Reading, again.

I was serious, btw, when I said I preferred kid's books to adult books (well, teenage reading).

So I read one yesterday, "My Worst Best Friend" by the woman who wrote Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen (being perfectly honest, I haven't got the book beside me right now, so I can't remember the author's name. Dyan something). It was good, if a little predictable. But it was a bit like another book I read recently, I think the Sarah Dessen book actually, in that I could see another way the story could go and it didn't and I felt that maybe that detracted from the storyline a little. I guess they were more red herrings, or plotlines the writer didn't fully think out, but it just makes reading the books a little unsatisfying. Way back when, this would be when I'd write a fanfiction to see if the plotline worked better lol (honestly, if it was in my power to rewrite all of Twilight I would. Renesmee wouldn't be there because she's physically impossible, and Half of them would've died. Except maybe Jasper, Alice, Carlisle and Rosalie. They could've survived. Maybe.) but I'm too stuck in the Uprooted series (my working title. I want to change it, but I don't want anything cheesy).

I've got another book on the go anyway, called Pretty Bad Things, by C.J.Skuse. It's actually pretty good, though I've only read about three chapters. It's about these boy/girl twins whose mother killed herself when they were six and their dad wound up in jail for fraud about the same time. I am so hoping the situation when they were six was due to their parents having no money, because she's already alluded to that and it would be so effing annoying if this was the third book in a row that led me down the wrong path.

I'm going to confess right now though, that I really only get these books because I'm checking out the competition. Any book with a blurb that sounds remotely like what I'm trying to write, I get. I want to fill a niche, not be a plagerist. I draw a line at those Diary Of A Chav books though, even though I think there's a possibility they are pretty similar. I'd rather just not find out (and no, I'm not going to go into my plotline now. But for my proof-readers, who I swear I will be sending this link to - change the protagonists name or not? I mean, I like it, especially the connotations when it's shortened, but at the same time ... I just don't know.) Does that make me a coward by the way, trying to avoid what could be the strongest competition? I just don't want to be laughed at whenever I get the balls to approach agents.

But watch this space. Next time I write, I might have caved into Joanne's demands and read Celia Ahern. Or Jodi Picoult, since last time we were talking on twitter she was complaining about the ending to My Sister's Keeper. And she rates P.S. I Love You over the film. I'll probably be the same with The Lovely Bones (which was great until Susie possessed her friend. What was that craziness about?)

Oh, I just looked it up on Waterstones. MWBF was by Dyan Sheldon. I like her writing style, although sometimes it was hard to know if Gracie, the main character, was talking to someone else or just thinking. Speech marks Dyan, Speech marks. Could be worse though, in PBT she has a seven am report talking about 3.50 that afternoon. They can predict the news now?

I'd better leave this here, toy story's on and my son has gone running amok. I'll find him outside my room, asking for chocolate. So predictable.