Buzz, Balls & Hype

WOW BOOKS

Today at Writer Unboxed I have a post up that goes against some current advice. Maybe we shouldn't be trying so hard to write fast and write more - maybe we need to write better.  Read it here.

In Santa's Book Bag - The Fishnet Stocking Stuffer

This year I'm giving as many books as I can - here are some suggestions.

For the fishnet stocking: 

The steamy first installment in the Inside Out erotic romance trilogy by Lisa Renee Jones, in the bestselling tradition of Fifty Shades of Grey.

When Sara McMillan finds a stack of journals in a storage unit, she’s shocked and enthralled by the erotic life the writer led. Unable to stop reading, she vicariously lives out dark fantasies through Rebecca, the writer—until the terrifying final entry.

 Certain something sinister has happened, Sara sets out to discover the facts, immersing herself in Rebecca’s life. Soon she’s working at the art gallery Rebecca worked at and meeting Rebecca’s friends. Finding herself drawn to two dangerously sexy men, the manager of the gallery and a famed artist, Sara realizes she’s going down the same path Rebecca took. But with the promise of her dark needs being met by a man with confident good looks and a desire for control, she’s not sure anything else matters. Just the burn for more.

When Sara McMillan finds a stack of journals in a storage unit, she’s shocked and enthralled by the erotic life the writer led. Unable to stop reading, she vicariously lives out dark fantasies through Rebecca, the writer—until the terrifying final entry.

 Certain something sinister has happened, Sara sets out to discover the facts, immersing herself in Rebecca’s life. Soon she’s working at the art gallery Rebecca worked at and meeting Rebecca’s friends. Finding herself drawn to two dangerously sexy men, the manager of the gallery and a famed artist, Sara realizes she’s going down the same path Rebecca took. But with the promise of her dark needs being met by a man with confident good looks and a desire for control, she’s not sure anything else matters. Just the burn for more.

 

Backstory from Eva Stachniak

Catherine the Great intrigued me for a long time. She was a powerful woman monarch. She was an immigrant to Russia. She was the best empress Russia has ever had. And—to me born and raised in Poland—she was also the empress who wiped Poland off the map of Europe and turned my ancestors into the reluctant subjects of the Russian tsars.

An irresistible combination.

As soon as I decided to write about Catherine the Great I began reading her letters and memoirs in search for inspiration. In one of the letters Catherine wrote to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, a British ambassador to Russia, I came across the following sentence: Three people who never leave her room, and who do not know about one another, inform me of what is going on, and will not fail to acquaint me when the crucial moment arrives. “Her” meant Elizabeth Petrovna, the empress who invited Catherine to Russia as a prospective bride to her nephew Peter. “The crucial moment” meant Elizabeth’s much awaited death which Catherine saw as her big political chance. But who were the three spies Russia’s Grand Duchess kept in the imperial bedroom? And what stories and secrets could they reveal? 

Whoever they were I couldn’t stop thinking about them and the kind of lives they must have led: dangerous and filled with betrayals. 

The Winter Palace begins in 1744 when a fourteen year old German princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst arrives in Russia. One of the palace spies, Varvara, a Polish orphan who is trying to assure her own survival, befriends the newcomer from Zerbst and for the next twenty years watches how Grand Duchess Catherine turns herself into the empress and sole autocrat of All the Russias.

Listen to me, Varvara says, I know. 

The one you do not suspect is the most dangerous of spies.

Visit  http://www.evastachniak.com

From Santa's Book Bag - for the fantasy stocking!

Magical books that I loved and urge you to get a copy for yourself when you buy them for others on your list.

Shelf-Awareness says: 

When a tale is shaped so well that the line of the narrative seems to have been able to take no other path," Pullman says, "and to have touched every important event in making for its end, one can only bow with respect for the teller." There are several moments in Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm in which Pullman himself earns that honor. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com

Discover: An enticing collection of familiar and not-so-familiar fairy tales, retold with clarity and wit by a master of fantasy literature.

 

 

 

CITY OF DARK MAGIC, written by the mysterious Magnus Flyte (pseudonym for authors Meg Howrey and Christina Lynch.

It has a very spiffy trailer here.  It's the delightful and absorbing and fanciful story of a woman who goes to the Prague Castle for the summer.

Paranormal suspense at it's best. ( Along with some tantric sex and Beethoven.)

“This deliciously madcap novel has it all: murder in Prague, time travel, a misanthropic Beethoven, tantric sex, and a dwarf with attitude. I salute you, Magnus Flyte!" —Conan O'Brien

"The most wickedly enchanting novel I’ve ever read and also the funniest. A Champagne magnum of intrigue and wit, this book sparkles from beginning to end." —Anne Fortier, bestselling author of Juliet

In Santa's Book Bag -The Art Lover's Stocking

For centuries, great artists have been drawn together in friendship and in love. In Artists in Love, curator and writer Veronica Kavass delves into the passionate and creative underpinnings of the art world's most provocative romances. From Picasso and Francoise Gilot to Lee Miler and Man Ray to Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne, Kavass' graceful and daring text provides a generous glimpse into the inspiring and sometimes tempestuous relationships between celebrated artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

The cover alone makes it worth giving to the art lover in your life. Click here for a wonderful article about the book and slide show about the artists couples.

 

Buy it here!

 

 

The couples include:

Robert & Sonia Delaunay
Alfred Stieglitz & Georgia O’Keeffe
Jean Arp & Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Anni & Josef Albers
Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera
Lee Miller & Man Ray
Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight
Barbara Hepworth & Ben Nicholson
Elaine & Willem de Kooning
Pablo Picasso & Françoise Gilot
Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner
Dorothea Tanning & Max Ernst
Nancy Spero & Leon Golub
Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Motherwell & Helen Frankenthaler
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Bernd & Hilla Becher
Eva Hesse & Tom Doyle
Charles and Ray Eames
Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy
Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne
Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt
Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely
Marina Abramović & Ulay
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Bruce Nauman & Susan Rothenberg
David McDermott and Peter McGough