Savage

Rereading "Savage", a short story by Kelly Armstrong that prequels her Women of the Otherworld series. It cracks me up...

"Before we left the motel, Jeremy had spent a lot of time making phone calls. Not that I understood what he was doing. For whatever reason, I had holes in my memory such that I’d know perfectly well what a car or money was for, but objects like telephones and toilets were unfathomable mysteries. So, at the time, it seemed to me that Jeremy was spending a lot of time with a piece of plastic pressed against his ear, talking to himself. Which was fine by me. We all have our eccentricities. Jeremy liked talking to plastic; I liked hunting and eating the rats that ventured into the motel room. Or, at least I did like hunting and eating the rats, until Jeremy caught me, and promptly kiboshed that hobby. Some of us are less tolerant of eccentricities than others."

It's true, some of us are just so intolerant!

Favorite Author Fridays - Kelly Armstrong

Kelly Armstrong is another modern vampire/werewolf fantasy author. I really like her books. I would say they were another step in maturity above Patricia Briggs but still well below Laurel K. One of the things I love about her is her use of her website. She has monthly contests and journals, discussion boards and just over all tons of stuff. She's very available to her readers without letting them take over her life. She used to have several short stories up online but her publisher decided to put them into a book and so made her take them down.

Another thing she does that I really love is that she switches lead characters. Her first two books are from the perspective of the werewolves but in the 3rd book she switches to the perspective of a witch you met in the 2nd book. It's a really cool way to keep the same universe and not have your story lines get really boring or overly dramatic or sexual. In fact, the witch Paige who narrates the 3rd novel is someone you didn't particularly like in the novel before. What a great idea!

She is also releasing her first YA novel this year (July 1 in fact). There's a contest here to win a copy of it. You just have to share if you 'got' the ending of the Sixth Sense movie. I'm pretty excited. I have a feeling she won't 'dumb down' her YA lit and I always appreciate that.

Bibliography:

Otherworld Novels
Bitten (narrator: Elena)
Stolen (narrator: Elena)
Dime Store Magic (narrator: Paige)
Industrial Magic (narrator: Paige)
Haunted (narrator: Eve)
Chaotic (novella in "Dates from Hell", narrator: Hope)
Broken (narrator: Elena)
No Humans Involved (narrator: Jaime)
Twilight (story in "Many Bloody Returns", narrator: Cassandra)
Stalked (story in "My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon", narrator: Clay)
Personal Demon (narrators: Hope & Lucas)

Nadia Stafford Novels
Exit Strategy
Made to be Broken (Spring '09)

Darkest Powers Trilogy - Young Adult
The Summoning (July 1, 2008)
The Awakening (May 2009)