Book Highlight: The Temple by Heather Marie Adkins

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This is the original cover of Heather Marie Adkins’ paranormal romance novel.  I first saw it discussed on Facebook, checked out the description and decided to give it a try.

Adkin’s Description

Vale Avari has a mysterious past and a laundry list of super-powers, but that’s nothing compared to what she finds upon moving from small town U.S.A to jolly-good England.

A chance dart throw lands her in Quicksilver, an off-the-map place with a big problem – people are dying, and word is, it’s supernatural.

At her new place of employment, a temple dedicated to the ancient Mother Goddess, Vale learns something even more shocking – women guards are disappearing at an alarmingly patterned rate; women who possess special gifts like her own.

Supernatural powers aside, Vale isn’t ready to believe in the Wild Hunt as the culprit, and she’s determined to prove the deaths are acts of human violence.

Plagued by a brute with a history of domestic violence and lusting after a dark-eyed man with a secret, Vale has a limited amount of time to discover the killer before he strikes again. In the process, she’ll learn things aren’t always what they seem and the supernatural might not be so extraordinary after all.

The Hunt could ride for her.

*************

This is the current cover of The Temple, drawn by Heather Adkins’ little sister, Sheridan.  What caught my eye in the description was that her main character, Vale, had super-powers.  In spite of my guy genes, (translation: I don’t read romances of any kind), I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  While there is some romance it definitely leans more towards a paranormal mystery.

I don’t know what Ms. Adkin’s plans are but this book could serve as the beginning of a series featuring Vale and some of her friends.  In any case, here’s the short review I wrote and posted on Amazon and GoodReads.

My Review

I don’t read romance novels. It’s a guy thing. But I picked up The Temple because of a discussion of the book elsewhere. The author’s imagination and ability to write wonderful descriptions combine to produce a story that, while there is romance, there is also adventure, a dose of fantasy and a splash of humor. I really enjoyed it.

 

Getting A Writing Fix – What’s The Big Deal?

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It’s said that writers don’t just want to write.  Rather, they need to write.  I’m always skeptical of this sort of stuff as, to me, writing is like any endeavour.  You do it or you don’t.  It’s likely that you procrastinate over it, look forward to it, and enjoy or hate it, all at different times.  At least that’s what I’d like to believe.

But I have to confess that I feel soooooo much better this afternoon than I have for the past couple weeks.  We’re in the middle of renovations that I’ve talked about here in the context of said renovations getting in the way of my writing.  Sunday, though, we got to a stage where we could actually start storing our sofas and TV in the living room rather than having them fill the kitchen.  I literally danced around the kitchen floor when it became available again.  Eating nuked frozen meals, grilled cheese sandwiches and hot dogs is not my style so getting the telephone and coffee maker off the stove top was a watershed moment.

So, what does this have to do with writing?  Absolutely nothing, which is the point.  All this has kept me from writing except for a couple of short blog posts – until today.  We decided to ‘take the day off’ which manifest itself in my wife and daughter going to a strawberry farm to pick strawberries, one of the pleasures of living in Quebec.

I stayed home, all alone, well almost.  I had my laptop and Scrivener, so I did some outlining and some WRITING!!!  It felt soooooo good.  I wrote only a couple thousand words but the spring is back in my step and maybe, just maybe, there’s something to that ‘writers need to write’ stuff.

 

What’s the Ultimate Writer Procrastination Tool?

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I’ve found it…I’ve found it!!!  If you’re one of those writers who decides to wax the floor before they write, or if you are the sort needs to count the forks and knives before they write, I’ve got a better tool to assist you in your procrastination.  It’s guaranteed to help you avoid writing for days at a time.

What is this magical tool?  I’m glad you asked.  Home renovation, my friends.  It’s the ultimate procrastination tool.  You’ll get so caught up in it that you’ll forget the book you’re supposed to be writing.

I’m sitting in my living room, or what used to be my living room.  It contains but one piece of furniture – a sofa that is covered with a large drop cloth.  Everything else is stacked in our library and kitchen.  The living room looks as though a bomb went off in it and I feel as though I was in the room at the time.  We’re renovating.

We’ve spent the last two days ripping all the moldings off the wall, removing the flooring, and using a mean ugly tool called a sawz-all to remove part of a wall.  This was followed by a trip ‘to the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump’ (say it fast and you’ll get the proper cadence).  Then it was off to the big-box store, twice, to give them all our money and to make promises about giving up one of my kidneys and possibly a lung to pay for everything.

Since then we’ve been installing drywall, sanding, filling, rewiring, and rebuilding.  And, as I said, the room and adjacent hallway still looks like a bomb went off in them.  But, as they say, we’re making progress, and in another day or so we may even be able to start painting.  I think our daughter is searching for a new set of parents.  She’s not comfortable in the role of indentured servant.

I’ve given up all thoughts of writing and I think my hands are too sore to do it anyway.  So, if you’re looking for that ideal procrastination tool, renovation is just what you need.  Me, I sit, in my living room, on the sofa with the drop cloth, and I just felt the need to write.

Baseball – Quebec Style

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One of my favorite things about living in Quebec City are the Quebec Capitales games I attend.  Baseball and Quebec don’t seem natural, though when I looked into it there is a long history of Quebec baseball teams.  But kids here play soccer more than baseball.  And, for goodness sake, hockey is front page news, and followed with a passion that borders on the fanatical.  The provincial Premier has a hard time getting a word in edgewise during hockey season.

Nevertheless, Quebec has a thriving team – part of a CAN/AM pro baseball league.  While it may be a step down from the Toronto Blue Jays, the game experience is just as satisfying, maybe even more so.  The team ownership understands well that it is providing entertainment and it treats ticket buyers as though we are all friends and most certainly that we are valued.  Humor plays a big part and so foul balls that leave the stadium are followed by sound effects of glass breaking as though some car in the parking lot was taking part in the proceedings.

Kids are also a big deal to the Capitales and every game I’ve attended have short events for the kids between innings.  They also honor kids who are part of the small contingent of young baseball players in Quebec City.

For me, as an American living in this French-speaking city, there are special feelings.  I sit, with 4000+ other people.  They all speak French, though crys of “bad call, ref” do crack the air on occasion.  The umpire calls balles and prises.  Home runs cause the announcer to yell a drawn out “CIRCUIT.” Vendors sell biere froide and players don’t have RBIs, they have PPs.  I still don’t know what PP stands for but does it really matter?

The French creates a different ambiance, though the rhythms of baseball seem the same the world over.  But the most striking thing comes during the 7th inning stretch, when all of these French souls stand, and reading from the big screen behind the right-field wall, they raise their voices in unison and sing “Take me out to the ball game…Take me out to the crowd…Buy me some peanuts….”  It’s AMAZING!!

Oh…one last thing.  The Quebec Capitales, MY team, is in first place by a considerable margin.  At 26 and 18, they’re 5 games ahead of their nearest rival.  And that’s better than the Blue Jays.

 

Canada Post Strike Over – Author Happy

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While I wasn’t happy with the way the Canadian government dealt with the Canada Post strike, it has come to an end.  This is significant to me as just before it happened, Amazon’s CreateSpace had shipped me a box of books…my book, Her Book of Shadows .

This is important because I have people waiting for these books, and they’ve had to be very patient as the books have been sitting in a Canada Post warehouse for several weeks.  But they’re here now and I can start sending them out.