Day: May 14, 2014

Book Brief: Bone Girl

Bone GirlBone Girl
by Annette Drake
Genre: Fiction – coming of age
Word count: 42K

A lonely girl learns to play a discarded trombone. An abused stallion learns to trust. Together, they save their world.

Eleven-year-old Josey Miller knows two things: it’s her fault Mama left, and she will do anything to coax her back.

Mrs. Casey, the new music teacher, starts a band at Bennett Springs Middle School, and Josey sees it as her chance to finally belong to something and convince Mama to visit for her concerts. The only problem: there’s no money for a clarinet, what with Dad laid off and fighting to keep their farm.

Things start looking up when Grandpa Joe gives Josey an old trombone to play, and Mr. McInerny starts boarding his high-dollar Arabian stallion with Dad. Nobody can train horses like Josey’s father. And that’s good because Chief is dangerous.

But when her father and the stallion go missing during a 50-mile endurance ride in the Ozark Mountains, can Josey bring them safely home?

This book is available from Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. Continue reading “Book Brief: Bone Girl”

Special Mother’s Day Flash Fiction Vote!

tulipsIt’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time to choose from among the entries in our special Mother’s Day flash fiction challenge. We got some nice entries this week!

Remember, the winning entries will all be included in the next edition of the IU Flash Fiction Anthology.

Check out this week’s entries here. Make your decision, then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

Voting polls close Thursday at 5 PM Pacific time.

Which story about mothers did you think was the best?

  • Laurie Boris (33%, 11 Votes)
  • John Kenny (21%, 7 Votes)
  • Carolyn Steele (15%, 5 Votes)
  • AL Kaplan (15%, 5 Votes)
  • Melissa Bowersock (9%, 3 Votes)
  • JT Sather (3%, 1 Votes)
  • Venkatesh Iyer (3%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 33

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NOTE: Entrants whose submissions exceed the 250 word limit are eliminated from the poll.

Playing With Character Interviews

Mastermind-chairYou are unlikely to recall my wail of despair a few months ago regarding making the switch from non-fiction to fiction. Just in case you have been fretting on my behalf however, it’s sort of going ok, thanks. And I’ve had an idea. I don’t actually know yet whether I’m a plotter or a pantser so I have been trying to work with a few ‘rules’, to see where they lead me. If they go nowhere, I will stop trying to plot and begin to just pants. Which is kinda rude if you’re a Brit. Where was I? Oh yes…

I was reading RJ’s brilliant post about story bibles last month and followed her trail back to Arline Chase’s post about character creation. I dutifully set about fleshing out my people in the manner described. I set up a spreadsheet, honestly I did. It had all the stuff on it that you need to know about your people, their motivation, their challenges, their appearance, childhood, food choices, the lot. And I sat and looked at it for ages. I put two characters’ names into the right spots and stared at the empty boxes. It felt like those awful ‘comprehension’ exercises that people in their late 50s who were educated in the UK may recall. You read a passage from a book, which you might have quite enjoyed, but then you had to spoil all that by proving to someone else that you understood what it meant. Continue reading “Playing With Character Interviews”