Sarah E. Morin's Blog, page 13

First-Time Author Can’t Open Her Own Box of Books

At last! I’ve slaved over the writing, editing, and publishing of my first novel, Waking Beauty. Now my books have arrived in the mail! If only I could work up the courage to open them. Anyone relate?

Book Review: A Tale of Two Castles

Gail Carson Levine

YA Fantasy

On one level this plot is simple. 12yo Elodie leaves home for Two Castles to begin an apprenticeship.  On another level, it’s full of snowballing complications. Elodie lacks the coin to purchase the apprenticeship she really wants—mansioning (acting).  She takes a temporary position as assistant to a kabob-chef/detective-dragon, a clever creature she doesn’t fully trust. Two Castles is full of dangers, from thieving cats to poisoners to ogres. And then Elodie is thrust into the middle of a mystery—and possibly murder.

The book’s biggest question is, Are things and people as they appear? 12yo Elodie, far from home and forced to rely on her own wits, is a great vehicle for this exploration. Her parents’ advice from the moment she leaves home is to “beware the whited sepulcher,” someone who looks pleasant but hides ill intentions. Learning to survive in a new culture with dangerous creatures and political intrigue makes for a great coming-of-age/mystery story. The characters of the detective-dragon and the polite but hated ogre-count are standouts. The storyline of learning to think for yourself dovetails nicely with subtle messages against racial and cultural prejudice.

And I’ll never underestimate a cat again. Gail Carson Levine reveals several potent talents I can believe our feline friends have, though they have not been documented until now.

image by zirconicusso at freedigitalphotos.net

Elodie is a brave, bright, and well-rooted young protagonist. She has a young woman’s completely plausible blend of big and small dreams, from becoming a famous mansioner to eating a tasty skewer of cheese and toast.

Gail Carson Levine builds several scenes of tension well. Will Elodie’s dragon “masteress” prove her greatest teacher and ally, or will IT eat her? A simple gross-out scene where Elodie trains to pour wine for a king had my heart racing with stress.

The book provides suspense, a colorful world, and a satisfying quest for identity.

I listened to this as an audiobook, voiced by Sarah Coomes. She does a nice job keeping the voices distinct, especially through use of inflection. I have to confess it took me a while to adjust to the accent she uses for Elodie, our narrator. It’s a beautiful Scottish, but I had to concentrate to be sure I understood the words. Young American listeners with even less exposure to Scottish accents than me will either be charmed by the accent or frustrated by it. After all, it’s not like a book, where you can see the action written plain before you on the page, and deduce the accent from the shorter paragraphs of dialogue. Nor is it like a movie, where you have visuals to help you reason out the meaning of accented dialogue in context.

Of course if you are a young listener from Scotland, you’ll probably be delighted.

Where Coome’s voice is most suited to the part is in its youthfulness. There is a kind of transparency and wonder in her high-pitched voice (but not annoyingly high) that fits our 12yo heroine.

I give this book 4.5 out of 5 skewers of cheese.

Waking Beauty Book Giveaway

Goodreads buddies, wanna win my book? btw, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of book giveaways on Goodreads all the time. Check it out! If you are not already signed up, it’s super-easy to join Goodreads.

You’re invited to a Facebook Party for my book!

My novel, Waking Beauty, comes out April 21. That’s right, 2 weeks, people!:) If you are on Facebook, I would love to have you join me for a Facebook party to celebrate. I’m teaming up with my sister author from Enclave Publishing, Morgan Busse. We’ll have guest authors like Jill Williamson and Gillian Bronte Adams. I’m super excited to bring in Sara Ella, my ACFW Genesis Contest buddy. (You should all go check out her youtube videos and WIP, Blemished). We’ll also have giveaways and maybe even a few unruly party crashers…

Click on the banner to see the invitation on Facebook. Hope you can come!

Goodreads Book Giveaway: Daughter of Light

What’s better than great Christian speculative fiction? FREE great Christian speculative fiction. Goodreads people, enter this book giveaway for Daughter of Light. It’s by the talented Morgan Busse, a sister author with Enclave Publishing. The other books in her series are also featured giveaways. She has a new one coming out April 21!

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

What if with one touch you could see inside the soul?

As the Shadonae rise in the west and war threatens the north, a young woman discovers she is not human . . .

Rowen Mar finds a strange mark on her hand, and she is banished from her village as a witch. She covers the mark with a leather glove and seeks sanctuary in the White City. She lives in fear that if she touches another person, the power inside her will trigger again, a terrifying power that allows her to see the darkness inside the human heart . . .

But the mark is a summons, and those called cannot hide forever. For the salvation of her people lies within her hand.

Poem: Another Good Friday

image courtesy of Michelle Tribe at flickr.com

ANOTHER GOOD FRIDAY

 

Let not this day grow stale,

the crumbs of Communion dry upon my tongue,

nor the wine turn rancid

when my long-bottled faith is exposed to air.

 

Let me not soak my indifference into a sponge

as sour vinegar

and raise it on hyssop branch

to mock the lips of one who thirsts.

 

Let me not forget

the spilling out,

the red stains

the taste of

the True Wine.

 

A very short Good Friday poem

Image courtesy of kqedquest at flickr.com, and has been modified.

An Unsentimental Spring Poem

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

SPRING IS

 

When you tune up your lawnmower for your grass and hairy legs.

When store displays of sunblock crowd out the Easter eggs.

When you pump up bike tires coiled ‘round wheels like shed skins of black snakes.

When neighbors downwind are drawn like dogs by the season’s first grilled steaks.

When others air garages and dramas the winter left confidential.

When you walk down aisles of seed packets just to absorb the potential.

When you want to bottle the tree-blossom air and slather it on your skin like lotion.

When birds croon like Frank Sinatra their amorous devotion.

When the last lazy decorator replaces Christmas lights with garden gnomes.

When you scrape frost from your car before work and turn on the AC on the way home.

When magazines wear new hairstyles, when children and sheep are shorn.

When your clock springs forward, but you don’t the next morn.

When potholes swallow fresh asphalt, when fences and roofs are mended.

And parking-lot snow heaps linger like guests unaware the party ended.

Waking Beauty Book Trailer – the dusty princess version

The release of the ebook version of Waking Beauty is less than a month away! Prince Arpien is waiting on the paperback a couple weeks later. Brierly prefers the virtual world, so she’s ordering her ebook now on Amazon.com.

Movie Review: Authors Anonymous

image by imagerymajestic at freedigitalphotos.net

If you have ever been in a writing critique group, you will find something to relate to in this movie. We track six aspiring writers and their struggles to be published. When one of them finally is, will her success tear the group apart?

It’s a little crass, very funny, and poignant.

It’s filmed in the style of a documentary, although the characters are entirely made up. We never see the camera crew or interviewer, just a series of clips of the members of the writing group, sometimes speaking directly to the camera. Because of this, we get to know the characters from multiple angles. We track several meetings of the writing group and how they relate to each other as people and artists. How, for example, would you deal with a group member who used five adverbs in a row in a rather overplayed chapter of erotica? Would you tell her you thought it was garbage? Would you try to be supportive and exaggerate the good things? Would you tell her how you would write it? Why do we as writers form critique groups, and what makes the experience beneficial or poisonous?

Along their journey to publication, there are all kinds of writing inside jokes. For example, rejection letters that are 2 inches square, or waiting in line to meet your favorite author only to have his cell phone ring as you are trying to pour out how much his writing his influenced you, and many others.

Colette, the trophy wife/ex-masseuse/romance writer, is a standout in the direct-to-camera scenes. We see her careful manipulation of her appearance, posture, and environment to present a certain image to the camera. For example, she sets a picture of herself in the background in one shot, with a quote by Ray Bradbury. When the interviewer asks her about it, she pretends to be surprised. “Oh it is me, thanks for noticing.” She reads the quote and mispronounces Bradbury’s name.

In one of my favorite scenes, Colette takes the camera crew on a tour of her luxurious home. “Every writer needs a place of tranquility,” she says, bringing us into the garden. In the background, a construction crew is presumably building even more onto her expensive home.

image by tivverylucky at freedigitalphotos.net

We hear the beeping of backup signals, the breaking of cement. Colette has to raise her voice to be heard, but she never loses her determined poise. This is her writing Garden of Eden, dang it.

And yet, from time to time Colette seems to open up to the camera, and we see the vulnerability and the desperate need to prove herself.

John K. Butzin, who always refers to himself in the 3rd person and by full name, is another standout. He’s an outspoken war veteran, whose ambition to become famous slowly blinds him to the love and support of his German girlfriend. I don’t know whether to call his story arc a comedy or a tragedy. He’ll do anything to be published first in the group, including self-publishing with a less-than-reputable press. His books come back with the back cover written in Chinese, and a dog on the cover instead of the lion he asked for. The best and worst of him is his drive. He sets up a book signing in a hardware store (which has nothing to do with his subject). Your heart kind of breaks for this arrogant jerk when you see him smile at approaching guests, and then he realizes they just want a lightbulb on the shelf behind him.

Also in the group are William, a slacker who writes to attract chicks, and Colette’s naïve and doting husband, who can think of original ideas but can’t flesh them out.

Our two main characters, and the most likeable, are Henry and Hannah. They are both the “nice ones” in the group, supportive to others and tactful. In other ways they are exact opposites. Henry is a prolific reader, of the academic and literary bent. He works as a carpet cleaner and pizza delivery boy while he tries to write the great novel, yet he’s perpetually stunted by writer’s block. Hannah, on the other hand, seems to write entirely by instinct. A running gag throughout the book is the interviewer asks her for her favorite writer, and she can’t think of one, because she doesn’t read a lot. She struggles to come up with the name “Jane Austen,” and then says with a bright smile, “I hear she’s good. Keep it up, Jane!”

image by photostock at freedigitalphotos.net

But for Hannah the writing comes first, and she puts in the hours and hours necessary to develop her craft. It’s Hannah who lands the agent, the contract, the movie rights.

Is it fair that the novice among them, the writer who does not read, the one who never went to college, should be the first to get what they all aspire to gain? Each person in the group struggles to come to terms. The struggle, it’s clear, is never about Hannah herself. Repeatedly, we see she doesn’t wish to make waves or cause jealousy, so she downplays her success. It is the insecurities of the others in the group that threaten to tear the group apart.

Henry’s massive crush on Hannah forms not only nice subplot but a good thematic parallel to the struggles of the writing group as a whole. All of them want to be published. Henry wants to win Hannah’s heart. But just because we want something, does that mean we can win it by hard work or force of will? How much should we sacrifice for a dream? Do we somehow “deserve” the things we want most in life because we are nice people? As Hannah asks Henry, “Why isn’t the good thing you have enough?” When if ever should we modify our dreams?

The movie comes to a satisfying but unexpected resolution. Some characters succeed, some fail, some land in-between. But all reach an ending that makes perfect sense for their character arc.

After watching this movie, I found myself asking such questions as, “What motivates me to write? What kind of critique group member am I? Do I thrive off the success of others, or do I let my own jealousies and insecurities poison the well?” I know which kind I want to be. And this self-examination was pretty easy to take, given the humor woven into the movie. A spoonful of sugar, as they say…

image by Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net