Snakes, Guns, and Southern Sexy

There's cause to crush mint and ice at the Mojito Literary Society. Our most illustrious Tina Whittle debuts her second novel in the Tai Randolph series, titled Darker Then Any Shadows. Not yet officially released, the novel has already received lavish praise from the notoriously-curmudgeony Kirkus Review. And it's no wonder.

This sexy mystery thriller is not only a cozy worthy of Sherlock Holmes sophistication, but it also journeys into the sultry and seductive world of slam poetry, with its host of eccentric characters, high financial stakes, and talents as large as egos are fragile.

Tai Randolph is wittier, cuter and more curious then the proverbial cat. Her relationship with Trey Seaver is complicated by Trey's unraveling persona and its tendency to fall apart whenever Tai is confronted with murder -- which is often enough. Still this reader can't help but root for their strange relationship, and Whittle likes to toy with her readers in the steamy romantic scenes, using language that applies equally to murderous violence as it does to sex. The novel opens with "Be still, he said, his mouth at my ear." Watch out for the steamy end of chapter 29 and the double-entendre of the last line of dialog. A pet snake makes its debut as a murder suspect in need of a good lawyer, and rabbits disappear faster then you can say Abracadabra.

I will refrain from writing that I couldn't put down the book because that's a cliche'. Instead I will transcribe here the email I wrote to our talented Mojito Sister at 3 in the morning when I finished reading it:

I don't read fast enough for your books: the act of reading was getting in the way of the ideal speed at which I wanted to know what happened next -- and some of the scenes were truly hot, and I totally got and cared for all these characters. The snake involvement and consequent setup was hilarious. Wow, what a writer you are!!!

Click here for an excerpt or pre-order here.

A New Kind of Paranormal

Hugo Award winner Will McIntosh astounded the Mojito Literary Society with his debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, which sold out from Nightshade Books on its first print run.

Now McIntosh is back for a second round of Mojito cheeers for his new novel, Hitchers, a story about a comic strip writer who fights for control over his body when a catastrophic event unleashes the dead upon the living, and the ghost of his angry curmudgeon grandfather comes looking for him to reclaim creative control over the comic strip.

The novel contains elements of the paranormal and the apocalyptic, as well as lots of comedy and romance. The characters are well developed, at times infuriating, at times funny, at times deliciously lovable, and the story is written with that nicely cultivated fast pace that has earned McIntosh his many awards.

McIntosh has already signed over rights to his Hugo Winning "Bridesicle" for a film adaptation. So make sure to get your first edition print of Hitchers before all copies are sold out!

Hitchers gets a first rate Yes! from this Mojito Literary sister.

Mojito's Top Picks for 2011: Laura's Favorites

As with all year-end recaps, The Mojito Literary Society will reflect upon some of the best of 2011.

Here are Laura Valeri's picks of the best novels this year (stay tuned for a post on story collections):

The Family Fang: by Kevin Wilson

A quirky tale of a family of performing artists, each of them having managed to blur the boundaries of what is appropriate and what is necessary in the name of art. The story will make you laugh, balk, ponder, meditate, and even maybe weep a little. If only for the fantastical performances that the Fang family manages to contrive, the book should get an award.

Faith: by Jennifer Haigh

The story of a woman who tries to trace back the choices and mistakes that led to her brother's suicide. On the surface, the novel appears to be about the abuses of the Catholic church and its coverups of sexual molestation cases, but as the story deepens, the reader is treated to a delicate, heartbreaking story about love, self-sacrifice, and most of all, faith. One of the most profound and uplifting books I've read all year!

Animal Sanctuary; by Sarah Falkner

Check out the extensive review I wrote for this one on Fiction Writers' Review. Sarah Falkner's debut is a journey into the aesthetic complexities of film and performance art. The novel is written as a braided narrative, combining article clippings, film synopses, audio transcripts and other less-conventional mediums. You'll feel like you've just gotten a crash education in art criticism when you're done reading.

Animal Sanctuary: The Hardships of Art in the Novel

Sarah Falkner's debut novel Animal Sanctuary is the winner of the 7th Starcherone annual prize for innovative fiction. The novel is a complex rendering of the small injustices, abuses and incongruities that keep the art world going. It's a sad chronicle of the sacrifices artists will make to honor their art, and it's a study of the beauty and savage nature of art, and its ability to both maul and give new life to those who dedicate their lives to it.

It was tough to review the book because so much about it is different, and so much of it is also familiar. But Animal Sanctuary is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of the future of innovative fiction. Written in the form of a braided narrative, Falkner uses film synopses, audio transcripts, letters, emails and other narrative mediums that are seldom found in traditional fiction to piece together the adventures of Kitty and Rory Dawson, a film starlet and her son who, together, focus their art on the neglect and abuse of savage nature.

Check out my full review on Fiction Writers' Review, or else check out the book. Enjoy!

Tina's Review of VIPER by John Desjarlais

I am such a sucker for a strong (if sometimes flawed) female protagonist -- and VIPER by John Desjarlais delivers. Selena de la Cruz is strong because she's vulnerable, both contemporary and traditional at the same time, which makes for an uneasy road.

A former cop now working as an insurance agent, she's brought back into the world of drugs smugglers and homicide when her name turns up in the Book of the Dead. She's still alive, but the people whose names proceed her have all been violently murdered. Suddenly a marked woman, Selena must face an old nemesis -- El Serpiente -- while solving a series of murders that may or may not be part of a plan of divine retribution, and may or may not be a prelude to her own demise.

Exciting stuff, this. The mystery hits several themes — faith vs belief, insider status vs outsider exclusion (and how those edges cut both ways), justice vs retribution. I especially appreciated Selena's struggle to be an assertive, intelligent female in a culture that has traditionally valued a certain home-and-hearth-based passivity even as it produces strong women who buck that trend.

Selena may seem like a contradiction herself – she has Jimmy Choos on her feet and axle grease under her nails. She’s an insurance agent who can work you a fine home coverage package . . . and also chase down bad guys (and bad gals too) while she’s at it. But her character is big enough to contain all these paradoxes (which also serves to ask the smart question of why these things seem like paradoxes in the first place. Why must a woman choose between her car and her shoes?)

This book isn't just smart; it's also fast and edgy and laced with murderous tension. Read VIPER, and then do like I'm doing and go get BLEEDER, the first mystery novel by Desjarlais and Selena’s introduction to the literary world. Or better yet, do it the other way around. But don't miss these books.

Suggested food and beverage pairing: Desjarlais' description of home-cooked tamales had me wanting to crawl into the pages and snatch them from Selena's plate. So tamales, yes, and a nice cerveza, por favor.

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Visit John at http://www.johndesjarlais.com . He's also available on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/jdesjarlais1) and on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/johndesjarlais). Visit his alter ego Johnny Dangerous at http://jjdesjarlais.blogspot.com.

VIPER is available at Amazon and through Sophia Institute Press.

Hot Iron Age Lovin'

by Susanna Ives

You’ve read Regency, Roman, Victorian, Ottoman Empire, Western and Viking, but let me introduce you to a new romance setting: Iron Age Denmark. Because nothing says romance like sleeping in a thatched mud and wattle hut in sub zero degree weather, snuggled with Lars under your wild boars pelt, listening to the gentle oinks of the pigs in the other half of your hut and calls of the wild aurochs in the distance.





For starters, Iron Age Denmark isn’t as far away as you think. Just fast forward past those Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and the beginnings of the Roman Empire to 1 A.D: that’s the Danish Iron Age.

Imagine your Iron Age Lars, sweat pouring down his rock hard muscles as he works over the clay furnace, smelting down some hot iron. He would build that furnace for two days and then fire it up for 5 hours using a cubic meter of wood. Then he packed down 70kg of charcoal and 50kg of the iron he dug up from the bog pit. He baked this for 24 hours to make sponge iron. Then he hammered the sponge iron into 1 kg of usable iron to make ten knives or an axe. Imagine his bulging biceps as he slung that hard hammer down. If that doesn’t turn you on…

When Lars wasn’t making you pretty axes, he was farming with the oxen so he could harvest barley, wheat, and spelt to for you to grind in your super modern grain grinder. Trust me, your man loves you when he gives you this grinder.


Your friends still have to use the old-fashioned hand and stone method.



And don’t forget the wool Lars sheared for you to weave your family’s fashionable clothes.





At night, when you’re sitting around the fire in your mud hut and your young children are playing with this wooden pig your husband carved, you tell them stories about how you and your hot iron smelting man met.You were still a virgin and it was the spring fertility festival. The elders placed you in the center of the dancing labyrinth. The village boys raced each other through the labyrinth and Lars reached you first.



You were a lucky virgin because they could have just chucked you in the peat bog as a sacrifice to the bog gods.



Also, your Lars fashions himself quite the artist. Look at the beautiful sculpture he made for you. You can see the beginnings of the phallic symbolism that would later characterize Viking art.



I think Danish Iron Age has great romantic potential. If, after reading this post, you have the burning desire to write some hot Iron Age loving please visit Sagnlandet or Danish National Museum

NOTE: The last Aurochs died in 1627. At Sagnlandet there are several Heck Oxen, a type of oxen created by the Germans under Hitler in an attempt to revive the Auroch. The Heck Oxen were very playful and chased each other around the grounds. Here is the only picture I took of them:

Mojito Literary Great News

The Mojito Literary Society is proud to announce that writer Susana Daniel won the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize in Fiction for her beautiful novel Stiltsville. Click here for the Mojito LIterary Society review of Susana's novel. Congratulations! The Mojito sisters toast to you!