You are browsing the archive for August 2011.
Writing about what you know and have experienced can be a great tonic to exorcise one’s demons while remaining authoritative at the same time. It can also turn into a self-serving rant. Thomas Thonson is a veteran of the Hollywood film industry and the theme of his unpretentious collection, You Don’t Die of Love, is Hollywood and its people, particularly Harry Dare, an old time actor of Westerns whose private life was more dramatic than his cinematic one.
Mick, Miri, and Derrick are the match team at matchmakers.com, an online dating service. And it’s time for Match the Losers – a contest the company holds to clean up its hard to match customers. When Mick puts herself into the system, Derrick is interested but coworkers dating would be a conflict of interest.
Poetry is hard to review. It’s very personal, and sometimes a poet likes to hide secrets or special meanings in their verse. They play on words and patterns and rhyming schemes. In the end, interpretation is often left up to the reader although the poet has often exposed a soft inner piece of themselves through their expression. That is certainly the case with Mr. Monroe’s collection of songs and poems called Slow Turning.
While assisting my day job’s charity committee with a company cookbook being published through CreateSpace, I discovered that after submitting the files and ordering a proof, and making changes, CreateSpace gave the option to opt out of having to order a second proof copy.
In life, we are often asked to believe in things that cannot be seen or explained. Our world is filled with unanswerable questions about creation, evolution, death, and the magic that binds us together. Doctors can explain how your heart beats and what part of the brain houses memories, but not why cancer spreads or Alzheimer’s steals away the ability to recognize your child’s face. When a book delves into how characters react when faced with mysteries such as these, you can be sure an adventure is in store. It is human nature to respond to tragedy differently, and Paul H. Deepan beautifully illustrates the tough choices a young hero must make when misfortune and magic collide.
Collectively, Inklings (Very short stories and other babies born of ink) by Aparna Warrier, is shorter than a conventional short story. Undoubtedly the shortest book I’ve ever read without pictures.
Recently, while riding in the car, I don’t know why but I took out my phone and downloaded the free Amazon Kindle App. I’m surprised I even had the phone with me. Most of the time I forget to even carry it. Within minutes, I was reading one of my books which I’m going to review later this month, and I was thinking to myself, “Wow! This is neat! I’ll now have my ebooks with me wherever I go even when I don’t have my iPad!” And then I thought, “Oh shit! What have I become?” I’m one of those people now who read books on their phone.
A book’s cover is its calling card and this cover is gorgeous. A lot of times I’ll read a book and go back and look at the cover and realize how the cover didn’t quite capture the story, or how there are bits of the cover which don’t quite fit with the tale inside. But in this case, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect showcase for The Devil’s Garden.
You may or may not have heard of an Epub file. For those of us e-publishing via Kindle or Nook, you are probably working in PDF files.
Recently, a reviewer asked for a copy of one of my books in a PDF or Epub file. I supplied a free coupon to download the book from Smashwords since I really wasn’t sure what Epub was. But it sparked my interest to want to learn. I made a mental note of it to Google it later on.
C.V. reviews Chuggie and the Desecration of Stagwater by Brent Michael Kelley
Shannon reviews The Boston 395 by Jason Derr
Susan reviews Appraisal for Murder by Elaine Orr
C.V. reviews Hellwatch by Larime Taylor (February's 1st review)
Jaime reviews The Parrot's Perch by Karen Keilt
Susan reviews Dark Mind by Jennifer Chase
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