Favorite Young Reader Novels #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Uncategorized

 

Nov 29, 2021

What was your favorite young reader novel growing up?

Was that even a category back in the dark ages? I had to look this up, because the definition of young reader baffles me.

What does young reader mean?
 
Both middle-grade books and young adult fiction are for young readers. Middle-grade fiction is comprised of books intended for readers between the ages of 8 and 12, while young adult fiction targets readers between the ages of 12 and 18.
 
That’s from https://www.masterclass.com/articles/whats-the-difference-between-middle-grade-fiction-vs-young-adult-fiction#what-is-young-adult-fiction. And that’s a really broad spectrum of readers. The difference between the reading ability between an 8-year-old and an 18-year-old is light years.
 
Now, for your consideration. I read James Michener’s Hawaii the summer after eighth grade. That made me 14, probably. And I read it in one weekend. I was also devouring Nancy Drew books in that same time frame. And cereal boxes, if I had nothing else nearby. In other words, I read whatever I could get my hands on.
 
To make it cleaner, let’s eliminate the adult books I was reading and stick with the ‘approved’ ones. In eighth grade, I was still in my ‘read a book a day’ phase. I’d get a book out after school, read it on the way home and after my homework was finished, and return it to the school library in the morning. I was also reading a lot of bibliographies and historical fiction. I never thought of reading only from one category. I’d read whatever looked interesting or a book the librarian suggested.
 
Then there were the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. I’m not sure how many years my mother bought them, but I’d devour them in no time flat. Sure, they might have ‘condensed out’ the more adult portions, but they introduced me to authors I might not have come across on my own.
 
So, that’s stacks of books, many I don’t remember. That doesn’t mean some small piece of them didn’t stick with me. But, I won’t claim any of them as my favorite. I don’t have one.
 
Back to where we started – I still can’t wrap my head around the young adult definition. A good book is a good book. I may be old, but I can enjoy a well-written story about teens, and I hope the opposite is true.
 
Let’s see what the other writers think.  Just follow the links below.
 
As always, until next time, please stay safe.
 
 
 
Nov 29, 2021

What was your favorite young reader novel growing up?

Rules:

1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

Nailing The Beginning of a Book: #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

Nov 22, 2021

Which part of your book do you spend the most time on? Beginning, middle or end? Something else?

Sometimes it seems that the more I think I know about writing, the harder it gets. That’s how I feel about writing the beginnings of my books.

The first couple of stories I wrote, I simply sat down and wrote. The opening was the opening. Things have changed. For The Ranger’s Dog Tags, I can document eight different versions of the beginning. Eight. And those are the ones I kept. I can’t tell you how many I started and then tossed.

You know what’s the toughest part? Finding the right place to start. I can throw all kinds of words on a piece of paper, but that doesn’t mean they are the right words. Or the right moment to introduce the reader to the adventure.

I dug out the earliest documented attempt to begin what became The Ranger’s Dog Tags. Here it is, in all its painful ineptness. “Four alarms blaring at the same time,” quickly changed to “Four alarms on my phone blaring.” I have one sheet of paper covered with variations on that theme. 

And how did the book start once it had gone through countless edits?

The squad car screamed down the street, its red and blue lights tearing through the darkness. I feathered the gas pedal and waited for a second set of headlights to pass. Dolores, my salsa-red F-type Jaguar, growled in anticipation.

Quite the difference. I lost 3/4ths of the beginning chapter in the editing process.

I’ve got two books in progress right now. (One is deep in edits, the other is only at about 7000 words- a long way to go.) In the opposite of what I usually experience, I actually added most of a chapter at the start of the first one. For the second one, I have shrunk my initial beginning from about 2000 words down to 450, and turned it into a prologue.

Not that the middles and ends aren’t important. I will fight myself over that last paragraph. I want to wrap up the story as well as I started it. The story may be over, but those final words are the what the reader will walk away with. That’s as true for these blog posts as it is for a book.

Want to find out which part of a story the other authors feel is the hardest? Just follow the links below.

As always, until next time, please stay safe. And if you are celebrating the US Thanksgiving this week, Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov 22, 2021

Which part of your book do you spend the most time on? Beginning, middle or end? Something else?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

The Holidays Are Upon Us #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

Nov 15, 2021

With the slew of holidays coming up at the end of the year, do you have watch list of shows/movies you like to watch to celebrate? What are they?

The holiday season is upon us, and you know what I don’t plan to do?

Watch TV.

Of course, that’s nothing new for me. If you follow this blog,  you’ve heard this before. I don’t watch TV. I don’t even know what holiday specials are out there.

Can I name any holiday shows? Sure. Old ones. Really old ones. Like The Charlie Brown Christmas from 1965, And Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer from 1964. Yeah, I’m THAT old. Then there’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas, but I’m not sure I ever sat and watched the whole thing in one stretch.

I used to enjoy the Thanksgiving Day parades, but my tolerance for commercials is so low I don’t watch them anymore. Seems like half the floats in the parades themselves are advertisements.  Bah, humbug.

If it’s all right with you, (and even if it’s not) I think I’d rather read a book. Or maybe write one.

If you are looking for recommendations on shows to watch, may I suggest you go read the posts from the other authors on this loop? They’ll likely be more helpful. 🙂 

Anyway, until next time, please stay safe!

Nov 15, 2021

With the slew of holidays coming up at the end of the year, do you have watch list of shows/movies you like to watch to celebrate? What are they?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

Treasures Remembered and Saved #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

Nov 8, 2021

Do you still have a treasure from childhood, can you tell us about it? How about any of your characters?

I grew up in a large family. Both of my parents also came from large families, so there were cousins galore. Everything got passed down and passed around—clothes, toys, books, bikes—you name it. So, I don’t have any ‘treasures’ from childhood.

There are a few things I wish I still had. The mustard seed necklace that was a Christmas gift. A 1964 JFK silver half dollar. I don’t know what happened to either of them. I wasn’t into dolls or stuffed animals, typical things youngsters save.

My teenage years are different. That’s when I started thinking in terms of ‘me,’ and keeping things for myself. Granted, some of those things were ‘borrowed’ from my older siblings when they didn’t want them anymore.

I still have most of the vintage (1960s) Boy Scout mess kit used by my two older brothers. I’ve taken it camping time and time again and it’s still in decent shape—a testament to how well-made it was. It’s packed away in a box right now, or I would have shared a picture.

The little but functional oil lamp I bought with money from my first job still sits on my desk. And I do mean little—it’s all of four inches high. It’s travelled with me from Pennsylvania to Wyoming to Oregon to Florida and back to Wyoming. I own a couple of ‘real’ oil lamps now, but my this one is still my favorite. (And here’s a picture!)

How about my characters? Do they have any childhood treasures?

I’m sure Harmony has some childhood books on those four bookshelves in her apartment. There are at least a few Nancy Drew books, and some old James Bond paperbacks. There are probably copies of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Knowing Harmony, she kept every college textbook relating to her major in library science, too.

Of course, we know she has her mother’s African Violet and John Denver CDs. They are reminders of her childhood.

How about you? Do you still have any of your childhood treasures? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Follow the links below to check out what the other authors on this hop have to say.

And, as always, stay safe until next time.

Nov 8, 2021

Do you still have a treasure from childhood, can you tell us about it? How about any of your characters?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

Your Title or Your Blurb – Which is Harder? #IWSG

  By IWSG

Time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group post.
This month’s question:
What’s harder to do, coming up with your book title or writing the blurb?

The awesome co-hosts for the November 3 posting of the IWSG are Kim Lajevardi, Victoria Marie Lees, Joylene Nowell Butler, Erika Beebe, and Lee Lowery!

Back when I wrote poetry – some of it pretty good – I had the worst trouble coming up with titles. How to condense those few words I’d written down to two or three words? It seemed impossible!

But then I started writing fiction, and it was a new ballgame. The titles came to me before I’d even finished a first draft. That was especially true for books that were not the first in a series.

However, we won’t mention the book I’m working on now. The title is giving me a hard time. Well, the whole book is giving me a hard time. It’s a new genre for me, but I’m not giving up on it.

But blurbs are hell! And everyone has a different idea of what makes a good blurb. I can hand a draft of a blurb to three different authors and have it rewritten three different ways. How long should it be? Are all the verbs action words? Are all the adverbs eliminated? Have you left the reader with enough information to hook them without giving away the ending? Don’t forget to include keywords Amazon algorithms are looking for! Just when you thought you’ve got it right, a fourth person comes along with more suggestions.

I think you know where I am heading. Yeah, blurbs are harder. That’s my vote.

Just for fun, here’s the blurb I’m NOT going to use for my next book.

Jake Hennessey lived by his own set of rules

Always be nice to old ladies and little kids.
Always watch out for other drivers.
Always keep an eye out for the cops.
Never carry a gun.
Never sell drugs.
Never steal from the bride or groom at a wedding.
Never get too close to a potential target
Never stay in one place too long.

Then he met Harmony Duprie.

To find out what other authors think about this topic, checkout a few of the links below.

Until next time, please stay safe!

Not The Legal Me #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

Nov 1, 2021

Did you write under a pseudonym? Why?

Long, long, ago, when I first starting writing, I didn’t like my given name. It was plain, boring, and easily mispronounced. I needed a name that I could identify with. I experimented with a variety of potential pseudonyms, and finally settled on one. Thus, Bobbi Jo Aspen—B.J. Aspen—was born. The first few poems I had published were under that name.

Where did the name come from? Well, the Aspen part may be unexpected. Most folks assume it was a tribute to one of my favorite musicians, John Denver. Well, that’s wrong. Aspens are one of my best-loved kind of trees. (Don’t get me started in how beautiful they are in the fall when they turn gold on the side of a mountain.) The Bobbi Jo? That’s a sideways tribute to the song “Ode to Billy Joe.”

But the name didn’t stick as I got older. I wanted something a little more ‘mature.’ A weirdly addressed piece of junk mail gave me my inspiration, and I became ‘P.J. MacLayne.’

Why use a pseudonym besides finding a ‘better’ name? When I started writing, it was widely understood that men had a better chance of being published than women. By choosing the names I did, I sought to increase my chances of publication. Did it work? There’s no way to prove that.

The other part of using a writing name is security. These days, of course, if you are on the internet, security is almost nonexistent. But in the not-so-long-ago, using an alias made it harder to get personal information about a writer. These days, if you want to be a successful indie author, you have to be willing to exchange a bit of yourself to give your readers a sense of community. (I still struggle with the security vs accessibility part of being an indie author.)

I’ve been using the moniker ‘P.J. MacLayne’ long enough that it’s a part of me. If someone were to call out “Hey, P.J.,” in a public place, I’d look to see who it was.

Several of the authors on this loop use pseudonyms. (The internet told me so!) I wonder if they do it for the same reasons? You can follow the links below to find out.

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

Nov. 1, 2021

Did you write under a pseudonym? Why?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter


A Little Bit Of Summer #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

 

Oct 25, 2021

Do any of your characters garden? Or keep houseplants? How about you?

 

The cushions in my favorite easy chair were slit and the stuffing thrown all over the front room. My books lay scattered on the floor and the bookshelves pulled down on them. My African violets, inherited from my mother, had been dumped from their pots, the dirt spread everywhere. A quick glimpse of the little kitchen showed pots and pans strewn all over.               The Marquesa’s Necklace

Don’t worry, with tender, loving care from Harmony, the African Violets survived and showed up in other books in the series. The light that streams through the kitchen window of her small apartment is perfect for them. However, I’ll guarantee that she doesn’t sing to them, but that’s a topic for another day. 

Harmony also helps her landlords with their yard work. That includes a large flower garden, so she gets her fill of gardening during the spring and summer. Plus, she’s remodeling an old Victorian house, and dream of restoring the formal rose garden to it’s original glory.

The forecast promised an unseasonably warm day, so I canceled the plans for Auntie Hilda to mingle with the after-church crowd. Instead, plain old me worked on the rose garden at Eli’s. It had a long way to go to match its glory years, but I had a vision. Working with the gardening club, we’d mingled heritage roses in with modern stock to achieve a display both colorful and fragrant.      The Samurai’s Inro

As for me? Well, it’s fall in Wyoming, and time for me to move my flowers indoors. I got a plant light this year, and I’m hoping the geraniums will stay healthy longer, getting artificial sunlight along with real sunlight when the weather cooperates. I have one that’s about 12 years old.

Due to the hazards of Wyoming weather, I have learned to plant in pots, so moving them inside is only a problem of running out of space. (We can get snow in May and September, hailstorms anytime in between.) It’s not like living on the Oregon coast, where flowers bloomed all year, and I had a large garden and grew a variety of vegetables.  Where the gladiolas would cross-pollinate and I’d end up with variegated buds, and I could make jam from the wild blackberries that grew along the edge of the garden. Yes, sometimes I miss living there. But I need my mountains.

Oh, and why an African Violet? It’s a tribute to my mother, who kept one alive for years and years. I was never in a position to get a cutting from it, but I’ve kept it alive in another way.

I’m betting on a couple of our authors including gardening in their books. Follow the links below, and let’s find out!

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

 

Do any of your characters garden? Or keep houseplants? How about you?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

Sports In My Little Town #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book, Uncategorized

 

Oct 18, 2021

Are any of your characters fans of a particular sports team?

There’s not a whole lot to do in most small towns unless you plan your own event or go somewhere else. That’s why high school sports take on an almost cult-like following. And Oak Grove, my fictional town in the Harmony Duprie series, is a true small town. Harmony may not belong to the cult, but she still keeps an eye on local teams. I pay homage to that in the books.

‘Football Coach Predicts a Winning Year.’ That one made me smile because Coach Henderson had predicted the same thing for the last fifteen years, and it hadn’t happened yet. The school was too small to field a team that matched its rivals. But there was always hope.  From The Baron’s Cufflinks

Not much was going on in Oak Grove that night, with most of the high-schoolers out of town for a football game.          From The Marquesa’s Necklace

I’ve explored that concept more in my work-in-progress. (I’m still playing with potential titles, but let’s call it The Thief and The Angel for now.) This is from a conversation between Jake and Harmony.

“I see they’ve hired Coach for another year,” she said.

“Is that a good thing?”

“Oak Grove is too small to have a decent team.” She closed the sports section and laid it on the stair behind them. “We haven’t had a winning season in years. But the alumni and school board don’t want to give up on it. And every year, at least one boy gets a college scholarship, so they keep the team going. In a good year, two or three boys will get scholarships, even if they are to colleges no one ever heard of.”

While none of my characters are huge fans of a particular team, many of them follow sports in general. I can use sports as a way to establish time and personality. If I write about American football, it’s fall. Basketball belongs to winter and spring, while baseball is summer. 

Then there’s personality. In The Ranger’s Dog Tags, I imagined Detective Timothy Horace as a football linebacker. When I figured out that he was a golfer, it changed how I wrote him. (his physical size remained the same.) Although he was could use his size as a physical weapon, he preferred a more subtle approach to his job.

I have a coworker who can recite stats on numerous baseball players (not just one team.) so, it would be easy for me to write that into a character. I just haven’t done it yet.  But I’m playing around with a new plot in my head, so who knows?

Let’s find out if any of the other authors have superfans in their books. Just follow the links below.
And, as always, stay safe until the next time.

 

Oct 18, 2021

Are any of your characters fans of a particular sports team?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

 

 

My TBR (To-Be-Read) List #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

Oct 11, 2021

What’s on your “TBR” (to be read) list?

 

Winter is on its way, although the forecast has backed off the snow that was predicted for my location this week, and that means more time for reading. (I hope!) So, what’s on my TBR (to-be-read list?)

Let’s start with one that’s been nagging me— Tripwire, the third Jack Reacher book. I got about a third of the way through it, and gave up. I wasn’t getting into the story. I feel obligated to give it another try because I enjoyed the first two in the series. 

Then there’s two books I should be getting for my birthday—a Craig Johnson (Longmire) book and a Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum) novel. Not the newest Longmire, because I wait until they come out in paperback. After my disappointment in the book two (?)  years ago, I’m not as much as much of a fan as I used to be. And I’m backfilling the Stephanie Plum books because I started reading them in the middle.

Next comes “The Time Is Now, A Call to Uncommon Courage” by Joan Chittister. I’ve mentioned her on this blog before. She’s the Roman Catholic nun famous for the quote “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed.” She also happens to have been one of my teachers.

I also have a personal goal to read at least one book by every author who participates in this hop on a regular basis. I’m not doing a good job on that one. I’ve read books by two of them, bought books by two of them, and I still need to buy books by the rest of them. (No names. I don’t want to get in trouble with any of them!) Hey. I’ll get there one of these days.

What else? I bought a couple yellow-cover Nancy Drew books a while back to add to my collection. I should read them before I put them on the shelf. The racism in the last one I read has made me hesitate.

I’m trying to make it though a bunch of books I’ve downloaded to my Kindle. The quality varies, and I’m not  finishing ones that don’t capture my attention after a chapter or two. I’m even making a mental list of ones I need to remove. (No names here, either.)

That’s enough to last me a month or so. But I’m sure I’ll find more books to add to my list by the time I get done reading the other posts on this hop!

Off-topic- Speaking of the kindle- is there a way to get the library to show books in alphabetical order by author’s name? I’m using the kindle app and haven’t found a way to do it. I can sort by titles alphabetically, but not by author.

Anyway, until next time, stay safe! 

Oct 11, 2021

What’s on your “TBR” (to be read) list?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

Writing to the Edge #IWSG

  By IWSG
 
 
Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

October 6 question – In your writing, where do you draw the line, with either topics or language?

The awesome co-hosts for the October 6 posting of the IWSG are Jemima Pitt, J Lenni Dorner, Cathrina Constantine, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, and Mary Aalgaard!

This question is eerily similar to Monday’s topic, but not by any grand plan. Coincidences happen.  I’ll see what I can do to add something new. (You can see that post below.)

On Monday, I wrote about my decision to not write sex scenes. (Because frankly, I don’t think I’d be any good at it., not because I have a personal objection to them.) I also don’t write horror, because I don’t enjoy it. I don’t read it, I don’t watch horror movies, I don’t write horror stories. There are enough bad things in this world without adding to them. (But if you enjoy them, go for it.) Interestingly, I have written scenes with mild violence. It fits in a different category.

Language isn’t a show stopper. (I wrote about that a few weeks ago!)  I believe in using language appropriate to the character and the setting. And if that means throwing in a few swear words, I’ll do it. The reader has heard them all before. (I don’t write children’s books.)

I also tackle controversial subjects in my books, but in ways that maybe you don’t realize what I did until later. I’ve mentioned the women’s movement, LGBTQ rights, law enforcement issues, the politics around marijuana and drugs, and other social issues.

There’s lots of things I haven’t tackled, but I still have time and ideas. I guess I’ll figure out what else I won’t write when it stares me in the face and my characters and I argue about it!

Don’t forget to check out other writers in this hop. There’s a whole list below.

As always, until next time, please stay safe!