Book Review, Part One: Hate List, by Jennifer Brown

I just finished reading a YA book,  Hate List, by Jennifer Brown. It's one of those books that you can't put down without snarling at whoever or whatever interrupted your reading.

Five months ago, sixteen year old Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, walks into the high school cafeteria and opens fire on the students. When she tries to stop him, he shoots her in the thigh and then turns the gun on himself. In flinging herself at him, she unknowingly saves the life of one of the girls who has been bullying her throughout high school. The final toll of the shooting: six students dead, one teacher dead, and several students wounded.

Valerie and Nick have several things in common: both come from dysfunctional families, both are bullied, both feel unloved and unwanted by their parents, and totally unaccepted by the kids in school. It is almost predestined that they will end up in a commited relationship. 

One day, in a joking way, Valerie suggests they write up a "Hate List", putting on it every kid who has ever laughed at them or made fun of them, as well as teachers who seem to dislike them as much as  the other students. When Nick takes up with an older boy, his whole personality begins to change, and the end result is that all those attacked that day are on the Hate List.

Valerie is painted with the same brush as Nick. The parents of the dead kids, in fact, most of the adults in town, believe she is as much responsible for thetragedy as Nick. This goes from bad to worse when even the police, her few friends and their families, and both her parents, believe the same thing...especially after they find both the Hate List, and emails back and forth from Valerie and Nick attesting to how much they hate these people.

Now Valerie must deal with overcoming her feelings of guilt, anger, hurt, sadness, and confusion, and amid this, try to decide whether or not she should go back to school in the fall and try to graduate with her class, or move away and attempt to start over. In the midst of her parents' constant fighting, of finding out her father is having an affair,  of trying to reconcile her image of Nick with what is, seemingly, the "real" Nick, and of constant police harrassment, she decides to stay in school.

She gets no comfort or support from either parent, and in fact, learns that her father does believe she had a part in the shooting and will never forgive her. However, she finds what she needs to go on with life from  her psychologist, Dr. Heiler. Through her much needed therapy sessions, she learns to accept reality as it is. She begins to analyze what her role in the shooting really is, and she develops the courage, determination, and self-confidence to face both her friends, and those she put on the Hate List.

This is already a long post, so I'm going to save my comments about this book for next week.

Until next time,
That's a wrap.

Some of the Best Websites for Writers

Last year I posted some of the 101 Best Websites for Writers, chosen by the Writers Digest Magazine. Several people thought this was a good idea since they didn't take the magazine. So I'm doing it again, and hope some of these sites prove to be useful and of value to you.

Easy Street Prompts:
easystreetprompts.blogspot.com
This blog offers both photo and video prompts to get your muse working overtime.

The Story Starter:
thestorystarter.com
This is a database that can generate over 3 billion opening lines. See what kind of story your imagination can create with a few of these openers.

Anne R. Allen's Blog...With Ruth Harris:
annerallen.blogspot.com
This is a great blog for all kinds of writing advice and information. I took a workshop with Anne a couple of years ago, and she is fantastic. I highly recommend this blog in particular.

Grammar Bytes!:
chompchomp.com
Sometimes we all get confused about certain bits of grammar, and this is a site where you can learn and have fun at the same time. There is a lot of advice and even exercises for you to do. "It's writing instruction with Spunk!"

InkyGirl.com:
inkygirl.com
A good site for those of us who write for children and young adults. Author Debbie Ridpath Ohi is humorous, inspirational, and has lots of writing tips, author interviews, and more.

Jane Friedman:
janefriedman.com
Her posts are tagged "Writing, reading, and publishing in the digital age." Her website and social media network are great examples of "platform building" for those who are interested.

The Kill Zone:
killzoneauthors.blogspot.com
These are 11 mystery and thriller authors who reach out to fellow writers of suspense, but their writing tips and advice often cross into other genres.

Plot Whisperer for Writers and Readers:
plotwhisperer.blogspot.com
Do you ever get tied up in your plot, and can't visualize just how to get from here to there? Does your plot ever start taking off on its own, and wind up in the outer sphere somewhere? Writing Instructor Martha Alderson is just the person to help you solve some of your biggest plot problems.

The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment:
theqqqe.blogspot.com
Writing a query? Frustrated? Wondering what in the world do agents and publishers really want in a query? This is just the spot for you! It's a hilarious blog aimed at helping writers avoid the same mistakes that author Matthew McNish has made on his publication journey ( still in progress). He posts and critiques real queries, and asks his blog followers to chime in with what they think.

Preditors and Editors:
pred-ed.com
I post this one all the time, because I think it is invaluable. As writers, no matter whether we are experienced, already published, newly published, or new writers, we can all be taken in by the many scams in the publishing industry. This is THE site to go to for information to avoid the many fraudulent or questionable publishing organizations and businesses.

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If you are in the ongoing quest for an agent, here are two of the best places to go for agent information:

Agent Query:
agentquery.com
Anyone looking for an agent had better know about this website! It is a free database of more than 900 literary agents and what they are currently seeking. However, if you are serious about getting an agent, it will be even MORE beneficial to you to pay the $40 per year membership. If you are a paid member, you can get a world of knowledge about agents that the free database won't give you: charts concerning the % of queries they get, reject, ask for partials, for full manuscripts, and how many they accept; you get printouts of all the agents seeking your genre, with a lot of information that doesn't come free; and even more. I highly recommend this site, AND the membership fee if you are really going for an agent.


Pub Rants:
pubrants.blogspot.com
This blog is run by Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agents, and offers her expert advice ranging from the basics such as submission protocol, to the more complicated process of figuring out contract negotiations.

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That's it for now. Next week I'll post some more of these great websites.

Until next time,
That's a wrap.

The Demise of One Completed Novel

When I first started writing my historical novel, I intended concentrating on the machinations of the Underground Railroad and how it operated before and during the Civil War. The working title when I first began was "Escape On The Train Without Tracks." I thought it was a catchy title.

I began this story as the 10 A and 10B assignment for my first course at the Institute of Children's Literature. At first, I just started writing what I thought I knew, and what I thought I wanted to write. My instructor was wonderful, loved the story, but told me I needed to do more research.

After I graduated, I took the first of two Advanced Novel Classes, and in the first one, began a new novel, and continued researching the Underground Railroad. My second novel course again concentrated on this one, but my instructor and I didn't see eye to eye on many things. She wanted me to develop a relationship between Ben, my 14 year old protagonist, and his father and older brothers to show why he (Ben) was so intent upon freeing his slave friends. Unfortunately, she wanted this relationship to take up the first five chapters of the novel. Five chapters? Before I ever got to the 'real' story, of the escape from the plantation and the hazardous journey to find freedom? Agents and editors would never know what the real story was about, and I would get nothing but rejections.

My instructor and I went round and round about almost everything I wrote. She corrected me on several things that, when I went back to my research, I found were wrong. That is, she was wrong, and my research was correct. It was not...shall we say, diplomatic? to tell her this, so I quietly accepted her corrections and criticism, and went about doing my own thing. Which was to write the way my research dictated. Still, the story was not going well. I was unhappy.

After nine months, I graduated from my second novel class. It was the longest nine months of my life...even longer than my pregnancies! We parted on relatively good terms, and I know she is a good instructor, but we were definitely not a good mix. The novel was finished. I was still unhappy.

Then came one of the worst moments in my writing life: reading through that novel, and knowing this was NOT the story I wanted or intended to write. There was only one thing to do: scratch nine months of hard work, and start over from the beginning. It was the demise of Escape on The Train Without Tracks.

More about my journey later...

Until next time,
That's a wrap.

News of The Day

Yes, I've been gone a little more than three months with no new posts, and no indication of why not.

I'm sorry, and I do apologize. Life got in the way...again...and I just wasn't up to posting, but that's not a good enough excuse to not at least tell everyone I was taking a short leave. But I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, and I'm back with good news for a change.

My historical novel, The Freedom Thief, is going to be published by MuseItUp Publishing! I am thrilled and excited! It will be my debut novel, and hopefully, only the first of several. It is tentatively scheduled for release in November of this year.

It has been a long journey. Six years ago, I decided I wanted to write a novel about the Underground Railroad, and how it worked to help escaping slaves before and during the Civil War. For a solid year, I worked on nothing but research. I read the journals and diaries of slaves, both those who had successfully escaped before the War, and those who were released from slavery after the War. I read newspaper articles about the Underground Railroad, stories and novels about that organization, how it came about, how it operated, and who the primary people involved were. I read history books and searched websites, particularly historical ones, for all the information I could find on Kentucky: plantations, slave quarters, clothing, weather, what the towns looked like, how the buildings were built...anything even slightly associated with living on a plantation in pre-Civil War Kentucky, or in or near a small town, I searched for and read until my eyes were crossed. I discovered that many many slaves were ill-treated, beaten, women and female children raped, families separated by buying and selling, inhumane punishment for any slave caught trying to escape or even just breaking a rule. I also found that many slave owners were kind and caring of the slaves, treated them well, gave them proper housing and clothing, and even took care of them medically. This didn't prevent them from trying to escape, either just because they wanted their freedom, or because they wanted to find husbands, wives, and children from whom they had been separated.

Sometime during the second year, my husband and I took a barge trip ( yes, on a real barge) down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. We visited historical sites, Civil War battlegrounds, historically preserved "safe houses" where escaped slaves lived until transportation could be provided to get them to the Ohio River and freedom. We looked at the historical means of that transportation: farm wagons with false bottoms, "death" coaches where slaves crawled into coffins, no matter how terrified they were of them, and even some of the preserved large boxes that sometimes carried a slave instead of a load of canned goods. It was a wonderfully fulfilling vacation for us, and we both learned a lot about our history.

It was then I started to write. And as happens so many times, my first draft has almost no relation to the story that is going to be published. More about that at a later time!

Until next time,
That's a wrap.

The Electronic Age vs Human Interaction

I recently learned of my youngest granddaughter's engagement. Now, ordinarily, this would be a momentous occasion, possibly even having the word of said engagement spread by way of an engagement party. Uh, well, no. Not in this case. Oh, not that my gradddaughter isn't fond of parties, she loves them... it's just that...well, it's like this: she announced her engagement to her family, including her grandparents, and to all her friends, and to the world at large by way of FaceBook.

I have to admit I was hurt. So was Grandpa. Probably the rest of the family, as well. But it got me to thinking: FaceBook, Twitter, all the other social media websites that I don't know about and sincerely hope I never have to, cell phones and texting, iPods, iPads, Droids, Smart Phones, iPhones...the whole world of electronics that we have today has taken over our lives, and with that, has pretty much destroyed what was once known as Human Interaction.

When was the last time you sent a long letter by regular mail? You know, the kind where you handwrite on a piece of paper known as "stationery", put it into an enclosure known as an envelope, put a little square thing called a stamp on it, and drove to a building called a "post office" to mail it? Be honest, now, how long has that been?

When was the last time you picked up a telephone and actually dialed a number and talked to a friend or family member? When was the last time that same phone rang, and a human voice was on the other end, rather than a computerized robot?

Have you looked at the so-called "handwriting" of your kids lately? Can you honestly read it? I sincerely doubt it. "Handwriting" as such long ago faded out of the educational environment, and children were pretty much on their own to learn cursive writing. Today, even kindergartners have computers, Kindles, and electronic calculators, so who has to hand write anything? It's the same with communication skills. Can your kids, especially your teenagers, carry on a conversation without throwing in a bunch of text words or using so much slang ( hopefully without the swear words) that you really can't understand or follow what they are saying?

In today's world, no one seems to have the time for Human Interaction. If you can't order it from Amazon, text it on your cell phone, email it from your computer or iPod, or shout it to the world on FaceBook, you are lost. And it doesn't seem to matter if you are 16 or 60, the Electronic Age has captured you, trained or retrained your brain and all your thought processes, and interacting with a real human being on any level is beyond your level of expertise.

Did you ever stop to wonder what this world will be like in 2050? Human Interaction will be a thing of the past, a dinosaur from just another Ice Age,
 and if an engagement can be announced on FaceBook, I'd bet a marriage proposal will be, too.

Human Interaction is slowly dying. Oh, it may twitch a time or two, and try to come back to life, but the life blood is slowly but surely seeping out, and death is the only option left.

We send "cyberhugs" to our friends all the time. Do you suppose the time is coming when the only hugs and kisses between humans are those found in cyberspace?

Until next time,
That's a wrap.

...in so brave a world.

"And the world will still be imperfect, because men are imperfect. Good men will still be killed by bad, or sometimes by other good men, and there will still be pain and disease and famine, anger and hate. But if you work and care and are watchful, as we have tried to be for you, then in the long run the worse will never, ever, triumph over the better. And the gifts put into some men, that shine as brightly as Eirias the sword, shall light the dark corners of life for all the rest, in so brave a world."
                                                                                   Susan Cooper, SILVER

....The above passage was sent to me last summer by a friend who knew what a traumatic few months my family had been going through. She knew that we all felt that there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I put it on my bulletin board, and reread it many times over the last few months. It just seemed appropriate to include it here, today....

I woke up this morning with tears in my eyes and wondered why. Then I remembered the horrific events of yesterday, and knew why I cried in my sleep. All Americans cried yesterday, and most are still crying today as more and more of the details of the slaughter of twenty innocent children and six adults come to light.

I'm a teacher. I've been a teacher for most of my life, teaching in a variety of situations: horseback riding, painting, Sociology and Statistics, and the History of Musical Theatre. Yet today I ask myself, if I were a teacher at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, would I have been one of those heros, one of the teachers who gave their lives to save their students? I can only hope I would have been that brave.

How are you feeling today? Me...I've been pacing, I can't focus on doing anything, like beginning my holiday baking that I promised myself I would start today. I feel angry, I want to cry...and I do cry for no reason, but yet, I know there is a reason. I just can't put it into words that do the emotion justice. Anger, sorrow, hatred of someone unknown to me, grief...what else can I feel? Where is the happiness, the wonderful spirit of the holidays, the joyousness of looking forward to Christmas? Well, it's gone. Vanished. And I don't know if it will come back any time soon. Is it just me? No, I don't think so.

Some will say, okay, you must put it behind you and move on. You can't spoil Christmas for everyone else. But you see, I am not the one spoiling Christmas. Nor do I think that "everyone else" feels differently from me. How do you put such a horrific crime behind you and move on, as though nothing tragic has happened? I don't think you do. I think this crime will linger in all our minds and memories for months, if not years, to come. I think every time we bring it to our consciousness, we will feel the same sorrow, the same anger, that we all feel now. I think we will still come to tears when we think of those twenty small children who were massacred, and the six adults who gave their lives trying to save the children and fight off the gunman.

We may not be able to put it behind us and move on in the way some would like us to. But we must learn how to heal ourselves, to find and to spread the light we each carry within us to light up all the dark corners of our world. In so doing, we will heal the wounds inside our hearts and minds that this madman and his vicious crime have put there. Do I speak only for myself? I don't think so. I hope it is not so.

Do what you have to do, whether it's to laugh or to cry, to pray in a quiet corner, to reach out and hug your wife or husband or children or other family members, to take a quiet walk all by yourself...or even, to sit down and write something. Anything. Do what you need to do for yourself, and in doing that, whatever it is, you will find that quiet light burning inside, and you will be one of those who will light up the shadows and conquer the dark. 

For we, too, live in so brave a world.

Until next time,
That's a wrap.

Getting to Know Your Characters

How do you know your characters? Do you think them out in your head before starting to write? Do you do a character profile, or a character analysis? Many writers do one or the other, and some do all of them.

That's all well and good, but what happens to these profiles and analyses when the characters take their lives into their own hands and decide to do or say something entirely out of character for them? I have many writer friends who often bemoan the fact that here they are, way past the middle of their story, and one or another of their characters are taking that story in an entirely different direction. My daughter, who writes for adults, says that in one of her mystery stories the villain popped up at very near to the end, and was someone she had not even thought of as being the murderer. That can make things very interesting! And very difficult to resolve in a timely and logical manner.

One of the things I've learned about characters is that they are most often far more complex than what I thought when I was developing them. After all, they come from my imagination, right? True, but that doesn't mean they are going to stay true to form...my form, that is. So how do I...and we...deal with those who decide to be independent and go their own way? Well, I have them sit down and write ME a letter, telling me all about themselves, what they want, how they plan to get it, and what they want ME to do with them. Sometimes those letters are short, sometimes they are 4 and 5 pages long, as was the case with my WIP's main character.

Below is an exerpt from one of the major antagonists in my paranormal novel. He wrote to me to explain why he was half human and half gargoyle. And why he might not be who I thought he was. The **** indicates other pasages I'm not quoting. See what you think.

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My Mama and Papa were married very young, and according to Cajun traditions. Mama was very beautiful and many Young Bloods were after her, but the marriage was arranged by both parents. She was not happy and finally, she slipped away to New Orleans. There she met an older man who enticed her into an affair. She became pregnant, and this man wanted her to marry him. She refused and fled back to her husband, had me, and they both pretended everything was fine.

 But, you see, nothing was fine. The man who impregnated my mother was only half human. His other half was a warlock. He was so angry he wanted to place a spell on my mother, but the warlocks of his coven refused to allow him. When I was born, his son, his hatred transferred to me, and he demanded to be allowed to put a spell on me. The warlocks told him he could do so, but with two demands: one, I couldn’t be made a warlock, and two, since this man was so angry, he would lose his life if he put any kind of spell on me. He hated me and my mama so much he was willing to die in order to put a spell on me. At the age of ten, I would become half human and half gargoyle. He put this spell on me, and died within minutes after.

 

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You see, I don’t know if I am evil or good. One of the gargoyles has more power over me than the others, and she…yes, there are female gargoyles…is a bad one. No matter how hard I resist, if she tells me to do something, I have no choice but to do it. There are times when I do something she has told me to do, and I know it is wrong but I have to do it, anyway. There are other times when she tells me something, and I don’t remember doing it. But I know I did.

 

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Now, when I help Gabriela find the killer, I will be helping myself by proving it wasn’t me.

 There is only one problem. I may be the killer.

 

He was not who I had thought him out to be, nor did he fit the profile I had made of him. I was totally surprised by this letter. Perhaps, if your characters wrote letters to you, you would also be surprised by what you find out about them. Anyway, it's an interesting, fun, and for me, informative way to find out who your characters really are.

 

Until next time,

That's a wrap.