A Breaf Update

I have somone helping me edit my story,but i'm lookinf for more people to helpme edit it as she has her own book too market and is really busy. (she is a up-and-comming science fiction writer with a book thats comes out later this year.)

I decided to change the ending to my story. What im going to change it too, I'm not 100% sure yet. But from my adding more discriptions the word count is now over 50,000. It was 40,000. I think agents like longer books. Also, i didn't like my ending because Angela never met any of the Amenders. Sence the background of the book deals with them, I though she should meet one of them. They are going to capture her, I know that much. Either that or capture her father making her have to come save him. But I realized one other things I think i should add to my story: sacurfice. I love my main character Angela, she is awsome, but she just gose around being awsome and helping the world. She dosen't change. She dosen't sacurfice. Well, she kind of scaurfices her safety by reveling her powers to the police officers when she saves Jessie's life. But she needs to rick more than her safety because she dosen't really care about her safety, she cares about making the world a better place and she cares about the people she loves. If she cared about her saftey she would have been more relunctant to leave Paradice in the first place. The one thing Angela wants most I think is... Freedom. So mabye she will have to give up her freedom for the worlds freedom. I don't know how to make that happen, without making the book sad. I don't want my ending to be a roses and sunshine, I want it to be real. But I don't wan't a sad ending. I want a somewhat-happy ending. A real ending.

I have't queried any more agents untill I finish the new ending (which im having mega writers block writing) and have them edited. But so far she has only looked over chapter 1 (and did a hell of a good job with it. She helped alot).

Also, Im reading The Forest Of Hands and Teeth. I got it today at borders while shopping with a friend. Its a post-apocliptic YA romance, so i thought reading it would help me write. She writes so beautifully, I don't know if i could ever write like her. It feels so dark and spookey and beautiful. Its about zombies, but it not a zombie book. I felt so much emoution from the charater. I'm on page twenty, and allredy her father is dead, her mother just got killed by zombies, and her brother kicked her out of their hut. So now she has to go join The Sisterhood, which I think are kind of like a religious group of women without husbands, because no boy asked her to the marraige festivle thing. But, while she watched her mother turn into a zombie, she deciced she didn't believe in god. I know all that sounds random, but its written really well.

I know my book isen't perfect, but to be a hundred precent honest I have seen books worst than mine published. I brought the book " I'd tell you i love you but then i have to kill you" the same day I brought "Twilight", which was a little after reading "Uglies" which I loved. I decided to read ITUILUBTIHTKU first, because it was shorter.TOOK ME FOREVER (like a mounth) to get to the middle of the book when i decided it was really stuiped and I wasen't going to read it. After that, Twilight sounded like shakespear. And, i finished twilight in only a week.



Okay, I'm going to post teh first chapter of my novel Saving Eden on here.Whoever reads this can be the judge on if its good or not.



Saving Eden


"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson





Chapter 1: Fifteen
“The caged bird sings, with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still.”- Maya Angelou



June, 2201



Truth had always been a mystery, hidden by half-truths and avoided questions. She was smart enough to know that her life wasn’t normal. There had to be other people out there somewhere. But she had never known anything different than what she was told, and what she wasn’t told she could only guess.



She could have stayed that way, but no one becomes something until they decide that’s what they have become. Until you decide that this is who you are, you are still becoming. Angela was still deciding.



This is the story of fifteen-year-old girl who came from nowhere. This is also the story of a girl who was destined to change the world. And after the world meets her, it will never be the same.



Angela tried to sketch as gently as possible as she pressed a pencil that was half the size of her index finger into the old, yellow-paged notebook. The gray music notes were hardily noticeable on the tinted page. No matter how light her inscriptions were, she knew the pencil would not last forever. She wondered what would vanish first, her light markings or the distressed page. Angela had just taken the unused notebook out of a dusty box in the cabin that morning, but the box had been sitting in solitude for an unthinkable amount of time. Angela knew that after things were gone they would never be replaced. She had looked all over their cabin and was confident this was the last pencil. Where would she store her music after her only way recording it was gone?

Angela sighed as she looked over towards the two-story cabin that her father built by hand. It was a magnificent peace of work for a man to build himself. It was as if every inch of their home was carefully constructed with extreme precision. Everything was perfectly symmetrical. Just looking at the home Nathan had built for her, she knew he was a clever and capable man. So why did they live the way they did, using only leftovers from long ago. The peaces of their existence didn’t add up in Angela mind.

As she scanned their home with her eyes, she noticed four fingers grip the blue curtain of a downstairs window and pull them apart. Angela’s saw one of Nathan’s brown eyes pop into the crack he had created to spy on her.

Angela quickly changed the placement of her eyes from the window to the bright blue sky above the cabin. After she was sure he hadn’t seen her seeing him, she spun around on the wooden bench back towards the piano. She placed her fingers back onto the keys and played her newest composition as she watched him from the corner of her eye.

As she saw the curtain fall back into place she prepared for what she knew was next. The cabin door opened and Nathan’s tall frame stepped outside. He was wearing old faded jeans a T-shirt that had been white sometime in the distant past. No matter how many times he washed it, the dirty brown color would not abandon the fabric. He had an awkward grin on his face and was holding what looked like a balled up peace of newspaper. Angela let him walk halfway to where she was seated before she pretended to finally notice him.

“What is it, daddy?” She called out after finishing the tune on the piano that sat in the center of the vast garden surrounding their home. She waited patently and quietly for him to approach.

“It’s nothing. Just… you’ve gotten so big.” He said. There was an eager grin on his face, as if he were about to present her with an exciting surprise. But Angela already knew what he was about to do, for he had done the exact same thing on the same day every year for as long as Angela could remember. She wasn’t certain about the exact day, but it was always in the middle of the summer.

“Didn’t happen overnight.” Angela replied dryly, but a smile slipped across her face anyway.

“I have something for you.” He said, holding the bundle of newspaper out in front of her.

Angela took the paper and unwrapped it, storing it in her pocket. Nathan didn’t know it, but the old outdated newspaper pages were always Angela’s favorite part of her father’s makeshift gifts.

Inside the paper was a small golden object that looked like a bracelet with a round center with symbols inside. It had three small hands that were not moving.

“That watch was your mothers.” Nathan said, “It’s a little big on your wrist but maybe you’ll grow into it… Happy fifteenth birthday, Angela.”

Nathan slipped the broken watch on his daughter’s wrist and tightened it. Angela glanced at the similar contraction on her father’s own wrist. The hands on Nathan’s watch were slowly ticking. Angela knew her watch was broken, but she couldn’t help but think that her father’s watch was just as useless. Why would they ever need to know the time out here?

“A watch, like yours” Angela touched the object on her fathers wrist, following the movement of its second hand with her finger “But you’ve never showed me how to use one. They tell the time, right?”

“Yes but time doesn’t matter here, Angela.” he pointed out, “Besides, it’s broken. But it’s the symbolism that matters.”

Broken time, Angela thought. It was the perfect symbolism.

“My birthday is time, right?” Angela asked casually.

“Yes” Nathan sighed.

“Well, don’t you have a birthday?” Angela asked, trying to keep her tone casual.

“I do.” He admitted. The wrinkles that appeared on his forehead let Angela know that her causal tone didn’t fool him.

“Well maybe if I knew the time I could give you a present.” She looked at her father in the eye. She sometimes felt like he wasn’t educating her on purpose, but the reason behind his secrecy was a mystery. He narrowed his gaze as she retrieved the newspaper from her pocket, “What do these symbols mean… on the newspaper. The letters?”

“Stories.” He answered, taking a seat next to her on the bench.

“Like a fairytale?” asked Angela. She could still remember the fantastic tails her father use to tell her before bedtime as a child.

“It’s a newspaper.” He frowned at her, “It tells stories about what’s going on in the world. But it’s outdated, from twelve years ago, and judging by how things were going then, I wouldn’t want to see one from today. I think the world ran out of happy endings a long time ago.

Anglia’s looked down at the ground, lost in her own mind. She knew that he was keeping things from her. He clamed it was for her own good, but she wanted to learn things, to understand what those letters on the newspaper meant. Angela bit her lower lip, trying to keep the things she felt from escaping from her head out of her mouth. She felt her father’s hand on her shoulder.

“With the way things were… I don’t know if time exists anymore. I mean I don’t know if there’s anyone… left.” He placed his hand under her chin, lifting her face as he gazed into her eyes, “This place is probably the closest thing to a fairytale that the world has left.”

Angela averted her eyes from his.

“Thank you.” She whispered politely.

He nodded and stood up to leave. Angela watched him silently as he made his way back inside the house and closed the door behind him. She stared at the undecipherable inscriptions for a moment before shoving it back inside the pocket of her dress and continuing to play her music.

For the first week after Angela’s fifteenth birthday, her life continued with its pervious routine. Angela woke up as the sun rose, ate a quick breakfast and then went out to help her father work in the garden.

Their massive garden accommodated thirty acres of growth and life. At times, Angela was envious of the garden. As the seasons changed so was it, constantly growing and dying. From Angela’s piano bench, the various scents of the garden engulfed her. She could smell fresh apples and the assortment of fruits and veggies. The sounds of the water flowing through the nearby lake was southing to her soul. A smile slipped onto her lips when she saw the fluffy white ball of fur run over to her feet, its bright eyes staring up at her.The fluffy white dog, Charm, sometimes would catch them something meaty, but their diet didn’t depend on it. Fishing in the lake, however, was one of Nathan’s favorite pastimes. It brought him the same simple joy that the piano brought Angela. Nathan sometimes joked about having his own personal Garden of Eden, and Angela wondered what he was talking about.

The Cabin that Nathan had built by hand was in the center of it all. Sitting about ten feet in front of the cabin was Angela’s piano. He had found it abandoned out here in the middle of nowhere, and it was the reason he decided to call this little peace of the world home. He had played the piano as a child and decided it would be nice to teach Angela. Angela loved the music and was happy to learn, but their was so much more she wanted to learn about. She wanted to know why they lived such an unusual life out in the middle of the forest, where there were no other people.

Surrounding their home was a wooden fence, but a mass of trees blocked Angela’s view of whatever was outside her home.. All she could see in the distance was a hill with brown, dead-looking grass.

She was forbidden to cross the fence. Her father said that with thirty acres of land there was plenty to explore inside of it. She disobeyed this rule once, and found that there was really no reason to disobey her father wishes. It was nicer inside. After all the work was done she spent most of her days playing the old piano. By the age of eight she had mastered all of the songs in the songbook she had found inside of the piano’s bench, and she took to composing her own. So she sat there, in a self-made white dress that stopped just before her knees, and played some of the most beautiful music the world had ever know. She closed her eyes and felt the wind blow her long wavy hair back from her face. Keeping her eyes closed was a little bit more difficult, which made it a little bit more fun to try. The music made her feel like the word was alive, dancing all around her.

She did this everyday, but on the fifth day after her fifteenth birthday something was different that didn’t go with her usual afternoon routine. Her father was in the cabin resting and the world was dancing around her, but she soon realized that there was nothing usual about this day at all. After playing her piano on the fifth day, she opened her eyes to discover a pair of unfamiliar eyes staring back at her.



These light brown, fear stricken eyes belonged to a boy, almost a man, in blue jeans and a dirty black T-shirt. Excitement coursed through Angela’s entire being. Even in the buried corners of her memories, the only two beings she recalled seeing were her father and Charm. Yet here he was, a few feet away from her and her piano, gaping at her, or maybe she more at him.

The look in eyes were one of someone who hadn’t decided their reaction yet, as if he had just witnessed something so bizarre and extraordinary there was no background information in his mind to tell him what he could possibly to. His entire body was frozen except for his eyes. His forced himself to blink a few times as if it would wash away some illusion he had just witnessed.

Angela smiled at him, which seemed to break him out of his trance. Suddenly, he took off running back the way he came.

“Wait!” she called after him, but he didn’t stop running. He raced through her garden at an incredible pace.

Angela didn’t know much about the outside world, but she was a very curious. Where did he come from? She knew she should probably be afraid of this strange boy from another world, but instead she was intrigued. Her father was wrong. There was still an outside world and she wasn’t going to let it get away. So she chased after him as fast as she could, racing through her garden as fast as she could force herself to go. When he leaped over their wooden fence, she only hesitated a second before doing the same. Angela had so many questions, and this was the perfect time to get them answered.

Despite his agility, Angela saw his foot hit a root on a nearby tree. She watched as while tripped and hit his head on a rock that was bulging out of the ground. Angela froze in her tracks out of panic for a moment, before cautiously walking over to where he lay.

“Hey, are you okay?” Angela shook him when she finally caught up, trying to wake him. He was motionless and his breathing was slow and hard.

“Hey!” she repeated, shaking him harder when he didn’t respond. His breathing sounded difficult and Angela didn’t know how to help. She deliberated asking her father but the idea of leaving this strange boys side was surprisingly unbearable.

“Keep breathing.” Angela’s heart pounded hard against her chest as his breathing steadily slowed.

Getting a book published is a lot like becoming an A list celebrity.

Getting a book published is a lot like becoming an A list celebrity.

First, you need to get an agent. just like Agents for singer or actors don't actually have anything to do with your singing or acting, Agents for book don't publish the book. However, in order to even get a publisher to glance at anything you've written you need an agent. Getting an agent is as hard as getting a publisher, or maybe harder because you have to do this part yourself. But your agents know the publishers, so just like in hollywood, its all about connections.
I don't have an agents yet, so as of now my book is being edited by a talented up and coming Science Fiction author, who wrote the up-and-comming book Lumairs Last Hope. (she has an Agent, but I want her to look at my book before i send any more queries out.) Getting an Agents is a lot like passing the first addition for American Idol. So after I get an Agents I will be well on my way to the next round in hollywood, where I will either crash or burn.

Next, you need a publisher. They do the publishing. i have no ideal how this works, but your Agent and your publisher will both get a percentage of how much your book sells for. So, you need your book to sell. As every A-list celebrity knows, PR is important.

Now I'm a journalism major so i know what PR is, but in case you don't it stands for Public Relations. Celebrities have PR people just to help them stay famous, or to help their Image. For an author, PR will help get awareness of your book and make people want to read it. I think the fact that I'm only 19 will be a good PR bit if my book sells. I can inspire other young aspiring authors to write. This will be achieved through interviews and book singings, ect. I get to be on the other end of the interview. How exciting.

If you get an agent, publisher, and your book sells, you become an A-list celebrity of all the little harry potter carrying, twilight shirt wearing, nerdfighting children of the world. (not that there is anything wrong with any of that. I love to read, and so dose almost any author.) You get the tittle of American Author, until next year (or probably week) when a new YA book is published. And this is the prize I aim to achieve.