TRAPPED by Jack Kilborn

Trapped is the first novel I've read by Jack Kilborn, also known as Joe Konrath. I've been reading Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, for years, so I figured it was about time I give one of his books a try, and knew that I wanted horror. Well, I got horror. I got more than that, too.

I was describing this book to my friend Brian - group of teens and two adult companions go to an isolated island, start getting picked off by feral cannibal people, and they're tortured in so many horrible ways, I won't even get into the details. So Brian says to me, "Oh, you're reading torture porn?"

I had no idea what he was talking about, but Trapped certainly wasn't pornographic. However, by the details of the torture I told Brian about, he concluded this is "torture porn" because there are people in the world who really get off on the torture of other people. So, okay. I guess it was Torture porn.

There were times in this book that I was severely disturbed. You know, every once in a while you come across a book or a writer who shocks you so much, you can't even believe what you are reading. Someone had the guts to write this down and publish it? Someone had the guts to publish it at all? Parts of this book were so intensely disgusting and, excuse my curses but there is no other way to put it, FUCKED UP, I was just blown away by the bravery. 

Yeah, bravery. Joe Konrath is BRAVE. Brave for writing this, brave for spending so much time putting down on paper what most people couldn't even think up to wish against their worst enemies. It was a very interesting experience, reading this kind of book. I can't say I want to dive into more 'torture porn' any time soon, but I'm glad I read it, it's good to read new things, and certainly it got me interested in reading more of Konrath's books. I'm currently reading Origin on my phone and liking it even more than Trapped, but it's a totally different book. I'll review that one as well, eventually. Matter of fact, I have a lot of book reviews to catch up with....

Shifting

Something remarkable happened today. I was given the opportunity to be honest with my boss without the fear of retaliation, and I told him that I was unsatisfied here at my job, mostly due to not being paid what I feel I deserve, and I told him that the best thing he could do for me at this point is give me a stellar job recommendation. And he will. 

I've been wanting to leave my current job for a while. It's not something I've blogged about since I don't want to get Dooced, but the job has really been one of the biggest dark clouds hanging over my life in the past few (six to eight) months, and now that I know I can take my time finding a new, better job with a great recommendation from my current boss, it's like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I feel liberated, free, and easy. Really, it feels like I've been walking around with a ton of bricks on my shoulders and I've just finally been able to set them down.

I'm still nervous about job searching, but nowhere near as nervous as I would be if I didn't know that I was going with my bosses' blessing, and certainly not as nervous as I would be if I were currently unemployed. I get to take my time now and find something that is right for me, and figure out what I am going to do to navigate the next part of my life. 

***

Lots of bloggers pick 'words to live by' at the end of the year, and Shmutzie, one of my favorite writers, has picked Shift for her 2012 guiding word. I was thinking of doing this myself this year, and need to come to a decision soon. Shift isn't quite it for me, though. I want to shift, yes. I want to shift out of my current job and into a new one, out of my current home and into a new one - but I want to settle as well. I want to be comfortable and rested no matter where I am in my life or any of it's stages, but I haven't gotten there yet. I'll figure out this word eventually, just like I will eventually write about Christmas and reflect on Elise's birthday. I just feel like so much has been going on lately, I've hardly been able to do anything CREATIVE.

***

I have been following a writer named Nova Ren Suma for some time now. I adore her blog, she has one of the best writing/book blogs I've ever come across in my life, and I was waiting not so patiently for my anticipated Christmas gift of Amazon gift certificates so I could get some books I have been dying to read. So tonight, Nova's book Imaginary Girls arrived in the mail, along with a few others. I started this one right away, mostly because not only did I anticipate it, but I sort of feel like a tool talking to this author on Facebook and on her blog and not having read her novel. Well, here I am up late, I could barely put it down and will pick it up again after I finish this quick blog, because, wow. I'm being blown away by her writing. It's WAY BETTER than I ever thought it could be. See, I am usually into urban fantasy and paranormal YA books, I have not found many regular "literary" YA books that I've enjoyed, and this... I am not sure yet what genre this book will eventually fall into, other than the genre of AWESOME. 

Trapped

This is a sad story: I am a terribly library patron. I have no idea when it was that I last checked books out of the town library, but it was probably springtime, and today I decided to finally return the books (most of which Elise and I never read) and pay my fines. 

Thirty dollars later, I balked at checkout when the librarian asked me whether I wanted to donate a holiday "gift" to the libary. I told him that I'd made my donation for the rest of the year, but nice try. 

This book, Trapped, by Michael Northrop, is one of the books I checked out today - the day that I've wholeheartedly decided that I am going to use the shit out of my library from now on. I started it in the children's library while Elise played with trains with any child who came her way (there were a lot of them) and then settled down with it in bed after she went to sleep. I read the book until I was done.

There is an amazing, satisfying pleasure that comes with reading a book in one sitting, if you ask me. Generally, books that I can read in one sitting, or in one day, have something special about them. Great characters, a good plot, action that keeps things moving along and a real desire to know what is going to happen in the end. This book had all of these things.

Trapped is about seven kids who get caught stranded in their high school during an incredible mammoth of a Nor'easter. I know what this means, this mondo-beyondo type of blizzard that can hit right here in Connecticut, where the events in this book also seem to take place. Nor'easter blizzards are a scary, intense whollop of snow and ice and wind that happen (badly) every few years or so. 

Anyway, seven teenagers are trapped. Snow starts piling up at an epic rate - it gets so that the kids have to hole themselves up in a second floor classroom with vats of peanut butter and bread to call their dinners, while the snow reaches ten, then fifteen, then eighteen feet high. 

The power has gone out. The pipes have frozen. The roof starts collapsing under the weight of the snow. No one knows the kids are there.

What would you do?

My rating: Four and a half out of five snowballs to the face. Just kidding, I really liked it. I could definitely see this being made into a movie, a la Day After Tomorrow, but with a lot less science involved. It was quick, exciting, and let my mind escape, which, man. It's so great when that happens.

(Have I mentioned how much I suck at reviewing books? At least I have finished one. I haven't been doing much finishing of books lately, although finishing of scarves for Christmas is a whole other story.)

Grace in Small Things # 5 - Thanksgiving '11 Edition

 

1.) The fact that I planned ahead this year and got three quarts of Rita's Ice before they closed on October 30th. I was trying to save them until at least December, but I'm thankful I decided to indulge tonight. This one is Coconut Cream. Watermelon and Mango are waiting patiently in the freezer until after the New Year.

2.) I am thankful for my family and friends today. We are few and far between, but we are healthy, and happy, and together as much as we can be. We're all we've got and we love each other. 

3.) I am thankful for good stories. I have been reading a lot lately (though haven't finished anything in a week or so, because I have that nasty habit of diving into a few different books at once) and good stories in bed are just so sweet and delightful.

4.) I am thankful for the mild(ish) weather we've had so far this season. I hate all things cold and snowy, so it was nice to be comfortable in a hoodie with the window's open today, and to see NO SNOW in the forecast. 

5.) I am thankful to be alive - and that the people I care about are, too. Gary is home and recovering from his quadruple bypass, and should make a full recovery soon. He and Linda are changing their lives day by day, striving to live as healthily as possible. I really want to do that, too. I want to keep on living, and loving, and being able to be thankful for so many things.

It used to be so easy, I never even tried.

This was a very low-key weekend. I had big intentions of finishing my read through The Eternals first draft, and of reviewing two indie books I have read lately (I'll never, EVER insinuate that I think of myself as a good reviewer - sorry!), but instead I read, and I plotted. Sort of.

Yesterday morning I decided that I didn't want to do much of anything besides read. I picked up a book that I bought a while ago and never started reading - Divergent, by Veronica Roth. Well, I read the entire thing cover to cover yesterday and I was blown away by it. I couldn't put the book down, seriously. It was like The Hunger Games, only better, I swear. 

Something about Divergent really got to me, though. In the beginning of the book, Beatrice, (Tris), has to take aptitude tests and go through a Choosing Ceremony to decide which faction she is going to belong to. All I could think about when I sat there rapt, reading it, was The Picking. The Picking - the ceremony that takes place in my book, The Eternals. 

Now, the ceremonies are not alike at all, and neither are the overall concepts of the book. My book is about vampires, after all. It was just the way that Veronica writes and I don't that had me all fershnickered. She shows, doesn't tell. I tell, I don't show enough.

I know that if I pick up my manuscript and read through it with a red pen in my hand, I would cross out more than half of what is written there. I need a read through, I need some notes taken, I need a rewrite.

I can see it plain as day now, what I need to do. 

***

To me, this is the last day of summer.

Elise starts kindergarten tomorrow, so that means it's back to waking up at 7a.m. every morning until June, because if I don't do it every day, I don't do it at all. This means earlier bedtimes for Elise and more writing time for me. This means I go back to pretending that I have two full time jobs - one as a slave to Quickbooks and email and furniture, the other as a novelist. 

And this is the reason that I have never been able to take myself seriously as a writer - I write every day, THEY SAY, because I can't not do it. I've never had that sweet not-problem. 

Here's A GREAT PIECE OF WRITING ADVICE FROM BRIAN K. VAUGHN:

WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS.

That’s it. Everything else is meaningless. You can take all the classes in the world and read every book on the craft out there, but at the end of the day, writing is sorta like dieting. There are plenty of stupid fads out there and charlatans promising quick fixes, but if you want to lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. Period. Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.

This means one thing to me: saying no more often.

It's the last day of summer. The last day of the time I yearn for (and live for) every year. This usually feels like a time of things dying and ending for me, because winter, so bleak - it is past the end, it is the dark and nothingness of winter. But this year, the last day of summer feels more like the beginning of some other season I am not quite familiar with yet.

But know this: I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year - and I'm going to win it.