My interest in the Young Adult Paranormal genre is a bit of a guilty pleasure, but I have to admit that Amy Patrick really knocked it out of the park with her Hidden Saga, to the point that I am willing to admit to aforementioned guilty pleasure.

I haven't finished the whole series yet, but the first one, Hidden Deep, is offered free on Amazon Kindle and is definitely worth a read for anyone interested in that genre. It's a compelling story with characters that actually have some substance to them, despite being young (16-18). It also avoids that painfully awkward female protagonist trope that started with Twilight​ and doesn't seem inclined to die anytime soon, which makes my guilty pleasure much less guilty. Patrick is also a strong writer, and a boon to the self-published community as her work is as polished and professional as any traditionally published author, making for an even more enjoyable read.

The two main characters are Ryann (love the name as my female character's name is Adrienne), and Lad (not as crazy about the name, but to each their own and it fits the book). Ryann is the human in this story, and Lad is the one that provides the paranormal element necessary for me to indulge myself enough to the point where I was reading them on break from work. There's also Nox, who is probably my favorite character, but is not as important in the first book as he becomes later in the series. But who doesn't love a handsome bad-boy?

Ryann has a lot of great traits like loyalty and a good work ethic, while Lad has that same loyalty wrapped up in a strict sense of duty, which I am a sucker for. Patrick has also packed some fun surprises in her work that add layers to the story without seeming like shameless plot devices. So far, in the four books I've read, there's no glaring plot-holes or "I see the author ran out of real ideas and went with this instead" moments that even the best authors can have--I'm looking at you, Stephen King, and your random sex scenes.

I'm not a parent, but I would say that this series is definitely child-appropriate (as one would expect from a YA book) while also containing themes and a writing style that are engaging to adults as well. So if you're looking to indulge in a YA paranormal romance, try this out. And I promise, the sequel is as good as the first one, so you can binge for days.

I'm not a fan of the term "writer's block." Sure, we've all experienced it, and I've used that excuse many times myself, but deep down I think that nine times out of ten, "writer's block" is just an excuse for laziness.

That said, whether or not writer's block is a thing, I've been suffering from that or something like it for the better part of the year. I wanted to have my sequel to my fantasy novel The Talented done by winter of 2017. Now, I feel that I'd be lucky to have a rough draft of it done by winter 2018. A lot of this is due to laziness, because I haven't so much as turned my computer on in months, but a not-insignificant reason for this is that I can't figure out what to do with the sequel.

I've started it many times. I've gotten close to finishing it twice. And each time, regardless of whether I was five or fifty pages in, I realized that it was crap. Not the insecure "I'm a horrible writer and don't deserve to live" crap that we all think we write, when really we're quite good at what we do. No, the actual crap that even a mother couldn't pretend to love. At first, I thought I was just being insecure and needed to follow through. Then, when I realized attempt #1 really was bad, I moved on to attempt #2 where I tweaked the plot. Still bad. Attempt #3 and #4 I backed the story up so that it started only a week after the first book ended. Still crap with no real action. Attempt #5 had too much action, full of those horrible author crutches equivalent to your FMC accidentally getting pregnant because she's too stupid to make a doctor's appointment for weeks, despite constant reminders, and then she is surprised by the fallout. It was horrible, and left me once again wondering what I'm doing with my life.

So I'm taking a step back, sipping on some home brew (kombucha, not beer), and reevaluating my life. It's pretty good. I'm engaged and wedding prep is going well. I'm employed and healthy and happy on a personal level. But I have to accept the fact that my usual pantsing isn't getting the job done for The Talented: Part Two. I even attempted some half-assed plotsing for Attempt #5, and that was worse than #4. So I've returned to basics, and went looking for the help of some more experienced writers.

But the title of this blog isn't about writer's block or craft books, this title is about giving something the old college try. And I don't mean that in the usual sense, I mean that in the sense of listening to what your professors tell you to do the first day of classes, which is to actually open and read your textbook for more than just homework, and to spend time consistently on that class, not just cramming before tests. I'm actually going through the steps of the Snowflake Method outlined in Writing Fiction for Dummies, even the steps that involve scene-by-scene details, and writing a 5-10 page synopsis of my story covering those scenes even though none of those pages will make it into the final draft, because I've realized that, for whatever reason, I'm not able to do this on my own, and I need help. So going to this book and going through all those steps is me giving it the college try. If I need to, I'll go to "office hours" by consuming more books on craft, or maybe even get some "tutoring" by other author blogs.

It might be Attempt #6, but I'm giving this the old college try, and failure is not an option.