Wednesday, March 22, 2006

What I've just finished reading...

Shadow Touch by Marjorie M. Liu (Love Spell, 2006)

Loved it! This is the second book in the Dirk & Steele series, the first being Tiger Eye. I had (much to my shame) Tiger Eye in my TBR pile for quite some time before I plucked it out to read at the weekend. Well, I read it in one sitting and was quite fortunate in that book two had already arrived so I was able to dive straight in to that one and I finished it today.

I enjoyed Tiger Eye, but Shadow Touch was even better.

Artur Loginov works for the Dirk & Steele Detective Agency. He has the ability to touch people and see into the heart of them, and it's a talent that he now uses to help others. Elena Baxter can heal with her hands, encouraging ailing bodies to heal themselves. Both Elena and Artur are kidnapped by an organisation that wants to use them, hurt them for their talents; and the depiction of the villains is so chilling and disturbing that you can really feel how evil they are. No cardboard cutout villains here just three dimensional sociopaths. (I wouldn't want to meet any of them on a sunny day, let alone on a dark night!)

Elena & Artur meet in captivity, and through a series of events have to win through and save the day. It was a great read, I found myself rooting for Elena & Artur throughout and the ending was satisfying too (although now I have to wait until December '06 for book three! )

Reviews here, here and Marjorie's website here

Not a bad evening

Well, I wrote 3015 words of my YA novel this evening - basically completing chapter 1. Very rough draft - but I'm not going to edit anything until I get to the end.

Tomorrow I want to outline a couple of short SFRs. I'll start off with one-line scenes and then build on them, expanding them a bit before I start writing. I also want, at some point, to completely scrap my Raven's story and start completely from scratch from the mythology all the way up to the outline.

I also need to get up to date with the 2YN stuff as I'm one session behind at the moment, but that's coming together too, which is cool.

I have to say that the writing went well tonight, and I didn't miss TV or reading at all (I read at luchtime and I finished the book I was reading so that may have had something to do with it!)

Well, off to bed as the fire is no longer roaring (solid fuel heating - don't you just love it? Are you sure this is the 21st century?)