Conjured by Sarah Doughty
“Dreamless sleep was like a dark place
that played like a lullaby without sound.”
Dreamless sleep was like being lost in oblivion. But it wasn’t frightening or terrible by any means. It was a dark place that played like a lullaby without sound. It was a slow beating of the heart, contentment, free from thought or stress.
© Sarah Doughty
2016
A small excerpt from Listen,
book 4 of
the Earthen Witch Novels.
Listen is now available at most online retailers, including iBooks, Barnes And Noble, and Kobo! Find the links here. Because my books are free, Amazon won’t add them to their catalog, but if you have a Kindle, you can find mobi files at Smashwords!
If you enjoy it, I encourage you to leave a review on Goodreads and your preferred retailer!
My friend F-K from fkregieblog came back with another glowing review. This time for Home, my third novel. I’m on cloud nine that the love is still strong for the series as a whole. But more than that, the depth of understanding that F-K shows in the underlying themes is almost uncanny.
Here’s the reviews for Just Breathe, Focus, Zoe, and Dream Spell. Read on for an in-depth review.
**Spoilers ahead, read at your own peril!**
Author’s note: there are spoilers in this review.
Any writing must explain itself or you wonder what the reason was for writing it. As you read any writing, it is only natural therefore that you try to find answers to the questions in your head (raised by what you are reading) – fictional works included. As such, as I read Sarah Doughty’s Home several questions were bounding around in my head: How can someone with a crisis of identity and a sense of displacement become a home for restless souls?Is race and kind only a human construct; can animals be racist – towards humans?What is the true meaning of home? These questions, and the answers Doughty provides to them will form the premise of my review of Sarah Doughty’s Home.
Home is the gripping tale of the becoming of Angela Ines Williams, a young African-American Librarian and Guardian…
View original post 4,827 more words
My friend F-K from fkregieblog came back with another glowing review. This time for Focus, my Second novel. I’m on cloud nine that the love is still strong for the main series. But more than that, the depth of understanding that F-K shows in the underlying themes is almost uncanny.
Here’s the reviews for Just Breathe, Zoe, and Dream Spell. Read on for an in-depth review.
**Spoilers ahead, read at your own peril!**
Author’s note: there are spoilers in this review.
In Sarah Doughty’s Focus all hell is (metaphorically and literally) let loose. This is not your typical novel, due mainly to how the story is told – it is nobody’s tale as several narrators tell it. This is not your typical novel because the first-person (omniscient) narrators have more than one level of point-of-view (POV) in the observation of self and situations. This is not your typical novel because Sarah Doughty is more than a narrator, she is a great storyteller – period. Usually, narration is a clinical and dry way of stating a series of events – a flow of events connected to a theme. Usually, narration is a method and means of constructing the events of a story into a plot, which concerns itself with the sequence of the events, the medium on which they are told, and the way…
View original post 4,492 more words
I woke up as the sky began to lighten in the mid-November sky. I was shivering. But I wasn’t cold. And it wasn’t fear I felt, either. It was an anticipation that something was coming. Something big.
© Sarah Doughty
A quote from Just Breathe,
book one of the
Earthen Witch Novels.
For the Word-High July Prompts
of Filipino words,
hosted by Rosema and Maria.
Yugto – (n.) transition or development of a story
My friend F-K from fkregieblog came back with another glowing review. This time for Just Breathe, my first novel. I’m on cloud nine that the love has continued into the main series. But more than that, the depth of understanding that F-K shows in the underlying themes is almost uncanny. To see the reviews of Zoe and Dream Spell, click here and here. Read on for an in-depth review.
**Spoilers ahead, read at your own peril!**
I treated Sarah Doughty’s Just Breathe the way I treat any book that holds my fascination – if books could speak the Holy Bible and Webster’s Advanced Dictionary wouldn’t want me near them. First, I read the novel three times, put it down for a couple of days, returned to it, reread it, put it down again, and returned to it today, reread it, and now I am ready to review it. I do this when I want to carry a book around in my head, as a source of reference – this novel is that good. Plus, after what I have put it through in one week I didn’t feel the book wanted me near it – I feel Sarah Doughty’s novel needs to just breathe.
What fascinates me about the novel is Doughty’s knowledge of witches. Through my second reading I realized this has to be some sort…
View original post 3,638 more words
I was standing in an alley lit by that same eerie sepia light. Like the sun was permanently at the cusp of twilight, just setting over the horizon. Deep shadows cast over everything and even the bits of trash that littered the dirty street looked devoid of most of their color.
The Spirit Realm.
© Sarah Doughty
A quote from Home,
book one of the
Earthen Witch World Novels.
For the Word-High July Prompts
of Filipino words,
hosted by Rosema and Maria.
Tapiksilim – (n.) twilight, dusk
It was a pleasant surprise to see that my friend over at fkregieblog read Dream Spell. Not only did he really enjoy it, but he’s back with another phenomenal review. It’s presented like a college essay, with quotes and even page citations to back up what he’s saying. I’m honored that he continues to enjoy my books and only hope that continues with Just Breathe, Focus, and Home.
**Read on at your own peril, because there are spoilers ahead.**
My very first creative writing lecturer, Nurrudin Farah, once told me, “a good short story needs a good hook.” My fertile imagination at the time conjured up two images – that of punching your readers into some kind of blissful literary drunkenness or reeling them in like a good pike piranha. Imagination aside, whatever you […]
I am honored and humbled to see such a thoughtful and eloquent review of my novella, Zoe. He was kind enough to inform me that his rating is five stars!
There are **spoilers** in this review, so read on at your own peril. Also, please note that there are a few passages and events in this novella that might be a trigger, and some of those elements are discussed in this review.
General: the end of this novella left me with a sense of deflation – not at the writing, which is superbly done, but the pyrrhic victory captured in the words “after all, dark is better than dead”(67). Zoë overcomes her dark-witch tormentor, Graham, but in killing him she gains darkness and loses the love of Connor and his werewolf/pet-dog companion, Shadow – the very person and friend she risks her self and life for.
Read the rest of Sarah Doughty’s Zoe – Review by fkregieblog.
General: the end of this novella left me with a sense of deflation – not at the writing, which is superbly done, but the pyrrhic victory captured in the words “after all, dark is better than dead”(67). Zoë overcomes her dark-witch tormentor, Graham, but in killing him she gains darkness and loses the love of Connor and his werewolf/pet-dog companion, Shadow – the very person and friend she risks her self and life for. This acceptance is somewhat unfortunate, as it separates her in the end from the happiness (with Connor and Shadow) I feel she deserves considering all she has been through. Somehow it equates a kind of transgender reality. But then again, if life were what we imagine, there wouldn’t be the need to live. So, the unexpected ending, though more expressionistic, isn’t beyond reality.
Structurally, I found the divisions (of the chapters) a…
View original post 3,089 more words
Dreamless sleep was like being lost in oblivion. But it wasn’t frightening or terrible by any means. It was a dark place that played like a lullaby without sound. It was a slow beating of the heart, contentment, free from thought or stress.
© Sarah Doughty
A small excerpt from Listen,
book 4 of the Earthen Witch Novels,
coming in October.
