Kasey Shoemaker's Blog, page 2

Something Funny

All right, I'll admit that the regular posting of something humorous got a bit stalled shortly after it got started. But, I'm here to with another dose of humor only us writers could truly enjoy.

Happily searching the internet, I found this little joke. Enjoy!

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

"Oh my," said the writer. "Let me see heaven now."

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

"Wait a minute," said the writer. "This is just as bad as hell!"

"Oh no, it's not," replied an unseen voice. "Here, your work gets published."

A Dose of Funny (1)

A new feature of my website is the joke of the week. Every once in a while, I'll post a writer's joke and its source for your amusement, so be sure to check back often!

This week's joke is from a site I happily stumbled upon.

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer. When asked to define great, he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!" He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

Joke of the Week

A new feature of my website is the joke of the week. Once a week, I'll post a writer's joke and its source for your amusement, so be sure to check back often!

This week's joke is from a site I happily stumbled upon.

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.

When asked to define great, he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!"

He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

One Liners

Progress on Silver Heat, the next in the Silver series, is coming along well. The outline looks good, several plot points have intricately woven themselves together for a happy narrative, and key scenes have been fleshed out. But, my happiest victory of late is the fact that I've constructed the all-important first sentence. I don't jump into a fist sentence haphazardly. I usually wait until I'm better acquainted with the story. I prefer to know exactly how the opening scene is going to unfold before I wring my hands over that first phrase.

The thing I love about constructing the first few paragraphs of chapter one is that it's accompanied by that optimistic enthusiasm that I will actually keep these sentences, that I won't find myself toiling over them and rewriting them dozens of times. It's refreshing, like a great first date when you can think the person is nearly flawless.

While I don't tend to judge a book by its first line or even its first chapter, here are some recent favorites:

"The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it's also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl."

- Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

-Stephen King

The Gunslinger

"You bitch, you killed me. You suck!"

-Christopher Moore

You Suck: A Love Story

I'd love it if you'd share your favorite first lines with me.

Book Review- Phoenix Rising

Phoenix Rising by Philippa Ballantine


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fantastic gender bender

It's about time! This book has a great combination of the hiss and gurgle of complex steam punk gadgets and a fantasy mystery. Books and Braun are a great mismatched pair. I referenced purchasing this book in my blog http://kaseyshoemaker.com/?p=261 because I had sadly dragged my disappointed self through another overly sexed urban fantasy where the main character ended up raped. It was awful, and I was more than a little offended to realize that it was a pattern. On my blog, I ranted about the state of the female hero in modern literature. In a huff, I grabbed my purse and headed to the nearest bookstore hoping for the genre to redeem itself in my eyes. When I picked up this novel, I was delighted at the gender-bender tale and amused that Eliza Braun, the "explosive" field agent wore a bulletproof corset. Princess Leia would have been proud to have her join the sisterhood. Books, is proper in that kind of sexy-but-doesn't-know-it way. And, his resourcefulness and quick thinking made him an equal partner for Braun.

My only complaint about this book is that I couldn't shake the feeling that the publishing company rushed the release. It had a distinctly unpolished feel, which was glaring against the beautiful Victorian wit. Other than that, I would highly recommend this read, especially if you appreciate the type of sharp-tongued banter that can be enjoyed in any Sherlock Holmes tale.






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Book Review- Moon Called

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Let me start by saying that what the Mercy Thompson series has done for urban fantasy has been nothing short of amazing. The protagonist, Mercy, is everything I love about heroines in fantasy. I almost didn't buy any books in the series in spite of Amazon's constant recommendations because the covers, showing a scantily clad and inconsistently tattooed female character, made me think it was like so many other fantasy books. It is not! Mercy is a strong, opinionated VW mechanic who spends more time covered in grease than she does showing off her assets. But, more interesting is that she is a "walker." She can transform into a coyote at will and is resistant to most magic.

At the beginning of the book, the reader learns immediately that Mercy, who is not motivated by vigilante justice or anything more glamorous or complicated than a good, kind heart, can get herself into trouble with her actions as easily as she can get her friends out of it. She begins by trying to help a young guy, practically a kid, who has been turned into a werewolf against his will. Having grown up in the most prominent packs in the area and having an Alpha as her neighbor, she knows a bit about this world, and she intends to help him learn to control his wolf.

While the stories in this series are great and full of adventure, I keep turning the pages for the characters. Stefan is an old, strong vampire who drives a VW bus made to look like the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine. Samuel is a werewolf and Mercy's old flame. Adam is the Alpha werewolf of the Tri-Cities pack, Mercy's neighbor, and eternally patient potential love interest.






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Book Review- Blood Bound

Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Mercy Thompson series continues! Blood Bound starts off with a suspenseful, bloody, and more than a little twisted scene between Mercy, Stefan (a vampire to whom she owes a favor), and a vampire controlled by a demon. Awesome. In this installment, the reader gets a more detailed and satisfyingly dark peek inside the vampire seethe, which is equipped with a sadistic truth-telling chair.

One of the great things about Blood Bound is that it spends a little more time on character development. The loving relationship between Kyle and Warren is bought to the forefront when Kyle, a human, learns about Warren being a werewolf. Also, the Mercy, Samuel, Adam love triangle becomes a square, so to speak, with the revelation that Stefan also has feelings for her. This story is not the typical fantasy tale where a strong, sexy main character suddenly has multiple men falling all over her, killing for her, and fighting for her. No. While the additional love interests for Mercy provide confusion for her and conflicting emotions, it's not the kind of plot element that was thrown in when some attractive guy inadvertently crossed paths with the heroine or when a guy who is so obviously bad for the female character that the reader loses respect for her. In the case of this series, these are friends who have a long, murky history together where love has developed over shared adventure and shared tragedy. It's far more realistic and more satisfying for the reader.






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Book Review- Iron Kissed

Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Iron Kissed focuses mainly on the Fae, and for me, it was about time. Up until this book, the Fae were mentioned in passing but given little to no attention. The set-up for this plot element is that Mercy needs a distraction from the tension caused by her inability to choose between Adam and Samuel. At the beginning of the book, her best friends tell her she has to pick one of them. The reader has been thinking the same thing for about 500 pages. However, the added complications are that Samuel is living with her, and her unresponsiveness to Adam's advances has created problems in his pack. What's a shape-shifting, VW mechanic to do? The answer is that she comes to the aid of yet another friend who needs help investigating a series of murders on the Fae reservation. And, as a Mercy Thompson reader would expect at this point, chaos ensues.





The end of this book is dark and tragic. But, the event brings the pack together, and Mercy learns a great deal about her friends and on whom she will always be able to rely. Honestly, at the end of this book, I wasn't happy with the turn of events. However, I realized that the writer had evolved the series from a bunch of books where the characters embark on one adventure after another to one group of interconnected stories with increasing depth of character and relationships. It truly became a series for me after this book. Sometimes, the tragedy has value, as hard as it is for the reader to endure it.








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Book Review- Bone Crossed

Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't get enough of Mercy Thompson! At the beginning of this series, Adam, the Alpha of the Tri-Cities pack, needed rescue. As the story developed, Adam was in competition for Mercy with another, older werewolf, the son of the Marrok. But, this book shows the reader why he's the Alpha and why he's Mercy's choice.

In this book, there are more problems with vampires when an old friend of Mercy's and her precocious and vulnerable little boy caught in the middle of the mess. Also, Bone Crossed revisits the events at the end of Iron Kissed. Traumatized Mercy must find a way to heal herself and her relationship with Adam, and it isn't easy. But, as always, Mercy has good friends to help.






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Book Review- Silver Borne

Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is by far my favorite book in the Mercy Thompson series. Returning a borrowed book should be easy, right? Well, it's far from easy in the world of Patricia Briggs. The premise of the book is that Mercy needs to return a very special book about the Fae. However, the more significant plot element is the developing relationship between Mercy and Adam, how it affects the pack, and the toll it takes on poor Samuel. From the beginning of the series, Samuel has been a sympathetic character, and old wolf, who wanted nothing more than to have a family. He lost Mercy when she was only a teenager and then once again to Adam. He's been a doctor for hundreds of years, and, simply put, is weary of the world. He takes drastic steps to end his pain, causing his wolf to take over.

Also throughout the story, Adam's pack, or rather some of the pack, has issues with Mercy's involvement with Adam, and they take action. Pack power struggles and battles for dominance take center stage here as Adam is forced to defend his position as Alpha. And once that's settled, Mercy, again motivated by friendship, finds herself in another dangerous mess facing off against the Fairy Queen. During the climatic scene where Mercy is trapped in the Queen's realm alone with no hope of escape, the reader is treated to a brilliantly depicted visualization of the pack and its bonds. After reading so many hundreds of pages about the pack bonds and how the energy flows between them, I was thrilled to have this succinct and beautiful scene that explains them so clearly. This book has definitely gone on my to-re-read list.






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