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).

A Magical Lady Knight

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews, Young Adult12 Comments

I’m going to try–I really am–not to wax too enthusiastic today.  But it’s hard when I’m talking about a favorite series–when it would actually not be inaccurate to use phrases like “changed my life” and “favorite character ever.”

Am I talking about some great inspirational work?  Well…not a traditional one.  I’m talking about the Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce.

The first book is Alanna: The First Adventure.  Alanna is a girl who wants to become a knight, except that girls aren’t allowed to become knights.  So she disguises herself as a boy and sets out to become one anyway.  Alanna is an incredible character.  When I was younger, I basically wanted to be her when I grew up.  She’s stubborn, determined, and incredibly brave, but also human–she makes mistakes, she has struggles, and she’s not always sure of herself.  She was my favorite character when I was a kid, out of any book I’d read.

The series has a host of memorable characters, with new ones arriving in later books as well.  A couple of favorites include Prince Jonathan, every girl’s dream of a handsome and charming prince, and George Cooper, the roguish and equally charming King of Thieves.

They all live in a world of swordplay and tournaments that is nevertheless grounded and believable–swing a sword around too long and you’ll have sore muscles.  They also live in a world of magic.  Alanna possesses the Gift, which she can use for various spells, some practical and some dramatic.  There is also an entire pantheon of gods who occasionally step into mortal affairs.

The books are funny, exciting, engaging…amazing.

And they changed my life.  I’m a firm believer that a girl can do anything a boy can do, that women have the same rights as men, and that we all ought to be equal, whether in pay rates or in who cleans the house.  I’m sure a lot of that belief comes from my parents, especially my mom, but I think reading about Alanna at a young age helped.

I also met one of my best friends because of Tamora Pierce.  We were freshmen in high school, and were both shy book-lovers.  We were in a class together, but hadn’t talked.  She was reading a Tamora Pierce book, and so was I.  I can’t remember now who talked first, but we’ve later admitted that we each noticed the other one’s book, and each took out our own book before class started in the hopes that the other one would notice and use it as an excuse to start a conversation.  She’s still one of my best friends; we’re both eagerly awaiting Tamora Pierce’s next book, promised for this February.

You may also be recalling right now that in Fiction Friday, I’ve featured some of my writing about a girl who disguised herself as a boy so that she could become a pirate.  It’s not a coincidence that my character’s name is Tamara.

Song of the Lioness is my favorite quartet by Tamora Pierce.  She’s written other books set in the same world, and many characters, Alanna included, turn up in those books.  I recommend those as well.

Much as I still love her, I don’t think I want to be Alanna anymore.  Now, I think that when I grow up, I want to be Tamora Pierce.  I don’t know anything about her personal life, but I’d like to be her from a writing perspective, at least.  🙂

Author’s Site: http://www.tamora-pierce.com/

My Tamora Pierce Collection

Bloggiesta Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations1 Comment

Finishing out the weekend, here’s my update on  how I did with my blogging goals:

—Clear through my half-written draft posts.  Either finish them so they’re ready to go, or decide they just weren’t meant to be and get rid of them.  Went through my drafts, dropped some and finished others.  Ruminations and Quotables are the ones who tend to get stranded in Draftland, so expect more of those in the next few weeks!

—Find more cool bloggers to follow in my reader (not exactly an improvement to MY blog…but related)  I found two new blogs to add…scrolled through several others, but not much was grabbing me.  I would have liked to add more, but that’ll do–this was my low-priority goal anyway.  I’ll probably try to pick up a few more over the next few weeks.  Any recommendations are welcome!

—Go through past posts to check formatting is all in order.  As a relatively new blog, I haven’t had much time for things to fall into disarray and disrepair, but it’s still worth checking to make sure that I didn’t miss any strangely arranged posts, forget to add a page break to a long Fiction Friday, or have WordPress pull a fast one on my spacing (I swear I’ve seen a neatly spaced blog post suddenly go haywire for no apparent reason).  Went through everything, glad to see nothing had gone too crazy while I wasn’t looking.  🙂

—Find new Reading Challenges to join for 2011, and update my one existing one.  I had lots of fun with this one.  I really enjoyed looking at the challenges other people were doing, even if they weren’t ones I’d try myself.  I ended up adding three new challenges, and got the whole thing better organized.

—Explore new places where I can add links to my blog, like directories.  I found four directories to submit to, and also found out that a lot expect you to pay.  How irritating.

—Try any of the mini-challenges that look fun/useful/interesting!  I wandered through a lot of the mini-challenges.  The one I spent the most time on was a past year’s challenge about adding your link to directories.  See above!

Bonus–I updated my calendar for tracking planned posts, so I feel extra-organized and on top of things now.

This has been a fun blogging-intensive weekend!  I made some good updates, although most of what I was doing was more turned outwards, looking at other people’s blogs, rather than working on my own.  I liked that, though, since it’s made me feel more aware of, and a little more connected to, the larger blogging community–which is probably the point of these blogging events.  🙂

2011 Reading Challenges

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations3 Comments

I’ve been searching the blogosphere for new reading challenges to join, and decided to compile them all here in one post.  I found a lot of fun ones, and picked out a few that are in line with what I like to read, but might give me a push in a direction I’d like to go more often.  So here’s what I have:

This one is hosted by A Few More Pages (love that name!)  The goal is to read a number of books that are the first in a series.  I’ve been wanting to look for new series to fall in love with, so that sounds perfect.  I’m going to aim for “Series Expert,” reading 12 books. 

So far this year, I’ve read:

1) Sarah’s Story by Ruth Elwin Harris (and the rest of the quartet too)

StilettoStorytime

I already had a goal to read more classics, so this fits in nicely.  This one’s hosted by Stiletto Storytime and has a great definition of classic on the challenge page.  I debated what level to aim for–from the definition I think I can legitimately count children’s books and classic sci fi as “classics,” so I’ll aim for fifteen.  Alas, I don’t think I’ve read any yet this year…

Photobucket

I think we know by now that these are a favorite of mine, so I couldn’t resist this one, hosted by Among the Muses.  I’m going to aim for the Enchanted level, 6-9 novels.  That’s probably conservative.  Looking forward to following this one for some new book ideas!

Read so far this year:

1) Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley (Sleeping Beauty retold)

I’m moving this one from its separate post to here to join with all the others.  Hosted by Home Girl’s Book Blog, all you have to do is read books from the library.  Since most of my reading comes from the library, I’m being un-conservative on this one and aiming for 100 library books read in 2011.

Progress thus far:

1) Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier

2) Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix

3) Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley

4) Looking for Marco Polo by Alan Armstrong

5) Stolen by Vivian Vande Velde

6) Enter Three Witches by Caroline B. Cooney

None of these are exclusive lists–that is, you may see books landing on more than one.  A classic novel of a fairy tale retold that comes from the library and starts a series could be on…every list.  I also haven’t seen any rule that says books have to be first-time reads, although I do have a goal of reading new classics, new fairy tale retellings, and new series, so hopefully a good percentage will be for the first time.

I’ll try to update the lists every month or so.  We’ll see how it goes!  🙂

Bloggiesta 2011!

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations4 Comments

Thanks to the blogs I’m following, I found out that this weekend something called Bloggiesta is happening in the blogging community…  Hosted by Nancy at Maw Books Blog, it’s a three-day period for intensive blog improvement.  There are suggested mini-challenges of ways to improve a blog and things to learn, and bloggers post their plans and share their results.  Fun stuff!

So here are my blogging goals for the weekend:

–Clear through my half-written draft posts.  Either finish them so they’re ready to go, or decide they just weren’t meant to be and get rid of them.

–Find more cool bloggers to follow in my reader (not exactly an improvement to MY blog…but related)

–Go through past posts to check formatting is all in order.  As a relatively new blog, I haven’t had much time for things to fall into disarray and disrepair, but it’s still worth checking to make sure that I didn’t miss any strangely arranged posts, forget to add a page break to a long Fiction Friday, or have WordPress pull a fast one on my spacing (I swear I’ve seen a neatly spaced blog post suddenly go haywire for no apparent reason).

–Find new Reading Challenges to join for 2011, and update my one existing one (Support Your Local Library).

–Explore new places where I can add links to my blog, like directories.

–Try any of the mini-challenges that look fun/useful/interesting!

Lucky for me, it’s a quiet Saturday anyway–so we’ll see how this goes!  I’ll post an update later on…

A Flying Pink Elephant

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction FridayLeave a comment

You did actually read that title correctly.  A little context: some of my best memories from high school revolve around Pirates of the Caribbean.  I had a close group of friends who were all big fans of the movie.  And I still do–we’re still friends.  One way this fandom and friendship manifested itself was that I ended up writing a POTC novel that pulled in a lot of the randomness of our high school friendship.  I only half count it as one of my novels, as I think it’s more accurate to call it a 200-page extended joke.

The essential plot-line (such as there was) is that Captain Jack Sparrow returns to Port Royal, and Commodore Norrington and his soldiers spend a night chasing Jack, Will and Elizabeth through a very bizarre cornfield.  I refuse to be held responsible for all the craziness, as some of it definitely came from my friends.

For Fiction Friday this week, I thought I’d share the opening chapter of Pirates of the Caribbean: Cornfield Madness.  It’s one of my favorite scenes, even though it’s not a heavily Jack Sparrow sequence.

Since this is fanfiction, I should probably note that I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean or any of the characters from the movie.  I guess I own the elephant.  It’s also worth noting I wrote this story before the POTC sequels came out, so it’s not always accurate with the later events in the characters’ lives.  If you’re not familiar with POTC, you can read a synopsis here (or take my recommendation and go watch the movie; it’s wonderful).

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            It was late afternoon when Norrington first heard that Jack was in town.  He gathered together Lt. Gillette and an unspecified number of soldiers, and marched off for Will and Elizabeth’s house.  He failed to take into account that he was attempting to capture Captain Jack Sparrow, who happens to be a master of quick escapes and split-second timing.  So as Norrington, Gillette, and their unspecified number of soldiers marched up the stairs at the front of the house, Jack jumped out a second story window at the back of the house.

            Jack might have escaped scot-free right there.  Except for one little detail.  He landed fine.  Hit the ground just right, rolled exactly the way he was supposed to, that wasn’t a problem.  Except that he dropped his hat in the process.  If he’d just ignored it and run, he probably would have been out of sight and gone long before Norrington got to the window, leaving the Commodore with no trail.  From there it would have been simple to hightail it back to the Pearl and set sail.  But of course, he didn’t ignore it.  And he still might have made it if not for the dog.  It might have been the same one from the jail cell, and then again it might have been that one’s brother, but either way there was a dog and it liked this strange three-cornered object that had just dropped into its life.  All of which explains why Jack was still in the courtyard arguing with a dog over legal property rights to hats when Norrington looked out the window. 

            Seeing the Commodore and hearing the shouts of “After him!”  Jack bowed deeply, yanked his hat away from the dog (who howled broken-heartedly), clapped it on his head, and ran. 

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