hush

1. I just randomly picked up Hush because I thought it looked interesting...And when I skimmed the inside cover, for some reason I thought it'd be something like Delirium. But it wasn't. Not even close.

2. Hush is the story of Gittel, an Orthodox Jewish girl who lives in a modern day Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. When Gittel was 9, her friend Devory died under less than pleasant circumstances. Actually, the circumstances were downright TERRIBLE but I won't give it away. Gittel has to learn to cope with Devory's death, even so many years later (she's 17), especially since she isn't supposed to talk about it.

3. I really liked Gittel. She was very strong under the circumstances and SO SO SOOOOOOOOO cute as a nine year old. I did find it very hard to relate to her, however. I honestly had no idea how different it is to leave in an Orthodox Jewish community. I mean, I knew it was different, but this was really intense. Obviously I found it a little hard to relate to a girl who lives in a community that think I'm going to hell because I'm not one of them. With that said though, she was pretty cool and much more open minded than some of the characters in the book.

4. I loveddddd Devory. She was just as cute as Gittel, if not more. But my heart did break for her. It really did. I would rant about that whole thing, but again, I don't want to give anything away. I also loved Yankel, after a while. At first he was EH but he got much better. He did some really CUTE things, though Gittel freaked out because she didn't know better. But I won't say anything more on THAT subject. The book was EXTREMELY well written and really fascinating too, which also made it great.

So I just thought I should say now that I was really amazed at how life is for the Orthodox Jewish people. Especially that it's THIS COUNTRY in PRESENT DAY. It was just so confining. I mean, they have arranged marriage! And I won't even get into details about married life! It was just really mind blowing. That's all I have to say. But definitely read this book, because it was awesome.

whats up with my writing

If you know me, or have read a previous post or something, you would know that I am trying to get my book published. I've queried six agents so far...Two by mail (those I sent out in January) and four by email (those I sent out like last week).

Initially I was just going to send my queries by mail because I had read somewhere that some agents won't respond to email queries if they don't like it. However, those three email ones that rejected me thus far did respond. One of the agents was really nice about it and encouraging, which made me feel kind of nice and loved even though she was rejecting me.

One thing I did that may or may not be a good thing is change my title. I had such issues picking out a title. It was just so hard finding something that was perfect. But I really wanted to send everything out, so in the end I just chose one even though I was meh about it, and just went with it. That is the title I used when I sent out my first two queries...but suddenly for some reason last week or maybe the week before that I had this urge to change my title. It wasn't that I had something else in mind, it was just that I looked at my title and though: "Is that anything you would pick up off the shelf" and when my answer was a NO I knew I had to change it. I mean I had always known it had sucked, but then I guess it just really hit me that if I didn't like it, an agent wouldn't either, so they wouldn't want to take me on. So I changed it to something much more typically YA and not a dumb attempt to be mysterious like with title number one. I mean, the title technically FIT, but it was just dumb.

The only reason it might have been a bad thing for me to change my title is because I still haven't gotten a response from one of the first two agents, and if she got my submission at all, it has the crappy title. I wish I could send like a follow up saying HEY LOOK I CHANGED MY TITLE IGNORE THE OTHER ONE. But that would look pretty bad on my part.

I'm also trying to build my resume in other ways, because I also figured that it would look better if I don't look like a COMPLETE high-school-kid-who-has-no-idea-what-she's-doing. Ah well. I'll just be determined and maybe hopefully in the near future some agent will look at my query or my submission or my whatever and be like I MUST HAVE THAT NOW. One can only hope.

Arthur Daniyarov

Arthur Daniyarov was born in 1989 in St. Petersburg, Russia, making him 21 or 22 years old. He became a model at the age of 19, signing with DNA Models in New York. Arthur has been in SO MUCH it's hard to know even where to begin. His debut was 2009 at the fall Prada show in Milan, and since then he also walked Alexander McQueen, Hugo Boss, Lanvin, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Jil Sander, to name a few. And speaking of Jil Sander, he also became the face of them in 2009, which you can see in that first picture I have. Honestly he has done so much I can't even begin to talk about it all. He does a lot of runway, I can tell you that. Recently, he was in Re-rare's Spring 2011 lookbook, if you're familiar with them at all. Sadly he is not on models.com's top models list, but that could easily change.

the most epic moments in harry potter history

These epic moments are from the books only. And they aren't even like the typical epic moments you would expect. They're more like the moments that I don't know I can't even explain them other than they're just EPIC. No particular order.

1. Fred and George Weasley saving Harry from the Dursley's in their father's flying Ford Anglia. I mean, come on! You hate the Dursley's so much and then all of a sudden BOOM there they are, outside Harry's window, ready to save him in the most EPIC way possible.

2. Mrs. Weasley dueling Bellatrix Lestrange in the Battle of Hogwarts. Her famous line will forever stay in my head: "NOT MY DAUGHTER YOU BITCH." Hell YES Mrs. Weasley. I hadn't seen it in you. But I am SO glad you got rid of Bellatrix. And your word choice...spot on. I never thought I could consider Mrs. Weasley to be badass. But well what other word could be used to describe her in this scene?

3. Ron: No, I mean we should tell (the house elves) to get out. We don't want anymore Dobby's, do we? we can't order them to die for us- Hermione: *Throws herself at him* They are just the cutest couple ever omigod don't get me started.

4. Book 1, Hagrid storming in that little house in the middle of the freaking ocean to tell Harry the truth...I just liked how the Dursleys were utterly POWERLESS. They didn't know what to do. Hagrid just CAME ON IN to save Harry and make everything better! And of course even more epic: the whole pig tail on Dudley thing. Good choice Hagrid, good choice.

5. So George loses an ear. And what's he have to say about it? George: Saint like. You see...I'm holy. Holey, Fred, geddit? Fred: Pathetic. Pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear related humor before you, you go for holey? ...How do you NOT love Fred and George? Seriously.

6. Harry was stupid and the Marauder's Map ends up in the hands of SNAPE. Snape taps the map with his wand, demanding for it to "yield the information it conceals" and instead of that, it shows the very interesting opinions Mssrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs have about Snape. My favorite is probably Mr. Padfoot's "astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor." Priceless.

7. Malfoy the Bouncing Ferret. Need I say more?

8. Harry tricking Lucius Malfoy into freeing Dobby. "Master has given Dobby a sock! Dobby is free!" YES DOBBY YES YOU ARE FREE. And now you can kick your dumb master's butt! Well it doesn't exactly happen that way but HAHA LUCIUS MALFOY YOU STUPID JERK!

9. Fred and George getting back at Umbridge and flying off into the sunset on their brooms. As if I didn't love these two enough...My greatest wish is that I could have been there to see them taking off on their brooms, with their completely EPIC farewell to their school and oh there is just too much about this scene that I love you should just go back and read it and re-live the awesome. If I HAD been ranking these epic moments, this would be number one. For sure.

10. Gryffindor winning the Quidditch House Cup in 6th year...Harry just walking into the celebrations and Ginny just THROWING HERSELF AT HIM LIKE BOY WE JUST WON AND LET'S JUST SNOG ALL NIGHT LONG BECAUSE WE WON THE FREAKING QUIDDITCH CUP. I would've been such a great Hogwarts kid with my school spirit and super love for Quidditch.

Yeah so those are my ten most epic moments. Could you tell that I love Fred and George?

Mateus Lages

Mateus Lages is the next model I'm talking about...but what's so special about him is that he is extremely new! He's still in the New Faces category in his modeling agency, which is Re:quest (just like Yuri Pleskun!). Mateus is 19 years old, and was born in Miami, Florida, which is also where he started modelling, with Next in Miami. He likes skateboarding, soccer, and photography. I love his profile, which might be obvious since i have three pictures of it up there. You probably won't see him in that much now (unless you read Vogue Hommes Japan), but he's definitely up and coming, and hey, who knows what will happen in the next six months!

Organization of This Blog

This post is basically a descriptor of what you can find on my blog. If you happen to run across it and really aren't sure what I do, this post will tell you! So anyway~

Basically here is what you can find: book reviews, fashion, movie reviews, guys, girls, top tens, writing/publishing advice, random thoughts, etc. If you want more specifics, keep reading. If not, you might as well stop here. :)

These are the types of posts that show up on this blog. There are my book review posts, which is self explanatory, but I only review books that I really love or that I think other people might love. They're pretty well organized posts, with a picture of the book, how I came across it, a general plot description, a description of the main character, and what makes it so great. The titles of these posts are the book titles. These are under the tag BOOK REVIEW. Obviously.

Then there are my movie review posts. These posts are much more relaxed than the book review posts. I basically just write whatever thoughts come to mind. No particular format. Sometimes I include a movie poster, sometimes I don't. Sometimes the title is the movie title, sometimes it isn't. These are tagged MOVIES.

A while ago I loved doing top ten posts, tagged as TOP TEN. These are completely my opinions on various things. So I have top ten best looking guys, top ten best looking girls, etc.

I also added a travel section, tagged as TRAVEL, which has to do with top ten because I've included the top ten best moments in a particular place, as well as top ten must sees in this place, tagged MOMENTS and MUST SEES, as well as TOP TEN. These above things I've done for France/Paris, tagged both FRANCE and PARIS.

I have a few posts about clothes/fashion, tagged FASHION, though I haven't since the when I first started the blog. If I'm talking about a particular trend, I'll post pictures of some examples. Recently the only posts tagged fashion are for my male model posting sequence. Those are tagged MODELS, FASHION, and GUYS. These include pictures of the guy (I try to get a wide variety including runway, editorial, etc.)

There are also some posts dedicated to writing and publishing, since I am a writer (I wrote a book and am now trying to get it published) tagged WRITING, PUBLISHING, or both.

Everything else is just my random thoughts (and sometimes rants, which, appropriately, are tagged RANT). Whenever I start a new sequence, I'll add information about it here.

Now the whole tagging thing doesn't matter as much since I got rid of my tag cloud and replaced it with the side labels to direct anyone to whatever may interest them. Right now I just have, books, movies, fashion, top tens, guys, and writing. I just added travel, and who knows, I might add more. If I see more people reading my rants, for example, I'll probably include that too. But I'll see.

Last updated: April 30, 2011

Francisco Lachowski

After that short three entry detour about books and movies we return to the male models with Francisco Lachowski! Francisco, nicknamed Chico, is about 19 years old. He is number 25 on models.com's top male models list and is represented by Ford Models. Francisco is Brazilian, and became a model in 2008 after winning Supermodel Brazil. I love him because well, how can you not love that face (or body) and his accent is just so cute! Facts about Francisco, and more reasons why I just love him: he's studying to be a graphic designer, plays tennis (like me!) and loves the beach (also like me!). Look out for him in Armani Exchange's Spring 2011 campaign. :)