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Archive for the ‘John’ Category
Pirates are freaking awesome. Add laser guns, some dinosaurs, and a huge ninja war and I’m in heaven. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a pirate? A big sword, a maiden in every port, and all the loot you could haul.
Of course real life pirates back in the day were stinky, had few teeth, and probably had more venereal diseases than a test baboon at the CDC.
Nowadays we have a completely different style of piracy—and no, I’m talking about those losers in rowboats raiding defenseless ships near Somalia. Most of today’s pirates are educated, observe proper oral hygiene, and don’t even think of themselves as pirates. In fact, we’ve all probably engaged in piracy at some point and didn’t even realize or think about it.
Any time you download an eBook and don’t pay for it—unless of course the book is free—you’re pirating it. You’re swinging across the virtual poop-deck, cutlass in hand, and taking something that doesn’t belong to you. Sure, you don’t get to make anyone walk the plank and nobody gets stuck with the pointy end of your sword, but at the end of the day, someone does get hurt.
And it makes puppies and kittens cry.
You don’t want to make puppies and kittens cry, do you? If you do, then you’re a big meanie. No self-respecting real pirate would want that on his/her
conscience.
Authors shed blood, sweat, and tears to write their books and most of them don’t even charge a lot of money for the end result that could represent a year or more of their lives. So if you’re about to download a book for free without compensating the author, please put away the pirate hat, the fancy boots, and the eye patch, and do the right thing instead.
As a bonus, I’m going to link you to the bestest video of all time about e-piracy. Don’t Copy That Floppy.
When book-blogging fanatic Katy Swartz moves to West Virginia, she knows she’s in for the best time of her life!
Or maybe not.
The moment Katy fired up her laptop and got on the internet, I knew this book was a work of fiction. I mean, they don’t even have indoor plumbing, much less internet access in WVA. But they do, apparently, have aliens living next door. That, I can totally believe. Especially since the aliens are gross and nasty looking, with purple liver spots all over their bodies and stinky alien breath.
Yeah, right.
Of course these aliens are HAWT in all CAPS. Seriously, who wants to read about ugly aliens except sadistic people who hate happy endings and scream at puppies for enjoyment?
Daemon, the main alien dude, makes his first few appearances shirtless. Apparently, women love it when a shirtless man wears his jeans low on his hips. I only just realized that after reading Fifty Shades of Grey. So men out there, make sure you let those pants ride loooow on the hips. Oh yea, and dumping the kettle belly kind of helps too. As for the alien bit–sorry, can’t help you there.
In romance novels, we often have either insta-love or love-hate to start things off. If the book is told from a female perspective, the girl is usually pretty, but nobody we’d see on the cover of Cosmo.
Obsidian chooses the love-hate route. Daemon fries Katy’s senses with his super-model hotness, while she, of course, is nerdy, but nothing compared to Daemon or his sister, Dee when it comes to looks. When read the first few scenes, I groaned inside. I had the feeling I’d been through this territory before.
But rather than slogging through the book, I found myself rather enjoying the banter between Katy and Daemon, and seeing them slip toward the inevitable despite their futile attempts to hate each other as much as possible. Though Armentrout does a good job describing the aliens and their natural forms, the fight scenes seemed a little fuzzy around the edges, despite all the immense strength and big cans of whoop-ass Daemon rips open. But this book isn’t about fighting. It’s about romance and Armentrout’s witty writing kept the story moving quickly and it kept it fresh. I enjoyed the banter and the douchebaggery from the alien quarter.
I had kind of hoped for a major revelation about why the Lux have their glow effect on humans, like maybe we could aspire to have six-packs and walk around with our pants low on our hips and waves of perfect hair falling into our faces at just the right moment. Maybe Armentrout’s compelling world vision will hold something lovely like that in store for us. But until then, this book is enough.
Overall, I give Obsidian 4/5 bro-fists.
Ever since I dropped from the momma cave onto this great green Earth, I’ve been a force to be reckoned with, from a squalling robust infant to a twenty-something male model and playboy trillionaire. Which is why talk of Fifty Shades of Grey caught my ear–that and the incessant gushing I’ve heard from so many friends of the female persuasion.
I’ll read just about anything and all this talk about a BDSM book that was rocking the temperatures of married moms and single women alike piqued my interest. Learning that this book was based on Twilight fan-fic comes as no surprise either. What better model to base any book targeted at females off of than Twilight? Look at Amanda Hocking’s My Blood Approves series should you doubt me. The first novel in that series is a near clone of the first Twilight book, although I enjoyed Hocking’s book more.
Despite knowing all that, it never tempted me to change Sweet Blood of Mine into a BDSM-fest replete with an ultra-rich and powerful man who rescues a girl with two left feet and a dead-end job. I’ll save that for my next series.
But apart from that seemingly simple formula, what is it exactly about these sorts of books that attracts females in droves? And repulse others (albeit quite a few less) in the opposite direction?
Well, I’m going to find out.
If only men could!
My current theory is the “Jonesing Hypothesis” which is based on the “Green Grass, Other Side of Fence Theorem”. In other words, people want what they don’t have.
Here in the first world, we’ve had blissful ignorance jerked from our grubby little hands by the Intarwebz, especially with Facebook, Twitter, and a combination of other social websites allowing the Joneses to showcase that new house, car, or significant other they’ve just acquired.
The Joneses, by a contemporary definition, are those people who have or can get everything that’s just out of your reach.
So what does that make Bella Swan or Anastasia Steele? Why, Bella Jones and Anastasia Jones, of course! And what is it they have that all the other women want? Boyfriends that are almost comparable to me.
I’ve just started reading Fity Shades so I’ll find out quickly if I’m wrong, although I must warn you that even when I’m wrong, I’m usually right.
My kind of Jones!
I want to thank everyone who entered the giveaway for a chance at an ebook and an autographed copy of Sweet Blood of Mine.
Winning is a wonderful thing. It makes you feel great and allows you to rub it in the faces of those who were less fortunate. One of our local radio stations does a daily giveaway to random callers. The prize could be fifty-cent coupon for a cheesburger at McDonalds and the winner would scream, hoot and holler like they just won the Mega Millions.
Why?
Because winning is awesome. And when it boils down to it, even if you didn’t win a copy of the book, you won simply by coming to the Mancave.
And now to the winners!
The winner of an eBook copy of Sweet Blood of Mine is Gabriela!
The winner of a signed copy of Sweet Blood of Mine is Maghon Thomas!!
Congratulations!
The other day I went into a Panera Bread and ordered a turkey breast sandwich, an apple, and bottled water. As I sat down to enjoy this hearty yet healthy meal, one of the Panera Bread employees walked over to me, leaned over, and said, “The young lady over there wanted you to have this,” and then placed a bag of baked potato chips on my tray.
I looked at the young lady in question, smiled, and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Many of you may think this sort of thing would be really cool and sweet. But in my world, this happens all the time and it makes me feel like a piece of meat. Besides, what if I didn’t want a bag of chips? I was trying to be healthy, after all. A fruit cup would have been more appropriate.
I’m just sayin’.
My male beauty is something that’s with me wherever I go. When I go for a night out with my friends, I’ll often have bartenders deliver gifts of Boones Farm and Mad Dog 20/20 to my table, not just from attractive women, but from men as well who’ve also fallen victim to my god-like physique and the intense gravity of my irresistible pheromones.
After a time, it makes me feel like a piece of grade-A beef tossed into a pit of humans starved for a juicy, sexually-charged tenderloin.
I’ve tried hiding my thick mane of Pantene-perfect hair with a ball cap. Wearing sunglasses to hide my large soulful eyes. A bandana to hide my chiseled nose, square jaw, and the manly 5 o’clock shadow that women love to rub their soft cheeks against. But my pheromones are something I can’t hide, and they give me away every time.
The protagonist in my upcoming novel, Sweet Blood of Mine, has to deal with similar sexual super powers, except he’s a hopeless romantic.
And me? Well, I take all the free bags of potato chips I can get.
Why? Because I’m worth it.
As a world-renowned ass model, cleanliness isn’t an option.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I have an efficient pattern for taking showers that developed all on its own over the years.
Clean hair. Apply shaving cream. Soap down my hot bod. Rinse my hot bod. Shave. And voila! I’m clean and shiny, ready for a new day. I almost added brushing my teeth to the routine, but that just seemed like overkill.
The little kink in my cleaning routine has always been my man-pits. Women shave their armpits. Most men don’t. We like to keep a mini-afro hidden there so when we wear our wife-beaters to Wal-Mart, everyone will know, without a doubt, that we’re men. But deodorant clings to all that hair and the amount of liquid soap required to thoroughly wash out the old stuff could keep a family of five clean for a week.
Even my Axe Ultimate Woman Magnet body wash, made of skunk pheromones, white wine, and liquefied hardcover editions of the Twilight series and the Hunger Games, fails to purge the old deodorant without gooping on a handful.
So I decided to grab some bar soap. Lo and behold, the bar soap worked! But adding it to my routine had unintended consequences. The first day I was so intent on testing out the bar soap that I forgot to wash my hair and only realized it after I was drying off. The next time, I forgot to shave. Another time, I forgot to shave AND wash my hair.
Yeah. That tiny addition to my routine threw everything off. But I’m adjusting and hope that within the next year, I’ll be used to it. Because my man-pits have never been cleaner.
On a related note, I’m happy to announce a GIVEAWAY of my upcoming book, SWEET BLOOD OF MINE!! Up for grabs, an eBook and autographed 6×9 paperback!
Click “Continue Reading” to see the rafflecopter giveaway!
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