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.