Satan Changed My Mind

Started reading To Date an Immortal by Stephanie Rowe as a light palate cleanser after reading a couple serious books. Was thinking the book a nice solid 4* effort.

An attractive male hero, Derek LaValle, wants to survive a curse that kills the men in his family. He has an ancestral document that says he need to kill the Guardian of some goblet, and his relatives think he's nuts. The Guardian, Justine, is now protecting an espresso machine and is bored with her duties, except she has to perform them because Satan is interested in laying her mother.

When the two meet, all bets are off. Sound familiar? The irresistible force meets the immovable object...except things begin to shift when the two meet each other. The book hits all the elements of an acceptable paranormal romance... except the characters aren't normal.

Humor saves the book. I didn't LOL so much, but I did smile  and chuckle a lot. Rowe has a knack of taking a cliché and turning it on its ear. When Satan appears on the scene, he steals the show, the devilish creature, by raising the level of humor.  But he is in good company. All the main and secondary characters are twisted out of their mundane tropes. More important, Rowe develops the multiple characters in her sub-plots rather than having them stand around to help in convenient moments.

This book met my standard of pushing myself to read "one more chapter". Yeah, I had to change my mind and give it 5*s. Truth be told, I am a coffee addict.

Learn more about the book and read other reviews at

Amazon      Barnes & Noble

 

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My Writing Rut

This blog is courtesy of BookBub which nagged me to review a book I bought through

them. I've another blog waiting to share with the people who signed up for may newsletter on my website...if I ever figure out how to do it. Which is dependent on if I ever find the energy. One of the negatives of being a cranky old lady.

On the other hand, I've bee getting lots done...for me, anyway. The Pig Wars has been published a month now. I've made some sales. Not enough to recoup what I spent promoting it, but enough to have a much more successful launch than my other two book. [The free short stories and novellas don't count.]

The reviews are gratifying. On Amazon I have six ratings to date with 60% of them 5*. Also have reviews on GoodReads which aren't quite as good as they rate at 4.16 or 7. [I'm not going to go back and look.] Who knows what future reviews will be like. I find reader interpretations interesting.

All in all, the new book is doing quite nicely for a pipsqueak writer. I can't wait for the book to get off of Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Select or ???? I'm getting a new cover which I like much better when I expand the vendors and publish the paperback.

But, my writing is progressing best of all. I'm almost finished with the first edits of "The Battle to Save Magic", the prequel to The Pig Wars. Why the book first? My editor wanted a prequel to explain the backstory, and it ended fifty pages long. It's now a little over sixty. It's been suggested I add another forty words to turn it into a "book". Yeah, I'll admit it. I kind of do things backward.

When I moved, I discovered the first edits of "Dark Solstice", the book I started writing when I switched to writing fantasy. It first opened with Marian standing on a cliff over the ocean with her hair streaming behind her. Vengeance, the name the resulting book's prequel was given, was first publish by Wolfsinger Press. "Dark Solstice" is set four hundred years in the future of The Pig Wars. Readers of The Pig Wars might like to know that Renna and Mariah are still friends. Just download Vengeance to learn more.

PS: Wolfsinger Press has some entertaining reads.

 

Dragons, Tigers, and Elves, Oh My!

Dragons can be annoying.

So if you don't like those preternaturals,

How about vampires, trolls, shifters, and half-breeds galore?

 

Lessons from My Reading

This year I've been working my way through Lindsay Buroker's laugh-out-loud dragon
series, featuring Val, a middle-aged, half-elf loose cannon assassin and Zav, a powerful, pompous dragon lord who wears interesting shoes, like yellow crocs.

Oh, the fantasy elements are there in abundance, as is action, magic, and shifting around multi-dimensional worlds. Humans, goblins, dragons, fairies, elves, vampires, shifters, trolls, half-breeds of all kinds, both friend and foe, abound. The wondrous part is that Buroker manages to make even the clichés her own. [Example: Buroker uses caramel chocolates to distract a pissy fae queen.]

Mostly, I enjoy the wicked first person point of view Buroker uses to make the most of a wise-cracking middle-aged protagonist. Her take on our modern world--Seattle in particular--often makes me pause even when I'm not laughing.

Buroker is also strong on drawing secondary characters. I enjoyed the fact that her human characters are almost as diverse as the preternaturals. All are well drawn and distinct. Her boss, Colonel Willard, is even more snappy than Val plus the more intimidating woman. [Val has an insecure streak as wide as a fun house mirror.]  Basically, Buroker makes Val's band of friends a crucial part of the stories.

Oh, I forgot the tiger companion. He's the i-beam that makes the series with his dry, snarky advice to Val.

Bottom line on the nine books in this series: They're action-oriented urban fantasy. By definition that means that the books are basically light and move fast without much introspection from the characters. Yet they have endless charm...and laughs. More important, well-done humor is rare and a great treat.

All I can do is look on with envy. I'll never write as funny...or as fast. There's still one more book for me to read in this series which I think is complete. Buroker does have other series...though I haven't read them.

You can find the Death by Dragons books on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble 

You can find her other many novels on iBooks and kobo.

 

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My Writing Rut

My book The Pig Wars, a Half-Elven novel set after the Rebellion created a safe-haven for them in the Far Isles, is coming along nicely, complete with a romantic ending. [I
don't know where that came from, but it's there.] Renna isn't quite as snarly as she is in Vengeance, set 400 years later.-- I'd think I'd be cantankerous, too, if my hair was white and I needed a walking stick when my childhood friend still looked like a sexy young woman.

My editor is going through the third content edits...slightly delayed by the death of her dog. After I transfer her suggestions/comments, come the copy edits and formatting. I really think the book will be published in Fall, 2021...in spite of how slow I am.

Perhaps, my eye troubles haven't be able to keep a good book down. At least, my editor thinks it's good. Said I should try a traditional publisher. My ego would like me to try. But I'm a realist. At my age, I'd probably be dead before the agent/publisher-finding-process ran its course. Yeah, it'd probably take five years and umpteen "not for us" rejections before I even found an agent...if I found an agent.

Heads up. This is my first blog in awhile, and I don't seem to be working it too well. I can't find the links or buttons I want.