What do Isaac Asimov, William Blake, J.K. Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut and Emily Dickinson have in common with me and probably many of you too? Depression. I really value my friends on Twitter and FaceBook but my latest bout with the black hand Read more…
Ok. So you’ve got to draft 3 (or 4 or 5) and you’re happy with the plot, the characters, the relationships. There’s tension on every page. Your editor, if you have one—and you should!—has helped you get this manuscript into top shape. You have given a last careful read-through of Read more…
In another break from my usual routine, this is a review of a children’s book. Jumper is written by Rebecca Scarberry and beautifully illustrated by Terri Kelleher. Jumper is about a big red beach ball who lives in a toy store and longs to escape so that he can swim in Read more…
As a writer, I sometimes get stuck creatively. I have heard this referred to as writer’s block but it is not exclusive to writers. Whether you are a business person, an engineer, in medicine, the arts, government or an NGO, you are likely familiar with the frustration of being creatively Read more…
This review is a departure from my normal reviews of crime fiction and I would like to start off by saying that I never read self-help books… well… not never but not for a few years, at least. When my friend of many years, Rael Kalley, gave me a copy Read more…
In my humble opinion, this is a real breakthrough novel for R. P. McCabe. The first thing I noticed about the book is that the style is redolent of my favourite US author of all time: John Steinbeck. Then I noticed a lovely device that I have never seen in Read more…
I really like L. J. Sellers for a number of reasons: She weaves a great plot with lovely twists; She keeps enough tension going to keep me turning those pages; Her characters are strongly drawn, driven and flawed; She provides a strong sense of place—she makes me want to visit Read more…
I don’t usually use my blog to discuss politics but I feel I just need to speak out on this one issue. Whether you are Republican or Democrat, Conservative of Liberal, whether you live in the USA, Canada, the EU, Asia, Africa, South America, Australia or New Zealand, our politicians Read more…
I am lucky to have had excellent critical acclaim for Junkie both on Amazon and on various blogs. So imagine my horror when I looked at the reviews on Goodreads.com. Among the 5-star and 4-star reviews was a 2-star review and worse, the opening sentence ran, I was very tempted to give Read more…
Impish is in a genre that I do not normally read but it was a great change of pace. Hibbard tells the story of Travis, a law graduate whose life basically sucks. Having graduated in the lower echelons of his class, he has a horrible job with a horrible boss, Read more…