Amy's Book Nook

Hey guys,

I need some help. I've started reading Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mystery series. I wanted to know if anybody else has read any of her other series. :\ I like this series very much so I was wondering if anybody could help me and clue me in on her other series.

Thanks in advance...X-posted to a bunch of other communities.

Amy

I seem to have hit a funk.  My brother (A, not G) says it's written all over my heart chakra.  

Maybe it's a delayed reaction to Boo-man's return to his dad's house.  Or maybe it has to do with the fact that my dad and I are loudly not speaking while a thousand miles apart, and he's cutting his vacation short (only by 4 days, and I imagine he's only staying that long because I bet he couldn't make it the entire scheduled month) so that we can not speak in person.  Actually, he's going to piss me off, and I'll bare it until, despite the fact I know it's coming, I'll tell him to get a fucking grip.  And I'll feel guilty.  He's right to be angry, he's just not right to take it out on me.  The pattern has only changed slightly in 30 something years, so the real question isn't really what will happen, but how hard he'll push before...

Whatever.  

Maybe it's just too many op-eds and not enough fiction.  That tends to make me nuts after a while.

Once there was a girl who dedicated her life to the devil.  I think I'll go write about her.

It's a specific author's birthday today, and I've made a new LOLcat for you writers. Find out more here.

Mega-thanks to everyone who visited my WordPress yesterday (Tuesday 8th July). You gave me my highest page visits in one day: 223. Considering the previous best was 177, this was quite a jump. Here were the most visited pages:

August 2008 Releases
[REVIEW] Even for Me - Taryn Blackthorne
July 2008 Releases
Reading Wishlist
[COVER ART] Witch Heart - Anya Bast
Cat with Books, Manny, WordPress & Tokyo

Sneezy me has to walk through muddy paddock again now.

A buddy of  mine from the Charleston area, Travis Reynolds, does a board-game focused report on OriginsGame Fair 2008  for Boardgame News. Be sure and check it out.

Travis also is one of the organizers for CharCon, the annual gaming convention in Charleston, W.Va. Be sure and check out the CharCon site, join the community and start posting some stuff. Even if you aren't from West Virginia we'd love to hear from you, and if you are from WV or one of the surrounding states, this is a great chance to make connections with some regional gamers. This year's convention is going to be horror themed, and looks to be a lot of fun.

ME 

Edit: After you are done reading Travis' report, check out one by Valerie Putnam, also on Boardgame News. It has a few interesting tidbits as well. I hope to post my con report this week.

Just found the cover art and summary of something I'm really looking forward to. Find out more here.

If you're already done buying and pre-ordering the July 2008 Releases, then it's time to focus on next month's August 2008 Releases (and it includes 1 July release I forgot). US and UK cover art, publishers and release dates, and summaries that I've found. Hopefully it has the information you're looking for. And it you want to look even further into the future (and not just this year - I'm talking 2009 and beyond, too), check my Reading Wishlist.

Cut out your impulse shopping by only buying what you order. It may not help your willpower, but it's a suggestion ;-)

Okay, so I'm in a strange mood, and this is one of those posts. 

I’ve seen quite a few postings on the webverse this weekend about a talking head making the rounds in South Africa. It laughs and talks with paying customers. When not on the road as part of a travelling show, the operators of said show (who are doing a brisk business) claim it’s stored in a hospital.

Okay, yucky aspects aside, I can’t help thinking this whole separation of mind/body thing would be quite useful. I’m sure my body could do most of the housecleaning and gardening, go to the gym, and take care of my day job without my head’s participation. My head could stay home, wired up to the laptop, and attend to my coursework and writing obligations. I could reunite with myself at the end of the day with double my tasks accomplished.

I suspect this system is already in use.  There are folks in responsible, busy public positions who look like they have heads, but are obviously operating without the active input of a brain. They must have spare heads, empty but otherwise cosmetically identical, for use while their brains are back at the office catching up on paperwork. It’s the only explanation for what comes out of their mouths during the sound bites.

Well, despite these obvious abuses of the separate-head model, it’s a nifty idea. No more need to suffer undue boredom. No more phoney sick days or internal arguments about doing chores. Let the body do it! The mind can literally be elsewhere! 

The only problem is figuring out the coffee. I can’t function without it, but which half would it need to go into?

 

It was a fairly heads-down-and-keep-working weekend, but after a short week I guess I can’t really complain--except of course the weather turned gorgeous the moment I had to go back to work. Figures.

Then again, I might have been a medieval monk and died from a poisoned pen, or at least the ink on it.  I stumbled across this little tidbit on the Discovery website:  http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/27/poison-monks-mercury.html

Apparently, some folks digging up Cistercian monks in Denmark (we all need a hobby) found indications of mercury poisoning in the bones. Apparently, this was an occupational hazard. The monks were exposed when preparing medicines for leprosy and syphilis.  Another possible source for contamination was the inks used for illuminating manuscripts (cinnabar, a compound of mercury, was used to make a brilliant red ink).

I knew about the hazards of cosmetics from past centuries—powders and rouges also contained mercury and lead—but never thought about paints used for other purposes. Poor monks were just trying to make something beautiful. Kind of makes one wonder about the substances in our own working environment.

Along that same vein, y’know, toxins and all, I watched The Day After Tomorrow—I’d taped it off the Space Channel and waited until I was too brain-dead to do anything useful. Leaving the accuracy of the science aside, it was a weirdly dull movie for so much disaster. The situation was dire, but the characters were too underdeveloped to really grab me. As for all the snow, I kind of felt—yeah, I grew up in that, so what else you got?

And I watched The Other Boleyn Girl, which had good actors (I do like Scarlett Johansson) but a limp script. This is well-travelled material that added nothing to the conversation.  The Tudors (the series) may play havoc with history, but at least it has some oomph.

And I also watched Juno, which was terrific—nicely acted and beautifully written.  I NEVER watch this much TV, so I’m glad at least one-third of the experience was worth the corrupted brain cells. Interesting that the “small” film was the only one worth the time.

Finally got to play some D&D 4E this weekend. I took my minis and reversible gaming tiles to Fairmont, W.Va. to a post-4th of July party. My one friend had just gotten copies of the 4E books (my review copies still haven't gotten here) and wanted to run through combat. Basically we set up a dungeon made of four tiles, interconnected, then moved our three characters through each room, gradually upping the difficulty and kinds of encounters in each room. It very well could have ended as a total party kill on the third and fourth tiles, but the GM fudged in our favor a couple of times since we were all just learning the rules.

I played a first-level Dragonborn Warlord. Angela played a first-level Tiefling Warlock who specialized in deception. Paul played a first-level human fighter. Basically Paul and I were the tanks while Ang sniped. It took us a few to figure out how best to use our powers and the rules. My guy really needed to go first each round, or at least before the other two PCs in order to give them bonuses to their defense and attacks. Ang needed to keep distance between herself and her opponents, which made it hard for her to benefit from my abilities, which required her to  be adjacent, and I didn't have any ranged attacks (other than a pretty cool dragon breath that I could only use once per encounter).

Once Paul joined the game on the second room, he and I would charge into battle together, and he would get bonuses from my manuevers. It was tricky keeping him out of the swath of my dragon breath. We also had to figure ways to use our ability to shift (move one square without provoking an attack of opportunity) to get the best tactical advantage.

There was one cool moment in the game where Paul was getting his ass handed to him by a skeleton that could use fire magic. I think this was the fourth room, and very nearly the end of us all. The damn thing kept setting him on fire, doing immediate damage, and then another 5 damage at the start of Paul's turn. He would then have to roll against a DC of 10 for the flames to go out, or otherwise take damage again on his next turn. It proved too much, and ended up knocking him out.

I was nearly dead fighting a skeleton with a longsword, so I decided to sacrifice my guy to save Paul (also because he was better at combat than me and stood a better chance of stoping Flaming Skeleton Guy). I used my move to shift one space around my skeleton, giving me a clear line of sight to Paul's guy. Then I used a minor action to do a Inspiring Command (forgive me if I get the names of these wrong) which allowed me to give Paul a healing surge plus 1d6 HP. This immediately brough him back to his feet. Then I used my standard action (for those who don't know, you get a minor action, move action and standard action each turn, with as many free actions as you'd like) to give a Combat Command (or somesuch) and order him to attack Flaming Skeleton Guy. This basically gave him a free attack out of turn and allowed him to wound the skeleton pretty badly.

Luckily my guy missed me on his next attack, and gave me a chance to do an Inspiring Command on myself (which I could only do twice per encounter), allowing me to heal. We ended up barely defeating our foes, and if the GM hadn't fudged a couple of times earlier in the game, bad dice rolls and poor decisions would have killed us.

All in all, its pretty cool. I can see where people think it plays more like a board game than old skool D&D, but I didn't really mind. I liked it. There is a huge tactical element now, though, and a few mistakes can easily cost you a character. I also noticed that critters in our threat range had about 2-4 times the amount of hit points we did, but we could deal out about 2-3 times the amount of damage they could. 

I look forward to getting to play some more and to see how combat fits into an actual storyline. I am afraid there will be a bit of a disconnect in that the combat will feel like a separate game from the rest of it, kinda like how in the old Final Fantasy video games you are walking around and then sudden whoosh into this lined up combat that doesnt look like the game you were just playing. Still, I think we will get the kinks worked out and enjoy the new system and the kinds of games it lends itself to.

I hope to post some pics of the board and minis at a later time. Questions and comments welcome.

ME

So I'm exhausted. Not just physically tired from this morning's workout but brain-tired like I've taken a handful of Benadryl--only I haven't. I get this way after long weekends with too many obligations. And this one was packed.

On Thursday, which is the new Friday, I got an email from a friend reporting such. In a flash, my plans for a leisurely night of Last Comic Standing and a few chapters of reading gone. Our regular Friday fun was bumped up. I use the term "fun" loosely, as it's a bit of a rut. Dinner, some shopping, coffee at a bookstore. Seems boring, right? Luckily, the actions don't determine the entertainment, it's the people...and our friends are nuts.

We ended up at the fireworks stand and spent too much money on things that go boom. Question: since when are mortar fireworks "safe and sane". We intentionally avoided the reservation this year to model civic responsibility for the Goddaughters and yet, the Fire Department approved stands seem to be selling the exact same fireworks (for double the price). Do I smell kick-back?

Anyway. The 4th was a good time. I made German potato salad, which feeds an army and turned out really well. Brisket, Crab, Ribs, good stuff. Especially when the time came for the ritual new baby lemon taste!

Oh yes.

A couple we know recently adopted a baby and right around the 1-year mark--as is our tradition--new babies get their first taste of that sourest of citrus fruits. Oh the smoosh face! How we love it. We were not disappointed, that little face scrunched up like a cat's anus and then she went back for seconds.

Which totally reminded me of this major lapse in judgment...


Saturday, we returned to the scene of the crime, devouring leftovers like a cloud of locusts, completely sated until someone--I think it was Caroline--opened her demon mouth and suggested Dairy Queen. Seconded quickly, we were off to the most disturbing fast food bunghole on the planet. Let's talk briefly about location. South Tacoma Way has had its ups and downs. New projects roll in and force certain ladies-who-aren't-walking-for-their-health to change their route. Moving from in front of the Filipino grocers and taquerias to the aging strip of grease peddlers.

So we pull in, nearly clipping a particularly thin lady in skin tight jeans, stilettos and a weave that started about two inches above her forehead, a Klingon without the ridges. I know what you're thinking. Hey Mark, lay off, at least she had the common decency to wear the uniform.

I'll give you that. Because the next one was wearing a stained t-shirt that rode up the sides of her ample belly which was modestly covered by the cotton shorts she'd pulled up so far as to expose the sag in her granny panties. This is not a good look for lounging around the house, let alone attracting some quick work and a twenty dollar bill.

We would have been mortified, if it weren't for the fact that this Dairy Queen was being operated by gang members and more specifically the Bloods. You'll need to clear your heads of some stereotypes here, cuz this was a diverse bunch--Tacoma gangs are a proudly inclusionary bunch, color blind in their initiation decisions (call them avant garde, but a white kid can just as easily bust a cap, or at least we've found that to be true).

Not everyone in the joint seemed to notice, though the clues were everywhere. For me, the tattoos gave it away as did the preponderance of red clothing, red bandanas and an overtly hostile attitude toward the customers. I didn't need to see the butt of a gun poking from the Blizzard maker's sagging jeans to know we were in a bit of danger. Or at least in danger of going off our carefully planned diet. So we sat quietly and gorged. Any loud nose sure to be met with a barrage of bullets and the tinkling rain of shell casings. Who knew soft serve could be so hardcore?

Sunday was a bit more relaxed. Grocery shopping and zombie movies. Zombie Honeymoon was, of course, a hot mess, just real crap and I ended up shutting it off after the first hour. Sentient zombie or no and totally incongruent with the title, it was being played too seriously. I did finally watch Romero's Diary of the Dead and while it wasn't a complete pile of crap (see also, Land of the Dead) it didn't work for me. Except for the mute Amish guy. He was a surprise and probably should have been the main character.

So now I must recover. Just a little nap ought to do it...

An agent (not mine) whose blog I still frequently read was talking about the use of said and adverbs in dialogue. A reader was writing in saying that she has been told by writing groups to not use anything other than said in dialogue tags and yet she's seen plenty of published books with adverbs or with characters hissing/screaming/whispering dialogue. She wanted to know if there were any hard and fast rules in the publishing industry about dialogue tags.

As far as I can tell, and hopefully my cohort over here will weigh in on this issue as well, no, there isn't any rule or at least, none that I was given. Sharon's and my writing group quite a while back now did a short-story exercise where you couldn't use any adverbs, and I came to be aware of how much I used those things! You had better believe before I sent the book that would be Phenomenal Girl 5 out to the person who would be my agent, I went through and rewrote a lot so there wasn't a glut of adverbs.
 
I'm thinking that is probably the closest to a "rule" in this case - you can use adverbs on occasion. You can use screamed/whispered/stated/etc. on occasion. It's when you overuse those tools that they become a problem and become very distracting. If you're using adverbs for every dialogue tag, it's going to get distracting. If you go out of your way to never use said and use other ways of saying that, it becomes VERY distracting. (I've seen it.)

My first drafts tend to have a lot of adverbs, but I go back and try to clean it up in the next draft. I also have a strange habit of overusing the characters' names in dialogue, but I'm always trying to watch for that and catch it before the next draft. However, I recently read a published book where the characters' names were used in almost every piece of dialogue and once I noticed it, I couldn't stop noticing it! Very distracting. I don't beat myself up now if I can't get out of using an adverb, but I do try to work those suckers out before the final copy.

So anyone else want to give their opinion?

I've been tagged by onegrapeshy for this fun meme:

1. I hate the color....
2. I hate the TV show...
3. I hate the taste of....
4. I hate the smell of....
5. I hate the word....
6. I hate the sound of...
7. I hate the song...


1. Puce... what exactly is puce? sounds gross!
2. Beauty and the Geek... what the hell kind of show is this?
3. Vinegar. 
4. Gonna go with onegrapeshy on this one and skunk.  Can't stand it
5. Puke, up chuck, just say throw up or vomit.
6. tires squeeling by teenagers who think their hot shit.
7. anything by shania twain.

Okay I have to tag three people... hmmmm...twilightxedward, mockingbird39, jp_davis

New photos of Manny with books here.

You'll have to forgive Manny's lack of enthusiasm - he had to visit the vet today. Da-da-DA! But there's good news - he's fine! His teeth have plaque, but that's the worst thing. Even his vomiting once a fortnight is not an issue - it's because he bolts his food down and eats who knows what else outside. Was told he has a nice coat, and that he's a good weight - "slim" I remember her saying. Not only that, but the vet said, "His name reminds me of the Black Books character." Which is a fair thing to say, because I named him after Bill Bailey's character. Perhaps I should've named him after the landlord cat, Mr Benson...

Thanks to everyone who visited my WordPress yesterday (Sunday 6th July) - you gave me the highest amount of page views I've received in one day: 177. That may be little bickies to some people, but it's big to me, and much appreciated. Here's hoping you find reasons to return.

I leave you with this short video Liz Maverick took in the Kiddyland store in Tokyo. Not sure why anyone would want to buy that particular toy dog, except as a joke gift...

I'm finally giving blogspot a try. If you've got a book blog (for reading or writing) that you'd like on my list, lemme know.

New review here.

My WordPress has a new header image, and page navigation has been altered. Should be pretty self-explanatory, but if not, let me know.

It's a certain author's birthday today. Find out whose here.

Because leahclifford tagged me:

1. I hate the color...yellow
2. I hate the TV show...Mark Loves Sharon (haven't seen it, but it looks like the biggest pile of wank)
3. I hate the taste of...fresh fish (though canned tuna, crabmeat and whatever's in fish fingers are still fine)
4. I hate the smell of...fish
5. I hate the word...shizzle
6. I hate the sound of...the kids next door
7. I hate the song..."Soulja Boy"

Oh, and I've added more links to my WordPress's sidebar. If you want to do a link exchange, I'd be happy to participate.

Watched "Once" last night and absolutely loved it.  I knew I recognized Guy from somewhere.  Of course, he is only in my favorite movie of all time, "The Commitments".  He's the long-haired, curly red haired guitarist!  I knew he looked familiar!  But the movie and soundtrack is brilliant.  I highly recommend it.  Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are amazing.

I've been reading up a storm, and really have done NO writing.  But it's all good because I'm just reading and I can use that for research!  In the past week I've read:

1.  Life as We knew it, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

2. Moon Called, Patricia Briggs

3. Magic Bites (still reading this one, and like it), by Ilona Andrews

I've been burning through the new Coldplay CD that is absolutely brilliant as well.  I highly recommend Alanis Morrissette's Flavours of Entanglement as well.  Awesome CD. 

I have a couple of websites to post about that I think writers who are reading this might want to look into for future reference.  They'll help you from query questions to basic grammar questions. They'll crit work if you need someone to do it for you, if you don't have someone.

The first one is

Writers.net

You do have to subscribe, but it is free.  I posted a faux-query and got some fantastic feedback.  I was forewarned they can be brutal, but brutal is good!

I've switched my work hours so I'll have Mondays and Fridays off, working Tue, Wed, and Thurs.  So that will give me plenty of time to write! (hopefully).

There's a gentle shower happening outside my window, it's what my grampa from Ireland would say is "soft rain".

I'd like to say hello to all my new friends.  Sorry I haven't taken the time to personally say hello, but RL intrudes and that sucks.  I hope everyone is having a lovely 4th of July weekend, and I wish a belated birthday to Canada, and all my canadian friends!

Well I guess that's all I have to say right now. 

If you happen to be Kevin from Gary, In. or Natalie who went to school in Bloomington, this is Angela from the train. Contact me!

Of course, this journal is set to not come up on search engines (like they'd be searching for themselves like that anyway), so nevermind. :-D

Had an enjoyable 4th. Spent far too much of the day in a steaming hot kitchen, watched a lot of movies and ate together with just the fam--or rather, just the immediate fam. My cousin Lori, who'd moved up from Miss a while back was not looking forward to an evening home alone; brother G, who is usually reliable for a party at such times, was working. So she came over for desert and talk before we took the T in for the fireworks.

X so didn't want to go, but I convinced him it was his fatherly duty. Besides, we were going last minute, so we'd miss all the crowds on the way in. Oops. We had the last car to ourselves until twenty drunken 20-somethings got on with us. I was amused--I generally consider people doing such remarkably obnoxious things in public to be a free show. He wasn't happy. Nor was the toddler who appreciated neither the ridiculous noise nor the fact that I shielded her from some of their antics. I don't even want to know what the teen ager throught.

Near the end of the trip, another young couple got on. We'd have gotten off before getting the chance to talk to them, but the drunken crowd decided to leave at Park, and even I'd had about enough of them. Staying on one more stop would just have us view the fireworks from a different part of the river.

Once silence reigned--as much as possible on an idling redline train--the female half of the young couple, who'd been talking to Lori, made her way over to me with a map. They'd gotten an alterative suggestion for where to see the fireworks which sounded great. All of my life, minus various years of roving, spent in the area, and I'd never tried watching from the Cambridge side of the river. And, they're engaged and his company is likely to move him here in six months, so they wanted to know about places to life. Finding out where they were from, I announced that my friends from Bloomington loved Davis Square.

Anyhoo, it was nice meeting them, but we got split up before we could exchange info.

Lovely fireworks, though I was dragged away before the big finish to beat the press of 100,000 people.

And that was the Boo-man's last night. He's on a plane now, heading back to Texas.

Black Widow by Randy Wayne White - Doc Ford's goddaughter is being blackmailed after she and 3 friends have a last fling on the island of Saint Arc. So Doc, at first, does as Shay asks and drops off the payment, but he warns her it might not end there. And he's right - one of Shay's bridesmaids tries to commit suicide after receiving another blackmail note. So Doc puts aside his clandestine research work for the US government and heads back to the Caribbean to take down a blackmailing voodoo queen. Fun stuff, great series.

Phantom Prey by John Sandford - I loves me some Lucas Davenport :)  This one has some weird psychological stuff going on, which hindered my enjoyment somewhat, but the Davenport stuff and the general police procedural part were good. Davenport delves into the world of Goths, trying to find out what happened to a young woman whose mother is an acquaintance of Davenport's wife. A couple other people in the Goth community are murdered and Davenport is hunting for a connection.  The killer is where the weird stuff is - just couldn't buy it, but the investigation and the subplot of watching a drug dealer's girlfriend were good.

Black Out by Lisa Unger -  Complex plot, read summary at link :)  Unger is excellent - twisty, suspenseful, haunting. Story switches between current time and the past, from the POV of a damaged woman who's not quite sure what is real and what is imagination/hallucination. But her confusion may not just be because of the repressed memories she's trying to sort out - other forces may be at work trying to keep her confused and helpless. A literary psychological thriller. Read her other books too!  (A to Z)

Infected by Scot Sigler -  Best book this month - Black Out is a close second, but Infected is much more accessible. Kind of a horror/science fiction/thriller combo. Icky, violent  - and totally gripping. People have been infected. Those people start out itching, but the itchy places turn into blue triangles under the skin. And the people turn into violent homicidal maniacs. Margaret Montoya, from the CDC, is working with CIA agent Dew Phillips (who's acting against all rules by working a domestic case) to find out what is making people crazy - the problem is that all the infected bodies rapidly liquidify, leaving nothing much to examine.  Former football player Perry Dawsy is infected, itching, and angry. But his father's abusive behavior when he was young and serious training when he was playing, have given him disipline and he doesn't take crap from anyone, not even his own body. But can he control the alien infection long enough for Montoya and Phillips to find him? And who or what is behind the infection? Excellent job at Perry's descent into homicidal rage and the things he does to fight off the influence of the triangles. You'll cringe, but you'll keep reading.