In non-book news, my boyfriend and I are getting a puppy in September, once it’s weaned. Behold, Sienna, soon to be cute addition to the household:

(oh, and since I don’t think I mentioned it, since this summer has been crazy, I moved at the end of June and am now living with my boyfriend, Ian. We celebrate our 1 year anniversary next week – woohoo! )

Bridge of Birds

By Barry Hughart

This was a surprising find. I’m not huge into Asian/Chinese-themed stories, so the subtitle ‘A Novel of an Ancient China that Never Was’ made me hesitate just a tad. I’m glad I ended up picking it up. This is a rollicking good tale. It’s got the flavor of a Chinese folktale, but told in a kind of tounge-in-cheek style that makes it fun to read, and rolls you right along with the adventure. I mean, you know it’s going to be a funny read when one of the main character constantly introduces himself thus: “My name is Kao Li, and I have a slight flaw in my character.” The other main character has the evocative nickname of Number Ten Ox. The story overall is like that: absurd, but it ends up making sense. In short, Bridge of Birds has everything a good adventure story should have: a seemingly impossible quest, romance, danger, charlatans, trickey, escapes, magic and myth.. and most importantly, a very satisfying ending. There’s a reason it won the World Fantasy Award back in 1985. Now I just need to find the sequels…

I give it 4.5/5 stars.

If you’ve checked in on my official NaNoWriMo page at all, you know that I am FAR behind on my quota of 50,000 words by the end of this month. In my defense, I do have a great deal of the entire novel (which will likely be more than 50,000 words) outlined, I just haven’t actually written it out yet. This is due to several factors, summarized below.

I have determined that it is practically impossible to keep up with NaNoWriMo when:

1. You run your own small business and holiday season (aka. The Gauntlet) is starting.
2. You lose a week and a half by being out sick and then having to catch up on real work before you can devote time to writing.
3. Said real work leaves you stressed out and exhausted, and all you want to do with your limited free time is relax with good books or your boyfriend, instead of writing a novel about a topic that stresses you out and is occasionally sad.

The last point is admittedly the most controllable, as I could’ve just picked a different topic to write about. But writing a book is hard work no matter the topic or angle, and sometimes my day job just doesn’t leave me with the energy to tackle that.

I may do my own version of NaNoWriMo in a less hectic time of the year – perhaps May (MayNoWriMo?). Regardless, I do plan to keep plugging away at this novel in small chunks until then, and ultimately completing it, as it’s a story that I feel is important to see told.

My birthday was this past weekend (the 23rd, for those of exacting curiosity) and my geeky bookworm side was indulged to the max. Witness below:

On the left, you see 3 books that I purchased just today from Austin’s wonderful BookPeople store with a gift card from my friend Nicholas. I picked a good mix: a modern sci-fi, an epic fantasy, and of course a book all about dragons. I’m eager to dive into them, but my reading attention is currently taken up by the other half of the picture above.

On the afternoon of my birthday, the doorbell rang, a box was delivered, I near broke my back picking it up expecting something lighter, and then I open it. The ENTIRE Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Sent by none other than my awesome boyfriend, who gets bonus points for being clever and absolutely surprising me. See, I’d first stumbled on this series when I chanced to watch an episode of Legend of the Seeker and got hooked. I found out it was based on this series, which I’d been meaning to read for awhile anyway. I got the first one from the library, thoroughly enjoyed it, and requested the 2nd one, which was checked out but they could put on hold for me when it came back in. And then I waited. And waited, and waited. Longest library hold EVER. I commiserated with my boyfriend on the long wait more than once (he, too, is a fan of the series), and he decided to end my wait and make me squeal girlishly in birthday book excitement all in one fell swoop.

I’m halfway through book 2, Stone of Tears – witness the crease down the spine – and the bookworm inside me is rubbing its hands together maniacally in anticipation of tackling the rest of this haul.

NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month: http://www.nanowrimo.org

Well, it’s official. I’ve signed up for this madness. Starting on November 1st, I will attempt to write at least 50,000 words of a novel over the course of the following 30 days. If you figure that one page has about 250 words, that works out to about 6-7 pages each day, which doesn’t seem quite as intimidating. I have an idea and rough outline in mind, and strangely enough it’s not going to be of the science fiction or fantasy bent, but a bit more true to life. It’ll still be fiction, but will be set in current times, and be about a very real-world issue for this particular character. Right now I’m leaning towards writing it in first person, even though I know that will bring the inevitable ‘is this about you?’ questions. We’ll see. It will be an interesting exercise, in many ways.

I’ll be posting word count updates on the NaNoWriMo site, so if you’d like to track my progress (and possibly chivvy me along occasionally) you can do so here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/522485

Any one else out there onboard for this crazy ride?

Here in Austin there’s a little annual theatre event called MUSES. In it, the Vestige Group takes over a house for a unique kind of performance. They take pictures of every room in the house and send those out to playwrights, who then write and submit a 5-7 minute scene or monologue to take place in one of the rooms. 10-15 scenes are chosen, then casting and rehearsals take place very quickly, and roughly a month later theatre-goers can share in this very interesting live performance experience. The limited-size audience is broken up into smaller groups, and go room to room to witness and sometimes participate in these scenes.

This year, the Vestige Group decided to use only Austin playwrights and writers. I heard about all this through the Austin Writers Meetup and decided to try my hand at stage writing. Below you’ll find a PDF of the short script I wrote (a monologue) as well as the pictures from the house that inspired this scene. Scenes were only due on the 23rd, so we’re still waiting to hear which scenes will be chosen for actual production. Fingers crossed.

Picture 1 | Picture 2 | Scene: Negative Space

**UPDATE: My scene was sadly not selected for production out of the 50+ submitted. Ah well. I still consider it a good writing exercise.

Tomorrow I head to sunny (hopefully) Florida for a week to visit my sister in West Palm Beach. It’s to be a week of relaxtion, girl-time, beach-time, and ideally writing time when my sister is at work. I’m taking a bunch of books on writing, my laptop loaded with all of my current writing projects, and I’ll be in a nice lakeview apartment with a balcony and a puppy for company.

If this doesn’t kick my muse back into action, I’m not sure what will.