ACCIDENTS for The Writer's Voice

Looks like I made it past the raffle stage of The Writer's Voice! Good luck to my fellow entrants. Here's the query and first 250 words for ACCIDENTS.

Artemis Masters always expected her sire would return for her, though he left before she'd even stopped bleeding. He wants her, forever, never mind that she's seventeen and thinks he's a certifiable lunatic. It's been a year of nightmares and sickening daylight since Genesis forced his blood on her. She has coped and pretended and re-built a life. She won’t just roll over, hopeless as it is to fight a man who holds his strength, her fear, and their bloodline over her like the sword of Damocles.

Artemis clings to her home, her last bit of normalcy – stirring up a bloody fight between her sister and her best friend under the pressures of the last year – until Genesis recaptures her. He expects she'll play house with the family he has created: a collection of eerily loyal vampire "daughters." Though she escapes to Japan, he's still her sire. He will keep coming back. Artemis sees no point in a life of constantly looking over her shoulder.

Her one chance is a Jinni, a trapped spirit powerful enough to erase Genesis from her blood. With monsters, vampires, and a legion of demons cat-fighting over the spirit, chasing wishes might get Artemis killed before she can turn human again.

ACCIDENTS is a complete YA urban fantasy at 75,000 words. It is a stand-alone novel with series potential.

Chapter 1

~Artemis~

I spent the eve of my anniversary freezing my butt off on a playground. Before I'd even put on my pajamas I knew I wasn't going to bed. I'd been restless all year; I didn't know if it was not needing as much sleep or just not wanting it. This ache in the lining of my stomach said I hadn't drunk in too long, and usually the ache meant I was safe from the nightmares. I really didn't feel safe from anything that night. Maybe that makes it stupid of me to leave home, where at least my family and walls surrounded me. I guess it was less stressful or more natural to be afraid out under the dark than in my house. The nightmares were enough without feeling scared of my own bedroom when I was awake.

If I wasn't going to sleep, I at least should have gone for some blood. Can't run on empty forever. But that's what a good, sensible vampire would do. I was not good at being a vampire. It should have been a relief but most of the time it was just pathetic. I probably wouldn't have been so bad if I practiced, but I wasn't good at practicing either. Too bad I couldn't drop vampirism like I did guitar lessons.

The sun called in a sick day, leaving dawn a sad affair. Blocked by thick-walled towers of cloud, her efforts to claw through were dull, gray, and noiseless.

A First

Last year, as I was scrambling over a collection of manuscripts in various states of non-completeness, I took a short story I'd done for my creative writing class and submitted it to a young writers anthology, just to see what would happen.

 Well, this happened.

 
That was a bit of a surprise! It's something to put in the bio section of my queries, finally. Kidding (well, not really). I'm quite attached to the story, since it's based on my Uncle Peter who died when he was a teenager (one reason I'm so fond of the name Peter). I'm glad it's found a good home, where hopefully people will read it. Also they're splitting the royalties between us as sort of a college fund: very nice of them.

Check out the trailer where I and the other eight authors got to talk about the anthology. I actually haven't watched it yet, as I'm stuck on campus with no headphones. Such is life.

So this has been almost a year of radio silence. Oops! I've been a bit preoccupied getting a book review tumblr (which I also don't pay enough attention to; double oops) and a personal tumblr going. I'm also kind of wondering what to do with this blog -- gotta name it something different since I'm no longer a minor. I think it'll be one of my resolutions this year to figure that out.

Until then, I'll try to be post here, maybe start doing some memes again and talk about books more. In my absence I've fallen woefully behind on the blogs I once read regularly, and that just won't do.

Hope to see more of blogger for the rest of the year. Best wishes!

Happy Hannahkah

This post is going to be better than usual because this post is not about me.

It's about hannah moskowitz, whose twitter and formspring are oh-so stalkable,

Whose love for Sam Winchester is unrivaled and also really cute,

Who wrote a few books, a couple of which I've read and loved to pieces,

Whose first middle grade came out today,

Whose characters will not get out of my head,

Who feeds and cares for and answers the silly questions of her magic gay fish,

And did I mention that ZOMBIE TAG is OUT and everyone everywhere should buy it? That's very important. All the Barnes & Nobles in my (admittedly miniscule) state are out of them already, meaning my life has become signifigantly more tragic (I have to ORDER THINGS? And WAIT?).

I'm going to post some photos of my hannahkah present, because unfortunately you can't scan painting. Instead of just using an image hosting site like I usually do, I decided to write a little something to go with it. 'Cause hannah is awesome.

I heard about hannah on twitter, which is the second-best place to hear about hannah, the first being in the vicinity of someplace where you can buy hannah's books, but that wasn't me. I found her twitter account first. I'd never read anything by her. Usually when I have not read an author's books I wait to follow them until I have, because this is one of the things I decided when I got on twitter so I wouldn't end up following a bajillion people. I did not do this with hannah. I followed her right away, because I thought she was funny. Actually, I very nearly beta-read sparklyfairyprostitutes for her before I'd read one of her published books. I think I started Invincible Summer about a day before sparklyfairyprositutes. Both of which I loved, bits and pieces, you know. But I already loved hannah before I read either, because it stuck in my mind that she was some kind of epitome of awesome. Which is not untrue.

hannah is, like, the highlight of my day. I know when I tweet her exciting things her responses will be in ALLCAPS and possibly include smiles and hearts ( :D <3 :D ). I know if I ask her anonymous questions she will respond honestly (unless the questions are dirty, but I swear I am not the one sending the dirty question) and by God is her honesty refreshing and sometimes a bit squick, in the best way. What I'm saying is, it's an honor to interact with hannah and read her books. Thank God for the internet!

So happy hannahkah, hannah moskowitz. Long live the provider of fish food.



The words are from The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot. I haven't read the entire poem, but I found the lines "Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow" and for me it represents something which I, and I suppose writers in general, am very afraid of, yet it's beautiful. It makes me think of sparklyfairyprostitutes in a few ways. Also, I apologize for the horrible picture quality.

So, I dropped off the face of the earth...

Am I back?

Well, not really.

Things have kind of changed. I'm in college. I'm right in the middle of a first draft. I'm working on a secretproject. I'm helping a friend illustrate her novel for self-publication.

In short, I am busy. Like everyone else on the planet. But because this blog is a lonely little place anyway, it is really easy to forget about. I'm not quite ready to re-commit myself to regular blogging, especially because of the secretproject, which probably won't be ready for quite a while so I'm not going to talk about it yet.

In short, I'll be around. Not regularly. I'll probably still post more words on twitter per month than I do here. But things are in the works, promise.

The things I do to motivate myself.

Best wishes!

Top Ten Tuesday - Freebie Week

Top Ten Tuesdays is a blog meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This is a free week, where we're allowed to chose our own topic. Since I, as per usual, was late to this bandwagon, I decided to pick a topic from the Top Ten Tuesday vault, because looking at that list always makes me a bit wistful. I love quotes, so I chose the topic of my top ten favorite book quotes. This is going to be hard. To make it easier on me, these are in no particular order.

1. Calcifer, Howl's Moving Castle: "That's magic I admire, using something that already exists anyway and turning it round into a curse." Howl's Moving Castle makes many interesting points about magic that are about more than magic, but this is one of my favorites.

2. Annabel Lee: "And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee." It doesn't come up quite enough just how much I love Edgar Allen Poe. Annabel Lee is my favorite poem.

3. The Motorcycle Boy, Rumble Fish: "It would be great, if I could think of somewhere to go." I really love this book. What can I say?

4. Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray: "The reason we like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid of ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror." Lord Henry's often ridiculous rants were amazing and hilarious. Not to mention amusingly scewed.

5. Finny and Gene, A Separate Peace: "'...when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.' I didn't think that was true, my seventeen years of experience had shown this to be much more false than true, but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny's: it should have been true. So I didn't argue."

6. Kerry and Ethan, Companions of the Night: "'In the movies,' she pointed out to him, 'a vampire could have turned into a bat or mist and followed me.' 'In the movies,' Ethan countered, 'Lassie never peed on the rug.'"

7. The Silver Chair: "She felt frightened only for a second. For one thing, the world beneath her was so very far away that it seemed to have nothing to do with her." I probably could've pulled sixteen excellent quotes from Screwtape or Mere Christianity, but I have a soft spot for this quote.

8. Sunshine: "I didn't know you could go on finding out you'd had stuff by losing it. This didn't seem like a very good method to me." There are a few for this book, of course, but I had to pick one.

9. Louis, Interview with the Vampire: "An artist, stealing paint from a store, for example, imagines himself to have made an inevitable but immoral decision, and then he sees himself as fallen from grace; what follows is despair and petty irresponsibility, as if morality were a great glass world which can be utterly shattered by one act." So many underlines... so hard to choose...

10. The Psalms: "You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy." Part of my favorite psalm.

I could go on. I could go on and on and on. I love quote darn it. Probably would've had a Good Omens quote, but I've lent out my copy. That concludes my favorite quotes. According to John Green, they say more about me than they do about the books. Comment with your favorites, or link to your posts! Happy Tuesday.

Top Ten Tuesdays - Underrated

Today's Top Ten Tuesday (a blog meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish)is underrated books... I might have a little trouble deciding what constitutes underrated. But I do honestly love all the books I've chosen and feel like more people should read them. Even if I couldn't come up with a complete ten.


Sunshine - It doesn't seem to get as much attention as Robin McKinley's other books, which is basically a travesty in my mind. I love love love this book to pieces.

Girl, Stolen - It's just good, darn it. I love it when everything goes to hell really quickly. I love heroines who are brave and resourceful. Concept to execution, there's little not to love.

Hawkes Harbor - Same with Sunshine, this book doesn't get much mention, possibly because when people talk S. E. Hinton they're thinking young adult, not adult fantasy. But it's really very good.

Invincible Summer - hannah moskowitz has awesome hair. Also, she can write amazing books.

Almost Perfect - Though it kind of irritated me on a few levels, it is, in the end, a good love story. The bittersweet character and realistic complications of a trans-gender relationship were really interesting and something I don't read every day.

Dark Sons - Just a very good story about a kid with a real-life problem sympathizing, convincingly and heart-warmingly, with a largely ignored figures of my religion. It hit close to home, but in general it's a wonderful example of a verse novel, not to mention a great male YA narrator.

Companions of the Night - Despite its quite odd packaging and title, this book was pretty much everything I ask from a paranormal. Good characters, engaging, and with some interesting twists. It's also short and stands alone, which I always love. It's better than some big vampire series I've read.

The Shadow of the Sun - If you have an interest in the complicated and unique history and culture of Africa, or maybe you sometimes forget that there are actually individual countries in it and they aren't covered with savanna and elephants, this is a great book to read. Granted, it's a little dated, but it really brought a part of the world that I'd always glossed over to life. And it inspired my internet handle.

The Man Who was Poe - Compared to Avi's other work, you could consider this neglected. I loved it, but then, there are few literary figures I find more interesting than Poe.

What are your underrated favorites? Please link to your posts and remember to visit the blog hosters.