Goo-Goo, Gah-gah

Birthdays, ya’ gotta love ‘em … ya’ gotta hate them.

I mean, think about it. A five year old kid holds up five pudgy, candy grimed fingers, “I’m almost five,” he says proudly.

At that age, the next birthday is like the world to you. Then you start hitting really cool milestones, like first becoming a teen … then sixteen … twenty one … thirty and a half.

But somewhere along the line, we all … well, you, not me … stop adding to your age. You won’t see a middle-aged person bragging, “I’m almost forty.” Or, “next month I’ll be thirty-six!”

Instead, you start shaving years off your age, sometimes to ridiculous extents. I personally know two women who have celebrated … well, not exactly celebrated … their twenty-ninth birthdays more than once.

Where am I leading with all this?

Well, it’s because .. um … uh …

Hmmm … (drumming fingers)

Okay, fine, I don’t have a clue.

Big surprise, huh?

But I do want to tell you the most special birthday ever for me. I mean, forget my own hatching, er, development in a test tube, er, binary fusion … but the most special birthday wasn’t mine. It was my daughter.

But you have two daughters, you say.

Yep, and they were both the best birthday ever.

commercial break: my upcoming vampire humor Young Adult book Fang Face comes out September 1.

Just weeks away

… hee, hee, hee!

Come check it out http://www.fangface.homestead.com

Norm

Fantastic Fantasy

Fantasy is one of the oldest writing genres on the planet, going back to Beowulf, King Authur, er, Arthur, and other mystical, magical beginnings.

It's a style with no rules, and when science started catching up, it spawned two related genres, Sci-Fi and the more fantastical of horror. These three genres intertwine like a handful of worms.

Fantasy is also the most liberating genre of all, because, frankly, anything goes. If you want your vampire to be all sparkly and pretty, sure, go for it. Wood elves, trolls, goblins ... do you want your elves to be good elves, or something darker and more foreign? Doesn't matter, there's no right or wrong way to do it.

In fact, the more novel, the more unique, the better. Books that give us a new look at an old topic are all the rave. Look at the success spawned by Wicked. Imagine, taking the old witch from the Wizard of Oz and making her someone you cared about.

I think this is one of the reasons I was drawn to the genre. After all, reading is, in a way, escapism, and if you're going to escape, why not go to a world so completely different than ours that your fascination with the world brings you more colorfully and lucidly into the story.

Look to the success of games like Dungeons and Dragons. If you liked the first Harry Potter, you loved them all, and you lived the story along with Harry, Ron and Hermione all the way to the end.

Fantasy allows the author a freer hand than any other genre. The science in Sci-fi has to be palatable, if not provable. Mysteries have to walk the line between being too easy and too hard to solve. Westerns have to be ... um ... I dunno, I don't read them. But the horses have to be vegetarians and have four hooves, all of which touch the ground.

When I wrote my Adventures of Guy series, I didn't intend on them being fantasy at all. My heroes were three college roommates and a mother from up the street who get involved on a Quest. Of course, every quest has to have an elf, sorcerer, Unbeliever, a warrior and attorneys, er, otherworldly evil creatures.

But fantasy? Nah, I just wanted the freedom to have whatever I wanted to happen in the stories happen , and if it took a bit of magic, so be it.

Still, though, I have to admit to some surprise when reviewers started using the word 'fantasy.'

But with my upcoming book, Fang Face, all pretense is thrown away. It's definitely fantasy ... a vampire story, cut and dried. And I get to make the rules. The vampires don't sparkle, can't come out in the day once they are fully Undead, and they can't tolerate Doritos.

And believe me, I love the freedumb ... freedom ... to do whatever I want.

Norm

www.normcowie.com

Fangs in school

On my other blog (fangplace.blogspot.com), I discussed whether a boy should be expelled from school because of acne ... no, not that, heck, if acne was a reason to keep kids out of schools, they'd be empty.

What I meant to say, was if he got caught at school with a penknife.

Anyway, this touched on something from my upcoming book, Fang Face, where school authorities discuss banning a teenage girl from school just because of a little blood problem.

No, not anemia.

Her problem is that she likes blood. To drink. This isn't all of an uncommon feeling among her kind, seeing as she's in the process of being turned into a vampire.

But she isn't yet fully a vampire, and frankly, the law requires she attend school.

This was a fun thing to research. I called an administrator at the local high school, and asked her how a school might respond to something like this, and her answers surprised me.

I want to throw it out to y'all. How do you think a school should respond if it were asked to let a vampire attend classes with the other kids? And how might you respond if your child were in the same school?

The floor's open...

Norm

www.fangface.homestead.com
www.fangplace.blogspot.com

New Kid on the Block

Heh... a new place to play with words ...

So make room !

I'm going to talk ...well, write ... about writing for young adults (definition: those whose ages approximate my maturity level). I'm going to rant on occasion, 'cuz things out there piss me off sometimes, and I like to get 'em back in writing. And sometimes I'm just going to say something random ... like this.

"I'm watching television right now ... well, I'm typing ... but the boob-tube is on, and guess what's going to be on in two minutes?

Have you guessed yet?

George W. Bush's FAREWELL address!!!

Yay!!!!

Anyway, why's that relevant to anything here? Well, it' snot, er, sorry, it's not, but my WIP (work in progress) stars one George W. Bush.

And boy do I have fun with him. You'll really want to read it, believe me.

But that won't happen for awhile, because I have two books coming out before this, "Missing," an anthology that includes a story with my characters from award-winning Adventures of Guy series ... and then in August, Fang Face, my YA humor/vampire books comes out to gnaw on young readers.

Books should be judged on their content, so I humbly ask you to visit my website and read excerpts of my books, including a sneak peak at not-even-edited Fang Face.

So get yourself over to www.normcowie.com, and check them out.

In the meantime, remember, be kind to your vampire and keep your neck clean!

Norm

www.normcowie.com
www.fangface.homestead.com

The Adventures of Guy
The Next Adventures of Guy
The Heat of the Moment
Fang Face (coming Aug 09)
Missing (coming Feb 09)