Category: indie author

Books, great reads, indie author, Reviews, scifi

Extant by Anthony Vicino

Karen

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Anthony Vicino is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. So when he sent me this story and asked if I would read it I said of course! then I realized I already owned it..I know, it’s sad when you get a book more than once. Don’t deny it, you know you’ve all fought with Amazon demanding to buy a book that they refuse to let you click on, and then after 10 minutes of you being sure that the whole system is broken and you’re convinced you are going to have to call customer service you finally read what’s on the screen and you realize that it’s been trying to tell you this whole time that you already own the book. No? That’s just me? Okay then moving on…

Let’s start with the blurb, totally snatched from goodreads: Manipulating time always comes at a cost. For Special Agent Kaelyn Kwon, Blinking means living with one foot in the past and one foot in the present. Torn between memories of what was, and what could have been, she must use her power to decide what is yet to be.
A 10,000 word short adventure filled with action, time travel, and intrigue!

It is a shortie, I originally owned it in an anthology called The Time Travel Chronicles but since I still haven’t gotten around to reading the whole thing I’m going to stick to just talking about this story.

What I really liked about this book was the concept. You’ve got this place where people can control time, but it’s limited to 32 seconds (there are reasons for this, reasons I accept) and three different abilities. You have ones who can move forward in time, backwards, or freeze time. My favorite part was when three of them were working together, it was backwards, forward, forward, forward, backwards, stop, forwards, (please don’t quote me on that order I just made it up) but it felt like a rush constant time flipping I felt the craziness of that and loved it. Also as Anthony does so well there was an standard plot rescue mission and then the deeper psychological plot of how time travel effected the traveler.

This story did leave me with many questions about the world and the players within but it was a great read and from what I understand a great set up for the next book to come. It’s on sale now for $0.99 from Amazon, you know what I’ll even be nice and throw up a link for you to go grab it. Support your local indie author today, and read a fun short story, everyone wins!

Books, great reads, indie author, paranormal romance, Reviews, Romance

Blue Moon by Angela Colsin

debra

blue moon

Blue Moon is the first book in The Crucible Series by Angela Colsin.  This is the first time I have read this independent author.

The Blurb:  When betrayed by his Alpha, Cade Hodgins takes the role in leading the Arkin City pack and begins his search for those responsible for his father’s death. Information is hard to come by however—until a stray lupine wanders into his territory.

But Ashley Passmore is no ordinary stray. She’s a newborn wolf, turned from being a human with no prior knowledge that lupines existed. Due to her blackouts, she can’t recall who turned her or why, but Cade suspects her attackers may be the same as those who entrapped his father.

In the meantime, Cade takes Ashley in to help her regain control of her new life, and finds more than just a lead—she’s his mate. But Ashley is adjusting to the new world she’s been thrust into, making it uncertain she’ll accept the growing bond between them, while those who turned her want to make sure she’s silenced for good.

My thoughts:  A few chapters into this book, I thought that this would be simply a quick, easy, light read.  I enjoy those books every so often as a change of pace from some of what I read.  However, I was glad to see this book has more to it than that.  It was a quick read, but enjoyable.  Cade has some issues to work through dealing with the death of his father. Ashley has many issues dealing with being a new lupine when she didn’t even know they existed.  Humans are notoriously unaware of what happens around us!!  Both are also going to have to come to terms with the whole mate issue.  I did like that the author made this part of the story go slow for them from the standpoint of the actual hookup.  They both dealt with the emotions internally first.  I think it improved the story that way. They had enough going on as it was especially figuring out the mystery of Ashley’s turning and the death of Cade’s father.  I really enjoyed the introduction of two interesting characters that are also supernatural beings towards the end and the twist involving them.  I am moving on to Book 2.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

indie author, Out of the Box Blogs, paranormal romance, scifi, steampunk, Urban Fantasy

The Waiting Game

Karen

Recently I’ve noticed that a lot of the authors I’ve been following for years are spacing the time between books in a series more and more. Now sometimes it’s a health or other personal issues which I completely sympathize with and understand, hey as much as I’d like to have that new book real life and family is a priority, but sometime it’s not. Here are some of the reasons I’ve been consistently running into:

  1. The new series. Authors want to start new series, which I get creatively they get bored, so the old series which is the cash cow and the one I love starts to have longer and longer wait times. I have a few that publish like clockwork once a year but now with new series (still only publishing once a year) the series I follow only comes out every 2-3 years. Sometimes I actually have forgotten what’s going on it’s been so long.
  2. The publisher. Apparently the publishers like the publish certain genres certain times of the year. One author missed her deadline by a month and now her book is slated to release a year later. This is a NYT best selling author and this will make it a three year wait on the book. Really? You couldn’t find a spot?
  3. The deadline. As mentioned above deadlines seem to be getting tighter and tighter for writers and when they miss them then books seem to get pushed not weeks buts 6,8,12,18 months out.

The saddest part is that some new series I’ve picked up are really interesting but there has been no follow up..and its been 12-18 months for some of these books. Honestly I’ve lost interest in anything that’s not my core reading, as far as series are concerned, that aren’t indie authors. Do you think it’s over stressed authors, publishing houses that think people will stay loyal no matter what or an over critical me?

 

Books, indie author, Out of the Box Blogs, Reviews, scifi, Urban Fantasy

The Pre-Review

Karen

I have a conundrum. I hate pre-reviews. You know the reviews that people put up on books before they are released. The 5 star ratings that say “I CAN’T WAIT!!!” with unicorns and rainbows, but they haven’t actually read the book yet. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. They make me so crazy for these top three reasons:

  1. They dilute any real ARC reviews. If I’m looking at reviews to purchase a book, I can’t trust the rating because who knows how many 5 stars are just people that are excited to get a book. The ARC readers could be rating it 5 stars but now the true average is skewed.
  2. It hurts the authors and publishers. They tend to get alot of likes, so they are at the top. This is a problem because when I’m looking for an actual review, all I find is…OMG when am I going to get this book!!!! and not anything with substance. After awhile I get sick of shifting through them all and sometimes just give up. The sad part is after a book comes out, some of these 5 stars will get changed to lower ratings once the book is read.
  3. They use the likes later for a real review. You see people like those “I can’t wait reviews” because neither can they. And they can build up to a 100 likes in a year. But here is the twisted part, the reviewer can then edit it to a real review and keep the likes automatically becoming a top review, without any work (or sometimes without a good review) because they keep those likes. Then they get more for the actual review, it’s like getting double points, or let’s just call a spade a spade it’s like cheating.

But here is my problem, you have sites like Amazon that “fixed” this problem by just not allowing reviews of any book before its release. Now when I go to review any ARC I receive I can’t put a review on Amazon. I always intend to go back, but you know what they say about good intentions.

So which way is better, let anyone review anytime or only allow reviews once the book is released to stop all the 5 star previews that haven’t read? Les suggested giving the ARC readers a code to allow them to review, but who would we get the code from and would you need  one for every site? I don’t know the solution or which way is better, frankly I see pros and cons in both system but you guys always have the best feedback so I figured I’d put it out there and see what you have to say…