Fourth Wish Contest and More

Busy, busy, busy!  The Fourth Wish is on Kindle now and I'm holding a contest.  Winner will have a choice between the paperback or the Kindle version if he/she lives in the US; otherwise the winner gets a Kindle version, assuming he/she has a Kindle reader.

Here are the contest rules: The contest starts today and ends Friday, September 9th at midnight -- California time. You can get a point each time you:

     1. Comment on this post
     2. Tweet the contest and this site
     3. Mention it on FaceBook
     4. Mention it on your blog
     5. And, if you are a new visitor, following this site.
You can do the first four as many times as you want. (Well, please don't comment four times in a row, because that could look strange, as in "Here I am again." "And again." "And again.")

Whenever you do #2, #3, or #4, just let me know so I can give you your point. At the end of the contest I'll use random.org. to choose the winner.

There is also another contest you should know about:
David Powers King, who has one super blog -- both funny and extremely informative -- is having a contest where the winner can get one of three books.  That's right, three! They all look good, and I certainly put my dibs in for the one I would like to get. Hurry over there now and get in on this. The rules for his contest are in the post you'll find when you click here  .

Last, but not least, I want to pass on the Helping Hands Award to two very special blogging friends: Michelle Fayard, who clued me in about how to run a contest, and J. L. Campbell, who clued me in on delivering the Kindle version if that's what the winner wants (and whose own ebook I won in a similar contest.)  Thanks, Michelle and Joy.  No obligation goes with it except to pass it to those you feel have helped you. Meanwhile, anyone reading this post should hop on over to their blogs which are always full of good reads and reviews and through-provoking articles.

     

That's it for today. 

This Was The Week That Was

This week I hardly did any writing for three reasons: 1) We had more company than we've had for awhile (and boy was I ready to see emmisaries from the outside world again!)  2) I was going through the procedure to set up my book, The Fourth Wish, on Kindle. 3) I was answering interview questions (via email) about writing The Fourth Wish (quite fun.)

I'll work backwards:
Interview: Diane Gross writes book reviews for Sacramento Book Examiner and will be reviewing my book later in the week (I'll tweet it when she does). The two part interview is prelude to the review, and you can read part one of her interview here.


Kindle: Ah, Kindle! Friends have been telling me I should put my book on Kindle, and so I decided to do just that. Originally, I self-published The Fourth Wish through CreateSpace, a very user-friendly publishing site with links to Amazon -- you can sell your book through both sites.  CreateSpace also offers incredible technical support. (I speak gratefully, since I am one who can be one click away from disaster whenever I try new ventures in technology.) They helped me immensely when setting up the original publication, and they helped me set it up for Kindle (charging a small fee to first format the book for Kindle). By phone, a technician walked me through the whole process of  downloading a free Kindle for Mac from Amazon, downloading my formatted book so I could read it to see if it looked good (it did), and then uploading it into my Kindle account. This was last Wednesday, and CreateSpace will connect the two links so that all reviews, etc. go to both sites, and both the paperback sites and the Kindle site are shown together, giving one a choice of which way to purchase. (The paperback sells for $14.95; the Kindle for $6.99.)


Visitors: I have been truly lucky, even before this week.  One of my classmates from art class has stopped by a couple of times with the teacher's demo pictures she saved for me. She also brought pasta, pasta sauce, and fresh basil. My wonderful neighbor has stopped by several times with books to read, a bag of  eats and treats, and a beautifully potted African Violet. (Visits I especially appreciate, as she has had surgery of her own to deal with.)

But last week's visits came all in a bunch: A writer friend stopped by with a beautiful potted succulent plant whose name I can't pronounce. Our nephew out from New York and stayed overnight. Friends from Colfax brought us lunch -- tortalini, salad, fresh bread, fruit salad, berry pie -- we are still marvelling over their kindness. (Especially kind for Sir Husband, as I am not cooking yet.) And yesterday my picture book writing group met at our house, since I also am not driving yet.

But I will be, and soon! I'll be doing all of it, and then my news will encompass more than the state of my foot. Until then, I look forward to visiting your blogs again and catching up on your news.

And please leave some recommendations for good reads.  I'm reading again.

The Best Laid Plans

I think I got over-ambitions with my recovering foot.  I did not accomplish everything on my list in my last post as soon as I meant to. Over about three days, I did get those three poems sent out, and I rewrote a short story for a fiction contest and entered it. I did visit websites, etc. for agents I want to send my MG mystery to, and made my list.  And then I just got plain tired.  I will spare you the details of foot excercises three times a day, 20 minutes each time.  But those exercises, plus walking around a little, really wore me out.

So, I've been reading again.  Not fiction, because I think I reached "fiction glut" rather than "reader glut" last week.  Instead, I've been re-visiting books on the writing craft and doing some more research for my current WIP under revision, my MG ghost story set in 1919 Sacramento. My characters are Irish-Americans, so I've been especially soaking in anything Irish, and the book I just finished reading (and thoroughly enjoying) is Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization, a wonderfully written account in a style that makes history truly exciting to read.


The writing books I've been poring over are: Self-editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King, and Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes, by Raymond Obstfeld.  The latter is really for writers of adult fiction, but, except for the chapters on murder mysteries and sex scenes, the advice and examples are superb for children's writers as well.  Both books are good.  I've read them before, they are part of my library, but you never can revisit a good book on the writing craft too many times.


So, now the foot is better, the energy is back, and it's forward and on to my revision of Granny's Jig, and query letters for Imogene and the Case of the Missing Pearls -- although my computer time will be in smaller doses for a few days. (I have learned my lesson.)

Hope all of you are   writing well, and look forward to visiting your blogs again soon.  Ciao for now.

Reader Glut and Writer Excitement

Even though this is Book Review Friday, recent posts were all book reviews while my foot was healing up.  Today I just have to share how good it feels to be up and about again.  That, plus the fact that I read about 16 books in the past 5 weeks and I am experiencing "reader glut".  My well has been filled with what feels like a lake!

The doctor removed the pin yesterday and gave me some truly uncomfortable toe excercises to do three times a day (but they are already taking positive effect!)  Meanwhile, when I rest, my foot still needs to be elevated, but activity is good for it, so I am making a point of walking around the house as often as possible.  And yesterday I had both lunch and dinner on the patio, enjoying close up and personal the garden I had been looking wistfully at out the bedroom window for 5 weeks.  Listening to bird calls and watching butterflies.  Feeling a faint breeze.  Joy!

So, what have I been doing besides reading these past weeks?  I am happy to say that I submitted 5 poems to various online sites, listened to some great writing tutorials, took notes in my notebook for my WIP, Granny's Jig, and bookmarked magazines to submit to, and agents to query. I also started a new book, inspired by Martha Alderson's wonderful tutorials on plot.  Martha Alderson is "The Plot Whisperer", and her approach to plotting is one I like a lot.  I first found her on Jill Corcoran's blog, here, and oh, how I wish I were writing the books Jill Corcoran is looking for, because she gives such great advice on her site.

Today Sir Husband set up my computer and printer on a table in the livingroom so I can sit at the computer and work with my foot propped up on a comfortable padded chair. ("Sir Husband"because I knighted him a few weeks back for taking such good care of me and treating me like royalty.  He's still doing that, too.)  Let me just say it feels great to be hunched over my keyboard instead of balancing my computer on one knee.  So my agenda today includes snail submissions for three children's poems, and some query letters for two of my books.  (Cross fingers, as I send them out into the world.)

Meanwhile, I have to thank all the reading I did for how mentally massaged I feel, how ready to write again. With all that input, it's time for output again, and I'm all revved up.  This is a case where deprivation made the heart grow fonder.

I also want to thank all of you for your comments during this period.  It was so cheering to hear from you, and I've enjoyed making new blog friends as well.

How about you?  Have you ever had "reader's glut" but appreciated it because it left you wanting to write again? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Kiyo's Story

While reading my way through the recuperation from my foot surgery, I read a wonderful memoir, Kiyo's Story, by Kiyo Sato.  The subtitle is A Japanese-American Family's Quest for the American Dream.  Originally the title was Dandelion Through the Crack, suggesting how the spirit can bloom, despite unbelievable adversity.  This book won the 2008 William Saroyan Prize for Non Fiction and should be required reading in high school history classes to give young people an understanding of how political hysteria can sweep a nation into unthinkable behavior.


Kiyo was nineteen when she and her family, as well all of the Japanese -American communities on the West Coast, were sent to an interment camp; in the Satos' case, in Arizona.  Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, there was already a mindset in place: Japanese immigrants were not allowed to become citizens or to own land.  Their children, however, were citizens by reason of birth.  But following Pearl Harbor, and Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, anyone with 1/16 or more Japanese ancestry was suddenly declared a "non-alien". Curfews were established.  They were not allowed to travel more than a five mile radius from their homes.  Finally they were rounded up, and forced to abandon their homes, taking only whatever they could carry on the train to an interment camp.  The Sato family, like neighboring families, were fruit farmers; their fields would be untended.  Some farms were simply taken over by squatters.   


Kiyo Sato first acquaints the reader with her parents' lives before this tragedy.  Her father, Shinji, left Japan as a boy because of extreme poverty in his village.  He labored for farmers in California, returned to Japan to wed a pretty nurse, and saved enough money that, through the help of others who were citizens, he could obtain a parcel of land.  (At the time, Japanese immigrants were not allowed to own land.)


Kiyo's mother, Tomomi, worked side by side with Shinji in the fields, as did Kiyo and, later, her eight brothers and sisters. Slowly they brought the barren acreage to life until their produce was in demand and they had markets as far away as Canada.  The close-knit family lived frugally, with dignity, as did their neighbors, happy to be making their way in the Promised Land.


Skip ahead twenty years, and they are stripped of everything they worked for, on their way to a camp guarded with soldiers, living with minimal privacy in cramped, thinly partitioned rooms, eating meals in overflowing mess halls meant for 250 people.


This could have been a scaldingly bitter book.  Instead, it is a testimony to how the spirit can triumph.  Kiyo's Story charts the course of lives lived with integrity, no matter what the injustice: Some young men, including one of Kiyo's brothers, enlist in the military to show their loyalty.  The Satos and fellow inmates farm the land in camp, bringing flowers and crops out dessert soil.   Classes are started for the children.  Adults hold meetings to resolve festering problems.  


Their repeated reminder to each other is, "For the sake of the children . . . ." They bend gracefully to what cannot be helped and hope for the future, rather than breaking down. Shinji never loses faith that this will pass, they will return home, and he and Tomomi will one day be granted citizenship -- which does come to pass.  Tomomi is selfless in her devotion to family and friends.  Both show their trust in life by deeds rather than words.  


I cried several times while reading this book, not just because of the sadness they experienced, but in the deeper recognition of how they triumphed over hardships that could have destroyed them. Tomomi's gentle spirit shines as she takes unceasing care of her family.  Shinji, a farmer with the soul of a poet, writes haiku and nurtures beauty.  The devotion and wisdom of both permeate every thing they do.  This is a book to be read more than once -- one that shows the true meaning of abundance and grace.


Kiyo's Story can be purchased here, and here, and here.  

The French Connection

While getting ready for my surgery, I started accumulating books over the past few months, some from used book stores and some from Borders. (Alas, I won't be doing the latter anymore.)  Some were adult books, and some were children's books. I started on the adult stack first, and was I ever surprised: Apparently my week in Paris a couple of summers ago burned its imprint into my unconscious; five of the books take place either partially or entirely in Paris. They are too many to review, so consider this post a thumbnail sharing of each.

I'll start with my least favorite first, Gourmet Rhapsody, by Muriel Barbery. I'm sorry to put it that way, too, because my purchase was motivated by how charmed I had been by Barbery's first book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In Hedgehog, a young girl has given herself a date on which she'll commit suicide unless she can find enough reasons not to. I know that sounds like a morbid story, but the book captures small, luminous moments of beauty that make life truly worth living. So I was expecting to be deeply moved again in Gourmet. Nope: A food critic lies on his deathbed, hoping to capture a favorite flavor that he can't quite identify in memory. Acquaintances and family each have a turn at sharing what they recall about this thoroughly unlikeable man. That's it, folks. some exquisite writing, because this author cannot turn out a bad line, but for me, the plot was . . . missing in action (pun intended).

But, next I read Cara Black's  Murder in the Bastille.  Black is one of my favorite mystery writers.  Her series stars Aimée Leduc, a private eye for white collar techie matters who keeps getting dragged into murder cases instead.  To read any one in the series is to get a free trip to Paris.  Black knows that city inside and out and places each new mystery in a different neighborhood.  Because Aimée grew up in Paris, naturally she has little snippets of memory about buildings she passes or bridges or streets she traverses, and so in a completely non-intrusive way, the reader picks up scraps of French history and art history while Aimée chases or runs from the bad guys.  Black's website is equally interesting: Press here and go take a peek.

Then I read The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks.  This is a  carefully sculpted story of a young girl cast adrift following World War I.  It takes place in a small village outside of Paris where Anne has taken employment as a waitress in the Hotel Lion D'Or of the title.  Her story unfolds by degrees: Her father was falsely accused of cowardice at  Verdun and shot.  Because of accusations, Anne and her mother were hounded out of their village and went to Paris.  With no one to turn to after her mother dies, Anne hopes to find a new life at the Lion D'Or.  She falls in love with a married man, a relationship that traces a doomed arc.  Ultimately this is a sad, haunting story about what it means to be a survivor.

The last two books of this French Connection are choices strangely related, though I didn't notice it at the time, since I bought them on two different occasions.

I had never read The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (one of oh, so many classics I've never read, although I had seen different movie versions of the story.)  So, I picked it up one day, thinking it was about time, and put it in my TBR stack.  Well, this story rocks, and so does the writing!  There really is a reason why some books become so renowned.  The very first chapter sets the stage for the book: Three important characters are introduced: the hotheaded D'Artignon, who wants to be a musketeer, the mysterious, mustached stranger, who steals his letter of introduction to Treville, and the lovely but dangerous Milady.  From that point the story moves from adventure to adventure, building  momentum and tension to the very last.  I loved this book and will probably read it again.


Imagine my surprise when I started reading The Club Dumas, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.  I was drawn to this book for a number reasons: the author is Spanish, and I'm trying to find Spanish writers translated into English to get more of a feel of Spain. (This is in English, by the way.  I'm a long way off from being able to read a book in Spanish.)  Also, part of the story takes place in Paris (yes, Paris).  It's about books and book collectors.  And it's a mystery.  (And I love mysteries.)  So, I thought, "Hey, this looks interesting."  Well, it is.  And also very weird.  I think at times it borders on magical realism, since there is one mysterious character I still couldn't figure out even at the end, when loose threads are tied up.  But an intriguing part of the mystery is how the main characters start falling into the roles of various characters in The Three Musketeers.  There's a parallel mystery involving a book by a heretic burned at the stake hundreds of years ago, but the Musketeers connection is what added spice to the mix for me.  I also appreciated that, while dead bodies appeared periodically, the author didn't dwell on all the gory details of the corpses and concentrated instead on the story.


That's it for today.  I'll be posting about other books from my stack later, but these five seemed to belong together in the same post.  Meanwhile, since I've off my usual track of talking about Children's books and YA's, if any of you have good mysteries to recommend, please include them in your comments.  Look forward to reading both comments and suggestions.

Book Review -- Dissolution

Normally I review chidren's or YA books on this blog, but during my recuperation period I've been catching up with some adult reading. What a treat, really. I love kid lit, but occasionally I miss, you know, fat paragraphs, long sentences, bigger vocabulary. So I'll be reporting on those good reads for awhile, some as reviews, and some simply as musings on what I've read.

Recently I had the pleasure of reading J. L. Campbell's fine book, Dissolution, set in contemporary Jamaica.

Sherryn and Reece (short for Maurice) have a nice home, a passionate relationship, and five children that brighten their lives. Reece owns his own business. Sherryn has her own home business baking and decorating cakes. Life is good. Then one day the doorbell rings, and Sherryn opens the door to find a scantily clad, bejeweled woman who thrusts a young boy into the room -- a boy who looks exactly like Sherryn's husband and is even named Maurice. Thus begins a painful journey for both Sherryn and Reece as they struggle with the unintended consequences of a festering and prolonged quarrel that led to Reese's sole one-night stand five years earlier.

Both Sherryn and Reese are likeable characters with a mixture of sterling virtues and all too human flaws.  Reece grew up in a ghetto, abandoned by parents, semi-raised by another tenant, and determined to make something better of his own life.  He's a good father, a devoted husband, a proud businessman.  But he can't break ties to friends in his old neighborhood, especially Ronald, who seems always in trouble.  And his early life has made him controlling, wanting to keep his wife dependent.  Sherryn has a big heart, loves her husband and family and friends.  But, when angry, she shuts down and won't communicate, resorting to the cold, silent treatment.  And she's very independent.

Gloria, the one-night stand, has been blackmailing Reece for years.  She has two other children by another blackmail victim, vindictively delivering the children to their fathers when they don't agree to her higher priced silence.  Ronald proves a complicated friend: He's the one friend Reece can talk to, but solves many of his own problems by violence and gives very poor advice.

All of the characters are beleveably portrayed, including the children.  I feel I would recognize any one of them were I to meet them in person.

As for plot, the author keeps things moving:  Stunned by her husband's infidelity, Sherryn is nonetheless filled with compassion for the little boy, Maurice Jr., who has obviously been neglected and mistreated. She can't help nurturing him, while still torturing herself about what kind of relationship exactly her husband had with Gloria.  Their children accept the situation, but even as Maurice is welcomed into the family, Sherryn cannot forgive her husband.  All of this is just for starters!  Then, when things seem to be getting better, they get worse.  Just when you think they can't get any worse -- they do.  Lots worse!  Before the books end someone is murdered.  Who is the victim?  And who did it?

You'll have to read the story.