Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 220

The Daunting To-Do List

Since I'm heading out of town in a couple of days, this is going to be a very busy week. I've got an intimidating to-do list, since I have a couple of business items that must be done before I leave in order to get that Much Ado About Magic paperback ready to go and book 6, No Quest for the Wicked, ready for electronic release. Today I took care of the last-minute errands, and I had to keep reminding myself that I'm going to be downtown in a major city. I'm not going to the uncharted wilds. If I forget something or run out of something, there are two big chain drugstores within a couple of blocks of the hotel. There's also a branch of my bank just down the street. I don't have to bring absolutely everything with me to survive on my own for a week.

I'd planned to indulge myself and actually pay to check my bag so I don't have to worry about restricting what I bring. And then I started putting things in my suitcase and realized that I can probably fit it all in my smallest bag, and even getting wacky with toiletries, I still don't fill the Ziplock bag. There's a lot I can do with $50 (to check a bag each way), so I may be wrestling with a carry-on, after all, since it doesn't look like it will be a hardship. It's funny how that one little thing has triggered all my stubborn Scottishness and actually limited the amount of air travel I do because I don't want to pay to check a bag and I don't want to deal with fighting over overhead bin space.

Now I just have to deal with the startling amount of fresh produce I have in the refrigerator. I'll be having a few fruit salads this week, I think.

Some TV updates:
Soon after I posted last Monday about the Doctor Who season premiere, they changed the date. It will be this coming Saturday, Sept. 1 (take note, Mom). Of course, I'll be at WorldCon, where the odds of the hotel TV system having BBC America are next to none, but I suspect there will be ways of viewing it. To set the stage, they've done a web series that's a prequel to this season, letting us know what the Doctor's been up to since we last saw him and what Amy and Rory do when they aren't traveling with the Doctor.Here's the first episode.

I've also discovered BBC America's new series, Copper, which is a police procedural set in 1860s New York. That's a time period and setting I've read a bit about, so I find it interesting on that level. I don't yet know what I think about the series, though. There are several characters I can't quite tell apart. Two of them I think are supposed to be brothers, so that makes some sense, but I spent a lot of the first episode never knowing which guy I was seeing was the hero and getting them mixed up. I may have to watch it again when I have time. I don't know when that will be!

Now I must go and see if there's anything I can cross off the to-do list from this morning, and then I must tackle the urgent items for today.

Conventions and Creeps

I think I worked my way past my roadblock yesterday, with great effort. Today I plan a serious marathon of work. Really. Plus I need to proof the e-book files for book 6 and write a couple of guest blogs. It's a good thing I don't have anything scheduled for this weekend.

As I've mentioned, I'll be at WorldCon in Chicago next week. Normally I don't post my convention schedule because I figure if you're there, you know how to find me, and if you're not, you don't care, but WorldCon is huge and the way they post the schedule on their web site is wonky, so here's what I'll be doing:

Thursday, 4:30-6, Faith in Fiction panel
This approaches the use of faith in world building. I'm moderating, which means I need to come up with some discussion questions.

Saturday, 9:30-10 a.m., my reading
What I read will depend on what happens between now and then, who shows up, what of my works they've read, what they've heard me read, etc. At 9:30 on a Saturday morning, I may be reading to myself. Depending on what I read, there may also be singing. Maybe even dancing. Who knows? Come and find out. Please!

Saturday, 1:30-3, Panel on what's on TV in the general genre space
I'm moderating, so I imagine this will go a lot like the SyFy Smackdown we do at FenCon, in which I play the Oprah of geekery and turn it into a talk show panel kind of thing. I already seem to have a problem panelist who started e-mailing the rest of the panel to try to dictate what the panel would cover. When I realized I was the moderator, the power went to my head and I told everyone to chill. I will do everything in my power to make this fun and funny, even if I have to smite someone with my Invisible Lightsaber of Moderation to do so. My experiences dealing with children may come in handy here.

Saturday, 4:30-6, the Warehouse 13 vs. Eureka Smackdown
We have to come up with which character from which show would win various challenges. Should be good for a lot of laughs. I anticipate at least one epic giggle fit.

Sunday, 3-4:30, panel on the artifacts of Warehouse 13
This one should also be fun as we get to talk about what's really in the Warehouse.

I'm not sure how I ended up on all the Warehouse 13 panels other than I said I was willing to do them. There was a lot of other stuff I was also willing to do that I didn't get.

Speaking of conventions, this summer there's been a lot of talk about harassment policies, safety, etc., and probably about time. When you think about it, conventions are kind of a recipe for disaster in that area. We've got a lot of people with not necessarily the best social skills getting together, it's traditionally a male-dominated environment and not everyone seems to be comfortable with the way that's changing, and the depiction of women in a lot of the works traditionally popular in that crowd doesn't necessarily lend itself to equality and respect (in fact, women are far too frequently depicted as objects to be won). So you get the "creepers" who can't (or refuse to) tell the difference between "cool, we like the same stuff" interaction and "I want you." And then you get the nasty situations when they refuse to believe that it really, truly isn't "I want you." Strangely, I haven't actually run into anything majorly awkward with the fanboys. I've had to deal with a couple of uncomfortable situations with fellow professional authors, and that brings me to my bit of advice for men at conventions:

If you offer to escort a woman to her hotel room and she declines, back off, totally and immediately. Don't attempt to talk her into it, don't try to bargain ("How about just to the elevator?") and above all, don't follow her. Even if you're going back to your own room and you need to take the same elevator, take a lap around the lobby and let her go on her own before you go. Because if you do any of these things, you've just made yourself more potentially threatening than any hypothetical stranger she might encounter, since you're demonstrating that "no" doesn't mean "no" to you and you don't care about her wishes or her comfort. After having to use the ugly voice to remove a guy from my room doorway after I told him I didn't need an escort to my room, I now make a lap through the lobby instead of returning to my room after an offer has been made and declined, and then I'll stop and talk to friends. If I don't find friends, I'll probably lead my would-be Galahad straight to the convention operations office.

But what if you really do feel like it's a safety issue and it's bad for her to go alone? Well, for one thing, there's a totally different vibe, voice inflection and body language between "I'm concerned for your safety" and "If I get as far as her hotel room door, I'm totally going to score." For another, I've never had one of the creepy offers come in a situation where safety was genuinely an issue. Those offers always seem to be made from the lobby bar/restaurant to my room on the last day of the con, after I've made the trip safely on my own dozens of times. These guys are nowhere to be seen when I need to get from the party hotel to my hotel through a deserted downtown area in the middle of the night.

If you think a woman needs an escort for safety's sake and you want to make sure she doesn't decline you because you're scarier than the unknown, put together a group. Find a group of people, both men and women, who already know and trust you, and then invite the woman you don't know as well to join that group. Then follow her wishes. If she only wants you to escort her to the hotel entrance, stop at the entrance. If she wants company farther than that, allow her to make the request. Keep a respectful physical distance from her the entire time and allow her to initiate contact like farewell hugs. If she needs an escort to her door, stay back to where you can see that she's safely getting through the doorway but you aren't close enough to be looming over her as she unlocks the door, then leave once she waves to let you know she's okay.

And, seriously, guys, when you gallantly offer to escort me from the hotel lobby to my room on the last day of the convention, I know exactly what you're up to and it's a total turn-off. I actually kind of liked the first guy who pulled that on me, and him doing that totally blew any chances he might have had because he was so cheesy about it and because he disregarded everything I said and followed me to my room even though I told him not to. If I want you in my room, I'll invite you.

Big Changes

I accomplished something major on the to-do list yesterday. Here's the before:



And the after, plus the 10-inch ponytail that will be going to Locks of Love.



I've been procrastinating on a haircut for a couple of years. I was rather severely traumatized by my last one when the stylist practically pinned me down and insisted on straightening my hair over my objections. Then it got to be kind of fun seeing how long I could get it and doing some fancy things with it occasionally. And then I realized that a haircut would involve chopping off a lot, so I might as well do some good with it. A lot of the little girls at church were growing their hair out and getting it cut off to donate, and I figured if they could do it, so could I, so I let it go a little longer so it wouldn't be too short when I cut off the required amount. It's still a little shorter than I'd ideally have it, but it grows pretty fast and I'll live. It's just at the length where it all falls forward over my shoulders and gets in my way. It still looks pretty long in the photo, but that was soon after the cut before it started curling up a lot more. Now that it's settled down, it's falling to just barely past my shoulders, and it feels really weird. However, I do have a little more versatility without all that length. I can still put it in my usual bun with fewer pins, but I can also do a bouncy ponytail again, and I can do a braid that doesn't get caught in the waistband of my jeans or strangle me in my sleep.

The weird thing is, last night I wore my hair down when I went to choir, and nobody noticed that my hair was more than ten inches shorter. I do wear it up most of the time, but I had it down or in a ponytail for much of the music and arts camp, and there were people in the choir who saw me there. I'd have thought that going from past my waist to barely below my shoulders would generate some comment, but I guess people just see "long."

I should weigh myself and see how much weight I've lost. My head certainly feels lighter.

The major items remaining on the to-do list involve some shopping, but I don't much feel like going out today. I want to focus on the work. I figured out that part of the reason I hit a brick wall was that I put something that should have happened later in the book in too early in a fit of overeagerness, and that kept things from going forward because there was nowhere to go from there. Once I fix that, I should be able to move forward. However, I keep forgetting that with each revelation that's made, there's an implied revelation that goes with it, and so I'm also forgetting to have the characters react to both the big revelation and the implied revelation, which then should change all the interactions. I knew this plot would be complicated when I came up with it, but I didn't realize I'd need to wallpaper the house with Post-It notes to remind myself of all the things that are going on.

But I have no errands, no classes, and no rehearsals today to distract me, so I'm hoping to get things fixed and then get some momentum going.

What Else Writers Need to Learn

I made great progress yesterday, until I hit a wall and had no idea what happens next. I think today I need to list all the big events that need to happen before the end of the book and then figure out the little events that lead up to each big event. Alas, it's not rainy anymore, but it is relatively cool, and according to the newspaper, we're supposedly done with 100-degree temperatures for the year and the fall will be cooler and rainier than normal.

In my previous writing post, I talked about the education and training that are needed for becoming a writer, but I've thought some more about it, and in today's publishing world, I think there are additional things that are necessary. If you get a contract with a traditional publisher, you're probably going to be expected to do the bulk of the publicity for your book. Only the really big names (who don't need the publicity) get the full-on marketing effort. Everyone else does most of it themselves. But it's increasingly looking like the publishers are using the self-published market as a kind of farm team or slush pile, so that instead of buying books by totally new authors, they watch the self-published market and pick up authors who prove themselves successful there.

So, in addition to learning to write a good book and learning enough about the industry to know how to submit a book and where to submit it, you should probably learn something about:

1) Public relations and marketing -- at least know some of the major terms so you can talk to a publisher's publicity department, but you may need to learn enough to do a bit of publicity for yourself. You can find books on the subject in most libraries, and there are a lot of blogs about book publicity on the Internet. This is something that's constantly changing, since the media are in a transition phase. This was my professional field, and it's changed dramatically in the ten years since I've worked for a PR agency. It's even changed a lot for the book business in the four years between my last book and the one I'm promoting now.

2) Graphic design and web design -- even if you hire people to do your web site and covers for your self-published books, it helps to know enough to understand if what the people you've hired are giving you is good. Again, there are books in the library and web sites that cover these topics.

3) Budgeting and finance -- I used to say that this would be important if you ever wanted to make a living as a writer because writing income comes in sporadically and isn't always something you can plan on. Now, though, you may have to self-publish your first book to get noticed by a publisher, and doing it well enough to achieve that kind of success generally involves some financial investment to get professional copyediting and cover design, so you might need to save money to invest in your career even before you sell a book.

The rule used to be that all money flows to the writer, and that should still be the case when you're dealing with an agent or with a publisher, but the ballgame really has changed in the last few years with publishers taking fewer risks. Instead of buying a manuscript from a total unknown, they can watch what's selling on the Kindle and then take those books. People are still selling from the slush pile, but it's hard to say what will happen in the next few years, and a lot of authors are discovering that they don't even need traditional publishers, that being in business for themselves gives them more rewards. That's why it's more important than ever for aspiring authors to learn about all aspects of the business so they can make wise decisions. You not only have to be a creator, you also have to be an entrepreneur. That doesn't always come naturally to creative types, so it may take some effort on your part to learn what you need to know.

Book Report: Other People's Books

It's August in Texas and I have my windows open. It's absolutely lovely listening to the rain and being cool. There aren't even any 100-degree temperatures in the forecast, so while it will go back to being summer, it won't be a major whiplash if my body decides it's fall because of today. I'm going to revel in every minute of it, too. I plan to have soup for lunch, and I made muffins for breakfast (I turn into Betty Crocker when the weather gets cool).

Because everyone's probably tired of me talking about my book, I think it's time to talk about other people's books, so I have a catch-up book report.

First, a book that would be ideal reading on a day like today: The Splendor Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore. This is a paranormal/gothic YA kind of story in the vein of Mary Stewart. Our heroine is a teenage ballerina recovering from a career-ending injury who gets shipped off to stay with a relative she barely knows in her dead father's family's ancestral home, an antebellum mansion in Alabama. There she learns about all kinds of spooky family secrets and a history that seems to keep repeating itself. It has all the elements of a classic gothic -- the spooky house, the sense of isolation, the seemingly good boy with dark secrets and the mysterious stranger whose motives aren't clear -- but it's got a very contemporary sass. I read it in just about one sitting because once I got into it I couldn't put it down. However, one slight caveat: this is very much a YA book with a lot of the elements that are currently familiar in that genre (the triangle, the Mean Girl, the emo, etc.), so adult enjoyment may depend on tolerance for some of the standard YA stuff.

Then there was a duology recommended by a blog reader, Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward by Patricia Wrede. The current edition puts the two books together in A Matter of Magic. I'd describe the first one as Dickens with magic and the second as My Fair Lady with magic, but in a Regency setting. Our heroine is a London street urchin who's reaching the age when she won't be able to disguise herself as a boy anymore, and she's worried about her future. When a man offers what to her is a great sum of money to break into a traveling magician's trailer just to see if an object is there, she feels like she doesn't have much choice. But the magician catches her and then hires her as his apprentice, and she gets more than she bargained for when he turns out to be a real wizard. Later, she has to learn to fit into London society while she's learning to be a wizard. Plus, there are bad guys to fight and magical objects to retrieve. I thought these books were a lot of fun, but I was left wanting more, and that may be because they were written for older kids/younger teens. From an adult perspective, I thought there was a lot more potential depth to be mined in this world and with these characters. For kids, it's a fun magical romp with a hint of romance.

Finally, the book that's been keeping me up late at night for a week, Something Dangerous by Penny Vincenzi. It's a sprawling, soapy family saga, not my usual sort of thing at all, but I stumbled upon it when looking for novels set in World War II. This book turns out to be the middle book in a trilogy about a family running a publishing house in London. It spans the years from the late 20s to the late 40s, going through the Depression, the war and the aftermath of the war. It's mostly about the relationships and loves of the huge cast of characters associated with this family, and I quite frequently wanted to slap some sense into them, but I couldn't seem to stop reading. This is the weird kind of book where when I'm reading it, I can't put it down, but when I'm not reading it I hardly think about it. It's the sort of glitzy saga that was popular in the late 70s and early 80s, and in the 80s they'd have probably made a TV miniseries out of it. I've heard people calling 50 Shades of Grey "cracktastic," where in spite of how ridiculous it is, you can't help but get caught up in it. I'd call this a higher-brow version of "cracktastic." It's well-written and vividly uses the historic settings, but a lot of the behavior is totally whacked. For instance, the ideal of "love" seems to be something you can't help yourself about, that it doesn't matter if he's selfish and unreasonable and maybe a little unbalanced, you can't help how you feel and you're helpless about falling into his spell even though you know it's bad for you -- and this is what true love is. Gag. But then there's the family home turned into a boarding school in the country and the elderly earl drilling the boys to be a home guard and being maybe a little disappointed that there's no invasion, and there's wining and dining and glamour, and there's a mad dash through the streets of London during the Blitz in order to retrieve the sole copy of a manuscript, and it's very easy to get caught up in it all.

However, it's not the sequel I want to run out and get. The first book in the series looks like it spans from the early Edwardian era into the aftermath of WWI, so it's likely going to be very Downton Abbey, only without following the servants, and there were a number of hints dropped in this book that I think were supposed to be meaningful for those who read the first book, and now I want to know the backstory. I don't much care what happens next because it looks like it will be about the 50s into the 80s, an era that doesn't excite me, and there's no war for them to deal with in London, so it's probably all going to focus on the politics of the publishing company and family squabbles and still more unhealthy "romantic" relationships. These are huge doorstopper books, so I'm saving the prequel for a rainy Sunday afternoon in the fall when/if my life starts to calm down. These are very much make a pot of tea and then curl up in a comfortable place and wallow for a while kind of books.

But before then, I have to finish writing the current book. It's good writing weather today, so I wonder how much progress I'll make.

Upcoming Movies

I made my pre-Worldcon to-do list last night, and it's daunting. My first problem is that stores and manufacturers aren't cooperating with me. My beloved black ballet flats that I can wear with everything and that are dressy enough for me to get away with wearing them for dressier occasions when I need to be comfortable but that are comfortable enough for walking are on their last legs. I'm holding them together with glue and making them presentable with shoe polish and by using shoe stretchers to keep them in shape. I need to replace them, but with all the shoes like that in stores right now, they're doing it wrong. The toe is too short. I guess they find toe cleavage sexy, or something, but I find that the shoe then cuts across the "knuckle" of my big toe and is painful, plus it makes you look like you crammed your foot into a shoe two sizes too small, for that oh so attractive Minnie Mouse effect. I'd found a few options when searching online that looked like they might work, but the actual shoes were awful. Even searching Nordstrom isn't bringing up anything I like. The one thing I've found that's perfect, they don't actually come up with having it in my size either in stores or online (and I love it when you're browsing for shoes online and they suggest you try a different size when they don't have the size you want -- yes, I'll just cut off a few toes and try a different size).

I guess I'll just stick in the shapers, get out the shoe polish and hope my shoes hold together for another year. Otherwise, I think I've got my wardrobe planned.

My book has now dropped off the Amazon category bestseller lists. I suppose everyone in the know has bought their copies in the initial surge and now it will be more of a steady trickle as word of mouth spreads and people find out that the fifth book is available. I worry that there might be fans out there unaware that they can now get this book, but I don't know what more to do to reach them other than hope word of mouth has a ripple effect. Skywriting is probably out. Though it would be cool.

They've added a number of new movie trailers to my OnDemand listings, and while the first part of this year has been rather slow for me, movie-wise (the only movie I've seen this year was Brave), there are some good things coming out. In no particular order there's:

The Great Gatsby -- it gets the Moulin Rouge treatment (without the music) with a really lush Baz Luhrmann production. He really has fun with the Art Deco world, and the cast looks good. While I was a little underwhelmed with the book, I must have found it pretty compelling because I read it in one sitting. The previous movie versions I've seen are fairly stilted and tame, but this looks like it will really capture the decadence and hedonism of the jazz age.

Looper -- I hadn't heard of this one before, but it looks like an intriguing time travel thriller about an assassin who specializes in going back in time to kill people before they're a problem (a human terminator), and then he gets an assignment to kill his future self, who's apparently hiding in the past. Uh oh. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the assassin, with Bruce Willis as his jaded future self.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower -- it's a teen film, but it looks like a smart one, and the trailer made me laugh out loud a couple of times. Features a post-Hermione Emma Watson doing an American accent and playing what looks to be the polar opposite of Hermione. Good for her.

Pitch Perfect -- the story of a chick with attitude joining her ritzy school's a capella choir sounds like it could be very formulaic (one of those "using current music is a radical idea that will put us ahead of the competition!" things), but the trailer was great. I think I actually want to see this.

Plus, the Les Miserables trailer is now OnDemand, so I can watch it on my TV whenever I want to. I'm ready for a new trailer or a bit more footage, though.

And in TV news, remember that a new Grimm is on tonight, and rumor has it that Doctor Who will return September 8. I'm already in pre-mourning for Rory's departure.

Availability Update

I've found that Much Ado About Magic is now in both the Ingram and Google Books systems, which means that you can now buy it through independent bookstores. I've checked a few, like A Real Bookstore and Book People in Texas and Powell's in Portland, and it's there. However, the prices at these stores are more expensive than the price I set and that it's selling for in other places. It also seems that Google is selling the PDF version in addition to the epub.

We're hoping that it will be available via Overdrive for libraries to purchase sometime next week. They're pretty slow to get started.

Ah, a Day at Home

Ah, a morning to sleep in and not have to go anywhere. It was sheer bliss. And it was a good thing because I stayed up way too late reading last night. At "late," I put my bookmark in the book, but then I found myself flipping through the pages to skim and see what was going to happen next, and next, and next, until I'd skimmed to the end of the book and it was "way too late." I think I still need to read the rest because there were some details I missed and I was focusing on one particular story line. And then I found that this book was the middle book in a trilogy (I'd thought it was the first), and some of the secrets that I thought there would be big revelations about were actually plots from the previous book. This may be the first time that I've finished reading a book and wanted to immediately rush out and get the prequel, not the sequel. I don't much care what happens next, but I'm dying to know exactly how the things that came before happened.

I think I'll wait until I finish reading it before I do a full review, though. So you'll have to wait to find out what I'm talking about. It isn't my usual sort of thing, actually, but sometimes it's fun to dive into something different that still has some overlap with your usual interests.

I guess my "blog tour" of sorts has started. I did an interview with the BiblioJunkies that gets into my fictional boyfriends and favorite treats. I have a few guest blogs I need to come up with and write. In fact, one of them is actually good background material for the next scene I need to write, so maybe that will be my afternoon's task. I'm still open to doing blog interviews, etc. Just let me know.

I did finally get back into writing yesterday. It helped to go back a couple of chapters to fix some things I realized were wrong and then to figure out some scenes I need to add based on that. Now I need to crunch out the second half of the first draft because I really want it done before WorldCon. I don't want another momentum break, and the rest between drafts is good. I'm hoping for a productive day, since I don't have to go anywhere at all. And it is bliss.

Sneaky Kids

I have survived music and arts camp. Barely. Today was crazy, and I only got through it because we spent most of the time rehearsing for the program instead of doing the usual classes. Otherwise, I spent the day tracking down kids making a break for it. There was one whose mom was helping out elsewhere who kept wandering off to see his mom. I had one who somehow followed a different group to the playground instead of following our group to the next class (I didn't buy the excuse he gave that he was really that confused because he knows the people in our group and he knew we'd already been to the playground). I had three run and hide in the bathroom to try to escape from art class. I had two try to run off instead of going to rehearsal. Fortunately, I seem to be smarter than a second grader, so I always knew who was missing and where he'd have gone, and I had a teenage boy helper I could send into the bathroom to look for them. Then to top it all off, at the end of the day we had a couple of missing kids (not mine, thank goodness). The mom came in to pick up her kids, rather late, when almost everyone had left, and her kids weren't there. These tend to be good kids who aren't the type to run off and hide, so panic ensued. After we'd searched the whole church and the playground the mom remembered that she'd arranged for their grandfather to pick them up that day and she called the grandfather to verify that they were with him. I think those of us who'd been frantically searching and panicking wanted to strangle her for totally forgetting her own plans and then blaming us.

But now I'm totally done, and the director said I don't have to come to the program tonight. I've seen the part my kids are doing. I really need to get some work done, but I'm considering a brief nap to recharge because I'm dead. I also got myself a cupcake at the grocery store on the way home because I figure I got enough exercise from chasing kids to earn a cupcake.

In other news, thanks for all the nice things you're saying about the new book and for the Amazon reviews that have definitely raised the star rating. When a book has been waited for as long as this one, there's the chance that expectations might be so high that the book couldn't possibly meet them, so I was a little worried about the reception it would get. But it sounds like people are enjoying it, and I'm glad.

And it seems that Google Books now has it available. You can either get it directly from them or via your favorite independent bookstore. Though the indies may or may not have it. I just searched a couple of independents I know of and it didn't come up in the search, even though I'd just found it on Google Books. Maybe it takes time to propagate.

More Purchase Links

I have now survived my morning with the second graders. They survived, too, but not without a great deal of effort to kill each other. I lost track of how many times I had to say, "This is not a weapon."

I have more purchase links:
All Romance E-Books -- they offer both epub and mobi (Kindle) formats, as well as PDF.

Kobo

If you want to discuss this book or others in the series, there is an #enchantedinc hashtag on Twitter.

The only review on Amazon right now (or the last time I checked) was three stars, which is sad. I'm avoiding reading reviews because they mess with my head sometimes, so I don't know what the review said, but if you've read and feel inclined to review, please do, and feel free to be honest. I just hope there are some who want to give it more than three stars.

And now I think I need chocolate. Or maybe wine. Not because of the book but because of the kids. There was a nasty thunderstorm last night that woke me up and kept me awake for a while, and the kids were also affected. I'd hoped that they'd be groggy, but they were really hyper, and the playground was a swamp after all the rain, so we had to stay inside for the "blow off steam" recess period.