Join Us in Reading the Hobbit!

Me and my good friend Rachmi created the J.R.R. Tolkien Epic Reads Goodreads group in January 2016. Since then, we've read The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin getting all the scoop on Middle Earth. Now, finally, we're ready to begin reading The Hobbit! We read a couple of chapters a month, so if you're a Tolkien fan—or not, if you've read these beloved books many times—or not, please join us in this epic reading of The Hobbit beginning on September 1, 2017.

Our group also has an epic and awesome art thread for The Silmarillion. Truly inspiring!

J.R.R. Tolkien Epic Reads
51 members We're reading it all: The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings ... slowly, deeply, thoughtfully, two chapters each month for most books. All Tolkien fans are welcome!!! Yes, it will take years, but we intend to enjoy the journey!!!

Books we've read

The Silmarillion
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Start date: January 1, 2016

The Children of Húrin
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Start date: June 1, 2017

View this group on Goodreads »

The Next Big Thing

Thank you, Jessica Fortunato for tagging me for The Next Big Thing. Jessica is the author of The Sin Collector books and her latest release is Steam, a 5-star original short story/science fiction/romance just in time for Valentine's Day.

So what is The Next Big Thing? Answering the following questions and tagging five more writers!

1. Diantha Jones
2. Bella Harte
3. Vanessa Wu
4. T.L. Rese
5. Michelle Muto

1) What is the [working] title of your next book?
The Dragon Carnivale.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
The idea for this installment grew out of one of my favorite characters in the series, Sevondi, a muannai and a powerful dragonwitch.

3) What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a fantasy fairy tale series and a spin off of the14th century French fairy tale, Melusine. There are faeries and half-faeries, and the enchanted world bleeds into the mortal world.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I'm pretty sure I am going to date myself here. I would love a young-someone-like Wynona Ryder for the main character Melia. Wynona Ryder is a beautiful, intelligent, irreverent actress.

Amanda Seyfried for the beautiful bad Plantine. She would be AWESEOME. Yes, all caps.

A young-someone-like the statuesque, auburn-haired, Aussie Nicole Kidman for Melusine. I can just see her looking down her perfect nose at her middle sister.

No one but Kathy Bates for Flora.

Waffling between Sir Anthony Hopkins and Sir Michael Caine for Uncle Raffles.

But if Peter Jackson would just direct the movie, he could do for Kathy and Anthony or Michael, what he did for Elijah Wood, Sam Astin, and all the other hobbits. He could make Ms. Bates the perfect Spring Faerie and either of the fellows the perfect head librarian/wood elf.

And what about a young-someone-like Javier Bardem for Ryder?

And no one, but no one, but Jada Pinkett Smith for Sevondi!!!

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
After the death of Elenda and the fall of the Stronghold of Calashai, energies in the enchanted world are shifting and new alliances are forming; the battle between Dark and Light has begun. Before Melia can deal with her feelings for Ryder, she must warn the halfbloods in the mortal world that Umbra is coming for them; and face the powerful Dragonwitch and her bacchanalian Dragon Carnivale.

Oops! Two sentences. Sirens. Here come the blog-meme police.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
My series is totally indie.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I will tell you when I am done.

8)What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I am so heavily influenced by Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The first manuscript for the first book in Queen of the Realm of Faerie was a totally Tolkienesque, cast of characters, omniscient POV, quest fantasy, but it needed a lot of work. It was my first completed novel and was rejected by five agents. The next attempt was a Charlaine Harris-Sookie Stackhouse-like-first person POV-attempt with Melusine as the main character. That didn’t even make it past my husband and beta reader, although I had a lot of fun writing it. Finally, after reading The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1), I settled on the multi-but-predominantly-Melia POV epic fantasy. Even though multi-POVs are out of fashion, it felt like the best way to tell the story. So ... can you compare Queen of the Realm of Faerie to The Lord of the Rings? The Sookie Stackhouse series? Or the Greyfriar books? I don’t know, but they directly fed my muse.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The entire series was inspired by my maternal grandmother. Whenever I went to visit her, I felt like I was entering another world full of enchantment and rife with black magic.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
In the end, I think of it as a contemporary The Lord of the Rings with faeries, half-faeries and female leads. The Lord of the Rings is a love story enfolded in an epic quest fantasy, and that is ultimately how I view Queen of the Realm of Faerie. Contemporary, but traditional. Faerie Tale, but epic. And I hope that when it is all said and done that the love story between Melia and Ryder will hold a candle to the inspiring love between Aragorn and Arwen.

I am Determined to see The Hobbit

It snowed last night. But today I am determined to see The Hobbit. I am not sure my determination is necessary. It's just another movie, right. And now it's just another movie adaptation of one of those books by Tolkien. Who? Right? But it's smashing box office records. Well, we are going to the first show and that means the snow's not going to melt by itself so we are going to need to do some shoveling.

We get downtown and the streets are clear. The parking is easy. We've beat the rush of last minute shoppers. We know the movie has at least 15 minutes of previews that I could care less about, so we don't bother getting there on time. All we want is to get some popcorn and be in our seats before the movie starts. Check. Check.

OMG! It has me from the first moment. Jackson is doing for The Hobbit what he did for The Lord of the Rings, except for maybe he's doing it even better. He starts with the dwarves and their history. It's awesome. I know that's not a very specific description but the cinematography, sets, and costumes are breathtaking. Get a load of the dwarf king's beard get-up.

Then he shuffles us back and forth in time between Bilbo's parties--the last one he has in The Shire for his birthday and the one that he didn't plan. The dwarfs start piling in and messing up his tidy hobbit hole and it just gets better from there.

English actor, Martin Freeman is hitting all the right notes. He's meek and assertive, outraged and clever, thoughtful and sensitive. He doesn't like the dwarves showing up and eating his food, and they aren't so sure they like him for their burglar, but by the end of The Hobbit's first installment, the group of fourteen is cohesive and almost everyone has had a chance to be a hero.

When The Ring and Gollum appear on screen for the first time, I want to stand up and clap. But no one else is jumping out of their seats so I restrain myself and manage with tapping my finger pads together. I have a big huge grin on my face. Gollum's first appearance in The Hobbit surpasses his debut in The Lord of the Rings and The Ring, well, it's The Ring.

When the credits start rolling I am frozen in my seat. I think it's better than The Lord of the Rings. I am so glad that my determination got me here, to the theater, on Christmas Eve Day. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Just like I'm supposed to. I can't resist chatting up other movie goers in the lobby.

Wasn't it great? Yeah. Everyone agrees, it is awesome.