Search Illastic (www.fictionpress.com/~illastic) for my other account, which boasts my least cringe-worthy works.

Broken Spiral is my primary reviewing account. If you're reading my profile right now, know that I am shamelessly advertising my other account since anything I've written on this file is just plain... embarrassing. (Don't let this stop you from reviewing. Haha.)

But then again, writing and showing your work to the public does always carry the risk of embarrassment, so I guess that's just a sacrifice we writers have to make.

To all you embarrassment-risking-writers out there, cheers!

Welcome to my world.

Hah. Aren't I the perfect example of the egotistical writer?

about m o i :

o: I'm on a quest for self-betterment.
o: The naive, delusional Me wants to grow up and be a novelist. However, I'm inclined to think becoming a novelist would exponentially increase the chances of me shooting myself, so just to be on the safe side... (And yes, I have perfectly good reasons for thinking that. Although I'm not usually suicidal/homicidal, I'm an invenerate slacker. Not a good thing in a business where people expect you to churn out a decent book a month. Also, writing a novel around 100K words in length is quite an agonizing roller coaster ride -- the masochist side of me loves it; the rest, not so much.)
o: I assume I am cynical. And sarcastic. But I'm not rude, and I always try not to be. I hope everyone else tries to do the same.
o: I love romance and thrillers, like fantasy, am currently writing a fantasy novel, finished around 75K of a romance/thriller one, and am open to every other genre out there.
o: Boy, was that one crappy sentence. Read it twice to see if it made any more sense than it did the first time.
o: I have an inferiority-superiority complex.
o: I like spicy food. If I can't have spicy, gimme sweet. I loathe anything too bland or too salty; makes me feel nauseous.
o: I'm a full-blown skeptic. Impress me, please.

favorite a u t h o r s :

Kurt Vonnegut

Stephen King

George Orwell

George R. R. Martin

China Mieville

Guy Gavriel Kay

Joseph Heller

Marian Keyes

Ayn Rand

Jacqueline Carey

P.S. I quite firmly believe that people should not write off books/stories just because they seem to "commercial" or whatnot. If the author has some idea of plot or pace or character, and if the author can get your pulse racing or your gut split from laughing -- all the better, I say. Never be a literary snob!
With that thought in the open, I have to point out that there are good commercial books and there are bad ones. Same with literary books.

Well, to each their own.

. . . and now, for your viewing pleasure, i present to you -

writing q u o t e s & s a y i n g s :

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it -- don't cheat with it.
~ E. Hemingway

. When you earnestly believe you can compensate for the lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there is no end to what you can do.
--

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising each time we fall."
– Confucius

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for. Perfection is God's business.
- Michael J. Fox

"Always remember: STRESSED spelled backwards is DESSERTS. So relax and have a piece of cheesecake."
– Me

'A bad experience... is a good anecdote!'

. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
~ G.K. Chesterton

"There was never a genius without a tincture of madness!!"

"You realize that everything will get totally and completely screwed over in the getting there, but once you're there, it's just fine."

. Your future happens to you...
...that's fate.

How you handle what happens...
...that's character.

What your future and your character create together...
...that's DESTINY.

"It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
~ E. L. Doctorow

"You describe a character by the shape they leave in the world. It's not the way they look; It's their looks; Their silences;
The character description is not the colour of the eyes as much as the
way they turn their heads"
- Terry Pratchett

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
- George Eliot

"The absolute requirement for creativity is blind-folding the judge."
- Joan Borysenko

"Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true.
Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real."
- Cao Xue Qin

"The question is not who will let me, but who is going to stop me."
- Ayn Rand

"If at first you don't succeed, you're in good company."

"Worry is a misuse of imagination."

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."
- Maya Angelou

Everything is a door/
All one needs is the light push of a thought
- Octavio Paz

"Pain is Temporary, Victory is forever."

"I'm a lousy writer; a helluva lot of people have got lousy taste."
- Grace Metalious

"I hate writing. I will do anything to avoid it. The only way I could write less was if I was dead."
- Fran Lebowitz

"No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell."
- Antonin Artaud

"Occasionally a date with a face blank as a sheet of paper asks you whether writers often become discouraged. Say that sometimes they do and sometimes they do. Say it's a lot like having polio."
-- Lorrie Moore, "How to Become a Writer"

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
– Einstein

"There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
- Victor Hugo

The pen is mightier than the sword, but only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp."
-- Terry Pratchett

"Happy lives make lousy novels... If the characters are having a good time, the reader is not."
– Jerry Cleaver

“I spent a morning putting in a comma and an afternoon taking it out.”
-- Oscar Wilde

“Just keep plugging away, because how you handle your slumps is what makes you or breaks you.”
– Jerry Cleaver

"Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind."
-- Rudyard Kipling

My brain is built of paths and slides and ladders and lasers and I have invited all of you to enter its pavilion. My brain, as you enter, will smell of tangerines and brand-new running shoes...

~Douglas Coupland