NaNo and Racing and Life and Not Dying

So. It's Halloween and I'm sitting in my office, looking around at the things I should be doing and just realized that NaNo is tomorrow. That shouldn't bother me because I'm not doing it, right? RIGHT?

I'm an idiot, so of course I'm doing NaNo.

Before anyone jumps on my case {I SEE YOU, BREE}, I am still editing my novel. It's going pretty well and I'm actually having a good time with it. GASP. I know, right? But it's a fun book because I finally took everyone's advice and wrote what I know. It might be cheesy, but I don't care. I really love this book. It's sweet and heartbreaking and reminds me of what love was like when I was fifteen. It's also been interesting reading it out loud, mostly because I can't stop laughing at my own voice {seriously, I sound like a child}, but also because I can hear my writing out loud and some of it doesn't make me cringe. I count that a win in my book. Not this book, just, you know, another book. Where I keep my counts.

Well, that brings us to NaNo. I wasn't planning on doing because of the editing and also because I didn't have a story that I LOVED. I can't do NaNo unless I have something that I know will keep my interest for a month. Sometimes that story ends up wanting to be turned into a book, and I'll allow it. Sometimes it's a silly story that only keeps me in the habit of writing everyday, and that's fine too. I've been kicking around a story idea for the last year or so, and it really started off as a joke with my boyfriend. But then it took root and after the novel I just wrote, I realized that I really like writing sweet romantic YA novels. They're not easier by any means, but I like the feelings and the memories that come with it. I'm not sure if this is going to be a book or just a silly story, but it's something I'm feeling pretty strongly about, so I'm going to see where it takes me.

Other than the writing, it's Halloween and that means...nothing. Absotively posolutely nothing. The boy and I have done something spooky every year on Halloween, but this year, the holiday felt a bit like a second Christmas. The haunted attractions around us seemed to be centered around money {yeah, I know, I get it} and they were asking for a lot without giving us much. So we stayed home and watched some movies {It Follows which was really weird, but the more I think about it, the more I love it}, but it's been fun. I'm going to pick up some candy on my way to work and we might pass it out tonight. If not, more candy for us, right? Also, our dog just decided that he should have surgery today, so there's that, too. Dogs: always keeping us on our toes.

We're also heading to Arizona this weekend for some racing and then we come back for more racing next weekend. I get some time off work, so that's a plus, but Oval Nationals take so much energy out of me. I don't do anything {really, I just get in the way}, but wandering around the pit area and watching everyone else drains me. Last year, I was only in the pits for one night, but this year I'm hoping for all three nights, so that's going to be something. Write in the mornings, read in the afternoons, racing at night, and editing threaded throughout. That's the plan. I won't die, I swear.

See?

Anyway, that means this blog might be quiet for some time. I have something exciting planned for tomorrow, and I'm working on something else for next week. I'm trying to get things organized for the next two crazy weeks, so bear with me, okay? If not, sorry, and I hope you have a wonderful life! Oh, I hope the people who bear with me have a wonderful life, too.

Anticlimactic, sorry.

Perfect by Dani Wyatt

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Homeschooled and under the stifling grip of an overprotective father, Talia Fielding’s life is pretty miserable. Playing her beloved ukulele and writing songs is as close as she comes to having fun. But that all changes on the night of her eighteenth birthday. She’s invited to her first party where she learns two things: girls can be very, very mean and Griffin Stanford kisses better than any fantasy she’s ever had.

To most of his friends, Griffin Stanford is the handsome football star. However, under those good looks lies the heart of a geek. His passion for numbers has ensured him a life changing job straight out of college. The contract he’s signed has him boarding a plane to halfway around the world the morning after he meets the girl of his dreams.

The obsessive draw Griffin feels toward Talia has him questioning his life’s choices. One night, one kiss and Griffin knows this may be his one and only chance to capture the perfect girl... How can he stop her from slipping through his fingers when the world seems determined to keep these two virgins apart?

Author Note: These two fall in love instantly. If you’re looking for a filthy fantasy fix complete with a Dani-style dirty talking hero topped with heaping helpings of swoony romance, you’re in the right place. This is a standalone novella, with Kindle melting heat, safe, no cheating and filled with virgins who magically know exactly what they’re doing from the very first kiss.

I’ve lost the power of speech.  She’s wearing that gorgeous little daisy-yellow nightgown dress I sent her a few weeks ago.  The soft light from behind her highlighting every contour and line of her lush body.  A body that will soon be under my tongue and in my hands.
I never dreamed I would see her like this, like she is right now.  But here she is, and it’s glorious.  I can see all her curves, the pink circles of her nipples pressing through and she’s not doing anything to cover herself.  I’ve just won the lotto and a Nobel prize, and whatever trophy they hand out when you come first in life.

“What are you doing opening the door wearing that, baby?”  I’m not sure if I’m raging mad about it or just about as thrilled as any virgin ever was.  My cock is about to snap in half, curved up and around where he can’t escape because my belt is holding his greedy, cum-dripping self in place.  “I mean,” I shake my head and rub my hands over my face trying to reset, “I’m sorry.  You are fucking stunning beyond words, but, baby, what if it wasn’t me?”

As happy as I am to see her, the jealous beast in me lights up, the thought of another man seeing what’s mine has me off my nut.

“I only opened the door after I saw who it was.  I peeked through the peephole first. It’s a sign, I know it is.  I just tried this on for the first time and here you are.  Here you are, I can’t believe it.”  She does this little bunny hop and I don’t miss how her full tits bounce and move with her, making my dick drip into my pants.  I am fairly sure I could watch that little move for the rest of my life and never, ever get tired of it.

Her hands pull at the long tendrils of hair hanging over her shoulders and I realize I haven’t kissed her yet, so I remedy that right away.

My arms pull her to me, sweep up and down her back, up and down the soft fabric that covers her equally soft body, as my lips mount hers.  I kiss her with the force of a man here to finally claim what is his, letting her know I’m here and she’s mine.  After a long kiss, I lean back to drink her in.

“I love that you are wearing this.  It means a lot to me.”  I hook my thumbs into the ruffle around the neckline and trace it up and down, my vision drifting down to where it scoops low, barely covering her ample tits and I want them in my mouth so badly it hurts.

“You must be hungry after your trip.”  Her voice flutters around my head, soft and like a dove, not quite ready to fly away.  Her breath between the words tells me I’m distracting her and I love that.

I bring a hand up to comb my fingers through her hair.  I’ve dreamed of how it would feel for so long.  Silk is like twine compared with its softness.  The black strands fall between my fingers and I’m hypnotized by the sight and feel of it.  It’s so real and I’m so fucking gone.

I taste her lips again with a quick kiss, then put my mouth next to her ear.  “I’m hungry for one thing, and one thing only right now.  That’s you, Wildflower, my mouth between your legs.  I told you, that’s the first thing I want to do to you.  I want to taste your first orgasm.  I want to remember it forever.”

 

Dani Wyatt loves her alpha men; make them military, cowboys, MMA -- any uber alpha with a wicked possessive streak and an insatiable libido. Receive a free exclusive unpublished title when you join Dani's private readers group for updates, free chapters and discounts.

http://eepurl.com/bubxzz

She's a 40 something regular lady who just happens to love badass alpha males who pull your hair and love their women with a lethal passion.

When she's not writing (which is not often) she is probably laughing about some irony (like A-1 Steak Sauce is vegan), riding her horse, wondering why The Walking Dead can't have a new episode every night, or looking cross-eyed at some piece of technology sent to ruin her day.

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Unnatural Deeds by Cyn Balog

Good morning {afternoon, evening, early morning?} everyone! I'm back with another review, because I just could not wait for this one. Usually when I finish a book, I give it a couple days to marinate, for lack of a better word, and then I write a review about it. But I finished Unnatural Deeds last night and felt the absolute, overwhelming need to write about it. It was far too late last night, but now I'm here to throw this book at your face because it's that fantastic.

Title: Unnatural Deeds
Author: Cyn Balog
Release date: November 1, 2016

Secrets. Obsession. Murder. Victoria is about to discover just how dangerous it can be to lose yourself.

Victoria Zell doesn't fit in, but she's okay with that. All she needs is the company of her equally oddball boyfriend, Andrew. She doesn't care what anyone else thinks...until magnetic, charming, mysterious Z comes into her life, and she starts lying to everyone she knows in an effort to unravel his secrets.

And then something terrible happens. Someone is dead and it's time for Victoria to come clean. Interspersed with news clippings and police interviews, Victoria tells her story to Andrew, revealing her dark, horrible secrets...secrets that have finally come back to haunt her.


This was one of those books on NetGalley that kept calling to me and I finally requested it without any hope of getting it. When it showed up in my email a few days later, it took every shred of willpower that I have {very little, in fact} to not start reading it right away. I like to wait until it gets closer to the publishing date, but also I had already committed myself to It this month. I finished that yesterday, so yes, I read this book in two days. I honestly couldn't put it down.

Victoria is kind of weird, kind of quiet, and kind of the new kid, having just arrived at St. Ann's Catholic School. But she doesn't mind it so much. She's a good student and she has her agoraphobic boyfriend, Andrew, waiting for her at home whenever she does have a bad day. They're both a little weird, but they fit together beautifully, and they love each other deeply. But then a rock gets thrown into their well-oiled machine when Zachary Zimmerman, or just simply Z, shows up at St. Ann's and takes the seat next to Victoria. Thus begins a whirlwind friendship/romance between the two mysterious kids, one super popular, the other a mere ghost.

{Okay, I tried my best not to add SPOILERS, but just be careful going forward. There might be some SPOILERS.}

So, knowing what I know now, this book was a trip. Cyn Balog gives us bits and pieces of the crime in the form of police interviews, and intertwines all that with bits and pieces of both Victoria and Z's lives. Z is...a complete mystery. One moment, he's sweet and loving, and the next, he's gloomy and snappish. I couldn't fully trust him through this novel, and, by the end, I wasn't entirely sure I was supposed to. Z and Victoria were both crazy in their own way. Z had fallen on hard times and did what he had to do to get out of there, but, near the end, he begs Victoria to run away with him, to get out of Duchess and run...somewhere. The way he treats Victoria, too, is kind of alarming. Since she's not exactly socially adept, she ends up doing a lot of stupid things because some kids are nice to her {honestly, there are moments where you're cringing and yelling at her because you know what's happening}. Z turns his back on her at one point, after they've done something that pretty much solidifies their relationship in Victoria's mind, and messes with her head a bit, whether consciously or not, I'm not sure.

Victoria's crazy was a whole new world, and it's really hard to talk about without giving major spoilers, so I'm going to concentrate on what I felt before the end.

Victoria, even though she went to public school her whole life, feels sheltered. Her parents are super religious and Victoria deals with anxiety by using her pills. She's super innocent, barely understanding how to text and being cringeworthy when her peers ask her a question {like asking if an emoticon translates to "wanting to do it," and Victoria doesn't understand what "it" means}. She also kept trying to convince herself that Z was just a friend, even when he would shove her against the wall and kiss her. She's incredibly sweet and so quiet, but something just feels...off about her. Throughout the whole narrative, I kept wondering if I should trust her.

Having just finished It, a story involving children and the power of friendships, I was a bit emotional. I expected to read this book and figure out a mystery, maybe with some scary parts thrown in. What I did not expect was to be in tears by the end, totally wrung out and utterly devastated for these two kids. It was one of those endings where the air built up inside of me and then, when the climax finally comes, I deflated like a balloon. These poor children that only wanted someone to understand them. Neither of them deserved what they got, and even though one of them seemed to not be punished, he or she really was.

Summed up, read these freaking book. Click on the title above for the link. Seriously, this is one of those books that's going to stick in your head for quite some time, and you're going to want to come back to it again and again and again.

Update!

Hello lovely people out there! Once more, sorry for the long wait between posts, but things have been a little hectic around here and I'm straighten everything out. Nothing too bad, but there have been a few things that I've been thinking about over the last month, and most of them have to do with this blog and writing.

1. NaNoWriMo

So, after careful consideration {and a thousand confusing moments}, I've decided that I'm not doing NaNo this year. Does that suck? Yeah it does. There is still the whole month of October left, so I may change my mind, but as of right now, I'm not doing it. I don't really have a plan or any ideas for a book to write, so that's one part of it. The other part is...

2. My books

Back in September, I started editing and rewriting one of my older stories because I found it again and fell back in love with it. I changed a bunch of stuff and even deleted the entire ending because it was terrible. I'm still slowly working on it, but stopped because another story idea worked its way inside of my head, and that's what I've been doing for a few weeks now. I have about 30,000 words of this second story and want to see where it leads me. This is a story that I've been trying to write since high school {!!!!} and it's nothing terribly special, but it's something to me. I've started and stopped a thousand times since senior year, but this one seems to be flowing nicely. I think it's one of the more real versions I've written, so that might have something to do with it. Anyway, I'm not doing NaNo because I want to concentrate on these two books, finish them, polish them up, and then {hopefully} start querying them at the beginning of 2017. It's nerve-wracking and exciting, so if I post less around here, you'll know it's not just me being lazy.

3. This here blog

I love Blogger, don't get me wrong, but I've been playing around with the idea of moving this blog to another platform. I've also thought of changing this blog into completely book reviews, and that does seem to make me happier. Talking about my own writing sends me into spasms of nervousness, and I'm always right in the middle of writing something, so I never can be like, here it is, world, take a look and shower me with money! But I love reading and I love writing my reviews, and starting in 2017, I'm going to try something new. I've been sticking mostly to new books to review, but then I realize that sometimes I read a book and don't really remember it the next year. While I do have Goodreads and am able to write reviews there, I'm wondering if some of my reviews here would be even more helpful. I'd have more space to write whatever I wanted and it would bring more eyes to the blog. So, if I move it or not, starting next year, I'm going to review every single book that I read in 2017. This year, my challenge was to read 80, and I might make that, so expect a lot of book reviews next year.

4. Life

Nothing to add here, are you kidding? I've been searching for a job and it's disheartening and upsetting, but I'm getting through it. Sprint cars are beginning to wind down, Halloween is right around the corner, and both animals are still alive and annoying me to no end, so everything's good.

That's where we are right now. Whatever happens, don't you worry, because you'll be one of the first ones to know. I have a review coming up in the next few weeks, so I'll try to post something in between then, even if it is just Hamilton lyrics and cat pictures. God, I'd probably get so many more readers if that was my blog.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been so long, but I've been sorting through some things lately and I'll tell you all about them in my next post! For today, though, I have the absolute honor of reviewing Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, one of the authors that shaped my views when I was a teenager. Seriously, The Handmaid's Tale changed me, for the better.

When Felix is deposed as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival by his devious assistant and longtime enemy, his production of The Tempest is canceled and he is heartbroken. Reduced to a life of exile in rural southern Ontario—accompanied only by his fantasy daughter, Miranda, who died twelve years ago—Felix devises a plan for retribution.

Eventually he takes a job teaching Literacy Through Theatre to the prisoners at the nearby Burgess Correctional Institution, and is making a modest success of it when an auspicious star places his enemies within his reach. With the help of their own interpretations, digital effects, and the talents of a professional actress and choreographer, the Burgess Correctional Players prepare to video their Tempest. Not surprisingly, they view Caliban as the character with whom they have the most in common. However, Felix has another twist in mind, and his enemies are about to find themselves taking part in an interactive and illusion-ridden version of The Tempest that will change their lives forever. But how will Felix deal with his invisible Miranda’s decision to take a part in the play?

So I just discovered these Hogarth Shakespeare books and I'm so upset that I didn't know about them earlier! Basically, authors from today rewrite Shakespeare plays, adding their own twists and delightfulness. It's like a movie remake, but better because it makes sense.

Margaret Atwood had the chance to rewrite The Tempest, which is one of my favorite plays because, really, of the magic. Also, I used to be big time into revenge in written works {used to be? I still am, what the heck}, so The Tempest had always been my kind of play {also Titus Andronicus, but that's not something you can say without getting one of those looks}. When I read the description {and the author!}, I knew I had to have it. I requested on NetGalley and didn't really think I'd get it, so imagine my surprise when the email popped up one morning and almost fell out of bed.

Poor Felix had a good life going for him, with the exception of his deceased wife and child, when he is ousted from his position as artistic director. His plays are amazing: Shakespeare retold through the eyes of an excited fan. After a few years of stewing angrily, he decides to get a job, to remake his life, and he starts at the jail, where they need a teacher to educate the inmates. Felix decides that this is the perfect opportunity for him to build up his life again and to put on his amazing plays with a brand new audience that seems to fall in love with him.

Oh, and please the ghost of his dead daughter who pops up out of nowhere and follows him around  most of the day. It just wouldn't be Shakespeare without a ghost, right?

I don't think I have enough words to say how wonderful this book is. Atwood writes with the most delicious language and she brings Felix and his cast of characters to life. The inmates are sweet and tough and hard and scary and marshmallows, and they all adore Felix because he's given them a new outlook on life, something to work toward while they sit in prison. Felix does not sit in his hovel, dreaming of revenge and wringing his hands together, but dedicates his life to these inmates, all under a pseudonym. But my favorite part is Miranda, his daughter that he lost when she was three years old. She comes back to his life,a  coping mechanism for him, and he lets her grow, although she is not the teenager that should be. She's perfect, too perfect, and that's why he gives her a little more room to grow and becomes surprised when she wants in the play.

Having never lost a child, I can't understand what exactly Felix went through, but I can understand the wanting to bring someone back. It's painful watching him live his life as Mr. Duke and teaching these inmates, all the while thinking about his ghost daughter sitting at home, waiting for him, never truly growing up. But it was wonderful watching him beginning to understand that sometimes family is what you make of it and that these inmates, as deranged as some of them are, loved him with a fatherly passion and he, in turn, loved them back.

Like, it's Margaret Atwood rewriting Shakespeare. That could have been my entire review and I'm hoping that you would have run out to grab it. It comes out Tuesday, so grab some money and start lining up at your local bookstore!

Don't do that. Just go buy it that day.