Just A Little Red

Confessions Of A Bookaholic: Guilty Pleasure Edition #16 – Fear Street Books 35-37

Posted on June 24, 2014 by DMW

I have been excited about this Fear Street list for awhile. Not so much because of the books on the list, but rather a book on this list. One of the best Fear Street books ever, awaits! 🙂

“The Thrill Club”

Fear Street Scale: 4 out of 5 Fears
Pick Of The Bunch Rating: Second Place

Talia Blanton writes horror stories that could scare you to death. Everyone loves Talia’s terrifying tales that often give her friends starring roles. But when her stories start to come true, Talia’s friends start to become her victims, one by one. Is Talia making her stories come true or is someone trying to turn Talia’s real life into a horror story?

This was a chilling addition to the Fear Street series. Friends meet every week, telling scary stories to one another. It reminds me of that old show on Nickelodeon ‘Are You Afraid Of The Dark’? Talia is one heck of a storyteller, her stories are gruesome, full of suspense and there is always a twist at the end. I loved being able to experience these stories in this book, and even better they aren’t introduced so the reader doesn’t know (at first) if Talia is reading one of her stories or if this is really happening until the story reaches its end or the scene reaches the consequences of its terrible reality. The reader may also feel a sense of déjà vu because Talia’s stories come true. Of course, people think it is Talia making the monsters in her head come to life, but wouldn’t that be too easy?

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Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Reviews | Tagged "r.l. stine", "reading list", "super chiller", book, fear street, guilty pleasure, mystery, reading, suspense, Thriller | Leave a comment

I Know What You Did Last Summer: The Book Versus The Movie

Posted on June 22, 2014 by DMW

I think a lot of people have heard of “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. Maybe some people have seen the popular film (1997) or read the book the film was loosely based on (1973). The premise is chilling: four friends do something very bad, by accident, and make a pact never to speak of it again, but then a year later they receive threatening messages and it is clear someone knows what they did, and wants them to pay the ultimate price for it. The idea makes me quiver in the ‘oh so good’ kind of way. It allows the ‘heroes’ to be deeply flawed from the very beginning and is the ultimate game of cat and mouse. That being said, the movie was very different from the book. It has the same characters, same idea and even some of the same suspenseful moments, but everything else is a new and original interpretation or take on the book. I have to warn anyone reading this: this post includes spoilers for the book and the movie. You have been warned! 😉

vs. I Know What You Did Last Summer Dvd

Being the book nerd that I am, I tend to prefer books over the movies they inspire, almost always… almost. “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is one of the exceptions, but not for the reasons most people would probably think. First, let me say I loved both the book and the movie. I saw the movie when it was first released on DVD, and I just read the book a few weeks ago. (I know, usually I am also a stickler for reading the book first, but the movie is what made me aware of the book’s existence in the first place. It was published more than a decade before I was born. I also should state that I unknowingly read the updated version, which featured email and text messages, etc. but the book was updated by Lois Duncan herself and in an interview she states that only fashions and the use of modern technology were changed. The plot, characters and actual story all stayed the same, with the exception of these small details.) I love YA thrillers, I have an entire blog segment devoted to them (half of my guilty pleasure posts are on the Fear Street series, the ultimate YA thriller series), but this book’s chills just seemed a bit tame for my tastes. It was creepy, more than it was suspenseful. I didn’t feel fear for any of the characters and I figured out who the killer was just a few chapters into the book (the movie and the book have different killers with different motives so if you have seen or read one but not experienced the other, you can still be surprised).

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Posted in Book Reviews, Books, film, movies, review | Tagged “Freddie Prinze Jr.”, “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, “Jennifer Love Hewitt”, “Lois Duncan”, “Ryan Phillippe”, “Sarah Michelle Gellar”, “urban legend”, “young adult”, fiction, hook, horror, novel, Reviews, slasher, Thriller, YA | Leave a comment

A Case (Kind Of) Of Publishing Envy

Posted on June 19, 2014 by DMW

Have you ever felt like you were lagging behind everyone else… like WAY behind? Lately, these thoughts and frustrations plague me, focusing on, “Why aren’t you published yet?” In the past eighteen months, several of my friends and peers have published books and made great advances in their careers as writers, and I just feel stuck.

To be clear up front, I am not jealous of their success. Each and every one of them deserves it, has earned it, and I am thrilled for them. BUT I keep thinking – why can’t that be me too? I have tried to be patient, but I am to the point of throwing up my arms, getting a copyeditor and self-publishing this son of a bitch (my manuscript). It is not what I want, and I want to hold out, but I have yet to find an editor to help me get my manuscript to where it needs to be to send out to agents. Once I get my manuscript to that point I have to send it out and find representation (let’s say about six months) and then they have to tell me what to change about my book and/or book proposal so they can turn around and sell it. And then they have to try to sell it (I would say another six months). Then once it is accepted by a publisher, I have to work with the publisher’s editor, make those changes and wait for it to be published (anywhere from eighteen to thirty months). That is a long flipping time! Even if it was ready to send out today, I am looking at about three years. And that is just depressing.

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Posted in Publishing, Writers, Writing | Tagged "book tour", author, career, envy, manuscript, publishing, stuck, success | Leave a comment

It’s Gay Pride Month Y’all And Look How Far We Have Come

Posted on June 17, 2014 by DMW

I have always loved the month of June. It is the first month of summer, the month I was married and it also happens to be LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) Pride Month, commonly referred to as Gay Pride. As involved as I am in different activist causes, and none more than LGBT equal rights, I have only been to Gay Pride events twice in my life and neither time was really worth talking about. I guess it doesn’t matter as much to me because I try to live the message behind Gay Pride all year long (and I am not one for large crowds). For those who don’t know, Gay Pride is in June in remembrance of the Stonewall Riots (see links below for more information).

prideflag

This year, I feel an additional sense of pride and accomplishment, however, because I look at how far the movement has come in the past year thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision last year, where it struck down the law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage in the case United States v. Windsor. This has seemed to open doors that should have never been closed in the first place. Since the ruling, ten states have legalized gay marriage while eight states have stayed decisions pending appeal after lower courts told them to stop hating.

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Posted in community, culture, Equality, Events, Life, lifestyle, Opinion, People, Politics | Tagged "equal rights", "gay pride", "same-sex marriage", bisexual, equality, gay, glbt, lesbian, lgbt, pride, transgender | Leave a comment

And Then He Proposed: An Unlikely (And Modern) Love Story – Mine! (Part Two)

Posted on June 16, 2014 by DMW

Even though I am the right-brained creative ‘artist’ I have always craved security, having a plan, organization – order. Maybe it comes from taking care of myself since I was a young teenager. When you have to juggle high school and “where am I sleeping tonight?” or “when is the next time I can eat?”… Well it just shaped the person I became (like a lot). So when Roy (my husband) happened, I was taken for surprise. By the time Roy and I arrived in Omaha, I had broken so many of the rules I clung to in order to protect myself. Roy and I had already said those three crucial words and had only been going together for about two months (though we had talked to each other for longer). I didn’t have a plan or a roadmap and for some reason I didn’t care. I felt secure, when I had no official reason to feel that way. Roy uprooted his life to be near me and things were moving really, really fast (but not physically, I was still a tease apparently).

Roy found an awesome apartment, a three bedroom, two bathroom. He went for a three bedroom in case I decided to move in when my lease was up in June. The extra bedroom afforded me privacy and took the pressure off, even if it went unused. And if I didn’t move in, he could downgrade to a two bedroom (the least was up in August). Even though I didn’t live there officially, I spent most of my time at Roy’s, since my place was on the other side of town and a slum (not a nicer way to describe it, the landlords refused to replace windows that were never there when we moved in, fix pipes and other things that caused sanitation concerns and resulted in a few ER visits for me because of infections – yay chemo). Roy worried and didn’t like me staying there. I can’t say that I would change anything about our relationship or how we happened, but this obviously took a lot of the mystery out of our relationship early on.

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