Sarah Scheele's Blog, page 31

And The Sorting Goes On

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With Thanksgiving out of the way, I can finally admit I’ve been thinking about Christmas for some time. It’s so much better of a holiday. Our tree is up, our gifts are wrapped, our carols are playing, and our candles are burning. Andrea gave us all small T-candles last year themed on classic books. So we’ve got the scents of “Wood Between the Worlds,” “A Walk to Netherfield,” and “Marilla’s Kitchen” to accompany our activities. In practical terms that’s the scents of musty ferns, old lady’s bathroom, and boiled apples.
The candles got me sorting books—classics, new ones, and even my own publications. I’ve read a lot of great new books this year (got to put up a list sometime) and the classics—well, I’ll get to that in a minute.The Birthday Present/Millhaven Castle has a new cover (see above) and is now officially a teaser for upcoming The Prince’s Ball. Since I don’t need extra Milland stories floating around, Alyce has been discontinued and the older purple Facets containing a different Millhaven Castle version will soon follow.City of the Invaders will be back on Kindle and coming to paperback soon, and Consuela is in the process of a complete rewrite that gives it a French Revolution backdrop and a lovely new cover.Victoria’s still around (this story’s always been special to me) but it means less than it used to and is slipping to the back.Facets of Fantasy cover is getting tweaked slightly (less of that vile green and more ice-gray) and Halogen Crossing has replaced the Taranui/Invaders story in it. Sci-fi, especially near-futuristic, is so different from fantasy that no one interested in Taranui/Invaders would pick it up in a volume that said ‘fantasy” on it.I’m digging back into my old notes and extras for American Homeschooler and am considering working on it. It feels a bit dated (almost 8 years old) but with some updates it could maybe come to print soon. It was always one of my most popular stories.Lexie-and-Petra is still being drafted, although I’ve taken off from it to put all my other books in order. As for classics—
LWW, Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy—ditch. Now there’s a surprise, there was a time when I lived in that book. But then, that was 20 years ago. Voyage of the Dawn Treader—not sure what’s up with this one.

The Secret Garden—in. I love all versions, although the 90s one doesn’t quite have the same tone. A Little Princess—out. I don’t know what I ever saw in this tedious, slow-paced tale of a young girl’s misery.

Oscar Wilde—out. I’ve always loved his humor about pompous, complacent people, but recently his literary presence has a morbid tone. I know, he did write Salome, but there’s a lot more to him—well, apparently not anymore

Reexamining The Pickwick Papers as I work on Consuela, not sure if I still like it. Our Mutual Friend—OUT, OUT, OUT. Am considering digging into The Old Curiosity Shop.

The Hobbit back in—I read it one time as a child and thought it was boring and silly. But it’s grown on me. Two lovely old hardcover B&N volumes of FOTR and TTT are locked up in the attic. Something about those white covers drives me nuts. But I have two tiny old paperbacks, the ones I grew up on, and I do keep them around.

Shakespeare is mostly out the window. There’s barely such a thing as “Shakespeare” in the old sense because the plays are for such different people. I do still like Much Ado About Nothing (the 90s movie—the play less) and As You Like It and Henry V. When my dad was fanatically into Henry V, I got more than a little tired of it. So I’m puzzled as to why it’s still here.
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I can’t seem to get rid of Sherlock. I think it’s extremely dull and a bit ridiculous. I haven’t enjoyed any episode I’ve ever seen of it and Benedict Cumberbatch mildly gets on my nerves. I have an Oxford magnet from Europe that seems to be the same sort of thing and I can’t GET RID OF IT. I tried and it CAME BACK. (Kind of like Hulk when he tried to kill himself.)  . . .
And there will be more updates.

MOVIE REVIEW: 94 FEET

Rating: G
Available at 94 Feet – DVD
I found this and other great Christian Movies here!

This drama about the personal and spiritual lives of a close-knit mining crew in the dying blue-collar town of St. Michaels gradually drew me in. At least 3 miners die when a terrible accident strands them in the mine for days. The hero, Chris Rossi, learns to face his own doubts about spiritual reality and the place of suffering in God’s plan. Chris emerges empowered, able to bond with a man he believed to be his enemy and to bring comfort to the morally troubled wife of his own best friend.  

Pros: Entertainment has often fallen short when showing blue-collar people. I felt 94 Feet did a really good job. The characters appeared realistically penny-pinching and shabby, their homes serviceable but lacking in luxuries, their equipment old and dinged-up, and their hours long and hard. I thought the small town scene was well-portrayed. 

Cons: There were a lot of loose threads at the end. We weren’t told if Michael would keep his job—he had been laid off early in the movie, but he was still around in the final scene. Chris learned that one man knew of his wife’s constant infidelity, choosing to love her anyway. But he didn’t tell the wife that her husband had always known, making assurance she was still loved have much less punch. Chris also needed to tell a teenage girl whose father died that she would live with her grandmother—we didn’t see this! Instead there were many very long prayers and Bible verse quoting. Praying and verses are great. But there were many and it hampered the action.

This movie would probably interest men and woman equally. Check it and other Christian Movies out at 94 Feet – DVD

AN EXCITING PROJECT (THE ASB)

A couple of months ago I signed up to help promote a new study guide for African Christians. We are doing a Kickstarter Campaign throughout Tyndale’s blog network, and over the next week I’ll be tweeting about it as well, so if you follow me on twitter, feel free to retweet and share the news! And of course, you can contribute to the campaign yourself. Visit it here at  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816907898/launching-the-africa-study-bible to put in a small donation (or a big one, your choice!) Almost $8000 have been raised so far, but there's still plenty of room for your donations, with about a month still to go in the campaign.

There is a list of incentives and prizes on the donation page. They range from a simple social media thank you shoutout for a $5 donation to a trip to Kenya for a $10,000 dollar donation—and everything in between, which is where you might be. :P But you don’t really need any of that to participate, do you? This project is its own excuse for being.

But why is this book even necessary, you ask? Well, millions of Africans know and love Christ, but God’s word can be hard to apply to their daily lives because nearly every study Bible is written from the viewpoint of the United States or the UK. Africans have different experiences. They have lacked a resource that connects with their lives, making it hard for them to be nurtured. I was very excited to tell you how you can be involved in this project to print 100,000 study guides. 100,000 bibles is a drop in bucket compared to the millions of African Christians, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Dr. Matthew Elliott, the president of Oasis, which publishes the ASB, has this to say about it:  “With the ASB, we’re bringing the power of Scripture to Africa in a new and culturally relevant way . . . we’ve brought together 350 writers and editors from over 40 African countries, representing 50 denominations. This is an unprecedented project that will impact the global church. We already know of more than 100 million people in denominations and movements in Africa whose leaders want to use the ASB for discipleship.” 

Pretty exciting, huh? The ASB uses the New Living Translation and includes 2,400 plus features such as application notes, stories and proverbs, touchpoints that link Africa and the Bible, notes that explain basic theology, and major theme articles that apply the Bible to key issues. To see videos of people involved with the project (and more) visit www.oasisint.net

And don’t forget to donate! This project is about the spiritual future of Africa and the spiritual health of Africa today. It is for all generations and will have impact long beyond your lifetime. I can’t think of anything more important. Can you? :)

THE RELUCTANT DUCHESS BY ROSEANNA M. WHITE

It took me awhile to get into this book, but when I did I found it a pretty interesting read. It’s the second in an Edwardian series about intrigues among lords and ladies over an immensely valuable set of red diamonds called the Fire Eyes. Many people, including the villainous Catherine Pratt and her brother Lord Rutherford, are obsessed with these jewels and constantly commit murders and thefts in an effort to get them. However, most of this second book was about a Scottish girl from a hostile and backward family, who is raped by her boyfriend, which forces her harsh and unloving father to set her up with a complete stranger, a British lord who doesn’t particularly like her. The jewel plot was secondary and at times a little confusing, especially since I didn’t read the first book.

The romance was okay—not too lavish, but not boring either—and the genteel set of upper-crust British people was amusing to read about. I was torn about the heroine, Rowena, because I wanted to like and feel sorry for her but sometimes she was honestly just very, very stupid. For instance, she felt her ex-boyfriend was pleasant and charming and listened to her prior to the rape, at which time he turned on her and became an abusive whacko who raped her for fun and then wanted to marry and beat her up. I couldn’t help but feel other people suspected he wasn’t very nice, but she didn’t notice any warning signs. She experienced a lot of post-rape trauma and fear of men, partly because she could never seem to figure out that men are not all the same and was now absolutely paranoid! This led to nightmares as well as poor decision-making in which she continually misjudged the well-meaning British lord her husband while trusting the obviously bad Lady Pratt. She kind of brought some things on herself through dim-wittedness, especially after the plot moved away from Scotland and into England. However, I was glad she and Lord Nottingham had a happy ending and he agreed to protect her and take care of her baby. I wouldn’t mind reading the next book in the series.

I was given this book by Bethany in exchange for my honest opinion.

LIVE FREE, AN ADULT COLORING BOOK BY MARGARET FEINBERG

When I saw this advertised as a possible book to review, I was curious and decided to test it out. Apparently adult coloring books are the new craze. They’re absolutely everywhere, from craft and gift shops to grocery check-out aisles. Hey, even Justin Bieber has thrown his pencil into the ring. But most of the books don’t have a real message of any kind, which leads to vague, feel-goody swirls and pages full of monotonous daisies. This Christian-based book uses a Bible verse for each picture. This gave the designs a focus so they were much prettier and seemed to be about something. 


I’ve spent Sunday afternoons for approx. the last two months coloring in the designs in the book and though it might not be all it’s cracked up to be, the coloring is very relaxing and the finished pictures are pretty. The book has 20 pictures, each accompanied by a Bible verse and the opposite page can be used for journaling and scripture memorization. 
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I haven’t colored all the pictures yet, but I thought the book was fun so far. It didn’t really help me memorize any verses (probably because I didn’t use the journaling function) but it helped me focus my thoughts on situations that were bothering me and work through them. Margaret Feinberg, the book’s author, was recently named one of the 50 women most shaping the church by Christianity Today. I don’t know exactly what that means! But I do know the coloring book is unusually nice, and the pics are quite good. I got it free, but there are more in the series and if they’re like this one they’re worth the money. 
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I was given this book by Bethany in exchange for my honest review.

SAMANTHA SANDERSON: WITHOUT A TRACE BY ROBIN CAROLL

This middle-grade mystery (the fourth in a series about the tween amateur sleuth Samantha Sanderson) wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Overall, I’d call it a disappointment. The characters were a little stylized. Samantha is the typical pronounced over-achiever presented as a role model, with up-tempo school involvement, adult-level social and reasoning skills, a tight set of friends, and the perfect set of high-achieving-wonderfully-compatible parents. (In this case a detective and a famous journalist.) The story overall— about the apparent kidnapping of a boy from school, solved by the very curious young Samantha—was okayish. Not special—but okay.

 Several times a website on which sexual predators prowled for kids was mentioned and at one time the girls believed they might be chatting with such a person when they hacked into the missing boy’s account. The topic wasn’t really explored, giving a different tone to the book without producing much benefit. Plus, an adult character turned out to have a secret, elaborate “panic” room in his home, fitted out with TVs and computers. The man had kept knowledge of the room from his family, and his wife’s reactions seemed more in line with finding mountains of illicit sexual material than a storm shelter hidden for some very weird reason. As it was, this plot angle was simply silly and really awkward.

 So I’d pass on this book. Just not very special, with one or two flaws. There’s a lot of books in the series though, so maybe I just got a weak one.

FLIRTATION WALK BY SIRI MITCHELL

This was a nice Christian novel— a wholesome romance, a good message, and some comedy. Mitchell is one of the most accomplished practitioners of the pastel-historical genre and her hefty amounts of research only add to the pretty illusion she creates. But she’s also a very skilled author. Flirtation Walk was complex and loaded with characters and detail. The faith message was well-presented. The overall moral that a life of selfishness doesn’t pay and that honesty and compassion for others really lead to one’s own happiness was well-developed.

The heroine was very unlikable. Mitchell describes herself as a character-driven author, and Lucinda’s moral growth and development was the main thrust of the book. Without her flaws, she couldn’t have learned any lessons and changed her ways. Lucinda begins the book cold, selfish and conceited—proud of helping her swindler father and determined to prey on her “nice” relatives now her father has died. But in the end she learns self-sacrifice and honesty, and is much more fulfilled not only as a person, but as a Christian.

A warning—Lucinda and Seth’s POVs were BOTH in first person and switched constantly back and forth. And almost all the hero’s many chapters were extremely boring. Repeat very boring. Repeat extremely, extremely, extremely boring. Lucinda’s chapters had much more drive. I skimmed endless interactions between Seth and his three friends at West Point as the guys tried to help Seth fail at his classes and get demoted. They got a touch more interesting towards the end when they engaged in a clever plot, but mostly the guys all seemed to have the same personality. Still, I enjoyed the book.

I was given this book by Bethany in exchange for my honest opinion.

A FOOL AND HIS MONET BY SANDRA ORCHARD

At first I thought I wasn’t going to receive this book. It was on the Revell March blog tour and arrived late (10th, I think.) That didn’t give me much time to read it, but I’m glad I was able to review the book after all. On the surface it’s just a light mystery with some comedy in it, about a clumsy and slightly harebrained woman who has joined the FBI Art Crime Team. But there must be something else in there, because it was one of the review books I’ve most enjoyed reading. In fact, although the middle is a little rambling and the style rather brisk—leading to confusion if you’re reading in a hurry—I’d like to reread it. No offense to the marvelously talented writers out there, but I rarely want to go twice through anything that’s sent to me for review!

There wasn’t much plot. Serena Jones drifted around St. Louis, trying to track down two paintings stolen from a local museum where her friend Zoe works. Serena, who is clueless in all senses of the word, endlessly interviews (with often amusing incidents and lack of success) everyone who worked in the museum, and constantly makes some embarrassing mistakes as she can’t figure out the perpetrators. Large areas of light side plot involve her friendship with two men—the hunkier-than-is-realistic man who runs her apartment complex, and the snarky, witty FBI agent who trained her and now babysits her. I found the agent, Tanner, a more entertaining character, largely because he often said the things I wanted to say. Readers can vote for which guy Serena ends up with, although I don’t think she’s particularly suited to either of them. Her parents and her elderly aunt also add a lot of action—her aunt actually helps solve the mystery.

I was a little surprised by the one of the perpetrators and I felt the character was—peculiar, at best. Maybe even unreal or maybe the motivations just weren’t spelled out enough. The mystery is solved at the end but A Fool and His Monet seems to be the first volume in a long novel rather than an individual mystery book. Orchard’s first series, Port Aster, also seemed to be a 3-volume novel rather than three loosely connected stories as is the case with many mysteries. So I’m sure Serena’s adventures are far from over.

I was given this book by Revell in exchange for my honest opinion.

KEEPING UP WITH ME

It's been awhile since I last gave a progress report, so here's what's up with me and here's what's brewing.

Facets of Fantasy was re-released under the title Facets of Fantasy: A Collection. It is available in ebook and print. One of my main goals in doing this edition was to give the book the cover it deserves. The two previous covers didn't capture the book's personality. Aside from the cover, the main changes are the omission of "Halogen Crossing" and the addition of the "Works of Glassware," to accompany "The Trouble with Taranui." I had planned to retire Taranui because Frank and Katia are in the original Alyce novel. But as I examined the story, I realized their literal names were the only problem. I changed them to Darren and Carina Fierten and voila! City of the Invaders (now back to its original Taranui title) is the headline story for the collection.

I now have 4 books released in both print and ebook, with "Alyce" still remaining as a Kindle only ebook. Covers, editing, design, marketing--for so many books in such a short time--has really been a whirlwind. Using various promotion tools has given me a chance to compare the different books in terms of their popularity and what kind of popularity it is.) Things can be quirky. Sometimes a book gets a few great reviews, yet stagnates. The Test of Devotion has currently sold more copies in ebook than anything I've published, even though its only review is negative. Go figure. I've been doing exactly that--figuring it out.

Ryan and Essie has a new cover in the works. I don't have a draft of it yet, but I promise you it will be lovely. And The Prince's Ball is being edited. There's so much wonderful content in it that I'm really ashamed of myself for ever leaving any of it out. In any case, I haven't looked at the later chapters in 10 years, so I'm enjoying it as much as I hope you will in a month or so. I'm planning on early April. The Miniature Hamlet will be put in the back of The Prince's Ball as a bonus feature.

See you in a month or so and keep reading those reviews.

ALWAYS WATCHING BY LYNETTE EASON

Always Watching was a fast-paced, slick book but in spite of that it was rather boring. That’s hard to believe when the story involves a mentally ill woman stalking a radio show host while a team of beautiful women bodyguards and dashing cops and crime specialists protect him. But my overall reaction was neutral rather than thrilled. I’d expected the plot of a woman (from a squad of all-female bodyguards, no less) protecting a man would be exciting and extreme—possibly even silly.  But it wasn’t at all. It was bland and quiet, a good read for a long airplane flight or afternoons waiting in a medical office.

I’d thought the hero, Wade, would be a dweeby wuss—after all, what sort of a man sits around being vulnerable while a beautiful blonde woman has wild protective instincts about him?! I was surprised that he was my favorite character. He was a sensible, ordinary sort of man, embarrassed by the idea of having women protect him. He hadn’t even hired the bodyguards (his father had), and was not able to handle his stupid, spoiled tween daughter, also a realistic touch. I really wanted to shake that little brat, she repeatedly almost got herself or her dad killed. However Olivia, the heroine, and the other characters didn’t really stick out.

The book is a suspense drama, with very little romance. This was good because Wade’s personal life was kind of unbelievable. First he married his high school sweetheart, a spoiled greedy vixen who drank and hated their kid; then, with no affection or attraction, he considered marrying a career woman for business and to further both of their social lives; then he finally was interested in Olivia, a bodyguard with strong feelings and a tragic past. What the heck IS this man’s type?! I couldn’t BELIEVE he would be attracted to all these women. Actually, I couldn’t believe he’d be attracted to any of them. So I would suggest reading this book only for the suspense angle. The romance can be overlooked.

I was given this book by Revell in exchange for my honest review.