Acquired Book By: I was selected to be a tour stop on the “Bee Summers” virtual book tour through TLC Book Tours. I received a complimentary copy of the book direct from the author Melanie Dugan, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Inspired to Read:
This particular book spoke to me when I first signed up to participate on the blog tour, there was something about the premise of the story and the way in which the story ‘sounded’ to me off the page; inspired my interest in reading the book. There are times when books whisper a thought of interest inside me, and those are the books I am always striving to discover because they tend to unlock a new way of story-telling and/or they create an individual experience of story craft that is not quite like other books you might pick up. I like delving outside my regular reading adventures, always seeking to not only expand my literary horizons, but to enjoy the bliss of discovery of new authors I might not have had the pleasure of knowing otherwise. Bee Summers is the kind of story that settles into your heart and your whet with anxious anticipation to read once the book is alighted in your hands!
I am always so happily curious about how a book will arrive in the Post, as oft-times I receive books for review direct from publishers, but evenso, there are sometimes a surprise of two in store for me! When I opened the book parcel for Bee Summers, a lovely little postcard featuring the cover art and the synopsis on the reverse side smiled up at me as I discovered it inside the novel itself! On the reverse side, a lovely handwritten note from the author graced the open space which reminded me of a postcard! I did not want to have the ink bleed or smudge whilst reading the novel, which is why I used one of the lovely double-sided bookmarks Ms. Astie sent me with her novels French Twist & French Toast! I never expect little extras with the books I receive, but oh! How my heart is filt with joy when I find something the author has tucked into the book! I appreciate their words enscribed on the postcard / notecards as much as words inked directly onto the books themselves! Little pieces of whispered joy ahead of reading their stories!
I must confess, part of my interest in Bee Summers lies within the fact beekeeping is included as part of the story’s arc! I have been an appreciator of bees for quite a long while, but when their fate and ours as a whole became entwined to the other, I daresay, I rally behind anyone who will have the kind grace to place a shining light on their culture and their significance of worth. The bees need us more than ever, and I am thankful to find their essence is still being included in fiction in a positive way.
Book Synopsis:
The spring she is eleven years old, Melissa Singer’s mother walks out of the house and never returns. That summer her father, a migratory beekeeper, takes her along with him on his travels. The trip and the people she meets change her life. Over the years that follow, Melissa tries to unlock the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and struggles to come to terms with her loss.
Author Biography:
Melanie Dugan is the author of Dead Beautiful (“the writing is gorgeous,” A Soul Unsung), Revising Romance, and Sometime Daughter.
Born in San Francisco, Dugan has lived in Boston, Toronto, and London, England, and has worked in almost every part of the book world: in libraries and bookstores, as a book reviewer; she was Associate Publisher at Quarry Press, where she also served as managing editor of Poetry Canada Review and Quarry Magazine. She has worked in journalism, as a freelancer, and as visual arts columnist. Dugan studied at the University of Toronto Writers Workshop and the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has a post-graduate degree in Creative Writing from Humber College. She has done numerous public readings.
Her short stories have been shortlisted for several awards. She lives in Kingston, Ontario with her partner and their two sons.
The voice of Melissa Singer reminds me of Calpurnia Tate:
As I opened the first page into Chapter One, I was acutely aware of the voice of Melissa Singer reminding me of one of my most earnestly beloved re-reads this year, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate! A novel I discovered through my local library and had in effect read whilst I had a journal off-line yet never had the chance to properly stitch my thoughts together after reading its mirth of gentle wisdom. As soon as you step inside the first paragraph of Bee Summers you know in your heart your settling in for a gentle whisper of a story which is going to tug at your heart-strings and be as gentle as sitting on a gliding swing on a Southern front porch whilst the fireflies dance in front of your eyes. I loved seeing the grace of acknowledging the intimate details of her surroundings through the eyes of an innocent young girl who still could see the beauty in the ordinary and how the ordinary can be quite extraordinary.
I also felt a kinship of her intuitiveness stemming out of the character of Opal from Because of Winn-Dixie. Although mind you, dear hearts, I have only seen the motion picture and am bent on reading the lovely hardback copy I have at some point in the future! It was simply one of those things where the film dropped ahead of my ability to read the novel, but within the motion picture I found a setting, a towne, and a unconventional family that all of us can appreciate wanting to curate in our own lives. The film had a heart pulse all of its own, and whose essence I am sure mirrored the story within the novel.
My review of Bee Summers:
It is not often that a story starts off by placing you full center on the plight of little house guests who are growing in numbers each day they visit the central lead character! The bees in the kitchen had me wondering about the larger scope of the story gently unfolding in front of my heart. Dugan has the grace of acknowledging how you can be a caretaker of a species but also how you have to take care of yourself if the species you are looking after starts to take up residence in a place that is not conducive to communal living. She does not shy away from showing how even those who protect bees sometimes have to make choices where you have to divide the territory between the bees and their beekeepers.
The eccentrically loveable Aunt Hetty is quite the charming character who not only entered Melissa’s life at a crucial moment of her eleventh summer, but she helped changed the direction of the family’s life. I appreciated seeing how the care and concern of a widow the father knew, strengthened the father’s resolve to relocate to the small towne she lived in. A towne that gave his daughter Melissa a new freedom of living outside of a city and the joy of exploring the bliss of childhood outside the confines of a city block. Aunt Hetty has the classic house which is overflowing in life spilt into corners, nooks, and crannies to where stepping through her house is a bit of a labyrinth of a maze! The amassed collection of items were not only a wonderment to Melissa but to the reader who reads the story! Such a diverse collection of knickknacks and odd objects!
On the fringes of understanding her world is about to change Lissy (Melissa’s pet name by her father), decides to embrace the changes a bit at a time, and take her father up on his suggestion of an adventure. Travel as he takes the bees on their pollination runs and study on the road instead of finishing out the school year at home. In her own quiet way, Lissy is fusing together the pieces of what is and what is not yet said aloud to her. She is growing in her awareness of the world outside the sphere of her childhood, as much as she is not yet ready to accept the reality of where her Mom has walked off too. The story yields to her sense of direction and of her ability to adapt to how life evolves as she greets each day anew.
Once out on the road, Lissy’s world starts to expand in new ways, as she starts to meet the customers her father is hired to help with his bees. My favourite of all the stops was actually her first encounter at Earl’s house. He had this beautiful laid back manner about him which made you feel warm and comfortable in his presence. His house was on the modest side, but his farm meant the world to him, which you could tell from the passages where Lissy and her father spent helping him about the place. They encountered a lonely husband longing for his wife to return from being away on the second leg, and by the time they reached the farm for Opal and Les, Lissy was starting to realise just how different each family in the world could be. Her first impression of Opal was of a woman who was trying a bit too hard to be friends, but as time eased throughout the week of her stay it is what she observed that changed her opinion about her. I liked how each transition on the road trip provided keen insights into the ways of the world as much as the juxtaposition of how Lissy was raised by her parents. She was starting to put the pieces together on how she viewed life and the world around her; which is why the trip was having such an effect on her thought processes.
By the time I reached Chapter 12, my heart’s emotional keel was eclipsed as the truth of the distances which had spread between Lissy and her father came to startling reality of truth. As the tears slipped through my eyes, I realised that the jutting punch of the story is held within the in-between hours of the character’s lives. Those little moments where as they are lived feel indifferent to the whole of what they mean to the person who is living them, yet when reflected upon later are full of warmth and remembrance. The little moments of each of our lives are what gives our tapestry its glistening edge. The foundation of every family is communication and within Lissy’s years of maturing youth, the fragmented hours where her ability to communicate with her father broke down the wall of love which used to encase them with a fierce grip of strength.
Her mother’s absence in her life and the years of silent questionings therein, left a chasm of indifference and swelling anguish intermixed with anger towards her father’s lack of explanations. Her choice was to mirror her mother’s, exiting her father’s life as easily and as seamlessly as her mother had many years before her to the brink that she quite literally managed to erase him out of her mind and heart. And, like real life’s counterpart to the story, by the time Lissy is a married wife and mother herself, learnt all to late how ill-comforting it is to realise the mistakes you’ve made in the past cannot be easily mended in the future. Regrets fuse together, and lost hours stack against the timeclock of your life. It is only how you can choose to accept the path you’ve walked and the lessons you’ve learnt along the corridor of your life, that can truly set you free. Allowing you to let go of your past ghosts and step into the light of the morning with a sense of renewal for where you’ve been.
The bees | secondary characters:
One of the pure delights of the novel are the bees themselves, as they take on the role as secondary characters and in some places, nearly felt as a narrator as to precognitively alert the reader of where the story might head next. I like the subtle inclusions of their hive’s presence, as much as their bee attributes being quite stellar in showcasing their bee qualities of personality! I enjoyed learning a bit about their flying patterns, walking statures of dance, and how in effect, the bees take to their keepers as much as their keepers enjoy watching over their bees! They were a delightful inclusion, and perhaps a bit of a metaphoric undertone to the key bits of the story as well. Bees by nature align and live by a certain code of curious ambiguity as for as much as we know about their culture within the hive and their interactions with the natural environment, there is a larger number of unknowns. Perhaps in this way, the bees were as much as a viewing of transitions in the seasons of life that are not readily explained nor understood could occupy the backdrop of a young girl whose growing-up realising her mother left her without the blessing of an explanation.
I liked how the sequences with the bees were as innocent and lovely as the observations of Lissy inside the narrative of her younger years. Each of them were a bit in tune with the innocent side of life, as the bees went about their duties as pollinators to encourage the growth of the fruit and veg that needed their assistance. Likewise, Lissy looked out at her road adventure with a fresh pair of eyes ready to embrace what came her way with a joyful heart, if a tender one full of concern for her mother.
Ms. Dugan’s gift for story-telling within notes of grace:
In the back of the novel, there is a stamp of acknowledgement from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, as the author received Creative Writing Grant from the Ontario Arts Council and a Work in Progress Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Two grants I had not known about previously, and felt were given to a writer who deserved the recognition of what the awarding of them could gain her writing. I have heard of writing grants previously, but as far as I’m aware of, I have not yet read a writer who used them to finish a novel I’ve read. How wonderful there are creative ways to pursue one’s love of writing and of setting one’s stories free to fly into the world, where readers like I feel not only blessed but honoured to have made their acquaintance!
She gave the father a wicked sense of logic in the story, such as resolving the issue of a ‘suitcase’ for their impromptu adventure on the road by using brown paper bags! I had a good chucklement on this scene, because it showed how the father wanted to solve the issue at hand but not show his uncertainty in how to go about it. She etched into Bee Summers an honest impression of how a father deals with the sudden exit of a wife and how he must choose how to face the reality of being a single father without a net of protection to see them both through to the next tomorrow. She guides the reader through the motions of their lives with such a flickerment of subtle acknowledgements of seasons and life moments, that by the time you alight in a harder hitting moment of clarity, the emotional conviction hits you front and center, and you feel appreciative that you were being guided by a steady hand and keen observer of the way in which an emotional drama can be told with a deft eye for grace.
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{SOURCES: Book cover for “Bee Summers”, Author Biography, Author Photograph, and Book Synopsis were provided by TLC Book Tours and used with permission. Blog Tour badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets embedded due to codes provided by Twitter.}
Acquired Book By: I was selected to be a stop on the “Awesome Jones” genre-bending fantasy-comic release tour from Seventh Star Press. The tour is hosted by Tomorrow Comes Media who does the publicity and blog tours for Seventh Star Press and other Indie and/or Self Published authors. I am a regular blog tour host with Tomorrow Comes Media and was thrilled to bits to see this novel being offered for review. I received a complimentary copy of “Awesome Jones” direct from the publisher Seventh Star Press in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Interest in Reading Awesome Jones:
When I see a writer like AshleyRose Sullivan who not only dared to embrace a genre-bender story as it alighted inside her heart but dared to have the confidence to find a publisher who recognised her vision is not only awe-inspiring it is the foundation of how each of us needs to remember to ‘own our muse, own our work, and carry-on forward’ until our stories reach the hands of the readers who believe in us too.
The only thing Awesome Jones wants is to be a super hero. Until he falls in love.
Despite his colorful name, Awesome Jones is a painfully average man who dreams of being a super hero, just like the ones who patrol his city. It’s been that way since he was a little boy, raised by his grandfather after his parents’ death.
The day Jones starts his new job as a file clerk at Akai Printing Company he meets secretary Lona Chang and everything changes. Lona sees something in Jones that no one ever has and the two quickly become inseparable. But when the perfect pair’s domestic bliss is threatened by a super-powered secret from the past, Awesome Jones has to make a choice. He must decide whether he should play it safe or find the strength to live up to his name and risk everything he’s come to love to save the day like he always dreamed.
Author Biography:
Born and raised in Appalachia, AshleyRose Sullivan has a BS in Anthropology and an MFA in Creative Writing. She lives, writes and paints in Los Angeles with her husband and their many imaginary friends.
On analog technology & the heart of the story:
An appreciator of the hidden world of typewriters via the typosphere (yes, there is such a thing! it runs counter-current to our regular blogosphere where typecasters post their typewritten blog posts!), I cannot even fully explain how wicked happy I was to see there were ‘typewriters’ clacking about in ‘Awesome Jones‘! Long live analog! I will always grow a smile of a whisper towards the joy in finding old world tech knitted into the stories I love to read! And, the blessing here is that this isn’t a historical fiction novel! This is a modern alternative world in which ordinary people are attempting to determine if their ancestral roots are strong enough to transcend their present lives. That in of itself is an accomplishment worth reading!
What I truly was unsure about what to expect when I read this novel, is how I would feel about being connected to a story whose heart was hinged to the stories of my youth. I always am quite eager to re-examine my past, especially when it comes to books and the bookish culture which are attached to certain volumes, authors, and stories. The fact that this particular novel gave me back my joy of comic superheroes and the style in which comic stories are told is pure bliss. The heart of the story harkened me back to remembering why I loved The New Adventures of Super-Man as much as I had! Lona and Awesome remind me so very much of Clark and Lois! Their connective spirits give you something to chew on rather than running on presumption. Nothing is cliché nor is anything predictable. Honest choices are threaded through the narrative, and I appreciate the choices the author made whilst creating it!
My Review of Awesome Jones:
You are immediately drawn to Awesome Jones as a character because of his introverted confidence in understanding his place in the world and how his everyday life is lived as a bachelor. He has a particular way of attending to each of his needs as well as his wants. From the order he reads the newsprint to the manner in which he eats the takeaway food he orders! He is a man of prediction not contradiction, of sincerity and of genuine curiosity for the bits of the everyday world that is not readily known to him; as he has more or less led a bit of a sheltered life. Not that he would be one to feel sorry for what he lacked in experience (such as having a pet; a dog perhaps?) but artfully steered his mind towards self-awareness and self-education practices which gained him the knowledge of what was absent. He’s the type of bloke you might overlook if you had not taken a keen interest to want to know him. He’s a bit understated, but that is part of his charm!
He’s the type of bloke who purchases flowers to know when they have arrived into their own full essence of splendor. One sniff of their delicate petals and the aroma which follows their mirth, and he knows how long it will take the bloom to reach its maturity. His knowledge for canines through the adverts he reads about their change of ownership lends him an eagle eye viewing of his sidewalk companions as he walksabout his business. He denotes which dog matched to which owner is either most akin to its nature or a reflection of its owner’s personality and thus, rendered differently than most.
Lona Chang took Awesome by surprise, not only for her growing affection and respect of his character, but for being endeared to him as a companion. The two took to each other quite readily, but it was how they fit into each other’s pocket that I felt bemused about the most whilst reading the story! You see, they were the near-identical half of the other, and I refer to it being ‘near-identical’ as although they each read the newsprint release of breaking news, they differed on a category or two. Little unbeknownst differences out of a sea of common threads which helped knit Awesome Jones and Lona Chang together in the bliss of conjoined living. She was quite methodical herself, yet Awesome took the cake for exacting out his observations, and for being near computeristically perfect in his actions. Whilst the two were together, they not only complimented each other in synced harmony but they cancelled each other out on their eclecticism.
Lona and Awesome were intricately entwined by their common share of loss, as they respectively never knew their proper origins. They were each raised by loving parents who adopted them as their own when their biological parents had died. They attempted in their own way to resurrect a connection fate did not allow to solidify whilst their parents were alive. In their shared ambiguous loss, they each sought ways in which they could formulate a way to connect themselves through a passion of their parents; even if the only true connection they had were fragmented pieces of their parents personal effects. These tangible reminders were a weight of a burdened yoke which toyed with their emotional well-being.
When Awesome Jones grapples with the choice between the life he’s formed together with Lona and the life he’s dreamt of living, they each have to put to test the strength of their love for each other. I sided with Captain Lightning (one of the main superheroes focused on in the story) on the outdated rules and regulations of The Guild (apparently superheroes are organised more than you realise!). He’s put in a most difficult position because as you can well imagine, he goes from knowing a scant amount about his ancestry and then, in one large dose of revelation he gets far more than he bargained to learn! I would imagine that if you wake up one day and your entire essence of who you are as a person is chucked out for this alternative version; a version you knew nothing of and had no idea of how to accept, there would be a period of adaption to adjust!
This is when I found myself reading at such a lightning clip as to beg my eyes to move faster down the page, as I had my hand at the ready for turning into the next scene! Again, I love the pace of Awesome Jones as you get to the point where you want to see him succeed. You want him to develop self-confidence and believe in his own truth. There are always forces against you in life, and there is always a chance that your going to falter in your confidence on your own behalf, but part of what endeared me to this story is that the main characters believed in each other. It did not matter what the outcome of their lives would be as far as where their place in the world would fit, as if they had each other they could overcome just about anything crossing their path.
This is why I selected this quotation to be the first I quote from a Seventh Star Press novel. You can read their love and their hope for each other inside the words Lona is giving to Awesome.
“I love you, and I’m proud of you, no matter what. I see something inside you, something bright and brilliant. Not like your parents. Not like anyone. Just you. There’s something different about you, Awesome Jones. Just keep training. And if none of this works — if you never develop stronger abilities — it’s ok. Eventually they will catch The Echo and we’ll go back to our house and find new jobs and read the paper. We’ll make a life together no matter what.”
– Lona talks to Awesome, page 276 from “Awesome Jones”
The very foundation of their relationship is trust and honesty. Giving each other the space to grow as individuals but remaining steadfast and strong as a couple. They endeavour to face everything as a unified team and in their choice to remain strong in hope, they are able to conceive of a path that keeps them united in the future. The mystery of how their future knits together holds you right in place with the narrative. Observing their everyday life and world as one incidence after another places their love in jeopardy will keep you up long into the wee hours of the night! And, for that I feel blessed to have stumbled across Sullivan’s writings as they give us all a fairytale to absorb in a day and age that has nearly forgotten how to write one! This is a story full of old-school superheroes with a bit of a modern alternative twist! These are the superheroes you want to read more about and learn more about their history. Sullivan has found a way to tap into their framework of existence and present a palpable story that you will not soon forget.
On the uniqueness of AshleyRose Sullivan’s deft hand in giving a reader a bit of bliss:
I had not even realised there was a distinctive difference in the manner in which the typesetting & style layout of Awesome Jones was presented to the reader in the softcover edition, until of course, I re-read the passage in her previously published Guest Post: On Writing Genre-Bending Fiction that I noticed quite readily how unique this particular novel is from the crowd of fantasy offerings! As I had lamented below her essay, I felt that perhaps my experiences in year’s past in reading stories of various mediums might have tipped my hand and arsenal of memory for stream-lining straight into the narrative itself rather than being curiously aware of its ‘format’. Rather instead of noting any outward appearances of nonconformity, I was celebrating the wicked sweet fast pace of dialogue intermixed with reflective streaming conscious thought narrative!
I liked how you could soak into the inner core of what Awesome Jones was thinking whilst seeing what he saw as he moved through his hours. He was a simple bloke, uncomplicated and true to who he was without being gracious on the details when he was around others. He’s the kind of bloke who did not take himself seriously but wanted to make a good impression on the validity of his strengths and on the merits of what he could accomplish.
Even when the narrative turns malicious to acquaint the reader with the villain of the story, such as on page forty-five and forty-six, Sullivan has this ingenious way of giving you the gruesome details of a crime with the deft hand of a writer who wants to hold back just enough bits of his character to keep you hanging in the balance of when his full form is front and center within the action! She doesn’t cross the line for me as far as Crime Fiction analogies are concerned, as I am a cosy mystery reader and the bits she includes fall under that umbrella moreso than Hard-Boiled. Anyone familiar with the Coffeehouse mysteries by Cleo Coyle will be able to handle the suspenseful climbing arc inside Awesome Jones! (either those OR any episode of “Castle”!)
Fly in the Ointment:
I was so excited to read this genre-bending story where comic-fantasy cross-over and layer upon each other to create a wholly new experience for the reader of print books. (or e-books as this is available in that medium as well; I simply only read books in print) Yet. Imagine my disappointment to find only a scarce few illustrations in the opening chapters, than the near-full of the middle part of the novel is nothing but text. Until towards the last half of the novel the illustrations resume! I was most distressed. I was a bit beyond let-down. I wasn’t even sure what could have caused the misunderstanding — as from all counts of what I knew of the novel going in to reading it as much as ahead of even requesting it for review (as I’ve known about this book since late 2013!): bespoke of the combination of illustrations and words which converge into a wicked sweet read!
The illustrations that are included are wicked awesome, don’t think for one minute they’re not! They added to the allure of reading a genre-bending comic-fantasy as I’m about to seriously consider this superhero fairytale truly is by essence of its character. Yet, for me, what began to unravel a bit of its heart is the absence of the illustrations themselves. Perhaps there was a layout issue or a formatting issue when the novel went to be printed, but to be truthful, there must be a way to circumvent this for the next Awesome Jones, right?! Where the illustrations can take ring-side seats to the action of the character’s dialogue and narrative voices?!
Please note at the time of posting the Author’s Guest Post and the commentary I added before and after Sullivan’s essay I had not yet begun to read ‘Awesome Jones’. I picked up reading the novel shortly thereafter and although as you can see I readily absorbed into the world of ‘Awesome Jones’, part of me was hungry for a bit more of its comic-minded essence!
Be sure to jump over to my tour stop for “A Chimerical World: Tales of the Seelie Court” an Editor Interview as I am hosting a reader poll to determine what is the favourite fantastical character in fantasy! Be sure to leave a comment in those threads on a recommended title and/or author!
What do you love about genre-bender fiction!? What kinds of stories do you wish were bent together more often?! Which authors and books would you highly recommend reading more than once to get their full effect!? What are your thoughts on Sullivan’s gift and vision for uniting comic superheros & fantasy fiction narrative!?
{SOURCES: Author photograph, Author Biography, Book Synopsis, Book Cover, and TCM Tour Host badge were provided by Tomorrow Comes Media and were used by permission. Blog Tour badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Selected Quotation of the novel “Awesome Jones” was used with permission of Seventh Star Press.}
Published By: Xchyler Publishing (@XchylerPublish) 11 February, 2014 Official Editor Websites: Site | Facebook | Twitter Converse via: #MomentsInMillennia Genres: Time Travel | Alternative History | Dystopian Available Formats: Trade Paperback and E-Book Page Count: 234
Acquired Book By:I contacted Xchyler Publishing about receiving books in exchange for honest reviews and was asked to pick the two books I’d like to request. Moments in Millennia was my second choice, as my first choice was A MidSummer Night’s Steampunk. The main reason I selected this anthology is due to my continued appreciation for being introduced to new authors through their short story contributions. I received a complimentary copy of Moments in Millennia in exchange for an honest review direct from the publisher Xchyler Publishing. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
I am hopeful I can continue to work with them in the future, as they are one of the Indie publishers who has a distinctive eye for creating books which give a reader a lift of spirits to read. The attention to detail in their books is quite bang-on from editing, copy-editing, cover-art design, and by giving some of their books a lovely book trailer presentation that borders on motion picture adaptation! I have enjoyed getting to learn a bit about their process as a publisher as much as learning key behind-the-scenes into the writing of the novels through one of their authors.
Editor Biography:
Author and editor, Penny brings to Xchyler thirty years of wordsmith experience, with emphasis on historical fiction, business writing, and journalism. She also serves as assistant public affairs director of a large organization, and has extensive experience in social media and Internet advertising. Literature, history, and storytelling are her great passions, although the technical aspects of the language arts satisfy her compulsion for order.
Anthology Synopsis:
Travel with seven talented authors as they glimpse through time into Humanity’s future. Will mankind blossom and flourish, conquering the stars and time itself? Or, with selfishness, greed, and just plain bad luck send us all to the brink of destruction?
The Cartographer by Samuel A. Mayo: Destined to chart the stars throughout the aeons, a team of novice map makers are thrust into a conspiracy to control the universe and time itself.
Fairykin by Ben Ireland: In a world where nature has ceased to exist, a tribe of fairies on the brink of extinction must fight for survival itself. But who will bear the ultimate cost?
Time out of Mind by Michael Cross: One young girl’s cosmic connection to her grandfather’s tragic past brings life and hope to the blackest days of the Holocaust.
The Hawkweed by Candace J. Thomas: Consumed with guilt, one girl fights to solve the riddle of her friend’s murder and the disappearance of his brother—unaware of the price on her own head.
Spaceman in Time by Fischer Willis: Victor seizes the chance to return to the past and right a terrible wrong. Will he have the strength to do what he must, or will history repeat itself?
Human Era by Neal Wooten: Two grad students hurl themselves into the past with their wormhole technology. Their modern skills make them heroes, but do they truly know where they are?
Black Ice by S. P. Mount: Men have become mindless drones controlled by chip implants and a master satellite. Can one serial killer imprisoned for a thousand years give them the will to truly live?
{ am electing to highlight the stories within the anthology which piqued my interest the most out of the seven offered inside }
| Time Out of Mind by Michael Cross |
From the moment I entered this short, I felt a direct pull into the story-line as Cross singularly chose to focus on the aspect of love and how bound we can become through love where time disintegrates from view. Love is an unlimited gift where time and distance do not affect its full measure of containment. By arching the story into a military dialogue of a grandfather’s selfless acts towards gaining the freedoms of others, whilst the granddaughter struggles to understand how her heart can entwine, through time was a very enchanting pull at the very jump-start of a story!
I believe the main reason this particular story held such a heart tug for me, is due to the fact I come from a very close-knit family. I oft talk (on Jorie Loves A Story & regular blogs I visit) about my adventures in uncovering my ancestral past as Mum and I resume the search after a bit of a long hiatus to uncover the missing gaps and links on both sides of our family. And, of how through these historical adventures the connections we find become stitched into our family’s tapestry is a bit like the discovery of the coin inside Time Out of Mind. You find a tethering to one moment nestled into the past which brings the past forward and the present backwards. We create connections due to our distinctive nature of not only wanting to belong but to become understood. To understand not only where we originated ancestrally but to understand who we are and what our purpose is whilst we journey through life.
The nexus of the portal which opens through the coin brought me startling back to Somewhere in Time, which is one of my favourite all-time romantic motion pictures despite the gutting ending and the reprieve that is bittersweet. The bending and yield of the fissure points held within the mechanisms of how time is wielded and kept is always an interesting theory to pursue.
As I read this story with a thirst and appetite of anticipation, my heart willed me to press the pages apart and see what the author would reveal on the next page, the next paragraph, the next sentence. It held my attention longing to know as Chantel did the fullness of the story she was tipping herself into on behalf of her grandfather’s legacy. He gave her a unique gift at the turning point of his exit from life, and it’s how she’s meant to follow his guidance that gave my heart a pulse-jump.
Cross pursues the theory of history and time being of temporal constant travellers of each other, where in order for our present to be in our reality, the past which has already occurred is still on-going as it had once lived. The present therefore gives us a way into the future, but whilst in the present we can stumble into the past and the past into the present at junctions of arrival we might not be aware of crossing over. In this, he held my complete attention.
Shedding my own tears as I turnt the last pages on this lovely short story, I felt compelled to see if Cross has published other stories such as this one or on parallel themes. He is intuitive about a woman’s heart and mind, as much as he understands the fractures of our hearts when we are left without the connecting pieces to puzzles. Living histories and historical artifacts help us all engage in the conversation of our shared reality. We gain compassion and empathy simply through the acknowledgement of who traversed before us as much as giving proper honour to those who died for a cause greater than we can all fully contemplate in one sitting.
Michael Cross is a debut author getting his wings in the publishing world from what I can gather off his website! How splendidly wicked news is this?! To have alighted on his first published short story and its the very one within this anthology which held my breath and heart in equal eclipse!? I cannot wait to read more of his writings, and am hopeful he is in development of a novel or novella which will be released in print form so that I can partake of reading it! Dear hearts, if he continues to write on the breadth of what I’ve just completed reading in Moments in Millennia – I dare not emerge until the last page is consumed! He has a gentleness and soft grace in writing a story with this thematic and character point of view.
| Human Era by Neal Wooten |
When I was younger I was especially intrigued by the motion pictures “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “2010”. Stemming out of those initial stories of how futuristic reality and past reality can become altered or perceived differently given the chance to change the perception of how time is analysed and accepted. I garnished an interest in “Planet of the Apes” except to say I never had the proper chance to watch the Roddy McDowell editions opting inside for the Mark Wahlberg remake when it was available to see on the silver screen. Cautionary tales of how future societies and future living realities can become transformed by interference and by curiosity.
Within the short contributed by Wooten, I had a foreshadow knowledge that their adventure ‘through time’ would end in a shocking conclusion. Not the kind that would be overtly traumatic or psychological disruptive to their well-being, but the shock that comes from discovering the unexpected truth of their actions. And, how best to continue forward in their own ordinary lives after having lived through the experience. I was not disappointed as they jolted through their time machine crossing through their homemade wormhole straight into a medieval time period fraught with war and unimagined terror of epic scale.
The more they explored the less they understood, because everything they could observe, sense, and be aware of was telling them they hadn’t traversed very far at all. If anything, they appeared to have travelled to their own world yet a step out of time or place from any map which could guide them. I loved the layers Wooten added-in to the narrative and the heart of the character of Ash, who I wish could have been developed and explored further past this initial foray. Ash is the type of character you could rally behind and see grow in the role of a mentor for the young lads who recklessly pursued technology they had little understanding of past its conception.
What I appreciated the most is how thought-provoking the capsule of the tale is for generations who are pursuant towards science explorations and experimentation. There is always a nod towards knowing how to balance the joy of discovering a new ‘acting theory’ of science within the realms of what is plausible and safe to explore. When we tip the balance into pursuing elements of science which lead us down corridors of heightened danger – it’s best to pull back and reconsider what the consequences might incur for everyone rather than the few who are involved in the experiment. It would have served well to have an epilogue on this one to see what the lads had learnt from their wormhole trip through time and how effectively they forestalled the events yet lived.
Neal Wooten is a huge appreciator of The Walking Dead which I found unique on the level that it’s the very last television series I would even dare contemplate viewing! It is interesting then that it’s his short which drew my eye to mention in my review of Moments in Millennia as I drew a connection to both of these stories (his & Cross) moreso than the others! I would not have felt that possible had I known ahead of time he was into Zombies & Horror, as his short is such a far cry from both genre exploits! This story appears to run in a side vein of what he normally writes and for that I appreciate the chance to sample his writings! I wonder if he could expand on the theory he set forth in this short and encourage out a novel?
My closing thoughts are ones of gratitude to Xchyler Publishing for giving me the honour of reading two of their books and being in a position to ask for Interviews on behalf of those who create and/or oversee the creation of the stories they publish. I am going to seek out an Interview for the two writers who inspired me whilst I read “Moments in Millennia” and I hope to provide those for you to read in forthcoming weeks. I was swept away by the depth of the story Cross conceived as from the initial moment I started to read his contribution to the very closing paragraph I dare not lift my eyes for fear of not returning to the narrative and the journey in which Chantel embarked on to find the truth etched in the past.
Stories which stir our imaginations and our hearts yield the best reading pleasure and joy; hence why my reader’s heart is full of gratitude at having been given such an extraordinary introduction to the works in which Xchyler Publishing produces and gives to readers everywhere. Again, I hope that I will be able to work with them again, and I do hope you will re-visit me this Thursday as I give my thoughts and observations on behalf of Scott E. Tarbet’s Shakespearean Steampunk debut!
Moments in Millennia : A Fantasy Anthology Book Trailer byXchyler Publishing
Dear hearts, I extend the conversation now to you,… what do you appreciate about anthologies which feature upcoming OR established fantasy writers? Which thematic do you find yourself attracted to the most out of: time travel, alternative history, and dystopian? The two I featured fall under the first two categories! Have you stumbled across a new-to-you author by reading a fantasy anthology and then longed for new material by them to read next? What elements make a short story endear you the most? And, what do you think is the hardest part on behalf of a writer of a short story to convey to their readers!?
{NOTE: I am enjoying the “Just Write” edition of writing blog posts in WP! This is my first post to be completely written inside this new format of ‘white board’ free writing – where you can focus on composing your thoughts without the interference of the menus & columns of the regular view inside of a browser. Quite a bit more enjoyable for me!}
{SOURCES: Moments in Millennia Book Cover, synopsis, Editor photograph & biography were provided by Xchyler Publishing and were used by permission. Book Review badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. The book trailer by Xchyler Publishing had either URL share links or coding which made it possible to embed this media portal to this post, and I thank them for the opportunity to share more about this novel and the author who penned it. Tweets are embedded due to codes provided by Twitter.}
Acquired Book By: I am a regular blog book tour hostess for Tomorrow Comes Media, whereupon in conversation with Stephen Zimmer about my curiosity over the contents of this anthology due to the overwhelmingly creative book cover art; I was offered to receive a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review direct from the publisher Seventh Star Press. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Intrigued to Read:
Being I am a writer of science fiction stories set in a modern world akin to our own and based on science fact (I always had leanings towards hard sci-fi rather than soft!), I am always quite the intrepid girl who becomes interested in reading the latest book of writing advice, tips, and sage wisdom from those who have gone before me and cast their stories out into the hands of readers! Science fiction was in my blood long before I ever put thought to pen, as I inherited a passion for Trek & Star Wars which goes back to the original canon of both franchises. I never expected to live in a generation where having to say I support the ‘original canon’ of either one would even come to pass! However, that aside, what drew me into this anthology wasn’t just the context of the subject at hand but the excellent cover art rendering by Matthew Perry! Whose knack for presenting such a cleverly creative jumping gate of a writer’s muse is in good form! I knew whatever was contained inside the anthology was content I was determined to read! The musings of writers always makes me smile, yet its the enduring spirit of putting your heart on the line, owning your own work irregardless of its popularity and being strong in your belief an audience is awaiting to read your story is what invigorates me!
Within the Workshop, you’ll find:
Prominent writers within the craft of science fiction and fantasy story-telling, impart sage wisdom and advice given through anecdotical essays, pertinent interviews; set to a rhythm of appearances which makes Editor Knost appear nearly telepathically inclined as the reader weaves through a symbiotic rumination!
Contents Therein:
Michael Knost: Introduction
Neil Gaiman: Where do you get your Ideas?
Lou Anders: Nebulous Matters or Speculation on Subgenres
Lucy A. Synder: Ursula K. Le Guin Talks about a Lifetime in the Craft
James Gunn: Beginnings
George Zebrowski: Middles
Jay Lake: Endings
Nayad A. Monroe: Time Powers Talks about Writing Speculative Fiction
Orson Scott Card: On Rhetoric and Style
Pamela Sargent: Talking Too Much, or Not Enough: Dialogue in Science Fiction & Fantasy
G. Cameron Fuller: How Alien the Alien: A Primer
Nancy Kress: “The Green-Skinned Zorn Laughed with Grief” Character and Emotion in Science Fiction & Fantasy
Harry Turtledove: Alternate History: The How-to of What Might Have Been
Jude-Marie Green: Larry Niven Talks about Collaboration
Joe Haldeman: Hemingway Talks about Writing
Nisi Shawl: Unbending Gender
Alan Dean Foster: Reverse Engineering
Alethea Kontis: Kevin J. Anderson Talks about Spin-offs, Prequels, & Fan Fiction
Elizabeth Bear: Tactics of World-Building
Jackie Gamber: Ann VanderMeer Talks about Weird Fiction
Michael Knost: Short Fiction: A Roundtable Discussion with Short Story Editors
Max Miller: Long Fiction: A Roundtable Discussion with Novel Editors
I will be making selections of my reading to focus on throughout this bookish girl’s review of the ruminative musings which ignited in her mind’s eye as she drank through the pages with an eagerness all writers will understand! Writers reflecting on their craft and opening an honest discussion about the inner workings of writing as art is a moment to celebrate and cherish!
[Where Do You Get Your Ideas? an essay by Neil Gaiman]
The curious nature of readers is always to formulate a question directed towards the writer they unabashedly follow throughout their career as to explain the seemingly bottomless well of ideas the stories oriented from. The honest truths of where the genesis of an idea is first garnished is brilliantly executed by Mr. Gaiman (of whom I am aware of his works but haven’t yet read)! Your ideas percolate at a pace that you’re at times not even expecting to be able to fulfill a request of, because of the nature of the human brain’s processor of information! A writer is willfully able to head into the direction the first spark of inspiration alights in mind, but to follow the originating idea through germination and tether it to a solidified ending is walking through the unknown; proportions of which, none of us truly know of until we’re sitting down to write.
And, it’s within this boiling and brewing of ideas where I gather my energy for the story about to transfer out of my mind’s vortex and unto the written page! To take a thread of an idea, nurture it into being and then, allowing the freedom of the idea to transition and transmorph into its full-bodied existence of what its meant to be is a writer’s realised dream. Nibblements of ruminations sprinkled throughout a lifetime of experience and adventure start to ink out into our imagination. Transcending both time and memory, as pieces of ourselves are wrangled into the lifeblood of our characters! Being a writer is akin to being a nurturer of ideas and of ideals. We take our observations from our living realities, and pour our heart into our works attempting to yield a story that others might find palatable. I say ‘might’ find as I am one writer who writes the stories which flow through her rather than write a story which is hinged to a specific audience or topic. We (writers) all hope that the momentum and passion we have for an idea will garnish itself a foothold in a reader’s queue. Perhaps even, enlighten their outlook or perception, but moreso than naught, to give them a hearty piece of narrative which leaves them pensively grateful for the idea which started the words to fill the page!
[Nebulous Matters or Speculation on Subgenres – an essay by Lou Anders]
I felt especially blessed to find this particular section included in the Workshop, as I am always befuddled to understand which ‘genre’ is the stepping stone of each of the ‘subgenres’ in which I read! I have spent quite literally hours exhausting resources online to sort through the myriad labyrinth of descriptive analysis always walking away feeling a bit more muddled than clarified! There are a few exceptions, as one post floats to mind which I read during (#RRSciFiMonth) Sci-Fi November (my endearing name for “Sci-Fi Month” hosted by Rinn Reads!*) which was Top Ten Sci-Fi Sub-Genres (Part 1: Cyberpunk) by Leanne of Literary Excursion! Whilst I read her engaging post on a slice of science fiction I never felt I could honestly attach myself, I shared this remarkable observation:
I have a keen interest in the subject as I never knew what the differences were and its part of my learning curve this month with SFN! Cheers to you!
You know, I hadn’t even realised Steampunk came OUT of Cyberpunk! Learnt something new there! And, I was researching a LOT myself to educate myself on the origins of Steampunk but I must’ve missed the key references that would have connected these dots for me! Thankfully, you stepped in and saved the day!
Wait! Hold the TARDIS! I like “Dieselpunk”!?! Seriously!? Wow. I didn’t see that coming at all! But, right there in your essay it explains that “The Rocketeer” and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” (I *knew!* I missed one on my Top List for Films!) are listed! I seriously adore those films!!!
Wow. OKay, so I’m still processing,… I am a Cyberpunk who fits inside the Steampunk + Dieselpunk genres!? Wow. I can see I have more research to do after SFN! Thanks for pointing me off in two new directions!
You can clearly see that “Doctor Who” had a direct impact on my life at the time, as I actually said “TARDIS” as an expression rather than as a direct reference of the Doctor’s travelling box! Laughs within a smile. One of the resounding benefits for me in being part of SFN is that it allowed me the advantage of not only interacting with other sci-fi enthused readers, but it allowed me to talk about a branch of literature I’m over the moon passionate about! And, within that perimeter, I gained growth in the knowledge of how the genre is both supported, explored, and constantly being revolutionised by new ideas! I am going to be going back through all the lovely blogs of whom were populated with posts during SFN as I make my exodus backwards and through the rest of my own SFN experience!
Leading back to the book at hand, Mr. Anders brought to light several classic key points which interested me dearly:
The word “speculative fiction” has plagued me since Autumn 2013, as I was trying to unearth if it were in fact the broad stroke of description attributed to science fiction, fantasy, & horror OR if it were a new definitive space of works within those keystrokes which pushed past the barriers of straight-up foundational beliefs and entered into the cross-section of the unknown, the unfamiliar, and the remarkable. His answer finally closes the theory of mystery for me!
My mind was enraptured by science since I was a very young girl, to the brink that following myself into studies for various sciences was the track I was going to bookend to my creative pursuits. Those who know me well, know which of the ‘sciences’ pulls at my heartstrings the most, and as I blog about my reading escapades I am quite certain it will be revealed for others as well. Here, I only wanted to say that due to my background in science (and the continued studies I am pursuing on my own) the branch of hard science fictionis quite appealing as it goes into the exploration of where the limits of known science and theoretical science are heading right here in the living now of time. It was not a surprise to me to see Ringworld mentioned in relation to this branch, as Niven is one of the authors I have earmarked off to read since I first broached science fiction in the first place!
The curation of mundane science fiction fascinates me due to the dexterity of how far the writers can take the stories without the ‘theories’ of the inclusion of hard sci-fi elements. There is always going to be a balance between the personal beliefs of a reader & of a writer, as to how far each is willing to extend their imagination and the stories in which they each choose to define as a whole component of the living context of the genre. I’d be keen to seek out writers of this branch and see how their approach is leading the genre forward.
Space Opera was an inherent choice of mine to pursue! One of my favourite ‘personal discoveries’ was Babylon 5, as it eliminated the ‘box’ of how science fiction serials were once defined. For me, it leapt out of the convention a bit moreso than its counterpart of Deep Space Nine, which was still set to work inside an established reality and space. I even appreciated the folly of Galaxy Quest as a comic and cheeky side of being a geeky sci-fi appreciator! (I am not one who would normally gather a mirth of joy for folly, farce, or parody!) The ramifications for living interstellarly is too keen of an idea not to indulge in reading! And, there is of course the tv movie from the 1980s I am still trying to unearth the title of,…where they had to choose whether or not to stay on the moon or return back to earth?! The woman was pregnant and the choice would be between where to live and how the choice would affect their family long-term. Not a lot to go on, but it was brilliantly done at the time and I regret my memory cannot remember more!
New Space Opera leaves me curious as I am always seeking to read more British literature, and if the Britons have sorted out a new method of curating stories of this nature, I am definitely going to sort out how to find them! Verse Military Science Fiction taking a limited backdoor of plausible interest. I think for me, the film Starship Troopers wrecked the joy! As I watched it when it first premiered, had I know the level of intensity I would experience I would have omitted the desire. Conversely, I have a deep appreciation for military fiction stories, as I have been a long-term supporter of JAG, NCIS, and NCIS: LA, as much as seeing various incarnations of the military fiction in both tv and film. I never fully close a door, as I might wander back through with a book in hand which changes my perspective and illuminates a character which my heart grows empathy to meet. Two examples of military fiction I have been over jupiter’s moon in favour of are: Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy & Sebastian’s Way: The Pathfinder by George Steger.
New Wave Science Fiction is one that I have noticed without the realisation of what I was seeing! And, yet am a bit on the fence if I am a reader who can attach herself to the stories of this category! Time will reveal… Cyberpunk I already revealed was a startling discovery of interest!
Steampunk Is a sub-genre I’ve had a deep appreciation for which was knitted out of a love of the Victorian Gothic clothing movement, the sub-culture of indie artists on Etsy, and a firm appreciation for Victorian technology merged into story-lines which elicit a new generation of science fiction with the heart of the old age intact yet re-defined for today! I am only in the very beginnings of reading ‘steampunk’ as my next foray will be The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart! (blogged about my discovery of the book) (posts on Steampunk)
Epic &/or High Fantasy Is singularly my absolute favourite to read due to the breadth and depth of the stories which bind together living worlds of imagined joy! I love wandering around a well-fused story, anchored by characters whose lives are visibly flawed but contain within the mirth of their scope an adventure, a journey, or a mission which takes you to the heights of their world and yours. I get all giddy about discovering new authors to seek out, because I know the story I’m about to merge my heart into is going to be one I’ll not quite forget! The author who proved her salt and my adoration for this branch was Kate Elliott’s Crown of Stars saga which I began reading at the age of seventeen!
Sword & Sorcery as well as Urban Fantasy Are two branches I am always a bit hesitative to indulge in as I am not a grisly, gruesome, or intensely horror-filled sort of reader. Having said that, I have read Urban Fantasy books which might have resonated an issue with my personal preferences but the heart of the stories staid with me much longer than a twitching of an issue over a book turnoff contained within their covers! I always keep an open-mind whilst I read due to the fact you never know which book your going to read that might push you outside your known envelope of acceptance into a story that gives you back something you were not expecting to receive.
Dark Fantasy & Paranormal Romance Are two more areas in which I find myself at odds to begin reading; only because I haven’t yet found my proper footing to explore the writers who pen their tales! There are aspects of the paranormal which intrigue me to read (clearly, as I read the Ghost Harrison series by Heather Graham!), but its in finding which author who pens which story of whose characters resonate with me in printed form as much as say “Ghost Whisperer” does in its motion medium.
Sci-Fantasy To me sounds like a merger of two of my favourite literary excursions in which I cannot wait to journey inside! To empathises and mix the two genres into a lively genre-bender exploration of story and thought is beyond genius! One of my favourite genre-benders for science fiction (Sci-Mystery?) is The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, another story I read at seventeen!
Ander’s way of capturing the tick-tocking dance of enticing offshoots of the genre, electrify the eagerness to drink in more of the stories which give us the most joy to read! His enthused approach to make the complexities of genre explainable to the causal reader as well as the experienced is a credit to his skill in understanding the foundations of science fiction. IF lack of space hadn’t been an issue, (as I presume all essays within the Workshop were under a limited word count), I would have rejoiced in reading more on the subject! Eek. Exciting stuff! And, for a girl transitioning back into the genre, it’s quite literally ‘a road map and treasure trove of where to wander off next!’
*As you may or may not be aware of, I am resuming where I left off with my Sci-Fi November postings, to where I want to complete what I originally set out to accomplish! I have numerous notes on the Doctor Who episodes I watched, as much as I want to complete the viewings I scheduled as it was such a fantastic introduction to the tv serial! My gratitude to Rinn for conceiving the idea & for running with it is a deep as the galaxy itself! I do hope it becomes an ‘annual’ event as it was quite literally the light and joy of my November!
[Jake Lake: Endings]
As it so happens the day I was first preparing this review to go live on my blog, I ended up readily engaged in quite a lively conversation through #LitChat which is a bi-weekly (Monday & Wednesday, 4-5 EST) literature conversation for the bookishly inclined! I stumbled across their feeds late in 2013, only to realise that it feels like I have found a nexus of readers who are as geeky and bookish as I am! The topics change weekly, as do the guests they feature on Wednesdays! As you can see, the topic on Monday was “Cliffhanger Endings” which I felt was appropriate to include here being that I was reading an essay on this very topical issue! How to properly end a story!
The following tweets were inserted using WP’s automated Tweet App: (as such I was trying to only include my words but the top tweet appears as well! They also appear in ‘reverse order’ because I like to be quirky!)
#LitChat My blog expresses the eclectic nature of my reading adventures! :) Laughs. Its a great time to be geeky and bookish! @LazetteG
As you can clearly denote, I have a keen interest in why certain books are set to swirl my head with bone crushing emotion and anguish, only to have no resolution of the core of the climax! These are the stories which nestle into my heart, the characters of whom I have followed through strife and joy, only to emerge out of their adverse circumstances with an unresolved distaste in my mouth! I whole-heartedly understand when stories cannot end well in later chapters if it’s the beginning of a serial, but what about the stand-alone books which oft-times are written by début authors!? What then, pray tell? Do you chance the hope that a sequel will be penned and released within a twelvemonth or do you anguish over the grief of not having a proper Epilogue to guide your heart back through to reality outside of the realm of the book!?
Endings if you ask me, are dicey, and these were my ruminations BEFORE I entered into Lake’s essay! Whoa!
I am quite comfortable if the elucidation of the story’s resolve remains vague if enough of the climaxical angst feels as though nothing more can be said or done to alleviate the character’s anguish. There are as much unresolved endings in fiction as Lake credits to real life; and I completely concur! Except to say, there is a measure of a breadth of leeway for science fiction & fantasy to a certain extent. However, my comments in the LitChat feed was a broad stroke recollection of inter-genre discussion. As such, I never specifically said which genre or branch of literature I was respectively discussing nor which particular author. I’d rather debate the merits of a tool of the craft, in this case, ‘the cliffhanger ending’ rather than to specifically denounce a preference of a writer. Because in the end, the issue with the ending is mine. I’m the reader who picked up the story in the forethought of expectation of an ending I could live with once the book was set down on my shelf. IF my presumption worked against my heart in the end, it is only half on the fault of the writing. It’s difficult to brace ourselves for unresolved endings when in life we are constantly dealing with the peculiar nature of the unknown! Sometimes it is nice to have a purported dimension where more or less resolution is commonplace rather than elusive!
According to Lake’s assessment my key issue is with accepting a story which is writ in normative and non-normative format! I knew there had to be a reasoning behind my discontempt! Yet. There are moments in certain stories I would suspect or even hope that the ending wouldn’t be resolved if the issues contained within the heart of the journey are ones beyond the scope of the book. A story can only yield so much insight into the world in which it thrives in the space in which it inhabits. I think my classic mistake is expecting too much out of certain stories in which present a journey with an open-ended definition of ‘the end’.
I was smiling when I read the bottom paragraphs of page 51! At the footfall of page 52 arching into page 53, Lake touches on the exact sentiment I was attempting to explain myself! If a story is generated to be a complex tome of narrative, the reader not only presumes but requires the ending to resonate with a deft complexity as the rest of the text! Thank you, Mr. Lake! His final sentence of page 55 is precisely what I was hinting at! Precisely!
Ah, ha! My malaise can lift! I suffer from broken endings under the influence of the parachute technique!
[G. Cameron Fuller: How Alien the Alien: A Primer]
The opening sequence of this essay illuminates one of my favourite [fantasy] films of the past decade: Avatar! I quite literally wanted to soak into the world in which the Na’vi lived! To soar into the skies as a warrior would have made my heart thrive on the electric pulse of purpose! Except to say, I believe my gender is against me in this one regard, but oh, I suppose there is a bit of a feminist in all of us who strive towards equality for all genders to pursue what they individually wish to achieve! Including in fictional worlds we drink in with a mirth of a nod in awe!
What fascinated me is that the conjecture of the tone in this section is that the Na’vi were not altogether alien in the traditional sense but rather a humanoid species living on a different planet from our own! Strangely or not, this mirrors my exact thought processes whilst I was in the darkened theater watching it on the silver screen! The aliens for me were the para-military minded soldiers whose taste for blood winked out the last bit of my inner resolve for warfare! No one wins in war, but warmongers are not my favourite characters to meet in fiction nor in motion pictures. The level of the emotionally gutting plane is enough to eclipse a moon!
I could even reflect that whilst I was becoming a Whovian during the 50th Anniversary month of Doctor Who, there were more than one occasion where I felt the ‘alien’ species being highlighted were less alien than the contemporary humans! Did anyone else think the nurses whose faces were cats was not all that unrealistic? Or, what about the fact that the Doctor himself is quite alien but prefers to be human?! Data ring any bells!? (as in: Brent Spiner’s character!)
He delves further into a study of some of my most memorable ‘alien’ characters: from Star Trek, Star Wars & Battlestar Galactica (all originals for me!); to the HAL computer of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the evolution of fear of technologic advances as explored in the works of Michael Crichton which I read from thirteen to seventeen! I devoured Crichton because I appreciated the balance of science fact and science fiction. Who else jumps into a dedicated passion for quantum mechanics and quantum physics due to the immersive jauntings of chaos theory encapsulated by the character of Malcolm in Jurassic Park? Which previously had been encouraged by Macgyver!
To put it more plainly, my personal preference of an alien race is one whose blendability is as translucently unseen as the subtle CGI special effects of films where unless you were given an outline could not deduce which sequence was digitally enhanced and which was shot in live-action!! Too much CGI makes a film portioned out of position which goes to say, that an alien who acts wantonly alien is going to have a more difficult chance of drawing empathy out of a reader!
[Nancy Kress: “The Green-Skinned Zorn Laughed with Grief” Character and Emotion in Science Fiction & Fantasy]
Compassion for characters through being a receptacle of their emotional cues whilst reading their stories unfold on the printed page is one of the main reasons I read fiction! I want the visceral experience to be all-encompassing without limiting myself of how far I am willing to take my emotional keel! I want to ache and anguish alongside the character who is woefully going through strife and adverse circumstances before embarking on a path towards redemption or enlightenment. I want to emotionally be convinced that my time spent with the character is one where I can feel as moved as though I had lived their life by the time the story concludes.
I do have my limits, naturally, we all do, but what I am referring to here is to be ensconced into a story within my limits and living every inch of the character’s life therein.
The following tweets were inserted using WP’s automated Tweet App: (as such I was trying to only include my words but the top tweet appears as well! They also appear in ‘reverse order’ because I like to be quirky!)
I couldn’t find the exact tweets I was seeking, which made me realise that perhaps the conversation was half contained in LitChat and half contained elsewhere! My memory is not drawing forward the exact ‘moment’ the topic was examined but the tweets I did discover to include bank around to the topic of why empathy for written characters is crucial to the reader’s experience of the story! If we cannot attach ourselves to the lead or supporting cast of characters on an emotional level, be that intensive or fanciful, we are not going to feel as though we read a transformative piece of story. We transform ourselves through the characters we read, as our minds process the experiences of their lives as experiences that become a part of our own threads of living. We process and analyse everything we drink in, which is one reason we all have to be cautious of what our internal limits are for subject, topic, and genre explorations! Its one thing to read to expand our horizons, it’s quite another to focus on literature which has a negative effect on our overall well-being. Which for me includes how far I am willing to absolve myself in gutting emotions if the off-set of the anguish is not released by a resolved ending!*
*The Time Traveller’s Wife (motion picture); Remember Sunday (tv movie); Follow the Stars Home (tv movie); The Notebook (motion picture); Backdraft (motion picture); Saving Private Ryan (motion picture); Life is Beautiful (motion picture); Alice I Have Been (book); The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (book); are key examples of stories I watched or read but should have exited without seeing the conclusions. The emotionally gutting angst and anguish which followed each of them was wrecked physically by the nightmaric flashbacks and migraine! Sometimes writing can feel so hauntingly real to me, that I have to watch that I do not traverse through a section of narrative that will render me worse than when I first became engaged! Woe to all sensitive hearts like me!
Whereas despite the heavy emotional keel I experienced whilst watching Road to Perdition it was the sociological perspective of understanding the character Tom Hanks portrayed that leveled out the angst of watching his life unfold. I gladly rallied through Girl in a Blue Dress (book), The House Girl (book), and even The Spirit Keeper (book) to emerge out of where I had started. I cherish the stories which push the envelope only ‘nay far’ to where I can enter and exit without side effects of my visit.
Her conclusion is my reason for reading itself: to walk away feeling physically moved and changed by the story I’ve read to the brink where the characters, setting, and place are able to stay with me for many years yet to come! I crave seeking out the stories which leave pieces of their imprint on my heart!
[Elizabeth Bear: Tactics of WorldBuilding]
Her essay was keenly lit in my eyes as I had already blogged about my Top Ten Book Turn-Offs late in 2013. Wherein I would disclose that one of the hardest issues I have in reading is when I am ‘taking out of place’ within the confines of the story. I completely concur with her lamentations about the purity of research and the extensive amount of said research it takes to create the true atmosphere of a world built on a sturdy foundation. I personally thrive on research because I happen to have a curious mind of which is rarely quenched! I adore snaking through corridors of the past to spotlight a key notation that could lead to a recognition in a story I am creating. I love wandering and absorbing everything that whets my general interest in the subject at hand as well as the focus in which I am pursuing for a specific reason. I try not to limit my research in scope but rather in a methodology that allows me the genesis of spontaneity of creating dialogue and narrative at the brink of discovery!
There are two key elements for me when it comes to world building in narratives, which may or may not be as prominently important for others. Is the author a wordsmith? And, did the author conduct the research to stitch in clues of the ‘place’, ‘time’, and ‘setting’ in which the story is erected!? These are key for me, because I am not one who always appreciates the redundancy of words in fiction. There are certain genres which sometimes flutter an ire inside me, because they relay on the usage of ‘trigger’ words which repeat, reflect, and insinuate themselves to have their own harmonious hum in the story. I still read those stories if the character and context interest me, but my ire is aflame a bit to wonder, why not pick up a thesaurus?I should have mentioned this in my Book Turn Offs, but I didn’t originally believe I had enough to fill the list! The research falterations can become readily apparent to me in most instances and less so in others. It depends if I am reading for mere pleasure or if I want a heartier read where I quite literally want to feel, touch, and sense the world in which I am reading. The difference is subtle but the elements can reflect whether or not its a causal author you read OR if it’s an author you want to pursue long-term.
Her exposition on writers using other writers to give them the foundation of their stories is something I picked up on myself whilst reading certain genres which are saturated. You can start to notice the telling truth of writers who write stories solely based on the books they read themselves. Mostly because their own creations are limited to the world in which they read by another writer’s vision. Her intuition of a readers who send up ‘red flags’ whilst reading is reflective of my own reading life! If I reach more than three flags, I am considering why I am bothering at all! If it feels like a tornado siren is going off in my head, I simply discontinue right where I am!
Being a think writer myself, I understood where she is pointing her guiding hand; she wants writers to become aware of their worlds to where you could quite literally walk blind through them knowing every inch of its space. You have to be conscience of the dynamics your world is creating for you to build the story. If your confidence grows out of the knowledge of your world, your readers will automatically endear themselves to the novel long before the middle is reached! Whilst reading her essay I found a like-minded soul who reads with the same apprehensive excitement as I do!Apprehensive here refers to whether or not she or I will find what we are hoping to read inside the cover!
I am not one to generally gravitate towards a manual of ‘writing tips OR how to’ yield the most out of our craft [writing]. Except to say, I can honestly credit Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy alongside Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg as being my favourite discoveries thus far! The key elements of the craft are interlayed into both books, and I daresay, no matter what you elect to create, these are the two books of ‘writer’s craft’ guides you need in your personal library!
I have unearthed three distinctly different Twitter Chat interfaces this week, which I happily suggest you find time one week to engage in directly!
*(runs concurrent with The Star Chamber Show, unfortunately! In which you may not see me until its concluded!)
Do you know of any other chat feeds and the days in which they chatter about a literary topic? Kindly share your experiences in the comment threads!
This Seventh Star Press focus week was brought together with the help of Tomorrow Comes Media, of which I am a blog tour hostess and book reviewer. To keep up to speed with which authors and books I will be featuring on Jorie Loves A Story in the near future via Tomorrow Comes Media, please check out my Bookish Events!
This marks my fourth post in contribution of:
(“Strength and Honor” by Stephan Martiniere, used with the artist’s permission)
I open up the discussion to continue through you, dear hearts! Which of the sections I have highlighted through my own musings attached themselves to your own curious heart? Which inclinations of writing resonate to you the most? Which of the three branches of speculative fiction do you write? Which do you draw a breath of curious excitement to read? Are any of the writers contained in the anthology ones you read regularly? I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways from your visit! And, as this is a focus week on an Indie Press, which Indie Press do you gravitate towards for science fiction, fantasy, and horror? OR have you hesitated to read an Indie Press title or author? Which specific sub-genre do you gravitate towards the most?
{SOURCES: The 2014 Sci-Fi Experience was granted permission to use the artwork by Stephen Martiniere in their official badge for all participants to show their solidarity during the event! Michael Knost photograph & biography, cover art for Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy were provided by Tomorrow Comes Media and used with permission. Blog News badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Tweets pulled from Twitter were able to be embedded by the codes provided through WP’s Tweet App in the Media section. Likewise, tweets can also be directly added by individual tweets on Twitter.}
I was selected to be a stop on “Love At First Slight” Virtual Book Tour, hosted by Meryton Press. I received a complimentary copy of “Love At First Slight” in exchange for an honest review by the publisher Meryton Press. The book released on 1st November 2013. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein. This marks my first review for Meryton Press!
My connection to the Author & the Novel:
Originally you might recall, I took part in the Book Cover Reveal for this novel on the 30th of August, 2013. I had received a curious email from the original publisher Rhemalda Press expressing interest of book bloggers who wanted to share the joy of the forthcoming release by J. Marie Croft. Having dipped into the Regency this year through participation of August in August, whereupon I re-read my beloved Pride and Prejudice whilst hinged to September’s Classics Re-Told Reading Challenge! I must confess I was deeply curious about which direction Ms. Croft would spin her tale of Darcy & Elizabeth knowing full well the tides were tipped askew as in this rendition of the story “Darcy” was meant to be a lass named Elizabeth, wherein making the “Bennett” a “William”! A flip on heel after canon seemed rather fitting of a story to follow on the foot heels of having read the original! Or, thus I rather thought would be a rather splendid reading!
With the closure of Rhemalda Press in a rather abrupt motion, I was in the dark as far as the pre-promised stop on the blog book tour which as of mid-September was no longer set to happen! I realised the news whilst opening up the former Press website reading on their behalf the letter they had publicly released. I quickly contacted Ms. Croft, to infer my disheartened heart on her behalf, as although I had wanted to read her story I felt grievously worse for her as her book was now in stasis! At the very same moment, I learnt her book had then been picked up by Meryton Press, which delighted me over the very moon in excitement! I was celebrating whole-heartedly the good fortune of having this novel picked up so quickly!
From that moment forward, I have been in the background waiting to see Love At First Slight grow wings and lift off into reader’s hands! I patiently waited word that the book was being released in print and would be available to receive in exchange for an honest review by those of us who had previously been in contact with Rhemalda were given the option to review for Meryton! Over the course of the months (September through December), the author and I have exchanged a few notes whereupon the seed of friendship had been planted. As she was one of the first who saw the name of my blog and fully understood the cheeky humour which is contained therein! I look forward to watching this book grab hold of readers hearts as much as I look forward to knowing Ms. Croft a bit better in the future! How blessed am I for this experience! And, yes, the book is in my hands at long last!
Synopsis of the story:
“It may not be universally acknowledged,
but the unvarnished truth is that a young widow
in possession of a good fortune is not necessarily in want of another husband.”
In this humorous, topsy-turvy Pride & Prejudice variation, all the gender roles are reversed. It is Mr. Bennet’s greatest wish to see his five sons advantageously married. When the haughty Miss Elizabeth Darcy comes to Netherfield with the Widow Devonport nee Bingley, speculation—and prejudice—runs rampant.
William Bennet, a reluctant and irreverent future reverend, catches Miss Darcy’s eye even though he is beneath her station. However, his opinion of her was fixed when she slighted him at the Meryton Assembly. As her ardour grows, so does his disdain, and when she fully expects to receive an offer of marriage, he gives her something else entirely ….
Photo Credit: Glane Gorveatt
J. Marie Croft lives in Nova Scotia and divides her time among working at a music lesson centre, geocaching (a high-tech treasure hunt) with her husband, and writing. Her stories are lighthearted; and her tag line is Jane Austen’s quote, “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.” A member of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Canada), she admits to being excessively attentive to the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. Adult twin daughters are the light of her life even though they don’t appreciate Mr. Darcy the way ‘Momzie” does. She can be contacted at her website:J. Marie Croft
A most curiously familiar cast of characters:
For readers who consider themselves Janeites &/or Austenites, the curious familiarity of the cast of characters found in Love At First Slight, will by no means be found as daunting to unravel as someone entering this lovely Regency world for the first time! The players, of whom, you are most apt to want to keep track off from the jump-start will be as follows: (counterpart characters are next to their names!)
Benjamin & Flora Bennett – parents of five unmarried, unattached singletons (all male heirs!): Martin (Mary) the studious and oppressively observant elder brother who finds himself befit siblings of social reproach!; Charles (Jane) the loveable sibling who chooses to see the world as an optimist; William (Elizabeth) a bit jaded and indifferent to society’s constrictions; and twins! Laurence and Christopher taking up the rear! (clearly of whom reek more of Lydia’s faults than the sense of Kitty) Uniquely in this spin, its Benjamin not Flora who is consumed by ill-fated nerves of seeing his sons married, which puts the weight of their betrothals on a father rather than a mother! She, in turn, takes her cue from the original Mr. Bennett having a preference for solidarity, reading, and staying outside the sphere of the social specter!
The Lucases (Sir William & Lady Lucas) – parents of Marcus & Clarence are the Bennett’s rivals for marriage!
The Gardiners – are still involved in the story, though this time a sad referee of knowledge for the Bennett brothers, knowing that even if their heart’s lie in opposite fields of choice, they are each meant to acquire their own livings based on the lot they were given to achieve. The Gardiners happily are still the winsome supporters of their nephews!
Elizabeth Darcy – in lieu of FitzWilliam, gives her earnest début as a woman with as much of an affront on country society as her affable counterpart! She lends the impression of being stalwart stubborn in both extolling her position whilst interacting with others as much as her own countenance.
Jane (Bingley) Devonport – in lieu of Charles is a widow in this after canon, who is determined to take up residence at Netherfield Hall. She, like him before her, has a delicate heart and an innocence of life which is what draws each to their respective heart’s desire.
Casper & Leonard Bingley – are decidedly worse than their original counterparts as they are oppressively snobbish and prejudicial of their peers!
Miss Olivia Collins, sister of William Collins – an obtusely droll sister who does her counterpart well in her appearance! Except that she has a streak of humility not afforded Mr. Collins (of Pride), to where she gives a glimpse of her softened repose of a woman most in want of a husband. Her pursuit is more of a natural yearning to be part of a union of a complimentary couple rather than the sole pursuit of many of her age. She is of course prone to tone out propriety and settle for long examinations of ramblings no one else has quite the ear towards hearing!
William Collins – (first Cousin of Mr. Bennett) being the clergy under the coattails of Sir Lewis de Bourgh of Rosings Park, is a necessary inclusion.
Miss Felicity Wickham – the wickedly devious bane of Miss Darcy’s existence, of whom could only bring a blight of misery on the Bennett’s! If parallel worlds were compliant she would be the other Wickham’s evil twin! Thus far as to say, they both had the perfect presence for inserting themselves into people’s lives for the pure exulting measure of advancing their own interests!
One happy coincidence the reader will notice most surely is how clever the choices in names, Ms. Croft bestowed on her characters! For Jane fell in love with Charles Bingley in the original Pride and Prejudice, and here, she is widowed by a ‘Bingley’, or rather a ‘Jane’ is widowed by one such fellow! Ha! Using William as the character to go up against Elizabeth is rather classic, if you consider outfitting this William as a Deacon meant to be a Cleric as more mirth and folly than one could hope be afforded! Charles Bingley’s name is donned by the love of his life Jane’s retold character in this story! Little curious oddities and irrepressible delights start this story off on the right footing!
Gathering my wits and alighting into Netherfield:
I regret that my plans to become acquainted with after canons this year, failed in the regard that I was not able to construct the time needed in either August or September for proper readings! Therefore, I am going in a bit blind with this reading as to know how others’ have handled their variations and versions of Pride and Prejudice. I can attest that the humour wrought through the storyline is a bit out of the reach of Jane Austen, as I think she might have blushed by some of the satire for the bluntly common joviality! However, I find Croft’s cheekily woven humour to light a bit of a punch and edge into a story that is as well-known as this, to effectively change the story to where it’s nearly its own tale altogether!
Having said that, it still remains true to how most of Pride plays out, as it is William who must walk over field and meadow in the mud to seek the condition of his ailing brother Charles (rather than Elizabeth seeking Jane!), only to find as a gobsmacked surprise in having Elizabeth (Darcy!) sympathise with his endearing nature to be with his brother, verse the discontentment of the Bingley brothers who felt most put out! From this timeless exchange of familial respect between the respective families, we find Croft venturing into new territory. Your not expecting to find one character smitten by the other, nor to have each of the characters observed in ways of which were not seen in the original. I like how Croft manages to breathe new life into a story all of us have come to know as our own. It lends itself a bit of a mystery as to where the characters are meant to entreat as much as striving to give the reader a new line of suspense upon the ending chapters! I must admit, whilst reading of Elizabeth’s wanton remarks on reflection of William, I nearly saw her inner voice rather than her outer countenance of an upper-class snob! Methinks perhaps this is a bit of a ploy on the author’s part to see how far a reader is willing to go as far as to suspend their own judgement (à la prejudice) towards Elizabeth, as she in full effect is replacing everyone’s beloved FitzWilliam! As for my own mind (and heart!) I like to travel a bit further into the heart of a story before formulating an opinion one way or the other, as far as knowing the true merit of a person’s character and the conviction of their actions as they are relayed.
If I can be so bold as to say, this version of Netherfield is like walking through a time portal to jaunt yourself into an alternative version of the place you last left your feet! You might look around, noticing bits and bobbles of what is already known, but at the very same time, everything appears to be a bit different, a bit off or left of center from whence you where here previously. In those little grievances of change, you start to realise that you’re seeing the familiar in a whole new dimension that is both invigorating and confusing! It takes a bit to draw your bearings, but once you do, I’d be plumb aghast if another reader hadn’t found herself (or himself) in step with this Netherfield as readily as a viewer could step through the portal known as “Lost in Austen”.
My Review of Love At First Slight:
As you fingers pull open the pages of a beloved story’s after canon, re-envisioned in a wholly new and plausible set of circumstances which start to alight in your mind’s eye as though your only re-entering a dance you had sat out the last set of; you’ll find yourself readily acquainted with the key players, with a lurking suspicion that even as they are familiar, there is a measure of freshness to their embodiment! They might speak in the same language of the age, they might even ring true their incarnated spirits of their originals, but wherein you find the familiar, there is a level of wanton choice to make these characters stand on their own laurels. As the story first reveals itself to you, a nod of a notice is given to the author whose passion for Austen’s style of romance is clearly evident as is her ability to convey her own spin on the previous writer’s incantation of a woman too prejudice and of a man too proud! I oft felt they both exchanged their own vices, and theirs was a story of how pride and prejudice towards those you barely know can lead you in such extraordinary corridors of choice!
Therein lies the departure, as Love At First Slight, stands on its own feet as a story of unpredictable turns at moments when even the reader was the last one to suspect the avenues ventured! There is a craft to willing a reader to circumvent their own perceptions of a story, as your only able to base your stances on what you read as a story is read. In this, lies a territory for jostling with the reader’s heart! Yet, it is artistry to switch the tables on gender-specific roles both in structure of story as much as in dialogue. Subtle changes in who originates which bit of speech, and yet, in lieu of a lady for a gent, the ability to ascertain the intent behind the structure changes in one fluid motion! And, of course, the reverse is equally as true!
Without the worriment over an entail due to a lack of a male heir, Croft had disentangled the one key ingredient Austen had left inside the story to dig deeper into the woe of marriage for five unwed singletons. Seeing the story play out to befit men rather than ladies, I admit proved to be a unique glimpse into another side of living altogether. It’s not only a reversal of gender, but of status, and the perception of status therein. The stage in which the story is set ebbs along with the changes to where even the secondary characters start to act outside of their spheres!
Longbourn was never more appealing of a visitation as it is in this story. There is a key observation made on Mr. Bennett’s behalf in the opening passages of Chapter 1, Volume II. The ingenuity of the comparison Croft gave in this section was as befitting as Mrs. Bennett in the original! How I applaud clever observations by giving examples such as the one I had for Taking Root in Provence, where I used a latte to guide my expression of the narrative therein! Giving a bit of reality to the mannerisms of a character bent towards the extreme is a cheeky way of representing them, I do believe! All the lovely little quirks that befall the Bennett family are still inside this tale of their residence at Longbourn. By the time this section of the novel is reached you nearly suspend all logic that there were a version of filt with females rather than excitable males! Three cheers for Croft for having a seamless transition! I also loved how she inserted a passion for Shakespeare by borrowing key references which befit scenes, dialogue, and character with such alacrity as to be struck as natural!
Getting caught up in the everyday jovial notions of Regency life is quite easier when a writer abides the time to include them in their narrative! Croft excels at giving out little bobbles of the Regency, as she doesn’t flout over trivialities but rather revels in them! Your taken abreast of everything you would see, smell, hear, taste, and bear in Regency society! To where I find this exploit of Austenesque literature to be on every Janeite’s shelf of pleasure!
A Special Note on Darcy & William:
One of the attractions for me whilst reading the original Pride and Prejudice is the vexation of having two people who feel transfixed by their oppositional personalities, come to terms with their attraction for one another. In this story, we see the underpinnings of attraction alighting through new circumstances and interjections of dialogue not yielded into view in the original. In this, we can celebrate that at the very heart and nature of a Darcy | Bennett connection there are the under-threadings of wickedly decisive and independently strong individuals who are not used to bending as a willow to give someone the proper chance to fall in love with them. Compromise to them is as devastating as becoming an invalid through illness! The sparring between them in this narrative is as delightful as the first square-off I saw them in when their roles were in reverse! I think it’s always a champion idea to pit would-be couples at odds with each other in a story where your attempting to focus on not only the strong of will but the strength of individual character. Not everyone is always prepared to enter into a betrothal if they feel they have to yield past the point of what they are willing give as concession to another in the relationship. When two strong-minded souls first start to butt heads, I do believe, its in that chance happenstance of a moment they are either going to end up parting company OR they are going become married with the knowledge their relationship will be full of fire and smouldering affections thereafter!
What I most appreciated was the sincerity of William’s appreciation for the natural world around him! Like Lizzy before him, he was as determined to remember where he walked and where he lived as much as she had! They each were attune to the natural environs in ways where their peers would readily forsake the realm for Town! Earthly in sport and of a belief where finding a balance between work and play is a necessity rather than an off-handed foray of play, I found William to be boldly different from FitzWilliam! As I find William a Lord of the Manor, of whom would toil more in the grit of the soil and in the caring of the fields moreso than FitzWilliam, of whom I always felt would delegate the everyday work load. William is ruggedly attached to the land and to preserving the history of how the land has been maintained. In direct comparison, FitzWilliam was more apt to be a caretaker-in-arms, standing guard and overseeing the management of the estate from an executive position. Herein lies the appeal of both characters and the point of perspectives they bring to their roles!
Elizabeth on the other hand is decidedly trickier to get a feel for as she is curious kept cleverly from the reader’s view. Little humanistic qualities peek out in-between the sequences of her interactions, but the true heart of her mind and being are as much of a mystery for the reader as they are for William!
An affection for words, this writer gives to all of thee:
Croft chooses to take the reader to higher grounds of literary enlightenment by her carefully selected words and turns of phrase contained within the pages of Love At First Slight. The entitlement of her novel is a clever twist on the original, but it’s how she chooses to infuse her character’s mannerisms, quirky natures, and expressions of personality that sets her a bit apart from other authors. She’s one of the true wordsmiths who is as giddy about lesser known verbs, adjectives, and nouns as I am! I can see she must have amassed quite the library of dictionaries and thesauruses too! The words may not easily tip-off the tongue but they endeavour even the causal reader to sit up and take stock of what the writer is entreating to teach them! Let the language of the novel inspire a bit of wordplay in all of us, celebrating the depth of the English language and the heart of a Regency romance!
This blog book tour stop was courtesy of Meryton Press,
{SOURCES: Author photograph of J. Marie Croft & Book Synopsis given originally by Rhemalda Press, used again with permission of author in this review as both are still current for press purposes. Book Cover for Meryton Press edition of Love At First Slight given by author and used by permission. Book Review badge provided by Parajunkee Designs to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Classics Re-Told badge created by Jorie in Canva. Photo Credit: Cas Cornelissen (Public Domain : Unsplash).}
Melanie Dugan is the author of Dead Beautiful (“the writing is gorgeous,” A Soul Unsung), Revising Romance, and Sometime Daughter.
This Blog Tour Stop is courtesy of TLC Book Tours:
