Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 41

Book review: Camdeboo Nights by Nerine Dorman

For me, it’s typical to know whether I like or dislike a book within a few pages, but Camdeboo Nights didn’t really stir a reaction in me one way or the other. There’s nothing wrong with the writing or the story, and the cast of characters are all defined in their roles. The main character Helen is someone forced to move to a new place after her parents separate, and here she makes new friends and enemies. Among her new friends are Trystan, a vampire, Arwen, a witch, and Etienne, a dwarf.

But the story and the characters just didn’t reach me. The book is a long chase scene, which is triggered when Arwen suggests that Helen help her cast a spell. This causes Helen’s magic energy to spike, and then everything is hunting her. Then she gets caught, and the book is over. That’s pretty much the most direct route through the story, but nothing that happens raises the tension for me, despite everyone suffering major injuries and the odds becoming a grim fight for life.

I can’t say there’s anything I didn’t like, but there was nothing that really grabbed me and pulled me into the story. Helen is a little too “everyman” for me to see her as anything but a blank, and Arwen is a plot device who enables Helen to become a prized untapped power. Once the chase starts, Etienne acts as the loyal friend who saves the day for Trystan and Arwen, but the book abruptly drops the chase for Helen just ending with a new character coming out of nowhere.

It’s probably left open-ended for a sequel, but none of the characters, good or bad, are given much to anchor them to the chase. There’s vampires, and witches, and possibly a demon and and a spirit. Everyone is chasing Helen because they sensed her great power. But no one ever mentions a plan to use her. So for me it feels like all chase and not enough detail to invest me in the ending.

Location descriptions are detailed, with Helen showing a certain level of architectural knowledge. But most of the locations given the most personality with history are briefly touched on, and once the chase starts, all the new locations become a blur. The same is true of all the characters brought in during the second half of the story. They’re given ample descriptions when they appear, but have no time to establish any motives for why they’ve become invested in this chase. Everyone wants Helen, but no one will say why.

I’m giving Camdeboo Nights three stars. It’s not a bad story, but perhaps akin to an action movie. Things just happen because they need to for the story to progress. But despite the rising tension and the bloody fight scenes, the characters just aren’t fleshed out enough for me to feel anything for the outcome.

Book review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent faced an uphill battle to capture my interest because I’m not usually big on dystopias. The setting of the book didn’t quite grab me, but I liked the main character Beatrice, and decided to see where the story led. In this decayed future, a city of people have divided up into the factions that they see as being most virtuous. This leads to people being factionless too, and already this perfect world is straining with political problems because only one faction governs. Obviously, not everyone is going to be happy with that setup.

When the children from each faction turn sixteen, they are given a “simulation serum” that is supposed to assess which faction they belong with. Beatrice’s results are inconclusive, and she is told she is divergent, and that this is something she must keep secret. She is also told she must decide which faction she will go to, because her test results are inconclusive.

Beatrice chooses to leave her family and join the Dauntless faction, who prize bravery, but Beatrice also remains selfless as she was raised to be in the Abnegation faction. The book mainly follows her initiation into her faction, and Tris has to deal with bullies, and at one point with the betrayal of a friend. As her training progresses, she also begins to learn more about the connections between the Dauntless and Erudite factions, and she finds out why being divergent is so dangerous to the scheming faction leaders.

Beatrice’s story was so intense that I swept through the last 300 pages in one day. I like that she’s gifted but not totally unique. There are others like her, and while she is gifted, she isn’t super special either. I liked the cast around Beatrice, including her romantic interest Tobias, AKA: Four. Dauntless initiation is shown as a grim and terrifying ordeal, with failures becoming factionless. With failure not being an option, every test and rite of passage is tense, and the book hums along at wild pace.

The ending is a bit of a shock, and for once a dystopia doesn’t have my eye twitching over unlikely rescues, because lots of people didn’t get rescued. It’s kind of an ugly ending, but one that fits in with the rest of the story. It does set up well for the next book, and I’ll be looking to pick up Insurgent soon.

I give Divergent 4 stars, and recommend it to fans of dystopia YA. It’s not often that I drop everything to spend a full day and night reading, and while this wasn’t “the best book ever” it certainly kept me guessing to the end. The pages flew by fast, and I kept going, “Okay, just one more chapter.” Definitely qualified as a page-turner, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.

Book review The Family: Liam by K.V. Taylor

The Family: Liam is the second novel I’ve read from KV Taylor, though I’ve also read a few of her short stories and a lot of her paranormal and supernatural romances under the pen name Katey Hawthorne. In this new series, the central monsters are vampires, something like a cross between Anne Rice and John Lindqvist.

The main character Liam is a bi-curious college student who thinks he’s straight until he catches the attention of his dorm roommate Gianni. Gianni is everything Liam isn’t, sophisticated, spoiled, and self-assured, while Liam is an emotionally wounded farmer’s kid who sill isn’t sure what he wants to be. But once Gianni has taken an interest in him, his course is set to become a monster as ruthless as Gianni.

I like all the characters, even the bit characters like James, Madison and Aldo. I very much liked the kind of vampires covered in this story, and the romantic scenes were certainly attention grabbing. Liam’s swift change raises him to delirious happiness, but his positive outlook doesn’t last long before he begins to question what he’s becoming. He rejects Gianni rather harshly and returns to his family, and there he learns that he can’t really go home before Gianni arrives to take him back.

There’s some other stuff that happens after this point, but the story seems to walk away from a major plot point and never comes back to it. I can’t say what without spoiling it, but once this seeming threat is introduced, the story wanders off in a different direction, and there’s only a few fleeting references made to it again.

I know this is a first book in a series, but the ending left me feeling like there should have been another hundred pages or so. There’s a couple of introductions of conflicts, but only one of these gets resolved. The other much bigger conflict is left hanging, and I felt like sputtering, “But…but what about Aldo?” And for that matter, I wonder if book two will get back around to Madison. I rather liked her. But even if it doesn’t, I wanted to know more about this other mysterious faction of vampires that are running a cult in the middle of nowhere.

Overall I liked the characters, but I felt like story was all ramp and no jump. I liked the ride, and I’ll be looking for the next book in the series. It is a small kind of complaint, “I wish there was more to it.” But setting that aside, this is a bloody vampire tale with sometimes sympathetic monsters and lots of rough sex between consenting guys. I give Liam 4 stars, and would recommend it to fans of Anne Rice’s work who wish Lestat could have had a hot romantic relationship with a hotter, prettier clone of himself. So, like 200% more hot sex and maybe two-thirds less existential blues and self-pity. And that’s not a bad combination for me.

Book review The Famly: Liam by K.V. Taylor

The Family: Liam is the second novel I’ve read from KV Taylor, though I’ve also read a few of her short stories and a lot of her paranormal and supernatural romances under the pen name Katey Hawthorne. In this new series, the central monsters are vampires, something like a cross between Anne Rice and John Lindqvist.

The main character Liam is a bi-curious college student who thinks he’s straight until he catches the attention of his dorm roommate Gianni. Gianni is everything Liam isn’t, sophisticated, spoiled, and self-assured, while Liam is an emotionally wounded farmer’s kid who sill isn’t sure what he wants to be. But once Gianni has taken an interest in him, his course is set to become a monster as ruthless as Gianni.

I like all the characters, even the bit characters like James, Madison and Aldo. I very much liked the kind of vampires covered in this story, and the romantic scenes were certainly attention grabbing. Liam’s swift change raises him to delirious happiness, but his positive outlook doesn’t last long before he begins to question what he’s becoming. He rejects Gianni rather harshly and returns to his family, and there he learns that he can’t really go home before Gianni arrives to take him back.

There’s some other stuff that happens after this point, but the story seems to walk away from a major plot point and never comes back to it. I can’t say what without spoiling it, but once this seeming threat is introduced, the story wanders off in a different direction, and there’s only a few fleeting references made to it again.

I know this is a first book in a series, but the ending left me feeling like there should have been another hundred pages or so. There’s a couple of introductions of conflicts, but only one of these gets resolved. The other much bigger conflict is left hanging, and I felt like sputtering, “But…but what about Aldo?” And for that matter, I wonder if book two will get back around to Madison. I rather liked her. But even if it doesn’t, I wanted to know more about this other mysterious faction of vampires that are running a cult in the middle of nowhere.

Overall I liked the characters, but I felt like story was all ramp and no jump. I liked the ride, and I’ll be looking for the next book in the series. It is a small kind of complaint, “I wish there was more to it.” But setting that aside, this is a bloody vampire tale with sometimes sympathetic monsters and lots of rough sex between consenting guys. I give Liam 4 stars, and would recommend it to fans of Anne Rice’s work who wish Lestat could have had a hot romantic relationship with a hotter, prettier clone of himself. So, like 200% more hot sex and maybe two-thirds less existential blues and self-pity. And that’s not a bad combination for me.

Getting awfully quiet round here…

You’d almost think something dire was going on, but actually, it’s been a pretty good month, all things considered. I’m in the midst of writing a romance novel, which I’ll ramble about here in a moment. I have to admit, the weather shifts have made concentrating a lot harder. Also, with the daytime weather being warmer, I spend more time on the balcony tending my garden, and of course the puppy needs to be walked. With the afternoons being warmer, we take longer routes around the area, and I think we’ve scouted out every dog park in a two-mile radius.

This is a little hard on my hips and lower back, but I know I need the exercise, so I just slip on my headphones, get lost in the music, and let my mind wander. Sometimes I think about stories I still want to write, and sometimes I think about the books I’m reading from other people. And sometimes I just watch other people and wonder what their stories are like.

I’ve been trying to read my manga too, with limited success. Part of my problem in picking up Italian is, I’m rarely outside of the house, and I only talk to hubby, who reverts to English whenever he’s home. It’s weird how I can get the gist of conversations I hear, but I can’t speak or write the language very well. Reading is extremely challenging because it seems I’ve only just begun when I get a kind of pop in my brain, and then I’m mentally fatigued and in need of a nap.

Writing doesn’t do this to me, but I get get the same mental fatigue when I’m editing. It’s like writing takes place in an undamaged part of my brain, and learning or working on recalling the myriad rules of grammar and style taxes part of my brain where I’ve got plaque scars.

Anywho, reading for pleasure doesn’t do this to me either, but I read to “study” other books and I have noticed how that can also tire me quickly. Plus, despite lots of practice, I don’t read any faster. So I actually write books faster than I read them. If it didn’t take so long to edit them, I could probably drop out a story a month.

Speaking of writing, I want to get back around to the romance WIP. I’m up to 48K and although my muse is joking about turning the main character into some kind of supernatural creature in a “shocking” final twist, it’s not a paranormal story. I wanted to make a story with a romantic triangle that didn’t end in a “choose one” plot, and I didn’t want the characters to be mega rich, or all chiseled perfection. While I was at it, I didn’t like “fading to black” to avoid sex. These things are all fine, and I know why they sell well. I just wanted to do a story that didn’t follow those guidelines.

What the muse has turned over is a story about Robert, a plain looking guy who plays D&D with his friends twice a week and works as a game programmer. He’s been in a long-term relationship with a cheerleader he met during his final year at college, and Maria makes Robert feel like the luckiest man in the world. Maria lives in another apartment in the same complex to give Robert space for his “nerdy habits,” and they have a comfortable relationship that makes Robert the envy of his friends, and the object of scorn with Maria’s conservative parents. Robert’s mother isn’t too happy with his choice not to get married or have kids, as Robert and Maria have been together for over three years. But as a couple, they’re still happy to have their own individual habits, even though they share several hobbies.

Then there’s Maria’s sister, Tina, who’s just returned from four years at a private all-girls high school in New York. Tina’s the opposite of her cheerleader sister, being shorter and stockier, and thus less popular. She’s a big fan of black fabric, and she’s a cosplay and comics nerd, allowing her to have a circle of like minded friends. But returning to Texas means losing all of her friends, which is why Maria initially suggests that Tina come to game with Robert’s group. Maria makes the offer to give Tina a place to get away from her parents, and Tina gets along great with all of Robert’s friends. But over time Tina and Robert become more attracted to each other, leading to the start of a romantic triangle.

There’s several subplots working around this main plot, and both the central conflict and the subplots feel realistic to me. Robert’s a faithful guy, while Tina loves her sister and isn’t trying to steal her guy. They try to avoid each other, and Robert tells Maria the reason why immediately. After a few chance reunions, Maria ultimately decides to share Robert with her sister. This has not resolved the relationships yet, and while Robert and Tina aren’t hiding their affection for each other around his friends, the trio unanimously decided not to tell their parents yet. Obviously, that’s going to come out somewhere near the end. The other problem is, Robert’s still not sure about becoming more intimate with Tina, even with Maria giving her permission. To him, it still feels like cheating, and he’s worried about losing Maria even if he can’t deny his growing feelings for Tina. Tina’s conflict is, she has to eventually explain to her parents that she’s dating her sister’s lover, a man they already don’t like to begin with.

Well, anyway, I’m enjoying watching the story play out. It’s something new that I’ve never done before, and this probably means it’s guaranteed to flop. BUT, I want you to witness the majesty of this belly flop. Note the spread-eagle pose, the come-hither smile as the crushing metaphorical waters of failure awaits a high-impact collision with the metaphorical body of naive expectations.

Have I ever mentioned that I once belly flopped off the high dive board at a public pool in Denison? No? Yeah, I was nine at the time, and that high board scared the living shit out of me. So one day, I said, “Screw it, I’m going to climb that ladder and jump off!” So I got up there and just about lost my nerve. But I jumped and spread out my arms, and on the way down I saw the lifeguard waving his arms and doing that slow-mo “Nuh-ooooooooooooo!” And I thought, Aw crap this is gonna—

And it hurt like a motherfucker. Like being slapped by Mom when she was super pissed, but ALL OVER MY BODY. I curled up in a ball, and I learned a valuable lesson that day: that I am a moron who does stupid things. (I swam out on my own and didn’t need a lifeguard, but my body was a bit reddish for half an hour after that.)

The other thing I learned is that flopping hurts. The funny thing is, flopping for real still doesn’t prepare one for soul crushing book flopping. That’s like sending out a message in a bottle, and right when it’s floating out on the glittering horizon, a glimmering speck among sun-lit diamonds in your teary indie eye, that’s when the USS Mainstream cruise-liner runs over the bottle and sinks your little message right to the bottom of the Don’t Give A Shit Ocean. And you cry out, “Why, Mainstream? Why you got to be like that?”

And really, the USS Mainstream never even saw your message, nor did they realize they’d sunk it under their awesome weight. They never even slow down to see what they hit. They’re like, “What is that crazy person on that indie island screaming at us for? Oh never mind, probably trying to sell us a trashy porno novel. Another Martini, Mr. King?”

But you know, I am kind of getting used to the art of the majestic flop. Okay, I don’t live anywhere near the mainstream, but at the end of the day, I write a lot, and I really am doing something different with each experiment. Maybe most of it doesn’t sell. Okay. But hell, I can’t grow as an artist if I’m not willing to branch out and try new methods of telling stories.

Plus, I rambled about this book on Twitter a few times, and there have been a few people who said they’d definitely want to buy this book. Two, actually. But that’s still better than no one, right? Right?

*Sigh* Okay, back to the keyboard. Gotta finish this story this week so I can get to a vacation and some quality reading time.

Book review: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

In what may start a trend for me, I got this book because someone on Twitter commented, “People who read Cassandra Clare, you deserve everything that happens to you.” I’m actually finding lot of music and books based not on rave reviews, but on the snarling outrage of the haters. In this particular case, that hate isn’t just for the story or for the writer, but for EVERYONE who ever picked up this book and liked it. And I’m like “Dayum, that’s some serious hate going on up in there. What the hell did the writer do to earn this kind of rage?” So I bought City of Bones, and I put it fairly high on my TBR pile. I was totally ready to hate this too, seeing as how someone wished doom and gloom upon anyone who liked it.

Now that I’m done, I have to wonder what’s wrong with that poor woman who would wish bad karma on readers for liking this book, because I can’t really find anything offensive about it. I can’t say it blew my mind or that it was the greatest book ever, and there were some parts of the character development that bugged me. Often the later chapters made me roll my eyes for how contrived the plot became, and for the dialogue becoming strained. But there was never an eyelid twitching scene, nor a “throw the book down” moment.

As far as YA goes, I found it to be a nice change of pace. It had third person perspective, and it had a heroine who wasn’t perfectly pretty. The story centers around Clary Fray, a girl who goes to a nightclub with her best friend and witnesses a murder that no one else can see. When she gets home, her mother is acting very strangely, and after having a fight, Clary leaves and goes to hang out with her friend. She meets one of the killers again, Jace, and he tells her that he has to take her to “The Institute” because she can see him, and “Mundanes” aren’t supposed to be able to see Shadowhunters. Clary gets a call from home just before her mother is kidnapped, and when she looks around, Jace has vanished again. So Clary runs home to a trashed apartment and an ugly monster.

When Clary first encounters a demon in her home, she manages through blind luck to kill it herself, and she doesn’t need Jace to act like the hero to jump in and save the day. Also unique is how there was no instant attraction between the hero and heroine. Jace certainly does all the insulting and self-centered bragging that you’d expect from YA male characters, but Clary doesn’t melt over him, nor does she feel like there’s “just something about him.” At one point, she even slaps him for being a jerk, and I was thinking, “Hey, for once, a YA story might break the mold. How novel!”

And then the romantic triangle was briefly thrown in. I say briefly because by the end of the book it’s clear that Jace and Clary will NOT be together, and for good reasons which I will not spoil. (But if they do get together in book two, I might see why some people would be mad.) The other point of the romantic triangle, Simon, is a longtime childhood friend, and the love he feels for Clary is unrequited throughout most of the story. So there wasn’t really a strong romantic angle. Again, not that I mind, and I liked that the main plots were more about finding Clary’s mother and finding out what the big bad guy wanted from her.

One thing I didn’t like is that both Clary and Jace are victims of child abuse, but neither one sees it that way. Jace is treated worse by his father, but in the story it comes out that Clary’s mother is erasing her mind every two years to cripple her. Both Clary and Jace feel badly for the other’s abuse, and yet neither seemed to acknowledge that they’re both victims. Shades of Stockholm syndrome? There’s five books in the series, so I suppose eventually this might be treated with more concern. But it was really bugging me when Clary was telling Jace, “You were abused,” and he’s all, “No, it made me tougher, so it was a good thing.” And at the same time, Clary already knows she was mind-fucked routinely, but that’s somehow different, and she’s able to readily forgive her mother’s monstrous abuses. I just don’t see much difference here. Both parents are kinda douchey.

Then there’s the fact that Clary rarely doesn’t need a dude to help her out. Despite rescuing herself in the first fight, almost every other encounter with baddies, a dude is coming to her rescue. And okay, she throws a dagger at a werewolf and it actually hits the target. But to escape that chase scene, she still has to rely on a dude. Well, two dudes, really….three dudes—NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION! Ahem. Anywho, it got a bit repetitive, to be honest.

And in the final chapters, the dialogue is really bad in places. It’s just struggling too hard to be cool or funny, and it all falls flat for me. Also, the ending is both tragically convenient, with everyone knowing everyone else, and no one at the all-knowing magical agency is aware of all this fuckery. Basically, the Clave is all-knowing when it’s inconvenient for the protagonists, and they know nothing about the antagonists because it’s convenient for the writer. Lazy, lazy, lazy. This really dragged down my enjoyment of the story, and that’s why I’m taking off a star. This book was going so well in the intro and middle, and it turns into a mess near the end.

Having said that, it’s not the worst book I’ve read recently, and I’m always looking for new paranormal series to get into. So while I give City of Bones 3 stars, I can say that I will be getting the next book in the series, City of Ashes. I kind of like Clary, and I’d be interested to see how this fight will escalate in later volumes. Nothing is really resolved in the first book, and the ending is open without being all that positive. Since I don’t see this kind of thing very often, with no happy ending offered, I kind of like it, even if the chapters leading up to it were a bit weaksauce.

So, I’d recommend City of Bones to fans of paranormal fiction looking for a new series to jump into about demon hunters. I’m not normally into this kind of story because the hunters are always cast as the ultimate good guys, but I think that’s what I like here, that the demon hunters are deeply flawed, and that their job in tracking down rogue mystical races isn’t so cut and dried as it is in some other books.

And now this review is getting a bit long, so I’ll shut up and let you decide whether you want to read it or wish doom and bad karma upon me for not hating it vehemently.

Couple of random things…

First, I wanted to mention getting a good review on Rebbie Reviews for The Life and Death of a Sex Doll, and I wanted to thank the reviewer for giving my book a chance. They also bought a copy of Saving Gabriel, so I’ve got my fingers crossed that it works for them too.

I probably shouldn’t, but I want to point out that despite having nothing but glowing reviews, The Life and Death of a Sex Doll still doesn’t move many units. It’s ironic in that I used the term sex doll in the story to convey a certain prejudice again artificial companions, and that people in meat space seem to be opposed to reading this because they see Sex in the title and think “porn.” *Shrug* eh, people are still hung up on sex, I guess.

Moving on, the second thing I want to mention is, Friday, I got a message from a friend on Facebook that my former roommate is now accusing me of stalking someone, and of using their image on one of my book covers. Both of these claims are false. The person he’s talking about, I haven’t looked for or lurked around. I was told to leave them alone roughly ten years ago, and shock of shocks, I did. I do still think of them and miss them sometimes, but I also regret being a bad influence on them, and I don’t long for a reunion. They have their own life to live without my crazy ass making problems for them, and I hope that they’ve since grown up happy and healthy.

I do not have any photos of this person, and all my book covers were made using stock images from Shutterstock, where I have an annual membership to buy five images before I need to pay for a renewal. I would not ever use someone’s image without their permission, and I would NEVER use this person’s image because I respect their privacy.

Around the same time that this stalker thing flared up, I also got a HUGE spike in visitors to my confessions posts. To put this in perspective, I usually get around 39-45 visitors a day here on the main blog, and 5-10 visitors on the mirror. I’m not big on the internet, as you can see. That one day surge went up to 375 on the main blog, and 75 on the mirror.

At first I thought I knew where these were coming from, but the blog I expected to be referring traffic had sent over only two visitors, and the rest, I cannot account for. There’s nothing in my search engine results to explain this spike, and nothing in referring URLs. So it’s kinda freaking me out wondering who all these people are who’ve suddenly taken an interest in viewing the worst details of my old life.

I’m not about to take those posts down, because I feel it’s important to be honest about my past, even if it risks alienating potential readers. I do not feel it’s better to pretend that I’m a good person and hide my past when it’s entirely possible that my past could one day bite me in the ass. Should there come a day when the cops change their minds about prosecuting me, or someone I knew does, I want to at least be able to say, “I never hid this, and I never stopped feeling regret for my past.” It won’t mean much to anyone else, but it’s another part of what keeps me honest and on the path of recovery. It’s my belief that the day I say “I’m a good person” will be the day I start making excuses for my actions, and that will lead to a backslide into old habits. So, best not to go there.

Lastly, I wanted to update numbers for April. As you know, I’m not doing any promotions for my stuff for April and May, so I fully expected April’s numbers to be close to nil. Actually, I sold 18 books, with 17 on Amazon, and 1 on Kobo. Amazon was surprising because I sold multiple copies of my floppiest books, and people didn’t ask for refunds on them. Kobo still isn’t doing so hot, and I won’t get any royalties from them until I hit $100. But I suppose I’ll worry about promoting Kobo more in June. For now, I’d still prefer to stay off the “buy my book” shtick.

And that’s it for now. As always, thank you for your continued support, and for putting up with my crazy ass.

Book review: Witch Way to Turn by Karen Y. Bynum

When I started Witch Way to Turn, I wanted to like it, and to like the main character, Breena Cross. The story is third-person perspective, something I don’t see often enough in YA, and the main character isn’t a virgin, a truly rare trait in a genre that spends a lot of time equating non-virgin status as solely a route for sluts and/or teen villains.

But very early on, the story began falling into a pattern that turned me off from Breena, and then from all of the characters. Once I’d lost my like of them, nothing else clicked for me.

I should mention that there’s nothing wrong with the writing itself. There’s no mechanical errors, nor did I come across any typos. Were I to judge a book solely on the mechanical writing quality, this is a top notch perfect effort.

BUT the first problem remains the biggest for two thirds of the story. Early on, Bree comes home to find her drunk foster father about to rape her younger sister Jenny. Bree suddenly manifests witch powers that stun Stan, and after a short stay with a vampire, Myles, Bree is kicked out of the house by her foster mother, Norma.

So far no problem…except from this moment forward the story runs on an infuriating pattern. Bree thinks, I have to worry about Jenny, who is living with an abusive foster mother and foster sister, and a potential rapist foster father. AND YET, whenever Myles or Orin appear in the story, all she can think is Ooh, hot guy. Maybe I can get some. I only wish I was exaggerating about how often this happens, but seriously, it’s the MAIN CONFLICT for two thirds of the book. The first few times this happened, I had to put the book down for several weeks because I wasn’t sure I could handle this. And having finished the book, I sometimes wish I’d just stopped back around chapter 12 and given up.

This is the biggest problem I had, but the story is littered with problems. The writer seems to be bound and determined to give the reader NOTHING about the plot until the final 20% of the book, and when the answers for what’s going on come out, I spent every other page alternating between shouting “Are you kidding me?” and various multi-chained cuss words. Nothing about this story is worth the time I invested in it. The world building is lazy and sloppy. The side characters are cardboard cutouts, and the dialogue bounces between vaguely serviceable and “dear God, they didn’t really say that out loud, did they?” The resolution of the main conflict is dreadful, and the subplots are handled just as poorly. Oh, and of course everything is left open-ended for a sequel.

I really cannot say how much I hated that Bree’s concerns for the safety of Jenny, and indeed, even for her own life, always took a back seat to “which hot guy should I fall in love with?” I know romantic triangles are a staple of romance, and sometimes they work fine. But the triangle is handled badly here, and both boy toys are sad wish fulfillment for a female Harry Potter, a “chosen one” who does absolutely nothing right, so the bad guy shows up at the end of the book to monologue and explain all the clues she missed. But unlike Harry Potter, NOTHING is truly resolved. This book might as well be subtitled Episode 1. But for sure, I’m not interested in bothering with whatever comes next. This story was handled so badly, I’d be hard pressed to read anything else from the author.

For these reasons I give Witch Way to Turn 1 star, and I would not recommend it to anyone. I really wish I’d dropped this sooner and moved on to books that didn’t try my patience with every single chapter.

Random April updates

So, I know blog posts are slowing down, and you’re all wondering, “Bitch, what are you plotting now?” Well I’ve been kind of busy. Last week I finished a new novel, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. It’s the first book in a spin-off series that will follow up on what happens to Alice Culpepper after the events in the final Peter the Wolf novel, Thicker Than Blood. (Which releases in June, by the way.) I’m working on the edits for Thicker Than Blood, and I’m also writing a non-paranormal romance novel, Third Wheel Romance Blues. Once I finish editing one book, I have to start editing the sequel to A Boy and His Dawg, a much darker story called Fangs, Humans, and Other Perils of Night Life, which will be released in July.

I also got interviewed by Rebecca Scarberry. So if you haven’t seen that yet on Twitter, go ahead and take a look.

I’m taking a two month break from promotions on Twitter, but it’s not done much for my nightmares problem. I’m now going on two straight months with no relief, and nothing I do seems to help get rid of the nightmares. Dropping promotions has helped to reduce my stress levels, and while my sales are kind of suffering for it, they didn’t die off completely. So there is that.

Plus, I sold copies of my flops, Bran of Greenwood and the Scary Fairy Princess, A Bard’s Tale, and Mmmm…Crunchy! And even more shocking, no one asked for refunds…on those titles, that is. Almost everything I sold in the UK Kindle store this month was returned. Which is a little depressing. I haven’t had this many refund requests before, and it’s not even the offensive books being returned. So I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe the straight readers got offended reading about trans and gay main characters. *Shrug*

Anyway, despite the slower sales and there being no improvement with my nightmare problem, I’m still not going to do any promotions for May. I really do need a break, and June will be hard enough on me when I have to start promoting Thicker Than Blood and the rest of the Peter the Wolf series. I just hope to have enough other projects done so I can devote most of my energy to the promotion push instead of dividing my time between writing, editing and selling.

And…I think that’s it for now. Along with everything else I’m doing, I’m also trying to catch up on my reading, and I’m starting my balcony garden again. I want to do another another video game review, but the last 3 Vita games I bought, I hated so bad, I dropped them too early to give a fair assessment of the games. But at least I’ll have some new book reviews relatively soonish.

Oh, right, thank you to everyone who bought books this month and didn’t get a refund. Really appreciate your continued support.

Short story review: Itsy Bitsy by John A. Lindqvist

Itsy Bitsy is a pretty compact short story, but the file I got looked longer because it has preview chapters for Handling the Undead and Harbour, both of which I’ve already read.

The premise is that a paparazzi is waiting for a couple to appear at a private swimming pool so he can take a photo of their romantic rendezvous and make big bucks. Only, the pictures he takes aren’t what he expected.

In some ways, it left me wanting more of everything. Lindqvist’s work is normally full of great visual details, but this is more sparse. There’s not as much creepiness here as in his full novels either, just a hint of something supernatural before the ride is over. It’s like a roller coaster that goes up and down one hill, and then pulls back into the station. It begs the question, “Where’s the rest of the ride?”

I can’t say I disliked it, but I really did wish for more. More detail, more information on the ending, and more of chance to be scared. So I give this 3 stars. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely not Lindqvist’s best writing.