Behind The Books

Book Review: Two Can Keep A Secret by Karen McManus My rating: 3 of 5 Stars <Three missing girls, gone several years apart. An attack on a small town's homecoming court. Falsely accused killers, broken relationships, and a mission to find the truth about the murders of the girls who went away. Ellery is searching. Malcom is trying to escape. Two Can Keep A Secret is a novel jam-packed with tension and mystery. Plot twists lurk behind every corner. Each new revelation adds to the conflict of the plot. A bone-rattling storyline, tantalizing characters, and a richly-painted world are there to explore. This novel by Karen M McManus is the third I have read by the author. She improved vastly since her last story and made a much more compelling novel than the first two from the One Of Us is Lying duology. However, not every story is perfect. I found it difficult to follow the "big reveal" at the end of the book. Why did the killer do what they did? How was it them? There was...

Book Review Wizards of Once: Twice Magic  4 of 5 Stars <A quest to destroy the sinister witches from the Wildwoods. A journey to bring the wizards and warriors together after ages apart. A desperate attempt to save Xar before he succumbs completely to the witch stain consuming his flesh. The Wizards of Once: Twice Magic by Cressida Cowell was one of those stories I picked up for its art. I love reading stories that have unique illustrations inside them. After finishing the first book, I was wary about the second because of how unedited the first novel seemed. However, this one surprised me. The second books amps up the plot. This novel, also, is better edited than the first. And the characters are well developed. The story is vivid and the settings are more described as the story goes on. The dialogue is cheeky and fresh. The characters: diverse and obsessive. Even labeled as a children's story, I enjoyed its humor and the storyline. It has all the basic needs for a fantasy Midd...

  Visual Outlines And Why YOU Need One For Your Novel Step One. What Is A Visual Outline? "An outline. This is only your second post and you are already plaguing us with the forsaken, forbidden, foredoomed: outlines?!" Yes. I am. But this one is fun, I promise. The first thing I will tell you is that I call the so-named 'Visual Outline' ' The Guts Outline '. This is because all of my thirty-or-so outlines I use depending on my chosen stories-in-writing are named after... death. Think of it like this: The Blood Outline (for tracking characters throughout a novel) The Skin Outline (the basic chapter-by-chapter outline) The Skeleton Outline (the villain outline, beyond his or her character description) The Dead Outline (for magic systems, species and races, and other stuff) and so on. I named my outlines like this because a) I made most of them up with the help of a thousand writing YouTube videos and writing-help books. And b) most outlines seem to kill their wr...

Introduction Hello, writers and readers. Welcome to Scribe Sundays! The newest and first addition to my blog. On the first day of the week, I will be posting what I have been learning throughout the week in my writing studies, alongside updates about my current work-in-progress's. I hope you all enjoy this chapter of my writing life and learn a thing or two from my own adventures. Epidermolysis Bullosa: C-D: One of my primary studies these past few weeks was surrounding a disability, or a disease, called Epidermolysis Bullosa [EB]. I started researching this specific disease because I had learned about it via a television show [ironic, seeing as I do not usually watch television] when a girl with the same disease was being helped by the TV show hosts through a service project. I thought it might be a disease that would fit into one of my stories for a side character of mine, who I will forevermore refer to as C-D. For those of you who have no idea what EB is, it is a skin disease....