THE BOMBS THAT BROUGHT US TOGETHER by Brian Conaghan

Fourteen-year-old Charlie Law has lived in Little Town, on the border with Old Country, all his life. He knows the rules: no going out after dark; no drinking; no litter; no fighting. You don't want to get on the wrong side of the people who run Little Town. When he meets Pavel Duda, a refugee from Old Country, the rules start to get broken. Then the bombs come, and the soldiers from Old Country, and Little Town changes for ever. 

Sometimes, to keep the people you love safe, you have to do bad things. As Little Town's rules crumble, Charlie is sucked into a dangerous game. There's a gun, and a bad man, and his closest friend, and his dearest enemy. 

 Charlie Law wants to keep everyone happy, even if it kills him. And maybe it will ...

I received the hardback version of this book from Bloomsbury Australia, and thought the cover was both bright and disturbing. I mean, check out the bombs! :/

Regardless, it's a really nice book. I'm kinda fussy about hardbacks, and really liked the look of this one.

Charlie Law lives in Little Town with his parents. Little Town borders the Old Country, and the two don't get along. The Regime in Little Town is strict and delivers harsh penalties to those who steal or break curfew. Charlie's a good boy: he goes to school, likes to read and stays off the radar, but when refugees from Old Country move in next door and Charlie befriends Pavel Duda, he's determined to teach him the lingo and keep him safe. Because there are a lot of people eager to make the Duda family feel unwelcome.

Charlie's mother has asthma, so he's always eager to help by walking several miles to get her inhaler. But when Old Country decides to attack Little Town and then soldiers move in, Charlie makes a few decisions that lead him down a very dangerous path...

This is such a unique book. Even after reading the blurb I wasn't sure what the genre was, but once  I got stuck into the story there was no denying that it's a dystopian book.

The people of Little Town aren't just in constant fear of what the neighbouring Old Country will do next, they're also oppressed by their own Regime. Everyone lives under the watchful eye of the Big Man, and anyone who breaks the rules either suffers the punishment or ends up owing him. Yeah, it's not a fair life.

The Bombs That Brought Us Together is an interesting, yet disturbing book. Interesting, because the friendship angle is done very well. Charlie is ferocious about helping his friend. And disturbing because the town is run by a man who knows how to keep people down, as well as put children in situations where they become indebted to him.

I also found the writing style to be as unique as Charlie's voice.

The Bombs That Brought Us Together, May 2016, ISBN 9781408855744, Bloomsbury Childrens

Just thinkin'

You guys already know about my fascination with 30STM, right? But I'm not sure if you know that I have a very similar fascination with MCR. There's just something about these two bands that gets my creative juices totally flowing! It's awesome.

So when I drop my daughter off at school, I always switch on my MP3 player and listen while I walk. The last few days I've been plugging back into The Black Parade. Before that I was listening non-stop to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. Both albums are totally awesome, I can't get enough, but this is also a way for me to gear up for their next album. We've already pre-ordered it. And I just can't stop listening/watching Na Na Na. It totally rocks! And I love the fictional angle that Gerard Way gives his albums/songs. He's very creative, and even writes comic books.

So, there you have it. These bands are two of my biggest musical influences, and I've gotten several story ideas just from listening to their songs. Just thought I'd share. ;)

We've hit mid-week again. Yikes! Today, hubby started work super early so we got up at 4m. We'll be doing that again tomorrow. And even though I kinda feel like a lightheaded zombie waking at that time, it also gives me a lot of extra time to do stuff before my daughter wakes up. Like this morning, I wrote/proofread/scheduled my upcoming Samhain blog post. It'll go live on October 29, but I wanted to get it done a few days before. It's a little post about NaNoWriMo. I'll post the link here when it's posted.

I also received the final round of edits for my upcoming Evernight Publishing novella, THE SOUL DEALER: Redemption. Instead of throwing myself into it all day today, I'm going to tackle the beginning of it, and then plan to have it finished by tomorrow afternoon. Friday, at the very latest. I've just got a small list of other things that need doing as well, especially for my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, which I'm now super excited about! Yay.

Either way, looks like I'll be pretty busy for the rest of the week. So, I better get started, huh? See ya later!

Awesome!

We have tickets!

That's right, we'll be going to this in July:

OMG! I'm so excited. Already counting down the days until the concert. And it's in my birthday month, too. How awesome is that? Yay!

The strangest thing is that I found out about this concert from hubby. See, I've been keeping a close eye on Twitter, their website, everywhere to make sure that we didn't miss out on the announcement. And you know what happened? The one day I'm not logged into Twitter is when they announced the tour. lol. So when hubby was driving to work on Monday and saw the above poster on a random wall, he called me and I got investigating.

To cut a long story short... we got our tickets this morning! Thank you Internet for making it so easy to buy just about anything at any time of the day. *mwah*

Okay. Now that the excitement's out of the way, let's get talking about what I've been up to.

The days are going too quickly, and mostly seem to be consumed by revision and hanging out with my daughter. Both are great things, of course. As far as the revision progress, I've been falling behind and haven't met my daily goals all week. Even last night I ended up 11 pages short of where I wanted to be by today, but that's fine. I'm now @ page 217/407. The word/page count keeps going up so much that it feels like no matter how much I do, there's always more tacked on the end. :/

Still, the fact that I'm now halfway through is great. And that the total word count has passed 81k is pretty cool too. Especially since I've been chopping SO much from the story. But since I'm changing almost every page, that explains the word count rise. Does that make any sense? It does to me. lol.

I better get to it, then. Hubby's got a half day today and I want to squeeze in a few things before then. :) See ya!

This Is War... is awesome!

On Friday, I found out that the official release date for the latest 30 Seconds to Mars album here in Australia was the 4th. So, we ducked out to the shops on Saturday and picked up our copy.

Okay, after hearing Kings and Queens, as well as This Is War, I knew that the album would be great. I love their music. But I didn't know it would be awesome, outstanding and totally addicitive. I can't stop listening to it. To all the tracks. It's not like I've got one fave that I keep repeating over and over, it's the whole thing.

I LOVE it with much love. ;)

This week my to-do list isn't too big. My main goal is to complete the final revision of Recast#2. So, that's 113 pages in 5 days. If I can do 23 pages/day, I'll have it done by the end of the week. Tonight I got to page 28. Not bad. Always good to be a few pages ahead. The goal page happened to be in the middle of a chapter, so it was best to keep moving forward until I got to the end.

Now that my goal's met, I think I'll keep reading. I picked up LOVELY BONES from my bookshelf yesterday afternoon. I want to read it before the movie comes out. I've already read the first 100 pages and I'm loving it so far. It's just so heart-wrenchingly sad, though. Beautiful, but sad. :( Can't wait to see where it goes.

Time for me to go now. Good night!

Uh... it's already Friday?

Well, yesterday was a bit of a bust. Though I did get a bunch of emailing and some blogging done.

I had a specialist appointment yesterday. Yeah, that whole nose thing that I've been struggling with for about a year now. The good news is that there is no more inflammation. It's all good internally, but I need to keep taking my medicine (in the form of a nasal spray) until at least next March. The dose is down to three times a week now, so that's cool.

Considering I've only had one sleepless, shitty night since the last time I went to see the specialist, I think it's good. This is just something that I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. As long as I've got some handy sprays nearby, I should be okay. So that was good news.

I planned to get some reading done on the train, but I took my daughter's MP3 player with this album, and this one, as well as this one... and just couldn't switch off. ;) Some awesome tunes, that's for sure.

Anyway, I got the Horror/X-mas story finished on Wednesday afternoon. I added a scene and fixed up a lot of the writing. The story is pretty much the same as it was, I just cleaned it up a lot. Now I think I'll just read it one last time and sub it away. Yay. I'll probably do that sometime next week.

As for today... I plan to get the final draft of that little Tryst finished. It's just over 10k, so it's definitely a short story. Still, I think it's got a lot of emotion and detail, sadness and happiness, and of course a little lovin'. Other than that, don't think I'll get a chance to do much else.

It's my daughter's last day of Term 3 today. :/ Oh gosh. I hope it doesn't bring the writing to a stand-still. There are plenty of things I want to accomplish within October.

Oh, and on another note, I thought this article was interesting. I don't think there's enough going on as far as outer space is concerned.

Have a good one!

Don't forget, I'll be the featured author over at Mandy M Roth's blog this Friday.

Obsessed? Who me?

As you can tell, my obsession for this band continues... my gosh, I've even got the hubby and daughter hooked on 30 Seconds to Mars. Lol. We can't get the songs out of our heads, and can't get enough of listening to these awesome tunes. Man, this is one brilliant band!

I'm very, very impressed with Jared Leto's songwriting skills, as well as his musical talent, and the way he sounds when he sings live. Being in a band REALLY suits him too. ;) And I don't need to go into how cool the band sounds as a unit. I'll just say: AWESOME! :D

Anyway, enough fan-girl gushing for now, I think.

You know, it's our 8th Wedding Anniversary today. Yay! Wow. Very cool. We're hoping that the hubby gets out at a good time so we can go out for dinner somewhere nice. Knowing us, we'll probably end up at the HRC. Love that place. Good music, cool atmosphere, yummy food... and it's one of the first places the hubby took me to when we started dating.

Damn, the naughty and very cheeky kitty has just jumped in front of the computer screen. This is his new thing. If he wants to get my attention, he gets in front of the 'puter. Darn it, he's too clever. :/ Oh good, he moved. Heeeee. Heeeeee.

I really surprised myself yersterday, and got through the entire second draft revision of my Vampire Oracle novella. The word count is now below 20k - 19,999 words. Lol. I deleted some stuff, added some stuff and made a few notes on the side. There are just a few (minor) Savannah details that I need to double check before I get started on the third draft. I'm still very excited about this tale, and found it very easy to read and get engrossed in the story. I hope everyone else that reads it feels the same.

Today I got started on a X-mas/Horror with Romantic elements story I want to rewrite a little. It's a completed novella that I want to enhance so I can sub it. At the moment I only got 7 pages in because my daughter woke up really early. Yeah, if it's not the lappy, it's the kid... or the kitty. Gee!

So last night I picked up another book. I'm in a Shomi-kinda mood. You know, last week I cast the hero and heroine in my own Shomi idea. And since then, their story has been circling around inside my head. How cool. Anyway, I started this book and got 60 pages in before bedtime. Man, it's really, really cool so far. I wanna get back to it. Lol.

This Friday I will be the featured author over at Mandy M Roth's blog. Aphrodite's Apples is featured this week. So check it out from Mon-Fri so you can read some cool interviews with some very talented authors... and me. ;) Lol. Click on the graphic to get there. It'll be a cool week!

Speaking of AA, do you know that I've got two different eBooks being released over at Aphrodite's next month? Yay, I do! :) Very excited.

Okay, I better get going for now. Here's hoping that today turns out as productive as yesterday... can't wait to listen to 30STM again today!