Just Reviewed Two Christmas Romances at SBR
Folks, it’s not every day that I get to review a Christmas-themed romance, much less two of them. Yet that’s exactly what I just did over at Shiny Book Review (SBR), so go take a gander here.
To give you a bit more information about the two books, the first is ‘TWAS THE NIGHT AFTER CHRISTMAS by Sabrina Jeffries. This is a romance set in Regency-era England between two flawed but engaging humans, Pierce, an Earl, and Mrs. Camilla Stuart, a respectable widow with a young son. The set-up is interesting, the romance convinced, yet some of the ending (which I can’t really talk about much or I’ll spoil your reading pleasure) didn’t quite scan to me.
Even so, it was a diverting read and I’ll gladly read more of Ms. Jeffries in the future.
The second book is WHAT HAPPENS AT CHRISTMAS by Victoria Alexander. This is a romance set in Victorian-era England between Camille, Lady Lydingham, and the “man who got away,” Grayson Elliot. Both are now older, wiser, and available, yet there’s a great many hoops to jump over, not the least of which is Camille’s impending engagement between herself and Prince Nikolai of the Principality of Greater Avalonia.
Ms. Alexander’s book is one that’s difficult for any reviewer to do justice because it’s a flat-out farce. Yet I did my best because I really enjoyed this book, mostly because it’s extremely funny.
At any rate, please go read my review, then go take a gander at the books.
Happy holidays to all!
Suzy Favor Hamilton Outed as Vegas Call Girl
This afternoon (December 20, 2012 to be exact), news broke that Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton — one of the biggest female sports stars to ever come out of Wisconsin — has admitted to working as a high-priced call girl for a shady Las Vegas outfit called Haley Heston’s Private Collection.
Here’s a link to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s story and a relevant quote:
Suzy Favor Hamilton, a three-time Olympian who capitalized on her wholesome image as an elite runner, mother and wife to land lucrative endorsement deals and motivational speaking engagements, has admitted to leading a double life for the last year as a high-priced call girl.
In a stunning confessional via her Twitter account, following a story published on thesmokinggun.com, Favor Hamilton wrote that she was drawn to escorting “in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life.”
The 44-year-old Favor Hamilton, a Stevens Point native and former University of Wisconsin track star, admitted to working as “Kelly Lundy” with Haley Heston’s Private Collection, one of Las Vegas’ premier escort services, in the thesmokinggun.com story.
“I do not expect people to understand,” she wrote on her Twitter account. “But the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression.
“I have been seeking the help of a psychologist for the past few weeks and will continue to do so after I have put things together.”
What troubles me here is not just that Favor Hamilton is a married woman with a seven-year-old child, though that’s bad enough.
Nope. What bugs me is that Favor Hamilton is quoted as admitting that her husband “tried to get (her) to stop” and that he “wasn’t supportive of (her) need to do this at all.”
Which, mind you, is the way most husbands are likely to behave when it comes to thinking about their spouse being a paid escort who gave away the “full girlfriend experience” and was rated quite highly by The Erotic Review, which is called by the Smoking Gun article that the Journal-Sentinel references as “the Zagat guide of the escort business.”
So it seems that Suzy Favor Hamilton has more than a few problems here — she’s been working as an escort when she’s not destitute (her husband is employed, she owns a realty firm and they live in a $600,000 home), she’s been fighting depression for the past year or more and if her marriage isn’t in trouble because of all this, she must have the most supportive husband in the history of the universe.
While I have never understood the need for men or women to go outside their marriages, I do know that not everyone is meant to be monogamous. So for those people who have admitted open marriages and the like, I made up my mind a long time ago not to judge them even though I freely admit that I don’t get it.
So the sex part of the equation isn’t what is so very troublesome, even though I don’t really understand what would drive a high-powered woman like Favor Hamilton to go outside her marriage and have a number of risky sexual encounters for money.
It’s the lack of trust issue that bothers me more.
Favor Hamilton is someone who’s had a squeaky clean image. She’s had endorsement deals with Disney, various running firms, has been a model in more ways than one and has been someone female runners have looked up to for the past twenty years or more in Wisconsin and much of the Midwest.
So apparently, in order for her to somehow feel better about herself, she had to throw this all away and construct an alter ego of “Kelly” the escort. Who was willing to do just about anything if the price was right because she still had the body and panache and knew how to speak the high-powered language of well-heeled men in order to better separate them from their money.
Why this intelligent, beautiful woman couldn’t find herself in some other way, I just don’t know. Why would she would risk her career for this, much less her marriage? Why would she ever entertain such a thing, considering that it’s well-known that women who become prostitutes (the not-so-nice name for “call girls”) rarely retain custody of their children?
And what about the IRS audit that has to be on the horizon? Because it would be ridiculous to assume that she’s declared all of the money she’s made as a $600-per-hour escort on her tax forms.
All of this happened because Favor Hamilton apparently enjoys risky sex in extremely expensive hotel rooms with men she doesn’t really know.
This seems so off-the-wall, so uncharacteristic, and so utterly absurd that I feel like I’ve fallen into a parallel universe.
Yet it’s the truth.
Suzy Favor Hamilton, runner and Olympian, mother and realty owner, is also a call girl.
What a terribly sad thing to have happen . . . and she did it to herself.
Bad Weather Plus Migraine Equals . . . Not Much
Many of you have heard that most of Wisconsin is under a blizzard warning. Southeastern Wisconsin hasn’t been hit that hard thus far, but we’ve had a great deal of rain in the past sixteen to eighteen hours . . . and now, it’s turned to snow.
Before the weather turned bad, I was able to get a great deal of editing done for a very big project I’ve been working on for a few months. I’m now over 3/4 of the way through it, and it looks likely that I’ll be able to turn it in soon.
The weather shouldn’t affect me providing the power stays on, of course. But one of the problems I have with huge weather systems is that they tend to set off a very bad headache, and that’s what I’m dealing with right now.
So everything that I’d hoped to do today — save my visit to the Asthma Clinic, which was accomplished — is likely to go by the boards, at least until I’ve had some decent rest.
I should be fine tomorrow (when I have internship hours scheduled), providing I’m sensible tonight and rest.
So I’m going to be sensible, stay home out of the nasty weather, and just do the best I can.
As for anyone else in Wisconsin, I hope they’ll be sensible, too — or at least be smart.
See you all tomorrow, when I should be able to get at least one book review up over at SBR. (I had hopes to get three up this weekend; now that looks most unlikely. Boo, hiss to that!)
Sandy Hook Massacre: Why did this happen?
Ever since the news broke last Friday morning about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I’ve been struggling to find the words to describe how upset I am, and I just haven’t been able to find them.
I want to say something, anything, that might give some comfort to the victims’ families . . . but I have drawn a complete blank.
Because how can anything — anything at all — comfort the parents of the twenty innocent youngsters who lost their lives?
And how can anything comfort the loved ones of the six courageous and heroic adults — including the school’s principal, the school’s psychologist, and several teachers — who gave their lives so the lives of innocent children may be spared?
This is the third time in the past six months that we in the United States of America have had to confront a mass shooting. First, there was the shooting in Aurora, Colorado in July. Next, there was the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in August.
And now, this past Friday on December 14, we had in some senses the worst killing of all — the killing of extremely young children (none older than seven). Along with six of the adults who were there to teach, protect, guide and nurture them. And the shooter’s mother.
Here’s a link that will take you to a list of most of the victims, and give a bit of biographical information about them:
After reading that, the only question I had left is this: when will the killing end?
Because it just does not seem right to have incident after incident where nothing gets done. It just does not seem right, or ethical, or just, or anything that anyone with any brains and sense should ever want to see.
Some have already politicized this latest event. These who’ve done so basically fall into two camps. One camp is screaming at the top of their voices, “Hands off our guns!” Which does not seem sensible, especially as the shooter’s mother had guns in the house (at least four) and regularly took her troubled young son to the shooting range with her.
The other camp wants gun control now, thank you, and has seized on this terrible thing as a way to get what they want in a way to perhaps bring about a good thing from such a monstrously awful event.
I have sympathy for the latter position, and almost none for the former (not in this context, assuredly). Yet I think the answer lies in better mental health treatment, for one . . . and getting rid of guns won’t solve that part of the problem one bit.
Plus, some of the pro-gun lobby’s arguments are correct.
If someone wants to kill and can’t get a gun, he will use a knife. (As did a man recently in China, wounding twenty-three.) Or a bow and arrow. (As did a young man on November 30 in Casper, Wyoming; he killed his father’s girlfriend, then went to his father’s place of business — a local community college — and killed his father, then killed himself.) Or bombs in a rental truck, as did Timothy McVeigh . . . or God/dess alone knows what.
But that doesn’t mean we should tamely sit by and do nothing, not after we’ve just seen twenty-seven people killed for no good reason.
Most especially when twenty of them were seven years of age or less.
I do not wish to play politics with such a tragic thing as twenty-six innocent people dying in, of all places, an elementary school. Just because they were there to either teach children, nurture children, or learn something should not have been enough to sign their death warrants.
But something absolutely must be done. Because we cannot allow innocent children to be killed for no reason whatsoever.
I normally have sympathy for the mentally ill, even severely mentally ill types like it sounds like the latest shooter, Adam Lanza, probably was. (And I’m decidedly not talking about his Asperger’s Syndrome; I’m talking about the behavioral issues he’d have likely had whether he had AS or not.) But in this case, I can find no mercy in my heart for him — far less mercy than one of the parents of the victims, Robbie Parker, who’s already expressed sympathy for the surviving family members of Adam Lanza.
Mr. Parker is a far better person than I.
My focus is elsewhere, because I just do not understand why any responsible parent, such as Nancy Lanza has been described, would ever allow a troubled young man like her son to get a hand on any of her guns.
Much less teach him to shoot them herself, as it appears she did.
As it stands, Adam Lanza should never have had access to his mother’s guns. He should never have been able to stockpile so much ammunition, either. And I absolutely cannot comprehend why on Earth he’d wish to take the lives of twenty children who’d never done anything to him — could never have done anything to him — nor the lives of six innocent adults plus the life of his mother, either.
But he did have access. And he did do these horrible things, though it’s possible that the six adults kept him from killing even more innocents — I’d like to think so, anyway.
We must do something to prevent the Adam Lanzas of the world from doing these horrific things, which is we must start with mental health treatment. We won’t be able to prevent all of the possible violence, no.
But we may be able to prevent some.
And we assuredly will change the lives of at least some people for the better if we make sure that health care spending — particularly on mental health — becomes a priority in this country.
I’m tired of doing nothing to stop these random killings. And I’m incensed that it’s now led to this — twenty-six people dying, in of all places, an elementary school.
So, when will the killings end?
I don’t know.
But I do know we must try to put a stop to them. Because this is intolerable.
——–
Edited to change title (so more people can find this blog post), and to add a link to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough’s stirring soliloquy about the terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and why we must have at least some better control over our guns in order to protect the most vulnerable among us — our children.
Just Reviewed Dave Freer’s “The Steam Mole” at SBR
Folks, if you’ve been looking for a thrilling YA action-adventure set in an alternate universe where the science has been meticulously worked out, well, search no more.
Such a book exists — actually, two such books exist, the first being Dave Freer’s CUTTLEFISH, and the second being THE STEAM MOLE, set in the same universe with most of the same characters but a different setting.
Hie thee hence to your local bookstore, online outlet or what-you-will, or if you’d like to read my review first, go here.
Then do yourself a favor, and buy both books.
Now, you might be asking yourself, “Barb, why are you pushing these novels so hard?”
It’s simple, really. Freer wrote two books on contract for Pyr — those two being CUTTLEFISH and THE STEAM MOLE — and now has to decide whether he’ll write another in this universe (as Freer does have other options for publication, whether it’s self-publishing or through the Naked Reader Press). My hope is that Freer will write many more books in this universe, as it seems to me there’s a great many plots that could be viable in such a milieu . . . which is why I urge you to go read my review (better yet, read both reviews, as there’s a link to my review of CUTTLEFISH included in tonight’s review), then go buy the books as fast as you can.
And, as always, enjoy!
Illness and Exhaustion . . .
. . . have kept me from my blog.
Yes, that’s the truth. I’ve been extremely tired due to the flu/sinus infection combo that I’ve been fighting, and that’s the main reason why I haven’t written a blog for several days.
The secondary reason is that a long-delayed edit has finally been completed for one of my private customers. (I have two others in train for a different entity.) I’ll be reading it over momentarily to catch anything else noteworthy, then will put this particular edit to bed.
Tomorrow, somehow, I plan to write a book review over at Shiny Book Review (SBR). I have read several books, but the one I am reasonably sure I’m going to review (unless my mind wholly fails me) is Dave Freer’s STEAM MOLE, a YA action-adventure SF story set in an alternate universe with just a hint of romance to spice up the mix.
Next week, my reviews will include Marie Lu’s LEGEND, at least one of K.E. Kimbriel’s three novels, and possibly the GALACTIC CREATURES anthology as well, all providing that my health continues to improve a mite and that I’m able to have enough strength to order my thoughts in a coherent manner. (Sometimes, writing a book review — writing anything — is a lot tougher than it looks.) Other books that should be reviewed by the end of the year are Red Tash’s TROLL OR DERBY (another long-delayed review), Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s DRAGON SHIP (I call this the “anti-romance”) and Paul Dillon’s THE MAGIC IN THE RECEIVER — another book that would’ve been reviewed by now if not for my illness gumming up the works.
Plus, there are a few Christmas romances by Sabrina Jeffries and Victoria Alexander that I plan to write a “2-for-1 special” for on the Saturday before the big day, Sherry Thomas’s TEMPTING THE BRIDE (which will be factored in somehow in the next few weeks) and last but not least is Sean Williams’s exhaustively researched and extremely dystopian THE CROOKED LETTER, another long-delayed review.
And I might squeeze another piece of nonfiction in there, too, just to keep everyone on their toes.
Anyway, that’s all for now . . . I need to get back to my editing, or at least make the attempt. (Whichever.)
Barb Caffrey's Blog 