Suburban (in)Sanity

Hey - check out my new page: Available Stories

At the moment my list of Available Stories is a number even a guy who lost nine fingers in a freak sandpaper accident could show you, but this list shall grow in 2011, by gummity.

But in the meantime, check out my page where I will hawk my wares, guilt you into buying my stories, encourage you to read my stuff through bargain-priced ebooks. First up - the ever-popular teens huffing in space story, Apples on the Moon, a Young Adult Science Fiction Short Story, which, at 5,000 words is just the right length for reading on a smartphone. Enjoy! Buy! Enjoy!

Where doth wisdom lie?

Prompt is about wisdom today, which is funny for many reasons. Short people are extremely good sources of wisdom, they're always discovering some important life lesson like pushing up your sleeves when doing the dishes helps keep your shirt dry (and then they like to reflect on this lesson and seem so satisfied with themselves when they can put it into words and describe how they'll do things differently NEXT time, even while the water drips all the way down the front of the cabinets into a puddle on the floor that you slip in next time you walk by.)

But the specific prompt says to write about the wisest decision I've made this year, which is difficult because I'm a mom. I make wise decisions EVERY day. And about eighty unwise ones (reference aforementioned unsupervised dishwashing, for ex.)

As I've been talking about in other recent posts, I have felt so much more comfortable in my own skin here in my late 30s, so much more me, confidence that had sometimes eluded me in the past seems easier to come by. Is that wisdom? Perhaps? Or just age, hard to tell.

I think the *smartest* decision I made this year was to finally commit to writing as a potential career opportunity for me, and attend a writing workshop (which I highly recommend to any serious writers - Dean Wesley Smith's writing workshops are excellent) focused on marketing my 2007 Nanowrimo novel. Whether it was a wise decision, well, I suppose it will be but needs some time to be borne out before we see how wise it was. Just today I mailed three more novel packages to editors, so I now have 6 novel packages in the mail. I have been rejected three times, but the rejections clearly indicate they have read my work, and one even encouraged me to send my next project her way, so I'm satisfied. I keep them in a file so that when I go all JK Rowling one day I can pull these letters out and laugh.

I have to tie this back to the age thing, too, though. Which is interesting now that I think of it. I'm not one of those people who always knew I wanted to be a writer. A shockingly large number of writers are like this, but not me. I don't remember writing much of anything as a child. I kept journals on and off through most of my teen years (and carbon copies of letters I wrote to friends back home when we lived overseas - can you even imagine? But the only computer in the house was shared and there was NO WAY I was going to let my mom see that I had a crush on so-and-so or whatever. But even then I had a compulsion around keeping what I wrote, so I started keeping carbon copies. Literal carbon copies, using carbon paper and everything.)

Here I am now, though, four years into writing as a hobby/passion/something I really love to do. (It was my 2007 New Year's Resolution if you were curious.) And I've got a novel in the mail, a short story up on amazon (looking for a fun, light read? Buy it! You can get it from Barnes and Noble too, and Smashwords which feeds into all the other ebook stores including Apple's.) I've also got three other novels written (some worse than others) and a mess of short stories (some of which are in the mail, some of which I think I will just self-publish to create a few collections.)

Before my mid-30s I'm not sure I could have made a conscious choice to pursue a hobby and have such traction (I won't call it success yet, though from many indicators - sheer work output alone - I have met with some success...I'm waiting for a real publishing contract to call myself a successful writer.) That seems wise to me, though to be honest it was also a coping strategy since I was the non-working at-home parent at the time and feeling just a tinge toward insane. However, realizing I needed a solid hobby/life direction/new way of thinking about the world and actively pursuing it - that's wise, too, I think.

Back to the workshop, by deciding to go, committing to go, I forced myself to finish editing the novel I wrote in 2007 (that I had been halfheartedly editing for ages), I forced myself to actually spend money on my hobby, which is a form of validation in and of itself though heaven hopes it pays back at some point in the very near future, I put my introverted self into a setting with a bunch of people I'd never met before (turns out that small-group thing isn't terribly intimidating to me anymore, certainly not when you consider that most writers are geeky introverts, too, it's like being at a programming class but they talk more.) I had a great time, I learned EXACTLY what I set out to learn (for instance, I learned about what belongs in a query letter and blogged about it) and I made new connections with a bunch more writers, some of whom are farther along the path than me and happy to share their knowledge.

Now I just need to get this first novel sold. And then the next one. And the next one.

How about you? What decision of yours from the last year was the wisest? Or the unwisest, that might be funnier... 

Why I read Young Adult/Middle-Grade (aka "Children's Lit")

This is a rant. You've been warned.

I read almost exclusively in the YA/Middle Grade age range. Know why? Because I've found in mainstream/aka "adult" fiction the following happens:

1. We are sloooooowly introduced to either (mainstream) a small cast of characters or (genre, epic fantasy in particular) an extremely large cast of characters. In the case of the small cast, each character will be imbued with some sort of character flaw that repulses me. In the case of the large cast, none will be obviously "the main character."

(this girl is too happy, she must be reading a Middle-Grade/YA book...)

2. In genre, a ponderous prologue will introduce me to events that make no sense whatsoever even after I've read 6 chapters, which is about 283 pages into the novel with another six hundred left to read.

3. In mainstream, the repulsive characters will moan about their life station, while bad things happen to them and/or their repulsive natures cause bad things to happen to them.

4. four hundred more pages will transpire, during which a total of three action sequences are shown, and possibly as many as a dozen new characters are introduced. Nothing else happens.

5. A month will pass. I will find that I procrastinate reading "my book" for enjoyment because there's just no joy left in life.

6. Around page 800 I'll just start skimming (I don't skim fiction, it offends my fiction sensibilities.)

7. Within fifty pages of the end of the book, every single character that didn't repulse me will end up dead in some manner or another, usually gory.

8. I will finish the book and find myself slumped into a deep depression that lasts weeks and weeks...

until...

I pick up a YA or Middle-Grade book, finish it in 3-6 days, and all is right with the world. The sun comes out, the girl gets the guy, the bad guys are vanquished, at least for this book, and there are reasons for living yet again.

Reading with Teen Reads Week

Did you know it was the Young Adult Library Services Association's Teen Reads Week? I didn't, but now I do thanks to a great post by sassymonkey on BlogHer.

I posted a lot of this in the comments thread on her post, but then I realized it was worth it's own place on my blog, too.

It's true. I read children's literature. Lots and lots and lots of it. It's far and above my preferred content to read. Now, I'm a writer, an aspiring writer of children's literature, so part of my interest is professional, but let's be honest. Writers write what they love, and I love Young Adult and Middle-Grade fiction.

I've never felt a need to apologize for it, I think I have managed to find circles of friendships where others are reading the same kinds of things I'm reading. It is partly due to the fact that my social circles largely revolve around my children's school and their activities, and are based on the ages of my children, but it's been almost like a secret club membership, too. When I get talking kids books with other enthusiasts, the non-kids-book-readers are left out (for once! usually it's the other way around, where my eyes glaze over while someone talks about Water for Elephants or Lovely Bones or some other depressing romp through the roses.) And we kids-book lovers can go on and on and on.

Turns out there's a lot to read and enjoy in children's fiction! And many different paths to take. I personally take the speculative fiction path, which because of the lack of science fiction published in YA and MG, means mostly fantasy. Nothing wrong with that, but one of many reasons I write YA sci-fi is because there just isn't anything out there to read in YA sci-fi, and I want to read it (I've always wanted to read it, ever since finding my first Heinlein book on the shelf of my 8th grade school library.)

But I have other reasons for reading YA/MG. Here are a few of them:

1) It's less of a commitment to read YA/MG. I read the excellent fantasy series The Assassin's Apprentice early this year and it took me the ENTIRE month of January, plus some, to read 3 books. I prefer to be onto a new topic/book/concept at least once a week, preferably every 5-6 days.

2) I prefer the general tenor and tone of YA/MG. While dark themes are covered (Hunger Games in particular gets very psychological and dark) they generally (though I thought HG was the exception) end in a positive/upbeat way. The authors don't seem to feel the need to fill the stories with "it sucked, then he died" over and over and over, though there are some authors who do this who I tend to avoid because of it (or ones who put the main character in peril time and again with no break. Too tiring to read!)

3) There is some FANTASTIC fiction going on in YA and MG. Truly wonderful stories, wonderfully told, interesting ideas. I read science fiction and fantasy almost exclusively and the YA/MG writers understand how to create an abnormal situation yet make it completely intelligible to the reader. Grown-up speculative fiction writers sometimes forget this slight detail!

My favorites, in no particular order:

The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, Anything by Shannon Hale, anything by Scott Westerfeld (including his high-YA stuff about late teens/early twenties kids like So Yesterday and Peeps), Diana Wynn Jones (oldie but a goodie), Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Of course Harry Potter, Twilight, and Percy Jackson series, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede, Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage, The Magic Thief books by Sarah Prineas, Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, Blue Sword and Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (those two are my all-time favorite YA books) and the Princess Bride (the novel is excellent.) .

One way we get the time to read more is by listening to them on audio books. We listen in the car (even short trips - because 5 minutes a day times about 3-6 trips/day equals plenty of reading time. It's also good practice for the kids to be able to pick back up where we left off a day or two before, remembering the plot and characters.) We listen while I cook dinner, or while doing other hands-intensive but mindless chores in the house like cleaning counters or organizing closets.

Shannon Hale's books are generally done on audio by Full Cast Audio, which uses...you know, full casts to do their audio books. Each character is played by a different voice actor (or a good actor using different voices/accents.) Way cool. The Golden Compass audiobook was done by a cast as well and I really liked that. The Prydain Chronicles narrator is EXCELLENT, as is Jim Dale who reads Harry Potter (as well as the Peter and the Starcatchers series, which didn't catch my fancy as much.)

I can't say enough about great children's fiction. Some of my writer friends believe that children's fiction is the only growing category, since a good book or series like HP, Twilight, and Hunger Games will cross over into the adult market (but you rarely see an adult book cross over into children's fiction, The Book Thief excepted, though it's such a borderline book since it features an eleven year old protagonist, but being narrated by death during World War II, it's really an adult work that is appropriate for more mature YA readers.)

Still not convinced? Okay, then I dare you. Try The Blue Sword, or Ender's Game, or The Book of Three (first in Prydain.) Try Dealing with Dragons (First in Enchanted Forest Chronicles) and try not to laugh at the way Dragons keep princesses in that fitional world. Immerse yourself into an ancient setting with Wolf Brother, or try to keep a straight face while reading The Princess Bride. See if you can finish The Princess Academy (Shannon Hale) without your heart racing along with Miri, the main character. I dare you to not get sucked into the Golden Compass. Try not to be surprised at the turns of events in Westerfeld's Uglies. I dare you not to cry at The Book Thief's climax. And honestly, I'm just picking out speculative fiction, there's a ton out there that's more mainstream like Chasing Vermeer and Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie (or anything by Sonnenblick,) and mysteries to solve in 39 Clues, honestly at this point you've got to stop me because I could go all night.

So what about you? Did I convince you? What of your favorites did I neglect to mention?

 

Sidenote: Photo credit: iStockphoto via MS Office's clip art online gallery. I have no idea if I should be crediting/referencing that when I use their images, since I own the licenses to the software through which I gain access to the website. Would appreciate any insights...

Writing a Query Letter to Pitch a Novel

I recently attended a novel marketing workshop in Oregon conducted by Dean Wesley Smith, with help from Kristine Kathryn Rusch. While I had some idea about what was needed to sell a novel, honestly I was clueless.

If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of Kris and Dean's workshops - do it. There is no substitute for an experienced professional writer sharing their thoughts, ideas, tricks, and tips with you. That's not even counting the benefit you get from networking with a number of other writers at a similar career level.

You don't have to agree with everything Dean says (though it is generally simpler, since he, like many seasoned professionals, has a low tolerance for argument about things he's seen for himself over the years) but you can gain a ton of insights about the publishing industry today (literally today, as he's constantly tinkering with his workshop content to suit today's specific publishing environment.) And you can identify what in your novel marketing package is working, what needs to be tweaked, and how best to present yourself to a publisher. By the end of the workshop, you will have your novel in the mail to at least two editors.

If you're looking for input on how to land an agent, you may wish to attend a different workshop. This was focused on how to get your novel package dressed up in business dress and in front of actual New York editors, ones who are in the position to buy your book.

A note on the "business dress" of your novel package. Kris, Dean's wife and a highly accomplished writer, says that getting your novel package into the right manuscript format with the right information in it in the right order is like getting dressed up for a job interview. Your packet *is* an interview. You wouldn't show up at a job interview in your pajamas, so your novel package should conform to standard practices so that it rises above the novel packages submitted on crayon or in wacky fonts. You don't want to be the guy in the waiting room in the clown suit, right?

Query Letters

So query letters. There's a general flow to them. Like any business letter, at the top is your name/address/contact information block. Be sure to include a phone number AND an email address. Dean recommends against using the free email accounts like hotmail or gmail, saying they are notoriously difficult to get through to New York Publishers. That's fodder for a whole 'nother post, though, so for now just make sure you have a valid email address up top that you anticipate having active for a minimum of the next 6 months (since your package may not get read immediately.)

Next comes the editor's name, company name, and mailing address. While some publishers accept email submissions, snail mail is still the standard.

BIG IMPORTANT POINT: Make sure that when you list the editor's name up top, you also match your salutation to the editor's NAME AND GENDER. I got the gender right, but accidentally included the salutation to the *previous* editor on one letter. I have to assume that query packet is going into the trash, as that's what I would do if I received a resume/cover letter addressed to the wrong person in the business world.

Let's get into the meat of the query letter. Important point: One page for the letter. One page MAX. And leave enough whitespace so that you can breathe. You can use either indented paragraphs (print standard) or the white line between each new paragraph (the web standard.) Personally I prefer the white line for readability so I include a blank line between each paragraph, that also adds to the overall impression of whitespace. Remember, standard 1 inch margins around, no header/footer, single spaced. You can use a different/smaller font for the letter, but remember it should still be normal-looking and READABLE. You're presenting yourself as a professional, someone an editor will give money to. Don't monkey around with fonts.

What should you talk about in the letter? The thing I think many writers are shy about is talking about THEMSELVES. But this is a little counter-intuitive. When you're selling your novel, you're not just selling these words you wrote on a page, you're selling yourself as a writer of stories, as someone who has things to say, someone to have a relationship with. Ideally your editor will be interested in more than just the one novel you're offering them in this query letter.  (However, in general it's not such a good idea to try to pitch multiple-volume novels, particularly if you're a first-time novelist. You can have those other novels/outlines in the wings, but leave them in your back pocket for now.)

Depending on the kind of case you make for yourself and why YOU wrote this book, why YOU'RE the best person to tell this particular story, you might consider leading with a paragraph about yourself. If you've had any contact with this editor before, definitely mention that early as well ("You considered my novel XYZ and suggested I send you other projects...." or "We met at ComicCon at XYZ restaurant with ABC writer.")

After this (or first if you don't have a specific personal opening) - you should talk about your book. This paragraph (just one!) is third-person past-tense, announcer voice. Imagine the voice-over teaser for the next episode of a hot TV show. "When Carrie uncovers a plot to overthrow her pre-school through her teddy bear, she's more than a little surprised, particularly since she didn't realize she could read. But this is the way of it for a pre-school super-heroine, and is just the beginning of Carrie's adventures. Will she be able to save the day, her school, her teddy, and still get home by naptime?"

Think about what your book is ABOUT, not what happens in it. What role does your main character play in the book? One way of thinking about this paragraph is to think about your main Character, in a Setting, with a Problem.

Have I mentioned lately how Dean helped me crystallize this thinking? I knew these things before, but it wasn't until the novel workshop that I really understood them and feel like I can practice them outside the boundaries of this one novel.

If you haven't already promoted yourself in your letter, now is your chance. Who are you? Why are you special? Why are you the best person on earth to tell this particular story? If you have any publication credits, mention them here. Even blogging can be a useful credit if you have a niche blog specialty or garner a lot of readers. But keep it brief. A few lines. What's your personal hook? The thing that makes you interesting? One workshop participant stated he had nothing interesting to say about himself, until he mentioned that he has held sixty-six jobs in his life. That's interesting! Someone like that has stories to tell. I'm intrigued. Be intriguing!

Next up, mention your novel's title, length (there are some exceptions to mentioning length but it usually needs to be up front), and the fact that it's completed. Important! Genre can be mentioned, but in edge cases where your novel might be a suspense novel or a mystery or a thriller, there's no need to mention it. Your short blurb and synopsis (coming later) should tell the editor what they need in order to understand how your book would fit with their line. It could be that they're over-bought on mystery right now, but if they market your book as suspense it would fit well. Don't pigeonhole yourself unnecessarily.  [1]

Lastly, tell the editor what you've included (a sample of your book - typically somewhere in the 15-30 page range, a few chapters, enough to get the flavor of your writing, and a synopsis. Full plot synopsis where you tell the major events of the book including the ending!)

Don't forget to thank the editor for their time/consideration! Depending on the flow, you can also mention that you'd be happy to send the full novel for their consideration (this should go without saying, but it's an important step so the editor understands it is complete.)

Leave a few blank spaces. Then SIGN your letter - in blue ink if possible so it's clear you actually took the time/trouble to print your letter and sign it. And then get it in the mail. Dean recommends priority mail flat rate envelopes. They self-seal (do NOT add tape!) and are becoming the standard way people in the publishing industry interact. It's a little under $5 to mail a packet, which is a reasonable investment. You're a professional, after all. Right?

More in this series soon. But remember - if you have the chance to attend a Kris/Dean workshop - go!

[1] Note: In my case, I explicitly tell both the age-range and genre of my novel, because the age range is dictated by the age of my character. She is 14, that makes the book a YA book even though it's written with tame themes, her age alone categorizes it as YA. I further specified that it's YA Science Fiction, because there is very little in the market in this space, so I'm drawing attention to it because I hope to find that editor who is just DYING to find some good YA Sci-Fi since there is very little of it. I may be pigeonholing myself a bit, but there's really no other way to dress up this particular pig, seeing as how it's set on a space station and features a high schooler as the main character.

I know you rely upon me to bring you news of technology

Because of that heady responsibility, I scan and scan the technology headlines to understand what's coming out, what's new, what you should know about.

So without further ado, I bring you the latest technological innovation. It's coming to you through the global world wide web, but have no fear, the information is subtitled.

  

 

Edited: hmm...I have no idea how to actually integrate a you tube video, perhaps it's not allowed. In that case, check out the link to the you tube video I tried to embed above about this fabulous technology that it's possible you've heard about before.

Science Fiction geeks as technology prognosticators

Search engines, virtual worlds, the Internet — ever get the feeling you're living in a science fiction fantasy? Well indeed you are. For more than a century, inventors have been driven to create what sci-fi writers have boldly imagined before.

via www.npr.org

This is one of many reasons why I write science fiction. The only difference is that in my case, nobody was writing what I wanted to read back when I was discovering science fiction (stories about what it was like to LIVE there, BE there, amidst all this technology that changed things, but didn't change things.) So *that's* what I write. Science fiction about being there, living there, wherever, whenever, or however technology-assisted "there" is.

Sometimes...

I just blog/facebook so as to not lose track of something. This is one of those times. There's a website called Tikatok that a friend pointed out to me a while ago. It looks interesting. Premise is your children can create bound books of their ideas and art, using either some established templates or free-form. They have some nifty ideas on their site and I'm hoping to have the kids do something like this over the summer, maybe an "What I did for Summer Vacation" kind of essay. Why yes, I do torture my children with schoolwork-like tasks at home, why do you ask? :D

Book Review - The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

The kids and I really enjoyed the Percy Jackson series, which the (then) 7 year old and I each read independently (in paper form) last summer, and then followed with the audio books that all three of us listened to (sometimes a fourth on weekends...) Rick Riordan has a great ability to take some of the mundane details of being a kid in today's busy world and interleave it with the fantastic--in the Percy series, that meant Greek gods and goddesses running amok in modern USA.

Riordan's newest book, The Red Pyramid, attempts to do for Egyptian mythology what the Percy books did for Greek mythology. And therein lies the biggest rub about this new book. At least for me as a grown-up, Greek mythology was familiar due to an interest and the ever-awesome (still in my possession) D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. It seemed my 7 year old 2nd/3rd grader had at least passing awareness of the likes of Zeus and Poseidon that pre-dated his reading of the Percy books.

Egyptian mythology is a big black hole to me. I've heard of Ra, and know that Isis was somebody important, that's about as far as I have gotten. So some of the fun of the Percy series ("what is he going to have Hermes, the messenger god, wear this time?") is missing because of the lack of familiarity. However, Riordan does a good job of grounding the gods and goddesses, explaining their roles, helping fill in the blanks. But those who are first picking up this book should be warned (particularly for those reluctant readers who prefer reading without effort) that there's a fair amount of new characters/content presented, with funny-sounding names like Set and Sekmet and Bast and Horus. It takes a little while to get the names straight, figure out how to pronounce them, and who does what.

The book follows the story of Carter and his sister Sadie (Carter is about 14, Sadie a few years younger.) They don't really know each other, only spending a day together once or twice a year. Sadie lives with their maternal grandparents in England, Carter travels with his Egyptologist father. Each (naturally) envies the life the other leads. The book is told in switching first-person perspective, alternating between Carter chapters (usually each POV has more than one chapter in a row) and Sadie chapters.

One of my observations as an adult was that I often got confused about child kid was narrating the chapter. The chapters are headed by the name of the narrator, so it was quick to check, but it's worth mentioning that there can be some confusion when reading "wait a minute, she doesn't know how to...oh, it's Carter telling this part!" The author tries to clear this up by giving Sadie some Britishisms and Carter being bad at basketball, but the cues aren't enough, even with the little bit of sibling banter that generally precedes each chapter to tell you who has taken over the narration.The book is fast-paced, there is a lot of action, as is typical for Riordan's middle-grade works. My other concern, though, is that it's really really crazy long. I usually finish mid-grade books in 2-3 days. This one took me about 15, which is unheard of in the Land of Reading Children's Fiction. I am definitely worried about giving this one to my 8 year old who is of late famous for not finishing books.

In spite of the different terminology, long length, and slight confusion on who the narrator is, it's still a good read. There's plenty of interest and intrigue. Many skin-of-the-teeth escapes (a few more than I prefer, but not nearly as many as in a Dan Brown novel.) The characters are endearing. They go to interesting settings, some in England, Egypt, France, and many in the U.S. There is enough description and detail to get an image of where they're located without tolkein-esque diversions. The narrative voice for both Carter and Sadie is funny and sarcastic and very current in the way "kids these days" talk.

There are some deaths (wouldn't be children's fiction without it, right? Sigh) but Riordan creates a world in which even death isn't a barrier to seeing people, so they are handled well and of course he avoids gory descriptions of human's demise. Most of that happens off-camera. There are some close-calls, presumed deaths that turn out to be not-deaths. Nothing that's too shocking, nothing that would be too hard to handle for an average middle-grade reader. There's a lot of weapon use by Carter (Sadie has a different kind of magic, less combat-related.) Sadie does quite a lot of flirting/thinking about a boy, which given that I believe her age for the story is only 12 seemed excessive (I had thought she was 14, but later in the story I got the idea she was only 12...) but it's all talk, and lightly handled.

There are plenty of hooks left for future stories to take off with, but the story does end on a satisfying resolution of major plot conflicts. I'm sure we'll be reading the next installment in a year or so, and I'm sure Riordan will have dreamed up new demons for the kids to battle, new conflicts, new weapons, and new tangles, and we'll gobble it up.

Book Review - Magic Thief: Found by Sarah Prineas

Maybe you've noticed the little Shelfari widget on the side of this blog? I read. Lots. Or try to. I am literally always in the middle of one or two books (usually two, one audio book with the kids, one paper or ebook on my own.)

I write reviews on Shelfari's site of the books I read, and wanted to store some here for some of my more favorite titles, and just so I can find things a bit more easily. This whole "create content on the internet" thing is great, but it leaves me feeling stretched.

At any rate - I was thrilled to discover the latest book in the Magic Thief series, hadn't know one was coming out! The good kind of surprise, since when I found out it was coming out it had already been published, I hate waiting for books. My then-7-year-old and I burned through the first book in this series last summer (we each read it in about a day and a half. We also both LOVED it.) We read the second book not long after (which was excellent, but not quite as good as the first.)

This third book is right on par with the first (I think it's the setting more than anything. Wellmet is a better setting than the travel to and from Desh, where the second book took place.) I highly recommend this author and this series, hope you'll consider reading it. We got so inspired by reading the book that we're going back and listening to the first book on audio! (not loving the voice talent, he's a bit of a projector, but it's fun to "read" the book in another manner.)

Magic Thief: Found by Sarah Prineas, book review by Karen T. Smith

I absolutely adore the Magic Thief books. I love the way this author writes. "quick hands!" and I love the character voice of Conn. He's plucky and realistic about what happens to him. He's not without an inner life of his own, but it's a change from a lot of other middle-grade books, he's not a whiner, never complains about his lot in life, just deals with it as things come along. As a result, I feel that the readers get a really good sense of what this character is like, to the point where we can anticipate his actions before they've happened.

In this book, Conn and Nevery are back in Wellmet even though Conn really shouldn't be there (banished and all.) Conn still doesn't have a locus magicalicus, which is causing some issues. He and Nevery eventually perform a finding spell, which causes some ruckus, and he goes off to find his stone, which takes a good 1/3 to 1/2 of the story. As always, he's hungry and determined, and interesting things happen to him.

This is a great book (start with the first) for somewhat reluctant readers or boys in that 8-12 (or older...I'm a non-boy much older than 12 and I really love these books) age range. The book is a little smaller than typical hardbacks, and the pages use whitespace effectively, with illustrations at chapter headings to make that first page of the chapter go quickly. As before, letters and journal entries are done in a different style of paper with a different font. These help break up chapters and are visually different enough than the rest of the story to stand out.

Reluctant readers might identify well with Conn and his plucky determination. Boys will certainly identify with him, though as mentioned, so will girls. The character is somewhat ageless as in book 1 he doesn't really know how old he is, but you get the feeling that he's about 11 or 12, scruffy and small still, on the wrong end of the growth spurt that will surely come.

Excellent book - you should read this one!