Book Review: The Fourth Wall by Elizabeth Maria Naranjo

About the book:
The Fourth Wall is a fabulously written first novel. When Marin was little and monsters chased her through nightmares, she learned to weave her own dreams. Her mother called the lucid dreaming a gift, and when an accident takes her mother and leaves her baby brother an empty shell, Marin uses this gift to spin a new reality for herself. One without time or sorrow. A world without memory.

But just when Marin thinks she’s safe in her make-believe fantasy world, the monsters come back and her dream turns to a nightmare. Something in the dream doesn’t want Marin to wake up. In order to heal herself and her family, Marin must face the truth she’s forgotten and conquer what lies behind the fourth wall.

Genre: Young Adult, Fiction


Publisher: WiDo Publishing (June 10, 2014)
ISBN: 978-1-937178-51-2




Twitter hashtag: #FourthWall

About the Author: 

Elizabeth grew up writing short stories and bad poetry before escaping the cold winters of Wyoming and settling in the Sonoran Desert. She lives in Tempe, Arizona with her husband and two children, Abigail and Gabriel. She still loves to write, but fortunately gave up on poetry. The Fourth Wall is her first novel.

Elizabeth’s creative nonfiction has appeared in Brain, Child, Phoenix New Times, Literary Mama and Babble.com, and is forthcoming in Brevity. Elizabeth is also an award-winning fiction writer; her short stories have been published in The Portland Review, Hospital Drive, SLAB Literary Magazine, and Bartleby Snopes. Links to her work and information on classes/critiques can be found at http://www.elizabethmarianaranjo.com/.



Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/elizabethmarianaranjo
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.m.naranjo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/emarianaranjo

Review:
Her mother once called it a gift. Ten years ago, when Marin was five, a little girl with a big imagination and a closet full of monsters. At night she could dream them to life. She watched them creep from corners and spun them down through in her consciousness in all their wretched glory.

From the opening pages of The Fourth Wall, the author's powerful use of imagery drew me in. I felt like I could physically feel the ache of loss permeating through Marin's entire being. I wanted to weep for both Marin and her father, worn thin by their circumstances but determined to care for Michael, Marin's brother who withdrew into himself emotionally and physically after the death of Marin's mother.

For the most part, The Fourth Wall alternates between chapters reflecting the dream world Marin has created for herself (this is where the descriptions are the most vivid, with a cougar, an elf, a foreboding forest and crashing waves) and what's happening in the real world as Marin navigates her way through a new school, determined to keep to herself and help out at home as much as she can. Soon, though, much to Marin's chagrin, she is invited to attend group therapy sessions with a counselor and several of her classmates at school (including a charming boy named Frankie), and both of Marin's worlds begin to shift and change.

Both Marin and her father, Tom, are very realistic and likable characters. In fact, what I liked most about the books was the character development. The main characters are well-rounded and you know enough about them that you can actually close your eyes and picture what they might look like. I also found myself rooting for Michael to get better and start showing signs of progress, and when I actually found out what was causing him to withdraw, it was a total surprise to me and one that I did not see coming. The Fourth Wall is classified as YA but it has a universal appeal. I can easily see both adults and teens picking it up and finding themselves mesmerized in the story.

*Giveaway!* I have one e-book copy of The Fourth Wall to give away to a lucky reader! Check out the Rafflecopter form below for easy ways to earn entries into the drawing.

To see where else Elizabeth is stopping on her tour and other places to win a copy of the book, visit this page.

a Rafflecopter giveaway





Product Review for Fireflies: A Writer's Notebook

As the editor of a regional parenting magazine, I am inundated with requests for book and product reviews. But very rarely does something grab my attention as much as the press release for Fireflies: A Writer's Notebook.

Inspirational writer and teacher Coleen Murtagh Paratore wants to encourage writers of all ages, whether they are students, teachers or parents. With her latest release, Fireflies: A Writer’s Notebook (Little Pickle Press), she helps prove that if you can dream it, you can write about it. In the introduction to the notebook, Paratore reminisces about chasing fireflies in the dark during her childhood summers, and says that . . . “ideas are just like fireflies. You never know when they will flicker. That’s what makes writing so fascinating. Ideas surprise us the same way fireflies spark and we must catch them, fast as we can, before they fly away.”

I often get caught up in the cycle of either writing and editing fiction or writing magazine copy, and it can leave me feeling like both my energy and creativity are zapped when I'm under a tight deadline. I can honestly tell you my fingers are itching to pick this journal off my pile of typewritten article notes and have a little fun with these prompts.

Fireflies is full of colorful design, writing prompts and inspirational quotes from other writers such as Kate DiCamillo. There are sections where you can record emotions, dreams, curiosities, top ten lists of your favorite things, traditions, birth and deaths, hellos and goodbyes, and so much more. It makes a great gift for writers both young and old.

Fireflies: A Writer’s Notebook is available at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and everywhere books are sold.

The Summertime Writing Life

The past month has been slightly insane, so I apologize for not giving this blog the attention it deserves. I always forget how hectic the last two weeks of school get with various special events, last day of school parties and field trips and scrambling at the last minute to get our teachers some well-deserved end-of-year gifts. To top it all off, we got a puppy on Memorial Day weekend, and I'd forgotten how much time is spent potty-training, making sure she doesn't electrocute herself on a power cord, and trying to prevent her from having an accident on the one small rug left in the downstairs part of the house (of course)!

The newest member of our family on the left.

I always have a hard time balancing having my kids home over the summer with completing my contract work and sending out new article queries. This year I'm also revising both a YA and MG novel so I can have the opening pages critiqued at our local SCBWI Conference in mid-September, which I don't get paid for, unfortunately. I really don't have the option of sending my kids to camps all summer long so I can work (camps for two kids can get expensive) but I do try to send them to at least two camps so I can meet pressing deadlines and attend meetings. The rest of the time we work out an arrangement where I try to work during the morning hours and we do extracurricular activities like the library, piano lessons, playdates or the pool in the afternoons. Because they are now both 8 and 11, it works out pretty well for us. They like having the time to relax at home, and I like not having to shuttle them back and forth to school and pack lunches for a few months.

I started my freelance writing career by writing about my kids, so I was excited to get the chance to interview Kerrie McLoughlin,  a fellow mom writer and author of the e-book "Make Money to Write About Your Kids: Get Published in Parenting and Family Magazines" over at WOW! Women on Writing. It helped motivate me to begin querying regional parenting magazines again with my own list of reprints.

Happy (Summertime) Writing!

In the (Freelancing) Field

I watch a lot of crime shows, and I always love when the agents say they are out "in the field." Sometimes my work as a freelance writer takes me out in the field, too, although it's much different in my case. I'm usually not out there covering hard news but meeting with people for human interest profiles.

This past week I was working on a local article about families with unusual pets. I met with a family that runs a business presenting wildlife encounters to local schools and the community. I got to meet their enormous animal family, and it was such a great experience. It really helps a story come alive when I get to meet with the people (or in the case, animals!) I'm writing about in person. This family has probably more than 25 animals from varying species. Remember the blue Macaws from the movie "Rio?" I got up close and personal with a red Macaw, who had gorgeous rainbow-colored feathers but was a little hesitant to show off for me. I also got to meet four very sweet and sassy female Italian greyhounds (can I get one now?), two degas (cousins of the chinchillas), two chinchillas, a Blue Tongue Skink, an Argentinian Tegu and an Emperor Scorpion from Africa. Who do you think this girl was most afraid of? If you guessed the scorpion, you would be right. I grew up in Texas and never had a friendly encounter with a scorpion, so I was too hesitant to hold it.

All in all I had a great experience and I feel like the extra time I took meeting this family really added some color and descriptive details to my article.

Have you been on any interesting assignments lately?

Confessions of a "Fault"-aholic

It's been awhile since I've been so excited about the movie adaptation of a book, but I'm officially giddy over the anticipation of the upcoming film "The Fault in Our Stars."

As always, I was a good year and half behind everyone else in reading John Green's book about two teens who meet and fall in love in a cancer support group. I kept hearing all the hype about the book, and thought to myself, "There's no way that's going to end well, so why should I even bother?"

I'm glad I bothered. I've read other books by John Green, but this one is by far my favorite, and it all has to do with the character of Augustus Waters. From the very first time he spoke in the book, I realized that Gus was the type of guy I had been searching for all through my teen and young adult years--a guy who could hold his own in a conversation and not say "huh?" when I used a word in a sentence that he had never heard before. I liked the book so much that I forced my husband (who does not read novels at all normally) to read it, and he finished it in two days.

It doesn't hurt that "The Fault in Our Stars" contains some of the wittiest dialogue I've seen in years, and I've read a lot of books. As I was reading the book on my Kindle, I found myself highlighting like crazy, and I'm so glad I did. Many of the lines I highlighted are used in the  movie and I was thrilled to see them in the movie trailer. Here are a few lines from the book that really caught my attention, and made me either laugh out loud, cry, or do both at the same time:

Kaitlyn: "Oh, I got over it, darling. It took me a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints and forty minutes to get over that boy."

Gus: "You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are."

Hazel: "As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."

You can find more great quotes from the movie on Pinterest.

And if I haven't convinced you by now to read the book and/or watch the movie, here is the extended movie trailer (you might want to grab a hankie first).

Find the Best Posting Schedule For You with Avoid Social Media Time Suck

If you're anything like me, you probably think posting about your work occasionally on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Facebook will get the job done. I often tell myself that the fact that I have any sort of social media presence at all is helpful to my platform as a freelance writer and blogger, but I'm starting to think differently. I'll admit that, working from home, I use Facebook mostly in lieu of a virtual watercooler whenever I get bored, think of something zippy to say or need advice about something which may or may not be related to writing and publishing.

Everything I've learned about social media over the past five or six years has mostly been self-taught and through books and blogs I follow. Because of this, I was excited to get the chance to work with author and social media strategist Frances Caballo on her WOW! Women on Writing blog tour for Avoid Social Media Time Suck: A Blueprint for Writers To Create Online Buzz for Their Books and Still Have Time to Write.

One of the chapters I found to be most helpful includes examples of posting schedules designed to help writers promote themselves while still having time to do all the other things we have to do, such as write our books, promote our work, pitch articles, follow up on queries, and so on.

Caballo points out that it is important to know when to post because you want to make sure your updates are seen. For example, it's best to schedule messages on Facebook between the hours of 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. If you're posting on Twitter, four posts a day are optimal. The real action on LinkedIn occurs during the week, etc.

For writers who are looking to increase their exposure and marketing messages, Avoid Social Media Time Suck includes handy charts with basic, moderate and advanced posting schedules, as well as which apps work best for finding new followers and analyzing your social media stats. I'm definitely tucking this information away for the day when (not if! I'm being optimistic!) I publish my first book. I highly encourage you to check out Avoid Social Media Time Suck, as well as Frances Caballo's other books designed to help writers navigate social media.

Intrigued? Enter to win your own copy of the book on Goodreads during the month of April.
                                                                               

Avoid Social Media Time Suck: A Blueprint for Writers To Create Online Buzz for Their Books and Still Have Time to Write

By Frances Caballo

Social media is no longer an option for writers--it is a required element of every author’s platform. If you’ve been avoiding Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networks because you think tweeting and posting will take large chunks of time out of your day and leave you with little time to write, think again. Using social media to market your books doesn’t need to be time-consuming. And with the four-step formula you’ll find in this book, it won’t be.

Whether you’re a seasoned or a newbie social media user, this book will introduce you to posting schedules, timesaving applications and content-rich websites that will help you economize the time you spend using social media to promote your books. You will learn:

• How to create and perfect your author platform.
• Where great content exists on the Internet and how you can use it to further your brand within your niche.
• The importance of being social and applications that make this task easy and fun.
• Tools that enable you to track and measure your success so you can better understand the return on investment of your valuable time.
• Which tools prevent you from accessing the Internet when the time comes to sit and write that next book.
• Exercises for introverted writers to help you feel comfortable on the social web.
• If you’ve avoided social media because you feel you just don’t have enough time, you’ve used it sporadically and missed the opportunity to widen your audience of readers, or you’ve been frustrated by how long it takes you to conduct social networking tasks, Avoid Social Media Time Suck is the book for you.

Meet Frances Caballo:

Frances Caballo is a social media strategist and manager for authors. Her books include Social MediaJust for Writers: The Best Online Marketing Tips for Selling Your Books

and Blogging Just for Writers. Her clients include the San Francisco Writers Conference, the Women’s National Book Association—San Francisco Chapter, and the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. A free ebook, Pinterest Just for Writers, is available on her website at www.SocialMediaJustforWriters.com.

Find out more about this author by visiting her online:

Website/blog:

http://socialmediajustforwriters.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaJustforWriters

Twitter: @CaballoFrances

Do you have any sort of posting schedule for social media, and if so, what does it look like? 

My YA Writing Heroes - Part 1

Just a few of the treasures I've unearthed at thrift stores.

I was browsing through the YA section at my local library not long ago when I came across the book Thirst by Christopher Pike. The first thing I thought was, "Wow, he's still writing!" And the second thing I remembered was how much I absolutely LOVED his books as a teenager.

I discovered Christopher Pike's books sometime in the early 1990s, and I was instantly hooked. It wasn't until recently that I learned his books are often labeled "pulp horror," which is kind of fitting, as I was usually reading Stephen King and Christopher Pike novels simultaneously while in high school. I'm also pretty sure it was my stack of CP books that got me through the Blizzard of 1993 that hit North Carolina during my junior year of high school. You can imagine how boring and frustrating it got living at least three or four days without power, but I was fortunate enough to be able to read Pike by candlelight.

One of the first books I ever picked up by this author was Chain Letter, then I moved onto Scavenger Hunt, Fall into Darkness (which later became a Lifetime movie!), Remember Me (one of my all-time faves) and Last Act (probably number two on my favorite list). I can't tell you how many times I read his books over, and over, and over. Somewhere along the way during my many moves during college, I parted with most of my paperbacks. I now sincerely regret that. I have such great memories of these books, especially as I now work on writing for this age group myself.

You can imagine how thrilled I was when I came across one of the original CP paperbacks in the Habitat for Humanity ReStore last year, and then proceeded to find two more in my next two visits. Whoever is cleaning out their old collection of paperbacks from the late 1980s and early 1990s, please continue dropping them at my local ReStore. I almost feel like someone is leaving them there just for me to find, but that would be silly, wouldn't it? Here's the log line for Last Act, which I am now searching for on Amazon, Ebay, and the thrift stores:

When the gunshot murder of a Care High actress takes place during an opening night performance, Melanie becomes determined to find the killer, before murder makes an encore appearance.

Now, I need to check out some of Pike's more recent novels. Off to Goodreads!