The Girdle of Melian

ot a special Monday-instead-of-Wednesday post today because of... Drum roll... New book releases from Entangled Publishing ! Find Your Ever After in Under An Hour October is the official release month for the all new Ever After. Ever After features paranormal, sci-fi, and horror novellas, all with the romance you've come to love from Entangled--just in a shorter format.  Ever After is celebrating in style with four new releases and great giveaways, including a Kindle Fire. Make sure to like their new Facebook Page and follow them on  Twitter Vampire Games by Tiffany Allee Otherworlder Enforcement Agency #4 She’s seen the past… OWEA Agent Beatrice Davis is haunted by the death visions that help her solve crimes. When Detective Claude Desmairis, her vampire ex-lover, asks for her assistance on a case, she'd rather help him than take the mandated leave to stave off her burn-out. The truth won't stay buried... Pressed to solve a series of cr...

ou know how a few pages into a new book you can already tell whether it's going to be dull, or you're going to simply like it, or -- you get that thrill -- you're going to adore it and start telling everyone about it? And then, as if adoration wasn't enough, further in you suddenly realise that it's a book you're going to stay up late for, and you get excited, and then! Then you realise it's a book that's going to make you cry -- but there are two kinds of that. There's the sort of bawling I did after I finished The Fault in Our Stars and The Summer of Skinny Dipping , and then there's the bittersweet crying of a satisfying ending, and that's just what happened to me the other night after I finished reading Claire Legrand 's The Year of Shadows . I love -- and admire -- books that make me laugh amidst the tears. For those of you who have read this book, the line that made me start crying was: "'She said she was sorry a...

ooks, books, and more books! Under the fiction-writing pseudonym James Forrester, famed historian Ian Mortimer crafted a thrilling adventure through Tudor England in his Clarenceux trilogy, praised by The Times of London as "an ingenious, authentically imagined treat." The Final Sacrament  presents the gripping conclusion to this Elizabethan adventure, where religious tensions, political intrigue, and personal vendettas collide. 1566. William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, has risked his life to protect a secret document, which could endanger Queen Elizabeth's place on the throne and plunge the country into civil war. But when his family goes missing, Clarenceux is put to the final test. Will he abandon queen and country to save the ones he loves, or sacrifice everything for the good of the nation? Filled with Mortimer's signature historical detail and vivid characters, The Final Sacrament delivers a dramatic close to the Clarenceux saga that highlig...

otta writing happening, and NaNoWriMo isn't even here yet! First up, there's a writers' marathon taking place on the Forum ! We're going to have three rounds I think, as as sort of warm-up to NaNo; first round is 11 to 13 October. "The idea is to set aside all non-essential activities and spend the time writing instead. Feel free to set your own goals -- word count, pages, number of hours, number of scenes written -- whatever works best for you. A specific goal is not required, though. Each mini-marathon will have its own thread, where you can briefly post progress reports and itsy-bitsy snippets of something you wrote during the marathon, if you like. The marathon will begin in October 11 at 12:01 am (00:01 if you're on a 24-hour clock) local time. That means your local time. And that also means that members will not all be on the same clock together, but that's OK, even though it means our down-under members will start sooner than the rest of us...

've finally taken the time to read Jonathan Franzen's essay "What's Wrong With the Modern World" which appeared in The Guardian on 13 September. (I've refuted Franzen on this blog before (in my pre-Twitter days!), and am about to do so again!) I also read Jennifer Weiner's response , a self-published author's rebuttal , a more friendly piece in The New Yorker (which I mostly agreed with, except for the bit where they praise his novels), and Nathan Bransford's well-formulated response (I'll be quoting a bit from this). To begin with, I admit to not being a fan of Franzen's writing. I read The Corrections for book club two years ago and couldn't stand it. I posted a mini-review on the Compuserve Books and Writers Community that went like this: "...it was the characters and story that left me cold. How shall I phrase this? When I read about helpless characters in (for instance) Steinbeck, I do not have the constant imp...