This is a different type of thriller. Dealing with the murky lives of Mossad Agents, it follows the early career of Thomas Glaze, a young man totally deluded about his appeal to women, his ability in the field, and his tolerance for drugs and alcohol. Unsurprisingly, with such a catalogue of denial, he fails miserably …
Continue reading The Sweet Oil of Vitriol: A Tom Glaze Hit, by Daniel Eagleton, Reviewed.
I’m currently reading each chapter and then feeding them through grammar checker, Prowritingaid.com. This removes unintended repetitions, weak verbs, and many of other small errors the eye misses when reading from the screen. It’s a fairly intense process. So far, I'm at page 165 of 412 in a Word doc that's double spaced. After that …
Continue reading Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.
Writing is such an odd occupation, requiring peculiar minds combined with unusual personalities. All writers are weird; that’s a given. We know we’re strange, some of us peculiar to the point of near insanity, others merely eccentric. We’re definitely an odd bunch. But there’s a strange beauty, a wonderful schizophrenia about writing, especially when the …
Continue reading Perils and Pleasures of Penmanship.
The second in a projected trilogy, this deeply complex fantasy follows on from Chopin’s Ghost, taking the reader through the next twisting, convoluted maze that constitutes the story. If you haven’t read the first book, I advise you do so. However, the author includes enough detail from that first novel to allow readers new to …
Continue reading The House on Sagamore Road, by Cary Grossman, Reviewed.
Listed as Teen/YA romance and mystery, this is a book in a genre I wouldn’t normally read. However, I was approached by the author for a review, read the blurb, and decided to give it a chance. I’d actually classify it as fantasy romance, but that’s a personal judgment based on how I view the …
Continue reading Can’t Buy Forever, by Susan Laffoon, Reviewed.
The follow-up novel to Blood Red Dust now stands at 81,661 words, which is only 7103 extra since last week. Very poor! However, here come the excuses. Spent a fair amount of time sorting, or trying to sort, my daughter’s Student Loan issues, since she’s in Australia and the UK company dealing with this matter …
Continue reading Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.
Humour with vampires: those who love the genre will really get their teeth into this. (Sorry, unforgivable bloody pun! – And again!) This is a well-constructed short that manages to pack in the conventions of the vampire world. I love the idea of the psychologist treating vampires for their problems. This story is told from …
Continue reading Until Death Do Us Part, by Lynda Hilburn, Reviewed.
Mike Dickenson’s ‘IQ84’ is a timely satire on American values and culture. Written in the style of a humorous pulp thriller, it captures the banality, self-obsession, materialism and superficiality that characterise the USA for so many of us who live in the rest of the world. The recent populist backlash against the establishment that has …
Continue reading IQ84, by Mike Dickenson, Reviewed.
Still going well, the follow-up to Blood Red Dust now stands at 63,098 words, an additional 8289 since last week’ update. Another slight change in direction occurred to me during a walk in the forest and this has ramped up the tension significantly. Those characters know how to have fun with me as writer. It’s …
Continue reading Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.
An astounding piece of work. Because this book is a modern classic, it has been much reviewed, discussed and dissected, which probably renders my review somewhat redundant. That won’t prevent me writing in praise of the novel, however. The author describes the work as speculative fiction rather than science fiction, and I understand her distinction. …
Continue reading The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, Reviewed.
Having read, and enjoyed, April Taylor’s other novels, I was eager to see how she would tackle this challenge. It’s no mean feat for an author to contribute a novel to such a well-established, ubiquitous and much-loved series as the Sherlock Holmes collection. April Taylor, however, has managed to combine her own voice with the …
Continue reading Sherlock Holmes and the Oakwood Grange Affair, by April Taylor, Reviewed.
The Strange Life; it says a lot about the book, this title. Intriguing? Yes. Compelling? Yes. You can sense the ‘but’, I suspect. This is a strange book. It follows the life of a young boy of military parents as he grows into adulthood after those parents mysteriously disappear following an accident for which his father …
Continue reading The Strange Life of Brandon Chambers, by Scott Spotson, Reviewed.
This fantasy short introduces readers to a new series, The Majat Code, which, on the basis of the writing here, I may very well explore further. For a short piece, this book develops the characters well and presents an imagined world in surprising detail, without boring the reader with unnecessarily lengthy descriptions. The story involves …
Continue reading The Majat Testing, by Anna Kashina Reviewed.
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.
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.
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Antidote to the Novel
Stuart Aken 