Another Question Answered, All In A New Moon

Hey, so Anne left a question to my post “Breaking Dawn: Not Really Worth It”:  I would love for you to express your point of view on this one. Why is it that every time someone writes a book about vamps they mention Twilight to compare it to?
I ask you this because my Twilight obsess friends burned my copy of my novels that had vampires in it.I feel like one cannot write about vampires because of Meyer any more.  ~Anne

My Answer starts with this: Money.  Meyer’s books grabbed the attention of a lot of young American readers, and what do young people have a lot of? Disposable income.  The media picked up on the buzz that was going around and dollar signs filled their eye sockets.  What now?  Get some hot young actors for the film version so we can reel in more teen followers, and lets ride this train for as long as we can.

You see Meyer’s book isn’t that great, but it has a lot of fans.  DEVOTED fans.  Putting her book in the spotlight.  This book is in the forefront of everyone’s minds, especially those people who are not usual followers of vampire fiction, suddenly vampires are in vogue right now and a lot of people are just now hopping on the bandwagon.  Twilight is their first taste in a genre that has been a round since the late 1800’s.  Therefore whenever another book about vamps is talked about or publicized the majority of people reach for Twilight to compare to because its what most people are currently familiar with.  For them this vampire thing is a fad, even though authors have been writing about vamps for 150+ years.  So that’s why everyone’s using Twilight as a comparison: Everyone knows about it.

An answer to your other question, I do think people can still write about vampires.  In fact people are currently publishing books about vampires.  Those books may be getting a boost right now thanks to Meyer.  Those who are actually interested vampires will use Meyer’s work as a jumping off point to delve deeper into the other vampire stories that are out there and this will keep the genre alive.  The same thing sorta happened in the 90’s when Anne Rice’s books were made into a movie.  Anyone remember Interview with a Vampire?  Movies like Blade, and Underworld also did the same thing.  They revive interest in the fascination with vamps.  The difference with Meyer is that her book was more youthful, its also simpler and targeted to a wider audience than Rice’s books which are so highly crafted they appeal to a smaller (though still big) group of people and they’re too adult because most media is geared to those between the ages of 13-24 where most of the money is made.  If you’ve read or seen Interview then you might understand what I mean.  It’s heavy to watch.  Brad Pitt’s character is struggling with his vampirism and humanity, he loses everything close to him, and now he has to live forever alone.  Its pretty deep stuff, and most 16 year olds don’t want to read 300+ pages or spend 2.5 hours on that.  The movie came out when I was really really young, and I didn’t even watch it until last year when my then boyfriend, who was also older than me, made me after I told him I was writing a book with vampires.  It’s a good movie, but its not fast paced or fun.  It fits in with other standards of the gothic vampire genre like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is unique in its style and being the first of many.  I think Meyer’s biggest accomplishment was lightening up the genre.  She doesn’t add anything to it, but she does make it a little less stuffy and got a lot of young people reading it.

So bottom line is:  People can, and should keep writing about vampires if that’s what they really want to do.  Thing is this:  They shouldn’t expect to be next Meyer (nor should they want to be), instead they should write their story and be true to themselves with it.  However, if they do want to stand out then they should be aware that in order to do so they may have to market their work in a unique way.  Me, well my book deals with major issues and uses vampires as symbolism for the human condition.  Also I don’t make any mention of vampires for a while, hopefully the reader wouldn’t know it had anything to do vamps until way into the novel.  Vampires are not the main point you could trade them out for say Werewolves, witches or heck even lepers!  I chose vamps for aesthetic reasons.  Lastly, I’m not publishing the book in my real name.  So anyone I know that picks up the book wouldn’t be able to say: “Hey she said she was writing a book about vampires!”  I’m marketing the book as a look at religion, crime, and racism.  So obviously I think people can still write about vampires.  Now you just have to be careful how you do it.

So last thing since we’re already near the topic.  New Moon is coming out November 20, 2009.  Super.  Can’t you just feel my excitement. (sarcasm).  Anyway.  I heard a rumor that Gaspard Ulliel a.k.a my one true love, was going to have a part in the movie.  I thought:  Oh so they’re finally realizing their mistake casting unattractive Robert Pattinson.  Instead I heard they were thinking of using him as Alec.  First off its false folks.  Gaspard knows he’s too much to play opposite Dakota Fanning (who I like a lot, but she’s like 15 and he’s 24…ehhh they’re not really blonde twins either) .  Anyway ET put out 15 (really 14 secs) of the trailer.  And http://www.newmoonmovie.org put up the vid on YouTube.  So Here it is, all rights reserved by Summit:

Human?

Thanks to my brother I may possibly have a title, at least a working one,  for my novel.  He suggested the title Human? with a question mark.  He chose it based on the main themes in the story and also some of the songs I used to describe what each main character is searching for.  For example Tristan and Eris are each looking for love, but their primary focus is on finding themselves on a deeper level, a spiritual level.  The Killers’ song Human really reflects what is going on in both of their minds.  So my brother suggested my book share the title of the song.  I’m not sure if its gonna stick.  Especially since so much is changing in the story all the time.  Well, the storyline is pretty solid, but I have added a new character, Jake “JR”…..I don’t have his last name yet.  Jake wasn’t even supposed to make it past the first two chapters.  But I let my brother read part of my first draft and he said Jake needs to stay since it adds another level of conflict that can be uniquely resolved.

Overall I’m excited and I plan on having all of the first draft complete by March 2009 and to have it self-published by my (perpetual 21st) birthday June 30th of ‘09.

Its a lot of work, but I’m so in love with my characters I can’t let them down.  Also I intended it to just be a simple one volume story.  However, even the length has changed and by the looks of it each book will be around 400-500 pages, with a total of at least 3 books.  I know, I’m sick just thinking about writing it too.  The sheer volume of information I have created is insane.  I’ve even created an entire history that happened before the existence of any of the main characters, but is essential for their stories to take place.  I’ll probably touch on this info in the first book near the end, and this will set the events of the second and third books into motion, but I’ll probably, or at least like to, write the prequel, or rather a real world text containing the history I’ve made up, which Eris and Tristan discover in their world.

There’s just a lot of loops, mythologies, and relationships that are very complex, and I’m tackling a lot of important themes like Religion, Love, Sexual Orientation, Gender Roles, Race/Other and Age, so I have a pile of food on my plate, but I’m happy to eat it…

Overall I’m excited, though you can’t tell by looking at my face, you’d probably assume exasperation.

Anyway one thing that keeps me going is finding out what my characters look like in real life.  Basically I like to chose models/actors that I think embody what I have imagined.  It also helps me write out their descriptions since its a little easier to write about characteristics while I look at an actual photo rather than just my head.

So Here are some of the models I’ve been using:

Tristan

Vespasien

JR

Their real names in order from top to bottom are : Buddy, Gaspard Ulliel, and Chad White.  Now their better halves (the Women)  were particularly difficult to find models for, and I’m still struggling.  Mainly because the women are based on specific real-ife people I know personally, and I can’t post their pictures, but I also can’t find models who look like them.  The men were easier because each of the male characters are based on combinations of real men I know, so there isn’t one specific face that I focused on.  For example Tristan is made up of:  My two best friends from my early childhood.  One of them is blonde and the other has dark hair, so I just idealized their features and found a model who fit what I wanted.  Eris is based on an actual girl, and I want her to look like this specific (real life not model or actress) person, she is a combination of no one, so only that one woman fits her.

I guess Hesper is the only woman I could even come close to, here she is:

Hesper (Ingrid Schram)

I Declare!

Ok, so I have not posted in a while.  I’ve been insanely busy, and there are still crap-loads of projects I desperately need to work on.  I was taking guitar lessons.  Note the WAS.  I got so caught up with school, I had to stop.  I WAS writing a novel, again school got in the way.  I WAS looking for a digital video camera, I was I was I was.  Now I realize I need to shift back into I Am.  I’m still taking a summer class, but this session I only have one class for 8 weeks rather than two crammed into 4 weeks.

Unfortunately or fortunately my mind is severely overactive so I’ve come up with more stories to write, while I have not even finished the first.  Also one of the classes I took was a Comics Studio course.  So I have an intro into creating my own comics.  Which I think will be really helpful in creating my novels.  If only  I could draw more realisticly with a grittier edge.  My writings and my drawings do not match.  The ideas in my head could be classified as dark, while my drawing is clean and cartoonish, happy and bright.  However, in my mind my stories are visual.  I see my characters actually doing things.  So now being able to sketch out my ideas in a more storyboard form will be very helpful.

As with music, I would love to find someone or multiple people I could collaborate with on several of my projects.  If I could find an artist to help with my stories, a band to help with my music, people to be in my short films, and a macbook pro to put it all together on I would be golden.

But I don’t have those things.  So I guess I’ll have to just keep puttering along, doing it myself.

Close Your Eyes…

He whispered.  Slowly he leans in, gently places his lips on hers.  She starts, but he holds her there and closes his own eyes for a moment.  “Tristan!!!” screams his mother.

Ok, so what’s that about you might wonder (or you might not)?  Well its one short line from this book I’m writing.  Yes, I am writing a book, with more than 10 pages.  Hopefully hundreds of pages will be the result of this endeavor, maybe even more than one book.  I dunno maybe it will take volumes to fully place into words the epic story of Eris and Tristan.  Who are Eris and Tristan, you ask? Well they are my two new favorite people.  Eris is named after the goddess of chaos, because that is what she creates in this story…a big mess.  Tristan, well his name might change, I just like it for now.  I actually thought of naming one of my children Eris when and if I ever had children, because I like the name, but then I thought naming my kid after a pagan goddess of chaos may not be best idea, I don’t want to be asking for it when the terrible twos hit.  So I gave this character the name, she’s chaotic…not like Britney…more like, well me.  She has a lot of me in her, and Tristan is also modeled after a real person, well two real people.  Personality wise he’s modeled after my first ever BEST FRIEND, a boy I met in pre-school.  Physically, he’s the upgraded version of this kid who goes to my school who I don’t actually know, but is really really attractive, and totally is what Tristan should look like, if he were real.

So why is Tristan’s mom screaming…well he’s really young at this part of the story and so is Eris, only her name is not Eris yet.  I don’t have a name for her before she becomes Eris…I’m still thinking.  It should be nice, but not too blah.  Also they’re catholic.  Tristan’s parents are crazy strict, and when they catch him kissing Eris, though an innocent first kiss it was, they move with him to an all catholic community, like the new town Ave Maria in Florida being made by that Domino’s pizza gazillionaire.  Only its not 2008 its 1989 or 1990 something.  So while there weren’t really places like that back then,  well its a very conservative catholic town place, thingy.  I’ll work it out.

Also its a dark story…its kinda scary.  For me to write it even, I got scared today working on it.  Dark thoughts are not easy to have and not freak yourself out.  There’s also this religious element to it that runs through the back-story.  See Catholicism fascinates me, I’m a Protestant, but something about being catholic is alluring.  Not enough for me to adjust my faith, but enough so I can create characters who are deeply involved in and influenced by Catholicism, and one who is alot like me.

Also this is a type of therapy.  I miss my Tristan, I want to find him know where he is, and I wonder sometimes if he ever wants the same thing.  If I saw him tomorrow, would he know me?  I like to hope he would, and in this story its Tristan looking for her, and he recognizes her even when she doesn’t know herself.