Weekly Goals 21-7-25

I got more writing done over the weekend than I thought I would, which was good.  I got through all of Devon's diary entries and am back with Arlo now.  I think I may have made a wrong turn in Devon's part, but I'm not sure.  I'll leave things as they are right now, but I suspect I may need to go back and rewrite some stuff later.

My goal for this week is to keep up the momentum and keep writing.  I'm at just over 45K now, and I don't foresee this being a super long book - 60Kish, I imagine - so I'm not too far from the end.  I do have quite a busy week ahead of me, but the weekend is looking very chill.  I was going to be doing some entertaining, but that's fallen through.

I need to figure out some more (and better) social media promo for the new book, but I'm really just not that good at it.  I'm trying to only post about the book once a week or so, and spend the rest of the time interacting with people on various platforms and sharing stuff that's interesting.  I don't much enjoy social media though...

I've been doing some beta reading for a couple of authors which has been fun.  Having some new voices to read for and to read my stuff is interesting.  My regular critique group and beta readers are amazing (huge shout outs to Breanna, Bill, Kim & Jeanne), but getting perspectives from people who aren't familiar with my style has been good too.

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

Celebrate the Small Things: 18-7-25

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

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

Standing Too Close got its first review, and it's a goodie.  It's so encouraging when the first one's a good one.  Especially since I know this one's going to have its haters.

I've booked my films for the Film Festival, so hanging out for August.  I feel like I'm going to be exhausted by the end of it because I'm teaching all the early morning classes at the gym over that period as well.  Lucky it's only a couple of weeks.

I have a few things on this weekend, but I'm hoping to get a clear spot on Sunday to write.  I feel like I'm getting close to the big climax of the new book, but I also kind of feel like I may have written myself into a corner a bit.  Damn reality for being so...real.  I've done all the research and there's no way for these kids to not have Child Services get involved in their lives in some way, so I'm going to have to figure out a way for that work with the story.  Once again, my timeline's not co-operating.  I may have to move the start of the book later in the year to make it work, but that's a hassle because all the seasons will be wrong.

I foresee a lot of editing in my future.

Lucky I like editing.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: This Book Won't Burn

 

In a world where books are being removed from libraries and various groups of right-wingers are advocating for laws that will remove books from bookstores, this was a particularly relevant read.

Big-city girl, Noor, is uprooted from her life when her father walks out on the family and her mother decides to re-group in a quieter small town.  This would be disruptive enough for someone only months from finishing high school, without the small town having only one other Muslim family living in it.

When, on her first day at her new school, Noor discovers a large number of books have been removed from the school library and are being challenged by a small group of parents, she's outraged.  especially since most of the challenged books are by authors of color or those in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Despite her mother warning her to just keep her head down and graduate, Noor can't ignore something that goes so far against her personal beliefs.  She and a couple of friends start a reading group - off campus to avoid angering the school administration - and read aloud from these challenged books.  Other students soon join in and before long it has become a movement within the school community.

But everyone knows Noor is the instigator, and that puts a giant target on her back.  Especially when the school's administration cracks down hard, punishing all the students, not just those who joined the subversive group.  As things get heated, and more dangerous by the day, Noor must decide how far she's willing to go for a cause that's important to her, even if it puts herself and those she cares about in danger.

 It's a brave thing for an author to take such a hot-button topic and face off with it. I imagine this is a book that instantly rocketed to the top of the "challenged book" list the text objects to.  And I object to it too.  I believe strongly that books can change lives, can save lives.   So many people feel alone in this world, certain they are the only ones feeling a certain way, but if they can see themselves and the challenges they face in a book, they can know they're not alone.  And that can be enough to save a life.

Noor is a brave protagonist, but not without flaws and that's what makes her the perfect narrator for this story.  She's grappling with some difficult things in both her homelife and her new school, so she could easily be excused from taking on a difficult social issue, especially since it makes her stand out even more than she already does in her predominantly white school.  But Noor's sense of justice is well honed and her personality is such that she can't just stand by and watch injustice unfold before her eyes.

So, I'd recommend this one.  It's not perfect and does occasionally lean too hard into the message to the detriment of the actual story, but it's an important topic and one that anyone who reads should be 100% behind.

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

From the New York Times bestselling author of Internment comes a timely and gripping social-suspense novel about book banning, activism, and standing up for what you believe.

After her dad abruptly abandons her family and her mom moves them a million miles from their Chicago home, Noor Khan is forced to start the last quarter of her senior year at a new school, away from everything and everyone she knows and loves. Reeling from being uprooted and deserted, Noor is certain the key to survival is to keep her head down and make it to graduation. But things aren’t so simple. At school, Noor discovers hundreds of books have been labeled “obscene” or “pornographic” and are being removed from the library in accordance with a new school board policy. Even worse, virtually all the banned books are by queer and BIPOC authors. Noor can’t sit back and do nothing, because that goes against everything she believes in, but challenging the status quo just might put a target on her back. Can she effect change by speaking up? Or will small-town politics—and small-town love—be her downfall?

Mid-year check-in (late of course)

 I meant to do this at the beginning of July and now it's halfway through...  But better late than never, right?  Her's my (late) mid-year check in on how I'm tracking on my goals for 2025.  

Dear Me,

I did pretty well with 2024's goals, so here's to doing as well in 2025.

Despite having got absolutely no traction so far in querying Guide Us, I will keep persevering with it.  I know this is a good book and I'm really weirded out that it hasn't had any requests.  The last book I queried was the same, but at least with that one, I knew there was something in it that might prove difficult for agents and/or publishers even if I didn't advertise it in the query.  With Guide Us, I don't think there's anything too controversial in there... I guess religion could be controversial though.  Especially questioning it.

I haven't done this.  I decided I'd be better off holding onto this one in case I got an agent for the next book and they wanted to see something else.  So I'm sitting on Guide Us for the moment.  We'll see what happens.  I probably need to publish a girl POV book next, so maybe this will be the one.

I have a book - Standing Too Close -  coming out sometime later in the year; I'm still waiting for a date for that.  Hopefully I'll find out soon because I'd like to be able to start things rolling as far as publicity goes as soon as possible.  I'm also waiting on edits for that one and would like to get through those before I dive into revisions and editing on A Stranger to Kindness.  They're both boy narrator books but the voices are very, very different.

It's coming out 8 August, so I'm deep in publicity mode now, having done edits and all that.  It's available for pre-sale if you haven't already clicked to that...

And talking about A Stranger to Kindness, the plan for that is to get it revised and ready to query before the end of the year.  I feel like that's going to be a tough one because I love this book so much and if it winds up getting the same response as Guide Us, it's going to be somewhat devastating.  I need to mentally prepare for that.

Done this too and have the rejections to prove it.  Keeping on keeping on with the querying and hoping one sticks eventually...

Luckily, by the second half of the year my work will have ramped right up so I will probably be far too busy to get too upset.  Here's hoping anyway...

Nope.  I'm busy and it still hurts.

And as far as non-writing goals go, I suppose they're much the same as they have been for the last few years.  To keep exercising, to keep reading as much as possible and to see films at the cinema least every two weeks.

Doing this.  Not hard.  It's part of my routine.

The exercising should be easy enough since I'm now an instructor at the gym and I'm hoping to pick up a couple more regular classes this year.  I've been teaching only 30 minute spin classes, but I'm starting to learn the hour-long ones now too, so will probably pick up some of those classes in the next little while.

So far no regular one-hour classes, but I do a bit of covering for other instructors.

I've lowered my reading target for 2025 to 110 books since I've failed to meet my goal the last two years running.  I've been reading more adult books than YA recently and they tend to be both longer and more complex than my usual YA reads, so they take me longer to get through.  Here's hoping the large number of books I got through during my holiday last week - the weather was not great so there was a lot of time to read - kickstarts things well.

I'm behind on my reading goal but that's primarily because I've been writing a lot this year.  I didn't expect to dive right into a new novel as soon as I finished revising A Stranger to Kindness, but I did.  Two new novels, in fact...  Yeah, I'm insane.

There are a lot of films opening the next few weeks that I want to see, so I should be able to keep up my film-going at least in the early part of the year.  Things might get a little more challenging once the Award Season movies dry up, but by then the Film Society should have started up again.

I finally managed to (sort of) break my nail biting habit in 2024, so I will endeavor to keep my nails nice in 2025 too.  Preferably without having to pay for expensive manicures every few weeks.  I do like having my nails done properly, but it does become expensive.

Not biting them, but still getting them done semi-regularly.  They're just stronger and better that way.  When I leave them natural for too long, they get ragged and then I pick and bite at them to smooth them out.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

What are your goals for the New Year?

Celebrate the Small Things 11-7-25

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

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

To be honest, I don't have a huge amount planned for it, but that's not a bad thing.  I'd like to try and get some writing done.  It feels like it's been ages since I did anything but tinker with my new book and I want to try and write some new bits.  I'm just not sure what direction to go in.  So, I might skip past the bit I'm not sure about for now, write the test, and hopefully what needs to happen in that section will become clear.

I got a query critique from an agent on my query for A Stranger to Kindness, and it was super positive.  She just said that with a boy POV, I'm writing for a very limited market and it would take a lot of queries to find the right agent.  So, I'm feeling good about the query.  But with another couple of rejections this week, I'm wondering if maybe it's the pages.  Or if the agent is right, and people don't want boy POVs.  Especially a mute boy's POV...

I find that odd.  I love writing boy POV and it's something I've always been comfortable with.  Maybe because all my best friends growing up were boys and I have two sons.  I also don't think books with a male POV are necessarily for boy readers.  Look how obsessed people - especially girls -  still are with The Outsiders - possibly even more now that before the Broadway musical - and that's a boy POV.  I certainly think all my boy POV books are just as enjoyable for girls, but maybe that's just me.

Had a couple more reviewers reply to me about Standing Too Close, but mostly it's been either declines because they have too many books to read already, or the reviewers want to be paid for reviews.  I don't pay for reviews.  It's not ethical, in my opinion, so if a reviewer asks for money, I just thank them for responding and explain that.  There seem to be an awful lot more asking for payment this time around, though.  Curious if any of you other writers pay for reviews?  And if it's worth it?

What are you celebrating this week?  

Books I've Read: Midnights With You

 

Those dark, late night hours when everyone else is asleep can be a sanctuary and this book really leans into that idea.

It's about two damaged kids, dealing with family trauma who wind up living across the street from one another and sharing their secrets in those night-quiet midnight hours.  Deedee is an only child whose over-protective mother smothers her on the one hand, and ignores her on the other.  Nothing she does is ever good enough and her mother never misses an opportunity to remind her of this.  She just tells her the Filipino ghost stories she grew up with but never explains to Deedee what they are supposed to mean or how they relate to their life the America.

Jay moves in across the street with his mother and sister.  Deedee quickly notices that he too spends time awake after midnight.  It is inevitable that their paths will cross while each tries to enjoy their solitude.  Deedee's mother won't let her learn to drive and Jay practically lives in his car.  When he offers to teach Deedee, in secret,  she jumps at the chance.

And little by little the barriers each of them have erected to protect themselves from the people and the world that insist on hurting them, begin to fall and the pair begin to rely on one another, and maybe even to fall in love.

There was a lot to like about this book.  The characters felt, for the most part, real and their problems were real-life problems that kids, especially the kids of relatively recent immigrant families might face.  There' s a real sense of the disconnect between the generations, one of which grew up immersed in a different culture to the one the current generation has been brought up in.  The difference in expectations and behaviours. 

That said, I wasn't 100% convinced by Deedee's mother as a character.  She was just too awful too much of the time - and to everyone.  Even the most evil of people have moments of compassion and humanity, and by the time Deedee, and therefore us, get to see this side of her, it was really too late.

But there was enough else to like about this book that I didn't let one cartoonish character ruin it for me.

So, I'll recommend it.  It's not perfect, but I definitely enjoyed reading it.

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

Two high school seniors with family trauma keeping them up at night fall in love over a series of secret late-night driving lessons.

Seventeen-year-old Deedee’s life is full of family ghosts and questions she can’t ask. She longs for an escape, but guilt holds her back—that, and the fact that her strict Filipino single mom won’t let her learn to drive. But one sleepless night leads Deedee down a road she never thought possible: secret driving lessons with the new boy next door, Jay, whose turbulent family life also keeps him up until sunrise.

As midnights stretch into days, Jay helps Deedee begin to unravel her past, and as shared secrets blossom into love, Deedee starts to imagine a life where happiness is possible. But the deeper she digs into the trauma that has shaped her, the more that trauma threatens to tear Deedee and Jay apart. Together, these two must decide if the pain they’ve both inherited has the power to choose their fate, or if they have the power to choose for themselves.

Weekly Goals 7-7-25

 I had a pretty busy weekend, so while I did some writing related stuff on Saturday, I didn't actually get any writing done.  So this week needs to be about writing.  I'm just over 40K into the new book, which is probably around two thirds of the way in.  I know how it ends, but I'm just not quite sure what happens between now and then.  There are a couple of different directions I could go and I suspect I need to write them both to figure out what needs to happen.

This is a downside of my chaotic writing process.  I often need to a write a lot of stuff that doesn't go anywhere before I find the right direction.

Other than that, I don't have much planned for the week.  The film festival progamme is launched tonight, so I will need to spend some time picking out my films for this year, but that doesn't usually take me too long.  I'm excited!  The film festival is always among the best two weeks of the year for me.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 4-7-25

 

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

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!  And Happy 4th of July to all my US friends!  Hope you're enjoying a long weekend.

I've had some luck with book reviewers for Standing Too Close.  Not as much as I would have liked, but there are still a bunch of people I've reached out to who haven't responded yet, so fingers crossed.  Early days yet...

Only one or two more rejections on A Stranger to Kindness.  I think I'm going to take a little break from querying, get the new book out and then re-start.

Been getting some great feedback from my crit group on the new book.  It's at a really messy stage right now where I'm not 100% sure if what I had planned to happen is a good idea, so I'm going to have to write two possible scenarios and see which one works the best for me.  Sigh...  I always have to go and make things harder for myself.

I have quite a busy weekend ahead of me, so i'm not sure how much writing I'll get done.  I have to learn a couple of spin classes because I'm covering an hour-long class on Sunday which I haven't taught in a few weeks, plus I need to move to a different release for my regular classes.  Luckily I have one of those I know super-well and it's been a while since I taught it, so I'll go with that for the next fortnight.

I was interviewed about Standing Too Close and my weird-ass writing process over at Literary Rambles on Wednesday, so pop over and check it out!  You could win a pre-order copy of the book.

What are you celebrating this week? 

IWSG - July

It's the first Wednesday in July, so it's time for the Insecure Writers Support Group. 

The awesome co-hosts for the July 2 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Natalie Aguirre, Cathrina Constantine, and Louise Barbour!

This month's question is interesting:

Is there a genre you haven't tried writing in yet that you really want to try? If so, do you plan on trying it?

To be honest, I think I have tried writing across most genres at one time or another. I do daily flash fiction challenges using prompts and often the prompt includes a genre (for example, this week I had to write fan fiction for one prompt and sci-fi for another), so I've experimented a lot across genres. Often these prompts are quite challenging for me because I'm not a huge fantasy or sci-fi reader, so when I have to write in those genres, it's a stretch.

But, that's really what doing these daily flash fiction challenges are for. To both keep my writing muscles limber when I don't have time to dive into my current project, and to stretch me in directions I might not otherwise go.

I don't think I'd ever write a sci-fi or fantasy novel, but never say ever, right? An idea might grab hold of my brain and not let go. I think it's unlikely, though.

What about you? Is there a genre you've never written that you're gagging to try?