My guest blog for Reader’s Entertainment
Is now live! You can see it here: Fictionally Factual I’ll post an expanded version of it here in a couple of days.
Interviews
This was a busy week. Three interviews, a press release, and a couple of podcasts. The podcasts are about a month away from airing, but one of the interviews is now live and the press release is out. Here’s the press release from Reader’s Entertainment: SPARK It’s pretty cool to see your book cover on the…Read More
Book Review: The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
The Paradox Hotel is a love story set 50 years from now. The love story part is touching at times, the rest, not so much. The basic premise is that time travel has become a reality, but it’s limited to the US government and the very, very wealthy. Believable so far. I mean, it’s very…Read More
Book Review: Pighearted by Alex Perry
It was pure serendipity. Slogging through my first draft of Book 1 (which I was convinced was a masterwork but later learned was crap), I found the Houston Writers Guild and joined a critique group. As I read through the work of the other four authors, I smugly thought: Okay, I’m better. Yep, better. Is this…Read More
Book 2: Fire – first draft complete!
During the 12 Days of Page Turners online event, the host, Aimee Ravichandran (@aimeeravichandran) of Abundantly Social, asked me how long it took to write SPARK. I told her that I thought it took about a year to finish the first draft. There were eight drafts before it was done. So, having just finished my…Read More
Thank you, Matthew!
We dwell in a universe of quick, easy, “likes.” So, when I checked the mail last week and saw a hand-addressed envelope, I was surprised. Inside was my first ever piece of fan mail. An honest-to-God, hand-written note to me: As Newcomer put it: “There will never be a digital form of communication which will…Read More
Book Review: The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card
Ender’s Game was the first book I read by Orson Scott Card http://www.hatrack.com. I read it when it first came out and was hooked by Card’s writing. It may be one in my top 10 of all time. Janne from SPARK was named after the AI in Ender’s Game. A couple of weeks ago, I…Read More
A nice review
SPARK was reviewed by onlinebookclub.org. Here’s what they had to say: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=200256 Reading through the comments below the review, it seemed that some readers of the review came away thinking that it was a “sad” book. Yes, some sad things happen, but is that what those of you who read it thought?
The death of words
Edward R. Murrow said of Winston Churchill in 1940, “Now the hour had come for him to mobilize the English language and send it into battle….” President Kennedy later used this quote when presenting Churchill with honorary American citizenship. It’s still at war, only now it’s under attack. English morphs as times change. Words fall…Read More
Will’s first brush with Death
When my editor rightfully shamed me about Will being such a wimp that he stayed away from SPARK for 40 days, I had to make some other tweaks beyond getting rid of the dog. One sub-theme I liked was the impersonality of the universe. The black grass didn’t care. It just turned toward the strongest…Read More