Home Posts tagged "I love this book ZOMG"

Tag: I love this book ZOMG

It’s Alive!!

…And no, I’m not talking about Frankenstein. Although I could draw some very interesting parallels — stay with me, here. Okay, so let me start from the beginning. Every January (or in the case of this year, February because reasons), I pick a languishing novel out of my pile to start the new year off with. I don’t actually continue working on it, but I give it a bit of time, just to keep it in the background of my mind, refill the well, remind myself that it still exists, and experience the magic again. It’s tradition. Currently, I have three such novels. So I wanted to work on a different one from last year, so I chose Survivor, my oldest work to date. For those of you just joining the madness, Survivor is a psychological thriller/horror novel I started way back in 2004 for a two-year novel writing class I was taking at the time. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It ended up being one of the best books I’ve ever written — and the most maddening, for a variety of reasons. But I love it, believe in it, and this book haunts me. YES. So the goal is to get it published, naturally…except…um…it needs a major rewrite because 2004!Erin just wasn’t as good a writer as 2023!Erin. And well, the book’s in pieces, and — (Frankenstein reference, anyone?) well, it’s been majorly intimidating me for years, but…in 2019 or so, I decided that…

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Escapist Literature

Nope, not talking about it. I hope you’re safe, I hope you’re well, and I have faith you are doing all you can to protect yourself, your loved ones, and total strangers. That said–I’m gonna talk about escape books. A reader once told me that mine is the book she reaches for when she needs a break, when she needs to get out of reality for a while. (This one, specifically–Knight Errant.) It made my day, and continues to make me happy. I never wanted to write a world-altering novel–I just wanted to make people as happy as many a book has done for me. So. In no particular order–my escape books. I’m not linking them all, but here’s Indiebound if you’d care to go look for any. None of these are exactly new, but hey. Spoiler warning. If you don’t want spoiled for a title (probably just a little,) don’t look at the paragraph that starts with that title! The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien I first read The Hobbit in 8th grade (so, 12-13 years old.) It was a very bad time for me, but The Hobbit took me away so magnificently, I reread it about eight times in a row. Even after that, I still carried it for months, rereading bits, and especially the chapter Flies and Spiders. Poor Bilbo, lost and alone in Mirkwood, but then he found his courage, and rescued his friends! It was a time I needed courage, and Bilbo finding his, gave some to…

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Everything old is new again

Those of you who are very observant probably noticed that this blog wasn’t posted yesterday like it was supposed to be. My bad. I need to put this on my calendar or something because I apparently can’t remember crap. Grump. But in cheerier news, I finally, finally, finally started the rewrite of Survivor, my psychological horror novel from 2004. It started its life as a carelessly written idea in a file I tucked away somewhere on my hard drive. When I decided to take a class on novel writing, and one of the requirements was a completely new idea, I happened to find it by accident. I worked on it literally for years, sometimes setting it aside for another book, but always came back to it. It fascinated and haunted me. In 2009, I finished the first draft. It was 225,000 words, too damn long but that was okay because I was quickly becoming the queen of the machete. I told myself for TEN FREAKING YEARS that I’d get to it, I’d get to it, but something was always getting in the way—important stuff, but stuff nonetheless. So when I found myself with a bit of room in my schedule and a writing challenge for this month, I said, “I wonder if I could finally do this. I’ve waited long enough.” So I did. In the beginning, it felt so wrong, because I remembered what the original was like. Even though 2004!Erin sucked as a writer, it still felt firmly…

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