Guest Post: Revealing Hamilton by Sarah J. Carr

Today's guest is Sarah J. Carr, author of Revealing Hamilton. Sarah Carr is a novelist who can be found most evenings with a cup of tea in-hand and her imagination racing from plot to plot. When away from her work, part of her mind is constantly brainstorming her next story and she always has writing paraphernalia within reach. She wrote stories as a child, but became more serious about her passion during her twenties. In her spare time, she likes to read, splash in mud puddles, smell bookstores and eat Honeycrisp apples. Yearly, she participates in NaNoWriMo and has mentored others through the program. Due to her dedication to National Novel Writing Month, she is part of an amazing writing group.
Born and raised in Washington State, Sarah still resides in the area. Her life is richly filled with her supportive, yet swashbuckling husband and their golden Nugget.

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Sarah is here to share a little insight into her main character, Amelia Hamilton.

                    (Blog Entry From Amelia Hamilton’s Perspective)

How do you tell customers that you’re raping their checkbooks on behalf of your boss?

Dear Loyal Customers,
I regret to inform you that due to the inclement weather, Ellie’s is raising their prices. In this extreme time, this is necessary due to supply and

Crap. The supply and demand bit wasn’t going to work. I didn’t buy it and didn’t expect the customers at Ellie’s to fall for it either.

Dear Patrons,
We’re sorry to say prices have gone up. The severe storm has caused us to re-evaluate our menu.

This wasn’t working either.

Damn Lorenzo. My stupid boss always gave me the most undesirable tasks and raising prices twice within the same day when we were the only restaurant open in town didn’t sit well with me. As if making me deliver meals on roller skates wasn’t bad enough, now I could add “lying” to my resume. How do you nicely say, “My boss is a greedy sleaze-face who would take bread from your starving child”? With my accident-prone nature, platters and glasses were as good as weapons in my hand and I fantasized about lobbing a plate right at Lorenzo’s forehead.

I didn’t know what else to do. Needing this job meant doing whatever Lorenzo wanted. I couldn’t get fired. Connor would be pissed and I didn’t want to envision the reprimand I would receive. Thinking about my drunken boyfriend, a wave of melancholy sadness washed over me. When did the need to require alcohol begin? I couldn’t even remember. It was pathetic. I could tell the brand of Scotch he drank by smelling his breath. I couldn’t afford to live on my own and stupidly, I gave up the lease on my inexpensive apartment. In retrospect, I relocated to become his maid. Bad move on my end.

Ugh. I was losing track of my “task” and the diner’s door would open for dinner in less than twenty minutes. I needed to act fast. Maybe I shouldn’t have turned down Donovan’s offer for help. No. He was my co-worker and my best friend. I needed to keep him out of Lorenzo’s web of lies. Besides, he was starting to give me the goo-goo eyes again. I wished he’d stop pining after me. We were friends, nothing more.

Was this really everything there was to my life? Go to school. Go home. Go to work. Go home. It was a perpetual revolving door and it was getting me nowhere.

Sometimes I wished another world would swallow me whole. Sadly, that would remain a fantasy.

I’ve got to get back to lying to customers….

Thank you for stopping by, Sarah!

Guest Post: 77 Days in September by Ray Gorham

Today's guest is Ray Gorham, author of 77 Days in September. Ray Gorham was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1966. Prior to settling in the United States in 1991, Ray had the good fortune to live in a variety of locations around the world. Years in Australia, England, Lebanon, Japan, Canada, and the United States all helped shape his background, worldview, and appreciation for other people and cultures.
Upon graduating from college with a degree in Accounting, Ray decided he couldn’t foresee spending a future studying tax law and sitting in front of a computer all day, so he took a management position with Wal-Mart and spent the next 10 years in retail management where he had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of employees and thousands of customers on a weekly basis. After growing tired of working for large corporations, Ray next opened and tried running a restaurant but decided after a year that the restaurant business wasn’t for him either. From there, he found a small, log home business for sale in Montana in 2006 and settled in for what he hoped would be a long-term career.
When the construction industry slowed down in 2008, Ray knew he was going to have a lot of time on his hands, so he determined to cross off one of the items on his bucket list—writing a novel. After thousands of hours of writing and editing, he had the final draft of his first novel, a 108,000-word story of a husband struggling to return to his family after a major terrorist attack incapacitates the country. While agents and publishers have passed on his efforts to this point, Ray has found significant success in digital format, selling over 10,000 copies of his work.
http://www.facebook.com/ray.gorham
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/77-Days-In-September/192933520729507
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/67990
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/77-Days-in-September-ebook/dp/B0052T1O6S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312412424&sr=8-1

Take it away, Ray!

                                                               Living With Your Editor
As I came to the conclusion of the second draft of my book, I decided I had probably better have someone with better English skills than myself do a little bit of editing. In school I had always been a good reader and decent speller, and strong in math and science, but for some reason the rules of English, beyond the basics, never made sense to me. Fortunately, I have a very talented wife.
Feeling pretty good about my book, I approached her with a 2” stack of paper (I had managed to talk her into editing). “Prepare to be amazed,” I said (or something equally witty, I’m sure). She stuck her hand out for the manuscript. “I’m pretty busy, but I’ll get to it as soon as I can,” she replied. From the expression on her face, I could tell she wasn’t expecting to be amazed.
Being in need of affirmation after such a long project, I was very anxious to get her feedback. It was probably only a week, but it seemed like a month before she announced she had the first chapter done. I eagerly snatched the papers from her hand, expecting to see smiley faces on each page, an occasional missing comma fixed, and a mushy love note at the end of the chapter telling me how wonderful my writing was and how glad she was she married me.
She turned to go make dinner and missed seeing my legs buckle as I glanced down at the first page. Red ink everywhere! I stumbled to the bedroom and fell into my writing chair. With shaking hands I fanned through the 20 or so pages in my hand, more red than black. My head spun. I had thought my wife was pretty smart, now I wasn’t so sure.
Commas, apostrophes, possessives, verbiage, wording—you name it, she nailed me on it. I opened the document on my computer and started making corrections. Okay, maybe I need a comma there. I guess that word fits better. I’ll trust you on this one. By the end of the night the first chapter was done, and it was looking and sounding quite a bit better than it had hours earlier.
We did make it through the book, and the final product is much, much better than my original version. We liked the process so much that we went through it two more times for the book (just kidding about the like part). In my defense, I can proudly report that there were some pages towards the end of the book that didn’t need any editing, but they were few and far between.
I learned a few things from the process. A second set of eyes on your work is essential, because no matter how thorough you think you’ve been, you’ll miss a ton. Editing isn’t personal. Rules are rules, and no matter how good I think something is, it needs to be said the right way. Also, English can be learned—she’s been through part of my second book and has commented that I’ve improved greatly on the technical side of writing (hooray for me!).
Finally, I’ve realized why we never hear about people falling in love with their editor. Agent? Yes. Bodyguard? Yes. Backup dancer? Yes. Director? Yes. Fans? Yes. Editor? Not on your life. I don’t think it is humanly possible to fall madly in love with someone who points out everything you do wrong. Fortunately for me, I had fallen in love with her years before, so we didn’t have that hurdle to cross. So my life, and my writing, is much better for it.

Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Book Details:
Divergent
By Veronica Roth
Genre: Young Adult
Published 2011, Katherine Tegen Books
Hardback, 487 pages
ISBN: 9780062024022


Synopsis:

          In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her.
Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

So this book is a bit of a recycled plot - whether or not Roth was aware that it resembled Hunger Games. Honestly, though, I really don't care. The book was entertaining, the world-building was still unique, and I can't wait to read the next one.
I found the idea of dividing society into factions based on a specific personality trait interesting in that I wanted much greater detail about each faction, much more so than the main character, Tris, was willing to provide. Tris is a teenager being forced into making the greatest decision of her life, and there just is not time for dwelling on the details. I found the simulation that is designed to help decide the faction of each individual too simplistic. Human beings are complex creatures, and an individual's personal prerogatives can change very easily from year to year. Abnegation, Amity, Erudite, Candor, Dauntless, or the rebellious Divergent - I could easily fit into any of these at different times in my life. The characters in the book are no different.
Much of the book centers around Tris undergoing the trials of becoming Dauntless, with details of the other factions trickling in, as well as the state of the political current. While this world of factions was originally created with the best of intentions, corruption has set in at all levels, and Tris's world will be toppled by the end of the book. While her trials are a journey of self-discovery, she is also forced to grow up quickly to protect the people she loves.
The only thing I would have liked to end differently is what happens to Tris's mother - with everything that we discover about her, she could have been a fountain of fascinating plot elements. Unfortunately, in most YA books, parental figures rarely stick around. Hopefully, I will get my hands on Insurgent soon!

The Cover: I love the image on the cover, though it is not explained right away in the book. It's both exciting and mysterious, even if it does remind me of the Hunger Games book covers.


First Line: "There is one mirror in my house."
An interesting way to begin the book, and it perplexes me enough to keep reading.


Favorite Quote: "Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now."

Read For: Young Adult Challenge, Dystopia Challenge