The Future of Book Reviews on This Blog

The Vault of Horror (book) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The Future of Book Reviews on This Blog

 

Traci Kenworth

 

 

 

For some time I’ve been thinking about these book reviews and whether they take the blog in the direction I want it to go. I’ve decided that they don’t. This doesn’t mean I’m giving up on reading books or the vast genres out there. It simply means, I won’t be reviewing them on here any longer. When I cut my blog down to two posts every other week, I struggled with what to post about. I love books, but I’m not so sure I’m personally a good book reviewer. Usually, what I end up doing is giving an outline of a book, my impressions/opinion, and then leave the rest up to the reader as to whether to look into that particular book or not. I know there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just, I feel that a review should be something more perhaps. And honestly, I have a hard time doing one for a less-than-stellar book. I feel bad for the author, as a writer I’ve been there, made those mistakes. I always look for the good in books, just like I do people. I don’t want someone to pick up a book I’ve reviewed and think, “Wow. She was way off,” or worse, that I lied.

 

So, deciding all this left me in a quandary. Until last night when I figured out just what I want to do. Attract future readers to my site. I know, every writer’s goal. I had to step back and think, what do I write, who is my audience, how can I invite others to take a peek (and hopefully, stay). As you can see from my “About” page, I write Young Adult Supernatural Horror. In there, I also said that I wanted to shine “a light in the darkness” for my readers. Now, I don’t want you to think I’m going to post preachy sermons or anything. What I am going to do is explore horror. Where it came from, how it started, different stories including classics and biblical history, all the spectrums of what it is, how it affects us, why we’re drawn to it.

 

Thus, I’m hoping to open up conversations with all of you on how you feel about it and the topics at hand. I’ll probably even visit movie-land’s depictions of it. I’m excited about this adventure. After all, my stories are about “more than a good scare.” They’re about hope, friendship, love, and beating “the devil.” I hope you’ll come along for the new posts starting in two weeks. Until then, take care.

 

 

 

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Book Review: Happiness Is…

 

Happiness (Photo credit: baejaar)

 

Book Review: Happiness Is…

 

Traci Kenworth

 

 

 

The book is published by Word Publishing and has no author listed. 1995.

 

 

 

I ran across this little book on my shelf the other day and waxed nostalgic. This book was gifted to me about seven months before my marriage, by my sister. I miss little books like these sometimes. So positive. Uplifting. A treasure to find when you’re having a less than fantastic day. Oh, how I wish my then-self could have known more, realized what was going on in my life, but things happen for a reason and I would not have wanted to miss my children despite the pain and loss of the later years.

 

In any case, sometimes I think we forget to look inside ourselves at what’s going on in our lives and see the signs, the warnings. Books like this one make our eyes see what our heart must have and ignored. Here’s a verse from it that I love:

 

“The world’s joy glows brightly for a moment and then fades away. God’s joy is forever!”

 

How true for me. The things I’ve always wanted—and got—did not satisfy me for long. There was always something else to reach for, something more to gain. But when I come to God, in his presence, all things make sense. He instills a peace in me that I fought many years to find. Books like these are needed. To remind us to look, to realize, to inspire us to not settle for the lonely and the despair but to open our hearts to what God is for me: love and healing.

 

I encourage you to seek out little gifts like these, to become amazed when you look into your heart and see the truth. Happiness is believing in something greater than ourselves. It’s having the faith of a little child to begin again. And in doing so, persevere.

 

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Book Review 6

Book Review: Shattered Me by Tahereh Mafi

Traci Kenworth

 

Harper, an Imprint of Harper-Collins 2011     Science Fiction       338 pages
Hook: I’ve been locked up for 264 days.

 

Juliette has been a prisoner of the Reestablishment, the initiative that was supposed to help the Earth’s dying society. The same people that pulled her out of her home and put her in an asylum. Now, she’s getting a cellmate. She has no idea where she is, only that it took her 6 hours and 37 minutes to get there.

There are soldiers stationed below. The Earth has changed. There aren’t as many trees as there were before scientists say. The animals are gone. Weather and seasons have changed. People are starving to death and the Restablishment promises to fix everything. They came in and took over. They’re burning books, destroying evidence of life before this.

Her new cellmate is a boy. He reminds her of someone she used to know. She doesn’t allow anyone to touch her. Bad things happen. Dead things. When they are released into the showers, she decides to help him, protect him, to not be afraid of him. His name is Adam. It’s a name she’s always liked but she can’t remember why.

Her parents stopped touching her when she was old enough to crawl. Teachers made her work alone so she wouldn’t hurt the other children. She’s never had a friend, a mother’s hug, a father’s kiss. She realizes she knows Adam—but he doesn’t remember her. They went to school together. Adam is the only person who didn’t want to hurt her. Five soldiers burst into the cell and take her away, she thinks to kill her. She awakes to find Adam is one of the soldiers. She’s introduced to the leader of the Reestablishment in these parts, Warner. He offers her a proposition. He wants her to torture people for him. He makes her Adam’s charge.

The Reestablishment meant control. Only the healthy were kept, the sick, locked away. Adam shows her a room of the finest things. This is what Warner’s offering her. She’ll be free—but Adam’s prisoner. Adam is moving in. When she doesn’t eat or dress the way Warner wants, Adam is hurt because of her disobedience. She vows to be the perfect mannequin. She finds her notebook from the cell with a purple dress Adam suggests she wear. He has written in it: It’s not what you think.

She finds hope in his small communication.

Later, she finds him in the bathroom and sees his bruises. He didn’t betray her. She realizes he’s a friend. Adam can touch her without dying. He understands why Warner wants her now. Adam wants her. He says he’s going to get her out of there. He has a tattoo. It’s a white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It’s flying. This is the bird she’s dreamed about since she was locked up.

A desperate run for freedom will begin…

This book was riveting. It was all that it promised and more. And I suspect that given how things ended there will be further books in this world. Juliette Ferrars makes one feel sympathy for her, despite the horrifying things she can do. Adam becomes a hero to root for. While Warner is creepily evil. He truly is one of the better villains I’ve run across lately. Running hot and cold, sane and insane, with a twinge of vulnerability—Tahereh Mafi did an excellent job of portraying his character.

I heard good word of mouth about this book beforehand and I’m glad I acted upon it. I’ve skipped recent reviews of it on other sites so as to not interfere with my own perception of it, but I’ve got to say, RUN to your nearest book store and pick up a copy of this. You won’t be disappointed. I have definitely found an author to watch for in the future and this book is going on my Keeper shelf.

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I’ve accepted another tag…

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Barbara’s Meanderings has tagged me. Here are the questions:

1. If you could be any famous person, who would you be? I don’t know if I’d want their crazy, publicity-hounded lives, but if I could be the female Stephen King and write as many books as he has, make them as fantastic as he has, and help others as he has, that would be my ideal.

2. Why did you decide to write? It was part of therapy for me after my divorce.

3. What is your favorite food? Why? Beef stew because it’s warm and comforting.

4. What is your favorite YA book? Why? Hard to choose. I guess at the moment, Hunger Games.

5. Who is your favorite author or authors? Why? Stephen King because of the kind of person he shows himself to be as well as his great books.

6. If you could live anywhere in the world besides where you live now, where would you live? Tennessee.

7. What is your favorite thing to do besides writing? Reading.

8. Are you a plotter or a “pantser”? (Do you plot or do you just start writing?) Both. I do a reverse outline and somewhere along the revision stage the outline gets thrown out and the real story begins.

9. Who is your favorite character of all time? Why? Oh. A hard one. So many. I guess Gordy LaChance from Stand by Me because he’s really what inspired me to start writing. Part of the “Don’t let them tell you, you can’t do this,” chime from Chris Chambers.

10. What would you like to learn how to do? Actually, I’m learning it. How to be a better person and how to write better.

11. What is your favorite kind of music? I like Christian and Country.

 

And now, I’m going to close this round of questions, so you’re all safe!!

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First Book Review of 2012

First Book Review for the Year 2012

Traci Kenworth

Featuring: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

 

YA Supernatural Horror. Tor Teen.

 

“Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills people story.”

 

I actually read a hundred-and-fourteen pages of this last year, but carried it over into this one. Let me start of by saying about the caption above: this book is anything but average. I truly would have finished this book in one day if I hadn’t been so busy with holidays and the rush of the New Year. I came at this book as a reader, a writer, and someone who wanted to learn as much as they could about it by studying it. That means picking it apart to help with my own writing, gleaning any secrets that I could, to make my own work better. I was both challenged and excited by what I learned.

Theseus Cassio Lowood, a ghost-hunter, is truly a character that goes through a major story arc of being so alone in his world to opening up to let others in by the end. In fact, most of the major characters go through their own growth. From Carmel, the prom queen, forced to tackle a part of life she didn’t know about to Thomas, the geek who’s forced to become a hero, to Anna, whose story we learn and come to fear.

Studying the inciting incidents in the story gave me a stronghold I hope for my own. From the beginning when stakes rise as Carmel and Thomas start to get closer to the truth about who Cas really is and what he does for a living. And we have Anna and Cas confronting each other, neither sure what to do about the other, both feeling an “attraction” toward the other. Cas has a hard time admitting he needs friends/allies. He wants to continue his old life of move, hunt, kill. Little does he know what life has in store.

Cas got into the ghost-hunting business when he was old enough, taking his father’s athame (knife) said to link him to it by a blood tie. His ancestors forged the knife, bled upon it, to put the spirits down. He belongs to the knife, and it to him. He doesn’t know what becomes of the spirits when he kills them and his father taught him never to ask. When he learns Anna’s story of how she was murdered, Cas can’t kill her. Instead, he frees her.

When his athame is stolen it weakens Cas and he must go through more changes to be reunited with it. Anna warns there is a darkness attached to the knife. More bodies start to appear with Anna freed and Cas must decide whether he believes Anna is guilty of their murder or not. And how he plans to deal with the growing horror. The resulting battle is fierce, tender, and explosive.

My thoughts on the book? I loved to see the knock-down, drag-out justice of Cas. I worry about events that are clues to a sequel book or books. This is a story that grabs you and makes you care about Cas and his friends. So worrying about them in the future is good. I was truly thrown by the twists and turns of the story and discovered the truth along with Cas. I knew something was up, of course, but couldn’t put my finger on what. And that’s the mark of an excellent book. I think Kendare Blake did an excellent job bringing the characters to life and the end was a smash. Not what you’d expect, but what you’d hope for with the people involved.

Overall, I give it a 4 ½ *, the ½ because I wanted a “happier” ending. Still, it’s a keeper and I’ll never forget the journey of this book. Stephen King says you have to learn to be swept away by a good book before you can write one, here’s hoping I learned the lessons from this one that I can use to improve my own.

So have you read Anna? What do you think, feel, like, hate etc. about it?

Next up: The Nine Lives of Chloe King  by Liz Braswel writing as Celia Thomson. Another YA Horror.

 

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Keeping Up with Your Career

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Keeping Up with Your Career

Traci Kenworth

 

Are you keeping up with your career? Do you research new findings? Study where you’ve been and where you’re going? I think it’s important to do so. Not only do you stay fresh, but it brings more to the bargaining table. Never stop learning is a promise of mine to myself. Each day, I’m amazed by something just found out, confirmed, or added depth to. Take writing, for instance. We need to keep browsing over those English manuals, learning our craft from the masters, and reading to discover who we are in relation to other authors.

Right now I’m learning how to be a Breakout Novelist from Donald Maas. I’m re-reading an English textbook, working on punctuation, revising etc. from several different craft books. Each time I go over them, I learn something, or see something different. I have two shelves of craft books and add to them here and there. Do I need them all? Probably not, but I tend to hang onto them for the day insight will come. The next time I flip through the pages could be the time a gem falls out that will help me with my writing.

And isn’t that what it’s all about? Helping yourself advance? Helping your employer, agent, editor, see that your capable of growing in the marketplace. It’s imperative that we not become stagnant. It cuts off the flow of ideas if we do. No matter where you are along your journey, I encourage you to take the chance to grasp something you never have before. Go back to school, pick up that book, talk to someone and learn what their life is like, it might make for an interesting character in your book. So take care to always keep learning, no matter how unimportant it might seem, it enriches your thinking, opens new doors.

What are some of your ways to learn new things? Do you find it helps? Do you agree we should never stop growing in terms of our lives?

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My Writing Journal

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My Writing Journal

Traci Kenworth

 

With the New Year at hand, I’ve decided to embark on some things I’ve thought about doing in the past, but didn’t get around to it. Yesterday, I pulled out my first book for reading in 2012 (although I read a hundred-and-fourteen last month), Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake. I plan on studying the book to learn what I can from it and its author. I will do reviews on each book I read this year, something I’ve only done for a few in the past.

I hope this will encourage me to read more. Often I get in the pit of finishing a book and not wanting to pick up another to find it of a lesser journey than the one before but by keeping tabs on my reading, I hope to discourage that pattern. And keeping the journal will help me to remember the books I’ve read. Often they muddle together, unless a really great one which often gets a further journey opened when the movie/s come out.

I’m REALLY like Anna so far. It reminds me of my favorite TV show Supernatural with the Winchester brothers. Except there’s only one (Cas) and a handful of misfits for this line of work who often get in his way, and their all teenagers. There are other differences, of course, I don’t mean to imply the books a straight route to the Supernatural phenomenon. It’s just his occupation reminds me of the show. You should pick up this book if you haven’t yet, it’s a shining star. I’ll review it further when I finish reading it. And I’m so looking forward to Kendare Blake’s next one.

I think this writing journal will be good for me to keep track of my progress, to see where I’ve been, what I’ve learned, and what’s still out there to pick up on. I plan to do a journal each year just to see how many pages I can fill and how many books I can clear off of my TBR piles. I’ll also visit the library regularly to keep up on new releases I can’t find in the stores in my area. It’s going to be a fantastic year for books, I just know it.

So, do you keep a journal of what you read for the year, or do you have one of those much-sought-after memories that can recall everything about a book you’ve read? I envy you if the latter. My memory has always been shallow. Lol. I know I’ve read a book and liked it but can’t recall the characters names or what exactly they went through. Yeah, a journal will help me to cement things more and grow as a writer and a reader.

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How to Place Your Characters

How to Place Your Characters

Introductions

Traci Kenworth

 

So you’ve come up with the great idea and it’s burning a hole through your gut, just aching to be written. How do you know where to begin? Should it be with Grandpa Sneitzler? The maid? The boy down on the dairy farm? Who to pick? In some books, particularly fantasy or horror, a prologue comes into play which features different characters than your regular cast. This is tricky to pull off, winning sympathy for your story people who most likely will end up on the sharp end of a blade at the end. Prologues are almost a no-no in today’s fiction—unless you’ve got a few books or more under your belt and some celebrity.

Instead, you open the tale with your chosen m/c. Unless, of course, you’re doing omnipresent, in which case you can pick any character you choose. Omni can be confusing and hard to connect the reader to but it can be done. I recommend using your writing tools and studying craft books and other novels written this way in order to pull it off. So, that said, most books are written as First, Second, or Third Person. The Second being that you incorporate your reader into the story. As in “You ate breakfast at Lady Janes where a seedy-looking fellow slipped in the backdoor, gun drawn.”

Second is another difficult form to pull off. The reader knows they’re not really part of the story and so that connection you want can fail. But there are books it works in. Some famous mysteries showcase this. Again, I advise that you study craft books and other novels written in this manner, to perfect how you handle it. Third Person is the he/she said mode. Most books are written this way. Because the reader is used to this territory, the connection is fast, immediate. Thus, “He walked into the shadows, hearing the click of a horse’s hooves as he did so. Several steps later, he pivoted, gun in hand.”

First person is the viewpoint I’m most familiar with and one I’ve come to love. This, too, is a bit of a stretch to pull off, but I like to think of it as a type of “diary-writing.” As in: “I felt the steamy breath of the horse on the back of my neck, its hooves keeping perfect timing with my footsteps. When I pivoted, gun in hand, its beady red eyes shone out of the darkness and its mouth split back into a grin. I had a half-second to spin out of its way as it reared, riderlesss, its teeth clicked open and a god-awful stench assaulted me.”

Sorry, got carried away there. But hopefully, you see what I mean. Now, onto how to place your characters in scenes. You need your mainframe character (your hero or heroine) and you simply branch out from there in importance of who does what/interacts the most with what’s happening. Thus, the m/c being our gunmen, the horse (yes, even an animal can be a character) is the next reactor to the plotline. I.E.:

“I lost my hat in the skirmish as the horse stomped down on it repeatedly, narrowly missing my head in the process. The animal turned to me at last as I crouched there and opened its mouth. A gassy substance escaped it and everything living in its path froze. I saw a boy pass within inches of the alleyway, glance in, and hurry on his way again. My mouth was open in a silent scream. The horse approached me, reached out, and seized one of my fingers. It sliced jaggedly through with its teeth and crunched away at it as I struggled to wake from the paralyzing spell it wove.”

See? The main character. The secondary. And, as an afterthought, the boy. Introduced in order of importance to the scene. Weave your characters in with care and you’ll do well.

 

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How to Breathe Life into Your Characters Part VIII

How to Breathe Life into Your Characters

Part VIII

Endings: The All Important Stop

Traci Kenworth

 

Next to your beginning hook, your ending may very well be the most challenging to write. Readers want to be satisfied, to be carried through “the dream” they’ve been exposed to. And, no, I’m not saying here to wake your reader up to an, “It was all a dream,” storyline. What I’m getting at is that the all important stop has to resonate with the reader, to the point of them saying, “Yes, that’s the way it happened.”

In your end, you want to tie up loose knots. That’s not to say if you plan sequels that you have to tighten them all, some can remain unraveled. Even if a single story. For instance, we don’t need to be told a character’s future. We can leave that up to the reader to decide what happens, if they got their “happily-ever-after,” or if things just didn’t work out. How do we do this?

We give a little taste of what is to come. This is your shot, your chance to hook the reader into buying your next book and the one after that. Always leave them hungering for more. So how do you know you put the right ending on? You should feel it down in your bones. That this couldn’t happen any other way. It should capture the joy or sadness of the characters depending on the outcome. It should leave the door open a smidgeon for us to guess what happens next in their lives. If they survive.

Sometimes heroes go down on the job. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. There are times when, no matter which way we look at it, the main character has to give their life in order for others/the world to go on. But along with all the grief, you want to leave the message that their life counted for something. That others will go on because of it.

An ending can make or break us. We can lose readers from a half-hearted effort, we can gain word-of-mouth from a glorious one. So pay as much attention to the ending as you do the beginning. Give us a teaser that will make us want to read more of your books. Good luck with your writing.

 

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How to Breathe Life into Your Characters Par IV

How to Breathe Life into Your Characters

IV

Choosing Viewpoint

 

Okay, now we get down into whose “eyes” the story is told through. It should be the character with the most to lose. Is it Little Boy Blue hiding under the haystack? The Big Bad Wolf? Or Esmeralda? Sure, the villain has a lot at stake, but are readers going to identify with him/her? Or would they much rather fit into the shoes of the hero or heroine? The choice is going to be as varied and interesting as the author’s of the stories.

I would say that it also depends on who your reader is: young adult or adult? It is much easier to incorporate the baddie’s view in the adult novel. Teens want to embrace the characters they read about, not be repulsed, imo. That is why Katniss, Clary, and others are so beloved. They speak to a reader, they’re like old friends. You want to encourage that comfortably as much as possible. Give them something unique, quirkish for sure, but ultimately it’s their hearts that matter.

A good character, a strong-rooted one, will be followed by their fans through thick and thin. So what makes a hero/heroine? Is it their bravery? Their ability to function when the lights go out in a haunted house? Courage is a powerful motivator. What makes Jay Asher’s hero listen to the tapes of a classmate who killed herself? An inner need to know the truth, to go the distance, to know himself.

I think it is the journey, the obstacles thrown into our characters path, the quest to overcome them, to become a better person that keeps those pages turning. In real life, we may not always be the “star player” in our world, but in a book, we can soar to new heights, maybe even change a part of who we are, how we see things, when we finish it. A novel gives us hope that things might be different, that others understand and awaken courage within us. They explore all topics from depression, to suicide, cancer, and rape to name a few. Stories can teach us something at the same time they deliver “the goods.”

Can your book be written from multiple viewpoints? Yes. Often both the hero and heroine share in the telling. I, personally, prefer this method. It gives you a chance to explore events that happen when another character is off-screen. You can advance the story faster. Look at Maggie Steifvater’s linger series. The hero and heroine effectively play off the other’s last scene. Simon and Clary do this well also in the City of Bones series. Here, we have a slight variation on just who the “hero” is, Simon or Jace. But clearly, Simon has the “most” to lose.

So, when your exploring how to begin your novel, consider the viewpoint character/s. A rough coal can be chipped away at to display a diamond. Point-in-case, hush, hush’s fallen angel. A “good” guy can be hiding in our midst, a “shattered” heroine can learn to live again. And the Big Bad Wolf can be defeated.

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