REVIEW: The Darkest Gate by SM Reine

Description: When Elise Kavanagh retired from demon hunting, she swore it would be permanent. But an attack from a powerful necromancer forced her back into the business, and now she's trying to balance her normal boyfriend and normal job with everything supernatural.

Mr. Black is a demon hunter gone rogue. He's enslaving angels and stealing ethereal artifacts in pursuit of forbidden immortality. An old grudge drives him to make his final stand in Elise's territory. Destroying her life and killing her friends isn't the goal, but it's a definite perk.

A demonic overlord offers to join against Mr. Black and protect Elise's loved ones. All she needs to do is ally with the demons she's sworn to kill, at the cost of her morals--and maybe her immortal soul. But once she crosses that line, there's no turning back.

Nothing is sacred when Heaven and Hell collide on Earth...

My Thoughts: One of the things I enjoy most about Reine's Elise is how likably unlikable she is.  Someone as traumatized as Elise isn't going to flop and angst, because they're not going to understand that they're traumatized.  The Darkest Gate begins where Death's Hand left off in exploring more fully this strange, dangerous woman.  The flashbacks are fantastic both in bringing the plot into focus without need of a full-fledged prequel and in showing that Elise is, if anything, in pretty good shape compared to her teenaged self.  Elise and her aspis, James, are at an inevitable crossroads: he wants a normal life.  She knows she can never have one, and James is the only person she truly allows herself to trust.  She's struggling to play nice in her own not-quite-nice way; as sweet as Anthony is, it's clear that it's not going to work.  Featuring at least one Joss Whedon screamer moment.

Siren: first three chapters!

Yep, failed NaNoWriMo miserably.  This is why you back your stuff up, kiddos.  (I assume children are the only ones who don't know this rule yet.)  Well, at least I'm enjoying Bonnie, and I do have some good news: I'm shooting the Siren cover next weekend!  The model will be the fabulous, the wonderful, the glamorous Mandalorian Maven, perhaps recognizable as the same model who brought J to life on the Fire With Fire cover.  She's chameleon enough to pull it off.  In the meantime, here's Naomi:

REVIEW: Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest

All right, I'm going to be frank: you might have noticed that this review is a little bit of a departure for me.  Not in the sense that it's done over a terrible, terrible horror film.  (I hold those to my bosom and perhaps coo over them a little bit.  The neighbors ask me to stop in increasingly worried tones.  We have a fun relationship.)  Rather, in the sense that it's a review of a horror film made in 1995 with the proceeds of my couch cushions delivered from the future.  The only two cast members who are remotely famous today are Nicholas Brendan, who is a basketball-playing extra, and Charlize Theron, who dies of being stabbed through the vagina.  I'm relatively certain that they both have attorneys drawing up C&Ds for me purely for mentioning their names in connection to this glorious hot mess.

Children of the Corn III first came to my attention due to the thespian talents of Mari Morrow and Duke Stroud, they who inspired the very astute question: "I write about superheroes.  Why the hell do people keep finding a straight-to-VHS mess when they search for my name?"

REVIEW: Thor 2

A few days post-premier, but I was busy chewing things over.  And generally twirling in a circle and cooing, because did I ever love this movie.  Actually cutting for spoilers for once!  (I know!)

On Kamala Khan

Marvel Comics is introducing a new Ms. Marvel.

She's Muslim.

Because I've already gotten into one dust-up that shocked me with how much casual racism is still acceptable (person who doesn't even read comics says that a Muslim hero anywhere, ever is unrealistic), I'm going to keep this short and sweet.

Buffy Summers, Rachel Berensen, and Xena were seminal (ironic, considering where I'm going) to me as an adolescent.  Do you know why?  Because they re-welcomed the era in which girls could be heroes.  Prior to that, I had to identify with the boys.  And I did, as the advertising agencies knew I would, but I still remember the incredible, exultant feeling of seeing a female hero and thinking, "Hey, maybe that could be me!"

So to everyone who wants to shit on Kamala before she even makes her debut: what if you never got to see yourself as the hero before?  What if she was the first time you got to identify with someone who looks like you and, rather than being a dirty terrorist, got to be remarkable?

I'm just sayin'.

NaNoWriMo and You: the Advice of a 50/50 Success Story

We're gearing up to my very favorite time of the year, Halloween.  After that, though, comes my second-favorite season: National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.  I won in 2011, and the result was Leech.  I failed miserably last year and haven't been able to restart the project since then.  (Perhaps because I have been away from the poisonous influences that inspired Eat in the first place for several years now, so call it a backdoor win?)  Here's what worked for me on the year I did win:

1) Routine.  Find out how you best work and stick to it.  When I was in college and working out of longhand in a notebook, I could sit down for five minutes and absolutely disappear into the work before popping right back up again.  (Apologies to the professors who got sixty percent of me at best.)  During the window between graduating and grown-up work, I learned to write from a laptop from an hour before I had to get dressed for the obligatory degrading retail job.  At my first Big Girl job, I took my laptop with me and physically removed myself from distractions during breaks and lunches.  Now that Ye Old Day Job is in a neighborhood where it's honestly not safe to carry a laptop with you, I work out of a thumb drive.

2)  Find the vices that help you, find the vices that hurt you, and eliminate accordingly.  I am, believe it or not, a morning person.  I wake up a good forty-five minutes before I actually need to and spend it dancing about, drinking coffee, and talking to myself.  My weakness for terrible pop music (I've given up and resigned myself to worshipping at the altar of Katy Perry) lends to that; so, for the month of November, it has to go in favor of character playlists.  (Except that Bonnie is a mixture of hip-hop, punk, and punch-your-fist-up diva ballads, so this might blow up in my face on the bop-inducing front.)    I'm also a fan of the vino.  Since I have a good feeling that my best work is going to be done in the evenings and on weekends, that is also going away for the duration of the month.  The iPhone will also be placed in someone else's hands during working periods.  But you'll pry my tea and white noise out of my cold, dead hands. :)

3) Know how you write.  I'm an outliner.  If I pants it, the bones of the story just aren't there, so I freak out and toss a perfectly serviceable tale.  I outline ahead of time, being careful not to give too much on the truly sweet scenes (so I'm still having fun when I get to them), and then step back to look at the whole picture.  I'm a little behind on Bonnie's outline, but this series has been in my head for so long that I know exactly where I want her to land.

4) Just write the damned old thing and don't worry about editing.  You are not publishing on December 1st.  The important thing is to get it out, and throw yourself a party afterwards.

Delivery day!

Was actually two weeks ago.  I'm kinda lazy.

Yes, Siren is done and off to the betas, and I'm leaping forward to do the outline on Bulletproof.  I hope to have Siren out by the end of the year, but you know me and promises by now.  Naomi, as I have said before, was a difficult character to figure out.  For so much of the series thus far, she's been either a side character or a pushing point between Ophelia and Marcus.  She's been something that the other characters have to act against rather than her own self.  I think I finally found that self.  A good thing, as Naomi's role in the Grand Finale is huge.

And now looking forward to NaNoWriMo and Bonnie, my dear Bonners.