Book review: Fire by Kristin Cashore (4/5)

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Okay, this is not a romance novel. So sue me! Actually, please don’t, I hate to think of the legal fees.

 

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Full disclosure: I didn’t expect to like “Fire.” I’d read “Graceling” and been left unimpressed, wondering what all the hype was about until I remembered I’m no longer a teenage girl. There goes feeling young on the inside.

“Fire,” however, had much more nuance than “Graceling” – something that surprised me, considering the fact it’s about a woman so magically beautiful, men and monsters alike would do anything to have her.

 

This image is way better than the cover I got.

This image is way better than the cover I got.

Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that; for one thing, Fire is a “monster,” a mythical creature both beautiful and harmful to those around her, capable of reading thoughts and controlling minds. This power, of course, makes it difficult when men, attracted by her unnatural beauty, are full of thoughts of raping or killing her just so they can have her. It also makes love a complicated thing.

Fire’s country is beset by two would-be usurpers, whose armies could easily defeat the king’s own force, which has been weakened by the previous king’s poor rule over the land – a rule that was largely controlled by Fire’s father, the monster who bewitched the king and weakened the country. Now, the king and his brother the prince seek to protect their throne and save their people from the usurpers – and they have called on Fire’s powers to help them. But young Fire dreads the thought of becoming like her evil father, and is pulled between the desire to make up for her father’s legacy and fear that she is trapped by her own nature into becoming just like him.

What made this book less than perfect was the same thing I disliked about “Graceling” – its utter lack of drama (in this case, literary drama). I admire the author’s choice to make both female protagonists strong young women who don’t desire children, but I still feel each book could’ve used more dramatic tension. The stakes in the climax are lower than one could wish for, but “Fire” does a much better job at pushing the tension and conflict than its predecessor, and it has the strength of a very unusual set of characters in a unique magical world. 4/5 stars.

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Where love goes when it’s gone

Posted in Musings by

I write romance novels. I’m currently 30,000 words into my next one, a full length novel I plan on self-publishing in the next two months. It’s not a stormy, brooding love story, but it’ll do, and there are plenty of stormy, brooding love stories to come.

I think about love, sex, affection, attraction, and both healthy and unhealthy relationships in my work. What kind of relationships, as an author, will I write? If I’m writing about an unhealthy relationship, is there a burden on me, as a writer, to make this clear? What defines a healthy relationship? Is writing about one boring, conflict-free, sure to fail?

I think about these questions a lot, and as I can see it there are no clear answers. Many of the romance novels out there are too similar, in my opinion. Brooding, tortured, emotionally absent men, and women who tear their hair out in frustration but love them. Lots of angst, torture, suddenly leaving each other with only a note left behind, etc.

I try to write differently. And I try to define what love means to me, in all its many forms: the early, deep pit inside you that hungers for your lover, like a missing limb. The bright giddiness that erases flaws, frequently to its own downfall. The sighing warmth of a well-worn, well-known friend. And finally, that dangerous, painful love when one is taken from you, by design or their own choice, and you wonder if it’s the loss of love you’re feeling or merely the pain of abandonment.

When that last one fades, leaving only a curious, dull memory of it, does that mean the love was never true? Or did it merely go somewhere, tucked deep inside you like an open wound that has healed and scarred over?

Where does love go when it’s gone?

I realize this post is mostly questions, and somewhat silly ones at that, since what I write is mostly entertainment. But I like to think on these things, and hope that the wondering will lead me to writing rich, interesting, epic stories one day.

What drives us to write?

Posted in Writing by

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. In many ways, writing is a compulsion, joy, and a chore simultaneously. What, then, drives us to first pick up pen and ink (or laptop and latte, as the case may be)?

Some people, I believe, write because they have lived for a while and wish to leave something of their learning, and living, behind. From this place comes non-fiction books from scientists, scholars and chefs. Others are quick and imaginative, capable of telling a story that will hold a crowd. Much like performers, they draw some intrinsic part of themselves from having an audience.

Still others, I believe (and anyone may be a combination of these), are forced to write. Writing is their greatest joy, their largest gift, and, often, their only real, tangible skill. Writers like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have said they wouldn’t, and couldn’t, do anything but tell stories. Stories that come to them in the middle of the night, unbidden, demanding to be told.

Well – which writer are you?

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What is your daily writing goal?

Posted in Writing by

With this novel I’m working on (and proudly 25,000 words into!) I keep thinking one question: how many words/pages/hours a day is enough?

Right now, my goal is 35,000 words in one month, about 1,166 a day. Some days I write 4,000, other days 0. It usually winds up evening out, especially on long weekends like this where I have so much time to myself.

What is your daily writing goal? Does it help to have a goal, or do you just get depressed when you don’t meet it? How do you feel about setting a low goal so that, no matter what, you usually surpass it?

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Additionally: are there times, places, or days that you write better? Are you a bourbon-at-hand, sitting-at-home writer, a coffee at a cafe writer, a procrastinator writer, or some other type?

 

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Book review: Wallbanger by Alice Clayton (3/5)

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Caroline Reynolds has a fantastic new apartment in San Francisco, a KitchenAid mixer, and no O (and we’re not talking Oprah here, folks). She has a flourishing design career, an office overlooking the bay, a killer zucchini bread recipe, and no O. She has Clive (the best cat ever), great friends, a great rack, and no O.

Adding insult to O-less, since her move, she has an oversexed neighbor with the loudest late-night wallbanging she’s ever heard. Each moan, spank, and–was that a meow?–punctuates the fact that not only is she losing sleep, she still has, yep, you guessed it, no O.

Summary from Goodreads.

Wallbanger was cute. It was fun. The first few chapters sucked me in to this world, and the cute friendship/rivalry between the main characters was realistic, funny, and fun.

Then something happened. The quality of the book deteriorated. Plot, romance, and quips were replaced with pages upon pages of text message conversations between the characters. A boring B plot line romance between the characters’ friends left me sighing and rolling my eyes. And the fun, funny style? Started to grate on me, feeling more cheesy, childish, and contrived than anything.

In fact, I skipped the last few “chapters,” which were a repetitive epilogue of repeated fluffy sex scenes between the characters, because I couldn’t take anymore.

Don’t get me wrong: this book was good, if you’re into the fluffy stuff. If I’d had a martini in my hand the whole time I might not be griping quite so much. It would be a good audiobook to listen to in the car on a long drive. But as a novel? I felt it lacked something that it didn’t make up for with silly fluffiness. Maybe if I’d believed for a second that there was any reason to have faux tension between the two characters, I would’ve bought it more. But honestly, everything between them was so happy-go-lucky easy the whole time, I just didn’t care.

Usually when a male lead is a playboy with multiple sex partners, it adds a certain tension to the book/movie in question: is he going to settle down for her? Is he even worthy of her love? Will he break her heart? While the idea of having Simon be respectful to his “harem” was unique, and Caroline’s ability to accept his girls (and their accepting of her) made the character less of a stereotype, I felt there was a lot of tension lacking. I never for one second felt there was a chance Simon might break her heart, or believed that she was in over her head. That left a decided lack of thrills, for me.

Read this book if you want to smile some, and don’t expect much in the way of hot sex. 3/5 stars.

“This is what w…

“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Describing this powerful emotion we call “love” is one of the most difficult things an author can do. What makes love, love?

Hair Pulling

Posted in Musings by

What is it about hair pulling during sex that gets women so turned on? More important, why does it turn men on to pull women’s hair?

I can’t speak for the men out there, but I’d imagine they’re turned on by the power aspects of pulling hair. That, and they don’t (usually) have their own hair to pull.

For myself, I often wonder if hair pulling turns me on because it’s a kink of mine, or if it simply turns me on because I’ve had my hair pulled during sex so much that I associate the two together.

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If you asked most women, they’d say that it’s annoying as shit to have your hair pulled. That doesn’t mean they don’t tolerate or even enjoy it. It’s all about the grip and, more importantly, how close to the head you’re pulling. Men don’t seem to understand this, but a nice pull close to the scalp is a lot more pleasing than a hard yank at the ends.

What do you think – does hair pulling turn you on because it’s sexy, or because the first time you had sex the guy yanked on it (me) and you started to believe it was just, well, part of the deal?