Howdy ... it's MONDAY and it ain't rainin'...

SO... Had a lovely review post on May 27 on a blog called IReadThat2.net, and it cross-posted to the Twilight Saga Facebook page. If you are visiting me from there, HELLO, and welcome to Planet Jenn! It's fun here. You should totally stick around and tell me about yourself.

There are lots of different ways to get your hands on Sleight. For KINDLE, NOOK, in PDF, in PAPERBACK, and SIGNED PAPERBACK! Short of having me come to your house and read it to you, I've done my best to feed your reading stomach.

Check the sidebar for purchase details. If you get stuck, can't find it in paperback, or want more info, leave me a comment or find me on Facebook at Jennifer Sommersby. Come on over and say hi. If you stand on a rooftop and wave wildly and shout my name, face north and westerly. I'll be waiting and listening patiently. And if you hear barking, don't worry. That's just the Fat Beagle, and she's harmless, especially if you have anything left over from your lunch.

On semicolons, worrying about worry, and Random News Crap

Dirty Grammar Bite
It's been a while since I've done one of these. I have two pressing issues wrestling for attention in my grammar brain, but in the interest of keeping this post shorter than prior attempts, we will pick...which one, which one...semicolons! Yay!

Okay. Here's the deal, folks. Stop using semicolons as commas or periods. They have been called "super commas." Take it from the experts, though. The Chicago Manual of Style (section 6.57) says:

The semicolon, stronger than a comma but weaker than a period, can assume either role, though its function is usually closer to that of a period. Its most common use is between two independent clauses [i.e., complete sentences] not joined by a conjunction.

Ex: 
Mildred intends to go to Europe; her plans, however, are still quite vague. [Semicolon is used after an adverb ("however"), between the two clauses.]
We were going to go out for dinner; my dad decided we should order take-out instead.

The two sentences that are joined by the semicolon are closely related.

Another possibility: use in a series. From CMOS 6.60 -- When items in a series involve internal punctuation, they should be separated by semicolons.

Ex: We were traveling to Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington, on our trip.

If you have further questions, I'm just that nerdy that you can email me and I'll see if I can figure it out. Long live Chicago! 

Now. In other news... If you have been following along, or if you know me at all in the "real" world (instead of Middle Earth, which is where I sometimes feel I live), you would know that I am a high-anxiety worrywart. I worry about everything. While I've touched on this before, it is worthy of reiterating as research indicates that worry and type A personalities are more prone to secondary cardiac effects as fallout from this worrying/anxietal behavior. Of course, this gives me something else to worry about. I could have a heart attack from worrying too much. And now I'm worried about having a heart attack. It's a vicious cycle, the head biting its own tail.

My book (Sleight, if I haven't shoved it down your throat enough yet) went to the formatter on March 10. Yeah, I fretted about every comma, every semicolon, and then sent it off. The first proof came back late on the 19th, and once I saw it on the Kindle (very exciting!), I found more stupid things to fix. Not the formatter's fault at all, just ridiculous repetitions I should've caught WAY before now. I'm embarrassed more than anything.

But it's now the 23rd, and I'm wait-wait-waiting for the final to come back. 52 Novels is great (the formatter) -- it's not him I'm kvetching about. It's me. For some reason, I cannot write anything else with this thing sitting out there, waiting to be returned. Once it's home, I can begin the tedious process of uploading to Amazon and Smashwords, as well as other places, so that I can get it out to the reading public (i.e., my mom). These things take time. I've had some gracious folks ask about the book, so I want to be able to say, Yeah, it'll be available on _______. So far, that hasn't been possible. It's the uncertainty, the vaporous game plan, that's starting to eat at me a little. I want to get it out to early readers for some early reviews. I know that Smashwords can take hours for an upload, and that Amazon can be equally as fickle, depending on traffic. The whole indie thing is cool, save the marketing efforts. That might be killing me a little. I spend so much time on Twitter and Facebook and stalking Kindle Boards and reading blogs that I haven't written a single thing in...never mind. You don't want to know.

Which brings up one other thing: I see that a lot of writers do guest posts on other people's blogs. How the hell do you come up with stuff to talk about? I mean, unless someone wants to hear about the intricacies of the comma splice and how to avoid it, or maybe 101 ways to avoid doing domestic-related chores, I don't have a lot to say. I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about (yet). This might change. I feel like I'm missing out, not doing guest posts. Again, what will I post about? I have a hard enough time not boring people to tears on this blog.

As if that weren't enough, there are always earthquakes to worry about. I live on the West Coast. Geologists are saying we're next in the Ring of Fire for the Big One. I really need to go buy a campstove and some beans. Today. Just in case.

Someone once told me that I should write all my worries on a piece of paper, and then torch it in the sink. I tried it, and ended up with second-degree burns on my hand when I almost caught the kitchen curtain on fire. Maybe I should've burned the sucker outside...  Anyway, the worries were still there. I didn't feel less attached to them. I just felt sore and sticky from the burn gel.

Folks are sweet. They tell me to relax, meditate, let go and let _______, take a bath, take a breather, take a walk, take myself out for Me Time, have tea, have chocolate, have a beer, have three beers. None of it works, but thanks for your advice. I'm still going to worry. I'm still going to fill my arteries with worry molecules that will coalesce into something resembling a blockage. And I will worry about how much it's going to hurt when the blockage catches up to me. Man, I hope I'm not driving...over a bridge...with my kids in the car...during a power outage--or an earthquake.

Time for Random News Crap:

~Friday on Twitter is #TGNO, i.e., Twitter Girls' Night Out, to celebrate the completion of Heather Hildenbrand's second novel draft, and...um...oh, yeah, to celebrate Sleight's publication. It better happen soon (the book coming home) or else #TGNO might be preempted. Check Angeline Kace's blog for the details. Party animal...

~I have a kick-ass review of Walter Mosley's latest release The Thrill Is Gone AS WELL AS an interview with the inimitable Hannah Moskowitz over at the Best Damn Creative Writing Blog. DON'T MISS OUT!

~AH1N1 is trending on Twitter because an outbreak has swelled in Merida, Venezuela.
~RIP Elizabeth Taylor. She had four kids--two sons, two daughters--I had no idea!
~Filming on The Hobbit started on Monday in New Zealand! Follow progress here: http://www.thehobbitblog.com/.
~Rebecca Black's parents are looking at a new investment in the near future: therapy.
~Apparently, the use of "asstastic" is bad. I thought it was good. Anything in front of "-tastic" that is bad makes the word bad, too (so "cracktastic" is bad. I thought it was good). Thanks, Keyboard Hussy, for that clarification. And I'm not even blond.

Next time on the Planet: the subjunctive (wha???), goal setting, and untangling social media. Unless something better comes along.

I gotta go shower. Eskimo the Cat says hi.

(As always, Tweep me: @JennSommersby // Facebook: Jennifer Sommersby and/or Jenn Sy)

On reviews, hearing you suck, and falling to Twitter

I'm not afraid of anything.

Okay, I'm lying. I'm a terrible liar. My face gets all blotchy and I can't make eye contact, even though I know people know I'm lying when I blink and look away because in the police academy, they taught us that perps will look away and avoid eye contact when they're lying. Or, they'll blink. A lot. I do that. (Yes, I completed a police academy, albeit a reserve academy, because I'm just that bad ass...here's the part where I don't admit that I got my scrawny ass kicked on a regular basis and talked my then-husband into having a baby so I wouldn't have to become a real cop. Best. Decision. Ever.).

I'm afraid of lots of stuff. Lightning, thunder, spiders, and bridges top the list. Prose constructed minus the use of serial commas. I'm terrified of the dentist, of dying before my kids are old enough to call me for advice about Geritol vs. Centrum Advanced, and of driving off one of Vancouver's many bridges and plummeting into the icy depths (I run survival drills in my head where I successfully roll down all the windows and unbuckle everyone's seat belts before we slam into the wall of water, after which we will all swim to the surface and be rescued by the Coast Guard and/or a boat full of hot fisherman who have cookies for the kids, Irish cream for me).

Now I'm afraid of something new: reviews.

WHAT am I going to do if someone hates this book? Seriously? Husband keeps reminding me that it's definitely going to happen, that someone is going to say something terrible and mean and "she shouldn't quit her day job" because it's impossible to make all of the people happy all of the time and blabbity blah blah. That's why I don't sing in public. I don't want to get shot or have someone turn a fire hose on me because they think I've caught on fire and thus explains the discordant undulation and ear-piercing vibrato.

I come from a long line of oversensitive people. Man, my mom--she's the worst. If you look at her the wrong way, she bursts into tears. She cries when her clients yell at her (Mom's a kick-ass kitchen designer. If you live in Southern California and you're in need of a killer kitchen, she's an uber-designer. Just don't yell at her.) She cries when my 27-year-old sister and I are fighting. She cries at the grocery store if someone tells her a sad story and she only has $5 to give to them for their child's kidney transplant. (She might be a bit of a sucker, too, especially when we see that same fellow behind the 7-Eleven just moments later chugging a bottle of Colt 45.) So I come by this need to people please quite naturally. I want people to like my work. I want folks to feel that they haven't wasted their time, or eventually, their money. And since I'm only allowed to call my shrink twice a week AND I'm out of American Oreos, I need to keep my sensitivities in check.

This sounds stupid to even say out loud. Machiavelli would rip me a new one, tell me how it's never good to let the enemy see your weaknesses and certainly, don't come right out and admit them. (You're not my enemy, though, right?) I mean, duh, we all want other folks to like us and read our work and tell the world of our brilliance. We don't want 2-star reviews (and worse) and snarky comments popping up in the Amazon stream or on Twitter. It's like telling us our children are ugly (which, for the record, mine are not. The last one is sorta funny lookin', but he's wicked smart). The other day saw a fair bit of commentary on blogs and Twitter about how GoodReads has had to change their policy about writers commenting on reviews that may not be as magical as one would hope--but who are these writers who are actually taking the time to go in and refute a review? (It was GoodReads, wasn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong.)  If you have time to go in and comment on someone else's comment/review, your time would be better spent learning how to make your writing suck less. YES, I know--this advice from someone who, at this juncture, has received one written review of the novel. (It was a good review, so I can't provide commentary with any weight as to the devastation of hearing I suck. It's going to hurt. Bad. Like a super-heated fork tipped with snake and spider venom, stabbed into an open, infected wound, over which is poured hydrogen peroxide and ammonia. And lemon juice.)

However, if the vomitus from Mean Reviewer Person is riddled with spelling errors and incomplete sentences and sounds like it was written by a 2-year-old or your ex's inbred cousin, then, again, I remind you what my mother often told me growing up: consider the source. Like the time that pesky Andy McCarthy cut in line again on the new slide and stuck his tongue out at me, and after school, I told my mom I was going to call him a fu*ker but instead decided to consider the source. (Maybe I didn't quite grasp the whole concept, but at least I got to say fu*ker at age 8 without the usual soapy snack.) It was very easy for me to criticize painters and paintings until I actually picked up a paint brush for the first time ever. Which I did, about two weeks ago. It was excruciating. See?

The same is true for us. Writing is hard. I could insert some overused quotes here that equate writing to blood draining from arteries, but you get the point. (And thanks, Lauren, at Back to Earth Designs, for being so patient with me while we giggled our way through Tofino's landscape.)

The POINT: It got me to thinking about the whole process of critiquing each other's work. There are a lot of writers who won't review other writers. Again, lots of debate in the blogosphere about why writers reviewing is a bad deal. It's the readers we want to connect with, right? I had someone ask me once, "Why do you care what other writers say about your writing?" Omigod, I SO CARE! But I also care about readers--and THAT is the circuitous way of me saying that I'm freaking out about those first reviews. I think an ulcer has reactivated in my gut. *squirt squirt* 'Scuse me. Gastric juices abound.

We're all people pleasers. That's why we're writers who are grabbing this publishing bull by the testes and saying, "Down, demon! You're mine!" And, unless you're one of those people who really doesn't give a rip about what others say, I'm guessing that I am not alone in this darkened room with my insecurity. There are lots of us here, aren't there? I can hear you breathing...oh, man, I think someone just farted...

This past week, I finally joined the Twittersphere and set to expanding my virtual connections. This exercise has reassured me in one thing: we're all in this together. The gals at DarkSide Publishing have certainly figured this out, as have the collaborators at Independent Author Network, Red Willow Digital Press, and numerous other sites springing up every day, the writers becoming partners in this grand adventure.

Don't believe everything the reviewers are saying (unless they're consistently saying you should take up dog walking as a profession). It would be like being a virginal 17-year-old and believing your boyfriend when he tells you he probably is infertile because he only has one...

Wait. I could be sued for defamation if I finish that sentence.

New friends are so much fun. I had no idea. If you haven't found me on Twitter yet, I'm @JennSommersby.

Time for chocolate!

On grammar, Blake Crouch's RUN, and birthing babies in multiple states/provinces

~Dirty Grammar Bite~

When writing numbers, particularly YEARS, this is how it goes:

~the 1980s (NO apostrophe. Common mistake = 1980's. Nope. Not good.)
~the '80s (Make sure that apostrophe is indeed an apostrophe and not a closing single quotation mark. Apostrophes are to be used any time you are abbreviating a number or even a word. In a contraction, the apostrophe takes the place of missing letters/numbers. Example: can't. The apostrophe stands in for the "n" and "o" in cannot. In the case of our example ("the '80s"), the apostrophe stands in for the "19" in the number. Capiche?)
~She is in her eighties. Or, She is 102.
~Street numbers (avenues, etc., inclusive) that are less than one hundred are spelled out: First Avenue, Ninety-fifth Street, but 120th Avenue.

When it comes to writing numerals in word format, there are going to be those folks who disagree with me, who follow AP and other styles. That's cool. I follow the Chicago Manual of Style like a slave, so don't crucify me if you like using numerals for everything over ten. I'm down with that. Whatever you decide to do, be consistent. That's most important. Oh, and the rules about the apostrophes and numbers still applies, no matter what. That's just basic grammar, babes.

While we're on the subject, I just had the conversation about comparative and superlative forms with still-at-home-under-the-weather MiddleBoy. I reminded him: fun, more fun, most fun (but funny, funnier, funniest). Make a note of it. (Apple ran an ad campaign here for the iPod. They used the word "funnest" in their posters. I almost cried, just because we don't need to perpetuate stupidity. It flourishes just fine on its own, thanks to the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, and Jersey Shore.)

OH, and just for the record: I got into a pissing match once (yes, a pissing match) on Facebook with a girl from high school about the comparative and superlative form for the word STUPID. (We didn't like each other in high school; we're not friends now. It was a pissing match hosted on someone else's wall. There is a reason why I've changed my name a few times...) STUPID can be either stupider/more stupid or stupidest/most stupid. They're both right. If you want proof, email me and I'll send you the relevant Chicago and Webster's passages.

Enough boring grammar. These things just come to me while I'm sitting at my desk, which is in the living room, while the kids' TV channel blares in the background (someone save me from the KidPop commercials...Justin Bieber is painful enough when he sings, let alone a bunch of tweens whose voices haven't cracked yet) or reading our small community newspaper or driving in the car and observing readerboards or thumbing through the magazines in my shink's waiting room. It sorta eats at me, the misuse of simple grammar. But I'm neurotic that way. I know I offend in my daily usage, but as punishment, I flog myself repeatedly with a mace, the spiked tips dipped in snake venom, just so I will be reminded to not re-offend during subsequent opportunities to communicate. Snake venom can really burn, especially when it's embedded in those fleshy holes left by the mace, but I'm growing more and more immune. It's a process.

In other news: I'm very excited. I get to review Blake Crouch's forthcoming RUN, which is described as such:

Picture this: A landscape of American genocide...

5  d a y s  a g o

A rash of bizarre murders swept the country…

Senseless.  Brutal.  Seemingly unconnected. 

A cop walked into a nursing home and unloaded his weapons on elderly and staff alike. 

A mass of school shootings. 

Prison riots of unprecedented brutality. 

Mind-boggling acts of violence in every state.

4  d a y s  a g o

The murders increased ten-fold…

3  d a y s  a g o

The President addressed the nation and begged for calm and peace…

2  d a y s  a g o

The killers began to mobilize…

Y e s t e r d a y

All the power went out…

T o n i g h t

They’re reading the names of those to be killed on the Emergency Broadcast System.  You are listening over the battery-powered radio on your kitchen table, and they’ve just read yours.

Your name is Jack Colclough.  You have a wife, a daughter, and a young son.  You live in Albuquerque , New Mexico . People are coming to your house to kill you and your family.  You don’t know why, but you don’t have time to think about that any more. 

You only have time to….

R U N

   
Doesn't that sound SWEET??? You know it does. And you know you're going to want to buy it. If it sucks, I'll definitely let you know. But Crouch has some killer street cred, lots of titles, and some important friends, so I'm sure it's going to be a breakneck read. I can't wait! (Doesn't hurt that I like his name. One of my kids has that name. It's a good name.)

Speaking of kids: I am the ONLY PERSON I KNOW who has had a baby in all three western U.S. states plus British Columbia. Vancouver, Washington, 1990 (first year of college + baby = umm, trouble...); Portland, Oregon, 1993; Tarzana, California, 2001 (Amy Brenneman from Private Practice had her baby in the room next to mine, six or so months ahead of me--I know--I was there the night she delivered 'cuz I worked in labor and delivery for a brief time. Yay for Random Tidbits You Don't Care About!); and New Westminster, B.C., in full view of the now-defunct/destroyed Labatt's Brewery, in 2004. (Canada loves beer!) I should get a medal for being so damn procreative and for diversifying not only the gene pool but for screwing up the genealogical efforts of my great-great-grandchildren. Ha ha ha...they're going to pull their finely groomed hair out trying to retrace the convoluted path of where their great-great grandparents came from. *giggles behind cupped hand*

Dudes, YESTERDAY I had thirty "likes" on my new Facebook page for my book, Sleight! If you haven't liked me yet, you totally should. It legitimizes my existence in ways I never thought possible. Yeah, so, I'm a mom and wife and stuff, but seriously? THIRTY people like me! (Well, if you subtract my husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, my best friend, and my daughter, then there are really only twenty-four people who like me, but whatevs. I'm so excited!) I will have lots of info forthcoming about the BOOK, the WEB SITE, the RELEASE DATES and FORMATS. Yeah. It's allllll good. This is really a fun way to pull myself out of bed every morning. 

It's Friday. I have to work this weekend on stuff other than words, which totally depresses me. Work sucks. Money should just come to be because I'm so dreadfully charming and adept with comma placement.

FUN TASK FOR THE DAY: Post your favorite (dirty) jokes in the comments section. I need a pick-me-up that doesn't involve a bottle opener or corkscrew.

Bringing back some old reviews on writer-relevant titles

Hello, dahlings...

I've added some reviews on GoodReads for some writing-related books I covered for a small writer-focused newsletter back in '06 and '07. They're good titles. And since I tend to harp about grammar and stuff (because I'm a know-it-all), I thought I'd share. Just in case you haven't heard enough from me today. Don't worry...it will be quiet for a few days after tomorrow. No more fun 'til Monday at least. I have to take pictures of people's children all weekend. And that's just a lot-o-work.

Check out the reviews for Sin and Syntax and Fondling Your Muse at my GoodReads page (links to pages are embedded in book titles. I hope!). While you're there, FRIEND ME. There are a few more...I just have to dig them up. There were some dead links on my blog because the sites where the articles were parked have changed their formats, so... I suppose one of these days, I'll re-build and re-post. For now, I am wasting far too much time looking for old documents when I should be making NEW ones.

Oh, I made an author page on Facebook. Check the badge in the right column. I've been a busy beaver today. And thanks to Megg Jensen, Karly Kirkpatrick, Angeline Kace, and Angela Carlie, I have new friends!

Prince VooDoo. He's cute, huh?

Sick kids, eye strain, and cocaine...just another Wednesday on the new planet

When my kids are sick, I feel like a bad mom. Like maybe I didn't do enough to protect them from the bugs or maybe I didn't drink enough water when I was pregnant so as to support healthy immune function once they were hatched. Or perhaps I don't serve enough immune-boosting foods (this is likely; if it's green, they pretty much won't eat it, unless it's mint) and thus are prone to inhaling and incubating all the detritus that floats around the classroom. Alas, MiddleBoy called me from the office again, just two hours after being deposited at school (late). Total hours done in school this week: 1.75. Size of brain: shrinking. I am worried. Why a headache in a 9-year-old? I'm Googling encephalopathy as we speak.

OnlyDaughter is working on Smallville today. So is her dad. Lucky me -- he drove her to set at 5:30 this morning so I didn't have to. Win! I received a text from Husband that wardrobe outfitted her and made her all purty, and the crew loves her. She's a good kid. Seventeen going on thirty. Mature, articulate, and oh-so-tiny-and-sweet. And it's great that Dad is there to pop in and check on all 4'8" of her. I worry. That's my job.

OldestSon, the Soldier called to talk about moving out of his house and into temporary housing in preparation for deployment. I think he's nervous. He won't admit it because he's all tough and soldierly. I'm scared shitless. I don't support this war, haven't ever supported this war, but I have to support my kid. Even though it scares me to death and his participation contradicts everything I believe in. Doesn't matter. It's not my life, and considering a lot of the boneheads he graduated with are still living in their parents' basements, unemployed and drinking too much and spending their days with their good friend X-Box, I am very proud of my boy. He's doing it, all on his own.

Received another ARC yesterday for a novel coming out in May called The Summer Without Men. Review forthcoming on Best Damn Creative Writing Blog (I gotta read the book first, a'course). And in continued support of my fight against overuse of adverbs, this fancy-pants book I'm reading right now contains the worst adverb I've seen to this point: unqualifiedly. That hurts.

Rachel from Books I Done Read finished Sleight (my book) and said she liked it. The review will pop when the book is available for purchase (April), but that's sorta nice. A thumb's up, preliminary review (I haven't received the official written version yet). Feels nice. My ego is happy, for the moment.

I am stumbling across blog after blog after blog of publishing advice and suggestions and marketing tips and OMIGOD, I now have eye strain. For real. My eyeballs hurt, vision is blurring, and my eyelids are swollen. Saw a medical professional yesterday (okay, FINE, it was my shrink, all right?), and she agreed that my eyes look a little funny. Sorta puffy and red. I should stop reading. But I might miss something! Gah! I feel like a little kid who is resisting bedtime because she might miss out on the Costco-sized bag of M&Ms (peanut, no less!) her mom bought but has been hiding because the children eat too many.
 
I wish someone would invent a pill/food that would take the place of sleep. Sure, there's always cocaine, but it's illegal, expensive, and it destroys the lining of one's nose (or so I hear). Funny thing -- in 10th grade, I had Mr. Clark Hoss for history, my first class directly after lunch. And every day, I'd get a bloody nose within five minutes of class starting, because I'm prone to that sort of thing (blessed genes), never mind the fact that I found history class to be a terrifying exercise in madness. Whose brain can remember all those dates and people? One day, Mr. Hoss pulled me aside and asked me if I had a cocaine problem. I guess it was because my nose was bleeding and I was sort of...hyper. Like Sniffles the Mouse. But, seriously? Mind you, I didn't talk back to Mr. Hoss. He played football for the Philadelphia Eagles at one point in his life. (I just Googled him--he played for the Eagles in 1972). He was a large, intimidating man with blond, curly hair and a no-bullshit policy. Of course I wasn't using coke -- first, my parents were broke, and thus, so was I. No money = no cocaine. Not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of my fellow classmates were using, though, because cocaine was the drug-du-jour back in the '80s (and the school district I was in was affluent. Not us. Just everyone else.). Nothing says "I'm ready to learn!" like a white powdery substance dusted across one's nostrils and upper lip after climbing out of your best friend's BMW.

But I was a scrawny, hyperactive nerd with an overdeveloped sense of moral responsibility and a raging guilty conscience. Accidentally stealing a pen from the library made me nervous. Coke wasn't my bag, baby.

Why the hell am I talking about this?

Oh. Yeah. Cocaine would keep me awake. Guess I'll have to settle for coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Ohhhh, my eyes are burning again! Make it stop! I think my eyeballs need a "me-day."

No time. There are M&Ms (peanut!) to be consumed.

Originally appeared on ChicMom, but now on GoodReads: REVIEW of cracktastic YA, *Break*

Break by Hannah Moskowitz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What were you doing during your junior year in high school? Chasing boys? Cheering on the home team? Worrying about the perfect prom dress (or if you were even going to make it to prom)? Fighting with your parents because of their crazy restrictive curfews?

I don’t know what Hannah Moskowitz did to keep it real during eleventh grade. And considering she’s only nineteen, those days were, well, like, yesterday. I know one thing she did do, though. She got herself a little publishing deal with one of the biggest houses in the country. In the world. She wrote a book called Break, and it is easily the most uninhibited, mind-numbing, high-concept YA (young adult) book I’ve ever come across.

From the back cover: Jonah is on a mission to break every bone in his body. Everyone knows that broken bones grow back stronger than they were before. Jonah wants to be stronger—needs to be stronger—because everything around him is falling apart.

YA isn’t just for the under-20 crowd anymore. And even though Break was published by a children’s imprint, it’s anything but juvenile. Moskowitz has infused a maturity into her work that clearly relegates her in the realm of prodigies—human beings that age shouldn’t know the stuff she’s writing. The story sounds simple enough—a kid hell-bent on self-destruction who finds that breaking his bones provides the rush and release other kids get from cutting, huffing, or drinking. But Jonah, and the life he is surrounded with, is complex and entangled. His baby brother never stops crying, for undiscovered medical reasons; his parents are embroiled in a taut, passive-aggressive, not-in-front-of-the-kids marriage; and his not-much-younger brother suffers from deadly allergies to milk, and pretty much everything else on the planet. Moskowitz’s vivid description of the mother’s sloppy lactation habits alone is enough to make the reader scratch her head and say, “How the hell did she know about this?” Moskowitz writes with a level of profundity unseen in most adult writers I read (and I read a lot), infusing deep psychological underpinnings in the latter scenes of the book where Jonah comes unraveled, or quite literally, broken.

The best advice I’ve ever received from a writing instructor was that, as writers, we must inject tension into every single scene. Moskowitz has done this; each page is ripe with tension of varying shades, from the stomach-curdling description of Jonah’s bones as they snap to the sexual tension of a seventeen-year-old boy involved in a relationship with his “non-girlfriend” Charlotte. The interpersonal relationships between Jonah and secondary characters are believable and heartbreaking, another testament to Moskowitz’s skill as a gifted teller of stories.

Moskowitz has a poet’s sensibilities in her tight, terse sentences, choosing every word for its merit rather than the beauty of its sound as it rolls off the tongue. If you have a sensitivity for the “F” bomb (which the writer uses with regularity), Break might turn you off, but understand that her choice to include such language is completely in alignment with Jonah’s character. The dialogue is true to type, and honest in its presentation. More compelling is the fact that Moskowitz wrote Break from an entirely male perspective, while she is female, not a small feat in any literary undertaking.

It is interesting to note that after reading Break, I emailed the writer to ask how many of her own bones she had broken in the process of writing this book. She emailed back within moments: none. Yeah, it’s that good.

Beyond my fascination with Moskowitz’s knack for shock value lies a visceral, educated writer who packs a powerful punch into every single sentence. On her acknowledgments page, she gives a thumb’s up to Chuck Palahniuk, a phenomenal novelist who twists humor and the macabre into a lickable candy stick at every turn. I am a diehard Palahniuk fan, and Moskowitz is the Palahniuk of her generation. If he hasn’t read this book, he should; it’s like listening to Gershwin and hearing the threads of Rachmaninov in the piece. Delicious. He would be so proud of sweet young Hannah.

Moskowitz, whose next book Invincible Summer is due out in 2011, is a cutting-edge up-and-comer to add to your must-watch list. This first example of her talents promises a long career of smart, excoriated fiction that sucks the reader in and holds them by the throat for the duration of the story. Break is a quick read, but one that will leave a lasting impression long after the final page has been turned.

And check out her blog at http://hannahmosk.blogspot.com/.

LOVE LOVE LOVE!





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Eclipse x 2, The Passage, Remember Me - I love good stories!

(The sun is out. It's actually shining. On the ground and through the trees. There is a soft breeze, and I'm NOT wearing wool socks or a turtleneck sweater. It is June 29. I don't want to speak too loudly or else the weather might unexpectedly change, but thanks, Weather Gods. We do appreciate the reprieve from the oppressive cloud cover. Just in time. I think that last call may have overfilled my shrink's voicemail.)

SO--today is it. The countdown. The one my daughter, Princess, has been ticking off on her calendar for months. No, it's not due to final report card day, or yearbook day. She is going to the movie theatre at 12:30 pm to wait in line for six-point-five hours to get into an auditorium with 400 other screaming teenagers (and a few moms) to watch seven-point-five hours of vampire/werewolf carnage and mayhem (well, sort of mayhem--dude, the vampires sparkle???). Yeah, I'm going. But I'm in a diversionary state right now, so I'd pretty much clean moss off the side of the house with tweezers and my toothbrush to get out of doing what I know I should be doing. And I don't want my sweet little thing to be in a movie theatre for that long without her mommy. She may be 16 but she's a good 16, not the snotty, booze-guzzling, authority-questioning little shit some of her Facebook "friends" are. Holy. Cow. You wanna feel old? Look at your teenager's Facebook account. Half the time I don't even know what the hell they're saying. (I think it's English. Scary, frightening English, but English nonetheless. I think.) Some real geniuses on there, I tell ya.

Anyway, watch for the Twilight Saga: Eclipse review this week on ChicMomMagazine.com. I'll probably do a DVD review on another delicious-looking film, ironically called The Eclipse, about a widower whose dead wife may be stalking him from beyond. It looks incredibly sinister, brilliantly acted by a cast of Irish actors (and Irish-American Aidan Quinn). Check out the trailer at http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/theeclipse/. It comes out today on DVD, so watch for the review, either here or on ChicMom, over the next week or so. OH, and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is out on DVD today. I think Bueno's head is going to explode. My little Greek mythology nerd...! Princess gets seven hours of Twilight, Bueno gets Percy Jackson. Yeah, movie freaks. The cool thing is, these movies started out as books. And my kids have read them. Which means they're using their brains. I like.

The good word this week:

MOVIE: Remember Me, Robert Pattinson, Pierce Brosnan, Emilie de Ravin = pretty good. Kick-in-the-ass, grab-you-by-the-throat ending. Wow. I sort of saw it coming but thought...nahhhhh. Yeah, I was right. But it was good. RPattz is so good at the brooding thing, and FINALLY, we get to see him gettin' it on with a hottie with some spunk. Sorry, Bella and Edward, but come on, already! Some of us want to see the Deed! Tyler and Allie...yes, they deed it. It's pretty good. Oh, and the acting--yes, the acting. Good. Thumbs up. Again, more brooding, but the real story is between Tyler and his little sister (Caroline, played by Ruby Jerins--she looks like an Osment kid--I had to check IMDB to make sure she wasn't Haley Joel and Emily's little sister). Heartbreaking. Like Lauren said, it'll make you wanna hug your kids a little extra today.

BOOK: The Passage, Justin Cronin. Suspense, suspense, suspense! This guy obviously scores in the higher echelons of IQ-dom. Dude's a genius. I tried to put aside my green-with-envy attitude (I wish I could write like he does) as I chewed through this weighty novel in just under five days. Cronin integrated post-apocalypse and vampires, and though it had an I Am Legend feel to it, he does a noteworthy job bringing the characters to life throughout the story. No details are spared, and the histories he has woven for his people are vast and rich. This is not light reading, however; though Cronin's prose is tight and descriptive, it's heady. Like I said, he's a smart guy. If you like supermarket bodice-rippers, I'm thinking The Passage ain't for you. And if you tend to obsess about the end of the world (like I do), maybe you should hold off, especially if you've watched The Road and Book of Eli back to back like I have. I seem to be on an apocalyptic bender right now... I can tell you, I don't have nearly enough canned beans in the cupboard, no propane, and I have no idea where my pocketknife is. All good things to have when the end befalls us. Oh, and Band-Aids. And some Neosporin. LOTS of Neosporin. Maybe a flame thrower, too.

Overall, good read. Worth the cover price of the book (even if I did buy it at Costco).

I have to go put makeup on and be wonderful. If this post is disjointed, it's because school is out, and I've been interrupted about 14 times. Please forgive me for sounding lost. Then again, I always sound lost, don't I?

Yak soon...

Book review - terrific book by young Hannah Moskowitz

The review for teen phenom Hannah Moskowitz's first book, Break, is up! Check it out at http://www.chicmommagazine.com/book-article.php?id=172. Terrific book from an incredible talent. The girl will become a household name.

Enjoy! (And go buy the book!)