Friday, December 31, 2010

THE PAST FORWARD $3.00 pdf book

Read, enjoy, and let me know what you think. And it's only $3.00!!! My head is killing me tonight so I'm posting this a little early. This is my second pdf book. THE PAST FORWARD




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CHOCOLATE DRAGON

Here's a few quick star reviews of some stuff I read or watched in 2010. I'm going to try and get all up to date on my reviews in Jan so I can start from new in the new year.You can also find these at my GoodReads and LibraryThing accounts. I'm going to start posting reviews here and both of those places until I'm all caught up.

THE CHOCOLATE WAR
audio
2 out of 5 stars

PIRATE RADIO
dvd
3 out of 5 stars

BATMAN: DARK VICTORY
graphic novel
4 out of 5 stars

BATMAN: FALSE FACES
graphic novel
2 out of 5 stars

HULK: RED HULK
graphic novel
2 out of 5 stars

JLA: SALVATION RUN
graphic novel
3 out of 5 stars

THE AVENGERS: POWERLOSS
graphic novel
3 out of 5 stars

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
dvd
3 out of 5 stars
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Saturday, December 25, 2010

FALL FOR ANYTHING

By Courtney Summers
St. Martin's Griffin
This book puts the whys? of death into your face like a punch for an answer. With each book Courtney Summers offers up to her readers characters who with every mouthful of air are part of what we all are as human beings. These are not cookie cutter characters for a writer’s goal but characters of living life through a story.
I love the harshness, the reality, the drinking of tears she shows with bravery in all of her books; which have been better with each one. Starting with CRACKED UP TO BE. Then SOME GIRLS ARE. And now FALL FOR ANYTHING.

Fall For Anything explores suicide, death, selfish grief, artistic shortsightedness, and the road of answering what truth can be found in the thoughts of someone after they have lost someone important from their life? These are not things which are made up of one superior answer or one way of thinking.

This writer can write pain as if she was holding you down and holding a scalpel to script the words into memories of events from your own life. Like with Some Girls Are, Fall For Anything connected with me not through pages of things that are similar to things that happen in my life but from little moments, scenes even that existed within the book as a sum total.

I believe it sometimes can be more powerful within a book when you are reading and a sentence or a scene rips you back to you life for a little while. You pause. You remember. You may even cry but then you continue with the story now invested in a way that maybe even the writer did not expect.

Even though I had a friend who committed suicide who was family to me it was the character of Milo who I identified with in larger ways in this book for reasons I will not get into for this review but that is the power of books. A great writer creates great characters who live their lives within a story that can make us smile, talk to a friend, tear, or need to take a break in proceedings to go watch something really stupid like Two And A Half Men. But you have to love books for that because they create that connect that makes you want to rush back to them as soon as you can.

The short cast list gives us time to really get into the lives of each character as time unfolds. Eddie stands in the after time of her father’s suicide with a mother who seems to have almost died in her own way, a pushy friend of her mother’s always getting into her face, a best friend who have information she wants, and a stranger linked to parts of her father’s life she didn’t know about.

I think in the end Eddie just wants to scream to her father, “Why did you have to do this now!? I’m not ready for something like this now!” But that is how life strips us of our days sometimes, by giving us things that we are not ready for but nonetheless faced with.

4 out of 5 Stars

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Friday, December 17, 2010

SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND: Tin Universe Story #5, Free Cut Chapter

This is the second of my FREE pdf cut chapters. Check it out and share with your friends. It's another chapter I removed from THE PAST FORWARD but still liked. And remember THE PAST FORWARD comes out on the 30th: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/school-for-the-blind/14313490


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Thursday, December 2, 2010

DHAKA: Tin Universe Story#4, Free Cut Chapter

This is my new FREE pdf cut chapter. Check it out and share with your friends. It's a chapter I removed from THE PAST FORWARD but still liked. And remember THE PAST FORWARD comes out on the 30th: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/dhaka/13845881

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

THE PAST FORWARD


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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

ALAN, ORLANDO, AND TWO DAYS WITHOUT SLEEP

I attended ALAN with Mar yesterday. She had went the previous day with one of her sisters but I had writing that really needed to get cracked out and couldn't go with them. All of us would have liked to have attended the whole event but had to pick and choose days that fit into our lives. Though we were both there Mar went to the talks and got the autographs while I tried to get more writing done just outside the doors sitting on park benches.

Speaking of the park benches. I was sitting on the hard benches inside the convention hall, turned sideways with my legs crossed, writing and to one side of me was a lady typing on her laptop. I thought she looked familiar. I had a feeling it was Ellen Hopkins, writer of books such as CRANK, but wasn't sure. I also was too deep into a chapter to distract myself. I asked Mar later when we meet up for lunch but she didn't know for sure by my description but I just checked her website and it was her. I've never read any of her books but Mar has and I have heard of her a lot from other friends. Oh, and at the same time standing on the other side of me beside my bench was Tom Angleberger and I love his book THE STRANGE CASE OF ORIGAMI YODA. Funny how things like that happen. Mar had gotten an ARC of  his new book HORTON HALFPOTT signed for me earlier in the day so things started out good for me in the day.

It may have been because of the distraction of so many writers around me but I didn't notice until I opened files to start writing today but I finished my NANOWRIMO project yesterday. That was a nice check off of the book in a very busy writing month for me.

They were giving out boxes of books and Mar and her sister got tons signed. I got books signed by Tom Angleberger as I said above and also THE EARTH, MY BUTT, AND OTHER BIG ROUND THINGS by Carolyn Mackler but I also picked up books to read such as CRUEL SUMMER by Alyson Noel, HEREVILLE by Barry Deutsch, and THE LOOKING GLASS WARS(which people have been telling me to read for a long time) by Frank Beddor.

Wish to write more but need to get back to writing.


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