Bethanie's Brain

by Cindy Lynn Speer A beautifully sweet story (pun unashamedly intended). OK, leaving aside the fact that anything having to do with chocolate is almost automatically certain to be a hit with me, this really was a great story. Set in a world far, far away where marriages are 'arranged' by magic and one's mate is usually determined when one is very young, the story consists partly of letters written back and forth between William and his 'intended', Tasmin, over the course of the time before they meet and partly of the 'present day', in which William has been framed for murder and Tamsin comes to free him, since she knows from his letters that he's no murderer. Their letters to each other alone are a good enough reason to read the book. They are charming and cleverly written, not only because they subtly reveal the nature of each of the main characters, but also because they evolve through the story, moving along from the first letter William writes as a ...

First, The Usual Warning – probably, I am not going to do this review thing right. My 'reviews' are more a part of my own learning process as a writer than 'proper reviews’ in the traditional sense. They are more my ruminations, more my thoughts on and reactions to stories I either read or watch (yanno, movies), and more my attempt to process - mainly for my own benefit - the techniques and bits of craft that I most admired (or that didn’t seem to work for me). For that reason, it isn’t enough for me to say ‘I liked it’; I need to think about and say exactly why, so I get very specific. Oh, and sorry about all the italics and bold and bold-italics in this one. I went sorta wild with it... There. You have been warned. :) On to Sorrow , by John Lawson ! * * * I'm not going to begin with a synopsis or blurb of the plot. I think that's boring. Sorry. I'll tell you there's an assassin and nobody knows who it is, but they need to find out before more people d...

So The Husband and I got to go on one of our very rare movie dates this afternoon and picked Watchmen. Yaay for the small miracle of movie dates! Almost 30 bucks and 3 hours later, I'm still sort of shell shocked. It was violent. It was graphic. It was gory. It had waaay too many flashbacks and moved waaay slower than I would normally tolerate and yet I've come away from it thinking it was great. I'm struggling to put my finger on why. I mean, normally any movie that moves that slow has me yawning, bored and pissed off that I just spent 30 bucks to be bored halfway through and hoping it will end. Watchmen somehow eluded this fate. I think there are a number of reasons for this. For one thing, there was a giant, blue man walking around totally naked for most of the movie. Two thumbs, way up! ;-D Seriously, though... The characters had enough depth to keep me interested. Maybe not as much as I usually like, but there were interesting internal conflicts going on. There were...

Introduction to Bethanie's Reviews OK, finally. I’m getting around to posting this, the long-promised ‘reviews’ of Joely Sue Burkhart’s Survive My Fire and The Fire Within , which I decided to do together because they both take place in the same culture, so some of the things I want to yak about overlap (and I’m kind of lazy…). But first, A Warning – I am probably not going to do this right. I’ve never ‘reviewed’ anything before and I really hesitate to use the word ‘review’ at all, since it carries heavy connotations that I think my opinion is somehow more important than anyone else’s, which I simply don’t. My reviews will be more my thoughts on and reactions to stories I either read or watch (i.e., movies) and my attempt to process - mainly for my own benefit - the techniques and bits of craft that I most admired (or that didn’t seem to work for me). For that reason, it isn’t enough for me to say ‘I liked it’; I need to think about why . And so, my reviews are more a part of ...