Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.

On 13/09/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Fiction, Mars, Progress

As work on this is mostly confined to the void that occupies most of my skull, I don’t have a lot to report today. Preparation, they say, is all. My method of moving toward the writing of a piece is to gather together my characters, something I’ve mostly achieved, though some are proving elusive for …

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Travelling Light, by Vickie Johnstone: #BookReview.

On 13/09/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Reading, Review

I exercise a degree of caution when reviewing poetry, since I’m by no means a competent practitioner. Therefore my judgment is necessarily both subjective and lacking in personal experience. This is a pleasant read with a great deal of variety in the poems offered. There's rhyme and blank verse here. For me, the blank verse …

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Emanation: Shadeward Saga #1, by Drew Wagar: #BookReview.

On 09/09/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Fiction, Reading, Review2 Comments

Genre can be the bane of the author’s life: most publishers insist on slotting fiction into predefined pigeonholes. But some books defy this process, either merging genres or crossing boundaries. Emanation is such a book. It is, essentially a science fiction book, but reads, certainly in the beginning, like a fantasy novel. It’s …

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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.

On 30/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, Progress

This weekend sees the annual science fiction and fantasy shindig in Hull. Fantasticon 2017 is on course to be the best yet. I’ll be there signing copies of War Over Dust and meeting readers as well as fans of all types of gaming in a splendid venue. I’m also partaking in a talk with another …

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The Purple Bowtie, by Lisabeth Reynolds: #BookReview.

On 28/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, Reading, Review2 Comments

[A review is a personal opinion. No reviewer can represent the view of anyone else. The best we can provide is an honest reaction to any given book.] This book is listed as ‘lesbian romance’. So, what attracted an agnostic, heterosexual man to delve into its pages? The description intrigued me to begin with. …

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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.

On 23/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, Progress

So, some small progress made: I’ve added a few notes from further research and ideas that occurred during the week, usually when in bed! At this early stage, while I wait for the story to mature, I restrict my activity to research and those daydreaming sessions that allow the imagination free reign. I won’t start …

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Utopia for Realists, by Rutger Bregman, Reviewed.

On 22/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Reading, Review2 Comments

This is a book I'd love everyone to read. Really. With its subtitle, ‘And How We Can Get There’, it offers hope for the future. Well written and, with forty pages of bibliography/research annotations, a book that has clearly been thoroughly researched. If you’ve reached that stage where you see a future for humanity in …

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A Night Shift, by Joshua Scribner: #BookReview.

On 14/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, Reading, Review

This short piece of dark fantasy puts a different spin on a popular theme, and carries it through with some dark humour. It’s a compact story, told simply but with great effect. We know as much as we need to about the characters and watch as the tension slowly builds to the denouement, which contains …

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The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe: #BookReview.

On 12/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Fiction, Reading, Review

It’s dangerous to review a much-loved and respected classic; even more so for an author. So I face this review with some trepidation. The story is, of course, of its time; a period when readers had fewer distractions, were happy to read wordy stories, and were educated enough to understand the subtleties of language. I …

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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.

On 09/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, Mars, Progress

Blood Red Dust is on the shelves. War Over Dust has just appeared as a Kindle, available from your local Amazon. The launch for that will still officially be 2nd September at Fantasticon in Hull, but you can now obtain your copy as an ebook and get ahead of the pack. Maybe even read/review …

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Story in Literary Fiction, by William H. Coles: #BookReview.

On 09/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Fiction, Reading, Review

Subtitled ‘A Manual for Writers’, this is a scholarly work that attempts to analyse what makes a story ‘literary’ rather than ‘genre’ and advises on how to go about achieving this distinction. Presented in two parts, after a brief introduction to the topic, the book looks first at ‘Structuring the Story’, in which the author …

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The Devil in the Belfry, by Edgar Allan Poe: #BookReview.

On 05/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Fiction, Reading, Review, Uncategorized7 Comments

Until I read this short, I hadn’t realised how good Poe was at comic writing. This is a tongue-in-cheek dig at the horror genre that had me laughing out loud. Although some of the constructed names are a little juvenile, I suspect they would have been thought quite revolutionary at the time. The story, inasmuch …

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The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano. #BookReview.

On 04/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, Reading, Review2 Comments

Translated from the original Italian, this melancholy novel captures the nuance and subtlety that can so strongly influence a young mind. The wrong thing said, the poor choice made, the misunderstanding never fully comprehended until much later, all act as controllers in the lives of those still forming. This is the story of two young …

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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.

On 02/08/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, Mars, Progress2 Comments

At the moment, patiently awaiting the first view of the new book. While we wait, I thought I’d make a few comments about why I wrote ‘War Over Dust’. Actually, why I wrote that and its predecessor ‘Blood Red Dust’ and will write the one yet to come in this trilogy. Science fiction attracts writers …

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Till They Dropped, by Sue Knight, Reviewed.

On 31/07/2017 By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Fiction, Reading, Review1 Comment

Fantasy? Science Fiction? Magical Realism? This book is all of these. But it’s also a thoughtful, imaginative, and ultimately terrifying cross genre piece that stirs both emotions and ideas. We’re plunged into an undefined land, except that it must be the so-called civilised world, in an undeclared time, which must be the future. What is …

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