Gate of Souls: a Familiar's Tale

I received my copy of Gate of Souls last night. I am quite excited and cannot wait to read it. Probably will sit down Saturday morning with a pot of tea and some scones and really enjoy it. I was a beta reader for this book when my friend Verna was writing it. It was great then, I loved it and was thrilled when she thought she had it published. That promise fell through, and in retrospect it was a very good thing it did. Since I first read the book, my friends Rick and Verna have moved so I haven't seen the changes in this book. Verna published several short stories in e-zines and in this way was 'noticed' by a book publisher. A Familiar's Tale was dusted off and has been through some serious editing. The title of the original, A Familiar's Tale, has become the series title. The story is told through the eyes of the sorcerer's familiars. The first time through Mellypip was the main character along with his sorceress Runa. I expect this hasn't changed any. As sweet and endearing as these two characters are Belwyn the owl -- and Mellypip's tutor -- was a favorite of mine, and everyone in the writers group. To a person, in our imaginations Belwyn had the voice of Edward Woodward. No one tried to give actors or voices to the other characters, but try giving this book a read and see if any voice other than Woodward's comes through for Belwyn.

I hear the 2nd book in the series is almost done. I wonder how much chocolate I'll have to mail out to Verna in order to see a rough draft of this book ahead of time?

Ramblings

Last night I finished another book club book, just in the nick of time. It was a library book - due today - and book club is tonight. The book was "Water for Elephants". It was a very good book. I had sworn, or rather promised myself not to do another forced read for book club, but somehow life keeps getting in the way. Well, life and procrastination.

Tonight, between work and book club I'm hoping to get some tatting ironed, and also iron some muslin while I am at it. I haven't posted any new tatting over at my other blog for a while and that needs to get done. I'm about 2/5 through the challenge and I need to get the last five items posted and get 'credit' for doing the work. The challenge is to create 25 tatted motifs in one year. I currently am at 9 motifs, the last 5 needing posting.

I started the other blog to be just tatting and leave this blog for everything else. Well, the lines have become blurred and now I'm wondering how to blend the 2 blogs into one and change the name to reflect the whole. I know other people have moved blogs so it can be done, it is just finding out all the mechanics behind it.