Looking At Old Posts

Posted: June 21, 2012 in Reflections
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You know, I always find it interesting when I see that someone has been reading an older post. And you know, this happens a lot, to tell you the truth: not a week goes by that it doesn’t seem like someone’s been reading one of my Saturday Night Live reviews, and it’s either the bad one I gave Lindsay Lohan or the good one I gave Jonah HIll.

And just yesterday, someone was reading one of the earliest posts I’d ever written, back when only my parents and a few friends knew I’d set up a blog. I can’t help but wonder how people stumble across these posts and what they think of them. And if they’re from a non-English speaking country, what do they think of the post, whether or not they speak and read English? To me, it’s an unsolvable mystery, but it’s one I enjoy contemplating very much.

Oh, a few updates for you readers, before I go:

1. I’ve heard from some magazines and an agent recently, and they all say they’ll have their answer to the work I submitted to them soon. So excited.

2. That short story I came up with while meditating? I finished it last night after Jon Stewart. I won’t get to editing it for a while, but I think it has potential. After all, I put psychic phenomena and the 2012 End-of-the-World theory into it. What’s not to like?

3. This afternoon, after I leave work and volunteer for a little while at the Obama campaign, I’m going to go see Prometheus! I’m almost bouncing in my seat, I’m so excited. I’ll write a review about it later tonight if I have the time.

All for now, blog to you later.

Review: Book Girl series

Posted: June 19, 2012 in Review
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The Japanese cover for “Book Girl”, featuring Tohko Amano on the cover.

Remember a while back I wrote a post about a Japanese book series called Kieli? If not, I’ll leave a link at the bottom so you can check out the exact post, but I want to talk about another Japanese light novel series: Book Girl by Mizuki Nomura. It’s very different fromKieli, but it’s still one heck of a series. The books follow Konoha Inoue, a teenager who wrote a highly successful romance novel in junior high under a girl’s name. However, the success of the book came at a steep price, and Konoha does not want to ever write another novel, or anything again for that matter.

Then one day in high school, he meets Tohko Amano, an upperclassman (or upperclasswoman, though I don’t think that’s a word) who eats books. No, she really does eat books! And when Konoha discovers the secret, he become’s the second member of the literature club, forced to write short stories as snacks for Tohko. Even worse, Tohko keeps getting him wrapped up in strange mysteries that always seem to resemble different famous novels (sometimes Japanese, sometimes not). What’s a guy trying to move on from trauma and shame supposed to do?

Te novels are very interesting, as I’m kept guessing at every turn, especially when it’s a Japanese novel I’ve never heard of that’s being used for the plot. Even when it’s a novel I’ve heard of, seen an adaptation of, or read though, I can never guess how the mystery will be resolved or how the story will end. It’s perfect for mystery fans with a knowledge of literature, and the characters feel very real to you, especially Konoha, who every moment struggles with his past. Interspersed throughout each book, we can find pieces of the literature used in the novel or the dark musings of characters as they struggle internally, adding a bit of spice to an–as Tohko might say–an already delicious piece of storytelling.

I give this book series–and it’s story-writing and story-eating main characters–a 5 out of 5 for excellent writing and excellent characters.

Oh, and before I forget, here’s that link for the review of Kieli:

https://ramiungarthewriter.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/review-kieli/

The Lucky 7 Meme

Posted: June 17, 2012 in Novel, Writing
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Alright, here’s the latest on the blogosphere: apparently quite a few blogs are doing this thing where if you’re writing a novel or short story, you take your 7th or 77th page (depending on what you’re writing) go to the seventh line, and pull out 7 lines or paragraphs. A few of the blogs I follow did that, so I figured, what the heck? Why not?

So right now, I’m posting lines 7-14 of page 77 of Reborn City, the novel I’m currently trying to market to agents. At this moment of the story, my main character Zahara is getting a tattoo, even though she doesn’t really want to get one. Why does she have to get a tattoo she doesn’t want? I can’t reveal that here, but if you’re an agent and you’re interested, let me know and we’ll talk.

So here’s my Lucky 7 meme:

“Um…yeah, sure. Go ahead.” said Zahara. As soon as Frimms had turned his glance away from her, Zahara closed her eyes. Allah, the Most Merciful and Understanding, please forgive me for this transgression. When I leave the Hydras and return to New York I swear in the name of the Prophet that I will get this tattoo removed, she thought in Arabic. Tattoos weren’t considered cool things to have on one’s body in Sunni Islam; the Shi’ites were allowed to get tattoos, but for Zahara it was much more preferable to get henna tattoos. Zahara figured that if she asked these guys if she could get a henna tattoo they’d probably just laugh or give her a queer look and ask her why she’d want that.

Well, there you go, ladies and gents. I hope that at least whetted your appetites and made you a little more interested in Reborn City. All for now, so bye.

Meditating A New Idea

Posted: June 17, 2012 in ideas, Living and Life, short story, Writing
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I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it on Rami Ungar the Writer, but I’m into a form of Eastern meditation known as Sahaja Yoga. It was founded in the 70’s and the goal is to awaken the dormant spiritual energy inside you so that somebody can not just correct problems in their lives they may be having, but in order to achieve Self-Realization, a form of spiritual evolution. Sahaja Yoga is very popular and easy, and it has followers in over a hundred countries.

Why do I mention this? Because just today I had some trouble with an idea for a short story and I was able to overcome that trouble with the help of Sahaja Yoga. It happened like this:

Just this morning, I woke up with an idea for a short story in my head: what if someone had lived a life, but had forgotten that life through the interference of someone else, and started remembering their former lives after several years? I’m not sure if I’d dreamed that or if I’d come up with that idea while sort-of half-asleep, but when I was fully conscious it sounded like an excellent idea.

Just the one problem: how could I write an original, exciting story with that idea without sounding like I’d stolen someone else’s idea? I sturggled with the idea, unable to come up with an exciting take or angle to work with, until I went to meditation class today. As soon as we started meditating, my mind cleared and all of a sudden my mind was filled with ideas for the story. Eventually, by the end of the meditation, a half-formed story, with names, places, a plot, and even a few lines, was in my head. I could not wait to get home and work on it. but first I thought I’d write a post about it.

Anyone else interested in Sahaja Yoga now? If you want to, there are websites that can help you learn. It’s absolutely free-of-charge to learn, and the people who are apart of it are so nice. Oh and don’t worry, it’s not like a cult: it’s more like those clubs you went to as a teenager where people dressed up as their favorite Star Trek characters, only with potential health benefits.

I’m including a link for a website used among a lot of Sahaja Yogis, and a video where the founder, Shri Mataji, teaches you the first steps to learning to do the meditation. Try it out; you may find that it helps you in your work like it helps me.

http://www.freemeditation.com/

Forward: Volunteering For My President

Posted: June 14, 2012 in Politics and Leadership, Social Activism
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Now, I don’t know what you guys are up to, or how much attention you’re paying to the election (especially if you live outside the United States), but I think it’s important that if you support a candidate and you are able, you should go and try to help support their campaign. And that’s exactly what I’m doing: this evening I went to a house not too far from the Short North and did a phone bank, which basically means I called people during dinner for an hour and a half to see if they wouldn’t mind volunteering. Let me tell ya, the time seemed to fly!

It wasn’t all that difficult, really. The people you work with are friendly, and most of the time you do simple work like the phone bank. It’s the people who are paid to work on the campaign–yes, the ones who are hired by the campaign–who get the hard jobs. I had fun, and I’d like to do it again sometime.

But really, I’m just happy to give back; President Obama has done a lot for this nation, for my family, and for me, and if he and the Democrats are successful this November, they will probably do a lot more for me. With Romney’s supporters doling out the big checks, I’m putting myself out there to show that wo/manpower can beat money (manpower seems politically incorrect nowadays. Is there even a word to replace it?). And I encourage you all to come out and help too if you support the President.

And to the Romney supporters…well, we don’t agree on some issues, but I guess we both feel an obligation to our nation, so I guess help out your candidate in your way too.

I’m leaving a link to President Obama’s website below. You can use it not only to look at his platforms, but also to find volunteering oppurtunities in your own neighborhood. Have a good time!

http://www.barackobama.com/

Review: In Time

Posted: June 10, 2012 in Review
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A poster for “In Time”, detailing in watch-like fashion the date of it’s release (don’t worry though, the movie’s on DVD if you want to see it)

You want to know how I spend the first few hours of my birthday? Starting the previous night, I watch the dystopian science-fiction film In Time on my computer, and then decide to write a post about it…after a couple hours sleep. Well, here’s that post, and can I just say I found this movie powerful? I mean, if the Occupy Wall Street movement wanted a movie that serves as a metaphor for them and the movement, along with the power of the wealthy in this country versus the power of the poor, they’d just have to watch this film.

You know the phrase “Time is money”? In this film, that’s especially true: you earn time, you buy time, you sell time, you lose time, you steal time, and once you run out of time currency, you also run out of life! Lower-class citizens live day-to-day trying to pay debts and have enough to eat while earning their time, while upper-class citizens can live for centuries with the amounts of time they have. Justin Timberlake (who is such a versatile actor as well as a singer) and Amanda Seyfried (who looks a lot like Emma Stone to me) play a ghetto tough and a little rich girl who see the corruption in the system and do everything in their power to upset it, all while being pursued by the police-like Timekeepers. It’s a ton of fun, and it really gets you thinking about things in our current system.

Kudos to the cast for their wonderful performance, and to the crew who made a believable world of corruption and nobody truly living. I give this film a 4.5 out of 5.

Writing In Summer: The Winner

Posted: June 10, 2012 in ideas, Novel, Writing
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Yeah, you heard it here first, folks; the poll is over and the winner for what novel I’ll be writing over the course of summer vacation (and probably beyond) has been decided. Of the 6 votes, 4 went to Idea #1. I don’t know how many of you are/were Math majors, but I’m pretty sure that’s the majority. And as having the most points gets you the win, Idea #1 is the winner! Somebody drop confetti from the ceiling!

Alright, for those of you just tuning into the Rami Ungar the Writer program, I’ve already written one novel–part of a trilogy–that I’m trying to market to book agents. However while I’m doing that, I’d like to be kept busy writing-wise. I don’t have short story ideas always on hand, and I don’t want to work on my novel’s sequel until after it’s been picked up by an agent. So instead, I decided I’d work on a different, unrelated novel over the summer. Problem is, couldn’t choose between 2 very good ideas, so I left it up to my readers to decide for me. The readers spoke, and I’ve got my summer assignment (lucky for me being a college student, I can decide whether or not I have summer assignments).

I already said in the post where I announced the poll, “Writing in Summer: What to Do” what the ideas were about, but I’ll give you guys a recap on the idea, with a little more information added in as a bonus. The working title is Snake and it’s about a serial killer killing off members of a certain Mafia family in New York City (if anyone reading this post is or knows someone in the mafia, I’d just like to say this is all fictional, none of the families I’ve created for this story are real, so PLEASE DON”T BE MAD!!!). The interesting thing is, you want to root for this serial killer, but why? And for what reason does he kill (don’t say psychopath, I can garauntee you that’s not it)?

Over the course of the research and writing process, I’ll be posting about the progress of Snake and even throwing in a short exerpt or two. Perhaps a literary agent or an editor in a publishing house will happen across this blog, get interesting in Snake–and my other novel, Reborn City, I hope–and get interested enough. Oh God, I hope that happens.

Alright, now that I’ve announced the winner, I think my first little present to you, my friendly readers, bloggers, and people-who-happen-upon-this-blog-through-sheer-random-websurfing-and-have-stayed-more-than-five-seconds-and-gotten-interested-enough-to-read, shall be a list of things I will research and who/what I might consult for this research (if you have any suggestions, let me know!):

1. An FBI profile of the serial killer (I think I’ll consult some professors versed in clinical psychology at OSU and other colleges; I don’t think the FBI BAU would like me sending them a fake profile, and I’m afraid my knowledge of my killer might get in the way of writing the chapters involving the investigation)

2. Streets/places/homes/apartments in New York City and the Hamptons (I’ll probably talk to a real estate or travel agent, they’d know more about this than I would)

3. The structure and history of various mafia syndicates (there’s gotta be a book on that somewhere, someone’s got to have gone to the trouble)

Actually, that’s it for now, if there’s something else I might insert in a post later. Gotta go now, it’s my brithday today, and I plan on writing a post about it after I’ve had my birthday fun. By the way, woo-hoo! I’m 19! I still can’t legally drink in the US, but it’s still awesome.

Thinking Up Stories

Posted: June 4, 2012 in ideas, Writing
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Well, it’s June 4th. Six days left for the poll I set up in “Writing in the Summer: What To Do” (once again, if you haven’t participated yet, please head there now and vote before June 10th; your votes will help me decide which novel I work on during the summer). And as it gets closer to the 10th, I find myself thinking about the current lead. Actually, I’m thinking about it a lot.

Why? I think the answer to that is obvious; writers write. But in order to write, we have to have an idea of what we want to write. And if there’s one thing in writing I can be one-hundred percent guilty of, it’s that I like to dwell on and come up with scenes and plot points and character issues and a whole plethora of other things for a single story…even when I’m not working on said story. I mean, for both choices in the poll, I have quite a few points in the story fleshed out in detail, from character names to life-shaping events, to individual scenes and plot twists, and on one of the stories I’ve analyzed over and over why I’ve given one character the name he has (trust me, his name says a lot about himself and about the people who may read this story in the future).

So yeah, I’m thinking about choice number one a lot. I’m coming up with certain scenes in my head, dividing up chapters, I even planned out two verbal confrontations between characters at different points in the story while taking a shower last night. I’m also thinking about research and the best options to go with (OSU’s Psychology Department; street maps of New York; interviewing a medical examiner who specializes in forensics), and the inner workings of each character, particularly my anti-hero protagonist.

And until I see choice number two leading in the poll, I’m still going to think about choice number one, though certainly not when I’m doing exams or something important. See you at the end of the poll, when I say who won and give you guys what would probably be the blurb on the end of the paperback version.

This Crazy Weekend (June 1-3, 2012)

Posted: June 3, 2012 in Living and Life
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No seriously, it’s been a crazy (but super-fun) weekend for me. It’s the last week of the quarter, and everybody’s getting ready to move out while studying at the same time. Still, events occur that perk up everybody’s moods and give them a welcome break from studying.

For instance, last night at Hillel (the Jewish organisation on campus, for those of you unfamiliar) hosted the all-Jewish acapella group, the Meshuggenotes, for an awesome concert, in which 9 seniors, one or two I’m friends with, were thanked for all their hard work and wished luck after graduation.

Then today, I found out at the cookout my dorm had that in the Biggest Loser challenge at my dorm, I was actually the winner! Oh my god! Really didn’t think I’d win that, but it looks I did! This’ll encourage to continue eating and working out over the summer! And that’s not all; my floor gathered the most food in a food drive, which means we get a pizza party! I knew buying all those ramen cups in bulk would pay off!

And tomorrow’s probably going to be the biggest thing yet: my sister is graduating from Bexley High School. She’ll be an OSU student like me in the fall, though we’ll be living on separate sides of campus and probably won’t have classes together or anything (anyone who knows us will say that’s probably the best arrangement for all concerned). Congrats Adi! Love you no matter what, and I look forward to you being a Buckeye on campus!

All for now, write a new post later. Oh, and if you haven’t already, go back two posts to “Writing in the Summer: What to Do” and please participate in the poll going on there. Polls open till June 10th, so please vote.

My Favorite Slasher Killers Part 2

Posted: May 28, 2012 in Review, Scary Stuff
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Boy, doesn’t that sound like the title to a slasher sequel! But don’t worry, there won’t be any part 3 or 4 or 11 or anything. After all, I’m just doing Part 2 to cover three killers I missed last time. I also wanted a new category of posts to devote to horror-related stuff, so here’s the new category: Scary Stuff. Not exactly original, but the only thing original about slashers is what you put into them (if you think about that it does ring true).

DEATH

The film poster for “Final Destination” because as I’ve said, there’s no picture of Death.

Of all the slashers I’ve ever seen, this one has got to be the most supernatural of them all. I mean, how can you top Death Itself? And the kicker is you never see Death, except for a shadow reflected in certain surfaces. Most of the time you only see his handiwork, Rube Goldberg-like plots that kill anyone who evades Death when it deems you have to die. So creepy.

I’ve only seen the first Final Destination and parts of the second, but definitely see the first. It will blow your mind (not literally!).

THE MINER

Also known as Harry Warden, this killer hails from the Canadian film My Bloody Valentine and its remake. Nobody knows who is really behind that miner’s mask; is it the madman Harry Warden, who went on a rampage one Valentine’s Day and threatened to kill anyone should they try celebrating Valentine’s Day again? Or is it a copycat, someone demented enough to dawn that miner’s suit and kill all the teens in town?

I’ve only seen the remake so far, which but for the ending was good. However, I hear the good one is the original, which I hope to get my hands on soon. Hopefully before the next Valentine’s Day.

The Miner in the remake. Freaky!

GHOSTFACE

Ah, the Scream movies. Wait…let’s start that over. AAAAAAH! The Scream movies! Much better.

Bringing a renaissance to the slasher genre, Ghostface was the killer in every Screamfilm, and each time the person (not just the actor, but the character too!) behind the mask was a different character and had different reasons for wanting to kill main character Sydney Prescott and everyone around her. The killer wears a Grim Reaper cloak and a mask based on Edvard Munch’s The Scream (oh, that makes so much sense), which in the Scream universe is a costume available at any costume store. Also, the killer uses a special device that changes his/her voice to a single, murderous voice and calls the victim before killing them.

Ghostface; he’s much scarier than he looks.

The Scream films were part slasher, part mystery (who was doing the killing and why?) and part satire, as they examined all the conventions of previous famous slasher films, used them, and made fun of them. Still, don’t think these films are comedic–they’re anything but. If you want comedy, see the parody film Scary Movie, which is mostly based on Scream.

I reccommend the first two films, as they were good and scary. The other two just feel recycled, unfortunately.

CONCLUSIONS

So, here are my favorite slashers. If you want to know what makes a good slasher film, let me know. Otherwise I plan to not write again on this subject for a while so as not to scare off any conservative readers. All for now. Bye.

Oh, and check out my last post so as to vote in the poll I’ve set up, if you haven’t already.

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