Since reading Danika Dinsmore’s Brigitta of the White Forest a year ago, I’ve been looking forward to the sequel. When offered a chance to read and review an eARC for The Ruins of Noe, I jumped on the opportunity. The book did not disappoint. It continued the delightful tone, characters, and setting of the first book while standing apart with its own strengths and perspective.

As Brigitta continues her training to become an Elder for the village, she is drawn into a larger problem facing the White Forest. As the spirits of the dead do not pass on and children are born without destinies, Brigitta is shown a prophecy that foretold this and included her as the one who had to go out and solve it.

With High Priestess Ondelle, Brigitta is transported to the ruins of the fairies’ ancestral home, the lost city of Noe. Though both fairies from the White Forest had believed that all of fairy-kind had moved to the White Forest when the world became filled with chaos, they are surprised to find a pair of ragtag settlements. Each fairy stronghold is ruled over by a cruel despot who has no interest in some strange fairies stirring up trouble. As things turn from bad to worse, Brigitta soon finds herself alone in a strange and dangerous world where she must try to save the world without any guidance.

This second installment has a more mature tone than the previous book, aging along with the young adults who may have read the first book. Awful things happen to good people and not everything is fixed by the end. The White Forest fairies quickly learn that the history they believed in was filled with half-truths. Brigitta has to grow up fast over the span of days, facing problems that would be difficult for an adult to deal with. This book also introduces the first signs of a love interest, which also hints at more mature themes to follow.

The Ruins of Noe improves on the previous book in terms of helping readers getting their bearings in the strange and magical world of the White Forest fairies. There are still some rough patches, but overall it does much better in explaining the world. Because I read this version as an ebook on my iPhone, I didn’t realize till I finished the book that there was a glossary.

While the first book was a self-contained story, this sequel leaves many plot hooks open as an avenue towards telling a much larger tale. Dinsmore did an excellent job at keeping me hooked, and sometimes even panicked, by the tale she wove. I can hardly wait for book three.

In her debut novel, Nearly Departed in Deadwood, Ann Charles weaves a fun romp of humor, romance, mystery and the occult. The pages are brimming with eccentric small town characters that brought the setting to life. Though not quite as paranormal a romance/mystery as I had hoped it would be, I would gladly read more tales in herDeadwood Mystery series.

Violet Parker, the book’s protagonist, is a single mother and struggling real estate agent trying to land her first sale before getting fired. But eccentric customers, haunted houses and workplace harassment all threaten to defeat her at every turn. On top of all this, girls have been disappearing from the town of Deadwood. And the girls all bear a striking resemblance to Violet’s daughter. Afraid that her child could be next, Violet starts to play amateur sleuth to find the abductor.

I’d chosen to review this book for Rise Reviews because the author had billed it on a panel as being a blend of paranormal romance and mystery. And I could see it earning that label. But the paranormal elements seemed slow in coming and were carefully handled to seed doubt regarding whether something supernatural had actually occurred.

The presence of ghosts, and someone who claims to be able to sense them, is dismissed as absurd by Violet Parker. The book leaves room for doubt while also planting seeds for future supernatural weirdness. None of this affected my enjoyment of the book, but for those who are only interested in strong, overt paranormal elements I worry that this could prove a letdown.

I deeply loved Violet Parker as a protagonist. She proved very human and approachable, a long cry from the badass tramp-stamped katana carriers or shallow love slaves you might find in similar books. (Not that I mind either of those…) Instead she was someone I felt was easy to relate to because she was very much like someone I might know in real life, foibles and all.

The part I liked least about the book was, bizarrely, something Charles did very well: I got really upset by some of the injustices that Violet experienced. I don’t know if this is just a cultural difference between Seattle and South Dakota, or perhaps a difference in how real estate works, but I was very dismayed by what Violet put up with in her work environment.

Her antagonistic co-worker is not subtle in his methods. This isn’t hard-to-prove shenanigans. It’s outright harassment. I liked Violet to such a degree that I became increasingly outraged on her behalf. “You don’t need to sell a house,” I thought to myself. “You need to tell your boss what’s going on, then get a lawyer if it doesn’t stop!” The author does such a good job at making this co-worker despicable that I just felt ill every time he showed up or did something to Violet. Kudos to Charles for making a protagonist that sympathetic, even if it spiked my blood pressure.

Otherwise, I found this to be a wonderful book to read. It sucked me in and kept me on the edge of my seat and left me excited to read more when I finally reached the end. This is a great book for those wanting something more down to earth and intimate instead of just saving the universe again.

When I first mention to people Rigor Amortis, the anthology of flash zombie erotica edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt, it elicits laughter and looks of disbelief. Until they realize I’m serious. As I understand it, the concept was born as a joke but grew as people realized there was material to be mined. And rest assured that this anthology is not one done for laughs.

There are humorous pieces among the 30+ shorts: black humor, slapstick and grossfests can be found in these pages. But more often the tales are more serious, questioning what remains of love and sex once a body dies but the flesh continues to move?

The stories cover a broad range of undead options that could fall under the mantle of “zombie.” George Romero’s mindless flesh-eating risen dead are a common approach but not the only one. Thrown into the mix are animated corpses, bodies that have come back to fulfill a task and even technological creations. Some are more mindless than others. Above all else, the stories are often macabre in their tone. There are few stories that don’t touch upon the grotesque nature of death.

The book is put together with an eye towards establishing tone. The cover art, which I would dare to call beautiful, tells you exactly what the books is going to be like. Each section of the anthology has interstitial art and most of the stories have a black and white piece tied to its content. After the opening messages from the editors, Gates and Holt kick things off with a sweet and dark poem by Lance Schonberg entitled “And Yet in Death.” It is a beautiful and short piece filled with love lost and love returned with a hunger for human flesh.

From there the editors break the stories up into four thematic sections. With so many flash pieces crammed into this collection, I hope you will forgive my brevity in not highlighting each one.

The first part, Romance, presents the sentimental and tender hearted tales of love beyond death. A few authors use the theme of a dead spouse coming back from the dead due to occult influences. My favorite among those was J.R. Campbell’s “Returned,” the final piece in that section. The sweet, almost fairy tale, structure of this story really captivated my heart. Another standout for me in this group was Nathan Crowder’s “Dancing Tonight! Live Music!” Evoking memories of the mall in Dawn of the Dead, his zombies carry out the same rituals they did in life, in this case the rituals of courtship they once went through. Through death I thought the story said much about life.

The next section, Revenge, told tales of love going wrong. Lucia Starkey’s “Erzuli’s Chosen Few,” for example, was a moving tale about a woman using voodoo to gentle an abusive lover. It was a painful and beautiful story of the complicated nature of love. “Swallow It All,” by Jennifer Brozek, is a dark and twisted story of a man who has his wife made into a zombie to make her more submissive. “Traveling a Corpse Over a Thousand Li” was an amazing tale of star-crossed lovers set in China. Many stories in this section focused on revenge between the lovers, but this was one of the few that focused on revenge on behalf of the lovers. “Syd’s Turn,” by R.E. VanNewkirk, was an engaging dark tale of recreational zombie drugs and mutually abusive lovers, a sort of erotic zombie Trainspotting. My love of Revolutionary France made the Wendy N. Wagner’s “Head” a delight to read, though I don’t know that a fellating severed head will be everyone’s cup of tea.

Risk, the third section, revels in the undead condition. Some of the stories are about undead lovers, others are about those who delight in the undead nature of their companions. Sarah Goslee’s “My Summer Romance” is a touching story of zombie-curious lesbian romance. A sharp contrast to this is Steven James Scearce’s “Second Sunday in September,” a campy lampoon of a high society wedding that will not let undeath stop the proceedings. Kay T. Holt presents one of the few sci-fi pieces in this anthology, “Obligate Cannibal.” Holt presents a near future world of cybernetic implants that provides a symbiotic relationship between the living and the undead.

The final section, Raunch, is a grab bag of pieces that wouldn’t fit into the other parts. This proved to be my least favorite section, though “Mitch’s Girl,” by Carrie Cuinn, was a gem that stood out amongst the other stories. It was one of the other sci-fi pieces, focused on a coin-op brothel that uses the lower half of women’s corpses for their customer’s pleasure.

I found this to be an excellent anthology of zombie stories, but it didn’t satisfy my interest in erotica. Beyond the necrotic undertones of the stories, the sexual content is often minimal. More often the stories focus on the romance, with sex either implied or entirely absent. In some stories, sex and romance are all but absent from the tale. The parts I loved the most were the thoughtful pieces that explored the human condition through the lens of undeath, but there are also fine pieces that are just about zombies and sex. If you enjoy zombie horror, this could be a fine piece to include in your collection.

First, my “issue” of Wily Writers has gone live. You can read or listen to Christine Danse’s “Fear of Darkness” and Cassandra D’Angelo’s “Catch and Release” now!

I’ve slowed down in writing reviews for Rise Reviews, but I’m still plugging along at one a month. Be sure to check out reviews for:

• Roarke by Frances Pauli
• The Chalice of Life by Karen Anne Webb
• Brigitta of the White Forest by Danika Dinsmore
• Nearly Departed in Deadwood by Ann Charles

I also have a page on GoodReads now, where you can also follow my blog. I’ll be crossposting reviews there as well.

On the fiction front, I have sent a revised story back to an editor who’d requested a rewrite. I’m waiting with bated breath for her response.

Lyn Benedict’s Sins and Shadows is a tense romp full of unexpected twists and turns. She also approaches the subject matter in ways that I didn’t expect, which can be both good and bad depending on your point of view. Her protagonist, Sylvie Lightner, is not the sort of person who would be universally liked. There is also a lot of background to Sylvie that could warrant multiple prequel books,to the point where I felt at times like I was entering the story in the middle of the series instead of at the beginning. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, Benedict manages to write a gripping tale that manages to take seeming disparate elements and weave them into a magnificent reveal.

Sylvie Lightner, owner of Shadows Inquiries, deals with threats from the magical world. But when one of her employees is murdered in front of her, she decides to hang up her hat and close the shop. A man claiming to be the God of Justice pressgangs her into working for him to find his missing lover. She leaves her native city of Miami to visit Chicago to begin the search. Along the way, she runs afoul of Greek gods, Lilith, her ex-lover (who runs the government agency that handles the occult) and an occult catastrophe that threatens to destroy Chicago.

Benedict’s writing is masterful. She lays out the stepping stones of the story without tipping her hand, so that when big reveals come they both blew me away and made complete sense with everything that happened before. All the pieces that didn’t make sense gelled together into a vivid picture that that left me stunned.

I adored the protagonist, but I’ve seen reviews by others who didn’t share my opinion. Sylvie is prickly as razor wire and justifiably worries about the tightrope walk she does between hero and monster. She even has Cedo Nulli, “I yield to none,” tattooed on the back of her neck. I loved the attitude, and there’s even a cosmological reason behind her spite. But some people have found her character hard to empathize with. This seems like it’s very much a matter of taste, and I firmly cast my vote as “Yay Sylvie!” But I can see that not everyone’s going to warm up to that sort of character.

The element I struggled with more, however, was the amount of background that tied into the story. There are two or three large previous events that impact the story, with enough meat that they could be their own books. But the more I’ve picked at how it could be approached differently, I feel like the book would suffer without it. Not only would such prequels be less powerful than this first installment, but Sylvie’s story would make less sense without the weight of her history.

I enjoyed this book, but I do recognize that this might not be everyone’s cup of tea. There are some definite love or hate aspects to the book, but it’s definitely worth a look. Benedict weaves a tight tale that left me eager for the sequels.

I sent in my entry to the PNWA Literary Contest last night for the Romance  category. It’s the novel length version of what I wrote for All Romance eBooks last fall. I’m also working on a rewrite of a short story I’m shopping around. A publisher asked for revisions, so I’m hoping this will be a winner.

Coming up, I will be a guest editor for the Wily Writers Podcast. Wily Writers is an online zine that also provides audio versions of the stories in addition to the text. Submissions are due at the end of this month, I’ll be reading them  in March, and two stories will be chosen for publication in May. AND you get a fat $50. It’s not exactly pro rates, but Ulysses S. Grant has a certain charm.

I commissioned the lovely and talented Wendi Strang-Frost to make a picture of me for me. Why use my real face when I can have an idealized version? Seriously. I’ve got it up on Facebook and Twitter, but haven’t had a chance to get it onto here yet.

In other news, I’ve utterly spaced on linking to reviews I’ve had published on Rise Reviews. Since the first, I’ve posted two reviews:

• Innsmouth Free Press, Issue #5
• Beauty Has Her Way, edited by Jennifer Brozek

I have another review coming out on the 21st and I’m trying to beat my way through another book to review it for March. The madness just doesn’t end. I’ve also started another review for Associated Content, which I will hopefully publish… soon…

Alright, now back to running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

In War for the Oaks, Emma Bull takes a simple premise to draft a tale that unfolds the deeper you get into it. The protagonist, Eddi McCandry, is a singer and guitar player in a rock band that gets sucked into an ancient war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. By binding a mortal to the conflict, it makes both sides as mortal as a human. The stakes become much higher and the risks each side will take much steeper.

The phouka that picked Eddi for the cause, and who is given no name other than “phouka,” has a deeper agenda for why he picked Eddi in particular. This results in Eddi not only becoming a dangerous wild card in the conflict but also in romantic tension between her and the phouka.

Eddi is no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she’s not a chosen one and possesses no supernatural fighting ability. Instead she is nothing but a pawn in a bigger conflict. The only powers she gains are a side effect of her exposure to fairies. As War for the Oaks unfolds, Eddi finds her own strength and influences the course of the conflict through her own resources.

Music, among other arts, is pivotal to War for the Oaks, both in terms of Eddi’s career and what the war is about. Bull highlights a spectrum of morality between creative, artistic freedom and sterile, soulless hierarchy. This conflict manifests in both the tensions between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts as well as the tensions between nobles and commoners within the Seelie court.

I have many books that are dearer to me than Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks. But each of my favorite books has flaws I can readily identify. I usually love the books in spite of their flaws rather than because of them. When it comes to War for the Oaks, though, I find myself unable to identify anything wrong with the book.

After loving the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, I had to delve deeper into Charlaine Harris’s marvelous vampire novels. The second installment in the series, Living Dead in Dallas, explores the secret world of the supernatural in greater detail. But while the writing is still engaging and the new revelations are compelling, the plot itself is not as tightly woven as the Dead Until Dark.

The novel opens simply enough: one of the residents of Bon Temps, Louisiana, is found murdered and another resident becomes the chief suspect in the case. But before any progress can be made in investigating it, Sookie and her boyfriend, Bill Compton, are sent by Bill’s boss Eric to Dallas to investigate the disappearance of the vampire. The bulk of the book follows this second plot and the book doesn’t return to the first plot until the second plot is over.

The second plot is the best part of this installment. It lifts back the edge of the curtain over the dark world Sookie has entered through her connection to Bill and Eric. Not only does Harris give us a glimpse of the movers and shakers in this world, but we also get a sense of just how this world works. Religious cults conspiring against vampires mixes in with vampire politics, shapeshifter subculture and airlines dedicated to transporting the undead.

Harris’s writing is gripping to begin with, but once Sookie Stackhouse arrives in Dallas the tension kicks up several notches. Even knowing that there are several other books featuring Sookie, Harris constantly left me with the feeling that Sookie’s life and well being were in danger throughout the book. You can’t ask for more when it comes to suspension of disbelief.

An unexpected surprise in this novel was the development of a friendship between Sookie and Eric. The more senior vampire in Sookie’s life takes

on new depth in this book and sets the stage for further romantic tension as the books progress.
For those who enjoyed the first installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series, this is a worthy successor and I heartily recommend it. It is not without a few hiccups, but is encouragement to stick with the series.

Scarecrow Video is a shining beacon in the gloomy Seattle weather.

One of the largest video stores in the country and a landmark in north Seattle, Scarecrow Video specializes in carrying movies and formats you can’t find other places. Though their primary business is video and machine rental, they also have great selection of new and used movies for sale in the same range of formats.

Established in 1988 with the desire to unite people with film, Scarecrow Video has grown exponentially through the intervening years. Their current inventory contains over 100,000 titles. They carry not only DVDs and Blu Ray, but also VHS, PAL and Laserdisc. These same formats are also available for sale in their new and used sections.

Its easy to get lost in the floor to ceiling maze of movies available here, and not just because of the maze.

The store is laid out in an eclectic fashion. Their upper floor neatly breaks things down into genres, from animation to noir to psychotronic. The main floor, by contrast, has sections based off of directors or nations of origin.

The store is built for exploring, with winding nooks filled with movies of every stripe. Whether its vampire films or movies based on video games, there are shelves and shelves of discoveries to make. If you don’t feel like adventure, you can find specific movies on a computer kiosk. Not only will the computer tell you in what section the movie is, but it also gives a map to help find it.

Not all of their customers are tech geeks who have every video-playing device known to man. For the common rental customers, they have machines available to rent. Whether it’s a PAL-format VCR or a Laserdisc player, they can help you enjoy movies that are not available any other way.

The very obscure contents of their inventory are labeled “Rental by Approval.” In those situations, you will need to provide a deposit with either cash or credit card. Sometimes the deposit is relatively small, but some irreplaceable classics can require a couple hundred dollars. This can seem daunting, but can be very worth it. Especially if you find yourself, like I did, needing to watch a VHS copy of an old Bond film right away.

Where else can you expect to find Lady and the Tramp for sale on LaserDisc?

In an age of downloadable films and DVDs mailed to your door, Scarecrow Video continues to thrive while other video stores close their doors. Their inventory of independent, foreign and out of print films are a valuable resource that has not yet migrated to the Internet. They also maintain connections with local film-makers and communities to provide better access to local work as well.

Take a moment to check out this priceless Seattle resource and find new depths to your appreciation for film. You can find them at 5030 Roosevelt Way NE in Seattle, or visit them on the Web at http://www.scarecrow.com/.