So I got two more signed books to add to my collection. Yay! I won’t go into a long explanation, but basically Kelley York donated some prizes for an auction to raise money for people the Sandy Hook tragedy. And I won.
 
 

So two of those many items she donated were signed copies of Suicide Watch —her recently released book, and Hollowed—her first paranormal novel. Both YA. I’ve read Hollowed a while back, but Suicide Watch is new. And I started reading it the day I got it. ‘They’ say the first page is so important and Suicide Watch has a first page that grabs your attention right away and makes you want to keep reading.
 
 
 

Kelley also included 2 signed bookmarks from her book Hushed—which I’ve read and loved too. So thank you, Kelley for everything.
 
 
 
 
 
My final Jan Plan update
 
So I had 2 goals I was trying to accomplish partcipating in for Christa Desir’s JanPlan. Goal #1 was to finish a few things in The Proper Way to Say Goodbye. Well technically I finished the things I’d planned at the time, but then I found lots more things to fix. So I’m gonna call it completed—at least what I wanted to finish when I first made the goals. #2 was to finish the rough draft of my NaNo project. Which I did. Time to let it sit for a bit now.
 
So I’ll call it successful.
 
Anybody do Christa’s Jan Plan?
 
Or, as I ask every time I do an I-got-a-new-signed-book post, do you have any signed books?

 
Not long ago I let a friend read The Proper Way to Say Goodbye. And her name is Chloe, just like my main character. That made me wonder, does it feel weird to read a story with a main character that has the same name as you.
 
I asked the real Chloe, and she said no, it didn’t feel weird to her.
 
But I’m wondering what other people think. Especially those with common names that show up in stories. Because mine does not.
 
I went to the Social Security Baby Names Wesite. I reference this site a lot when I’m trying to find character names. It’s great because you can look them up by popularity of any year. Of the top 1000 names. So if you need a name from an earlier decade, it’s easy to find them.
 
And big surprise, Suzi doesn’t even rate in the top 1000. Neither does Suzie or Suzy.
 
Susan actually rated pretty high my birth year. #27. But Susan isn’t my name, so it doesn’t count. Susie came in at 541. But still, it’s not my name.
 
So my point is, I don’t think I’ve ever ran across my exact name in a book. And I’m curious if it feels weird for you to read a story with your name.
 
And, have you found a story that has your first AND last name?
 
That would be pretty cool.
 

(Come back tomorrow for more name stuff with the Allow Me to Re-introduce Myself Bloghop.)

 
Halloween of course!
 
I love horror movies and books. I don’t read/watch them as often as I used to, because I’ve been doing more contemporary YA, but someday I would like to write a horror. YA or adult.
 

 
Perhaps it started with Christopher Pike—the master. I read Slumber Party in 6th grade (I think), and I was hooked. I read all his books through high school and into college a bit. Christopher Pike is probably the author I’ve read the most books of… ever.
Christopher Pike led to Fear Street with R.L. Stine and then up to the next level.
 

One of the early ‘adult’ books I remember is April Fool’s Day. Looking back, I was probably too young to read that, but hey, who doesn’t like partying and sex and murder! (In fiction that is.) So in high school I moved on to John Saul and Dean Koontz, among others. I also got into horror movies.
 
 
 
 
So in honor of Halloween, here are a few of my favorites horror book authors.
 
 

 
 
And favorite horror movies.
 
 

 
 
I’m not sure what type of horror I’d like to write. Serial killer. Supernatural evil. Biological terror. I don’t know. I have no ideas yet, but someday…
 
How about you? Are you into horror books or movies?

(FYI: Come back Tuesday for a new feature… The Big Reveal)

Learning to read is hard. Or so I assume because I did it so long ago and can’t remember. But my kids are there now. One thing they don’t fully understand yet is abbreviations. I guess I shouldn’t expect much, they’re young.

A conversation held with my daughter.
Miranda: I know how to spell U-N-D
Me: Oh yeah, how?
Miranda: I don’t know. (With a confused look on her face.)

We had this conversation in the kitchen as she’s standing in front of Lincoln’s art project, a collage of
C-3PO. On it are a few Star Wars words but also the name of C-3PO, or as he attempted to write it: See-Three-Pee-O.

Abbreviations must be hard for kids when they’re first learning to read. They learn to sound out a word to spell it, and that obviously doesn’t work. A beginning reader might try spell it youndee. With Miranda, she knew UND refers to the school, but I’m sure she doesn’t know that it stands for the University of North Dakota shortened down.

So it got me thinking about how the abbreviations we use change over time. Lately I’ve been learning all the ones that writers use, but here are a few of the important ones from my life.

Life in the 80s
SCUBA: Thank you Alex P. Keaton. I will always remember what this means. Self contained underwater breathing apparatus, just in case you didn’t know.
AU: Although I have since memorized many elements from the periodic table, gold was one of the first thanks to Natalie and Tootie. (A U, give me back my gold). How I loved that show.
USSR: I remember being proud of knowing the difference between the USSR and Russia, which we discussed in 9th grade Global Ed with Mr. K. (So I was a little nerdy back then, who cares)
BFF & JK: Best friends forever and just kidding—the precursor to the . I was a ridiculously avid note writer in jr. high and high school—not sure how I got good grade, since apparently I was writing notes all the time. Being the pack rat I am, I still have the notes I got from my friends during those years. They’re HILARIOUS and reading them brings back many things I’d forgotten.

College Life
KAΘ: Kappa Alpha Theta, the women’s fraternity I belonged to.
ASCE: American Society of Civil Engineers. The student organizations I belonged to which brought us fun things such as the steel bridge competition and the concrete canoe contest. Did you know concrete floats? It does if you mix it right.
Diff EQ: This was one of the most dreaded math classes we engineering students took. (And trust me, there were plenty) Differential Equations. I still shudder at the thought.
FE: The Fundamentals of Engineering exam is a national test we took at the end of college. If you want to become a licensed professional engineer, this is the first step. This was one long test and it covered not only my discipline of engineering, but all those others I didn’t learn much about other than the random introductory class all engineering students took.

Worklife
PE: This is the professional engineers exam, and is a requirement if you want to become licensed, which I had to do. One long, tough test taken in your discipline. I’m registered in three states by the way.
CAD: Computer aided design. For years I got to draw at work. Okay, there was a little more to it, but that’s basically what CAD is.
RCP, PVC, CMP: Reinforced concrete pipe, polyvinyl chloride (plastic) pipe, and corrugated metal pipe. The pipes underground that transport water and other unmentionables in and around the city.

Life with young kids
SAHM: stay at home mom—a lot of my friends
DTP: Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (one of many shots the kids cried over when receiving) and yes, buy now I know what DPT stands for. Back when Lincoln got his first shot, I probably didn’t.
bpA: Bisphenol A { (CH3)2C(C6H4OH)2} Okay, I copied that out of Wikipedia; I didn’t know that. This is the dangerous compound used to make many of the plastics that my kids probably ate and drank out of. I’m not scared of it, but I’m glad they’re not using it like they used to.
SIDS: scary stuff, not much to say.

Life with Semi-Older kids
Pollys: Polly Pockets are the toys that live in our vacuum cleaner because they’re so darn small. Some moms throw out the shoes right away because a complete pair never lasts longs. I keep them. They can wear mis-matched shoes.
WWE: Wrestling. It’s not just for boys, girls like it too.
NCLB: No Children Left Behind. I won’t get into politics here, so we’ll leave it at that.
PS2: The video games my son loves to play: Playstation 2. Luckily we got it cheap and used from the neighbors.

Writing Life
SCBWI: Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Pretty self-explanatory.
MS: Manuscript, your story. (It’s not a book until it’s published.)
MC: Main character. One of the people who takes over your brain when you’re writing.
SS: Simultaneous submission. Submitting your work to different agents at the same time.
MS: Multiple submissions. Submitting multiple works to one agent. (Took me a while to figure out what these two meant). This is a no-no with literary agents. One ms at a time.

I’m not sure what the next stage will be. Most likely learning all the chatting codes. But luckily cell phone usage for my kids is a few years off.

Did you know there is a big debate raging out there? Okay, maybe it’s not raging, but I’ve seen people on the internet arguing about what is better, literary fiction or genre fiction? For a while I was confused about what literary fiction means because even the experts can’t agree to a specific definition. But I think I got it now.

A simple way of looking at it is like this…

Literary fiction is like an education from Harvard. You think you’re better than everyone else because you read some 1000 page intellectual novel that nobody else gets. And you paid way too much money for that privilege.

Genre fiction is like a degree from a state college. Anybody can read it. Anybody can write it. And this book is really the same as that book, and that one, and that one.

Joking aside… this is how I see the difference.

Genre/popular/commercial fiction is more plot driven, more commercial, open to a broader audience.
It includes different genres (of course) like horror, romance, suspense, science fiction…
It is more for entertainment.

Literary fiction is more character driven and often appeals to a lesser audience.
It is more about the changes inside a character than what is happening to them on the outside.
It is more thought provoking.
It tends to be more descriptive and stylishly written.

I didn’t really know there were two different categories until I got into writing. A lot of book club books probably fall into literary fiction. Right now I’m reading The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton for our MOMS Club Book Club. I assume this book falls under the literary fiction category. It has long descriptions of places and things but I don’t mind it because it’s interesting. The story takes place in Australia and England over a long time period (1900, 1913, 1975, 2005). A woman is trying to figure out a family secret that her grandmother had been trying to uncover. It’s told from the perspective of at least 5-6 people and sometimes it gets confusing keeping track of ALL the names, but I like it so far.

But back to the literary versus genre fiction.

From a reader’s standpoint, I probably prefer genre fiction and read more of it. But from a writer’s standpoint, writing literary fiction would be much harder for me, so I admire it in one way. I don’t know that one is necessarily better than the other because it’s all about personal opinion. But I hope that at least now you understand the difference between the two.

On my home page, it says, “Because reading and writing are my two obsessions.” Maybe I should have put writing first, since this blog is more about the writing end. But it sounded better that way I did it, so I’ll leave it. But time for a post on reading.

There are not many books I have started and not finished. I thought of posting this after I didn’t finish a book club book. Luckily my book club is very forgiving. It’s not the most serious book club because we all have young kids and try keep track of them as we talk, but the ladies are all fun.

So here’s my list of unfinished books (as an adult—I don’t remember the teen years).

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller – Started in early 2000s – I know it’s a classic and it is on many required reading lists, but I didn’t like it. I got ¾ way through (and I had to force myself at that), but I couldn’t finish. I like war stories in general and I understand that there is no “normal” in war, but the main character was unrealistic to the point of absurdity. (This is how I remember it, as read probably 8-9 years ago.) I could/would possibly try this again sometime. We’ll see.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf – Started in early 2000s – Another classic. But seriously Ms. Woolf, those long sentences stopped me cold, including the one sentence that had 52 words—no exaggerating—and I didn’t make it past the first chapter. So sue me, I like period breaks every once in a while; maybe it’s poetic, but I didn’t like her style and it would take some convincing before I try read another Virginia Woolf novel.

King Lear by Shakespeare – Started in the early 2000s – Plays are okay to read, although not my favorite. But it was the Elizabethan English and the footnotes that got me—in my version half the pages were half footnotes and they seem important because sometimes they explain what the words. “I am so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazed to’t.” I wouldn’t have understood that “brazed” meant unashamed if the footnote hadn’t told me. I’ll probably try re-read someday because he is WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE after all and I still have the book. Maybe I should read it the first time and ignore the footnotes. Then re-read with footnotes. Good idea, but when would I find the time?

Notice the big jump in years due to lack of reading (children being the excuse)

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III – Started in 2010 – I don’t know why I quit this one. Maybe because I just had other better books to read. It still looks interesting so I’ll probably read it someday.

The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer – Started in 2011 – I finished 120 pages. And since my book club (who doesn’t mind if you don’t finish the book) filled me in on the rest of the non-story, I don’t feel the need to finish. I was bored by the lack of plot. 120 pages and I felt like almost nothing had happened.

That’s all I can think of right now. Generally I hate not finishing a book, so it takes a good reason to quit. I’m curious about what other people do. If they trudge through it no matter what, or if they give up right away.