M. R. SellarsCríticas

With Felicity arrested for murder, Rowan is determined to find the original Miranda, and the woman she possesses. He also has to find a way to sever the bond between Miranda and Felicity before Miranda possesses her for good.

In this book it's Felicity, Rowan's wife, who is communicating with the dead. Not only is she seeing what they see and hearing what they hear, she's experiencing what they experience. Right down to the burn marks appearing on her body. They fade quickly, but the memory doesn't. As the symptoms worsen, Rowan is desperate to find the latest victim, not only to save her but to save his wife.

This is the first of the books in which Miranda makes an appearance, and it's also the first in which the tone of the Rowan Gant books changes and becomes darker. Once again, Felicity is communicating with something. But that something isn't just sending messages, it's possessing her.

It was all too easy for Miranda to possess Felicity. She slipped right in as if she belonged there. And there's certainly something about Felicity that welcomed her, though that something is nowhere near as twisted as it is for Miranda. When Felicity is arrested for the murders Miranda committed, even she isn't sure if she's innocent.

After all the damage done by Miranda and the woman she possessed, Rowan and Felicity want nothing more than to live normal lives. Unfortunately, the dead don't care about Rowan's wants, because they want his help.

How do you stop the dead? It seems that any time she wants Miranda can leave Annalise and possess Felicity, at least for a short period of time. Miranda won't be happy until Felicity is entirely hers and Rowan won't be happy until Felicity is safe.

This book, in particular, of the Miranda series was frightening to me. It was Felicity's fright that got to me, her own doubts about her sexual preferences, and her own reactions to some terrible family secrets.

Liked it. Read it at night and I havke to admit that there were a lot of strange noises around :)

Okay, I'm conflicted about this book. I have no problem with short ebooks. I have no problem paying money for a short ebook as long as I know that is what I am doing. And I should point out this book was a freebie, so I didn't lose money.

However,

if the book is basically a teaser - could you please put that in the title or description so people know?? It was so disappointing to get to the end and then be told I have to buy something that will include part of this, to find out what happens. It's a shame because Sellars' work is really good. IT is a believable tale and the heroine is wonderful. I will most likely buy it, but I would've liked a warning.

Novella/Short Story Ratings
Book ♥♥♥ 3 Stars
Author ♥♥♥♥♥ 5 stars
Total ♥♥♥♥ 4 stars

Okay before I go into the bad ... I will say that M.R. Sellars knows how to write a book and a good one at that. This was a brilliant creation. I got this book for free on Amazon and again I hate when no one tells me that it is the prequel for a series..I feel that this is a ploy by marketing to get you to buy the first book and make sure that you buy the second. Hint: If you use the term prequel many people will buy the second book after reading the short story. I just like to be told that is what is going on! I like the story but, really want to know WTF happened at the end???!?? That was crazy and now that I am off my high horse I just may possibly by the rest of the book so that I can see how this crazy story ended.

I bought this because this was supposed to complete Merrie Axemas". If you are thinking of buying for the same reason don't bother!"

This is the shortened version of In the Bleak Midwinter" by M R Sellars. It is a chilling tale; a horror story, mystery or an FBI tale. But, choose which you will read this one or the longer "In the Bleak of Winter", they are the same story."

This is the first novel that I have read in the Rowan Gant series and I was a bit underwhelmed by it. Rowan Gant is a witch who can hear the dead and helps the police with murder investigations. Although he wants out of these investigations, the dead won’t let him out and he gets sucked into another investigation which involves vampires, or at least someone who likes to drain the blood out of his victims.

As I mentioned, the novel was a bit underwhelming. The writing to me seemed fairly pedestrian. There was nothing novel or intriguing about the storyline. Furthermore, very little actually happens in this novel. It’s mostly just Rowan having conversations with people. There is very little that occurs from a plot standpoint. This novel could easily have been cut in half. Most disappointing of all is that the climactic scene of this novel happens off the screen. There is no payoff. By the time I was finished reading it, I was ambivalent and had no interest in reading any further books in this series.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street

I love the way he explains and weaves the tenets of the Wiccan faith without making witches look like a bunch of weirdos that worship Satan and have awesome powers ( come on, they would be fun to have) like the fictioal witches on the series "Charmed". M.R. Sellars has earned another loyal fan in me. I look forward to some new books, by the time I get the rest of the series already out.Thank you for your excellent use of The Craft in your books.

This is the first book of a series of "Rowan Grant" investigations. Rowan Grant is a well-versed Wiccan/Magick User in St. Louis who helps his friend Ben Stone, skeptical detective for the St. Louis Police Department solve a mysterious crime. In the first few chapters, readers are introduced to what Wicca and Magick are and are not. What is a Athame? What are Spells? What does the Wiccan Rede phrase "Harm None" really mean? And what happens when a Witch turns Bad?

The conversations between the main characters, Rowan and Ben, bring back memories of the camaraderie between old friends like Kirk and Spock, Apollo and Starbuck, Abbot and Costello, etc. Basically two opposite people meeting, joking and working with each other in friendship and trust. The author transports you to a familiar setting 'believable' plots and supporting characters, which all enhance the flavor, tone and timing of the action. Once you start, its hard to put it down!

A brilliant work of "Fiction", based in the World of Facts only the few know about. Exciting, Educational and provocative, this book has been acclaimed by Dorothy Morrison, who said, "Its guaranteed to leave you breathless and begging for more!" and by the Midwest Book Review as "a superbly suspenseful thriller...". I have read this several times, and I am as enraptured by the story as when I first read it. Excellent work! - Salient

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
By M.R. Sellars

This book touts itself to be a paranormal thriller and that it most definitely is. Sellars
drives you forward, having you so engrossed in the story you forget where you are.

Special Agent Constance Mandalay is sent to the very rural town of Hulis, Missouri to aid
in a hunt for an annual serial killer. Every Christmas for the last seven years, a body is found in
the same exact place and no one, neither the previous seven FBI agents who were sent there
over the years nor Deputy Addison “Skip” Carmichael can catch the killer in the act.

Constance notices the lack of information and evidence in the file and begins to question just who
is covering things up. She’s almost convinced the whole town is keeping secrets. And she vows to uncover them. Then she witnesses for herself just what is going on in Hulis.

This is one paranormal ride you will want to take with Sellars. This is engrossing, engaging, and thrilling and will make your heart beat wildly in your chest. Sellars is definitely on my list of MRAs (must-read authors).

Reviewed by Starr Gardinier Reina, author of “The Other Side: Melinda’s Story”

Very meh Wiccan detective solves crimes with his painfully stereotypical Native American cop friend while battling psychic forces. Rather gory.

#5 in the Rowan Gant ‘paranormal’ mystery series featuring the Wiccan computer geek/sleuth and his friend Ben Storm, St. Louis policeman as well as Felicity O’Brien, Rowan’s wife. This book is pretty much the same plot from the previous four books re-hashed—a serial killer is loose, this one taking young, pretty women, torturing them and then in a little twist, beheading them. Rowan and Felicity become involved when Rowan and Ben, on their way to lunch, witness the abduction of one of the victims, who turns out to be none less than the mayor’s daughter. Actually Rowan had been involved earlier, when he woke up on the floor having had one of his seizures—he just didn’t realize at the time what it was about. Rowan and Felicity both end up channeling the victims and having their otherworldly seizures in this one, and once again are sometimes in grave mortal peril, with the clock ticking as the victims try to lead them to their resting place and/or where they’re being held. Ben and FBI agent Constance Mandalay again are bucking procedure, acting outside of the lead detective’s wishes by allowing Rowan and Felicity to assist them, and Lt. Albright, aka “Bible Barb” once again is riding their tails with scorn and derision.

While being quite a seat-of-your-pants thriller, since I’ve already read the first few books in the series, I was pretty sure of what was going to happen and I was right. I do enjoy the Pagan aspects of the book and it’s refreshing to have openly Pagan protagonists, and as much as I’ve come to love Rowan and Felicity and Ben, I do wish the plot would vary a little from book to book and that they would find something different to occupy the pages. It’s also a very graphically violent book, and not for the faint of heart—and I’m not faint of heart, but again, it’s just a lot of ‘same old, same old’ from previous books. I understand the next three books are a trilogy within the series that feature Felicity more, so maybe something different will come of them. I’ve got them all here, so I will read them, but if it’s ‘more of the same’ I’ll most likely end up leaving a year or more between reading each book…had I read all these at one time, I’d have likely not continued what with the marked similarity between them all, which leads to predictability of the outcome.

This is the third Rowan Gant investigation book I've read (although chronologically, it's the second in the series), and while the author seems to have learned a little about the craft of writing since the first book, all the things that made me hiss and spit and chant 'no, no, no, no, no' plaintively as I read are still there. *sigh*

Basically, at the beginning of the book, Mr Sellars has a big note to the effect that the books are written in a first person narrative voice, which means he's writing the way his protagonist, Rowan Gant, thinks; and that this voice may therefore not necessarily be grammatically correct. OK, lack of grammatical correctness in a narrative voice, I can deal with. No - my issue is that firstly, Rowan apparently doesn't narrate the way he thinks – or if he does, he doesn't think the way he speaks.

In essence, we have someone whose dialogue is all in pretty standard conversational language – casual, reasonable mixture of long and short sentences, frequent contractions. Whenever we have anything outside of quotation marks, however – description, exposition or reasoning – the language suddenly becomes unbelievably verbose, with sentences that frequently run over three or more lines; word choices that read as though the author felt that failure to use a thesaurus at least twice per sentence would be letting the creative team down; and generally, an apparent belief that any use of a short, simple word where a more erudite polysyllabic circumlocution could say the same thing with added complexity was simply unacceptable.

That, plus some lousy editing (use of apostrophes in plurals, lack of apostrophes in possessives, and a lack of commas that led to some mindboggling ambiguities, none of which should count as 'bad grammar justified that's by a first person narrative voice') created constant frustration for me as I read through the book. I lost count of the number of times I was jarred out of the story by little typos – it wasn't a matter of being offended by improper punctuation, so much as annoyance at being forced to work out what the hell the author was trying to before I could get on with the story.

Now, the more pragmatic amongst you might ask why I bothered to keep reading (and, indeed, finish) the book if the writing style annoyed me so much. My answer is twofold. First, Mr Sellars is a Pagan author with a character who (stigmata, channelled visions and telepathic links with his wife aside) reasonably accurately portrays a Witch who's active in both the Pagan community and the mundane day-to-day world of earning a crust. This makes me want to like and support the author's books: I just keep hoping that as he gets more and more practiced at the craft of writing, the issues I'm seeing will get less and less obvious. Unfortunately, so far, I can't quite manage it (the liking, I mean – the supporting I'm still doing).

My second reason is that underneath the writing style with all its niggles, I actually think Mr Sellars has some great plot ideas and some solid characters with whom I can often identify (not that they couldn't do with a bit of development to flesh them out sometimes, but they definitely have the potential there). It just bugs me that the massively overwritten narrative style, gets in the way of that potential for me.

The plot, for those who are still with me after that lead-in, revolves around a set of brutal serial killings, all perpetrated by an individual who seems intent on resurrecting the Burning Times in St Louis. The killer appears to be using the Malleus Mallficiarum as a guide for both his methods and his victims; and he leaves bibles with highlighted verses at each crime scene. And once more, our friend Rowan and his faithful sidekick, Detective Benjamin Storm (along with a cast of a few others) have to find out who and why.

The 400-odd pages they spend doing this interested me enough that I had no problem finishing the book, even though I found myself constantly reading a passage, and then having to to go back and edit it in my mind before I could move on to the next one. I actually found some of the 'educational' crime scene exposition interesting too – especially since it often mirrored bits and pieces I've been picking up from my Criminal Minds watching (yes, I know that's fiction too... but it's reasonably well written fiction).

So all up, my gut feeling is that, while the ideas and the structures behind the book are actually not too bad, the execution, as with the previous Rowan Gant books I've read, lets it down horribly. I'm trying to think of who I'd recommend the books to, and to be honest, I'm coming up blank. Ratings-wise, I think I'd give it an 8/10 for potential, but unfortunately, the writing style gets in the way enough that the final figure drops to a 5.5/10 for the actual story. Which is a shame – because it would just take a good editor and a bit of work to see it reaching that potential.

#4 Rowan Gant investigation, in which Rowan is once again stalked and terrorized by religious nut Eldon Porter. Eldon thinks of himself as God’s helper and is on a witch-hunt, and Gant is a self-professed Witch. When a member of Rowan and Felicity’s coven is found dead—tortured and disemboweled with a personal note for Rowan, he once again goes into high gear to try to figure out Porter’s next move and prevent any more loss of life. With the help of his good friend Ben Storm, a St. Louis detective on the Major Crimes Squad, Rowan has a leg up—however, Ben is teetering on the edge of respectability himself, especially with his new boss, “Bible Barb,” a right-wing Christian who, like the crazy Mr. Porter, has no knowledge of Pagan beliefs and thinks Rowan is a devil worshiper.

With plenty of fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat action, this book definitely classifies as a thriller and was hard to put down. Where it falls down is with believable dialogue and character development and a certain repetitiveness of themes. Much of the conflict and dialogue seems to be a re-hash of previous books and the dialogue always manages to sound somewhat stilted to my ear. And the constant and frequent descriptions of Rowan’s migraines and ‘seizures’ wore thin after awhile. I was a little confused (as a nurse) as to why no one suggested Rowan have a CT scan and get himself on some anti-seizure medication at some point. That, coupled with his crippling headaches, could easily signal a brain tumor or other serious physical abnormality—yet it’s always written off as just part of his psychic abilities manifesting itself. Still, it is refreshing to find at least a somewhat realistic picture of Pagan belief and practice portrayed.½

This is the second in the Rowan Gant series, set in St. Louis, Mo, and
featuring a male witch as the main character. I tried to like this series,
but I simply don't. The first book was extremely gory, with far too vivid
descriptions of the spectacular murders, and this one follows that pattern.
There's just too much "woo-woo" witchy stuff, too, from prophetic dreams and
recurring ghostly characters (murder victims from the first book coming back
to help solve murders in this one? Come on!) and it simply felt way too
contrived to me. This was a DNF and I won't be trying anymore in this
series.½

This is the first book in the Rowan Gant series. I have to
say that I'm not nearly very enthusiastic about this book.
The story was interesting enough, and the "woowhoo" factor was fairly
high -- with many psychic visions and odd dreams. But there was just
something about the way the characters talked to each other, the way they
interacted, that rang false to me. Much too stilted, conversations that
just didn't seem true to life, the way friends or spouses really talk to one
another. The character of Ben Storm came off seeming almost like a buffoon
at times. It just didn't ring true.

I wanted to read the book, also, because it was set in St. Louis, which is
only about 100 miles from me and I'm pretty familiar with the city. I
couldn't help but picture a friend of mine who happens to live in St. Louis
(a certain "wizard") in the role of Rowan Gant. He certainly looks the part, even if his religious views are
completely different. That made the book a little more interesting for
me, too, I'll have to admit.

The story was good, and now that I've gotten to know the characters a bit,
perhaps I'll enjoy the next book in the series a bit more. I'll give this
one a 3.5.½

Review located at http://lupabitch.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/harm-none-mr-sellars/

Review located at http://lupabitch.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/never-burn-a-witch-mr-sellars/

Review located at http://lupabitch.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/perfect-trust-mr-sellars/

Review located at http://lupabitch.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/crones-moon-mr-sellars/