Book Review- Queen of the Dead

The Queen of the Dead.

One word review: AWESOME.

Three word review: Brain explodingly awesome.

Real review:

If you’re a reader of this blog then you know by now that one of my favorite books of 2010 was The Ghost and the Goth.  Queen B Alona dies and Goth Will, a ghost talker, helps her out.  It was funny, smart, excellently crafted and best of all FUN.  

In a market place filled with dystopias and more doom and gloom than can fill an emo kid’s live journal account, The Ghost and the Goth series is a refreshing breeze through a bakery, sweet and leaves you craving more.

The Queen of the Dead is even better then the first book.  Seriously.  And how often does that happen?  It picks up about a month after where the first book leaves off.  Will and Alona are trying to help a ghost to over to the light, when they hit a snag.  Will’s not the only ghost talker in town.  Mina is hardcore, with weapons and “boxes” to get rid of any ghost that’s a threat.  Think Faith for Buffy but slaying Ghosts instead of Edward Cullan.

Instantly Alona and Mina loathe each other.

But Mina’s arrival on the scene isn’t Alona’s only problem.  Only two months after her death, her parents are moving on.  Her mom is throwing out Alona’s homecoming sash and her evil step Mothra is preggers.  

Meanwhile, Will is hit with the news, that not only are there other Ghost Talkers but they’re a well organized and funded group, and they want him.

The whole series takes a drastic change about half way through the book, and not to spoil it  but it’s awesome.  

Where Stacey Kade shines is in her character development.  The reader should HATE Alona, and yet doesn’t.  In any other set of hands, Will could be extremely annoying but he isn’t.  He’s far from perfect but he’s not a stupid boy either, (a welcome change of pace).   Kade places so much emotion on the page that you feel Alona’s heartbreak, and later on in the book you feel Will’s rage.   

Am I a fan girl for this series, yep.  Do I want the final book to be in my hand right now? YEP.  I know it’s done, Kade tweeted about it.  

The Queen of the Dead is a fast paced, fun, and a perfect beach read.   I loved every page.  

In fact, I loved it SO much... I’m feeling a give away coming!!!!

Win a copy of The Ghost and the Goth paper back and The Queen of the Dead pre-order...

Contest ends next Friday!

Life is AWESOME CONTEST

Lots of pretty awesome stuff has been happening in my life. 

My Birthday was yesterday.

I have over 125 followers.

My daughter is getting tubes in her ears in a few days. I know it sounds scary and awful but she's going to be so much happier.  She's going to sleep better, hear and speak better and walk better too. I already think she's perfect so now I'm getting an UPGRADED kid.  Zoey 2.0  WOOT.

I made to it to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Contest.  (They take 5000 entries and only take the top 1000 for the second round)

I will be giving away three prizes.

• $25 giftcard to Amazon.  Buy a book, put to towards a Kindle (although the nook is pretty fraking cool) or a popcorn popper.  Whatever, it's your money.

• A pre order of Where She Went, the sequel to If I Stay.

• A FULL manuscript critique, maybe you want another pair of eyes to look at your novel.  I've got two eyes. 

Contest ENDS on 3-18 at noon EST.  Winners will be posted on Monday.

CONTEST DAY

Thank you to EVERYONE who entered.  The winner will be announced on Monday.   You can only vote once but tell your friends about the contest.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com




Don't forget to scroll through and see ALL the submissions before voting! 

Thanks everyone and good luck. 

Here's my entry but I'm not in the contest:  "My g-string was so far up my ass it felt like an organ." 
 

First Line- how to start.

So after skimming this wacky thing called the internet I've learned a few things about first lines.

1) Don't be boring- I guess this means a really long sentence that doesn't say much expect describing Tupperware or trees or dirt or something.

2) Make your writing accessible-- I shouldn't have to look up five out of the twelve words in the sentence. If you're a smarty pants that's fine but ween me into it.

3) Action-- keep it interesting, put the reader in the center of the action.

4) No extra words--- don't use two words when one will do.  Cut all your useless empty words, like, pretty, that, just, --- by cutting those words your book is already a lot stronger.

5) Pick only the best word- you want to sucker punch your reader not gently nuzzle them.


So those are my tips for how to write a stellar first line.  Time to show off.
You can either e-mail me your first line or leave it in the comments below.  I will set up a cool looking contest page, and you can vote on the one you like the best- the winner gets an i-tunes gift card.  WOOT.

Fricking Awesome First Lines.
RULES:

• You will need to e-mail or post your first line in the comments on Thursday's post. 
• You need to be a follower of the blog. 
• Vote for your favorite on Friday.
• Winner will get a $10 gift card and a 10 page critique from me.

My e-mail is fussymonkey2 at gmail dot com in the subject line say "first line"

All entries must be posted by 11:59 pm Thursday.

The Friday blog will go up sometime on Friday.
Voting ends Sunday 11:59 pm.
You need to be a follower to post a first line but you don't need to a follower to vote-- so tell your friends.

ecard -when it's not ok

I am personally a huge fan of ecards, they're free, they're quick and it looks like you care about someone when really you totally forgot about their, birthday, illness, wedding or birth of their child. 

Yep, I've sent ecards for all those reason.

However, it's not ok to send a twenty minute ecard.  Nope.

It's not ok to send a Jacquie Lawson ecard as an invitation for your 4 year olds birthday party. 

Nope.

A Jacquie Lawson ecard is long, interactive and requires me to sit at my computer and click the damn fairy fifteen times just to find out the time and location of the birthday party.   

NOT COOL.

That's just the lastest thing that occured in my craptastic morning.

My daughter peed on the floor.
My dog tore up a diaper
My coffee maker wasn't working and it took 3 minutes to fix it, and when I did, I burnt my fingers.
It's cold out.
I'm still drowning in paper work.
And then I had to deal with a 20 minute E CARD!!!!!

I'm still debating if I should do a contest for my 75 followers. 

Shameless attempt to win contest take 2

More contests are happening!


Amie is having a pretty awesome contest with lots of books and prizes.

http://amie-borst.com/

Her blog is not only beautiful but very insightful.

If you want to enter go do so, and if you're entering because I'm suggesting it, then please give me a little credit.

One of my favorite blogs is having a contest too.

http://katharineowens.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-i-love-contest.html


Her blog is great and she's an active commenter.  

All you have to do to enter is to tell her about your favorite book. 

Please go check her out!

Fun Friday

65 Followers!  That's crazy talk.  65 people clicked on the follow button and now their picture shows up on my little blog.

This week in the real world, I've battled post nasal drip that was so bad it made me wish for an early death.  My parents drove up from South Carolina and are up for a visit.  And I became shamefully addicted to Plants verses Zombies.  I have gotten zero writing done, zero planning done, not a whole lot of reading done, either.

Next week I go back to work.  The school year will start and I will be swamped with TONS of work.

So I will be going down to a three day a week schedule for blogging.   But hopefully this means the blogs will be AWESOME!!!

There's also a contest I will be running in the month of September.  The Best comment of the week will win a Mix CD from me.  YAY.  All you have to do is comment, easy stuff.  Oh and if you run a similar contest on your blog I'll send you a CD too.   SUPER EASY, SUPER FUN.

In other fun stuff, hopefully I'll be seeing this movie this weekend:




And last bit of fun -- for the win!  Happy Friday Everyone!

Shameless attempt to win contest

Because winning Blue Lipstick Samurai''s super awesome prize pack wasn't enough for me.  No I will SHAMELESS enter all contests I see.

No, that's not true.

I did enter tiara day, but um, it was tiaras and since having a daughter her toys became useful for once. 

I follow a lot of blogs, but there's a handful of blogs I try to comment on every time they're up.  Why? Because I have a lot in common with the people writing the blogs.

Writers- Check
Working- Check
Moms- Check

Super Mom Writes is an AWESOME blog and she FINALLY hit 50 followers, it was a long time coming and LONG over due.  Her blog is pretty fraking awesome.   On Tuesdays she give tips of making mixed drinks.  She keeps to a great blogging schedule.

Please  Go check her out.  Go enter her contest and tell her which Hogworth's house you belong to.

Next is Lynda Kang and her amazing blog The Word is My Osyter.  On Mondays she does this thing call medical Mondays where she answers medical questions you have about your characters.  Say your character gets shot and you want to sound like you know what your talking about, but you don't want to ask your doctor about it, because you know, that's awkward... Poof problem solved.
Her blog has 300 followers, you know why?  BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME.  It's short, cute and insightful.  And if you aren't following it then go off and check it out.

A HUGE thank you Blue Lipstick Samurai- I won her 65 follower contest and this is what I won!

 THANK YOU! I had to pry the candy out of my daughter's hand.

And the WINNERS

Thank you SO much to everyone who joined the blog in the last week.  I hope you all stick around and enjoy it.

The winners of the mystery boxes are:

Blue lipstick Samurai

Casey 

Rose Cooper

BTW all three of these ladies are running their own separate contests on their blogs.

Go check them out. 

(I hope that counts as entering off of them)

 

Yay you guys! 

 Please e-mail me with your information so I can mail it out to you.   

My e-mail is fussymonkey2 at gmail dot com 

 

Contest News:

First off MY CONTEST!  

I will be extending my contest until MONDAY August 2.

Why? Because I still need to buy the stuff for the boxes and the amazon gift cards haven't arrived at my house yet.  LAME. So I still need to order some stuff.   I don't want the prize winners to wait for a long time to get their boxes.  But needless to say,  there's going to be some very cool stuff in there.

PLUS a crit of your first three chapters.  Lots of awesome.  Promise.

AND instead of points per comment you've posted on MY  blog-- because yes, that is annoying.  You can get points PER TWEET.  So if you really want a mystery box, tweet the crap out of it.   Or SHAMELESS promote it on your blog.  (every time you mention it I'll give you another two points)
But you MUST include the link.

• You get 2 points if your are a current follower
• You get 1 point if you are a new follower (please say who referred you)
• You get 1 point following me on Twitter. (I''ll follow you too!)   My Twitter Button has been FIXED!
• You get 3 points for referring someone to the blog.
• You get 1 point for posting this contest on your blog (you get 1 point for EVERY Mention too)
• You get 1 point for tweeting about the contest. (you get 1 Point for every tweet.)
• You get 1 point for adding it up and doing the right math too. 

If you already posted your score, that's cool, you can go back and add more points to it.  

Please post your score on the MAIN contest page.

Also there is a BUTT Load of AWESOME contests happening RIGHT NOW!  Why Twitter isn't flooded and crashing with blog contest I don't know.

Other Blogs

1) Rose Cooper - a new follower to this blog, has just about the most amazing layout design for her blog and is doing an art give away.  Now what you might not know about me is I'm a comic book geek.  Her art reminds me a lot of Jhonen Vasquez.  Very cool.  
So go check out her super awesome give away. 

http://rosecooperwriter.blogspot.com/2010/07/art-giveaway.html

2) Larissa World just hit 100 followers Yay Her!  One day I'll be there too.  There's a bunch of ARC up for grabs.  yay.  BTW in case anyone is a HUGE dork like me and DOESN'T know what an ARC is, it's the Advanced Reader Copy, yep it took me WAY too long to figure that out.

http://lchardesty.blogspot.com/2010/07/woohoo-blogaversary-and-100-followers.html

3) Sarah Enni is doing a summer giveaway!!! But it ends TONIGHT!  Go check it out.  She has one of the nicest blogs I've ever seen.    


http://www.sarahenni.com/?p=1077

4) Blue Lipstick Samurai hit 50 followers too.  YAY her.  She also racked them up MUCH faster than I did.  Not that I'm jealous or anything.  She also has a pretty cool blog and it's one of my faves.   Signed copies of good stuff and CANDY! 


http://www.bluelipsticksamurai.com/2010/07/contest-time.html



Other shameless promotion, my very good friend Meg has a blog.  Instead of posting her tales of writing, she posts her writing.  She's writing a book a Claire, God's klutzy prophet who doesn't like her job because let's face it, being a prophet is a HUGE pain in the ass.   
For every 10 followers she gets, Meg will donate money to cancer research.  Seriously 1 click will make a HUGE difference.  Please go check that out!

http://readthisbookaccordingtoclaire.blogspot.com/

Road Trip Wednesday- Best book of July

This week's question is, what was the best book you've read in the month of July.


Oh that's the easiest question EVER.

 I LOVED LOVED LOVED LOVED LOVED this book.  I wrote a review on it here.  

Long review short I gave it 11 out of 10--- for the record I gave The HUNGER GAMES a 7.  So yeah.
It's about a girl who has a reputation for kissing boys and gives up kissing boys as a science experiment.  Then she meets Hank, she thinks he's cool and mysterious like an artist but really he has aspbergurs. 

I loved this book SO much Friday I'm posting an interview with the author. 

I loved this book so much, one of the MYSTERY boxes will be containing it!

What's a MYSTERY BOX?  Well, it's a cool prize you could WIN if you enter my contest in celebration for my 50 followers.  (55 now!) 
Go enter!  

50 Followers Celebration!!

50 followers celebrations!  Woot! 

Time for a contest

Prizes to be won

Top three people will receiving MYSTERY BOXES but it will contain at least ONE of the following books, Half Life of Planets, Will Grayson Will Grayson and The Graveyard Book.  My top three favorite books of 2010. Then you will also receive a bunch of other SURPRISE books.  Ooohhhh aaahhhhh.  Maybe a writing journal and maybe a gift card to Starbucks.   Not every box will contain all the prizes.  But still pretty cool, right?

Plus a critique of the first 3 chapters of whatever your working on.  Please note I will obviously NOT be checking for spelling or grammar, because if you've been reading this blog, you'll see I suck at both.
 
How do I win such kick ass stuff?

Point system 
But you MUST include the link.

• You get 2 points if your are a current follower
• You get 1 point if you are a new follower (please say who referred you)
• You get 1 point following me on Twitter. (I''ll follow you too!)   My Twitter Button has been FIXED!
• You get 3 points for referring someone to the blog.
• You get 1 point for posting this contest on your blog (you get 1 point for EVERY Mention too)
• You get 1 point for tweeting about the contest. (you get 1 Point for every tweet.)
• You get 1 point for adding it up and doing the right math too. 

If you already posted your score, that's cool, you can go back and add more points to it.
Leave your score in the comment section below.  You can post your score more than once but only your top score will be accepted.

CONTEST ENDS Monday August 2 @ 5 PM EST. 

Two Posts in one day- Good New / Horrible news

Good news

I won a contest back in May from Kathleen Ortiz. You can find the link here.

Anyway today my package came. YAY!!!!





How awesome! Seriously. I've been wanting to read Gone for a while, but I haven't gotten around to it and it's really fraking expensive. I read Wicked Lovely A few years ago and it's a solid read. I still think about it now and then.

But I'm most excited for Vordak--- its a super villain guide to over taking the world, but it's written like the wimpy kid books.

YAY


Also two pretty amazing videos are on youtube right now that I wanted to point out:

Hank Green of the vlog brothers does his BEST video ever.




Charlie from Charlie is so cool like, has a new musical project. Charlie is one of many reasons why I like England so much.



Bad news:

Its that time of year. UOMAMWNSATS.

What is UOMAMWNSATS you ask?

Ugly Overweight Middle Aged Men Wearing No Shirts and Tight Shorts time in my neighborhood. Yes, enter June and all the shirts come off. No man wears a shirt. Men with better boobs than me are walking their dogs, squeezing themselves into the tiniest shorts known to science.

It's not just one guy who does this, but like 70% of the overweight middle aged men in my neighborhood. I don't really mind the Russian guy who does it because a) he is in shape and b) he's from Russia there's a big climate change for him. But no one else has an excuse.

I will not include any picture of that, its bad enough I have to see it, why force it on other people.


That's all for now, good night all.

Happy friday

Contest info--
Do you like free food? I like free food, especially if it's the sugar based kind.

YA Highway is a year old and I've been following them for a few months. They've been running all sorts of cool contests this week, which I've failed in my part to promote.

http://www.yahighway.com/2010/05/yah-anniversary-giveaway-day-3-fun.html

Today is food, the sugar buzz is vital to any writer. Writing can get a little boring at times, but then there are other times when the plot bunnies exploded and you're hyper on caffeine and sugar when a while awesome story comes out.

Thanks YA Highway for being made out of awesome.


In other news my school was shut down early because we had no power. Not sure why, we didn't have power and to be honest, I don't care. I get sent home early on a three day weekend. NICE



I'm off to write- Penny and Hank call to me, well they don't really call as much as they are poking me gently saying, "Don't waste this opportunity of a quiet house and borrowed time, you've got 153 pages to write. Get going."

Oh on other news! I won a contest--

http://kortizzle.blogspot.com/2010/05/contest-roundup.html The second place winner, that's me. I'm looking forward to my grab bag of goodies.

Have a nice three day weekend everyone.

The weakest link, on the weakest day.

Contest pimping and pitching.

First off, how do you like the new format? Cid thanks for your help and Alicia sorry for snipering it.

I'm going to start the doing a thing where in the middle of the week I'm going to post links to blogs I found to be useful, because as Alicia pointed out, Friday everyone's doing it, (because Friday is the most logical day.)


Contest Pimping

http://leaguewriters.blogspot.com/2010/05/introducing-league-of-extraordinary.html

League of extraordinary writers is a blog for people who love the most scary screwed up future the writers can think of. It's called a dystopia. Lots of pretty amazing YA books (young adults for those who are not in the know) feature a dystopian society, the most famous being The Giver.

The blog just started and they're having a contest, FREE STUFF. Go check it out.


Pitching
In exactly 10 days I will be going to a writers conference. My last writers conference was possible the worst day of my life, more about this to come at a later date.

Insanely I signed up for a three minute pitch session. *shakes my head in shame because clearly I didn't learn from last time*

So I am going to include some links on how to pitch a book to an agent, because I need a refresher.

As far as I can tell, pitching a book is like a verbal query letter, but you can see the agent's face as their eyes glaze over in boredom or shine with excitement.

Rachelle Gardner talk here about why it's so important. Basically it comes doing to being able to read body language.
After 9 years of being a teacher, you would think I'd be an expert at it... NOPE, if I have an idea I'm going to steamroll through you until I've said it, no matter how uncomfortable you are during the process.

She then goes on to say what to do during a pitch, like STEP by STEP DIRECTIONS. Pretty much the most useful and awesome thing ever. Her final advice was that agents are people too. Yes they are people but they are people with POWER, they can validate five years worth of work or they can make you cry. <-- that's my addition not hers. I should say EVERY agent I've ever encountered has been very kind and extremely helpful. Still they're kinda scary.

Over at QueryTracker.net Elana Johnson talked to Laura Rennert who gave 5 steps to a great pitch. Serious five steps and a five minute timer will give a perfect pitch. Guess what I'll be doing over the long weekend?

Just for some good measure some conference to do and NEVER EVER do's.

Agent and blogger superstar Nathan Bradford talks about the one sentence pitch and the one paragraph, and two paragraph pitch.
He's so dreamy.

Mary Kole talks about Pitchcraft and she did it MONTHS ago because she's a trendsetter. She will also be at the conference I'm attending and I pray to God I don't puke on her shoes. Maybe I should bring an extra pair of shoes for her, just in case.

Kathleen Teman talks about the one sentence pitch here and since she's running the NJ SCBWI conference I'm going to, it's some solid advice.

Ok there's you go TONS of links.

Any thoughts on what to do next week?

Penny and Hank- update

I went dark for a week because I really wanted to win a contest and in my insane logic the longer I had the posting up the better chance I would have to win. News on the contest will come soon.

I've been thinking a lot about this blog, how I can gain more followers, how I can reward my followers, what sort of content I should fill the blog up with.

So I will ask you, all of those who take the time to read this blog, and ask, what sort of stuff do you want to see?

I was thinking about doing a round up all links to all the cool blogs I read in a week on Fridays.
Maybe pictures of things I like one day of the week.

Anyway Penny and Hank. I have less then 1 month to finish the book. I hit 22K words this weekend. Page 89. I'm 2/3s of the way to my goal.

I've also hit the point in my book where I've gotten my characters to the main setting, now they need to do something. How many pages do you think I can commit to them watching TV? At least 150, right?

I have the book mentally outlined, although the outline changes all the time.

How about you my writer friends? Do you plan out your story ahead of time with room to change or do sit at the computer and let the words come? Do you control your characters or do they control you?

Super Cool Contest

In case no one knew, I have the bestest husband in the whole wide world. For a anniversary gift he got into a bidding war with a girl for a charity auction. The prize was a FULL manuscript critique. He was up until 1 am until the auction closed. He ended up losing the auction but the agent offered him the prize anyway.

The agent's name is Kathleen Ortiz and she as a pretty awesome blog. http://kortizzle.blogspot.com/

Right now she's running a contest where she's offering a ton of prizes.

"Three random YA or MG books from my stash, though most are from July 2009 - August 2010 (yes, some ARCs are involved). Plus an additional prize that will consist of the following: bookstore gift card, note for a query critique, note for a synopsis critique, note for a first chapter critique or an extra book."

Ack seriously! That much! Books-- I love books, a gift card to a book store, a note for a query critique, note for a synopsis critique, note for a first chapter critique or an extra book.

Personally I'm all about the books and the query critique. Kathleen will be reading my book No System At All, but my query needs a lot of work.

I think this woman is a total rock star.

You should follow her on twitter too, her picture is this super cute dinosaur.

You should also follow her blog.

There's a little button right here on the top of her page where you can follow.

If you start to follow the blog, if you could give me credit in the comments, that would be pretty awesome.


I also updated my facebook status talking about this contest as well.
But clearly it's nearly impossible to see.

Yay for cool contests and even cooler people spreading their passion for literacy.

Oh and she has a new contest, check it out here

This woman is AMAZING!

Shameless pimping

Yep, I'm going to pimp out my blog for a contest....

http://dear-editor.com/ is a cool site (Thank you Alicia for pointing it out to me) that lets you ask an editor whatever writer question you have.

It's been around for a month and it's going to give away randomly a free MS critique.

If you like writing, or shameless contests, please go check them out!