Book review: The Rules of Magic

I've been listening to 'The Break' by Marian Keyes on audio in the car. There's no way I'm going to finish it before PizzaBoy and I head away for our own break to Gaia Eco-Retreat (review after experiencing). So I've googling to find spoilers for how it ends. No one's giving it away. Plenty of hints, and yeah, I've gotten all that, because I'm at chapter sixty-something. But I need to know how it ends. The audio book will shortly go back to the library.
While I was tootling around the net, yelling 'Give me spoilers!' I came across a blog called something like 'eats vegetables and reads books'. It amused me, and I spent some idle brain time thinking what I could rename this blog so it would be a witty and clever book review thing.
Then I shrugged, and thought 'medicated, munching, and reads books' was both derivative, and boring.

Anyway, last week, I finished reading 'The Rules of Magic' by Alice Hoffman. It's the recently-released prequel to her famous 'Practical Magic'. This time, we get the story of Aunts Jet and Frances, who, in 'Practical Magic' are far more interesting than the main characters.
In this book, we see the childhood of the aunts, plus their brother, and their adult years leading up to the beginning of PM.
Frannie is a hard character to grab onto, but Jet was compelling, in both the 'what will happen' and the 'I wanna shake some sense into you' way.
I have to be in a particular mood to enjoy Hoffman, and her writing style, because she tells the reader. We are never intimately inside a character's head. Never. We don't feel their feelings, but we see their actions, and their thoughts. This annoys the shit out of me normally, which is why, even though I loved this book, and the take on magic is hedgewitchy, kitchen witchy, fanciful, and homespun, I don't list Hoffman in my top ten authors.
Nevertheless, I did like this book, and it's a keeper, which is a rare thing for me.
Does everyone live happily? Would it be a Hoffman book if they did?

My writing 2018: the big, shining, scary plans

Inspired by MasteryGirl's latest book launch yesterday afternoon, yesterday morning I took myself to Le Wholefood Merchants café, to do some writing planning for 2018. This, of course necessitated, a new notebook, and new pens. Every new project needs new stuff like that. Which is why I have about 20 notebooks with 10 pages filled out.
All my new textas were pink and purple, because I was in that sort of mood. I even bought the Barbie-pink texta.
My new notebook is dusky pink with a gold pineapple on the front. It's very stylish, in a girly way.

So, I have three rewriting projects for 2018.
1. The spiritual memoir, which was dubbed, at the end of 2016, both 'witchy memoir' and 'how to be a new age wanker'. I thought they were separate projects They aren't. Last week I got chatting to a lass on facebook, in the Melbourne NaNo group, and she does book covers as a hobby. She offered to come up with a few for me, so I had to think up a title, lickety split. The working title is now 'In and Out of the Cauldron'. I'm not sure about that, but it's better than 'confessions of a witch'. I aim to have to offering to pro publishers stage by the end of 2018.
2. Children's books. A friend reminded me that I have 3 children's books I wrote circa 2002, when TwentiesGirl was in primary school, around Grade 3-4. Her friends enjoyed the books, and I thought little more about them. Prompted by this friend, and the interest of MothraBabe, I'm now looking these short books out. Rewriting, spiffing up, and out into the world they will go.
3. The short story collection, which now has the working title of 'The Communicant, and Other Stories'. That's in process with CDX Design. Launch aim date approx. March-April 2018.

Then there's new writing. To keep going to memoir group, I need to have memoir things written. I need to start something new, as I'm still not ready to tackle the rewrite of the TwentiesPerson memoir. I have the choice of writing stuff that is so hard, and so secret that it will never be a publishable thing, and a lighter(so I suppose) account of what I know of my mother's life, which is already titled 'What Lila Said'.
I want to participate in NaPoWriMo in April, too.

Writing all this down like this, I feel my stomach knot, and my mind whirl, and the panic set in. Too much, too much. Yet, if I take it slowly, and ask for help, I might just come through 2018 with at least 2 new books in the world, and a third with publishers. Plus new poems, and a memoir project done.
And retain my sanity.
It would make me feel really good to have done all this, and not copped fibromyalgia flare-ups, anxiety, or sleeplessness from the stress of what I'm going to attempt.
So, help I shall need. This means you, PizzaBoy, MotorCycleMan, MasteryGirl, OopsIHadABaby, SnakyPoet, and many others whose handles I can't remember off-hand(somewhere on my computer is a list of all your handles).
Please, please, help me get safely in and out of my shell.