Book Review: The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids

Amra is a thief, and a very talented one at that. She has a small pool of acquaintances, and an even smaller collection of friends. When one of those friends winds up dead, after giving Amra something for safekeeping, she takes it personally. Armed with an expansive wit and an admirable armory of knives, Amra begins a quest for revenge that will lead her into temples, brothels, pawn shops, and manors, with a little bit of prison thrown in to keep things interesting. She finds that her friend got himself into something dark and dangerous, and that if she sin't careful, she will likely end up just as dead as he is.

There are so many wonderful things about this book that I'm angry with myself for letting it sit on my to-be-read shelf for so long. Let's start with the characters. First of all, Amra is female, and a bad ass. More amazingly, there is no lovey-dovey subplot to mire down her badassery. It was refreshing and very welcome to read such a strong female character. Kudos to you, McClung, for making Amra so incredible. However, the supporting characters are all just as well-written. Holgren is a mage with a million secrets and a soft spot for slobbery dogs. Bosch is steampunk cyborg warlock necromancer that oozes villainy. The list of memorable characters could go on to include them all. Seriously, they're all amazing.

Lucernis. The place where everything goes down. The world building is so subtle it's hard to even notice that the details are there. McClung doesn't give a single info-dump paragraph to give readers a sense of setting. It's all done as the story moves forward. He creates an utterly believable, gritty world where magic exists, though the world doesn't revolve around it. There's even a handy appendix in the back for any details you might miss as you read through.

I always feel like I'm taking a huge gamble when I buy something that has been self-published, but this story blew me away. I was left feeling unfulfilled because I wasn't ready to leave that world, where the gods are not as dead as they are supposed to be and trouble is looming beneath the surface, ready to emerge at any moment. I've already bought the second book, and will most likely be rearranging my reading list to make sure it rockets to the top. Do yourself a favor, and buy this book. Absolutely five out of five stars.

National Poetry Month

April has come and gone, and with it has passed another successful Poem-a-day challenge. Since April is National Poetry Month, I try to write a poem a day. So, I've got 30 new poems. Some of them show a lot of promise. Some of them will never see the light of day again because they are beyond saving.


Daily poem writing is amazing for stirring up the creative juices in my brain. It's a huge shift from fiction, which is what I had been focusing on, but it's a fresh way to explore words.


A lot of people in my life are currently expecting babies, so motherhood and fertility were a very common theme in my poems. As a wonderful bonus, one of those poems about fertility will be published this month in the Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review.


I'm hoping to submit some more pieces to various literary magazines this month. Fingers crossed that a few get accepted. I'd like to hope that this is a trend and not a fluke.


My monthly writing group focused on sonnets, so I've penned a few of those in the past weeks. Here's one of my NaNoPoMo sonnets. It's a twist on a story you're probably all familiar with.



The Real Story


You met me at a ball and it was fun
to dress up and play at something that I'm not,
but midnight comes for everyone,
and all that fun comes screeching to a stop.

Beneath the gown and glitter, I am plain,
and dirty, and unloved, and overworked.
You make promises of love, and joy, and games,
and a castle full of other little perks.

But I'm not buying what you're trying to sell.
I know some things are too good to be true.
You can deck me out in silks, and jewels as well;
remove all that, and who am I to you?

Just a kitchen maid in a pretty dress,

too tired to be your damsel in distress.

Book Review: Because I Love You by Tori Rigby

Andie has her whole life planned out. She's going to be Homecoming Queen and then she's going to medical school to become a doctor. Then, she professes her love for her best friend and sleeps with him at a party. A few weeks later, she's puking every ten minutes and worried that her religious mother is going to disown her. Andie is pregnant, and scared, and loses everything she thought she wanted. Both of her best friends disown her. She is bullied so much at school that she has to drop out. Her mother becomes a surprising source of comfort, as does her ex boyfriend Neil. As she faces difficult decisions, like whether to keep the baby or put it up for adoption, Neil rescues her again and again until Andie can no longer fight her feelings for him.

Poor Andie just cannot catch a break. I don't want to give any spoilers in this review, but let's just say the world dumps on her time and time again. I actually felt like she faced too many obstacles, that her luck was too bad to fit naturally into the story. That being said, it's one of the only cons I had with this story.

There is an undercurrent of religion throughout the book, but I feel like it never gets preachy, and it's not so heavy that the book becomes unreadable.  I would also recommend not reading the book at work as your co-workers will begin to wonder why you keep crying at your desk. Also, the epilogue was a wonderful way to bring everything to a close.

The book is well-paced and the characters are likable (except for those that aren't supposed to be). Rigby captures the distress and confusion, loneliness, and frustration of a young, pregnant girl really well. Andie's emotions are a bit of a rollercoaster, but that's to be expected when your hormones are raging out of control because not only are you a teenager, you also happen to be growing a new human. This was a quick read, but an enjoyable one. I give it three out of five stars.

PAD challenge

April always seems to be the month I decide to heap too many things onto my plate. At the beginning of the year, I began a writing challenge with a small group of friends. We each write a 300, 500, 1000, and 1500 word short story every month. We also give feedback to the other writers. It's been wonderful motivation to maintain the daily habit of writing. So, I have to write four short stories before the month is through. No biggie, I've done that for a few months already.

However, April is also National Poetry Month. I've got a soft spot for poetry as it was the first outlet I poured my creativity into. I've never been exceptional at it, but I love writing it all the same. Every April, in honor of NaPoMo, there is a PAD challenge. PAD stand for poem a day. Regardless of how busy I am, I feel the need to attempt this challenge.

We're on day two, and I've written two poems. It's far too early to consider this a success, but I've got a good feeling about it.

That being said, I haven't started any of my short stories for the month. The 300 word is due by the end of tomorrow. That means I need to crank out one poem and one story by day's end. Hopefully, tomorrow will be exceptionally inspirational.

Book Review: Yellow Brick War

I loved DOROTHY MUST DIE, the original book in Danielle Paige's series. I'm a sucker for retellings, and was excited to revisit this twisted version of Oz.  In the third installment of the series, Amy Gumm and her companions return to take another shot at thwarting Dorothy Gale's attempts to destroy both Oz and The Other Place (the one in which Dorothy's and Amy's Kansas can be found).

Dorothy's companions have already been destroyed, all except for little Toto. Although weakened, Dorothy is still extremely powerful.  As the magic of Oz destroys her mind, Dorothy becomes a threat, not only to Oz, but to her Kansas home as well.

After Dorothy kills the wizard, she and Amy get sucked back to Flat Hills, Kansas. The Wicked witches follow, attempting to trap Dorothy in Kansas for good. But Dorothy still has the ruby slippers, and pops back to Oz before they can stop her. That leaves Amy and the witches trapped in Kansas and Dorothy unopposed in Oz.

The responsibility to stop Dorothy once again falls on Amy Gumm. You see, once upon a time, Dorothy had a second pair of magical shoes, and that pair is supposedly still in Kansas. Finding the shoes is a long shot, but it's Amy's only ticket back to Oz. There's just a few problems. One: Amy has been missing for a month and will have to move back in with her mother while she's in Kansas. Two: Amy has no magic in Kansas, and the witches are mere shadows of their former selves. The shoes will have to be found without magical assistance. Three: The last known location of the shoes was at the site of Amy's old high school, which means she has to face all of the classmates she thought she'd left behind forever. And four: Her vice principal is The Nome King. You know, the one from Ev who has been trying to take over Oz for hundreds of years. Yeah, that one. And he's not a very nice guy.

There were many thing I didn't love about this book. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, because I did, but I wasn't as crazy about it as I was the first two books. I don't know if Paige is running out of steam, or if she's rushing to meet deadlines, but this book felt more forced than the others. The plot is rushed, details spared for action. Amy is reduced to a whiny, love-sick teenager instead of the badass warrior she had become. The poverty and dinginess of Flat Hills, Kansas is so over the top that it reaches ridiculous levels. The cliffhanger ending could have been just the end of a chapter and the while Oz business could have been wrapped up in this book.  Instead, we're left with the threat of the Nome King still lingering in the Emerald City while Amy, Nox, and a very confused and terrified Madison are carried away by the yellow brick road. I'm too invested in the series to not read another book at this point, but I feel like this one was so rushed and short, that whatever story remains could just have been tacked onto the end.

I hope Amy finds the steely reserve that melted away in this book and brings it back in the next installment. I also hope that her and Nox get their relationship straightened out so she doesn't whine about it as much. Given how great the first book in this series was, I feel like there's still potential for it to end on a high note, and this book will just be a stepping stone to a great finish.

Three out of five stars.

Steering the Craft

Since I finished editing my Nanowrimo novel, I decided to focus a bit more on honing my writing craft. Instead of biting my nails while I wait for the feedback from my wonderful beta readers, I'm writing, albeit much shorter fiction.

Steering the craft combines the wisdom of Ursula Le Guin and a collection of exercises to make you more conscious of the structure of your writing. It is informative, challenging, and inspiring. I stumbled upon it at my local library, and decided to give it a try.  I've tried various other books on craft, but have had mixed results. This one seems to be the perfect blend for me. As an added bonus, it's a short book instead of an intimidating tome.

An example of one of the exercises is to write 100-150 words without using any punctuation. It is far more difficult than you might think. It is instinctive to place periods at the end of sentences, at least it is for me. I had to mark many of them out because I placed them there out of habit. Le Guin recommended writing about an event that is filled with action or chaos.

the metal twisted around his legs and he struggled to free himself from its grip the smell of gasoline was in the air so potent that his eyes began to water somewhere in the recesses of his addled brain he recognized that the smell of gas meant danger his heart began to hammer in his chest and his efforts to extract himself from the wreckage grew more desperate it was all he could do not to weep with joy when his legs pulled free of the mangled mass in fact he could have been weeping given the wetness that poured over his cheeks he assumed it was due to the sting of the gasoline fumes he ignored the possibility that it might be blood

As you can see, without punctuation, everything gets a little crazy. If you can't at least tell that it is someone escaping their vehicle after an auto accident, then I have failed. The lack of punctuation does give the passage a sense of urgency and mimics the chaos that is in the driver's mind as he hurries to free himself, but it's a little too confusing for readers to follow. It was fun to play around with though.  Le Guin recommends coming back to add punctuation in later. I might just do that, though if I revisit this, I will expand it into a full length story.

I have found that books on writing craft are beneficial for me in two ways. One: they make me more conscious of my writing as I write. I was very aware of the lack of punctuation as I wrote and it was difficult to push myself to exclude it. Two: the exercises open a floodgate of ideas. I have snippets of stories scribbled on bits of notebook paper and stuffed into the book. I'm only about a third of the way through. I expect there will be many more scraps of paper to follow.

While I'm not a published author, and am barely figuring out this whole writing thing myself, I would offer this piece of advice to other new writers: do not pass up opportunities to learn more about writing. Whether it's by attending workshops and conferences, or just self-teaching through books borrowed from the library, the effort you put into learning your craft will be reflected in your work. 

(And that's a good thing.)

Book Review: Cogling by Jordan Elizabeth

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I've previously read Escape from Witchwood Hollow by this author, so I was interested to read her newest novel.

Edna Mather lives in a world where magic is real, but only hags use it.  Humans pay hags for potions and spells, but otherwise treat hags like second-class citizens.  One night, a hag comes to Edna's house and kidnaps her brother, Harrison, leaving a cogling in his place.  A cogling is a mechanical person, enchanted with magic to appear real. The cogling looks just like Harrison, but the hag does a rush job, and the cogling's behavior is a bit off. While chastising him about his odd behavior, Edna grabs what she believes is a stolen pocket watch and lifts it over his head. The cogling immediately falls apart.

Determined to save her brother regardless of the peril, Edna reluctantly recruits the help of a thief named Ike. Together, they cross the kingdom in an attempt to free the children the hags have kidnapped. On their journey, Edna and Ike have to flee from slave traders on a train only to fall into the trap of different slave traders, escape from their subsequent enslavement, ride a blimp into the swamp where the hags live, free the kidnapped children, and convince the king of the hags' sinister plot.

Mierek's novel is filled with action from start to finish.  I felt like poor Edna never got a chance to catch her breath. The language is simple, but engaging. Her description is vivid without being cumbersome. While aspects of the plot are very predictable, I still found the book to be very enjoyable.

Four out of five stars