Yzabel / January 9, 2010

Review: Are You Watching?

Are You Watching?Are You Watching? by Vincent Ralph
My rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb:

Ten years ago, Jess’s mother was murdered by the Magpie Man.

She was the first of his victims, but not the last.

Now Jess is the star of a YouTube reality series and she’s using it to catch the killer once and for all.

The whole world is watching her every move.

And so is the Magpie Man.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Ten years ago, Jess’s mother was the first victim of a serial killer that proceed to claim many more—one woman every nine months since then. Tired of said killer still being at large, Jess decides to apply to a YouTube reality show that will give her one day of air time every week, which she plans to use to appeal to potential witnesses, and basically keep the case hot so that her family can finally see justice being served.

All in all, this story turned out enjoyable and fairly well-constructed overall, with a nice balance of red herrings and suspense, even though the premise is slightly over the top. (The first thing anyone should think when it comes to Jessica’s means is “if that killer’s still around it will attract their attention and she’ll be their next victim for sure”, so it’s kind of baffling that the adults around her were relatively easily on board with it—especially in that time and age, when the flip side of social media is not a mystery.) It also has something very simple, but that I enjoy in this kind of novel: short chapters (sometimes 1-2 pages long, not more), which means that, since I mainly read while commuting and during breaks, I could easily stop and pick it up again pretty much at any time, even when I only had five minutes to read. And I did want to keep reading, and knowing what would happen next.

Of course, the heroine being 17, her decisions were often reckless and bordering on stupid, which is definitely not unheard of in YA stories… On the other hand, it does make up for twists and not-so-happy consequences for the characters, so that’s that. All TSTL tendencies set apart, though, I really liked the other aspects of the story. Jess’s relationship with her close firneds. How her family has been spending the past ten years mired in grief, with her father trying to function as best as he could but never becoming who he used to be again. Her meeting the families of the other victims of the “Magpie Man”. It wasn’t only about catching a killer, but also about (re)discovering how to live after such gruesome events, after a loved one is snatched away from you—and after realising that yes, one’s actions always has consequences.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / November 18, 2007

Some Music To Write To…

It occurred to me that this year, I’ve added a new playlist to this blog to celebrate NaNoWriMo, but have also completely forgotten to actually, uhm, mention it. Considering the fact that I hadn’t changed the old playlist in more than one year, I suppose it was high time that I did so. Since I incidentally added a couple more songs between November 1st and now, here are the titles of what you can listen on it.

As a little game (and because I was asked in a comment on my ‘writing excerpts blog’, which has locked entries due to various reasons, and is mostly used during the NaNoing month anyway), I also added alternative titles. These are not to be all viewed as specific scenes in the novel, nor ar they in any particular order, but they’re the kind of titles I would give if I were to compose my own soundtrack–I cannot write without music, and I’m a sucker for soundtracks, really. If you wish, feel free to toy with these and imagine what kind of scenes they could correspond to. It’s a game I like playing as well.Read More

Yzabel / November 4, 2007

NaNoWriMo: The First Days

I doubt that this year, I’ll ever write as fast as I did in 2005, but so far, I must admit that things are going quite well. I’m not late on my word count, I even have a 1k-2k words buffer, and I’m happy about my writing: sure, it’s not the best I’m able of, but I am writing and having fun and interest about it, something I’m always afraid of losing at some point due to too many constraints falling over my head. Maybe the saying is in part right. Maybe if you want something done, you really need to give it to a busy person–provided that this person isn’t feeling too worried and depressed in her mind, that is, because I’ve also realized, in retrospective, that 2006 was bad for a certain amount of personal reasons that had nothing to do with my desire to write.

In any case, I am (re)discovering characters I thought I knew too well, my chapters make sense, my plot is slowly unveiling in front of my bewildered eyes. Even if I were to stop working on this novel right now, it would still remain a victory in my eyes. Indeed, I have absolutely no regrets about attempting NaNoWriMo again. This year, and with my mindset and the fact that I’m now well-organized in terms of schedule, it can only be a positive experience.

Yes, writing is a wonderful experience. And I really need to remind myself that no matter the lack of time, no matter the hardships of life, it is an experience that I cannot let go of. Whether I want it or not, it will always be with me, in one form or in another.

Yzabel / October 18, 2007

I have no title for such a late update

If I have to apologize each time I don’t write in one of my blogs for three months, this is going to become tiresome, because I don’t see things change in the upcoming couple of years. So no apologies. Just know that I always come back to the Y Logs sooner or later, m’kay? 🙂

Somehow, it seemed like a good idea to do a short update now, because we’re slowly nearing November and, this year again, I have finally given in and signed up for NaNoWriMo.

I’m not going to ‘win’–I don’t think so, since I have so much school assignments and personal work to complete. I’m not going to work on a completely new idea. In fact, I’m going to start from scratch again with my one-shot project. I have no intention of letting it rot after NaNo, or of taking that as a pathetic excuse to not edit it thoroughly afterward. However, the fact is that currently, I’m not writing a lot in terms of creative works (assignment and crapping out technical manuals don’t count in that regard). I haven’t been writing much at all since I’ve moved to my new location, in fact, save for a short story aimed at a call for submission (and a second one that I didn’t send: silly me misplaced the date for the deadline). Therefore, I’m placing new hopes, so to say, in the whole NaNo hype to pump me up for a time at least, and allow me to resume a more regular rhythm of writing.

I must add that my imagination pool has not dried, nor am I growing disillusioned or uninterested in writing as a whole. It’s just that when I finally have time to write, I’m usually quite tired, or feeling guilty because I’m not using that time to do more school work or go exercise or whatnot–and then I don’t write. It sucks, and I know I have to choose my priorities, but seriously I can’t make everything a priority at this point in my life. There just aren’t enough hours in a day for that! Unfortunately, what gave was writing. In three months, though, it may be something else. Who knows.

Anyway, I’m not going to post daily NaNoWriMo updates here–I wouldn’t have the time. But I wanted to bring back some life here all the same (expect a new playlist soon, too). And I hope that with NaNo incoming, I will have a couple of things about ‘writing’ in general to say. That would be a nice change, wouldn’t it…

Yzabel / July 26, 2007

Writing Site Update

For some time, I’ve been wanting to ditch the Joomla! installation on my writing website. The RSS feed wouldn’t work, the URL-rewrite mod was a horror, and I don’t know if it’s me who’re lacking in skills, or if it’s really the CMS that can be a serious pain at times, but all in all, I got tired of it. Moreover, there’s no way I want to find myself fixing stuff in emergency during the school year. So, I finally gathered my spirits, and took a couple of days to redo everything from scratch, save for the texts themselves. The CMS I replaced with WordPress, and the forum with Simple Machine Forums. I can only hope that these changes will be for the best in terms of security and efficiency.

Why am I mentioning this now? Simply because URLs have changed, so in case you had bookmarked a specific category or something, be aware that the link may not work any more.

I’ll of course welcome any remark about how I could improve it in the future (I’ll probably change the template, but I still need to work more on developing those skills).

Yzabel / July 2, 2007

A Summer Update

I’m getting so great at writing updates after weeks or even months of silence, am I not?

Since there is no way I want to give up on this blog, here is one. There are just WAY too many things going on in my life at the moment for me to be able to write daily in all my blogs, and since the Y Logs are pretty much geared toward writing and writing did NOT go well in the past months, somehow it was kind of normal for me to not post here.

But don’t go running away yet! A few weeks of facing the dreaded blank page are far from enough to discourage me.

First, as I was announcing in March, one of my short stories was accepted. The three others finally weren’t, but, hey, one was! And the webzine is now out here at http://nuitsdalmor.over-blog.com/article-10920933.html (of course, the blog and ‘zine are all in French).

April was a big month of learning and revising, May was a half month of exams. Which I passed successfully. After all, it’s not every day that I can brag about getting a 18/20 at a syntax exam. 😉 I won’t even mention the ‘computer science’ exam, that was cake and a joke, and I gobbled the cake while laughing a lot.

The problems appeared after, when I found myself 1) exhausted, 2) unable to recover from those exams (and I’m still tired), 3) as a result, all the writing I had planned on doing pretty much stalled. As a result, I just said “screw it” and went to resume weight-lifting, because being so out of shape is never funny; mens sana in corpore sanao and all that.

And there is also the big move. I got very tired of living in my crappy student room, and went on the look-out for a 1-room apartment, where I could at least have a mini-kitchen AND a bathroom of my own. Talk about living la vie boheme here. Later on, the biography to be put on the back cover of my novels will probably look similar to that of a Stephen King. “This girl has lived every were and done everything save from selling a kidney to go through life”. Anyway, I will be moving in three days. Three days, and that hell hole will be behind me. Seriously, I cannot wait. It’s keeping me busy with packing and filling paperwork and running everywhere to get more paperwork to fill, but life’s good and happy.

About writing? Well, here’s a good thing as well: two weeks ago, I said “screw it again, and on top of it, I am NOT going to worry and blame myself any more”. Two days later, bam, it hit me like a brick, I got to work, and I got back into it big time. With a new short story under my belt that only needs proof- and beta-reading now. The story, not my belt. It won’t be the best short story ever, but I’m really glad to see that I still have ‘it’ in me, you see?

And this will be all for today’s update. I hope I will also have internet access soon enough after moving out, so that I can go on attempting at updating more often.

Yzabel / March 30, 2007

Good news

As usual, I don’t have too much time to write in here these days, but since I have something nice to share…

I got an answer regarding one of the short stories I had submitted a few weeks ago, and it was a positive one, which will be… the first time ever for me. No need to say I’m pretty happy about it, because no matter what, whether it is in a paper anthology or in a webzine, I had never been published before (save for a couple of articles in a fanzine, but that was long ago, and it didn’t have to go through a screening process first).

I don’t know how it goes for other authors. In my case, I… didn’t sleep during that night, out of being so excited (I got the answer at 11:30 PM), then lived on a happy little cloud the day after. It’s a small step, yet one that will definitely hold much importance to my eyes. It’s also one of the short stories I’ve had the hardest time writing, because it dealt with a sort of ‘borderline’ theme that could’ve quickly fell into exaggeration, and I constantly was under the impression that I was ‘going too far’. So, I’m sort of twice as satisfied.

In any case, Yza is happy (and may now proceed to decide on a pen name at last, because she’s going to need it * chuckles *).

Yzabel / March 5, 2007

Separating the Siamese twins

I’m not talking about cats or a piece of news, but about a process initiated some time ago, grown in my little mind by what’s left of my brains, fed with the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, and finally blossomed in full. This is to say that I separated in two distinct entities (in brief, two novels) the first volume of my trilogy set in the world of Eien.

Complicated? Yes and no. I had been hesitating for a long time, fearing that by doing so, I would only pursue new chimeras, but the facts dawned on me rather than I imposed them as a law. Either I’d get rid of a secondary plot that deserved something better than background importance (and I’d then find myself with characters without any reason of travelling any more, and with the need of modifying a general plot that otherwise suited my tastes well), or I’d develop that secondary plot, with the risk of overshadowing the main one. In the end, none of these seemed good in my book.Read More

Yzabel / February 23, 2007

A Victory Over My Fears

This may seem odd, but in my case, I think I’ve just crossed a new threshold.

This afternoon, after having made sure that no typos nor spelling mistakes remained, I sent Au sein de la nuit and La Dévorante to the 5eme Saison French publishing house for their free theme. And that was… surprising. A sort of huge change in my little world.

I explain: writing, editing, sending the short story to proof-readers, applying their corrections, modifying the text hoping it’s for the best… all of this is easy. Annoying at times and leaving me with the need to rip my hair off, but easy. On the other hand, what is harder for me is to actually send the texts once I’m done with them. By doing so, I’ll now be running the risk (which is real, I admit) to see them rejected for a reason or another. I’m standing in front of failure, more than of success. And the fear of failing is something one definitely needs to triumph over. It is useless to tell oneself  “I want to be published” if it’s to keep all those short stories bundled up in a drawer or on the PC, and if it’s to end up not sending the texts. (Note: I am indeed able to pull a “oh, what a shame, I had completely forgotten the deadline, now it’s too late! It’s such a shame, indeed!”)

So, it’s official: I’m ready to accept failure, and it has helped to increase my chances of getting published. Because if I don’t take part in and don’t send my stories, said chances drop to 0 anyway, right.

And even if my short stories are crappy without me realizing it, which is probably the case, at least I’ll have won something treasurable: new knowledge regarding all those little writing quirks and mistakes I should correct. (And good pals, too: the people who accepted to proof-read my stuff.)

In other words, progress came with those short stories, and I’m not afraid anymore.

Yzabel / February 17, 2007

Online novel (at last)

It is a public fact that sometimes, I am a real millstone. In order to illustrate that rule, I had of course to put stuff online, mention it everywhere, and… totally forget to write about it on my own blog. Ain’t I dumb!

I’m thus taking a few minutes this morning to post a belated notice here, and announce that, after mulling and pondering the thought, I finally decided to put a story online–namely Unsung Heroes, which those who’ve been here since 2005 have surely heard of (a sci-fi/cyberpunk novel I had started for NaNoWriMo ’05).

As the title easily enough reveals, it’s written in English (I just don’t have the time to translate it into French), hence I feel entitled to blab about it on the English version of the blog as well. The rest of the website is in French, though.

I’ll update accordingly in the weeks and months to follow, and don’t be surprised if I also rewrite a few bits here and there, especially if we take into account the fact that studying English in college always causes me to spot new mistakes these days. For the moment, at least, the first chapter is already available here.

(Critiques and the likes are to be left on the forum or through e-mail, unfortunately: I don’t want to activate a comment system on too many pages of the website, since it seems to attract many Russian people who seemingly love football and bedroom sports a lot. Sorry about that…)