Writers Wednesday - NaNoWriMo Style

Back when Cheryl and I first started this blog we had all these great ideas of daily slogans.  Writers Wednesday was one of them.  Every week we were going to post about some of our favorite writers we stumbled across whether it be fanfiction.net or fictionpress.net.  Needless to say, it didn't last long nor did the other slogans.

With NaNoWriMo going on I decided to bring it back with a twist.  Every Wednesday I'm going to post a snid bit from my NaNo novel, and hope that those that are also writing this month will join in!  Think of it as a Teaser Tuesday.


I'm going to be sharing two different snid bits this time.  If you want to know what my NaNo novel is about click here.  The first one is my opening lines to The Unexpected Clash of Strangers.  (I always love the first paragraph of a book.)   The second part is where my main character Grace snags a fake boyfriend off the street.

And a head's up...I'm well aware my grammar needs work.  I would appreciate any sort of feedback whether it's good or bad!

So....*takes deep breath*....here they are:

Snid Bit One:

There is nothing worse than getting caught in a random winter storm. Especially if by some weird coincidence you’re wearing a red sequin flapper dress and reeking of tequila. How I even get myself in these situations is beyond me.

Snid Bit Two:

It’s time to strap on my thinking cap. There has to be a guy out of this crowd I can just grab by the arm and start to walk with. It’s the city for crying out loud! He’s not even going to notice me at first. By then Stephen and Fake Boobs will be on their merry little way.

So who’s it going to be? I start to scan the crowd. There’s an old guy that looks exactly like my dead Uncle Arty. Woah, that’s a little freaky. I mean, he looks just like him. Suspenders and all! He did die, right? No time for that. I’ll have to ask my mother later. I eyeball a guy in a yellow hat, and am about to grab him when I realize it's not a guy, it's a girl.  Oops!

Well what do we have here? A guy so drop dead goregous I'm about to melt at the knees....and he's holding hands with another supermodel type girl who is giving me a death glare.  Damn. Do I know how to pick a crowd or what?

“Gracie, are you sure you don’t want to join us?” I hear Stephen ask from behind me. I stop in my tracks. Hell to the no, he did not just call me Gracie! I open my mouth to tell him to stick it up his butt when I spot my fake boyfriend.

He’s about six foot tall; medium built with messy light brown hair, and sporting a five o’clock shadow on his face. He doesn’t exactly look the part of a big time lawyer with his tan colored sports jacket and a faded Rolling Stones shirt. But desperate times call for desperate measures so he’ll just have to do.

He’s talking on his cell phone so he doesn’t notice me as I push myself through the crowd to grab him. “Ethan!” I shout, placing my hand on his arm. “There you are!"
The guy narrows his eyes at me and says, “Excuse me?” Thankfully he has a light voice or my cover would already be blown.

“Listen,” I whisper harshly, “I’ll pay you fifty bucks to pretend to be my boyfriend for the next few minutes.”

“You want me to pretend to be your boyfriend?” he repeats, pulling the cell phone away from his ear.

“What are you, dense? You want the fifty bucks or not?”

“Dude!” a male voice screeches on the other end. “Do it! She sounds hot!” I have no clue who this guy is, but I like him. Too bad he’s not standing out here instead.

“Yeah,” I say, pointing at his phone. “You should listen to your friend.” Glancing behind my shoulder, I see the happy couple approaching us. I gasp and spin back around. “It’s too late. You’re going to have to just play along.”




****For everyone who is doing NaNoWriMo and would like to do a Writers Wednesday of their own, leave me a link in the comments so I can go check out your post! 

♥amber

Come with us and you will see, this our town of Halloween

Happy Halloween! 

Whether you're going trick-or-treating, heading to a haunted house, watching scary movies, going to a party, passing out candy - whatever you're planning to do, I hope you have a blast! 

One thing I love about Halloween is the movies!  This month seemed to fly so I didn't get to watch all my favorites.  But I wanted to share a list of some of them and why I heart them so.  (I didn't put them in a patricular order either.) 

Nightmare on Elm Street – Unless you’ve lived under a rock then you’re well aware who Freddy is. Freddy scared the living crap out of me. I used to have nightmares after watching the first movie at a friend’s house. I couldn’t watch this again until I was twenty. The only reason why I did it was because Johnny Deep is in it.  I was all proud of myself that I made it through that I gav “The Final Nightmare”a try.
....Yea, that sucker got shut off halfway through.  If you can watch these movies, you are a brave soul.


Killer Klowns From Outer Space – Before you start laughing, hear me out here. Imagine being five years old and thinking some psycho clown is going to stick you in a balloon cocoon and suck the life out of you with a crazy fun straw. That is terrifying my friend, absolutely terrifying.

Lost Boys – Best. Vampire. Movie. Ever.

Witchboard – If you’ve ever messed around with an Ouija board, you know that eerie feeling you got when the thing started moving?  Try watching a whole movie based on it.  Is it cheesy?  Well, yes.  But it still makes me jump.

Poltergeist– “Carol Anne, Carol Anne, where are you, Carol Anne?” The whole series is good, but nothing beats the first one. Maggot meat anyone?

I do have a family story to share with this.  When my older sister was about four years old (and she's going to kill me once she sees that I posted this), this was her movie. She used to crawl under her bed and watch the thing over and over again. One day she came into the living room with her baby doll in her hands.  Not a big deal except the baby doll had a butter knife shoved in its butt.

The Ring – This movie didn’t make me scream, but it freaked me the hell out!  Don't even act like you didn't get goosebumps when that girl climbed out of the TV with her limbs going all crazy like!  I wouldn't bother with the sequel though, that sucked.

IT – I cannot read a Stephen King novel to save my life. (Sorry Cheryl!!) But I do enjoy the movies that are based off his books. Pennywise takes the cake on scary freakin’ clowns.  “Everyone floats down here fat boy, muahaha!”

Pet Sematary – I’m not really an animal person. So undead animals are high up there on the creep factor. Even more freaky is how Gage is the most adorable little kid ever then turns into a zombie psycho. 

Amityville Horror (remake) – The original was good, but for once I liked the remake better. Haunted houses are the biggest freak factor for me.  (Plus did you see Ryan Reynolds getting out of that bathrub? *melts*)

Saw 1 & 2 - Not exactly a film where things jump out and scream, “Boo!” But it does the trick on the freak meter. When you think of all those psychotic people running around doing this kind of stuff, it really creeps you out. I never watched the rest of them though. Fifteen minutes into the 3rd one and I was about to vomit everywhere. 

House of Wax – Screw you, I liked this film! When it came out I thought it was going to one of those movies I would sit back and poke fun of.  But I ended up loving it!  I mean c’mon, Chad Michael Murry and Jared Padalecki together? Hot! Also the whole ankle getting sliced opened and the scene where the killer cuts a finger off - *shivers*

Halloween Town – Oh those Disney Channel originals. This movie makes me feel like a kid again. I would love to live in Halloween Town.

Casper – Back when this movie came out, I probably watched it a million times.  A lot of that had to do with my love for Casper and my obsession with Devon Sawa.  

Nightmare Before Christmas – Tim Burton is the man. The songs are awesome (hint my title of this post). I love the animation.  And the bonus - it serves as a Christmas movie too!

Hocus Pocus – Leave it to a virgin to light a candle, and bring back three kick arse witches to Salem. Now three kids and a talking cat (who is awesome) have to save the town before the witches suck the life out of all the children. When I watched this movie when I was little, I wanted to be a witch so badly.

Troll 2 – Okay, it’s not scary…at all. It’s probably…okay, it is just about one of the worst horror movies ever made. Nothing like a dead grandpa to warn you about the evil goblins that are lurking around the town of, Nilbog…wait a second…Nilbog? Well, that’s goblin spelled backwards! Oh the horror! (Yes, you will be laughing your face off when you watch this.)

Practical Magic – This is one of my favorite movies in general. I love the aunts. I love the sisterly bound between Sally and Gillian. The plot is great. The house they live in is my dream house, and it’s just awesome! Go watch it!

Now I'm off to go trick-or-treating with these boys...

(.....Okay, that's an obvious lie.  But I am taking my niece trick-or-treating.  She's dressing up as Alice from Twilight.  I know, she's awesome.)

♥amber

Waiting on Wednesday

Stalker Girl by Rosemary Graham


Release Date: August 2010

I saw the cover for this book on The Story Siren's To Pine For post and wanted to know more about it. So far this is the only synopsis I can find on the book:

Stalker Girl is about what happens when a girl's interest in her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend turns to obsession.


Sounds interesting to me and I am LOVING that cover! It's another one that screams read me.

Win 5 of Nancy Holder's books - Open INTERNATIONAL!

Author Nancy Holder has generously offered to give away all 5 of her books to one lucky winner!  I just received my copies today and I am very excited to start in on both of the series. 


The Books:

-Pretty Little Devils
-Possessions
-Wicked: Witch & Curse
-Wicked 2: Legacy & Spellbound
-Wicked: Resurrection



How to enter:

Leave a comment taking a guess at the following question:

From the book Possessions, what is the name of Linsday's roommate's stuffed unicorn?

**Please make sure you include your email address with your guess. Without it, your entry will not count.

***Your answer doesn't have to be correct for you to win.  Just take a stab at it.

The giveaway will end on November 10th at 11:59 central time, and it is opened up for EVERYONE! Yay!
Contest is now closed!

Will you be doing NaNoWriMo?

For those of you that don't know being an author has pretty much been my dream since I was about 10. While I've tried and tried, I've never finished one of my wannabe novels.  (I have over about thirty stories or more just dying for an ending.) At the beginning of this year, I told myself if I did not finish one of my stories, I was giving up on the dream all together. Due to many things in life getting in the way, guess what? I still haven't written a novel.  So, I signed up for NaNoWriMo.

I'm sure most of you know what NaNoWriMo is. For those of you that don't, I will give you a quick run down. The idea is start with a new story on November 1st, and write your novel by the end of the month. The minimum requirement is 50,000 words. 

For my NaNo novel, I didn't exactly start out with a fresh new idea. It's more of an old story idea that I stripped down to its' undies and started over with. So in this round about way, it's still a new fresh idea. (At least that's what I'm telling myself so everyone just go with it.)

While I love reading Young Adult, I cannot write it to save my life. I've tried many times, but it just doesn't work for me. A lot of my stories are about girls, like me, who are in their early twenties. We'll go with the genre of Women's Fiction for now.

Here is my awesome cover art my muse and blogging partner, Cheryl, made for me. Along with my very weak attempt at writing a synopsis.

The Unexpected Clash of Strangers

Everything in Grace's life was going great. At least, semi-great until the day she finds herself caught in a random winter storm wearing a red sequin flapper dress and reeking of tequila. If matters couldn't be worse, she runs into ex-husband, Stephen, and his new fiancée.


In a desperate attempt not to loose in the ex-game; she blurbs out that she has landed a starring role in a movie, and that a stranger walking down the street is her new boyfriend, Ethan. What should have been a one time lie spins completely out of control. Suddenly Grace finds herself having to fake a relationship with a stranger and somehow put together a movie. Can she pull it off? Or has this struggling actress taken on much more than she bargained for?


To make sure I really give NaNoWriMo my all, I'm making myself MIA from blogging for the first week of November.  I did say I was going to be MIA from everything else on the net, but I'm still going to be checking in on things. 

If you are planning on signing up this year or already have, feel free to add me to your buddy list:

Username: sammyjones57

♥amber

Review - Family Affair by Caprice Crane

Family Affair by Caprice Crane

Released: September 2009
Publisher: Bantam
Genre: Adult - Women's Fiction
Pages: 368

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

When Layla Brennan married her high school sweetheart, Brett Foster, she finally got the big, loving family she’d always wanted: his. Now she’s closer to Brett’s parents than he is, partners with his sister in a successful pet-photography business, and confidant to his younger brother. She couldn’t be more of a Foster if she’d been born one. There’s just one problem: Brett wants a divorce. Stunned and heartbroken, Layla turns to the Fosters for comfort, only to realize that losing Brett means losing them as well. What else can she do but sue him for the most valuable thing he’s got–namely, his family. Breaking up may be hard to do, but for Layla and Brett it’s even harder to undo.

---

The words hilarious, heart warming, fun, and flat out wonderful first come to mind when I think of Family Affair. Caprice Crane knows how to write a story with such unique characters and wild antics that make me laugh so hard I nearly pee my pants.

When I cracked open the book, I will admit, the first couple chapters that involved Layla didn't really grab me like normal. But things quickly took off and just kept getting better and better. I was a little sketchy about having some many different characters telling the story, but Crane did it perfectly. I think that's what really made this story stand out was hearing both Layla and Brett's side of view. With an added bonus of knowing what the family was going through as well.

I loved how this novel portrayed that one perfect couple from high school and how un-perfect their lives can easily be. I cannot say enough how the dynamics of the family really just made this story all it was. There were so many hilarious stunts Layla and Brett both pulled to try and grab the family's attention.  Or the things they did just to get someone to be on their side. If you've never read one of Caprice Crane's novels, you are missing out! Each one just gets better and better.



♥amber

A helpful site for bloggers

I know a lot of bloggers use sites to see how many visitors they get, where most of their readers are from, etc. I wanted to share what free site I've been using and find very helpful.

Statcounter.com

It has the basic show of traffic, popular pages, where your readers are from, etc. But there are some other neat things about this site. Like how people even find your blog. Here are some things people have typed into search engines and somehow got here (I find them all pretty funny):

• Jack says books

• Which blogger is a klutz who trips over the most bizarre situations?

• Skinny dipping boys

• What types of characters does Stephenie typically write about?

I also like knowing what pages are the most popular. (Usually if I'm running a giveaway, those are at the top.) When I wrote my review of Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr, I included a picture of my first tattoo - it just seemed fitting. That was months and months ago and it still gets a lot of hits. (Though I think most people are looking for the tattoo mentioned in the book and wind up seeing mine instead.)

Then there is the issue with Anonymous commenters that I know a lot of bloggers have problems with. The site also shows you exactly where each person who visits your page is from, what time, and a referring link of where they entered the page they're commenting on. So you can see if it's the exact same person over and over again. (Which in my experience has happened.) This might also come in handy for those that report abuse on their sites.

I've only used this particular website on the blog. I know there are a lot of other ones out there that do the same thing. If you use a different site for this sort of thing, please tell me. I'd love to see what the differences are.


♥amber