Manic Mondays -- Paranormal Addict and Proud! by Donna of Booklover's Hideaway.

Angela asked me to write about why I love the Paranormal genre so much. Or the Paranormal Romance genre, to be more specific. Well, that is a good question.



To be honest, I wasn't a fan until just a few years ago, when my niece suggested I read the Dark Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon. At first I was like, I dunno... At the time, I was a big-time fan of Historical Romance. Yeah, I can hear you now: "Those cheesy bodice-rippers?!" Yes, that's me. I can't help it, I love them. But I decided to give the Dark Hunter series a shot anyway; after all, there is a mixture of Greek and Roman mythology in these books, and I've always loved reading anything to do with that. So I picked up the first book, and that is all it took for me to become obsessed with this genre.



What hooked me? I'm not sure how to answer that. The stories and mythologies were unique...and I have to admit the hot, steamy stuff helped. There's just something about these dark heroes that make you want to sigh. You know, we all crave a bad boy now and again; maybe that was it. Maybe it's the danger these men represent? Or how loyal they are to those they care about? Or is it a combination?



What is my favorite Paranormal to read about? Why, it's vampires, of course. Dark and dangerous and sexy, oh yeah. Here is one example. This vampire is the reason I watch True Blood and have read the books, the Sookie Stackhouse series. Don't you just want him to taste a sample from you? Excuse me while I stare at this picture for while.

Oh yeah, sorry, I'm supposed to be finishing this post.















I have several suggestions if you are interested in whetting your appetite in the world of Paranormal Romance:



1. The Dark Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon. I cannot pimp this series enough. Kenyon does wonderful job of mixing drama, sarcastic humor, hot and steamy, and Happily Ever Afters. In the Dark Hunter world, there are not just vampires, there are werewolves, and gods and goddesses.

2. Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward. This is another series that is a must buy for me. Her vampires are a tortured bunch, but they are really good.

3. The Lords of the Underworld series by Gena Showalter. This is another series that has a mixture of Greek mythology and vampires. These tortured souls possess a demon; for example, Pain, Wrath, Lust, and so forth.

4. The Demonica Series by Larissa Ione. This series is filled with demons and the inner workings of a Demon Hospital. Don't laugh; honestly, this is a fantastic series, not a soap opera.

I'd better stop now, or this post will never end.



Whether it's the danger, the hot steam that coats the pages, or just a damned good story, I love to just to be whisked away for awhile. Isn't that what we all want from a book?








TO LEARN MORE ABOUT DONNA AND PARANORMAL ROMANCE PLEASE VISIT -- BOOKLOVER'S HIDEAWAY

Angel Rants 10/1/2011 Schools and Rules.

So I though I might just blog today about whatever was on my mind. And, right now what's on my mind is schools and the differences I've noted in the inner-city and rural districts.

It really amazes me how different they really are and you might think that this is gonna be all about violence and lack of real education, but it's not. It's about the frivolous unnecessary rules based on appearance or style.

I lived most of my life in a small town and went to a rural school that was medium sized and for the most part, from the outside looked pleasant enough. My oldest daughter, up until this year also attended school in this district.

Now, back in the day, and even these days I was and still am somewhat of a rebel when it comes to style and trends. My daughter is the same way. If it's strange or different, she will do it or wear it. Purple hair? Piercings? yes, and yes. Strange clothing, unique jewelery? yes and yes again. Needless to say, I was frequently in trouble for these things, as was she. She wore a tutu over pants to school and nearly got detention. I got told via note from the principle that her hair was a distraction to the other students and the learning process and had to be dyed to a "normal" color within 7 days or she would be kicked out of school. Her pants were too long, she needed new ones that fit properly, (mind you, I'm not talking bout the pants on the ground type thing here where the underwear shows, I'm talking, the girl is simply 4'11 and probably not gonna grow much more so the pants are simply too long.)Or, I needed to take them to the tailor and have them hemmed/altered. If not she would be sent home to change and if she didn't have the "appropriate" pants she wouldn't be allowed in school. Her piercings we not to be worn anywhere on school grounds....

Are you getting the full picture here? Talk about frustrating? I went rounds with the principal trying to understand why such superficial things were so damn important that it would lead the woman to want to keep my daughter from her right to learn! I don't understand how someones hair color or the pants they wear affect the inner workings of the brain?

Well, let me tell you. this woman, (the principal of the rural school district) basically told me I was a piss poor parent, ruining my child's life by letting her be herself and express her uniqueness though style and that I was flat out wrong. I was devastated because I like to think of myself as laid back, open minded and approachable. I feel that's how parent should be to their teens and here is this woman telling me: Nope, you're a horrible mother.

Imagine my surprise when I relocated my family to a big city, Pittsburgh to be exact. I was very apprehensive about the move and the schools seeing as they are "inner-city" Would my kids be safe? Would their education suffer due to inferior schools and teachers? Would the environment be too violent and deter my girls from learning?

I am happy to say that while the school district is a bit rougher, they employ metal detectors everywhere, even in the elementary schools and security forces on grounds all the time, as a whole, they are so much more RELAXED!

There are no stupid rules about what color or style your hair or clothes can be! If you have Piercings so what! You wanna wear a tutu and ballet slippers in the middle of winter, more power to ya! The only clothing or style restrictions they have is nothing overly provocative or sexual and nothing relating to drugs/alcohol/violence/gangs. Otherwise, let your uniqueness shine!

These inner-city schools really have it together, they focus on important issues. children's safety and the core of education, as it should be!

My daughter, has gone from a mediocre student with grades riding steady C's to all of her classes grades at A' or B's, the lowest B being an 88% and that is in math which is her worst subject. She is no longer worried that her appearance is making people judge her. She is allowed to be herself and just relax and learn and not worry whether she "fits in".

LISTEN UP RURAL AMERICA! -- THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE!

Take a pointer from the inner-cities and focus on the important detail and quit ruin our kids lives with your vanity and superficial non-sense! Don't judge a book by it's cover. I know that's cliche but really, when it boils down to it... it is the truth. Outward appearances should have no bearing on a persons worth. Hair, clothes, make-up, piercings, it's all irrelevant in the grande scheme of life so seriously, WAKE UP!

That is all. I just had to get it off my chest. Do you agree with me or not? I am interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions!

I'm out---
Angel

Angel's Cove Wants YOU

That's right! We are looking for two people to join our staff! Do you have what it takes? What we are looking for is not a tall or impossible order at all we simply need two motivated people with some spare time to help keep things running smoothly around here and timely!

We need one person to run/post MEMES. You would be responsible for posting such MEMES as: Teaser Tuesday, Waiting on Wednesday , Follow Friday, On My Wishlist , In My Mailbox I would provide you with the info needed i simply need an assistant to make sure it's done because between contacting authors, reading, reviewing and real life offline crises that come up, I can not seem to keep up with them all. If you would like to fill this position, please either leave a comment on this post with your email info or contact me directly at awallace1973@gmail.com You will be added to the "About Us" Page and become an Angels Cove Angel! (ok, cheesy I know but cut me some slack!)


I am also looking for someone who reads a lot of Romance Novels to sumbit Romance reviews. While The Kobra Kid and I are known to read ANYTHING, looking through our reviews I nticed that we tend to neglect the romantic genre and this will just not do. So We are looking for one person who absolutely loves reading and reviewing the differnt romance genres to join us! As with the above, if you are interested in this position either leave a comment with your contact info and a sample of your reviews or contact me directly at awallace1973@gmail.com


Thanks everyone and we hope to hear from you soon!

Guest Post from Pat Lawrence author of Jarred Into Being: Working Together

Visit the author website which includes an audio excerpt & a one minute video promo; and you can order the book right from there as well. I highly recommend this book! It was wonderful! :) http://www.outskirtspress.com/jarredintobeing




‘Pat Lawrence’ is part of the fiction. ‘Pat Lawrence’ is a pseudonym for our husband and wife writing team of PAT Adsit Burke and Daniel LAWRENCE Burke.




People often ask us, “How do you do that? How do you collaborate?”
• Do you each write a draft and then combine them?
• Do you write alternating chapters?
• Does one of you write the descriptions and the other write the dialogue?
• Do you sit and write every word together?
The answers to these questions are: Not really, No, No, and Definitely Not.




Collaborative writing is like riding a tandem bicycle: one author steers, but both authors provide the energy to move, watch to avoid the hazards, agree on which direction to turn, and settle on the final destination.




Our novel collaborations begin with agreement on a single idea that serves as the overarching theme of the entire work. That theme for Jarred Into Being was that each individual life is profoundly influenced by the lives which intersect and surround it. Next, we agree on the major plot elements that need to occur to craft an interesting story that will illustrate that theme. In Jarred, a young girl’s loss of her parents places her in great peril because the characters now intersecting and surrounding her life want to possess her rather than protect her. The conflict in the novel arises out of the fact that our main character, Eva, is unwavering in her determination not to be possessed, and she continually battles for independence and freedom from the powerful and corrupt forces who would dominate her.




After that, draft one begins in earnest. We create the incidents and the characters which dramatize the main character’s plight. One of us (the partner who steers the bike to continue the analogy above) writes sections—maybe a chapter, maybe several—and submits those to the other partner. That partner reads, edits, searches for flaws, plot failures, and adds suggestions for additions or deletions and returns the sections to the other partner who incorporates the suggestions into the ongoing manuscript. That process continues section by section until we reach what we agree is a satisfying conclusion to the book.




For draft two, we separately read and revise the entire work from beginning to end, and then we each submit our suggested revisions to the other for consideration. Finally, in draft three, we collaborate and discuss all the suggested revisions we have both made and ultimately agree on what emerges as our final version.




This collaboration process works well for us. We enjoy it, and we agree on the most important aspect of writing: always make it interesting. In fact, throughout the entire process we constantly challenge ourselves and each other by asking: “Is that last sentence, paragraph, chapter compelling enough to capture and hold the reader’s interest?” The answer MUST BE “yes.” If the answer is “maybe” we immediately employ our ironclad rule: rewrite.




Ultimately, we both have learned that the two most important words in a husband-wife collaborative writing team are—“Yes, dear.” Happy reading.

Angel Reviews-- Jarred Into Being by: Pat Lawrence

Jarred Into Being by Pat Lawrence

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I don't give alot of 5 star reviews, most of my reviews fall in the 3-4's cause there is always something missing.

I am happy to say with "Jarred Into Being" nothing is missing! Action, intrigue, mystery, love, betrayal, evil, it's all there and in just the right amounts.

At first you may envy the main character Eva, I mean who wouldn't want to be so exquisitely beautiful? I know as a woman I wish I could be visually perfect! Or at lest I thought, until I read this book. Beauty may have it's perks but as you will soon find out while reading, for Eva, most of the time it is a curse! People want to be her, to possess her and it takes her a very long time and a lot of wrong decisions before she learns how to use what she has to her own advantage.


Without giving too much away, the story has it's typical plot points and triggers, evil doers and supportive charecters, but the thing that kept it from being cliche or mundane was Eva herself. The authors wrote her to suck you in. In this book you are Eva, you see what she sees, feel what she feels, you ache and triumph with her. I found myself screaming and shouting at her, crying with her and laughing and loving with her. Somehow despite all the craziness surrounding her, she never loses her goodness.

I was very impressed with the ending as well. A lot of times in fiction, the authors leave loose ends and unfinished business, or the ending seems contrived, hurried or just not believable. That is not the case with "Jarred Into Being" Everything wraps up tightly and concisely and that is why I give this book a solid 5 stars!

I would recommend this book to adults who enjoy a little bit of twisted evilness and intrigue mixed with love.






View all my reviews

Guest Post: Author Patty Friedmann and Taken Away.

I'd like to welcome Author Patty Friedmann to Angels Cove and welcome her for our very first Guest Post!

In the midst of the biggest natural disaster in American history--Hurricane Katrina--15-year-old Summer "Sumbie" Elmwood's two-year-old sister disappears from the hospital after open-heart surgery and Sumbie is the prime suspect. But in the chaos of New Orleans after the storm, no one is looking for just one little girl. Sumbie must find her missing sister and enlists her two would-be boyfriends to help her, hoping against hope that it's not too late.
Buy on amazon!







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From Patty....
TAKEN AWAY--But Staying in New Orleans


I never learned to touch type. So during my early neurotic years of writing I sometimes wondered what I would do if I lost my eyesight. I wouldn't be able to put words on paper. Then my grandmother had symptoms of dementia, and I let my neurotic worries shift to thoughts of not writing because I'd lose my mental faculties.
Never in all the time I was writing novels--darkly comic, highly acclaimed, literary, New Orleans-set novels--did it occur to me that I might not be able to write because something would happen outside of myself.
Then it did.

Hurricane Katrina came tearing through my hometown. I stayed for the storm because, rightly so, it wasn't a big deal. The flood that followed, though, was a very big deal. I was trapped, and my city was ruined. A lot of New Orleans is rebuilt now, but the real people here, the true characters who make up the deep-down character of the city that only born-natives understand, well, we're what what one my novels called "a little bit ruined."

As a writer after the storm, as a woman with PTSD, I've been "a little bit ruined." My landscape was gone.

I didn't think I'd write again until agent Charlotte Sheedy came to town with her client Eve Ensler ("The Vagina Monologues") and took me to breakfast and gave me a dutch uncle talk. "Write a young adult novel about a baby who disappears during Katrina," she said.

I'm sure Charlotte, like every New Yorker and out-of-towner in general, expected I'd do a novel about a black child who disappears in the Superdome. But that wasn't what I knew. I knew what it was like to wade in four feet of water in uptown, what it was like to be trapped for a week in 95 degrees in the open part of the city. What happened to white people who might have had resources at one time, but had none after the storm. I wrote about a girl whose baby sister has open-heart surgery three days before Katrina, then disappears in the hospital the night the storm hits.
Taken Away has bits of romance and lots of mystery in it. But as far as I'm concerned, it's my way of using my old voice on my old New Orleans streets to tell a family story that only a native would know to tell.






For More Info Visit: www.pattyfriedmann.com

Personal Update and Upcoming Reviews!

Hello people! Angel here, I hope you all are doing well. First I want to apologize for my total lack of posting lately but life kinda got in the way of my reading and reviewing! Thanks to my Sis *Kobra Kid* for keepin' up in here and actually posting reviews! I have been out/offline for a bit cause I moved. FINALLY we are nearly settled in a nice house, plenty big enough for all of us and we will be staying put now for a very long time! YAY! Now that things have settled down I wanted to let you all know that I have A LOT of book on my list of up coming reviews! Some I have finished and just not written up my reviews yet and others are still waiting for me to begin reading but I am very excited about them and can't wait to share my opinions with you all! So here we go.... up coming reviews from me....


Canyons of The Soul by by: Charles L Fields

Charles Stone, Boston lawyer and sculptor is retained again by Franklin Life Insurance Company. This time it is more than another dangerous investigative assignment, but one that involves saving the insurance company from financial collapse. Stone confronts Lucas "Luke" Simon, a prominent Mormon insurance executive turned sadistic self proclaimed prophet of a Utah polygamist sect. The confrontation is further complicated by the revengeful acts of a previous antagonist, Brigadier General Jane Meyers. Occult side events, romantic encounters and Southwest adventures add greater intrigue and dimension to this travel mystery. The reader and reviewer should be aware this dual genre allows the author to use greater details, flashbacks and delayed action. Be patient and you will be rewarded.


Zaftan Miscreants Book 2 of the Zaftan Trilogy by: Hank Quense

The Zaftans and the natives from Gundarland are at it again. This time, the encounter is in deep space and two powerful fleets of warships face off. While the fleets challenge each other, two females struggle to survive. One, named Sam, is a new type of android with an organic brain. She is perplexed by her unexpected ability to experience emotions. Her primary one is loneliness since the softie officers she is supposed to work with treat her with open contempt. The only friendly voice on the battle cruiser is the ship's main computer, called Slash 9, and he has turned rogue and plans to evolve to a softie-like state. Slash 9 is also interested in romancing Sam. Meanwhile, Klatze, a beautiful Zaftan officer blessed with talent and ability, a rarity in the zaftan navy, comes to the attention of the fleet's commodore, Gongeblazn. He lusts after her and her continuous refusals to have sex angers the commodore and his lust turns to thoughts of vengeance. Gongeblazn's desire to slaughter Klatze continues after his navy career is cut short by treachery. After becoming a pirate, Gongeblazn's thirst for revenge continues. Sam and Klatze each face unique situations that test their mettle and their desire to survive in the midst of chaos. Zaftan Miscreants continues the humor and satire that set the first book apart from other sci-fi and fantasy stories.


Pride and Prejudice Hidden Lusts by: Mitzi Szereto

Imagine that Jane Austen had written the opening line of her satirical novel Pride and Prejudice this way: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a good romp and a good wife—although not necessarily from the same person or from the opposite sex.” In Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts, the entire cast of characters from Austen’s classic is here, caught with their breeches unbuttoned and their skirts raised high in this rewrite that goes all the way – and then some! Mr. Darcy has never been more devilish and the seemingly chaste Elizabeth never more turned on. In this no-holds-barred account, men are not necessarily the only dominating sex. This time Mr. Bingley and his sister both have designs on Mr. Darcy’s manhood; Elizabeth’s dear friend Charlotte marries their family’s strange relation, discovering that her husband’s pious nature extends to worship of a different sort; and, in this telling, Lady Catherine de Bourgh takes the disciplining of those in the parish very seriously. As for the handsome Mr. Wickham, he’s wickeder than ever! And of course there’s plenty of good old-fashioned bodice ripping that shows no pride or prejudice and reveals hot hidden lusts in every scandalous page-turning chapter. This is the book Jane Austen would have written, if only she’d had the nerve!


Love Child by: A.M. Torres

Tommy Hulette never asked to be born. Everyone wants to make him regret it even so. Tommy Hulette hates his ghetto Brooklyn neighborhood. He's content living with his beautiful mother, his loyal caring father, his little sister Greta. He enjoys playing stick ball with neighborhood friends then really perks up when he meets beautiful and interesting Stephanie from Starrett City. But Tommy's world is shattered forever. His mother becomes terribly unhappy and commits suicide. Things go downhill completely when his father decides he needs time to cope with the tragedy, sending Tommy and his sister to live with a brother Tommy never heard about. He promises that it will be for a short spell until he can come back for them. He doesn't and it doesn't take long for Tommy to discover how this brother hates him and has since birth. He wants to punish Tommy for events occurred long before Tommy's birth...Then it gets worse as he wants Tommy to end his life just like his mother...and to this Tommy is pushed and pushed and pushed... Pushed to the limit, and with no one to turn to, Tommy takes solace in his sister's company and letters he receives from Stephanie. Will he be able to cling to life, and not succumb like his mother?


Jarred Into Being by: Pat Lawrence

THE WOLVES ALWAYS DEVOUR THE SHEEP After the tragic death of her parents, Eva Lange must battle for her freedom; indeed, her very life. Fleeing her aunt's abuser, she falls prey to a murderous drug lord and his wife in their luxurious lair of lust. Using her wits, beauty, and sexuality to save herself and break the bonds of captivity and degradation, Eva struggles against corruption and powerful political forces to reclaim her independence and save the life of the man she loves.