Full Scene Spread

So I’ve had a lot going on for the past, well, several months.  Truthfully I went through something of a depressed stage (trying to figure out “what to do with my life now?”), that was preceded by months of a different type of depression - the kind where you do what you have to do day-to-day, but most of it barely registers except for those extremes: the joy, the bliss, the sorrow...

But most recently I’ve been in super busy mode, having finally (metaphorically) slapped myself to awareness and made myself realize that I could continue to be miserable, or I could do something about it.  So I decided to do just that.  Now my personal life is on something of an upswing, plans and actions are moving along reasonably well in that sphere, and I figured it was time to start working on that “balance” thing.  You know, shaking off the tunnel vision every once in awhile and focusing on something else.

So here I am.

Besides trying to keep up-to-date with “the favorites” on TV: Criminals Minds, Law and Order: SVU, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Bunheads, and Once Upon a Time - I actually haven’t been spending a lot of time watching TV.  (Not to mention that my VOD service has been spotty, and my husband has been monopolizing the DVR with Pawn Stars and Lizard Lick Towing.) But because of how busy I’ve been in other spheres of life, by the time I sit down to watch TV I’ve been lucky lately if I make it through a single episode of anything before I’m passed out, and most likely snoring in my lazy boy.

That said, if you haven’t been keeping up with Once Upon a Time - or are within the set of TV viewers that haven’t watched any of this simply amazing show - you need to take the time to GET CAUGHT UP!  Season 2 has thrown us a bunch of twists, turns and “what the?...” moments, that I honestly think makes Once one of the best dramas on TV right now.  Don’t miss out!

I’ve actually seen a handful of the newest cinema releases lately.... 

The Call - while perhaps not Halle Berry’s best movie ever, it attempts to dig in deep and hook you.  This drama/thriller(??) aims to grip you by your emotions, but mostly missed the mark.  I enjoyed it overall but it’s definitely not a movie that I’ll be clamoring to watch again... ever.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation - I was actually really excited to go see this movie.  Both my husband and I loved the first movie when it came out a few years ago, I think we may even have gone to see it twice in the theater, but sadly - Retaliation did not live up to our expectations!  The were very few, if any Joe-gadgets - something that made Rise of the Cobra a distinctive success for me, and in the end Retaliation became just another action movie.  Entertaining, but clearly lacking the WOW factor that we’d expected!

And lastly, The Croods - perhaps one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year. (Granted there are a couple movies out right now that I’m dying to go to...) This was a fun movie that entertained everyone - from my 4-year old daughter, to her 55-year old grandma!  With Laugh-Out-Loud parts, and sweet and serious tear-jerkers, The Croods will be one pick that will definitely end up on my shelf.

Despite how busy I’ve been lately, one thing that I have spent a considerate amount of time doing is reading.  Mostly because my insomnia has been acting up again and reading is one of only a couple of compassionate activities to partake in at 3:30am.  For the most part I’ve been doing re-reads of favorite series: Jean Johnson’s Sons of Destiny series, Stephanie Laurens’ Bastion Club and Cynster series, The Highlander series and the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning, a couple of the novellas from the Carpathian series by Christine Feehan, some Lora Leigh books and some Lara Adrian.  Lots of my favorites and all stories that I would recommend to any and everyone!

Most recently I wrapped up a re-read of the entire Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward - which started and finished with reads of Lover at Last, the newest release in the series and the long awaited story of Blaylock and Qhuinn.  Because I love the BDB novels so much I’m going to leave deeper discussion of this book and it’s place and impact on the series for another time, and just say that I loved it, I recommend it to absolutely everyone and leave it at that.  For now.

In the last couple months I’ve stumbled upon a few new authors (or new to me anyways) and a couple new series that I think have a lot of future potential.  I’m going to wait and talk about them in another update too and I hope you’ll check back to find out who and what has caught my interest now!

And in Fan-Fiction news... I haven’t published anything recently, as anyone who checks or is a fan would know, but I am working on a couple things.  I’m (still) working on the next chapter for The Best is Yet to Come - this story can be alternately easy and difficult to write, and this next part to come has been one of the most strenuous parts to write so far.  Rest assured though that I have not given up on this story though, its just a [hard] labor of love.

I’m also working on a new story.  Well, it’s sort of new.  It’s basically a companion story in the An Ending or a New Beginning world.  I’ve been jotting down a bit here and there, and it’s coming along, but I have to make sure that it matches up to the timeline from An Ending or a New Beginning and that I’m not compromising the original story with anything from the new one.  That is after all one of my FF pet-peeves = when a FF-author creates a world, has a whole bunch of stories that fit into it, but constantly contradicts themselves with the details.  So I’m really trying to make sure that I do it right!

Last but DEFINITELY not least - music.  There are always songs that catch my attention, or ones that I just fall in love with right off.  This song is one of those.

Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men

It’s an amazing song, and something of a confusing, messed up video that one YouTube video likened to the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’... Love, love, love this song!

What I Read During What Was Left of September

LORA LEIGH

·         Lion’s Heat

·         Styx’s Storm

·         Navarro’s Promise

The next book in the Breeds series will be released in November and it features Lawe, one of Jonas’s personal security officers, and a Lion who has always professed a deep wariness of mating and mating heat.  I look forward to reading this novel and seeing how he manages to deal with the pressure!  Look for Lawe’s Justice online and in bookstores near you on November 26, 2011.

JULIA LONDON

·         Summer of Two Wishes

·         One Season of Sunshine

·         A Light at Winter’s End

These are all contemporary romance novels in her connected novels, Cedar Springs series.  They are nice stories that are really good and interesting reads.  If you're looking for something that's a sweet read - definitely check these out!

SUSAN KEARNEY

·         Lucan

·         Rion

·         Jordan

These Kearney novels are the books of the Pendragon Legacy and use a twist on the myths and legends of King Arthur, Merlin, Avalon, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail.  All things that I’m vastly interested in (and mildly obsessed with!), so keep your eyes open for reviews of these books and other Arthurian based entertainment.  And really there is so much to choose from I could talk about it for ever.  Or write about it indefinitely as the case may be!

So that’s what I read during the second half of September! To see what I manage to read during October check back here around the 15^th and 31^st! 

Until then, keep reading, watching, writing, and doing whatever else most entertains you!!

My Reading List (So Far) and Some Opinions

Reading from September 1-15

LORA LEIGH

Megan’s Mark

Harmony’s Way

Dawn’s Awakening

Tanner’s Scheme

Mercury’s War

Coyotes Mate

Bengal’s Heart

CHRISTINE FEEHAN

Dark Predator

And I have just a bit to say about these books… (especially since I promised some mention of how I liked Dark Predator after I read it!)

First – after discovering last week that the latest Carpathian novel was released, I read a couple reviews from advance readers and readers who picked it up as soon as it hit the shelves.  I was somewhat surprised by what I found.  One of the reviewers actually said that she was disappointed with Dark Predator on the whole and went on to say that after waiting for so long to see/hear Zacarias De La Cruz’s story, she felt that what we got was flat and lacking.  It has been commented on in the past couple of years that the last several books that have come out in this series just weren’t as good as the earlier ones.  To a certain point I can agree. 

The first five, six, or even eight books in the series did a lot of setting up the plot line for the future.  Then we had a few books that were transitioning, and introduced other, new races besides the Carpathians and revealed the overall ‘evils’ that the Carpathians faced.  The last couple of books while different and evolving, are just that – different.  If the stories were all the same, with the same situations, the same problems and dilemmas, and the same resolutions, we wouldn’t keep reading them, especially when you’re considering a series that includes 22 books, so far.  So yes, if you’re judging the “worth” of the book based solely on a template of the earlier books, I can agree that it’s not quite as good in that sense.

BUT!!!!!!!!

But, ChristineFeehan’s Dark series is as much about immersing the readers into the paranormal world of the Carpathians, as it is about showing the ‘human’ side of the Carpathian’s themselves, or their ability to develop a more human-friendly nature.  Does that mean that the latest books – Dark Predator, Peril, Slayer, Curse, Possession – aren’t as good as those that we initially fell in love with?  NO! I loved Mikhail’s story, and Jacques, Gregori’s, Lucian’s, Gabriel’s, Falcon’s and Byron’s.  I love them, but I’m just as fascinated by Zacarias, Dominic, Ivory and Razvan, Nikolai, Vikirnoff, and the other De La Cruz brothers.  From the very first Christine’s Dark novels have been trying to teach us (and them) that change, while disconcerting, confusing and difficult, is necessary.  Did readers really think that the message wasn’t about more than just the situations the Carpathians came to be in?  Or was it just me that saw the possibility?

So yeah, I liked Dark Predator. Did I find fault with it, or have complaint’s, sure.  I would have like to see more interaction with other Carpathians – nearly the entire book has only Zacarias and Marguarita.  Would I have liked to see more vampire/Carpathian battles? Yes, because frankly they are always interesting.  The way that Predator was written, works for this story.  And really, that’s what matters.

LoraLeigh is an author of books that I’ve always seen on the shelves.  Just due to the typical alphabetical product placement that most bookstores employ, I would see her titles every time I was scanning the shelves for some of my (other) favorite authors (for example: Johanna Lindsay, Angela or Deidre Knight, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Linda Leal Miller and K.M. Moning!)  But for years, literally, I didn’t pick up any of her books. 

I have this weird thing where if I’m starting a series that already has several books published, even if they don’t have to be read in a particular order, I have to read them in the right order.  Or as close to the right order as possible.  For a while I would look at Lora’s books and think about getting them, but the first few from the series were just never available. Then last spring (this would have been Spring 2010) I finally picked up Megan’s Mark and Dawn’s Awakening when they showed up on the shelf, and forced myself to order Harmony’s Way.   And I haven’t regretted the decision once.

All of Lora’s books lean more into the realm of erotica than (nearly) all of the other novels that I have.  While my husband (and men/women all around the world) may joke that all romance novels are porn, or pornish (pornesque?), the extent to which her books are more explicit than I was used to, was almost something of a shock to me.  (Not a real shock, I am a happily married woman with three kids, and a semi-adventurous spirit, after all!)  But I’ve been known to skip over the intimate parts of novels on repeat readings because it’s not the sex that I read them for, it’s the HEA- happily-ever-after. 

So the explicit sexual scenes, which Lora frequently puts in her books, were different for me.   I’m not saying that those scenes made the books better or worse, or that all romance novels should have more explicit scenes, but for Lora Leigh and her Breed novels (and actually the Nauti, Elite Ops and the Bound Hearts series as well – which are three more of her series which I have found these types of scenes in.) these more explicit and frankly erotic scenes fit.  They fit with the stories, the men and women the stories are about, and Lora manages to write them with just the right touch! (pun intended!) 

But take this as a warning if you aren’t a reader who can enjoy these types of scenes – none of the Lora Leigh books that I have read to date, is anything but unapologetically sexual, from the tone she sets right off, to the personalities of her characters.  If you don’t like, or can’t handle, reading the nitty gritty of sexual interactions, don’t read these books.  They are awesome books, the stories and the characters that she portrays, whether were talking about her Breeds, the Nauti boys, or the members of her Elite Ops and Navy Seals series, are all amazing, rich and well worth the read.  Just beware.

That’s everything I have to say… And I guess it was more than just a little bit.  Oopps.  See you next time everyone!