Ayel and Nero and related concepts.

Teasers:


hello darkness, my old friend...

And I'd like to add a small note that if anyone likes Nero/Ayel, please join the lovely community for it: neroayelslash. It needs more love!

Scarlet (2009)
Written by: Jordan Summers
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 292 (Mass Market Paperback)

The premise: after the events of Red, Gina Santiago has settled in the town of Nuria with her werewolf boyfriend, Morgan. She's trying to control her own abilities, but can't, which makes her an outcast in the town of Others. It makes her job of forming a Nurian tactical team even more difficult, but everything goes to hell when Morgan is called away on an important but personal mission he won't tell anyone about but Gina. Now, Gina has to run a town of people that resent her, and what's worse, someone REALLY has it in for her: dead bodies start piling up, and all the evidence points to her. She's got to find a way to clear her name and get Morgan back before something far worse happens.

Waste of Time & Money: yes, it was that bad. What I loved about the first book, Red, wasn't even remotely present in this book, and so much about the plot and character motivations seemed contrived, not an organic part of character, setting, or story. The romance was obnoxiously labeled as love when it was obviously lust, and Gina is not the same character from before, which is frustrating as hell, because I don't want to read about a moping heroine trying to cope with her missing boyfriend (wait, isn't that what New Moon is about?). Too many POVs litter the landscape of 292 pages, and the story is nothing if not predictable. Certainly, it's a transition to the third and final book in the trilogy, Crimson, but I have no interest in reading forward, this book bothered me so much. I would've stopped reading if it hadn't been such a FAST read, and frankly, I wish I had. There's a scene towards the end that reminds me of what I've heard my romance-reading friends complain about: you know the trope where the "hero" rapes the heroine, and until the rape scene, she hates him but suddenly loves him because the "rape" is so good? No, that specific scene is NOT in this book, but there's a scene that very much reminds me of that trope. Consider that a warning to those readers who are fed up with rape or anything alluding to it in genre fiction.

At any rate, if you enjoyed the first book for its gritty horror elements and solid, tough-as-nails heroine, don't bother with this one, because neither element is present. Don't get me wrong, there are points in the book where it TRIES to bring those elements back, but not enough and far too late. Save yourself and skip this one, or if you must read it, I'd try borrowing it from somewhere.

Review style: stream of conscious, with spoilers. It's taken me six days to actually sit down and review this book, and yet I still feel the need to rant. So if you're up to it, click the link below to my journal for the full review. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.

REVIEW: Jordan Summer's SCARLET

i wrote a little fun piece with the prompt :squirrels.

hope you like it. 

ezra mostly, but all the guys are there.

Scarlet (2009)
Written by: Jordan Summers
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 292 (Mass Market Paperback)

Considering my SF kick of late, this might look like a book that just doesn't fit the mold. It doesn't, but it kind of does. The sequel to Red is actually set in our future, in a rather dystopic setting in terms of landscape, and the paranormal are actually genetically engineered. And because I was waiting on a stack of SF books from Amazon that could arrive at ANY MINUTE, I wanted to read something fast, and this book fit the bill without completely straying from my SF demands.

And I'll be honest, I've been dreading writing up this review. It's been sitting here, waiting for review, since July 6th. If that doesn't tell you anything, I don't know what will.

The premise: after the events of Red, Gina Santiago has settled in the town of Nuria with her werewolf boyfriend, Morgan. She's trying to control her own abilities, but can't, which makes her an outcast in the town of Others. It makes her job of forming a Nurian tactical team even more difficult, but everything goes to hell when Morgan is called away on an important but personal mission he won't tell anyone about but Gina. Now, Gina has to run a town of people that resent her, and what's worse, someone REALLY has it in for her: dead bodies start piling up, and all the evidence points to her. She's got to find a way to clear her name and get Morgan back before something far worse happens.

Review style: stream of conscious, with spoilers. It's taken me six days to actually sit down and review this book, and yet I still feel the need to rant.

( SCARLET: spoilers )

My Rating

Waste of Time & Money: yes, it was that bad. What I loved about the first book, Red, wasn't even remotely present in this book, and so much about the plot and character motivations seemed contrived, not an organic part of character, setting, or story. The romance was obnoxiously labeled as love when it was obviously lust, and Gina is not the same character from before, which is frustrating as hell, because I don't want to read about a moping heroine trying to cope with her missing boyfriend (wait, isn't that what New Moon is about?). Too many POVs litter the landscape of 292 pages, and the story is nothing if not predictable. Certainly, it's a transition to the third and final book in the trilogy, Crimson, but I have no interest in reading forward, this book bothered me so much. I would've stopped reading if it hadn't been such a FAST read, and frankly, I wish I had. There's a scene towards the end that reminds me of what I've heard my romance-reading friends complain about: you know the trope where the "hero" rapes the heroine, and until the rape scene, she hates him but suddenly loves him because the "rape" is so good? No, that specific scene is NOT in this book, but there's a scene that very much reminds me of that trope. Consider that a warning to those readers who are fed up with rape or anything alluding to it in genre fiction.

At any rate, if you enjoyed the first book for its gritty horror elements and solid, tough-as-nails heroine, don't bother with this one, because neither element is present. Don't get me wrong, there are points in the book where it TRIES to bring those elements back, but not enough and far too late. Save yourself and skip this one, or if you must read it, I'd try borrowing it from somewhere.

Cover Commentary: it's not my favorite Chris McGrath cover: Morgan looks like he's wearing a babydoll tee at first glance, which always makes me giggle. But hey, at least here's no shirtless guy in the moon, as there was in the first book. :)

Next up: a little treat and a break from SF: The Homeless Moon chapbooks.

I am rambly, so all is under the LJ cut.
( Read more... )

Takes place Saturday, July 25th!!

1:30-3:00 Glee— When FOX aired a special preview of its subversive new comedy musical series Glee after the American Idol finale, the response was through the roof, and fans have hungered for another episode ever since. The wait is over! Stars Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith and the producers of the FOX hit present a sneak preview screening of a never-before-broadcast episode with panel discussion to follow. Don't Stop Believin', Comic-Con fans! Glee is here! Indigo Ballroom / Hilton Bayfront

Two new Sam/Janet stories are posted here at my blog:

"Worth It"

"Tattoo for You, Sam Carter"


cross-posted

So, I'm home. For the curious, I went from Seattle to Ashland, OR, to Reno to Las Vegas (w/ bonus! library event) to LA to San Francisco to back home. All in a little under a week. In a Prius. (Is it just me, or does driving one remind anyone else of driving a giant Japanese anthropomorphic toy?)

I topped off my Miyazaki-esque adventure with a visit to the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada.

I'm going to trickle in some pictures as I slowly unwind and blog the trip, but here's a start:



Pioneer grave, Rhyolite cemetery.

I read a couple of books on the excursion, too.

13. Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

Just a delicious, twisted piece of writing with a bleak, black premise. Libby Day survived the massacre of her family by her Satanist elder brother and is a hero for putting him in prison--or is everything she saw that night wrong, and the truth far, far darker? Now an adult, freeloader and con artist, Libby is hired by a group of crime ghouls with too much time on their hands to reinvestigate the murders. Things do not go well. The writing was stellar in this and I almost didn't want it to end. As far as dark mysteries go, this is one of the best I've read.

14. Guillermo del Toro and Bob Hogan, The Strain

Ugh. A bog-standard vampire-as-viral-outbreak novel that feels like an repurposed and outdated film treatment (the Gawth Baddie is at least ten years too late.) I'm willing to bet this was a film del Toro couldn't get off the ground round about 1998. Worse, it's not just a wannabe film but a wannabe predictable film. I'm a huge fan of del Toro's movies and I know he can do better than this tripe. The only mildly compelling bits are the flashbacks to the vampire hunter's younger days at Treblinka, when the camp is menaced by a master vampire. Also, I wished the hero would just fall down a well, because he was the definition of TSTL. Not even Ron Perlman narrating my audiobook could save this.

Now reading (in bits and bobs) The Terror, Shutter Island, and Drood. (Two-fisted Dan Simmons is the way to go, it seems.)

Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.

MORE @ MISHAPES

MORE @ MISHAPES

Queries: 110
Requests: 2 partials: contemporary YA, paranormal romance, and 3 fulls
In my inbox: 4 partials, 3 fulls (plus one that hasn't yet come in) -- and 1 query that just appeared.

--

Seems like the stuff I want to read comes in all at once. There was another full I forgot to mention I requested last week, plus the three this week, and any of the partials in my inbox that might turn into full requests...

It's good there are so many good things to read, but this is getting a little out of hand! :P

--

Things that are inappropriate (in varying degrees):

1. Writing back to ask if the lowly assistant who rejected you has recommendations of other agents who might like the query.

Generally, if an agent has ideas in that direction, they'll tell you right away. It's not really polite (or professional) to ask.

Then, writing back to ask if the lowly assistant wants to represent you. Umm. What part of lowly assistant was unclear?

2. Stationery.

In emails, it shows up as an attachment, which are frowned upon. It pretty much doesn't look professional anywhere you put it (unless it's like business type stationery, but even so), and if it's the kind with pretty flowers and colors...I'm so distracted. I love pretty flowers and colors. Do you want me to read the query letter, or ogle the paper?

3. Replying to give me one more chance to read your manuscript after I've sent a form rejection. If I'd just read the first pages! Because the query letter isn't that good! But the book really is!

The agency guidelines say we welcome the first several pages in the query letter. If you didn't send that, I am not responsible for your omission. I can't read what isn't there. But, as I've said in the past, I can usually tell by the query letter.

And if your query letter isn't very good, rewrite it. Why would you send out a poor representation of your writing skills?

4. "Cute" tricks, like pretending your book is your baby or puppy, or anything that needs care and nourishment.

It's a book. I know you love it, but get over it. This part of the process -- the submission process -- is not about how much you love your book. It's about how publishable your book is, and if you're holding onto it that tightly, you're going to be very disappointed.

--

And now I'd better get back to work. there's a lot of stuff that needs reading here...

Welcome to the seventh gleeclub spam post! Every Saturday we'll put up this post and you can feel free to talk about anything - your day, your favorite celebrity, your family, your crush - whatever. And hey, feel free to gifspam/picspam your heart out.

Participate and get to know other Glee fans!

Random spam question to get us started - Who is your favorite celeb? Post a picture if you can!

We took a day trip out to Tulsk today. There’s pretty much literally nothing in Tulsk except a convenience store, a ruined abbey dating back to 1406, and an archaeological dig site dating back to the Mesolithic that we got to climb around in.

Obviously it was well worth the trip out. :) No, seriously, it was! It was awesome. There’s also a visitor’s center, except sort of ironically all the information in the visitor’s center is about the Queen Mabh site a couple miles down the road, because they didn’t know what they had in their back yard (literally) until very recently. They’d just finished up this summer’s dig yesterday, and apparently the last things they found were a baby’s skeleton in a sheltered grave of some sort, and evidence that the site was Mesolithic in origin, which was much, much older than the Bronze Age materials they’d found evidence of at the last moment of last year’s dig.

The woman at the center said we could climb around and have a good look at the site, but that she didn’t know how much of it was tarped over, because the wine had been opened the previous evening before the tarping was finished, and everybody came in to celebrate the summer’s work! :) So we went all around the edges and then were like, “…there’s no one to tell us no, and she *saaaaaaid* we could climb around…!” So we actually got down into the castle/keep/god-knows-what-came-before ruins. I mean, how often do you get to climb around in Mesolithic ruins? It was pretty cool. :) I’ll post pictures soon.

Dad made a smart-ass comment on our way there, I said, “Oh, I’d go for that,” and Ted started extrapolating how it would work, and now we have this awesome idea for a business. We have to figure out who to talk to here about getting money to pursue a business idea to see if it would be viable…

(x-posted from the essential kit)

For $45, that’s one of the prettiest Goth layouts I’ve seen.  If I wrote about witches, I’d snap that sucker up, but it’s really not representative of anything I write.

I saw it and thought Sisters of the Crow, heh.  Check out the live demo.

I do hate light text on dark background though.  :/

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there.