About two weeks ago, I got this cold, maybe flu, thing. Runny nose, fever, aches all over.

Just as I started to feel better, the fluey bits decided they wouldn’t be content to use my body as their own personal disco club and leave it crumpled on the floor like a dirty tissue. Oh, no. They had to leave behind a sinus infection.

But full disclosure: I don’t really know what I’m talking about because…

1. I’m delirious from a fever that’s lasted two weeks.

2. I haven’t seen a doctor yet. (I do that as a last resort, which is obviously well past now. But it didn’t hit me until Friday night during a dinner that I could not force myself to eat, when I blubbered to my husband that I shouldn’t have waited so long, and the blubbering just made me more congested. So I go on Monday.)

I’ve never been this sick for this long. So sick I’m not even interested in reading from my sick bed.

What I really want to be doing is posting about the Unsung YA giveaway I have all ready to go, but this is about the most I can bring myself to craft out of thin air. The sooner I get better, the sooner you get your fabulous giveaway.

Your Turn

What’s your favorite trick for getting over a cold/flu/sinus infection?

Or howzabout some tips for thanking a spouse who’s been taking care of the house plus a two-year-old all by his lonesome?

(Here endeth the whine.)

Photo by jamelah.

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Lips Touch: Three Times
Author: Laini Taylor
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4/5
Why I Read It: This book was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award.

Summary: Three stories, each about a different girl and a kiss. And no ordinary kiss, either. These kisses carry a dangerous promise to forever change the girls’ lives.

Review: I must read more by this author. Soon after I started this book, I was jotting down page numbers of quotes left and right. When I hit page 100 and had filled up an entire post-it with page numbers, I decided I’ll just have to reread this someday.

These stories are weird, but deliciously so. They reminded me of Pretty Monsters, which I also loved.

The only reason this book didn’t get 5 stars from me is that the ending of the first story let me down a bit. I wanted more conclusion, but I don’t read many short stories so I’m probably just not calibrated for them.

Here’s a taste for you from the first story about a girl named Kizzy whose grandmother has just passed away:

Sometimes Kizzy imagined her grandmother knife-fighting her way down the long tunnel of death, but mostly her daydreams were of a very different nature. She daydreamed of slow-dancing with Mike Crespain and of sitting on his lap at lunch while he hugged her around the waist instead of Sarah Ferris, his knuckles resting lightly against the underside of her breasts instead of Sarah’s. She daydreamed about having slim ankles like Jenny Glass instead of peasant ankles like the fetlocks of a draft horse. About smooth hair instead of coarse hair, sleek hips instead of belly dancer’s hips. About a tinkling laugh, and a butterfly tattoo, and a boy who would tuck his hand into her back pocket while they walked, and press her up against a fence to suck her lower lip like a globe of fruit.

That’s hot. The next paragraph is even better, but I would’ve had to give you more background to the story.

So go read it for yourself!

Your Turn: What’s the last book you read where you found yourself jotting down a ton of quotes?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Pretty Monsters—My rating: 4/5
• How to Steal a Car
• How to Say Goodbye in Robot
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

The Guardian posted a collection of rules for writing fiction from authors like Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, and Philip Pullman. I read these rules over the course of a day so the words of wisdom would have a better chance of sinking in. Here’s my eloquent summary of one rule that cropped up over and over on the authors’ lists: Read a lot.

I can attest to that. A year of book blogging in which I read more books than ever has taught me more than any writing how-to book or writers’ conference.

After reading the Guardian article, I allowed myself to fantasize about one day being a published author and being asked to provide my own list of writing rules. Would I offer practical advice like Elmore Leonard? Be funny like Roddy Doyle—or a stick-in-the-mud like Philip Pullman?

I decided to find out.

My Rules for Writing…Or for Dating, Take Your Pick

1. First impressions count. This is the rule that trumps all others. If the reader doesn’t connect with your main character—if she doesn’t empathize with what your character’s going through—you’ve lost her. Some ways we push our readers away without realizing it:

• Switching the point of view makes it harder to truly connect to any one character, let alone multiple.
• Introducing too many characters all at once takes the focus off the main character.
• Playing into a stereotype makes the character less real—less of a person.

2. Don’t be shy. In this world of instant gratification, readers want something to happen right away. So ditch the prologue and the first chapter full of backstory and jump right into the good stuff. You can sprinkle the backstory in later. Likewise, make sure your main character does something early on that involves more than just reacting to what others are doing.

3. Do be mysterious. Can you imagine if the first chapter of When You Reach Me explained who was sending the notes and what they meant? No fun in that. Our job is to create a sense of wonder in the reader. This goes for the main character’s thoughts and feelings, too. We don’t need to tell the reader every single thought that flits through the character’s head. Use their actions and dialogue to show how they’re feeling.

4. Keep the drama in check. Soap operas don’t work so well on paper, at least not for me. Cut the melodrama, or tone it down. Try reading an emotional scene out loud to find the parts that are over-the-top. Instead of having a character talk about their emotions, put them in a scene where their actions can reflect how they’re feeling. The character might still have to hint at their emotions, but at least they won’t come off like a drama queen.

5. Live in the present. Much like the person you’re dating won’t appreciate frequent trips down the memory lane of your previous relationships, the reader will get tired of frequent flashbacks. It can also quickly get confusing about what’s happening now versus then. If you do include a flashback, keep it short and make it clear when it’s over.

6. Listen to your heart. Your main character’s parents and teachers may very well have good advice. Even so, she’ll have to learn those lessons for herself the hard way. Not only does it make for a more interesting story, but a character empowered to solve her own problems is hella inspiring. Scrutinize every piece of dialogue coming out of an authority figure’s mouth to make sure they’re not giving all the answers.

7. Don’t forget to have fun. Play with language to keep your writing fresh and sharp. Do a crossword puzzle every day, or subscribe to a word-of-the-day newsletter. Pull out a writing book and use a prompt or an exercise. Stretching your brain to use language in new ways will pay off.

Your Turn

What would be on your list of writing rules? Do you disagree with anything on my list or in the Guardian article?

And if you’re looking for even more rules, check out:

• Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, and William Safire
• Ian Hocking
• Pauline Rowson

Or maybe you just think all this rules business is a bunch of hooey?

Photos by Professor Bop and 365bunnies.

I want one web site where I can go to:

1. Look up a book title and see all ratings and reviews combined into one list. Example: See how Google Books combines reviews from Amazon, Goodreads, and a couple other sites. But I want them all—LibraryThing, Shelfari, Powell’s, IndieBound. Everything in one place, but with duplicate ratings/reviews from one user across multiple sites culled to just one entry from that user.
2. Enter my rating and review for a title in one place and have it automatically pushed to all the sites of my choice. Currently, I manually post my ratings and reviews on this blog, on LibraryThing, and on Goodreads. The gating factor is my time, so I haven’t been posting reviews to other sites like Amazon and Powell’s, even though I would like to.
3. Get recommendations for books I will probably love, based on the ratings of other users with similar taste as mine. LibraryThing’s recommendations are okay, but Goodreads seems closer to achieving this with their Compare Books feature because you can find users with similar taste based on ratings of the same books. But Goodreads is missing the step of then extrapolating a list from all similar users of recommendations for titles you might like.

Is This Too Much to Ask?

It looks like Google is continuing to add new features to Google Books, as recently as January. And they’ve already tackled the first item on my wish list in their Google Maps interface, such as how they aggregate restaurant reviews into one place. Could they be the first to cross the finish line on that feature?

Your Turn

Have you seen any of these features on my wish list? Tell me and make my day!

Would you be interested in using these features? Or do you have other features on your own wish list?

Photo by Spatch.

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Fire
Author: Kristin Cashore
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: I loved Graceling, so this companion novel was a must-read for me.

Summary: Fire is part-human, part-monster. The monster part of her makes men wild and full-fledged monsters crave her blood. The human part has to cope with having the power to enter people’s minds and bend them to her will.

Review: I was a tad bit bummed to find out we wouldn’t be seeing the next round of steaminess from Katsa and Po in this book. But I need not have worried because parts of this story rivaled a sauna.

This book was a little slow getting off the ground, but it picked up in the second half. Part of that is that I had trouble clearly seeing Fire’s motivation in the first half.

What saved it for me and why I kept reading—aside from the yummy bits, of course—was that the world Cashore created is completely engrossing. I mean, monsters?! But I totally bought it from page one.

Also, did I mention the romance comes in the ever-so-delicious flavor of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet?

Your Turn: That Austen chick sure knew what she was doing. What other YA books use the Darcy/Elizabeth dynamic?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Shiver—My rating: 3/5
• Leviathan
• Graceling—My rating: 5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing