I spent my lunch hour yesterday reading through Libba Bray's Livejournal ... well, actually I just read through her 2004 archive. If you don't know who Libba Bray is, she's the author of Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels. I enjoyed Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels was good, but - and I feel kind of ashamed to admit this considering how much enjoyment I'm getting from her LJ - neither of the books made me go "OMG! I can't put this down." Of course, that could be due to any one of a number of things including the frame of mind I was in when I read them ... but her blog is a different story. It's hysterical!! I stumbled across it purely by accident and I'm so glad that I did. Ang got to see her when she visited Borders in Novi, Michigan and told me the story that is regaled here so when I saw her blog and saw that she had written the "Can you take me to O'Hare" story down, I had to check it out. Do yourself a favor and go read it. You'll be glad you did, I promise.

continue reading...

I especially enjoyed reading the few posts she made while she was writing - or trying to write - "Rebel Angels". This, in particular, made me love her more:

Then there's my book #2. Ahem. Yes. Well. How can I put this? Oh, I know, how about, It sucks so bad that I can actually feel the oxygen leaving the room? Yep. That about sums it up. I can't seem to catch the thread on this one. It feels all icky and stupid. And working out the magic system? Jesus, I can barely write up a grocery list that's coherent. I keep tripping myself up. "If they do this, then Y happens. But if Y happens, why didn't it happen before?" That kind of crap. So then I make an exception to the rules. And that leads to anarchy. A plotless blob of atmosphere with a sprinkling of decent metaphor. So I'm back to figuring out the structure again. It is a vicious cycle. I am cranky and I'm mainlining chocolate. Oh, and it's due at the end of May. What, me worry?

Barry keeps trying to tell me that I get this paranoid, morose, and unbearable during everything I write. But I just think he's being nice.

I mean, I feel like that with most of what I write, but to see that a real - and by real, I mean published - author goes through the exact same thing gives me hope. Not that I think that I am by any stretch of the means a good enough writer to get published, but just on the off chance that hell freezes over, pigs fly, or any one of a number of other impossibilities occurs, it's good to know I'm not alone. (Did that sentence make any sort of sense whatsoever? See, told you I'm not good at this writing stuff.)

I just saw on amazon.com that the third book was released in hardcover in December 2007. I think I'm going to have to give the books another try.

Also, switching subjects here, I've decided to migrate my writing_is_fun LJ over here. I'm not going to go through the hassle of re-posting the 13 chapters of "Two Seasons in London" that I had posted because I will give copies of the book once I get it published on lulu.com to the people I care to have read it and everyone else ... well, you'll just have to pay for your own copy. But everything else will be here ... except for the comments, unless I can figure out a way to post comments without actually "posting" comments ... or maybe I'll just include them in the post itself. Time will tell.

Ok, time to get back to good ole Mitch Rapp's latest adventure.

hello, my name is ...

So with all the changes going on over at Livejournal, I thought I'd give this a try. I'm not getting rid of shellseeker, but I might decide to use this blog instead of my writing_is_fun blog at LJ.

We'll see how it goes.