Confession: I am wearing Wranglers

Obviously, this has NO relation whatsoever to any kind of book (though I admit it could make a pretty awesome title.. ooh, ideas!). However, I felt it necessary to mention.

Here's the scoop: I am from Chicago. I lived, ate, and breathed Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Aeropostale, and Nordstrom in high school. Heck, I even worked at two of the aforementioned places. I got to Oklahoma for college, and despite the culture shock I refused to give up my big city jeans. There would be nothing but the approved brands for this butt!

And then Lucky Brand came into the picture. Oh, Lucky Brand, I couldn't afford you on my meager part-time retail wages in high school, but with college graduation came a real job which resulted with me receiving a real crappy paycheck. Suddenly you were a lot more attainable, and I rejoiced in your awesomeness... until you started falling apart after so many wears just like every other pair of jeans in the world does. And you fell apart at approximately the same rate as Levi's fall apart, and suddenly I realized you needed to stop invading my closet so frequently because Levi's were approximately $70 cheaper.

With marriage came more practicality. No longer needing to impress, I instead went for comfort. Yes, I do want to look decent. I cringe at the thought of sweat pants and a t-shirt everyday (not that there is anything wrong with this some days!). But at the sacrifice of my bank account? No. And that's where the current story comes into play.

Someone gave my husband a pair of jeans for me. For free. They were Wranglers, and it made me want to shrivel up inside because I do not wear Wranglers. But they fit, and not being one to pass up free jeans, I accepted graciously. However, I have been highly skeptical of the fact that they're freaking Wranglers!!! Alas, they are about as comfortable as a pair of tight jeans can get, and they even come with a stretchy waistband, which I admittedly find enthralling. I think all jeans need stretchy waistbands.

And so, Katie is wearing Wranglers today. Tomorrow will be the pearl snap button shirt, snakeskin boots, and maybe a bolo tie for good measure. Sigh. So long, Chi-Town.

And because Julie rules.. another award

It's Award Day!












One of my favorite bloggers (who I haven't sent an award to because I always see she already has them from others!) gave me this one. Please follow her blog Book Hooked if you don't already because she rules. Thank you Julie!

People who deserve this award:
Mrs. Messi's Musings
My Overly Ambitious Attempt at 101 in 1001 (Ebonie)
Chic Fit Geek

Blog Award: You're Going Places, Baby

Thanks to Chic Fit Geek for this award! I love blog awards because it makes me feel like someone actually bothers to read the crap I post! :)

The rules:
1. Tell the blogging world where you want to be in ten years.
2. Pass this on to some blog buddies. (I think technically you're supposed to do ten, but I'm going to be lazy and do less)

I can totally swing this!

My big dream for ten years from now is to be able to write for a living. I want to get published and write novels, letting all these ideas careening through my head come to fruition so that I can give them to the rest of the world while supporting my family doing it. I think I would be really happy doing this.

Now, as for who is deserving of this award is a different matter! I follow a lot of different blogs that are all wonderful, so it will be hard to choose my favorites. But a sampling, and in no particular order (okay, maybe alphabetical)..

1. Angel - An Everyday Angel
2. Angie - Angie Eats Peace
3. Tameka - Because Perfection is Boring
4. Crystal - Crystal Clear Reading
5. Ashley - Great Books and Fresh Coffee
6. Jen - My Brain's Comfort Food
7. Leah - My Life: Uncensored
8. Heather - See Heather Write
9. Melissa - The Kitchen Canister

Writing - Puzzling out the Pieces

I'm writing a novel.

There, I said it. A few select people are aware of this, and I even recently joined a writing group that has really helped me to plow through the hard parts of the process. But the majority of the people in my life have absolutely no idea I'm doing this. Part of the reason is that I'm still in my rough draft phase, and I don't want anyone to see my work yet. Some of it sucks, some of it makes no sense, and some of it leads nowhere. I want to have a chance to polish things up first once I've completed version one.

Another reason I'm not very forthcoming about this fact is that I'm not ready to answer those inevitable questions about what it's about or who the main characters are. I think part of this is a little nagging sense of self-doubt. I love my story, but I'm not quite ready to hear that someone else doesn't. This is a piece of myself that I want to show to the world someday, but that time has not yet come because the manuscript is far from complete, let alone up to my high standards.

Last night I hit 28,000 words, and even though it seems impressive it really means I haven't even cracked the halfway point yet. Part of the fun of this process is that I don't know exactly where things are going to end up. I know how I want them to end, but this could easily change at any time. New ideas keep popping up in my head, whether a new character or a new direction that things can take. I know this isn't the way many writers do things. I know many have a detailed outline or some other process they go through before actually sitting down and tapping out the novel on their computer. But I started with a general description. I keep a separate document with information I may need later: Facts, character names, scene ideas that I think would be fun, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if an outline would have been better. For example, last night I was completely stuck. I had finished one scene and was ready to start the next, which I had thoroughly fleshed out in my mind already. The only problem is that there was a small in-between part that would segue me into the next scene that I could not figure out. Nothing I thought of made sense, and unfortunately this little in-betweener wasn't something I could just gloss over for right now. Even though it was only a few paragraphs, that little piece would carve out the future of several important supporting characters. I was stumped, and admittedly I was completely frustrated with myself for having gotten this far before realizing that I had absolutely no clue what to do. I should have had an outline because this would have been a non-issue. I could have just consulted my outline, tossed it into the story, and I would have been done with it rather than spending a good two hours stewing as I tried to toss in a few sentences here and there.

In my head I tested out various scenarios. What if this happened, and then from there I went here? Or what if that happened? If that happened, I couldn't go there. And as I did all this, it occurred to me that my writing process is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I start by finding those corner pieces because they're easy, and they're incredibly important if you plan on actually completing the puzzle. From there the edges are hunted out, and I slowly begin to put them together to create a frame. But the rest is a mystery. Sometimes I have to take several pieces and try fitting them together to see if they fit or try fitting one piece to the frame of the puzzle. Sometimes it works and snaps into place, but sometimes it's all wrong and I need to try again.

I did end up finding a solution I liked for my in-betweener, and once that happened I had no problems forging ahead and completing that next scene. I was proud of myself for being able to work through it in a way that pleased me and opened up future possibilities in my story. After this was all said and done, I admit that I contemplated outlining the rest of my novel before continuing on. But some voice inside my head told me to stick with puzzling out the pieces because not knowing everything right now makes me feel like I'm on an adventure. I feel like I'm a reader in a way, where I have an inkling of where things might be going but at any time something could shake things up. It allows me more perspective, which I think will make for a better story in the end. Sure it will require a lot of clean up, but honestly isn't that the way all writing is?

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

I had the misfortune (maybe?) of picking up this book just as I was getting back into the swing of things with my novel, a big fat NaNoWriMo '09 failure (but now is looking like an extraordinary non-failure as I've been putting all sorts of effort into it). The point of this is that despite usually flying through books like Hex Hall, I ended up flipping through this one at an unusually slow pace spanning a week.

Sophie Mercer isn't your average 16-year-old girl. She's a witch, and when a love spell meant to help an unpopular classmate goes horribly wrong, she is sent to Hecate Hell (known to students as Hex Hall), a sort of boarding school/reformatory for Prodigium (witch/faerie/shapeshifter) teenagers who risk revealing themselves to the human world. Here she is surrounded by her own kind, and she quickly discovers that even amongst those she is just like she is still... different. On top of it all, her new best friend and roommate is a vampire and thus one of the most hated people in the school, and she quickly makes enemies of the three most powerful witches in the student population while managing to crush on one of their highly unattainable boyfriends. Things get even worse when Sophie learns her new vampire friend is the prime suspect in a student attack the year before, and soon attacks start happening again.

This book is the first of a trilogy, and it is by debut author Rachel Hawkins. I am really happy to report that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I know supernatural young adult lit is very much the "thing" these days, but Hawkins looks at it with a very refreshing a fun point of view. Usually I can say that something in this genre reminds me of another genre (the Harry Potter and Twilight series usually being the ones I'm reminded of), but in this case I have to admit that it doesn't really hail back to anything I have read before. And that is truly refreshing.

The story also has a few twists to it that I wasn't expecting. I can usually see some of these things miles away, so it was exciting to be surprised when things didn't turn out quite the way they initially seemed. In addition, Sophie's voice is just so great that I couldn't help but to smile every other page as I read this book.

Movie: The Princess and the Frog

I am a huge Disney freak in two ways: First, I'm a huge, huge fan of Walt Disney World. I'm a total kid at heart, and this is a place where I can just go crazy and have fun and no one will think the worst of me for it. Second, I totally dig all the old throwback Disney animated films, which means it was a sad day for me when they stopped creating them. But then it was a happy day when I heard they were going "back to their roots" so to speak with The Princess and the Frog.

Now, unfortunately life got in the way around the time this film was released in theatres. I never got to see it. But yesterday it came out on DVD, and so of course I ran to Target during my lunch time, armed with a $10 coupon for the DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack, and snatched it up giddily. I ran back to the office, tore off all the packaging, and sat there staring at it for several hours until the time came that I could finally go home and watch. And go home and watch I did!

One thing I loved about this movie was that it was technically kinda sorta based on a book I read last year: The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker (who is credited as the writer of the story, in fact). The film pretty much only has one major thing in common with the book, and that is the whole girl-kisses-frog-and-turns-into-frog-herself thing. Otherwise, it's very different. But regardless, it was a fun little thing for me to discover.

I also loved that despite having all the makings of a traditional Disney animated film, it was also very unique in its own way. First, there's the whole African American Disney princess thing. And technically, she's not even a "real" princess! Add to this the New Orleans setting, the amazing music, and I was completely hooked. And while I won't give it away to anyone who hasn't seen this movie, but I cried like a giant baby when Ray finally ends up with his Evangeline.

In other words, big thumbs up! I can't wait to be a nerd and watch it again!

Honolulu by Alan Brennert

While I would certainly have never passed up a trip to Hawaii, to be perfectly honest I never had any huge desire to go. I mean, it's a long flight for starters. Second, it's expensive! And third, why go there when I can get a tropical paradise a lot closer in the Caribbean?

But then Alan Brennert and his books came into my life, and now Hawaii has jumped a few places on my "must see" list. His writing is so beautiful, and the scenes he describes are so unique and incredible that I can't help but to want to hop the first plane across the Pacific and see these islands with my own eyes.

Honolulu is the story of Regret, a Korean girl in the early 20th Century whose biggest desire is to get an education. Knowing that her chances of fulfillment are slim in Korea, she signs up as a picture bride for a prosperous Korean man living in Hawaii and travels to the remote islands in search of a better life. But what greets Regret in Hawaii is a violent husband with little money and a habit of drinking away what money he does receive. But from this unfortunate situation, Regret renames herself Jin (Gem in Korean) and along with her fellow picture brides, not only manages to survive this new land of Hawaii but also thrive.

I will admit that Moloka'i will probably forever hold a place in my heart as my favorite Brennert novel. However, that doesn't mean Honolulu was any less amazing. The story was unique and intriguing, and watching Regret transform into Jin was an amazing experience. As with his previous novel, this one also is a beautiful tapestry of fiction and nonfiction, each piece of the puzzle perfectly fitting into the bigger picture and creating something incredible.

Because I love historical novels that so seamlessly blend fact and fiction, I wanted to include some photos of real life people who readers run into in this book. It's always a wonderful treat for me when I finish a book and I can hop online and see what these people really looked like.

Chang Apana



















Joe Kahahawai


















W. Somerset Maugham (and the real "Sadie Thompson")





















Queen Liliuokalani