Author: Kristi

Weekly Writing Update: August pt. 4

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Sunday: 52 minutes freewriting from prompts
Monday: none
Tuesday: 1 hour, 45 minutes at writing group
Wednesday: none
Thursday: none
Friday: 1 hour, 30 minutes working on cover & other publishing things for “Pithea”
Saturday: 35 minutes working on cover for “Pithea”

This week wasn’t the most productive for me, but it was an important week for several reasons. I went to the writing group at my local library for the first time all year, and from that came a very exciting, though also very scary, opportunity. I’ll post about that more later. I’ve made some official decisions on what I want to do with my completed novel “Pithea,” which will start with making a few small changes, which will be the last.

Wednesday and Thursday, our internet was down, which shouldn’t have prevented me from working on the novel I’m currently revising (“Outcast”), but it did. I’ll be diving back into that, while simultaneously working on those final changes to “Pithea,” this week. I’m excited to see the results in next week’s writing update.

Book Review: #NotReadyToDie

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#NotReadyToDie
by Cate Carlyle

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: YA suspense

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A school shooting at a high school in Canada is shown from the perspective of one of the students. She’s forced to think past her perceptions of other students to do the best she can to help others trapped in the classroom with her.

I didn’t find very many redeeming qualities about this book. My favorite thing was the way that each chapter ended with a tweet from various sources–usually either the local news station or one of the students in the school. I liked reading the updates as time went on (and missed them when they weren’t there), though I wished I could see reactions from the characters to some of them. They were mostly removed from the narrative. The writing was clear and easy to follow. And I liked the relationship between the narrator, Ginny, and her mom. That’s the extent of my positive notes. These are the main reasons I gave the book 2.5 stars.

There was a secondary main character named Kayla who, frankly, would have made a much better main character. She was compassionate, brave, forgiving, and had knowledge of medicine. I don’t mean to say side characters can’t be better at anything than the main character, of course, but in contrast, Ginny was judgemental, a bit harsh, and too often focused on the entirely wrong things during this crisis. The main character doesn’t have to be the “best,” but for a story to land well, it certainly helps for the reader to be able to identify with the MC…and I just didn’t. Ginny spends the entire book calling Kayla by an insulting nickname, but it’s okay, because she says it “with love” after the two start to become friends. Just…no. There are other things that happen with Ginny that either don’t make sense to her character or are pretty big personality flaws.

And speaking of characters, the book is so full of cliches. In the classroom during the lockdown, there are only 3 main groups of people identified: jocks, cheerleaders, and nerds. I get the over-simplification of background characters in a setting like this, but maybe go against the trend of those commonly used groups? The main person who acts selfishly and is disliked by the MCs is a jock. Maybe change it up, make him something less cliched.

This might count as a spoiler, so be warned, but one specific thing that really bugged me was later in the book, Ginny makes a comment about one of the other students that leads Kayla to tell her maybe she should work on not judging people so much. After initially snarking back to Kayla about this comment, she admits to the reader that Kayla had been right (yeah, we know…considering that you have been calling Kayla, who is supposedly becoming your friend now, “Barbie” since the beginning of the book). Then later, when talking about the “jerk jock”, we’re told that Ginny prides herself on having a pretty good feel for people. Except she’s spent half the book finding out that she’s misjudged at least 3 different people in her class. But since we all agree that the jerk jock is a bad guy, I guess we’ll let that little contradiction slide.

Here are a few other stray thoughts, which contain some spoilers (which I’ll try to cover with black): From my limited knowledge, I’m pretty sure most school shootings are a lot shorter than the time it went on for in this book. The shooter weirdly taunted this classroom, which I never really understood. There wasn’t much suspense for me, considering the final chapter title, the book’s POV and tense, and the fact that I wasn’t really connected to the MC (note: I am not at all saying that I didn’t care if she died, especially considering the subject matter of this book). Finally, I don’t think it would have bothered me to not be told the motivations behind the shooting if the students hadn’t speculated on it so much along the way. Because of that, I did find myself wanting to know, which we don’t find out. I know that the motivations aren’t always clear in real life either, but this is fiction, so I would have hoped for at least a more definitive speculation from someone in authority by the end.

The subject of a school shooting intrigued me, which is why I chose to read this book. Though I know there are other books like this out there, I haven’t read any. However, so much of the characterization was just so off to me, I had a difficult time finding it very much of an exploration into the minds of students in this terrible situation. I don’t think I can come up with any types of readers I would specifically recommend this book to. It was short, so I should have read it much more quickly than I did, but instead found myself stopping and going back to my other book that I was really enjoying, and it’s not because of the difficult subject, but because…it just didn’t hold my attention very well.

Thank you to Netgalley and Common Deer Press for providing me a copy of this book to review.

Find out more about #NotReadyToDie
Publication date: October 1, 2019

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Lock In

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Lock In
 by John Scalzi

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Sci-Fi mystery

Lock In

In the near future, a disease ravages humanity, leaving a large population of Earth completely paralyzed. In the time period of Lock In, technology has been developed to allow those “locked in” to live as normally as possible, either putting their consciousness into a robotic being, or into the mind of someone who has the ability to accept the mind of someone else. Set against this backdrop, the book is a mystery that starts with a murder, but deepens continually as the story goes on.

I wasn’t really expecting to like this book that much, though I don’t know why. However, I ended up liking it a lot. The sci-fi element, mainly the roles the Hadens (those who were locked in) and the Integrators (those who could let a Haden use their mind & body) played in the mystery, really enhanced the mystery plot.

The main character, Chris Shane, is a Haden and an FBI agent, who interacts with the physical world in what they call a “threep” (basically a robot that is controlled by a Haden’s consciousness). In a lot of ways, the book was similar in this area to Ready Player One, which I only read recently, so it was fresh in my mind. I was interested reading about the laws surrounding Hadens and their threeps, when it comes to crimes committed both by and against them. I also enjoyed the main character’s intelligence, ingenuity, and stoicism.

Another thing that I found myself appreciating throughout the book was the writing style. There is not a lot of description or figurative language, which to my taste, at least, can slow a story down or add unnecessary filler. There were even times that I would read through an entire page and get this feeling in the back of my mind that I’d skipped some text (I do that sometimes, essentially accidentally skimming for a bit before deciding I need to go back), but when I’d go back to try to find what I’d skipped over, there was nothing. Conversations flowed quickly, with little in the way of descriptions of what the characters were doing. Some may find this a flaw, but I personally liked it. If the characters aren’t really doing anything but sitting and talking…maybe sometimes it’s okay to not add minor actions in just because. I usually write dialog this way too, but end up going back and adding more in, because I feel like it’s expected.

Scalzi’s world-building was brilliant too, from following the progression of politics, laws, and citizen response brought on by Haden’s syndrome in America, to the slang and lingo that seemed so natural in this world. My main detraction in the book is involved in this area though. At one point in the last quarter of the book, a side character who is an expert in a field that is needed for the investigation spends about 10 pages explaining some technological and coding mumbo jumbo that I had a difficult time wading through and understanding. I was at least able to come away with some idea of what was going on, though, so it didn’t cause enough problem for me to be more than a short frustration. I also feel it prudent to mention that there was a lot more language than I prefer.

I had seen that there is a follow-up to this novel when I wasn’t even halfway into reading it yet, and I didn’t expect to have much desire to read it. However, by the end of the book, I knew I had to read Head On at some point soon!

I would recommend Lock In for fans of near-future sci-fi and for mystery lovers too.

Find out more about Lock In

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Writing Wednesday: Prompt

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WW Prompt

Here’s today’s Writing Wednesday Prompt:

The sinister stranger never checked behind him.

(Today’s prompt is a quote from the book I’m currently reading: Illusion by Frank E. Peretti.)

If you write something from this prompt, by all means let me know! Feel free to share what you wrote, if you want!

**If you’re looking for more like this, you might want to check out the story seeds posts I wrote for NaNoPrep a few years ago. They are not specific to NaNoWriMo, and each contains a list of several different types of prompts or ways to generate story ideas. You can find them here: Story Seeds 1, Story Seeds 2, Story Seeds 3, Story Seeds 4**

Ultimate Book Tag

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I took these questions from a post on Kitty Marie’s Reading Corner and had a lot of fun answering them. It seemed fitting after getting back into reading as heavily as I have.

1. Do you get sick while reading in the car?
Unfortunately, yes, reading, looking at a phone or tablet, etc. can give me a headache and make me queasy. It didn’t used to; I don’t know what changed.

2. The Harry Potter Series or The Twilight Saga? Give 3 points to defend your answer
Well…I haven’t read either, or watched movies from either. But I have put the first Harry Potter on my TBR list, while I still have no particular desire to read Twilight, so…I guess there’s your answer.

3. Do you carry a book bag? If so what is in it?
I don’t, but in the right situation, I do put a few books into my Handbag of Holding, usually whatever I’m currently reading (if it fits), and at least one notebook.

4. Do you smell your books?
All the time. Though even more than that, I smell my notebooks a lot, especially now that I’ve organized them in a location closer to my computer, and especially those that have leather or wood covers or cotton pages.

5. Books with or without illustrations?
I haven’t read a lot of books with illustrations, but I wouldn’t be adverse to them. I often have a difficult time understanding descriptions, so images can’t hurt.

6. What book did you love while reading but discovered later it wasn’t quality writing?
I really hate to say this, because this series was a big deal to me growing up, and I’ve collected some of them as an adult, in the hopes of getting my daughter to love them too, but I have realized that the Mandie series by Lois Gladys Leppard have a lot of issues, both in the plots and characters, and in the writing itself.

7. Do you have any funny stories involving books from your childhood? Please share!
I remember writing school subject names on the front of some of my books and pretending to teach school with them. I still have a few, one with “Spelling” written on it, for example.

8. What is the thinnest book on your shelf?
It’s technically my own novelette, The Triangle. Not including my own though, it’s Tilly by Frank E. Peretti.

9. What is the thickest book on your shelf?
These 2 questions are difficult to answer, because my books are spread across several bookshelves (not because I have so many, but because our books take up a shelf or two on a bookshelf with movies, on a bookshelf with my daughter’s books, on a bookshelf with my writing stuff, etc. But as far as I can tell, excluding multi-book volumes (because that’s just not fair), I think it’s The Visitation, also by Frank E. Peretti.

10. Do you write as well as read? Do you see yourself in the future becoming an author?
I do write, to which this blog is a testament. I have published a novelette and am working on a series of speculative fiction books.

11. When did you get into reading?
I was reading as early as I can remember. In first grade, I went to a second grade class for reading. Though I stopped for a while, getting back into it has been like coming home again.

12. What is Your Favorite Classic Book?
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (just fyi though, I have not ready many classics).

13. In school was your best subject English or another Language Arts subject?
It was one of my best. That and math subjects. I did well in English, though to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it that much. Especially the part about picking apart everything we read for theme, symbolism, figurative language, etc.

14. If you were given a book as a present that you had read before and hated, what would you do?
If it had been a while since I read it, I’d probably keep it to re-read it and see if my feelings had changed. If I’d read it recently…I’d probably keep it for a while and eventually decide to donate it or give it away.

15. What is a lesser known series that you know of that is similar to Harry Potter or The Hunger Games?
The Summoner trilogy, of which I’ve recently finished book 2, reminds me of Harry Potter, though as mentioned above, I’ve not read Harry Potter yet.

16. What is your favorite word?
Surreptitious

17. Are you a Nerd, Dork, or Dweeb? Or all of the above?
I don’t really know…maybe more of a dork than the other 2?

18. Vampires or Faeries?
I’d say neither, but I’m a Buffy/Angel fan. I’m not a vampire fan in general though.

19. Bookmark or Random Piece of Paper?
Bookmark if at all possible, and so far, I’ve managed to keep 2 of the 3 bookmarks I bought over a month ago. If the other 2 disappear though, it’ll be back to random pieces of paper again for a while.

20. Love Triangle or Forbidden Love?
Forbidden love. Love triangles just make me sad, especially if I care at all about the characters involved.

21. One book at a time or several books at once?
Usually one at a time. If a book is uninteresting enough for me to not want to keep coming back to it as much as I can, I might start another one along the way, but most of the time, I stick it out with one.

22. Can you stop reading at any part of the book or does it have to be the end of the chapter?
Any part is usually fine. In fact, stopping at the end of a chapter brings the potential of being at a cliffhanger, which isn’t an easy place to stop either!

23. Do you write in your books?
I don’t think I ever have before. I even have a hard time underlining or writing notes in my Bible.

24. Can you read while listening to music or watching TV?
Maybe lyric-less music, but even that can distract me, so usually, I prefer quiet. Though I may soon try out using coffitivity.com with my reading like I do with my writing. It may help me block out sounds of people going about their lives around me, though to be honest, as long as I’m not being directly addressed, or the sound is not loud or persistent (or strange), I can usually ignore it.

25. Do you read out loud or silently in your head?
In my head. When I read out loud, I actually have a very difficult time understanding what I’m reading.

BONUS QUESTION: Physical book, e-book or audio book?
By and large I prefer physical books, both for the feel, the look, the sense of tradition, and the smell. I’ve recently realized the benefits of reading on my Kindle, because of the potential for hands-free reading, so that’s a good alternative. I avoid audio books as much as possible, because I have a difficult time focusing on the words, and then end up lost. There’s also the fact that when I’m reading, I often go back in the book to remember a character, or a scene that is referenced later but didn’t stick out in my head at the time, or even in some cases, to go back to a scene that I find out later had a lot more going on in it than I realized at the time, and I want to re-read it with a new understanding. (I did this so much with one particular time-travel book that I ended up bookmarking the earlier section so I could find it again easier.) Anyway, with audio books…well, all of that is a lot harder to do.

Book Review: Tilly

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Tilly
 by Frank E. Peretti

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Christian drama

Tilly

Tilly is a touching novella about a woman coming to terms with something from her past that she regrets. It begins when a husband and wife, Kathy and Dan, are in a cemetery, and she spots a gravestone with the name Tilly one it, and only one date. From that point on, she can’t get that gravestone out of her mind, to the detriment of her family.

I had no idea what this book was about when I started reading, but it was short, and Peretti is my favorite writer. According to the back of the book, it was originally a radio drama, and it took me somewhere between 1-1.5 hours to read it.

Maybe because of my experience with Peretti’s other works, I expected more of a mystery than this book contained. In fact, if you read the synopsis on Goodreads, half of the book is almost unnecessary (thankfully I didn’t look the book up on Goodreads at all before reading it, though I normally do).

A good amount of the book is spent in a dream, with beautiful imagery and tender moments, as Kathy comes to grips with a mistake she made in the past, which has affected her family for 9 years. The reason for the past choice is not expounded on, which was probably one of the things I most wished was different about the story.

No matter what the past decision was that Kathy and Dan regret, the important message in this story is of the forgiveness we can have in Christ, though I’ll admit it’s only lightly presented. Maybe the greater message is that, even when we know Christ has forgiven us, sometimes we are unable to let go of that mistake, and that until we do, we will never truly feel we can accept God’s forgiveness.

I would recommend this light read to anyone who struggles with past mistakes, especially those they might consider unforgivable, but also for anyone interested in dramatic Christian stories.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

A Monday Moment: Fight

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Monday Moment

No punches had been thrown, but we all clearly heard Ted tell Dom that he was going to kill him. I hadn’t seen how the fight started, but someone in the crowd said Dom had said something bad about Ted’s girlfriend. I knew that couldn’t be true. Dom once felt bad when he had to insult someone in character, in drama class.

He stood there with a look of sheer terror on his face. I looked around at the others in the crowd. There were guys there at least as big as Ted, and some who I would have thought nice enough to stand up to the bully on someone else’s behalf.

I don’t know if it was fear of Ted or indifference to Dom that no one was trying to intervene. I thought about every school fight cliché I’d ever seen:

Even bullies won’t hit girls. What if that isn’t true?

The person being bullied will be humiliated and angry if they are defended by a girl. Would Dom react that way?

Ted took Dom’s books and handed them to his friend. Then he moved closer to Dom, towering over him. I saw his hand form a fist, clenched tighter than a dog’s bite.

I made a split second decision and ran forward from the crowd. I had a plan—probably a bad one—to extract Dom from the scene without embarrassing him.

“Dom!” I said as cheerfully as I could. “There you are! You were going to walk me—”

The blow came unexpectedly, and I fell to the ground. The gasp from the group rang in my ears. Or was that just the pain I was hearing?

Prompt used: A fight breaks out between a muscular person and a much weaker person who is clearly being bullied. You decide to intervene.

Weekly Writing Update: August pt. 3

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Sunday: 1 hour revising “Outcast”
Monday: none
Tuesday: 45 minutes revising “Outcast”
Wednesday: 50 minutes revising “Outcast”
Thursday: 1 hour, 6 minutes revising “Outcast”
Friday: none
Saturday: none

Most of the time this week was spent either putting revisions into the computer or writing a couple of brand new scenes. Friday and Saturday I hit a low point, and just didn’t feel like there was much point in working on it. I think I’ve shaken that off, thanks to some time spent praying, talking to my husband, and eating tacos (not all at the same time), though I think today’s writing time is going to focus on some freewriting just to shake out what’s left of the depression.

I’ve also noticed a sudden desire to go back to the writing I was doing a few years ago about the two weeks my dad was in the hospital back in September of  2016. I started writing it during NaNoWriMo that year, but it was pretty rough–maybe a little too soon. After I finish this draft of “Outcast,” maybe it will be a good change of pace for a while to work on this instead of more revision. Or maybe I’ll do both.

Book Review: Things You Save in a Fire

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Things You Save in a Fire
by Katherine Center

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Women’s fiction, romance

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Multiple events conspire together to cause Cassie Hanwell to move away from the city in which she’s just received an award for her service as a firefighter to a new city where, she’s told, they don’t even think women should be firefighters. But Cassie has taught herself how to overcome almost anything–by keeping emotions and feelings at bay and always following a schedule and a plan. This method serves her well, but also poorly, in her new life. A very strained relationship with her sick mother and a crush on the rookie at her new fire station both lead to changes she could never have expected.

This book was a fun read for me, and I think it is interesting that it isn’t quite as much of a pure romance as I thought it would be. The romance is a key factor, but it’s not the only factor. Other important elements include recovering from past trauma (or lack thereof), mother-daughter relationship (focusing on abandonment of the daughter), surviving in a not-entirely-friendly workplace, and most of all, forgiveness.

I really liked the fact that the book had that last angle in it, because I think it’s something that many people don’t really take the time and effort to try to do. The book may have taken a fairly simplistic approach, but for what it was, I appreciated it.

There are a lot of tropes wrapped up in Cassie, but at the same time, she had some traits that I really connected with. For example, I watched as she pushed another character away, and then was truly disappointed that the other character left. She wanted this person to push harder to reach her, help her, get her to open up, whatever, even while at the same time knowing that she would never let that person in. I am like that as well, especially with my husband, though with his help, I’ve identified it and am working on it.

One thing that bugged me throughout the book was Cassie’s mother. I had a really hard time sympathizing with her, for reasons that I won’t explain, because it would broach spoiler territory. But in the end, I decided that I didn’t have to agree with Cassie’s assessment of her mother or the situation. It wasn’t my mother, so I just let it be.

The ending had a few wrap-ups that were a little strange to me, but I enjoyed the book overall. I recommend it to fans of romance, especially those where the romance isn’t quite so in-your-face.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me a copy of this book to review!

Find out more about Things You Save in a Fire

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Thr3e

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Thr3e
 by Ted Dekker

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Christian suspense

Thr3e

Equal parts thriller and philosophical, this book starts with a discussion about the nature of man and by the end of the first chapter, has the main character nearly blown up. Kevin is tormented by a man who demands he confess his sin or his attacks will only get worse. Aided by a caring FBI agent whose brother was killed in a similar fashion only a few months previous and Kevin’s best friend since childhood, he struggles to understand what the madman wants from him. All of this leads up to an unexpected confrontation that I did not see coming.

The book is billed as a thriller, but I think where it tends to trip some people up is that it’s also very philosophical. Unlike Peretti, whom many people compare Dekker to, I don’t know that I’d classify Ted Dekker as a Christian author exactly. The books of his that I have read contain religion or spirituality, but not exactly Christianity. There is a fairly strong moral message in this book, though, and it can slow down the action. It doesn’t bother me much, but it might others.

I first read this book in the early 2000s. I’ve considered it one of my favorite books ever since then, but unlike my long-time favorite book, I have never re-read this one before now. It has the type of ending that led me to think that it wouldn’t really be worth re-reading. Now that it’s 15ish years later and I find myself enjoying books again, I decided it was time. I did enjoy it this time through, but not quite as much as the first time, because of the knowledge I had. However, knowing the Big Twist, I was able to see the build-up to it, spot the signs and hints. I appreciated the way that Dekker spun the story.

I did still enjoy the book, particularly the characterization of the main character, Kevin, and his childhood. That was one big thing I didn’t quite remember from when I first read it–the book hinted at him having a more difficult childhood than what was even shown up front, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I enjoyed unraveling the story again, even though I knew what it was leading up to. I also very much enjoyed Kevin’s relationship with his professor, and the role the professor played in the latter part of the book.

One gripe that I have is in the symbolism regarding the Big Twist. To use an example, when watching Sixth Sense for the first time, you may not even know that the color red is always involved in the Big Twist (not spoiling, though by now, if you don’t know the twist in that movie, where have you been living?) throughout the movie unless you are told about it by someone else. It’s there, but it’s subtle. In this book, the number 3 is a huge part of the bad guy’s psyche, and it’s not even remotely subtle. The bad guy himself says how much he likes the number 3 more than once. I think I would have liked to see it as a more subtle element.

I would recommend this book for fans of Christian thrillers and philosophy.

Find out more about Ted Dekker and Thr3e

This book was made into a movie that came out in 2006. I watched it in the theater, but I don’t actually remember much about it (except that the main character was played by Marc Blucas).  I remember having a terrible migraine, so I don’t think my forgetfulness is completely indicative of how good the movie was. However, I also never felt the need to watch it again in all this time, and that’s considering I’ve had a DVD copy for years. I do plan to watch the movie now though, and will likely post about the comparison like I did with Ready Player One.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!