July 2024 Roundup

Types Of Foreshadowing Subplot Do’s And Don’ts

July 2024 Roundup

Welcome to the July 2024 roundup!

Well, after spending the end of June and most of July with strained lower back muscles, including a week on doctor-prescribed muscle relaxers and inflammation meds, I’m finally almost back to normal. That wasn’t fun, and I have no idea what I did to pull the muscles, just that they were sore one morning, and only got worse until I could barely move and got some medical help.

Unsure if my terrible habit of slouching at my writing desk was the culprit (or at the very least, not helpful), I bought a desktop riser that allows you to have a standing desk when needed. Now my cat Luna spends her days sleeping on my abandoned desk chair while her brother, Dash, hogs the home-office cat tower. So, in the end, I guess my back pain was a gain for my writing buddies .

As for what else I got up to in July, read on…

What I’ve Been…Writing

The Checklist Project. This month, I managed to complete draft 2, which involved narrowing down the content I was using (my original blog posts), rewriting, and then creating checklists to accompany each piece of content. The plan now is to do an editing pass for voice consistency, to pick up errors, and to cut words where I can to get the word count down. It’s not as high as it once was, but I’d like it as low as possible while including the most helpful content so that the eventual book will be available at a reasonable price. If I complete these goals for draft 3, I’ll then have a version to format into the vision I (and my formatter/cover designer) have for the book, before passing it on to beta readers for their feedback.

Watching

A Quiet Place: Day One

Even though it’s the prequel, Day One is the best movie in the franchise so far. There are plenty of jump scares, and I think knowing that it’s blind aliens that invaded Earth only helps make the frantic nature of the arrival scenes even better.

This story concentrates on Sammy (played by the always excellent Lupita Nyong’o), a hospice patient out for a day in the city with other patients and a nurse. All she wants is pizza, and her insistence on getting it even when things fall apart, seems strange until the movie reveals why it’s so important. By this time, she’s met another lost survivor, Eric (Joseph Quinn), and they help each other get to where they need to be—her pizza place, and him onto a boat that’s taking survivors to an island (yes the one revealed in A Quiet Place 2).

This is an emotional story, and it’s so brilliantly acted and paced that my only gripe was the silly logistical reappearance and disappearance of Sammy’s cat as they trek from one side of the city to the other.

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder (TV Adaption)

After loving the book (see the review below), I dove right into the TV adaption, but as the saying goes… the book was better. While the series was fine, following most of the same beats as the book, and featuring the same murderer resolution, I just didn’t like the changes made to pack the storyline into 6 episodes. It felt like it missed the layering of the characters, and it also couldn’t feature all of the secrets and tension built up so beautifully in the book.

One thing I will give the adaption props for is the romance between Pip and Ravi coming across stronger in the TV version, and that all the actors did the characters justice. If you haven’t read the book, I’m sure you’d enjoy the series without issue, so I’m still recommending it for those who like small-town murder mysteries.

Twisters

I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a reboot or a sequel to the 1996 original, Twister, but Twisters does a great job at being both, and it’s own movie. While it follows the same story beat of a group of twister chasers wanting to use science to save lives, this time there’s also a group of online influences who follow the tornadoes to shoot content for their fans.

As both groups find themselves in a once-in-a-generation tornado storm, they need to work together to survive. There’s more action, special effects, and the natural chemistry of the leads (played by Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones) adds another watchable layer to this return of blockbuster popcorn movies.

Deadpool And Wolverine

NO SPOILERS. Since the movie has just opened, all I’m going to say is that it’s most definitely worth seeing, and seeing it before spoilers make their way to the Internet. There are so many surprises, and they’re even better if you don’t know anything about them. Other than that, Deadpool And Wolverine is funny, quippy, gory, and emotional in all the right places. The soundtrack is also awesome.

Reading

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder (Book #1) by Holly Jackson

When Pip does her final high school assignment on the 5-year-old murder of Andi Bell, most think she’s crazy. Even more so when she’s the only one who believes that the since-dead murderer, Andie’s boyfriend and Pip’s friend, Sal, was innocent.

Teaming up with Sal’s reluctant brother, Pip, and Ravi work through the clues, ignore threats, and uncover more than just the truth about Andi and Sal’s deaths, but a stash of secrets that threaten to tear families and the little town they live in apart.

I listened to the audiobook and found the voice acting gave this mystery that I enjoyed so much a whole other level. All the twists and reveals were pulled off in a way that, even if you’d guessed them, it was satisfying to have your hunches proved right. This is the first book in a series of three, and I will most definitely be getting the audiobooks for the others, too.

All You Took From Me by Lisa Kenway

In this psychological thriller from debut author, Lisa Kenway, Dr Clare Carpenter, wakes from a coma to discover a car accident took her husband and her memories of the last few months.

As she’s piecing her life back together, threatening messages from a stranger, and flickers of memories she can’t be sure are real, makes Clare question not only herself, but if the man she married was who she thought.

When her past and present collide, Clare puts her job as an anaesthetist at risk, as well as her mental health using hypnosis to uncover what’s been blanked out. Clare is a strong woman, but not without her flaws. Her grief for her husband, a lost close friendship, and the years-old shunning of her estranged family compound, adding layers to her character, and setting up inevitable truths when the well-foreshadowed twists fill the final chapters.

While the first half of the book is a slow burn, and the story goes in directions you didn’t think it would, the action-packed climax is thrilling, making All You Took From Me a satisfying read, crafted by a talented writer who knows how to meld beautiful prose and gritty storytelling to create an intriguing page-turner.

The One That I Want by Sandy Barker

This is the third book in the Ever After Agency series, and it’s been my favorite so far! Poppy is back, hired by the head of a magazine to help the editor of her digital imprint through a series of good and bad dates for content and to secretly help her find love.

Although Greta loves her job and it’s been a rewarding career where she’s just hit her most successful goal, she fears her other goals of romance, traveling, and family are slipping away. While the dates get Greta on board with finding a match, when one turns out to be her dream on paper, it gets complicated when a man she’s struck up a friendship with at the coffee shop near her office feels like he could be the one.

As usual with Sandy Barker’s books, there’s humor, romance, great characters, and little nods to this fun romance series’ past and future books. I found this book delightful, and I’m sure fans of light-hearted romance will feel the same.

A Flash In The Dark by Steven Smith

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of flash fiction and short stories from author, Steven Smith. A Flash In The Dark features a good mix of everything from fantasy, dark crime, psychological thrillers, sci-fi, an emotional story about an imperfect doll, and even an inspiring Christmas story.

Standouts for me were Coming Home, about an astronaut’s exploration to Mars that features a fantastic twist. The life and demise of a musician across Windy City Blues and Sin City Sorrow. The joy and pitfalls of being a writer in Underwood and Writer’s Retreat. The ghostly, A Haunted King. And the leaves-you-wanting-more crime thrillers, Inside Job, and Insomnia. Even with the mix of genres, the author’s engaging and beautifully written prose ties all of the stories together, and I’d happily read another collection by him.

If you’ve got any good book recommendations, let me know in the comments, or be my friend on Goodreads and share your books/recommendations! You can also find and follow my reviews and book recommendations on Amazon and BookBub.

If you’d like to add the Blackbirch books to your Goodreads “Want to Read” shelf and/or check out the reviews, click the following links:

Blackbirch: The Beginning Blackbirch: The Dark Half Blackbirch: The Ritual Blackbirch: The Collector

Taking Photos Of

Sunrise soaked clouds. I’ve seen so many on my cold winter walks, and it makes the early morning starts (almost) bearable.

Blackbirch Review Of The Month

This month’s review is for the third Blackbirch book, The Ritual. This was the hardest book of the series to pull together, and at one point, I spent a whole year doing rewrites. Once I got the basic story right, however, it was smooth sailing, and the feedback for it has been great, as this lovely review shows!