Guest Blog: What I Really Wanted To Be by M. J. Rose

What I Really Wanted To Be by M. J. Rose

 

When I was a kid, we lived a block away from Metropolitan Museum of Art It was my backyard. Other kids rode bikes… I took art classes there. By seven years old I was already at home there. As I grew older, my mom and I went there once a week for lunch and to walk through a new exhibition. For years we never missed a single show.

Spending so much time around the great art at that great museum – exploring every nook and cranny, it’s not surprising that I’d want to be an artist.

When I went to college -- it was to go to art school. I have a BFA. I’ve always loved everything about art and still do. But despite all that I didn’t wind up being an artist because at school I discovered what a truly ordinary painter I was. For some, just doing it would be worth it, but for me what I see in my mind is so far from what I can create with my hands that it’s more of a frustration than a joy.

And so I started writing what I saw in my mind.

For me writing and painting are very different. Both in the creating and the absorbing. The intellectual versus physical. Philosophical versus cerebral. Paintings, like music, move you without logic. Books require thinking, logic. I love the movement of painting, the romance of the artist’s life. I like museums better than bookstores, art supply stores more than computer stores.

I can stare at colors for hours, mix blues and greens into each other for no other reason than seeing them bleed together like the ocean. I love the smell of paint, the sting of the turpentine in your nose, the overwhelming scent of the linseed oil, the feel of brushes, buying new brushes and running one down your cheek and feeling that smooth silky touch of the sable. I love touching thick rich watercolor paper with its tiny indentations where the color pools. And I lust after the idea that when you paint you can create something in an hour or an afternoon and look at all of it at once. See the whole. Take in all of it all at the same time.

So while you might read what I write… I’m really painting the stories first.

The e-book, “In Session” by M. J. Rose and audio book will go on sale Oct 17 but the e-book is available to pre-order at Amazon now. http://www.amazon.com/Session-Morgan-Reacher-Eislers-ebook/dp/B005OLJ3VC

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR M.J. ROSE GETS JACK REACHER, COTTON MALONE, JOHN RAIN ON THE SEX THERAPIST’S COUCH

How do you get a stoic drifter, a former covert agent and an international assassin to see a sex therapist? That was the challenge faced by international bestselling author M.J. Rose when she proposed setting up appointments for Jack Reacher, Cotton Malone and John Rain with Dr. Morgan Snow of the Butterfield Institute in her new e-book IN SESSION (October 17, 2011, Kindle e-book, $1.99).

Eisler – swore that their men of mystery would never agree to therapy – unless Rose found a way

to get them there. By slipping Dr. Snow out of her office, Rose delivered some of America’s
favorite male characters to a place they’ve never been before – in therapy.

IN SESSION contains three racy and revealing short stories by M.J. Rose:

• KNOWING YOU’RE ALIVE with Lee Child’s Jack Reacher results in revelations for the
injured Dr. Snow and her unexpected savior/patient. What secrets from the past are contained
in an unexpected gift?

• EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES with Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone features a
woman who seeks help for her lover, and sends Dr. Snow overseas on a most unusual house

call. Can a rare book in a plain brown wrapper be the medicine her patient needs?

• DECISIONS, DECISIONS with Barry Eisler’s John Rain forces Dr. Snow out of her own

comfort zone, and into the world of a former patient’s worst nightmare. Does protecting what

she loves most require a dance with darkness?

The audio version, narrated by award winners Phil Gigante and Natalie Ross will

feature Dick Hill, Scott Brick and Barry Eisler reprising their roles Reacher, Malone
and Rain.

M.J. ROSE (www.mjrose.com) is an internationally bestselling author of eleven novels

including The Halo Effect, The Venus Fix and The Delilah Complex all featuring Dr. Morgan

Snow. Her next novel, The Book of Lost Fragrances will be published in March, 2012 by Atria

Books (S&S). Rose is a founding board member of International Thriller Writers and founder

of the first marketing company for authors, AuthorBuzz.com. Proceeds of the audio book

and a share of the proceeds of the ebook will be donated to David Baldacci’s Wish You Well

Foundation, supporting family literacy. (http://wishyouwellfoundation.org/)

Book Review: The Vision by Jen Nadol

 
The Vision by Jen Nadol

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Publish Date: September 27, 2011

Hardcover, 240 pages 
Fiction, Young Adult, Paranormal
 ISBN: 978-1599905976
The Mark #2

My Review:
The Vision picks up a little ahead of where The Mark left off and I must admit that confused me at first.  I read so many books that I was trying to figure out how The Mark ended in the first place, but after a little bit I remembered and Jen Nadol does a great job of bringing you up to speed in the first few chapters.  I also think that with these first few chapters that a reader could pick up The Vision and start with it without reading The Mark. Yes you miss the back story, but it could be done.

So once I figured out where I was in the story, the story began to pick up fast from there.  With Cassie moving to a new town to try and figure out more about how the mark works, the reader finds a whole new cast of characters and a new love interest or two for Cassie.  I found the plot of the book to be very interesting.  Cassie is still trying to figure out whether telling a person and saving their life is a good thing or a bad thing.  She knows that there is a possibility that saving one persons life means that another person will lose their life.  What is the person's life she saves is not worth saving.  She wrestles with the meaning of each life and even tries to stay away from crowded places so she won't be confronted with the mark and have to deal with the what ifs.  She's come to the suburb of Chicago to seek out a Greek population like her to find out if there is anyone like her.

While wrestling with all of this, working at the funeral home, befriending Ryan, learning about various religions and trying to find a way into the Greek group, she meets Zander.  Zander is the hot guy and player at school.  Zander is the guy that Cassie's best friend Liv has warned her about.  But Zander has an interest in her.  Suddenly Cassie and Zander are together and Cassie finally feels she fits in, but does she.

Cassie is really developed in this book.  She wrestles with right and wrong through the whole book.  I like that although she is on her own, she is still very much a teenager and she acts like it when it comes to guys, she is still rather immature, still trying to figure things out when it comes to love.  The rest of the characters were rather glossed over.  I never felt like I got to know Zander.  I honestly liked him, then I hated him.  I never knew Ryan either or any of Cassie's friends.  Cassie is the star of the book, but it would have been nice to know one or two of the other characters a little better.

The Vision is a great book if based solely on plot - it moves along at a strong pace that really held my interest.  It furthered the premise put forth in The Mark and prepped me for the third book in the series The Touch.  I like the moral angle that Cassie dealt with when trying to decide whether to tell and how she knew this was too much of a job for just one person.  Where The Vision fell just a little flat for me was with the characters.  While Cassie's character was strong and well fleshed out, all of the others were not and that made them hard to understand.  However this did not detract from the overall enjoyment of the book.  I still enjoyed the book very much and with the ending I will be anxiously awaiting The Touch.

My Rating: 3.75/5.0


About the Book:
Cassie Renfield knows the mark tells her when someone is going to die and that she can intervene and attempt to change fate. But she still doesn't understand the consequences, especially whether saving one life dooms another. With no family left to offer guidance, Cassie goes in search of others like her. But when she meets Demetria, a troubled girl who seems to have the power of the Fates, Cassie finds the truth isn't at all what she expected. And then there's her heady new romance with bad boy Zander. Dating him has much graver repercussions than she could ever have imagined, forcing Cassie to make choices that cut to the essence of who she is and what she believes.


About the Author (from Goodreads): 
I grew up in Reading, PA, hometown of John Updike, Taylor Swift and fellow YA author A.S. King (nope, didn't know any of them).

I went to college at American University in Washington DC, graduated with a BA in Literature, then spent the next twelve years doing something totally unrelated to pay the bills.

Now I live north of NYC in an old farmhouse with my husband and three young sons. I am thrilled to finally be writing, the thing I always meant to do. 

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FTC Information: I received this book from Teen Book Scene for an honest review. 

Waiting on Wednesday - October 12

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Night Eternal by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Publish Date: 10/25/2011

From the authors of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Strain and The Fall comes the final volume in one of the most electrifying thriller series in years
It’s been two years since the vampiric virus was unleashed in The Strain, and the entire world now lies on the brink of annihilation. There is only night as nuclear winter blankets the land, the sun filtering through the poisoned atmosphere for two hours each day—the perfect environment for the propagation of vampires.
There has been a mass extermination of humans, the best and the brightest, the wealthy and the influential, orchestrated by the Master—an ancient vampire possessed of unparalleled powers—who selects survivors based on compliance. Those humans who remain are entirely subjugated, interred in camps, and separated by status: those who breed more humans, and those who are bled for the sustenance of the Master’s vast army.
The future of humankind lies in the hands of a ragtag band of freedom fighters—Dr. Eph Goodweather, former head of the Centers for Disease Control’s biological threats team; Dr. Nora Martinez, a fellow doctor with a talent for dispatching the undead; Vasiliy Fet, the colorful Russian exterminator; and Mr. Quinlan, the half-breed offspring of the Master who is bent on revenge. It’s their job to rescue Eph’s son, Zack, and overturn this devastating new world order. But good and evil are malleable terms now, and the Master is most skilled at preying on the weaknesses of humans.
Now, at this critical hour, there is evidence of a traitor in their midst. . . . And only one man holds the answer to the Master’s demise, but is he one who can be trusted with the fate of the world? And who among them will pay the ultimate sacrifice—so that others may be saved?

I read The Strain and have The Fall in my TBR pile.  Sounds like it's time to break out The Fall and read it so I can finish out this trilogy.  Perfect time of year as well ;)

So what are you waiting on this week?