C.L. Causer's Blog, page 13

True Blood

I've read the books, which I loved, and I've watched the television programming, which was good, but not great, and I think that is the usual way of adaptions. But there was one relationship that I loved that wasn't in the books.   The relationship between Hoyt and Jessica is brilliant (in season three not four) it's  probably one of my favourite relationship in any new TV series. The reason I'm telling you this, is I'm watching the show for the first time in ages. 

Strange Days

Saturdays are the days we usually say goodbye to the hotels guest for the week. The three two-weekers went home this morning (which I was glad for as they were a lot of work) and I was knackered. We still have people in, but I don't have to deal with them ones. 
Just like the past couple of days, I've been tirelessly promoting Power Within, so I sat down to start this morning. Instead of staying in the windowless office I tried the conservatory. Stupid idea really as the Internet wont stretch as far as there. And I also had this problem - 

Say hello to my laptop hogger. After a quick visit in town, primarily to pick up The Thing DVD, I re-started work...for about ten seconds. Then my sister, the resident artist, asked me to do something do to with her new art project. This is what I ended up looking like. 

I'm still pulling plaster out of my hair. Anyway, so after the shower it I managed to get maybe 10 minutes of work done before we had to take Norman to the vets. No, it's not the butterfly. Norman is my sister's rabbit who at the moment has a bad eye. Hopefully the antibiotics will do it's job otherwise Norman will lose it. Fingers crossed. Here's Norman and his poorly eye - 

So here I am now. Watching Aliens and having a cuppa. It's been a long day. 

1st Month

So it's been one month since my first book, Power Within, was released on Amazon (Link Here) and I had to restrain myself from looking everyday to see if anyone had bought it. I failed twice, but my reserve held out.   Looking yesterday I saw 21 people had bought it. Not much in the grand scheme of things but as I didn't do any advertising or promoting, and the book bloggers who have graciously volunteered there time to review my book are still pending, I don't think 21 people is all that bad. 
Here's to those 21!!
:)
Also, has anyone else checked out the new blogger stats page. How awesome is it that you can now see how many people have viewed your blog and were they come from. I had 254 views last month, 170 from the UK, 48 in the States and the rest from all over the world like Latvia, Canada, Australia, Egypt and Russia. 
For those viewing my blog, feel free to add me via google accounts. 
It will make my day
:)

Fracture - Review

Fracture by Megan Miranda

Publisher - BloomsburyPages - 262My Rating - 

'By the time seventeen-year-old Delaney Maxwell is pulled out of the icy waters of a frozen lake, her heart has stopped beating. She is officially dead. Then she starts breathing .... The doctors are mystified. But Delaney knows something is very wrong, even though outwardly she has completely recovered.  Pulled by sensations she can't control, Delaney now finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her brain prediction death or causing it? Then Delaney meets Troy Varga. Is Troy a kindred spirit who somehow understands her weird and frightening gift? Or are his motives chillingly more sinister...'
*SPOILER* Delaney is a straight A grade student in the running for valedictorian. That is until she takes a short cut across the frozen lake to reach her friends. Her neighbour and best friend, Decker, races ahead. But Delaney falls. The ice begins to fracture and she falls in. The next thing she sees is doctors surrounding her. Unable to talk, unable to move and unable to tell the doctors that she is alive. A rage builds in her as she listens to the doctors tell her parents that she might remain in the vegetative state. The rage allows her to break through the locked in coma and the doctors rush to her. After tests, physio and a brain scan that says she has severe brain damage, she's allowed to go home. The scan says she should be a vegetable but she's fine. Except she feels her body beings pulled in every direction. A pressure builds in her mind. Following the feeling, it leads her to a dying man. Standing over him, the feeling peaks and the man crashes. Delaney can feel people who are sick and can tell when they are going to die. She meets Troy Varga who after a few meetings finds out he is like her. After a car crash that killed his parents and his sister, he feels responsible for their deaths. When he found out he could feel death, he became almost an angel of mercy. But this goes against what Delaney believes. She begins to struggle against her family and friends. Unable to break from the depression that has consumed her. 
My Review I didn't know what to expect when I read this book. The short length and the sound of the blurb made this book appealing. I started reading this around 3am when I couldn't sleep. Bad idea. I read nearly half the book before I could put it down. The first couple of chapters flowed and was compelling. It made you want to continue reading the whole book. The friendship between Delaney and Decker was nice. The border between friends and something more can be tenuous and scary. Miranda captured it beautifully. And with the introduction of Troy and Decker's other love interest put the necessary strain and allowed Delaney and Decker to confront their feelings for one another.  This books introduces a few issues that is present alot, especially in Europe, with Euthanasia. Though the write never says the word, the deal with Troy trying to relieve some of the dying peoples suffering, the term is certainly implied. If you were dying would you want to suffer? Delaney doesn't agree with his methods. Instead she poses that he give them a choice. But before that could go any further or even provide some ethical explanation to Troys decision, Troy dies. As a rule, I don't like my female heroins to be submissive. I like the strong female lead who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to stand up for her beliefs. I feel Delaney lacked this conviction. Often getting easily plied by Troy's views or Decker's distance. I would have liked Delaney to be more stronger. To be true to herself. The books ending was abrupt and didn't really answer the questions about what Delaney was going to do. Was she going to help the dying? There was a nice scene with a dying gas station man. Delaney asked him, "If he has one day left to live, what would he do?" He replied to leave. And just go to the coast with his dog. It would have been nice if the book ended with a final chapter or epilogue where Delaney is asking another dying person the question and advising him to do it. 

Though this book is compelling with the issue of dying and suffering, the final opinion and next step of the main character is lost in the abrupt ending.  

Deadly Secrets cover 2

I spent days on the first Willowhall book cover. I struggled and stressed until I searched the internet for a designer to do it for me. She did. And it looked great. 
Instead of doing my dissertation (which I keep putting off) I calmly messed around with photoshop and I really enjoyed the session. 
This is what I made:

Which one to choose?!?! 

Deadly Secrets

I've finally put up information on the first book of the Willowhall Series, called Deadly Secrets. After struggling with the book cover for weeks, I found help in Char Adlesperger, from Wicked Cover Designs. Her work is amazing and much, much better than I could ever do.   Now with a cover, I have the motivation to do final edits and finish the book. Hopefully putting it on Amazon next month. 

A book a day, keeps reality away

When I was younger, say 4 or 5, we used to have this low shelved wall lined book case in primary school. It was filled with children's story books in clear plastic zip bag things. The colour of the bags zip, was the different reading levels.  I think I read every single book on that book case in one year. When I went into year one, I lived in the school's tiny library. Most of the books were over my head but over the five/six years, I read most of them books too. My favourite was Creature Teacher by R. L Stine and a book about Howard Carter and his excavation of Tutankhamen's burial chamber. What can I say, I was a strange child.   In high school, I would constantly read. My pace getting faster and faster, until I could read a book a day. At weekends when my mother and sister went shopping, I stayed in the town's library (even now I hate shopping) reading book after book in the children's sections and then into the teen section.   It wasn't until I wrote a short story for my friend, that I knew I wanted to be a writer. Even then, I didn't think I was possible. Instead going for a career in journalism or media. Then in university I realised how much I didn't want to be a journalist or television producer or any other media related job. 
I am a writer.  
I just thought you'd like to know. 

Slide - Review

Slide by Jill Hathaway

Publisher - HarperCollinsPages - 250My Rating - 

'Vee Bell hates having narcolepsy. But collapsing at school is nowhere near as bad as the truth - when Vee passes out she slides into other people's heads and ends up seeing through their eyes. Then Vee finds herself in the head of a killer, standing over the body of a cheerleader.Now another cheerleader is dead, and everyone is a suspect. Struggling to understand her terrifying and unwanted 'gift'. Vee is tangled in a web of secret, lies and danger...'
The book cover drew me in first. The fallacy of 'never judging a book by the cover' is a common one, and as a self-published author, I try hard and often fail to make an interesting cover. This one is amazing. One of the best I've seen in ages. Then I read the blurb. A book about narcolepsy. Not a plot I've read before and I thought it could be interesting.
*SPOILER* Sylvia 'Vee' Bell is sat in English lit class as they read 'Julius Caeser' by Shakespeare. She was struggling not to fall asleep, and who can blame her. We learn she has the sleeping disorder narcolepsy which makes her fall asleep, or lose consciousness, without her wanting to. No matter how hard she fights it, she blacks out. Excusing herself from the class she goes to the toilets where after seeing the feets of her sisters friends under the bathroom stall, Vee thinks Sophie is throwing up due to bulima, she has an episode where she goes into the mind of another of her sister's friend. They talk about Sophie, that she's going out with Scotch (a boy in her year) and how this friend is going to make her pay. That night however, after her sister and this 'bitchy' friend are supposed to have a sleep over, they tell Vee they are going out to the cinema. When in actual fact they go to a frat party. Vee has an episode where she looks into the eyes of Sophie who is crying her heart out after Vee's sisters friend sends a naked photo of Sophie to the entire football team. Disgusted with her sister's cheer leading friends, Vee tries wait up for her sister. But she ends up having another episode. Think she was in the mind of Sophie again, she sees Sophie dead on her bed. She's seeing through the eyes of a killer leaving a fake suicide note. For the rest of the book, Vee decides to be proactive. Especially after another cheerleader commits suicide and Vee thinks the killer got to her too. The suspects go from her psychology teacher, who is rumoured to have had an affair with Sophie as everyone discovers she was pregnant. To her best friend, Rollins, to Sophie's suspected baby's daddy, Scotch. 
My Review Like I said before, I was very interested in this book after reading the blurb as the idea behind it was unusual and different from all the other YA fiction books that has saturated the market these days. I really enjoyed reading this book and liked Vee's family and how they were portrayed and then grew as the book developed. The fragile relationship between Vee and her sister was a familiar one. But not necessarily an over used one. Vee search for the killer could have been more proactive, I'm thinking Harriette the Spy, Nancy Drew, Heather Wells or even Veronica Mars, but it's a nice, well paced story of Vee trying to harness her gift to find the killer. Even though there was three or four different suspects, it was slightly obvious that the new guy and Vee's love interest had something to do with it. The lack of history from him and Vee's quick judgement of him, despite the fact that when he showed up only then did the murders begin, the wasn't a suspect. 
Despite one character sticking out to be the killer, this book was imaginative, well paced and easy to read. Well worth a read for something a bit different. 

The Greatcoat - Review

The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

Published - Hammer BooksPage # - 196My Rating - 

'In the winter of 1952, Isabel Carey moves to the East Riding of Yorkshire with her husband Philip, a GP. With Philip spending long hours on call, Isabel finds herself isolated and lonely as she strives to adjust to the realities of married life. Woken by intense cold one night, she discovers an old RAF greatcoat hidden in the back of a cupboard. Sleeping under it for warmth, she starts to dream. And not long afterwards, while her husband is out, she is startled by a knock at her window. Outside is a young RAF pilot, waiting to come in. His name is Alec, and his powerful presence both disturbs and excites her. Her initial alarm soon fades, and they begin an intense affair. But nothing has prepared her for the truth about Alec's life, nor the impact it will have on hers...'

*SPOILER*The newly married couple move into a ground floor flat in a small town in East Anglia. Trying to mold into her role as a housewife, she struggles with the life in her new home. Years after the end of World War Two, life is still restricted with ration cards and limited supplies. Unable to get warm, Isabel finds a RAF Greatcoat within the far reaches of kitchen cupboard. While her husband is out on a call one early morning, Isabel hears a knocking on the living room window. It's a RAF solider. Closing the curtains in fear, Isabel reopens them seconds later to see the solider gone. After days of shying away from the towns people and the responsibilities of a wife, she receives continuous visits from this solider. Each getting more intimate and longer in meeting. Instead of being scared, Isabel hungers for these visits. She is flooded with memories of this man, Alec and their life together. Isabel's husband notices a difference with her, but puts it down to their new life. As Alec is visiting more and more, Isabel's reality starts to blur. Back in the flat, the continuous pacing, footsteps of the landlady sounds above their heads making Isabel irritated with the closeness of the cold and strange old woman. 

My Review I struggled writing a plot/spoiler as this book is so...intricate, that its very hard to explain. I was unsure about this book, but because I know it's published by Hammer I knew it must be worth a read. I liked the location of East Anglia as my Grandparents lived there. Visiting them every weekend in my childhood, I was immersed in war time memorabilia and home guard stories. This book is set in the late fifties so the imagery came easy for me after all those years imagining the stories my Grandfather told me. The story was very easy to read and I often found myself wanting to skip ahead to see what was going to happen. After the first couple of meetings between Isabel and Alec, I automatically came up with a dozen different theories. But none of them where correct, and I still don't entirely understand the plot. This confusion kind of ruin the book for me. Having said that I liked the history behind the landlady and her husband and child. She was having an affair with Alec during the war, and on his 27th flight he crashed into the farm the landlady and her family were living in. Killing everyone. Except she was in town. I like my books to be exciting and intricate to read like this one, but I also like them to be rounded and end with all the questions answered. Unfortunately, though this book was very interesting, it left me questioning the plot. Was Isabel with a ghost, at times I thought this was plausible, but then how did she get pregnant and hear the arm barrack noises? And if the greatcoat was a conduit to her time travelling, then how in the ending did Alec come to her and her son when she wasn't wearing the coat? And how....Or was she...But

Though this book was interesting to read, the history of the landlady especially, the theory behind the time travel left holes. These questions detracted from the story, making it hard to follow the plot. 

The Look - Review

The Look by Sophia Bennett

Published - Chicken House, 2012Page # - 325My Rating - 

'Ted is Tall. Freaky. When she's spotted by a model agency, she can't believe it. At the same time, her gorgeous sister falls seriously ill. With her world turned upside down, Ted must choose between fame and family. Can she be a supermodel and a super sister? All in five-inch heels?'
Usually I'm not into books about modelling, or people wanting to become superstars or anything else like that. It always seems frivolous to me. But skimming over the other reviews, I took a chance and decided to buy it. I'm glad I did. 
*SPOILER*Ted Trout is a 15 year-old British school girl. Due to her 5ft11 height, she is often the butt of jokes among her school friends. This plus her beautiful, and slightly selfish, old sister Ava, she is a shy introverted girl. After being scouted by a model agent during a busking session in London City Centre, and after finding out it wasn't a scam, she goes to the model agency. During all this however, her sister is diagnosed with lymphoma. During her sister's treatment Ted is constantly encouraged by her sister to take the modelling seriously. Over the summer holidays before her GCSE's Ted goes to go-sees, but none pan out for her. She quits thinking that she wasn't good enough. Ava becomes less controlling and begins to slowly let her sister in, including a touching moment where after a dressing room change in a new designer clothes store leaves Ava's hair falling out in clumps, they go to the hairdressers and both get their hair cut off. This new hair gets Ted scouted by a world renowned agent, famous for making top models.  After this new confidence with her hair, Ted relishes the role of a model and slowly begins to lose herself. Ava who shines within Ted's company begins to push people away, including her supporting boyfriend. During a trip to New York City, Ted goes to a fashion shoot with a top photographer. The night before she received a phone call from her model agency's owners son, who she has feelings for, saying her sister just dumped her boyfriend- his friend. Calling her a sell-out. This upset her and in turn made her ruin her shoot. Seeing the fake people in the industry, she leaves the shoot and rushes home. She makes up with her sister and decides to make things right between Ava and her boyfriend. After the reconciliation, Ted decides that she prefers to be behind the camera than in front and finally makes up with her crush. 
Review- After begrudgingly buying this book (as I said, it's really not my type) I decided to read it. Get it over and done with. However, after reading the first few chapters, I was intrigued. I enjoyed Ted's character (however the repetition of the same description of her hair got a little tiresome) because she was like me in high school. Not physically, as I was heavy as well and tall, but because she was ostracised by her school friends because of her tallness. Her older sister, Ava, starts off as unlikable. She seems controlling and selfish, but I like that she and her sister grew closer while her illness got progressively worse. It was the right amount of the two worlds. Ted growing up, mentally I mean, as she discovers the perils of the modelling world, and Ava during her illness. The sister's storyline is a touching one that is a small insight to the mind of a young person during this type of illness. Ava's islotation, her anger for her parents to be stronger than they were, her irratation at the constant intrusion of her thoughts and her feelings of being unattractive. Espacially since she was popular and was beautiful before her chemo. The the character's in this book, including Ted's crush, dimmed in comparison to the sisters. 
Ted and Ava's parallel lives are opposite in every possible way. The connection between the two is the shinning beacon in this book. But it also blinds the readers from the other characters.