Story Dice

--Me

Restraint by Sandra Madera Book Report

Restraint
By: Sandra Madera
Genre: Paranormal Thriller (possibly YA, but I didn't classify it that way because I didn't get the feeling that's what the author intended when she wrote it)
Rating: PG
Coffee Beans: 2/5 – the story has the potential to be interesting
Spoilers: No. Well, maybe a little
Favorite Line: "…she answered briskly, brushing off Laura's concern as if it were a fly that needed to be swatted." (ebook, pg 54)
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book free in exchange for this honest review

 
Sometimes it's hard to review a book.

Sometimes, there's just so much you want to comment on, but it all gets scrambled in your head and you can't figure out how to put it all down so that it makes sense. That's what I ran into with this book so I'm going to try and limit what I bring up and try to keep it as on point as I can.

Here we go.

Restraint is the illegitimate child that resulted from a one-night stand between Jane Austen and Bram Stoker. Set in 1884 America and England, Restraint is a story about two sisters whose father dies, leaving them to be shipped off to live with an estranged uncle in England. The only problem is, there are vampires in the mix. And they're after Laura (Even though that's the crux of the story, you don't find that out until well after the halfway point).

The idea of the book is interesting. I like that the vampires are cruel, cold beasts. It's about time vampire stories get back to their roots. But the author's execution in telling the story is poor. Also, I felt the first 125 pages could've been summed up (or given as snippets of back story later on in the book) and the book should have started on 126 with the discovery of her father's journal.

Now onto specifics:

First of all, head hopping. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be in the protagonist's head throughout the entire book, but there were countless times the reader was told things there's no way the protag could've known.

Secondly, vocabulary. We're in 1884, stick with the language and sayings from that period. For the most part, Madera did a good job getting down the vernacular and vocabulary (from what I would expect it to be, anyway), but there were times she would throw in word or phrase that just didn't fit and would completely pull me out of the story.

While reading through the book, one thing kept standing out to me. The story was overworked while at the same time still extremely raw. There were a lot of little things (and some not so little things) that could've been fixed by tightening up the book.

There was a lot of telling (sometimes telling the reader the same thing 3 or 4 different times in the same paragraph). It's like Madera didn't trust the reader to figure out on their own what she was hinting at. I think this issue also affected the fact that there wasn't any real sense of urgency or risk in the story. If we'd gone through what Laura was going through, then maybe there could've been.

Incorrect use of many things. Exclamation points! ….ellipses…. and adjectives, to name a few. A lot of times, a adjective was used in the completely wrong context, giving the reader a wrong impression of what the character was feeling at the time. It threw me out of the story more than once. For example, there's a scene (well, several scenes, actually) where Laura is very tired/sick/drained/etc and "hops" out of bed. wrong. Maybe she crawls/slides/slinks out of bed, but with what she went through, she most certainly didn't hop out of bed.

I felt that Laura, the main character, was a very inconsistent and unreliable character. Her thoughts and emotions were all over the board and couldn't be relied upon. Also, she didn't have a strong enough arc.

And lastly, the cover.

I don't say this easily, in fact, I debated weather to even mention it at all. But in the end I felt it would be unfair if I didn't since I almost always make some sort of comment about a books cover in my reviews. 


The cover is an author's first impression on their reader. It's so, so, so important to have the right cover for your book, for traditionally published authors, but even more so for self-published authors. With traditionally published books, covers can go through dozens and dozens of designs, focus groups, restarts, votes, etc before the final product hits the shelf. You get lots of input and opinions. Unfortunately, that tediously long process usually isn't the case with self-published books. The same thing is true with editing.

Madera designed her covers herself, she tells you on her blog it's her own artwork. And while she's a talented artist, using drawings for the covers made the books appear a bit amateurish. Had I been browsing for a book to read and I came across this one, it wouldn't have been one I picked up. I strongly suggest for any self-publishing author to spend the extra money and get your cover professionally designed as well as your book professionally edited.

Okay, I know this review might sound a little harsh, I tried everything in my power for it not to seem that way, but at the end of the day, it's my job to be honest and give you guys my candid review about a book. It's up to you if you like it or not. And as I always say, pick it up and read it for yourself. Your opinion might be very different than mine.

Happy reading, my friends!

Just Read...

Restraint by Sandra Madera

If Jane Austin and Brahm Stoker would have had a kid together. I'll let you decide if that's a good thing or not. BR to come...

--Me

Freebee Friday!

Even though I have a Nook, I still love this commercial. You all know why. :)

Happy Friday, my friends!

--Me

Story Cubes!

So, the A2Z Blogging Challenge made me realize something: Random writing prompts are fun, simple, and good exercise. I've had these story cubes for a while (Wal-Mart for only five bucks) and have played with them and thought I should let you guys use them, too.

So, every Thursday, i'll give the dice a roll, throw a theme out there and urge you to spend no more than 500 words telling a story using all nine cubes (feel free to use artistic interpretation for the cubes' contents). Maybe I'll have you email them to me and I'll pick a winner and you'll win something yet-to-be-decided but still ultimately cool.

What'day think? Should we try that?

Theme: A crazy vacation

So! Write your story, email it to me, and I'll pick a winner and announce the prize on my blog the next week. :) This will be fun!

The ? is a freebee

--Me

Exciting news of the non-book-publishing-but-still-pretty-dang-exciting type

It’s that time again…updates. You know I like to give ‘em. SFWC was the middle of February. I always take the month of March off from writing because I’m usually recuperating from the conference and working on any requests or final tweaks and edits for my current WIP.

When April came around, I decided to do something I’ve never done before and that was sign up and participate in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Let me tell you, that was fun and challenging. I wrote around 14,000 words to a story that was only meant to be a throw-away story. Who knows, maybe one day it will become a trunk novel.

Between the A2Z challenge, reading close to EIGHT books and offering reviews, I didn’t have much down time to write for me. That’s what May’s for. Starting today.

CASTE – I’ve submitted the full ms to three agents, one has already come back with an R&R (which is entirely awesome), two more have it in hand and I’ll probably nudge them sometime this month.

Funny story: One thing you’ll notice when you get into the business of writing books and wanting to get published (especially if you write in a specific genre), is that you end up submitting your different works to the same agents over the years.

One of the agents who has a full sent me an email the other day. I glanced at it on my phone when it came in and it said something to the effect of, “So sorry, but your query got trapped in our junk filter. Please resubmit if you’re still seeking representation.”

I chuckled to myself, thinking it was no big deal; I’d read the email in detail the next day and resend my ms. When I opened the email and read it closely, I found out that it wasn’t for CASTE. It was for my very first book I queried them about back in 2010!

Holy crap. Thanks for being a rockin’ enough agency to come back and ask me to resubmit. That’s awesome. So, after I type this, I’ll be spending my time at Starbucks spit-polishing those first few chapters and resubmitting them. Who knows, right?

I found out over the weekend that I might have a slight allergy to bees. I know, It's a little late in life to be figuring that out, right? But, believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever been stung by a bee. I got stung on the head (actually, a very funny story, maybe I'll tell you about it sometime), instantly got a migraine for the rest of the day--not to mention the pain was the worst I'd ever felt, not even kidding--and then things started to swell. But not until the next day. Then, a protrusion the circumference of a softball proceeded to make its way from the top of my head and across my forehead before finally settling--yesterday--on the bridge of my noes and both eyes. I looked like a Klingon. No joke. Anyway, it's finally gone this morning.  

So, now on to the BIG news. Some of you may already know that I work at a newspaper crunching numbers. Not exactly my calling with words, but I get by. Plus, I sit close to the news department so it counts for something.

Anywho, we have this cubicle that’s filled with nothing but ARCs. Me and a couple friends (Pam & Janice) often peruse the contents to see if there’s anything that catches our interest. I didn’t realize what a travesty this graveyard of books was until I came across The Hunger Pains. I about cried (a slight exaggeration). What a missed opportunity!

I complained to Janice and Pam that we don’t have a good book review column in our paper for “everyday reads”. NYT AP wire stories don’t count. I mean, local reviews in a casual voice.

“We should offer to review these books!” I said with a fist of injustice in the air.

“Yeah!” Pam chorused.

“You should write a proposal!” Janice said.

So I went back to my desk and did just that. I explained why the paper needed this and why it HAD to be the three of us to do this. And before I could think about it anymore, I emailed the newspaper editor.

She emailed me back and said, “Let’s meet.”

Then, in the meeting, she told us, “I love this idea. Let’s do it. But instead of a column, I want a page for your reviews. And I want you guys to have a blog for the paper, too.”

We were excited into speechlessness. Then we started talking about other ideas. It was crazy, and they loved it all. We were basically given free reign to make this ours and make it the best we could. A community calendar for upcoming reading and writing events. Editorial pieces written by us, FAQs, Twitter, Facebook, email, the whole kit n’ kaboodle. They wanted writing samples and they loved those, too.

It was heaven. I think we’re all still floating on Cloud 9.

Anyway, our first deadline was yesterday for the very first installment of our PAGE. It’s still hard to believe. I’ll probably buy about a thousand copies and frame at least ten, giving them out as gifts.

So that’s my “big news”. I can’t wait. I’m one step closer to getting my book published. Kind of.

Anyway, I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on how that goes and give you the link so you can visit us over at our official home (Book Addicts) when that’s all up and running.

What about you all? Anything new and exciting going on? Little or big.

--Me