My rainy day craft box

( The prompts )

Day Four: A female character you relate to. This is another easy one for me. I relate to Leliana from Dragon Age. Let's see, she's highly theatrical, highly sexual, and highly violent all while trying to live a life of religious integrity. No, I wouldn't know anything about that. Not at all. She also tends to playfully joke around when her friends are being serious, and when she's trying to be serious her friends treat her like a joke. That's another feeling I understand a little too well. I may not pull off a sexy Orlesian accent or think that God talks to me, but in every other respect I am Leliana. I am Leliana with a dick.

Fun fact, if you do a Yahoo image search for "Leliana with a dick" the very first image that comes up is this. I'm not kidding! Try it!

( The prompts. )

Day Two: Favorite supporting female character. I'm going to have to go to the realm of books for this one and choose Wynn Hyergeoht from Barb and J.C. Hendee's intriguinging Noble Dead series.

The blurb on the covers bills this series as "Buffy meets Lord of the Rings" but in terms of tone + setting it's more like Underworld meets medieval Poland. Here's the premise: a traveling con artist pretends to be a vampire hunter who kills fake vampires (her accomplice in heavy makeup,) for a fee. One day she discovers she is in fact a Dhampir with vampire-killing super powers and a destiny to fulfill. Hijinks ensue involving elven ninjas, tremor-causing dwarves, half-fae dogs, and even eldritch abominations. It's a pretty good series but it doesn't really hit its stride until our heroes encounter Wynn Hyergoeht.

Wynn is a professional scholar assigned by her superiors to follow Magiere the vampire hunter and learn what links the vampires hold to the cataclysm that erased most of the world's ancient history. She is an outsider in the group, useless in a fight, generally in the way whenever danger threatens. She is also incredibly strong-willed, resourceful, and inevitably the first one to figure out what's going on in any given situation while the rest of the heroes are blundering in circles. She is the only character among the heroes with no special powers or training. She does have a kind of second sight acquired from a magic ritual gone wrong, but it backfires more often than not and incapacitates her. It's hard to convey what makes Wynn so special if you haven't read the books, but her normality combined with her sheer reckless nerve make her the emotional heart of the story. Magiere even says as much to her at one point. Even certain of the remorseless vampires and sociopathic elven assassins encountered in the story have a hard time treating Wynn with the cruel disdain they'd like to. It's not so much that she's just written to be a good person: she sort of represents what is good and right in the world, the things the bad guys have a hard time letting go of.

The Hendees have recently begun the second series in the Noble Dead line wherein they elevate Wynn to central protagonist. They give her some power upgrades to better survive undead encounters, but so far they have done so without overpowering her or in any way sacrificing what made her great the first time around. It was a smart move to push her front and center because she really is the best thing about the story and makes an average work of gothic fantasy worth remembering.

Day 24 - Best quote from a novel

Best quote from a novel? It's like picking a favorite blade of grass! But here's two good ones:

"That's the problem with people who always mean what they say: they always think everyone else does too."

-Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

I really identified with this line, a lot. Because I do tend to mean what I say and get hurt a lot when others' commitment to what they say is more fluid than my own.

For something completely different:

"My lord makes love like he is hunting boar: it is a heroic act, but not one that is pleasurable for women."

-Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

SPECIAL BONUS QUOTE:

"A man is walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers. Somewhere on the other side of the world a young man is getting a blowjob from an 80 year-old woman. Both of them are having the exact same thought: 'Don't look down!'"

-Mark Z. Danieliewski, House of Leaves

( The prompts... )

Day 20 - Favorite kiss

I can't think of a favorite kiss, but I've always been partial to the scene in Neil Gaiman's American Gods where Bilke seduces the movie producer. If you've read it you know the scene I mean >:)

::EDIT::

Actually I CAN think of a favorite kiss, if you can call it that. There's a scene early in Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show where the two antagonists meet and one tries to possess the other one by kissing him. 1,000 page book and the line "his breath smelled like a sick man's fart" was the only one I could remember for years. Ah, Barker, you crazy fellow.

( The prompts )

Day 18 - Favorite beginning scene in a book

My all-time favorite beginning scene has to be the infamous "Darkfreinds' Social" scene from The Great Hunt, volume 2 of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I enjoy the device of using a double agent as a viewpoint character without revealing his/her identity so much that I've gone on to use it quite a bit in my own writing.

( The prompts... )

Day 15 - Your comfort book

Honestly, whatever I'm reading at the time is a comfort book. Reading itself comforts and soothes me. As long as it's good and entertaining, odds are I'll feel safe and happy when reading it.

( The prompts... )

Day 13 - Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)

Were you not paying attention on the last entry? I read The Chronicles of Narnia FIVE FREAKIN' TIMES!

( The prompts... )

Day 30 - A book that disappointed you.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Because it is an AWESOME book with maybe the most anti-climactic climax ever laid to paper. Dracula has not taken part in such a lackluster ending since, well... since Dracula.

( The prompts... )

Day 8 - A book everyone should read at least once. I'm leery of saying anyone has to read a certain book. Everyone told me I had to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and look how well that turned out.

Having said that, read House of Leaves. I can't explain why. No one can. Just... read it already. You have to.

Day 9 - Best scene ever. I can't pick just one. But one that has stayed with me in recent memory is the finale of Walter Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz. It involves nuclear holocaust, a dying Catholic priest, and a mutated woman with two heads. And it is one of the most moving, emotionally genuine scenes in a novel that I have read in a very long time.

( The prompts... )

In other news, anyone know what to do when your Facebook gets hacked and starts throwing up spam links on everyone's feeds?

Favorite book of your favorite series OR your favorite book of all time.

Wow. That's a toughie. Well I don't want to pick just one favorite from one favorite series so I'm not gonna. Eat it.

-The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader - The Narnia crew take a break from saving Narnia from conquerors to go on an old fashioned high fantasy quest. Gets rather weird when invisible hopping monsters get thrown into the mix.

Kushiel's Dart - Never before in the centuries of animosity between Vikings and sissy French bondage freaks has anyone tried to tell both sides of the story. Carey does and does it well. And also: Chidric d'Essoms; what the fuck is WRONG with that guy? And why do the other books just forget he existed?

The Wheel of Time: The Shadow Rising - SPOILER ALERT! A guy gets so upset about his ancestor's history that he literally eats his own face. They don't make entertainment like that anymore.

( The prompts... )