"Die Like A Girl":A Sardonic ,Inverse Version of "Fight Like a Girl"

                 


Inspired by both Emilie Autumn's "Fight Like a Girl," and her commentary on the brutish sexism of Pre-Raphealite paintings. As a form of pure hypocrisy  I happen to have the painting of the "Lady of Shalott," serving as my undignified computer wallpaper. Given the below criticism, should I hide my head in shame? 
Die Like a Girl 


Come one, Come all
                   To the greatest theatrical show-
                   Invented by the demented minds of a true Opheliac
                   Tinkered by misery
                   Powered by Sadism and self-destruction
                    Appropriating the themes of Woebegone Mistresses
                 
                    Plummeting to the depths
              Or should I say-their deaths?  
In appropriately vibrant-colored Pre-Raphealite  paintings
                    Filled with Verdant Leaves and variegated flowers
                     Suffused with the brimming life
         Of traditional pastoral poems
                   
 As each of these victorian girls pant
                    Their dying breaths
                 -ACCEPT NO IMITATIONS-
                 Die the royal, honorable way
                  Of a Wayward Victiorian Girl
           

   We have inimitable imitations of the Lady of Shalott
  Sinking herself in a boat with her artistic work
   Wrapped about her wan body-her majestic cloak
    Meticulously worked by her pallid, lifeless hands
      She envisioned knights, courtiers,
 Kings, queens, cherubic-faced children
      Graciously attending her funeral proceedings
     This was her moribund stunt-
DEATH OF ANONYMITY-
 The Demise of an unnamed female artist
       

   Unparalleled by other artistic equals
   It is the shrewd mind of the gentry folk that conceived her pathetic
   Death as beautiful and aesthetically-pleasing
    Her befallen fate graces the walls of pretentious English professors offices
     Within and Without the world of academia
     
To die like her is to truly hate your female persona
And prize the male appreciation of your anonymous work
Above all else
Mask your art with the persona of a dainty "George Elliot"
Or an unassuming Curtier Bell
Never boast your real artistic, audacious alias of
 Such strong, sturdy women like Mary Shelley
Who would read the "Lady of Shalott" in a playful, nondefeating tone-
One used by a fine woman by the name of Anne Shirley


Do you feel spurned by men?
Come watch and gaze upon Ophelia
In this scene, she  recites poetry
Using a  semidetached tone to woo Hamlet one last time
WEAKNESS-A faint woman on the brink of slipping
An empty vessel that falls into strong currents of water
If unable to appease the interests of other men

Victorian men sigh and swoon
Conjuring up erotic portraits of such a fine damsel
Tragically falling to her death
The First Suicidal Girl
Spurned, Misunderstood repeatedly by
The historical romanticism surrounding
A grisly, visceral scene of
Self-destruction
Yet it's so artful, so genuinely Shakespearean
Let us appraise a woman's misery with
Unconcerned eyes of artistic awe

I say- Never shall any of these damsels
View any tangible life beyond their
Tragic Objective of death
Look upon the Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Juliet, and the Lady of Shalott
With pure,unadulterated shame
If all we see is poetry, we have never learned
About what it really means to "fight like a girl"
Which we have misconstrued to be
"Die Like a Girl"
The asylum's legendary spectacle
Of doom and gloom ad infinitum



   
                       
                                             

What will I forget?

 What will I forget? (The Inverse, Poetic Version  of Emilie Autumn’s “What Will Remember?)

               Having never woken up at 4pm again,,, I sleep into perpetuity
              My dreams write this poem
               Forgotten, detached Lullabies
Smeared like blood against the walls of my dying dreams
             I’m still thinking, I’m still dreaming
               Am I still alive?

          There’s the vanishing bleep of life-support
          Trying to support something dying is truly
        A complete waste of an endeavor
        It reverberates through my mind-
      The beautiful tinkling of a phantom noise
       Beep, Beep, Beep-
     My disappearing act is summed up in one
      Clangorous , monosyllabic
      BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

      I’m still here though
    Hearing the beep nevermore
    No everlasting beep
   To Furnish the silence of the dead
    What will I remember?
     What have I forgotten?
                        
  As the dream of my dying thoughts vanish
 There’s no more................
 Not even a prayer...........  No AMEN to finalize this ineloquent pause
Before the great God of the medical machine                         Issues one last prayerful BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

A Ripple in Time Promo Blitz

   
Title: A Ripple In Time
 Author: Julia Huges
 Book Description: One hundred years after she sunk, the Titanic has a new love story. Wren awakes in a present day in which World War 1 never ended, and the alternative him died as a child. Somehow, his nightmares entered the consciousness of Carina, a girl on board the Titanic. Using Wren's knowledge, she has been able to avert the tragedy, so creating a ripple in time. With the help of Carina's descendant, Carrie, Wren must find a way to go back and restore the time line. If he does, the lives of those aboard the vessel will be lost, and the love of his life will never be born. Will he be able to save the present, or is history as we know it, doomed?
 A Ripple in Time by Julia Hughes FREE to download from April 14 – April 18: Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

About The Author

 The London born author of the Celtic Cousins’ Adventures: A Raucous Time; A Ripple in Time; and An Explosive Time. The Bridle Path, and her latest title is a young adult/crossover action adventure: The Griffin Cryer. “I’m an eldest child and walking my younger brother and sister to school and back, I’d tell them stories – a captive audience! On leaving college, I worked at the BBC, helping write stories for their “Schools’ Programmes”. That was back in the day, before satellite telly made it over to the UK and ‘Auntie Beeb’ ruled the air waves! I gave it all up for the good life, and moved down to Cornwall, one of the most beautiful counties in England, and often known as ‘God’s own country.’ I think the greatest compliment I received was ‘Julia’s more Cornish than the Cornish.’ I picked daffodils in winter and made pasties for the holidaymakers in the summer. But all good things come to an end: I upped sticks to be closer to my family, and landed in a little village just outside London, and have been here ever since, scribbling away at my stories. ” I don’t specifically write in any one genre, an idea will flitter into my mind, and the story develops. My first three titles, “A Raucous Time”, “A Ripple in Time” and “An Explosive Time” are action adventures, while “The Bridle Path” is romance. I think I’d overdosed on the testosterone flying around in the previous three books and wanted something a little more feminine and romantic. My latest title “The Griffin Cryer” is an adventure/fantasy. What makes this genre special is the opportunity to really allow imagination to take flight, and even create whole new worlds for readers to explore.


Author Links Purchase on Amazon Blog Facebook Twitter

Blog Hiatus for April

   

   Right now, I'm working under the gun on my senior thesis, which fittingly revolves around Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. For that reason, I haven't been able to post any real reviews for the last few weeks, and the interminable pace of updates will continue for the whole of April. This thesis is slowly invading my subconscious, and it will be next to impossible to review anything with so much of my energy concentrated on this one painstaking task.
    Things will be back to normal in May!!

Touch of Scarlet Review

                                      Amazon (Kindle Copy)/Barnes and Nobles (Nook Copy)
                                                     
                                                               

"The Scarlet Letter was going to kill me" (Page 1)

                                                   
Songs for "Hypothetical" Soundtrack for Novel:

"There is something painstakingly heartbreaking about this song,and the intense,unrelenting melodrama of Touch of Scarlet  definitely suits this song. Plus, its based on the The Scarlet Letter, much like this book is." (Yes, the vocalist looks like Black Widow at points in this music video.) 

 "More-so than the song above, this song was the one I kept hearing in my subconscious while reading this book. Once you read the book, you'll know what I mean."

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"For me, this song really conveys the aggressive side of Emma's emotions that she feels at certain intervals throughout the novel. While this song might be a bit too extreme in the emotional department, especially in comparison with this book, I really feel that this song does a good job of matching the frustrating emotions that Emma grapples with in a neat, techno-Gothic manner."

                           
Review


      . Overall, Eve Mont's sequel to A Breath of Eyre, A Touch of Scarlet, focuses much more on Emma's life spent outside the books she loves to quite literally escape into (if only it were just in a proverbial sense). The events of Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Scarlet Letter are not explicitly retold, in the same way that major events from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre  were explicitly retold in A Breath of Eyre.  Instead, The Scarlet Letter  becomes an allusive background to the grittier melodrama that is occurring within Emma's real-world setting. Her palpable sense of estrangement that results from a devastating emotional event before starting another year at school forces her to stay outside the psychic confines of the world of the books that she can telepathically inhabit at will.

      With effective prose,well-developed characters, and a finesse at evoking realistic character drama, A Touch of Scarlet  exceeds A Breath of Eyre  in terms of feeling like a more unified story. The fragmented construction of A Breath of Eyre  was of course incidental, mirroring Emma's adolescent identity crisis. In many ways, Jane Eyre  revolved around the search for one's identity, while The Scarlet Letter  concerns the tumultuous drama that accompanies heart-break and passion of any kind. The Scarlet Letter  has become a readily identifiable allusion, used in  Buffy the Vampire Slayer  and the film: Easy A.  There is something universal about the trials and tribulations of romance: the sordid alter-ego of blissful romance.
    A Touch of Scarlet  rivets the reader, as Eve Mont plumbs the emotional depths of the newest challenge that Emma faces throughout this novel, and she does it in a very mature and satisfying way. It is very hard to find Young-Adult fiction that goes beyond the pale of the superficial, and succeeds with creating something with so much depth and realistic drama. While I loved A Breath of Eyre,  this novel felt more polished, shrewd, and daring with where it was willing to go for the sake of making readers turn the pages more fiercely.
   Its very rare for me to find something that perfectly matches my own experience of watching Roman Polanski's eternally frustrating adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'uberville. This book was one where I was shouting at character's foolhardy decisions and hoping that they wouldn't be so obstinate at points, where a certain realization would make the difference between staying together with a certain someone or effectively sorting out things in their messy life. No, this isn't a criticism. It is praise for a book that made me feel very invested in what was happening with the characters.

   It was really reassuring to see that there will be yet another installment, based around one of my favorite novels, The Phantom of the Opera. Hopefully, it will be as nail-bitingly(Is this even a grammatically correct term?) frustrating in the emotional drama department. The last series to make me feel such aggravating, yet sweet,dramatic frustration was Downton Abbey. 

Charity Fantasy Calendar Kick-starter Project-One Day Remains

     




    Only one day remains for Lauren Zurchin's charity calendar project, which goes by the name Beyond Words: A Year of Daydreams. Essentially, the calendar features fourteen noteworthy, famous fantasy writers, including  Brandon Mull, Christopher Paolini, Gregory Maguire, Brandon Sanderson, Tad Williams, Patrick Rothfuss, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Lauren Kate, Lauren Oliver, Maggie Stiefvater, Gail Carriger, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff. Proceeds for the calendar and individual author photographs, autographed by these featured authors, go to both First Book and World Builders: both these charities are substantive and well worth researching about.

    Anyways, I've looked at some of the preview scans of what the aesthetics of the calendar will look like on the project's calendars, and I was pretty impressed with attention to detail and the use of varied colors. If you consider yourself even a minor fantasy fan, I still highly recommend this page! Both her own website and  the Kickstarter project website feature both these pictures and more details about this project.

   Also, Lauren kindly offered to do this interview to give readers of this blog even more information about this exciting project!

Interview with Lauren about the project:Interview Questions:
1.What inspired this idea of making a calendar that features some of the most popular writers within the fantasy/scifi genre?

 Lauren: I was feeling bored with the types of photos I'd been taking, and decided that I wanted to do some fun fantasy themed photos to get some creativity back into my photo life. Initially I was going to use my friends, but because of my job at lytherus (I'm the managing book editor), I had fantasy authors on the brain one day and it sorta popped into my head: what it you used fantasy authors as the subjects? And it sorta grew from there! I thought a calendar was a fun and easy way to get the photos out into the world.

2. Thus far, How successful has the project been; was there any specific types of challenges that had the possibility of hindering the success of this?

Lauren: The project's been great! I hit my Kickstarter goal about three weeks in, and now it's slowly working towards a stretch goal. It was stressful launching, because I had to take the project I had planned and send it out into the world and hope that people would love it as much as I did, enough to want to support it. I'd say the only real challenge was knowing that a lot of the success was in my hands, in regards to promo. I emailed 20-30 different blogs every single day, hoping to spread the word. That took a lot of time, but it seemed to pay off!

3. Why did you choose Kickstarter, as the platform to launch this ambitious, but very creative project?Lauren: I love what Kickstarter stands for. They are there to support artists and get art into the world. And it allows people to support new projects and get personally involved. I think it's a great site. 

4. Are there any other future projects right now on your radar?
Lauren::Ha! Well, this calendar will consume my life this year (in a good way!). I'm thinking about doing a calendar for the following year with all different authors, but I want to see how this one goes first. But who knows? :)

Asteroid Survival Kit

Survival Kit for Asteroid DA14 Day
(Well..for the asteroid that will not hit us, according to NASA)

Celebrate with these movie and books:

The Last Policeman

    While it could have read like a conventional police procedural, Ben Winter's awesome crime book also had an added element of danger: the impending collision of an asteroid that may foil anyone's crime-solving enthusiasm... Read it before the next time DA14 enters into the orbital tract

Armageddon


  As you're biding your time before the next real asteroid collision, watch this crappy movie and remind yourself that impending apocalyptic doom can offer campy euphoria!


   Unprepared for the sheer Michael Bay-esque cheesiness, watch Nostalgia Chick's mocking review instead!




Life as We Knew It



         While this story is mostly about the highly improbable of the moon (hearkening to the terrible Time Machine  film from nearly a decade ago), this book does a great job fashioning a highly believable story about the human face of apocalyptic disaster.


Melancholia
    

Help me! This movie is trapping me in the mire of its own self-aggrandized pretensions....

      Apologies to Melancholia fans! This movie really puts the futility of our lives into a melodramatic/nonsensical perspective  I give you Melancholia-the most absurd, pretentious movie that would make any emo person cheer with masochistic glee.  (Yes, the very nature of art is counter-intuitive . when we realize how meaningless life is....)Its just so terrible that the movie even metaphorically commits suicide by the end because it cannot suffer the pangs of its miserable existence. Watch this if you ever wanted to see hyperbolic gloom be reenacted on the screen in such laughable, overly dramatic ways.



Spoilers Ahead....

Watch with either awestruck horror or pure, diabolical laughter as Melancholia  commits suicide. When the world ends, shut off Mozart, stop reflecting on any meaning in life, and make a tepee out of sticks...The movie is about to do something unprecedented: Commit Suicide!!
 


When you're laughing at this film.. Beware of Mr. Mcnitpick...

"How dare you make fun of this poignant masterpiece?"
(Character created by Nostalgic Critic)

Growing Up Dead

 Amazon(Kindle) (Only 99 cents!)

Amazon.com (Paperback Edition)

Interview with Greg Wilkey(Author of the Mortimer Drake Series)

1. Let's start with the conventional (rather overtired) question, What spawned the idea for this book? 

The idea for this book came from a dream. I was teaching middle school Spanish and I was reading tons of Young Adult literature at the time. Of course, vampires and the supernatural have always been my favorites. I do not remember the actual dream I had, but when I woke up, I had the title GROWING UP DEAD in my head. I kept thinking that would make a great title for a book. I wrote the title down in my journal and promptly forgot about it until several weeks later. I started thinking of stories that would fit that title and after a while, Mortimer Drake,  a half human/half vampire teenager was born.

2.Why did you choose to self-publish all three books?  What are the advantages to self-publishing?

I have been writing and creating stories since I was a young boy. I have dreamed of landing that big book deal for many, many years. I am constantly sending out query letters and proposals to agents and editors. I have actually gotten a few nibbles, but nothing definite. I began researching self-publishing and was interested in the digital book revolution. Since my target audience was young adults, I thought that going the digital route made since. And since I own all the rights to my work as an indie author, I can set my own price. Digital books cost very little to produce, so I went with the lowest price possible, .99 cents. I am not writing to make money. I just want to get my work and my name out there. I hoped that people would take a chance on an unknown writer if the book was affordable. 

3..Growing Up Dead is very unconventional because it departs from that romantic scheme and brings vampire somewhat back to their horror origins. Is your story a response to this romantic obsession with vampire fiction? Or, was your vision of this story always something purely unaffected by what's popular in vampire fiction? 

Good questions! The answer is yes, to both. I have read almost every vampire book there is ranging from Bram Stoker's Dracula, to Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, to Stephenie Meyers' Twilight Saga. I loved them all for different reasons. But as a professional educator, I noticed that the young adult vampire-themed books were heavy in the romance. I felt that they appealed to females more than males. So many young boys that I taught were not reading and I wanted to create a series that would attract them. I wanted to write the kind of vampire book that I would have wanted to read as a teenager. I combined elements of horror, myths and legends, and adventure - I drew inspiration from the comic book super heroes I read as a boy for a lot of that. I wanted Mortimer's world to be a dark and fantastic place filled with high energy, gore, and suspense.

4. Knowing your frequent activity on Anne Rice's Facebook page, you are obviously a huge fan of Anne Rice's works. I definitely saw the parallels between your works, but you also consciously created your own vision. How did your love of Anne Rice's novels shape the construction of this series

I have been a fan of Anne Rice since I was 17 years old. I read Interview with the Vampire in high school and was hooked immediately. I loved her take on the vampire's world. I loved how she broke from some of the traditional vampire rules to create her own creatures. I remember reading Queen of the Damned and being mesmerized by her origin of the vampire. I was truly in awe of how she created an entire mythology and history for her undead. When I started writing Growing Up Dead, I did not want to rewrite what was already out there. I wanted to invent my own universe populated with my own characters. Anne and I have discussed many times about how there are no rules in vampire fiction. The genre is open to interpretation and experimentation. She is a wonderful person and I have truly been blessed by her encouragement and support. I have learned so much from her and my fellow People of the Page. It's a unique network of writers and readers that I truly admire.

5.Who would you cast in a potential film of Growing Up Dead? Would you even want a film adaptation of your books made-knowing how terrible some book adaptation can be?

I would love to see Growing Up Dead as a film. That would be just great. In fact, that's how I see the book as I write. It's like a running movie in my head and I am right in the middle of it. I just sit back and write everything I see happening. It's funny because when I am not writing, I have this "paused" mental picture of where I last left my characters. It's like they're frozen in my head until I get back to my keyboard. I really haven't thought much about who I'd cast in the roles. I modeled most of the characters after people I know in my life. Mortimer is actually me as a teenager. His physical description is how I looked when I was in the 8th grade. His two best friends in the book, Tofer and William, are my friends from childhood. I used all three of use as the models when I wrote the book.

6. Do you have any future novels in the works? 

There are currently three books in The Life and Undeath of Mortimer Drake series: Growing Up Dead, Out of the Underworld, and Hope Against Hope. I am working on the 4th book, Star Blood, and hope to have it ready for publication by the end of spring 2013. I am developing a new young adult series about ghosts and the paranormal that I plan to start writing when I have completed Star Blood. This series will star a new young hero and his adventures with the dearly departed.

Book's Hypothetical Theme Song:

"If books had soundtracks like films..."


  "  Incidentally, Within Temptation, one of my favorite Dutch metal/rock bands, designed an entire album based around an original comic book that the band created. Fitting with the comic-book style of Growing Up Dead, I thought this recent Within Temptation song really suited the book's own action-packed, frenetic pace. "



My Verdict:

 
While reading the novel, I could not help but nostalgically dwell on memories of this fantastic animated series 
" For the longest time, I put off reading this book, mostly because I was very skeptical about the vampire genre as a whole.  Greg has posted about it numerous times on Anne Rice's Facebook page. Astonishingly, Anne Rice has posted several times, calling this book to attention. Unfortunately, when you've read far too many YA vampire books, you start to grow very tired of the same paranormal-romance plot conventions that are employed in YA vampire fiction. Then again, most of the paranormal books in the YA market have romance attached.Ever since Stephanie Meyer's own vampire books allowed these seemingly dissimilar genre labels to be wedded for their overall lucrative quality.

     Fortunately, Greg Wilkey's self-published vampire series, the Mortimer Drake series, is aimed more for Middle-Grade readers, which lessens the focus on romantic elements. This is much more of an action-packed story with very well-constructed characters and an appropriately suspenseful plot.  The prose is very clean and not too superfluous; Greg expertly writes scenes with a succinctness that some of his professionally-published peers have not  been able to quite master.

     Towards the end, the story did seem to transform into a X-men inspired plot. This is fine by me, of course, because the old, nineties X-Men cartoon was awesome, and it was neat to see this story pay homage to that series in a respectful way(not in a plagiarizing way). In the end, the main reason that I really loved this book was that it adeptly translates the unrelenting pace of a good comic book, while filling in the gaps between action sequences with  excellent character development.
     
       Remember, that this  book is geared for middle-grade readers, so don't expect something as intricate as say Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. It is a novel that is attuned to what keeps readers tearing through the pages. Above all, it is extremely entertaining, and is definitely one of the best escapist reads that you can buy for less than a cup of Starbucks coffee.  For the comic book nerd in all of us, this is definitely the series to read! "







What's your verdict? Have you read this already? 
What prejudices do you have about the quality of self-published works? Have you read any other self-published works; what did you think of the quality?
Leave a comment with your feeling about any of the above questions!