The Mammoth Summer of Reading

Now that I have some free time on my hands, guess what I'll be doing for the rest of the summer? Actually, you don't have to guess; I told you in my last post. Those are just the print copies. Highlights include:

• Ruth Downie's Caveat Emptor & Medicus
• The Forever Queen by Helen Hollick
• C.C. Humphrey's Vlad: The Last Confession
• Conn Iggulden's Khan: Empire of Silver
• George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (I'll wait for A Dance With Dragons when HBO's Game of Thrones season 2 is done next year)
• The Borgia Betrayal by Sara Poole
• A book by one of my absolute favorites, the woman who inspired my love of historical fiction, Persia Woolley in a re-release of Queen of the Summer Stars.

A summer of books

There are prime choices that I'm looking forward to on Kindle as well, including:

• Cinders by Michelle Davidson Argyle
• Elizabeth Chadwick's For the King's Favor
• Mel Comley's Impending Justice
• Blockbuster by Sven Michael Davison
• Alison DeLuca's The Night Watchman Express
• In Her Name: Empire, by Micheal Hicks
• The Vampire Relationship Guide, Volume 1: Meeting and Mating by Evelyn LaFont
• Cartier's Ring by Pearson Moore
• Cate Rowan's Kismet's Kiss
• The Black God's War by Moses Siregar III
• Lindsay Townsend's To Touch the Knight & A Knight's Vow
• Mike Wells' Wild Child
• The House of Women by Anne Whitfield
• Sarah Woodbury's The Last Pendragon    

That's about a tenth of what's on my Kindle right now. All of them will be read and reviewed this summer, either for the HNR blog or any place I like to mouth off about books, like Amazon. You might be wondering, is she really going to through all those books? Um, yeah. If an author really hooks me, I'll read a book a day, with a rare break to eat and pee. Since I'm a semi-insomniac, sleep is also a possibility. But why sleep, when you can read?

What are your summer reading plans? What are you looking forward to the most?  

New Voices: Evelyn Lafont

Author Evelyn Lafont

Suffering from Sequelitis

I loved Alanis Morrisette’s first popular album, Jagged Little Pill. I think I was about 19 when it first came out and while I hadn’t suffered all the setbacks in love that she had, it still felt like an anthem for my life.

Did I like her follow up album? The one…uh…oh—called, um…wait—what was her follow-up album called?

This is the conversation that runs through my mind every time I sit down to write the sequel to my first novel, The Vampire Relationship Guide, Volume 1: Meeting and Mating. See, when I wrote the first book in the series, it was my debut work. There were no expectations and nothing to live up to.

Now, while my book isn’t top of the charts or anything, I do have a readership and I have set a standard that I’ll be held to. This is true of any author working on their second work. But in addition to that, since I’m writing a sequel, people are attached to the characters and have certain expectations based on the events in the first book.

Let me tell you, that feels like a lot to live up to. But, as Lisa will tell you (although she hasn’t known me that long, she seems to have picked up on this) I’m not one to run away from a challenge. That means that I park my ass in my chair and force myself to write that damned sequel according to my writing schedule. I write through the fear, I write through the weight of expectations, I write through the insecurity, I write through the doubt, and eventually I reach the gooey, caramelly center of my writing experience—which is the fun. And once I remember that it’s about having fun, oooh, I can’t be tamed.

If you are suffering from sequelitis, sophomore scares, and follow-up frights, just write. Eventually, your mind will go to that special place that only we writers know about and the rest of the world will melt away, just as it should.

Evelyn Lafont is an author and freelance writer with an addiction to Xanax and a predilection for snark. Her debut novella, The Vampire Relationship Guide, Volume 1: Meeting and Mating is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords.




If you do ANYTHING online today, please follow Evelyn Lafont on Twitter! She is all-knowing and altogether fun, all of the time. And, don't miss the trailer for The Vampire Relationship Guide!