First Thoughts on Surviving the Stillness, by Jessica White

I received a copy of Into the Stillness today, shipped from Amazon by my friend, Jessica White. The book took her over a decade and a half to write to completion, but I was lucky enough to follow the last few months of her writing process to publication. When I finish the book (hopefully in a week or so) and review it, I will be doing it under the full disclosure that she is a friend of mine, and that she sent me a review copy of the novel.

Even so, I cannot be bought! 

Books are a passion for me. I love to surround myself with them, to enjoy them, to feel the paper in my hands or to curl up comfortably with my Kindle Paperwhite. Good books are rare in an age of independent self-publishing via platforms such as Kindle Direct Publishing. I pick up a lot of books that I never finish, and therefore that I never review. 

When I receive a review copy of a book, I commit to give the book a review, to tweet about the book, and to post about the book on Facebook. I agree to publish a fair and honest review, not to give a positive review, even if the person asking for the review is a friend.

Of course, it's always easier if you like the book that the friend has written.

I'm two chapters into Into the Stillness and I can already tell you that I like this book. Jessica starts it out powerfully, with strong characters in the midst of a gripping story. The reader gains a first sense of the plot in chapter two, when Matthew's struggles with his father become evident, and by that point, is entirely sucked in.

Since I'm not finished reading this book yet, I can't review it, but I do want to encourage other readers who enjoy Christian or Historical fiction to pick up a copy on Amazon. Jessica will appreciate your purchase, and I will make a small commission on the sale of the book as well! 

I think that you'll enjoy it, particularly if Historical fiction is an interest for you. The Christianity in the book (thus far) is underscored and subtle, the characters are rich and enjoyable, and the historical setting is built effectively. 

Who would believe this was Jessica's first novel?!

Again, you can purchase Into the Stillness on Amazon. I'll be keeping you up to date with my thoughts on this book!

Three Days of Strain

Today was the third difficult day in a string of difficult days. Hopefully this will follow the rule of threes and the difficult days will fade into the background after today. I would love to be left in peace.

I'm not the type of person who likes to talk about things that other people have done to me. Everyone has their own story, and every fight has two sides. I also believe that people need to take responsibility for their own decisions and their own actions rather than projecting responsibility onto their friends and family. 

With that in mind, let me tell you about the past few days. As much as possible, I'd like to only talk about myself.

I've been over-extending myself by agreeing to do too much for too many people. The amount of (unpaid) work that I'm currently doing for people in my life is beginning to exhaust me, and it's time for me to reach out to those people I'm helping to point out to them that I'm not capable of continuing on at the previous pace. It may also be time for me to put my foot down and demand that the people in my life respect me enough to say "thank you" for the things that I do for them. My over-extension is my own fault, and I need to learn when to say "no." Even so, I'm exhausted.

The things I've promised have taken over from the things I enjoy. These things should not be permitted to rule my life.

Yesterday was a difficult parenting day. As with other issues, I'm not going to spread my six-year-old daughter's dirty laundry on the internet by openly discussing the problems that she struggles with. Those are her struggles and when she's old enough, perhaps she will blog with them. 

I can tell you (in good conscience) that yesterday reduced me to tears on more than one occasion. Even with three adults in the house, we struggled to provide the tools that our daughter needs in order to make the right choices, and much of the weight of helping her fell on my (exhausted) shoulders. I'm not a perfect parent (by any stretch of the imagination!), but I was finally able to help her to become complaint. 

Coming into today, I was tired, but hopeful that things were going to get better. It's important to me to keep a positive attitude about things, because I believe that a positive attitude can make all the difference between a good day and a bad day.

Courtesy Luca Rossato CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Today has been something else. My positive attitude has carried me through and it's mostly been a good day. Even so, someone triggered my anxiety today. Fortunately my tool kit is growing and I'm finding it easier to handle the emotions that come up every time something like this happens.

Forgive me for saying this, because I strive to always be absolutely honest: I'm keeping a secret. It's a big secret and it's one that I have to keep. Some of you might not understand this, but those who know my secret will understand why it's something that I keep buried as deeply as I possibly can. The internet is not the appropriate place for me to air my dirty laundry, and this secret involves other people whose stories are their own to tell. One of those people is still a minor child. I will leave you to deduce of this what you will, and will continue on with the part of the story that belongs to me.

I married young the first time around. At the time I was barely an adult and believed that I was in love with a much older man. 

Teenagers rarely make good spouses, and though I was in my twenties by the time the marriage ended, I didn't grow through the marriage. Looking back now, and having grown in the meantime, I can assure you that I made my fair share of mistakes. I'm a horrible cook (even to this day), tend toward laziness, and am inherently self-centered. In those days I was argumentative, contentious, and always looking for a reason to fight. Fights gave me a high that I couldn't get any other way, and I was known for arousing the people around me (my father, my sister, my husband, my friends) to anger because it made me feel good.

While my ex-husband is hardly exempt from any blame whatsoever, I accept that I could have done better. I will not take the blame for his behavior, but I will also not accuse him publicly from this point forward. Nor will I remove previous posts and articles that discuss his behavior during the course of our marriage.

I will say that for all my flaws, he was not a good man.

What he is now is not for me to say. I have neither seen nor spoken to him in thirteen years. He may have turned his life around and turned himself into a new man, and he might have stayed the same as he was when we were married. It's not for me to say because I don't know.

I do know that someone who has information that could only have come directly from my ex or someone in his life has been using the internet to harass me anonymously. This person attempts to discredit me accusing me of cheating on my ex (online), which never happened; by calling me names; by saying "you are a bad person who likes to bend the truth"; and by accusing me of attempted murder.

If I answer to these accusations in replies to the comments being left on my articles, I do nothing but add fuel to the fire. 

I've changed. Controversy no longer excites me. Confrontation scares me. I have post traumatic stress and panic disorder. I do not want this fight, but this person has persisted in attempting to smear my name and to make me look bad on writings that I have produced and which earn an income for my family.

This is the best answer that I have to all of this, and there is a chance I will remove it out of fear. The person doing this attempts to control me by fear and bullying. It is narcissistic, abusive behavior, while pointing the finger at me and calling me an abuser, a bad person, and more.

I'm hesitant, even now, to post this and confirm my identity to the individual who has been harassing me, but I did report them to their ISP today. Hopefully the harassment will stop. If it does not, I may have no choice but to contact the police half a world away.

Goodnight, everybody.

Keeping a Blog

I'm terrible about keeping a blog. 

It's not about the motivation to write daily: I have the motivation and have done daily writing in the past. The problem with daily blogging is that I struggle to talk about myself, and any blog is boring if the blogger doesn't open herself up to discussion of personal interests and internal struggles.

A writer who wants to sell a book ultimately needs to be concerned with getting to know the readers, and letting the readers get to know her. I wonder sometimes if this means the boring details (such as what I hate for dinner [kielbasa]) or whether it's the deep down musings of the heart that people most often write about in journals and diaries.

How much am I willing to share?

Photo courtesy Erin Kohlenburg CC BY 2.0

Honestly, I'm not sure yet. Blogging isn't good practice for the real thing. No matter how often someone tells you that keeping a blog will enhance your writing and make you a more worthy writer, this is a myth. I've personally discovered that the more that I blog or participate in literate role play, the more I struggle to find my voice and to write with passion and purpose.

Sharing is frightening for me. When I put myself on the line, I have suffered harassment by someone I can't identify speaking on behalf of someone I used to know, and there is always the question of how much I can say without inviting this sort of harassment and stalking. If I talk about how I'm feeling, sometimes I'm told that I'm "bending the truth" about who I am. If I talk about what I'm doing, then I risk letting people into my life who I might not want there. You can see my conundrum, I'm sure.

I want to be honest with my readers, and to build a relationship with the people who may one day read my novel(s), so my commitment to you is to do my best to share myself with you. Comment moderation is turned on on this blog, which means that I need to approve all comments, and that I won't be approving any comments that are libelous or which attempt to reveal my personal information without my consent. 

Everything else will be published, even if I disagree with it!

Here's to blogging!

The Death Cure, by James Dashner

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Well, um. That was an experience, to say the least. I'm still dealing with the emotional upheaval that this book has caused me, and not because it's an emotionally-driven book, but because I experienced so much anxiety through the reading of this series.

For the first time in a very long time these books transported me into their world. I wish I had this experience with more of the novels that I've read, and I find it strange considering that I read widely and from a tremendous range of authors (adult and young adult, with some mid-grade novels mixed in). Most authors are better than Dashner is. What he provided was a better story than most I've read in the last several years. 

In fact, I was sure that this series was going to become a new favorite, one I recommended to everyone who reads in the young adult dystopian genre. 

Ugh. The Death Cure ruined all of that. This had to have been one of the worst endings of a series that I've ever read, and my recommendation for the entire series is fully canceled as a result of the clumsiness of this book.

If you haven't read The Maze Runner but intend to, stop reading right here and be assured that I cannot recommend this series for a number of reasons (including the fact that it gave me -- a 34 year old adult mother! -- nightmares). 

Otherwise, proceed but be warned of spoilers for The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials and (I'm sorry) The Death Cure.

What on earth possessed Dashner to include a love triangle in this series? It's not a romantic series to begin with, but in the eleventh hour, he throws a flimsily-formed love triangle at us, complete with tragedy. I'd convinced myself with The Scorch Trials that Brenda's feelings were one sided and disposable, and that Teresa was only a friend and nothing more. Boy, I clearly don't get the way that the male mind works, after all!

And that's not my only complaint! There's no story here, really. Where I was drawn through the other two books chapter by chapter because they had such an incredible story to tell, this book read as though Dashner was in a hurry to be finished or that he forgot what he was intending to write about. I fully expected certain deceased characters to reappear at any moment.

Moreover, I'm disappointed to conclude the series with the feeling that I didn't get to know any of the pertinent characters. For all that we're told that so and so is Thomas's friend, I don't see so and so (there are several so and sos) as having enough of a personality or attachment to Thomas to be considered his friend. 

I wanted to love Minho the most. For some reason he was the most appealing character to me after Gally and Alby (both of whom are such brief fixtures that focusing on them is redundant), but his character never made it any where.

The book finishes in a very anti-climactic way. Let me just put it to you this way: We reach the climax in the final chapter of the book. There is no downward motion after that point, no coming down off the high of the climax. And, frankly, not a whole lot of build in this book.

Whatever you're expecting, having finished The Scorch Trials, this book isn't going to give it to you. For heaven's sake, just skip the whole series altogether!

The Scorch Trials, by James Dashner

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Okay, I gotta say that this thing where I'm trying to write reviews before I sink my teeth into the next book is proving to be difficult. The Scorch Trials leaves me with such a cliffhanger that I cannot wait to get going on the final book in the trilogy (and hoping that it answers my personal questions about this dystopian world).

So before I say anything else about this book, let me put it to you as simply as I can: It's not as good as The Maze Runner. I'm surprised, in fact, to see that it gets a higher rating on Goodreads than the previous novel, but that's alright; Everybody is entitled to their opinion even if it's the wrong one.

If you haven't read The Maze Runner please be warned that there are spoilers from book 1 of this series coming your way, and maybe a tiny handful of bits you might consider spoilers for The Scorch Trials. 

Fans should forgive me, because I think my view is going to be unpopular, but I want to say that what I wasn't expecting from this book was for it to be about zombies. In fact, throughout this book I kept thinking of Resident Evil as much as I was about another series of dystopian books for teenagers.

It was good; I liked it. But at some point I was hoping to have more answers than I did, even knowing that there are three books in the trilogy (and a prequel with The Kill Order).

I also figured out how these books connect to The Hunger Games and why they might be good for fans of that particular trilogy (and I was proud of myself for figuring this out). These stories pertain to a group of children (two groups of children, actually) who have been forced to go through a series of trials in order to run an experiment apparently intended to repair and reunify the world. It's gruesome, it's bloody and it's adults being cruel to teenagers. I can see this connection, but it's abstract for me, not something I can exactly explain.

This book was great. If you enjoyed The Maze Runner you should read it. If you didn't enjoy The Maze Runner you should still probably read it because why not? Some people found this book better than the previous novel. Some also found it worse.

The Scorch Trials was almost as good as it's predecessor, in my opinion. This series went from a clear favorite to a "probably won't read again" with this book. The same complaints I had about The Maze Runner and Dashner's writing still applies, with the added frustration of how often Thomas passed out, fell asleep, or something similar. That was irritating. Someone on Goodreads counted 29 times in the book, and I'm pretty sure it was close to that (at least).

I recommend this book, particularly for tween and teen boys!

The Maze Runner, by James Dashner

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I want to write all this down while I still have it fresh in my mind, from the anger at reading some lousy Amazon reviews of the book to my feelings on having finished it. 

My first thought on The Maze Runner is simply "Wow." The book wasn't what I expected, so let's get that out of the way. If you're hoping to find a young adult dystopian novel in the vein of The Hunger Games, you're probably going to be in for a rude shock. 

Thankfully the shock I felt only lasted a few pages before they turned into that feeling of total "AWESOME!" that you get when you open a really powerful book you know you're going to enjoy.

A friend of mine instructed me that this book was "different." She's particularly good at avoiding spoilers when discussing books, and so I have had a hard time determining whether or not she actually enjoyed the book. On the other hand, it's true that sometimes it's difficult to determine the taste of another reader and therefore to assess whether or not they are going to like a book.

I liked this one. 

Actually, I liked this one a lot.

It's a bit awkward trying to tell you the story of The Maze Runner because the summary doesn't give readers a lot of information and I'm not comfortable telling you something the summary doesn't. 

Let me put it to you this (spoiler free) way. Thomas wakes up in a box, being taken to a place called The Glade. He's surrounded by other boys and he has no memories of the time before the box. The Glade is enclosed by giant walls, each with a door opening in them. Every night, the doors close, and every day, boys called Runners must try to solve the maze that lies outside the doors.

There's more to it than that, and certainly more I could tell you without spoiling the book, but I don't need to say more.

To say that The Maze Runner is a good follow-up book to The Hunger Games may be slightly confusing, but I will tell you this: It's nothing like The Hunger Games except inasmuch as it is a post-apocalyptic story. If you're like me and you don't like to read highly similar books back to back, this is probably a great follow-up for you.

I do have to tell you some technical things about this book because I'd be dishonest if I only gave you a summary and information on whether or not I enjoyed it. 

For the record, I only tend to rate the story unless the editing is so terrible that it warrants a separate mention. As far as I'm concerned, this book was amazing. I loved the story and was drawn through it from start to finish and have already started on The Scorch Trials (which I am also loving). 

Firstly, and the most irritating for me, is Dashner's use of passive voice and filter verbs. "A click was heard." (I'm paraphrasing from The Scorch Trials, but I'm close.) This is not only passive voice but it's also filtering us from the character! What's wrong with "The object clicked." I found this jarring coming from a writer who does an otherwise spectacular job of keeping the story being written from a single perspective -- and never straying from it. 

Less passive voice, Mr. Daschner (and editors). Much, much less passive voice!

Dashner also uses cliches with too much frequency, and I found the "new slang" of the books jarring rather than charming. Interestingly enough, I've picked it up and am using it in my daily conversations (but it's so crude I wish I wasn't).

The characters could have done with more development. That is to say all of the characters could have done with more development (including the main characters). But I found it easier to get over this than I did the other problems, because less development makes it easier for me to relate to the main character.

All in all, I found this book incredibly entertaining and devoured it in less than two days. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys teen thrillers. Boys in particular should like this book.