Review: Master of Darkness by Susan Sizemore

I have no idea where I picked up my nasty habit of starting a series right in the midst of things, but my back luck struck again with Susan Sizemore’s Master of Darkness. This book is the fourth in her “The Primes” series, centering on vampires but with a bit of shape- shifters thrown in to deepen the universe.

Sometimes, jumping into an establish series isn’t that bad of a deal, as with Maggie Shayne’s “Wings of the Night” series. This time, however, I missed out on some basic bits of world building that Sizemore laid down in the previous three novels. Specifically speaking, her take on the role of tribes and clans. It was easy to figure out that a “Prime” headed a clan, but without having the background, knowing exactly how the tribes and clans differ (and what makes the tribes to undesirable) proved to be a stumbling block.

The mortals in the novel, represented by Eden, are probably the least developed characters in the novel. We get a brief glimpse into her family and work life, but compared to Laurent's family it is a little thin. Several reviewers criticize Sizemore for flat characters, and I think that it's the human characters they're referring to.

The vampires, on the other hand, are better developed, and the subplot concerning Laurent’s parentage contains some of the most emotionally charged portions of the book. Sizemore begins to explore the family dynamic of vampire families and her take on the status of female vampires is an intriguing twist. Hopefully, she will explore the female vampires more in depth in a future addition to the series.
Sizemore has been criticized for having too much sexual elements at the expense of developing other aspects of emotional attraction between her leads. Readers of erotica will find the writing a little tame, and given the mythos of vampires places them as sensual above all else, I don’t think Sizemore made a mistake in emphasizing their sensual qualities about their other emotions.

Tackling the backlog

I'm going to try and fight the temptation to re-read the Julie Garwood novels I have on my bookshelf. I've read so many of her novels that I could probably quote some scenes from her books. Besides, I need to start exposing myself to some other voices.

Right now I have Hannah Lowell's Highland Warrior, which is another historical. I grabbed it off of the bookshelf at Barnes and Noble on the recommendation of the woman standing next to me. I'd never done that before but I figured what the heck and went ahead and bought it. As the title suggests, it's set in Scotland, which always scores points for me as a reader.

But given that the last novel that I read was a historical, I think I'm going to change direction even further this time. I have Susan Sizemore's Master of Darkness up next in my queue, and I'll probably start on it this weekend. I'm not even sure when or why I bought this one. I probably thought the back cover blurb sounded intriguing, and for a while I really tried to seek out authors I'd never read before.

I like paranormals, but I've really lost interest in vampires in the past decade. I devoured Maggie Shayne's Born in Twilight from her Twilight Series. Despite this being the second one in the series, I managed to follow the storyline without feeling like I'd missed anything. Reading Born in Twilight started my love of Shayne's emotional depth in creating her characters. I prefered it to her immortal witches series.

Shayne set a pretty high bar, since her take on vampire novels was my first exposure to "vamps." I tried some other authors and I couldn't get into their books as easily as I did with Shayne's. I read as many of her vampire novels as I could in the countryside where I lived at the time.

Soon I developed a preference for witches, due to the first few seasons of Charmed before Prue turned descended from a competent auction house antiques expert into a bumbling photographer. Add in the success of the movie version of Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, and I'd found some heroines that I could relate to. I admire Hoffman's ability to mix an ethereal set of powers with a sense of impending doom for the men in the Owen sisters' lives.

Before the bad fashion and overblown silliness, Charmed had potential to really explore the sisters' feelings of helplessness when faced with a charge they couldn't help or wondering what their place in the world once they became the Charmed Ones would really be. My favorite scene in the first few seasons of the show featured an apprehensive Piper worrying that being a witch would mean that she'd no longer be welcome in a Christian church. As she sat in the car, she worried that simply walking across the threshold of a Catholic church would lead to her being struck down with the proverbial bolt of lightning. Her relief when she entered and excited the church unscathed was wonderfully touching and obviously still stays with me today.

Well, now it's time to tackle the pile of books by the couch.

Why honest criticsm is good

I've decided to put my mideaval historical aside for a few weeks. I hated the language and I saw way too many cliches in my writing. Even worse, it was boring me to to read it. I'd shudder to think what an editor would think of it.

That led me to lurk on and eventually join the forum at Absolute Write. And before I knew it, I'd also joined up at Romance Divas as well. I've spent every night (and every work break I could get) soaking up every last bit of advice people were willing to give me.

The details get fuzzy at this point, but somewhere along the way I decided to start following the never- ending chain of blogs. That led me to
Miss Snark and her infamous crapometer. That alone was worth the time I took off of my manuscript. Not only have I figured out where I went wrong, now I realize how I went wrong and how to fix that drivel.

I'm not looking for an agent at this point. I haven't published my first manuscript yet, but after reading a brutally honest assessment of what works and what doesn't I'm starting to figure out how to avoid an enormous amount of mistakes commen to new writers.

I'm suddenly remembering why I left Blogger last year in favor of Live Journal. Adding hyperlinks on Blogger is an absolute nightmare. I finally gave up and decided to hand code them instead of using the link utility at the top of each post. That didn't work, either, despite the fact that I had the code exactly perfect. I lost two posts when Blogger decided not to recover either of them. Now I'm just annoyed.

I know it can be done. I've seen people do it.

Aaaaannnd We're Back

Well, everyone- after an almost yearlong hiatus I'm happy to say that THE BLOG IS BACK!

It's been an incredibly busy year for me. I spent most of it job hunting for a nice steady day job. That meant moving all the way to Austin, the writers' haven of Texas. I'm very glad to be here and I'm excited about settling down for the long run and getting back to writing.

To that end, I've joined the local RWA chapter here and I'm working on a manuscript. Why romance? Well, because it's fun and the industry is very welcoming towards new writers. Truth be told, all of publishing is welcoming towards new writers, but I grew up with romance books and RWA members have a well deserved reputation for being a training ground for learning how to write solid characterization.

What am I writing now? Well, that was the challenge- settling down and choosing something to write. I am working now on an erotic romance (cover the kiddies' eyes), and I keep kicking around an idea of a paranormal romance.

When I first started writing romance, I naturally gravitated towards historical since I'm trained as a historian. But I think I'm burned out on history, so that manuscript has been put on hold so I can work on genres that interest me more.

I'm interested in writing a sci-fi fantasy novel, and given my interests there will probably be some strong romantic elements in it as well. Oh, and as if I weren't busy enough, I'm really tempted to try my hand and screenwriting. I mean, it is Austin after all....