Category: Reviews

Reading Watching Listening: Extra Long Summer Fun Edition

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Beach read! (Literally. It takes place AT the beach. Surfers. Mmmm…)

READING

Summer beach reads! I have two contemporary romance authors (three, technically) to recommend to you for fun summer beach reads. Yay!

The first is the writing duo of Steph Campbell and Elizabeth Reinhardt. (Full disclosure, I’m good friends with both these gals.) Liz and Steph write mostly contemporary romance, and their books are very fun and perfect for vacation. Limits is the next book in the Lengths trilogy, and that will be out in the next week or so, but in the meantime, you can catch up with Lengths and Depths. Fair warning, ladies, keep your hands to yourself with Cohen in Depths. He’s MY book boyfriend, and I’m not in a sharing mood.

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Look! I liked something pink!

The second is Cora Carmack. Her first book, Losing It, hit the NYT Bestseller list, so she’s kind of a big deal now. 😉 Luckily, she’s still a very cool chick and her second book, Faking It just released last week. These are laugh out loud funny romances, you guys. But they also ring true. I like wit, but I also like emotional depth, and these books have both. The characters feel very real. So… deliciously awkward situations with snappy dialogue? Yes, please. I highly recommend both.

Not swooning. Not swoon--okay, swooning.
Not swooning. Not swoon–okay, swooning.

WATCHING

Television: I loooove a good psychological mystery, and it’s hard to beat the BBC for that. One of my favorite shows years ago was Wire in the Blood with Robson Green. (I think you can catch the whole series on Netflix. Warning: It’s VERY dark.) In the same tradition of strong, character-driven mysteries comes Luther. This show is brilliant. The writing is smart and layered. The acting is top notch. Idris Elba is… visceral in the leading role. He’s so, so good. The first two seasons are streaming on Netflix, and I highly recommend them.

I LOVE YOU, TONY!
I LOVE YOU, TONY!

Movies: I just saw Ironman 3. It got mixed reviews, and I’m not sure why. I really liked it. I thought it was narratively strong, particularly as the final film in the Ironman trilogy, and the action and dialogue were balanced and sharp. Knowing my weakness for lovable smart-asses, you can probably guess how much I love RDJ as Tony Stark. (It’s a weakness I won’t apologize for. I would totally fangirl in real life.) Is Ironman still my favorite Avenger? YES.

LISTENING

If you’re looking for a folk/rock sound, I highly recommend Lord Huron. I saw them when they opened for Monsters and Men last winter, then I saw them at Coachella. In a long weekend, they were one of the most memorable acts. I think you’re going to be hearing a lot more from them. Their album is Lonesome Dreams, and “She Lit a Fire” and “Ends of the Earth” are two stand-outs for me.

Dreeeeeamy...
Dreeeeeamy…

And if you’re looking for something a little (okay, a lot) harder, SAVAGES!!! A London based punk band I also caught at Coachella, they were amazing live, and their first album, Silence Yourself, just released in May. They’ve got a lot of buzz, and in my opinion, it’s well-deserved.

My fictional girl band will NEVER be as cool as these girls...
My fictional girl band will NEVER be as cool as these girls…

That’s what I’m reading, watching, and listening. What are you up to this summer?

News, updates, and “ARGH!”

I’ve taken a few days off (“Really?” Yes, really.) and I’m enjoying a writing break before I start on my next couple of projects. The cover reveal for the fourth Elemental Mysteries book, A Fall of Water, will be happening tomorrow. ARCs will be going out to bloggers soon, and a teaser for the fourth book has already posted here.

As for upcoming projects, I have three that I’m very excited about. Carwyn’s book is still a work-in-progress, but is reaching the halfway point. I don’t have an estimated time for that release, since I’m trying to catch my breath schedule-wise. I’ve also been planning a brand new series in an entirely different universe for my paranormal-lovers out there. I’m really excited about it, and I think I’ll have a short story published over the summer that will be a prequel for the first book.

Most fun of all, my son and I will be working on a project together this summer for a children’s book series he’s concocted featuring a young and ethically challenged mad scientist named Max. Yes, Mr. Colin Hunter appears to have been bitten by the writing bug and is planning and plotting along with Mom now. (This doesn’t really come as much of a surprise considering he’s been telling me the bedtime stories for quite a while now.) I have to tell you, it really is a joint project. His imagination is so wonderful, all he’s needed is a little guidance (and, of course, my writing skills since he is seven and his typing isn’t quite as good as mine). It’s a testament to turning off the electronic devices and talking with your kids. *steps off soapbox*

Finally, there have been many articles written about book piracy, but I wanted to give you a few of my thoughts here.

An excerpt:

“I’m not going to rant about it. It’s pointless. …I’m not going to debate the ethics with you in this post; I think almost everyone knows that it’s wrong, even if they’ve justified it in their mind.

What I am going to do, is loudly say to readers who do buy my books legally…

Thank you.”

I hope you have a wonderful week, and be looking around the web tomorrow for that cover and the synopsis for A Fall of Water! I’ve only given the cover out to a few bloggers, but you’ll be able to see it over on ElementalMysteries.com and on the Facebook page, as well.

Thanks for reading and have a great week,

Elizabeth

P.S. If you’ve had the time to read The Genius and the Muse, I’d really, really, with-chocolate-sprinkles, really love it if you could take the time to leave an honest review where you bought it. It makes a big difference. Thanks!

Guest Posting at Once Upon A Series

No new post from me today (wish me luck, I’m braving the shops with SmallBoy later) but you can check out this guest post from me over at Once Upon a Series. Chrissie is doing a new feature on her blog where bloggers talk about their top ten favorite series of all time. Can’t wait to see who is next!

Once Upon A Series:


To a lifelong bookworm, narrowing down your ten favorite series is pretty difficult! Like a lot of readers, I like series books because I enjoy revisiting characters and worlds that I find compelling. I also like the longer plot arcs you can explore with a series!

In the end, I decided to not just pick my ten favorite, but those that I felt had the most influence on me as a reader and a writer. As I looked over the list, I found a great combination of fantasy, history, science fiction, and mystery, all genres that have contributed to my own novels.

There’s no possible way that I could rank these from favorite to least favorite, so I am listing them in the order that I read them. I hope you enjoy!

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
I think I started this series with my parents reading to me, and I ended reading them for myself. I was a huge Narnia fan, and I still enjoy reading them to this day. Lewis knew how to write for children without writing down to them.

Read the rest over at Chrissie’s site, and check out her blog for great reviews, series news, and other guest posts!

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Chrissie for letting me take over her blog for the day!

Elizabeth

Promotions, Paperbacks, Sales and Stores. Happy Friday!

Crossposted from Elemental Mysteries… (so if you subscribe over there, just delete this email, it’s pretty much the same)

It’s the last week before the release of my second book, This Same Earth, and there is much going on with my readers, the Elemental Mysteries world, and e-publishing in general this last month before Christmas. I have promotion news, book news (new book and paperback), a very interesting development in international book stores and e-book expansion, and some belated thanks to a few important people.

My news first! (Hey, it’s my blog.) The November promotion for the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption went smashingly, and readers raised over $98 to help promote adoption from the foster care system! Thanks to all of you who bought the book last month. Going forward, look for more news of my involvement and promotion of this charity that is so close to my heart.

My new promotion for the Elemental Mysteries will run through December (and possibly the first part of January). I have lowered the cost of the first book, A Hidden Fire, to just…$0.99. That’s right, folks. I’m not going to lie; it was a bit painful, but that means that, starting next week, if you know someone with an e-reader (or who is getting one for Christmas!) you can buy them the first and second Elemental Mysteries books for a total of $3.98. That’s less than four dollars for what would be almost a thousand pages of reading in paperback. If you like the books, please consider buying them for a Christmas present!

Speaking of presents, my paperback issues seem to be resolved, and I ordered proofs of the first and second books from CreateSpace yesterday. I’m very excited to see my books in paperback and make that option available for readers. I’ll let you know when I get them. (Unless they look awful, in which case I will hide them from everyone except my mother.) Continue reading “Promotions, Paperbacks, Sales and Stores. Happy Friday!”

Why I’ve put off watching the season premiere of Bones…

…but will tonight, and I’ll let you know what I think.

Ages ago, when I was a young, impressionable maiden (no, really, I was), I got hooked on Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels.  The first one was Postmortem, and I ate that series up.  This was before the emergence of shows like CSI or Body of Proof and the whole forensic science aspect was new and fascinating to me.  I loved the science, the mystery, the chemistry of the characters. In short, I’ve been a lover of the forensic science mystery for a long time.

When CSI premiered, I checked it out, and I liked it.  After a while, though, it got repetitive, and I lost interest.  While the premise was interesting, it wasn’t as character-driven as I usually liked in a TV drama.  However, when Bones premiered in 2005, I jumped on it like a mouse on cheese.  Here was a drama with two strong leads (One of whom was David Boreanaz, hello.) a twist on a premise I loved (Forensic anthropology? Awesome!) and a great supporting cast.

From the beginning, series creator, Hart Hanson, talked about how it was a character-driven show, a show about relationships, not just another police procedural. And it was. It had great mysteries, but it had great character dynamics, too. Continue reading “Why I’ve put off watching the season premiere of Bones…”

Review: Once Upon a Time (Pilot episode)

 I don’t watch a lot of television.  I like television, but it’s not something I have much time for between writing, teaching, wife-ing, and mom-ing. However, I saw the previews for the new ABC show, Once Upon a Time, a few weeks ago, and I was intrigued.

The show is from the writers of Lost, so I expected a complex storyline and something different.  I also liked the idea of a fairytale world gone wrong.  The premise of the show is that “once upon a time” there was a fantasy realm cursed by an evil queen (apparently the one from the Snow White fairytale, who’s a very respectable baddie, in my opinion). The characters from classic fairytales are thrown into the modern world with no memory of their own “happily ever after” or who they really are.

Now, while the premise may seem a bit precious at first, I was impressed by the casting (Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Morrison, and Robert Carlyle all star) and I wanted to see what the writers of a show like Lost could do with the setup, so I thought I’d give the series a chance.

So far, I’m impressed!  The main character, Emma Swann (Morrison looking cool, but not overly glamorous) is a tough bail recovery agent with a complicated past.  She gets drawn into the small town of Storybrooke by an unusual ten-year-old boy named Henry.  I like elusive main characters and interesting kids on my television, so the first few minutes of the show caught me.  It was fun to see the fantasy back story gradually unfold through the episode, and not have one big story-dump at the beginning. Also, if you tend to get confused between Goodwin and Morrison because they have similar looks…yeah, that’s intentional. (Side note: Goodwin’s hair is amazingly cute in a pixie cut, which makes this curly haired writer very jealous.) Carlyle steals every scene he’s in, and I can’t wait to see what they do with his character.

I loved seeing the modern versions of the fairytale characters.  From hints in a mysterious book (you know I love my mysterious books!), viewers can expect to see characters from the classic tales, along with some more modern fairy tales like Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz.  I’m looking forward to playing “spot-the-character” in the next few episodes.  (This might necessitate a drinking game…I’ll keep you posted.)

In summary, Once Upon a Time has impressed me enough that I’ll be tuning in next Sunday to watch.  It’s on ABC at 8/7C (so moms might have to set the DVR to work around bedtime) so if you like a little intrigue with your happily ever after, you might want to take a look.

Here’s the trailer: