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).

Writing Wednesday: Final Edits

On By cherylmahoneyIn Writing1 Comment

The writing projects I’ve been talking about recently have all been continuing along nicely, although things are about to shift to other projects shortly.  I’ve been doing finalish revisions of Guardian III, and am within a few pages of getting to the end of this pass.  My goal was to finish by the end of the month, so I may end up a few days ahead.

Even more excitingly, I ordered the print proof of Guardian I, and that arrived yesterday.  It’s always very cool to see what the book looks like as an actual book for the first time.  I spent all that time adjusting tabs and formatting dropcaps and so on, and seeing the proof is the pay-off.

The actual purpose of the proof is to review and see if everything is looking good as-printed.  It’s close to final.  I need to tweak some small things, and one bigger thing – the gutter isn’t quite right, so the lines of print are falling into the center binding a bit.  It’s readable, it’s not that bad, but I plan to tweak the formatting to give it a better margin.  I love how the cover looks though, and I’m really excited to start sharing that.  My cover reveal is scheduled for about a month from now, so stay tuned for that!

After I finish up the last bit of Guardian III and make formatting edits to Guardian I, I’ll be turning to a totally different focus…sort of.  I plan to spend March doing some new writing, as I have two short stories to finish for an anthology I’m going to be published in later in the year.  The anthology is about people entering into books, and one of my stories involves a ballerina entering Leroux’s Phantom…so it’s not an entirely new focus!  But it is pretty different, and I’m looking forward to doing some new writing soon.

Book Review: One True Loves

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

Last year, when I was trying to read more love stories, One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid, made it onto my list.  It didn’t actually get read until this year, which is in a way too bad–because it was very good!  But even if it didn’t serve my “read more love stories” goal of last year, it’s meeting this year’s “read that To Be Read list” goal instead.

The book has a great opening line: “I am finishing up dinner with my family and my fiance when my husband calls.”  We swiftly learn that Emma, our protagonist, lost her husband Jesse in a helicopter crash a few years previous–but now Jesse has been found in the Pacific, and is coming home.  The book then flashes back to the beginning of Emma’s romance with Jesse in high school, follows them through college, marriage and Jesse’s “death,” Emma’s grief and how she eventually finds new love with Sam, the fiance of the opening line.  And then we return to Jesse’s return, and what Emma is going to do now, with two men she deeply loves.

I am not usually one for triangles, but this was the rare case where it really worked for me.  The concept of how this all came about was intriguing, and I liked that it’s a really difficult situation that was no one’s fault.  In some ways it’s an implausible situation, but it was written with such emotional truth that whether Jesse could survive in the Pacific felt largely irrelevant.  And as Reid says in an interview at the back of my copy, this isn’t a story about a man’s adventure to get home–this is about the woman left behind.

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Friday Face-Off: Puffy Dresses

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations2 Comments

FFO.jpg

It’s time again for the Friday Face-Off meme, created by Books by Proxy, with weekly topics hosted by Lynn’s Book Blog.  The idea is to put up different covers for one book, and select a favorite.

This week’s theme is: Meringue – the puffy dress? – Lots of covers with ‘big’ dresses

What a fun theme!  I thought of several books with impressively puffy dresses, but they only had one cover each.  And then I considered that my Jane Austen Book Club is currently reading Pride and Prejudice – and that’s a book with many covers.  I’m not sure “puffy” is exactly right for Regency fashion, but sure enough, puffy dresses abound.

I suppose this is Elizabeth and Jane?  Movie versions tend to make Jane blonde, but the book doesn’t actually say – though there is a reference to Elizabeth’s “dark eyes,” so she probably is a brunette.

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Writing Wednesday: Riffing Off of Awesome People

On By cherylmahoneyIn Writing1 Comment

I took a pause in my revision work this week to take a turn on my other ongoing project – I’ve mentioned before that I’m writing a collaborative novel with three other authors, Pesto, Pirouettes and Potions.  We’re writing it round-robin style, each writing a chapter then passing it on to the next person, and my turn came around again this week.

I had a lot of fun reading through the five chapters we had so far, and then writing up Chapter Six.  I got into a nice flow of conversation between the characters, getting to know their dynamics a little more.  I had the chance to play with Charlie and Lola, our two heroines, and their friends Nathan, who dances in the ballet with Charlie, and Mario, Lola’s roommate.  Mario is a flirt who thinks Charlie is cute, Nathan likes to tease straight guys who assume he’s gay (he isn’t), Charlie is totally freaking out over her crush on Lola, and Lola is trying to convince herself not to crush on Charlie–so it’s awkward all around and so much fun to write.

This was the first chapter I wrote picking up after other people wrote theirs – I wrote Chapter Two previously, but since it was introducing Charlie (while Chapter One introduced Lola) it was pretty independent.  I really enjoyed being able to riff from things other people had written–like continuing Charlie’s tic of saying “oh goddess,” or building from a previous-chapter moment when Charlie introduced her dog.  I probably wouldn’t have thought of either thing, so I loved springing off of the ideas to continue building.  Here’s an excerpt that shows both those ideas continuing to grow!

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Was this whole business, stalking the Pilates classes, showing up at brunch, going too far?  Was Charlie building way too much on one charged exercise class, and one not-quite-a-date?

But it had been such a good sort of date.  It had been a long time since she’d felt a connection like that.  And Sammy had liked Lola—who had understood his name.  Charlie only introduced him as Samwise when she wanted to see if someone would catch the reference, pick up the semi-secret code she was sending out.  And Lola hadn’t just asked about Lord of the Rings, she had asked Sammy if he was a Hobbit.  So adorable.

Oh goddess, she had it bad.

Book Review: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews2 Comments

I love to read, but I also really love getting enough sleep, and I’m generally pretty good at not staying up too late because of reading (for other reasons, sometimes!)  The last time I can distinctly remember staying up later than I intended because I wanted to continue a book was Jane Eyre, 5+ years ago.  Until last week, when I couldn’t bring myself to stop reading The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.  I can’t say that it will join my list of absolute top favorites, as Jane Eyre did, but it’s a probable winner for this year’s “hardest book to put down”!

Trying to explain the plot is…challenging.  It’s sort of Groundhog Day meets Every Day meets The Mouse-trap, with some scenes directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho-era.  And despite that, it’s all stunningly original!  Our protagonist, who we learn some way in is named Adrian, is living the same day over and over, but inhabiting a different body each time.  He’s trapped at Blackheath, a crumbling manor house filled up by the devious guests of a grim house party, repeating the same day until he can solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, who dies at 11 pm.  He will live through the day eight times, in eight different bodies; if he doesn’t have an answer by the end of the eighth day, his memory is wiped and it all begins again.

On one level, Adrian lives eight days – but on another level, it’s all one day, and he frequently encounters himself in another body, that other self living a different day.  Not sure that made any sense, but…it’s fascinating!  And surprisingly easier to follow than you might think.  This is an incredibly complex book, with so many, many threads, and yet I felt like I followed it all very clearly.  It must have been extremely carefully crafted, because somehow it all worked.  Mysteries on Day Three are explained on Day Five, and the actions taken on Day Six impact Day Two, and we get a different perspective on an event on Day Seven that completely overturns how we thought something happened on Day One, without changing it, just explaining it differently.  And so on, and so on.  I never caught Turton in a contradiction or inconsistency, which is pretty amazing, considering.

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