TBR pile: The Marriage Spell

I seem to be on a TBR pile conquering roll. Honestly, I think it's just my addictive nature toying with me after finishing all the seasons of Stargate Atlantis and now having to restrain myself to only watching Farscape episodes with my kids as part of my effort to share my love of sci-fi with them.

After an afternoon of cross country skiing--my first try at that behind busting (in more ways than one) endeavor-- with my kids, my sore body informed me that a long hot bath was in order. Long hot baths call for a book. That's where Mary Jo Putney's The Marriage Spell comes in.

A paranormal romance set in England sounded like a fun read. Wizards abound, both talented and not so much, but all are held in disdain by the snobby and politically powerful people of the upper class. When a lonely female healer wizard asks for marriage as payment for healing a mortally wounded Lord, he agrees rather than face death. As he falls in love with her he discovers he's a wizard too and now they must face a hostile society while he takes his place as Lord of his land.

As a reader, I found the book to be a lighthearted, quick read. It was also easy. Too easy for my taste. There's no thought involved in following along. There's conflict but everything is solved in a few pages and the characters, while endearing, happily barrel on to the next part of the plot.

The romance side of things was done well enough, sweet with a few warm fuzzy moments tossed in. The one thing I did applaud was the use of the title, which turned out to have a revealed meaning more literal than I'd first suspected. If you're looking for a romance read for a mindless day, this book may be for you.

As a writer, this was a major lesson in tension, or lack thereof. This book clearly illustrates that we can go far too easy on our characters. While full of what could have been tension filled scenes, they moved too quick and the solutions were too obvious to convey any real sense of danger, threat or heartpounding 'oh my god, what is going to happen next/how will they get out of this situation?' moments. There was a vague overall plot goal, but it felt more like the characters were bumbling about from one subplot to the next more often than not.

Characters spent the first half of the book not asking each other obvious questions that they logically should have asked, didn't share information with each other for random reasons that seemed darned hollow, or just never happened to though there was plenty of opportunity for conversation. Those lost opporutnities would have increased the tension level or avoided misunderstandings that led to weak plot moments.

On the plus side, this book was a breath of fresh air in the atypical female main character. She wasn't tiny, skinny, petite, beautiful, full of charm, had the waist the size of a starved twelve year old, got lost in her husband's embrace, or was snarky for the sake of having a contrary, spoiled or perky personality. She was a normal woman, of average beauty with normal doubts and a personality to match. While everyone in this book seemed to suffer from a lack of confidence in some manner of their personality, I did enjoy her character enough to see the book to the last page.

Would I read this book again? No, but I'd be willing to give the author another chance because even my favorites have a weak novel now and then.

Another TBR pile selection down

My husband and I have been watching the Tudors as time allows (all hail Netflix) and so when I reached into my TBR pile again, I aimed for Phillpa Gregory's The Constant Princess. I've always enjoyed reading about this time period and vastly enjoyed The Other Boleyn Girl. This book features the story of Katherine of Aragon, the flip side of the Boleyn story.

This beautifully told tragic tale rekindled my love for Gregory's books. No need to throw the book against the wall or start any fires this time around. If only high school would have taught history with historical fiction, I would have paid so much more attention. This book chronicles the lift of Katherine from childhood as the Princess of Wales to her quest to become Queen of England. The utter certainty of her character, conviction beyond what anyone else can understand, puts this strong woman on the throne where she belongs.

As a reader, I loved, loved, loved this book. The strength of character, so artfully portrayed is amazing. Having been thoroughly introduced to Katherine, I can now only wonder how different things would have been if spoiled, selfish Henry hadn't put her aside. Gregory's solution to the question of Katherine's actual relations with her first husband, Arthur, seems a logical one and plays into the princess's ambition to become queen.

I would recommend this book to anyone currently watching the Tudors. While Katherine is portrayed as a solid and devout force to reckon with on the show, we're given little hint as to what she had to endure to get to the throne and exactly why the people love her so much. This knowledge makes her battle against the corrupt church, her husband and the woman who wants her throne so much more tragic.

As a writer, this book is a excellent example of how to portray a sympathetic, loving, yet utterly strong and determined female character. It also illustrates why it is a bad idea to have pages of italic text (hard on the eyes) and convey thoughts with quotes (so very confusing!), especially within dialogue heavy sections of the book. The title caught my eye right away and when the first use of it came up in the book, I stopped to appreciate the 'ah ha' moment. Then it was used again, and again, and again... my head hurt from the anvils raining from the sky by the time I'd finished the book. Those little things didn't diminish the love factor, though, I'd certainly read this one again.

Venturing into the TBR pile

It's been awhile since I've picked up a book for fun, mostly because I get a little out of control when I go on a reading binge. I stay up far too late, work doesn't get done, writing doesn't happen, dinner gets burned, and I'm late for everything. Just one more page. One more, and I promise I'll put it down. Yeah, right.

My TBR pile has been steadily growing and I needed to do something about it, so being around Valentine's Day and all, I allowed myself to dip into the romance pile. My hand landed on the guilty pleasure of Christine Feehan's Lair of the Lion.

I've read many of her other books, mostly of the Dark Series, and had found them enjoyable, but perhaps a bit formulaic when read too closely together. Still, the perfect book for a glass of wine and a long, hot bubble bath kind of night. Lair of the Lion was a nice change. Still sensual but without vampires of any variety. It's a twist on the Beauty and the Beast type tale with a gothic edge.

As a reader, the level of romance was satisfying and the curse to be broken led me through a fulfilling mystery. There were even a few twists I totally didn't see coming, which I always appreciate.

As a writer, the repetition of description of the characters got on my nerves. The word 'strange' was used far too many times to describe the mysterious male MC's eyes and hair. The ending of the mystery felt slightly rushed, but the romance side of the plotline ended on the perfect note, full of character and without any of the dreaded overdose of HEA-happy-sparkly-rainbows-of-eye-rolling-gag-me. On the plus side, the book illustrates a good balance of incorporating enough foreign language to offer flavor without confusion or overdoing it.

The waiting game

We write. We bleed on the pages. We wipe up the blood, format correctly and research our markets. We submit.

We wait.

We check email. We write. We check email. We go to work. We come home. We check email. We decree that we hate waiting.

We check average response times and discover we have a long time to wait. We sigh and write.

We fear rejection, but check email anyway. We feel positive, uplifted, because we had a good day, so we check email. We decree that we hate empty inboxes.

We check market websites. Responses have gone out. We check email. We sigh and write.

Days go by and the inbox remains empty. This just can't be right. We check email. It occurs to us, with a sense of dread, quelled by a sudden rush of utter optimism, murdered quickly by the second flood of dread, that we've not checked the spam folder in quite some time. We check the spam folder.

Rejected way back on day two. We decree that we hate the spam folder.

We write.

From steamroller casualty to acceptance

I am utterly pleased to announce that my short story, "The Employer", has been accepted to The First Line magazine. The steamrollers have been vanquished and a gold star has been plunked on the top of my paper.

Thank you to all the wonderful people who critiqued this story. Your suggestions made it shine. As this story was part of my November writing frenzy, I can finally say that something I wrote during NaNoWriMo has become something worthwhile!

The Employer is the third story I've written for this magazine. The first two didn't make the cut. I was drawn the idea of the first line prompt and find them quite inspiring. It's one of those shove the prompt in the back of your head, percolate it for awhile and see what the old twisted mind comes up with things. Since they post the prompts for the year well in advance, there's plenty of time to ponder.

Not only do you have to write a story that hasn't been done a billion times, you have to start it with the same first line as everyone else. The trick is to think outside the box that all the other bunches of outside-the-box-thinking creative people are thinking outside of when they read that first line. Now, if that doesn't make your head hurt, you should go write down whatever just popped into your head, because its sure to be something you can work with.