contest entry

This is the prompt and story I entered to win my Reckoning Arc

Contest time! Is there a “haunted house” in your neighborhood? In your town? Tell me a bit about it in the comments!The house next store to mine doesn't like people. It would go through a new set of owners every 3-5 years. It's a beautiful house, all brick, nice porch, at the very end of a culdesac. It's lake front, with the woods off to one side and a field off to the other. We were on our third set of new neighbors when the incident happened. My friend was spending the night and we were watching the craft and gossiping. We were only about 10, so my chief complaint was my neighbors. The youngest boy had been chasing my dog up and down the fence the other day trying to spray it with wd40. The oldest threw rocks at me while I jumped on the trampoline and tried to shoot the side of the house with a bbgun, and the parents were always drinking and yelling. Knowing the houses creepy history of getting rid of neighbors ( the last set had moved after their toddler crawled under his parents bed and found a rattle snake, the couple before that moved because they swore up and down ab aligator lived in the lake and sunned in the yard (man made lake, actually just there to collect rain water, doesn't even have fishies) ) we decided to help it along. We went outside under the plum trees and performed a little craft ritual asking to get rid of the neighbors. Moments later we heard them arguing, then screaming, a shot was fired and my friend and I ran inside and hid under the bed vowing never to play witches again, and promising to go to church the next morning. For months no one saw the neighbors, they're lawn grew so high the neighborhood council worried about wildfires and snakes that may be living in the grass. My friend and I told no one what we heard so no one thought anything was amiss. A few months later when my dog got out it ran to their backyard. We followed. It pushed open their back door (evidently unlocked and ajar) and ran inside. We were scared but I loved my dog an couldn't just abandon it. We went inside. There were toys on the floor, shoes by the door, everything in place except a shattered glass figure by the wall. The kitchen window was broken from the inside, the glass spilled onto the porch. The bedrooms were a wreck, clothes thrown everywhere. We fully expected to find bodies but the house was empty. Grabbing my dog we ran home and never did find out what happened to those neighbors. A cranky old couple lives there now. Thus far the house has made no move against them, I figure it's because they're so close to joining the spirit world on their own, but you never know.

The Reckoning

Yesterday I received my advanced readers copy of Kelley Armstrong's, The Reckoning. It could not have come at a better time. The husband and I are both sick with a cold that we caught from the baby (go figure, no clue where she got it), who is of course miserable and also teething. Bella is taking her illness like a champ though, we get the occasional tears, but for the most part she just doesn't want to sleep. Her dad and I have been taking turns sitting up with her in the rocking chair, and reading this book made my shift so much better! I needed a treat, and man did this provide it.

So how did I, a lowly blogger in Georgia get ahold of one of the New York Times best selling authors latest installment to her young adult series? I won a contest in which I told the story of my neighbors creepy house. (I'll be posting that later, all true, I swear). Kelley Armstrong is exactly the type of writer I hope to be should I ever get published. She has a great website a myspace page, a face book page (why does blogger acknowledge myspace and not face book in spell check?) a twitter page, and a page for her young adult series here. Technically the myspace page is Chloe's. Anyhow, she interacts with her readers, and has contests, and proofs their work if they request it, and has a message board where you can ask her questions, and actually responds to her emails. She's amazing, and her books are great... and now I'm sounding like a creepy stalker fan, so onto the review.

THE RECKONING

is technically the third book in her young adult series, "The Darkest Powers." Young adult books are different in degree not kind, so grownups like myself are not too good for this series :), its just like her adult books (Bitten, Stolen, and other women of the other world books) only with no sex, which to me isn't a drawback. My husband even likes her books, I read them out loud to him on our many trips to Atlanta (sans the sex scenes cause MAN, would that be awkward to read out loud to my husband as the baby plays with her toys in the backseat). Anyhow, the series stars a young necromancer named Chloe Saunders who is just coming into her powers and gets shipped off to a group home for troubled teens. At this home she discovers other supernaturals like herself, and discover that she is part of an experiment to produce better supernaturals, only problem is it worked too well and the children of the experiment are more powerful than they can handle. You can read the entire first book online for free here along with fairly large excerpts of her next two books. Plot wise, this is pretty much all I can tell you without giving away any details, and that just wouldn't be nice to do when Kelley Armstrong included such a nice note asking me not to divulge any plot details online. So what you see above is less detail than is written on the back of the first two books.

What I thought

Most trilogies follow a formula. The first book is generally the best, it can stand alone, but it does leave you wanting for more, traditionally on an upbeat note as the heroes venture off on their adventure. The second book typically has all the action with a tragic death and ends on a note of hopelessness, and the third book wraps everything up nice a neatly, but typically can't live up to the hype (note that star wars did a reverse of this in episodes 1-3) This doesn't exactly follow that formula. In a good way. The protagonist wants to write screenplays when she grows up, so she's fast to point out how their situation would play out if it was a movie, then explains the more realistic approach they took. I love that, its funny, tongue and cheek, and very accurate.

A striking contrast between this book and its prequels was the steady scenery. The characters stay in one place for awhile, and its a change. The characters suffer cabin fever, and we get to see different sides of them then we have in the past.

I was a little worried about the pacing, it wasn't moving slow, but I shouldn't have, the book read perfectly, it wasn't moving too fast or too slow, and while the grand finale was action packed (as grand finales should be) that wasn't every bit of action for the book.

Three things happened in this book that I cannot disclose.

One I guessed would occur, but thought would be a much bigger deal plot wise. I appreciated that it wasn't, it was one of those "In real life as opposed to movie," moments.

One I knew would occur, and made me smile

And one thing I really really hoped would work out but can completely understand why it didn't but hope to see more of in the future (vague enough for you, lol, sorry, I'll clarify after the release date)

The ending was typical for Kelley Armstrong, and well done. Things wrap up but it has that moment of "well in fiction things would have ended up like a, b, and c. Have I mentioned how much I like that aspect of her books?

A character I'm surprised I like, Tori. I hated her in the first book, she was mean, but she grew on me, and one thing that helped is that no one has forgotten how mean she was. Armstrong doesn't pull a lost and go, "No, Ben has never hurt a fly. Why don't we trust him?" No one has forgotten how Tori acted in book one, and they won't let her forget. The characters inability to move past it helps me move past it because I don't feel like I'm being manipulated into liking this character. There's an element of poor little rich girl there, but it doesn't excuse what she did.

A character I would like to see more of?

Simon. Don't get me wrong, he was in every scene, but with so many strong personalities its kind of easy to forget he's there. Every now and then he'll speak up to agree with Chloe, but mostly it was just supposed to remind the reader he was there. It's not a flaw in the writing, his character is a well developed, easy going, easy to get along with guy in a room full of opinionated people. He's just going to put his two cents in and then remain silent. My husband does the same thing when my brother, cousin, and I argue politics at Thanksgiving dinner. (Maybe that's why I want to see more of Simon, lol, his personality is a lot like my husbands.) He has a large number of solo scenes with chloe, in fact the solo scenes with Chloe were very well balanced between the three main characters, but I wanted more interaction between him and everyone else.

My favorite character?

chloe, I'm jealous, if I had been that level headed and intelligent as a teen... well I wasn't really ever in a situation where it would have made much of a difference, but still, she's smart, and resourceful, and exactly the sort of book protagonist young girls should be reading about. This is not a girl who is going to fall into a deep depression if her vampire lover leaves her randomly in the forest. (I like the twilight books, I just hate Bella Swan, my Bella and I are going to have a long talk about healthy relationships versus unhealthy relationships when she's old enough to read them) this is not a girl who would be ok with being stalked, threatened, and belittled. She has her own mind, thoughts and opinions, and they will be heard. It's well balanced though, because she's wrong for every time she's right.

I haven't said much about Derrick. He reminds me of Clay from the Men of the Otherworld stories. He's not a carbon copy by any means, the similarities have a fairly strong reason behind them. He's a great character. He's the sort of guy that I would have thought was amazing when I was actually the target audience for this novel. Back when I thought that if two people argued enough it meant they had strong feelings for each other (well watch any chick flick, tv show, read any book, or heck, watch children's cartoon and tell me there's anything other than a love hate relationship out there) He's protective, and sweet while fierce and smart, and all of that good stuff. Also he has the ability to admit when he's wrong (take notes hubby). I have no complaints or insights regarding his character, just a well done.

Overall a very strong plot, strong characters, and great pacing. I could only hope to write this well.

You know what job I want? I can't find it anywhere, I don't know if it's actually out there. I would love to just read arcs. Reviewers do it, presumably someone in the publishing industry reads the books to see if they are worth publishing. How do you get that job? Heck, I'd do it free. I'd pay to do it. Especially for Kelley Armstrong books, if I could be one of her advanced readers for all of her books... well that would rock.

Mom's Groups

I finally did it. I went on meetup.com and found a local mothers group in athens. I'm so glad I did, I went to my first meet up today and I had a blast. It was just a playgroup at one of the mothers homes, the kids played with play dough and water colors, Bella was of course too young to participate but she watched with avid interest.

I got to meet more mothers and have grown up conversations :) Maybe even go see some chick flicks with other women.

Incidentally I saw Sherlock Holmes this weekend, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The entire time I was watching I kept thinking "wow, the characters remind me of House and Wilson," which means the writers of House modeled him very well. I enjoyed this fresh take on the adventures.

Sherlock Holmes the books were interesting but very very dry. I much prefer modern day adaptations, which I suppose makes me a bad English Graduate. Meh, I'll survive the shame. Classic literature is written in boring classic language. Half the challenge is reading it well enough to understand the very interesting plots. If people rewrite or rework it in a way that captivates the larger audience of today like it once captivated the larger audiences of a hundred years ago, power to them.

There's modernizing, and then there's destroying. Sherlock Holmes modernized, Ella Enchanted destroyed. (Evil Uncle? a snake? can they even pretend its the same story? It wasn't a bad plot movie wise, but it wasn't Ella Enchanted.) The writers of this film understood the difference.

Also read a new book this weekend. Angelic, by Kelley Armstrong. It was more of a novella, but very well written with a cohesive and fun plot. Overall I've had a great weekend :)

A Day of Stress

Tuesday, my husband and I stayed overnight with friends in Atlanta, in preperation for a very busy day of errands. I'd been nervous about Wednesday for awhile because I've had so much trouble sleeping, I wasn't sure how I'd be able to cope a full day without cat naps. I preperation I woke early on Tuesday morning, after a very fitfull night of attempted sleep, and refused to nap all day, so I'd be sleepy Tuesday night.

I had a busy day on Tuesday anyway, no time to nap. I had to clean the house, pack our bags, take the car to get the tires changed, aligned, rotated, and balanced, and drive with my husband to Atlanta.

Visiting my friends was great! They are also pregnant, but they aren't due until February. They just found out their baby is a girl, and are in the midst of decorating their nursery in a Dr. Seuss theme. I brought all my pregnancy books (I've finished them all, and really don't want to re-read the labor parts) and now have extra space on my bookshelf. We talked about being pregnant, and our plans for our babies, and just got caught up in general.

Then it was bedtime. I was pleasently surprised to find that I was actually tired. So I promptly dropped off to sleep while my husband watched youtube on his phone in our very nice guest room. Between 10:00 and 12:30 my husband woke me up every two minutes to let me know I was snoring... loudly. I switched positions, moved the pillows, blew my nose, and everything I could think of to stop, but once I dropped back to sleep, the snoring would start again without fail. I asked him to stop waking me up, since he was awake watching tv anyway, and it wasn't helping, so he switched to bed kicks every time I snored to loudly. Around 11:00 I not so nicely asked him to stop kicking the bed, and stop waking me up. I couldn't help that I was snoring, when he gains 20 pounds in his chest and abdomin, deals with facial, hand and feet swelling, can only sleep on his side, and suffers from prenatal rhinititis, he'll understand.

He tried to sleep, until about 12:30, when he woke me again and asked me to please stop snoring, he couldn't sleep. Then I snapped. I have been pregnant with his child for nine months, I haven't slept through the night in three months, I cannot help that I am snoring, but he can deal with one sleepless night if I can deal with it every night. He pointed out that he doesn't sleep much either because he has class early every morning and studies until midnight every night. I pointed out he was in control of that, and that was why every other night I went to the living room and read instead of tossing and turning and selfishly keeping him up at night when I couldn't sleep. Because he did have somewhere to be. Tommorow would be busy for both of us, so it stood to reason that it was equally important for us to sleep, so stop waking me up. He kept whining that it wasn't fair, I was keeping him up, ect. I finally stormed off to the bathroom and read in there for awhile, since I couldn't really go anywhere else in the house. I had to get away from him, I was to angry.

When I went back to bed, he was already asleep. I tried to sleep, but was way to wired and angry to do it, so I bought Frostbitten, by Kelley Armstrong, and resolved to read that until I was sleepy. Dwelling on the situation would only make me angrier and would make it harder to sleep. So I read, the book was great, I finished at about 5:00 am, and still wasn't feeling sleepy when I finished. So I lay there, listening to my husband snore (yep) and getting annoyed that we had to wake up at 7:00. At 6:30 I finally felt sleepy, and burst into tears at the unfairness of that.

My crying woke him up, and he pretty much felt like scum. His pregnant wife had stayed up all night because of his selfishness, and was now crying because she was so tired, but had to wake up in half an hour. He felt bad enough to take me out to breakfast, and then we drove to court.

Court went well, it was over very quickly, then we went to the doctors office, where they again teased me with talk of induction, but said I was doing well enough to send home today. *Sigh* Though they did comment that I looked pale and sleepy, and should try to get more rest. I basked in the look on my husbands face, and we went out to lunch, and then went to pick up some pottery from a fellow shop owner and friend. We talked to her for awhile, just about business, and employees, and mutual people we knew.

Then it was time to go home. We drove home, and upon arrival I went straight to bed, and slept from 3:00 to 10:00 am. Today I am a happy camper, because I'm very well rested, and my husband still feels like a jerk, so is still trying to make everything up to me. All is well with the world.