Betrayal

Why is it that no one told me that there are new Vampire Diary books out? Why?
I feel so betrayed. Of course I found this out while perusing the meager book section of our local WalMart. Ridiculous. They only had volume two. Why do they do that? I don't understand. Doesn't matter I have to re-edit my doc and write a five page paper on agricultural defamation anyway. Ingrates.

Secret Circle Originals

Leg Warmers and LJ SMith

Last night I hauled all of my teen novels out of storage.

Maybe not all, I seem to have misplaced some. Likely, they are in storage.

Again I was struck by the fact that just like leg warmers, the books of the late 80's/early 90's are finding themselves on the shelves again. And not just the shelves of used bookstores. They're sporting shiny new covers with trendy new cover art in the biggest retailers around. Personally, I prefer the old ones. There's something about the use of real people on the covers of the books that has always bothered me. If my stomach wasn't rolling around right now maybe I could figure out what that is.

After finishing the Twilight sage the first book to on my reread list is Christopher Pike's Fall Into Darkness always one of my favorites. It's so funny. After all these years, two decades in some cases, I can still remember the stories just by looking at the covers, and feel the emotions the skillful craft of Christopher Pike wrought in me. Granted, it will be different now as I am older and have lived through quite a bit. Although I am finding that the difficulties I have lived through actually help me connect with some of the stories I read..the difficulties and the most romantic and heartbreaking new beginning...The Lord has blessed me with a wonderful love story of my own. Some adults may laugh that I read teen novels but they shouldn't. My life could serve as inspiration for some of those "silly" novels. Fairytale romances, with all the strife and stupidity and horror and reunions, really do happen. But that's my tale to tell, one day.

Retro Books?

The Avoidance of Being Trite

Work on my new novel has begun in earnest. I say "new" as if there is an old novel of mine out there and people are breathlessly awaiting my next stunning work.

No.

New just means that this is the first time since high school that I have written more than...3 pages consecutively.

I am now the proud author of seventeen pages! Woot woot!

It's ridiculous I know.

My first novel was completed my junior year of high school. Piece of trash, that. But it was good practice. It kept me out of trouble.

My friend, who is forever debating with me over the Twlight v. Vampire Diaries, heard from my own lips that I am writing again.

"What is it about!" She asked, her eyes lit up as though she were meeting Robert Pattinson himself. (I do appreciate her enthusiasm for my contrived efforts.) "Is it about vampires?"

No. No it is not.

That story has been beaten into the ground to the point of humiliation.

Can teen novelists jump off the vampire band wagon and find a new way to spin a suspenseful romance?

This is my mission.

I didn't intend to begin a mission. It started with the comparison of Twilight and the Vampire Diaries, the love stories that hold them together. Then I got to thinking about Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy and Nate in Elizabeth George Spear's The Witch of Blackbird Pond. What was it about these characters and these love stories that possessed my soul to the point that I mourned when the story drew to a close?

Before I knew it, there were characters walking around in my head, kicking and demanding to be set free.

It has been all the difference.

Ever since high school I have tried to write, to pull the words out and make them come to life for me. I've had fantastic ideas and wonderful plots, but none of them were living and breathing (so to speak).

And now, in my most academically rigorous semester when I am still trying to decide on an internship and a career and film a mini-doc....there are characters breathing inside my thoughts. If too many days go by without giving them air I start to become depressed and impatient and generally unfriendly. Writing them out is like gasping in wonderful, reviving air after being smothered under a pillow of practicality. The characters are even doing things I haven't planned and didn't intend.

And it's all working out wonderfully.

Now let's just see if I can keep it up.

Simply put,

My story is not about vampires.

It is about love.

It is a bit gritty and a bit fru-fru.

The heroine is not Isabella Swan or Elena Gilbert.

And I am so very happy to be back doing that one thing that has always brought me fulfillment ever since I wrote my first poem in kindergarten...my first love: writing.

And may I just say, thank you dear husband of mine, for giving the strangers in my head room to breathe and loving me even as my flakes begin to show.

Confessions of A Teen Novel Junkie

There is a confession I must make.

I am 30 years old. Three little boys call me "mom," my husband calls me on his way to work, on his way to school, and on his way home. My university calls me a Broadcast Media major with a business management minor.

In short, I am a grown woman with the responsibilities of a grown woman...and I have read Twilight.

There. I've said it.

For years I ignored the series and chided those who didn't. After all, it sounded like a rip-off of LJ Smith's Vampire Diaries series which I had read back in 1991, when they came out. (My originals sit proudly within my towering stack o'novels. They have that wonderful old book smell.) Last year, however, I began debating with a girl who always had a copy of one of the Twilight books. She kept insisting that I read them. My response was that I was too old for vampire love stories and that it sounded just like a series I had read when I was in middle school.

Over Christmas break, in spite of my husband's demeaning laughter, I watched the movie. The parallels between the two stories were blatant and almost embarrassing. The only difference was that, I didn't buy it. I didn't buy the sudden love. "You smell so good, I have to be with you." And where did her love spring from? It just wasn't fleshed out enough. I don't know.

It also irritated me that the two initial scenes wherein the damsel is rescued by the brooding hero, were so fast. He gets out of the car and growls at the guys, seriously?

Maybe, I thought, it was just a poor job of adapting the book into a movie. Like Harry Potter, maybe it lost the essential essence in the adaptation.

So, amid more laughter from my loving husband, I bought the book. And read it in a day. He marveled, "I could never read a book that fast." I shrugged. It was no big deal. There was nothing complex or new about it and I didn't feel compelled to slow down and savor the story.

I will say this, Twilight is probably the BEST book to film adaptation I have ever seen. That is something to be admired.

So I can now say, "Yes I have read Twilight and yes, Vampire Diaries is way much better. "

More on those embarrassing parallels to come.....