Catching Up

I used to love What’s Up Wednesday posts because they told me exactly what to write, allowing me to maintain my status as a mindless drone. Which is all I ever want in life.

Which is why I’m joining Katy Upperman for her Tuesday Currently post. Here’s how it goes:

It’s no secret I’m a sucker for a great book cover design, and I’m loving the cover art for these two adult novels (they’re part of a larger list of books over at The Book Smugglers). 

I’m crazy about the way the illustrated birds overlap the title and author’s name. The design is so appropriate considering the title.

And then there’s Written In Blood which is chilling in its simplicity. The streaks of color that reveal the girl’s face beneath remind me a bit of water drips on a foggy mirror. Water drips that maybe reveal something scary behind you.

If every book I bought was as good as the ones I read in April I wouldn’t have to worry about broken e-readers. Those things do not take being thrown across the room well. Anyhow, I loved the books I read last month so much that I’m going to write all about them in a separate post, complete with ❤️ ❤️ and !!! and pronouncements that you must read them immediately.

Right now, though, I’m getting ready to read Jessi Kirby’s Things We Know by Heart. If it’s anything like her previous books, I’ll be sad crying and happy crying and avoiding the mirror until I hit The End. (I’m not one of those pretty-cry people. My face turns into something from an episode of CSI.)

I’m slowly making my way through Supernatural—I’m on season nine and seeing the end. That sort of feels like an accomplishment, but mostly it feels like I’ll soon have commercials and weekly waits crashing my friendship with the Winchesters. Not cool, man.

I’ve also really been loving iZombie, which has been cracking me up with the way the main character adopts the personalities of the people whose brains she eats. Add bonus points for a loveable sidekick and personality-changing former-Arthur boyfriend and I’m hooked.

If I tried to write to music with lyrics my novel would read something like this:

“What’d she say?” I asked.
 “Nice to meet you, where you been? I could show you incredible things. Magic, madness, heaven, sin. Saw you there and I thought, ‘Oh my God, look at that face. You look like my next mistake.’ Love’s a game. Wanna play?”

Not that I listen to Taylor Swift ALL THE TIME. Only most of the time.

Anyhow, I’m an instrumental-only kind of girl when putting words on paper, but I like to listen to other sorts of music while staring into space (though the literary term for that is brainstorming.)

And this songs is basically my book in broken into beats and measures and other musical terms someone as tone deaf as me wouldn’t understand. Here’s how my book goes:

Fear. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve been struggling with my current WIP, and that has nothing to do with how much I love it.  (Because I really, really love it. Like, risk-of-death-by-hug love it.) It has everything to do with fear and doubt and worries that it’s not original enough, not well-written enough—never mind the fact that it’s not actually written yet—not exciting enough, not surprising, not smart, not…oh, you get it. I recently went back to Susan Dennard’s posts on facing fear, and reading how a published author handles this is super helpful. If you’re blocked by fear, it’s worth a read. Her post on taking writing-related fears and putting them in their place is especially helpful.

Getting my hands on one of the eleventy billion books that released today. I need a pause button to hold time until I’ve had a chance to read some of these:

 

Nothing feels like summer quite like watching a cartoon wiener dance for a circus ringmaster during a double feature at the drive-in. I’m lucky enough to live close to a few—something I didn’t realize was so rare until I moved to Philly and then Northern Virginia, neither of which are near working drive-in theaters. The theater’s opening seems to usher in summer, and I don’t care that the movie selection is smaller than at the cinema. Will a 1950s announcer tell you that ladies can arrive in casual housedresses at Showcase Cinemas? Will he tell you to have a gay old time? I don’t think so.

What are you currently up to?