Writers' Chasm

Saturday was Writers' Chasm's two-year-anniversary so I wanted to do something to celebrate. :) So I dug up some of the highlights from my last couple years. On January 29th, 2009, I typed my first words for the blogosphere: Hi I'm Horserider! I love to read and write. My favorite genre is fantasy, but I'll read almost anything. Except horror. My favorite authors are J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Tamora Piece, Erin Hunter, Rick Riordan, and Anne McCaffrey. I do love Twilight and Harry Potter and I have also seen all the movies. I've written one novel so far. Once I finish this edit, it should be a little less than 350 pages. It was the first novel I ever finished and someday I hope to publish it. It's on the second edit at the moment which I hope to finish sometime this weekend. For the record, Stephenie Meyer is no longer on that list and you will never see me use Twilight in the same sentence as Harry Potter again. As for that first novel... Andra is ...

Multiple points of view are tricky things. Done well, they can be a very powerful tool. Done badly, they can break a book. Making the decision to have multiple points of view is mostly a personal one, but there are a few things to remember before making the jump. If you're going to go for more than one point of view, you should have a good reason for it. The book needs to be better with more than one PoV than it would be if you just stayed in one character's head. One question to ask yourself when trying to decide would be, "Would this be better off in third person, showing all the characters' thoughts?" Each character should also have a distinct voice. There's nothing more jarring then having to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to see who's point of view you're in. With multiple points of view, you can run the risk of the reader loving one point of view and hating another, and therefore wanting to skip over the chapters of a particular chara...

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic. This Week's Topic: If you could live within the universe of one book, which would you choose? I can't decide between these two, so I'm just going to list them both. 1. HOGWARTS! I started reading the Harry Potter books after my eleventh birthday so I never experienced the long hours of waiting for my Hogwarts letter except for maybe a fleeting hope that maybe it had just gotten lost in the Muggle post. I would still love to live in that world of witches and wizards. Preferably post-Voldemort era of course. 2. TORTALL! This is the country where many of Tamora Pierce's books take place and I wouldn't hesitate to move there if I could. I could move to Corus and join the Queen's Riders. I might also consider the...

Timeless by Alexandra Monir When tragedy strikes Michele Windsor’s world, she is forced to uproot her life and move across the country to New York City, to live with the wealthy, aristocratic grandparents she’s never met. In their old Fifth Avenue mansion filled with a century’s worth of family secrets, Michele discovers a diary that hurtles her back in time to the year 1910. There, in the midst of the glamorous Gilded Age, Michele meets the young man with striking blue eyes who has haunted her dreams all her life – a man she always wished was real, but never imagined could actually exist. And she finds herself falling for him, into an otherworldly, time-crossed romance. Michele is soon leading a double life, struggling to balance her contemporary high school world with her escapes into the past. But when she stumbles upon a terrible discovery, she is propelled on a race through history to save the boy she loves – a quest that will determine the fate of both of their ...

I read more blog posts in a week than I care to think about. I do it because I enjoy it, but sometimes there are things that just make me hit that red X when I'm reading a blog. Based on my experience, I compiled a list of five common mistakes bloggers make. #1 Same information I can get anywhere Be original! I've stopped reading blogs that give the same information as every other blog out there. You can take a topic and look at it from a different angle or compare it to something completely original or talk about it in your own way. Take beta readers for example. I've read a lot of blogs about what beta readers are, how to get one, and how to become one. But that doesn't mean that you can't take the topic of beta readers and make an original post out of it. #2 Double sides both packed with widgets This one is mostly a personal thing. When someone has two sidebars on their blog and both of them are packed to the brim with widgets, it really slows down my computer. ...

This has been a strange week. [I typed 'Today has been a strange week' first. I think it's time for bed...] Still trying to get my head on straight. Will hopefully be back to normal by Monday... Song of the week: Total Eclipse of the Heart -- Glee Cast Must Read: Hannah Moskowitz calls for more characters like you BookEnds: Pop culture in fiction Janet Reid: The difference between a pitch and a query Johnson Literary: November and December query stats Kirsten Hubbard: Cursing in YA Nathan Bransford: How to use Twitter In Movies: The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- Not quite as good as I expected, but it was cute and funny. Inception -- There are no words to describe that level of awesome. I'm going to be thinking about this one for a very, very long time. Also, ending scene = cruelest ending in any movie I have ever seen. In Writing: Did some revisions at the beginning of the week, but haven't had much time lately. I blame homework. Everyone have a great weekend and ...

Fallen by Lauren Kate First book in the Fallen series Published by Delacorte Press There's something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori. Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price's attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at Sword & Cross boarding school in Savannah. He's the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are screwups, and security cameras watch every move. Except Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce -- he goes out of his way to make that very clear. But she can't let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, Luce has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret...even if it kills her. I'm going to be one hundred percent honest about this one. I raved about it when I first finished it, but once I let the story soak in, I didn't feel so hot towards it. It has a similar vibe of other novels where the main character falls in love with a "mysterious" boy with...