S.J. Himes's Blog, page 5
May 4, 2015
Review for No Place Left To Run
Goodreads Link below:
No Place Left To Run
4 Stars
Zarah Detand did a marvelous job with No Place Left To Run. The style of writing, the mechanics, was at first too abrupt for me, with characters receiving little to no clarification as to who they were before the plot picked up and made me forget about pesky things like back story. I'll be honest, at first I was put off by this, but I pushed through the first two chapters and found myself very happy I kept reading. The plot keeps moving, the characters and the two MC's are never stagnant, and the way Detand keeps the internal monologues and personalities of Samuel and Ryan distinct and separate was masterful. Eventually, as the MC's get to know each other, the reader is let in on the private lives and pasts of our two lovers, at nearly the same pace as they learn about each other. A great idea, as it kept the story moving, and helped to avoid the stereotypical bodyguard trope that is so overplayed in romance novels today. In fact, there is little to be called stereotypical about No Place Left To Run once you get past the surface, especially in regards to the Main Characters. Detand pulled a fast one with her boys, and it was well played.For the story itself, it does start out fairly standard for a bodyguard novel. Famous singer in danger, wants a normal life, doesn't want guards, etc. Yet here is where it deviates: instead of feeling safe that the protection detail is there, even undercover, the sense of impending danger doesn't abate...in fact, the creep factor foes up. Fast. Standard stalker fair predictions went out the window fast after the first few scary instances, and I was left wondering just what was going on...and who the hell can the boys trust? Usually I can spot the clues left in place for who the villain is by the 2/3 mark of a book, but NOPE, I was shocked. *applause*I won't spoil the ending, or any of the major plot points. Just take my heartfelt advice on this book-- READ IT. Loved it. In fact, I plan on rereading it again after I hit submit on this review.
I received a free copy of this book for an honest review, and I'm really glad I got a chance to read it. This is going on my Reread pile for sure.
April 29, 2015
Wolves of Black Pine
Cover art by Kellie Dennis at Book Cover By DesignClick here For Amazon Link
Wolves of Black PineJune 30th, 2015bySJ Himes
Cover Art by Kellie Dennis at Book Cover By DesignBook Cover By Design
This is a beautiful and amazing cover. Kellie Dennis is a skilled artist that took my dream and gave it an impressive cover.
April 25, 2015
Debuts, and Home Again
My debut erotica as Revella
So, I'm back. Kinda disappeared for a while, didn't I?Wasn't on purpose. Kinda. Maybe.
Moved a thousand miles away from the place I made my home for a decade. Came BACK to where I grew up. Moved into my old high school friend's spare room, had to move right back out due to extreme cold weather and the extra 30 minutes drive to work. Which is still unbearably long, btw. Two hours to get to work each day is WWAAAYY too much driving.
Nope.
So, here I am. Several days ago, I released my debut erotica under my pen name, Revella Hawthorne. 'Revella' for my fanfiction name, 'Hawthorne' cuz it's cool and my sister came up with it. Sounds nice, she did a good job on that one.
(The book cover and it's link are at the top, if you're curious, go take a look.)
It's doing fairly well, far better than I was expecting. I broke the Top 100 for all three of my categories, and I tell ya now, I stared at the screen and blinked back some tears. I was expecting nothing, so as not to be let down if it didn't do okay. No expectations is better than having them crushed, right? Well, I did okay, and it's still doing okay. I can take okay. (Now all I need is some reviews.)
Living now with my OTHER sister, her fiance, and her five yr old son. He's adorable. I actually never met him before I moved back home. He was born while I was 'gone', as he now says. He is cute, and most definitely my sister's child. ;-)
I may not be alone, at home that is. BUT, at work, I feel very alone. I like a few of the people who have made a genuine effort to get to know me and make me welcome, but everyone else is just atrocious. Either so reserved as to act like I'm not even there, or completely fake, ingratiating and irritating. I can't have perfection, but can some of the Nor'eastern Reserve flake off just a bit so I can finally breathe? Does anyone have a real smile anymore? I got spoiled by the Midwestern Cheer, even if it came hand in hand with mild bigotry and religious superiority. (Now don't get mad at me, it was a culture shock moving out to the Midwest, and first impressions are hard to shake, even ten years later. I finally found plenty of ppl in Indiana who were NOT bigots, and didn't invite me to their church EVERY Sunday for ten years.)
Hard at work at keeping the depression away, and making my life head in the direction I want. Do I expect to be able to live off of my books and write fulltime? Nope. That's a dream. I'd need more support than I have now, and everyone else is struggling too.
So....work fulltime, write fulltime, sleep never.
My novel, Wolves of Black Pine, is coming out on Amazon on June 30th, 2015. Final edits due June 20th.
Back to the book!
P.S.- Everyone find their happy, okay?
So, I'm back. Kinda disappeared for a while, didn't I?Wasn't on purpose. Kinda. Maybe.
Moved a thousand miles away from the place I made my home for a decade. Came BACK to where I grew up. Moved into my old high school friend's spare room, had to move right back out due to extreme cold weather and the extra 30 minutes drive to work. Which is still unbearably long, btw. Two hours to get to work each day is WWAAAYY too much driving.
Nope.
So, here I am. Several days ago, I released my debut erotica under my pen name, Revella Hawthorne. 'Revella' for my fanfiction name, 'Hawthorne' cuz it's cool and my sister came up with it. Sounds nice, she did a good job on that one.
(The book cover and it's link are at the top, if you're curious, go take a look.)
It's doing fairly well, far better than I was expecting. I broke the Top 100 for all three of my categories, and I tell ya now, I stared at the screen and blinked back some tears. I was expecting nothing, so as not to be let down if it didn't do okay. No expectations is better than having them crushed, right? Well, I did okay, and it's still doing okay. I can take okay. (Now all I need is some reviews.)
Living now with my OTHER sister, her fiance, and her five yr old son. He's adorable. I actually never met him before I moved back home. He was born while I was 'gone', as he now says. He is cute, and most definitely my sister's child. ;-)
I may not be alone, at home that is. BUT, at work, I feel very alone. I like a few of the people who have made a genuine effort to get to know me and make me welcome, but everyone else is just atrocious. Either so reserved as to act like I'm not even there, or completely fake, ingratiating and irritating. I can't have perfection, but can some of the Nor'eastern Reserve flake off just a bit so I can finally breathe? Does anyone have a real smile anymore? I got spoiled by the Midwestern Cheer, even if it came hand in hand with mild bigotry and religious superiority. (Now don't get mad at me, it was a culture shock moving out to the Midwest, and first impressions are hard to shake, even ten years later. I finally found plenty of ppl in Indiana who were NOT bigots, and didn't invite me to their church EVERY Sunday for ten years.)
Hard at work at keeping the depression away, and making my life head in the direction I want. Do I expect to be able to live off of my books and write fulltime? Nope. That's a dream. I'd need more support than I have now, and everyone else is struggling too.
So....work fulltime, write fulltime, sleep never.
My novel, Wolves of Black Pine, is coming out on Amazon on June 30th, 2015. Final edits due June 20th.
Back to the book!
P.S.- Everyone find their happy, okay?
January 15, 2015
Hell Hath No Fury
One of my teachers told me once to "write when you're mad, write when you're sad, write when your heart is broken and ground to dust. You'll never write better than when your control is gone."
How very true.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm moving back home. And I'm transferring within the same agency, so I get to keep my job. (yay)
Anyhooos.... Some one I long counted as a friend decided to take his chance (since I'm leaving in 2.5 weeks) to spread all kinds of shit about me. Rumor mongering. I hate it. I hate it so much.
No one told me that high school was gonna be forever. Why is this shit still happening?
How damn hard is it to treat people nicely, to be a decent human being? How is this hard? Do unto to others and all that, I know we've all heard it.
No excuses. No justification for starting something without provocation just to make yourself look better. If your life is so damn miserable that tearing other people down is the only thing you can do to make yourself happy, GET PROFESSIONAL HELP.
I will defend myself. I will make you hurt if you hurt me. I won't strike first. But I will most certainly throw the last, and final, punch.
Changing Scenery
Above picture was taken by me this past fall, from the pedestrian path between the terminal and the employee lots at Indianapolis International Airport.
Changing Scenery
I've been here ten years now. Indiana, USA.
Never, ever thought I'd be here. It was in fact a plan of mine to NEVER move to the Midwest, since I foresaw myself having trouble dealing with the ideals, the religious elements, not to mention the aggressive disregard for my inherited political views.
Yup, it's true--I'm a New England snob. More accurately, a displaced Masshole. Unabashedly a Patriots fan, not to mention a Rex Sox devotee. (Had to hide my colors while I was out here.... this here is Colt's country.)
(I've mellowed in the last decade, mental illness aside. I swear.)
Talk about a culture shock. All I did was move 952 miles away from where I was born and raised, and it was like I was in a different country. Different accents, different vehicles, people even drove differently. And who the hell says "warsh" instead of "wash"? I knew intellectually just how big the States were, but experiencing such a severe culture shock really drove it home for me just how gods-bedamned our country really is.
Not all bad, though. Made some friends. Met my future husband. Got a job, and kept it longer than six months. Nine years, five months actually. But who's counting?
I have less than three weeks left here. Soon I'll be home. I left when I was 21. I'm now 31. I know it's time to go back, to start over from scratch, because no matter how, against all odds I came to love this place, I never stopped calling MA "home". That's how I know, now, when my world is crumbling, that I need to leave. Sure I can start over here, but I need the cleanest slate I can manage, and rebuilding bridges to the places I never stopped loving is more important to me than holding onto the remnants of my life here.
I'm still expecting to have a panic attack on moving day though. That's a given. I'm going to be sobbing as I drive that Uhaul away.
January 14, 2015
Training Wheels
Training WheelsIn February 2014, I was attempting to assuage the withdrawal symptoms from missing my favorite show, BBC's Sherlock. I got clued in to fanfiction by my sister, and my world exploded. Here I was, staring at a website FULL of hundreds, thousands of people who loved what I did, and expressed their love in a myriad of ways....some with skill, most not so much.
I struggled through the badly written ones, the ones written as porn and without a thought to plot, the ones full of angst and misery and not a touch of joy; I read dozens of fanfics, and while my Sherlock addiction was being moderately sated, I was growing heartily discontent with what I was reading. Nothing was satisfying that itch, that place in me that loved the show so damn much. ( I was severely depressed, I realize now that I was clinging so hard to the show as it was one of the few things in my life that made me happy, so I was obsessed for survival's sake.)
I had an epiphany. After closing a story in disgust, amazed at the total and complete lack of decent writing, spelling, etc., I said to myself, "I can do better than this."
BOOM.
Seriously, it felt I was in the middle of an explosion. I sat there at my computer, blinking, and I told myself, "Why the fuck not?" I opened a Word doc, thought about what I wanted to see and feel and read when it came to my fav show, and started to type.
I can say now, nearly a year later...I sucked. So long out of practice when it came to writing, my first few attempts were deleted in shame and frustration. Where was the talent that had my teachers and family calling me a genius? Surely I was the same person, just a decade removed. Talent can't die, can it?
It can't die, but it can suffer from atrophy. And my talent was this tiny little muscle, hiding under disuse and laziness. I had to grab it kicking and screaming from out under years of abuse and neglect, and slowly feed it until I regained some semblance of confidence. Not entirely successful, but I'm getting better.
Long story short, I'm writing again. I'm remembering who I was, who I wanted to be. And on the way, I managed to write a massive Sherlock fanfiction that's still a work in progress, even 530,000 words later. I'm not done with it yet. had to slow done some, as my novels and short stories need more of my attention now. I plan on leaving the story Complete after I blast everyone else out of the water with the longest, most in-depth Ode to Doyle I can.
If anyone is curious, go to Fanfiction.net, look up a Sherlock fic by the author Revella. Called "Forever Yours, Sherlock". That's me, by the way. Not really a secret, but this is the first time I've revealed who I am in any kind of public fashion. I have some stalkers on ff.net, and I delete some weird comments every time I post.
Forgive the first dozen chapters, as I had no clue what I was doing. My fanfiction serves as my training wheels, a means to find my way back, and the path forward to the type of talent I want to be.
And it is a delightful excuse to write as much m/m loving as I want.
Finding My Way
Finding My Way
Depression.
It is just as nasty and sad and horrible as it's made out to be.
I almost didn't make it out. I hit the bottom, a place so dark, so oppressive, that it took a serious brush with death to get my brain to wake the hell up.
An almost fatal accident, stop looking at me like that. Not suicide, I promise. Though I know the weight of serious depression, so I can understand to some degree why some people make that fatal and irreversible choice. (I don't condone, I understand--that's it. But I digress.)
If I had been more aware, more awake to the world and my place in it, it wouldn't have happened. I won't share what did happen, not yet. Been several months, almost a year, and I still can't talk or even think about it without thinking I'm going to die and freaking out.
My life the last twelve years has been harder and harder to survive. I don't say this for pity, or sympathy. I am the architect of my own fate, and I am in this position entirely due to my own failings.
Guess what I learned? Being depressed is a vicious cycle that's almost impossible to stop. It's a life-stealer. I gave my up dreams, my talents went to waste, and I settled...on everything. I gave up my ego and my pride, but lost my ambition and drive. I put on weight, lost my muscles and my curves, lost my friends, stayed away from family...I lost a lot.
I got so depressed...that I didn't realize that I WAS depressed. I honestly didn't know it. It was so gradual, so insidious, that it was in me, stealing my life and the entirety of my twenties, before I even noticed it. At the age of thirty, with nothing in my life worth much more than the barest of smiles and a shrug of indifference, I was dead on my feet. I was no longer me; the woman I once was was gone, reduced to a flicker in the deepest well of my being.
Sure, there were some good things in there. Met some new people, got married, got some pets, a house. But out of all of the things I gained the last decade and change, I'm now, right now--weeks away from losing all of that.
I am losing a lot--and I couldn't be more excited.
I found my talent, my voice. It took nearly dying, and an odd, obsessively passionate response to a TV show of all things that made me feel ALIVE for the first time in a very long time.
I used to be a writer. As a teenager, I wrote ALL the time. I was fast, too. In the time it would take a peer to write a five page essay, I wrote three or four. I could spin out stories in the blink of an eye, and holy crap, they were good. I was fast tracking my way to great when my life hit the first speed bump. Not getting into that right now, but it was the first of many setbacks, and I was ill-prepared to meet them.
That's enough for now. Suffice to say, I am getting better. 11 months and counting. Working on five different novels of varying lengths and unique plots. By spring of this year I should have the first of them released. I can't wait.
I can't wait for my old life to end, and my new one to begin. The life I lost years ago, and I am so close to getting it back, or better yet--really starting it.
Depression.
It is just as nasty and sad and horrible as it's made out to be.
I almost didn't make it out. I hit the bottom, a place so dark, so oppressive, that it took a serious brush with death to get my brain to wake the hell up.
An almost fatal accident, stop looking at me like that. Not suicide, I promise. Though I know the weight of serious depression, so I can understand to some degree why some people make that fatal and irreversible choice. (I don't condone, I understand--that's it. But I digress.)
If I had been more aware, more awake to the world and my place in it, it wouldn't have happened. I won't share what did happen, not yet. Been several months, almost a year, and I still can't talk or even think about it without thinking I'm going to die and freaking out.
My life the last twelve years has been harder and harder to survive. I don't say this for pity, or sympathy. I am the architect of my own fate, and I am in this position entirely due to my own failings.
Guess what I learned? Being depressed is a vicious cycle that's almost impossible to stop. It's a life-stealer. I gave my up dreams, my talents went to waste, and I settled...on everything. I gave up my ego and my pride, but lost my ambition and drive. I put on weight, lost my muscles and my curves, lost my friends, stayed away from family...I lost a lot.
I got so depressed...that I didn't realize that I WAS depressed. I honestly didn't know it. It was so gradual, so insidious, that it was in me, stealing my life and the entirety of my twenties, before I even noticed it. At the age of thirty, with nothing in my life worth much more than the barest of smiles and a shrug of indifference, I was dead on my feet. I was no longer me; the woman I once was was gone, reduced to a flicker in the deepest well of my being.
Sure, there were some good things in there. Met some new people, got married, got some pets, a house. But out of all of the things I gained the last decade and change, I'm now, right now--weeks away from losing all of that.
I am losing a lot--and I couldn't be more excited.
I found my talent, my voice. It took nearly dying, and an odd, obsessively passionate response to a TV show of all things that made me feel ALIVE for the first time in a very long time.
I used to be a writer. As a teenager, I wrote ALL the time. I was fast, too. In the time it would take a peer to write a five page essay, I wrote three or four. I could spin out stories in the blink of an eye, and holy crap, they were good. I was fast tracking my way to great when my life hit the first speed bump. Not getting into that right now, but it was the first of many setbacks, and I was ill-prepared to meet them.
That's enough for now. Suffice to say, I am getting better. 11 months and counting. Working on five different novels of varying lengths and unique plots. By spring of this year I should have the first of them released. I can't wait.
I can't wait for my old life to end, and my new one to begin. The life I lost years ago, and I am so close to getting it back, or better yet--really starting it.
