New Feature: Writer of the Week

I'm really inspired by the blogger La Carmina (a.k.a. Carmen Yuen), whose blog can be found here.. She graduated from Columbia University and Yale Law School with a JD, which proves that she's a total intellectual. She combines brains and beauty with her amazing wardrobe and travels and writings, as she is also a published author and has a fashion blog with an emphasis on gothic and Harajuku fashion. She used to have a featured called "Gothloli of the Week," in which she profiles girls and women who have gothic lolita inspiration in their wardrobe, and showcases each individual's style and interests in each post. You can find her Gothloli of the Week archive here.

La Carmina is smart, beautiful, ambitious, AND successful! Any reasons not to admire her?

Her feature inspires me to try something similar on my blog. Since I'm interested in connecting with  other writers, I'm thinking of doing a "Writer of the Week" feature, in which each post will showcase a writer's aspirations, inspiration, and writing style. I would be interested in profiling both published and non-published writers
If you would like to be profiled on my blog, please READ these instructions carefully!

*email me at authoressjo@gmail.com,

*attach at least one photo of yourself (feel free to submit more if you'd like. I would prefer it if readers knew who they were communicating with, as opposed to questioning a faceless enigma).

*answer these questions

• Name:
• Age (optional):
• Website (if you have one):
• Location:
• When did you realize you wanted to be a published author?
• Name 5 authors and 5 books (do not necessarily have to be your favorites).
• Where do you get your inspiration from?
• What do you think is the best quality a writer can have?
• Any last words? (Fun facts, comments, something you'd like to share with the world, etc.)
• Challenge: Write a one-sentence story!

Please spread this with anyone who you think should be shared with the world! :)

I guess I will use myself as an example, so that people can get an idea of what I'm aiming for.

Credit: Emily Nguyen Photography

Name:  Jo
Age: 19
Website:  My Caliber Magazine Author Archive
Location: California
When did you realize you wanted to be a published author?

I have always loved storybooks when I was a little kid, and, inspired by these magical objects, I decided to write my own books and illustrate them. When I found out that there was an occupation called an author, I thought, "That's what I'm going to do one day!"
Name 5 authors and 5 books.

Authors: JK Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley, Catherynne M. Valente, Lemony Snicket

Books: Frankenstein by Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley, A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb, Faust by Goethe, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind, Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Anywhere and everywhere! I think sources of inspiration are rather unpredictable. 
What do you think is the best quality a writer can have?

Willingness to grow
Any last words?

Tuomas Holopainen, the songwriter for the band Nightwish, is one of my biggest poetic inspirations!
Challenge: Write a one-sentence story!

The mermaid's pearls were milky-white and as delicate as tears, scintillating against the backdrop of the ocean like stars beaming in the evening sky.

Modeling Digression: Preview of Today's Carousel Shoot

In the long months that I have been absent from Blogthings, not only have a revived my novel-writing goals and become a college freshman, I now model part-time for fun.

From left to right: Emily, me, and Terry.

Today, I had the honor of doing my second collaboration with photographer Emily Nguyen (website here) and my third collaboration with makeup artist Terry Alabata (website here). We had a carousel-themed shoot at Zeum Carousel in San Francisco, by the Creativity Children Museum and Yerba Buena Garden. It was ecstatic to be part of it, and riding the carousel costs $3.00 for two rides. Definitely made the kid in me very giddy. Terry is a makeup genius, as well as a super-friendly and bubbly woman! Emily is such a talented photographer, (go check out her website and portfolio, and you'll see what I mean!) and super-creative with wardrobe (see the skirt I'm wearing? She created it in about ten minutes, and put it on me with staples. But it looks so pro, doesn't it?).

None of the photos are edited, but here's a sneak peak. ;)

My Novelist-Wannabe History

A bit of background of me as a writer: I started writing novels at age 11. Many of them fizzled out by the end of the first few chapters, but the first one I finished was when I was 13, written in a span of 4.5 or 5.5 months, and took up 1.5 composition notebooks. The second one was finished when I was 14, a few months before graduating middle school. However, they are both humiliatingly amateur fantasy novels, and I refuse to regurgitate the summaries. After penning these novels, I proceeded to submit query letters and (if requested) excerpts of my manuscripts to agents. They all rejected me, and looking back, I can definitely see why, and am now pretty happy that they were rejected. In fact, I still have the rejection letters floating around home...somewhere...

The pile of notebooks with a long history of novel-writing attempts.

Look at all those worn pages!

I still wrote in high school, but not as often as I would have liked, and was happy to use creative writing classes as excuses to write more. High school resulted with a lot more partially-written novels that I lost interest in (though as I look through the notebooks, I see some rather promising material that I can resurrect and utilize in the future...) Back in January, I started a novel about a doctor who tries to resurrect his dead sister with a headless doll, because he's convinced that she's the answer to a cure for the epidemic that's spreading in the city he lives in. But as I was writing chapter 5, I figured that I need some more life experience to write that novel, so it's currently on hiatus. But, in college, I'm still determined to make publication a reality, despite Berkeley's reputation for killer academics.

On Friday, I finished typing up a revision of chapter 1 of my novel. Yesterday, and up to today, I'm in the process of typing chapter 2. Lots of changes made, and to be made!

Blog Rebirth

My 19th birthday was 4 days ago (January 1, New Year's Day!). And just last night, at approximately 11:30 PM, I finished the draft of my novel! After 129 days, draft #1 is complete! (I began on September 1, 2011. I don't count outlining and planning, which took up a good chunk of summer 2011.) This is the third novel I have been able to complete in a long time.

My birthday cake. It has Chinese characters that say "Happy birthday." Hey, look, I'm a one-year-old aspiring novelist!

I know that this used to be an art blog, but so many things have changed since then. Aside from now being a UC Berkeley freshman, and blogging for their Caliber Magazine (my author archive is here.), I'm going after my dream to be a published novelist again. I tried way back in middle school with two novels I wrote, and with high school, I was so busy with academics and my art portfolio that I didn't get to do much novel-writing. Two authors who have inspired me to resume novel-writing are Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus, and Lauren Oliver, author of Liesl and Po. My own novel is middle-grade, and I hesitate to say "fantasy," because I don't want readers to suddenly harbor pigeon-holed ideas that my story is paranormal/cliched forbidden romances/Mary-Sues who become "the Chosen One,"/save the world,  and so on.

To save time, I'll say this much for now: It involves...

*an eleven-year-old girl with a functioning keyhole upon her neck

*a paraplegic tarot-reading princess

*an obsessive military general and his ten-year-old protege

* a world that's a mish-mash of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, fairy tale magic, and steampunk.

In the meantime, I have been obsessing over the Liesl and Po book trailer, which I will share with you. The song in it, called "A Train With Wings" is particularly touching, and the animation of the actual illustrations by Kei Acedera from the book is so beautiful!

Until next time...<3

Concentration #10: Dream Within Memories

So, Concentration #10, which I started back in January, draws a lot of references from my childhood photographs.

Works in Progress:

AP Concentration #9: Happy Birthday: Commemorating my 18th Birthday

I haven't updated in forever! One of the reasons is that it took me so long to get my latest AP Art pieces photographed. Anyway, here is my 9th concentration piece, titled Happy Birthday. I worked on it during the 2-week winter holiday break to commemorate my 18th birthday (which was on January 1, 2011!). Here is the final piece:

And here are the works in progresses........

Twelve Dancing Princesses

Oh man, it's been FOREVER since I posted here! I haven't been able to photograph my latest concentration pieces here, since the laptop in the art room at school is always in use.

One of the latest projects I partook was creating the poster for my school's dance production of The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Well, this is the poster...without the text. The one with text is currently in PDF form, which is incompatible with blogspot, so I'm only able to upload the word less version for now...

Done in photoshop. Fail, right? :P