Ack! Send me your email addy! I want to talk to you! LOL (but not here in public! hehe)
i'm at debbi dot michiko at gmail dot com

FYI: haven't heard from you yet. If you did send and I didn't receive (had this issue before with another live journaler) try
(no spaces)
just kid ink at yahoo dot com

After reading this book and letting my anger and frustration peter out (I guess I just had higher expectations as it was the final book), I came to the conclusion that even though I felt as if I'd wasted three nights of my life reading it, I actually had not wasted time. I learned a lot from this book--how to tie up over-arcing themes, avoid happily-ever-after endings, etc... I saw what I didn't like about BD, and applied it to my own writing.

I have not read Flowers in the Attic. I should pick it up, as just about everyone else on the face of the earth has! Right now, I'm re-reading Anne of Green Gables. Next on the list is Little Women!

Oh absolutely! It's so difficult for me to read as a "reader" and not a "writer" or "editor." I am constantly thinking I'd restructure a sentence, omit an adverb, yadda, yadda, yadda!

I haven't read it (*gasp*), but I agree that lots of teen girls love things that are "forbidden"...and I seriously doubt any of them run out to do them. That's why they read about them :) SM did one thing right: she created something that people feel very passionately about -- and I suppose that's every writer's goal, right?

Ok, is this a series I should read? I have never heard of it and wonder if it's worth starting? PS, Your baby is GORGEOUS!!!

I whole heartedly agree with you! I enjoyed it despite the fact it could have been quite a bit shorter. (yes on the 450 pages, lol) Doesn't that make you wonder about the editor?
I LOVED the happy ending and the hybrid baby plotline (having read Jeaniene Frost's Halfway to the Grave, I wasn't offended by the vampire daddy/human mommy thing.) And yes, I definitely feel the same way about protecting my babies.
Being a midwife, I was squicked out by the birth scene, LOL - too many kids will have that in their head as the ultimate birth. Ick. It certainly doesn't have to be so much drama.
I hated Renesmee's name, LOL.
I did think that maybe they story was a bit Mary Sue, but it was still so much fun to read .::grins::
all in all I was captivated enough to read it in one day. despite it's shortcomings.

I missed her pic! :( can you link me to it? I can't find it...::looks back in your LJ::
Owen is getting huge! 15 lbs and 26 inches long last Thursday! I'll weigh him again tomorrow.

yay!!! I've been hoping to see her for a while!

I didn't read BD. I just had to smile at this line of yours: "the girls that read this probably won't try and marry a vampire and create hybrid-rib-tearing babies with them."

Goodness, I LOVED VC Andrews when I was a teen! Flowers in the Attic just rocked my little ittie bittie insular world...

I'm with you on everything- liked Breaking Dawn, loved the descriptions of the baby and Bella's attachment to her (instead of just Edward for a change), and really liked Jacob's narrative. I'm also quite fond of Seth, the cute little werewolf, and even liked what we got to see of Leah this book. I also agree that all authors' personal experiences inform or impact their writings in some way, and I scratch my head a little at the insinuation (in many of the reviews I've read) that this is only okay if their life is something you relate to or agree with. I find BD compulsively readable- even in the parts where it stretched on and on. That said, I just finished Meyer's THE HOST last night and thought it was incredible- it blew BD away.

I'm also in total agreement about Flowers in the Attic. When I was twelve, I went through a stage where I read ALL of the V.C. Andrews books that were out at the time, and I just gobbled them up. The Flowers in the Attic books, the Heaven ones, the Dawn ones, the Ruby ones, My Sweet Audrina... loved them. I stopped reading them after the ghostwriters got too repetitive (the Melody series was, I think, the last one I actually liked), but I've read most of the early ones at least a half dozen times a piece, if not more. And- wouldn't you know it- I'm almost 25, not married, not in an incestuous relationship (like Cathy, Ruby and Gabrielle, Heaven... gee, all of them, really), and not at all twisted by having read them. They jut produced the right mix of horror and awe and OMG-what's-going-to-happen-next, in a way that's completely akin to soap operas...

And speaking of TV, I find it so odd that everyone is up in arms about the "age difference" between Bella and Edward, but no one seemed to have a similar problem with Buffy and Angel, whose age difference was two and a half times as big. And there also hasn't been a huge outcry about One Tree Hill, a teen soap in which two of the main characters got married when they were sixteen and had a baby DURING their high school graduation...

Yeah, My Sweet Audrina = total mind warp. Talk about Twisted. The Ruby series was fun- mostly the same as the other ones, but a different setting. Plus there was an evil twin sister! And boarding school.

Re: One Tree Hill- for the longest time, the show had characters who were "in high school," but absolutely none of them led high school lives at all. Each of the first four seasons covered one semester of high school, so for four years, they were juniors and seniors. Nathan and Haley got married at the end of their junior year and both became emancipated minors- Brooke and Peyton pretty much didn't have parents at all (though they did have big houses), and for a while, Haley was a pop star off opening on tour for Michelle Branch... And since all the actors and actresses were in their mid-twenties, it was IMPOSSIBLE to remember that they were "in high school," until there would be a random scene set at the school, and then you'd be like "Oh yeah. We're supposed to believe these characters are teens!" I thought it was brilliant of the producers to skip forward four years for last season- because the show (if you believe it) became slightly less ridiculous once the characters were adults (even if they do seem several years older than 22!). Plus, a lot of the actors seem a lot more natural in their "older" roles...

And now I'm babbling. Because I don't want to do work. But I have to. Thanks for the distraction!

I love Gossip Girl! It was my favorite new show last year. :) I think it was extraordinarily well-cast. And, based on having browsed the CW's fall line-up, I have to say that they seem to be using it as a model for their future acquisitions! Most of their new scripted shows look like Gossip Girl set in a variety of cities, with different characters- the new 90210, the "teaching filthy rich girls" one, etc.

Re: the girls looking alike on One Tree Hill- in the beginning, they were very careful to make them all look different, by giving each actress a different hair color. Peyton was blonde, Brooke was a brunette, and Haley was kind of a red-head. It's harder now that Brooke and Haley have pretty much the same hair color- luckily, I learned to tell them apart a long time ago!

Re: Lucas being cute- I used to think he was really cute (the actor, Chad Michael Murray, was in a ton of teen shows before settling on OTH- with recurring roles on Dawson's Creek and Gilmore Girls, among others- and he also turned down the role of Ryan on The OC), BUT a year or two ago I started getting really squicked out by Chad- in part because of the rumors about the way his marriage to Sophia (Brooke on the show- they were married in real life for about a year) ended and in part because he subsequently engaged himself to a 17 year old extra on the show after knowing her for a week, and in part because Lucas (the character, and the actor, too I suppose) went through a bunch of REALLY bad haircuts. Seriously, there was greasiness for a while. Now, I agree that he's back to being physically cute, but for me, he kind of sucks all of the life out of every scene he's in (unless Jamie is in the scene, because Jamie is immune to the Lucas-kryptonite-of-suckiness)...

I haven't read the 4th one. Read the first two, not the third, so didn't want to jump to the 4th. However, I have read many of the reviews on Amazon because I find it all so fascinating! :)

But I think you are VERY smart to refer back to our teen years when everyone was reading FLOWERS. I too loved the danger and wrongness of it all.

I sorta think more adults had a problem with BD and how it went down than teens. My informal survey on myspace that I did via my blog there showed most of the teens LOVED it.

Okay, so basically the theme of the entire show has been "Dan is evil." In season one, we are introduced to the fact that Dan is evil via the way he interacts with both Lucas and Nathan. In the early seasons, the premise of the show was that L and N were half-brothers who didn't even know each other and who had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks. Lucas was the poor kid with the single (unwed) mother who Dan impregnated and left (demonstrating his evilness) only to marry a richer girl who he impregnated (with his super sperm, of course) shortly thereafter. Dan has not been a part of Lucas's life, and Nathan has been taught to ignore or despise Lucas, his mother, and all other people who don't have the kind of popularity and affluence that his family does.

Lucas, meanwhile, has not been raised by Evil!Dan, so he is a genuinely nice guy. His mother, Karen, who was just a teenager when she got pregnant, is this down to earth, amazing woman with a lot of determination and a strong moral compass. And the male parental figure in Lucas's life is equally good- Keith is Dan's (not evil) brother, and he despised the way Dan left Lucas and Karen to fend for themselves, so he made sure to be a part of his nephew's life, and he was always there for both Karen and Lucas, and wasn't much a part of Dan's life, or Nathan's, although they did see each other occasionally.

For most of the series, Keith is in love with Karen. For a while, he leaves, and then he comes back. Meanwhile, because Dan is evil incarnate and keeps doing really horrible evil things to everyone- including his wife, Deb, Nathan and Haley, Lucas, etc- Deb decides to leave Dan. He physically abuses and threatens her into staying, and is so emotionally horrible that she becomes a junkie, and she can't leave him because he says he'll kill her or make Nathan suffer if she does. To get back at him, Deb sleeps with Keith. Meanwhile, Dan is off getting himself elected Mayor so that he can ruin everyone's lives with even more impunity.

Let's see... here's where it gets weird. Eventually, Nathan and Lucas become friends, even though Dan keeps telling Nathan that Lucas is beneath him, and Nathan falls for Haley, who is Lucas's best friend (and from his side of town), even though Dan keeps telling him that he's a disappointment who will never amount to anything if he takes his eyes of the prize (basketball- the whole series was about basketball back then). Nathan and Haley eventually get married, and Dan tries to do everything he can to get them to divorce, including lying to Nathan about Haley wanting a divorce and forging her name on the papers...

Deb, who is incredibly crazy by this point, decides that the only way to save her son and herself is to set Dan on fire. Yes, you heard that right. Fire. But at the time, it makes sense, because Dan has been evil for so long that you want to set him on fire, too. So Deb sets Dan on fire, and Lucas- who at this point has been accepted and then disowned by Dan like eight times- goes by the dealership where Dan is becoming Evil BBQ, and he sees the fire, and at great personal risk to himself- because that's the kind of guy he is, he runs into the building and saves his evil father. Subsequently, Dan becomes convinced that Lucas is the one who tried to kill him (yeah, didn't make sense then either), and he strangles and tries to kill Lucas a bunch of times, and basically just goes around whispering everyone's biggest insecurities in their ears (especially Nathan's) and tries to make them think that without them, he's nothing.

TBC.,,

Flash forward four years. Lucas's little sister has never known her father and never will, and Dan somehow expects Lucas to forgive him not just for years and years of being manipulative and evil and claiming to have reformed, only to do something MORE manipulative and evil (like framing a mentally ill kid for a murder he committed), but also for robbing everyone- including little Lily- of a wonderful, better man. And even though Dan claimed four years ago that he wanted to pay for the crime he committed, somehow he decides that he has done enough paying- four years for Keith's whole life!- and he miraculously (and somewhat unbelievably) comes up for parole and manipulates his way out of jail, and then spends the rest of the season trying to get his "family" back and not quite believing them when they say that they will never forgive him for killing Keith. Oh, and Dan wants to be a good grandfather to Jamie, but everyone has a problem with that, seeing as how Jamie's best friend (who is hardly ever on the show, but whatever) is Lily- Lucas's little sister- whose father DAN SHOT IN COLD BLOOD.

I have no idea why his hair is brushed forward...

Also, LJ is really anal about how long comments can be. :)

I haven't read any of the series and probably won't now because I've read so many comments and reviews, especially about Breaking Dawn. Everyone has an opinion, that's for sure. *g*

I just read two pretty good urban fantasies -- Wicked Lovely and City of Bones -- so I'm not in the mood for one with as much mooning as the Meyer series seems to have. I have no patience. But reading the reviews sure are fun. :-)

I just got BD from the library. Haven't started it yet (what's the rush? I've read all the spoilers, so I know what happens ;P), but it is sitting on the shelf next to my dictionary and THEY ARE THE SAME SIZE.

Incredible. O.o