Last week I finished reading Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why and since then I've been wanting to get here and right a review about it.  Thank god I found the time today.

For starters, I read it in two day.  I've been trying to limit my reading to my commute using my time at home to write.  But, on that second day, I just had to continue reading it to find out what happens.  Needless to say, I didn't get any writing done that day.

I really loved the concept of this book.  My favorite part was the mixing of Hannah's story with that of Clay's.  I liked the two distinct voices and how it contently jumped from one to the other, sometimes so quickly you could almost miss it.  What I also liked was seeing what stories pushed her to the brink of no return.  Some can seem so trivial to us, a bad joke that we've all experienced in our lives, but how in someone who is depressed, that one bad joke could be the final straw in their lives and how a string of bad jokes make them feel like they have no place else to go.

I definitely recommend this book to read.  It's an eye opener as well as a page turner.  But it doesn't get so dark that it can be scary.  It's a good mix.

I’ve been thinking a lot about tenses in books lately: past tense vs. present tense.  I tend to lean towards past tense when I write.  Whether its 1st person or 3rd person, I always see my story being told as a flashback, a memory my main character is reliving.  Sometimes I even picture my character as an old person on their porch, rocking in a chair, telling their story to their grandchild.  For some reason, I never see my character as living it in the moment.  I wonder how other authors come to the conclusion to use present tense versus past tense.

I bring this up because the last three books I’ve read have all been present tense.  I sometimes feel like this tense became popular after The Hunger Games.  In some cases, there seems to be one book or series that starts a trend or at least brings the trend to the fore front.  Harry Potter did it with magic, Twilight with vampires and even Diary of a Wimpy Kid with journal books.  So I can’t help but think that Suzanne Collins made this particular tense more popular.  I don’t blame writers.  With the success of The Hunger Game trilogy, who wouldn’t want to try to hit gold using the same technique?  It just makes me ponder.

I know every story is different and I have been known to switch from 3rd person to 1st and back again.  Who knows, maybe I will be able to see one of my stories told in the present tense someday. 

Funny enough, I finished this book well before Christmas.  I guess with everything else I've blogged about, I forgot to blog a finish post of the book.  I am rectifying that now.

In the end, I liked it.  It was something a little different.  As stated before, a dystopian society mixed in with the real world.  I've always liked the strong female character and oddly enough, they are popular: Katniss in The Hunger Games, Cassia in Matched and now Lyn.  She's a good addition to the list.

My only feedback, I was expecting the fight to the death to be sooner in the book.  It literally was like the last two chapters of the book.  As much as the back of the book hypes this match up, I was expecting almost half the book to be about it.  I think by the time the match was announced, then the training for the match and then the match itself, the plot line only took up 4 chapters of the book. That's fine, but my expectation was different. 

Other than that, I enjoyed it.  No word yet on a meeting, but I'll keep you posted to see what the other girls think.

For my New Year's Resolution I put together a writing schedule that I would try to follow.  One week has gone by and I am proud to say that I have finished a chapter.  Even with a weekend full of travel, cupcakes and a child's birthday party, I was able to finish the draft to a chapter of my book.  Now, I must keep the momentum going.

Truth be told, I can already feel the excuses bottling up inside me: long day at work, too tired to write, etc.  I can also feel the laziness come on along with the need to watch my favorite shows on TV.  Forget the fact that most of them are on On Demand and I can watch some of them commercial free.  I just have the need to watch them live on the night the first air.  It is a need I must ignore.

If I can keep this momentum going, that's one chapter a week I can finish.  Most books being around 20 chapters long and since I already had 6 done by the time I started this resolution, that means I have at most 13 more chapter to go.  That's 13 weeks, only 3 and a half months.  Which means, if I keep it going, I can be well into the revising stage by summer.

It is definitely a challenge with both my attitude and a social life getting in the way, but that's why I write it down for all of you to see.  I can't let you down and in turn I won't let myself down.  Let's work together on this.