Weekly Goals 18-2-19

I didn't do a lot of writing work last week.  I started doing a read-through of the book I think I'm going to try to finish and polish next and so far, it's better than I thought it was.  Love it when that happens!  Unfortunately, I know it falls apart at some point, but I haven't got there yet.

So this week my goal is to try and finish the read-through and hopefully have some ideas about how to finish the story.  This is one of the rare books I actually wrote an outline for (albeit a very brief, 2-page outline) so I know what I was aiming at, but whether that actually works or not is another question.

I managed to get to the gym three times last week, and my aim is to do that again this week.  We shall see how that works out....

What are your goals for the week?

Celebrate the Small Things 15-2-19

This post is part of Lexa Cain's bloghop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up!

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

This week has felt really long so I'm looking forward to having a quiet weekend.  I have nothing at all planned, which is just the way I like it!

Last night I went to the premiere of a film.  It's always so nice to see the finished product, and this one is really enjoyable.  I have high expectations for it when it releases next month and look forward to tracking how it goes.

The Sidewalk's Regrets got another really good review, which makes me happy.  Hopefully a few people might even be buying it too...

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Loved: Summer Bird Blue

This is a gorgeous book about love and loss and recovering from trauma.  The writing is beautiful and the characters are both unusual and real.

Rumi and her younger sister Lea are closer than most sisters, spending all their spare time together writing and playing music.  But when Lea is killed in a car accident, Rumi loses the desire and the will to play.

Unable to cope with both her own grief and her daughter's, Rumi's mother sends her to stay with her aunt in Hawaii.  Rumi reads this as an ever bigger betrayal, and proof that her mother has always loved Lea more.  Filled with fury, Rumi's first weeks in Hawaii are spent sleeping or raging at anyone she comes in contact with - her aunt, the boy next door, the older man with the yappy dog who lives down the block.

Rumi is determined to finish the song she and Lea were writing before the accident, but she can't find the music inside her any more.  Just thinking about music is painful for her, and early attempts to string lyrics together are a disaster.  But one night music drifts over from the elderly neighbor's and draws Rumi in.

As the summer moves on, Rumi begins to navigate life without Lea with the help of her elderly neighbor whose own grief is palpable in every moves he makes.  And then there's Kai, the boy next door whose attention makes Rumi confused, but in a good way.

This is a beautiful story about love and loss and learning to live again.  Rumi is realistically drawn in her depression and fury and inability to move on or make decisions about herself and her life.  Her feels about Kai and romance in general felt realistic and not at all tacked on just to tick another diversity box.  I like that she wasn't certain about her sexuality at such an early age, but also that she knew there were options that might fit her, or might not.

Definitely recommended!

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.

Weekly Goals 11-2-19

I finally finished my revision over the weekend.  It was a long time coming and I have no idea if it is any good, but it's done.  Now to leave it for a few weeks before going back for another pass.  And to see if it has fixed the problems that have plagued this book forever....

So this week I'm going to look at another partially finished MS I have lying around.  This one was a NaNo project a couple of years back and I never finished it.  But the characters are some of my favorites and I think it deserves another shot at becoming something.

It's going to be another busy one at work too, so I'm going to have to try and make time to go to the gym.  Last week wasn't great in that regard, so this week I'm going to try harder!

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small things 8-2-19

This post is part of Lexa Cain's bloghop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up!

What am I celebrating this week?

It's been a short week because Wednesday was a holiday here.  I had a lovely day off and went mountain biking in the morning, then took my older son with me to the movies to see The Hate U Give.  Which we both liked a lot.   I even got some writing done too.

Well, revising...  I have six chapters to go so my plan is to kill those over the weekend.

I got a couple of really great reviews for The Sidewalk's Regrets too, which makes me really happy.  Love it when reviewers really get the book.  You can read them here and here if you're at all interested.  Or if you were still trying to decide if you want to read the book....

And finally, thank you to everyone who already voted for Stumped in the Long and Short Reviews book of the year poll.  Last I looked, I was trailing a bit on 3% of the vote.  So if you haven't voted yet, and have a spare couple of minutes, I'd appreciate it...  Also if you could encourage everyone you know to vote too.  Voting happened here.

What are you celebrating this week?