So I decided to do a top ten movie list. :) Why? Because I love lists. I love seeing other bloggers' lists and I love making my own and remembering all the good things I've seen/read/heard. And movies are all about storytelling, right? Enjoying these fantastic films has made me think about how the directors and writers maintain tension, reveal character, and convey information without succumbing to the dreaded info-dump trap. I hope you'll enjoy the list and share your own list of top 10 (or 5 or 15 or 50) movies!

These movies aren't all from 2011, but as of 2011, they are my favorite films. They're also in no particular order, because how could I possibly choose between them? They are each perfect in their own way.

Disclaimer: I haven't taken the time to point out potentially offensive material in the movies listed. There are plenty of other websites offering that kind of guidance.

10. The Proposition
An extremely gut-punchy movie about three outlaw brothers in Australia. One is caught, one gets away, and the third is asked to kill the escaped brother - or the younger brother dies. Gripping.

9. Fight Club
Need I say anything about this one? I love this movie. So many quotable lines. So much to think about. So many memorable moments.

8. Let the Right One In
Beautiful movie about a friendship between a bullied boy and the girl who moves in next door... a girl who turns out to be a vampire.

7. Jane Eyre
A film that perfectly captured the mood of the book. Gorgeous scene-setting and convincing performances.

6. The Shining
The first time I watched this movie, I thought, "This isn't scary at all. What's the big fuss?" Something nagged me about it, though, so I read quite a bit of criticism on it. I loved it on the second viewing.

5. Brick
I really enjoyed this noir film about an intelligent high school student searching for the truth about his murdered girlfriend. I recommend to people it all the time!

4. Wall-E
What can I say? Wall-E is simply magic. The little world he's lovingly built from trash, the instant recognition of community when Eve shows up - the first half alone puts this on my top 10 list.

3. Primer
Time travel gets realistic... and ugly. Indie film that blows away many big-budget movies with smarts and style to spare.

2. Memento
The most twisty movie I've ever seen. The end completely recasts the movie you thought you were watching.

1. Pulp Fiction
See, this list did have something to do with books, after all! I loved the eccentric style and impossible-to-predict storylines.

Please comment with your top 10 movies (of this year or past years)!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it!

According to the poll, the majority of you want a week of steampunk! I will be haunting Goodreads and choosing authors to interview. If you have a favorite steampunk book or author, contact me. If I get enough responses, I will write a "Readers' Choice" post featuring your faves.

Thanks to everyone who voted!

I'm really excited to share another great article by my friend Jeriel Ng, author of The Syndicate.

Find Your Writing Niche
By Jeriel Ng

In this day and age, the world is populated with a plethora of writers and novels, and each day, that number continues to grow. So how do we find a way to stand out from the crowd? Being unique certainly goes a long way. Finding your niche in writing can help out tremendously, as you find a certain style that caters specifically to your knowledge and talents. So how exactly do you find your niche? There are several things you can determine about yourself, and of course, discovering them will only come from experience and trying different things each time:

1)      Genre
2)      Point of View
3)      Voice

The most obvious – and perhaps the easiest to pick out – is the genre in which you want to write. Simply think about what kind of books you enjoy reading and work from there. Or perhaps you may not even want to write from your favorite genre. It’s really up to you.

To consider another case, the point of view from which you write can have a serious impact on how you write. For the most part, you would choose either first or third person. Of course, we all know the specific details each one entails. However, some people work better writing in first person, while others thrive writing in third person. To determine which one would work best for you, consider some of the following factors:

If you want a more personal, more conversational connection with your readers, if you want your readers to have a much deeper connection with your protagonist, or if you want to delve deeper into a more emotional aspect of the novel, first person works well.

If you want to impose a sense of omniscience over all your characters, if you want to be able to focus on any given character at any given moment in time, or if you want to feature a larger cast of characters, you may want to turn to third person.

And then there’s your voice. Every single writer has a unique voice. Of course, there may be those who write similarly to others, but it’s safe to say that no two writers have identical voices. Unfortunately, voice is a completely intangible aspect – there’s no absolute way to measure a writer’s voice. Fortunately, once you have figured out a voice that is unique to you, you will know. This idea involves several factors, ranging from the words and phrases you use to the way you vary your sentence lengths. Each word you use plays a crucial role in characterizing the individual you want to present to the public, and as for sentence length, the way you handle your variation will ultimately define the mood you create for your stories. For example, if you want to focus more on action, shorter, more abrupt sentences would work best. If you prefer to write more on emotions, longer sentences should be your forte. Aside from those two aspects, another thing you could test to determine your voice would be your narrator’s tone. If you are writing in first person, you would naturally create your protagonists as a separate entity from yourself. Ultimately, however, each narrator you create, whether written in first or third person, would embody the core of your likeness as a writer, and what you want to do with that is create a unique tone that is common among each narrator.

Of course, there are quite a number of other factors, but those listed above should serve as the core springboards to determining your preferred style of writing. If you really want to delve deeper, perhaps consider the way you divide your chapters, and even the form of publishing you want to use. All of these aspects will work together in shaping your identity as a writer and in helping you find the niche into which you will fit perfectly.

Let’s welcome Julia Madeleine to the blog! I discovered her via Goodreads and can’t wait to read her book.

Welcome to the blog, Julia! Your cover looks amazing, by the way. Could you tell us a little bit about No One to Hear You Scream?
No One To Hear You Scream is like The Ghosts Of Belfast meets Cape Fear. It’s the story of Rory Madden, a former Belfast gang member living in exile in the states where he builds his dream house on the edge of Keuka Lake in upstate New York, only to lose it to foreclosure when he can’t make his mortgage payments after getting popped in a drug raid. Six months after he’s released from pre-trial custody, he goes on a drug-induced rampage to get even with everyone he thinks is responsible, including the nice family who’s bought his house. When their teenage daughter falls for him, together they plot the murder of her parents.

What led you to write this book?
In 2008, my family and I bought a country house in foreclosure on a 30-acre wooded property out in the middle of nowhere.  Shortly after moving in we found ourselves on the receiving end of the former owner’s wrath, still angry over losing his house. We were targeted with vandalism, and when it began to escalate, we called the police to report it. The police were the ones who told us they believed it was the former owner. Apparently he was well know to them. That night I had a dream—a nightmare—where a guy was standing at the end of my driveway with a shotgun and he wanted me out of the house. From this image my character, Rory Madden, was born. And I constructed the story around him.

A year later we sold the house and moved back to the city, where I can honestly say I feel a lot safer, being within screaming distance of my neighbours.

I liked how the description mentioned “the dark side of the American dream”. How does your book challenge the American dream?
The American (or North American, since I’m Canadian) dream is that ideal we strive for; a good life filled with success, abundance, health, and love and happiness. And most of the time this includes buying a house. But sometimes things happen to throw that dream off kilter, like an unexpected predator in the midst. That’s what happens in my novel when a family buys the house of their dreams only to discover the previous owner is a violent criminal who wants in back.

Do you see any intersections between themes in No One to Hear You Scream and any of your other books?
I think all my writing leans toward noir with a dark feel. I do love to blur the lines a bit between the villain and the good guy because I think that we are not all bad or all good all of the time, so I enjoy playing with the reader’s emotions a bit in making the bad guy sympathetic as I’ve done in this novel.

What is your best writing advice?
Many years ago I received a brutal rejection letter from a literary agent who couldn’t seem to say enough bad things about my manuscript. She then gave me a list of books on the craft of writing that she promised would put my writing light years ahead. Naturally my initial reaction was to be offended, but rather than get my ego up, I decided that maybe she might know a thing or two and perhaps I should shut up and listen to her advise to see if there was any truth in it. So I bought every book on that list. As it turns out, I consider this one of the pivotal points of my writing career. Everything she said was completely accurate and I’ve benefited enormously from reading those books. That is the best writing advice that I can pass on, read every book on the craft of writing that you can get your hands on. 

Thanks so much for stopping by, Julia!

Bio
Julia Madeleine is a thriller writer and tattoo artist living on the outskirts of Toronto. Her third novel, The Truth About Scarlet Rose, will be available December 2011.

Julia Madeleine can be found on Twitter @Julia_Madeleine and here: www.facebook.com/MadJulia.

No One to Hear You Scream is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.