Aeternum Amor

Lover’s Requiem is finally published at Smaswords for those that are interested in having their own copy.  It has been renamed as “Aeternum Amor”.  Once again, I seem to have a thing for Latin.  It’s free to download and you can read it either on your computer or pretty much any e-reading device.  I’m not completely happy with the cover, but it was what I was able to create with my limited graphical design skills.

Maybe one of these days I will buckle down and learn how to work with Adobe programs besides my Photoshop Elements.  Still, not bad for someone who can really only manipulate photos somewhat.

You can download the ebook here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/149329 and if all goes well, it’ll be avalible on iTunes and Barnes and Noble soon enough.  You can also click up on the Published Works tab at the top if you want to get a hold of it.

It is longer than Vatican Vamps by a lot, so hopefully the people who have complained about my short stories being too short will be happy with this length.

In non-related news, I’m heading back to my family’s home in about, oh…a half an hour. And there will be the Sister. Which means the promised Q&A with her regarding Hunger Games will be happening while we eat our Cadbury Eggs.

Have a happy Easter.  And watch out for Zombies.

Kindles

Remember that contest I posted about a while back?  The one where you can win a kindle or a nook?

Winners were announced the other day, and one of the people I referred won, which meant I got one too!  Having said that I would never get an e-reader for myself because I love the feel of book so much, and the look of a bookshelf full of them, I’ll be getting my 3G Kindle Touch tomorrow.  What this basically means is that it will be easier for me to carry books around at work and my travels (I love traveling). And that I will have more access to those books designated as “classics”. Those ones are generally free on Amazon.

What this means for you is that I’ll likely be doing more book reviews of all sorts of books (and updating my shelves at leftthemap.com   See what I did there?  Shameless plug). And I’ll probably do a review on my Kindle itself once I’ve gotten it and have played with it a bit.

******

In related Kindle news, Battery Pack is at number 95 out of 500 for most downloaded ABNA excerpt.  Either that means I have a lot of friends or people like it that much.  Either way, exciting.

I’m also working on getting Lover’s Requiem self published again.  All I need right now is a summary, which I’m pretty bad at writing.  So this could take awhile.  But I’ll post here when it’s available for downloading.

In one last shameless plug, leftthemap has forums now.  Go talk about your favorite book, get in an argument with someone about why your favorite book is better…you know, the general internet stuff.  Seriously, go check it out.

Yay music!

I am a giant music junkie.

And yesterday, thanks to a link a friend posted on the Facebook, I have discovered the group that I want to write all music for my stories. Never mind if they never all get published, they are making the soundtrack that plays in my head.

Book Review: One For The Money by Janet Evanovich

After hearing about this book from my friend E., I found it at a library book sale a few weeks ago and picked it up for a dollar.  I’m not generally a mystery person, I’ll admit.  As you might tell from some of the other books I have reviewed, I’m far more into the Fantasy and the Sci-Fi ends of things. And Vampires.  Never forget the Vampires.

I was a bit afraid that it would be dry and that I would put it down half way because the plot was getting too hard to follow, or a plot device came out of left field that tied everything up in a bow and everyone could move on from there quite neatly. Sadly, that has been my experience with most mysteries. But my Grandma enjoys Evanovich, and E. likes a lot of the same types of books that I do.

First, this is a terrible book to read before bed, because you will. not. put. it. down. It hooked me at the beginning and didn’t let go until the end. Finished it in about a day and a half when all was said and done, reading it on breaks at work, before bed, and while food was cooking. The characters are all clear and multi-dimensional, and could easily be someone you see walking down the street. The myriad of plot lines twist and turn together in such a way that though they might get confusing, they never get hopelessly entangled and it never seems as though Evanovich has written herself too far into a corner. The twists and turns in the plot make sense when you get to them and I felt dense a few times when I didn’t see where it was going until after it already got there.

The main character, Stephanie Plum, meets with wonderfully crazy people all over, from completely insane and scary to her almost weekly lunches with her Italian family in Trenton. I’m a person who loves a good dash of reality in all my stories too, and it’s clear to me that research was done for this tale. The details in Stephanie’s cars and forms of transportation was always a wonderful way to break tension in the story too, letting the reader catch their breath when things began to get intense.

My one issue with this first book in the Plum series is that it ended far too quickly. It was very much a fade to black at the climax of the story and it was just explained to the reader in the last chapter what happened. Telling instead of showing. Personally, I felt rather cheated at the ending and would have liked to have “witnessed” what happened instead or having it be revealed later. But to each his or her own, so I can deal with it.

It’s a quick read, so I got my $1 out of it that I originally spent, but I don’t know if I would pay full price for it. Thankfully, there are libraries and Half Price Books, so I’m set for when I look for the next one in the series: Two for the Dough.

As a side note: I’ll be visiting my family and sister this weekend, so I’ll be interviewing the Sister regarding her thoughts on the Hunger Games while I’m there. Something to look forward to.

cover photo of book from here: http://0.tqn.com/d/bestsellers/1/0/g/9/-/-/one_money.jpg

My Thoughts on the Hunger Games

I’m going to preface this by saying that I have not read the Hunger Games series, nor have I seen the movies. Everything I am going to say is what I have gathered from talk by friends and family on them, as well as Wiki, so I could see what the main plot was about.

And after reading it all, hearing what people have to say, I can honestly say I don’t plan on reading them any time soon. I think it’s great that there are books out there that get people wanting to read, I really do. They become a part of our generation, of our world and culture. Some of them are good (The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings), some of them aren’t built in worlds that could work, but connect with people at such a level that everyone knows it, even if they have never read them (Harry Potter). Others have redefined a created a new twist on an old myth (Vampires in Twilight). They all have their issues, but they all have a place.

I look at the Hunger Games the same way. It is something that, at the moment, has become a pervasive part of the world and conversation. It remains to be seen how long it will stick about, but judging from what I hear and see, I think it’s here to stay for at least as long as Twilight and Potter, if not perhaps as long as Tolkien. But at the same time, people are reading about kids killing kids when we get down to it. And not just that, but it’s kids killing kids for entertainment for the wealthy of the world in this series.

There are enough kids killing kids in real life, do we really need to sensationalize it?

My sister is 12, and she has just finished reading the series. She would tell me about what had just happened, such as reading about a child in the games around her age being mauled to death by monkeys or some such. Or wasps killing another. Or two children making a suicide pact at the end just so that there would be no winner. She is twelve. Yes, she sees worse on the news about shootings and killings, wars and earthquakes. But I always saw books as a way to escape that. And true, there are fights in Potter and Tolkien, there is death and destruction, even of kids. But the majority of them were written for the older age group. And weren’t kids killing kids.

There was an article I read a few days ago about a mom who went with her kids to a midnight showing of the film and came out in shock. Her words are perfectly to the point: “I didn’t expect to come here and see a movie about the young Israeli soldiers sent to occupy the West Bank”. Over dramatic? yes. But she raises a good point. (read the rest of  it here if you want, I highly suggest it).

I remember when September 11th happened.  We were watching in classrooms, and saw all the footage. And by the end of the day, I had grown almost numb to what I was seeing.   The fact that maybe my sister could get numb to kids her age dying…  that frightens me.  A lot.

And hey, maybe I’m over reacting.  I mean, I do play the Deus Ex games and enjoy running around with a laser sword and a flame thrower… so I contacted some friends who HAVE read it and asked their opinions.  I’m posting the questions I asked and the answers I received.

Question and Answer with a Mother (not mine)

1- As a mother, did it disturb you at all to read about kids killing kids?  If not, why?  Was it because you knew it was only a book?

it disturbed me, i think, mainly on the level of a human being. I don’t think I brought so much of “being a mom” to my reading of it.   these books totally got to me. I’m not joking when I say they broke my little heart all the way through. I sobbed like a baby through much of the end of the third book. but it wasn’t .. I don’t know, it didn’t always feel like kids.  I had to remind myself at a couple spots that Katniss was only 16 and 17 when this is taking place.

2- What do you think draws people to them (the books)?

it’s a compelling story, certainly. you really start to empathize with the characters. I couldn’t put it down… I worried about them and wondered what was going to happen until i got back to the book.  it’s this world that’s so detailed and familiar in some ways …and yet such a mystery.  so i think the storytelling has a lot to do with it.  that she unfolds this society as the story progresses.  it’s not everything over the head all at once, the layers keep coming.  and the characters are great.  katniss is sort of oblivious and flawed but sincere.  and the love triangle doesn’t hurt.

3-    finally, is there are age that you think would be best for people to read these books?  example: my sister was 11 or 12 when she started reading them.  The big sister in me goes “TOO YOUNG FOR THIS!”  Having not read them though, I’m not sure if I’m over-reacting

hmm, no, I think 11 or 12 is probably a good age.

Why is that?
The violence is probably up there. It’s shocking, and that’s what gets people talking st first. But the more you dig into the story, you realize it’s about friendship and loyalty, love and loss. It’s about the futility of war, the disparity of socio-economic classes, the inherent cruelty of humanity. It touches on a lot of issues that we face in the real world, only they’re magnified by a thousand. People just relate to a character our a situation easily. I remember I read Catching Fire in about two nights. You just get sucked in to the story.

they’re not graphic .. well, there’s a lot of fighting and killing.

but it’s told from a very innocent perspective, though not at the same time.

katniss has her eyes open; she’s just not always right about what it is she’s seeing.

i’d let my kids read it in the next couple of  years.

it was pretty emotionally taxing for me, but I am just a giant ball of emotions.

stuck together with tears.

 

The same questions to four friends around my age (update: all friends have reported in. But I’m currently working to get a hold of my sister for her opinion on the books. Rather than take words from her mouth, I figured she should have her own say. That’ll be a blog post in and of itself though, once I get a hold of her.):

 

Caleb Hall:

1. I was not disturbed, mostly because, as you say. it’s only a book. Also, it’s a well-written book, and I was too drawn in by the story to be disturbed. Mostly it was just the knowledge that what I was reading was purely fantasy. Knowing that, it didn’t bother me at all.

2. Oooh, good question. Depends on which people. For teenagers, young adults, people my age (I’m 19) I think the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale is a major draw. Shippers pour their hearts out on the internet over how much they love one couple and want them to be together forever.Also, though, the characters are very interesting, and I’m sure everyone can find one to whom they relate, even if the situation in which the characters find themselves is nothing like the readers’ lives. I know there were times while reading the books that I felt a certain kinship with Peeta and Gale. If I can see myself in a book, that makes me love it.

Third, the action. What can I say, the books are action-packed and fun to read. I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat through all 3, but especially in Hunger Games and Catching Fire I was very interested in seeing what happened next, how things would turn out. Action keeps people interested, keeps them reading.

3. Huh, never thought about this. The books are violent, sure, but they’ve also got a lot to teach about society. But would an eleven-year-old see that? I’m not sure. I’d say middle school age, maybe, around 13. The problem is, I love the books, and so I want everyone to read them […] It’s a difficult thing to judge.

 

Jonny Appleseed:

1- It didn’t disturb me, personally. I’m really just desensitized to that sort of thing at this point. Maybe the knowledge that it was just a book factored in. But I think that Collins understood that the impact of the story would be much greater if the Capitol was forcing the districts to send children to die, and that the results would be infinitely more shocking if the kids were doing these things to one another. It’s an idea that’s been touched on before (Lord of the Flies and Battle Royale spring to mind.) But the presence of children in these situations rather than adults makes it tougher on the reader, because you fully expect adults to do these things. The death of a character like Rue doesn’t hurt as much of she’s not a tiny 11 year old girl. The cruelty of the Career Tributes isn’t as frightening or tragic if they’re not teenagers who were raised to enter the Games and slaughter each other.

2- The violence is probably up there. It’s shocking, and that’s what gets people talking st first. But the more you dig into the story, you realize it’s about friendship and loyalty, love and loss. It’s about the futility of war, the disparity of socio-economic classes, the inherent cruelty of humanity. It touches on a lot of issues that we face in the real world, only they’re magnified by a thousand. People just relate to a character our a situation easily. I remember I read Catching Fire in about two nights. You just get sucked in to the story.

3- I don’t think age is really an accurate indicator of maturity. I probably would have been pretty okay to read this at eleven, but I was probably more mature than some fifteen or sixteen year olds. It’s honestly no worse than your average hard PG-13 or soft R movie. The fact that it’s kids doing the worst of it makes it seem a lot worse than it is.

 
Hunter “Wildback”
1- I wasn’t particularly disturbed by the concept. I think It may have somthing to do with knowing they were only books. Plus, I was aware of the setting and the importance of understanding how the actions of the characters fit into the world.

2-I rather enjoyed them. I found the story compelling and the characters interesting. I believe that the strength of the story comes from the important meanings we take away from it and the lessions we learn. In esscence, it’s a cautionary tale about overcoming the odds and the dangers of consumerism.

3- Well I think that you should be at least 13 before reading these books, while not overly graphic in its discription death is a constant companion to the characters. Someone reading the tale should be mature enough to handle that.

Joe Knight
1- It didn’t disturb me because it was just that well written and that well set up. The disturbing part was the fact that the children were put into that situation, not really the fact that they killed each other.
2- The story is compelling, a post apocalyptic world that’s rebuilt on the back of oppressed districts who must offer up tributes to compete in gladiatorial games once a year.

3- The first book, I’d say is okay for early teens. Yes, it’s got questionable subject matter in it, but not terribly so, and it’s not graphic about any of it. The second book gets darker than the first, and the third is much darker and more violent, but even still, not graphically so. The subject matter ages with the reader, so I’d probably put an 11-12 age limit to begin the series, but it’s not anything worse than they’d see on TV these days anyway.

Me again

Basically, at this point in time, I have no desired to read these books.  Maybe when the hype dies down and I can read them without having something explode when someone sees me reading them, I might give it a shot.  But right now, I think I’m better off not knowing.

 

As always, feel free to debate and comment.  I only ask that you keep it civil.  If there isn’t civil, I will  ready the Stick of Whacking to lovingly bring civil back.

Battery Pack Excerpt and Reviews

So, this is going to be a very long post this morning.  It will contain the excerpt of Battery Pack and then the reviews on it by “Expert Reviewers” at Amazon.  I’ll finish it off with a copy to my page on Amazon where you can download and write your own reviews on it.  I would appreciate any reviews you want to leave here or there (especially there, as it looks like there might be judging based on customer feedback one round), but don’t feel like you have to.  And what you see here is exactly what Amazon got for this part of the contest too.

Battery Pack Excerpt:

I had never been so glad to be a part of SSMS as I was when I got off the plane at Frankfurt International Airport. We were ushered quickly from gate to private room as we waited for a taxi to arrive.  I was thankful that Jim and I didn’t need to use the train.  I had caught sight of it on our way over and had seen the crush of people with luggage that were cramming themselves into each car. Even with my arms, hands, and most of my face covered, there was still a chance that I could come into contact with one of them without meaning for it to happen.

And people and I do not mix well when that happens.

That was why Jim was along as my Battery.  So I didn’t need to go near others in case Bad Things started to happen.  It was the first time we had spent more than a five minute car ride together though, and even on the short plane ride from Scotland to Frankfurt, Germany, he was already beginning to get on my nerves with constant questions, comments, and things that he noticed.  With his arms covered in tattoos, I had hoped that he would draw attention off of me as we traveled.  But no one was allowed to NOT pay any mind to a woman who was almost completely covered from head to toe.

Still, once off the plane and into our room, I was able to unwind the scarf from around the lower half of my face and finally relax the muscles that had been held taut through the two hour flight while I was arm to arm with Jim and the window.

He had been good to switch seats with me once he saw that I was otherwise going to be sitting between two people.

The air was cooler to breathe once the scarf was off and I debated taking off my leather gloves as well while we waited, but ultimately decided against it.  If our taxi came soon, I didn’t want to have much to put back on.  I could wait until we got to our more permanent rooms in Heidelberg before I put on my non-traveling clothes.

“You alright Elle?” Jim asked my, voice rough from use prior to his induction into the SSMS as a Battery.  I didn’t know what he had done before joining with us, but it had to be something that involved yelling or screaming.  Maybe he had been a boss of some sort before the Readers had found him and tested him and brought him into the organization as a replacement…no, not a replacement.  There would never be a replacement for Aaron.

I nodded, a sigh making its way out.  “I will be.  Just…hate flying. Too many people in too close an area. It’s impossible to avoid touching them.”

He made to put a hand on my arm, but then quickly remembered who he was with.  He settled what, for him, was a look of compassion instead, something that looked strange on a 6’5” tattooed man who was build like an all-pro linebacker. “You don’t need to…” He waved a hand about for a moment, letting that finish his question for him.  Poor guy wasn’t comfortable saying what he was here for yet.  It wasn’t like I would have minded him coming into contact with me.  It was going to need to happen eventually, no matter how hard he and I both tried to put it off. Not for the first time, I wondered why I had been paired with an inexperienced and untested Battery.

It was another in a long list of differences from my last Battery, Aaron.  He had been a good kid, and I still felt incredibly guilty whenever I thought about what had happened to him. Readers told me that there was nothing I could have done, that it was what they were there for. But every time I replayed it in my mind, I saw something different.  A sign that I had missed that could have saved him. It was my fault that he was…

If I hadn’t been so careless with what I was doing, with what I had done to him after a Working that I had been forced to do in order to…No.  I had done what had needed to be done to finish the job SSMS has given us. I couldn’t let myself forget that.
I shivered slightly at the memory even though the room was warm and forced it out of my mind.  I had told the Readers at SSMS that I was over it and, for the most part, I was.  But there were some nights when I just couldn’t escape from those memories and found them replaying in my mind until I was sure that if I had done just one thing differently, it all would have worked out. Doubt was powerful.

“Fraulein Malone?” The hesitant voice that came from a short man at the door broke me out of my thoughts and out of the memory path that I was already beginning to walk down.  “Yours…and Herr Mottershead’s taxi is here,” he continued.  His English was hesitant and heavily accented.  I wasn’t sure if it was because he wasn’t used to seeing a woman dressed in long pants, sleeves, gloves and a scarf and hat in the mid April spring season or if he was just that uncomfortable speaking the language that wasn’t his mother tongue.

I wound the scarf back around my face and grabbed the duffel bag and backpack that I had dropped by my chair when I had sat down. Throwing them over my shoulder as I stood, I noticed Jim doing the same with his and we followed the airport worker out of the private lounge and to the taxi stand.

My life in New York had trained me to taxi rides and had conditioned me to expect small, yellow four doors with little trunk space and a driver insane enough to tempt Manhattan traffic in the height of rush hour in order to get you to where you wanted to go with five minutes to spare.  And often times breaking laws of physics and probably magic in order to do so.  I had expected a car like this for the ride to Heidelberg from Frankfurt International Airport and was not looking forward to spending an hour in cramped confines once again. The few hours in the plane had been more than enough for me.

I was wonderfully surprised when I saw what looked like an elongated blue van waiting there for me, and a man who wanted to take our luggage from us in order to throw it into the back before strapping it down.  It had made my day even more when he told me that we would be the only ones riding in it, which wasn’t normally how it worked, but that our business had paid for an express route that would get us there with no stops to drop off other passengers.

Like I said, there were times that I was glad I was with SSMS.  Even though the hours sucked and I rarely managed to spend more than a week a year at my apartment in lower Manhattan, the travel was always worth it.  I didn’t often get a chance to see a lot of whatever country or state I was sent to, but when I did manage to play tourist, I enjoyed it, for the most part.

Some days I thought that it might have even made the nightmares worth it too.

***
The Autobahn wasn’t as bad as the stories had led me to believe it was.  People were generally responsible drivers and only ever went 20 over the limit through the construction instead of the 40 or so they would have been doing back in the States.  There were only two lanes of traffic going in each direction, a right lane for driving in and a left lane for passing.  A lot of people did driving in the left lane too, but that was because they were heading past us.  Only at twice the speed of sound or so though, so it wasn’t a big worry.

Castles dotted the countryside and I remembered the old joke I had been told once when I was younger, before I knew that I needed to have a Battery.  “Everyone in Europe can have their own castle,” was what my great aunt Margo had told me before I had taken a school trip there.  While she was exaggerating, the number of castles, towers, and buildings from the Middle Ages that we passed by on the way to Heidelberg were enough that I could have believed that there might have been a grain of truth to that tale had the population not been as large.

Jim was snoring slightly next to me, the early morning flight finally getting to him.  He had passed out about 5 miles from the airport and the driver and I had been treated with a symphony of his grunts, wheezes and mumbled words as he dreamed on beside me.  Some of what he said made me wonder before I realized he was probably just repeating what he had recently finished learning from training sessions with SSMS. I had talked for months in my sleep about ghosts, Underworld and magic after training.  He had been partnered with me only a day and a half before we were sent off to Heidelberg, which didn’t give me a lot of time to get to know him.  The Readers had offered to let me read the file they had created on him during the interview process, but I didn’t want to go into his private life that much. It didn’t seem right to me to be able to read another’s thoughts on paper, even if they had agreed to it in the first place.

The radio was on quietly on the background and I strained to hear it before I remembered that there wasn’t much of a chance that I would be able to understand much of anything that would be on it.  While I had taken a few years of German back in high school days, not much of it had stuck with me in the intervening ten years since graduation and I could now only remember the bare minimums of grammar and vocab.

It was probably enough to get me beers, bathrooms, and the occasional brat.

At least I wouldn’t go thirsty or die of starvation.

The thought to follow Jim into sleep crossed my mind, but I knew that any sleep I was able to get in a van would be spotty at best and wouldn’t be worth the effort.  I grabbed at the file folder in my backpack and began to read it over once more. Most of the information on the case that we were being sent on I had long ago memorized.  There were, of course, ghosts in Heidelberg, as there were in any old city.  The problem came when they were starting to get bolder than the average ghost and begin to terrorize the people living in “their” building. Not a lot was known about the situation there, only that it had started with no warning and for no reason that anyone could tell.  There were reports of possessions, evil spirits, pranks and poltergeists, none of which were good things for those of us who were supposed to keep the paranormal world a secret from the rest of society.

There were several different accounts of this happening in various places throughout the city.  The University Library was one, the Student Cafeteria in what had been barracks when the castle has been in use was another.  What the locals called Die Hexenturm, or the Witch’s Tower, was a place that was apparently full of them and when I read the history of the place again, it wasn’t hard to see why.  It had been build in 1392 and housed women and ‘witches’ before, during and occasionally after their trial to see if they truly were the magic users and devil worshippers they were accused of being.  It passed to the ownership of the University of Heidelberg and now almost no one is allowed inside of it.  The official reasoning is that they want to preserve the building as it is and keep it as a memorial to World War One victims and fallen soldiers.  It was the only structure from the original building of the city to survive the attacks by World War One and Two soldiers, Napoleon and his Army, various other wars, floods, fires, storms and other such things.  Historians loved the place.

But with the amount of people who were held in it, who saw their last sunrise and sunset through the high windows at the top of the tower, there was little wonder that it was full of vengeful ghosts.  I was pretty certain that was the unofficial reason for not letting anyone inside after a few nasty things happened to the people who went inside.  There weren’t details on those, but I could guess the standard injuries that came from haunted places.

By far the biggest hot spot was the Nazi Amphitheater built on top of the Heiligenberg to the north of the city.  Near it were also Celtic ruins from the fifth century BC, the ruins of a Monastery from the 800s AD, and Roman ruins from the early 40s AD.  It had been a religious magnet, apparently, since the Celtic times, if stories were to be believed, and people still went up to the Amphitheater on May Eve, Walpurgis Night,  to go to a giant bonfire, drumming, fire dancers and drinking. It was little wonder that there was a great deal of energy about the place.

We wouldn’t know for sure what was causing it until we managed to get there though.  If it was ghosts, we should be able to get through to them and find out what was causing them all to stir up.

If it wasn’t…well, then we would get a hold of SSMS and find out what we were supposed to do with that.  But I was really holding out for ghosts.  It had been a while since I had had to deal with a simple haunting and I was looking forward to something that I could do in my sleep and not need to drain a Battery afterwards to recover.

I did not want another Portland on my hands.

I wasn’t sure that I would be able to take it if something like that happened again.
***
We were dropped off a few blocks walk from where our apartment was due to construction on the road that was normally used to get to that complex. We walked slowly through the late morning streets of Heidelberg.  Hauptstrasse, the main street through town, was cobblestone, uneven, rough on shoes and made walking without bumping into people difficult.  I let Jim lead the way, using his height and appearance as a way to push through the crowd and following in the wake he left behind.

We passed by a number of small shops and cafes on our way down the street from University Square, including an antique book seller that gave me chills as we walked past the open doors.  It was another place that I was adding to my list of things we would need to look at while we were here.  The five blocks to the apartment that SSMS had rented for us ended up taking a good 15 minutes to walk due to trying to avoid the large groups of tourists that seemed to appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as fast.  For reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, a large amount of them were Japanese tourists, speaking rapidly in their language as they snapped pictures of buildings and even other tourists and locals.  There was one tour group that was half blind, and I couldn’t help but give a small laugh as I tried to wrap my head around just why they were showing the architecture of one of the few medieval cities to completely survive the Second World War to a group of blind people.

I bet they had really good imaginations.

There was a pizzeria as we turned a left and the smells coming out of it were heavenly to both Jim and I. “Mind if we stop by here after we get settled in,” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t see why not.  It looks like there might be a few smaller tables in there that we could find a seat at.”

He gave another look at the pizzeria before huffing out a long sigh and kept walking.  The streets were far emptier on this side alley between roads and we were able to walk next to one another.  “Is it…hard to not be around people so much?” he asked me, breaking the silence that had been around us.

“You get used to it after a while, I guess.  A good Battery makes it less lonely too.  Someone to talk to as well as support you during Workings means that there’s a lot of trust between the Mage and their Battery.  And well, they’re always there too,” I told him, refusing to think about Aaron.

Jim raised an eyebrow at my comments.  “You’re saying we’re dogs then?”  I looked up sharply, craning my neck a bit in order to meet his green eyes. I was worried that I had upset him with my words, but the smile showed, I hoped, that he knew he was joking.  “Relax, Elle.  You need to lighten up some.  You’re far too serious all the time.  You’re twenty eight, for christsake.  And travel around the world.  I bet you’ve never done anything touristy ever.”

“Jim,” I warned him.  “Drop it. Now.”  Just when I had been starting to warm up to the man, he had to go and put his foot in his mouth with what I should or shouldn’t do. I pushed ahead of him, feeling a jolt even through my layers of clothes as my arm brushed past his.  For a moment, I got lost in the feeling of pleasure that it induced.  Swirls of emotions filled me and breathing became easier as I felt as though I was floating above the ground for my next few steps.

As soon as the little contact between us ended, the high that I felt was rapidly disappearing and my mind fell back to me, crashing to the cobblestones beneath my feet.  A quick look behind me showed that Jim had the same look of rapture on his face, though it too was fading fast.  I focused on my breathing and forced myself to calm down and to bring myself back into the here and now so I didn’t feel light-headed for the rest of the day. So that I could concentrate and not feel as though the energy addiction all Mages had was going to control me.

Shifting the duffel bag on my shoulder and the backpack on my other, I began to walk again, quickly moving towards where our apartment was.

***
The apartment was up one flight of stairs, but because of the fact that the ground floor is labeled as “ground floor” in Germany, we were still technically on the first floor here. Our names, Eleanor Malone and William Jameson Mottershead, were on a slip of paper taped to the door along with the key to the mail box below.  I tore it down as we walked inside, crumpling the paper into a small ball.  Neither of us really liked our full names.

It was small, two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and a “living area” that was more of a hallway than anything that was worth living in.  The previous tenants had apparently left some of their belongings behind and there was a couch sitting in the kitchen taking the place of two chairs. Thankfully, there were two more besides the couch, so I least I could choose those if I felt like actually being upright while I ate. A small bathroom with a shower that I could barely fit in with a shower head that moved up and down on a rail (and didn’t seem to stay where you put it for long when I tried it out) rounded out the place that we would be staying in for the next few days or weeks that we were here.

I went for one of the bedrooms as soon as I had unlocked the door and closed it behind me, my mind still on the burst of energy that had hit me.  While getting high from it wasn’t at all uncommon for Mages, it was the first time I could ever remember that I had gotten that level of energy through two layers of clothes and the slightest touch.  Even with Aaron, I had to touch bare skin on skin in order to initiate a recharge after a Working. And I had never gotten high off of it before, or at least not at this level. I wasn’t sure why he was so much stronger.

I stripped off my travel clothes as I continued working through events in my head, trying to see if there was anything different in Jim that wasn’t there for Aaron.  The only thing there was, I realized, was the fact that I had never drained anyone when I was with my first Battery.  Perhaps now that I had, it made it easier and quicker to get the energy addiction back?

It was something to ask Petunia about next time I was at a SSMS building.

My windbreaker and sweatshirt I hung in the wardrobe that was in the corner while the laptop I had carried along was slid out of its case and placed on the center of the desk.  The room wasn’t overly large, but it certainly was roomy for the amount of furniture that it had in it.  The bookshelf was already full of Minor Working supplies like candles, salt and matches, and books. I was pretty sure that the previous owners wouldn’t have had all of it, so SSMS must have been in here at one point to stock it.  While I wasn’t one that often worked with Minor Workings, it was still nice to know it was all there if I was to need it.

It looked like they were planning on turning this place into one of the many safe houses they had all around the world. But there were a few final things to do to it before I felt that I was safe enough in it to sleep at night without Dreamwalking on purpose around the city.
Since draining another, there were more times than not now that I found myself wandering places in my dreams, especially when I felt I was running low. It was as though my body was telling me that if I wasn’t going to keep it charged, it would charge itself for me. In a strange place full of ghosts of unknown power, it didn’t seem the brightest plan.

I pulled four stones out of my pocket–red, green, yellow and blue–and put one on each side of the room.  North was green, east yellow, red went to the south and blue was set on a small shelf on the west side of the room.  I focused for a moment and felt for the siren’s song within me that marked where my stored energy was, where it was singing for me to use it from.  I had it in my hands within moments and whispered “the webbing is drawn” before tossing the energy out and towards the stones.

The wards immediately popped into place around the room and I felt psychic shields surround them a moment later.  The pressure from the city’s life and bustle around me faded quickly until I felt a calm wash over me that came only when I was out of the way of all the people.  Breathing came easier to me and I turned back to my bag to unpack the rest of my belongings I had brought with.

There was a mirror on the wall across from the wardrobe that I caught sight of myself in as I moved around and I stopped to make sure that I still looked alright after the flight, taxi ride, and walk to the building.  My blonde hair was a bit windblown perhaps, but the bob-style cut made the strands out of place look like I had spent hours achieving that look instead of a 15 minute walk.  At least the eyeliner hadn’t smudged around my green eyes when I had rubbed at them earlier on the plane.

knock knock

“Elle?  You ready to head back out?”

“Just…gimme a bit of time, Jim,” I all but snapped back.  I could feel my energy levels lower from the Minor Working of wards and shields and it was already making me cranky not being up to where I was used to being.  I knew that I would need to recharge from him eventually, but I had plans to hold out for as long as possible before I had to.  And even then, I would struggle to draw only a bare minimum from him.

I had made a promise to myself after Aaron that I would never come close to draining anyone again.  No one deserved a fate like that.  And even Batteries needed time to recharge.

“I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready then,” he told me through the door and I could hear bootsteps as he walked away from me.

I felt like a bitch, but I also knew I needed a bit more time to recover from being around what was essentially food for me before I went back out into it again.

Maybe I could try being nicer to Jim, I thought guiltily.  I was his first Mage after all, and he had never even known he could have been a Battery until SSMS had taken him from wherever the hell he had been prior to me.

I had known Aaron was a recent graduate with a degree in linguistics.

Did I really not care that much about my Battery that I was not willing to get to know him?

My thoughts drifted back to some of the other Mages I had seen at one of the main offices for SSMS in Edinburgh.  They walked around like they owned the place, Batteries three paces behind and heads down, spirits broken.  I had always sworn to myself that I would never become like one of them.

And since Portland…

Even the Readers there had mentioned that they were seeing signs of me closing off.  Damn. Was I really going down that road?

“Now is not the time for this, Elle,” I muttered darkly before slamming the door to the wardrobe shut and stalking out into the kitchen where Jim was waiting, his own copy of the file I had been reading in the van in hand.  “Okay.  I’m good.”

Huh.  Jim wore reading glasses.

I suppose I had seen stranger things than tattooed men wearing tiny Walgreens style glasses.

Reviews:

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

Interesting characters. Intriguing enough to make me want to continue reading.

What aspect needs the most work?

The idea of a battery has been done before, so that part was not all that original.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

Could be a fun story. Good characterization and interesting enough story.

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

Elle is a mage and Jim is her battery. Things are getting bad in Heidleberg and ghosts are getting active. Jim seems to be a backup source of power and while she has not used him she is aware that she might have to drain and kill him in a power fight.

What aspect needs the most work?

Where is some backstory on the ghosts and what is going on? Is everyone in the country magic or is being a mage a new and different thing. How long has the fight with the ghosts gone on.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

Very interesting, full of potential, really draws you into the story, Elle seems a very lonely young woman, alone and without friends. Looking forward to reading further in this story.

Finally, the link to me on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Pack-2012-Entry-ebook/dp/B007GEJ7CK/ref=br_lf_m_1000778871_1_10_ttl?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&pf_rd_p=1353712382&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_i=1000778871&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1BEXWMT38WVGDCAVGJ1F

Boggling

There can’t be a better name for this post right now.

I meant to post yesterday, regaling all of you with tales for my birthday weekend and a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. Or how I finished reading the Darkover novel after pushing myself to do so (it’s currently looking for a new home if anyone wants it?).

Or tell you about this new book that I finally got around to reading called One for the Money by Janet Evonovich.

But I was tired from my weekend, so I went to sleep instead.

I’m glad now I did, because I have SO much better news to share.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award put out the list of the Quarter-Finalists today. Both myself and my friend E.M. Verhalen made it through again. Neither she nor I are completely sure of how this happened, seeing as how both of us really threw stuff together at the last minute and decided to enter.   But made it we did.

This was judged on the excerpt of your novel that you provided at entry, the first 3,000 – 5,000 words. If there is any inclination, I’ll happily post that excerpt here for anyone who wants to read it.  I’ll also post the reviews I supposedly got during this section of the contest but have yet to see.

 

So…yeah.  Give me until tomorrow to get the brain back in order and I’ll do a proper review of One For the Money aside from “it’s good, go read it!”

Off to go be boggled now…

Drive By Posting

This is a really really quick drive by post while I have 5 minutes between errands and work.

If you’re like me, you read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books.  And they sit on your shelves.  And then you go to the book store and go “crap…what one of these did I have”.  Or you’ll have a family member ask you what books you have…and you’ll stare at the two bookshelves and the floor full and go “know what?  gift cards are easier”

This is why a friend of mine started Left The Map.  Basically, it’s a way to keep track of and rate the books you have read.  There are new ones constantly being added, and with new people joining every day, you can meet people who have your same interest in books, and find some books you might have never come across before.  It’s organized by “shelves”: have read, going to read, never going to read, on my list, and so on. With a lot of books to read, it’s a great way, at least for me, to keep track of what I said I was going to read. And when people ask me what books I want, I can point them towards my “shelves” and say I either have these or…

“See that category that says ‘want to read’?”

….yes

“Pick one and give it to me.  I’ll be happy”

There’s also a really nice contest going on right now.  Click on a button, get a change to wind a Kindle or a Nook, your choice. Only thing you have to do is make an account.  Technically, you never need to do anything with it ever again if you don’t want to.  We’ve done this before on Facebook with a less likely chance to succeed.  If you wanna enter…

http://www.leftthemap.com/login/?action=register&ref=zira

okay..shameless plug off.  Off to errands now.  later today, I try to discuss the video game that ate me for a bit.

Um…oops?

So…yeah.  I raelly seemed to suck at this writing twice a week thing the past month.  I could offer excuses, like how Battery Pack made it to Round Two of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest, or that it’s in actual book form on my shelf now (more like my floor for this picture, but it exists!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can also say that I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the last month.  For example, I plowed through American Gods by Neil Gaiman for the first time.  Reading the book form of Howl’s Moving Castle (so different from the movie!), and a few books from the local Little Free Libraries.  Add in a Darkover novel or two as I try to make myself like them–so far, it’s not happening–and my weird hour job… There’s been some planning of a new writing project with my friend E.M. Verhalen (also in the second round of ABNA) and going to acupuncture for stress and health and having it work (whoo!).  And some good old fashioned D&D with friends on the weekends, it’s little wonder that I’ve been busy.

But in reality?  I’m just lazy. And the longer it got between times that I wrote, the more guilty I felt, and the more I didn’t want to write because of guilt.  It was a vicious cycle that I kicked in the ass today, and bit the bullet in an attempt get back into this thing.

 

Update on Mists of Avalon: Finished Second Two, the High Queen.  Like Lady of Magic, it focused on the character the section title named, in this case, Gwen.  It’s mainly regarding her impact with Arthur now that Morgaine and Avalon is out of Camelot and off who knows where (we discover later she is with the elves on accident).  Here is where we first see Christianity having a big impact on the life of Arthur rather than the “pagan ways” of Avalon, and him casting aside the banner of the Pendragon to carry the Cross into battle that Gwen made for him.  She thinks that because Arthur isn’t Christian, that is why she can’t have kids.  At the end, she and Lance get together with Arthur’s knowledge and blessing…  Nothing good can come of this.  As soon as I finish one of the books I’m currently reading, I’ll dive back into this one.

The biggest thing I have noted about Mist of Avalon is how hard it can be to slough through at some points.  I mean, we’re dealing with some pretty heavy stuff.  Religious type of heavy, and the “killing” of old ways to make room for the “new” (at least in the eyes of Avalon). But some of the thoughts are beat upside the head so many times that the hose is beyond dead.  It is a paste along the side of the road that one one can identify.   Yes, the amount of research shows through, but at the same time, I got the point when you mentioned it for the 4th time three pages ago.

Gwen is, sadly, very one dimensional, at least in her section.  Which is a shame, as it is “hers”.  She is so very focused on the Christianity aspect of life, that she seems to become little more than a representation of what she is believing in rather than a person.  It is only towards the end when she and Arthur have their conversation about Lancelot and Gwen is given the go ahead to be with the Knight of her Dreams that she begins to develop a personality aside from a Fundie (if you’ll excuse the phrase).

 

So…yeah.  expect me to try to kick my ass into gear more on posting here.  Maybe on Wednesday I’ll do something with this new game that has consumed me.  I suck at it, but I enjoy the story. Which is the best part of any game, in my opinion.

Worldbuilders: A Patrick Rothfuss Fundraiser

Taking this moment to pimp out a charity that a new favorite author of mine is having a fundraiser for.  He calls it Worldbuilders, and all money from the raising of funds goes to a charity called Heifer International.  This charity donates bees, ducks, chickens, goats and cows to families living in poverty all around the world so that they can start making their own life better almost immediately.  Fresh milk every day?  No more malnourishment.  Eggs from your chickens?  Instant way to sell things so you can make money and buy food.

It’s a brilliant charity if I say so myself.

Here’s the kicker though…  Worldbuilders is run by an author.  And an author who other people have donated many many things to to go into the lottery.  Some awesome things in this lottery:

A Signed, numbered ARC of Stardust with it’s own pretty Slipcover and an even better story about the traveling book that might jut give Neil Gaimen a complex soon that no one wants his book.

A Golden Ticket, good for one favor from Patrick Rothfuss.

More signed books than I can shake a stick at.

Graphic novels, comic books, online comics in print.

Basically, a bit of everything.

 

For every $10 you spend, you get your name put into the lottery.  So, if you donate $20, your name goes in twice.  There was one recent blog where Rothfuss discusses the odds of winning something.  When you take all the math, it comes down to “a better chance than if you were playing in the real lottery”.

And for every dollar donated, Worldbuilders matches 50%.  So your $10 donation becomes $15.  Which is half of a hive of bees. And Honey is pretty awesome.

 

The catch is this funraiser ends tomorrow at midnight-ish.  So if you want to get your warm fuzzies on, best do it soon.  A link to a better explanation and a small listing of all the cool things is right…. here