Today is the Ninth edition of #WritingWednesday!!!
Remember, #WritingWednesday is an EASY, STRESS-FREE, weekly writing challenge.
• Read the writing prompt below, • Spend 5 minutes writing (in your own voice or the voice of a character you’re writing) whatever comes to mind, • DON’T EDIT what you write! IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT!
The goal is 5 minutes of creativity.
Today I am writing in the voice of Dean, one of the characters in my upcoming novel The Beast Within (This is not a selection from the novel, but part of my character development journal.)
Today’s writing prompt:
What do you look forward to every week?
What do I look forward to every week? I don’t know. A drink? Dude, I drink, so what. My job is stressful and life sometimes sucks. So, I get drunk and I get stupid, but it’s all in good fun. Honestly, it isn’t the feeling of being drunk that I look forward to, it’s the friendships I’ve developed over beers. The camaraderie. I don’t even always get drunk. I can control it. It doesn’t affect my life. It doesn’t affect my job. Ok, well, maybe. Maybe it’s effected my job, a little. I mean, sure, I’ve shown up late a few times because I’ve had one to many the night before. I’ve maybe called in sick a handful of times because of a hangover, but who hasn’t? I’m not an alcoholic.
Alright, now it’s your turn. I’d love to see what today’s writing prompt inspires in you. So, if you are willing, go to the comment section below and start typing. Take 5 minutes and let’s see what you come up with!
Today is the Eighth edition of #WritingWednesday!!!
Remember, #WritingWednesday is an EASY, STRESS-FREE, weekly writing challenge.
• Read the writing prompt below, • Spend 5 minutes writing (in your own voice or the voice of a character you’re writing) whatever comes to mind, • DON’T EDIT what you write! IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT!
The goal is 5 minutes of creativity.
Today I am writing in the voice of Kim, one of the characters in my upcoming novel The Beast Within (This is not a selection from the novel, but part of my character development journal.)
Today’s writing prompt:
Complete this thought: “I wish I had paid more attention when…”
I’m stubborn, like my grandfather. It’s in our blood. I’m also trouble, at least that’s what he always used to say, “…more trouble than all my money.” Looking back, I don’t really think he had all that much money. He didn’t need it, not for happiness. He had love and joy and peace of mind. He had everything he ever wanted.
When I was twenty, I packed up all my belongings into the trunk and back seat of my car and headed West. I didn’t really have a plan, just a destination; the ocean. My love of fashion was going to be the path that led me to greatness, even if all my friends thought I was crazy. I could see it, just as clearly as the morning sun. I made it happen too. I started my own line of clothing – Kimmy Designs – and even opened my own shop.
There were hard times. I was alone, a lot. Not having family or friends in a big city can be hard, but I survived. Eventually I established a pretty good life. I loved my work, had a great apartment, made a few friends. I was healthy…happy. However, there was always something missing. That little piece of happiness that only comes with knowing you haven’t sacrificed yourself to find your place in the world. I think that was what my grandfather had tried to teach me. He wanted me to know that things and money don’t matter, it’s the people you surround yourself with that make all the difference in the world.
I wish I had paid more attention when I was younger, when my grandfather sat me on his lap to tell me stories. I have a feeling, they contained the secrets of the universe.
Alright, now it’s your turn. I’d love to see what today’s writing prompt inspires in you. So, if you are willing, go to the comment section below and start typing. Take 5 minutes and let’s see what you come up with!
Complete this thought: “I wish I had paid more attention when…”
Today is the fourth edition of #WritingWednesday!!!
Remember, #WritingWednesday is an EASY, STRESS-FREE, weekly writing challenge.
• Read the writing prompt below, • Spend 5 minutes writing (in your own voice or the voice of a character you’re writing) whatever comes to mind, • DON’T EDIT what you write! IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT!
The goal is 5 minutes of creativity.
Today I am writing in the voice of Kim, a character in my upcoming novel The Beast Within (This is not a selection from the novel, but part of my character development journal.)
Today’s writing prompt:
Come up with a mathematical formula to express something you know/believe. (Example: Relaxing Saturday evening + Movie + Popcorn = Happiness)
I’m a hard worker, for the most part. I moved cross-country, on my own, at just seventeen. I’ve known what I want to do with my life since I was thirteen. Fashion isn’t an easy business to break into, but I did it. I have my own clothing line, my own boutique, and my spring line flew off the racks last season. Honestly, success is all about hard work, dedication, and a positive attitude.
Hard Work + Dedication + Positive Attitude = Success
Sure, things haven’t always been easy. In fact, lately they’ve been harder than normal. Trisha up a quit on me after that girl was found dead down the street, so now I’m training a new girl, Sophie. She seems nice though. She’s definitely a hard worker, but most days it seems like she’s daydreaming about other things. She’s from somewhere down south, Georgia or Alabama… some place like that. I don’t think she’ll last very long. If she does, I’ll be surprised. Don’t get me wrong, I like her. I do. I think we could actually turn out to be friends, but she’s kind of jumpy, she scares to easily.
Alright, now it’s your turn. I’d love to see what today’s writing prompt inspires in you. So, if you are willing, go to the comment section below and start typing. Take 5 minutes and let’s see what you come up with!
Come up with a mathematical formula to express something you know/believe. (Example: Relaxing Saturday evening + Movie + Popcorn = Happiness)
Molly’s Game – The true story of Molly Bloom, on Olympic-class skier who ran the world’s most exclusive high-stakes poker game and became an FBI target.
I picked this movie simply because the “movie poster” looked interesting! If it were a book (as I’ve recently discovered it is) I would have picked it for the cover. Not knowing anything about it, and without watching the preview, I jumped right in.
Jessica Chastain (see her IMDB page here) was wonderful as Molly Bloom! I can’t imagine they could have cast it any better. When I looked up pictures of the real Molly Bloom, I was pleasantly surprised to see Chastain actually does somewhat resemble her.
I’m not going to lie, I have since read reviews that say the book is so much better than the movie. Yes, I plan to buy the book and read it promptly.
Have you seen Molly’s Game? If so, what did you think?
AMAZON DESCRIPTION: Don’t miss this breathtaking collection of stories set in the world of the best-selling Darkest Minds trilogy, now in paperback:
IN TIME A desperate young man is forced to make a terrible choice between his own survival and the future of a little girl who won’t speak, but who changes his life in ways he could never imagine.
SPARKS RISE A spark of light brightens a brutal world when a girl named Sam encounters her childhood best friend at the government-run “rehabilitation” camp, Thurmond. Lucas and Sam form a risky escape plan, but sometimes even love isn’t powerful enough to overcome unspeakable cruelty.
BEYOND THE NIGHT The camps are closed. A tyrant president has been deposed. But for many Psi kids living rough, there is no home to return to, no place for them in a country devastated by the past and anxious about the future. Every day is a struggle for Sam, who knew all the rules at Thurmond and has been thrown into a terrifying and uncertain new life. But there’s more at stake than Sam’s own survival. She once made a promise to someone she loves, and the time has come to fulfill it.
From New York Times best-selling author Alexandra Bracken comes a collection of three hauntingly beautiful novellas set in the world of the Darkest Minds series. In the most harrowing of times, it takes a ferocious strength not only to survive, but to stand up for those who cannot fight their own battles. The characters in these stories–some new, some familiar–face impossible missions, and the hardest of all may be protecting the last flicker of hope in a seemingly endless night.
WRITING: Overall the writing in this set of novellas meets the level you would expect from a Bracken story. She is a wonderful author, one of my new favorites. Definitely one of the newest authors to join my list of “I’d buy their book even if I didn’t know what it was about.” The only reason this book is getting a lower overall review rating is because of the third novella, Beyond the Night. I just didn’t really care for the story… or maybe it was the Character Mia. I just didn’t feel like her character was that fleshed out. Compared to all the other characters in the series, I just didn’t care for Mia.
STORY: I’ll take this section one story at a time…
• In Time If you were to read these stories in chronological order, In Time would come right after book one. However, having read the first three books in the series before picking up this one, it is my recommendation that you read the novellas after you read the first three books… Why? Because in order to truly appreciate the story of Gabe, a want to be skip tracer, you really have to have a deep hatred for skip tracers in the first place.
Gabe is just like all the other adults living out in the world Bracken has created for us. Those too old to be afflicted by IAAN but those not pulled in to work for the government at the “rehabilitation” camps. He is struggling… hungry… down on his luck… Basically, he is just barely surviving. He sees becoming a skip tracer as a way to turn his luck around. Through his struggle… his journey… we, as readers, get to see a completely different side of the story. We get to sympathize with “the enemy” in a why we never could have only reading the main books of the series. Bracken does a wonderful job telling Gabe’s story, and even though I didn’t want to, it was hard not to understand his decisions.
On its own, I would give this story a ★★★★ (4 star) rating.
• Sparks Rise This was my favorite of the three novellas. I LOVED glimpsing into the mind of Lucas (a RED) and learning more about Sam (a GREEN), who we only briefly meet in book one. I loved the tragic love story Bracken introduced with these two characters. Their struggle… their pain… their anger… their innocence. Everything about Sam and Lucas feels right and yet… Well, I won’t tell you what happens, but if for no other reason, you should pick up Through the Dark to read this story.
Well done, Bracken. I would give this story a ★★★★★ (5 star) rating.
• Beyond The Night I didn’t love this story. I didn’t hate it either, but comparing it to everything else in this series, it just feel flat. Although I love the characters of Sam and Lucas, Mia just fell short for me. She seemed like an afterthought… as if her character wasn’t fully fleshed out. Mia felt to young and yet to mean-spirited for her age. I’m not really sure that is what Bracken was going for, or maybe it was. I didn’t believe Mia as a stand-alone character, but instead felt like she was pieces of other characters pulled together haphazardly to form one.
This story started on page 217, but it wasn’t until page 289 that I feel like the character issues I had with Mia finally started to fade away and I actually started to enjoying it. If this had been a Stephen King novel that wouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was a 183-page novella not a 500-1000 page mega-novel. At page 289 the story did get good and I quickly finished after that, turning page by page eager to find out how it would end. And end it did, beautifully.
On its own, I would give this story a ★★★ (3 star) rating.
If this had been the last book in the series, I would have been satisfied, but it isn’t. The Darkest Legacy is up next… Not sure I will read it right away as I have a number of other books on my list, but I’m sure that I will eventually get to it.
CHARACTERS: I gave characters a 3-star review… only because 2 out of 3 of the stories had excellent character development. 2 out of 3… That third story, Beyond the Night, just didn’t meet my expectations for what I have become accustomed to when reading Bracken.
APPEARANCE: Beautiful! Stunning! Breathtaking! I’m sure you’ve learned by now that I absolutely love Bracken’s covers. This one is no different. You can almost feel the fire burning just beneath the cover. The character quote for this one is, “I want to feel every ounce of pain and happiness life can serve up, because it’ll mean I’ve survived.” When I first read the quote, before reading the book, I though I knew who would have said it… and maybe that character would too, but I was wrong. I was wrong in such a good way. Hold your breath… wait for it… You’ll be glad you did!
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I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not very good with technology. I can turn on my computer and use the programs… most of them… ok, some of them, but much more than that and I’m lost.
My kids are the IT department of my house and will probably run their own technology firm some day, if they don’t secretly have one already. I’m not kidding, my kids know more about my computer and phone than I do!
Blue screen of death…“Kids, mommy needs you!”
Phone screen freezes…“Kids, mommy needs you!”
iPad tells me it hasn’t been backed up in 18 weeks…“Kids, mommy needs you!”
When I was their age, we didn’t have a home computer, much less portable tablets. Phones, well there was no such thing as a cell phone back then. Our phones were still tethered to the wall with a coiled cord. If you wanted privacy you pulled the phone as far from the kitchen as you could, stretching the cord till you could almost hear it cry. More often than not you found yourself sitting in a closet, your head on the floor next to the phone as you tried to whisper loud enough that your friends would still hear you. The day I got my own bedroom phone… a bright yellow Pac-man phone… WAS AMAZING!!! It was like my parents had handed me the golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
I never dreamed of carrying a pocket-sized phone around with me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my cell phone. Cell phones are cool. I am constantly connected… phone calls, emails, internet searches, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blah blah blah, INSERT NEXT NEW APP HERE!!! WE ARE ALWAYS CONNECTED…
But seriously, cell phones are great for safety. I love that my kids have them and can reach me whenever they need to… but love it more when they want to. With all that said, I’m sure my next statement is of the unpopular brand… I think cell phones have killed childhood. OK… that’s a topic for another post.
The whole point of my post ‘I think my computer hates me’ was to say this:
I often feel like my computer deliberately deletes my files! There, I’ve said it. My computer deliverately deletes my files! What is that? What did I do to my computer to make it hate me so much? I backup everything… I have thumb-drives (do people still call them thumb-drives or is it flash-drives now?) for all my work and I keep a downloaded backup (multiple in fact) of everything I do. Yet, the other day, after discovering that 5 of my 7 eBooks had somehow mysteriously disappeared from Amazon, I tried to find the files on my computer and THEY WERE GONE!
Shock!
Fear!!
Terror!!!
To say that I was freaking out would be putting it nicely. Luckily I found a way to get the files… but my computer didn’t make it easy… the files weren’t formatted.
NO FORMATTING AT ALL!
Paragraphs and chapters ran into each other like one long run on. How does something like this happen? I tried everything, but in the end I ended up spending hours re-formatting one book… I have four more to do… FOUR MORE!
I’ll look on the bright side… I haven’t read those books in a while, so at least I get to reconnect with some of my past characters. I have missed them.
Has something like this ever happened to you? If so, tell me your story and what you did to fix it. Misery loves company, right?
Are you working on a manuscript, but need a little help getting organized? Check out SO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BOOK ~ An Indie Author Guide to Outlining and Planning Your Next Novel
Nina Soden 