Author: cherylmahoney

I'm a book review blogger and writer. I have published four novels, The Wanderers; The Storyteller and Her Sisters; and The People the Fairies Forget; and The Lioness and the Spellspinners. All can be found on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. In my day job, I'm a Marketing Specialist. Find me on Twitter (@MarvelousTales) and GoodReads (MarvelousTales).

Blog Hop: Grateful Reading

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop2 Comments

book blogger hopThis week’s Book Blogger Hop question: Would you take a book with you when you go to your family’s Thanksgiving gathering/dinner?

Absolutely!  Though I should clarify by saying that it would be very unlikely I would actually read it.  I just bring a book everywhere, all the time.  And there might be a suitable reading opportunity somewhere in a day-long Thanksgiving gathering.

In recent years I’ve fallen into a semi-tradition of reading Terry Pratchett over Thanksgiving weekend.  I think it started when I read Hogfather one year (a little early, as that’s his Christmas satire, but it was almost seasonal) and now I’ve been carrying it on just for fun.  And perhaps it’s appropriate–laughter in general and Terry Pratchett in particular are something to be grateful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, all my American readers–and a lovely day to all the international ones too!  I am grateful you are here. ❤

NaNoWriMo Day 13: Back from the Deeps

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo1 Comment

Closing in on the halfway mark for NaNoWriMo already!  I’ve been running at a deficit ever since political results came in, but the muse, temporarily scared off, seems to have largely returned.  I kept the deficit fairly low, and have now managed to catch back up again this weekend.

I’m hitting some new challenges on the writing front–I was expecting all along that the writing would get easier once I got to the final, more plot-driven section of the book.  Well, I’m there now, and have discovered a new complexity.

You see, when I saw I had a partial draft before NaNo, it wasn’t quite as simple as, say, having written chapters 1-30 and needing the last ten.  I’ve been writing most of this out of order, so it’s more like I wrote the first thirty chapters, had a multi-chapter gap, and then had portions of the final few chapters.  I’ve filled in the gap and am into those final few (which still stretch over a lot of scenes and words).  Now I need to connect things up and fill in missing pieces…and it’s harder to get the word count that way.

I can write a lot of words quickly if I can get into a scene and just tear right through it.  Completing a partial scene or writing transitions between scenes are smaller chunks and it’s harder to get momentum up.

On the other hand…I get to move forward through the book in leaps and bounds since entire scenes are already here.  And I feel that I’m really finally getting down near the end–which is exciting and alarming!  But more exciting. 🙂

Have an excerpt!

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Everything was perfectly fine and I was perfectly happy and I was perfectly, perfectly content without Erik at all.  Or so I kept telling myself. Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Day 13: Back from the Deeps” →

NaNoWriMo Day 10: Dark Clouds and Daffodils

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo1 Comment

Quite a gap in NaNo updating!  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been novelizing though.  I had a particularly excellent Day 4 last Friday, writing just over 3,000 words to build up a solid cushion for a weekend spent traveling.  I kept up well the beginning of this week too, even on Election Day which I had expected to be too busy for much writing–but I got several hundred words in on my lunch break, writing up a confrontation at the Mardi Gras ball.

And then yesterday those election results came back and…well, this is not a political blog, so let’s just suffice to say it was a very, very bad day.  Under the circumstances, getting any words written was a victory.  Today has been slightly better emotionally but busier in the usual way of life, so I’m currently running about 600 words behind schedule.  With a friend’s birthday party tomorrow that number may rise, but I think I’ll be able to catch up over the weekend.

On a plot front, I’m just about reaching the end of a pretty large, vaguely-defined section of the book, and catching up to the point where the action grows more intense.  Or to put it another way, after a stretch of mostly character development I’m reaching a more plot-driven portion.  I hope this will make the remainder of the book a bit easier…but one never knows! Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Day 10: Dark Clouds and Daffodils” →

Book Review: Life After Life

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

I just finished another parallel universe book, and…am not quite sure how I feel about it!  Life After Life by Kate Atkinson was strikingly different from my previous reads in this area–striking mostly because it seems like it should be exactly the same!

Ursula is born in a snowstorm in England in 1910.  She dies at birth.  She is born again into the same life and survives until she dies in a drowning accident as a child.  She is born again, again into the same life, and this time is rescued from drowning and goes on to an uninspiring career in government intelligence until dying from a gas leak in the late forties.  She is born again…and so on, and so on.

This may sound remarkably like another recent read, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.  It is–and isn’t.  Ursula does retain some memory of her previous lifetimes, but unlike Harry’s total recall, her memories (mostly) exist only in the form of deja vu and sudden premonitions.  Sometimes they help her avoid a disaster or make a better choice, but she doesn’t have Harry’s full awareness of what’s happening.

So why do I feel mixed about this one?  This is one of those odd duck books that I genuinely enjoyed reading, while being very clearly aware of a lot I actually didn’t like about it.  Let’s unpack that. Continue reading “Book Review: Life After Life” →

Blog Hop: Reading Off to Sleep

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop2 Comments

book blogger hopThis week’s Book Blogger Hop question: When you settle in for the night with a good book, do you read until you can’t stay awake or simply have a nightly page goal?

Actually, neither!  Just about any time I settle down to read, but especially at night, I’m looking more at a timeline than at a page goal.  I know what time the light should go out, and I read until then–and I usually try to settle down to read about half an hour before then.  Very prescribed and ordered, I’m afraid!  And I suspect this is not a surprise to the people who know me well off-line…

Though it does sometimes surprise people that I don’t stay up late reading.  I get into books and I occasionally read page-turners, but it’s been a long time since I stayed up later than planned because I couldn’t put a book down.  I remember the last time that happened (a few years ago now)–it was Jane Eyre.  Probably not cited as a page-turner all that often!  But it’s a book I really love, and I was reading it for the first time.  I had watched a movie version, and I was eager to keep reading and see how the book wrote some of the moments I had seen in the movie.

What do your bedtime reading habits look like?  Assuming you have any–but many readers seem to!