Out of Control

Spiralling Out of Control by Michelle Dennis Evans
Temptation, depression, seduction, betrayal ... Not what Stephanie was expecting at fifteen years of age. Uprooted from her happy, all-girl high school life with a dream filled future and thrown into an unfriendly co-ed school, Stephanie spirals into depression.

When charismatic high school senior, Jason notices her, Stephanie jumps in feet first and willingly puts all her faith and trust in him, a boy she barely knows. Every choice she makes and turn she takes leads her towards a dangerous path. Her best friend is never far away and ready to catch her … but will she push Tabbie too far away when she needs her most?

This novel contains adult themes.
Recommended reading audiences 15+

About Michelle

Michelle writes to inspire, take people on a journey and escape their world. She believes you can find healing or hope when you read about someone else’s story – fiction or truth. Michelle is married to an awesome man. She spends most of her days educating, socialising and sporting their four children and her nights writing. Her life is full and at times overflowing but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
http://michelledennisevans.com


Spiralling Out of Control via Amazon


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My review
Set in Australia, this is a story about a fifteen year old girl named Stephanie who spirals out of control and goes from popular student with so much potential, to a drop out involved with sex and drugs. After moving away from all her friends in Sydney, Steph finds herself bullied at the new school, neglected by her parents, and in desperate need to find a connection with someone, anyone.

I love the occasional use of verse scattered throughout the novel. The poetry sometimes portrayed more raw emotion in its simplicity than the main body of the novel. I got the impression this was because, since the story is written through Steph's point of view, she was more able to express herself through the freedom of verse than she could with her family and friends.

Because I became so deeply invested in the character of Stephanie, the story became increasingly difficult to read as I watched her fall further into her downward spiral. I kept wondering what would make Steph wake up and take control. At each terrible event, I'd think, 'this is it', but she kept making catastrophic decisions and all the adults around her turned a blind eye, or made things worse.

It's a heart wrenching story of how easy it is to fall so far. It's an unsettling read, but one that will stay with me for a long while.
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My thoughts and prayers go to all the people affected by the bushfires of New South Wales in the last couple of days. I live in the south of Sydney and took this photo last Thursday from my front balcony, showing the smoke from the fires. Over two hundred homes have been lost. As I type this, there are still fires burning out of control.

Moonless Reveal and Gravity Review

Moonless by Crystal Collier

Young Adult, Historical Paranormal Romance

Alexia must choose safety and an arranged marriage,
or true love and being hunted by the Soulless every moonless night.

Alexia’s nightmares become reality: a dead baron, red-eyed wraiths, and forbidden love with a man hunted by these creatures. After an attack close to home, Alexia realizes she cannot keep one foot in her old life and one in this new world. To protect her family she must either be sold into a loveless marriage, or escape with her beloved and risk becoming one of the Soulless. 

MOONLESS is Jane Eyre meets Supernatural.

Crystal, author of MOONLESS, is a former composer/writer for Black Diamond Productions. She can be found practicing her brother-induced ninja skills while teaching children or madly typing about fantastic and impossible creatures. She has lived from coast to coast and now calls Florida home with her creative husband, three littles, and “friend” (a.k.a. the zombie locked in her closet). Secretly, she dreams of world domination and a bottomless supply of cheese.
Website - Blog - Twitter - Goodreads - Facebook

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I went to see Gravity today, but wasn’t expecting much since most of the reviews I’d read were lukewarm. Well, I don’t know what the reviewers were on about. I loved it. Visually it’s spectacular, the sound and music are brilliant, the acting wonderful, and the tension was so edge of seat that the movie had me engaged from start to finish. It wasn’t the standard space type blockbuster we’ve come to expect from movies like Alien, Sunshine, Serenity et al. The only monsters were a nasty debris storm and the temptation to give up against what seemed like insurmountable odds. It got me thinking about writing… You know where I’m going with this:

Never give up! Keep going, keep writing!

Are you looking forward to reading Moonless? Love the cover? Have you seen Gravity yet? What's the next movie you're planning to see?

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A big THANK YOU to everyone supporting the Insecure Writer's Support Group Website and Facebook Group. You guys are truly awesome!!

Due to some unexpected 'stuff' that's come up, I need to focus elsewhere for the week. I'll be back around the blogsphere at full strength next week.

Automated Online Proofreaders: Are They Worth It?

For those of you who read one of my previous posts (found here), at the end I vented some frustration after attempting to gain access to a seven day free trial of the online proofreader, Grammarly. I had to give my credit card details. Like that was going to happen. Well, the makers of Grammarly contacted me and gave me two weeks risk-free access. My confidence in their program rose. So I gave it a go.

The layout is clean and easy to understand. I didn't need to read long instructions to know how to get started. Win.

For some reason, the copy/paste function to get the text into the program wasn't working. Not being technical, I have no idea why. Perhaps it was my browser? However, I also had the option to upload my text, or drag the text file into the program. Easy. Another win.

There are a number of levels of checking the program can go through. The default is General and is rather formal, advising me to avoid my casual use of personal pronouns and contractions. The levels also included Academic, Business, Technical, Creative, and Casual. Casual is a far more forgiving setting and even let me get away with fragmented sentences. Woot.

I can't help comparing Grammarly to Microsoft Word's grammar checker, which has become somewhat intelligent. Word picks up many foobahs, even many correctly spelt words in incorrect places. However, it didn't pick up a mistake I'd made in a previous post. I'd written: World War Z, staring Brad Pitt. Grammarly picked up 'staring' and gave me a few suggestions to replace it, with 'starring' at the top of the list. Impressive. After a quick test, Grammarly is also better at picking up comma placement mistakes than Word.

Is Grammarly infallible? No. It gave me a few suggestions that were incorrect. For example, I'd written in this post: Weigh it, understand where it's coming from… and Grammarly tried to tell me the pronoun 'it' doesn't agree with the verb 'understand'. It took me a while to work out that Grammarly thought I was saying something like, 'It understand where it's coming from'. Grammarly failed to read my sentence properly.

Grammarly will also pick up some things it's simply programmed to pick up. For example, I used 'your' in a sentence and Grammarly suggested I may need to change it to 'you're'. This lack of intelligence became a bit of a time waster as I had to sort through them all.

Wishlist

• I think I'd like to see Grammarly use more often an example of my incorrect sentences written correctly. It does this only sometimes. 
• I'd also like an option to adjust what Grammarly looks for, rather than having to use their premade settings. For example, I'd like it to ignore my fragmented sentences, but pick up passive voice. While there is an ignore button, it will only ignore each instance of a 'mistake' it's picked up. If I want to ignore every instance of that same mistake, I have to use a dropdown list which is an extra click. This seems a little silly when there's plenty of room for an 'ignore all' button next to the 'ignore' button. Time is short and I don't want to be wasting it sorting through all the rules.
• Grammarly didn't recognise that I had two different spellings of the word 'colour' in the same paragraph. I used both the American spelling and the British, so I think I'd also like to see a setting added which specifies which English you want checked.

From Grammarly: Grammarly is best used as a "second set of eyes" for your writing as opposed to a replacement for a professional proofreader. I'd agree with that assessment.

So overall, are automated online proofreading tools worth it?

• I might have some skill with editing other people's work, but I'm often blind to my own mistakes, so that 'second set of eyes' is kinda handy.
• They are mighty expensive for an online service but cheaper than a professional editor. Note, Grammarly is cheaper than AutoCrit. 
• They can be used as a learning tool for someone who doesn't feel confident with all those tricksy grammar rules. If this is done, then I'd advise using an official grammar guide along with the online tool, just to make sure those automated responses are correct.
• As indicated in my previous point, they do take up a lot of extra time because of the need to sort through all the suggestions which aren't always correct.
• It comes down to your individual needs. I think they are worth it if you're writing lots of articles regularly, or pieces like query letters where correct grammar is essential.

Have you ever used an automated online proofreading tool? Would you?

Edit: Grammarly recently (March 2019) tried spamming my blog with their advertising. I wasn't impressed. Previously they also tried to get me to remove this review.