Michelle L. Levigne's Blog, page 91

A peek inside (the insane asylum ....)

I'm so grateful to the lovely folks at NF READS for inviting me to be interviewed and blather a little bit about my different universes, the writing process, and just creativity in general.

Please click HERE to read the interview, and consider sticking around to read about other authors they've hosted. You might find something you'll like and want to explore further! 

Will I see YOU at the craft fair, this coming Saturday, September 21?

For more information, follow this link:https://www.facebook.com/events/872550786422464/

I will be here, selling copies of CHRISTMAS FICTION OFF THE BEATEN PATH, hot off the presses!
Not your Granny's Christmas stories!
The new 2019 anthology from Mt. Zion Ridge Press.
This will be the FIRST opportunity to buy a copy.
Get them while they're hot -- Christmas stories (and any books, as far as I'm concerned!) make GREAT Christmas presents!


Hope to see you there!!!And don't forget to check out Mt. Zion Ridge Press's growing catalog of great fiction "off the beaten path." MtZionRidgePress.com

Off the Bookshelf: I'D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU, BUT THEN I'D HAVE TO KILL YOU, by Ally Carter

Audiobook
A Gallagher Girls novel

Narrated by Renee Raudman

What fun! Another romp with Cammie Morgan and the spies-in-training at the all-girls Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women.

The first Audible book in the series was in introduction, Cammie's first few weeks at the academy, dealing with her family heritage and being a legacy. All the pressure of being the headmistress' daughter and figuring out how to fit in actually overrides the totally unique world of learning to be a spy -- starting in 7th grade.

Cammie and her friends/roommates, Liz and Becks, are sophomores. Bad enough the new teacher for Covert Ops is a gorgeous male teacher, but the spoiled daughter of a US Senator somehow manages to get through all the subterfuge and diversion to keep non-spy-talented girls from waltzing through the gates. Worse than that -- this girl gets put in the room with the three pals.

Then during a Covert Ops training, Cammie runs into a local boy, and there's a spark, and she is suddenly torn between her legacy and the allure of a normal and ordinary life. Or at least making this cute boy who likes her think she's a normal, ordinary girl. Learning to speak dozens of languages and kill a man with just an uncooked piece of spaghetti is nothing compared to the hazardous world of high school dating and figuring out boy-speak.

Not just a fun romp, but a delightful return to a familiar world and familiar characters. More, please?

Get Your Copy of CHRISTMAS FICTION OFF THE BEATEN PATH soon -- live and in person!

For more information, follow this link:https://www.facebook.com/events/872550786422464/

I will be here, selling copies of CHRISTMAS FICTION OFF THE BEATEN PATH, hot off the presses!
Not your Granny's Christmas stories!
The new 2019 anthology from Mt. Zion Ridge Press.
This will be the FIRST opportunity to buy a copy.
Get them while they're hot -- Christmas stories (and any books, as far as I'm concerned!) make GREAT Christmas presents!Hope to see you there!!!And don't forget to check out Mt. Zion Ridge Press's growing catalog of great fiction "off the beaten path." MtZionRidgePress.com

Off the Bookshelf: SYNAPSE, by Steven James

Obtained through Netgalley for review purposes.

RELEASING: October 8.

Master of suspense (and dang good writing conference speaker/teacher) Steven James shows he can thrill and send chills up the spine in the future, too.

There were a lot of reasons to snag this book to read, starting with the fact that I've been in one of his classes, I have a few of his writing books, I've read and made notes on his Writers Digest articles, and my publishing partner fan-girls over him. And yeah, I wanted to see what all the hype was about regarding his fiction.

Deserved!

SYNAPSE is set in the near-future, where Artificials (androids, artificial intelligence, whatever you want to call them)  are evolving and becoming Human enough to make people nervous. They're asking the big questions about life and death and life after death.

Enter Kestrel, a minister who has just lost her child at birth. She's asking questions, but maybe not the right ones. On the way home from the hospital, a terrorist attack occurs in front of her and she jumps in to help, since that is where she is trained. The terrorists are Purists, who are resisting the "rise of the machines," to use Terminator parlance. This brings her to the attention of the authorities, who are investigating. Her background isn't clean, so she's suspect for a while.

Things get even more complicated when her estranged brother sends her a "gift" in the form of Jordan, an advanced-model Artificial. Jordan is asking questions about forgiveness, life-after-death, if he has a soul, and why God allows horrible things to happen ...  Kestrel isn't in the best emotional shape to take on an Artificial in her life -- especially when her parents were murdered by one years ago. She gives Jordan a chance, though, and they change and challenge each other, while getting in the way of the wrong people.

Other reviewers refer to James' stories as a roller coaster ... yeah, but the roller coaster starts slowly, subtly, and you're hooked before the big drops and sharp turns hit. Hang on! Don't bang your head if you get thrown out of your seat. Just when you think you have all the players identified and you know what teams they're working for, the field and the uniforms change.

In some ways, this is a story about attitudes and actions and reactions all around us today, including the brutality, hatred, and fear that arise when people force their vision of the world on everyone who disagrees with them.

So many layers. So many different speeds and textures, all woven together into a complicated picture that I sure hope will have a sequel. Thanks.

Off the Bookshelf: WALK TWO MOONS, by Sharon Creech

Audiobook
Audible

Narrated by Hope Davis

Newberry Award Winner

Sal is a 13-year-old whose life has been entirely uprooted. Two stories interweave as she goes through a journey of the highway and of the heart.

When Sal's mother leaves them, Sal's father moves them from Kentucky to Euclid, Ohio, making her leave behind their farm, their trees, their chickens, their dog -- everything that makes up Sal's world. Sal doesn't want to know about this new relationship between her father and Mrs. Cadaver -- an ominous name in itself. Things get even stranger and confusing when Sal meets the girl who lives next door to Mrs. Cadaver, Phoebe -- who immediately gets Sal wrapped up in her wild, suspicious imagination. Phoebe believes Mrs. Cadaver killed her husband, and there's a lunatic on the loose in the neighborhood, and then there's their bizarre English teach who not only makes them write journals, but then reads entries from their journals out loud, in class.

Phoebe's personal trials mirror Sal's, and Sal relates Phoebe's life on a ride out west with her quirky, adorable grandparents who can't seem to avoid trouble, both funny and dangerous. Little by little, Sal explores the pain of her mother leaving, and why she isn't coming home.

I highly recommend this lovely, warm, sad, thoughtful, entirely too short book about pain and loss and friendship and love.  The narrator makes all the characters come alive. Entirely lovely experience.

Off the Bookshelf: STEELHEART, by Brandon Sanderson

Audiobook.
Narrated by MacLeod Andrews
Book 1 of The Reckoners

Who are the Reckoners?

Well, they're people who are out to destroy Epics -- the name for what are essentially mutants or superheros. But in this dark world created by Sanderson, they are nothing near heroic.

The Reckoners are the heroes -- kind of.

The narrator, David, is a little boy when his father is killed by Steelheart, a new Epic who has the ability to turn anything that isn't living tissue to steel. Every Epic has a weakness, and that day, totally by accident, David's father made Steelheart bleed. Ever since, David has been trying to figure out Steelheart's weakness, so he can get revenge for his father.

Then he meets the Reckoners, who have come to the perpetually nighttime city of New 'Cago (Chicago), which Steelheart has made his kingdom. David wants to work with the Reckoners, share all the research he has done, and persuade them that the plan he has created to destroy Steelheart can work.

Nearly 13 hours of listening time -- compelling, and will leave you aching for the ugly, fear-filled, grim world David and the Reckoners live in. By the time the end comes, the surprises can take your breath away. But Sanderson lives up to his reputation as a master storyteller and worldbuilder, because every surprise makes sense. I have a good backlog of books waiting in my Audible app, but I'm really tempted to buy the next book in the series just because I gotta know what happens next.

Off the Bookshelf: ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING, by Ray Bradbury

A book on BEING a writer, more than a book on the writing craft.

Part autobiography.

It went way too fast, and yet there's a lot of meat for digesting, slowly, so maybe the smaller portions, highly condensed, are a wise choice. This is a collection of essays on writing Bradbury wrote over several decades.

I enjoyed remembering the books I had read, or short stories, and the movies I had seen as he talked about the various journeys to get them written. I had a little bit of shock to realize that a story I read in an English class magazine was written by Bradbury. Mind-blowing -- "name" SF writers having their stories appear in required classes in school. Of course, I remember when "Rocky" was coming out, and we had some scenes from the script in our English class magazine, so ....

Even if you don't write SF or fantasy, this book is highly useful for just getting into the mind of a writer and seeing that we don't all do it the same way, we don't all have the same journey, we don't all run at the same pace or learn things the same way. What works for YOU is the right journey to take and the right tools to pick up and the right approach to use.

Thanks to the master for making clearer what I've been learning for some time now, and will probably have to keep learning, as I go along.

As a note: I have a big stack of writing craft/writing resource books that have piled up, and my goal is to read at least 1 each month. Here's hoping -- and hold me accountable!

Off the Bookshelf: ROSE OF THE OATH, by Hope Ann

Ebook
Legends of Light 1
A Beauty & the Beast Retelling

I need to read the other books that tie into this story, especially the one that sparked the whole curse and prophecy and involves the ancestress of the heroine, Elissa.

Very well done, a new angle on Beauty & the Beast.

Elissa and her orphaned siblings are living life on the edge, tormented by news of approaching war. Plus there are the wolves howling in the distance, constantly. Wolves are especially tormenting for Elissa, because as we learn once we're deep into the story, she has a scar from a wolf attack -- the same attack that killed her parents.

The Beast carries multiple scars, also from wolf attacks. He wears the skins of the wolves that he has killed, without number, for centuries. He calls her Beauty, and she slips up and calls him Beast, because that is what he seems.  While he would like to explain the curse and the situation, he can't -- the same curse that traps her in the castle with him has taken his voice. Yeah, it's frustrating, for both of them. The bits and pieces of the story are revealed in his thoughts and writings and the snippets of news she hears about the outside world from the one person who, with no explanation, is able to get through the shield of magic and visit her at the castle.

There is prophecy and betrayal and learning to forgive and to care, and in the end, willing sacrifice. Elissa nearly dies, and is left marked by scars, just like Adrian the Beast, whom she has learned to love. That's not a spoiler, is it? Because this is, after all, Beauty & the Beast retold.

A very satisfying retelling. I really do need to get the other stories, to find out how the rose ties into the curse and betrayal and treason and the King's oath and the sacrifice that the Prince must make someday....

Off the Bookshelf: NEVERMORE: THE TRIALS OF MORRIGAN CROW, by Jessica Townsend

Audiobook, from Audible

Ever feel like everything is stacked against you, and no matter what you do, you're going to get blamed for anything that goes wrong -- even if you weren't anywhere near when it happened?

That's what life is like for cursed children in this fantasy world. Morrigan Crow was born on Eventide, considered cursed and the cause of all misfortune around her -- and worse, she's doomed to die on the next Eventide, midnight on her birthday.

Her adventure begins when Eventide comes early, and the strange, flamboyant Jupiter North comes to whisk her away to the magical city of Nevermoor. She becomes a resident of the hotel he owns, where her room decorates itself to suit her and chandeliers grow from the ceiling and there are rooms where shadows become real and ... Whew! Too much to tell.

Morrigan is something of an illegal resident, and the authorities want to snatch her up and throw her back into the country where she's not exactly welcome ... and the only chance she has to stay in Nevermoor is to pass all the tests and trials and become a member of the Wundrous Society. She has to demonstrate her gift -- but what is it? She doesn't know, and Jupiter, her guardian, isn't telling.

Major fun. Another one of those books where I kind of grudged having to stop listening. Real life gets in the way an awful lot, y'know? The reviews recommend this for fans of Harry Potter and other stories where kids are whisked away into magical, sometimes dangerous worlds and adventures, where their only weapons are their own wits. The next book, Wunder Smith, is on my gotta-get list.