Guest Post: Christine Cunningham - Please Respect my Intelligence

I love books. Let me rephrase that I love good books. Though the course of reading throughout my life, I gorged myself on the informative, bizarre, fantastic, and hysterical. More recently I have chosen to function as a reviewer to the independent author community. I have a few requests before you decide to put pen to paper.

1. Unless you’re writing a book, specifically for children don’t treat me like one. I can handle three syllable and above words.
2. Attempting to infuse your character with depth by associating them with a culture outside your own is sketchy at best and purely racist at worst.
3. Please mention classical and modern literature in your text properly. “Title dropping” in a book is just as annoying as “name dropping” in a conversation.
4. Let your women breathe! The archetypal virginal, beautiful (but charmingly unaware of it), and flawless do-gooder is the bane of my existence. Please give your women characters a true voice.
5. Let your men be men. Reading a male character that sounds like he’s just a man’s skin covering a woman’s body is very frustrating. There is a difference between the sexes for a reason. It builds tension, and that, my friend is exciting to read.
6. There’s a difference between paying homage to an author/book and lifting a storyline from a book that has already been written. You have a unique voice and perspective. Please don’t shy away from using it.
7. Edit your work! This means more than grammar and punctuation. Ask a few people to read your story prior to publishing who will give you an honest appraisal. Consider the poor fools on American Idol, who had no one who would be honest with them. Save yourself much pain and heartache by asking always how you can improve.

I want to read your story, and I want to be the one that tells everyone in my social circle about you. I found you first, and all of my friends are drooling with envy. You are the only one that can make that happen.
 
Christine Cunningham writes fictional stories to uplift and inspire. She is a life-long student of happiness and how to attract it. She compiles what she learns and weaves it into an understandable, enjoyable story. She is the author of Eternal Beginning Amazon bestseller, First Snow Amazon bestseller and 30 Day Guide to apply Eternal Beginning.

Connect with Christine through: Amazon, Facebook, Twitter or via her blog.

The Gaudi Key? Keep the door locked.

The Gaudi Key didn’t unlock any doors for me, I’m afraid. Shame. I like these kind of books and can normally lap up Dan Brown and the conspiracy theorists. And I love Gaudi and the art nouveau movement. But this was truly awful. Maybe it suffers from being a translation from (presumably) Spanish? I simply can’t sit and read huge chunks of exposition and back-story and listen to characters telling each other things they already know just to inform the reader. And while I’m all for multiple points-of-view, you can’t jump into a character’s head and have him/her conveniently forget pertinent plot points because it suits the current scene. The author pushes one-dimensional characters around the board like chess pieces lecturing the reader and nobody has enough depth for me to have a clue whether or not their motivations are genuine. And I don’t really care.

But enough of negatives. There’s a lot of history in here, both real and imagined, though its delivery is pompous and dull at times. Gaudi is linked with the templars (isn’t everybody these days?) and the masons and there’s a real depth in the interpretation of his work, particularly the Sagrada Familia. On that level, the book succeeds. But as a novel, it just didn’t do it for me.

Vampire fiction

A timely post, since there's apparently some new vampire film just out?

What is it with vampires? They're fictional creatures that drink blood, for God's sake. And yet the media and youth of today are obsessed with them. 21st century vampirism is definitely cute and fluffy, with pin-up vampires and Hollywood overtones.

Personally, when I do vampires at all, I like them dark and broody - Mitchell style, I guess, in the awesome BBC tv series Being Human. But I got a vampire book for review not so long ago - called Blood & Ice, I was fully intending to write a review here but lost the publicity slip and can't remember when the publication date is. I emailed the publishers but they've not got back to me. Now while this has been published already in hardback, I'm loath to write anything pre-paperback-publication-date just in case my edition is different in any way. So you'll have to make do with the hardback review by The Independent in the link. But I have to say, that for somebody who doesn't generally do vampire fiction, I liked this one, despite the negative review. I thought it was rather original. But you make your own mind up.

Or if you like your vampires a touch more - shall we say? - erotic, check out this excellent unpublished snippet Bite on HarperCollins authonomy site. But please note - it's adults-only and, um, ever-so-slightly (well all right - quite a bit) graphic. Don't say I didn't warn you....

Faery Tales

Those of you who know me might be surprised to know that I’m quite into faeries. That’s faeries, not fairies – the latter being the cute winged creatures who may or may not live at the bottom of the garden, and the former being connected with Celtic mythology who may or may not be the lost race of the Tuatha De Danaan. Faeries have their own agenda, which doesn’t always complement our own.

The best faery fiction I’ve read must include Raymond Feist’s Faery Tale. Classic stuff, closely followed by Tom Deitz’s series set in Georgia, USA which dips into just about every mythos going. Then there are Mercedes Lackey’s urban faeries who ride fast cars for fun and live alongside humans in sometimes interesting relationships!

I was sent a copy of Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely a couple of years ago. Not sure if this is YA fantasy or not, but who cares? Awesome stuff. American urban faeries again – the yanks do this stuff so well. Why has nobody done faeries on the London underground yet? (makes mental note to get writing …) Anyway, I also got sent a review copy of the third in the trilogy Fragile Eternity a few weeks ago. Not having read the one in the middle, Ink Exchange, I asked the lovely Sam White at HarperCollins if I could have a copy, which duly arrived a few days later.

Wicked Lovely follows the story of Aislinn, falling in love for the first time with Seth. But Aislinn’s no ordinary teenager – she can see faeries. Everywhere. And they’re mostly a nasty bunch too, hanging around the streets and clubs – tripping people up, pulling out their hair. Now faeries can normally only be seen if they choose to be, or put on a human glamour and Aislinn’s spent her whole life trying not be noticed by them. And how do you not notice the most gorgeous faery of them all, especially when he wants to date you and just happens to be the Summer King? Aislinn’s not interested – her future is with Seth – but the Summer King wants her for his Queen and he won’t take no for an answer …

I loved this novel. Read it when I first got it and read it again recently as part of the trilogy. Like I said, I’m sure this was sent to me under the guise of Young Adult fiction, but it would appeal to anyone who likes the dark-and-dangerous side of faeries. Possibly pure escapism, but can you really be sure? Remember that dark charismatic stranger who held your eye contact on the underground this morning for just a fraction of a second longer than was decent? Remember what he was wearing? No, I didn’t think you would. But you may see him again tomorrow and the next day. He may speak to you in a voice with no trace of an accent and yet he won’t sound quite English. Read Wicked Lovely and you just may survive the encounter, but whatever you do, don’t agree to meet him for a drink. Because you can never really be sure, can you?