Books I've Read: How to Survive 1985

 

I read this author's first book, Royals a few years back and quite enjoyed it.  So when Netgalley offered me the opportunity to read this in advance of publication, I jumped.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this one so much.

In Royals, a group of kids were trapped in a shopping mall while the world went on without them outside.  They were there for several weeks and had time to develop relationships, have fights, and work out how to get back into the real world before the mall destroyed them.

In this book, the same characters find themselves transported to 1985 for some reason.  They're not together in their own time, so one by one they arrive in the past and somehow manage to find each other.  Some stay for the full length of the book, others vanish back to 2025 quite quickly without really seeming to have any real reason to be there.

This book happens over only two or three days, not really enough time for the characters to even get properly familiar with the strange new world they find themselves in.  And in the time they're there, nothing particularly challenging happens to them.  Even finding their way back to their own time doesn't seem difficult - it just happened when they went to the place they arrived at the right time.

This felt a little unfinished to me.  It was super short and not a lot actually happened.  I was suprised when I realized I'd hit the end already because it didn't feel like enough had happened for it to be a whole book.

Which is a shame, because I enjoyed the earlier book with this characters.  And there's so much possibility with a time travel story where kids get to hang out with their parents at the same age.  There are so many more interesting aspects of the 1980s this book could have explored through the lens of someone from 2025.

So, I was actually disappointed by this one.

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

When four friends find themselves thrown back in time to 1985, how will they handle being teens in their parents’ era? And will they ever get back to the future?

It takes Shannon a while to work out what’s happened. She went into the cinema in 2025 and came back out … in 1985? Somehow she’s travelled forty years back in time.

But this isn’t the first time something strange has happened to Shannon and her group of friends. Is there a chance that whatever mysterious forces brought them together a year ago have sent them back to the 80s with her? To find her friends, she’ll have to navigate a world with no smartphones, no internet, and – worst of all – no access to bubble tea. Plus, what’s with the hairstyles?

Once they’re reunited, things only get more complicated. As the group tries to find a way back to the future, some friendships are strained while others blossom into something more. Can they stay together – and stay friends – long enough to survive 1985?

In another warm, wise and life-affirming story, Tegan Bennett Daylight takes her beloved cast of characters from her debut YA novel Royals on a fresh adventure, to discover something about their roots and how far their generation has come.

Weekly Goals 28-4-25

 I think I've figured out which version of the book I'm going to go with.  Annoyingly, it's my original version so most of the stuff I ended up writing last week is going on the scrap-heap.  I figured that if it was going to take until chapter 11 or 12 for my characters to meet anyway, I might as well go back to the original.  So I've made the new stuff fit with that version and I'm still at around 31K.

It's a little irritating that this is the way it's worked out, because I now feel like I kind of wasted my week off re-writing stuff that didn't need be re-written.  If I'd trusted what I was doing, I would have been much deeper into the story by now. 

Consider this a lesson learned.

I've had another rejection for A Stranger to Kindness so I need to get onto sending out another batch of queries.  It would be so useful to know if it's the queries or the pages that are getting me the rejections.  I hate querying.

I have to go back to work today which is likely to feel like something of a shock after having 10 days off.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 26-4-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

I've made progress on the new book.  I haven't written as much as I'd hoped to over the break, but I'm at around the 32K mark.  I'm pretty sure most of what I've written is pretty diabolical, but I'm going to keep going in the hope I'll be able to peel the good stuff out of the crap in revision.  At least I've finally got my two characters together now.   It just took 12 chapters to get there.

And because I went back and re-wrote the beginning to try and get them there faster (it didn't), now I have two versions of the start of the book and I'm not sure which works best.  Which is all very annoying.  Seriously, if I ever say I'm going to write a book start to finish again, please tell me to get off the crack.  It's just not the way my brain works or the way I pull stories together.  I feel like this one is already a nightmare editing project and I'm not even halfway through drafting.

I sent my first queries out for A Stranger to Kindness and have already had three rejections.  So I will try and get a few more out next week.  I love this book so much, but it is a character journey rather than a super-plotty story that races from one place to the next.  I worry that maybe those early chapters (which is all an agent sees in a submission package) might feel too quiet.

I guess we'll see what happens.  Keep your fingers crossed for me..

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: All Better Now

I've read a bunch of books by Neal Shusterman and even though they're not the kind of thing I usually read, I've enjoyed almost all of them.  So when I heard he was coming here to do a talk in May, I decided it was time to pick up his latest offering and read it before I go to his event.

This book deals with a pandemic very much like COVID and cleverly uses the things we know about pandemics now, and the way people behave, to create a very realistic picture of what might happen when there's another one.

The virus in this book is quite different to COVID though.  It completely transforms those who recover from it, making them gentler, happier, less consumerist, more altruistic people.  Billionaires give away their money.  People rush to help those in need.  No one buys anything made of plastic.

Obviously, the people in charge of the world and its economy aren't thrilled by this.  The army isn't thrilled by this.  The uber-wealthy who haven't contracted the virus aren't thrilled by this.  And factions develop, the line between the uninfected and the recoverees becoming stark enough to create conflict.

An interesting group of protagonists explore this new world, each navigating through their own status as infected, recovered, or, in one case, naturally immune.

There's the son of the world's richest man who has been protected and coddled his whole life, but more so since the virus.  When he is infected and recovers, he becomes a super-spreader, convinced everyone deserves the gift of being the new person he's become since recovering.  Trying to contain him is Mariel, a homeless girl who has a pragmatism that will balance out her friend's dreaminess.  She's immune to the virus, the first person to be discovered to have this trait.

Which makes her valuable to Morgan and the scientists she's stashed away in the arctic to find a vaccine against the virus.  Her immunity may be the key to crushing this thing.  Morgan only has the power and wealth to run this lab because prior to contracting the virus herself, one of the world's wealthiest women elected her to be a successor.  Knowing the virus would make her lose her ruthless, cruel streak, this woman handed over everything and instructed Morgan to carry on the nefarious work.

With the cure/vaccine about to be unleashed on the world, creating a planet more miserable than any we've known, the two factions will inevitably, clash.

I really enjoyed this book.  The idea of a disease that makes you a better person appeals to me.  Maybe this is exactly - well, maybe not quite; these people are so altruistic they're willing to dive into the ocean to save drowning people even if they can't swim - what the world needs to reset itself.  Maybe we do need a virus to show us what it is to be content and truly happy.

The intrigue and plots and the very definite line between the infected (embraced) and not (unembraced) was fascinating to watch.  And there were some fabulous villains in there to hate.  I particularly liked the old lady billionaire whose entire life had been devoted to making tis miserable for people she disliked.  In petty, annoying ways.

So, I'd recommend this one.  It's fun and fast-paced and while speculative, has enough reality in there to make it feel all too possible.

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

From New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman comes a young adult thriller about a world where happiness becomes contagious and the teens caught in the conspiracy by the powers that be to bring back discontent.

An unprecedented condition is on the rise. It behaves like a virus, with the first symptom being a fever, but those who contract it experience long-term effects no one has ever seen utter contentment. Soon after infection, people find the stress, depression, greed, and other negative feelings that used to weigh them down are gone.

Almost everyone revels in this mass unburdening. But people in power—who depend on malcontents tuning into their broadcasts, prey on the insecure to sell their products, and convince people they need more, new, faster, better everything—know this new state of being is bad for business. Soon, campaigns start up convincing people that being happy all the time is dangerous. There’s even a vaccine developed to rid people of their inner peace and get them back to normal because, surely, without anger or jealousy as motivators, productivity will grind to a halt and the world will be thrown into chaos.



It’s nearly impossible to determine the truth when everyone with a platform is pushing their own agendas, and two teens from very different backgrounds who’ve had their lives upended in different ways by the virus find themselves enmeshed in the center of a dangerous power play. Can they reveal the truth?

Weekly Goals 21-4-25

 I have the whole week off this week so my goal is to write a lot.  I spent the weekend fixing up the place I feel like I went wrong with the book I'm working on, and now I'm charging forward with it.  I should be able to re-use a few bits and pieces I'd written earlier, but probably not the whole lot.

So this week is all about the new book which I'm calling Street Smarts at the moment, but don't think that will be a permanent title.

I'm also going to send out a handful of queries for A Stranger to Kindness.  Just to kind of test the water.  I got some feedback on my query and I've tweaked it as a result, but it will be interesting to see how it goes in the wild.  So wish me luck...

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 18-4-25

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

Holidays!

It's Easter, so we have a four-day weekend, plus, because it's ANZAC day on Friday next week, I only had to take three days of leave to get a 10 day break.  Nice, huh?

I'm not going anywhere, but I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get a good way through the new book, so my plan is to try and write at least 5,000 words a day over this break and get a good way in.  I had initially thought I'd be able to finish the whole thing, but realizing I went the wrong way in about Chapter Two means I'm not as far in as I thought.

But it's fine.  I'll fix that chapter up and get things moving in the right direction, then I'll see if anything I've already written can be salvaged. I'm pretty sure some of it can.  Just probably not all of it.  And if I can get 40-50K written over the next week or so, that will be fantastic.  I'll be right in the story then.

I'm also hoping to send off my first few queries for A Stranger to Kindness over the next week, so please keep your fingers crossed for that.  I feel so protective of Harley and Wolfe, I can't bear to think of them being rejected.

Oh, and that exciting thing I alluded to that I couldn't talk about?  Turned out to be nothing.  Just another disappointment in a week that's been a little disappointing on numerous fronts.  But this is a celebrate post, so I'm not going into that....

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: The History of Love

 

I found this one in the bookshelf in our office breakroom.  Because we run a Writers progamme as part of our Festival, we often have books given to us at work and when they've been read, they end up in the library in the Whare Kai.  Plus, other people (myself included) often offload books they've read into those shelves if they're not ones they want to keep at home. Anyway, this one looked interesting enough, and I needed something to read, so I picked it up.

It was one of those books that have a variety of POVs, all linked by a single thing - in this case, an obscure book called The History of Love.  

There's Leo, an old Polish man who has had one great love in his life and his love was so huge, it spilled over into a book he wrote to contain his emotions. Both the book and the woman are long gone now, and Leo is in New York, trying to prove to himself he's still alive.  At least for one more day.

Also in New York is Alma, a fourteen-year-old girl whose father has died, leaving her mother desperately lonely.  When they met, her father gave her mother a copy of a book called The History of Love, in Spanish.  when a stranger writes and asks her mother to translate the book into English, Alma decides the man asking for this must be her mother's next soulmate.

As the various characters in this book circle closer and closer to the truth about The History of Love, all their lives might be changed forever.

I enjoyed this book.  It was well written and the various different relationships revealed themselves quietly.  It wasn't something completely absorbing or mind-blowing, but it was interesting enough to keep me reading.  It was also quite sad, or maybe, melancholy would be a better word.  It left me with a bit of an ache in my heart for all the lost opportunities the characters had.

So I'd recommend this one.  It's not right up there among my favourite books of the year, but I did enjoy it .

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

Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.

Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives...

Weekly Goals 14-4-25

I didn't do a lot of writing over the weekend, but I think I figured out that I've gone the wrong way with this book.  I thought originally I needed something dramatic to happen to get Devon out of her house, but was convinced by a bunch of other people that a slow fade would work.

Maybe in real life.

In fiction, I think you need more and certainly, the slow fade isn't working for this book. It's taking far too long for me to get the characters to the place they need to be and I feel like a lot of what I've written is really boring.  So I'm going to go back and figure out where I need to add the dramatic bit that forces Devon's change, then I'll be able to get this book on track.

Very glad I've figured that out now because I have the whole of next week off to write and was really planning to get this book done in that week.  Not sure I'll manage that now, but I should be able to get a good way into it anyway.

So that's my goal this week.  To figure out where I went wrong and to fix it before I move on further into the story.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 11-4-25

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

It's been a busy week and I'm tired.  I haven't been feeling all that great either, so am looking forward to maybe getting a little time to rest.  I've had this weird lip thing going on, where my lips have suddenly got really dry and cracked and no lip balm seems to help.  I finally went to the doctor and was given some cream to use, but I suspect it's just steroid cream and will clear things up for as long as I use it, but won't actually fix the problem.  But maybe that's me being cynical...

Hoping to get some writing done this weekend.  I'm a little stuck right now on how to get Arlo and Devon together.  I mean, I know how they meet and why and everything - I've even written that section - I just can't seem to get Devon there.  From where I am, I still think it's another two chapters.  And I think that's too long.

But I'll figure it out.  I always do in the end.  Unless I trunk the book, but I don't feel like I'm at that point with this one quite yet.  And next week's easter and I have 10 days to immerse myself in the book and figure it out.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Loved: Boy Swallows Universe

 

I can't believe I didn't discover this book sooner; it's so up my alley it's not funny!  The writing is glorious, the story is edge-of-your-seat gripping and the characters are absolutely unforgettable.

The book follows the exploits of one Eli Bell, starting when he's around twelve,and finishing up when he's on the threshold of adulthood.  Eli is a sensitive, observant kid, prone to crying, yet tough as nails at the same time.

He has to be.  His mother is a junkie, his father a drunk he barely knows, his stepfather deals drugs and his brother chooses to be mute (sound familiar??).  And his babysitter is the legendary crook and prison-escape artist, Slim Halliday.

Growing up with Slim's stories of goodness, crime and derring-do, Eli has a nose for a good story and an over-developed sense of right and wrong.

But life isn't kind to Eli and his family, especially when his stepfather crosses the drug kingpin in town and gets himself disappeared, his mother thrown in jail and Eli himself mutilated.  But true to his adventurous spirit, even losing a finger doesn't slow Eli down.  It might take years for the opportunity to take Tytus Broz down, but he will be taken down.

And in the meantime, there are other adventures to be had, from falling for the crime writer at the local paper to breaking into a prison to spend Christmas with his mother.

I loved this book.  Eli is such a delightful character, even when he's in some stupidly awful situations.  And the relationship he has with his silent, possibly magical older brother is beautiful.  You know what a sucker I am for a good brother relationship...  The depiction of Brisbane's criminal underworld in the 1980s is perfectly drawn in its gritty, slightly shabby and worn-out criminality.

And the writing is gorgeous.  As a wannbe reporter, Eli's editor tells him he's too flowery, too focused on the details, and the author is just as focused on the details - to great effect.  There's some gorgeous language in this book, even though it's as tough and gritty as the streets the Bell boys grow up on.

So yeah.  I loved it.

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

A novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, set in Brisbane's violent working class suburban fringe - from one of Australia's most exciting new writers.

Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crime for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.

But if Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.

A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.

Weekly Goals 7-4-25

 I got all the edits done on Standing Too Close over the weekend, so that's gone back to my publisher.  I expect it will be a few weeks before I get the next round.

So this week, it's back to the new book.  I finished chapter seven this weekend, and I feel like it's still going to be another two or three chapters before Devon and Arlo meet.  Is that too far into the book?  I think I'll be at around 20K by then, which feels like it might be too far.  But I guess we'll see.  Writing a book from start to finish is weird...

I have a function to cater for work this week which will be a nice change from being in front of my computer all day.  Looking forward to that.

And that's really it for goals this week.  What are yours?

Celebrate the Small Things 4-4-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I got edits through from my publisher for Standing Too Close, so that's going to be my weekend.  I flicked through them yesterday and there's nothing too major that needs to be done.  I started yesterday, but didn't finish, so I plan to try and get that done today.  Then reward myself by going to a movie.

Oh, and Standing Too Close will release on 8 August.  Cover reveal to come...

It's so weird going back into that book.  A Stranger To Kindness was born out of writing that book, and I've spent so long working on that one now, Standing Too Close feels very, very long ago.  But apparently it made my editor cry, so that's something!  I do remember there's a scene in there that made me cry when I wrote it which has never happened to me before.

Something else potentially exciting happened this week, but I can't talk about it yet.  So I'll just tease you with that much.  Again, more to come...

What are you celebrating this week?

IWSG - April

 It's the first Wednesday in April, so it's time for the IWSG!

The awesome co-hosts for the April 2 posting of the IWSG are Jennifer Lane, L Diane Wolfe, Jenni Enzor, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month's question really had me scratching my head.

What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with?

You see, I don't really read fantasy.  I've never enjoyed fantasy books much. I've tried reading The Hobbit about 10 times, and never got far into it.  I think there are two types of people in the world - the ones who like The Hobbit, and the ones who don't.

I've tried reading other fantasy too, thinking maybe I just don't like Tolkien, but I've had the same reaction to most other fantasy books I've tried.  Just. Not. My. Thing.

Interestingly though, one of my longest-term CPs, Breanna, is a fantasy author.  High fantasy too.  With complex magic systems and wizards and battling tribes.  The stuff I usually find a complete turn off if I come across it in a book's description.  And I love her books.  She has a unique voice and an even more unique way of making what are probably fantasy tropes something specific to the worlds she's created.  In her published novels, the way magic is used and the effect it has on users is something I've never come across before.  And her new stuff...  well, you fantasy lovers are in for an absolute treat when these books come out.  

So, to answer this question, I'd have to say, if I had to go on a quest or sit down for a bevvie with a fantasy character, it would have to be one of Breanna's. I have a specific one in mind - he's one of the heroes of her newest book that I'm reading for her at the moment, as she writes it - but as the book isn't finished yet, I'm going to have to go with one from one of her published novels: Corcoran Gray from Lord of Secrets.  He's kind of a scoundrel, but a loveable one, in his own way.

But to be honest, there are characters in a bunch of books I'd love to spend time with, even some of my own characters.  By the time I've finished writing them, they kind of have lives of their own and I'd love to know more about them.  But fantasy characters?  Not so much...

Who would you pick?