MERLYN’S RAVEN by Rose Vanden Eynden
5.0 stars
I recently finished an excellent first novel by a long-time student of Arthurian legend, Rose Vanden Eynden. MERLYN’S RAVEN from Soul Mate Publishing is a romantic fantasy set in fifth century Wales.
Gwendydd, the illegitimate child of an allegedly wild woman, suffers her mother’s reputation, but longs to know the truth of her heritage. Slated for a loveless marriage to her chieftain grandfather’s political ally, she meets and falls in love with a druid’s apprentice, a handsome man with golden eyes, possessed of second sight, yet said to be the son of a demon. Appearing and disappearing at will are a few of the many feats of magick the young Myrddin (Merlin) can do, as well as casting glamours—and building Stonehenge with his metaphysical prowess.
Beyond the disapproval of her family, difficulties mount when Myrddin’s clairvoyant visions foretell the birth of a great king who will unify a warring Britain. To shift the balance of power, they must succeed in a dangerous scheme, one that threatens their very lives.
If you’re looking for a book that’s a perfect potion made of magick, romance, and adventure, I highly recommend MERLYN’S RAVEN. Rose Vanden Eynden’s words flow like a rushing river. The setting is rich, the characters are fascinating, the magick is powerful, the treachery surprising. Keeping the pace brisk throughout, Vanden Eynden builds ancient intrigue to an exciting conclusion and sets things up nicely for the next edition of an enchanting saga.
You can watch the book’s video trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt4cu3rSKz8.
You can find MERLYN’S RAVEN at Soul Mate Publishing and Amazon.
The Goodreads page is http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13448335-merlyn-s-raven. You can find the author on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/RoseVandenEyndenOfficial.
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DESTINATION UNKNOWN by Trent Zelazny
4.6/5.0 stars
I’ve read most of Trent Zelazny’s work, and along with TO SLEEP GENTLY, this is one of my new favorites.
Again, in DESTINATION UNKNOWN, Zelazny really puts the screws to his characters, and I relish that in a suspense tale. Just when you think you know where the story’s going,—blammo!—you’re off in a different direction and, by the end, careening downhill with no brakes. (I should warn you that I had to stop reading this one late at night because it was jacking my adrenaline and I couldn’t get to sleep.)
The characters are deep as they are wounded. Brian and Kate tragically lost a son and think they’ve received a boon when they come across some money. A lot of money. But the owner wants it back, and will do anything to get it.
DESTINATION UNKNOWN will keep you guessing to the end, and wincing at every development along the way. Classic TZ with an 80s music soundtrack. Loved every freaking page. Please write another.
Available in paperback and for e-readers. On Goodreads at: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13276701-destination-unknown.
You can find out more about Trent Zelazny at: http://trentzelazny.com/
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4.6/5.0 stars
“You are thirty-four years old and already two-thirds destroyed.” This is not just the measuring rod of today’s alcohol consumption, but the yardstick of your life.
Ron Butlin’s The Sound of My Voice (Canongate, 1987) is another text in my self-study plan for second person point of view. In this short novel, the “you” is protagonist Morris Magellan, an alcoholic whose life is unraveling, perhaps irreparably.
Following the death of his cold and distant father, Magellan dogpaddles through life as disappointing husband, father of two “accusations,” and junior executive at a biscuit company.
Drinks connect the moments of each day, accompanied by a background of classical music played too loudly. While numbly trying to hold it together, Magellan manages to alienate his co-dependent wife, frighten the children, offend his secretary, and jeopardize his position. Without the drink, he’s drowning in mud or hallucinating about snow.
Butlin’s choice of second person POV is perfect for the task, making you (the reader, that is) feel nervous, guilty, and detached all at once, as if you’re watching through a hidden camera lodged in the bridge of Magellan’s smeary eyeglasses the embarrassing minute-by-minute footage of someone too drunk to realize he’s failing at every turn.
Although The Sound of My Voice is not as excruciating as Grimsley’s Winter Birds, Butlin’s short book is self-conscious and uncomfortable, tense and poignant, with anguish made more powerful by his keen skill of understatement. Butlin delivers meaning and emotion in his spare prose like a lorry filled completely with the perfect number of biscuit boxes; no more will fit, and nothing jostles. This book is nigh perfect in its execution, and makes a lot more sense than Daniel Gunn’s over-literary Almost You (1994).
I recommend Butlin’s The Sound of My Voice. It’s a fine study in narrative and an example of a well-executed novel.
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4.8/5.0 stars
You are Danny, one of five children born to poor Southern parents in the late 1950s. You move from one ramshackle house to another, most in ill repair and without adequate heat. When your Papa loses his arm in a farming accident, hard times grow harder.
Your saintly Mama puts up with a lot of abuse from Papa, whose moods swing deeper and darker and dangerously more violent with every imagined offense. You young’uns do your best to steer clear of trouble.
How do you feel reading the previous two paragraphs?
Jim Grimsley’s Winter Birds (Simon & Schuster, 1984) is part of my self-study plan for second person point of view. The initial effect of second person is an unsettled feeling, then a distancing: “That’s not me—I’m not ‘you.’”
But the more you read of it, the more it draws you in, creating identification with the narrator/protagonist. Ultimately, it forces you to participate in the story events against your will—probably one reason why Grimsley chose this POV.
Being held in an uncomfortable POV underscores the plight of an impoverished mother and five children trapped in a house with nowhere to escape abuse. All you have are your thoughts and each other, waiting for Papa to come home.
Grimsley ratchets up the tension with the dangers that Danny’s hemophilia pose: a misstep on a glass shard or Papa’s drunken backhand could mean a week in the hospital until the bleeding stops. Like Danny, as a reader, you continue to bleed until the final page.
Winter Birds is one of the most beautiful and excruciating stories I’ve ever read. At times it’s so intense that I had to put it down, and I’m no literary sissy.
Turning away is the prerogative of the reader; never the writer. Grimsley doesn’t flinch. American publishers rejected this semi-autobiographical work for a decade because it was “too dark.” When the book was finally published in English, it won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as being cited for a PEN/Hemingway Award. Well deserved.
The narration, the dialog, the POV, the description all blend into a cohesive package that delivers a poignant, dark dream of childhood. Occasionally, second person comes off as incredulous when the narrator describes things he couldn’t be privy to. But the floating, fantastical elements interspersed through a child’s imagination allow you to accept the tale as told.
If you’re studying narrative or second person POV, you must read Winter Birds. If you read it for any reason at all, I daresay you’ll be moved.
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I’m seeking beta readers for my current work in progress—DEATH PERCEPTION—a supernatural crime story infected with horror yet preserved by a sprinkling of black humor:
Nineteen-year-old Kennet Singleton lives with his invalid mother in a personal care home, but he wants out. He operates the crematory at the local funeral home, where he discovers he has a gift for discerning the cause of death of those he cremates—by toasting marshmallows over their ashes.
He thinks his ability is no big deal since his customers are already dead. However, when what he discerns differs from what’s on the death certificate, he finds himself in the midst of murderers. To save the residents and avenge the dead, he must bring the killers to justice.
Take a peek at chapter 1 of DEATH PERCEPTION in PDF. If you’re interested in reading and providing comments on the entire manuscript (70K words), send me an email. Feel free to share this page! Thanks.
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Darkeva over at Hell Notes reviewed my horror story, STRAY. Check it out!
Review of STRAY
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Fractal Despondency by Trent Zelazny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Gimping through his grief over a lost love, lost in a way that can only damage, Blake Gladstone has much to recover from: choices she made, choices he made. As he struggles to go on with life in Santa Fe, he meets Denise, who introduces him to 24/7 spiced rum. And danger.
Has Denise come to rescue him, or finish him off? Blake must deal with more choices: choices she made, choices he made. She disappears and reappears, and when she does, Zelazny portrays it with an electrifying sense of doom. The characters are disturbing, their pain is palpable, the suspense is taut. Recommended.
View all my reviews
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Disintegration by Scott Nicholson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
DISINTEGRATION could have been titled DISSOLUTION. The downward spiral of character may not be the most popular form, but it’s a valid one, and Nicholson handles it artfully. He pours on the misery thick and heavy — and never lets up. Blow by blow, he nails the pain of the past to the heartache of the present. Skillfully revealing events from yesterday and the motivations of the moment, he builds a juggernaut of suspense and doom that will keep you guessing until the very last line.
Who’s worst: Jacob, Joshua, or Renee? You decide. All the characters are deep, twisted, enigmatic. The Appalachian setting and the residential contractor trade ground the story in reality, and the description throughout is not just gritty and biting but at times excruciating. Nicholson is a master storyteller, and I can’t recommend his work enough.
Those who want happy characters should switch to mid-grade fiction. DISINTEGRATION is literary intensity.
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When you’re a self-published writer, if you want your book promoted, it’s up to you. The same as it was for the writing, the revision, the editing, formatting, and publication. All yours. Every bit of it. But when it comes to reviews, you can’t go it alone.
Although I’ve read a lot of books in my life, I’ve reviewed very few. This is changing. Why? Because now as a self-published author, I need reviews. And I believe in the Golden Rule of Indie Publishing: Scratch the Backs of Others as You Would Like Yours to Be Scratched.
In the world of e-pubbing, I can’t count on the publishing house’s marketing department to push my book. (Not that it would anyway, had I gone the traditional route.) Nor can I depend on my personal fame to attract strangers to praise me. (I traipsed around in a platinum wig and meat suit like a monster, and all I did was draw flies.) I need the handful of people in my literary circle to pull for me, reading and posting reviews wherever my work appears.
According to the Golden Rule of Indie Publishing, if I want my stuff reviewed, I need to write reviews for others—at least for those who write in the genres I read most. I must comment on their Facebook posts, like their author pages, recommend them to others, visit their blogs, RT their Tweets.
Those who just jumped on the bandwagon should realize that indie publishing is a collaborative effort based on personal relationships and mutual favors. We are the literary Amish, raising each other’s barns.
Even if you don’t yet have a well-established blog or writer’s website, a Twitter account, or a Facebook fan page, one thing you can do is to start building goodwill for yourself among your writing peers. Someday when you get all of the pieces of the business figured out—or enough of them to put your work out there for public consumption—you’re going to need reviews.
You’ll find your hours must be divided between putting stuff out and requesting help from others. When it comes time for reviews and promotion by others, you’ll want to have a full account to draw from. Your back will one day need a good scratching. The best scratchers are those whose backs you’ve already scratched.
Begin now to put people in your debt for those favors you’ll need tomorrow. Instead of your launch stalling, you may find it will take off and soar.
“Don’t look out only for your own interests,
but take an interest in others, too.”
–Php. 2:4 NLT
My pubs, THE SIXTH SEED, STRAY, and SEVERED RELATIONS, are available for review. If you like horror and paranormal fiction, hit me up on my Contact page to request a free coupon of whatever you’re willing to write a review for.
And if you enjoyed this post, please click Like, promote it among your peers, subscribe to my blog—scratch my back. Thanks, karma buddies!
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