Sunday, February 26, 2012

Happiness Guaranteed by Wendy Laharnar


Back Cover:


Bianca, a beautiful Epicurean Supremo from a privileged futuristic society has a flaw which, if discovered and reported to the Rulers, will threaten her life and that of the man she loves. Unable to pinpoint the cause she tries to hide her anxiety until an ingenious birthday present from her husband provides a respite. Now, on her thirty-third birthday, her primitive behaviour and thought patterns return; stronger and more dangerous.


Excerpt:


Bianca’s bed swayed in gentle rhythm with her floating condominium. Smiling, she opened her eyes and reached across the white expanse for Derek. He wasn’t there. Damn. She’d overslept; very out of character. What if he noticed? No. He’ll return soon and find me on the balcony exactly where he expects me to be, especially today.


She rolled onto her back, stealing a few extra minutes in bed and glanced up at the domed ceiling high above her: Derek’s masterpiece. The wide, stained glass panels let shafts of coloured light sprinkle life into her sterile world. She watched the lazy sunbeams paint murals on the milky walls. They tinselled the buckles on the two pairs of shoes and spotlighted the confusion of clothes on a moulded chair.


Flinging back the covers, she stretched, letting the sun energize her skin. “What a glorious morning,” she murmured. Only Penthouse Dwellers, like Derek and herself attained this privilege. According to Derek, sunlight symbolized their status. For a moment she revelled in true contentment.


An image of her grandfather snuck into her mind. He’d told her of a time when sunlight shone on everyone, but he’d been a storyteller, a bad influence. On her seventh birthday her parents forbade her to visit him any more, and placed him out-of-bounds. Years later she heard he’d died.


Her happiness shrivelled. “Unimportant.” She scowled, jumped out of bed and slipped into clear, tensile slippers. A filigree tunic lay on the floor where she let it fall the night before. She picked it up, grabbed yesterday’s clothes off the chair, hurried to the primping room and dropped them all down the trash-chute. “There!” She stabbed her finger on the Restyle button.


With her fingertips, she massaged her cheeks and studied herself in the mirror. Thirty-three, today. No obvious flaws, not yet, apart from that one little glitch Derek inadvertently fixed last birthday.



Review:

Bianca lives in a society in which happiness is required and unhappiness is considered a flaw.  If the Rulers ever knew she experienced even the most fleeting feelings of unhappiness, they would scrap her and start over.  And they would probably scrap her husband, Derek as well, not believing she could hide such feelings from him, despite the fact that she takes great pains to do so.  After all, they’re genetically perfect Epicurean Supremos.  They live in a penthouse with a stained-glass skylight and a balcony where they can bask in the sun and watch the cars whiz by on the accident-free highway.

But her grandfather told her of a time when the sun shone on everyone, and people lived on the ground amongst trees, and had babies just because they wanted to, and not because the geneticists said they could have a child designed in a test-tube…  And she dreamed of a woman with a baby.  Could it be her?  Why would she want to live among trees and carry a baby on her back when she already had the ideal life?  Why couldn’t she suppress these dreams?  And how could she keep Derek from finding out?

I highly recommend this thought-provoking, yet very entertaining short story.

Length:  25 Pages

Price:  $2.50


You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if this book costs $2.50 at Secret Cravings and you buy from there, the author will receive about $1.00.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.30.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Lady in Waiting by Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz




Mabriona is cousin to the beautiful and spoiled Princess Alana.  When Alana is forced to marry a man she despises, Mabriona is torn between her loyalty to her cousin and her attraction to the handsome Prince Blayne.

Tragedy befalls the cousins on the way to Prince Blayne’s castle.  Servants, believing Mabriona to be Alana, refuse to listen when she tries to explain.

While she waits for Blayne to recover, Mabriona meets his equally handsome younger brother, Madoc, a bard.

When Blayne awakes, will Mabriona choose life with a future king, will she be sent home in disgrace because of her inadvertent lies, or will Madoc win her love with his poetry?


I dread reviewing historical romances.  So many authors don’t do their homework and fill their books with anachronisms and modern language that doesn’t belong there.  Not so Ms. Ehrenkranz.  There is not a blip in the entire thirty-seven pages.

Even though they’re first cousins, Princess Alana treats Mabriona as a servant; not a friend or relative.  But then, there’s really no love lost between the two girls.  The Princess is selfish and self-centered and Mabriona wishes Alana would get over herself.  It doesn’t help when she falls for Alana’s betrothed, and the feeling appears to be mutual, and it gets even more complicated when Alana is killed during an accident en-route to the Prince’s kingdom and his family mistakes Mabriona for her.

And it gets even worse when his brother falls for her.  He’s just as handsome.  Used to living in her cousin’s shadow, Mabriona is enjoying the attention.  But the other shoe has to drop eventually.  Will she fess up before she gets caught?  And what will be the consequences when it does?  I guess you’ll just have to read the story to find out.  I definitely recommend it.


Length:  37 Pages

Price:  $2.50


You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if this book costs $2.50 at Secret Cravings and you buy from there, the author will receive about $1.00.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.30.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

The King’s Daughter by Miriam Newman


Tia is the daughter of the King of Alcinia.  He is about to marry her off to a neighboring king, despite the fact that she is the heir to his throne and has always expected to marry her cousin—so much so that she throws a temper tantrum in the midst of what was to be her wedding banquet.  Her tantrum is cut short, however, by an attack by their enemies, the Tumagi using weapons and ships supplied by Alcini’s ally, the Omani.  Alcinia is a small kingdom and not very wealthy or populous. High Born women (including Tia) are trained for combat, but Tia is unarmed in her wedding gown.  She is captured, almost raped by the enemy king (saved only by his impotence), and sold into slavery.
Tia is transported along with the other High Born women to Omana, where she is bought by Sergius Magistri, a general whom all of her people fear, as his reputation is one of ruthlessness on the battlefield.  At home, however, he is a gentle man who frees her and treats her with the accord due her rank and station.  They fall in love, marry, and start a family.

The Omana Empire is in trouble, however.  The Emperator is clearly insane and the Emperatum is rife with corruption and debauchery.  Think Caligula.  It was he who supplied the Tumagi with ships and weapons for their invasion of Alcinia, despite their treaty with Omana, signed during his father’s reign.  The Emerator sends Sergius to capture Alcinia, but Sergius has his own plans for the kingdom and they include returning Tia to her throne.


“Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.”
“All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgians inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third.”

I’ve forgotten most of the Latin I took in high school and college and confess I had to look up this quote—the opening line of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, the text that consumes every Latin student’s second year.  However, I’ve included it here because Ms. Newman has really done her homework (something I didn’t do very well my second year or I might not have had to look this up).  Her descriptions of life in a Roman villa, battle tactics, and conditions aboard Roman slave ships are incredibly authentic.  Alcinia could well be Britania but without a description of the building of Hadrian’s Wall, and Tia could be a Celtic Princess in that she worships The Goddess, had a scrying bowl back home, and honed her religious/spiritual powers among an order of wise women she refers to as The Sisters. 

This book is also told in first person, a very difficult thing to do well.  Even Dostoyevsky couldn’t manage it when he started Crime and Punishment in first person.  Five hundred pages into the book he had to go back and re-write it in third person.  In longhand, since the typewriter had not yet been invented.  Ms. Newman has carried off her first-person narration flawlessly.

This book has incredible attention to historic detail, flawless first-person narration, but most importantly, it has multi-faceted characters who will engage you.  While Tia starts out as a spoiled brat, you can tell from her narration that there is a redeemable person in there and you will get to watch her grow.  Sergius is fierce, but you feel his gentility from the moment you meet him, and you fall in love with him alongside Tia.

This is one incredible book.  Have Kleenex close by.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Ten Years by James Hartley




Blurb:
 
Peter Ingraham invented a time machine, and traveled into the future. Ten years too far into the future. But he soon found that the future didn't match the past, and when he returned to where he started, the present didn't match either of them...

Excerpt:
When Peter pressed the switch, everything went dark. Then, as his eyes became adjusted to the darkness, he realized he could see a few things, like the luminous dial on his watch, and, if he twisted his neck a bit, the pilot light on the time machine itself.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the blackness vanished again, and Peter was standing in the lab, but a totally changed lab. It was deserted and looked like it had been for a long time. There was dust all over everything, what little equipment remained was rusting and broken. Most of the window panes had been shattered. Peter looked around, a cold sick feeling arising in the pit of his stomach. This was not just a single day later.
A quick check of the lab didn't turn up anything useful. The office outside had a faded 2015 calendar on the wall. 2015, he thought, that shows I moved at least two years, and that calendar is anything but new. The office, and several others down the hall, were all deserted, abandoned. He reached the front door and looked out. In front of the building, where Mr. Carlson's prized lawn had been, was a jungle of weeds.

Peter pushed the door open, and there was the sudden clangor of an alarm. Great, he thought, only one thing is still working, and it has to be the alarm. He continued out the door and down the path to the parking lot, only to discover that he was fenced in by a tall cyclone fence that had not been there when he started his trip. There was a gate, and he tugged at it, but it was firmly locked. It looked like it wasn't going to matter, several police cars were screaming into view, lights flashing. He stood by the gate and waited.
The first cop to arrive at the gate looked him over then asked, "Okay, buddy, how the hell did you get in there?"

"I work here, officer. I was running an experiment in the lab, and I seem to have stayed a little longer than expected. Could you please let me out?"

"You work there? Come off it. Nobody has worked there for years, not since the place went bankrupt. Yeah, we'll let you out, and then we'll give you a nice little ride. Straight to the station house."

Another cop came hurrying up with a set of keys and soon had the gate open. True to his word, the first cop hustled Peter over to a squad car after a quick frisk and shoved him in the back. "You behave yourself, and we won't have to handcuff you," he said. "But if you give us any trouble, well, you ain't gonna like it. By the way," he said as he slid behind the wheel and started up, "what's in the backpack?"

Uh- oh, said Peter to himself, I have a feeling that telling him it's a time machine might not be the best idea. He thought quickly then said, "It's some experimental scientific equipment, officer, a, er, a temporal displacement generator. The, ah, calibration was off, that's how I got in there."

"Oh. Yeah. A temporary thingie. If it got you in there, how come you couldn't get out?"

"Once I saw the calibration was off, I was afraid to try it again. Who knows where I would have ended up?"

"Sounds sensible. You just explain all that to the lieutenant, and you're maybe not in too much trouble." He lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive.


Does anyone ever get the calibration right on their time machines?  Would it be a good story if they did?  Even Robert Heinlein’s time travelers end up in the wrong place dodging the cops.  This short story reminds me a bit of The Old Man’s style.  Greater praise I cannot give.  This is definitely a five-star read.
Back to wayward time machines.  The DeLorean in Back to the Future almost went where it was supposed to go, but it was carrying the wrong passenger.  At least it came back to the right time and date.  And now it’s in the Volo Auto Museum in our back yard, complete with flux capacitor.  Now, where’s Marty McFly’s hood?  Last time I saw it, my granddaughter Beth had it.


My daughter Christine with my granddaughters Presley and Beth holding the hood.

Price:  $2.50