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).

Friday Face-Off: Spooky Lodgings

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: ““And, though there should be a world of difference between the smile of a man and the bared fangs of a wolf, with Joss Merlyn they were one and the same.”  – a cover featuring an Inn/Hotel

It took me surprisingly little time to hit on a book featuring an inn–and it’s even October/Halloween appropriate!  I offer Howliday Inn by James Howe.  This is part of the Bunnicula series, but I read it first, and always seemed like the primary book in the series to me.  Chester the cat and Harold the dog are sent to stay at “Howliday Inn” while their humans go on vacation, and the overactive imagination of Chester promptly decides villainy is afoot.  The story is funny and delightful.

I like Harold’s expression here, and the inn is suitably spooky in the background…but I feel like the relative size of Chester and Harold is a bit off.  Or that’s just a really BIG cat!

Continue reading “Friday Face-Off: Spooky Lodgings” →

2019 Reading Challenges: Three-Quarters Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations5 Comments

It’s October, and time to check in again on my reading challenges for the year!

Nonfiction Reading Challenge
Host: Doing Dewey
Goal: 12 Nonfiction Books

My ongoing nonfiction reading continues, with a lot of variety in topics.  At my last update, I’d decided to try the “Century Challenge,” reading one book from each century of the Dewey Decimal system.  I only had a few left to hit, and I got all of them in during this last quarter.  So I guess it’s all just a free ride from here for the rest of the year on this one!

  1. We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee (590.73)
  2. Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb (158.1)
  3. Through Lover’s Lane by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly (813.52)
  4. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach (571.09)
  5. Dear Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence (028.9)
  6. Love for Imperfect Things by Haemin Sunim (294.35)
  7. The Creative Life by Julia Cameron (818.54)
  8. Do Nothing by Siroj Sorajjakool (299.51)
  9. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (153.35)
  10. It’s Better Than It Looks by Gregg Easterbrook (306.09)
  11. Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin
  12. A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton (387.73)
  13. Growing Up Again by Mary Tyler Moore (362.19)
  14. The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy (428.00)
  15. 30 Before 30 by Marina Shifrin (650.10)
  16. Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin (974.7)
  17. Alone Time by Stephanie Rosenbloom (910.40)
  18. I’ll Have What She’s Having by Rebecca Harrington (791.43)
  19. Quit Like a Millionaire by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung
  20. Living a Life That Matters by Harold S. Kushner (296.36)
  21. There Are No Grown-ups by Pamela Druckerman (305.24)
  22. Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (155.23)

Continue reading “2019 Reading Challenges: Three-Quarters Update” →

Writing Wednesday: Plans Revisited

On By cherylmahoneyIn Writing1 Comment

Before I went on a writing retreat in mid-September, I put up a list of writing goals.  I didn’t get to most of them on retreat, but I’ve been working away at projects since then.  I thought it might be fun (and good for me to keep things straight!) to come back and see where projects stand now.

Here was the list…

  1. Finish revising Guardian III for beta-readers – I completed this on retreat, my main goal!
  2. Guardian II revisions based on second-round beta reader feedback – This got done as my first project when I came back.
  3. Guardian I revisions based on read-aloud review – I started this on retreat, and finished it within a few days after.
  4. First-round revisions for Thorns I, Part Two – This is my next project, and planned focus throughout October!
  5. Beta-read a friend’s novel (due by mid-October) – I sent this off to her at the end of September.
  6. NaNoWriMo prep for Thorns I, Part Three – Closely related to #4, this is my other October focus, especially as NaNoWriMo gets closer.
  7. Continue drafting short stories for planned “Bookstore Anthology” – My main project of late September, I made some good progress on my story of a ballerina falling into Leroux’s Phantom.
  8. Stonehenge Circle Writers’ biweekly blog prompt short story – Well, this is ongoing…

So that’s five out of eight complete, which is a nice feeling.  I don’t usually have quite this many things going all at once in different stages. 😀  It’s been interesting, but I’m looking forward to being more focused again…

Blog Hop: Bookish Holidays

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop3 Comments

book-blogger-hop-finalToday’s Book Blogger Hop question is:  Have you ever wished that there were official government bookish holidays, and that, by law, employers HAD to give their workers a paid day off? If so, what kind of bookish holiday would you like to have?

I’ve rather thought that Shakespeare’s birthday (April 23rd) would make a nice holiday.  In college, I was in a Renaissance-but-heavily-Shakespeare class that happened to meet on Shakespeare’s birthday (and since we only met once a week, it was actually a pretty lucky chance).  I brought cookies in to celebrate. 🙂  Mostly just because, but also a little bit because I’m a Stratfordian (I believe William Shakespeare of Stratford, who was born on April 23rd, wrote the plays), and I knew my professor was decidedly not…  Nothing like fighting a literary war with cookies!

If Shakespeare’s birthday was an official holiday, obviously it should be celebrated with Shakespearean plays.  And maybe something to do with dragons, considering it’s also St. George’s Day.

November 30th would make a good writing holiday–it’s the birthday of L. M. Montgomery, Mark Twain and Winston Churchill (prime minister, but also a writer).  Plus, it’s the last day of National Novel Writing Month, so a final-day celebration seems both appropriate, and helpful to all the writers who need a day off to get their final words written.

I tried to think of a fictional holiday in a book that I’d like to see really celebrated, but I came up blank.  The only one I thought of was Hogswatch from Discworld, but that’s very close to Christmas (with more meat pies).

Are there any bookish holidays you’d like to see celebrated?  Any holidays from books, or holidays celebrating books?

Writing Wednesday: Down Once More?

On By cherylmahoneyIn Writing1 Comment

I’m having a bouncing-around kind of period for my writing right now.  Until I dive into NaNoWriMo, I’m working more casually on a number of smaller projects.  One of these is my short stories for a planned anthology, in which characters magically enter books.  I wrote about my plans to send a character into Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera before.  I wrote roughly the first ten pages some months ago, moved on to other projects, and now have circled back to write a bit more.  Because obviously the weeks before NaNoWriMo should be spent writing!

Michelle has been at the Opera overnight, and in the morning is ready to hunt for the Phantom.  She just isn’t sure exactly how to go about that.

*********

I thought about trying to find a way below the Opera—if I descended enough stairs, would I find the underground passages the Phantom had led Christine through?  Could I eventually find my way to the Phantom’s rooms?

Somehow I doubted it.  After all, it couldn’t be that easy, or the Opera Company would have found the Phantom long ago.  Unless that was authorial suspension of disbelief.  Maybe Leroux’s story just wasn’t that plausible.

Yeah.  It was weird being in a book.