The BookFetish Blog

I’m a little lost today, folks. I’m sad and tired and outraged and sad and despairing and sad. This is probably going to be a little rambling. Stay with me.

Tom Petty plays in the background as I write this. It’s not something I would normally write about but I need to get out of my own head and maybe one of you also needs to get out of your head and this helps.

Las Vegas is terrible – by the way, the Twitter handle for the Vegas police is @LVMPD if you want to show them a little love- almost incomprehensibly sad except this has played out so many times in our country and people offer outrage and thoughts and prayers and support and nothing changes. So instead of outrage this time, I feel like a rock is in my chest. Because I have no expectations that 59 is the number that forces us to have a real discussion about both mental health and our access to guns.

Then came the news that Tom Petty had died. But then he hadn’t. And then he did. And this one hurt. I went for a walk in the park yesterday to feel connected to nature. To see something pretty. I listened to a podcast that made me laugh because I needed to get out of my own head.

I came back home to Facebook outrage that there were too many posts lamenting Petty’s passing and not enough about Vegas and HOW DARE WE. That made me tired, too.

I finished a book I was reading. It was a compelling read but also quite sad. What Made Maddy Run, about mental health and college athletes and I was sad about that.

This week is melancholy, as one of my friends said so accurately. I said on Facebook that I feel like we need a big group hug. A lot of people agree with me.

I don’t know what we do next. I’ve felt so- I can’t even find the right word for it- the last several days. It’s too much. I feel like there are so many things that need to be fought on so many fronts, yet nothing seems to change and then something terrible happens and it adds to it. I have a friend with a terminal illness and I feel helpless that anything I can do for her can’t solve the biggest problem.

I could say all the things- be nicer to each other. Let’s make sure love wins. But that sounds hollow to me right now. At the same time, it’s the only thing I have. I’m going to a soccer match tonight, and I’m going to look around at the venue and hope no one opens fire on us. I’m going to be patient if security is heightened getting into the match. I’m going to look for ways out and have a game plan if something happens. But I’m also going to cheer on my team and enjoy my time with my friends. And I’m going to try to be more patient and kinder and slower to judge. I’m going to choose my outrage on the things that really matter. I’m going to fight the good fight, and I’m going to read books that aren’t sad and stressful. I’m going to find ways to laugh. I’m going to hug tighter and hug longer and check off the things on my bucket list. It’s all I know to do.

If you’re feeling like I am, I hope you find something to help you, too. Be in this space of melancholy, but find your way out. And if choosing joy and happiness and light seems insurmountable for you, please talk to a professional to help you. We’re in a bad place right now. I hope we get better.

It’s a guest post today. When I saw a demo of Fictionary, I thought it was cool and asked how I could help publicize it. What’s Fictionary? Read on…

I’m very pleased to be invited onto Ashley’s blog to share my writing and editing journey. I’m an author who loves to edit, and I believe today’s author must also be their own structural editor.

The difficulty with editing is the time it takes and the cost of an editor. So what if I could speed up the process, spend less money, AND write better fiction?

This is the story of how we created Fictionary.

What is the Fictionary?

Fictionary will help writers turn a first draft into a great story by becoming their own big-picture editor.

With Fictionary, you can focus on character, plot, and setting. Fictionary helps you evaluate on a scene-by-scene basis or on the overall novel structure. Fictionary will show you the most important structural elements to work on first and guide you through the rewriting process.

Why a structural editing tool for writers?

Creating Fictionary began when I finished the first draft of my first novel. By then I’d read over 50 how-to-write and how-to-self-edit books. I’d taken writing courses and workshops, and had 100s of writing and rewriting tips swirling about in my head.

I knew I had to begin the editing process and improve the quality of my draft before sharing my work, but I didn’t know how to go about it.

My Worries:

How was I supposed to remember the torrent of advice and apply it to each scene? A spreadsheet, that’s how!

I created a spreadsheet with a chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene structure. Then I listed the different writing advice I needed to consider for EVERY scene. I ended up with over 75 “key elements of fiction”. I used the reports from the spreadsheet to visualize my novel.

Did Fictionary Work For Me?           

After the hard work of self-editing, the quality of my fiction was validated when my first two novels were shortlisted for prestigious crime writing awards and I landed a two-book deal with publisher Imajin Books.

My first editor said: “If every manuscript was this good, my job would be so easy!”

The next exciting moment came when DESCENT, my first novel, hit #1 on Amazon’s hot new releases. Descent was published by Luzifer-Verlag in Germany, and I sold the audio rights to Auspicious Apparatus Press. Imajin Books also published BLAZE, AVALANCHE and LOOK THE OTHER WAY.

Building Fictionary

I wanted to share my process, so other writers could benefit from an immediate approach to self-editing and rewriting first drafts. But who would want to use a spreadsheet?  Perhaps a fun, fast tool that helps writers visualize and self-edit their novels would be better.

I joined forces with author Michael Conn and business specialist Mathew Stanley, and we formed a company called Feedback Innovations just to build this tool for fiction writers.

You can find out more about Fictionary at https://Fictionary.co

Turn Your First Draft Into A Great Story

You can try Fictionary for free (no credit card required) for two weeks.

Download our free eBook, BIG-PICTURE Editing And The 15 Key Elements Of Fiction, and learn how big-picture editing is all about evaluating the major components of your story.

Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids was everything and nothing I expected.

From the publisher’s summary:
SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster—another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.

1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.

The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.

A nostalgic and subversive trip rife with sly nods to H. P. Lovecraft and pop culture, Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids is a strikingly original and dazzling reminder of the fun and adventure we can discover at the heart of our favorite stories, no matter how old we get.

If you’re of a certain age, you can’t read the synopsis of Meddling Kids and not immediately think of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby Doo.  And there’s certainly a nod to the Scooby gang in the book.

Somehow, when I read the synopsis of the book originally, I missed the “… and, perhaps, save the world” part of it (and perhaps the cover should have made me rethink the context).  I thought this was going to be a deeper look into the PTSD that resulted from mysteries more Dateline than cartoon.  And the PTSD, the unresolved issues, the feeling that there are things left unfinished is there from the beginning of the book.  But it’s far more fantastical and adventurous than I had expected- much more Buffy than Friday Night Mystery.

That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy Meddling Kids, just that I had to reset my expectations about the book.  It’s fun and campy and a mystery. It’s fantastical and completely unrealistic, which makes for escapism reading. At the same time, the characters are drawn such that you empathize with their insecurities and old wounds that are slow to heal.

That Tim the dog is more than just a mentioned character in the book delighted me.  It’s a twist hard to pull off in a lot of ways.

The book isn’t perfect. It’s a bit of a mind fuck in some ways, and that isn’t for everyone.  I’m still not sure I completely follow the manifestation of the bad guys. And there was one scene that was a gut punch to me.

But, if you like nostalgia,  if your Saturday mornings were filled with cartoons and you’ve actually said “Zoinks” before, and you like reading something that gets you out of your own head, then take a chance on Meddling Kids.

One of the things I find most difficult about reviewing memoirs is questioning the narrative. Of course, I do it when something doesn’t ring true or if I find part of the story particularly notable (see my review of Wild), but sometimes a story is more complicated than it first appears and the complexity allows you to see one viewpoint while feeling others are still there to be examined. Such is the case with Hillbilly Elegy.

From the publisher’s summary:
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

I have long been fascinated with the culture of Appalachia, and that is what drew me to this book.  Vance doesn’t pull punches in describing his family and his growing up.  I understand the fierce family loyalty, and I appreciate the nuances of the poverty and fighting to get ahead.

But I really have mixed feelings about this one.  Vance is right to a large extent- we should not expect anyone else to get us out of poverty and we should work for what we  want.  I understand his frustration at his co-worker who had a good job and a baby on the way yet was perpetually calling out of work and walking away from a good, reliable job.  But I also try to realize that my perspective on this comes from a place of privilege.  I’m not sure that there isn’t a societal component.  I don’t know if anyone  has an answer to Appalachia.  I don’t know that gumption is enough to get you out of this situation if you don’t have some resources to show you other ways of living; how to seek out opportunities; what to do when every step forward you take, you’re pushed back three.  This is one of those subjects where people like to point fingers, but few want to sit down and have the hard conversations.  And even when we do, where is the tipping point between personal responsibility between societal aid?  What do  you do when cultural influences and history work against your own best interest?

If you look up commentary on Hillbilly Elegy,  you’ll see both praise and criticism for Vance’s story.  I agree with the New York Times review that regardless of where you come down on this issue- and I’m not convinced there is a single right side- it’s good that we have the discussion.  I hope you’ll read Hillbilly Elegy  and I hope you’ll continue to think about it after you read the last page.

Remember high school? Remember that one person who got under our skin? Who just knew our weak spots and how to taunt us? Those little digs? Well, in Meredith Schorr’s debut Young Adult novel, Kim Vs The Mean Girl, you get to go back to those days and live vicariously as Kim tries to best her nemesis, Hannah.

If you’re a fan of Meredith Schorr, you will remember Kim and Hannah from Blogger Girl and Novelista Girl, but you don’t have to read those to read and enjoy this one.

From the Publisher’s Summary:

High school sophomore, Kim Long, is no stranger to the “mean girl” antics of Queen Bee Hannah Marshak. When Hannah steals Kim’s diary and in front of the entire class reads personal (not to mention humiliating) entries Kim wrote about her crush, Jonathan, Kim vows to enact revenge.

Kim and her loyal best friend, Bridget, come up with the perfect plan to put the evil Hannah in her place once and for all. But will their scheming have the desired effect of getting even, or will Hannah emerge more celebrated by her peers than ever?
Kim vs. the Mean Girl can be read as a young adult standalone novel, set in 2000, but is also a prequel to the popular Blogger Girl adult romantic comedy series. Told in the dual perspectives of teenage Kim and Hannah, fans of the series will get an inside look into Kim’s early passion for reading, writing (and Jonathan), and find out why Hannah is so darn mean.

Writing for young adults is obviously different than writing for adults, and it  isn’t something I think all authors could do.  I think Schorr manages well, perhaps because it is a glimpse of characters I already know and it’s cool to get their backstory.  This is more throwback to Sweet Valley High or The Girls of Canby Hall than Thirteen Reasons Why and I was glad to have something more lighthearted to read.

As all of us who survived high school know, there are some relationships that leave an impact on us long into our adulthood. If we are lucky, we  all grow up and get past it, but the seeds are there. And we see how Hannah set the seeds to make Kim’s high school life miserable.  While funny from Kim’s perspective, her attempts at revenge are almost cruel to a point because innocent people could find themselves hurt as part of the shenanigans.  I thought that was an important takeaway- in our youth, we don’t always take stock of how our actions can impact other people.

Like her other books, Schorr creates some terribly authentic moments here.  I felt my stomach drop and my face burn as I saw coming one of Hannah’s mean girl skewers- and I’ve been out of high school for a while now.  I think it’s a talent that Schorr could still take me back to that mortification that can only happen at that age.

My biggest criticism of the book is that I felt it ended a bit abruptly. But it’s a fun read and would make a great addition to your summer vacation reading list.  If you’re new to Meredith Schorr’s books and a fan of chick lit, do yourself a favor and check her out.