Helen
said "yes" to attending the event: Character Naming Contest.
date: June 01, 2009 08:28AM
location: http://ljsellers.com, The United States
description: Enter a great character name and you have a chance to win a free copy of The Sex Club. You can also win a chance for your name to be in my next novel. Stop in.
Helen said: I posted mine on your blog. You've been getting some great suggestions! ]]>
Author Lacresha Hayes presents her soul in Becoming: My Personal Memoirs. She gives the reader a diary in poetry of her life: the pain, the joy, the anger, the love. And in doing so, she allows you to see inside her emotions and her life.
Hayes is a survivor, a minister, a founder of Christian Vitality magazine and a poet. It doesn’t matter whether your life has had the ups and downs that hers has. You will find something in this book of her life that will speak to you. It might be “Toss It Out” where Hayes urges you to get rid of the pain and burdens in your life. Or if your heart holds revenge, you might want to read “The Debate” to see how Hayes handled what she calls “the dark sludge” in her heart. To feel the joy that has come into Hayes’ life, read “Important That You Know.”
By seeing the growth, love and joy in Lacresha Hayes’ life, you can perhaps experience your own Becoming.
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Owen Fiddler by Marvin D. Wilson
Author Marvin D. Wilson presents the man Owen Fiddler as average. So average, in fact, that the “one unique aspect of him is his absolute average-ness.” But, in fact, Owen Fiddler, in the book Owen Fiddler, represents the extremes of man. He reaches the lowest of lows, attains the highest of highs, and, like most of mankind, searches for redemption.
In Owen Fiddler, Marvin D. Wilson has written a modern-day religious allegory, a story of rejecting grace, walking God’s path, and accepting responsibility for one’s sins in order to be saved and returned to grace. Owen Fiddler’s life is not necessarily one that all people can relate to, but his struggles are. Until he reaches the bottom, he is happy to wallow in his life, not caring how it affects others. When the worst that can happy to Owen Fiddler does indeed happen, the question becomes can the best that ever happened to him show Owen the way out of his misery? And will he follow?
Marvin D. Wilson describes himself as a “spiritualist with a zeal for sharing inspirations and insights ….” In Owen Fiddler, he shares a story of opposites, of good and evil, of rejecting God and accepting grace … and he does it with zeal.
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The Shadow of Excalibur is the second in this futuristic suspense series by Joan Upton Hall. The Shadow of Excalibur is set in a post-plague world, where the new leader is the “reincarnation” of King Arthur. At the start of the book, years have passed since the plague but problems are not over. As in Camelot, everyday life in this new world has unexpected, sometimes horrific, turns and lives are tested to determine the true mettle.
One thing that bothered me about the book was a trial early in the story where things happened that felt contrived in order for the outcome to be such that the story could continue running a somewhat parallel course with the original King Arthur myth. That aside, I enjoyed the story and the characters. The plot is suspenseful with a lot of action and the characters are multi-dimensional. Hall brings in some fantasy-touched characters in the Truthers. The Truthers can read minds, which is an interesting twist when they’re used in court and when they are advisors to the King.
The farther I got in the book, the faster I read. I assume there will be another in the series, and I look forward to reading it. Hall has a unique idea in recreating the King Arthur story set in a modern, post-apocalyptic world.
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Helen
said "yes" to attending the event: L.J. Sellers - The Sex Club.
date: August 22, 2008 10:25AM
location: Straight From Hel, The Internet, The United States
description: L.J. Sellers answers questions about her writing, marketing and the controversy about her book's title, The Sex Club.
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Sometimes when you read a book with a non-professional investigating a crime, you wonder why in the world the character keeps insinuating himself into the crime, but not with the lead in Asking for Murder. Dr. Rebecca Butterman is a psychologist and advice columnist and she’s thrown right into the center of the crime and has to stay involved to protect patients.
She’s a believable character who wants to be a good friend, needs to straighten out her own relationships, and realizes her life is in danger. She’s not getting a whole lot of help from the police, the family of the victim, or fellow professionals.
But it’s not like she has a whole lot of choices. She can’t turn her back on those who need her. She has to figure out not just the who of the crime but the why.
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If you like your suspense to be organic to life, not contrived the way some serial killer books feel, then read Freezing Point. As unique as the story is – using microwave beams to melt icebergs to get clean water – it feels as if it could be true. But the suspense is not in the melting of an iceberg, but what happens in the trying – and what could happen in the doing.
Freezing Point has suspense, action, unusual settings, believable characters, with environmental issues, scientific fact and theory and a touch of horror thrown in.
Due out in October ’08, Freezing Point will probably become a fast-seller. Dionne and Jove Books is already sending it out on a pre-publication world book tour. It’s garnering a lot of buzz.
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Ian Rankin, in Blood Hunt, introduces Gordon Reeve, a former SAS soldier. When Reeve’s journalist brother is found dead, Reeve doesn’t accept the ruling of suicide. Believing he was murdered, Reeve sets out on a quest to find out why his brother was killed and by whom.
Although Reeve is no longer a professional killer, he remembers his training and he’ll have to put his body to its limits to exact revenge while keeping his family safe. He sets out on his hunt for the killer, only to find himself the hunted.
Rankin is an award-winning author and Blood Hunt is fast-paced with interesting characters. Rankin clearly did his research for this book, weaving his knowledge seamlessly into the plot.
The only negative for me was that there were a few too many characters to keep up with and differentiate.
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In The Sex Club, L.J. Sellers leads you through fourteen days in the lives of nurse Kera Kollmorgan and Detective Wade Jackson. It starts with a bang, literally, and takes you through the twists and turns of a case involving murder, secrecy, and twisted reasoning. Each new incident pulls you along and keeps you reading. It’s the underlying, unsaid, questions that keep you thinking, like: How does a “good” person get so rigid in their beliefs that they become worse than what they hate? It also begs the question, Is this radicalization the way terrorists are born?
But Sellers never becomes preachy, nor tells you how to think. This is left up to the reader. What she does if tell a fast-paced, unique tale of lives intertwined in unwanted murder and intrigue.
I especially liked this book because it took me beyond just the story.
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