Hello to All my Followers and Potential Followers,

I’m back home, and getting into the routine of things. While I was away, I thought about new postings on my blog, and I’ve decided to add reviews about anything I’ve dealt with, such as books, writing, life, publishing, etc. Reviews are helpful in making decisions, so I thought posting them here would help.

This post is dedicated to a book review. Over the summer break, I was only able to read one book, Reinventing Claire by Darian Wilk. I’ll admit that I don’t read a lot of chick lit or free eBooks, which is why I had this book downloaded, but I decided to read it since I’m currently writing a women’s fiction/chick lit book and I liked the cover.

Summary:

Reinventing Claire is about a woman who thinks her marriage is forever until her husband, Charlie, decides forever is too long. He leaves her in a cold fashion and remarries her friend as she struggles to figure out what went wrong and how to live life without Charlie. She turns to her sisters, Holly and Samantha, to help her cope with the turn of events, and then she meets up with a man, Mac, who makes her realize that love does exist after divorce. Now she has a choice to make. Does she go back to Charlie, who pursues her and wants her back, or stay with the man she recently fell in love with, and who treats her well?

Review:

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. Before my writing days, I would have given this book a 2, but because I know how much time is put into writing a novel, it gets that extra star.

This book starts off strong. Claire breaks her shoe, loses her job and then her husband asks for a divorce at a restaurant, leaving her crying at the table. In the beginning, the character Claire is funny, but then things start to get repetitious. She is always turning to her sisters for support, which is great, but it seems they are there after she calls, as if they don’t have lives of their own. Claire is annoyingly needy. I thought she was a pushover and unintelligent. Maybe it’s because I like my characters to have some dignity, which doesn’t describe Claire. Another repetition that drove me crazy was that everyone was ‘smirking’. I think that word was on every page.

As I continued to read, I was waiting for Claire to reinvent herself. Instead, she continuously cried to her sisters about Charlie even when a wonderful man, Mac, enters her life. She doesn’t give Mac the respect he deserves, and he allows her to hurt him time and again, which is surprising since he is divorced, too. You would think Mac would be on-guard instead of letting Claire walk all over him while she tries to figure out whether she wants him or Charlie. That’s just a slap in the face.

Darian Wilk has her main character, Claire, rely too much on her sisters instead of bringing the book to a new level and making it about ‘Reinventing Claire’. I wanted to read about Claire’s life without Charlie, such as her job, which is mentioned but not discussed; feelings about children (whether she wants them or not. She was married for a long time to Charlie and they didn’t have children); dealing with Mac’s son’s mother; and her new home. Darian Wilk left out the reinventing part. Majority of the book is about Claire and her sisters, Claire thinking about Charlie, and her confusion about which man she wants. By the end of the book, Claire still doesn’t feel like her new home is home; there isn’t anything mentioned about children even though her new love has a son, and it takes her close to the end of the book to realize she doesn’t want Charlie. If she was reinventing herself, the book would be more about her new life, feelings about home, job, children and some definite anger toward Charlie and how he treated her. How did she get a job working from home? Does she want children, or can she have them? Where is the anger toward the way Charlie treated her in the marriage, when he left her, and his divorce demands? Very little growth is shown.

Along with characters I didn’t like or relate to, I found the dialogue annoying. When writing dialogue, you don’t always have to write, ‘he said’ or ‘she said’, especially when there are only two characters in the scene. Darian Wilk continuously wrote ‘she said/he said’, which were like speed bumps to me. Give the reader some credit. It’s all right to guide the reader at first as to who is talking, but when all dialogue tells you who is speaking, it becomes monotonous.

If you’re looking for a predictable, light romantic chick lit book, then you might enjoy Reinventing Claire by Darian Wilk. In two clicks, you can buy it on Amazon.

Chick Lit and Reinvention,

Bea

Incredible aloud and extremely revised!

It wasn’t until the fourth revision of Net Switch when I started to read the book aloud, and it made all the difference in the world. For those writers who haven’t read your written words aloud, I suggest you start. As we read, our minds can already put in words that might be missing without us even catching it. It isn’t until you read aloud that you realize something doesn’t work.

With my newest manuscript, I have found so much in revisions when I read it aloud. I am able to catch missing words, notice where it stops flowing, awkward dialogue, and believe it or not, wrong word usage. The one thing I didn’t expect to happen in reading aloud was it bringing out more personality in my characters. When I’m reading it aloud, I change my voice a bit to reflect the characters’ personality. This helps me stay focused on my characters’ personalities. It’s a great way to enhance character development.

As writers, we take bits and pieces of our life and incorporate it into our novels. I believe this is what makes our characters and stories come alive. Don’t get me wrong, a serial killer in a novel doesn’t mean the author is a serial killer, but there are parts of the author’s personality that brings the character to life. Maybe the author has a temper or knows how to keep secrets. Whatever it is, our characters grow because we have lived. Reading aloud is another dimension to giving our characters life. I can hear my characters in my head, so when I read aloud, their attitude and personality comes out. I can tweak and show off my characters more through description or dialogue.

I’m not losing my mind when I say I can hear my characters’ voices in my head. We all do it at one time or another. I’ve heard many of people say, “I can now hear my mother, telling me to…” It’s part of life, just like it is part of creating authentic characters; flawed characters struggling from self or another kind of infliction.

Like anything else in life, practice is important. Practicing the art of writing and realizing your mistakes are key in becoming a good, if not great writer. I suggest you add reading your manuscript aloud during revisions. You’ll learn so much more about your writing, your characters, and the story.

Do you read your works aloud? Do you have another revisions tip?

Reading aloud and Characters,

Bea

P.S. The picture is of a fellow author, June Kramin.

Featured Author – Dorothee Lang

Okay, I’m a little early with the next author. Please welcome our Featured Author, Dorothee Lang, who is a writer, web freelancer and traveler, and editor of Blue Print Review. Dorothee is from Germany, where I’m in the process of moving to, and has always been fascinated by roads, languages, and places abroad-themes reflected in her own work. Her book, Worlds Apart is a true story of two friends, two journeys and ten life lessons. I’m definitely interested in this one since it focuses on lessons learned from traveling.

About Worlds Apart

Smitha Murthy lives in Bangalore, India. A restless wanderer in the wilderness of this world, she worked as contributor to the Deccan Herald, as teacher in a school in China, and in the Global Markets Research department.

While Smitha Murthy is in a foreign country for the first time – teaching English at a Chinese school – she chances upon a fellow traveller in the web: Dorothee Lang, who has just returned to Europe from a journey to Asia, and is trying to find the balance between everyday joys and worries, work, and the call of the horizon.

An engaging travelogue in the form of emails unfolds. It leads from the Great Wall to Shanghai, from Munich to the Mediterranean Sea, and from curious questions ("How does one type on a Chinese keyboard?") to shared life lessons: "And that is the beauty of travel. It's a journey to discover the truths that lie underneath."

Interlaced with photos and rounded up with practical advice for travelling and teaching in Asia, WOR(L)DS APART is both an inspiring travel read, and the story of a friendship across cultures and borders.

The Start of Worlds Apart

This book started through a coincidence: after Dorothee returned from a journey through India, she posted some travel memories and photos online. A few months later, those blog posts triggered an email from the other side of the world: “Hi! I know that you will be really surprised to receive an email from this stranger. Let me explain. My name is Smitha, from Bangalore. Right now I am in the middle of a teaching adventure in China…”

After the first contact, they both wanted to learn more since they led very different lives. They had no idea that their mail conversation would continue and would turn into a book—but at some point, as the dialogue developed, crossing between cultures, revealing differences and commonalities, so they began to collect the correspondence in a file.

Choosing an Indie

For Dorothee, the indie literary scene – both the online and print one – always felt a bit like the individual travel scene: drawn to follow new trails, to explore new places, to cross borders, to share. They thought about self-publishing, too, but felt it would be good to have someone with editing skills that could advise and revise their collected notes from a fresh point of view, especially as they wrote their mails without the plan to publish them. Folded Word Press, their publisher, started as an online magazine and chapbook press of handmade books – that’s how Dorothee got to know Jessi Graustein, their editor. Jessi was also into travelling, and when she posted about the idea to invite travel-themed manuscripts, it all fell into place.

Link to purchase Worlds Apart: http://foldedbooks.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/worldsapart

Author Website: http://intersectingjourneys.wordpress.com/the-authors

I want to take this time to thank Dorothee Lang for sharing her book with us, and I’d also like to thank her for featuring Net Switch and Pay It Forward on her website.

Travels and Memories,

Bea