Alternative Booker Awards

Seumas Gallacher went and did it again – he has graciously honored me by tagging me for an Alternative Booker Award. Personally, I think this is a ploy to get a peep at my personal bookshelves, but… at least as far as books go, I’m a bit of an exhibitionist, so he’s in luck. The idea is to mention five of your favorite books – preferably without going all literati and pretentious – and then tag 5 other bloggers with this delightful award. Now, choosing only five books is going to be completely impossible for me, so bear with me, you’ll just have to cope with several series!

My newest favorite series on my ‘keepers’ list is by Sean T. Poindexter, and because it’s new and I haven’t mentioned it before I’m going to natter on about it, because I tend to be a little enthusiastic about finding a new favorite. The Dragon’s Blood Chronicles – thus far I’ve read books 1 and 2 – The Shadow of Tiamat and The Will of the Darkest  respectively, are simply wonderful. I would seriously go all fan girl on this poor fellow, so it’s probably good that he’s far, far away. No, I don’t go in for going fan girl because an author is ‘cute’ (although… he is kinda cute), I go fan girl for authors who can write a damned good story. Nothing’s sexier than brains, good vocabulary, and creativity. I’ve already started pestering the poor man about when book 3 is coming out and was treated to the news that there’s a spin-off series coming along as well, which delights the hell out of me. Brains, vocabulary, creativity, and productivity too? What? Oh. You want to know what the books are about? Silly you.

The books center around Megan, a young woman who is entirely average – which I love. She’s fairly pretty but not fall-all-over-yourself gorgeous. She’s got a job she cares about that she’s actually qualified to hold… That’s a pet peeve of mine – characters with jobs their degree wouldn’t qualify them to get. She’s not rich. She doesn’t drive a faboo car. She has realistic insecurities about her appearance but doesn’t hate herself. She thinks her roommate is prettier – or at least hotter – than she is. She’s had past relationships that were lousy, and past experiences that were awful, but she’s not completely destroyed by them. She has a boss she thinks is cute but she hasn’t asked him out. She has a friend who is a complete bitch (oh, come on, we all have at least one). In short, she’s ordinary. I love that because that lets the reader identify with the character even when she’s thrown into extraordinary circumstances.

One of those extraordinary circumstances is hitting a motorcyclist with her car. She’s banged up, but he ought to be dead – and isn’t harmed in the least. He’s rich as Croesus, tall, dark, handsome… and a dragon. What I love about Garrett is that for all those wonderful things he isn’t the least bit charming. He isn’t ‘smooth’ with words, and he doesn’t know how to express his feelings. For me, that’s just about perfect – I, for one, can’t stand a hero who is “perfect” and romantic and all that. Love, in my opinion, isn’t about smooth talk, flowers, candlelight, and dancing. I find “romance” a silly thing for the most part. Love is about how you really feel – and how you continue to feel – when ‘the chips are down’. If your love doesn’t survive all hell breaking loose in your lives it wasn’t really love to start with.

Now, I’m not going to spoil the story for you, except to say that loving a dragon may very well be the definition of all hell breaking loose. Meg is targeted by vampires, as is Garrett, and Meg’s considerably more special than she appears to be. I will say that the plot is exceptionally well done; the ‘minor’ characters and their sub-plots are absolutely essential to the story and Mr. Poindexter develops their characters extremely well. The sex scenes are hot without being disgusting and tawdry or heavily laden with purple prose and ridiculous euphemisms. Better yet, they’re accurate for sex with a… um… well-endowed fellow. I’m sorry, folks, this may be blush-inducing, but unrealistic sex scenes in which the man is well-endowed and they go ‘all night’ are insanely stupid – there’s some wear and tear involved and you’re going to be walking funny and sore as hell the next day, plainly put. The fight scenes are dead-on accurate in choreography and physics (given that there are dragons involved, of course). That’s another pet peeve of mine – fight scenes that just couldn’t possibly work that way make me skim and roll my eyes at an author’s lack of research.

Next on my list is David Eddings’ Belgariad and Mallorean  series. I adore epic fantasy and these series are an excellent example of how it should be done.  Of course, Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series is also exceptionally well-done epic fantasy.  For both authors, however, I really only like these series and I’ve never been able to get “into” their other work.

I love funny fantasy, so competing for the ‘funny’ slot are Piers Anthony’s Xanth series and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Of the two series, Discworld is considerably cleaner – I begin to worry that Mr. Anthony’s just a touch pervy. Mr. Anthony has, of course, produced several other series, most of which are even more ‘questionable’ than Xanth;  sex is fine by me, pedophilia isn’t, so I’m not going to recommend any of his other series.

I love science fiction, particularly space opera, and again I have competing favorite series. Lois McMaster-Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga and Sharon Lee & Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe are my picks, and both have gotten Hugo nominations for the 2012 installments of their series – at least on my ballot. Yes, I get to vote on the Hugos this year. Much as I love Lois’s Vorkosigans, I really can’t get into her other books like Spirit Ring; they’re just not as well done and not as engaging.

My last category of absolute keepers are “my” authors. I’m probably biased, but I think that Justin Macumber (A Minor Magic), Lindsey Loucks (Grave Winner), Shawna Romkey (Speak of the Devil), Cindy Young-Turner (Thief of Hope and Journey to Hope), Jody A. Kessler (Death Lies Between Us), Diane M. Haynes (Rift Healer and Sirocco), Rusty Fischer (Reanimation Reform School among others), Denna Holm (Soul of a Warrior), and Wendy Russo (January Black) are putting out some of the best new books out there. Better yet, most of those books are either going to be series or already part of a series, which means there’s more to read! 🙂 Now, you may over-rate my bias here and think that I love them just because I’ve edited some of their work, but the truth of the matter is – that makes me that much more certain that these are really good books! Think about it; I’ve read these books several times over and I absolutely adore them and will read them again and again. That says something, right?

And, because it’s my blog, I’m also going to mention that I adore Neil Gaiman, David Weber, Larry Correia, and Eric Flint. Just because I can. 🙂 I read a lot, okay?

The five people I’m tagging with Alternative Booker Awards of their own – mostly because I want a peep at their bookshelves:

Shawna Romkey

Lindsey Loucks

Wendy Russo

Jody A. Kessler

Cindy Young-Turner

Just can’t wait to see their favorite books!

 

Smuggler’s Justice

Yep. I posted it again. I like the way that red ‘winner’ shines so pretty. :c)

‘Smuggler’s Justice’ is finished and I’ve done the first round of editing on it. Since I wrote the first two chapters in first-person and then switched to third it really needed the work even before going into Beta reading. Right now Himself is Beta reading it. He’s not a big science fiction fan, but he does like political intrigue and political scandal, so I’m holding out hope that he’ll actually like it. That said, I am planning to seek out other Beta readers who are more familiar with commercial science fiction on the market to get a better idea of how the book stacks up.  In the meantime, the next 3 books in the series are organizing themselves into plot ideas I’ll need to churn through Snowflake Pro (which I have decided is possibly the best thing in the world for the outline-haters, like myself, among us).

Of course, I’m going to have to list my handicapped son’s chickens in my acknowledgements for their help with writing the book…  Yes, my little boy thinks that the sounds I make while typing are similar to the sounds of chickens pecking, and he happens to love the farm more that just about anything. He has a rich imagination (as you would expect from a deaf-blind child) and his imaginary friends include a flock of eleven (his favorite number) Rhode Island Red chickens the size of domestic turkeys. He insists that he asked his chickens to help me, and he’s been rooting for me all month long, so the chickens clearly must be thanked!

I’ve been looking at agent listings on WritersMarket.com and market listings as well and I’m really not altogether sure that’s even the route I want to take. I’ll admit that some of my hesitation is financial, but that’s playing second fiddle to my fear of rejection. When it comes to people judging my writing, I’m just as neurotic as any other author, maybe more so considering the great neurosis-free authors I’ve worked with as an editor. Who knows? Of course, despite my fear I’ve drawn up a list of possible agents and once the novel’s through Beta reading I’ll send off my queries if only to say that I didn’t chicken out! That said, I may decide to self-publish entirely in order to get ‘Smuggler’s Justice’ and the rest of the Smuggler’s series out there the way I want them out there without being concerned about print run quantities and the like. On the other hand, that puts all the hard work of finding a cover artist and the like in my lap! I enjoy art, and I’m fairly decent at painting and using Adobe Illustrator, but I’m pretty sure I’m not up to producing the cover I want on my own, and I’m not sure if I can find a cover artist locally who’ll be able to do so either. That means a fairly arduous search for Mister – or Miss – Artistically Right.

For hitting the 50,000 word mark I treated myself to a makeover and a couple of new hairpieces from wiggoddess.com, plus I’ve ordered another one that I liked the look of that she didn’t have in stock in my baby blonde – Clare’s store is down in Berlin, VT. She does all sorts of glamour photography too, so when I need my author photo I’m very likely going to have Clare do it.  It’s an investment because a photo shoot with her isn’t cheap, but I can use the right photo for my author picture on any number of books without ever having to acknowledge that I’m getting any older than that, so it’s all good in my opinion!

Yesterday we drove down to the Vermont Country Store’s store in Rockingham, VT. Of course, on the way there we got a flat tire and had to drive the rest of the way on the ‘doughnut’ spare tire and then all the way back on the back roads at 40mph or less, but considering that it was snowing and the roads were icy I don’t see that as a huge slow down.  While we were there I got lovely soaps (rose, hyacinth, and lavender), nail polish that’s supposed to thicken the nail (which I need because I have paper-thin nails), Tangee blush and lipstick, and two shades of Taboo lipstick. The last time I even saw Taboo lipstick I was eight, and it was the last dregs of my grandmother’s prized hot pink lipstick. After that she switched to something from Avon and was never as happy with it as she had been with her Taboo. I personally got two shades of red lipstick because I tend more towards the ‘vamp/seductress’ when it comes to lipstick than the ‘cheerleader’. The Tangee lipstick and blush changes color to suit your coloring, but I’m still not altogether sure about it since it seems to want to be hot pink on me, and I’m really not a fan of hot pink! Beyond all that I got my little boy a Squawking Chicken. He likes squeaky type toys, so it seemed to be a good fit and so far he seems to like it beyond insisting that it’s definitely not as nice as his imaginary chickens.  I have to admit it’s not as helpful with my writing!

When we got home I gave my son’s friend (his girlfriend’s best friend I think – or at least one of that ‘crowd’) a haircut which she seems to like quite a lot, so that’s nice. I tend to do all the haircutting around here. No, I don’t charge, so you licensed hair dressers don’t come after poor little me! My mother was a licensed beautician for 12 years (1961 – 1973), so I learned the basics from her. Yes, despite a great deal of animosity between the two of us I have to admit that she did teach me some things. I refuse, however, to ever give anyone a ‘shag’ haircut for any reason. The shuddering horror!

In other news, I’ve got a new book to edit for Crescent Moon Press – Wendy S. Russo’s ‘January Black’. I love it to bits after my initial read-through, and I have to say that Ms. Russo did an excellent job with both the subject matter and the prose itself, so I don’t think it’s going to be a terribly long and drawn-out process.  It’s quite a good story, and I’m really enjoying the themes Ms. Russo weaves into her work.

Some of the first books I edited for Crescent Moon Press are being released in December – the novellas ‘A Journey to Hope’ by Cindy Young-Turner, and ‘Sirocco’ by Diane M. Haynes are coming out December 3rd /4th (not sure of the exact dates on those), and the novel ‘A Minor Magic’ by Justin R Macumber is coming out on December 15th. Naturally I’ll be buying a copy of each for my own portfolio – and enjoyment! I’ve also heard that Shawna Romkey’s ‘Speak of the Devil‘ will be released in March 2013, and Lindsey Louck’s ‘Grave Winner‘ will be released in May 2013, but the covers haven’t been released yet nor do I have dates more exact than that.

All in all a very busy month, what with writing a 90,321 word book.  I’ve had some vehicular “fun” and lots of girly-girl stuff to do, and now I’ve got a new book to edit before I can go nuts with nothing to do. Oh! And I have jury duty December 5th. How that’s going to work out if I get the job I think I have a good chance of getting I don’t know.