So I'm a little behind on my review of Amish Vampires in Space.  Life happens.  I'm still reading and thought I'd offer a little progress update.  I'm not as far along as I'd like to be, but that is no fault of the author.  The book is pretty intriguing so far.  It definitely holds my interest in spite of all that is going on around me that pulls me away from reading.

I'm not quite half way and things are starting to really heat up for Congi.  He is a Finder.  That can be taken at face value.  He finds things for himself and for others willing to pay a fair price for his services.  His other job could be best described as janitorial.  He is kind of slimy character, but I think I like him...a little.  He has currently gotten himself into a bit of a pickle and might be about to get caught with his fingers, or his whole body in this case, in the cookie jar.  I think that is probably the least of his worries though.  I'll have to get back to reading to find out what happens to poor Congi.

Meanwhile things are getting tense for Jebediah at home on Alabaster as well.  Seems he is in a spot of trouble with the Elders for dabbling with technology and keeping secrets. Poor Ezekiel is caught in the middle and trying to do the right thing by his people.  He doesn't want to hurt his friend, but what he witnessed was too much to overlook. I don't want to include any spoilers in my review, so I'll stop there.  Let's just say there is definitely something to that secret Jebediah has in the barn.  Even he doesn't have a clue what it is, but everyone is about to find out.

I expected something far fetched and utterly ridiculous going into this, but the book is actually quite good.  I'm already thinking about purchasing the next one.  If you like sci-fi stories that include space travel, you should check this series out.  The pacing is great, the suspense is definitely there, and I dare anyone not to fall in love with all the characters.  I still have a little over half the book to read, so I'm not ready to assign an official star rating yet, but so far it is at a strong 4 out of 5 stars.

Yeah, yeah.  So there are already tons of reviews of this book on the web.  I purposely have not read a single one.  I didn't want to go into this with any preconceived notions other than my first thoughts on seeing the cover posted in the TLS den. I took one look at it and said, "That is something I never thought I'd see."

I did read the story behind the book.  I know it came about from a mock cover by publisher Jeff Gerke, created to poke fun at the current Amish craze in Christian Fiction genre. Eventually, Kerry Nietz approached him with an idea for a plot and obtained permission to write the book with no promise on a decision to publish until reading it. The finished product knocked Gerke for a loop, and apparently a lot of readers as well. It even found its way onto Jimmy Fallon's Do Not Read List. (Was going to link to that, but the segment is no longer available. Guess that's what I get for being so slow!)  The book has garnered some pretty good press and a LOT of buzz across the internet.  So I'm a little behind with my review, but I promise you this.  It will be honest.  Hence, my determination not to read what anyone else had to say about it.

Here are my first thoughts after one chapter.

Holy crap!  This is surprisingly good.  I had a hard time putting down my tablet to feed my demanding cats and share my first thoughts here.  I was expecting to read a few chapters and give a brief update with some anecdotes to poke fun at this hilarious idea. The Forward even says not to take it too seriously.  Instead, I find myself itching to get back to the book and find out what happens.

I have so many questions churning in my head right now.  I need to know what secret Jebediah is hiding in the barn, dammit!  Why are the crops declining?  What is happening with the stars and the Morning Nebbit?  (Thank you to the author, for the brief explanations of terminology.  I'd have been totally lost and frustrated without those! And they are added without disrupting flow or making the reader feel dumb. Too many writers irritate me by doing that. Kudos!)  Why is nobody talking about all of this?  Apparently, they all see the changes, but nobody is discussing.  At least not too loudly.  Jebediah's neighbor seeks his opinion on what's happening to the crops.  Jebediah wants to get the elders' opinions. Have they noticed all the changes?  Do they suspect something is up with Jebediah?  Why is Jebediah's wife so exhausted that he told her to stay in bed this morning? Is that somehow connected to all of these changes, or is it another issue entirely?  Maybe he was just being kind to her.  I'm starting to question every little thing now!  That's good writing right there!

So those are my first impressions after Chapter 1.  Questions upon questions.  I have to get back to the book ASAP and find some answers!  Be back soon for an update, or a complete review, if I'm unable to get away before reading to the end.  Oh, and I even like the cow, Clara, too!  Who knew the mundane milking of a cow could be entertaining!

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate good stories getting ruined due to lack of decent editing? *sigh*

I'm nearly finished reading The Haze by Janine Olsson, and it has some really exciting and intense moments, but I'm finding the story difficult to read due to poor spelling and basic grammar issues.  I find myself wanting to seek out the author and ask if I can have a go at editing the book for her. There is no copyright page in the version I downloaded, so I don't know if she used an editor or not.  I honestly don't even remember where I got the download.  I thought it was from Bares & Noble, but that doesn't seem right coming from them either.  I hope it isn't a pirated copy, now that I think about it.  (If it is, I'm sorry, Janine.  It was not intentionally stolen!)

This story took awhile to get off the ground, but now that I am into the meat of the book, I find myself starting to like all the characters.  It's an interesting story involving family betrayal and affairs of the heart.  The main characters are vampires, but we also get to see shape shifters and weres of all sorts.  I find it interesting how the species put aside their animosity and use their differences to their advantage as the situation warrants. I can't really comment on much more since I have yet to finish reading the book, but I will say that I do like the story.  I just wish an editor could get their hands on it, and a more polished version could be released.  Ms. Olsson may find much more success if this were to happen.

It's a shame when someone has such potential and it gets held back because they have no help with such basic principles of writing.  Irritates me to no end.  My mother often chastises me for doing too much editing for free.  Many don't understand why I don't charge more, and this book is the perfect example of WHY I provide such a low rate fee schedule and often do editing for free.

There are so many great stories out there to be told.  There are audiences for any genre imaginable.  Readers will gobble up books in their favorite genre and beg for more as fast as their favorite authors can supply the material.  With the digital age of publication taking hold in today's book market, independent authors have more opportunities for seeing their work published than ever before.  With that, comes a lot of garbage, but there are also a lot of diamonds in the rough that just need a little polish for their target audience.  If I can help those writers get a little closer to their goal by offering an inexpensive editing service to assist them, then that is what I want to do.

It saddens me to read books like Janine Olsson has written when they could be so much better.  So if you get word of this, Janine, please consider finding a helpful editor.  The story is there.  The grammar, sadly, is not.

If anyone out there wishes to contact me about editing, feel free to send me an e-mail  creechwriter@gmail.com.  I'll gladly send you a fee schedule, references, and samples of my work.

I just finished reading the book Game Misconduct by Bianca Sommerland.  I am going to have to give this book a weak 2 stars.  It had so much potential and just fell flat on its face.  I was excited to see something about a sport that interests me that I know very little about.  Hockey.  I knew better than to expect a lot of technical information since it was a romance novel after all.  However, I did expect some kind of plot to develop.  Apparently that was too much to hope for from this author.

The entire book was one gang bang after another with a BDSM tossed in for extra fun.  I love a good steamy sex scene as much as any reader of the genre, but not at the expense of a good story.  There were so many ways the plot could have taken off into a great story.  The potential was there to really build up suspense and in some cases this did happen briefly.  The problem?  Nothing happened with the story except more sex.  Little crumbs were laid out giving me hope to find something more in the next paragraph after they get done having sex, or the next page after they get done having sex again, or okay, maybe in the next chapter after they get done having sex....AGAIN.  Okay, so it's gonna be awhile before we find out what's happening to the team or the coach and his daughters.  

Well, okay, I've made it far enough into the book that I will at least finish reading it.  It just won't be on my list of favorites that I read over and over.  So I continue to read and look for some other redeeming quality in the book.  How about the BDSM stuff?  I haven't read a lot of fiction with BDSM involved.  I have read all of Cherise Sinclair's books and I am in love with those.  I have read a bit about the lifestyle and I understand the basics pretty well.  That being said, I found the BDSM parts to this book somewhat unbelievable.  These guys were supposed to all be Doms sharing the one sub.  That in itself seems a bit odd to me, but I can accept it as possible.  The real problem is that these Doms let their sub get away with just about anything she wants and only threaten punishment.  When they do finally follow through with spanking her, they find that she is a masochist and only gets off on the pain that much more.  They agree that they need to find another means of punishing her for inappropriate behavior, but they never do it.  She continues to mouth off at them and tell them what to do.  No true Dom would stand for the way she acts.  

We finally get through several rounds of sex and a new piece of plot shows up.  The ex-lover/head coach has been using her as a PR weapon for the team's investors.  It isn't much and doesn't seem to be developing into anything plot-wise, but things heat a beat when we find out her father/the team owner was in on it all along.  He cuts her off and she is on her own to find her way through life and get into med school (another plot detail left unused as she never goes to school and only references it weakly a couple of times). So, then we have more and more and more sex.  We go meet one of the players' father and an ex-flame and have an almost hockey game that ends up with our main character running out when she gets mad at two of her boyfriends who then run after her.  Then more sex ensues.  Then we get some meat to the plot when another of the players/masters shows up and takes our heroine (I use the term lightly) home after a scene goes bad with the other two Doms. He shows up and tells them her main boyfriend who got her started in all this got arrested and may end up charged with attempted murder, but his attorney will be trying to get him out on bail that night.  Another place where the author veers off into the unbelievable crap.  No worries though.  Nothing is going to actually be done with this part of the plot either.  To further build tension, we learn that the main boyfriend got in a fight with the coach when he tried to get him to throw a game for money and keep the team out of the playoffs.  

Now I'm thinking we are onto something.  This is getting interesting. We're getting right up to game time and the star player is now in jail unable to get a bail hearing when he finds out the team lawyer is in on the entire mess with the coach.  He has to hire another lawyer to get him out of jail.  Just as girlfriend and Dom arrive at the arena, out pops boyfriend.  His new lawyer miraculously got him a bail hearing in the middle of the night and got him out.  Charges for attempted murder were apparently dropped, but that isn't explained until the last chapter.  For now all we know is boyfriend got out on bail and has a restraining order against him, so he has to hide from the coaches during the game and rely on girlfriend to sneak into the room where he's hiding and give him updates on how the game is going.  Ridiculous!  Game is tied and only minutes are left and the coach is doing everything he can to keep the best players from being on the ice together at the same time so chemistry will be off.  Then someone gets hurt.  He ends up getting rushed to the hospital and girlfriend and main boyfriend rush after the ambulance.  Next thing we know all the players are at the hospital and then the other daughter of the team owner comes in and tells her sister their dad had a heart attack.  So who won the game?  What happened there?  Oh we get told by one of the players that the kid had two skull fractures and would be out probably a full year, but he is stable.

Now let's go see daddy in his hospital bed.  He is in and out of consciousness.  Not sure what's going on here.  All we know is he had a heart attack and he is supposed to be in stable condition.  He starts waking up and sees his currently cut off daughter at his bedside and yells for her to get out and get the other daughter back in there.  That's the last we hear of daddy.  He made his favorite daughter power of attorney and eventually turned over the team to her.  Did we get any details on any of this?  Why of course not.  We learn about it in the last chapter when everything that happened is summed up in 2 pages at a barbecue at the player's house FOUR MONTHS later!  Nothing about what happened to Daddy.  Nothing about what happened to the coach who was fixing the games.  Nothing about what happened to the main character who was arrested, only that his lawyer got charges dropped.  The two lovers went on a vacation where they got engaged and the master bought her a collar and they agreed to have the wedding and the collaring ceremony on the same day.  The end. What the hell?  That is it?  I wasted two days reading for that?  So what happened to the kid with the skull fractures?  Oh yeah.  At some point he apparently met up with the other player's old flame and they hit it off and she became his Domme.  Turns out he was actually a sub and nobody saw it but the Master who collared our heroine.  Geeeez.    

As if it wasn't painful enough making my way through the first book, I decided to try reading the sneak peek for the next one in the series.  It starts off at the wedding and collaring ceremony.  Then it ends up at the Blades and Ice BDSM club where one of the Doms is marking her in his own way to claim his piece of ownership.  Her sister doesn't know she is into the pain and goes nuts when Dom draws blood with his whip.  One of the coaches/a master at the club jumps in and takes over as the sister's Dom and tells her he doesn't give out safe words for use during punishments.  I had to stop reading there.  I just can't accept that any Dom worth a grain of salt is going to take on a new sub who has stated just minutes before that she isn't into the lifestyle though she was at the club with two other men and tell her she can't have a safe word.  

If you are into sex for the sake of sex  upon more sex upon more and more sex with multiple partners just for the sake of having more sex with multiple partners then I suppose you'd probably enjoy Game Misconduct.  If you want a story with some kind of plot detail involved and at least some semblance of plausibility, then stay away from this one.  I'd love to have my time back to spend on a more entertaining read.

PS - Sorry if there's lots of typos in this one.  My keyboard is messed up - backspace key is broken.  I tried to get most of them as I went, but I'm sure I missed a few.