Title: Angel Burn Author: L.A. Weatherly Publisher: Candlewick Press Pub Date: 05/24/2011 General impression I enjoyed this YA Romantic Fantasy and devoured it at a fast pace. It’s intriguing, engrossing and heart warming. What people think they experience and what they do experience aren’t always the same thing, and in this novel, angels are definitely not what they seem. Trouble is, very few people know it, and the angels not only have a cult following but have infiltrated all areas of US society with potentially disastrous consequences. It’s an interesting and rather scary take on why cult followers might be so gushy and starry eyed. The blurb Willow knows she’s different from other girls, and not just because she loves tinkering with cars. Willow has a gift. She can look into the future and know people’s dreams and hopes, their sorrows and regrets, just by touching them. She has no idea where this power comes from. But the assassin, Alex, does. Gorgeous, mysterious Alex knows … [Read more...]
Review – Lost Voices by Sarah Porter
Title: Lost Voices Author: Sarah Porter Publisher: Harcourt Books Pub Date: 07/04/2011 Lost Voices is an enjoyable, interesting and unusual book. Essentially, it is about moral dilemmas and power plays in a group of teenage girls who are mermaids. The concept of abused girls turning into mermaids at their most horrific moment makes a fascinating basis for the story. The blurb Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside of her grim, gray Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below, but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation and becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in—all of them, like her, lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives. Luce is thrilled with her new life until she discovers the catch: the mermaids feel an uncontrollable desire to drown seafarers, using their … [Read more...]
Review – The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
Title: The Goddess Test SubTitle: Book I in The Goddess Test series Author: Aimée Carter Publisher: Harlequin TEEN Pub Date: 04/26/2011 I loved this book. As well as being a great story with endearing characters, its themes of death, justice, responsibility for others and the process of releasing a loved one made it moving and thought provoking. The blurb EVERY GIRL who has taken the test has DIED. Now it's KATE'S TURN. It’s always been just Kate and her mom—and her mother is dying. Her last wish? To move back to her childhood home. So Kate’s going to start at a new school with no friends, no other family and the fear her mother won’t live past the fall. Then she meets Henry. Dark. Tortured. And mesmerizing. He claims to be Hades, god of the Underworld—and if she accepts his bargain, he’ll keep her mother alive while Kate tries to pass seven tests. Kate is sure he’s crazy—until she sees him bring a girl back from the dead. Now saving her mother seems crazily possible. If she … [Read more...]
Finished. Done. And into the world again.
I declare Lethal Inheritance finished – at least until I get a publisher and their editor wants changes. For now though, I’m done, and I’ve emailed the ms to my agent along with my revamped blurb. In this last round of edits, I got rid of another 5000 words and redid the beginning. Again. I discovered and fixed Too many ‘hearts’ – thumping, fluttering, lifting, sinking, shrinking etc. You name it, I had it. Every couple of pages, sometimes twice on a page. I cut it down to generally no more than every 10 pages. Every time I changed it, I discovered that the words was either not necessary or the change was an improvement, because I found a more interesting – or at least different - way to say the same thing. It’s amazing what you find when you do a search for a particular word. I’d done it with many others but not this one. Thanks, Laurie for picking it up. Unnecessary details manifesting as superfluous phrases in how small things happened eg where an objected was picked up from, … [Read more...]
On what criteria should a reviewer make their judgment & how much should personal ‘likes’ affect a review?
With the development of ebooks, reader reviews are becoming an important arbitrator of quality. Anyone looking for a book online will most likely read online reviews before buying. This gives reviewers an important role in book sales and with it comes responsibility. But, just like books, there are well written reviews and not so well written reviews, and I believe that as readers, to be fair to the author, we should evaluate the reviews we read. In order to do this, we need to consider the following. What are the responsibilities of a reviewer? They are responsible to readers who want an honest review and to authors who want a fair review. Is this an informal review or a formal review? An informal review is usually short and just says whether a reader enjoyed the book or not. This is completely based on personal likes. These reviews are meaningless to us unless we know that the reviewer likes the same books as we do. I put these sort of reviews on Goodreads for books that I’ve … [Read more...]
On dealing positively with feedback
I discussed some of the issues my writer friend, Laurie, raised about my manuscript in my last post. Here’s the process I used to work with and apply the rest of his feedback. I hope that sharing this will help others to work positively with any feedback they get. Oh and by the way, I didn’t have that nervous little heart flutter before I looked at Laurie’s feedback. Does that mean that ego has finally taken a back seat to the quest for excellence? Laurie said… ‘Its a really good yarn ... I got quite caught up in it. It’s inventive and new! The plot is great – always something new and exciting. The work you have done to embody meditation principles is brilliant. The characters are generally good ... and interesting. ‘I found myself very comfortable with the way Walnut explains things but had a little more difficulty with Maya’s voice. At times she becomes something of a caricature of an old wise woman. I would run against stereotype here and make her … [Read more...]
Evaluating feedback & balancing the romantic element
Both my critique reader/writers have sent back their feedback, but like all feedback it requires evaluation before acting on it. We need to evaluate it objectively, in terms of what is best for our book, and that means loosening our attachment to our work as it stands. This process of evaluation has shown me that a writer’s perception of what they’ve written may not be the same as what they actually have written, and the only way you’ll learn that is through someone else’s eyes. Here’s a couple of examples. The issues are things that any YA author with a romantic element in their work could check in their ms. Among other things, Laurie said… ‘The one thing I’m having difficulty with is the Nick-Ariel relationship ... I think its overwritten ... the prose sometimes borders on Mills and Boon ... And the many repetitions of their eyes meeting for a moment and then the energy that passes between them that wore me down. Maybe it just ignites too soon and goes on too long. Partly … [Read more...]
Done it – again
I finished another edit and yes, the writing is a lot better. A lot! I sorted out a few problems with changes of POV and thanks to some blogging friends, particularly Jami Gold who happened to be writing about POV changes & head hopping at the time I was looking at just that, I now feel confident that what's in there now isn't going to red flag a publisher. Today, I'm printing out the ms and posting it to a writer friend to look over with a VERY critical eye. Expect some posts on handling criticism in the near future, and that give away for the 'Light series' is on it's way too, amybe tomorrow or Saturday. If you can get me 100 friends on face book ( only 9 more needed) - they're yours. Check out Jami's blog, she writes some good stuff. … [Read more...]
Author blog hop
Tomorrow, I'm posting an interview with the wonderful Jennifer deLucy who wrote Seers of Light, but today I'm helping a few other authors to reach out to new authors and for awesome readers to join in the blog hop! It's a great chance to get to know new talent! READERS: Follow as many authors as you like. Just follow the Linky list and hop from author to author. The idea is to find as many "new to you" authors as you can, and hopefully some great new reading material as well. Leave a comment as you hop from blog to blog! We'd love to chat with you! AUTHORS: Follow the Meet an author Monday host (Cali Cheer Mom) along with any of the wonderfully talented authors on the list. You will need to enter your name and blog url into the Linky tool. Grab our super cute button and place it in a post. (THIS IS IMPORTANT!) If you don't create a post for the hop, your readers won't have a place to comment, and the hop will stop with you. So create a post, paste in the Linky code and … [Read more...]
What REALLY helps writers? Truth?
There is clearly a lot of support for writers within the writing community on the web, but if all we give each other is support, without real help, then not only are we not helping, we could also be hindering them as well. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be encouraging and supportive, no, no, no. These things are the very basis of our helping each other. What I’m saying is that support isn’t enough and that without real feedback on our work it could lead a writer to think that they are ready to publish when they’re not. I have been to blogsites where a writer has something up for you to look at. I read it and find flaws, but I don’t feel I can say so because all the other comments are glowing. I want to support the writer. I can see some good ideas there, but… in its present state it needs work, so I don’t comment. I don’t bookmark the site either. I’m guilty of not really helping. But if I was honest, how would it be read by others? If I was the only one to point out the spelling … [Read more...]
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