Review: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Riveting conclusion of epic proportions...

Return of the King begins with the Gondor story line where The Two Towers leaves off. Sauron's eye is focused on the city and his forces are gathering for a final strike. Ringwraiths, men, ogres, orcs and trolls are on the move. In Gondor, Faramir struggles to gain the acceptance of his father, Denethor. The young hobbit, Pippin, swears fealty to Denethor on a whim and soon finds himself garbed as a soldier of Minus Tirith. As Denethor loses his grasp on reality, Pippin must decide whether to stay true to his oath or true to his conscious.

Likewise, Merry has sworn his services to the King of Rohan. But the King, unlike Denethor, does not want his small vassal in harms way and decides to leave him behind. His plight is noticed by another who would also fight, despite being told to stay behind, and the two join up and follow together, a decision that just might mean the difference between victory and defeat in the final battle.

Maintaining balance as an overacheiver

Another legacy post from my Goodreads blog...

People often ask me how I manage to wrangle family time, errands and writing books.  Here's what I do to preserve my sanity.

December 24, 2012

I'm on holiday this week and so I'd like to take this opportunity to write about balance, something overacheivers like me tend to forget sometimes.

Balance, in this case, is a way of keeping yourself fresh, keeping your family ties strong, and enriching yourself. It's easy to go out of balance when you're working towards a deadline (either self-imposed or otherwise) and especially if you tend towards perfection. Having finished two books and one draft and started a fourth, finding balance this year has been a challenge for me. However, I do have some tips that have worked well for me.

Inspiration: Character Name-Tully

Here's another legacy post from my Goodreads blog.

Sometimes character names come from odd places.  Here's one of my favorites.

December 21, 2012

One of the characters in Shadows of Valor, Tully, got his name from a creature I created in Spore, a game that let's you create creatures in the cell stage and evolve them to the space stage. The good news is that all he got from the Spore creature was his name. It would have been difficult to explain where the short, round, hot pink guy with the heart shaped horns fit into my military sci fi book.

       

Published on December 21, 2012 06:36• Tags: characters, funny, humor, inspiration

Review: The Sity by Curran Geist

The Sity by Curran Geist

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read from March 25-April 01, 2013. Original review written April 03, 2013.

The Sity is edgy and action packed.

The story opens with Victor, who discovers he possesses a superhuman power fueled by rage. He escapes from an alien-run freak show into the sinister Sity. Memory wiped, only faint impressions of his mother and sister remain, but he's certain that they are still in the clutches of the evil alien, Zaku. Victor vows to exact revenge on Zaku and rescue his family.

Side Bar: Unexpected rewards

Here's another legacy post from my Goodreads blog.

December 20, 2012

Today I'd like to take a detour into a new topic: unexpected rewards.

No, I don't mean cash, winning contests or scoring a book deal. Instead, I'm talking about rewards that aren't on the radar, and perhaps those that don't even register as rewards when you first encounter them. In my case, they all stem from my foray into self-publishing.

Obviously, having a book published (even if you do it yourself) is rewarding in itself. Your work is out there where people can buy it, read it, and perhaps even love it. It's a heady feeling and also a bit scary, because you always have that thought that maybe they won't like it.

Later, you begin to fear that no one will ever see it at all, especially when your friends and family have all received their own copies. Some will tell you how much they enjoyed it, some (like my dad) will insist that you get started on a sequel right away, and some won't say anything (at least not to you).

Are you the victim of human auto-correct?

Do you find yourself sending an email only to notice glaring errors only moments later? Do you hit publish or post, only to find comments about your grammar, or lack thereof, sprinkled throughout subsequent comments and reviews? If so, you may be the victim of human auto-correct.

The human brain is a wonderful thing. It helps us make sense of a chaotic world and helps us react accordingly; but, similar to the auto-correct on your phone, the brain also subconsciously hides, or auto-corrects, inconsistencies, errors and omissions we encounter in the written word. A duplicate word becomes invisible, a misspelling is overlooked, and missing words are filled in.

Surely, you've seen blurbs where almost every word is a jumble of letters, but you were able to read the message anyway. Take the following example.

The qicuk bworn fox jmups oevr the lzay dgos.

You probably read this with no problems. In fact, so long as the first and last letter of a word is in place, most people's minds will substitute the correct word, especially if there's context to go with it.

Finding inspiration: Writing without a plan...

Legacy post from my Goodreads blog.

Update since original posting date: I'm about halfway through the second round of edits and revisions for Fearless: A survivor's account of the zombie apocalypse (or The Zombie Logs, as I as refer to it in my notes), which is mentioned below.  My challenge now is corralling all of the unbridled creativity that writing a novel in 20 days generates. 

November 26, 2012

Sometimes inspiration is fickle and not even a good mind map can save the day.

This year was my first NaNoWriMo and all I knew going in was that I wanted it to be about Zombies and that it would be a journal. That's it.

These are a couple of things that worked for me:

Review: Talented by Sophie Davis

Talented by Sophie Davis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Very cool, I loved it!

Talented takes place in a distant future 100 years after a series of catastrophic natural disasters damages underground nuclear reactors, which in turn contaminates the world's oceans. In the years following The Great Contamination, some children are born with strange genetic defects, some as simple as purple eye color others as complex as superhuman powers of the mind and body. I love the strange and wonderful skills portrayed in the book.

The world is divided between those who would accept (or perhaps just use) the gifted and those who would suppress (or exterminate) them. I found it interesting that the organization that gathers, trains and uses the talented kids is called TOXIC, not a very positive acronym for a group supposedly devoted to training and supporting the population's uniquely qualified outcasts.

Time to get writing!

Here's another legacy post from my Goodreads blog.

November 18, 2012

Step one, write another book or books.

Back in early January I learned that authors who have more that one book under their belts are more likely to land an agent, so I realized that it was time to get writing.

Part one, prewriting.

Did I prewrite for The Golden Ship? No way! I just wrote and spent several years editing away the plot abonormalities, disjointed storyline, and scenes that didn't really fit into the story. Sure, it turned out great, but several years to produce one book was not in the plan. I needed a new book this year, so I decided that this time I would put some thought into things before I got started. In a 70 page, wide ruled notebook I picked up from a local grocery store I began to draft the startings of a new story, at the time unnamed.

There are many methods out there for pre-writing and each have their own pros and cons. I chose one that served me well for writing essays when I was working on my BBA at Strayer University. I've seen the method refered to with different names, mind mapping and the double bubble method, but both are essentially the same thing.

Review: Josh Anvil and the Cypress Door by Bruce E. Arrington

4 of 5 stars
Read from March 11 to 18, 2013

Excellent fantasy for middle schoolers.

I really enjoyed this book and it kept me entertained for nearly a week. Of course, the fact that the main character gets fantastic, nearly limitless powers is a fun element and the way Josh chooses to use his powers makes me wonder what I would do differently if I had powers like that.

The StoryTellers Club, an amusingly formal organization similar to the Toastmasters where members dress up in suits to camp out in one of the kid's back yard for their story telling finale, provides a clever twist. One of Josh's powers is activated when he tells stories, causing trouble early on when he tells a story about ancient spiders that once lived in the local swamps only to have them come to life during his story.

Amazingly enough, ignoring reality doesn't make it go away...

Time for another legacy post from my Goodreads blog.

Amazingly enough, ignoring reality doesn't make it go away...

Now that I knew what attracted agents, I must admit that I was intimidated. So I decided to break it down into steps. Steps are doable.

Step one: Disregard the fact that I have one book, no following and no idea what I'm doing.

Step two: Write a query letter and send it to an agent.

Step three: Wait.

You may have noticed my steps did not include any of the three things agents like to see. Let's see how that worked out for me.

Agents, a circular reference

For those of you new to my blog, here's another legacy post from Goodreads.

November 3, 2012

Agents, a circular reference

Circular references are when you define a word with itself. Why do I mention this with regard to agents? Let me explain.

My research in January quickly branched off into a process of finding and sorting through various agents and what they were looking for. Before I began I was under the impression that an agent was a magical person who would champion my book to the publishers, land me book deals, arrange for signings and readings, etc. Shortly afterwards, I realized that my guess was off a bit.

Review: Flute of the Wind Queen by Eisah

Flute of the Wind Queen by Eisah

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Fun and easy to read.

Flute of the Wind Queen is the debut story of Leander, a teen-aged Naggian whose greatest dream is to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Tevias, and become a reknowned treasure hunter. The story opens with Leander sneaking (not so stealthily) into a theater basement hoping to find the lost Flute of the Wind Queen, a treasured relic of his country which disappeared when a neighboring country invaded.

But his inexperience and a crashing fall from rotting scaffolding quickly attracts the attention of one of the actresses, who decides to let him go after a brief encounter. They meet up again a short time later by chance and decide that the flute must have been looted by the Geuranian army. Leander decides to risk a foray into enemy territory, and on a whim Ellora, the actress, decides to help him get there.