Beauty and the Billionaire by Jessica Clare

If you want to get my attention, tell me about a book with the Beauty and the Beast trope. It is my absolute favorite, and I’ll read pretty much anything based on it. When I heard about this one, I was all over it. It originally went on my Book Rewards list, but I got lucky and found a paperback copy of the first two books in the series at a bookstore in Tulsa while visiting a friend. I couldn’t resist picking them up, and I’m so glad I did.

One-Sentence Synopsis
A lonely, scarred recluse sets up an elaborate scheme to get the ghost writer he’s attracted to into his home, not expecting to have anything more than friendship with her…if that. For a full synopsis, see this book’s Goodreads page.

The Good Stuff
This book was everything I wanted and more. Hunter is such a good “beast.” He’s nervous and angry and lonely and even when he’s yelling, you can’t help but love him. And…wait for it…he’s a virgin! I love a virgin hero! Gretchen is adorable. She’s quirky but not annoyingly so, and she’s perfect for bringing him out of his shell.

There are some funny moments between the two of them. The first time she sees him, he’s completely naked and he’s mortified because he had this idea he’d give it time before he showed her his face (that plan went down the tubes pretty fast). But she feels bad about embarrassing him, goes to apologize when she sees him outside, and somehow thinks that saying “I saw your penis!” will help break the ice. I don’t think that ploy ever works.

The Romance Factor
No question, this is a 5/5 on the romance scale. Hunter’s shyness melted me. Even when he was being slightly underhanded in finding ways to keep Gretchen at his mansion, I adored him. When they had their standard romance novel falling out, it actually broke my heart. Even knowing they’d get their HEA, I was still so sad for them. Also, bonus love to the Phantom of the Opera reference in the story.

The Steam Factor
Like the first book in the series, this one has so many sexy times. Once again, though, they fit well with the story. I loved that Gretchen’s “job” involved a trunk full of erotic letters that she used in her seduction attempt. And did I mention the virgin hero? So hot! 5/5.

Final Thoughts
The minute I finished this book, I wanted to start over and read it again, and I almost did. I didn’t want this story to end. Like the first one, this one brings in characters and alludes to pairings in the rest of the books in the series. Instead of reading it again, I shelved it with the plan of picking it up at the beginning of next year for a re-read. Now I just have to get the third in the series to continue my journey through all the billionaire feels.

What a Wallflower Wants by Maya Rodale

This was another DBSA podcast find. Those people know their romance books. This book was amazing…but first…

Trigger warning: This book has detailed descriptions of a rape, and rape is a prevalent theme throughout. Those who find this hard to read will want to avoid this one.

This was the third book in a trilogy by Maya Rodale, but it can be read as a standalone.

One-Sentence Synopsis
After being compromised against her will, a young woman believes her dreams of love and marriage are finished, but a handsome and mysterious man wants to show her that she can still have those things…preferably with him. For a full synopsis, see this book’s Goodreads page.

The Good Stuff
Where do I even start? This book was amazing from start to finish, and not just because the romance was one of the best I’ve ever read. This book was amazing because it handled a hard subject like rape in a way that didn’t shy away from what it was while still being tactful. It highlighted the possibility of finding happiness after a traumatic event, so though sad, it was also hopeful.

It was also relevant to how things are today. While people might not think there are a lot of similarities between current culture and those found in historical romances, the author has drawn attention to the parallel of women being expected to act a certain way and being shunned when they don’t, even if it puts them in danger. It highlights the polite way in which women are supposed to act, and it brings in the shame that a woman faces from society, even if she’s not at fault and her rapist has ruined her. How have we not made more progress in this area?

The Romance Factor
5/5 all the way on the Romance Factor. John, the hero, is fantastic and kind and patient. He’s intrigued by Prudence from the first time he meets her and quickly falls in love with her. He catches on quickly that something isn’t right, and the way he handles it…best hero ever.

Prudence is frightened of men in general, but she starts to trust John and eventually tells him the story she hasn’t shared with anyone else, not even her best friends. Not once does John try to “claim” her as his or try to avert authority. Instead, he goes slow, putting her needs before his and saving her when she’s almost attacked again. He’s written in a way that the reader never doubts how much he feels for her. So many feels…oh, so many.

The Steam Factor
Another 5/5, because while there aren’t very many (happy) sex scenes, the first intimacy Prudence and John have is one of the most steamy and sensual scenes ever…and they don’t even touch each other.

Things That Made Me Go Hmmm
As far as the story goes, I have no complaints. I loved the whole thing. What was a little weird about this book was the use of text to convey certain emotions. It didn’t happen a lot, but in a few instances, the author uses all caps to convey the manner in which something is said. The thing that really cracked me up was the actual use of a strikethrough. I wasn’t mad about this. If anything, I kind of like the idea of using things like that to convey a mood or tone. So as far as anything goes, I don’t have any complaints, I just thought that was an interesting characteristic of Maya Rodale’s writing.

Final Thoughts
I’m afraid to read the first two books in the series because I’m worried they won’t hold up to this one. I mean, I’m going to, but I’m prepared to realize that this book set a really high bar. Not only did Rodale tell a beautiful romance story, she also worked it around a tragic event and she did it with tact and care and an honesty that, while difficult at times to read, made the quality of the book that much higher.

Weird Back Pain and Nanowrimo Revision

I woke up this morning with a sore lower back that persisted all day long. I don’t know what caused it for sure. We walked yesterday but didn’t do anything overly strenuous. Maybe it was how I slept? I know that sometimes it just feels sore for a day or so, and then goes back to feeling fine, so I’m hoping today was just an off day and that tomorrow it will feel better. The pain meant not being able to walk on breaks or lunch, and I opted out of a post-work walk to give it more healing time. However, I want to get back into some activity tomorrow, so here’s to hoping.

Between the back pain and the normal Monday workload, the day was productive but still stressful and overwhelming. I was glad to call it a day and come home to Jon, who had the day off for MLK day, and the crockpot deliciousness he’d cooked up. Over the course of the night, I managed to put away laundry, pack for housesitting tomorrow night, watch four Coursera lecture videos, and…wait for it…finish the first revision of my Nanowrimo project!

The funny thing about the revision is that it’s been hanging over my head, and when my friend asked about it today, I said I didn’t think it was ever going to get done. At the time, I truly believed that. The last chapter I’d revised prior to tonight made me mad…I hated how it flowed, but I was at a loss on how to fix it. However, I was thinking about my goals tonight and knew I wanted to still get it done, even if it meant waiting until later to fix that chapter. So I sat down, got focused, and finished revision on the last few chapters and the epilogue.

It’s not horrible! It’s got some good things going for it, and it has some stuff that I need to work on. My main worry is that it’s going to be super boring and I’m not going to know how to fix the overall plot.  I’m going to take the initial feedback and prepare the first revision for some beta readers, which brings me one step closer to possible publication. Admittedly, this is the furthest I’ve ever gotten on a novel. I’ve written several. I just haven’t revised them. Now that I have this revision under my belt, I’m kind of excited to go back and revise and re-work some of my older projects as well. However, to avoid that feeling of being bogged down in something, I’m reminding myself to take baby steps.

Since I met my January goal, my next goal is to make the initial changes, prepare the second draft as one document, line up my beta readers, and send them the draft. I already have a couple in mind, it’s just a matter of contacting them. I’m aiming to have that all done by the end of February, though since that’s a lot of time, I’ll hopefully have it done sooner.

Now that I feel super accomplished, I’m going to go shower and lay down for some reading and sleeping time. Here’s to hoping the back pain goes away and that tomorrow is super productive.

A.

Winning National Novel Writing Month

I have officially won National Novel Writing Month.

Technically, I won it a few days ago when I broke the total word count of 50,000. However, that was split between two novels I was writing simultaneously. Today, I focused on my first one and managed to finish it completely at just over 53,000 words. I still have a few days before the official end of Nanowrimo, but since we’ll be traveling, I’m not sure how much time I’m going to be able to give to the second novel. The goal now is to try to get a high word count to at least be in the running for Marissa Meyer’s contest. However, even if I don’t make that one, I’m still pretty excited with this accomplishment.

Also, I don’t completely hate the story I wrote, and other than the fact that I’m a bit squeamish about letting my family read it, I might actually work on revising it in the coming year.

We slept in a little bit today because it was freezing and I couldn’t seem to get out from under the covers. Jon discovered that we didn’t have a great deal of hot water, so I decided I’d suck it up and take a shower at the gym after a workout. I took him to work, then decided to run errands. This turned out to be a good thing. One of my errands was to return some laundry balls to Forsh, who told me I could use her place for chilling and showering. I took her up on that offer, which meant I got a ton of writing done in a comfortable chair and got to shower without trying to maneuver around a fairly public locker room. Thanks, Forsh!

Instead of going to the gym, I ended up taking another walk around the neighborhood. It was still cold, but not as cold as it was over the weekend. I did a zombie mission and ended up making it around the big block, then making a lap around a smaller one. I had four zombie chases, and on the fourth one, I actually had to push through some leg fatigue. It was still fun.

After I picked Jon up from work, we went to the grocery store to buy some travel snacks before coming home. I broke out the snuggie right away, because even though the heat is on, the apartment is not as warm as I would like it to be. I finished my story, but I didn’t get much else accomplished. Luckily, we’re almost completely packed for tomorrow, so there’s nothing besides some last minute things to throw into the suitcase, and those can be done tomorrow morning before we leave.

I think I’m going to finish off the night with some reading. We’re off early tomorrow for St. Louis! Whoo hoo!

A.

A Challenging Find and Scary Games

I realized that I didn’t do my blog last night, opting to crash out after time with friends rather than try to push through a post. It’s early right now, almost 8am on new time (did you remember to “fall back” last night?), and though I was going to get my Nanowrimo session done first, I figured I’d go ahead and kick out yesterday’s grind.

I started my day off with some hot tea and writing, working on my piece for Nanowrimo. I settled on erotic fiction, since it’s a genre I hadn’t yet really tried, and though I’m not regretting it, I don’t think I’ll be comfortable letting anyone in my family read it. So far it’s coming along nicely, though. Like most of the things I write, it’s doing things I didn’t expect, which is always fun and why I use a very loose outline when I write. Yesterday, I broke 6,000 words, and I’m hoping to break 8,000 this morning before getting started with the rest of the day.

Once we left the house, we headed out to the Wamego Boat Ramp once again to try to find that geocache. After talking about it with the cache owner and some others who had found it, we wanted to give it another try.  NCC had helped us eliminate some of the possibilities, so we focused our attention elsewhere this time. Within a few minutes, I saw a place where it could be, and Jon managed to get into a position to check it out. Sure enough, there it was! Talk about a sense of accomplishment.

From there we went to Zeandale to grab a few more on one of the back routes to Manhattan. This trek took us to Pillsbury Crossing, an area that we’d heard about and talked about but had never been to until yesterday.

It was a little weird driving across here.

Swing time!

Had to make a short hike to get down here, but the view was worth it!

We found one cache in a picnic area. There was another one near the rocks in the lower picture, but we decided to save that one for a day when we were geared to handle wet and rocky terrain. We ended the day with five finds and one DNF.

We called it a day there because we were hungry and because I had some prep to do for a small one-shot horror game I was testing out, After stopping at Taco Bell, we headed over to Forsh’s for puppy sitting. I finished up my game’s back story, and we watched the latest episode of “American Horror Story: Coven.”

Around six, Terry and Erica came over. I transferred some music over to Erica for her workouts and we ordered pizza, ate too much candy, and got the game going. Though it was only supposed to be a one shot game, we put it on hold to finish at a later time. It’s story based, so even though I had a general outline for it, I had to veer a bit since the players basically dictated what happened. This is actually a really fun way of running a game, at least for me. It’s like storytelling improv. To my knowledge, I only made one mistake in the telling, and I’m blaming that on being tired.

The goal for today is to “detox” and get back on track with eating well and exercising. When I say detox, I’m really just going to avoid sugar, drink a lot of water, get a good workout in, and maybe have a green smoothie for lunch for a nutrient boost. Last week was SugarFest 2013 (thank you, Halloween) and a short gym hiatus, but I want to get back into a routine. We have our St. Louis trip coming up, and I want to be ready for that and the high amounts of walking we’ll be doing.

For now, going to work on my Nano.

A.

Zombie Evasion and Debating NaNoWriMo

Today wasn’t bad for a Monday, it was just uneventful. I stayed late at work so Jon could take a test. We did laundry and dropped off a library book. I finished up some con notes and correspondence. The most excitement I had was doing a zombie mission this evening. We’d originally planned to find a geocache, vacuum the car, and then take a walk, but I’m not used to the fact that it’s getting darker earlier now. We nixed the other plans and headed to the rec track so we wouldn’t be out much past dark.

I’ve been feeling good about my walking abilities lately, so I was excited to see if tonight’s walk would be better than past ones have been. It started out great. I was walking at a good pace and got chased by zombies early on. I evaded them around the hilly part of the track,  and was out of breath by the time I crested the small hill (hills and I are not yet friends), but recovered quickly. I kept my pace up for a little while after that, but then my ankle started cramping. Everything else felt fine, but that ankle…so frustrating.  It’s like a tightness or stiffness on the outside, and it makes walking uncomfortable.  I thought I’d finally found the right fit of shoe because that cramp hadn’t happened in a long time.

Good shoe fit or not, my ankle gave me some grief, possibly due to the change in speed. I decided to take a rest at one of the benches to let the cramp ease itself. It finally felt okay, so I started up again.  I got a little further and finished my second zombie chase before it cramped up again. There are no other benches along that track, so I took a few standing breaks that didn’t really help. I was limping by the time I got to the last stretch. I figured it was okay, though. The app says it won’t trigger the zombie chases unless you’re walking at least 2.2 mph, and by that time I was shuffling along pretty slowly, so I didn’t think anything would happen.

Apparently, that’s not the case. Maybe it’s an average or the starting speed, but even with my slow shamble, the app triggered a third chase. I realize I could have paused the app or just said screw it and gotten eaten by the zombies. Instead, I pushed through the pain and hauled butt down the sidewalk for that interval. This is a good thing, right? The whole idea of “training” is to push past those painful moments and get in a good endurance-building walk. Be that as it may, once that group was evaded, I slowed right back down.

I ended up taking another break on the benches by the concession stands. The breaks always feel so long, and I get frustrated at the time I’m wasting, but I really needed that ankle cramp to go away. While I sat there, I watched Jon just stroll past. He was going into his third lap and didn’t see me sitting in the dark.

By that time, I was just a few minutes from having finished a thirty minute walk (breaks not included) and completing my mission. Though the break felt long, it was only a few minutes.  I walked around the parking lot for the cool down and to wait for Jon to get back around to the car since he had my keys. During what I thought was my cool down, I was chased again! It took me by surprise, but I got away . Apparently, there is no cool down. It’s just jump in, deal with the undead, and have a nice day.

Besides the sore ankle, I had some pain in one side of my lower back and hip, but I would guess that’s from walking funny to try to avoid the ankle cramp. Otherwise, I felt good! In the future, I’ll have to push through the pain, maybe, or just let the ankle acclimate. Next time I walk, I might do it with no zombie chases so I can keep at a steady pace and see if that makes a difference.

Afterwards, we went and got Subway for dinner then came home. I didn’t put laundry away, opting to get online and start this post instead. I did take a break to shower, so I’m all clean and ready for bed.

The only other thing of note is that National Novel Writing Month is coming up in just a few weeks, and I have yet to decide if I’m going to do it. Last week I was all excited for it, but now I’m not so sure. If anything, I should edit and re-work some of my past Nanos for possible publication. But I’m also sitting on two ideas for new stories right now: a horror/mystery that is currently in my head as a short story but could be fleshed out into a novel, I think; and a romance/erotica novel that I want to write to prove that I can turn out something better than 50SoG.  At the same time, I’ve already got things to do that I’m not getting done, like knitting projects, courses, books to read, and packing and purging. I’m just not sure if NaNoWriMo is in the cards this year.

But i have a few weeks to decide. I suppose I could set October as goal month to get all the other things done to free up the time to write in November. It could happen.

On that note, it’s time to catch up on some blogs before heading off to sleep times.

A.