SPARK, FIRE, and THROUGH TO YOU October 28, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: Kristin Cashore, TTY, wip
6 comments
I realize I’ve been an erratic blogger lately.
Okay, fine – ABSENT blogger. But this is starting to sound like the diaries I tried to keep growing up. Every entry started with, “Sorry it’s been so long…”
ANYWAY, I have a good reason — a GREAT reason for being *quiet* lately — a new WIP!
The working title is THROUGH TO YOU. It’s shaping up to be more high-concept magical realism, which is where my heart lies. <3 
*happy sigh*
I’m SO excited about this new wip…over the last few weeks I’ve been battling out characters and point of view most of all. I had to take a huge GULP when I realized my MC is male AND he’s telling the story in first person present-tense. This is so foreign to me! But that’s how the story is taking shape, and it feels so natural as I go, I’m not going to argue! Bite my nails, yes! But I’m going with it!
As far as SPARK goes…still waiting. Sorry, that’s a crappy update, but it’s all I’ve got!
I also finished FIRE by Kristin Cashore last week. With no free time to read, I listened to it (as usual) on audio at work. I have to say, I like this recording much better than the one of GRACELING. FIRE was read in the traditional way by a single person, whereas GRACELING was done by Full Cast Audio. The actors who did GRACELING were great, but much as I love Bruce Coville…it’s just *jarring* to hear one person read the narrative, and a slew of different actors read the lines of dialogue for different characters. It works well for plays, but not so much for books.
ANYWAY, I really, really loved FIRE. The “monsters” were such an interesting, unique concept for fantasy. I admit I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but anything called a “monster” that is devastatingly beautiful and alluring is an automatic win with me. ALSO there was so much talk of blood, sex, affairs, menstrual bleeding, pregnancy and babies, my head was reproductively spinning! I love what a wonderfully feminist writer Kristin Cashore is without coming off like she’s on a soap box. I got the same impression from GRACELING, and it’s just SO refreshing. The women in her books are strong, but still feminine, and they deal with the issues of women in a realistic and mostly positive manner.
I’m trying to decide what to listen to next, but LEVIATHAN and GOING BOVINE are both in my queue. 
Paying Tribute to Christopher Pike October 1, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: christopher pike, horror, thrillers, writing, ya
7 comments
October is one of my FAVORITE months. The weather starts to cool, but we don’t usually get snow, the shorter daylight hours become impossible to ignore…it’s all about transition. And then there’s HALLOWEEN.
Every year, S and I watch a marathon of scary/thriller/horror movies from October 1st to 31st in celebration of the season, and this year will be no exception. Last year I blogged movie reviews, and I might this year too…but when I started to think about great blog topics for this month Of All Months, I wanted to do something different. I tried to think of what DEFINED my love of Thrills and Chills…and Christopher Pike jumped out at me!
…and then I screamed! 
For those who may be ~unfamiliar~ with The Great Mr. Pike, he was known as the Stephen King of Young Adult Fiction in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He is also famous for being completely mysterious – no one knows much about him personally, and good luck trying to find out (his name is a pseudonym taken from Star Trek - FTW!). It’s part of his ~mystique~. He was a MASTER of teen thrillers and science fiction, always pushing the envelope. I devoured these books in middle and high school, always checking the stores to see if a new one had come out. Recently, I reread some of them (I still have ALL my original copies), and I’m so impressed that not a single one seems formulaic or trendy, even now. Many of them deal with paranormal phenomena, but often times, the scariest things in them are simply human beings.
My absolute all-time favorite Pike book is Master of Murder. Observe the completely amazing 1992 cover art (it was redone later, but to me this is the only cover): 
The book is about an eighteen-year-old guy named Marvin who is a bestselling author of teenage fiction, but NO ONE KNOWS IT except his sister and his agent. Marvin needs to keep his identity secret, but he starts to realize that the stories he’s been writing – murder mysteries - are actually true. And then he receives a fan letter that reads: “I know who you are.”
People have speculated that MASTER OF MURDER is semi-autobiographical for Mr. Pike. The first time I read it, I became convinced that he WAS a teenaged novelist, and that if I met him, he might realize that I loved writing too and go out with me!! I no longer think this is true…okay, the part about him being a teen novelist, though I’d still LOVE to meet the mysterious Christopher Pike.
Does this cover not SCREAM amazing to you? The 90s computer! The dead girl! The chilling font! The guy tapping away at his novel! <3
One of the more disturbing Pike books I’ve read is Whisper of Death. 
This one definitely has a supernatural element to it, though it is hard to define – which is one of the BEST and scariest things about Pike – how uncomfortable he makes you feel. You don’t understand the threat, and that is SO terrifying. !!! Anyway, those two terrified-looking kids are Roxanne and Pepper. That hooded death-figure on the road may or may not be Betty Sue, a dead girl with a GRUDGE.
Roxanne is pregnant, so she and Pepper leave town to try and solve their problems (I LOVE how vague the back cover copy is about this). When they get back, however, the town is deserted except for three other kids Betty Sue wants dead.
Christopher Pike is a magnificent storyteller, and one of his great talents is weaving stories into stories. Betty Sue left stories behind that she’d written about each of the kids – telling how they died, before it happens – and of course things unfold exactly how she wrote them! One of the greatest things about Whisper of Death is the ambiguous ending. I still couldn’t tell you exactly what happened, but it wasn’t happy for anyone – except maybe Betty Sue, who we find out, was also pregnant when she died. I’ve read this book several times, and it still bothers me. Which is why Mr. Pike is a master of the craft.
The Midnight Club has stuck in my mind for fifteen years. I reread it recently, and cried all over again. Yes – I CRIED over a Pike book. That’s what a gifted author he is. The Midnight Club is about a group of teens in a hospice (I KNOW – depressing). But Pike makes you realize teens in a hospice are still TEENS, and they act like them. A group of five meets at midnight to tell stories (more stories within story – FTW!), but as each of them gets sicker, they start to speculate about ~the after life~ and make a pact that the first of them to die will try to make contact–from beyond the grave. Eeee! I LOVE this book. It feels so well-researched, so compassionate…and so hopeful, despite the theme.
I guess a post about Christopher Pike wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Remember Me. Except that I am sooo disappointed I couldn’t find a bigger picture of the cover than this. You can hardly see the ~ghostly hand~ on the balcony railing, not to mention poor Shari’s artistically-arranged body on the ground – without a trace of blood in her gorgeous blonde hair. 
Remember Me is about Shari Cooper, a murdered girl whose ghost sticks around trying to find out who pushed her from that balcony at a party. The story is compelling, with lots of interesting familial backstory and baby-swapping, but the ending totally makes the whole book. I might as well ruin it, it’s so…NOT anything I ever expected. Shari’s (not dead) brother is diabetic, and his crazed girlfriend-slash-actual-sister tries to kill him by using his own syringe to inject an air bubble into his veins. Shari’s ghost slips INSIDE her brother’s veins to stop the air-bubble from giving him a heart attack. I mean – WHO would have thought of that? CHRISTOPHER PIKE.
There are TOO MANY excellent Pike books for one blog entry! However, I found out while writing this that The Last Vampire series is being re-released. Which isn’t a huge surprise considering the YA market right now…but it isn’t one of my favorites. I think one of the most impressive things about Christopher Pike is that he could write fantastic stand-alone thrillers. Remember Me became a series, so did The Last Vampire, Final Friends, Chain Letter, etc… and I’m not saying I didn’t buy every single one and enjoy them. But I remember and hold dear the single, sweet, intense books like Road to Nowhere, Spellbound, The Eternal Enemy, The Immortal, Die Softly, Last Act, and who can forget the very FIRST book: Slumber Party.
So on the first day of October, the spookiest month, a month of transition, I pay humble tribute to Christopher Pike. For keeping me up reading at all hours as a teen, for making me afraid to turn out the lights, for blowing my mind with compelling tales, and for instilling an everlasting love of YA that continues to shape me as a writer. ~*~
10 Things to do at Your First Writing Conference September 18, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: agents, conferences, RMFW, SPARK, writing
12 comments
So a while ago I wrote a blog entry about my fear of writing conferences. Ok, maybe it wasn’t just about writing conferences, but a general fear of social situations IN GENERAL and writing conferences happen to be VERY SOCIAL events?
Well, last weekend, I FACED THE FEAR.
And…the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer’s conference was a FANTASTIC experience. I learned so much, I only had one soul-crushingly-anxious moment the entire weekend, and now I have become infected like a ZOMBIE and become one of those obnoxious people who always tells you, GO TO A CONFERENCE…there are *SO MANY BRAINSS*…
Ok maybe not that last part. I just listened to the audio version of The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan and ~loved~ it. My apologies for all zombie analogies in this post…
So to get away from the undead and RUN toward a much more productive blog entry, I give you:
Ten Things to do at Your FIRST Writing Conference
1. Walk in, register — locate the bathrooms. You will want to know where they are if you suddenly find yourself in need of them, TRUST ME. And don’t laugh at me yet – MANY drinks are consumed at conferences. Most of them either caffeinated or alcoholic. Nature calls, even if agents don’t. And the sympathetic nervous system is not your friend. Ok, I can’t make a judgment on that for you, but MINE is not my friend. Also…what was the green thing in your teeth while you were talking to that editor? Bathrooms are BUENO — they’re also a place to hide from zombies.
2. Get the “I am a NEWBIE” label for your name badge, or whatever equivalent tagging you can locate or create yourself. This helps prepare you for number three (talking to people)… which was my BIGGEST fear going into RMFW. My NEWBIE label made everyone smile sympathetically and ask if I needed HELP, or if I was having a good time, which was wonderful — because sometimes I did indeed say “HELP!” and they were soooo nice about it! (disclaimer: being labeled NEWBIE puts you at risk for being thrown to zombies first, so STAY on guard, even when people smile.)
3. TALK TO PEOPLE and do not be scared when THEY TALK TO YOU. Unless they are moaning and shuffling toward you with milky eyes and fetid flesh…they don’t want to eat your brains! Ok, as noted, this was my biggest source of anxiety. When in social situations with people I admire, I either don’t say anything, get ridiculously giggly and say stupid things, or manage to say something horribly offensive without realizing it until later. But ~everyone~ at RMFW was sooo nice from the moment I walked in (even going so far as to sit with my lonesome newbie self at lunch – SO not like high school!), and just remember you are armed with the ETERNALLY INTERESTING ice-breaker question that works on EVERYONE at writing conferences: “So, what do you write?”
4. Go to as MANY workshops as possible. Staying in an organized, structured environment at all times is a priceless tool when you need to pick a zombie out of a crowd. That person who just WON’T stop groaning at the back of the room and hasn’t turned their cell phone off? Probably a zombie. Or at the very least…not a serious writer. Also – you will LEARN THINGS! I found interactive workshops to be the most helpful – ones that help you craft a query letter, for example, and then give you feedback on the work. There were a few workshops I didn’t even like the sound of that turned out to be really informative – SO GO.
5. BUDDY UP. This may come as a shock, but…there are other people at the conference who don’t know ANYONE there either. I was lucky enough to find someone close to my age who wrote in the same genre as me. We hit it off pretty quickly attending the same classes, so I didn’t have to go hide in the bathroom (see #1) rather than try to “mingle” with others…as much. Also, when the dead rise again, having someone to run/strategize with increases your chances of survival.
6. DO Participate in a critique group/session, if you can. This is what you want most – for other people to see your work. You want feedback on it. THIS is where it’s at. Er…where it is. I was in a group with six other writers and one agent. Our agent had never participated in a critique group before, but I was WOWed by the grace with which she handled the situation. Each writer submitted ten-page samples ahead of time, and each writer got feedback from every member of the group. I received comments I was expecting, as well as some new insights, and it was just FUN to hear what people thought about what I’d written, whether good, bad, mistaken, or dead on. Knowing HOW people read your work helps you become a better writer.
7. EAT. Okay, this list is obviously in no particular order. Try to eat something ~lasting~ before you enter the conference each day, and no matter how nervous you are, TRY to eat lunch. If you don’t, I guarantee you WILL be a zombie by nightfall. I know this sounds like instructions for surviving the SAT, but…maybe those obnoxious test-prep people were onto something after all. Also…the RMFW conference had TWO separate dinners, which I was completely unprepared for. The sight of well-appointed tables with ZERO seat assignments in a huge room with 300+ people made me feel a little like um…a wounded vampire surrounded by hungry werewolves (though I was going to make another zombie ref, didn’t you?). Also, the tables at these things are SO LARGE you can’t possibly talk to the person directly across from you. It helps if you are good at interpreting facial expressions, but my advice is, smile a lot, nod, pay attention to what you’re eating, and try to LISTEN as much as possible. IT IS SO INTERESTING TO LISTEN.
8. Sharks don’t bite. I mean–agents are people too! Okay, some of them are more intimidating than others, for sure. But a writing conference is a huge OPPORTUNITY to get to know them! Say hello, introduce yourself, and DO NOT talk about your book — unless they ask. You may be thinking, um, but the whole reason I am THERE is to get them interested in my book! And that’s TRUE! But if you have a great conversation with an agent, and make a good impression, then you can QUERY them and say, “Hi my name is Emily Zombiepants, and we met at the RMFW conference in September…” which is the appropriate place to speak to an agent about your book (UNLESS they ask), and when they are at their desk in New York and you jog their memory, they’ll look back and go, “Ohhh yeah, Emily Zombiepants! The ONLY person at that whole conference who DIDN’T try to hock their book at me, AND she was cool – I am 100 times more interested in her query letter now!”
9. Dress for success! UGH I cannot stand that phrase — but it’s true. Go to a writing conference dressed as if it was a job interview — because it IS. You wrote your entire novel wearing pumpkin pajama pants, but get out the dress slacks, the iron, and pet hair roller before going to a conference (also, comfortable dress SHOES). Once you’ve topped the best-seller list for 52 weeks, you can wear NoPants, or All Black, or a Pink Sparkly Bodysuit, or just revert to (my fave) PJ PANTS! And if you’re worried about erring on the side of OVER or UNDER dressed, pick OVER DRESSED. Always. If everyone else is in jeans, you will SHINE. If everyone else is over dressed too, you won’t look like a sloppy ZOMBIE!!
10. GO TO THE CONFERENCE. Okay, this isn’t advice about what to do AT the conference, but how can you do all the other nine things if you’re home on your couch? FIND a conference, PAY the money (soooo worth it), and GET OUT THE DOOR. Don’t get me wrong, I am a total advocate of online networking when it comes to being a writer. You can do so much to connect with other writers, agents, and editors online — you can learn a TON that way — but we’re still human. Coming from someone terrified to answer her doorbell when it rings…NOTHING beats connecting with the writing industry face-to-face, getting a feel for writers, editors, and agents as people, in real time. You will come away excited that you could count yourself among them! AND you’ll have an advantage when fighting zombies.*
*NOT true…or I don’t think so, but someone let me know because if it is, how fast can I get on a conference committee?
Don’t Go Through The Red Door August 6, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: art, doctor who
14 comments
Two weeks ago, S and I went out to an Italian restaurant we haven’t been to in quite a while. One of the cool things about this place is that they feature the work of local artists on the walls, and if you like what you see – you can buy it. S and I have been married almost TEN years, and I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve come across art we both really liked.
So imagine our surprise when we’re seated in a booth, start munching breadsticks, look up and see THIS!! And then we read the title: DON’T GO THROUGH THE RED DOOR. And we were both like :-O It’s as if…Doctor Who was made into a piece of metal art. That’s the only way to describe how we both feel about it. We discussed the piece all through dinner – the many interpretations we could draw from it - and decided we’d regret it forever if we didn’t buy it.
So we did.
If you like the work of Tim Herbst, more can be found here: http://www.herbstmetalart.com/
Vivian Sweibel Smith July 30, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: death, grandma, women
5 comments
My grandmother Vivian Sweibel Smith died this past Monday. She was 88 years old. Vivian was the last of my four grandparents, and with her passing comes some kind of new turning I don’t yet comprehend. My sister has a child, and now our parents are the eldest people in the family. Somehow I’ve been shifted from low-on-the-totem-pole grandchild to AUNT, and my parents are the grandparents. This is weird.
Anyway, this entry isn’t about me, it’s about Vivian. I fly to Oklahoma tomorrow to attend her memorial service. I have mixed feelings about this whole experience…mostly because Grandma and I were not close. I was the fourth of six grandchildren, and I grew up in upstate New York. I didn’t even see my Oklahoma grandparents once a year, but they faithfully sent me gifts for every birthday. As a child, I only understood that Grandma was sweet and baked the BEST Melt-In-The-Mouth Cookies in the WORLD – okay, only place you could get them was her kitchen. It was only after Grandma started to decline that I started focusing less on the cookies, my appetite, and myself and started to realize what an amazing woman she really was.
I still don’t know many of the details, but this is what I can tell you of my grandmother, Vivian Sweibel Smith:
Vivian was born to secular Jewish parents in Brooklyn, NY in 1920 – the year women won the right to vote. She graduated high school at the age of 16, and though her family had only saved money for her brother to continue school, she attended Hunter Women’s College, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa – at the age of 19.
After graduation, Vivian studied parasitic disease at Johns Hopkins University as a “special student” - but was told she would not be officially admitted to the graduate program because she was a woman. Instead, she attended the University of Illinois where she earned her PhD at the age of 23.
The University of Illinois is also where she met my grandfather, Philip E. Smith. Grandpa once told me she was SO focused on her research when he was trying to court her, that he took her shoes and threw them into a tank of snakes just to get her undivided attention. They married in 1942, and my grandfather earned his PhD shortly thereafter. They moved to Oklahoma City, where they raised four lovely daughters (my mother Diane being the eldest). Grandpa became the Dean of OU College of Medicine while Grandma taught classes in comparative anatomy and zoology here and there. Her status as a wife and mother kept her from pursuing much of a career beyond that, though I’ve been told my grandfather always thought Vivian was even more brilliant than he was.
Vivian and Phil became active in the Oklahoma State legislature after Grandpa retired, and Vivian frequently testified before state legislative committees, becoming a tireless advocate for the needs of the elderly. The organizations and research she worked to support goes on for pages. After my grandfather passed away in 1998, she stayed active with her work. When S and I visited, she took us on tours of the Oklahoma State capitol and introduced us to just about everyone we passed.
Grandma was so on top of it, she even used email – which seems trivial until you realize how many elderly people struggle with the concept.
Vivian was not herself for the past few years…it was difficult thing to see happen, especially knowing what I do now about the amazing life she lived. I’m not a spiritual person, but I hope that I can honor my grandmother Vivian, carry on some iota of the !!!!! that she was in life, and maybe someday try to pass it on in some form to a new generation. Anyway, in my own feeling-less-than-brilliant words: Vivian, you ROCKED. I wish I’d known you better than this, and I love you.
Turndown June 14, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: conferences, jobs, RMFW, writing
16 comments
S and I went for a Night Walk around the park with Basil this evening. These are the best kinds of walks because there’s almost no one else there, the air is comfortable in summertime, you don’t have to put on sunscreen, and all of the squirrels (aka poodle bait) are asleep.
About halfway around, near one of the lakes, S and I started discussing writing conferences. I’ve never been to one. The idea of going fills me with excitement and DREAD (which might be WHY I’ve never been to one). Anyway, this week I learned that the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference will be right here IN Denver in September. I checked into it, thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it turns out a LOT of interesting, important people have signed up to be part of this conference.
The only problem is…I have no one to go WITH. Okay I’ll just come out and admit it, I am ~fantastically~ codependent. I can do ANYTHING if someone holds my hand. But by myself…I BECOME wallpaper. And not even the delicious Willy Wonka kind. More like the I-WISH-I-could-talk-to-someone-I’m-going-INSANE Yellow Wallpaper. Heh. I blame my mother.
Trying to be supportive as usual, S asked me what the advantage of networking at a conference would be vs the old-fashioned query letter. So I searched my memory banks and recalled this post by Janet Reid, and told him that basically, conferences were like a chance to deliver a verbal pitch and prove in person that you are not a yahoo.
To which he responded: “And with that in mind, WHY do you think a conference would be AT ALL the right choice for YOU?”
Heh. S has known me a long time. In fact, he was in the room with me for my very FIRST real job interview. I was seventeen. We were both interviewing to work as “turndown staff” (aka we make the bed and put a chocolate on the pillow) at a high-end golf club for the summer. The woman interviewed us together to save time. S went first, chatting with the lady – we’ll call her J – and answering her questions. Then it was my turn. Typical, easy job interview, right?
J: “So Emily, everything on your application looks good. Tell me a little bit about yourself.”
Me: (O_O)
J: “Uhm…you know, do you have any hobbies? Things you like to do?”
Me: (O_O) *panicked glance at S*
J: (really trying hard here, poor woman) “Maybe you like to play sports…go skiing…perhaps something? Anything?”
Me: (thinking nothing she’d listed sounded appealing) “No…I don’t like to do anything.”
J: “You…don’t?”
Me: “No.” (O_O)
Um, so chasing down the point of this blog entry…perhaps conferences are NOT for everyone. I doubt the above exchange would WOW any agents or editors (in a good way) if they took the place of J. But okay yes, I have never been to a conference, so I WILL give it a try – to make sure. Because despite S’s kind intentions to keep me from embarrassing myself again…I’m a different person (thank goodness!) than I was at seventeen. I’ll never know for sure if I can do better than that at a conference unless I suck it up and just GO to one.
Incidentally — maybe somewhat because S was there cheering me on in the background, I DID miraculously get hired for the turndown job. LOL. So maybe I just need to hold out for a conference I can go to – not so conveniently close to home – with my amazing YA writing friends who cheer me on every day. Can anyone say…SCBWI Winter 2010? I know, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to fly 2,000 miles and spend TONS more money just for some cheerleaders to pull you off the wall… But neither does putting a ridiculous piece of chocolate on someone’s pillow every night, does it?
Titles and Doings June 13, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: mf, revisions, rewrite, titles suck, ya writers
13 comments
Wah! MUCH has been going on here to keep me from posting!
One of the most EXCITING was getting to meet Susan Adrian and her lovely family while they were in Denver! Suze is one of my FAVE Twitter acquaintances, and it was awesome to see her in person and spend time talking YA (under the guise of a baseball game with husbands), and finding out that she is EVEN COOLER in person! See, I have proof:
(I’m the dorky one on the right) Oh, and the Padres slaughtered the Rockies, but oh wells. Most fun I’ve had at baseball all year!
Aside from meeting AMAZING and TALENTED fellow writers, I think I mentioned in my last post that I FINISHED MY REWRITE. And since then, I FINISHED MY REVISIONS. So I could no longer prolong the inevitable - the chocolate reward bunny met his demise. And then I got a stomach ache. But it was the best one I’ve ever had.
I proceeded to get even MORE stomach aches because I SENT my ms out to be read by other people – NON-family members – YA WRITERS – for feedback. *sweats*
I haven’t heard back from everyone yet, but the initial response has been more positive than I EVER expected, and I’m a little overwhelmed. Obviously the ms DOES need more work before going out to query AGAIN, but I think this last start-to-finish rewrite was the best move I ever made (don’t I say that about EVERY step of revision? Hee).
BUT – MF (Mind Fire) might just be getting a new title. Okay to be honest, I’ve never been overly ~thrilled~ with MF… S came up with it when I first realized my ANTI-TALENT when it comes to titling, and it has functioned pretty well as a working title. I’ve even grown attached to it. But (sorry MF) I never could say I <3 Mind Fire.
And did I MENTION the anti-talent?? Because let me tell you – what I lack in title inspiration, I COMPLETELY make up for with my ability to PUN ANYTHING. I have 1,000,000,000 brilliantly cheesey names for a book which (somehow though written by me) didn’t come out cheesey…I don’t think. Well, okay there might be a slice or two of muenster in there. Omg guys, PLEASE tell me if it’s cheesey, I can take it…
A few examples from the Title Slush Pile: YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD FLAME — THE ELECTRIC SIDE — CARRIES A FLAME — TELEFREAKS — HOT DESIRE.
Ohhh yeah. Every book has them – the titles that NEVER were and NEVER will be! I promise this book is NOT a bodice-ripper, so…back to the drawing board. I’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel of my iTunes library listening to EVERY song I own for inspiration. I even listened to…Ace Of Base.
Might have to sit on it for a while.
But LUCKILY I’ve also added to my music library these past two weeks! My BFF Jodi tried to tell me about Regina Spektor MONTHS ago. And just like ME – I didn’t listen! But Regina kept popping up EVERYWHERE, and when she made it to my ears via Pandora on my Blackberry…I couldn’t help getting hooked. She hasn’t offered any title inspiration YET…but she makes me feel ~good~ which is awesome. So I leave you with one of my fave songs, Apres Moi, from her album BEGIN TO HOPE – pick it up, she will make you HAPPY!!
Getting Older Doesn’t Have to Suck (too much) May 31, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: Birthdays, Casa Bonita, Denver
14 comments
Well good, it’s officially over.
I haven’t been a big fan of birthdays since about…age 23. At least, that was the last one I remember being fun. And I have been dreading turning 29 oh…for about a year now. Seriously, I have such mixed feelings about it. More so than 30 even. I know every one of my elders will roll their eyes and pu-pu me, but I can’t help it. I’ve been in “my twenties” for nine years now. It’s like growing attached to a favorite pair of pajama pants and then being told - next year you are required to get a new pair. 
So in the spirit of not letting AGING get me down – my birthday turned into an awesome celebration of YOUTH – and I wasn’t even trying!
Firstly – at 12:00am Eastern Time (where I was born, so legitimately my birthday) Courtney Summers threw me a completely fawesome Twitter birthday party, and then proceeded to SPAM my Facebook wall with pictures of Lady Gaga and Edward Cullen. FTW!
Then at 12:00am Mountain Time, S finished the final paper for his grad school class and took me out for pancakes to celebrate that - and my birthday. I was legitimately zonked from work and my Twitter-party by then, but Omg great start to the day!
I SLEPT IN. Then S made me coffee, went out to get me cinnamon rolls, and THE MOST AWESOME GIGANTIC CUPCAKE BIRTHDAY CAKE I HAVE EVER SEEN:
!!!!! When I couldn’t imagine things getting better (while still aging), I unwrapped my present and found…quad skates!! Oh Em Gee! I used to RAWK the roller rinks in my SKORT to Madonna’s VOGUE when I was 9 in a pair like these – only my new ones have PURPLE WHEELS! Twenty years just like, fell off of me. Did you see that?
I took some blissful time to work on MF revisions after this fun-overload, but then EVERYONE in the world either called, Facebooked, or Tweeted to wish me a happy birthday. Seriously, I have never felt the love like I did today – in all my twenty-nine years. ~*~
But it gets BETTER! S and our good friend Matt (who brought me sunflowers!) took me to CASA BONITA for dinner! The only way to describe this Denver institution is this: It’s like Chuck E Cheese, with Mexican food, on STEROIDS. Oh, and there’s a giant indoor waterfall with CLIFF DIVERS. If you still need help getting the gist of Casa Bonita, it was featured in this episode of SOUTH PARK. Need I say more?
I THINK I WILL. Everyone who’s ever been to Casa Bonita knows you do not go there for the food…as ~entrancing~ as the cheese sauce really is: 
BUT – in case you think you need to make a pilgrimmage, I suggest you order the all-you-can-eat chicken or beef platter (chicken pictured above), ignore your stomach’s protests, and DO ask for as many cheese enchiladas as you can swallow. ESPECIALLY IF IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY. Do not let the staff talk you into fried ice cream, because the sopapillas are FREE and also all-you-can-eat. When you want more of anything, you just raise the red flag on your table, and it magically ~appears~:
The interior of Casa Bonita is built like an underground Mexican village. Don’t let the exterior shopping mall setting fool you – this baby is over 52,000 square feet inside! You could seriously get lost in this place. Besides dining tables set into the rocks, up inside towers, down in caves, inside mines, and under the waterfall, there are also TWO arcades, Black Bart’s Cave, a Magic Act with a private stage, live mariachis, a gift shop, and TONS of different ways to spend coinage including THE FANKY MALLOON MACHINE. Srsly, this requires a video (not made by me), it is so awesome:
I tried to get a pic of the giant 30-foot waterfall and cliff-divers, but it is always ~night~ inside Casa Bonita, therefore – the pic did not come out. You’ll just have to trust me about their awesomeness…or go find one of the many videos dedicated to them on YouTube.
When you have completely exhausted all of your tokens in the arcade playing Skee-Ball, and you’ve explored every nook and cranny of the caves and cliffs and village buildings looking for “the table we want next time”, you can leave Casa Bonita knowing your stomach will eventually recover, and the wonder that is The Casa will be there waiting to light up another un-birthday – or several down the road. It seriously made my night, as you can tell. My sheer glee was blurring the picture (I SO don’t look 29, do I? Do I?):
Oh yeah, and then we got home and had THIS!! 
Seriously omg – despite the aging – best birthday EVER.
Great Finishes, Oration, and D100D May 30, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: D100D, high school, mf, revisions
4 comments
This should be about THREE blog entries, but by the time I realized that was going to happen, it was too late to write them separately!
Thing that have been going on with me:
I FINISHED MY REWRITE. Gah, that felt good. I had been saving this dark chocolate bunny since Easter on a shelf above my desk, waiting for that beautiful moment when I typed THE END (again) to consume it as a reward for my months and months of work. Unfortunately for me, when I DID type the magic words, I was totally sick with some horrible spring-is-here-but-you’re-coming-down-with-plague cold, and I didn’t even WANT the bunny. Which is so wrong. So now he gets a stay of execution and he’ll have to be revision bunny. But he’s not getting out of this intact. Whahahahaha.
Oh yeah, and bunny…I plan to finish revisions this weekend, FYI.
My 17-yo niece Aurora graduated high school last week, and we flew to Ohio to cheer her on! I think people tend to forget how hard high school is – maybe not necessarily the academics all the time (ok, they have their moments – damn you, AP European History), but anyone who spends four years just surviving the social constructs of teendom deserves some CHEERING in my opinion. So we did.
I’m sure everyone has been to at least ONE high school graduation (although I did not attend mine). This time around, while listening to different people talk, I couldn’t help thinking AUDIOBOOKS have ~ruined~ public speaking for me. Sure, I was expecting platitude-laden speeches about the “places you’ll go” and how this is the “first day of the rest of our lives” mixed in with metaphors about the sky and the sea…but oh dear. As Neil Gaiman once said of poetry: “It’s all in the delivery.” S finally suggested that the principal was probably a good principal BECAUSE he doesn’t speak well. Which shut me up because it seemed to make sense, and didn’t all at once. But MAN, I just HEART audiobooks. You need to know what you’re doing to record those things, and I salute professional audiobook readers for mastering the craft! And I also ~secretly~ want to record my own book someday. Um, but back to shooting for publication first!
Aaaaannnd from Ohio we went to Virginia to see my sister and her husband and my 9mo-old niece Audrey who is a ~ways~ from HS graduation, but hey, this Baby Einstein stuff is completely insane, so you never know! Also, I AM SO NOT READY TO HAVE KIDS. Eeep.
Anyway, I took some advice from my Twitter pals and brought along THE DUST OF 100 DOGS by A.S. King to distract me on the flights – and it was ~FANTASTIC~. I give it FIVE eyeballs rolled in sand (!!!!!). YES!! It is the perfect book to fly with if you’re an anxious flyer in need of distraction. There are all kinds of threads to follow and weave together, tons of pain and sorrow, love lost and found, and – PIRATES! And a freaking GIRL PIRATE!!! How cool is that?
The dogs didn’t play as huge of a role as I anticipated, but I appreciated everywhere they appeared in the book. Since I have gained more than my share of knowledge/experience with dogs through my day job, I read all of the Dog Facts carefully, just waiting for King to slip up…but she was flawless. Every dog her voice slipped into was completely in character, not overly anthropomorphized, and just all around spot-on, right down to the pit bull. I’m excited that this book is *out there* as an amazing story, and also because people could really learn a thing or two from it about dogs and behavior!
The other thing I loved about D100D is that it never shied away from being REAL. Yes, there were more than a few moments that turned my stomach or made me wish I didn’t have to be a witness to the scene, but too many books fade to black when things start to get tough, and I don’t think that’s fair to the readers OR the characters. There is a point where things can become gratuitous, but I never even glimpsed that in this book. I don’t want to include any spoilers, but let’s just say that people are only human, A.S. King knows people AND dogs, and she knows how to weave a good yarn. Aye.
Off to pwn my revisions! Squeee!
The Future is NOW! May 10, 2009
Posted by Emily Hainsworth in Uncategorized.Tags: mf, scott westerfeld, wip
8 comments
Way back in 1995, up-and-coming actress Sandra Bullock and hottie Englishman Jeremy Northam starred in a movie that sent every synapse in my brain firing YES, YES, YES! That movie was called The Net:
I haven’t watched The Net recently, but I’m pretty sure anyone watching it now – who’d never seen it before – would look at me, nod politely, and shake their heads.
But I am TELLING you – in 1995 this movie was The Shizzle! Except there was no such thing as shizzle yet either. GOD my birthday is just closing in trying to make me feel OLD, isn’t it? But I digress.
This movie HAD my 15yr-old self in the first five minutes. Sandra Bullock – a slightly unconvincing hermity software analyst – sits down at her computer and click, click, CLICK – orders a PIZZA. I wanted to rewind the movie in the theater to watch it over and over, but of course I couldn’t, so I just dragged my friends to see it again and AGAIN. This was something I had been WAITING FOR and now it was in a movie which meant that it was going to HAPPEN. Right?
Let me give a little background if I may… I would never ever describe myself as being on the cutting edge of anything – unless I give myself a paper cut. Heh. But I WOULD describe myself as incredibly impatient. When I saw BACK TO THE FUTURE 2, I was like Where are the flying cars? STAR TREK made me indignant that medical testing could not be done with tricorders yet. And when I read Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES series, the hoverboards and hole in the wall almost made me melt down asking WHY don’t we have these things yet? But I think to my credit, I tried to work with what I could: I had one of the very first PDAs – a Handspring Treo, and soon after, the sweet Treo accessory and predecessor of cameraphones: The Eyemodule. I also had an mp3 player that never quite worked - before the iPod was ever conceived - and well of course I had one of those Nokia candybar-style cell phones as soon as I was old enough to get one – with interchangeable color covers!
But my excitement over these things was always outweighed by the fact that none of this stuff was quite there yet. The bitter slogan on this t-shirt says it all – this was supposed to be the future!
So imagine my delight – now that I have a Blackberry which combines phone (communicator), camera, PDA, and even music player in ONE – when I found out YOU CAN NOW ORDER PIZZA ONLINE.
*dies*
People – THE FUTURE IS CLOSING IN. I am so excited, and I promise you it’s not just about pepperoni. My WIP covers this a little bit…it’s kind of a speculation on how I wish/wonder if humans could develop in teh future…with some kissing. But seriously, I don’t know whether to be excited that I got to experience SO MUCH of the amazingness that was the 20th Century (which reminds me of ANOTHER awesome future movie starring Sandra Bullock - don’t laugh – DEMOLITION MAN) or if I should be SAD that so much more will happen in the REAL future when I’m long gone.
Did I mention I had LASIK too? COOLEST. THING. EVER.
Now…some bad things happened to Sandra Bullock in THE NET too…in short, a guy she met online (sooo cool in 1995, trust me!) wasn’t who she thought he was and proceeded to steal her identity – but she was a smart, sexy, computer-savvy girl as we all should strive to be – and she CRASHED their whole evil plot with the stroke of a key.
I think it was because she ate amazing internet-ordered pizza, don’t you?
