The Book Cove

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. Our childhoods provide a rich tapestry of resources which we can weave into our fiction.  A child's perceptions are more unfiltered, their motivations are simpler, and their emotional ties more direct.  Strip your adult characters down to their core and you essentially have the template of a small child: what primal goals and dreams buoy them up and what primeval fears and horrors shackle them down?  Eventually, we must add nuance and subtlety and a job and romantic entanglements and we are no longer talking about children, but don't lose sight of the inner child. We are not children anymore.  Sometimes that inner child gets buried under career decisions, tax paperwork, family concerns, and civic duties.  It is easy to put away your childhood as something irrelevant when you are snared in the trappings of adu...

I'll generalize here and say that book bloggers start out one of two ways: 1. They have followed book blogs for a while and after some thought they decide that they want to give it a try 2. One day they (randomly) decide that they want a book blog I fell into the second category. I didn't know that "book blogging" was a highly active subset of bloggers. I knew they existed because I'd happen upon their reviews every now and then. But I didn't realize all of the extra activities and such that a majority of book bloggers took part in, and I had no clue what a lot of the terminology floating around out there was. Google was my friend (as it is every day in life). Life's a lot easier when someone puts it all in one spot for you :-) Terminology: Some are self-explanatory, but since there are a variety of readers and bloggers from different backgrounds, I thought best to cover everything.  Basic Lingo DNF - A book that you d id n ot f inish. Typ...

I don't know about you but I know I'm guilty of following more blogs than what I have time to actually keep up with. There's just so many good or promising ones out there! I finally decided to do a long overdue clean-up. Let me just say, there is no easy way to do this. Not that I know of anyway. I wish sites like BlogLovin' had a feature that would sort blogs by date of their last post rather than only having the ability to sort all posts by dates. With the later it is hard to figure out which blogs you haven't visited in a while because they've gone the way side. Here's a little perspective of what my clean-up involved. On GFC I was following 68 blogs . I decided that 3 months of dead time and minimum of 2 posts per month would be my main criteria for unfollowing . Other obvious factors were change in blog topic (from books), deleted blogs, blogs turned private, URL switches, and those that no longer fit my taste. I spent about 30 minutes clicking, che...

I have traveled that long and winding road connecting my future to my past. My truck is eternally almost out of gas. The potholes knock my fillings out. The dust plugs my nostrils. And the map gets more incomprehensible the farther I go.  That's not a mountain on the horizon, it's a volcano.  As soon as I get there, good book and lawn chair in hand, ready to enjoy my reminiscences, the damn thing erupts.  The harder you work to recall an old memory, the faster the landscape changes.  We tend to think of memory as a huge canvas scene we create and display in the museum of our minds that we can revisit and sit beneath whenever we wish.  It hasn't started fading. No flash photography in my mind, thank you very much, or senility...yet. But at night, when the museum is closed, little imps sneak inside and repaint the details.  After awhile it feels like something a stranger produced. This is natural, it happens to everyone, but writers are not so passive. ...

The Detective's Dragon by Karilyn Bentley As a Halfling with little magic, Jamie is barely considered a Draconi, his sole talent finding jewels and lost people. But when he dreams of a human female in trouble, he has no choice but to save her, even if it means crossing dimensions into a different realm. Unfairly accused and placed on administrative leave, Detective Ruby Parker is determined to regain her position on the Denver police force. When an attempt to kidnap her fails, she must learn to trust the stranger who appears from nowhere to help her. Unlike in Draconia, Jamie's powers work in Parker's world, his longing to wield magic finally fulfilled. But is working magic worth leaving his family and friends? When Parker realizes she loves Jamie, she must make a choice, follow her heart to a different world, or remain alone and attempt to regain her beloved job. What happens when the one you love lives in another dimension? Excerpt: The squeak of hi...

Do you prefer a synopsis that tells a little about the MCs, plot, and major theme? Or do you prefer the quick blip about the main point of the story? I don't have a preference. I think they each have their place and it all comes down to the art of writing.  Condensing a 200p+ story into a paragraph is hard work! But it's part of the job. If the book has a different element to it, especially one that is rare in its genre, then I appreciate a longer synopsis that tells me where the character is coming from and where they're are going. If the book is, say, a generic romance ( I know. Nobody likes to think of their book as generic) , then I think a quick blip about the main theme is sufficient, but something needs to differentiate the book enough to grab my attention. The long synopsis... I can't think of a specific example now, but I do recall some books that I've picked up where I was told all of the major plot twists and resolution. The problem -- too much inf...

Book Information: Age Group: Young Adult Genre: SciFy, Romance Series: Yes, ordered The Lux Series has been on my TBR radar for well over a year, but I kept pushing it to the back burner because I had been reading a lot of other YA paranormal/sci-fi books and needed a break from long series reads. Looking for something different, I finally purchased Obsidian  and Onyx,  and over four days I cruised through these first two books -- barely leaving my reading spot for bathroom breaks. Obsidian (#1) (Blurb): Starting over sucks. When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I'd pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring...until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up. And then he opened his mouth. Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave ...

Both parents and writers (and parents who are writers) suffer a deep, dark curse.  Did your mother not tell you?  “I hope when you grow up,” she said as year of toys and angry words smacked the walls, “that you have a child who acts just like this.”  No wicked witch or evil stepmother could have done better.  Whether the child is real (parent) or metaphysical (author), the damn curse works.  The muse is a myth, a lie perpetuated by romantics and dreamers.  There is no gossamer fairy alighting on our shoulders when we squeeze the words down from our brains and push them out our fingertips.  The meme of the shoulder angel and devil hits closer the truth, but still misses.  That tiny voice who knows better than we do, who comes when our brains are wracked and leaves them wrecked, who is a tiny god in our own minds, that whiny, nitpicking, petulant absolute master of the universe: our adolescence haunts us.  Mine was a right prick and the little ...

It's always a good idea to scheduled in some time to only work on the blog. The Summer Bloggiesta is June 13-14th with a Twitter chat at 3pm EST. Here is my to-do list for the weekend: Catch up on reviews Check into all of the blogs I follow or promote Schedule July guest posts Confirm August posts Update forms and mailing lists What are you're bloggiesta goals? Link up and check out other Bloggiesta participant's goals by clicking here.

Words touch us all in different ways. Sometimes the original intent of a quote resonates so profoundly with us that it is hard to believe that another wrote it. Other times it is a single word, peculiar phrasing, or an alternative meaning regarding an event in our lives that resonates the most. I believe in the power of starting the the week off with a positive or provoking thought -- and so was created  A Penny For Your Thoughts . This is a weekly blog hop that will feature quotes of all kinds; classics, character, book-movie, personal, etc. The themes will range from funny to serious, but really it all depends on how you interpret it! How does this work? Every Sunday a quote will be posted Enter the giveaway by posting your thoughts on a post of your own or the comment section   below .  Collect the pennies!  Every week there will be a penny to collect and include with your post, if you choose. RAFFLE ENTRY:  Y our site or comment needs to be submitted...

What is Feature and Follow? F&F is a weekly blog hop that consists of book bloggers. It is hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee . The rules of involvement are simple: 1.) Link up on the blog hop Linky gadget below this post, 2.) follow the hosts via their network of choice, 3.) follow the weekly featured blog(s) via their network of choice (listed as "featured" in the blog list below), and lastly, 4) check out the rest of the blogs on the hop! If you become a new follower of a blog, let them know and they will follow you back. The F&F is a great way to network, meet other book bloggers, and gain new followers. Even more so, it's a great way to drive fun discussion on a weekly topic. This Week's FF:   If you can step into one characters shoes (in a book) and be them for a day who would it be and why? Also if you want to be creative, what scene? - Suggested by Seeing Night Book Reviews This question is hard because it would grea...

The fun part about having a blog is that it is like having your own house -- without the bills (for the most part). You can design it. Say what you want. Invite you you want. Party when you want. And kick the disgruntled drunk out when they've had one too many. Everyone has their own taste when it comes to design. I know that not everyone likes my blog design, but their reasons haven't persuaded me to change it yet (e.g., it looks weird on their one rare browser or my column ratios aren't their preferred). Book bloggers like to contact each other for opinions about their design and layout. It works out because 1. we know how to constructively critique  2. we visit a lot of blogs and know what we like and don't like pretty quickly. I'd say that 90% of our critique comments line up with each other. The difference is in personal preferences -- usually the little stuff that doesn't matter so much when it comes to aesthetics and layout. In no particular orde...

Woot! We just turned two! I'm pretty proud of this blog and having been able to maintain weekly posts even during the busy times in my life. Writing ahead of time and pre-scheduling was a HUGE factor in being able to maintain posts without turning into a ghost blog every other month. And of course there's been L.A. Kelly who has been awesome about providing information on riveting new reads regularly. When I hit year one, I said my biggest goal for the next year was to expand the audience and write a lot more discussion posts. Check and check! Between Facebook, our Google+ community, and here, the interaction and discussion has been excellent! I love that people are reading and enjoying what we are posting and that is what is driving this blog into a third year.  Going into year three I don't want to set any extremely lofty goals. My life is even busier now and I'd rather give myself half a chance at reaching a goal rather than doom myself from the start...

Things were simpler when I was a boy.  Stories were black and white; heroes were good, villains were bad, and the first always trounced the second. Puberty brought shades of gray into my world and adulthood got downright colorful. Some of my long-time heroes turned out to be villainous, some of the villains were placed under a heroic spotlight, and who won depended on which person was telling the story to whom.  I object to such editing—we must acknowledge both the horror and the happiness without bowdlerizing our history—but at the same time I revel in the rich, vibrant palette our kaleidoscope of perceptions injects into what could have been such a simple black and white narrative. I want to be clear that as a vision of red, white, and blue splendor, my memories of childhood Americana are unpure, undiluted fairytales. This is not a case of memories coloring perceptions or rewriting personal history, but of a man spreading tall tales, some of which were inspired by childhoo...