AH!! This has totally galvanized me.

I already know how my dream agent is, her name is Jenny Rappaport and I've been following her blog Lit Soup (see sidebar). Well... following as in infrequently reading the most frequent post. I'm a really bad blog follower. Feministing.com is probably the one I stay most current on and I only check it every couple of weeks. That's besides the point! Today I checked her blog and look at this post!!!!

I'll quote the things that are what got me so excited and explain why.

"I want the next John Green. By which I mean, I want funny, poignant books about intelligent teenagers. Mainstream YA novels, obviously. But I want to read books about teenagers like me, in high school. I don't want to read about the always popular bitchy sluts, because you know what? I wasn't a popular bitchy slut, and that type of story never has and never will appeal to me as a reader. I know there's a market out there for it, but I am not the right agent for the Gossip Girls series, unless *your* Gossip Girls series is written so well that I fall instantly in love with your writing. (Never say never.)" I have a YA in the back of my mind about a girl transported to a medieval indie music inspired world where all of her really random skills somehow make her the perfect candidate to save the kingdom. (Yes this is cliche' in YA but I won't do it super cliche' like. If you know my writing at all you know I like to play on archetypes and I think I do it pretty well.) She is much like me in high school. So I have a story idea that falls into this category.

"I want an epic fantasy novel that thinks outside the box. This can be done in a number of ways, but the most obvious one is not to do a direct rip-off of Robert Jordan or George R. R. Martin. You don't need an innocent farmboy saving the world to have a wonderful epic fantasy novel. Epic fantasies can have different ideas and yet be incredibly good. I want you to write me one that's *different*. One recent epic fantasy that I adored was THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss, which has plenty of standard fantasy tropes, but totally twists them on their head, especially with his innovative narrative structure. Stories within stories within stories. I want your epic fantasy novel to completely surprise me and overwhelm me and make me believe in the power of the epic fantasy novel to sweep me out of my everyday world. Can you write me one? =)" Wow. Sounds like my future tour de force world politics epic fantasy might be right up her alley. Sometimes also referred to as Xavier world since I still haven't decided if it'll be an alternate universe or not. Just wait there's more...

"I want an urban fantasy. I don't have enough urban fantasies on my list, and I'd like one. Perhaps it would be better to say I want a contemporary fantasy. It doesn't necessarily need vampires or werewolves, because I think those are somewhat played out now." *Cough* Muse novel anyone? A very contemporary urban fantasy novel that isn't about vampires or werewolves. Oh and I'm still not finished.

"I don't have enough romance, period. I want witty contemporary romances like Jennifer Crusie, who I adore. I want sexy historical romances. I want paranormal romances that make me love the characters and the worldbuilding behind them." The Muse novel could totally go paranormal romance too. It's on that thin line between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. I would just need to add a few sex scenes which I think I'm totally capable of and I can already think of where they would fit in the plot. Oh and my writing is SO witty. Not trying to be arrogant. But I think that's one of the strongest parts of my writing. Oh an the Amazon story could totally fall under this too! She might also like the Lewis and Clark story which falls somewhere between Chic Lit, Historical Fiction, and Romance.

"I would love to see a slipstream novel. There are very few out there. I think there could be more. Show me what you've got." and...
"I'm still looking for a great historical fiction novel to fall in love with. Haven't found it yet. Keep sending more." Making of the Treaty anyone? Hells yes. Zebulon Pike? Check.

and finally:
"Because this is a baker's dozen list! Let's throw out a random book description, and see if anyone can write it for me: I want a superhero novel--give me your version of Dr. Horrible in book form with your own original villians and superheroes and plot. Be creative. =)" the Xavier story certainly falls under this category since it's slightly x-men esque although that's not what I originally based it on, it's been pointed out to me multiple times the similarities. My favorite superpower'd character to create: probability manipulation. I had a character named Trix aka Fortune on a super hero rpg once I would love to write her into the Xavier universe somehow.

Can anyone else imagine how perfect this agent is for me? Or actually how perfect I am for this agent. ;) She just doesn't know it yet. Hopefully by the end of this year I'll be querying her with the Muse novel and I have a feeling if it all works out in my favor she'll love being my agent for everything else I write too. It would be a brilliant match because her interests so perfectly match all of my very eclectic future body of work. *sigh* I'm in literary agent love.

Everything works out...

So sometimes my life and the way it winds along this very determined yet sporadic path amazes me. It all just seems to work out perfectly somehow. It's a much longer story than I care to tell right now but to find out that Seattle has the largest community of Icelandic people was super cool. Because I've been thinking about spending a couple year in Iceland doing a masters in comparative literature. Except that I have to speak and understand Icelandic to do so, since I'm taking my writing year in Seattle I looked up to see if I would be able to find anyone to practice with and! lo and behold it looks like I'll definitely be able to. How cool? There's this free online Icelandic course that gets you up through intermediate so I can do that in between writing and learning whatever other language I was going to add during my year off. I still can't decide between Italian or German or French. Although I prefer them in that order... Or maybe Greek! But I'm not sure which one would be the most useful. Obviously Icelandic will only be useful while I'm over there and as a party trick but it will be worth it. The program they have for comparative lit is exactly what I wish I could find in the states. With electives on Horror Literature and Hard Boil Fiction, all genre literature, I'd be in heaven!

Btw. I think I'm going to Seattle over spring break to look for a place to live, maybe a job, plus in general being a tourist since when I move there I won't have time for all that fun stuff. Is 2 months too early to be looking for a job? We'll have to see.

RAWR!! I hate America and I hate people who love America.

I can't even begin to type all the things that bother me DEEPLY about American politics and rhetoric. So I won't bore you with another long rambly, rant driven post. I'll just say this America is not perfect, we do not have a RIGHT to rule the world economically, and although we say we're helping make the world a better place, we're simply not. If we use rhetoric like that we need to back it up. I think America is one of the most dishonest countries around. We use all this false rhetoric and create monsters of it like the red scare (which still pervades today). We don't back it up and we stand by and do nothing when those things happen. I'm starting to rant again. Basically I had another revelation today of how much I do NOT belong at A&M. I can't wait for the next two semesters to be over any quicker. I'm stifled here. I did not want to debate this guy in my American Foreign Relations class today but my professor insisted that I rebut him. At least the professor backed me up.
I think I need to think more seriously about moving abroad. Is it harder? Yes. Might I be happier? I don't know. I really don't know where life will take me but if I talk all the time about how I don't like how America does things maybe I should move abroad. I mean Terry Prachett is British. Aren't their foreign publishing houses that would publish my fiction? *sigh* It's been mentioned by people to me before and I think I need to think more seriously about doing some of my graduate work abroad.
Is it really A&M that's stifling me or is it really America itself? Wow. Big realization. I dunno where this big adventure of life is going to take me.

Good news about publishing...

Well no I haven't been published yet. But I'm sure I will be soon!!! No not my fiction either. That still needs a lot of work. However I know my critical stuff is stellar and until this morning I didn't know that Strange Horizons publishes critical essays! Now if I only knew how to write a query email properly... (don't worry I'm just going to google it). I'm going to see if they'd like me to adapt some of my essays that relate to speculative fiction (which several do). You only get 50 bucks per article but I really don't care about the money. How awesome would it be for someone to read what I thought critically. And care?! I know posting this is premature but it was just fate that I somehow ended up on their website this morning. That is my ultimate dream. Writing fiction is just a side project I do for fun. What I really want is for people to listen to what I have to say about speculative fiction. And believe me when I say that some of it is important to the literary cannon. Oooh I can't wait. But first I need to study for my math quiz today. Then later I'm sending off those query emails!!! They haven't had any true critical essays to publish in awhile either. So maybe they'll be excited too.

I need to leave for class...

But I'm just going to cross the street and catch the bus on the way out. I think I hear it at my stop right now. Oh well. So.... I think I've decided to wait a year to apply for graduate school. Then I can apply early next year and have been able to take the GRE as many times as needed to make a kick ass score. Plus my GPA will be higher after the spring semester than this fall and I'll have had plenty of time to write an amazing critical writing sample (all 20 pages) that will knock the socks off the admission staff. It all just seems much better the more I think about it. However that also means while I'm biding my time somewhere (probably Austin or Houston) I will have time to really get to writing. I'll just got a grunt job somewhere part time for rent money and write full time! Woot. I think this is a brilliant plan and more conducive to both career goals.

Here are my goals for the summer:
-Edit and finish off the Merlin story, submit it for the FenCon Short Story Contest and then do market research on where to send it. According to Amy Sisson this weekend I should look into online publishing because they'll be able to do cooler things with the formatting. According to Kate Sanger I should look into some of the more humorous/light fantasy venues. She said she would email me a more detailed list. They were so nice!!
-Work on the Shep story. Send it off as soon as possible for FenCon writers workshop.
-Keep researching and taking notes for both novels. Which my American Foreign Relations class is really getting my head spinning again about the Xavier world. I'm planning a weekend trip to Austin mid-July to research for the Muse world. But there's plenty of world building I can do here also. WOOT! Which I think I'm going to start on right now. Although I should be working. When do I ever do that?

WOOT! Finals are over.

So I just got back from my McDonald's comfort run after my last final for the first summer session. It's about RIDICULOUS that the next summer session starts tomorrow. What I'll do to be able to leave this place sooner astounds me.
Now I'm able to return to the rpg that misses me and write more (starting tomorrow morning at 7am!) as well as sleep. This weekend I didn't sleep much. But I'm about to go get my comments on the Merlin story. Edit it up and then send it off to apply for ArmadilloCon's writing workshop. Hopefully I will be able to continue cultivating my contacts with writers there for when I (hopefully) move to Austin in a year. Woot! Wouldn't that be sooooo much better than College Station? Yes I think so, too.

Also now I'm able to read again!!! Not stupid history books but all those books I couldn't read yet that I bought the other day. Right now I'm working on Mercedes Lackey's Ill Met By Moonlight. She's one of my standby good authors. I love all her stuff. But there's a lot of other stuff on my shelves too. Oh and last week I finally bit the bullet and talked to my adviser about wanting to go to graduate school. It didn't go as badly as I was afraid it would. Looks like me thinking about taking a year off might be a possibility. I think I want to do my masters at UT, that's what it's looking like now.... So if I don't get in, I doubt I can get in anywhere I want to do my PhD at, I think I'll just move to Austin, get a regular job and write full time for a year. I need to work on my second foreign language anyway and I think ACC offers Italian which is what I want to take. Or German.... Still haven't decided which to tackle next. Any opinions? lol. I love when I write these things like people read them. One day!!!! I'm a secret optimist trapped in a cynic's body. No denying it.

Ok, here's the goal

Fantasy WorldCon 2009 in Montreal, Cananda.

Neil Gaiman is going to be the guest of honor. I'm going to go and meet him, but I'm also going to shop out my novel. The goal is to finish my first novel by then so I can try and get it published. It's in August before grad school will start. When I saw that Neil Gaiman was the guest of honor I knew it was meant to be. Our lives are meant to be tied together. I just know it. That sounds so ridiculous but... he's the whole reason I tried hard enough for the Clarion and even though I failed at entering that I succeeded in thinking of myself as a writer. Now I know if I work hard enough for a year on my novel to finish it, I can go to WorldCon and I just know some publisher will pick up my novel. It'll work!!!!

New ideas and an update

The urge to put an update on me applying for a writing workshop makes me wonder, why? No one currently reads this. It's really only for my own use. Maybe my creative writing prof reads it every once in awhile. Although I doubt that with all the treadmill journals she has to do. BTW I'm a firm believer in treadmilling now. I will most definitely continue it on into my professional career and make my students do it too. Even my lit students. You could kind of tweak it for lit students and instead of writing, reading or if they have papers to write, writing too, but for reading you could change #4 to a reflection on what you read. It would be very helpful I think. Plus then I could see if my students were actually reading or not. lol. YES! Another strategy to ruining my future students lives. Really just enriching and helping them out in the end. But yeah they'll love and hate me all the same. :D I get goosebumps just thinking about it. hehe. Yes I do think I will take too much joy in being a mean ole professor who tries to make people learn. RAWR! hahahaha. ok enough of that.

SO! I didn't make the Clarion. I seriously doubt I had a chance of getting in but I tried. I'm now applying for Odyssey instead. This one seems more beneficial even in a professional way (although meeting Neil is still a life goal now) because its run by a former senior editor for Bantam Dell. HUGE publisher known for its science fiction and fantasy titles (its an imprint of Random House if that means more to you). Her critiques of your work they say are typed and about 1,000 words. How incredibly life movingly helpful will that be! Anyway I only have to submit one story for that under 4,000 words and its due to them by April 10. I'm planning on mailing it WAY before then. If I concentrate just on the Merlin story I should have it done in no time. I plan on staying in town to work and write all Spring Break. How nerdy and lame am I? lol. Oh well. I really think this all worked out for a reason because if Neil hadn't been an instructor for Clarion I never would have even tried for it. But now that I have and have the beginning of two great stories plus a butt load of confidence about myself as a writer I really might be able to do this other one. They say on the website they have around a 50% publishing rate for their graduates. But when you're getting comments from an award winning editor that's not surprising. You'll learn to write better and write to actually get published.

The story ideas I wanted to record for future use are as follows:
A shepherd boy (16-17 in age I think) who becomes an unlikely hero when his village is pillaged. He's shy, relates better to sheep then people and has a smart ass sheep dog who talks.

Also an Amazon woman who doesn't want to be a warrior but a housewife. I thought it would be funny because I'm writing an academic paper on characters who are all warrior women/heroines and don't want the home life. What if it was opposite, where the societal norm was to be a warrior and instead someone wanted to be a housewife. Also my mom is a housewife and people think she doesn't do anything. This would kind of be a tribute to my mom. :D Kind of a parallel to our world where the modern working woman is respected more than the housewife because she's helping contribute monetarily to the household.

Anyway that's all I got for now. More ideas will come to me I'm sure. I think I might do my exercise from creative writing on here later. The making a list thing. I want to make a list of things I'm passionate about. It helps inspire things to write.