Do you read Jay Lake’s blogs? Twitter? You know how he says ‘A reader reacts to BOOK TITLE (they liked/didn’t like it)’? Well, if you’ll forgive my being a total copycat:

A reader reacts to Shades of Green (He liked it).

Though, the reader’s pretty biased — he’s a friend of mine. Still, he liked it. He really liked it

As Ms. Parrish is apt to do, every word feels intentionally and methodically chosen for its effect on the reader, be it emotional or visual.  And as Z’thandra goes about her daily routine and is spit on and wrongfully accused of different actions, we want her to be able to escape the madness surrounding her.  The ending of the story… The end is simply beautiful.

That is part of Kari Wolfe’s review of Shades of Green. She likes it, she really likes it Yay! You can read the whole review here if you’re so inclined. I got the google alert about her post while I was playing WoW. We were in the middle of the apothecary boss fight in SFK and was so distracted reading the review that I (being the healer of our group) accidentally let the DK’s ghoul die. (Sorry David). Still, yay!

I’ve never actually considered my stories my babies (I only have one of those and her name is Danica) but I do want people to like them, so it makes me happy when they do. There’s another review of Shades of Green available for anyone who’d like to check it out. Aubrie, of Book Reviews by Aubrie, had this to say:

Shades of Green is a unique and unsettling tale of life after an apocalypse. The descriptions are exotic and fun to read, and I felt for Z’thandra’s plight throughout. Amongst all of the prejudice and hatred she is able to forgive, and that is truly heroic. The ending is unexpected and left me with much to think about. This is no fluffy fantasy tale, but a powerful and emotional journey with a profound message at the end.

Needless to say, that put a big smile on my face You can read the full review here.

There are also two interviews of yours truly that went live today. Firstly at Amber Stults’ website I answer questions about Shades of Green as well as what I’m currently working on. You can read that here. Some of Amber’s questions really made me think, like when she asked if I’d intentionally make the Reptars less alien than I might have.

Then over at Aubrie’s blog I answered questions about my writing process, being the editor of Niteblade and, of course, a bit about Shades of Green. You can read that one here.

I always stress about interviews because I’m never sure that my tone of…erm…voice(?) comes through in them. I did ask Jo to read these ones and tell me if I sounded like a moron. He responded with ‘You sound like yourself’ which didn’t really answer my question, but I’ll take it

Today is the official release day for Shades of Green. I’m a weird mixture of feelings including nervous, excited and disbelieving. Plus I’m stressy and worried about non-book related stuff.

I’m nervous and excited for sort of obvious reasons. One of my stories is being shared with the world and it’s my first physical book. How could that not inspire nerves and excitement?

It’s still not completely real to me yet, I think that will change once my author’s copies reach me (stupid post taking for freaking ever to get from the US to me). So yes…it’s a bit unreal still, but hopefully soon that will change. *crosses fingers*

In a happy coincidence green is my daughter’s favorite color and last night she and I spent some time dyeing her hair green (not all of it…just much of it). Unfortunately the dye didn’t take as well as we had hoped and this morning she has lime green streaks instead of dark green. She seems happy with it, but I still get to stress a little bit (it’s what I do). I hope she doesn’t get teased. As we were doing her hair we were talking about how it’s funny my book is called Shades of Green and she was going to have shades of green in her hair for its launch day. That was nice.

Oh, another source of stress? My husband is sick.

So it’s a weird day already…and a weird blog entry. I just thought I’d give a little peek inside my brain today. I hope I didn’t bore you.

I do have good book-related news to share too

Firstly, thank you to everyone who entered the draw to win a copy of Shades of Green. You all really made me smile. Thank you. Alas, I could only pick one winner and the random number generator says that person is Alexa. Congratulations Alexa, you win a copy of Shades of Green. Email me (rhonda@jofigure.com) with your snail mail address please

Secondly, the first review of Shades of Green is in, and I’m happy to say it’s a positive one Amber Stults has a review up in which she says:

The ending is a bit of a surprise but it’s what sets the story apart from similar tales.  It ties things up neatly in a way that isn’t obvious on a first reading.  If you want to lose yourself in the story of the last Swamp Elf for an hour or two this is the novelette to pick up.

You can read the whole review here. If you pop over to her website tomorrow as well she will have an interview with me. It’s less scattered than this blog entry. Honest.

Now I’m going to go be unfocused some more in a less public location. :O)

Being a writer changes a lot of things in my life, including how I read a book. I can’t read the same way I could before I started writing ‘in earnest’ for lack of a better phrase. I judge books differently too. These days when I’m finished a book and it’s time for me to assess what I thought of it I tend to ask myself questions beyond ‘Did I like it?’. Did I enjoy my time spend within its pages? Was I able to suspend my disbelief throughout its entirety? Did it make me think? Was it well-written? Were the characters real? Did they grow?

In the case of The Mermaid’s Madness the answer to those questions, for the most part, was yes.

Okay, biases out on the table, I adore Jim C. Hines. I like him as a person, a blogger and a writer. Thus far I’ve enjoyed every novel of his that I’ve read and I’ve paid (via charity auction) for him to critique my work. That’s a double-edged thing though, really, because while it means while I was pre-disposed to like The Mermaid’s Madness, I also had high expectations that could easily have been disappointed.

They weren’t though. Yay!

The Mermaid’s Madness is the second in Jim’s princess books, the first being The Stepsister Scheme. I thought this was a great book and enjoyed it more than I did the first. It had a darker feeling to it than The Stepsister Scheme, which could well be one reason I liked it better, but I think there’s more to it than that.

The characters were very real, three dimensional beings who grew and developed over the course of the story. Jim built on what he’d started in the first book and made it even better. This is where I find it difficult to really make points without giving things away…so forgive my vagueness.

One of my favorite things about this novel is that actions had consequences. The consequences from the first book weren’t simply forgotten, they carried over and touched this one. Not heavily really (except in one case…man I suck at vagueness), but they were there — just like in real life. I can’t abide stories where everything works out well in the end and everyone lives happily ever with nothing changing except for the better, blah blah blah. That is great for children’s tales…I suppose…maybe…in pre-school…occasionally… /digression . Happily, Jim doesn’t do that. Bad things happen, and they can’t just be made better by waving a magic wand or kissing the prince. I like that.

That’s not to say I think this book was perfect. In a couple places in action scenes I got a little bit lost and had to read back to re-imagine the scene and exactly what was happening, and I struggled a bit with suspending my disbelief at how quickly some people recovered from…things (stupid vagueness). Occasionally people seemed to have supernatural endurance/recovery powers that didn’t fit with what I thought probable, that sort of thing. But I wasn’t bothered enough by those things to set down the book or even slow my reading.

On a pseudo-related note, no matter how hard I’ve tried (and I have tried) the Danielle in my mind doesn’t even come close to matching the Danielle on the cover. Not. Even. Close.  I’ve given up on making the two match and I’m just going to enjoy how Danielle looks in my imagination.

Right, back on track.

The Mermaid’s Madness made me think, about lots of things. Stuff like reprecussions, character growth, real emotion and magic. Quite specifically about magic, magic systems and mechanics. I had a few revelations related to my own writing that was sparked by thoughts about The Mermaid’s Madness. This, as you can imagine, makes me happy.

I also enjoyed the ending, and the way Jim has started subtle mysteries in this novel I look forward to seeing how they develop in the next book…though waiting for it to come out may be painful. What do you suppose the chances are of my picking up an ARC of it before its release date?