One Pimple is One Too Many - NaNoWriMo

Hey Everyone!
Welcome to November! Can you believe how the time has flown?
Let's talk about something wild, crazy exciting, a little nerve-racking but a WHOLE lot of fun! :)

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - is very simple:
Write 50,000 words (about a Novel length) by November 30th and voila'! You are now a novelist!

I know from experience that this works - I published my book Chasing Dandelions because of NaNoWriMo!

So what are you waiting for? Sign up today!
www.nanowrimo.org

(And I know what you're thinking, "Ariel! I don't have time to write a novel!" Well the truth is, none of us do. Writing a novel is one of those "one day" things. As in, "One day I'll write a novel..." and before you know it that one day becomes never. If you write 1,667 words per day, you'll make 50,000 by the end of the month! And REMEMBER, if you don't win - that's okay! The goal is to get you writing and to have fun -- you'll have done more writing than some people do in their entire lifetime AND there's always next year :))

Happy Writing and I hope you have a great week!

Ariel

P.S. Need help on something I haven't covered yet? Send me an @reply (@arielsmiles) or an email to arielsmiles(at)rocketmail(dot)com :)

One Pimple is One Too Many - Games

Let's talk about something fun today!

GAMES

Recently, I got this lovely little gem:



Beautiful isn't it?

This was my FAVORITE game back in the day.
I never really got into Monopoly but I'd have to say my favorite board game is LIFE! (Especially the new one!)
What about you? What's your favorite game/board game?

Schedule a day with the whole family this week to sit down and play some games the good ole fashioned way!
If you don't have any board games, maybe play a card game! Go Fish, Speed or Spoons!

Have a great week everybody!

Ariel

Don't forget! LIVE book review/chat with Amelia, Deko, Posh and myself tonight to talk about my book Chasing Dandelions! 6pm Pacific time at www.dekoposh.com! :)

Amelia's Book Room: Marcelo in the Real World

This is another book cover I love, isn't it so pretty, with all the stars and the glow of the window?

Marcelo Sandoval is 17 years old, but he's not like most other teenagers. He hears music in his mind, a music he can only describe as 'remembering.' This is part of the autism-like impairment he has, which has caused him to be tagged with 'developmental disorder.' He goes to Patterson, a special school for kids like himself, but his father surprises him with a challenge: he has to work in the mail room at his dad's law firm for the summer, and if he does well, he can decide if he wants to go back to Patterson. Otherwise, it's off to public school.

Marcelo decides to work at the law firm. Many of the people he meets in this new, huge world think that he's an idiot, literally, but he just interprets things differently and with more difficulty than most people do. He soon finds a friend in his coworker Jasmine, and a confusing friend/enemy relationship with Wendell, the son of a partner in the law firm. Everything is going smoothly, but then Marcelo finds a mysterious photograph in the company files, that causes him to dig deep into one of their cases.

This is a much more complex story than the cover suggests, and it's a good one. I listened to Francisco Stork's novel on CD, and I came home every day excited for the next disc! Marcelo In The Real World does contain a lot of coarse language and adult topics, though, so be warned, younger readers.

I hope you enjoy this week's book, and don't forget to read Chasing Dandelions by Ariel Arguelles; the end of the Book Club month is coming up pretty fast! Happy reading!

Amelia's Book Room: Guitar Highway Rose

Hey guys, I'm here to give you guys another book suggestion, and it's a real good one!

I picked up Guitar Highway Rose at random when I was at the library, looking for something to read to pass the time. (Strange concept in a library, huh?) First off, the cover told me that this could turn out pretty awesome. Isn't that cover just lovely? I read a few pages, and at first the writing style confused me; it takes a while to get used to. The story is about Rosie Moon and Asher Fielding, two Australian teenagers. Rosie wants a nose ring and wishes her parents would stop fighting, and her best friend is named Pippa. Asher just moved away from his home, he disobeys dress codes, and the worst thing that's happened to him is his parents' breakup. (Asher is where it gets confusing; his point of view is all lowercase with no punctuation, much like a train of thought. Kind of cool, really.)

Asher and Rosie decide that they just want to get away for a while; and so, they go hitchhiking alone about Australia, discovering all the amazing, terrible, scary, wonderful things that go along with that. After a few days, I picked this up again, and I was hooked. I stayed up way past my bedtime reading it, and finished it the next day. This road trip/family drama/love story is now one of my favorite novels. Not to mention an unexpected twist at the end that made me gasp!

Find out more about author Brigid Lowry here, and check out her 'Autobiographical Tale', it has some cool insight on writing Guitar Highway Rose. She has written several other books, including Follow The Blue and With Lots Of Love From Georgia.

Join the book club, read Ariel Arguelles' Chasing Dandelions, and have a good week! (Ooh, and leave a comment!)

Amelia's Book Room: Matilda

This is a book review; why not review a book about books?

Roald Dahl's classic novel Matilda is one of my favorites; although, I did find it through the movie first. I still love watching that, over and over! Once I read the book, I discovered that it was just as awesome.

Matilda Wormwood was born into the wrong sort of family; her parents sit around watching television all the time, and pay hardly any attention to their children. Matilda, however, immediately shows extreme intelligence; she could read by the time she was three years old! And that's certainly her favorite thing to do. When she was four, she walked by herself to the library and read nearly every single book there.

But when she starts going to a terrible school, where the awful Miss Trunchbull is the principal, she discovers that she has more than knowledge--how about, a magic power, to control objects? One of the things that made me like this book was that the librarian's name was Mrs. Phelps, which is my last name!

We had a great Dekoposh Book Club meeting yesterday, thanks everyone who was there! For the month of September we'll be reading Chasing Dandelions by our very own Ariel Arguelles! Happy reading!