This little eBook is worth its modest price for the links alone. It’s a basic journal setting out the process, pitfalls, opportunities and rewards relating to writing for literary journals. With chapters on Why You Should Submit…, How To Know When Your Work is Ready…, Basics of Submitting, and many others, it provides useful information …
Continue reading Submit, Publish, Repeat, by Emily Harstone, Reviewed.
This series offers help for writers to make their work more varied, accessible, interesting, accurate and effective by exploring similar and dissimilar words. It also helps language learners understand some of the finer points of English usage. A good thesaurus gives substitutes for the idea of a word, but not all suggestions are true synonyms. Context …
Continue reading Looking for the Best Word? Tip #18
Today, I’m delighted to be interviewed on the unplag.com/blog, and given a chance to share information, motivation and writing advice. The piece is titled, 'Stuart Aken reveals a secret of his writing craft in his interview to unplag'. I consider this a real honour and I’m pleased to share it with you. Here’s the link …
Continue reading Author Interview on Unplag.com.
Young adult fantasy, with the emphasis on the ‘young’. This is a sort of fairy tale told at length. Action-packed, fast moving and sometimes mysterious, this story is also convoluted and occasionally poetic. It is also surprisingly engaging. Surprising because there are structural, grammatical and even vocabulary errors that some serious editing would have corrected. …
Continue reading Chronicles of Drenyon: The Golden Sword, by NLJ, Reviewed.
What's this? A children's book reviewed here? Not what you'd expect, I know, but it's the season that's mostly about children, and this book was recommended to me, so I thought, 'Why not?'. As an author, it's good to step outside your usual zone of activity from time to to time and experience a different …
Continue reading Felicity – A Sparrow’s Tale, by Loralee Evans, Reviewed.
Poetry is more difficult to review than novels or nonfiction. For me it is, anyway. As a writer of prose, often puzzled by the brevity and density of poetry, I feel less qualified to comment on technical aspects. What I can do, however, is describe how the poems made me feel, what I experienced as …
Continue reading Against the Night, by P M F Johnson, Reviewed.
This collection of letters written by an American novelist to her family and friends whilst living in Hull, England, during 1999/2000, is, essentially, a very personal book. Having said that, it’s also a book for everyone interested in the cultures, habits and attitudes of both nations. I came across it via Facebook; one of my …
Continue reading Letters From Hull, by Linda Swift, Reviewed.
Set on the Moon in some unspecified future, this science fiction novel presents the reader with complex characters that live on the page. For me, as both a reader and a writer, character development and presentation are key to the enjoyment of a book. Here, we have a well-constructed story set in a credible world …
Continue reading Dreagan Star, by Nan Klee, Reviewed.
If you read this post, you’re in good company. I recently did a Google search for ‘Writer Help’ to answer a Quora question. The search brought up 270,000,000 results. 2 of the posts from this series were listed on the first page in the 1st 10 results! A series offering to help writers make their …
Continue reading Looking for the Best Word? Tip #15
A book launch, where we sold out of the publisher’s stock! A meeting with Royd Tolkien and lots of other authors. A gathering of enthusiastic and generous people at an event celebrating science fiction, fantasy and gaming. Plus: Visits to relatives and friends in various locations. Visits to Family Research Centres to gather facts for …
Continue reading Fantasticon 2016 and Other Treats
What better place to launch a new science fiction novel than a convention devoted to scifi and fantasy? Well, today (19th November) I’m here at Fantasticon 2016, in Hull, signing copies of my latest book, Blood Red Dust. Set on Mars before the end of this century, it follows the lives of a set of …
Continue reading Today’s Definitely The Day!
A series exploring similar and dissimilar words for ways writers might make their work more varied, accessible, interesting, accurate and effective. A good thesaurus gives substitutes for the idea of a word, but not all are true synonyms. Context is vital. Placing alternative words in the same sentence to see if they actually make sense …
Continue reading Looking for the Best Word? Tip #13
From Glen Donaldson on Goodreads: Enjoyed? I positively feasted on this book! It opened a door to a behive-world of thoughty concepts and high-res imagination the likes of which I have rarely seen. The 'frolicksome' character of Jannine deserved a book all on her own! You really have dynamited the vault and poured out the …
Continue reading Blood Red Dust Gains Great Reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.
Launched at the brilliant Fantasticon 2016 in Hull on Saturday 19/Sunday 20 November is my latest science fiction novel, Blood Red Dust. (Tickets here) If you can make it to Hull and pop in, I’d be delighted to sign a copy for you. If you can’t be there, you can still obtain a copy in …
Continue reading Blood Red Dust to Launch 19 November at Fantasticon 2016!
Subtitled, ‘The Story of Muhammad’, this scholarly and meticulously researched book provides answers to many common questions about the Islamic prophet. As an agnostic (It’s impossible for humanity ever to truly ‘know’ whether God exists or not, since such a power must, by definition, be far beyond our comprehension) I have an interest in the …
Continue reading The First Muslim, by Lesley Hazleton, Reviewed.
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Antidote to the Novel
Stuart Aken 