• Review of EXTRAORDINARY by Nancy Werlin

    Extraordinary by Nancy Werlin My rating: 4 of 5 stars A bargain between the faerie and human worlds has gone wrong, wreaking havoc among the faeries. Mallory and Ryland, a fey brother and sister, are dispatched by the faerie queen to the human world in a last-ditch effort to salvage the situation. Their mission: to masquerade as humans in order to manipulate Phoebe, a descendant of the original human bargain-maker, into fulfilling the the terms of the pact. There are familiar paranormal elements here (faeries–yeah, OK), and familiar romance elements as well: good girl falls for bad boy who treats her like dirt yet it takes her the whole book to figure out that he’s a jerk and she should kick him to the curb. Werlin does provide an internally consistent framework for this scenario, since the reader knows that Phoebe is under Ryland’s magical influence; every now and then…

  • Garden Notes — Summer’s Last Gasp

    Though fall has been getting steadily longer and milder over the past few years here in Western Massachusetts, and we still have at least a month of fine weather to go before winter closes in, this is always a bit of a melancholy time of year for me, as I watch my garden yield to the change of seasons. So, for a look back, I’m posting photos I took toward the end of August, when things were still in vibrant bloom and torrential rainstorms hadn’t squashed the late-blooming flowers flat. Click on the image to see a larger version, plus my comments.

  • Writer Beware is on Vacation

    Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Actually, I'm on staycation, but I'll be cutting way back on the Web stuff for the next two weeks. I'll be back the week of September 24. I'll still be checking messages and answering email, so if you ne...

  • Vanity, Vanity: Turning The Label Around

    Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware In the war of words that rages between advocates of self-publishing and proponents of traditional publishing, one of the long-standing weapons is the term "vanity publishing." It's often leveled, dismissive...