Artemis, by Andy Weir: A Review

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Did Andy Weir’s creative mojo weaken when he joined the Big 5 Publishing Machine? Is publishing in New York City his kryptonite? For sure, it’s hard to follow The Martian. It became an on-line sensation that was noticed by publishers and movie-makers. But still, I know Mr. Weir has better chops that this.

Artemis, in Greek Mythology, is the daughter of Zeus and twin sister of Apollo. She is the Goddess of the wilderness. A perfect name for this book, considering it takes place in a colony on Earth’s moon.

I had high hopes for this novel. I absolutely loved the map of the moon colony at the front of the book, it stoked my imagination! Sadly, this book was lacking in so many ways. Just so you know, I’m going to talk about that now. Spoiler alert!

Jazz, the main character in this story is a petty outlaw. A smuggler. She’s estranged from her dad, a renowned welder. She’s promiscuous and impulsive. But why? We know that she and her boyfriend accidentally burned down her dad’s shop- thus the estrangement- but we never learn why she’s such a Bad Girl. 

Courtesy of Google Images

She has a pen pal on Earth named Kelvin (clever!). I though her backstory would develop through the letters they sent back and forth, they started out that way, but fizzled. Kelvin’s character became mainly her smuggling/scheming partner. As I’ve talked about before, every story has a back-story. Our past is what makes us who we are and what we do in the present.  I didn’t know what made Jazz tick, so I didn’t really care about her. Story death. Big time. (Story Genius by Lisa Cron.)

Other things that bothered me include several characters “pinched his/her chin…” What’s that all about? I believe in each scene, the character was thinking, but it’s awkward that at least three different characters did it. I understand if it’s one character’s tendency, it shows a bit of their personality, but it’s not o.k. for several characters to “chin pinch.”

Jazz’s friend, Svoboda, talked in exclamation points! Everything he said ended in an exclamation point!  Most writers understand that exclamation points should be used sparingly! This story read like a young adult or juvenile story. It was written in first person, like The Martian was, but it lacked maturity. Every time Jazz talked to me, the reader, 

I was pulled out of the story. Again, story death.

Like The Martian, there was lots of chemical, sciency stuff that went over my head in Artemis. However, in Weir’s first novel, that stuff was explained better. In that book, I could see the technology in my mind. I this book, I could not visualize so many, too many, things.

Overall, the characters were underdeveloped, making me not really care about them. The premise of the story was all about being underhanded- by accident they learned their underhandedness was against organized crime, and in the end Jazz talked herself out of being deported by convincing the Powers-That-Be that her monopoly and personal ‘community first’ stance in smuggling was what kept their colony free from drugs, gangs, and crime, and if she was deported to Earth, who knows what kind of smuggler would take her place? Give me a break.

Sorry Andy.

Until next time,

Be Good To Yourself.

~Nadine

My Writing Guru

I recently attended a writing conference for children’s books authors.  The Iowa chapter of Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI) held their annual conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa this year.

You may wonder why I went to a children’s book conference. I don’t really write children’s books (but I might…), and I for sure am not and cannot illustrate a book of any kind! Why did I go?

Me and the brilliant Lisa Cron

Two words: LISA CRON. Yes, MY writing guru, the chick that I get, the one who helped this novel writing business really click for me, Lisa Cron was the keynote speaker!

Lisa Cron is the author of Wired for Story and Story Genius. I’ve written a post about how I applied her theories from Story Genius to my first novel, THE INK OF TIME. 

Courtesy of Google Images

The first time I heard Lisa Cron she was being interviewed by  JoAnna Penn, creator of  The Creative Penn Podcast. When she talked about how the brain works and its/our biological need for stories I knew she was on to something. As a former teacher, I’ve put in many professional development and continuing education hours studying how the brain learns and/or why it doesn’t.

Besides The Creative Penn podcast interview, I’ve watched Ms. Cron give a TED Talk on the subject of brain science and its connection to story, I’ve read Story Genius  one-and-a-half times*, and yet I still wanted to see the lady in person. I was not disappointed!

Right after being introduced :)

Ms. Lisa Cron can talk. Fast. She is passionate and knowledgeable about her topic and it shows. Lisa walked probably five miles in her first two-and-a-half hour presentation. She never stood still. Up and down the stage she walked. And she’s a ‘hand talker’, too. It was never a dull moment. I wrote so fast, only to be distracted by her animations, that my notes look like a battlefield! Good thing I’ve read the book!

This is some of what I’ve learned from her. These are the big points. Each one had many details about how to make them happen. Lots of writerly stuff.

1. The ability to write and the ability to tell a story are not the same. Events, quests, and a bunch of stuff happening is not a story. It’s a bunch of stuff happening.

2. All stories are about change, and change is hard. Stories allow us to experience something and learn from it. This makes me think of all the fables and tales that, throughout every culture, teach a lesson. Think about some of your favorite novels, what was its lesson or the cautionary tale?  I think about the book (and movie) Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins. The obvious is ‘don’t be a drunk loser on a train’, right? But really, that book is about ‘trusting yourself and your instincts.’

One of many pictures Tim has taken
of me while I'm reading.

3. The first job of an effective story is to anesthetize the part of your brain that knows it’s a story, and puts you, the reader, IN the story. I so get that. 

How many times have I been so deeply in a book that I don’t even hear other people talking to me? Lots and lots of times!  Tim will tease me by saying, “The house is on fire!”  That's when I know he’s been trying to talk to me but I was oblivious. Does that ever happen to you? If so, you’ve struck story gold.

4. Story is not just entertainment. Stories tell us what to do, allow us to step out of the present and envision the future, and stories allow us to see the unknown and unexpected. (Remember, there is no such thing as “mindless entertainment.” You know the saying: “you are what you eat”? Same goes for entertainment. You may not even know how it affects you.)

So, every story worth its salt is created with these points in mind. Kinda makes writers pretty important, doesn’t it? Writers’ jobs are to give us food for thought. Something to contemplate. Something to learn from. Something to think about. Pretty big stuff, I say.

Then, THE INK OF TIME, right? Luckily, I already understood the concept of story being events that lead to a conclusion, so I didn’t have any actions or scene to delete because of that.  However, the part about change was a big aha moment for me. Otto had a lot of stuff happen in his life that made him who he was at the beginning of this story. I wrote some pretty heart-breaking scenes with him and his sisters to illustrate that point. (Thanks again, Lisa Cron!)

I hope my readers (when I publish) will become engrossed in Otto’s story. One of the tricks is to tell very little about his physical appearance. This gives the reader the ability to step into his shoes. Also, the story is about a man who gets a job in a tattoo shop, but that just the vehicle, if you will, for the story. The overarching theme of my story is family. Who is family and what defines a family.

Think about what you read. Think about what a gift the author is giving to you - the opportunity to learn, experience, and explore. Big stuff.

And another picture of
me reading!

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine

*I will finish reading it for a second time, as part of my work on my second novel.

The Silent Corner, by Dean Koontz- A Review Sort Of...

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Google from Amazon

The first Dean Koontz book I read was By the Light of the Moon, published in 2002. I’m not a big fan of horror, guts, or gore so the fact that this book captured my attention is strange enough in and of itself. 

And the book is even stranger.  Here’s the gist:

It begins with a “mad scientist/doctor” injecting a serum into unsuspecting strangers. He tells them, while they’re tied up, ‘Either you’ll die (from the injection) or you and your world will become astounding.’ 

Well the characters, of course, do not die. (Else no book, right?) They gain some super-human skills from the serum injection that the bad guys are willing to kill them over. (They already off'd the doc.) 

My favorite character in this book is the autistic adult (yet younger) brother of the main character. Unbeknownst to big brother, little brother has also been injected and gains the ability to time travel, which he calls Folding. Their brother-to-brother conversations are charming and take the edge off my “nervous scardy” for a little while.

The Silent Corner, by
Dean Koontz

Fast forward fifteen years. Today I just finished our book club pick, The Silent Corner, recently released by Dean Koontz. FBI agent, Jane Hawk, (Koontz’s newest hero) is searching for some answers. The untimely death of her husband and many other unlikely victims have caused Jane to “go rogue” from the Agency.

This story is scary, not because of zombies, evil spirits, aliens, or supernatural events- there is none of that in this book- but instead because of its possibility of being very, very real.

Point number one: The “dark web” is in this story. – Just this week on the national news a report from Italy about a young female model being abducted and nearly sold into human trafficking ON the dark web. It’s a real thing with real bad dudes. *

 A nanobot on a blood cell. Image courtesy of Google.

Point number two: Nanotechnology plays a prominent part in this book. -Also real. Science, technology, and medicine all wrapped into one. Its implications are nothing short of miraculous. Little machines in our bodies that fight cancer or brain tumors or whatever. Machines the size of molecules. **  

Except in The Silent Corner nanotechnology takes a horrible turn. Bad guys are using the technology to alter the human brain. Make people do what they wouldn’t do.  All sorts of shit hits the fan.

Image courtesy of Google.

As a writer myself, I loved several things Mr. Koontz did in this story. First, every story worth its salt has a protagonist that has a need. Check.
Also, every major character has a back story that motivates what they do. Check. 
Good stories don’t have random characters that  do nothing to move the story forward. Check. (Homeless guy on page 34 becomes a player later in the story.) 
And, finally; Beautiful language does not a story make. Tell the story and the language will emerge. Like this: 

“ Together…they ascended on foot through a meadow carpeted with a variety of grasses and decorated with formations of chaparral lily in early bloom. Rabbits dining on sweet grass hopped away from them or sat up on their hindquarters to watch them pass. Cicadas sang, and orange butterflies with narrow dark margins on their wings took flight.”

Poetic, huh? I can see it, feel it. I know where the characters are. Oh, and I know all hell is about to break loose soon. (Shout out to Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius. Click here to read my post about this book.) 

Inside the book jacket of
The Silent Corner.

The next Jane Hawk story, The Whispering Room, will be released November 21, 2017.

Jane won some hefty battles in The Silent Corner, but she didn’t win the war. I hope to find out if Jane conquers this particular evil group, if she has it out with her estranged father, whom she’s “called out” after many years of no contact, if Dougal will to be her side-kick or backer, and how her son Travis is fairing.

I'd love some reading suggestions. What have you been reading lately?

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine

* http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-model-kidnapped-italy-dark-web-20170807-story.html

** https://www.theguardian.com/science/nanotechnology

Ninety-Nine and Counting

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Today is my ninety-ninth post! 

That’s almost two years of blogging. Wow! It’s quite a challenge coming up with an idea each week. When I first started blogging, I thought I would gradually work my way up to two posts a week; one on Wednesday and one on Friday, but I find that a once a week post is challenging enough for me. I don’t know how some bloggers handle three or four posts, or more, per week. Perhaps it’s the only writing they do.

Each of my blog posts takes several hours to create. After I get an idea, it typically takes me an hour or so to get the ideas organized on paper. I do a lot of re-reading to try to make my work as clear and as mistake free as I can. Sometimes my brain goes faster than my hands, or I read what I WANT it to say, not what I’ve actually typed!

Image courtesy of Google

 After that, I spend (probably definitely too much) time finding images to go with my text. Then, I get everything formatted on the blog page so that I’ve created some white space between paragraphs and added images to go with most of them. 

Finally, I create hyper-links if I want readers to look at something else on-line.  I also create labels that allow readers to click to blog posts having particular key words in them- like: Writing a Novel. (If the words are a different color than the rest of the text, you can click on it!)

Three hours or so later, I can look at a preview of my post before I schedule it to appear at 4:00 AM, Pacific Daylight Time, on my BlogSpot page.

This is the book I need!
Image courtesy of Google

So, what’s in the future for this blog? Can I maintain another hundred posts? Well, I hope so. This blog is part of me “building my platform.”  Writers need that. We can’t live in a vacuum.  I’ve been doing some marketing research and I’ve learned enough to know that I don’t know much at all. (Is that a song???)

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My goal for this blog is to continue to talk about books, and life, and writing. With the writing in particular, I hope to share my process for self-publishing. I hope to self-publish THE INK OF TIME by August, 2017. (Just typing that makes my stomach do flip-flops!)

I will chronicle the steps I take in this process. Right now, I’m at the sort-of rewriting/revising stage of this novel. I thought it was done. I sent it out into the publishing world. I found out, it was not ready. With the help of Story Genius, By Lisa Cron, my novel goes much deeper than what I’d previously put on the page. I’ve already written some very interesting scenes that I’ll be adding in.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Courtesy of Google Images

My eighteenth birthday came and went. Polly was the only one to wish me a happy birthday. She’d bought a Bear Claw at the gas station on the corner and we split it. Crazy Polly even lit a match and stuck it in the donut and made me blow out the flame, like a real birthday candle she said.

Polly and I were sitting on the front stoop of our apartment building a couple days later. Quinn, without actually having any chalk to draw a real one, jumped in a hop-scotch pattern up the sidewalk and then picked up the little rock she’d tossed and continued to jump.

 “Otto, I’ve got a secret. It’s a bad one,” Polly said.

“How bad?” I asked.

“Bad.”

“What did you do this time, Polly?”

“I went to the free clinic.” I stared at her, afraid to ask and maybe not wanting to know, but she blurted it out anyway. “Otto, I’m gonna have a baby, look!” My sister pulled her sweatshirt tight against her belly. It looked like she’d stuffed Quinnie’s favorite cereal bowl under her shirt...

Believe it or not, Otto’s life gets even more messed up from this point on. I knew Otto had siblings, but until I wrote this scene, I didn’t know they were younger sisters named Polly and Quinn.

Here’s my thing: It’s exciting to create. It’s very scary to share.

Do you have an exciting/ scary “thing,” too? I think maybe we all do at some point in our story, don’t you?

Image courtesy of Google

God gives us each our unique “things” to make us braver, stronger, and more humble.

Take a minute to think about yours (maybe now or in the past..).

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine

Braining Up My Novel: THE INK OF TIME Needs a little more ink!

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I recently found a podcast about authors marketing their own books, called The Creative Penn. The podcasts are about the writing process, creativity, author mindset, and a variety of other good stuff, along with the marketing side of writing. The creator, Joanna Penn, a huge proponent of self-publishing, has recorded over 300 episodes in the past few years.  I’m working my way through all them on my daily walks. Each and every episode has given me at least a nugget of information that is useful and applies to my writing life; however, one episode in particular, sent me directly to my Amazon account to order a book!

Courtesy of Google Images

Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (*Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere), by Lisa Cron is that book.  Besides having a whopping twenty-seven word title, it focuses on the science of brain and story-telling. Really cool and interesting stuff!

As a former (yet always) teacher, brain science and how the brain works and learns is an integral part of teaching. If educators can’t or don’t teach to the patterns of how the brain works, what is the point? I’ve spent a lot of time over the years learning (the little we humans really understand) about how the brain works and processes information.

Image courtesy of Google

When you're hungry...
Courtesy of Google Images

It all starts with our NEEDS. Our need for shelter, security, and food, you know- survival. If any one of these things is not being met, optimal learning cannot happen. (Just the other day at my part-time job my boss wanted me to pick out some tee-shirts. I told her I couldn’t concentrate on that because I was hungry. Tee-shirts. I couldn’t pick out tee-shirts because I was hungry. It brought me back to the classroom in my mind and all of the times students came to school and told me they were hungry.)

Courtesy of Google Images

Telling stories is as old a time. And do you know why? Because stories give information of experiences and times past. Lisa Cron says, “…we come to every story we hear – not just novels, which, evolutionary speaking, arrived on the scene about five seconds ago -  hardwired to ask one question in what’s known as our cognitive unconscious: What am I going to learn here that will help me not only survive, but prosper?” (p.14)

I’m studying this book like it’s a college course. I’m highlighting and taking notes in a spiral notebook. I’ve created a table document for the ‘What To Do’ assignments where am creating new scenes for my two novels, THE INK OF TIME and my yet unnamed elevator/earthquake story.

 I’m excited to add more to Otto’s story (THE INK OF TIME), and I know I’m going to need some beta readers (again) for that story. I want to get it right before I publish- and yes, I think I might just self- publish.  (Scary!) If you think you might like to give being a beta reader a try, send me a message. Beta reading IS HOMEWORK!  I’d love a few more perspectives on this story.

Since this post is all about brain science, ask yourself this: Which way do I learn/remember best:

A)   I write everything down.

B)   I underline or highlight information.

C)   I use different color pens to stay organized.

D)   I listen to learn.

E)   I learn best when someone shows me how to do something.(Youtube?)

F)   I need a quiet place to think/learn.

G)   I need to move around a lot to process information.

H)   Music helps me learn.
I) I like to draw or read diagrams to learn/ figure things out

(Seriously, this list could go on and on. You get the idea… Now how are you going to USE this information about yourself???)

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself!

~Nadine

P.S. And think about being a beta reader for me :)