Fake boyfriend blogfest

Amparo's blog is hosting a fake boyfriend blogfest.  So to honor the blogfest I have wrote a love letter to an oldie, but goodie...my former high school love, Angel.

Dear Angel,

First you left Sunnydale to go off on your own and do brooding vampire things like hang out with demons and then you decided to hide your true vampire identity and become an FBI agent.  But I’ve never given up hope that you would come back to your Angel-like ways and show the world what a real vampire looks like.

I’m pretty impressed with your evolution, Angel.  You went from playing with Buffy’s heart to hanging around a socially awkward anthropologist and NOT ONCE tried to bite her!  I’ve even seen you walk around in the sunlight and eat actual food.

Though I think it’s great that you’ve made progress in your vampire ways, I can’t help but miss the old brooding Angel that would make my heart swoon.  Sure, you still have those long, pondering stares that can make any girl melt as your chocolate brown eyes gaze straight into their heart, but it’s just not the same Angel!  I miss your inner Good vs. Evil struggle and the way I was always on pins and needles wondering what move you were going to make next.  You’ve gotten predictable and I miss your vampiric ways.

This is not a good-bye, Angel.  But maybe it’s time that we move on from each other.  I’m married now and my husband likes you as an FBI agent.  He doesn’t know the side of you that I spent my high school years watching.  So for now I think that it is best that we part ways, amicably, and maybe we’ll find each other in some dark teenage night club and I can be the one to get your leather jacket instead of Buffy.

Xoxo

Magan Vee.

Monday is all about the BOYS.

As I get notes in from my critque partners and finish up HOW TO DATE AN ALIEN, I started to think back on how I could tweak things to make them a little less "Twilighty" as one critique partner had put it and a little more fire in the characters attraction.

With that being said...we all know that Edward isn't my favorite vampire.  Sorry the bedhead thing just doens't do it for me. I had thought it was time to give up on vampires, but then as I lay on the couch and scrolled for something to watch on TV I found the teenage vampire that could make me forget I ever said anything bad about vampires.

Hummanah, hummanah, hummanah.  What was I talking about again?  I'm sorry I was lost in David Boreanaz' jaw line.  Yeah...there was a Buffy marathon on Oxygen and it was the earlier seasons before Willow's yestergayness and Buffy's sister appeared in the picture.  Those little moments were Angel wasn't a main character, but would show up at Bronze to give Buffy some cryptic message and maybe even take his leather jacket off of his broad shoulders and drape it around Buffy because she looked cold...swoooooooooooon.  Um what was I talking about again?

Oh yeah...writing....right....  So I thought about how this transfers over to my writing.  How a girl could fall for a mysterious alien, even though he is so mysterious yet is always there when she needs him.  Or if he just looks like this...


Nggggggggggggggh. Did I mention that I -may- have also started watching another vampire show called Being Human?  Well as I watched, one of the main characters caught my eye.  His dark eyes...the spiky hair...the air of mystery about him.  He's actually an alien instead of a vampire in my eyes and he is very funy to look at...butt chin aside.

But enough about looking at good looking vampires, it's all about how we write these characters descriptions and make the reader SEE what we find so attractive in our head about these characters...all while still keeping it YA.

  He ran a gloved hand through his hair as he looked around the hallway.  I tried not to stare at the way the muscles in his arms moved as his fingers grazed his scalp.  When did he find time to work out? 

Who do you use for visual inspiration?  How do you put that onto the page?  Am I crazy for staring at teenage vampires?

What dreams may come

So...I haven't blogged in awhile and felt that I should blog.

I had a strange dream lastnight...there was a boy and a girl in a field and the boy was sparkling..

OK NO.

That wasn't my dream.

The real dream was that one of the agents, who has a partial of MY PAPER HEART, sent a postcard with a form rejection, but then on the back wrote "HAHA SUCKA."

It's kind of funny and sad in the same way...  If you didn't know this, yes, MY PAPER HEART did start out when I had weird dream sequence.  I had this idea in my head for a long time of a girl getting the letter that she had failed out of college and have to move away.  Well every way I could think about it just made it seem like the same story over and over.  Then I had a dream that involved a girl dancing, a boy with the most striking blue eyes I had ever seen, and a child yelling for her mother in the woods.  Since I was away on a trip there was nothing I could do, but just think about it.  I actually had an Insurance exam coming up and thought I would study on the eight hour ride home, but instead I just started writing and didn't stop.

A dream may have started the story, but a bad dream will not end it.  I love this story too much for that to happen.  I did have to come to the realization that even though my main character is nineteen and sounds like a teenage girl...it's not a YA book.  It definitely has cross over potential and could even possibly sit near the YA section (think the Jessica Darling series), but I'm going to stop labeling it as that.

There are two categories that I'm actually playing with, within the chick lit genre.  According to RWA's Chick Lit subgenre there are:

Single Title (Contemporary, Contemporary Series): If your heroine, like Bridget Jones, reveals her innermost fears and unsightly blemishes on the way to self-acceptance, she’ll fit in with the classics of the genre. (Think: Too Good to Be True by Kristan Higgins, Easy on the Eyes by Jane Porter)




Women’s Fiction (Mainstream): Finding a dreamy man isn’t the only challenge women face. If your central plot revolves around another obstacle in your heroine’s life–with romance on the side–she’ll be at home in this category. 
(Think: Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin, Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella)



Note: Trying to figure out the difference between Single Title and Women’s Fiction (Mainstream)? Single Title entries are romance-focused and will usually have the happily-ever- after ending. Women’s Fiction is less about the romance and more about the journey through life.


I'm leaning more towards women's fiction for the pure fact that I put in a cliff hanger ending, but we shall see how it goes.

I'm excited to continue this journey and though I have dreams to continue on and have writing as my career, I won't let those dreams of postcards saying "HAHA SUCKA" ruin me.

*note I will NOT name agents until I have signed a contract and am officially represented by one...though I really want to tell this agent about my dream and think it's hillarious. 

So...what are your dreams?  How are you going about acheiving them?  Do you let those road blocks get in the way?

Love

So you think I'm going to write about Love, do ya?

Well this is love, but not the love that you are thinking of (Though Hubby poo is great).

I just wanted to say that I love, love, LOVE my first completed manuscript. Yes it is currently with an editor and once she is done tearing it to shreds and then I add those edits in to make it the best story ever, I honestly can't wait to query again.

Call me a nerd (this happens alot), call me whatever but I think you have to love your work very much to take all the rejection that comes along with it. When I was getting picked on in school, I wasn't ready yet to stand up for those things I really liked, but the things that I really loved I did defend till the death of them.

For instance: I had knee-high black I believe eighteen eyed pleather boots. I LOVED these boots. I got made fun of till no end in 8th grade for having these boots, but I didn't stop wearing them just because no one else liked them.

I think this is how everyone should feel about things that they love. Don't stop writing just because you get rejected! Don't stop singing just because you're off key! And don't stop reading those books you love just because people tell you that you look silly reading about teenage vampires!

Love what you do and if you don't love it, then why are you doing it?

Sometimes I feel like I'm writing to myself...

I never ever thought that I would say this, not in a million years. Thank you Stephenie Meyer.

That’s right I said it. On my constant theme of reading, writing, and all things geeky I thought I would discuss my love of reading. One of my best friends still lives back in my tiny hometown and we probably talk every day. She recently just finished up reading the Twilight books and it’s sparked a lot of conversation between the two of us about what is appropriate and inappropriate for young adults and of course what we read when we were in middle school.

Here’s the biggest kicker: I think Kelly and I were just about one of maybe ten kids in our class of 120 that actually read for pleasure. I know you think that sounds crazy, but it’s completely true. Harry Potter did come out when I was in about 6th or 7th grade, which a few kids did read, but mostly reading still was reserved for the B-list and below. Why Kelly and I were discussing the latest VC Andrews books we had read the other kids were talking about the latest episode of something mundane on MTV or whatever else the popular kids talked about. Don’t ask me what they actually did talk about because I was never cool enough to get within ear shot.

In high school you would think more kids would read, but no they didn’t even read the assigned readings in class they just spark noted them. My interest was sparked even more by reading in high school. I took a creative writing class and my teacher had said, “All good writers must read,” so at the beginning of every class we would have to read, and it had to be a book for fun no required class reading. Now if you go back to the previous paragraph you would see that I was the girl in middle school reading VC Andrews, so you can only imagine how much my reading progressed into high school. Let’s just say it wasn’t until the past few years that I actually read young adult books and enjoyed them. In middle school it was VC Andrews and in high school it was a lot of Nicholas Sparks and other romance novels. The first book that could be considered young adult that I read was “Sloppy Firsts,” By Megan Mccaferty. Now sometimes this is labeled as Young Adult and sometimes it’s in the fiction section, but either way it’s a great book and you should check it out.

The point of all of this is the fact that I don’t think I ever saw as many people reading until “Twilight” came out. Then all of a sudden it was cool. Every girl I’ve met whether she is a fourteen year old cheerleader or a fifty year old mom has read and enjoyed the books. These books were also the ones that sparked my joy for reading again. Being in college I didn’t get a big chance to read a lot for fun, so on my final spring break I finally read the Twilight books and about 100 books later I can say that my love of reading has been re-kindled. Within a year’s time I had also wrote my own Young Adult book (which I will classify as Contemporary Teen Fiction because if VC Andrews and Gossip Girl is on the Young Adult book shelf then I think mine qualifies).

So Thank You Stephenie Meyer for making vampires and reading cool again. I still am a bit mad that now teenage girls think that vampires sparkle, but hey at least now less girls will get mad