Z = Ziegler & Zusak

Irene Ziegler wrote Ashes to Water, a book that I really enjoyed reading last year. It was very interesting, and I still remember it in surprising detail. I definitely will be looking to read more of her writing.

Who in the book-blogging world hasn’t heard of Markus Zusak? (NOTE: I am not in any way implying anything about anyone who hasn’t yet heard of him! If you fit that group, I am happy to introduce you! ) I am sorry to say that I have not yet read The Book Thief. An Australian book-blogging friend of mine even sent me a copy! Believe me, I WANT to read it. Perhaps during my next reviewing break I will.

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And there you have it! The final post in the Authors from A to Z challenge here on Proud Book Nerd! I hope you enjoyed reading about all of these fabulous authors.

HUGE thanks to every author who participated! THANK YOU! This event ROCKED because of you! I had a blast working with you, and hope to have the opportunity to do so again in the future! Best of luck to you all in your future bookish endeavors (and everything else, too)!

And if you participated, THANK YOU! I have discovered many, many great new authors. (As if my TBR list needed to be longer! LOL) I have tried to at least read everyone’s posts, and comment when I felt I had something to say. If I missed you, please let me know and I’ll come check it out.

Look for a wrap-up post sometime in the first week of July! (And, yes, I will do this again. Probably next year – same time, same place! )

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W = Wardell

This was another easy letter for me, as I recently discovered Heather Wardell. She’s not new, but she’s new to me. And she’s a great writer. Earlier this year I got to read Planning to Live, a powerful book about living in the now. She recently released A Life That Fits, which will be reviewed here soon.

Heather wrote us a post for today. Enjoy!

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Why I don’t write paranormal

by Heather Wardell

As you’re all well aware, paranormal is hotter than Edward Cullen is cold. Vampires and werewolves and angels and demons and shapeshifters, oh my! But in all six of my novels to date, I haven’t written about anything more other-worldly than a house cat. (Incidentally, I have a theory that cats are actually aliens come to observe us. Stare into a cat’s eyes for a bit and see if you don’t agree.)

I could probably reach a much bigger audience with my books if I did write paranormal, or if I alternated paranormal with my women’s fiction, and I’ve even had a few paranormal book ideas. So why don’t I write them?

Because, frankly, I’m not a paranormal being and I don’t want to read about them. I love to read about real people, people like me. Marian Keyes, one of my favorite authors, does such an amazing job with her characterization that I believe wholeheartedly in those people. They live and breathe and carry on with their lives even when they’re not on the page. I want to do that with my books too, and I’m so happy when a reader tells me, “I feel like your characters are my friends.”

I have no doubt that this level of connection could be achieved with paranormal creatures as well, and I’m certainly not suggesting that authors who write paranormal don’t care about making their characters believable. For me, though, I would rather write about true-to-life situations, about things that I or the people around me have faced, and explore the depth of happiness and sadness in our regular lives.

I’ve written about:

• choosing between a husband and a returned first love (my free-to-download novel “Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo)
• deciding whether your art should be a hobby or a career (“Go Small or Go Home”)
• letting go of resentment and anger so you can move forward in life (“Seven Exes Are Eight Too Many”)
• learning to live in the present rather than obsessing over the future (“Planning to Live”, which was reviewed right here on Proud Book Nerd)
• choosing between a man and a career (“Stir Until Thoroughly Confused”)
• listening to yourself and doing what you need (my newly released “A Life That Fits”)

I enjoy putting my characters into these difficult, but still normal and everyday, situations and watching them learn more about themselves and who they are as they extricate themselves from the mess I’ve made for them. I enjoy it more because they’re real people to me. I can understand them and get into their heads, and even when they don’t do what I would have done (which happens surprisingly often – one of the big things I’ve learned in my years of writing is that the author is not remotely in charge once the story gets rolling!). I can learn things about myself from what they do and how I feel about it. I’m not convinced I could learn as much from the struggles of a paranormal being who is nothing like me.

Readers of Proud Book Nerd, I’d love to know what you think! Do you prefer to read about real people? Or is it more fun to read about the vampire or werewolf you’ll (with any luck!) never meet in real life precisely BECAUSE you’ll never really have that encounter? Or do you read both at different times, and if so what makes you pick one over the other?

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Thank you, Heather, for a great post. And now for me to answer your questions …

For me, I tend to read both. I enjoy paranormal and fantasy because sometimes it’s fun to suspend reality for a little while. With fantasy, the appeal is delving into a whole new world that I never would’ve dreamed of on my own. With paranormal (which for me means fantasy-type characters in today’s world), the appeal is having the real world without all of the rules. Exceptions to the rules. Unexpected exceptions to the rules. New experiences in parts of the world I could visit myself. For the more realistic stories, I like how very easy it can be to relate to the characters. Their day-to-day lives (especially when the books feature a bookworm or someone in the publishing/newspaper industry), their relationships. It’s neat to get inside someone else’s head, and examine things from different perspectives. Consider life in ways I might not have done so on my own. And sometimes, yes, the characters are almost friend-like by the time I’m done reading. (I hate when those stories end, but visiting with my new “friends” is one more incentive to read the book again!)

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U = Updike, Urquhart, and Upton

U has proven to be a difficult letter for me. According to Goodreads, I haven’t read anything by an author of the U variety. So I considered book titles. No better, as I have read very few books with that title. And the ones that I LOVED have already been highlighted. Unearthly was part of the letter H, and the Unicorn Saga series was mentioned as part of the letter L. And nothing on any of my lists (read, to-read, etc.) fits, either. (Something tells me X, Y, and Z won’t be much better.)  So, here goes nothing.

John Updike was the only author whose last name I could think of, and I don’t think I’ve read anything of his. It’s possible I have – in high school – but if I did, it obviously hasn’t left much of an impression!

After Updike, I was stumped, so I Googled author listings. I eventually found a listing of authors on Wikipedia, wherein I found Emma Maree Urquhart. I have never heard of her before, but she’s a Scottish YA fantasy author. And quite young, too. I like fantasy. I like YA. So I just might have to check out her series, Dragon Tamers. Hopefully the library here has it!

For lack of another author who fit the bill, I remembered Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, and apparently several other works. I have not read a single one of his books, and likely never will. I know enough about The Jungle – it’s an expose of sorts of the meat-packing industry, and takes place in Chicago (my hometown area) – to have no interest in it. I prefer ignorance, so far as what could possibly occur to the meat that I eat. Yes, I know, regulations and such are much stricter, but this is one topic for which I STRONGLY prefer ignorance!

And there you have it. My three authors. I’m impressed. Didn’t think it’d happen. Sorry for no pictures. Tune in tomorrow for V.

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S = Sullivan

I am so excited that S is finally here! I’m not kidding. Michael J. Sullivan is today’s author, and he is by far one of my favorite fantasy authors EVER! His series, The Riyria Revelations, is one I’ve talked about many, many times here on Proud Book Nerd. You see, I read his first book, The Crown Conspiarcy, shortly after it came out. This is the book that reminded me why I love to read.

To make a long story a bit shorter, I shall try to explain. You see, I had the joy of reading killed in me. As many of you know, I have a degree in English. That means literature, which means tons and tons and tons of required reading. And writing about that reading. And reading some more, and even some rereading. Degree in hand, I ended up working in newspaper publishing. As a copy editor for a few years, I got paid to read. That’s what I did. I HATED what I was reading (news is so boring), but it was my job. Because I spent 8 hours most days at work, most of which were spent reading, I didn’t enjoy reading at home too much. I switched to a less reading-intensive job, but still couldn’t find my love of reading.

Then came The Crown Conspiracy. I gobbled that one up, and haven’t looked back since. I have read the first five books in the six-book series, and eagerly await the final chapter. (For those who don’t know, Michael recently signed with Orbit, who is completely revamping the series. I am very much looking forward to the new releases. You can find out more on Michael’s blog HERE.)

THANK YOU, Michael, for helping me to fall in love with reading all over again. And double thanks for also getting me back into fantasy!

Now that I’ve gushed, here’s the true meat of the post. Michael kindly wrote a guest post for today.

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Voices

By Michael J. Sullivan

Although I still suffer from chronic depression, I don’t hear the voices anymore. This is what a man actually said to me at one of my first book signings. He stopped, turned over one of my books, nodded, and then gave me this gift – the first line for a book I hope to one day write.

I collect first lines, sentences that people throw away not realizing their worth. Once while driving my son and his friends home from a trip to the video game store, one of the kids in the back seat said, “I’m the world’s most unluckiest person; whenever I throw something in the trash, I miss.” I kept repeating that in my head until I could find pen and paper. For a writer it’s like finding a twenty on the sidewalk.

Lately it feels more like I’m becoming a hoarder. I’m a fantasy writer and these sentences lend themselves more to literary fiction, or clever short stories filled with porch swings, estranged brothers, and the ghost of a childhood dog or perhaps a goldfish. I don’t do much of that. I write about sword swings, strange brotherhoods, and ghosts of wizards – or perhaps a goldfish. When you think about it, ghostly goldfish are just one of those things that work anywhere.

The point is that I keep these things in files and notebooks but never use them. I take them out occasionally. I look at them like jewelry and try them on the way a widow might while thumbing through photo albums with yellowed pages. They are the keys to a car I don’t drive anymore. It lies under a tarp in the garage and quite frankly, I’m not even sure it will even start. Still, I remember the way it used to roar once upon a time, and how it ate the open road. And the road was open back then, back before I was published.

I’m not lamenting getting published, that’s like cursing about dying and going up instead of down – but it does close doors. They aren’t locked. I could force a few open if I worked really hard, but that’s the thing. After struggling for decades to get to the mountain, it’s hard to even think of hiking another. But you see, I never intended to be a fantasy author. I guess I never intended to be any kind of author. I never knew there was a choice. I assumed it was more like a buffet and you could go up for seconds and thirds. The first trip is really just to taste stuff anyway, to see what you’ll load up on the second trip. Only it doesn’t work that way. Once you leave the runway and the landing gear is up there isn’t much going back. I established a fan base of people who like what I wrote – not what I might want to write. After forcing them to develop a taste for lighthearted adventure, I expect they will be peeved if my next novel is about the tormented mind of a serial killer driven crazy in contemporary Detroit. Maybe he’s the one with the ghostly goldfish – a fishy Caesar, who decides who dies like a less humorous, less corporal, Audrey II.

Instead I need to play to the audience I made. I entered into a contract with them, a contract I didn’t know about until after I signed. I mean honestly, who knew that when I was bored one day and started writing a nutty, medieval, six-act opera about a self-serving thief and an idealistic soldier that it would be the one. I wasn’t even taking it seriously. I didn’t care. I had written dozens of books and even more unfinished beginnings that went nowhere. This was no different. But it was, and now I look back across the piles of science fiction, horror, mysteries, and coming-of-age tales, and I take out my first sentence jewels and put them on. I glance at myself in the mirror and wonder what might have been.

Back in the drawer they go, and the albums fold and slide away. Like I said, I don’t regret being published, but it closes doors that once were open; doors through which blew exotic breezes. Winds from distant lands where I will never venture and over seas I shall never sail.

Although I still suffer from chronic depression, I don’t hear the voices anymore.

My problem is that I still hear the voices.

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Wow, Michael! Maybe one day you will get to explore those new lands. I’d love to see what else you can do.

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