I want your feedback…

I blogged a while ago about an idea I had for a completely new book.  I have posted the first two paragraphs under the “New Book” tab at the top, or under the pages section.  I would really like your feedback.  Do you like it?  Are you interested?  Would you want to read more?  The first few paragraphs can be so critical.  I’d really appreciate any comments.

Also, remember to look around and please come back again.  If you like the site, make comments.  If I ever get this book published, it will be really helpful to have a network already in place.

I know it’s been a while, but I’m back…

So, having a baby doesn’t leave much time for writing.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but fifteen minutes here and ten minutes there doesn’t work very well for me.  I have a hard time really getting into the writing.   I’m just not that creative in ten minutes.  However, my baby is now on a schedule (more or less).  I have done more in the last week than I had in the six months before it.  Yea!!!  I’ve totally rewritten the first chapter, which I think will really help since that’s exactly what agents see first.  I am also changing something that will affect multiple parts of the book, but minimally.  It will only require some wording changes.  The final thing I’ve done is go back and read through the whole manuscript.  It’s amazing what you see when you haven’t read it for eight months or so.  It was a really good exercise and I found some other minor change (scene deletions, combining scenes, etc.) that will make a big difference.  Hopefully, it will all come together and make the manuscript better and a lot tighter.

Two paragraphs, that’s all I ask…

I needed to work on something new for a bit and I had a moment of inspiration, so I wrote the first two paragraphs of a completely different book I want to write.  I might not even finish it now.  (I do want to finish my trilogy first, even if it’s just a rough draft.)  However, I do want your opinion.  Just click on the “New Book” tab at the top of the page.  Do you like it?  Would you want to read more?  Too much back story or just right to leave you needing to keep going?  You tell me!!

Four books I’ve read (Book Reviews: The Graveyard Book, Forest of Hands and Teeth, Fragile Eternity, City of Glass)…and writing I haven’t done enough of…

Have you ever been talking with people, reading blogs, searching amazon, or just searching books in general and you keep running across a particular book or author?  Well, that’s how I was a few months ago.  I kept hearing about Neil Gaiman.  Now, I’ve read stuff by him before and I liked it a lot.  However, I recently tried reading “The Graveyard Book,” and I just couldn’t get through it.  I tried, and I really had nothing else to do because of the new baby, but I just couldn’t finish.  I was interested through the first few chapters, and then I just couldn’t get myself to read it anymore.  I stuck it through about a third of the book and then gave up.  Now, this rarely happens to me.  Even books I don’t love, I almost always finish.  So, nothing against Mr. Gaiman (like I said I’ve read other books of his and like them), but I just couldn’t get into his latest.

Another book I’ve read recently is “The Forest of Hands and Teeth,” by Carrie Ryan.  I had read the cover flap of this one and had heard about it from a number of sources.  It sounded interesting so I tried it.  My overall view is that it was really interesting.  I didn’t realize before I started that it was kind of a zombie book, but that didn’t really bother me once I got used to the idea.  I actually kept picking it up to see what would happen next (even when I had other things that I should have been doing).  I read the book in less than two days because I really really wanted to see how she would resolve the ending.  And here is my only criticism…there wasn’t enough resolution for me.  And it wasn’t just that the ending wasn’t fully resolved to my personal liking.  There were little things throughout the book that I felt were left hanging, things I would have loved more explanation for.  And this might be entirely just me.  I like resolution.  It doesn’t have to be a  happy white picket fence ending, but I do like resolution.  And there was some…just not enough, at least for me.  Still, I would highly recommend this book if only for its creativity and originality.  The characters are great and their growth through the decisions they make was fascinating.

All right, now for a book I’ve been waiting for.  I just finished “Fragile Eternity,” by Melissa Marr.  I’ve blogged before about this series.  I loved the first one, I liked the second one.  And…I loved the third one.  This latest book got back to the main characters introduced in book one.  It also escalated the conflict between the faerie courts.  Old friendships cracked, new ones were forged.  Alliances were constantly shifting and sometimes strange.  And it was great.  I couldn’t put it down.  Ms. Marr has created such a great world that’s fun to delve into.  It’s both comforting and scary at the same time.  “Fragile Eternity” really brought everything to a head and I can’t wait to see how everything is resolved in her next book of the series.  As a writer, I’ve had so many thoughts on how I’d resolve this one (do any of you other writers do this, think of endings you’d write to other people’s books?).  I’m excited to see how she does it.

Ok, I know this has gone on way too long, but I have one more.  This is another book I’ve been waiting for.  It is the third book in the Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Clare.  It’s called “City of Glass.”  I know this series has gotten mixed reviews, but I have really enjoyed it.  The world she’s created is so imaginative and yet you can almost believe it really exists right alongside reality.  I also love the characters she’s created.  They are real, flawed, and likeable (most of the time, which is just as it should be).  Ms. Clare has taken urban fantasy (which I’m starting to get a little tired of because it seems like everything is UF these days), and applies her own twist.

Now about my own writing.  I’m actually really excited.  I haven’t written much, but I’ve had the greatest idea.  There’s always been a part of my book, and it’s the critical set up and introduce everything part, that I haven’t been totally satisfied with.  I’ve left it alone because I didn’t know what else to do.  All that stuff had to be in there and I just didn’t know how else to do it.  Well, I finally figured it out.  I think the book will start off quicker and trickle the back story out bit by bit instead of a big dump of information.  Much, much better.  Maybe now, when I send out a partial, it won’t come back.  I hope maybe this has been part of my hangup with getting someone to read enough that they just can’t put it down.  Here’s my fingers crossed.

My Beautiful Daughter…oh, and some books I’ve read.

Wow, what a month.  First, I was tired and miserable the few weeks before my daugher, Adrianne, was born on April 24, 2009.  Now, I’m just kind of tired.  I haven’t been able to do much writing lately, but I have done some reading (but more on that in a minute).  I know it has nothing to do with writing, but here are a couple of pictures.  The first was taken the day Adrianne was born, so I’m not looking so hot, but what do you do.  The second is just to show you how cute she is (at least I think so).

On the reading front, I have read a few interesting books while I’ve been getting back to a normal schedule.  The first seris is The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare.  It’s entertaining and an easy read.  On a little deeper level, I read “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins.  This book is definitely more of a thinker and I really enjoyed it.  It reminded me a lot of “The Lord of the Flies,” except I think I liked it better.  Anyway, for anyone who wants to read a great book about how people react to and approach extreme situations, this is a good one.

I haven’t posted in over a month…and Shannon Hale…

It’s been a long time and I don’t really know why.  I do know that I’m not going to finish the first draft of book 2 before I have the baby.  I’ve been so busy getting ready and the other three kids seem to have taken a lot of time lately.  Oh well.  It will get done eventually.  Hopefully sooner than later.  I haven’t really had a lot to say over the past month, so I just didn’t write.  I’ve gotten a few more rejections, one which was a true disappointment, but what do you do?  I just need to keep on sending out queries and hope to find that one match.

On another note, I read a book I wanted to talk about.  I don’t know how many of you know of Shannon Hale.  She actually lives a few miles north of me and writes for the younger end of young adults.  I’ve read four of her books.  “Enna Burning,” “River Secrets,” “Princess Academy,” (which received  Newberry Honor) and “Book of a Thousand Days.”  The first two on the list were good and I loved the second two.  Now, the first two are books two and three of a trilogy.  I had never read the first of the trilogy.  I didn’t realize there was a trilogy and I figured I’d gathered most of the story about the first one anyway.  And when I liked, but didn’t absolutely love, the second two books in the series, I figured I’d just skip the first one all together.

So, the first book of the series is called “The Goose Girl.”  It was Shannon’s first book.  One of my friends read it and absolutely loved it, so I thought I’d finally give it a try.  Besides, I needed something to read.  And to my surprise, I liked it a lot better than the second two in the series.  It was a great book and I would recommend it to anyone.  My neighbor’s ten year old daughter even read it and loved it.  Just a brief summary:  It’s about a Princess who’s been betrothed to the prince of a neighboring kingdom in order to prevent war.  She isn’t thrilled about it.  In fact, she’s kind of angry.  And then her trusted guard are murdered.  She barely escapes with her life.  And the people who wanted to murder her have disguised one of their own as the Princess and presented her to the foreign prince as his future bride.  The true princess must find a way to prove who she really is…and discover herself in the process.

No…it’s not as awesome as it appears, but still…

For those of you who read on a regular basis, you’ll notice that my word count just jumkped like 10,000 words in about a week.  Looks great, right?  And don’t get me wrong, I love seeing that little pink meter move further and further to the right.  And I did technically add that many words to the book.  However, most of it was already written.  As I’ve had ideas over the past six or so months, I’ve written them out into very rough drafts right within my outline.  So all it really took to get that 10,000 words was to transfer them from my outline to the manuscript itself.  I did do a lot of polishing — basically what was in my outline was a very very rough draft — so I guess that has to count for something, and all of it was stuff I’ve been really excited about getting in there.  The only downside, I’ve left a few holes.  There is one chapter where I’ve only included a small paragraph giving a general idea of what I want to happen.  Other chapters have an introductory paragraph that is the same.  I just wasn’t up to working out all the intricate details of political intrigue and plot.  Plus, I’m not sure I have it all figured out yet.  So, there you have it.  My amazing 10,000 words in a short space of time.

3,000 words…

In the past few days, I’ve written over 3000 words on book 2.  Even more significant, I’ve gotten past a scene that I haven’t known exactly what to do with.  I finally just knew what needed to be done.  It’s still pretty rough, but at least I know who’s feeling what and how the events got to where I wanted them.  Now I enter the section of the book I only recently decided on.  It’s going to be tricky.  I’ve always known the middle would be.  The beginning almost wrote itself.  The ending I’m actually excited to write (because it explains a lot of unanswered questions — past and present — and really sets up well for the third and final book).  But the middle…the middle is full of building tension, guesses by the main character on what he should do next, and build up to a battle.  The trickiest part is going to be making sure everything plays out in an orderly and logical way.  The characters have to respond to what’s prestened to them in a way that makes sense.  They can’t go off to battle without a good reason.  They must take risks, but only ones that are realistic.  The hero has to struggle.  The relationships between the characters have to grow.  And all that happens in the middle.  I guess I have a lot of work to do.  I’m even tempted to do a real general outline and write the ending first, but who knows…

Dilemma…

As all you regular readers know, I’m working on finishing book 2 before the end of April (when I am having a baby).  I’m finding that I’m a lot pickier doing the first draft of book 2 than I was on the first draft of book 1.  On book 1, the first draft was really really rough.  I mean no proper names, places, and most of the speech tags weren’t even there.  However, because that draft was so rough, it took a ton of revisions to get it right.  Now, with the draft of book 2, I’m trying to get a much better draft the first time.  Because of this, it’s taking longer.  I tend not to write a scene unless I have it all worked out in my head, including making sure it works with what has happened before and what I want to happen after.  This has slowed me down a lot and I’m wondering what to do.  Should I continue to do a better first draft, or should I do more of a free write like I did the first time?  On the one hand, it makes for a lot less revision work.  On the other hand, the story gets down on paper a lot quicker.

Book Review: “The Thief,” “The Queen of Attolia,” and “The King of Attolia,” by Megan Whalen Turner

I know, I know, another book review.  I’ve been enjoying myself lately by reading a lot of books, and these three were ones I really enjoyed.  You know when you finish a book or a series and you can’t stop thinking about the characters?  Well, that’s how this was for me.

The first book (a Newberry Honor book) is about Eugenides, a thief.  It starts with him in prison and where it ends is actually quite surprising and unexpected — and therefore great.  The second book is about Eugenides’ role in a war going on between his kingdom and the neighboring kingdom of Attolia.  I don’t want to say too much more for fear of ruining it for someone.

The last book, and probably my favorite, was really the one that left me thinking about the characters, their motivations, their fears, and their humanity.  It was really good, mixing political intrigue, war, and romance.  The characters acted because of who they were and not becasue Turner wanted a particular result.  Sometimes you wanted to hit them and tell them to get real, suck up, and do what they know they should.  Sometimes you hurt right along with them.  Either way, it was a good book.

Because of the way the third book ends, I assume there is going to be a fourth, and I can’t wait to read that one!

Book Review: “The Ranger’s Apprentice” series by John Flanagan

I’ve read the first four of “The Ranger’s Apprentice” series and I have enjoyed them.  I don’t know that I can say I absolutely LOVED them, but they were definitely good and I didn’t want to put them down.  I think the first and second were the best, but I am excited to read the fifth.

The basis for this story is that a young boy who is too small to be a knight gets chosen to be apprentice to a “Ranger.”  Rangers are a group that serves the king and works more behind the scenes.  The boy finds that being a ranger entails more than he initially thought.  He acquires skills he never would have imagined and becomes good enough to participate and help the kingdom and his friends.

I like the characters here, especially those of Will and Halt — and Horace in the later books.  The stories are creative and the world feels real.  I would recommend it to those who like fantasy.