News and Reviews

Still buried up to my eyebrows in my submission to the Ellora's Cave "Cavemen" anthologies. I swing wildly between loving my story and knowing it's good (whether or not it gets accepted) and hovering over the "delete file" key because it's all worthless crap no one will ever want to read and I should just go back to scrapbooking to fulfill my creative urges.

I'm still having a moment, in other words. But I'm confident it will pass.

REVIEWS:

For ADIOS TO MY OLD LIFE, by my dear friend and crit partner, Caridad Ferrer...from BOOKLIST, no less. Because she's the SHIT.

Ali Montero, 17, has been brought up by her father, a music professor in Miami, to be a good Cuban American girl as well as a talented singer and guitarist. But he’s not pleased when she makes the finals in a nationwide TV competition to find the "next Latin superstar." Could she win? Caught up in the performance rush with makeup, wardrobe, and publicity, she is helped by cute Jaime Lozano, a smart production major from NYU, who loves her. Ali’s first-person colloquial narrative is "totally" with it. But there’s also a real story here, with frenetic action, romance (including some hot sex), pop-scene fantasy, and surprises to the very end. What shines through in Cuban American writer Ferre’s first novel (part of the MTV Fiction series), though, is the rich diversity of Latino culture, and the celebration of music and its universal connections.

ADIOS TO MY OLD LIFE at Amazon.com.

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And for my own TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, from TwoLipsReviews.com:

4 KISSES (out of 5) and 2 PEPPERS for heat (out of 3): Fifty years from now, the Breach has been catalyzed by global warming, destroying a good portion of life on earth; and for the remainder, the Change has arrived. Those who choose to embrace it have become nocturnal, creatures of the night. Jack is one of those; to conceal his undercover activities he pretends to be a male escort. He’s decided it’s time to leave the monster-ridden nightmare that Baltimore has become, and he’s going to ask his girlfriend, Laura, to go along.

Laura never knew Jack before the Change, before he became a vampire. Laura is convinced that Jack considers her no more than a blood donor and sometime partner, but she is no more aware of that than she is of his work for the Resistance in Baltimore. When the big-break up scene comes, magic will interfere with fate, with surprising results.

Selah March is a skillful writer of futuristic fantasy, creating a world, which we all might hope we never have to experience. Shallow on the surface, the protagonists, Laura, Jack, and Ellie, prove to be much deeper than expected, and hope triumphs despite the horrible conditions of the story line. To Have and Have Not is a story well worth reading as an introduction to this author; caution to the reader, there is some violence and graphic narrative included.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT at Phaze.

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I've got a couple reviews for LIE TO ME on the way, which is scaring me shitless. I suspect it's the kind of story that readers will either love or hate, so sending it out for review is a crapshoot. It took every fiber of my willpower not to stock the freezer with Haagen Dazs in preparation to receive these reviews...

In other news, my daughter's third grade teacher passed away suddenly over the weekend, and so we've had to broach THAT subject. In my family of origin, the discussion of death was at least as verboten as the discussion of sex, so I don't have much training in how to talk about buying the farm with a nine-year-old.

My sister, who rebelled against our clan's bizarre handling of death (and by bizarre I mean not telling my twelve-year-old self that certain a family member had died for MONTHS, until said family member didn't show up for Christmas and I had the bad taste to ask, "Where's Aunt Mae?"...or insisting that all dead pets had actually gone to live on a farm, far, far away...or neglecting to call me at college to tell me yet another aunt had croaked, thereby making it impossible for me to attend the funeral) by going to work for Hospice and running a practice as a grief counselor on the side, is coming in from Tacoma this weekend. I may hand the dirty work off to her, now that the initial shock has worn off.

Hmm...one sister bucks the denial of death and becomes a grief counselor...one sister rejects the denial of sexuality turns to writing smut...we're really quite the mutinous bunch, aren't we? Can't wait to see what the baby of the family does to piss my mother off. ;)

Happy Thursday!

SelahMarch.com - Romance of Dubious Virtue