TMI by Patty Blount-Review and Guest Post with the Author

TMI by Patty Blount
Young Adult
Release Date: August 6, 2013

ORDER:  Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk/ Barnes and Noble / KOBO / The Book Depository

ABOUT THE BOOK:  Release Date August 6, 2013

Best friends don’t lie.
Best friends don’t ditch you for a guy.
Best friends don’t post your deepest, darkest secrets online.

Bailey’s falling head-over-high-heels for Ryder West, a mysterious gamer she met online. A guy she’s never met in person. Her best friend, Meg, doesn’t trust smooth-talking Ryder. He’s just a picture-less profile.

When Bailey starts blowing Meg off to spend more virtual quality time with her new crush, Meg decides it’s time to prove Ryder’s a phony.

But one stupid little secret posted online turns into a friendship-destroying feud to answer the question:

Who is Ryder West?

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Review:

Meg has had a hard life. Her father died when she was small, leaving her and her mother on their own and struggling. Her mom worked two jobs and went to the local community college at night, trying to make a better life for her and her daughter. Meg was left on her own a lot, but her friends kept an eye on her…..her best friend Bailey and her friend Chase. Meg was a no nonsense kind of girl. She had a plan and had her future all mapped out. She did extremely well in school and was a gifted artist. She just wished that her bff, Bailey, was as channeled.

Bailey loved her video games. So when she met a guy online, (after a big breakup with her current boyfriend), whom was just as interested in her as he was video games, she was ecstatic. Until she told Meg about Ryder West. Meg immediately went into “mother hen” mode. After all, Ryder could be a forty-two year old perv. Bailey wishes that just for once, Meg could be happy for her and not be so uptight.

Chase has been in love with Meg for years. Bailey has tried to get Meg to loosen up and give Chase a shot, but Meg is too afraid of ending up like her mother and won’t let anyone stand in her way of attaining her goal of finishing high school, then college and securing her place in the world. She wasn’t even willing to entertain the idea, until that one kiss that had her thinking………..what if? And, when Bailey decides to “help things along”, none of our trio had any idea the things that would be set in motion. Will Meg finally give in and let Chase in? Will Bailey finally get to meet Ryder in person? And, will Meg and Bailey survive the tumultuous ups and downs of being bff’s? You’ll have to read to find out.

TMI is an intriguing young adult novel that didn’t really grab me at first. Everything seemed typical, mundane and ordinary. Then, bam! I got pulled in and couldn’t turn the pages of the last half of the book fast enough. TMI is full of teenaged angst, as are most YA novels. What sets this one apart from the others, in my humble opinion, is that you can see these things happening in the real world. There are life lessons in this book. You can see how social media can have such an adverse affect on an unsuspecting person when one post is made and then spreads like wildfire. And, the dangers of meeting someone online whom you nothing about? I don’t even need to elaborate on that. But, what grabbed me the most, and not always in a positive way, was the viciousness of one of the girls. Having two daughters myself, I’ve always told them no one is more vicious than a teenaged girl who thinks someone has wronged her. To say I was mortified by what played out would be like saying the Titanic hit an ice cube. If I could have reached through and slapped the crap out of the girl, I would have. Well, actually, I would have crawled through and beaten the hell out of her, but since that wasn’t a viable option, I sat here with my mouth gaped open in disbelief. TMI is ultimately about building trust and what happens when that one person lets you down and you have to decide whether it’s worth trying to rebuild. This book should be recommended reading for teenaged girls everywhere, as it shows some shining examples of what “to” do and what “not” to do.

Reviewed by Vickie M.

Copy supplied by the publisher

Writing for Balance by Patty Blount

I’ve been writing for what seems like my entire life. But I didn’t get serious about it sometime over the last ten years. Prior to this, writing was something I did when I needed to vent, to unload. It’s cathartic. I’d wanted to write a novel for years. It was a dream that lived in the back of my brain, but every time I sat down to do so, I got bored and abandoned project after project midway through. It felt beyond my capabilities. Like I’d bitten off more than I could possibly chew.

So I gave up.

But I never stopped writing. Articles, poems, fan fiction, letters to editors – I begged for things to write. Eventually, I landed a job as a technical writer for a software company – a job I still hold today. This was the perfect career for me – I got to apply my various computer degrees with something I loved – writing.

And I was good at it! But I still wanted more. I wanted to conquer fiction writing, which still felt like scaling Mount Everest. Finally, my lightbulb moment came when my son’s teacher sent home a poor progress report and suggested my son read more to improve. He insisted there are no good books worth reading. I asked him what he wanted to read and he gave me a list. We made a deal; he’d read it if I wrote it.

So I did.

I approached this deal the way I approached any project at work. I broke up into smaller tasks and figured out how much I could achieve each day. The books I write are between 70,000 and 90,000 words. I figured I could write about 1,000 words a day, every day, and at that rate, could have my son’s book written by Christmas that year.

I wrote it and he read it, as agreed. The book kind of sucked, but it taught me some valuable lessons. First, I really can do this! I can write a book! That alone was a huge achievement. Second, it taught me the value of setting small goals. A thousand words a day is not a tremendous burden – it’s about three pages of output. Third, that writing goal is sufficient for me to achieve when I get home from work or during my lunch break, depending on my mood. I still follow this plan today. Some days, if I’m really motivated, I will write several thousand words. Other days, I’m happy with a single paragraph.

But I write, every day, no matter how I feel.

It’s not easy, but I’ve learned the things that matter most rarely are. For example, after I signed my two-book deal with Sourcebooks, I learned my mother’s cancer had returned and this time, it was terminal. My deadline for TMI was just a few weeks after she passed away. Writing during this time is what kept me from spiraling out of myself. Relatives were appalled that I wrote while she was in hospice but the truth is, the story was the only thing I had control of. I needed that control.

Do things slide? Yes. I don’t watch TV at night anymore except for a few favorite programs. When I’m on a tight deadline, my kids and my husband take turns with the laundry and cooking. And some nights, I may be up later than I’d like.

But when it’s something you love doing, it’s not a sacrifice.

Writing is my balance.

Patty Blount

Patty spends her days writing facts and her nights writing contemporary romantic fiction. A coworker once said if Patty were a super-villain, she’d be called The Quibbler. Her costume would be covered in exclamation points. Fueled by a serious chocolate obsession, a love of bad science-fiction movies, and a weird attraction to exclamation points, Patty looks for ways to mix business with pleasure, mining her day job for ideas to use in her fiction.

Though she’s passionate about happily-ever-afters, her first story wasn’t a romance at all. Penalty Killer, a whodunit, was written on a dare from her oldest son. Though unpublished, it was the subject of so many seventh-grade book reports that year, the English teacher requested a copy and later returned it, covered in red ink.

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