Amanda Hocking

I watched The Next Three Days three days ago, and I’ve been listening to the soundtrack ever since. It is awesome. It’s Danny Elfman, but I had no idea it was Elfman, and I can always call Elfman. That’s not to say anything bad about him, but there was just something extra fantastic about this score. Especially the songs by Moby. Phenomenal. It really elevated the film to a whole new level.

I do like Moby, though. I always feel weird saying that. But “Porcelain” and “Natural Blues” are amazing songs, and I stand by that.

I’m writing a blog, but I don’t really have a lot to say. It’s just been awhile since I updated.

My cat got fixed last week, so I’m obsessing over her incicion to make sure she’ll live. She doesn’t seem to care at all that she had an organ removed, but she does get incredibly irritated when I don’t give her my undivided attention. And I’m not giving it to her now, so she’s meowing at me. So I should go. Apparently.

I don’t own Jurassic Park. Not even VHS.

That doesn’t sound like much to you, but this is a fact: Jurassic Park came out on tape October 4, 1993. Do you know how I know this? Because I had it marked on the calendar. I obsessed about it with an unhealthy fervor. I wanted to skip school that day so I could go buy it, but I eventually convinced my parents to pick me up from school so I could go get it.

I distinctly remember my mom and dad picking me up my classroom and apologizing to my teacher for me being such an irritating spaz all day. I probably disrupted the class a thousand because I just could not wait to get the movie.

So to me, it’s very strange that I don’t own it. I don’t even know where my VHS went. It’s just gone, in the magical pile of things that got lost when my parents split up. Also in that pile: my Stray Cats .45 for “Stray Cats Strut,” She-Ra’s horse, my TMNT Halloween costume, and my awesome Jurassic Park t-rex that had a chunk of flesh that could be removed from side for realistic battles.

I was the only fourth grader in my school that had read the complete works for Michael Crichton.  So suffice it say, I was a pretty awesome fourth grader.

I read Jaws by Benchley when I was eight.I read Terminal Man by Crichton when I was nine years old.  I read Cujo by King when I was ten, and subsequently went on to read most of Stephen King’s books by the time I was twelve.

It should also be noted that I didn’t start reading young adult books until I was an adult. I read anything I could get my hands when I was a kid, and I was into horror and sci-fi, I guess. So that’s mostly what I read.

But I also wanted to make a point of reading books that I’d heard of – things that people talked about as classics. So I sought out Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, J.D. Salinger, Edgar Allen Poe, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, that guy who wrote Lolita who’s name I can’t remember and I’m too lazy too look up.

I read all of that stuff by the time I was sixteen. I do everything backwards, though. I didn’t start getting into graphic novels and young adult books until I was in my twenties.

I grew up backwards, I think, and I like that better. It’s much more fun being a kid now that I’m an adult.

And I really need to get a copy of Jurassic Park.

P. S. To all those who weighed in the Australia trip – I’m seriously looking into it. I haven’t bought any tickets yet or made any official plans, but I’m in talks to get something going. Because Australia is fancy.

P. P. S. To those didn’t understand my ABBA comment in the last post, it’s because in the hit Australian film Muriel’s Wedding, Toni Collette listens almost exclusively to ABBA, and it was my attempt at being funny. But I’m not always funny.

P. P. P. S. The Australian film Candy is actually a big inspiration for the My Blood Approves series, particularly Letters to Elise.

P. P. P. P. S. You should all listen to “My Body is a Cage” by Peter Gabriel. It’s a cover of an Arcade Fire song, but I like the Peter Gabriel version better. To be fair, I love covers of songs though. They’re my favorite.

My Australia obsession is at an all-time high this week, and I’m seriously considering a visit. It’s just a very expensive, very long flight, and I’m not a huge fan of flying. If Australia were like an hour away, I’d probably live there already.

Here’s fun fact (although I’m not entirely convinced of the factual nature of this fact): When I was a small child, I really wanted to move to Australia. My parents told me that before they knew they each other, they had both separately made plans to move to Australia, but at the last minute, these plans changed. (I don’t know if they were really “plans” so much as “briefly wanting to,” but this is the story as I remember them telling me.)

Anyway, I became convinced that in a parallel universe, my parents had moved to Australia, met each other, and still conceived me. So in another universe, I’m Australian. And thus began my unnatural feeling of kinship to a country that is very, very far away.

Everything in Austrailia is just awesome. Every creature there sounds like Eric named them. (Wallaby? Koala? Didgeridoo? Okay, so the last one is an instrument, but still) And they all have bizarre super powers. Platypi lactate and have venom.

Then there’s the luscious Sydney Opera House. Toilets flush in a different way. Heath Ledger is buried there somewhere, or his ashes are spread out in Perth or something. And there’s the coral reef.

And everyone has fancy Australian accents. New Zealand is semi-nearby, and Peter Jackson has repeatedly shown me how gorgeous it is there. Isn’t Flight of the Concords filmed somewhere there? And I’ve seen Muriel’s Wedding and A Cry in the Dark like twenty times, so I’m all caught up on Australian culture. (It’s all ABBA and dingos, right?)

So yes, Australia is crazy awesome. And if I went this summer, it would be winter there. (But I don’t know what that means in terms of weather). BUT its still crazy expensive, and the flight is so long I could be incepted seven times over. (If you haven’t seen the hit film Inception, that reference I just made was really funny). 

So people of Australia, and the general Oceanic community – what do you think? Is Australia really awesome enough to risk crashing into that weird island from Lost on the incredibly long flight over? And what are the chances of me running into Daniel Johns on the street? And do you guys really have gold eagles the size of city blocks like in Rescuers Down Under?

If you haven’t already done so and you can afford to, please donate to RedCross.org and/or Shelterbox.org to help those hurt in the disasters in Japan. I know a lot of people can’t afford to give much, but every little bit helps. Also, if you know of any other good relief efforts that are worthy of donations, please post them in the comments section. I know I’ll check them out, and hopefully, other people will too.

The phenomenal Zoe Winters pointed this app out for me called “Focus Booster.” It sounds stupid because it’s basically just a timer on your computer. Okay, it’s not basically that. It is that. But somehow, watching the time go down has kept me focused, and I’ve actually managed to get a lot of work done. I think I ended today with almost 8,000 words, and the awesome part is that it only took me four hours to do it. Because I just stayed off the internet when the timer was counting down. It was some bizarre psychological trick that totally worked.

So, if you’re a writer, I would highly recommend you getting it. It sounds silly, but it really helped me. 

And, on the subject of Zoe Winters – the internet has really latched on to me as an “indie darling” (their words, not mine). But if you really want to have a leader for the indie writer movement, it should be Zoe. I’m not sure of her exact numbers, but I know that she makes a living off her self-published works and her rankings are pretty good.

But more than that, Zoe loves being an indie writer. Loves it. She’s crazy about doing all the crap that drives me insane. She chose to go the route she did because she believed she could put out a better quality product on her own, and her case, I’d say she was definitely right. She’s a valiant and outspoken proponent of self-publishing, and if you really want to know anything about it, read her blog.

Also – I’ve been forgetting to give a shout-out. My laptop has been showing up a lot in the pictures when reporters and what not photograph me. If you’ve seen those pictures, you may have noticed the decal on the back of my Dell.

That decal is from Gelaskins.com, a company that makes decals to fit all your electronics, including laptops, Macbooks, iPads, ereaders, and phones. That particular decal was done by an artist named Lawrence Yang, and I absolutely love his artwork. I have several of the pieces he’s done for Gelaskins so that his various artworks adorn my laptop, nook, Kindle, and phone.

I love his work. I think it’s really brilliant. Lawrence Yang also has a website where he sells original artwork and prints. I’m waiting until I move to buy some so I can figure out exactly where I’m going to put, but his artwork will definitely end up in my house.

And the tee shirts I wore for the pictures taken for the Star Tribune, Associated Press, and Pioneer Press were all from Threadless.com because I love ironic tees.

Here’s the one I wore for the AP stuff and it’s one of my favorites. It’s called “A Simple Plan,” and it’s available in tee shirts and hoodie:

The majority of my writing today was done whilst I listened to the soundtrack to the Pixar feature film Up because it’s awesome. Up actually is one of my favorite movies. It’s sandwiched right up there somewhere between The Dark Knight and My Own Private Idaho. And also I listened to the Gin Blossoms Outside Looking In: The Best of the Gin Blossoms.

I like promoting stuff I enjoy. And I’m off to bed now.

Oh, don’t forget to set your clocks or change the time in someway. I don’t own any clocks that don’t automatically update anymore (my phone, laptop, and cable box all do it themselves). And that’s a big relief. Every clock should automatically set itself.
 

I attempted to unplug. I did for awhile.

I got some work done tonight. Not very much. Only about 2,000 words. I was hoping for more like… 10K. So that’s a fail in my mind. I have some time left to write tonight, so I might still get some done. I’m blaming my lack of enthusiasm on the past few weeks, and trying to switch gears from business and logical thinking to more creative type stuff.

But I’m taking a break, because my brain has requested it of me. So, I thought, hey, why not let you all in on my writing process since people are asking me a lot about said writing process?

Okay. Here’s how it works:

I sat down at 8 PM to write. But first I had to move around in my office so it was just so. I printed off the outline for the book I’m working on and reread it. I also played with my cat. I listened to my 90s playlist really loud, mostly skipping to the Gin Blossoms tracks.

I wrote for about 15 minutes. Then I checked twitter. I donated some money to the Red Cross and bid on some auction items by Mark Hoppus. Eric came in to tell me something. I don’t remember what. But he scared me because I was listening to Sonic Youth so loud I didn’t hear him come in.

Then I turned off the internet and vowed to get some work done. I wrote straight for about 20-30 minutes. I sang along to “Until It Sleeps” by Metallica.

I tried to avoid the internet, so I started watching Inception on my iTunes. I skipped around to my favorite parts (which are mostly towards the end where Joseph Gordon-Levitt is fighting people or the music is being really dramatic or Tom Hardy is being sassy). I thought about how either the movie doesn’t make any sense or Christopher Nolan is a genius.

Then I wrote again for about 10 minutes straight, but then I gave up to watch Inception some more. I bid on more Mark Hoppus stuff. And I played on twitter.

Now I’m writing a blog. And that’s the last three hours of my life. I’ve maybe written about an hour of that. And I’ve definitely spent more time being plugged in than I have being unplugged.

But I will most likely continue the pattern of writing for a period of time, then screwing around, then writing some more. Hopefully, though, as I get back into it, the time I spend writing will grow longer (like an hour or two at a time instead of 15-20 minutes at a time.).

And that is how I write a book.