on Reading and Writing and All the Speculation In Between
Author Joseph Rinaldo contacted me to review this and sent me a PDF to be able to read it on my iPad. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, given the wide range of seemingly divergent tags on the book’s Amazon page (ranging from bereavement, to embezzlement, to mental retardation, to fishing, to espionage) and…
Stumar Press contacted me to review this anthology by the Derby Scribes plus, which includes short stories from Simon Clark, Conrad Williams and Neal James, plus short stories from Derby Scribes members Stuart Hughes, Richard Farren Barber, Christopher Barker, Victoria Charvill, Jennifer Brown, David Ball, Peter Borg, and Alison J. Hill. In general, I shy…
This was another review request that languished on my to-read pile for a while. Author Rachel Forde contacted me via this blog with a short and sweet introduction and request. According to Amazon, the book was released in early July, and has already earned an accolade: the ePublishing Consortium‘s Writing Award. That last seems a…
Ever since I first read Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters and then Five Hundred Kingdoms series, I’ve been fascinated by fractured fairy tales. Only recently, with Kait Nolan’s Red did I even discover another author noodling on that theme. So when Nigel Osner requested that I review his fantasy novel, I had no idea this was…
After a series of read-for-myself days, today I felt honor-bound to pick up the next in my pile of review requests, and opened up Toonopolis: Gemini, by Jeremy Rodden. It’s labeled as young adult/fantasy, so theoretically aligns with a lot of what I’ve been reading. I wasn’t too sure about it from the author’s blurb, since…
This is the second Veronica Li book I’ve been asked to review, and it fulfilled all the promise her first title. She describes this as a memoir dictated by her mother and transcribed and translated by herself. Li explains in the prologue that the genesis of the idea came from childhood: One of my fondest…
I’ve discovered an ever-expanding circle of professional authors on Twitter, so when I saw @kaitnolan announcing the release of her latest opus in August, I had to jump on the opportunity to ask a few questions. Without further ado: 1. You blog regularly about your “evil day job”; how did you get sucked into that…
This comprises the fourth book I’ve been requested to review in the past few months. The author sent a lovely request to review both of her books, and based on details about her journalistic background on her author’s website, I had high hopes for a well-crafted story. Her blurb gives a particularly focused reference on…
I debated whether to actually review this, since it touches on elements of spirituality some might find controversial, but there are a few points worth sharing that made me decide to move forward. I found this on Smashwords’ top 100 list and was curious that a book that self-categorized into the “visionary and mystical” realm…
Read More “Review: Parallel Worlds: Nothing is as it seems” »
I first “met” Kait Nolan on Twitter, where she shares wry and self-deprecating tales of home and work life as well as gluten-free cooking experiments under her @kaitonlan handle. Based on reading her blogs, I had to assume she was at least a decent writer, but just hadn’t gotten around to reading one of her…