Friday, May 22, 2009

Wildwood Dancing

By Juliet Marillier

I read this book last week and I absolutely adored it. Beautiful story, lovely writing, wonderful characters. It's a fairy tale retelling (more than one fairy tale actually) with some other fantasy twists thrown in.

I bought this book on a whim, something I hardly ever do since I always have a long list of books I'm planning to read and/or buy, but the hardback was on a discount table at Borders for only $2.99 so I decided to take the chance. (I'm not sure why it was marked down except that there was a small dot of red ink along the bottom edge of the pages, so I guess they considered it damaged.)

Anyway, I'm so happy I found this book and it has reminded me how much I love fairy tales. I tend to do this with books, when I fall in love with one I only want to read others like it. I've just finished Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, which was also wonderful and I'm about to start another of her books.

Some of my favorite fairy tale retellings are Deerskin and Beauty by Robin McKinley, Beastly by Alex Flinn, and Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley. If anybody has more recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Quick Update

Long time since I posted. Some day I will get better about this.

Progress on my current WIPs:

WIP #1 - Finally finished the revisions (and finally have a first page I am happy with). Planning to start a new query round soon.

WIP #2 - Finished first draft and letting sit for now. Sequel to book above. (And started the 3rd book, but trying to ignore these characters since I have other things I should be working on instead.)

WIP #3 - My primary Sven project. Finally finished first draft (way past the 70 days) and have started the second draft. I'm really happy with the first half of this book, but the second half has a few holes and several plotty things I'm probably going to change. I know basically what I need to do though, so hopefully getting the book into shape won't take too long.


Also, I've read a lot of wonderful books lately. If you haven't read the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, you must. I had put off reading these despite the many recommendations because the basic premise (a world where everyone has plastic surgery to look pretty) didn't sound all that interesting to me, but these books are amazing. I devoured the entire series within days. I love it when I find books like this that I can't put down because they are just that good. So happy-making. I would say more, but I don't want to be spoilery, so you'll just have to read the books for yourself.