{Review} The Bane (Keary Taylor)

Goodreads: Before the Evolution there was TorBane: technology that infused human DNA with cybernetic matter.  It had the ability to grow new organs and limbs, to heal the world.  Until it evolved out of control and spread like the common cold.  The machine took over, the soul vanished, and the Bane were born.  The Bane won't stop until every last person has been infected. With less than two percent of the human population left, mankind is on the brink of extinction.

Eve knows the stories of the Evolution, the time before she wandered into the colony of Eden, unable to recall anything but her name.  But she doesn't need memories to know this world is her reality.  This is a world that is quickly losing its humanity, one Bane at a time.

Fighting to keep one of the last remaining human colonies alive, Eve finds herself torn between her dedication to the colony, and the discovery of love.  There is Avian and West – one a soldier, one a keeper of secrets.  And in the end, Eve will make a choice that will change the future of mankind.

The Bane is The Terminator meets The Walking Dead with a heart-twisting romance.

{My Review} 

I really enjoyed The Bane. It was full of action, suspense, and romance. Taylor's take on zombies taken over not by a virus, but by cybernetics, was a fresh twist that I enjoyed. 

The heroine is tough and dedicated--she's easy to root for, even though her failure to make a decision on which guy she wanted grew a little tiresome for me. 

*spoiler alert* The story kinda reminded me of Battlestar Galactica, when one of the Cylons (a Sharon model) falls in love with a human and fights alongside them. The episodes where the humans are fighting on planets totally gave me flashbacks. 

In The Bane, Eve doesn't know she's part Bane until close to the end, and she falls in love with a full human. Without her help, the humans don't stand much of a chance against the Bane. 

All in all, The Bane is a great bargain, at only $3.99, and I will be reading the sequel. 

Help! I can't decide on this dang cover.

For all my covers, I've pretty much known what I've wanted from the beginning. Witch Fall not so much. 

Laura and I have brainstormed about 3 options. *Keep in mind that your voting on the CONCEPT, not the actual pieces before you. You have to think ahead to what it will look like finished, not what it is NOW. Make sense? 

Option 1: *These two are very rough sketches. They'll be all prettied up for the final.* I love the colors and the sky. It matches the first books pretty well. Not quite sure what do do about the pendant (The title is Fall, so I wanted the pendant to fall from her hands). 

Option 2: This one will have some tweaking, so keep that in mind. I don't really like her pose, but Laura thinks we need to keep it more portrait like to match the first two covers. I'd kind of like a full body shot of her in the water, but the pendant would be tiny. Something like this. We'll make the water turquoise, with sunken buildings around her (she's on a sinking island), the necklace pulling her up. 

Option 3: Something more like this, with Lilette facing the audience, the pendant floating free in front of her and her hair floating around her (Love the Forbidden Sea, BTW. Great book).

I'll probably take the sketches down tomorrow so the unfinished image isn't floating around in cyperspace. 

{Review} The Neptune Project (Polly Holyoke)

From Goodreads:

THE NEPTUNE PROJECT is set in a future where the seas are rising and global warming is out of control. Nere Hanson and her teen companions are shocked to learn that they have been genetically altered by their desperate parents to live in the sea. Protected by her loyal dolphins, shy Nere leads the rest on a perilous journey to her father’s new colony. Fighting off government divers, sharks and giant squid, can Nere and her companions learn to trust each other before their dangerous new world destroys them?

My review: 

The Neptune Project opens up a whole new world--at once achingly alien and yet fascinatingly familiar. It sings to those who hear the call of the water in the breathing out of the ocean's waves against the shore or the laughter-like chatter of the dolphins. 

Speaking of . . . Holyoke captures our the undeniable kinship dolphins seem to evoke in humans--we love them without knowing why or how. Every watched a nature movie on dolphins, sharks, giant squid? Ever snorkled or scuba dived into the depths, and a part of you never wanted to leave?

Holyoke perfectly captures that hunger, that feeling of belonging where you don't belong at all. I can't say enough good things about this book. It was one I eagerly devoured, and yet immediately wanted my son to read as well. Truly a family novel. Perfect for bookclubs or vacations or anytime you hunger for the embrace of the water--the siren song it sings to our blood. 

Also, my ugliest writing contest has two winners:

JoLynne Lyon and Anthony Pacheco. Pick one of my books and I'll send you an ebook. 

Worst writing contest

Post your worst paragraph on your blog/facebook/twitter. Winner get's a free ebook of Winter Queen and Witch Born. Leave a link to your post in the comments. And have fun with this!

Here's my worst:

It was a dark and stormy night. Or if not stormy, then at least dark. Well, darkish. Because the brightest time of the day is noon, so really anything before or after that is a varying degree of dark. So we'll say it was the dark of 4:30. In the afternoon not the morning. Cause 4:30 in the morning isn't scary, and this story is supposed to be scary. Of course, 4:30 in the afternoon isn't really scary, unless you have to work overtime. Then it's depressing because your hungry and tired and you want to go home but you have to work late so you can't. So it's the dark of 4:30, which is scary cause you have to work overtime. Forget the stormy part. Storms in stories are overdone. 

Back cover for Winter Queen

Pick which section do you like better for the back cover for the hardcover:

Option 1: 

“I know you, Ilyenna. Know you as I know the language of the storms, the frost flowers that bloom in the ice, the sleeping sighs of the bears in their caves. You think of yourself as a healer. But as a winter queen, you will become a destroyer.”

Ilyenna could only stare at the terrible beauty of the fairy.

Chriel fluttered her wings. “The powers of winter will allow you to save yourself and the ones you love. But there is a price. Before, you hadn’t become winter yet. To do so is to be reborn. And after that, you’ll never break free.”

“I’ll no longer be human?” Ilyenna asked.

Chriel cocked her thimble-sized head to the side. “You will give up your humanity. All of it—your memories, your emotions. You will be shattered, melted down, and reformed into something new.” The fairy paused, looking sad. “To save yourself and the ones you love, you will have to lose them.”

Option 2: 

The water was so cold it drove the breath from Ilyenna, sending her whole body into a cramp. Her lungs burned with fire. Trapped beneath the layer of ice, she slammed into the riverbed before hurtling into the ice. The water dragged her along its jagged surface—so close she could see the pale winter sky, the dark trees framing it like lace. She clawed at the ice, numbly aware of the sting as one by one, her fingernails were ripped off.

Then, by some miracle, the ice broke above her. She bobbed along in the water, too weak and cold to fight the current. She bumped against another sheet of ice, and the water started sucking her down. Clawing at the icy snow, she bent herself in half over the ice. She couldn’t pull her legs from the river. She dug into the crystallized snow with her blue hands, trying to call for help. Her voice refused to work.

This is how I’m going to die, she thought.

I just typed "The end"

The first draft of Witch Fall is done! And the ending is so beautifully heart-wrenching.

This deserves a blog post in and of itself. 

That's not to say I'm done with the book. I don't even know if I'm halfway done. I still have to flesh the story out-I'm missing at least three chapters that I need to go back and add (I bet I need to add 20K words). And the story is kind of a mess. I have LOTS of editing ahead of me. 

BUT THE BONES ARE THERE!

BTW, have you added Witch Fall to Goodreads yet? 

Help me brainstorm Witch Fall's cover

Witch Fall is due out this October, which means it's about time to get started on the cover. I plan to have Laura Sava, who did Winter Queen, finish the last cover in the series. 

I want all the books to look like they belong together, so we'll utilize the same tones and feel. There are two-ish options I'm considering. Let me know which one you like best in the comments.

Option 1: the pendant featured in the center with plant leaves and curly vines around the outside. Featuring a magical object is something that's done a lot in high fantasy novels. Some examples: 

The magical item signals to the readers that the book is a high fantasy. Some of them are simpler than others, but one of the main jobs of a cover is to give you a visual story about what the novel is about. 

Option 2: Feature Lilette, much as Senna is featured. Because Witch Fall is a prequel, I thought I'd have her looking back toward us. I'll keep some of the same elements--namely, the warm earth tones, the pendant, one of my fantasy landscape on the back cover, the eyes that follow you. In each shot, the "camera" is further back, so Lilette's whole body would be featured. I'll try to incorporate one of the scenes from the book, I'm not sure which one yet. 

Option 3: Something different all together. Feel free to throw your own ideas out there!

YOU are beautiful

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time. So when my fellow writer, CJ Redwine, posted the above video along with her own person journey to beauty, it finally propelled me into action. 

I'm going to start with an observation: Women like beautiful things. It's built into our makeup. It allows us to be artists and lovers and nurturers.

But the ability to see beauty can easily be twisted into a search for flaws, which turns our natural gift into a curse. But only if we let it.

Real, true beauty is something to be searched for. Something to be found.

So when you look into the mirror, do you search for beauty or flaws? I promise, you have both. Everyone does. But finding the flaws can only lead to unhappiness, while discovering the beauty will only add to your beauty.

So your homework, look in the mirror, and tell me how you are beautiful. 

I'll start with what I see: Surrounded by thick, long eyelashes, my beautiful brown eyes pop with hints of green when I wear the right colors. My hair is long and soft. My features are dramatic and bold, much as my personality is. My ears are cute. My lips full and smiling. My figure is long and lean, with just a hint of curves.