Blog Tour! A visit with Portia Adams!

Angela Misri, creator of the fabulous Portia Adams, has the first stop on the #GoodReads book tour!

You can read her kind words about It Should Have Been a #GoodDay here.

Check out other parts of her blog to learn about Portia's mysteries and her fascinating connection to the Sleuth Sherlock himself.

N

Quill & Quire Part Deux

So now that the print magazine has been out for a bit they've posted the review of Aptitude online!

Reading it makes me smile :)

N

Quill & Quire? No way!

I'm learning there are certain events that act to legitimize this effort of mine to carve an existence as A Writer (capital A, capital W). Typing "The End", signing on with a publisher, working with an editor that is not MS Word Spelling & Grammar check, seeing the cover (still my favourite), holding a real book, finding it in the library or bookstore, hearing a review outside the obligatory readers (family and friends)... so last week I got to check another off my list. Aptitude was chosen as the Editor's Choice and reviewed in The Quill & Quire!

The review will go online after a few weeks, but I've got my hardcopy to stare at now :) The editor, Dory Cerny, spent the first half of the review setting the story up and explaining some of the background, then she jumped into the fun stuff — her opinion of the story! She used words like "complex", "delightful", "lustre" and "vividly" and finished the review by saying: "Sampson's dystopian tale is a multi-layered and thought-provoking examination of the concepts of free will, duty and what it means to truly love someone." She got it.

I'm getting there...

N

Story vs Story telling

I just finished February by Lisa Moore and am trying to figure out how to explain it to you.

I can't tell you the story. Is there a story? I think it's the epitome of a literary work - the characters are the story. It's about Helen, a mom of four who is widowed when her husband dies on the Ocean Ranger, a rig off the coast of Newfoundland that sank in 1982. The narrative switches among 1982, flashbacks of her husband before his death, and times afterwards up to present day with her grown children and grandchildren. The story... story? just is.

It is a piece of art. It's like an impressionist painting that you can stare at in parts and appreciate the colours, the textures, the lines. It's like a piece of music that sweeps you up and makes you close your eyes and concentrate on only the music. It's like a chocolate cake that you let slowly melt in your mouth to savour it. The story is less important, just like the scene of the painting is secondary to the colours and brushstrokes.

Lisa Moore does interesting things with her words. She does things that are against the rules: omits quotation marks, uses run on sentences, uses passive voice, uses repetition of words and phrases... all the things that would be 'wrong' in an edit of someone else, someone lesser of a writer. It's beautiful and it works but it creates an air of inaccessibility... that this is a higher form of art not attainable or
accessible for typical readers and writers. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing?

I enjoyed reading it, it's a beautiful novel, but I'm happy to slip back into something narrative and story based for now.

N

Book Review: The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen - Susin Nielson

Sooo, you know when you finish a book and you're lying awake at 2am because you laid awake reading until well past any normal bedtime and you're so blown away by the book and the story that you want to talk to SOMEONE about it but it's 2am and every sane person in your timezone is asleep?

And then the next day you try to start a new book, but you can't figure out what to read because every book you try to read will be so sad and pathetic in relation to the book you just finished so you don't really even feel like bothering?

I just finished THIS:

It's hard to summarize because one of the coolest features of it is the delicate and natural way the backstory unfolds. This is the written journal of Henry as he processes his emotions - reluctantly because he's been encouraged to by his councillor. Counsellor? Geez. He has just moved to Vancouver after a pretty ugly stretch in his family life and he's dealing with the fallout of everything that happened and everything that is happening at school.

There are parts of the book that were physically painful for me to read. There were parts where I laughed out loud (and at 1:53am that's kind of creepy). Overall it's a real and raw story of real and raw characters and life as it happens. It's amazing. Add it to your TBR.

N

Pages vs Film

"The book is always better."

True? False?

My knee jerk answer is "True". Always. But I don't think it's that simple.

I've read a few books where the story is awesome but the writing itself is mediocre and cumbersome. The movies take the writing out of the equation and (if it's a well done film) all that's left is the story that was great to begin with. Those movies are better than the books.

Last night some friends and I went to see American Sniper - me mostly because Bradley Cooper is in it. It's based on the autobiography by Chris Kyle. The movie was intense and very violent. The theme was dark and the depicted evil was frightening. The movie was enough - there's no way I could read the book.

There's a difference between watching and reading. Watching a movie is temporary, short term and limited. Reading gets inside my head. It's intimate and consuming. So book characters get in my head and mess around a bit and when the characters leave they leave a bit of themselves behind. That's the power of books to change people and impact lives... I don't want a story like that sticking in there.

So sometimes movies are better than books.

N

A House in the Sky - Review

I'm intrigued by memoires, and some of them have been some of my favourite books. To date my life has been too boring - not enough excitement or conflict to warrant a memoir, but after reading this book, I'm thinking that's a good thing.

Amanda Lindhout had a difficult childhood and escaped as soon as she could to a life of travel. She'd work six months or so making good money as a cocktail waitress then spend months backpacking around foreign countries in South America, Asia, Europe, Africa... it all sounded very exciting. With or without travel mates, she'd make up her schedule as she went, not tied down to dates or commitments, travelling from one place to another based on whims and suggestions of other travellers she met along the way. I gotta admit, I was kind of envious of her existence for the first part of the book.

Then she went to Somalia.

Lindhout describes well her carefree invincible character that brought her there... knowing what the rest of the story is about, I was trying not to yell at her through the pages and time to tell her 'don't go!' but I could understand how she made a different choice. On her second day there she and her friend, Nigel, and their tour guides and security are kidnapped by, really, a bunch of kids. There are a few adults in the mix, but most of the guards are teenagers, hyped up on fanatical religion and violence.

Lindhout's description of her 460 days in captivity is harrowing and difficult to read. The way she writes details without melodrama and with a compassion that makes all of the characters human instead of innocent and monsters is phenomenal. It's not an easy book to take in, but a worthwhile one.

N

Molly Miranda Thief for Hire - Review

I was excited to be included in the Blog Tour for this book! I'd heard good stuff about it and I get childish pleasure at reading ARC's before everyone else can! Here is Jillianne Hamilton's Molly Miranda, Thief for Hire.

Molly, the narrator is unique and intriguing, sets up the opportunity for a totally different story. Hamilton writes with details that make Molly's escapades believable and easy to tag along. It also makes one wonder, how did she do her research?

My favourite part of this story was the voice. Molly's first person narrative with her side comments had me laughing out loud. The use of contrast between the readers' knowledge and Molly's is hilarious. Hamilton does a fantastic balancing act between suspense and humour, tossing in a laugh at *just* the right place.

Another aspect of the story that impressed me was Hamilton's creation of likeable characters. Presenting a main character that lives outside society's rules can challenge the readers to like the person at the most basic level. A square like me is challenged to give someone who steals from other people the benefit of the doubt - ever. Molly comes with her own flaws, but with a well laid out and consistent moral compass that allowed me to forgive her for her profession and like her as a person. Her relationship with Nate is challenged by their differing scruples but Hamilton composes their interactions in a way that allows them to be different, not right and wrong.

Rhys was the weakest character for me... which is hard to explain without giving up the deets. I found he was less consistent than the other characters, which left me questioning him at times.

(As an added bonus, I learned from this book to spell 'thief' correctly, after spellcheck redlined my repeated 'theif' attempts... I know, I know, "I before E, except after C" and all that.)

Overall Molly Miranda is a fun read with some good messages of self awareness and identity laced through the humour and suspense. The ending (and I'm not giving anything away) eluded to this story being the start of a series which made me smile big on the last page! I'd love to read more of Molly's adventures!

Kissing Frogs - Alisha Sevigny

I'm so excited to be a stop on the Kissing Frogs tour! Partly because I got to read it waaaay before any of you poor saps, but also because I love talking about books.

At first glance, Kissing Frogs is a cute, light-hearted romance. A teen is 'forced' to go on a conservation study trip with a different group of kids while her own gaggle of friends heads to Florida for a party-filled vacation. So not fair, right? 

What's worse? Her old nemesis is there too - the boy who teased her in her past life when she was a clumsy nerd. She has worked hard to shed her past and who she used to be, and there he is to bring it all back. Oh and, instead of partying with her boyfriend she has to clean the poop out of the aquariums of ickily gross frogs. 

Can you guess what will happen?

What's not apparent before you read Kissing Frogs is the depth of character and the gentle reminders of the value of integrity, independence and being true to yourself. Sevigny delivers realistic characters. Her main character, Jessica, has a fantastic voice (and I don't mean singing) with laugh-out-loud one liners and on point sarcasm. She develops through the story as she learns who she is, who she wants to be and figures out how to get there. She takes the readers along in a gentle, here's-the-clues-figure-it-out-yourself way instead of the crash over the noggin other books often use to hammer home a message. 

Sevigny's description of the setting and landscape was beautiful, leaving me wanting to learn more about Panama and the animals that live there. 

As a mom, some of the um, adventures? the kids get into made my toes curl - surely teens wouldn't do THAT in a foreign country, right? But I doubt those without dependents would find fault with their  escapades. I'm just an old mother hen, now. While the outcome of the story is somewhat predictable, the way the characters get there, is not. Their week in panama is full of twists and turns and surprises that kept me intrigued.

As a mom, this is one I'll keep for my daughters' bookshelves, so they can hear Jessica's experience. I'd recommend this book to anyone who needs a breath of fresh air and a happy, feel good book.

N

PS Don't forget the giveaway!!! Canadian residents are eligible to win a free eCopy of Kissing Frogs. To do so, comment here or leave a message about Kissing Frogs on Twitter @NSampson17 !

AWOL

I've had my head down digging through edits against a deadline... less time for blogging!

It's fall! I love fall. I hate that it leads directly into winter, but I love fall!

Any big Christmas plans? We have a ginormous Christmas surprise for the half-sized people in the family. I'm excited for the reveal.

Any books on your Christmas list?

N

Review

It's so nice to get a good review... this one came via a friend:

"Got this book from one of my besties Colleen McKie for my bday. Her company published it... started to read it at 1pm on Monday & finished it before 10pm. A FANTASTIC read! Whitty, touching, everything a great book should be.Warning I cried & laughed through out it. It has been years since I read a book in one sitting! I highly recommend you grab a copy"

Sounds awesome, no?

N

Multiple Perspectives and Super Powers

In the past couple of months I've read these three books:

      

The Book Thief I discussed in my review here. The second and third are memoirs written by women who knew Anne Frank. Reading them were like looking at a single sculpture from different sides, different angles. And next I'm going to reread Anne Frank's diary itself.

Some books are important as escapes, some drive the imagination, some make us think or make us laugh. I think these are important as reminders, as humans to empathize and realize. When Gies is talking about her struggles to find food for her family, walking hours under fear of detection for a few potatoes or beets, I was thinking about my Tim's drive through trip for my hot sausage and cheese on a biscuit, the expired food in my fridge that just went bad because we were too busy to eat it this week.

And it's not outdated. We can read these books and gasp at the unimaginable atrocities, wonder how it's possible it could have happened and forget it's still happening now. Words have power, and written stories give their writers a super power Long after the Germans surrendered and pulled out of Holland these stories remain. The way time passes, the people who died would have been old enough now to have passed even if they had survived... but these stories can still be shared and can still have impact. Their super power is immortality, maybe.

N

Finally...

Finally is a good title for this post b/c it's LONG over due.

FINALLY the third book of the Madgeburg Trilogy was finished.
FINALLY I got to read it (before all'o yous :P)
FINALLY the cover was released so FINALLY I can post my review!!!

 One of the reviews of Game Plan started with an advisory that the reviewer didn't typically like contemporary YA. I appreciated the review she wrote because it meant she went out on a limb to read it, so I offer up the same advisory: I don't typically read fantasy. I don't typically read about fairies or vampires or monsters or werewolves... but the Madgeburg Trilogy is different. Kat Kruger cements the world in such well researched science that I'm almost convinced it's NOT fantasy at all, but absolutely possible given all her explanations.

The Night is Found is the closing novel, following The Night Has Teeth and The Night Has Claws. Connor Lewis, the sorta loser-ish, mostly lost foreign student at a Paris high school has followed his fate and found his place in a world he never knew existed. Through the first two books he made friends and enemies and decided where he stood in the controversy escalating around him. Everything comes crashing together in the final story, The Night is Found. Kruger's characters are consistent throughout the three books, which isn't true for every series. They change and grow but do so in ways that are understandable and realistic given the challenges they face. This third book answers all the questions and brings resolutions that are not always perfect for the characters or preferred by the readers but are believable and congruous with Kruger's effort to present a realistic and conceivable world.

I thoroughly enjoyed each of the books, but think the third might have been my favourite. My eleven year old son is insanely jealous that I got to read it first and is anxious for the release of The Night is Found in July. Definitely a book to check out!

N

The Hard Part

Writing is easy. 

I just wrote that, see? Easy. Thought to fingers, it spreads out from a word or two to a sentence to a paragraph to a story, and there you have it.

The hard parts come next. 

Second guessing each sentence - is it good? is it clear? is it interesting? is it needed? 

Editing can be painful - line up all your children and decide which one is worthy to stick around for a bit. Which one will be culled for oblivion. Which one is not smart enough, not cute enough, not funny enough. Which one works too little? which one tries too hard?

(Maybe that's a bad example 'cause if I had 100K kids it may be easier to kick some out.)

And then, the whole selling thing. 

Chapters is a lie. Not really but try to follow me anyway... When I go into Chapters there are all of these rectangular objects that SING to me "Pick me! PICK ME!" It's not quite as bad as the SPCA cat room but close. What you don't see is the behind the scenes selling to get them there... The author had to sell the story first. 

1. To him/herself - is it good enough? If you think so, zip back a couple of paragraphs and see how that works out.

2. To an editor - is it good enough? And here's the tough part, the editor's job is to say "Well, not quite here, here and here," without handing the author that tiny bottle of WIP poison.

3. To an agent / publisher - is it good enough? Cause they're the ones that make it into that rectangular object in the first place. And they have a bazillion options besides that one story. 

4. To the readers - is it good enough? Even after a story is published the marketing and promoting is just beginning. Remember Chapters with the thousands of books screaming "PICK ME!"? how do I make my book sing loudest? 

Writing is easy. I sit at my desk alone with my cat and my diet Coke and push the thoughts from my head to my fingers and the story appears. I like the quiet, the solitude, the safety. But then I have to scrutinize it without squashing all the confidence with it. And once it's out there I have to find a way to yell PICK ME above the crowds, and drawing attention to myself on purpose? Not quite part of my introverted bio. That's where the hard work starts.

N

Happy Spring!!!

Yes, "Happy Spring" even though our driveway would be skate-able if the ice had frozen flat instead of rutted with tire tracks and footprints. "Happy Spring!" even though some sites are calling for more snow this week (Not all, of course, some are calling for rain and some for sun, it is Halifax after all). "Happy Spring!" even though we're only sixteen days through the worst month of the year...

Why then? Because, BASEBALL!!!

Pitchers and Catchers have reported to spring training! The Jays first full work out is February 21 and they play Philly on the 27th. YAY!

I've written sports into each of my stories, at least in passing. To me, sports are an essential part of life. For my kids sports (hockey, basketball, baseball) teach persistence, practice, sportsmanship and FairPlay, confidence, graceful losing and classy winning, priorities and full effort. In Game Plan basketball was important enough to make the cover. Ella's star status on her basketball team was a huge pedestal from which to fall, was something important put at risk by her pregnancy and gave her something to move forward for during and after the story. It gave her a connection to Kat and Danny too, as he played university ball, like she was hoping to do. Her basketball gave her something to connect her to her brother and her friends, it gave her something nonverbal with which she could interact on a fair and even plane even when she was struggling to feel competent socially.

My short story, Nine, is narrated over nine innings of a baseball game. Mike is a big league picture who has returned to the game after the sudden death of his wife. He struggles to stay in the game and through the game works through some of the fallout of her death. In celebration of the Jays' spring training, I've put the price of Nine down to 50% on Kobo. Check it out!

N

SO what's the point?

Happy Monday!

And I mean that with no sarcasm at all. I love Monday. It's Tuesdays I struggle with.

I received some feedback on Game Plan yesterday that really made me think. The reader asked:

"Was her hope to encourage young girls to feel comfortable giving their babies up for adoption?" 

And it's one of those questions that has festered with me even though I answered it easily and simply right away - no. So why is it taunting me?

Game Plan is 'just a story'. That doesn't mean there aren't themes and messages, though. It's a love story. And it's a story about being true to yourself, making hard choices and growing up doing that. But it's just a story with no political intent.

And that was tough to come to terms with when I was writing/editing it.

The easiest choice for Ella would be an abortion. But my story was about adoption and my respect for birth mothers who have lost children to adoption so an abortion would not tell the story. I really struggled with the why of it - Why would a 17 year old choose to go through a pregnancy and birth to give a baby up for adoption? Why would she choose to place a baby for adoption instead of keeping it, especially when her family was supportive. That's why it took Ella so long to find out she was pregnant - I guessed that hearing the heartbeat changes everything, regardless of the circumstance.

But it was a struggle to write her decision. The truth is, I can't know what's best in any circumstance and feel pretty strongly that it's not my right to choose or judge what someone else needs to do. I was very worried that Ella's decision would come across as judgemental and righteous to anyone who would choose differently. One of my favourite lines of the story was: "She couldn't end a life to fix her own." but it very nearly didn't make the cut... because I agonized that it would be condemning. And I worried readers would think that Ella's decision represented my categorical stance and that's just not true.

Anyways... always a good exercise to think on the whys of an emotion, there's usually something there to learn.

N

Hat's off to Amy!

How awesome is this: CLICK HERE BUT COME BACK!

I can't tell you how impressed I am with this idea.

Someone twitted at me early this morning (that's how I stay current with the lingo, yo) that she was reading my book. Okay, she wasn't twitting at me, she was twitting to the rest of the twits... wait... she sent a tweet saying she was reading my book and included my 'handle' (that makes me feel like a cop) so it beeped on my phone. I thought 'Cool! My most awesome of awesome publisher-publicist found another blogger to review Game Plan' and didn't think much more of it until I asked who she was and how she'd come to have Game Plan for review. And then I was directed to Amy's page.

Holy toots, Batman.

In honour of Terry Fox and Rick Hansen, two great Canadian heroes, and in support of The Canadian Children's Book Centre Amy is 'reading across Canada'. She has decided to read ten pages per kilometre and to do that, read a book a day for the year of 2014. How coooool is that? I think it's a fantastic idea and I can't wait to follow along.

Have a look for her on Facebook and on Twitter if you're interested in following. I'm nervous now that she is reading or read Game Plan today... I really hope she liked it. I'm so honoured to be a teeny (well 1/365th) part of this project.

Thanks Amy!

N

Reviews make the World Go 'Round

What makes you read a book? 

the cover? the author's name? the description on the back?

I am a follower, a reading-stalker even. I read books my friends read and say are good, especially when I've found that we have similar tastes and make similar choices. That's one reason I LOVE GoodReads - have you tried it? Word of mouth is a strong way for books to grow and reviews are important for that. When it was released Game Plan was reviewed by several bloggers in a 'blog tour'. Those were the first 'unbiased' reviews I got - from people who had nothing invested in the book or in me. It was nerve wracking to say the least... then exhilarating and rewarding and humbling.

Now that the publishing and the release are done the real work is spreading the word - shaking the trees for more readers. I'm headed to Vancouver, Saskatoon and Toronto in March to do just that. My Publicist Extraordinaire is working on finding me some gigs to meet and talk to readers and get Game Plan out there. And hopefully I'll hear more good stuff about it as it spreads. 

A long lost ghost from my past - one of my favourites - has come back to haunt me from Nfld and coerced her bookclub friends into reading Game Plan. One of her friends has written what is perhaps my favourite review so far: 

Ok if a good book makes you bawl (several times) reminds you of falling for a boy, remind you of your children's births.... And how much you really don't want to kill them.... Than this was a good book.
Isn't that great? I might have teared up a bit reading it. 

SOOO if you liked Game Plan, spread the word - add a rating and/or review to Amazon or GoodReads, hand it to a friend, recommend it at work... Please!

N

Reviews!!!

The blog tour is in full swing! I thought I had posted the blogs, but... I didn't. What can I say? I'm a flake sometimes. Fierce Ink Press has a list of the blogs and dates, HERE.

You gotta check them out!!!  Here's one from today at WhY.A. not Reviews.

I received a review on GoodReads too! Not from someone who was asked to review it either! HERE is that one, if you're interested.

It's sooo exciting to have people who don't HAVE to like it, like it! Don't forget the launch party is tonight at the CGC at 630pm. Treats are being provided by Diane Sampson - that's reason enough right there!

N

It's a cyber busy day!

Strange that I'm not getting any 'real' work done. The Blog Tour started today!!! My first review! EEK. I couldn't even look at it until Colleen said it was good. Here it is at CanLit for Little Canadians.

Thanks so much, Helen!

Natalie