Stacking The Shelves / What's Up This Week?

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly event hosted by Tynga's Reviews where we share the books we bought, borrowed or received this week.

Well, this week has certainly been "unique". My parents went to Cuba, and I stayed here with my brother Shawn and his girlfriend Kate. On Wednesday night we went into Kingston for shopping and some dinner at 5 Guys Burgers and Fries. While there I picked up these two lovelies at Target.

I've been a huge fan of the House of Night series for several years now, so picking up Revealed, the latest book in the series, was just a matter of time. Most of them I've just grabbed around town but for some reason the amount of YA in Napanee has been on the decline. So when I saw this I grabbed it purely for convenience.

I don't have the same history with Rainbow Rowell, but Fangirl has been on my radar for a while now. It seemed quite popular at this year's Blogger Meetup. As someone who is releasing her first novel next year, and someone who was both a wannabe author and rather awkward during college (University) I think I can relate to this one. I hope I love it as much as I *think* I will. :)

My Kindle also got some love:

So I finally started reading the Night Huntress series. I'm pretty sure the fact that there are two books here from it makes it pretty obvious I'm liking it quite a bit. It's by far one of the most action oriented series I've ever read with a female lead and romance. Most of the stuff I've read in the past that blends paranormal, action and romance tends to either have the heroine in a less active role, have less "action" in general, or have people freaking out that the heroine is being heroic. I wouldn't want ALL the books I read to be this way, but right now? It's refreshing.

As for Everneath, I was sold when I read the words "Underworld" and "bring her back as his queen". Um, yeah. I don't think any further explanation is needed for anyone who knows me. :D It also doesn't hurt that it was on for $2. Again, you guys know how much I love a sale. Anyone read this? I'd love your thoughts. :)

So, yeah. This was suppose to be the perfect week to get Sealer's Promise revised and ready for betas. And I'll be totally up front, people: that totally didn't happen. For most of my life I've been one of those people who can get into a total slump when the sun starts to hide itself for the majority of the day, and this year that crap hit me hard. I'm talking I slept for 10-14 hours a day hard. I had absolutely no drive. Zip. Zilch. Nada. And I was freakin' weepy to boot. Not fun.

Fortunately, a bit of retail therapy and drag-your-butt-outta-the-house therapy on the part of Kate and Shawn has me feeling much more normal. Aside from the two pretties above and the yummy food at 5 Guys, I also found the Skylanders bargain to top all Skylanders bargains:

This is Granite Crusher. He's a series 2 (Giants) figure that was exclusive to Target before there were target stores in Canada, and before Jay and I got into Skylanders. We figured we'd never get this figure because it sells for $45--$70 online. ...Until I found two at Target and bought them for retail price ($15). I even got the 2nd one for 5% off because there's some wear on the packaging. Like we care: these bad boys will get taken outta their packaging the next time Jay visits and I can't wait to see them light up. I hear they glow blue and they're one of the figures that actually looks different in-game.

It's also been a good week for music. I bought Lady Gaga's new album, Artpop, just before my parents left for their vacation and I'm quite impressed with it. More shocking is my reaction to the two CDs Kate bought. I really didn't have any intention of listening to "Wild Life" by Hedley--it wound up on my iPod by accident. But the Sealers have claimed a couple songs. (Might as well give it a listen--it was already there anyway.). As for "Pure Heroine" by Lorde we listened to it on the way to Kingston and I'm very eager to sit down with it and get more time with the music. My initial takeaway was extremely positive. Odds are high I'm going to start doing some album reviews on here (I love music.) and these will likely be among the first albums I talk about.

Something new is happening in the Coleman household this holiday season: we're doing Christmas "secret Santa" style. So with only Shawn, Jay, Merissa and my Grandma to shop for, I needed to find a way to fill the gap because I *love* Christmas shopping. I have found the solution in adding two bookish Secret Santa events to my holiday plans (thanks Mom for agreeing to help me mail the package for the Broke & Bookish one!). I've done RAK before and I'm excited about that too. I already have my Broke and Bookish person and I need to send in my response for the RAK Secret Santa because it's due Monday. But I wanted to be sure and list both of these events because I think they're really neat.

I Just Finished...

In Short: Loved.

Longer: Bones is hot and Bones and Cat together kick ass.

Want to know more? Check out my full review later this week.

If it tells you anything, I'm already 15% of the way through the next book.

What's Up Next...

Two words: That Ending!

A bit more: I had to jump right into the next one. And I plan to do that a lot more often. It's how I read before I started reviewing.

Thoughts so far: Where the hell is Bones?

And if I finish this...

Fangirl was the most popular pick from this week's What's Next post. (I tried Cinder, guys, and it wasn't for me. Rather annoying since I also have Scarlet.)

I wanted this book enough that I bought it in print. Lets not have it sit for a year like oh, say, Prodigy and Unravel Me. (Sorry, books! I will get to you!)

I really hope this is good. I am not in a patient and 'forgiving' mood toward books that don't grab me right now. Fortunately, I did love the sample.

I haven't been focusing well on the task of writing. Which is one of the reasons that I am focusing so much on blogging and reading. It's clear to me that my brain needs to untangle the two yarns I'm working on--editing / revising Sealer's Promise, and outlining / planning Sealed With A Kiss. (No, we're not going to talk about how I blew NaNoWriMo. I wrote 60k of my Sealer's Promise rewrite in August.)

I really, really hate to say this but I may end up having to delay the Sealer's Promise launch. Why? Because (1) It's not ready for betas yet. And (2) I'm not a soulless yeti who would try and get people to beta my work while they're trying to get ready for Christmas. They're doing *me* a favor. Meaning that as it stands SP won't be with betas until at least January (I am finally starting to get some energy back, thank goodness.) and I probably won't get it back from them until February. (If I do great, but I'm not one to expect things.) I set up the date I did to get myself to write a draft I was really freaked out about writing and that worked. But ultimately the most important thing for me, as a (future) author, is making sure that I release the absolute best book I can. I owe it to myself, my readers and my characters.

I think the time away has done some good. I understand a few things both inside this book and inside the overall Sealer Saga that I didn't a few weeks ago. While it might be frustrating now, I believe that it will pay off in the end.

So, did you get any fabulous bookish goodies this week? Did anything exciting happen? Feel free to link me to your Stacking the Shelves / In My Mailbox / Book Haul, or whatever you're calling it so I can find out. :) Have a great day!

Stacking The Shelves / What's Up This Week? (Aug. 24th)

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly event hosted by Tynga's Reviews where people can share the fabulous books they've bought, borrowed or received during the week.

For Review

Won

Bought

Bought

Bought

Breaking The Reins by Julianna Haygert

Snapshots by Patricia Lynne

The School For Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

If You Leave by Courtney Cole

Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins 

Hey guys! 

I know--it's been a bit of a barren wasteland here for the last couple weeks. I've been insanely busy with the Sealer's Promise rewrite, though, and anyone who's been here a while knows how bad I can be about balancing blogging and writing. 

My plate's about to get even more full. Today is the start of Early Access for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and I'm logging on there the moment I'm done here. <3! For those who don't know, I'm a huge gamer geek. :D I don't play as much as I use to, but I've been waiting months for this and the experience I had last weekend for their open beta was totally awesome, so I'm pretty excited. Anyone want the occasional screenshot in my "What's Up" posts? :) 

Are you attending the Ontario Book Blogger Meet Up? If so, you might want to go here and get involved in the book swap going on. :) I attended last year's meet up (my recap is here) and had an absolute blast. I can't wait to go again this November! :) 

Breaking The Reins

by Julianna Haygert

Horses, mansions, tea parties, and lies are twenty-year-old Hannah Taylor’s life. To others, her family and her relationship with Eric is perfect. But she knows the truth. She lives it.

After a fire takes her grandma's life and kills her horse, Hannah's immaculate life spirals out of control. Her father disapproves of her decision to run her grandma’s ranch instead of focusing solely on learning the family business; Animal Control brings her Argus, a mistreated horse that she can't turn away even though she's not ready for another horse; and her boyfriend, Eric Bennett, a world famous polo player, becomes possessive and authoritarian. Despite her best efforts to disguise it, Hannah grows wary of him.

Then, Leonardo Fernandes struts onto the polo scene. A cocky rookie with a messy life of his own, he’s drawn to Hannah and isn’t afraid of showing it, even when Eric makes it clear she is his and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way. Hannah suffers for Eric’s jealousy. The abuse only gets worse when Leo steals the title of best polo player in the world from Eric.

But the title isn’t enough for Leo. He wants Hannah too, and she can’t deny her attraction to him either. Somehow, she must find a way to break free from abusive Eric before he breaks every bone in her body.

**New Adult Contemporary Romance Novel**
**Contains scenes of domestic violence**

I don't accept that many review requests, since I can't always get to them. This was a rather unique situation, though. I got contacted by Julianna after putting my name in for a twitter giveaway. I've been interested in this book for months, so I'm pretty thrilled to have it on my Kindle right now. I'm not reading quite as fast as I'd care for--which is why I'm only listing Breaking The Reins this week--but I am genuinely enjoying the book so far. :) 

Sealer's Promise Word Count Update: 45,000 words 

16 / 25 planned chapters. 

The blog is admittedly suffering, but progress on this rewrite is exceeding my wildest dreams. I started on August 3rd and have been writing four nights a week. I should be done by the middle of September by the latest, which should keep my lined up with my goals. 

I think the most shocking thing is how much the characters have grown in the jump from YA to NA, and how certain elements of the story have basically kicked it up a notch in response to this. Sealer's Promise won't be as long as my last draft (at 135,000 words) but it has a lot less fluff and a lot more meat.

Sarena has a lot more humor this go around and seems to know more what she wants, while Kesyl is doing things I could never have planned in a draft. (My drafts are like tourist guides--they'll help you find the landmarks, but they're not the same as living the experience of going somewhere.) I'm having an absolute blast writing this and am so glad I finally sat down and got to it. :) 

I'm going to be starting to look for betas in the coming weeks. If you think you'd be interested, feel free to leave your e-mail and a note that you're interested in the comments, or e-mail me. (The address is on my contact page.) 

So, did you get any awesome new goodies this week? Has anything exciting happened? Feel free to share in the comments, or link me to your STS, IMM, etc. 

Stacking The Shelves / What's Up This Week? (Aug. 4th)

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly event hosted by Tynga's Reviews where people can share the fabulous books they've bought, borrowed or received during the week.

It's been a couple weeks so I have a few goodies to share with you guys. :D Here we go! 

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

 1. The Marriage Bargain by Jennifer Probst

2. The Marriage Trap by Jennifer Probst

3. The Marriage Mistake by Jennifer Probst

4. Dungeon Crawl by Robert Bevan

5. Ink by Amanda Sun

6. The Academy: Game On by Monica Seles

7. Dare You To by Katie McGarry

8. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey 

This week has seen the re-drafting I needed to do to get ready to do the final re-write on Sealer's Promise. That got finished yesterday morning, and I'll be talking about where that's at below. I also finally got Sealer's Promise up on GoodRead, and for the next two weeks that will mean an opportunity for all of you to enter for a chance to win a free book! 

I also got my ticket for the 3rd annual Ontario Book Blogger Meet Up! Extremely excited about seeing everyone on November 2nd. Last year's event was fabulous and I'm sure this year's will rock as well. :)

Aside from writing and blogging, it's pretty much been the usual: visiting grandma and aunt Brenda, spending time with Jay and trying to keep cool. Though the weather here has been pretty cooperative for the past couple weeks. 

Since I'm actively writing a project with a due date, the number of reviews I'll be doing will likely be between 4-6 a month until I have this done. What's at the top of my list right now? 

GoodReads

GoodReads

GoodReads

1. Dungeon Crawl by Robert Bevan: This will likely be my end-of-week or "OMG this draft is making me want to break something!" book. Robert's Caverns & Creatures stories are always good for a laugh out loud time, and I'm sure Dungeon Crawl will help preserve my sanity at that moment where the Sealer's Promise re-write threatens to squeeze it past a breaking point. 

2. If You Leave by Courtney Cole: Come on Tuesday! I madly loved If You Stay, so when I saw that this was going to be releasing, I had to make sure I listed it here. No doubt this will be a day one purchase for me. I just can't let it get in the way of finishing what I'm doing. (Bad!)

3. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey: I've heard such great things about this book and it seems like it should be a very different read from the rest of what I've picked. Grabbed it at Walmart for 30% off, so I may as well dive right in! 

Sealer's Promise v3.0 Word Count: 3,900 / 80,000 (guesstimated word goal.) 

The first two chapters are done. They'll need some final revision work, but when I saw this stuff is done in the next few weeks, what I mean is it's the way the characters say it *happened*. 

A lot of people hate revision. I'm not one of them. To me, revision is when you take a finished draft and get to tinker with it, like a car nut getting to change the various pieces of a vehicle, or give it a wacky paint job. The structure is there; it just needs refinement. 

I'm not so great at what I'm doing here, though. This is a re-write. I'm actually writing the entire manuscript from scratch. Sure, I do get to look at stuff from my previous attempts, and can even use lines, descriptions, etc. if they will work. But it's very challenging. 

Today I thought I'd share five things that made me feel doing this last re-write would be worth it:

1. Switching from YA to NA. The ages of the characters, and what it would be appropriate and believable to have them do, just plain fits better. Also, a lot of the themes of the Sealer Saga as a whole just make more sense this way. I'll be blogging about this in more detail in the future. 

2. Refining Sarena. The biggest issue a lot of my betas had was actually my heroine, and I won't lie, this is something I really struggled with. I knew what I wanted her to be, but coming up with a way that would allow me to portray that in writing seemed like it was going to be impossible. Then, as I restructured other aspects of the story in my final draft outline, I saw that the problem was that I gave Sarena too much too soon. What this was doing was making her inconsistent from one situation to the next--sometimes she would kick total ass, and others she'd be (for lack of a better explanation) using other characters as shields. What did I discover about Sarena? Will, you'll have to wait and see. But the good news is, I finally have a grasp on how she operates. 

3. Controlling the pace of the romance: Anyone thinking I switched categories to have my characters be more sexy is thinking wrong. I've got absolutely nothing against sex / love scenes in fiction if they move the story forward. And there's no denying I want there to be chemistry between Sarena and Kesyl. But that's not the foundation of their story and switching categories either to "add it", or feeling I have to "add it" because of my decision, doesn't sit right with me. There are things I don't care for in how their original romance paced itself, and I'm really hoping to get those right.

4. Exploring Hycanth and the culture of Kindred and Sealers: In my first two drafts the characters spent a lot of time with Sarena and Jayden's parents, but my betas were like, "Why didn't you put them at the school?". When I looked at this and saw how much more interesting I could make things and how much more sense a lot of my lore and background could be if I did it this way, I was totally sold. Plus, I'd done all my research for Hycanth since it's important in future books, so switching this was relatively painless. It just means writing a lot of new scenes and structuring things differently. But that's what a re-write is for. :) 

5. Characters taking action: I think this is something a lot of writers struggle with; it felt like I was throwing things at my characters, rather than them making choices and following through. When I worked on my new outline I tried to make sure that I didn't abuse the ability to just have things happen, because I feel that a character looking someone in the eye and being able to say "I made a choice." is very much at the heart of good fiction. 

So, did you get anything exciting this week? What are you reading? Did anything awesome happen to you? I'd love to know, so feel free to leave a comment. :)