Remember how a few weeks back, my husband took me to Barnes & Noble at my behest to get out of the cramped hospital room I'd been trapped in for about a week? And remember how I fondly caressed the cover of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries? There was another book. That book was none other than Alyssa Wees's Nocturne. It had one of those employee recommendation labels beneath it, describing it as The Phantom of the Opera meets "The Beauty and the Beast." Of course I wanted ...
Musings
WOMS: A Sinister Revenge
This week for "What's on My Shelf," it's a Veronica Speedwell mystery, A Sinister Revenge, by Deanna Raybourn! I've shared before with how much I enjoy the plucky heroine of this series, but more especially, how these books helped me fall in love with mystery again. This book is no exception; rather a continuation of why I think these are some of the best historical murder mysteries out there in the market today. In this latest installment, Veronica and Stoker's relationship is a bit ...
WOMS: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
For the past six book reviews I've shared, it's been all about the Nine Kingdoms series. This week, I'm changing things up. I don't know if I needed a break from the series or not, but when my husband took me to get out of the hospital room I had been stuck in for almost a week, caring for my parents, we ended up at Barnes & Noble. If I'm honest, I hadn't been to a Barnes & Noble in a while. You probably can tell by the photos I share of the books I'm reading, there's usually, if not ...
WOMS: Gift of Magic
It's time to wrap up the second trilogy of the Nine Kingdoms series with the final installment, Gift of Magic. This trilogy is what I'm calling Ruith's trilogy compared to the first three books which focused on his sister, Morgan. Speaking of her, let's dive right into it, but this won't be spoiler free. Beware! Morgan is in this book!!!! Albeit, her appearance is brief, but she's there all the same. In fact, she saves Sarah from probable death at the hands of the malicious Queen ...
WOMS: Spellweaver
This week we're getting back in the swing of things by continuing on with Lynn Kurland's next book in her Nine Kingdoms series, Spellweaver, and boy howdy did it deliver! As I hinted in my last review of A Tapestry of Spells, Kurland has a way of interweaving her plots together so you can see how the events of her first trilogy and this trilogy interconnect but also differ. In this book, especially, there are greater parallels and crossovers, ones which I had hoped would occur since they were ...
Embracing the Pain
Three weeks ago, my father was rushed to the hospital due to severe swelling, weeping of the skin, traumatic ulcers, and pain in his left leg. A few days later, he underwent an arterial bypass where they inserted a stent. Essentially, as I confirmed with a RN friend, he had a "heart attack" of the leg. During this time, my main concern other than supporting him by being present as often as I could in the hospital with him was caring for my mentally disabled mother. You know, the one who ...
WOMS: The Love Prescription
They never said marriage would be easy, but I also don't think when they warn you of the challenges you'll face as a new couple, those will include both a life-altering health crisis and global pandemic occurring all within the first year of said marriage. I know I've spoken before about some of the challenges my "new" husband and I have faced within the last three, going on four, years of our marriage, but I haven't, I don't think, revealed just how difficult overcoming these challenges has ...
Celebrating Success
It's official: I'm a published author! I don't know if it really has sunk in yet. The day of the book launch, I had mentioned to my coworker how I had a big event that evening. When she asked what, I didn't cower and mutter some half-baked lie. No, I told her the truth. Of course, like most creatives who constantly compare their level of success to the heavily-publicized, multi-billionaire artists who seem to be famous overnight (never happens that way except in the movies)---I did tell ...
A Small Beginning
Tonight is the night! It's book launch day! I still can't believe something I wrote is actually going to be in a literal, physical book, and people are actually going to read it! I can't even believe I told people and they bought it! Sure, it's not a major book deal with one of the major five publishing houses, nor is it a full-length novel or series. It is after all only a short story within an anthology. Even though this may be a small beginning---one small step for Lynn---it's my step, ...
WOMS: A Tapestry of Spells
Continuing with Lynn Kurland's Nine Kingdoms series, this week we're reviewing book four in the series, the start of a new trilogy: A Tapestry of Spells. Unfortunately, I wasn't as absorbed by this book as its predecessors, but this is not at all a comment on Kurland's writing. Rather I just had too much on my plate, so I didn't get to sit down and just let myself fall back into the world of the Nine Kingdoms and forget about life for a while as I would have preferred. Instead, I had to read ...
