A Good Hook.

As a writer, I consider myself to be awful at starting stories. Which causes immense self-doubt when I have to submit opening chapters/pages to agents, asking them to represent me. I always want to write a note at the end of my sampler saying, "No, please just give a chance to the writing further on! It gets so much better." As a writer, that's bad. As a writer, I need to sort myself out with that because the opening chapter is my only shot at hooking both an agent and then, hopefully, readers.

I'm currently taking an online course to fill up my time and to get fine-pointed on writing. And I've just been reading about hooks, which inspired me to write this post, and to also reflect on my story. I've written two completed manuscripts, one half-finished, and I'm onto my next one, a story about a magician who works for a king, condemning criminals.

The opener of that first manuscript, when I was fifteen, went like so: "In Illeyal Woods, hunters hid and lived. In Illeyal Woods, Terrin Cast hid and waited. It was the first Friday of autumn and so Terrin waited. She waited as she had done for the past six Fridays. The reason was simply the fact she was the best and she’d been sent on this to prove that."

Here, my protagonist, Terrin Cast, has been sent on a mission to kill the prince, the heir to the country she lives in. Her kind have been banned and the chapter starts with her finding the prince and his captain; it ends with her being knocked out and caught. Pretty cliche, but it had action straight away and that was good but wasn't a good chapter. To be fair, I was only fifteen. But I haven't improved. Still, I made that story into something I loved only as a writer could love their first completed manuscript. So I wrote a second book to follow it up.

That opener went like this: "For Derrek Cast, the past months had been considerably less torturous for him than it had been for his sister, but she hadn’t been beaten, reprimanded, slept cold and outside where he was forced to be a hunter when he had little skill for it. Still, he had survived."

Again, I wrote over two-hundred pages of this second book before I decided that the whole story was wrong and I wrote about seven more drafts before realising that I didn't know how to make the story different to what I'd just spent two years writing.

Imperial Infiltration. That opens with Aritha, the younger of the two sisters that the story is centered around, in her new life, in the palace kitchen's, as a servant.

"Aritha Zenii counted as she felt the horrible stickiness of dough coat her fingers: it had been one week less than six months since she’d given herself up the Imperial Palace as a servant. She knew four other staff in the kitchen by name; everyone else only by face. She had twenty more dough rolls to prepare for the oven. In three hours, she would serve thirty plates with four courses, along with three other girls. When she slept, she’d be lucky if she got five hours sleep.

            She wasn’t sure when, exactly, her life had become narrowed to depending on counting hours or faces or careful steps. But she liked it; it was reliable and she always knew what to do and where to go and how to go about it."

Tollen's story. At the moment, I'm finishing up a draft about a magician, whose story launches right into action again, with a criminal trying to plead his case of killing a man who claims killed his wife, and he's about to receive his fate for his crimes. For now, I'm only drafting this story so I know I'll come back to edit this to make it sound nicer. But it's another story hook that I'm getting practice with. It's another one actually written down, to work with.

"Blood dripped, echoing on the polished, hard floor. The throne room seemed to hold its breath. The bedraggled man on his knees had frightened eyes, darting between those stood before him.

“Please,” he spoke up, voice ricocheting off the walls and pillars around the room. “He killed my wife.”

*

So they are my story hooks. Not the best but I don't think they're the worst either. But as I read the "hooks" page on the course I'm doing, I had a look at some books on my shelves to gain inspiration, to see how it's done well. Listed are some of favourite hooks, where it's been successfully written to spark interest.



"Even when there are no prisoners, I can still hear the screams." - The Sin-Eater's Daughter, Melinda Salisbury.

"After a year of slvery in the Salt Mines of Endovier, Celaena Sardothien was accustomed to being escorted everywhere in shackles and at sword-point." - Throne of Glass, Sarah J. Maas.

"The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice." - A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J. Maas.

"Echo lived her life according to two rules, the first of which was simple: don't get caught." - The Girl at Midnight, Melissa Gray.

"Delilah Bard had a way of finding trouble." - A Gathering of Shadows, V.E Schwab.

"I've read many more books than you. It doesn't matter how many you've read. I've read more." - Everything, Everything, Nicola Yoon

"One summer night I fell asleep, hoping the world would be different when I woke." - Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Saenz.

"I'm not a shitty person, but I'm about to do a shitty thing." - Holding Up the Universe, Jennifer Niven.

*

These authors, for me, have done it right. They hooked me from the beginning. They incited the right questions for me to think to read on and get answers, or they made the hook relatable. Like, same Ari. Girl in Everything, Everything, I'm a good reader, how do you know you have? *reads on* OH RIGHT OKAY YES YOU WIN. I wondered what screams Twylla heard and why, in TSD. They all mattered to me to read on. Each inspired a thought process that made me frown and wonder why and I try to take all of these reactions into account when I'm writing my own. I want people to wonder why the prisoner is dripping blood, who killed his wife, why he's there pleading for his life, what crime did he commit? I want people to wonder how Aritha went from being in a family of four, to being all alone and taking the last resort. I want people, one day, to be curious enough to read on and read an entire story that I've spent time and effort and strength on and enjoy finding out each character crevice.

Why the Literary World Needs Young Adult

Fore-note: I'm never sure whether to call this genre young adult or contemporary so I switched it up now and then, used both. If I'm wrong or need correcting, please do let me know! I know some people can be opposed to the use of contemporary to describe these books.

I'm a reader whose literary interest is split directly between contemporary and fantasy young adult fiction. I don't read any other genre; I've found my comfort there, I've found my enjoyment. But whilst fantasy is all good and magical and world-building, there is realism in contemporary that's also incredibly magical. In fantasy, because of the genre, I think some protagonists are hard to relate to, they're made more like gods than humans. Key word: some. I've reviewed plenty of fantasy books where there are comparable characters.

But then in swoops contemporary. And as a reader, I need contemporary. I need to read books like ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES and WING JONES and BEAUTIFUL BROKEN THINGS. (And YOU need to as well, hence the capital format for the titles.) I need the characters in these stories because they're real, they're broken, they're happy and sad. Contemporary books are usually the ones that end up breaking my heart the most but that's because I can see elements of myself and my life in them.

Sara Barnard's Beautiful Broken Things was a book that touched me incredibly deep. I tried to convey as much to her in a very fumbling, awkward way when I met her earlier this year. 2016 was a year for me where there was this friend. At the start of last year, I let myself get incredibly close to her; she was almost like another big sister for me and I don't know why I let myself get that close to someone. It took me a long time to realise how deeply her words and "light comments" about me or my interests or choices affected me enough to be bringing down my self-confidence inch by inch. But at the same time, I thought she was lifting me up, I thought she was incredible and strong for all she'd gone through and still smiled, so I let everything bypass. I thought I ought to constantly thank her for trying to strengthen me when I felt weak. When I read Beautiful Broken Things, I saw a lot of that friend in Suzanne. A girl with a past, a girl with a constant pretense on to seem happy but had something a lot deeper and sadder beneath the surface when she trusted someone enough. I was the one who got my friend's baggage, as she actually once told me, and I feel like Caddy also got that from Suzanne. It seemed like they had something a lot stronger than a mere friendship; Caddy seemed to idolise Suzanne because of her confidence, her spontaneity and encouragement for Caddy to be more than she felt. For me, it was a very relatable book. And I needed to read that book and I didn't know just how much until I'd finished it. Some parts made me laugh: I imagined standing up for myself and so many times, I nearly did. But in reality, I didn't want to break some perfect image I thought I had in this friendship. Some parts, I felt like I was reading about me and my friend and that made me cry, quite a lot. Beautiful Broken Things was an empowering, insightful book that I had the pleasure of reading.

I'd never quite found that sort of ability to relate in any other book before. But with each contemporary book I read, there's an issue in there that I've either felt or known someone who's felt it. And I feel like there's advice in those books to help with any friend struggling with these sorts of feelings. There's a lot in the world that I don't understand or have yet to learn but contemporary opens people's eyes to mental health, to real-life teenage world, to the nastiness or power of high school, to first loves and heartbreaks.

And it's not all sad. Sometimes, it's the breathless feeling of reading about Wing Jones finding her own potential, or realising that Theodore Finch always held his own power in his hands even if he felt it was slippery, or reading the journey that Caddy went on to realise that she didn't need that Something to happen; that she was enough and that things take time. It's getting to share Eleanor and Park's first love story and knowing that nothing is ever perfect and struggles happen but something good and wonderful always comes from it. There's always some massive realisation of self-worth in young adult books and that's why I need them, why I think they need to keep being written and flourishing in the literary world.

I find contemporary books inspiring, above anything else. My wall is full of notes and scraps of paper because I read about Finch doing that and I realised that I wanted everything I write on them in front of me, like him. Sometimes, there's even forgiveness in contemporary young adult books. Night Owls by Jenn Bennett raised a particular subject within family relations that I had taken similar action to in my on life and had never quite forgiven myself for. But Night Owls helped me come to terms with those choices, it helped me forgive myself as I needed to.

The likes of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, I think, inspires fanfiction writers and readers to embrace what they love and that there are many more people out there who will like it. Cath was obsessed with Simon and Baz, and she made friends and a boyfriend from that love. And she was proud of it; she got to read her fanfiction to her boyfriend, who enjoyed listening to her and loved her even more for it. I think a lot of fanfiction has a stigma against it that it's silly or not-serious and that's untrue. Whilst I don't personally write fanfiction anymore because I no longer feel able to carry on with characters that aren't my own, it's been the start of writing for many writers. I've read about so many authors who started out writing or reading fanfiction and they became inspired for their original stories from it. That's Cath. That's set an example in Fangirl and I think Rainbow Rowell sends out a great message through her book. It's an important part of the literary world, so much that some authors have hosted fanfiction competitions to encourage writers by that method.

I've read wonderful and devastating and heart-breaking in these books. But the thing about it is that it can build you back up again with a paragraph. It's not so complex that you forget the worse parts for the better; contemporary makes everything important, in one story, so that you remember all of it.

Contemporary is needed, and especially in an age where mental health is becoming so much important to see and made aware of. Young adult books aren't just an escape anymore; they're answers and help for those who don't know how to find it otherwise. There are helplines and personal, shared stories in the back of these books for those who need it. And another thing: contemporary books don't glamorize mental health. The authors make it real and raw and as insufferable and uncomfortable as it is. They show how much toxic relationships and friendships and past can weigh on someone's mentality and they show the recovery--or are not afraid to show the worse endings to untreated mental health. They show journeys of first sexual experiences or the male protagonist realising that he likes boys. Books like Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and I'll Give You the Sun show the fear and denial and hesitation of coming to terms with sexuality and then showing the happiness in their lives once they can accept and embrace the love they feel. Noah's and Brian's story touched me deeply in IGYTS because of how torn and happy Noah was, when he grew up to realise that his feelings for Brian went a lot deeper than childhood fun. Ari was protective of Dante's acceptance of liking boys and liking him and it took him a long time to know that he shouldn't be scared of ashamed of loving Dante back as he did.

In the world, LGBT and POC are topics often skimmed over, ignored, but young adult books are incredibly diverse and they raise the issues and things otherwise overlooked by everyone. They're needed for those who seek them or want to learn more about other cultures. For me, reading THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR was a history lesson as well as reading enjoyment. It explores the diversity and culture of the two protagonists, massively and widely explaining their backgrounds as well as their families' stories.

Young adult... it bases around topics like mental health, sexuality, diversity and real life situations and emotions. It faces it head-on rather than leaves it as a side-plot. These writers are brave; they're not afraid to write about these things and make them as raw as they actually are. And that's why they're important, why they're needed, why most young adults would be lost without these stories.

Writer Flaws (Working and Becoming Better)

Hi, my name is Bryony and I write books. I'm querying agents and writing two other books. I'm a great surface writer but I'm terrible at depth.

Introduction over. But that's what it feels like sometimes. Especially at this point: at the end of April, I finished an edit on Imperial Infiltration. Now I'm trying to get back into the swing of writing and it's hard. I'm surprised at hard it's actually proving to be, creating words again, creating outlines to work to (more on THIS) after working for a solid month with words already there. There's a quote something like: it's easier to work with a page of words than a blank one. And that's meant to be writing encouragement. But whilst editing has been a royal pain in my backside sometimes and made me cry reading over my story, writing is proving difficult. It is much, much harder to work with a blank page that I have to fill. That said, it's way harder for me to not write. So I'm working and so far, I'm onto Day Eight of my new project and I've gotten just over 11,000 words done. Not great. Ideally, I wanted to work on drafting quicker this time round. But it's some sort of progress so can I really complain? No. I just want so much more from myself.

Whilst trying to get back into writing, I've had frequent thoughts that I'm only a good writer on the surface, that when it comes to depth in my story, I'm actually quite bad. I don't know if it's a side-effect of struggling to write again because it's only since editing that I've had these thoughts. And I want to write depth, obviously. So I made a small list of writer flaws that I know (or think) I have so I can work on them and focus on becoming a better writer with broader stories.

1. Terrin and Derek (THC). Lucas and Emily (THC). Reya and Aritha (II). Con and Caiden (II). Sen and Sar (Untitled).

These names are the main sibling relations I have in my stories. Aside from Sen and Sar, they all have something in common: they have no peace. Usually, as well, they're torn apart due to some sort of personal decision. The elder had everything surrounding them, whether they are the heir to the throne or the better huntress or the one who wanted to fight. With Reya and Aritha, they actually nearly killed each other. See the pattern? Their situations are different but they always have the same non-peaceful relationship. That is terrible. Only delving into my fourth (unpublished) book have I learnt to write a nicer set of siblings, which is Sen and Sar. Angry siblings are always an on-going theme in my books and I need to work on that. They're always incredibly deep and dramatic, but they're always broken in some way.

2. Family! (Again). This is proving a bad reflection on my own family but everything usually just fits when I create these stories.

For non-royal characters, their parents are either dead or escapees. If they have someone, it's always a "father figure" who torments them or they hate to no end. Switching to the royals, the father, usually the king or emperor, is a tyrant. I will hold my hand up and say that I cannot write nice father characters. I struggle a lot, and I need to work on that too. I can't have every sibling wanting to kill the other and I can't have every father dead or hated because they're awful people. That's bad writing. It's not even a niche thing; it's just bad and unimaginative. I'm trying to convince myself that if I can envision fights and grand palaces and such developed storylines, then surely I can imagine a nice father character at least once.

3. Tense.

This has become a thing of stress for me lately. It's actually become apparent that I tense completely wrong, and it's made me very paranoid. There have been about five recent incidents where I've been corrected on my usage of tenses--even in my query letter when I got people to help me out, this was commented on most. There were about two or three occasions of corrections needed in that letter. It was only a page. I dread to know how many is in a 350 page novel. But that's what critique partners are for! That's what beta readers are for; dragonspells (twitter follower) and Dayna, I'm looking at you amazing people. These are the only two people (aside from agents) who've properly read any of this story. I've shared small paragraphs on Twitter, but I've not opened those up to critiquing (obviously).

4. OUTLINING.

Here's another bad secret: I never outline. I've written books and half-books and short stories but I only did my first outline for a story late last month. It felt a lot better, in all honesty. I usually delve into writing with a loose knowledge of the timeline and what will happen, a few random parts of dialogue or description scrawled in a notebook, and everything else usually came to me messily. That usually led to a lack of a reliable draft to further work with. But for the second book of the Imperial Infiltration duology, I actually outlined. For my new story, I'm outlining. So it's nice not to go into writing as blind anymore.

Somebody once told me that writing is easy. It's not. It's really not. Editing is not easy. If you think it's easy, you're quite delusional, sorry. Even published authors don't consider it easy, if their social media posts are anything to go by. There is very little about writing a novel that is easy. It requires concentration, focus, major thought, time, effort, planning. It's cancelling plans because there are goals you want to reach, it's saying no to going outside in the garden because you can't see your laptop screen in the light, or it's encouraging yourself to get out for the day to spend a few hours getting at least something down in a coffee shop just to get some fresh air. It's cramped fingers and aching arms from being in the same position for a very long time. It's getting headaches from staring intensely at a screen. Writing is not a walk in the park by any means. It's forgetting to properly hydrate yourself sometimes because you're too busy completing a chapter. But when you have a full, finished story, all those factors are worth it. Because you may have something that looks and reads nicely for all your struggling.

But now I've assessed some flaws in my writing, I know I can work on them. Perhaps there'll be a change in the story directions in the future. After Imperial Infiltration and Book Two of that, and Tollen's Story (which I haven't properly introduced), I have a few more ideas lined up. So I'll be trying to adapt some changes to those stories.

The Sun is Also a Star (Review)

Title: The Sun is Also a Star

Author: Nicola Yoon

Genre: Young Adult

Rating: 5* !!!

“… Meant to be doesn’t have to mean forever…”

As a reader, I’ve learnt this:

There are some books you read that are good, incredible, even. There are other books that coax your entire being into it and take you to a different place completely. But then there are books that are important. The Sun is Also a Star was important to me—and it should be to the world, not just of readers.

Set in New York, Nicola Yoon (after a delightfully deep and emotional debut of Everything, Everything), manages to address every concept of life within a 344-page novel, and all taking place on the same day. Not only to write about so many realistic concepts, but to set it as she did… that had to be hard. But Nicola Yoon pulled it off in a way that surrounded me entirely, starting from the how-to-make-an-apple-pie philosophy beginning, to the tearful ending.

Backtrack to December, 2016. I asked for this book as a Christmas present. I knew I wouldn’t read it straight away, no matter how excited I was for the author’s next book after completely adoring Everything, Everything. For some reason, this book sat on my shelf and I wouldn’t pick it up—something told me to wait, that there was something about this book that required special timing. So I waited. Fast-forward a few months, to a couple days ago. I was holiday-ing in Corfu, a place I’d never been before, on a relaxation break. I packed The Sun is Also a Star—finally, it felt right to read it. I’m glad that I followed that weird feeling to wait because I got to read a thoughtful and beautiful book in a beautiful setting.

Immediately after closing the book, I said to my mum, “I need to write about this book. I can’t just leave it at that. This book needs to be spread so much further and I want to contribute to that.” After spending two days falling in love with the characters, the realism of the novel, I still couldn’t shake off this story.

Daniel Jae Ho Bae is a dreamer. Natasha Kingsley is a realistic cynic. Both are immigrants; one illegal, one legal. Daniel was born in America, but his parents originated from South Korea, and moved to America for better prospects, and their knowledge and experience of being poor weighs heavily on their two sons. Because of their past, they heap pressure on Daniel and Charles (aka, Asshole) to get themselves better futures. Doctors, is what they want their sons to be. And they push.

After being a Harvard drop-out, Charles becomes the sort-of frowned-upon son, when he’s always been the one Daniel is being told to be more like. Finally, one day, Daniel’s mum says that she doesn’t want him to end up like his older brother. Despite being born in America, Daniel is very Korean, completely opposite from his brother, who tries his best to be everything American. All these aspects are very important to the plot and Daniel’s character and life. On the day it is set, Daniel has an interview to begin his journey to the Second-Best university and then become a doctor eventually. He’s dressed up smartly and promises his mum that he’ll cut his hair.

Spoiler: he doesn’t.

It becomes quickly apparent through a train (literally) of awry things happening on his journey that Daniel does not want to be a doctor and he cares very little for the interview, clearly only going to make his parents happy because he knows how strongly they feel about not being poor, wanting their children to have a better life. What Daniel—sweet, innocent (again, not quite in thought as the story progresses), dreaming Daniel—wants is to be a poet. And he’s so immersed in his poetic world that it utterly collides (both well and terribly) with Natasha’s scientific, factual one.

Natasha Kingsley is also a main character with a sibling. This time younger. Peter is the brother that she has to share a living-room-turned-split-bedroom with. A curtain partitions their two rooms, barely. Living in a poor neighbourhood, Natasha’s family are immediately revealed that the day of the story is the day they’ll be deported. But instantly, Natasha is the only one not accepting that and acts to save her family.

Progressing into the novel, it becomes clear the resentment Natasha harbours for her father and their life and the unfairness of the situation. She remembers very little of the country she has come from-- Jamaica. What she does remember though is America being her home and now she’s being told that she has to leave that home, through no fault of her own. She’s paying for the mistake her father made. Obsessed with the facts and workings of the world, Natasha has no true passion.  It’s clear that she loves science and the world she surrounds herself with; she’s full of all this clever knowledge of the world and the reasons. But that’s just it for her: everything has to have a reason and evidence behind it. Nothing can never just be.

Then she meets Daniel. Daniel, who is beautiful to her and tempting and a dreamer. And he takes her to a Korean restaurant and to a Korean karaoke room and she offers to take him to her favourite museum, and he does his best to link love to scientific experimentation, and alters her way of thinking; she allows more thought to the way he sees things. In turn, she alters his.

This story is about the impossibility of falling in love as quickly as they do—that its fate, Daniel argues. But Natasha pushes and refuses that—she’s being deported, of course she doesn’t believe that it is fate. Why would she happen to meet him, fall in love with him, all on the day that she’d never see him again after? All throughout their day together, she can physically see Daniel’s brain wandering into a deeper love for her as she talks to him about her facts and world. And bit by bit, her resistance seems to fade, as such. She realises that she does feel for him. All these realisations come to her so strongly that it’s almost overwhelming.

A very important aspect of the book is that each background character mentioned meet get their own chapter (or two) of their backstory, to explain why and how they got to be a part of the story at the time they were. A security guard assesses Natasha’s phone at the office she has an appointment for about her deportation, and Nirvana’s album cover is her phone case. The security guard takes note of it, and she listens to the album on her break. This leads to her solidifying the fact that she wants to take her own life. But then the security guard gets another chapter—and her life is changed (very importantly so, for the ending that is sure to bring tears to eyes), thanks to Natasha.

In one part, a man nearly runs Natasha over in his car. His story is explained—and then it evolves to involve another man, who turns out to be the lawyer who is handling Natasha’s case—and happens to be Daniel’s interviewer. Each part of this story is intricately and well-thought out to weave together in a perfect and plot-twisting way to tell a story that expands so much more from the streets of New York. Each character is intertwined and tells a story that shows just how much one small move from one small person can affect another. A half-thought “thank you” can inspire a woman to move past the darkness, get help. A flight time falls perfectly to get two torn-apart people on the plane, plus an air attendant who remembers goodness. A man who recklessly drove can affect the mental outlook of another man, who realises that he needs to alter his married life and finally tell the woman he truly loves that he wants only her. A boy who’s on the verge of losing the best thing in his life can give altering perspective to a man who has so many more years on him.

And a poet can change the life of a factual, aspiring scientist who is facing the worst thing in her life.

So many aspects make up this book: family, friends, love, past, futures, legal matters, aspirations, passion, culture. With the two protagonists being so diverse, culture takes a massive front seat in The Sun is Also a Star and there are so many informative explanations and history in selected chapters. Despite coming from a South Korean background, Daniel’s father owns a black hair product store. Which, evidently, links into Natasha’s and her mother’s different hair styles. Through this, Nicola Yoon gives facts on the background of how the popularity of Koreans in America came to open up these kinds of stores which thrived. Following that, there is history on black women’s hair and styles and how they changed, what was fashionable, and how Natasha’s mother disapproves of her Afro, when she herself chemically straightens her hair. Natasha expresses her interest in changing up her hair styles, despite the popular “look”.

I’m not American, I’m not very well versed on American culture. So through this book, I learnt things about Korean culture as well as American and Jamaican. I wasn’t just reading a story, I was reading history and facts and things that made me wonder and think and consider. There’s a part in the book where Daniel and Natasha go to the Korean restaurant, and she asks the waitress for a fork as she doesn’t know how to use chopsticks. The Korean waitress responds with, “Teach girlfriend how to use chopsticks,” to Daniel. She then gets her own chapter of how she’s had her family divided by culture and American-Korean disagreements within the family. Her son married a white woman, moved away from his family’s disapproval, and how she only gets to see her grandchildren on pictures through social media. All this comes back to her through an American customer not being willing to learn how to use chopsticks in her restaurant. Her chapter mentions how America wants everyone to know their ways but isn’t willing to accept a small piece of other people’s culture within the country. I had a similar experience in a Korean restaurant—I asked for a fork because I didn’t know how to use chopsticks to eat my meal. I had no clue how to eat Korean food—I didn’t know there was a way. I didn’t have a Daniel Bae to instruct me. On top of the fork thing, I mixed my rice with my main meal. Again, wrong. I was taught that rice is eaten separately, and with a spoon. I did three things wrong in that restaurant, so reading about Natasha getting it wrong too made me feel relatable. I sat wondering if I’d offended the waitress who saw me, as the waitress took offence at Natasha’s asking for a fork.

There are two opposites in this story: there are people who embrace their origins and where they’ve come from, and then there are those who try to escape it and forcefully immerse themselves in the new culture they live in. The latter includes Daniel’s brother, who gets embarrassed at Daniel calling him a respectful hyung, the title for younger brothers to address their elder brother. As well as Charles, there is Natasha’s father. He’s the one who moved them to America, to follow his dreams of becoming an actor—evidently he’s also the one who ends them up being deported back to where he wanted to escape. Yet, he just accepts it where Natasha fights for her family’s rights.

With so much disagreement and awful actions over diversity and minorities going on in the world, The Sun is Also a Star puts incredible perspective on that through love and family relations in a story way, but also so it’s clear that this is a very real book.

The Dream is the Theme.

A couple of days ago, my friend visited me and she said, "I have this song that reminds me of you. You should listen to it." So I did. Dream Out Loud, by Alana Lee. In all fairness, its a very relevant song. My entire life now is fueled by my current dream starting to come true. And that's pretty overwhelming. A good kind, though.

Lately, I've been putting pressure on myself with deadlines. Edit so many pages in a day, get to a certain count or make it to the end of a chapter. Yesterday morning was a time when I really struggled to concentrate. But I got myself out for a while, came back with a fresh determination and edited thirty-odd pages. I post a lot of my progress online but Twitter probably gets the most of it; a while ago, I tweeted: "Edited up to Chapter 14 and I feel like a man starved and thirsty in a desert and there's no hope of water and every direction looks the same."

Well, I'm now about to edit Chapter Twenty-Five and I've found water, I've found direction again. I explain all this in such a cheesy way, I know, but that's what I'm good at. I'm good at dramatic writing and making thought processes in my stories deep and winding and emotional. I'm great at that. Not many people have gotten to see that, either through how bad I am at verbal talking or the fact that they've read short pieces I've written for them and that writing hasn't expressed my serious writing style. But after getting the idea to write Imperial Infiltration, I discarded everything. Any other writing ideas I had that niggled at me, I wrote down and stuck them to my bedroom wall, delayed them. I knew this idea was enough to give my full attention to and in turn, I owed this idea no distractions. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and eventually, I had a first draft to edit, finishing at 116,000 words.

Now, with only 50 pages left to edit (my own edits, this is only the first round, wooo), II is standing at 120,000 words. I'm not entirely sure how I've managed to add another 4K to it. I feel like I've taken a lot out of the story but this is only the first edit. I have so much further to go with Imperial Infiltration (and, of course, this entire process but with Book Two).

But as I edited, everything started to happen. I realised that I wanted to self-publish. I advertised myself and my book; I posted my progress very publicly and frequently; I came up with the idea of selecting five trustees to read an early copy of my book to assist in another round of editing. I advertised for a critique partner. I realised that my dream is starting to come true, it's actually taking shape. People started listening to me about it as I circulated progress. This morning, I got a mention from a Twitter mutual who I actually think is great (and extremely good at taking on Lila Bard cosplays) to tell me they were following my writing progress on my Instagram and I cried a little. Good kind of crying though. Someone I don't know in person and haven't talked their ear off about constantly writing has noticed what I'm doing and told me as such. And that was pretty amazing to read.

I skyped Dayna (she's basically my soulmate of five+ years) yesterday and I was basically telling her my planned schedule for Imperial Infiltration and I started laughing because she looked at me so incredulously and I said, "I know, I don't stop." But that's just the thing: why I've set all these deadlines and time limit for the early copies--I work better under pressure, when I think I have to complete something by a certain time. Otherwise, I'm lazy enough to not get anything done. I keep getting told to relax the pressure on myself but I can't because then I get very little done. Aside from writing, my motivation has been looooow lately and I've wanted to be sat glued to my laptop, writing or editing or noting the structure for the second book. BUT, I think I'll finish these edits today or tomorrow. If not, I want them finished by April 20th and then I'll have a week off. I'll be glued to my notebook and gather material for the second book whilst I wait for any critique partner responses or reader ones, if anyone reads II by then.

I want nothing more than to hold up my laptop and blog posts and manuscript to my grandma, tell her everything about this and have her be proud of me. But I can't, and that's life, so I did the next best thing that I could think of. She got the book dedication for Imperial Infiltration. Before I even starting writing the story, I wrote that page out on my document because I knew she should get it. I wrote a list of all the dedications I want to have starting future books and hers was first. So, this book isn't about my grandma, but it's for her because I think she'd be proud of the grandchild who watched her do her morning crosswords very frequently and liked to think could help out to find words I didn't even know.

Imperial Infiltration is the dream that's for the younger me who sat obsessed with wordsearches whilst my grandma did crosswords. It's the proof that I can write one book, fail with that, but then write another with different characters and a different world and overcome any comments to tell me to stop, and just write.

(I told you this was cheesy.)

I'm extremely nervous about letting some people read my story, more so with my family. My mum once asked me why there's fighting and war in my book when I'm such a peaceful person. Because that's just how and what I write about. There needs to be violence in this story. It's part of one of my protagonists. She also asked me how I could write kissing scenes when I haven't-- anyway, I told her that I'd not killed a man, or served an Emperor, or lived in a palace, but I still wrote about those. It's called imagination that I put to use.

I've had a lot of people tell me that dreaming is no good, that I need a reality. I've seen others get told that their dreams are silly or unreachable. But here I am, getting my dream. And I can have both a reality and a dream because they're actually merging right now. Sarah J. Maas said, "the world will be made and remade by the dreamers," and it's true. If there's no dream to someone, what's the point? Where's the happiness or the thing to keep going? There have been days when I've been grasping at this dream to give me strength and to keep me going on when there's been nothing else. Dreams are the things that remain when everything else disappears. It's something for self-empowerment. It's a goal. I once got told that I was a silly dreamer. Well silly or not, dreaming or not, I am publishing a book. My book. And in summer, I'll hold my dream in my hands purely because the only courage and strength I found in myself was to fight back against those trying to push me into realities that didn't work for me. It's a sad thing when someone gets told to stop dreaming because it's believed that dreams don't come true. They can. Even if they have to be merged sometimes with reality, they can still come true.

Keep dreaming, even if you're not a dreamer. Dreams are always there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWot2EJ_ezE

My Second Novel and I'm Pretty Proud

Okay, so it's only a first draft completed. But as someone who usually struggles with just those, I'm pretty happy. I started drafting this in October/November, sitting next to my sister. She was playing the Les Miserables soundtrack and I'm pretty sure we were both supposed to be job-hunting. I played around with the opening sentence; I knew I wanted it to open with my younger sister character, Aritha. She was the part of the story that was the servant to the Empire so I wanted her to be central, already in the palace, to kick off the story. Immediately, I wanted to draw attention to the tattoo on her wrist and start of saying, "Hey, yeah, so this is an important thing she has." So, beside my sister, I wrote two lines of something about the steam of the pot making her face itch because she had to stir some sort of soup for the palace dinner that night. That turned out to be altered from hot to the feel of the cold of the stone floors making her flinch. Sensory, you see? I'm doing something right.


I called this story Imperial Infiltration. In the back of a taxi in Spain, driving back to the airport to come home, in mid-September last year, I began to have the tendrils of an idea about two sisters; one would be inside the palace and the other would pose as some princess or nobility figure for some reason. I didn't know what it was but I jotted it down on my phone and my mum asked what I was doing, and I just shrugged and said, "Another idea I probably won't use." Yet here I am this morning, writing about it and typing THE END to it. This all sounds very self-important for somebody who hasn't even got an agent or started editing this but I want to get my writing out there. I'd love for people to read this and gain interest, follow my news and updates. I don't know, but here's to trying! And here's to my sister for telling me to post and blog about my writing again properly to get it circulating, thank you! If anyone remembers, my earlier blog posts used to actually be about the last book I wrote so I may start that up again depending on how this one goes.

So Imperial Infiltration tortured my mind for a while. At the time, I was writing a story about two best friends in a gang of thieves, working for a man called Red. That story sucked quite spectacularly. It was fueled by pure anger and grudges and sadness and I'd never tried writing about thefts before but I persevered. But then I really, really couldn't help thinking that this new idea would be better; it would be the thing to break the spotting of creativity and I'd actually make good progress with it. So I began to write properly--each day, starting officially on this rule in January. And it's massively paid off for me. I've gotten a first draft completed in five months where my last full book took me a year and a bit. Yes, editing is to come next and I have my notes and my plans and the positivity still there in a waves, and this will be a lengthy process but I'm just enjoying my success here. My last post was dismal, angry, and I wanted a different tone.

This is the story of two sisters, only two years apart. When they lose both their parents, they're forced to duel out ownership of their house as they want to go their separate ways. Here, it doesn't matter who was born first; it just matters who wins. The eldest, Reya, wants to travel, train herself to become more like her father who served as the Emperor's general (this story is set in a big Empire called Zaari) and use the house as a constant base for when she returns. Aritha is the youngest and more logical. She just wants to live in the house, sell different furniture to buy her own things. But at the same time, she wants out completely. But their duel goes a little haywire and Reya gets injured, making her do that last step towards leaving. She travels to a place outside of the Empire called the Stones, a transformed battle safehouse, where she then trains with a different army general. Alone and surrounded by the house she originally wanted, Aritha can't bear the loneliness and memories so she leaves. But she leaves to go to the imperial palace. Her theory is that there, she'll have work without worrying that she'll have to return to an empty home, she'll be surrounded by people and she'll have a constant in her life again. So she becomes a servant. After a few choice events, Reya also makes her appearance in the palace, but posing as someone called Lady Revina and she's been sent there for some ulterior motive that even she didn't know.


Romance doesn't really take a high seat in this story. There is very much elements of it. For example, Aritha finds herself feeling for a lord's son within the palace and their journey assists in her own in her confidence. She's out of practice with feeling loved and second-guesses the reciprocated feelings quite a bit but she comes to realise Jackson, the son, does care about her. In the Stones, Reya and Eli, the general's nephew, come to have a certain arrangement of "hey, I'll kiss you and try to acknowledge that I like you but in reality and more sober, I'm too scared to admit it." But there's only make-believe feelings there. None of them really pursue it but they argue about it enough. It's more focused on the depth of the siblingship and the break in the past and how each of them deal with the loss of their parents and each other and what the memories and unfinished business does to them. Reya is a character who can get stroppy quite easily, someone easily scared. Aritha suffers from panic attacks and is timid, afraid in her own way, and is picked on within the palace. But she builds herself up each time because she only has herself. She falls the hardest out of everyone in the kitchen where she works but she's the first to get herself back up.


So this was originally planned to be a 420-page standalone. That was my goal when the idea began to take shape in my head. With each month, I counted up my daily wordcount and my monthly one and got better and better. Two days ago, I wrote a chapter ending and realised: oh, this is actually a pretty good, concluded ending. Followed by, wait! you have so much more to write. And I literally had an internal monologue/argument with myself over if I should leave it there and write a second book to couple with it because of how much further I wanted to go with this story, or if I should carry on writing, shorten my ideas and make it the standalone originally planned. So I took out my phone and talked and explained to my friend; she agreed that good fantasy usually comes as more than one book and it should be a duology. I asked others and they also agreed. So, after much deliberation, I'm now closing THE END on the first book standing at 340 pages (pre-edit) and beginning the editing process whilst planning out brief notes for the continuation. Me being me, I scrambled at the books on my shelves, somewhat disappointed as I don't feel like this is long enough but I've said all I want to in a now first book and tried to find others that had a 300-400 page count. And I did so I'm somewhat reassured this may be okay.


I have no idea what either one will be called now so I'll also be thinking up ideas for that and perhaps looking for critique partners again which never work out but heyho, timing is awful. In the second book, I plan for most things to come to light. The reason why Reya was sent to the palace, what the infiltration means, introducing characters into the off-limits part of the Empire called the Barian Desert rather than just have past legends being told. A lot more can go on with this story, especially given where I've ended it. I never thought I'd end a story with a kiss but that seemed right and nice for one of the character's partial conclusion.


I usually post updates on my personal Instagram account: reidandwriting, or I have a Twitter account @ShaneDReid where I post about my writing, if anyone's interested! Follow me or come chat to meeeee :D

TRAITOR TO THE THRONE Review

This review includes spoilers for both REBEL OF THE SANDS and TRAITOR TO THE THRONE.

Here's the thing: one day, you finally pick up that pretty blue and gold book that's been waving at you for ages. You look away, leave it be for a while, think over buying it. But then you buy the book and it's called Rebel of the Sands written by an author with one of the coolest names going, Alwyn Hamilton. So this book turns out to be not just one of the best fantasy books set in a desert (which is so uncommon in YA fantasy) with legends galore but it has everything in it. And truly everything. Everything, enough to coax this booknerd to write their first fantasy book review.

(So if this is bad and messy and just godawful, please do excuse. I'm filled with a lot of emotions right now about this story and don't really know what anything is anymore.)

It turns out that this story of a rebellious, mouthy desert girl called Amani who learnt to shoot a gun at a very young age gripped me tightly enough to tumble headfirst into the equally pretty sequel. AND LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS THE SEQUEL.

It starts off with Amani being captured in Saramotai, soaking a shirt through with blood. She gets herself captured in order to free two rebels who'd already gotten themselves into trouble. There, in prison, she finds two sisters, one Demdji. From the prison, the rebels free many women who choose to follow them to their camp. One of them happens to be Amani's aunt who was meant to be making a life for herself in Izman, a more prospering city that was originally Amani's destination. This aunt also happens to be a bad woman and captures Amani one night when they run from their camp, selling her to the Sultan due to her Demdji powers. From there, Amani spends 70% of the book in the palace, under the command of the Sultan thanks to the iron and bronze embedded in her skin; the bronze to follow the orders and the iron the strip her of her powers. In the palace, she meets previous characters from Rebel, literal ghosts from her past, and also she meets Sam. A wall-walking, amusing boy who takes her nickname, Blue-Eyed Bandit, and turns it into a very notorious legend that includes seducing many women. Inside the palace, she's trapped in the harem and meets her Djinni father and makes unexpected allies and Leyla. Sweet, sweet Leyla. Traitor is Amani's time in the palace, enduring the Sultan's command in the face of his foreign guests and alliances and witnessing terrible things from inside, and finding her own true loyalty and doubts and helping the Rebellion from where she is, even when she can't quite reach them.

There's this wonderful transition from Rebel to Traitor where Amani isn't just a desert-girl from Dustwalk, her hometown. Now, she's fully recognised as the legendary Blue-Eyed Bandit, which originates from the very first chapter of Rebel. At first, her blue eyes are just another trait from her real father, who Amani doesn't know. But then she meets Jin, and through him, she gets the adventure and escape from her hometown she's always wanted. It's a little (a lot) bloody and dangerous that she may have anticipated but it gets her away. It gets her to an entirely different world. It gets her to the Rebellion. Through Jin, (wonderful, swoony, heart-breaking Jin) Amani meets the Rebel Prince, Ahmed. More importantly (I think), she meets Shazad, the ultimate female fighter in the whole thing. I adore Amani's skills and her constant need for guns and how the iron of guns made her securely human and safe for her entire life, but Shazad is truly something else.

The rebellion is not just some magic circle who think they can fix every problem with a flick of a hand or will and have elements at their fingertips. It's not just about having otherworldly elements at their disposal there. The Rebellion is everything. It's a human prince who wants a better world for his country, who wants to be a better ruler than his murderous father, the Sultan. It's a general's daughter who's constantly underestimated due to being both female and beautiful. Nobody looks past Shazad's status or beauty to see the cunning brains she has. It's Demdji's working alongside non-Demdji's and having a fully mutual respect. Hala, Imin, Izz and Maz, Delila. All of them having their own powers that set them aside from each other but make them fit easily with the Rebellion. They're not selfish magic-users; they want to use their Demdji gifts to better the world, to help their friends and families and their prince.

In Traitor, there are so many elements of the world addressed. Something I found incredibly important was Imin's character and the swaps. As a shape-shifter, Imin switches between female and male appearances and with that Alwyn Hamilton tailors to the gender swap, giving light to an issue that has such an influence within the story. Navid, Imin's husband (as he becomes in the sequel), is mentioned to never discriminate Imin for whatever form she chooses. Whether Imin is a burly guard hiding in plain sight in the palace, or a slight young woman sitting in Navid's lap, as his wife, he loves Imin whole-heartedly and never loses an ounce of that dedication and love no matter the form he sees. And for me, that was an amazing thing to have included in this story. It's an equality within a relationship, friendship, and a world-changing group to all see Imin as anything she chose or had to be seen as. It's diversity for Imin's character; to show her (or his) value to the Rebellion as anything. She dedicates her entire being and appearance to any role she needs to fill and is never ashamed or let anyone put her down for any shape she chooses to take.

Also in the umbrella of gender, there's Shazad, as mentioned earlier. An incredible woman I was happy to read about on International Women's Day because if there was ever an admirably strong woman from the very start of her introduction, it's Shazad. As a general's daughter, it seems as though there could be a lot of pressure for her to be the leader of battles and strategies and she slips into that role so, so easily, and clearly has her passion for it. She's calculating, often formidable when she uses her appearance to her advantage to fight her enemies. Nobody expects her to be this girl who steps out of a stand storm wielding swords against soldiers but she does. And she does it wonderfully. Shazad faces an awful thing in Rebel: losing her best friend, Bahi. But she doesn't let that defeat her--she grieves for her friend but she comes back fighting, always. Even when she is met with hurdles and hitches in her carefully thought-out plans, she alters if she needs to and so quickly. Her mind is constantly moving with logic and thought and strategy. Know this about this story: Shazad is incredible. She is an inspiration with unwavering dedication to her cause, her prince, her friends. She's the character who, one minute, will be laughing with her head thrown back, pulling off a gorgeous khalat; the next, she'll whipping out a weapon from somewhere nobody quite knows and getting anyone to safety and fighting her way out.

Another notable woman in the series so far is the Demdji Hala. (Honestly, Alwyn, you write so many admirable females, I'll want to write for DAYS about them and had to narrow my individual talks.) At first, her and Amani don't seem to get along. The gold-skinned Demdji meets the Demdji-forced-human who literally grew up in golden sand. They're both golden-covered girls but for different reasons. It's Hala who ends up being Amani's most relatable friend in the Rebellion, learning to harness and know her power, helping her out when she loses it again, understanding what it would be like to lose the thing that makes her different. So when Amani returns to her aunt's place to get the iron removed from inside her, it's Hala she chooses to come with her. Not Shazad, not Jin. Hala. Because she knows Hala understands. And that was a massive bonding thing. I was deeply touched by how much Hala helped Amani out in that part. She alters the aunt's mind and when she sees Amani in the overwhelming amount of pain she is when the iron is being cut out of her, Hala takes her away to an illusion, taking the pain away. Something in Hala cares deeply for Amani and helps her through that pain and gives her something beautiful to focus on instead. I actually wanted to cry at that part, it felt so vital to develop that rocky friendship.

Traitor to the Throne is a story of immense sacrifice and reflection and betrayal, even more so than the first book. It's a story showing the power of the Sultan and his many sons, but also of the women in the palace, particularly Mirajin women in the harem. Whilst the palace is one big political spiderweb, the harem is full of dangerous, battling women, too. Except their fights are quite different to the royal overthrowing of the men. Ayet, the Sultim's wife is a jealous bitch to Amani, cutting off her hair, getting her two Mirajin friends to humiliate Amani over and over, purely because she is Mirajin and that's the Sultim's favourite  type of woman and they're scared of being replaced as there is only a place for three girls. In the harem, a surprising turn happens. Shira, Amani's cousin from Dustwalk, is reintroduced. Along with Tamid, Amani's best friend who she left for dead and forever carries that guilty burden on her shoulders of. Shira, the Blessed Sultima, becomes one of the biggest strength stories of the whole book, I think. She changes her views towards her cousin and they learn to become somewhat allies. Amani changes her views too and starts respecting her cousin for the lengths she went through to survive and make a name for herself in the harem, as an important person to not be easily discarded.

Set in a sprawling, vast landscape of desert and cities and palaces and beautiful exteriors, Alwyn Hamilton gives a very visual story, a book full of mesmerizing world-building. She doesn't just focus on where the Sultan lives just because Amani spends a great portion of the story there. She explores and uses her stunning world. I found myself loving the desert described and loving how it raised and taught Amani and how it became her hidden strength. I love how it witnessed magic and legends and love. It sees a new dawn full of clever plots, genius strategies throughout the Rebellion that literally left me wanting to screech at how wonderfully it was planned out. It sees death and execution and liars and deserters and pain. Here, the desert doesn't just represent a hometown. It represents a guardian, something that watched over the Rebel Prince taking his rightful lands and leading a growing group of rebels who saw a better world; who watched over a girl desperate to leave her hometown and make something of herself; it saw her learning her own skill at the age of ten, all the while never letting her see half of her true self. But then it spoke to her, rose up to help her and made her realise she was more than just a desert-girl who knew how to fire a gun with lethal accuracy.

A tale of magic and legends of Djinni, princesses and truths, of unknown creatures, of sacrifice and loyalty and betrayal, Alwyn Hamilton has written two fantastic books so far and left me itching for the third installment.