Top Ten … Monday: Female Book Characters
Posted: May 12, 2014 Filed under: On Books | Tags: top ten tuesday 2 CommentsTomorrow’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “books I nearly put down but didn’t”. But I’m pretty stubborn about finishing books—and these days seem to have hit on a string of awesome ones—so the category didn’t really work for me. Instead, I’ve decided to do my own thing, after a suggestion from a friend on Facebook: my top ten favourite female characters. Looking over the list, they all have strength and determination in common. (I’m also doing it on a Monday because I’ve got something else scheduled for tomorrow, and I’m a rebel, me.)
Hermione Granger, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. I can relate to Hermione, because I was a lot like that in school. I wasn’t as bright as her (although given the opportunity to study transmogrification I would definitely have applied myself!), and I couldn’t levitate chairs, but I was socially awkward and above average, academically. That’s why she’s first on my list. Also, she’s a great role model for teenage girls, full of courage and empathy.
Cinder, Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I only just read this, and I really liked Cinder. She had a balance of defiance and practicality that I admired. Given the way she’s treated, she could have very easily become sullen, but she clearly loves Iko and Peony. Also, a female main character who’s a mechanic cyborg? Made of win!
Isabeau, The Witches of Eileanan by Kate Forsyth. It’s been years since I read this series (if I were stranded on a desert island it’d be top of my pile of books). But I loved Isabeau, a fiery redhead who is a little overconfident at first but learns restraint the hard way. Plus, I adore the Scottish brogue.
Coraline, Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Regular readers of my blog will know I only read this in the last month. I love how self-possessed Coraline is, her willingness to “go exploring” and determination to do what’s right and beat the bad guy. And she’s only twelve!
Gaby, The Rephaim by Paula Weston. This is another awesome series with a confident main character who manages to be human (ironic, under the circumstances) because of how the loss of her twin brother shattered her. She does eventually learn to kick butt, but it’s a gradual process rather than an overnight montage.
Yukiko, The Lotus War by Jay Kristoff. Yukiko is yet another strong, butt-kicking female with a gentler side. (Noticing a theme here?) She has a hard personality at the start, but under the circumstances—absent mother, drug-addled father, poisoned world, secret power—that is understandable. However, the dynamic between her and Buruu is awesome.
Katniss, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Ah, self-sacrificing, self-sufficient Katniss. She’d seem cold except she sacrificed herself to save Prim. And genuinely cared about both Gale and Peeta. Also, as much as I didn’t adore the third book in the series, there’s no denying that her reactions to events were realistic and very human. Poor, broken Katniss. 😦
Granny Weatherwax, Discworld by Terry Pratchett. Crotchety, powerful and confident, demanding of respect, Granny Weatherwax is a powerful witch who’d rather do what’s right than what’s nice. But she always looks after those she considers to be hers…whether they’d agree or not!
Lessa, Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. Lessa is the talented main character in Dragonflight, the first book McCaffrey wrote in this huge series. Like Granny Weatherwax she doesn’t suffer fools and can have a sharp temper, but is also compassionate and clever.
Eowyn, Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein. Shieldmaiden of Rohan, not afraid to take up a sword in defence of her people, she really struggled with the expectation that she’d stay at home and mind the children and elderly. Plus, she killed the Witch-king. Go Eowyn!
Who are your favourite female characters?
Book launch: ‘One Lucky Night’ anthology
Posted: May 10, 2014 Filed under: On Books | Tags: romance, self-publishing 1 Comment
One night can change everything…
The crew at Boston’s Brazen Head Pub hasn’t been very lucky in love. Can a mysterious visitor inspire them to look past old hurts and misconceptions and give romance a chance? One Lucky Night is a collection of five sexy interwoven novelettes by Aria Kane, Grace Teague, Ana Blaze, Constance Phillips and Melinda Dozier.
Lucky Break by Aria Kane
Four years ago, chef Derek Chase walked out of Andrea Rivera’s life after a tragedy neither of them were prepared to deal with. When she’s called to the Brazen Head to repair a dishwasher, old sparks ignite buried feelings.
Lucky Star by Grace Teague
When her life is threatened by a mugger, Charlotte Price realizes she’s in love with her best friend, Tommy Leung. The Brazen Head seems like the perfect neutral place to confess her feelings, but nothing goes according to plan.
A New Tune by Ana Blaze
When it comes to dating, Holly Hall has one unbreakable rule: no musicians. Not even gorgeous ones. Especially not gorgeous ones. Dating them only leads to heartbreak. So why did she let singer-songwriter Cian O’Neill kiss her? And why is she thinking about doing it again?
Lexi’s Chance by Constance Phillips
As a bartender, Sean Whalen meets all kinds of women every night, but none turn his head the way that Lexi has. She’s been playing cat and mouse with him for weeks. Tonight, Sean’s determined to get Lexi to quit teasing and take a real chance on him.
Drink or Dare by Melinda Dozier
A bachelorette party Drink or Dare game pairs paramedic students, Rachel Robertson and Killian Whelan, in a flirting match. Soon, the dares threaten to turn their academic rivalry into something much more.
Now available from:
Amazon | iTunes | Barnes & Noble | Other Retailers
Add on Goodreads
Book launch giveaway
The authors are giving away two Amazon giftcards!
About the Authors
Aria Kane is a recovering mechanical engineer and romance writer. As a military brat, she grew up all over the country, but now lives in sunny Florida with a 60 lb mutt who thinks he’s a chihuahua.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads
Grace Teague lives in Pittsburgh with her spouse, children and a cat named Mr. Sushi.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Ana Blaze lives near Washington DC with her charming husband and three cats who firmly believe they are royalty. Ana is a member of Romance Writers of America.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads | Tumblr
Constance Phillips lives in Ohio with her husband, two ready-to-leave-the-nest children, and four canine kids. Her perfect fantasy vacation would involve hunting Dracula across Europe with her daughter, who also digs that kind of stuff.
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Melinda Dozier teaches English to middle schoolers by day and writes at night. She lives in Guatemala, Central America with her college sweetheart and three sons.
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Interview: Paula Weston, urban fantasy author
Posted: May 8, 2014 Filed under: On Books | Tags: aussie-owned, AWW, Interview, urban fantasy Leave a commentOn Tuesday at Aussie Owned and Read, I interviewed Paula Weston, author of “Shadow” and “Haze” – the first two awesome books in a an urban fantasy about angels in Australia. What is not to like about this?!
All of this is a round about way to tell you that I’m as happy as my puppy when he sees his lead, because I got to interview the fabulous Paula.
*leaps into the air*
*straighens clothes and pretends to be professional*
Although the story in Shadows—and more so in Haze—takes the characters all around the world, Australia features heavily as a destination. A lot of Australian spec fic writers shy away from setting their stories here. Did you ever consider setting the books overseas?
When I started writing Shadows, it was…
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This Writer’s Space: Jessie Devine
Posted: May 7, 2014 Filed under: On writing | Tags: inspiration, this writer's space 2 Comments
Today’s This Writer’s Space awesomeness is brought to you by Jessie Devine, one of the most fabulous people on Twitter.
Where I Write
This is my writing chair. It’s older than I am, and it’s right by the heater. My buddy there is Diego. He’s always in the chair, whether I’m in it or not. He’s a good conspirator because he sits on me and doesn’t let me get up and get distracted. You can also see my coffee cup and notebook full of mad scribblings from this morning. My rainbow-unicorn-stickered laptop is usually in the picture too, but I’m on that currently.
Where I Am Inspired
I don’t really have one place where inspiration happens. I’m usually inspired by interactions with people, or by concepts (recently, for example, I got a brilliant idea from an article I read about an immortal jellyfish discovered in Japan). However, there’s something I do when I get stuck, and that’s walk my cat. This is Dexter. He loves walking on a leash around the backstreets, so whenever I’m all blocked over a plot point, we go walking and work it out. I think my brain is always trying to do too many things at once, so if I distract it by walking, I can think clearly about the problem.
To Be Read
This is a fraction of my TBR. I also have a big list on my Nook, and more actual books I couldn’t fit in the picture. I know, I know, there are some big names in there I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, including Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Book Thief, and Divergent. I tried Divergent at one point, but I couldn’t get into it. I’m gonna give it another shot eventually. I get nervous about books with lots of hype because I don’t want to be disappointed. But anyway, I love having a big TBR! And having such a diverse list is nice so I have something to read for every mood.
About Jessie
I write YA and NA fiction that pushes limits. I like my stories to be dark and real, even if they’re fantastical. You can always find queer characters in my pages. I’m also genderqueer and a martial artist, an amateur chef and a student. I live in Missoula, MT with my fiance and a million cats.
Top Ten Tuesdays: Cover Art
Posted: May 6, 2014 Filed under: On Books | Tags: book covers, top ten tuesday 4 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is the ten covers you’d hang on your wall as art. The hardest part of this was limiting myself to only ten! It’s an interesting mix in terms of its status on my TBR pile — some of them I’ve read and loved, some are on the “to be read” shelves (yes, plural shelves), and a couple I know absolutely nothing about…except I saw their covers on Pinterest and adored them!
In terms of their artistic content though, all bar two have females (or parts of females in the case of Cinder) on them. One of those females is 12 and carrying an axe, though, and another is 16 and weilding a katana.
All of that said, I’m aware of my preference for gorgeous ladies on the front of books. I’m not sure what that says about me. 😉
I considered writing a blurb on each book, but this post is dedicated to the art, so I decided to let them speak for themselves. I’d love to see your favourite covers, though. Please link them in the comments so I can check them out (and add them to my Pinterest board).
Review: ‘Coraline’ by Neil Gaiman
Posted: May 4, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: middle grade, reviews 5 Comments
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring….
In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
Only it’s different.
At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.
Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
Neil Gaiman is a strange author to me in some ways. I love his scripts, and his Sandman graphic novels, and those of his other books that I’ve read. But I haven’t read that many of them. I don’t exactly know why. So when I saw Coraline at my local second-hand bookstore, I snapped it up. (The cover above is the cover of the version I own. There are prettier covers, but it does capture the weirdness pretty well.)
And no, I haven’t seen the movie either. Although now I kind of want to.
I don’t read a lot of middle grade fiction yet. (My son and I are onto chapter books. If I put all the Geronimo Stilton books I’ve read into my Goodreads account I’d be 50% done on my 2014 challenge already.) But this has got to be one of the best, surely.
I love Neil Gaiman’s wry humour. It’s—dare I say it—terribly British. I love how calm and clever Coraline is, and how even when she’s scared she manages to be brave. As she said, “When you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.” Wise little girl.
Apparently Gaiman wrote this book for his five-year-old daughter. So either his daughter is also very brave or he’s trying to give her lots of opportunities to learn, because this is a scary-ass book. At the point where Coraline’s other mother offered to sew button eyes onto her as a mark of her acceptance into their creepy family, my own eyes bugged out a little.
There weren’t any plot twists I didn’t see coming. But this is middle grade fiction, which means the twists tend to be a little more clearly telegraphed than they would be in a book for adults. Nothing wrong with that.
There was one thing lacking from the book. Gaiman didn’t often touch on how Coraline was feeling. When she first discovered her parents were missing, it took her a full 24 hours to cry about it. This is partly because her parents are a little remote and she’s used to fending for herself, but I think it was partly a stylistic choice Gaiman made—not to wallow, or let Coraline wallow, in her emotions. Maybe he did it because the content of the story is nightmare-inducing, and if he’d described the taste of fear in the back of her throat, the shaking of her hands, it suddenly wouldn’t have been middle grade anymore?
Or maybe that’s just his style. Like I said, I haven’t read that many of his books, and those I have read were ages ago.
Either way, although I noticed the lack of emotion, the extra distance that imposed wasn’t enough that I couldn’t follow or enjoy the story.
This is a 4.5 star read for me.
My five favourite geek t-shirts
Posted: May 3, 2014 Filed under: On me | Tags: geekery, t-shirts 6 CommentsIt says up there at the top of my blog that as well as being a writer and a mother, I’m also a geek. But aside from the occasional Doctor Who reference, I don’t think I’ve flown the flag here as much as I could have.
Also, as mentioned in a recent Top Ten Tuesday, I LOVE T-SHIRTS! Not just boring, plain shirts but ones that say something interesting about the wearer.
So for something different, here, without further ado, are my five favourite geek t-shirts. I own all of these except one, and the one I don’t own has been bought and paid for. I’m just waiting for the internet fairies to drop it at my door.
I’m including buy links, so you can all be as cool as me if you want to (hahaha). Also, so that way I hopefully don’t get smacked for copyright theft. 😉
Minecraft
The first is from that awesome, and these days all-pervasive, computer game: Minecraft. It’s not the only Minecraft t-shirt I own, but it’s the most comfortable. Also, the creeper is sad because someone turned his family into a block of dynamite. Feel the pathos. FEEL IT!
Serenity
This one’s a little more obscure. Have you seen Joss Whedon’s movie Serenity? Remember the bizarre fruity oaty bar commercial that sends River into a spin? Yeah, that.
The Muppets
Remember Statler and Waldorf, those two grumpy old bastards that gave Fozzie Bear such a hard time? Now they can heckle you in the privacy of your own home. I’ve pretty much worn this shirt to death, sadly.
Scooby Doo
I like to think that during a zombie apocalypse, Velma would be the one to survive, because she has smarts. Fred would die in a complicated trap of his own devising, and Shaggy would get eaten trying to fix himself a club sandwich. Not sure what happened to Daphne, but it probably involved stopping to fix her hair. (As an aside, my son loves this t-shirt!)
Doctor Who
This is the one I’m waiting on. It better arrive soon or it will be dated before I even get to try it on, given the Twelfth Doctor isn’t represented! (Edit: Okay, it arrived! Crisis averted — stand down the search party!)
Do you own awesome t-shirts? Link them in the comments so I can admire (and possibly buy!) them. 🙂
A couple of things: PitchSlam and bookends
Posted: May 1, 2014 Filed under: On the Lucid Dreaming duology | Tags: aussie-owned, bookends, Lucid Dreaming, pitches Leave a commentJust a quick note to let you know of two other places you can find me, or at least my various thought bubbles.
Today over at Aussie Owned and Read, I’m looking at bookends. You know, the things you use to stop your books from falling over if you don’t already have so many that there’s nowhere for them to go? Those.
Also, in the past few days I was a Pitch Slam finalist. I got some awesome feedback on my pitch and first 250 words during the “audition” rounds and was then chosen to be part of Team Stray Tats. I have a stray tat (or a tat of a cat that may be stray — haha, I rhymed), so that seemed appropriate. You can see my pitch here.
I got one request too. *plays air guitar* Thanks to Lucas for having enough faith in me to put me on the team. 🙂
This Writer’s Space: Deborah Kreiser
Posted: April 30, 2014 Filed under: On Books | Tags: this writer's space 6 CommentsWhere I Write
I wish I could say something exciting about where I write. I do have a little desk set up in the kitchen where I *sometimes* do my writing, but the chair is hard and it’s not really ideal. Besides, I often write in the evenings, and what better place than sitting next to my loving husband on our comfy family room couch? You can’t see it in the picture, but we have a TV and a woodstove in there, too, so he’ll watch his shows while I work and we’ll snuggle together in the warmth from the fire.
Where I’m Inspired
It sounds silly, but just looking out on our backyard makes me relax and stay open to my muse. On nice days, my kids will play on the swingset while I write at the patio table. That fresh air really freshens my mind.
But when I need some really big inspiration, I think of some of the National Parks I’ve visited. Years ago, my husband and I were park rangers (that’s how we met!), and those huge, breathtaking vistas really free me.
To Be Read
I am a total bookworm, but I’ve *just* started a new job—as an elementary librarian!—and between that and my own book coming out, I’ve had little time for pleasure reading. Though I do plan on re-reading Skellig by David Almond so that I can read My Name is Mina, its companion, which I just discovered existed. Still, I normally read a lot more than that . . . give me another week or so and I’ll be up to my usual one or two books per week schedule.
About Deborah
Deborah Kreiser writes fiction of the Young Adult variety. Her debut, THREE WISHES, came out on April 15 from Astraea Press, and is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. If she had three wishes, they would include: a lifetime supply of calorie-free chocolate, a self-cleaning house, and the ability to expand time as needed. When not dreaming of her next plot, she works in a school library in Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and two young daughters. Follow her on Twitter, her Blog, or Facebook!
About Three Wishes
Tall and lanky, Genie Lowry is only noticed at academic awards assemblies—until the day she turns 17 1/2, when her body changes from Kate-Hudson-flat to Katy-Perry-curvy—and she finds out she’s a real, live genie. Suddenly, every guy at school is paying attention to her, including Pete Dillon, her never-in-a-million-years crush.
But to gain her full powers and keep her new body, Genie has to find a master, and she’s not sure if Pete’s Master (or Mr) Right. With help from her dead mother’s interactive diary and an imposing mentor with questionable motives, Genie uncovers the family history and genie rules she never knew. She grapples with her new powers and searches for the perfect master as she tries to make her own wishes come true.
Stats and trends — NestPitch 2014
Posted: April 29, 2014 Filed under: On writing | Tags: NestPitch, pitches Leave a commentIf you guys like stats, or just like to get a closer look at agent request trends and that sort of thing, check out this very informative post by Nik over at NestPitch on how the numbers shook out during that pitching contest.
Hello All,
As we round up to the end of the month, it’s time to share some stats with you all. (everyone loves stats as much as me right?It’s OK, I’ve done all the work for you.
**Note:I will be sending out Scorecards to the 10-reserves & posting the results of those scorecards in two days. I decided to split the scorecards and stats when I realised how much space the stats would need.
So down to the Fun Facts & Figures.
We had around 220 submissions, of which almost 200 were accepted. (Several did not meet the guidelines, remember people Submission 101- follow the guidelines). The final submissions were made up of:
24 % = Picture Books / 11 % = MG / 33% = YA / 8 % = NA / 24% = Adult
Of those submitted the following % were selected by the…
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Cassandra Page 