EA Blevins - Blog

We went to the dentist. My husband doesn’t like shots, including shots in his mouth, so he was pretty reluctant to go. He said a dentist had told him years ago that his saliva is very basic, so he should never have problems with cavities.

Still, I made him go, and this is what we learned:

• It’s good to have a checkup earlier than 3 years after major oral surgery (such as getting wisdom teeth removed) because, apparently, infections don’t always leave you writhing in agony. They can be quiet little things that cause minor annoyances for no reason every now and then.
• Even if you’re like my husband and will never have a cavity in your life, you can have other problems–like excessive tartar buildup.
• Excessive tartar buildup leads to gum disease.
• People develop tartar differently.
• Alex develops tarter very quickly and needs his teeth cleaned every 6 months.
• Flossing only counts if you do it 2-3 times a week. Anything less, and you might as well not bother.
• When you floss, you need to scrub the sides of the teeth and get down below the gums. And especially floss the backs of your back teeth (even more important when you have an infection back there from missing wisdom teeth, like me).
• Bleeding during flossing is normal for gums. I know this, because the dental hygienists made our gums bleed a lot and kept poking us with sharp things, and they knew what they were doing. (And Alex asked.)
• Soft and extra-soft toothbrushes are better than medium and hard brushes because the bristles are flexible enough to clean under your gums.
• When brushing, scrub the biting surface of your back teeth but don’t scrub the sides. Instead, angle the toothbrush and make small circles at the gums, then move the brush to another tooth and do the same, all the way around, on both sides. (video) Electric brushes with round heads are useful for this (though neither better nor worse than manual ones, if used properly) — just place the rotating brush against your gums for a few seconds on each side of each tooth.
• The most neglected teeth are in the back and touch the tongue. Everyone does a good job in the front where they can see, but the ones in the back tend to get a half-hearted job and cause more problems down the road.

I picked up Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause in middle school, around the same time I picked up the Night World series by LJ Smith. I prefered Smith’s stories, but Klause stuck in my mind due to solid writing and a moment when my brother thought I was silly for being embarrassed at the word “kiss” in the title.

A friend recently suggested Klause to me, and I’d been meaning to catch up on my supernatural teen book obsession — especially because this one agent website ordered writers to keep up with what’s happening in their genre — but I couldn’t remember being wowed by Silver Kiss and wanted to save my free time for writing.

Still, my husband decided we were overdue for a library raid and all the Young Adult books seemed to have been returned that morning because the shelves were glutted. I saw Blood and Chocolate, which hadn’t been in since we moved here, so I sighed, picked it up, and stacked it onto my five others, figuring “I’ve avoided it long enough.”

Since the protagonist is a werewolf with dating issues, and since the title is “blood” and “chocolate” I expected violence (blood) and sex (chocolate). This is part of why I waited so long to read it — I’m not an “intense” sort of girl, and this promised lots of gloopy emotional messiness.

I was pleased, though, because the gloopy emotional messiness was pretty engaging. There’s a lot of making out, nudity, violence, and talk about sex, but the overall premise is solid (a werewolf girl feels like she doesn’t fit in with her disorderly pack, so she takes a shot at making human friends) and I appreciated the ending as rock-solid. I also appreciate Klause as a writer who can make me cheer for characters I didn’t like at first, which I always love in a book.

So I approve. I’d put an age minimum of 16 or 17 on this due to content, but I enjoyed it. Gonna rent the movie — I’m excited to see how they translated the book to film. It should be fun.

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…seem to blog about real world events a lot.

I read somebody’s post about a fantasy writers’ convention. It sounded scary, because she said the panel discussions were… I think the word she used was “intense.”

Sounded like I’d end up crying alone in a corner. Because that’s what usually happens when I go to things where I don’t know anybody.

She also said there were lots of smart people there, which I’ve never found to be a good thing — not that I’m not smart, I just don’t usually like people who are branded as “smart” instead of “nice.” Nice is safer. Nice doesn’t compare Nice’s writing to yours and then privately gloat about being awesomer. And Nice tends to prefer talking about cats and funny t-shirts instead of metaphysical poetry and the effect of beauty on cynicism and optimism.

I can follow those conversations.  But a few years ago, after I sat through a few in college, I thought “What’s the point?” and just stopped.  Now when Smarts get together to talk like Smarts, I ignore them and work on one of my stories in my head instead.

Much more productive.

Alex confirmed that I start my stories without much plot.

So I’m outlining Frostbite to see what parts don’t really work. This will be easier to print and mark up than a manuscript.

I’m also starting out the new Deathlock as an outline. Bone structure first. It seems to be going well, and I’ve started a Character notebook with extensive profiles of my characters. ^_^ Very pleased.

I’ve gotten back on track with Frostbite, and I’m able to overview the plot in my head and pick out the parts that still need polishing, which is a huge step forward. It would help if I’d sit down and finish up the revisions I started, but…

I’ve been distracted by a new version of Deathlock. Through all my revisions I’ve had Alternate Story B, a non-fantasy love story, that’s haunted me as a short story I could do with Deathlock’s main characters after Deathlock Proper is published. But Deathlock Proper just wasn’t coming together at all even with four full versions. And it finally hit me — take Alternate Story B and make it Deathlock Proper — by adding the trappings of the fantasy world and the special circumstances of the characters.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense, the more the story came alive in my head. The female lead no longer seemed weak and boring, the action no longer seemed contrived.  And, oddly enough, I’ve been more interested in writing Alternate Story B than Deathlock Proper from the beginning, which means now I get to write the story I wanted to all along.

I’m crossing my fingers but not getting my hopes up.

Oh, wait, there they went. They’re up. *sigh*

The first time I ever shaved my legs, I did it dry.

I was in high school, either a freshman or sophomore, and too embarrassed to tell my mom that I thought my legs should be a little less hairy. So I got one of my dad’s orange plastic safety razors from the packet of backups, tucked it neatly into my shorts pocket and took it to my room, where I proceeded to try to shave my legs without water or soap.

Naturally, it hurt, because that’s what happens when you drag a razor across dry hair (it pulls), but it worked reasonably well, and I decided to try and get hold of some shaving creme next time — the guest bathroom had an old, crusty, almost-used canister hanging out that nobody had touched for months, since my mom never throws anything useful away.

Then my dad came in to ask me something, and I shoved the razor under my bed and looked at him with what I hoped was an innocent expression.

He took one look at my face, folded his arms, and demanded to see what I’d just put under the bed.

Horribly embarrassed, I pulled out that silly little orange safety razor and showed it to him. Of all the things a teenager could have hidden under her bed from her father, I doubt that was anywhere on his list, especially since he almost smiled and said, “Oh. Okay.”

A few days later, though I never mentioned the incident to anyone, my mom pulled me aside for some shaving tips.

Several months ago, I asked you to help me get my favorite writer reprinted by sending in letters.

I’m not sure how many people were influenced to do it by me, but the goal has been acheived!!! Woohoo!

I stumbled across the author’s website yesterday (I’d checked before, so it must be fairly new) and the Night World series is being reprinted along with the final book, which the LJ Smith fan community has been waiting for for about 10 years. (Yes, you Robert Jordan and Harry Potter fans, take THAT! I’ve been waiting MUCH longer than any of you had to. Nyah nyah!! *makes taunting faces because she won the “I’ve been waiting longest” competition*)

Anyway, this is insanely awesome, and you should go preorder at least the first book from Amazon. The publisher has collected the first three books into one and the next three books into a second.

Night World No 1: Secret Vampire, Daughters of Darkness, Spellbinder
Night World No 2: Dark Angel, The Chosen, Soulmate

If you want to keep up with what other books are being re-released, the author’s site is ljanesmith.net.

So, after discussing things with Alex and Chris (and visiting an interesting site called tvtropes.org, which analyzes every kind of character type and plot trope imaginable), I decided that the female lead in Deathlock is turning out to be a Scrappy or, worse, a Wesley:

A Wesley is created when the writers (or sometimes only one of them) have become attached to a specific character, so they begin writing him/her into more and more of the scripts, giving them more to do, and sometimes making them the proxy voice of the author, all while blithely ignoring the simple truth that they’re the only ones that love their character, because the fans absolutely … hate this character.

Typically, you can’t have a Wesley or Scrappy without fans, but I think I’ve studied enough of what my favorite writers did wrong to realize when I’m treading dangerous waters with a mismatched couple.

You can’t give a powerful guy a useless girlfriend.

*sigh*

So… Deathlock take five, anyone?

I’m going to take my own advice and start working on the overarching plot of the series. It needs to go somewhere, everyone needs a spot, I definitely need to work out who’s going to do what, and it’ll be clearer if I have a good outline.

>_> Now where are those blank notecards?

Still pretty tired of dealing with Frostbite but getting close to willing to edit again. Instead, I’ve been working on Deathlock. Basically all of my free time is spent trying to decide where to go with Deathlock and how the story should play out.

Deathlock is on its fourth incarnation, meaning I wrote almost the entire story last year and threw it completely out. Then I started two other versions, hated them, and started this version, which I might not hate. I think I’ve finally found a few things in the story worth keeping, but I need to settle plot details and… they just aren’t settling at the moment.

I need to do more prep work before actually starting to write. >_> I always get caught by not having enough plot to go with my characters, and I have to go back and do the prep work I should have done in the first place.

I have no idea how I managed to finish Frostbite without it looking like a trained monkey just banged his head on my keyboard.

“Alex, when we move, can I just tell people I’m a housewife?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Of course, I’d be a lousy housewife. I sort of am a housewife, but I know I do a bad job — I’m too lazy.

It’s awesome, though, because Alex says that I’d stress him out if I wasn’t a little lazy, if I was always running around and cleaning. Even the days I’m “on,” like when the cat ate half a spool of thread from my sewing machine and we had to rush him to the vet, and I cleaned like . . . well, like my grandmother . . . to remove any other dangers, Alex was glad when I stopped and went back to our normal routine of lazy video game playing and making our friend Chris help with (read: do all of) our dishes on the weekend.

Anyway, I want to pass myself off as a housewife from now on (even knowing the stigma attached to it) because there’s just something awful about telling someone you’re a writer and always having them ask how it’s going. Because what are you going to say? “I wrote half a scene this week and ended up scrapping the entire book because it wasn’t working and I wanted to rip my hair out”? Yeah, that’s a conversation — for mental patients, maybe.

Maybe that’s what writing is — a profession for crazy people. Maybe all writers are just nutjobs dedicating themselves to their insanity. God knows it’s what I feel like. Completely insane, and completely unable to stop.