Tag Archives: novel

Book review: Hat Dance

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March is finally here, and hopefully warmer weather will soon be upon us. I can’t wait. I’m tired of the cold and the ice. Be that as it may, I have a new book to share with you, this time by author Carmen Amato entitled Hat Dance. You can find out more about the author on her website, on Twitter, and on Amazon. Enjoy!

Hat Dance_final_300pxWhen Emilia Cruz joined Kurt Rucker, an American who ran El Palacio Réal, one of the most luxurious hotels in the city, she thought it would simply be a night out at a restaurant her salary could never afford. Kurt soon announced that another resort in Belize was interested in him to run their property, and he wanted her to join him to check out the potential offer. Never could she have guessed that before the date was over, losing Kurt would be the least of her problems.

In Carmen Amato’s novel, Hat Dance, we meet Emilia, who works as a detective with the Acapulco Police Department, and who helped close down a casino that was a front for organized crime. Kurt took her to El Tigre, an upscale restaurant, where they ran into the popular mayor of the city Carlota Montoya Perez, and the head of the police Union, Victor Obregon Sosa. As Kurt and Emilia leave, their night comes to halt when a bomb tears through El Tigre.

Seen as a potential assassination attack on the mayor, Emilia quickly finds herself in an escalating game of political theatrics, navigating the inflated egos of the powerful while trying to solve a complex case. Complicating it even further is her assignment to a new partner who is openly disdainful of her, and a police lieutenant who appears incompetent.

Adding to her drama, she agrees to accept a personal case on the side, a missing person’s report which alienates her from her partner even farther. In a city where corruption is rampant, and the powerful are known to be on the take, can Emilia get to the bottom of the case before others are hurt or killed?

What Carmen has done is to create a story rich and powerful. The storyline is dynamic, with several threads woven to create a varied tapestry, of lives intersecting at a specific moment in time, of lives hanging in the balance, all depending on her and a reluctant partner to solve a high-stakes case. I enjoyed this book and I hope you will too.

List of Book Reviews
Next Review –  The Trinity
Previous Review – Solid Rock

Book Review: The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time

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Super Bowl Sunday has come and gone, with Seattle the victors and a very disappointed Denver in its wake. February also brings with it a reminder of romance for the lovers out there, as well as another book for me to review. Today I will be reviewing an Eli Yaakunah novel. You can find her on Facebook.

scandalImagine a not-so-distant future, when the media conglomerates are no more, replaced by an ever-present “Agency” that possess the unchecked monopoly of not only disseminating the news, but that creates and scripts the world’s realities, from sports, local news, and even elections the world over. Welcome to the world of your protagonist, Ishtar Benten, a young woman in the employ of the Agency, who is promoted to Scriptwriter, and discovers that in her, and her fellow “god’s” hands are held the (mis)fortune of the world.

The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time is her story. What resonates is the idea of a pervasive all-powerful organization, that controls what we are told and believe. The concept is not too far out of the realm of possibilities when one considers the intrusiveness of Government, (CIA, FBI, NSA), and the idea that only a few select – the wealthy and powerful – are truly in control of our destinies, only furnishing the illusion that we have a voice in our world.

The novel is narrated by Ishtar, who specializes in news stories with sexual undertones. As such, the reader is treated to several highly suggestive and graphic scenes of sex, and of violence. Many scenes come straight from her imagination, others are seen as she engages another for a passionate round of intimacy.

The story begins to gel when it becomes clear the Ishtar is beginning to question the morality and ethics of her workplace. The novel is a journey of discovery, not only of the environment around her, the characters in it, and the greater truth that lies beneath the woven tapestry that she helped fabricate, but also a personal one, where she must surrender herself quietly to the role assigned to her, or rebel against the authorities, and likely forfeit her job, and possibly her life.

The greater story is well told, and after wading through several chapters, does manage to grasp the reader. What I had trouble with was the attempt at creating a sensual image during the erotic parts of the stories. That, I feel, failed because it became labored with too many words attempting to conjure an image that is at once provocative and sexual. This is an instance where less would have been more.

Instead of allowing the reader to create the imagined dalliance, the writer tried to impose their idea of the protagonist’s sexual exploits down to the minute detail. What I found was a story that begged me to put it on the nightstand and forget it, which would have been a shame, since the story proper was actually quite good.

Understand, I am not a big fan of romance and/or erotica, so my review may be suspect. What I can say is that while I liked the story of the Agency, the erotica left me in want of something better, something more cohesive. The sex pushed me out of the story instead of enticing me in. As such, it felt clumsy, the transitions between the graphic sex scenes were not smooth, and I didn’t get hooked into the story until very late, long after I would have given up trying to read the book had I not agreed to review it.

In the end, I found the book to be a mixed-bag. I cannot assign a simple good or bad grade on it, so I’m left to flip-flop a bit and say “it’s good, but it has some problems.” Thus, I will not recommend this book to read, unless you are a fan of the genre, which is a shame. The book had promise of being a lot better than I found it, but that’s just this reader’s opinion.

List of Book Reviews
Next Review – Solid Rock
Previous Review – Crimson Return

Just chillin’ n readin’

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I’m stuck at home on a Saturday night. Typical. It’s actually not a bad thing. I have a new book review coming out on Monday, for Daelynn Quinn’s book, Crimson Return, the second book of the Fall of Venus trilogy. I’m three-quarters of the way through with the book, and I plan to finish it before I go to bed tonight.

Work on my own book is progressing slowly. I’m not having any luck writing at home, so yesterday I left the nest and drove to Amarillo, set myself up at a coffee shop, and wrote for a couple of hours. It’s not nearly enough, but it’s a start.

Seriously, writing can be a chore sometimes, but all the worthwhile activities usually are. It’s those who acknowledge that fact, and persevere in spite of the grind that achieve their goals. I want to be one of those people, someone who can say I accomplished my goal.

Tonight, I will finish reading my book so that I can post my review as promised. I’m enjoying the book and I can’t wait to share my thoughts on it. If you haven’t already, check out my review to Fall of Venus, and come back on Monday!

I can’t sleep

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Insomnia’s a bitch, ain’t it? I’m here at four in the morning, desiring nothing more than to fall asleep, but instead I’m making use of this time to update my blog. It’s infuriating! Oh well, I need to type up a post because I haven’t done so in almost a week.

My book is going nowhere fast. It’s not for lack of ideas, it’s due to lack of taking the time to sit down and write it out. I’m to blame, well partly. I’ve been working late the past few weeks, getting off most days at midnight, then after the hour drive home, I’m not really in the mood to write.

Then there’s the fact that I’ve been talking to somebody. A human somebody. A female somebody. Yeah, I know I said I would never talk to a female somebody again, but I made myself a liar and proved everyone else right. Damn it! The new feeling won’t last, so I’ll get back to writings soon.

The female somebody, who made me promise never to write about her on my blog (sorry, but at least I’m not using your name) has given me a few ideas on my book. Gotta love creative people who can point out flaws in your logic. I think I’m on the right track as it relates to my plot, but I have to sit my butt down and actually write the freaking thing.

I’m working on creating my two main characters, who have not met yet. They have separate lives, one a priest, the other an escort, but whose lives will intersect at some point, and of course they will hit it off. I just need to make it seem real.

What holds me back is motivation. Why do they meet? Why does Giada seek Israel out? And why do they create and maintain a lasting relationship, one that threatens their lives, and his career in the church?

I have an idea to be sure, but it’s always difficult to translate the picture in my head into words that make sense. I’ll need to try, and then I’ll need to go back and edit it. What I need to do is set aside time to do it. Haven’t I made that observation before?

It’s probably due to exhaustion. It’s too early (late?) for me to be writing. I think I’ll shut my computer down and try to sleep. Fortunately for me, I go to work at three in the afternoon, so there’s no pressure to fall asleep right now, but I’ll try anyway. Maybe when I wake up, I’ll be able to write something that makes actual sense.

Writing Project: Giada

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It’s Saturday night, and once again I’m at home, twiddling my thumbs, wishing I had something to do. That’s not quite true. I have something to do, I’m just not doing it. What I mean to say is that I wish I had somewhere to go. No matter. I need to sit myself down to do some serious writing.

I’ve started another project, which in all honesty is an extension of another, my first and still unpublished book, Son of the Father. The new book is called Giada, after a character I’m pulling from my first book, and expanding upon.

As originally conceived, Giada worked as an escort, which really was a cheap shot at my ex. I wanted to get back at her, so I made her character a prostitute, and to make it even better, I killed her. Unfortunately for me, by the time I did so, I fell in love with my own creation. I have bad taste in women, even fictional one that I create.

The Giada character worked well, she was funny, mischievous, and a great foil for my main character, a priest by the name of Israel Mendoza. The problem was that she didn’t fit the story I was telling. I introduced her in a serious of flashbacks, using her to tell some of Israel’s back story. It took away from the story I wanted to tell, of a bishop finding out he has a grown up son, and having to deal with the fall out from the news, both emotionally and privately, and publicly, as the face of a U.S. Roman Catholic Diocese.

I had to cut her out, but I didn’t want to lose her, and I didn’t want to completely cut out her role in Israel’s life. Instead, I chose to write the back story as a separate piece, to set up the next novel, which will be a rewritten version of Son of the Father, with more emphasis on the son and not a dead prostitute.

Now that I decided to do that, I found that it’s not easy to tell an offshoot story, in this case a prequel, although if published, it will come as the first book of a series. It’s difficult to expand a role that only fit into three chapters of the original incarnation of the story. I’m having to create new characters, as well as creating a new expanded story line.

I’m only at 5000 words at the moment. I need to set a daily word goal, say 2K, and work to meet or exceed that goal. That’s an easy 14k a week goal. I have ample time to write, I just haven’t maximized my time. So that puts my at 45K words by the end of the month, which should put me about halfway through the book.

I need to be done by the end of February, when I will hopefully turn my attention back to the book I wanted to publish last September, Unseen Obsession. I need to come up with a better title than that. I hate that title. I hope to publish that by the summer. All I need is to edit, rewrite, edit some more, find someone to make me a book cover because I’m useless when it comes to visuals, and then edit some more. I’m not panicking. Okay, I am.

I know what needs to be done, I just need to do it. So good night. I have more writing to do tonight.