Looking for a great dark fantasy read this summer?

Ever heard of author Erin Kellison? Neither had I, until I clicked on a banner ad and ended up with a copy of her book Shadow Bound on my doorstep…

Shadow Bound is one of those unexpected great reads that you would never see coming. Look at the cover — does that look like the cover of a great book? Unfortunately not… it’s a very nice image, but I don’t think it accurately conveys the theme and intensity of the story. It looks more like… something for a YA Romance. Which this is definitely not.

Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly synopsis:

Kellison’s debut, a blend of suspense and paranormal romance, follows Adam Thorne as he attempts to unravel the mystery of the wraiths, possessed humans who feed on human souls. Desperate to free his brother from possession, Adam follows a flimsy lead to half-Fae Talia O’Brien, a young woman with a newly minted doctorate, a mysterious past, and magical abilities that stop wraiths in their tracks.

As the wraiths pursue Talia, determined to destroy her in retribution for her father daring to love and impregnate a human woman, Adam tries to protect her and understand her powers, and finds himself falling in love. Fast-paced without being frenetic, interesting and entertaining if not particularly challenging, this tale deftly avoids romance cliches while delivering plenty of action.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

And it is! It delivers on all counts. The characters are interesting and multi-dimensional (though it takes awhile to get much from Talia, but I think that’s simply due to the personality of the character), and the plot is fast-paced and action-driven.

I also loved the concept of the wraiths, which seemed like a combination of Dementors from Harry Potter and the wraith from Stargate: Atlantis — very creepy, and truly evil. In a way, it’s very refreshing to see truly evil villains, because as great as it is to have villains with pathos, I think recent paranormal/fantasy has got away from that Truly Bad Villain that readers simply want to see destroyed at all costs.

A word of warning to the sensitive, however — there are two sex scenes in this book, but if you’re not comfortable reading these, it’s very easy to flip the page and get on with the story. Just something I thought worth noting, as I don’t want to scare anyone off the book for the sake of missing such a great story.

I should also mention that Kellison is on Twitter, and seems to love interacting with her readers! If you read the book and enjoy it, pop over there and send her a note.

And one final thing… when you get to the end and think “Oh noooes, a cliffhanger?!?”, never fear! Book two, Shadow Fall releases this month — some places are even putting it out early, so keep your eyes open.

So I realize that I didn’t actually post the link to my second published short story, which came out in June. Oops! But it’s never too late to be excited about your own work, and since I just got my print copy yesterday, what better time than now?

My second short story is entitled Firebird’s Embrace, and was published in the ‘Midsummer’s Ever’ issue of Emerald Tales, a publication of Scribblers and Ink Spillers, LLC.

If you’re interested, you can either purchase a print copy of the magazine, or you can read the whole magazine for free online! Oooh, exciting! It’s an effort by the editor to gain a bit of publicity for the company, so if you like a story in there and feel like you want to donate a dollar or two to help keep the publication going, you can. If not, read away and enjoy the stories!

Also, if you didn’t have a chance to read my story from last December’s issue of Emerald Tales, the ‘Winter Solstice – Special Edition: Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Horror’ issue is also up to read for free.

Free stories, yay! Well, I got paid for them but they’re free for you to read! Huzzah!

Something I heard from both Joel Freeman (plenary speaker, Write!Canada 2010) and Michelle Buckman (author) at the conference:

Absolutely NO ONE is more excited about your book than you are.

Not your critique partners, your mother, your agent, your publisher, your publicist, store owners, blog writers, book reviewers, or fellow writers.

In fact, few people will actually sit down and read your book from cover to cover (particularly if you’re a non-fiction writer).

Why does this matter?

Because it means we have to have huge confidence to be in this industry. We need to develop that thick skin and clothe ourselves with a confidence that can convince the rest of the world why our work matters.

We may not always be successful at convincing others… but if we go into this remembering that no one else loves our work as much as we do, maybe it’ll help us keep a more realistic perspective as we face the struggles ahead.

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme started by The Story Siren to showcase books you’ve received for review, bought, borrowed, or swapped. Anyone can participate, and it’s a great way to showcase new books and encourage blogger/commenter interaction.

Here’s what came in my mailbox this week!

Perfectly Dateless – Kristin Billerbeck (YA)

Back on Murder – J. Mark Bertrand (Mystery/Suspense)

And that’s it for me! What came in your mailbox this week?

UPDATE, 11:23am: The RSS feed is fixed! Yay! And the button is back, as you can see over on the upper right — my husband added his own clever touch there. Thanks for your patience!

For those of you attempting to follow me through an RSS reader, I apologize… the feed is broken, so my posts won’t be showing up in your reader (and probably haven’t for some time).

If you’re trying to follow me and can’t find the button to do so, I apologize for that too… I just had someone update WordPress for me and the button vanished! Ahhh!!! What’s going on?!?!

Needless to say, my husband has someone working on fixes for the feed and the RSS icon, so please be patient and bear with me until it’s done — I haven’t disappeared! I’ll post again when it’s fixed so you can add me to your feed/adjust me blog in your reader as necessary.

And as a side note, the archive links over to your right are NOW FIXED!!! Yay, they work again!

Thanks everyone for your patience …all will be right with the blog again soon!

The plenary speaker for Write!Canada 2010 was Joel Freeman, a businessman/ entrepreneur/ writer/ speaker/ film producer/ you name it, he’s done it. Dr. Freeman’s best known book is entitled If Nobody Loves You, Create the Demand, and I definitely bought a copy of both the book and the workbook after hearing him speak. He’s a very dynamic speaker who knows how to engage the audience, and he had a lot of good — and scary — things to say about writing, business, and building a career.

One point I want to touch on today is a statistic Dr. Freeman shared with us… and what he said about it afterward. He pointed out that (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“Over 200,000 books are published in North America each year… the chances of any book becoming a bestseller are about 0.01%.”

Then he told us this — on average, you can literally make more money flipping burgers than you can as a writer.

Wow. That’s harsh, and hard to hear. But think about it for a moment, let it really sink in, and then ask yourself…

Do you still want to write?

You should be discouraged. You should look at that statistic and think “well, there’s no chance, I might as well quit while I’m ahead and find something else to do”. You should run as far and as fast as you can from writing.

But if you read that, take a close look at yourself, and answer “yes, I still want to write despite the odds”… then, as Dr. Freeman said, “you’ve really got something”! You’re meant to do this. You were born to do this.

And if we as aspiring authors are willing to keep on pushing, leap the hurdles, adapt to the industry, and think like both writers AND business-people — after all, writing is a business too — then we’ve really got something.

We can be part of that 0.01%. I can be part of that 0.01%. You can be part of that 0.01%.

Still feeling motivated? Go grab yourself a burger… then sit down and write!

What’s ‘In My Mailbox’, you ask?

Well, it’s a weekly meme started by The Story Siren to showcase books you’ve received for review, bought, borrowed, or swapped. Anyone can participate, and it’s a great way to showcase new books and encourage blogger/commenter interaction.

I’m going to do my best to participate in this every week (Sundays are when most IMM posts go up)… as writers, we NEED to read and expand our reading horizons every week, so hopefully I’ll have a book or two each week that’ll inspire you to pick it up — or maybe you’ll have something to recommend to me in return!

So here we go! This week, I received 2 books in my mailbox:

The King’s Mistress – Emma Campion (ARC)

Releases July 6th, 2010

Scent of the Missing – Susannah Charleson (Review Copy)

Hardcover Released April 14th, 2010

Paperback Releases December 22nd, 2010

Reviews of both books forthcoming! I’m excited to read both of them, though I’m pretty sure I’ll need a box of tissues to get through the dog book…

To those of you visiting this blog from my homeland… Happy Canada Day!

And to those of you visiting from the USA… just a few more days until your celebration!

And to anyone visiting internationally… I have no idea when your independence day/patriotic event is held, but I hope it’s a good one this year.

Now get outside and enjoy some sunshine and fireworks!

I almost forgot! There’s one more book I wanted to remind you about that wasn’t part of the books I read for the tour this month… but which I read a few months back as a part of Librarything.com’s Early Reviewer’s Program.

However, Graf-Martin Communications & Baker Publishing Group included it as part of their selection of tour books this month, and I figured… since I liked the book when I read it… it wouldn’t hurt to give it a little extra promotion, right?

So, in case you didn’t get a chance to read my review back in April, here’s a LINK BACK to my review of ‘Heartless’ by Anne Elisabeth Spengl.

The writing style is a bit ethereal, and it’s an unusual story & development for a CBA book… but ultimately, I enjoyed it, and have since recommended it to a number of people.

Who knows, if you like fantasy? You might like it too.