Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 33

Book review: Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler is an author I’ve been meaning to read for some time now, but didn’t know quite where to begin with her work. Then I saw a retweet expressing displeasure with Fledgling, and as has become a habit for me, I decided to make it my first effort. (How do you get me to bump a book up in my TBR list? Complain that you hate it. I’ll come running to see what all the fuss is about far faster than I would if you told me to read it because you loved it. Yeah, I know, I’m weird like that.)

There was only one complication in that the Kindle edition I wanted wasn’t available yet. I paid for the preorder, and the book was delivered to my phone at the end of March. (Isn’t technology grand?) I still had to clear out my other current reads, but as soon as that was done, I began the book curious to see what had displeased the other reader.

Well, I found it, and this is the first caveat I must warn other readers about. The main character, first called Renee, and then by her true name Shori, is a child despite being fifty-three years old. She is a child by the standards of her people, the Ina, who humans would call vampires, and she has severe amnesia after almost being killed at the start of the story. To my mind, this makes her even more of a child. Almost as soon as the story starts, Shori finds a human named Wright, and she feeds from him. Her venom compels him to follow her orders, and soon after traveling with him to his home, they have sex.

Now, the thing about this scene that makes it so troubling is Shori herself, and how the scene plays out. She has amnesia so severe that at first, even the appliances and features of Wright’s home are alien to her. So the scene goes something like this (I’m paraphrasing): “Yes, I remember these things now. This is a stove, and this is refrigerator…let’s go to bed and have sex.”

Wright’s reaction to Shori may be explained by her venom, which acts as a hypnotic agent and as an aphrodisiac. His enchantment with her is not necessarily some latent pedophile tendencies, but Shori’s shift in mental directions is a shock as strong as a bucket of ice water. There’s no questions in her about having sex with a man she just met hours before, no confusion about having this sudden urge when she was only seconds before cataloging the contents of a complete stranger’s home. The scene is not graphic or explicit, but it is definitely going to shove some people violently out of their comfort zone even before the deed is described. I found I had problems with it too, being so out of nowhere, and I had to put the book down for a day to process that.

In the chapters that follow, Shori is able to locate her father, who has been searching for her since the destruction of her mother’s community. Ina males and females do not live together because their pheromone attraction to each other is distracting to the point of making them unfit to raise their kids. While male children under a certain age live with their mothers and sisters until they near adolescence, as soon as their mating tendencies begin to develop, they are moved in with their fathers.

Again, some what’s revealed is going to push people out of their comfort zone. These young children are paired with adult human symbionts for feeding, and because of the aphrodisiac nature of their venom, those relationships quickly become sexual. There’s an interesting point here about the moral views of humans being applied to sentient creatures who are not humans, but who have an almost similar appearance. Yes, it is likely that an outside observer of these relationships would instantly equate them to being a pedophile cult grooming their children for multiple lovers. I think for a lot of readers, this is going to stop them from ever getting past the earliest parts of the book. It’s a gut check that many readers will fail because it’s an understandably uncomfortable topic.

Setting that aside and returning to the story, Shori begins prowling to find other symbionts to avoid weakening Wright, and her father Iosif invites her and her symbionts to live temporarily with his community until he can make arrangements for her to live on her own. Only, before any such plans can be made, his community is also destroyed, leaving only two symbionts alive who had been out of town during the attack.

What follows should be a mystery of sorts, as Shori must find out why humans keep attacking people close to her. But with the mystery element just introduced, I made a written prediction of who the culprits were, and why these attacks were made, and I was not wrong. Which brings me to my third and final caveat about this story. It’s very predictable. There’s not one event that I couldn’t see coming, and while that’s not quite a problem, I much rather prefer stories that make me think I know what’s going on and veer off in a direction that shocks me. If I can see everything coming, it kind of takes the fun out of discovering the plot.

Having said that, I ended up enjoying most of the book. The Ina people are not humans, and they’re not at all like the vampires of our legends. This is a world that is culturally aware of vampires as we understand them, so from the moment that Shori bites Wright and then Theodora, there’s none of that stereotypical “What are you?” trope. They know her as a vampire, and they understand something about Shori even when she does not.

With help from the surviving symbionts from her father’s family, Shori seeks out another Ina community, and it too is attacked. But Shori is able to organize a defense, and in questioning the surviving attackers, she begins to piece together why these massacres have happened.

Throughout these chapters, Shori learns more about the Ina and their culture, about the many functions of Ina venom and its effects on humans and on other Ina, and about her past connections to these other Ina communities. Her amnesia has some quirky conveniences that service the plot. She can’t remember much about her people or her culture, and yet she retains the ability to read and speak Ina. The amnesia serves to make Shori the reader’s “new guy” so that all this information is given without “as you know” cliches, but for someone almost killed by severe head injuries, it’s curious how she still retains knowledge of at least two written and spoken languages. Curiouser still, looking at human appliances or devices instantly returns parts of her memory about their function, but all mentions of her family or Ina connections revives nothing. It’s…mighty convenient, wouldn’t you say? I know I would.

Yet, I’m willing to forgive this convenient head injury because it allows the other Ina to describe their culture and their relationships with the humans in a convincing and fascinating way. There’s several ideas in this story that I’ve used in vampire stories, including the concept that vampires are a separate race with a culture and language all their own, and that their bite cannot turn humans into similar blood drinkers. Where we diverge lies in the complexity of Ina venom. In addition to being a hypnotic drug and an aphrodisiac, is also has healing and immunity-boosting properties. Humans taken as symbionts can live much, much longer, provided they are bitten and fed from regularly by the same Ina. The venom of each Ina is unique, so there’s no swapping symbionts, either. If it wouldn’t spoil many of the discoveries, I could actually spend whole pages gushing about how fascinating this one facet of the Ina is all by itself, and it’s something I kind of wish I’d thought of before I started writing my own stories.

I can’t talk about the last quarter of the book without massive spoilers, but I will say that the action peaks and then dips down to a more sedate conclusion. This is not a complaint, and I liked how the story played out. I like the Ina and their alien culture and morals. It’s the kind of world that makes me hope for a sequel, or failing that, a spin off following some other Ina besides Shori.

With the earlier caveats and quirks listed, it might be confusing why I’m giving this 5 stars, but I feel like it’s is a story that will stick with me in much the same way that Let the Right One In has, another story with a child vampire, and that shares some of the same issues of pushing people out of their comfort zone. Fledgling certainly did make me feel a bit squicked out at the start, but I liken this to a kind of culture shock, like a person from America moving to another country and finding the local age of consent is thirteen. Once I could get over that sense of shock, I found the book intensely fascinating. If I had read something like this before I’d fully formed my own vampire mythos, I believe this would have inspired and influenced my writing decisions. Even so, I think it’s food for thought should I ever start writing a new vampire series.

So yes, I’m giving Fledgling 5 stars and would recommend it to vampire fans with warnings that it’s got a nasty gut check right at the start. The book WILL push you out of your comfort zone, and if you aren’t prepared to do that, I can’t suggest starting it in the first place. But I survived the gut check, and while this was my first read of Octavia Butler’s work, I can say with certainty it won’t be my last. And now I shall stop here, because any further praise will get into the land of spoilers, and I think you should have a chance to explore this alien world on your own.

Standing out in an outstanding crowd

It’s been a while that I let myself coast without trying very hard on promotions or writing anything here aside from reviews. It’s not that I don’t have things I want to talk to y’all about, but more that I wasn’t sure how to say anything without coming off as a grumbling fogey or an unappreciated jeenyus.

Through the last two years, I’ve often felt encouraged by seeing reviewers and readers asking for more diversity in their fiction, and I took this as encouragement to keep writing to put out more options instead of focusing on any one genre or market. At the same time, I felt that I needed a message more developed than “I’m different” to stand out from the crowded markets.

The thing is, I’d really rather not resort to dissing the work of others or being jealous of their success. In my own way, I’ve tried as a reader to support everyone from the big name authors down to the first-time indies just dipping their toes in the writing pool. When it comes to social media, when someone asks me for reading recommendations, I will first offer up a list of other authors I enjoy before asking if it’s all right to suggest something from my catalog. It’s strange, but even after years of being so deeply invested in this global writing competition, I still feel awkward actually trying to compete.

Maybe it’s all those years of abuse that keeps a voice alive in me, constantly insisting “I’m not really good enough to compete with these people.” Maybe it’s empathy knowing how hard it is to make even one sale that prevents me from saying “My book is better than X-book.” Maybe some of it is respect for the other authors, even those I don’t like or find their work repugnant to my own tastes.

A lot of my work is made in direct protest to the mainstream trends that I read so much of. It’s not that I don’t believe these things should be popular, either. I write in protest because I know there’s other viewpoints not being explored. This doesn’t make me better than the mainstream, only different. But simply saying I’m different won’t make a blip on anyone’s radar because almost every author insists that they’re different. And in a lot of cases, it’s simply marketing hype. Many authors write the same character tropes, putting their characters in the same convoluted situations as their peers. They may use the formulas skillfully in crafting their tales, but it’s rare to see someone who subverts those tropes to create something genuinely unique.

I’m loathe to name names or make comparisons from one story to another, even if I’m not using my works as the basis for comparison. I do think these stories are written well, and in many cases, I enjoy them as much as the next reader. But as a writer, part of my task is finding some way to differentiate myself from others, and I’m never sure of how to do that. I’ve certainly made efforts to explain how I’m different, but I’m never able to come up with a case convincing enough to build a larger audience.

But I know I have to, and I’m encouraged to keep thinking on the problem when a new reader writes to me after giving me a chance. Just last night, a new reader from Turkey was praising my writing, comparing it to Jean Genet and speaking fondly of the many layers of interpretation they were able to see in my work. I felt dissected and humbled, but also pleased that a reader was willing to scratch the surface and search for the deeper meaning in each passage and scene.

And it is true, I am writing these stories with many layers, giving the casual reader something to appreciate even if they never question my motives for creating those characters and scenes. I’m happy enough when someone simply writes to say they liked a story, but I become euphoric when someone slices my characters open to puzzle out the real reasons for their existence. I have favorite reviews from bloggers who dug deeper and asked the right questions about my motivations. I don’t think I can ever get enough of those keen dissections and the resulting observations.

But isn’t that what every artist means to do? I believe it’s a rare artist, whether a writer, a painter, or a musician, who creates strictly to fill a marketing goal. We all want to be seen as messengers with a mission to enlighten and entertain at the same time. Yet I must find some way to pull away from the others or risk always being hidden in the midst of their successes.

I can’t really say I enjoy puzzling on this dilemma of wanting to stand out from my peers. I have many favorite artists who I feel inadequate when I compare myself to their works. No amount of praise for my efforts can ever rid me of the nagging fear that I’m really just a hack with a limited vocabulary, and not even the best review can dispel my fears of always remaining obscure and unappreciated. I also have a sneaking suspicion that more sales and a growing audience would still not relieve my doubts about myself.

Perhaps I am dooming my efforts by always selling myself short, but even after nine years of pushing and promoting, I don’t feel qualified to make bolder claims about my art. I know I have the discipline to write well and quickly, and that I have the drive to keep going in the face of constant commercial failure. But sometimes I wonder what essential ingredient I’m missing to make the world notice me. Is it only a lack of ego or self-esteem? Or is it simply that I’m unable to form a sales message worthy of more attention?

If the readers and reviewers are clamoring for more diversity, why do I never seem to reach those eager markets? Is it all just a matter of visibility? And if so, what can I do to make some noise without comparing myself to my peers?

I still don’t know, but it is a puzzle I would love to solve.

Changing promotional tactics

Lately, I haven’t had nearly as many sales through Twitter as I was making last spring, and at times, I thought that was a side effect of my reduced promotion efforts combined with my lack of new releases. But as of last month, I put out a new book, and I put out another this month, with another planned for May. I returned to putting out one ad per hour, and I got a decent number of retweets. Despite having good exposure, I still wasn’t finding nearly the level of success I’d had last year.

One of the people I follow on Twitter has been emailing me about making changes to my Amazon tags and blurbs to get better visibility, but even making some changes like he suggested, it doesn’t seem to help pull me up into a high enough ranking to break through the competition. In talking over my promotional strategies with him, I’ve come to realize one possible cause for my diminishing gains on Twitter: I’ve lost my credibility and my connections to my followers.

What happened was, I started retweeting books for other authors because I wanted to get their help promoting my stuff. But this added exposure isn’t helping, and if anything, tweeting for others has diluted my stream to the point that my own ads are being completely lost in the shuffle.

The other problem is, I’m no longer vetting the books I promote. Now sometimes this works out okay, and followers write to me to thank me for introducing them to new writers. But some have also written to me to say that some of the books I promoted weren’t edited or weren’t written well at all. So because I’m promoting this stuff, it reflects badly on the quality of my writing sight unseen.

There’s something else to consider in this equation, the problem of ad fatigue. So many writers are doing the shared retweets that a person who follows several authors might see hundreds of ads in any given session, and it wears them down to the point where they don’t see any of the ads. It’s similar to grief or outrage fatigue. We can only handle so much input before the rest fails to make any impression.

Back when I was having success, it wasn’t necessarily the ads themselves that reached people. Rather, I might launch into a rant about an ad not going anywhere, and my followers would then tweet something like “What’s this about a new book? I must have missed the ads.” So I’d chat them up, and then they’d go look at a link I sent to them. But, the interesting trend was that they often didn’t buy that book. Rather, they clicked on my name and looked through the rest of my catalog before buying a book that was more to their personal preference. I was able to send them to the vendor of their choice, and once they got to the site, they looked for my other books using my name. So my new book might only sell 10 copies in opening month, but it was okay because I was still making 20-30 sales on my other titles

This helped eliminate my visibility problems because instead of people looking for tags like zombies, werewolves, or vampires, where I had no chance of showing up through the thousands of options, people were looking for my name. And luckily, I seem to be the only Zoe E. Whitten writing books.

Thinking on the problem this way, I’ve decided that at least for the next few months, I’m going to stop retweeting book ads for others. I will continue to promote other authors by tweeting links to my reviews, and in this way, I’ll be vetting the titles I promote. Which will hopefully help to reestablish my credibility with my followers. I also think not retweeting all those ads will make my own ads more visible, and so I might not have to do a tweet every hour unless I’m pushing a book I just released in the last few days and want to build impressions of it in people’s minds.

There is the downside that I won’t get as many reciprocal retweets from other authors, but being honest, out of all the people I helped promote, perhaps 10-15% actually bothered to return the favor, or at the very least say thank you for the help. It’s occurred to me how many of these folks aren’t even really online. They’re scheduling ads and walking away, and they’re not very social at all. It’s people like this contributing to the ad fatigue problem, and whether their books are great or lousy, by promoting them so often, I was adding to the problem as well.

Maybe in a few months, I’ll discover this shift in tactics doesn’t have any effect on my sales. Maybe I’ll go back to sharing retweets and chalk this up to another wild guess that didn’t work out. But I have felt less connected to my followers, and I feel I have to change something or risk further alienating them. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

Trans minor to be sent to adult male prison…

This is going to be a very short post. This morning someone I follow on Twitter brought this story to my attention. The minor is so young, the law prevents anyone from mentioning her name, but the state of Connecticut is going to place them in a male prison, misgendering them and exposing them to even more abuse from violent inmates. The story says this teen was the victim of childhood abuse, and that they’ve been in custody for half their life. They must have PTSD already, and the proposed solution is even more violence against them.

I can’t say much else about this. I want to. I want to yell and scream. I want to storm someone’s office and demand that this mistake is corrected. I want to whip people into a frenzy and convince them to do something to stop this kind of thing from ever happening again.

But I’m just a broken little nobody on the other side of the planet from where this is happening. Even if I were closer, why would anybody listen to me? I have no money, no political power, no leverage to make this better. I feel tiny, helpless, and powerless. I can’t think about this without feeling sucked back to my own useless struggles against a system that offered neither compassion nor justice. All I can do is bring this to your attention and then sit back and shake.

God, where is the humanity in humans?

Book update: Rot by Michele Lee

While browsing the blog Wag the Fox, I ran across an entry for Rot by Michele Lee in a new Kindle edition. This is good because as far as I’d known the book had gone out of print, and I’d had to give up on recommending it to readers. I even emailed my ebook copy to someone because I wanted them to read it. (I deleted my copy because I respect copyright, and because I still have an original print copy.)

Michele and I no longer talk (no use rehashing old shit, so I won’t), but this is one book I’ve reread multiple times and still tear up at the ending. Briefly summing up, Rot is a unique take on zombies because it involves the undead being reanimated by way of magic. These zombies are aware, but still quite prone to violence and munching on raw flesh. Most are kept in a retirement home of sorts, but the people running the home are doing some rather unsavory things with the undead whose family’s can no longer afford the rent. It’s a story that makes every zombie’s suffering personal and easy to empathize with, and even years after first reading the book, it sticks with me as one of the best zombie stories I’ve ever read, if not the best. (I waffle on whether I love Rot or John A. Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead more, but both are fantastic and worth you time.)

So, knowing there’s a Kindle reissue for this book, I’m happy to once again recommend it to everyone, not just fans of zombie stories. It’s reasonably priced, a good short read with a gut punch of an ending. So please, do check it out and add it to your to-be-read pile. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Book review: I Can Transform You by Maurice Broaddus

I Can Transform You is made up of two stories, with the first bearing the same name as the book. I Can Transform You starts out very much like a long familiar trope of a loose cannon PI brought in to consult on a case involving the murder of his former partner. The trappings of a dystopian sci-fi world do little to change this formula during the journey through a well worn path. A suspect is found with an orgy of evidence to implicate them, and the brass are happy to close the case there. But of course there’s something else going on, with people in the upper echelons of society pulling the strings to frame a two-bit felon and offer up a neat tidy package for the evening news.

In maybe 75% of the story, you could find the same idea present in any hard-boiled detective story, and the future setting with its trappings of bioengineering and cybernetic officers might be seen as superfluous. But it’s in the final quarter that all those little crumb-clues begin adding up to a bigger conspiracy and lead to an explanation for the changes in the world. Then the pieces of world-building become more important in explaining the stakes of this one seemingly open and closed case.

Mac Peterson’s washed out PI is balanced by the tight-laced and cybernetically enhanced Ade Walters, and both play a verbal tug of war teasing out bits of character development from each other. Mac’s a rebel without a cause who’s too afraid of himself to ever let anyone get close to him. He numbs his insecurities with drugs, alcohol or sex; whatever’s available to take the edge off. On the other hand, Ade is a man well aware of his past and his pains associated with it, and he chooses work as his addiction. The law is his refuge from a dysfunctional family, but his loyalties are put to the test by this case in particular.

So we have trappings of a buddy cop movie mixed with a strong dose of dystopia, plus one other trope I can’t reveal without spoiling the conclusion. It’s hard to sell me on dystopias, but this one works by focusing on the struggles of the main characters to the point where the world building is just window dressing to the real point of the story. There’s no definite ending to the story, only the implied ideal of a longer battle in which justice must throw off the strangle-grip hold of bureaucratic laws or risk dooming the entire human race to a death of choking apathy. When it comes to dystopias I do like, I prefer this kind of ending, the uncertainty of victory versus the ridiculous ideal of one person overthrowing an entire system of oppression with a few hollow words and meaningless actions. So yeah, the first story worked for me.

The second, not so much. Pimp My Airship is a steampunk story, and I have yet to read any of these from any author that roused my interest. I can understand the aesthetic appeal of alternate technology for some fans, and the historical appeal for others. But I hold no fascination for either of these things, and so most steampunk flies far, far off my radar.

It doesn’t help that I know very little about the three characters beyond their struggle and their plans to attack a prison complex. Despite Deaconess Blues and Knowledge Allah speaking in lofty terms, their plan amounts to little more than a suicide mission that will likely do little to change the balance of power in this alternate world. I get their frustration about oppression and remaining slaves despite a supposed emancipation, but these two chastise Sleepy Nixon for being too simplistic, only to turn around and launch a plan that’s never been shown to work in our own history of class struggles. Ultimately, all three are doomed, and Sleepy’s fate is just delayed to a lingering death through imprisonment.

I will give the story points for presenting a stemapunk world from the viewpoint of the colonized and oppressed, but it is still a steampunk story, and those trappings end up outshining the characters for me.

I have to give two separate scores rather than grade this as a whole. So the score for I Can Transform You is 4 stars, while Pimp My Airship gets 3 stars. I think both are worth reader’s time, but the second tale is in a genre that doesn’t float my boat, and shouldn’t be taken as a knock to the author.

Book review: Crooked Fang by Carrie Clevenger

Crooked Fang has been on my list of books to pick up for a while, but I was reluctant to read it because I know the author, Carrie Clevenger, on Twitter, and we’ve talked for a few years now. At one point, while I was live-tweeting a book I hated, she’d even joked, “Don’t read any of my books, please.” But I’ve got a thing for vampires, and so eventually, I knew I’d have to read this. I just had to hope it didn’t suck.

Thankfully, it did not. In fact, it’s one of the better vampire books I’ve read in a while, and it’s every bit as good as Let the Right One In. Xan Marcelles is a relatively young vampire, one who had previously worked as an assassin for his sire. His job was killing the vampires who risked exposure to the humans, but after burning out on killing, he moved to Pinecliffe Colorado and made up a quiet new life for himself at a bar called Pale Rider. He plays bass in his band, Crooked Fang, and as the story opens, his bandmates are pushing for something more than playing as a house band for a podunk bar.

Xan’s problems are all over the place. He’s confronted by a vampire hunter, and the bar is burned down by an unknown enemy. While he’s still trying to deal with those problems, he’s contacted by the sister of a girlfriend he left back when he was alive, Silvia, who has news that Heather was killed in an what the police are calling an animal attack. This sends Xan back to a home he hasn’t known in well over twenty years, posing as his own son to assist Silvia in finding out what really happened to Heather.

There’s not much else I can say without getting into spoilers, so I’ll focus on Xan instead. Here we have a vampire whose job was to kill other vampires when they became a liability to their peoples’ need for secrecy. Death has left him weary, so despite his relatively young age, he’s still something of an old soul. He’s also a bit of an asshole, but that’s not a complaint. If anything, it’s a compliment to the writing that I could accept his uglier moments as a part of the package deal. He’s a complex character, not just a stereotype from one side of the vampire trope or the other. He sips from humans to keep himself fed, and he has several connections to the living world, some who know what he is, and others who he has to keep in the dark. So he’s not a hero, but he’s not exactly a villain either. Which, to me, is how it should be.

Xan is one race of vampire, and another variety is part of his story too, though I won’t spoil that part. I get the feeling there’s probably a lot of vampire races from different cultures, and these are the only two put on display for this book. If this is the case, I hope to find out more in the next book Traitors. What I learned in this book was certainly fascinating, and I like that the author made an effort to explain how vampires could remain hidden in a modern world by policing themselves.

I don’t really have any complaints about the story. It did bug me that when the shit hit the fan, Xan forgot to check in on one of his human friends because I felt she deserved better. But again, Xan’s a bit of a dick, and he tends to get self-centered at times. So this was in character for him, and I can accept that and let it go.

I give Crooked Fang 5 stars and recommend it to all fans of vampires. It was a great read, and I look forward to reading the sequel.

Book excerpt: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Here’s an excerpt from chapter 7 of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore:

I take Brandon to the living room to watch Cartoon Network, and then I go to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Somewhere in the middle of putting the rinsed dishes in the dishwasher, I start to feel hot and anxious for no reason. The feeling of my skin splitting comes back, and I break out in a sweat. My teeth grind audibly, and I feel the need to curl my hands into fists.

When the puzzle pieces snap together, I sling my head around, finding the calendar pinned to the wall. My vision is so sharp, I don’t need to cross the room to see the little black circle beside the date. It’s a full moon tonight, and my wolf is calling me. It’s why I was extra irritable, and why I snapped under the same stress that I’d been handling for months without blowing up.

Four years, I’d been warned this was coming. Four years, I’ve dreaded it and prayed I would be alone when it hit. But no, here’s my first bout with lunar madness, and I’ve got a kid I barely know, no parents to watch over us, and no way to get away.

I grit my teeth harder, and a growl rumbles in my throat. I’m so hot I have to pant, and my skin feels like I’m soaking up sunlight in the middle of summer.

Spinning away from the dishwasher, I grab the door leading to the side yard and fling it open too hard. I can’t think straight, and I need to cool down. Off comes my sweatshirt followed by my T-shirt, and I’m down to my bra, thinking to lose it too. I’m dripping sweat, and my breath comes in shaking gasps. The wind is blowing, but it doesn’t feel cold to me. It’s a hot wind on my burning body, doing nothing to quench my parched throat.

“Alice?”

I spin on my heel and glare at Brandon, who gasps and steps behind the doorframe like he’s trying to hide. He stinks of fear and it makes my mouth water.

I swallow thick spit and struggle to find my voice. “Go back to the living room. I’m…going for a walk. Don’t follow me.”

There. Simple, easy directions. Go me.

Brandon shuts the door and locks it. Were I in a better mood, I might find that funny. You can’t lock out the monster when she has a key to the house you’re hiding in.

Hopping the fence I take off walking, knowing where I will head. Not far from our neighborhood is a wide copse of trees, and these woods are the place Peter claimed as his territory. After his mother cursed me, it became our woods. But when Peter left, I stopped visiting. It holds too many memories that I’m supposed to think of as unhealthy.

But tonight, I’m guided more by instinct than common sense. Tonight, I need to get out of these restrictive clothes and run until I pass out.

Once I’m inside my woods, I reach down to unbutton my jeans. I pop the first button before I smell a rabbit, and my thoughts unravel into a single word chorus: kill, kill, kill.

Hunching over, I creep at a waddling pace while I sniff out the trail of my prey. I don’t have to move very far into the woods before I find the grey rabbit. I’m close enough that I should hear it, but my ears are muffled by the roar of my blood pumping too fast. My body is thrumming like I’ve been running for an hour, and despite the cold air against my skin I’m dripping sweat.

My slow crawl brings me within ten yards of my prey before the rabbit hears me and turns to run, but it’s pivoting on its back legs when I leap to close the distance between us. It shrieks when I snatch the struggling animal by the scruff of its neck and snap a bite over its throat. The rabbit’s throat collapses as the skin yields with a pop, ending its terrified scream.

I growl and swallow a mouthful of hot blood. So sweet, so perfect. I jerk my head back to open the wound. The rabbit spasms while I dig my fingers under the fur, peeling wet flesh off the ribs. My thumbs find the sternum, and I push them under the lowest ribs to crack open the chest and pry out the heart. It rips loose with a wet tear and spurts blood over my cheeks and nose. I pop the heart into my mouth and hum in pleasure. Then I pry away the skin around the back leg and sink my teeth into the hot, raw meat. There’s no rational thought to my actions, only the greedy need to fill myself.

As I feast, some of my bloodlust fades, and when the whooshing rush of my blood stops singing in my ears, other sounds alert me to the fact that I am not alone. Somewhere behind me is a rapid heartbeat and shaking breath. I drop my kill and growl, twisting at the waist to seek out the intruder. Brandon hides behind a tree, but when our eyes meet, he takes a step back.

This is his mistake, moving out from behind cover. Acting on the instinct to hunt, I pivot and plant my hands on the ground to launch myself at him. My shoulder connects with his side, and the impact dazes him, making his limbs go limp. He flops to the ground and I crawl on top of him, pinning his arms under my knees.

Brandon squeals in pain when I set my weight down, his breath louder in my ears. “No, please,” he begs. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Maybe it’s my full stomach that saves him, but I freeze and I really see him. He’s so pale his freckles look like flecks of blood stuck to his cheeks, and his green eyes are filled with terror. This isn’t food. He’s a little boy who just an hour ago was professing his love for me because I made him tuna casserole.

I smell urine. He’s just peed himself.

Despite my feelings of guilt, I can’t stop glaring at him. “I said, stay inside.”

“Okay,” Brandon whines like a little girl. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

I ease up off of him and sink into a low crouch. He’s seen too much, and the cold logical monster in me says I should kill him. But the same logical voice recognizes how that would be my undoing. His mom knows I was watching him. My mom does too, and she knows what I am. If Brandon should disappear on the night of a full moon, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out what happened.

Brandon gets up and stares at me with undisguised horror. The scent of his fear is so strong, my full stomach growls with the need for his blood.

I spit a red glob on the ground and wipe my mouth. “You didn’t see anything.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Say it!” I snap, the gravel growl in my voice getting stronger.

“I didn’t see anything.”

I get up and walk around him, and he follows after me, his rattling heartbeat thumping in my ears.

___

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is available on Amazon, Kobo, and Gumroad for $2.99. You can download a free sample from Amazon, and if you are a member of Goodreads, you can add it to your bookshelves. If you’re a fan of werewolves or dark fantasy, you may enjoy this tale of a young skinwalker coming to terms with her past and her curse.

Gods of Sand and Stone by Walt Shuler

I feel conflicted about Gods of Sand and Stone for several reasons, though there’s nothing wrong with the writing or the story. Conn Fuilteach is a warrior on a quest for revenge who discovers early in the story that’s he’s been tricked by Cernunnos, who has apparently gone insane. In his journey, he encounters several other gods, fights some possessed hunters and undead animals, and meets some new allies. Then the story ends quite abruptly, leaving most of the plot threads open for the next book in the series. This leaves me wanting more, and I don’t just mean a sequel.

Conn is a sympathetic character, and the same could be said of “rogue” fighter Aerlyn, while Mur’s introduction is at a point in the story that prevents him from having any back story. All that can be said of him is, he’s a mysterious mage.

The battle scenes are vivid and tense, and most locations and characters are described with good detail. The dialogue is good and flows well without ever feeling forced. The POV shifts are clearly split up without confusion or instances of head hopping, and the story does end at a place that feels natural, if a little rushed and anti-climatic.

So what’s the problem? Well, I have several. First off, Conn’s motivation for his quest is a trope that bothers me, the “woman in a refrigerator,” meaning his mother, wife, and daughter are brutally murdered long before the story’s intro, and show up only as bodies in a flashback. They exist solely as an explanation for the main character’s anger. I’d think most folks interested in this kind of dark fantasy won’t be bothered by it, but it bugged me that they didn’t even get a flashback or dream sequence to be developed in some meaningful way.

I’m also not convinced by the depictions of the gods. Part of this is a personal hang-up, because I’ve studied Cernunnos, and I understand him as The Green Man, a god of nature with a peaceful demeanor. Here, he’s presented as a psychopath who speaks in all caps, and even reminding myself that writers can exercise artistic license, this version of Cern rubs me the wrong way the same as Hollywood’s decision to make the Nordic gods aliens in the Thor movies did. Maybe if there was some background information on why Cernunnos went bonkers, this would be easier to accept. But the cause of his insanity is as much a mystery as his plans.

But the other gods are also bugging me because they’re…well, they’re useless.  None of them displays any powers aside from shapeshifting, they’re apparently not omnipotent, and despite Cernunnos plotting for years, they seem pretty clueless about his plans. They also seem to be so weak that they have to ask a human to stop Cernunnos, though no one explains why he’s so powerful and they’re all so weak and blind.

What I felt was lacking was not details on the fights, locations, or physical descriptions of the characters, but rather the history of this world and these gods. This is a fantasy that feels like an action movie script where the battles are fast and tense, but there’s not much context for why all this fighting is going on. Which is not to say it’s a bad story, and my issues with it were not so off-putting that I won’t buy the next book in the series, Into a Dark Land. I just find myself wishing for more information to put the action in context. Perhaps some of my questions will be addressed in the next book.

I give Gods of Sand and Stone 3 stars and would recommend it to fans of action fantasy tales like Tarzan and Conan. Conn’s a character with interesting potential, but it remains to be seen if the world he inhabits is as complex and deep as he seems to be.

New release: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Yes, it’s time once again to release a new book, this time something that I finished last April and I’ve been working on over the last year to try and get it as polished as possible. Without further ballyhoo, here’s the cover and blurb for the first book in the Alice the Wolf series, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

Beginning a new spin off series after the events in Peter the Wolf…

Life was supposed to get better for Alice Culpepper after Peter Holmes turned himself over to the FBI, but growing up and moving on has only become more difficult in his absence. It’s hard enough being the only lycanthrope in Dallas, but Alice also suffers harassment and bullying from other students and lectures from her extended family about the behavior of “good girls.” The local weredog council views her as a threat to their community for corrupting Robbie Matheson, and one of her mother’s co-workers drafts her to babysit Brandon Butler, who sees Alice lose control during her first bout of lunar madness.

Adding to Alice’s problems, another werewolf has come to town with unknown intentions, and all she knows is that this new arrival is from the same bloodline. The weredog elders want her to find the wolf and learn their intentions, her parents expect her to set a good example for Brandon despite her increasingly violent urges, and Robbie confesses that he’s still in love with her and wants to be more than just friends. It’s enough stress to send even a normal human howling at the moon.

Hoping to vent some aggression in a healthy way, Alice tries out for the football team and finds surprising acceptance from the jocks and cheerleaders. With her school and social life improving, all she needs is time to sort out her future. Unfortunately for her, the wolf she’s seeking knows secrets about her family that could expose her to the humans and force her into war against an army of lycanthropes. Can Alice maintain her truce with the weredogs, prevent a werewolf war, and still find time to finish her homework?

___

 Kindle – Kobo – Gumroad

This is another release that’s only $2.99, a pretty good deal for a novel of roughly 85K not including the legalese and author’s note.

And now I have to do something unsavory and beg for sales. If you’ve read the Peter the Wolf series, I hope you’ll pick this up and find out what happens to Alice after Peter turned himself over to the FBI in the final book. And if you haven’t read Peter’s books, but you liked one of my other dark fantasy titles, I hope you might give this series a chance. If you read one of my books and hated it…and you’re still here reading my blog, that’s got to be some kind of miracle, huh? But anywho, I hope you’ll at least check out the preview on Amazon and give me another chance. Finally, if you’ve never bought any of my books and you’re just a regular blog reader, maybe you might try Alice’s story as your first introduction to my fantasy writing. Sure, this is a spin-off series, but I wrote this so that you wouldn’t need to read the first series to get into this one. I even looked for beta testers who hadn’t read Peter’s books to see if they got enough information without feeling like they were missing something. All of the beta readers came back with positive feedback, and I think you’ll also enjoy the story if you’re willing to give it a shot.

Okay, that’s all the begging I’ll do for now, and sorry I had to do that. But I’m extremely proud of this new series, and I want to try and find as many new readers as I can manage in the first month. If you do buy a copy, thank you very much, and I hope you enjoy it. Oh, and whether you enjoy it or not, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review.

Edit: If you’re on Goodreads, you can also add the book to your bookshelves.