Archives for February 2013

Blood King Teaser

February 27, 2013 By Lyra Selene 1 Comment

Hello world! Good to see you again. I spent last week tearing through the last quarter of the first draft of my novel, and after a mind-boggling 20k words in three days, it is complete! Then off to the country with the husband to spend a cozy long weekend in Worcester, at Hanbury Hall. I enjoyed a few days off, but now I’m ready to get back to my blog schedule and work on a few short stories while I get some distance and perspective from my manuscript before beginning edits.

In honor of completing the first draft of my manuscript, I thought I would share some details about the novel that have been, up until now, secret!

Working Title: Blood King

Genre: Young Adult Dark Urban Fantasy

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Out for lunch

February 18, 2013 By Lyra Selene Leave a Comment

Hello all! I’m approaching the bitter end of my WIP and need all my time and energy to focus on finishing the damned thing. To that end, I will be taking a brief hiatus. I’ll be back next week, refreshed and ready to astound you all with new and excessively witty blog posts.

What we gonna write?
Courtesy of marriedtothesea.com

Review: Graceling, by Kristin Cashore

February 15, 2013 By Lyra Selene Leave a Comment

In Katsa’s world, some people are born with extreme skills, called Graces. But instead of being admired for these gifts, they are feared and exploited. Gracelings are recognized by having two differently colored eyes.

Graceling, by Kristin Cashore

Since the age of eight, Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands: she is Graced with killing. She is forced to work as her uncle King Randa’s thug, bullying, punishing and occasionally assassinating his enemies. Everyone believes her to be a vicious assassin, as bloodthirsty as she is cruel. Throughout the Seven Kingdoms they call her “Randa’s Dog.” Katsa hates being under Randa’s command, but knows that if she disobeys or tries to escape he will hunt her down and kill her. The only thing that brings her comfort is the secret Council she and a few trusted advisors have formed to bring aid to anyone being wronged by corrupt kings across the Seven Kingdoms.

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Top 5 Fictional Boyfriends (You’d Never Want to Actually Date)

February 13, 2013 By Lyra Selene 2 Comments

In honor of Valentine’s Day tomorrow, I thought I’d write a fun listy-post about fictional leading men. Now, I’m a sucker for romance. There’s nothing I love more than a good love story, where a swoon-worthy gentleman does everything he can to win the hand of his special lady. But sometimes, right in the middle of all the warm fuzzies, a little voice whispers, Wow, that guy would be a terrible boyfriend in real life.

So, this is my paean to all the handsome fictional boyfriends out there who also happen to be obsessed, emotionally manipulative, or just plain damaged. I love you, but I wouldn’t want to date you.

Damon Salvatore, from The Vampire Diaries

9 am? Time for a scotch and a blood bag.

Oh Damon. From the moment you swaggered onto our screens looking like a slightly sinister young Rob Lowe we couldn’t resist you. Your smoldering baby blues pierce us to our souls and your abs are splendid. Your undying (pun intended) devotion to Elena Gilbert makes us feel all fluttery and warm inside. Your day-drinking is as endearing as your penchant for breaking peoples’ necks.

Oh, wait. Maybe not that last one. On top of being an alcoholic and a blood-oholic, Damon also seems to really enjoy killing people, especially if, God forbid, they annoy him. He tends to show zero remorse, even when the new corpse in question is a friend or relative. Damon also spends a solid three seasons trying to steal his brother’s girlfriend, after spending one hundred and fifty years holding a torch for the evil vampire who lied to him, betrayed him, and turned him into a vampire against his will. So yeah, he’s beautiful, but that hardly makes up for being an obsessive sociopath with a rage problem.

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Dreams

February 11, 2013 By Lyra Selene Leave a Comment

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a
Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening

Dreams are one of life’s great mysteries. Freud saw them as the key to unlocking the unconscious mind and revealing the true desires of the Id. Psychics and mystics believe dreams can tell the future or reveal important truths about one’s life, and that lucid dreaming can be a gateway to astral projection. Creators of all types see dreams as tools for enriching the art or science they seek to create. Richard Feynman famously experimented with lucid dreaming to enable more creative problem solving; Salvador Dali used dream incubation techniques to inspire new works straight from his unconscious; Christopher Nolan’s personal dreamscape directly influenced his blockbuster film Inception.

Stephen King writes,

I’ve always used dreams the way you’d use mirrors to look at something you couldn’t see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back. To me that’s what dreams are supposed to do. I think that dreams are a way that people’s minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language.

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Review: Wither, by Lauren DeStefano

February 8, 2013 By Lyra Selene 1 Comment

Wither, by Lauren DeStefano

At the age of sixteen, Rhine only has four more years left to live. Two generations ago, scientists found a way to create genetically perfect humans, impervious to all known diseases or mutations. But something went wrong, and the children of this first generation of perfect humans die inexplicably at a very young age: girls at the age of twenty, boys at the age of twenty-five. Geneticists are racing against time to find an antidote, but as the first generation dies out, the world is full of poverty, starvation, and orphans hoping to find some meaning before they die before their time.

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Stereotypes: or, the Trope That Got Away

February 6, 2013 By Lyra Selene Leave a Comment

Good day, everyone! The weather in London today is bleak with a chance of scattered dreary. Wait…was that a scrap of blue I saw just then? No, it must have been my imagination.

I dithered around for a while today wondering what to post about, but eventually decided I’d discuss something that’s been annoying me about the book I’m currently reading (that shan’t be named). And that is…stereotypes in fiction!

This has nothing to do with the post, it’s just funny.

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Fire in the Hole!

February 4, 2013 By Lyra Selene Leave a Comment

I don’t usually like to write from prompts, but for some reason I’m having trouble coming up with a theme for today’s post. I could talk about how my husband sleep-talks like a robot (I know) and how I dreamed about taking a writing workshop with Neil Gaiman (and it was awesome) but all together that takes up like…yeah, one paragraph.

So, I toddled over to WordPress’ Daily Prompt section to see if they could offer me any brilliant ideas. Happily, I came across this little nugget:

Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab?

*sad face*

On first glance this prompt seems quite banal. Saving five items from a burning house, yawn. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and here’s why. Asking someone which five items they would rescue from their burning home is really just a roundabout way of asking someone, “What’s important to you, really?” People and pets are a given, and the question isn’t asking about them. It’s asking, “When you pare down your life to the barest of essentials, what really matters?”

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25 Things I Learned before 25

February 1, 2013 By Lyra Selene Leave a Comment

Tomorrow is kind of a landmark: I’m going to be a whole quarter of a century old! So in lieu of my usual Friday book review, I thought I’d do something a little different.

I’ve been reflecting on what it means to grow older, and how I’ve changed and matured in the years that I’ve been a resident of Planet Earth. I thought I would share some of those insights with the internet in the hopes that they might amuse or delight.

So, with no further ado (and in no particular order), here are twenty-five things I learned in the twenty-five years that I’ve survived as a human being!

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