Kristal Lee

I'm so excited! My review of Master of Smoke by Angela Knight was featured on The Season blog. Click on the hyperlink for a chance to win a free copy of this new release.

MASTER OF SMOKE by Angela Knight.
Berkley/Penguin Group
Release Date: January 4, 2011

Gold Coin Rating: 4.1
Heat Level: Bonfire
{Click here for Tuesday's Treasures rating system guide}

Master of Smoke is smokin’ hot with fast moving, action-packed sequences and sizzling love scenes.

Eva Roman is a comic book geek coping with surviving a werewolf attack when she stumbles upon a shapeshifter in the throes of a similar assault. Upon rescuing him, she discovers that he’s lost his memory, except that he knows he’s been dreaming of her for weeks.

Eva decides to call him David, unaware that he’s a Sidhe warrior that shares his body and mind with two other entities, Cat and Smoke. David’s attacker, Warlock, is the leader of a fanatical werewolf aristocracy. He seeks Smoke’s magick and memories in order to destroy the Mageverse and rule the human Earth.

Eva risks her life to help David reunite with his spirit brothers and then must discover if she can love David for who he is in his entirety, rather than the fractured man she first met. For David, Eva is his heart and soul and he will fight the battle of his life to keep her safe and win her love.

Eva’s internal dialogue with her “Fluffy” werewolf self is hilarious and provides some needed comic relief during intense scenes.

David/Smoke’s struggle for Eva’s acceptance tugs at the heart. Before he’s reunited with his other selves, he ponders:

“Here he was, one fragment of some other man, waiting for the rest of his of his mind to return. Would he even exist once they came back?
Would he still love Eva?
David winced. And there it was: the trouble. What kind of idiot let himself become obsessed with a woman in a situation like this? All he was doing was setting himself up for more pain.”

After he’s made whole again, doubts still linger.

“But I’m still your David.” There was a trace of a question in the words. “Aren’t I?”
Eva stopped in her tracks to stare up at him.
That’s when it hit her just how much she’d been hurting him. Her refusal to accept Cat, her unconscious tendency to call him “David” even after his three personalities recombined—all of it had communicated a very ugly message.
“What have I done to you?” She asked the question in a low, shaking voice.”

Master of Smoke is the 10th book in the Mageverse series. I’ve not read the entire collection but I have read Master of Wolves, which is book 5. Based on what I learned in that story, I noted what seemed like a minor inconsistency in Master of Smoke regarding the relationship and interaction between the Direkind and the knights of the Mageverse. Since I’m reading the series out of sequence, it’s possible that this tiny issue exists only because I haven’t read all the books leading up to this particular story.

The weave of the Arthurian tales, werewolves, vampires, and the Sidhe, with our modern world is creative and ingenious. There is so much going on in this story that if you have a difficult time focusing you might get lost in the hustle. Some extended scenes made me a little impatient to get to the next sequence. But, I admire how Angela Knight is able to keep all those plot plates spinning and push the story forward in a credible paranormal fashion.

(Reposted from New Kids on the Writer's Block)

More than two months have past since I attended the 2010 RWA National Conference. I'm still digesting information from the fabulous workshops and my learning of the craft continues. One of the books I picked up while there is Angela Knight's "Passionate Ink: A Guide to Writing Erotic Romance."

You don't need to be an erotic romance writer to benefit from AK's how-to guide. It's written in an easy, down-to-Earth style that seems more like an afternoon tea with a writing mentor than a textbook.

One of the gems that I plucked from it's pages is a simple tip to avoid sagging middles. Ms. Knight's solution to this problem is "making a bad situation worse." In other words, up the conflict ante'. The middle should be the place where everything goes to he** in a hand basket. "[T]he action needs to ramp up with every scene so that each crisis is worse than one before."

In romantic fiction, love may conquer all in the end but until then it should throw everything into chaos. Love needs to complicate the external conflict so that it is much harder to defeat or overcome. If your story is sagging in the middle something must force the hero/heroine to jump from the frying pan into the fire. AK suggests to consider "the worse possible thing that could happen to [the] hero--given his particular emotional hangups--that he could still survive...[t]hen do it him." Be ruthless with your characters. Misery loves company and the readers will rally behind them.

The middle is also where lust begins to give way to love. As the pressure of the external conflict builds, a moment comes when the hero/heroine experiences an eye opening moment and realizes that he/she is in love and has much more to lose than when the story started. Falling in love should make the problem the hero and heroine are facing much more difficult to overcome and add unexpected consequences.

If your middle is sagging, take a hard look at the story's conflict. Conflict should drive the plot. If it doesn't, you're likely to experience a sputtering of your story. Check out your villain. Is he/she as three dimensional as your hero and heroine? Or a cardboard flunkie?

A weak villain undermines the conflict and sucks the ooomph right out of the plot. Your villain shouldn't be too easily defeated, unbelievable, and/or suffer motivational anemia.  His motivation should be as strong or stronger than the hero/heroine. One trick to creating a worthy villain is to remember that he is the hero in his own mind. He isn't evil for the heck of it. Something deep, dark and sinister motivates him to that end.  He has a cause, he has goals, and he can up the ante' if you let him. And, like a pair of big red suspenders, he can help hold up that sagging middle.

"Passionate Ink" is packed full of useful information and is an excellent resource for romance writers of every genre. If you're interested in winning a free copy of "Passionate Ink," please visit my website (www.kristalleeromances.com) and enter to win. The contest runs through midnight Saturday. Hope to see you there.

~kristal lee

After finishing "Passionate Ink: A Guide to Writing Erotic Romance" by bestselling author Angela  Knight (www.angelasknights.com), I decided that whenever I come across a particularly informative, wow-every-writer-should-have-this book, I'll post about it here. These recommendations will be about writing-craft books I've come across by browsing bookstores, talking with other writers, or at book swaps. "Passionate Ink" came to me by way of the RWA National Conference this year. I had the opportunity to attend Ms. Knight's riveting workshop and picked up a copy of "Passionate Ink" before I left. I'm immensely glad and grateful that I did. 


So, for my first writing-craft book recommendation, I give you "Passionate Ink." 



Bow down to Mistress Knight. Her guide to writing erotic romance should be on every aspiring romance writer's keeper shelf. Wait, forget the bookshelf, it's too far away. It should never be beyond arm's reach when tapping out your manuscript. Even if you aren't writing EroRom this how-to book is an invaluable resource, delving into characterizations, plotting, dialogue, voice, and the practicalities of the writing and publishing industries.

She uses excerpts from her works to demonstrate techniques and emphasizes why those particular caveats are important to the success of the story. I learn by association, so reading those enlightening tidbits after delving through the how-to's of those craft points are helping me more than hours of lecture time in a stuffy classroom.

Every writer worth her salt should know about GMC. Ms. Knight takes this a step further with her Romantic Conflict Chart. After using her simple guide on my current WIP, a little light went on and the Hallelujah choir began to sing. I finally understood why my story pooped out around Chapter 10. And more importantly, how to fix it.

If you're struggling with your manuscript, or you need some advice on how to spice things up, consider picking up "Passionate Ink." It's well worth your time and money. 
  
***CONTEST NEWS****
Because I believe that this book is such an excellent resource, I'm doing my first contest give-away. All you have to do is become a blog follower via Google Follows or Network Blogs and leave a comment. The contest runs through midnight, October 9th, EST. The winner will be chosen by a random number generator on October 10th and will receive a copy of Angela Knight's "Passionate Ink." 

Notice of Advisement-- "Passionate Ink" contains frank language and sexually explicit details. By entering this contest, you are asserting that you are at least 18 years of age, or the legal age of consent in your respective state or country of origin.

~kristal lee