Friendship, fangs, and a bit of gore of course! #Review of E.J. Wesley's Devil's Snare

5 STARS!!!

Before I fangirl over Devil's Snare (my absolute favorite in the Moonsongs series), here's a taste of my first encounter with this story with Blood Fugue...

Jenny does her best to be your typical hostile gaming hermit. Then she opens a seemingly innocuous email. Suddenly she has a living grandfather she believed long dead, commits to doing a favor that involves bullets, and discovers a destiny that will test her tendency to push people away. You can read more of my review here.

Jenny is all sass and toughness as in the girl sports a purple mohawk and feels naked without her tomahawk. But Jenny isn't whole without her best friend Marshal. He's the bee's knees (in designer loafers). They come across some seriously gruesome baddies and they survive with a healthy dose of fear and an even healthier dose of humor. I love them! In Devil's Snare we see through Marshal's eyes at the start, which rocks the planet because Marsh isn't just sitting back being the gay sidekick. In E.J.'s world of monsters, you sink or swim or get eaten. He can write gnarly things that bite. I'm telling you. 

After a suspenseful glimpse into what Marshal is going through, we dive into Jenny's precarious situation. Back to the suspenseful glimpse for a second...I was reading my kindle at the window of my favorite coffee place waiting for my drink. In the few minutes it took them to make my white mocha I had sunk so deep into the story that I jumped when the barista reached toward me with my coffee. The writing is that good.

If you haven't started the Moonsongs series, dive in. They're divided up into short novellas E.J. calls episodes. 6 episodes so far and I cannot wait for the next one! 

When life's kicking your butt, how about a theme song? It's all about the ukulele!

I just realized it's November! It was the spectacular show of color this morning that clued me in. Plus the very unhappy kid raking a mile of yellow on the sidewalk. I smiled huge at the thought of sending my petulant teenager to rake and scoop leaves. My mind jumped from that thought to the first fall I spent in Washington. I was homesick and surrounded by strangers, but the colors fed a part of my soul that has never gone hungry since. There was this one day I was determined to rake leaves just like in the movies. Since I didn't have a lawn because I lived in the dorms I walked and walked looking for some old person who should not be raking leaves in the first place. Apparently, Tacoma is filled with spry elderly because I had not a single taker. So happy fall! Here's to yummy hot coffees and colors that make our hearts sing. And on that note (I'm killing with these puns!), here's my November theme song. It's all about the ukulele (for no good reason).

Joe Brown singing I'll See You In My Dreams

Writer or collector?

This week while I measured and cut a thousand times making flashcards for the team I work with a teacher down the hall read a story to his class. Maybe his door was open, probably not. The man can project. But while I counted and cut, I smiled and kept smiling because he was creating memories. He was cementing his presence as a teacher who loves teaching and I cataloged him for my writer shelf alongside my eighth grade math teacher who told my mom not to worry about my grade. "She'll get it."

It got me to thinking about the rest of the memories on my shelves. A hoarder of feelings and senses ready to be dusted off and carefully held in a story of my choosing I sometimes feel like I should come with a disclaimer: I will collect you in some way. Sorry.





By mat Walker from Brighton, UK (Video archive) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons