Rich Boys (the most ridiculously titled entertaining YA book I have ever read) and Unrealistic Expectations in Men

I took a break this weekend from the classic literature and “grown up books” that I’ve been reading lately to enjoy at little YA fiction (that did not involve anything paranormal like vampires, angels or werewolves). I try to stay away from it, because at nearly 22 I sometimes (frequently) find myself having a hard time relating to the 15-year-old characters finding the loves of their lives. I was once 15 myself, and this did not happen for anyone I knew. But, they’re kind of my guilty pleasure books, and Winnie was much more relatable at the age of 17. So after pouring over Barnes and Noble’s website for a couple of hours, I finally settled on Rich Boys by Jenny O’Connell. The title of this book is absurd. I’m a little bit embarrassed for the author because of it. If I wasn’t already familiar with her, (absolutely loved her book The Book of Luke. If you’re a fan of YA, I completely recommend it) there’s no way I ever would have purchased the book, but I am glad that I did in the end.

The book is the second in O’Connell’s Island Summer Series (you don’t need to read the first to enjoy it) and is the story of a girl named Winnie. It’s the start of her summer vacation, and her life has never been worse. Her sister decided not to come home from culinary school in Boston for the summer. Her parents are spending so little time together, Winnie’s fairly certain they’re on the brink of divorce. And Winnie’s job as a summer camp counselor at a resort in her beach town is only four hours in the morning, so she doesn’t have a chance to escape all of the awkwardness that goes on at home while or feeling like a third wheel with her best friend, Jessie, and Jessie’s jerky boyfriend, Nash. Then Winnie meets heavily pregnant Anne Barclay and her daughter, Cassie, while working at the beach one day. Anne is well into her third trimester of her pregnancy and is having a hard time keeping six-year-old Cassie entertained. She asks if Winnie will come be their nanny in the afternoons so Anne can rest, and Winnie happily accepts.

Winnie’s only been working for the Barclays a few days when Anne’s stepson, Jay, comes into the picture. After he’s rude to Winnie the day he arrives at the house, she’s pretty much ready to write him off completely. But Winnie can feel that there is more to Jay than meets the eye. She can tell that there’s a different person underneath the guy who is angry at the world and got kicked out of the dorms at his college for almost setting them on fire. The more time she spends with Cassie, the more time she spends around Jay, and the more Winnie realizes that things are not always as they appear. Her own family may be falling apart, but Winnie may be able to bring another back together before the summer’s over.

I loved this book. I thought Winnie’s insights about love, life and forgiveness were pretty much spot on. There are two major flaws though. Firstly, the absurd title. This book is basically a beach read. I read it in 2-3 hours on Saturday morning, but the title completely trivializes a book that realistically deals with some pretty heavy issues. I commend O’Connell for the way she tackles things like death, abortion and guilt, but she really should have fought for a better title for her book. Money wasn’t really a big factor. The two main guys, Jay and Nash, both came from wealthy families and were only on the island for the summer, but their problems are not limited to the ridiculously wealthy. Honestly, any guy can be a terrible boyfriend. Any guy can have major guilt issues over the death of a parent. Their problems were in no way defined by their economic status and had nothing to do with the book. Besides, the book was about Winnie. I felt like the title should have something to do with her.

My second problem is that this book feeds into the popular myth that a girl can change a guy. Jay meets Winnie and decides he wants to be a better person. Wrong. Books like this are why girls like me have unrealistic expectations in men. You meet a guy and know that he’s a jerk, but you just have to believe that there’s some deep underlying cause to his jerkiness, like guilt over his deceased mother or that he wasn’t loved enough as a child. Wrong. This is why girls date guys who are jerks. We read too many books and watch too many movies where a girl changes a guy, and we completely forget that this is a completely synthetic situation. Some author or script writer is feeding the guy every tear jerking line he says. I completely forget it too as heroes like Jay finally repair their relationships with their estranged fathers and become better people. Let us remember that there are far more Nashes in the world than there are Jays. But honestly, we probably wouldn’t enjoy books so much if every hero was a nice normal guy who was issue free. O’Connell handles well all of the issues that arise in the book though, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I give it 5 out of 7 stars.

Bookworm Problems

I just finished The Bronze Horseman Trilogy by Paullina Simons, (Which is for the most part excellent by the way. Especially the first book. I completely recommend it.) and am now forced to choose a new book to read. This can be a rather daunting problem when I have a “to read” list that is at least 50 books long and a Barnes and Noble not even five minutes from my apartment. I also consider buying a new book like making a new friend. So I therefore have to think about how well this new book is going to fit into my current library. Will the other books like it? Are there any other books I’ve recently read that are too similar? Is it going to be the odd duck sitting on my book shelf? These are my steps for choosing a new book.

1. What does the cover look like? I am fully aware that you should never judge a book by its cover, but anyone who tells you that they don’t is lying to you. Graphic design would not be such a popular field if what something looked like played no factor into a customer’s purchasing decisions. I can freely admit that covers play a big portion in my book buying decisions. It’s what lead me to the Bronze Horseman books. I also tend to buy books with keys on the cover. It has been my experience that books with keys on the cover are usually good books. (The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips and Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen for example) A good cover doesn’t necessarily mean a good book. It’s a fine line sometimes. A good graphic designer doesn’t always mean a good author. Still, I can’t immediately think of any truly excellent books that have terrible covers.
2. Is it part of a series? This can work for or against a book depending on my mood and the state of my finances. A book in a series means either buying another book in the immediate future or having to wait agonizing months for the next book to come out. Sometimes you just want the instant gratification of owning one new book that tells a complete story. But if I really like the characters, I’m more inclined to want to revisit them and keep tabs on their story as it progresses. But I could also just want the characters to get a happy ending and be done with it. I’m kind of upset with the Mortal Instruments Series because Cassandra Clare continued it. I was so happy for Clary and Jace at the end of City of Glass. It was like they were finally getting their happily ever after, and it was a well deserved one after everything they went through. (The whole OMG you’re my SIBLING thing just killed me.) Sometimes as a reader I just need closure.
3. How long is it? This is probably as shallow as considering what the cover looks like, but it’s a valid concern. I’m a student with a busy schedule between class, my internship and my sorority. I love Game of Thrones. It’s an excellent book. When I read it, I get really caught up in it. Then I have a paper due or a big test to study for, and I stop reading it. I bought the second book in the series ages ago and am still only half way through the first book. The problem with larger books is that they just don’t have the most readability. I prefer books that I can read in a couple of days. Or in a night if they’re really good.
4. Has the author written anything else? This kind of goes along with the series thing, but I love finding new authors that I really like. It really helps me to choose the next book I’m going to read. If an author already has several books out, I’m likely to strongly consider their work. I read The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton and really enjoyed it, so I went on about bought her other two books not long after.
5. What did Barnes and Noble recommend with my last purchase? I don’t know if this phenomenon is limited to my local Barnes and Noble, or if this is something that Barnes and Nobles every where are doing now, but the last time I bought a book there I got this handy little paper with other books like the one I’d just purchased. While it might be a bit of a waste for the amount of trees that will be killed for those little extra receipt things, they are probably also going to largely influence my purchasing decisions in the future. I like to know what other people with tastes similar to mine are reading. When I’m looking at books online I always look through the similar books to see if there’s anything else I’d like to buy.
6. What is the book about? This should probably come sooner on the list, but I read many different kinds of books. I tend to gravitate towards historical fiction, but I’ll read almost anything. I’m not a very picky reader. I think every book has some sort of literary merit. If someone somewhere thought it was good enough to publish, then I’m willing to give it a chance. This does tend to be a limiting factor for me on other books though. If I have major problems with the plot, I’ll probably put it back on the shelf no matter how pretty the cover or how much I like the author.  

Sometimes I impulse buy books. Or I get suckered into a “Buy 2 get the 3rd Free” table. Sometimes you come across the best books that way. But I rarely ever end up with a book that I didn’t really like. It takes some time for me to make a decision, but the end results are almost always worth it.

You Know You’re A Crazy Bibliophile When…

I am an obsessive reader. I am aware of this. I get so caught up in whatever book I’m reading that everything else I do completely falls to the wayside. It can be a problem. It can be a very unhealthy problem. But it’s a problem I live with and probably encourage a little too much. I was the kid whose mother threatened her with taking away books as punishment. TV I would give up with a minimal amount of fuss. Books on the other hand… I’m pretty sure none of my friends parents ever had to tell them to stop reading. Here my top 10 signs that you’re a crazy bibliophile like me:

1. You have ever lost sleep over a book. This happens to me a lot. I’ll stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning with a book because it’s just not mentally possible for me to put it down. The first time I experienced this was my sophomore year of college when I read Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. My best friend brought me the book at like 10 o’clock at night and I stayed up until 3 in the morning because I had to know what was going to happen. I tried to put it away. I really did. After thirty minutes of tossing and turning with my brain entirely too keyed up for me to sleep, I gave up, turned the light back on and didn’t sleep until I had finished it.
2. You are emotionally invested in fictional relationships. I am extremely guilty of this. Two characters in a book  I was reading got in a fight, and I started to panic. I also consider myself to be the Saint Jude (the patron saint of lost causes) of fictional relationships. I always ended up cheering for the wrong guy in a series. Like The Hunger Games for example. Gale was barely in the first book, and I was convinced he and Katniss belonged together. I knew it was a completely lost cause, but I still found myself cheering for him.
3. You have in depth conversations about characters/books with friends (who could sometimes care less). This also in part refers to The Hunger Games, mostly because it’s the book that all of my friends are (finally) reading. My little and I have literally had hour long conversations about that book since I got her to start reading them a week before the movie came out. We text about it. We talk about it whenever we’re together. It’s obsessive, and we sound like crazy teenage fan girls (although she technically still is a teenager so it’s okay for her). I do it with other books too though. I have to talk about a book as soon as I finish reading it. Often this is to my mother, because she’ll just let me get it out. Now I try to do it on this blog. I love sharing my opinions about books with other people. Almost to an unhealthy extent.
4. You sacrifice grocery money for books. I have never gone hungry because of my obsession with books. I have, however, lived on ramen noodles for a week because I spent my grocery money on a couple of new books. I have no regrets. Groceries get eaten or go bad. I still have the books and frequently reread them. I don’t recommend doing this if you are married or have a family, but for a single college student like myself, I think it’s perfectly acceptable. Just don’t tell my mother.
5. You sometimes wonder if you have too many books. I know this is not actually possible. But as my books pile up in double rows on my bookshelf or in stacks on my desk or my dresser or the floor, I sometimes wonder if just maybe I have too many. Don’t ask me to part with any of them. It would be like selling off my own children. I’ll lend them to people willingly. I just want them back. How am I ever going to fill my own library someday if I don’t keep all of my books?
6. You have countdowns going for when the next book in a series comes out. The only book I’m eagerly awaiting right now is Clockwork Princess which is the next book in the Infernal Devices Series by Cassandra Clare, and it does not have a release date yet, so I can’t give you an exact countdown for anything I’m waiting for. But I could tell you the exact number of days until City of Glass came out for the Mortal Instruments books when I was awaiting its release. I pretty much thought I was going to die waiting for that one.
7. You have realized that books are always released on Tuesdays. It took me a while to realize that. I felt really dumb after. It just seemed so convenient that books were always released on my usual grocery shopping day. It just worked out so perfectly. Eventually I realized it was always a Tuesday. I’ve never had an exception to this rule. I’m not sure what it is about Tuesdays, but they’re kind of my favorite day of the week as a result.
8. You view social media sites primarily as a way to be in contact with your favorite authors.  I have a twitter. I don’t use it. Everyone who I want to know about my life is my friend on facebook. I do, however, use it to follow my favorite authors. I religiously follow everything Sarah Dessen posts because even though I am probably out of her target audience range at this point in my life, I eagerly await all of her books. And she posts about how she’s writing a new book sometimes. It’s enough to keep me going until her next book is released.
9. Your celebrity crushes are all fictional characters. Maybe this is because I actually know a fictional character’s personality and there’s no risk that the guy is actually a jerk in real life, but I don’t get crushes on celebrities. I get them on the characters of the books I read. I’m absolutely convinced that Wes from The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen is the man of my dreams. I’m absolutely in love with him.
10. Your Christmas list consists almost entirely of books. This frustrates my parents to no end when they ask me what I want for Christmas and I direct them to my “Books I Want to Read” board on pinterest . But they’re really the only things I feel like I need in life.

If you have experienced at least five of these symptoms, you’re probably as crazy as I am. But hey, you’re not alone in the world. You’re not the only person who sacrifices sleep and food and homework because you’re just going to die if you don’t know what happens next. It’s a problem, but it’s a problem we can all face together.

What I’m Reading: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

I don’t think  I can say enough just how much I love these books. Every time I read them, I get just as caught up as I did the first time. I reread The Hunger Games  Monday night and was up until 2:30 in the morning because I just could not put it down. I tried. I tried multiple times, but I was just too keyed up by the book to sleep. How could I leave Katniss in a tree with all of the careers underneath her plotting her death? It just wasn’t possible. Or how could I leave Peeta on the brink of death? Again, not possible. 

The Hunger Games takes place in a place called Panem in the ruins of what once was North America. Every year, all 12 of the districts of Panem are required to submit two children, one boy and one girl, to take place in the Hunger Games where they will have to fight to the death. Katniss Everdeen is a 16-year-old girl who lives in District 12. When her younger sister, Prim, is chosen as tribute, Katniss immediately volunteers to take her place. She goes to the Capital along with her fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark, to compete in the games. Katniss never really spoke to Peeta, but he gave her bread once when she was on the verge of starvation, and Katniss as always felt herself indebted to him. But Peeta has reasons for what he did that Katniss doesn’t know or understand, and suddenly the games are so much more complicated than they’re supposed to be. Suddenly Katniss has got to get out of the game with Peeta or not at all. 

This book is beautifully written. The writing is so clear and flowing, it’s like watching a movie. (I highly anticipate the movie which I will go see on Thursday night! It looks fantastic) Suzanne Collins shows so much about human nature and how people react to impossible situations. There are so many lessons to be learned about life and the choices we make. I absolutely recommend this book to everyone. It’s one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve finished. I think that’s the sign of a truly wonderful book. I give it a 7 on a scale of 1 to 7. 

My problem with The Hunger Games is not with the book itself. Like I said, I recommend it to everyone. It’s on my list of all time favorite books. My problem is with some of the commercialization that has taken place since it’s release. Before the movie was even being produced, I saw a Hunger Games board game. At first I thought that was really cool. It showed the popularity of one of my favorite books. But then I really thought about it and was kind of horrified. Thankfully, the game doesn’t actually involve the arena, but instead the training that all of the tributes undergo. The goal is to end with the highest possible popularity as you’re about to go into the games.

Then imagine my surprise when I see some of the high schoolers I know having their own Hunger Games “RPG” that involves them actually killing each other off. Apparently it’s a popular thing, but I personally am horrified by it. I think both of these really trivialize the lessons of the book. Human life has been turned into a game, which is one of the things that the characters in the books fight so hard against. How can we as the readers play our own version of the “game” when that’s what the characters were fighting so hard to end.

Maybe I’m taking it a little too seriously, but I don’t think this is okay. The books are fantastic, but I don’t know if I would want my teenager or preteen reading them. From my experience, they just don’t know how to handle them properly, as evidenced by these RPGs and everything. I know that there are exceptions to this. I think I would have been one of them if they’d come out when I was younger. But if I was a parent I would talk to my child about the books and make sure that they really understood the lessons about standing up for what you believe in and the lasting effects of the choices that Katniss and Peeta had to make. I have the same problem with these things that I do with violent video games. Life is not something to be trivialized, even when it’s just pretend. I’m not saying that Suzanne Collins did this. The books definitely show all of the consequences (both good and bad) that Katniss and Peeta experienced.  The books are wonderful, I just think people need to be more aware of what they’re reading.

What I’m Reading: Tatiana and Alexander

The Bronze Horseman series is killing me. It’s literally killing me. And I still have one more book to go. Paullina Simons has given us two perfectly nice characters and then puts them through seven thousand terrible experiences, dangles their happiness in front of us ever so briefly, and then snatches it away again ten pages later. Reading it is an incredibly emotional experience. Have tissues handy. I stayed up last night until almost two in the morning because I just could not leave Tatiana and Shura in the condition Simons had put them in. I needed some sort of closure.

This book is a lot different from The Bronze Horseman. It doesn’t move forward through time quite like the first book in the series. Instead we spend a lot of time in Alexander’s past. We learn a lot more about his history and his life before he met Tatiana at that bus stop in Leningrad, which I definitely liked. But meanwhile he’s in charge of a penal battalion, which is a battalion of prisoners who are always at the front lines. They’re ill-equipped  and undersized, but Alexander is determined that he’s not going to die in the war. He’s going to make it home to Tatiana no matter what.

Meanwhile Tatiana is in New York. She’s living on Ellis Island and taking care of her young son. She’s making friends, and everyone is encouraging her to move on with her life. Then Tatiana finds Alexander’s Hero of the Soviet Union medal in her bag, and suddenly she’s not so sure that her husband is dead after all.

If it’s even possible, this book is even darker than the first book in the series. We’ve left behind frozen, starving, blockaded Leningrad and instead travel back and forth from busy war-time New York to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. The reader gets a front row view of exactly how little the Soviet Union cared about its soldiers during WWII. It was absolutely horrifying. If you surrendered to the Nazis, your family’s rations were taken away so that they would starve to death, and you were probably put to death when the USSR got you back. It was terrible. There was so little regard for human life, and I had absolutely no idea. That was definitely something they never talked about in all of my history classes.

The moral of this trilogy better be the ever used “true love conquers all,” because if Alexander and Tatiana are not together and happy by the end of the third book, I’m going to be furious. That’s going to be days of my life that I won’t be able to get back. It’s going to be like Cold Mountain all over again. (Which I’m fairly certain is my least favorite move of all time. Seriously. Hours of torture and Jude Law and Nicole Kidman still don’t get to be together.) I enjoyed the book, but if these poor people do not get a happy ending, I might throw all three in a lake. I just don’t understand how Paullina Simons can torture her characters like this. It’s probably very true to real life and what actually happened to people from the Soviet Union, but my goodness. I’m giving this book a 5 out of 7, because I don’t think it was quite as good as the first. Simons experiments with some weird shifts in point of view that I don’t think always work and were definitely not in the first book. I’m not sure if saying that I liked it is the appropriate phrase, but I was moved by it. I couldn’t put it down for three days. That has to count for something.

What I’m Reading: The Bronze Horesman

I managed to get lots of readng done over spring break. It was wonderful. I picked this book up at my local Barnes and Noble and couldn’t manage to put it down. I think I got halfway done with it the first night. I even braved Daytona Bike Week traffic to pick up the second book in the trilogy. The Bronze Horseman tells the story of a girl named Tatiana and her family during the siege on Leningrad during World War II. The story begins with the announcement that the Soviet Union has entered the war and Tatiana is sent out by her father to go and buy food for the family. She waits a little too long to go to the stores, and suddenly all of the shelves are empty. She can’t buy any food for her family to stock up for the winter. She sits down on a bus bench and looks up to see a Soviet army officer, Alexander staring at her from across the street. He helps her to get the provisions she needs from the store for Soviet officers and then helps her get everything home. Tatiana has barely met him, but is already well on her way to falling in love with him when she learns that Alexander is the man that her sister, Dasha, has declared just that morning to be in love with.

Tatiana tries to push her own feelings for Alexander aside for the sake of her sister, but the pull between them is just too strong. The best part of her day is when Alexander meets her when she gets off work and takes the bus home with her. As times get more and more desperate, he does everything he can to help Tatiana and her family. Whether it is bringing them food, getting Tatiana and Dasha out of Leningrad to ultimately trying to get Tatiana out of the Soviet Union.

The cover is absolutely beautiful, which is probably what drew me to the book in the first place, but all of the history behind it was what made me buy it. I’ve had a mild to strong obsession with Russia since seeing the movie Anastasia when I was like seven.  What’s really fascinating is that the author Paullina Simons is actually from Leningrad, although significantly after the events of this book. I feel like it gives her a very interesting perspective to write from. It gives a really great picture of what communism was actually like in the USSR and everyday life during the time period. I’d also never really heard much about the siege on Leningrad. It was amazing to read about what those poor people went through and the numbers that starved to death. The story itself is beautiful as well though. I absolutely fell in love with Tatiana and Alexander. I’m so emotionally invested in their story now. The second book, Tatiana and Alexander is officially going everywhere with me until I finish it as well. On a scale of 1 to 7, I give it a 7. It’s an absolute must for anyone who loves historical fiction.

What I’m Reading: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

I am at an unfortunate stage in life where I am awkwardly placed in the world of literature. At 21 (almost 22) I feel like I am too old for the young adult novels with 15-year-old children finding their soul mates and too young for thirty-year-old divorcees getting a second chance at love. I just have a hard time emotionally connecting with these character types. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children came very highly recommended though by a lot of the blogs I follow, and I decided to give it a shot.

Jacob Portman loved his grandfather’s stories as a child. He listened to tales of an island where it was always sunny and children with peculiar abilities like being inhumanly strong or being able to levitate  He also heard stories of the monsters his grandfather chased and fought with tentacles coming from their mouths. As he grew older though he stopped believing his grandfather’s tales he believed them to be impossible until he gets a frantic call from his grandfather one day saying that the monsters are after him. After going to check on him, Jacob finds his grandfather dying in the woods and catches his first glimpse of one of the monsters his grandfather has always talked about. They’re real.

The police don’t believe Jacob. His parents don’t believe him. He is completely alone with his nightmares of the frightening creature he saw. Then he convinces his parents that he needs to visit the island where his grandfather went to school. He needs to see it for himself so that he can be sure once and for all that none of it was true. He goes with his father to Cairnholm and finds Miss Peregrine’s. With the decaying building, he also finds answers to all of his questions and a danger he never expected.

The strongest part of this book was the photographs. They were creepy and fantastic. I thought it was fascinating that all of the pictures were real too. They from the collections of people who hunt for strange old photos in bins and flea markets, which in itself is a very interesting hobby. I thought it started really well too. I was getting caught up in the story and was really anxious for Jacob to see Miss Peregrine’s and to find out more about his grandfather’s childhood. It just kind of fell flat for me at a certain point. The tension in the story dropped off kind of abruptly. There was this really good build up to Jacob getting to the house and finding out the truth about his grandfather, but then the story stopped moving and it was hard for me to get back into it. Exposition is necessary in every story, but I thought this one kind of got lost in the middle. I did finish it in like two days though, so I think that counts for something. All in all I give it 4 out of 7 stars. It’s better than average, but I wouldn’t go out and recommend it to all of my friends. I would suggest they pick it up at their local book store and flip through the pages to see the photographs though.

Confession #5: Publishing is a very long and complicated process.

I’ve been working at the University Press of Florida for about a month and a half now, and I think I finally have some sort of grasp on the publishing process. It’s long, complicated and fairly messy most of the time, but the end result is a shiny new book with your name on the cover. That’s pretty much every writers dream. It’s certainly mine. Understanding how the process works will go a long way towards getting yourself published too. So here’s a look at what goes on inside of a publishing company:  

1. Acquisitions is where the book process officially starts. Here at the UPF we get letters of inquiry from prospective authors or finished manuscripts, and our acquisitions department works with the authors to get the books polished enough to move on in the publishing process. Academic publishing does work differently than fiction publishing though. Most larger publishers won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. If you are a fiction writer trying to get published, you have to find an agent first. One good place to start your search is the Association of Authors’ Representatives. Everyone has their own submission guidelines, so make sure that you follow them exactly.
2. From Acquisitions your book will move on to the editorial department. Most of the shaping of the book is done with acquisitions. Editorial is more about fixing typos and making sure that all of the information is factually correct. As a university publishing company, it’s really important that our books contain all correct information in order to preserve the UPF’s reputation.
3. The next step in the process is getting a book peer-reviewed. The UPF requires that the book is reviewed by two other scholars in the field. These peer reviewers are asked to give their general impression of the book, whether or not they think the book is worthy of publishing, and to make any suggestions for improvement that they can think of. The author is given the readers’ reports and given a chance to respond and make any necessary changes to the manuscript. If heavy revision was called for, the process is repeated. 
4. After the peer review stage, the book is submitted to the UPF’s board of directors for publication approval. Board members are given a packet containing the readers’ reports, the author(s)’ resume, and some comments from the editorial department and then vote on whether or not to approve the manuscript for publishing. 
5. Once it’s approved by the board, it moves on to the design and production phase. Here a cover is designed for the book and it is formated for publishing so that it is as attractive as possible. 
6. The book also goes to the marketing department (the one I work in) where a title is finalized. A tip for authors: unless you feel like the suggested titles compromise the integrity of your book, listen to the marketing department about suggestions. Our goal is to make your book as marketable as possible. The text for the back of the book or the inside flap is written. We contact publications we think would be interested in writing a review for the book and sent out the review copies requested, and generally just work hard to make your book as successful as possible.     

That’s a rather abbreviated description of the publishing process in a nutshell. It works differently at every company, so make sure that you are familiar with your own publishing company’s policies and procedures. A few tips for authors: Don’t fight your publishing company too hard. They have a vested interest in the success of your book. They’re not going to intentionally ruin your work, and probably know more about how to make it a success than you do. Also, remember that your book is never going to be the only book on someone’s desk. Give your publishing company a little patience and a little grace. We’re always going to get back to you. We care about your book. There’s just only so much time in a day. Authors can get a reputation for being difficult just like anyone else. It makes publishing companies less desirous to work with you.

What I’m Reading: A Modern Day Persuasion

I am a sucker for anything and everything Jane Austen. I’m a sucker for anything even remotely Jane Austen related. Persuasion is my all time favorite book. I own like four copies, and I look forward to any opportunity to revisit all of my favorite characters. So, I really couldn’t help myself when I came across A Modern Day Persuasion. I just had to get it. The book is 256 pages, but I read it in probably 3 hours. I enjoyed it because I already love Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. I’m a sucker for seeing them get a happy ending. It probably would not get a favorable review from me though if I didn’t already know and love the characters.

When Anne Elliot was 17, her 20-year-old boyfriend, Rick Wentworth, gave her an ultimatum. It was either marry him or go to college.  Anne did the smart, sensible and responsible thing and went to college. I approve of this decision. In this version of Jane Austen’s classic tale, Frederick Wentworth was not already in the navy. He was instead perfectly content with his job as a lifeguard at the local country club. He had no goals, no ambition. I don’t blame her for turning him down. I would have. Rick takes off for parts unknown, and Anne goes off to college and starts designing greeting cards.

Eight years later, Anne is 25 and home alone when her father is served papers saying that their home is going into foreclosure. This does not make a ton of sense since the reader is supposedly supposed to believe that the house is sort of an ancestral home. I have a hard time believing that it was still mortgaged multiple generations later. This could have been solved by Anne being surprised and not knowing that her father had mortgaged the house, but whatever. After her father and older sister return it is decided that they will sell the house and move to Martha’s Vineyard while Anne goes to stay with her younger sister Mary.

The novel pretty much follows Jane Austen’s classic here. I think some of the shining moments were with Anne’s two nephews, Charlie and Nicholas. Their ages were never specified, but they loved Star Wars, which was adorable for me. At one point Anne has them pretending that they are Obi Wan and Anakin. It was too cute. That was one of my favorite parts of the book.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I feel like the writer did a lot of editorializing sometimes. There were a lot of moments where it got really introspective and slowed the story down. It wasn’t the best written book I’ve ever read, but I did enjoy it. It definitely improved as the novel went on and the end was as satisfying as ever. I’ll give it 3.5 out of 7 stars. Persuasion fans will love it, but if you’re not already a big fan, I wouldn’t bother.

Confession #4: Revisions How I Loathe Thee

Part of writing anything is revision. Whether it’s a novel, a short story or even catalog copy, you’ll probably drive yourself crazy with revisions. I feel like I’m having PTSD flashbacks of Reporting (the second most dropped class at the University of Florida) as I’m sitting here at my desk trying to revise my catalog copy. I can all to vividly remember sitting in that computer lab in Weimar Hall praying that there weren’t any fact errors in my story and that my commas were all actually necessary. I still have nightmares about it two years later. And I still struggle with commas. Personally, I think that they should be used for dramatic effect only and have no bearing on actual grammar. I might be alone in this opinion, but I think it’s a pretty valid one.

I’ve been dealing a lot with revision this week from my creative writing workshop and my internship. So I thought I would put together a list of tips on how to deal with it. Everyone is going to have to face it at some point or another. The important thing is handling it well and learning from it.

1. It’s not personal. When someone tells you to  make changes, it’s probably because every word you wrote is not as divinely inspired as you believe . It’s because they want to help you become a better writer. It is not because they have a personally vendetta against you.
2. Take a step back. Let your piece sit for a few hours or days depending on how much time you actually have. Fresh eyes make everything better. You’ll see things in a new light and better be able to make changes.
3. Every point is valid. If someone points out a problem with your piece, then most likely there’s a legitimate problem. You are not your own audience. Of course you understand every word. You’re the one who wrote it. The thing is, it doesn’t matter if you understand it. What matters is that everyone else does.
4. Really, it’s not personal. Don’t think it is. Don’t get majorly offended when someone tells you that your tone is wrong for the character or totally marks up your piece with a red pen. It’s not that they hate you or your work. It’s that they are trying to make it the best it can be, and consequently make you the best you can be.
5. Be open-minded. Go into any revision session open to what everyone has to say. Don’t go into it combative. Everyone will only get frustrated, and you won’t get the helpful criticism you need.
6. Let the criticism you receive marinate. Don’t immediately start making changes. Think long and hard about what was said to you before you start ripping your piece apart. You’ll only make yourself crazy doing that.
7. Remember that it’s only one person, or even a few people’s, opinion. While you should listen to everyone’s advice, that doesn’t mean you have to take it. In some cases, like when you’re at your internship writing catalog copy, you do have to accept all the changes. But in that case your boss has been doing this a lot longer than you have and knows what he’s doing far more than you do. Most of the time though, you are still the author and it’s still your artistic integrity. Do what feels right in your gut. 

If it’s not already clear, the important thing to remember is that it’s really not personal.  Your writing can always be better. Whether you are a best-selling novelist, a journalist, or a struggling writer just trying to get some attention, your writing can always be cleaner, flow better and generally just improve. The best writers are the ones who can take and apply criticism the best.