What's on the Nightstand? #7

    It has been one doozy of a week around this joint! At 3:35 a.m. on Saturday I typed the last sentence into the rough draft of my second novel. *squeeeee* I sat for at least ten minutes afterwards just staring into the screen, brain completely drained of words. As I type this blog, I'm printing the monster out, all 356 pages. Don't fret tree hugger's, I reuse. Honestly, finishing the first draft of a book is the strangest feeling. So strange, I actually don't think I can describe it well enough to explain myself, but I'm going to try. 

    Writing feels a lot like pouring something out of a huge container slowly. There's no half way to writing. If you don't open yourself up completely, drivel comes out. No one wants to read drivel by the way. Night after night, I'd be drenched in fantastic conversation and descriptions as the words would splash and drip out of the tips of my fingers. Until finally, I upended the thing and it was done. The creative release was buzz-worthy.

    Having explained all that, hopefully you can understand my reasoning behind doing a re-read this week. I never stop reading, even when I'm working on my own books. It's necessary really. I have to look at something else in between working to cleanse the palate so to speak. 

    The featured author this week, Cassandra Clare, is setting the book world ablaze at the moment. Bless her, Cassie's tweets nearly blow my phone up everyday. I don't know how she does it. She is one of the most giving writers to her fans I've ever seen. She answers question after question all day and into the night. I'm amazed truly. Now add to this, a book release this spring, City of Fallen Angels May 2011, and City of Bones being cast for a movie and I think you get the idea how wild her life must be. Best of all, she writes one heck of a good book. 

  Clockwork Angel is the prequel to Cassie's first three books. City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass. They are all really, really good. With so many new and exciting things going on for her, and since it had been a while since I read CA, I decided this was a great time to do a re-read.

    Tess, principal female character is alone. She's lost her parents as a child, her brother has run off to England and now her Aunt has passed away. Thankfully, her brother sends for her to join him in England. Mistakenly, she thinks this will be a wonderful new life for them both. Throw in Cassies' beautiful new world of complex characters and Tess's adventures do not disappoint. The wit is sharp, the descriptions are gorgeous and the characters are so colorful you need rainbow colored glasses to see all the hotness and glitter.  

I've said it before, I'm a sucker for a gorgeous cover and these covers are awesome! The cover is the reason I picked up City of Bones in the first place. Two days later, I went back to Books a Million and bought the other two.

   Clockwork Angel was wonderful the first time around and is turning out to be even better the second. Cassie's series is classified as young adult and it crosses over for sure. A wonderful read I would recommend to all.

    Cassie's other books as well as updates on how the series is growing and changing can be found on her website. 

Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Teheran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent a month living in her father’s backpack. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old. Since her family moved around so much she found familiarity in books and went everywhere with a book under her arm. She spent her high school years in Los Angeles where she used to write stories to amuse her classmates, including an epic novel called “The Beautiful Cassandra” based on a Jane Austen short story of the same name (and  which later inspired her current pen name).

After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids where she reported on Brad and Angelina’s world travels and Britney Spears’ wardrobe malfunctions. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favourite city. She turned to writing fantasy fiction full time in 2006 and hopes never to have to write about Paris Hilton again. (CassandraClare.com Bio)

 She maintains a massively active twitter with her fans. Visit her website and follow her adventures. http://www.cassandraclare.com/cms/home.