michelle.m.manus

Oct 02 2020

September Reading Roundup

Welcome to the first official Reading Roundup! It’s exactly what it sounds like. I herd all of the books I read this month into a corral and rate them on things like attractiveness, form, substance, and generally just how fun they were to hang out with.

I’ll be honest, I don’t like to say mean things about books pretty much ever. If I read a book and have nothing nice to say about it/wouldn’t recommend it to others, I just won’t put it on here. Lying by omission isn’t really lying, right?

OMG, so it’s been twelve years since we got a new Watcher novel, and I couldn’t have been more excited or pleased with the book. If you haven’t read the first five, they’re all connected but can be read independently, so you don’t need to go back and read them if you don’t want to. But I mean, obviously, you will want to after you read this one. . .

By happy coincidence, I reread the series about a year or so ago because they got re-released with shiny new covers, and I wanted the shiny new covers, and of course I couldn’t then not read them.

Delivering on the series’ standing promise of broody dark warriors who don’t think they’re good enough for the witch they’re sworn to protect, I give Finder a solid A+ for Saintcrow’s return to this world.

Caleb is adorably dense, as most Watchers are, and his Witch Jorie has a lot to do, tracking down something Dark that is stealing children in her town. Saintcrow’s flawless writing makes it a delight to follow along with these two as they bumble their way to finally getting together, and take down some evil while they’re at it.

Perfect for snuggling up with late in the evening. Best taken with a cup of tea.

Novella number two in the Rogue Queen series. The books definitely need to be read in order, so if you’re interested, start with The Queen’s Gambit. The main character, Samara, is an excellent addition to the tough-as-nails, takes-no-shit character we all love to love.

Space court intrigue! A hot emperor whose brother may or may not be trying to kill him! One rogue queen who promised to sort out said emperor’s mess for him!

The nice thing about novellas is everything clips along at a fast pace, so if you’re looking for quick, action-packed reads, look no further.

Pairs well with a whiskey-soda.

Okay, how have I not read Courtney Milan before!? Admittedly, I don’t read a lot of books that don’t have magic in them, but I do dabble, and Courtney’s been on my list to try for a while now. When I saw the phenomenal value on her Brothers Sinister series (seriously, $9.99 at the time I bought it for an ebook box set of three novellas and four full novels is crazy), I decided to just go all in.

I’ve only read the first novella, The Governess Affair, and the first book, The Duchess War, but I am beyond hooked. Courtney just has a way with transmitting the characters’ emotions, and really making you feel what they’re going through, to a level I haven’t read in a really long time.

The relationships themselves are also refreshingly realistic – no one is perfect, and I love them all the more for it. Minnie in The Duchess Affair is so freaking smart and I love how much Robert adores her for it. Can’t wait to update you all next month on the rest of the set.

Pairs well with winter nights, cozy socks, and a nice red wine.

I know what you’re thinking: “But Michelle, Emerald Blaze released in August and you claim to be a rabid Ilona Andrews fan, didn’t you read the book in August?”

The answer is yes, of course I read it in August, on release day, and went to work on two hours of sleep the next day. It makes September’s list because of the obligatory reread via audiobook that all of Ilona Andrews’ books are subject to.

If you’re new to the books, you will want to at least read Sapphire Flames before this book, in order to understand what’s happening. Better yet go back and read the original Hidden Legacy trilogy, but Sapphire Flames will get you what you need to know if you’re not all-in yet.

Dude, I knew Catalina was totally brilliant and all, but THAT SCENE you will get to at the novel’s climax really does her justice. And Alessandro—dear, sweet, handsome, wonderful Alessandro—also performs some killer high-level magic that just thinking about the implications of with regards to magical fights in this universe has my head spinning.

As happens every time I finish an Ilona Andrews novel, I suspect I may die of sheer want before the next one releases. Pairs well with. . . everything. Definitely pairs well with everything.

Sep 13 2020

On Covers, The Excitement Of

So by now you’ve probably noticed the cover for my first book is obnoxiously splashed all over the website (look left! Look right!). This is because I am so very, very excited to have it.

When I first decided to indie publish, it seemed like there were a thousand things to learn. On the one hand, the process is relatively simple: write book, edit book, get cover, upload book to retailers, sell book. On the other hand, there is a lot of hidden work that goes into all of that.

Writing the book is hard enough. Then there’s the self-edit. Then there’s finding an editor(s) you will mesh well with, working with their schedule, etc, all while dealing with the typical crippling self-doubt that no one will like what you’ve written and you will have invested a lot of time and money into something that won’t work out.

If you’re going to format the book yourself, there’s learning that as well, and then there’s the marketing side of things which involves, at the very least, building a website. To a tech-luddite such as myself, this website has been a giant sinkhole for my time. It’s taken me hours and hours to do what someone else probably could have done in one or two, but I’m one of those people who has to be able to do everything themselves, usually to the detriment of my sanity. (I literally cooked all the food for my own wedding and had to ask my best friend to delegate tasks for me because I knew I couldn’t do everything myself but also couldn’t stop).

All of which is to say I was getting a little worn-down and feeling like I wasn’t really making any progress toward my goal of getting my first book out there. I knew it wasn’t true, but I was in the waiting stage (the editor’s schedule doesn’t open up for a month or so), and there wasn’t anything more I could do except keep writing the next book.

So I decided to go ahead and order the cover. At this point I was so stressed out that when I had to fill out the questionnaire form asking what I wanted in a cover my mind went entirely blank and the only words that came to mind were: Nice? Pretty? I didn’t know what I wanted, I just wanted a good cover I could be proud of.

Somehow, I threw together answers to the questionnaire, overflowing with numerous apologies to the designer unfortunate enough to be handed the mess, fully expecting to get a reply something along the lines of, “What do you expect us to do with this?”

Instead, I got the cover you see one week later, and it was everything I didn’t know I wanted. I’ve never really understood when authors talked about wanting to cry when they saw their first book cover. You guys, I get it now. I stared at it pretty much all day. Like, literally, I took out my phone every half an hour at work to just look at it. Having this one, tangible thing go right relieved so much pressure, and now whenever I get stressed out I just pull it up and look at it.

Maybe one day the thrill will wear off. I hope not.

Sep 10 2020

The Importance of Creatives

I’ve always made up stories. As soon as I was old enough, I started writing them down and never stopped. I also never thought of it as something I could quit my day job for, so writing was always a back-burner activity. I wrote in my spare time, sent out queries and waited for rejections, knowing that even if I did get picked up by an agent, it likely wouldn’t mean a full-time career.

Because I didn’t feel writing could be a full-time career for me, I felt guilty for the amount of time I spent on it and other creative pursuits—reading fiction, playing games, or watching movies. I felt pressured to do more “worthwhile” things with my time, and a lot of that pressure came from myself. If someone looked at my life I wanted to be able to point to something other than a stack of unpublished manuscripts and say, “See, look, I accomplished things. I’m worth something.” So I gave the majority of my time to other things – learning skills for my career, trying my hand at various home renovation projects, trying to learn another language, etc. I enjoyed all of those things, and they all had value, but they weren’t where my heart was.

Even after I met my husband, who has had more faith in my writing than I ever did, I still didn’t have that sense of self-worth. I’m the type of person who can manage to feel guilty over someone else’s belief in me, and the more positive he was about what I wrote, the guiltier I felt that I still hadn’t accomplished something with it. Though I knew I would never quit writing, because I simply wasn’t capable of quitting for more than a week or two, I had begun to think it held no intrinsic value. I wasn’t writing the next great American novel. My books weren’t going to solve any of the world’s problems.

So, what does all of this have to do with creative importance? Well, though a pandemic certainly is not the way I would have chosen to recognize the value of creative work, that’s exactly what it made me do. I was waiting on three book releases (Jessie Mihalik’s Chaos Reigning, Skyla Dawn Cameron’s Blood Ties, and Ilona Andrews’ Emerald Blaze), and when each of them came out despite everything going on, it was absolutely amazing because, just for a moment, I could disappear into another world so completely that I could forget the trash fire burning around me. I could find strength in each of the characters and take a little bit of that strength back with me into the real world.

The same thing happened with music and movies. Taylor Swift’s surprise album Folklore had me on a high for two weeks straight. Then The Killers released Imploding the Mirage. The fan remake of The Princess Bride came out, and then Bill and Ted Face the Music released. Each of these things kept me from falling too far down the Pandemic Despair Garbage Chute and reminded me that people are still out there creating things.

I know the same thing has happened for so many people in my life. I’ve lost track of the number of people I know re-watching The Office because it makes them happy in what otherwise seems like a very bleak time. Everyone I know is reading, watching, playing, and listening more than ever before because it lifts them up and makes them feel connected to humanity during a time when it is otherwise difficult to feel connected to anything, and that is the importance of creatives, not just during this pandemic but all the time.

Art, in all of its various incarnations, reaches people in a way few other things can, and realizing this has allowed me to stop feeling guilty for the time I spend on my own craft. Even if I never quit my day job. So if you are a creative, in whatever form that may take, then know that what you do has value. Keep going. Even if you never share it with anyone else, even if it’s just for you, that has its own value.

On a parting note, as Bill and Ted recently reminded me, “Be excellent to each other.”