Jane S. Morrissey's Blog, page 2

Wild Rain Review

 

To escape an assassin, Rachel finds sanctuary in the rainforest, where the most exotic of all creatures walks: Rio. But when he unleashes his secret animal instincts, Rachel fears that her isolated haven could become an inescapable hell…

About the Author

#1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan has over 40 novels published, including four series.  Each of her four series has hit #1 on the NY Times. Her debut novel Dark Prince received 3 of the 9 Paranormal Excellence Awards in Romantic Literature for 1999. Since then she has been published by Leisure Books,Pocket Books, and currently is writing for Berkley/Jove. She also has earned 7 more PEARL awards.

She is pleased to have made numerous bestseller lists including the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Bookscan, B. Daltons, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Waldenbooks, Ingrams, Borders, Rhapsody Book Club, Washington Post, and Walmart. She has received numerous honors throughout her career including being a nominee for the RWA’s RITA.  She has received a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times and the Borders 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award.

She has been published in multiple languages and in many formats, including large print, palm pilot, e-book, and hardcover.  In October of 2007 her first manga comic, Dark Hunger was released in stores.  This was the first ever manga comic released by Berkley Publishing and it made #11 on Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller’s List. Her ground-breaking book trailer commercials have been shown on TV and in the movie theaters. She has been featured on local TV, appeared on the The Montel Williams Show, and her book Dark Legend was featured on the cover of Romantic Times Magazine.

Christine Feehan has also appeared at numerous writers’ conventions and book signings including: Romantic Times Convention, Get Caught Reading at Sea Cruise, Celebrate Romance Conference, Emerald City Conference, and numerous Romance Writers of America Conferences.

Websites

http://www.christinefeehan.com

http://www.myspace.com/christinefeehan

 

My Thoughts

Wild Rain by Christine Feehan is the second book in the Leopard series.

Warning: I try to avoid giving spoilers but be cautious as you read this in case you haven’t read book one. That said, if you haven’t read Book 1, do it! Do it now!

If you haven’t read any books by Christin Feehan, I highly recommend checking out her work. Not only has she written many books (and I mean a LOT), but she ‘knows’ how to write. This is one of her four series and is about shape shifters. If you are familiar with her work from other stories, give Wild Rain and the Leopard series a chance, you will not be disappointed.

In Wild Rain, our heroine Rachel Lospostos is traveling when she is forced to abandon her comrades and fake her own death to save herself. When she comes to, she is found by leopards who, after a brief misunderstanding (meow, scratch, hiss hiss), take her under their protection. When Rio, an outcast among his people, but a critical member of the leopard-shifter’s elite taskforce discovers that Rachel is being hunted, his heart and protective nature is ignited and he leaps into the fight to help her.

As they fight side by side, their wills and hearts are tested. Rachel’s secret (I’m not giving this away but you have to wait through most of the book to discover the truth) threatens to destroy everything Rio holds dear, including the woman he is falling for.

Their love is forged through survival and a gradual building of trust that overcomes stubborn wills and makes them both stronger. I imagined myself racing through the rain forest by their sides throughout their struggle. Inner instincts and desires are let loose. For those who have not experienced Christine Feehan’s writing before, she writes with rich, graphic description that makes for a sometimes gory, but quite steamy read. Enjoy!

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Everything Has a Weakness

From Superman’s Kryptonite to vampires and sunlight, everything and everyone has a weakness. It is often that vulnerability that becomes the touchstone for a character’s development, and in some cases it is ultimately their greatest strength.  In the realm of the paranormal, mortals, for example are often the weakest. Take Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunters Series although some mortals have small powers, they are really no match for angles or vampires. It is their humanity and capacity for love and compassion that can bring even the most powerful and tortured paranormal back from the brink.

Some of these characters embrace the raw, primal power within as a way to combat any vulnerability, while others live in fear that one day their weakness will be the thing that brings them down. We mere mortals struggle with this at times as well and that struggle can help us relate to these mystical creatures. On some level we get that we are afraid of our demons and our perceived weaknesses, yet they are facets of our personality and sometimes products of the situations we find ourselves in that define the next steps we take.

As a writer, being able to draw on those vulnerabilities and weaknesses is a wellspring rich in character and plot development. I of dream of capturing a world through my writing, yet it can be tricky to navigate a road fraught with pitfalls and potholes. Putting a story out in the world is scary. Will those deeper, darker parts of ourselves be revealed? Probably, on some level, but the greater weakness is to never sit down to write, to never show our creative efforts the light of day or the scrutiny of the larger world.

While we invest valuable time in trying to avoid being weak, or showing the world our vulnerability, we lose site of the opportunities they present. We stumble. It’s part of being human, or of any character – no matter how powerful – in any story I’ve ever read. What really blinds us is not understanding our weaknesses and vulnerabilities and not being able to live with them. There are certainly some things we can change in life, but many traits we are born into this world with are there to stay. And as for the fantastical creatures of the paranormal world, there is no changing how the moonlight affects a werewolf or the sunlight turns a vampire to dust. I’ve read stories where those traits are some how “fixed” if even for a short time to allow them a little taste of humanity, and I find that ultimately unsatisfying.

Everything has a weakness – and it is in the expression of that, living through it and working with it that we can discover true strength of character.

 

 

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Traveling and Books

Why are books and traveling so intertwined?  For me there are two answers to that question. The first is that books have always been an important part of the journey for me, providing a familiar touchstone when I’m away from home. In part because there is a lot of time in transit and what better way to spend endless hours on a plane, stuck in an airport or train station, or delayed somewhere in between, than in a story that transports me to another place. A good story certainly helps pass the hours… and over the years I’ve come to look forward to a long flight so that I can have hours of uninterrupted reading time.

Perhaps the more important reason for me though is the romance of the road. Stories give us a picture into alternate worlds and can ignite a sense of adventure. Movies and films can certainly provide us with images, incredible sweeping landscapes and cultures we may long to visit or avoid, but there is something magical about a world portrayed through words. It forces our minds to be creative in our interpretation of the description and doesn’t spoon feed each aspect of an experience to us as film does.

There is a romance to traveling, to seeing new worlds and cultures, to feeling like a part of something so far beyond what is familiar. I’ve been to many different countries, mostly in Africa, Asia and Europe and at times I fancy myself far more adventurous than I really am. Much like Odysseus heading off into unknown lands to explore I sometimes walk with a lighter step when I can imagine myself in a different time or in a life built on travel or tragedy that sends people off in search of answers.

At the end of the day I’m happy to return to the routine of my life a little better off for a different view of the world.

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Slave to Sensation Review

Nalini Singh dives into a world torn apart by a powerful race with phenomenal powers of the mind-and none of the heart.

In a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of “rehabilitation” – the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was…

Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy coexistence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murders of several changeling women. Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion – and that the animal in him is fascinated by her. Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities – or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation…

About the Author

I’ve been writing as long as I can remember and all of my stories always held a thread of romance (even when I was writing about a prince who could shoot lasers out of his eyes). I love creating unique characters, love giving them happy endings and I even love the voices in my head. There’s no other job I would rather be doing. In September 2002, when I got the call that Silhouette Desire wanted to buy my first book, Desert Warrior, it was a dream come true. I hope to continue living the dream until I keel over of old age on my keyboard.I was born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand. I also spent three years living and working in Japan, during which time I took the chance to travel around Asia. I’m back in New Zealand now, but I’m always plotting new trips. If you’d like to see some of my travel snapshots, have a look at the Travel Diary page (updated every month).So far, I’ve worked as a lawyer, a librarian, a candy factory general hand, a bank temp and an English teacher and not necessarily in that order. Some might call that inconsistency but I call it grist for the writer’s mill.

   

My Thoughts

In a world filled with shape shifters and people with the ability to use psychic powers Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh was a brilliant surprise. There is nothing harder than trusting your heart, especially in a world where emotions aren’t supposed to exist. Love is forbidden for Psy, but not for the changelings and humans. There were many times throughout the story that I forgot to breathe and felt my mouth drop open.

Sascha Duncan was born different from the other Psy beings in one very important way: she feels emotions. In a world where emotions are deliberately bred out of the Psy, we discover a hypnotically entrancing view of what happens when emotions are suppressed for a life time and then can no longer be held in check despite threat of death, or worse. I found Sascha Duncan refreshing in her acceptance of who she is and her incredibly generous heart is poignant as she suffers on her lonely journey of self-exploration.

Imagine seeing colors but everyone around you can only see black and white. If you were told that seeing colors is wrong, it would be impossible to describe something as powerful as a sunrise. Seeing someone you feel strongly for would be outlawed and no one else would understand how you feel because they can’t. In stark contrast to the Psy, the Changelings live their emotions and the primal urges of their animal halves are close to the surface as they display affection and sexual interest. Sascha’s journey brings her to the DarkRiver’s leopards, a group of changelings led by Lucas Hunter. Lucas has a secret he’ll do anything to keep from Sascha and the emotions Sascha feels for Lucas threaten her very existence. Their developing relationship and the threats to them both kept me up late many a night to see what happened. .

There is an overlay of sexism in the book that I struggled with a bit, although Nalini Singh does a phenomenal job of creating her characters in their cultural contexts which provide a background for the roles they find themselves in. As the series progresses, these gender roles shift along with the psychic powers and the abilities of the changelings. Slave to Sensation surprised me in many ways. The emotions are powerfully written, and the world that Singh creates is vivid. I would highly recommend this story, particularly if you like heroines that are as beautifully written as Sascha. This is a great read for the paranormal reader! 

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Loss

The world can be a scary place sometimes. Loss, or even the psychic threat of a looming loss, can present challenges that seem overwhelming. As the holiday season gets into full swing I find myself holding space both for the incredible gratitude I have for the people in my life, and a deeper grief and sadness for the many people I’ve loved and lost over the years. We find great comfort in those we love, and when we lose someone the security of that bond is disrupted. There isn’t an instant fix. There is no right or wrong way to deal with it because every loss is unique. Grief takes time. It’s okay. Be sad. Be angry. Recognize that it takes time to adjust to a new reality without that person.

 

During times of loss, I take great comfort in curling up with a favorite book. While in general escapism isn’t a good long-term coping strategy, taking a break from the harsher realities of life is often just what I need to find my center again.  Taking some time to settle in with a story and characters I know and can relate to on some level can be soothing to the soul.

 

I read widely in the paranormal genre and I think in part it is because the characters I find there pique my interest. In terms of what they have experienced and what they can do, there are virtually no bounds. The challenges they face are often nothing if not fantastical, although they also struggle with some of the same things we do. A good character is one I can relate to because of the way they move through their world and face the obstacles that jump out in front of them. And let’s face it, if any of us had to go through the kinds of loss and tragedy that our characters face, we’d be lucky to survive the day. If only we had ways to express our grief or avenge a loss with supernatural force, free from the moral and ethical dictates of our society… would our pain be less? Probably not, but it’s satisfying to entertain the notion for a moment of emotional reprieve.

 

There are so many things in my life that I am deeply grateful for and the most important are the people. As we age, there are exponentially more losses. It’s just the way of things. As people I love slip away and cross over, I am continually reminded of how grateful I am to have known them, even if for too short a time. I like to think that pieces of each of them find their way somehow into my stories.

 

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The Importance of Pacing

When writing a novel with suspense, which let’s face it, makes for a better story regardless of the genre, things get tricky fast. I thought this part of writing a book would come as naturally as breathing once the story started to unfold. But what I discovered is the art of pacing which can make or break a moment. It is an art because pacing rides a fine line – keeping characters and readers on the edge of timing the twists in a story to be both believable and unanticipated. I’ve found that the more I overthink it, the easier it is to fall into the trap of writing something that is too outrageous to fit the story, which can take a while to come back from, or even worse, a boring interlude.

Man of us have had this experience; sitting in a lecture hall or classroom so bored out of our minds that the entire focus of the moment is how to keep our eyelids open. Often this has little to do with content and a lot to do with presentation style. I’ve also had the experience of being completely drawn in to a topic that I didn’t have much interest in, simply by the pitch and pacing. Talk about an ideal learning environment! But I digress…

Pacing is as important to a story as the names we choose, or the subject we write about. In my previous post I talked about the importance of outlining in the evolution of a series. Pacing is another factor that cuts across the story arcs of each scene, book, and the meta-story which ties them all together.

Pacing is the pulse of a story. As my stories unfold I start to feel that beat like the rhythm of a jazz riff. It keeps the story flowing from scene to scene and the characters and plot developing as we move through them. It’s taken me a while, and writing several books to get a good sense of that pulse. It isn’t always apparent and sometimes feels more like a wild fusion number that I’m not totally comfortable with, but I’ve found that staying true to that beat from dialogue to characterization, is as critical as any other part of the story.

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The Evolution of a Series

When I first sat down to write I knew I wanted to write a series. I was compelled by the some of the series that had captured my imagination, like Marjorie M. Liu’s Dirk & Steele Series, Christine Feehan’s multiple series Drake Sisters, Dark Series, Ghostwalkers, and of course her Leopard Series, Nalini Singh’s Archangel and Psy-Changling Series and Thea Harrison’s Elder Races Series. I loved the fact that the story wasn’t over when I finished the first book, and even when I had finished the fifth there was a promise of another on the horizon.

Looking back, I would say that I was naïve when I first sat down to write. I had a belief that the world I was creating would emerge on its own without too much massaging from me. I also thought that the overarching story that tied the Quytel Series together would fall into place naturally. It was at some point, about halfway through the second book, that I realized I needed more of a structure to return to in crafting this series. I struggled with the idea for a while and wondered if it would ultimately be too constraining, but what happened was delicious… Once I sat down and thought through the structure of the world, the stage upon which my characters lived and loved – it expanded. Some of the twists and turns in the story were ones I had been planning for from the start but others were unanticipated and beautiful in their congruence.

What I learned is that I benefit from having an outline for a series, no matter how rough. This is as important for me as having a guide for each other individual story, perhaps more so because there are endless details and characters upon characters to track. Keeping track of characters and their relationships, story arcs, and timing can be tricky. As writers we all have different ways of outlining, or planning a story that keeps our ideas and the direction clear. It’s easy for me to get lost in an individual book in a series and lose track of the overarching progression of the story that ties all the books together.

I’m not a fan of rules. I find I go around them whenever I safely can, especially if they don’t serve me. One of the things I love about writing is that it exists in a place without rules in my mind, and yet there are guidelines of grammar, pacing, description, and characterization that are beneficial to follow. It took me a while to get there, but planning a story, a series, finally sank in as a rule not to be avoided, but a guideline embraced. Oddly I found an unexpected piece of freedom in that process.

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Seattle – The Land of Gray and Rain

When we read a novel like Necromancing the Stone, by Lish McBride, , we’re introduced to a setting where we can imagine anything happening. And for poor Samm Lacroix anything is exactly what happens to him. There have been many death and wolf teen novels released in recent years that are well written. One of the things that draws us into Samm’s world is the setting he steps into when he struggles to live in Washington State. Seattle is a port city bordered by an immense rainforest, an inlet leading to the ocean, and a desert. It’s a place of clouds and overcast skies for most of the year. It rains with a frequency that can make even the ducks long for sunlight, and when that sunny day finally appears and the clouds part… the city is ringed with the majestic peaks of the Olympic and Cascade Mountains and the looming presence of Mount Rainer in the distance. It has been used in thousands of novels…. including the ever popular Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James.

One of my main characters in Circle of Dreams lives in Seattle. Bri is a journalist living in a beautiful old Victorian house near Greenlake. While she doesn’t stay long in this majestic city because she is forced to flee for her life and then follow the dictates of her heart, it sets the stage for her eyes to be opened to the magic around her. This door, once open, is one that will forever be captured in her heart.

In a Seattle setting, an author can walk through lush green forests, sail on a boat across a sparkling moonlit ocean, and create an unforgettable backdrop upon which characters come alive in their world. Whether the story is one of romance, horror or adventure, it is a majestic place that reaches out, coaxing us with promises carried on unseen winds and pages filled with unforgettable images.

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Magic Bites by Ilona Andres

Amazon | Nook | Goodreads

 When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose, leaving all kinds of paranormal problems in its wake.Kate Daniels is a down-on-her-luck mercenary who makes her living cleaning up these magical problems. But when Kate’s guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta’s magic circles.The Masters of the Dead, necromancers who can control vampires, and the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, blame each other for a series of bizarre killings—and the death of Kate’s guardian may be part of the same mystery. Pressured by both sides to find the killer, Kate realizes she’s way out of her league—but she wouldn’t have it any other way

About the Author

http://www.ilona-andrews.com/

Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Gordon was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.)Gordon and Ilona currently reside in Oregon with their two children, three dogs and a cat. They have co-authored two series, the bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and romantic urban fantasy of The Edge.

My Thoughts

I have one name for all of you – Kate Daniels. A no-nonsense heroine, this young woman delivers everything that makes fantasy great. Author Ilona Andres creates a world that bursts forth from the pages and immerses us from the first sentence. It feels rather like a new scented candle that you light for the first time. Before you know it, the scent fills the room and you find yourself lost in it. That is this book.

If you love mystery, you’ll find your appetite hungrily devours Magic Bites. Whenever Kate discovers answers, you’ll find more questions. Actually there will be a lot of question that are born from the first page. Some of which won’t be answered at the end of the first book. But it left me hungry and filled with a desire for more.

In the end what I love best about Magic Bites is Kate Daniels. She has strength. She has her issues and emotional pain. She is as real to me as the person I look at in the mirror. Romance exists, but it doesn’t define her. She defines who she is and it is refreshing to see a woman in romance literature who can be strong and real but not need romance to fill her out. Kate is just Kate. A badass protagonist who struggles just like us. This is one of the may reasons why I love this book. Ilona Andres has made her writing and her characters real.

Ilona Andres has given me a gift that I’m very thankful for. She created a world that I can visit whenever I want. When I’m having a hard day I can turn to Kate Daniels and watch her kick the butts of all of the assholes (and there are quite a few) in her world. Those are  wonderful, precious moments when we forget our own world for a little while and travel, in this case with  Kate, sharing in her badass nature – and maybe fantasizing that we can can be that too.

I still have the rest of the series to check out, and I’m sure it will get even better. I know this book won’t be for everyone but for those of us who connect with Kate Daniels it is going on our shelf of top favorites. I expect it won’t be long before I read it again.

Well done, Ilona Andres!

 

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Why Do We Crave Romance?

I would venture to say that most people, when asked, have some disdain when talking about romance novels, dismissing them as trivial and not real literature, whatever that means. Many incredible literary masterpieces have romantic love as their central purpose: Doctor Zhivago, Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, to name a few. By the number of romantic comedies that top the box office and the number of pop songs with themes ranging from craving love, searching for love, losing love and mourning it’s loss that top the charts and box offices,, I’d say we were a society obsessed with romance.

And that creates an interesting social question… Why do we disdain something that we consume so much of? And that’s just the romance part of it, we’re not even talking about the consumption of erotica that covers the seedy underbelly of the sex trade to the light porn that is fairly common place in most popular movies and everything in between.

We’ll leave sex and erotica for another day and focus on romance. If we look at historical figures in literature, like Helen of Troy, for example. She has fascinated historians and readers alike for thousands of years. Why? She was supposedly very beautiful and men fought to the death to win her favor. Paris started a war to have her, condemning thousands of innocent citizens of Troy to their death to fulfill his need to be with her. The question of why isn’t really answered here. We are left to wonder what it would feel like to have someone love us that much, or to love someone enough that we would be willing to make that kind of sacrifice. How horrifying and how fascinating to spend a moment in those shoes.

And then there are characters like Bram Stroker’s Dracula (1897), a murderous vampire who tormented his victims with disturbing delight. When we see his heart begin to beat again for Mina, we can’t help but be attracted to the romance of such a thing. Can love transform him? Our own hearts yearn to beat with theirs, to feel, even for a moment, a taste of the kind of love that could bring a monster back to life.

Then there is the ever popular Fifty Shades of Grey, soon to be released in motion pictures, that clearly appeals to massive numbers of people, men and women, around the world. I covered this a bit in my previous article ‘Why Mommies like BDSM’ because it skates on the edge of a very edgy lifestyle most of us can’t really imagine, but can certainly fantasize about. Is it his money, his power, or the dominance play that appeals so immensely to our psyche?

Why do we crave romance in literature? Maybe it’s because we can’t help walking once more in that moment of falling in love. It’s a tantalizing time in a story when two hearts desperately reach out to one another while disaster looms ahead. Perhaps it is the humanity and tragedy of these characters and their stories that speak to us. Do we want to believe in a happily ever after and a world in which love really can conquer all? I would venture to say that there is great catharsis in that fantasy and experiencing those vicarious moments. We are ever hopeful that there is happiness despite all the pain of living in the world. Maybe we crave romance in literature, music, and film because we need to see it succeed, and want to take part in a journey, however brief, that touches us so deeply that we feel its residual draw long after the story ends.

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