Review of Brother in the Land
Brother in The Land begins with teenager Danny taking a break from working in his father’s corner store for a long bike ride into the English countryside. It starts to rain, so he takes shelter in a World War II pillbox. As he waits for the rain to stop, he sees the flashes of nuclear missiles […]
My Writing (meltdown) in April.
I had a writing meltdown in April. I was, and still am, frustrated with the lack of output and progress with my fiction writing. Strangely, the meltdown was caused by my non-fiction writing after I submitted an article to Divine in mid-April. The editor immediately replied, wanting a few changes. Most of the changes were […]
Hugo’s sad puppies.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the Hugo Awards this year. For those of you who don’t know, the Hugos are science fiction awards for best novel, best short story, best movie, etc. Books and movies are nominated for the Hugo by people who attend that year’s Worldcon or pay a non-attending membership fee. […]
My Writing Efforts in March.
Novel Writing. In March, I added 5848 words to Branded, a science-fiction, young adult novel, so I improved on February’s 4841 words. I averaged 188 words per day in March compared to 173 words per day for February and 155 words per day in January. The novel is now just under 70,000 words. It has […]
Review of The Method – a dystopian science fiction novel.
Juli Zeh’s The Method is a very believable dystopian science-fiction thriller. It is a different take on themes explored in novels like 1984 and Brave New World. The novel is set in a future Germany, not too different from the current version, except society is controlled by a strict set of rules known as “The […]
ebook Piracy
I’ve been doing a bit of research into ebook piracy, and I have concluded that any author who is worried about their book being pirated should worry about something they can actually do something about. Almost every published ebook seems to be pirated on multiple sites right now. Spending time trying to track down all […]
Review of Holly Childs’ No Limit.
No Limit is a book about hip young things doing hip things and wanting the world to know about their hipness via social media. The novella is set in Auckland, New Zealand, in December 2012, which is important because the world was supposed to end then due to the Mayan calendar running out. To add […]
My Writing Efforts in February.
In an attempt to motivate myself, I decided at the start of this year to write a monthly blog post about my writing efforts for the previous month. Novel Writing. I am still writing Branded, a science fiction young adult novel. In February, I added 4841 words, 25 words more than in January, and in three […]
Review of Lauren Beukes’ Novel Zoo City.
How did Zoo City win the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award? Not that it’s a bad book; it is a enjoyable, imaginative, and well-written novel. The problem is science does not drive its plot, so it is not science fiction. If anything, the book is fantasy, as its plot’s two main drivers are magic and […]
Australian, UK, US, fiction bestsellers 2014.
A request on my blog’s Facebook page asked if I could follow up my last post with lists of the bestselling fiction books of 2014. As I write adult and young adult fiction, I decided to include both in the following lists. Note: I could only find the top nine bestsellers in Australia. Australia The […]