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Guest Posts

Life Without Junior High Students- Impossible by Darlene Jones

Fuzzy-Dice
provided by D. Jones

“You asked for this,” I tell myself as I stand in front of the unruly grade nine students. They’re big. They’re loud. They’re bold. And, I’m not all that much older than them.

They’re my PFL class—Perspectives for Living. I’m supposed to teach them life skills—self-esteem, drug and alcohol education, sex education.… They’re here because the drama teacher and the art teacher are fed up with them and only the academic kids take the other two options offered—French as a Second Language (which is the bulk of my teaching assignment) and music.

I have great plans for this class, field trips to see court in session, guest speakers, etc., but I can’t do any of that until I get some control. The first couple of weeks do not go well so I hatch a plan.

“Here’s the thing,” I say. “You guys put yourselves in groups of four and every Friday I’ll take a group for lunch. You pay for your meal. I’ll pay the tip.”

Group one pile into my car that first Friday and we drive to a small restaurant near the school. We have a great time. Group two and three go equally well. The atmosphere in the class begins to change.

“Shut up! Mrs. Jones wants to talk.” This is the biggest, toughest kid in the school talking and they do. Shut up, that is.

Then it’s group four—five boys from Lebanon with very shady reputations. “Where’s A?” I ask.

Waiting for us in the parking lot. And he is. Sitting in the driver’s seat of his own car. I didn’t know he was old enough to drive. He gets out and gallantly opens the passenger door for me. Great! I get to ride shotgun which wouldn’t be bad normally, but the car is festooned with huge fury dice and pompoms, and upholstered in plush red velour.

“It’s okay. I’ll sit in the back,” I offer.

The young man insists I take the front seat. I slide in and sink down as low as I can. I don’t particularly want to be seen in this car. It’s not a matter of snobbery, honest. It’s a matter of professional reputation. As with the other groups, lunch is a huge success. They reveal a side of themselves that I would normally never have known. Underneath the bravado, they’re kids.

Nor do we neglect the academic students. My fellow French teacher and I offer to take the grade nine students to a French restaurant at the end of the year. Seventeen kids take us up on the offer. We have a wonderful time. They even use a bit of their rudimentary language skills with the waiters, who it turns out, don’t speak French at all…

To see the rest of this article and learn more about Darlene Jones, visit the ECS blog.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

Categories
Guest Posts

Courage to Change: Guest Post: Ian Mathie

When there seems to be no way out you need Courage to Change.

A perspective on Sylvie Nickels’s book by author Ian Mathie.

Courage to Change, by Sylvie Nickels
Paperback: 232 pages, also available in ebook
Publisher: Oriel Press, UK (June 6, 2013)
Reading level:  Young Adult / Full Adult
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1782995579 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1782995579 (paperback)
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
Content Rating: General release

As an industrial psychologist I was accustomed to dealing with many problems people brought with them to the workplace every bit as much as with problems growing out of the working environment. A problem which raised its ugly head quite frequently had many faces yet in each case it was the same problem: addiction. Reaching well beyond the workplace, addiction is far from easy to deal with and its first and most difficult challenge is recognition and acceptance by the sufferer.

Often misunderstood is a subject the very thought of which turns most people off. As a result it is too often ignored. Nevertheless, we are all potentially vulnerable to it. We can all learn useful lessons about the pitfalls and what fuels different forms of addiction if only we take the time to listen or to read about them.

This is one of the benefits that books like Courage to Change, by Sylvie Nickels have to offer. The novel offers a great story wrapped a framework of relationships, situations and problems arising out of one form of addiction, alcoholism. As the story unfolds it explores all the human dilemmas faced not only by those addicted, but by their families, friends and those who seek to help them.

Sylvie Nickels has a great wealth of life experience. She understands human abilities, frailties and weaknesses so well. This gives her the capacity to express the emotions and mindset of people in all sorts of social, domestic and working situations in ways that make her characters so real you feel they could be your own relations, or you know them personally. Because of this, what seems at first like a lightweight story draws you in and carries you along, wanting to know what people will do next and how things will turn out. Her writing is not gripping in the conventional sense, but it is truly compelling and will keep you reading to the very last page.

Through the medium of a touching story she offers a subtle exploration of the many dilemmas and problems involved in addiction; offering insights that should be valuable to any parent or person who shares their life with an addictive personality. Whilst she offers no magic solution to the problems; there isn’t one anyway, she at least offers hope whilst leaving it to the reader to make their own final judgements.

Courage to Change is a most rewarding book that can teach one a lot about life and human interactions. It also offers a good lesson to writers in how to convey the feelings and emotions of one’s characters. Here the players are very ordinary people and yet we come to know them intimately. That only comes about through very skilful writing and a thorough understanding on the part of the author of both the subject and the people she is writing about.

Sylvie Nickels’s other works include an excellent trilogy based on the effects of conflict on families, using the Bosnian war as its backdrop. She has also written a mystery thriller based in Finland and a series of travel books during her long career. Publishing most of her books by her own efforts, she is an author whose work deserves to be much better known.

To see the rest of this article and learn more about the author of this book and the author, Ian Mathie, visit the ECS blog.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

Categories
Full Moon WIP Updates

Unstuck :D

Ok so, I was stuck for a lot longer than I thought I would be. That eleventh chapter of “It’s Like a Full Moon” was haunting and taunting me for days. I couldn’t figure out what to do to mix up the story and move forward. Finally I had a break through.

I have been reading like a mad woman lately trying to finish stories for enjoyment as well as for review. Plus I’ve been fairly busy interviewing other authors, but think it was the interviews that made the light bulb go off in my head. One of the authors I was interviewing answered a question by providing a very unexpected answer. It was clear that there was a misunderstanding about the nature of the question. Once all things were cleared up, the answer made much or sense.

Later as I sat in front of my laptop, staring into to the abyss of white, while my cursor blinked mockingly at me, the words began to rattle around in brain. I started writing and didn’t stop until chapter 12 was completed and my story was ready to take a whole new exciting direction.

What I think I failed to realize before was that even if I came up with a great angle to spin my story on, I couldn’t just have it happen out of the blue.  That’s when I thought about the funny misunderstanding with that interview.  Well after that, it didn’t take long for me to come up with a great misunderstanding for two of my other characters to get caught up in, which just so happen to pull my heroine, Rebecca, right into the middle of.

So now my little romance is making its slow descent from its climatic plateau towards the conclusion of this tale. Hopefully I’ll be able to fill up another ten or so chapters working out a way for Rebecca, Teddy, Lisa, Paul, and even the quirky parents to all find love or at least lifelong companionship. (see article Stuck! For reference)

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I’ve been interviewing authors over at the Eternal Curse Series Blog, check it out to see what author Jimi Akanbi has been up to.

Interview: http://ecsuniverse.blogspot.com/2012/12/interview-06.html

Guest Post: http://ecsuniverse.blogspot.com/2012/12/guest-post-03-jimi-akanbi.html