Absent Until April

Things are getting down to the wire with classes and my senior project, so I'll be turtling into my anti-social shell until after my thesis defenses. I have two. One for my major, and one for my Honors qualification.

The performance of my project goes up on April 5th, and the defense will be sometime after that. Err, I should probably schedule that. Soon. Unfortunately, my schedule is full of things like that that I should have done yesterday. Until I do all of them and get this thing over with, no more blogging for me!

I might still publish the odd review on Examiner just to keep my active status -- and I have a big backlog of reviews to get to, anyway -- but more likely I'll hold all that off until April.

Also, I am still beta-reading for two people right now, but I will not have your stuff back to you until mid-April at the earliest. I'm really sorry about that. I'll still be checking email, so you can send me questions related to your MS and I will respond. However, I won't be able to get you the actual documents until later.

In the meantime, you college students can still submit to Outrageous Fortune literary magazine, which I intern for. :) Send me more plays and art!

When I do eventually return, I want to redesign this blog. I'll also be able to tell you a bit more about my senior project after it's done (when I'm not teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown).

Then on to my senior recital, graduation, and the world beyond.

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Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène, a YA Book By A Young Author

Review time! Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow is a young adult novel by a young adult, so I was very interested to read it. There's also a #MuslimShelfSpace tag going around, and this review is a nod to that. The idea is that there's been a lot of stereotypes and anti-Muslim sentiment spread around, so buying and boosting books about and by Muslims can help educate people and break down harmful stereotypes. The author is French with an Algerian background, and Guène wrote Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow when she was in her late teens. Although the novel is not autobiographical, she shares many things with its main character. Doria, like her creator, is the child of immigrants and lives in poor suburban housing projects. Guène wrote that she realized girls like herself weren't really represented in books, and felt that Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow was a way to tell the stories of people in the suburbs who are ignored by the elites of French literature. Plot: Life Sucks, Until...

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Review: Hemlock Grove, ep. 1 and 2

Hello! I'm back from my blogging hiatus. I've been on a horror kick lately, and most recently, I watched the first two episodes of Netflix's Hemlock Grove. I'm a bit late to this series, but for what it's worth, here's my review. I have some...issues. Pacing It's based on a novel, and you can tell. Once the show introduces something that might be interesting or lead to tension and conflict, it snatches it away like a precious plot-gem that it doesn't want you to see. There is way too much exposition and filler. The plot hangs together pretty well, but not much really happens. Case in point, it should not have taken two whole episodes to find out Main Character is a werewolf. Especially since everyone seems clued into this fact and accepts it as truth -- except the viewers. Then suddenly Rich Boy is asking if he can watch the transformation like it's understood that Poor Kid Main Character is a werewolf. No warning, no lead-up, nothing. ...

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King Arthur Sucks.

I wrote a review of The Greenstone Grail by Amanda Hemingway , in which I applauded the book for being the first Arthurian adaptation I had read that I didn't despise. I mean, how could I? Despite the book's other problems, it had aliens riding motherfucking dragons!!! Aliens! Dragons! Parallel universes! After reading my review, one of my friends asked me why I hate Arthurian legend so much. Well. Perhaps one of the reasons I liked The Greenstone Grail 's take on the Holy Grail myth was because it was so different. Most Arthurian adaptations fall along the same lines. It's the same damn story told almost the same damn way all the time. But The Greenstone Grail took place in modern times, borrowing from the Holy Grail and Arthurian myths without making it so central to the plot that there was no room for other stuff like imagination. Say whatever else you want about this book ( and believe me, I did ), it had imagination. Its main character c...

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