Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Seven Writers, Seven Sentences

It's times like this that I realise that I don't have a general, all-purpose blog...


Oh well. 


My lovely Twitter friend @Mariam_Kobras tagged me in a thing. Normally I avoid those tagging things like the plague, but this one intrigued me. Mariam wrote: "Seven writers are invited to copy and paste 7 sentences, starting from line 7, on page 77 of their WIP."


Now, since I finally finished the first draft of my WIP last week (a mere two years after getting the idea and starting to write), I thought that it would do me no harm to through a tiny morsel of it out there, put it under the magnifying glass and see just how shit it actually is. 


So, here goes: 7 sentences from page 77, starting from line 7 of Capricorn, book one of the Zodiac trilogy, a paranormal YA romance.  



'...And he wasn’t lying to be cruel, but to protect the kids here at the centre. It’s hard enough being a Capricorn without finding out that some of the other kids haven’t made it.’
‘Some of the other kids?’ I asked sharply. ‘Tell me honestly, Andy; have any of the Capricorns made it? Survived past, you know – ‘ I blushed scarlet – ‘puberty?’
The following silence rang with unspoken truth. Andy couldn’t meet my eyes.
‘Oh god,’ I said, wheeling myself away from him, needing to escape. ‘Oh god, oh god – I’m going to die!’




I rather like the fact that that excerpt ended so dramatically! Serendipitous, I guess :) 


Anyway, in turn I'm tagging seven other writers with the same challenge. No pressure guys, do it if you feel like it. My seven are: 


@rflong
@denisedeegan
@mduffywriter
@chrisnickson2
@mruku
@rebeccaebrown
@NettieWriter

Monday, October 24, 2011

More Tentacular Awfulness

I'm sure you all remember that I hosted a stage on the blog tour for Mrs Darcy Versus The Aliens (How could we not? I hear you cry). Well, I've now reviewed it on Amazon and thought I'd post the review here too.

What can I say about this book? I approached it with fear and trepidation, expecting it to be every bit as awful as Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (which was an interesting conceit, but has a terrible execution! The prequel Dawn of the Dreadfuls was considerably better.]


How wrong was I? Very, that's how. I never expected to find another human being with similar interests in both the works of Jane Austen and popular culture, but Pinnock obviously is such a person. I laughed out loud at lines like "the truth is out there, but it is not yet universally acknowledged" and at references to HP Lovecraft, The Fast Show, the X-Files, and any number of others.

This novel is not just a line of gags one after the other, though; it's well plotted and thought out, pacy and full of twists. I read it quickly, enjoyed it to the end and will probably have to re-read it soon, to make sure I didn't miss any of the references... The nerd in me would never live that down!

Highly recommended for nerds and neo-Georgians alike.