Gina G writes

 The Writing Journey I had the weekend off. I spent half of my time combing through four chapters in my completed novel. This is phase four of the writing journey. Phase one is getting the story down. Phase two is fleshing it out. Phase three is making sure everything flows. I let the book sit for a month before I went back to it. On Friday, I sat down and prepared myself for phase four, combing through each sentence, paragraph, page, and chapter. I read the page out loud. I read it backwards. Was there repetition? Did I use clichés? Did I have a hook? Page one is very important. You have to hook the reader and make them want to turn the page. You need to introduce the setting, the timeframe, and the main character. I moved on to the second page, where I introduced the "inciting incident." In this story, it is the introduction of a very bad, messed-up man. He is going to set things in motion that my main character and his best friend will have to right. I went through the sam...

 November Musings November is my grateful month. I love everything fall. I start celebrating the season in August. All of the summer decorations are replaced with autumn colors, and my all-time favorite Holiday, Halloween, arrives in October. I will admit that my Halloween decorations stay up far longer than my Christmas decorations, but then again, I'm not a fan of Christmas. It's too garish, too pushy, and too commercial.  Many people move straight to Christmas after Halloween, but I like to keep the holly jolly crap as far away as possible, which is a challenge given that I work in retail. I want to give November its due. This is a time of reflection, of relaxing over a mug of warm coffee while listening to music and reading a good book. This is a time for walking under the changing colors of the leaves and feeling the crisp chill in the air. It is finally (here)flannel shirt weather, and I will confess, there is nothing sexier (in my opinion) than a person wearing flannel....

 The "Q" Books Book 1: The Night Child by Anna Quinn I went with this one because the setting was in Seattle. :) Brown teaches high school. One afternoon, after she has dismissed her last class of the day for the Thanksgiving Holiday, she sees a disembodied face. She sees it again when she is out with her family celebrating the holiday. It's the sad face of a little girl. But who is she? And why does she make Nora feel trapped? She meets with a neurologist and a psychiatrist. Why is she getting these flashes of a Valentine's dress? What happened in her past? As Nora digs deeper, she confronts the lost child she once was, embraces her, and learns the sordid, horrible truth she tried to bury.  As the story progresses, a terrible secret is discovered--a secret that pushes Nora toward an even deeper psychological breakthrough. It is a story of resilience, hope, and the mind, body, and spirit's ability to save itself. It examines the impact of traumatic childhood exper...