Six Sentence Sunday 15/07 #23

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Ileandra Young

Its Sunday again and that means its time for another post of six sentences. This one, even though its written as a piece of flash (still with my A-Z of Flash Fiction) is very personal. Not sure how it happened, but I suppose when you’re sitting in the house unable to go very far, your brain does certain things.

The trigger word for the piece was ‘news‘ and it features… well… me…!

~My partner arrives home…

Then the light snaps on, bathing the room in golden brightness.

“Hi.”

I make myself turn. It would be rude not to and, to be honest, I don’t want to field the questions that will no doubt follow if I hold back a response. Tilting my head back I look over the back of the settee to the man who did this to me. The man who, with his love, planted not one, but two children in my belly.

Now, in hindsight, I’m thrilled, but I guess at the time I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, tired and heavy. o.O

The banner below will take you to the main Six Sunday website where you can see what the other authors are up to. Catch you next time!

Six Sentence Sunday

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Sad News :(

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Ileandra Young

I hate bringing sad news to the blog, but that’s part of life. There is often good to go with the bad; indeed one wouldn’t be able to tell the good if there was no bad to balance it against.

Do you remember at the beginning of the year I talked about how Clash Of The Animal Kings had found a publisher? The post is here if you need a refresher.

Well I received an email from Lester at Popcorn Press a short while ago and he explained to me that he had been forced to make a very difficult decision; Popcorn Press will no longer be publishing fiction. Instead, it is devoting all its time (which, I as understand, to be rather limited) to the publication of poetry. This, of course, means that they will be unable to pursue the publication of Clash of the Animal Kings.

*sniffle*

Of course I understand that sometimes control of these things is taken from you, but I won’t deny that I was upset. However… as I said above, I know that was bad news, because it was immediately balanced by good news. ^_^ Lester has been good enough to recommend the novel to Mark Williams International, a small press that has already taken on two of Popcorn Press’ authors.

I’m not sure exactly what this means for me yet, but I’m in contact with Mark Williams International to see what they think and if they’re interested in the piece.

You know what they say… Every time a door closes, a window pops open. I’ll keep you all posted!

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80 Post Challenge – Post 71

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Ileandra Young

What was the worst mistake or decision you have ever made in life? What could you have done differently?

Hmmm, now that’s a bit hard. o.O I don’t think there’s been something that I’ve done that was so totally a mistake.

I can think of a couple of things I’ve done in life that I’m not proudest of but some of them are a bit close. Hmm.

Okay.

Before Dave I had a boyfriend. I shan’t name him, but I’ll talk about my experience with him as its something I’ve learned from.

We were together for a couple of years. We met online and had been very good friends prior to becoming a couple. Part of the reason we lasted so long – I think, anyway, – is because we were such good friends to start with.

As sometimes happens, feelings began to change. I’m not so sure that his did; even to this day, I feel we might have been okay, because he hadn’t changed. It was me who did all the changing. Slow at first, and gradually more and more I began to realise that I didn’t feel for him what I used to. Nothing specific triggered it, but the change was becoming more and more obvious to me.

This is the part that was the (very) poor decision. I decided to keep my feelings to myself. I didn’t talk to this man about how I was feeling and what had changed which meant, as a result that he had no chance to fix it. Or work with me to see if we could fix it together. In effect, I cut him right out of the emotional process and ended up leaving him to deal with the fallout. Understandably, that didn’t go well. He’s not a mind reader (I don’t think!) and neither am I, which means that when the arguments started to happen, neither of us really understood what the other was upset about. In hindsight, I know a lot more about what he was feeling and thinking, but that’s the beauty of being able to look back. At the time, I saw jealousy and unreasonable requests while he must have no doubt seen someone slipping further and further away from him and, even worse, into the arms of another man.

Not to say that that relationship could have lasted until now (who knows, after all! Something else may have come up), but I think, if I could do it over, having learned much more about myself and relationships and men, I would take far more time to explain things. To share what I was feeling and why one thing annoyed me and another thing sent me to the verge of tears. Communication is so important in any relationship and there was a distinct lack of that in later months.

This is the thing though, its definitely not the most sensible of choices – hiding behind an emotional wall – but I think through doing so I’ve learned how not to act. It was bad at the time, but I certainly won’t do it again.

That’s how I think about experiences such as these; they’re only bad or the worst if you don’t learn from them. All experiences are there to help us grow… this is no exception.

What about you? Would this be an easy question for you to answer? Looking back over it, I’m not even sure I’ve answered it, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. 🙂

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.

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Shaken Confidence

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Ileandra Young

This Fifty Shades of Grey thing is doing my nut. I’ve been reading the triology, happily (in the loosest possible meaning of the term) for a day and a bit and I can see so much of my earlier writing style in what EL James has done. The choice to use first person, using present tense (something I only EVER do with roleplay posts now), the cluttered and clunky sentences, the contrived metaphors and imagery. Its all there and though I recognise it, which is good on one level, on another I’ve started to question if I’ve stepped as far away from that as I really think.

A lot of my flash (for the A-Z Challenge) is first person. If I’m writing something quickly, it tends to be the easiest choice, and then, if I’m returning to it, I’ll often switch to third person. Most of the flash from that challenge hasn’t been edited yet; I’ve held onto it so I can edit as I start to go over the entries here on the blog. But I have been reading them. Particularly since I’ve been using them for Six Sentence Sunday offerings for the past few weeks and because a few of them are erotic.

I can’t decide how I feel about them. I look at the words and some days I’m thrilled with them and other days I have to fight not to delete the file from my computer. Its a bizarre sort of conflict and it stems from my desire not necessarily to be successful, but from the desire to be remembered as a good writer. Deep down, making tonnes of sales and having every body talk about my work would be wonderful, but that’s not what I’m here for. I certainly don’t want to be remembered for selling lots of dross. I want to be remembered for writing good prose with interesting, well rounded characters and believable dialogue.

I’m sure this is one of those days that I just need to ignore the little voice at the back of my mind. I mean surely all authors have to have some measure of pride or conceitedness about them – or else we’d never write and expect/hope/pray that people will read what we have written. But the voice that tells me ‘you’re doing okay,’ has been very quiet for the past couple of days.

How do you guys deal with flagging confidence? Is it something that bothers you or have you found a way to stomp on that little voice at the back of your mind and tell it to leave you the hell alone?

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Bonus eBook Review: Fifty Shades Of Grey

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Ileandra Young

Author: E.L. James
Title: Fifty Shades Of Grey
Genre: Erotic Romance
ASIN: B007L3BMGA
‘When literature student Anastasia Steele interviews successful entrepreneur Christian Grey, she finds him very attractive and deeply intimidating. Convinced that their meeting went badly, she tries to put him out of her mind – until he turns up at the store where she works part-time, and invites her out.
Unworldly and innocent, Ana is shocked to find she wants this man. And, when he warns her to keep her distance, it only makes her want him more.’

Right. Well. I’ve had my rant and I suppose now that I’ve read the book I’m free to talk about it without feeling like a judgemental bitch-queen.

First of all… I don’t hate it. Its not Twilight, which I hate purely for how it has trashed vampires and made them into something they are not. This book… though its hyped up to be an exploration of ‘kinky sex,’ is really just a standard love story. With some sex scenes thrown (carelessly) in.

I’ll say I’ve read far hotter scenes coming from the Six Sentence Sunday crowd; they have been able to excite and titillate me with six sentences. Just six…! Erika failed to do so with an entire novel to play with. Pity, as the idea has potential.

As a writer…
The piece needs an editor. It needs to be slapped with a big old red pen of doom and ironed out. Its too long, there are scenes that are clunky at best, utterly unnecessary at worse. Anastasia is almost as irritating as Bella Swan (almost) and seems flat to me. She lacks depth and instead seems host to a strange cluster of traits that don’t compliment each other at all. She confuses me. She also blushes too damn much. Hell, if anybody in the real world spent that much time blushing, I doubt there would be enough blood left for the rest of their body. There must be another way to express her embarrassment/fear/lust/confusion/anger… but no… its all done with a series of blushes and flushes.

Christian is broken. And not in a good way. From what I understand of the BDSM Community he is a jumble that makes no sense. His manner and his method seems in the face of one of the most important principles of BDSM play… SSC (safe, sane and consensual). Nothing about his freakish stalking tendencies strikes me as sane and it certainly wasn’t consensual. In a brief spoiler, Christian invades Anastasia’s privacy in a way that boarders on criminal, which is not what the community is about. It feels to me as though Erika could have done a bit more research into the world she was trying to represent.

The plot did become a bit predictable. Self indulgent sex scenes aside, it was too easy to second guess at where the tale was heading. The only thing remaining was to guess at what point events would unfold. I felt very much as though the writing handed everything to me on a silver platter. To paraphrase comments from my writer’s group ‘I had nothing left to do.’ That principle of ‘show, not tell’ was utterly ignored.
 

As a fan of erotica…
Well, like I said, I’ve read better. The descriptions became repetitive and, despite themes of the sex, it actually got a bit boring. There was no heat in it, at least that I could feel, and the passion came off as forced.

With that much sex getting thrown around, I didn’t really have time to care about the characters, which would have made the sex better. In truth, less is more. People underestimate how true that is.
 

As someone who enjoys books…
I didn’t engage with the characters as much as I hoped I would and the story was too long for me. It took ages to get going and then I found myself skim reading over certain aspects because 1) I didn’t need to know that detail and 2) it was just a bit boring, for want of a better word.

That being said, it was an incredibly easy read. I tackled the book in about three days, baring in mind that I’m already half way through two other books (Call of The Wild and Game of Thrones) and I’m looking after my babies. For something a bit mindless to while away the time before its safe to go back to sleep at 4am it certainly did the trick.
 

In all, I don’t regret reading the book. I’ve now formed my opinion about it and feel safe in expressing myself when people ask me what I think (because people do… regularly). I can base my opinion on what I have read, rather than what I have heard, and that is always valuable to me. I’ve even started on Fifty Shades Darker, which is the second book in the trilogy.

That being said I’m not holding out much hope that the second book will be any better than the first. I would expect that Erika will remain of the same level as she progresses through her trilogy, though I would hope that she improves. Time will tell on that score.

*picks up Kindle, begins to read*

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