Enjoying Reading The Passage by Justin Cronin.
The Passage by Justin Cronin has been a bloody good read so far. It’s apocalyptic horror/science fiction that takes vampires back to being monsters and not the insipid morally confused fashion plates they have become. The vampires in The Passage are genetically engineered mutants that have reverted to a primeval state whose only goal […]
ebook Price Survey
Price of Top-selling ebooks Continues to Rise. It has been seven weeks since I last checked the prices of Amazon’s 100 best-selling ebooks. Some trends seem to be continuing while others are faltering. Overall, the price of a best-selling ebook seems to be going up. The trends that continue include a drop in the number […]
Fifty Shade of Grey. And Life Imitates Freedom.
Writing News. I have been catching up on my newspaper reading and I have read some interesting articles relevant to writing and books. Shades of Twilight. A few blog posts ago, I postulated that based on the success of Fifty Shades of Grey, publishers would now be bracing themselves for an influx of erotic manuscripts. […]
Australian History in Schools and Books.
Australian History in Schools There has been a bit of debate in the media lately about the teaching of Australian history in schools. I wish Australian History had been taught when I was in school in the 70’s. All I remember being forced to study was ancient Greek history in high-school. It not only […]
Review of George Turner’s A Pursuit of Miracles
A Pursuit of Miracles is a fabulously entertaining and thought provoking collection of science fiction short stories. It maintains the exceptionally high standards of George Turner’s many novels. Turner is arguably Australia’s best ever science fiction writer and this collection shows why. There are only eight stories in the collections 207 pages, so they are […]
What is a Disability. Critiquing a Book. Science Fiction on Television.
New Article on DiVine When researching an article on the definition of what a disability is I came across the surprisingly large statistic that one in five Victorians have a disability. That’s a million Victorians with disabilities. I did find it hard to believe, but the more research I did the more disabilities I uncovered. […]
Fifty Shade of Bad Writing. George Turner’s Books to be Reissued.
Fifty Shades of Bad Writing. Seems everywhere I look someone has written an article about the mega-selling, publishing-game-changing, super- duper, must-read-before-you die (or at least dis) Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. As a result, I am sure publishers are looking forward to reading thousands of manuscripts full of badly written bondage scenes. Publisher’s […]
Review: Me and Her, by Karen Tyrrell
Me and Her: a Memoir Of Madness by Karen Tyrrell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Australian Karen Tyrrell has bi-polar, an illness that affects many millions of people. Her memoir, Me and Her: A Memoir of Madness, is about her life with bipolar. The book is her quest to understand and control her bipolar, […]
Review of the Bottomless River, by Anthony J Langford.
The Bottomless River begins in a small town in rural Victoria in Australia. Three mates, Tom, Jen and the male point of view character, regularly get together at a river bank for harmless fun and banter. But their innocent world changes one night when they get drunk. The main character cannot forgive himself for […]
Review of the Dervish House by Ian McDonald
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Dervish House’s big plus is its setting, a near future Instanbul, during a heatwave. Its author, Ian McDonald, took me somewhere different from most science fiction novels, he took me away from the west. McDonald writes such a convincing description of Istanbul […]