Vacation is Having Nothing To Do and Doing It

I am officially on vacation and will return on July 8th. All the kids are coming so I plan to relax with the Gkids, swim in the lake, boat, fish, watch fireworks, all health permitting. If I’m not doing well, I’ll just lie on the couch and let them entertain me. 

Not.

 I’ll take Prednisone. I’m just about done with this flare. If I have to stay up all night, so be it. No one is going to care.

I thought I’d leave some upcoming new releases that caught my eye while compiling them for USA Today. Once a week, I gather up new Sci-Fi and Time Travel Romances for the newspaper and send them off. They are usually uploaded on the Saturday the week after they release. If you want to see them online just go to USA Today.com and Google my name. That will pull them up so you don't have to hunt for them.  Sometimes titles will appear on more than one list and they are moved. If that happens you can find the book under fantasy or paranormal. So, here goes:

INK, intrigues me. Written by Amanda Sun, the novel is a Harlequin Teen release. The book is about a teenager named Katie who meets up with the Kami in Japan. She falls in love, of course and when things begin to spiral out of control, the wrong people start asking questions. If they discover the truth about the Kami, no one will be safe.  (Hint: The Kami are an ancient ruling class of the Japanese.)

I have a deep fascination for Japan and its culture. So while this might be YA, it satisfies two of my favorite things: paranormal and Japan.

Then there’s Ruby’s Fire by Catherine Stine. This is another YA where teenage hormones meet impossible odds only to find that love leads the way.

They never had books like this when I was a kid. The best I could get was Judy Blume. That’s not to say she’s bad because I loved those books. Still do.

Next up is The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod. Here we have a magically reformed Industrial age in England. It sounds like Harry Potter meets Steam Punk. In any case, society is turned upside down, changing a once magical world overnight. What is left is a separation of classes, those who dig up a miraculous substance and are poisoned by it, and those who profit from it.

I’m a closet Steam Punker. Enough said.

For Time Travel we have Hindsight by Sarah Belle, publisher Harlequin Enterprises/Escape Publishing. Juliette is married with a red-hot goddess who wants her husband. That is the least of her worries when she wakes up on a lounge floor in the year 1961. It is in this slower world that she discovers an unexpected truth: slower doesn’t mean boring, at home doesn’t mean dull, and priorities don’t mean sacrifices.

I’d like a slower world. I can’t remember when life was slow enough to enjoy. As the kids grew up and left I had grandkids and my few projects turned into many projects. I’d like a novel that reminds me of a slower place and time.

25 Perfect Days by Mark Tullius published through Vincere Press.  25 is a novel told through 25 different points of view, each in a separate chapter. (How awesome is that?) It chronicles the path into a hellish future of food shortages, contaminated water, sweeping incarceration, an ultra-radical religion, and the extreme measures taken to reduce the population.

This one caught my eye because it’s where we could be headed if we don’t pay attention and start THINKING about what kind of a world we’re going to leave our children and grandchildren.  

That should get you started for the weekend and last you the rest of the week. All are available on Kindle and they release either this week or next.

Interested in seeing what I’m up to while on vacation? You can check out my Facebook page here:

Or follow me on twitter @LouannCarroll

Happy Reading!

(((hugs)))

Louann

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