Tag Archives: book reviews

No Time for Love, Dr. Jones!

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My sis-in-law is cooler than your sis-in-law.

I’ve been working insanely looooong hours to finish my revisions for SUMMONING THE NIGHT ( . . . and turning in my option for Books 3 and 4, and mentally outlining a new paranormal romance series, and thinking about reworking a book I wrote last year, AND working on new artwork for my site).

Unfortunately, I’ll be continuing the same crazy pace this week, right up to the finish line. After that, I’ll be taking a mini-vacation with my family (I’ve been so busy, I’ve had to delay it twice). Though I might be scarce around the web, I’ll be mailing out several copies of KINDLING to folks who won recent giveaways on various book blogs.

For now, I’ll leave you with a couple of things:

Here’s a link to a lovely review from Australian author (and all-around stupendously kind person), Yolanda Sfetsos.

Here’s another link to guest blog I wrote for Fresh Fiction (a list of five moments I love in UF, including characters and plot devices from great UF authors like Stacia Kane, Karen Chance, and Kim Harrison).

And lastly, I’m finally getting around to posting a pic of the beautiful moon necklace that my sister-in-law gave me on KINDLING’s release day (only took me 2 1/2 months, sheesh). It was made by an Austin artist named Shannon, and you should check out her other jewelry here.

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Love Letter to Carolyn Crane

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Not only do I write urban fantasy, but I read it…a lot of it, like, every stinkin’ day. Sometimes I hate the genre and all the boring tropes that define it, and sometimes I’m surprised and thrilled by how a talented author can put a new spin on said tropes.

But when an author comes along with a can of lighter fluid and a gleam in her eye, and throws a lit match on the whole genre, I’m starstruck. Enter MIND GAMES by Carolyn Crane, a psychological urban fantasy-comicbook-noir about a hypochondriac who joins an underground team of crime-fighters.

If you buy this book based on expectations delivered via the cover, you’ll be sorely disappointed; it’s one of the most deceptive covers I’ve seen in the genre. And you also might be alarmed by the present tense, or the fact that the heroine is neurotic and unreliable. You might even be worried that the lack of supernatural monsters might disappoint. But it won’t.

What’s more, this isn’t a book that will mildly surprise you. It’s a love-or-hate thing that will either have you deserting it early on (if you have terrible taste) or wanting to gild it and put it on a pedestal…or at least board and bag it and store it in a long box with all the other treasures that you would never-ever sell in a million years. That was me. I didn’t just like the damn book, I LOVED it. In fact, it rung ALL my reading bells:

–I carried it with me, room-to-room, fearful that someone would steal it from me when I wasn’t looking

–Both related to and was repelled by heroine; got angry at heroine’s choices, to the point of berating the character out loud (and angry with myself for secretly knowing I’d make the same choices)

–Kept thinking about minor characters and plot points days after finishing the book, trying to piece together things I wasn’t sure about

–Laughed, chuckled, and grinned many times when re-reading certain phrases and lines

–Charmed by the author’s ability to describe big things with simple, ordinary words

–Two weeks later tried to fight off need to read book again

–Three weeks later worried that the second book in the series couldn’t possibly live up to the first

–Four weeks later paralyzed with fear that I may not read anything else so engrossing this year

Easily my favorite book of 2010. Marry me, Carolyn Crane.

Buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553592610/

Read her blog here: http://thethrillionthpage.blogspot.com/

XOXO,

Jenn

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