Went to go watch “Prince Caspian” with BF at the theater today, and I was pleasantly surprised. I usually hate book to film adaptations, but I had a lot of fun watching PC. Although, they did something with Susan and Caspian’s relationship that made me want to kick the screenwriter/s. It IS possible for a girl and a boy of similiar age not to feel attracted to each other, but they had to put in a stupid love sub-plot that was just plain retarded in my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong. I thought it was cute, but it was just…worthless.

Ben Barnes made a very convincing Prince Caspian, although I wasn’t too hot on his accent. BF thought the youngest Pevensie, Lucy, was quite possibly the ugliest little girl he’d seen, while I strongly disagreed with him. Personally, I thought Susan wasn’t as pretty as she could have been, but eh, beggars can’t be choosers. Edmund and Peter were very good in their respective roles, and the movie made me want to read the series all over again.

My only beef with the movie was the stupid love plot thrown in sort of haphazardly, and I heard somewhere that the actress who played Susan, actually asked for that plot! I think she said something about how a guy and girl were of an age to have feelings for each other, blah blah blah, but I think all she wanted to do was have an excuse to kiss Ben Barnes.

Not that I blame her. Caspian was a pretty delectable character.

But you all know I’m more partial to mature guys. Aragorn, anyone? *drool*

This isn’t really a complaint, but they did take a lot of liberty with the actual plot of the story, and to be honest, I hadn’t expected Prince Caspian to be so…old.

Next week, we’ll be watching Iron Man and Indy Jones #4, so I’m sure I’ll find plenty more to bitch about then. Ehehe.

Anyways, on to the writing news.

I got about 2k/10 pages down for the new short story tentatively titled “All That I Hold Dear” that I’ve got some vague idea about sending it away somewhere. It might not even be a short story…could just end up being a full length novel, but then again maybe not.

I’ve also got an idea about a new YA fantasy novel that’s been cooking in my head for a while, but I didnt have enough time (read: courage) to pull it out. I’m starting work on the characters, and it looks like it’s going to be one hell of a writing challenge.

Eve’s story is still going strong, although I’m starting to feel happy that I’ve decided to rewrite the whole thing. It certainly can’t be any worse than what it was before.

I love my new header banner.

The original pic is a bit, er, risque. You can’t exactly see “everything” but trust me, the original leaves little to the imagination. The model is awesome. He’s the same age as me, and I have an extreme fondness for his photographs, although some would said “You only like them because he’s nekkid” and to that I can only say, “No!”

Well, not exactly. There’s a classiness to all the nekkidness, although I really must wonder what BF would say about this. Hopefully nothing.

I still love him best.

Anyways, enough about him. Let’s talk about Eve, shall we?

Eve being Walking in Shadows aka A Touch of Shadows.

It’s going. That’s about the best I can say about it. It’s going, plodding along, but hey, it’s getting somewhere, and I’ve got this fond hope that it’ll be done by the end of July.

On to other news.

Actually, I was listening to Yoko Kanno’s “Is It Real?” and I got this idea for a short story that I might take the time to do, while editing Eve. Don’t know too much about what kind of short story this will be, but I’ll keep you posted.

Anyways, it’s 12:26 AM and I’m cozy with a full pot of hot coffee so it’s off to Wordsland I go.

Tally Ho!

Oh my lord.

Daughtry!

Why the hell did it take me so blasted long to learn of this man/band’s existance?!

Chris Daughtry and his band is EXACTLY what I need to get Eve’s story told the right way. Especially the songs “It’s Not Over”, “What I want”, and “There and Back Again”, is just perfect, perfect, perfect. Give me a second while I go and wipe the drool off my keyboard.

“Home” is hot.

Twenty four pages of rewriting. I shit you not. Writing from 10 to 4 in the bloody morning.

And I don’t mean, 24 pages of just going over the manuscript. I mean, actually rewriting the whole darn thing on a different file. Sheesh. Dunno why I can’t get that much done in broad daylight.

I’m dead tired. I’ve only slept about three hours, and I’ve consumed eight cups of coffee over a four hour period. Between rushing to the bathroom and shuffling to the coffee pot, I’m just lucky I managed to get that much done in the first place.

Well, I’ve fixed a number of problems in the manuscript. I’ve brought up Vincent in the first chapter, but I’ve had it where Eve knows who he is, has heard of his reputation, but considered herself lucky that she’d never had to meet him. I’ve made her sound more like she’s in the loop about how things are going in the Underworld, and she’s less snarky. Okay, bitchy might actually be the more correct term. I was going through the second draft and I realized that not only does she make a bunch of mean/uncalled for comments, but she came off as quite immature.

So really, this whole rewriting thing is good for the book.

Just…not…good for me. Nor my mood. I’ve been snapping and nitpicking at BF for the past few weeks, my nerves completely frayed at the edges. I’d like to think that he understands and knows that, eventually, I’ll stop acting like I’m bipolar (Which I am not, I assure you) but he might not. Eek.

I want the first Eve book to be perfect. I’m not a perfectionist, not by any means, but this first one, I want it to be spotless, pristine.

But I don’t want it at the cost of my sanity.

Hell no. Nothing’s worth that much.

Yoko Kanno is a God.

I’m serious. I don’t know what it is about her music, but it makes me laugh, cry, the whole gamut. In fact, I feel like I’m on crack when I go through her entire discography…which is quite impressive. I missed out on a chance to see her at Anime Expo in ‘02 (I went in ‘03) and I’ve been kicking myself since.

‘Course back in ‘02, I didn’t even know who she was.

Now I do, and I say that she is a God.

She is a God, I say!

My apologies for anyone who has now branded me as a heretic.

Anyways, I’ve been thinking about Eve and what the heck is going wrong with the story and why I cannot seem to come to a decent conclusion. I’ve been running into a bunch of obstacles. As a preternatural investigator who deals with all things that go bump in the night, you’d think that she knows who the four vamp lords of Centennial, but it’s painfully obvious that she doesn’t. So. That leaves the reader with three answers.

1. She’s pathetically dense.

2. The vamp lords have absolutely no power over the city and no one knows anything about them nor who they are in the first place.

3. The writer made a big mistake and obviously wrote the story while being blind and half demented.

And you know what? I’m pretty sure that they’ll be thinking all three. I’m also pretty sure that they’d be right about the third one.

Argh!

I said I was rewriting the ending.

Yes, I know. I was so, so wrong.

I’m going to have to rewrite the whole darn thing. Bah!

Anyways, I’m off, but before I go, I’d like to share one of my favorite songs composed by the God that I have spoken of above.

This is “Is It Real”, vocals by Tim Jensen (At least, I think it’s Mr. Jensen. Could be Steve Conte. Hm) and composed by Yoko Kanno, aka God.

Is It Real? (From the Cowboy Bebop OST)

Yesterday morning, I got up at the godawful hour of 5 to write. No, that’s not entirely true. I don’t know why, but as soon as I opened my eyes at 5, I just could not go back to sleep. Maybe it was because the sun completely flooded the room with light at that hour, making it impossible to go to sleep. Or maybe it was because my boyfriend kept pushing me out of bed. Such a bedhog.

Or maybe it was because Eve was calling, screaming, shouting my name, telling me that I had to hurry up and tell her story before it’s too late.

Too late for what?

Damned if I know.

Long story short, I managed to squeeze out 4 pages, and at the end, I felt exhausted. It’s just not writing out, and I’m thinking now that maybe I need to rewrite again. I feel like I’m wringing out my brain here, and it’s not working. I’m starting to lose touch with Eve, Vincent, Ryder and hell, even Harrison, even though he’s a sadistic SOB.

I’m going to try to jump back into the story now.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get something done today.

Someone’s been a bad, bad girl.

Mainly me, but I’m sure there’s also a few million bad, bad girls out there in the world. Are you one of them?

To tell the truth, I just haven’t been doing any writing, instead opting to procrastinate like crazy. I can’t remember the last time I played so much Sims 2 or watched so many various TV shows.

Although, I really do have no excuse for working.

On Thursday, through a botched download involving some program that I don’t even remember now, my laptop got attacked by some sort of Trojan/Internet hijacker and despite the fact that I had about three different virus/spyware programs, this pesky thing resisted all attempts of me trying to throw it out on its ear.

After spending about five hours wrestling with it, I decided, “What the hell” and took it to the computer repair store just down the store. See, the good thing about Korea is that it has everything you need, at any part of the country, just a few blocks from one’s residence.

Three hours later, I was the proud owner of a faster computer with Windows XP. Yep. Remember when I was bitching about Vista?

Bye bye, Vista, I ain’t missing ya.

Now, if you’ll excuse, I do believe I’ve got some writing to do.

I find myself having to rewrite the first Eve book. Well, not the entire book, thank God for small mercies, but I’m rewriting the ending. That’s about 20k down the drain, but what’s a few thousand words here and there when it’s for the good of the entire book?

It’s the big fight scene between Eve and Harrison, and it’s going by ridiculously slow, and although I’ve been writing for about an hour, I’ve only got three pages down, which is just torturous for me. It could be worse, but I’m not even going to go down that alley of thought, trying to decide how much worse this could get.

I think the problem is music. When I write, I listen to music. I can’t write without music. Music, the words, the emotion is a catalyst to my mind and the stories flow from my fingers to the computer screen.

God, that was dramatic, but I’m a writer, and I’m entitled to the occasional dramatic moment.

I can’t seem to find the right sort of music for this last scene. I’ve tried listening to Revis, Rob Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Seether, Atreyu…and nothing helps. Just about the only thing I haven’t tried is Cradle of Filth, and I don’t think I need to try CoF to know that it probably won’t work as well.

Gah! Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma.

I think I need to go and look up some new bands to headbang to.

The time is 8:13 PM and we are at Yook Island.

I know I said that I wanted to go to a secluded island, but I didn’t mean so secluded that it didn’t even have a convenience store. We meant to stay here until Monday morning, but I think we’re going to leave tomorrow morning, Sunday morning, to be exact. It’s a good thing this place is a beachhouse with an extra nice landlady who doesn’t mind cooking food for my BF and I, otherwise I do believe we would have starved to death.

Okay, so I’m being a bit melodramatic, but there really is nothing on this island except for beachhouses and the, er, beach. There seems to be construction going on at the far end of the island so there’s this really noisy truck that goes by every ten minutes or so.

My BF says that I’ve hit the jackpot on crappy islands to visit.

All in all, this place wouldn’t be that bad if only it had a place where we can buy toilet paper and water. Unfortunately, we weren’t so lucky, so tomorrow morning, we’re going to try our luck at another island nearby. It’s a bigger island, so I can only assume that said island will have a convenience store, or at the very least, a place that will sell us toilet paper and water.

At least the beachhouse we’re staying at is a fairly nice one. Secluded, quiet, large open space, I’m hoping that I can get some writing done after dinner. Not a lot, maybe just an hour at the most since we’ll have to be up before 10 if we want to get off the island.

Well, I’ve started work on the second Eve Faulkner yesterday and I’m about ten pages into it. I’m thinking that, for this book, Eve’s got to contend with a book that is evil through and through. But beyond that, I have no idea. My writing process is usually pantsing the first three chapters to get a feel for where the book wants to go, and then for the rest of the book, I write up a chapter outline. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Let’s call it a working process, yes?
  

The night before the vacation and I am not ashamed to say that I have not done a speck of writing this entire day. I spent it downloading horror movies for the trip and packing a ridiculous amount of clothes that I probably won’t have time to wear.

Then I spent the remainder of my free time unpacking my duffel bag when I realized that I could not take more than three steps with it so full and bursting at the seams.

There is still a part of me that thinks I’ve overpacked, but you know, ’tis better than to have too much than too little.

I’m sure some clever man in every century has said something like this, only with more flowery language, making it look more impressive than what I have for you today.

Will check back in tomorrow when I am on a secluded island with a cocktail at my elbow and the sun at my back.