|
Elizabeth
Book Review
The Barcode Tattoo
by Suzanne Weyn
Individuality vs. Conformity
Identity vs. Access
Freedom vs. Control
The barcode tattoo--Everybody’s getting it; most people want it. But Kayla knows better. After her father’s suicide and witnessing a massacre over the inch long barcode that is required for everyone to get, Kayla realizes that maybe this new way of life isn’t what it’s supposed to be. When she uncovers a nasty secret about the tattoo and the government branch behind it, she knows that her only option is to run.
Musings about
Achievement
- You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor.
Adversity
- That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
Agony
- Not all pain is gain.
Ambition
- The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly.
Apathy
- If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us.
Arrogance
- The best leaders inspire by example. When that's not an option, brute intimidation works pretty well, too.
Beauty
- If you're attractive enough on the outside, people will forgive you for being irritating to the core.
Bitterness
- Never be afraid to share your dreams with the world, because there's nothing the world loves more than the taste of really sweet dreams.
Cluelessness
- There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.
 Change
- When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most trivial of things can become deadly projectiles.
Burnout
 ~Attitudes are contagious. Mine might kill you.
- I never tell anybody how clever I am; they would be too scared. –Artemis Fowl, II
All taken from demotivators.com
|
|
Featured Author
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes -- written
by Miss Rhodes
I was born in Maryland on April 16, 1984. My family moved to Concord, Massachusetts when I was five years old, and there I grew up, matriculating through the Concord-Carlisle School District from kindergarten through my high school graduation in 2001.
Some of my first tales were written down by my cousin, Jennifer, when I was still too young to write on my own. Later, when I was able to write, my best friend and I began a novel titled The Hope to Get Out.
Hope was something of a failure, perhaps because we hadn't learned about things like plot or punctuation yet, but it was a fun project while it lasted. But as I grew older, I progressed in ideas and plot figurations.
I feel terribly old saying this, but my graduation to a word processor was a glorious thing. Even more wonderful was the day my mother bought a computer for work--a computer she almost never used, but kept in an office where I was given free reign during a very long, very dull summer: Summer, 1995
I started writing Red Moon that summer in an attempt to keep myself entertained while most of my friends were away at camps and the like, without ever contemplating how unlikely it was for a fifth grader to finish a novel, and finish it I did, later that year.
A couple novels later, inspired by a very strange conversation with my best friend, Riana, Red Wine introduced me to New Mayhem, to Kaei and Silver-- and to Risika, who on May 11, 1997, became the protagonist of the novel that would become In the Forests of the Night.
As for publishing... well, the story of how I became published reads like a fairy tale. It begins with a great deal of encouragement from my friends, close and more distant, who finally harassed me into trying. I discovered that bookstores usually had whole sections on writing and publishing, and thankfully my mother was willing to fund this extensive research--as, at thirteen years old, I had no income of my own. I set a goal: to submit a manuscript to an agent by 1998.
December 31, 1997, found my mother and me in the post office line with three packages, bound for three agents... and later, to return with three rejections.
I continued editing, but I had not yet had the courage to submit again when February arrived, along with the annual eighth grade trip to the high school, so the soon-to-graduate eighth graders could tour the building they would move into that fall.
Our tour guide was an English teacher, who instantly made me feel miserable by recognizing me as "Rachel's little sister," a badge I had worn all through middle school and would wear throughout high school. Little sister to the perfect, 4.3 GPA Rachel Atwater-Rhodes... yes, I was having a bad day. The teacher recalled Rachel from his class (all her teachers did), and asked if she were doing any writing. Politely, he asked me if I wrote.
At this point, Carolyn decided to answer for me, overriding my mumbled response with the excited statement that I wrote songs, poetry and books and was trying to get a book published. I was blushing, humiliated, and desperate to change the subject. The teacher looked at me with some surprise, and said, "You know, I'm a literary agent." He called me back a week later... and offered to represent me. That was mid-February.
On April 16, 1998, on my fourteenth birthday, while I was opening presents, he called again, to say that Bantam Doubleday Dell (now a division of Random House) wanted to buy my book. I screamed, and I laughed, and I ran about the house like a chicken with my head cut off, calling everyone I knew, thanking people and pulling apart bookshelves to figure out what books we had that BDD had published.
|
