This crazy thing called life...

Wow! I feel like I’ve completely neglected this part of my life and I miss it. Reading and writing had been put on the back burner as my life around me decided to take turn after crazy turn. I went from being an employee to having employee’s, a fall out with a close friend, losing my grandma – who I miss everyday and still cry over, to having experienced a ten year relationship come to an end. Writing, reading and trying to get my book published has not been my focus, but that’s changing as of right now!

I’ve come to realize that if you want something, even if it seems completely out of reach, to go for it, you never know what will happen. I’ve also learned that I’m not a patient person – which isn’t a good thing trying to break into the writing industry. I can’t just snap my fingers and get what I want – even though that would be ideal, life doesn’t work like that.  

There are so many different things I want right now and I only see hard work and determination, along with a thick skin, in my future. Nothing is impossible. Nothing is out of my reach. It may be a slow and long process but I’m buckled in for the ride. I’m all in baby. I’m ready for this crazy thing called life. I have a smile on my face and a twinkle in my eye, as I only see improvements coming my way! So as I’ve been saying, a lot lately, watch out world! It’s my turn to be in the driver’s seat and make my life what I want it to be. I ask that my friends and family buckle up for the ride because it is going to be an exciting one! 

Stay tuned, this is a new Kristie - that many of you, might not know yet.

Review for Hide

Hide by Lisa Gardner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Wow! 4.5 stars!!!



Annabelle is only five when her parents tell her that they are moving. She is told she will have a new name and she needs to never mention who she is to anyone, ever. After numerous aliases, cities and states Annabelle, now going by Tanya, has found herself back in Boston, where it all started and the target of an unknown threat.



A bunker is found on the ground of an old Insane Asylum in Boston. Six small female bodies are found and one of them is wearing a locket with the name Annabelle Granger on it, the only problem, Annabelle is now a twenty-seven year old woman who works, has an apartment, a dog and a very bad case of looking over her shoulder to make sure no one is following her.



Detective Bobby Dodge and Sergeant D.D. Warren take us through the case of trying to find out who all six small female bodies belong to but also who the person is that killed them. Who is Annabelle Granger? Why does one of the females have a necklace with her name on it? And why can’t they find any record of her?



Annabelle takes them through years of life on the run. What is she running from? She has no idea. She remembers at age five finding presents on her front step, wrapped in the comic strip, and her dad going crazy. When she gets a beautiful locket with her name engraved on it her dad goes ballistic making her throw it away, which she gives to her best friend and next door neighborhood, and with in weeks they have left and she has a new identity. Now the horror that one of the victims is her childhood best friend crushes her and makes her want to fight and figure out what is going on.



Hide by Lisa Gardner is a page turner. Unlike Alone, the first book in the series, this book kept my attention and wasn’t predictable. There were great twist and turns and kept me guessing until the last page. If thrillers and mystery’s are your type of book then this is a series for you! I’ve heard they only get better…







View all my reviews

Paradise Valley ( Book #7) by Robyn Carr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Who doesn't love reading about men who are strong, whole-hearted, hard workers, amazing lovers and even better fathers? I know I love it!

With this installment of Robyn Carr's, Virgin River Series, we get to see how the relationships of Walt and Muriel progress, Cam and Abby, and Rick and Liz. We also get to witness the beginning relationship of Dan and Cheryl (two people who've been in the series since book one and we've watched their progress). There's a lot of information so bare with me.

 ***Contains Spoilers***
Muriel just left Virgin River to go make a movie that has the potential of winning her an Oscar. Walt finds himself left behind taking care of her dogs and horses and missing the hell out of her. But his pride gets in the way and even though she keeps asking him to come visit her, he won’t. Vanni gets involved, showing her dad that he needs to be there for Muriel and stop pouting. Once Walt sees Muriel crying because she was after that he didn't feel the same about her, he finally gives in and confesses that he loves her and wants to marry her.

Cameron is trying to convince Abby to let him be apart of not only his unborn kids lives but hers as well. He comes up with a plan to have her move in with him so he can be there for his kids and slowly win her over. Before he knows it she has agreed. She moves in, and the poor thing is getting larger and larger as she carries Cameron's twins. They both tip toe around the truth, that they both love each other, and start making things work. Then bam, they come clean with each other, they start planning for their families to meet, decide to get married and then having two new born babies to take care of. Life is good.

Rick's been deployed to Iraq and we watch in horror as he gets injured. Jack and Liz rush off to Germany not sure if Rick is going to make it or not. Once there they learn that he lost his leg and it had to be amputated the worst seems over until Rick starts to wake up from the anesthesia. He believes that he is a curse. He becomes an ass, just a plain ass. He's rude, doesn't allow anyone to help him, doesn't talk to anyone and makes sure that everyone that is around him feels small. He feels that everyone would be better off without him. He's parents died when he was two, he got Liz pregnant when they were both teenagers, their baby comes out still born, he watches a team of Marines in front of him get blown up and then he loses a leg. It would be better if everyone stayed away. At first Liz tries to wait him out, but once he's back in Virgin River he makes it clear he wants nothing to do with her. He breaks up with her, in a harsh way I might add, and when she doesn’t fight him on it and ignores him he gets mad. They have a very large fight in the middle of town and 1, 2, 3 they are trying to make it work.

Dan Brady is the Shady Hat guy that is a pot grower. He's helped out when Paige was kidnapped by her crazy ex and when Jack got stranded during the forest fire and now he finds himself, freshly out of jail, looking for a place to call home - he picks Virgin River. Cheryl was the town drunk. After Mel got her to somehow go to treatment she's made a complete 180. Time will only tell what happens next with them.

Okay how I feel about this book. I still think I would love this series more if each book had one main focus. There is always so much information to take in. But with that said I can’t get enough. Robyn Carr has created an amazing small town setting with amazing characters. If it was real, I’d move there in a heart beat. I didn’t really care for the Walt and Muriel plot line, never really have. Cameron and Abby are just sweet and Rick and Liz pissed me off, but I get it. I can see someone who is only twenty acting like that and acting out for those reasons. He’s been through a lot and for the first time I actually liked Liz. She has grown into a strong independent woman and I think she will do nothing but great things for Rick. There’s still a lot of work there but it should last with a lot, A LOT, of elbow grease – but they both have to do the work.

Can’t wait for the next book!!!




View all my reviews

Waiting Around for a Yes or No

Not much to report on the agent front. I've decided that I'm going to put everything I've got into rewriting a new synopsis and query letter, since I feel that both aren't doing my novel justice. I've also started writing a new book. Not sure what the title will be yet but I have the outline down and have started writing parts of it.

Question for those of you who write. Do you write an outline? Do you start writing from Chapter One and go forward, or do you jump around? How about page lengths? Do you try to keep each chapter a certain number of pages?

I've read from authors who feel that they have to have a complete outline before they start writing and other authors who don't use an outline at all. I find, for me, a general outline works the best. I know my main characters, what brings them together, some of the struggles they go through and the ending, but there are a lot of holes that I still have to fill in. I also jump around in my writing. If I get a scene in my head I can't get it out until it is down on paper, even if it’s a scene near the end of the book. With my novel, The Pier, I started with three scenes and the store developed around them. It was one of the most amazing things to see it all come together even though I had absolutely no idea how I was going to get there, it gave me the chills.

I've been really disappointed with how little I'm writing lately. I think the daunting task of getting The Pier back in the computer is putting a wall up for me. I find myself staring at a brick wall as I hold my breath thinking about how I have no upper body strength to pull me up. I can see the white tethered rope that is taunting me, making me feel like it's there to help but really it laughs as I slip back down and fall to the ground. Instead of picking myself back up and dusting off the hard warm dirt, I crawl away with my head tucked. I'm not having writers block. I'm having a case of the "you aren't good enough’s".

I vow that tomorrow I'm going to straighten my ponytail, retie my shoes and give everything I have to NOT let the rope or the brick wall beat me. I'm going to sit down and write. I'm going to sit down and work on The Pier and I'm going to conquer that wall no matter what obstacles get thrown at me.

Alright, enough writing on this blog. I'm going to go to "The Waiting Place" as I work to make myself the best that I can be.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

"Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting."

The dog ate my homework

In elementary I remember a girl, with a side ponytail, an overly large shirt that was tied at the side and leggings, telling our teacher her dog ate her home. Did she really just say that? I thought. It obviously was the same thought the teacher had because she didn't buy it and her name went on the board.

It has been well over fifteen years and I think that I somehow inherited her dog. No my dog, an Akita, didn't eat my homework, she ate a book. Cover, pages, spin and all. This isn't the first time she has done this but the fourth. The first time was my brand new bible. (You should have seen the teenagers faces when I told them the reason their Sunday School teacher didn't have her bible. It was priceless.) All of the books she has eaten have been kept on a book shelve but since she is so tall she is able to get them and pull it off. I’m thinking about buying a safe to put my books in but that would have to be one really big safe.

When I got home to discover the book in shreds on my bedroom floor Megg, the dog, was sitting at the backdoor with her tail and head tucked not making eye contact. I asked "what did you do?" and she laid down not wanting to look at me. *Sigh* thank goodness this is the only problem I have with her otherwise I would find a new home for her. But I can't. The way she protects the kids and our house is something that I will never part with. I just wish that she had a thing for grabbing bags of bread off the counter to eat, like my good friend Holly's dog, instead of $20 plus books.

Now I'm just wondering if one day my kids will have to use the same excuse that girl did so many years ago. "Um Mrs. Fill-in-the-blank, my dog ate my homework. No really! She did!"

Hallelujah

To say that I’m the happiest person on the face of the earth today would be an understatement. (Corny, yes I know). After almost a month of trying to type on a keyboard with missing keys, I finally have my laptop back.

About a year ago, my now four year old, thought that it would be entertaining to pop off the “T” and the “J” keys on our old laptop. The hardware underneath the buttons hurts as you push your finger down to make the letter show up. Why did he do this? One only knows with that child. He got in trouble but for those who know my Andrew know that getting in trouble doesn’t faze him. He does what he wants when he wants and he doesn’t really care what you think about it. Two weeks later I woke up to hear him laughing in the den. I go in there to find him popping off more keys and belly laughing as they hit the floor. He not only popped off more letter keys, he also popped off the Enter button and the power button. In order to turn that laptop on you have to take a metal paperclip and put it in the hole, wiggle it around until you somehow manage to hit the right spot and then, and only then, the computer will turn on.

So we made that one the kid’s computer and I bought myself a new laptop that they weren’t allowed to touch. The kids hardly go on the computer so it really just sits there collecting dust. But I was thankful for it when this computer’s hard drive fried and I had to send it in to get a new one. (Thank goodness for warranties.) It took almost a month to get my laptop back and I did a little gig once I saw the bright cherry color on the front, that I’ve come to know as my computer. No more pushing broken hardware to spell “the” or “thoughts” or anything else for that matter. I plan to get the kids a new desktop and threaten my children to NOT break it or they will have to learn how to type on an old laptop that hurts and sometimes cuts your fingertips.

Now that my laptop is back, I’m off to get all of my manuscript (ms) back into it and rewrite my query letter and synopsis. Wish me luck!

Review for If I Stay by Gayle Forman

***Contains Spoilers***

This book did contain some laugnaue but I think it is a book that everyone needs to read. It makes you realized, you don't have until your eighty-something to live, this could be your last breath.

If I Stay is a book that makes me want to run out and hug everyone I love.

Mia is having an ordinary day. School was cancelled because of snow, so the family decides to get out for some fun adventures on the snowy day. While they are driving they get hit by another vehicle. Mia stands up, once the part of the car she is in stops spinning and twisting around trees, and she looks down to see that there isn’t a scratch on her. She makes her way to where the other part of the car is and finds her mom and dad dead. She then rushes off to try and find her little brother but instead finds herself. She is a ghost, or a spirit, able to see everything that is going on around her but can’t make others know that she is there. Will Mia make the choice to go back to her body to live? Or will she decide to go be with the rest of her family who has past on?

I LOVED this book. Last night I rated it a 4 but I changed it today to a 5 because it really did make me think and made me want to hug everyone I know. It was a short read but the characters were great. I really loved the parents, they made the book light and funny. We got to watch as person after person came to the hospital to be there for Mia. Friends, family, boyfriend, friends of friends. It was great. Then Mia would have a flashback about that person and we would get to see how much she was really loved.

I teared up twice in this book, which doesn’t happen that much. First when she found her parents dead. Mia has a relationship with her parents like I have with mine. I couldn’t imagine finding my parents in that state. It was tough to read. The second time was when her boyfriend, Adam, sat at her bedside and begged her not to go. We have watched through the book how they fell in love and the struggle that they are facing with their lives taking them to two different parts of the country and trying to figure out a way to make it work. My favorite line in the book was from Adam.

            “If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too…I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”

But the question remains, will she stay?

Review for Room by Emma Donoghue

***Contains Spoilers***


The narrator in this story is a five year old boy names Jack. We don’t know it right away, but his mother had been kidnapped two years before he was born and had been held and rapped for the past seven years. We see their daily lives of living in an 11’ x 11’ room. Jack has never gone outside, doesn’t even know there is an outside. We watch as Jack's Ma decides to finally tell him that they are being held and that she needs his help to get out of there. We bite our nails as we watch Ma plan how she is going to get them help and when she realizes that Jack is going to be the key for them getting rescued, we bite harder. Once they are rescued we watch as Jack goes through sensory over load and doesn’t know how to socially act or talk in a world that he didn’t even know existed.  

I had a hard time with this book for a number of reasons. One I didn’t like the topic. It bothered me. I couldn’t imagine being kidnapped and then having to try and raise a kid in that environment. But I do applaud the mom. She kept Jack safe from “Old Nick” as they called him. In the five years that Jack lived in “Room” or the shed really in Old Nick’s backyard, he had only seen Jack once. I thought that the mom did a great job in the situation. She taught him everything she knew, keeping him active, healthy and clean. Jack never knew that anything was wrong and the mom took great care of him. But the topic bothered me so much that I could only read a little bit of this book at a time.

I also had a problem with the way Jack talked. I understand that he is young and hasn’t been in the world. But with the large vocabulary he had and the way his mother talked I thought that the baby talk and the incompletely sentences were a little over the top. I completely understood him not socially been able to form sentences when talking to people, but for someone who could read books, spell, say large words and know the meanings, he should be able to complete a sentence, at least in his head.

I also started not to like the mom half way through the book. I can’t imagine going through what she went through but she abandoned Jack once they got out. The poor kid had no idea what anything was and the mom was just overwhelmed with everything and tried to kill herself. I don’t think I could do that to my kids, no matter what the situation was. The poor grandma was left to show Jack the world and how to deal with it. The grandma got frustrated, which is understandable, but I thought she was a little to snippy with him. The only person I really liked in the end was Steppa, Jack's Step Grandpa. And Steppa had never had kids so he had no experience in how to handle them but he was there for Jack like no one else was.

Room is a book that got me thinking. It wasn’t something that blew me away but it’s definitely a book that I will remember for years. I think that everyone should read it just to see how you feel about the situation the author, Emma Donoghue, puts you in. Room is a book that will be talked about for years. I think if the topic wasn’t so bothersome I would have enjoyed it more.

Here I Go

Here is my first blog post ever – I’m a little freaked out. Do I really suffer from anxiety? Yes, and the thought of just doing this makes me sick but I’m excited at the same time.

I have spent the last seven months writing and editing a novel called "The Pier". I finally got to a place where I was ready to send it off to try and hook an agent. With a nervous finger, I clicked the left side of the mouse and send my query off - to be read, rejected, and hopefully, to get that one “yes” that it takes to get my novel published. I know that it's not that easy of a process but I can always hope right? After sending it off and staring at a screen that tells me my e-mail was received, my computer crashed. Really you might ask. Yes, just that fast. So not only did I lose my whole novel, query and synopsis, I also lost six months worth of pictures of my children. *Sigh*

I sat there desperately trying to get the computer to turn back on with no avail. So now here I sit, with my new laptop sent off to get the hard drive fixed, trying to type on a laptop that my four year old thought would be entertaining to pop off half of the keys. Why in the world didn't you back all your stuff up Kristie? I ask myself at least twenty times a day. "It's a brand new laptop it will be fine..." I kept saying. Now I'm sitting here praying that no one wants me to send them any part of my manuscript because I don't have it. Luckily I did print off a couple copies to be sent to and edited by some well trusted friends. But just typing this small post hurts my finger from the hardware underneath the keys that my son popped off. I couldn't imagine retyping 114,000 words on this keyboard. I need my laptop back so I can work on getting my novel out there.

Please pray from me as I go through the process of trying to find an agent AND that they miraculously don't ask to see more until I'm able to get my computer back and retype it ALL. I think that I've learned my lesson. I'm going to back up my files once a week - if not once a day.