Good news for fans of Gone Girl and Girl on the Train

This is a debut novel and kudos to Mary Kubica for pulling off the multiple point of view/dual time-line story. (She’s since written two more psychological thrillers, and I cannot wait to read them.) 

Here the focus is on the search for missing Mia Dennett, a young woman whose father disapproves of the way she lives her life and whose mother flagellates herself for not being more of a nurturer. The story is told from several different angles, including Mia’s mother Eve and Detective Gabe Hoffman, who finds himself drawn to Eve as he searches for clues to her missing daughter. 

The more we know about Mia, the more we sympathize with her and that’s also true of Gabe, who starts out being a somewhat generic wise-cracking cop but develops into a man whose compassion extends beyond the family of the victim in the case he’s investigating. The twists and turns are nicely handled, and even fans of the genre may find themselves surprised by the end.Yes, yes, the comparisons to Gone Girl and Girl on the Train are more than justified.

Sample Karin Slaughter's new book

I'm a big fan of Karin Slaughter's books and she just published a new one last month. Her publisher is making a sample available online here. Check it out.

Size does matter

I'm short. At five foot one, I'm four inches shorter than the average American woman. I'm even short by worldwide standards, unless you factor in Bolivian women, where the average height is 4'8" or Cambodia where the average is five feet even. The average height of an American man is approximately 5'10" so I'm nearly a foot shorter than even the average man. I can live with that. My height makes it harder to find clothes that really fit--I can't afford Vera Wang who dresses petite celebrities like Holly Hunter, and it's sometimes hard finding cute shoes in my size, but in general, I've learned work-arounds for things like getting cans off high shelves in supermarkets and dusting the tops of refrigerators and posing for pictures with taller people so we don't look like a circus act.

My height was never an issue until I worked at a production company on the Warner Brothers lot. The man whose name was on the company hired an executive to run the film division so that he could expand into television and cable. The man he hired was a sociopath. He was eventually (and successfully) sued for sexual harassment by a male intern, but before that happened, he was responsible for a 100 percent turnover in the people who worked at the company. I was there for eighteen months. Within months of my leaving, there wasn't a single person left I'd worked with.

This man was tall, probably six feet four, or so, and he liked LOOMING. It was his go-to stance. He would move in really close and loom. I do not have a particularly large bubble of personal space. I can feel comfortable standing close to other people, even to strangers, but every time this man loomed over me, I had to fight an almost viseral urge to back up. I'd forgotten about that until I watched the debate last night and watched Donald Trump (who is 6'2") looming over Hillary Clinton (who is 5'7"). I can only imagine the discipline it took not to flinch away. I don't care if this is a tried and true strategy for pulling focus, the optics were creepy. If you didn't see it, here's the link. 

Ride the Pink Horse--Vintage Noir

I've always been a fan of writer Dorothy B. Hughes. She is best known for writing In a Lonely Place, but this book, Ride the Pink Horse, is probably her second-best well-known novel. She rote hard-boiled mysteries and noir-ish crime and her work has definitely held up in the 23 years since her death. The Kindle version of the book is on sale today. If you haven't had the pleasure of reading this book, now is the time to change that.

And I love that cover!

Think Spiders are Scary? Me Too

For the last several years I have written longish short horror tories just for Halloween. In the past I published them just on Amazon but I'm in the process of "going wide" with them. Right now you can find Unsanctified--the most spidery of my stories--on all platforms; by the end of the weekend, Spite will be there too.

It's going to be a really busy month, so I might not get a story out this month. If I do, it's going to be called Godforsaken and will most likely feature a cover from my favorite source of pre-made cover designs, Book Cover Designer. My "wish list" on that site is embarrassingly long.

A meme is worth a thousand words

I've worked in a sexist business since I was in my 30s. If I blushed every time a man used the C word or the P word around me, I'd  be permanently beet red. I've heard producers candidly dismiss actresses because they weren't sexy enough (or because they didn't want to sleep with them and as Rachel Maddow would say, "That's not the word they used.")

I saw one of Donald Trump's female surrogates on CNN yesterday defending what he said on the leaked Access Hollywood tape as just being the way people in Hollywood talk. And you know--she wasn't wrong. There are people in Hollywood who do talk like that. But they're not running for president.

Another Great Cover

And another book for the TBR pile. This one is a "Roaring Twenties" fairy tale retelling  that came up in the "also boughts" section when I was checking out another book. The cover caught my eye. So many books!  But this is a three-day weekend so I see some reading in my future.

Free Monday Mystery

I'm signed up for a lot of the newsletters that showcase free Kindle books. When I'm feeling a little light in the wallet, it comforts me to know that I can still have new books to read without spending any money. (I spend a lot of money on books when I have it to spare, so I'm not one of what a friend of mine calls a "greedy grabber" who won't spend money on books and just slurps up all the freebies.)
Today it's Mystery Monday, and I snagged this thriller, the first of a series set on the Oregon Coast. I'm still new to the Pacific Northwest, so I'm eager to see how it's depicted in The Gray and Guilty Sea.

A luminous novel of female empowerment

I'd heard of Caroline Herschel before, sister of the composer/astronomer William Herschel. (He is the man who discovered Uranus, which was once known as "Herschel's Planet.") When I stumbled across this book on Pinterest, on a board dedicated to beautiful covers, my curiosity was piqued. (I LOVE the cover.) The Stargazer's Sister was a wonderful historical novel and I recommend it highly.

Free Sci Fi and Fantasy Books

Love free books?  Click here to go to Patty Jansen's monthly promo site where you can choose your favorite retailer. Just one click gives you a choice of more than 100 books in all flavors of sci fi and fantasy. You'll find short reads like my book Daughter of the Midnight King there, along with Heartblaze 1: Vampire Soul, The Cobweb Bride, and many others I KNOW you've been dying to read. And did I mention it's FREE???

Cover reveal--my new urban fantasy series

I know that generally you reveal a cover when you're about to actually publish your latest novel, but I am so excited about this new cover that I can't wait. It was created by Kristyn McQuiggan of Drop Dead Designs, who sells both premades and custom covers. (There's a pre-made I have my eye on right now that's pretty stunning.)

This image is fabulous, I think. The model is gorgeous, the photoshopping is fine, and the overall urban fantasy concept just works beautifully. Go check out her work. She prices her work for the indie author on a budget but her work doesn't look like those cheap covers you pick up on Fiverr. (She includes the print book wraparound in her cover prices, and they are VERY affordable.)

An anthology of political satire

My story, "Looking Good America," is part of this new anthology, We've Been Trumped, timed to hit the bookstores a month before the election. The genre is political satire, the them is what life might be like under a Trump presidency. There are some excellent stories in the collection, and if you enjoy snark, you might enjoy them.

You Know This Already

But I'm going to say it again. If you're not registered to vote--register.
Just Google "How to Register to Vote" and all the info will come up.
And if you are registered to vote, VOTE.
Don't make me tell you again that my father voted on his deathbed by absentee ballot.
Don't make me tell you that that my great grandmother died before women had the right to vote.
Don't make me remind you that African-Americans had to die to win the right to vote.
Not voting is un-American.
And if you do vote, make sure your vote counts. It's all very well to write in a  no-hoper for Senior Class President, because there's not a lot at stake. What's the worst that can happen?
But only one of two people in this election has a chance at being elected President--Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Even if there are elements of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson's platforms that reflect your values, they will not win. They won't.  But there are Libertarian and Green Party candidates in down-ticket races that might have a chance. If you believe America should have multiple party systems, be a part of building those parties up so that they are viable alternatives.
But in this race, in 2016, a vote for anyone but one of the two major party candidates is a vote that says you don't really care who wins because it's not the candidate you wanted. And "not caring" is how we got into this mess in the first place. This is a participatory Democracy.
Participate.

Happy Banned Books Week!

Don't just sit there--read something subversive. Go to the official Banned Books Week site for ideas.

Autumn sentinel

It's so much fun having fall weather again. I missed that in Los Angeles.

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

Behold the Dreamers. You need to read this book. If your library doesn't have it, buy the paperback or the Kindle edition. Because seriously, you need to read it.

I have a history with this book. I was in the running for the job of editing it, and although I did not get the gig, I got to read the book last year as the author was refining it for publication. When I read it, I got that prickle on the back of my neck, the one that says, this is a fantastic book and if there is justice in the universe, it will be a best seller.

This is a story about an immigrant and his family whose lives become intwined with the lives of their employers--the typical "one percent" just before the economy crashes and burns in 2008. Like her immigrant protagonists, the author is herself an immigrant, and her portraits of the various "dreamers" are rich and layered and believable and true.

The writing is luminous. She takes us to the heart of several very different lives and takes us to a time and place that was a pivot point for history, a time that shattered a lot of people's dreams. The book came out last month and has already been picked as one of Good Housekeeping's fall reading picks. It'll be on a lot more reading lists before too long. 

Strawberry corn

It's officially the first day of Fall so my local supermarket has gone all in on the harvest-themed displays. There are twenty kinds of pumpkins and gourds, and a half-dozen kinds of corn (sweet, Indian, you name it). And there was this...strawberry corn. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the size of the little corns is just about the same size as an extra large strawberry. I've never seen such a thing before, so I immediately came home and Googled it. Turns out "strawberry corn" is a kind of popcorn. But to me it looks like something fairy animals would eat. (They also look exactly like that strange hard candy with the nubbins on it.)

Cover Comparison The Stephen King edition

I love short story collections and continue to buy them even as my friends and colleagues bemoan the way short story markets have dried up. Paying markets that is. I started out writing short stories and it's still my favorite length. Some ideas are just short story ideas.
Somehow, in the middle of writing longer works and doing good works and just living his life, Stephen King still finds time to write short stories. The most recent collection of these is Bazaar of Bad Dreams, a title I love. But when the book came out, I didn't love the cover. Honestly, it looked like one of those photoshopped numbers that indie authors get slammed for. That's it on the left. The combination of black and white and red just doesn't say "Dreams" to me.

But since today is King's birthday, everyone is offering special deals on his books (Simon and Schuster, his long-time publisher, is wishing him a "Happy Birthday" with all kinds of offers on his backlist.) And so I saw an offer with the UK cover of Bazaar of Bad Dreams and for me, it's a winner. I'm drawn to covers with splotches of color anyway, and I like the typography and the whole "concept" just so much better. Which one would you rather pick up?

Happy Birthday Stephen King!

The first writer I sought out because I loved her books and wanted to read everything she wrote was Beverly Cleary, who just turned 100 in April. (Live long and prosper Bev!)  And then it was Carolyn Keene "who" wrote the Nancy Drew books but she wasn't really one person, so "she" doesn't count. And then it was Stephen King.
I didn't start with Carrie; my gateway to the Kingdom was a collection of his short stories. Back then, he wasn't writing six or seven books a year like an indie author, but he'd been writing for a couple of years by the time I discovered him and so it took me a while to work through the backlog. (Well, it probably took me a week. I read fast and back then, I still had a lot of free time.)
I was moved by The Dead Zone and scared by Pet Sematary and blown away by The Stand. To this day, the only epic apocalyptic novel that even comes close to it in terms of Dickensian breadth of characters is Robert McCammon's Swan Song.
So I've been reading along all these years and love that he's writing like his life depends on it.

Wait, maybe it does? Maybe the reason he's so prolific is that in the terrible accident that nearly killed him, he did die? And he made a bargain with the devil to come back. But if he doesn't write 10 books a year, he has to return.
Happy Birthday Stephen King.
Thank you for the books!

Seven Skeletons

I am a sucker for books that tell a story through a collection of objects or similar items. (A History of the World in 6 Glasses is one of my favorite books.) This book, Seven Skeletons (from Penguin) bills itself as a "cultural history of each celebrity fossil" that combines into a work of science and history. I'm so there. Plus, I like the cover. It's clean and graphic.

Random Cat Picture--because cats!

My cat has recently taken to hanging out at the top of the stairs. He likes sitting in the sun and he also likes having a clear view of the upstairs and down into the kitchen. Whenever I see the cat following the sun around,  I always think of Robert Heinlein talking about the title of his book The Door Into Summer. It came to him while watching his cat go from room to room in the winter, looking for "the door into summer."

For the TBR pile BELOVED POISON

A Victorian mystery!  My favorite. Well, one of my favorites. Read a review on Criminal Element.

Thomas Mullen's DARKTOWN, a review

In Thomas Mullen’s novel DARKTOWN,  the murder of a young black woman exposes a secret that goes all the way to the highest levels of Atlanta’s white society.

In post-war Atlanta, LUCIUS BOGGS and TOMMY SMITH are cops. But they’re also black and “Negro policemen” don’t get a lot of respect from either civilians or white cops. Their authority is limited, and whites know flout that limited authority wheneve they feel like it. As when a white man drunkenly plows into a street lamp with a bruised black  woman in the passenger seat and repeatedly ignores Lucius’ polite requests to hand over his license. Instead, he simply denies hitting the light pole and rives away … slowly.

The ongoing information about the black police force and how it was formed and where it is located is dripped into the story as needed (sometimes a bit clumsily) along with information on the racial politics of the time and place. Real-life people are mentioned (including Rev. Martin Luther King SENIOR) and there’s a real feeling of verisimilitude to the story.

Free Short Story--a little September horror

I snagged this cover from Indie Author Services last year when they were having a blow-out on their pre-mades and I wrote the story around it. My heart still belongs to short fiction and I'm quite pleased with the way this dark little story came out. You can snag it free on Amazon for the next five days. Click here.

You'll Want to See Collateral Beauty

I read scripts for a living. Most of them aren't that good.  Some of them are so bad you despair for the movie industry. And some of them are so wonderful that when you read them, the hair on the back of your neck stands up because you know you're reading something that's going to make a great movie. I felt that way about The King's Speech.

Collateral Beauty is a lovely story. It will be out at Christmas. You should go to see it. The cast alone makes it worth the admission--Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton.

I wish I drank coffee

Because I would be all over those pumpkin spice lattes. And also the chile mochas. I love Mexican chocolate. But alas, I am a failed adult in that I never acquired the taste for coffee. But I do love pumpkins. Aren't these little tiger-striped pumpkin-lets adorable?

My Next to Last Political Comment of the Cycle

I was reading the Dallas Morning News's lukewarm endorsement of Hillary Clinton this morning--they were much more impassioned in their anti-endorsement of Donald Trump yesterday--and thought, wow, Texas!  And then I read the comments.
Oh comments.

The poor editorial writer could not w. I suspect many subscriptions were cancelled in the wake of this endorsement. A conservative pundit immediately accused them of "becoming a liberal paper" because of their endorsement. One reader accused them of being too close to the Bush family. One reader slammed them for supporting a "criminal" for President. And that's when my head started to ache.

Seriously.SERIOUSLY, define "criminal" for me. Does it mean encouraging cyber-espionage? Does it mean donating money to an official who's considering bringing a lawsuit against you? Is it an allegation or rape?

Is it criminal to defraud students with a bogus university? Does "criminal" mean not paying contractors for their work? Does it mean encouraging employees to lie on immigration forms?

Now I know it's Autumn

Fall is my favorite season. I love sunny days that are cool. I love the colors the trees turn. I love Halloween and dark scudding clouds across huge full moons. And pumpkins. When the pumpkins come out, I know it's finally Fall.

100 for 99! Ninety-nine cent books for your Labor Day Reading

Patty Jansen's monthly promotion is here! Click for your favorite ereader platform and search for more than a hundred books available for 99 cents. Writers like Shay Roberts, Tommy Muncie, Carysa Locke, Alycia Linwood, Christine Pope, and H. Leighton Dickson are yours for less than a dollar!

Meet the Editor: Susan Schader of Story Services 4 Wrriters

photo by Michelle Seixas

Susan Schader has worked as a freelance Story Analyst/Story and Development Consultant/Editor on feature film and television projects for companies such as DreamWorks, New Regency Productions, Village Roadshow, DeLuca Productions, Donner-Shuler-Donner Productions, Icon Films, Jagged Films, Showtime, Lifetime, Turner Pictures, among others, including private clients and international film brokers and producers (covering such film festivals as Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, etc.). She was Assistant to filmmaker Albert Brooks on Defending Your Life, from project’s inception (scripting writing and editing), pre-production, and casting, to production and post-production, publicity and marketing research.

In the publishing industry in New York and San Francisco, she worked as a Developmental Editor, developing, co-authoring, editing major college textbooks, including all ancillary and audio-visual materials, from planning through publication) for Harper & Row (now Harper Collins) Publishers.  She also served as a Marketing Analyst, Research and Development, Harper College Division East. As a freelancer, she did developmental/substantive editing, copyediting, research, proofreading, redlining for such major publishing houses as Prentice-Hall, McGraw-Hill Book Company, and Abrams.

She has a background in graphic design and photography as well, and has loved “Words & Images,” which is also the title of her blog at sschader.blogspot.com. She is currently writing a Middle Grade novel  -- a new creative challenge. 

For information on Susan's rates and services, check out the Story Services 4 Writers gite here.

What is the last good book you read?

The debut novel of Brit Bennett, entitled The Mothers, which is due out this fall but I had the chance to read in advance. It’s a coming-of-age story about two young African-American teenagers and the book’s central question as Ms. Bennett describes it is, “how girls grow into women when the female figures who are supposed to usher you into womanhood aren’t there. How girls come of age with that absence. And it’s about how communities are shaped by loss… how in moments of grief, community can be both a source of comfort and a source of oppression.” It’s beautifully written, touching, and timely.

Who are your favorite writers? 

That question is hard to answer given that I read so much “professionally” that I rarely read for my own pleasure. When I can sneak in a read for “fun,” I tend gravitate toward crime/detective tales. I don’t know what that says about me, although I hope that instead of indicating I have a penchant for dark, dastardly deeds, it suggests that solving a crime or mystery is rather like solving the puzzle of what’s missing in a manuscript or screenplay, what needs to be there or needs to be removed to make the narrative soar. I do like the writing of the Scottish writer, Ian Rankin, who has penned the Detective Rankin novels. One of my all time favorite novels is Harper Lee’s, To Kill A Mockingbird, and my favorite children’s book is, Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White, which I’ve seen described as a nearly perfect book. I agree with that assessment.

Paris! Crime! A book with my name on it

I don't really enjoy contemporary true crime, but I very much enjoy the books of Ben Macintyre and Erik Larson. This new book about the first police chief of Paris sounds like it deserves a place at the top of my TBR pile. Alas, it will not be available until next year.

I love the cover line--Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris--who isn't going to read a book that offers all that?  Holly Tucker is a professor at Vanderbilt University (not to be confused with the singer of the same name), and has written several other historical true crime books. I can't wait to dig into them.

Another Great Cover from Laura Gordon of Book Cover Machine

I have been on a writing binge lately, mostly turning out short stories and novelettes. I find it's a great distraction from the political landscape and it's also nice to be crossing items off my "to do" list.

One of the projects I've just finished is a reworking of the story "Tiger Bone Wine" I originally wrote for John Donald Carlucci's Astonishing Adventures Magazine back in 2007 when I was first starting out as a fictionista.

I've always been fascinated/appalled by the trade in tiger parts, and every time I see that sobering statistic--less than 3,200 tigers remain in the wild--I want to weep. Three thousand two hundred was the size of my graduating class at Duke. We could all fit into the Duke Chapel. Granted, tigers are bigger than people, but factor in the parents and friends who were also squeezed in and I think that's a pretty good spatial representation of how many tigers are left. One large auditorium's worth if packed nose to tail. Sigh.

At any rate, the new version of the story is called "Tiger Bones" and I found this great cover from Laura Gordon of the Book Cover Machine. Check out her pre-made covers (which are very affordable) or hire her for custom work. Because as you know, people judge books by their covers.

Romeo & Juliet--Vampire Style

Shakespeare's plays are durable. They can withstand any number of modern adaptations, permutations, and mutations. The whole Underworld movie mythos is based on the vampire/werewolf love story. so I was not surprised to see this book in one of the daily "book dump" newsletters I get.

Author H.T. Night has more than half a million books in print and several are vampire-centric. He has multiple series out there, along with half a dozen standalone novels. He definitely seems like a writer to check out if you like paranormal romance.

This version of the oft-told tale is set in 2099 in a New York now renamed Verona. It has an overall 3.8 star rating in reviews, which is not awesome, but more than half of those who reviewed it gave it five stars and really loved it. I've seen myself how a couple of low-star reviews can REALLY mess up a rating, so I'll definitely see for myself.

Participatory Democracy: Fiction by Katherine Tomlinson

freeimages.com

I don't write much political fiction, and this story, strictly speaking, is more of a noir-ish kind of tale. But after binge-watching the RNC and the DNC, I re-read the story (which I wrote several yaers ago) and felt like it suited the times a little too perfectly. And sums up why I'm With Her.

 

Nora had been working on the Congressman’s campaign for eighteen months. His neighborhood office was within walking distance of her apartment and going there every day gave her something to do with her unemployed hours; injected purpose into her otherwise

Heartblaze 2: Vampire Rising by Shay Roberts

This is the second book in Shay Roberts' Heartblaze Trilogy, and unlike some series that seem to go through a "sophomore slump"  with sequels, this second outing with heroine Emma Rue is bigger and better and takes the story to a place where the stakes are monumental. (Yes, in this book, we face TEOTWAWKI,)

I read a lot of paranormal romance and urban fantasy and books with vampires and werewolves and witches seems to fall into two categories. There are those that simply mimic what's come before, and give us the same old/same old tropes that make readers want to roll their eyes at the very thought o reading another vampire book. And then there are the paranormal stories that give us something new. The Heartblaze series is in the latter category.

In this story Emma Rue comes to realize that she has a purpose and a destiny far beyond anything that she could have imagined. (Yes, I know, all heroines of paranormal romances are supposed to be special, but here, she really is special.) Just as the Heartblaze world is special. This is a dark fairy tale of a story, and when you learn what the dagger in Emma's hand (see cover) can do, you'll be stunned. Roberts teased it in Heartblaze 1, and he paid it off BIG TIME in this sequel.

New Orleans, Prohibition, and a mystical speakeasy. I'm there!

I've only visited New Orleans once and it was before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. But it really is one of those places that isn't like any other. I'm a sucker for stories set in the big easy, and this one, V.R. McCoy's The Merchant, looks like it's right up my alley. The author cites Walter Mosley, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Tom Clancy as his inspirations, and just reading the blurbs of the other two books he's published, I believe his work has "commercial" encoded in its bookly DNA.

This is how The Merchant begins:  It was the year 1187 after his death. It had been raining fire for most of the night ..."  I don't know about you, but there's no way I'm going to stop reading after that. Kindle "look inside" tool--you just made a sale!

The Oldest Sense: Vetiver Quinn #2, a preview

Last year, at the urging of a friend of  mine who is a best-selling novelist, I dipped my toes in the "paranormal romance" genre. I didn't want to use one of the typical paranormal creatures--honestly, I'll be fine if I never see another shifter story--and I wanted my heroine to have the power, not just be "the girl" who gets dragged along on the adventure. (And I did want there to be an adventure. Straight-out romances don't really work for me.) I started thinking about the powers my heroine might have and I thought of Anton Strout's great books about Simon Canderous and Rachel Caine's "Weather Warden" series. They aren't cookie-cutter books and I didn't want mine to be a cookie-cutter story either.

I was writing an aromatherapy book for a client at the time and I started thinking about what it would be like if someone could "see" things in a person's olfactory aura. I know that sounds weird, but there are all those studies about memory being linked to scent and I decided to try. The result was a woman I called Vetiver Quinn, an aromatherapist who can read people that way. And then I came up with a story that involved a government agent named Peter Eliades who needs her help foiling a terrorist incident.  And then I found a group of pictures of the couple on the left and a couple of covers came together. The first book was The Fourth Sense (smell being the fourth sense in the sequence of five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste). 

The sequel is called The Oldest Sense. (Smell is the first sense we develop while hearing is said to be the lasst sense to leave us as we're dying.)  The storyline for the new book is a straight up mystery, and it's been fun to write. These books are just novelettes, and the idea is to eventually put them together in a boxed set.  Yes, I know, I really need to finish that novel. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying writing the shorter stuff.  Here's the prologue of The Oldest Sense written under the name Delia Fontana.

The Oldest Sense

“I want it to smell like an NFL locker room at half-time during the Super Bowl when the other team is winning,” my client said.

Yikes, I thought, but what I said was, “Okay. Man tang and musk. Notes of camphor and mentholatum.”

“And leather,” she added. “Sweaty socks and leather.”

“Leather?” I asked, because I wasn’t following her. “I don’t think they really make footballs out of pig skin any more.”

She gave me a pitying look. “The players are wearing underwear.”
Of course, I thought. The players’ leather underwear.

“And a hint of chlorine.”

“From the showers?”

Again I got the look, this time tinged with a bit of impatience. “The smell of fresh spunk,” she said. “It smells like chlorine.”

The Trilogy is Complete!

Well, almost.  I published Bride of the Midnight King a year ago August, and the sequel, Daughter of the Midnight King in January. Now I'm rounding out the story with The Midnight Queen, which is about Joie, princess of Eindar and the first natural-born vampire in the land. I'm having a lot of fun mashing up fairy tales with my own kind of vampires, but I think Midnight Queen will be the last story in the series. I snagged this cover during the big June sale over at The Book Cover Designers.  It's by Magic Covers. The Midnight Queen will be out in September, just in time to celebrate my birthday.

A modern-day Pinocchio?

I read the blurb for Ricardo Henriquez' debut dark fantasy/horror novel The Catcher's Trap over at Dread Central and it feels to me like a dark fairy tale along the lines of Pinocchio. It comes out in November. I'll be waiting.

A Tale of Two Covers

I love free books. And while I'm not what my best friend calls a "greedy grabber" (one of those people who scoops up freebies and never actually reads them), I have been known to actually fill my Kindle to capacity with free and bargain books.  and I have a lot of opportunities to do that because I'm subscribed to a couple of services that email me every morning with tempting books in every possible category. Today, on Freebooksy, Meg Xumei X's book Empress of Mysth caught my eye. It looked like something a little different in the paranormal romance genre, and I'm always looking for something different. (Killer angels!!)

The cover to the left is the one in the ad, and it caught my eye because it looks like an old school Tanith Lee cover. (I still miss Tanith Lee!)  It snagged my attention and then I read the blurb and clicked over to Amazon to claim my free book. Because ... free!  But also because I've read some of X's other books, including The Siren. I like her books. They always have high stakes (like the survival of the human race.) And they don't have cookie cutter characters. So, very much looking forward to reading this book. But when I clicked over, the cover below was the one on offer. And I tell you right now, if I'd seen that shirtless angel photoshop  cover, my eyes would have glided right past it.

I know there's been a lot of talk about "shirtless covers" and I've mostly kept out of it, but here's a real A/B test. To me, the book with the woman on the cover looks more interesting than the book with the shirtless angel. I'm not a prude, not at all. But the book above tells me the book is about a woman who is DOING SOMETHING. The shirtless angel cover tells me that the most important thing is the relationship with the shirtless angel. (Yes, I know it's a fantasy romance, but work with me here.)

Maybe if the guy's wings hadn't been off-center. (Because of the way his torso is turned, the wing on his left shoulder should have been turned as well and it isn't. The model has just been superimposed on the wings and it doesn't look great. In fact, it looks like a bazillion other covers you see in the Kindle book section.

I'm still looking forward to reading the book (which is #1 in one of his categories in the Free Book section right now), but I really wish the author had stuck with the original cover.

Steampunk Poe!

The annual Bellingham Steampunk Festival is coming up and as always, there are author appearances. This year one of the authors who'll be there is Lindsay Shopfer. I don't know his work, but when I Googled around, I found THIS collection, Merely This, which looks like all kinds of fun. (They had me at "clockwork raven.") I look forward to reading his work.

I like the playful thing the book designer did with Edgar Allan Poe's name. I also like the play of purple against the black and white. Not crazy about the way the title and subtitle are laid in. 

Fury Rising by Yasmine Galenorn...a review

Fury Rising by Yasmine Galenorn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Kaeleen Donovan—her friends call her Kae—is a Theosian, a minor goddess created when her pregnant mother wandered into a patch of wild magic that altered her DNA. Bound to the goddess Hecate, and able to roam the Crossroads where all worlds meet, Kae has a mission to retrieve a stolen artifact that in the wrong hands, could mean TEOTWAWKI. That’s the setup for author Yasmine Galenorn’s latest book and it’s a romp through a Seattle altered by a cataclysmic magic storm unleashed by Gaia before the story opens.
The Portland of GRIMM has nothing on Galenorn’s Seattle, which is inhabited by creatures of both shadow and light, beings who can shift into hawks and work magic, spirit guides, and all manner of creatures that have come from the World Tree and through the various portals ripped in the fabric of space time.
Kae is a typical kickass urban fantasy heroine with her sword and dagger and whip, but though she walks “in flame and ash on a field of bones,” she is also recognizably human and profoundly grateful that she wasn’t bound to one of the death gods of Santeria instead of Hecate, Goddess of the crossroads and of dark magic. And her world includes a day-job (running a cleaning company), which grounds the fantastical in the mundane.
The author has done a lot of world building, which is a treat and as a special gift to her readers, she’s also added the playlist she used for the book, which includes everything from Android Lust to Tingstad & Rumbel. This is the first in a series, and it’ll be fun to see what’s next for Kae, who is known as “Fury” when she’s on the nightshift.




View all my reviews

An interview with C.J. Warrant

1    C.J. Warrant is the debut author of the romantic suspense novel Forgetting Jane. (Review to come shortly, but trust me, you want to get it!) She stopped by to talk about her book and her writing and her life. 

 You’re an Army brat?  Me too! How do you think that shaped you as a person? Growing up, it was hard to make friends. I had to learn to put myself out there if I wanted them, which helps me now with networking. Also, since we got to travel from Korea, to Japan and then to the states, I met so many interesting people along the way.

2.       If someone gave you an all expenses vacation to anywhere you wanted, where would you go? Bora Bora! Every picture I have seen about that place reminds me of paradise, and I want to retreat to it.

3.       Why is Forgetting Jane set in Wisconsin? I lived in Wisconsin for about a year when I was ten, which drew me to have this story in that state. And all the elements in this story melds together making it a perfect fit.  I knew from the start of Forgetting Jane, it had to be Wisconsin.

4.      You’re a wife and a mother and also have another career outside of writing. How do you balance writing and life? Do you have a daily schedule for writing or do you just fit it into the corners of your time? Actually, I quit the beauty industry and turn my focus onto my family, my writing and myself. It was very stressful and it was affecting my health and connection with my family. I’m a lucky one who has tremendous support from my husband and kids. They encourages me to write and have me time.

Do you listen to music as you work and if so, what was in your playlist for this book? I don’t listen to music when I write. For me, it’s too distracting. But when I’m character building, I do. Depending on the character, I listen to anything from AC/DC to country. I also a big fan of club music, and get a little exercise in when I’m standing by my tall kitchen table typing away my characters…with the blinds wide open!

Picnic by the Lake of Time...out next week!

I have been playing around with a time travel idea for a while, and this novelette is going to be my first in the series. Hare is the opening:

The fifties were not my first choice as a time to seek refuge and 1955 was not my first choice of year, but as I did my research and exercised my due diligence, it became obvious that 1955 was probably the best place to lie low. For one thing, though I needed to hide somewhen fairly low-tech, I didn’t want to go so far into the past that I had to grow my own food and build my own house.

I also needed to pick a year where I could blend in without too much explanation.

The fifties were perfect for that. The decade had telephones and television and indoor plumbing and air conditioning but it didn’t have facial recognition software or stoplight cameras or laws requiring you to prove your citizenship when looking for a job. You might get asked to show your social security card, but it was easy enough to forge one of those with a totally meaningless SSN because in the days before computer databases, what were they going to do, make a long-distance call to another state to check a birth certificate?

Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor...a review

The Scent of Death by Andrew  Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


When London clerk Edward Savill sails into New York harbor on August 2, 1778, heh is not impressed. “I confess I expected a finer prospect,” he comments to a sailor keeping him company, “Something more like a city.” The British are occupying the city and like his cabin mate, Mr. Noak—an American who has been working in London for years—Savill is traveling on business. England and the United States may be at war, but war is good for business and opportunities for getting rich are everywhere. And in this atmosphere, everything is for sale, as Noak notes cynically. “For some people, sir, loyalty is a commodity, and like any other may be bought and sold.”

Margaret Atwood rewrites The Tempest

What can I say but "I can't wait to read this." It's on offer as an Early Reviewer copy at Library Thing, so of course, I signed up for it, along with 308 other people who are vying for 20 copies. Wish me luck!