Tag Archives: good books

On Reviewing a book . . .

March 21, 2014 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

I’m wondering if you, my wonderful readers, would be interested in giving me a review on Amazon? You see, I’m fully aware that Amazon is the new “black” for the world of publishing. The “place to be” for any writer is getting to be top-rated on Amazon. Go Amazon!

Some people don’t like Amazon because they are the equivalent of the “big box store” and because they cut prices on books and often will cut the price lower than any other book outlet. But what I’ve found is that many people are willing to pay that extra two dollars or four dollars for a book they’ve discovered at their local book store, too. Amazon can mark down prices on my books, it doesn’t offend me at all.

About reviewing my books. I’m not asking for a thumbs up. Because my asking for such a thing isn’t right in the grand scale of RIGHT. I don’t want you to support my book if it isn’t good.

The Dry is a middle-grade(ages 8 to 12) historical fantasy. It is set in West Virginia in the 1895 drought.

Here is what one reader said of it – “Twelve-year-old Elliot Sweeney could walk off the page, he feels so real. He’s a collector, a tinkerer, a lost boy who is more interested in rescuing his lost father than in sitting around whining about being stuck alone with an uncaring uncle. Compassion comes naturally to him; it is neither effeminate nor overwrought, it simply is and it defines him. Lefty is an excellent companion for Elliot. Fierce and determined, Lefty’s deeply ingrained mistrust and tendency to avoid getting involved in other folks’ troubles are a valuable contrast to Elliot’s nature. The Wicked Prince of Every Place lives up to his name and reputation; smart and evil, he is motivated by an unquenchable thirst for power, ironically played out by taking control of the world’s water supply.

Reviews don’t have to be elaborate. And please don’t say *** spoiler alert and give away things. A good review is a sharing of enthusiasm for the story. You can even tell which character was most appealing to you. You can share favorite excerpts. I love it when a reader shares favorite excerpts. Chances are they are my favorites, too.

Buy a book and I’m thrilled, give me a review and I’m ecstatic, tell a friend and I’m indebted forever.

MY BOOKS

Review of ‘The Dry’

March 9, 2014 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

I love to read great reviews and especially when I find them about my book!! The funny thing about the review below is that I love what he said about The Dry but then I realized he gave me four stars. It doesn’t matter because to me this is a five star review. I thank him for putting the review on his blog, on Amazon, and on Goodreads.

Review of ‘The Dry’.

The Writing Life

Taking Control of Your Social Media

March 3, 2014 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

What a joy to be able to connect with readers through social media. One junior high boy wrote to me yesterday that he loved The Dry. He said it was “awesome”. A girl wrote recently on FB that she was enjoying The Dry.

Social Media is a buzzy set of words. Without social media how do we connect with people that we know now? Or how do we meet new people who share our interests? I don’t know the answer. The world is not necessarily friendly. There are few opportunities to connect to people we would want to hang out with daily.

With social media such as Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest you can at least view those trying to connect with you. I don’t connect with people with no photo for instance unless I do know that person already. When someone tries to connect to you, wanting you to “accept” them, you can check out their page first. This would be difficult to do in the physical world. It’s not as if you can ask a person who wants to meet you walking past on the street all the pertinent questions within a few seconds. I think if someone stopped me on the street, I’d be apt to run away. Unless I’m walking the dog and they have a baby in a carriage.

Meeting people on Facebook is a snap. You can see where they’re from, where they live now, what they do for a living, if they own a dog… all in the comfort and time period that you wish, before accepting them as “friends”. It seems safe.

Are computer “friends” the same as friends? There are pros and cons about the “friendships” we have on the computer. Our FB friends are there as we share troubles, have a birthday, or celebrate a book launch. They might live on the other side of the world, but they are able to press “like”, type “Congratulations!” or “LOL” just as if they lived nearby and will be meeting up for lunch later in the week. The cons are that some FB friends are friends in a disconnected way.

Fortunately, you can control how much and to what extent FB friends, twitter friends, or LinkedIn friends/associates can see of you and what they can see of your other FB friends. The part about “your other friends” is important. I have marked on my security controls that friends except acquaintances can see my posts on my personal FB page. This is important. I may not know my friends’ friends so I don’t actually want them to see pictures of my family.

We all get the occasional repeat repeat of announcements in our news feed. An example from back when it was popular is Farmville. I never wanted to get on Farmville, but Farmville under the guise of being posted by friends would send me invite after invite to join. To the far right and upper corner of every post you can scroll your mouse over and see a little drop down box. In that box you can “mark as read” or “turn off”. In other words, you can turn off those annoying “please join such ‘n’ such” bits that turn up every other hour.

Another way you can control what shows up on your actual FB page is that you can delete and even edit what appears or what you’ve added. There have been things that I did not solicit or want to appear on my page. The occasional old photo where someone has “tagged” me I enjoy seeing. I don’t enjoy seeing ads to enter contests, or buy products. In a post, you can run your mouse over the top right hand corner and you will see a drop-down box that asks if you want to: change date, add location, highlight, hide from timeline, delete, or report/mark as spam.

Any post you post to your own timeline or to someone else’s you can go back and edit later, or immediately. Just like my writing, I often see mistakes in a post that I’ve posted when I read it again the next day. And just like my writing gets edited often more than once, so a post gets edited. You can do this, too.

Not seeing much on FB? If you click on “Home” at the top of the page you will see a long list/feed of what everyone on your friend’s list has posted. Poignant, sad, hilarious, scary, morbid, encouraging, and interesting stuff gets said every day. Scroll down and engage in fun, happy events. Leave a short comment or click “like”. Spend a little time doing this every day. You may see someone whose opinion makes you smile and think “I wonder if they would join my friend’s list?” Do it. But not often and not many. Facebook does not encourage mass “friending”. In fact, you can get booted off.

I hope I’ve given you some ideas about how you can control what kind of FB experience you have. Give yourself an enjoyable fifteen minutes a day on your FB visiting friends.

Briefly, I want to share the one thing I’ve learned of value from Twitter. There is a lot of information being passed around on twitter in the form of “how-to’s”. Check out what interests you. If you find something you like or have found very informative, retweet it. You can scroll over the top right hand corner of a tweet and see your options appear.

Control your social media so that it doesn’t control you. Enjoy getting to know others in shared business or interests. Have fun and be careful. Navigating the internet is like walking down the street. For your own safety you need to know what’s going on around you.

Home and Family

In the Arms of Trees

January 16, 2014 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

I was challenged to share what it was in my early life that made the hours fly by and shaped what my future passion would be.

This is my offering:

I was seven years old when my father built the tree-house. It was more of an eight-foot square platform held up by two Chinese Tallow trees. Chinese Tallow trees do not live long. Their branches bend and twist rather than break when they are young trees. The older ones are brittle to a fault.

Originally imported to Texas as an experiment to see if the tallow could be extracted and help the candle industry, the tallow trees were a failure. The electric light bulb gained popularity over candles, and the tallow in those Tallow trees was impossible to extract commercially. The tallow project was abandoned but the trees multiplied and spread. Now the trees are so prolific in the wild that native trees struggle to prosper. Despite gorgeous fall foliage, the Chinese Tallow is considered a pest tree.

My first remembrance of a wasp encounter happened in that tree-house, or, I should say, under it. The main entrance and exit was by way of a ladder that went straight up from the ground and through a square hole cut in the bottom. There was a board door that could be dropped over the hole to protect from invading pirates, gorillas, or just brothers in general. Sometimes brother Jon would beat me to it and lock me out. The only other way to enter was to climb through the trees and scramble over the “side” to the platform.

Wasps are quiet at their nest. They set sentries as lookouts who will warn the hive of danger. They are the first line of defense. They have levels of “buzz”. The louder the buzz, the more danger you are in of getting stung. I learned this because when I grabbed the branch next to the hive to haul myself over the side of the tree-house, the wasps exploded with buzz and began stinging me. I slip-fell out of the tree losing most of the wasps that were after me on the way down. I don’t even think that the stings registered until later because of the rush of adrenalin from the fall.

Thus I learned to watch out for wasps in trees.

Years of days went by – or perhaps it was days of years, who knows how childhood passes – Jon and I wore that tree-house to splinters. That palace in the trees kept all our secrets and stories.

Perhaps we loved the tree-house life for its order, because our home life was not so orderly, or because there, we could escape whatever plans were laid for us by parents who thought we needed plans.

I will tell you this, even when Jon was allowed friends in a neighborhood full to brimming with boys, I was never lonely. I found my friends in books. I took books up in the tree-house. Every day after school, I took a book into the tree-house and spent hours up in the air, reading.

Nancy Drew cleverly unmasked the bad guy in my tree-house. Mowgli learned the language of the snake tribe in my tree-house. A tiny naked baby (Tarzan) was discovered in a tree-house by none other than GORILLAS! The scent of cinnamon and curry wafted all the way from India (Kim), I visited China in the 1600’s (The Black Rose), I heard horses stampeding across the vast prairies (Fury, The Black Stallion), and came face to face with a murderous black mamba snake (Bring ’em Back Alive) in my tree-house.

I relished the danger and intrigue inside my books, but … but I could not escape my chores. I had to descend to ground level to eat, you see. There was a pull, like a great suctioning from that “inside” world of whatever I was reading, to enter the shrill world of the now. To this day when I read a good book I feel that pull of good story. Don’t you?

All those years of reading in trees taught me about story. Despite my “labels” as day-dreamer in school or scatter-brained at home, this head-in-the-clouds-girl spent many much-too-short hours in the trees learning the pattern of good story. As a result, I’m an author.

Now I can share good stories with you, my gentle reader.