Thought for the Day:
"If you rewrite a paragraph fifty times and forty-nine of them are terrible, that's fine;
you only need to get it right once."
~ Tana French ~
Gifts for My Writer Friends:
Authors Publish has a post HERE by Emily Harstone that lists 25 publishers who accept submissions without an agent. This is worth looking at.
Gail Carriger has a fun guest post HERE on writing author bios over at Fiction University.
HERE is a neat infographic with 128 words you can use instead of “very.” It will make all our writing better.
Last week, I promised a gently-read ARC of Mayday by Karen Harrington to one of you. Danielle Hammelef is this week's winner. Congratulations, Danielle! And thanks so much for spreading the word. Those extra chances seem to working. I will get your book out to you this week.
I don't have a giveaway this week. I will be hitting the road the end of the week with my daughter Maggie who is moving all her worldly goods to New York, where she now resides. It's where you have to be if you are an actor. Anyway, she invited me along for the journey, and then she will drop me off in
I had a chance recently to read a book from my TBR list. I had been hearing a LOT about The Girl in the Well is Me by Karen Rivers. I was able to snag a copy at my local library without too long a wait and was immediately and completely captured. Let me tell you about it.
Kammie is new in town. She, her mother, and her brother Robby have had to move because Dad is in prison for embezzlement. But when Kammie decides she wants to be friends with the three most popular girls at her new school, she has no idea what a Pandor's Box she has opened. Little does she know they are also the mean girls. They say she will have to undergo an initiation, and, of course, Kammie goes along. They have her stand on a board far out in the woods away
from anyone and sing a song, but the board breaks and Kammie falls into an old well. The good news is she is not badly hurt. Nothing is broken. But the bad news is her arms are down at her sides, stuck between her torso and the walls. There is no way for her to climb out. The three popular girls call down to her and tell her to get out. She explains there is no way, but they don't seem to believe her or understand or, worse, care. After a while, the girls leave and tell Kammie they will go for help. But she is alone and stuck, although a couple of times she slips farther down, and she has no idea what is below.
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| Karen Rivers |
No one comes. Kammie has a lot of time to think. This story is first person and stream of consciousness. Kammie tells her story -- of her family travails, of the mean girls bullying, and more -- through flashbacks she has. The voice is pitch perfect for a girl of around twelve. The writing is magnificent. What I found most interesting is the longer Kammie is in the well, as she becomes dehydrated, she hallucinates and the reader is left to wonder where the hallucinations start and reality leaves off. I will leave it to you to read this wonderful book and find out if help arrives and how this turns out. I don't want to spoil it for you, but take it from me, this is a perfectly riveting story, terribly well written, and worth your time.
Please read and leave comments for the guest posts the next two weeks, and I will be back the end of the month. If you are reading this in your email, click HERE to go to the blog so you can leave a comment. Don't forget to check out Shannon Messenger's wonderful blog HERE for many more Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday reviews and giveaways.
