Today I’m sharing another video review, of two picture books I’ve been enjoying reading to my baby: Roar of a Snore and Prancing, Dancing Lily, both by Marsha Diane Arnold. The first is a fun rhyming story of waking up a family one by one to find the source of a great and clamorous snore. The second follows a cow on her quest to find her own right dance.
Yesterday was the cover reveal for an upcoming anthology I’m a part of, Plot Twists. So that means I get to show it to you! But first, a little about the book:
Down forgotten alleyways and quiet streets, mysterious bookstores only reveal themselves to people who need the special volumes on their shelves. People who are lonely, people who are lost, or people who want an unforgettable experience, find themselves inexplicably drawn to particular works. The keepers of the books, just as strange as the stores themselves, will ask:
“Where would you venture inside the Phantom’s Opera?”
“Have you dreamed of sitting at Arthur’s Round Table?”
“Would you dare to meet Frankenstein?”
Follow nine authors as they weave tales of characters finding exactly what they need, expected or not, inside the pages of a book. With stories across the ages explored: from the heroes of the Iliad, to the madness of Alice’s Wonderland, to the horror of H.P. Lovecraft, adventure awaits.
So get your favorite French wine, or heart-shaped tart, and dive into a good book.
Literally.
I’m so excited to share the news about an upcoming release: Plot Twists, a Stonehenge Circle Writers anthology. I have two short stories in this collection! It’s a really fun book with a very cool premise, and if you love classic literature (including The Phantom of the Opera) you definitely won’t want to miss this one.
The cover reveal is coming October 1st (and it’s SUCH a great cover!) plus a little more about the book. Stay tuned!
Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Are you more willing to read traditionally published books than self-published (indie) books? Or do you not have a preference?
I’m open to either if the premise is intriguing and the writing is good. I’ve read excellent indie books and terrible ones, and I’ve read excellent traditionally published books and terrible ones.
Indie books can sometimes have an issue where the writing is not quite as polished – there’s a particular “not quite there” style of writing that I’ve seen in authors who are still honing their craft. It’s hard to define, perhaps a kind of stilted quality, that I can usually recognize by page two if a book is suffering from it. I’ve only seen that particular issue with indie books, I think.
On the other hand, traditionally published books can be plagued by problems of predictability or trying to fit into specific molds because that’s what’s “in” right now.
And of course, there are a host of potential storytelling issues that any book can have, regardless of how it’s published. And all sorts of great things that could happen in a story too. Stories are stories, however they make it onto the page.
Sometimes I see a book with a premise that seems too good to be true, and then it turns out that it is. Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne promised to be Jane Eyre – in space! And it was, but unfortunately it wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped it would be. I ended up having two seemingly contradictory yet both true problems – the book was too much like Jane Eyre, and then it was too different!
The story follows Stella Ainsley, trying to get off her decaying home spaceship by applying for jobs as a governess. She ends up being offered a position on the Rochester, where she meets the brooding captain, Fairfax, and sparks fly. But does he have a secret? (yes, of course he does!)
So the worldbuilding concept was intriguing – set a few hundred years in the future, Earth has been made uninhabitable by…no, not global warming, the opposite! A super volcano has caused a new ice age, and humanity’s survivors have taken…not quite to the stars, but rather into orbit. People escaped onto enormous space ships that have been orbiting the planet as a fleet ever since. That’s an intriguing concept. There’s still major class divisions between wealthy ships and poor ones, and Stella comes from one of the poorest. The Rochester, on the other hand, is a tiny but very wealthy ship, so landing there seems like a dream. Well, at first.
Tales of the Marvelous 