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Book Review: Behind Closed Doors

7/23/2018

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Initial Impression: I have been reading all of the Florida Teen Reads books for this year over the summer, so this is the first "adult" book I have read in a while. It took me about a chapter or two to change gears, but the concept was intriguing, and not at all what I was expecting. From the beginning, Paris really pulls you in and keeps you there.

Character I’d like to be when I grow up: Esther. She is bad ass in a quiet and unassuming way. I love the way she questions everything.

What I love: Grace's persistence. Her glimpses at what could have been or what she imagined could have been are endearing and make her a very real character. Millie's smarts and wits. The love Grace and Millie have for each other.

What I don’t love: Jack.

This book’s spirit animal: Those little dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that look friendly and innocuous but are vicious and deadly. Really, any animal ever that looks cute and friendly but is really like a pit viper underneath.

Where you should read this: I read this in 2 days while on a cruise with friends and family. My daughter chastised me for reading on the bus to our horseback riding excursion in the Dominican Republic, but it was a 1 hour ride each way. I took in the sights and read! Really, read it anywhere...but be prepared to ignore everything else around you. (I promise I closed it a few times and took in the scenery.)

Who should read this: Anyone who loves a good psychological thriller.

Fave quote: (I'm sure there were other great lines, but in my fervor to get to the end, this is the only time I broke to take a quick snapshot of a page.)

"We go downstairs and in the hall, he takes my coat from the cupboard and holds it open while I slip my arms into it. In the drive outside, he holds the car door for me and waits until I'm in. As he closes it behind me, I can't help thinking it's a shame he's such a sadistic bastard, because he has wonderful manners" (171).

Laugh out loud: Not that kind of book.

Cry: Um? Every turn of the page, but especially after the honeymoon. I won't give it away, but I was eager to get home.

Overall: I loved this one!

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Book Review: For Everyone

6/23/2018

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For Everyone by Jason Reynolds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My friend, Cait, handed this book to me and said, do you have five minutes? It took a few more minutes, sitting in a waiting room for a consultation on a possible heart condition- a heart attack at 39 with zero risk factors. An event that left me wondering if the time for my dreams had ended or just begun or transformed in some way.

She didn't tell me this book would speak to me. She didn't warn me I might not want to read it in public because the beauty of it might make me cry no matter how quickly I might be able to read it. Or that I would want to read it again and share it with specific people and with every student passing by to encourage them in their dreams, in their goals, in their lives.

It makes me think of Mrs. Beale, my acting teacher, colleague, friend. She read us "The Places You'll Go" our senior year with a hint of a tear in her eye. A little choked up at her hopes for our futures. It reminds me of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" in some sense, but completely different and new in another. I can see connecting these texts in the classroom and engaging students by inspiring them all while preparing them with a toolbox of practicalities with which to build up their dreams and toss the practicalities aside.

Jason Reynolds writes of creating and alludes to himself as well as anyone writing "...maybe even letters to people / you don't know but / do know you love." This is how I feel about all of my students past, present, and future. How I feel about all of the students who walk through our library stopping to get a book or to talk or maybe not even stopping at all. It is how I feel about all of the students in the halls of our Florida high school, in the halls of schools everywhere. This is the beauty that will bring a tear to your eyes, I hope. This is the beauty of embracing and chasing your dreams and spreading that passion to others to do the same because your heart holds nothing but love for them.

So, Dear Jason, I don't know much more than that either, but I am writing back never-the-less because I, too, am a Dreamer who needed some "firelight for this long and often dark road." Don't worry. I plan to share it.
Thank you.

Love,
A Dreamer

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Book Review: The Belles

6/23/2018

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The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really want to give this book a higher rating, but the first half simply dragged. I get that you need to do world building in a fantasy novel, but I feel like it could have been done amidst some additional action. The first half of the book just felt too tame. My rating was a 2-3 for the first half. By the second half of the book (actually, considerably past the halfway point), the book began to get more interesting. The reader discovers some dark secrets about the Belles and the current princess along with Camellia, and the story begins to pick up. I would rate the second half of the book a 3-4. It may just be that beauty and fashion are not my thing. I found the descriptions of dress types, fabric and makeup to be sleep inducing. However, my daughter is my opposite in this regard, and she (a 13-year-old fashionista who will watch makeup tutorials and practice until she gets it just right) may very much enjoy this book. I think I will hand it to her and see what happens. I haven't decided yet whether or not I will read the sequel, but if Paige likes this one, I will update my review.

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Book Review: Love, Hate & Other Filters

6/8/2018

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Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love when a book juxtaposes two stories side by side, even if one is infinitely more bleak than the other. Ahmed artfully places the story of a tragic act of terror taking place in the larger world outside the small suburb of Batavia, Illinois where Maya Aziz has grown up beside the intricacies of Maya's life as she sheds the layers of a life expected by her parents and seeks out her own truths. At the novel's outset, Maya relies on her video camera to reveal and record the world around her. She continuously pushes against the shelter her parents want to envelop her in, but uses her camera to shelter herself from the awkwardness of life.
Maya stands as a speck of brown in a sea of white in her school where she is the only Indian-American Muslim student. Maya's ethnicity and religion do not wholly define her, but are key elements in a story of familial obligations, discrimination, and obligations to self. Maya must make choices about the importance of family, self and to what extent one should act out of fear. Love and hatred soak into the themes of the story, and Maya alternates between extremely mature decisions and those that show she is still a teenager learning how to navigate the world.
Overall, Maya is a strong, female character with morals, empathy and drive. I would love for my daughter to have Maya as a role model--despite the continuous tension between Maya and her parents. Maya benefits from a supportive and calm aunt who I would love to go to yoga with if she were a real person.
Recommendation? This is one to read. The very serious topic of xenophobia is addressed, but not in a way that comes across as didactic. Instead, it offers a slice of life to see how one family in a small town can be impacted by prejudice. Maya's story is large, while the contrasting tale of the terrorist is small. It feels like a news story leaving an imprint in the lives of the characters, but still removed from the actual circumstances the characters face. The effect creates a blanket of realism around Maya's life and the people in it.

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Moments in Time

5/14/2016

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Here's the thing, when you lose someone you love, you heal over time, but you are never truly whole again. Everyone heals differently, but I would imagine I am not alone in having those little moments that bring that loved one back to you. Sometimes, they are light, and you smile at the memory and move on with your day. Sometimes, they catch your breath and a lump forms in your throat, but you keep your tears at bay. Sometimes, they rock you to your core and the loss you felt feels fresh and new for some inexplicable reason.

   Last night, I took my two youngest kids to see Beauty and the Beast at the high school auditorium. Most of the night, I reveled at what an amazing job our FPCHS teens were doing. Gaston captivated the audience with his antics and facial expressions--yes, Jacob, we know you are not really a misogynist, but you entertained us exceptionally well while you played the part. Belle drew us in with her melodic voice. Lumiere and Cogsworth along with the rest of the enchanted castle kept adults and children giggling throughout. I also found myself thinking about the unusual opportunity our students have to work in a professional theater. Our high school auditorium hosts professional productions on a regular basis. It is not your typical high school theater. So our television production students film, our stagecraft students construct and manage lighting and whatever else they do, and our theater students act and student direct in a setting most teens don't have the option of experiencing until later in their educations or careers.
   All was well until one moment in the musical. Belle and the Beast were sitting down, and the table that had been center stage at one point in the play had been moved to downstage left. In that moment, that one staging choice swept me back over twenty years. Because this was a high school production, it is even possible it was the same table, stuck back in the prop room and used in countless productions over the past two decades, but it didn't matter if it was the same table or not. Only the staging mattered.
   Anthony, my high school sweetheart and father of my first son, sat at a table on the very same stage in a play called Let it Rain.  I worked as a student director on that production. Anthony played the son of a psychiatrist who was trying to convince God not to flood the Earth a second time. The psychiatrist had a wife, a son, and a daughter, and during one scene, they sat in that very spot on that very stage. I couldn't focus on anything else--as if a single spotlight had been trained only on the table and all else in the theater had gone silent, leaving me alone with an empty table and the ghosts of what had once been.
   I didn't cry, although I wanted to. I didn't run out of the theater, although I wanted to. Part of me wanted them to move on to the next set change so the table would move to somewhere else. Part of me wanted them to leave the table there, no matter how ridiculous, so I could hold on to the feeling. The feeling that Anthony had just been there. It wasn't twenty plus years ago. It was a production not that long ago, and if I hurried backstage, I might just catch up with him. (I didn't actually think this, but it is the closest I can get to putting this feeling into words.) None of that is real. It is an emotion that sneaks up on you and overtakes you. You want to push it away so you can seem normal and whole, but you also want to embrace it so you can feel just a little bit longer like the one you love is still close by.
   It is difficult for me to explain this to people because there is no term for it. I am not a widow because we were high school seniors when Anthony died in a plane crash leaving me six months pregnant and alone. I've used the term soulmates, and I feel this way, but I also have a husband whom I love, and I wonder if it is possible to have more than one soulmate. I know our relationship was not perfect. We had our fights--Anthony called them debates. I even told my best friend I would break up with him if he was getting in the way of our friendship. But he,too, was my best friend. Maybe that makes my argument for multiple soulmates.
   In the end, it comes down to one word. Love. Once you love someone, a part of you is with them forever. When the one you love is gone, you tend to romanticize the past. It's human nature. I would pray you never experience a loss like I did, but we all experience loss. There are only two alternatives which could protect you--you are the one lost or you never love. I don't wish that on you either; although, when the moment hits, you may feel like either of those options would have been kinder.
   Instead, I share this. Know that others share the feelings you may have--but they are yours and yours alone. The loss your heart holds on to is both a burden and a blessing. It may bring you to your knees from time to time, but it shows you loved, and it is a living memorial to the one you loved. So, bring on the random staging in life that will carry an echo of the past into your present and the ghost of a lost love brushing past your soul. Revel in it for a moment to remember the feel of that love. Then let the next set change take place, and remember to give the loves you have around you a squeeze.

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The Lottery Experiment

2/27/2016

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Others have done it before me. From my initial Googling, I found a few people who did a scratch off lottery experiment using $1 scratch off tickets. I know the house always wins, but I keep finding myself going through spurts of playing, and when I have a spurt, I feel lucky. I buy a ticket; I win; I buy more tickets until the streak ends. I feel like I usually end up on top, but I never really keep track. I have fun, and I only spend money from my weekly spending money (we use an envelope system). In the lottery experiments I checked out, one man bought a $1 scratch off ticket every day for a month. He had some wins, but ended up down. Another man bought 100 $1 scratch offs all at once. He won more than the first man (apparently you have a better chance this way), but he still ended up down.
Am I really lucky or do I just fool myself into buying tickets every now and then? Only one way to find out. I need to keep track and do my own lottery experiment. Although I have a feeling I will not want to play again when this is over, I've decided to buy the equivalent of one $5 ticket a week for the rest of the year. I started the first week of February. My first three tickets lost, and I wanted to give up on my lottery experiment already. Instead, I decided to save my $5 for four weeks and buy four tickets in a row.
One of the lottery experiments I read donated all of the winnings to charity. I have decided to donate 20% of what I win and 20% of what I spend to charity. So, in addition to spending $5 on a lottery ticket each week, I am setting aside $5 in savings to cover my donation and give me a little reward at the end. Since I didn't start in January, I will end up with $240 in savings at the end of my experiment. I will also end up with a minimum donation of $48.
There are a couple of charities I am considering including Alpha Pregnancy Center (a non-denominational Christian based pregnancy crisis center in our area) and the Shriner's Hospital. As a child from a low-income family of five, when they discovered I had scoliosis, the Shriner's Hospital in Tampa, FL provided my medical care free of charge. I've never utilized Alpha Pregnancy Center, but having started motherhood as a single/pseudo-widowed teenage mother, I have a place in my heart for women who are in need of support during and after pregnancy.
If I win nothing in the next year, then I will donate $48 to one of these organizations (in addition to the regular donations we make to Alpha Pregnancy Center). If I win enough to increase the donation size to at least $100, I may split the donation. Either way, we'll see how it goes.

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Book 2 is out!

2/20/2016

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For those of you who don't already know, book 2 in the Jade Hale series, Dreams in the Midst, has been released. Both books are now available on Amazon.com for $2.99 as e-books. They are also both available in print.

I'm very excited to see how book 2 does. There was so much time in between the first two books that book 1's momentum has just about vanished. However, I am just happy that these books are out there in the world. I know I have become a better writer, and with each book I finish, I am closer to the dream of becoming a full-time writer. Even if it doesn't happen until I am officially "retired" from my day job, I know the day will one day arrive when I can claim my only career is that of a writer.

Now comes the hard part--really focusing on marketing the first two books while continuing to write. I recently started a Specialist degree at FSU (August). I finished my first two classes without writing anything not related to work or school. I racked up student loan debt. So I stopped. I am too grown to amass debt to go to school for something that, although I love it, is really my secondary dream. Writing MUST take a front seat in my life at some point, right? Obviously, God and my family are also up there, so unless my vehicle is going to take up the whole road, I've got to draw a line and throw some things into the back.

So here I go, writing every day, and focusing on what is important today. Goal? I'd like to finish and release Guardians in the Midst in one year or less from the date of this post. Hold me to it!

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We Got a Dog

11/18/2015

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So when we got home today, I found the new puppy (Luci/Daisy/maybe we'll decide on a name soon) in her crate. She had an accident. She pulled the sheet which was draped over the crate into the crate...not sure how she did that...and her accident was somewhat hidden. She also tore the plastic tray under her blanket into many pieces...it was 15 years old...but still...how? $42 to replace the plastic. I threw the sheet out and salvaged the blanket. She didn't tear up any of her toys.

Then the kids and I bathed her. She likes baths. Then we dried her. She liked that, too. Then I got out the blow dryer, and she basked in that. She followed us around the house the rest of the day, dropping her ball in my lap, whining at the door when the kids left with my mom, and just being cute.

My thoughts? She was originally named Valentine, and she was born on Christmas Eve, so her first owner's probably got her around Valentine's Day. They gave her up because they had to move. (No judgement here. Sometimes people think they can care for an animal when they can't. Sometimes life circumstances change in ways you never imagined.)

Then she spent a little time at the Humane Society where another family adopted her. They had a bulldog, and the two dogs didn't get along, so after a couple of weeks, it was back to the Humane Society where we found her. So, in her first year of life, she has lived in five different places. She may have some anxiety from this. So, we bought the $42 plastic tray. We cleaned things and her up. Tomorrow is another day. She is now a part of the Reckenwald family.

As I write, with a plate of spaghetti on my desk, she lays on the floor by my feet. She wants to play, but she is patiently waiting for me to finish or for someone else to come home. After whatever trials await us, I think Luci/Daisy/Valentine is going to be a good dog.

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Do you want to run?

4/1/2015

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    I love the endorphins you get from running! I feel amazing. And exercise leads to writing. Writing leads to feeling great. It's a circle of positivity and creativity I don't want to escape.
    A few weeks ago, I lamented to my husband, "I want to run."
    I have scoliosis. My back hurts when I do high-impact exercises. I tried Beachbody's Focus T25. I worked through the back pain, but then my knees started to hurt. After weeks of taking it easy, I visited my physician who explained what I had done to my knees with all the lunges. Bottom line: it would take a few months to heal. I gave up and resigned myself to bicycling, which I also love.
    But our middle child, our youngest son, has taken to running 5ks. We show up at the crack of dawn, and I cheer on the sidelines, waiting for him to come into view and cross the finish line. I watch all the runners, and remember the season of track I ran in high school. I think of Jade running and wonder idly if I am living vicariously through my fictional character.
    So when I told Jon I wanted to run, I was just expressing my frustration at something I didn't think I would ever really do again. His response? "So run."
    I decided I would do it. I would push through the pain to experience the exhilaration and power of running. I had one more obstacle to cross. My chest had been hurting. I chalked it up to heartburn or stress, but decided at my husband's urging to see my doctor once more. After several tests, we determined I have mitral valve prolapse--common in women as we age...also not a huge risk. It turns out running could help lessen the pain I had been experiencing.
    I downloaded the Couch to 5K free app, and started running. Today was Day 2 of Week 2. I haven't been at it long, but I can feel a change. My workouts are more walking than running right now, but when I push myself to get out there, I can feel my energy and motivation increase. Today, I ran/walked 3.06 miles in 40 minutes and 10 seconds. It's not great, but it's a start. And I'm writing. I love the endorphins running brings! I feel amazing!

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Dreams in the Midst Cover Reveal

2/17/2014

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The sequel to my first novel, Flames in the Midst, has been a long time coming. I am nearing the 70% complete mark on my rough draft of Dreams in the Midst, and it should be coming to a close soon. I don't want to rush, but it is taking much longer than I would like. I guess being Mom to children in 3rd, 6th, and 12th grade and having a full-time job in a Middle School does take a little bit of my time. (But come on, there are 36 hours in a day, right?)

Still, lately I have been engrossed in some self-indulgent, self-reflecting. I am my best self when I am writing (and exercising...something about healthy living, although watching what I eat does not come into play). I am working out a plan to make both of these things (writing and exercising, not healthy eating) a part of my daily routine. I'll give you an update when I am up and running with the plan.

While I wait for the plan to transpire, here is to hoping that having a cover ready to go will propel my actual writing (and then editing) forward. I realistically hope to have a release of Book 2 in the Jade Hale Series by June. (Maybe sooner...cross your fingers, but don't hold your breath...it's an awful long time to go without breathing!)

In the meantime, thanks a million to Mike (owner and guru of Musion Creative, and long time friend, practically sibling). You have made an amazing cover to follow the first, and I can't wait to see what the third will look like (Yes, I am already plotting and planning the skeleton of a third book...no time to flesh it out yet, I'm still writing the 2nd one, after all!).

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A teacher, a writer, a mother, a wife and a friend. All people wear what feels like a million different hats at any given time. In this place, I choose to have freedom. That doesn't mean I'm not still juggling my hats; it just means I choose which of them I balance on my head as I write.

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