Weekly Goals: 23-9-19

I still haven't even finished reading through all the notes I got back from a CP on SHOOK, so I need to keep working through those this week.

Then I need to decide if there's actually any point in keeping on struggling with that story.  I've been working on it forever (it feels like) and never seems to quite get there.  But maybe it just needs to be left to rest for a few weeks again.

And then there's still that ending for Standing too Close that needs to be written....  And revisions on the silly little romance novel to be done.  Not to mention all the other characters and situations I have crawling around my skull right now, just waiting to be allowed out to play.

I think I need to take six months off to write.  Then I might actually get somewhere with all this.

Unfortunately we'd all starve if I did that.  So I will just have to try and scratch up as much time as I can to do all these things.

Which isn't going to happen this week.  I have two evenings in which my elder son has music performances, and one on which my younger son and I are going to his school production.  So there's not going to be any evening writing time for me this week.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 20-9-19

This post is part of Lexa Cain's blog hop, Celebrate the small things. Head on over there to sign up!

What am I celebrating this week?

Weekend!

Yes, it has been another crazy busy week at work so I am grateful for the weekend.  Not that it's going to be a quiet, relaxing weekend.  It's my father-in-law's birthday so we have a pot-luck lunch with the family on Saturday.  I've made the birthday cake.  I didn't have quite enough icing sugar to make the frosting, so will have to try and make an emergency dash to finish that before lunchtime.

On Sunday my elder son and I are going up the coast to see friend and go to a concert.  It's a Chinese pianist and should be good.  We've been to these before and they always have been in the past.

So not a lot of time for rest and relaxation.  Or for cleaning the house or writing or any of the other things I like to do over the weekend.  But it should all be fun.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Six Goodbyes We Never Said

There is a lot to like about this book. Both the main characters are truly broken people- and for good reason. Their ways of dealing with their individual losses are very different, and I really appreciated this because everyone deals with things in their own ways.

I just wish the two character voices were more distinctive. Because they were both grieving for lost parents and dealing with complex mental health issues, it was difficult to know who we were following section to section. It got easier toward the end once we knew all the supporting characters and who was important in whose life, but early on, I became confused.

It was also difficult to actually like Naima. I feel like this was intentional, but it's difficult to get into a story when you really wish the MC would fall into a ditch so you didn't need to listen to her whining for a while.

That said, I think the portrayals of the various different coping mechanisms and quirks each of the characters had were very realistic. I also really liked that the adult characters around these broken people let them be themselves and find their own ways to deal with their various issues. They were all supportive and present and loving, but didn't go over the top in trying to 'cure' the kids in their care.

So while I didn't love this one, I did like aspects of it.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read it before release.

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

Two teens meet after tragedy and learn about love, loss, and letting go

Naima Rodriguez doesn’t want your patronizing sympathy as she grieves her father, her hero—a fallen Marine. She’ll hate you forever if you ask her to open up and remember him “as he was,” though that’s all her loving family wants her to do in order to manage her complex OCD and GAD. She’d rather everyone back the-eff off while she separates her Lucky Charms marshmallows into six, always six, Ziploc bags, while she avoids friends and people and living the life her father so desperately wanted for her.

Dew respectfully requests a little more time to process the sudden loss of his parents. It's causing an avalanche of secret anxieties, so he counts on his trusty voice recorder to convey the things he can’t otherwise say aloud. He could really use a friend to navigate a life swimming with pain and loss and all the lovely moments in between. And then he meets Naima and everything’s changed—just not in the way he, or she, expects.

Candace Ganger's Six Goodbyes We Never Said is no love story. If you ask Naima, it’s not even a like story. But it is a story about love and fear and how sometimes you need a little help to be brave enough to say goodbye.

Weekly Goals 16-9-19

I have my fingers crossed this week isn't going to be as nuts at work as last week was!

I have revision notes to go through on two books now, so that will have to be done this week.  And I'm still 50 pages from the end of my beta-read, so that also needs to be finished. Plus I agreed to look over a friend's query, synopsis and first pages for a contest, so that will be incoming this week too.

The priority is to finish the beta-read.  Then the other reading for a friend, then getting through all the revision notes and deciding what to do with them all.  I feel like there is a lot of revision in my future...  Which seems to be a recurring theme in my life.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things: 13-9-19

This post is part of Lexa Cain's blog hop, Celebrate the small things. Head on over there to sign up!

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I was expecting things to be a little quieter at work this week, but I have been stupidly busy and am looking forward to having some time this weekend to get some of the things I want to do, done.  I have not been doing any of the writing I want to do, and haven't even managed to get through the beta -read I'm supposed to be doing.  

So that's what the weekend is going to be about.  When I'm not dealing with the usual chores.  And my son's 15th birthday.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Loved: Road Ends

I have binge-read all of Mary Lawson's books over the last couple of weeks.  I read Crow Lake many years ago and it became one of my all-time favourite novels.  After re-reading it a couple of weeks ago, I decided to see if Mary Lawson had written anything else, and ordered her other two books, both of which I read over the weekend.

Road Ends is my least favourite of the three, but still a powerful and engaging read.  Like all Lawson's books, it is set in a remote Ontario town called Struan.  There are even cameos from a couple of characters from Crow Lake in there, which I enjoyed seeing.

The book is about a family with eight sons and one daughter.  The father is remote and busy, shut away in his study when he is home and leaving the raising of all these kids largely to his only daughter since his wife seems only to be interested in children while they are still babies.

So when Megan, at the age of 21, decides it's time to leave home, it's inevitable that things might start to go wrong.

The story is told from three points of view: Tom, the eldest son, Megan and Edward, the father.  Tom and Megan's sections are told in third person while Edward's are in first person, almost like a journal he's writing for himself.

Tom is home again at the age of 25, dealing with a tragedy that he feels at least partly responsible for.   He's shut himself off from the world, not speaking or engaging with anyone any more than he has to and keeps to a strict, unalterable routine to keep his world within the boundaries he can cope with.

Yet as things begin to spiral out of control at home, Tom finds himself having to deal with more and more and his carefully built walls begin to crumble, allowing the rest of the world to begin creeping in.

Meanwhile, Megan has moved to London which, after the smallness of Struan is something of a culture shock.  Yet, ever practical and pragmatic, she manages to find work she loves and build a life for herself.  She misses her family, but revels in not having to be responsible for them anymore.

Edward, locked in his study, is largely unaware of the chaos reigning outside the door.  The occasional rowdy fight between his sons drags him away from his reading and he emerges to yell at them, something he regrets afterward because it reminds him of his own father, a brutal man whose shadow he has never really managed to escape.

The emotional and physical isolation of these characters is almost painful to read.  But their eventual growth as they begin to dig themselves out from the holes they have been hiding in is worth the pain.

The ending was disappointing though.  And I think that's why it isn't my favourite of the three novels by this author.  The explanation for the mother's fading from the world didn't ring entirely true to me, and both Megan and Tom disappointed me.  They both had other choices they could have made in the situation, although I do sort of understand why they acted the way they did.  I just wished it could have been different.

But overall, this is another beautiful book by Mary Lawson that illustrates the harshness and isolation and the wild, untamed beauty of small communities in the North of Canada.

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

Mary Lawson’s beloved novels, Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge, have delighted legions of readers around the world. The fictional, northern Ontario town of Struan, buried in the winter snows, is the vivid backdrop to her breathtaking new novel.

Roads End brings us a family unravelling in the aftermath of tragedy: Edward Cartwright, struggling to escape the legacy of a violent past; Emily, his wife, cloistered in her room with yet another new baby, increasingly unaware of events outside the bedroom door; Tom, their eldest son, twenty-five years old but home again, unable to come to terms with the death of a friend; and capable, formidable Megan, the sole daughter in a household of eight sons, who for years held the family together but has finally broken free and gone to England, to try to make a life of her own.

Roads End is Mary Lawson at her best. In this masterful, enthralling, tender novel, which ranges from the Ontario silver rush of the early 1900s to swinging London in the 1960s, she gently reveals the intricacies and anguish of family life, the push and pull of responsibility and individual desire, the way we can face tragedy, and in time, hope to start again.

Weekly Goals: 9-9-19

I've gone back to Standing Too Close, and I think I have at least the first part of an ending now.  And once I start writing it, I'm hopeful the rest will fall into place.  I also have a new piece I want to add in the middle because I feel like something important to the story happens too quickly to be wholly believable.  Adding this little bit will help, I hope...

And I'm reading for a friend, so that will have to take priority this week.  But I will get there.  Eventually.

And that's about it for goals this week.  Keeping them small because I am foreseeing a busy week at work ahead.

What are your goals this week?