Celebrate the Small Things 31-7-26

 

It's the end of the week so it's time to celebrate the small things!

It's the weekend!

It has been a busy week (again), so I'm looking forward to a little downtime.  Although, a little is what it will be.  I have a lot of chores to get through, a beta read to finish and I'm teaching on Sunday.  But at least it's a little different to everything I do at work during the week.  Except the teaching... I've been doing a lot of that.

Things are really ramping up at work with the new ticketing system and website needing to go live in about three weeks.  God.  Is it August already?  Yep.  Three weeks.  Ack!  That's really soon...

I don't think I'm going to get any writing done for a few more weeks.  With everything else going on, I don't see myself having the time to commit to anything other than the odd piece of flash fiction.  And even that is going to be a struggle to get to.  

I went to the dress rehearsal of the opera on Thursday night and really enjoyed it.  I don't usually like operas much, but I keep trying because I feel like they're something I should enjoy.  So I was pleased that I actually did like this one.  There were a lot of school kids n the audience at the dress rehearsal and they were very vocal which was fun.  I don't imagine the audience on opening night will be anything like as raucous.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: We Fell Apart

I've read a bunch of other books by this author, so when I found this one in the bargain bin at The Warehouse, I decided to give it a whirl.  

When Matilda gets a letter from the father she's never met, she jumps at the opportunity to visit him.  Her mother has recently moved to Mexico with a new lover, leaving Matilda behind with a former boyfriend.  With a few months before college starts, Matilda is searching for connection and this seems like an opportunity to finally connect with her father, a celebrated artist.

When she arrives on the island, she finds no father.  Apparently he left to sell a painting.  What she does find is Meer, a brother who is almost exactly the same age.  Meer is lovable as a puppy and Matilda finds herself instantly bonding with him.  Also living in the house are Brock, a former child-star battling addiction and seeking meaning in is post-Hollywood life, Tatum, a brooding, intense boy with a love of water, and June, Meer's mother who seems startled by Matilda's arrival and not at all welcoming.

Without her father,  Matilda tries to navigate life in this strange place while trying to find answers to her myriad questions.  But the more she discovers, the more secrets she stumbles upon.  And with each new secret, she becomes more and more certain that something weird is going on in the house.  And that everyone in it is lying.

I enjoyed this book.  The three boys Matilda finds at the house are well drawn and very distinct.  I did feel like June might have been a little over the top as the kind of wicked stepmother, but once the big reveal was ... revealed toward the end, her character made a lot more sense.

So, it you're a reader who likes twisted families with secrets, a touch of romance and wealthy people behaving badly, this might just be the book for you.

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

The invitation arrives out of the blue.

In it, Matilda discovers a father she’s never met. Kingsley Cello is a visionary, a reclusive artist. And when he asks her to spend the summer at his seaside home, Hidden Beach, Matilda expects to find a part of herself she’s never fully understood.

Instead, she finds Meer, her long-lost, openhearted brother; Brock, a former child star battling demons; and brooding, wild Tatum, who just wants her to leave their crumbling sanctuary.

With Kingsley nowhere to be seen, Matilda must delve into the twisted heart of Hidden Beach to uncover the answers she’s desperately craving. But secrets run thicker than blood, and blood runs like seawater.

And everyone here is lying.

Weekly Goals 27-7-26

 I don't have a huge number of goals this week.  The weekend was predictably exhausting, so I'm sitting her on Monday morning struggling to even think about what the week ahead might bring.  I am taking the day off today, so hopefully by tomorrow I might have a better idea what's needed.

I'm doing a beta read for a friend, so I'm hoping to finish that this week.  Then I can turn my attention to the new book I may have accidentally started.  I'm really not sure what it is, or if it's anything yet, but I'm sure it will come to me.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 24-7-26

 

It's the end of the week, so what am I celebrating?

It's the weekend!

Well, sort of...  I don't really get a real weekend this week because we're playing a concert in Christchurch on Sunday afternoon, so I have to go down there on Saturday evening.   On the plus side, I'll have time to catch up with a friend who recently moved down there.

It's been as busy a week as I suspected it was going to be and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount to stuff I learned about our new system in just a few days.  Luckily I have a bit of time to practice before we get the live site, and then a couple of weeks to build everything on the live site and get things tidied up so they look the way I want them to look.  

No new rejections this week, which is good, I guess.  Although, with so many queries still outstanding, I'd rather know for sure they're passes than to keep waiting, just in case.

I'm hoping next week will be more manageable in terms of the workload, so I'm hoping to get caught up on some things.

I had a great idea for the opening lines of a new novel.  I just need to figure out the story to go with them...

What are you celebrating this week?

Weekly Goals 20-7-26

 I had a pretty quiet, restful weekend which is what I needed.  I started beta reading a book for a writing friend, but that was pretty much the extent of my writing work.

This week isn't going to be a good one for writing either since I have three days of all-day training sessions for using our new ticketing system, and concerts on Friday and Sunday.  It's going to be busy and exhausting.

As a result, my goals for the week are very small.  I plan to do a little more work on Rebecca's book where I can.  That's it for writing related stuff.

In life-related stuff, I just need to get through the week.  Trying to find time to do anything outside the training is going to be challenging, but I may just have to pull some late nights.  especially since I'm teaching at the gym during a few of the lunch breaks I've built into the schedule.

My son's band is playing on Thursday, and I really want to go, but I'm not sure if I'll be up to it after the three days of training and 4 classes I will have taught by then.  I guess we'll see.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 17-7-26

 

It's the end of the week, so what am I celebrating?

It's the weekend!

And boy do I need it.  It has been a crazy busy week at work, and next week is going to be even more so.  I feel like I'm not going to get any real chance at downtime until the Christmas break.  And that feels like it's a long way away.

No new rejections this week which is nice.  Although, I don't have a huge number of outstanding queries that aren't old enough for me to call them rejections purely based on the fact it's been 5 or 6 months with no response.

Film Festival tickets went on sale this week, and after a very frustrating day of trying to book and the system crashing, I managed to get tickets for everything I wanted and can go to.  Annoyingly, the orchestra is playing both weekends, so I'll be working and traveling when some of the films I most wanted to see are on.

And that's about it for celebrating this week.  I've been so busy I haven't even managed to do flash fiction this week.  I suspect it might be a while before I manage a full week of that again.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: On the Subject of Unmentionable Things

I admit it.  I picked this one up because of the cover.  It was just too pretty not to.  Thankfully, it turned out to be a pretty good read too.

Phoebe lives in a small town with her parents who are caring, but very busy with their business and one another.  She's a star journalist on the school paper and has a good group of friends who support and love her. She's a good girl who follows the rules, sometimes almost too well.

What no one knows about Phoebe is that she's Pom, the anonymous person behind a blog that's frank and open about all things sexual and doesn't shy away from difficult questions.  Phoebe's research is thorough and she started the blog out of a curiosity about sex and recognizing that the sex education taught in schools was not useful for real-life teens.

When one of the town's conservative mayoral candidates stumbles upon the blog and decides it's an affront to morality, she tweets about it and the blog goes viral.  With a sudden explosion of followers, Phoebe finds herself - or her alter-ego, Pom - in the firing line as the candidate demands Pom reveals their identity.  Suddenly the mayoral race becomes much more interesting as Phoebe fights to protect the things she believes in while desperately trying to keep her true self under the radar.

This was a fun read that deals with some important real-world issues facing us today.  It shows the power of social media and the responsibility people using it have.  It also shows how the clear abuse of power and platform can polarize people and spur them into action.

I just wish the characters had been a little better drawn.  I found Lydia, the Mayoral candidate almost cartoonish in her "bad guy" role.  And I never really warmed to Phoebe as a main character, which is a problem in a first-person narrative.  I did like her boyfriend, Jorge, and I thought the editor of the newspaper was a better villain than Lydia in many ways.

But overall, I enjoyed the book and the questions it posed about modern society.  Well worth a look!

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


A girl rewrites sex education, one viral post at a time, in this fiercely honest and delightfully awkward novel by the award-winning author of Words on Bathroom Walls.

Phoebe Townsend is a rule follower . . . or so everyone thinks. She’s an A student who writes for her small-town school newspaper. But what no one knows is that Phoebe is also Pom—the anonymous teen who’s rewriting sex education on her blog and social media.

Phoebe is not a pervert. No, really. Her unconventional hobby is just a research obsession. And sex should not be a secret. As long as Phoebe stays undercover, she’s sure she’ll fly through junior year unnoticed. . . .

That is, until Pom goes viral, courtesy of mayoral candidate Lydia Brookhurst. The former beauty queen labels Phoebe’s work an “assault on morality,” riling up her supporters and calling on Pom to reveal her identity. But Phoebe is not backing down. With her anonymity on the line, is it all worth the fight?

Julia Walton delivers a brutally honest novel about sex, social media, and the courage to pursue truth when misinformation is rife. Who knew truth could be so scandalous?

Weekly Goals 13-7-26

 Despite the freezing weather, I had a good long weekend.  I saw a couple of movies, which was good and I went to the final of the Song Quest, New Zealand's competition for opera singers which was fun.  The guy who won was 19 and already has the most amazing control of his voice as well as stage presence to burn.

This week is going to be all about getting stuff done because next week is crazy busy at work.  I also start teaching two extra lunchtime classes at the gym for the next few weeks which is going to add some complexity to my life.

I don't have a new book idea that's clamoring to be told yet.  I have several pieces of new books spinning through my head, but nothing that's ready to be written yet.  Which is probably a good thing, given how busy the next few weeks are going to be at work.  So, I'll stick to my daily flash fiction and wait for something to spark.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 10-7-26

 

It's the end of the week, so what am I celebrating?

Long weekend!

Yes, it's Matariki here, the Maori New Year, so we have an extra day to the weekend.  Unfortunately there's another freezing weather bomb upon us, so it's not the best weekend to have an extra day off, but I'm sure I'll find some way to make it enjoyable!

Had to take the cat to the vet this week which was an adventure and a half.  She does not like it one bit!  But, on the plus side, she seems to be fine now and has even forgiven me relatively quickly.  She's slept on my bed the last two nights.  Almost makes the hefty price tag worth it!

No rejections so far this week which makes a nice change, although I'm not really expecting anything other than rejections at this stage.  So disappointing.  But, I guess that books goes back in the trunk with all the other ones I haven't managed to get a bite with while I figure out what to do with the next one.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: The Staircase in the Woods

 

I was excited when I found this one at the library last week.  I follow Chuck Wendig's blog and have been looking forward to reading this since he started talking about it.  

There are definite parallels to Stephen King's IT in this one in that it focuses on a misfit group of friends across two time periods, the first in childhood, the second when they reunite as adults to reckon with the terrifying event in their youth. 

As teenagers camping in the woods, this friend group discovered a staircase in the woods.  Just a staircase, no sign of a house or any other part of a structure.  One of their number went up the stairs and never came back.

Twenty years later, they gather at the behest of the one who stayed in town and find another staircase in the woods.  Determined to find out what happened to their missing friend, they all go up this time and find themselves in a strange, ever-morphing house where every room holds a new horror, some familiar, others strange.  With no windows and every door opening to only another horrific room, these four people must try to figure out the house's reason for existing if they are to find their friend or the way out.

While this was certainly a creepy horror story, it also had some interesting questions to ask about what makes a house a home, and whether a house can absorb the crimes and passions of its inhabitants.  It also plays out as kind of a puzzle as the characters, some of whom have been gaming since childhood, try to use gaming logic to figure out the way the house works.

The characters are for the most part well drawn and each has their own unique trauma, the thing that brought them together as friends in the first place and yet may be the thing that breaks them in this house of horrors.

I enjoyed it, even though some of the particularly gooshy things they saw in the house made my stomach turn.  I don't think I'm quite as good at dealing with truly horrific horror as I was when I was younger!

So, I'd recommend this one.  Unless you're particularly squeamish.

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

A group of friends investigates the mystery of a strange staircase in the woods.

While on a camping trip, five high-schoolers bound by an oath to always protect one another discover something in the middle of the forest: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend climbs up but does not come back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later it reappears, and the friends return to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase.

Weekly Goals 6-7-26

 I still have a bit of a cold, but I don't think it's bad enough to keep me from going to work.  I just feel like it's going to be a long day.  I also have a feeling my cat might be sick and I need to try and get a vet appointment for her.  I have no clue how I'll get her to the vet.  She's skittish at the best of times, and when she's feeling bad, she tends to hide, often under the house where I can't to her.  She is still coming in to eat, so I'll just have to try and get her into the cage when she comes for food.  Wish me luck!

I read through an earlier draft of Street Smarts over the weekend, one of the attempts I made at having Devon as the MC, and it wasn't as bad as I remembered it being.  I still think I like Arlo's POV more, but I think the structural things that are a bit of a problem in my Arlo version aren't such a big problem in my Devon version.  I'm waiting on another beta reader to comment on the Arlo version, but I feel like it might be worth spending some time finishing the Devon version too.  I wrote over 30K twice in her POV before switching entirely to Arlo's, so there's a lot of material there already.  Plus, she takes over his diary for a period in the middle of the book already, so it wouldn't be too hard to massage those sections into shape.  It's definitely something to think about...

I don't really have any other specific goals this week.  It's a long weekend for Matariki, so that will be nice, even if I don't have any real plans for it yet.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small things 3-7-26

 

It's the end of the week, so what am I celebrating?

It's the weekend!

Unfortunately I have a bit of a cold, so I think I'm going to have to put most of my plans on hold and just stay home to rest.  I have too much to do next week to be sick, so better to take the time to kick it over the weekend.

I was asked to beta read for a writer I beta'd for last year, so that ought to keep me busy, at least.  And I'm going to have to walk up to the pet store to get more cat food at some point, so that'll be some exercise since I don't think I'll go to the gym.

I got my anthology turned in on time, so we'll see what happens there.  The results aren't due until the end of August, so I have a while to wait.

No new rejections this week, which is always nice, but I'm not hopeful about a request coming in from any of the outstanding queries at this stage.  I think I'll just shelve that book for a while and see if I can get Street Smarts into any kind of shape to query.

What are you celebrating this week?