Book Review: Not Another Soldier

Not Another Soldier by Samantha Holt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sienna Wright has just become an ex-military wife. Her husband Rob was killed, not in active duty, but in an accident. There to help her through is her husband's best friend and fellow Marine, Nick Jackson. Nick has been harboring feelings for Sienna from the day she met her husband. Although he wants to be a friend, his ambition is to make her his-- like she should have been from the beginning.

Having come through a crappy marriage, Sienna just wants to figure out who she is again and find herself and her independence. She moves off base and into her own place. That's where the action starts.

Sienna finds out her recently deceased husband was involved in some pretty risky business and now there are people after her. Of course Nick is there to help her, but their relationship or lack thereof keeps getting in their way. Sienna and Nick spend a lot of time doing the horizontal lambada in this book. Nick can't keep his hands off of her and she's just as bad. The sex scenes aren't drawn out or overly poetic, however, which I liked.

Keep in mind, plus/minus mileage may vary:

-: I did have a little trouble with the flow of the story. It seemed like a lot of, as they say in the military, "hurry up and wait", which would be typical in their situation. Like a real life danger situation, once you think it's all clear, you find out you're in over your head again. There was a lot of nookie and Nick is slightly possessive

+: I really enjoyed this story and it kept me turning pages. Nick and Sienna are adorably cute together. I was rooting for Nick through the whole thing. I'm rarely a fan of alpha types, but Nick wasn't an ass about being in charge and I LOVED that. While he was possessive and protective, he let Sienna be a real human being. The epilogue is super sweet.

I enjoyed Not Another Soldier. It was descriptive instead of telling like many books I've read lately. I was enveloped in the story instead of feeling like a bored bystander.

View all my reviews

Recipes: Chicken Pot Pie Soup

This soup was the $500 grand prize winner for the Better Homes and Gardens December 2012 contest and it is worth every ounce of its winnings. We make this soup at least twice a month. It's inexpensive and tasty and, with a few alterations of my own, even my picky son will eat it.

Chicken Pot Pie Soup

• 1/2 cup chopped carrot
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 2 cups cooked, chopped chicken breast
• 1 16 ounce package of gemelli noodles
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/8 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon curry
• 1 cup half and half or light cream
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 cup chopped fresh broccoli
• 1/3 cup frozen peas

1. In a large pot, cook carrot, celery, onion and garlic in hot butter 5 minutes until tender. Stir in broth, chicken, noodles and seasonings. Simmer, covered, ten minutes or until noodles are tender.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together half and half and flour. Add to pot. Add broccoli and peas. Simmer uncovered five minutes until slightly thickened  Spoon into bowls, top with biscuits.

Quick Biscuits

• 2 cups flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 4 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 450
2. Combine flour, baking powder, sugar and cream of tartar. Cut in butter to make coarse crumbs.
3. Make a well in center and add milk. Using a fork, stir until just moistened.
4. On a lightly floured surface, gently knead dough until it holds together. Pat into a square, cut into 12 rectangles.
5. Place one inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until golden.

We serve ours with honey butter and the soup is great reheated.

Recipe written by Beth Seuferer from West Des Moines, Iowa.

Book Review: Prossia

Prossia by Raphyel M. Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a part of the Prossia blog tour, Raphyel was kind enough to offer a copy of his book if I would do a review. I’m not a huge sci-fi fan, but I thought I’d give it a shot. At worst, I would retract my offer of review. At best, I’d find an entertaining read.

Prossia surprised me.

Warfare is a large part of Prossia. An alien girl, Alyichai, lives on the planet Gooliun. Her people train from the time they are young to be warriors in case the call for war is sent out. Aly is friends with Cattalice, another high level warrior from her home planet. Aly is different than the others of her tribe because she cannot control her “being”, a weapon others of her tribe use like a natural laser. Aly makes herself better at weapons to make up for the lack of being.

Her people know what her differences are, but they are forbidden to explain them to her. Everyone ignores her differences past the usual childhood teasing.

Aly and Catty are called off to war with their fathers and other members of the planet. Aly becomes a force of destruction. We learn she is a mutation of her people, something called a Sungstra. They are beings capable of extreme warfare. She survives many harrowing trials, surviving through war only to be presented with a choice: Go the way of her people, or set off on her own in search of truth.

I really enjoyed reading the battle scenes, especially later in the book when Aly learns more of her abilities. She disposes of her foes in particularly brutal ways. I liked the play between Aly and her father and the almost opposite relationship between Catty and her father. Tradition versus innovation.

The book really could have used another run through an editor. There were repetitions of “shriek” and “ticking time bomb”. Toward the end of the book, every time someone shrieked or used the phrase ‘ticking time bomb’, I grit my teeth. Ears would “whimper down” and “frown”. Instead of using the word “passed”, it was simply “pass”. When speaking of someone’s middle, it is “waist”, not “waste”. Some of the beings would not “trot” off to do bidding, especially the giant mountains of people termed “heavies”. The villain of the story “trotted” to the heroine in the big fight scene when walking slowly and deliberately toward her would have been much more powerful. I’m anal enough to notice things like that over the course of a book and at times I really had to push through and ignore improper usage and repetition. That was the major flaw of the book.

The ending really wasn’t what I was expecting. I wanted to see Aly take down an entire city of bad guys all by herself, Rambo-style. I was vaguely let down.

All in all, the story is entertaining and kept me flipping pages. Despite the editing errors, I did enjoy the read. I was impressed enough with the book, even with its flaws, to buy a copy despite having a review copy. Raphyel is a great storyteller and I hope he continues this series. I have to find out if the epilogue ends horribly. If it does, Raphyel and I are going to have words.

View all my reviews

Keep the Christ in Christmas

I was behind a car in traffic today, dark green SUV with a white sticker depicting a nativity scene. Mary and Joseph bowed over baby Jesus in the manger and they were shielded by the barn. They were just like the ones my mother used to put up every year when I was a child. I loved putting the little white shapes up on the windows. Stars and snowflakes and manger scenes with little animals all over the windows of the house. Our big bay window held the nativity, flanked on either side by plastic snow. She even took the screens out of the windows so anyone pulling in could see the scene. We'd spend an entire Saturday decorating.

Scrawled across this particular manger scene in large black letters was "Keep the Christ in Christmas". It gave me pause.

Keep the Christ in Christmas. That's so exclusive. Christ in Christmas. Even just saying it sounds like a club name, something we made up in grade school. Other kids couldn't play with us before they passed some silly ritual or liked exactly the same thing as us. The kids who didn't get in would sit by themselves off to the side and mope. They would come up with their own clubs sometimes and not let any of the rest of the kids in, but none of the kids in the first club wanted to join anyway. They had the original club. The Christ in Christmas club.

Sorry, Jewish kid, you're just not cool enough. What's that? You don't celebrate holidays because of your religion? Oh. Well, you're out, too, then. Can't have that. Your parents make you pray in the afternoons to some other god? Oh. No. No no no. No. Ew. Get away from us. Go do whatever it is your people do. We're the Christ in Christmas club. You can't belong.

What's sad is this excludes so many people from the positive message of Christmas. We're to love one another. We're to practice fellowship and good will amongst man (humankind, in my humble opinion). We give gifts to one another, something thoughtful for that other person. We decorate our houses and have spiffy drinks and awesome food and hang out together.

What... exactly about that has anything to do with Christ? I mean, I know the Bible says things like "love thy neighbor" and "thou shalt not kill", but one only has to look as far as the Westboro Baptist Church to see that the teachings of Christ have become corrupted somewhere along the line. The way people act toward one another and the clerks in the stores and restaurants they frequent during this time of the year is the exact opposite of Brotherly Love and the Divine Love of Christ everyone seems to think we should show. This whole "keep Christ in Christmas" thing sounds about the opposite of the love Jesus wanted humanity to have for one another from all of it I've seen in practice.

If this is about wishing someone a Happy Holidays, it's a catch-all way to wish anyone of any denomination the joy of the season at hand. Anyone who isn't Christian doesn't celebrate Christmas. But here's the thing. Why can't we have something that espouses the joy of the season that ISN'T Christmas? We can't I wish you a Happy Holidays? I'm not Christian, but I still wish you all the wonderful things about this season we as Americans are so wrapped up in. I am not Jewish, but I want them to be happy in remembering the miracle of the oil. I don't know the first thing about Kwanza, but I want them to be happy in remembering their heritage. I want pagans celebrating Yule to remember the plight of the two Kings. I want Heathens to remember the peace of the mistletoe.

I want all of fucking HUMANITY to remember that we are ALL HUMAN and we all deserve love and acceptance and basic human fucking contact.  I want us all to stop fucking shooting each other. I want us all to start being a little kinder to one another. I want us to stop lying and cheating and stealing from one another. I want people to donate food and clothes to people who just don't fucking have it. I want them to stop caring WHY they don't have it and just give to someone else who needs it, regardless of their circumstance. I want people to stop being assholes. I want people to stop freaking the hell out over their stupid "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake and just be happy they can have cake at all. I want them to stop yelling at the poor girl serving them their dinner and just simply send the undercooked steak back to have it cooked a little longer. I want people to stop threatening toy store clerks over the hot new toy that will die out next year. (Furby anyone?) I want people to stop and take a moment to appreciate the things they have in life. THAT is what "Holidays" is. It's a wish from one simple, insignificant thinking mammal to all the other simple, insignificant thinking mammals of the world.

All these things "Christmas" is supposed to be? It's not just for Christians. It's for humanity. Simple common sense rules of loving each other. If that makes me a bad Christian, good. But it makes me a good human and I'm all right with that.

For Writers: The Hero's Journey

In talking with one of the members of my crit group (who is awesome, by the by), she passed along this link. I have found it helpful and I will, in fact, be using it. So I don't lose it, I am going to keep it here on my blog. Multiple copies can't hurt, right?

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/smc/journey/ref/summary.html

the hero's journey : summary of the steps
This page summarizes the brief explanations from every step of the Hero's Journey.

1. Departure
   1. The Call to Adventure
      The call to adventure is the point in a person's life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not.
   2. Refusal of the Call
      Often when the call is given, the future hero refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.
   3. Supernatural Aid
      Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears, or becomes known.
   4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
      This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.
   5. The Belly of the Whale
      The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero's known world and self. It is sometimes described as the person's lowest point, but it is actually the point when the person is between or transitioning between worlds and selves. The separation has been made, or is being made, or being fully recognized between the old world and old self and the potential for a new world/self. The experiences that will shape the new world and self will begin shortly, or may be beginning with this experience which is often symbolized by something dark, unknown and frightening. By entering this stage, the person shows their willingness to undergo a metamorphosis, to die to him or herself.
2. Inititation
   1. The Road of Trials
      The road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.
   2. The Meeting with the Goddess
      The meeting with the goddess represents the point in the adventure when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. It is also known as the "hieros gamos", or sacred marriage, the union of opposites, and may take place entirely within the person. In other words, the person begins to see him or herself in a non-dualistic way. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love and /or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman.
   3. Woman as the Temptress
      At one level, this step is about those temptations that may lead the hero to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which as with the Meeting with the Goddess does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. For Campbell, however, this step is about the revulsion that the usually male hero may feel about his own fleshy/earthy nature, and the subsequent attachment or projection of that revulsion to women. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.
   4. Atonement with the Father
      In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving in to this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power. For the transformation to take place, the person as he or she has been must be "killed" so that the new self can come into being. Sometime this killing is literal, and the earthly journey for that character is either over or moves into a different realm.
   5. Apotheosis
      To apotheosize is to deify. When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. This is a god-like state; the person is in heaven and beyond all strife. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.
   6. The Ultimate Boon
      The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.
3. Return
   1. Refusal of the Return
      So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?
   2. The Magic Flight
      Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
   3. Rescue from Without
      Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often times he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. Or perhaps the person doesn't realize that it is time to return, that they can return, or that others need their boon.
   4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
      The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. This is usually extremely difficult.
   5. Master of the Two Worlds
      In myth, this step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
   6. Freedom to Live
      Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.

Heros Journey : Summary of Steps
Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI)
Maricopa Community Colleges

the ' net connection at MCLI is Alan Levine
comments about the site to : alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu
questions about the content to : liz.warren@smcmail.maricopa.edu

last modified: 11/19/1999 15:06:34
URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/smc/journey/ref/summary.html

For Writers: Professional Bio

I am absolutely horrible when it comes to writing any sort of bio for anything. I hate talking about myself, I hate talking about myself in the third person and I either give too much information or too little. Just when I think I've got a winner, something comes along and changes it in three months and I have to update. I never know how to truncate my bio for something like twitter where I have only a few characters to tell you all about me.

The writers at The Undercover Recruiter suggest having three different bios to fit different size limits.

The smallest of your bios should be able to fit in your twitter bio, so fewer than 160 characters. It should be one or two sentences telling everyone how you're unique. If someone's twitter bio doesn't reach out and grab me, I'm hard pressed to go in and look at their tweets to see if they're someone I want to follow. In the business world, this brief statement about yourself is called a "brand statement". It should have a mixture of shock and delight, according to the Undercover Recruiter, and be simple enough an eight year old can understand it and tell you your value.

To pick what should be included, sit down and write out your key attributes on a paper. Pick those that make you unique and write it out telling people what value you provide, how you do it uniquely and who you do it for.

While you're cruising through Twitter to update, make sure you link your personal sites, have a good profile pic and your location data is in your profile so people can find you. If you live near someone, they're more likely to follow you.

Once you're done with the short and sweet version, you've already done some of the setup for your longer, one page bio. This is a nice little story about you that tells everyone who you are and what you do in a way they'll want to read it. It's generally done in the third person so it's like someone else is writing about what a great author you are and what kind of fun things you do.

Included in this one page babble about yourself, you should include:

1. Your name in the first sentence (so people know 'who' if they jump from Google.)
2. Where you've been published or featured (link to it if possible)
3. Any awards or acknowledgements for writing
4. Education or credentials, and not just for writing
5. Hobbies or interests
6. Contact details

Be sure you have someone read over your bio to make sure you haven't forgotten anything important and you haven't forgotten a word or punctuation. Editing isn't just for novels. They also suggest cruising through your biography monthly just to make sure nothing has changed. You don't want to forget a recent publication or public appearance and have someone skip your page thinking they've found the wrong person.

Any biography posted with a picture gets more views. Make sure pictures you use for promotion are of professional quality, aren't reminiscent of a My Space photo you took at the bar and wouldn't make your mother blush to see it on the back cover of your novel (unless that's the image you're going for).

Get out there and wow them! (And give me a link to check it out if this blurb helped you.)

Resources:

• The Undercover Recruiter
• 7 rules of professional brand statements
• How to craft your personal brand statement
• Why your bio is more important than your resume
• 8 steps to writing a bio like a pro
• 7 profile pictures you should never use

For Writers: Personal Brand

As stated in my last post, a lot of publishing companies are requiring writers to market for themselves. Rather this is to keep costs down so publishers don't have to charge as much for books or if it's to keep small and indie presses flowing smoothly, it's something we all are going to need going into the future. How do we market ourselves? In the research I've done, it seems like a pretty simple thing. All we have to do is what the business world calls a "Personal Brand".

A personal brand is simply the face we put forward into our professional scope. To create a personal brand, you really only have to do the things you're already doing.

• Blogging

How many of us don't have a blog nowadays? Most everyone has a blog, including inkslinging monkeys banging their face against a keyboard and leaving it for the world like some primate Picasso. I have this blog  for writing and storytelling. I have another for cooking recipes and yet another for my gaming woes. When you're working with your personal brand, you need to add regular content. When your readers can rely on a post, they'll come back for more. By the time you start talking about your next novel coming out, the established reader base you already have is going to be there waiting. 

This means, however, that you're going to need a reader base. There are a few simple things you can do to draw people in. Go to other blogs and Twitter feeds. Read their stuff and comment. Open a dialogue between other readers and writers like yourself. Post reviews of the books you've read on Goodreads. You can do guest posts for other people's blogs. It's like a vicious cycle that isn't vicious. You learn things, they learn things and people follow people. Easy, right? (Just don't be "that guy" and go everywhere spamming that you're a writer and you have a great book everyone needs to read. We're all pretty sick of hearing that already.)
On that topic:

• Be active in social media

Twitter is like an addiction for me. Since I use Tweetcaster paired with Readability, I can cruise through my Twitter feed, read all about people's lives, save interesting articles to read later and keep up on what's coming and going in the world of writing. I can comment directly in Readability and others who use the site can see what I've written. I retweet like a fiend when I've found an interesting bit of online knowledge. Most of what I post on Twitter posts automatically to my Facebook page. I can keep several options open. 

Don't do like I did and join all the things. Stick with the social media sites you'll actually use. My twitter feed posts to Facebook, but I actually have to check in on Facebook to see if anyone is replying to what I've written and do it sooner rather than later. There's nothing worse than feeling connected to an author for some reason or another, leaving them a little post and never hearing from them. You get lost in the floe of posts coming to those popular people and carried away. It could be what makes or breaks a connection with someone else.
I post not only a lot of retweets (which I do too much sometimes) but also content of my own, what's going on in my life, pictures of my animals, my new haircut... You get the idea. I take what I enjoy reading about other people and I do the same thing. I'm active there and when I publish, I might actually have a few people who are genuinely interested in hearing what I have to say. I've posted once about what annoys me on Twitter and another on what I want to see in writer blogs, but it bears repeating: Don't be "that guy". We want to know some things about you personally just as much as we want to know what you've written.

• Do a meetup

Many people I've talked to have spoken on attending writer's groups for people to bounce story ideas off of, get information and research, cover angles you haven't thought of and to get good, honest critique before you ship your babies off to be cowboys or, in the case of bad writing, hamburger. Do a quick Google search of writers groups in the area. 

My favorite meetup is NaNoWriMo. For those of you who may not have heard of it before, it's a month of crazy writers drinking too much coffee and writing a terrible 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's all self-paced and nominated. There are no judges, no one who picks whose novel is best or worst. A bunch of us crazy people get together in coffeehouses, restaurants, bookstores, libraries and even grocery stores and write throughout the month of November. I love it enough I work as a municipal liaison for Columbus. Previously I worked as ML in Findlay. I have met some wonderful, incredible, horribly knowledgeable people who have given me the best advice and invited me to so many fun things. It really is an experience you should try at least once. If nothing else, it teaches you to sit down and write a little every day.

The most important thing in developing your personal brand seems to be just getting out there and having a good time with other people. Do guest blog posts. Record a video blog. Do some blogging of your own. Come stalk me on twitter. Read the articles I've saved to read on Readability. Check out my reviews on Goodreads. Talk to me about your books. I'll even do reviews for you. Without sounding too desperate, I LIKE hearing from people and I LOVE making new friends. Let's improve our brand (and our chances at getting published) together.

Resources:

• The Undercover Recruiter
• How to keep your personal brand present
• In her blog, M.J. Pullen gives some great tips on self-promotion without feeling like a complete skeeze.