Steamed by Katie MacAlister

I hadn't heard of this book until my lovely friend Red over at Texas Red Books reviewed it. Steampunk has hovered at the edges of my sci-fi interest for several years, but I'd never really made a foray into the genre until recently. During my trip to DragonCon last fall, there were quite a few people dressed in Steampunk gear. The most amazing, awesome Steampunk gear was someone who had kitted out his wheelchair! It was so well-done.

My dad was caught up in the Steampunk trend and since getting back home has made his own Steampunk jewelry. I'm glad that he's found a new hobby, and I keep hassling him to get his things up on Etsy. Once he finally does, I'll post a link for all those who might be interested. I think he does a great job, and I hope everyone else does, too!

Anyway! The book! I love the cover art to begin with. It's so well done! I feel like it really captured the essence of Steampunk. I was expecting a book that was set completely in an alternate Steampunk universe, but this book wasn't. Two of the main characters were catapulted into the Steampunk universe through an accident of nanotechnology.

I found the point of view rather confusing. MacAlister used first person and switched between telling the story from the girl's point of view to the guy's point of view. It was hard to keep track of who was telling the story sometimes.

I also ended up feeling like MacAlister was advocating the advantages of living in our universe as opposed to a Steampunk universe. I don't feel like that was true to the Steampunk "code," so to speak. If I read Steampunk or dress Steampunk or write Steampunk, I believe in Steampunk. I believe that it is better than the way we live. That wasn't the feeling I got from MacAlister.

I got a sort of deux ex machina feeling from the book as well. The heroine always knew just the right person in order to pull their bacon out of the frying pan each time. It felt just a little too contrived for me.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, even though I had some criticisms. I enjoyed the foray into the Steampunk world, I enjoyed the romance, and I hope that MacAlister is going to continue to tell the story of the Steampunk universe she has created.

Absentee Blogger

December is a busy month for everyone. That's no surprise with all the parties, Christmas shopping and the usual day-to-day events. In addition, I'm a crafter, so I end up making quite a few of my Christmas gifts. My December flew by without reviews, but certainly not without reading! I have two fantastic series that I've just discovered in the past month that I'm going to share with my blog followers, so stay tuned.

When Being a Reader & Being a Writer Collide

I am an avid reader, and have been since before I could even read. My mother tells me that I used to sit at her feet and watch her reading. I am quoted as saying "I wish I could read." I was highly motivated to learn to read and learned as quickly as possible.

With my love of reading has followed a love of writing. I loved the characters in my books so much that I wanted to create my own characters. I began writing epic stories with no end in elementary school. I still have a notebook filled with a description of my imaginary world that I wrote some time in middle school. In 3rd grade, I was a finalist in a DAR writing competition about what the Constitution meant to me.

In high school, I discovered poetry. It was all I wrote for years. At college, I majored in English with an emphasis in creative writing. All but one of my workshop classes were in poetry. I really struggled with the one fiction workshop class that I took. My biggest issue was conflict. I didn't really have a lot in my own life, and a lack of experience led to a lack of inspiration for me. After college, I stagnated. I dealt with depression that sucked any interest in writing out of me.

Living in Los Angeles, I posted an ad on Craigslist for a writing partner. To my surprise, I found a great one! She was from Kentucky like me, and vegan where I was vegetarian. She liked my writing and really encouraged me. A year later, she and her husband moved back to Chicago where they had lived previously. I went out hunting for a writing partner again, and again was amazingly lucky. This writing partner helped me focus more on my goals as a writer and the fact that I start a million different projects and never finish anything!

Now I am a blogger mostly, with a few pieces of poetry and quite a few personal essays thrown in. I do a lot of thinking about writing a novel. I have done a lot of planning in regards to my novel. I've started more than one novel. However, I haven't pushed through any of them yet.

Then a funny thing happened. All that reading I've done about writing a novel started clicking into place while I was reading. The book I read the other day was a textbook example. Textbooks, though? Not so much fun to read. Textbook examples, ditto. I am seriously concerned that being a writer is going to ruin being a reader for me! It disappoints me that books are becoming predictable and formulaic. I don't want to have to give up one or the other of my pleasures for the sake of the other remaining interesting.

Veteran's Day

I know that this is not strictly a bookish post, but I felt like it was important for me to say.

I am a pacifist. And hard core. I have always said that arguments are best solved with words, not violence. However, my boyfriend and I have had arguments about this recently. He says "Might makes right," and I haven't yet come up with an argument that trumps that. There are some people that are just not open to negotiation. It takes two to come to an agreement. My views about are mostly not changed, but I'm recognizing that there are some cases in which nothing short of violence works.

I have usually viewed veterans with respect, but somewhat of a negative attitude. I don't often feel that they fight for me, the military is misused by the government(not the service members' faults), and so forth. As I have said to people in the past, I don't support the cause the troops are currently fighting for in Iraq, but I definitely support the troops.

I've been substitute teaching at a middle school for a few days now. Today, they had students bring a veteran for lunch and an assembly honoring the veterans. The assembly really changed my attitude about veterans. They had students and staff stand while they played the songs for each branch of the military. I stood for my cousin who was in the Navy, my cousin who was in the Army Reserves, and for my grandfathers whose branches I don't know.

Doing that made Veteran's Day personal for me. I love my cousins and my grandfathers fiercely. I believe that they deserve to be honored for their service in the military. No one else's family member deserves any less.

So, in the name of Fred Sweet, Jim Underwood, Nicholas McCoy, and Matt Delavega, I honor all who have served in the military this veteran's day.

Frozen by Jay Boninsanga

Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time has probably noticed that my two favorite genres currently are paranormal romance(vampires and werewolves and witches, oh, my!) and action-adventure historic mystery(think Dan Brown-esque, but better!). Paranormal romance is so popular right now that it's not hard to find new authors to read. The action-adventure historic mystery isn't quite as popular, so I have to do more hunting to find the kind of books that fall into this category. Of course, Dan Brown and James Rollins are always a good bet, and I've discovered both Raymond Khoury and Chris Kuzneski to be great authors in this genre as well. I expected Frozen to be a typical thriller since a profiler was the main character, and I was happy when it took a different turn.

Ulysses Grove is an FBI profiler working on the Sun City case. He's known as the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit's golden boy, cracking cases that no one else is able to close. He has been working on the Sun City case for over a year without any breaks in the case, and his superiors are beginning to believe that's he's having a nervous breakdown.

After an incident on the job, his unit director sends him to Alaska to investigate a mummy at the request of a journalist for Discover magazine. There, he meets off-beat journalist Maura County and discovers a link between the death of the neolithic mummy and the MO of his Sun City serial killer.

My only complaint about the writing is that the author has a tendency to foreshadow too much. He says things like "she didn't know how important this person would be," or "he didn't know that this would help crack his case." There were quite a few show, don't tell moments in the writing. I've come to the conclusion that this is a pitfall for first time fiction authors. Possibly it is confined to this particular genre.

I really enjoyed the book, and I can't wait to read more about Ulysses Grove. I really hope that all Bonansinga's books have a historic/supernatural twist like Frozen. If you enjoy James Rollins, you'll love Frozen!

Body Movers by Stephanie Bond

I picked up this book because I had read Bond's In Deep Voodoo earlier this year. I was looking for something funny, along the lines of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. There are so many jokes to be made about working in "body retrieval," right? I was disappointed on the humor front, but I did enjoy the book nonetheless.

Carlotta's parents skipped out of town to avoid facing legal charges when she was 17 years old, leaving her in charge of her 9-year-old brother Wesley. Ten years later, Carlotta works at Neiman Marcus, rarely dates, and lives with 19-year-old Wesley. Her parents send an occasional postcard, but have otherwise been absent since they skipped town. Wesley is a computer whiz and gambler in debt to multiple shady characters.

When one of Carlotta's customers and high school classmates drowns under suspicious circumstances, Carlotta decides to do her own investigation. She runs up against the handsome Detective Jack Terry, who warns her to stay out of his investigation. Meanwhile, her brother takes a job moving bodies with the yummy Coop Craft, a former medical examiner. She also ends up entangled with her former fiance, the husband of the woman murdered.

I was honestly kept guessing the whole book about which of the three men Carlotta would end up with. It still wasn't resolved at the end, although the crowd was narrowed from three to two. I am not sure which I would rather Carlotta end up with either. I definitely want to find out what Carlotta is up to next and who she decides to date, so I'll certainly be reading the next book in the series.

I would recommend this book to people who enjoy a good mystery, and who like fashion.

Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart & Lani Diane Rich

What a fun book this was! Three ladies, Abby, Daisy and Shar meet each other at a dog obedience class. They are greeted by the mysterious Kammani, who shares the name of a goddess no one knows much about. She gives them some punch, and all three wake up the next day with their dogs talking to them! These three ladies discover love while working to defeat Kammani, who actually is an ancient goddess. They unravel an archaeological mystery and discover that they are descendents of ancient goddesses as well, and have powers of their own!

I love books where women find their inner goddess, and I love books where people can talk to their pets, so this book was a great read for me. I am more of a cat person, so the only thing I would have liked was for it to be Cats and Goddesses instead! I don't think that would work out as well since people don't really take their cats to obedience classes. I have one that I would definitely take if I knew where to find a cat obedience class!

I was also impressed by the fact that these three authors worked together to write the book. I was expecting three shorter stories within the book, but I was surprised that it was one complete story. I can't imagine what it must be like to work with one other author during the writing of a book, let alone two other authors! Then again, it may help with writer's block. You get stuck, just send it along to someone else for some writing! Check out what the authors have to say about working together at their blog, Dogs and Goddesses, And pick up this book for a fun romantic read!