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Hello! This evening’s post is going to be a little different because we’re going to talk about Author Mentor Match! Usually I only talk about my writing during my monthly wrap-ups where I give you a paragraph about what I’ve been doing, but today I’m talking about my AMM entry, The Brightness of Shadow!

Lila is an elf (her hair is covering her ears right now). When the story begins, her parents are the Duke and Duchess of Garia, an important duchy in the kingdom of Erenya. She’s supposed to marry Prince (later King) Alexei, but although they were friendly as kids, she doesn’t love him and certainly doesn’t want to marry him. She prefers training with swords at her castle than wearing pretty (but uncomfortable) dresses and acting like she’s helpless. As our story begins, King Palenda II is supposed to announce their betrothal. That doesn’t happen, because the party happens to get interrupted by a supernatural event. She’s pretty happy about that. She’s @DuchessLilaP on Twitter.

King Palenda II (and his son, Alexei) tried to kill Dorlath when he was 11 years old, but he escaped. Since then, he’s been living out in the forest trying to survive. When Dorlath finds out that King Palenda II died, he’s optimistically hopeful that the new king, Alexei, might be a better king, so when he discovers somebody trying to kill him, he stops the murder (he’s very good with the bow and arrow). And ends up in Lila’s dungeon. The guy who tried to kill Alexei? Just happens to be Lila’s uncle. Lila (she’s the duchess now, her parents died) has to figure out what to do with him. They just got hit with the plague and she needs some new guards. Obviously he can shoot, and he did save her intended from certain death. He’s @DorlathHwyl on Twitter.

This is the new king, Alexei, the boy Lila doesn’t want to marry and the boy Dorlath saved. He thinks he’s an okay guy, although he does think that elves are superior to humans (most elves think that though). He’s in love with Lila but he’s also extremely possessive. He’s happy Dorlath saved Lila’s life at one point in the story, but he wouldn’t really be happy if he discovered that Lila’s falling in love with Dorlath. Lila’s making some changes to her duchy and he doesn’t like that either. Lila and Dorlath asked me to not allow him to have a Twitter account, because they don’t want him to know about their relationship.

About Me

And I’m Brooke! I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I wrote a couple novellas in high school, then didn’t write any fiction for a a long time, although I had a blog, wrote as a content producer for Associated Content, Yahoo! Voices, Empirical Marketing, and a few other places. In 2014 I read Divergent and was so upset at the ending that I got into fanfiction. I’ve written several fanfiction short stories, novellas, and novels since (I’m Lorren over at AO3). I recently posted the first chapter of Saving Adelinetta over there if you’re interested. The story isn’t finished yet, but chapter 1 stands on its own (it’s a Young Elites fanfic from Magiano’s POV, and chapter 1 tells of his escape from the Temple of Mensah shortly before his 12th birthday).

I failed NaNoWriMo a couple of times trying to write original fiction, but on April 22, 2018, I had a dream. It didn’t make sense, but I managed to tease out of it a short story about a duchess and the Captain of the Guard she was in love with. That August, I was half-awake and the idea of turning this into a novel with elves came to me. That year, I was originally going to write about an evil queen (and her daughter) that I eventually discovered were Alexei’s ancestors in Soyuza, but that story is waiting for now, because I’m in the final stages of editing this one.

I hope to become an Author Mentor Match mentee this year, but if not, I’ll keep trying! I want to make this story as good as I can, and AMM could help.

It’s Tuesday again, and you know what that means! It’s when everybody in the book blogging world gets together for Top Ten Tuesday! Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. But Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is a lot of fun. Today’s Topic is “Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2019” but I’m going to go with authors I discovered last year, so I retitled it “New to Me Authors from 2019”. Let’s get started!

VE Schwab: I started wanting to read her books back in 2018, and I finally got around to reading one of her books. She was probably the author that I owned the most books of yet had never read her. Her books always went on sale and they always looked good. Now I just have to read another one of her books!

Sandhya Menon: When I found out Sandhya Menon was speaking at the Colorado Teen Literature Conference last year, I knew I wanted to read one of her books before I went. Not only did I read When Dimple Met Rishi, but I also got on her street team! It’s such an honor. And you’ll definitely want to look for her books in the future ;-).

Jodie Lynn Zdrock: 2019 was Jodie Lynn Zdrock’s debut year, and I’m so happy to have been able to get an ARC for her first (and now second) book! And she’s such a nice lady too.

Laura E. Weymouth: I bought Ms. Weymouth’s debut, The Light Between Worlds, in 2018, but I didn’t get around to reading it until 2019. It’s funny, we started chatting on Twitter before I even knew she was publishing a book. I have her sophomore book, but I haven’t read it yet either. But soon!

Maggie Stiefvater: Ms. Stiefvater was another one of those authors that I talked about reading months before I actually did. I’ve read five of her books now, and plan to read The Scorpio Races in November.

Astrid Scholte: Another debut author from last year was Astrid Scholte, author of Four Dead Queens. Her next book comes out on March 3 (along with half the other books in the universe I want to read) so I’m getting it on audiobook.

C.G. Drews: C.G. Drews, AKA Paperfury, was not a new-to-me person, as I read her blogs and Twitter comments before 2019, but I read her 2018 debut, A Thousand Perfect Notes, last year.

Jessica Brody: It wasn’t until a few months ago that I realized that Jessica Brody was, in addition to writing one of my favorite books from last year, the author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel. I still haven’t read Save the Cat, but she was a new-to-me author last year.

Jenn Bennett: I had seen Jenn Bennett’s books around for a while, but when I saw Alex, Approximately on sale last year, I had to pick it up. Then I had the opportunity to read an ARC of The Lady Rogue.

Jennifer L. Armentrout: My first Jennifer L. Armentrout book was Storm and Fury, but it wasn’t the last book I read of hers. I still have to read more of her Lux series, but I’ll get there someday.

2019 was the year that I read most of the authors that I’d been saying “oh I really need to read” for months and months. Even though we’re only a couple weeks into 2020, I’ve already read a new author. Hopefully this will be a good reading year too!

One of the books on my summer 2019 TBR was Rora by James Byron Huggins. The book is a true story about the Waldenses, a religious group that was persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition. I first heard about this group in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and learned about this book shortly afterward. Even though I heard about this book years ago, I didn’t buy the book until last year.

Sadly, although the story was decent enough, the book itself was just okay.

Joshua Gianavel lived in the Rora Valley in what is now Northwestern Italy. He was also a Waldensian, who are Christians that don’t adhere to the Catholic Church’s beliefs. They attracted the attention of the Spanish Inquisition, who decided to make war upon their religious community. In the process, Gianavel had to rise to a position of leadership within the community, helping the community fight for their survival.

What I Liked

I liked how Rora was based on a true story. I didn’t know much about their story before reading this book, other than a small passage in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. It took a lot of research to write a book like this. This story brought the characters to life. I feel like I know a lot more of what happened to these people after reading this book.

What I Didn’t Like

The writing in this book didn’t exactly draw me in. The wording of this book was a little bit difficult to follow at times. Yes, this book happened a long time ago, but the characters didn’t have to talk as formally as they did (as far as I know, the author wasn’t using direct quotes). There were also a lot of characters in this story. It was sometimes difficult to keep track of who was a marquise and who was in charge of what territory, and what did Britain have to do with all of this? This book would have been better to make all of this more clear. There were also characters that appeared quite a bit in the beginning and seemingly disappeared. Where’d they go?

Conclusion

Although I’m glad I read Rora, I was disappointed that it wasn’t written better. This is such an unknown event in history that it’s a shame that the book wasn’t a page-turner. It wasn’t a bad book, but I read so many excellent books that I enjoy enough to give four or five stars to that when I see a book that is just average… it is something of a letdown.

Aaah! It’s Monday night and I still haven’t worked on my Top Ten Tuesday post for this week! Today was so busy (it was my boy’s first day of homeschool for the year and I had to go shopping) and I was about to go to bed but… good thing I remembered. Top Ten Tuesday is an awesome weekly gathering where we talk about books! It’s hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Today we’re going to talk about our favorite tropes.

1. Variations of “There’s only One Bed!”

I don’t really care for a simple “there’s only one bed” because one of them can sleep on the floor, but there are ways to twist this. Lost in the forest and need to huddle for warmth? You have to share a room with close quarters? These make sense. I use this in the book I’m writing.

2. Enemies to Lovers

Two people start off hating each other and by the end of the book they can’t get enough of each other? Count me in!

3. Childhood Friends to Lovers

On the other end of the spectrum, I love when characters have been best friends since childhood and then they fall in love with each other.

4. Cinnamon Roll Boys

I just love cinnamon roll boys… I just want to give them a hug! Boys who had terrible childhoods, but they’re still sweethearts deep down. Even if they had to turn to a life of crime as a matter of survival.

5. Would-Be Lovers Trip Onto Each Other

These two have to get together somehow!

6. Morally Grey “Heroes”

I loved Adelina Amouteru in The Young Elites, even though she’s definitely not a good person. Although she does terrible things, I feel bad for her. She didn’t choose to be bad. Cardan from The Cruel Prince probably could fit into this category as well.

7. Strong Girls

She doesn’t have to face the entire Hun army on her own (that would be unrealistic anyway) but I like a girl who knows what she wants and doesn’t let people walk all over her.

8. Forbidden Love

I’m not talking about biological siblings, but if the two families aren’t on board, they’re an interracial couple in a society where that’s forbidden, or that sort of thing, I might like it.

9. Characters Go on a Journey

It can be a lot of fun to see the characters run off and have to travel the world.

10. Survival

Oh no! We’re lost in the forest and we have to find a way to survive! Even better if the characters have some sort of attraction to each other (or develop one).

It was hard to come up with ten this week (and I kinda put it off until the last minute too). Next week, when we talk about books I wish were in my personal library, should be easier. Anyway, how about you? What are your favorite tropes (or ones that you hate)? Looking forward to reading what you posted this week.

I was recently given the opportunity to read Goof-Proof: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Perfect Query Letter. Thank you, Victoria, for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review! If you happen to be a writer who’s getting ready to query, this book might be of interest to you.

I have very limited experience querying. It’s pretty much limited to querying one short story and my novel to Author-Mentor-Match (I figured it couldn’t hurt). Prior to sending out these two queries, I went to several web sites trying to make sure I didn’t screw up anything too badly. Goof-Proof provides you with the essential information you need to create a query, all in one place.

At 25 pages, Goof-Proof is a quick read. It’s not an 800-page tome covering every little detail in creating a query letter. You’re not going to read chapter upon chapter about how to find the perfect comp titles, or how to craft the perfect hook that will reel in an agent. If you’re a busy writer, do you really have time to read all that anyway? You’d probably be better off reading craft books or taking Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass. This book does give the most important details you need to keep in mind as you develop your query letter.

In addition to the important query letter details promised in the title of this book, Ms. Loder also includes important insight about what it’s like from the agent’s side of the desk. If you spend a lot of time on writing Twitter, you may have heard a lot of this information before, but if you’re just getting into the writing community, this is good information to know.

Overall, I would recommend Goof-Proof: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Perfect Query Letter to newer novel writers who know they need an agent and have no idea how to actually create a query letter. This book might also be helpful to someone who has been querying, but hasn’t had much luck yet. It might not have anything new to offer if you’ve spent the past week visiting various author advice sites studying querying, however. This book also doesn’t cover short story queries (although some of the advice here will also work for your short story).

Goof-Proof doesn’t come out until July 23rd, but you can pre-order it now.

Hello! I found another great book tag, the ARC book tag, that I thought looked like fun. It was created by Book Princess Reviews, although I found it over at Kristin Kraves Books. In just a little over a year (when I first started reviewing ARCs) I’ve been blessed with so many amazing ARCs, and I’m grateful to the publishers for offering them to me. So here are the details:

RULES

• pingback to the creator (bookprincessreviews)
• pingback to the person who tagged you
• tag as many people as you want
• have fun!

WHAT’S THE FIRST ARC YOU EVER RECEIVED?

When I first started receiving ARCs, they were the “Read Now” kind you get off of Netgalley. The Titan Strain wasn’t the best book I ever read, by far, but wow. I was so overwhelmed by getting to read a book before it was released to the public.

Evidently, there is a second book out now, The Osiris Contingency. Amazon is giving a free three-month trial to Kindle Unlimited for Prime Day this year; maybe I’ll get the three months and read it then. I’m not sure I’d want to pay $5 for it.

WHAT ARC WOULD YOU SELL YOUR SOUL FOR?

Okay, I’m going to be honest here: I wouldn’t literally sell my soul for a copy of Rebel. I draw the line there. But I would consider crawling on broken glass wearing a pair of shorts, walking over hot coals, camping outside a bookstore in the snow… you get the idea. I did download a copy of the Rebel Sampler, but since there are no ARCs for this book, I’m just going to have to wait like everybody else. I’ll have to wait longer for the hardback because I’m getting a signed copy, but I’m also getting the Kindle copy, so guess what I’m doing at 10 PM Mountain Daylight Time on September 30th?

USING ARCS YOU HAVE RECEIVED OVER THE YEARS, SPELL OUT A-R-C.

ULTIMATE QUESTION: TO DNF OR NOT DNF AN ARC?

It would take a lot for me to DNF an ARC. Maybe I’m weird, but I think of receiving an ARC as accepting a freelance assignment. The publishers send me an ARC, in turn, it’s my job to read and review the book. So I do.

I think the only exception would be ARCs that I won in a contest from someone other than the publisher. I have an ARC I won over a year ago that I haven’t gotten to reading yet (although I intend to).

NAME AN ARC YOU DNF’D AND AN ARC YOU COULD NEVER DNF.

This question appeared in the original book tag, and since I finish all my ARCs, I don’t have an answer here, but I’m putting the question here in case someone wants to do this one.

WHAT ARC DID YOU GO OUT AND BUY A FINISHED COPY OF AFTER?

I don’t buy finished copies to the majority of ARCs I get (just a few). One of the books I did buy a finished copy of was Sky Without Stars. The first printings had a special print under the dust jacket that I wanted; besides, I wanted a hardback copy of the book.

I also couldn’t pass up the finished copy of Finale because it came with an amazing pre-order gift. I’d also buy books from my auto-buy authors.

WHICH MEDIUM DO YOU GET MOST OF YOUR ARCS IN? (PHYSICAL/EBOOK/AUDIO)

I get most of my ARCs in ebook format. I’ve started to get a lot more ARCs in physical format from Bookish First (I’ve had such good luck with them).

GIVE BLOGGERS ONE PIECE OF ADVICE REGARDING ARCS (REQUESTING/REVIEWING).

Requesting: My advice regarding requesting ARCs is don’t request too many. I know, everybody says that. The first books you request, you’ll probably get rejected (or more commonly, ignored). Once you do a few “Read Now” books, you’ll probably start getting accepted for book requests. The more books you review, the more likely it’ll be you’ll get accepted. At that point, you’ll want to dial down your requests WAY back, or you’ll have a flood of reviews to do.

Reviewing: I keep a blog schedule (pictured above). When I get an ARC, I add it to my calendar, so I know when I need to review it. A lot of publishers don’t want the review published more than a month ahead of the pub date, so that’s when I tentatively schedule my reviews. It helps me not to request too many books too. Right now, I have ARC reviews scheduled through September 9th, so I know not to request an ARC with an ARC prior to a mid-October pub date unless it’s a book that I absolutely must read.

That’s All!

So if you’d like to do this tag, feel free! I hate leaving people out that want to do it, but if you do complete this tag, please send me a link so I can see it!

Book publishers have been very good to me lately! I recently had the opportunity to read Dragonslayer by Duncan M. Hamilton (thank you Bookish First and Tor Books!). I enjoyed this book quite a lot, although it’s different than a lot of books that I review. I wouldn’t consider this book to be YA, but not because of inappropriate content or anything.

Our main character is Gill (or more formally, Lord Guillot del Villerauvais). He is the lord of a demense, but he has been neglecting his duties recently. He thinks that he’s doing his villagers a favor by not taxing them and spending most of his days drinking instead, but they could probably use a little more governance. Back in the day, he used to be the best swordsman in the world, but now, he’s fairly washed up.

Gill doesn’t remain a has-been drunk, however, because circumstances force him to shape up. A dragon has been woken up and is now terrorizing the land, starting with Villerauvais. Guillot may be the only person that can stop this mess, because he’s the last remaining member of the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle, a group of knights who were once famous for dragonslaying, but who fell into debauchery. After all, dragons haven’t been seen in the land for about 1000 years.

To make matters even worse, while Gill is trying to figure out how to solve this dragon problem, he’s also trying to deal with a more conventional enemy. To find out what happens, you’ll have to read the book.

Good Things About this Book

There are a lot of good things I can say about Dragonslayer. I like how this book focuses on a hero who is no longer a hero. There are plenty of stories out there about young men (or sometimes ladies) that save the day, but what happens after they save the world and have to return to normal life? Guillot is a good character with a kind heart (this is demonstrated when he risks his neck to save a damsel in distress), but his purpose seemed to be over when the story begins. I loved how this story explored that question.

What Could be Better?

Dragonslayer is a good book, but it’s not perfect. I’ve read other reviewers complain that there wasn’t enough worldbuilding, and I think that part is actually fine, but the book doesn’t exactly say what happened to his wife and child. This event was pretty much the beginning of the end for Guillot, so it’s surprising that the book doesn’t specify what happened. That being said, this is the first book in a trilogy, so more might be said in the next two books.

Overall

Dragonslayer is a return to the classic “let’s go slay the Dragon!” story. There hasn’t been a lot of great dragon stories recently. It has some really unique aspects, specifically the alcoholism angle and some chapters from the dragon’s POV. I definitely recommend it, say, if you were a big fan of Dragonlance back in the day and wish there were something recent and written for adults. If you’re just looking for a fantasy story and don’t need the dragon, then there might be better choices, but this book was pretty good and I’ll probably read the sequel.

We’re already halfway through the year (well, almost, but I’m not adding a new release between now and tomorrow) so it’s time to update everyone on The New Release Challenge, hosted by Unconventional Bookworms! I haven’t been linking my reviews over there (just another thing to do) but I’ll update you on my new release reads here!

• Finale – Stephanie Garber
• No Place Like Here – Christina June
• Happily and Madly – Alexis Bass
• The Tiger at Midnight – Swati Teerdhala
• Rebel – Beverly Jenkins
• Storm and Fury – Jennifer L. Armentrout
• The Thirteenth Guardian – K.M. Lewis
• Soul of the Sword – Julie Kagawa
• The Evil Queen – Gena Showalter
• The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
• Spin the Dawn – Elizabeth Lim
• Wicked Fox – Kat Cho
• The Storm Crow – Kalyn Josephson
• On the Come Up – Angie Thomas
• Dragonslayer – Duncan M. Hamilton

So that’s 15 new releases, which is better than Quarter 1, where I read 13 new releases. I guess it’s easier later on in the year, because although most of these books I read on release day or as ARCs, there are a couple that I read a month or two after their release date. I still have to review a few of these, but they’re all scheduled.

It’s really difficult to pick favorites from this list. Finale, Wicked Fox, Spin the Dawn, On the Come Up, and Rebel were all outstanding! I’m going to have such a difficult time with my end of year favorites this year.

What was your favorite new release from this spring?

It’s Friday again, and that means it’s time for another episode of Fangirling on Friday. This week’s topic is Children’s Books, in honor of Dr. Seuss. This weekly meme is hosted by Books in the Skye.

I saw on Twitter the other day that Dr. Seuss was rejected several times. He was about ready to give up, when he ran into a friend of his who had just started a publishing business. If he had been walking on the other side of the street, we might never have heard of Dr. Seuss.

I don’t read a lot of children’s books (unless you count YA, which I don’t) so today I’ll talk a little bit about an author that my boy absolutely adores and another one that I’m currently reading that I think he’s going to love. The author that my boy adores (he’s 12) is Lauren Magaziner. She’s the author of Wizardmatch, Case Closed, and The Only Thing Worse than Witches. These are all Middle Grade books.

For the longest time, my boy would only read Minecraft books. Like most kids, he loves Minecraft. I couldn’t get him to read anything else. Anyway, I found out that Goodreads has Middle Grade lists just like they have YA lists, and I got this book for him from the library. He’s since loved every book that he’s read from this author.

Right now I’m reading The Land of Yesterday by K.A. Reynolds. I’m only about 25% done with the book, but I’m pretty sure this is a book that my boy will love.

In addition to the gorgeous cover, this book is pretty funny. My boy loves funny. The girl lives in a town called Hungrig (which means hungry in German). They have a neighbor called Mr. Curmudgeon. This book is all sorts of cute and I’ll definitely have to recommend this book to my boy.

I also happen to be pretty happy that I actually convinced our library to buy this book. I buy a lot of books, but I can’t buy them all, and since my library bought it, other girls and boys will get to read this one after my boy and I are done with it.

Do you have any book recommendations for my boy? He reads the occasional YA book, but he still enjoys a lot of middle grade books. He likes funny books with magic in them.

Next week I’m supposed to write about badass heroines. See you then!

February was a short month, and so not quite as much happened this month, but we’ll see what I did do:

Books Read:

After such an amazing reading month in January, February was kind of “meh” for me. There were a few bright spots but a few that were just okay (that was almost half of them). I’ve read 7 1/2 books this month (so far). I fully expect to finish reading Four Dead Queens today, so I’m putting it here, even though I’m not 100% done.

• Hundreds – Pepper Winters
• Second Star – J.M. Sullivan
• Tower of Dawn – Sarah J. Maas
• The Iliad (graphic novel) – Gareth Hinds
• Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo
• The Waking Forest – Alyssa Wees
• The Dysasters – P.C. and Kristin Cast
• Four Dead Queens – Astrid Scholte

Blog Stats:

• Twitter has been really weird this month. I’ve been hovering around 1,932 followers for weeks now. I’ll get followers and lose them. Don’t know why.
• Blog users have been fairly steady.

Writing:

I finished the first round of editing on The Brightness of Shadow this month. It’s going slower than I’d like it to, but even though I’d like to query early summer, there isn’t a deadline or anything. I don’t want to send this thing out until it’s ready. I read the first page to my critique group and they liked it, and then I went and changed a few things and made it better… so I think the first page would be ready to go out, but there’s still a lot of work to do on the remaining ~300 pages.

Life:

My daughter is back from the hospital, so I don’t have to spend every Sunday and Tuesday afternoon visiting her. Since I can see her every day now.

I’m teaching Spanish this semester, and I’m taking a writing class to work on TBoS. So life is teaching, working, getting ready to teach, writing, tweeting. Hope to get our house refinanced soon so I can work at home again.

We got our taxes done! Last year I owed about three months of our salary and we had to set up a payment plan (a job loss caused us to make less money at the end of the year than at the beginning). This year, we got a huge refund, and that basically is going to pay for everything we owe the IRS. So that will be paid off. Which is good, I’d rather owe money to Vinny who might break my legs or not paying him.

So that’s it! Hopefully March will be good!