Follow Friday & In My Mailbox

 

1. (Required) Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host { Parajunkee.com } and any one else you want to follow on the list
2. (Required) Follow our Featured Bloggers -We Fancy Books & Unrequited Desire
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing. LINKY TOOLS IS BACK! I paid for the subscription - finally so now you can add the links to your own post!!! To add the code to your own post click on GET THE CODE here under the list of names.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "HI"
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers
7. If you're new to the follow friday hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

Q. Name 3 authors that you would love to sit down and spend an hour or a meal with just talking about either their books or get advice on writing from?

Well the first author comes to mind immediately, Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling and Fire. I went to one of her talks where she discussed her writing methods and I would love to have more time to sit down and talk about it in more detail. We seem to have similar methods but hers result in books and mine result in piles of notebooks with half finished stories.

The second author would probably have to be Laurell K. Hamilton, she is so in tune with her characters, I would love to hear how she gets so inside their heads and still manages to get it down on paper. Of course, I also love her books and gobble them up!

I think the third author I would love to sit down with would be Kenneth Thomasma, he was the first (besides my parents and teachers) to recognize my writing.  I would love to thank him for that recognition and tell him how whenever I start to wonder if I really can do it I think back to that day.

I went to an exclusive writing workshop when I was in 5th Grade, only 3 kids from each school in the district were able to go. I was one of the kids from my school selected.  Towards the end of the day he gave us all a line and asked us to write a story based on that line (I believe the line was something like "you are back country skiing with a group of friends and suddenly an avalanche starts taking your friends with it, you are the only one left who can get help, what happens next") I actually wasted most of the time he gave us to write, imagining what I would write and in the last minutes I filled the little card they gave us with a really suspenseful bit about skiing down the mountain, with tree branches grabbing my coat and scratching my face, and seeing a clearing ahead in the trees and thinking it was the lodge but only to find out it was just a meadow.  He chose a few winners and mine was one of those winners, he read it aloud in front of the whole workshop. It is still one of the most significant moments to me.



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In My Mailbox is a weekly event hosted by The Story Siren that I have decided to participate in.

How IMM works:
Make your own IMM post! You can post about books you've bought, gotten from the library, received for review... books don't have to arrive via your mailbox.
I post every week, but you don’t have to. You can do one week out of the month or every other week it’s up to you.
You don't have to call your post In My Mailbox... (some people don't even have mailboxes!)
I post my IMM on Sunday, but choose a day of the week that works for you.
Once you have your IMM posted, come back to The Story Siren on Sunday and add your link to the list.
Try to post a comment on other bloggers IMM posts. I don’t expect you to post a comment on every single one, but pick a few!

All book bloggers are welcome, while I’d like to keep the theme to YA literature it’s NOT a requirement.

There is no right or wrong way to do In My Mailbox, you can vlog, you can take fun picture, you can use the books cover art, it’s up to you!

Most importantly HAVE FUN!

 

 

I was fairly good this week, I only purchase two books (even though I am on a book buying ban).

 

Synopsis from Goodreads: "Helen Brown had no intention of adopting a pet when she brought her sons, Sam and Rob, to visit a friend's new kittens. But the runt of the litter was irresistible, with her overlarge ears and dainty chin.

When Cleo was delivered weeks later, she had no way of knowing that her new family had just been hit by a tragedy. Helen was sure she couldn't keep her-until she saw something she thought had vanished from the earth forever: her son's smile. The reckless, rambunctious kitten stayed.

 

I picked this one up at the pet store while buying Valerie's Birthday present (yes my cat gets a birthday present), she turned 8 on Friday last week.  I saw this book and of course am a huge sucker for black cats and it sounded like a touching story.

 

Synopsis from Goodreads: "Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't."

 

The movie for this one looks fantastic so of course I had to get the book to read before seeing the movie!