Musing Mondays

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…
• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then

I thought I would share with all of you that I saw the proofs for my novel, THE ROSE MASTER, a couple of days ago and they are fabulous! I can't wait to see the book in print, which will be July 9th, so pretty soon!
 If you would like the ebook, you can buy it by clicking on the title.
 

My Debut Novel is Now Available!

Hi everyone, if you don't follow me on Facebook you may not know that my debut novel, THE ROSE MASTER, is now available as an ebook on Amazon. The paperbacks will be ready in a couple of weeks, but if you have an ereader and want to read a Victorian Gothic novel that is a cross between Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast, stop by my book's Amazon page below!



But THE ROSE MASTER here!

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!



There is no teaser today because I am in the midst of celebrating and promoting my book's release! It has been such a journey getting THE ROSE MASTER published, but I am thrilled to finally be able to send it out into the world.
As a debut author, it is hard to get the word out on a book, so if any of of you could mention it around, share it with friends, request it at your bookstore or library, it would mean so much.

Oh, and don't forget to stop by my Facebook party to win some goodies!

Musing Mondays

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…
• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then


My debut novel, THE ROSE MASTER, is released tomorrow in ebook form! I am beyond excited, as you can imagine. The paperback is available starting July 9th, for those of you who prefer hard copies. 

 Be sure to stop by the Facebook party tomorrow at 2-5 pm EST to win some prizes and get some inside looks into the writing process!


 You can find the event page here 


 

The Corrputible by Mark Mynheir

How much money would it take for you to betray the truth?

Ex-homicide detective Ray Quinn never had glamorous thoughts of the life of a private investigator—but being cornered in a bathroom stall by the enraged philandering husband of a client? That’s something he could live without. Retired from homicide and living with a painful disability, Ray’s options are limited. Stick to the job, keep impetuous sidekick Crevis alive, and spend quiet evenings with trusted pal Jim Beam, that’s about the best he can hope for.

As a new client emerges, Ray finds himself in an impossibly large boardroom holding a check with enough zeros to finally lift him from his financial pit. The job seems easy enough: find Logan Ramsey, an ex-cop turned security officer who’s taken off with sensitive corporate information. But few things are easy in Ray’s world, regardless of the amount of zeros in the check.

In what should be an open-and-shut case, Ray stumbles across Logan Ramsey in a seedy motel room. Only Ray wasn’t the first to find him. Now Logan’s dead, the client’s information is nowhere to be found, and Ray’s employer is less than forthcoming with the details. Suddenly the line between the good guys and bad guys isn’t so clear. With a foot in both worlds and an illuminating look at an unhappy ending that could well be his own, which will Ray choose?

This was an interesting book, although it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when it comes to detective novels. 

 

The protagonist has PTSD, which makes for a slightly more original take on the detective-with-issues fad that has taken over the mystery genre. He is likeable, though, and reads as a pretty realistic character, so that is something to commend the author for. 

The action is pretty well paced, with only a few moments where backstory took over just a bit more than it should have. I also enjoyed the look at a private investigator’s life, with all its details and issues. 

Although it doesn’t break any boundaries, it was still a good read.

Wool By Hugh Howey

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

 

I expected much more from this book after hearing so much about it. It was all right, don’t get me wrong, but definitely nothing I just have to recommend.

The pacing is just so slow. A lot of it does have to do with world-building, I do understand that, but it just didn’t really pick up at all until the very end. Even then, the action was overwhelmed by descriptions and a million characters that could have easily been trimmed out. What I think the novel needed, more than anything was a good editor who could get rid of some of the extraneous information and characters that got in the way of the real story, starting with the whole beginning chapter. The rule of thumb is that if any section in a book, or character, can be removed and the book still make sense, then it should be removed. There were a lot of things that could have been chopped out of this one. 

None of the characters were truly developed. Since there was so much world-building, it is hard to get to know the characters as more than action pawns the author moves around from scene to scene. In particular, the “relationship” between the protagonist and Lukas made no sense. It was insta-love for adults and…no, just no.

I don’t think I’ll be picking up the other two books in the series. They are just too slow paced to hold my interest. 

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Another teaser from my upcoming debut novel THE ROSE MASTER!


From The Rose Master by Valentina Cano



















And remember to sign up for the Facebook Release Day Party here!

Musing Mondays

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…
• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then

I wanted to invite all of you to my Facebook book release party for THE ROSE MASTER! It is next Tuesday, the 24th, from 2-5 pm EST. There will be games with awesome prices and lots of giveaways. Let your friends know, too. Everyone is invited to help me celebrate my book's release. 

 You can find the event page here 

.  

Follow Friday

Armchair Travel! Tell us about your favorite book in a setting you’d like to visit (a real place for this question)

I have to choose The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips. I would love to travel to Egypt and see the pyramids, the Valley of Kings and the city of Cairo. Hopefully, I'll get to do that some day!

Now I wanted to take a moment to invite all of you who are interested to join the Facebook release party I'm having on June 24th, from 2-5 pm Eastern time for THE ROSE MASTER. There will be giveaways, games, and lots more, so stop by if you can!

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Another teaser from my upcoming debut novel THE ROSE MASTER!


From The Rose Master by Valentina Cano

Musing Mondays

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…
• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then

 I started reading The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry. I'm about a chapter in and it's turning out to be a pretty good read. It sounds like a psychological thriller of sorts, which is probably my favorite type of book after a good Gothic. I'll let you all know how it progresses. 






 

The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier

The first victim is a horse: its headless, flayed body hangs suspended from the edge of a frozen cliff. On the same day as the gruesome discovery takes place, Diane Berg, a young psychiatrist starts her first job at a high security asylum for the criminally insane, just a few miles away She is baffled by the slightly unorthodox methods the asylum's director uses, and then greatly alarmed when she realizes that drugs are disappearing. Commandant Martin Servaz can't believe he has been called out over the death of an animal. But there is something disturbing about this crime that he cannot ignore. Then DNA from one of the most notorious inmates of the asylum is found on the corpse...and a few days later the first human murder takes place. 

This was an interesting read, but it did not quite fulfill the expectations its blurb creates.

What I felt, more than anything, was that its pace was too slow for the genre. Although the very beginning (I’m talking about the first two or three pages) is attention-catching, the rest slowly unwinds in a way that doesn’t help maintain the right amount of tension. 

The best thing that the novel has going for it is the location. The action takes place in such a desolate area that it goes a long way into building up a bit of fear in the reader. If the pace had been a bit faster, tenser, it would have made for a truly chilling read.

As it is, I would perhaps recommend it to people who like a literary thriller, although the writing is not quite literary.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

So today I'm going to do a bit of shameless self-promotion for my debut novel, THE ROSE MASTER. Since today was the official cover reveal, I wanted to give you all a taste of what the novel is like.

 From The Rose Master by Valentina Cano

Musing Mondays

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…
• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then
My debut novel, THE ROSE MASTER, comes out later this month! I will be posting more info as I learn it, but in the next few days will be the cover reveal, which is going to be awesome. If any of you are interested in being part of the cover reveal or the upcoming blog tour for THE ROSE MASTER, sign up in the link below!



Sign up to participate in my debut novel’s blog tour here!