Anna W. Waggener's Blog

Letters of the alphabet, that is. I’m not quite popular enough to get real mail. Well, excepting requests for money. I don’t want to think about tuition right now, thanks very much.

But I’m well plugged into meeting my summer reading goals. I’m working on three books right now, all of them pretty different:

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now, and which is fascinating. Very much recommended for anyone looking for non-fiction.

Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, which was lent to me by a friend and which is a refreshingly easy read. Lovely prose and straight forward.

Chris Wooding’s Storm Thief, given to me upon leaving Scholastic. The concept of probability storms is interesting. It reminds me of Douglas Adams’ Infinite Improbability Drive except not funny because it might make your heart stop.

Other than reading, I’ve actually buckled down and started teaching myself Thai. I was doing awesome until I got to shapes. Rosetta Stone why must you be so cruel? You speak far too fast and I can’t decipher the words in your complex geometrical statements. Ah well. I’ll get it eventually. I also watched Everything is Illuminated with my brother last week. Without subtitles. Don’t do it. It’s a complex film, made totally confusing if you can’t speak Russian. We argued about it for fifteen minutes when we finished, then looked up the plot and found out that we were both wrong. Maybe Russian should be next on my language-learning list.

And of course I’m still working on my next novel. I want to take a really gritty look at what exorcism means in the modern world, and see how YA Urban Fantasy fares under a more traditional/historical view of demons and possession. I’ve been researching intensely, and I’ve got a new book coming in the mail next week. I just finished Malachi Martin’s Hostage to the Devil a few days ago. Intense! And he’s a spectacular writer. If possession and exorcism interest you at all, go grab a copy.

I’ve been developing my plot while reading Hostage to the Devil. I now have a tiny notebook full of scribbles and lots of graphite in the margins of my paperback. I hope to sit down soon and get something a little bit less nebulous on notebook paper. My brother runs a writing/art group at a nearby library (I know, I’m such a proud sister!) so I may go sit in this Friday to show my support. With luck, I’ll start laying out my foundations during that time. Since I missed NaNoWriMo last November, and since deadlines are the only way to get me to do anything, I’m going to self-impose 30 days of writing in July. I think I’ll start on the 10th, after sending my revised draft of Grim back to Scholastic, but I haven’t really planned that far ahead yet.

So that’s it for me. Oh and one of my best friends watched The Proposal and then went out and bought an American Eskimo Dog puppy. Oh. My. God. Google it. Such an adorable breed. It’s like a baby polar bear clothed in cashmere.