New review here.

Boys that Bite - Mari Mancusi "...a teen vampire tale with an Arthurian twist..." Buy

Have a lovely day! :-)

Tez Miller

Series: Darkest Powers
Publisher: Doubleday, 2008
Genre: Horror
Sub-genre: YA, Paranormal



Cross-posted from genrereviews.

I have two initial reactions to this cover. The first is me dancing with joy that there's no underage cleavage being shown off. The second is me being very sad that I'm so easily pleased when it comes to the cover of a supernatural YA novel.

Actually, I have no complaints about this cover. It's tastefully shot, the necklace is significant to the story, and I like the monochromatic tones with the occasional splash of colour. The black lace pattern on the back cover is gorgeous, too, and the whole thing sets the mood perfectly. On the whole, the cover is eye-catching, and exactly the sort of thing I'd pick up off the shelf to take a closer look at. Then again, having been written by Kelley Armstrong, whose Women of the Otherworld series I have a serious fondness for, I'm not someone who's going to randomly come across this book in the store, but that's another story altogether.

( 'I see dead people...' )

Well, what do you know. I actually liked that. I kept expecting the whole thing to go down the drain at any moment, but though it started to spiral once or twice, it never completely sank.

( Spoilers )

Bring on the Christmas special!

My WordPress has a new header image, and page navigation has been altered. Should be pretty self-explanatory, but if not, let me know.

It's a certain author's birthday today. Find out whose here.

Because leahclifford tagged me:

1. I hate the color...yellow
2. I hate the TV show...Mark Loves Sharon (haven't seen it, but it looks like the biggest pile of wank)
3. I hate the taste of...fresh fish (though canned tuna, crabmeat and whatever's in fish fingers are still fine)
4. I hate the smell of...fish
5. I hate the word...shizzle
6. I hate the sound of...the kids next door
7. I hate the song..."Soulja Boy"

Oh, and I've added more links to my WordPress's sidebar. If you want to do a link exchange, I'd be happy to participate.

I received these words in a text message moments ago. The number is not saved in my phone but I knew instantly, it was Ashley. Ashley is my ex girlfriend and her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. While Ashley and I were dating, we used to go to Cleveland and stay at her grandmother's house, sometimes all weekend. I grew very close to her (although she somewhat disliked me because I couldn't help Ashley produce great-grandbabies)...Ashley told me yesterday that she was on emergency leave from the Air Force because her grandmother was in hospice. She would be dying in the next few days.

I never believed any of this stuff....I prayed for her...and it didn't do anything. It was her time. But it doesn't stop me from being extremely distraught. I've never lost someone so close to me before. The words...can't really form correctly. She was a great lady. I will miss her immensely.

She wanted to die. I knew that much. She was so sick....she just wanted to stop suffering. That thought makes me feel a tiny bit better about her decendence...I just can't help but wonder. Is there a heaven? Is she there? Is she floating around in nothingness? Did it hurt? What will happen to her family? I wonder if I will be writing her obituary. If I do, it will be painful.

Her family is in my prayers, and even though I'm on very weird terms with Ashley, I am still affected deeply by this loss. She was to me a part of my family. She was to me another grandmother...of mine.

Rest in peace, Joanne.

My emotions are all over the place.

 
I cried a lot today. It was my last day at school, officially, I haven't been there for many weeks now and it's just the school's Open Day where everyone dresses up and spends the day being bored. I was vey bored. And not at all emotional. Sertiously. Nada. Bamforth said he liked my haircut. I like Bamforth. He can be sweet. Matthew didn't show his face, apparently he was proposing to his girlfriend but wtf I dunno. It was a crap day anyway. The highlight was getting a caricature done with Sophie. I'll scan that when I get it off her tomorrow (she's photocopying it for herself).

Anyways, I didn't cry a bit about leaving school. I had a miniature argument with my mumand then I couldn't stop crying. It's seriously all about Ben. Whenever I think about him it actually hurts and I hate it but at the same time I don't want it to go away. I think I may have found him on MySpace (omg I'm a stalker) but I'm not sure if it's him :-s. If Istart crying about it, I can't stop. I only cheered up for Doctor Who and I do feel better but then I think about leaning towards him as he explained stuff to me and it makes me want to cry again ;___; 

I was doing my Journey's End picspam and one picture made me think of the phrase 'happy days' and it just reminded me of Ben saying that when telling me about surgical stuff, and it made me depressed again. I miss him so much ;___; *blames hormones*

If I were to die right now...I would be very  upset! Because I have yet to do the thing that is the "best thing" I've done in my life. Whenever I finish my novel...that will be the best thing. Hopefully I will live a long time after that!!! Really I haven't done much to leave my imprint on the world, yet.

WHY IS THIS NOT HAPPENING WHERE I LIVE??!

*weeps*

(Also -- 25 years? Ouch.)

Watched "Once" last night and absolutely loved it.  I knew I recognized Guy from somewhere.  Of course, he is only in my favorite movie of all time, "The Commitments".  He's the long-haired, curly red haired guitarist!  I knew he looked familiar!  But the movie and soundtrack is brilliant.  I highly recommend it.  Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are amazing.

I've been reading up a storm, and really have done NO writing.  But it's all good because I'm just reading and I can use that for research!  In the past week I've read:

1.  Life as We knew it, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

2. Moon Called, Patricia Briggs

3. Magic Bites (still reading this one, and like it), by Ilona Andrews

I've been burning through the new Coldplay CD that is absolutely brilliant as well.  I highly recommend Alanis Morrissette's Flavours of Entanglement as well.  Awesome CD. 

I have a couple of websites to post about that I think writers who are reading this might want to look into for future reference.  They'll help you from query questions to basic grammar questions. They'll crit work if you need someone to do it for you, if you don't have someone.

The first one is

Writers.net

You do have to subscribe, but it is free.  I posted a faux-query and got some fantastic feedback.  I was forewarned they can be brutal, but brutal is good!

I've switched my work hours so I'll have Mondays and Fridays off, working Tue, Wed, and Thurs.  So that will give me plenty of time to write! (hopefully).

There's a gentle shower happening outside my window, it's what my grampa from Ireland would say is "soft rain".

I'd like to say hello to all my new friends.  Sorry I haven't taken the time to personally say hello, but RL intrudes and that sucks.  I hope everyone is having a lovely 4th of July weekend, and I wish a belated birthday to Canada, and all my canadian friends!

Well I guess that's all I have to say right now. 

If you happen to be Kevin from Gary, In. or Natalie who went to school in Bloomington, this is Angela from the train. Contact me!

Of course, this journal is set to not come up on search engines (like they'd be searching for themselves like that anyway), so nevermind. :-D

Had an enjoyable 4th. Spent far too much of the day in a steaming hot kitchen, watched a lot of movies and ate together with just the fam--or rather, just the immediate fam. My cousin Lori, who'd moved up from Miss a while back was not looking forward to an evening home alone; brother G, who is usually reliable for a party at such times, was working. So she came over for desert and talk before we took the T in for the fireworks.

X so didn't want to go, but I convinced him it was his fatherly duty. Besides, we were going last minute, so we'd miss all the crowds on the way in. Oops. We had the last car to ourselves until twenty drunken 20-somethings got on with us. I was amused--I generally consider people doing such remarkably obnoxious things in public to be a free show. He wasn't happy. Nor was the toddler who appreciated neither the ridiculous noise nor the fact that I shielded her from some of their antics. I don't even want to know what the teen ager throught.

Near the end of the trip, another young couple got on. We'd have gotten off before getting the chance to talk to them, but the drunken crowd decided to leave at Park, and even I'd had about enough of them. Staying on one more stop would just have us view the fireworks from a different part of the river.

Once silence reigned--as much as possible on an idling redline train--the female half of the young couple, who'd been talking to Lori, made her way over to me with a map. They'd gotten an alterative suggestion for where to see the fireworks which sounded great. All of my life, minus various years of roving, spent in the area, and I'd never tried watching from the Cambridge side of the river. And, they're engaged and his company is likely to move him here in six months, so they wanted to know about places to life. Finding out where they were from, I announced that my friends from Bloomington loved Davis Square.

Anyhoo, it was nice meeting them, but we got split up before we could exchange info.

Lovely fireworks, though I was dragged away before the big finish to beat the press of 100,000 people.

And that was the Boo-man's last night. He's on a plane now, heading back to Texas.

Blood Trail - Tanya Huff "Vicki's a wily, likable character...the world-building is original..." Buy

Blood Trail - Tanya Huff "Vicki's a wily, likable character...the world-building is original..." Buy

Have a lovely day! :-)

Tez Miller

Cake - cold - with or without ice cream. Chocolate!

I thought I would share this anthology market I stumbled on this morning:

Shroud Announces New Anthology
Tentative Title: Northern Haunts
100 Terrifying New England Tales to Tell Around a Campfire


Guidelines: Flash fiction (no more than 700 words) told in the FIRST person (to allow readers to re-tell the story) set in a New England location. The anthology will be separated into 4 sections (tentative titles):

Haunts- Stories of ghosts, specters, and phantoms
Beasts- Stories of monsters, critters, and wild animals
Humans- Stories of eccentric people, serial killers, mad men
Other Oddities- everything else

Format: Submit as a Word .doc or .rtf attachment.
SUBJECT LINE MUST SAY: "SUBMISSION--NORTH--TITLE"

Multiple submissions allowed and encouraged
No reprints
No simultaneous subs
Payment: (.01 cent a word or you can donate your stories)

Proceeds to benefit the American Cancer Society

I hope y'all are having a good 4th of July -- blowing things up, eating slaughtered cows, dancing around bonfires with lots of face paint, etc.

My Friday fiction (fun demon action!) is up at Merry Sisters of Fate. I thought of it while I was sitting in the parking lot of Walmart today. I think that either says something about Walmart or me.

It feels like I’ve been running from them forever, but that’s not what I tell her.  

Instead, I say, “I can drop you off at the next town, if that’s what you want, or I can take you as far as Chicago.” Really, I could offer to take her as far as Denver, or L. A., or Montreal, or Mexico, because I have no doubt I’ll get around to all of them eventually. If I live that long. The key is to keep moving. And stay in the car as much as possible.

It was really stupid to stop for her, really. I look in the rearview mirror. It looks like we’re still alone, but in this rain, it’s hard to tell what’s just normal darkness and what’s something worse.

“Chicago would be awesome,” she says. She’s still completely disheveled; now that her hair is drying, it’s curling out all over the place in dark brown springs. She keeps rummaging around in her purse-bag thing like she’s expecting to find peace in there. Stuff is falling out of it as she does: snowflakes of tissues, volleys of pens, armies of business cards. She hurries to get it off the floor of my car. “Your car’s so neat.”
    
She doesn’t mean clean. She’s talking about the box of alphabetized CDs at her feet and the carefully packed bag of granola bars and jugs of juice next to it. Or maybe she means the photographs I have taped all along the dash. My family. I remember them. I wonder if they do the same for me.

I look in the rearview mirror again. I had lost them for hours, before I stopped for her. “Why did he throw you out of the car?” It sounds rude and accusatory, so I wince and add, “Sorry. Do you mind me asking?”

“He’s an ass,” she says, pulling a washcloth out of her bag. She scrubs her face dry with it. “Thanks for picking me up. I wouldn’t normally take a ride – I mean, no offense – but it’s just not a good idea. But it’s the middle of nowhere. And it’s raining.”
   
I’m not a big fan of stating the obvious, so I wince again, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s digging in her bag again. If she uses her bag so much, why doesn’t she clean it up a bit? Seriously. It’s driving me crazy. I look in the mirrors again, looking for glowing red eyes reflecting in the ditch or running dark forms, but the wet road is still empty. Just my home on wheels and me. And her.

“What are you running from?” she asks, after about two seconds flat of silence. She flashes me a big smile. “If you don’t mind me asking.” I must look freaked out or something, because she adds, “Your car is stocked like a grocery store. You running away from home or something?”

Happy July 4! I decided to take the day as a mostly holiday, since there's little point in starting something, only to have the weekend hit, and I have a busy weekend.

This morning, I watched my city's parade on local access cable. I went in person once, and it was a lot of fun, though I got horribly sunburned. On TV, it reached new heights of hilarity because the local access cable announcers apparently didn't have monitors to see what the TV picture was. Therefore, their commentary was rather out of sync. We'd hear them talking about the amazing stretch limo while the picture showed a golf cart. I think most of the parade units were old cars, convertibles carrying local politicians, or flat-bed trailers carrying scout troops, gymnastics schools or Red Hat ladies.

I've realized that I'm in an awkward stage of life when I'm too old to be a Girl Scout but too young to be a Red Hat lady.

My plans for the rest of the day mostly involve reading, some of it work-related (maybe). I'll make a burger, and I've got a watermelon slice and some Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream with some blueberries and strawberries to go on it (I may make a parfait in one of my fancy sundae glasses).

Then it will be fireworks on TV. It's such a couch-potato way of celebrating the holiday, but I think that is typically American. Besides, the issue with July 4 is that it's in July, and in Texas that's not happy-fun outdoors time. It's huddle in front of your air conditioner and expend as little energy as possible time. We need a cooking-out and fireworks type holiday in October, when it's perfect weather for being outdoors as much as possible.

And now, before I retreat to my sofa with a Terry Pratchett book, my blog readers came through for me yet again, and here's the Japanese cover for Damsel Under Stress: