I never thought I’d be reading a story about a tooth fairy, but in ‘Tooth and Nail’, Jennifer Safrey takes the premise that such fairies are real, gives them a credible reason for teeth stealing, and weaves it into an awesome and surprising urban fantasy.

The Blurb
Gemma  Fae Cross, a tough-girl amateur boxer whose fiancé is running for congress, has just made a startling discovery about herself. She is half faerie – and not just any faerie, but a tooth faerie!

A hybrid of fae and human, Gemma is destined to defend the Olde Way and protect the fae – who are incapable of committing violence – from threats to their peaceful and idyllic way of life, which must be maintained by distilling innocence collected from children’s baby teeth.

But when a threat to the fae mission emerges, Gemma is called upon to protect her heritage, and become a legendary fae warrior… even if it means sacrificing everything she knows about being human!

I like Safrey’s fae better than the nasty little sprites authors often portray them as and her vision of their world and the effect of the humans overtaking it – the classic dispossession of a conquered race – is unique and refreshing.  The ‘Olde Way’ that has been lost is a state of peace and bliss and once Gemma tastes it, she knows it’s worth fighting for. But a modern heroine has different challenges and must use different methods to the Warriors of old, so Gemma uses psychology and the media as her weapon, resorting to fists only when necessary.

The plot was almost completely unpredictable. The central characters were delightfully warm and real including Gemma’s volatility and the bad guy was a complex character that gains our empathy by the end. What I liked most about the story was that Gemma managed to solve the problem without killing a soul. Her solution, as noted by a surprised Fae, was much more heroic than had she resorted to murder. It was also more real and more intelligent. Congratulations, Ms Safrey for looking outside the box. It’s rare that readers get a real senses of the power of something good, and in this story, we almost taste it for ourselves.

The ending was excellent and left a good hint that more is in store. I give this 5 stars and recommend it for all lovers of urban fantasy, especially those who are sick of vamps, weres and witches and would like something where light balances the dark.

Buy now from Amazon kindle store for $7.95

or click here for the Paperback version at $10.80

Personal preference
It’s a personal thing, but personally I can’t understand why anyone would want to live in a world full of cruel, twisted, characters, a world where you’re constantly fighting for your life, where people are tortured, abused and repressed. Not only do I not want to spend my time reading about these things, I don’t want to fill my mind with those kind of images, or set my adrenaline racing along with that of the terrorized protagonist. Our world has too much horror in it in reality without reading about it in fiction too.

The Young Adult genre
Of course, there are plenty of people who love what I hate – no wonder there is so much violence in the world – but there is a genre for people like me, it’s called Young Adult.  It’s a well known fact that a lot of people who read Young Adult aren’t teens. I suspect that these people, like me, like the genre for the lightness of the worlds and the tendency for Young Adult fiction to be cross genre. Generally, the genre has a high degree of relationship interest, plenty of action, a touch or more of romance and bits of horror and suspense to add spice.

You should be able to pick up a Young Adult book and know that the world you’re immersing yourself in, isn’t too horrible. Unfortunately, this isn’t always true. I just read a Young Adult book that I found highly disturbing for its sadistic characters and excessive level of violence, torture and in particular, a graphic attempted rape. The only reason I can see for it to be considered Young Adult is that it’s about high school students, but according to a publisher friend, the age of the protagonist doesn’t make it Young Adult, rather books in the genre are supposed to be light on violence and sex. If the publishers/author insists on calling this Young Adult then it should have a warning on it – this book includes a high level of violence, torture and a graphic attempted rape. That way, those who like to live in a world like that can still read it and I can avoid it.

Dramatic tension
Novels do have to have challenges, of course. A novel without drama is a bland one indeed. Writers are always told to have tension on every page, but dramatic tension isn’t just fighting, torture, bombs exploding and so on; it can be much more subtle and it takes a better writer to use the more subtle kinds. A little of these things is fine, it’s all a matter of degree.

What kind of world do you want to live in?
Before reading a book, ask yourself what sort of images you want to fill your head with. What do you want to come back to you in your dreams?

What kind of world do you want to live in?

‘Under the Moon’ is a terrific story, tight and well written, about a goddess, her assistant (and ex lover), her sexy protector and their efforts to stop a man who is on his way to steal Quinn’s power.

In the world of ‘Under the Moon’, goddesses live amongst us, using their power to help people, but when an unknown goddess gives some of her power to a man, he becomes addicted to it and becomes a leech, one who preys on goddesses and drains their power. The first two goddesses he leeches are Quinn’s friends and when Quinn tries to find out what’s going on, the society of goddesses shuts her out of the loop with a vague reference to family ties being too strong.

Quinn has two gorgeous men who care about her. First is Sam, her business assistant who wants a relationship with her that she can’t give. They’ve had sex for years because it replenishes Quinn’s power, but Quinn has broken it off, denying her need for sex so he can find the kind of relationship he wants with someone else. It takes most of the book for Sam to come to terms with that, but along the way, he never stops being a wonderful friend.

Then there’s Nick, a protector assigned to her by the Goddess Protectorate. He’s only around when her power is at its weakest – it relies on the phases of the moon – and he refuses to have the intimate relationship with her that she wants, because it would compromise his role as her protector. The sexual tension between them is as thick as butter and the relationship between the two men is delightful.

The story takes the threesome to various places, into several close escapes from death, revelations about Quinn’s family and inevitably to a deadly battle with the leech. During this time it becomes apparent that Nick’s feelings for Quinn are more what she wants than he’s willing to let on. The story builds to a sizzling climax (literally) and a very satisfying conclusion. I loved this book, give it 5 stars and recommend it for all lovers of urban fantasy and romance.

From the Blurb
Keeping themselves safe while working to find the enemy proves harder each day. But not as hard as denying their hearts…

Buy now on  Amazon

The kindle touch

When you read reviews on ereaders, often you’re either reading what people who have had only one ereader have to say or what people who have had a quick look at a few ereaders have to say. But I have had 3 different ereaders and used them all for a reasonable amount of time, so I think I have a pretty good understanding of what works and what makes a good ereader. I haven’t looked at the Nook or the Kobo though, so this comparison doesn’t include them, but if you’re thinking of buying one of them you might find it worthwhile to check if they have the features that I find really helpful.

I’ve already done a comparison of the Sony touchscreen, the Australian Kogan and the screen of the kindle – based on a quick look at my daughter’s one. Today, now that I have my own kindle keyboard, I’m going to share with you why I think it’s the best ereader available, at least for Australia where the Nook isn’t an option (B&N don’t sell to Australia). I haven’t tried the Kobo, but since the early downsides of the Kindle’s file limitations are no longer an issue (more about that later), and pretty much every ebook ever made is available on Amazon, the reasons why I looked elsewhere in the first place have gone.

Now a disclaimer. This is not an advertisement for Kindle. (If it was I’d get some money for it, however if you buy a Kindle via the link in the photograph, I’ll get a % of the price via Amazon Associates program, which would be nice) This review is my own opinion. This is also not about the Kindle touch. I don’t recommend touchscreens for e-ink ereaders, because they are slow to react and the screens are a little glossy making them harder to read. I have heard that the kindle touch is faster than other touchscreen ereaders, but apparently it still isn’t as fast as what we’re used to in the Ipod, iphone and ipad. This is because it’s not a backlit screen, which makes it good on the eyes, but it’s slow on the touch uptake – at least for now.

I’m also not going to talk about the wi-fi or 3 G connectivity because though it’s kind of nice to have, computers are much better suited for surfing the web if you’re serious about it. (except if you have a kindle fire)

Here’s what impresses me about the Kindle keyboard.

• It has instructions for what to do on the screen even before you turn it on, and when it’s charged and you first turn it on, instructions for how to use it appear. This is exactly what is needed to get people started. The other ereaders I’ve had (Sony & Kogan) made you find the instruction manual first and neither of them had links for navigation around the document. This is a new technology and if I want someone like my mother to use an ereader, I need to give her something that makes learning to use it this simple.
• The screen contrast is better than all other ereaders I’ve had or seen, making it much easier to read. (I haven’t seen a Nook or Kobo though). It’s also not as shiny as a touchscreen ie easier on the eyes.
• It’s easy to use, totally intuitive and consistent.
• The buttons are easy to press and well placed.
• It’s lighter than a touch screen, so it’s easier to hold and type at the same time.
• The keyboard buttons are a lot easier to use than the touch screen keyboard and much quicker. I kept missing the letters on the touchscreen because you can’t feel the edges of the keys.
• There’s a back button – this is fantastic. I can’t believe the other 2 ereaders I had didn’t have one. It makes navigation so much easier.
• It turns pages fast.
• It’s a good price and Amazon’s policy of lowering their price to the price of any other ebook seller means you’re not paying more for your books than anywhere else.

The downside of a kindle has always been that it can’t read anything other than a mobi file, but the new ones read PDF files as well, making it a lot more useful.  For getting your personal files on it, you always could email the file to Kindle and have them change it and download it to your kindle, but that’s still a clunky system with a time lag. I prefer to use a free program called Calibre that can change your text files to a mobi file that you can drag onto your kindle as you would a file onto a USB device. Just save your word doc as a text file. Add the file to Calibre, click convert and select mobi. Within seconds you have file that your Kindle will read.

If you don’t want to annotate books then, the Kindle light is all you need and it’s cheaper.

Are you thinking of getting a kindle, or are you leaning towards a different reader? If so why? If you have a Nook or a Kobo I’d like to hear how it compares.

A gripping plot, likeable characters, well written and imaginative, The Last Slayer is another terrific urban fantasy romance from Carina Press.

Ashera del Cid hunts demons for a living, but on her twenty seventh birthday she discovers that demons – dragon lords to be exact – are hunting her. Ramiel, a sexy dragon lord, offers his alliance, but he invades her dreams and gives her toe curling astral sex. Sounds good, except that only incubi can invade your dreams and she hates incubi. One of them killed her boyfriend and she’s sworn revenge on all of them. She’s suspicious, but it turns out that he’s vowed to help her and dragon lords are sticklers for honouring their vows.

Ramiel knows her true identity, the only daughter of the last slayer, and the real reason the demigods want her dead, but he only tells her what he wants her to know and when she discovers that he has been manipulating her in her ignorance, she is rightfully pissed off. Nevertheless, he’s the only ally she has and is an awesome lover, so when her plan to return to her human life falls through, she returns to his Dragonhold and works with him to battle dragons and demigods so she can claim her heritage.

This book made my imagination soar with images of dragons, castles in the air, magical portals and dragon riding. Ashera and Ramiel are both vibrant characters and I loved Toshi the little fairy dragon who looked after Ramiel’s dragonhold . The touch of humour he added helped to make this a really enjoyable book. Even without him, the story avoided the overt darkness of some urban fantasy.

There was plenty of action, making this book more than just a romance and probably enjoyable for people who are cautious about that genre. The sex, though intense, wasn’t overdone or gratuitous.

The ending was perfect and I thank the author for the epilogue. I really appreciated being able to leave the book having my suspicions confirmed. There wasn’t anything I didn’t like about this book and I hope that Nadia will bring us further adventures from Ramiel and Ashara. The story certainly left room for at least one more. I give it five stars and urge all lovers of urban fantasy to read it, especially if you’re into dragons.

Buy it on Amazon

When the publisher approached me with this book and asked if I’d review it, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to or not, because historical romance is a genre that doesn’t generally interest me. However, the fantasy element and the theme of the power of words and philosophy drew me in and I discovered a rich and surprising read that far surpasses what this books genre designation would have you expect.

We meet the central character, Nadira in 1494 in Barcelona, where she is a servant to a wealthy spice merchant.  A man badly beaten by mercenaries looking for the book, The Hermetica of Elysium is brought to the merchant’s stable. When his brother comes looking for him, the man is already dead, but he discovers that Nadira can read Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew making her one of the few people who can read the book they seek.

While the Black Friars are burning heretics and texts in their effort to purge Europe of the ancient secrets of the gods and the bold new ideas that are ushering in the renaissance, Nadira is kidnapped by Baron Montrose, the dead man’s brother and eventually is forced to read from the Hermetica. ‘She soon discovers that words are more powerful than steel and fire, for within its pages are the words that incite the Dominicans to religious fervour, give the Templars their power and reveal the lost mysteries of Elysium’ (from the blurb).

But the Baron is not the only man after her services as a reader and the plot has Nadira kidnapped several times by various people. Each captor gives her greater experience of the book and through it she begins to transform from a servant into a sorcerous.

The Christian church of the day sanctioned and propagated torture, cruelty and repression in the name of God and this formed a backdrop of tension to Nadira’s increasing empowerment. Not only is she in danger from the Inquisition, Pope Alexander Vl and the French king Charles Vlll, but her new love  begins to fear her.

What I loved about this book were

• the delightful and beautifully portrayed central characters -  brooding, noble Montrose and the other members of his party, sweet and earnest Brother William, the scholar Conti and of course Nadira herself who has the wonderful innocence of a mind unspoiled by dogma, a no nonsense, intelligent, gutsy woman.
• The slow growth of the love between Montrose and Nadira
• The snippets of philosophy and major themes eg words & knowledge are power, and freedom of mind is true freedom.
• The feeling of actually being in that era – often not pleasant, but realistic and more than made up for by the main characters.
• Her experiences in reading
• The way the reading empowers her.

There was a lot of gore flying about at certain points, but it was realistic to the time and I liked that it wasn’t romanticised or made more gruesome than it needed to be.

The ending was very satisfying, but with enough left open for me to want to read the sequel. I recommend this for all lovers of anything from this period in Europe’s history. I give it 5 stars.

But it now on  Amazon

 Ready for lift off in 2012

What I achieved, what I didn’t & what I learned in 2011

• I created my own publishing company which published 3 of my individual short stories and one collection of short stories. This gave me a good base of knowledge and experience from which to publish more works and build a readership for future works. I learned
  • how to format & publish an ebook
  • that it’s really hard to get the word out to people about your work, even when you do all the right things and have over 1000 followers & friends over all your social networks.
  • that even when the consensus of opinion is that your work is good, it’s hard to make sales. There’s just too much competition.
  • that the advantage of having a traditional publisher is not only that you get help with covers, editing etc but you get access to their data base of customers & contacts for publicity. You also get the reader’s perception that your work is of a certain standard. This is why I decided to leave ‘Lethal Inheritance’ in that system.
  • that there’s a lot of hype about indie and self publishing but it’s not as easy as the gurus of ebook publishing make out. There’s still plenty of substandard self published works out there lowering the standard in the public’s eyes, so you’re still starting out behind the eight ball.
  • that more important than selling books is writing books that fulfill your aims in writing.
• I started two other blogs and deleted one of them after a couple of months. I learned that
  • You can spend too much time on online stuff with little results for your efforts.
  • Having a separate blog to your author’s blog on a topic of interest related to your work gets you in contact with a different audience. Even the look of my Happy Honkers blog appeals to a different kind of person.
  • You can’t rely on other people to help out on projects that were your idea even if they agreed to do it. (My daughter agreed to help me out on the Happy Honkers site but so far she hasn’t)
• Read masses of ebooks, including many by indie and self published authors. I learned that the most common fault in self published works is unecessary words that weigh the story down & sometimes swamp it all together.
• My agent didn’t find a publisher for ‘Lethal Inheritance.’ I learned that
  • the traditional publishing route can take a hideously long time and you can’t push it along.

Aims for 2012

• Make ‘Give me a Break’ – a collection of magical realism short stories for young adults – really good, then publish it on ebook & in print.
• If I haven’t found a publisher for Lethal Inheritance by the end of October, have Catapult press publish it in ebook and print by the end of the year.
• Be less selfish. ( I say this every year) Specifically
  • do at least one helpful thing for another author every day ( I already so this so it won’t be hard)
  • do at least one helpful thing (other than cooking their dinner) for each member of my immediate family every day
• Spend less time online and more time mediating.

What did you learn from 2011 and what are your goals for 2012?

Title: Clockwork Christmas – four steampunk novellas
Authors: Crime wave in a Corset by Stacy Gail; This Winter Heart by PG Forte; Wanted, one Scoundrel by Jenny Schwartz, Far from the Broken by JK Coi.
Publisher: Carina Press
Category: Steampunk romance

Like most of Carina Press’s titles, these works are well written, interesting stories with the perfect balance of romance and action. My favourite was ‘Wanted, one Scoundrel’ by Jenny Schwartz. Set in a superbly described Perth at the height of the gold rush, the story involved a suffragette who ran a political party and needed a man to represent her when the movers and shakers in politics met in a men only club to discuss the future of the colony.

My second favourite, ‘Crime Wave in a Corset, was a delightful, creative story about a thief and a man who makes her steal back something she stole from him. The end was delightful. ‘This Winter Heart’ was a lovely tale about an estranged husband and wife brought together again by the child the husband previously didn’t know he had. ‘Far from Broken’, also about a husband and wife, gave a lot of insight into the kind of emotions those who have lost a limb go through in their healing and the power of someone’s love to break through the injured person’s negative feelings about themselves.

I loved this anthology so much that I would actually read some of it again, a rare thing for someone with so many books to read, not to mention my own stories to revise and edit. If you like romance with a good story and with the sex not overdone, I suggest you get this.

Purchase from Amazon

Title: The sexiest time of the year: Erotic encounters at the Yule Season
Author: Elizabeth Kolodziej, Clarice Clique, JP Archer and Lani Rhea
Publisher: Sizzler, edited by Sascha Illyvich
Release date: November 28th 2011
Category: Erotica

Over all, these stories aren‘t as good as those in Clockwork Christmas because they lack the depth of those in the above anthology, but if you like erotica (hotter sex and more emphasis on it), then you might prefer these. I wouldn’t have brought the book myself, but when offered it for review, I thought I’d take a look. The stories are definitely fantasies, not just because two of them involve fantasy elements, but because they are the stuff of erotic dreams rather than reality. This is not a criticism, just an indication of the kind of story they are.

Some of the eroticism in the first story, Winter, about a witch who called a prince from another place through a portal to rescue her, was too kinky for me. The best stories were The Ark Hotel,  a more serious tale about an abused woman finding her way forward with the help of a gorgeous man, and the final story, Demon Protection Plan about a half breed demon in a protection program. She falls in love with the man assigned to protect her, but they have no hope of a future together, because she doesn’t know how to tell him she’s a demon and figures that he’ll run away when she does. If you’re into erotica, you’ll enjoy these stories and if you don’t usually read erotica but wouldn’t mind a foray into the genre, then this is a good place to get a taste, but I suggest that you read the first story last.

Purchase from Amazon

Author links: www.vampyrekisses.com

http://lanirhea.webs.com/

http://jp-archer.blogspot.com/

 Click on the name links to read my reviews and on the photos to purchase them on Amazon.

My Christmas gift to you and your friends is everyone’s favourite short story from ‘A Matter of Perception’. Some of you have already received this gift, but if you haven’t, or if you wish to give it to someone else, you can get “A Hole in the Pavement” free on Amazon from the 25^th to the 29^th December.

I hope you all got ereaders for Christmas, but if you didn’t you can read it on your computer by downloading kindle for PC. Go to Amazon and have a look on the right hand side, underneath where it says ‘Buy Now’, it says ‘Available on your PC’.  Click that, download the program, then you click ‘Buy Now’, set up an account and you’re set to read kindle books with one click in future.

This is a really lovely story, so please tell all your friends about this special offer. It’s only for 5 days.

Every morning, Norris watches his goddess walk to the bus stop in front of him, the gap between them far wider than the physical distance. This morning, she stumbles. He wants to run and help her, but finds himself stuck in a hole that appeared along with his self doubt. By the time he gets out, she’s long gone. He vows that if it happens again, he won’t hesitate, but when she falls the next day, he has more than just his own hole to deal with. Can he find his heroic self before she walks away?