Parallel Minds...

Through the wonderful world of ROW, I have become acquainted with several new and wonderful authors.  One of these is Claudia Lefeve, whose work I sampled via her goodreads profile page.  BTW- Readers, if you are interested in an author but want to sample their work before you download, I recommend looking at their profile page to see if they have any short stories or chapter samples posted.  This will give you a good idea as to their writing style.  I myself have a couple of chapters of Six Keys posted, as well as my short stories The Angel & Her Gun and Perfect Man Plus.  They are free to read.

In Claudia's case, I read the sample of her book Heir, which later became Parallel, and was intrigued enough to beg to be on her beta reader list.  To my excitement, she accepted, and that is what I'm going to talk about today.

Because I am a beta reader I'm not going to give Parallel a traditional review.  I don't know if that would be considered "ethical", which is why I wouldn't ask MY beta readers to review my book.  Usually betas are people you like and root for, and I'm sure that could be considered a conflict of interest.  However, since I do think Parallel is WORTH talking about, I'm going to at least feature it here on my blog.

It's always nerve wracking, being a beta reader.  There is certainly a lot less pressure, since the product involved is a work in progress and the author generally WANTS feedback.  But it's tough.  I've done it a few times, and there are a couple of times that I've pretty much didn't like the books I read.  I had to put aside my subjective feelings and give constructive feedback without telling the author involved that I thought their work was crap and that I would be surprised if anyone liked it.  I know that seems harsh, but again, we can't always read the books that are intended for us.  I'm sure that some of the books I've read weren't even remotely written for me, as a reader, so I take it all in stride.  As I do when someone else has the same reaction to MY books.  You can't please everyone.

So it was with some trepidation that I received Parallel.  I wanted to like it SOOOO bad, you see.  Thank goodness, I can say with all honesty that I LOVED it.  Sure, there were some inconsistencies and plot issues, because Parallel was a work in progress.  Having read the final version, I can assure you that she addressed all of them and more.  She even added more words, which was my overall comment.  Give me more book, dammit!  :)

Parallel is the story of Etta, orphaned girl and foster home hopper, who finds herself endowed with powers most humans only dream of.  In the course of this story, she will have to hop through dimensions, use her powers to find her real family, and try to discover the true identity of the mysterious, yet sinfully handsome Cooper.

I LOVED the idea of this book.  The world Claudia creates is so fascinating.  I have never read anything like Parallel in YA fiction before.  She manages to describe the differences in worlds perfectly, yet she also leaves enough mystery to leave you clamoring for the next addition in this series.

My other favorite part about Parallel is the romance, which is again, so far from the usual YA fair, that it's a breath of fresh air.  I'm so tired of teeny-bopper love, and this has all the makings of mature, passionate love. The two characters are perfect for each other, but this book gives them the time they need to fall in love, and save the world, all at the same time.

If you don't like cliffhanger endings, you might want to wait for the sequel to Parallel, which is supposed to by out by winter, at the latest.  But the ending to this book is so fabulous, you might want to give it a chance anyway.

In summary, this book is a winner and though it is still too short for my taste, I highly recommend it!  Also, if you want to tag along on her blog tour, stop by Claudia's website for a list of all her appearances!

Happy Reading!

PS- Okay, ROWers, I'm up to 99,036.  Yay me!  I've been taking advantage of New Baby's early rising time to feed him and then write my fingers to the bone.  I will finish this dang book!!

Feeling the Disconnect...

Well, with a bit more optimism than I feel right now, I signed up for the year's final ROW80.  I hesitate, especially after reading Kait Nolan's goal blog, to name a goal though.
Should I shoot for 1000 words a day?  I know I can write that much, if I sit down and do it, but I also want the freedom to duck out, or hit the snooze button like I did today. New Baby makes me tired.
I could say, like I did last time, that my goal is to finish Aeris.  However, when I did that, my life blew up and now here I am with a book that is 2/3rds finished.
So I guess my goal will be to write when I can, to try and finish Aeris in time for the Christmas rush on ebooks(which there will be, have you SEEN the new Kindle prices???), and to forgive myself for not attaining either of those goals.
New Baby just woke up, so I have to go.  Good luck to all and Happy Reading!

PS- I'm up to 96,243.

Thoughts on Moving Forward...

Looking down the long road of my inability to work on Aeris like I want to, I've been considering the feelings of success and failure.  That's what they are, feelings.  Like how you FEEL after you read a book and decide whether to love it or hate it.

As an author, I'm faced with failure every day.  Like I said, Aeris in a state of failure for me, right now, failure to finish.  There is also the failure to achieve... I didn't make the goals I wanted.  I didn't sell the amount of books I'd hoped to.  I didn't get the type of reviews I wanted.

My mom was up to help with New Baby and we discussed a friend of mine who supposedly wants to be a photographer.  She has taken all the classes and bought all the equipment, and yet she has yet to book a shoot or set up her website portfolio.  And when I talk to her about it, she as all these plans, and is enthused, but can't seem to make it past the start of the race.

"She's afraid of failure," said my mom and I couldn't help but agree.

Failure holds us back.  It tells us we're worth nothing, that we'll never make it, that we don't have what it takes to be SUCCESSFUL.  It is that shadowy plague that grips us and keeps us from moving forward.

I have faced down a lot of things that would make a normal person give up, maybe.  My book has been slammed in some reviews.  My very FIRST fan email was not a fan email at ALL, but a letter from an angry reader who felt like I'd insulted the people who lived in the area where the book takes place.  Sad, huh?  :)  As I mentioned in the first story about Six Keys, it was the book that almost WASN'T, as I had a huge data loss right at the beginning of writing it.  And now, during Aeris, I've had death, birth, hardship and loss of sleep interfering in my ability to write it.

But for me, failure is not trying.  That sounds trite and it probably is, but man alive, I would rather have 50 one star reviews than not have a finished book.  If I hadn't had the guts to finish Six Keys, I would never have started Compis, which is part of a series that I'm so passionate about writing (and finishing! hahaha).

I keep referring myself to that motto from "Meet the Robinsons": Keep Moving Forward.  Learn from what you can learn from and use it when you start your next project.  Face those stumbling blocks and use them as stepping stools and you will truly have made a success of yourself.

********Reader Goodies!!!

I just read two great indie books:

Gifts of the Blood by Vicki Keire -This is the story of Caspia, who is running herself ragged to support herself and her terminally ill brother.  Descriptive, well-written, and much too short for my taste! hahaha  5 stars

Red by Kait Nolan- Told from two perspectives, Elodie's and Sawyer's, and is one of the best werewolf books I've read.  It also made me want to read books with werewolves in them again, which I thought would never happen after I read Shiver.  This got an enthusiastic 5 stars from me as well.  (Read the review for a disclaimer from me, I got this book in a giveaway.)

I have another entry to write soon, about a book I was a beta reader for, Parallel by Claudia Lafeve, but New Baby calls, so I have to go.

Happy Reading!

Dark Skies for Writing By...

It's 3 in the morning and I'm writing a blog post which must mean... New Baby Copeseeley has arrived.  :)  He is as enchanting as his brother and I suspect I'm going to be busy for quite some time.  However, now that I'm up all hours of the night, perhaps I'll have time to finally finish Aeris, which believe me has been on my mind of late.

That's pretty much all the update you'll get from me.  If ROW is still going, I'll post this to let everyone know where I'm off to, and I will, of course, keeping writing blogs.  How can I not?  There is so much great stuff going on in the world of writing and reading.

On a side note:
Started Vicki Keire's book Gifts of the Blood and thus far I am enchanted.  Warning to new moms, though.  Don't read this one unless you want to cry buckets through your hormones. hahaha

Read these great posts on JA Konrath's blog.  Quick aside on Konrath... He is considered by many in MY neck of the woods to be the definitive voice in current happenings for indie writers.  His writing is often volatile, opinionated, and unapologetic, but I have seen this man get it right OVER and OVER again.  If you are an indie writer or just interested in the goings on of the other crowd of writers, I most highly recommend him.  Here are the posts.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/08/whats-wrong-with-sex.html  I laughed my butt off over that one.  "Four pages!" hahaha

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/08/end-is-nigh.html Very thought provoking commentary on how the industry of writing is really opening up for authors and giving them more power.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/08/who-wants-whom-dialog-between-ja.html  Another interesting post about how the power dynamic is shifting in the writing industry.  Good read, but long.  :)

Happy Reading!

Choices, Choices

Some interesting things in the world of authors and artists today.  I saw this one buzzing around the internet and I was frankly astonished at this one.

I'll summarize and you can look up the links for yourself, if you find it interesting enough.

There is a writer, LK Rigel who wrote a book, called Spiderwork, the second in her Apocalypto series.  When she finished it, she hired an artist, Nathalia Suellen from Brazil, who painted her the most AMAZING cover.  Some time later, Sasha Illingworth of Harper Collins approached Nathalia about her cover.  She wanted to buy it for a book in development for her own house: Bewitched by Alex Flinn.  Let it be here noted that Illingworth did not act on orders by Flinn.  Flinn had no idea.

Nathalia refused the $4000 offer to buy her cover, for the simple reason that the cover had already been purchased by Rigel.  She felt it was selfish and underhanded for someone from such a large publishing house to try and buy a cover that was already being used by another author.

To make matters worse, Illingworth also asked several questions about Rigel —her country of origin and her genre.  Perhaps seeking for their purchase to go unnoticed?

When Alex Flinn revealed the new cover of her work in progress, several people were shocked to see it was a very close replica of the original work that Nathalia had created.  So close, in fact, that she was sure someone had been hired with the sole purpose of copying her original work.

As you can imagine, a firestorm erupted.  Everyone was talking about it.  How could a large publishing house like Harper Collins do something so underhanded?  Nathalia had all the correspondence to prove what their original intent was.  I don't take the same attitude that Big Publishers think they are better than the lowly independent authors, but several others have mentioned it.  I DO think that Sasha Illingworth should be fired, because I have a hard time believing that any of her managers would have approved of what happened.

And now Harper Collins is having to deal with the fallout.  Well, as soon as Alex Flinn heard about what happened, she pulled the cover (or HC did).  But that hasn't stopped the story from getting out.  I feel bad for Flinn.  How mortifying.  She was so excited about her new book and had NO idea the cover was someone else's, essentially.

Here are the links:
Nathalia Suellen's Blog
The Passive Voice
Dear Author
Goodreads commentary from Nathalia

In a quick ROW summary: 94,000 words for Aeris.  I've been sick, so my words have been few.  Hope to make up some ground next week, but there's only 1 week left till my due date, so we'll see.

Happy Reading!

Just another update: writing, ROW, and life.

Things are better in our household than they were a week ago.  Thank you all for the kind words.  We had family staying with us for about two and a half weeks, but now the house is quiet (relatively -I have a 3 year old, after all).  Nothing is normal or will be normal for a while, but at least now I'm not privately freaking out about sending myself into preterm labor from the stress.  So that's good.

Stress relief around my house?  I wish I could say it was writing.  Sorry, ROW, I'm failing miserably here.  I'm at 92,500 for Aeris and no closer to the end of this book.  The good news is, I've been writing again.  The bad news?  I just can't see where this book is going to end.  It's kind of become a joke among my friends and family.  "How many words is it now?  How much closer are you to the end?"  I think I will have some major, major editing to do to get this thing down to a size that people will actually want to read. hahaha

On a happier note, stress or not, the garden keeps growing, and I keep harvesting from it.  Basil, garlic, potatoes, squash, beans, even some sad little tomatoes!  I am also the youngest Suzy Homemaker alive, in that I just put up a dozen jars of apricot jam, another dozen of peach apricot, and some applesauce from an early apple tree.  This week I'm looking at doing a batch of plum jam, YUM.  I love plums, but I've never done plum jam before.

I have to get all of these done now, because pretty soon (2 weeks or so from now, I still can't believe it!) there will be another child around here demanding my attention!  So excited to have my stomach to myself.  I think I'm probably the only person I know that detests being pregnant.  I love being a mom, and all the mommy stuff that comes with it, but pregnancy is just the pits. hahaha

I have done a lot of reading.  There have been a lot of nights of no sleep, so I've put in some hours there.  I won't list everything I've read, because not all of it even got a review from me, but here are a few I enjoyed and wanted to share:
Glimpse by Stacey Wallace Benefiel (I kid you not, this is the first time I haven't had to look up her name!) 4 stars  (Also picked up a book from her other series to read)
Fire by Kristin Cashore got a rare 5 stars
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly also 5 stars (I didn't even mind that it was first person present tense!)
Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card got 4 stars

All worth reading, depending on what genre you're into.

Recently purchased books, that I can't wait to read:
Cross my Heart by Katie Klein
Gifts of the Blood by Vicki Keire
Days of Sacrifice by Stacey Wallace Benefiel
Divergent by Veronica Roth
A Need So Beautiful by Suzanne Young

Hope to have better news of my word count on Wednesday.  In the meantime, Happy Reading!

Quick Update:

For the curious:

No baby yet.  If this baby boy comes before August 24th, I will be extremely disappointed.  :)  And irritated.

Instead, my husband and I have found ourselves embroiled in not one, but two family tragedies.  Because of these, I haven't written in a week, my word count is stuck at 91,000 and we are both emotionally worn out to the point of exhaustion.

I don't want to call it quits on ROW80, but I don't know exactly how this is going to play out, so I may not be on here for a while.

Hope everyone is well.  Check out my newest reviews on Goodreads, I've read some GREAT books of late and it's worth knowing what they are.

Happy Reading!

PS- When the baby does come, I will have someone post an update here for me, so everyone will KNOW why I'm absent for so long.