NaNoWriMo

I am a participant in NaNoWriMo every year (except for last year when I was too lazy) and every year I have a great time with it.

I've actually only "won" it twice, in 2003 and 2004 but I've been participating since 2001.

For those who are not familiar with it, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and during the month of November, the goal is to author a novel with 50,000 words in the thirty days. And the motto? No plot...no problem.

I will probably not get a lot of reading done. But I will get a lot of writing done.

I'll post my progress occasionally, here.

Hurricane

HURRICANE by Karen Harper (Mira, c2006, ISBN 0-7783-2307-2) blew me away!
Set in Gladesport, Florida near the Florida Keys and the Everglades, Julie Minton and Zack Brockman are in search of their teenaged children who went missing while on a Jet Ski ride. Normally there'd be no problem, but a hurricane is moving in...and fast.

Unfortunately, evidence leads the two to suspect foul play and as the hurricane moves closer and closer, it becomes a race against the clock and Mother Nature.

It starts with a radio broadcast:

All right, heads up everybody out there on this lovely morning.

This book was fast moving and I think the setting had everything to do with that. The tension that the hurricane caused and the fight to find their children in time caused for great suspense, despite the ubiquitous romance that popped up right in the middle of the ratrace. This was a very fun book to read and I am excited (and dismayed!) that I have found yet another author of whom I will be reading more. How tall can a stack get before it topples and buries a person? Are there any mysteries written about a body found buried under books?

The Perfect Family

THE PERFECT FAMILY by Carla Cassidy (Signet Eclipse, c2005, ISBN 0-451-21390-4) surprised me.

Set in Cass Creek, Missouri (a suburb of Kansas City) Marissa Jamison is trying to piece her life back together. A little over a year ago her husband, a member of the local fire department, was run down in a grocery store parking lot after stopping to get some milk. Now, raising two kids alone, Marissa thinks things are getting back on track when Alex Kincaid, her highschool sweetheart, comes back inter her life.

And then the "Gift Bow Killer" strikes and the victims all relate to Marissa somehow. Someone wants to be a part of Marissa's life and it looks like they will stop at nothing to make--the perfect family.

This book surprised because I found it in the trunk of my car, which is not uncommon but I think it jumped to the top of a stack or something because I don't recall buying it, putting it there, nothing. I was meeting my husband for lunch and he was on a call and told me it'd be a while so I went looking for something to read while I waited at the station and found this book in the corner of my trunk by an author I'd never heard of before let alone read, but, it had a purple cover and I like purple. So, I picked it up and by the time my husband called to cancel lunch, I had read 150 pages of it and didn't want to put it down. It had really great timing with the suspense and I will definitely search out more books by this author. I will recommend this book to my patrons who enjoy Mariah Stewart and Allison Brennen as I saw several similarities.

The first sentence:

It was a perfect evening.

Smitten

SMITTEN by Janet Evanovich (Harper Torch, c1990 and 2006, ISBN 0-06-059887-5) is a re-release of one of her earlier books.

Lizabeth Kane is living in Chase Mills, Pennsylvania and takes a job working for Matt Hallahan with his construction company, even though she knows absolutely nothing about construction. Her house is in need of much repair, her Aunt Elise Hawkins (the prototype for Grandma Mazur) has come to watch over her two boys for the summer and there's a flasher streaking thru the neighborhood and has his sights (and other body parts) aimed at Lizabeth while she has her sights on Matt.

This book was good for a quick, typical fluffy read; it was very entertaining but had little substance. I had to actually peruse it before writing up my review in the book that I keep because from the time I finished it and went to jot down my thoughts about it, I had forgotten all of the key elements to the plot.

However, as I said, it was typical for her re-releases (not the best of hers I've read but definitely better than some other authors I've tried)and since she is my guilty pleasure, I enjoyed myself while in between the covers of this book.

The first sentence:

When Lizabeth Kane was five years old she wanted to grow up to be a fairy.