Yolanda Ramos's Blog, page 3
September 10, 2015
The Seventh Sentinel-Reviewed
Originally posted on Dragon Knight Chronicles:
The Seventh Sentinel a historical fantasy novel can be compared to The Da Vinci Code meets Supernatural. There is murder! Ancient heavenly artifacts! A religious secret order! Hidden secrets! Toss in some Angels and Demons and you got TheSeventh Sentinel. Instead of Robert Langdon though we have a younger hero Cristiano heir to become The Seventh Sentinel. Cristiano was trained for this though, but he runs after the death of his adopted Father to fulfill a promise only to get pulled deeper into his chosen path which is up for him to decide.
The Seventh Sentinel takes you on a whirlwind journey as Cristiano finds out the truth about who he is and his ties to the Sentinels. The Sentinels were chosen by each of the seven Archangels to protect magic artifacts from the Fall of the Watchers, and their offspring the Nephilim. That pretty much sums up…
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August 31, 2015
July 8, 2015
Miss Congeniality: South African fiction
Loved this post. Had me laughing hysterically. Read it people, it’s that good.
Originally posted on Calling Through The Fog:
Authors’ incomes collapse to ‘abject’ levels.
That’s what the headline on The Guardian said, and I was frantic to know more. Which authors? Was it me? Were my annual royalty cheques of R250 about to plunge to R50? Less?
Usually I read like a millenial, which is to say I base my world view on the first three words of headlines from Buzzfeed articles on Twitter. But this time I read on.
Many professional authors in the United Kingdom, I discovered, were seeing their royalties plunge. Some who had earned their living from writing books were facing the prospect of – dear reader, are you sitting down? – not being able to write fiction as a full-time occupation.
Mal Peet, a celebrated writer of novels for children, told The Guardian that his direct income from sales had become “literally abject”. His royalty cheque for the last months of 2013…
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May 22, 2015
May 19, 2015
The Seventh Sentinel Wins New Apple Award
I’m very pleased to announce that my book won an award from New Apple; Medalist Honors for Best Fantasy 2014.
As soon as my son has moved to Sydney and settled in, he will place the award decal on the cover of my book listed on Amazon. I have to be patient and wait for him to do it, because I’m afraid that if I try, I might crash the whole system. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I’m useless when it comes to that sort of thing. Computers are not my best friend and Phillip is very patient with me.
Book Two in the series, titled False Gods, will be out in about two months, after all the editing and proofreading rounds. In the coming weeks I will also be doing a Cover Reveal, so stay tuned.
Here is the link :http://www.newappleliterary.com/awards.html
February 7, 2015
January 21, 2015
Movie Madness
I love going out to the movies. With popcorn and Coke light in hand, (it’s a ritual), I plop down onto the seat, my husband next to me and we crunch away. Quietly, of course. Don’t you hate when things go quiet and you can hear yourself crunching? I stop with a mouthful of popcorn and as soon as the music/sound is up, off I go again. When the movie is finished I’m usually covered in salt and/or cheese and chives powder in places I shall not name.
We also watch movies at home of course. Anyway, we bought the DVD of Noah and Son of God, and settled down to watch on our new curved screen 3D, blah, blah, blah. Sans popcorn and Coke Lite.
Let’s talk about Noah:
If Hollywood is going to make a movie based on the Bible, I wish they’d stick to the facts. Come on! Portraying the Watchers as giant, compassionate rock things. They were evil, twisted, demented fallen angels, and couldn’t give a hoot for mankind. They knew exactly what they were doing when they left their high station and decided to get busy with women – and play around with DNA, mixing and splicing and producing horrible creatures that are the things of myth and legend.
God did not need the fallen Watchers to defend Noah and his family when they boarded the Arc for greener pastures after slurping around in the boiling, roiling waters of the Flood.
Now, as for Noah’s sons, Shem, Japheth and Ham, they already had wives when they placed their weary feet aboard the Arc. You’d be tired too after years and years of building this great, big vessel. I won’t even go into how exhausting it must have been for eight people to feed thousands upon thousands of animals for forty days. Imagine the smell from all the waste. Okay, let’s not go there.
As for the mad, evil, king stowing away on board and getting cosy with Ham? Not true. Would God, who had gone to so much trouble to save Noah and his family and performed many miracles – you know: spoken to Noah, given Noah the plans for the vessel, commanded the animals to journey to the Arc in twos, tame the beasts to live side by side without eating each other and the humans…have allowed the Watchers to hold off the hordes just before the rains came down…I don’t think so.
Even if you don’t believe in God, if you’re an atheist, a pagan or whatever blows your hair back, I still think that if you’re producing a movie or writing a book, based on facts, from whatever source you choose, then the story should be factual.
I’m all for artistic license on the blurry parts that aren’t written down on ancient scrolls and history books. But historical facts are facts, no matter what the source or what you ‘believe.” For me this movie was a disappointment. Have you watched Noah? What say ye then? Really interested in your comments.
I’ll get to Son of God in my next post.
