Excitement Overload

 Oh. My. Four.

Okay, this will be a hard time. I'm stuck in between Insurgent and folios. I mean--it's just so annoying. Being in Form 3 really is a hard thing.

But that will never stop my rebelling urge to just finish this book as soon as possible and review it. And I have LOTS to read after examination:

1) Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
2) City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare (ugh--I don't know if I'll buy this book)
3) Matched by Ally Condie
4) Switched by Amanda Hocking
5) Torn by Amanda Hocking
6) To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
7) The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
8) The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

THIS IS A BIG MAYBE . . . I GUESS:

9) Meg by Steve Alten (UH-DAAAAA, this is a GREAT, GREAT, BOOK!)
10) The Last Siege by Jonathan Stroud

INSURGENT--on page 238 so far. Oh my GOD, this book is awesome. Action lies on every page! It's like that movie where Tom Cruise kick asses and Jason Statham's shooting guns!

NEW HAIR AND STUFF

I DON'T KNOW . I HATE MY NEW HAIR . BUT SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE I LOVE IT .

I don't know. What do you think?


And in countdown moment of INSURGENT, I'll re-share my DIVERGENT review

Beatrice and Katniss

Yeay! Today I'm going to write a post to extract all these inappropriate excitement I have for the upcoming Divergent sequel, which is named Insurgent.

I've sort of participated in Veronica Roth's INSURGENT ARC and yeah, like all odds I always lose. But it's okay, it will be fun to crash the bookstore and kicking asses to get that thing. Yeah, literally, I am serious on the kicking-ass part. I think everyone will be crashing into the bookstore for the book. And I will love to do that.

I hope you know that DIVERGENT has been my most favorite read in 2011, and it reached #1 on my favorite read and #2 is The Host. Well, I guess I never reveal that. I also read THE HUNGER GAMES in 2011, but I wonder why I do not have that hype like I had when reading Tris.

So after the phenomenal success of the trilogy, dystopia books are increasing. Many authors love to create bad governments with cruel and inhuman rules in their country, and things are just too much now. Well, thanks to the three books of the Games that revived this genre. Dystopia had once been famous before our YA-hood and the books are such The Running Man by Stephen King or 1984 by George Orwell.

The Hunger Games has become the third literary phenomena after Harry Potter and Twilight. But what's cool is The Hunger Games is unique in its own way -- really, really bad government, a girl who rebels on live TV and a hectic slash crazy citizens of Panem. When I first read them, I didn't know if I was feeling good about it. I guess I was depressed because we were following Katniss on her journey through the pages of the book, but it was amazing when she was fighting strongly, lit a fire that sparks the rebellion to stand up fiercer and then the trilogy ends. After the end, we felt astonished and amazed. Like, "Oh my God, she's freaking a teen and she changed the world!"

It is not real. It's fictitious, but dystopia gave readers a realistic impact. We couldn't sleep in the progress of reading these books. We was thinking about our characters, hoping that their strength would multiplied, and there were lots of other things that made dystopia a really, really realistic fiction genre. And why Young Adult loves it, especially the ones who are still in high school? Yes, because high school seems like a dystopian world.

Then DIVERGENT is released. It is a dystopian thriller, and in comparing The Hunger Games to this book, I was trapped inside this book deeper because the characters are high school characters, and what's cool the bad ruler of this world is among of young adults.

The book is basically about a society divided into five factions classified for selflessness, peacefulness, honesty, intelligence and bravery. It's a compulsory rule for every sixteen-year old to choose their factions. And they will undergo aptitude test that will show them the most fitting faction for them, but the test will not change their choice. You may choose to stay with your family, but if you found you are bored with the faction you are born to, you may leave them eternally.

So if you find bravery's cool and you can't initiate to what they do (jumping on moving trains, shoot a gun on someone you love, jump off from a tall building, climb a moving ferris wheel), you'll fail the initiation and you'll be thrown from the society, and you are the factionless, and factionless people live in poverty.

Beatrice is sixteen. In her test, she's fitting to more than one faction, and that makes her a Divergent. Divergent is secretly dangerous, and she must keep her Divergence low.

Well, she still has to choose her faction, doesn't she? Living for sixteen years in her faction Abnegation that makes selfless as priorities, she feels as if her freedom is stolen completely and she left to the Dauntless, a faction for bravery. That's when she meets new people and she was exposed to dangerous plan of one of the bad factions in the society that tried to shatter the slightly insane world and make it more ridiculous. And yeah, she will try to stop the plan.

When I reread THE HUNGER GAMES for the movie, I started to feel that I love Beatrice more. In Catching Fire, I was devastated of Katniss who couldn't actually see or make a good choice. She seems to always follow what people had told her to do, and it was hard for Katniss to stay put and do things based on her heart. That's because she didn't have a good heart to choose, to decide, and all she did was what from the others' heart. The most devastating thing that I saw in her is her weakness in choosing between Peeta and Gale. If she's a brilliant girl, she'll see that there's no point of being in love and felt torn between the two like how Bella feels between Edward and Jacob. She'll know that Gale was more like her older brother, her companion, her strength, and she'll see that Peeta is her only trustworthy friend, a worthy lover and someone who always stay by her side no matter what happens. But she didn't see that.

Beatrice Prior, she goes to bravery by her heart. She meets Four, and she do love him, but that's not the main point in her story and there's a bigger picture that she wanted to show us other than his relationship with the guy. She never regret of whatever she'd done, like how she left her family and go to another faction, on how she fix her strength to through the rest of the initiation. She's a calm girl, she never torture herself even whatever happens to her. And what's best, she knows who to love, and she knows why, and she knows what to do.

So in conclusion, The Hunger Games is a phenomenal story, and the world is way far brilliant than Divergent, obviously. But to me, what's important in a book is the storyteller. Katniss's strength was massively amazing and it's mostly is a form of physical. Beatrice has a strength of heart, which honestly, I don't think Katniss actually have. Tris's strength of heart that makes her believe that she'll be strong wholly, ultimately. So Beatrice Prior is my choice if to compare with Katniss Everdeen.

So, Happy Abnegation!

School's Literary Week and AIN MAISARAH's book signing!

PHOTO CREDITS to Amirun Afiq, an amazing photographer-slash-buddy

I'm writing this post at nighttime . . .

So, I have a lot to tell you today. Last Tuesday, it's a legendary day as the FIRST local author came down to my school and done a book signing slash talk there.

Well, it sounded enthusiastic, eh? But actually that's not the point here now. I wanted to talk about what a terrible day that day went for me.

Apart from the day before when an idiotic barber cut my hair until it became almost like an alien version of Chad White, being late to school (EXTREMELY) and realize I missed a lot at school, things going down like a roller-coaster to me that day. Becoming emotional, fussy, extremely confused about things, that day had almost become the worst day in my life since 2012 starts.

It's almost a good news to me when a popular local novelist AIN MAISARAH is about to make a visit at my school.

Ain Maisarah is a young novelist, writing books from age ranges 10-16 (I guess) and her books are usually contemporary teen books. She wrote the Aku Mahu . . . (English: I Want To . . .) series which is extremely popular among young girls. The books inside the series are included Aku Mahu Popular (I Want To Be Popular), Aku Mahu Saiz S (I Want An S-size Clothes) and the rests of I Want . . .and she wrote books under a publisher where it receives books about teenage friendship. And that publisher is PTS Publications.

I watched a local reality-TV Nona some time ago and her interview was aired from her home. If I was not mistaken, her husband was interviewed and he told about how she'd start writing. Before she got married, her husband received a love letter from her and he noticed how talented she is in writing. After marriage, her husband manages her writing time, and what she should do in writing. Her writing became wildly successful in Malaysia and she's currently on tour around Malaysia to local schools in having some talks and book signing.

That's a little about her. So, on the 10th of April she came. Yeay! Amazing! I was super excited although I read none of her books, but at least a writer, A WRITER, came down and gave a talk about writing. As you know, I am always interested in writing, and writing to me is a part of MY LIFE. Half of my soul, writing is my life, my therapy, and when I write words, it can be a remedy to any internal pain I felt.

So before the book signing started, I sat and listen attentively to her talk about her writing life. And devastatingly, I was disappointed.

Well, she's amazing. But she was promoting writing in a way of businesses. She told us how profitable writing could be, convincing us that each one of us can write excellently, and earn profits for our future. In the talk, she stated some young authors who got signed by a publisher at a very early age, like Riha Jamil, who published Gadis Piano when she was fourteen if I'm not mistaken (Gadis Piano, English: Piano Girl). And she stated her profits, how much she earned and she promoted writing to us like it was the easiest way to earn money.

So, that's that, and I have my story. I came up during recess to see her manager and talked to him a little about publishing in Malaysia . . . which I researched slightly deep and knew that Malaysia have this one policy where they can only trust foreign authors or imported books for English fiction. I know that. And he repeated that. He offered me writing in Malay in teen contemporary genre by posting a query to one of PTS editor and wait for a respond AND THEN, I can start writing.

And this is my opinion . . .

After the book signing, kids who knew about me self-publishing my first 100,000 words mediocre YA Te Amo urge me to write and earn profits like how Mrs. Ain Maisarah suggested them. If I am following the track, I'll break some cultures I have in writing such as:

1) IF YOU WANT TO GET PUBLISHED, SEND A BRIEF SUMMARY TO PTS EDITOR, WAIT FOR A RESPOND OF EITHER REJECTION OR APPROVAL, AND THEN I SHOULD WRITE.

This is so awful. I do not do this in writing.

I write every day, and I write always and if I feel it was a broken writing, I'll stop. I'll keep writing the story if it felt inspiring and good for me. After I done halfway, I will do an editing, where I'll keep the writing in a pristine quality and then I rewrite the stupid lines that I did.

If I wanted to get signed by PTS, I must send a brief summary to one of the editor via e-mail. And if the story sounds interesting to him, he'll approve and THEN I'LL HAVE TO WRITE THEM. How if I, as the author, felt like that story didn't hit the point, the whole big picture on why I started to write the story? And I will not like it, that means I do not wish it will turn into a book. So that's that.

Different from publishing in U.S., I must complete my work, send a query to literary agent, and then if he/she wants to represent my work, that's quite a green light. I'll have a chance to edit my work. I'll have chance to improve my query. And it's in my hands if I wanted to proceed in making the story comes alive. Not the editor.

2) WRITE BECAUSE IT LET YOU EARN MONEY. WRITE BECAUSE OF CA$H. WRITE BECAUSE YOU'LL HAVE DOLLARS TO SPENT WHEN YOU WANT TO GO TO COLLEGE.

I write because I love doing it. It is a part of my life therapy, where it builds up confidence, builds up new friends for me in substituting some a$@$ole in school where it doesn't functioning at all. And I write because that's what I do, the biggest ability I have in my life that I have interests in developing and I love it.

In an interview in Oprah, I knew that when Rowling is publishing Harry Potter when her agent said that she'll never make money by writing children's book. Rowling ignored those words, and published Harry Potter. It was clear that J.K. Rowling didn't care for cash. And that's what we have in common. I don't care about the cash. Of course I need money, but in writing, that's not what I'm chasing. I believe that in having sustenance we have to pray and put effort on a goal, and if we chase sustenance we'll earn nothing as it flees away from us.

I do not see cashes and dollars beyond the words I wrote.



To conclude, I am picking the AgentQuery way in getting publish. I was told many times to write Malay books because I will not go anywhere writing in English. Because my country imported English fiction, from foreigner authors. Yep, that's true.

So this post is to my friends who always asked me and convince me to stop writing in English and in YA genre such what's popular right now, because I will not go anywhere. Yep folks, Malaysia imported English books from foreign authors. So I have no choice, but to become a foreigner author.

I have to write, edit, read, polish my writing, write a query, polish a query, polish my writing, and submit my query, pray to get signed. I am a local author, who had no choice but to find an outsider publisher to get publish. And what's devastating is, IF I'm signed, my books will be in a high price here in my local bookstore because my book is still an "imported books by a foreign author" while I am a Malaysian author, and my books should belong here.

And I will show my country I'm capable of doing it. It's a matter of time.

An Announcement

Do NOT bash on anyone. I make it unavailable.

I had my own reasons. Thank you for supporting me.

It's just Te Amo is too mediocre to be a novel. I guess let's just leave it as a sweet memory, shall we? Anyway, I'll keep on writing rocking books!