Books I've read: On the Bright Side

 

When I write at the library, I tend to sit in the YA section in the hopes all those published words will have an effect on my own writing (yeah, it's cheap magic) and last week I happened to be sitting by the new release rack and saw this book with a Deaf protagonist.  Given my book has a mute protagonist, it felt like I needed to read this.

It was a cute book and I enjoyed it.  It was refreshing to read something with a real understanding of disability and how some people with disabilities don't really see them that way.

Ellie is Deaf and has been at a special boarding school for the Deaf for several years.  When the school closes down, she's forced to go home to her hearing family and to try and figure out how to fit in there and at a mainstream school. Her first day is kind of a disaster and to try and help her find her way, she's assigned a guide.

Jackson is one of the school's soccer stars, but has been ostracized since he fumbled a pass when his legs went numb and lost the team an important game.  He is eager to help Ellie, but somehow manages to say all the wrong things all the time.  And then just as things are beginning to improve between them, he's blindsided by a life-changing medical diagnosis.

I really liked the relationship between this pair, especially when it was so fraught with miscommunication.  I also liked Ellie's attitude toward her disability and how she never sees it as an impairment.  It really highlighted how important having a community of like-minded people around you is - Ellie only really thrives once she finds a group of other Deaf people to hang out with.  It also underlines the fact sign language is in fact a language in the same way French or Russian is.

Jackson also discovers the importance of community when he joins a support group for people who share his diagnosis and can speak to their own experiences and ways to overcome challenges brought on by having this condition.

But despite each having their own group, Ellie and Jackson's relationship is the centre of this book and the way they come together and fall in love is super cute.  It would be easy to say their relationship is inevitable because they are two people with differences and would naturally gravitate toward each other, but this is not the case here.

I especially enjoyed reading about the struggles Ellie has with her parents who seem unable to understand that Ellie has a world of her own and doesn't necessarily want to conform to the hearing world the way they want her to.

So I'd recommend this one.

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

A hopeful novel about love, disability, and the inevitability of change by the author of Give Me a Sign.

Ellie’s Deaf boarding school just shut down, forcing her to leave the place she considered home and return to her hearing family. Back in a mainstream school, Ellie quickly becomes the subject of hateful rumors. That’s when her guidance counselor pairs her with Jackson, a student who’s supposed to help her adjust. Can the boy who tries to say the right things, and gets it all wrong, be the lifeline Ellie needs?

Jackson has been avoiding his teammates ever since some numbness in his legs cost them an important soccer match. With his senior year off to a lonely start, he’s intrigued when he’s asked to help the new girl, initially thinking it will be a commendable move on his part. Little does he know Ellie will soon be the person he wants most by his side when the strange symptoms he’s experiencing amount to a life-changing diagnosis.

Exploring what it means to build community, Anna Sortino pens a story about the fear of the unknown and the beauty of the unexpected, all wrapped up in a poignant romance that will break your heart and put it back together again.

Weekly Goals 28-10-24

 I've had a pretty good writing weekend and still have a day to go since today is a holiday and I plan to spend the afternoon writing.  I think I might hit the ending today,  if I'm lucky.  Probably not the epilogue - I'm still thinking about that - but the actual ending of the story.

I have a lot of stuff to fill in further back though.  And things keep occurring to me that I need to add to earlier chapters.  But I'm feeling on track to meet my goal of finishing this before the end of the year.

So my goal this week is to keep up the momentum and keep working on it.  I also want to send out a few more queries for Guide Us.  It's starting to feel 100% fruitless, but you have to keep trying, right?

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 25-10-24

 

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 it's a long weekend!

And I've made it an extra-long weekend by taking Friday off too so I have a day dedicated to writing.  After working all those nights and all of last weekend, I have a bit of time off owing to me.

I had an okay writing day on Friday.  I was hoping for it to be better, but the scenes I'm working on are a little tricky and I'm not sure I got the events in the right order.  I'm going to go back through and see if my instinct is right and that I need to move a few things around.

On the plus side, my critique group are still enjoying the story.  I'm going to need to go back soon and fill in some bits I skipped over because my crib group are almost those chapters.

I had a few rejections this week - from agents and publishers for Guide Us and a couple of pieces of short fiction I'd sent out also got turned down.  'Tis the season, it appears....  I will send out a new batch of queries for Guide Us this week.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: 2000ft Above Worry Level

 

I picked this one up at the library the other day because it was on a display of local authors and I recognised the author's name as being someone who used to work for me at a cinema many, many moons ago.

And as soon as I read the first page I recognised the guy who came in to his job interview shaking and sweating and barely able to stutter out his name.  You wouldn't have thought that would have given me a great first impression, but I saw something in Eamonn that I don't think he could see in himself at the time and I wanted to encourage that.  So I hired him.

Since then, he's gone on to be a comedian and now an author.

Structured as a novel of sorts, the book is more a series of loosely related vignettes or short stories, some taking place in the present, and some harking back to the protagonist's childhood - one of my favourite chapters was about a childhood camping trip to a town dealing with a plague of wasps.

The main character is depressed, a little lost in the world, perpetually broke and probably a real worry to his long-suffering flatmates.  Some of the stories about what he's going through are incredibly tragic, yet also incredibly funny.  I guess those situations that you find embarassing at the time can be hilarious in retrospect, even if they are still tinged with a hint of shame.

I think what makes the protagonist here so endearing is that he is genuinely trying to be a better human.  He's just not great at it, and he manages to somehow undermine every step he takes in the right direction.  Some of this is circumstance, some of it is poor mental health and some of it is just the stupid stuff we do as we grow up, the stuff we (hopefully) learn from.

I'd definitely recommend this one.  It's tragic and funny and will make you squirm in places, but it's also undeniably human.

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

Everything is sad and funny and nothing is anything else

2000ft Above Worry Level begins on the sad part of the internet and ends at the top of a cliff face. This episodic novel is piloted by a young, anhedonic, gentle, slightly disassociated man. He has no money. He has a supportive but disintegrating family. He is trying hard to be better. He is painting a never-ending fence.

Eamonn Marra’s debut novel occupies the precarious spaces in which many twenty-somethings find themselves, forced as they are to live in the present moment as late capitalism presses in from all sides. Mortifying subjects – loserdom, depression, unemployment, cam sex – are surveyed with dignity and stoicism. Beneath Marra’s precise, unemotive language and his character’s steadfast grip on the surface of things, something is stirring.

Weekly Goals 21-10-24

 The Jazz Festival is finished for another year.  I think it went really well. Last night's performance by esperanza spalding was one of the best shows I've seen yet.  What an amazing performer!

So this week is about wrapping things up from the Festival and trying to get back some me time.  I've worked a ton of extra hours over the Festival and throughout the year, so I'm going to try and take an extra day off most weeks for the next month to finish A Stranger to Kindness.  It needs work and there are a lot of holes I need to fill in, even if I do make it to the end in the next couple of weeks.

It's a long weekend this weekend so I'm going to take Friday off too, to make it a 4-day weekend.  Which gives me plenty of time to put into my book, especially if I make Friday my specific all-day writing day which I plan to.

I taught my first half spin class last week and this week I'm doing the other half - the start.  I still have things to work on,  but I think I did okay.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 18-10-24

 

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!

But not really.  I'm working all weekend on the Jazz Festival.  I'll get my weekend on the other side.

The Festival has been going well.  Almost all our shows are sold out or close to it and audiences have been loving it.  I got to see Marcus Miller on Wednesday night, and it was amazing!  What a fantastic player he is.  And so funny and warm too.

I've been getting some good feedback from my critique group on A Stranger to Kindness which makes me happy.  So far they're getting everything out of each chapter that I was hoping they would.  Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to get any writing time this weekend, but next weekend is a 4 day weekend for me and it's going to be all about writing.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Brotherless Night

 

My book club chose this book because it was shortlisted for the Women's Prize.  It's one of those books I probably wouldn't have picked up on my own, but I'm really glad to have read.  I know very little about the civil war in Sri Lanka, and while I've heard of the Tamil Tigers, I wasn't aware of exactly what they did, or their role in this conflict.

The book follows Sashi, a teenager whose dream is to be a doctor.  She's from a large, loving family who value education and encourage the dreams of their children.  Just as she's preparing for the exams that will decide her future, civil war breaks out and Sashi's life changes overnight.

One by one her beloved brothers disappear from her life - killed or joined up with the Tigers to fight for their people's freedom.  Her childhood friend K is also swept up in the madness and violence, rising through the Tiger ranks rapidly.

When K asks for Sashi's help, she can't refuse and soon finds herself working punishing hours in a field hospital helping an organisation she is becoming increasingly disillusioned with. So when her favourite professor invites her to take part in a women's movement, Sashi jumps at the chance even though she knows it will change everything for her.

 This is a powerful book about people who are traditionally without power - women.  Yet here, the women are the ones who demand and ultimately succeed in creating change.  But there are prices to pay and Sashi's journey vividly evokes both the bravery and the sacrifice required to force positive change.

I learned a lot about Sri Lanka and its history through reading this book which is a good thing. The politics and history of that part of the world are not things I knew a lot about - my history class studied South Africa the year the other history class studied India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - so I came to the subject matter without much prior knowledge.  I used to run films for the local Tamil society, but those were rarely political; they were usually just the same as Bollywood films, just in the Tamil language.

So I recommend this one.  it's powerful and speaks volumes to how different the world would look if women ran everything...

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

In this searing novel, a courageous young woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor as civil war devastates Sri Lanka.

Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K's invitation to work as a medic at the field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.

Set during the early years of Sri Lanka's three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman's moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.

Weekly Goals 14-10-24

It's Jazz Festival week so it's going to be a busy one with very little time available for me to do anything much outside of work.  Especially since I start teaching at the gym this week.  Contract is signed and everything!

Which is kind of a shame because I had an awesome writing day yesterday and managed to write 2.5 chapters.  I haven't re-read what I wrote, so I'm hoping it's okay...   Getting into the really meaty part of the book now, so it's been fun to write.  I'm very much looking forward to writing the ending. I have a wonderfully emotional scene to write toward the end which it the kind of stuff I love to write.

I also think I may need an epilogue in this one too - Standing Too Close has one and it's the only time I've ever written an epilogue, but this book feels like it needs one too.

But next week will be the week to focus on that stuff.  It's a long weekend and I'm going to take an extra day so I have 4 days to myself.

So that's my week...  What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 11-10-24

 

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.  I am going to be working for a few hours on Sunday as we head into Jazz Festival week.  I'm not going to get much in the way of writing time this week, but I'm hoping for a couple of hours on Sunday.  I'm right in this book at the moment and I don't want to fall out of it while I'm so there.

I'm having my team from my old job over tomorrow evening, which should be fun.  It's been a while since I saw them all, so it'll be good to catch up.  I need to clean the house and do some cooking before they arrive too.  I have a delicious dish planned....

I've had some great feedback on the new book from my critique group.  They are getting out of each chapter so far exactly what I was hoping them to, so I'm feeling good about that.  I just hope it continues.  I'm not so sure that some of the stuff I've written 100% works, so I'll be looking forward to that feedback.

I've had a few more rejections for Guide Us this week.  I'm really baffled by the lack of response this one's been getting.  I haven't had a single request!  I kind of got it a little bit with Standing Too Close because the query did hint at a plot point some people might find too challenging for YA, but there's nothing like that in Guide Us.  I wonder if it's the whole religious thing.  Maybe the current climate isn't open to people questioning the church.  It's frustrating, because I know it's a good book.

On the plus side, if I manage to get it right, I think the new one is going to be even better...

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: Harlem Shuffle

 

I'm late to the whole Colson Whitehead thing, I know....  I picked this up at the library because I've heard so much about this author and it seemed wrong that I hadn't read anything from him yet.  Maybe I picked the wrong book to start with, but I really am not sure what all the fuss is about.

There's nothing really wrong with this book, but I didn't love it.  It took me almost three weeks to read which is VERY unlike me.  I just wasn't into it so much that I was compelled to get back to it any time I had a spare moment.

Set in 1960s Harlem, it's about Ray Carney, a guy who is kind of a crook.  Only kind of though.  Outwardly he's a respectable business owner trying to do right by his family and get ahead.  His cousin Freddie is a career criminal and has a bad habit of getting Ray involved.  And Ray can't say no to Freddie.

The book follows Ray across many years as he tries to balance these two sides of his life, keep his family ignorant of his more shady dealings and keep himself form getting himself killed.

The book has a colourful cast of characters as you'd expect from a story about the criminal underworld.  It also paints a vivid picture of Harlem at the time, the power players and racial tensions that seethe beneath the surface of the seemingly thriving community.

Yes somehow this book didn't quite work for me.  It wasn't gripping enough to satisfy as a crime novel, yet wasn't quite a character study or an examination of the society at the time.  It was all three and it didn't quite work as any of these things entirely.

It's a hard one for me to talk about because I didn't dislike it.  But I didn't really like it either.  I think I was actually a little bored by it, if I'm being honest.  There were some wonderful lines, but overall, I didn't find the writing to be that extraordinary.  I think I'll need to try another one of Whitehead's books - I hear The Nickle Boys is good - before I cement my opinion.

So I'm not sure if I should recommend this one or not...  Make your own mind up!

But don't take my word for it...  Here's the blurb.

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it’s a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

Weekly Goals 7-10-24

I had another pretty good writing weekend and managed to get through a couple of pivotal scenes.  Hoping they're as good as I think they are when I go back over them...  They're tricky ones to write because I want the reader to glean some idea what's going on, but the POV character is blind drunk at the time and doesn't know what's happening. 

I swear this book is the most challenging I've ever written....  I have really made it hard for myself!  But if it works out the way I want it to, I think it's going to be pretty powerful.  My critique group have read the first six chapters and are enjoying it so far.  And they love the characters which makes me so happy.  I love them too!

Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to get any time to write over the next couple of weeks because the Jazz Festival is almost upon us and I'm working the next two weekends.  But the week after is a long weekend and I might take a day or so on either side to write.

So this week I need to get all my ducks in a row so I'm organised for the Festival week ahead.

What are your goals for the week?

Celebrate the Small Things 3-10-24

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 a busy week at work this week, so I'm looking forward to having a bit of a break this weekend.  I don't have anything planned, so hoping to get some reading and some writing done.  I'm kind of itching to get back to Harley and the shenanigans he's getting up to.  Things are going to go downhill fast for him from here....

I haven't got much else to report this week.  Things will start getting busy from next weekend with the Jazz Festival, so I'm not anticipating having a lot of free time until after 20 October now.  But after that, I'm hoping to be able to take a few days off to write and finish this book.

What are you celebrating this week?

IWSG - October

 

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

The awesome co-hosts for the October 2 posting of the IWSG are Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month's question has me scratching my head...

Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What's your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

I don't really read ghost stories.  I mean, I know I have in the past, but other than A Christmas Carol, I can't remember any that have really chilled me.  Maybe The Woman in Black? I remember being quite creeped out by that when I read it many, many years ago.

Most of the ghost stories I've read aren't really chilling in the sense of being scary - the ghosts tend to be in the story more as a literary device than to scare.  I mean, you could call The Lovely Bones a ghost story in that the narrator is dead, but it's not the first thing I think of when someone wants me to recommend a ghost story.  Nor is Beloved, which could also be considered a ghost story.

I guess The Shining is a ghost story although I tend to think about it more as a story about a child with supernatural gifts.  But at its heart, it is a ghost story.  The hotel is definitely haunted and that's what makes the people trapped in it go mad.  

I read The Shining when I was about twelve and probably way too young to read it, but back then, there wasn't much in the way of YA books available, so once I'd read my way through the children's section of the library, I started trawling through the adult section.  And horror was what I gravitated to at that age.  I read a lot of horror for a few years there consuming all of Stephen King's books and a whole lot by an author called John Saul and books by Graeme Masterton, George R R Martin (before he wrote the Game of Thrones books), Peter Straub, Dean Koontz and others.

Yet amongst all those books, I don't remember there being many ghost stories.  But it was almost 40 years ago, so I may have forgotten... And even if they were ghost stories, I don't really remember ever being truly scared by them.  Maybe by Christine...  I know my friends and I watched the film of that one for my 13th birthday and then terrified ourselves by going outside and watching cars go by, certain they'd leave the road and come to slaughter us.

Kids!

What's your favourite ghost story?  I could use some recommendations for the spooky season.