Day Two

Day two: How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

I have had several characters show up in my stories. Each has their own collection of characters that play a part, whether minor or major. Depending on how the story is going and which one I am currently writing, I can have as many as 20 characters who keep reappearing at various points in the story and as little as 10. Now that includes all characters good and bad, major or minor.

When it comes to the sex of my characters, it varies. I definitely feel more comfortable writing the female perspective but that’s because I am one myself. I try and sometimes succeed in writing the male perspective but it a lot more difficult then you would think.

With each of my three stories that I am working on the most I have one main protagonist and one or two antagonists.

• Noah vs. Madoc and the Dallions


• Selene vs. The Voice/Ezra


• Aislynn vs. Cadeyrn and the Voice

Each of my protagonists have the support and family through out the novels as minor characters, and depending on which one you are looking at they are going to have few supporting members up to several.

Past Entries:

Day One

Cara Mia Amore

Review: Paranormalcy

Description: Paranormalcy is the debut novel of writer Kiersten White and was published at the end of August 2010. It falls into the category of young-adult urban fantasy and is about a girl named Evie who works for a secret police force (International Paranormal Containment Agency or IPCA). Evie has been working for IPCA for years because of her own special ability to see through the glamors of other paranormal creatures. Her job is to contain any trouble and make sure all paranormal creatures are tagged and known to IPCA.

The story itself follows Evie in discovering herself and what IPCA is really up to. She is supported by various comic characters (she’s one herself!) including a mermaid with a foul mouth, a shape-shifter that catches her eye, and a fairy that wants more then she wants to give.

This is the first in what will be a trilogy of books. The second is due to come out in August of this year and the third is to be announced.

Reaction: I loved this book. I actually stumbled across the blog of the author well before her book was actually released and enjoyed her writing style there. And since I enjoy supporting those authors that are new to the field, I just had to pick up this book. It was fun and made me fall in love with all the characters.

Kiersten White definitely takes you on the journey very well and the writing flows in a way that keeps you gripped to the book and not wanting to put it down. It was exciting to see where it was go and it made me laugh, cry and want to kill those who dared to hurt her. It was awesome and I love when authors put that much emotion into their writing and make me react that way.

I got a kick of Kiersten White’s lack of cursing in her novel, instead filling the spaces with Beeps, not only just writing them in without explanation, but actually builds it into the story line.

I also enjoyed the romantic tension between Lend and Evie. It’s lots of fun watching teens build with tension and finally give in to it in the end.

Rating: I give this book 5 stars out of 5. It hit everything that makes me enjoy reading.

Cara Mia Amore

Day One

Day one: Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why?




For as long as I can remember, my writing has focused around one “universe”/world. Granted I’ve had many different stories told in that world of mine and the characters that star in those stories have grown and evolved along side that world.

The name of the world is Torrest Reyenne and it is a magical world. It is similar to our world in the sense of the creatures that inhabit the world but it was one created by some bored gods playing a game. This world was created out of magic and is full of it. The gods created their children in their image and gave them magic. As the years passed, some of these children abused what magic they had and since they there are only some that keep the full magic of the gods.

Now we are currently left with humans (those with no magic who have, with time, forgotten/don’t believe in the existence of magic), Cats (those who have full range of powers including the ability to change their shape to a large cat), and Dallions (those who have active magic on a limited level and no god shape). We have a few other exceptions and peoples that I plan to introduce, but those are the ones that I focus on right now.

My stories themselves are centered on two main, warring countries. The first is Hycintha which is the home to the Cats and some humans. The second is Lolia which is the home to the Dallions. These two countries have been at war for several years on and off, and currently the reigning monarchs are at a tentative peace. There has not been any actual fighting because of the friendship between the current monarchs. This war is truly being held because of magic, all the humans know is that its fights for land.

And that, my dears, is a basic overlook into my world and how some of the going-ons.

 

Cara Mia Amore

So... lets try this again.

Alrighty ... so I tried on the last entry. And pretty much failed. So this time I found a way to try and focus myself with getting back into the "blogging everyday" attitude. Awhile ago I found a writing meme that has thirty questions to answer over 30 days. So I think I'm going to use that to go ahead and try getting back in to blogging.

Here are the questions:

1. Tell us about your favorite writ­ing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.
2. How many char­ac­ters do you have? Do you pre­fer males or females?
3. How do you come up with names, for char­ac­ters (and for places if you’re writ­ing about fic­tional places)?
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
5. By age, who is your youngest char­ac­ter? Old­est? How about “youngest” and “old­est” in terms of when you cre­ated them?
6. Where are you most com­fort­able writ­ing? At what time of day? Com­puter or good ol’ pen and paper?
7. Do you lis­ten to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your char­ac­ters?
8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?
9. How do you get ideas for your char­ac­ters? Describe the process of cre­at­ing them.
10. What are some really weird sit­u­a­tions your char­ac­ters have been in? Every­thing from seri­ous canon scenes to meme ques­tions counts!
11. Who is your favorite char­ac­ter to write? Least favorite?
12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of world­build­ing? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?
13. What’s your favorite cul­ture to write, fic­tional or not?
14. How do you map out loca­tions, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
15. Mid­way ques­tion! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether pro­fes­sional or not!
16. Do you write roman­tic rela­tion­ships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you will­ing to go in your writ­ing? ;)
17. Favorite pro­tag­o­nist and why!
18. Favorite antag­o­nist and why!
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove him­self into the spot­light and why!
20. What are your favorite char­ac­ter inter­ac­tions to write?
21. Do any of your char­ac­ters have chil­dren? How well do you write them?
22. Tell us about one scene between your char­ac­ters that you’ve never writ­ten or told any­one about before! Seri­ous or not.
23. How long does it usu­ally take you to com­plete an entire story—from plan­ning to writ­ing to post­ing (if you post your work)?
24. How will­ing are you to kill your char­ac­ters if the plot so demands it? What’s the most inter­est­ing way you’ve killed some­one?
25. Do any of your char­ac­ters have pets? Tell us about them.
26. Let’s talk art! Do you draw your char­ac­ters? Do oth­ers draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite pic­ture of him!
27. Along sim­i­lar lines, do appear­ances play a big role in your sto­ries? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about design­ing your char­ac­ters.
28. Have you ever writ­ten a char­ac­ter with phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­i­ties? Describe them, and if there’s noth­ing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
29. How often do you think about writ­ing? Ever come across some­thing in real life that reminds you of your story/characters?
30. Final ques­tion! Tag some­one! And tell us what you like about that per­son as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!

 

Cara Mia Amore

So... it's been awhile, are we still friends?

So I have been postponing things for awhile... this year has been one procrastination after another. I think the year was so full of different things happening (work, weddings, etc.) that I needed a mental break from getting everything done on time.

I mean I haven't even finished my Thank You notes. Mrs. Manners would be so disappointed.

But anyways, I plan on doing some more posts the next few days.

Well anyways, my brain isn't working... so this will end here and I will go ahead and write up the review... which will probably end up being posted tomorrow since I just started getting a splitting headache.

Wow.

Procrastination and excuses.

Hiatus

Since most of you know this already, I am getting married in August of this year. Because of the fact that planning a wedding takes so much time, I will be taking a hiatus until after the wedding. I will post what I can here and there, but because of this planning and life, writing is going to be something more of a private activity for a bit of time.

I will see you guys soon, married and happy!

Wednesday Review 2/3/10

So this weeks review is on the first book of a series of books I like to read. I'll probably end up doing review on each of the books, but I really wanted to start with book one. Mostly because her most recent installment of the series just came out. The series is called the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series by a lovely woman names Laurell K. Hamilton.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="240" caption="I love this cover out of all of the different ones that have come out"][/caption]

So, this book itself came out in 1993. I probably started reading this series... well there were quite a few of the books out by the time I picked up the series, so lets say maybe 2003 or so. So by the time I came into the series there were several books already out so I got to work through the books pretty steadily at first, then had to be a patient little reader waiting for the next set of books to come out. All in all wasn't too bad of a way to start off the series.

I quickly got addicted to the characters and the story line that followed the series, so about seven years of being an avid reader of hers (including diving into her other series as well, which I will talk about later) I thought I would do a little review on the series. So... here we go.

Guilty Pleasures is a series of books that follows a woman named Anita Blake. Anita starts off the series as a full time Animator (someone who raises zombies) and Vampire Hunter as well as a part time helper of a police squad called RPIT, and goes through this first book introducing us to the world that she lives in where those monsters under your bed and in your closet are real. Here is a good snippet on what happens in the book brought to you by Wikipedia:

Anita Blake lives in St. Louis, Missouri, in a world where magic, vampires, werewolves, and the like are, and have always been, "out of the closet" and, in some cases, even legal. Anita is an "animator," with the ability to raise or inter zombies. She uses this ability in employ at "Animators, Incorporated," where she raises the dead for various purposes including murder investigations, will explanations, and other legal services. Anita also works as a "vampire executioner," killing vampires (by court order) and advising the police on supernatural crimes. This first book takes place in July when Anita is 24.

In Guilty Pleasures, Anita is blackmailed by Nikolaos, the vampire master of the city, into investigating a series of vampire murders. During the course of this investigation, Anita begins her relationship with Jean-Claude, another master vampire, and receives two of the four marks necessary to make her Jean-Claude's "human servant." Ultimately, Anita identifies the murderer, but by that point has sufficiently antagonized Nikolaos and her underlings that she is forced to confront them. Ultimately, with help from Jean-Claude and Edward, a human associate who specializes in assassinating supernatural targets, Anita kills Nikolaos and many of her followers, making Jean-Claude master of the city.

So that wraps up what the basis of the first book is about and it sets it up for things to come. That is one thing I like about Laurell. She has a habit, of when writing, that its like life (even though our idea of a life doesn't include what Anita's does) and she writes her books like she's telling a story, like someone retelling an event that has happened. Instead of it being a definitive ending like a lot of stories, where you asking what comes next for these people? and then are left hanging when there is nothing that follows about them. When these stories are written you get the feeling that that story has been told and you know that there will be a new adventure and story with her.

Really that's why I like series books because you get to know characters a lot more then you would in a single book story. You get to get more into the world and the characters in the stories. Things get so rushed in single books, in series you get a chance to explore people and worlds better.

Anyways, to wrap it up, I give this book a 5 out of 5 for books.

Cara Mia Amore

Tuesday Random Post 2/2/10

So... I had yesterdays and today's posts all written up and... poof! they disappeared into the abyss of my work computer as we lost power at work. Which brings me to the wonderful new, and different, topic for this random topic of Tuesday. THE SAVE BUTTON.

I am usually a very anal person when it comes to constantly saving when I am working on projects, especially on word or some system I know has the potential of crashing at any point. I learned that lesson many years ago when I was first starting to write and lost an ENTIRE beginning of a manuscript I had written because I forgot to save and word crashed and was unable to recover the document.

What sucks about work is that our computer systems are on a shared server (as are most companies), so if power goes out or your system goes down for any reason you lose what you were working on and very rarely can recover documents that were unsaved to your system. And because I was getting busy at work and only periodically working on my mock ups of my posts for this week, I had overlooked saving as I usually do when the system went out I knew that I was screwed.

As a writer, most of you understand the importance of saving constantly as well as keeping backups, especially when we are a writer who's livelihood is based on making sure that their work is not lost to evil computers. And those of use who don't base our livelihood on writing, but wish we do, still would die if we lost our works. So I tell you all this:

USE THE SAVE BUTTON!!!!!

Cara Mia Amore

Monday Character Development 2/1/10

**This is actually a delayed posting, I apologize for the lack of post on scheduled day**

With this first Character Development post I want to also introduce you to the form I use in keeping track of my characters, that way everything is uniform in how I keep things filed. With that being said, I am going to do this first character development on a character that is a character in one of my shorter stories in my world.

Name of character: Neasa.

Main novel: God's Story.

Role in novel: Major character.

Physical description, distinguishing marks: She is short, right around five feet tall, she has chesnut brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. She is a bit over weight compared to the standards of what you would see. Her hair is to the floor and is normally in three braids and then wrapped around her head to “crown” her. Her form is ever changing and never settling. She takes the form of whatever child is in front of her or needing her. Because all of her Children have a variety of different forms that is why her form never truly settles around them. When she is just around her husband, who is the same way, her from goes through the different stages of life: maid, mother and crone. She also bears a scar that goes across her abdomen from the birth of her children.

Birthdate: Unknown, the only ones who would have any idea of her age or birthdate would be the fates, but because there is no sense of time or a way of tracking it on Calypto.

Place of birth: Calypto

Spouse: Asher

Children: Alastar, Keeva, Leander, Naida, Drake, Draca, Lupus, Phoebe, Raven, Phoenix, Marius, Deirdre, Jorun, Marah, Alvar, Fae, Micah, Ceri, Caden and Tristan. These are her children but not in a traditional sense. She did not carry them individually but all at once and they burst into being from her abdomen, hence the scar, but they come out in full adult form with all their powers and gifts.

Mother: Technically she has no biological parents. She and Asher were brought into being by the Fates to start a world that they foresee.

Father: See above.

Siblings: None.

Occupation: She's a god.

Residence: Calypto.

Age (separated by story): Unknown.

Godshape: Anything and everything.

Powers and affinities: Basically Neasa and Asher have all the powers that are even possible to have. Their magic is what allows their children and their children's children to have magic. There is no magic that exists outside of the magic that Neasa has. She has an affinity with death and chaos. She can cause death or mayhem with a thought and is only balance out by Asher.

Race: God.

Notes: The Fates lived alone on Calypto with no true purpose. A vision is had of a world of gods and world of non-gods. To make this future and to give them a purpose, the three fates create a man and a woman. They are opposites of each other. Neasa short where Asher is tall. Neasa dark where Asher is fair. Life and death. Creation and destruction. Peace and war. Yes, they have all the powers out there, but Neasa has more strength with the darker powers focused around death. Asher is focused around lighter magic. Neasa and Asher are by themselves on Calypto for quite a bit of time similar to Adam and Eve in Eden.

Cara Mia Amore

Sunday Background and World Building 1/31/10

So this Sunday's World Building and Background is going to be just a generic introduction into my world.

The world that my stories revolve around is called Torrest Reyenne. It was created by some very bored gods who were bugging their parents. Mommy and Daddy dearest (more about these two on a later date) decided to make a contest for their children. They would join together and create a world. They would then have to populate the world with their children. Basically what the contest does is get the whiny bored gods out of Mommy and Daddy's hair.

Torrest Reyenne is a world of magic, there are magical powers, the ability to switch shapes.

Its a world very similar to our own.  Their technology is as advanced as our as well as in some places being slightly more advanced (working on the specifics of that)

There is a lot that I am trying to work out right now, but that is the gist of it for now.

Cara Mia Amore