A.R. Hellbender's Blog, page 4

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Characters who are Book Nerds

Top Ten Tuesday is brought to us by The Broke and Bookish. These are my top 10 book nerd characters, in no particular order:

1- Liesel from The Book Thief. She stole books just because she wanted to read them.

2- Hermione from Harry Potter. We all know why.

3- Meggie from Inkheart. She is one of the few characters I have read about who takes books with her everywhere no matter where she is going, the same way I do.

4- Kelsea from The Queen of the Tearling. One of the first things she did as queen was get someone to go back to the home of her foster parents and retrieve their books. She also hates her mother for not owning any books.

5- Cress, from Cress.

6- Estral, from the Green Rider series. She’s pretty much my favorite minor character in anything ever.

7- Astrid, from Dies The Fire.

8- Elizabeth Bennett, from Pride and Prejudice.

9- Arianne, from The Dark Queen

10- Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird

A Word to the Wise

This doesn’t have to do with writing or art, but don’t fly Spirit Airlines.

Just don’t do it.

Spirit was the only thing left when I booked my trip. I already knew that they charge for a carry-on and for water, but I was at least able to avoid those problems on my trip there. In fact, everything went so seamlessly that it was too good to be true.

Upon going home at the end of the trip, however, I was faced with all sorts of problems. My connecting flight got really delayed, which I was not happy about since my layover was already 4 hours long to begin with. They didn’t even announce the delay at all, and I only heard about it because other passengers checked their emails and told everyone else about it. I started hearing stories about that flight being cancelled before. One girl even said that she had been stuck there for 3 days already because her flight was cancelled. The flight before ours actually did get cancelled, and those people were sent back through security to get rebooked.

Once our plane arrived at the gate, everyone cheered. We boarded the plane, but were met with an announcement about repairs, and they claimed not to know how long we would still be there. An hour or so later, the pilot announced “there’s a limit to how long flight crew personnel can keep working, and [we] have already been flying the maximum number of hours and are not legally able to operate this plane. Therefore, your flight has been cancelled.”

So the flight was cancelled, even though we were all already on the plane. I had to wait in line for almost 2 hours to get rebooked on a different flight. They were going to give me a 3pm flight, but it was 2 in the morning and I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, so I asked if they had anything earlier, and they gave me a 5am flight. And thank goodness they gave me a 5am flight, because that ended up being 6 hours of travel by itself, even with barely a layover, and I would not have gotten home in time for band practice if I had taken the 3pm flight they were going to give me.

I was not happy about going through security again, having a connecting flight again, and getting home 11 hours after I was originally supposed to. BUT at least they did rebook all of the passengers for no extra cost, which is a lot more than I have heard of them doing. And for a lot of the people there, that was already a flight that they had been rebooked on when their original flight was cancelled, so their flight was cancelled on them twice.

But this was still the worst thing that had ever happened to me at an airport. Far worse than the time I got stuck in New York at 3am, lost my checked luggage for a time, and had nothing but McDonalds to eat, because at least then I was with my family. And that was the beginning of a trip and not the end. This time, I was stuck at an airport at the end of a trip when I was almost home and anxious to see my boyfriend. At least they gave me enough food vouchers for a feast of a hummus plate, a sandwich and quinoa.

Origins

My short story The “Last” Quagga is about quaggas developing mind control powers as a response to being hunted, so that they can make the hunters forget that they were there, and make people think they are extinct.

Naturally, as I was writing the story, my boyfriend wanted to know how the quaggas developed those abilities, etc, etc. He was thinking way too hard about it. While it is nice to have the facts, and if my short story were a full-on sci-fi novel it certainly would, they aren’t always necessary.

Look at Stephen King, one of the most popular authors of our time. Did he ever explain how the enchanted word-processor or the creatures from The Mist came to be? No. And even when he did give us the origin of some horrific thing, such as the disease from The Stand or the creature from It, he didn’t think overly hard about it and just gave us the most simplistic details about how those things came to be.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Recently Acquired Books

I’m a day late for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday (Top Ten Tuesday is brought to us by The Broke and Bookish), but I’m answering this week’s anyway.

Here are the 10 books I have most recently acquired:

1- Survivor, by Chuck Palaniuk (bought today)

2-The Alienist, by Caleb Carr (bought today)

3- The Bar Code Tattoo, by Suzanna Weyn (lent to me by my dad, finished reading today)

4- The Bar Code Rebellion, by Suzanne Weyn (lent to me by my dad, about to finish reading it)

5- A Cup of Friendship, by Deborah Rodriguez (lent to me by my aunt, finished this week)

6- A mystery book set in New Orleans that I forget the name of (bought a few weeks ago)

7- Portrait in Sepia, by Isabel Allende (bought a few weeks ago)

8- Seeker, by Arwen Elys Dayton (borrowed from the library last month)

9- Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli (borrowed from the library last month)

10- Half Bad, by Sally Green (borrowed from the library last month)

Short Stories

Short stories are a whole different art form. You can’t get too far into world building, but you still need to get a good story with some good character development.

I currently have 7 short stories, four of which are finished, and one of which will be finished soon. The other two may not be complete for a long time, if they ever are. Two of them have been published in a magazine, the first of which, The Paper Dragon, was submitted to a magazine so long ago that it’s under my real name and not A.R. Hellbender. I submitted it to countless magazines that rejected it, before finally settling on a magazine that wouldn’t pay me anything for it but would allow me to retain the right to publish it elsewhere.

The most recent short story I have written is definitely the best one so far. I am so proud of it, in fact, that I am ready to start submitting it to magazines again, in the hopes that a magazine that is a paying market will want it.

And while I’m at it, I am figuring out what magazines I can submit some of my other short stories to. Some accept reprints and just pay less for them, so The Paper Dragon may find another magazine at some point, since it was last published over 2 years ago.

The only story that has very little chance of being published is my one horror/fantasy, because it has zombies in it. There are a surprising number of magazines that say they don’t accept stories with zombies, vampires or warewolves in them. But that’s ok. It is submitted to a contest right now anyway, and has gotten some good reviews off of that. Maybe it doesn’t need to be published.

Top Ten Tuesday- Top 10 Hyped Books I Have Never Read

From now on, I’m going to spend every Tuesday answering the Top 10 Tuesday weekly meme you can find over at The Broke and Bookish. This one’s is Top 10 Hyped Books I Have Never Read, so here are mine:

1- An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (this one’s already being made into a movie)

2- Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard.

3- 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James (and I’m never going to. I couldn’t even get through the 1st paragraph)

4- Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

5- The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

6- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

7- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

8- Looking for Alaska by John Green

9- Paper Towns by John Green (as you can see, I really need to read more John Green)

10- The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski (this one might not be as hyped as the others on this list, but I hear it talked about a helluva lot).

Even though I honestly couldn’t even get through the first page of 50 Shades, the other books on this list are ones that I am really looking forward to reading and that I plan to read asap. Yay reading!

Stuff

I have been getting waaaaaay more views on my facebook posts since converting my page from a book page to an author page. Nothing else changed. The content is the same, I have the same amount of likes on the page, and I post at the same times as I did before, and yet there has been a dramatic increase in people’s views and interactions with my posts. So here’s my tip for other authors out there: when you make a facebook page, make it an author page and not a book page.

I also had an article to write today that I only had an hour left to write and I hadn’t even started it yet. It only took me 15 minutes to write the first 300 words, and the whole thing was done within half an hour, even though I took a break to just go on the internet after the first 300 words were written. It’s times like that that I’m really making more money from that than I would at a minimum-wage job, because I at least have control over how much I can make, based on how fast I can work. I’ll take $8 in 15 minutes over $10/hour any day.

My journey to South Carolina begins tonight, and I just tried to check in online. But instead of taking me to a boarding pass, it just takes me to an itinerary and a receipt. When I called the airline, I found out that I literally can’t get a person. Here’s part the conversation that occurred:

Airline: You can check in online within 24 hours of your flight time, but no later than 60 minutes before. For difficulties checking in, press 1.

Me: *presses 1*

Airline: You can check in online within 24 hours of your flight time, but no later than 60 minutes before. For difficulties checking in, press 1.

Me: *presses 1*

Airline: You can check in online within 24 hours of your flight time, but no later than 60 minutes before. For difficulties checking in, press 1.

Ridiculous.

Birthdays

My birthday was the 4th. I’m 27 now. It was a strange birthday, because it is one of very few that I have spent in town. Hell, I probably never spent a single birthday in my home town growing up, either. That’s the thing about summer birthdays.

For the most part, I spent my birthdays in South Carolina, but sometimes I have been in Germany, and more recently I have been touring.

For this birthday, my 27th, I was here in Portland. I ate princess cake, went to Sweet Tomatoes with my boyfriend (not much else was open, and at least Sweet Tomatoes was good), went to someone’s barbecue, went home to make sure the puppies weren’t freaked out by the fireworks, and finally watched fireworks in a field.

For my 26th birthday, I was in Ione, Oregon, playing at a blues festival there. We had one helluva time.





That’s me on the drive there.

For my 25th birthday, we had a show in Sioux City, Iowa. I wasn’t in the band at that point, but I was still there. I learned that Iowa isn’t too big on Sushi.

My 24th birthday was spent at home in Portland, after I had just moved there permanently.

My 23rd birthday was spent at the Deutsche Sommerschule, where I got to speak German all day. That was my first time having school on my birthday.

My 22nd birthday was spent in Germany. I hung out with one person and then went to Mainau with another. Mainau is a really pretty natural park place.

My 21st birthday was actually spent in Portland again. I didn’t drink because I boycott the drinking age on my birthday. It should be 18.

My 20th birthday was spent in South Carolina.

My 19th birthday was spent in Germany, when I took a class there for a month. This is me sitting on Drachenfels.

And my 18th birthday was spent in Germany, the first time I ever went there.

Before that, I’m pretty sure my birthdays were mostly in South Carolina, though one was during camping (my 1oth, probably) and one was at camp (my 11th or 12th).

Book Covers

The crazy thing about being a writer/artist and not just a writer is that I will sometimes get too sucked up in the cover designs before the book is even finished.

I made several different versions of the cover art for my steampunk retelling of Sleeping Beauty, some of which didn’t even get completed. And don’t even get me started on the cover art of my first book. I went through so many failed and half-baked attempts at cover art for that, and only recently came up with the perfect idea.

The first cover I made for Unicorn Hunting was pretty boring, but it was just an ebook at the time, so the cover wasn’t as important. But when it was getting published in print, it took me way too long to get my great cover idea done. I vowed that next time, I would have The Perfect Cover Art ready before the book is getting published.

That cover involved stock footage of a forest and a unicorn, needing only a photo of a unicorn hunter hiding a sword behind her back to complete it. But where could I get a sword, a unicorn hunter, and some badass-looking clothes to make it more fantasy-esque?

The sword was obtained at a halloween store for $8. It’s a really nice-looking sword, too, that passed for a real one more than the slightly cheaper alternatives would have. I had intended for my roommate at the time to pose as the unicorn hunter, because she actually had the short red hair that the character has. But since she and I were never home at the same time while the lighting was good, it ended up not happening that way. I posed as the unicorn hunter myself and had my boyfriend take the photo. And since the unicorn hunters in the book actually wear really boring clothes, I spiced it up by wearing a corset. The skirt is photoshopped on. That cover ended up being just how I imagined it to be when I first came up with the idea.

The idea I have for the cover of the sequel is two girls looking up at two unicorn statues in front of a medieval-looking building. The medieval-looking building is easy to get, since I have loads of photos of castles and the like from all of my time in Europe. And if none of them work, that’s something I can draw (though I would rather use a photo). And if all else fails, I can have two friends dress up and pose as the girls. But where can I get photos of unicorn statues (or even horse statues and just draw the horn)? That’s going to take some serious searching, or drawing.

An Awful Lot of Writing

I have a lot of books. The first one I ever completed has just undergone a lot of changes and more editing several years later. I still need to give it the final (hopefully really final) readthrough this time, and have a few other people do the same.

I’m also finishing up my steampunk retelling of Sleeping Beauty, hoping to get it done within the month and put it up for sale as a cheap ebook. That one will be my first novella, is almost done being written and will soon need the final editing and hopefully beta-reading by a few people.

And then there’s the sequel to Unicorn Hunting, called Unicorn Revenge, that a lot of people are waiting for. It’s only halfway done, but, with some serious work, could be finished pretty quickly.

Let’s also not forget Conjure Queen, my stand-alone novel that is still in progress and dying to get written.

And I have a lot of articles that someone wants me to write this week as well. And another article-writing site that I applied for liked my writing sample and wants me to write them another one. And first priority is the beta-reading I’m doing for my dad’s book.