“Amazing roller coaster ride” BookieNookie reviews FAR SHORE
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“Amazing roller coaster ride” BookieNookie reviews FAR SHORE

On the rather wonderful and lively BookieNookie book review blog, reviewer Tickled Pink for Book Ink had fun with my After Series, which warms my heart to its deepest, tenderest, most innermost core.

She reviewed all 3 books of the series, most recently writing about FAR SHORE:

Reading this series has been exciting and awakening. I have never asked myself so many of life’s big questions due to a book, but the AFTER TRILOGY was clearly written with that experience in mind. In FAR SHORE, we learn much more to the workings of the mists, but more questions arise as well…

She emailed me a few days ago asking if it really was a trilogy, and I explained that it started as a trilogy but there was story left over to be told at the end of the third book, so it was now a series. She commented on that, also:

 Here’s the best news yet. IT’S NOT OVER! At the end of the FAR SHORE, I freaked out a little because I thought, “Oh no! That can’t be it, but it’s a trilogy so it must be!” I was more than a little upset so I went a little stalkerish on Ms. Slatton and searched her website and blog and finally just emailed her asking if there would be another book. Her answer was there would be a book four and maybe five! YAY!! I really want to hear about the group’s next journey and the plan to eradicate the mists forever.

So, to be clear: The After Series is not done, it’s not a trilogy, and there is a book 4 and likely a book 5. Stay tuned!!

Find BookieNookie’s FAR SHORE review here.

Find BookieNookie’s COLD LIGHT review here. “One thing is for certain, I am totally enthralled with this series. I can barely stop reading long enough to write a review….”

Find BookieNookie’s FALLEN review here.

 

 

Writing Well is the Best Revenge
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Writing Well is the Best Revenge

Almost two decades ago, when I worked as a healer, I had my hands on a male client when my husband called.

New York city apartments being constrained for space, my healing table stood in the living room, not far from the answering machine.

My husband’s voice rang out as he left a message. He had a deep, resonant voice; it was one of his best features, a pleasure to hear.

But the client didn’t think so. “Just listen to him,” my client growled, “so sure of his own prerogative!”

Those words, and my client’s scathing tone, branded themselves irrevocably on my mind. It was early in my career as an energy healer, and this was my first palpable experience of psychosexual transference.

I remember freezing and thinking, “Uh oh. This can’t be good.”

Sure enough, a few months later my client erupted into blind rage. He spewed verbal venom at me, at length, haughtily assuring me that I was in delusion about myself as a writer, he had the proof, and therefore he couldn’t trust me anymore as a healer.

In fact, I had made a grievous mistake some days earlier: I had broken a boundary. My client was a well-known journalist; he offered to read a manuscript I had just finished, and I accepted his offer. The manuscript was a first draft hot off my printer, and it wasn’t even spellchecked. Remember those ancient days, when Word Perfect didn’t automatically spellcheck a document?

I told him it was a first draft. I said it hadn’t been spellchecked. Then I made the mistake. I handed the manuscript over to him.

Right around the same time, I had informed him that I had to start charging him for sessions. Mutual friends had introduced us when he told them he was writing a book about healing. At their urging, he came for one session. Then he came for many more, all free.

I had gotten sucked into this arrangement because he was writing a book, but healing was my business. I couldn’t afford to keep giving away sessions. It was time to set a boundary with him.

When he started working with me, he was a charming, brilliant, and carefully guarded playboy. He was locked into an unconscious certainty that no woman was good enough–beautiful enough, rich enough, wonderful enough–for him.

Most of the work I did with him focused on his heart. Not to be too technical about it, but I restructured his heart chakra and wove the energy of love into his being during every single session I gave him. There was other work too, but for him, it always came back to opening his heart.

By our last session, when he attacked me so vociferously, he was monogamously dating a woman to whom he would soon be engaged. He later married her. This particular woman was that beautiful, rich, and wonderful–she was exquisite, in fact, and talented and accomplished. But I also believe that the work I did on his heart and soul helped him reach a place where he could love someone deeply enough, and with enough maturity, to commit.

Over the decades, in order to deal with certain people in my life and to continue working on myself, I’ve read a lot about borderlines and narcissists. Borderlines are empty and have only rudimentary self-soothing skills. It gives them that astonishingly quick, unpredictable trigger: one minute you’re a saint, and the next you’re evil incarnate. They’re vicious.

And narcissists, well, they’re on the spectrum of sociopathy. Since the world must reflect their perfection back to them at every moment–and let’s face it, the world ain’t that pretty–narcissists are steeped in their own victimization. So steeped, in fact, that they can justify all manner of criminally unkind behavior. Narcissists are cruel.

I never figured out which category my client fit, if he fit into one at all. I only know that two years after he ceased working with me, his book about healing and healers was published.

He had written an entire chapter about me and our work together, employing a pseudonym that did not disguise my identity to others in the healing world. Using terribly clever and expressive language to skewer my writing ability, he went on for a few pages about what a terrible writer I was. I read it with astonishment. There was no mention of the warning I had given him: that it had been an unspellchecked first draft.

I have always loved Anne Lamott’s beautiful book on the craft of writing, Bird by Bird, with its outright approbation for ‘shitty first drafts,’ a term which she has immortalized, and claims is practically obligatory:

Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor, 1995.

In fact, I had entrusted my manuscript to that long-ago client hoping he would give me feedback that would help me take my shitty first draft to the next level, to being a good second draft.

My bad. I shouldn’t have given him the manuscript. He was my client, and I knew he was in the grips of deep and unconscious projections onto me. I learned a hard lesson about not breaking boundaries with a client.

After reading my client’s printed criticism, the gist of which was even picked up in a Publisher’s Weekly review, I cried for a few days. Then I moved on. He wasn’t the first, or the last, person to blast me with his negative projections.

Transference is a bitch.

In 2005 my novel Immortal sold to BantamDell, and it was published in 2008. It was published on four continents; it was a bestseller in a few countries. Since then I’ve published eight more books, of which five are novels.

My novels get good reviews and they’ve been socked with bad ones. Then there are the splendid reviews. After all these decades of working on my craft as a writer, I get some spine-tinglingly excellent reviews. I’ve worked hard for them, and I’ve earned them.

When drafting this post, I considered which great reviews to quote, to “prove” that I’m a good writer–occasionally, at my best moments, an excellent one. I’d bet 50 bucks cash money that my client still has that shitty, unspellchecked first draft of mine tucked into a drawer somewhere so that he can “prove” what he said about me being a terrible writer. He was that kind of person.

So I thought of quoting twenty or fifty reviews that say my books are wonderful; there are at least that many. Or perhaps I would quote from the fan email I regularly receive. My readers are vocal and appreciative and they reach out. I’m lucky that way. I could mention the awards my books have won or the “Best of” lists to which they’ve been appointed by enthusiastic book review bloggers.

But in the end, overkill is unnecessary. That old client is inconsequential, a distant and unpleasant memory from my past. What matters is that readers buy and enjoy my books.

I offer one quote, from a review of Far Shore (Book 3 of the After Series) by a book review blogger who had conflicting feelings about the novel. I could have chosen a rave review, there are plenty of those. I am grateful for every one of them, too. People have busy, complex lives and I appreciate it when they take the time to read one of my novels and write about it.

This particular review, on The Lost Entwife blog, reflects the reader’s ambivalence about the book. There were two sentences that have stayed with me and give me deep personal satisfaction. They prove something to me about my merit as a writer:

 If nothing else, Slatton writes in such an addictive way that I could swear there was some sort of addictive substance between the pages.  I know when I pick up one of her books I am not going to want to put it down until I finish it, and Far Shore was no different.  

Writing well is the best revenge.

Listen to this blogpost as a podcast on iTunes here.

 

“Best of 2013” mentions for COLD LIGHT and FAR SHORE
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“Best of 2013” mentions for COLD LIGHT and FAR SHORE

This year, my novels have enjoyed being enjoyed.

COLD LIGHT made it to charming French book-lover Melliane’s list on the bilingual book review site Between Dreams and Reality: “My best books of 2013 – Mes meilleurs livres de 2013.” Find the list here.

Her review of Cold Light is here, and she writes, “This series is really a great discovery for me… The plot itself is well done, we follow Emma in her mission to find her daughter, and this is really fraught with obstacles of all kinds.”

If you prefer Version Originale, it’s here: “Cette série est vraiment une grande découverte pour moi. J’étais tombée amoureuse du premier tome et quand j’ai eu l’opportunité de lire le deuxième et troisième tome de cette trilogie, j’avoue que je n’ai pas hésité.”

On the ever popular Paromantasy site, the exuberant paranormal romance Guru Evelyn Amaro puts FAR SHORE on her best of 2013 list, writing that it is “An adult dystopian romance that is haunting, thrilling, and romantic. You will not be able to put it down!” Find the list here.

Both lists are very sweet for me because my novels are rubbing shoulders with some very well known, very well and widely published works of fiction, including bestsellers and novels made into film.

So what are you waiting for? Go here to buy these great books!

 

Between D&R

TicToc: Far Shore, Book Three of the After Series by Traci Slatton
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TicToc: Far Shore, Book Three of the After Series by Traci Slatton

TicToc: Far Shore, Book Three of the After Series by Traci…: Posted First on Blog Critics as Book Review: ‘Far Shore’ by Traci L. Slatton.

 ‘The heart wants what the heart wants’ seems like such a redundancy. Yet there is that simple truth to the adage where there often seems to be no real choice in the matter….

READ the rest of Leslie Ann Wright’s delicious review at TicToc Book Reviews and General Observations or at Blogcritics.org

 

“Join the apocalypse!”

“Join the apocalypse!”

Columnist Margaret Marr of bustling Nights and Weekends blog wrote a fantastic review of FAR SHORE.

In Far Shore, the struggles are brutal, the emotions are high, and the dangers are constant. Emma makes decisions that you might not like, but you’ll understand why she makes the choices that she does—because no decision falls neatly into a black or white zone. She once again proves her strength and courage as she’s faced with one insurmountable problem on top of another. You’ll admire her for sticking with Arthur even at his worst and most pitiful moments. 

Interwoven into this apocalyptic plot is an epic love story that defies the ravages of time and incidents…


Once you begin reading Far Shore, you’ll be sucked in with no hope of getting out—nor will you want to. Page after page brings intrigue, suspense, and breathtaking thrills all wrapped up in a solid plot that will continue into another adventure with the next book in the series. Come on, what are you waiting for? Join the apocalypse! 

It’s especially sweet for me because Marr is an author herself. She’s an educated consumer, in the sense that she too has sweated through a few rough spots in a story. She has smart things to say about writing and revision. Here’s a great interview of Marr on a writer’s blogspot, talking about the necessity of revision and how she came to accept herself as a writer.

So come on, everyone–Join the apocalypse!

 

FAR SHORE is  TOP PICK on NIGHT OWL REVIEWS
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FAR SHORE is TOP PICK on NIGHT OWL REVIEWS

Night Owl Romance reviewer HCHarju posted an awesome 5 star review of FAR SHORE on the illustrious Night Owl Reviews blog. The review starts out, “Oh my goodness. Traci Slatton does it again.”  How fun is that??

Here is a quote from HCHarju’s revuew:

I am completely in love with this series. She ups the stakes and the intensity is doubled in every aspect of the book. The mists are even scarier and horrifying than in the previous books. The friction from the love triangle is explosive and the characters are all put to the test of their limits. Emma must face her demons and be strong for herself and for Arthur. Also, my favorite sociopath shows up and has been both a curse and a godsend. 

Find it here.

I must say, I am pleased that such an expert reader as Harju enjoyed our very own sociopath; I took some risks with him in the novel, and some of my readers were not pleased.

Night Owl Reviews designated FAR SHORE a “Night Owl Top Pick Review” which is thoroughly lovely!