Realms of the Raven

Okay, I’ve decided to surrender to reality:

1) I am NOT a graphic artist.
2) While I can write html and C# code, it’s not my passion.
3) I don’t have enough hours in the day to do everything and I want my website(s) and blog to look nice.

So I looked around and saw that Design-A-Blog had done KarenS’s blog and, after looking through their portfolio, I decided to hire them to make my blog look nice and have some resemblance to the website redesign I’m struggling over.

Poor GemmaK is probably hating life now after I innundated her with graphics and the requests I was making. I’m certain that good things will come of it but she may put me in her killfile by the time it’s done!

So I just have to struggle with the website - leading, of course, to my reading a book on web site design and then I have a book on FrontPage after that to glance through. Leaving me with 3 websites to resign - my fiction author site, my technical writing site and my local RWA chapter site.

Sigh

- Maura

I cannot, for the life of me, get Blogspot’s template to not drop the entire side panel down to the bottom of the last post. I’ll try a new post in the vain hope that this will cure the issue but I’m not holding out TOO much hope.

If it doesn’t work either I’ll have to live with the weirdness or I’ll have to try to hack into the template and see if I can reset it somehow.

I love it when stuff just doesn’t want to cooperate.

Review - Helene Blackmailed by Elliot Mabeuse
Ellora’s Cave eBook (www.ellorascave.com) - January 2006
http://www.ellorascave.com/productpage.asp?ISBN=1-4199-0493-0

This ebook is the story of Helene Blanchard, a rising executive, and her transformation both sexually and nonsexually through her blackmail, domaination and sexual servitude at the hands of Daniel.

Helene has devoted the last 8 years of her life to climbing the ladder at work, leaving little time for anything more than the most perfunctory of encounters with men who are far too polite for her deepest desires.

When Helene receives an email containing photos of herself taken while she was reading an erotic story and masturbating on the roof of her building when she was sure she had been alone, she goes along with the blackmailer’s request and meets him at a rather seedy hotel to hear his demands and discovers that she will never be able to go back to the old Helene.

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I liked certain parts of this book quite a bit but found that it didn’t suit my taste in some of the language being used. I found myself almost flinching at the repeated verbal degradation, even in the contexts it was presented in.

Forced / coerced sexual encounters are difficult to portray at best and Elliott did a pretty good job of not stepping over the comfort line there but the language just didn’t work for me.

The sensuality and descriptions were, however, very nice and I liked the introspection into Helene’s changing feelings. I do wish I had more insight into the hero, Daniel. I was not at all able to get inside his head - which is probably why part of the language bothered me.

All in all, this was a real middle of the road read for me. The first thing I thought when I finished the book was that I just didn’t understand the people. I didn’t hate the book, but I didn’t love it. I’d be willing to give this author another try to see if this was an abberration.

Review - Wolfmates 3: Moon Over Manhasset by Dakota Cassidy
Changling Press eBook (www.changelingpress.com) - January 2006
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=248

This ebook is the story of Julia Lawrence, an entrepreneurial she-wolf who just happens to design haute couture outfits for pets and Xavier Wolf, a were-lion investment advisor.

Julia has made a lot of money from her business of dressing dogs and cats but her love life has her knickers tied in knots when it’s the full moon and she’s feeling all the urges that go with it. It is, after all, hard to get a human SO distracted that they are willing to overlook her tail making appearances at socially (and sexually) inconvenient moments.

Even though her tail wouldn’t be an issue if she dated and slept with fellow werewolves, Julia much prefers humans - not nearly as stinky and certainly less hairy. In her disgust at her tree-hugging and bunny petting family, she’s stays well away from their vicinity and settles for occasionally assisting them with money or touching base with a phone call.

Xavier has a true talent as an investment advisor and approached Julia to see if he can persuade her to open an account with him and let him make more money for both of them. He and Julia hit it off right away and soon the investment meeting has turned into a whole new type of merger!

When Xavier and Julia each discover that the other person is NOT a human, the fur begins to fly. What is a she-wolf (with a distaste for werewolves) and a werelion (from a family who never mates outside their own kind) supposed to do when they aren’t tearing up the sheets and licking body parts?? Then things go from bad to worse. Julia and Xavier are challenged to overcome prejudices and assumptions if there’s any hope of a happily ever after between cats and dogs!

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This book really cracked me up. The spunky heroine with her tail problems and her impatience with her relatives was a terrific counter-point to Xavier’s rather staid and traditional ways.

Since I’m usually considered the oddball blacksheep of my family, I was amused by Julia’s exasperation with her family and their causes.

Great sex scenes without need for Barbie and Ken mock-ups.

One telling thing to me was the story was really really funny without the feeling that it was trying too hard to be so. A shortfall with a lot of the erotic comedy I’ve read is that it tries so hard to be funny that it fails to be erotic. Not so here!

Another one to save on the ebook archive for later re-reading! I’m now hoping for a 4th in this series by Dakota Cassidy.

Review - Willing by Lucy Monroe
Kensington Brava - January 2006
ISBN: 0758208758

This trade paperback book by Lucy Monroe is the story of Josette McCall (Josi) who is the daughter of a Vietname vet who now spends his time doing freelance training of mercenaries at his school in Oregon. After losing her mother at a young age, Josi was raised solely by her father and taught all the skills he knew in his determination to never have his daughter at anyone’s mercy or have her endure some of the horrors he saw through his tours of duty.

In her mid-twenties and after a serious injury, Josi has at last decided to leave the mercenary way of life and explore a career in computers. Her father had just taken on a partner in his business in the person of brooding and dark explosives expert Daniel Black Eagle (Nitro).

When her father’s compound is torched and her father disappears from the hospital she had taken him to, Josi finds herself partnering up with Daniel in an effort to discover who had destroyed the merc school and just where her MIA father has disappeared to.

This partnership throws these two old aquaintances together where their assumed mutual dislike was actually covering a great deal of sexual attraction and chemistry between the beautiful merc woman and the modern day Sioux warrior. Their hot tempers and assumptions about their own natures and desires cause them no end of trouble as well as great pleasure during the mission they are both determined to complete.

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I enjoyed this book quite a bit and it may well be my current favorite of Lucy’s books. Josi was a very strong heroine and Daniel was a very caring but possessive alpha male. The sex scenes were a great balance of hot and detailed without being overly technical - I didn’t need to get out the Barbie and Ken to visualize what was going on.

I really enjoyed Josi going through the effort to enjoy “girlie” things and her childlike delight in them at the same time Daniel is trying to convince himself that he’s not a fit long-term companion for her.

I think I liked this second book in Lucy’s Merc series more than the first book. The characters felt more 3 dimensional to me and I was able to really get into the head of Josi and Daniel.

The only downsides to me was my lingering issues with the concept of Daniel being able to make it as an architect without formal training. It’s not as easy as having a great design sense, there’s a lot of engineering knowledge required as well when building structures.

All in all - a definite buy and it will join my keeper shelf for future re-reading.