Talking vs. Listening

For a few years, I conducted an informal survey where I asked people if they had to choose one, would they rather be deaf or mute. The majority of men said deaf. When I asked why they'd say, "Because then I could talk. I could tell people things." The majority of women said mute. When I asked why they'd say, "Because I'd want to be able to hear what other people are saying."

A Visit From the Goon Squad

Just reviewed A Visit From the Goon Squad on Goodreads. An interesting, yet depressing, but annoying and engaging book.

Fangs for Nothing Questions

Becky from Book Bite Reviews has some interesting questions about Fangs for Nothing.

Vampire Hunting Kit

A friend just sent me this link to a "1890" vampire hunting kit. Looks pretty cool. Someone did a nice job.


Sherbie and Xander would have loved this in Fangs for Nothing

Vampire kit

Why YA over regular A?

It's no news to anyone that young adult fiction is mega-popular right now. It's not just teenagers reading YA, it's millions of adults also delving into the genre. In fact, I've encountered numerous adults who prefer YA or only exclusively read YA.

But why? Being a teenager is challenging at best and I don't think most people would choose to go back to being a teenager. So why read about it? Why choose to live vicariously through the eyes of a teen for a span of three hundred pages?

I read a lot of YA. I justify it by saying that because I'm a YA author I need to know what's out there, but that isn't 100% the truth. I don't exclusively read YA but I find myself really enjoying YA. Recently I started reading an acclaimed book for adults and I found myself not enjoying it. Not because it wasn't well written or didn't have interesting characters, but because I was intolerant of the stupidity of the characters. Don't get me wrong, I felt they were accurate portrayals of humans, I was just less patient with their foibles because of their age. Hearing a 48 year old man whine about his love life is somehow much more annoying than hearing a 16 year old kid whine about his love life. I guess there's the idea that a struggling teen will get his or her act together and go on to be a functioning adult. Transporting that kid 30 years into the future and having them still struggle gets depressing.

But let's face it. We all struggle all the time. We all want to lose weight, or find a better mate, or finally land a date with the hot guy from R&D, but I don't necessarily want to read about it.

Pillow Talk

I was looking for the ancient Japanese diary of Sei Shōnagon called The Pillow Book in the San Francisco library system. I threw The Pillow Book into the search engine and the first thing that came up was The pillow book: over 25 simple-to-sew patterns for every room and every mood by Shannon Okey. This has really set me in a good mood for this dreary Saturday morning. I wonder if anyone at Ms. Okay's publishers knew that The Pillow Book was already taken. Or, even better, if they did know and were smirking and winking at each other as the title went to press. Either way, I'm delighted.

John Hughes Themes

I got sucked into watching Some Kind of Wonderful the other night. I know a lot of people like this movie, but I find it a little choppy. Maybe it's because John Hughes only wrote the script, he didn't direct. I did notice some themes that run through a couple of different Hughes movies.

Yes, of course, teenagers, growing pains, different cliques, liking someone who doesn't like you, but also diamond earrings - both in Wonderful and The Breakfast Club as symbolizing wealth and with that wealth confidence, popularity, etc... Also, visiting a museum appears in Wonderful and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's meant to express... uhm... maybe... that there's more of a world out there than what you find in high school. (Yes, I think that's it. Let's go with that.)

If you want to read a story about high school, friendship, fitting in, having a crush on someone who doesn't know you exist and vampires, check out Fangs for Nothing. 99 cents on all ereaders.