Ten Ways to Start a Novel

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (), science fiction (), and dystopian (). Find Jill on , , , or on her .



The first sentence or paragraph of your novel is very important. It should hook your reader, pull them into the character's mind and situation, set the pace for the story, establish voice, or more. There are many ways to do this. Many more than I've listed below. But here are ten to get you thinking. And keep in mind, you can combine these methods too. The more you can do with one sentence, the better.

An Interview with Ann Hunter, Author of The Subtle Beauty

Looking for a great, easy weekend read?How about a book that, in its first week of release, ranked in the top 20 of Amazon's hottest new releases, outranked the bestselling Leven Thumps by Obert Skye, received a 5 star review on Amazon, and was nominated for a Whitney Award?Look no further than Ann Hunter's The Subtle Beauty!



A cursed prince. A vain beauty. Glory is the seventh daughter of Balthazar, High King of the Twelve Kingdoms. Glory hopes that - of all her sisters - she can escape the fate of a loveless marriage. But on the night she plans to elope with the royal falconer, her world comes crashing down: Her father announces Glory's betrothal to Eoghan of the Blood Realm - a prince no one has ever seen. The prince is said to be a recluse, cursed and deformed by the gods for the sins of his power-hungry father. Yet when Glory is trapped in Blackthorn Keep, she discovers that not everything is what she expected. An insulting gryphon, a persistent ghost, and a secret plan to usurp the prince keep Glory reeling. Can she overcome her vanity to learn that what you want isn't necessarily what you need--and save the cursed prince?

Virtual Book Tour: Master Of The Opera Acts 1 & 2 by Jeffe Kennedy

About The Book:



SERIES TITLE: Master Of The OperaAUTHOR: Jeffe Kennedy

2013: My Year in Anime

I already have posts for , , , , , ,, , , , , , ,, , , , , and . You can click right on the names to take you to those writeups. So: what else did I watch, but didn't write about? Let's see!



STEINS;GATE (2011)

Epic Fantasies in Anime

Because of how complex the epic stories are it's hard to find series in this style and even less that are really good because many times they overdo it having a very pretentious tone or making them too complex and hard to watch. Fortunately I'll recommend you two series that have all in its stories in just measure balancing thes tories between personal and epic developing a fantastic world vaery fascinating and complete. These two series are Berserk and Juni Kokki which despite telling stories with different goal they share a memorable story and characters developed in detail.



BERSERK

Mapping Imaginary Worlds

This is a map that I drew for my upcoming Twelve Kingdoms trilogy. It's on my mind because I just returned from a conference that my editor for this trilogy (Peter Senftleben, Kensington Press) also attended. Not only dig he take me and the hubs out for an amazing seafood dinner, but he also told me they want to include the map in the books.



So very, very cool!

My Top 50 Anime

Well it's been nearly two years since I last updated my Top 50 Anime list - a ridiculous amount of time to leave it untouched really.I decided to completely redo the list, it is remarkable how you can completely change your mind about a show after a while - some shows went up in my estimation, some went down and I had two years worth of new shows to cram in somewhere too!But I did it and now



But I didn't want to lose some of the entries so here's what's out and what's in.