Realms of the Raven

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….

Okay - so most of you know my day job is as a tester (Software Development Engineer in Test to be precise) at a … uh… major software company in Redmond, Washington.

I recently moved to a new position in the Security Technology Unit where I can work on fun things like infrastructure for how we deal with spyware and viruses, etc. Exciting stuff every day and right up with my interests.

I’ve been there now for about 2 months and have sunk my teeth into my assigned project finally.

Now, those of you who know me might know (or guess) that I’m a little Type A when it comes to work. I tend to be aggressive and rather take charge and don’t tolerate crap well.

This has been over a week of sheer crap.

Today made me almost postal because:
1) Code Complete was scheduled for 2 days ago - I still have no code and no eta from the developer. In fact I have UTTER SILENCE from him. No code complete means I cannot start testing.
2) All the bugs from said developer are sitting on his plate, still unresolved.
3) One of the internal customers for the product I’m working on decided to have a fit about something is being handled after code complete was scheduled and was trying to insist on a redesign in the middle of the ship cycle.
4) My PM is too green to leave in charge of dealing with said customer, so I end up doing so. After about 5 emails, I finally call her - at 6:30pm my time, and spend 40 minutes talking about what is going on and FINALLY talk her into letting it go as it is and working with the PM to redesign it afterward.
5) My laptop that I started to install a beta build of some software we were all asked to try out has gone into an endless cycle of rebooting. Start the several hour process AGAIN.
6) Test plan review tomorrow - thought of more use cases not included in plan
7) Code review schedule from developer for tomorrow - 3 days AFTER code complete. Sorry dudes, it’s NOT code complete until it’s checked in and I GET IT.
8) I finally get out of the office and home at 8pm. Lovely…. Tomorrow doesn’t look much better but at least my craft night might calm me down. If my friend doesn’t try to get me to debug his code for him.

This is on top of lovely things like finding out that two utility programs either will not work with the new code or will totaly screw up the database.

A developer who *I* am telling how to solve problems and what code to write.

My boss took his fidget toys away from me because he said I was going to destroy them.

The women’s group wants to reorganize their mail list again - all 3000+ members thereof.

I wish I was a drinker because I’d probably get drunk about now.

Reminds self *No punching holes in the wall - you still haven’t fixed the hole from the teenager doing that and hate patching walls*

And today, with my luck, I’d break my hand.

I think I’ll change my sig lines at work and on IM. Someone I was helping gave me a great quote (though I don’t know the author):

“When your purpose in life is to etertain the gods, there’s nothing to do but put on a good show.”

Wonder if “Rampaging like a crazed rhino in rut” counts as a good show?

Let’s see, a few updates are in order…

One is that I’m finally at 71% of RWH and trying to chug on. Sllooowwwlly getting there. It’s not helped by the fact the Day Job is very challenging and eats up a whole lot of time and energy. Just means things take longer.

Ideas for new stories keep pouring in far faster than I could write any of them. I just keep writing them down and stuffing them in the idea box for now. I have a feeling that I probably have more ideas than I can ever write in my entire life. I’m not sure what everyone else does but the Idea Box seems to fill my need to not “lose” the idea but not require me to immediately do more than just write the idea down.

I’m also working on my technical book which is due to the editor 10/1 and I want to beat that by at least a month. I HATE being late and much prefer being very early!

Diet is going…nowhere. I’m hanging in at the same weight for several weeks. Certainly no one to blame but me and the fact that I totally suck a self-denial, especially when under stress - like now.

Guess that’s about it right now. I know everyone was so interested in this that they could barely keep their eyes open but I feel guilty when I don’t mind the blog….

Let me preface this review with the comment that though Alison Kent has been conducting a viral marketing blitz as an experiment with this book, I had already pre-ordered a copy. She happens to be on my autobuy list - for very good reason.

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Deep Breath is the latest installment in Alison Kent’s SG-5 series.

Georgia McLain is a woman who specializes in finding modern day treasures, especially documents. This time she is looking to find a file that may exonerate her late father in a case of national scandal at the time. But she’s caught by another party, Charlie Castro,and given only two days to find that file and turn it over to save her brother’s life.

Harry van Zandt is sent to accompany her but he isn’t the innocent bystander he purports to be. He’s a seasoned SG-5 operative who has his own mission to accomplish - to turn that same file over to his superiors. Since he’d already wanted to use Georgia to find the file, being sent with her as her “helper” suits him just fine. His nickname of Rabbit is a nod to how well he can pull miracles out of his hat.

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This is definitely a book of secrets - secrets kept and secrets shared. Pretty much everyone in the book starts out lying - to others and to themselves. The fact that Alison could take this and turn it into a very enjoyable book that I’m sure to reread is a sign of what a terrific writer she is.

This book actually combines two things I generally do NOT like into a book I really liked.

I don’t usually like books with more than about two or three points of view. Most of the time I become too easily confused and lose track of whose head I’m in at any particular time. Alison made it work, though, and I never struggled to figure out whose head I was in.

I don’t usually like books which display their timeline. I think the root of this dislike is that I have trouble reconciling the actions in the book with the amount of time that has purportedly passed. But again Alison made it work for me. I was so much into the story that the timestamps really coincided with what I felt made sense for that point.

I was a little drawn off by a subplot involving Georgia’s little brother but not enough to cause a lot of distress or disgruntlement.

I really liked the fact that it wasn’t yet another case of the hero and heroine being absolutely perfect for each other. The little issues that remain make them more human and more real to me.