Monday, June 27, 2011

Lovin' The Language Blogfest



I'm participating in my first blogfest! My friend and critique partner, Jolene, is hosting a Lovin' The Language Blogfest. Since I'm a language lover, I knew I had to participate in this one. All you have to do is share your favorite lines from a book you wrote or one of your favorite reads. Check out Jolene's blog HERE to see more of the participants!

First, I'm going to share two of my favorites from the book I just finished, LET'S GET PHYSICAL. It's about a girl who's tired of being put down because of her weight. Ready to take control of her life, she hires a personal trainer at the gym, who just happens to be a gorgeous, eighteen-year-old boy. On the surface, he's everything negative that pushed her here in the first place and she has a hard time trusting him, but soon she realizes he's so much more than that.

* "Something inside me almost…shifts. It’s like my eyes have been pried open and I see him. I’m really seeing him for the first time. Not the gorgeous boy, the flirty boy, the one who has girls checking him out left and right. No, I’m seeing him."

* "His words are my life boat. He throws them out to me and my instinct is to grab on, to let myself float to safety on them. Tegan always knows how to make me feel buoyant, as though just by him thinking I’m beautiful, or because he likes to be with me, I could make it to shore even without the boat. But what happens when he’s not here? He can’t always be here."

DIZZY is a collaboration Jolene and I wrote together. It's alternating point of view. She wrote the girl, Ziah, and I wrote the boy, Dylan. It's rich, snarky, spoiled boy who meets smart, sensible and snarky girl. Though he definitely gets a lot of girls, he's never fallen for one the way he is, Ziah. It confuses and freaks him--especially since he's seen how loving someone can leave you crushed.

* "My stomach constricts because I MIGHT HAVE WANTED IT TO BE A DATE. I mean, what is that? Dates lead to commitment and commitment leads to temporary insanity and temporary insanity leads to full on mental illness, picking out china patterns, choosing places to get married in and ends with two fucked-in-the head sons and a dad trying to hold it together when he’s just as fucked in the head as they are. So no, I definitely don’t want it to have been a date."

* "It is like a punch to the gut—no a punch to the head that knocks me out and then all of a sudden I wake up and I'm not in the dark anymore. I realized it before, but not until this moment did I comprehend how much I like this girl. That I actually want to give her those things she wants."

* "Sometimes there’s something so big in your life, something so monumental that you make up all these different life-altering reasons that it happened. Really the truth isn’t something big at all. Sometimes there aren’t reasons. There doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, things just are."

Lastly, if you liked these, feel free to stop by my personal blog HERE. I shared a few different lines from each book there as well :).

17 comments:

  1. SWEET! You have a way with words, me like it a whole lot.

    I can't wait to read the other entries. :D

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  2. That paragraph from Dylan with the fucked in the head sons is my favorite paragraph in that WHOLE BOOK!!

    YOU ROCK!!

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  3. LOL. Thanks, Jolene. That just came out and it was SOOO Dylan and how he felt.

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  4. I so totally want to read Dizzy now. Dylan's voice is so compelling!

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  5. I feel lucky to have read both of these in their entirety, and they are fab!!!
    This sounds like so much fun, Kelley and Jolene! I think I'll participate. :)

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  6. Love the chain reaction from date to china patterns. hahaha

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  7. Great voice in two books. Fun! Thanks for sharing.

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  8. Love the excerpts! Um, are both of these books available now? Must have.

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  9. I really like the excerpts. Your characters are very appealing and likable.

    Lucy

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  10. On Let's Get Physical -- I really enjoyed the first excerpt. Good sentences to describe the change in noticing the real him.

    The Write Soil

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  11. I really enjoyed the first one from "Dizzy"

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  12. I love Dylan's voice, especially in the first DIZZY excerpt. It shines right through. :)

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  13. Yay! I posted from two different WIPs too :-)

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  14. I posted on my blog, too, yay! This was fun.

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