Twice Tempted by Jeaniene Frost

**Spoilage**

3.78 Stars. A very high 3.78 stars.

As much as I wanted to give this 2 stars, I just can't. No matter how little I like a plot she does, which characters she decided to fuck over or tweak their personality, or which one she ultimately decides to kill give a spin-off series to, this woman is a PHENOMENAL writer. She obviously cares about what she sells or else we'd be getting a new Night Huntress book every six-nine months. And that, above book sales, book signings, appearances, movie deals and all that shit lots of other "authors" are doing is what I respect and love the most.

It is no secret that the Night Huntress series isn't my favorite of all time. Sometimes the plot....eh. I just don't always get it but her characters - I always love.

That being said, I will repeat an earlier opinion of mine and say I wish she would have just left Vlad in Night Huntress. Sometimes. Yes, even Dracula needs love but he just felt better as a supporting role in NH. He was SO badass - still is, but I just don't like him in this role of savior and protector as much as he is in both the Night Prince books. And Leila and her family are always needing protecting. I just...more abduction, Frost? Really? I thought we were done with that. I want us to be done with that. I NEED us to be done with that.

Anysnooch, Leila has never been my favorite female. But then again, neither was Kira at first and I really grew to love her. But no, Leila still hasn't grown on me completely and I think that's partly because of her waffle-like personality. One minute she's balls to the wall bossing around the scariest motherfucker in the world, and the next she's crying because he won't tell her he loved her. I mean, part of it is understandable but c'mon dude. You're having sex with Dracula. You had to know it wasn't gonna be all lollipops and rainbows and he wasn't going to fawn all over you, telling you he loves you every second of every day.

For that, you might want to go see Spade. He's in the spin-off series right before yours. Book one. Now, don't dawdle visiting hours are almost up.

A few things really ground my gears for this book. Like, how Leila actually believed Vlad would try and kill her after she refused his offer to turn her in front of his line. Please. Just please, human you are inconsequential. Even with your business hand flowing full of electricity.

And how obvious it was that the vamper from the circus bombing was the bad guy/bitch/culprit behind the attack and Leila conveniently forgets to mention she saw her at the scene of the crime. Throughout the entire book, we read about this "thick brown/chestnut hair" on this vampire whose face she can't see and when it really counts, she never connects the two.

WHAT THE FUCKETY FUCK?!?!

It was just too obvious to the readers. I feel that if Frost was going to give us hints about the big bad, they should have been more subtle and more infrequent. Because she made her MC look dumb as a box of rocks. And since she hangs around vampers for the better part of her life, one would expect her to be a wee bit smarter.

I expected her to somehow become a vampire, so I wont bother putting spoiler brackets around this. We all knew she'd be Vlad's HEA and being human, she has an expiration date so...yeah. She had two options : Ghoul or vamper. Not that hard to figure out.

One Two Three more things I didn't like:

One: The fact that Vlad is supposed to be this big imposing vampire and he has all these traitors among his own people. Nope. I don't accept it.

Two: Vlad really jumped up the overprotective/borderline abusive vampire ass for this book. Waaay too much. Don't threaten to lock me up for using my own abilities because you don't like it. So what I hemorrhage from my facial orifices like I've contracted Ebola and have actually died once from it. Don't get your fangs in a snit.




Three: This Sziglayi or whatevaaa is name is, is still a factor. No! I'm over it and him. This is basically, book one with some stranger bitch using magic, an explosion, a wedding and a hell of a lot less sex between Vlad and Leila.  We're still being kidnapped and used for our seeing abilities, we're still crying cause Vlad won't tell us he loves us, We're still impaling folks - nothing has changed! How many books is she trying to squeeze out of this? I don't want to read the same book three-five times. It's exhausting.

Aye dios.

Self-Publishing? Yay or Nay?

I see an abundance of self-published/Indie authors all over my timeline when I'm on facebook. Yes, on my personal facebook I literally go around "Liking" several dozen Indie Authors' pages, looking their published pieces up on google, Goodreads, Amazon - anywhere people talk about them - to see what they write about, how many people read them, how popular they are, what people say in their reviews of their books; ya know, shit like that. I think that, as an aspiring author and avid reader, one can never be too informed about what's hot on the market and what people are flocking to in their reading tastes. If an Indie author's book has hit the NYT's or USA Today's Bestseller lists, I damn well need to know who they are, what they write and how much they charge for an e-book so I can read that shit asap.

I've also read a blog post very recently by Suzie Townsend, a literary agent at New Leaf, and it reminded me of several things:

1. The conversation I had with my friend about self-publishing.
2. I have too many indie books on my kindle that I have not read and need to get to like, ASAP. And
3. Why I don't self publish.

Yes, I have a finished MS and yes, I've thought about self-publishing it several times.

The problem is that I don't want to.

So, the convo with my friend. She's SUPA talented; writes thee most AMAZEBALLS Spoken Word/Slam Poetry that I've ever had the honor of hearing. She's unpublished but prefers it that way; her work really is best heard and not read. The emotion isn't really conveyed on paper so much as when you hear it. Anyway...

She says that there is no integrity in self-publishing. I disagreed and I still disagree. I don't see anything wrong with publishing your own work yourself. You get all the royalties, you get full and final say on what gets chopped and what gets left, you have free reign on what you want your cover to look like - the works. But you also get the negative backlash if that book doesn't sell.

Of course,  that could and does happen to those who choose to query agents and all that jazz but when you self-publish, there is nothing to fall back on. Let's say you write a full 80k+ word novel. You get your ideal cover and self-publish. You couldn't be happier with how it all turned out. But it doesn't sell like you think it will.

Okay, we've cried and moved past that. Now, we want to take it and shop it to agents and publishing houses to try something different OR you take a completely different MS and shop it. In your query you should mention your self-published book. Said agent will look it up if he/she is interested and will ask you how it sold. If it didn't sell well, it does not inspire confidence in your agent that this next MS will sell. 

OR, if you're shopping the self-pubbed one around and they take you as a client, they now have a MS that they cannot sell to a publishing house. Because if it didn't sell when you self-pubbed it, chances are a new cover, jazzed up blurb and a famous name behind it won't help it sell either. It is the SAME words, SAME story. Just in different packaging. 

Now there are some cases where self-published authors make it to the NYT's best selling list. Like Jamie McGuire, Shanora Williams and Tracey Garvis-Graves. But not everyone can or will do that when they've self-published.

Personally, I'd like to have a few manuscripts under my belt first.Get a hold on my own writing style, let it develop a bit more and just generally KNOW and recognize my work when I see it. I hope someone understands what I mean when I say that. I also want my books published by a well-known publishing house. No, not because I think my work is better than anyone else's or that I deserve it more but because I believe in my writing. I believe it can stand on it's own next to the St. Martin's Press publishings. I believe in my own ability to write great books and I will not rest until I have made someone smile with words I have written down on a piece of paper.

Like I've already said, self-publishing can turn into something amazing for some authors. It's just not something I want to do at this early stage in my writing. 

Happy Writing!  --A.