Author Archives: Khaliela

Book Review: Beware That Girl

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GirlBeware That Girl, a novel by Teresa Toten.
Set for release May 31, 2016.
Suggested Price; $17.99 USD.

Beware That Girl is a rags to riches story that left me shaking my head.

Kate O’Brien, a pauper and con-artist with a brilliant mind, gains admission to Waverly, an elite all girl high school in New York City.  Despite the fact that it’s not a boarding school and all the characters are high school students, everyone’s parents are neatly tucked away on foreign business trips, living in London, deceased, or incarcerated, leaving the girls unattended to ruin their lives.  Oh, and all their parents let them drink, and so do all the restaurants in the city, actual laws be damned.

If the author doesn’t have the girls engaged in a cascade of bad decisions, then she’s busy dropping names of designer labels.  Tiffany’s, Doc Martins, Jimmy Choo, Chloé, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Patek Philippe; please kill me now.  And don’t get me started about the name dropping of artists.  It served as a constant reminder that nearly all the characters in this book are shallow and unlikable.

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Book Review: Blood in the Sand

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SandBlood in the Sand was a gripping read from beginning to end.

Philip Entwistle doesn’t believe in God and he certainly doesn’t believe in witches. But all that changes when the mild mannered history professor goes up for promotion and needs a Hail Mary to advance his career. Finding himself at the center of a trumped up sexual assault charge that nearly cost him his job, deliverance comes in the form of the occult as he researches the life of the famed English explorer, Sir Francis.

The book is full of delightful surprises, starting with the poem in the table of contents. Easy to read prose speaks to the heart of our humanity. Never shying away from difficult questions, the author takes the reader on a journey through time as Sir Francis’s experiences cause Philip to question his own doubts about religion, “After all, I am just a crazy man in the desert, hearing voices. Isn’t that how religions start?”  And then moves on to confront the stigmas of interracial marriages, “He has gone native, they will say and sneer. And I have. Gladly, with all my heart.”

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Wild At Heart Receives Honors

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Idaho Award

My story “Wild at Heart” won the Judge’s Choice Award in the IDAHO Magazine fiction contest. It’s just a short story and it’s written in three languages. I didn’t figure it would go anywhere, let alone get an award. You’d think that would be cause for celebration, but you’d be wrong.

Americans are hateful and spiteful, and I’m tired of that vitriol being spewed my direction. It’s why I wrote “Wild at Heart.” Authors usually avoid autobiographical characters, but I figured, why not?

Read Wild At Heart here.

So my story, is really an essay that could just as easily be titled, “A Day in the Life of Khaliela.” The only differences being, I work for the Census Bureau, not the Department of the Interior and I want demographic information, not water samples. Unfortunately, the people I meet are the same. I’ve been shot at while working in the field and I get death threats on occasion. The frustrating part of being a federal employee is, you are the target for the nation’s anger. In Idaho, a good many people cannot tolerate anyone who is different from themselves. When that anger is unleashed, it gets directed at me simply because I’m the one standing in front of them at the time.

Finding the Right Group

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Finding a good writing group can be challenging, especially if you are new to writing and don’t know what to look for. Fortunately, there are a variety of group styles to choose from. No one style is better than the others, what matters is whether it works for its members. Some groups meet weekly, others monthly. There are groups where dedicated writers gather together to work at their craft, others are strictly social gatherings of like-minded individuals.

The difficulty in finding a good group is, like all other groups, they can be dysfunctional. Stories of writing groups gone bad are pervasive on the internet and new writers are particularly susceptible to falling prey to dysfunctional groups. Holly Lisle’s Blog lists some common types of group dynamics:

  • Circle of Friends
  • Masters and Slaves
  • Sharks and Dinner

It only takes one person to completely change the dynamic of a group, quickly spiraling from circle of friends to sharks and dinner.

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“Patience you must have, my young Padawan.” –Yoda

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I used to think I was a patient person, then I started writing. The first draft was a lesson in instant gratification. I sat down to write and five weeks later a 105,000 word novel lay before me. And then the work began. Every writer knows the nightmare of an idle muse while polishing a novel. Edit, revise, proof read, and then get critiques so you can edit, revise, and proof read all over again. It’s not sexy, it’s work. And, all the while the muse is whispering in your ear, “How ‘bout you and me dim the lights, open a bottle of wine, and together we can create something new.”

Book 1 is complete at 110,000 words and 21 chapters. It’s working its way through the critique process, but at a chapter every other week, that’s a 42 week process. I’m not sure I can stand 42 weeks of a pouting muse. I could find someone online and swap manuscripts to make it through the process faster, but there is no way on the god’s green earth I will send my manuscript anywhere electronically.

During graduate school a professor of mine submitted one of my term papers to a journal under his name. I didn’t know until I was searching journal articles for a subsequent project that I came across my own term paper. Anyone who has had their work plagiarized knows the gut wrenching feeling that comes from seeing another person represent your work as their own. Thankfully, I still had the graded paper in my possession. It took 3 months of mediation with the school’s ombudsman and the journal to get his name removed and replaced with mine. So, with that demon in my past, I deal exclusively in paper. And it’s slow . . . horribly . . . painfully . . . slow.

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