Author: Harley Quinn

I chose writing because therapy is expensive. I write in YA and NA in genres fantasy, horror, and sci-fi. I am a music lover. Metal head, rock n' roll chick, punk rock girl, and I do love a good techno dance song.

On Girls Doing Stuff

I now have a new fantabulous way to characterize my favorite heroines and the heroines I hope to write: Girls Who Do Stuff

hotkeyblog's avatarHot Key Books Blog

katiecoyleToday’s blog is by one of our Young Writers Prize winners, Katie Coyle. You can follow Katie on Twitter or Tumblr. Look out for her prize-winning novel, VIVIAN VERSUS THE APOCALYPSE, which comes out in paperback on 5 September. To read an extract of her novel, click here.

The only thing I knew for sure when I started writing Vivian Versus the Apocalypse was that I wanted my heroine, Vivian Apple, to be a Girl Who Does Stuff. This my very professional literary term for my favorite kind of female character—the kind that goes out into the world, thinking and fighting and asserting herself, rather than the kind who sits primly at home being pretty, while her boyfriend does the adventuring.

VIVIAN_hires

There’s room in this world for both these kinds of girls, but it’s the Girl Who Does Stuff that has always sparked my imagination. This girl goes…

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The Literary Calling – Why Do You Want to be a Writer?

Listen to my girl here. You want to know why I want to be a writer? Because I can’t hack it as a rockstar.

Mo Smith's avatarMedley of Mo

“Why do you want to be a writer?” I have been asked this question more times than I can recall, but I’ve always had to answer quickly. I’m so thankful to have escape these situations unscathed that I forget them and move on. I never stop and think about it, and I mean really think. That may sound strange coming from a creative writing major, but how much did you know about your future at eighteen? (If your plan worked out, kudos to you! Honestly, kudos!)

With that said, I wanted to take a time out and ponder the question. Why do I want to be a writer? ….

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “I was born to be a writer,” “I eat, sleep, and breathe writing,” or, “I’d die if I couldn’t write.” Well, not me. In fact, I say that’s crap. You eat food…

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Adventures of Aria: Necromancing the Snow

Currently Playing: Black Veil Brides, Devil’s Choir (on repeat)

I have finished my second manuscript—the first that will see the light of day—and as I re-read it for the hundredth time I’m still stunned that I actually wrote these pages. I can’t believe I sat in Cathy Day’s (http://cathyday.com/) novel writing class a year and a half ago and, from the depths of my mind, created these characters and the world of Tiger, Tiger.

I. Cannot. Believe. It.

It’s far from being perfect, every read through I find something that could still use more polishing and tinkering, but at this point every time I try to fix it I make it worse. And if I learned nothing else through four and a half years of college writing courses, author interviews, and literary agent blog posts it’s that this is actually a good thing. I’ve reached the limits of my current skills and it’s time to ask someone else to lend their talents and skills to this manuscript.

You know, writers like to think the blank page is scary, but the terrifying part has only just begun. After months of writing, editing, crying, screaming, and moping it’s time to send my baby out into the world. The query letters are written, months of combing through agents via social networking and google searches have finally come to a head. I can’t put it off any longer. If I want even a chance of making some kind of living off my imagination, other eyes must see it. Fortune favors the bold, right?
I haven’t slept more than three or four hours a night since I wrote my first query. I’ve gone over those eight letters four and five times, re-read the submission guidelines, picked up every book I could get my hands on that felt like it fit with the world and characters I created.

I Am Terrified.

I know agents aren’t big scary creatures. I talk to them on twitter and I’ve met a few at the Midwest Writers Conference (http://www.midwestwriters.org/). They’re good people who love reading and writing just as much as I do, hence their occupation.

I’ve been telling myself for a year to brace for form rejections and, really, I thought I was ready. But now the time is here to send my manuscript into the world, as prepared as my beta readers and I can make it, and I’m not ready at all for that rejection. I could cry just thinking about it.

All those pesky “what-ifs” I could shoo away while immersed in the world are now coming up hard and fast. It’s time to take a critical business eye to my work; is it saleable? What audience am I aiming for? What genre? What sub-genre? Are these first ten pages good enough to hook?

A lot of the agent profiles I looked at said they were looking for “excellent” writing, “wonderful” worlds, “endearing and complex” characters. Their Bestsellers are listed, their authors and all their awards are proudly displayed.

And then there’s me.

This is my first novel. I don’t have any awards. The only things I’ve submitted were three poems to Ball State’s Broken Plate magazine and received a polite form rejection for all of them. Is my writing excellent? Is my world developed enough? Are there too many details? Not enough? Does my character properly show off her many sides or is she only one dimension?

I don’t know if I have the ego to handle eight and more form rejections for something I’ve spent two years pouring blood, sweat, and tears into.

This is beautiful. Everyone, male and female, needs to read this and let the words settle in your heart.

edriecorbit's avatarEdrie Corbit

To my dearest Belle, I would never have guessed that at only 10 months I would have to tell you this, but you are not safe. More specifically, your body is not safe. And since your body is the house for your soul, all that you are perches dangerously close to jeopardy.

You live in one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to women’s rights. Moreover, you live in one of the most progressive states in that progressive country. Yet, yesterday, the California Court of Appeal relied on an 1847 law to say that a man who snuck into the room of an unmarried woman and had sex with her, while pretending to be her boyfriend, did not rape her. Because she was unmarried and Victorian law was like that, the court said she was not raped. And because no one cared enough to revisit…

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Lovely pictures of a Shinto shrine in Mishima Taisha. Follow the rest of the adventure!

Kai's avatardaiboukenkeiki

So, as promised, here is a look around Mishima Taisha. I apparently had the same idea as everyone else in the city, which was to go take pictures of the sakura (SAH-koo-rah, not suh-KOO-ruh) as they were at their peak bloom and just beginning to fall. I went fairly early in the morning, and so I got breakfast at the shrine.

I’m not sure what exactly it was, but it was basically rice, battered and fried on a stick, and then doused in mayo, soy sauce, and green onions. It was DELICIOUS. (It was also probably terrible for me, but this was the day that I learned that shrine food seems to be pretty much the same as fair food in the States- mostly fried, and kind of expensive.)

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The Sound of Madness: The Beginning

 

            It being the start of Camp NaNo, I thought I’d really kick this blog off with what I’ll be occupying myself with this month. I’ve spent several months, even years, with the idea percolating in the back of my mind; there are scraps of paper with random words and short phrases jotted on them scattered in journals and drawers, and when I look out my window I see the characters on the street.

Now, either it’s time for medication or it’s time to write.

Music is a part of who I am. I’m always listening to something while I type. A lot of people use background music, this isn’t something new. This has never had much of an impact on my writing; it’s just something to occupy my mind when I hit a snag or to block out background noise or a way to set the mood for a scene. But this manuscript, this storyline, these characters; they’ve proven to be quite different from anything I’ve ever written.

The story wriggled its way into my head after I got Black Veil Brides’ album Set the World on Fire. Track number six has become something almost sacred to me. It’s the song that hit the top of my “Songs that will get me Fired” playlist for work. It’s the song that gave me the courage to flip my major from anthropology to creative writing my final two semesters of college. It’s the song that told me to look beyond this dying town and go. If you’re a fan, you’re probably humming the chorus by now, if not; the song is called “Rebel Love Song”.

This song is freedom. I can’t fully express the buoyant joy the chorus fills me with, the teeth-grit determination the verses give me and the inexplicable feeling of flying I get when that guitar solo kicks in. And it’s that whirlwind of emotion, that impact that goes deeper than skin when you hear the words, that my newest manuscript is built on and why it’s working title is Rebel Love Song.

I’m writing my character to embody these songs that—through my own hectic life—have become pep talks, shoulders to cry on, hands to pull me up, and a friend to sit with me when I start to break.

I have tailored a song list to fit this storyline. Every section, every chapter, right down to the paragraphs; correlates with a song. And I hope I can find the words to do these songs and these feelings justice.

 

P.S. It’s not too late to join Camp NaNo this month! You can sign up at www.nanowrimo.org or www.campnanowrimo.org. You can find me there as Writing_Fiend. Happy Writing!

Famous Last Words:

I’m not okay (I Promise)

“I’m guessing M. and Harley will be disappointed by this. I’m sorry :(”

My heart is pounding. My hands are still shaking as I write this. My lungs are stuffy, constricted, not working like they should. I’ve resorted to recovery breathing, like I’ve been running or gotten a good workout in karate.

My Chemical Romance’s split is a 6 on my Richter scale. My world is rocking on its foundation. And I know for some of you it’s off the charts, the devastation is complete and it’s going to take a miracle to rebuild everything.

But the heart pounding adrenaline, the tears suffocating my chest, are more than just shock of seeing a cornerstone of my musical life so cleanly break off. No. It’s a memory. One I’ve locked away in the furthest, darkest corner of my mind for years. It’s the memory of another early morning condolence.

“Rev died, sry hunny”

I got that text December 29th at 9:25am, 2009.

No, I didn’t save it. That day, that message, they’re branded into my memory. I locked that day away; pushed it as far as I could. And here I am; racked again by chills, tears stinging my eyes, heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my toes, mouth dry, stomach roiling, trying so hard to breathe.

My gods, the Pain.

I’ve been reading the tweets all weekend about MCR’s split. Gerard’s goodbye is a cool rag on third degree burns. And I feel what you’re going through because it hurts. It does. My Chemical Romance are the band that got me into the more theatrical side of rock n’ roll and through that I’ve found the bands that are the building blocks of my existence. I know without a doubt I wouldn’t be who I am today if not for them and I know I’m not alone with that sentiment. Some of us wouldn’t be breathing if not for this band.

It was a late night/early morning, when Fuse TV was young and still catering to the rock n’ roll crowd, that I saw the video for “I’m not Okay (I Promise)”. And that, that moment I saw these guys, these slightly awkward misfits, was the moment I—and many others—fell in love with MCR.
That song was the anthem of my life. I was fourteen, middle of freshmen year and I really wasn’t okay. My parents had split only a year or two ago and my mom had taken to staying out late at the bars with her friends. She was distant and I was not okay. My sister was acting out in her own way, getting into minor trouble at school, probably doing things after school that would have landed her in more serious trouble had she been caught. And I was trying to hold everything together. I was trying to be a pillar of support for my mom, trying to wrangle my sister, trying to navigate the nightmare that is freshmen year, trying to be the good friend as my best friend went through friend drama and boy trouble. And I was Not Okay.

And then, like a small condolence from the gods, there was My Chemical Romance. They gave me more than just music; they gave me a fan base, the MCRmy, they gave me a way of life. This is the moment music became more than just background noise while I did homework; this was the moment it became who I was because it gave me a reason. It gave me something to hold onto. And as I sit here listening to their full discography I’m struck again by how much they shaped my life and the hole their absence has left me with.
But the tears I feel are of breathless relief. The band is gone, with cool—almost clinical—words severing everything cleanly, but the guys are still here. They’re still breathing. They’re still out there going about their lives.

I’m not here to minimize the pain. My Chemical Romance is a foundation block in my life, but for some they were the keystone holding them together. This isn’t some “wow, that sucks” polite condolence. I’ve heard them. And sometimes that well-meaning yet vague response is more painful than the actual event.
You’re not alone with your pain. I want you all to know, unequivocally, You Are Not Alone. For every person in your life that tosses an uncertain “sorry” at you because they don’t know what else to say, there are three more in the MCRmy that will gladly hold out a hand and share your pain.

The alienation I felt after The Rev died was as close to soul crushing as I think anyone could get and still get out alive. I was at my dad’s house while he was in Columbus, OH for the day on business. I had the place completely to myself for the day and I spent every minute sitting on my bed crying. When he got home, close to six, I answered the door wrung out of tears but still racked by uneven breaths and chills. He gave me a hug and asked what was wrong.
I couldn’t answer. I hadn’t spoken the words aloud all day, because words are power and if you speak it that means it’s real and it’s happened. I had texted him earlier and gotten the same awkward apology from him as my mom had given me.

“Is it about that drummer? I’m sorry.” That drummer. That drummer. He wasn’t that drummer he was the goddamn Reverend Tholomew Plague. He was James Owen Sullivan. He was so much more than just “that drummer”. And my dad didn’t understand. That painful rift of those who “know” and those who don’t has never been more agonizingly clear. I was completely alone in my real life in dealing with this grief. No one understood how the death of a man who I had never met could tear me into a hundred pieces. So I had to pull myself back together, at least on the surface. I had to patch myself back together for them. I had to get up the next day and act normal, pretend like my world wasn’t in shambles and burning around me, because not one of them understood the devastation the Rev’s death had caused in my life.

So, MCRmy if your world is in pieces, talk to me. I never want anyone to go through the pain of being alone in rebuilding your world. To others it’s just “that band”, maybe even a band they don’t like, but I know how much more they are. If you don’t talk to me, talk to another Killjoy. Get on Twitter, get on Facebook, get on the official MCR page and talk to others.

This is an army and we’re not leaving anyone behind.