Sage Nestler's Blog, page 63
July 25, 2016
Summer Author Tour: C. A. King
Today I am pleased to present to you C.A. King, author of The Portal Prophecies series! You can find my review of A Keeper’s Destiny here. She is a fantastic fantasy author, and very passionate about her writing.
1) What is your favorite genre to write, and do you write across different genres?
Fantasy! If I can make it up, I write about it. My books are all young adult in language and content. If you are looking for Fifty Shades of Grey, I can’t help you. My books are more like Fifty Shades of Blushing.
Of course there is some romance, a touch of suspense, a little Sci-Fi and fully saturated with supernatural/paranormal.
I enjoy putting a new twist on mythology, lore, urban legends, fairytales and the paranormal.
2) What has your publishing experience been like?
I spent a long time researching my choices before choosing to self-publish. It was the right choice for me at the time. I like to be in control of my creative endeavors.
3) What is your advice to aspiring authors?
Just ask! A Lot of places are willing to help authors, especially local ones. Ask at small book stores if you can do an author signing. Look for small arts festivals. Contact your library about book readings. Talk to small cafe owners. Don’t get discouraged. No one is born a famous author. We all have to pay our dues on the road to discovery.
4) What do you hope readers will take away from your writing?
If I have a bad day and close my eyes. I can travel to a world where things are just a little brighter and get lost there for a while. I want to share that with my readers. When they need to forget about the present even for a few minutes, I want them to be able to grab one of my books and smile again.
5) What are you currently working on?
This fall the sixth book in my series comes out. That is the final book. You can expect a spin off series, but the main plot of this series comes to an end.
I have been asked for a cookies and treats cook book, which some of my characters may help out with. I am hoping it will be ready before December.
I have two brand new series underway. The first, Tomoiya’s Story, is an alien/vampire tale. The second Mer-Alliance, is you guessed it, mermaids. Both looking at 2017 dates.
I also have a blog of interviews which will continue and I am writing a weekly column for Books & Quills Magazine.
Find C.A. King Here:
http://www.portalprophecies.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ThePortalProphecies/
https://twitter.com/portalprophecy
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6993053.C_A_King
https://www.instagram.com/the.portal.prophecies/
http://theportalprophecies.tumblr.com/
BIOGRAPHY
C.A. King was born and raised in Halton County. She currently resides in Ontario, Canada with her two sons.
After the loss of her loving parents and husband, Ms. King was devastated. She decided to retire from the workforce for a year or two to do some soul searching. It was during this time that writing became her passion. She found she was able to redirect her emotions through her writing and in 2014 decided to publish some of her works.
Today her creation, The Portal Prophecies Series comes to life.
Book One, A Keeper’s Destiny, Book Two, A Halloween’s Curse, Book Three, Frost Bitten, Book Four, Sleeping Sands and Book Five, Deadly Perceptions are currently available for purchase. Book Six is scheduled for release this fall.
http://www.amazon.com/C.-A.-King/e/B00OSIL07M/
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/the+portal+prophecies
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/the-portal-prophecies-a-keeper-s-destiny
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-portal-prophecies/id921907472?mt=11
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-portal-prophecies-c-a-king/1120416565
http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/c-a-king/the-portal-prophecies-a-keepers-destiny/paperback/product-22598883.html
July 22, 2016
Boy Band by Jacqueline E. Smith
Title: Boy Band
Author: Jacqueline E. Smith
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis:
Sam Morneau is Melissa Parker’s best friend. He’s also a member of The Kind of September, basically the hottest boy band on the planet. After two and a half years, Mel is all too familiar with the day-to-day occurrences that come with being a member of the band’s inner circle, including hectic schedules, passionate fans, and gossip-mongering celebrity girlfriends. Now, with the release of the group’s third album just weeks away, their lives have never been crazier and Mel is doing everything she can to keep up, all the while trying to cope with the ridiculous rumors that follow the band everywhere they go and pretending that she isn’t harboring a secret and hopeless crush on Sam. It’s weird enough being in love with your best friend. It’s even weirder when the rest of the world is in love with him, too.
Review:
Boy Band is a novel that surrounds a juvenile concept, but pulls it off for an older audience. When I first began reading this novel I was afraid that it would be directed towards the lower end of the young adult spectrum, but I was happy to find that it was fit for my age range – those in their 20s. Jacqueline E. Smith took the concept of “bandoms” to the next level by having a girl, Mel, as the best friend of one of the band members, Sam, before they became famous. In this way she humanized celebrities, and I found myself forgetting that the boys involved were indeed superstars.
Mel was a highly relatable character. She was awkward, and always tried to stay hidden even though she was a big part of the band’s life. The story follows her as she struggles to hide her feelings about her best friend, Sam, whom she has been in love with for years. I could relate to her struggles with her intense feelings, and I was rooting for her in the beginning, but as the novel went on I became irritated with her inner dialogue.
Since the novel is told from her perspective, the reader was prone to hearing her lash out at certain characters, and then apologize profusely to the reader for how she acted. To go along with this, she also tried to convince us that she is not usually like that. She frequently found herself thinking about Sam as a lover, and then backtracked all over herself saying how she would never confess to Sam how she felt. Her humbleness was endearing in the beginning, but over time I just wanted her to stop apologizing and get on with her story. I also wasn’t fond of the ending as I always see cliff hangers as a cheap trick, but it did work and I will be going onto the sequel immediately.
Apart from that, I loved Smith’s raw writing style and how beautifully she captured older young adults today. I felt many times as though she were speaking from herself, instead of as Mel, and this added realness to her story. She incorporated all the characters beautifully, and none of them seemed to be lost in the cast. Even though I didn’t feel that Josh and Jesse had that big of a part in the story, she still gave them full personalities and I felt that they were jumping off of the page. Smith did a fantastic job of introducing the term”bandom” to those like me who never knew what it was, while also maturing the situation into a heated romance, and a drama filled fiction. Smith’s writing is everything that I wanted it to be, and so much more. I highly recommend this novel to women in their 20s, and I am positive that I will not be able to get this novel out of my mind for quite some time.
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July 20, 2016
The Book of Esther by Emily Barton
Title: The Book of Esther
Author: Emily Barton
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis:
What if an empire of Jewish warriors that really existed in the Middle Ages had never fallen—and was the only thing standing between Hitler and his conquest of Russia?
Eastern Europe, August 1942. The Khazar kaganate, an isolated nation of Turkic warrior Jews, lies between the Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea) and the Khazar Sea (the Caspian). It also happens to lie between a belligerent nation to the west that the Khazars call Germania—and a city the rest of the world calls Stalingrad.
After years of Jewish refugees streaming across the border from Europa, fleeing the war, Germania launches its siege of Khazaria. Only Esther, the daughter of the nation’s chief policy adviser, sees the ominous implications of Germania’s disregard for Jewish lives. Only she realizes that this isn’t just another war but an existential threat. After witnessing the enemy warplanes’ first foray into sovereign Khazar territory, Esther knows she must fight for her country. But as the elder daughter in a traditional home, her urgent question is how.
Before daybreak one fateful morning, she embarks on a perilous journey across the open steppe. She seeks a fabled village of Kabbalists who may hold the key to her destiny: their rumored ability to change her into a man so that she may convince her entire nation to join in the fight for its very existence against an enemy like none Khazaria has ever faced before.
Rating:
The Book of Esther is one of those rare novels that takes a biblical story, and heroine, and transforms it into a book for the masses. Even those who are not familiar with Esther from the bible will love this novel, and they will enjoy the fantasy appeal that it presents.
Emily Barton writes with a strong historical knowledge of the time period and story of which she is writing, but she also has a firm grip on steampunk and fantasy elements. She intertwined fantasy with history in a way that was believable, and I fell easily into her world.
Jewish culture is often something that it intertwined hand in hand with the Holocaust, but this novel explored more than that connection. It clearly represented the Jewish culture in terms of the language, settings and habits used, and I found it to be the “grown up” version of Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin. It holds a strong sense of love and hope for the Jewish culture, while also applying biblical stories to more contemporary times. Barton beautifully explored the concept that men have more power than women, and she did so by exploring how Esther went looking for magic that would turn her into a man. She wanted to become a man so that she could convince people to fight for what is right, and it was sad to see how she felt the need to go through with this; however, she had the passion and the drive and knew that she would be taken more seriously if she appeared as a man.
Barton is clearly a strong storyteller, and one that incorporates an unapologetic love for the bible and the lessons it teaches. She also challenges certain concepts present in the bible, and isn’t afraid to mix them with mysticism and lore. Her novel preserves the Jewish culture with a modern take on Esther, and invites people of all races, religions and cultures to enter her world. The Book of Esther was a roller coaster of events that didn’t tip toe around the reader’s comfort zone, and Barton forced you to not only confront our past, but our present as well. She made it clear that our present is not as progressive as we may think, and by comparing it to biblical themes, we are forced to stare that truth directly in the face.
I am Esther, and like my namesake before me, I will save the Jewish people.
And indeed, she did.
*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.*
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July 19, 2016
Joyland by Steven King
Title: Joyland
Author: Steven King
Rating: 3/5
Synopsis:
Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.
Rating:
The shame about Stephen King is that his brilliance is often masked by his high sales potential, and that is where I thought Joyland lost. It appears that the Hard Case Crime brand hired King simply because of his sales potential, and not because of his craftiness with words. The “crime” in this novel was minuscule, when it was advertised as something much heftier, but the nostalgic literary fiction appeal is where King won me over. His brilliant way of evolving his characters and entangling them with one another astounded me, and I simply couldn’t read this book fast enough.
Those who are fond of King for his brilliant horror novels may not be as interested in Joyland, but this novel is an excellent introduction to King’s writing for those with weaker stomachs. There isn’t any ample horror appeal in this novel, apart from a slight paranormal occurrence, and King chose instead to focus on the early adult experience. He discussed how humans evolve through heart break and life changing events, and how a simple occurrence in someone’s life can change the complete course of their life span. Our main character, Devin, began as a young, heartbroken boy, but ended up being a strong, knowledgeable man. Having been in a position before where I felt that a boy was my entire life, and losing him, I know how it feels to question everything in your life and reinvent yourself. It is not a pleasant experience, but for some people it is essential. I truly enjoyed King’s insight on first love and how some people have a huge impact on our lives, and I would love to read more books by him that are simply literary fiction, and not centered on horror or crime.
If you are interested in seeing some of King’s best work, I highly suggest Joyland; however, I do believe that the publisher and cover designer did a disservice to this novel by trying to make it into something it is not. It is not a high quality crime, nor a horror novel. Don’t let King’s legacy and sales record fool you. People tend to write him into the horror/crime author corner, when he is much more multi-faceted than that.
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Weekly Update – 07/18/16 – 07/24/16
Hi Everyone!
It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Last week I was busy preparing July boxes to ship out for the Go Indie Now! Bibliotherapy Box before I left on vacation to visit family, and this week I am taking a bit of a rest. But don’t you fear! I am going to try and get a writing tip up this week as well as a couple of book reviews:
The Book of Esther by Emily Barton
Boy Band by Jacqueline E. Smith
Much love,
Ashley
July 18, 2016
Summer Author Tour: Cat Banks
Our first author feature for the Summer Blog Tour is Cat Banks! She is the author of over ten novels, and she was kind enough to answer all of our questions and tell us a little bit more about her process. Enjoy!
Bio: Catherine Banks is the author of the Artemis Lupine Series, Little Death Bringer Series, Ciara Steele Novella Series, and the novels Daughter of Lions and Pirate Princess. She began writing fiction stories when she was only four years old and finished her first full length novel at the age of fifteen.
Catherine is a Northern California native and has lived within a twenty mile radius her entire life. She plans to travel to as many places as possible in her thirties to make up for her lack of traveling experience. She is married to her soulmate and best friend, Avery, who blessed her with two amazing children. After her full time job she reads books, plays video games, and watches a lot of anime shows and movies with her family to relax.
1) What is your favorite genre to write, and do you write across different genres?
Fantasy is by far my favorite genre to write. YA fantasy has been the main one I’ve been writing in. I plan to branch out and try some science fiction soon as well.
2) What has your publishing experience been like?
I first published Song of the Moon as a paperback book only through Createspace (Amazon). I had very few sales though. I decided to publish it as an ebook as well with Amazon and Smashwords as well. I get 99% of my sales from ebook sales. I have had a pretty decent experience publishing and enjoy having full control of my books. I have started trying to improve my marketing skills, but I’m learning!
3) What is your advice to aspiring authors?
Write! Seriously, you need to write. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to ever be seen by the public, but writing is practice and practice is important. Write what you love and what you want, not what you think people want to read or what you think will sell the best.
4) What do you hope readers will take away from your writing?
Enjoyment. I hope readers enjoy my books and possibly use them to escape reality for a bit.
5) What are you currently working on?
I have several projects I’m working on right now, but I will be focusing on Pirate Princess 2 mainly in the last half of the year.
Catherine Banks
www.facebook.com/CatherineBanksAuthor
https://www.goodreads.com/catherine_banks
July 14, 2016
The Crown of Stones: Magic – Scars by C.L. Schneider
Title: The Crown of Stones: Magic Scars
Author: C.L. Schneider
Rating: 5/5
Synopsis:
They took it all: his will, his memories, his freedom, his magic.
Imprisoned by his enemies, tortured and drugged to keep his magic suppressed, Ian Troy returns to a world as marred and broken as he is. Ravaged by the reign of her new High King, Draken of Langor, Mirra’kelan’s citizens live in fear. The Shinree, misled by Jem Reth’s promises, are no longer slaves, but they are far from free. Thrust together by necessity, refugees from all realms have banded together and formed alliances never before thought possible. They share a common goal: freedom from oppression. And a common, fragile hope: Ian Troy.
But as Ian struggles to put the pieces of his life back together, he finds he is not the same man as before. Afflicted by an unsettling, personal transformation, he strives to discover the truth behind his connection to The Crown of Stones. He searches for answers among the ruins of the past and uncovers ancient secrets that may have altered the course of his entire race.
The Price of Ian’s magic and his addiction have never been higher.
Review:
C.L. Schneider’s imagination runs wild in her series The Crown of Stones, and her sequel, Magic – Scars, is even better than the first book in the series. Schneider’s story climaxes in this novel, and it is everything that a great epic fantasy novel should be, while adding in contemporary issues to amplify the story. The issues of oppression and prejudice against Troy’s race connects to today’s racial issues, and in that way Schneider allows fantasy fans to connect their love of the genre with the contemporary issues going on around them.
As with the first novel, I am still amazed by the new way that Schneider represents magic. She doesn’t glamorize it in her series, but presents it as a burden that magic doers carry. The way that Troy is addicted to doing magic makes it like a drug for him, and I think that by presenting magic this way, Schneider clearly wanted to show that sometimes what you are addicted to is killing you. Troy is reminiscent of Sampson from the bible in the way that he is more powerful than others, but is beaten down by them to be at their level. They are intimidated of him because of his powers, and it is because of this that he suffers. Schneider is an artist with her words, and I admire the way that she weaves such intense insight into her fantastical characters. I was blown away by this novel and her series, and now consider it to be one of my favorite series of all time. C.L. Schneider has earned a strong spot on my favorite authors list, and it is because of her artistic way with words and her scholarly insight on humans and the human experience. Epic fantasy series do not get any better than this.
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July 13, 2016
P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
Title: P.S. I Still Love You
Author: Jenny Han
Rating: 5/5
Synopsis:
Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter.
She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren’t. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever.
When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?
Review:
Jenny Han is the modern day L.M. Montgomery. She captures the life of today’s teenage girls perfectly, and doesn’t paint their lives as perfect. Lara Jean Song is easily our modern day Anne of Green Gables, and her insight on how serious high school relationships can be for children that age is flawless. When reading Han’s novel, I couldn’t help but go back to the pain and complications of being a teenager; but I was also reminded of how free it felt to be on the verge of starting your life and leaving your childhood behind. Watching Lara Jean fall in love and experience those feelings with not just one, but two boys was beautiful. She touched on the subject of understanding that teen love doesn’t always last forever, and her insight on how you become many different people in your lifetime was flawless. I loved how she discussed how she did love different boys at different times in her life, but when a person enters different stages they no longer feel the same things that they did before. It was also heartbreaking to read how her best friendship with Gen didn’t stick through high school, and that is a tough reality for anyone who has ever been a teenager. High school is a place of ultimate evolution, and in order to evolve, some bonds have to break. Unfortunately, as Lara Jean realizes, the pain of those broken bonds does stay with us, and when reading this novel I felt those age old scars throbbing back to life within me.
Han’s writing is not something that I will ever forget. Her books have changed me as much as Anne of Green Gables did, and I could see them easily becoming classics. She doesn’t paint the teenage experience in a bitter way, but in a realistic one. She makes sure that everything she writes is raw, not shiny, and that is why her novels are perfect for not only young adults, but all ages.
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July 12, 2016
I Won’t Break by E. Mellyberry
Title: I Won’t Break
Author: E. Mellyberry
Rating: 5/5
Synopsis:
Lea and Andrew’s story continues in this sequel to My Lea. From the city of San Francisco, the tale journeys on to the other part of the world: Jakarta, Bali, and Tokyo.
It’s been five years since Andrew walked out of his apartment and left Lea in America. Five long years without any single contact.
Andrew is now a twenty-eight-year-old man who just inherited his father’s business empire and is about to marry the granddaughter of the wealthiest man in Singapore. At twenty-four, Lea is in the early process of sorting out her life and career back in her home country.
When Andrew’s father passed away, they are reunited again for the first time since America.
Like it or not, they are forced to revisit their past and deal with their unfinished business. For most people, love is the answer to everything. But Lea and Andrew’s love is far from ordinary. Theirs is tainted by sin and guilt. And anger. Lots of anger.
What happened five years ago that made Andrew leave?
What happened after Twin Peaks?
What happened to their baby?
Told in both past and present events, I Won’t Break tests the limit of love when faced with grief and heartbreak, discovers the true power of forgiveness, and explores the meaning of second chances.
Review:
I Won’t Break is a rare sequel that is not only just as good, but even better, than the first book in the series, My Lea.
The novel follows Lea and Andrew five years after the first novel when they are reunited once again, and one of the best things about this novel was that it wasn’t a dreamlike reunion. Instead, it brought about more heartache because they were both forced to confront each other and the feelings that they shared those five long years ago. E. Mellyberry did a fantastic job pouring reality into this novel, and not making it into a fairytale. She knows how people tick and what emotions they experience in any situation, and her insight was amazing. Her books are not just novels, they are stories of you and me, of people living and hurting and forgiving and loving. She doesn’t force her novels to be cheerful and entertaining for the reader, she forces her reader to stare at things that they would rather look away from – such as grief and heartache – and feel all of those things along with the characters. The best writer is one that writes about life as how it is, but from a raw and real perspective, and Mellyberry’s novels are some of the best of our time. She writes with a knowledgeable and dignified voice, and doesn’t shy away from speaking what she feels and sees for herself. It is clear when reading not only I Won’t Break, but My Lea as well, that she is writing to speak her voice and get her stories out into the world, and isn’t writing to satisfy the reader. Her novels have become a part of my soul, and if you want raw, heart wrenching novels that ring with the timeless voices of some of our greatest authors, such as Harper Lee, then look no further than My Lea and I Won’t Break. Her work cannot be categorized because it breaks the mold, and you will be changed upon reading her words.
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July 11, 2016
Echo From Mount Royal by Dave Riese
Title: Echo From Mount Royal
Author: Dave Riese
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis:
1950s Montreal. A young woman from a working class, Catholic-Jewish family blindly falls in love with a handsome, wealthy, Jewish orthodox man. The courtship is a romantic dream, but class, religion and sexual secrets test their love, leading to a shocking, life-changing revelation.
Review:
Dave Riese is effortless in the way that he molds current times with the past. His characters were very well developed, and I felt as though they could be my neighbors or people I would pass on the street. Echo From Mount Royal is a timeless novel about a person’s past and how their past changed them for the future. When reading this novel, I reflected on my own life and how small events can change the entire course of a life.
But what fascinated me the most about this novel was the romance element that encompassed the story and the time period. I am always fascinated by romance stories set in previous times due to the romantic air that always seems to surround them, and this novel lived up to my expectations. I am not familiar with Montreal in the 1950s, and I enjoyed learning about that world through this novel. Riese made history fun, and I enjoyed knowing that Rebecca was based off of a real person and her stories. It was clear that Riese worked hard to make sure that her stories were accurate, while also incorporating his own fictional elements to make the story his own. I was very impressed with the natural flow of his plot and scenes, and plan on keeping this book forever. I found it to be an ideal historical fiction novel, and it deserves to be recognized on a broader scale. IF you are interested in historical fiction novels that involve the characters in current times as well, then this book is the best choice to pick up.
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