by Melissa J. Troutman | Aug 29, 2025 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
If you take a handful of Beauty and the Beast and mix it with a scoop of How to Train Your Dragon, and throw in a few sparks from something like Rumpelstiltskin, you’ll have an idea of why I enjoyed Embergold by Rachelle Nelson so much. (Beauty and the Beast is...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Jun 27, 2025 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
Something Else: The Background When I heard about Something Else before its release in January, I didn’t know what to expect. After all, it was the original story, Something I Am Not, that had me sobbing on my bedroom floor after midnight. (No wonder it won the 2020...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Apr 25, 2025 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track, Mystery
Introducing Lady Jayne Disappears by Joanna Davidson Politano: Pride and Prejudice meets Little Women, wrapped in a bit of Charles Dickens, and tied with ribbon borrowed from Sherlock Holmes. As a writer and a reader, I appreciate few things more than reading books...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Feb 28, 2025 | Blogs/Podcasts
If you like fantasy (dystopian or medieval or both), action and adventure, clean romance, and deep themes, The Nightingale Trilogy by J. J. Fischer belongs on your bookshelf. After Calor and Lumen, the trilogy finishes with Memoria, a novel with a beautiful cover and...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Nov 22, 2024 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
Every writer dreams of visiting her story. But what do you do when the hero is more like a villain, the villain is more like a hero, and your side characters come to life with stories of their own? Oh, and you don’t know the world, and the person you have a crush on...
