Can You Handle the Truth?

I was reading a link to an article posted on Twitter (I’m @tanialramos if you wanna follow), and the link was directed to a blog which spoke about the preconceptions of authors and who they really were.  Hemingway was listed as well as Jodi Picoult and others I hadn’t heard of.  I found it to be a fascinating article because I know personally that I hear about authors I know of like Patterson, Sparks, Palahniuk, and Wilde to name a few, and an image of their life immediately enters my head.

For instance, Nicholas Sparks: a family man with a loving wife, two kids, a white picket fence a lab and a cat.  I’m not saying that is who is, just that that is the image that plays in my head.  As for Palahniuk, well I imagine a man sitting in a dark room, drinking his tenth cup of Irish coffee, carving names like “Damian” into his large, antique  mahogany desk that has those old claw feet embellished on it, eyes drooping and  he is laughing maniacally while punching away at an old thirty pound typewriter.  I have a pretty vivid imagination sometimes.

So I decided that someday when I am a household name (insert rolly eyes) that people will likely have these misconceptions about me.  So allow me to tell my 37 followers exactly who am: I wake up in the morning and if I’m going to work I think of ten thousand reasons to call off … though I rarely do, and if Ido it is because I am legitimately ill.  If I go to work my day ends there.  Now, days I have off are much more interesting: I wake up and try and try and try to fall back asleep because just once I would like to say I sleep in.  Usually, I am awake by 630 am.  If I am home alone then I pull the laptop from under my bed and proceed to follow this dreary routine: Check stats on home page, check stats on book trailer (close to two hundred views, yay!), check WordPress (no link necessary, right?), check email and wonder why I am being sent info about Viagra and who my new friend in Zaheer is and how much money he will send me today, proceed to delete all email except the ones with the coupons to Payless Shoe Source and Baja Fresh.

Interesting life right?

Next, I look out my window and think I really should get to cleaning the moat … er, umm, pool today.  Shake my head and tell myself that someday I will be able to hire a full-time pool boy, with the glistening body of Andonis, hair flowing like John Bon Jovi, with some exotic name like Sven or Mauricio…oops, did I go off topic? Okay, next I look at the huge mess that continues to pile up on my dresser and think that after writing one chapter I will tackle the mountain of papers and create some kind of logical filing system.  Yep, right after I write that chapter.  Next, I take a shower and go downstairs, and if not caught up in some conversation with my mom (yes…I do live with my mommy still! Well, she lives with me, and YES there is a difference).   I might or might not find something to munch on, but a cup of ice water is a definite.  I love to crunch ice.  I then proceed up stairs and start writing that chapter, and if I do it right that could take all day.  Boyfriend comes home from work, I read him my new chapter of awesomeness and amazement…watch to see if his eyes tear up…remind him this is purely FICTION and does not have any resemblance to our lives or events we have been through other than the fact that my characters breathe air and we breathe air, but the similarities end there!!!  Then I go to sleep.

Now when I am famous, you can tell all your friends how Tania L Ramos told you personally about her life.  And when they ask what I am like you can answer with, “Well, she likes ice … and … lives with her mommy…still.”

Book Review: The Christmas Wedding, James Patterson

In my quest to become a better writer, I vowed to get back into reading.  As I wrote in my last post, after an impromptu visit to my local bookstore, I picked up James Patterson’s ,”The Christmas Wedding.”  I also picked up another little book called, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.”  I’ll review that book when I finish it.

So many of you know that PAtterson is my chocolate.  He is my comfort when I need a good cry, a good plot twist, and sometimes just good old fashioned adventure.  Many people saw my book at work and had the same perplexed reaction, “Patterson writes romance?’ Yes he does.  And he does it very well, by the way.  He is as intense about his romance as he is about his thrillers and young adult novels.  Although I enjoyed reading this book I would highly recommend another book of his called, “Suzzane’s Diary for Nicholas,” talk about a tear jerker.

This book, “The Christmas Wedding,” is a fast paced, fast moving novel that tells the story of Gaby and her grown children.  Gaby is getting married on Christmas day, but she hasn’t revealed to whom.  there are three suitors, all very dear friends.  The story follows the events that lead up to her wedding, and the lives of her children leading up to that day.  She doesn’t reveal who she will marry until the very end, and I am disappointed that it wasn’t as big a twist as I thought, but it held my attention none-the-less.  There was one surprise on wedding day, and the sap that I am, brought me to tears…but it had nothing to do with Gaby.

All-in-all. this book moved very fast.  I read it in two days, maybe a total of five hours, probably less, but I do read fast.  This book isn’t as detailed as his YA books or thrillers, and think he chose to infer more rather than give outright details.  I suppose that is fine for a romance novel that is more dialogue than wordy substance.  My big complaint with the book is in the character of Gaby.  Whereas her children are all given very believable and real personalities, I just found it impossible to believe that Gaby was without flaws.  Without fault.  If anybody was that perfect then I would and could understand why she would have three proposals.  But Gaby is faced with many challenges brought on by her children and grandchildren, and not once did she flounder.  Each and every time she came through like a champ.  In my life, and maybe it’s just that I don’t live in a perfect world, but people around here have opinions.  Sometimes loud, sometimes cynical, usually sarcastic, but no one is as wonderful as Gaby.

I read in someone’s blog (I can’t remember who, sorry), but they said nobody wants to read about the perfect person.  We want to read real life, real personalities.  I loved this book for the fact that James (Mr.Patterson to you readers who don’t like chocolate), held my attention from page to page to find out just who Gaby was going to marry.  I did not like that Gaby was so pristine.  My overall rating would be 3.5 out of 5 stars, only being decreased due to the flawless main character and lack of amazing ending.  I would recommend reading this, but I would still recommend, “Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas,” much better.  Visit me at Goodreads to see what else I am reading.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_18?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+christmas+wedding+james+patterson&sprefix=the+christmas+wedd%2Cstripbooks%2C316

Stupid book that sounds just like mine!

Maybe it’s just me, and I’m writing this staring at a clock, knowing I should be getting ready for another fun filled day at the place that pays the bills … but, does anyone else out there in the literary world get a bit peeved when they come across a book or movie that is almost exactly your idea? Okay, I told someone at my job about my book and gave the elevator pitch of the story line and she says, “have you read …” So she pulls up this book online and I read he jacket and HOLY MOLY!!! It’s my story line.  And I mean almost verbatim, with the exception that I my underlying undertone is not about a wolf pack.  However, seeing this book did send some primal, animalistic reactions into my psyche.  I found myself defending my book, like a mother defending a child who was just slandered.  I had my, “oh no you didn’t,” face on, and the shoes and earrings were about to come off.

Okay, so that was sooo last week (By the way, how many “o’s” do you put in so of you want to drag out the point? Is there a standard?).  Okay, so yesterday, because my car was almost smashed by a big rig and some jerk who pulled in front of the big rig and cut me off, I was forced to make a left hand turn into our small mall.  Oh, well, I took my lumps and pulled into the Barnes and Noble to scope out the competition and pick up a new book (I vowed to be a good writer and start reading again).  As I entered the store, there it was, right smack in my face like some big neon sign that read, “Ha ha. I made it to the front rack at Barnes and Noble.  Where’s your book that is significantly so much like mine.”  I know its a lot to be on a neon sign, but I swear that’s what the sign was showing me.  So I did what any other writer in my position would do…I turned her book around.  Sigh.  Shallow? Probably, but don’t judge me lest you be judged.  And don’t throw stones at my glass house unless you want some shards to fly your way.  Anyway, before I walked out of the store I turned her book the right way…stupid morals and proper upbringing.

I do have to say that this has really bore a hole in my creative soul.  I am trying so hard to realize we did not write the same book, and that every story has already been told….now it’s a matter of making it better, adding a twist, or whatever makes it genuine.  But there are so many similarities, and now I feel like people will look at my book and think I copied off the New York Times Best Seller chick.  I feel substandard.  My dreams have been stomped on…but maybe, just maybe….Maybe I wrote it better.  Maybe my characters are more believable.  Maybe my story line excedes hers.  Maybe…oh, well.  I was almost fit to never buy another book again, but I did what I said I wouldn’t do because buying A James PAtterson book is my chocolate fix.  So I bought his latest romance novel, “The Christmas Wedding.” I read his jacket that states he is in Guiness Records for selling the most books ever…240 million, and so I wallowed some more while I turned each page wanting desperately to read the last chapter and find out the big mystery.  STUPID JAMES PATTERSON, master of the page turner, even in a romance novel.  Yes he is my chocolate, but I’m always left with some guilty, inadequate feeling after, like I need a shower to bathe of his wonderfulness that I basked in more a spell.

Anyway, I’m still boycotting that other book, and if push comes to shove, and I end up in Barnes and Noble again, so help me, this time I will turn her books over and walk away with a clear conscience.  I’ll do it, too!