A Weekend in September Review

I read this book for several reasons. First, I had read a historical romance novel for kids when I was young about the hurricane of 1900, and the tragedy of the event stuck with me. Second, this is one of the reading assignments for our 6th grade students next year. Students love it when teachers that teacher another subject have read a book that they have to read and can share it with them. Third, I wanted to look at how they handled such a hurricane after experiencing Hurricane Ike.

This book is a bit difficult for me to review, as it’s non-fiction. I am not an expert in the field, but I can tell you that the factual and historical data is weaved very well with the first person accounts. The author breaks the time up into increments of a few hours, this really makes a timeline clearer as well as increases the suspense and emotional intensity. Parts of this made me laugh, parts of it made me cry. The author has a clear and direct style. The original publication date was 1957, so he was able to interview many of the survivors.

I was amazed at how quickly the 1900 Galvestonians began to recover from the hurricane. They began cleaning up and rebuilding even before outside help could reach them. The 1900 hurricane is the land-based equivalent to the sinking of the Titanic. It is the event which caused the seawall to be built, though it had been discussed before the hurricane, it was considered too expensive to build. It shifted the ideas of what could be done to protect coastal cities, just as the Titanic altered the safety regulations on cruise ships. I recommend this book highly if you are interested in history, hurricanes, or humans ability to adapt and recover from disaster.

Book Club Book for August 9th Discussion

Our next book is House of Leaves by Mark. Z. Danielewski.

Overview from Google books – Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth — musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies — the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story — of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

If you’d like a preview of his writing style and language, please follow this link to an online preview. Please skip around as he uses three distinct types of writing in the book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qGA_3RGqTkQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Writers’ Digest Writing Competitions

Writer’s Digest 10th Annual Short Short Story Writing Competition

Deadline: 12/1/2009

We’re looking for fiction that’s bold, brilliant…but brief.

Send us your best in 1,500 words or fewer.  Enter the 10th Annual Short Short Story Competition for your chance to win BIG $$$$ - including the $3000 First Prize! Click here to enter or for additional information.

Writer’s Digest 9th Annual Short Short Story Writing Competition

Look for the winners of the 9th Annual Short Short Story Competition appearing in the May/June 2009 issue of Writer’s Digest.

There is still time to order this collection which features the top 25 manuscripts in this year’s competition. Click to purchase a copy online using a credit card. (Publication date: May 2009.)

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Writer’s Digest Pop Fiction Awards

Deadline: 11/2/2009

Writer’s Digest is now accepting entries in the Pop Fiction Awards. Submit your entry (or entries!) now for your chance to win $2,500 cash, $100 worth of Writer’s Digest Books and the 2010 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market.

Compete and Win in 5 Categories!

• Romance
• Mystery/Crime Fiction
• Science Fiction/Fantasy
• Thriller/Suspense
• Horror

Click here for additional information or to enter online!

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Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards Competition

Deadline: 12/15/2009

Enter the 5th Annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards Competition – the only Writer’s Digest competition exclusively for poets! Regardless of style – rhyming, free verse, haiku and more – if your poems are 32 lines or fewer, we want them all. Click for more details or to enter online!

Winners will be notified in March 2010 and will be announced in the August 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest.

PLUS, it is not too late to order the new 2008 Competition Collection. The 1st- through 50th-place poems are printed in this special competition collection, published by Lulu.com.

Writers’ Meet Weekly Writing Prompt

Taken from Writers’ Digest:

You forgot to make your bed this morning and your mom is on the prowl, ready to hand out punishment. In an effort to avoid grounding, make up an excuse (no matter how absurd) as to why you were unable to make your bed.

…get writing!

The Importance of Performance

Why bloggers should perform their writing

By Iain Broome

Reading your writing out loud is generally a good thing to do, whatever the medium, genre or format. It helps you understand the rhythm of your writing and, more often than not, it helps you discover punctuation and grammar glitches that you might not otherwise have noticed.

read more

Milk Wood’s Weekly Writing Prompt

We’re starting a weekly writing prompt here at Milk Wood, to help get us over our fear of writing. Writing should be fun. We shouldn’t be worrying about whether we are using perfect grammar, syntax or spelling, at least not initially; we can do that later. First we just need to put our pen to paper and let the words flow. So, get those pens or keyboards ready and let’s see what we can produce. Email me (harriet.gausman@googlemail.com) your finished piece and the best will be published next week.

Writing Prompt for Week Beginning 29th June 2009

Cliffhanger: You’re out hiking in the mountains. Some shale slips under your feet, and suddenly you’re sliding down a steep embankment. Describe how you feel as you slide. It’s a rough landing and you are injured. How do your companions react? Are you calm or upset? Is your speech lucid? You need help right away. How can the nearest Search & Rescue team be notified? When they do arrive, how do you feel about your rescuers? Describe how they bring you to safety. What effect does this mishap have on your life?

Excerpted from Fear of Writing by Milli Thornton Copyright © 1999

She Murdered Me with Science Review

She Murdered Me with Science is David Boop’s first novel. It combines historical fiction, sci-fi, and detective noir. Boop often plays for humor, and I think he does it well. I love the liberal sprinkling of period slang, though I admit my knowledge and taste of it come from “Casablanca”, bits of “The Maltese Falcon”, and Shirley Temple movies like “The Bachelor and the Bobbysocker”.

As is a staple in the detective noir genre, when we meet our hero, he is “down on his luck”. Noel Glass was a teenage science protege. He was recruited in his childhood by NMIT and graduated at the tender age of 16. He left NMIT in disgrace when an experiment went horribly wrong and killed six people, including his lover, Tangie. To make ends meet he becomes a private eye and forensic detective. He has been struggling to invent something to reestablish himself as a scientist.

Just as he completes his new invention he is approached by a mysterious man that not only wants to buy his invention, but tells him that the accident was really a frame job. The people that framed Glass for the deaths are trying to kill his benefactor. Glass then uses his detective skills to figure out why this mystery man is helping him and who framed him.

He is helped in his quest by Mr Lee, who had previously rescued him from depression and self-pity, and Vincent, the mystery man’s body guard. At times the interaction between the three makes me think of a buddy flick. Boop also pulls in the sultry songbird, though this one is far from helpless.

I was a bit disappointed in the twist ending, as I predicted it much earlier. Now whether this was accidental, or done on purpose to play up the archetypes of the genre, I can not be sure. Over all, this was a fun read. Perfect for a vacation or to read on a beach.

PS. All Milkwood events are on hiatus due to Harriet’s computer pulling a Hal. Please continue reading  by China Mieville.

The truth about writers

What do they really do with all that time?
By J. Robert Lennon in the Los Angeles Times
June 21, 2009
Ask a writer what she values most in her creative life, and she is likely to respond, “Time to write.” Not many of us have the luxury of writing full- time; we have spouses, families, day jobs. To the people closest to the writer, “writing time” may seem like so much self-indulgence: Why should we get to sit around thinking all day? Normal people don’t require hour after continuous hour of solitude and silence. Normal people can be flexible.

And yet, we writers tell our friends and children, there is nothing more sacrosanct, more vital to our intellectual and emotional well-being, than writing time. But we writers have a secret.

Read more…

The Gunslinger Review

The Gunslinger is the first book in “The Dark Tower” series by Stephen King. “The Dark Tower” is King’s magnum opus that has been written over the course of the last 25 years. He was inspired by Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.“ The series ties most of King’s works into a single universe. This book takes us into the realm of horror, as well as fantasy, westerns, and epic journeys.

When we meet are protagonist, he is “a man without a name”, simply “The Gunslinger”. The Gunslingers are a mixture of nobles and law enforcement. The titles are inherited, but must be earned through a trial of battle. We later learn his name is Roland. He is pursuing the man in black. The man in black has wronged him, and many others. Later we meet a young boy named Jake, he is crucial to the story as well.

King makes frequent use of flashbacks to develop the back story of Roland and Jake. King paces the story well, and is often vividly descriptive. King’s words pull the reader into the events in many places, the paintings included in the first edition are also quite beautiful. This book is the back story, set up, for the rest of the series, but it is done in a way that doesn’t make it feel like its exposition only. King even gives the reader a classic cliff hanger ending.

Second Life Story Circle – Premiere Story

The sun peered between the jagged snow covered mountains, melting scattered patches of hoarfrost and exposing the delicate buds that had been hiding underneath throughout the long winter months. It was a lazy, undeveloped morning rife with potential… a good day for a brisk walk to the market or a hike along the shoreline. Regina could hear the waves breaking against the stony shoreline in the distance, on the other side of the trees.
- Let’s run in the forest ! she said to the dog who jumped in front of the door.

The dog bounded away into the woods, yapping wildly. Regina shook her head, giggling at the dog’s frantic pace. She hurried along the path after the dog. She heard the dog begin to bark wildly up ahead. She rounded the path and stopped in surprise at the scene before her. There, in a small clearing, a cloud of tiny creatures with gossamer wings were sparkling in the air and tiny flowers of all colors were exploding from the ground beneath them. She stood in amazed silence and watched the lovely faeries dance in the sun. She yearned to dance with them, and her small feet began to move in a delicate pattern on the soil as she strained upwards to fly with them.

The dog lost its patience waiting for the dance to stop and barked like crazy. Regina twirled playfully around the dog, inviting him into the dance. “Dance with me, puppy,” she entreated as she bent to stroke his silky ears. The dog began to circle her ankles and emit small yaps of joy as he danced with Regina and the faeries. Their feet crumpled the flowers, releasing a sweet aroma, as flowers continued to burst from the earth.

Something at the center of the circle caught Regina’s eye. A deep red rose there seemed to be growing larger than the other flowers. She stopped dancing to look at it, but nothing seemed to be happening. As she started to dance again the flower got larger. She experimented with stopping and dancing and found that the more she danced the larger the rose became, until it reached over the top of the surrounding trees.

The faeries spun about excitedly, rising into the sky with the flower. They lifted Regina with them into the air, and she found that she was flying and floating with the other faeries. She cried with joy as she floated amongst the small figures with gossamer wings. Below them, flowers of all hues and scents continued to burst forth from the ground.

Not bad for the first story as a group. Thank you to Alphonus, Princess, Mykyl, Lumi13, and arbenlow.

If you enjoyed this, please let your friends know about it so they can play too.

http://secondlifestorytellers.wikispaces.com/

May’s story is about an old lady that gets sucked into her teakettle and has a psychedelic adventure.