The Art of Recovery

As writers, especially new writers, there’s something we come up against in cycles constantly. For me, it’s usually about a month. I begin feeling motivated to write. Every minute I’m thinking of what I can add to make my story come to life. I feel excited, inspired, and confident in myself. Then the questions come.

English is a challenging language. It’s human to question yourself and it’s human to question your writing ability. It takes a special kind of skill to keep everything together while also making sure plots make sense, scenes are being shown rather than told, and dialog is natural. Writing is a juggling act. It’s harder to realize this in the middle of the act.

The questioning of my ability comes like depression. I have a high of writing, then something stupid triggers me. This time it was asking a simple question on Facebook. I was feeling the woes of uncertainty and thought it might be helpful to ask a writing group how I could improve getting people to view my website. A simple answer, meant to be helpful, cut me down.

That’s just how the uncertainty comes though. It wasn’t so much what was said, by the internal conflict within myself wondering if I actually have the ability to write.

The inspirational thought I shared earlier this week was exactly what I needed. I even found it before all this seemed to begin. “Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.”

Well, I choose to keep going. I know I’m not the best writer. I know I have a lot to work on. I’m going to keep writing. I’m going to move forward. Don’t let doubts hold you down. Push through your own barriers. I plan to.

Rogue: By Julie Kagawa

About the Author

Check out my Talon Review for more information on Julie Kagawa.

Story Set Up

(Spoilers for Talon, the first book in the series) We left off with Garrett’s capture from his own group, St George. Now he will have to stand trail for his crimes of protecting the enemies, Dragons. Ember isn’t ready to let the boy she learned to love die for saving them. Fighting the confusing feelings of betrayal and love Ember and Riley embark on the epic mission of rescuing Garrett from his inevitable doom.

Will Garrett be able to forgive himself for betraying his brothers? Can he accept help from his new dragon allies? Will Riley ever be able to trust a soldier of St George? Can Ember forgive Garrett for lying to her?

All this and more in Rogue, the second book of the Talon Saga.

Rating

I decided to at the rating section to help those that may be interested in reading the book have an idea of what they’re getting into.

Rating is a hard thing to do. A simple “I’d give this a pg-13 rating” doesn’t really cut it and could mean a lot of things. On the other end some people wouldn’t read a book if it has any swearwords, some can handle some of the more general swear words but anything that says the F word is off limits and some could care less about language and care more about content. I hope this can give people a better idea on what they’re in for when reading this book.

Language: For the most part they use damn and hell, but the characters will use the occasional F word. It isn’t very often and is used to cuss not sexually.

Violence: Violence is another hard one to determine. You have dragons attacking humans and visa versa, guns shooting others, mentions of death or of killing. Its littered throughout the book with a couple chapters focusing around dangerous activities.

Sexual: They have intense kissing. Nothing else is explicit.

Plot (Spoilers)

We start with an exciting prison break. I especially love the way Garrett talks about Ember in her dragon form. At the end of Talon you’re left with Ember and Garrett discovering each others true identities near the end. It makes sense Garrett would feel uncomfortable around Ember in dragon form.

This book plays around more with Riley and Embers relationship, with a big focus on Riley’s origins. My biggest issue with this book was the Riley backstory. Throughout the book you flash back to Riley before he was the leader of the rogues. Most of what he has to say is just back story we’ve already heard extended.

We also get to hear from Dante more in this book. It’s nice to be on the other side and see what Talon is working on through him.

The story finishes with a double cross from a few dragons pretending to have escaped Talon. We watch Ember battle with the desire to be good, but also have to come to terms with making tough decisions when others morals don’t match her own.

Character Development

Dante: Dante’s character doesn’t so much develop this book as get revealed. Unlike Riley in Talon, hearing how Dante thinks was very interesting. It showed how much he cared for Ember, while still being deathly loyal to Talon.

Ember: Ember grows in a lot of ways. She has to come to terms with this new life. Does she really want to be fighting against Talon if it means killing or is she willing to sacrifices that part of herself in order to help others. She has a battle within herself with her relationship to Garrett. He’s no dragon, and she feels something for Riley she can’t explain. Is it right for her to be with a non dragon?

Garrett: This book is were Garrett really grew on me. Here he has to decide what he wants to be. He’s given up his life as a man of St George and betrayed all the people he swore to defend. He learns to love Ember no matter what she is and once he knows he expresses it to her. He decides he want to fix his own organization if he can. He’s willing to go out on his own to accomplish this.

Riley: Honestly I don’t feel like Riley has much development here. In the end he expresses his desire to go after Ember romantically, but it’s under a truth serum and honestly doesn’t seem like much of a development from how he’s felt before. His back story portions are meant to show how he become a Rogue leader, which is interesting fodder, but his character is shown in the mindset of wanting to leave Talon already. It was disappointing with the title of the book being focused on rogue.

Summary

This was a good book. It keeps you interested enough to keep reading, but after it was over I found myself asking what really happened throughout the story. They don’t move around a lot. The ending was pretty good, I didn’t know what was going to happen until it was happening, then the foreshadowing was clear. A good second book.

Click the picture below to check out Rogue on Amazon

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Climb

It’s interesting to think about how our bodies work. We have these fancy things called muscles, one of the harder words to spell by the way, and these fancy things get bigger. The detailed process of muscle growth is beyond my own expertise, but I think I have a good idea. You push the muscle, whether it be by stretching it out or lifting heavy weights. If your body contains the proper nutrients the muscle grows. The more frequently you repeat this process the more your muscle will grow.

I think the body is a good example for our lives. Sometimes in life we set goals we wish to obtain. We do everything in our power to accomplish that goal only to discover our goal is unattainable. In that moment all we can think of is throwing in the towel. Maybe throw a little fit while we’re at it. We look at something we wish was ours, but have no way of making it so.

It’s easy to see what we don’t have. The more challenging part is to look at what we do have. Even more what we’ve gained as we’ve sought after our goals.

When I started college I had and empty goal. Finish. I didn’t really have something I wanted to achieve, not for real at least. It wasn’t real inside. After one semester life took over and school fell to the wayside. It wasn’t because things were too hard, it wasn’t because I was overwhelmed, it was because my goal didn’t exist, at least not in the realm of school. Part of it was just not knowing what goal I wanted to set for myself.

Years later I got a job I loved, but the only way to keep doing it was to go to school. This time I did commit. I was able to fill my head with knowledge I never thought I was possible of. Now I’m looking for a job I can use that knowledge in, but that wasn’t my greatest take away. My greatest take away was that I could achieve my goals. Knowing I could do something I set my mind to. That’s one of the reasons I’m sitting her at one in the morning. I can achieve my goals. Even better I learned that I could feel satisfied knowing I’d put all the work in.

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

Talon by Julie Kagawa

One of the benefits of my current job is being able to listen to audiobooks throughout the day. I love reading, but between everything else that needs to get done it’s more in my realm to listen. As I listen I think about the stories flow and what I like vs what I don’t like. Are there aspects that don’t make any sense? Yada, yada. I thought I’d take this journey my brain already goes on and turn it into one of my blogs. This weeks book, Talon, by Julie Kagawa.

This will be the basic structure of these reviews. First, about the author. Second, a story summary. Third, I’ll go over the plot. Fourth, character development. Finally, overall readability.

Author

Julie Kagawa is best know for The Iron Fey Series, one I have not read. She’s been publishing books since 2010, according to Wikipedia, beginning with The Iron King, and her most recent publication, Night of the Dragon, the third book in her Shadow of the Fox series. Talon was released in 2014.

The Story Set Up

Talon is written in first person and is told through the eyes of three different Characters. Ember, a young dragon; Garret, a dragon hunter; and Riley, a rogue dragon. It begins with Embers arrival into a new home, Cresent Beach. Talon, the dragon organization, has sent her and her brother Dante her to learn how to live like humans. Their mission is to blend in. While Dante is more comfortable with the task, they both take to it like pros.

After a day of successful blending Ember sees a young man who she immediately recognizes as a dragon. He’s not from Talon, which means he a rogue dragon. A dangerous type of dragon that has abandoned the organization. Her and her brother could be taken away from the mission just from his presence alone.

Meanwhile, a young solider of St George, a dragon hunting organization, is called with his partner, Tristan, to uncover a sleeper dragon in Cresent Beach. They arrive and find some young teenagers being harassed by some older boys. Stepping in, Tristan and Garret easy beat these boys off and are introduced to Ember and her friends.

Plot (Spoilers)

An overly simplified explanation would be to say this is the run of the mill Romeo and Juliet stories. It has a lot of those elements within it, but it is deeper. Initially I was getting a very heavy, Twilight, but with Dragons, vibe. That was whipped away the further I read.

This story has all the right twists in it. You have a young dragon and a dragon hunter, they fall in love. There’s your Romeo and Juliet bit. You have rogue dragon who wants to rescue her from Talon, and he’s got a whole organization of his own. You’re constantly afraid for Ember as she defies all the rules, yet you can also tell she’s getting some special treatment as well.

All in all the story is three course meal and delivers it all pretty well. I can’t recall any point I felt like the story didn’t make sense. I felt like it was exciting and exceeded my expectations of what I thought was going to be a Dragon version of Twilight.

Character Development

This was the spot that really interested me. I love character development within stories. I’ll start with Ember.

Ember

She begins already questioning her place within Talon. This is a natural feeling to have as a teenager, but she’s just the right amount of on the edge that you question if she’ll stick it out or take the risk of leaving. Dante is the ultimate leverage and her relationship with him makes her decision even more challenging.

Throughout the story she builds these relationships with humans that really break down her dragon perceptions. This is were things get a little weird. Throughout the story she begins to refer to “her dragon” as if it’s a creature that lives inside her. While it does make some sense later on throughout this book it seemed out of place for her to talk as though she wasn’t a dragon, but there was a dragon inside of her.

She eventually flees Talon, but it was clear she was looking for a reason anyway. Dante says he’ll go with her, but doesn’t end up coming. This was the ultimate betrayal that made her decision set.

Garret

Garret had the most development. His character begins as hating dragons. His mission is to kill the sleeper dragon. He develops feelings for Ember and even though he hopes she isn’t the dragon, he’s pretty sure she is. Over time he realizes she has feelings like any human would which destroys his entire perception of Dragons.

He begins as a stiff soldier, and becomes more like a teenager by the end. He sacrifices everything he has to protect two dragons, one he doesn’t know and one he’s in love with.

Riley

Riley’s development is my least favorite. His change is basically that he takes more risks for Ember then he would for other dragons. He doesn’t begin narrating till the second half of the book. It feels a lot like a recovery so it could be more reasonable that he and Ember could have deeper feelings for each other. His character doesn’t so much develop as it is revealed through his thoughts once he starts narrating.

Summary

This is a great book. It’s was easy to read, and a lot of fun. It ends with a cliff hanger that makes you want to look for the squeal. I enjoyed it and I’ve continued on. I would probably say the first book would have a pg-13 rating. There’s a lot of language and some violence but neither goes to the extreme.

Personal Review

Over time I hope I can do better with these reviews. I underestimated how much I could write about a single book. My goal is to help other writers get out there. If you’ve got a book I’ll read it. I can review it here and give a brief review wherever it’s posted. Thanks for reading.

Does it have to be good?

The art of writing is so tedious. For painting, while there is definitely structure to it, you have so much liberty to make the project what you want it to be free and clear. People looking at a painting marvel at what it could possibly mean. “How does it describe the human condition?”, “What was the artist feeling when they painted this?”. Someone could be seen as a terrible artist in their day, then after their death suddenly their art becomes priceless.

Writers aren’t so lucky. When writing, everything you do could suddenly be portrayed wrong. Writing is a literal form of story telling, of sharing emotion. If you punctuate wrong, your message will now be misinterpreted. If you use the wrong to, again the message is misconstrued. If you use too big of words some people are left out. If you’re too simplistic, some people feel you’re not educated enough.

All of this creates a challenge for the creative minds of the writers. We want to create just like the painters, with stained aprons and darkened fingers, but when people see those stains they see our mistakes, our weakness, our efforts to become what we hope to eventually be. I don’t think writers need to be perfect in every form they write in. One project can be the ultimate project, the one you look over time and time again. Other projects can be your practice rounds, you’re not looking to be perfect you’re looking to act.

As artists, we struggle breaking free from our shell, art is the expression of the soul after all. As artists it’s our job to support each other not bring each other down. So go out today, find someone’s art and show your appreciation. They need your support, even if the only support you can give is love.

Creativity

I think it would be safe to say everyone has a creative bone in their bodies. Some people’s creativity comes in what they make. Some peoples creativity come in how they make something. Other peoples creativity comes in how they keep things in order.

When I was really young, and my parents were making me clean up the garden or some other chore, I used creativity to get through it. I’d imagine I’d been enslaved and I was working on a way to escape but for the time being I had to complete my chore. This probably sounds terrible, I didn’t feel like my chores compared to slavery in the slightest. I didn’t even think the chores were that terrible, it was just the closet thing I could think of that would match up with my current actions. I’m digging a ditch, I’m a slave or a prisoner of some kind.

That’s how my mind worked. I created an imaginary zone where I could float away while my body continued on working through whatever mundane task I was currently involved in.

That wasn’t my only creative outlet. I loved to draw. When I was really young I used to draw the characters from star wars. I thought I got pretty good. Even then I would create a story in my mind as I drew each line of the character. Sometimes I would simply draw a face, in pencil, and then I would slowly lengthen the characters hair and beard as he progressed through time, then erase it because he got a haircut. All this because even though I was drawing what I was really doing was building a story in my mind.

Even while acting in high school I had to create stories. My character was more then the few lines written on the pages. He’d lived an entire life and it was my job to create that backstory.

Now I go through phases. Sometimes I write, but as much as I love writing it becomes exhausting sometimes. When those times come I resort to drawing. I still stretch some creative muscles, but for some reason it just doesn’t seem as taxing. Other times I’ll turn to music and just listen and admire songs or even creating a bit of music. Nothing worth listening to, but it’s more about creating something then creating something good.

In my writing, I’m trying to make something good. I’m trying to turn my creative thoughts into a tangible artwork. I know I have a long way to go. We all work with a creative mind, when we pinpoint what drives us we become better creators.

Rise Up

Honestly I thought this blog would be easy to write. I was going to base it off the quote “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall” by Confucius. Earlier this week I posted a more contemporary quote from Rocky with a similar tone. I love the lesson. I love thinking of how standing up after a trial is our real victory. As I’ve thought about it, and wrote two entire blog posts about stuff I realized it’s hard to stand up when we don’t even know if we’ve fallen.

Falling seems like such and easy thing to know. It’s when we’ve failed at something right? It’s when we tried and didn’t succeed. It’s when we pushed ourselves as hard as we could but couldn’t reach our goals. Falling was a moment we could recall, a goal not in our hands, a person we aimed to be, but we’re not.

Falling is deeper then that. Falling is depression. Falling is when we look at our life and ask why we don’t seem any more then a mediocre being. Falling is seeing ourselves as a single ant in a colony, one the world wouldn’t miss if we happened to get squished by the big people in the sky. Falling is being swallowed up in a sorrow we can’t define, in a hurt that we know is no ones fault so all we can blame is ourselves.

The hardest part about these types of falls is there is no moment, no indication of how we’ve suddenly ended up three steps down from where we stood a moment earlier. All we know is suddenly we’re looking up at our own foot prints wondering if they’re really ours. Wondering if we only imaged being that high on the staircase of success.

We did stand there. Those are our footprints above us.

Sometimes we need to take a breather. Sometimes we need a snack to give us more energy. Sometimes we need a friend to reach out and remind us of where we once stood, and where we can stand again. Whatever we need to get there, our greatest glory is in rising. We are here to become the best us possible. We become the best us, when we push forward and stand up. If you need a friend, I’m here. If you need to vent to someone, Marco Polo me. No one should stand alone. If anyone feels that way, I’ll stand next to you. I’m not going to agree with everyone’s life choices, but I agree with everyone’s choice to live.

Zedephants

Inspiration is a wonderful thing. It makes something so much easier when it just comes to you instead of sitting in front of a computer screen wondering what in the world you’re going to write next. Today that came in the form of a Zedephant.

If you were to ask me what one of my biggest challenges with writing was I would say, grammar. Obviously. Sorry that was a poor way to start that paragraph, but we all do it. It makes me think of a how I met your mother. Barney constantly says he has one rule, and other rubbish of a similar nature, but the rule’s different almost every time. I digress.

Something that has been a challenge in writing is animals. Why are animals so hard? In a fantasy world you have fantastical animals. Right away you have to make a decision do animals I’m familiar with exist in my world, and are they called the same thing. Avatar: the last air-bender does a great job with this. All of it’s animals are mixes of things we’d recognize. It makes it easy to relate to and the name basically says what you’re looking at. Other creatures are staples that everyone recognizes, Dragons, Fairies, Vampires, Werewolves, etc. These creatures you expect your audience to have some idea of what they’re looking at.

When you create a unique animal you are suddenly stuck with describing it. If you’ve decided to omit the creature that would best match it’s description you’ve suddenly given yourself the challenge of describing something that is almost like something that isn’t that something. Your description would probably be as confusing as this paragraph.

A Zedephant is an elephant. How does a brain work? Look above. Somehow while sitting in a car driving to the zoo we got talking about elephants. To mess with my son I began switching the first two letters for fun, mephant, pephant, zedephant. All those names got me thinking about new animals I could introduce into my fictional world. This lead to my complicated thoughts regarding the challenge of describing those creatures. Thus I present you with a literal form of word vomit.

To be, or not to be

“To be, or not to be: that is the question” Hamlet says as he contemplates the meanings of life and death. That’s a big question we all ask ourselves these days. It’s a big question in the world right now. While we may not be contemplating life and death, we often contemplate our purpose in life. We wonder what paths we need to take, where we may end up, and what we might have to suffer on the road. To be, or not to be.

What part does this play in writing?

For a long time I’ve written casually. Yes, even now these very words are casual and leisurely, but my real burden was whether I wanted to consider myself a writer. I’ve never identified myself as such. I’ve joined groups on Facebook, worked occasionally on personal stories, even started blogs where I could have more freedom and ability to write. I did all this with little commitment. To be, or not to be.

Recently I gained a new perspective. Writing is something I’ve always loved why not work at it? Why not make it into something more then just working on things when I feel like it? I always have the desire, it just comes second to easier relaxation. So I worked to make a commitment for myself. I wanted to write and so I wanted to be a writer. I know I’m no pro. honestly I question my ability daily, but that’s what deciding to be is about. To be, or not to be.

By deciding “to be” a writer I’ve taken on some of the challenges, learning grammar, structure, and all the millions of things that make writing better. I commit to becoming better, taking criticism, putting my work in the eyes of the world. But by doing all that it allows me to stretch the muscles I’ve always wanted to. Become more of the person I always thought I was. I chose “to be”.

I could have just as easily chose “not to be”. In some ways it would have been easier, but in a lot of ways it would be harder. I know as long as my efforts to be a writer doesn’t hurt the people I love more than writing, that I have the power “to be.”

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:”

Inspiration

I think inspiration is a fitting topic for a Sunday morning. Even if you’re not religious Sunday is a day we seek out inspiration. We’ve had Saturday to rest from work, we’ve had a night were we’ve gotten plenty of sleep, or not enough. Sunday can be whatever we want it to be. Now this could be any day in the week, but Sunday is the universal last day of the weekend. The recovery day we prepare for the week again.

Inspiration comes from many things. Some people find God inspiring, some find being in nature inspiring, and some find inspiration through imagination.

When writing stories I think it’s easy to see God’s inspiration on the writers. Often times the stories aren’t fiction at all, but amplified reality. Other’s write stories with a god-type figure that embodies the god they believe in. In some stories the god figure isn’t present at all, but the morals are. In any case, those inspired by God show that in their stories.

I love nature. I love to breath it in. I love to look at it. I love to imagine how it will fit in my fictional world. Looking at tree’s, hills, mountains, fields, etc. I look at them with the eyes of my characters wondering where they might see this, and how would they describe it if they saw it. I think nature takes a big part in inspiring writers.

Imagination is the key to inspiration in writing. For me, the most amazing parts of my story came to me, not while writing, but while thinking about my story during the day. When I was young I would act out the characters’ lives in my backyard, now I just imagine the story like a film playing in my head. Often this imagination dies out as we grow older. Too much real world to deal with. I know imagination is what inspires me to keep writing.

Everyone is inspired differently. These are only a few ways people are inspired. What inspires you? What moves you forward? I think when we answer these for ourselves we can move more smoothly through life.