NaNoWriMo 2015

It's that time again! November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

Last year, I participated for the first time, and the effort led to my novella, Transmissions. I was also very pleasantly surprised to surpass the 50,000-word mark in one month. Here's a chart of my progress from last year's NaNoWriMo. Doesn't it look wonderful?

This year, I'm going to try something new. I'm going outside of my usual YA/MG genre to write a thriller. I like reading thrillers and have been wanting to try writing one for a long time, and NaNoWriMo seemed like a good opportunity for me to stretch my wings. We'll see how it goes. As with last year, if you want to follow my progress, you can stalk me on Twitter. :-)

Book review: Jet by Russell Blake

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Description:
Code name: Jet

Twenty-eight-year-old Jet was once the Mossad's most lethal operative before faking her own death and burying that identity forever.

But the past doesn't give up on its secrets easily.

When her new life on a tranquil island is shattered by a brutal attack, Jet must return to a clandestine existence of savagery and deception to save herself and those she loves. A gritty, unflinching roller-coaster of high-stakes twists and shocking turns, JET features a new breed of protagonist that breaks the mold.

Fans of Lizbeth Salander, SALT, and the Bourne trilogy will find themselves carried along at Lamborghini speed to a conclusion as jarring and surprising as the story's heroine is unconventional.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

And now for something completely different (college job-seeker edition)

Today, I'm going to talk about something totally unrelated to writing. It is, however, related to my day job as a software engineer.

This post came about because I recently participated at a couple of college recruiting events on behalf of the company where I work. At these events, I helped interview college students for internship and full-time positions. Based on what I saw of the candidates who were rated most favorably by me and my colleagues, I came up with a list of observations that I hope will be helpful for readers of this blog if you are currently in college or thinking of going to college soon, or if you're the parent of a child who is college age.

1. You don't have to go to a top university. We talked with students from all over the country. There were students from prestigious universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, or Carnegie Mellon, but a majority went to other schools. Most of these were still good schools but not among the top tier. When I looked at the colleges attended by the students we rated most highly, they came from a wide cross section of schools. We didn't favor graduates of Ivy Leagues over other schools, for example. While there are some companies that still place an emphasis on where you go, the company that I work for and a growing number of others don't care.
2. It does matter what you learn while you're in college. Instead of basing our decisions on the college a student attended, we tried to base our ratings on what you know. In a college computer science curriculum, students should have learned about data structures, for instance, but whether you went to Stanford or to Indiana State, you should know the difference between a queue and a stack. We care about whether you learned the basics of computer science well, not where you learned it. If you went to an Ivy League but can't write code to traverse a linked list, your school's prestige isn't going to help you get a job.
3. Start looking for internships your sophomore year. Most of the highly rated students already had two summer internships under their belts by the time they were seniors. That means you should look for a summer internship after your sophomore year. Internships are a great way to get real world experience and gives you something to talk to prospective employers about. We want to know what you learned in those internships, what you found interesting or not interesting, and what challenges you faced and overcame.
4. Work on personal projects to show your independence and initiative. The best candidates have also built two or three apps or websites by the time they're seniors. They usually took on these projects to learn a new technology, like Android app development. It doesn't matter how successful the project was or even if it's still an incomplete work in progress. The goal is to show us that you have a desire to learn and that you have the initiative and independence to work on something on your own.
5. Culture fit matters. There were a few resumes with notes along the lines of "Smart but not a culture fit." These students didn't make the cut for my company. It's not only important to do well in school and to be smart and have a lot of experience. You can't be a jerk. I met students who talked ill of the instructors and/or classmates in an attempt to show how smart they were. Um, no. While it's hard to know how much to brag about your accomplishments without coming off as too cocky, keep in mind that companies are looking for people who will work well in teams because that's how real world projects get done. If employers don't think you'll be a good team player, then it doesn't matter how technically skilled you are.

Although my advice pertains mainly to the software industry, I hope that students in other majors can benefit too. And if you're deciding on a major, computer science isn't so bad, considering that the world is continually becoming more electronic and computer science is now the most popular major for women at Stanford.

Why I don't write four books a year

Last month, there was an article on Huffington Post asking authors not to write four books a year. I am happy to say that I don't write four books a year. It's an accomplishment if I can finish one novel a year.

Do I write just one novel a year because I agree with the article and think that a good book can't be written in three months? Do I believe that any book that doesn't require a year's worth of work must not be very good? While I do work hard on my books and try to write the best story I can each time, that's not why I only publish one book a year. The reason is simple: I have a full time job and a family that keeps me busy, and since I only write in my spare moments, it takes a year to finish a novel that's good enough for the public to read.

If I weren't working a day job, I'd probably write four books a year, and you know what, they'd be better than the single book that takes me a year to write. The idea that a good novel can't be written in three months or less is absurd. Novels aren't like wine that needs to age before it's ready. Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in three weeks, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine days, and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde in six days! While those astounding numbers may be the exception rather than the rule, there are many great books that have been written in less than three months. Speed doesn't dictate how well a book is written. An author's skills, inspiration, dedication, and many other factors count more toward the quality of a novel than the amount of time it took to write it.

Now, it's time for me to go back to my precious minutes of writing today.

Book review: The Brothers by Katie French

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Description:
“They tell me it’s for the good of humanity. That I’m saving our way of life with my body. They lie.”

Book Four in the award-winning, best-selling Breeders series.

Riley has survived madmen, deranged doctors, and false prophets. Her next task is uniting her family, which has been ripped apart by Nessa Vandewater, the Breeders’ enforcer. Her boyfriend Clay and brother Ethan are still missing. Only she can find them.

But on her way, Riley is stung by a scorpion. To ease her suffering, Auntie Bell shares the story of Riley’s mother, Janine, and how she escaped the Breeders.

Nearly twenty years in the past, Janine, an obedient Breeders girl, is nearing her seventeenth birthday, and the clock is ticking. She has two months to become pregnant, or she’ll be put out, sold into slavery . . . or worse. When her doctor informs her she’s infertile, she’s devastated. But some doctors lie, and one in particular seems to want Janine for his own . . .

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

More stories on Wattpad

I posted two more short stories on Wattpad, making it a grand total of three stories published on that platform! The three stories that are available are:

"Fortune Cookies" - After a two-year break, Ryan takes the first steps in getting back together with his ex-girlfriend, Stephanie. Along the way, he receives aid from an unlikely source, a Chinese restaurant whose fortune cookies accurately predict good news in Ryan's life. However, all good things must come to an end.

"Urban Spelunkers" - For Fred, Rick, Brian, and Brian's younger brother Jake, exploring abandoned buildings is an adventure, and a very profitable one. However, sometimes, there's a reason why no one should cross the Do Not Enter sign.

"Conversation with a Time Traveler" - How do you convince someone that you're a time traveler? That's the problem facing Henry Tisdale as he tries to persuade Malcolm Pierce, one of the richest men in the country, that he is from the future. With every question that Malcolm asks, Henry finds his claims slipping away. Can he turn things around to prove that he is indeed a time traveler? Does he want to?

I'll continue to post more stories to my Wattpad account as time permits.

My reading/writing spaces

Have you ever seen those articles where authors show their special writing space (like this one)? It could be an office in their house with a big desk full of writing tools and bookshelves in the background, or it could be as simple as a favorite chair tucked in the corner of a den. Either way, I envy those authors because they have a dedicated place to pursue their craft.

As for me, I read and write whenever and wherever I can. I don't have a writing desk. I don't own a desk, period. And my house is too small to have a room dedicated to writing. Instead, I do my reading and writing all over the place: on the living room sofa, at the dining table, in bed, etc. I spend as much time with books outside the house as I do inside.

Here are two pictures of places where I do a lot of my reading and writing:

The first one shows two seats on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), which is how I commute to my day job. It gets too cramped to write on BART, but I read a lot on the train.

The second photo depicts one of the areas where the parents sit at the taekwondo school that my kids go to. I used to watch them practice, but after years of seeing the same routines over and over, now I spend my time writing while they're in class. :-)

One of these days, if I become rich and famous (or just rich), I may own a house with a special place for reading and writing, but for now, I'll do it whenever and wherever I can.