Stop me if you have heard this before: shy, outcast girl dreams of being liked, only to find that the only person in their school that realises how wonderful she is just happens to be the most popular guy there. It’s a set-up that has been used so many times that, like many other reused concepts, can very easily become trite, or lost in a sea of similar works. But there are stories out that that despite having a reused premise, are so well done that they shine in amongst the common rabble.
So, like any good bookworm, I have a to-real pile. Although when I look at it properly – and especially if I were to add in the ebook library – it would be more like a tower. There are a lot of memes out there dedicated to showing off unread books, but if I were to give one book a week some focus it would take forever. And I suspect I am not the only one in this position. I’m also very much a vampire bookworm: not only do I have a vampire podcast, it’s my dream to travel through Eastern Europe (where part of my family comes from) and visit various locations important to vampire folklore and fiction.
There are a lot of articles out there on essential/best plugins for Wordpress blogs, and even a few by book bloggers. One thing I have noticed is that they tend to recommend the same major plugins, and while Askimet is important, I wanted to see what other plugins book bloggers are using.
The Glass Demon is one of those books I knew was going to be good right from the very first lines. In just two sentences Grant effectively sets up a feeling of impending doom, and with the third sets up the first death – and thus the rest of the book. With such a strong opening, standards are high for the rest of the book. But Grant’s elegant writing and careful plotting make for a page-turning novel that gets better and better with each chapter.
A thing I have been doing lately-ish is making stuff and giving it away to download for free. So far it has been a public domain fairytale ebook (with a new cover by me) and some colouring mandala because I like colouring and times are stressful.
In case you didn’t know, I am a big fan of anything vampire. I even run a podcast dedicated to the discussion of vampires in media. And in case you aren’t familiar with the Bloodsucking Feminists and our rantings opinions, you’ll know that vampire fiction tends to be about straight white pretty people. So when browsing Kickstarter for anything to do with vampires please somebody help me I discovered a kickstarter for a graphic novel about the same-sex romance between a 61 year old man and a vampire of colour I had to investigate.
If you’ve visited my blog before, or even followed me on twitter, you may have noticed that I like to make covers for books. Some examples include one for the NaNo that has just gone by, and pretty much everything in my portfolio.
A few years is a lifetime in YA: #YesGayYA is probably so far back that at least some people are not aware of what exactly happened.
The short version is this: Brown and Smith co-wrote a post-apocalyptic YA book, STRANGER, featuring a diverse cast and 5 POV characters. During their search for an agent for this book (they were already agented, only separately) they wrote a post on Publishers Weekly where they revealed that an unnamed agent had asked them to either remove the POV of one character, or change/hide an intrinsic part of him.
You may not have figured this out, but I live in New Zealand. (Yes, it is the place where they filmed Lord of the Rings. No, it’s not part of Australia.) While a lot of the media we consume here is imported – mostly from the US and then the UK, as well as Australia – we have our own creatives producing movies, TV shows, and of course books.
Each year I tell myself that I am going to read more NZ books, and each year I either do it or I don’t. So to get me started for the next round, here is 5 NZ books I plan to read in 2017. Wish me luck.
Lately I have been having fun making (and colouring) mandala patterns, and I thought I would share a couple of them for you to print and colour in as well. Colouring in is fun, and I know this time of year can be stressful. The mandala are in one .pdf file, zipped with the example images you see below.