8-BIT CHRISTMAS (Cephalopod Coffeehouse book club)

As it's the last Friday of the month, it's time for a bunch of bloggers to post for the monthly Cephalopod Coffeehouse (a.k.a. "Friendly Gathering") hosted by The Armchair Squid. The idea behind this monthly hop is that each month, participants will post about their favourite book read in the last month.

I read three books during November, and I really enjoyed all of them. It was kind of hard to choose which one to review here, but I decided to review 8-BIT CHRISTMAS by Kevin Jakubowski.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC copy.

I put this on the "children's literature" shelf, even though it's narrated by an adult character looking back on his Nintento-crazed childhood. But if you were a child in the 80s, you'll probably appreciate this one.

Story:

Jake is 9 years old when the first glorious grey Nintendo Entertainment System hits the market. The richest and most spoiled kid in town gets a Nintendo and all the other kids are suddenly swarming onto his front lawn, looking for new ways to suck up to him so they can have a turn on his NES. He only lets 10 kids in at a time on weekends, so the stakes are high and the competition fierce. Kids even go so far as to surrender some of their best toys just so they can go down to the rich kid's basement and Nintendo-land.

All over town, kids begin plotting how to get their parents to give them Nintendos for Christmas. But when disaster strikes - starting with a kid's tantrum, and leading to a falling TV and ultimately a squashed dog - the town's parents are up in arms about the evils of Nintendo. The only NES in town is no longer available for weekend tournaments, and the kids are getting desperate. The parents even go so nuts they arrange for local stores to stop stocking NESes on their shelves. All the kids in Jake's class are now kissing their dreams of owning a NES of their own goodbye. But Jake isn't giving up on his dream. A stroke of inspiration gives him a new plan for how to save the town from being Nintendoless forever.

My thoughts:

I kind of LOVED this book. As a child of the '80s, but also as someone who can apparently appreciate Kevin Jakubowski's sense of humour, I was snorting with laughter at almost every turn of a page (or "turn", really, as I read this on Kindle). Also, I could relate to that whole "rich kid with a NES" thing, since we had a neighbour who had every game console known to man, while the rest of the kids in the street made do with our hand-me-down Atari.

Some parts of the book seemed a bit odd to me, for e.g. rather modern-sounding dialogue like "Dude!" which I'm not sure was authentic to the 80s. But what do I know, I was just a kid back then. Perhaps my memory is rusty. ;) I also found myself disappointed with the fact that Jake didn't get a NES for Christmas - even though he got something seriously awesome instead (and no, I don't mean the Lite Brite. haha). But yeah, all in all I thought this was a highly entertaining read, and I would recommend it to anyone who:

a) can relate to an obsessive love/fondness for Nintendo,

(I myself had a Super NES, which I bought with my own saved up pocket money at age 12, and it was still beautifully lumpy and grey)

b) loves the '80s, or

c) wants to enjoy a large number of laughs (it's the best medicine after all).

Also read in November:

☆Hard to Handle by Jessica Lemmon

☆The Almost Girl by Amalie Howard

(both courtesy of NetGalley. Thank you!)

Travel Series: U.S.A. = Ca., Or., Wa. & Ga., 2001

In June 2001, a few things were happening in my life all at once:

1. We were moving house;
2. I was finishing up another semester of uni (I had about 3 essays due I think);
3. and I was preparing to travel overseas to meet my first ever ... wait for it ... internet friends!

These were people I'd met through my love of the epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time, which drew me to an online community of fellow fans in mid-2000. I knew these people really well, having spent copious hours chatting to them (it's amazing the things you learn about people you've never met in person!). But I was still nervous. And I know my mum was as well. ;)

In 2001, going off to meet a group of people "from the internet" was a huge deal. It's still kind of a huge deal today, actually - people still look at me funny when I talk about my internet friends. But I guess it's more commonplace now than it was then.

So we moved house, and I staggered across the uni semester finish line, and finally it was time to pack my bags and head for the airport.

From Perth I flew to San Francisco, where things got off to a rocky start because my friends and I couldn't FIND each other! I didn't even hear my name being called over the loudspeaker, probably 'cause I was too busy crying into the pay phone to Mum. Finally, though, I got found, and with a certain amount of sick relief we all headed off to the car and hit the road, heading northeast towards Auburn, CA.

It's true nobody killed me over those first few days (or any of the other days to follow), but my mum must have been wondering, since it was another 3 days before I thought to let her know I was safe and found. Sorry, Mum! ;)

Most of my time during this trip was spent in California, but we also went on a rather epic road trip up north, collecting more friends along the way. We drove through Oregon (where we stayed a night with one of those friends), and finally up to Washington State. In Seattle we met up with yet more friends and hung out for a few fun-filled days.

Deception Pass, WA (no, that's not me).

The Seattle gang (me with my arms around my shins).

Later, I flew to Atlanta, Georgia, to meet up with two more of my (interwebs) (also potential axe-murdering) friends, one of whom had actually paid for my plane ticket out there (she rocks to this day!). We hung out, watched crap movies, and met her then new boyfriend (now husband). We did a bit of sight-seeing as well, including visiting Stone Mountain and the Coca Cola Museum. And we met up with yet more WoT community friends.

The Atlanta gang.

Me (middle) with 2 friends at Stone Mountain, GA.

There was one more meeting that occurred in 2001, during a few hours I spent waiting at Phoenix Airport for a flight. I met up with two more friends there.

At Phoenix airport.

I finished up my trip back in California, and flew home fully in tact (no limbs missing at all, nor many brain cells). I had taken off a fair bit of weight, but mostly because I lost my wallet before the trip even began (left it on the plane on stop-over in L.A. - picked it up on the way back as they'd kept it in lost property, bless them!).

So for my whole trip I hadn't had my own funds to assist in gorging myself on food. My friends were good enough to feed me, and for that I am eternally grateful!

Anyway, that about sums up my 2001 trip to the U.S. to hang out with people I hadn't ever met in person before. I'm still friends with many of them to this day.

Write ... Edit ... Publish (Nov. ed. ~ SHARING)

It's that time again, when a bunch of us get together to participate in Denise Covey's full-of-awesome monthly blogfest, Write ... Edit ... Publish. This month's theme, as the image above suggests, is "SHARING", and here are some of the suggested themes:

SUGGESTIONS:

• tell us about your writing in November

• write a flash fiction piece with SHARING as a theme - maybe an Adam and Eve story?

• post some pictures to suit the theme (raid Pinterest!)

• share something memoir-ish about your travels, experiences, your life

• write a poem that encapsulates SHARING in some way

• other...?

For me it was pretty easy to choose what to write about this month - NaNoWriMo!

You know, I can't tell you all how happy I am that NaNo has become so immense since the days of its humble inception. Sometimes, great ideas flare for a while, and then burn out. Maybe the great minds that come up with these ideas work so hard and get worn out, with nobody there to take up the slack and keep their great idea alive. Thankfully that didn't happen with NaNo, and I can't see it happening anytime soon. NaNo is basically an institution now!

I've participated since 2002, failing twice and participating "unofficially" one year. Most of my 11 novels have been NaNo-born. And I guess that's a good enough reason for me to love NaNo!

In truth, I seem to do my best work during months like November, when I'm given permission to just write like a nutter. And by "best" I don't mean "really great writing", just that I get a lot of work done. Of course, it never feels like work, per se. It's more like freedom from work, actually. NaNo is my time to slack off from what I probably should be doing (revision, editing, etc.) and do something for the pure exhilarating fun of it. So this month, I haven't been doing hard work at all. I've been having a supreme amount of fun.

During November so far, I've written 83,305 words (and a tiny bit more as of tonight, which I haven't counted up yet. Too busy writing up this post!). I've loved pretty much every second of it.

(I usually forget to share the linky list of all

the participants, but I didn't this time! Here it is)

Too many words, and I'm glad

It's November 18th, and my NaNo word count is 68,820. I still have a number of juicy scenes to write (by "juicy" I mean dramatic, horrific, sappy, any of that). And I'm pretty sure my word count is going to end up being the usual overbloated type I'm so good at producing.

Sometimes people are daunted by the idea of editing stories that have at least 40k too many words. I know I have been in the past, with some of my other bloated works. ;) But in this case, I'll be glad to have all that extra padding to work with, since I'll have to start things off with some of the old slash 'n burn. I have high hopes of being left with a good amount of quality(ish) wordage afterward. And yeah, I'm already looking forward to revisions, without even having finished the story. But once I've finished, I'll do my usual thing and set the novel aside for a while. Let it stew.

I've got other things I want to achieve before picking this novel back up for revisions (rewriting my novella, reading a new novel I'm beta-ing, and revising at least one of my other novels). But you never know ... the temptation to return to Nora's world earlier than planned might become too great.

For now, I'm still enjoying the slightly shadowy initial journey. And I'm pretty sure this story is gonna end up being one of my favourites.

I hope you're all having a great November!