The Royal Companion

The Royal Companion by Tanya Bird

(Book abandoned at 70%)

Ohhhhh no. I should have read the trigger warning. I'm so ticked off.

The Royal Companion started off really well. Smart writing, a lovable heroine...what else can a reader ask for? But at nearly 70% the book becomes unredeemable for me. There are certain unspoken rules in literature you simply don't violate, such as never killing off a beloved animal or including graphic scenes of a child being hurt. Well I think it's time to add a third rule: (view spoiler)[Never have your sixteen year-old virgin protagonist raped and beaten in a gang-bang situation. (hide spoiler)]

Horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE. If this was an adult novel, or even a YA novel based on a true story, then...well...maybe. But for a YA/teen romance? NO.

After reading this scene, I now hate Prince Tyron. His wishy-washiness and cowardice led to him abandoning Aldara and leaving her to the devices of his sadistic brother, and frankly, he should have known better. I have no desire to see him and Aldara end up together. That's a huge problem for a romance novel...if the reader doesn't wants the heroine and hero to find their happy endings together, then the book loses all purpose.

Another thing. Tyron's little brother Prince Stamitos chooses a companion for himself, Sapphira. Not only is his companion smart and witty like Aldara, but she and Stamitos are both quite progressive when compared to others in their kingdom, and neither one has a problem openly showing their love and affection with each other despite the whole Prince/Companion dichotomy. So this begs the question: If Sapphira and Stamitos can have a relationship like this, WHY CAN'T ALDARA AND TYRON? It states in the book's synopsis that "there is no place for love between a prince and his Companion," yet no one seems overly concerned about Stamitos' and Sapphira's relationship. Those two make it look easy. I'm not sure why the author chooses to add these two little lovebirds into her story because they undermine her entire conflict. Stamitos and Sapphira show the reader that the wedge between Tyron and Aldara isn't an external conflict after all; but an internal, perceived conflict created by Tyron. In short, society isn't the problem. Tyron is. Like, dude, your little brother managed to figure this out and rise above it all...why can't you?

Bird did include a trigger warning in her synopsis and that's my bad for not noticing it. Plus the writing, other than a few minor editing misses, is elegantly executed. Bird is a talented writer, her subject matter is simply not my taste.

Last 200 Words - Chapter One

Lots to write about but no time! Just to keep my blog from going stale, once a week I'm going to copy/paste my last 200 words for each completed chapter of Black Lilies (similar to what we used to do for the WIP Marathon), unless the last 200 words is a big fat spoiler.

Note: These excerpts are being pulled from a working draft and are subject to change.

Okay, chapter one! Dang it, this one is the most boring when it's out of context. Oh well.

Yet the words chilled him. They seemed aimed directly at him, though he had only conceived a name for the clock minutes ago. He turned around, suddenly feeling watched; vulnerable.

  The paper began to skid in the breeze, and he reached down to retrieve it. Flattening it again, he skimmed down to the end of the letter to find the closing salutation.

Yours in Time, Aviva

He let out a breath. That confirmed it. He didn’t know anyone named Aviva. He had never heard of that name in his life.

Curious now, he went back to read the letter in its entirety. The beginning was confusing, and some parts made him chuckle. But by the time he reached the end, his eyes were fogged with moisture, and his skin felt hot. He was glad that William and George had gone home so they wouldn’t witness him behaving like such a pansy.

He carefully folded the letter and stuffed it into the pocket of his trousers. The letter wasn’t meant for him.

So why did he feel, deep down to his core, that it was?

(185 words)

Duck Derby

For the record that last post was written well over a month ago, and I either forgot to post it, or thought at the time that it was too depressing. But it doesn't really bother me now, plus that's a damn fine graphic of a butterfly.

So, life right now in a nutshell: Work, commuting, sleep deprivation...the usual. Monday through Friday sort of sucks. (Wow, I'm off to a chipper start here). I love my job the way I always have, but I'm drained like, all the time. The weekends, on the other hand...those are magical. Every weekend I feel like I'm on vacation. Clint makes us breakfast on Saturday mornings and we eat it outside on our patio, rain or shine (really 'snow or shine'  would be more accurate). We bought one of those patio heaters a few months ago:

You may have seen these in outdoor areas of restaurants. Anyway, this thing was the best hundred bucks we've ever spent. Even when the temperatures are freezing we keep nice and toasty. We end up outside for probably a good hour in the mornings, chatting, drinking coffee, enjoying our little neck of the woods. Literal woods too, which is even better.

Friday on our way home from work we swung by Goodwin's (local grocery store) and purchased our ducks for the mountain's annual Duck Derby next weekend. I've never been to one, but I've heard about it from Shan for years. Basically a bunch of rubber ducks are released down a waterslide down into the lake, where they proceed to bob along in the world's most pitiful "race" in which most stall into giant clumps and need help from firefighters with giant hoses to move them along. Everyone cheers for their duck, not really knowing which one(s) is theirs. The owner of the winning duck gets $1,000 (2nd place = $500, 3rd = $250, last place = $100). Proceeds for the duck derby pay for the town's fireworks for 4th of July.

So despite being super cheesy, the Duck Derby is a big deal around here. Over 3,000 people attended last year, and nearly $8,000 was raised. Isn't this the best thing ever? I am so, so excited for this stupid event. I love it that I live in a community that does corny stuff like this. It makes me feel like I've stepped back into the '50s.

Other reasons I love living here: Regular visits with my sis's family! It's amazing to be able to meet them spontaneously for lunch now, or to swing by their house for a beer and a game of shuffleboard. Trin and Elijah get to see their cousins all the time...those crazy kids get together with or without us. On Thursday night, Cassidi, Dylan and I went to a school board meeting to support Rim teachers (long story), and both Cass and I gave a speech. The whole thing was such a cool experience; being there with my niece and nephew, seeing the community rally together like that.

But mountain living is definitely not for the faint of heart. This is what we've dealt with this past month:

 Our driveway

Trin conquering Mount Crap-Ton-of-Snow

The snow is finally gone now, and we somehow made it through the season without losing a single day of work. Thank goodness we bought the Renegade. That little beast saved us.

Off-topic, but we caught the culprit who keeps eating my fern.

 

Butterfly Effect

I haven't been able to get this concept out of my head. The idea that the smallest action can trigger an unimaginable chain of events.

Like the fact that a water heater rupturing in a random house in Twin Peaks resulted in the death of a young woman from Los Angeles six months later.

I know this sounds insane, but I'm simply stating what happened.

In November 2016, after losing his wife, an elderly man named Richard put their beloved home on the market. After a few months, Richard accepted an offer on the house. It was officially in escrow.

A week before escrow was scheduled to close on the house, disaster struck. The upstairs water heater ruptured, flooding everything. Richard was forced to make repairs, spending months replacing cabinets and floors. The buyers of the house were not willing to wait, so they pulled out of the deal.

It wasn't until July 2017 that the house was re-listed. A family of four fell in love with the house and made an offer. Despite a hellacious escrow process, they received their keys on August 22, 2017, and now happily live there today.

But here's where the story goes dark. One day this family of four were on their way home from work and school, and they struck a female motorcyclist with their truck. The motorcyclist died. 

This family would have never been on that highway if they hadn't moved to the mountains. They would have never moved to the mountains if they hadn't stumbled upon their dream house. They would have never stumbled upon their dream house if an unfortunate incident involving a water heater hadn't forced the first buyers to back out. 

Thus, a ruptured water heater resulted in the death of Kaleena Porter.

And the wheels of the bus go round and round...

By the way, me getting blasted on social media by a horrible parent also led to Kaleena's death.

Me buying new curtains for my living room also led to her death.

Me pushing my family to leave work right after the bell rang also led to her death.

Clint turning left when he usually turns right also led to her death.

If we just took one of these things out of the equation, just ONE of these pathetic little things, we would not have struck Kaleena with our truck.

I can rationalize a dozen things that I did, that she did, that life did, that led to Kaleena dying on the street that day. I don't need anyone to console me, to tell me "You can't beat yourself up over this. You didn't do anything wrong." Because I already know that. I already know that I was being a normal human doing normal human things, living my normal human life. I also know that if we weren't there, someone else might have struck her. She was, after-all, in the wrong lane.

But knowing doesn't keep your brain from traveling through the "If only's."

If only I had listened to my family who said my living room curtains looked great and didn't need to be replaced. If only I had let the school clear out more before rushing my family out the door. If fucking only.

People often mistake regret for guilt. You can tell me all day long that I have no reason to feel guilty. But don't try to tell me not to feel regret.

Everyone Wants to Write a Book

Well, maybe not "Everyone." But according to surveys published in the New York Times, USA Today, and other online forums between 2002 and 2016, over 80% of Americans dream of writing a book. Of course this doesn't address the other half of the question: Of this 80%, how many actually set out to do it? 

Regardless of the answer, there's this little sweetheart to contend with:

According to Utterances of an Overcrowded Mind, 

"Out of every 1,000 people that set out to write a book, only 30 actually finish. And if you then add on top of that the fact that only 20% of people who write a book actually publish it, this means only 6 people get published."

This would be a good time to note that the author of this post never cites any sources for this statistic, so it could be total hogwash. Nor did he mention whether "published" includes self-publishing and/or publishing through independent presses. 

So maybe this statistic needs tweaking (it definitely needs backing). Still, I tend to believe its basic premise: The majority of people here on planet Earth will not write a book in their lifetime. It's easy to forget this, because when I'm on social networking sites such as twitter, it feels like everyone and their mother is a writer. I'd estimate that at least 2,000 of my 'friends'/followers are published. But here is where I need to remind myself that I spent years deliberately building connections with published authors. These numbers do not reflect the world I physically live in day-by-day.

In real life, I do not have one single flesh-and-blood friend who is published. In fact, I work for the largest employer in my hometown with over 2,500 staff members. Of these staff members, there are exactly two who are published authors. A 6th grade teacher, Mr. A. (from one of our local elementary schools), and me. Two. Of over 2,500.

That's a more accurate representation of real life. 

So I guess the moral of the story is, I need to give myself permission to feel good over writing a book. Instead of wallowing in writer's guilt for being such a slow writer, for not cranking out my next book fast enough, for derailing from writing for months at a time, for being terrible at marketing the f*ing thing...why not simply feel damned good for being amongst the 3% (of a possibly bogus statistic) that actually finished writing a book in the first place?

So if you too have finished a manuscript (or are on the verge of doing so), repeat after me: 

Bite me self-doubt, I wrote a book.

Goal for 2018: Be Boring

In the past two days I managed to tear down a huge wall of writer's block. This sucker was beefy and cost me several months of writing (though looking at my word count, we're probably talking closer to a year). The culprit, I think, has been all of the life changes my family has gone through. Not only have these changes been distracting (and even derailing), they've also been entertaining. Walls to paint, rooms to decorate, new places in my neighborhood to visit...I guess it sounds like a good thing, huh? I mean, a lot of people believe that the key to writing a lot is living an interesting and varied life. The thing is, I disagree. I think the key to writing a lot is stability, and even boredom. When I first started teaching, it was my dream to write a book, but I couldn't get anything down on paper. Teaching was too new, and it was taking every ounce of creative energy I possessed to create lessons. The job turned my life upside-down, and I was perpetually drained. It wasn't until 2011, after I had been teaching for 4 or 5 years, that I was settled enough in my job to finally write a book. Three years later, my novel was finally finished.

~ Gustave Flaubert

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon devotes an entire chapter to this principle. The first paragraph sums up his argument nicely:

I'm a boring guy with a nine-to-five job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog. That whole romantic image of the creative genius...running around...is played out. It's for the superhuman and the people who want to die young. The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don't have that energy if you waste it on other stuff (Kleon 119).

I think that's the key. I need to get to a place of consistency again. I need my life to take on a sort of dull harmony, so that boredom can set in, and I can take all of that pent up creative energy and purge it onto pages on my screen.

Thus, my New Year's Resolution for 2018 is to be bored.

(For the record, I think this resolution is better than the one I made in 2015, in which I vowed to be a hermit crab stuffed into a broken piece of bottle).

Seriously, 2017 was too exciting. And too unsettling. Boredom sounds amazing. Can I get me some of that, please?

Happy New Year, and may yours be more exciting than mine!

New Everything

I feel like we just did some kind of life swap. It's exciting, but also unnerving. I get a little spooked when life throws too many changes at me, and even good stress is stress. I started mentally cataloguing the things that have changed in our lives recently, and taking smaller things out of the equation (such as the renovations we're making on our house, Trinity learning how to drive, etc.), here's what I'm trying to adjust to:

New Career: Not for me, but for Clint. He went from being a train conductor and engineer to a 7th grade math/science teacher. Though this has been a mostly positive change for our family, it has come with it's share of stress (having him buried in school work, his exhaustion as he copes with his new position, etc.).

New Home: You already know about this one. But one thing worth mentioning is that though we moved only 29 miles away, 9 miles of it is straight up a mountain, which means our new house is in an entirely new climate.

New Car: Because of the above-mentioned new climate, we need a smaller vehicle with more maneuverability for narrow, curvy roads, yet something that can get us through the snow. I wanted a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. I adore Wranglers. There's just something so classic and timeless about them. Unfortunately the crash rating for the Unlimited is only a 2 out of 5 for the passenger (3 out of 5 for the driver). This was an instant deal breaker. So we ended up with this:

This is a 2017 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk (crash rating 4 out of 5). It has everything on our wish list. It's a 4-wheel drive with a tight turn radius and has special settings for the snow. And yes, we got it in hyper green! I'm not a silver or beige car-person. Best part is we never had to go to a dealership. We found everything we wanted online, and the dealership came to us! We signed all of the paperwork at my work and they delivered us our car. It was pretty crazy showing up to work in a minivan and leaving in a brand new Renegade.

New Dog: This is Gus.

When we moved to the mountains, George (our German Shorthair Pointer) became an absolute terror. Clint's dad has always had a soft spot for George, so he decided to take him. Giving up George left us with only one dog, and Beans gets pretty lonely while we're at work. So we got Gus. It was Clint's idea to go with a Corgi again because of how much we loved Cricket (our old girl who died last year). So far Gus is too adorable for words.

New Diet: I haven't eaten meat since June 22. In less than two weeks I'll be at the half-year mark. I really want to tell you all the cliches such as "Becoming a vegetarian has changed my life!" and "I have more energy than I've ever had before!" but the latter is simply not true, and mostly I just miss meat. Trying to cope with all of these life changes without any comfort food kinda sucks. I've decided to give myself one cheat a month now for fish only, but this doesn't help much when what I really want is a McDonald's double cheeseburger.

New Perspective: I've touched upon this on past blog entries. Ever since the accident the idealist in me has been chipped away a little, and I view the world through a more cautious lens. It's not a bad thing, it's just different.

I think that covers the major "new" things. I did buy a new set of pajamas that I really like, but that's probably not worth its own heading.