Browsed by
Month: March 2013

Zita The Spacegirl

Zita The Spacegirl

Zita’s life took a cosmic left turn in the blink of  an eye.

When her best friend is abducted by an alien doomsday cult, Zita leaps to the rescue and finds herself a stranger on a strange planet. Humanoid chickens and neurotic robots are shocking enough as new experiences go, but Zita is even more surprised to find herself taking on the role of intergalactic hero. Before long, aliens in all shapes and sizes don’t even phase her. Neither do ancient prophecies, doomed planets, or even a friendly con man who takes a mysterious interest in Zita’s quest.

Zita the Spacegirl is a fun, captivating tale of friendship and redemption from Flight veteran Ben Hatke. It also has more whimsical, eye-catching, Miyazaki-esque monsters than you can shake a stick at.

Part of the reason I have this blog is to tell people about cool stuff. Well, this is some cool stuff.

I picked up this book, Zita the Spacegirl, last Thursday at my daughter’s book fair. To be honest, I picked this one up for me because I had heard good things about it and it looked cool. And I figured my daughter would be into it. Well, it’s been four days and I’ve yet to read it. But not because it isn’t a good book. I just haven’t had the chance to get my hands on it.

Since last Thursday, my daughter (6 years old), has read Zita the Spacegirl four times. Pretty much every time she has picked up a book since we got it, she has gone for Zita. When she isn’t reading Zita, she has been telling me little bits of the plot (without spoiler alerts, grr). This makes me so happy.

I’m picking up the second book of the series from the library today and was happy to read that there is a third book on the way.

So, yeah, if you have kids buy this book. If you don’t have kids, still buy this book. It has space and robots in it.

[iframe src=”http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thestruwrit-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1596434465&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr” style=”padding-bottom:-100px;margin-bottom:-100px;”]

Lost Story Followup

Lost Story Followup

A follow-up from yesterday’s post: Long Lost Stories.

Yes I did go looking for my notebook when I got home last night. And yes, I did find it.

What? You’re wondering, perhaps, if I opened it up and took a peak? If so, was it any good.

You know what, I have to say it wasn’t too bad. There are some parts I would change, but it was supposed to be a first draft anyway. You know what, how about I just open up the bad boy and show you what I found.

Excerpt from the long lost moleskine reporter’s journal that has gathered dust in my bedside table since 2006 (as much as it kills me, I’m writing as-is, not cleaning anything up):

Luke awoke from his dream with a single thought in his head: I have to visit Mom and Dad and find my Dinosaur Encyclopedia.

Already the details of his dream were fading like an ice cream headache; what just a moment prior felt so urgent was now just a memory. What remained was a desire to hold the favorite book of his childhood once more.

Luke contemplated calling his parents at that moment and asking them if they knew of the whereabouts of his book. He quickly changed his mind once he realized it was 3:23 AM and a call at that time would probably kill his mother. Luke had once called his parents at 12:30 AM on New Year’s Eve to be met by his father’s voice frantic that his mother had seen Luke’s phone number on caller-id and had fainted, thinking something horrible must have happened to him.

Luke turned off his nightlight and fell back to sleep, this time dreaming he had won the World Series, only he wasn’t one of the players but was instead the baseball and had felt extremely lucky the opposing team consisted of tiny infants who were up way past their bedtime. Luke remembered none of this upon waking the following morning though he did wonder why he was suddenly so cross with his baseball bat.

Okay, I lied. I did clean up some of the more egregious writing. Not all, but some.

If my counting was correct, this notebook contains roughly 14,000 words. I don’t know for sure why I abandoned the story, but most likely it was because I hit a wall. Maybe if I read through it now, after all these years I can make something of it. It’s worth a shot, I suppose.