Helen Rena's Blog: Books and Their Discontents, page 6

Pretty Little Ethical Conundrums: Pretty Little Liars Review

I know I am a little late to review this book since it was published a few years ago and even turned into a TV series, which I haven’t watched, not yet. But I happened to read the novel recently, and I liked it. I really did. The only problem was that I couldn’t quite understand the ethical layout of the book. As it is I am sure universally known the book is about four girls who used to be friends with each other and one other girl who mysteriously disappeared at the very beginning of the book. After her disappearance, the four girls go on their separate ways, but keep receiving messages from someone who signs with the first initial of the disappeared girl: A.

I’ll concentrate on one of the girls, let’s say, Aria, although the ethical-ambiguity case can be made for all the girls in the novel possibly excepting Spencer, who has no redeeming qualities, none that I noticed at least. Anyway, back to Aria. There are two big things/events that we get to know about her life. Thing Number 1: when she was fourteen or around that age, she caught her father kissing one of his students in a car. She does not tell this to her mother, however, because her dad asks her not to. Later she receives several messages from A, who taunts her about this event as well as rebukes her for not telling her mom about it. So, is Aria a liar? Technically, yes. She does not tell her mom about what she saw. But in reality how can a kid be a liar if her parent pressured her into lying?

Thing Number 2: Aria has sex with a guy who later turns out to be her new English teacher. Now, it is specified that the guy is young, but still, he is older than Aria and, as a teacher, he should sever the relationship, but no, it goes on. Does that make her a liar? I don’t think so. Her teacher is an adult who has sex with a minor, and like I said, it was on him to stop the relationship.

Based on these two events, Aria is branded as a liar by the title. Why? Sure, she is not entirely truthful, but it’s not her fault. Especially Thing Number 1. Which, I am certain, is a very traumatic experience for a child. But perhaps that’s why there’s a word “little” in the title. It signals that Aria is not a big serious liar, but just a little one. Just a fibber. But that makes light of her traumatic experience of catching her dad cheating on her mom, doesn’t it? Which can’t be the author’s intention. I’m pretty sure it can’t be.

Fighting the Sexy

I read a lot about feminism and pervasive sexualization of women in Western culture. I even wrote a little about it when I was working toward my graduate degree in Comparative Literature. But it was only recently that I directly engaged in a fight with the sexy. It was over the characters in my YA paranormal novel Into the Blind. Yes, because recently, I decided to make a book trailer for it. Seasoned writers who have read this last sentence probably shivered because it’s so darn hard to make a good book trailer, but back then, approximately a month ago, I was naive. I decided I would do it.

My idea for a trailer was to have a slideshow with a voice-over and maybe some music if I found something good. Or no music, if I didn’t find anything good. But first things first, I needed images for the slideshow. Since my novel had a protagonist and three strong supporting characters and I had a photo for the protag only (it’s on the cover), I decided to get a sketch of all four characters. I found an artist; I made an order and paid for it.

Long and elaborate were my emails to the artist about my characters. I gave as many details as I could about their poses, their clothes, and their hairstyles. But above all, I specified that I did not want my two female characters to be sexy. That’s what I wrote to the artist: pretty, but not sexy. I wanted my protag to be hugged by her boyfriend and the other girl, who is a somewhat mean girl, by herself. The protag was to be short, and the mean girl as tall as the protag’s boyfriend.

Off went the emails…back came the sketch:

Now, the funniest thing about it is that even after I specified that all four of the characters must be barefoot, they wear shoes. And not just shoes, but heels, in the girls’ case. A slightly less funny thing is that the protag’s boobs are almost falling out her dress. And an almost unfunny thing is that mean girl is short, at least a head shorter than the protag’s boyfriend. And so is the boy on the right, who was supposed to be as tall as the mean girl and the boyfriend, but no luck. I wondered if it was because I had mentioned in my emails that he was an Arab.

Again, I wrote to the artist. Explained all about no shoes. Repeated about the height. Reiterated that the mean girl’s hair should be braided and that the protag should not look sad. I did not want her to look sad or weak. I wanted her to look brave and adventurous, and more than anything, I wanted her to look directly at the viewer.

Sketch # 2 came.

And yay, the shoes are gone, although now the boys look like Bigfoots (Bigfeets?). The protag’s dress is more modest, but she looks so sad that I can almost see a speech bubble above her head, “No boobs?”

I wrote back to the artist. I begged him to correct the mean girl’s height and not to make the protag sad. I gave up on the mean girl’s braid.

When Sketch # 3 came, I was scared to open it. But of course I did. After I ate half a pound of chocolate.

And yessssss, the mean girl and the Arabic boy are finally tall, although the boy looks…I don’t know… like he’s a werewolf or something. And the protag seems to have acquired mustache. Which is probably for the best because otherwise, she has as much personality as a piece of white soggy bread.

I didn’t know what write to the artist anymore; I ate nothing but chocolate, earning myself an early heart disease. He, I think, was very fed-up with me as well because the Arabic boy looked like this in Sketch # 4:

…closely resembling The Shining dude:

After a few more email exchanges, I gave up on the idea of the slideshow for a trailer and wrote to the artist that the sketch was fine whatever it was. He sent me the final version:

So in the end, I lost to the sexy, of course. The protag, whom I must have doomed to be sexified by telling the artist she was hugged by her boyfriend, still looks delicate and weak. Look at her fragile arms. Look how she hides her hands, the weakest thing you can do with your hands in a portrait. But at least I won one battle: the girl looks directly at the viewer. Although those eyelashes…where’s my chocolate?

Brutal by T.A. Brock: Zombies take over the world!

Today I am very excited to announce the release of Brutal, a prequel novella to the zombie romance, Fatal, by T.A. Brock! We get some juicy backstory for Leiv, and Grayson’s mysterious origin story. If you are new to the Fatal Series, this is a great place to jump in!

There’s also a fantastic zombie-filled giveaway below, including swag and a signed copy of Tera Shanley’s Love In The Time of The Dead! Check it out!

Brutal Synopsis:

No matter how brutal, the law must be kept…

Leiv Patch was killed, turned, and left to his own devices. With nothing more than an ancient tome to educate him in the zombie ways, he’s eked out a lonely—and sometimes miserable—fifty years of undead existence. When he meets raven-haired Iraina Lukin on a 911 call, he begins to realize that being a riser doesn’t mean he has to go it alone. Having a Save means anything is possible. Love, family, a future. The only problem? A union between a riser and a human is against the Oracles’ law…and Iraina doesn’t want to be turned.

Conner Grayson lives as a street kid in the Windy City after his father is locked away for murder and his mother overdoses on drugs. Street savvy, he becomes extremely good at surviving. Never make friends—that’s the key, then nobody can screw you over and you never owe a soul. It works. Until he meets Leather. She’s quiet and sad, but something about her draws Conner in. He looks for her every morning in the shelter lines and before long, they’re inseparable. But Leather is not as she seems, and soon his friend is making him an offer he can’t refuse: she can make all of his brutal heartache and struggle to survive go away. All he has to do is say yes.

Brutal on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22734912-brutal?from_search=true

T.A. Brock on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/TA-Brock/e/B00BGV70AU/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1414419975&sr=8-1

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Paranormal Romance HOWLOWEEN Hop

This post is a part of Paranormal Romance HOWLOWEEN Blog Hop. It is organized by Hops with Heart (www.hopswithheart.blogspot.com). Below are my ramblings on kissing and 2 giveaways, one for a $50 Amazon Gift Card and another for a Graphique de France stationary set. Thanks for stopping by. And have a wonderful Halloween.

On Kissing

Physical aspects of kissing never fascinated me in the past. Yes, I know the sentence sounds odd no matter how you read it, but it’s true, nonetheless. I’ve had bad kissing experiences in my life. Plenty. In particular, I remember one boy who kissed me so hard I thought he’d crash my teeth in. But for all that I somehow never thought of sitting down and trying to figure out what a good kiss was.

And there is a lot that goes into a good kiss, right? How hard you press your lips to someone else’s lips…how wide you open your mouth…and I won’t even start on tongues or on the topic of whether there is even such a thing as a universally good kiss…

Anyhow, I didn’t think about any of this in the past, maybe because I am not much of a philosopher. Or maybe because I thought I’d already absorbed all the theoretical knowledge I needed from books. How many times did I read, “They kissed,” in novels? Quadrillion, that’s how many.

But then I started writing fiction myself, and “They kissed” just didn’t sound descriptive enough for me. Perhaps if I read some erotica, I wouldn’t have had to figure out everything myself, but I didn’t. And so I bravely forged ahead with nothing but my own personal experiences…

…and that’s how Ever-Jezebel, my fifteen-year-old protagonist in Into the Blind, ended up in a few kissing scenes. I liked writing them. There is so much power play in kissing, isn’t there? Especially if the participants are not equal in height and strength and social status. Add to that youth and inexperience…and I’m itching to write another scene.

But back to Into the Blind. In the first kissing scene between Ever-Jezebel and her boyfriend Fox, she doesn’t like how Fox kisses her. He kisses her too hard. Too greedily. But she doesn’t tell him anything because she feels it is her fault that she tastes blood when he kisses her–she feels that he got wounded because of her. Which is not true because it was Fox’s choice to protect her from a prison guard who went berserk on her. But then, again, if he didn’t protect her, what kind of a boyfriend would he have been, right? See, I told you kissing was fascinating.

P.S. If you are interested in reading the first kiss excerpt, here it is:

Fox quickly placed his lips on mine. At first it was a dry kiss, but then I tasted his saliva mixed with blood. His arms tight across my shoulder blades, Fox was flattening me against his chest as if trying to push me inside his body, make me safe within his ribcage. But he was crushing my breasts. Luckily, before I had to ask him to stop, Demi got free from the door’s hold, and at once Fox pulled away from me.

“Remember the Plan,” he ordered me in a fierce whisper. “Don’t fight the gods!”

GIVEAWAY #1

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GIVEAWAY #2

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Into the Blind: Prologue

The black market was closing. The last sellers and buyers clustered behind an out-of-business toy store in Brooklyn, where the road smelled of trash and the subway trains that ran high above the street rattled the loudest. There were no children for sale at this hour. The last and least important bits of the day’s tidings were hastily sold.

“There’s been a dance kid born in Queens this morning.”

“Hell, who needs a child gifted in dancing?”

“But it’s right around the corner. And the parents haven’t hired any security.”

Monies changed hands.

Everyone was stealthily watching two bulky men who were not selling or buying anything. The slightly shorter man of the duo held a large four-wheel suitcase, and the slightly taller one, wearing a trench coat and a black fedora hat, gripped a gun. They did not talk. They had the letters DH tattooed on their right cheekbones.

Cars honked in the street, and somewhere far off a police siren howled.

A woman entered the alley. Neither tall nor short, she wore a pixie-cut blond wig like a ski hat: pulled down over her ears and forehead. Her shoulders were wrapped in an oversized faux fur coat that made it impossible to guess her real proportions. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

The men with the DH tattoos looked up at her simultaneously. They didn’t say anything, but the woman answered them nonetheless, “Yes, it’s here, the child.” She nodded at a rather small purse in her hand. “And the money?”

The black market sellers and buyers stopped even pretending they were still trading. They held their breaths and listened. All of them had wondered if the suitcase held money, but it was such a big suitcase. No child was worth that much.

The man with the suitcase lightly swung his burden. “Yeah. Ten mil. Wanna count?”

The fedora hat man puffed. “Wait, bro. I don’t think…you know what.”

The bro clearly knew. “Lay off it, man. We talked enough about it.”

“Oh, yeah?” The hat man jabbed his gun in the direction of the woman’s purse, a fake brown leather affair with an ugly brass zipper. “This kid…how do you know it’s gifted in what this gal says it’s gifted? Yeah, sure, two dream guys told us it’s legit, but what if they are in on it? Ten mil is good money even split three ways.”

The bro shook his head. “I said. Lay. Off. It.”

The hat man didn’t. “And where did she even get that kid? Sure, Bones…I mean, not Bones…I mean, I never said your name, okay? Anyways, we bought death kids, time kids—pricey kids, yes, but those gifts can be priced in. But this…a kid with this gift…who would sell it? It’s like selling the Almighty!”

The people in the alley inhaled sharply. A heart child had been born on earth? That was some tidings to sell.

Book Covers as an Unappreciated Test of Human Psyche

A few months ago, when I was carefree and young and had just finished my first novel Into the Blind, I did not worry about a cover for it. I firmly believed I would simply hire a professional artist and trust his or her professional opinion. And that’s exactly what I did: when it was time, I hired a wonderful artist, and I told her all about my wonderful book, and then I sat and waited for miracles.

Okay, okay, I was holding my breath and barely sleeping, but who’s counting?

A few days later, the artist emailed me her first stab at my cover…and I hated it. Passionately. I felt like printing it out and tearing it into tiny shreds. And then jumping on them with both feet. Not that the cover was ugly, mind you. It was just that it was wrong. It didn’t suit the book.

I told all this to my wonderful artist, and she patiently said that yes, she understood and that yes, things like that happened all the time. Very promptly, she sent me two more mock-ups, and just as promptly, I disliked them too. They were good covers for some other books, not mine. At this point the wonderful artist offered to refer me to some other wonderful artists because she had run out of ideas.

I sat at my desk and stared at the wall.

For quite some time.

By then I, of course, understood there was nothing wrong with the covers I’d been offered. It’s just that to like a cover I would have to come up with one myself. And so I scoured bookstores both online and off. I looked at my own bookshelves. I checked out art sites and museums. Myriad good ideas, but which one of them was right for my novel? Should I have a picture of my protagonist on the cover? An object that has significance in the story? A place where the story happens? In fact, how do you decide what to put on the cover?

After a few sleepless nights and perhaps steeped in some existential angst, I realized that making a cover for one’s own book was better than the Rorschach test. You know, the one where you look at inkblots and tell a psychologist what you see. Just think about it… Could you sum up your life in one attractive, intriguing image? What should be in it? Your family? Your job? Your pets? Your car? Would it be a photo or an illustration? Should the image be a direct representation of the things you choose to put on your cover or a symbolic interpretation? How fast could you put that cover together?

In the end, for better or for worse, I went with a cover that had an image of my protagonist. Since she is imprisoned, I put her into an outline of a keyhole, and since she is blind and only able to see through other people’s eyes, there are eyes incorporated into the background. Now, all I need is to make enough money off the book to ask a psychologist what having one’s blind protagonist on the cover of one’s first book says about me.

P.S. You can see the covers I didn’t go with here.

Into the Blind Cover: Bloopers and Outtakes

The process of getting a cover for Into the Blind was not long, but very emotional. Here are the covers I didn’t choose for the book…

☆ 1 ☆

The novel was called Escape 11 back then, and this cover shows the bookstore where my characters were locked up by their kidnappers. Notice the row of eyeballs along the door. Yes, they are eyeballs and not buttons, and they are there to indicate the significance of vision in the story, for my protagonist Ever-Jezebel is blind and can only see through other people’s eyes. So I really-really-really wanted eyes somewhere on the cover. But along the door?

☆ 2 ☆

Unlike the previous cover that was suggested by my cover artist, this one was my idea. Hence eyeballs everywhere…

☆ 3 ☆

Yes, there is actually a mason jar full of eyeballs in the book, but somehow this cover just looks…I don’t know…disturbing?

☆ 4 ☆

My sweet husband overwhelmed by all the eyeballs and my deep book-cover despair made this for me.

What do you think?

Megan O’Russell on Book Covers and Symbolism

We’ve all heard the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but the truth is when we go to a bookstore, that is exactly what we do. We go to the book with the cover that catches our eye, and that’s the one whose back jacket we bother to read.

When I was asked to fill out a cover art form for The Tethering, I was lost. It seems like most Young Adult romance novels have pictures of beautiful teens looking lovingly into each other’s eyes. And those covers are perfect if they tell the story of the book. But that really isn’t the story of The Tethering.

Here is the story: All sixteen-year-old Jacob Evans wants is to win the heart of Emilia Gray, but with order in the magical world crumbling, war threatening, and Emilia’s boyfriend living across the hall, he may never have the chance.

Jacob Evans loses everything he has ever known and is tossed into a world of magic. The Dragons, a group of rebel wizards, are threatening to expose the existence of magic to humans. Jacob is determined to find a way to fit into Emilia’s family, but as his powers grow, so does the danger. With the death toll mounting, Jacob is accused of acts of rebel terrorism and must fight to stay in a world he’s only just beginning to discover.

When Emilia’s life is threatened, Jacob must risk everything to save her. Does he have the power to rescue her in time? And what could their survival cost?

Jacob loves Emilia, and that is a driving force in the story. But The Tethering is about Jacob finding his place in a world he barely understands. It’s about fighting for what you love and what you believe in. And that’s how The Tethering ended up with its cover.

I was lucky enough to have an amazing cover artist who took what I wanted and made it into something wonderful. There are several images layered into the cover. First is a forest. A large portion of The Tethering takes place in the woods, but the trees also represent life. The tree of life itself is a central image in the cover art. Not only is the tree of life the crest of the Gray Clan, the family that Jacob finds himself joining, but the meaning of the tree, the sanctity of life magical and non, is a very important theme throughout the book. The fire burning through the trees symbolizes not only actual flames (I know, how clever of me), but also the destruction of a world and a way of life.

As for the hands reaching toward each other. Well, I’ll just have to let you read the book to find out. But sometimes holding on is just as dangerous as letting go.

All sixteen-year-old Jacob Evans wants is to win the heart of Emilia Gray, but with order in the magical world crumbling, war threatening, and Emilia’s boyfriend living across the hall, he may never have the chance.

Jacob Evans loses everything he has ever known and is tossed into a world of magic. The Dragons, a group of rebel wizards, are threatening to expose the existence of magic to humans. Jacob is determined to find a way to fit into Emilia’s family, but as his powers grow, so does the danger. With the death toll mounting, Jacob is accused of acts of rebel terrorism and must fight to stay in a world he’s only just beginning to discover.

When Emilia’s life is threatened, Jacob must risk everything to save her. Does he have the power to rescue her in time? And what could their survival cost?

Add The Tethering to your Goodreads list at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21480311-the-tethering?from_search=true

Follow Megan O’Russell on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ORussellauthor or on Twitter @MeganORussell

For more great books and to follow The Tethering’s journey to publication, be sure to visit my publisher’s website: http://www.silenceinthelibrarypublishing.com/

Megan’s blog and website can be found at MeganORussell.com

Halloween Giveaway

It’s almost Halloween, and I’m taking part in Paranormal Romance Howloween Blog Hop. Yes, it’s not a typo; it’s actually Howloween. There will be a giveaway on October 30 on Hops with Heart Blog with the Grand Prize being a $50 Amazon Gift Card. And as for me, I am doing a smaller giveaway…of one stationary set by Graphique de France. It’s pretty; it has birds on it. Please enter.

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The Lonelies: Flash Fiction

The space between the couch and the wall is tight and dark, and it smells musty even though we cleaned here just this morning. We carefully squeeze into the gap because the lonelies are coming. It’s time to hide. Methodically, we press our knees to our chests; we pull our heads deep into our shoulders. They wouldn’t find us here.

But we can see the dark surrounding the couch isn’t black tonight. Somehow it’s gray, a dusky, cloudy gray. The glass top of our coffee table reflects this grayness with a bit of shimmer. But where is this gleam coming from? Didn’t we turn off all the lights?

We stick one head out. Damn it. The nightlight in the kitchen, the one by the sink, is still on. Shaped like a pink ball, it projects a picture of a princess onto the ceiling, and while the princess is defective—she has only one head—we still kind of like this nightlight. We hesitate. Damn, damn, damn. All the lights must be off, or the lonelies will grow stronger. They will stain the floor and the walls and the furniture, and then we’ll have to move out, and this is the last unstained house in the neighborhood. Damn.

The right head cusses, which is okay because the lonelies can’t hear—they’re only attracted to light and movement. The left set of eyes pointedly looks at the nightlight: we have to go and turn it off. We nod.

Holding hands, we run to the kitchen just as the lonelies slither in through the crack under the door. Their flat, shapeless bodies look like puddles of oil on our clean wooden floors. We flick the nightlight off before they sense the light, but they catch our movement. They dash toward us, yet cannot find us because we stand very still now. And so they search and search, and this one time, when they get too close to us, they cut our foot to the bone. We scream, but we don’t move, and the lonelies, having circled the kitchen several times, pool not far from our bleeding foot. They know we’re in pain—they wait for us to move, to flinch, to shudder—but we stand like we were petrified, only lightly moving our lips to whisper words of encouragement to ourselves. We stay strong together. Finally, the lonelies wriggle in disappointment and swim away, into the night, to check the other houses on the block.

We bind our foot with a dishtowel, then limp over to the couch and lie down. We think about the princess in the nightlight. A lot of one-headed people died when the l-bomb went off, the “l” standing for “loneliness” and for “lonelies” and perhaps for “last,” because so few of us managed to fuse together and survive that explosion of the sharpest, most agonizing forlornness that we just don’t merit another bomb of any kind. Yes, people’s hearts just burst. They weren’t close enough to each other that day, which is only natural, for to be alone is to be human. We lean our heads together. We smile because we are not human anymore. For we are not lonely.

COVER PHOTO: Audrey from Central Pennsylvania, USA