Tardy again and SURFACE TENSION by Brent Runyon

You may remember when I blogged about ALWAYS by Brett Runyon. Well, I recently completed another interesting novel of his. I picked up SURFACE TENSION, A Novel in Four Summer because I was intrigued by the concept. First of all, time at a summer home is a topic that is near and dear to my heart because I think a lot of 'coming of age' happens in the summertime. (BTW, my favorite example of this genre is by Stephanie Greene--check it out) And this novel is just that. It's an interesting novel of the 'trendy new variety' in the sense that there's not a traditional plot sequence. However, that did not slow my reading a bit. I actually found the whole idea of the sequence of four summers to be quite a page turner. As you can imagine, a teen-age boy grows quite a bit in four years and so do his relationships with his lake house neighbors. As expected, there's the cute girl down the block who only gets--you guessed it--cuter every year. There's the obligatory relationship with his parent's friend's daughter. There's the crazy preacher neighbor across the street. Runyon does a nice job of tying these issues through the four years. One summer he even brings a friend with him to the lake which adds an interesting element. All in all, while I would not heartily recommend this book as I often do, it's a great study in character development and plot development in a nontraditional format (essentially four novellas). Although, I think I was more disappointed in the main character than the book, but he was true to himself and proved himself to be a man of character, he never really broke out of his shell like I wanted him to. But some of us never do. Check it out. Probably not a gift book, though.

My brain is aflutter with the approaching NaNoWriMo. (National Novel Writing Month). I plan to participate again this year, but I don't really know what I'm going to write yet. Maybe you can all send me ideas. ha ha At any rate, my friend who is also doing it has written, like, seventy pages in preparation for her story which is making me feel very behind. AND Lauren Myracle is coming to her town next week---it's so not fair!

My six-year-old came alive on the soccer field tonight. I'm not sure what finally kicked in (no pun intended), but he scored a goal and everything. Then we came home and my daughter was reading two books, no kidding. One in her lap one in her hand, then she'd switch. She couldn't decide which one she liked better, I guess, but it cracked me up.

I'm reading this really cool book that I can't wait to share with you in a few days. It's really hooked me. I'm *hoping* to finish editing my novel TOMORROW. That's my goal, anyway. Don't know if I'll get all the changes typed in tomorrow or not, but I should get most of the edits down on paper, at least.

This week-end is the Peanut Festival complete with 5K (my husband and two girls are running), parade (the girls are marching with the band, one son with the scouts, one son has a soccer game), and marching band competition. It's a very exciting thing in this neck of the woods. Wish you were all here to share it with us.