knockmedownwithafeather

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The Grey - a short story

As a winter project for the South Somerset Creative Club, which I’m a part of, I chose to write a short story inspired by the theme we were given - ‘Grey’. This is what came to me...

The Grey, by Bobbie Killip

They came in the middle of the day, not even waiting for the cover of night to hide their distasteful deeds. No-one knew who or what they were – not even quarter of the town really believed they existed. Only those who were close to someone they’d come for, and, of course, those who’d been taken themselves.

Rumours and old wives tales abounded about them. There were three of them. There was more than three, but they always travelled in threes. They were just people in long, grey cloaks. They were skeletons in long grey cloaks. They were just long grey cloaks with darkness inside. They killed people. They ate people. They sucked the badness out of people. They ate the badness out of people. The only people who knew for sure were the ones who’d been done, and they never remembered anything.

Supplicants left their requests tied to a gnarled, ancient oak a mile outside of town. A name, and a reason, scrawled onto a piece of paper, rolled and tied to a branch with a piece of wool or string. Battered wives named their husbands, cuckolded husbands left their wives’ names, a handful of shy children left a bully’s name, a man unfairly dismissed left his boss’s name. Ordinary, every-day pieces of hatred. Sarah left her own name.

           Sarah Hartland.            I don’t deserve to live.

She wasn’t entirely sure she believed in them, but she had hope. It was the only thing she had hope in anymore. She’d heard the rumours around school – Emma Courtney’s brother’s friend had been done. Disappeared for 24 hours, then reappeared with no memory of what happened, but with a dark stain on the side of his face and a distinct lack of the arrogance and bluster he’d been known for. Sarah had overheard her foster mother and a friend talking one night, too. About some woman called Mary who’d been done. They said she used to be a right slapper, and didn’t care if the men she seduced into her bed were married or not. She disappeared for three days, before reappearing dressed conservatively and full of repentance.

Sarah was careful not to appear too interested or ask too many questions about them. She focussed on staying invisible, and wishing for them to come for her. If anyone deserved to be done, she did. After all, she was the reason her family were all dead. Her loving mother, gone. Her strict but caring father, gone. Her little brother, gone. All of them killed in a horrific car crash, all because of Sarah. If she hadn’t chosen to go to Alton Towers for her birthday treat, they wouldn’t have been on the motorway, and their old Ford Escort wouldn’t have been crushed by an out-of-control lorry. Sarah was convinced she shouldn’t be alive; that The Grey were just biding their time, making her suffer because it was what she deserved.

It was the middle of the summer, and Sarah had finally given up, when they eventually came. She didn’t know how they knew. Had one of the other kids in her foster home noticed her collection? She thought she’d hidden it well, but with six kids and two adults sharing three bedrooms there was never any privacy. Anyone who saw it would be left with no doubt as to its use. Razor blades, carefully wrapped in a piece of kitchen roll. Several part-used packets of paracetamol. A half-bottle of vodka. A postcard of a pretty village in Cornwall, blank on the back, and a pen. Sarah had found the postcard stuck at the back of a drawer one day, and kept it because it looked like the kind of place she’d like to visit one day. The kind of place where nothing bad could happen.

Sarah was fed up of waiting for them, and had made her decision. In three days she would be seventeen years old. Six years of commemorating the day of her birth alongside the day of her family’s deaths. She thought she was being careful. She found a place to go, where no-one would find her before it was too late. She had just transferred her collection to her secret place, made one last visit to be sure it was secure, when they came.

It turned out the rumours were true – some of them at least. There were three of them. They wore long, grey cloaks with hoods that cast their faces into shadow. But if you looked into their eyes, if you were brave or stupid enough, they reflected like those of a cat.

Sophie faced them without fear. She looked deep into the eyes of the front figure, curious to know what, or who, it was. She saw nothing she recognised.

           Sarah Hartland…

She heard the words, without hearing a sound. The voice was neither old nor young, male or female. It simply was.

           You have made your decision.

‘Yes.’

           You think you have no choice.

‘I don’t.’

           We offer you a choice.

Sarah tilted her head and waited for more. This wasn’t how she’d expected it to be. They weren’t how she’d expected them to be.

           You can continue with your plan. We won’t stop you, if it’s what you want. Or you can join us.

Sarah’s eyes opened wide in shock. The Grey stayed silent, but she felt a nudge inside her head. An affirmative, reinforcing what it had said. For the first time in a long time, she wavered. Could this possibly be an option? Instead of being… gone… she could be… something else.

           ‘Why?’ She asked, unsure if she actually wanted an answer.

           We have toiled for centuries, working to fix humankind. But as times have changed, we have not. We no longer understand humans as we used to. The supplicants make requests that make no sense to us. Maybe it is time that we three become four. You will help us to know what to do. How to fix things.

It was ridiculous. Preposterous. Sarah pinched her arm to see if she was dreaming, because surely this couldn’t be real.

           ‘Will I… be like you?’ she asked. Will I be inhuman, with glowing eyes and a grey cloak, is what she really wanted to ask. Will I have to kill people, or hurt them? How do you fix people? Why do you do it? She had a million questions, but self-preservation was finally starting to kick in and she was feeling more scared than she wanted to admit. Then she remembered. It didn’t matter. None of it did. In three days, she would be gone.

‘Will I be able to change my mind? If I say yes? If I join you, and I don’t like it, can I change my mind and… go back to my plan?’ Because if it said yes, then it really didn’t matter.

           The leader, for want of a better word, turned to its companions, and they appeared to be discussing her request, although she could hear nothing. After a few moments, it turned back.

           Yes. If you agree, you will commit to helping us three times. After that, you will make your choice. You may carry out your plan, or you may join us permanently. You may not return to your life here. You will not be given this choice again.

           Sarah held back a giggle. It was all so fantastical, so dream-like, and really, so perfect. She got the feeling that giggling wasn’t approved of by The Grey, but she also got the feeling that when she said yes, and became whatever they were, giggling wouldn’t be an option any more. So she let out the giggle. She let it grow into a laugh. She laughed aloud in delight, that fate, or God, or whatever was in charge of The Grey, had chosen her. And then she let the laugh fade away, and faced The Grey with perfect composure.

           ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will join you.’

The End.

I hope you liked it, it’s quite dark, quite grey, some might say :)

[knockmedownwithafeather]

Cultured Fox

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More life/writing advice from the marvellous Maggie Stiefvater

This Is Going to Be About Heroes

Enough of the educators who were at ALAN/ NCTE ‘16 have asked me for the transcript of my keynote there that I’ve finally decided to post it. Here it is, give or take.

_________

This is going to be about heroes.

I’m going to tell you three stories about heroes and bravery, and then I’m going to tell you how all three of those stories could be told differently.

Nowadays, I find myself a professional storyteller. A maker of heroes. I spend my days putting swords in stones, monsters under beds, ghosts in attics. I have learned that often the difference between a hero and a villain is merely the narrator I choose for the lens of the story. I have learned, too, that the difference between a horror and a romance is sometimes as simple as where I choose to begin the story. A tragedy and a comedy can convey the same events — the difference is in how you tell them.

I’ve also learned that this isn’t just true of the stories I write. It’s true in the story I’m living. The first hero I ever built was myself.

So. These three stories. I’m sharing these three stories about heroes because I want to talk about how the most important stories we tell are the ones we tell about ourselves. Those who have the power and wherewithal to change the narrative of the events around them are the ones who will change the future. Those who have the guts to say “that’s not my version of events” when they hear someone else telling their story are the ones who get to own their own story.

Here is story number one: I drove down to NCTE from my home in Virginia on Saturday. It was supposed to be about a seven and a half hour drive but it turned into a ten hour trip because of Atlanta traffic. Because of my car’s tiny gas tank, I ended up stopping for gas three times. Each time I pulled into a station, a thing happened, the same thing that’s been happening every time I park my car in a public place for the past month. I’ll get out of my car and swipe my card at the pump, feeling like there are eyes on me. I plug in my zip code and put the fuel nozzle in the car, and as I do, I’ll see that the eyes are attached to a motorist or a pedestrian who has paused to stare at me. By the time the tank is full and I’ve gotten my receipt, I’ll discover that they’ve made their way over to me. The conversation goes pretty much the same way every time.

Keep reading

[knockmedownwithafeather]

(via silent sky | Dirk Wuestenhagen Imagery)

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(via free spirit 2015 | Dirk Wuestenhagen Imagery)

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I’ve now got forks, I’ve been a spoonie for a few years, now who’s going to give me life advice based on knives? Could be a tricky one to get right...

Flipping Forks

Here is a true story. In my former life, I arranged food for 40-50 people every Sunday night. Imagine a dented plastic table decorated with rogue Sharpie scribbles, two-liters, pizza, and if everyone was kind to me, Little Debbie cakes. It was about as sexy and appetizing as it sounds.

At the beginning of the line was a cutlery tray. It looked like:

Some of you see this tray and your brain screams: THE UTENSILS ARE FACING OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS.

I know this because every week my adult volunteers dutifully fixed this fork crisis, ecstasy and satisfaction on their faces until the tray looked like:

Ah! Order restored. The Earth was off-axis, but we are returning to proper position and the apocalyptic freezing or frying of humanity is abated. Whew. Close call. Thank God for fork flippers.

This is also a true story. One day I said, “STOP FLIPPING THE FORKS.” (They stopped. I rarely all-caps yell.)

Why stop these correctors of chaos?

What if I told you the 40-50 partakers of unflipped forks were mostly middle school boys? And then I asked the question: do you believe a single middle school boy cared about the direction of forks?

In 9 years of setting Sunday dinner forty-five times a year, they never did.

Here is truer story. Some of you are wasting time and emotional energy flipping forks for middle school boys. (If you’re thinking middle school boys might be a metaphor, you’re correct.)

I’ve taught fork flipping as it relates to time management and goal setting. (I’ve written about time management here.) But over the years, I applied the fork flipping theory to emotional investments too.

Here’s my best truth. People flip emotional forks for audiences that will never appreciate the effort. I’ve done it myself. Too many times to count. 

Here are four things I’ve learned.

1. Audience is key.

If I’d been arranging dinner for a crowd of ladies in their twilight years (you know the ones–they drive Cadillac’s and kick ass at bridge), not only would I have flipped the forks, I’d have borrowed sterling silver. That audience cares about those details. So think about the recipient of your generous actions and ask, will this matter to them? Am I actually doing this for me? Is it emotionally efficient?

2. The problem is not your effort.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with flipping forks. The effort can be a beautiful offering of selflessness, but don’t forget that emotional energy is finite.

3. Identify those who deserve your best emotional efforts.

There are those who deserve flipped forks. Folks who will notice your efforts and appreciate them properly, but we often burn out giving emotional energy to those who won’t appreciate us and deplete energy for those who will. I recently said to a friend, why would you punish someone who wants to help you to help someone who wants to punish you? That’s the sentiment here as well.

4. Identify those who do not deserve your best emotional efforts.

There is a very good chance you have said of someone, “I give and give and nothing ever satisfies him/her.” Perhaps…and I’m just spitballing here…you don’t owe that audience your spectacular efforts.

(It’s fine to choose another effort. My middle school boys didn’t notice forks, but when I invented a game called Blender Wars…well, that was a different story.)

*No middle school boys were injured in the writing of this post. **Some middle school boys threw up after Blender Wars.

[knockmedownwithafeather]

More excellent writing advice from Stiefvater

So, I'm impressed with quite a lot about your writing, but one of the things I'm impressed with the most is how you do characters. The characters are just really /Real/ and alive and vivid. My characters are round and have flaws and motivations and everything that smart people say good characters need to have, but. They're still just not as /Real/ as yours. So if you have time, could you give some tips for developing characters? Thanks!

Dear protecterwinsmith,

Let’s say someone asked you to draw a person. 

If you’d never drawn a person before or thought you didn’t have much time, you might do one of these guys:

Example A: stick dude. A stick dude is recognizable as a person because it follows the baseline, easiest rules of personhood. It’s got a head, a torso, a familiar arrangement of limbs. You don’t need more to get the concept of “person” across. 

Now, if you had a bit of experience drawing people or thought you had more time, you might do something more like

Example B: Cartoon Dude. Cartoon Dude is even easier to recognize as a human. He follows the rules of personhood even more: he’s got facial features, ears, hair, clothing, shoes. You can tell one cartoon dude from another cartoon dude. You can populate an entire series with cartoon dudes and the storytelling would work, because they would effectively follow the baseline rules of human anatomy as well as being unique enough to tell apart. 

Now let’s say you had a bit more time or you had some more experience drawing people and someone asked you to draw a human realistically. Depending on how much you’d done it, you might get

Example C: 3-D dude without reference. A 3-D dude drawn without reference is even more recognizable as human. He can hold all sorts of nuance in his expression because he follows the baseline rules of personhood even better than the previous two. More nuance means more empathy from the viewer, and more empathy usually means more emotional resonance.

And finally, let’s say someone asks you to draw a human but gives you an actual person to look at. In the same amount of time given, you might end up with

Example D: Portrait with reference. This guy (one of my brothers, in fact) follows the rules of personhood, their effectiveness limited only by my ability to capture them in the time given or by my level of experience. He’s recognizable as both a person and an individual because of the specificity of his facial features, and moreover, he is unlikely to look like any other person I would draw using this method because of my close adherence to his, you know, actual face.

If you think about this in terms of characters, you could build a novel with any one of these sorts of character.

Example A: A novel built with stick man characters would be incredibly stylized. Fairy tales are often stick figure characters. Instead of being fully-fleshed individuals, they’re types. This is the stick figure woodsman (we can tell it’s him, he’s drawn with an ax). This is the princess (we can tell it’s her, she’s got a crown and some long hair added to the stick figure). This is the knight (we can tell it’s him, he’s got a sword and a stick horse). People don’t actually look like stick figures, but as long as the characters are all stick figures, the narrative still works at some level, because it tells you the rules and follows them, even if they aren’t the rules of reality. The moment you draw one character as something more than a stick figure, though, the viewer suddenly realizes how the others are merely made of straight lines. 

Example B: When I first began to write, I used to write novels with accidental cartoon characters. I knew I couldn’t populate a novel with stick figures, so I tried to flesh them out. What makes a human a human? I asked myself desperately. Specifics! I made character worksheets and dutifully filled them out with attributes. Height, hair color, eye color, hobbies, place of residence, parental occupation, etc. etc. I ended up with characters who followed the rules of being human, and they could carry a story, but they still didn’t feel real. 

I’m skipping Example C for now, because it’s a byproduct, for me, of failing to remember the lessons of Example D.

Example D: Example D is how I build characters now. I begin by studying real people instead of by creating lists of traits. I end up with shadows I forgot to draw in my cartoon version, hair that looks like actual hair instead of what I sort of remember what hair looks like, and feet that have all the toes drawn in because with a reference, I can remember how to accurately draw a pinkie toe. Real people are complicated and surprising. If I were building a character with a fear of water without looking at a real person, I might give them the phobia because they’d nearly drowned once: the easiest and most logical answer. It wouldn’t necessarily be wrong — it would follow rules that a reader would understand. But if I looked at a real person with a fear of water, I might discover that their fear developed because of an obsession with quantifying the abstract, and trying to understand the concept of an infinite body of water made them anxious. A much more complicated answer, but more specific and more real because of it. If I populate a book with characters built like this, I’m going to end up with a nuanced story that should have more emotional resonance. Moreover, the more I study real humans and build characters from them, the less I have to lean on real humans to make secondary characters. As I learn the more subtle rules of how people’s personalities are made, I can start to build new humans who don’t exist — who nonetheless appear as if they could. 

Example C: I’m returning to example C because it’s a cautionary tale for me. Even though I feel that I’m worlds better than that old version of me writing cartoony people who could only exist in a two-dimensional place, if I get lazy with my character development, or if I try to create a sort of person I’ve never met in real life from scratch, I can still end up with one of these weird cartoon-realistic hybrids. A character who nearly looks real but lacks the subtle, observed nuances that I can only get from keeping an eye on real life. These characters follow the rules, and they have back stories and hobbies and nuance, but they’re still lacking the surprising, non-linear subtleties of a real person, or they’re lacking the specificity that comes from studying a real-life elbow and carefully transcribing the shape of it.  

There are particular sorts of things I look for in real people when I’m stealing bits and bobs, but that is a topic for another blog post. For now, I’m going to go figure out why I still can’t draw feet.

urs,

Stiefvater

[knockmedownwithafeather]

More excellent writing advice to remember.

5 Things Maggie Stiefvater Taught Me About Writing

Some things @maggie-stiefvater​ taught me THROUGH THE POWER OF LITERATURE.

1. Write About What You Love.

Maggie’s love of vintage cars serves to transport us into Gansey’s Camaro. Her love of horses translates to knowing exactly how Puck’s pony behaves. I read Scorpio Races years ago and one thing that still sticks in my memory is when Puck’s pony bends around to scratch its ear with a hind leg like a dog. I have seen a pony do this, and it’s adorable. It takes knowledge of horses to know that this behaviour is (1) odd but possible, and (2) embarrassing if your horse does that while you’re on his back.

Writing about what you love adds richness to the story through vibrant details.

Passion in the writer also translates to passion in the reader. I don’t give two craps about cars, but when I read the Raven Cycle series, I cared deeply about that Camaro.

2. Create Unique, Relatable Metaphors.

“A laugh like sucking the whipped cream off of hot chocolate.” “Friendly in the sort of way that an electron is friendly with a nucleus.”

I had not heard these ones before. Not only are they effective descriptions, but they’re also fun to read. Small phrases like these make the whole book stand out.

3. Focus On The Characters.

All of Maggie’s stories centre around intriguing characters with distinct personalities.

“When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.”

Characters are the most important part of a story. You can argue with me, but I will argue back. The best moments are the ones centred around interpersonal conflict. A character’s stakes, emotional journey, quirks, and unique view are what pull a reader into a book. Even rip-roarin’ action scenes can be improved with relatable emotions and internal struggles.

4. Write With Confidence.

I attended a panel in which representatives from a publishing house said one of the main things they look for in a manuscript is an “it” factor—a quality of writing that differentiates a professional novel from an amateur one.

Maggie, of course, has it. She writes with calm command. I don’t sense any fear of rejection or hesitation in her style. Instead, I sense, “Yes, I am a writer, and this is my story, and if you don’t like it, go read something else.”

You, too, can do this. Write unapologetically. Own the page.

5. Be You.

If you follow Maggie on social media, you know she injects her personality fearlessly into everything she does. Your writing and your author platform are unique. Anyone can make a story, but only you can write your story.

There’s a reason this quote is so overused: “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”

Well, write your story. You’re the only person in the world who can bring all of your quirks, obsessions, experiences, and general weirdness together into one identity—your authorial masterpiece.

[knockmedownwithafeather]

[knockmedownwithafeather]

reminder to self: write it quickly before I change too much.

Dear Maggie. Do you have advice for those of us in the trenches desperately scooping words into a bucket that may have a hole in its side? Sometimes writing a novel -Such a Big. Thing.- feels useless and scary when you know there isn't a soul on this earth waiting to read it. There are no fans with unobtainable expectations or otherwise and I suppose I should find that freeing, but lately I just find it sad. How do you perform to an empty auditorium? How do you paint in a museum for the blind?

Dear trululu7,

Five things.

1. Never feel bad for wanting to create for an audience. Writing and storytelling can hold hands and play cheerfully in the sandbox together, but they are not the same thing. One exists for its own sake. The other is like a joke without a laugh; it’s not finished until the audience is there. Nothing wrong with either of them, but it’s important to know why you do it. I write for an audience. I am happier to write with a contract and deadline in place. I want to know I’ll be read. It’s not a grubby impulse.

2. The bucket does have a hole in the side. You’re going to have to get used to scooping faster. Otherwise you as a human will change faster than your story gets completed, and your story will try to shift to accommodate this new person you are, and you will end up with something that is many things instead of one. That’s not wrong, either, but the more things a book is to you, the harder it will be to both complete and edit. 

3. A rough draft of a YA novel or a slender adult genre novel is 60,000-80,000 words. Don’t think about that. It’s too big of a bucket. Think about how a scene/ chapter is 1200-2000 words. Think about how that is only 30-40 scenes. Take out a piece of paper. Write the 30 steps it will take to tell your story. Write them one at a time, or out of order, but remember that it is only 30 chunks, not 60,000 attack words coming to nibble you to pieces. 

4. Imagine what the book will be when it’s done. What does it feel like. What does it do to people. What sort of cover does it have. What, what, what. Write that book.

5. Climb out of the trench. This is going to be fun, or you wouldn’t be doing it.

urs,

Stiefvater

[knockmedownwithafeather]

reminder to self - create.

Who inspires you?

Dear boykingdom,

Everyone. Everything. I think if you imagine my mind as one of those chopper-grinder kitchen appliances that you feed vegetables and fruits and pasta into, and pretend like music and people and stories and pain and joy and automobiles are vegetables and fruit and pasta, you’re just about there.

Ever since I was a tender maggot, I’ve felt the pull of something more. I couldn’t tell if I believed in it or if I just wanted it or if I was afraid of it. Someone told me the other day that the thing I was describing was called meaning, and I don’t disagree, even though I don’t think that’s all of it. By the time I was a teen, I knew I was going to spend the rest of my days hunting it with whatever tools and traps I had at my disposal. By the time I was an adult, I realized that I wasn’t happy to just search for meaning — for something more. It wasn’t enough to just look for proof of it outside myself. Better to actively make it. 

So every day I pour fruits and vegetables into the chopper-grinder of my mind, and every day, I produce something that I think is a meaningful compilation of the things I’ve consumed as a human. Some bit of art or music or writing, either for other people or for myself, on a page or on my basement wall or just hummed in my car and gone the second I sing it. Every time I do, I’m reminded that I’m living, not merely existing. I’m looking for that something more still, but I am also being that something more.

My mind never stops being hungry.

I hope it never does.

urs,

Stiefvater

[knockmedownwithafeather]

Reposting to remember in the future when I’m in this position.

Dear Maggie, my mom is a writer and lately her books have been getting bad reviews, mocking the stories or who she is as a person. She's obviously very upset. What do you do when you get bad reviews and know you can't say anything about it?

Dear steepingstars,

I feel for her; the internet has become a more gleefully nasty place in the years since I’ve first gotten published. Internet culture has decided that you can still be a heroic person as you mock or drag someone, so long as you have proven your victim to be a villain of some kind. I know very few villains, but I know a lot of people getting dragged. I won’t lie; it’s a hard place to be a writer in.

That said, I have three pieces of advice — and this isn’t just for your mother or for published authors, this is for any writer or creator. This is the world you’re birthing your stories into; you might as well get the nursery ready.

1) Think of your favorite novel. It has to be one that you’ve read lots of times. One that is basically a vacation home on your shelf. You’ve memorized lines. You know it so well you can open up to just a single chapter in the middle and reread it for the comfort of rereading it, and you don’t have to even read the rest because the story’s already hooked so securely to the coils of your brain. 

Now go to Goodreads and find the page for that book. Read its 1 star reviews. They will be terrible. They will be scathing. They will shred it. How do I know? Because every book has terrible 1 star reviews. As you sit there with your curled lip (WHO COULD HATE THIS PERFECT NOVEL), take note of the teachable moments within. Notice how the 1 and 5 stars reviews will sometimes disagree — “the character development is crap!” “the characters are amazingly like real people!” — but also notice how sometimes they will agree. “Chapter 14 was a leisurely dream; I loved it” or “Chapter 14 was pointlessly slow.” It’s important to remember that there is not a single story in the world that everyone will love. You don’t need everyone to love it. You have to write like you’re writing for readers who will love it. You have to write like you’re writing for the readers who want that story alone. 

2) If you throw out the extremes — the most searing one stars and the most dazzling five stars — you start to get into the reality. Despite what the reviews say, the odds are very unlikely that you are actually either the worst or best writer to have ever lived.

3) The personal attacks are a hard pill to swallow, particularly when someone shouts something you know isn’t true, but there’s no real point in defending yourself. Often readers come in assuming certain things about you, and it doesn’t really matter what you say or write, they’ll twist it round to make it further evidence of their predetermined thesis. I advise using list item #2 in this case as well. If you throw out the most glowing statements about your person and the most terrible snarled comments about your person, you start to get closer to the reality of who you are. Remember, though, the Internet is not your friend, even when they are friendly. They are also not your enemy, even when they’re terrible. They can’t be, because they don’t really know you. Only you and your inner circle have an inside line on the true colors of your heart. 

urs,

Stiefvater

[knockmedownwithafeather]

Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.

Earl Nightingale – 1921-1989, Radio Personality and Author (via believetheenergy)

[knockmedownwithafeather]

She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. And she was pretty to look at, too.

Pierce Brown, Golden Son (via wordsnquotes)

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stunning book art

Stunning 3D Illustrations Are Carved Into Obsolete Books by Isobelle Ouzman

Illustrator Isobelle Ouzman creates stunning book sculptures with the use of an X-Acto knife, micro pens, and watercolor paints to transform discarded books into intricate sculptures. By recycling these books for the use of art, Ouzman practices an immense demonstration of patience and love. Her three-dimensional drawings feature woodland creatures, dainty fairies and secret hiding spaces in obscure forests. She confesses: “I value books greatly. With technology the way it is, not many people are as willing to read physical books, so they sit untouched and are discarded.” You can find more of her creations on her Etsy shop, which is open to commission.

View similar posts here!

[knockmedownwithafeather]

This book has already been on my amazon wishlist for forever, I love Brenna’s writing and am itching in my stomach to be able to read it.

I love this book. I’ve loved it since @brennayovanoff started writing it and I loved it as I was paging through it now. I’d love it even if I didn’t know Brenna. 

But I do and so I can ask for an advanced review copy to give away on the blog. I’ve sketched in it and now LET’S HAVE A CONTEST. All you have to do to enter is reblog this post before 9 PM EST on 2/1, and Brenna will pick one of the reblogs (it’s also running on Twitter) to win. It’s open internationally, and the only thing that’ll disqualify you is if you enter more than once on Twitter/ once on Tumblr (that’s twice total if you have both social media accounts which I realize not everyone does and makes this inherently not fair but that’s life I’m afraid).

I’m so excited for you guys to love this novel, too.

[knockmedownwithafeather]

Facebook giveaway! Head over to my facebook page to enter my Valentine giveaway with this beautiful Rose Quartz and Moonstone necklace.

https://www.facebook.com/SpoonsAndStars/