Beautiful Review of BROKEN on Tometender.blogspot.com
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Beautiful Review of BROKEN on Tometender.blogspot.com

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So it’s my first public review of BROKEN, and it’s beautiful! It’s on one of my most favorite book review blogs, TomeTender.

Here is part of the review:

Don’t expect a normal run-of-the-mill fallen angel tale that zooms on past, settle in for a deep thinking read to savor and get lost in. Traci L. Slatton has added her own artistic touch as she paints a deeply moving and unique tale filled with dark drama as we are invited to feel Alia’s feelings, hear her thoughts and see the world through her eyes as the scenery changes with each detailed page. Ms. Slatton has taken on a dark time in history and brought it to life through her characters and her words, lavish with intense prose and emotion. 

Now this is why I write novels!

Read the whole review here, on the extraordinary TomeTender Blog.

BROKEN on Tometender
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Bluehost rocks hosting

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As an author, I want information about my books to be freely available on the internet. I’ve also seen firsthand how internet presence, especially in the form of reviews, can drive book sales.

I started with a sweet little site through the Author’s guild. Worked good. Then I wanted something snazzier. So I learned iWeb and built a more elaborate author website.

Then, well, iWeb was decommissioned. So I bought Rapidweaver and educated myself in that, and at the same time figured out that I needed web hosting. My first foray into that was with a service that was badly organized, expensive, and not user-friendly. Then a friend told me about Bluehost.

From the word “Go,” Bluehost offered tremendous customer service. Switching from the old hosts to Bluehost was easier than I dreamt possible, and help was available by phone, live chat, and email 24 hours a day.

A few months ago, I got a little miffed because it seemed like my server kept going down. Whatever that was, the issue seems to have resolved itself, and the techs couldn’t have been kinder and more apologetic.

Recently I have again had reason to appreciate Bluehost. After appalling email harassment by someone who was also ordering gifts online and sending them with my name and personal email, I decided to beef up my internet security as best I could. Bluehost technicians walked me through adding filters to my email accounts and blocking IP’s.

I decided to retire my old Blogger blog that I’ve had for years in favor of a blog on Bluehost. I installed a wordpress blog on my bluehost account, imported the old Blogger posts, and redirected to the new one. Once again, Bluehost techs were available at all times of the night and day to offer support and advice.

Today a technician got a little too eager to help, spied an open ticket that should have been closed, and rearranged the settings for this new blog page. For a few hours, there was a chaos of “404 Website unavailable” pages, until I got on the phone with a different tech and straightened it out.

It hasn’t been quick to get things back the way they’re supposed to be, but the problem did arise from commendable zeal on a technician’s part. It shows how much Bluehost wants its customers to be happy. And the tech who helped repair the issue was absolutely lovely and polite and a pleasure to work with. I was really grateful for his patience and skill.

I recommend Bluehost to anyone.

 

Reading Other People’s Blogs
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Reading Other People’s Blogs

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I have a lovely friend Lori who keeps a blog. I subscribe to her blog via bloglovin, so her enchanting essays regularly land in my inbox. Her posts are richly textured and full of color, they’re sad and despairing and happy and reflective and sweet and charming and inspiring and courageous and heartfelt. I stop work to read them when they come in. I get a little buzz of expansive feeling-thought, rather like eating a sugary square of lush dark chocolate with hazelnuts when I know I shouldn’t.

Lori’s blogs keep me connected to her and her life and they bubble up emotions within me. People use Facebook for that, too, I guess, though I’m not a fan of that particular forum. I forget to go on Facebook for weeks at a time, and then when I do, I try to “like” everything and everyone on my timeline. That ought to tame the beast, right?

I read the blogs of strangers, too, when I come upon them after googling something. I’m looking for information and sometimes I get that. Other times it’s a voyeuristic peek into an unknown life, as if I were riding in a hot air balloon and was floating past, staring down at the scenery. Sometimes it’s both. During the writing of my novel COLD LIGHT, I needed details about a certain Canadian park, and I stumbled upon a family’s blog about their vacation to that park, complete with an extensive photo album. I will never meet that family, but I am grateful to them for recording their trip with such meticulous care. I like to get the details right when I’m building a world inside a story, and I need to get as exhaustively detailed a mental picture as possible to that end. Their chronicles helped me.

I suspect that a lot of authors keep blogs for the same reasons I do: one, to promote their books; two, to keep fresh content trickling into the vast, libidinous ocean of the Internet, where content is king; and three, to rant about life and thus exorcise demons. The urge to autobiography is hard to extinguish.

So, promotional things, like eBook sales: COLD LIGHT will be on sale for $1.99 from Feb 18 to Feb 27; THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR will be on sale for $.99 from Feb 10-18.

And check out this gorgeous oil painting: LIBERACI DAL MALE, by the outrageously talented Italian painter Roberto Ferri. Ferri’s work is insanely beautiful; he knows his way around a figure like no other painter alive right now. Sabin and I are both fans, and Sabin, who is perfectly fluent in Italian, has Skyped with Roberto. Roberto has graciously given permission for me to use LIBERACI DAL MALE as the cover for my novel BROKEN, the WW2 story on which I am currently working. The novel is wrestling me to the ground every day–if I see one more image of a Nazi atrocity, I will not be able to contain the tears–but this image helps. Other people’s work, in image and word, strengthens my own.

 

5 Star Review! I’d So Rather Be Reading: Book Review: Far Shore (The After Trilogy #3) by T…
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5 Star Review! I’d So Rather Be Reading: Book Review: Far Shore (The After Trilogy #3) by T…

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I LOVE this great review!!! Happy Saturday!!

I’d So Rather Be Reading: Book Review: Far Shore (The After Trilogy #3) by T…: Summary:  An old enemy wreaks new havoc at the end of the world… After the mists’ lethal apocalypse, mankind’s only hope for survival lies broken and battered…

“I was on pins and needles waiting for Far Shore, and I stopped everything (including the book I was reading at the time) to read this book.

 Slatton did not disappoint my high expectations: I loved every single second of Far Shore. I did not want the book to end, and found myself trying to slow my reading pace, just to make the book last longer.  Slatton’s writing style makes this series so special.  The best way I can describe the writing is that it’s very intelligent without feeling too text-like.  I found myself using my Kindle dictionary function several times, and I love being challenged like that.  

 The premise of the earth-destroying mists is so unique and well-executed….

Slatton does an excellent job with her characterization and also with the relationships between characters.  I’ve said it before: I can’t believe that I’m just as invested in the love story as I am in the fate of the world, but I am.  I am still shocked by Emma’s choice, but I believe it was really the only choice she could make and stay true to her beliefs…

I finished this book feeling educated, entertained, and satisfied.  I still think about this series, weeks later, and often wonder what the characters are doing now.  This series is outstanding and I can’t wait to read more from Traci Slatton!”

  

  Id So Rather Be Reading

Amazingly Awesome Amazon Review of FALLEN
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Amazingly Awesome Amazon Review of FALLEN

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Awesome Amazon Review of FALLEN.

This 5 star review is on the Amazon product page for FALLEN, which has just received a new cover to go with the publication of  FAR SHORE, the 3rd book in the After Series.

Look for Dii’s review, entitled “What would You do to Survive?”

Here’s her review:

“A mysterious mist is devastating the world, humans caught in the mist are reduced to water and sand in an excruciating death. The survivors were left with little but their wits and luck in the cruel game of survival. True leaders are born who are not all bright and shiny, they are damaged, flawed and human, doing whatever they need to do to survive and provide relative safety for those in their care. Emma has been caring for a group of children in the months since the mist arrived, so when another band of survivors on horseback rescue them from the mist, she will do whatever it takes to join this group and keep the children safe and fed as she attempts to make her way to safety and her husband, thousands of miles away. Arthur, the leader of the group of men who rescued them seems to have some type of control over the mist, a power he has gained since the apocalypse. Others have also gained “powers,’ Emma can heal people; some have psychic abilities to read people and their intentions. Ask yourself, what would you do in order to survive? What would you expect of others?

Fallen by Traci L. Slatton, the first book in the After Series isn’t filled with the promise of a happy ever after. It is brutally dark, gritty and has a frighteningly realistic view of what a world-wide disaster could be like. The heroine didn’t start out damaged, but her determination to survive and keep those around her alive has caused her to do things she never would have dreamed of. Did it make her larger than life and completely likable? No, but Traci L. Slatton created her to be strong in a world filled with darkness, evil and people running scared. Emma does have a sense of loyalty, at time it seems skewed, but as I fell further and further into the story, I began to understand why, in a word – survival.
Arthur has secrets he is keeping, but as brutal and cold as he may seem, inside he has his own code of honor and a shroud of guilt he hides behind and he is falling for Emma. Should she tell him of her husband, who may still be alive?

Is the mist a product of nature? Science? Is it God’s wrath coming down on a power-hungry world? There are people who know the answers, people who seek retribution, who will pay the price?
Traci L. Slatton has stamped Fallen with her own style of writing, bold, thoughtful and driven by the characters as much as the plot. It is a story of survival in a world that seems doomed to succumb to the dark side. I was riveted to each dark page as my imagination went into overdrive ferreting out what I would do. This is not a traditional romance, so do NOT expect hearts and flowers, but do expect a story that will stay with you in that realm of “what if” long after the last page.”

AWESOME!!!!

 

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Shifts

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I have been reading my friend Lori’s blog, which always opens my heart. She has a way of writing that is heart-felt and true, revelatory, and experiential. I admire her for it.

Today I am thinking about shifts. One friend of mine is hinting at things that he should not. I will have to address it, and shift it. I will have to address it tenderly, because he’s a friend. But it feels like a burden I’d rather not carry.

And not so long ago, I extended an invitation, which perhaps was ill-advised. I was following the energy in the situation, but I seem to have left discomfort in my wake. That was not my intent.

In the meantime, I am here, thinking about necessary shifts, and unnecessary burdens.