Life and Things

Well, I got my biopsy results back. It confirms that I have NASH. I do not have any malignancies, or autoimmune hepatitis. There is significant scarring, but not yet to the point of cirrhosis. The doctor is confident we can get things reversed. Gastric bypass may still be necessary, but we are going to see how the dietary guidelines work over the next six months.

I’ve settled into following the guidelines, and many things I ate only a month ago smell or taste yucky. That’s a plus in the case of sugars, baked goods, basically junk foods. I’ve fallen in love with hummus and carrots.

I’ve joined RockStar Book Tours 😀

I haven’t gotten much writing done. I’m seriously blocked. I realise I don’t like writing about bad things. And I don’t want to write certain things and then share because I don’t want people to judge me.  Sigh I want my Ambien addiction back… I did get some editing done, thanks to the writingcraft book I’m currently reviewing.

 

Books read, reviewed, and posted/scheduled this past week

Across the Darkling Sea by K Ferrin, 4*

Black Bird of the Gallows by Meg Kassel, 4*

Creature Files: Predators by LJ Tracosas, 4*

Sleep, Savannah, Sleep by Alistair Cross, 4*

Amazing World: Sea Creatures by Lee Martin, 4*

 

Favourite read of the week

Sleep, Savannah, Sleep by Alistair Cross

“The Dead Don’t Always Rest in Peace

Jason Crandall, recently widowed, is left to raise his young daughter and rebellious teenage son on his own – and the old Victorian in Shadow Springs seems like the perfect place for them to start over. But the cracks in Jason’s new world begin to show when he meets Savannah Sturgess, a beautiful socialite who has half the men in town dancing on tangled strings.

When she goes missing, secrets begin to surface, and Jason becomes ensnared in a dangerous web that leads to murder – and he becomes a likely suspect. But who has the answers that will prove his innocence? The jealous husband who’s hell-bent on destroying him? The local sheriff with an incriminating secret? The blind old woman in the house next door who seems to watch him from the windows? Or perhaps the answers lie in the haunting visions and dreams that have recently begun to consume him.

Or maybe, Savannah herself is trying to tell him that things aren’t always as they seem – and that sometimes, the dead don’t rest in peace.”

 

Current Read

Goblins of Bellwater by Molly Ringle

“Most people have no idea goblins live in the woods around the small town of Bellwater, Washington. But some are about to find out. Skye, a young barista and artist, falls victim to a goblin curse in the forest one winter night, rendering her depressed and silenced, unable to speak of what happened. Her older sister, Livy, is at wit’s end trying to understand what’s wrong with her. Local mechanic Kit would know, but he doesn’t talk of such things: he’s the human liaison for the goblin tribe, a job he keeps secret and never wanted, thrust on him by an ancient family contract.Then Kit starts dating Livy, and Skye draws Kit’s cousin Grady into the spell through an enchanted kiss in the woods. Skye and Grady are doomed to become goblins and disappear from humankind forever, unless Livy, the only one untainted by enchantment, can unravel the spell by walking a dangerous magical path of her own.”

 

Next Up

Gears of Fate by Wilbur Stanton, Xpresso

Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Legends by Lydia Sherrer  ASAP

Your Crossroads, Your Choice by EP Apicello. ASAP

Sun Born by Kathleen O’Neal and W Michael Gear  CBR

Skeleton God by Elliot Patton.  CBR

 

Book Haul

Favourite egalleys of the week:

STAGS by MA Bennett

“One deadly weekend.

At St. Aidan the Great School, or S.T.A.G.S., new things–and new people–are to be avoided. Unfortunately, Greer MacDonald, token scholarship student, is very much a new person. She has just transferred to S.T.A.G.S., and finds herself ignored at best and mocked at worst by the school’s most admired circle of friends, the Medievals.

So imagine Greer’s surprise when this very group invites her to an exclusive weekend retreat at the private estate of the parents of their unofficial leader, Henry de Warlencourt. It’s billed as a weekend of “huntin’ shootin’ fishin’,” and rumor has it that the invitee who most impresses the group will be given the privilege of becoming a Medieval themselves.

As the weekend begins to take shape, however, it becomes apparent that beyond the luxurious trappings–the fancy clothes the maid lays out on Greer’s bed, the elaborate multicourse dinners held in the Great Hall–there are predators lurking, and they’re out for blood. . . .”

 

The Girl in the Fog by Donato Carrisi

“An atmospheric novel about the disappearance of Anna, fifteen, on a cold night in a small town in the Italian mountains close to the Slovenian border. Vogel, a policeman specialising in murder cases, has two suspects: a lonely literature professor who could be connected to the crime; and a teenage boy tracked down via Anna’s diary. In true Carissi style, the lines blur between policemen and murderer and Vogel is a potential suspect in the case of Anna’s death. Surrounding all this is a media storm with the girl’s family at its centre – it culminates in a television interview between Vogel and the professor and a strange and shocking revelation about Anna’s death.”