The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez -- Review and Giveaway

Thought for the Day:

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”

 ~ John Steinbeck ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends: 

K. W. Weiland has a great post HERE on how to get your message across in your story without beating your readers over the head with it. 

I ran across a good post a while back reminding us of ways to cut words. Click HERE to see what Kaylee Baldwin has to say about that.

Kristen Lam always has something interesting to say, and this is now exception. Click HERE to find the Five Warning Signs Your Story Needs Revision. 

Every Sunday morning, I try very hard to make time to watch all the major news shows. It really helps me to put things into perspective for myself. This morning there was a special treat on Face the Nation. Bob Schieffer had five mystery/thriller writers -- Sandra Brown, Lee Child, Jeffrey Deaver, Karin Slaughter, and David Ignatius -- on his show to discuss their craft. It was a lot of fun. If you missed it, you can see it by clicking HERE. It reminded me that sometimes I need to read something that is just for fun -- not for review or as homework for my own writing. The segment runs 15 or 20 minutes and you can build a good escapist reading list while you watch.

Last week a offered a copy of Fake ID by Lamar Giles, kind of a mystery/thriller for the younger set, to one of you. This week's winner is Jen Garrett! WooHoo for Jen!! She is a writer and mother. She has written award-winning scripts, articles, and poems and is hoping to have one of her children's books published one day soon. You can find more about her at here site HERE and you can also find her blog there. Jen, I will get the book out to you this week. For the rest of you, I have another giveaway this week so keep reading.  

Since it is summer, and since I am getting ready to fly to Minnesota tomorrow for a very short trip, I am going to take it easy and post a review of wrote for the San Francisco Book Review a while back. The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez by Peter Johnson is my choice for this week. Here is my review.

For seventh-grader Benny Alvarez, life is never dull. At school, where he hangs out with best friends Jocko and Beanie, he has a special teacher the boys call Ms. D (for Demigoddess). Benny is always, it seems, in conflict with pretty Claudine and her girlfriends. His family is very interesting. He has a younger brother, Crash, an older sister, Irene, and her odd boyfriend, Aldo. Benny’s father is retired, his mother is an executive, and his grandfather has suffered a couple of strokes which affects his speech and thinking. Ms. D has decided to have the students work on poetry, not a subject the boys are too crazy about, and she brings in a visiting poet. The girls believe poetry must have rhyme and line breaks, but the boys think poetry in sentences and paragraphs is just fine. The competition heats up and forces Benny and Claudine into head-to-head conflict.

“Another one of my traits is that I can argue you to death. You want 

to argue that the cafeteria pizza is great, I can counter with a 

hundred reasons why it isn’t, even if it’s my favorite meal.”

 
Peter Johnson has created an engaging cast of characters, all very realistic and believable, and placed them in a likewise believable setting and situation. The writing is funny and smart, and the story is told in a pitch-perfect voice of a very likable and shrewd Benny.

Peter Johnson

If you would like to win my gently-read ARC, all you need do is be a subscriber or follower (free and easy in the right-hand column), have a US address, and leave a comment. Next time I post I will draw a name of one commenter. If you want extra chances, please Tweet the link or post the link on your Facebook feed or your blog. Tell me you have done this and I will give you extra chances. Be sure to check Shannon Messenger's wonderful blog for more Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday reviews and giveaways. Click HERE to find it.

By the way, I have no idea why I can't get all my text to be in the same font. Blogger seems to take on a life of its own sometimes, and I can't control it. Sorry. 

Two Reviews and a Giveaway

Thought for the day (just because it cracked me up so much):

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” ~ Mark Twain ~

A gift for my writer friends:

 

Here are some links I think you will find valuable. I have so many, I just couldn’t pare down the list to less than five. If you aren’t reading Kristen Lamb’s blog, you really, really should. She is outrageously funny and has lots and lots of great tips for writers. Here are links to two of her posts and three others I think are worth your time.

Kristen Lamb, author of We Are Not Alone, has a GREAT blog post and will tell you why to not eat the butt (seriously, Don’t Eat the Butt!). Not kidding. Worth reading. http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/lies-that-can-poison-your-dreams-dont-eat-the-butt-in-2013/

Another great post by Kristen Lamb. This time on writing detail: http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/writing-tip-1-how-much-detail-should-writers-use/#comment-55280

Query Letters that Worked. Great examples: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/successful-query-letters-for-literary-agents_b62590

20 Common Grammar Mistakes. You will be surprised how helpful this one is: http://shqipria.eu/?p=12247

Snippet of Terry Gross interview with Maurice Sendak: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/30/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-2012.html?view=Maurice_Sendak

First, let me wish all of you a happy and prosperous New Year. I hope this is the best year of all our lives!

For my fabulous giveaway, the winner is Pat Kahn! (Cue the confetti please!) Pat, I will be sending you a copy of Vin and the Dorky Duet. The book will be on its way soon. Enjoy! I have another giveaway for today, so stay tuned.

A couple months ago Lee Child was the speaker at the Sacramento Bee Book Club. There were probably more than two thousand people in attendance. Imagine that! To listen to an author. Wow. They cheered long and loud when he came out, but when he mentioned the movie that is soon to be released based on his popular character Jack Reacher, they jeered and booed. Hmmm. Interesting. Well, his readers certainly have strong feelings about his books.

I hadn’t read any of his books, but had a small stack of them waiting until I had time to do a little adult reading. Murder and mayhem, in books and TV shows, are my guilty pleasure, but I have little time to indulge. Child was an interesting speaker and my wonderful son-in-law gave me the first book in Lee Child’s highly successful Jack Reacher series, Killing Floor, for Christmas. I would have to say it was a romp. One has to suspend belief in reality a bit too often in this book and there were breakdowns in logic. Honestly, it read a bit first-drafty, but I set everything aside and plowed through over 400 pages in a couple of days, so it was a page turner. I’ll read more of his books when I’m in the mood. And I will probably see the movie when it hits Redbox just because I can’t imagine Tom Cruise in that role and want to see if it’s as silly as it sounds. If you’re looking for some silly murder and mayhem, this might be worth your time.

Now on to my usual business – Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday and a review. This week it's a cute new book in a very popular series. Here is my review of The Candy Smash by Jacqueline Davies that was posted by the Sacramento Book Review. (http://citybookreview.com/2012/12/the-candy-smash/)

Don’t forget to stop by Shannon Messenger’s wonderful blog for more Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday links. Click HERE to find it.

Jessie is running a newspaper for the fourth-grade classroom, and she thinks it gives her the right to know everybody’s business. Her brother, Evan, on the other hand, thinks everyone deserves to have some privacy. They have quite a houseful since their grandmother, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, lives with the kids and their mother. Their father is living far away. At school, as Valentine’s Day approaches, the students discover candy hearts in their desks that seem to have very specific messages for each – except for Evan’s. This happens several times. And Jessie finds a love message in the girl’s bathroom that gets her started investigating that message, the unexplained candy hearts, and more. Evan just wants everyone to leave him alone and respect his privacy. All this is going on while the students are studying poetry, which Jessie hates and Evan (privately) loves and for which he has a surprising talent.

She watched him hang the bathroom pass on its hook, then return to his seat. He still had that angry look on his face, but it wasn’t quite as bad as when he’d left the room.

Jacqueline Davies has added another fine book to her long-running “Lemonade War” series. The Treski kids always have a pretty compelling, kid-appropriate mystery to solve, interesting family dynamics, and some personal growth that will keep young readers engaged and turning the pages.

 I really recommend this book for lovers of middle-grade books and especially fans of the Lemonade War series. This series deals with some difficult issues kids these days have to face, yet never is too heavy handed.

I am giving away my gently-read ARC of The Candy Smash. If you leave a comment, your name will go into the hat. If you post the link on your blog or on Facebook or tweet it, let me know and you will have an extra entry.

On the book giveaway, this is for U.S. only. Sorry, but it would be too expensive for me to send books out of the country. But please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the title of the post and it will give you just this post with a comments section on the bottom. Also, if you haven’t signed up by email, please do. Just look in the upper right-hand corner of this page, pop your email address in, and you will receive an email each time I put up a new post. Your information will not be shared with anyone.           

Whole Lot of Tellin' Goin' On and a Giveaway

Thought for the day:  "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." ~ Thomas Edison ~

A gift for my writer friends. There has been a LOT of talk on the net the last couple of weeks (while I have been taking some time off) about a blogger who was sued for posting a photo she thought was copyright free. If you haven’t read it, and if you ever post photos other than your own anywhere on the net, you might want to read the first of the links below.  The second link will tell you about some places to get photos you can freely use.

http://www.roniloren.com/blog/2012/7/20/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-for-using-pics-on-your-blog.html

http://meghanward.com/blog/2012/06/21/where-to-get-photos-for-your-blog/

For my fabulous, albeit late, giveaway, the winner is Morgan Mussell!! Congratulations to you, Morgan. I will be sending you a copy of Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator. It’s a funny book and I think you’ll love it. I have another giveaway for today, so stay tuned.

I want to write today about writing rules. There are a lot of them, but perhaps the biggest one pushed by just about everyone I can think of is “Show – Don’t Tell.” I remember when I was teaching, one of my colleagues stated that her students just couldn’t stand a story that had any telling in it, that they would refuse to read such books. I asked what novels she was teaching, and they were mostly new. She pretty much ignored the classics. No Lord of the Flies for her kids. No To Kill a Mockingbird or Fahrenheit 451. I read some of the books she was teaching and felt they were pretty lightweight, short on symbolism, strong themes, and richness of writing, and was saddened that her kids missed out on such great books as I mentioned above. But, heck, those old books sure did have an awful lot of telling in them. Lots of exposition and lots and lots of narration. Shameful!

I recently had a chance to workshop the first chapter of my middle-grade novel on a blog. It was an interesting experience. I got lots of nice comments, followed by admonitions about too much telling and not enough showing. I think the chapter got better in some ways, but, honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot of tellin’ goin’ on to start with. Sometimes I think it’s a knee jerk reaction in the business of critique.

Back in April, I wrote a post about narration and about how a couple of books I’d read by Michael Morpugo were almost entirely narration and – hold onto your hats, now – I loved them. It didn’t bother me at all. I’ve been reading a lot lately. (You may have noticed I haven’t been writing much in the way of blog posts!) I’m finding that many really wonderful books have an awful lot of tellin’ goin’ on.

I ran across an article by Lee Child that Writer’s Digest posted and found it really refreshing. Now this is a guy who know a thing or two about getting pages turning! The title of the article is Lee Child Debunks the Biggest Writing Myths. You can find it by clicking HERE. You will have to click away an ad for Writer’s Digest, but it’s worth it. He reminds us that nobody ever asks anyone to SHOW them a story. They ask to have someone TELL them a story, and that’s just fine. It’s worth your time to read what Child has to say.

I’m reading a book right now that is almost all telling and am enjoying every page. Oh, there’s enough showing to keep the story moving at a rapid pace, but there’s a whole lot of telling and, frankly, that keeps the pace rapid too. It’s a YA about a teenager, Jazz, whose father was the most notorious serial killer of all time, and Jazz has to figure out who he is and whether or not he is destined to become like his father. And, just to make things interesting, there’s a new serial killer in town. Great premise, eh? It’s by Barry Lyga and the title is I Hunt Killers. As soon as I post this, I’ll be getting back to it. If you like Murder and Mayhem, as do I, you will love this book.

I think the whole Show – Don’t Tell thing has gotten a little out of hand. People of all ages love to have stories told to them. So, I’m just suggesting people shouldn’t get their panties in too much of a bunch about some well-written exposition or narration. Just relax and tell your story!

On to my giveaway for this post. I reviewed a book a while ago for the Sacramento Book Review called Just Write, Here’s How! by Walter Dean Myers. Myers has written a TON of very successful YA and Tween books. I’ve read and enjoyed many. So if someone has some good ideas about writing, it might well be him. If you’d like to read my review, click HERE. This is for writers of all ages, so even if you aren’t a writer, if there is a young person in your life who might like to write, you can pass this along. If you leave a comment, I’ll put your name in the hat. If you post a link to my blog on your blog or Facebook or some other such thing, let me know and I’ll put your name in the hat again. And even though I’m on summer hours and not posting too often, I promise I won’t wait too long again on a giveaway.

On the book giveaway, this is for U.S. only. Sorry, but it would be too expensive for me to send books out of the country. But please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the title of the post and it will give you just this post with a comments section on the bottom. Also, if you haven’t signed up by email, please do. Just look in the upper right-hand corner of this page, pop your email address in, and you will receive an email each time I put up a new post. Your information will not be shared with anyone.