Just Finished…Letters from the Ledge

“Long time, no read, eh?”

That sounds about right 🙂 I’ve spent the free time I’ve had in the last few months pushing through completing The Rainbow Maker’s Tale to get the ARC version completed. I’m currently doing the final edits, small re-writes in scenes which aren’t quite working, before the final proof reads get done and it goes for release. This has been a long time coming – over a year on from the intended release date. I think last year I spent more time reading, blogging and marketing, instead of writing, which is really what you need to do if you want to finish a book 😉 At the start of this year I decided 2013 would be about the writing – and so far, I’ve stuck to that promise reasonably well.

I’ve not read a huge amount so far this year, mainly when I was on holiday and so allowed myself some ‘free’ time. I’ve been away again, and with some long journeys and a bit of relaxation time, I found some time to read. And, so here’s my first review in a l-o-n-g time 🙂

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Still reeling from the suicide of his best friend Tess, seventeen-year old Brendan struggles to overcome addiction and identity issues. Walking the ledge outside his Manhattan apartment has become its own sort of drug, as he stands night after night with his arms outstretched, ready to fly away. Sarah can see him from her window, and begins journaling about a boy on a ledge. Paige and Nate, a young couple in another building, can see both teens from their fire escape. None of them know the others are watching, but a strong desire for freedom resides in each of them, and as their lives begin to intertwine, that desire will be tested. Anyone can jump, but not everyone can fly… Sharp, humorous, and deeply layered, this chronicle of a suicidal teen’s survival explores the reality of addiction and other tough issues, but does so easily, through the use of multiple perspectives, intelligent dialogue and authentic characters. Equal parts romance, contemporary drama, and coming of age, this highly engaging and intensely beautiful novel challenges our cultural perceptions in the battle for balance.

Rating: 4*

This was an unexpectedly enjoyable read. I have to admit that the blurb didn’t really bowl me over, and so this book has wallowed on my kindle for a fair while. I just began reading it on a whim, deciding to clear off some of the oldest books on my TBR list…I was quickly sucked in.

I really enjoyed the multiple perspectives that the third-person narrator moves through. It delivers the story in a nicely balanced way, drawing together the different elements. Each was well defined, and noticeably different from the others, and so made them realistic. I also found the dialogue pace-y and well-written.

The plot is not as ‘heavy’ as the blurb suggested to me – yes, it covers some difficult areas, like drugs/drink, self-harm, violence and grief – however, each difficult element was integrated with the characters in believable ways. The examination of relationships: parental, friends, boyf/girlf and business were all intricately woven between the various character perspectives and action of the book.

Overall, I enjoyed it, found it well-written and quick to read, when I sat down with it (reading the last half in a couple of days). NB. Given some of the subject matter, I would recommend for ages 16 and up.

Link

The first Goodreads review

An exciting day – the first review of the ARC version of The Rainbow Maker’s Tale has been posted today at Goodreads, and I’m very happy 🙂

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/270942215

More Covers…

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Following on from a previous post about covers and gender, I had another look at some of mine. I suppose the main ‘target audience’ for Hope’s Daughter is female, young adult, and so the cover was geared towards my taste and ideas, and more than likely a more ‘feminine’ style. (Any blokes who can offer insight as to whether it is girly or not, in their opinion, would be appreciated).

I don’t think it’s overly ‘girly’ – but the focus on the Earth and female eye are quite pretty, and the plain white background (in my head reminiscent of the white world she lives in) possibly leans away from darker, masculine elements you tend to find in covers elsewhere. One thing I did want to do in designing the cover was down-play the sci-fi setting, as it is not a sci-fi book in the traditional genre sense, just set in space.

The Rainbow Maker’s Tale, although told from a male perspective, is primarily aimed at the same audience. The cover is a direct reflection of the first – to reinforce that it is a different side to the same story/timeframe – is this girly? Or are both books on the borderline, gender-neutral? I’m feeling all confused, tbh.

As a bit of an experiment, I played around with the covers – not major changes as I didn’t want it to take too much time. But, I started with the idea that Balik’s story comes first, and how it might be different…any thoughts?

RMT - Male Test

Songs to Live By

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We all have them: songs from real life, songs from films… They stay with us for a long time and often the significance of them doesn’t change. But, do you use them much for books, either in writing them or reading them?

I’ve noticed more and more writers revealing their ‘playlists’ from when they were writing certain books and although I use them a little, wasn’t sure it was worth bothering people with a snapshot into my cheesy music collection to show how the Greatest Hits of Haddaway has inspired my creative endeavours.

Not that it’s something I tend to dwell on, but I know quite a lot of people who have thought about what they might have played at their funeral. I’m sincerely hoping that my pal who wanted Chris Rea ‘Road to Hell’ was joking – I’m 99% sure they were.

Top Ten Funeral Songs

I’m sure most of you could guess that ‘My Way’ would be on the top ten list – although I wonder if that’s how people really think they’ve done it, or more that it presents what they would like people to take away about them…? Is it just a rumour that Frank Sinatra had ‘My Way’ played at his funeral? For him, it would make sense, just like ‘Over the Rainbow’ being sung at Judy Garland’s. In any case, I don’t see many people looking to have ‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua as their swan song, no matter how much pink they’ve worn or plastic they’ve had put into themselves.

I have been to a funerals where Always Look on the Bright Side of Life and Don’t Worry, Be Happy, have been the last tunes played – it definitely worked for those lovely individuals and getting people to smile, at your funeral, is surely an achievement.

There are some beautiful, moving songs that although I love them, I probably would not want to have featured as ‘my last request’ (even if God is a DJ). So, although I’m not fully decided, I kind of lean towards the mellow, with a slightly upbeat message.

I suppose it is a bit ‘My Way-ish’ when you look at the lyrics – but in my head it works.

Anyway – let’s move away from the depressing stuff! Book playlists – do they interest you? Do you do them for yourself, to inspire you to write, or even for books you’ve read? I occasionally take part in ‘Song on Sunday’ meme from Confessions of a Bookaholic blog and find that certain songs that are around at the time I’m reading remind me of characters or the book itself. You can take a look at some of my old ones and see if you agree.

For myself, I never used to make playlists, although I had certain music pieces that I would listen to and – a bit like a movie trailer – would see the whole book plot played out from start to end. The plot for Hope’s Daughter played out to this piece, The Final Fight, taken from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Radio Sunnydale album.

I’m sure you can guess that the ‘movie trailer’ had lots of exciting chase sequences, falling off cliffs and stolen glances, in my head at least. After opening on the space station and external images of Earth, the images moved on, building through some nice boy-girl stuff with Cassie and Balik (for about the first minute). Then the secrets start to come out, questions linger until with a sudden change, you’re into the fast-paced cliff-dropping, life-and-death, chase/fight stuff. If I was a real director, and didn’t have to rely on making book trailers with stock footage, this is what Hope’s Daughter would actually look like on You Tube. *wishful sigh* I don’t see me getting props, budget, actors and costumes for that do you? Unless I raid some kind of sci-fi convention, and I’m not they’d be up for it, if it wasn’t canon. Oh well – at least the music helped me write the book and visualise the overall plot.

Have things changed? They have a little, I suppose. I find that I do now consciously build more of a playlist when I’m in the early planning stages of the books – either to get my head into a world of images and emotions generated by the songs, or the characters, if the songs remind me of them and their experiences. I can then dip back into them – not necessarily as I’m writing, but when I get stuck – to remind myself of where we’re supposed to be going. I’m easily distracted, what can I say? Ooh look – a puppy!

In the future I might post the playlists on here to go with the books as they come out – it will be interesting to see whether people agree with me, or simply question my terrible, albeit random, music choices 🙂

All Author Blog Blitz

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Today is the blog blitz, organised by author Y. Correa, mod of the Indie Author Support Group on Goodreads – you can find out more about the group and Y here. For my piece on the blitz I’m featuring young adult writer and excellent all-round writing buddy – Tony Talbot! You may have seen my review of his latest book Eight Mile Island earlier this year. Tony is a regular blogger on my other blog Aside from Writing, and I’m excited to have him here as my guest today!

PS. If you’d like to see my feature, author Stephanie Hurt is hosting me at her blog here.

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Mary Tanaka is an all American Girl until the attack on Pearl Harbor makes her something terrible: Japanese. And when the US Government decides all the Japanese within a hundred miles of the west coast should be moved inland to prison camps, she has no choice but to go.

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Gimme 10 – Mini-Interview

Please answer each question in 10 words or less – that’s what makes it tough but fun!

Where do you find your inspiration? My wife and my dreams

What is your favourite aspect of American Girl? The research into Japanese culture was a lot of fun

Who is your favourite character from American Girl and why? Ganaha-san; so dignified and reserved, and so tragic.

What do you love about most about writing? Creating whole worlds and people from nothing.

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About the Author: Tony Talbot was born in the 1970s and started writing in 2008 after a dream he had and couldn’t shake. American Girl was his third book, and he’s currently editing his next book and planning the book after, tentatively called, ‘Dome’.

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Want to know more? Check out the links!

Website: http://www.tony-talbot.co.uk

Twitter: @authortony

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonytalbotwriter

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/author/tony-talbot

Cover Thoughts

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I’ve just come across this interesting article from the Huffington Post, about gender bias on book covers. If I’m honest, it was probably only something I noticed on the more obvious books like romance novels and chick-lit, rather than every book I pick up. Take a look at the article and see what you think of their cover re-dos of some famous books.

Huffington Post – Gender-Biased Covers

For traditional books, I could see this making sense – do you remember when the Harry Potter books launched the ‘adult’ covers (around book five), for those people who didn’t want to be seen reading a child’s book? I have a oddly mixed collection of HP, because I just went for the covers I liked the look of best.

Maybe it is a reflection of the story content, that I tend to have the ‘adult’ covers for the later books, when everything got a lot darker and difficult. In contrast with the brightly coloured early covers of the first few books, where the main focus was the excitement of this new magic world Harry fell into. Perhaps the beauty of that series is that you read some parts as a kidult and others as an adult…?

But, that was before the advent of the e-reader – I could be reading anything, feminine cover or not, inside my little black-cased Kindle these days. Will this make a difference in the future? Will covers continue to matter, or do they mean less now that you can sample the chapters, and judge a book by that, rather than its cover?

It gets you thinking about your own book covers then – are they feminine, masculine or neither? It’s difficult to tell sometimes – especially if you are perhaps writing from a specific character point of view that you feel will appeal more to one group of readers than another, you perhaps ‘angle’ in that direction.

Any thoughts?

Just Finished…Eight Mile Island by Tony Talbot

Just Finished…Insurgent

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Hmmm…

I’ve just finished Insurgent and ‘Hmmmm…’ is the overwhelming thought in my head. There is something with this series I just don’t feel, and I think it’s because I find Tris difficult. There’s also the ‘faction thing’ for the people within the system: I find it hard to believe that they do not question a system that would seem to want you to be a particular way, but then encourages divergence by allowing the movement of people between the factions (nature / nurture…If they want pure, faction-matched people, why would the system allow movement…?) The conclusion of the book did go some way towards alleviating my issues there, in that it gives you an answer to the ‘why’; but it doesn’t explain why people inside the system should not see it as a flaw in their faction system to allow movement from one to another.

I’m not a Tris fan – I find her reactions to things too variable; she veers from being ultra-logical and self-aware to being obtuse and reactionary. Even with her ‘divergent’ brain I find it difficult to believe in someone so wildly erratic. It’s almost as though she switches from one faction stereotype to another, without a natural blending of the various faction natures coming together. Maybe I’m wrong and she’s like this exactly because of how she’s been raised and so she cannot blend the various elements together, just use one at a time…if that’s the case, there’s some logic to that, but I find it difficult to believe as a true reflection of human nature.

There are characters I like in this series: I like the Dauntless banter and passion (with people like Uriah) and I’m OK with Four; Christina I also like, just as I did in Divergent. And the books are well-written, so that you get a feel for the environment…but I find I’m just mildly ambivalent with the book as a whole.

Overall 3.5* – I found this book more interesting that the first – although it is reasonably long and I could walk away from reading it, so I know I wasn’t gripped. Seeing more of the other factions was good – Divergent was too much Dauntless training for me, with not much of interest until the end of the book. But Tris is not my cup of tea and I find that because I don’t relate to her, I empathise less.

Am I missing something with this series??

Just Finished…Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

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Fab, fab…fab, fab, fab!

When I read Cinder last year, I really liked the way Meyer blended the sci-fi / futuristic elements of the story within a loose framework of the original fairy tale – rather than sticking too rigidly to it and writing a simplistic re-hash. Looking back now, I think I preferred the second half of Cinder to the first, which is perhaps why I liked book 2 better than the first overall.

I have to say that the cover didn’t grab me in the same way that Cinder did – the cyborg foot in the slipper was what drew me to reading Cinder in the first place – to be honest, if this had been book 1 I’d probably have skipped over this one, as it doesn’t have the same intriguing originality of the Cinder cover. That said – even after the first couple of chapters, I had a feeling this was actually going to be better!

Scarlet is a great character, and splitting the novel between her and Cinder provided a nice variation and created a good pace throughout – I found it difficult to put this down and was always wondering where it was going to go next. Scarlet’s story – once she meets Wolf, street fighter and ex-Wolf gang member – is intriguing; as a character she’s pretty feisty and stubborn, which makes for interesting reading and contrasts Cinder’s gentler personality.

The interplay between Scarlet and Wolf is good – always wondering how much you can trust him and how the ‘Red Riding Hood’ fairy tale piece would come into play. Just like Cinder, the fairytale elements are subtly done and when you pick them out, you may find yourself smiling at them like I did – I loved the chase through the wooden forest – visually you could see it making a great scene in a film of the book.

I think the wider story, beyond the fairytale, comes into play more in this book. A lot of the groundwork from Cinder is now developing into a very full and interesting world. The escalation of the situation with Luna and also the glimpses of their society you get now indicate a much wider piece that is sure to come into play next time..

So…why does it get a 5* review? Well, I struggled to put the book down every time I had to; I would have picked up book 3 as soon I finished this one if I could! And I’m still thinking about the characters now and wondering where everything is going to go next….I can’t believe we have to wait until 2014 to find out!

Just Finished…On a Foreign Field