Lara Lee's Blog, page 25
November 29, 2018
FREE eBooks for Christmas!
This year I wanted to give a gift to all of my online friends and family all over. I decided to create this coupon to give you a free ebook of either Gryphendale or The Shadow of the Gryphon. I know not everyone will be thrilled to get an ebook for Christmas, but if you do like to read or had the smallest curiosity about my novels, this is your chance to get a free copy in any format you want. Just go to Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/883636
There you can select from a number of file types such as mobi for a kindle reader or just a plain pdf. Type in the coupon codes:
Gryphendale – JX88D
The Shadow of the Gryphon – UD54V
That should be it and you can download the files to read now or later. Both books are clean young adult fantasy fiction, good for readers 12 and up. They are novel length and should be fun for adults who love fantasy fiction.
Gryphendale: When Autumn, a human from our world, investigates a lone door in the woods, she is thrust into a faerie realm ruled by the evil wizard, Maldamien. Immediately, she is cursed to look like a child with her memories erased. She must depend on a scholarly satyr, Puck, to help break the curse and unravel the mysteries surrounding her, including the photo she holds of the missing faerie Queen. At the same time, Sage Goliad, a Huldra hero of the people, and Toble, the elderly Dryad inventor, must piece together the newest plot by Maldamien before he destroys the world and becomes a god.
The Shadow of the Gryphon: Thirty years after the events of Gryphendale, a new adventure begins. Join three travelers on a witty adventure set in an exotic fairy world. An unusual brownie adventurer named Arthur, and the twin princes, Timothy and Nathaniel, join forces to travel to the underside of their coin-shaped world to break the curse that has turned Nathaniel’s fiancee into stone. Arthur must face his traumatic past as he leads Nathaniel and Timothy on the same journey that killed his friends more than forty years before, getting them all stuck far from home with only one impossible way home. Things continue to go wrong when they learn that this curse is just the beginning of more significant problems threatening to destroy the Guardian of the Ocean. Struggling through a debilitating injury, Nathaniel must risk everything to save the ones he loves. Timothy must let go of his dark magic past to use his fire magic against the alliance that threatens to destroy the world with water.
I hope you enjoy the books!
November 27, 2018
FREE Books for Christmas!
Coupon Codes:
Gryphendale - JX88D
The Shadow of the Gryphon - UD54V
This is only good until the end of December. Use the coupon code to download a FREE copy here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
November 13, 2018
Book Review: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
As a small child, I watched a cartoon of Gulliver in Lilliput and had firmly formed the image, as so many people do, that this was a children’s book. Having read the book now, this is the most unchildren’s book children’s book I have ever read!
Gulliver’s Travels was written in 1725 by the clergyman, Jonathan Swift, as a parody of the popular romantic travel logs of his day. He was part of a writer’s group that created a satire of popular genres, and this was one of his assignments. It soon became known as a children’s book after it’s publication because of its fantasy elements, but the Whig party were angered seeing it for what it was, political satire.
The book follows Gulliver on four journeys. Lilliput is only the first journey and the most famous one when we think of this novel. Each of the journeys, Gulliver meets an extraordinary culture that he describes in detail and then makes a great deal of commentary on the politics or philosophy of that people group. The first group is a people who are only 6 inches tall, the second voyage is to a land of giants, the third is to a pseudo-scientific people, and the last is a land of intelligent horses. There are minimal action scenes and a lot of philosophy and dry humor.
I enjoyed the book, but I honestly can’t imagine a child under 13 being able to get much from it. It would be like calling Utopia a children’s book. Human nature is dissected in all ways possible by the dialogues. A young reader would find it hard to see the irony and satire in the way governments are run or how institutional academia in being ridiculed.
Wikipedia discusses this book in a very informative article but seems to me to miss the themes of the book. It isn’t easy to reduce the message of this novel because it covers so many topics. The book is critical of everyone and everything in the most ridiculous ways. Gulliver is brought from a pride in civilized man to an awareness of just how base and animal-like we are. He explores the absurdity of law, politics, academic institutions, and basic greed. Each government he encounters he feels like is better than his own in certain ways, but the excesses and absurdity of those governments only act to highlight why we do things the way we do.
When Gulliver returns from his journeys, he is more and more unable to cope with normal society. Is he mad or just dealing with reverse culture shock? We really don’t know. We as the reader are never told what to think about the experiences Gulliver has. Some casual readers may miss the irony of various sections to emphasize the ridiculousness of others. It is a book to chew on and ponder because no conclusions are made.
I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy books like Utopia, 1984, or Animal Farm. I would NOT recommend this to children. It is a classic for good reason, but not the way it is typically portrayed. It is a good exploration of what does it mean to be a modern human.
November 6, 2018
Book Review: How to Write Funny Edited by John B. Kachuba
How to Write Funny is a Writer’s Digest book that is a collection of essays and interviews like many of their other how-to books. The essays each cover various aspects of humorous writing, but the last third of the book starts sounding repetitive. In general, I liked the book and learned a lot, but I do have a few complaints.
The beginning essays were probably the most interesting and beneficial. They covered various tools for writing humor like exaggeration, understatement, irony, repetition, surprise, and the pairing of odd ideas. The writers talked about how they craft the humor because written humor must be different than spoken humor for multiple reasons. I also found the section dealing with humor in fiction useful because the author explained how you can’t have just endless jokes for 100,000 words. A humorous novel needs downtime and serious moments. I also found some of the writing habits and procedures of the various authors fascinating.
Once you enter the last third of the book, all the articles start sounding the same: I was born funny, everyone says I’m funny, if you aren’t funny then you should give up writing humor. I was bored by the autobiographical discussions of the personal influence in these author’s lives who made them funny and how humor is just instinctual for them. There is probably a good reason I have never heard of these people before.
One of the humblest articles was an interview with Dave Barry who I think is hilarious. He spoke of wrestling with a piece of writing until it because funny. He saw humorous writing as an offspring of good writing. He also didn’t think of himself as super funny outside of writing.
The funniest essays were the roundtable discussion and “The Comfortable Chair: Using Humor in Creative Nonfiction” by Dinty Moore. Most of the other articles weren’t funny at all, but I didn’t mind as long as they could give me real reasons why their advice works.
The best advice that was repeating in a couple of articles, was that in fiction, your humor should come from your characters and be a natural part of the book. If your jokes stick out oddly, then you aren’t doing it right.
Overall, I would recommend this book, or at least the first two-thirds of it.
November 2, 2018
We’ll be back after these messages…
[image error]So I just realized that I forgot to post anything on my blog for all of last week. So here is an unusual personal post to make-up for my lapse. This is a cute picture of my husband and son dressing up for Literature Day at school. My husband teaches Latin for 3rd through 6th grade, and he is dressed as a hobbit. My son is the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. This is sort of a book/writing post since it is for Literature Day, right? Don’t I have the most wonderful family, though?
October 22, 2018
Writing Update!
[image error]It has been a very busy month and a mountaintop sort of time! I have sent out tons of short stories to various publications and even submitted a book query. Publishers Weekly has offered to review Gryphendale as well.
My short story, “Trust Old Juniper” has been accepted to be published in Chantwood Magazine (https://chantwoodmagazine.com/), and I am thrilled! “Trust Old Juniper” is about a Gnome who loses his father and gains a very strange inheritance: a bag of gold, an old brass key, and a bottle of cyanide. You’ll have to wait for the magazine to come out to find out the trouble this leads him through.
I have another short story, my very first pure humorous piece, that the publishers have requested for more. It’s great to know I can tell a joke! I’m hoping that to hear back from them soon.
Also, The Shadow of the Gryphon audiobook is in its last phase of recording! The book will be available in November on Amazon or iTunes. I’m thrilled at the work Ken Chambers has put into this project. Keep an eye out for when this book gets released.
November starts the National Novel Writing Month and tons of authors are getting involved. The goal is to write 50,000 words in one month. I have never really kept track of my writing total. It will be fun to find out if I can do it. If you would like to join a group of us at Goodreads who are tackling this goal, check us out: Christian Speculative Fiction
Since so many cool things are happening in November, there will be some sales for my books, Gryphendale and The Shadow of the Gryphon, coming out to celebrate. It will be posted here and on my social media accounts.
If you would like to keep up with what I’ve been doing, feel free to follow me on Facebook or Twitter. I’m staying busy trying to create more tales from the land of Gryphendale. Sometimes, I also post book reviews and writing humor. Most of all, I am have lots of fun and I hope you join me for some of my adventures.
God bless!
"The Worst Hero Ever"
October 21, 2018
"Trust Old Juniper"
October 18, 2018
I'm Funny!!!
October 17, 2018
Book Review: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
***Spoilers***
I don’t often write reviews with spoilers, but I can’t really explain why I like this book so much without talking about the ending. As with many of my reviews of classics, I find that I must review this book in comparison with the movie that I had seen first. The musical “My Fair Lady” is based off of this play to the point that many scenes are even word for word. The differences between the musical and this book, though, is huge in my opinion.
The story for both “Pygmalion” and “My Fair Lady” is about both Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Professor Higgins is a linguist who forms a bet with Pickering to covert Eliza from a poor flower girl to a duchess just by cleaning her speech.
The musical really focuses on the character development of Professor Higgins. Eliza tries to exert her independence, but she ends up coming back to Higgins like an abused wife comes back to a pouty abusive husband. The costumes and music are so beautiful that we try to believe that Higgins is actually in love with Eliza even though there is absolutely no proof of it. I thought the actors were great in this movie, but I found the story disturbing. The lesson was very male-centric and Eliza’s independence meant nothing in the end. She came back to fetch his slippers. Nothing changed for her.
From the moment “Pygmalion” was written reader tried to create this sort of love sort between Eliza and Higgins. This caused Mr. Shaw to write a long epilogue explain why a romantic ending such as this was impossible. I completely agree with Mr. Shaw in this.
“My Fair Lady,” portrays inconsistent characters and demeans women. “Pygmalion” is much more consistent and, for a book written by a man, one of the best depictions of women I have ever read.
In “Pygmalion,” Eliza is actually the focus. Higgins thinks of himself as the perfect Victorian gentleman who is creating a piece of art like in the Greek story of Pygmalion. What we learn in the end, though, is that Eliza was always a person of value even before Higgins came around. Eliza learned to be a lady from Pickering because he treated her like a lady from the beginning. Higgins treated Eliza horribly from the beginning and never stopped. It wasn’t Eliza’s speech that made her a lady, because we find out she had a fantastic ear for both speech and music, instead, it was actually how she was treated that matters. Higgins never learns this. His horrible manners and rudeness separate him from good society, while Eliza shines wherever she goes. With all the characters of this story, from Freddy to Eliza’s father, we learn that there is very little difference between high society and they gutter other than money.
Eliza in the end of “Pygmalion” chooses to marry Freddy who loves her. This is as it should be. When being loved and appreciated is so important to Eliza, why would she choose to go back to the horrible treatment of Higgins? Freddy and she open a flower shop with the help of Pickering. Eliza does stay close to Higgins as she does her own awful father, but she has learned self-respect. Once a person learns to value themselves, they can’t allow another person to take that away.
I know many people who think that this ending is a shame. They like Higgin’s bullying ways. I find these are the same people who read romance novels in which male character rapes the female character under the name of “romantic”. Even though I like James Bond novels, I most certainly do not agree with his horrible treatment of women. I can like Higgins for who he is, but I am very grateful he chooses to stay a bachelor.
Eliza’s character has learned to rise up and make her own choices. This isn’t a Cinderella story as so many people want it to be. Eliza’s soul is still the same. She is a survivor and a fighter. It takes a very strong woman to stand up to a man like Higgins who can twist and turn words to get his way. She is what a woman should be and even gets the support of Higgin’s mother in her battle for independence. Mr. Shaw understood well what a woman wants and values. Eliza doesn’t try to become a man to fight back. She just fights back.
This review may have ruined “My Fair Lady” for you, but I find I can still enjoy the music and costumes just fine. After reading this book, I can even watch the musical with the satisfaction that Eliza doesn’t stay in that abusive situation for long. I honestly can enjoy the movie more now after having read the book. Higgins is not Pygmalion even though he wanted to be. Eliza instead is able to show that she always was alive and had value from the very beginning. This is as it should be.
I recommend this book to young adults and older. I wish, especially, that women would read this and learn to expect more from their relationships. I wish that woman would look at this portrait of a strong female character and see that you don’t have to marry the bully just because you can care about him. Love is more than compassion. I wish that woman would stop writing “romantic” novel based off of abusive relationships. Mr. Shaw is a man who understood women better than many women understand women.
One line from “My Fair Lady” that you will never read in “Pygmalion” is “why can’t a woman be more like a man?” In many ways, Mr. Shaw actually asks Higgins “why can’t you humble yourself enough to learn from Eliza?”
