The story continues, describing the typical day for a Scottish housewife and her children, as well as a brief discussion of the politics of the day.  The reformation has chased the majority of Catholics into hiding, and King James, feeling harassed and threatened by witches, has begun a ‘witch hunt’.

As Marion and her eldest daughter Isobel prepare to do the washing in the river, they are hailed by the Protestant Minster’s son, who is convinced his mother is dying.  Despite protestations, Marion is coerced into helping the woman, upon learning both the doctor and Protestant midwife are unavailable.

****

“How long have you been having contractions?”  Marion asked when the spasm had passed and she was breathing normally again.

“Since last night,” was the surprising answer.  The woman looked sheepish as she tried to explain.  “I thought that I just had heart burn or ate some bad meat.  Then I thought that it was false because I am about a month early, and that it would go away if I just slept.  But this morning it was the same, only after breakfast, after everyone had left, they got so much worse and I couldn’t walk to get help.   Oh, my poor darling boy to find me like this!  What a disgrace!”

“Shush now,” Marion said, “that is hardly a thing to be concerned about at this time.  Where is that boy, anyway?”  she asked herself quietly, so as not to worry the poor woman.   Just then Jonny came panting into the bedroom sloshing a nearly full bucket of water.

“I’m sorry, I had to go to the well” he explained.  He thrust the water and a cloth at Marion before dashing out the door again, she assumed to perform his second task.

Marion drenched the cloth in the cool well water, and used it to wash the woman’s face.  “Now listen Mrs….” She began before the woman interrupted her with a hand on her wrist.

“You call me Gail,” she said “if you’re going to be birthing this baby then we might as well be on a first name basis.”

“Alright, Gail.   Here’s how it is.   I think your baby needs to be flipped.  That’s why the pain is so bad right now, the baby is trying to descend but it can’t because I think it’s trying to go bottom first.”  She put her hand on Gail’s belly to demonstrate.   “The bottom is here,” she cupped the belly right above the pelvis, “and the head,” she moved her hand to the top of the belly where she could feel a distinct lump, “is here.  Now babies can and do get born bottom first all the time, but my concern is I can’t account for both feet and if there’s a foot down there, there will be trouble.  So, I want to try to turn the baby.”  Gail nodded in understanding, but went slightly more pale at the thought.    “It is going to hurt.”  Marion added bluntly.

Just then Isobel entered the room and, as unobtrusively as possible, handed the midwife bag and apron to her mother.   Marion put her apron on and rolled up the sleeves of her under dress.    “Now I want you to relax and at the end of the next contraction we’ll make the big flip, okay?”   Marion placed her hands on Gail’s belly, one by the baby’s bottom and one by it’s head and readied herself.  The room was all of a sudden very still while they waited.  No one said a word, no one barely moved.   Then the contraction was there and Marion could feel the muscles contracting under her hands.   She counted to 45 before it began to lessen.   As soon as the contraction was gone she pushed hard on the belly.  She pressed with one hand and pulled with the other and forced the baby into it’s proper position.   Gail, who had born all those contractions like she could barely feel them, screamed.

Unfortunately, Jonny had chosen that exact time to return home with his father.  The minister, upon hearing his wife’s tortured scream burst into the room and wrenched Marion away from his wife, throwing her against the wall, knocking the wind from her.

“What are you doing to my wife!?  You, you…witch!!  How dare you touch her?” he hissed at her, his eyes burning in hatred.

Marion gasped air back into her lungs and tried to speak through the painful burn in her chest, while her daughter huddled protectively over her and Jonny tried pitifully to restrain his father.

It was Gail who restored order.   “Michael,” she sighed at him, and he was instantly by her side.

“What has she done to you?”  He asked, his eyes raking in her disheveled appearance, the half raised shift and the sweat upon her brow.

“She saved me,” she answered with a reassuring smile on her face, before bracing herself with another contraction.   When she could breathe evenly again she added, “now I can have your son.”

The minister kept hold of his wife’s hand, but he turned to Marion and glowered at her.  She slowly straightened herself up from the floor and looked him right in the eye, determined not to let him get the better of her.

“Leave my house, heathen.”  he ordered.

Marion felt the blood stain her cheeks at the insult but steeled herself to remain calm.  “If I leave, there will be no one to help your wife birth your baby.”

Without responding, the minister turned to his son.   “Go to the Dr’s house, his carriage was outside when I went by this morning.  Demand that he come and help your mother with the baby.”

“But..” the boy began.

“Go!” the minister demanded and turned back to his wife, ignoring Marion and Isobel all together.

“Oh, Michael!”  Gail wailed as a contraction gripped her, “there isn’t time!  The baby is coming! I have to push!”

Marion pushed her way past the minister, leaving him sputtering in indignation.   With her arm around her waist she helped her to her knees in the bed, the better for gravity to help with the work.   “Now lean on me,” she cooed soothingly, “that’s it, and when you feel the need, push that baby out.   Don’t fight your body just let it do what it wants to.”

She turned to the minister and ordered him out of the room to get boiling water and blankets.

It didn’t take long.  Within three pushes the baby was delivered into his mother’s waiting arms.  “It’s a boy, my lady,” Marion said proudly, wrapping him in the bottom of his mother’s shift until she could get more appropriate blankets.   She helped Gail recline on the bed once more and smiled at the lusty cry the baby boy gave forth, announcing his arrival to the world.

The minister arrived with the boiled water and a bunch of cloths and blankets so the baby could be wiped down, and Gail cleaned up once the afterbirth had been delivered.  Marion clipped the baby’s cord and tied the end with strong catgut, and wrapping him in a soft blanket, presented him to his father.   “Your son, my lord,” she said with as much respect as she could muster.  Then she turned back to tend to Gail once again.

The afterbirth was taking an inordinately amount of time being delivered.   She gave a slight tug on the cord to encourage it and Gail began to push again.  In moments it was delivered and Marion gave a small sigh of relief, until she saw the blood.

It started as a trickle, which all women have naturally after just having given birth, but it kept coming, it wasn’t slowing and it was bright red.   “Now Gail, she said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice, “there’s just a bit of bleeding, so I’m going to have to massage your stomach to try to get it to stop, okay.  This will hurt a bit,” she said glancing at the minister in warning to let her do her job.

She placed the heals of both hands directly on the now empty uterus and pushed down, hard, rubbing in a circular motion.   Gail groaned and tried to tense her stomach muscles but Gail pushed harder to stop her.   Great bursts of blood and large clots came from her, just as was expected.  However the uterine massage didn’t stop or slow the bleeding like she had hoped.  Now she was getting concerned, this could turn deadly if she didn’t act.

“Minister, you need to leave now,” she said, physically removing him from the room while he protested.  “Listen to me!” she said sharply, “I need to help your wife or she will die!  I cannot help her with you staring over me and passing judgment. Now wait here!”  She pushed him the final foot out of the room and closed the door.

****

I’m currently in the middle of reading two books, Yasmine Galenorn’s “Sisters of the Moon”, and Robert A. Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”.   I never used to read two books at once, but then I got my hands on a bunch of ebooks, which I can’t take in the bath, so, I’ve been grabbing a paperback for bath reading.

Anyway, since I’m currently in the middle of two books, and have nothing to review right at the moment (at least you know w hat’s coming up, though), I figured this can be my first post on my own novel work.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember and there are fragments of prose scattered all over my computer, and in a big folder of paper dating back to my high school days.  Short stories and poetry have always been my strong point, but I have from time to time attempted to write a novel, only to have it die within a couple of chapters.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) was the push I needed for serious novel writing.  Never before had I been pushed to complete something like NaNoWriMo, and lo and behold in my first attempt I wrote 50,000 words.   I barely completed it on time, and as soon as I hit 50,001 I threw up my hands and declared myself done, and haven’t looked at it since.  That was three years ago.

So, I’d like to introduce you to my very first serious novel attempt.  “In the Blood” (a title I’m still not entirely happy with) takes place in 16^th century Scotland, and is the story of a family who lives through the persecution of the witch hunts.  Because it would be very difficult to post entire chapters here, I’m going to just be posting enough excerpts for you to get the gist of the story.  Let me know what you think!

In The Blood

Part One – October 1590, Trenent, East Lothian, Scotland

Chapter One

Her breath steamed slightly in the pre-dawn air, a reminder that fall had arrived and winter would be upon them all too soon.  She took a deep breath of the chill and felt it cleanse her lungs after hours spent in a hot room made smoky from fire and an oil lamp burning animal fat.  She made her way slowly through the deserted streets, giving herself time to unwind.  The neat houses and shops were packed tightly together in this, the main part of town.  Each store placard hung silently, occasionally swaying with a slight breeze.  Most of the windows were dark, but lanterns or candles could be seen shimmering dimly in the occasional window, a testament that hard work never waited for the sun.

Marion knew that all too well.  It seemed that most of her work came to her in the dead of night.  She was just now returning from such a case.   Margaret Johnson had been in labor the entire day, but the babe chose the early hours of the new day to be born, and Marion had been fetched to assist slightly after midnight.   It had been an easy birth, the first girl in a family of boys.  Margaret had prayed for a girl and been delighted.

Now Marion was on her way home just in time to start the day for her own family.  Her husband, Robert, would be waking soon in order to open the shop and begin work for the day, and the children wouldn’t be too far behind his waking.   Marion had to have breakfast ready and the house warmed soon; she didn’t want anyone catching a cold from chilled feet or an empty stomach.  The baby was already a bit congested and God forbid that got any worse, or the whole family would end up miserable, especially in this cold damp.

Dawn was slowly beginning to lighten the sky, and now Marion could see a thin film of frost on the rocks in the road.  The little grass that existed in the sparse spaces between the houses was now brown from the cold and sparkling with what remained of the moonlight, and the approaching day.   It had been a cold night and it would be a cold winter.

On her street now, she quickened her pace until she came upon their house.   Her husband owned a cobbler’s shop and they naturally lived above it.   It wasn’t a large house, only three rooms, but it was built well with sturdy wooden walls and a thick thatch roof.   It was much better than what some people had and she was grateful to be so lucky.  Robert’s shop kept her family clothed and fed and paid the taxes.  There was also the advantage of being married to a cobbler; her entire family had shoes, and not just felt or cloth shoes either, but real leather shoes with good hard soles, in a time when the majority went without.

The door squeaked slightly as she opened it, as it always did in the damp.   She placed her short wrap on the hook by the door, and her midwife’s bag on the floor ready for when she next needed it.   Then, lighting a splinter from the old glowing coals of the fire, she lit the lamp, a good pure oil burning one, no guttering and smoking here.   Then she added more wood to the remaining embers of the night’s fire, and blew gently until the flames caught.   She held her hands out to the fire while the small house began to warm.   To the pot that hung beside the fire, she added some oats and sea salt she had gathered to some water and swung it over the fire to boil.

While the water boiled and the oats cooked she sat herself down in the one stuffed chair in the house, and rested for just a moment, very careful not to close her eyes and drift off.  Her gaze drifted over the room, dominated by the large wooden plank table and benches that she had draped many years ago with her mother’s lace.    The only chairs in the room were the one she was sitting in, soft and stuffed with horse hair, and another plain wooden chair that she had sewn a cushion for to be easier on the bottom.  The chairs flanked the deep fire place where all of the cooking was done.   Beside the plain wooden chair sat her sewing basket full of mending to be done, and yarn for the blanket she was slowly knitting.   Her eldest daughter, Isobel had left her own needle work beside her mother’s.

Lastly, in the corner of the room, just out of the way so as not to get stepped on, was a pile of old but much loved toys.   There were rag dolls, and balls and carved horses and soldiers and even a toy fishing pole and wooden fish.    Her children, most certainly, did not go without.    The only thing left to adorn the room was over the mantle of the fire place.   Beautifully drawn portraits of her and her husband on their wedding day, and of all her children, even the two that had been lost, hung silently gazing out at the world around them, their innocence captured forever.

A squeak in the floor alerted her to the family beginning to wake.   She rose from her chair and swung the pot off of the fire.  She stirred the thick cereal with a wooden spoon to ensure it was ready, and with a thick cloth carried the hot pot over to the table.  Then she quickly placed wooden bowls and spoons on the table, from the small hutch that sat against the wall.     To accompany the porridge she placed a precious jar of honey and a jug of milk left over from the day before, kept on the porch where it was cooled by the night air.  The final touch was the jug of well water and carved horn cups, which had been a wedding present all those years ago.

A gentle touch on the elbow made her turn from her chores and give her husband a brief embrace.   He smiled at her as he tucked some hair that had come lose from her braid, behind her ear.

“Good morning” she said softly, smiling back at him, as she dished him a healthy bowl of porridge and milk.  She didn’t add honey, knowing that he preferred his cereal plain and with nuts or berries in the right season.

Just then strong arms encircled her knees, and she turned from her husband and bent down to pick up her eldest son, three year old Robert.   “And good morning to you, my little man” she said affectionately, burring her face in his neck with soft kisses.

“I missed you mommy” he said, with a pout “The monsters came.  I needed magic to send them away.”

Marion smiled to herself at his innocent view of ‘magic’.   When she was home and insisted monsters were in their room, she would spray a ‘magic potion’ which was really a small jar of very precious perfume that Robert had had shipped from France for their anniversary.   He frowned at her frivolous use of something that had cost so much, but Marion assured him it was going to a much better use this way, than just making her smell good.   To her son, Marion feigned shock, “Oh, I’m so sorry!  Are they still there?”

“No,” he said looking quite satisfied, “daddy scared them with his sword.”

Marion smiled at her husband over her son’s head, before placing him on the bench and dishing him some well milked and honeyed cereal.

Isobel emerged from their room next, holding the baby James and was closely followed by the twins Maude and Mavis.   Marion took James from his big sister and shooed the girls to the table to get their own breakfast.

Patting his clout to ensure he had been changed, Marion settled herself down in a chair with him, and undid the tie on her overdress so the baby could get his own breakfast.

“How is Mrs. Johnson, Mom?”  asked Isobel around her cereal.  She was always very interested in her mother’s patients and accompanied her to births whenever she could.   In a few years she would be old enough to apprentice with her soon.  It was going to be exciting to teach her daughter about her craft, about bringing life into the world.

“She’s quite well,” answered Marion, “she had a baby girl.”

“Oh wonderful!” exclaimed Isobel, “she wanted a girl!  Did she tell you her name yet?”

“Not yet, but she invited us to the christening and naming and I suppose we’ll find out then”

“Do we have to go?”  Asked Maude and Mavis at nearly the same time.

“Of course you do, it’s the polite thing to do,” responded Marion, slightly chagrined at her daughters’ attitudes.

Just then a light tap could be heard through the window, which was coming from the front door of the shop.   Robert Sr. quickly finished his porridge, rose from the table and kissed his wife on the cheek.   “That’ll be John, delivering the new order,” he said, “I’ll see you all at lunch.”  With a ruffle of each child’s hair and a kiss on the baby’s cheek, still nestled up to his mother’s breast, he left to begin his day.

*****

This book is the story of four women and how they deal with being pregnant, having babies, relationships and loss.   Being a woman myself, and three years past the baby and pregnancy stage, I was drawn in by the possibility of being able to relive the experience.

The book drew me in from the very beginning.  The characters are realistic, likable and dynamic, and there were diverse enough that the majority of readers would be able to identify with at least one of them.  The women’s hopes about childbirth, babies and relationships with their husbands are very diverse. It represents the fact that everyone has different experiences and very rarely do plans turn out how we want.  The writing is completely engaging and I finished the novel within three days, because I couldn’t put it down; I was so eager to find out what was going to happen next.

If I had one complaint about this novel it’s that the characters do not react to situations they way that I would, if I were in the same situation.  It’s difficult to not see the decisions that are made as a flaw in the writing, or a weakness of the characters.  However, I believe that this is the entire point of the novel.   We are to see and accept that not everyone reacts or responds as we do and that there isn’t one right way.

In the end, everything works out and everyone gets what they want; they move on, happy with their lives and the decisions they’ve made.   The story leaves in the warm, glowing, warming glow of a satisfying chick-lit ending.

To read a synopsis, get publisher information or try this book out, you can find it here:

Little Earthquakes.

****

I originally read these books six years ago, while slowly working through my tiny library’s shelf of science fiction.   I enjoyed them enough, but over time forgot more than just the basics, including the name and author.   I’d been recommending them, based on my fuzzy recollections, to my husband, who is a die hard sci-fi fan, however it was difficult without a name or author.   I finally tracked them down, however, and figured I should read them again to ensure my husband would enjoy them.

The short answer is, no, he would not.  This is not a hard science fiction series.  Its more like, soft, pink, bubble gum science fiction

My first impression is that these books are chick-sci-fi.   They’re sci-fi written to appeal to a female audience.  The main character is a smart, strong woman and throughout the books a strong sexual relationship is established between her and the main male alien, a Catteni named Zainal.

I have a problem with the main character, Kate, and that is that despite her devotion to Zainal, she twice manages to get extremely drunk, have sex with other men (without remembering nearly anything) and become pregnant.    This completely ruined her for me, and I can’t imagine why the author thought that women would identify with her through this.   The image of the strong, independent woman is turned into a weak female who can’t hold her booze and is a slut to boot.   It becomes even more of a problem when she feels nothing but slight embarrassment for it having happened.   Any sane woman in a stable relationship would be sick with guilt, but not Kate.

Beyond the character flaws, I enjoyed the story in general, but it had so much more potential.  There were a lot of factors of life on the planet that could have been drawn out or made more dramatic.   Instead, they are quickly dealt with and glossed over.  The extreme ease of the refugees in colonizing the planet is based on extremely fortuitous arrangements of main characters: engineers and NASA pilots, in particular.   The adventures of exploring and colonizing a not entirely uninhabited planet are what keep the first two novels, “Freedom’s Landing” and “Freedom’s Choice” going, however, and they are entertaining enough.

The third novel, “Freedom’s Challenge” is the climax of the series and holds the majority of the action, yet, again, there’s not enough excitement where it would be expected.  The destruction of the Eosi is surprisingly easy despite the levels of security and danger that is alluded to throughout.  To get in, kill them all, and get out without challenge is satisfying, but not exciting.  In the end everything is resolved but it’s rather anti-climatic.

The very last book in the series, “Freedom’s Ransom”, is completely unnecessary and felt like a waste of time for me to read.  I can’t even figure out what the point of publishing an entire novel based around trade between Barevi, Botany and Earth was.   If anything, it could have been left to a couple of chapters, tops, in the last novel.  It took me twice as long to finish this book than any of the others, because I was so completely bored with the constant conversations about trade.  That’s all this book was; the characters talking about what they could trade, where they’d get it from, who they could trade it with, and what they could get for it.   It was a chore to get through it; I even contemplated not finishing it, and that’s rare for me.

One can tell that Anne McCaffery is more experienced in writing fantasy, as a lot of this story is designed to make you feel good.  Everything is happy and works out in the end with minimal conflict or effort.   It gives me a very ‘sunshine, lollipops and rainbows’ feeling.

To read synopses, get publisher information or if you want to give these books a try, you can find them here:

That is the phrase that kept popping in to my head when I first thought about creating a book review blog.   It was too long for a title, yet it wouldn’t go away.    If you don’t know, “Through the Looking Glass” was the sequel to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”, and was the book with the Jabberwocky, which scared me so badly as a kid, that I got nightmares.

So why think about it now?    The looking glass was the portal into Wonderland, basically a way to step into the story, something I’ve always dreamed about being able to do.  It’s what I would like to do here.

Read Reviewer is designed to allow me to go further with the books I read, than just reading them and putting them back on the shelf.  It allows me to share my opinions on the story, the writing and the author in general; basically your typical review.  However, this blog has a little twist that you may not find on other blogs.

I also write my own novels.  Or, I attempt to, in my spare time.   Alright, to be honest, I am, to this point, a one-month-of-the-year-writer.  I write in November, during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where the purpose is to write 50,000 words in one month.  To this point, I have won 2 out of 3 years of participating, but I have yet to finish a novel.  So, in between reviews, I’ll discuss my own work and put up some excerpts and try to look like my work fits in alongside those of the authors I’ll be showcasing.

To begin this blog off, I’ve decided to give you a little preview of who I am as a reader, and what you can expect from my reading habits.

I am a voracious reader; I inhale my books.   When I read, I get completely lost, and block out the rest of the world, which annoys my family to no end.   I said before that I live my books, and that’s true.  I immerse myself in the universe the book creates and want to stay there as long as possible.   Because of this, I tend to read books in a series so the experience can last as long as possible.   I prefer series that are already completed, though, because I hate having to wait for a new publication.

I mostly find myself reading fantasy and science fiction, or some amalgam of the two.  However I do read anything and enjoy historical romance and drama, chick-lit, mystery, horror and mainstream fiction.

I am always looking for suggestions, because I go through so many books that I often feel like I’m running out of ideas.  So, please, share your favorites with me!