I am so, SO overdue to continue this that it’s not even funny! But since I definitely want to get this done before An Unexpected Journey comes out in December, and because my language geekery is wanting the love, let’s dive into Chapter 5, shall we? Bring on the riddles in the dark!
This won’t be the whole chapter, but it’s a start, and I’ll keep chipping away at this as I can!
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
As I’ve mentioned in my previous reviews of Courtney Milan’s work, I like her writing quite a bit–and Unlocked, her novella set between Books 1 and 2 of her Turner series, was no exception. This story features a side character that we briefly meet in Book 1, and how the wallflower Lady Elaine Warren is courted by an earl who once was extremely cruel to her and now deeply regrets it.
I really liked Elaine’s backstory, and I liked Elaine a lot as a character. The incident in her and her love interest’s history that set her down the path of spinsterhood was his publicly mocking her for a distinctly unladylike laugh, and the ton being what it is in these sorts of books, all of his hangers-on immediately leap on the chance to mock poor Elaine mercilessly. This pretty much ruins her socially, and I can’t help but feel for the poor woman and want to punch Evan for having pulled that on her. This being a romance novella, though, Evan’s maturation as a character hinges upon his having realized the error of his ways, and he does so beautifully.
If Regencies are your thing, this is a great fast read, and you can read without needing to have read the first in the Turner series since it stands alone. Four stars.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have to admit, I liked the idea of this one–in no small part because the house wherein the mystery is set, filled wall to wall with the hoarded items of many years, rang true for me. I’ve known houses like that. Fortunately none that ever had anything like the plot of this book happen in them, but nonetheless, houses that were definitely the home of hoarders.
And as for the mystery itself, I have to admit as well that I’m writing this review many months after having read the book. But that said? I’m remembering it kindly. Our heroine Terry is a private investigator, and I specifically liked the ethos of the agency she’s working for, helping women that need it. This plot in particular, which wound up having international ramifications, struck me as a bit convoluted and oddly juxtaposed against the setting of a hoarder’s house. But not overly so, and on the whole I did enjoy reading this one. It’s good for a light mystery read. Three stars.
Anybody miss my book review posts? I’ve certainly missed doing them, and I’m severely behind on ’em. I’ve been so busy over the last many months that it’s been impossible for me to review books in a timely fashion, I’m afraid. I have been regularly rating them on Goodreads, but that’s just not the same, I think. Apologies for my chronic tardiness on this, especially to my fellow authors to whom I promised book reviews a LONG time ago.
So this is your all’s notice that I’m going to try to get a bit more caught up. I have overdue reviews from both 2011 AND 2012, so don’t be confused if you see Book Log posts showing up for both years. I’m going to alternate between them to try to close the gaps!
I’ll be picking up again with reviews from June of 2011. Next up: Trash Course, a mystery from Carina Press!
I just made the delightful discovery that several of the French SF/F books I wanted to get are in fact available for the Nook–so I indulged myself and grabbed them! They’re ones that I THINK are all available from the same publisher, which might explain why I found them on bn.com. The publisher in question is Alire–who stand out for me with their covers because of a distinctive way of showing the author’s last name in a vertical block of white text on black. So here are the books of theirs I grabbed! Most of these are titles I grabbed off the lists of recent Aurora Award winners and/or nominees, so they seemed like excellent examples of Francophone SF/F authors to check out. And Esther Rochon I grabbed because of her being recommended by 
cow
So yeah, those ought to keep me occupied for some time!
Meanwhile, I had Dara pick this up for me from Amazon, in print:
And I grabbed this in print because I’ve needed to grab a copy for a while, and because of the general awesomeness of Smart Bitches Trashy Books:
And last but not least, from Carina Press on general grounds of their awesomeness AND because they sent me a coupon:
This brings me to 108 for the year!
I have received notification from Amazon’s KDP system that my first drop of royalties, for sales in June of this year, will be delivered to me on the 31st. The amount is puny–$39.45–but it is by gods my royalties, and I’ll be very grateful to get them.
Similarly, Apple has a notification up on my iTunes Connect account saying that my first payment from them should be delivered on September 6th. They owe me over $75 at this point for total sales, but I expect to get a subset of that; I don’t know the exact amount yet.
The long and short of it is, though, I’m about to get money for my self-pub sales and that is awesome. Especially since the sales so far in the month of August have been minimal–especially on B&N and Smashwords and Kobo. So those of you who aren’t in favor of either Amazon or Apple, if you want a copy of Faerie Blood and you don’t have it yet, those sites have it too!
Especially worthy of note is that Kobo just sent its Writing Life authors a notice saying that to celebrate the site being up, they’ll be bumping up the royalty rate to 80 percent. Which is super, super shiny, so any of you Kobo owners out there, if you’d like to consider buying my book, now’s the time! And remember, y’all, I’ll also be happy to just hand-sell you a copy of the ebook if you want it, just drop me a line and we’ll make arrangements! The same will apply once I get the next drop of print copies from Third Place; the request for the next set of those is in, and I’ll post when I have more copies available.
Amazon has also, by the way, also informed us KDP users that self-pub sales will now be available in India! So readers in India should be able to grab my book off of Amazon.com now. If anybody out there actually succeeds at doing that, I’d love to hear about it!
And oh yes, speaking of iTunes–I’ve gone ahead and deployed Faerie Blood to all the remaining iTunes stores I have access to, for a total of 32 stores! Mostly this means a bunch more countries in the Eurozone, and a couple of Scandinavian countries as well. If you’re in Europe and you’re an iTunes user, chances are high you can get Faerie Blood that way now.
I have cleared 80 copies sold so far this summer, counting print and digital. It’d be awesome if I could clear 100 by the end of the year.
This is a book roundup post made entirely of awesomeness, since it features four of my favorite authors!
Picked up in print:
katatomicrachelcaineAnd, picked up electronically:
jimhines98 for the year! And counting Seawitch twice since I DID buy it both formats!