Cynthia D. Brandel's Blog, page 28

Virtue: Intuition Series Book One by Jordan Leger

Story Line Overview:  Reagan is the daughter of the CEO of Blacken
Enterprise.  She meets Maddox during a
sales meeting and ends up selling him three luxury planes.  Instant attraction!  Reagan didn’t know what hit her when Maddox
entered the scene.  Reagan breaks up with
her current boyfriend, Keaton, and starts dating Maddox.  Unexperienced Reagan agrees to a S/D
relationship with Maddox

Describing A Character's Voice

The way your character speaks can influence the mood of the conversation.  It can also give insight into emotion and setting of the scene.


Example:


"Get out of here," he yells in choked voice as the house continues to burn down around us.

"No.  We aren't leaving you," i protest, my strangled voice barely audible above the sound of the raging fire.



Here are some words that can be used to

Ways To Describe A Smile

A character's smile is important.  It can set the tone of the conversation, give a hint about how a character feels or what they think.  Here are some of the ways a smile can be described.





Weak


Distracting


Grateful


Slow


Forced


Hint of a Smile


First Smile


Quick


Bright


Dazzling


A Smile That Could Melt


Disarming


Big


Brief


Genuine


Brittle


Broad


Gummy

Meet Cynder

Cynder Beastwood



His dark brown hair and eyes as blue as the ocean, Cynder is a hottie!!!  He can make any girl swoon with his signature smirk of a smile.  He is the second oldest of the nine Mantekai brothers.  The Mantekai are a race of Sanctorians with shifter abilites.



Cynder takes flight as an owl in search for Lyla, his bonded mate.  His feathers seem to emit a slight glow in the

Tips on Adverbs

What is an adverb?

Adverbs describe verbs and adjectives.  Most end in -ly or -ily but not always



Example 

      Verb: Angry  Adverb: Angrily



Where do you use an adverb?

Adverbs can be used anywhere within a clause.



Example 

    At the beginning:  Suddenly I am hungry.

At the end:  I eat so fast.  

In the middle: I may have never eaten before.



What are sentence adverbs?

Testimony of the Damned (Emissary of the Devil Book 1) by K.G. Reuss

               The conflict of Constantine intertwined with a Romeo and Juliet style love!Abraxas Shepherd, Brax, is a suicide who serves the devil and is one soul away from becoming a crown prince of the Lower Kingdom (Hell).  The devil charges him with collecting the soul of Maggie Westbrook, the sacrificial lamb that can open the seals beginning the Apocalypse.  The devil wants eight souls, the lamb and her seven trumpeters. But none more so than the purest soul, the lamb, Maggie.  Maggie has an abusive step dad.  Most Nephilim emanate feelings of calm and peace, but Maggie emanates feelings of fear, sadness and despair.  This throws Brax off and makes him more curious and eventually concerned for her.
Brax struggles with his need to complete his duty and take Maggie back to the Lower Kingdom and his want to protect her keeping her for himself.  Brax teams up with Lance, a Nephilim, to protect Maggie from Corbin Black, Brax’s brother.  Brax walks a thin line between completing his demonic duties and protecting the girl he loves, Maggie. 
Told from Brax’s point of view, Reuss develops a romance between the sides of good and evil.  Both Brax and Maggie struggle with their inner desires.  They bend the rules for the salvation of each other’s souls. 
The Good:I loved that the story is told through a demon’s point of view.  Reuss was able to descriptively show the inner struggle that Brax faced when confronted with his feelings for Maggie.  The plot was easy to follow and enjoyable to read.  My favorite quote from the novel is:
“She was a fever burning like hellfire within my scorned heart,  and yet, I had no desire to extinguish the flame that threatened  to turn me to ash.”
The Bad: I had issues with high school aged characters living a college style life.  Going to clubs and drinking are not something most high school aged people do where I grew up, a one-horse-buggy style town.  So, this I had a hard time believing, although I guess it is more prevalent in large cities where entertainment options are more widely available.
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Book Two: Forsaken (Warning Spoiler Alert!!!)

In Forsaken:Book Two of the Sanctorian Series, Cynder has ascended, killed by the Commander in a fierce battle during Lyla’s forced wedding ceremony.  Lyla, after attacking a legion of Produrai knights during her escape from the community, found her way to the Mantekai encampment and witnessed Cynder’s body lying in the middle of a burning pyre.The bond between her and Cynder was broken leaving Lyla as an empty shell.  The Chief of the Mantekai asked Prince Thanark to protect Lyla from the possessive Commander by taking her back to the Produrai palace on Sanctoria.  Thane (Prince Thanark) agreed under the condition that the Mantekai also move back to Sanctoria and fall under his authority.Ronan, beaten and bruised from his imprisonment, escaped from the Commander with Thane’s help and awakened on Sanctoria.  Ronan decided to rescue Lyla from Thane, but when he went to take Lyla away, Thane forcefully stopped him and ordered his men to escort Ronan home.Thane carried Lyla back to the palace.  They stopped to rest and shared a skin of wine.  In a drunken haze, Lyla and Thane performed a blood oath under the twin moons and consummated their bond.Lyla was startled awake by Joel in the palace and whisked out through secret passages.  Joel and Lyla escaped both the Commander and Prince Thanark by hopping a portal to Terra and settling in lower Manhattan.Lyla tried to live like the Terrans.  She found a job as a desk clerk at an antiquities shop run by an old lady named Bones.  Lyla and Bones quickly hit it off and Lyla took her as her adopted grandmother.We later find that Bones is the leader of the underground antiquities world and has bad relations with the leader of the White Dragon gang, Nicolai.  Nicolai sent his “suits” to kidnap Lyla.  Nicolai wanted to use Lyla as leverage to retrieve the Vineblade, a valuable sword forged on Sanctoria.Nicolai brought Sara, a five-year-old girl, to his home and told Lyla that Sara was her daughter.  If Lyla didn’t cooperate, Sara would die.  Lyla played Nicolai’s game and took on the actress role of his lover at an antiquities gala.Thane, Joel and Ronan cooperated with Bones and her grandsons to rescue Lyla from Nicolai only to have Lyla voluntarily return to Nicolai’s compound to save Sara.  Nicolai threatened Lyla when she returned.  Lyla decided to take Sara and flee from Nicolai’s grasp.  She used the powers that have been dormant inside her and crumbled the wall of the compound in order to escape.Thane rushed to save Lyla as bullets flew, one straight into her leg.  Lyla was rushed back to Heritage, Bones’s manor house.  Thane and Lyla began to show feelings toward one another due to their bond-Lyla doesn’t remember bonding to Thane due to the wine.Thomas discovered Lyla’s location and attacked Heritagewith the Queen on the front line.  He met Thanark, face to face in a head on battle only to be thwarted by the return of the two Produrai Princes, whom everyone thought had ascended many years ago.Lyla was carried, although unwillingly, by one of Thane’s men through a portal and taken back to Sanctoria for her safety.  The two Princes greet their mother, the Queen.  She named the eldest prince King.  Thomas, in an act of rage, attacked the eldest Prince but the Queen stepped in the middle and was speared by his sword.Thomas escaped through a portal with Adam’s help.  The Produrai retreat from Heritage and Thane learned of his connection with the Produrai Princes.  Ronan escorted the Chief, whom died in the battle, through a portal back to Terra where his body was placed on the pyre.Lyla was supposed to have been escorted by Argo, Thane’s patrol, to the palace.  Argo, instead of following Thane’s orders, took Lyla to the Domuran Stronghold to meet the king.  Battered and bruised from the injuries on Terra and the fall through the portal to Sanctoria, Lyla hobbled into the Stronghold only to fall and hit her head on the ground.
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Early Life Leadership in the Classroom by Christina DeMara

Early Life Leadership in the Classroom is a guide to teaching leadership skills to our youth.  Demara provides simple activities that can be used in the classroom, bible study, or at home.  I feel this is a guide any parent/teacher could easily follow.  Growing our children into leaders with integrity and values will create a better future for the society of tomorrow.
If you want to read this guide click here

A Steep Most Deadly by Jamie Perkins

This was a very quick read.  I found the plot was very easy to follow.  The length of the story was lacking as it took me very little time to read.  This is a good beginner work.  It is a good outline for a larger story however the work is missing some punctuation and needs to be formatted for an easier read.
To check out this short story click here

The Assembly of Thirteen: The First Two Companions by Omayra Velez

ALICE IN WONDERLAND MEETS THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING!!!
June is a minimalist suffering from PTSD.  As a photojournalist, she and two of her colleagues were kidnapped-only she made it out alive.  June is transported by a mysterious box into the Forest of the Living Death, with blue trees and over-proportions flowers.  She is chosen to serve as the Blue Companion, one of four companions bound to reset the balance of power in the Empire.
The Companions are meant to break the curse of the Athany by forming a new Assembly of the Thirteen to choose a new leader to rule Quetza.  That can only happen when the Blue Companion Judge protects her charges and helps join the other Gifted to the other Companions.  June is the protector of two Gifted, the Teacher-Magi and the Water-Magi, as well as the leader of the other Companions.  Kara is the Red Companion.  Her first charge is Kuroi, a Healer-Magi. 
The Assembly of the Thirteen is a collection of stories that tells a greater story.  Velez introduces each new Gifted giving a little bit of their back story along the way.
 The good: I loved the complexity of the individual characters.  Each one of the protagonists has struggled through their own life-battles, fought against their own demons, and beat the odds. I loved how each individual story played a part of the bigger picture.The bad: I felt that there were too many characters which made it hard for me to identify with “one” in-particular. I would start feeling the vibe with one character but then be introduced to a whole new set of characters and a different back story which made it hard for me to stay focused on the main goal of the novel—to find the Companions and their Charges.If you want to read this novel check it out here.