Club Alpha and a Nano Update

It's a beautiful afternoon and it's time for another post. One of favorite authors, Marata Eros is releasing her newest novel Club Alpha on November 19th, but I was able to score an ARC of the book while I was on vacation. It took me longer than I wanted to read it because vacation. I wasn't able to hole up on a chair or couch with my coffee (caffeine is a must) and read through it quickly. When I did read it, I was turning the pages quickly.

I mean with a tag line, "Would you pay fifty million for your soul mate?" how could it not be good. It's a combination of mystery, suspense, and just a bit of romance. Marata Eros's blurb is amazing as well:

Francisco “Paco” Castillo is a bilingual billionaire with unconventional ideas about love, sex and possession. He believes there is no other half to make him whole. Paco dreams of experimenting with a dangerous reality not of his own making. Club Alpha owner, Zaire Sebastian, can make Paco's vision a reality—for a price.

Greta Dahlem is an extreme sports executive whose ambition masks a terrible secret. When her mentor Gia Township, sponsors her as a player in Club Alpha, Greta's unsure she can survive the inherent risk of the game Zaire weaves. But in her heart, Greta yearns for a man who will complete her, and erase the brutal tragedy of two years ago.

As the fantasy progresses, Greta comes to realize she is the loose string in a plot of murder and deception that begins to unravel. Without knowing who to trust, Greta must decide between two men. When the three are thrown together, the lines of reality and fantasy blur.

Is there any way for her to know what is real?

 This book is on the darker side of the spectrum just because of some of the material is graphic and isn't suitable for all readers. As always, she has posted disclaimers about the violence. Having read her work, I had a good idea of what I was getting myself into. Nothing could prepare me for the intensity of this story however. Everything is the book builds on itself and the violence isn't there just to be there, it is an integral part of the story line and of the character of Greta.

Paco is a wonderful alpha male and his friend/ bodyguard, Tallinn throws in the comic relief that's needed for such an intense story. It's gritty and real in a way that brings the story to life. I was on the edge of my seat with a pounding pulse as I flipped the virtual pages on my Kindle.

Something that Ms. Eros is able to do is create complex characters with different cultures attached to them. It brings rounded characters to the forefront. Paco and Greta don't stay on the page in a one or two dimensional way but they pop off the page and make you care about their journeys.

In the writing world that is NaNoWriMo, I'm slow and steady and behind. Does that mean I won't be able to finish? Not at all, it just means that the 1667 a day word count is more like 2200 words a day for me. It's still something that I can manage. It's not like its day 25 and I've written nothing. 10K a day might be a bit a of hurdle. I mean I guess it's possible. Speech to text would make it super easy I think, but the stress would be crazy.

I've been writing various things for a long time and it never fails to amaze me that once I start a story and I think I know where it's going to go, it goes onto a path I never even thought about. I swear the characters take over and I'm helpless to do anything about it. I'm also a writer that sits down and writes. No outline, with just a vague this is what I want.

That's the quick update on my nano novel halfway through the month. I's at least in the 15-16K range and my fingers are itching to keep writing.

May the new week start out bright and good.

Taking the Challenge... Write a Novel in 30 Days

This blog has been about books I've currently read, for the most part. However, I'm not just an avid reader of just about anything, I'm also a writer. Granted, I am a procrastinating writer. I have yet to actually finish a novel to it's final stages for it to be published, indie style in my case. Though, I do have a few completed rough drafts.

I can say that I wouldn't have those drafts if it wasn't for a site called NaNoWriMo, aka National novel Writing Month. This month happens to be in November and in those 30 short days the site is challenging the writer to write 50 thousand words. I did it for several years and I enjoyed myself because I was challenging myself, but more than that, I was writing a novel. It didn't have to be perfect, it just had to be written.

I love the image of a man or woman sitting in a coffee shop, bookstore, or the like with a cup of coffee or tea, writing or reading. I love being that person actually. I basically do that from the comfort of my couch, but the image is there and it's awesome.

For the last couple of years, I haven't been able to do Nano because of life. Even this year seems to be daunting, but I'm going to try. I would rather try and fail, than not to have tried. On the bright side, I'll have some sort of manuscript by the end of it and that's nothing to scoff at. As long as one can maintain something like 1667 words a day or so, one can write 50k in 30 days. Plus they have nifty badges to let the world know you are doing the challenge.

I will still be trying to read as much as possible as well. There are so many books and so little time. I have several I am in the middle of right now. They are in different stages of being completed and as I finish them, I'll list them and tell you what I think. I might even tell you where I'm at in this challenge, so watch out for the insanity to ensue.

So Many Books... And a Movie

It's been over a month since there's been a post. Oh dear. I have read several books in the last month, but I have been very very busy and haven't posted about any of them. Shame on me. Of course I was reading across the board. It will be evident by just how varied my reading is by the books I've read this month. There was a paperback I was looking forward to being released at the beginning of last month which I read pretty quickly. I didn't have a choice, I promised my friend and fellow blogger the book the next time I saw her. Otherwise, I have been reading on my Kindle. I never thought I would enjoy digital books, but I do even though there is something about paper books that can never be replaced. Plus they don't require batteries. I'm only going to talk about two of the books I read this past month.

Nalini Singh has the Guild Hunter series that I love and it was the paperback I was waiting for. Archangels, vampires, and hunters oh my. Archangel's Enigma is the latest novel in the series where Naasir is the hero. Naasir is a vampire, but he's also something more, something not human. He's on a mission to find his mate and he finds her alright, a scholar angel with secrets. There is mystery, humor, and action. I love how each novel builds onto the next in this world with one all encompassing plot line. Being inside of Naasir's mind was fun. He doesn't have the same thought processes as other characters. He has a very childlike attitude, only he's hundreds of years old and in the service of an archangel. The description was amazing. I don't want to spoil any of the books I read for other readers so I won't go into any of the details. With this being book eight, I would suggest reading books 1-7 along with the book of novellas, unless you are one of the few that can get away with reading books out of order.

After I finished this book, I already had another one lined up. I entered a Facebook giveaway for a new favorite author, Jade West, and won her latest novel Dirty Bad Strangers. It's a dark erotic novel that is defiantly 18+. I loved her first two novels and there are a few points in all the books where I have cringed. It's all good, because that just means the writing sucked me in and engaged me. This novel was about a woman named Gemma who enjoys sex with strangers and she happens to work as a sex chatline operator. It's there she meets a caller named Jason and he is her ultimate fantasy. She does the one thing she isn't supposed to and gives Jason her phone number and it turns into dirty bad stranger sex. Like the title says, its dirty and bad. Not only does Gemma have sex with Jason, she's blindfolded and knows nothing about him other than his first name. There are plenty of sex games between these two and friends of Jason. One of my favorite things about this book is that Gemma meets Cara, a character in the previous books.

Of course this weekend was also the release of The Martian on the big screen. After having read the book, I was looking forward to this movie. The trailers looked good, and Matt Damon seemed to be Mark Watney. Since I read the book, I understood the jokes. This is a drama and not a comedy, but being on a deserted planet without communication to anyone means, one has to keep themselves sane somehow. Comedy only makes sense. I was disappointed in how certain things were explained, but as we all know, movies don't follow books exactly. Other than certain scenes not making their way into the movie, I was happy with the movie. I would suggest watching it and I would say reading the novel makes the experience even better.

On a wacky sidenote, I have noticed that trailers are showing clips or having audio that never makes it into the movie. It's becoming something like a game for me now. I try to place the scenes and in some cases the audio as I watch the movie. Sometimes I'm disappointed in not seeing or hearing what was in the trailer because I want to know where is would have been. Anyone else have thoughts about movies trailers?

Tea Time

I have had lots of fun to this point talking about the books we have been reading and that is great, but this is also a tea (coffee as well) reading room. We can't have a tea reading room if we never talk about tea. I love tea, mainly because it can be drunk a number of ways. There are also these things called tea parties.

Most little girls love tea parties, I know I did. Little china set that held a thimble sized amount of liquid. Granted most of these tea parties occur with stuffed animals and dolls so therefore everything was in pretend mode. But when you had another person, it was fun to have real tea, sugar, and milk. Yummy.

Fast forward into adulthood and tea parties become something else altogether. They do when I throw one. For one, I tend to want some tradition in my parties. Thank god for trusty Google where it knows almost everything. People input this stuff, so it's never going to be 100% accurate. With that being said, there are actually different kinds of tea. The most common at the pretend tea parties are actually High Tea.

Off on the internet super highway and one can find places that serve high tea and lo and behold, menus. Those are awesome. Cause what does one serve at high tea? Why dainty little yummies. Cucumber sandwiches, scones, mini desserts. This means, lots of finger food so lots of selections. After stealing ideas from menus and others that post on the internet, one can create their own high tea menu. 

This is a lovely little menu I made for a tea party I orchestrated (meaning I demanded they play dress-up and come party). As stated in my about page, I have a lot of tea and I love adding to the collection. I made several of the listed menu items, finding simple recipes online. Those mini quiche were yummy.

Having a tea pot with cups and saucers to streamline the feel of this being a lovely day at a tea room with your girlfriends sitting at a lovely table looking out of a giant window at the people passing you by. Back to reality, as I was saying before I transported myself into that seat which in my mind is really comfortable, a tea kettle is really important in heating up the water. Plus, it whistles at you. (No I don't have issues. I'm quite content talking to myself.)

Some cream, sugar, honey, and jam work well sweetening tea. With so many types of tea out on the market, there is something for everyone. I love jasmine green tea along with fruit teas. Everyone has their own taste and having several to choose from is awesome.

Now this is the most important part, have over your besties. I mean yes you could have stuffed animals and dolls around the table, but they can't talk back. You want to converse with these friends and have fun. This might be high tea, but that doesn't mean you can't have some fun.

Personally, my girlfriends and off onto some random ass topics. Hello, if we haven't read the posts regarding tentacle porn, you should to understand the level of fun one can have a these parties. Go on and read them, I'll wait.

This is some yummy tea and the chocolate hazelnut piroulines la di da.

All right, now that you get an idea of the crazy level. Go have a tea party, dress up, and let loose. Alcohol isn't even needed. Just some good old fashioned fun.

For a party of one, do everything listed above, but instead of having friends over, curl up in a comfortable place and grab that book you've been eyeing. Go on, it's fun.

Out of this World

In one of the latest movies I went to see the theaters, there was a trailer for The Martian starring Matt Damon. The trailer was really well done. Matt Damon's character was stuck on the planet Mars after his crew left him because they thought he was dead. He also has to figure out a way to contact Earth to get rescued all while trying not to die. It went onto the list of select movies I'm willing to go see in the theaters.

Fast forward a few weeks and my husband tells me that this movie is based on a book (something I didn't notice from the trailer). That got my attention. While I'm an avid reader, he is very selective and even he wanted to read it. So on the recommendation of my husband's friend, we venture to the local bookstore (which can be a hit or miss experience, but I was hopeful) and there was The Martian  by Andy Weir. It even had Matt Damon on the cover. Jackpot. So clutching the book like the treasure it is, I got it.

As soon as we were seated in the car I read the first few lines, but alas I get car sick when reading and those few lines were awesome and sucked me in. If less than a hundred words can do that, then this book was going down. I look at the page count and for this edition it was 369. That's a good little number, but it's not like I haven't inhaled longer works. Granted the last thing I was expecting was to be challenged. And that was what the question, "You think you can read that book by tomorrow?" I scoffed and looked at my hubby as if I didn't hear him correctly. I mean I eat, um read, yup read, books up. so my response was, "Of course." I really wanted to roll my eyes. okay maybe I did. I don't recall.

Now, I wanted to get home and read right away, but I had some domestic things to do. Cleaning and cooking. So after I made the dishes go from dirty to clean with my magic wand, aka the Dishwasher, I pulled the whole chicken from the fridge, gave it a little bath, buttered it up and dressed it in spices before throwing it into the oven to bake for hours. Hours mind you. That would give me plenty of time to sit down with Matt, errr, Mark Watney. But alas Facebook stole me away for a bit. Then, I was able to settle down onto my comfy couch to be brought to Mars.

This finally came to pass around 9pm-ish. I wasn't watching the clock all that closely. I mean sure I had work the next day, but I was determined.

I happen to really like the planet Mars. It's my favorite out of all the nine, wait someone downgraded Pluto, so I guess we have 8 planets in the solar system, and then they added little ones didn't they? I was taught that there were 9 planets and by god I'm going to continue to believe that. I mean I know the planet isn't flat, But we named Pluto and Pluto shouldn't be thrown into the doghouse. He's a good little planet all the way out there. This is my blog and I say there are nine planets damn it.

Rant over. As I was saying, Mars is my favorite planet and it all started when I was a wee little girl. I spent my time in science museums for fun and there was this traveling exhibit called "Mission to Mars." My parents brought me to it and I was allowed to fly "the spaceship" and land it on Mars so that we could do experiments. Now I seven or eight at the time. It was fantastic and I really thought we went to Mars, so sad to learn we didn't. but come on it was the reason that astronaut became the thing I wanted to be when I grew up.

Mars, wonderful little red planet that will kill you. So back to the book that I finished at 3:50 am that same day. Well, if you want to be technical, it was the following day, but I hadn't gone to sleep, so it was still the same day in my little world. I had the lovely visual of Matt Damon as Mark throughout the entire book, thank you movie marker people. It was funny and entertaining. Andy wrote a wonderful character and he placed you on Mars.

There were so many little jokes and things that happened that I wouldn't be able to list them all and I wouldn't want to spoil this novel or in some cases the movie. How true to the written word will be seen later in the movie theater with popcorn and Coke. Mark's personality was what kept me so entertained. Here's a man stranded on Mars and he's writing a log about how he plans to survive and how he plans on finding a way to contact Earth.

Most of the novel is written like this. It's as if Mark is talking to you. I loved how he redesigned things throughout the novel. He was a nerd alright. One that made mistakes as well. He was flawed. Yay, a flawed character on Mars. Sorry, I like flaws, they make characters realistic. The novel switches POVs (point of view). We get the first person narrative on from Mark, but we also have third person POV, The 3rd POV is done in a couple of different ways. Each POV brings something different to the novel bringing the reader onto an unforgettable journey. I read it quickly, while cooking lunch for the next day.

Here's the book blurb from Amazon.com:

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

Tentacle What? Tentacle Porn

There is so much to read in the world. Romance. Humor. Mystery. Satire. Well, there is a book out there called The Squirm Files by Cari Silverwood. And you guessed it. Tentacle porn. It's a lovely parody that had me in stitches. (Possible, probable spoilers ahead. Nothing to revealing. I promise.)

The anthology has all three stories about the heroine Virginia Chaste, our reluctant virgin captive. What can I say? The author had me laughing out loud at the dialogue and prose. Each installment had something different to offer.

The first installment of this anthology sets the stage and we meet our lovely Virgin, um *cough,* Virginia. She is just a nice normal young woman looking for the ultimate prize of a 10 incher. A skill she has honed to a scary ass science. She of course is taken captive by a tentacle monster. (Where else would the tentacle porn come into play?) We get to meet Dangerous Bob, who does nothing but cuss but somehow still is understandable. Plenty of word play and the author calling her readers tentacle perverts mid story. Loved it and totally kept reading waiting for more gems like that. There was lovely tentacle erotic sex, by an alpha evil tentacle monster, Karl,  who loves throwing people off roofs and into portals. Virginia Chaste is a sassy mouthy woman on a quest getting more than she bargained for. Plenty of sassy banter between her and her inner voice. Plus RABBITS. (Spoiler: Jokes abound.)

Installment two. A book with a long complicated name that means evil sex book is on the loose about to destroy the world. Oh my. That would be one hell of a fun book to get your hands on. A book about any and sexual acts, toys, you name it. Move over Kama Sutra say hello to the Necrosexi-texmexicon. (Told you it was a long complicated name.) Virginia must save Karl and to do that she needs a demon rock star, Zagan, and his band (not of merry thieves either) to save the world. Mostly, Karl and his biker group of monsters. But the world is very important to them all. Somehow, they end up in the world of books and weirdness. Lots of random humor that ins't so random. Erotic sex with demons and tails and tentacles. Cause there can't be enough tentacles. Dino sex and frying pans. There is so much humor written throughout that it can't be contained. Nor should it. After, a mind blowing three-way with Virginia, tentacles, horns, tails, and suction cups, the world is saved.

Holy shit, installment throws us into the past with the help of a futuristic skateboard. Virginia ends up in the wild west while Karl is ill in the future. She can't believe this is happening to her and this time she has a talking skateboard to help her out. I was dying when she decapitates a poor defenseless cactus just because. Though if I ended up in the wild west after having had dealt with becoming a captive and then helping save the world from ultimate destruction by a sex book, I would become homicidal as well. Okay, back to Peckerwood Springs. Yes, this is real folks. There she meets a new tentacle monster by the name John Beastwood. There are roses, talking dishes, and Virginia is a captive once more. Now, where do I know that story? Doesn't matter, she just needs to get home to her own personal tentacle monster. But wait, before that can happen lets have more tentacle porn. Not just plain old tentacle porn either. Lots of fetish tentacle porn.

As one can see, Tentacles are integral to the story line as is humor. (Duh. Satire. Parody. Whatnot.) There were lots of other little gems that I didn't mention. I laughed throughout this book. Of course, my lovely friend Katie read it with me and we messaged each other back and forth laughing out loud with each new discovery. Read alone or with a group of friends, (I recommend that you read with a friend), but this is a great book to pick up and read.

I am now a fan of the Tentacle porn. So many tentacles, so many possibilities.