Marching into Reading

Trying to come up with a better way to title these posts, but I'm not very punny.

Anyway...........

Started the month off by finishing A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, the first book in her All Souls trilogy. The book is massive and took me a bit to really get into, but now I'm hooked on the series. I love the characters, from witches and vampires to humans and daemons, and even one house that does more than just sit on its foundation. I really like how magic and science are linked in the story, it gives it the perfect touch of magical realism. I'll be diving into the second novel as soon as I read everything that piled up on my nightstand while reading this.

Switching back to The Madman's Daughter trilogy with Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd, this book uses the same characters as the first but with a storyline inspired by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I enjoyed this story, but not as much as the first one. It did, however, set up for a great third book, which is supposed to be based on/inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

This next book was chosen on the recommendation of author V.E. Schwab, from a tweet listing five books that inspire her. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black is a vampire story like no other. Vampires, almost-vampires, and vampire groupies live in walled cities called Coldtowns, which have popped up throughout the country over the course of a decade. The story follows Tana, unsure if she's going Cold, as she fights to survive Coldtown for her ex-boyfriend and a mysterious vampire she saved and befriended. It's an intense and hypnotic YA read.

This next book was chosen from the same V.E. Schwab tweet, and is my first Neil Gaiman YA. (I've read some of his adult fiction.) The Graveyard Book is about a boy raised in a graveyard by ghosts to keep him safe from the man who killed his entire family when the boy was just a toddler. Gaiman works with illustrator Dave McKean to show the first scene of each chapter. I couldn't put this book down, it took just over a day to read, mostly because I have to sleep and raise a kid. (Sigh.)

And now we come to the wonderful writing of Ms. Schwab herself, another writer whose YA books I haven't read until now. (Her Shades of Magic for adults is ah-maze-ing, check it out!) The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab is her first novel, published in 2011 for YA readers. A great read, although it was just creepy enough that I couldn't read it before bed! (Note: YA books are published under Victoria Schwab, adult fiction under V.E. Schwa, so pick accordingly!) (PS: While this book has a gorgeous new cover, the library copy I got is the original cover/first edition hardcover.)

I continued by YA-themed month with Angie Thomas' On the Come Up, her amazing second novel. Just like The Hate U Give, Thomas gives voice to important issues the youth in our country (especially minority children) face every day. Set in Garden Heights and with mentions of some of the events in THUG, this book made me laugh and cry and I almost threw it across the room once because the truth behind the fiction made me so angry. Read this. Have your children read this.

My final book for this month was a memoir about growing up evangelical and being forced into ex-gay therapy. Boy Erased is Gerrard Conley's story of coming to terms with his sexuality in a deeply religious Baptist family. This book made me very angry because I can't imagine doing something like this to your child. I found this book while doing research for my own.

I Have A ROUGH Draft!

OMG, y'all! I finally finished the very first, very rough draft for my novel. I have the perfectionist problem, where I can't move on until I've made a scene perfect. This was getting me nowhere because I was constantly going back to fix or change something. So I basically said screw it and just wrote. No going back, no changing anything. This is a really crappy draft, but it's a complete draft.

To celebrate, I thought I'd share a bit about the book with you!

1. I started this book by telling the story of one girl (my original title was even Story of a Girl, how original) but it has morphed into the stories of four girls, all living drastically different lives in one small southern Appalachian town.

2. My current title is just as simple as the first, but encompasses the one thing the girls all have in common: American Girls.

3. This is definitely YA fiction, but I really don't know how else to describe it. It's contemporary with a bit of alternate reality thrown in...maybe?

I printed a copy off at my local library today because I prefer to make notes on a physical copy instead of the file on my laptop. And instead of going through it chapter by chapter, I'm revising it by character so I don't accidentally confuse my narrators' voices.

Since I'm starting with the character I've had the hardest time writing, here are some facts about Leah!

1. Leah is the exact middle of seven children and is 14 at the start of the novel.

2. Leah's father is youth pastor at her church and principal of the private Christian school her parents started before she was born.

3. While Leah may get lost in the mix of her large family, at school she stands out as a perfect student and model Christian.

The book is broken down into four parts, one for each year of high school, which a chapter for each narrator. I'm giving myself until the end of March to revise and edit Leah's first two chapters so I can work on the last two before family comes to visit for Easter!

My goal is to get everything revised by my birthday in early June so I can send it out to some readers. Right now, I have two readers with one more as a possibility (plus my mom who I send everything to because she always loves it and that makes me feel good). If anyone has suggestions on how to recruit readers I can trust, please let me know!

As always, don't forget to follow me over on Twitter!

February Books

Howdy, Folks!

Welcome to the February 2019 installment of what I've read this month! Let me know what you've read, love or hate, this month!

First up in February is A Spark of Light, the newest novel by Jodi Picoult. While I loved this book, I (as usual) had a difficult time reading it. I have a love/hate relationship with Ms. Picoult's books, partly because she gives everyone's opinions through various characters' points of view (including racists and bigots in some books, in this book they're anti-choicers at an abortion clinic) and partly because she's so good at tying things up with a bow at the end we don't even realize the bow is crooked, we just accept the ending as inevitable. For my library reading challenge I'm filing this under "a book with a cover you love" because it's just gorgeous!

Next up is a great YA novel I waited 6 months for through interlibrary loan! I can't remember how I first heard about this book, but the title hooked me and the summary made me add it to my Goodreads TBR list. Why? Because Heretics Anonymous by Katie Henry is about an atheist forced to attend a Catholic High School and I'm an atheist who only had to go to Catholic Elementary School (Sacred Heart in Brockton, MA is now a Seventh-Day Adventist school with a different name). I thought the story and characters were great and I can't wait to read her next novel!

My third book of February is another YA novel, The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd. This book is based on H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, and is told by the point of view of Moreau's daughter, Juliet, who travels to the island to find her father and see if the accusations against him are true. Since I've never read the original story I only had a vague idea of what this novel would be about. I love the suspense of this novel and I'm looking forward to the sequel, based on another horror/science fiction classic: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Next up is the second book in Nora Roberts' Chronicles of the One series. I've never read a book of hers until last year and that's only because Year One sounded so damn good. Honestly, it was just good enough to make me put the second book on hold at the library. Of Blood and Bone has a lot of problems and wasn't remotely as interesting as Year One but I finished it because I'm invested in the characters and storyline, even if neither is all that good. The characters seem flat and stereotypical, and because there are so damn many of them, sometimes I got confused who was who because very few stood out. I'm also incredibly disappointed in the (lack of) inclusion for the LGBT+ community. Literally the only mention of a non-heteronormative couple was a "teaching moment" used to call out one character's religious bigotry. It's 2019, we need more LGBT+ main characters and a woman with 200+ published novels should know this.

I'm on a roll this month so book #5 is Lauren Oliver's Rooms, one of her non-YA novels. This is aimed for adults and is a story told from the point of view of two ghosts haunting a house. It is definitely the creepiest book I've read this year and probably the creepiest since I read The American Girl by Kate Horsley in 2016. (Funny story: Amazon recommended this book because I had read other books by the author, but it was a different Kate Horsley, which I figured out about five pages into the book because the writing style was so different.) The narrators are two ghosts watching the family of a recently deceased man (who thankfully didn't die in the house or he'd be stuck there with them) who are cleaning out the home and preparing for the funeral. Each character, alive and dead, has issues to deal with. The only problem I had with this book was the obvious fat-shaming of one of the characters. She's a drunk and a horrible mom, maybe don't worry about her weight that much? A great read, just like every other Lauren Oliver novel I've read.

Right now I'm reading A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I'm thoroughly enjoying it but it is a tome, and the first of three to boot! So I'll include that in March's post because there's no way I'll be finishing it tomorrow, my hubby's birthday. (No, he wasn't almost born on the 29th, he wasn't born in a leap year. It's amazing how many people automatically ask this question when someone's birthday is February 28.)

My Writing Life: An Introduction

I don't remember exactly when I started writing, but I was in middle school when I started writing angsty white girl poems. Those were the first things I wrote that I saved. I've lost many stories since then, thanks to flooded apartments and outdated technology. But no matter what, I still write.

My first official writing class was a creative writing class my senior year in high school. I didn't consider myself a writer then, just a theatre kid who adored books and wrote poems about my feelings, something I figured all teen girls did in the final decade of the 20th Century. When I graduated in 2000, I had helped publish a literary magazine but I wasn't published because I couldn't bear to submit anything I'd written.

I started college planning to get a BS teaching high school English because that's what I always wanted/expected I would do. Applying to the College of Education at my university was a big deal because it's the original NC Teacher's College, so they take this very seriously. I registered for a class that was required before I could even declare myself a teaching major, but because I didn't have a car to get me to the required tutoring at one of the local schools, I had to drop the class before the semester started.

So I switched my major. Instead of pursuing a BS in English Education, I received a BA in English, Creative Writing, with a minor in History because all BAs need minors.

I hadn't written anything other than essays for class in a long time, and stories for class were close to essays. In my writing classes I learned more than my literature classes could teach me. I wrote about my best friend's addiction and our falling out. I named characters after her in my fictional short stories. I had characters that looked like her but were my version of who I wished she was instead of the best friend who deserted me.

I graduated and continuted working at local restaurants, eventually working my way to Assistant Manager of a local pizza joint. (This restaurant and one of the business owners becomes the basis of an important aspect of my current WIP.) I left the restaurant business in the summer of 2013, months before the birth of my son.

I didn't write again until a few months after my son's second birthday. We had moved right before his birthday, not far, just two miles from our last address. But something changed and that led me to my current project.

I'm not ready to say too much about my current WIP but it's a YA contemporary dystopian novel, if that's even a thing. If not, I guess it's an alternate reality dystopian novel? I really don't know how to describe it right now because I'm undergoing a major revision right now that includes adding both characters and narrators. (Sorry Amanda and Nikki, you've got more to read!)

A Question for February

Happy February, Readers!

While January lasted approximately 6,000 years, February is like 3 days long so let's get down to business (to defeat the Huns).

I want to start by telling y'all about the first book I couldn't finish this year, A Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak. I loved The Book Thief and was disappointed in myself for not liking this one. A Bridge of Clay has a lot of dialectic Australian dialogue that I had a hard time reading, which kept me from focusing on the story.

Before I get to the books I have read this month, I have a question for those of you who read this (and I know there aren't many of you). I'm curious if there's anyone out there who's interested in hearing about what I'm writing instead of just what I'm reading. I'd like to add a post every so often about where I am in my writing process and, if enough people are interested, I might be persuaded to even let you know what the book is about.

If you're interested in reading about my writing, comment on this post or head on over to follow me on Twitter and drop me a line there. (Disclaimer: My Twitter is at least 75% anti-Trump/GOP/the religious bigots who call themselves the religious right so if that bothers you, don't bother following me because you won't like me or my novel anyway. Hate follows will be immediately blocked.)