Friday, August 10, 2007

The Golden Compass

I saw the preview and decided to treat this movie (and another one, the Spiderwick Chronicles) like I treated Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings in 2001.
Back then I saw the previews for both movies and decided to read the books to know ahead of time what the stories were truly like. This way I could enjoy the movie even more.

It worked great for both those so I'm doing it again. I read the first four Spiderwicks (they're small) and while waiting for book five from the library I started on Golden Compass. I like Spiderwick, but I think I like Compass more.

Originally published in England as the Northern Lights, this is the first of a trilogy. It's about a girl in a parallel Earth who has to go on a quest and do all sorts of stuff. You know me, I like my spunky, adventurous girls (Annabelle) so I'm totally eating it up.

At first I wasn't to enamoured with Lyra only because she's a bit crass sometimes, but as a writer I can see that Phillip Pullman did that to give her room to grow in the series.

In this world every human who ever lived has a Deamon. These are shape shifting creatures who share every emotion and physical feeling with their human. Lyra's Deamon is Pantalaimon. I really like him. He's my favorite character. Sometimes he reminds me of Adam's "Fleabot", but not rude.

This preview shows him a bit more than the other. It's from the Comic Con.






Pretty sweet, huh?

I hope we're out of our crisis by December. I REALLY want to see this.

At the moment I'm about half way through the first book. I need to get back to reading.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

An accounting of my submissions so far...

Started October 06- present (August 07)

1 request for a full. (Among the rejected)
6 requests for partials (5 among the rejected)
1 full submission to a publisher (among the rejected)
59 Rejections total

32 electronic submissions still out there. 11 since last March)
9 snail mail submissions still out there. (8 since last March)
1 full soon to be submission to a publisher going out next payday.


I discovered as I compiled this list that I still had a request for a partial since last October that was still out there. I’ve gone through three revisions since then. The first five chapters (most of which were slow intro chapters and a first chapter that, while quick and hooky, was back-story) have been removed since then! Huh. I emailed him to ask if he wanted the new chapters. I expect a rejection but still!

100 submissions so far. Not bad.

Sunday, August 05, 2007