Marsha Prescod's Blog

I’ve Done a New Book!

I published some short stories New Years Eve!
I have 2+ decades of unpublished work. I’ve got the author equivalent of constipation!
Decided to start putting stuff up, as ebooks, even if fragments. To see if l can get things moving.
So, l spent New Years Eve determined to get a book out which had 2024 as publication date.
Didn’t have time for/access to, an editor, or someone who knew how to format ebooks, or a book cover. Seat of pants stuff!
I’m hoping this breaks the dam…
The tiniest book of short stories. African Caribbean Fantasy. I like sci-fi and fantasy, they analyse/critique etc current society but set things in a distant future or past. There needs to be more of these genres from our perspectives.

https://amzn.eu/d/eMY7fnh

Héloise Says No by G.L. RobinsonMy rating: 5 of 5 starsJu...

Héloise Says No by G.L. Robinson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Just finished this.
I am a Regency fan, a Georgette Heyer fan, and I look for writers in that vein. I enjoy others who place books IN the Regency period. But most do not write in the Austen/Heyer style.

This book is very good.

The subject matter- the heroine becomes a courtesan- places it outside Heyer and Austen.
Sarah J Waldock, Emily Hendrickson, Joan Smith are the people to read for very good Regencies.

But this author’s books are intelligent, she gives good ton, the characters are 3 dimensional. And she often takes standard Regency plots, and gives them an unexpected twist.

And she’s got the class differences between the gentry and the aristocracy right.

In this book we get 2 generations, the novel goes back to the 1780s/90s when the heroine’s parents had a hair raising escape from revolutionary France, and then settle in Hastings. And forward to the early 1800s, when the heroine is an elegant, charming, calm, very savvy mistress who enters short liaisons with rich men in the ton, that she totally controls, then ends.

The hero – handsome, titled, wealthy- is the one man she turns down, repeatedly. And he is a REAL rake.
The villain…I wont go into details.

The ton know the heroine as a demi monde, a courtesan. She will never have vouchers to Almacks. Is the typical Regency HEA i.e love and marriage, even possible?

Well worth a read.






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Review

Letitia or The Convalescent Heart by Catherine J. Bowness

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well written Regency novel. Which starts off with one, annoying, badly oppressed but very self obsessed teen heroine. And ends up being about two heroines, the second one being her aunt.

There are also two heroes. The main one, the older man the teenager becomes engaged to, to get away from her domineering, overbearing, violent father, and bitchy scheming young stepmother. Tall, dark, handsome, calm, thoughtful and titled, he is wonderfully patient with her.

The second is his half brother, severely wounded in the Napoleonic wars, disfigured on one side of his face, and depressed, as he had attempted to elope with the teenage heroine years before, and been caught and thwarted by the first hero, his brother: Who has now just become engaged to Miss Wilful Teenager (MWT). MWT believed hero no 2 had died, and just before setting out to meet her new fiancé his brother, is told by wicked stepmother that he has married.

There are two heroines. MWT, and her lively, likeable, aunt.
Her aunt accompanies MWT to hero no 1’s castle as chaperone. She is married, but her husband deserted her after a year a decade before, and she lives in limbo, at the edge of society, with an irritating female companion. Disinherited by her brother due to her elopement marriage- her brother is the first heroine’s brutal father- she is commanded to accompany MWT to meet her betrothed.

Add in two handsome, gallant, military men that MWT and aunt meet on their way to hero no 1’s castle – who then become visiting guests.
And a vicious, scheming step mother of hero no 1 who hates him and wants her son – hero no 2- to be the one who succeeds to the title, and what starts as an awkward house party becomes a mystery, and eventually a whodunnit.

Shock twist towards the end, and things turn from awkward, and potentially scandalous, to lethal.

Well worth a read!



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Review of Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop

Brilliant. Bonkers. Dark. Original. Fan fiction made flesh. W.T.F!

There’s…a LOT of ways to describe Anne Bishop’s writing. She has a very singular vision, she needs a firmer editor, she’s a FANTASTIC worldbuilder.

Having stumbled on her series The Others, I read all of them last week, then – needing a further Anne Bishop fix- read this series. Wow.

Dark fantasy on STEROIDS! Murder. Magic. Rape (women, men, oh so much of it!) Bloodletting. Politics- though not as intricate as George RR Martin. (OOhh, how I’d love to read a series co-authored by those two!) An original look at what happens if the male-female balance gets out of kilter.

The Realms in this series are ruled by females. Witches and super-witches. Men are magic wielders called Princes or Warlord-Princes according to their caste. Both genders are violent. Their magic complementary. But its gone from a healthy, life affirming society to a twisted Gynocracy due to two power-hungry, corrupt, women. As they come from long lived races, the corruption has very gradually twisted the world in these books over millennia. As a result, ruling queens in various territories can by psychopathic, forcing males to be sex slaves, Warlords can be always on edge, ready to kill.

The battleground is the mind, the psyche, as much as the body. Bishop has created her own rules of magic here, filtered/amplified through the Jewels of the title. The colour of the Jewel a magic wielder has as his/her birthright, and after his/her majority, determine how powerful they are. Magic users are people of the Blood who rule countries. Non=magic people are called Landen. If you’ve ever wondered what a world would be like where hundreds of thousands of sorceresses, mages, warlocks etc openly practice, and rule over millions of normal people, well… here’s one possible glimpse. Loads of sex- but not much described- and often weaponised. Some characters well fleshed out, others 2D cliches. Lush, evocative, a little bit loony.

As a wannabe fantasy writer, I’m picking up ideas on storytelling, worldbuilding, and pacing from reading this series. And I’m impressed that the writing style is totally different from that in The Others series

Its…both Tosh and Terrific.

A Must Read!

My Book of Short Stories is Out!

After literally YEARS of procrastination, I’ve done it. Short stories. First set.

After the crappiest year. And I plan to get more writing out there in 2021. In Your Face, 2020!

https://amzn.to/3pdFqNe

Scifi Stories through a Caribbean, African, retro, futuristic prism.
Its on Amazon, Smashwords,Apple Books, Barnes & Noble,Kobo, Overdrive, Scribd, Libri etc

The Age of Corona

So..

The World is different. Maybe l’ve fallen into a parallel universe. Or is it alternative universe?

Right at the end of 2017 l lost my Mum. And then months later, l was diagnosed with breast cancer. So half of 2018, and all of 2019 was taken up with operations, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, etc etc and fighting that.

2020 was supposed to be getting my life back. Travelling, house repairs, seeing relatives in the US, Caribbean…

Small dreams.

But now, we are in the Coronavirus World. I now have a new label – vulnerable. So l can’t go out, because Death might catch me after all.

But,

I’m a writer.

So l can read, and l can write, and l can weave tales and dreams of worlds and people. I can create a world without this threat.

Yes.

Watch. This. Space.

(And in the meantime, l hear the annoying earworm ‘muh-muh-muh my Corona!’)

NaNoWriMo!!!!!!!!

NaNoWriMo!!!!!!!!

NaNoWriMo!!!!!!!!

NaNoWriMo!!!!!!!!

NaNoWriMo!!!!!!!!

NaNoWriMo!!!!!!!!

NaNoWriMo (Again!)

That time of year has come round.

50,000 words, in 30 days. AKA, ‘Masochists R Us’.

I’m doing it.

And I’m behind…..