If there is any author who would like to be a guest blogger and/or be interviewed, please let me know. I would love to exchange promos! All guest bloggers are showcased on my Promos page.

6 Sentence Sunday

Those edits are now concluded, and the new release date is February 6th. I’m still a bit disappointed at this delay, but they are accepting pre-orders. So be sure to head on over to http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=1510 and place your orders. As soon as the book is released, it will show up in your VIP account ready to read.

The story is told from the imaginary point of view of Inés Suárez from what she may have written in her diary when seventy years old. The diary’s existence is also imaginary. Only a writer of Isabel Allende’s stature would dare to tell this very complicated story in flashback and succeed so brilliantly.

In her diary, Inés addresses Isabel, her stepdaughter from her last marriage. In the first chapter, Inés Suárez says: “I beg you to have a little patience, Isabel. You will soon see that this disorderly narrative will come to the moment when my path crosses that of Pedro de Valdivia and the epic I want to tell you about begins.”

Inés, a poor seamstress from Plasencia–a town in Spain, comes to the new world in a ship with her niece to search for her husband Juan de Málaga. In reality, she is determined to escape from poverty and the backward thinking of the society she was born into. When she learns her husband is dead, she tries to make it on her own with her nursing and housekeeping skills. When a man who was in the same ship with her tries to attack her, she kills him out of self-defense, but the ship’s captain takes the body of the man from her house and discards it, keeping her name clear. After this, Inés wants to move on to other towns in the new world, partly with fear of being found out. It is at this time that she meets Pedro de Valdivia, the conquistador of Chile, and becomes his mistress.

Inés gets Pisarro’s permission by saying that she knows dowsing and can find water in the desert; so, together with Valdivia she travels to Chile, crossing an impossible arid region and facing many hardships to establish the city of Santiago in the Mapocho Valley as a Spanish settlement. They call the new town, “Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura.” The date is February 12, 1541.

In this settlement, cut away from Peru because of distance and dreadful travel conditions, the group faces a terrible struggle against chief Michimalonko’s fierce Mapuche Indians. Inés’s story continues until 1580 when she is writing her memoirs at age seventy as a rich and successful widow but somewhat boastful and full of pride.

Even if the story is filled with battles, cruelty, and blood and gore, the central theme is the passionate love and companionship between two lovers. The relationship between Pedro and Inés is that of a fairy tale, passionate, loving, and full of communication. Even if Pedro changes from an idealistic man to a man of greed eventually, his love for Inés survives to his last breath.

Although Isabel Allende, through Inés, does not lionize or conceal the brutality of the conquistadors, she romanticizes the idea of establishing settlements in the new world and the exploits of those who went through so much to conquer the continent. Inés, a remarkable woman who comes up with solutions to most problems the people of the settlement face in the new world, is portrayed as the modern women’s rights advocates would like to see a heroine. How much of this idealizing might have come close to the truth is debatable.

Inés of My Soul is the fifteenth book for Isabel Allende. In this book, too, her narrative style takes over the story, but her delightful storytelling with the exciting twists and turns in her narration grip the reader fully and make him want not to leave a word unread.

Isabel Allende is a Chilean novelist who was born on August 2, 1942 in Lima, Peru. His books are: The House of the Spirits (1982), La gorda de porcelana (1984), Of Love and Shadows (1985), Eva Luna (1987), The Stories of Eva Luna (1989), The Infinite Plan (1991), Paula (1995, Afrodite (1997), Daughter of Fortune (1999), Portrait in Sepia (2000), City of the Beasts (2002), My Invented Country (2003), Kingdom of the golden dragon (2004), Forest of the Pygmies (2005), Zorro (2005), Ines of My Soul (2006), and Dos Palabras.

The book is in hardcover and 336 pages with ISBN-10: 0061161535 and ISBN-13: 978-0061161537.

As expected from Allende’s wonderful storytelling, “Inés of My Soul” is a brilliant historical epic, full of excitement and suspense.

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers Her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/joycag

Author: Joy Cagil
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

5 stars

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“Second Time’s a Charm” is the love story of Stacie Edmonds and Tyson Garrett. Stacie turns forty early in the novel while Tyson celebrates his thirty-first birthday. As someone who will turn forty this year, I found the love story between these characters more relevant to me than one about teenage romance. In addition, I had already met these characters briefly in “The One”-Stacie is Kyle Davis’ aunt-and while they had only appeared for a few pages, their presence in that novel was significant and memorable, precisely because of their age differences and that they were older than your ordinary romantic leads.

Stacie is the owner of The Sound Side, a successful restaurant in a coastal resort town in North Carolina, but despite Stacie’s success, she still has some issues to work out with her past, primarily her divorce from her ex-husband, Rick, who just happens to own a restaurant in the same town and who appears just enough to irritate her as well as give her an opportunity to heal her past. Tyson has his own issues to work through, but he is committed to their relationship-perhaps more so than Stacie, who is a bit nervous about taking a second chance on love.

For the most part, these characters are self-assured and confident. They know who they are and they know their weaknesses-they are not teenagers trying to find themselves but adults who have made difficult decisions and are still hopeful about their futures. Besides love, Stacie needs to make a decision whether she will attempt to have a child after suffering from some health problems that could put her and a baby at risk. The way the two main characters support one another and their passion for each other makes them extremely sexy, something that becomes obvious with the novel’s first chapter. Apparently, life can begin at forty.

Mary Flinn also brings back several characters from “The One,” including Kyle and Chelsea and Kyle’s mother Shelly. Both the familiar and the new characters make a great cast in this novel. The reader is bound to feel like he or she is there, working at The Sound Side, enjoying a lazy hour on the beach, and just hanging out with family and friends at the parties Flinn does such a great job of bringing to life. I felt like I knew these characters-they are ordinary, hardworking people with the same goals and hopes and dreams we all have, and I grew to like them and hoped they would not get hurt.

It isn’t giving things away to say that everything works out in the end for Stacie and Tyson. The magic is not so much in the plot but in the way Flinn breathes such life into this fictional world with its references to real restaurants and places in North Carolina. The book may be somewhat predictable, but it still makes you keep turning the page to see the details of how everything will turn out. I almost felt ready to go out and buy a wedding present and try to decide what to wear to the ceremony because after all, Tyson and Stacie had become my good friends and I expected to dance at their wedding.

In short, “Second Time’s a Charm” is a charm to read. Mary Flinn knows how to make the everyday world real as her words cast a spell over the reader, a spell that only ends all too soon. But don’t be too disappointed-her third book “Three Gifts” is coming soon and will bring the reader back to these lovable characters all over again-these three novels are “Three Gifts” indeed.

Tyler R. Tichelaar holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Northern Michigan University and a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University. His family’s long relationship with Upper Michigan and his avid interest in genealogy inspired Dr. Tichelaar to write his Marquette Trilogy: Iron Pioneers, The Queen City, and Superior Heritage. Dr. Tichelaar is also a professional book reviewer and editor. For more information about Tyler R. Tichelaar, his writing, and his author services, visit:

www.MarquetteFiction.com

Author: Tyler Tichelaar
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Why the update? Well, if you visit the main page of my site, my other beautiful covers make their rounds in the carousel. I noticed how the remaining two covers of my trilogy look a bit amateurish by comparison. So I realized it was time to update them, since I had already updated the final installment. Grady’s Return will take me a bit longer to update, but that too will get a new look. Hopefully, it won’t take me as long as it did to finish Nada’s cover.

So stay tuned for that new cover to make its appearance in the carousel on my site…as well as on amodernmyth.com

Edit: Please note that due to the Flash coding, your browser’s cache must be cleared before you can see the new cover in the carousel. I have also posted the cover on my forum for members to see the full size.

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl have problems. Will boy and girl be able to overcome problems and stay together? Mary Flinn’s “The One” may have an old plot, but love is so important to our lives that when the story is well told as it is here, not only do we not mind reading once more a tale of lovers, but we find ourselves engrossed in the story. “The One” is the story of a young man and a young woman who find each other amid the craziness of the world, in this case, high school, and weather the storms together, be they the death of loved ones, or others determined to split them apart. In the end, they learn about themselves and the world around them while preparing to enter adulthood and the beginning of a committed relationship.

Flinn’s characters are mature and believable. Readers will sympathize with Kyle and Chelsea and hope their love will last. While the young lovers find themselves in some difficult situations, what is remarkable about the book’s atmosphere in many ways is the supporting cast of characters, family and friends who provide stability for Kyle and Chelsea. This supportive environment is one in which every young man and woman should be so lucky to be raised. While their lives are not perfect, Chelsea and Kyle find strength in one another, their families, their friends, their coaches, and teachers.

However, not all the characters are without their share of drama. Teenage drinking is involved and some wild and unacceptable behavior. Flinn wisely treats these topics realistically, not glamorizing the behaviors or morally condemning them. As a result, the characters are multi-faceted while the main characters are primarily responsible and good role models to young adults as evidenced by the community projects they pursue.

Set in North Carolina, where the author lives, “The One” perfectly captures a region and way of life. Readers may or may not be familiar with the area, but they will appreciate the realistic setting that reflects a teenager’s life in the early twenty-first century rather than becoming a stereotypical southern romance or a story that tries generically to appeal to a teen audience. Teenage readers will no doubt enjoy seeing characters similar to themselves, but adults will enjoy the book also. As a male reader, I found myself surprisingly invested in Kyle and Chelsea’s relationship, wanting them to be happy together because Flinn does such an expert job of developing her characters. I’m not a big fan of description, but Flinn knows how to describe a house, a cabin, a beach in ways that bring the setting to life and that keep it relevant to the story by using the settings to develop and reveal information about the characters.

Flinn’s writing has a grace and elegance, which coupled with the wedding toward the end-I won’t give away whose-reminds one more of Jane Austen than most recent romantic comedy films. The drama of the story is almost always on the sidelines, never becoming unbelievable or extreme, and the characters’ choices and actions all seem naturally to fall into place. I was both amazed by Flinn’s imaginative creation of a fictional world so that it felt so very real, and also impressed by how perfectly balanced the writing was so that it never went over the top. Flinn does not bite off more than she can chew but takes simple situations and draws out the nuances, the emotions, and the integrity of her characters. In that way, she is like Jane Austen, telling a simple story, with one or two obstacles to the main character’s love, but in the end, creating an ending completely satisfying for the reader. In short, the writing is sincere and believable because of it.

If you’ve never read a romance novel, this is “the one” to start with, and if you’re already a fan of romance, Mary Flinn is sure to be your new favorite author. I trust her pen will produce many more love stories.

Tyler R. Tichelaar holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Northern Michigan University and a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University. His family’s long relationship with Upper Michigan and his avid interest in genealogy inspired Dr. Tichelaar to write his Marquette Trilogy: Iron Pioneers, The Queen City, and Superior Heritage. Dr. Tichelaar is also a professional book reviewer and editor. For more information about Tyler R. Tichelaar, his writing, and his author services, visit:

www.MarquetteFiction.com

Author: Tyler Tichelaar
Article Source: EzineArticles.com