Fighting For Love by Sandy H. Steele

Genre: Fiction/Suspense/LDS

Review: Lisa is an eye-witness in the murder of her brother and is put into protective custody in UT, heart of the LDS church. There, she joins the church and meets the man she wants to spend eternity with. New evidence presents itself and she finds herself on an adventure with a kidnapper to discover the truth of what happened to her brother.

We are all a little hesitant of purchasing self-published books so when Steele asked me to review it I was very excited to have this opportunity. The story was fun and kept me turning the page to find out what would happen next. There were a few errors in it, but not as many as most self-published works contain. There was also a lot of telling and not as much showing in this book. This is excellent for people who just want to get to the heart of the story and learn what happens quickly. There is a lot of content packed into less than eighty pages of book so there are definitely no dry parts in this novella. Enjoy!!

Author: She was born in UT but was raised in California with her three older siblings. After only a year of college at BYU-Idaho she married her sweetheart. She currently resides with her six year old son while earning her English degree at Southern Utah University.

Rating: ** Two Stars

If you are interested in purchasing it, the e-book is available through Amazon or Barnes and Noble. 

I received this book free from the author. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. :)

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The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr

Genre: Novella, Science Fiction

Author: "'James Tiptree, Jr.' was born Alice Bradley in Chicago in 1915. Her mother was the writer Mary Hastings Bradley; her father, Herbert, was a lawyer and explorer. Throughout her childhood she travelled with her parents, mostly to Africa, but also to India and Southeast Asia. Her early work was as an artist and art critic. During World War II she enlisted in the Army and became the first American female photointelligence officer. In Germany after the war, she met and married her commanding officer, Huntington D. Sheldon. In the early 1950s, both Sheldons joined the then-new CIA; he made it his career, but she resigned in 1955, went back to college, and earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology.

"At about this same time, Alli Sheldon started writing science fiction. She wrote four stories and sent them off to four different science fiction magazines. She did not want to publish under her real name, because of her CIA and academic ties, and she intended to use a new pseudonym for each group of stories until some sold. They started selling immediately, and only the first pseudonym—"Tiptree" from a jar of jelly, "James" because she felt editors would be more receptive to a male writer, and "Jr." for fun—was needed. (A second pseudonym, "Raccoona Sheldon," came along later, so she could have a female persona.)

"Tiptree quickly became one of the most-respected writers in the field, winning the Hugo Award for "The Girl Who was Plugged In" and "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?," and the Nebula Award for "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" and "Houston, Houston." Raccoona won the Nebula for "The Screwfly Solution," and Tiptree won the World Fantasy Award for the collection Tales from the Quintana Roo.

"The Tiptree fiction reflects Alli Sheldon's interests and concerns throughout her life: the alien among us (a role she portrayed in her childhood travels), the health of the planet, the quality of perception, the role of women, love, death, and humanity's place in a vast, cold universe. An award in Tiptree's name has celebrated science fiction that "expands and explores gender roles" for ten years now." This info came from here.


I just wanted to add that I found that very interesting. The whole time I was reading the story I was surprised that a man wrote so much about how a woman thinks but it's b/c James was really a female. Interesting!! :)


Synopsis: This is set in a futuristic world. It's about a young woman named Philadelphia Burke who. Philadelphia tries to kill herself and it is discovered that she has no family or friends so she is invited to work with a team of doctors and scientists where she's plugged into a machine and controls the body of a young, beautiful 15 yo girl they name Delphi. Soon, Philadelphia learns that she'll sacrifice everything for Delphi. How far will she actually go?

Review: I liked this story. There were parts where I had to read a few times to get. The narrator sounds like (s)he is telling the story to someone and occasionally that someone asks questions or comments and the narrator responds but the reader only sees one side of the conversation. Also, the someone the narrator is talking to knows a bit more about this futuristic world than me, as the reader, knows so I felt a bit out of it for parts of it but overall, I really liked the story.

Rating: **** Four Stars

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