One Crazy Month (Part 2)

I’ve been entertaining visitors.

People have been in and out of Charlotte like whoa.

First, it was me, gone in New York. Then, my parents went up to Boston – to watch my little bro’s squash final. The next weekend, they went to Mardi Gras.

During those times, I was in charge of taking care of our dear bulldog Churchill. You see how cute he is? Adorable. This is him after our walk, not moving – until I opened the door and we went for a second walk.

Then my good friend Angela and her boyfriend came in from DC. The next day, my sister arrived from Charleston. And a few days later, my grandmother arrived in town, and the next day, my aforementioned brother came home for spring break.

It’s nice. I’ve been social. I’ve talked to people in person rather than over the phone or over BBM (umm, I mean, Blackberry Messenger for those of you who love your iPhones or other devices). It’s sad and odd to rediscover how much you miss someone – even if you talk to them every other day. Sometimes, digital communication really isn’t the same.

I’ve been sick.

(Disclaimer: this may be a TMI section. Feel free to skim/skip.)

It’s so weird: I’ve basically been sick for over a month. I’ve got one of those stubborn sinus infections, which really won’t go away, and I’ve been on three different antibiotics since February 9. (But please don’t be alarmed. An ENT doctor told me what was up, and life is back on track.) The low-grade fevers finally went away this week (yaaaay!), but guess what I got instead?

The stomach bug of doom. It was ridiculous. Tuesday morning, I woke up and rushed to the toilet. I rushed back three more times before noon. God, I haven't been so violently ill since I got food poisoning in high school.

(But don’t worry: I don’t have any pictures, and I definitely wouldn’t force them on you even if I did have them. :-P)

But there is one good thing about being sick: TONS of reading time.

….And I’ve been reading awesome things. :-)

Really awesome things. Awesome like whoa, in fact.

I’ll only talk about four – briefly, because I plan to devote whole posts to some of them.

Divergent – OMG, I feel like I’ve been waiting to read this book forever (but it’s really only been about a year)!

(Jo was nice enough to sign me up for an ARC tour, and it came to me right before I went to New York. And then it went straight on its way again, so unfortunately, I can’t send the ARC along to any of you readers.)

And it. Was. AWESOME. No, really – I wouldn’t just say this. I didn’t rush through it the way many other people said that they did. I forced myself to go slow, to savor it, because I knew when it was over, I couldn’t read it anymore. When I read the last page, I immediately wanted to start over at page one (but I couldn’t…I had to send it on…Sadness…).

The MC, Tris (short for Beatrice), lives in a dystopian Chicago, where the whole population is split up into five factions, which all try to become the epitome of one virtue: Abnegation (which is big on Selflessness), Candor (Truth), Erudite (Study), Amity (Kindness or Peacefulness - basically, comfortable living), and Dauntless (Courage).

I’m not totally sure I can write a real review yet, but here’s what I loved the most: Tris and her relationship to her fear. Her initiation into Dauntless forces her to confront all of her fears, and she gets ranked among the other Dauntless initiates in relation to how well and how easily she conquers these fears. Tris is a person small in stature, but with nerves of steel. But she has next-to-no recognition about how brave and awesome she is. She tackles her fears, and conquers them, one by one. Which leads her to do what she needs to do to keep the people she loves safe.

Which translates to awesome awesome AWESOME.

Can't wait to read it again come May.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate – Okay, I’ve been keeping this in the TBR stack for a couple months now, on the recommendation of a trusted bookworm friend. But I couldn’t bring myself to read it. I mean, a girl-scientist in 1899 Texas? (Of course, I also had an ulterior motive for keeping it close: it’s just pretty to look at. I’ve always had a thing for the Victorian silhouettes (ie. the cut-out profile look), and this cover gives me happy flashbacks to the picture searches in the Highlights magazine I read in my youth. But in a nice way.)

But it was so funny!! I never thought I could love biology so much. Calpurnia herself is the kind of character who latches onto you – she’s so flawed, so smart, and so loveable. There’s not really a plot in the strictest sense of the world, though lots of stuff happens, but there’s a great feeling in it: the sense of wanting more from life, and not being sure you’ll be able to get it.

The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless – This book is for everyone who wanted to be an evil villain when they grew up, or maybe just…everyone with a sense of humor.

Seriously, it was AWESOME! I laughed so freaking hard, and I kinda now just wanna make a shirt like Zachary’s that says, "Born to Be Rotten." And get some zucchini-flavored gum – also like Zachary’s – so I can trick people into thinking that it's spearmint or something.

Once you finish, you too will want to perfect your evil cackle: Bwa-ha-ha!!

Stay tuned, dear friends: I’ll do a giveaway once it pubs next month. :-D

This is Dream...with his chipper older sis, Death.
He's kind of moping. He does a lot of that.
(This scene comes from the end of Volume One, by the way.)

The Sandman series: They call this the comic book series that redefined comic books. And they should.

(Disclaimer, though: this is not for kids.)

If you write for children, you might know about his novel Coraline or The Graveyard Book, the 2009 Newbery Award winner. If you read fantasy, you might have read Neverwhere or American Gods.

But this is one of Gaiman’s earliest works. The main characters is Morpheus (a.k.a. Dream), one of the seven Endless: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium - siblings, older than gods, who have lived from the dawn of time and rule over their respective dominions.

But it’s really a writer’s comic, because it’s really about Story (which is also about Dream’s realm). We see Shakespeare, we see the Muses, we see the Fates, we see Mark Twain, we see Lucifer with a mention of Milton, and also, an Alice in Wonderland type world with evil Cuckoos. We see Norse gods, and Egyptian gods, and Babylonian gods, and we see comic book heroes.

It shouldn't work, but because it's Gaiman, it does.

It also defies description without spoilers, so I would just go check it out. All ten or eleven volumes. Like literally, from your local library. :-)

I'm Still Alive, I Promise.

I know, I know. I haven't been as full of digital chatter as I usually am. I have a good reason: a sinus infection. It kicked my butt and gave me fever. :'-(

I got antibiotics and kicked its butt back. (insert evil laugh here.) I am feeling much better.

(For those of you who are now worried about my health, since I was sick twice in one month, I promise you that I'm fine. Sinus infections are routine for me at this point. I've gotten them at least twice a year since college. I think it's the cold climes I choose to live in. Must move to California, place of sunshine and warmth and coastal breezes...sigh...someday, ie. after revisions...)

While I've been MIA, things have been happening in the publishing world:

1. Harper Teen Pays Seven Figures for Debut YA Trilogy:

Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 3/5/2010 9:44:42 AM

In a major pre-Bologna acquisition, Laura Arnold at Harper Teen pre-empted North American rights to a debut YA trilogy by Josephine Angelini. Mollie Glick at Foundry sold the series--the first book is called Starcrossed--and said she pitched it as "a Percy Jackson for teenage girls." Foundry's Stephanie Abou and Hannah Brown Gordon will be handling foreign rights at the Bologna Book Fair, and film rights are being handled by Angelini's manager, Rachel Miller at Tom Sawyer Entertainment.

In Starcrossed, which brings Greek tragedy to high school, a shy Nantucket teenager named Helen Hamilton attempts to kill the most attractive boy on the island, Lucas Delos, in front of her entire class. The incident proves more than a bit inconvenient for Helen, who's already concerned that she's going insane--whenever she's sees Lucas (or any of his family members) the image of three crying women appear to her.

The murder attempt does have an upside though, as it ultimately leads to Helen's revelation that she and the local heartthrob are, in fact, playing out some version of a weighty ancient love affair. (Said female apparitions are, in fact, the Three Fates.) So Helen, like her namesake, Helen of Troy isn't going crazy, she's destined to start a Trojan War-like battle by being with Lucas. This then begs the unfortunate question: should she be with the boy she loves even if it means endangering the rest of the world?

The second book in the trilogy, Persephone's Garden, follows Helen's journey to the Underworld, and the third book, Ilium, chronicles the final battle between mortals and the gods. Harper Teen is planning to publish Starcrossed in summer 2011.

This totally blew my mind. I mean, I know some of the players involved. I even follow them on Twitter. I saw the excitement even before I knew what the excitement was about.

I have mixed feelings about advances that are high enough to be newsworthy, but I think this one will definitely earn out. I mean, Did you read description of the book? Does it not sound awesome?? I'm already plotting on how to pull strings and snag a galley..... :-P

2. Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall was released in stores everywhere...


...even in Bozeman, Montana.

I know I said this in my last post too, but it's true here too - You have to read it. I admit, I'm not the biggest fan of this genre. I haven't read other teen weepies like If I Stay or Th1rteen R3asons Why (I have this thing against sad endings), but the pre-pub buzz for Ms. Oliver's novel was so good that I begged a galley off a friend.

Before I Fall deserves every nice thing that anyone has said about it. It totally changed my mind about the weepy genre. It is destined to become the favorite book of multitudes of teens. In five years, all the copies in the picture above will be battered and dog-eared, the tell-tale signs of many reads and re-reads.

Do yourself a favor, and read it now - that way, you can say you read it before it became a bestseller/won such-and-such awards/got so famous that everybody knew about it.

3. On the same day she emailed me to make sure that the bears hadn't eaten me, my awesome agent J. invited me to go see The Lightning Thief with her after our lunch on Tuesday. Eeeeeekkk!!! I know - I can't believe I haven't seen it yet either, but I want to. Desperately. It totally made my week.

A few things have happened here in Montana too:

1. Spring has begun to crawl up the mountain. This means that the weather has moved away from sub-zero temps and started to look more like this:

This means that mud season is upon us. At the base, the landscape has turned from white to brown, and on either side of the road, rivulets of melted run-off thread their way to the Gallatin River.

I'm crossing my fingers that the snow lasts long enough for my little brother to get here and snowboard to his heart's content. He's spending his Spring Break here, and if he can't get out to snowboard, he's going to be bored out of his mind.

2. Also, I'm off to NYC tomorrow to see my editor, my agent, and oodles of friends. The excitement abounds like whoa.

Of course, my little brother will arrive at the airport an hour before I return. That means that I must clean the cabin unless I want him to see how I've been living and thus be teased/blackmailed until the end of time. I spent a significant part of yesterday and today cleaning. I even vacuumed and made his bed. It was epic.

3. Revisions are everywhere. I still haven't received my editorial letter from my editor, but I've been plowing ahead with revisions for J., agent extraordinaire. Earlier this week, I went into a mild panic, thinking that a month had been wasted since I hadn't finished my revisions in the three weeks since the arrival of J.'s letter. (Note: when I'm sick, everything tends to look like the end of the world.)

Then I started typing up all the new scenes...and realized I had written 20K. Not all of that 20K will make it into this manuscript, of course (one scene has three different beginnings I need to wade through so that's 6K cut right there), but it did make me realize February was actually productive, not just full of illness.

I have maybe three more new scenes to write, and then I revise my revisions. I'll be cutting and pasting the chronology of these new scenes the way a dealer shuffles cars. Then a line-by-line edit or two.... (starting to feel mildly stressed)

But first...laundry! And packing! :-D

Truth

I had to change the name of this blog. It used to be "Tales: The Adventures of Shelby R. Bach." I added "Life and" today.

I like the word "Life." I say, "How's life?" when other people say, "How are you?" I've done that since high school, and I might have even done it earlier. "Life" is kind of all-encompassing. There's not much it doesn't include.

The word "Adventures" had a specific purpose. I was scared. Many changes were in the air. I was trying to view them in a certain light. I'm still trying, but it has gotten easier with time.

The problem was that I didn't post anything.

"Adventures" is a big word to live up to. I'm not sure if I have had any real adventures.

I got lost in my own hometown, between my parents' house and a park less than two miles away. My little brother (adorable, a freshman at college) was quarantined with the swine flu. I bought health insurance. I borrowed 71 books from my local library (actual reading rate: roughly 80% - but I didn't finish them all). I recovered from a sinus infection. I visited Charleston and learned how to make shrimp & grits. Later that day, I found a graveyard (see right). I also found a dress for the debutante ball of my little sister (senior at the same college, tough and awesome). I attended a beautiful wedding in Virginia, but my camera's battery ran down and left me without pictures. :-( I booked flights to Montana, to DC, and to New York. I started a part-time job at a general contracting company. I wrote 70 pages of a children's novel, read fairy tale anthologies, and structured a story arc for a five-book series.

I'm a writer. I quit my job in New York in order to pursue my dream. (And also, to keep sane. New York is a difficult place to stay sane.)

Truth: That's the real adventure. Risk and dreams and faith.

The posts should be more frequent from here on out.

(P.S. Truth number 2 - I'm still not unpacked.)