Plot.

My boy is vegging out watching the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the recent one with the good graphics, not the old one that reminds me of being five. He is Reepiceep, in case you were wondering. But I'm okay with that, because Reepiceep is badass) so I thought I should blog some more, because I love nothing more than the sound of my own voice. Or the sight of my words on the screen, or something. They're about to take on the sea serpent in the mist, so I may be slightly distracted.

It's post 20 (happy 20th post!) so I thought I should maybe actually talk about the book (or books) that I'm writing. Consider it me practicing for a blurb or promotional piece for approaching agents, should I decide that's what I still want to do.

I've always planned for it to be a series of seven. Not because I'm money hungry, just because it makes sense for the content.

It's told from two view points, the main characters in the piece. From what I can see on Goodreads, people find this slightly annoying, but it's a device I want to use because trying from one stand point, I realised a lot of the plot happened away from the narrator. When I tried third person, I couldn't get the emotions that the characters were feeling, couldn't convey that back in my writing. Each character gets a different chapter, and for the most part they alternate so it's not as confusing as it could have been.

The first narrator is a girl, called Lambrini (I'm sure I mentioned this in an early post. I will not be flexible on her name, even though it must sound strange the first time people hear it. For any non-English readers, Lambrini is a fairly cheap perry over here, and is more aimed at younger women. I kinda like the peach flavour. Picture below) who comes from England. Her family decide to move over to the US, which is pretty much the first scene, and it quickly becomes apparent that something bad has happened in the UK to lead them to move overseas. From her viewpoint, the story is about learning to deal with the mistakes of the past, and not avoiding them but coming to a point where she can find peace. At that point, she'll be a stronger girl, who'll grow into a strong woman. The story is basically an overcoming adversity story for her (add in cross-Atlantic puns and the whole new-girl genre).

The second character who narrates is a boy called Carter, who becomes her neighbour when she arrives in America. He's one of many boys (I realise this sounds a bit like the Weasleys, or the Cullens, but on top of my two brothers and sister, I have three half-siblings and two step-siblings. I know big families better than Rowling or Meyer. No offence meant, but you are meant to write what you know, right?) and despite that, he's very forthright and vocal. He's pretty moralistic, and he has certain ways of looking at life, he just seems sour to most people because those ideals aren't always supported. For him, the story is about letting go of expectations a little so that you can let better things into your life.

So you may wonder how exactly I can tie those stories together, right? They learn pretty early on that by being a support system for each other, they can help each other get to the point in life where they are happy, and achieving whatever they want. The story starts when they're fifteen and they meet, and ends when they're twenty-five. I don't plan on writing every moment of their lives, but I hope by the time it gets to the end, those who stick through it with me agree that it's at the point it should be. Along the way there's death, marriage, other friends, the whole question of visa's, dissecting abuse ... it reads a little like The Casual Vacancy in that it's more of a social dissection, but it's also a series on friendship and relationships.

At the moment, the working title for the first book is Uprooted (because Lambrini is uprooted from her home, and her way of life, from her friends etc) and I've been working on this thing since 2005 ... I always wanted flower analogies but with the birth of Twilight, I'm no longer sure. I probably will anyway, because they suit the way Lambrini and Carter go through adolescence into adulthood, but we'll see. I'm only a third of the way through the second book right now as it is.

Btw, would love feedback from anyone about the content of my work. Whether you'd read it or what you do or don't like about the outline, or anything. Anyone can comment, you know ;)