With final exams completed (huzzah!), I’ve enjoyed reviewing a few new books. Take a look at these reviews if you want some good reading this summer!
Gifts of Sight by Dr. Bruce Shields
The Wood’s Edge by Lori Benton
In the works are How to Have a Good Day by Caroline Webb and Someone Like You by Victoria Bylin.
Hi all! It’s been a rollickin’ semester with many new courses and books to discover. I’m reigniting my book reviews now that some major projects are complete! Stay tuned for reviews of science fiction hits such as books one and two of The Saga of the Seven Suns, historical fiction/romance like Diana Gabaldon’s Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, and a few topics related to my studies, such as Gamestorming and The Elements of User Experience.
It’s the season of so much more than yellow daffodils, sugarcoated Peeps (a favorite of my dad’s), hollow chocolate bunnies, cascades of jellybeans, and pastels.
It’s the time when we celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection. We greet one another with, “He is risen, indeed!” Not He has risen, but He is – because Christ lives today.
After listening to Neil Gaiman’s audiobook “American Gods” with David, I was reminded of those who like to point out that Easter was originally a pagan holiday before the life of Christ. Indeed, that’s where much of the baby chick, eggs, and bunny imagery comes from, since Easter was a fertility festival.
You might be surprised to know this doesn’t bother me in the least. To me, Easter represents new beginnings. Christ’s death represents the opportunity for new life for us – a real life that goes beyond what this world can offer. It’s like we’ve upcycled a holiday to make it mean more. (Interesting article here on whether Jesus would celebrate Easter today.)
David and I have both made new starts: enjoying the sunshine more by running together outside and making bold culinary attempts to eat healthier (shout out to mock mashed potatoes made with cauliflower – still amazed at how good this tastes).
Thank you each for helping me to become a book reviewer. I am still gobbling up books and posting about them on Amazon, Goodreads, and here in the book review section of my blog, “Recent Reads.” (Check it out if you are looking for a good book to read!)
I’ve completed 28 book reviews since this time last year! It’s been a dream come true, and that’s no exaggeration. Each book introduces me to new styles of writing and creative stories that fuel my writing as well as my life in general. (Book reviews to come: Finished reading Duncan’s “Moon Women,” Picoult’s “Lone Wolf,” Abrams and Dorst’s “Ship of Theseus,” Ingermanson’s “Transgression: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel,” and Gabaldon’s “Voyager.” Aaaah, so many great stories!)
I’m excited to announce that I’ve been accepted into a doctoral program in Digital Teaching and Learning, and so in the fall I’ll be taking classes in instructional design and the cognitive psychology surrounding learning. Still stunned by this opportunity!
What does this mean for my writing? Well, for one thing, it means I need to finalize the edits to Wedding 3000, the book I wrote for National Novel Writing Month in 2013 and had edited by my terrific writers’ group here in Greensboro. I’m currently drafting a query letter and synopsis to send to agents. I’m told I should expect plenty of rejections, so perseverance is a must! Please pray that this story finds the right agent and publisher so that it can encourage couples who are planning their wedding day to focus on what’s actually important (hint: It isn’t the color of the font on the invitations or the flowers).
In closing, I wish you each a joyful Easter that means more than the candy lollapalooza and egg hunts; join me in making some new beginnings.
Best to each of you,
Susie
God our Father
God our Father
We thank You
We thank You
For our many blessings
For our many blessings
Amen
Amen
That’s the simple prayer my brothers and sisters and I sang along with our parents before every meal growing up. Perhaps it was originally intended to be sung as a round, but we just sang every verse twice. In retrospect, even though that might’ve been silly, it’s kind of nice to realize we were giving thanks twice in our childlike, singsong voices.
This month, there’s a wonderful trend on Facebook of posting one person/place/thing you’re thankful for every day during the month of November. Filling Facebook with words of gratitude for family members and pets, new babies and babies to be, coworkers, homes, food on the table, and the beauty of fall is a welcome change from the typical scuttlebutt of political jabs, infectious and overhyped videos, and misleading ads. I wish we did this year round!
I am thankful for each of YOU for reading this blog, irregularly as I keep it up! I’m glad to share with you a few exciting updates in my tiny writer’s world:
May you each enjoy this blissful Thanksgiving time of food, family and fellowship.
If you’ve already begun your Christmas shopping, think of what a wonderful gift books make! Audiobooks, paperbacks, hardcover – what matters is sharing a story with someone! My writers’ group has produced some incredible, hilarious, beautiful and exciting stories recently. Check these out for yourself or a friend or family member; having read them myself, I can tell you they are superb!
The Circle (Love faeries? This story, great for middle-schoolers, is beautifully described and filled with excitement and mystery) – Cindy Cipriano
Sifting Through Mud (Fab fiction, guilty girls’ read, hilarious and saucy) – Demetria Gray
Wink of an Eye (Newly published! Winner of 2014 PWA First Private Eye Novel Competition!) – Lynn Willis
The Rising (I read this earlier this year and published a review of it; terrific mystery) – Lynn Willis
Love this image from the UNC Press Blog. It’s books for Christmas this year!
Sure, it’s been a while since my last post. A few of you may be like, what happened to Susie? Has she given up? Too busy for writing?
Yup, yup, and yup. I am too busy for writing, but I’ve learned that every writer is. So take that excuse out, kick it around, toss it in the garbage and let’s move on!
In short, I’ve become a cattle rancher.
A beautiful image from a beautiful blog, VeederRanch.com.
Let’s envision these posts as actual fenceposts for a second. Picture a hardy cattle rancher, clad in well-worn blue jeans and stiff leather boots, an embroidered Western style shirt and a big-brimmed ten-gallon hat. Bueno. That’s me, and let me tell you, I look awesome in that outfit. Ok, ok, sidebar aside, that’s me in the sense that these online posts are the fenceposts. I’m slowly going around the fields of activity, marking new moments and milestones as I attempt to define what’s going on. Sometimes I’m just not going to be building the fence; the important activities are what’s going on inside the fence.
Here are a few of the horses I’m breaking and cattle I’m taming and crops I’m raising:
Happy Trails to you until we meet again,
Susie (tips my hat and rides off into the sunset)
All, thank you for your support recently that enabled me to become a book reviewer! I’ve definitely “caught the fire,” so-to-speak, and I’ve reviewed two books and am expecting three more in genres I don’t usually read!
You can read the book reviews here (Prelude for a Lord and The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn); I am thrilled to say they were both excellent selections I’d highly recommend to anyone who enjoys high quality Christian love stories set in past times and beautiful places. Essentially I submit the link to the review on my blog and on Goodreads.com, then I’m able to request a new book! Living life from book to book seems grand to me.
It was a welcome challenge to read these two in the midst of grueling preparations to take the GRE in anticipation of graduate school. For me, reading is an escape and respite from the rigors of the chores at work and home. Even better than a mere vacation or break, these stories let me apply what I’ve read, imagined and experienced so that I can write better.
Reading did help me to prepare for the GRE; even the GRE study book I used stated that the best way to build a strong vocabulary is through reading, not endless repetition of flashcards. However, these stories brought to light the fact that the GRE tests on such narrow principles that it cannot be a good predictor for success in life or even in college. These heroines didn’t survive by dint of their ability to calculate a mysterious angle in a parallelogram nor filling in the blank of a sentence lacking an overly pretentious adjective. They survived through resourcefulness, bravery, musical skills, quickness, willingness to learn new tasks, and the ability to stay calm in fearful situations. I don’t know any standardized tests that can measure those qualities. The GRE, with its rigid set of quantitative, essay-writing, vocabulary and reading comprehension, leaves an astounding amount of other life skills completely untested. It’s important to see this test for what it is, and not any more than that.
What other skills do you think ought to be tested? How could we do it?
You’re probably asking, well, did you take the GRE yet? What’d you get? With great happiness and relief comparable to Sisyphus learning he need not roll the stone up the hill anymore, I can say that I took it yesterday and scored well enough to not take it again! Thank the Lord, whew!
At any rate, what probably seems like a rambling blog post is, in fact, my attempt to keep you up to date with the fact that I am extraordinarily happy still learning about this world of book reviewing, writing and life here in NC. Thanks and God bless you each!
And guess what makes it even better – I was able to join TWO different book review groups! It’s like finding two pots of gold at the end of a rainbow!
BookSneeze, aka BookLookBloggers – you already heard about these guys, but they are a division of HarperCollins Christian publishing. They contacted me on July 25, with this understated email below:
I went right ahead and requested an eBook version of a Christian fiction book called “Prelude for a Lord” by Camille Elliott and published by Zondervan. I’ve already started reading!
BloggingforBooks – They are a branch of Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House. As soon as I joined, I was presented with a list of delicious books I could request to review. I chose one work of Christian fiction – The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn by Lori Benton, and I received the email below:
You can see that they thoughtfully provide the links to the book cover image for insertion into a blog post. Normally I go to Amazon.com and nab a screenshot of a book cover. This is so handy! (It’s the little things.)
Becoming a book reviewer is a particular joy for me, as I’ve always thought it would be a dream hobby or job, akin to a travel writer or video game tester. I’m glad that others out there share this interest and have formed these large platforms enabling small-town bloggers to spread the word about good books. I really believe that recommending books to friends is one of the most powerful ways to get the news out about a great story. People trust their loved ones to know them and suggest the best books. Word-of-mouth isn’t something that millions of marketing dollars can manufacture; it has to be genuinely grassroots in origin.
Each of you helped me get to this point!
Over the next few days, I’ll reorganize the book review section of my blog to make it easier to find reviews. Perhaps a gallery of links rather than individual pages or a looooooong scrolling page. I’m observing other book reviewers’ sites, such as http://marielamba.wordpress.com/, to see how they are structured.
On that note, I’ll be checking my mail every day for my new glossy books to read, and you can see the reviews on this blog!
God bless you each.
Waiting for boooooooooks! SOURCE: http://marielamba.wordpress.com/ – a web site for book reviewer, agent and writer Marie Lamba
For me, writing devotionals doesn’t come as easily as writing fiction. I don’t want to force writing something that is divinely inspired and meant to encourage others spiritually. Creating a devotional is a precious opportunity to praise the Lord, comfort others, connect Scripture to our daily lives, and more. Unlike fiction, which for me really is about entertainment and at times, education, devotionals have a higher purpose.
So I was thrilled this past week when I awoke one morning, and through the groggy haze of waking up, yawning, and getting ready for the day, I realized a story worthy of a devotional had come to me.
I wrote it down, while it was still fresh, and am editing it now. I can’t publish it here, because most devotionals require the material not to be published anywhere else, but I can give you the rewritten synopsis below:
Recently, my husband David and I bought a tiny tomato plant. We’ve tended it like parents, watering it daily, admiring its growth, rushing out during rainstorms to shelter its fragile leaves. We even named it: Benito Tomito!
(Ok, so we’re kooky. And it’s just a simple garden plant. But inspiration can come from the most mundane places.)
We noticed the tomato plant suffering one day. Gaping holes appeared in its leaves, lower branches lost their healthy green color and turned a pale yellow, and the leaves began curling upwards. Worrying, we watered it extra, checking on it daily. Did it need new soil? Was it getting enough sunlight? Was Benito lonely?
One cool morning I notice the issue. A fat caterpillar lay comfortably on the stalk, chewing hungrily on a green leaf. Poor Benito was helpless, defenseless against those gnawing mandibles. The caterpillar’s chubby segments were the exact green as Benito’s stalk, one of Nature’s camouflage tricks, and so we’d overlooked it day after day.
It struck me this week that sin can attack us just as the caterpillar was ravaging Benito. It stays close by, in disguise, draining us of energy that could be used to serve others. We are distracted from our purpose on Earth by the many sinful, attractive activities that are out there.
Even once we’ve quit the distraction, it takes time to recover. Often there are consequences of our sin that continue pulling us away from serving others. Even after we plucked the caterpillar off and flung it away, Benito’s energies and nutrients were devoted to regrowing damaged leaves rather than growing the red tomatoes we hoped to see.
All we can do is pray for God to reveal our sin to us, that we can be on our guard against it. Similar to how we needed to protect Benito with bug spray, we can guard against sin’s infiltration by surrounding ourselves with Christian encouragers and friends who can keep us accountable and see what we can’t see, reading God’s word, and, most important of all, praying constantly.
I hope this encourages yall!Thank you for reading and following my blog! I am deeply thankful for each of you.
I am so honored to share with you the July 18 devotional for The Upper Room, which is a submission I sent based on a broken friendship which is now reconciled.
You can read the devotional online here, at devotional.upperroom.org. I woke up this morning praying that it would encourage others who have lost the closeness of a friend, sibling, parent or someone else and who despair of ever reconnecting with them. The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways, and I believe He’s changing our hearts all the time when we listen to Him and pray. Have patience and courage!
It also happens that today, July 18, is my new mother-in-law’s birthday! Happy Birthday to Mrs. Susan. It feels like this devotional’s publication date, which I had no control over, was meant to be. It shows me that the Lord is opening the way for new friendships for me even as He also restores old ones.
Have a wonderful Friday, everyone!
US goalkeeper Tim Howard Blocks a Shot
In light of the ongoing World Cup, I’m setting a new GOAL!
(Ok, yes, that can’t even be called a pun. “The lowest form of comedy,” my husband says, quoting “Last Man Standing”.)
That’s it. Seems simple, right? Sure. Just as simple as when they tell you to eat right and exercise. Hah!
My brother Ralph, an exercise enthusiast and exercise physiologist, recently mentioned to me that the words “should” and “shouldn’t” shouldn’t be used in the context of goals. Why? The reasoning is that there’s no commitment to action behind “I should lift weights” or “I really shouldn’t eat that giant slice of chocolate cake.” There’s only an implied action, or a slightly shamed admission that one isn’t doing the right thing. Compare those statements with “I will lift weights twice a week” or “I will not eat desserts except on Friday nights.” Much more concrete. Plus, the timeline adds structure.
So for this short story goal, instead of saying “I really should write more,” I’m going to say, “I will write one short story per week until the first week of October.” That would equal 13 short stories.
I won’t be posting them here to this blog (I know! I want to share them, you want to read them. But many of the short story contests I’ve been looking at require that submissions not have been published anywhere, even to a blog.), but I’ll let you know when they’re complete!
Why do you need a goal, and why short stories rather than a novel?
Settling into married life and increasing responsibilities at work have squeezed my writing time lately. It’s time to make a renewed commitment so I can keep making progress and sharing the constant stream of stories and ideas floating around in my noggin.
I have created two novel manuscripts, which I’m proud of and yet realize suffer from the typical new novelist’s traps of bulky “middles”, character inconsistencies and more. Many of the great writers started out writing short stories. Aerogramme Writers’ Studio, one of my favorite blogs, shared this article containing 35 beautiful and insightful quotes about short stories from famous authors.
Here are a few gems:
That last one really appealed to me, hence the short story a week goal! I realized that these writers practiced their craft, the story arc and the whittling of words, within short stories. Who am I to do differently?
To me, the short story is a 5K race as a novel is to a marathon. If I can practice my form through 5Ks, I’ll be ready to tackle a novel with greater skill later.
Me writing a novel right now:
Let’s get to this level:
SOURCE: Michigan Runner Girl
{Susie Boles Books} 