Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Goodbye

It is my sincere wish that you all had a blessed holiday in whatever fashion -- or lack there of  -- that suits you best. 

And yes, this will be my final post as a regular member of the line up.

A few days shy of seven years ago, I clicked the button to publish My Very First Blog Post as a member of this group, back when we were the Word-Whores. 

This is the post that went live on January 5, 2011:

WHY AM I A WORD-WHORE?

I like to get the sheets dirty.

Ahem.

Sheets of paper, that is.

Everyone has something they are passionate about, something to which they willingly, eagerly, devote their time. Surfing. Sewing. Scrapbooking. Dumpster diving. Weight-lifting (which may be part of dumpster diving depending on what you find...). Jewelry making. Wood-working. Volunteering. Writing--ooo--that one's mine!

Sometimes these leisure pursuits make the leap into a life-long career. I've pursued this publishing dream since I was young, and I consider myself blessed to have my writing published. So yeah, I've exchanged my stories for money and that makes me a Word-Whore. That, and the fact that I love yielding my every spare moment to the intense pleasure I derive from writing.

Maybe it's masochistic...because being a Word-Whore sometimes means keeping your backside in the chair until your ass is flat because the muse has been drinking tequila and she's spewing ideas all over the place. It often means conceding that dinner won't make itself and that you don't really need it anyway because there's a pot of coffee you could finish. But it always means consenting to the daily challenge of being creative, engaging, entertaining, logical, and grammatically correct all at the same time--and on deadline.

It is not a goal for the faint-hearted. But then, I suggest that whoring in any form is not for those who are thin-skinned. Consider the fact that Word-Whores bravely release their product out into the wild world where our Johns, bloggers and reviewers will voraciously share their independent opinions...good, bad, and ugly...and writing with professional intentions surely could qualify as a kind of self-torture. (*note I've had really good reviews overall, but authors still experience a nail-biting period of time as a release looms where our inner voices speculate on what awful things they could say...)

Whether it's done for love or the thrill I get, I'm a happy Word-Whore and I hope I get to keep on putting out for happy readers. (Love all the pun-tential with our witty name!)

Your Hump-Day Word-Whore,

Linda


It was fun reconnecting with those long-ago sentiments...and to those words, I still hold. But I share them again with you now because, bittersweet, the time has come for me to go.

Leaving the blog will free up the time I spent (or didn’t) writing about the designated topics and the plan was for me to explore other writing options. But then, only days after I announced to my blog-matesmy intent to leave, I received notice that Ragnarok was dropping all contracts for 2018, including my contract for Immanence #2. 

I have to be honest, it hurt. A lot. And then it didn’t. A weight was removed from my shoulders and suddenly I realized that I didn’t owe anyone anything. I didn’t have a contract pending. I didn’t have a year’s commitment to weekly blog posts.

Now, my only commitments are to myself.

-

I’ve learned a great deal from being a part of this group-blog and I am grateful for the opportunity it has been. I’ll never forget my awesome blogmates, past and present.

Jeffe – It was my pleasure to hang out with you at the conventions we’ve both attended, just as it was my pleasure to watch your career blossom over the past six years. You’re smart and dedicated and I know you’re going up, up, up.

Jim – I was delighted when you joined our group because I already knew you and knew you were an awesome author and a good man. Since we run in many of the same convention circles, I know I’ll be seeing you again, and glad of it.

KAK- I will truly miss the pseudo-chocolate. We should absolutely send some to each other via messenger from time to time. Just because, yanno? Someday, we’ll cross paths at a convention and have some real chocolate together! Rock on!

Marshall – It was great to meet you at this past WFC, but wish we had more time to chat. I look forward to seeing you again at a con in the future and wish you the best with your Maradaine series.

Marcella and Veronica – Both of your websites cite that you started writing when you read through all the books to which you had access. That youthful determination to satisfy your story needs one way or another led to writing and that is something we all have in common. I hope we’ll eventually cross paths at a convention so we can talk about that, how our dads influenced our appreciation for sci-fi/fantasy, and where in the world this wild business is taking us.

I wish you all the very best in your writing careers. If you’re ever going to have to miss a post and need a fill-in, hit me up. If I’m able I’ll step in. (:

-

And to you, dear readers who follow this blog, I do not know who is filling my shoes, but I am confident that whoever the crew brings in will have much to offer.

To those of you who have visited my posts here because you’ve enjoyed the Persephone Alcmedi series or the Immanence series, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you want to keep up on what I’m doing, please subscribe to my monthly newsletter. The sign up is on the home page of my website HERE. www.authorlindarobertson.com

Thank you Word-Whores and SFF7. It’s been a wonderful seven years with you.

Thank you, readers and fans. I promise, there’s more to come.

Blessed Be.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

A Wish at the Changing of the Year:




May we live every day of 2018 with courage, compassion, and charity ever-present in our intentions and actions. 



Monday, December 25, 2017

It's Christmas!

Go spend it with your family!

See you next year!

Sunday, December 24, 2017

Happy Holidays from Jeffe

Happy Holidays from Santa Fe! May this season be restful and joyous, and may the coming year be merry and bright.

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Memorable Books I read in 2017

(Sounds like a school book report assigned for the first day back from vacation, doesn't it?)

It’s always hard to pick books for end of the year lists because I read so many and I don’t keep a spreadsheet (sorry, Jeffe!) nor record them in Goodreads or anywhere else. I also reread my favorites a LOT. Shield of Winter by Nalini Singh would be a perpetual entry on any yearly list of mine!

I have to go by which books come to mind when I start thinking about the subject of a listing (and then just check to see that I read them for the first time this year!).

So my list is ‘memorable’, in no special order.

The Shift of the Tide by Jeffe Kennedy. I love her Twelve kingdoms fantasy world, I was blown away by the details of the shifter heroine’s experiences as various types of creatures, I LOVED how the hero became more and more and MORE wonderful as the book progressed and the ending was  FABULOUS. (I love her covers too...)

Quakeland by Katherine Miles. I’m quite an earthquake buff, having been a Caltech employee (on the business side of the house at JPL), living in Southern California and having had a very famous seismologist you see all the time on TV tell me at daycare one day as we were collecting our toddlers that my house sat directly ON a fault and would go up or down by at least 18’ if that fault ‘broke’. ULP! (I don’t live in that house any more, but not because of the fault LOL.) At any rate, author Miles had new information and some of her experiences in pursuit of her story were AMAZING.

Night’s Templar: A Vampire Queen Novel by Joey W. Hill. I’ve been enjoying her books for years and this one really grabbed me. I loved the relationship between the ancient Knight Templar vampire and the Fae Lord. Just all around cool and spicy hot as always with Ms. Hill’s books. And good glimpses of other favorite characters from earlier in the series.

I just discovered Tracey Cooper-Posey’s Endurance Series, about a generation ship on its way from Earth to a new colony and was fascinated by all the world building and the twists and turns of the plot. I loved jumping a few hundred years for each book and seeing what happened next to the ship and the people (and how I knew things they didn’t). Sadly she’s suspended writing these for the moment, to focus on other genres, but if she does return to the series I’ll be right there!

Found Girl by Pauline Baird Jones has a nice military flavor, with the USAFG ‘flying’ a captured alien ship as if it was an aircraft carrie, and a fascinatingly mysterious alien heroine who learned more about herself  and what she could do on practically every page. Usually any hint of an amnesia plot sends me fleeing for the exits, but this was so well done that I was utterly hooked and can’t wait for a sequel (although rest assured there was a HFN ending.)

I enjoyed the new offerings throughout the year from Anna Hackett (Galactic Gladiators and also her Hell Squad series), Cynthia Sax (Sizzling Cyborgs) and Michelle Diener (Calling the Change). I had fun with Mars Ho by Jennifer Willis, which combined reality shows with colonizing Mars in a very effective fashion…

And I’d better stop now that the memory floodgates are opening wider and wider (aided by a look at my kindle…)

I did also love my fellow authors' stories in our USA Today Best Selling Embrace the Romance: Pets In Space 2 scifi romance anthology. It's only going to be available through January and Amazon has it on sale for $.99 right now! Here's the LINK.  The book is on all major ebook retailer platforms but the sale is only on the Zon, as far as I know...


Best wishes for a Happy Merry Jolly Holiday Season and lots of time to read!




Friday, December 22, 2017

Favorite Books

Joyous Yule, northern hemisphere! Happy Litha to the southern hemisphere!

We do this every year - we write about our favorite books of the year as if there were any hope that I had read a single book that had actually come out this year. That's because the TBR pile is deep and wide. And this year, I managed to read something that was actually published this decade, so that's progress, right? A good portion of my problem is that for ten years, I had a secret TBR stash - paper books - all hidden away from the mildewing influence of saltwater and damp. 

So my two favorite books are the first two books in a trilogy by Ilona Andrews. 


The trilogy is a paranormal mystery series. Tortured, brooding, scary hero. Plucky, resourceful heroine. Add some romance, lots of sexual tension, magic, bad guys not afraid to kill millions of people, and clues that seem to lead nowhere and you have yourself a really fun time. Super enjoyable books. Love the characters. These are stories I look at when I want to take a finely crafted, well paced story. The last book in the series is also good, but it got a little bogged down in recapping the first two books and the story lost some of its edge for me. I still bought it, mind, but if I had to stack rank the series, book 2 is the best, book 1 is a damned close second and the third book is definitely third.

The other books I read this year that I would call favorites were books I read under some really terrible circumstances. They were whatever I could get my hands on that would take my mind off what was happening. They were 1980s historical romance novels with plots I couldn't possibly recount now. Nor could I tell you the titles or the authors. It wasn't that the books were stellar. It was that by picking them up to distract myself, I discovered that I'd stopped reading over the past few years because I was having trouble seeing my Kindle. Put a paper book in my hand and magic happened. I read. And I read and I read. For two weeks straight I made it through a book a day. A little making up for lost time, I think. Just for the sheer, physical pleasure of scanning a line of text for the joy of it. And have it not be some dire health assessment for someone I love. Those books were the best books because I got to remember how much I love to read and how very much I'd missed it. 

Thursday, December 21, 2017

My Favorite Novel of 2017


It's the time of year when people are writing their "best of the year" lists and such.  Unfortunately, as a reader, I tend to be a bit slow and behind the times, so I'm hardly going to be able to tell you the best books from 2017 that I read. 

BUT, I'm going to tell you about one of the new releases from this past year, a spectacular debut, and definitely the book you should be looking at to give All The Awards to, and that's The Prey of the Gods by Nicky Drayden.

Now, full disclosure, I've known Nicky for a long time, and I even read Prey in rough-draft form way back when.  And I said then what I'll say now: It is delightfully batshit, and you'll enjoy the heck out of it:
In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes—the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present challenges:

A new hallucinogenic drug sweeping the country . . .
An emerging AI uprising . . .
And an ancient demigoddess hellbent on regaining her former status by preying on the blood and sweat (but mostly blood) of every human she encounters.

It’s up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there’s a future left to worry about.
And, I mean, look at the praise:
*A Wall Stree Journal "Summer Reading: One expert. One book" pick for 2017!
*The RT Book Reviews "June 2017: Seal of Excellence" pick!
*A B&N Sci Fi and Fantasy Blog "Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2017 So Far" pick!
*A Book Riot Best Books of 2017 Pick!

So I'm not alone in praising it.  Go get it, go read it.  You'll be glad you did.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Cthulhu Redo of 4 Holiday Classics

We are supposed to be writing about our top 5 reads of 2017...but I'm feeling like a recap of last year's Cthulhu Redo of Holiday Classics. *Consider yourself warned.* LOL


O Holy Night

O Holy night, Cthulhu now is rising 
It is the night of The Great Old One's re-birth
Long lay the world bereft of his despising
Til he appeared and the soul felt it's dearth
The daemon-sultan Azathoth rejoices
As the world breaks and people everywhere mourn
Fall on your knees!

O hear the shoggoth voices
O night malign!
When comes the shoggoth horde!
O night malign!
O night, o night malign!

And at his sight, all sanity shall cease
Sweet dirge of death in mournful chorus raise we
Dagon! The Mother of Pus! Yog-Sothoth!
Shavalyoth!
Their names forever praise we

R’lyeh, R’lyeh
O night, o night malign
R’lyeh, R’lyeh
O night, o night malign
R’lyeh, R’lyeh
O night, o night malign



Cthulhu's Plunderland 

Slay bells ring, are you listening?
In the lane, entrails are glistening
Horrifying sight, we're dying tonight
Crawling in Cthuhlu’s plunderland

Gone away is the succored
Here to stay are the interred

He sings to Dagon, as we’re quartered and drawn,
Crawling in Cthuhlu’s plunderland

In the darkness we can summon D’endrrah
Then discover she is really foul
She'll say: Are you buried? We'll say: No ma’am

But you can do the job when you're in town

Later on, when things are dire
And we roast upon the fire

He’ll burst and abrade the blisters we've made
Crawling in Cthuhlu’s plunderland

In the light we can summon Tru-nembra
and dance until we have a nervous breakdown
We'll have lots of fun with him and Yog-Sapha
until they decide it’s better to let us drown


Though the snow don't stop his killing
He prefers those who are unwilling
He'll frolic and flay

the R’leyh way
Crawling in Cthuhlu’s plunderland

Crawling in Cthuhlu’s plunderland
Crawling in Cthuhlu’s plunderland


Here Comes Cxaxukluth

Here comes Cxaxukluth, here comes Cxaxukluth,
Right down Cxaxukluth lane
Ghroth and Daoloth and all the outer gods
Plannin’ a new reign
Worlds are breaking, children quaking
All are cursed with a blight
When he’s a-stalking better say your prayers
'Cause Cxaxukluth comes tonight!

Here comes Cxaxukluth, here comes Cxaxukluth,
Right down Cxaxukluth lane
He's got a chains and complete disdain
For boys and girls again
Hear those slay bells, wrangle entangle,
Oh what an amorphous sight
Blood so red you’re better off dead
'Cause Cxaxukluth comes tonight!

Here comes Cxaxukluth, here comes Cxaxukluth,
Right down Cxaxukluth lane
He doesn't care if you're rich or poor
He wants to cause you pain
Cxaxukluth knows we're Cthulhu’s minions
That makes everything right
So fill your hearts with R’leyh cheer
'Cause Cxaxukluth comes tonight!

Here comes Cxaxukluth, here comes Cxaxukluth,
Right down Cxaxukluth lane
He'll come around when the shoggoths cry out
That it's his arcane domain
Peace on earth we’ll never know
If we just follow the alt-right
So beware beware the new regime
Cause Cxaxukluth comes tonight!



O Tentacles

O Tentacles, O Tentacles!
You move just like a serpent!
O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
You move just like a serpent!

Hanging from Cthulhu’s face,
Slither-squirming with an air of grace.
O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
You move just like a serpent!

O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
Your sucker cups are toothy!
O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
Your sucker cups are toothy!

Each arm doth hold many bites
Surprising me when you hold me tight.
O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
Your sucker cups are toothy!

O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
How tightly you do squeeze me!
O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
How tightly you do squeeze me!

For every breath I cannot breathe,
Brings to you so much joy and glee.
O Tentacles, O Tentacles,
How tightly you do squeeze me!