There’s still a little room on the I, Spy / Mr. Nice Spy blog launch tour, but it’s filling up fast! More details here.
Who doesn’t love libraries? One of my favorite things about libraries is using the hold system. Okay, so it’s not so great when the book you want isn’t available right away, but with the hold system, it takes like five minutes to get a book you already know you want to read (once it comes in, of course). So here are the last three books that came in on hold for me.
Paige by Annette Lyon
After a bitter divorce from her unfaithful husband, Paige moves from Utah to California with her two little boys and vows to make a fresh start. She finds a job at a dental practice that helps her get back on her feet, but it’s the friends she makes at her new book club who help her realize how strong she is and who give her support to carry on as she faces the challenges of being a single mom. She also meets Derryl, a wonderful, kind, attentive man who treats her right—something her ex never did. Yet, Paige struggles to figure out who she is as a woman rather than a wife, how to help her boys adjust to a broken home, and whether she can ever trust a man or love again. As Paige leans on the book club ladies and Derryl’s ever-present care, one thing becomes clear: healing from the past requires more than a change of address.
With my birthday book budget, I decided I’d rather buy Annette’s Band of Sisters: Coming Home (Side note: Band of Sisters is currently $1.99 on Kindle!), and I put Paige on hold from the library. It finally came in, and it was the first book I picked up off the stack! But then life sucked up all my reading time. Darn life.
Reached by Ally Condie
Cassia’s journey began with an error, a momentary glitch in the otherwise perfect façade of the Society. After crossing canyons to break free, she waits, silk and paper smuggled against her skin, ready for the final chapter.The wait is over.
One young woman has raged against those who threaten to keep away what matters most—family, love, choice. Her quiet revolution is about to explode into full-scale rebellion. With exquisite prose, the emotionally gripping conclusion to the international–bestselling Matched trilogy returns Cassia, Ky, and Xander to the Society to save the one thing they have been denied for so long, the power to choose.
I’ve read the first two books of this series, Matched and Crossed. I’ll be honest: the characters and the story don’t totally grab me and glue my eyes to the page (which sounds like a horrible, violent torture anyway. . . .), but I can’t stop reading Ally Condie’s beautiful, perfectly poetic writing. Love it!
The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Steadman
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.
This last book is for my new long-distance book club, composed of my mom, my sisters, and my BFF. (With a roster like that, you’d probably think the book club was my idea. Nope.) One of my sisters has already read and enjoyed it and it sounds great!
What are you reading? What should me new book club tackle next?
Earlier this month, I presented at the LDStorymakers Writers’ Conference on character arcs. There was one question that my examples didn’t seem to address very well on character arcs at the climax. The other day, we were watching my two-year-old’s favorite movie when it hit me: this specimen of high art is a perfect example of the model of character arcs at the climax!
I haven’t seen Kung Fu Panda, but I’ve seen the sequel probably 30 times. It’s my two-year-old’s fave (“Panna,” she calls it.)
Info dumps, or long, unnatural passages of exposition, are a good way to bore and lose your reader. Sometimes we try to sneak in that 
Our “secret sauce” is everything it takes to make a manuscript publishable (for me, anyway). Over the last several months, I’ve gone through more than a dozen techniques in-depth that I believe took my writing from rejected to accepted, everything from the structure of the whole story to building a better sentence.