Celia Aaron works her magic on the gridiron in her new release Kicked. She weaves her magic and love of football through the lives of Cordy and Trent. Of course you cannot have a true Aaron work without the sassy verbal exchanges, insanely steamy encounters, and a depth in character building which only Aaron delivers on a silver platter. Enjoy your summer with a little preseason read!
Meghan Quinn wins the gold with her new release Stroked. From start to finish her sassy style hooks you right into the twists and turns of Olympic hopeful Reese King and his road to the 2016 games. Along the way Paisley causes his stroke to skip and creates a wave of unexpected challenges, which King must face before getting back in line and swimming for the gold. Reese’s contractually agreement with reality show star Bellini Chambers only adds to the stress for King. Quinn’s hilarious over the top peek into the world of high-class athletes, high snobbery reality television entities, and the behind the scenes folks who take care of these difficult personalities is down right priceless. Quinn cannot possibly write the next two follow ups fast enough!
Over the last several months I made the conscious effort to start writing reviews of all the works I read. Coming up with this decision wasn’t without a long thought out plan. Deciding to write reviews cultivated out of hours of thinking about what I expect out of myself as a writer, what I expect of myself as a reader, and what I expect from the folks who intentionally choose to read my works.
As a writer the purpose of composing a piece is formed out of two roads. The first being to formulate your thoughts about a prompt or idea and conveying the message to an intended audience. I often write short pieces to share with my national writing group for growing as an educator, and also practicing certain author’s craft structures I’m working on. They are really my sounding board for improving small areas of my writing. We’ve all been together for almost two years discovering how to grow as writers and formulate ways to teach those ideas to students. The second road and purpose for writing is to get these people who wake me in the middle of the night, and talk to me during important meetings, out of my head and onto the paper. These people, settings, action pieces, and all sorts of other goodies, which roll around in my mind, relax more when I write often. This is where I check what I write in longer works and test out my ideas on my betas. I love the positive feedback, but I also crave the constructive criticism from them. This constant connection loop of write, edit, review, revise, edit more, and so forth is the end game when the betas finally come back with a “Oh My God, I need more. What’s next? Hurry up, I don’t care if it is perfect, I need to know.” These feedback loops help me grow as a writer.
As a reader I enjoy the result of someone’s hard work and sharing in the fruits of their labor. Years ago there were so few outlets to express to an author how much you enjoyed their work. The red tape it took to get a letter through was mind-boggling. If an author traveled for signings it was difficult to advertise where they might be and when. With the internet and social media the entire world of the writer-reader, reader-writer relationship transformed. Ultimately, there are infinite ways to show an author how much you enjoy their work, and maybe some ways to show an author things which would make their craft better. We teach the feedback loop in the classroom but often forget how important they are in the real world.
This brings me to why, as an inspired novelist, I feel a deep connection with writing reviews for the things I’ve read. I want to celebrate with the author’s I’ve read. I want them to gain more readership because this allows them to continue writing, which in turn keeps me reading. I also want them to know that somehow their voices, which were screaming to get out of their head, conveyed a message, which touched me in some way. The purpose of publishing a work is to share. If you don’t know people are enjoying your work then what is the real point of bringing a work out of the saved file bank? I save constructive criticisms for personal notes or instant messaging with an author (which I rarely read something that I feel compelled to write a negative about). No author intends to publish something terrible. Too many hours exist in a day to waste intentional time writing crappy works. My two big criticisms usually fall in mechanical structures or a rushed ending. Besides those issues, there is value in everyone’s work, which needs celebrated and enjoyed by more readership. Therefore as a writer and reader I whole heartedly committed myself to making the effort to write and share, as well as read and review. Everybody should get a chance to read a work and if one little review I write prompts someone I know to pick it up and dive right in, then I’ve done my job to help make the reading-writing, writing-reading continuum travel full circle.
David Michael tells details about the dirty nature of the porn industry in the modern era. From social ostracization to attempting building trust worthy relationships within the porn industry which keeps its people close and its secrets closer. Porter has it all figured out, until Holly Nash crashes his scene. Please check out more Porter and click buy while you are at it!
Kendall Ryan surely does not disappoint with her second installment of the Hitched series. She’s developed all the right hooks to keep Noah and Olivia moving through the inheritance clause. The only hitch is Olivia, although a thorough business woman, did not read the final lines of the contract. Noah wants more than a marriage contract, he wants the true love of his life to commit to the life long marriage. He wants the dream. Noah’s struggles with telling Olivia the dark and dirty final lines of the contract, because he truly wants Olivia to fall in love with him. Olivia’s focus is the company and its long term survival. She does her best to keep Noah at a distance, but her walls are falling. Will she figure out the bottom line of the contract and agree?
Bravo to Ryan on the second installment. The third installment is due out early August!
Five years ago my partner teacher and I decided we needed to do more for our students. One of the ways we chose to up the anti was by designing a trimester book club. Sounds easy enough, pick four books for every student to select a work, they read it, then attend a lunch time discussion. The discussions are facilitated by teachers across campus and disciplines. The fictional works switch after two years, while the non-fiction works change as needed.
When we began the Hunger Games trilogy caught the eye of many of our non-reading students. It progressed to adding in the Mortal Instruments, by Cassandra Claire, first three selections, and on to the Divergent trilogy, by Veronica Roth, and James Dashner’s hit trilogy The Maze Runner. This year we start off with Marie Lu’s Legend series and Ransom Rigg’s Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children Series. Intermixed are the non-fiction reads 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens (Sean Covey), Please Stop Laughing at me (Jodee Blanco), Soul Surfer (Bethany Hamilton), Imperfect:An Improbable Life (Jim Abbott), A Long Way Gone:Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Ishmail Beah), and I Am Malala (Malala Yousafzai). Each of the non-ficitonal texts was chosen as stepping stones to get kids thinking. First getting them thinking closer to home. They need to begin thinking about themselves by first organizing their lives or maybe learning how to deal with bullying. Then they need to learn how to overcome life’s challenges. Finally, getting them to think on a global scale. Each work is picked as a deliberate piece to add some culture to their world. Since we have kids for two years they have multiple opportunities to each these works.
Three years ago my partner moved away and left me with the book discussion pilot. It has grown and continues to be a focus for bringing students around to the idea that reading can be fun and interesting when you have other people to discuss the works with. I have also been able to secure funding for adding ten copies of each work to our school library. Each year I only change out one work which helps spread the budget a little better. This little slice of independent choice has helped build a culture of readers. Students like the idea that they earn some extra credit tickets by participation in the school wide discussion and they see teachers of all disciplines participating in the talking portion. Our usual participation rate is about 150 students out of our total population of about 850. This is not too bad considering our population is over 50% socio-economically disadvantaged students.
Of course, most of these have a movie or some media piece attached but the bottom line is kids are being exposed to the idea of coming together to discuss and expand on ideas by their merit. This is actually by design so the books do not look so out dated. Research shows the literacy connection between reading, writing, and discussion is vital for developing strong connections for students to grow and become more productive in the world. I know I usually review the romance genre, but I think there is value in a wide variety of genre’s being read and maybe something here might spark you or a child you know to jump on the reading bandwagon!
Last year I attended a five week national writing project. Once a week we were asked to bring things in and then given thirty minutes to write to a specified prompt question based off the item we brought. This little piece was my thirty minute composition based on the picture included. It’s raw, from the heart, and caused tears when I had to read it aloud in front of my writing group. It is actually the piece which got me thinking about writing something full length. It isn’t so much that it is a perfectly written piece, but it is the fact through so many of life’s experiences a tale is hidden to be told. As I patiently await the official first round edits, I figured I’d share the humble beginnings of where this journey was born. Yes, this is actually one of the photos the kids took, right after the boys sat in the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil pose. The girls pushed them when they realized they were goofing around, and our photographer caught it perfectly. Their grandparents actually picked that photo as one of their favorites!
Maggie Jane Schuler is a wife, mother of three almost-grown children, and teacher by day. While she has always loved to read, the thought of writing her own prose did not strike until she was in the middle of writing her Master’s thesis. From that point on, she was hooked. She resides in
Southern California. Besides the family and books, she loves baseball. Since the Dodgers, Angels, and Padres are all within a short distance, and the Giants and Athletics a nice weekend jaunt away, she’s got plenty of games to take in during the season. Additionally, she enjoys cooking, movies, the beach, and the local mountains. She’s most content being with her family engaged in whatever activity they have planned.
