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Mar 8, 2008

Curse of the Spellmans

Izzy Spellman has finally left home but that doesn’t mean she is not still in the family PI business. Dealing with ex-boyfriend #9, a grumpy bartender, Olivia Spellman’s new sabotage streak, loosening up Henry Stone and stopping little sis from running him over with his own car not to mention an awol best friend. Izzy has a lot on her plate including the case of the copy-cat vandal. Also there’s her obsession with “John Brown” the Spellman’s new neighbour. Izzy’s convinced he is up to no good. Can she prove it? Will she get arrested – again?

This is a great follow-up to last year's “The Spellman Files.” By turns, funny, mysterious and downright kooky but well worth the ride.

loads of arcs!!

OK, now it's raining arcs:-) but more of that in a moment.

Book of Air and Shadows, takes a while to get going but once it does... Premise is this. After a fire in a New York bookstore Carolyn Rolly takes a damaged set of books to break them and sell off the illustrations/maps for the owner. Inside the cover she and Albert Crosetti her colleague find clues to what could be one of the greatest discoveries of all time - a lost Shakespeare play. Carolyn offers to sell the papers to a former professor of hers. When that professor is murdered things get out of hand. A tale of revenge, ye olde english, cyphers, blurred identities and forgery. It will keep you turning the pages until the end.

Enjoying the Capra but haven't finished it yet.

Curse of the Spellmans was released in hardback this week but I've been given the arc to keep:-)
I'll post a full review shortly.

These are coming soon but just FYI
Compulsion, Jonathan Kellerman, my first Alex Delaware but not my last.
Hold Tight, Harlan Coben
City of the Sun, David Levien - full reviews as they are released.

Will be off the grid for the next few days as we'll be in Europe and unless I can get to an internet cafe around the university or we drive by one our connection will be sketchy at best.

Feb 29, 2008

No arcs:-(

This process with the arcs is really slowing me down. People keep saying they'll put arcs in my box but they don't and I hate asking over and over it's not like I've never lost or mislaid one and I read them within a week. Sorry I'm grumpy because I've got something - not a full-blown cold. This thing is in my head and my throat but apart from coughing fits and a stuffed up head I can function normally so forget sympathy!

OK enough of that. I've borrowed a copy of Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. Good so far, I'll review it fully when I've finished it. Also I made an impulse buy yesterday The Web of Life by Capra. Read the back of it while I was shelving yesterday and he's just published one about the science of Leonardo da Vinci which sounds fascinating.

Feb 26, 2008

Loaf of words and Labyrinth

Someone once told me that writing is like making bread. I never quite understood the analogy until now. When I beat down 20 pages to 10, left it for a while and when I went back to work on it again the ideas in my 10 expanded to 20 and then 40 pages. Now I'm looking at 80 pages. Dare I tighten those 80 down to 40 and see what happens?

Also this week finished Labyrinth. Kind of glad I read the arc of Sepulchre first, although I didn't hate Labyrinth her 2nd novel is much better, tighter, and I connected with her main character immediately. It took me a while to warm up to Alice.

Spent most of my time today editing I'm due to submit my hard copy to the group tomorrow.

Feb 19, 2008

Breaking Dawn

Stephenie Meyer's fourth - and final book in the series comes out in August. We're taking pre-orders - no reservations this time. I love midnight launches. Stephenie will not be there. I mean we tried to get JK for HP7......

In the meantime here's a countdown for all you Edward/Jacob/Bella fans.






Feb 18, 2008

Spellman Files in paperback

One of my favourite books of last year is now out in paper. The Spellman Files is about this family of dysfunctional private eyes, told through the eyes of eldest daughter Izzy. Izzy, reformed bad girl, still lives at home is obsessed with the 60's TV show Get Smart and collects exes like some people collect stamps. When parental prying goes way over the line Izzy threatens to leave the Spellman family business for good. To stop her Mum gives her an unsolvable cold case. Will Izzy solve it? Read the book and find out.

Word counts - we've been talking about this for a while but Eva finally flat out said that she's going to e-mail us her word count every day just so that she knows that she has to report it. I think it's a great idea so at the end of each post I'm going to put my word count for the day even if - as today - it's zero. Hey it was 206 yesterday! Today I have a ton of housework to do, ugh! Also while we're talking about writing I had a complete blep on Friday and realized that this simple past lark isn't working. So Friday I re-edited it all back to the present tense. God it reads so much better like that:-)

Feb 11, 2008

More writing than reading

Finished arc of the 'The Killer's Wife' it didn't really grab me. I'm halfway through Eat, Pray, Love and so far her sense of humour is carrying me through the preachy bits. Plus the fact that I've just started doing the type of yoga she's talking about and although it's doing something I'm not quite sure what:-) Crystal Skull by Manda Scott was good, I seem to be on a history kick at the moment or maybe that should be a past/present kick. The ending was OK but I felt she built up one particular character to be the bad guy and then switched teams on us at the end. I liked her characters though and the emotion between Stella and Kit was nicely played as was Owen and Fernandez's friendship.

I'm written a few stories this week - all short - none of them short enough to fit on the back of a postcard. This was the exercise we didn't do at the last meeting. Going to try Lyns' suggestion of creating a brochure for the LWPP and when we go back to Europe in March I'm taking my camera to get as many pics of the village as possible.