BW 44: Parasol Protectorate

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How about dipping your toes into Steampunk.  I picked up Gail Carriger's Soulless, the first novel in her Parasol Protectorate series.   It's Victorian English society meets vampires, werewolves, ghosts type of story, with some romance and comedy thrown.  Sound interesting.  There are five books in the series including: 

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Look up Steampunk on Amazon and you'll come across a wide variety of very interesting and what look like, entertaining non fiction and fiction books.    Including The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature  by Jeff Vandermeer, another interesting writer well worth checking out.   

Steampunk Bible

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BW 43: National Novel Writing Month

Modern Water Clock by Bernard Gitton

The clock is ticking down to National Novel Writing Month and writing 50,000 words in 30 days.  Crazy idea that I discovered back in 2007 and have participated in ever since.  It's stressful, time consuming and wild, but fun as you create a story while ignoring your inner editor as well as household duties and other activities for 30 days.  It helps if you have understanding family members who are aware all your energy is going to be taken up with writing.   I had thought of bypassing the whole challenge this year but between my husband encouraging to join in again and a wonderful idea that's been growing by leaps and bounds, I decided to do it once again.  Guess it is turning into an annual thing.  

The goal is to simply write and hopefully by the end of the month, you have the makings of an interesting story.  Of course it will need loads of editing, but that's all part of the writing process.   Plus the process of sitting down and writing at least 1667 words a day forms a habit so by the end of the month, if you aren't already in the habit of writing everyday, it will have become a habit.  So, just to let you know if November's Sunday posts are a bit short or perhaps wacky, you'll know the reason why. 

There are lots of writers who are pantsters who basically just write, fly the seat of their pants and make things up as they go, without any planning.  Then there are the plotters - those who outline, create character sketches, and map out their stories.  I lean more toward plotting, than pantster.  This year I found a great  book to help me out -  K.M. Weiland's Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success which is available in both book and ebook format.   It is chock full of useful information and highly recommend it. There are several authors out there in the blogosphere who are very encouraging when it comes to NaNoWriMo and  have been posting tips on their websites.   

Larry Brooks who wrote Story Engineering:  Mastering The Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing as well as several fiction novels has come up with 31 Empowering Posts in 31 Days.

Alexandra Sokoloff, who writes spooky, scary mystery thrillers which I really enjoy as well as Screenwriting Tricks for Authors has come up with a series of great articles which are immensely helpful.

And if you are wondering if anything good comes out of this craziness, here is a link to a list of authors who have had books published which they started during nano.  Maybe I'll be on that list in a few years.  *grin*

Anyone else joining in on Nanowrimo this year? 

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BW42 - Old New York

Chrysler Building courtesy of joiseyshowaa's

We did a bit of futuristic armchair traveling with J.D. Robb aka Nora Roberts who introduced us to a futuristic new york in her In Death series.  Let's do a bit of historical fiction traveling in old New York.  I found a series of mystery books and authors that  haven't read yet thanks to Bookmarks Magazine.

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

B&N Synopsis:  "The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence."

Time and Again by Jack Finney

B&N Synopsis:  "Sleep. And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There are no such things as automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no dictionary. You have never heard the name Richard Nixon." 

Did illustrator Si Morley really step out of his twentieth-century apartment one night -- right into the winter of 1882? The U.S. Government believed it, especially when Si returned with a portfolio of brand-new sketches and tintype photos of a world that no longer existed -- or did it"

Murphy's Law by Rhys Bowen

Book one in the Molly Murphy Series set in the early 1900's.    Author Synopsis:  Molly Murphy has to flee from Ireland and finds herself in deep trouble on Ellis Island in Murphy's Law.

Murder on Astor Place by Victoria Thompson

Victoria Thompson's Gaslight series starting with Murder on Astor Place set in the late 1800's.   

B&N Synopsis:  "After a routine delivery, midwife Sarah Brandt visits her patient in a rooming house-and discovers that another boarder, a young girl, has been killed. At the request of Sergeant Frank Malloy, she searches the girl's room, and discovers that the victim is from one of the most prominent families in New York- and the sister of an old friend. The powerful family, fearful of scandal, refuses to permit an investigation. But with Malloy's help, Sarah begins a dangerous quest to bring the killer to justice-before death claims another victim."

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ink to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

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BW41: Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts - October 10, 2011

Happy birthday to my favorite author - the diva of romance and romantic suspense Nora Roberts.   I discovered her books back in 2007 and fell in lurve.  She has written almost 200 novels (complete booklist) including a number of stand alone books as well as series which are all unique and interesting.  She writes the type of stories that make you fall in the love with the characters and makes you want to turn right around and read the book over again, when you are done.  She also write a futuristic crime novel series called the In Death series under  the pseudonym J.D. Robb.  There are 33 books (chronological list)  in the series (which I've read most of them twice) and I just finished the latest New York to Dallas.  And I recently started listening to audio books in the car and am currently listening to Naked In Death which is the very first book in the series. I can sense that listening to the series will keep me busy for quite a while.    Besides being a prolific writer, she and her husband own a bookstore in Maine called Turn the Page and also a historic inn called Inn Boosboro with rooms named after literary characters including Eve and Roark from the In Death series.  She has a new trilogy named after the Inn Boonsboro and the first book is The Next Always being released on November 1st.

Tidbits from her website:

• Every Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb title released in 2010 hit the New York Times bestseller list.  That’s keeping up a streak started in 1999.
  
  
• With Treachery in Death (February 2011) Nora will have published 195 full-length novels.
  
  
• Nora has written 173 New York Times bestsellers including 27 written as J.D. Robb and one written together with J.D. Robb
  
  
• Since her first bestseller in 1991, Nora’s books have spent a total of 879 weeks on the New York Times list…that’s equivalent to more than 16.5 consecutive years of weekly bestsellers.
  
  
• Nora’s books have spent a combined 178 weeks at the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list – that’s more than 3 years.
  

Once you read one of her books, you'll understand why.

Happy Birthday Nora!

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BW40: Spooktacular October

I've seem to have gotten into a vampire, werewolf, ghosts, angels and demons reading kick lately.   Last year for the month of October I read Frankenstein and was surprised because the story wasn't even close to what the movie had been like.  Maybe I had watched Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein one too many times *grin*    Then I read Dracula: The Undead by Dacre Stoker, Bram's great grandnephew, inventive sequel to Dracula. 

Barnes and Noble: At last—the sequel to Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, written by his direct descendant and a Dracula historian  Bram Stoker's Dracula is the prototypical horror novel, an inspiration for the world's seemingly limitless fascination with vampires. Though many have tried to replicate Stoker's horror classic- in books, television shows, and movies-only the 1931 Bela Lugosi film bore the Stoker family's support. Until now.

Dracula The Un-Dead is a bone-chilling sequel based on Bram Stoker's own handwritten notes for characters and plot threads excised from the original edition. Dracula The Un-Dead begins in 1912, twenty-five years after Dracula "crumbled into dust." Van Helsing's protégé, Dr. Jack Seward, is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina, leaves law school for the London stage, only to stumble upon the troubled production of "Dracula," directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself.

The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets, but before he can confront them he experiences evil in a way he had never imagined. One by one, the band of heroes that defeated Dracula a quarter-century ago is being hunted down. Could it be that Dracula somehow survived their attack and is seeking revenge? Or is their another force at work whose relentless purpose is to destroy anything and anyone associated with Dracula?

I thoroughly enjoyed it, however, I've never actually read Dracula by Bram Stoker.   Decided this year I'm finally going to read Dracula, especially since I'm on the fore mentioned vampire kick.  Plus I happened to stumble across his very first book The Snake's Pass which looked really interesting so picked it up:

Amazon:   Arthur Severn, a young Englishman on holiday in the west of Ireland, is forced by a storm to stop for the night in a mysterious village, where he hears the legend of "The Snake's Pass." Long ago, it is said, St. Patrick battled the King of the Snakes, who hid his crown of gold and jewels in the hills near the village. But it is not only legend that haunts the town. The figure of the demonic money-lender Black Murdock looms over the village, as he searches for the lost treasure while manipulating the townsfolk to his own evil ends. Even more threatening than Murdock is the shifting bog, personified as a baneful "carpet of death," which will swallow up anything -- and anyone -- in its path. Art and his friend Dick will brave the dangers of the bog to seek out the treasure, but the sinister machinations of Murdock will lead to a deadly conclusion! Featuring a slow accumulation of terror worthy of Le Fanu, The Snake's Pass was Bram Stoker's first novel. A clear precursor to Dracula, The Snake's Pass was the only of Stoker's novels set in his native Ireland. This edition follows the text of the first edition published at New York in 1890.

Come along and join me in a spooktacular read of  Dracula by Bram Stoker.  And along the way, you may as well check out his other stories.

What spooktacular books are you reading this month?

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