Weekly goals 12-5-25

 I didn't get a whole lot of writing done over the weekend, but I did some.  I think writing this book from Arlo's perspective is definitely the way to go.  He's way more fun to write.  I hope to get another 4-5K added this week.  I'm aiming for each of his entries to be around 1K give or take.  Then when I get to the part of the story where Devon takes over, her parts can be longer or shorter as need be.

I sent a big batch of queries out, so will wait and see what happens with them before I send any more.  One rejection already, but that was from an agent I did wonder about sending to.

Got a draft of the cover art for Standing Too Close and I'm excited to share it with you.  It just needs a little tweaking to get it right.  Hopefully I'll get the final version before the end of the week so I can share it.

It's my birthday this week, so I'm going to do my best to celebrate that too!

What are your goals this week?  

Celebrate the Small Things 9-5-25

 

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 long week so I'm looking forward to it.  Not that I have a whole lot planned...  I have a new spin class to learn for next week, but I've been through it once already, so it shouldn't be too hard.

I haven't done a lot of writing this week, but the prompts for the contest I try to do every day worked for diary entries a couple of times this week, so I have two new Arlo sections to add to the book.  I hope to go through and bulk up the existing entries a little and then move forward with the rest of the book all from Arlo's POV.  We'll see how that goes...

Only had a few rejections this week, and weirdly, they have mostly been for Guide Us, not for A Stranger to Kindness. I stopped querying Guide Us in October, so these are from a long time back!  Not sure yet if the new query is working better - I've had one rejection from that version so far.  No requests from either yet.  It's kind of brutal!

Got feedback from a new beta reader which was really positive.  She even wanted to know more about Meg and Ozzy so it was fun to be able to say that Ozzy actually has his own book which is already published.  She emailed me back the next day to say she'd bought it.  That's what I like to hear!

And that's about it for me.  What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Break to You

 

Continuing on my Neal Shusterman kick, I read this book he co-wrote with two other authors.  It's set in a juvenile detention facility which I was interested in since A Stranger to Kindness also has some parts set in a facility like this.

Or, not quite like this - this centre houses both boys and girls, but they are strictly segregated with the common areas being used by girls and boys at separate times.  Which opens the doors for a clandestine romance between inmates when a girl accidently drops her journal in the library and a boy discovers it.

The pair then write back and forth, using the journal to get to know one another and to fall in love.  And then to set in motion a daring plan to actually see one another in the flesh.

I enjoyed this book and feel like the depiction of detention is more realistic than in some other books I've read with similar setting.  The characters were interesting and diverse and I particularly liked the contrast between the boys' behaviour and that of the girls. 

I learned some interesting things too, like the fact foster kids with nowhere to go sometimes end up in detention centres.

The planning and the way everyone on both sides of the prison worked together to get this pair of wannabe lovers together was probably very unrealistic, but made for a very satisfying story nonetheless.

The only thing I found disappointing, was the ending which seemed very abrupt and not entirely satisfying.  I felt like it was almost like the authors were leaving things open for a possible sequel, but not quite...

But overall, I enjoyed this very much and raced through it far more quickly than I've read a book recently.

So I'd recommend it.

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

Bestselling author of Scythe and Challenger Deep Neal Shusterman, here with coauthors Debra Young and Michelle Knowlden, tells an intense yet tender story of two teens, trapped in impossible circumstances and unjust systems, willing to risk everything for love—no matter the consequences.

Adriana knows that if she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence in the Compass juvenile detention center. Thankfully, she’s allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts when her feelings get too big.

Until the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her writings—and has written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back.

Jon’s story is different than Adriana’s; he’s already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them in have melted away.

This fast-paced, highly compelling tour de force novel exposes what life is like in detention—and reveals the hearts of two teens who are forced to live in desperate circumstances.

Weekly Goals 5-5-25

 As I suspected, I didn't get a whole lot of writing done over the weekend.  I did rework my query letter for A Stranger to Kindness after getting a couple more rejections.  It's not significantly different, but I think the stakes are a little clearer now.  I hope, anyway.  I sent this one out to four or five agents, so we'll see if it works better.  A whole swathe of agents I identified as being a good fit for this book are currently closed, so fingers crossed some of them re-open.

I toyed around with Arlo's diary entries, and I think it might work to have the whole book told this way.  It just feels terrible to have written 30K already and then just ditch it all.  But I think this is the direction I need to go.  I thought Devon's arc was the most compelling one, but I think Arlo actually has more growth to make..  And we'll still see Devon's arc, just through Arlo's eyes.

So my goal this week is to work on this.  I'll need to pad out the diary entries I've already written since they're only about 300 words at most, and I'll need them to create more of a driving narrative to move the story along.

So that's my goal for the week.

I also have this horrible thing going on with my lips that's making life quite unpleasant.  I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so hopefully we can figure out what the issue is and do something to fix them up.  It's annoying not being able to smile.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 2-5-25

 

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 have a few things on this weekend, so I'm probably not going to get a whole lot of writing done.  Plus, I'm starting to think that maybe the problem I'm having with the book is that I'm writing it from the wrong POV.  I've been enjoying writing Arlo's diary entries far more than Devon's parts, so I'm curious about maybe trying to write the whole this as Arlo's diary.  There is a section he wouldn't be able to write, but I think it could make sense for Devon to fill in his diary at that point.

So I might have a go at splitting out the diary entries and having a go at telling the whole story that way.  Why do I always prefer writing boys?  And why do my boys always have more voice than my girls?  It's weird.

I've had a couple more rejections for A Stranger to Kindness which is disappointing.  I need to get to sending another round of queries.

We had a huge storm here yesterday and it has got really, really cold.  I think winter has hit for real now.

What are you celebrating this week?

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?