Books and Reading, A-Z

My friend Caitlin just posted this on her blog, and since I actually ADORE doing these kinds of surveys, guess what I'm making you put up with? Oh yeah, you guessed it . . . And this is long, kids, so brace yourselves.

Author you've read the most books from: I had to count, but Julia Quinn is the winner by a few. She's a romance author, BTW, and my very favorite romance author. She always has those moments in her book that make me laugh out loud, which is a trait I much value in my reading. In case you're interested, second place goes to JR Ward, my guilty pleasure of the reading world.

Best Sequel Ever: And thus starts the Harry Potter devotion. No book or series, in my opinion, has come close to how amazing and consistently awesome those books are. No one else can touch that.

Currently Reading: Speaking of Julia Quinn, I just started reading her again. I'm on her first book, Splendid. I finally finished the Harry Potter series while I was camping a couple weeks ago.

Drink of Choice While Reading: Water is my drink of choice 90% of the time, so that's usually what is on hand.

E-reader or Physical Book: I am a die-hard physical book girl. I don't have a Kindle or Nook, but I do have the Kindle app on my phone and the program on my computer, so it's not like I haven't used e-readers at all. I find them handy, to be sure. But there is a magic to a real book, the feel of the pages and the smell of the paper and the way you can take a moment to close the book and cry or laugh if you need to. Also, it's hard to read ahead on an e-reader. (Oh yeah, I'm THAT person.)

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School: *Takes a moment to consider this* Okay, this is a hard one. First of all, I have many friends who are writers, I myself am a writer, and I am emotionally attached to a whole lot of characters that don't even exist in a published forum. I actually fictionally dated a version of Orlando Bloom for quite a while in junior high and high school, courtesy of a dear writer friend that indulged my Lord of the Rings inspired fantasies (I've mentioned this before, there were vampires and Michael Jackson involved). So, if we are only counting characters that have been published, and we're not limiting this to books I had only read by high school, I would say that the character I would have dated in high school would be . . . one of the Weasley twins from Harry Potter. They were hilarious, unruly, had a family as bonkers as mine, I think I would have done very well with one of them. If we're counting unpublished literature as well, I do have a few characters of my own and a few creations of other friend writers that I would have dated without a second thought.

Glad you Gave This Book a Chance: Julia Quinn pops up again. I had never read a romance novel until my honeymoon (don't worry, the irony is not lost on me), and it had not occurred to me to take anything to entertain myself on said honeymoon. I figured we'd be busy watching movies and lounging around when we weren't, erm, pursuing other activities. Well, by the end of day 2, we were starting to get bored. So I bought a movie magazine that featured a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean material, and a book I picked at random from that aisle of the grocery store. I figured if I picked a pretty safe-looking cover and didn't stumble across anything scandalous during my brief skim through it, I'd be fine (I was leery about romance novels, since I'd never read one). Well, everything checked out, so I unknowingly bought my first romance novel. And I LOVED it! Opened up a whole new genre of books that I absolutely adore! Regency romance (Regency era of England, about 1815 and the years surrounding) is my favorite, and I've written quite a bit in this era as well, but all romance novels have appealed to me thus far. I love the characters, the plots, and I'm such a sucker for romance anyway. Throw me a hero that is professing his love to the heroine using the most flowery or simple words, it doesn't matter which, I love it.

Hidden Gem Book: Greek mythology. Not any specific book, not really, because there are probably dozens if not hundreds of books about Greek mythology, but there is just something about reading those stories, from whatever book I find them in, that I love. Gods and goddesses and heroes, beasts and monsters, tricksters and mortals, this convoluted web of interconnected characters and stories that are so very epic in every kind of way! With no end of tragedy, to be sure, but still, I love them. I love reading these myths, they are my favorite in all of mythology.

Important Moment in Your Reading Life: I don't remember it, but it was probably the moment I really discovered a library. I mean, come on. A voracious reader like me, just a kid, going from the bookshelves at home to a LIBRARY? Shut up! Libraries became frequent visitations for me after that, and still are. I take my daughter to story time at the library I worked at for two years, and she loves it there. We always go home with a huge bag of books, and even some movies, and she always has a favorite. Libraries are such a big thing for me, I discovered some of my greatest reading loves from the library, and I still do. If you don't have a library card, go get one immediately, and use it weekly. I promise it will be worth your while.

Kinds of Books You Won't Read: Stephen King. Don't get me wrong, I think the guy is amazing, and no way he has as many books and movies as he does without being an amazing writer. But horror, thriller, disturbing, all that is just not my thing. Which also cancels out Mary Higgins Clark and other writers in that genre. I'm also not all that fond of mysteries either. I live for fantasy, love, and comedy.

Longest Book You've Read: Probably the fifth Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix. That's 870 pages.

Major Book Hangover Because Of: Yes, this is going to keep cropping up. Harry Potter, definitely. Although, I'll definitely give second place to the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by JR Ward. I finish those books (several hundred pages) as fast as possible, and have to wait a whole YEAR for the next one. Thankfully, I only had to wait for the last few of Potter since I was later to the game on that one. But I do fantasize about JK Rowling doing another Hogwarts series, featuring either the Four Founders, or the Marauders, or the Progeny of the Harry/Ron/Hermione generation.

Number of Book Cases You Own: Actual cases? I have three 6-shelf bookcases with doors, and three 3-shelf open cases. One of them doesn't actually contain books because I moved them to shelves on the wall in my room, but there you go. Six book cases of varying sizes.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times: Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan. I don't know why, but I adore this book. I have read it over and over, and it's the book I never get sick of. It's the story of a teenage girl in India dealing with an arranged marriage, being widowed, and starting over her life from nothing, and I love it so much. Probably because it has a happy ending.

Preferred Place to Read: Someplace quiet. I'm a peace and quiet nut, and I can't write or read when there's lots of noise and activity going on. I don't even listen to music when I read and write, I like silence.

Quote That Inspires You: Oh, there are so many. No, really, I'm a quote collector. I have journals, Pinterest boards, and Word documents full of them, and I love them all. But this one pertains to all of life, and it brings reading into it in a special way. "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten." - G.K. Chesterton. This is on my closet door, which is kind of my shrine to, well, happiness and beauty and things that inspire me.

Reading Regret: That I do not have or do not make enough time to read as voraciously as I have before in my life. I have a daughter, and another baby on the way, so being mommy takes up a lot of time, and just being an adult takes up even more. And I have my computer and internet, where I waste far more time than I should, and there's also my own writing. So reading time, just reading, is precious and rare, which I hate. But I will never, never cease this fierce, abiding love for books and reading. I just have to treasure those moments I have for it.

Series You Started and Need To Finish: I have a few, actually. The Tennis Shoes series by Chris Heimerdinger (intensely interesting, historical, exciting, and fascinating look into biblical times mixed with the modern world). the 13th Reality series by James Dashner (it reminded me a little of the feel of Harry Potter and I already know I love this author from reading his Jimmy Fincher series). I know I have more, but I'd have to go peek at the rest of my books to find out which ones I'm still working on.

Three of Your All Time Favorite Books: Uh oh. This is so problematic. Alright, first off, I am going to give my three favorite authors, because I literally CANNOT choose favorites from them. They are JK Rowling, JR Ward, and Julia Quinn. If we are looking outside those three authors, my three favorite books after those (that I am listing off the top of my head to save time) would be Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan, Falling Up by Shel Silverstein, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Yes, they are all young adult or children's books. I'm a kid at heart.

Unapologetic Fangirl For: Harry Potter. There, I said it. Potterhead to the end, I will go down with this fandom. Always. I beg you, Ms. Rowling, give us more!

Very Excited For This Release Over All The Others: Since this is the series I've been hooked into most recently and it is the most emotionally wracking, laughter-inducing, tension-cranking series I've ever read (not even exaggerating), the most anticipated book I am looking forward to is JR Ward's new Black Dagger book, The King. It comes out in March. Over half a year away. I go through this every year with her.

Worst Bookish Habit: How long it takes me to finish them. Soooo not kidding. Last year at a camping family reunion, I took the 5th and 6th Harry Potter books with me, both to color the pictures (yes, I do that) and to finish 5 and start on 6. This year at the reunion, just a couple weeks ago, I finally finished 7 and read Tales of Beedle the Bard. I know. I know. Don't even go there. Also, I dog-ear pages if I don't have a bookmark right there. So guilty.

X Marks the Spot: One of my earlier memories of my childhood involves my mom and dad reading to me and my little brother and sister when I was probably no more than five or six years old. We were reading Little House in the Big Woods, the first book of the enormously popular series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have a very clear memory of being together in the bedroom us kids shared, sprawling around while my mom and dad took turns reading chapters to us. That boxed set of books was the first book series I ever owned, as a gift from my mom. I've read them over and over, all of them, all nine books. We were bookworms as kids, and we certainly had plenty of books to choose from. Shelves and shelves of Disney books and Little Golden Books and The Tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter and Berenstain Bears, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Little Critter, I could go on and on. Our house always had books, all kinds of books, everything from Baby Mickey board books to little chapter books to the Shannara series by Terry Brooks for my dad and scores of LDS authors for my mom. I grew up on all of them, all kinds and genres and lengths of books, and I still have that widely varied base guiding my reading today. I will be as happy reading picture books as I would reading adult nonfiction, because from a very early age, I was encouraged to read. I was the kid that read James and the Giant Peach during recess at a new school before I had friends, and I was okay with that. It has been a lifelong treasure and gift, that was started from the time when I couldn't even read yet. I will always appreciate that.

Your Latest Book Purchase: Ah, book fairs. At my daughter's school, I went on the sale day of the book fair and got three books. A Clifford the Big Red Dog 6-book collection (for her), a book about the life of Darth Maul from Star Wars (my husband and I), and a book about 100 Most Amazing Animals (mostly for me, but it's COOL!), I think is what the title was. I love books, I love buying them, I love having them. I also loves sales and the clearance section of Barnes and Noble.

Zzz-Snatcher Book (Last Book that Kept You Up Late): It was while we were camping, I was up late separate times reading the three books I read while up there, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and Splendid by Julia Quinn.

That was actually a ball to write! I told you I love these surveys! I love thinking about books I've read and loved, revisiting memories that they hold. It's the same feelings I get when I write. And I didn't even touch of most of the books I've read that I adore, and believe me, that list is long and ridiculous. So, anyway, please do this survey if it interests you, I loved it! Also, feel free to comment about anything and everything that comes to mind, I also love comments.

How I Became a Writer

For some reason, I am suddenly inspired today to tell a story. Kind of a long story, and I'm sure you have better things to be doing, but that's okay. I'm telling it anyway. This is the story of how I became a writer.

The very first time I ever actually sat myself down and started to write a story, I was 10 or so. I remember sitting in my bedroom I shared with my sister in the apartment we lived in, in Morgan, Utah. And this story was about a deer. I don't actually remember now what the story involved, but I knew it was a female deer, and at the beginning of the book, I was describing her walking through some trees, rustling the leaves as she passed them. I was absolutely enchanted then, as I still am now, at the glorious way that words translated images so beautifully.

Words have always been easy for me. Ever since I was a kid that could barely read, I have sucked up words with a passion that is unending. I was the kid at recess who sat under a tree and read James and the Giant Peach in second grade because I didn't have friends, and I was okay with that. If I could have, I would have lived in the library. I loved to see those shelves crammed full of every kind of book, those mysterious, entertaining, colorful covers of books that had the most intoxicating mysteries and adventures inside.


So it's really no surprise that writing was something that has come naturally to me. Being such an incurable bookworm as a kid and teenager fueled that fire, and still does. Reading is a unique solace that a person can retreat to, somewhere sheltering and yet unreal that one can go to escape the unbearable things of life and for a short time, have the freedom to be somewhere else. With other people. In another world. That's how it has always been for me. The characters and places in books have always had a pull on me that I've never wanted to resist. And I feel for those characters as if they were real people, sometimes I want to reach through those pages and just hug them, or laugh with them, or cry with them. And sometimes I do, even if it is something as cheesy as hugging that book.

When I was in junior high, 8th grade to be specific, I was sitting in my US History class behind a guy that I had a crush on. And when we weren't passing notes (boy, did my tweeny-bopper self get a rush out of that), I was often bored. This particular teacher had a way of making the American Revolution sound as exciting as reading a legal dictionary. He had this voice, this monotone voice that might occasionally go up or down in volume, but it was one of the easiest sounds in the world to just tune out.

So naturally I found other things to keep myself from falling asleep and drooling attractively on my desk.

I wove a few (see also, dozens of) friendship bracelets out of embroidery floss, I doodled on my notebook, and then one day, just for fun, I started writing down made-up names that popped into my head. And the first one I came up with was Laika.

It came to my attention several years later that I was not the first person to come up with this name, there was actually a Russian dog that was the first animal put up into space with the same name, and this devastated me. It was not solely my name. But I got over it. This is not the only name that I made up only to find that it had been made up by someone else too. I always feel a surge of righteous anger and indignation when this happens.

But anyway, I had this name. I liked this name a lot. It was somehow foreign and familiar and poetic and realistic all at the same time, and while I kept on jotting down names that were a mix of sounds and syllables that I was putting together in my head, my imagination kind of . . . exploded.

A royal family, a quaint village, magical Elves (we're not talking Santa Claus here, we're talking Terry Brook's Shannara and JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings), mythical creatures, a grand quest, and certainly danger along the way. This picture of this gorgeous tree? This is what one fraction of my world looked like in this story. A new printer of my dad's printed this picture off as a test, and I totally swiped and kept it in my writing binder.

Now, let me be both indulgent and critical for a moment. This idea was GENIUS. I still think so. However, when I wrote this story, which quickly spun from just an idea to over 1,000 handwritten pages (not an exaggeration) of TWO books, I was a dramatic, emotional, hormonal teenager who had many enthusiastic friends who I was delighted to have contribute ideas, characters, and even pages of writing to this project.

It was a disaster! So much of those books were random and delightful pieces of fluff that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the story and everything to do with the interactions and lives of me and my friends. I had well over 50 characters in those books, and almost all of them were me and my friends, come to literary life in a world that was manipulate-able in so many ways. You would not believe how many 9th grade girls got their dream boy in writing that year, it was insane. And I was the orchestrator of most of it, I'm happy to say.

Anyway, so this idea was great, the writing was . . . shite. The story was there, to be sure, but it was positively buried in the outrageous and hysterical mound of fluff and nonsense of me and my fabulous friends.

Two pivotal things happened when I was in high school that ended this era. The first one was finishing the second book. Two separate, distinct adventures and plot lines that were in two separate binders. I had a idea where I wanted to go next with this, but at the time it involved my main character, Laika (told you I liked the name) growing up and having grown up daughters. And I just didn't know if I could do that, emotionally or realistically. I wasn't 20 or 30 years old and married, I wasn't 40 or 50 with grown kids, I didn't know how to write that. I was a teenager, that's what I wrote. And I also didn't know if I could basically take my heroine off her pedestal as the star of my show and have someone else take her place. It was like Ariel from Little Mermaid having a daughter, it was cool but just felt . . . so wrong! Look how old that ridiculous hairstyle makes Ariel look!


The second thing that happened, that just took the heart and soul right out of me, was that a few large chunks of my books got lost. I was devastated. I had lent parts of the book to friends to read, and either they were returned missing pages or damaged beyond use, or in one case, the binder my pages had been kept in was stolen. I have since discovered that one of the first rules of writing is to ALWAYS have a copy. An updated copy that, in the event that you lose part of the original, you have a backup. I didn't have a backup. Sure, most of the story was in my head, and I could probably faithfully reproduce what I'd written, but still . . . the thought of having to rewrite so much both exhausted me and broke my heart.

I didn't write again for a long time. Not because I didn't want to, a part of me did. And I did write a page here and there, little moments that came to me. But nothing serious or of any length. I was still too heartbroken. It probably sounds pathetic, but it truly broke my heart. To have something that was such a part of me, such an integral element in my life, to have it be fractured and broken like that . . . it hurt. I didn't blame anyone for it, I knew that it didn't mean to them what it did to me. And I know in at least one case, one friend was so frantic about having lost what I'd lent him that he even had a reward out for the binder that had been stolen that had my pages in it.

So anyway, I took a long sabbatical away from writing. It wasn't until much later, after I was married and I think after I had my daughter, did I finally go back into the world of writing. My reading had never stopped, and when I made my way back to my muse, what I was reading at the time was Julia Quinn. She is a Regency Era romance author, and she is one of my top three favorite authors. I loved her books, every one of them, for their characters and their humor and the richness of the writing. So it's not surprise that my first story I wrote coming back to writing was a Regency Era romance. And, looking back, this time it was more the plot that has issues while the writing had greatly improved. I guess that's what time and experience does to you.

It was a bit of a slow start, but from there on, writing was back in my life, and over the years since then (it's been four or so) I am confident that I have written in excess of thousands of pages of single spaced typing. I finally got myself a laptop when I got married, an easier and faster way to write, and boy have I made use of that system. At this very moment, in my muse folder, I have 152 items, including 9 folders that have multiple other documents in them. And this is not counting any co-writing I have done with my dear friend, that's another . . . 6, I think. That gives me easily another few hundred pages. I promise I am not bragging, I am just stating how far I have come in his new era of my writing. I've been busy. And I have loved it.

If I were to pick out the flaw in my writing that bothers me the most, it might be consistency. The reason I have 152 separate items in my muse folder right now is because I have over 180+ separate stories going on. And I have only ever finished (I use that term loosely) maybe 5 of them. That is pitiful. It's not that I don't want to finish, in fact I would dearly love to finish. To read those stories and laugh and cry with my creations. It's just that the muse is flighty and picky with me, and unfortunately never stays with the same muse for long. It rests comfortably in that muse for a few days, maybe a few weeks, on the rare occasion even a month or so, and then takes off again, flitting to another one or going off to take a vacation, leaving me in a slight stupor from writing and a little bit anxious about when my muse will return. And my poor characters, in my poor story, sit untouched for who knows how long. It makes me feel so neglectful!

I visit them. I read over what I've written and I wish I could write more. I wish I could finish those stories. But when the muse isn't smiling, I can't write like those characters deserve. But I visit them, and still love them, and whisper promises that someday, they will have their ending. Someday.

I am always promising a someday, and I swear that someday will come. Hint hint, muse. Stop flitting. Come back. And settle already!

Wanna know what my most recent two victims are? An unstable workaholic father who falls in love with the nanny taking care of his son, and a female cross of Jason Bourne and every awesome action flick chick you've ever seen. They are amazing. A lot of my writing is inspired by things in my life, what movies I've seen, what songs I'm listening to, what actors or actresses I'm obsessing over, etc., and these two are no surprise. Well, actually, my super secret agent/spy girl was kind of a surprise, she snuck up on me, but I have had her niggling around in my brain for awhile now. In the time I have been writing these two muses, I've written something like 90+ pages between the two of them, and not even made a dent in how long their stories will eventually be. I have pivotal moments, or nonsense moments that pop into my head, a string of events that I organize into chronological order and hope beyond hope that someday I will be able to knit all these pieces together into a complete and understandable story. (I hate that part, by the way. The knitting.)

I wish I had the focus and the inspiration to be able to just work on one story at a time. I really do. But it seems, that whenever I have the muse smiling at one muse, the muse tends to smile and give me ideas for several all at one time. So, really, focusing on one is really just unreasonable. If I have an idea for a muse, be it a sentence, a picture in my head, a phrase, an emotion, anything, I HAVE to write it down. And if I postpone, if I just make myself a note to do it later, I lose the magic of the moment. And it's quite terrible, and it makes me feel horrible, so I get stuck between four or five different muses at the same time, trying to do them all justice with completely separate emotions happening in each one, and it's truly exhausting.

I sound like a deeply disturbed person, don't I? Well, that's because I am. Disturbed and annoyed and pestered and gifted by having these amazing, wonderful, absolutely hysterical characters in my head. I can't even claim this brilliance for myself, I have imaginary friends in my head telling me to write brilliant things. And I do hope they never stop.

Truly, words have changed my life. Reading them, hearing them, writing them, words have become a ruling part of my life, a majority of who I am. And even if no one in the world ever reads my words, it is enough for me to have written them. To have them out of my head and in a physical form is something beyond spectacular. To someday have someone read them, and maybe love them even a fraction as much as me, maybe that would be too much to hope for. But it could happen. As much as critique and criticism scares me, I would be willing to let my words be read anyway, just in case one person finds something worthwhile in them.

Maybe that's just what all this is about, this lonely little post floating out there in the abyss of the internet. Maybe someone will catch it in their net as they surf along one day, and maybe they will want to read more. Maybe they will read what I have written, and they will smile. Maybe. And out of the words I treasure beyond my ability to say, I will have created something . . . beautiful.