Take a Look, It's in a Book

Time again for Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday!

We're closing in on the last few excerpts I'll be sharing from my YA paranormal thriller After Me. (You can catch up on the earlier excerpts here.) Lots has happened since last week's snippet. Jada made a new friend on the school bus, a mousy little bookworm named Annalee, and Jada is surprised to find out how much she wants Annalee to like her. Annalee talks her into going to the school library (a place Jada has never been in until then) at lunchtime and gets her to check out To Kill a Mockingbird. In chemistry class the next period, Jada's plan is to pretend to read after their quiz in hopes that it will make an impression on Lew Stanton, the nerdy guy she's crushing on who can't stand her. But she gets two big surprises: the story grabs her and won't let go, and she has suddenly become a speed reader—another "super zombie power" she doesn't quite understand. Here's the exchange that takes place when Lew asks Jada about the book.

Ben May Main Branch, Mobile Public Library My beautiful home library!

“Hey, the bell rang,” Lew said, "didn’t you hear it?”

I looked around and realized everyone was leaving the room, then I said, “Oh, guess I got distracted by this crazy book. That little Scout chick is a trip.”

He narrowed his eyes and said, “What part are you on?”

“They just found out the hole in the tree is filled with cement.” I stood up and dropped the book into my backpack. “Pretty lousy thing to do if you ask me.”

A slow transformation took place on his face, and I knew he hadn’t believed I was really reading it until then. He was looking at me as though he were seeing me for the first time, and my knees actually got weak when he smiled at me.

And to think it was all because I finally went into a library.

Yep, libraries are magical places for sure. ;-) Next week Jada again gets to use her one zombie power so far that's not quite so nerdy. Can't wait? You can buy After Me here. And please do also check out the other Snippet Sunday folks and the Weekend Writing Warriors. Something for everyone among these talented writers!


~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

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Mystery Man from the Past

Happy Sunday, everyone!

This week's six sentences feature the man in Symmetry from Jess's past who shows up while she's separated from her husband Lee. To celebrate her new independence and reward herself for standing up to her mother, Jess decides to pamper herself a little. But since she's Jess, her idea of pampering is to get her first pedicure, take art and yoga lessons, and sign up for a lecture series on the Revolutionary War. Her best friend Deb tells her those things are an insult to pampering and that she's like the heroine in the nerdiest Chick Lit novel ever, which of course she is! ;-)

When Jess attends her first lecture, the speaker--Noah Hamilton--seems very familiar to her, but she can't place him. This scene takes place right after he's introduced to the audience, but it still doesn't jog Jess's memory.

Jess thought she might’ve heard his name before, but she had no idea where or when. As he stepped up to the podium, his gaze met hers again momentarily, and she got the feeling he was looking for a reaction from her, as if he knew who she was and wanted to see if she recognized him as well. Who the devil was he?

As soon as he began speaking, she knew. Although she thought they might have had more than one class together in high school, she remembered talking to him only once when he’d complimented her on an impassioned essay about tobacco company lawsuits that she’d written and read aloud in her sophomore English class. She recalled thinking then that his voice reminded her of the wind in the trees outside her bedroom window, a soothing whisper that had lulled her to sleep for as long as she could remember.

Uh-oh. Looks like Lee has some competition, huh? Find out next week what happens when these two polar opposites on the testosterone scale meet face to face!

Or you can just buy you own copy of Symmetry here. And please also check out the other Six Sentencers. Loads of talent on this list!

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Challenge Me, Will Ya?

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

FACT: I need to finish my work-in-progress, a YA paranormal novel titled PENANCE.

FACT: It has already taken me longer to write this book than it took me to write my first three.

FACT: All productivity on my part comes crashing to a halt whenever my husband is home.

FACT: My husband is a teacher.

FACT: School is out for the summer.

Consequently, I have decided to join author Theodora Goss in her YA Novel Challenge, a NaNoWriMo type event meant to inspire/boost/dare/taunt some of her fellow writers into writing or revising a YA novel, or part of one, between June 1 and August 31. Obviously, she understands flummoxed writers like me since she’s made the rules so flexible!

I have every intention of winning this challenge with a completed manuscript. I’ve even got a big head start since I’ve already written almost 40,000 words of it. However, if I don’t finish my book, at least this challenge will make me update my woefully outdated blog more often, so I shall be claiming success either way!

Time to get off now and write. My mantra for the next few months is “BICHOK now, BICHOK forever!”

At least until August 31.


~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true.

My Life As A Writer

I’ve always loved books and reading, but I began making up stories to entertain myself even before I could read or write. Sometimes I couldn’t wait for it to be my bedtime so I could lie in bed and envision exciting adventures in which I was the sidekick/girlfriend of my favorite Superhero, and together we had to defend the world against the forces of evil. I won't tell you which Superhero was my heartthrob, but he wore green and said "Holy" a lot!

By the time I made it to the ripe old age of six and entered elementary school, I loved to make up tragically romantic tales of misunderstood lovers kept apart by their families or society. As you can see, I’ve always had a fascination for love stories and was quite romantically precocious. One of my favorite scenarios was the one in which we lived next door to Starfleet Academy and I got to watch a young James T. Kirk through the fence. Years later, we would meet again when I was a young-but-brilliant yeoman on the Starship Enterprise. ;-)

I also loved playing with Barbie dolls when I was little. And although I did like styling their hair and dressing them up, my favorite thing to do was make up stories for them to act out. Each doll had her own background about how she grew up, and they all had different names and personalities. This is why I hate to hear some women say they’d never let their daughters play with Barbies because they don’t like the image she represents. My Barbies were sassy, independent girls who stood up for themselves, so don’t discount Barbie automatically. If you encourage your little girls to use their imaginations, Barbie can be anyone you want her to be!

I’ve made up stories all my life to entertain myself, but it wasn’t until I began plotting the story for my first book that I realized I had been inventing storylines all those years. And that’s still the way I write my books—I write the stories that entertain ME, the kind that touch my heart, excite me, outrage me, and make me laugh and cry.

That’s why I’m always a bit amazed when I hear some writers say that by the time their book is published, they’re so sick of it that they never want to read it again. I read my books again every other month or so, and even though I know almost every word by heart, they still make me laugh out loud and cry my heart out. And since my characters are real people to me, when I read my books again, it’s like visiting with old friends.

My goal as a writer is to never write a book that doesn’t affect me that way.


You can find all my books here:

True Blue Forever http://tinyurl.com/yfuwh2y

Different Roads http://tinyurl.com/ygt5yzs

Symmetry http://tinyurl.com/ydrp7x3

You can also read sample chapters of them on my pages at Authors Den: http://tinyurl.com/yb8q2sw

~Stay true to yourself, and your dreams will come true!