Stacking The Shelves / What's Up This Week (Jul. 20th)

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly event hosted by Tynga's Reviews where people can share the fabulous books they've bought, borrowed or received during the week.

   1. Breath by Jackie Morse Kessler

2. Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson

3. The Distance Between Us by Kasie West

4. Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo 

Hey guys! How's it going?

First, the good news: I have my PC back.

Now, the bad news: It's just as broken as it was when I took it in. I'm just $108 poorer. :( To say I'm not happy is a huge understatement. I'm back to the darn drawing board and have to decide how I want to address this, because it really, really sucks. 

Long story short: if you live in my area, do NOT take your computer to Computer Ease Solutions. Not only did they epicly fail at fixing this thing, they also deleted my downloads folder(!!!). I'm lucky I thought the machine was getting a reformat (lord knows it NEEDS it) and saved my cover for Sealer's Promise or that would be a real mess! They were also more focused on telling me the fan they were replacing would no longer be a blue LED (big deal) while neglecting to tell me it would not be silent (Oh. My. God. Noise.)... My head is hurting just thinking about this. 

I got a lot of reading done in the downtime, though. :) I guess everything has a silver lining? I finished Breath by Jackie Morse Kessler and Faking It by Cora Carmack, and I'm over half through The Collector by Victoria Scott (which I'm loving so far.) 

I got my smartphone! :D I chose a Samsung Galaxy S3 and got a totally cute sky blue case for it. If you have app recommendations, I'd love to hear them. :) So far I'm really liking Plume (for Twitter), Life Reminders, Skype (big surprise there!) and Flow. 

Last, to any fellow ontario bloggers, are you planning to go to this year's Blog Squad Meet Up in November? Tickets go on sale August 1st, if you haven't heard. You can find out about that here. :) 

As always, my disclaimer: no guarantee I'll finish all this. But it's what I'm dying to read! 

The Collector by Victoria Scott

The Distance Between Us by Kasie West 

Tiger's Voyage by Colleen Houck 

This has not been a productive time for writing. Plotting? Sure. Writing? No. Writing on a smartphone is definitely not my cup of tea. It's great as a "Holy crap, jot that idea down!" device. But I wouldn't want to write a novel on it. 

My plans, as far as what I'm doing, are staying relatively the same. Working on finishing Promise Me Forever, then finalizing Sealer's Promise outline decisions while I work on Sweet Rebellion. 

As for giving you guys a sample, here's part of the latest scene for Sweet Rebellion. As always, this is draft so it is subject to change and there may be typos or other minor mistakes at this point. 

Down on the dance floor people were doing a variety of hip wiggling, gyrating dances in time to the song’s heavy beat. Clay was among them, a throng of girls circling him like they were petals on a flower. Each shimmied and dropped, grinding him shamelessly as they spiraled around him.

Burning disappointment lodged itself in Megan’s throat, but she focused on singing and managed to tune it out. Why bother being surprised? She had known from day one that this would happen sooner or later.

As she came to the last repeat of the chorus she caught Clay's gaze and altered the lyrics, singing, “He’s a snake with green eyes.”

Her point made, she turned toward the other side of the stage and finished up the remainder of the song, her body throbbing with pent up frustration that had nothing to do with controlling her diaphragm. She needed to get down from here, now, and slip into the crowd. The stupid sugary smile she had plastered on her face was already starting to make it hurt.

It was time to forget that stupid kiss he had given her the night he arrived. Except she couldn’t decide what hurt more: the fact that she was fool enough to still have it on her mind, or the fact that she wasn’t sure she knew how to let it go.

Anyway, that wraps it up for me this week. :) How's life been treating you? What are you excited about right now? What are you reading and / or writing? I'd love to know, so feel free to leave a comment. :)