Are there any zombie fans out there? I have a bit of an affinity for them myself, since my steampunk features reanimated corpses–not quite zombies, but similar. Plus, I love the zombie spoof movies, like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.

Anyway, I went to see Wicked a couple nights ago (could you tell?) and it made me think about the sympathy I usually have for evil characters, and the desire to hear the story from their point of view. So Gregory Maguire gets major props for executing this idea (in several novels–not just in Wicked.) Admittedly, part of why I like Elphaba (musical Elphaba–book Elphaba actually does become wicked) is because she’s totally misrepresented. It’s not really her fault. Even if it is (like in the book) I always wonder “what could possibly have to happen to someone to make them that awful?”

Yes, I even have sympathy for Voldemort. Because, really, poor little Tom Riddle, even if he was a sociopath.

I guess you could say I just have a penchant for those people who inhabit the gray between good and evil (not that Voldemort counts, but Elphaba certainly does, and I’d argue that so does Agent Smith, Dexter, Dr. House, and Spike (from Buffy).)

What “character type” do you like best? (Ignoring the fact, of course, that every character is unique. Just generalize with me for a moment )

*The title of my blog post is one of the lines in “No Good Deed” by Stephen Schwartz in Wicked. Holy awesome song–check it out.

But, it does help me see (hear?) the manuscript in a new way, rather than wasting paper and killing trees to print out over 350 pages just so I can see it on paper. (Plus, I’ve done that before, and I always hate typing in my edits after I’ve already done them on paper.)

Do any of you read your stuff aloud to yourself?

I have a character who is not particularly emotional and who prefers to look at everything rationally–not unlike Bones/Dr. Brennan (though my character doesn’t have the social weirdness that Bones has.) I realized while watching the show that even though Bones isn’t very emotional, she’s still a sympathetic character, and in each episode, the viewer is able to see emotions in Bones that she may not recognize herself.

I thought, why can’t I do that with my writing? I’d (pretty idiotically) thought that my only option was to make her more emotional, but now I see that instead, I just have to display her emotionlessness in a way that makes the reader identify–because everyone has had feelings that we didn’t want to recognize or admit to, and everyone has been in situations where not feeling anything was just easier than feeling whatever unpleasant emotions were there. And when she does have emotions that she can’t stomp on (which happens more frequently as her situation gets more dangerous) I get to make those into something special.

Also, has anyone heard the new Taylor Swift song? I feel like I’m turning my back on my metal and classic rock fandom by admitting this, but I sort of love it…

By the way, the paranormal YA anthology Kiss Me Deadly just came out a few days ago and one of my friends and one of the nicest people I’ve met in the writing field, Karen Mahoney, has a story, “The Spirit Jar” in the anthology. I urge you all to check it out, because Karen is a fantastic writer, and EVERY author featured in the book is just amazing.

You can win a copy of MATCHED by Ally Condie, or BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, sequel to BEAUTIFUL CREATURES.

What are the rules?
~You must be a follower (hehehe…)
~You can win 5 extra entries by blogging
~You can win 3 extra entries by putting a link in your sidebar
~You can win 3 extra entries by tweeting about the contest. If you tweet about it after that first one, you can win one extra entry up to four times (so the total number of tweets I’ll count is five… Also, I know I haven’t been on twitter in like a million years, but if you could include @a_shostak so I can keep track of who tweeted, that would be great. You don’t have to follow me or anything, it’s just for the sake of my sanity.)
~The contest will close three weeks from today.
~Sorry, I’m poor, and I can only ship within the US or to Canada.

How do you enter?
Fill out THIS form. (I promise, it’s less complicated than the last one. Slightly.)

Good luck!

I think I’ll call it “Why Seventeen-Year-Old Alexandra Thinks Boys Suck”

It was a school break (Thanksgiving, I believe) and the second to last night before school began again. I’d gone to the local coffee shop, equipped with headphones and ipod, to do my maths homework (yes, we had maths homework over the holiday–that was what I got for taking AP Calculus, which I then never used neither to get into college nor once I was in college.) As I was walking up to the coffee shop, there was a group of boys sitting outside at one of the tables.

One guy asked me, “Hey, were you the girl who did Pink Floyd at the Battle of the Bands?”

I said yes, I was, since I had (and had gotten a fair amount of teasing for it, too.) I asked the boy what school he went to, since he clearly didn’t go to mine. He replied that he went to a neighboring school, and then invited me to sit down. I said no, I wanted to get a drink and go inside. He tried to insist that I sit with him and his friends, but I declined and went inside, ordered my coffee, and proceeded to take a table at the back of the shop, put my headphones in, and start my homework.

But lo, not two minutes later, someone takes a seat at my table without asking. I look up and it’s the boy from outside.

He proceeds to ask me, “Why didn’t you come back outside?”

To which I gestured at my calc book. He didn’t seem to get it. Instead, he started asking me questions, which forced me to take my headphones out, lest I appear rude (the irony.) The first question he asked me was how old I thought he was.

I am relatively certain I replied with a face that vaguely resembled this:

I probably threw a number out there, and then he proceeded to tell me he was sixteen. (Gee, couldn’t tell.)

He then picked up my ipod, put one of my earbuds into his ear (ew!) and started scrolling through my songs, all the while keeping up a useless dialogue with me about the bands he found on my ipod. I have to make the point that he bypassed the numerous classic rock albums (including every Floyd album up to The Final Cut) and picked out the random crappy metal bands my ex-boyfriend had added on there, somehow thinking I might want that music (I didn’t.)

I was shy and awkward as a seventeen year old, so it took me a while to muster up the courage to interrupt him, get my ipod back, and say that I had to do my homework. But I got there, and I did it. (Though I think I burned that pair of earbuds.)

However he didn’t go away. He asked what I was doing the next day. I didn’t want to hang out with this dork on the last day of holiday, so I lied and said I was going to the mall (which was over an hour away, since I lived in the middle of nowhere.) He asked me if we could hang out after I got back from the mall. I said no. But he wouldn’t give up, he wanted my phone number and wanted me to take his so that just in case I got back early, we could go see a movie. I thought it would make him go away, so I let him have mine (and I’ve never made that mistake again, I am happy to say.)

The next day, he called me twice and texted me about going to a movie. I didn’t answer, and then later on had to hear from my ex-boyfriend (in a complaining, accusatory way) about this kid who I had apparently “flirted” with, led on, and then ignored at the coffee shop.

My impression of the whole thing?

There was definitely a reason that at seventeen, I was convinced that boys’ brains were actually a combination of cement and already chewed Brussels sprouts.

Sorry it’s not a funnier story. I wasn’t much of a boy-magnet when I was a teenager, so it’s the best story I got.

Also, this has nothing to do with my story but it’s freaking hilarious and cute:

The winner of the CLOCKWORK ANGEL ARC is:

Hillary!

The winner of the PARANORMALCY ARC is:

Vicki S.!

The winner of the HALO ARC is:

Abby Annis!

The winner of the signed WHITE CAT is:

Necie Jones!

The winner of the SAPPHIQUE ARC is:

Jeremy West!

And the winner of the DRACULA IN LOVE ARC is:

titania86!

If you didn’t win, don’t worry. I have a couple more ARCS that I want to give away. Thanks to everyone for playing and for all the awesome followers I have that made this contest possible in the first place!!

[Winners, I've emailed you all asking for your addresses. If you don't email me back within 2 weeks, I'll be forced to give over the lovely prize to someone else.]

And I have a proposition for you all, if you want to earn some extra entries. I’ll give you +2 if you tweet about the contest (sorry, not for every time you tweet–just one tweet, and you get +2). Don’t worry about the form or anything, just leave me a link with your twitter in the comments here, and so long as your name is the same as the one you used to sign up, I’ll easily be able to add your points to your total. You can put my twitter handle (@a_shostak) in there if you want, but I won’t make you, since I rarely use my twitter anyway. But it would be nice to mention my name

If you’ve not yet entered, but you’re going to, I’ve updated the form so you don’t have to worry about commenting or anything