Celebrate the Small things 13-3-20

This post is part of Lexa Cain's blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to sign up!

What am I celebrating this week?

Given the way the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, I'm celebrating the fact life is still pretty normal here.  I don't have Covid-19 and so far I haven't had to go into quarantine because of being in contact with someone who has.  There don't appear to have been any cases in my city (yet).  The majority of events are still going ahead and apart from the supermarkets running out of hand sanitizer, anti-bacterial soap and toilet paper, life seems to be ticking along as usual.

Not sure how much longer it's going to last, so I'm making the most of it while I can.  And making the most of the last of the summer weather.  Daylight saving ends in a couple of weeks and once that happens, I won't be able to ride my bike to and from work anymore because it will be too dark in the evenings.  So making the most of it now.  Excercising while commuting saves a lot of time!  I don't. have to find time in my day to go to the gym.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Junk Magic and Guitar Dreams

This was one of those frustrating books where I really liked part of the story, and found another part of it just didn't work for me.

Otter is a fifteen-year-old boy whose mother has just died from cancer.  Before she died, she made sure he was capable of living alone and made the arrangements for him to be emancipated so he wouldn't have to face foster care or a group home.  Now Otter lives alone in a trailer park, struggling to keep the lights on and himself fed on what he earns working part time at a car wash.

Life is pretty grim, but Otter keeps himself going with the dreams of what might happen once his band hits the big time.  They have their first big gig coming up, so it's possible...  And in the meantime, there's his biker neighbor to hang out with when things get too much to take.  The biker neighbor who starts pressuring him to join his group called Odin's Warriors.

Just when life is complicated enough, Otter falls for the new singer who joins the band.  Falls hard and fast.  But Amber doesn't seem to notice his epic crush.  Or if she does, she doesn't care.

When Otter receives a box of stuff his grandfather has left him, he doesn't think much of it.  He had to miss a day of work to schlepp downtown to pick it up, and when he opens it, it's full of garbage he probably won't even be able to pawn.  But when he picks out an item from the box, he's suddenly overwhelmed by memories.  And they're not his own.

I liked Otter as a character.  He was both tough and vulnerable, stubborn and impressionable.  I wanted to adopt him and bring him home to live with me.  He made stupid decisions and was too proud to ask for help even when he desperately needed it.  His life was so hard, but a lot of that was his own doing because there were people trying to make things easier for him all the way through. He just couldn't or wouldn't see it.

What I didn't like about the book was the magical way the objects in his grandfather's box gave him memories.  This book was so gritty and realistic in depicting Otter's life, the sudden appearance of magical memory-giving artifacts didn't really gel with me even if the memories did give Otter a deeper understand of his family and who he really is.

It's probably just me, because I'm not a huge fan of fantasy or magic.  There was nothing really wrong with the memories or the information they gave Otter about where he came from, but I just didn't really buy the magical way this information was provided to him.  But like I say, that's probably just me...

Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this one in advance.

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

A guitar, a box of junk, and a pile of trouble...

Fifteen-year-old Otter is in a dark place. When he loses his mom to cancer, Child Services wants to put him in foster care, or even a home for troubled youth.

Living on his own, he’s one bad decision away from the street. His band’s first gig is only two weeks away, but his crush on their new lead singer has him tied in knots.

Then he inherits a box of random junk from a dead grandfather he barely knew. Can his grandfather’s memories help Otter win the girl of his dreams, reconnect with his family, and keep him out of juvenile detention...maybe even become a rock star?

Weekly Goals 9-3-20

I had a busy weekend, but did manage to make some headway with ending Standing Too Close.  I'm SO close to being done!  I'm midway through the final scene of the epilogue.  So close to the end!

Obviously my goal this week is to write 'the end' after finishing that scene, even though I know the book isn't actually finished once I do that.  I need to fix something that's been bugging me in the middle.

But I feel like I'm almost at a point where I can start asking if people might be free to read the thing for me.  So if you're interested, let me know.  It'll probably be a couple of weeks, but it's always nice to know there are people waiting for it.  Kind of creates a deadline to meet...

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 6-3-20

This post is part of Lexa Cain's blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to sign up!

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

It's been one of those really, really long weeks so I'm ridiculously glad to have a couple of days off.  I'm feeling very tired today, so am looking forward to getting some sleep over the weekend.  Sleep is definitely something to celebrate!  During the week I generally get around 5 or so hours, so if I can get a couple extra in on a Sunday, I do!

I also haven't managed to get a lot of writing done this week (although I did read through an unfinished MS and discovered it's not nearly as terrible as I suspected it would be), so am looking forward to getting some time to really knuckle down to finishing Standing Too Close.

My partner and I are going out for dinner with some friends on Saturday which has been in the works for MONTHS now.  We keep scheduling and having to cancel because one or another of us (or our kids) has something on. So I'm looking forward to that.  We're going to one of my favorite restaurants.

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

IWSG - March 2020

It's the first Wednesday in March so it's time to join the Insecure Writer's Support Group.  This month's question is:

Other than the obvious holiday traditions, have you ever included any personal or family traditions/customs in your stories?

You know, I haven't.  My family doesn't have any particularly unusual customs or traditions (or at least I don't think they do) so there is nothing of note to mine for my stories.  I'm actually struggling to think if any of my stories even have holidays included in them...  I don't think they do.

Hmmmm.....  Maybe that's an opportunity I'm missing out on.  

I am going to try and rectify this and write a holiday scene into my next book.  And I will try and find something unique to add to it from my own family's way of celebrating holidays.  Although the only thing I can think of is that at Christmas, because my father's family were Jewish, we always have bagels with lox for breakfast before we get to presents and the rest of Christmas.

We don't have any special thing we do for people on their birthdays or any other holiday.  We don't celebrate Easter and there is no Thanksgiving in New Zealand (unfortunately - it was always my favorite holiday) and I can't think of any other holiday that would be celebrated with anything other than a day off from work.  Which is, of course, something to celebrate.

Do you have any unique family traditions that show up in your stories?

Books I've Read: The Vinyl Underground

I really enjoyed this piece of historical fiction.  Set in 1968, Ronnie's brother, Bruce,  has recently been killed in Vietnam.  Now he's about to graduate and the draft hangs over him.  Despite having already lost one son to the war, Ronnie's father is determined to see his second son honor the country with his service too.

When Ronnie meets Hana, the new girl who moves in across the street, his thinking begins to change.  She's half-Japanese and faces daily slurs about her race at the still-segregated school they attend in small-town Florida.  Having come from Chicago, Hana has new ideas about the war and justice and many other things Ronnie has never thought about before.

Along with Ronnie's best friend, Milo, and Bruce's best friend Lewis, Ronnie and Hana start up a club, The Vinyl Underground, as a way to share the music all four kid love.  But their weekly meetings become more politically charged as the conversation flows.  Before too long, the group have come up with an audacious plan to keep Ronnie from being drafted.

Things should calm down for Ronnie once the threat of going to war is lifted from his future, but instead, an act of racially charged violence shatters their tight-knit group and together they plan an act of revenge that may just change the lives of their peers forever.

The characters in this book feel very real and complex.  They are children, yet face the very real possibility of being sent to a foreign country to be killed.  How they are expected to go to school and study the heroics of American politicians in the face of this level of terror is beyond me.  This would have been a very real fear at this time, and I loved how creative these characters are in their planning.

I would definitely recommend this one, even if you're not interested in historical fiction.  The themes explored here are just a relevant today.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review, so thanks, NetGalley!

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

During the tumultuous year of 1968, four teens are drawn together: Ronnie Bingham, who is grieving his brother’s death in Vietnam; Milo, Ronnie’s bookish best friend; “Ramrod,” a star athlete who is secretly avoiding the draft; and Hana, the new girl, a half-Japanese badass rock-n-roller whose presence doesn’t sit well with their segregated high school.

The four outcasts find sanctuary in “The Vinyl Underground,” a record club where they spin music, joke, debate, and escape the stifling norms of their small southern town. But Ronnie’s eighteenth birthday is looming. Together, they hatch a plan to keep Ronnie from being drafted. But when a horrific act of racial-charged violence rocks the gang to their core, they decide it’s time for an epic act of rebellion.

Weekly Goals 2-3-20

Can you believe it's already March?  The year is spinning away from underneath me!

I had a good weekend, but I didn't get any writing done so it wasn't great.  Standing Too Close still doesn't have its ending written.  So that's my goal for this week.  Get the ending done.  Then my goal for the month is to get the rest of the book finished.   I'm determined to get this one out to readers in April.  It's been far too long to get it to this point.

So that's my goal for both the week and the month.  What are your goals?