A book review of Dark Threats

This is a fun and entertaining book. It's a collection of short stories told from the perspective of a vampire child who lived through them. Scott Bryan has made up a fun history and incorporated different stories, myths and legends as well as some history into his book. Annabelle Foresight is a vampire child who has lived for more than three hundred years. During that time she has fought against witches, other vampires including the brides of Dracula, werewolves, zombies, the Invisible Man, and Mr. Hyde.

You can get it as an ebook, or order a paper copy if you prefer. Both are found on Amazon.

It's a fun story for Halloween, but it isn't just a once a year kind of book. It has lots of fun stuff to it, while hinting at bigger things and other experiences Annabelle and her brother Roland have had. Those stories are found in a full length novel called Dark Birth.

You can find out more about this book, the follow up books, and the author, and his blog HERE.

Gonna Gush

I have to say that having beta readers is the best thing ever. Having a critique group to go over your work and tell you what they like and what needs to be fixed is so very very very important. See in the case of the previous sentence, a good critique partner would say, "You don't need that many very's you could do with just one, or better yet, use a stronger word like extremely".

That my friends is what I'm talking about. I've had a handful of people (Writers) who have read my recently finished manuscript, and while they did give me encouraging feedback on what they liked, they also pointed out things that I could work on improving.

I highly recommend you get yourself some readers if you are writing. I love mine. Thank you so much.

Laura

OCTOBER BLOG HOP!

Welcome to the October Blog Hop, where you can visit new blogs, enter to win prizes, and have a great time!

At the bottom of this post, you'll see a list of participating blogs. Just click on each link, check out the prize, and follow the easy instructions to enter. You can enter on each blog, so it's possible to win multiple times. It's frighteningly easy.

On this blog, you can win ...
A signed copy of Night Children: DARK THREATS by Scott Bryan. Find his blog HERE or find him as a participant on the blog hop below.

To enter, all you need to do is:

1. Be or become a follower of my blog.

2. Leave a comment on this post and tell me why you'd like to win this prize. If your e-mail address isn't visible through your Blogger profile, please also leave it with the comment so I can notify you if you win. You can enter until midnight MST on Saturday night, October 15th.

That's it! You are now entered. Now please go visit all my friends on the list below. It's almost like trick or treating!
October Blog Hop Participants

1. Tristi Pinkston 2. I Am a Reader, Not a Writer 3. Bonnie Harris 4. Michael D. Young 5. Misty Moncur 6. Debbie Davis 7. Mandi Tucker Slack 8. Mary Ann Dennis 9. Deanna Henderson 10. Laura Bastian 11. Kristy Tate

12. Kristy Wilson 13. Jennifer Debenham 14. Jenny Moore 15. Elizabeth Hughes 16. J. Lloyd Morgan 17. Close Encounters with the Night Kind 18. Billy Boulden 19. Scott Bryan 20. Maria Hoagland 21. Shirley Bahlmann 22. Shelly Brown

23. Marcy Howes 24. Lynnea Mortensen 25. Jaclyn M. Hawkes 26. Diane Stringam Tolley 27. Gail Zuniga 28. Betsy Love 29. iWriteNetwork 30. Canda's InkBlast 31. Stacy Coles

Learn more about October Blog Hop here.
View More October Blog Hop Participants
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Book Review. INSIGHT, Beholders book 1

A Book review of

Well, here it is. The book review you've been waiting for.  I've posted a couple of times about this book, one was where it was the prize for my September Blog Hop.  Another was a post for you to have a chance to win a Nook by entering the contest on his blog.  So now I'm going to tell you my thoughts about this book.

First off, the cover...  I have to say when I first saw it, I hated it. I didn't like the expression on the guys face. It looked too unhappy, stressed, irritable, and downright miserable.  Then when I started reading the book and learned of the predicament the young man found himself in, I could totally understand the expression on his face.  Not that he feels that way all the time, but since he is forced to leave his family and his fiancee in order to keep them safe from the threat he becomes to them when his ability to wield the long lost True Sight comes out, the cover now works for me.

The story is about a young man whose family had to leave their home in a rush five years earlier without being able to say goodbye to family or friends for a reason Lon and his twin sister Mellai never knew. It turns out, Lon is a Beholder, or a person who can use the power of True Sight, (a power where he can see the elements and manipulate them)  The Rayders have been searching for a Beholder for centuries because they want to use his power to overthrow the King and the kingdom of Appernysia. The history behind the Rayders is interesting, but brutal. They are a very ruthless society, relying on exact obedience, and will kill without a second thought.

When Lon decides the only way he can learn about this newfound power of his, which is killing him every time it manifests, is to join the Rayders, we get to learn about the Rayders, and the terrible choices Lon will have to make. Should he stay with them and help them with their cause, or return to his fiancee and family?

I liked this book a lot, and enjoyed the world and magic Terron James created. I found myself really liking the characters and rooting for them. Terron did a nice job making me really know the characters enough that I actually felt sad for them, or angry with a particular choice, or happy if they got what they wanted. I did feel there were too many times the background information was just given to us in conversation between Lon and his dad Or Lon and another character. Sometimes those conversations dragged.  Also, there were places where I really wished I could have experienced with the character, instead of having it summarized with the characters conversations.

Terron's style of writing reminded me of the Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan.  There were times when he broke away from one character to go to the others.  This is a series, though I don't know how many books are planned for it, but he ended the story in a good spot, and made me want more right away.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes High Fantasy, or a clean romance, or even just a few hours in a faraway world.

Go to his website to order the book.

Book review. The Key of Kilenya

I had the opportunity to receive a free copy of The Key of Kilenya to review for Andrea Pearson on her online book tour. Though the book was free, it did not effect this review.
The following is a summary of what the book is about.

When two vicious wolves chase fourteen-year-old Jacob Clark down a path from our world into another, his life is forever changed. He has no idea they have been sent by the Lorkon—evil, immortal beings who are jealous of powers he doesn’t know he possesses—powers they desire to control.

The inhabitants of the new world desperately need Jacob's help in recovering a magical key that was stolen by the Lorkon and is somehow linked to him. If he helps them, his life will be at risk. But if he chooses not to help them, both our world and theirs will be in danger. The Lorkon will stop at nothing to unleash the power of the key—and Jacob's special abilities.


So here are my thoughts about the book:

I have to admit that I didn't relate to the main character of the book very well, but that's probably because he was a 14 yr old boy, and I'm a 30 something mother, but he was still a likeable kid. He seemed a little too obsessed with the basketball tryouts that he missed when he finds himself transported to another world through some kind of passageway hidden in the forest near his home.  I would have expected him to be too amazed at the idea of being in a new world for him to obsess about things back at home. There were also lots of times when something he said or did, didn't really seem like it would be coming from a 14 yr old, but again, I'm more than twice his age and can't really remember that far back. ;)

The book has lots of action and wonderful magical elements in it. The descriptions are fun and I could totally see what he was experiencing. My favorite part was when he had to travel through a dark tunnel by feel since using any light revealed people trapped in the actual stone of the mountain they had to pass through.

There is a lot of back story to this book that was delivered in a clever way through a journal Jacob had to read, (and I loved how the journal only showed one page at a time and wouldn't reveal more until you'd read the words shown to you first, making it impossible to skip ahead.) I did find myself wanting to read the journal myself and not worry about what Jacob was doing. But then Jacob would get into a predicament and I'd get caught up with his story again.

This is the beginning of a series and so there are many questions brought up that are left unanswered, which irritates and interests me at the same time.  The parents and adults in this story seemed slightly shady to me. They wanted Jacob and his new friend Akeno to do something huge and important, but didn't give them much information. It's like they felt it would be better for them to stumble across things themselves. And a few times, magical things solved a problem that arose without giving me a real sense that it needed to happen other than to get them out of the predicament. Maybe in the following books, we'll learn how the magic works better since Jacob and Akeno didn't know and we were experiencing things with them.

Overall, it was an interesting book, and I would recommend it for kids who could relate to Jacob. My ten yr old and 8 yr old enjoyed the beginning that we've started reading together and we'll see how it goes with them.


To purchase her book go HERE, it's free for a bit.

To learn more about Andrea and her series go HERE

My friend is giving away something cool!

I'm in the process of reading a book called Insight by Terron James.


 It is pretty good. It was the prize I gave away for the September Blog hop and now I'm reading it to be able to review it. However, since Terron is a friend of mine, and I'm following his blog and hoping to help him promote his book, I'm going to tell you about his giveaway on his blog this month.

Go HERE to check it out.

Anyway, he is going to give away a Nook First Edition Wi Fi.  It's pretty simple to enter into the drawing for his giveaway.  Go check it out.

And check back here soon for my review of his book. I think you'll like it.