Blue by Lou Aronica -- Review and Contest!

From the back cover:

Chris Astor is a man in his early forties who is going through the toughest stretch of his life.


Becky is Chris's fourteen-year-old daughter, a girl who overcame enormous challenges to become a vibrant, vital young woman -- and now faces her greatest obstacle yet.


Miea is the young queen of a fantasy land that Becky and Chris created when Becky was little, a fantasy land that has developed a life of its own and now finds itself in terrible, maybe fatal, trouble.


Together, Chris, Becky, and Miea need to uncover a secret.  The secret to why their worlds have joined at this moment.  The secret to their purpose.  The secret to the future.   It is a secret that, when discovered, will redefine imagination for all of them.

Tamarisk is the imaginary world that Chris and Becky began imagining during a difficult time in her life.  When Chris and Polly (Becky's mother) divorced, Tamarisk was abandoned.  Becky begins to feel drawn back to Tamarisk and as she and Chris learn more about the blight affecting the crops there, they also, with Miea's help, begin to suspect that there is a way to save both Becky and Tamarisk at the same time.  So much to say about the way Aronica develops this story, but I don't want to give too much away!

Blue is making the rounds of other book blogs right now and I am interested to see what others have to say.  I wasn't sure what to make about one part of the storyline -- it might take a re-read for me to see more of the connections between Chris and Becky's world, Miea's world, and the observer (and perhaps orchestrator?) we read about in a few sparse sections of the book. 

A few random thoughts:

When Becky and her dad were instant-messaging I felt like Aronica did an excellent job of showing the subtle differences between the way a fourteen-year-old uses IM and the way her father uses the same technology -- it added to the believability/authenticity of the conversation.

I read Blue about four months after separating from my husband and so that part of the book felt especially poignant.  The reader learns a lot about Becky's feelings regarding her parents' divorce and also hears quite a bit from Chris's point of view. We don't hear as much from Polly, Becky's mother, and I think that it was good for me to have a chance to think more about the father's viewpoint.

Chris is thinking about Becky growing up -- such a bittersweet description:

When your child is born, each of her accomplishments seem to supersede the one before, and each makes you feel increasingly connected to her.  Simple biological need gives way to interaction, which gives way to meaningful conversation, and so on.  The relationship deepens with each stage.  At some point, though, you reach the top of the curve.  Your child continues to grow, to become a fuller and more substantial human being, but your association with these events become more distant.  She has meaningful conversations with her friends instead of you.  She learns critical life lessons away from the house.  She interacts more fully with the world and considerably less with you.  She looks to her future and sees a place where you are something just slightly more elevated than a number on her speed dial. Of course, if you are divorced from her mother . . . you descend the downside of the curve even faster.  (page 179)

All in all, a unique fantasy plot that includes so much real life as well.

CONTEST!!!

How often do you hear about something that sounds too good to be true? Well, I am here to offer 10 lucky winners the opportunity of a lifetime.

New York Times bestselling co-author, novelist, and former Publisher of Avon Books and Berkley Books, Lou Aronica has created a unique and exciting offer to anyone that is going to follow his upcoming book tour with Pump Up Your Book. His extensive experience in the publishing and editing fields has given him insight into an industry that continues to grow and change daily. Once again, that insight has led him to offer a contest that is truly special in so many ways. Lou will be accepting story pitches from followers of his blog tour. These story pitches must be for short stories pertaining to the fantasy world of his novel, “Blue.” This contest will allow 10 lucky people the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to have their story published in an upcoming companion anthology to “Blue.” Lou will hand pick the winners, edit their stories, include them in the anthology and give them a pro-rated share of the royalties. How can you pass up an opportunity like this?

Now for the details:

The pitch should include a synopsis of the proposed story and a sample of the submitting author’s fiction writing. Specify the expected length of the story.

The pitch needs to be submitted by April 16, 2011
 
Please email your submission to Lou at laronica@fictionstudio.com

All winners will be notified by email by May 27, 2011.

Anyone Can Die by James LePore

Anyone Can Die is a collection of three short stories, each one featuring a different character from James LePore's debut novel, A World I Never Made.  In LePore's introduction to this collection, he explains that in the process of writing A World I Never Made he developed quite a bit of history and backstory for each of his main characters but realized that there isn't really a place for that in your standard thriller.  Anyone Can Die is his chance to flesh out that bigger picture he'd imagined.

The three stories(descriptions from the back cover):


"Till Death Do Us Part" -- A young Pat Nolan and his wife are on their honeymoon in New Mexico when they find a bond they didn't know they had as they are forced to confront trouble in the form of a surly trio of locals.

"God's Warriors" -- Megan Nolan, a cynical American woman on her own in Europe makes a life-changing decision that both reveals and belies her true character.

"Max" -- Max French, a quirky, deadly and, in his own eyes, oddly lovable FBI agent faces a personal drama that will set the course of his future.

I was intrigued by this idea, a sort of prequel in the form of a short story collection.  As I read, I wasn't sure what to make of the fact that each story made some reference to ethnicity, with varying degrees (in my opinion)of stereotyping and/or generalizations.  I may be hyper-sensitive at this exact instant, as I've been reading about perceptions of racism in Agatha Christie's books, but nonetheless it was a distracting element for me.  Yet even in the midst of writing this review, I'm still waffling on my desire to read A World I Never Made.  I do sort of want to see what happens with these characters -- I want to know what "the Megan Nolan affair" is, I want to learn what happens in Pat and Lorrie's relationship, and I want to know how Max's experiences as a child and young man have affected the middle-aged FBI agent.  I may just pick up A World I Never Made in spite of my reservations about this collection.

Secrets of the Black Box by Amanda Wolfe

Secrets of the Black Box is the first in Amanda Wolfe's autobiographical trilogy.  In Secrets Amanda tells us of her childhood and adolescence growing up in Canada in a cruel and unstable family and says, in a note to readers at the beginning of the book, "I believe that the true meaning of healing is understanding worthiness of oneself.  And that the sins of others inflicted upon you should not, No, in fact must not change or alter your true spirit or your ability to stay true to that spirit.  Yourself."

It seems like the author herself has, as an adult, been able to find that worthiness, peace, hope, and belief in her true spirit.  But that hope and optimism are very much not present in this first book of the trilogy.  Perhaps that will come more in the final two books. Readers who can identify with her troubled childhood may feel a comfort in the fact that they were not alone.

A bit about the series title -- Amanda says that she could always find the silver lining -- but that "[i]t was what was beneath the silver lining that was the problem."(page 103)  She goes on to say that finding the silver lining is "how you survived life." (page 108) As for the title of the book itself, she says, "I developed an imaginary little black box in my stomach, which I would put all this stuff into, and in the real world, none of this existed."(pages 167-8)

This book was extremely poorly edited and it was hard for me to get past that to think about other layers of the book.  Misplaced apostrophes & quotation marks, disagreeing verb tenses, misspelled words, needless repetition and odd uses of capital and lowercase letters were only the beginning.  A few examples:

"Well, technically five Melanie slept downstairs with my mother." (page 29)

"About two weeks after the car episode, my mom had been bugging my dad to get her some dirt from the garden in the front yard because it was dark and rich soil, and she wanted to put some potted plants along the back porch; but he still hadn't done it for her, so we were having breakfast oatmeal with brown sugar." (page 76)

"Chad had driven in to Ottawa really early in the morning.  To pick up my grandma we were all still asleep when they arrived." (page 152)

"She had three or four boyfriends at a time and was drinking too much, among other things.  That I did not want to know about." (page 333)

I'm willing to accept that the stream-of-consciousness style that is present throughout the book was, perhaps, an intentional choice on the author's part.  I'm less convinced, however, that it added anything to the story she was trying to tell. 

Secrets of the Black Box was painful to read -- both because of the subject matter and because of the hideous editing/writing style.  I can, however, get behind the message in Wolfe's epilogue, with which I will end this review.


"The decision to heal is up to you.  Only you can choose to stay in the place behind the wall.  Or keep things buried in your own version of the black box.  Or you can step out of it and find courage in knowing you are not to blame.  You have the strength to stand up to the people who have the power over us and take it back for yourself." (page 379)

Teaser Tuesdays -- December 21, 2010 --Blue by Lou Aronica

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers! 

"'Do you have any idea why this is happening now?' 


The princess lowered her eyes, and when she looked up again, she had a slightly sheepish expression on her face."  ~ p. 91, Blue by Lou Aronica

This book goes on sale January 4th!  It's pretty intense reading for me right now, as it involves a daughter's reactions to/feelings about her parents' divorce -- though that's only a part of the full story.  I feel like the plot is still being set up for me and I'm interested to see how it keeps developing.

Don't Know Where, Don't Know When by Annette Laing == Time Travel

I was so pleased to receive, from the author, an autographed copy of Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (The first book in the Snipesville Chronicles!) by Annette Laing.  From the back cover:

What a nightmare.  Hannah Dias, California Girl with Attitude, and Alex, her laid-back brother, have moved from exciting San Francisco to boring Snipesville, Georgia.life doesn't improve when they meet Brandon, a dorky kid who is plotting his escape from the Deep South, and the weird Professor, who has a strange accent.  

Suddenly, the kids are catapulted thousands of miles and almost seventy years to England during World War Two.  They fall into a world of stinging nettles, dragon ladies, bomb blasts, ugly underwear, stinky sandwiches, painful punishments, and non-absorbing toilet paper.  They learn so much more than they could ever learn in a history class.  Not that they want to learn it.

But they can't go home unless they find George Braithwaite, and whatever it is that he has to do with Snipesville.

This is one of those books that it would be a pleasure to re-read, to catch all the little connections you didn't catch the first time around.  I'm a big fan of time travel (and parallel worlds -- I love the movie Sliding Doors) and this book was definitely a hit for me in this area. 

I appreciated the discussion that Brandon and the professor have about what is different because it's 1915 and what's different because it's London (versus the United States).  The distinction makes total sense to me and I could see myself wondering the same thing.  In fact, I have wondered something similar -- I grew up in small-town Indiana.  Before moving to Denver four years ago, most big cities I'd spent time in were located in another country (China, Guatemala, Costa Rica) and I often wondered what was "big city" and what was "different country". (If we were talking in person this is where I'd probably lapse into the mildly amusing story about the butcher shop in NYC, but we'll just all try to stay on task, shall we?)

In her acknowledgments Laing thanks her friends for encouraging her "'not to worry about the P.C. People.'  You're right:  the past is not politically correct".  There were a few parts of the book that did indeed rub me the wrong way and perhaps it was those very things that Laing is referring to as politically incorrect.  At one point, after breaking a neighbor's window, Hannah is beaten with a leather belt. The professor's explanation?   "Mrs. D. doesn't think like the adults in your world, or at least like the adults in your world tell you that they think.  In her world, unlike ours, almost everyone says it's fine to spank children now and then, but it is not considered a good idea to burden kids with grown-up worries.  So Mrs. D. reckons that kids are kids, and her two only needed a simple lesson today . . . She hopes they will learn their lesson so she never has to repeat it." This makes sense to me as an explanation, but not as a justification, if that makes sense.  It was also a little disconcerting to me when Hannah thinks to herself, after being approached by an older woman, ". . . the lady would probably look quite a bit younger if she wore makeup, dyed her hair, and got her wrinkles ironed out with Botox" (p.137) and goes on to mention facelifts and dental work.  I think this was another attempt to point out the differences between the two time periods but this is the kind of thing that makes me cringe -- just the whole idea of someone "needing" Botox.  But these are just small quibbles.

Some fun or humorous parts -- Hannah and Alex find a Monopoly board and discover that it's all London landmarks -- So Park Lane instead of Park Place, etc.  I liked it when they played "pass the parcel" at a birthday party, as we did that a few months ago at the birthday party of a dear (English) friend. Laing is good at this type of detail.  On page 105, after the professor has been speaking with Hannah outside a classroom -- "The other girls think I've been scolding you, so try to look upset and angry.  Oh, I see you already do.  That's helpful."  And the Scooby Doo reference on page 178, "'All thanks to us meddling kids!' Hannah said cheerfully, to blank looks from everyone except Alex, who put his hands over his eyes" is a classic.

The book closes with the professor back in London, examining an artifact in the Victoria and Albert Museum and leaving the reader to wonder what part the artifact will play in the next book -A Different Day, A Different Destiny!  I will definitely want to learn about the next adventure and I am curious about whether the characters will stay the same.  

I hope to have a young friend also read this and write a guest post with her reactions.  I'll be interested to hear what someone closer to the target audience thinks.

Oh, and check out Imaginative Journeys!