Friday Forays in Fiction: Let Me Tell You a Story

And So It Goes
by Charles Shields

Let me tell you a story about a storyteller and a story about a storyteller.  No, I did not say that twice by accident.  I am to tell the story about my encounter with the review copy of a biography about a writer of stories.

Still confused?

Me too.

So it begins in November when I (the storyteller) get an email from a web publicist offering me a review copy of And So It Goes by Charles Shields, (the story) the biography of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (the storyteller) I was excited by this as I am a Vonnegut fan.

Now I had just recently downloaded a Kindle for PC ap and started reading ebooks on my netbook, rediscovering the joys of reading stories long enough to get immersed in them and loose track of time.  Because of my visual impairment normal books with normal sized print cause eyestrain after less than thirty minutes and during those minutes I am constantly adjusting the position of the book, the magnifying glass or the 3X reading glasses I wear over my prescription glasses, and my limbs, shoulders, head and seat.  Quite frustrating and the result has been my gravitating more and more to reading online which tended to be blogs and news rather than novels even though I had many online public domain books bookmarked and had dozens of txt or pdf books on my netbook.

I had downloaded the Kindle for PC in early November after being invited into the Premier Virtual Author Blog Tour for December and needed it to open the books.  Once I had it and experienced reading in it that first evening I was hooked and began downloading free Kindle editions as fast as I could find them, starting with classics.  I started with Jane Austen to be precise, downloading every one of her novels.  In just a few days I had over a hundred.  I now have over five-hundred and the balance has shifted to Indie authors.  Shortly after this I downloaded Calibre so I could start collecting public domain epub from sites like Project Gutenberg.  I now have over 2000 ebooks in my Calibre library.  Yeah I do tend to go to extremes.  And I digress.

With my enthusiasm for ebooks burning hot I decided to ask if I might have an ebook copy of And So It Goes and was sent to Net Galley to get it.  There I had to sign up first and in the process got excited about finding a site where I could ask for review copies and not wait to be offered.  But my enthusiasm for Net Galley has cooled after what happened since.

I couldn't figure out how to get the Kindle version so had to accept a version to be read on Adobe Digital Reader which I first had to download and install.  And once I downloaded And So It Goes and got it opened I discovered it was a pdf and thus would not word wrap which means that when I enlarge the font to my comfort level the lines are so long I often have to scroll sideways and even when I don't my eye (only my right eye can still read) gets lost on the way to the beginning of the next line.

That happens as well with tree books and is one of the factors preventing immersion into the story and is why I so much like being able to control the length of the line as well as the size of the font.  So of course I was disappointed but I was determined to read it anyway.  I kept it opened on my desktop and dipped into it when I had spare minutes such as waiting on downloads or my sister's reply during our chats.  But I had to give priority to the three blog tour books for which my post dates had been set for the second week of December.  And of course NaNo took precedence over even those until November 30.

And then the first week of December I got the flu.

With all of that converging on me in early December (and let's not forget the Xmas gifts I was crocheting) I did not make much progress in the Vonnegut bio before mid December but then it went to the top of reading priority.  Meanwhile I had been dipping into a few of his novels and other writings to refresh my sense of him as a writer and storyteller and of the human being that reveals.  I still set more store in that sense I get of the person behind the words than I do in biographies or even autobiographies.  One is information the other is soul.  Do I need to say which is which?

Between December 14 and December 24 the bulk of my reading time was devoted to Vonnegut.  You could almost say I was immersed.  Then on December 23 Ed presented me with the key to our own trailer house two doors down from his parents where we had lived since 2001.  The 24h and 25th were devoted to family holiday functions.  And on the 26th we began moving our stuff.  Since we were doing that on foot with the help of a dolly that took most of the next ten days.  And before I'd even finished emptying the room we had lived in for ten years let alone finished unpacking in the new place I had to start packing for my trip out of town.

It was my mom's 80th birthday on January 3rd and a big family bash was planned and I'd promised to be there.  I had planned for it to be a relatively short visit this time though.  My stays at Mom's since her broken hip and stroke in 2008 have tended to be over a month and except for the first one in which I stayed almost 6 months to help my sister during Mom's initial recovery the visits have averaged about six weeks.  I wanted this one to be under three as I was understandably anxious to return to my new home and enjoy all the benefits of a home of my own for the first time in over ten years.

But when my sister called to make the arrangements for coming to pick me up I realized she was having a particularly hard time and I offered to stay longer.  She asked for a month.  She picked me up on January 6th (because of illness in the family Mom's bday bash had been postponed) so I expected to come home the second week of February but since then my stay has been extended again as the weekend of the 18th my sister has a 3 day engagement with an organization she's involved with that works with troubled kids for whom she occasionally provides respite care   So now the plan is to take me home the following weekend.  The 25th.

Meanwhile a few days before my sister picked me up in Phoenix I had finally had a moment to relax and thought to open the Vonnegut bio only to discover it was locked against me with a notice that my 55 days had expired.  I must have missed the fine print somewhere as I don't remember being aware of that deadline. Add the fact that Net Galley provides only pdf to the fact that there is apparently a kill switch on the books and my enthusiasm for them has cooled considerably.  Part of the fun of reviewing books, and not a small part, is getting to keep the books!

I immediately got on the library catalog and got in queue for it but deactivating my hold and setting it to reactivate in late January.  Then a week or so after I arrived at Mom's I emailed the publicist to explain what had happened and apologize and promised to have my review up in late February, assuming I got my turn with the library copy by early February.

I never heard back from her so I thought 'There goes that professional relationship'

Then last weekend I was on my library account online and discovered both the Vonnegut book and the new Stephen King book which I'd also been in queue for were waiting for me at the Phoenix branch.  Arrrgh!  I had forgotten to reset the hold activation and it had kicked on January 24th.  Back to the end of the line I would go!  Was I going to have to buy a copy so I could fulfill my obligation.

Then Tuesday morning an email from my husband informed me that the Vonnegut book had arrived the day before.  The publicist had gone ahead and had one shipped to me.  But there is over 500 miles between us now so how was I going to read a 500+ page book and write a review between the night of February 25th and the last day of February.  3 days?  Not going to happen.  The thought of emailing another excuse to the publicist made me cringe.

So I got on the Longview library catalog to see if their copy was available for my sister to check out only to find they don't even have one.  Can you see my jaw fall?  Then I tried the Vancouver WA library system for which my sister also has a card and found one.  Now, when my sister orders a book through the Vancouver library they are sent to the closest branch for her to pick up and that is Woodland 20 miles south.  She usually has occasion to travel to either Vancouver or Portland at least once a week but she said that she had no current plans to go that way again before the 18th except for her orthodontist appointment the very next day which did not allow time to have the book sent to Woodland if she ordered it that night.  She offered to pick it up at the branch it was at since that branch would not be too far out of her way.

So Wednesday night she brought it home with her.

Holding it in my hands I am daunted by its size and the smallness of the font.  It is hard to feel that way about big books while remembering how it felt in the days when seeing me lugging around big fat books or hunched over one reading was more than normal.  It was iconic.

I have had to start it over for although I am remembering the material as I re-read it I can't remember much of it before I pass my eyes over it again.  I guess, between the flu, Xmas, the move, the time spent at Mom's and the three books I read for the blog tours since the last paragraph I read in And So It Goes has crowded it out.

I am all set to get back into it though.  I even dressed up one of my crocheted bookmarks with a long folded over ribbon special for it.  That way I can put the crocheted section at the place where the main text ends and the Notes begin so I can easily find the Notes when referenced in the text.  Then one ribbon will mark my place while the other marks the daily goal.  I haven't set that goal yet but I imagine it needs to average more than thirty pages per day.

And so it goes.

Read more...

Big Kindle Boogie - One Day Left

http://bigkindleboogie.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/BigKindleBoogie

There are 10 Kindle Fires up for grabs.  And to top it off the winner of the first drawing also gets $500 donated to their local public library.  As bad as I want a Kindle Fire (any Kindle actually) I would be more thrilled to see that money go to our Jackson County Library System which continues to struggle like a transplant patient on life-support ever since the six month closure in 2007.  So I love that these guys are adding that grace note to their boogie.

I have downloaded all of my copies of the 75 books.  Those I didn't already have from the Kindle Fire Giveaway Scott Nicholson participated in with two other inde authors a couple of weeks ago.  The books among them that I'm the most excited about aren't the novels and short story collections but rather the non-fic books on writing, self-publishing, being an indie author and all that entails including promotion.  So even if you think the genre of story these guys write is not your cup of tea but you are an aspiring writer yourself you might find those books helpful.

I am participating in these events and the virtual author blog tours of the previous two days posts as part of my investigation into the inde option for publishing my own stories.  I believe it takes more than reading books about it.  Watching someone who made it work in action is worth a thousand how-to manuals.  And as I've discussed here before, self promotion is a very alien concept to me because of the way I was raised to believe that it was the equivalent to bragging which in turn was evidence of prIde which was a sIn.  Note the big fat capital 'I' in the middle of those dirty words.  Evidence, see, that when you put your big, fat, selfish self into the middle of something you are standing on a slippery slope on the edge of the abyss and nothing good can come of it.

I learned that before grade school and fifty years later still can't shake it.  Even after eight years of blogging.

Funny thing is tho, whatever in me generates that anxiety and self-disgust surrounding efforts at calling attention to myself does not translate to feeling disgust with others I'm observing in action doing the very thing I can't seem to allow myself to do.  I even have vicarious joy in watching them succeed as I cheer them on.  That seems to indicate to me that this is not a core value of mine but rather something more like a Pavlov response.

So I wonder if I were to create a pen name and instill an alter ego in it and publish and promote under it would my 'I' feel free to cheer on it's alter 'I' and allow it to succeed?  

OMG my brain hurts.

Actually if I had my druthers I'd rather give my alter 'I' all the baggage of the  'self=sin' paradigm and write under my own name.  Which BTW means 'joy reborn'.

OK so this post went places I never intended.  Only the pic and the first paragraph was planned when I opened the draft and I almost clicked on publish but then thought to say something about the free books.  This is what happens when I start typing after being awake over twenty hours--just hit 36.  Which is probably why I do it so often.  24 to 44 hour wake periods are to me what alcohol is to the drunk--a form of self medication that lowers anxiety and inhibition.

I wish I could bottle whatever it is that floods my brain sometime after twenty hours awake and take a swig upon waking.

Read more...

Hot Chocolate - Blog Tour

Hot Chocolate
by Dawn Ireland

This cozy mystery is a raucous romp.  A light, quick read, it is laugh-out-loud funny all the way through except maybe for the scene when the murder victim is discovered and the scene when the murderer declares themselves tho even those two scenes have elements of slapstick visuals incorporated into them.

The plot is quite masterfully constructed and kept me guessing right up to the moment the culprit was revealed and that is not easy to do as I've read or watched so many mystery stories I often figure it out well before the halfway point.

Where the story truly shines though is through the characters of which there are many yet each one is fully rounded and uniquely eccentric.

There are the three Alcott sisters, Madge, Lila Mae and Dorthea, ages 55 to 60 something heiresses to a bazillion dollar global chocolate company and their 90 something father who lives with Dorthea, the youngest.

Then there is their staff: Dorthea's histrionic male housekeeper, Lila Mae's divine cook and her uncle Tito, a shaman/guru.  And central to the story, Bambi, the elderly father's day nurse and her husband Jimmy.

There's the family lawyer and his wife and their addict niece.  There's Houston police detective, Chance who is also Dorthea's beau and his two investigators.  There are several of Jimmy's employees at the bowling alley, Bambi's parents and Jimmy's aunt and Lila Mae's astrologer.

Food itself is nearly a character in the story and several of the recipes featured in scenes are included in full at the end of the novel.

As the story begins Dorthea has confessed she can no longer manage their father's care and the sisters develop the plan with the help of their lawyer to place him in a ritzy assisted living home and provide Bambi a generous severance package.  But when Jimmy learns the Alcotts have let Bambi go he is infuriated and hires a shyster to sue the family for wrongful termination.  That suit is dismissed as frivolous and an angry Jimmy drives his wife home from the courthouse.  Dropping her off at their mobile home park he returns to work at his bowling alley.

Bambi wakes in the wee hours to find Jimmy is still not home and later that morning Jimmy's employees, arriving at work, find him dead on lane five.  The murder weapon is an item Chance recognizes as something belonging to Dorthea.

I mustn't go further as beyond this point only spoilers abide.

This novel could almost sit on the shelf beside the biggest names in mystery without blushing.  I have only two beefs with it and only one of those is definitely related to writing quality.  The other might be if looked at one way but is possibly a personal bias.

The first is the abundant use of descriptive words and phrases to substitute for the simple 'he said/she said' in dialog.  Often when characters opened their mouths they snipped, spat, spewed, fired off, fumed, broiled, wailed, pleaded, squealed, tittered, chimed, extolled, relayed, instructed, quipped, hissed, snarled, gushed, roared, thundered, whined, sputtered, squeaked, and oozed.

There is nothing wrong with a moderate amount of this stage direction but it gets annoying when overdone and especially when the words chosen do not jive with the mood or action of the scene.  Then the reader is jarred out of the story to do confused double takes and left with  incongruent images to contend with.  I found it most annoying when, during scenes where eating played a big role, words were spat, gushed, broiled, oozed or spewed.  And there was a whole lot of eating going on throughout.

My other beef which I own may be wholly personal bias was what seemed to me to be a huge imbalance between the descriptions of the high class environment inhabited by the Alcotts and the rest of the settings.  Whenever one of the Alcott sisters was on scene there would be a whole lot of itemizing of everything they touched or laid eyes on from clothing, furniture, wall hangings, and carpeting to handbags, jewelry, bedding and cars often with brand names and price tags included.

Whereas settings such as the police station, bowling alley and trailer park were given bare-boned descriptions--quite serviceable actually as it was enough to place the reader without intruding--that juxtaposed against the gushing over the ritzy homes and belongings of the Alcotts gave the impression that it might be the author and not just the three aging Alcott princesses who deems everything and everyone not of high-society unworthy of attention.

But the saving grace and the thing that belies that assumption is the development of Bambi's character after her husband's murder.  This seeming air-headed bimbo truly stepped up and evinced a moral integrity that topped everyone else's except possibly Chance.  She was blossoming and showing potential for and willingness to grow outside her comfort zone that none of the Alcott sisters seemed to have carried beyond their adolescence.

But as I said I am biased.  I live in a trailer park.  And I find it one of the most interesting and stimulating environs I've ever spent time in and inhabited by the most intriguing people.  But then I've never been anywhere near a neighborhood like Dorthea's.

Giveaway:

I'm authorized to giveaway one ebook copy and since it is ebook that means this is open internationally.  The ebook is available in several of the most popular formats.

This drawing will be open until February 14, 2012. As usual I will be using random.org to choose a winner.  

Enter by leaving a comment expressing interest on this post along with your @ so I can contact you.

Extra entries can be had by:

Following Joystory on Twitter  if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Like  Joystory's page on Facebook   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Tweeting once per day (leave the tweet's url in a comment here)

Add Joystory feed to your reader.   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Following Joystory on Networked Blogs   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

For each one you do leave a comment here with the identifying url and/or your username.  Remember leave a separate comment for each task as the individual comments will be the entries that I assign numbers to in the order they are made.

www.dawnireland-writer.com

Dawn Greenfield Ireland has been writing stories since attending summer camp around the age of seven. To date she has five completed novels (science fiction and contemporary), 15 completed screenplays (one optioned in 2009) and as many scripts in various stages of completion. Dawn is the author of two award-winning self-published books: The Puppy Baby Book (hardcover) and Mastering Your Money (print and eBook). Many of her screenplays have won awards. She spends her days editing and formatting engineering documents as a senior technical writer.








Follow the tour for more giveaway drawings, author interviews and guest posts:

http://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/

Joy StoryFeb. 1 Review and Giveaway

Chocolate & MimosasFeb.  2 Review                  

Chocolate & Mimosas Feb. 3  Author Guest Post

Cafe of Dreams Book ReviewFeb. 3 Review                                   

Debbie’s Book BagFeb. 6 Review and Giveaway

Butterfly-O-Meter  Feb 7 Review                                    

Butterfly-O-Meter  Feb. 8 Author Guest Post

Butterfly-O-Meter Feb7-14 Giveaway Hop

My Life  Feb.8 Review, Excerpt, and Giveaway

Books and Quilts  Feb 9 Review and Giveaway                                      

Books and Quilts  Feb. 10Review and Giveaway                  

From the TBR PileFeb. 10 Author Guest Post

This Miss Loves to ReadFeb 13 Review                                  

Culinary CoziesFeb. 14Review               

Culinary Cozies Feb.15 Author Guest Post

Socrates’ Book ReviewsFeb. 16 Review and Giveaway              

Cheryl’s Book NookFeb. 16 Interview            

Cheryl’s Book NookFeb. 17 Review                            

Books & Beyond  Feb 20 Review

Books & Beyond  Feb. 21 Interview and Giveaway

WV StitcherFeb. 22Review                

Curling Up By The Fire Feb 23  Review

Curling Up By The Fire Feb. 24 Author Guest Post and Giveaway

Book Loving MommyFeb 27 Review

Book Loving MommyFeb. 28 Author Guest Post

To Read, Perchance to Dream Feb 28 Review

To Read, Perchance to Dream Feb. 29 Interview and Giveaway

Read more...

The Firelight of Maalda - Blog Tour

The Firelight of Maalda
by Melissa Douthit

This is Book 2 in the  YA trilogy The Legend of the Raie' Chaelia (rye - kale - ya).  I discussed Book 1, The Raie' Chaelia, and its two prequel short stories in last Tuesday's post so I won't retread that ground here.


The adventures of Chalice and Jeremiah continue in  The Firelight of Maalda as they make their escape from the ancient underground city where they had taken refuge with the entire community of Bransbury whom they had rescued from captivity in Book 1.

Chalice is introduced to her father's side of the family and learns what it means to be daughter of the True King.  She chafes under the imposed 'princess lessons', and she and Jeremiah are separated by space and social convention as he must stay in quarters on the opposite side of the city from the royal quarters and they must endure the shocked reactions from both their people at the fraternizing between the royal princess and the country bumbkin.  But it is not just class it is also a racial divide.

Chalice learns the burdensome secret kept by her family for thousands of years.  The secret sought by the False King who had deposed her father and exiled him.  The secret is thought to be a powerful weapon and in a sense is.

Chalice also discovers the significance of the obsidian stone and dagger given to her by the Chinook race in Book 1.  The stone had been stolen from her by the men who had kidnapped her on behalf of the False King.  Now the False King's men had also figured out the purpose of the stone and were on their way to the islands of Maalda where they would use it to awaken and enslave the enchanted race of  'dragons'  to use them as weapons to subjugate the peoples of the world.  Chalice is the only one who can prevent this and she must set out from the city with her royal guard, her trusted friends and her wits to rescue the stone, her father's ship and the dragons.

The book ends on a terrible cliff hanger.  Literally.

Well I am going to just quote myself from last Tuesday's post since the following is something I said while talking about the trilogy as a whole:

This fantasy trilogy has a lot going for it.  It is well plotted and the world building is extraordinary. The science under-girding it is impeccable   The main characters have depth and personalities that come alive on the page.  The dialog is more than competent with different characters having distinctive voices.

That said, there are a few areas that could do with some polishing.  The pacing within the scenes is often choppy with action and dialog being interrupted for too long with large chunks of description.  The information imparted at these times is interesting, even fascinating, and it furthers the plot and/or world building so it is not that it is fluff or filler just that it jars one out of the flow of the story.

And as with the first book, this one needs a good line edit.  But in spite of these flaws it is a fun story to read and I am champing at the bit to get my hands on Book 3.  Not only that, I hope there will be another trilogy in the future set on this world.

Giveaway:

I'm authorized to giveaway one ebook copy and since it is ebook that means this is open internationally.  The ebook is available in several of the most popular formats.

This drawing will be open until February 12, 2012. As usual I will be using random.org to choose a winner.  

Enter by leaving a comment expressing interest on this post along with your @ so I can contact you.

Extra entries can be had by:

Following Joystory on Twitter  if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Like  Joystory's page on Facebook   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Tweeting once per day (leave the tweet's url in a comment here)

Add Joystory feed to your reader.   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Following Joystory on Networked Blogs   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

For each one you do leave a comment here with the identifying url and/or your username.  Remember leave a separate comment for each task as the individual comments will be the entries that I assign numbers to in the order they are made.

BTW if you wonder why bother entering a drawing for book 2 when you haven't read book 1 well you can download or read it and both prequels for free at Smashwords for a limited time as part of the promotion for The Firelight of Maalda.

Mellisa Douthit has the science background that qualifies her for the exquisite world building in this trilogy.   With a degree in Computer Science she currently works as a scientific and mathematic programmer for the Army Corp of Engineers in Salt Lake City.  Previously she has worked for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, NASA Ames research Center, Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Naval Postgraduate School.

 At this time she writes on the side but her dream is to shift the balance the other direction making programming the side job while writing full time.

Melissa is holding a contest on her web site for a free Kindle during this promotion.  She says:

Contest - Free Kindle
Enter a drawing and win a free Kindle by answering the following question:
What is the title of book two of the trilogy, The Legend of the Raie'Chaelia?
To answer the question go to this link and fill in the information (place answer in Message field):
http://melissadouthit.com/contact-me-2/
Contest ends March 10, 2012.  Winner will be announced March 11th on Melissa Douthit's Blog.


Follow the tour for more giveaway drawings, author interviews and guest posts:

http://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/

Butterfly-O-Meter Jan 27 Review                                           

I'd Rather Be At the Beach  Dec. 21 G Dec. 21

Butterfly-O-Meter  Jan. 28 Guest Post

Butterfly-O-Meter Jan 27-31 Giveaway Hop

Joy Story Jan. 31 Review and Giveaway

Hywela Lyn Feb. 1 Review

Hywela Lyn Feb. 2 Interview and Giveaway

Peeking Between the Pages Feb 3 Review and Giveaway

Everything to Do With Books Feb 9 Review                          

Reader Girls Feb 9 Review, Guest Post, and Giveaway

Life Long Learning Feb. 10 Review and Guest Post                                                       

Darlene's Book Nook Feb. 10 Guest Post and Giveaway

Jagged Edge Reviews Feb. 13 Review

Jagged Edge Reviews Feb. 14 Guest Post

WinterHaven Books Feb. 13Review                                       

Books Ahoy Feb 14 Review and Giveaway                                        

This Miss Loves to Read Feb 15          Review

This Miss Loves to Read Feb 16 Guest Post

Tessa From The Bookshelf of T.B. Feb 16 Review and Giveaway

Confessions of a Readaholic  Feb 17 Review                         

The Wormhole Feb. 20            Review and Giveaway                        

Book Nook Club Feb. 20 Review                                           

The Book Faery Reviews Feb 21 Review

The Book Faery Reviews Feb 22nd Interview and Giveaway

My Book Boyfriend Feb. 23 Review and Interview                                        

To Read, Perchance to Dream Feb 27 Review

To Read, Perchance to Dream Feb 28th Guest Post and Giveaway

Read more...

It's Monday! What are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.


This past week and for the next week or two my reading line up is all ebook review copies for self-published authors.  Two of them for blog tours set for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and a third for a blog tour set for the first week of March. All three of those are for Premier Virtual Author Book Tours and will feature giveaways. The fourth is open ended and casual but I don't want to keep the author waiting too long for my response so I'm hoping to fit it in between the second and third tour.

I have begun seeking out self-published ebooks for review as part of my research into taking my own stories that route.

The two books slated for blog tours this week are:

For Tuesday (tomorrow)

The Firelight of Maalda by Melissa Douthit  which is the second book in a planned fantasy trilogy, The Legend of the Raie’Chaelia.   I was given the first book, Raie’Chaelia, and two prequel short stories as well to get me up to speed but the review/giveaway of one ebook copy tomorrow, Tuesday, January 31st, is for this one only.

The Firelight of Maalda: A story that unites the real with the fantastical and turns science into magic …

Chalice and her group leave Barenthren to travel to Portalis.  There she and her friends discover the beautiful city, its people, its history, and its secret that has been kept hidden for thousands of years.  During their stay, they learn that Dar’Maalda has the Firestone and that he plans to use it.

What is the Firestone and what does Dar’Maalda plan to do with it?  What are the Naezzi?  What does the title, The Firelight of Maalda, really mean?  And … what is the secret of Portalis, the secret that has been guarded so jealously for so long – so jealously, that many have given their lives to protect it?

In The Firelight of Maalda, the second novel of the trilogy, The Legend of the Raie’Chaelia, you find out.  It is a tale of intrigue and wonder where two opposite worlds collide in an explosive journey that leads Chalice and her friends to the dark islands lurking just beyond the horizon of Ielieria, where the Firelight of Maalda sits … and waits.

I posted a review of the first book and the two prequels last Tuesday.

I have now finished The Firelight of Maalda and hope to have my review/giveaway up before dawn Pacific Coast time or as soon after midnight as I can manage.

Hot Chocolate by Dawn Ireland, is a mystery novel and I think is what is know as a cozy a mystery which I'm basing on the blurbs like the one below but I could be wrong.  My review/giveaway for one ebook copy is scheduled for next Wedensday, February 1st.

Meet the middle-aged Alcott sisters: Madge, Lila Mae and Dorothea, heiresses to the Alcott Chocolate fortune and mavens of Houston’s elite River Oaks.

Madge ambushes Lila Mae with Dorothea’s manipulative plea: she can’t care for Bernie, their 92-year old father, any longer. Lila Mae explodes in a hissy fit—she had warned Dorothea years ago that they should put Bernie in an assisted living center.

Robert, Lila Mae’s astrologer, warns of impending problems and he’s rarely wrong.
The sisters call a meeting with Walter Branson, their solicitor. They discuss Bernie’s nurse Bambi Chaline, a blonde bombshell who looks more like a hooker than a nurse.

Arrangements are made for Bernie to be transferred over to Lake Sides Assisted Living Center in the Uptown Galleria area and a severance package is drawn up for Bambi.
Jimmy Ray Chaline, Bambi’s bowling alley husband, is enraged that Bambi was let go. He hires ambulance chaser Mark Slade to file a lawsuit for wrongful termination.

The suit is thrown out of court further fueling Jimmy Ray’s rage. Bambi had been more than satisfied with her bonus, letters of recommendation and praise from the Alcott clan.
When Jimmy Ray fails to return home from the bowling alley that night, a series of events unfold that shocks the entire Alcott family and their extended members.

I finished this just before midnight last night and hope to have the review/giveaway up between midnight and dawn Pacific Coast time on Wednesday morning.

Both of these novels are more than passingly competent and worth the read so if you like either YA fantasy or cozy mysteries you might like to stop by and enter the drawings.  I'll also be posting the links to the other giveaways on the tour.

The March 7th blog tour review/giveaway is for Finding Katie  by John Smith author of the ebook Delayed Flight which I reviewed for its blog tour last month.

From John's email:

Finding Katie is about a very wealthy and very sheltered Preston Meadows who lives his life protected from even the hint of harm. His world is safe and secure until someone kidnaps his sister, Katie. Against his parents’ wishes, Preston sets out on his own to find her. Preston works hard to blend in with the “regular” people roaming the streets of Dallas – but the real world is zany, insane, full of danger and filled with ruthless criminals. As I mentioned, it is a comedy filled with mystery and romance.

The forth one which has no deadline but which I am very excited to read as I've read and enjoyed several by this author is, Her Frozen Wild by Kim Antieau.  Kim is an author who has gone the self-pub ebook route after being published by the traditional press several times.  Her material is often heavily influenced by folklore and fairytale from many different cultures and emphasizes the female archetypes.  Every one I've read has had a strong female lead.

I started this last night within the hour of finishing Hot Chocolate, thinking I was just setting it up on my Kindle PC to sit on the taskbar in place of  Hot Chocolate which had been sitting there all week which had taken the place of The Fires of Maalda which had taken the place of its previous installments.  Basically I've been keeping an ebook live on my taskbar since mid November when I first downloaded the Kindle for PC and Calibre for reading the free epub found on most of the sites archiving public domain materials.  So for over two months now I've had an ebook sitting open on my taskbar for those moments when the impulse strikes to read for awhile and I was just setting up the next in line.  Or so I thought.  But an hour later I was still reading and I had used up the time I'd set aside for putting up this post.

Now, knowing it is sitting there is like having those books open inside my textbooks or on my lap under my desk when I was supposed to be doing class work.  But I'm both the sneaky 'student' and the 'teacher'  who has the power to confiscate the book.  Except in this case the balance of power tends to favor the 'student' who has little fear of tho at least still some respect for the 'teacher'.

All of which is by way of saying that the story is so gripping that I'm having a very hard time resisting its pull in spite of the commitments I've made to others depending on me which today includes both authors in the blog tours and my sister who needs a bit extra help from me with Mom this week because of various appointments outside the house.  She is depending on me to have dinner made by 6pm today for example.  Which gives me an hour to get this posted and visit a handful of IMWAYR participants.  Then after dinner and its cleanup I must devote several hours to prepping the review/giveaway for tomorrow before I can be allowed to immerse myself in this story again:

Scientists in the Altai in Siberia uncover the 2,500 year old frozen mummy of a tattooed priestess. This mummy has the same genetic material as American archaeologist Ursula Smith whose mother disappeared in Siberia 30 years earlier. Ursula travels from the U.S. to Siberia to unravel the mystery of the “lady” and meets Sergei Ivanovich Polyakov, a Russian doctor who graciously invites her into his home. After they become lovers, she discovers Sergei has the same tattoos on his body as the tattooed lady. He tells a disbelieving Ursula that they have met before and she is destined to save the ancient People, considered as devils by some and shape-changing gods by others. A shaman takes Ursula to one of the sacred timeless caves where Ursula’s mother vanished. When Ursula allows the shaman to tattoo her, she is thrown back in time where she must unlock the mystery of the People and their link to her past in order to save them and Sergei—even if it costs her her life.

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