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Tag Archives: writing
review of argentum by Debbie Manber Kupfer
![Argentum (The P.A.W.S.Saga Book 2) by [Kupfer, Debbie Manber]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41hFhkHAMiL.jpg)
**** stars
Overview
This is the second book in Debbi Manber Kuyper’s P.A.W.S. Saga, and it begins where book 1 finished. It is a tale of shapeshifters, werewolves and animagi.
P.A.W.S. is the place where these beings live. There are many such places all over the world.
Werewolves are humans that have been infected with lycanthropy, and are forced to become wolves at the full moon. Animagi can change their shape at will into an animal, while shapshifters require a charm passed down through families, and originally made by Merlin himself.
In this second book, we take up the story where the eveil werewolf, Alistair, has been destroyed.
Or has he?
Blurb
Argentum is the thread that binds all magic …
The silver of Miri’s cat charm passed on through the generations.
The silver of Jessamyn’s scepter, the source of her illusions.
The silver of Quentin’s scrying bowl, forged by Merlin.
All intertwine in Argentum.
With Alistair gone a measure of peace returns to P.A.W.S., but Miri is tormented by nightmares. The silver charm that had recently hung around Alistair’s neck is now in Miri’s possession and seems to have taken on a life of its own. And then it mysteriously disappears.
Jessamyn seeks help from Quentin, who claims to have repented his past association with Alistair, but can he be trusted?
And what of Jenna? The young girl rescued from Alistair’s pack house holds a terrible secret. One that could determine the future of P.A.W.S.
Story
I found the story to be as immersing as the first book. Miri’s growing romance with the shapeshifter, Danny, whose alterego is a large maine coon cat, plays a big part in the story.
There is also a mystery about how her friend Josh’s mother has a photograph that looks like one she has of her grandmother when she was young.
The story, I found captivating, and wanted to know more about the whereabouts of Miri’s second charm that had belonged to her grandfather, and who took it. Was the dead Alistair influencing events? And how could this be?
Characterisation.
The characters in the book are realistic. They all have their good and bad points, just like real people. Perhaps they did not develop as much as they could have, but then there are 5 books to get through. Perhaps they will be changed by the end of the 5th book.
Writing.
This is the weakest part of the book. While the style is easy to read, I found a number of grammar mistakes that should really have been discovered and corrected in the editing stage.
Conclusion
All in all, in spite of the grammar errors, the story is good, and so I decided to only remove 1 star from my review.
A Writer's Year
As it’s my last post of 2019, I thought I’d sum up my writing year.
This year I’ve been quite busy. I decided I’d write some prequels to my Wolves of Vimar series, some of which I serialised here. I originally thought I’d write them as short stories, but they have grown into novellas.
I wrote the back stories of Asphodel, and Kimi and Davrael. When I decided to submit them to Next Chapter, the publisher who published The Wolves of Vimar series as far as it’s got, I thought I should begin with the story of how Carthinal came into being. I told the tale of his parents. It’s a rather tragic story. I’ve now submitted it to Next Chapter, and am waiting for their next move.
I finished Vengeance of a Slave, my very first Historical Novel, submitted it and it is now live on Amazon. (http://mybook.to/voas/ ) It was released on Boxing Day. If any of you decide to purchase and read it, I would be grateful if you could post a review.
Researching this book, and the next one, Jealousy of a Viking, took a lot of time. Although some research is needed, even for fantasy novels, to get the history right, and the background is much more exacting. This book is not yet ready for publishing. It’s needs much more polishing before I submit it.
Earlier in the year I lost a lot of Book 4 of The Wolves of Vimar, and I searched all my places on my computer and also online. I felt demoralised by this, having lost several chapters. Then, out of the blue, I looked in one cloud storage I’d not looked in. In fact, I didn’t know I’d stored anything there, but there it was! Hooray!
I started working on it again, but it’s coming on rather slowly. This is because I started working on the backstory of Carthinal from The Wolves. This novella isn’t yet ready for submitting to Next Chapter. In fact it’s not quite finished, but I hope I’ll get it done shortly after the New Year. Then I can finish Book 4, probably to be called Immortal’s Death.
Next year I hope to release more of the novellas—Davrael and Kimi and Asphodel. I also hope to get Jealousy of a Viking released and finish Immortal’s Death. Quite a big task to get it all done.
I also have another fantasy novel that I started a couple of years ago that I want to finish, then there’s the on-going saga of the descendants of Adelbehrt from Vengeance of a Slave and Jealousy of a Viking. The next one is to be in Britain just after William the Conqueror beat Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Not sure of a title yet.
So that’s my year.
Thank you for following my blog, and to those of you who bought my books, a big thanks. I would be grateful for any reviews. They are most helpful, not only to me, but also to potential readers so they can tell if the book is for them.
You can purchase any of the books by clicking on the cover in the sidebar.
Please leave a comment in the comments box. I love to hear your thoughts.
Review of Write it Right by Mary Deal *****
Mary Deal has produced a book that every aspiring author, and even those with experience, should read.
She deals with every aspect of writing, from the beginning, when the book is just the germ of an idea, to the end, when the book is published and the dreaded marketing begins.
If you have no other book on writing, this should be the one you buy. It should be required reading for every author.
The book is easy to read, with no complicated explanations. She talks about the importance of editing and getting your manuscript the best it can be. She mentions how you can improve your plot, and how important characters are in getting the poblic to read and enjoy. Then she goes into the best ways of formatting your book for publishing, and the importance of the cover art.
There is little or nothing she doesn’t cover in this amazing book. If you are a writer, or an aspiring one, buy this book now.
I give it 5 stars.
Some thoughts on Enid Blyton and the 50p coin
Recently, it was proposed to put Enid Blyton, the children’s author, onto the 50p coin. This was rejected on the grounds that she was a racist, homophobic and sexist.
This worries me slightly because we are judging someone from a different era in the light of our own. Admittedly, the three things she has been accused of are deeply unpleasant—at least to our more enlightened eyes. I personally abhor all these things.
She has also been condemned and removed from libraries, not because of this, but because some people thought that she used too simple language and did not stretch children’s vocabulary.
When I was a child, I loved her books. I read them avidly. They were exciting. Her Famous Five books, her Mallory Towers books, the Adventure books, the Faraway tree books, the Secret Seven, and my favourite as a child, Shadow the Sheepdog were all read with great pleasure.
Now let us examine the accusations.
Racism.
She certainly had golliwogs in the Noddy books, and they were the baddies. But golliwogs were common toys in the 40s and 50s and no one thought anything was wrong with them. There was The Black and White Minstrel Show on the TV, and the blacking up of white men as black minstrels was accepted.
Now I’m not saying it was right, Clearly it must have been deeply offensive to black people. What I am saying, is that when she was writing, golliwogs were not considered to be offensive, and so to brand her as racist on the grounds of having gollisogs in the Noddy books, and making them bad, was acceptable at the time.
Sexism.
Was she sexist? At that time, it women usually stopped working when they married. They then devoted their time to looking after the home and raising the children. That was how it was.
Because Anne, in the Famous Five, did the cooking when they were camping does not make Miss Blyton a sexist. She was reflecting the way things were at that time. Boys simply did not cook.
That they do now, shows how far we’ve come. When she was writing, boys didn’t learn cooking and needlework at school, neither did girls do woodwork and metalwork. Now they are all merged together under the title of Technology, or Design and Technology.
Homophobia.
Homosexual acts were illegal in England and Wales until 1967, but only between consenting adults over the age of 21, and even then, not in the armed forces, It was illegal in Scotland until 1980 and Northern Ireland until 1982. Thus, during the time when Enid Nlyton was writing, homosexuality was frowned upon by the state.
Having said that, reading the Famous Five books, Miss Blyton had a transexual (although the term was not used in those days.) Georgina, one of the five, and known as George, always dressed as a boy and had her hair cut short (unlike Anne who had long hair). She also expressed the desire to be a boy and behaved as a boy. That sounds very much like a transexual to me.
To conclude, I think that it is unfair to judge someone from a totally different era, with a totally different mindset by our much more enlightened and liberal standards.
Miss Blyton was very important as an author. She got many children interested in reading. I am one of them. I devoured her books, as I said at the beginning of this post.
Some of her works, I understand, have been reworked. Things that we now consider wrong, why can’t they be altered. Noddy’s golliwogs could easily be changed into something else. Her baddies in the Famous Five, Sevret Seven and Adventure series, if people don’t think having them as foreign is right, could have their nationality changed.
The very first story I wrote was based on Shadow the Sheepdog. I was only about seven at the time. Would I have become a writer if I’d not had that early inspiration?
I think it’s wrong to judge people by today’s standards when the standards they lived in were so different.
I would love to hear what you think of this. Please post your comments in the comments box.
The Day on Vimar. How the people of that world break up the day.
I’ve often wondered why we start the day in the middle of the night, and the year at a date that seems rather random.
Let’s think about the day first.
To me, it would seem obvious that the day begins when the sun rises. Or, I suppose you could say it ends when the sun sets, which would mean the next day begins at either sunrise or sunset. But why did someone—who?—decide the middle of the hours of darkness was a good idea? Anyway, midnight isn’t the middle of the hours of darkness all the year round, anyway.
Now if we say the day begins at sunrise, I can see that would be a problem, especially for the modern world. That can be solved by saying the day begins at the time of dawn on the equinoxes. That is round about 6am.
When I devised my world of Vimar for my Wolves of Vimar Series, I had to decide on how the people would break up their day. This is a totally different world from Earth, although, for simplicity’s sake, I still use hours and minutes. The people on Vimar hold the number six as sacred and all multiples of six also have power. Thus 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day makes sense.
So, on Vimar, the day begins at what we would call 06:00 or 6am. That to them would be 00:00. They begin counting from there. 7am would be 01:00. 10am would be 04:00. What we call midday, to someone on Vimar would be 06:00.
They also use the 24 hour clock.
If a person wanted to have a meeting at, say, 10am, by our standard, they would say, “I’ll meet you at the fourth hour.”
I don’t use the time very much in the book, but I thought it would be essential in my world building to try to think about this.
I will go into the year on the third Tuesday of next month,
If you want to read more, and about Carthinal and his friends and their adventures on the world of Vimar, you can buy the first 3 books by clicking on the covers in the sidebar. I am serialising Carthinal’s early life on the first Tuesday of every month.
Please leave a comment in the comments box. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Review of Relissarium Wars, Part 1 by Andrew C. Broderick
Remembering When it all Began…
via Remembering When it all Began…
I think many of we writers can relate to this.
A Poem from my Work in Progress.
This story is set in Britain, in what is now Yorkshire at the time of the Danes and tells of the trials and tribulations of Helgha. This is a saga told by a scald (the Danish equivalent of a bard.) It tells of how Erik won Helgha from her father.
“Erik loved the beauteous maiden, Helgha,
The most beautiful maid
Amongst all the Danes.
Her flaxen hair flowed like moonlight on the seas
And her blue eyes glowed like the sky in summer.
But they could not marry.
For Erik was promised to another.
He visited his love often
Until her father challenged him
To a battle.
Sword rang on shield.
Axe split the air with sound like thunder.
Young and strong, was Erik,
Older and wily was Biorn.
Who would win?
Youth and strength or
Guile and Experience?
Biorn struck first with his axe,
But Erik raised his shield.
Biorn’s axe glanced off.
Erik fought bravely
Until Biorn’s shield broke.
Biorn hit Erik with the edge and drew first blood.
Brave Erik did not flinch.
Blood streamed from the gash in his cheek
But he fought on, ignoring pain and blood.
The battle continued for hours.
Erik parried the axe with his shield.
His sword longing for blood.
His eyes burning with the pleasure of the fight.
Then Erik saw Biorn tiring
The man’s steps became slow,
His axe dragged
As if reluctant to hit this brave young warrior.
Erik backed into a barn wall and feigned a slip.
When Biorn came with raised axe
To finish the battle and send Erik to Valhalla,
The young warrior rolled beneath the axe
And as Biorn raised his weapon,
Erik sent his sword upwards.
Into the heart of his foe it went.
Blood flowed over both.
As Biorn crashed down, Erik rolled away.
Helgha screamed.
Her lover and her father both drenched in blood.
Who lived and who died?
Then Erik rose and seized the maiden.
He fled to Stjarna, his horse,
And leaped to her back with Helgha.
They galloped all night
Until at dawn they arrived in Jorvik.
Now Erik has a beautiful bed-slave.
And a scar on his cheek
To remind all of his bravery.”
The book is undergoing the editing process at the moment. I’ll keep you all informed as to how it’s getting on. Nearly through the first rewrite.
Sunshine Blogger Award.
I read about House of 1000 Books excitement over this award, and read the question answers with interest. Then I came to the list of nominees. Imagine my surprise when I saw my name there.
I would like to thank House of 1000 Books for nominating me for this award. It’s a great honour, and I’m so excited. You can visit by clicking the name above. Here you will find many helpful reviews of books you might wish to read.
The rules of this award are:
Thank the person nominating you and link back to their site.
Answer the questions they pose.
Nominate 11 bloggers.
Notify the nominees.
List the rules and display the award logo on your site of post.
So with no further ado, here are my answers to the questions.
Pepsi or Coke?
I don’t usually drink either, but I would go with Coke. (But not the diet kind!)
What type of books do you like to read?
I like Fantasy, Science Fiction or Historical. At least that’s what I usually choose, although I’ve read many from other genres that I enjoyed. I think I stick with those for ease. I can go straight to that genre.
Have you ever bought a book on vacation?
I can’t believe I’ve never done so, but recently I take umpteen books with me on my iPad. I do like a real book, but it’s so convenient to be able to take a large number in something not much bigger than an exercise book.
What would you do instead of blogging on a rainy day?
I would play my piano, or do some cross stitch, crochet or tatting. If it’s near someone’s birthday or Christmas I would make cards. I might also do some painting or drawing or even play a computer game. Sometimes I wish there were more rainy days!
Do you like cats or dogs?
While I acknowledge that cats are attractive creatures, I’m more of a dog person. I have an objection to the effect cats are having on our wildlife. In some places, they are causing the extinction of some other creatures. They are also no respecters of property, and will happily poo in other people’s gardens (never their own).
Would you rather be captured by aliens or kidnapped by Sasquach?
This is a difficult one. I don’t suppose I’m allowed to say ‘Neither’? Thought not. Mmm! I’ll go with the aliens. I think it would be interesting to see inside the spacecraft of another species. Also, we have a vague idea as to what Sasquach look like. We have no idea about aliens.
If you learned one thing about blogging, what would it be?
That it’s not easy? You must make notes of ideas you have for posts, otherwise when you come to write it, you’ll have forgotten. That’s happened to me so many times.
What are your hobbies?
Apart from the things I mentioned above, I enjoy cooking and gardening.
What do you hate most about bloggers?
Nothing, really. The people whom I follow seem to be very nice, intelligent folk.
What do you love most about bloggers?
I love the variety of posts out there in the ether. Bloggers all seem to be friendly and helpful. That’s something I love. There’s a community of bloggers, and that’s good.
What is a place you’d like to visit?
I would like to visit St Petersburg in Russia and see the Hermitage Museum.
Am I allowed to have more than 1? I’d also like to see the Grand Canyon, the Yangtse River Valley in China, Niagara Falls, The Northern Lights…
Here are my nominees:
Bluebird of Bitterness
Clancy Tucker
Charles Yallowitz, Legends of Windemere
K Morris-Poet
Jenanita01
Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo
Little Fears
Alexander ONeill
Viv Drewa-The Owl Lady
Sheila Renee Parker
Nicholas Rossi
And here are my questions.
1. What is the first book you remember either reading or having read to you?
2. Who is your favourite author?
3. What is your favourite book?
4. When did you start blogging?
5. Do you write to music? If so, what music inspires you?
6 Do you have any pets?
7. When you go out to eat, what type of food do you prefer?
8. Do you prefer the city or the country?
9. Would you prefer a holiday buy the sea, in the countryside or in a city?
10. What city would you like to visit?
11. When preparing your blog, do you write to music, if so, what do you prefer to write to?
Dragons Rule OK. V.M.Sang (author) 