A new month, a new 30 day challenge.  For those of you who are friends on Facebook or check out My 30 Day Challenges blog regularly, you already know that I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this November.  Thirty days, 50,000 words, local events, and the permission to completely suck.  At least that’s what I was told at the kick-off event last Saturday 🙂

I’m two days in (after I write this I’ll start writing toward my 1700 word daily goal) and already my story is not going quite as planned.  I’ve added a main character who I adore and taken out the love interest in my romance.  That’s right.  He’s gone. Someone else jumped into that role in chapter 1 and I’m rolling with it.  Oh, and as I was writing in Bob Evans the first morning, my waitress got into the novel too (her name anyway).

I’m asking people on the 30 Day blog and on the Facebook page to help me decide things.  Right now voting is up for the name of my heroine – please stop by either place to see the finalists and cast your vote.

I’ve found a couple other bloggers who are participating too.  If you or someone you know is signed up let me know so we can be buddies.

Care (Care’s Books and Pie)

Michelle (True Book Addict)

It’s going to be a fun month 🙂

Extreme Prey. Finished 9-30-16, 4/5 stars, thriller, 406 pages, pub. 2016

Lucas Davenport series #26 (1- Rules of Prey, 2- Shadow Prey, 3- Eyes of Prey, 4- Silent Prey, 5- Winter Prey, 6- Night Prey, 7- Mind Prey, 8- Sudden Prey, 9- Secret Prey, 10- Certain Prey, 11-Easy Prey, 12- Chosen Prey, 13- Mortal Prey, 14- Naken Prey, 15- Hidden Prey, 16- Broken Prey, 17- Invisible Prey, 18- Phantom Prey, 19- Wicked Prey, 20– Storm Prey, 21- Buried Prey, 22-Stolen Prey, 23-Silken Prey, 24-Field of Prey, 25-Gathering Prey)

After the events in Gathering Prey, Lucas Davenport finds himself in a very unusual situation—no longer employed by the Minnesota BCA. His friend the governor is just cranking up a presidential campaign, though, and he invites Lucas to come along as part of his campaign staff. “Should be fun!” he says, and it kind of is—until they find they have a shadow: an armed man intent on killing the governor . . . and anyone who gets in the way.  from Goodreads

So, either you’ve read, are reading, or have no intention of reading this series.  I don’t think my thoughts on this one is going to sway your choice.  I love Lucas and the progression of his life.  Although he has changed official jobs throughout the series he always remains a bad ass detective and this time around he has no job at all. So, he’s working on the side for a wanna be governor and can call in old friends like Kidd, who don’t do things by the legal book.

An interesting take on the fringes of the voting electorate, a timely story.  I look forward to seeing what the future holds for Lucas.

 

Dear Almost. Finished 9-13-16, rating 4.5/5, poetry, pub. 2016

Dear Almost is a book-length poem addressed to an unborn child lost in miscarriage. Beginning with the hope and promise of springtime, poet Matthew Thorburn traces the course of a year with sections set in each of the four seasons. Part book of days, part meditative prayer, part travelogue, the poem details a would-be father’s wanderings through the figurative landscapes of memory and imagination as well as the literal landscapes of the Bronx, Shanghai, suburban New Jersey, and the Japanese island of Miyajima. As the speaker navigates his days, he attempts to show his unborn daughter “what life is like / here where you ought to be / with us, but aren’t.” His experiences recall other deaths and uncover the different ways we remember and forget. Grief forces him to consider a question he never imagined asking: how do you mourn for someone you loved but never truly knew, never met or saw? In candid, meditative verse Dear Almost seeks to resolve this painful question, honoring the memory of a child who both was and wasn’t there.

Last month I read Dear Almost and was so moved. Jason and I experienced a miscarriage when I was 36 and it was a difficult thing to wrap my head and heart around. Eventually I was able to tell a few people and my good friend told me that she too had suffered a miscarriage the year before and didn’t know if she was supposed to tell people or just try to forget about her ‘almost’.  Since then I’ve talked to many women, friends who’ve had miscarriages, but it was that friend whose words stuck in my head.  Were we supposed to talk about it, which is the route I chose, or just move on and pretend it didn’t happen, like she did?  There is no right answer, of course, because like Thorburn so perfectly addresses in the book one day there is this life full of possibility and the next day all of those possibilities are gone and it hardly seems real.  How each chooses to move on from that is a very personal thing.

I am not much of a poetry reader, but I do like to read outside of my comfort zone and when Serena told me what the poem was about I was in.  Reviewing a poem is not a skill I really possess, but reading something beautiful full of sadness, grief, joy, and a renewal of spirit and appreciating it was easy.  I was completely caught up, all of the emotions of the poet swirling around the ones that it brought out in me.  It gives me hope that one day I might be able to call myself a poetry buff.

I’ll leave you with a little from the end. The last few pages bring tears to my eyes every time I read them but I’m only sharing a small part..

We’ve had our time

together. I wanted you

to see the snow.

I wanted to show you

these days, what

life is like. It scares me

I can no longer

picture your face,

which was only ever

my memory of

my imagining of

how your face

might look someday-

not enough

to hold onto.

I want to thank Serena for having me on the tour and Matthew Thorburn for graciously sending me a copy of his newest poem.  Thorburn also wrote an article in the Sept/Oct Poets & Writers magazine talking about this new poem so check it out if you can. It elevates the reading experience.

Other stops on the tour-