Month: July 2016

Fantasy review: ‘The Cauldron’s Gift’ by Marina Finlayson

Fantasy review: ‘The Cauldron’s Gift’ by Marina Finlayson

This is one of those series that’s everything I don’t normally read: it’s YA with a teenage girl as the main character, there’s a shedload of school drama and boyfriend angst, it’s written in first person, and, would you believe it, the protagonist turns out to have unusually strong magical powers. As a rule, I’d be running a mile. But this is by Marina Finlayson, the author who seduced me into enjoying werewolves and other shifters, so it not only works, it works brilliantly. In The Fairytale Curse, Vi and twin sister CJ found themselves spitting frogs and diamonds respectively, while others around them were turned into the sleeping beauty, an ogre and a polar bear. It turned out the Sidhe were escaping from their magical captivity, but Vi and friends managed to lock them up again, at the price of losing one of the four artifacts that kept them […]

Posted July 22, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

New release round up: books I’m looking forward to reading

New release round up: books I’m looking forward to reading

Confession time – I don’t read as much as I used to. In prehistoric times (2011-2013), I routinely read two books a week, more than a hundred over the course of a year. Sometimes I read an entire series of books one after the other, and not short, light reads, either – my preferred genre was (and is) epic fantasy. Fast forward a few years and there just isn’t the time any more for that kind of consumption. My writing has gradually eaten away at my free time, and I’ve got to the point where I only get sustained reading done when I’m travelling. I’d like to pretend that I’m pressured by fans to write more, and publish faster, but actually I just love writing! So no one to blame but myself. What this means is that there are lots of books coming out that I plan to read and […]


Starting all over again: new book, new genre, new pen-name

Starting all over again: new book, new genre, new pen-name

When I first became a self-published author, I was right at the very bottom of the pecking order, in author terms. I had no previous published history with a major or independent publisher. I’d never had a short story published in a magazine. I had no fanbase, no mailing list, and my blog had maybe three people following along. I’d hung around the forum at Kboards (the Writers’ Cafe), for a while, so I knew a little bit about starting out. I knew enough to get a professional quality cover, for instance, although not enough to know what sort of cover was needed (luckily, my cover designer did, and came up with a great set of well-branded and striking covers). I knew to have other eyes look at my work before tossing it up on Amazon. I paid a proofreader to tidy up my wayward punctuation. But there was so […]