Blind Sight: Throught the Eyes of Aniela Dawson

NOTE: I am a bit behind on writing some of the reviews. I needed to take a break and rest so I'll be doing some catching up. I also have a couple of things I want to blog about so, hopefully, things will be busier up here soon. Thanks for hanging on with me!...Charlayne


Aniela is Princess of Edaion, an island where people who have magic come to live. Her father and mother rule, her brother is being groomed to take over and her sister is the prima donna of the family. There is family drama going on, and all Aniela wants to do is graduate high school, keep her orphanage school going, and find a job that will let her have time to do what she wants. But her mother has other ideas and pushes her, demands she do other things, and throws tantrums when things do not go her way.

Aniela befriends Odette, a new student who is blind and who is trying to find out what her magic is. She draws mysterious pictures and has seizures. Her brother, Leocardo, worries about her and joins forces with Aniela to find out what is going on with his sister. The deeper they go, the stranger the story gets.

This is one of two stories about Aniela and Leocardo, the other being seen through Leocardo's eyes. I did not read that one and I'm curious as to how the story changed.

This book started out slow and I found it tedious as the family dynamics were settled and all the beginnings of the story were laid out. Since this is YA, I'm not sure that it will hold a young reader's attention to the point where the story begins to get really moving with all the challenges to Odette and Aniela. There were questions about how Odette and Leo came to be in Edaion and what Leo's own magic is.

I think that some of my questions might be answered in the other book. I wonder if this story might have been better presented in a double-book issue instead of separate books. Especially as it is a YA, it may be confusing to readers to have to look up and buy two books to get the entire story.

I do think the author has a good grasp of writing and flow, it was easy to read and everything seemed to be in place. On the publisher's point, I had a problem with the typeface being san-serif (arial) and it seemed that random words were bold and larger type for no apparent reason. This was distracting and can only be placed on the head of the editors and publishers.

I liked it, I just wish I got the whole story.

Lover Reborn by JR Ward

I just finished JR Ward's Lover Reborn. She is my favorite fiction author and I've looked forward to this book for a year now.

She did not disappoint.

What follows is the quick review I did for Barnes and Noble. I am doing a re-read before I do a proper review, I want to give the multitudes of her fans time to do their first read before I start putting up things that would be spoilers. This review is spoiler-free.

JR Ward has surpassed herself with this new book. Tohrment is still mourning his beloved wife, Wellsie and their unborn child as a new group of soldiers, lead by Xcor, seek to get rid of the king, Wrath, and the Brotherhood and take over. John-Matthew and Xhex try to make their mating work, and the rest of the cast of characters weave in and out of what is probably the best of the Black Dagger Brotherhood books to date.

There are the usual Lessers to be hunted, Glymera to be pacified, new characters come to challenge the status quo in Caldwell NY over the one year of this 600 pages of pure action and emotion.

Don't forget the tissues, there are some really emotional scenes in this one. You will laugh one moment, yell the next, and cry another. It's a roller-coaster of a ride but one that will have you wanting to re-read it almost immediately.

Illicit Magic by Camilla Chafer

Stella Mayweather works at a temporary clerks job in London and lives in a very small, run-down flat after growing up in a series of foster homes. She’s odd, everyone either knows it or figures it out and soon she moves on because people can’t handle being around her because of that oddity. 

And the news reports are filled with stories of women around Europe and then in England are getting taken and put into bonfires, burned to death as witches. In this day and time, someone called the Brotherhood has declared war on women. One night Stella gets chased home by these men who have every intention of making her their next victim. She manages to allude them and get home, only to have a young woman show up at her door telling her that she is in danger and she has to come along with her NOW. Etoile, the lady at her door, isn’t kidding around and as she convinces Stella of the immediacy of the need to move, the Brotherhood starts throwing firebombs into the apartment. Etoile gets Stella out, by magical means, and Stella’s life is completely changed from that moment on.

Illicit Magic is the first of a series about Stella and the world just on the edge of our own, one controlled by magic and headed by a Council of Elders that is fighting both the Brotherhood and something else, something deeper. Stella moves into a house kept by a lady named Meg with a lot of other students of magic, is taught by Evan and David to harness her skills, skills she has buried for many years. Things are not as they seem, there are questions about her parents, a missing sister of Etoile, odd behavior by another student without magic, and then there’s Evan. Stella is drawn to him like a moth to a flame, but will she get her wings singed? 

This book is a lot slower that many of the other paranormal books I have read. Camilla spends a lot of time describing general life in the household and building up the relationships between the students and the teachers before she gets to the final few scenes that are the real meat of the book. Sometimes I found myself wanting to skip ahead and look for the good stuff when I got bored of watching Stella working on her lessons yet again. But the last 1/3 of the book made the rest of it well worth the wait as she pulled together several threads and explained a lot of the hinted upon background we saw all through the book. By the time I finished, I was in tears and wanting to pick up the next book, Unruly Magic.

Ascension by Caris Roane

A new kind of vampire novel.

Alison Wells is closing her psychology practice and going back to school. She is feeling unfulfilled, jealous of her sister, Joy’s, family life and love. She reflects on the last guy she went out with and how she hurt him but we’re not told how, exactly. She throws a statue through the window, which shatters but she stops the window and the statue, pulls it back and the window is as new, the reader is left with a “what the?” feeling. Alison just has to see one more patient, Darien Greaves. She thinks on him and that she really hasn’t helped him at all as he arrives. He offers her a job with him, offering her almost the world to come with him. She turns him down.

Then someone is murdered in the street below and they go down to see. There is a crowd around and the emergency personnel but no one sees the winged figure rising above the dead woman. The black wings beating, the beautiful bluish man calls to Alison, telling her it’s her turn. Then a man with big muscles and white wings comes between them. She is drawn to his cardamom scent and the warrior is drawn to the lavender she is putting out. Neither of them are really sure what is happening and Alison is not sure she likes the fact that no one but her and Darien can see these two winged me. Then Darien disappears and the fight between the men begins. The warrior wins, introduces himself as Kerrick, a Warrior of the Blood, takes her memory and leaves her a card of a local club, and disappears, leaving her bewildered and with a headache.

This is the start of one of the most interesting takes on the Vampire mythos I’ve ever read. Caris Roane has put interdimentional travel, winged vampire warriors with codes of honor and limited numbers to fight the hordes of death vampires who drain their prey and make war on humans and other vampires, led by Darien Greves, 

called the Commander. She has the concept of soulmate, lifemate, called breh hidden that has the mating scent between those who are drawn together, in this case cardamom and lavender. 

Kerrick is an Ascended Vampire warrior, he fights for the Supreme High Administrator of Phoenix 2, a woman named Endelle. He also becomes the Ascension Guardian of Alison, taking care of her for the three days between her declaring she wants to become what she is supposed to be; a citizen of the second dimension with all the power that entails, and also becoming her teacher. With Damien wanting to kill her since he cannot use her, this becomes very problematic for both of them, especially since they are falling in love while he is training her and keeping her alive. 

Ascension has a whole new world built just out of reach of our own, shadowing our own and it is told so cleverly that I cannot recommend it highly enough. And this is a series so we don’t have to wonder what happens with the other warriors and the war that is going on, we have three novels already out to enjoy with the potential for many more as other dimensions open up.I picked this up because the thought of vampires with wings intrigued me, I’m continuing with the read because it is one of the better series I’ve read.

Immortal Desires by Laura Eno

Two factions of Immortals fight for the human race, though at odds with each other. One serves Order, the other Chaos. At stake is the Tobar d’anamacha—the Well of Souls—and with it the pairing of soul mates.

Occasionally, humans are forced onto the battlefield. This is one of those stories. (leading paragraphs of Chapter One, Immortal Desires)

After being stood up at the altar by her fiancé, Deanna Cameron is given the chance of a dream job, one with many perks, an apartment in the building she is working in, a free cafeteria, and travel to places she could only dream about before, such as the first assignment to go Scotland and check on accommodations at a castle-turned-hotel. Before she leaves, she encounters a strange man, almost a ghost, keeping watch on her in her new apartment in Boulder Colorado. What she does not know is that she is the soul mate of the last laird of the castle that is now the hotel she will be staying at. She flies to Scotland, sees his picture above the mantle, and then, during a walk in the cemetery, she finds a Celtic broach and suddenly she is whisked back to 1505 to meet with the laird, Ian Mackay.

Robert Thornton of the Light Street Corporation isn’t your average good looking mega-millionaire corporate CEO. He is a Guardian of the Well of Souls, someone who helps souls back to the Well to be paired with their soul mate in future lives. Guardians work with the Aeneas Council, the Gods of the Souls. Ian Mackay is an Immortal who works for Robert as a Guardian and is none too happy to find out that the new lost soul that Robert has hired with intents on recycling into the well is someone who is meant to be his soul mate, Deanna.

Workings against the Guardians are the Contri, a group that believes that the only way to save humans from extinction is to keep soul mates from pairing. They do this by targeting humans who are carrying souls to be mated and killing them to banish the souls from the Well.

This book has so many twists and turns, changes in time between the present day and the 1500’s Scotland. We see the story as it happens in the 1500s, Ian’s reactions in the present, and how Robert is having to work on things. The process of getting the soul mates together, how Ian in the present is having to sit and await how his early self handles things is an interesting twist on time travel storytelling. 

I loved this book, Laura Eno is fast becoming one of my favorite writers and I am hoping there is going to be more to the Well of Souls. It has a fast pace and there are some really great scenes with Deanna’s modern woman ways and Ian’s “pigheaded Scottish maleness” pulling between them. Oh, and Ian does wear a kilt.

With the way it is set up and the way it has been put together, Laura Eno has almost an unlimited pool of stories to write about (pun intended). The book has some nice, gentle love scenes but it’s not graphic by any means, I would give those scenes a PG 13 rating, mainly for the necessary language used to describe their lovemaking.

House of Saints-by A.C. Mason

Note: this was written for http://www.tigriseden.com/index.htm, a new site I'm writing for.


A poor orphaned Victorian girl with two brothers to raise takes a chance on becoming a prostitute in a brothel to give her brothers schooling and a good life. Simone is trained in sex by a mysterious man named Eravas. She is given a new name, taught how to be with a man, shown creatures she never knew existed, and loses her heart.

This is a very short book, rather a novella. It's very easily a couple of hours of reading if you take your time. It is fast paced and it held my attention throughout. Simone is a very likeable character and I found myself hoping she would find a way out of her situation and somehow could find her happily ever after with Eravas. The Madame of the brothel, Saint Veronica, has a very interesting part in the book as well.

The story reminds me of "The Story of O" by Pauline Reage but with a paranormal bend. It is a very well done story and it ends up better than Reage's book. It also reminded me of an old fairy tale by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the name of which would give the story away so, shhhh, no spoiler here, if you are curious about what I'm referring to, look it up AFTER you read this wonderful story and see if you agree with me.

This is not a book for the faint at heart, to be sure. It is hotter than a cup of coffee on the sun and you will need to keep a cold drink, a hand fan, and maybe even your preferred manner of relief nearby as you read it.

Darkest Seduction by Gena Showalter

Paris carries the demon of Promiscuity in him. This is the punishment for his part in opening up the box guarded by Pandora. Zeus punished his warriors, the Lords he had built to guard him and the other Gods and Goddesses for this by putting an escaped demon in each warrior.

In Book 2 of the series, The Darkest Kiss, Gena tells the story of how Sienna, a Hunter who seduces and then drugs Paris into oblivion, making him a captive of the Hunters. They want to experiment on him and then kill him to take the demon. Paris is not able to have sex for several days and weakens to the point he is dying. The hunters finally send Sienna in to try to save his life so that he can be examined further. She brings him back to full strength and he breaks away, taking her with him. As they get free of the compound where he is being kept, the Hunters shoot, hitting her three times, killing her.

That is the background of the story told in the Darkest Seduction. Paris has hunted for her for seven books and he finally finds her. She has been given the demon of Wrath, taken from Aeron when he died. She is being held by Cronus as a pawn in the war and Paris is wanting to take her back.

This book has a lot of twists and turns. There is not as much of the group stories with all the Lords as in other books but we do get a few tie-in's to what is going on.

One side storyline is Kane's, the carrier of the demon of disaster. William is with Paris for a lot of the book and the banter between the men is pure fun.

Sienna and Paris keep trying to get together but circumstances keep them apart and this drags the story out somewhat and becomes tedious. There were times when I was wishing we could get rid of the back and forth, "I will sacrifice for you" stuff and let the couple find each other. One thing that I really found long and slow was the almost word-for-word recounting of Paris' first meeting with Sienna. Yes, I know Gena put it in there so that someone picking this up as a first book would know what was going on but it really detracted from the pace of the story for those of us who have been reading the series all along.

Viola. The keeper of the Demon of Narcissism. This character is a real strange, funny, and somewhat grating character. I wasn't sure any character could top the Harpies or Anya in the previous books but Viola tops them all. I do wonder who she is going to end up with and how that happily ever after is going to happen.

The book has a very interesting twist at the end, one I did not see coming. It is not often that a writer can make me put a book down, sit and reflect on what I just read and then just say "oh wow." but Gena managed to do that with Darkest Seduction. This twist made the entire book fantastic and left me wanting to read the next one soon.

Overall, this is a good book. I would love to give it a "great" rating but for the dragging first part.

What I'm Reading Right Now

Look for a couple of reviews soon.

I just finished Gena Showalter's The Darkest Surrender

Now I'm reading Caris Roane's Ascension. Oh, this series is seriously H.O.T.  Keep a glass of tea and a hand fan handy, you'll need it!

I'll do the proper reviews in the next couple of days. Meantime, here's the cover of Ascension, just as a teaser.

Where the Heck have I been?

I know, I've been remiss in writing for a bit but I have been out of town seeing my younger daughter, Kimmie, get married to her sweet man, William, on Leap Year Day. It was a beautiful wedding and I am so proud of them. It's a long trip and I'm still trying to recover. Not a lot of time to write, although I did get into the first chapter of my book (hurrah!) and I picked up Gena Showalter's "The Darkest Surrender"; Paris' story, which is wonderful and I'll put up a review on it probably tomorrow.

I'm now reading Ascension by Caris Roane, it's good and it has the most interesting twist on the vampire mythos, I promise, you'll be getting the review on it just as soon as I finish it off. It's a series too so look forward to seeing the rest of the books reviewed too.

This is also Read an E-Book Week. If you have never read a book by electronic means, it's a good time to do so. I know, I know, many of us "oldsters" want to stick to our tried and true paper and ink bound books. There's something comforting in having it in your hand, being able to bend down a page or press a flower between the pages. Ever found a $20.00 bill in the pages of a book you remember reading years ago? I have. And then there's the look of your rooms filled with bookcases over-flowing with books you've read and may not read again. Yep, I have those too. We have enough to start a small-town library.

So why go to a Nook? Or a Kindle? Or any other electronic form? It's lighter than a book, it is back-lit so you are able to read without a light on or a clip on light. If you get bored with one book, open the library and pick another book, even when you're miles away from home because you carry your electronic library with you. And my Nook Tablet can access magazines, Graphic Novels, comic books, newspapers, music and videos, movies and TV, and I have all nine of the grandchildren's pictures and the children's pictures on it so Grandma's brag book is always with me. I can read a page or two waiting for a doctor and then just close it and not worry about a bookmark slipping or having to dog-ear a page.

And did I mention FREE BOOKS? Oh I didn't? Yeah, there are tons of free books out there. And you can borrow books from the library for more. And you can borrow some books from friends too. And then, some are purchased, but they are, many times, cheaper than a paper book. And you can keep them forever.

So, if you've never tried it, get your start now.. Kindle (Amazon) and Nook (Barnes and Noble)have downloadable (and free) readers for your computer that you use to read books from their sites. They both have free books to download to your computer and there are other sites that have free books, just put that in your search engine and have fun downloading things you will find yourself wanting to read.

Just don't blame me if you become addicted and need to buy an e-reader. Then again, drop me a note and tell me what you bought, your favorite e-book, and how many freebies you've managed to come up with.

Destiny's Revenge by Nancy Strange

Nancy Strange has done it again. Destiny's Revenge is a fantastic book, longer, stronger, and full of the twists and turns I've come to expect from her stories.

This book picked up where Meeting Destiny, the first of the series, stopped. Lauren Davis is recovering from the attack while she was camping with her boyfriend, Max. When she wakes up from the coma, it's two years later and Max is in Afghanistan as a corpsman, having given up on her coming out of the coma.

I won't give the rest of the story away but Lauren comes into more of her powers, she learns of a Council that keeps an eye on the destiny of people on earth and a Cabinet of the Council's opposites. For the Counselor of Confidence, there is a Cabinet equal of Doubt.

And a demon who wants Lauren dead, or else.

This is a very long, meaty book. It's not a one-day read, it begs to be read slowly and savored. Max and Lauren, all of her friends, her parents, Peanut (my favorite character) and all of the Council/Cabinet people fill each page with a world that is part of this one and not at the same time.

Am I gushing? In a word, yes. I laughed, I cried, I screamed at some of the characters, and I sometimes had to put the book down and let the words sink in. I love Destiny's Revenge and I'm giving it five stars.

As I have said previously, I'm not into young adult books. This one really isn't young adult, there is some mild sexual discussion in it, so I would say it's not for under at least 15 year olds. But it is so good, I didn't even notice it was supposed to be a youth book.

It's so good, I'm going to go get the third and last book in her series, Destiny's Wrath, and start it soon.

My Enchanted Life by Laura Eno

Here's my newest review, a Young Adult read by Laura Eno. I gave it 3-Stars.

Emma is 18. She graduates high school, has plans to spend time with friends and family until college starts until she gets a couple of mysterious envelopes. She has inherited a house in England. She gets a plane ticket, money, and directions on how to get there. What's wrong with a little vacation before school starts again?

Everything. Especially when you find out you have special powers, a hereditary job to do, and people depending on you. And a boy named Matthew who is handsome, nice, and a half-demon.

Her teacher, Randolf, is a stuffy, stodgy, and bossy Sentinel who has been picked to teach her what her job is and how to do it. He is all about rules and laws and things and he hates demons, even half-demons.

I enjoyed this book for what Laura put in it. It's whole dimension of fairies, ogres, dragons, gnomes, and other mythological creatures. It is written for young adults and I spent some time reading part of it to my 10 year old grand daughter, who loved it. I didn't get to the part with the kissing, that may have been "icky" but she loved the adventure of finding out about a house and new people who were different than human.

The thing that I didn't like was the lack of character development, the rush to finish. It was like everything was just "accepted" as fact. Matthew is one-dimensional and the time at the end when he is separate from her and then comes back is rushed to the point that it left me wondering what happened and how he fared where he was. There were a lot of questions left unanswered as she pushed to finish the book.

The six-month jump to her family's visit was another void that left questions. What happened during that time? Did she improve her power? What happened with Randolf? Was there further interest between Matthew and Emma? And how did her family handle him being with her? So many questions left undone.

It was so short and she could have written more in that first book to clear up some of the questions and still lay down the clues and build the interest for the next book that I know is coming from something she was told late in the book. I do want to read the next one because I did enjoy most of the book.

Author Exclusivity in Sales Areas

This is going to be a rant. It is my thoughts on this situation and yours may differ. I would like to hear from you and what you think, especially if you are a published writer who has faced this.

I am a Nook user. Before I bought my Nook Color a year ago, I spent several days researching all the different e-readers and their features. I looked into how they worked, what they would do, what book service they would use, and how to get other books from other services. Some were horrible, in my opinion, others were ok, and it came down between Ipod, Nook, and Kindle. We're not Apple users and I just didn't like the fact that it was an "everything" pad and it was larger than I was looking for. I chose the Nook because of the pricing, it is light and it has a back-light included (you don't have to have a clip-on or a cover with a light like the Kindle did), the ability to get service and help, and the fact that it was easy to deal with Barnes and Noble on things. When the Nook Tablet came out, I passed my Nook Color down to one of my daughters and I bought the Tablet. It is light, which is necessary since I am disabled and a heavy book is hard for me to handle now.

I do all my reading on the Nook unless it is a history book or a book on Paganism that I'm adding to my library. Regular "for fun" reading is done exclusively on my Nook and I read everywhere. I read at night in bed when I can't sleep. I read when I'm waiting for doctors, my husband to get off the bus, my grandchildren after school, and other places. It never loses my place and I always can write notes where I am needing to remember something. I have really come to love having the thing. Now I'm doing reviews for Good Reads and other places on it and that has been a lot of fun so far. I've picked up books that I probably would never picked up except for the assignment. I can usually always find the book both on Amazon and Barnes and Noble with no problem.

I ran up against a problem doing a review of the last book I was assigned by the Read 2 Review folks at Good Reads. I had read the first book in the series on my Nook and it was good and I got the second book in the series as an assignment for this week. But the author and publisher had decided to put the book on Amazon exclusively. This was very upsetting and not just for me. Several of the other reviewers were on Nook only and had to back out. So many were only Nook readers and that makes it hard to get reviewers to take the assignment.

I downloaded it and tried to use Calibre to change it from Amazon's Kindle format to the e-pub or at least a PDF form for my Nook to handle. Amazon not only had an exclusive buy on this book but they had a digital lock, a Digital rights management (DRM) on the book and it could not be converted from Kindle to Nook. So I ended up having to download the Kindle app for my laptop and spend time stuck on my couch with my enormous Dell XPS M1730 laptop in my lap reading this book. Not my favorite way to spend my time, and for someone with muscle problems who gets tired, this was also a disability access issue.

Not everyone was as determined as I was, they saw it was Kindle only and they dropped the assignment for this week.  It was just really hard to try to find a way around their rule of "Kindle only" and in the end, having to sit at a computer and read when you have a perfectly good e-reader you can't use to read the book is just not an enticement enough to read a book that you may have not picked up on your own anyway.

Why in the world would an author or publisher limit their readership to one sales unit and one type of reader? Why would you lock out the rest of the reading public when you wrote the book so people would read it? Is Amazon giving you such a great deal that you can stand to lose the readership of the other book dealers and it not hurt your bottom line? Face it, very few writers are doing this job to just put their work out there because it is fun to do, they do want to get paid for it, that's why they call it a profession. So why limit that pay?

I just do not understand this. Can anyone explain it to me?

Wicked Sinners by Charity Parkerson

This was a very different read from the first in the Society of Sinners series and quite a surprise in the end. I was not sure how I was going to comment on it because right up to the last quarter of the book, I wasn't sure that she was writing a sequel to the first Society book at all. The book was good, I was really interested in Adriana Claymore and the Druid, Julian Dubois and the whole triangle with his twin brother Jacques and Alain Moreau. But I really could not see where it was going in reference to the series itself.

Adriana buys a house in Martinique to get away from an abusive sister in Alabama. A delivery guy named Jacques Dubois helps her hang the drywall he delivers. Then she meets his twin, Julian, but he plays like he's Jacques so he can try to find Jacques because he's hunting his brother to kill him. It gets very complicated with Adriana finding an old diary that says that the twins are very old, the diary is dated to 610 BC. And she begins to find herself falling in love with Julien.

So much more happens but to tell you would mean I would have to spill all the good points of the book and I recommend picking up the book. It is good, with lots of twists and turns and surprises that make this one actually better than the first one.

My only criticism of this book is that Ms. Parkerson chose to go exclusively with Amazon's Kindle. That makes it hard to impossible for some readers to get to read the book. I am a Nook reader and the way I ended up reading it was on my laptop. This tied me to my house and couch. I love to read in bed or when I'm waiting at the doctor's or waiting to pick up a grandchild or my husband and I cannot do that with the laptop. Some readers will not even have this option and it will limit the readers she gets for her books, which is sad because it is a book that deserves to have a wide audience. This is why I didn't give her a 5 star on the book.

Review: Meeting Destiny by Nancy Straight

I spent all day reading this. I do not ordinarily read Young Adult books but this one is very interesting. And she has 2 more out. I'm glad because she left this first one in a pretty cliff-hanger.

Meeting Destiny by Nancy Straight

This book was a lot different that I expected and it was a very pleasant surprise to say the least.

The written description of the book had me thinking this was going to be more of a young adult romance read with some paranormal elements thrown in. I originally put this back on the "Maybe I will read it" list and went to read another book. I really don't read young adult books, most of them do not catch or hold my attention and I did not expect much from this one either.

I finished another book I was reviewing and then looked for something to read and picked this up again. I was on the second page when the action started rolling and it did not stop until the very end. I read it in one sitting, something I do not do unless the book is really good, and this one was really good.

Lauren Davis works for the local burger shop. Her long-time friend, Seth, drops by to get a salad and check on her ride home. Then a man comes in that makes Lauren pay attention, he didn't look right, like he was there for no good. And he was, he was robbing the shop. She had made excuses to get everyone out of the way and tried to get him tended to and out the door but a kid comes back to demand a toy and the robber swings to shoot him. Lauren puts herself in front of the bullet and she meets the man of her dreams, the man she has called her Destiny, Max Meyer.

There is a lot of back and forth with Max not wanting to interfere in her life, and misunderstandings with her friend Seth, her mother, Seth's mother, and others. It sometimes seems like everyone is trying to run Lauren's life, including a woman on a bus who talks to Lauren by telepathy and says she's watching her, and to stick to her path.

Lauren seems to be a trouble magnet. The police begin to be on a first name basis with her. Things happen around and to her and she always seems to be able to pick up on what's going on before it happens. And always, Max is there to hold her and help her think things through even though she sometimes fights that.

This book has a lot of very good story lines going through it. I actually cared about Lauren, I really liked Max. I sometimes wanted to smack Seth and sometimes I wanted to hug him.

And Nancy Straight has two more Destiny books out, which is good because where she left this one had me so flustered, wanting more, I'm ready to go get the next book right now and spend the rest of the night reading it. Yes, it's that good.

***********************************

I did like this. FYI: if you like sex scenes in your romances, you won't find them here, this is a YA.

So Where Have I Been?

Oh where have I been? It's been a busy week. I'm on deadline for Meeting Destiny by Nancy Strange and have Wicked Sinner by Charity Parkerson on for next deadline waiting for me.

Meantime, I'm working on my novel. I've not talked much about it but I've not wanted to until I have it a little more solid. I can give you some tidbits about what I'm doing for the background and work that I have needed to get ready to write. I've been dreaming about these things for, literally, months. I go to sleep and the story keeps coming out. Now I've been putting it on paper. At least this first part has been the old fashioned way, pen and paper.

I know the name of the ethnic group in the stories, Galno. They are a race of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh human warriors and vampires who are almost extinct due to a mysterious portal that has begun to open up and pull the Galno into it, either by capture or because the person is evil by nature, or has attempted suicide. Those who go into the portal are changed into what can only be described as ghostly vampiric evil entities resembling those they used to be. What they really are is yet to be discovered.

The Isle's Galno have no idea if there are any other Galno from anywhere else on the Earth and when they are forced away from their island homes, they head toward the North American continent and they find a few clues of other Galno but none living.

With that thought through and put down into writing, then I had to come up with characters. And OH did I come up with characters. I did this probably the weirdest way possible. I started with names. I picked out names of males and females and then of families that would be native to those three countries. This means a lot of Ap and Ferch Welsh names and Mac's for Scottish and Irish. Once I found the names, I divided them into families, took out one or two for those who were evil (gotta have bad guys), and then started looking for pictures online for them.

I found pictures for each name. Now, you will never see these people because there are a LOT of big name people in the list. I wasn't really judicious about keeping it to non-known people, sometimes because I had no idea if the person was famous or not, other times because the person just "fit" the image I had in my head. I'm quite sure Prince Harry of Great Britain would frown on having his picture, with a different name, in a book or on a website without permission, but he's in my photo gallery because I needed a cute redhead. I needed a lot of redheads and dark headed people and I ended up with 56 total photos.

Then I had to figure out what the picture and name made these people like. And what they would be doing. So a biography and a set-up for the book was written for each and every character, both good guys and bad guys. As I wrote, each character seemed to wake up and start telling me their story and what they were going to be doing. I may have had an idea about what I was going to do with them but they oftentimes had the last laugh as they changed my story to suit themselves. But it got much more interesting!

So now I sit here, blogging before having to pick up my Beloved and before my grandkids get here, with a full community of good guys, a cabal full of not so nice guys, and a portal full of bad guys waiting for me to put pen to paper and get their story out there.

Oh, and with 56 characters and so much material, I've already seen the light in the tunnel, it's the oncoming series train. Oh yeah.

I need to get busy writing, and reading, and stay off Facebook and out of my email and away from World of Warcraft. I have work to do!

Review-Society of Sinners

This book is a paranormal romance and the second of the Read 2 Review that I'm participating on GoodReads. Unfortunately, this is the second writing of the editing. I was writing it in the review window last night and had finished it. I thought it was one of the best reviews I had written and I went to check a fact and instead of going to the open window I had with the information in it, I hit the Back button and "pthththth", the Interwebs ate my review (which is worse than the dog eating my homework!) I screamed and then I said "screw this, I'm going to bed" and tried to put it out of my mind until today. It worked, I guess because I can now present the review, as published up on the Goodreads site.


Society of Sinners by Charity Parkerson

With her book, Society of Sinners, Charity Parkerson has created a very interesting and refreshing twist on the vampire mythos. The book is the story of five men, members of the Society. Brandon, the vampire next door who ends up working with humans to help humans and vampires start a new life. Jazz, the vampire who is like a monk, serving God and the Society as a special elite warrior. Gabe, the werewolf, who walks away from the Society to try to live a normal life as a game warden for the mountain surrounding the little town of Jackson Station, Tennessee, where all the stories take place. Dominic, the vampire who tracks those who are sought by the Society, and Dimitri, a tainted vampire.

Vampires are not cursed by the devil or made by evil but by God as warriors for good, to battle evil and protect humans. They are much more than the familiar undead from so many of the books on the species. They are living beings who eat, sleep, and live like humans, however they have the usual strength, agility, and the eternal life to be able to perform the duties given to them.

The organization that kept the vampires and other supernatural entities from evil and who avenged those who were harmed by that evil is the Society of Sinners. And they take their mission very seriously in this first book. The evil comes from other vampires. Those who have the same powers as the warriors, who were once warriors in their own but who decide they want to rule, to have power over others. They use those powers for their own gain and to harm others. They create minions by harming and turning humans into vampiric slaves, they kill, and because of their actions they and their progeny are targeted by the Society.

The book reads like an anthologized novella, written in segments for each main character with a prologue for each that defines the background of the vampires and the Society. The stories have a main focus on the character but it has the other characters involved as well and it connects with a weaving that is complex yet very beautifully done. Each story gives the character his own voice and sets up the next and the situations with smooth grace.

I've not read a paranormal romance quite like this one and I'm looking forward to reading the next one in the series.