Wow. All I can say is Wow.

I just finished Regina Sirois’ book On Little Wings. I’ve been hearing hype on this book for a long time now and had actually purchased the ebook months ago. It moved up high enough on my to-read list. I'm SO glad.

I’ll say right now that I don’t give many five-star reviews. I love a lot of books. A three-star review means I liked the book. Four stars mean I really liked a book and would own it and read it again. Giving a book five stars means it touched me in some way.

Sometimes a story struck a chord because of real-life experiences that made me relate to the characters (such as the I Am Not a Serial Killer series by Dan Wells—and no, I’m not serial killer material).

It might be that the five-star story captured my imagination with its world building, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the fabulous places and desperately wanted to go there and meet these characters.

It could be that the weaving of words and the story haunted my sleep and followed me around even when I wasn’t reading. Like a delectable dessert whose lingering taste keeps me wanting more.

On Little Wings is one of those books for me.

So, what’s it about?

Jennifer's mother is not an only child.
Jennifer's aunt has thirty seven freckles.
And life just stopped making sense for this sixteen-year-old girl from Nebraska.
It will take one forbidden journey, an octogenarian movie star, three old pirates, and one scarred genius to put all the pieces back together.
If that is even possible.

When Jennifer finds a dog-eared photograph of a freckled girl, she never dreams the innocent picture will tear open a gaping wound to her mother's secret past.

Jennifer must leave her home, parents, and best friend in the wheat fields of Nebraska and travel to the rocky shores of Maine to find the aunt she never knew she had. Her search for the truth is distracted by the strange and hilarious characters in the tight-knit town of Smithport. From the 88 year old movie star who likes to show off her tattoo, to the fishermen who have a passion for rockets, to the aunt who recites poetry in the long, Maine nights, Jennifer is intrigued by the lives swirling around her.

In the midst of madness she meets Nathan, the tight-lipped, reluctant prodigy who is surrounded by women who need him to be brother, father, protector, provider, and now, first love. With a restrained, mature, and uncertain voice, Jennifer shares her tale of family, love, loss, truth and beauty.

As Jennifer seeks to piece together her mother's shattered story, she inadvertently writes one for herself.


Sirois uses beautiful language to paint this tale. I’m not in to too much description and will skip over a lot of flowery language. That’s not what Sirois does as she crafts this story. But she made me feel like I was there. Made me want to go to Smithport so I can meet these quirky, fun people. There's a certain showdown that we anticipate, and I loved the circumstances when it finally happened.

On Little Wings is up for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction. I’m not the least bit surprised.

You can download a sample of the first fourteen pages from Kindle here.

What do the star ratings mean to you? We often see books with extremes--5s or 1s. How come we see so few 3s?

Just for Fun

Since I've been so focused on writing since the start of NaNoWriMo (I hit 14,214 words last night, by the way--according to NaNo stats if I keep going at this rate I could hit the 50,000 word mark my November 17th).

Last night I attended my first write-in. It was held at this cute little place called The Chocolate. It's an old home that's been converted into a restaurant. I only knew about it because I attended a book launch there a couple of weeks ago. Holy cow. The place was packed! Since it used to be a home, it's full of lots of small rooms with small, intimate tables.

It was kind of distracting trying to write because real life was going on all around us. Seriously! It was hilarious listening to these young couples who'd come to this dessert cafe. One of the discussions going on next to us made me think about Melanie Jacobson's book Not My Type. The main character gets roped into doing an online series about dating. She's got a snarky, witty edge and many of her dates are disasters. I'll have to ask Melanie where she got her ideas. The Chocolate would have been a great resource.

This morning I needed and wanted something to make me laugh. Someone on Friday suggested that I should go to Google and type in the word askew (no quotes)

Go ahead. Do it yourself.

Did you smile?

Now type in do a barrel roll (no quotes--or words in parentheses).

So do it.

Are you dizzy?

That got me thinking. Dangerous on an early Sunday morning. But I decided to check out what other quirky things those folks at Google have been up to.

Google's Top 10 Hidden Treasures

Google Earth: Top ten fun things to do
I love #3's second option.

Anyway, it's time to get back to work. The general municipal election is Tuesday, so it's going to be a crazy, crazy week. Tuesday I'll be in the office at 6 a.m. and if things go well will be home before midnight.

I used to just ask that people vote (our primary turn out was 7.5%--that means in a city with over 50,000 registered voters, fewer than 4,000 people decided who got to move on to the general election).

It's amazing to me, however, the number of people who vote but do so uninformed. No candidate will ever represent your views on every issue, but do a little research and make sure you're at least on the same continent on issues that mean a lot to you.

Local elections are where the rubber meets the road, by the way. You have the greatest chance at making a difference in those.

Fine. I'll get off my soapbox.

What about you? Do you vote? Or does the ugliness that's so much a part of the national news taint even your local elections?

Review - I Am Not a Serial Killer Series

Last weekend, I finished the third book in Dan Wells' series. The books are I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster, and I Don’t Want to Kill You. I wanted to stew on them for a few days before writing about the series as a whole.

I heard about the first book in the series when I was listening to an episode of Writing Excuses (hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler). Brandon commented on how well Dan had done making a normally unsympathetic main character (he’s a sociopath who dreams and has fantasies of torturing and killing people) into someone you love and worry about, someone you’re cheering for, cringing for, having dang nightmares for!

The first book wasn’t high on my list of reading priorities because I don’t really read horror anymore. When I was a child, I loved to be scared to death. LOVED it. Used to make my mother nuts because I’d end up on her side of my parents’ bed. I guess I knew my father wouldn’t have any patience with my self-induced nightmares. I gave horror up when, as a young widow, I was scared to go down the dark hallway to one of my crying children. Single parenthood and Stephen King were not a good fit.

Back on topic, I continued to hear rave reviews about Dan’s book, so I decided to download the audiobook. You can see my review of I Am Not a Serial Killer here.

Mindy over at LDS Women's Book Review warned me that she found Mr. Monster the hardest of

the three books. Because of my response to the first book, hearing this from Mindy really made me nervous. But it makes sense this middle book in the trilogy would be dark (dark for an already dark series? Hmmm).

John Cleaver, our hero, after his success in the first book, is losing control of his dark side, his Mr. Monster. The rules he'd so carefully put in place to save him (and society) from his inner demon had to be loosened in order to be the victor in the first book. But once rules have been broken, they're much harder to put back together again.

Whereas I took a break and read another tome between the first two books, I jumped right into the last one. It's longer, and John has to deal with more issues (like Mr. Monster isn't enough, right?). Girls at school are killing themselves, and a serial killer is loose in Clayton County again ... and John has some responsibility for it. But he's also better in control of his monster, and he's making progress socially.

I'm not going to say too much about what actually happens, but there are some really horrible things and some really wonderful things that happen to our John. The journey he makes in this book, the growth and self discovery, are profound. And exquisite for me, the reader.

Perhaps some of what struck a cord with me in this seris is John's dealing with his mental illness. I have many friends and family members who struggle with mental illness. I've lived through a suicide and several attempted suicides of people very close to me. I've felt the consequences of loving someone with a devastating mental illness. People can have one and struggle through the challenges and carve a decent life for themselves. They can love and grow and be active participants in their families and society.

At the end of this last book, I cried. I cried for the poignant discovery John made about himself. He suffered some terrible losses, yet the very pain he experienced brought hope. For others trying to find their way through life's challenges, John Wayne Cleaver is an inspiration. Real life readers may not be able to go out and hunt supernatural demons, but sometimes hunting--and dominating--their own demons is enough.

I highly recommend this series.

Storymaker Conference - Report 1: How to Scare People

I came back last evening after an incredible three days. I got to meet some wonderful people and learn skads about writing. I attended bootcamp where four writers met with a published author (though one of the bootcampers was published). Our drill sargeant was Melanie Jacobson, author of the The List, and we spent six hours together reading and critiquing 15 pages from each of our WIPS. Learned SO much.

In this blog I'm going to report on the class that Dan Wells taught on how to scare people. Dan is the author of I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster (which tied with Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings for the Whitney Awards Novel of the Year last night), and I Don't Want to Kill You.

His class was titled "There's a Bomb Under the Table: How to Write Thrills, Chills, and Suspense".  He broke down the process of how to scare people (in 5 easy steps). Dan only had 50 minutes, and he used movies to make his point, some of which he showed excerpts of. I don't write horror, but I do have suspense in my books, so it's important for me to understand how to make it work for my readers.

Establish normal and then break it.
He had a couple of examples for this one. One was a scene with Drew Barrymore in Scream where she gets a phone call that starts out seeming very normal ... until she realizes the caller is watching her from somewhere. Suddenly the norm is broken and it's a shock. Dan showed a clip of the George C. Scott movie The Changeling.

The familiar becomes unfamiliar.
He reviewed that dock scene from the movie Jaws, where the two guys throw out the Sunday roast as bait for the shark and one is very nearly killed. Personally, that was one of the scariest scenes in the movie for me. Dan said that the story is so well set up because everything acts normally ... until the floating dock turns around and heads back toward the man in the water. Freak out!

Delay the other shoe.
He showed the clip from Jaws where Brody is stressing because he knows there's a shark out there but the mayor won't close the beaches. We're given several scenes where people are doing just what people do at the beach (normal) but Brody's also seeing potential dangers everywhere. As viewers we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. We keep thinking, 'this time it'll happen' but it doesn't. And when it does ...

Pushing fear buttons.
Dan's example for this one was from Silence of the Lambs. It's almost to the end of the film, when Jodi Foster has gone into the building where the kidnap victim is trapped. One of the brilliant techniques in this scene is how the viewer is shown things people are scared of. We have the character's obvious fear--let's be real here; if it scares an armed FBI agent it's going to scare me--then we have a room full of scary, creepy things (closed doors, bathtubs full of icky stuff, a screaming victim, etc. and then the lights go out and the viewer then gets to watch the murderer watch the character without her knowing it. *shivers*

Show the monster when the time is right.
Unfortunately we ran out of time on this one and didn't get to see the last video clip. From my personal experience, I would suggest in this one to make sure the monster isn't ridiculous. I remember watching a movie on TV with gargoyles. They did a decent job creeping me out in the beginning ... until I actually saw the monsters (gargoyles). They were so ridiculous I laughed. Not good.

If you're interested, I'm providing the link to the first of a five-part training Dan did on Story Structure at LTUE in 2010. Very informative.

Blogging Challenge R(eview)

I recently finished a book that's been on my to-read list for some time. I've heard from numerous people that it's supposed to be a compelling read.

But ... wow. Serious wow.

The book is I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells. If you're interested, Robin Weeks talks about the book on her blog here where she discusses building better villains.

The protagonist is John Wayne Cleaver, a 15-year-old sociopath. His mother and aunt own a mortuary where John helps out. He thinks a lot about death and is fascinated by serial killers, recognizing within himself the tendancies that could someday turn him into one. So he establishes strict rules (like no stalking). John doesn't connect with people emotionally, and he's a smart kid. He knows he's different from 'normal' people, and he makes an effort to try and not seem quite so weird.

But when a real monster starts killing people in his town, John has to let loose his own monster so he can stop it. Unfortunately, without his rules to keep his monster in check, John could be more dangerous than the killer.

One of the most frequent comments I'd heard about this book is about the fine job Dan Wells does making John a sympathetic character. But really, you have to read the book to see just how well he does it.

I'll be honest. It was a hard read for me and creeped me out. I haven't been into the horror genre, since I gave up Stephen King (it's difficult to be a parent when you're afraid to walk down a dark hallway). As I was reading this book, I found myself saying over and over again, "No, John. Don't. No."

I really felt for this kid! I like John. A lot.

I've already purchased the other two books in the series, Mr. Monster and I Don't Want to Kill You. I've read reviews that say these other books are even better than this first one.

I definitely recommend it.

If you can handle it.

Shhh ... I'm taking an emotional break before I begin the second book.

Blogging Challenge M(oving Ahead)

I've been on an editing treadmill. One where I keep thinking I'm close to completing WIP #1, yet something comes up that throws it all back to the beginning again. Some of it is studying the craft and going back to implement what I've learned. Some of it is feedback from critiques.

The above is a colored map I did back in February, when I was planning to completely revamp it. But then as I'd faced the project at my computer, I'd decided not to shift the format of my 3-part ms, which made the mapping unnecessary. All those nifty post-it notes have been on that whiteboard for over two months, while I've worked on show not tell, dialogue tags and dialogue beats.

Natalie Palmer, who is on new baby hiatus, kindly did a critique for me. It's funny because my hubby tends to be very protective of my writing, so I don't always read him feedback I receive. It makes him mad. He likes my story just the way it is. But, no offense, he doesn't have particularly discerning tastes either--he's very easy to please. I did read Natalie's review to him, and he kept nodding his head and muttering, "Yes. Yes." for most of it. So hubby's made a mental leap in my behalf and is willing to recognize ways I can make it better.

As I considered Natalie's observations, I realized that the best way to remedy some of them would be to do shifting around of the story. So I'm back to my story map and glad I hadn't gotten around to putting all those little post-its in a folder as I'd intended.

I've been on vacation and/or sick for two weeks. I've managed to read four books (The Mage's Daughter, Princess of the Sword, Starship Troopers, and I Am Not a Serial Killer) and I've started another (City of Fallen Angels). I'm feeling rejuvenated (kinda--if I can throw off the vestiges of this dang cold and quit hacking up my lungs every morning) and ready to move ahead and get back to work. Funny what a difference a few days can make.

I really appreciate all the supportive and encouraging comments from everyone when I was having my pity party the other day. I'll close this post with a quote from my friend Robin Weeks:

Remember the definition of a published author:

One who doesn't give up.