Celebrate the Small Things 26-7-24

 

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!

Well, kind of...  We've got the semi-finals for the opera singing competition we're running happening, so I'm working all weekend.  But it is just in the evening, so I may get a bit of writing time during the day.  But I'm not counting on it.

Had a couple more query rejections for Guide Us this week.  I seriously don't know what's wrong with this one.  I've never had such a dire response rate to a query.  And this query has had more professional eyes on it than any previous one.  It's incredibly frustrating.

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

Books I've read: We Are The Light

 

I picked this up on my last trip to the library because I've enjoyed other books by Matthew Quick and figured I'd probably like this one too.  And while I didn't love it, I did enjoy it and appreciate what it was trying to do.

Lucas Goodgame has survived an unspeakable tragedy that has taken his wife from him and torn his entire small town apart. He manages to hold himself together with his belief that his wife, Darcey, has stayed with him in her angelic form, visiting each night to hold him and guide him through his grief and the fact his analyst appears to have abandoned him.

Through a series of letters to his analyst, Lucas tells the story of his grief and eventual healing, something that is brought about when a young man, the brother of the person who instigated the violence that tore through the town, sets up camp in his yard.  A former counsellor at the high school, Lucas is drawn to help this damaged boy, and through helping him, somehow manages to heal the entire town.

Lucas is a fascinating POV character in that he wholly believes what he thinks is happening, even though his interactions with the townspeople show us that he is not seeing everything as clearly as he thinks he is.  And what a town it is!  All the citizens who rally around Lucas have their own quirks and eccentricities and they are really what makes this book so delightful.

The eventual revealing of the truth of what happened the night of the tragedy, and Lucas's own acceptance of the truth make for compelling reading. And of course, the fact that there is a movie theatre right there in the centre of the story, doesn't hurt.  At least from my perspective.

So I'd recommend this one.  It is heavy in places, and its depiction of grief and grieving is very real and raw, so if you're in a fragile place or on your own journey through grief, it may be tough read.  You've been warned...

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

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most important, themselves.

From Matthew Quick, the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, We Are the Light is an unforgettable novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love. The humorous, soul-baring story of Lucas Goodgame offers an antidote to toxic masculinity and celebrates the healing power of art. In this tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned, Quick reminds us that guardian angels are all around us—sometimes in the forms we least expect.

Weekly Goals 22-7-24

 I managed to get quite a bit of writing done over the weekend and I'm quite happy with the scenes I wrote.  I feel like I may have sorted a few things out in my head about who knows what and that has clarified the way forward for me. 

Means I need to go back and change some stuff further back, but I'll do that later.  I know editing is going to take a long time; it always does.  One of the negatives to writing without much in the way of an outline or plan...

So my goal for this week is to try and write at least one more chapter.  It may not happen - I'm working the next two weekends because our next event is happening over that period.  Plus, the Film Festival starts at the end of July.  I haven't bought a ton of tickets for the Film Festival this year, but I got a ten-trip ticket for Christmas that I've redeemed, so I'm going to at least ten.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 19-7-24

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 had two days off and did a bunch of writing on A Stranger to Kindness. I'm at that awful point in drafting where nothing seems to be hitting the page the way I want it to and everything I write feels like it's in the wrong place or happening at the wrong time.  

I know it's all part of the process and that this draft is all about getting the story onto the page and I'll be able to fix it later, but it doesn't feel great.  If feels like I'm not getting it right, that I'm not hitting the beats.  I think I'm struggling a bit with trying to show Harley's inner conflict between what he's internalised, what he's been told and what he's seeing in his new home.

Hopefully I'll be able to get that layered in once I've finished writing the thing...  I'm getting to the meaty stuff now, but can't help thinking that I haven't given the core relationships enough time to develop before getting there.  I guess we'll see how it comes out in the end.  I've written about 35K words, so it's not like I've got a bloated word count.  I can probably write another 10K or so building up those relationships before I need to get to the major turning point, so maybe I'm not in such bad shape.

I hope to get a bunch more writing done over the weekend. The weather looks like it's going to be dreadful, so a good excuse to stay in!

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: The Heart's Invisible Furies

A friend at work gave me this to read because she thought I'd enjoy it.  She was right...

It's kind of an epic story in that it spans around 70 years in life of Cyril from his birth out of wedlock in 1940s Ireland to the present day.  In telling the story of this one man, we get to see the way attitudes and ideas have changed over the years. And the ways they have not.

Cyril realises quite young that he's gay, even if he isn't able to communicate what it is he feels when the glamourous young Julian shows up at his house and wants to compare willies.  Cyril's attraction to Julian forms the backbone of his identity, even while Julian seems oblivious to his desires.

With Julian unable (or unwilling) to return his affections, Cyril is forced to seek satisfaction in the only places available to him in the repressed Ireland of the 1950s and 1960s.  It's only after escaping Ireland for Amsterdam that Cyril is finally able to accept himself and the love of another man.

In 1980s New York, that acceptance is turning to fear with the AIDS epidemic ravaging the gay community, yet it isn't AIDS that shatters Cyril's life but a random act of violence.  Broken, he returns to Ireland to try and reconnect with his past and find a way forward.  And in doing so, he may just find the family he's never had before...

I really enjoyed this book.  Cyril was a fascinating character because he is terribly flawed, yet still very relatable.  It was also fascinating to follow the ways attitudes toward homosexuality changed over the period of time, particularly in Ireland with its deep rooted Catholicism.

The author's note at the end was also a fascinating read, so if you decide to read this book, don't skip that!

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

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.

Weekly Goals 14-7-24

I got another chapter written over the weekend, so this week my goal is to add another one (if I don't take those days off) or another four or five if I do.  I feel like a lot of what's happening in this story is happening in the wrong order, but I'll deal with that in editing, once I've seen the shape of the whole book.  The good thing about writing in Scrivener is that it's easy to move scenes around.

I got a few more query rejections last week too, so I'm going to try and send out a few more queries this week too.  Some of the agents I wanted to query in my first round were closed, so hopefully they will have re-opened now.

And that's about it for goals.  What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 12-7-24

 

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!

And I don't have a lot on this week, so I'm hoping to get time to write another chapter or two of Kindness.  I may also be able to have a couple of days off during the week too.  We were all gifted an extra two days' leave for working on Light Cycles and they have to be used in July.  This week makes sense to use them because the following week is when things ramp up for our next event.

I snuck out of work a little early on Thursday to go and see Kinds of Kindness, the new film by Yorgos Lanthimos.   It's almost three hours long, but doesn't;t really feel long because it's broken into three parts, each of which is kind of like its own film.  Just all three have the same actors in them, just playing different parts.  And all three stories are about power - having it, not having it, relinquishing it.  It's interesting and absurd and makes you feel a little off kilter.

I loved it.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Loved - The Outsiders

I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing career, how it started and my influences.  And I can’t think about that without referencing the book that started it all for me.

I first read The Outsiders when I was 12.  I remember finishing it the first time, sitting there, stunned and reeling from what I’d just read and thinking ‘I’ll never be able to read another book again.’

Obviously, I have read other books since then.  I’ve been moved by other books. I’ve been influenced by other books.  But I’ve never again finished a book and felt the same way as I felt when I finished that one.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that book changed my life.  The Outsiders changed my life.

I always felt like an outsider growing up.  Because of my dad’s job, we moved to a new country every couple of years, so I was always the new kid in school, the one with a funny accent, the wrong clothes, the wrong age for the class.  Even when we came “home” I felt like an outsider because my references and experiences were so different from those of the kids who’d grown up there.  So I embraced my outsider status and revelled in being different, wearing it on the outside so there was no mistaking it.

And I started writing.

The Outsiders is the book that made me want to be a writer.  The book that made me believe I could be a writer.  And as a writer, it’s a book I go back to whenever I want to remind myself how I need my books to make a reader feel.  Because I want to write things that make my readers feel the way I felt the first time I read it.

I still have the first copy of The Outsiders I ever bought.  It’s a movie tie-in with Coppola’s film and the illustrated cover – now long gone – showed the characters looking very like the actors that portrayed them in the film.  It’s faded and discoloured now, the back cover and last couple of pages torn.  It’s a well-read book, one of only a few I’ve owned that I can honestly say I’ve read to rags.

I used to sleep with that book under my pillow.

In fact, I slept with all S E Hinton’s books under my pillow, arranged in the order I liked them most – The Outsiders, Tex, Rumble Fish, That Was Then This is Now. I think that lasted about a year.

Interestingly, while I still love The Outsiders, as an adult I’ve come to appreciate Tex more and would almost argue that I like it more than The Outsiders.  It’s more subtle, which makes sense when you remember that Susie wrote The Outsiders when she was 15.  My writing is more subtle than it was when I was 15 too. At least I hope it is!

It’s also less obviously influenced by The Outsiders.

My early writing was basically S E Hinton fan fiction, if that term had existed.  My characters sounded and felt like her characters and I often didn’t even bother to change their names from Johnny or Steve.  I don’t think I ever wrote a character called Ponyboy, but they often sounded a lot like Ponyboy.  I also wrote a lot of boy characters.  Boys and brothers. 

I still write boy characters.  And brothers.  Always brothers.  I think I’ve only ever written one book where my protagonist only has a sister – An Unstill Life.  My other characters all have brothers, one or more. My protagonists’ brothers are often my favourite characters in the finished book too.  I love Finn in Stumped almost as much as I love Ozzy.  He’s such a complicated and layered character, even as seen through Ozzy’s eyes. And in Guide Us (the one I'm currently querying) Jason - Juliet's twin -  is a  character I enjoyed writing very much in that he's both a heo and a villain in Juliet and Iris's story.

I cannot stress how much of an influence The Outsiders has had on me as both a writer and as a human.  The book and the Coppola film (which I have probably seen at least 20 40 times ) have been constants in my life since 1985.  And I know I’m not alone.  Generations of kids have read and loved those characters in the same way I did, seeing themselves and their feelings reflected from the page. 

I can only dream that I’ll write something that will have the longevity and enduring popularity that The Outsiders has had.  Something that reaches in to touch the hearts and souls of readers because it so perfectly captures exactly how they feel in that specific moment.

A writer can dream, right?

 

 

 

 

Weekly Goals 8-7-24

 I managed to write another chapter of Kindness over the weekend, so I feel like I'm on a roll.  I have a couple of extra days off I need to use in July, so I'm hoping to take those next week and write a big chunk more.  This book might actually get finished before the end of the year!

And that's about it for goals this week.

What do you hope to achieve?

Celebrate the Small Things 5-7-24

 

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!  And I have nothing much on this week which makes me happy.  I'm planning to go to a movie - something I haven't done for a while - and to write another chapter of  A Stranger to Kindness.

I realised this week that I missed the 10 year anniversary of becoming a published novelist.  It was in January, but because my first publisher went out of business and An Unstill Life was re-published by my current publisher, I didn't have that date at the front of my mind.  It's kind of hard to believe it's been 10 years, but then, I do now have five published novels.

To kind of celebrate that 10 year anniversary, I decided to do something I haven't done before and go back and read those published books (except My Murder Year which only released last year so is still pretty fresh in my mind from editing) which has been interesting.  After finishing each of those books I thought I'd never forget a single word of them because I'd spent so long with each of them, but I was surprised at how much I'd forgotten about them. 

I thought I'd find re-reading some of the older ones a bit cringeworthy - I'm pretty sure I'm a better writer now than I was when I wrote them - but I was pleasantly surprised.  I found a rather embarrassing number of stupid errors in one of them, but I can only blame myself for that...  I've always said Stumped was my favourite of my own books and after re-reading it, it's still true. That one is good!  If it's not tacky for me to say that myself.

There were parts of all the others that I'd probably write differently now, but they're not terrible.  I was surprised at how much I enjoyed re-reading Chasing the Taillights which is probably the oldest of these stories in terms of when I wrote the first draft.  And I was surprised at The Sidewalk's Regrets - there's a lot more of me in that one than I remembered!

So here's to there being more, better books in the next 10 years!

IWSG - July

 

It's the first Wednesday of the month so it's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group!

The awesome co-hosts for the July 3 posting of the IWSG are JS Pailly, Rebecca Douglass, Pat Garcia, Louise-Fundy Blue, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month's question is a technical one:

What are your favorite writing processing (e.g. Word, Scrivener, yWriter, Dabble), writing apps, software, and tools? Why do you recommend them? And which one is your all time favorite that you cannot live without and use daily or at least whenever you write?

Personally, I'm a Scrivener user for my longer-form work.  I love how easy it is to move scenes and chapters around, something that is really important when you write in the rather chaotic way I tend to write.  I know there are a lot of features of Scrivener I don't use - I've never been taught to use it properly, so probably don't really harness its full potential.  If anyone has any parts of Scrivener they particularly like and want to share, I'd be keen to know what I'm not using...

For short fiction, I tend to just use Word because I don't need to move things around in the same way, and I don't feel like working in Scrivener adds anything to the process.

And that's probably the long and short of it...  I used to like to handwrite first drafts and only move to the computer for editing, but these days I tend to hit the laptop right from the start because it speeds things up a bit for me.

What writing software do you prefer?

Weekly Goals 1-7-24

 I got another two chapters of A Stranger to Kindness written over the long weekend, so I'm pleased about that.  I'm not sure any of it is any good, but I guess I can figure that out when I'm finished.  

So my goal this week is to keep going and to try and write at least one more chapter.  If I can write a chapter a week, I'll get this book finished!  I know t won't happen that way, but I'm prepared to try.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 28-6-24

 

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

What am I celebrating this week?

It's a long weekend!  A weird one where we get the Friday off instead of the Monday.  But it's still an extra day off...  I plan to use it to write and to finish my beta read.

On Sunday I'm catching up with my old team, which will be great.  It's been a while since we all got together, so I'm looking forward to it.

I've been to the gym three times already this week and plan to go another three times over the long weekend, so I'm feeling very virtuous.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller

This was a rather frivolous, silly book I read a few weeks back.  I've  been reading too many long books recently, meaning I haven't been finishing stuff quickly enough to review on a weekly basis!  I must read faster...

Keslie hates Eric and has done since they were at grade school.  They have always been rivals, especially now they are at a super-competitive high school.  At the start of their senior year, Eric and Kelsie run into each other at a party and in a moment of weakness, Eric admits his girlfriend has ghosted him since leaving for college.  Kelsie admits her bestie, Brianna, has not spoken to her either, since leaving to move in with her mother across the country.

When Keslie discovers Brianna is planning a co0llege visit to the same college Eric's girlfriend is attending, she is willing to do just about anything to try and talk to her friend - even put up with Eric.

Without much of a plan, Eric and Kelsie head off, certain things will work in their favour, despite not really knowing where their people might be at any given time.  And they talk, uncovering things they each didn't about each other and their shared past.

By the end of the trip, they will either have killed one another or buried the hatchet forever.

This was a quick and easy read.  I found both Eric and Kelsie quite annoying and spending that much time with them grated on me a bit.  They did grow throughout the trip, and Kelsie was somewhat less obnoxious by the end, but not quite enough to make up for what came before.  And Eric, for someone supposedly so smart, was ridiculously shallow.

But if you like an enemies-to-lovers romance, this is not the worst I've read.

Don't just listen to me though.  Here's the blurb:

Today Tonight Tomorrow meets A Pho Love Story in this whip-smart young adult novel about a girl who embarks on a “breezy road trip romp” ( Publishers Weekly ) with her longtime rival to win back her best friend and his girlfriend.

There’s no one Kelsie Miller hates more than Eric Mulvaney Ortiz—the homecoming king, captain of the football team, and academic archrival in her hyper-competitive prep school. But after Kelsie’s best friend, Brianna, moves across the country and stops speaking to her, she’ll do anything, even talk to Eric, to find out why.

After they run into each other—literally—at the last high school party of the summer, Eric admits he’s been ghosted by his girlfriend, Jessica. Kelsie tells him she’s had zero contact from Briana since she left their upstate New York town.

Suddenly, a plan is they’ll go on a road trip to the University of Pennsylvania the following week when both Brianna and Jessica will be on campus. Together, they’ll do whatever it takes to win back their exes.

What could go wrong?

Used to succeeding in everything, Kelsie and Eric assume they’ll naturally figure out the details on the drive down. What they don’t expect is that the person they actually need may be the one sitting next to them.

Weekly Goals 24-6-24

 I have two main goals this week: to finish my beta read and to add more words to Kindness.  I ended up not working on my own book at all over the weekend, but I did work on the beta reading, so I hope I can get that done by Fridayish.  Then I can spend the rest of the long weekend on my own book.

We'll see how that goes...

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 21-6-24

 

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

What am I celebrating this week?

It's my youngest son's 17th birthday.  How the heck am I old enough for my youngest to be 17?  Crazy!  I don't feel any different inside than I did when I was 16...

I've read through the stuff I wrote last week and some of it is okay...  I think there's definitely some stuff I need to add and change, but as a starting point, it's not too bad. I'm so in love with these characters though.  I just hope I can do them justice.  I'm going to try and find a few hours to work on it this weekend (not fixing stuff, but writing forward) so I can keep up the momentum I started last week. We have a public holiday next week and I'm hoping to take an extra day on top of that to get a couple of writing days in there.

I've made more progress on my beta reading too (I'm 13 chapters in), so I need to make some more progress on that too...

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Every Other Weekend

 

I have a confession to make.  Reading this book was cheating on the book I'm actually supposed to be reading - a massive 800 page Ukranian novel which I'm reading for my book club.  I picked this up while I was writing at the library on Wednesday so I had something to read while eating lunch and just kept going...  Apologies to my other book.  I will get back to it, I promise.

I'm a huge fan of Abigail Johnson, and I enjoyed this one very much.  The characters kind of irritated me to start with, but they really grew on me as they began to see themselves and their circumstances more clearly.

The premise is simple - two kids have to spend every other weekend with their fathers in a dodgy apartment building after their parents separate.  Both hate it for different reasons, but once they meet and become friends, these weekends become the best part of their lives.

Jolene is an aspiring filmmaker, living her life in stories she can control because her own life is so miserable through no fault of her own.  She is deliciously snarky and mean as a result and has some of the4 very best lines in the whole book.

Adam, on the other hand, comes from a tight, loving home. But after his oldest brother dies, everything falls apart and his father moves out, unable to keep living with his wife's grief.  Adam s furious at his father, seeing his leaving as an abandonment of the family as a whole.  The way he treats his father and brother made me really dislike him, but his loyalty and obvious care for his mother kind of redeemed him a little.

With only two days a fortnight together, the friendship between Jolene and Adam is slow to start, but feels so organic as a result. It is so easy to see why these two people might bond, given their similar-yet-different circumstances.  With chapters alternating POV, we also get an insight into their lives when they aren't together (although I feel like we get much more of Jolene's life than Adam's - especially her friends).

I really enjoyed seeing the way they both grew and changed over the course of the book and how their friendship grew with them.  Their circumstances may have been similar to begin with, but by the end of the book they are in very different (better) situations yet you can see that their relationship has developed to a place where they don't need the shared anger and misery to bond them anymore.

So I'd recommend this one.  

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

Can life begin again… every other weekend?

Adam Moynihan’s life used to be awesome. Straight As, close friends and a home life so perfect that it could have been a TV show straight out of the 50s. Then his oldest brother died. Now his fun-loving mom cries constantly, he and his remaining brother can’t talk without fighting, and the father he always admired proved himself a coward by moving out when they needed him most.

Jolene Timber’s life is nothing like the movies she loves—not the happy ones anyway. As an aspiring director, she should know, because she’s been reimagining her life as a film ever since she was a kid. With her divorced parents at each other’s throats and using her as a pawn, no amount of mental reediting will give her the love she’s starving for.

Forced to spend every other weekend in the same apartment building, the boy who thinks forgiveness makes him weak and the girl who thinks love is for fools begin an unlikely friendship. The weekends he dreaded and she endured soon become the best part of their lives. But when one’s life begins to mend while the other’s spirals out of control, they realize that falling in love while surrounded by its demise means nothing is ever guaranteed.

Weekly Goals 17-6-24

 I unfortunately have to go back to work today.  After a good long chunk (3 days plus weekend) off, I've gotten into the swing of writing and wish I could keep going.  Another week, and I could potentially finish this book...  But I'll have to leave it until the weekend now, and I'm not sure I'm going to have any time to put into it this weekend because I have a bunch of other stuff on.

But my goal is to keep going, to keep the momentum up that I've built.  It's a public holiday next Friday, so I'm planning to keep that free for a full day of writing.

I have also made inroads in my beta reading and aim to try and get that finished over the next two weeks too.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 14-6-24

 

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

What am I celebrating this week?

I did some writing!  Actually, I did a lot of writing.  I set out to write three new chapters on A Stranger to Kindness, but I needed up writing seven. 

They're not good chapters for the most part, and I think at least two of them will probably end up on the scrap heap, but damn it felt good to write like that.  Stupidly, I 'd forgotten I'd written a little outline/synopsis thing (1.5 pages, so not much) for this, and didn't find it until day 2 of writing.  If I'd read it at the start, it probably would have changed the order of scenes I wrote and probably the direction I took.

But I wrote and I loved every minute of it, even when it was hard.  And I'm even more determined to finish this one now.  I left it at a good bit yesterday, so I'm hoping that will encourage me to keep going, even when I don't have a full day to dedicate to it.  A few hours would do.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: The Followers

This was a fun, twisty read that I found myself far more invested in than I had anticipated being.  Perhaps because I find social media so frightening in many ways, this just kind of confirmed my fears.

When she was a teenager, Liv's sister was brutally murdered and all signs point to her recently-estranged boyfriend as being the culprit.  But Sam disappeared right after the murder, with Liv's niece in tow, and despite detectives continuing to search for him, there has been no sign of him for years.

So when Liv stumbles upon a photo of Sam in the feed of a popular Instagrammer, she packs her bags and heads to the remote town the social media icon has recently moved to.

Molly is a popular social media maven with scores of followers (and an entire forum of haters) watching her every move.  But her new husband is uncomfortable with the scrutiny had demanded she remove the single picture she posted of him.  Molly is surprised at the intensity of his reaction, but agrees to keep Scott and his daughter out of her carefully curated social media world.

When Liv arrives in town, it's easy for her to follow Molly's online clues to engineer meetings and even easier to befriend the lonely newcomer.  But as the two women develop a friendship, both are uncovering secrets about Molly's husband, secrets that have remained buried for over a decade and point to something much more sinister and dangerous than either of them could possibly imagine.

I enjoyed this one.  There were lots of twists and turns that kept me guessing right up until the end. And I liked the way social media was used as both a force of good and of evil in the way the plot played out.  I did find Liv a bit of a stereotype - we've all seen this kind of seemingly tough, shut-off woman before, isolating herself and stifling her needs for fear of being hurt again. Yawn.... But the plot was exciting enough that I'll forgive it this time...

So I'd recommend this one.

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

The Girl on the Train meets the world of social media in this psychological thriller about influencer culture, parasocial relationships, and the secrets we keep from those we love most.

Molly Sullivan is used to sharing intimate details of her life with millions of followers. A thirty-one-year-old single mom, she has built a career out of fearless posts about parenthood and dating. But when Molly shares a photo of her new fiancé, Scott, she is shocked by his negative reaction. For the sake of their relationship, Molly agrees to remove the post and keep Scott and his ten-year-old daughter out of her social media spotlight.

But it's too late, someone has already recognized him. Liv Barrett is certain Scott's the man who killed her sister and disappeared with her infant niece nine years ago. The police don't believe her, so Liv takes matters into her own hands. Driving cross-country to Colorado, Liv uses Molly's social media posts to orchestrate "accidental" meetings, slowly gaining her trust. Meanwhile, newlywed Molly begins to unpack boxes in her new home and discovers her husband has been lying about his past.

While Molly and Liv uncover secrets that have been buried deep for almost a decade, they have no idea that someone else saw the photo of Scott--someone who poses a threat more dangerous than either of them can imagine. Someone who is watching them from the shadows.

Weekly Goals 10-6-24

 Light Cycles finished last night.  It rained and was windy, so it wasn't a busy night.  My feet got wet and cold and my scarf got soaked.  Not the most fun I've ever had...

But it's over now, so I get my life back!  And more importantly, I get a few days off at the end of the week.  I'm planning to use them to kick-start myself back into writing.  I thought about it a lot over the weekend, and I think I'm going to work on A Stranger to Kindness.  I want to write new stuff, not edit, and that't the project I really want to write, even if it is hard.  My goal is to get three new chapters written this week.

So that and the beta reading I need to do will keep me busy.  

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 7-6-24

 

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!  And the final weekend of Light Cycles which means I'll get some free time back. I'm so ready to write something!  I don't know what, but I need to write.

It's been a week of rejections this week.  I've had five so far, three on one day even!  That's a bit much.

I've done some work on my query, trying to make the stakes higher for both my girls.  I do wonder if I go too far into the story...  I read somewhere once that a query should only talk about the first third or so of the book, but that seems like one of those rules that doesn't work for every story.  It doesn't work for Guide Us.

After working so much the last few weeks, I'm planning some days off for next week. I have a beat read to do for a friend, but apart from that (and trying to read some of the 800 page Ukranian novel for my book club) I have nothing planned, so hope to be able to get at least one writing day in.  I'm just not sure what I want to work on.  I have a bunch of choices.

1. A Stranger to Kindness - I'm about 6 chapters in, but I'm not feeling obsessed with this story right now and I know it's going to be hard to write. I should just dig back in and I'll probably find my way, but it feels like it's going to be hard...

2. I have a bunch of chapters written of a book about a reality TV show that I found the other day.  Maybe that would be fun to work on?

3. I've been thinking about re--working an old story that I still kinda love as an MG project.  Not sure if I can write MG, but maybe it's worth a shot??  Can you write about suicide in MG?

4. I have two other stories I've written a bunch of chapters for, one about a boy who is abused by his girlfriend and another about a ballet dancer who becomes a stripper to fuel her drug habit.

5. And then there's that finished novel about the child criminal being released with a new identity that probably just needs a bit of editing and polishing up...

6. and finally, there's an old story idea I never actually wrote about a runaway and her return home...

Which do you think I should work on?

And what are you celebrating this week?

IWSG - June

It's the first Wednesday of the month so it's time for....

The awesome co-hosts for the June 5 posting of the IWSG are Liza at Middle Passages, Shannon Lawrence, Melissa Maygrove, and Olga Godim!

This month's question is an interesting one:

In this constantly evolving industry, what kind of offering/service do you think the IWSG should consider offering to members?

I think the best thing IWSG offers is a community. To be honest, I've never used any other service that the team offers (other than sharing book release news), so I'm not entirely sure exactly what services there are. Yes, I probably should have done some research before I started writing this...

The publishing world seems to have changed in the last few years and I think many of us who have been long-term members of the IWSG may not be across just how much and in what ways. It might be useful for the group to address this, bring in some publishing professionals to explain what is happening out there so writers can be better prepared for what publishing looks like in 2024. It feels very different to what it was like in 2014. Especially in YA.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else that might be useful. I love that this community is here and that once a month we all get together to talk about something. I wish I had time to explore more widely and meet more members of this awesome community. Being a co-host is so good for that, so if you haven't put your hand up for this role, it's so worth it!

That's my two cents... For what it's worth.

Weekly Goals 3-6-24

 It's the final week of Light Cycles, so I may get some semblance of my life back after next weekend.  If I make it that far...  Last night was the busiest night we've had and it was cray cray.  And it was supposed to be my night off.  I suspect there will be no such thing for the rest of the run.

But at least today is a public holiday and there is no show so I can try to catch up on a few things.  Cleaning the house.  Tax return.  That kind of thing.

So once again, not setting any real goals for this week.  I know I won't get to much.  But I'm hoping to be able to take a couple of days off after Light Cycles finishes and I'd like to make at least one of those days a writing day.  Not sure exactly what I'll write, but maybe I can kickstart myself into picking up A Stranger to Kindness again.  I hope so.  I love my beautiful, damaged foster kid.  I just need to figure out exactly how to write his story.

what are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 31-5-24

  

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!  A long weekend.

But I'm working Saturday and possibly Sunday, so it's not really a weekend.  Thankfully, there's only one more week after this that the experience is running so the stupidly long hours and nights will be over for a while.  Until the end of July.

I won a query critique on a friend's blog and she has given me some useful feedback.  I'm going to try the re-written query out in my next batch and see if it makes difference.  I've had one more rejection this week...

And that's about it for me.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Mom Com

 

I was tired this weekend so I decided to read a something really unchallenging to rest my exhausted brain.  I saw this one at the library and thought it looked like good choice - what's better than cakes and romance?

It turns out, this one might have been too sweet even for me...  

Maddi has just disgraced herself on national television after appearing on a reality baking show.  She returns home to her mother who has summoned her with some vague intimations about her recently deceased father's will.  With her is her nine-year-old son, Spence, whose father still lives in her hometown.

Also back in her hometown is Wilder, Maddi's childhood best friend who became much more than that while they were in high school.  It does not take long before Wilder and Maddi run into each other and the chemistry between them begins to spark again in both the good and bad ways it always has.  

So it's an unwelcome shock for Maddi to discover that her father's will leaves his beloved bakery not to Maddi alone. but to both Maddi and Wilder.  And there are are strict rules around them both staying to work there built in.

At home, Maddi wrestles with her past and tries to do the right thing to win approval from her mother who has been vocal over the years about how disappointed in Maddi she is after Maddi fell pregnant in high school, skipped college and moved away.  And then there's the confusion of having both her high school boyfriends in town and falling right back into their own pattern of rivalry.

This was the fluffy read I needed this weekend, but somehow I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to.  Is it just me or do the heroines of these books always sound alike?  I feel like every book like this I've read recently has a main character with a similar voice - someone who feels like a screw up, yet demonstrates a real inner strength and determination.

I didn't hate it, but the book somehow irritated me, something I've found in a lot of this type of book recently.  Maybe I need to stop reading them...

So I'm not strongly recommending this, but if you like this kind of book-candy, it's not the worst of its kind...

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

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Adriana Mather comes a heartwarming tale of love, family, and pastry perfection.

Maddi DeLuca is coming home for the holidays with her nine-year-old son, only it’s not the triumphant return she might have hoped for. She recently broke down on a reality TV baking show, letting the entire country know she feels like a colossal failure. And she can be certain her mother will remind her of all the ways she hasn’t lived up to expectations over the years.

Weekly Goals 27-5-24

 It's going to be a busy week this week and with four nights on site, I don't think I'm going to get any writing time (again).  Although it is a long weekend, so maybe on Monday...

So I'll just do what I've been doing and keep sending out queries when I have time.  Maybe one will stick eventually...

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Tings 24-5-24

 

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!  Sort of...  I do I have to work, so maybe not so much.

I only got one query rejection this week, and sent off two more.  Still no requests.  My hit rate has never been so bad.  And I don't think it's the query or pages because I've had them both assessed professionally twice now, and both times the response has been enthusiastic.

So I'll keep trying.

I went to pub quiz with a couple of friends last night and we came 7th, which was a big surprise.  We didn't feel like we'd done well at all and were guessing we'd come around 15th or 16th (there were 22 teams), so to get 7th was cool.  No prizes, but still cool.

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

Books I've Read: Stories of Your Life and Others

 

I don't often read short story collections and I really should do it more often.  A good short story is truly a work of art.  I only read this collection because it was suggested as our book club read for this month and I'm very glad it was.  It is certainly not something I would have picked up on my own, but I found myself enjoying it, even though the stories were basically all science fiction of one sort or another.  Or maybe philosophy?

As with most collections, there were some stories I liked more than others, but one thing I can say about the collection as a whole is that every one of the stories made me think.  It's been a long time since I read something this cerebral.  I'm not usually a fan of sci-fi, but because this all felt rooted in real science (except maybe the story about angels) I didn't mind it so much.

The title story surprised me by being the story on which the film Arrival was based.  I now kind of want to re-watch the film to see how like the story the film is.  It's been a long time since I saw it...

I think my favourite story was the first one in which the author imagines what the tower of Babylon might be like if it existed as it was described in the Bible.  The physics of such a thing is kind of staggering to start with, but even more so, the human side of it, for those who worked to build this structure.

I also enjoyed the story about angels visiting Earth and that their arrival might not be as benign as we imagine, but accompanied by huge natural disaster-type disturbances.  I also liked its depiction of hell as being just like real life, but eternal.

In fact, all the stories I enjoyed the most in this collection had elements of theology involved.  The other one I liked a lot was about a world in which golem were used as a part of everyday life, as simple machines to aid in manufacturing. 

But even the ones I didn't enjoy as much were intriguing and thought provoking.  I can't claim to fully understand the mathematics involved in the one about a man whose wife basically lost the will to live over a mathematical theorem, but as an idea it was interesting nonetheless.

So, I'd recommend this one - I know, me endorsing sci-fi.  They're well-written stories and definitely will get you thinking about things in a new and different way.

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

What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven-and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang. Stories of your life . . . and others.

Weekly Goals 20-5-24

 It's going to be another busy week, so I'm not setting myself any writing goals again.  If I get time to do any writing work, I'll do it, but I don't know that there will be any time.  I'm onsite three nights this week and I have a lot to do at work outside the onsite stuff.

I've had one more query rejection for Guide Us.  There were a lot of agents closed to queries when I did my first round of querying, so I'm going to try and go back through my list to see if anyone has re-opened since then and send some more queries out.  I'm quite disappointed at the reception this query has received, given all the positive feedback I've had on both the query and the opening pages.  I guess no-one is looking for Catholic school lesbians at the moment....

And that's it for goals this week?  What are you trying to achieve?

Celebrate the Small Things 17-5-24

 

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!

Well, sort of.  I do have to work Saturday night.  And it looks like it's going to be a busy one too.  But I have Sunday off, which will be nice.  I might even make it to the movies which I haven't managed the last few weeks.  So unlike me!

I finished the second job I was doing yesterday, so that's going to free up some time (maybe).  At least it means I can pay the electrician some of the money I owe.  I'm still trying to get the lines company to admit fault, but I at least have a person who responds to emails now, even if they do keep fobbing me off.  If I don't hear back from them on Monday, I'm going to have to go a step further.

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

Books I've Read: The Invisible Hour

 

If you know me, you know how much I love a good cult story.  Something about cults just fascinates me.  And I've loved Alice Hoffman's writing since her first book, Property Of, so finding that she has written a book abut a cult escapee was right up my alley. 

The book is kind of magic realism, with a touch of history in there too in that the main character, Mia, is fascinated with Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter.  I haven't read The Scarlet Letter since high school and this book almost made me want to go and re-read it.  Almost...

The book starts with Mia leaving the cult she has been brought up in.  It's not portrayed as an absolutely terrible place where sexual abuse is rife, but the cult leader (Joel) doesn't allow books or reading or kids to have close relationships with their parents.  It's known as the Community and work and sharing is a core part of the belief system.  Mia's mother ended up there after falling pregnant to a high society Boston boy who wanted nothing to do with her or the baby and her father's fury that his daughter should find herself in such a tawdry predicament.

After her mother's death, Mia is determined to leave the Community.  She has been introduced to books and the library and longs for more than apple picking and child minding.  But before she can leave, Joel discovers her hidden books and punishes her by locking her into the barn before she is branded with a letter corresponding to her alleged crime.  She escapes to the library and is taken in by the librarian who smuggles her out of town to a friend's place.

Outside the Community Mia thrives, but Joel's shadow still falls on her life regularly.  Apple leaves show up in impossible places - the cult leader's quiet calling card - and Mia knows she is being followed. Only her love for Hawthorne and his book keeps her going and when, by some magical twist to the earth's fabric, she finds herself in Hawthorne's time, it is inevitable that they would fall in love.  But will her presence in his time alter the course of history and lead to the book that saved her life never being written?

I enjoyed this book.  The magical elements worked well and I enjoyed seeing Hawthorne brought to life.  I love that the power of reading is so celebrated in this book, and that books and writing are shown to be not just powerful, but magical too.

So I'd recommend this one, even if you're not a huge fan of magic.

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

The latest New York Times bestseller from beloved author Alice Hoffman celebrates the enduring magic of books and is a “wonderful story of love and growth” (Stephen King).

One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter ? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?

Weekly Goals 13-5-24

Work is going to be super busy again this week, so once again I'm not setting myself any writing goals because I'm pretty sure I won't meet them.  I have to wonder if I'll ever write again at this stage...  Maybe when I retire.  Although I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to do that either.

It's my birthday on Wednesday so I'm hoping my family might do something nice for me.  Neither of my kids seemed to even know it was Mother's Day yesterday...

And that's about it for goals this week.

What  are you hoping to achieve?

Celebrate the Small Things 10-5-24

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!

Not that I get much of a weekend this week...  I'm working both nights and I between I need to finish of the other job I've been doing.  *Sigh*.

But I'm celebrating that our test of the event last night went really well.  Everything ran smoothly, even with a few last minute wrinkles in the plan that came out of nowhere the day before we had to go live.  Tonight will be much easier, with only a couple of sessions for media and stakeholders.  Then on Saturday we open to the public.

The only downside is that this week it got cold and after spending 6 hours out there yesterday, I've come to realize my clothing is just not adequate for something like this.  So this weekend I'm off to invest in some thermals.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: Bones and All

 

Okay, so I really don't know how I felt about this book....  It was weird.  And creepy. And I can't believe anyone made a movie of it, but apparently they have...

You see, it's about cannibalism - never an easy topic to tackle.

Maren has a problem with people liking her.  When they do, she tends to eat them. It's been happening since she was a toddler and her babysitter got too close. Since then, there have been others.  Her mother doesn't love it, but will do whatever she can to protect Maren, so after each "incident" they pack up and move elsewhere, start afresh.

Until Maren is 16 and wakes up one day to find her mother gone,

Certain her father will have some answers for her, Maren sets off to find him, even though she's never met him.  On the journey she discovers a lot about herself and the world around her, most importantly, that she is not alone in her need to devour the people she cares about.  But as she discovers more about the world and her place in it, can she learn to accept herself?

I found this book odd from start to finish.  I'm sure the cannibalism was supposed to be symbolic of something, but I never quite grasped what and that frustrated me.  Each of the "eaters" she come across seems to have a different reason or way of eating people so there was no consistency.  

And my logical brain couldn't accept that people could just vanish off the face of the earth without questions being asked.  I mean, not all the people who got eaten in the story were unattached drifters who wouldn't be missed...  And is it possible for a human to eat another human without leaving even a trace of DNA lying around somewhere?  I don't think so!  And how does the human jaw manage bones the size of  a thighbone or pelvis?

Yet there was something oddly compelling about the book which made me finish it even though I had a lot of reservations.  

So I'm not sure if I should recommend it or not!  Maybe?  Maybe not?

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

Maren Yearly doesn’t just break hearts, she devours them.

Since she was a baby, Maren has had what you might call "an issue" with affection. Anytime someone cares for her too much, she can’t seem to stop herself from eating them. Abandoned by her mother at the age of 16, Maren goes looking for the father she has never known, but finds more than she bargained for along the way.

Faced with love, fellow eaters, and enemies for the first time in her life, Maren realizes she isn’t just looking for her father, she is looking for herself. The real question is, will she like the girl she finds?

Weekly Goals 6-5 24

 It's going to be a busy week this week, with an event going into production at work.  So I'm not setting myself any real goals this week.  If I get some spare minutes, I may send out a few more queries, but basically, I think I'm just waiting on the ones I already have out for the next month or so.  There are still quite a few.

Otherwise, it's a work-focused week.  I have our event to get up, plus I still need to finish up the extra work I took on a couple of weeks ago as it's all due on my birthday (15 May).  So those two things are my main focus this week.

What are your goals for the 7 days ahead?

Celebrate the Small Things 3-5-24

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 don't have a lot on this weekend, which is nice because next week we go live with our next event and I'm working nights Thurs-Sun and then am on call every other night until mid-June.  And with it being autumn and getting chilly at night, I imagine we'll have a few of our staff getting sick across the four weeks.  It's an outdoor event...

I've only had one more query rejection this week.  Still no requests for pages.  It's clearly very competitive out there at the moment, but I'm not sure what else I can do.  I've had my query package professionally assessed and been told it's very strong, so I have to just keep believing in my book and putting it out there.  Fingers crossed the right person will stumble across it eventually.

I got author copies of the anthology I have a story in and it's really pretty!  They sent me both hardback and paperback copies!  I've never had harcovers before.  They'll look lovely in the library!

And that's about me for celebrating this week.  What do you have to cheer about?

Insecure Writers' Support Group - May

 It's the first Wednesday in May so it's time for the Insecure Writers' Support Groups!

The awesome co-hosts for the May 1 posting of the IWSG are Victoria Marie Lees, Kim Lajevardi, Nancy Gideon, and Cathrina Constantine!

This month's question is a very relevant one!

How do you deal with distractions when you are writing? Do they derail you?

Distractions are all too common, everywhere, whether it's when I'm doing my own writing, or trying to perfectly word an email or funding application at work.  The trick is to try and minimize them as much as possible so you can make the most out of the limited writing time available.

For example, I sometimes take a day off work just to write.  To make sure I get the most out of this day, I don't write at home where there are always chores that need attending to.  I'll go to the library with my laptop and find a nice quiet corner in which to park myself for the day.  I turn the wifi off too, so emails and notifications won't come through and distract me from my work.

I also turn the sound off on my phone no I don't hear those notifications coming through either.  I can look at that stuff when I take a break every few hours.  There's unlikely to be anything so urgent it can't wait a few hours, right?

So that's how I try to keep distraction at bay.  But once you have been distracted, how to get focused back on what you're doing?  Sometimes I  accept that it's time to take a break and use that break in concentration to get up, walk around, take a few minutes away from the page I'm working on.  But then I get back to it.  Maybe I have to go back and read a paragraph or two of what comes before the place I got distracted to find my way back into the flow.  Sometimes I can just dive back in, but I usually need a little intro back into the world of my story.

Listening to music can help keep distraction at bay.  I find I can't listen to music with lyrics I understand while I'm writing because they distract me from the words I'm writing, but music without lyrics can help block the outside world, or music with lyrics in languages I don't speak.  I have a few classical music playlists that I like to listen to when writing, one which is very big and dramatic, and one that is more serene.  I've also been listening to a lot of music from the Middle East recently, with lyrics in Urdu or Arabic.

At the end of the day, how big the distraction is will have an effect on how easy it is to get back into the writing flow.  If you take a phone call and it's something you can just brush off or deal with later, that's one thing.  Getting a call from your kid's teacher asking you to come and see them after school can be more distracting because then you'll be thinking about that and wondering what the hell the kid has done now,

Sometimes I just have to accept that I'm not going to get back to that chapter today.  My brain has moved away from the story and is now focused on  something else.  I like to make sure I leave each writing session with something slightly unfinished on a page to guide me to where I need to start next time, so stopping midway through something is often helpful for me.  I never stop writing for the day at the end of a chapter, for example.  I will always write at least a couple of sentences of the next one before I close the laptop so I'm not staring at a blank page when I open it again.  

Getting distracted to the point I have to stop for the day often leaves me mid-sentence or mid-paragraph - the perfect place to pick up again next time.

How do you deal with distraction?

Weekly Goals 29-4-24

 Despite having a long weekend, I didn't manage to get any writing or querying done.  I spent the whole four days working on this other job instead.  I'm not quite finished with it either,  but close.   I think I'm going to need to put in a few hours next weekend to finish it off.

So I'm not setting myself any writing goals this week (again).  If I have time, I'll try to send out a few more queries, but we go live with our next event at work on 9 May, so I'm not expecting to have a lot of time until that finishes in June.  But we'll see how we go...

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 26-4-24

 

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!

Actually, it's kind of felt like the weekend since Wednesday because Thursday was a holiday.  And I took the Friday off too so I have a 4-day weekend.  Not that I'm relaxing and doing nothing or going away or writing.  No, I'm using this long weekend to do another job for a bit of extra cash.  And it's going well so far, I think.  I'm not sure I'll get through all the work I have to do this weekend, but I will certainly have broken the back of it so I won't have a lot to do the next couple of weeks.

Which is good, because we're about to go live with our next event at the beginning of May and things will get super busy for me again at work.

I don't know if I'm ever going to have time to write again...

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: A Tale of Two Princes

This was kind of a silly book, but one that I kind of enjoyed, despite the ridiculousness of its premise.  

Basically, it's kind of a Parent Trap story.  But set against the rather preposterous idea of Canada suddenly having its own monarchy - known throughout the book at the Maple Crown.  Seriously, the number of times maple was mentioned in this book was ridiculous.  It's enough to give you diabetes!

Edward is the Crown Prince of Canada, just waiting for his eighteenth birthday and his investiture as the heir to the Canadian throne.  Weeks before the big event, a chance meeting with a stranger who looks remarkably like him leads to the discovery that Edward has a long-lost twin, Billy.  And Billy is a minute older, so is in fact heir to the throne.

Obviously this is not ideal for Edward, especially when Billy blurts out that he's gay in his first public outing, something Edward has been keeping hidden for years for fear of tarnishing the Crown's reputation.  As his resentment grows, Edward plots to sabotage his newfound brother by trying to turn public opinion against him.

On his part, Billy is overwhelmed with discovering he's a prince.  He's spent his life on a Montana ranch and believes it's his destiny to stay there and keep it running for his recently deceased father.  All of a sudden he finds himself in the global spotlight and his every move is being scrutinised by the press.  And his family's moves too...

As the big day gets closer, it becomes increasingly uncertain which head will eventually wear the crown.

To enjoy this book, you really need to just accept the ridiculousness of the Canadian monarchy.  It's not explained that well - one of the Queen's sons had an affair with a Canadian commoner and the press hounded them out of town - and its value and structure within the Canadian political system is never clear.  But if you can just believe that that exists, you can just move on and enjoy the story.

The book is told in dual POV, but the two boys' voices are a little too alike and I found I had to keep checking back to see whose section I was reading.  Edward, who was brought up Canadian, speaks French and sprinkles a few words en francais into his sections, but that's not quite enough to different backgrounds and life experiences.

Billy has a precocious younger sister who vlogs on social media and a genderqueer bestie with dreams of becoming a fashion designer - both these things are important to the plot, but the characters are fully fleshed out enough to feel like they exist for any reason other than the parts they play in the drama.

Edward has a best friend who is out and proud and a girlfriend who is certain she's going to marry a prince and secure the social currency she's sure she deserves.

I think this book is very flawed in so many ways, but I actually didn't hate it.  It made me smile a lot because it was just so silly and the shenanigans got more and more ridiculous the closer we got to the princes' big moment.

So I'm torn about recommending it.  On the one hand, it's kind of a fun romp, but on another, it's just really not that good.

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

Will these long-lost twin princes be able to take on high school, coming out, and coronations together—or will this royal reunion quickly become a royal mess?

Edward Dinnissen, Crown Prince of Canada, loves getting the royal treatment at his exclusive Manhattan private school and living in a fancy mansion on Park Avenue. But despite living a royal life of luxury, Edward is unsure how to tell his parents, his expectant country, and his adoring fans that he’s gay.

Billy Boone couldn’t be happier: he loves small-town life and his family’s Montana ranch, and his boyfriend is the cutest guy at Little Timber High. But this out-and-proud cowboy is finally admitting to himself that he feels destined for more . . .

When Edward and Billy meet by chance in New York City and discover that they are long-lost twins, their lives are forever changed. Will the twin princes—“twinces”— be able to take on high school, coming out, and coronations together? Or will this royal reunion quickly become a royal disaster?