Author: marianlthorpe

Not content with two careers as a research scientist and an educator, Marian L Thorpe decided to go back to what she’d always wanted to do and be a writer. Author of the alternative world medieval series Empire’s Legacy, Marian also has published short stories and poetry. Her life-long interest in Roman and post-Roman European history informs her novels, while her avocations of landscape archaeology and birding provide background to her settings. As well as writing and editing professionally, Marian oversees Arboretum Press, a small publishing imprint run as a collective. Marian is currently writing Empire's Heir, the sixth title in the Empire's Legacy series.

Upcoming Sequel to Chained by Susanne Valenti: Linked

In support of a fellow indie young-adult writer, here’s information on Susanne Valenti’s upcoming sequel to Chained.Linked cover

In a world she never knew existed, Maya is coming to terms with how much her life has changed. Danger lurks around every corner, nothing is as she expects and she’s never felt so alive. But the choices she makes could change everything and jeopardise the things she cherishes most. There is so much to learn and so much to love but her heart is pulling her back. The Guardians are hiding in the shadow cast by their Wall, concealing the truth from the people inside. It’s a shadow that darkens her happiness and she can’t stop fighting until the truth comes to light. It would be easier to walk away but Maya has never run from anything and she’s not about to start now.

The Amazon link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B015NDMX3U/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb_uk-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/SusanneValenti
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Valenti.Susanne

A Review of Chained by Susanne Valenti

Chained, by Susanne Valenti

A fast-paced, well-plotted young-adult dystopian novel by first-time author Susanne Valenti, Chained is concerned with the familiar theme of teenage protagonists challenging the structures and tenets of their society in a post-apocalyptic world. While this theme is the basis for most dystopian novels, the characters of and the story told in Chained are original enough to keep readers interested. Before I write anything else, let me say this: Chained is worthy of a read if young adult dystopian fiction is a genre of choice. Fans of the Divergent series, The Hunger Games series, and similar works should enjoy this book and look forward to the sequel.

Now, for a few niggles.

The society against which Maya, the heroine, and her companions rebel is imagined and described in enough detail to give the reader a sense of how this world works. The society into which she escapes is less well realized, perhaps because it reflects, more or less, current Western society, and therefore is supposed to be already familiar to the reader. I found I had questions about the functioning of the society outside of the city from which Maya and her companions flee which were not answered in the narrative.

Maya’s thoughts and reactions to situations were not always made clear, and at times she appeared to observe what was happening to her and narrate rather than respond. In one or two cases – especially after a scene in which she is brutally assaulted – her reactions did not to me ring true. Overall, though, this does not impede the action of the narrative, and should not be a barrier to enjoying the the story.

A few production issues were mildly irritating, and perhaps the manuscript could have benefited from one final copy-edit. The author’s use of ‘alright’ rather than ‘all right’; the contraction of ‘going to’ to ‘gunna’ rather than the more familiar ‘gonna’; inconsistent capitalization of City in “Harbour City”, and an unconventional use of quotation marks in multi-paragraph dialogue were all distractions for me, pulling my focus away from the writing – which overall is effective – when they occurred.

But these are niggles only. Let me repeat that Chained, overall, is a well-told story, and I will be reading the sequel when it comes out. My overall rating for Chained? 3 ½ stars out of 5.

Chained by Susanne Valenti is available as an e-book from Amazon.

This is an independent review of a purchased book. The review was not sought by the author nor written for any benefit. The opinions stated here are mine alone.

Two Sonnets

Nassagaweya Township is where I live. Still mostly rural, it is dominated by rock and swamp and small fields, and was first settled in the early-to-mid 1800s. The lives and labour of those first settlers, who cleared huge tracts of hardwood and white pine, dragged enormous boulders to build boundary walls, and quarried limestone for rock and lime, were in part behind these two sonnets.

Nassagaweya 1: Winter Deer

Dividing wood and tangled swamp the road

Cuts survey-straight, a line drawn cleanly on

The map, unlike the trail that six deer followed

Through brush and cattail, three pairs of doe and fawn.

Their path ran crooked, keeping to high ground

Between the clumps of osier, brilliant red

Against the morning’s snow. A final bound

Brings the first doe to the road: the others, led

By her, follow, and in silent file cross

This barren space, alert, deliberate,

Unhurried; not admitting any loss

Of path or cover, valiance animate.

No survey stake or draftsman’s pen rules here:

Red osier, swamp, and wood belong to deer.

Nassagaweya 2: Rock and Water

Rock and water underlie this township,

But neither deeply; it’s rarely more than

A few feet to the rock, and every dip

Of land’s a swamp. A challenge to a man,

To try to farm this, but his chance to make

A life is here. So fields are cleared and streams

Diverted; roads are built. But rock can break

Both ploughshares and spirit: too many dreams

Of harvest awake to springtime flood

And summer drought; the skin of soil above

The limestone now like rock itself; now mud.

His sons say there’s not enough here, to love

Or prosper on: they answer other calls

As trees surround the crumbling boulder walls.

Divided Desires

I often go walking when I’m working out plot points, conflicts, or scenes, and today was no exception.  I’m reaching a fairly pivotal plot point in Empire’s Hostage, and I needed to think about it.  However, I’m also house-and-cat sitting for my sister this week, and so am close to the birding mecca of Point Pelee National Park.  And those of you who’ve read my bio on various sites know I’m also a birder.

It’s fall, not the intense migration of spring with birds (and birders) in hordes.  So I figured I could walk, look at a few birds and think about plot at the same time. Ha!  Warblers everywhere.  Thrushes everywhere.  Sparrows everywhere and all the Eastern Phoebes in the world, it seemed.  I’d walk a few paces, thinking… “if Lena does this, how will Cillian react?”  and would just start formulating a scene and ‘What’s that?  A black-throated green?  Yes, juvenile male….ok, where was I?  Cillian doesn’t like…..Now what?  Kinglet…which one…golden-crowned, should be a ruby-crowned in this bunch somewhere…”

This went on for my entire two hour walk. I can’t turn my birding brain off; it’s just not possible. I wonder if Margaret Atwood has this problem?  (Canadian writer extraordinaire and also a birder, in case you’re unsure.)

However, at the end of the two hours, I had seen a ruby-crowned kinglet along with a lot of other birds, and had more or less worked out the next couple of scenes, albeit in a very fragmented way. So once I’ve got today’s records entered in e-bird, I’ll go and write for a couple of hours. Away from the window and the bird feeders.

Supporting a fellow YA Author: “Tomorrow my book is out… Let’s party”

Here’s a promotion for a fellow YA writer whose book is out tomorrow!

susannevalenti's avatarSusanne Valenti


This is an invitation to all of you to attend my book launch party tomorrow!

Throughout the day I’ll be online to chat with you all about the book and anything else you’d like to discuss! There will be extracts and character profiles going up throughout the day here on my blog and over at the event on my Facebook page too so come on over and join me ☺️ here

I’ll also be hosting a competition to win an advanced e-copy of the first novella in the series.


So are you in? 😊xoxo

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And now for something completely different…

Here’s a short story I wrote a number of years ago for my husband’s birthday party – his birthday is just a couple of days before Hallowe’en, so every few years we do a costume party with a theme.  This particular year it was horror stories.   You can read it on Wattpad  or on my website.

Spider

A review of Jazz, by Cristian Mihai

One of the gifts of retirement is more time to read, and to read genres, authors, and works I may never have chosen before. I’m going to try to focus on works by my indie author compatriots, although not exclusively.  This will be an occasional series of posts – I’m not going to promise a schedule I can’t keep to!  But here’s the first review.

Jazz, by Cristian Mihai (2012)

Jazz is a Fitzgerald-esque novella by indie writer Cristian Mihai, set in New York and Paris. Mihai’s writing invokes both a strong sense of place and creates a mood of film noir, of smoky jazz bars and rainy nights on city streets.

Focused on the unrequited love of the narrator, Chris, for the beautiful, cryptic Amber, the novella’s title sets both the mood and the tempo; all through it I kept hearing Charlie Parker as the soundtrack. Like a piece by the great Bird, when it was finished, I was left with a feeling of melancholy, and of knowing there were more parts to the whole than I had been able to comprehend the first time through. There is nothing new in this story – rather it is a story very very old – but the way it is told makes it well worth reading.

There are occasional and minor mis-steps in the choice of words or sentence structure, but overall they do not diminish this short work. The e-book is available from Amazon and Smashwords for about the price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and it would be the perfect accompaniment to a good espresso on a wet afternoon. Strongly recommended.

This is an independent review, not sought by the author nor written for any benefit. The opinions stated here are mine alone.

Routines and Frustrations

It can take a long time to get back into a routine, especially when that routine is self-directed.

Since my holiday earlier in September I’m having difficulty getting back into many of my routines. I’m not writing regularly, exercising regularly, or even eating as well as I was. Now I’m away from home again, staying at my sister’s house for a while, keeping her cats company for a few days of the three weeks she and her husband are in India playing in the World Bridge Championships. (I can’t even play euchre, but the cats don’t care about that. They’re just happy to have a warm body to sleep with again, rather than just the teenager from across the street who feeds them every day.)

I’m also feeling some of the frustration all writers feel unless their book is a best-seller. While some of of my friends and family have read my work (and thank you all) others haven’t. Which is fine, too – the ones that are annoying me are those who haven’t even mentioned it to me, ever, even though they know it’s been published and a second book is in the works. I can’t work out if they are too self-centred to say ‘hey, that’s great, well done’, jealous, or, oblivious. I shouldn’t let it bother me, but sometimes it does.

I’m going to take this time – four days on my own – to re-focus, remembering why I do what I do, whether it is the writing, walking or what I choose to eat or not to eat. It’s interesting for me to observe that I am still quite easily swayed by external influences (and my own inertia) – I’m not quite as self-actualized as I thought (or at least hoped) I was. An opportunity for growth.

So I’m off for a walk…always the best thing I can do when things just aren’t right.