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Blood Review from Rebekah B.

Blood has been out for a little over a week and I’m loving your feedback! While my blog tour was coming together, I heard from a fan who wanted to join and share a review, but hadn’t got sucked into blogging (yet!). I offered to share her review here. So here are Rebekah B.’s thoughts on The Unfinished Song

I have just finished reading ‘Blood’ Tara Maya’s 6th book in The Unfinished Song series.

Once again, Tara had me hooked from the first page and it took tremendous effort to be able to put the book down! I found myself transported into a magical land where the fight of great beauty and colour is raged against fear and darkness. I love Tara’s writing style, it flows beautifully and draws you right into the very heart of the tale.

This book will keep you on the edge of your seat the whole way through, desperate to see what happens next. The twists and turns in the story were far from predictable to say the least!

An absolute must for all you readers out there!

Blood Is Here!

The Unfinished Song (Book 6): Blood is ready to download its way to your e-readers TODAY!

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Enjoying Blood and want to talk about it? Tweet your thoughts with the hashtag #TUSBlood.

Dindi and Umbral have an uneasy truce, forced to work together to defeat a greater enemy: the Bone Whistler. The Bone Whistler’s scheme to sacrifice humanity and resurrect the Aelfae will culminate during an eclipse on the spring equinox…in three days.

3 Days of 99c Fantasy — Part 3

It’s the last day to stock up on some great reads with the 3-day 99-cent fantasy e-book promotion, featuring The Unfinished Song (Book 2): Taboo. Through the end of today we’ll have a total of 10 books discounted to 99 cents. Today I’ll be featuring the final 3 books in the promotion.

Encrypted

But they’re not there to kill her. They need her to decode mysterious runes, and they ask for help in the manner typical of a conquering empire: they kidnap her, threaten her family, and throw her in the brig of their fastest steamship.

Her only ally is a fellow prisoner who charms her with a passion for academics as great as her own. Together, they must decipher mind-altering alchemical artifacts, deadly poison rockets, and malevolent technological constructs, all while dodging assassination attempts from a rival power determined the expedition should fail. As if the situation weren’t treacherous enough, this new “ally” may turn out to be the last person Tikaya should trust. Those runes cloak more than mysteries, however, and he’s the only one who can help her unravel them before their secrets destroy the world.

3 Days of 99c Fantasy — Part 2

I’m back with more of the books in the 3-day 99-cent fantasy e-book promotion, which features The Unfinished Song (Book 2): Taboo. (Considering the first one is free, you can essentially own 1/6 of the series of only 99 cents!) From February 10-12 we’ll have a total of 10 books discounted to 99 cents. While all of the books are available at 99 cents throughout the promotion, I’ll be featuring 3 per day here.

The Chocolatier’s Wife

ROMANCE, MAGIC, MYSTERY…. AND CHOCOLATE

When Tasmin’s bethrothed, William, is accused of murder, she gathers her wind sprites and rushes to his home town to investigate. She doesn’t have a shred of doubt about his innocence. But as she settles in his chocolate shop, she finds more in store than she bargained for. Facing suspicious townsfolk, gossiping neighbors, and William’s own family, who all resent her kind – the sorcerer folk from the North — she must also learn to tell friend from foe, and fast. For the real killer is still on the loose – and he is intent on ruining William’s family at all cost.The Chocolatier’s Wife is a truly original, spellbinding love story, featuring vivid characters in a highly realistic historical setting.

Rowena Through the Wall

When Rowena falls through her classroom wall and lands in an alternate world, she doesn’t count on being kidnapped―not once, but twice―and the stakes get higher as the men get hotter.

College instructor Rowena Revel has a magical gift with animals and a huge problem. Gorgeous tunic-clad men keep walking through the wall of her classroom. If that isn’t enough, she’s being haunted by sexy dreams in a rugged land. Curious, she checks out the wall and falls through a portal into the world of her dreams.

After years of war, women are scarce. Rowena finds herself in a heap of man-trouble when she ‘accidentally’ marries distant cousin Ivan. Enter Cedric, who dabbles in black magic and has an even blacker heart. Throw in a Viking, the local wolf-king, a band of brigands and a goth-clad student who follows her through the portal, and Rowena is off on a rollicking adventure.

Unwanted husbands keep piling up, but that doesn’t stop her from falling for the wrong brother. Not only that, she has eighteen year old Kendra to look out for and a war to prevent. Good thing she has the ability to go back through the wall. Or does she?

Dragon Rose (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms)

The shadow of the cursed Dragon Lord has hung over the town of Lirinsholme for centuries, and no one ever knows when the Dragon will claim his next doomed Bride. Rhianne Menyon has dreams of being a painter, but her world changes forever when a single moment of sacrifice brings her to Black’s Keep as the Dragon’s latest Bride. As she attempts to adjust to her new life — and to know something of the monster who is now her husband — she begins to see that the curse is far crueler than she first believed. Unraveling the mystery of what happened to the Dragon’s Brides is only the beginning…

To check out all the books available, and some ongoing freebies, click here.

3 Days of 99c Fantasy — Part 1

I’m really excited to be joining some other fantasy authors for a 3-day 99-cent fantasy e-book promotion, featuring The Unfinished Song (Book 2): Taboo. From February 10-12 we’ll have a total of 10 books discounted to 99 cents. While all of the books are available at 99 cents throughout the promotion, I’ll be featuring 3 per day here. It also gives you something to read while I make the final preparations to release The Unfinished Song (Book 6): Blood on Valentine’s Day! (That’s Thursday!)

Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur

For the price of a truce, Yseult is sent to a world where magic is dying – to marry the father of the man she loves. Marcus’s son Drystan would have saved her from a loveless marriage, but with her relatives being held hostage, Yseult cannot endanger them and must go through with the wedding. The tragic love story of Yseult and Drystan plays out against the backdrop of a violent world threatening to descend into the Dark Ages – only Arthur’s battles to push back the Saxon hordes can save what is left of civilization.
Yseult is a retelling of the tragic tale of Tristan and Isolde, a story older than Romeo and Juliet or Lancelot and Guinevere; an Arthurian romance with roots going back far into the realm of legend and the undying tales of King Arthur.
A historical fantasy novel by Ruth Nestvold, Book I of The Pendragon Chronicles. Also available on Kobo and B&N.

Once Upon a Curse: Stories and Fairy Tales for Adult Readers

STEP INTO THE WORLD OF MYTH AND MAGIC…Fair maidens, handsome princes, witches, and fairy godmothers all show their dark and dangerous side in this anthology inspired by myths and fairy tales, retold by some of the best authors in this generation and by some upcoming new talents. Told with a dark twist, focused on the lure of the gorgeous evil, this collection will take the readers on a wild ride through magical realms of Ancient Greece, old Russia, medieval Europe, and modern day America.

THE CURSE OF ABSOLUTE POWER.
THE MAGIC OF TRUE LOVE.

When, on the day of her age-coming, the princess opens a mysterious bronze bottle—a gift from her grandmother—she has no idea that she is about to unleash a power older than the world itself. Worse, she is not prepared for the bearer of this power to be a handsome man whose intense gray eyes pierce her very soul. Hasan, her new slave, is immeasurably older and stronger than anyone she has ever heard of, and he is now hers to command—if she can handle him, that is.“Truly compelling” — Booklist

“A fine recasting of Arabian Nights material into a fable for our times.” — Locus

New Fiction from Kevin O. McLaughlin

“Ad Astra” launches STARSHIP, fresh episodic fiction from award-winning author Kevin O. McLaughlin. The first season of five episodes, released weekly, will carry the reader through a single novel-length adventure from Earth to the stars, and from broken spirits to humanity’s unlikely heroes.

If life knocked you down, would you risk everything you had left to reach for the stars?

Ad Astra is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

Blood To Be Released on Valentine’s Day

• Post a review of Blood or any book in The Unfinished Song series. Review copies are always free!
• Share the cover, summary or excerpt above in a post leading up to the Valentine’s Day release.
• Share a guest post with either a character sketch, excerpt, or some of my thoughts on writing and reading.

The blog tour will officially run February 14 – March 14 and of course all tour visits will be linked to on my blog, Facebook and Twitter. To sign up, please email my assistant at katie@misquepress.com.

How To Take Criticism Of Your Writing

Now, we always give advice on how to crit, but, as we discussed 
earlier, perhaps it is more important to discuss how to receive 
crits. Personally, if one receives a crit that tells you, “Your basic 
idea is all wrong,” how should you take this?

1. Get some perspective. I look at something else that same person 
has critted. I read the piece and then the critter’s opinion. Often, 
I’ll find that I disagree just as much with that critter’s evaluation 
of the other person’s work as of my own. In that case, I dismiss the 
critter, because our tastes differ. On the other hand, if the critter 
has useful things to tell other people, I’ll take what she tells me 
more seriously.

2. Ask for specifics. I once received a crit telling me that my 
villains were cliche, and the ending ending to my book was obvious. 
This was not helpful to me. I emailed and asked *what* about the 
villain was cliche and what the reader thought the ending would be. 
The reader then told me it was because the villain wore black and 
some more specifics, and what they thought the “surprise” ending 
would be. This *was* helpful.

3. Remember your own point. In the above example the critter was 
completely wrong about who the villain was and the twist at the end. 
But the critter’s reaction told me that I had correctly set up reader 
expectations.

4. Keep in mind the rules of your genre. If a critter condemns your 
paranormal romance because he anticipates that it will end with the 
hero and heroine living happily ever after and that strikes him as 
sappy, boring and overdone, he doesn’t grasp the rules of the romance 
genre. Ignore him. Above all, do not give your romance an unhappy 
ending to please him.

5. Consider that the alternative to the “trite” may be equally trite. 
I have had people tell me that they are tired of High Fantasy in 
which the good guys prevail over the Forces of Darkness. They want to 
see the bad guys win “for once.” Guess what. That’s been done too. If 
you want to do it again, in your own story, go for it. I don’t.

6. Remember no story can be all things to all people. I like to 
observe the nasty things that people say about the writing of Stephen 
King, Nora Roberts and J.K. Rowling. It’s cliche, poorly written, has 
too many adverbs, is sentimental, is trashy, appeals to only to 
morons, etc. Maybe all true. But something worked.

7. What is the true core of your story? Perhaps you have 
inadvertently fleshed out your beloved story with readily available 
cliches. The important thing is not to lose that luminous inspiration 
that first moved you to write, even as you brush aside the cobwebs of 
trite ideas from it and polish it. Good critters may try to 
distinguish between the diamond and the tinsel, but ultimately, it’s 
up to you, the author.

Partly it depends on the piece. Partly it depends on how many people 
tell me the same thing. Partly it depends on the critter. Sometimes I 
put up an experimental chapter or story on the OWW, just to test the 
waters. I don’t have much invested in the piece. If I get a lot of 
negative crits I’ll shrug and pull it off and try something else later.

Suppose I put up a slight revision of a chapter of a book that is 
nearly complete and over 100,000 words, and that has previously 
earned a lot of enthusiasm and maybe an Editor’s Choice along the 
way. I say in the intro, “I just want a final polish for nits on this 
chapter.” Or, “I added a new scene into the middle of the chapter and 
want to know if it still flows ok.” Then some innocent newbie comes 
on and tells me that I shouldn’t start the book there, I should make 
the main character someone else, and they already know the ending of 
the book and it’s trite. Am I going to listen to a word that person 
says? No. Might the newbie be right? Sure. But at a certain point, a 
book or a short story is what it is.

Here’s a concrete example.

I once received a crit telling me that my villains were cliche, and 
the ending to my book was obvious. This was not helpful to me. 
I emailed and asked *what* about the villain was cliche and what the 
reader thought the ending would be. The reader then told me it was 
because the villain wore black and some more specifics, and what they 
thought the “surprise” ending would be. This *was* helpful.

They were also completely wrong, of course, about who the villain was 
and the twist at the end. But that told me that I had correctly set
up reader expectations.

In one of the introductions to her books, Bujold also talks about the 
fact that many of its Beta readers told her to take out the first 
scene, where Miles visits his grandfather’s grave. This slows down 
the action of the book, they said. She kept it in, because she was 
not writing an action book, but a character book with a lot of action 
in it. She knew better than to sacrifice what was really the bedrock 
of the book, even though out of context of the whole series, those 
scenes might have seemed unnecessary. And indeed, I would say that it 
is her superb characterization that makes her books stand out.

Moral of the story: Making a general sweeping statement that the core 
idea of a story is trite is useless feedback. If you recognize 
cliches or you think you anticipate the twists or ending of a story, 
tell the author what you anticipate. BE SPECIFIC.

This gets back to the “reader reaction” kind of crit, which I find 
the most helpful to receive. “Tara, I knew this guy was bad news, 
because, just like every other High Fantasy villain he dressed in 
black and Reeked of Wrongness” rather than “Your villains are too 
cliche. Try something new.”

And if you’re the author and you receive a generalized negative or 
condescending review, ignore it unless the critter offers specific 
examples of what and why. A critter who can’t do that isn’t a very 
good writer him/herself and probably isn’t offering good feedback 
anyway.

Three Ways To Do Dialogue Attributes Wrong

One of the first novels I wrote, 
when I was, ye gods, twelve or thirteen, I don’t remember (or I have 
thankfully blanked the memory from my brain) was Star Trek 
fanfic.

On the first draft, the dialogue looked something like this:

“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” said Kirk.
“That is not logical, Captain,” said Spock.
“But he looked like a Klingon,” said Kirk.
“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” said Spock.
“That’s what puzzles me,” said Kirk.

And so on.

So I re-wrote:

“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” said Kirk suspiciously.
“That is not logical, Captain,” said Spock calmly.
“But he looked like a Klingon,” said Kirk insistently.
“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” said Spock
implacably.
“That’s what puzzles me,” said Kirk dubiously.

Again, this was plainly awful.

Probably I read in some How To Write 
Novels That Don’t Bite book I read that verbs are more powerful than 
adverbs.

Hence:

“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” Kirk suggested.
“That is not logical, Captain,” Spock objected.
“But he looked like a Klingon,” Kirk insisted.

“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” Spock pointed out.
“That’s what puzzles me,” admitted Kirk.

And so on for three more pages.

What’s the right answer? There is no singular answer, no exclusively perfect way to write the scene, except to mix it up, let it flow, don’t overdo any single convention, and read and try every writing “rule” there is until
you know the reason for the rule and know exactly how to stand it on its head.

At different points in my writing career I needed 
different advice. The editors who say things like, “Don’t overuse 
adverbs,” “Don’t use ‘said’ all the time,” AND “Don’t be afraid to 
use ‘said’ most of the time,” are
addressing writers such as my 
thirteen year old self, who made all of these mistakes.

Oh, believe me, once I discovered dialog beats, I became a dialog 
beat fiend. All dialog beats and nothing else would grow tiresome 
after a while too. It’s the mix of things that lets a novel flow. It’s a question of balance. And, past a certain level of 
proficiency, of personal taste.

I read a “How To Make A Bajillion and Win a Pulitzer” from an author 
who had, to my knowledge, done neither himself. He took a book which 
had won a century of acclaim, The Great Gatsby, and then edited the 
first chapter to point out how much better it would have been if 
every single adverb had been deleted. His argument went like this, 
”There’s no need to say, ‘She leaned forward eagerly,’ the fact that 
she leans forward shows she’s eager. The sentence should read, ‘She 
leans forward.'”

Uh huh. Whatever. I read the scene both ways, and I came to the 
conclusion that Scott Fitzgerald was a better author than this self-appointed editor.

My favorite example of an author deliberately flouting this “rule” is 
a sentence by Lois McMaster Bujold, in which she uses the tag line, 
”Miles shouted mildly.”

Obviously, such a sentence can only be used once, which is how often 
she uses it.

Writing for Boys — Take the Quiz!

I have a son who is learning to read. I want to write stories that will be of 
interest and value to him. I know the 
values that I believe are universal to sentient beings, but are there elements which are particularly attractive 
to the little boy goobers out there?

I have three of them, and I’ve gotta admit, they are vocal about what they like and don’t like. An awful lot of the time, that appears to be: cars, trains, robots, sharks, dinosaurs, soldiers, blowing things up, the color blue, and anything totally gross—boogers and farts.

But they also love: cute baby animals, mermaids, kittens, puppies, frogs, ants, science, paleontology, stories that “aren’t TOO scary”, bad guys who turn out to be good guys, singing and dancing, rainbows and anything with chocolate.

What about older boys? What do they like to read? Harry Potter, of course… remember how delighted everyone was at the thought that thanks to Harry Potter ten year old boys were actually reading books? One of the concerns of teachers is that it’s harder to get boys to read than girls throughout most of the academic ladder—including up to college.

What makes a book masculine-friendly? I asked my 
husband and he said BFGs and T&A. Thanks, sweetheart. 😉 Kids cartoons have everything color-coded quite maniacally. But young adult and adult books really aren’t much different. You can tell from the cover which demographic the book is aimed at.

The feminist in me always feels guilty if I “cave in” to gender stereotypes. It would be nice if stories could transcend that kind of straightjacket, wouldn’t it?

But what if by getting so obsessed with the trappings of the story,we’re actually making the same mistake of judging things by the outer appearance and not the inner essence of the story? A while ago, Lego came out with Lego Friends: super cute Lego girls and Legos that came in pink and lilac and aquamarine. (Squeeee!!!! They are so awesome!!!!!) Inevitably, some people came and chewed out Lego for being sexist.

The shiny things that attract that atavistic part of ourselves probably is different in girls than boys. I remember reading some mind-boggling study that said there may be a biological reason most girls like pink better than
most boys—most females have more red receptors in their eyes than most males.

Holy cow. Here I was, blaming Matel. I don’t know about you, but that blew my mind. It also made me think that well-intentioned feminist parents who won’t let their daughters wear pink princess dresses are really missing the point.

If there really is a biological base for the love of pink, then it isn’t much more sexist to have a dearth of pink Legos?

The fear is that it’s all a slippery slope. Once you admit that pink might be rooted in biology, then you’ve as good as tied an apron around your daughter’s waist and chained her in the kitchen.

Or… maybe we could consider another possibility. Just because some primitive parts of ourselves, the inner cave people, are sexist, doesn’t mean that the best and most cherished parts of our minds are as well. The values that men and women are most likely to share equally also happen to be the highest values of our humanity: friendship, loyalty, courage, intelligence, love….

Now for the quiz!

Can you guess whether the following stories are aimed at boys or girls? I’ll give you just a few clues.

STORY 1: Pink. Ponies. Designing hats.

STORY 2: Trucks. Killer robot. Wrist device shooting green slime.

STORY 3: MC promises wants to do something. Although friends offer to help, MC is too proud to accept help. Finally, after MC is literally stuck, accepts help from friends and realizes there’s no shame in it.

STORY 4: MC and group of friends decide to race. MC is so busy trying to win that begins to lose friendship. Then a friend gets hurt and MC realizes friends are more important than winning.

Have you written down your answers yet?

It probably wasn’t too hard to guess that Story 1 was aimed at girls, and Story 2 was aimed at boys. But what about Story 3 and Story 4? It wasn’t as obvious, was it?

Why is that?

The clues from Story 1 and Story 2 were all about the out trappings of the story: the colors, the creatures, the goo. The clues from Story 3 and Story 4 were about values. Unless you knew that Story 4 involved pink ponies and Story 3 involved blue trucks, you’d never know one was targeted at girls and the other at boys. In fact, you could reverse the plots but keep the color schemes, and superficially, the entire demographic of the story would change.

But what do you think? What makes a book more appealing to boys or girls? Do you think men and women are more or less open to reading omnivorously?