J.S. Little's Blog

It's a sad day, today. Wolf on Water, the publisher for Child of Doors, has closed The most immediate result of this is that Child of Doors isn't currently available for purchase from any of the sites where it was listed.

I'm not quite sure what I'll do next, I might shop around for a new publisher or put up a self-published version, we'll have to see. And hey, if you are an editor or represent a publisher and liked Child of Doors enough to publish a new edition, let me know and we'll see what we can do.

So, uh, it's only been like 6 months.

This is generally what happens every time I try to blog, I keep it up for a while and then run out of steam.

It's actually one of the things that I am not quite sure how handle as an author in this emerging world where it's expected that you be online and engaged. For someone that's generally an introvert, it can be nerve wracking to convince myself to interact with the public. In theory I should be on twitter and posting on facebook, ect, ect. It's a bit terrifying.

But I did want to attempt to get back into blogging again, especially after seeing the post http://nichehacks.com/lessons-from-10... . It's not ground breaking but it did jab the "You need to keep writing" spot in my brain.

So, the last thing I wrote about was Melissa being published in an anthology. Originally it was one that was on Smashwords and everything was happy and it would live on the internet forever.

However, it looks like the anthology is doing so well that the editors are working on a print version as well as moving it to the Kindle store. It'll be available for free at times and I'm still trying to figure out exactly how it'll work but it does make it available for a lot of people that wouldn't have had a chance to see it if it was only on Smashwords.

Being the 800lb gorilla in the e-book market is good at times since most people go to Amazon when looking for new books and not nearly as many people know about Smashwords. So if you have a Kindle and wanted an easy way to get the anthology, well here you go : http://mybook.to/ODP .

From 19 Feb to 21 Feb the anthology will be free so even if you got a copy from Smashwords, I'd like to ask you also download it during that free period and leave a review on Amazon (and Smashwords too).

And speaking of reviews... I keep reading, slowly, the Gina Harwood novel which I can't wait to review. The stumbling block has been my lazyness in finishing the book. So I'll try to fix that.

Hey everyone, it's the day for free books! "Melissa" has been released in the Day of Our Passing anthology. Get your copy today for free. I poked through the rest of the stories and poems and there are some pretty damn good ones in the collection and quite a wide variety.

Smashwords : Our Day of Passing

The editor Ingrid Hall also has a blog post announcing it :Announcement Post

Hope you all enjoy your weekend with a few stories about our inevitable death and possible afterlife. Fun!

It's been a while but I have a short story coming out in an anthology, Our Day of Passing, in a little over 10 days. And the best part, it'll be nestled between many other I'm-sure-they-will-be wonderful stories and poems. And I think each one has it's own illustration so you get art as well. Art and stories for free!

I haven't had a chance to read any other stories in the book, so I'll be as surprised as anyone to see what else is in store but I like what I've seen of the illustrations. They have a bit of a Ben Templesmith feel. If each story or poem has one I'll be very curious to see how "Melissa" was interpreted by the artist. Most of the art has been fairly serene. "Melissa" is not a serene story.

The editor, Ingrid Hall, was very nice to work with so I trust her judgement on this. We'll have to see what all is in store on July 31st. I'll put up a link to download the anthology when it's available. For now, here's the blog post announcing it, it has some of the illustrations as well as the other authors that contributed. Go take a look : Our Day of Passing

Every time I try to keep up a blog, I tend to get bored and wander off. Or other parts of life intrude and I don't feel like writing so I find other things to do and just skip it. Yeah, I'm terrible. But hey, I just finished reading a book but I didn't like it very much. I've heard from a lot of other authors that you should only review books that you like because you never know when the book you are reviewing might be by an author that has more pull in the industry than you do. I'm sure that's very wise advice.

Unfortunately, I'm not a very wise person at times. I also probably broke some cardinal rule by choosing a book solely based on having an author with the same name as me. I'm sure this will not in any way backfire horrendously.

Enchanted: Calling the Quarters by J. S. Little

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


If you like Wicca and want a book that doesn't have a lot of violence or harsh language, perhaps this book will be better suited to you than it was to me. I figured that the main problem I would have would be the romance part as I keep imagining that I don't like romance and yet I like books like where a lot of the plot is focused on a romance, at least the 'how will people work out the difficulties' part of it. And if this book had more of it, I might have liked it a lot more.

First let's get the major stumbling blocks out of the way. I don't mind present tense writing but this uses third person present tense and quite a bit of the time the prose feels like it's someone reading stage directions for characters. I was not a fan. I think first person present would have worked a lot better, or third person past tense. Mixing them, at least in the way it was done, felt awkward. There are also a lot of sections with info dumps and 'telling' the reader about scenes I really wanted to see. Brandon (the male lead) is said to have had horrific nightmares where he is tempted by an evil god and right when it sounds like we are going to get to see this in action, the story cuts away. One of the other large issues I had was that the characters, whether an old woman (who appears to be in her 30's) or a child or the most powerful witch to ever live speaks, there are times when their dialog sounded the same. Grandma sounds like a teenager some times and other times demands to be treated with respect as an elder.

The tone of the book shifts around quite a bit. In the beginning there's an almost salacious quality with Brandon ogling Anna, Alina's twin sister and the book seems to take a perverse joy in showing us his dirty thoughts through Alina's telepathy. But there is hardly any word more harsh than "Darn" or "heck" throughout most of the book. At first Anna (the evil twin) is shown accidentally tearing the soul out of child and later casually magicking away a mans tongue but as the book progresses, nothing ever comes of it. The super evil bad guy isn't shown doing more than calling someone a 'wench' one time and being given implied evil because he is Very Bad.

I guess after the first chapter or two, with the super model magical twins, the casual abuse of magic, the leering poon-hound of a leading man billionaire it sounded like this was going to be a trashy fun book with sex and violence even if the format wasn't my favorite. But one love spell later and the international ladies man and next up to be Evil Incarnate, Brandon, is a slightly possesive, super-faithful, handsome as all hell boyfriend.

Here's a few things I learned in the book :

50 million dollars is enough to feed enough people that it makes the entire nation a better place and pisses off the big bad guy because it weakens him (by making people happier and the world a better place).

"Electric" is a common adjective used to imply bright green. Perhaps this one is true.. I'm color blind and I always associate "electric" with blue-white so what do I know.

Having character names represent their power level.. well okay, I guess that can work, but having a lot of characters, in the same family all have names that start with "Al" or "An" is very confusing.

Stephen King was right, adverbs are the devil.

Talking about powers makes me long to have those powers shown in action rather than just talking about what they might be able to do.

And now a few things that really just pissed me off but this could be spoilery: <spoiler>
The Quarters are called only once.. and never released. I'm not Wiccan but I was married to one for quite a while and this struck me as very odd.

The bouncing around between using All Hallows Eve and Samhain as the date of the Big Battle. These seem to be Wiccan witches of some fashion, I don't know why All Hallows Eve kept being mentioned when they talked among themselves. Eventually it shifts to just Samhain which makes a lot more sense.

Alina's primary power (each witch has one main power, like the x-men) is healing, she's a super-healer and can even resurrect people. When she gets tapped to be the prophesied One to fight the Battle against the evil Abeddon, her primary battle plan is to walk in, kill everyone (all of the witches that Abeddon has kidnapped/seduced to the dark side), take the magic throne, then resurrect everyone. Personally I would have felt some tension if she had to actually worry about killing her mom and sister who joined Abeddon. But no, just blitz the whole castle, take the throne, res your party and it's good.

None of this matters though, because her boyfriend, who's destined to be the next super evil power guy, steps into the Battle and fights Abeddon instead of Alina while she sits on the sidelines. For hours. She has the power of 10,000 suns and just sits by while Evil and Going-To-Be-Evil slug it out.

Brandon wins, then turns Evil and tried to kill her but she turns into an owl and he falls to his death. Oh, and she becomes a new Goddess (even though the text says god) that the witches now worship. And she makes it snow in Florida. </spoiler>
Wish I could recommend this but it just lacked the kind of story I generally like. I did finish it though and that puts it ahead of those Area 51 books. And it did have some hilarious 'Grandma making penis jokes' for a few lines but that was about it.

The Fall Fest over at Pretty Little Pages continues with tons of interviews and you can win a hard copy of Child of Doors and read an interview and a guest post by me. I should be working on my next book right now but I've been so behind it hasn't been happening.

Oh yeah, and that whole 2nd half of October movies I still need to review because there were some cool ones this year.

Happy Halloween, Blessed Samhain, all of the fall festivals are now in full effect. I know the Fall Fest over at Pretty Little Pages and Kira's blog has been in full swing for a little while now so I'd like welcome all of the people from over there. I had planned on keeping up with the movie reviews and I need to get caught up but there's been a lot of Twin Peaks sprinkled around in there and I've been a bit busy at the day job. But it's Halloween and today will be filled with jack'o'lantern carving and all of our favorite movies.

I've been a bit distracted and the novelette Melissa will be delayed for a little bit longer but it is on it's way.

And tomorrow starts NaNoWriMo which I'm completely unprepared for, but I do have all of the basic plot and characters outlined for the next book and since I generally just use the NaNo version as the really long outline for the 2nd draft, I think it should be okay.

So it's time to get off the lazy author kick and get Melissa finished and published (whoohoo free ebooks for all!) and get the next novel started.

Kristen over at Pretty Little Pages reviewed Child of Doors and was kind enough to let me rant about 50 Shades of Grey. Check it out : http://prettylittlepages.blogspot.com...

One of the original found-footage movies and the big one that kicked off the genre. I saw this on opening day way back when and I was one of the ones that was completely freaked out by the ending. It was just something that was totally different.

The years have been fairly kind to it. Since it was mostly a character piece there's no special effect to age poorly and honestly, it could probably be made today and look almost the same with smaller cameras.

Yeah, it's a bit slow and if you already know the ending I can see why most people don't rewatch it. But I'm a sucker for these kinds of movies and I guess I'm just not sick of seeing it yet.

The kids bloody hand prints are still pretty damn creepy.

This is what a good "haunted asylum" movie looks like. It's presented in a found-footage style that I personally like for stories like this. You have your crack team of young ghost hunters sent to investigate an asylum armed with the latest technology and a ton and half of cameras that they cover the place with.

This actually manages to get around a lot of the problems that a few found-footage movies have, like "why are you still filming?!" Since it's for a TV show it gives them an excuse to all have cameras and to have mounted cameras setup to catch action that might be happening to characters that drop/lose the cameras.

It follows the usual haunted building setup : Team goes in, nothing happens, they wander around for a while and then one little thing is freaky and while the characters were skeptical before, now they have the proof to show the world! Naturally, leaving is a lot harder than getting in.

The first time they check the windows and notice the sun hasn't come up, even though it's well into the morning hours, brought a smile to alien-geometry-loving heart.

The ghost effects, when used in long shots, are effective and most of the digital effects are good. But some of the close-ups on the face scares are a little off. Other than that this is one of my favorite successors to the Blair Witch.