Anyssa

Someone asked me about the pronunciation of Anyssa's name. I realize it's not a common name, since I've only encountered one person named that. He asked if it was pronounced Alyssa, but it's not. It's Anyssa, and one of the other werewolves in the book calls her Nyssa. I might make a youtube video about this, but right now I only have a cell phone to record myself, plus I'm not that interesting. Basically the Y makes an I sound.

Casual Friday: My Little Editors

My pets are such a big part of my life that I can't believe I haven't posted about them before. The picture above was taken when they were about seven weeks old. We had to get them one of those baby play pins because they would walk around the house and eat food, making a mess. Now that they are older, they are always by my side when I'm writing. I almost always have one of them on my lap when I'm at my computer. Whenever I have a bad day I can't wait to get back to them, since they cheer me up.

 I dressed Sayu up for Halloween one year.

How do the werewolves in my novel compare to other werewolves?

Someone recently asked me how my werewolves compare to other werewolves. Do they walk on two legs or four? Are they normal wolves or some type of monster hybrid? How are they created? Are they born or bitten? Since it's getting closer to the day when I'll finally be able to publish my novel, I decided to talk about my werewolves. Anyssa Marshall, the main character of my book is a werewolf, and she was born that way. Since she's a purebred she can transform at will, and she doesn't have to transform her entire body. She does transform during the full moon, but she is always aware of her wolf. That doesn't mean she has full control, but she can sometimes stop the wolf from doing something she does not agree with. The werewolves in my story can also be created through bites or scratches, but they are not welcomed into a pack and usually die fairly soon after being bitten/scratched. They also can not transform at will. Anyssa and the members of her pack transform into 'regular' wolves, only a little bigger.



Also, here's some trivia for those of you wondering where I came up with the name Anyssa: A customer at one of my past jobs handed me a check and when I checked her id I noticed her first name was Anyssa. I had never heard of the name before and asked her to pronounce it. I loved the way the name sounded, and it must have stuck with me. I met this customer in 2009, and didn't start writing this book until 2011. I took a break from this book to write about zombies, but started writing this again when I saw it on my laptop and started reading through. I kept thinking, this is the kind of story that I would love to read.

My LEAST Favorite Books

I've done a bunch of posts on my favorite books, and books that have inspired me, but today I wanted to do a post on books I hate. Some of these books I've actually read to the end. I also want to say that just because I didn't like these books doesn't mean that you will dislike these books. I've already had someone bashing me for my amazon review of one of these books, but we'll get to that in a minute.

I got this book because Barnes and Noble suggested it to me after I bought the Sookie Stackhouse books. I was waiting for the new Sookie Stackhouse book to come out and thought it would be cool to read this while I waited. I wasn't aware that this was the second book in a series, but you can read this book without reading the first. In the book Elena Micheals, the only female werewolf, is captured to be part in a crazy game where supernaturals kill each other. The entire book is Elena wishing Clay would save her, or whining about missing Clay. She came off as one of the weakest characters I had ever read. I also hated the tv show, which is basically just a rip off of true blood.

This is the book I got attacked for my review on. Another amazon reviewer said that I must not be very intelligent if I didn't like this book. Sorry to break it to you, but intelligence is not measured by what books you enjoy. I honestly think a better name for this book would be the art of forcing you to get on anti-depressants. This book is told from the point of view of a dog. The book actually starts off with the dog about to die!! I have two dogs and didn't want to read that. The dog follows his boring master through college and onward. His master falls in love, has a kid, his wife dies of cancer. After the man's wife dies he gets accused of having a "relationship" with an underage girl, so his daughter also gets taken away. I had to read this book for school, I never would have picked something like this on my own.

What's a Stephen King book doing on this list? Well, it's not that it was poorly written, or anything like that, I just didn't like the book. Stephen King has always been kind of a hit or miss author for me. I like some of his work, but hate some of his other books. This and Insomnia are the worst two Stephen King books I've picked up. I didn't finish either of them.

I bet a lot of people have never seen these books before. Sometime around the time when Final Destination 3 was released New Line Cinema partnered with Black Flame Publishing to give you these crappy books. I actually collect them, not because I like the stories, but because I'm a huge fan of horror movies. The content inside the books is mostly original, there are a few novelizations. These books are basically poorly written fan fictions. The ones by Natasha Rhodes are the worst of the worst. Some of the Nightmare on Elm Street ones actually had decent ideas behind them, but these books are still poorly written. I might do a collection post on them in the future.

Weekend Review: The Hunger Games

I know I'm way behind in reading this book, and I couldn't say much about the book without spoiling it for those who haven't read the book or seen the movie. I probably put it off because I didn't want to read about war, but this book wasn't really about a war. The entire time I was reading the book I kept thinking that the hunger games could happen. I loved the movie too, but I probably do need to rewatch it, since I couldn't spot many differences. The scene with Rue (in the book) is one of the most heartbreaking scenes I've ever read. Peeta was a sweetheart, doing things to help Katniss because he was in love with her. I did wonder what the capital was up to while the kids were fighting to the death, since the book was told from Katniss's pov, we didn't get to see what they were up to. I loved this book, but I don't want to say much about it, since that would spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it/seen the movies.

FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS



BUY THE BOOK IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY

Casual Friday: Weekend Plans

I couldn't really think of anything to blog about today, so I guess I'll just leave you with my weekend plans. Since I don't get out much they will be pretty bland. I'm going to be reading Horns by Joe Hill (I've actually already started, it's pretty good), I'm going to watch Thor the Dark World. I know I'm behind in seeing that, but I like Captain America way more than Thor. Thor is actually one of my least favorite heroes. I'm also going to try to watch Bedlum, it's a British tv show about ghosts, and Being Human, also a British tv show about ghosts (and vampires and werewolves). I am going to work the rest of the weekend.

My favorite Goosebumps books

In an earlier post I said that Goosebumps were some of the books that helped me get into writing. It's been a long time since I've read a Goosebumps book (like I said, I would love for R.L. Stine to write an adult Goosebumps book and have a lot of his characters come together in a mental ward. Slappy can be one of the toys they use to entertain them, they can have a pet hamster like in monster blood, and Carly Beth can be obsessed with making masks). Anyway, I decided to list the Goosebumps books that I remember as being some of my favorites.

The Haunted Mask is the first book that I've ever read in only a day. Goosebumps books are so short that you can do that, but I would usually take a break when I reached a certain chapter and pick up later on. I think this was the first Goosebumps tv episode they aired too.

The Haunted Mask 2 was not only one of my favorite books, but one of my favorite episodes.

Who loves Goosebumps that doesn't love Slappy? For some reason I never read the first night of the living dummy, but my mom bought me this one when we went to walmart. I remember being drawn to the pink and green cover. I'm pretty girly, and I've always loved scary stories. This was the perfect mash up.

I also loved the complete monster blood series, but settled on this cover because it was the cutest. I am girly, remember?


There were a dozen more that I loved, but I can't remember a lot of them now. Hopefully seeing the new Goosebumps movie (starring Jack Black) will jog my memory.