Bending the Spine: Review: Fallen by Traci L. Slatton
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Bending the Spine: Review: Fallen by Traci L. Slatton

Bending the Spine

Bending the Spine: Review: Fallen by Traci L. Slatton

This was a passionate and thoughtful review. In part, the reviewer wrote:
I think I will be haunted by these characters until I get my hands on the next book. Fallen had me crying more than once, there were times of great hope, love, and bitter sadness. I have no idea how the Fallen trilogy will all work out but I am one reader that is happy to be along for the journey.”
 
Read the review here.

Review

When I read the last word of Fallen the first thing I did was grab my laptop to find out if this is in fact the bitter sweet end of the story, and I’m thinking, “this can’t be the end. Please don’t let this be the end of this story.” So, as I’m crying and searching frantically on Traci L. Slatton’s website I find out that Fallen is in fact part of a trilogy.
I’ve read many YA dystopian books but this is my first adult book in the genre and I think it was trying to tear my heart to shreds. If you are a parent be forewarned: Fallen will have you wondering just how far you would go to keep your children safe and loved. I can’t say that I loved Emma’s character but I found myself wondering, if our world was taken by the mist would I make the same decisions Emma did. I have to say that Emma is amazingly strong, and does everything she can to protect those she loves.
What do you do when the world you know ends? Do you find others, band together, and help them? Maybe the mist changed you, (many people now have a power they didn’t have before) if the mist did change you would you try to gain power and hold it over others? Or would you help those around you? Arthur has the greatest power of all and he has decided to help those around him. Emma and Arthur together are wonderful and heartbreaking all at the same time and when you read the book you will understand why I say that. In the end, finding out why Arthur has the ability he does was not a surprise it was more of a sadness.
I think I will be haunted by these characters until I get my hands on the next book. Fallen had me crying more than once, there were times of great hope, love, and bitter sadness. I have no idea how the Fallentrilogy will all work out but I am one reader that is happy to be along for the journey.
Happy Reading
Rebecca
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Another great, thoughtful review of FALLEN

 Crystal Book Reviews
I love this book review blog. Viviane Crystal is such a thoughtful, careful reader. She writes beautifully, and she is a close, intelligent reader.
About FALLEN she wrote:

“The reader is forced to consider previously stable definitions of time, obedience, psychic powers, science, and most importantly, love. Powers exist, perhaps, that enhance long-ignored mental skills but is the power of memory too strong to allow for new ways of relating and the freedom to explore same without guilt and ignoring the instinctive inclinations of the heart?

Many, many questions arise as one reads this story that defies what can be falsely read as a simplistic story/plot. Traci L. Slatton is a writer to watch closely, including in whatever sequels follow this unique, well-written sci-fi novel! ”

Great Review of FALLEN on Takingtimeformommy Blog!
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Great Review of FALLEN on Takingtimeformommy Blog!

Takingtimeformommy Blog

Takingtimeformommy Blog
I LOVE the idea behind this lively blogspot: that moms can actually take some time for themselves. As the working mother of three daughters and a step-daughter, I often feel like I have no time to pause. Every minute is over-booked. It’s a little better now that the oldest two are in college, but still, there are a tremendous number of details, large and small, for all the girls. Not to mention caretaking for the home and family in general. I am always walking down the street with a list in one hand, my iPhone recording notes for a novel in the other hand, and a planned conversation with a teacher or pediatrician going on in my head.
So it is with delight and appreciation that I found this terrific review of FALLEN. “Excellent book, I mean unbelievable!” wrote the reviewer Mandie O’Steen Stevens.
To all who participate in the blog: Feel free to stalk, I mean, friend me!
Many thanks, Taking-time-for-mommy!!
Great review of FALLEN, on Michelle’s Book Blog
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Great review of FALLEN, on Michelle’s Book Blog

Michelle's Book Blog

Great review of FALLEN, on Michelle’s Book Blog

This lively blog gave FALLEN 4 out of 5 stars, and commented, “FALLEN is the first book I have read by Traci L. Slatton and I enjoyed it very much. I am a huge fan of the post apocalyptic genre and FALLEN is a wonderful addition to the genre.
I can’t wait to read more in this trilogy.”
To FALLEN’s readers: I’m writing as fast as I can!
Fallen is the first book in a romantic post apocalyptic trilogy by Traci L. Slatton from Telemachus Press.

Book Blurb:

In a time of apocalyptic despair, love is put to the test . . .

Lethal mists have scourged the planet, killing billions of people. As chaos and madness descend, one woman with mysterious healing power guides seven children to safety. Charismatic Arthur offers her and her wards a haven. Slowly Emma falls for him. At the moment of their sweetest love, he reveals his devastating secret, and they are lost to each other.

My thoughts:

Emma and her young daughter are in France on a work related trip, her husband and older daughter are in Canada visiting his mother – they plan to meet up for the holidays – when the unthinkable happens.

Out of nowhere mists envelope the world.  Rising up from the ocean, seeping from crevices in the earth, dropping out of a cloudless sky.  These mists are deadly – destroying everything that contains metals or minerals; buildings, vehicles, weapons – people.

Now survivors are on the move, trying to outrun the mists.  Emma and her daughter have picked up several survivors in their escape through France – but one woman and several young children are not safe from the rogue bands of refugees scattered throughout the countryside.

When Emma and the children are saved from the mists by a group of men on horse back, Emma decides it would be in their best interest to join them at their camp.  Their leader, Arthur offers shelter in exchange for Emma’s company.

Despite their intentions, Arthur and Emma develop feelings for one another.  But Arthur holds a terrible secret about the mists.  And Emma holds a secret of her own.

Fallen is the first book I have read by Traci L. Slatton and I enjoyed it very much.  I am a huge fan of the post apocalyptic read and Fallen is a wonderful addition to the genre.

I can’t wait to read more in this trilogy.

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Great review of FALLEN, and fun guest post….


reviews, interviews, and giveaways from an eclectic reader…

Drey’s Library blogspot asked me to write a guest post on how I get inspiration. This was fun…. Then my novel FALLEN got an “Excellent!” from Drey. Thanks to Drey for the opportunity and the wonderful read!

drey’s thoughts:  Fallen starts off with a bang, capturing your attention right away…

I was flattened against a brick wall, watching in terror as she struggled not to inhale the killing mist that pulsed a few centimeters from her face. If she breathed it in, it would kill her. If she moved into it, or if it moved to engulf her, it would kill her. Dissolve her from within, filling her mind with madness before blistering her cells with heat until she ruptured into steam and water droplets. All that would be left of her would be a splatter of water on the ground and a fine beige powder sifting down from the air.Yikes!!  This is so not a world I want to live in–a mysterious mist that kills, rogue bands of survivors who round up women and children for far more nefarious purposes than you could imagine, dwindling food supplies…

It is in this world that Emma Anderson finds herself in charge of her five-year-old daughter Mandy, and seven other children; trying to survive and keep them safe and alive. When she meets a band of men who are seemingly able to keep the mists away, Emma barters for protection for herself and the children. Before she knows it, she’s healing the camp’s sick and making friends. Well, except for a few of the men…

I like Emma. She’s strong, she’s resolute, and she’s fearless in standing up for those who can’t help themselves–almost to the point of getting herself killed. I like that some of the survivors have acquired a new skill, like Emma’s healing.

The plot is simple (survive), the story is moving. I enjoyed reading Fallen, and the realization at the end makes me antsy to find out what happens in the sequel to this first-in-a-trilogy.

drey’s rating: Excellent!

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How I Get From Inspiration to Ideas to Research to Novel
By Traci L. Slatton,
Author of Fallen

This topic fascinates me, because I wrestle with it every day. I am a creative person and I have a lot of ideas for stories. I’m also hungry. I’m starving to write 100 books before they peel my cold, dead fingers off my keyboard and lay me in a plain pine box. Then there’s another consideration: writing is misery. Every page is agony.

Ideas come and I take notes. If I’m walking, I’ll make a voice memo. Usually characters stuck in tense situations, and bits of their dialogue, come to me first. Sometimes I’ll get a palpable feeling-sense of a relationship: the tenderness and eroticism and playfulness and fierceness of it. I also see my main characters in my mind’s eye. With FALLEN, my recent post-apocalyptic romance, I had a vision of Europe in shambles, and a man and a woman who were both very strong and very tormented. She was willing to do anything to keep some children alive, but she was strongly connected to an absent husband. So the premise came to me first. I had a clear sense of the man as good and bad, a leader, a striated human soul. I could feel his essence.

Usually I won’t start writing until the idea threatens to shove bamboo shoots up my fingernails if I don’t write it. That’s when compulsion has set in. The beginning is great fun. It’s a rush. I’ve never been interested in drugs but I always think that the rush of creative energy when I finally surrender to a story must be like the rush of some potent chemical. It’s intense, it’s alchemical, it consumes me. It’s like falling in love, because it’s all I can think about. I walk down the street with scenes scrolling through my brain. I feel alive in a new way.

After that initial rush, the work sets in. Maybe it’s like a marriage at this point. You know, when the honeymoon has worn off and you’re sick of picking up your spouse’s toenail clippings from the coffee table and you just want to throw a heavy wrench at his head. It’s a lot of unglamorous work. Here’s when I mock up an outline of the story, the main turning points, and the character arc. I grapple with the nuts and bolts of story, and the fundamentals of what I aim to do with this particular one.

Best I’ve figured out, and this is an on-going inquiry for me, story is what your main character wants and how they DON’T get it. All story has a common source: it’s an argument for a specific value. And all good fiction has two qualities: 1, it’s about truth but not necessarily about fact, and 2, it is structured around conflict and obstacle.

So I have scenes, obstacles, disasters, bits of dialogue, and the faces of my characters all jumbled up in my brain, and I sit down and start writing the first few chapters. Then I pause to write an outline. I also figure out what value I am arguing for. I am opinionated and I have strong values, which helps. I write out my value on a sticky note and tape it to the side of my iMac.

I also almost always have a clear sense of the ending of the story. With FALLEN, I saw my heroine riding off without her man. I saw her heart-broken and determined. I enjoy writing stories where the stakes are high, so I tweak the plot points to up the ante. How can I push a scene? How can I turn up the volume on a character’s breaking point?

Writing is an arachnoid process: it’s like weaving an intricate web from the silk in my gut. That weaving happens in the back and forth between the vast, oceanic creative flow and the careful structuring of analytical thought. Both are crucial.

I usually do research as I am writing. I’ll pause in the middle of a page and read six chapters in a book, or google around the internet, or send emails to people I know who might have answers. A small plane flies from Edmonton to Le Havre in Fallen, so I emailed my friend Geoffrey, who’s a pilot, to ask him how that would be done. He had some ideas and he emailed some of his friends, too. When I have my answers, I resume writing. If I need to do further research, then, after a day or so, I’ll keep writing and start reading the necessary texts at night.

The end is another rush, because I get excited to torture my main characters more intensely, and so finish the story. Finally I have a first draft. Here’s where I ask a few trusted friends to read and critique. I’ve also found a free-lance editor who is scary smart, and I have her read the draft. Then I go back and revise, revise, revise . . .