Friday, July 8, 2016

Review: Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising by Kathryn Meyer Griffith @KathrynG64


Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising
(Dinosaur Lake #2)
by Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Published March 27th 2014
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Suspense, Fantasy

BLURB:

Prehistoric creatures have again invaded Crater Lake National Park
…and this time there’s more than one.

DINOSAUR LAKE II: Dinosaurs Arising
by Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Henry Shore has been Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park for thirteen years now and thought the days when he’d had to fight a rogue dinosaur that lived in the caves below the lake were long over.
Until one of his park rangers, to save a visitor’s life, is in a deadly struggle out in the woods with a new breed of dinosaur worse than the last one. It’s as big as a man, but this one is a young one. And growing.
Then more of the creatures begin to show up everywhere, threatening people and destroying the tranquility and safety of his beloved park.
A tourist trolley filled with fifteen people is snatched up off the crater’s rim by another version of the younger one…but this one has grown into a giant with fangs, claws and a deadly tail.
And this one has wings.
Ugly Gargoyles, Henry calls them.
For this one isn’t alone.
They’re flying beyond the park’s boundaries into the neighboring towns.
So Henry, with the help of his son-in-law, a paleontologist named Justin, and a band of brave park rangers, and a few good soldiers, must not only protect his park and his people from monsters once more but find their lair and destroy it and them before the creatures kill again. ***

Dinosaur Lake
Goodreads ~ Amazon

Read my review of Dinosaur Lake: HERE!


Guest Post:

Dinosaur Lake Series Backstory

Of all my 22 novels my Dinosaur Lake series (Dinosaur Lake, Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising, Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation–and coming soon: Dinosaur Lake IV: Dinosaur Wars) has the strangest story attached to its creation, death and rebirth…20 years later…of any of them.
Not so much because, as a few of my books, it took so long to write or publish, but because in 1993 it was contracted, edited and the final galleys had been proofed by me for a 5th paperback book release from Zebra (Kensington Publishing) after 3 earlier novels with Leisure Books. I even had a stack of the full-color, printed and embossed covers; it was only weeks before it was to go to the bookshelves (in those days the brick & mortar stores were still king, no Internet or ebooks). I strongly believed it’d be my breakout book. You know, the book that’d make my career and launch me into the stratosphere with Stephen King and Anne Rice? How wrong I’d be. But, hey, I thought who wouldn’t love a tale of a cunning but malevolent rampaging prehistoric dinosaur living in Crater Lake, Oregon, and the Park Ranger who, along with a ragtag gang of heroes who’d try to stop it? I mean, I’d always loved anything about dinosaurs…dinosaur books, playing with those little plastic figurines and watching old stop-action dinosaur movies of the 1950’s and 60’s…who hadn’t? Apparently someone. My new editor at Zebra.
By 1994, after four novels with them, I’d lost my sweet editor there and a new one took her place…and over the next year he didn’t like anything I wrote for him and later that year Zebra unceremoniously dropped me and my book (Predator…which never came out but still lingers to this very day like some weird ghost book in every computer on the global Internet) only six weeks away from going to the bookstore shelves. When we were editing the book and deciding on the title and the cover, I’d begged the new editor not to call it Predator (his choice as they hadn’t liked my American Loch Ness Monster title), bad title since there was a popular movie out of that name and the movie, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, was nothing about a dinosaur, and the cover was awful, an empty boat on a lake…what!!! Having that book-my first ever-dumped like that was a crushing experience, let me tell you. I had a stack of finished, printed covers and my final edits were done! But nothing my agent or I could say or do would change their minds. They said they were cutting their horror lines and setting adrift a lot of their mid-list horror authors because horror (in 1994) was on the decline. The new editor-that-didn’t-like-my-writing explained: “And no one wants to read a book about a dinosaur.” Yeah, sure. And six months later Jurassic Park the book came out! We all know how that story ended, don’t we? People loved the book, the movies; they loved dinosaurs.
I’ll never know the real reason they cut the book but that male editor never bought another book from me…which was another weird thing because when I’d met him in New York (I went for a Horror Convention) in the summer of 1993 he’d taken my husband and I out to lunch and gushed over me and said how much he’d loved my last release WITCHES. Hmmm.
Anyway, I got to keep my advance but the book was officially dead. It never came out. I grieved. I was so disgusted I stashed it in a drawer somewhere and tried to forget it. Until now. After I’d finished revising and rereleasing all my new/old 15 books (and besides paperbacks they’re in ebooks for the first time ever) from Eternal Press/Damnation Books in June of 2012 I remembered about my American Loch Ness Monster novel, took it out and reread it.
Whoa, like a lot of my older novels now years later I could see what was wrong with it and how to fix it. Back then I hadn’t seen the head-hopping I did or the awkward phrasing, stiff or overly dramatic dialogue, repetitive words and other things I’ve learned since to recognize and stay away from. Of course, computers help make the editing so much easier. I think I’d done the original book on my electric typewriter. Anyway, telling myself the dumping of that book had been a turning point in my writing life-sending me in the wrong direction for a long time apparently…I couldn’t sell a book for eight long years after that-I decided to rewrite and finally release it. In fact, I was going to do something that twenty years ago would have been unheard of and frowned on…self-publish the book myself. With Kindle Direct. For the first time in forty years I was walking away from the traditional publishers and going on my own. Thank you J.A. Konrath’s blog! I figured I could sell the Kindle eBook a lot cheaper and, thus, use it to introduce (as enticement) more readers to my writing and perhaps, if they liked it, they’d buy more of my other novels, novellas and various short stories. It could work, right? So here it is, re-titled, rewritten, updated and with an amazing new cover I love by Dawne Dominque… Dinosaur Lake. I hope my readers will like it.


My Review:

Chief Park Ranger Henry Shore is back and fighting more dinosaurs at Crater Lake National Park. Henry has worked at the park for thirteen years and was around helping to fight the dinosaurs the first time they showed up about five years ago. The first dinosaurs came out of the lake and were fought on the ground. Henry lost some of his best rangers and friends on that horrific day.

The dinosaurs of today fly and are stronger when they are flying than when they are on the ground. Now don’t get me wrong they are still very strong when on the ground. They are bigger and stand taller than any man. Their wings have claws on the end of them and they have fangs. The first one to make an appearance is young but they are growing and will become stronger. They can think and make up plans to fight the humans with. They are very cunning.

After the first flying dinosaur attack Henry is skeptical about calling the authorities. He doesn’t want to cause a pandemic besides who is going to believe him. Even after the dinosaur attack five years ago; sometimes people just don’t believe their own eyes. But after a trolley full of tourist and two of his rangers are snatched off the rim of the carter he realizes he has no choice it is time to call for reinforcements before more people are killed.

Henry does not only have to worry about dinosaurs in his park but he is also having a hard time at home. His wife Ann is having a real bad time with her health and having to go to doctor’s appointments and treatments. Henry wants to be with his wife because he loves her very much and he wants to be there to help support her through her time of need. He is very lucky that he has a wife that is so loving and caring not only for him but everyone else too. She understands and knows that he has to stop the dinosaurs or a lot of people will suffer.

I read Dinosaur Lake and really loved it but I think Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising may be just a tad bit better. It is very hard to say though. Both are filled with excitement, danger and suspense. I loved all the characters and the love and caring they had for each other and what they would all do for the other.


I loved watching the movie Jurassic Park so when I saw Dinosaur Lake I knew I had to read it and I definitely wasn’t disappointed at all.  I loved it so much that I just had to read Dinosaur Lake II and I am so glad I did it was out of this world amazing. Dinosaur Lake II will take you on the ride of your life. I can’t wait to read the next book Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation to see what kind of dinosaurs Kathryn has in store for us and what kind of adventure she is going to take us on next. I would love to see the Dinosaur Lake series on the big screen along with all the characters. If you have not read Dinosaur Lake then I suggest you pick up a copy of Dinosaur Lake and Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising today. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Since childhood I’ve been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. But I’d already begun writing novels at 21, over forty-four years ago now, and have had twenty-two (ten romantic horror, two horror novels, two romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel, one historical romance, two thrillers, and four murder mysteries) previous novels, two novellas and twelve short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books/Eternal Press. But I’ve gone into self-publishing in a big way since 2012; and upon getting all my 22 books’ full rights back for the first time in 33 years, have self-published all of them. My Dinosaur Lake novels and Spookie Town Mysteries (Scraps of Paper, All Things Slip Away and Ghosts Beneath Us) are my best-sellers.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-eight years; have a son and two grandchildren and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois. We have a quirky cat, Sasha, and the three of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk/classic rock singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.

2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS *Finalist* for her horror novel The Last Vampire ~ 2014 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS * Finalist * for her thriller novel Dinosaur Lake.

*All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s books can be found here:

*All her Audible.com audio books here:


Novels and short stories:

Evil Stalks the Night, The Heart of the Rose, Blood Forged, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire (2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their Horror category), Witches, The Nameless One erotic horror short story, The Calling, Scraps of Paper (The First Spookie Town Murder Mystery), All Things Slip Away (The Second Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Ghosts Beneath Us (The Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Egyptian Heart, Winter’s Journey, The Ice Bridge, Don’t Look Back, Agnes, A Time of Demons and Angels, The Woman in Crimson, Human No Longer, Four Spooky Short Stories Collection, Forever and Always Romantic Novella, Night Carnival Short Story, Dinosaur Lake (2014 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their Thriller/Adventure category), Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising and Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation.



0 comments: