Kindred: The Shadows of Night
Ellen Fisher
Samhain Publishing Ltd.
ISBN 1-59998-016-9

In a world of the future where descendants of Earth have inhabited a new planet and found that the unique properties of their new world give them the power to shapeshift into animal forms. Three distinct societies, or Kindred, have emerged — Antler, Claw and Fang.

Katara, a female of the Claw Kindred, finds herself rescued by Hart, a male Antler Kindred. These hereditary enemies are forced together in an effort to defend both their Kindred from a common enemy. That is, if they can avoid killing each other first. Or is the greater risk that they will fall in love?

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This is listed on Samhain’s site as a Romance/Shapeshifter but I was pleasantly surprised to see it was actually one of the more difficult to categorize Paranomal Science Fiction Romances.

Ellen Fisher does a terrific job of world building from the very start. The blending of the science fiction aspects with the shapeshifter societies is very well thought out and it’s clear she has put a lot of thought and work into the world her characters inhabit.

Watching Katara and Hart overcome their assumptions and learned lore about each other’s Kindred kept me fascinated through the whole book. The interplay and growth as they discover that for two Kindred that are supposed to be complete opposites, they are not so far apart after all. I really enjoyed watching their knee-jerk reactions to attitures and opinions that were different from their own change as they got to know each other better.

At first I was rather dubious about the idea of romance between Katara’s leopard and Hart’s stag but when I let go of my own preconceived notions of shapeshifter romance, it really worked and was a nice change.

I really loved the interplay between the characters and the story had me laughing at several points.

My hope is that Ms. Fisher will produce the next installment in even more depth and complexity and I’ll get to learn more about this world and how it is evolving along with the story characters.

So I had thought for a while that perhaps I should actually try to figure out a tagline that describes my writing… But without much luck.

So late last night I’m working on graphics to use when ordering business cards and C is helping me. He kept tryning to get me to use “Writer of SMUT” and similar things. I carefully explained an unsold writer probably shouldn’t be quite so crass.

But he came up with an acronym that works for me and I’m adopting it!

S = Sensual
M = Magical
U = Unconventional
T = Tales

It works! LOL

After a huge problem with the person they were running their purchasing system through, eXtasy has reopened!

www.extasybooks.com

I’m so glad they’re back up! Some of my favorite authors publish through them and I was neurotically checking their URL hoping to see the new site go live!

Today was the meeting of the small local critique group I belong to. We met, as usual, at a local Tully’s coffee shop and after a few hours of painstakingly going over each other’s work, we became confused about the exact character relationships and story arc in one member’s book.

In attempting to explain these intricate details, our group discovered a great new writing technique – Story Cupping.

We found ourselves using the various cups from coffee that were now scattered about the table to represent various people in her story! It quickly became pretty hilarious as we would ascribe physical traits to paper coffee cups (and a McDonald’s soda cup and a water bottle). We even had a small espresso cup to represent a child!

Who needs Barbie & Ken – we have CUPS!

Well, I had hoped that today would be significantly better than yesterday. This proved only partially true.

Late last night at bedtime brought on one of the lovely discussions that make married life SO interesting. Unfortunately I got upset during it and ended up getting out of bed to leave, have a good cry and do not much of anything until I thought I might be able to sleep again. Of course this was the very nice hour of about 4am.

I managed to heave myself out of bed to take Morgan to daycare and get to work. Not quite sure how but I did.

Ah, then the Day Job….

Late last night my developer’s code checkin broke the build last night. My boss asked the pointed question of who had double checked it for him. Based on the lack of response, I’ll put my money on “no one.”

I sent email about noon that I was officially slipping the schedule. It would have to move out at least one week because we were already 4 days over the scheduled code complete and there was no way *I* was going to absorb that amount of time.

Then I poke around and discover the developer isn’t resolving his issues in our bug tracking database. There are 10 items for this release that are still active and assigned to him. At the moment I’m waiting for him to tell me he’s done resolving all the bugs he needs to because I’d bet money that he will NOT get all those resolved.

We did have a good informal company meeting which heralded some good changes in the land of work atmosphere and perfomance reviews.

Oh, and several co-workers have volunteered to chip into a bail fund, just in case I need it….