Monday, January 11, 2010

Weekly Review: Betrayals by Lili St.Crow

Well, my intentions to give you guys a weekly book review was swallowed up by the holiday monster. So to figuratively get back on the horse I give you my opinion on a new young adult series by Lili St. Crow.

Betrayals is the follow up to Strange Angels, a vampire/werewolf/teen angst themed load of fun. It has all the trappings of high school drama meets the strange and unusual. The main character Dru is somewhat reminiscent of Buffy, but with a lot more grit and common sense. One of my favorite things about this character is you don't get the typical urge to slap yourself on the forehead whenever she makes a decision. She's smart and savvy about what she calls the "real world".

However, in the second installment Betrayals Dru discovers just how much of a noob she is to the "real world". Its nice to see her off balance a little after how surefooted she was in the first book. Her sidekick and possible love interest Graves is a character to love. He is the constant in her ever changing world, and a friend to make any girl envious. There is also a character to lust. Christophe fills the story with mystery and tension, as well as, giving Dru and the rest of us some butterflies.

The story is getting deeper and the twists more precarious. I will definitely be picking up the third book of the series Jealousy in 2010.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Pretty, shiny things...

Oh, the siren's call of a new idea. That first excited rush of possibility. For the last seven days I have been caught up in pursuing a new book idea. I've fleshed out an outline, developed a few characters, and wrote a three page synopsis. After working on a single story line for the past six months the change up has felt great. However, it has also been a distraction. I'm into the middle of my first novel, (aka TSC) and now all of these great ideas keep tugging at my brain that have nothing to do with TSC. Now the fear of never completing TSC is creeping in. For now, I'm letting the ideas come. Satisfying myself with just jotting down the concept. I'll give it a few more days and then dive back into TSC...hopefully.

So does anyone have some advice on staying focused? Is this deviation from TSC a good thing or bad? Let me know what you think.