Author Archives: Goddess in the Stacks

Friday 56 – Black Wings Beating

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black wings beatingThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from Black Wings Beating, by Alex London.

Now that she was close to the one thing she wanted for herself, her brother was being reckless. Well, she could be reckless, too. Frustration parted her lips, and the burning breath inside rushed from her in one searing word, as angry now as it had been desperate before.

“Shyehnaah,” she said, and in an instant, Shara unmantled her wings, scooped up the dead rabbit, and flew straight to Kylee. As she swooped to Kylee’s fist, she dropper her kill at Kylee’s feet and opened her wings to slow her landing. Her bright white under-feathers practically blinded the twins. The bird hooked her bloodied talons around Kylee’s bare knuckles and then stood, proud, eyes fixed on the rabbit she had killed and, for reasons she probably didn’t understand herself, dropped at the feet of her master’s sister.

The full review will be live tomorrow!

Book Review: Are You Tired and Wired?

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tired and wiredAre You Tired and Wired? Your Proven 30-Day Program for Overcoming Adrenal Fatigue and Feeling Fantastic Again
by Marcelle Pick
Nonfiction/Health
289 pages
Published 2011

One of my 2019 goals is to get my health under control. I have at least two auto-immune diseases, with two more suspected (they often jumpstart each other, yay!) and one of the things I struggle with A LOT is fatigue. Adrenal dysfunction often goes hand-in-hand with autoimmune diseases, especially those dealing with the thyroid gland, like my Hashimoto’s Disease. This book spends a lot of time on figuring out if you have Adrenal Dysfunction and why that’s important. A lot of the questions made me feel REALLY called out. I perk up at 9 p.m. after being tired throughout the day. I crave high-protein, high-fat, salty foods like meats and cheeses. I’m exhausted all the time, absent-minded, and have to take breaks often when doing things like housework or walking. There’s a quiz in this book that has five categories for your score. The worst score is anything over 26 points. I scored 64!

So, according to this book, my adrenals are SHOT. Unfortunately, the 30-Day program involves a lot of foods that contradict with the AutoImmune Protocol, which I was on for about six months in 2018 and made me feel fantastic. I’m still avoiding gluten, nightshades, and some dairy, but I want to go back on full elimination AIP. It’s just difficult to do because it means cooking almost every day. After we move, we should have more fridge and freezer space and I can start doing big batch cooking. That should make it easier.

In the meantime, though, there isn’t actually a whole lot of lifestyle changes in this book I can make. There are herbal supplement suggestions, which I might try, and prescription medication suggestions, which I will consult with my new doctor about as soon as I get insurance straightened out and make an appointment. But I won’t do the 30-day diet program, and as far as reducing my daily stress, well.

I’m a housewife. I have no children. The vast majority of my stress comes from living with roommates, and I can’t do anything about that until we move! Now that my husband is done with school, there will be less stress coming from that direction, at least. But really, I lead a pretty low-stress life. Looking back on things, I think I’m actually improving from where I was a few years ago, when I was working retail while my husband went to school and worked, while being financially strapped and living with roommates. And that was after the five years of near-constant background levels of stress from him being in the military. So it could be that my adrenals actually bottomed out a few years ago and I’m just now noticing it because there isn’t a constant pressure forcing me to be on the go constantly anymore. Or, according to the book, I’m through the Racehorse and Workhorse stages and in the Flatliner stage.

I’ll probably look into more books about adrenal dysfunction – I always take these kinds of books with a grain of salt, because so many self-helpish health books are just trying to sell their own protocols or diets or “this one simple thing will change your LIFE!” But it was worth reading and mulling over the information.

From the cover of Are You Tired and Wired?

Do you wake up every morning feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and stressed? Are you constantly reaching for coffee, soda, or some other promise of energy just to keep yourself going? Do you struggle through the day – tired, irritable, forgetful, depressed, and craving sweets – only to have trouble sleeping at night?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions – you’re not alone. In fact, hundreds of thousands of women are fighting these same feelings as they strive to live the lives they want. 

In Are You Tired and Wired?, Marcelle Pick, co-founder of Women to Women – one of the first clinics in the country devoted to providing health care for women by women – and the author of The Core Balance Diet, gives you the knowledge and tools to overcome this epidemic of fatigue.

Pick sets her sights on adrenal dysfunction – the root cause of these symptoms. In our modern lives, the adrenal glands, which are responsible for providing the fight-or-flight hormones in response to stress, are triggered much more often than they should be. Everything from challenges at home and at work, to environmental toxins, to chronic health problems cause the adrenal glands to produce a constant flood of stress hormones that can ultimately lead to multiple health issues, especially severe fatigue.

The good news is that through diet, lifestyle adjustments, and reprogramming of stressful emotional patterns, this can all be fixed!

Pick helps you identify which of three adrenal dysfunction profiles you fit – Racehorse, Workhorse, or Flatliner – and then lays out an easy-to-follow, scientifically based program to help you restore adrenal balance, regear your metabolism, and regain your natural energy to live a happier and less-stressed life.

Library Loot Wednesday

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I only picked up two books this week, and turned in five. The End of Yearathon last week helped me make a little bit of headway on my library books!

I picked up a physical copy of Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, and checked out a romance on my Kindle, The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie. I was told the hero is autistic. We’ll see how the book presents it, though I’m side-eyeing that title (and the blurb on Goodreads) pretty hard. The author has verified her hero is autistic, she just couldn’t say it in the novel as there wasn’t a term for it at that point in history. Well. I will read it, confer with my #actuallyautistic husband, and report back!

TTT – Most Anticipated Releases for 2019

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Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and she has a linkup on her site to see what everyone else is looking forward to this year!

I have twelve this week because I simply couldn’t narrow it down any further! There are more I’m looking forward to, but these are my top twelve. All fantasy, because that’s what I get the most excited about.

 

 

 

I have five upcoming sequels: The Winter of the Witch (sequel to The Bear and The Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower, out today!), The Kingdom of Copper (City of Brass, 1/22), Storm of Locusts (Trail of Lightning, 4/23), The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, whoops, this one is actually out in the last half of 2019 – August), and The Shadow Glass (The Bone Witch/The Heart Forger, 3/1).

The rest of my list are new worlds. Some of them are debut authors, some are not.

 

 

 

White Stag (out today) is about a teenage girl entwined with the fae and becoming more monster than human. A Memory Called Empire (March) is about interstellar politics. It looks Aztec or Mayan inspired, but I’m not sure of that. Crown of Feathers (2/12) only needs two words. Phoenix. Riders. PHOENIX. RIDERS.

 

 

 

Once & Future (3/5), an F/F sci-fi King Arthur retelling, Descendant of the Crane (4/2), a new Chinese-inspired fantasy by a debut author, We Hunt the Flame (5/14), another debut but this one middle-eastern fantasy, and Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2/5), a new fantasy by Marlon James, round out my most anticipated books.

Book Review: Silence Fallen

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silence_fallen_layout.inddSilence Fallen
by Patricia Briggs
Urban Fantasy
371 pages
Published 2017

Silence Fallen is #10 in the Mercy Briggs series, and honestly, they’ve started to get a bit boring. Mercy gets into trouble. Mercy gets into SPECIAL trouble that werewolves would have a hard time with, but she’s special because she’s a coyote shifter, and her abilities give her an edge over the pure strength of werewolves! Mercy antagonizes enemies, escapes, finds her way home. Gets revenge. That’s basically the plot of almost every one of these books. I generally like them, but this one in particular fell short. Maybe it’s because I haven’t read them in a while, but it just lacked the urgency of some of her other adventures.

One thing that really bothered me was the big bad vampire in the beginning – who was creepy as ALL get out – turned out to not be that bad, I guess? They let themselves get used by him to fulfill a plot and weren’t mad about it? I would have expected Mercy’s pack to take the dude down, no matter the consequences, but that wasn’t what they decided to do.

And then, very frustratingly, they revealed something in the last ten pages or so that made me go re-read EVERY SCENE with a certain character and yep, there was no foreshadowing of that AT ALL. And there should have been. That’s something the reader should be able to guess, because the viewpoint character knows about it. And it’s absolutely not hinted at. So that’s frustrating, and changes the meaning of several scenes.

So I’m very meh on this one. I don’t know if I’ll continue this series. Sometimes series just overdo their lifespan. This should have been wrapped up and moved on to other characters some time ago. The second series in this world, Alpha and Omega, is still pretty good. But maybe it’s time to set Mercy aside. Do a series focused on the fae, or the vampires or something.

From the cover of Silence Fallen:

In the #1 New York Times bestselling Mercy Thompson novels, the coyote shapeshifter has found her voice in the werewolf pack. But when Mercy’s bond with the pack – and her mate – is broken, she’ll learn what it truly means to be alone.

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against Alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes – only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in a foreign country.

Unable to contact Adam through their mate bond, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the city of Prague, old ghosts rise…

Looking Forward – 2019 Goals

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Well! 2019 promises to be a year of great change for me personally – my husband graduated from college in December, and went full time at his job at the beginning of the year. (Computer Science.) In April we’re planning to start the process to buy a house! So very soon, we’ll be moving, and we won’t have roommates anymore. (OH THANK HEAVENS.) With that in mind, I’m toning down my Goodreads goal slightly to 150 books this year, since the move will take a lot of my reading time. (And we have a two-week vacation planned later in the year.)

As for reading challenges, I’d like to do the 50 books in 50 states challenge, with a small twist – no straight white men. So a book set in each state of the US, while avoiding white male authors. (I made it straight white because there’s a few states – like Vermont – that it might be pretty difficult to find a non-white author in, but I should be able to find a queer white author writing there. I will be doing my best to avoid white authors entirely, though.)

My library is doing a reading challenge, but it’s only one challenge each month so that shouldn’t be hard to keep up with, and they’re all pretty easy tasks. For example, January is “Read A Book You’ve Been Meaning To Read” which is pretty much everything on my desk!

I’m planning to start the Dewey Decimal Challenge, but I’m not putting a time restraint on it. The Dewey Decimal Challenge is read a book for each category of the system – so each 10s place, I believe. I’ll make a page in the sidebar to keep track of it. I also need to make a page for the 50 states challenge and a page to keep track of my books about and by autistic people. I’m also planning to make a page to gather links to Chronic Illness books and posts. I could make a page for LGBT content, but that would be 75% of the fiction I read! I think using the tag is the better idea for that.

For the blog, I’m going to continue to try to post every day. I’d really like to get a short fiction series going on Sundays, I’m just having trouble writing the beginning of the story. I’d like to post more regularly on Instagram and Litsy, as well, I just keep forgetting about them! Lately I’ve been most active on Twitter. The Facebook mobile app changed and it’s a lot harder to post to my Facebook page from my phone, so that has just been getting the automated posts whenever I post here on the blog.

statsDecember was my best month ever, in raw views, and each month this last year was better than the last, except for the spike I had in July and August. I assume that’s related to people wasting time on the internet during the summer. I beat both summer months in December, though, so hopefully the growth will continue building! Maybe I’ll host a giveaway when I hit 1000 views in one month or something.

In more personal hopes for this year, my husband going full-time at his job means our insurance is changing and so is my doctor, which is actually a good thing. I’m going to be looking into a functional doctor (there’s a few in my area) who will be more willing to try other drugs for my thyroid and autoimmune disorders. I’d really like to kick these constant fatigue, insomnia, and digestive issues.

I’m also really looking forward to our wedding anniversary this year, we’re planning a trip to Toronto in early July to celebrate! I might simply take a short hiatus from the blog over those two weeks, if I don’t have enough of a backlog of entries built up. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

So those are my plans for this year. On Tuesday I’ll be talking about some of my most anticipated releases this year, so stay tuned!