Fantasy Series to Discover

 

It’s December so people are already thinking about their Best of the Year Lists. Personally, I plan to read another fifteen to twenty books this month, so I can’t do a Best of yet! There’s also the problem in that my reading is divided roughly in half between recently published books and older books. So I thought instead I’d do a post on series that I personally discovered this year.

 

1/ Bannon & Clare by Lilith Saintcrow – Steampunk/alternate history Victorian. I gobbled up all three books in this series about sorceress Emma Bannon and mentat (think Sherlock Holmes) Archie Clare early in the year. I love how vivid Saintcrow’s writing is, especially when it comes to magic battles. One caveat: do not expect a romantic relationship between the two main characters, this is a partnership/friendship.

2/ Livi Talbot by Skyla Dawn Cameron – Action-packed urban fantasy series, ongoing. The tagline for these is: Ex-debutante. Single mother. Treasure hunter. Think Indiana Jones but in a world where magic has newly reawakened and old legends are suddenly real. I adore kickass heroines who can also be vulnerable, and slow-burn romantic subplots with broody heroes-with-a-past.

3/ Curseworkers by Holly Black – Teen contemporary fantasy trilogy, complete, soon to be released in an omnibus. Having zoomed through Black’s wonderful Faerie of Light and Air series I went looking for her backlist and found this. Premise: what if people with magic had been put in labor camps and now mostly worked for the mafia? Cool magic, a very twisty plot and a likeable con-man main character.

 

4/  House of Shadows by Rachel Neumeier – Fantasy duology, complete. A family of poor sisters is forced to sell one of the sisters into a courtesan house, while another becomes apprentice to a mage. Lovely world-building, lots of cool magic, political intrigue and characters to root for. 

5/ Romances of Arquitaine by Lilith Saintcrow. – Fantasy romance duology, complete. A world with French Versailles vibes and political upheaval. Book one is first person from the lady-in-waiting heroine, book two is first person from the knight-in-very-tarnished-armor hero, a structure that worked well. I loved how Tristan was totally gone on the oblivious heroine.

6/ Gargoyle Queen by Jennifer Estep – Fantasy series, ongoing. This is a sequel series to her Crown of Shards trilogy, with a new protagonist. Fantasy setting, but with the same strong pacing and first-person voice of Estep’s popular urban fantasy.

7/ Sun Chronicles by Kate Elliott – Science fiction/space opera, ongoing. Pitched as a gender-flipped Alexander the Great in space. Only the first book is out, but I’m looking forward to more. Space battles and political intrigue!

 What new series have you discovered this year? Share in the comments.

The Waiting Game

By Maureen L. Bonatch

I was a reader long before I was a writer. There was nothing more exciting than finding an new author, or series (there still isn’t). However, when I discover my latest favorite author, one book is never enough. 

Like a bag of potato chips, I have to fight the urge to devour them all. So when I would go look for the next book in the series and discover it wasn’t ready yet, I’d become impatient.

 I wanted to demand, How long until the next book? More like—Why is it taking you so long to write it? 

I need to know what’s happening with these characters that have become part of my life! 

Then, I became a writer and realized that sometimes the birth of a book takes longer than anticipated, or the delay might be out of the author’s control. 

Book 2 Where Are You?

My series, The Enchantlings, has one book available (DESTINY CALLING), and I have the next two books in

the series in draft. Book #2 is with my editor, and book #3 is just waiting in line for it’s turn to be polished and produced. (Sorry, to my dismay, no cover to share yet! So I'll share the cover for Book #1.)

The wait for Book 2 (NOT A CHANCE) to finish can be just as frustrating for me as an author, as it is for readers. The difference is that I know there are so many steps from writing the book until it’s available for reader consumption. 

Editing, creating the blurb, cover, tagline etc. etc. They all take time, and a small tribe of people involved in the process. 

Patience for Perfection

Part of me understands the delay because I want to create the best book possible and striving for perfection takes time. Yet, another part of me wants it done…yesterday.

I want to continue the story. But alas, I must wait. So until then I temper my impatience by working on other stories, reading fabulous books—and repeatedly checking my email for my editor. 

Thus, I’m a little more patient as I wait for the next delicious installment from my favorite author. A little, but not much. I still want to devour all the books in one setting. So I must remind myself that taking time to savor can be a good thing.

How Well Do You Wait?

Author Bio: Maureen Bonatch grew up in small town Pennsylvania and her love of the four seasons—hockey, biking, sweat pants and hibernation—keeps her there. While immersed in writing or reading paranormal romance and fantasy, she survives on caffeine, wine, music, and laughter. A feisty Shih Tzu keeps her in line. Find Maureen on her website, Facebook& Twitter

Win-A-Book Wednesday with...Jeffe Kennedy!

Jeffe Kennedy

Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook. Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera, which released beginning January 2, 2014. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and a fifth, the highly anticipated erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, will release starting in July.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Foreword Literary.

Pregnant, possessed, and in love with a man I don’t dare to trust-those are the consequences of the risks I took to save my life. But Faerie, the land of blood and magic, is filled with bitter ironies, and the bargains I made now threaten me and my unborn child.
The darkly sensual fae noble Rogue still tempts me to danger and desire. As we await the birth of our child, I’ve been forced to question whether our offspring is part of a bargain Rogue once made to save himself. He can’t tell me the truth due to a spell the vicious Queen Titania has him under. Would he betray our family against his will? Could I ever forgive him if he does?
Rogue insists on an eternal commitment from me, even as Titania’s forces close in on us. I don’t know if Rogue and I can withstand her onslaught, or that of the beast within me. But I will not stop looking for answers-even if it brings the walls of Faerie crashing down.

To celebrate the release this week of Rogue's Paradise, the third book in my Covenant of Thorns trilogy, I'm giving away a digital copy! If you're new to the series and haven't read the first book, Rogue's Pawn, or haven't quite caught up with the second book, Rogue's Possession, I'm happy to substitute one of those! Happy entering!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

After The End

Love or Destiny?

Journey of the Wanderer releases on February 24th. It will only be one of the many books released that day but for me, it’s a momentous day for many reasons. Journey of the Wanderer is the last book in the Triune Stone Series. It’s the book that gives the HEA. It’s the book with the scenes that, even after writing, rewriting and editing over and over, still make me cry. It’s where I say goodbye to characters that I’ve grown to love.

Finishing the last book in a series has always been a bittersweet moment for me. Writers are first and foremost readers. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’d have the same sense of melancholy when I finish writing a series as I do reading one.

I  can remember vividly holding The Return of the King in my hand with tears running down my face as Frodo says goodbye not just to Middle Earth, but to me. I didn’t cry but I did yearn for just one more of JK Rowlings’ books. I wasn’t ready to leave Harry or the world she created yet. I finished CS Lewis’s Last Battle and immediately wanted to start again at The Magician’s Nephew.

So what makes a good series? The world building? Character development? Story arc? I think it’s all of these things and more. There is something magical that happens when a world escapes the pages of a book to grow and take up such a place in our imaginations that it elicits true emotion.  Characters, places become real and a part of who we are. And like with any place or person we love, it’s hard to say goodbye.

So it is with a lot of emotion that I give to you Journey of the Wanderer, and the last of a series.

Some legends are born. Some are made. Some just are.

Journey of Wisdom is available now at Amazon, Carina Press or any eBook retailer. 

 As Bredych seizes power in the kingdom of Greton, Ilythra staggers north with a magic stone he covets, fleeing his murderous trackers. There in the mist, she finds the Siobani and the final Triune Stone.

Ilythra's quest won't be complete until she recovers the stone still in Bredych's possession and uses it to mend the wounds of the world. Though the Siobani are reluctant to leave their long seclusion, Ilythra convinces them that the time to reunite the stones has come.

With Ilythra wielding the power of her stone, the Siobani have a fighting chance. But Greton's walls are thick. Bredych's spells are insidious. His army is well trained. And even with new magic she's learned from the Siobani to help her, pulling down the puppeteer of Greton will be Ilythra's hardest battle yet.

What is your favorite series? 

Apples or Oranges?

My Alliance of the Amazons series will continue in May when The Brazen Amazon releases. The fourth—and final book—will debut in September. It’s called The Volatile Amazon. And that’s that. No new Amazons. No new books following the Amazons. Not now. Not ever. My girls’ stories will have been told.

 

When I tell people that, it tends to surprise them. There are so many romance series out there that go on and on and on…like the movie Titanic. <g> Actually, I can see the appeal of a never-ending series. You’ve already got an established readership. The publisher is obviously behind you. A successful series could easily be a cash cow that is impossible to resist milking.

On the other hand, I really like the idea that my series will have a true ending. All loose threads knotted. All plot lines resolved. Everyone is accounted for. There are some secondary characters I might give their own sets of wings one day in the future, but Rebecca, Megan, Gina, and Sarita have each had their turn, and I won’t be using those characters again.

A fantastic example of a successful closed series is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, albeit it had A LOT of books, there was an end to Harry’s journey. As far as an extended series, I don’t have to look farther than my friend and critique partner, Cheryl Brooks. Her Cat Star Chronicles are on book eight—Wildcat. Yet each story seems to make the series stronger, and it has yet to become stale because she has a universe of planets and species to choose from to add newness to each story.

So as readers and/or authors, which do you prefer? Do you like the fact that a series can keep going, using new characters to continue a storyline or keep the world you’ve learned/built alive? Or do you enjoy the idea of a closed series, one like my Alliance of the Amazons where you know exactly how many books are in the series and that it has a distinct ending?

Top series I'd like to see on HBO

I'm a big fan of HBO series. My favorites are True Blood, Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire. I think HBO does an incredible job of casting and producing complex multi-character worlds in a way that draws me into the story just like a good book. Here are my top three picks for other paranormal series I'd like to see on HBO.

1. Mercy Thompson Series by Patricia Briggs

I love this one because of the strength of the secondary character cast.

Who wouldn't like to see Adam and Samuel, Bran and Mercy walking around in the fascinating world Patricia Briggs has created?







2. Night Huntress Series by Jeaniene Frost

Interesting and flawed female lead and loads of action but when it really comes down to it, this pick is all about Bones.










3. Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning

Okay, so I've made no secret of the fact that this is one of my favorite series. It's very dark. The morality of the characters is...um, ambiguous at best. There's actually very little sex in the series but it's one of the sexiest series out there.








Which series would you like to see?

Watch Out! Angry Frat-boy Archer on the Loose

Sometimes the book you start out to write isn't the one you turn in. When I started my little tale of the rock star and the principal, it was a straight contemporary for a contest. For better or worse though, the contest had a 7,000 word limit. I knew very quickly the story wouldn't fit in those confines, which gave me the opportunity to re-look at my hero and heroine.

Kira is a high school principal and very straight-laced, whereas one look at Jesse would make two words fly into the heads of women everywhere: bad boy. They definitely weren't people who would automatically gravitate toward each other, so I decided what they needed was a push in the right direction. Enter Eros (aka Cupid) and his arrows.

My initial reaction to the thought was abject horror. A little guy in a diaper flying around shooting people and making them fall in love? Plus, if Cupid was actually doing his damn job, would romance be in the sorry state we see these days? Of course not.

Which means he wasn't doing his job. And that opened up a world of possibilities, one I knew was far too big for me to handle on my own. Still, I had to get the ball rolling. I had to build an Olympus where this could happen.

Basically, where I ended up is with a college-like Olympus with Eros as frat-boy extraordinaire. And a very pissed off Dean of Students in Zeus who expels him until he shapes the hell up. Because really...what other kind of Cupid would look at Kira and Jesse and say, "Yeah. Those two need to be together" except one who thought succeeding in an unexpected match would earn him brownie points.

I'm really happy to say that other people have embraced my crazy vision as well. GunShy, the first book in the Cupid's Conquests series, is out now at Evernight Publishing. (Other authors have taken up the call and are penning stories for this series right now. Each one will follow Eros as he unites a couple--or more--in love.) For now, here's a little taste of Eros's magic...

As she staggered to a stop, the man peeled the card from his pants and held it out to her. “Lose something?” His deep, gravely voice sent a shiver all the way to her toes as she took in the six-foot- plus wall of muscle.

Kira wasn’t a small girl by any stretch, but in front of him, she felt tiny. “I... uh... dropped that.”

He read the card aloud. “Take a chance, huh?” Kira started, knowing those weren’t the words she’d read a moment before. With a shrug, he pressed it into her hand. “Better hold on tighter next time.”

When his fingers left hers, something pricked into her shoulder. She slapped her free hand against the pain and felt something. In her palm, she held a tiny golden arrow, but when she blinked, it was gone—replaced by a very dead wasp.

The guy in front of her, t-shirt straining against his chest as he moved, leaned close. His words belied the gruff tone of his voice. “That’s weird. Someone must have fucked with a nest. You aren’t allergic, are you?”

“N—n—no,” she stammered, staring at the arrow-wasp.

Gently, he gripped her wrist and tipped her hand until the insect fell to the ground. “Why don’t I take you to first aid anyway?” The words on the card drew her gaze: Take a chance. They’d

been different before; she was sure of it. Then Kira looked up at the man in front of her, his leather jacket and jeans such a stark contrast to Nolan’s polo and pressed khaki shorts, and the wasp sting burned. The strange, but not painful, heat traveled from her shoulder through her body to settle between her legs. She bit her lip, wondering where the feeling really came from. The guy in front of her wasn’t her usual type. Too big, too muscly, too rough around the edges right from his worn boots to the scruff along his strong square jaw.

In her mind, her teeth grazed that same jaw, and a shiver ran through her as she tore her gaze away. “Yeah. I think the pain is getting to me.”

Releasing her wrist, he rested his hand on the small of her back. The heat of his skin seared straight through Kira’s thin tank top. Her throat went dry within ten steps, and she had to swallow hard before she could speak again. “Thank you for your help, Mr....”He arched an eyebrow at her quizzically before answering. “Stanford. I prefer Jesse though. I killed the last guy who called me mister.”

Kira froze, fighting against the light pressure of his fingertips. “You what?” she squeaked.

He twisted his head and winked. “Kidding. Mister just makes me feel old. And you are...”

“Sorry. Kira Murphy.”

“Well, Kira Murphy, who needs to learn to take chances, consider yourself safely delivered to first aid.” He nodded toward the rickety trailer with the sloppily painted red cross on the side. “Have a good night.”

His hand fell from her back, and this time she shivered from the loss of his heat—heat she very much wanted back. But Jesse had already melted into the crowd. “So much for taking chances.”

With a sigh, she went inside to have the sting tended.

Barbarians Do It Doggie Style

Please note I'm an avid fan of George RR Martin's Fire and Ice series. I wouldn't miss a second of the new HBO series Game of Thrones that just began this past weekend. I loved it. I loved the series on which it's based. Looking back at my formulative years of writing, I credit Martin and Robert Jordan with giving me the desire to write stories as wonderfully epic and sweeping as theirs.

So while this is a complaint of the series, it's done tongue in cheek.

There was a big stink in the NYT about how all the sex must have been thrown in "as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise." Lots of people tweeted and commented and blogged about all the women who love fantasy in general (self included), Martin's series in particular (ditto), and anyway, the criticism that the sex was "thrown in" for HBO audiences is ridiculous to anyone who's actually read the books. (The sex was already there!)


But that's not what I'm riled up about.

I'm simply so offended for barbarians everywhere because of their treatment in this series that I couldn't remain silent. I can't even blame it on HBO, because this dastardly failure to accurately convey barbaric sensuality occurs in the books too.


Seriously, who could possibly believe that barbarians *only* know how to perform sex in the doggie style position?


Of course, I can see the foundational thought process. If they're barbarians, they must be around livestock or wildlife a great deal, so naturally they emulate the creatures about them in their bedchambers. Wait a second, though. Doesn't that mean they should have animal dens instead of tents? Or why not just doze standing up out in the pasture?



In the book, Khal Drogo is seriously befuddled when Daenerys gently proposes that she turn around and face him during their nightly intimacies. Yes, a fourteen-year-old girl comes up with the idea to face each other during sex, but not her much older (and presumably experienced, thanks to all the public affection displayed by the Dothraki) barbarian husband. I guess all those battles he'd won seriously damaged his... Oh, never mind, I won't even go there.


Poor Drogo. I know several barbarian warriors who are laughing at him.


On the other hand, royalty in the Fire and Ice world tend to indulge in incest to keep the bloodlines pure. Maybe it's not so bad being a barbarian!

If you watched Game of Thrones this week, what did you think?

Series Fatigue

I still remember the day when I was first introduced to Robert Jordan, author of the phenomenal Wheel of Time series now continued by Brandon Sanderson since RJ's passing. It was Christmas 1991 in College Station, TX. A friend asked me to go to the mall with her so she could pick up the latest Jordan book. I was a heavy duty reader myself, but I was stunned when she paid hardcover price. Until then, I couldn't remember ever buying hardcover. I mean, we were poor college students working as Teaching Assistants for $10k/year. I didn't have money for hardcover!

But she insisted he was worth it. To prove it to me, she lent me her copies of the first three books in the series.

Within a few days, I was back at that bookstore myself, buying my first hardcover.

Now the end of Jordan's great series is almost here. The last book is supposed to come out late this year, all of them heavy, meaty fantasy tomes. Once upon a time, I read the ENTIRE series again before his latest book was released - and then usually read them AGAIN after reading the latest to tie all the events and people together. [I did this through book seven, can you believe it?!?] I even had a notebook at one time for notes because I was trying to figure out who the Forsaken were in the Tower.

I look back now and I can only laugh at myself. I still love the series, definitely, and I can't wait for the whole journey to be complete -- but I don't read long meaty series like that any longer. Maybe I'm just getting old -- or I'm busy with children, a full-time job, not to mention this writing gig. But I can't remember characters and events. They blend together into the dreamscape in my mind, even getting confused with my own stories and other authors' until it's a wonderfully convoluted mess.

[I was discussing Legend of the Black Scorpion the other day on Twitter and guessing about who killed a major character at the end of the movie. I was sure it was this one guy -- and felt like a complete fool when my friend pointed out that the same guy had died in the previous scene. Oops. In *my* version he was still alive!]

I can't keep up any longer. I haven't read Jordan since book 10. I haven't read George RR Martin since book 3 of his latest trilogy. I quit reading Kim Harrison's series around book 3 or 4 too. I loved the stories....I just couldn't. Keep. Reading. I couldn't remember what happened in book 1. The characters got mixed up. Sigh. So I've sworn to wait until the last book comes out -- and then I'll read the series straight through one last time.

I guess I have series fatigue. So tell me, am I alone in dreading the heft of book 17 in an neverending series? Can you recommend a fantastic standalone fantasy that doesn't take years and years to release?

For me, I've loved Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana and Sharon Shinn's Summers at Castle Auburn.