Helen Garraway's Blog, page 48
January 1, 2022
Book Review Alert: The Fallen Prince by M.H Woodcourt
Reviewed: January 1st, 2022
Released: October 21st, 2021
Genre: Epic/Science Fantasy
Raised by ghosts. Trained by gods. How far will he go to save those who betrayed him?
Abandoned in the wilderness, Lekore lives with ghosts and fallen gods, until his efforts to rescue a traveling princess and her entourage bring him into a civilization unlike anything he’s ever known.
Caught in a net of silk and secrets, Lekore finds himself ensnared by court intrigue, midnight assassins, and a deviant faction of the Church of the Sun Gods—all thirsting for his blood.
He just wants to find the man who deserted him, until a storm rises out of the north, furious enough to destroy the city and outlying lands. Now Lekore must find the source of its wrath, deep in the wilds of the deadly Lands Beyond, if he can flee a city that won’t let him escape. Read My thoughts…
December 23, 2021
Author Interview – Katie Zaber
Helen: Welcome Katie.Tell us about yourself. What inspired you to write?
Katie: I’ve always been creative, but never took up writing until I was recovering from surgery, was on a lot of meds, and let my imagination loose. Once off the meds and healed, I edited the story, building and rearranging, working through drafts until I was happy.
Helen: What inspired your book/series?
Katie: The song, Lord of the Dance. Somehow, it was stuck in my head and my imagination took over. I pictured a king singing the song—a much more sinister version—while destroying a village of people who disobeyed him. At first, the story was going to be about him and how his reign ends, but I didn’t want to tell it from his perspective. That’s where Megan comes in.
Helen: How do you come up with your book titles?
Katie: When I write a book, I usually have a broad idea of what I want to call it, but I usually decide when I’ve finished the first draft. Almost like a parent meeting their new born. They might have an idea of what they want to name the child while pregnant, but that can change when they see the baby face to face and realize he isn’t a Jim, he’s a Stephen. Kind of like that.
Helen: Tell us about your writing space. The place where you capture your amazing ideas.
Katie: I sit in front of a walnut stained secretary desk with a hutch holding an array of keepsakes. Albums, picture frames, my Snoopy collection, souvenirs, and nostalgic knickknacks line the shelves of the hutch.
My work space is a wonderland of post-it notes in three different colors: pink, neon-yellow, and green. On the right corner of my desk, shoved between the monitor and notary stamp, is a yellow, mini-spiral notebook that contains book outlines, plots, and ideas. Little sticker tabs separate the notebook into different sections. The tabs not in use are floating on the surface of pamphlets and lists of login information to accounts I hardly visit.
A leather bounded diary with nautical embellishments, complete with anchor bookmark, holds random thoughts and sketches. A mechanical pencil can be spotted, hiding between the yellow notebook and leather diary. Its extra parts—erasers & extra graphite are strewn about the entire desk.
Between the post-it notes there are three hacky sacks. There’s also a rectangular leather box with a brass kaleidoscope made to look like it was used on a whimsical pirate ship.
It’s a happy mess.
Helen: Sounds amazing, and the ideal place to wrangle your ideas into words. Do you have a writing routine or do you write when inspired?
Katie: I try to stick to a schedule, but that normally doesn’t happen and I end up writing when inspired.
Helen: What was the hardest scene for you to write? Which scene was your favorite to write?
Katie: Intimate scenes. They are my weak spot. I feel like I can never get them exactly right.
My favorite ones are when I’m describing something for the first time. When I introduce the reader to a new environment, object, or food, my goal is for the reader to feel the mist and sun on their skin. I want them to see in minute details what the character is looking at and taste the juice running down their cheeks as character bites into fruit.
Helen: What’s next for you? Do you have a book in the works?
Katie: Right now I’m finishing up DNA—Demons N Angels, a book about a woman named Evie who mysteriously gets pregnant. After a DNA test proves that her husband is not the father, her life becomes complicated.
People become possessed around Evie, telling her to kill the baby or protect it at all costs as she tries to rebuild her life after a heartbreaking divorce. Throughout the book, she realizes that her child might be a celestial being, but isn’t sure if it’s angelic or demonic.
It’s almost done, and I hope to have it on sale midsummer. You can read the first five chapters here for free.
I’m also working on the third book in the Dalya series, title is undecided. It’s roughly 20,000 words, and I hope to have it out this fall.
Helen: If you could live anywhere, in this world or fantasy, where would you live?
Katie: I’d love to live on a winery in southern Italy. The architecture is breath-taking and I love the small villages with cobblestone streets, knowing your local artisans by name and buying locally from them. There’s something really romantic and peaceful about that small village lifestyle that I hope to one day experience.
Helen: What is your favorite meal?
Katie: I’m a steak and potatoes kind of lady, but the steak needs a decadent brandy cream sauce and buttery garlic whipped potatoes.
Helen: Coffe or tea? Wine or beer?
Katie: A good cup of black tea with a little bit of sugar and milk is my go to in the morning. If I drink coffee, its half milk, and I don’t count the how much sugar. I love moscoto and fruit wines.
Helen: Describe yourself in three words.
Katie: Curious, Spaz, Sensible
Helen: Thank you so much for joining me today, just to close us out can you share some of your authors who ahve influenced your writing?
Katie: There’s a few. I’d say Margaret Atwood, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Conroe, Jim Butcher, Kevin Hearne, Karen Marie Morning, Jennifer Estep, Laini Taylor, and Chuck Palahniuk are some of the biggest influencers. However, I’d like to think I’ve absorbed a little bit from every book I’ve read.
About the Author:
Katie ZaberKatie Zaber knows the best way to decide who is cooking dinner is with a Nerf gun fight in the living room. Her boyfriend is an exceptional cook. When she isn’t baking, reading, or going to wine tastings, she’s busy planning her next trip to Six Flags Great Adventure or Long Beach Island, New Jersey. As a child, her parents would read stories about Atlantis and other fictional places that she dreamed of exploring, fueling her love of history, adventure, and fantasy. These days, she finds herself captivated by her many projects and enjoys quiet nights at home.
You can find more via:
Amazon Author Page | Website | Goodreads | BookBub | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Blood and Ashes synopsis:
A mystical tree captures the attention of Megan and her friends, morphing the surrounding environment, transferring them to an exotic planet with bloodthirsty creatures. Saved from the deadly beasts by hunters, Megan finds herself stuck in a rural town still maimed by the plague. A chance encounter with a familiar face gives Megan and her friends some security during their adjustment to this new world. While settling into promising lives, they are attacked and stalked by planet Dalya’s humanoid inhabitants, who focus solely on Megan.
One dark night, after a magical attack, the Fae King’s knight is sent to fetch Megan for a reason she can’t possibly guess. When she wakes up a prisoner, she learns that there is much more to this strange place, and it is oddly more like home than she ever would have expected.
The more Megan learns about the strange world of Dalya, the more she realizes that finding a way home is insignificant compared to everything else at stake.
You can purchase Ashes and Blood from Amazon:
Book 2: Below Dark Waters
As an Amazon Associate I may earn commission from purchases made using these links.
If you enjoy fantasy books then you will love my books which are available in eBook, paperback or hardcover: Book One: Sentinals Awaken. Book Two: Sentinals Rising. Book Three: Sentinals Justice. Book 3.5: Sentinals Recovery. Sign up to my newsletter and download a free novella called Sentinals Stirring and get notified when my next book releases.
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December 22, 2021
Cover Reveal – Sentinals Across Time
Book Four of the Sentinal Series
Add to your Goodreads TBR
Release Day: Spring, 2022
If you would like to read an ARC for my latest novel, then sign up to my ARC team via the link in my linktr.ee. All I ask is that you leave an honest review on the week of the launch.
Sentinals Across Time
Jerrol’s fragile balance between duty and family life took two years to refine and one brief moment to tear apart as the Lady Leyandrii and the Oath conspire in a desperate bid to protect the Birtolian Empire. As a result, Jerrol finds himself stranded in the middle of an ocean, lost across land and time and seas.
Unsure what is expected of him, Jerrol learns to appreciate the idyllic life of the Birtolians, the vibrant people and the beautiful coastline. To his growing horror he realises the devastation which lies in their future.
Can Jerrol prevent the destruction of the gentle people he has grown to love? Is he meant to? Desperate to find a way home, he begins to leave clues in anything he thinks will survive the test of time. Taelia and the Sentinals are his only chance of ever returning to his own life but can they find him before the Lady sunders the Bloodstone and changes the Birtolian Empire forever?
The fourth installment of the Sentinal Series takes us the beautiful Island Empire of Birtoli. Only once, it wasn’t an archipelago of islands, it was a land of majestic mountain ridges, mystical forests and exquisite sandy bays joined as one to the southern Vespiri borders.
Get ready for Book Four – Purchase the first book Sentinals Awaken now:
Book One: Sentinals Awaken
Book Two: Sentinals Rising
Book Three: Sentinals Justice
Book 3.5: Sentinals Recovery
December 18, 2021
Book Review Alert: To Thaw a Heart by Sky Sommers
Reviewed: December 18th, 2021
Released: November 18th, 2021
Genre: Fairytale Retelling
Sixteen-year old Kaj has to make a trade. A mysterious woman he has never seen before and will never see again offers to make it so that the Red Guard would ignore his friend Gerda while they drag her whole family away to exile. All Kaj has to do is surrender the warmth of his heart.
Will Gerda stick with Kaj after he changes overnight for the worse?
Can the Snow Queen’s curse ever be broken?
What would you give to keep someone you care about alive?
This Snow Queen retelling is a 90-minute prequel to Cinders and the Magic Mirrors Saga and can be read as a standalone. Read my thoughts …
December 15, 2021
Book Review Alert: Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim
Reviewed: December 16th, 2021
Released: July 8th, 2021
Genre: Fairytale Retelling
A princess in exile. Six enchanted cranes. An unspeakable curse.
A beautiful and immersive YA fantasy retelling of the Grimm brothers’ The Six Swans fairytale, set in an East-Asian inspired world, by the author of Spin the Dawn.
Shiori’anma, the only princess of Kiata, has a secret. Forbidden magic runs in her veins. And on the morning of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori loses control. At first, her mistake seems like a stroke of luck, forestalling the wedding she never wanted, but it also catches the attention of Raikama, her stepmother.
A sorceress in her own right, Raikama banishes the young princess, turning her brothers into cranes, and warning Shiori that she must speak of it to no one: for with every word that escapes her lips, one of her brothers will die.
Penniless, voiceless, and alone, Shiori searches for her brothers, and uncovers a dark conspiracy to seize the throne. Only Shiori can set the kingdom to rights, but to do so she must place her trust in a paper bird, a mercurial dragon, and the very boy she fought so hard not to marry. And she must embrace the magic she’s been taught all her life to contain – no matter what it costs. Read my thoughts …
December 12, 2021
Book Review Alert: Dark Fate by Kat Silver
Reviewed: December 12th, 2021
Released: November 12th, 2021
Genre: MM Paranormal Fantasy
“And if I am a monster? Will you want me then?”
Ten days after the battle at Blackriver, Michael struggles with new forbidden desires, with his rampant Flame, and a deepening relationship with the taciturn werewolf, Commander Gabriel Flanagan.
Feeling responsible for their loss, Michael longs to rescue the students stolen by the manipulative vampire prince, Alexei Vasiliev. But the High Council refuses to free Michael from his chains. They fear the Whisperer — the half-breed who decimated an entire company of soldiers and came back from the dead. Yet, Michael still yearns for a future among the Guardians. For a place beside his Finnish, silver-eyed giant. For a home within the crazy supernatural world he’s now bound to.
But does Michael still have a future? He’s a descendent of the Warlock — from a bloodline that produces only monsters. If discovered, not even his protective lover can save him from certain execution. He may not want to.
Dark Fate is the second book in the Flame Born series. This MM urban fantasy/paranormal romance is action packed, featuring steaming hot scenes, a hunk of an alpha love interest, a chocolate-scented snarky vampire prince, a clever best friend who can kill a man with her little finger, and one too many shady characters to count. There is content through the series some readers may find distressing. Meant for mature audiences only. See inside for trigger warnings. Read My thoughts…
December 11, 2021
Book Review Alert: Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
Reviewed: December 11th 2021
Released: November 6th, 2018
Genre: YA Science Fantasy
Spensa’s world has been under attack for hundreds of years. An alien race called the Krell leads onslaught after onslaught from the sky in a never-ending campaign to destroy humankind. Humanity’s only defense is to take to their ships and fight the enemy in the skies. Pilots have become the heroes of what’s left of the human race. Science Fantasy
Spensa has always dreamed of being one of them; of soaring above Earth and proving her bravery. But her fate is intertwined with her father’s – a pilot who was killed years ago when he abruptly deserted his team, placing Spensa’s chances of attending flight school somewhere between slim and none.
No one will let Spensa forget what her father did, but she is still determined to fly. And the Krell just made that a possibility. They’ve doubled their fleet, making Spensa’s world twice as dangerous . . . but their desperation to survive might just take her skyward . . . Read My thoughts…
December 7, 2021
Book Review Alert: Reign of Darkness by Ariana Nash
Reviewed: December 7th 2021
Released: November 25th, 2020
Genre: MM Dark Fantasy
Book two of the Prince’s Assassin series
“Know your place, Nikolas.”
“Under the heel of your boot, Your Highness?”
After a terrible inferno destroys the Caville palace, and with the people of Loreen turned against him, Prince Vasili is left with no choice but to flee his ancestral home, leaving his brother Amir to proclaim himself King. But Vasili’s life isn’t the only one left in ashes. King Amir has not forgotten Nikolas Yazdan—a lord’s bastard son and Vasili’s favorite pet. With forbidden power in his veins, Amir has become more than Niko can fight alone.
Thrust together with Vasili once more, Niko must travel south, to a land of pirates and thieves, of mystery and magic. A land of opportunity for a manipulative prince and his reluctant assassin. But just as Nikolas begins to believe Vasili might be worth fighting for—that Loreen can be saved with Vasili on the throne—the dark flame trapped in the royal bloodline unravels its ancient bonds. One prince must control the unrelenting power desperate for its escape. The other must die.
Niko thought he knew which prince he could trust, but he’s been fooled before and as Vasili’s true motives are revealed, Niko finds himself at the mercy of Prince Vasili once more. Only this time, there’s more than love at stake. The fate of the world rests on Niko discovering the truth about the flame, about the cursed Cavilles, and his place in their doomed destiny.
***Reign of Darkness is the second book in the Prince’s Assassin series. The series should be read in order, beginning with King of the Dark.
December 5, 2021
Book Review Alert: King of the Dark by Ariana Nash
Reviewed: December 5th, 2021
Released: July 10th, 2020
Genre: MM DarkFantasy
“Your love is worthless, it’s your hate I need.” ~ Prince Vasili Caville
When King Talos Caville surrendered the war to the elves, soldier Nikolas Yazdan vowed never to serve the royals again. He said the same to the prince who tried to buy his loyalty, and learned that the Caville princes don’t take no for an answer.
Whipped for his insolence, Nikolas is also forced into slavery in a palace full of vicious, brutal royals. Prince Vasili is the worst Caville of all. Malicious and cruel, the prince is more viperman, and someone inside the palace wants him dead. Nikolas would kill the prince himself if not for one thing: Julian, the prince’s personal guard and Niko’s light in the dark. If Nikolas doesn’t submit to Prince Vasili and discover who is plotting against him, Julian will suffer.
But there’s more wrong in the palace than just the prince. The king is on his deathbed, the ferocious elves are creeping closer to the great city of Loreen, and madness stalks the hallways. There’s poison in the Caville court, and if Nikolas doesn’t discover the real reason Prince Vasili tried to buy him with a bag of coin, the palace, the city, and everything he loves, will be lost forever. Read My thoughts…
December 4, 2021
Book Review Alert: The Binding by Bridget Collins
Reviewed: December 4th, 2021
Released: December 26th, 2019
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Imagine you could erase grief.
Imagine you could remove pain.
Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret. Forever.
Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a bookbinder–a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.
For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, the bookbinder Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to handcraft the elegant leather-bound volumes. Within each one, they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, a binder can help. If there’s something you need to erase, they can assist. Within the pages of the books they create, secrets are concealed and the past is locked away. In a vault under Seredith’s workshop, rows upon rows of books filled with memories are meticulously stored.
But while Seredith is an artisan, there are others of their kind, avaricious and amoral tradesmen, who use their talents for dark ends. And just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: there is a book with his name on it. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.
An unforgettable novel of enchantment, mystery, memory, and forbidden love, The Binding is a beautiful homage to the allure and life-changing power of books–and a reminder to us all that knowledge can be its own kind of magic. Read My thoughts…
