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About lydias

I'm a sci-fi writer who loves lifting weights and hates eating Brussels sprouts.

Mistimed Meal: A Review of Vampire Fly

Book cover for Vampire Fly: A Samantha Moon Story by J.R. Rain. Image on cover is a closeup photo of a large, green fly sitting on a white surface. Title: Vampire Fly – A Samantha Moon Story

Author: J.R. Rain

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 4, 2022

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 28 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

She’s a horsefly who bit the wrong person—and now something very strange is happening to her.

Something very, very strange.

Not only can she fly faster and see further than ever before, but she has a weird craving for blood.

Her crazy new life has just begun.

That is, until she gets caught in a sticky web and stalked by a massive spider… a spider that’s about to get the surprise of its life…

Review:

Content Warning: A vampiric horsefly, insects eating each other, and an insect pregnancy and birth.

Flies have feelings, too.

Mr. Rain did an excellent job of exploring the logical conclusions of a horsefly accidentally becoming a vampire. Not only was this an imaginative story, it spent a lot of time digging into what horseflies might think and feel as they go about their usual business looking for food and, in this case, a safe place to lay their eggs. The vampiric twist to what should have been a pretty ordinary day only made everything even more interesting as the ecosystem is not exactly set up for a horsefly that is much stronger, faster, and more resilient than any other member of its species has ever been before. This opportunity to get a glimpse into the mind of a creature so unlike humans is one of the many reasons why I adore xenofiction, and this was a very good example of what that micro-genre can do.

I found myself wishing for more details about what happened to the horsefly’s babies. For example, did they inherit her supernatural abilities? Would future generations of this family be little vampires as well, or were her babies sterile like most human versions of this monster are? There was so much more the narrator could have done with this subplot, and I would have gone with a full five-star rating if a few additional paragraphs had been included that explained what their fates might have been.

With that being said, I did enjoy the ending quite a bit. The main character had been hurt by a spider in a previous scene, but many of the assumptions I’d made about what might happen next were turned on their heads in the most marvellous manner.  I must tip my cap to the author for pulling this piece in the direction he did. It has piqued my interest in what else might be going on in this universe and made me wonder if this is only the tip of the creative iceberg. As much as I wish I could go into more detail about the last few scenes, I don’t want to spoil anything for other readers as it was a great deal of fun to be surprised by what happened.

This is part of a series, but no prior knowledge of that world is necessary in order to understand what is happening here.

Vampire Fly was a memorable tale that made me curious to read more.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: An Interesting Story About Family or Friends

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

To give a little backstory first, my grandfather has been a farmer his entire life just like his father was before him. One of the problems with farming in certain parts of the Midwestern United States is that the land there used to be a giant swamp.

This means that anywhere from mild to much more serious flooding is common in certain low-lying areas and that they often have too much water for their crops instead of not enough. Stagnant pools of water are also a great place for mosquitoes to lay their eggs, so one must take note of that as well unless you want to become dinner for thousands of tiny little bloodsuckers.

Drainage pipes are one modern solution to this problem. My grandfather’s land is filled with them wherever he notices that he has too much water.

This is the tale of the white drainage pipe and the kids who protected it.

When my brothers and I were little, Grandpa installed a drainage pipe in his side yard. This was a little uncommon as most of his pipes were in his fields or by his barns in order to keep his crops and tools from being flooded out.

It was not a complicated job, but it was something that my siblings found fascinating. We were allowed to stand a safe distance away and observe part of the process. I have vague memories of it being muddy as they dug.

After the pipe had been placed and covered over with dirt and grass seeds again, Grandpa gave my brothers a very solemn and important assignment.

Two photos from the day when Grandpa dug the drainage ditch in his yard. In the left photo, you see a Caucasian girl with short, curly brown hair leaping over the drainage ditch. I’m probably about 5 or 6 years old in this photo. The ditch was maybe a foot or two deep and there are piles of soil on each side. I’m wearing a pink shirt, a red skirt, and white shoes that were somehow still clean despite all of the mud. I n the photo on the right, my little brother is standing next to our grandfather beside the ditcher. The ditcher had been painted red but the paint was fading. It was about 8 feet tall based on how much it towered over my already decently-sized height grandfather. Grandpa is a Caucasian man in about his 50s whose skin has been deeply tanned by a lifetime of working outdoors. He’s wearing a blue and white ball cap, a blue longsleeved work shirt, and a lighter blue pair of pants. My brother is also Caucasian, about 3 or 4 years old, and he wearing jeans and a yellow-tshirt, and has straight blond hair. Every time we came over to visit, they were to pour a little water in one end of the pipe and make sure it flowed out the other end into a nearby creek.

Some kids might have forgotten this duty after a time or two, but my siblings were not among them. Every time we visited, they would pour a little cup of water into the pipe and then we’d race down the hill with a nearby grownup to ensure grandpa’s pipe wasn’t plugged up.

This went on for multiple visits if my memory is correct. The pipe was always clear, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

And now I chuckle at the cute memory and creative way to encourage the grandkids to burn off some energy and feel included before going indoors into our grandparents’ home.

(This post was edited to include a few family pictures I didn’t know existed from this time period. Look how big that ditcher was! And I’d forgotten that I jumped over the ditch).

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Top Ten Tuesday: Movies That Would Have Made Amazing Books


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A photo of about six rows of red empty seats in a theatre. There’s not a lot of light in this room which gives it an eerie sort of feeling even though all you can see are tidy, red seats everywhere you look. Thank you to Sabrina @ Notes From a Paper Plane Nomad for coming up with this topic!

This is one of those weeks when I will be giving a little more than the suggested ten answers.

What surprised me while doing research for this post was how common it is for many movies and tv shows that weren’t originally based on books to eventually have stories published about them anyway.

I wonder if there has ever been or will ever be a film based on a book that was originally based on another film?

At any rate, here are some films that would make great books. So far as the Internet tells me, no books have been written about any of them yet.

1. Us

2. Good Will Hunting

3. Inception

4. The Cabin in the Woods

5. Beetlejuice

6. Edward Scissorhands

7. Nope!

8. Europa Report

9. Labyrinth

10. Get Out

11. The Sixth Sense

I look forward to reading everyone else’s responses.

 

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Paranormal Business: A Review of Ghosted

Book cover for Ghosted - A Short Story by H.L. Burke. Image on cover shows a a drawing of the silhoutte of a black cat who is standing on a brick wall with its back arched under the light of a full moon. You can also see the branch of a nearby tree hanging over the cat. The branch has several leaves on it. Title: Ghosted – A Short Story

Author: H.L. Burke

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 15, 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 18 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Ghosts thrive on fear, but Maisie just isn’t delivering. In fact, Lazarus isn’t even sure she realizes she’s being haunted.

When expert haunter, Lazarus Bently, receives a cry for help from a fellow ghost, he rushes to the chaotic cottage of eccentric artist Maisie. If Ghost HQ finds out Lazarus couldn’t get a rise out of this little old lady, he’ll never live it down.

With his professional pride on the line, can Lazarus get through to this unshakable woman? Or will this unbeaten scarer be the one quaking in his boots?

Review:

You don’t have to be a big fan of being scared to enjoy this one!

Artists aren’t easy to scare…especially someone as independent and creative as Maisie. I adored the descriptions of how she worked on her paintings and drawings in her cluttered and messy but also warm and inviting home. She was the sort of antagonist that I can’t help but to root for because she genuinely didn’t realize she was annoying her resident ghost at all. After all, who has time to worry about the spirit world and what it wants from the living when there are countless ideas out there to try to commit to paper or canvas? Her self-absorption was understandable given how quirky she was in general, and it also matched the ghosts’ frantic attempts to frighten her beautifully.

The world building was amazing as well. The author only had about eighteen pages to work with here, so it was impressive to see just how many descriptions of paranormal society and how the dead were expected to interact with the living she managed to pack into such a small space. While I would have happily read another few hundred pages about the complexities of it all, I was also content with what I was given and finished the last scene with a chuckle.

Speaking of the ending, it couldn’t have been better. This piece played around a lot with everyone’s expectations, including the ghosts, Maisie, and even those of us who participated in it simply by reading. I don’t want to share too many details and accidentally give away spoilers, but what I can say is that Ms. Burke is clearly well-versed in both the fantasy and paranormal genres and knew exactly how to tweak her plot twists to bring out the funniest aspects of being a ghost, being haunted, and even of wanting to read about a haunting gone terribly wrong in a silly, not tragic, sense of that phrase.

Ghosted – A Short Story was cozy, sweet, and hilarious.  If you need a palate cleanser between checking out more serious works, I highly recommend starting here.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Book Trope I Wish Wouldn’t Happen IRL

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Closeup photo of pink, yellow, orange, and white conversation hearts. Not all of their messages can be read, but the ones that can be say things like “love,” “soft,” and “help.” I have two words for all of you this week: forbidden romance.

Assuming everyone in the relationship is a consenting adult and no one is being harmed, I spend exactly 0% of my time worrying about who anyone dates or marries in real life or in fiction.

This includes, but is not limited to, interracial, interfaith, age gap, multicultural, interabled, same sex, and any other sort of relationship that some heartily disapprove of.

You see people in just about every sort of “forbidden” relationship you can imagine in Toronto every single day. If someone chose to be horrified by other folks quietly going about their business, it would literally occupy the offended person’s mind every single moment of their days for the rest of their lives and they would still run out of time decades before they ran out of couples to be angry about.

Yes, I know that not every community is like this by any means….but I think our world would be a better place if everyone treated others with kindness and didn’t make a fuss about who folks fall in love with.

After all, there are more important things to discuss. For example, are conversation hearts delicious or not? I love them but my spouse does not!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Spring 2024 TBR


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

There are four stacks of books in the background of this image that have about 6-8 books in each stack. No spines, authors, or titles can be seen in these stacks. The three books in the foreground have been wrapped up multiple times with a rough, brown, thick string that might be twine. There is a large pink cloth flower on top of the books. On their spines the words “Happy Spring’ and a few tiny pink cloth flowers have been affixed to cover any signs of their authors or titles. So here’s the thing about spring and my reading habits:

I tend to dramatically slow down on my reading time once the weather warms up, April showers have ended, and spending ample time outdoors is pleasant again for the first time in about six months.

If Ontario happens to have an unusually cold or stormy spring in a given year, this obviously does not happen.

I try to plan for all sorts of possibilities since you never know what the weather might do as the seasons change.

Let’s see which new books coming out this spring have caught my eye. I hope to read them on stormy days when going outdoors is not such an appealing idea.

 

Book cover for The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon. There is no image on the cover really. It starts off as lime green at the top of the cover and gradually shift colour to a sea green at the bottom. The title and author are written in a white font whose style is reminiscent of chalk on a chalkboard.

1. The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon

Publication Date: Today!

Why I’m Interested: Not only am I part of this demographic group, I was also a preacher’s kid. I’m really curious to see what the author has to say about us and how much of her research matches my own experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of a very pale person who might be a statue lying down with their eyes closed. They are surrounded by flowers and greenery, including one green leaf that is touching their lips and some grass growing up by their pale, still body. The background is pitch black, possibly a reference to this being set very late on a cloudy night?

 

2.  The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez 

Publication Date: April 2

Why I’m Interested: As an author, I have my own little cemetery of abandoned stories that I feel guilty about and do hope to go back and finish one day. Personifying forgotten characters is such a creative idea. This could be an excellent read.

Book cover for A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland. Image on cover shows a closeup of a white person whose long, straight, brown hair is flowing over their bare chest, concealing their breasts. Their hands are holding their hair in exactly the right position to keep this image from becoming too racy.

 

 

3. A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland

Publication Date: April 9

Why I’m Interested: Romance isn’t a genre I visit very often as you all may remember, but I love the fact that this is a retelling of the classic folktale The Selkie Wife and am excited to see what the author does with it.

Book cover for https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196834746-the-house-that-horror-built. Image on cover shows an eerie red glowing light that looks like an alien spaceship hanging low over the floor in an otherwise almost pitch black room. You can see two white lightbulbs above it and the dim outline of a large wooden door, but the rest of the room is shrouded in darkness.

 

4. The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry

Publication Date: May 14

Why I’m Interested: It’s much less common for me to read horror since the pandemic started, but I do find the occasional stories in this genre that aren’t too scary. Here’s hoping I can handle some paranormal horror as the protagonist sounds like a very interesting person who just so happens to work in what sounds like might be a haunted house.

 

 

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Persistence: A Review of Ghost Coach

Book cover for Ghost Coach by Amanda Linehan. Image on cover is a closeup photo of some white satin or silk sheets on a bed. The sheets are a little rumpled. Title: Ghost Coach

Author: Amanda Linehan

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: January 10, 2015

Genres: Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 15 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Sarah hasn’t been sleeping well. Turns out, she has a ghost in her house. But this ghost has a problem.
And only Sarah can solve it.

Review:

Content Warning: brief reference to blood, a dead animal, and a ghost with a severe head injury. I will not discuss these things in my review.

Even ghosts need a little tutoring sometimes.

I adored the fact that Sarah was oblivious at first to the ghost’s attempts to scare her. She had such a logical and calm personality that the spirit of a dead person was the last thing she ever would have suspected to be the cause of the fluctuating temperatures in her bedroom. This was a nice change of page from the sorts of characters who generally populate this genre, and I found myself wishing for just a few more scenes with her in them so I could get to know her even better.

The beginning and middle of this tale did not quite match the ending due some references to blood and gore in the last few scenes. While other style could have worked for this piece, I have to say that I preferred the lightheartedness of the first two-thirds of it to the more violent – albeit still sort of humorous – tones at the end and wish that the author had stuck to one style or the other for the entire thing. Some readers will love both, of course, and that’s totally normal and okay, but in my experience these two approaches do tend to attract different audiences whose interests may not overlap here as much as the author might hope they would. Sticking to one lane would have made this a more effective and memorable story in my opinion.

There are only so many things someone can do after death to amuse themselves. It made perfect sense to me that the ghost would eventually want to interact with the living in order to get some sort of mental stimulation and socialization, as one-sided as those experiences could often be depending on who they were haunting and how that person reacted to suddenly having their covers pulled away or their television turned on in the middle of the night.

Ghost Coach was a funny, playful, and occasionally a somewhat dark take on the haunted house genre.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Book Trope I Wish Happened IRL More Often

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Every Christmas I reread Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

I love seeing a grumpy, selfish, mean man being transformed into someone who is kind, generous and remorseful.

WA photo of the hands of two people who are holding one side each of a $20 US bill. One of the people has dark skin and the other person has a medium skin tone. hile I do believe people can change for the better in real life, too, it seems to be much more rare than it is in fiction.

When it does happen, it’s a slow process in my experience. Instead of taking one night, it generally takes many years and includes lots of stops and starts.

The gradual process of it makes sense to me as a changing is hard work and rarely happens immediately for anyone no matter which habits we’re trying to begin or end.

But I do wish this transformation would happen more often in the real world. Imagine how much better life would be if it were common for people who have a great deal of wealth and power in the world to give it away in order to save lives and reduce suffering.

So many of the deeply kind and generous people I’ve known have been folks who have limited influence and tight budgets but who still do everything they can to help others. If only everyone behaved the way they do!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’m Worried I Might Not Love as Much the Second Time Around


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I’m going to tweak this prompt slightly so I can give more general answers to it as I have a long history of rereading books I loved X years ago only to discover that they no longer suit my tastes for a wide variety of reasons.

Drawing of dozens of red, green, black, or yellow circles that have been arranged in a chainmail pattern so that all of the circles are interlocked with several other circles to create an unbreakable bond between them. This means that if I’ve felt the urge to reread something, I’ve probably already done it.

Change is part of being human, and I don’t think it’s always reasonable to expect someone to feel the same way about a book 5, 10, or 50 years later.

Some people will always love certain books, of course, and that’s perfectly okay, too. But I believe that some books may work best if read at certain stages of life or under a specific range of personal circumstances for some of us.

This will be a short list this week.

1. The Classics

I’ve had some disappointing experiences rereading some of my favourite childhood classic novels only to discover things in them that I’d either forgotten or had not fully understood the first time I read them. This makes me not want to read reread anything else from this genre I have fond memories of.

See also: the weird and offensive things The Secret Garden had to say about how people should overcome their health problems. While I agree that spending time out in nature and trying to look on the bright side of life can be great coping mechanisms, they are not magical cures for anyone’s disabilities or illnesses.

 

2. Long Books

I used to see books that were 400+ pages long and relish the thought of diving into them. Now I strongly prefer works half that length at most unless the storyline is otherwise irresistible to me.

See also: The Pillars of the Earth series by Ken Follett. I remember loving how detailed the plot was about the lives of ordinary people who built those amazing cathedrals in Europe…but it’s also almost 1000 pages long which is far too verbose for me these days.

 

3. Unsatisfying Endings 

It’s disappointing to follow a series for years only to be let down by how it ends.

See also: The Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel. The first few books in it were wonderful, and then most of the conflicts that had been slowly building up tension in this series were either completely ignored or hand-waved away with tepid solutions in the final two books.

While I’ll always have a soft spot for these characters, I cannot convince myself to read those last two books again.

 

4. (Overly) Hyped Books

Obviously, not all books that are wildly popular upon their release are going to have this issue, but I’ve noticed that quite a few books that are hyped up a lot do not match my expectations of what I want to read. Their characters might feel flat when you look closely, or their plot twists have an over abundance of foreshadowing, or the issues they discuss are no longer so relevant a few years later.

I will not be providing an example of this one as I don’t want to make anyone feel bad for enjoying the hype surrounding hot, new books or having different preferences for character or plot development than I do. Reading tastes are such personal things.

It has simply been my experience that there is often – but certainly not always –  an inverse correlation between how much a new book is hyped up and how much I will personally enjoy it. So I will leave those heavily advertised books for other readers to enjoy and go browse in quieter sections of the reading community.

 

5. Fairy Tales

It pains me to admit this, but I have not enjoyed the majority of the fairy tales or fairy tale retellings I’ve read in the last five years. The genre doesn’t feel fresh to me anymore.

Hopefully this will change someday as I loved this sort of thing when I was a kid.

Once again, no examples are needed here.

 

6.  Amazing Plot Twists

Some stories work fabulously the first time around because you (probably) won’t see their plot twists coming in advance.

Once you know what those plot twists were, it can be hard to find the motivation to reread these tales even though I may have really enjoyed them the first time around.

See Also: Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Ishmael, #1) by Daniel Quinn, but I will not be giving any hints about what the twist was!

 

 

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Small Town Woes: A Review of The Curse of Three

Book cover for Makepeace and Grimes: The Curse of Three: A Gaslamp Gothic Mystery of Victorian England by Kevin Partner. Image on cover shows a photograph of a middle-aged white man who has salt and pepper hair standing in a graveyard at night. He’s looking straight at the viewer with a serious expression on his face as if he just heard something strange there and wants to see if you heard it, too. He’s wearing a late 1900s-style hat that had a wide brim and is raised a little over his head. Title: The Curse of Three (Makepeace & Grimes Book 1)

Author: Kevin Partner

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 4, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Historical

Length: 49 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Blurb:

Who would you choose to investigate the disappearance of three children?

A man and a vampire. Of course

It’s 1872.

Ichabod Grimes, mysterious defender of humanity, and his vampire friend Valentina, travel to a quiet village in Essex to find the missing children.

They uncover a sinister three hundred year plot that will see the return of a long forgotten evil.

Who is Ichabod Grimes? Find out now.

Review:

Content Warning: Kidnapping, a few mildly racist remarks,  and a few references to blood.

Rural doesn’t always mean peaceful.

One of the best things about this tale was how it explored life in a small village in 1872 and allowed readers to quietly compare it to how people behave in contemporary times. Obviously, there have been a lot of societal changes between then and now, but human nature has more or less remained the same. I smiled and shook my head as certain villagers showed fear and distrust of outsiders as the same thing continues to happen in many communities to this day. This pattern repeated itself a few times more and I continued to take note of how similar small towns – and people in general – often are to the way things were more than a hundred and fifty years ago.

I would have liked to see more clues included given the fact that it was a mystery (among other genres). While it’s certainly tougher to do so in the short story format given the limited amount of space an author has to work with, there weren’t enough hints about what was going on for me to come up with theories about who might have kidnapped the children or what they were planning to do with them. This meant that I wasn’t as emotionally invested in the ending as I could have been, although I did still enjoy seeing how Ichabod went about interviewing everyone and trying to piece things together. There is a sequel to this, so my hope is that it and any future instalments will dive much more deeply into the mystery storylines as I liked everything else about this universe.

This was my first introduction to Mr. Partner’s work, and I immediately liked his straightforward and sensible writing style. He seems to be the sort of writer who only describes people and things in detail if those descriptions push the plot forward in some way or if they’re otherwise necessary in order to understand what’s going on. While I do appreciate more flowery writing styles on occasion as well, this minimalist choice suited this particular tale nicely. Something tells me that Ichabod would have approved of a no-nonsense account of his first mystery as well. Perhaps this is one thing that the protagonist and the author share in common? At any rate, it worked and I’m glad it was written this way.

The Curse of Three was a quick, fun read.

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