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She hadn’t expected to be expecting …
Having a family wasn’t part of Cinnamon Robert’s five-year plan, but when she accidentally fell under the spell of a hypnotist who’d been hired by her baby-crazed twin sister, she suddenly became a warm, willing woman ripe to conceive. Which is exactly what happened … by Chance.
Ramblin’ man turned family man?
Chance Devereux had to wonder if he wasn’t the one under a spell .. ’cause ever since sweet-and-spicy Cinnamon had come into his life — making him a daddy-to-be — he’d started hearing wedding bells.
Chance wanted to make the mother of his child an honest woman … but could he hope for marital bliss after Cinnamon came to?
[amtap book:isbn=0373165846]
All Cinnamon Roberts thought was that she was going to accompany her twin sister Pepper to a hypnotist, who was going to help the frustrated Pepper become more accustomed to having sex so she could finally be pregnant. The trouble began with the carelessness of the hypnotist, starting with not recognizing the signs that Cinnamon was under the same trance as her twin Pepper and ending with the poor selection of a post-hypnotic trigger, the word “cayenne”.
When Cinnamon met Chance Devereux later, when he mentioned the word “cayenne”, Cinnamon immediately went into a passionate state, astonishing Chance, who, unknowing the actual state she was in, decided to take ‘advantage’ of the situation. Only afterward does the trance wear off does Cinnamon finally realize that she was pregnant, much to their mutual astonishment. That’s when the established tropes of the romance novel begin to appear, and as expected, it all works out in the end.
Commentary: Three classic fails in media hypnosis: first off, the unintentional witness trance, and, secondly, the inadvertent post-hypnotic triggering, all leading up to the third, that being the inability of the person unintentionally hypnotized to ignore or resist the suggestions.
Birds of Prey #6
“Clean Getaway”
The confrontation with Choke and the Cleaners is building to a head. The Birds of Prey track down one of the individuals who is under the thrall of Choke and manage to release him from Choke’s control, then send him back to his regular job to act as a lure to draw out Choke. Little do the Birds know that the entire office staff is under Choke’s control, all mindlessly preparing to attack at the same time reciting strange phrases that just might be control triggers to take over the Birds of Prey themselves.
Star Trek and The Legion of Super-Heroes #5
With the identity of the mysterious Emperor of Earth revealed, the question is, how was Vandal Savage / Flint transformed into the ruthless conqueror of the galaxy and how did he accomplish that feat? The answer lies in the mysterious force that he keeps locked away, a force that allows him to manipulate reality and compel his subjects to obey him utterly. An intelligent force that does not appreciate being locked away, a powerful and petulant force used to going wherever and whenever it willed, unbound by any restrictions. A force that does not like losing, especially to a Stone-Age savage such as Vandal Savage.
A force that should need no introduction to anyone who followed “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.
[amtap book:isbn=0425181995]
Amid the lush vineyards and majestic hills of Napa Valley, hypnotist [Doctor] Johanna Schell has founded Der Haven — a sanctuary for those who know the pain of being “different”. For desperate, frightened people whose souls are lost to grief. For lonely tortured men like Quentin Foster …
Frightening spells of amnesia have plagued Quentin for years, and Johanna wants nothing more than to ease his unspeakable pain–and find out if his claim to werewolf blood is just a delusion. But she is horrified to discover that, under hypnosis, this tender, thoughtful man becomes violent, vengeful …evil. And now–caught in the balance between reality and illusion, truth and deception, simple desire and absolute destruction–she must find the courage to trust him. To love him. To save him…
Can a tortured man like Quentin Foster find peace? Can a dedicated healer like Johanna Schell find love? Can they together defeat the enemies with and without and find their desires together?
Well, this is a romance novel, so, yes, they will do all everything listed above. But it won’t be easy, even less easy than the average romance novel. That’s what happens when the paranormal is added to the mix.
⇒ Continue reading ““Secret of the Wolf” by Susan Krinard”
Total weirdness: a plugin conflict was rendering the visible blog section, but not the admin section, completely blank. No data as to which plugin was doing it, the only way to figure it out is to disable one after another to find the offending one.
Which happened to be the first one I tried. Or maybe not: maybe it was just the order in which things were run, and disabling and enabling things fixed it. Who knows? What matters is that the blog is back up and operational again. Very annoying.
Reading: Another regency romance, this time with a little more bite and society politics involved than the last one. The male protagonist is not comfortable in his new peerage and several of the influential members of the ton have it in for him. At least there’s something more going on than the two eventual lovers sighing and wondering whether they love each other, as at this point they hardly know each other.
Research: I picked up the library copy of “Incognito:Â the Secret Lives of the Brain” this afternoon but haven’t had the chance to start reading it yet. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon.
The name Samuel Youd is not that most anyone would immediately recognize. Even I didn’t at first.
However, his pseudonym of John Christopher would be immediately recognized by SF fans anywhere. That was the name used for the author of a large number of SF novels, including the YA trilogy known under the collective name as the “Tripods”. The Tripods trilogy (“The White Mountains”, “The City of Gold and Lead”, and “The Pool of Fire”) was about an Earth that was conquered by aliens who moved about the world in almost “War of the Worlds” tripods. To control the populace, everyone was “capped” at the age of 14 with a metal device that maintained the aliens’ control over humanity. But not all humanity: an underground movement, employing agents wearing fake “caps” recruited young men to act as undercover agents, eventually able to infiltrate the alien base and provide the information to restore humanity.
There was also a prequel novel, “When the Tripods Came”, published in 1988, almost 20 years after the first publication of the first book of the trilogy. This novel finally disclosed how the alien “Masters” first conquered the world: through a hypnotic television program called “The Trippy Show” that reduced resistance to the alien conquest.
Samuel Youd’s career was not limited to just these stories: he was a prolific writer who used several pseudonyms as well as his own name. Other than the “Tripods” series, he is best remembered for his post-apocalyptic novel The Death of Grass, the second work published under his John Christopher pseudonym, in 1956.
Trivia:
- The trilogy was adapted as a comic strip in the venerable “Boy’s Life” magazine, from May, 1981, through August, 1986.
- The first two books of the trilogy would eventually be translated to television by the BBC, but the third book never got past the script stage.
Reference:
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