Book Expo of America

For any of you who have never heard of the Book Expo of America, it's a place where people in the book world (i.e. authors, librarians, booksellers, and publishers) come together to celebrate books. Not to mention there are lots of free books given away at the event. Many of them are advanced readers and many are books recently published.

Best $85 I've ever spent. I came home with over 80 free books, and had the experience of meeting a bunch of amazing authors. Some of them I even stood in line for over an hour to meet. It was amazing. I've decided to make it my goal to be one of the authors signing at the Book Expo in the near future. We'll see if it actually happens.

Now to Segway into Desiderium, I've recently come to a shocking realization of what was so wrong with one of my secondary characters and what I need to do to fix him. I hope. Now that I see this character in this new light I can't quite seem to think of why I never thought of it before. It's going to take a while to go through and revise the draft to reflect this character change, but I have a feeling it will be worth it. Wish me luck.

June 2013 Book Review

Sorry I've been away for so long. Between work, flying home to visit my family, and going to the Book Expo in New York City, I haven't had much free time. The same goes for my writing. I plan to get back on track with revisions starting this week. In fact, I had an epiphany this past weekend about something that wasn't working with my book, and I've realized how to fix it. Or at least make it better. So I'm ready to move forward with my revisions, and I'm really excited about the changes I'm going to be making.

But in the meantime, I also have more exciting news. My second review for the School Library Journal was published last weekend, and I wanted to share it with you guys. Here it is:

Gr 9 Up--After high school graduation, Ella and Sydney are looking forward to their last summer with their friend Astrid. Then Astrid commits suicide, and their world is shattered. The teens each find different ways to cope and slowly begin to drift apart. Sydney resorts to drinking away her sorrows, while Ella suffers from sleepless nights afflicted with nightmares about Astrid's death. When she begins to receive messages and phone calls from their dead friend, Sydney thinks she's crazy, but Ella grows determined to solve the mysteries surrounding their friend and the reasons behind her death.

The characters' background information is sporadically revealed and poorly integrated, and the plot is excessively drawn out. The choppy writing and underdeveloped relationships make the story difficult to get through. The ending has some redeeming qualities, but teens are unlikely to keep reading past the first few chapters. The plot is reminiscent of varying aspects of Sara Shepard's "Pretty Little Liars" (HarperCollins, 2006) and Laurie Halse Anderson's "Wintergirls" (Viking, 2009), but does not live up to either.--"Candyce Pruitt-Goddard, Hartford Public Library, CT" Copyright 2013 School Library Journal

Check back later this week. I'll be posting some stuff about the Book Expo.