Abducted by A Whole Lot Of Nothing

Before I get started let me just say that I am writing this at work and therefore will not be able to include a whole bunch of pictures and cute art in my post. Personally I feel that including a lot of pictures has become a staple to my posts, but you may not even notice them. Maybe once I get home I will go back and edit this post to add some but we will just have to see.

We are now on our third week of NaNo and I am doing the number 1 thing you should NOT do during week 3. I am taking a break. I know I know, I am a total traitor for putting my novel on hold. And I know that a lot of you who read my blog will be completely shocked that I would make such a daring move. But alas, it must be done.

I have been so focused on NaNo this year that I haven't been reading the book for my book club! I had never intended to become so consumed by NaNo. I really thought that this year since I had so much planned ahead of time that all things considered I would have a better...balance.

Well, that didn't happen.

But I love being a part of my book club! And even though NaNo means a lot to me (and it does) so does my book club. So ultimately I chose to put the novel aside and give Dracula (our November selection) a fighting chance.

Now, don't panic just yet. My book club meets on Saturday, November 20th. So even if I can't start writing for NaNo again until the 21st that still gives me TEN days to work on it. Also, out of those 10 days, I have 6 days off! I am currently a little over 20,000 words (not good, I know) so that would mean I would just have to write 5000 words on those days off. Or just write 3000 words on my 6 days off, leaving 500 words on each of the days I am working.

Okay, I don't really know how I am going to make it happen. But I know that I can. I mean in the pep talk Chris Batey sent out this week he wrote about how the best part of NaNo is racing the clock to the last second. Just reaching your goal with barely any time to spare! What is life without a little adventure right? Without a little risk and daring?

And who knows, I'm off tomorrow, and I'll be spending all day reading, maybe, just maybe I'll finish Dracula early!

So I'll be back, on Monday with my review on Dracula. And I will keep you all posted on my progress with NaNo during those final days.

Have a great rest of the week!

To all the Harry Potter fans out there...JUST BREATH ALREADY! Friday will be here before you know it!

Abducted by NaNoWriMo part 2

Greetings to all my new followers!!!

Thank you so much for following me and for all your comments!

I am so grateful for all of you and I hope that I don’t let you down. I will try to make my blogs as entertaining and honest as possible. You have kind of caught me at an odd time however. You see I am participating in NaNoWriMo this year and therefore the majority of my time is spent on working on my novel.

Unfortunately because of how consuming NaNo can be I haven’t really had a lot of time to spend on reading. I’m going to be hard pressed to finish my book club book before our meet up on the 20^th, so all additional reading is just simply not happening.

However, I can tell you that as much as I am enjoying NaNo this year, I can not wait to get back to my books in December! Right now I only have two books ready and waiting, one I am still debating on and one that I am hoping someone will get me for my birthday.

But in the mean time I still wanted to drop in and let you guys know how everything with NaNo is going.

We have just entered week two and so far I have earned 3 additional badges since my last post.

I have awarded myself the Eureka badge (for finally figuring out all the major aspects of my actual plot), the NaNoWriMo socializing badge (for attending our first meet up and participating in the word-war challenge during our second meet up), and the Procrastination badge (for watching movies and cleaning my apartment yesterday all in the effort to avoid working on my novel).

I am currently at 12,648 words. However, if I had been able to successfully ignore my inner editor when they told me to delete part of my story I would now be closer to 14,000 and therefore not be so far behind. As it is, I am actually 4,024 words behind schedule.

Not good! Not good at all!

But, because of the amazing encouragement I have received from my friends Andrea and Kate, I am here by ready to promise that I will not delete another page

I mean scene…

I mean paragraph…

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT

I promise not to delete another WORD and

I give myself full permission to suck.

Unfortunately, even though I have made this promise to myself for NaNo, I couldn’t stop my inner editor from deleting everything I just wrote for my next blog entry.

I was going to write this whole post about the first sentences of novels and how important or unimportant they are. I googled stuff online and I went to Hastings yesterday and looked at a lot of books. But in the end it wasn’t that interesting.

So my inner editor and I came to the agreement that instead of leaving you with a very uninteresting blog post, it was better to just leave you with a promise to make next weeks entry spectacular!

Have an excellent week!!!!!!!

P.S. As I told my friend Andrea the other day, I believe my inner editor to take on the form of giant tick.

Because he sucks out all my creative juices and

I really REALLY hate ticks!

Abducted by Midnight Book Girl

Wow! I am so excited!!! Today has been such a great day!

First of all I just got back from seeing Inception…again.



I went and saw it on Saturday with my friend Andrea and officially had my mind blown! Then when I was having dinner with my parents on Sunday I begged my mom to go see it with me tonight. She didn’t like it as much as I did but that’s okay, I still love her.

I am completely obsessed with this movie. Not only are the visuals amazing and Joseph Gordon Levitt is all gorgeous and manly!

But mostly it is the ending that has me entirely consumed. I need to know what happens!

I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it (to those people I say, What are you crazy!?! Stop reading my blog right now and go see it! I said NOW!)

But basically the ending is very much open to interpretation.

After the first time I saw the movie I was pretty certain it ended one way. So I went and saw it again, hoping to convince myself that I was right, but now I think I was wrong and it ends a completely different way!

And of course the only way to know for sure would be to go see it again. Hmmm, I wonder if there is anyone else out there who wants to go see it with me again? Good thing I waited til it was at the dollar theater to go see it or I would be broke right now!

Second, today was the first day that I started writing for NaNoWriMo!

I had to work yesterday so I purposefully held off starting until this morning. My goal was 5000 words, because I did order the NaNoWriMo badges (the badges I ordered are actually stickers, because they were cheaper) and you get one for writing 5k in a day. And even though I overslept and was an hour late to start my writing, and then at one point my friend Ame called and I talked to her for an hour and then after I got off the phone it took me almost another hour to get back my train of thought, even with all those distractions I still reached my 5k by 5:30pm.

I am so excited and I really think NaNo is going to be awesome this year!

But that is not the best part of my day!

That doesn’t even come close to being the best part of my day!

Because the absolute most amazingly wonderful part of my day was this, right now!

Getting on to my blog and seeing that I have so many new followers, AND that people who don’t even know me are leaving comments on my blogs! My heart is swelling like you have no idea!!!

So, I just wanted to take a minute to say

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you guys so much for adding me to the blogs that you follow!

And I want to give a big shout out to…

Kai Charles (at http://fictionstateofmind.blogspot.com/) and Annette (at http://annettesbookspot.blogspot.com/) who were officially the first two people to comment on my blog that don’t actually know me! Thank you guys!!!!!!!!

But most of all I want to give a really big shout out to my amazing friend Kate aka Midnight Book Girl! Who is so awesome that she did one of her giveaways to just to help me grow my blog. Kate really is incredible in that way, always so generous and supportive. All she really wants in life is for the people she loves to be happy and she consistently goes above and beyond to do all the little things she can to offer people encouragement. I am really truly blest to have her as a friend!

So now the only question is; How on earth am I going to be able to pay her back?

I have to do something to return all the love and inspiration she has shown me!

So, if anybody has any good ideas please leave them in the comments! Keep in mind that Kate lives in Virginia and I am here in Oklahoma so anything done will unfortunately not be done in person.

Also Thank you again to everybody who is now following! Thank you for all your comments! I promise that tomorrow I will get on and check out all of your blogs and return the favor by following them as well!

To those doing NaNo, good luck with all the writing!

Other than that, have a great rest of the week!

Abducted by a Witch and Wizard

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

You know I’ve never been much of a Halloween fan. I mean it is a fine holiday I suppose but it has never been one of my favorites. However, over the past few years I have found many multiple reasons to look forward to October 31st.

First of all, if you have the time and money it can be quite enjoyable to dress up in funny little costumes. This year I went as a crime fighter like in Kick Ass. I have a red wig and a mask and a cape. I wore my costume to work on Friday and I realized I never fully appreciated the joys of wearing a cape. I felt like a little 8 year old boy walking around in cowboy boots or their own favorite super hero costume. If you come around my apartment on some lazy Sunday afternoon and find me walking around in my cape, I’m just saying…well…I warned you.

Second of all, my mother and I always have a movie date to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show. A fine tradition if I do say so myself. Usually we also order a midnight pizza. But since I’ll be starting a diet here in the next few weeks, my dad has agreed to make my favorite for dinner, cheese ravioli, roasted tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella. So a pizza wont be necessary.

Third of all, this year marks my fourth anniversary of becoming Catholic. Funny story, four years ago I was at Borders purchasing my dvd of Rocky Horror in order to go home and watch it with my mother and while there I also bought Catholicism for Dummies. And so it began.

Last but not least, it marks the kick off for NANOWRIMO!!!!!!!!!!!! Could I be more excited? Uh, I doubt it! (for more info see the previous post)

So to all those Halloween lovers out there, I’m slowing but surely coming over to your side. To all those indifferent about the matters of Halloween, trust me, it’s not so bad.

Moving on.

Last night I finished one of the three books I was trying to finish before NaNoWriMo started. Unfortunately the other two will probably be put on the back burner until December. But anyway, here is my review for…



Witch and Wizard by James Patterson with Gabrielle Charbonnet


First of all let me confess that I didn’t technically “read” Witch and Wizard. I listened to it on audio. Now, W&W is a story told from two perspectives and one of those perspectives happened to be read by none other than my sweet Elijah Wood! So I downloaded it from audio books and then I finished it last night.

Basically the story is told from the perspective of a boy, Whit Allgood, and his sister Wisty Allgood. As it turns out they are in fact a witch and wizard although they had never known it.

I really enjoyed the sibling relationship in the book. I thought it was funny and honest. I understand that in times of danger and high stress siblings can get on better then they would normally, but sometimes in books the authors can take this relationship to the extreme and make them too saintly. But with Whit and Wisty, they bickered and bantered back and forth, and they still had their loving moments but it was more believable.

However, the characters were supposed to be, I believe 17 and 16. So the authors included a lot of slang in their speech, and I am just not a fan of that. For some reason when adults put those words into teenagers in their books it never comes across as genuine to me.

I did not enjoy the parental relationship in the story. Which is kind of surprising seeing on how the parents leave the story in the beginning of the book and don’t show back up until the end. But that entire relationship was, well…in a word, cheesy.

As for the plot of the book. Of course Whit and Wisty find out about their powers right as a new world government takes over and condemns all those with magical powers as evil and criminal. Whit and Wisty are then ripped away from their parents, forced to go on the run and mayhem ensues from there.

The story had a good balance between the humor and action adventure scenes and I found myself really enjoying the book.

That is until the end.

I hated the end so much that I am now going to talk about it. So if you think there may be a chance that you’ll read W&W in the future and don’t want to have the ending ruined for yourself, I understand.

Therefore DO NOT read any further.

*************************SPOILER ALERT********************************

I’m going to be brief because this blog is already pretty long. And really I only hated one thing about the book.

However that one thing I really hated, I really REALLY hated it.

The story begins with the Allgood family about to be hanged for their crimes of having magical powers. And then Wisty backs up and starts to tell you the story of how they got to that point. Only she never finishes. The book ends with them still on the run and separated from their parents. I was listening to this book on audio and I could see there was only like 10 minutes left and I kept thinking that was strange because they were still on the run and yet I knew that they had to be reunited with their parents, captured, and then brought to the location of the hanging. But no according to James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet a book doesn’t have to come full circle in order for it to end. You can just end it.

What kind of f%*ked up s#~t is that!?!

Most of my friends that know my preference for books, know that I’m not a fan of series. I have read a few and can find myself sucked in. But I am very reluctant to allow this. For the most part when I finish a book, I like to close that cover and know that the story is completed. Maybe the characters can go on with their lives and dreams and what not but for the most part any problems that occurred with in that story are resolved in some manner. I don’t really mind stories being left open for sequels but the over problem for this stage in the characters journey needs to be settled.

But for two authors to come together, introduce a certain obstacle and then not resolve it in any way shape or form, it is just infuriating! I can understand if not every tiny little obstacle gets resolved but a pretty big one like the entire family being hanged to death, yeah I’m going to need some form of an ending for that.

All I am saying is that if you are not going to complete the circle, don’t start out your entire novel with it!

And in all honesty the book wasn’t good enough to really make me want to run out and buy an entire series. I mean it was a fun and all but it wasn’t enough to keep me hooked through several books. That is all I’m saying.

Have a good Halloween everybody!

Abducted by NaNoWriMo

It is funny how one moment you have no idea where you are going and the next moment it is all so clear and you can’t wait to get started.

That is exactly how I feel right now! Only a few weeks ago I had absolutely no idea what I would be writing about for this years NaNoWriMo project. Then about a week ago, I finally resolved on an idea. Not one I was too proud of or excited about, but it was enough to get me started.

One of the ideas I’ve always tinkered with was to write something in the style of Maeve Binchy. She writes truly amazing novels that link together several different stories and uses them to tell really simple tales of people’s everyday lives and choices they make. Of course I would never assume that I could come close to touching the ability that Binchy has, but it would be fun to try. I shared with my friend Andrea, how one blessing to this style of writing would be that if I ever got stuck or bored with a character I could just switch over.

But then, last night, I started flipping through magazines to put faces to my characters.

And now here I am.

I have my entire novel cast-ed. I know all of my characters names (first and last), I know the way they look, I know their personalities. And after spending my entire day off looking through the forums on the NaNoWriMo site I know what is going to happen to some of them.

I know how the story will start and how it will end. I have so many ideas buzzing in my head I fear that if November does not hurry up and get here my head is going to explode.

It is funny to me because all I wanted this year was to be more prepared then I was last year starting NaNoWriMo, so that I could get off to a solid head start. But as October was quickly passing I was starting to get nervous that November 1st would arrive and I would still be drawing a blank. And now here I am just days away and I can’t wait to get started.

The only problem is that I have no idea what the main arc in the story is going to be. The main climax. The main turning point.

But I have no fear. My characters will lead me there, I am sure of it.

I make no promises that my novel will be anything worth reading by the time I am done. But as long as I give voice to these characters (and as long as none of them break into Andrew Lloyd Weber songs when they are on dates…a method I might have used to pad my story last year) I will consider myself successful.




ONLY 3 MORE DAYS TO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Abducted by the Countdown Meme

Well it has almost been a full week since my last blog post. Originally I was planning on including a post for the Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, which was our selection for October book club. However, after book club on Saturday I just feel pretty talked out about it.
I usually try to not post about book club books because, well at least for now, the majority of my readers are my fellow book-clubers.

Unfortunately, since I’m not posting on Lost Symbol I don’t have another book to write about right now. I have three books I am in the middle of and I am going to push really hard to finish them before Monday.

NaNoWriMo is starting up on November 1st so I just know I am not going to have a lot of time to read next month.

But, for now, I still wanted to do a post for the week.

So I looked around at some different meme’s and found a really quick one I thought might be interesting.

THE COUNTDOWN MEME

FIVE: Give the five books you’d recommend to anyone

For a love story I’d go with Pride and Prejudice. It is a classic for a reason.

For a graphic novel I’d go with Scott Pilgrim. I’m not really into graphic novels, as much as I’d like to be. But Scott Pilgrim is just layered with sarcasm so it really is a fun read.

For a thriller I’d go with Relentless by Dean Koontz
. It was the first book I ever read that gave me nightmares. Some people like the ending and some people don’t, but the journey to get there is so exciting that it is definitely worth reading.

For a super natural I’d go with Odd Thomas also by Dean Koontz
. There are definitely elements of the super natural but even if you remove all of them you’d still have a really good story with an amazing protagonist.


For a classic I’d go with To Kill A Mockingbird. No explanation needed I hope.

FOUR: List your four all time favorites

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair by C S Lewis. Puddleglum was always one of my favorite characters in all of Narnia and I loved the scene when he stood up to the Green Witch. I’ve read this book like six times I think.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo. I remember when I first read this with my online book club and I was shocked by how thoroughly entertaining it was. Loved it.

Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy. Awe, my first Binchy. I was crying by the third chapter and that book has really stayed with me. I can’t wait to check in on Declan in Binchy’s new novel coming out next year.

Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella. It is an entire book that is an ode to baseball fanatics. How could I not love it?

THREE: Identify three places you’d love to live from a book. (given that the characters from the original novels are not going to be there, just the place)

Whitethorn Woods from the Maeve Binchy’s novel of the same name. It is just this really small woods in the middle of this really small Irish town.

The Shire from Lord of the Rings, as long as I could guarantee that it was long before any of that stuff goes down with Frodo and the ring. I don’t want to be there when the shire all get’s destroyed.

Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I’d just build me a little house in that one room just like at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’d get to leave during the day if I wanted to, to visit the streets of…where is it?…London? But I’d still get to swim in rivers of chocolate and have fields of flowers that look like tea cups you can bite into.

TWO: List two characters you’d want to trade places with.

First and foremost Clare from Outlander. What I wouldn’t do to have Jaime Fraser all to myself! Now, the picture I've included is the cover for the book The Exile, which is the graphic novel based off of Outlander. But I chose that picture because the actual Outlander cover is simply...

Any girl from the Hufflepuff house. I’d join the DA and make a move on Neville Longbottom. Then later when he becomes a professor of herbology, I can join the staff too as the professor of muggle studies.

ONE: A book that has made a difference in your life.

Don’t Die My Love by Lurlene McDaniel.


At book club on Saturday some of the girls were talking about the books they read when they were kids. I’ll be honest some of the ones they mentioned I’d never even heard of. And I was embarrassed to say that when I was a kid I was reading R L Stine or Lurlene McDaniel. Especially Lurlene McDaniel.

All of her books involved kids that were sick or dying and every one of them made me cry. They were the first books I read that ever really brought out those strong emotions from me and it made me love reading.

Sure, I’d like to think now that my taste has improved, (no offense) but still, I have to give credit where credit is do. And if I hadn’t gotten so deep into Lurlene McDaniel books as a kid, who knows if I would still end up loving to read as much as I do today.

Any way, if you agreed with any of my answers or if you want to challenge any of them, please leave comments.

And I’ll be back later in the week to write about all the books I finish before the kick off for NaNoWriMo.

Abducted by An Abundance of Katherines

This weekend I left work on Saturday as a girl on a mission. The mission being that I was going to accomplish 2 things that I have been meaning to do for a long time.

1. To give myself a pedicure.
2. To read a novel by John Green.

The thing about the pedicure is that my feet had literally started to look like they belong to an elephant. So trust me when I say a pedicure was way past due.



And look at these beauties now!!!




Now about the John Green Novel.

My friend Tracy introduced me to the vlogbrothers a couple of months ago. But just in these past few weeks I’ve become obsessed.



John Green is one of the two vlogbrothers (the other being his brother Hank Green) and he is also an author. He has written I believe three main books and co-authored a fourth. For a while now I have been wanting to read one of these books but I couldn’t decide which one to read first and it just wasn’t high on my priority list.

Then last week Green posted a vlog in which he showed off some of his fans that had gathered at one of his appearances. One of the girls had actually tattooed a mathematical equation that was featured in Green’s book, An Abundance of Katherines, across the length of her forearm! Crazy right!

Seeing the devotion that some of his fans had to this book made me want to read it immediately. I finished on Tuesday and I am now ready to give you my review on...



When it comes to relationships there should be a mathematical equation to predict how long the relationship will last and how the relationship will end.

Following the aftermath of his nineteenth breakup with a girl named Katherine (by the way I should specify that this is not one girl named Katherine but he managed to date and get dumped by nineteen different girls all named Katherine). Colin Singleton, a child prodigy/genius, has had a “eureka” moment. He will develop such an equation.

With the help of Hassan, the greatest best friend character I’ve come across in a really long time, Colin heads out on a road trip and ends up in the absolutely charming town of Gutshot Tennessee. Colin is one of those main characters that before you have decided that you even like him, your heart has fallen in love with him. In contrast Hassan is this completely hysterical, strong, supportive, loyal, and unconditionally generous best friend that you love straight from the beginning. In the Q&A section of the book John Green states that he doesn’t feel he would ever write sequels to any of his books. But in this case I seriously think he should consider taking the route of a spin-off and give Hassan his own book. He’s earned it.

There is no question that the town of Gutshot is extremely delightful. While there Colin and Hassan are befriended by a young girl named Lindsey Lee Wells who partners up with Colin to help him finish his equation. The equation works in such a way that you only have to know a few basic facts about each person to be able to predict the future of their relationship.

I thought it would be funny to work the equation to predict my future relationship with Elijah Wood. However, I then remembered something. Math is really hard. Also, it has been like over five years since I was last in an actual math class and I was never very good at it to start with. The hard parts of the equation completely allude me but even the simple stuff like subtracting fractions from a whole number had me scratching my head.

There were many parts of the story that I connected with and was moved by. Colin’s declarations of just wanting to matter, and his feeling that he is missing a piece inside of himself, or when he says that his distractions keep “…the loneliness of crushlessness from being entirely crushing.”

However there was one part of the book that I found to be entirely unsettling.

Colin manages to ask the one question I have always felt to be unaskable. Not because the question itself can’t be asked but because the prospective answer is too frightening.

“Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more
or less if they could see inside you?…If people could see me
the way I see myself--if they could live in my memories--
would anyone, anyone, love me?”

The entire time I was reading the story I couldn’t help but feel that Colin was such a pessimist. His theory on relationships boiling down to it always ending. And yet the unsettlingness of the above statement helped remind me that I am often also a pessimist, because my honest answer…would be…no.

(before I continue with this line of thought, please know that I am not writing this to get a response. To put it bluntly, you can save all your “Oh, Courtney, when you find the right guy…blah blah blah”. I know you mean well but I am honestly including this part in my blog just to put it out there into the void. Also I tend to find those types of answers to be somewhat patronizing. No offense.)

In the book, Colin and Lindsey both have a secret habit of nibbling on the tip of their thumbs. This is a private habit that they never do in front of anyone. I have similar habits. Things I do in the privacy of my own home that I would never do in front of another person. Things I have never told anyone about, not even my oldest and dearest friends. NO ONE. And a part of me always assumed that if I was ever in a relationship I would just either a- stop doing them or b- become the type of person who didn’t need to do them anymore. It was never an option for me to find someone I could do them in front of because if anyone ever really saw inside me, saw me the way I see myself, they couldn’t love me.

And if I am totally honest with myself. I think I prefer it that way. Not the, no one loving me part. But let us just say that my secret habit is nibbling the tip of my thumb. I don’t want to do that in front of someone else. I want to drop all those private habits. I wouldn’t want him to see me as the type of person who does that.

Again, we are talking about little habits like nibbling your thumb, for anyone out there who’s thinking of anything dirty, get your mind out of the gutter.



In conclusion I would simply say that while I didn’t love the book, I did really really like it. The ending was probably less climatic then I would usually prefer but the characters were endearing and the story was simple and genuine. And I am excited to read more from John Green in the future.



40 posts; 25 weeks; 21 books- to go.