sjbgilmour writes

Bye Bye Blogger Blog

2011-07-30T12:26:00.000+10:00

This blog is now defunct. G+ has taken over. All future blog posts will appear on G+. You can find me here.

Play 'As' For Norway.

2011-07-23T18:54:00.000+10:00

On September 12, 2001, my dog Maddy refused to leave my side. She knew something was up. Something awful. Instead of merely whining as I shut the garage door, she hurled herself at it. Had she been a dog smaller than the Rottweiler she was, I might have just left her there. But, I wanted to keep my garage door intact so along she came.

It wasn't the terrible things that happened in New York and other parts of the world that day that concerned my dear Maddy. It was the effect of those things on me. She knew I was troubled. She was right. I felt ill. I felt disgusted with mankind, yet oddly proud of them at the same time. The horrors we are capable of inflicting upon ourselves appalled me. The strength we show in the face of those horrors filled me with pride.

I feel the same way now. My beloved Maddy isn't with me any longer. She died several months ago and I still think of her every day. Now, my wife, my daughters and another four-legged friend Cassie fill my life with warmth and love. I consider myself one lucky bastard to have them around, especially at times like these when I need them to ward off the despair I feel when I look at the news.

What has happened in Norway this past day is beyond the scope of a reasonable mind to comprehend. I cannot put into words the complete repugnance I feel. I can only think of the wonderful people there and beyond who must now live on past this horror. It's a strange mix of worry, grief and pride I feel for them.

As I do, a song plays in my head. 'As' by Stevie Wonder is primarily a love song but it also sends us all a message that there is hope for a better world for those who will survive us.

Play it now. Play it loud. Sing along and dance (hopefully you'll do both better than I) and remind yourself that terrible things like the events in Norway give us a chance and inspiration to prevent their repetition.

Amazon, Smashwords, The Big Freebie Fight And Me.

2011-07-23T06:02:00.000+10:00

Here's something I've just discovered. We all know Amazon can and does discount Kindle ebooks to pricematch other retailers. Even right on down to $0.00. It happened to me with The Department and at first I was a bit 'Huh? WTF, Amazon?' until it got listed as a freebie and downloads went through the roof.

So I thought well, here's a good idea; I'll just make my next ebook Run Ronny Run! free on Smashwords, let Amazon pricematch it and then the same thing will happen. And did it? Nup. So, I emailed Amazon and asked why. The first response was just a cut 'n paste of their policy which didn't really answer my question 'How can I get my book discounted to $0.00?'

So, I asked again.

Their response was:

"At this time, we'll not be able to guarantee you that if your books are offered for free on other websites/sales channels, Amazon.com will also offer it for $0. Please note that our decision to price match are based on various factors, which cannot be disclosed. Further, we realize that offering free books will certainly help promote your books, but at this time, as you might already be aware of, you'll not be able to select $0 price for your Kindle book."

Bugger.

So, what shall I do? Well, since I'm not getting diddly for the freebies I'm putting out, I needn't worry about Smashwords taking their 6%. Next ebook I put out (should be in a couple of weeks) will also be free, but it'll go through Smashwords and Amazon can go hang. Eventually, Smashwords will list it on Amazon and it'll be free the way I want to be.

Google+

2011-07-20T09:12:00.000+10:00

Okay, I'll bite. I'll give this Google+ thing a go.

If you want to invite me: sjbgilmour@yahoo.com

If you want me to invite you, send me your email.

The Toughest Critic And Why Amazon Pisses Me Off.

2011-07-19T13:10:00.000+10:00

Always thought I was my own toughest critic. Then Superwife read Run Ronny Run.

Oh dear. You see, the story's just a little more adult in nature than Golden Mane which is the main story it's a spin-off from. I didn't quite make that clear when I first put it up on Smashwords and Amazon. So, I had to get in and fix the bugger.

Smashwords was easy to amend. I just logged in, added a different blurb and Bob's your auntie. All done. Amazon? F%$# me! You get into your book settings on Amazon Kindle Direct and any change you make takes 48 hours to get through. Even the bloody price!

While I'm ranting about Amazon, their login system needs work. Every time, no matter which bloody url I try to login from, I have to enter my username & password four times just to access my bookshelf & reports.

Rant over. That is all....

Introducing Ronald Trustworthy Mason - Quite The Naughty Gnome!

2011-07-14T18:34:00.001+10:00

Here it is folks! This is the cover for my next short story Run Ronny Run!

The artwork is by the wonderfully talented Mr Tom Hermann. I can't say enough nice things about Tom. He's diligent, fast, easy to work with and most importantly, he just 'gets it' when I give him my idea for a character. If ever you're looking for an illustrator, do consider him. I'm sure you won't regret it.

Now, Ronny. Who is he? What is he? What's he all about?

I first came up with Ronny as a bit of light fun for my Adventures of Sarah Coppernick series. I had the idea that Sarah and her werewolf companions were really the only true 'nice' characters in the books and that they were surrounded by all sorts of others who weren't so nice. Ronny's one of them. He's got a good heart and is prepared to do anything for the right cause, but until he met Sarah, he didn't know what that cause was.

He's a corrupt little gnome who associates with all manner of shady characters and has, shall we say, peculiar tastes when it comes to the opposite sex. Sure he likes lady gnomes, but he doesn't mind the odd fling with other halflings like dwarves or elves.

In Run Ronny Run! I wanted to provide a bit of history about our adventurous little gnome, as well as some insights to his nature and what better way to do that than by presenting him in his worst possible light?

In the story, there's violence, illicit enchanted drugs, danger, inter-species sex, various other enchanted creatures and, well, a fair amount of poo.

Run Ronny Run! is in its final proof stage and should be up online at Smashwords and Amazon some time in the next few days. More news as it happens.

Book Review: Golden Mane by SJB Gilmour (That's Me!) 4.5 / 5, by Guest Reviewer Wilma Howe-Bennett

2011-07-12T14:01:00.000+10:00

ENTIRELY DELIGHTFUL

I just got finished reading GOLDEN MANE:BOOK I OF THE ADVENTURES OF SARAH COPPERNICK, and I have to say, for a first effort, this is a real winner.

Brief synopsis: Sarah Coppernick is having a very bad day. She has been in a fight with the school bully which resulted in the bully being very badly bitten, and Sarah being sent first to the principal’s office and then home. You see, Sarah isn’t a native Australian; she’s from Romania. She’s also 11 years old, flat-chested, skinny, has, in her own words “funny coloured eyes” (brown eyes are so light that they appear to be yellow), and also has a literal mane of frizzy hair that is yellow. Not blonde, yellow. She’s growing up in a culture that worships both beauty and conformity to a societal norm that she can’t fit into.

The teen years are horrid periods for almost everybody; this is the time of life when a teen is desperate to fit in and belong. In Sarah’s case, not only does she not fit the societal norm of “pretty teenaged girl”, she’s also got a name – Coppernick – that simply screams to a bully that it’s something to be made into a hurtful, hateful label. Never mind that it’s an Anglization of Copernicus and a famous, historically important name, it’s still something that bullies can make a whip out of. Of course, the teasing and the bullying never stops – until one day, when Sarah bites the biggest bully in the school.

When she gets home, she is talked to (and at, which is an adult aversion technique) about her troubles in school. Her Uncle Benjamin tells her that he’ll fix the problem (which he does, with hilarious results) and arranges for her to be taught out of his offices. He’s a book publisher that publishes educational books, so his offering to teach her and incidentally get her OUT of the nasty situation that she’s currently in is acceptable to the school principal.

After all this is settled, Uncle Robert, Aunt Roberta, Uncle Benjamin and Sarah all walk to a nearby park, where Sarah is acquainted with the true facts of her history: She’s a born werewolf, her werewolf group (the Golden Manes) is the rarest and most powerful of the groups, he two uncles and one aunt can all both transform into werewolves and still manage to talk as if they were in human form, and, basically, everything that she THOUGHT she knew was at complete right angles to the way things really are in her new world.

Her parents aren’t dead, just missing. Mandy Kelly, the bully that Sarah bit, is missing as well, and, since she’s been bitten, is going to turn into a half werewolf/half human monster unless the bunch of them can find her and take her to the werewolf world, Wolfenvald. There’s an evil force in the world that wants to either take her over, or, failing that, kill her so she can’t fulfill her destiny.

Uncle Benjamin’s offices are just as eccentric as he is, and Sarah’s school companion is a witch that’s in training to be a sorcerer. During the course of her schooling, Sarah discovers that every single magical creature that is supposedly mythological in our world actually has a world of its own. Instead of them being time continuums, the habitats for these folks are actually planets with doorways into our world and onto our planet. Sarah is especially a special person because she was not born on the werewolf world, but on our world and thus can move more freely between the two worlds.

There is a lot more, including the ending, which I have no intention of revealing here. Suffice it to say that the ending is predictable within the context of the storyline, makes sense while setting up the storyline for the next book, and is reasonably satisfactory.

Mr. Gilmour’s first effort, as I said, is entirely delightful. There are places where the pacing is a bit slower than I like, but that’s because it takes time to set up his story-telling universe which is always a slow process. There are a few rough edges, and an overdependence on exclamation points to make the plot points. Overuse of any sort of punctuation is annoying (to me at least) because it interrupts the flow of the story; when there are so many exclamation points, or commas, or lines between sentences separating thoughts, I find myself starting to count and write down just how many times it happens. That’s something that I myself struggle with, and I think that every new writer does the same thing. It’s all part of learning your craft.

This is, as I said to begin with, a completely delightful, fun book. The characters are well-written and well-presented, and, while the storyline is an old one (out-of-water misfit on a quest) it’s been given a new and interesting twist. The plot points are cogent, well-realized and logically presented. This is the first of what I anticipate being a wonderfully rewarding series of books as Sarah Coppernick learns how to be herself within the context of both our planet and her other planet. Now, Mr. Gilmour, hurry up and get the next one written. I have GOT to find out what happens next.

Over all, I give this novel 4½ starts out of 5.

Well! What can I say after such a lovely review? Thank-you Wilma! The next book in the series is coming along nicely and shouldn't be too much longer.

Wilma tweets as @cherose228, blogs at The Thorn Bu$h and is on Facebook. Please do pay her a visit!

The Mystery Behind Naked Happydancing

2011-07-09T16:28:00.000+10:00

It sat there for months. Not just days or weeks. Months. I kept logging on to Smashwords and Amazon so see how my little experiment in the realm of digital self-publishing, The Department, was going. Sales and samples just ticked along soooo s l o w l y that I wrote it off as a story I should never have bothered with in the first place. I dropped the price to $0.00 and kind of forgot about it and put all my efforts into releasing Golden Mane.

Then something happened. At some stage in the last 36 hours, The Department went nuts on Amazon. Now I'm going nuts. I keep refreshing my Kindle Direct Publish reports page to see the numbers just go up and up and up. When I view The Department's Amazon page, I keep seeing those all-important little figures get smaller and smaller. As I write this, I'm #273 in Free Amazon Kindle Store and #31 in Free Contemporary Fiction.

Much happydancing has ensued. Some of it naked. Good thing the dog's outside. The last thing I want while I'm naked happydancing is a German Shepherd's cold wet nose investigating places on my body normally covered with Bonds briefs.

So what caused this? To be honest, I'm not sure. Smashwords is doing a promotion at the moment but since I didn't release The Department through Smashwords in mobi (I went with Amazon Direct directly (I love that: I got to use two forms of the one word in a row!)), it probably wasn't anything to do with Smashwords.

The only thing I can think of is that I've been listed on a free ebook site somewhere. As soon as I know more, I'll post it. Now, where did I put those briefs...?

Almost A Review of Legon Awakening by Nicholas Taylor

2011-06-24T10:48:00.000+10:00

If I'd managed to get through Nicholas Taylor's Legon Awakening, I'd have given it a rating. Sadly, I didn't get that far. Other reviews mentioned spelling & grammar problems so I expected a few, but not the massive amount I found.

I loved the premise of the book which is why I made it so far into it (Chapter 4). It has great classic fantasy themes which, if told properly, should entrance the reader. Obviously, I wasn't.

The writing style is inconsistent. Take thoughts for example. When a subject thinks and said text is italicised, it can be either in inverted commas or not. Not both. I found the grammar weird and the dialogue stilted and forced. Try reading bits of it aloud to yourself and you'll see what I mean.

Because the idea for the story was so promising, I was prepared to put up with these little snags. Then I read "chain male". After that, I gave up. Pity.

Review 39: Hybrid by Brian O'Grady. 1/10

2011-06-18T13:33:00.001+10:00

It’s not often I disagree with other reviewers (LeaF), but hold your nose: Hybrid stinks. The first couple of reviews on Amazon are favourable – too favourable to be creditable, according to Karen’s review.

The errors… Good grief! “to” instead of “too”, “latter” instead of “later”, typos like “threeyear-old”. I just typed that and Word gave me a red squiggly line under it. How the hell Brian O’Grady missed it and every other case where he mentioned the age of a person, I have no idea. There were even several cases where O’Grady forgot which way his inverted commas were pointing. That’s not easy to do with Word or similar word processors. What was he using? A brick?

The Plot
There’s a new virus on the loose, a survivor or two, a terrorist plot (why oh why does it always have to be the Muslims?), and a psycho. Throw ‘em all together and you have Hybrid in a nutshell. Sort of. O’Grady turns his psycho and survivor into superhumans thanks to the virus.

This is where the plot started to get dumb. Granted viruses can have unusual effects, but they don’t turn people into demigods. Then it got dumber. The body-count is ridiculous as is the sudden eruption of war late into the book. Dumber still, the various US government departments O’Grady mentions; CDC, FBI etc, just don’t behave the way he wrote them.

The Characters
Okay, we have Amanda Flynn, the original survivor of the virus as demigod number one. Haunted by all sorts of terrible in her past, yet somehow on the ball and of course, beautiful. Oh please.

Then there’s a German assassin called Klaus Reisch. He’s our psycho and demigod number two. O’Grady writes Klaus as a nut-bag quite well actually, despite the demigod stuff.

Father John Oliver becomes demigod number three. The dude may as well have been a cardboard cut-out. Lame.

Phil Rucker is an autistic coroner – yeah, like that can happen in real life – who gets exposed and becomes demigod number four.

Nathan Martin is a bigwig at CDC who originally encountered Amanda years before and now is trying to get to the bottom of things. Perhaps the most balanced character.

Greg Flynn, Amanda’s father in-law and retired cop who manages to get more done than all the other cops combined. Oh deary, deary me.

Lisa/Linda Flynn Amanda’s mother in-law. O’Grady even mixed up this character’s name, spoiling her beyond redemption.

Rodney Patton was a big-city cop who came to Colorado Springs for a simpler life. These doozies keep on coming, don’t they?

The Setting
Could have been anywhere, but O’Grady chose Colorado Springs. In winter. Doesn’t make sense. If a psycho wants to release an airborne virus for maximum spread, he’d choose a bigger town, frequented by more travellers, in warmer weather. Shtoopid.

The Style
O’Grady tries for fast-paced but falls short. The errors in the text alone would ruin that. Unfortunately, those errors aren’t alone.

The fight scenes are silly and over-the-top. There’s even one bit where the force of a few bullets blows our bad guy out a window. Thanks to Mythbusters, everyone knows that sort of stuff doesn’t happen. There’s a handy little equation brought to us by a guy called Sir Isaac Newton: ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’.

Another fight scene towards the end, this time in New York, is just plain confusing. I read it three times and it still didn’t work for me.

There's supposed to be a race-against-time element in Hybrid, but it just doesn't work either. Characters wind up flying from Colorado Springs to LA and New York as if these paces are just around the corner. O'Grady could have at least checked how long it actually takes to fly from Colorado to Los Angeles.

Conclusion
I downloaded Hybrid to my ereader out of curiosity. The reviews, both good and bad, got me interested. It didn’t take long for me to want to delete it and move on to something else, hopefully written by someone who at least gave his work one out-loud read before he published it.

But, I hung in there. A fair number of reviews for Hybrid have the reviewer admitting to not finishing the book. So, to be fair, I did. Don’t bother with Hybrid. It’s just not worth it, even if you manage to get it for free. 1/10.

Aaaargh!

2011-06-16T15:11:00.000+10:00

I love Italy. I really, really do. But, after spending a day or two in Germany, I just want to slap Every. Single. Italian in this hotel.

Yes, they have wifi, but actually getting it requires the patience of a saint. The lovely little twit at the counter who wrote down my username & password used all kinds of lovely but undecipherable girly squiggles that made her handwriting impossible to read. Eventually, after three trips back to the front desk, with much eye-rolling and drama-queen sighing, a bloke turned on the receipt printer and printed out, in lovely, legible courier, a new username and password.

Hooray! I'm online. Then their cheapass modem needs a reboot. All this and it's only 6.30 am. I know it's 6.30 am 'cos the damn church bell is right outside my freaking window! So, I 'm awake and have been since it started ringing at 5am but breakfast isn't on till 7am... Spleen vented, rant over...

Free To Libraries!

2011-06-09T17:13:00.000+10:00

To all librarians, their friends and relatives... To anyone who actually, you know, goes to their local library...

Golden Mane is now available free to libraries as a DRM-free ebook!

To have it sent to you or your favourite library,

email me: sjbgilmour@yahoo.com
Facebook me: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=100000184699695
Tweet me @sjbgilmour

Support you local library! Send a message to publishers that DRM & borrow controlled ebooks for libraries is unfair. Let libraries have their free copy of Golden Mane for unlimited borrowing!

Book Review 38: Hell's Bells: Samuel Johnson vs The Devil by John Connolly 8/10

2011-06-09T06:45:00.000+10:00

Ooh, I had been looking forward to reading Hell's Bells: Samuel Johnson vs The Devil. Back in January this year, I read the first in this series (Is it a series? So far there's only two and I'm not sure how much further Connolly's going with this... Let's just call it a series, eh?) The Gates, I was blown away. Not so much by the fact that it was a ripsnorter - it also made me suspect Connolly's true calling isn't really the dark, creepy stuff for adults that he does so well, but this dark, creepy and FUN stuff for Young Adults.

I was right. Hell's Bells: Samuel Johnson vs The Devil proves it. Not that Connolly's been wasting his time with the adult books he put out before The Gates and now Hell's Bells. Far from it. The guy's an amazing talent. It's just that The Gates and Hell's Bells are so damned brilliant.

The Plot
Really it just takes up where it left off. In a fit of misery after the failure of his last attempt to conquer Earth, The Great Malevolence has let things slip a bit. His cohorts are scrambling about all trying to either take over themselves, or bring their master to his senses so that Hell can get back on track.

One of the demons not trying to overthrow the now unstable government in Hell uses the same way it got to Earth last time: the amazing and misunderstood energy produced by the Large Hadron Collider. Only this time, instead of coming to Earth, it reaches out and grabs a bunch of unlikely lads, including Samuel Johnson (our hero from last time) and hauls them back to Hell.

As things are likely to do in Hell, everything goes rather badly for these poor sods and the demon who snatched them, what with other demons wanting to get their claws, paws and tentacles on them and all.

The Characters
Hell's Bells reunites Samuel Johnson (now 13) with the not-so-demonic demon Nurd and his sidekick Wormwood. It also reunites us with Sergeant Rowan and Constable Peel.

For some wonderful comic relief, we're introduced to four demonic (though regretfully quite human) dwarves called Angry, Dozy, Mumbles and Jolly. These dudes are psychotic, drunk and incorrigible - oh what fun Connolly must have had writing them!

Then there's Mrs Abernathy, or the demon formally known and Ba'al who now wears a disguise made out of what's left of the original Mrs Abernathy and who now also like to wear frocks. In Hell. This cross-dressing demon with the identity crisis is the one who hauled Samuel, his dog Boswell, Constable Peel, Sergeant Rowan, Dan the ice-cream man and the four dwarves to Hell.

The Style
This... THIS is what makes Hell's Bells and its prequel The Gates so good. Connolly can not only really creep you out (I woke up this morning at 3 am and haven't been able to get back to sleep just from thinking about what I'd read last night) - he makes it fun. There's really a lot of very funny stuff in there, considering the setting of the book, which is HELL, by the way. Like The Gates, the ebook edition of Hell's Bells is littered with hyperlinks to hilarious asides.

Hell's Bells is a little darker than The Gates though. Connolly makes more frequent observations/warnings about the nature of good vs evil and the human soul and what can happen to that soul if it chooses to misbehave. He also demonstrates his talent for real creepy stuff which, as any who may have read his Charlie Parker novels would know, he has plenty of.

The dialogue, asides and dry comedy make for a very easy and fun read - even with the dark, creepy stuff Connolly put in there. It's a joy.

Conclusion
Buy The Gates. Read it. Then buy Hell's Bells: Samuel Johnson vs The Devil and read that too. You won't be disappointed. 8/10.

Book Review 37: Deadworld by J N Duncan. 6/10.

2011-06-08T09:41:00.000+10:00

I first noticed Deadworld when I read a less-than-cheerful review of it. Being the contrary bugger I am, I logged on to Amazon and downloaded it. (At that time, it was free.) Funny how that works, isn't it?

The Plot
This is a pretty good take on the buddy cop/paranormal investigator thing. All the elements are there: violence, sex, creepy bad guys and good guys haunted by secrets/terrible pasts. It's entertaining, though a little predictable towards the end. Still, knowing what was coming didn't stop me reading on till the end and I've added Duncan's follow-up Vengeful Dead to my 'to read' pile.

The Characters
This is where Duncan lost a point in my review scale. Our heroine, FBI agent Jackie Rutledge and her sidekick agent Laurel Carpenter are a Chicago version of Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, only they're both believers and they're both female and only one of them is gay.

Jackie's the one with the haunted past, the booze problem, the big temper and the big gun. Laurel's the one who can see ghosts and other supernatural characters. They're the good guys. The problem is, Jackie's just a little too messed up - too jaded and thus cliched to be really enjoyable. And Laurel... Okay, she's a medium and supposed to be sensitive and all that, but she's also an FBI agent. She just comes across as a bit too wet to be credible.

Then there's Nick, a vampire also with a haunted past, his female sidekick Shelby, and another vampire called Cornelius Drake. Look at the character names here - you don't have to be a super genius to figure out which one's the real bad guy.

The Style
Duncan throws you into the deep end with little to no background story. I felt as if I was reading the third or fourth in a series instead of the first. It's really cool to read a book that's not weighed down with its own back-story, but Duncan overdid the restraint a tad. The suspense and action are fairly well-paced and Duncan unveils the history of his characters and (thus the reason behind all the dirty deeds done by the bad guy) quite well.

Deadworld could have done with a few more red-herrings though. Suspense needs a bit of that to balance it out, so where Deadworld could have been a real page-turner with the reader not knowing what will happen next, it wound up being a cut-and-dried race against time with the reader being able to guess what happens in the end. Still, it's an easy read that doesn't insult your intelligence. Nice.

The Setting
I don't know Chicago. I've been there once and all I can remember about it is there being a lake, a tall building and one night I went to restaurant and ate ribs then went to a blues bar. The references to street names and locations may have been necessary to the action, but only just. What really annoyed me were the frequent mentions of a coffee & donut place - so frequent that I wondered if Duncan got some product placement funding. Not necessary at all.

Conclusion
Deadworld didn't blow me away, but it certainly was written well enough to keep me reading. I'm looking forward to reading more by J N Duncan. 6/10.

Where To Find Golden Mane (Redux)

2011-06-03T16:21:00.006+10:00

Just a little shameless self-promotion here...

Golden Mane, Book One of The Adventures Of Sarah Coppernick is available at Amazon , Smashwords, Diesel, B&N.

Go check it out!

Book Review 36: 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson 7/10

2011-05-30T09:31:00.000+10:00

Maureen Johnson first came to my attention when she tweeted and blogged about another writer here. Then I noticed she'd put 13 Little Blue Envelopes up on Amazon as a freebie. It's not free any more, but I still recommend you buy it and read it - it's fun.

The Plot
This is a great idea. Virginia (or Ginny or Gin), a kinda shy, kinda naive teenager from New York experiences the rite of passage of a lifetime when she abandons all rational thought and obeys (or tries to) instructions set her in a series of envelopes by her slightly bonkers artist aunt. Her slightly bonkers and dead aunt. She meanders all over Europe on a shoestring, meeting a variety of friends and acquaintances of her aunt, most of whom seem every bit as nuts as her aunt herself was. It's a fairly safe story where nothing really bad happens other than near the end where she loses a bunch of non-essential luggage. She meets boys, both safe and charming as well as not-so-safe and sleazy. And there's the big happy ending that is clearly a hook for the following books.

The Characters
Virginia is wide-eyed and innocent with enough of the obligatory teen sarcasm but not enough of the self-doubt and angst that goes with it. She was fun to read but at times I wanted to reach in through my Kindle app and smack her.
Peg, the dead aunt, comes across in her letters as very sane - far more so than the way she both describes herself and is by others. Ultimately, it's dear dead Peg who is responsible for turning a sweet, naive teen girl into sweet, but much more worldly (and better for it) young woman.
Kieth the love interest, is a bonkers Brit (cue eye-rolling) artiste. He's also a gentleman, spontanious, romantic and has that lovely bad-boy image. Well, he's supposed to have that bad-boy image, only he's just a bit too safe. Must have something to do with all that gentlemanly behaviour (despite his penchant for punk t-shirts and kilts).
Richard is the go-to guy Virginia leans on when things get rough. He was dear dead Peg's last main dude and it's at his place where Virgina has a sort of base while she's traipsing all over the continent. He's harmless and a bit distant, in a fatherly way but somehow, just a bit off. The ending, and no I'm not giving it away, were it to happen in real life, would almost certainly not have gone the way it did in the book. Richard would have behaved very, very differently, I'm quite sure.

The Style
Possibly why I enjoyed reading 13 Little Blue Envelopes so much. Her dialogue is quick and dry and Virginia is delightfully slightly self-effacing. The book flows nicely and the titled chapters work very well. Johnson's work is easy to read and just as easy to get hooked on. Nice.

Conclusion
Anyhow, 13 Little Blue Envelopes is great YA/Teen lit for the angsty teen girl in all of us - well those who want a little bit of romance & safe adventure without it all going Sweet Valley High-ish. I've mentioned before that I don't like the term 'Chick-lit'. 13 could probably be pigeonholed as such by some, but I'm a 40 y/o, straight father of two and I enjoyed it, what does that tell you? You can find it here.

I give it 7/10 (I'd normally have put in a bit here about the setting, but as I mentioned, the book takes place all over Europe, so... duh...) I'll get around to reading more of Maureen Johnson's work soon enough I guess. Those two kids I'm father of? They're girls.

PS: There's another reason I enjoyed 13 Little Blue Envelopes so much. Johnson's an accomplished author, with an agent and traditional publishers behind her, and all the resources that go with them. Even then, there are a few little typos that made made it through. One is a though/thought slip. I'm not pointing this out because I'm a pedantic asshole. It's because right now, I'm putting my own work out there and have been stressing big time about little mistakes like that in it. I found great comfort in the knowledge that if Johnson and HarperCollins can cope, so can I.

The Publishing Adventure & My Plans To Take Over The World

2011-05-28T05:48:00.000+10:00

Golden Mane, Book One of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick is now online at Amazon and at Smashwords. From the experience of self-pubbing my short The Department, I'm guessing it will be a little while before Golden Mane is up on Amazon's competitors like B&N.

I noticed a couple of little blips this time round:

The formatting - as much as I tried to get it all beautiful and clean, and it does look beautiful and clean in pdf format, snatches text following dialogue are indented in an odd way in both the epub and mobi versions. I'm working on that and if I have to re-release it, I will.

Amazon's draft status. I had to upload to Amazon twice. Something went wrong with the first upload. It seems as though all of the file didn't quite make it to its destination. So, I had to un-publish the first draft and upload it a second time. For some reason, I can't delete the first attempt, so it's stuck there as a permanent draft.

I priced Golden Mane at $5.99. That may sound high for a self-pubbed, debut novel with bunches of $.99 and free releases out there. But, I have a plan!

As I mentioned in a few of my earlier posts, I'll be releasing a free pdf format to any school, library (and now reviewers are added to this list) who wants one. I'm working on that and should have it ready in about a week.

I've also got a bunch of shorts as WIPs that will be released as freebies. These shorts are spin-offs/background little snippets for many of the supporting cast in Golden Mane and the following five tales. They should all be between 10k-25k words long and I hope they'll capture the imagination of enough readers to encourage them to buy the main ebooks. Advertising in the form of small press ads and letter-box drops is also an option I'm considering.

There's also the online thing. I'll be sending off the obligatory emails, tweets, DM's & other social media PR where I can, as well as hitting up as many reviewers as I can find, as I find them. The thing I've noticed about the online thing though is this; some writers seem to be spending a helluva lot of time on social media, contacting other writerly people. Their resulting sales are low. Greater sales & followers seems to come from general media interest. It's long been my retail practice to spend advertising $ only (and time spent online equates to $ spent too) where I get the biggest bang for my buck.

I'm not doing this in the hope that I'll sell so many books that I'll be able to give up the day job, even though that would be sooo cool. I just want to... Nah, screw it. I do want to earn so much that I can give up my day job. That said, I may never do it, even if I find myself driving to work on a gazillion dollar supercar. There's a joke about family businesses like the one I'm in: it's kinda like the mafia - you're born into it and the only way out is in a box.

Thanks!

2011-05-27T15:04:00.000+10:00

Here's an excerpt from the 'Extras' bit in the back page of Golden Mane, Book One of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped me with the story and put up with me while I was writing it. My wonderful wife Anna has been a sounding board, stalwart supporter and relentless provider of encouragement (and the occasional kick in the pants). My brothers Joe and David, my parents John and Julie, and cousins Phil and Rachelle. You guys rock!

Readers group royalty who also should be hoisted up onto pedestals are (No last names here. You guys know who you are.): Ingrid, Maddy, James, Meg, Henry, Jozefa, Monika, Ray – you’re all legends.

Tom Hermann (www.tommiart.blogspot.com), your cover art is wonderful. Thank you so much for working with an obscure amateur so diligently.

Kerry Biram (www.scholarly.info/book/9781740971379/), you looked at some very early drafts and provided some wonderful advice. Thank you so much.

The senders of Rejection Letters (Gasp)! Yes, I’m thanking you all. I can be stubborn at times. Being rejected only made me more determined to push forwards.

There are of course a whole bunch of wonderful people I've not listed, and they are the readers. Those highly intelligent, discerning and imaginative people that they are! So, to everyone who has read, is reading or is going to read my little tale, THANK YOU!

WOO HOO!

2011-05-26T16:00:00.001+10:00

Finally, Golden Mane, Book One of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick is out there. I've put it up at Smashwords for all ebook formats except Mobi. I've also uploaded it to Amazon and I gather it will take about 24-48 hours before it's available for Kindle.

This has taken a very, very long time. There have been all kinds of bumps in the road, many of them purely a result of me being a complete basket case. All through that time, my wonderful wife has been there, supporting, listening, offering advice and when needed, a kick up the ass.

Thank you, Princess! You rock.

This whole experience has taught me a hell of a lot. The next ones will be easier. There are five more books which will follow Golden Mane. The second, Renegades of Wolfenvald, I hope to have up and running by Christmas. I've also got a few short stories I'm putting together. When they come out is anyone's guess.

What I am going to do now is nothing. No writing. Oh, I'll be doing a bit of promotional work, but as for creating & writing stories - I need a break. What I will be doing is a lot of reading, so you can expect to see a flurry of reviews coming out on this blog, but other than that,, I'm gonna let my brain turn to mush for a bit.

The first of the books I'll review will be Maureen Johnsons's delightful little read, 13 Little Blue Envelopes. I should add that I have a very special fondness for this book right now. Not because of its plot/story/subject matter or target market or even Johnson's lovely style. No, it cheered me up because as great as it is, it's not perfect.

My copy of 13 made me feel much less worried about making catching every typo. There's a thought/though slip in there and if it's okay for Johnson et al, it's okay for me and my little project. Overall, this last month has been bloody horrid. It's been slow and frustraing and the story I created, loved and nurtured became an absolute pain in the ass. There were times when I hated it. I wanted nothing more than to destroy it. 13 was a nice little backrub that eased some of the stress I'd put myself under.

And now I can hold my head up and say I'm an author. Sure I'm a self-pubbed author, which in certain circles means exactly fuck-all, but I think those circles are getting smaller.

My Crap

2011-05-22T09:31:00.000+10:00

We all have them. Little piles of crap. Mine tend to accumulate on desks and in drawers. This one of mine is from my 'hole' in our 25-box Ikea bookshelf:

1 small bottle of Dettol handwash.
1 box of sugarfree mints.
1 belt, now too small for me.
1 spare set of shoelaces from a pair of runners.
2 tubes of superglue.
1 luggage tag.
1 tape measure.
2 mechanical pencils.
1 business card from a Norwegian cutlery designer (I know - I have no idea why I have it either).
2 loyalty cards for different pet stores that sell bulk dog food.
1 glob of Blu-tack.
1 empty sunglasses case.
1 empty reading glasses sleeve.
16 random receipts.
1 bank statement.
1 rubber band.
2 keys.
9 key rings.
1/2 of a snap-lock key ring thingy.
1 tiny piece of a broken wooden toy.
5 cents.
1 small baggie of foreign coins.
1 set of earphones.
1 packet of screws.
1 compass.

Now that I've cleaned out my hole, I had to re-locate the above pile of crap to the garage/my desk/the bin/my cupboard. Sadly, only a couple of those items made it to the bin. Can you guess which ones???

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When I Rule The Universe

2011-05-11T14:52:00.000+10:00

Everyone's got one. That list of things we'll do when we come to power. Here's mine:

Things I'll ban.

Telemarketers.

Spandex to people over a certain body fat percentage.

Driving slow in the overtaking lane.

Overuse of the words 'snark' '...punk' (steampunk, cyberpunk: you get the idea, punk?) and 'pwned'.

That annoying synthetic voice-tuner thingy R&B 'artists' can't seem to live without.

Government sanctioned/enforced censorship.

Greenhouse gas emitting vehicles. Period. We have the technology to build clean green cars.

Things I'll enforce.

A mandatory road-rules etiquette test (see point 3 above) for all drivers, everywhere.

Immediate freeze of all assets of any politician once they take office. Deficits to be deducted from their accounts at the end of term, just as a percentage (very small) of any surplus to be paid into their account.

Euthanasia to be allowed. Period. Everyone must have the right to chose how they die.

Complete separation of church and state. An individual can be a politician or a minister - not both.

A tax on junk food according to kilojoules/fat content. Proceeds to go to health care.

Medical boards to recognise that religious fanaticism is form of mental illness.

Polluters will be made to clean up 110% of the mess they made. No appeals. No carbon trading crap. They. Clean. The. Mess. Up. And then some.

Things I'll change with my godlike powers.

I think I'll drag a biggass chunk of ice the size of a small country up from Antarctica into the middle of the Pacific every year until we've got this global warming thing beat.

I'll bless mankind with the ability to predict earthquakes/tsunamis.

While I'm handing such blessings, I might just give us the key to interstellar travel.

The entire world will suddenly lose any and all interest in reality cooking challenge/weightloss/backyard renovation/survivalist shows.

So It's called Golden Mane, Eh? What's It About?

2011-05-03T15:33:00.000+10:00

Some authors might be good at answering that question. I'm not. Never have been. Well, never good at it when it comes to my own stuff, that is. Gimme someone else's book, and I yak on about it for ages. I posted a short bit about it a while back. Here's a snippet from that post:

'Golden Mane is about a funny-looking, skinny kid from Melbourne. Her name is Sarah Coppernick. One of her ancestors was the great Nicholas Copernicus, but nobody at school really cares much about that. They're much more interested in her shaggy blonde hair, funny amber eyes and quick temper. Finally, after yet another run-in with the bullies in the schoolyard, she gets her first hint that she's not exactly normal.

'It turns out, she's a werewolf, as is everyone in her family. She's not just any werewolf either. What follows for Sarah is an adventure in a race against time against some very nasty people indeed who want to do something even nastier. She meets sorcerers and all manner of enchanted creatures, all while discovering the true nature of werewolves.

'Golden Mane is for anyone who likes a good fantasy read. Anyone who may have read Eddings, Heinlein, Feist, McCaffrey et al, will probably find it right up their alley. Anyone who loved the likes of Harry Potter and Twilight will probably also get a kick out it. But that doesn't mean it's just for twelve year-old girls. The reader group consists of a pretty even mix of people, ageing from their early teens to their sixties. There's action, suspense and humour with a little drama and classic mythology all mixed in with a great new fantasy universe.'

It's a series of six books. It's fun, escapist stuff. And the formatting/final edits will be done withing the next 48 or so. Cool, huh?

The biggest Interruption Of All.

2011-05-03T08:33:00.000+10:00

Writing's always been a number of things. Sometimes, it's a release: there's stuff in my head I have to get out through the keyboard. Sometimes, it's a primal urge: I'm driven to write and I don't even know why. Sometimes, it's actually been work or a responsibility. At least, that's how it's been since I first began to scribble - way back in the early 80's. But, it's always something else as well. It's a litmus test. Sadly, until fairly recently, I had no idea what it meant. Now I do.

When chemicals in my bi-polar noggin aren't mixing right, my mood can go up or down. It's like mental herpes. It comes and goes. I'll never be rid of it, but I can manage it. When I'm up, hey, I could write till my fingertips bleed. When I'm down, well, I can hardly find the energy to finish a senten

(long pause - me just staring at the screen without blinking till my eyes start to go funny)

Golden Mane will be released very, very soon. It's just taken longer than I'd expected because of little bumps like this. And it is a little bump, thanks the meds. Most of the time, I don't notice them doing diddly. But when I'm hypermanic or depressed, they kick in and those periods, which used to go for months, are now much, much shorter and less severe.

Osama May Be Dead, But Don't Forget About The Assholes.

2011-05-02T17:09:00.000+10:00

I first heard about the attacks on the twin towers as I was on my way home from bowling. It was late. I pulled into one of those late-night bar/pokies (slot machines) joints because I knew they had a bigass TV. They'd be bound to be showing the news coverage.

They were. And the crowd was watching. The 99% Muslim crowd. The pub I went to was smack-bang in the middle of a Lebanese/Arabic pocket in North West Melbourne. Until then, I'd not had much of an opinion about Islam. I just lumped it in with every other form of organised religion and let it go at that. That all changed that night. The crowd in the bar watching the smoking towers and occasional slo-mo replay of the planes hitting the buildings really opened my eyes.

They were clapping. They were cheering. I've never been so disgusted in my life. I got out of there and never went back.

That experience didn't make me hate Muslims. Well, not really. I was mad at them for a while. Then it just made me sad. As the story unfolded and we came to know the infamous Mr Osama Bin Laden, I kept thinking about that night. Sure the dude was evil, planned evil things and encouraged other evil dudes to do more evil. But he couldn't have done it without support. The kind of support I saw in that pub. People who may not want to play an active role in whatever crazy shit Bin Laden wanted to do, but thought 'Yeah, he's got his thing going - good for him. I'll just shut up and let him get on with it. If anyone asks, I dunno nuthin'.'

Now Osama's dead. Great. Hope it hurt too. Thing is, this aint the end. There are still a helluva lot of his sympathisers, some even more rabid then he, who'll stop at nothing to keep their crazy war going. Even worse, a lot of those people who don't know nuthin' are still out there. That's what really scares me the most about this stuff. See, when they don't know nuthin', they actually do know somethin' only they ain't sayin'. Assholes.

The Bible, My Kids, And Me

2011-04-26T20:11:00.010+10:00

In the beginning of my becoming a parent, there was the blackness of Holy crap! What the hell do I do now? Then there was light. And tears, and milk, and vomit and poo. Lots and lots of poo. There was a lot of broken sleep and exhaustion. Eventually, things settled own and Superwife and I thought, hey, that wasn't so bad. Heh. Weren't we a pair of dumbasses?

So now we've got Miss 4.5 and Miss 1. Next year, Miss 4.5 will be off to school. A nice, expensive private school (Thank God (yes I know this is a religiously-themed post) I've got a job & family that with help fund it.). A nice, expensive, private Catholic school.

'Cool', thought I. 'I'll let the sisters take care of all the religious stuff.'

Man, I just walked straight into that one, didn't I?

See, this Easter, we went interstate to be with the Polish in-laws. Babcia and Dziadek (Jahdek) attend Polish Mass. If they attend Polish Mass; we all attend Polish Mass. That's fine. I don't mind. I get to practice a bit of my Polish, and it makes the family happy, which makes me happy. I don't really have to understand the language the sermon is in anyway. We all know the story of Easter. We know the deal. Well, the adults do.

For Miss 4.5, it opened up a whole new can of 'Why?'

Sooo, tonight, after a few days of why this and who's that, I read the first two chapters of Miss 4.5's first bible to her as bedtime stories. At least I tried to. I found myself ad-libbing quite a lot. No matter how much you sweeten Genesis, it's still pretty heavy stuff. Especially to a four and a half year-old girl.

After the first two chapters, we had a chat. Thankfully, she wasn't scared witless. She wants more. Uh, oh... I knew the stories of Adam and Eve and good old Noah, but there's a lot I don't remember that well.

Yes I've read the bible. A few times, actually. The first time I read it, I did so reluctantly and incompletely. Hey, it was in early high school. The next, a few years later, I'd probably seen The exorcist one too many times, which happened to be a lucky coincidence for some local bible-thumpers - so I read it looking for answers. I've read it cover to cover twice since then and I'm buggered if I can remember much about it. Oh, sure, a few passages seemed to have burned themselves into the old noggin. But right here, right now, I confess to not knowing it as well as I ought.

So, now I'm probably gonna have to read a lot more to my daughters, I'm picking it up again. Not out of choice or need for guidance. Not out of any kind of religious fervour. I'm doing it because my daughter wants answers.

I just hope she doesn't want me to teacher her how to ride a horse. Not only is there no way in hell I can afford the whole 'Daddy, can I have a pony???' hoo hah. How do I put this nicely? Ahh, the hell with it. Priests, churches, The Bible - I can handle them. Pony clubs and pony club girls snobbery? I fucking hate that crap.

I should add, (and it may help if you read this the way Tim Roth in 'Lie to me' would,) The Bible is a book, right. I mean, it's just a book. Beginning, stories in the middle, big ending; that kind of thing? Now, if it's just a bleeding book, why the hell is there such a lot of fuss about then? Nah, forget that - we all know why there's such a fuss about it.

I guess the question is: Should I make a big fuss about it? Maybe this time I oughta look at it as if I'm subbing the thing. Maybe this time I read it, I put on my Mr Potato Head angry eyes. Lots of stories there. I'll read each one with a mental red pen in hand and try to break it down. Characters, setting, plot, style, ending. Then, after what shouldn't be more than about six paragraphs or so, I'll add my two shekels' worth in one par.

Of course, I'm not going to to that on this blog. Just for my own personal use, so to say. Might just do me good.

Should I Give A Vampire Kindle To My Mother-law?

2011-04-21T11:47:00.000+10:00

Since I got my shiny iPad, I stopped using my Kindle. It's just been sitting there doing sweet nada. But something's not quite right. It should have been doing nada, but it hasn't. You see, it's been sitting there, slowly letting its battery drain away and now seems to need more than mere electrickery to revive it. I think it needs blood.

It's as if (Insert your favourite vamp here) has come along and left it a mere husk. If it wakes up, will it have no knowledge of its past life, or will it remember everything? Will it have a thirst that can never quite be satisfied?

Normally I wouldn't mourn it. It's just that I kind of offered it to my mother in-law. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I thought about it. What if she sees all those embarrassing freebies I've put on that thing? Now not all of them are the kind that should come with a 18+/R/XXX rating. Some are just trashy. There's an assortment of fantasy, sci-fi, romance, paranormal romance, chick-lit, Christian-lit... You get the idea. Some I don't mind people knowing I've read. Others, well, let's just say the last person I want knowing about them is my mother in-law.

Yeah. I'm in trouble. I've got to revive that sucker, de-register it. I've got to take it to Anchorhead and have its memory erased. I can't do that if it won't wake up. And I've got to do it quickly. My mother in-law lives interstate and I'm flying over to see her tomorrow.

Now, I probably should just chuck it and buy my mother in-law a new one. I should, shouldn't I? Or, should I bring it back from the dead to haunt the night? Which would you do?

Book Review 35: City of Bones (Mortal Instruments 1) by Cassandra Clare. 7/10

2011-04-14T18:09:00.000+10:00

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. Wow. I'd heard good things about this trilogy so I waited until all three were released. I'm glad I did. If I'd rushed out and read it as soon as it was released, I'd be jonesing for my next Mortal Instruments fix for ages. I don't like jonesing for anything.

Clare writes her characters beautifully. She describes them very well, but it's her dialogue that makes her characters come alive. Brilliant. Well, most of the time. Clary, the main player is a 15 year-old girl in New York who: gets plunged into a supernatural world she never knew existed, discovers she's one of the supernatural folk herself, fights demons, vampires and other nasties, and then she tumbles into a love triangle between the limp best bud and hot new badass guy (the repartee between these three main players is just fantastic, by the way). And, she does it all with the maturity of a jaded 35-year old serial monogamist. She's just a tad too mature.

As for the limp best bud Simon; he's fairly standard limp best bud been-secretly-in-love-with-her-for-10-years stereotype. And he's mortal, or a Mundie (short for Mundane) as the supernatural gang - shadowhunters - call us. Poor bloke doesn't stand a chance against the hot new guy... or does he??? As limp as he is, I was jealous of even him in this book because his dialogue was so cool. Wish I'd been able to talk that way when I was a teenager, instead of being the awkward nerd I was.

Then there's the hot new guy. Jace, his name is. And he's a terminally sarcastic smartass, who's also one of the best demon hunters in the business, despite being just a teenager. The mouth on this kid is just fantastic.

The main baddie, a thoroughly nasty piece of work called Valentine, is nice and wicked without too much of the all powerful Voldemort thing going on. Even better, his motives, which at first seem simple, turn out to be be a little more complex. Good stuff.

The setting of New York might tug at the heart-strings of a few, but to me it didn't matter where the action took place. I mean, it was a nice change from dystopia, or down-town LA or Hogwarts, but hardly important. In fact, Clare puts a little too much emphasis on settings - I'll explain why in a minute.

The story itself is great. Clare gives us plausible new takes on the origin of vampire, werewolves and demons which is nice, especially because she sticks to the rules. You know - silver, sunlight, holy water - that kind of thing. There's the battle to save the world from demons and the missing enchanted thingamajig that can either help or hinder. Classic stuff. Of course it's Clary who appears on the scene to help find said thingamajig.

So far, so good. Then my Mr Potato Head Angry Eyes started to notice a few things, like the settings. New York seems to be where shadowhunters are sent if they've been naughty. Huh? New York? Being sent to New York as punishment comes across a bit hillbilly. Have a listen to Hank Williams Jr's If Heaven Aint A Lot Like Dixie and you'll get what I mean. On second thoughts, don't listen to it. You might need your ears again one day and scrubbing them out with barbed wire won't do you any good. Just read the lyrics.

Then there's their homeland, Idris. Idris is nestled somewhere in Europe, but it's not on any map. That's fine. It's the comparison to the rest of the planet that made me cringe. The grass is greener there. The buildings are more beautiful, the people better looking and more civilised and the food tastes better - get the picture? All these hot-stuff supernatural warriors moping about after some beautiful place like love-sick cows started to wear a bit thin by the end.

Next on the grumpy list, was the ending itself. The ending, even though it's not really the end because we know there are two more to follow the first, which isn't really the first because Clare is writing prequels... where was I? See how annoying that can be? The ending has a few too many twists and turns. It also gets a bit Empire Strikes Back - ish. I'm not going to give away the ending, but when you read it, you'll see it too.

City of Bones (Mortal Instruments 1) by Cassandra Clare is a great read. Don't let the previous two pars in this post put you off. Really. Clare's dialogue alone makes it a must-read. I give it 7/10.

I'm really looking forward to the next one: City of Ashes. It's there now on my ereader app, just waiting for me. Yummy.
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Where To Find Me

2011-04-12T07:27:00.000+10:00

The Department is available at:

Amazon

Smashwords

Diesel

Barnes & Noble

3 Things That Screw With My Writing

2011-04-11T09:19:00.000+10:00

I do a lot of my writing before trade at work or during quiet patches. Also, I do a bit at home on the rare occasions I get the place to myself. Because I travel a lot, I also manage to get a lot done in hotel rooms. There are always distractions, like family, the day job or procrastinations like social media etc, but I'm not really bitching about those.

3 things that really mess with my ability to concentrate and write or edit are:

#1 Smelly people. Examples: The other day, I was sitting in the library (to get away from family and the day job) and some jerk sat down next to me, smelling as though he'd eaten about three whole onions raw. I wanted to ram my keyboard into one of his reeking orifices. I moved away from him, only to be joined soon after by a late-night party-person who, even though she had probably taken nice long shower that morning and put on clean clothes, still stank of the night before. I gave up on the library and went home.

#2 Noise. In particular, that reverberating bass that doof-doofs through walls and car windows from the street outside. I don't mind music if I can hear it properly. Hell, I even listen to it myself when I write. A lot. But, that bloody annoying doofing that you can feel as well as hear drives me bananas. Same goes for dumbasses in hotel rooms next to mine who insist on patching pay-per-view porn up loud. I mean, who does that? They're in there, doing... well I don't wanna know what they're doing but unfortunately I've got a good idea, while they watch porn so loud everyone on the hotel floor also has a good idea about what they're up to. Eww.

#3 Ringing phones. For the love of all things holy, can't someone answer the damn phone?

Okay, rant over...

The Indy V Trad Debate And Me

2011-04-10T08:28:00.000+10:00

I'm indy, and probably will be for quite a while. Maybe forever. I've made enough noise about that.

But...

Instead of getting into some big philosophical rant with all the possible scenarios and 'what ifs' (why do I want to put an extra apostrophe in there somewhere? " What if's' " just looks freaking weird.). Here's what I'm not going to do: I won't

# Send out countless submissions, synopses, brag letters & bribes - yeah, you heard me - bribes to agents.*

# Do the above to publisher submissions editors and panels.

# Hand over control of what goes into my work and how it is presented.

What I am going to do is:

# Release my work independently until the the benefits of going with a traditional publisher outweigh the drawbacks and still allow me to maintain what I see as deal-breakers when it comes to the integrity of my work.

That may seem like I'm saying I'll cross over to the dark side just because they offer me enough cookies. Blaarp! Uh-aahh... Wrong answer. Truth is I don't know if I'll stay indy or not. I do know I don't need to be pubbed by traditional publishers for validation. My beta/readers group has already done that.

And, that ego boost is nothing compared to the support I get from my family. Seen the movie Hook with Robin Williams as Peter Pan? Remember what his happy thought is? It was his kid, Jack. My wife and kids are my happy thoughts. Every time I feel like wailing and banging my head on the keyboard, crying out 'I'm a hack!', thoughts of these three wonderful people bring me to my senses. The rest of my family, just as wonderful, are also a great help.

* I know most agents, and many submissions editors and publishers are too professional to accept them, but I don't know any who've not been offered them in one form or another. Not a single one. Also, I've witnessed enough schmoozing to know the real deal. One publisher I worked for many moons ago, refused to look at a manuscript unless there was a bottle of scotch or theater/football tickets in the package.

Me And My Dumb Ideas

2011-04-09T06:40:00.000+10:00

It's part of the package, this being ever-so-slightly obsessive compulsive. I tend to start a lot of little projects op experiments, only to have them fizzle out. Rationing my social media was one of them. Cutting them all out during working hours was a complete disaster. But, instead of giving up, I'm refining it.

Twitter, I'll keep on in the background. Facebook, Goodreads & blogs, I'll hit only briefly in the morning before work and then again in the evening. Smashwords, Amazon etc are essentially work, but I really only need to check them once a day, so they're evening logins as well.

New Regime

2011-04-06T15:35:00.000+10:00

This may collapse in a big heap, but I'm going to try something for a few days. It'll go into effect from the moment I post this.

No social media during working hours - yep even during lunch break. No FB, no Twitter, No Goodreads. What, I hear you cry??? Has he gone bonkers?

Probably, but no more than usual. See, here's the thing. It's not that I'm wasting too much time during the day (I am, but that's beside the point). It's because I'm wasting too much time on the couch watching mind-numbing tv, when I could be using that time to do my blogging, blog cruising, Facebooking, Twittering etc.

I doubt this is going to last long, but I want to give it a go for a few days at least. Just to see what happens...

Well This Is Embarrassing

2011-04-06T08:28:00.000+10:00

Here I am, see me? I'm the one standing up, waving a sign that says 'I'm a doofus!'

A few weeks ago The Department got a nice review from a fellow (actually, she's a she, so she's not a fellow, but a lady - a very nice one at that - but you get what I mean) writer Amy Rose Davis. I only noticed it this morning while I was messing about on Amazon. I should have noticed it weeks ago and certainly should have thanked her. I didn't do either. Well, I'm doing so now.
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Amy, I owe you a box of chocolates. Thanks for the lovely review and I'm sorry I didn't respond earlier. I'll go and give myself a good talking to.

S.

My 2 Cents about Pru Goward's Dumbass Comment

2011-04-05T10:23:00.002+10:00

Tara Moss posted a comment on Facebook that got me curious. Turns out she was referring to Amity Dry's open letter to NSW Liberal Pru Goward.

Okay, I'm not a mum (duh). I'm a dad. Proud of it. Buuuut, I do know a lot of mums. Goward's remarks irked me enough to send her this comment:

'Dear Ms Goward,

Gee, your fellow Liberals must be loving you right now, NOT! Of all the dumb things to do having just won an election, you go and antagonise half the voters in the country.

Get over your own ego and apologise, not just to Jackie O either. Every mum in Australia was insulted by your ill-conceived quip.

sjb gilmour.'

Okay, spleen vented. Off my soapbox now...

Self-pub Ebook Test Results For The Department Part 2

2011-04-05T08:49:00.000+10:00

The Department is now available on Diesel and iBooks (Can't show a link to this, but I'm sure you'll be able to find it on the app if you want to). This is great, but for some reason, iBooks listed The Department as 'Children's Fiction'. Not so sure about that!

In the last post, I neglected add couple of details.

Copyright. Jeez, what a kerfuffle. In most rational-thinking countries, copyright's basic. Write something, then sign your name on it. Simple. For the US??? Nuh, uh. You've gotta register it, which involves spending $$$. Well, slap me with a fish - how delightfully (sic) bureaucratic.

ISBN. Smashwords gave me a freebie for the version they distributed. Amazon didn't need one. For Golden Mane, I've bought a bundle of 'em and will assign them to the various versions I release. There's one for the print version (when it happens) that I put out. There'll be one for Apple. There'll be one for the library version. You get the idea.

Self-pub Ebook Test Results For The Department

2011-04-04T09:03:00.001+10:00

I decided to test Smashwords as a platform for self-pubbing with a short story The Department.

It took a few goes to get it up and running on Smashwords. My fault. I know my way around a keyboard, but formatting is not my bag. Once I got the formatting right, I was live on Smashwords and started to get hits.

Once that was up and running, I went about setting up an Amazon Kindle Direct account. Living in Australia, I'm not eligible for the 70% royalty Amazon pays to its US-based customers. I wanted to avoid as many drains on my take from Amazon as I could, so I opted out of the Smashwords delivery to Amazon and went solo.

That may have been a blunder. Amazon need a US bank account, US address and US tax number if they're to pay me electronically, while Smashwords pay straight into a Paypal account. Setting up a US account was actually easy. While I was in Vegas a few months ago, I just waltzed into a Citibank branch (closest bank to my hotel) and signed a few forms. Getting a US tax number is something I've not yet achieved, and obviously, I don't have a US address. I'm working on those. The blunder part, is without that info, Amazon is going to send me a cheque (That's the UK spelling of 'check' for those in The States). This could prove expensive. Just clearing a US cheque here in Australia is gonna cost me about $10.

That said, once I had the Amazon account set up and had already gone through the formatting for Smashwords, submitting to Amazon was a piece of cake. The Amazon release of The Department was live within 48 hours.

What about Barnes & Noble? Well, that took a little longer. I'm still trying to set up an account with B&N. Until I've got that set up, I'll be using Smashwords to distribute to them as well as Apple. It's been about four weeks since I went live on Amazon and I've just now discovered that I'm live on Barnes & Noble.

So, have I sold any books? Heh. Not many. Truth be told, even though I get a kick out of seeing sales in the various dashboards of these accounts, making moolah out of The Department wasn't my objective. This whole exercise has been a test. So, like any good test, I've finally got some results to document:

# Self-pubbing via Smashords.
Possible. Once I learned how to format for the platform, easy.

# Self-pubbing via Kindle Direct.
Possible. Very easy.

# Self-pubbing via B&N, Apple etc.
Almost impossible unless going through Smashwords. Decision: Let Smashwords do it and pay their 6%. Easy.

So, what course will I take for Golden Mane? I'll release it to all the above-listed ebook retailers but Amazon through Smashwords. I'll release it through Amazon direct.

The next big learning curve for me is to get my head around DRM pdf/epub creation for Golden Mane so I can distribute a separate library version free to every library that wants one. I'm not going to back down from this. I'm convinced HarperCollins' idea of limiting their ebooks to 26 borrowings is flawed.

I'm determined to release free, unlimited versions of Golden Mane to libraries in another experiment: I want to see if just by releasing it free to libraries acts as a form of publicity and leads to sales. If it does, then maybe other indy writers will do the same and eventually, maybe even the likes of HarperCollins may rethink the way they treat libraries. If it doesn't, then I'll have not lost anything but my time, and even then, I'll still have learned something.

I wish I was Arnie

2011-04-03T08:15:00.000+10:00

We've all got at least one favourite Arnie movie scene. Some us have quite a few. Nerds like me have dozens. Who could forget him looking at the alien in Predator and saying 'You are one ugly mother (expletive deleted)!' or that great line for Terminator when the landlord's complaining about the smell in the room; '(Another expletive deleted) you, (Gee, you'd think Arnie did little other than swear in his movies!)'.

Well last night, I wanted to be Arnie. Not from Terminator or Predator or even True Lies. I wanted to be Arnie from Kindergarten Cop. Not from where he was all clean-cut and nice, looking after those little monsters. I wanted to be the enormous, shotgun-wielding, hard-bitten maniac cop that called himself the 'party pooper', barging through the junkies' shooting gallery, blasting everything in sight.

My neighbours had doof-doof music up real loud till past 2 am last night. Normally, I'm fairly cool with this kind of stuff if it doesn't happen too often. But dammit, I'm this far away from finishing the final edits on Golden Mane before I release it. When I'm working on it, I need to be sharp. I need my sleep. Anyone who deprives me of those precious z's - short of immediate family, of course - should fear the wrath of the interrupted writer. Last night, I wanted to barge into that house, blowing away random furniture and stereos with a twelve-gauge. I wanted to scare the heebedejeebers outta those guys.

Any artist at work can be an anti-social creature. To those not of the same bent, when we're working, it can seem as if we're selfish, aloof and downright rude. They just don't get it when we turn homicidal when we're interrupted. Because of this, I try as much as I can not to do too much writing at home or on weekends. Miss4 and Miss1 can't be expected to understand and don't deserve angry dad. Superwife doesn't get to see enough of me as it is (though sometimes, maybe she sees too much of me.) so it's not fair on her if I spend too much time at the keyboard while I'm home.

The thing is, I'm this fucking close! If I don't get this done, I'm gonna go bananas...

Golden Mane, Book One of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick.

2011-03-30T09:28:00.000+11:00

We all have heroes. One of mine, sci-fi/fantasy writer Robert Heinlein said:

'Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.'

He also said:

'A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.'

For better or worse, these quotes have stuck with me, and seem to ring true. I'm not good at describing my own work. I'm certainly not going to go about quoting myself, nor am I about to critique it when it comes out. If anyone else wants to (and I sure hope they do), I'll relish every review - even the bad ones. That said, here's the rundown.

So, just what is Golden Mane about? Who's it for? When will I see it available and where?

Golden Mane is about a funny-looking, skinny kid from Melbourne. Her name is Sarah Coppernick. One of her ancestors was the great Nicholas Copernicus, but nobody at school really cares much about that. They're much more interested in her shaggy blonde hair, funny amber eyes and quick temper. Finally, after yet another run-in with the bullies in the schoolyard, she gets her first hint that she's not exactly normal.

It turns out, she's a werewolf, as is everyone in her family. She's not just any werewolf either. What follows for Sarah is an adventure in a race against time against some very nasty people indeed who want to do something even nastier. She meets sorcerers and all manner of enchanted creatures, all while discovering the true nature of werewolves.

Golden Mane is for anyone who likes a good fantasy read. Anyone who may have read Eddings, Heinlein, Feist, McCaffrey et al, will probably find it right up their alley. Anyone who loved the likes of Harry Potter and Twilight will probably also get a kick out it. But that doesn't mean it's just for twelve year-old girls. The reader group consists of a pretty even mix of people, ageing from their early teens to their sixties. There's action, suspense and humour with a little drama and classic mythology all mixed in with a great new fantasy universe.

Right now, Golden Mane is at that painfully slow final edit/beta stage. It's being proofed, tweaked, proofed again and so on. By the end of the week, the formatting for ebook release will begin. Then at some stage a few days after that, I'll work up the guts to make that final click and it'll be up, up and away. It'll most likely appear on Smashwords and Amazon first, then Barnes & Noble. Other online retailers will follow.

For fans of paper, print-on demand copies will be available in time. Eventually (don't know when), mass-market paperbacks will also be available - again most likely through online retailers like Amazon and Book Depository first.

I will also have a free digital special release for any and all public and school libraries that want one. HarperCollins' idea of limiting ebook library borrowings is misguided and not how I want to do business. That part of the release, believe it or not, is actually going to take the most work and so probably won't happen for another few weeks after the initial launch.

Phew! That was a long post. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've lines on pages to look at...

Not a burned bridge. A little singed around the edges, maybe.

2011-03-25T12:19:00.000+11:00

I've been a little quiet of late. Mostly because I've been frantically busy with the day job, family, as well as scribbling and liaising with an amazing artist who's doing the cover art for my first major ebook work. As soon as I've all my ducks in a row, all will be revealed about that little project.

Today's rant is my response to HarperCollins decision to give the ebooks they provide to libraries a shelf-life. The NYT did a story on it a week or so back. You can read it here. 26 times. That's all a HarperCollins ebook can be borrowed at a library before another version needs to be purchased.

Now that my initial outrage has subsided, (though I'll admit many librarians are probably still pretty steamed), here's my response. HarperCollins, I think you may have made a slight blunder.

Some time in the very near future, I'll be releasing an ebook. It will be the first in a series of at least six. It will be for sale on Amazon, Smashwords, B&N etc. And, It'll be available as print-on-demand from a variety of online retailers. But, I will make my ebook available completely free to every public library or school library. Not just the ones in Australia. Every public or school library who asks me will get their copy 100% free, and they'll be able to lend it out as many times as they like, for as long as they like.

No, this isn't some sort of scam. I'm not making the first in the series free just so I can screw them on the price for those that follow. Yes, I want to make money, but I'm not in the business of ripping off libraries. All the libraries that receive the first free copy, will also receive a discount voucher which will allow them to purchase the next ebooks in my series at half the regular retail price.

Why am I making this pledge? Why am I doing this? Simple. I want to sell books. I want my customers to like dealing with me. I may be a prickly bugger with very few close friends, but the last thing I want is a reader not picking up my book because they think I'm a money-hungry asshole.

I don't want to make my work available only to those who can afford it. If presented with the choice of borrowing it for free at a library or buying their own copy online and they choose to buy it, fine. Great! Thank-you very, very much. If they choose to borrow it for free, even better! Maybe they'll like it and tell a friend. Maybe they'll like it so much they buy their own copy.

Is this just some hare-brained scheme from a freaked-out liberal? Not really. Think about it. Treasure Island is available as an ebook for free. Millions of readers have rediscovered this classic work for exactly that reason. It's free. And now it's popular again. So popular that an author's been commissioned to write the sequel!

HarperCollins, I know you've got more important things on your schedule than to listen to a little nobody like me, but I do hope you reconsider your decision. Libraries need support. They don't need to be treated like second-class customers.

Book review 34: Insight (Insight Series) by Jamie Magee 2/10

2011-03-16T08:34:00.000+11:00

When I first downloaded Insight onto my ereader app, I thought I might be onto something great. The first chapter was interesting and had quite a few original ideas. Then everything went pear-shaped.

The protagonist, in this case an 18 y/o girl called Willow (I know. I was prepared to overlook the corny name choice for a while there) can see people from other dimensions. It turns out, she and her whole family are really from another dimension and are only on Earth because they're in hiding. There are bad guys out there, trying to get Willow. As Willow gathers new friends and family she never knew she had, she tries to elude the bad guys while learning all about her true talent and the talents of her merry band.

It's not my habit to give away the endings in these reviews. If you want to find out if Willow and co find their way to safety, peace love and happiness, then you'll just have to read it. If you can. I struggled.

The two main problems I had with Insight are these: Firstly, Willow has all kinds of amazing things happen to her - not all of them good - and she takes in in her stride as though it was a simple change in direction of the breeze. Oh please. Second, she falls in love. Instantly. With a dweeb called Landen. Pathetic.

After those two points, Insight is full of little issues that niggle and spoil the read. Magee can write. Her first chapter demonstrates that. She just seems to have put all her energy into the first chapter and not bothered that much with what follows. The rest of the book just seems to fall over and get muddled up in its own romantic goo. There's little to no realism. The antagonist, Drake (another dumb name choice) has no depth to him at all. The other players, including Landen (gag) are so flat they may as well be cardboard cut-outs.

The plot gets confused in the middle and seems to go around in circles for a while. It's as if Magee got stuck on 'soppy' and couldn't find the delete button. I get that Willow can fall in love in a flash; I just don't need all the g-rated late-teen luvy-duvy gunk. Teenagers have a high amount of stuff called hormones. Magee writes her characters as if they run on milk and cookies.

Also, the religious overtones just made me want to give up completely. I'm not going to convert to a religion because I read a soppy fantasy book. If anything, that kind of stuff alienates the reader against the author, the book and the cause he or she is trying to promote. Magee shouldn't have included it in her story at all.

I doubt I'll read more by Magee. I give Insight (Insight Series) 2/10 .

Book review 33: Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman 6/10

2011-02-28T10:03:00.000+11:00

I first read the epic fantasy Gorean series by John Norman when I was just a kid. Robert E Howard's Conan stories, along with help from the likes of L Sprgaue De Camp and of course the amazing Mr Heinlein, cast me into a world of sci-fi and fantasy that I, like John Norman's Tarl Cabot and his world Gor, loved. I read everything I could get my hands on. Tolkien, McCaffrey, Jordan, Eddings, Herbert... You get the idea. Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Amy Rose Davis' Ravenmarked. Reviewing it, I remembered these greats from my early introduction to epic fantasy. I had to revisit some of them. I don't know what happened to my 29 paper Gor books. Must have lent them to someone. Thanks to Amazon, I've got 'em safely tucked away in my Kindle.

Norman's style has become as dated as the early covers of his books. All those sword-wielding he-men, scantily-clad slave girls and those big cheesy fonts have fallen by the wayside. So too has the rambling style Norman uses. He says in paragraphs what he could in a sentence; in pages what he could in a few lines. And, he goes off on tangents for dozens of paragraphs at a time. Norman's work also reflects attitudes of his time and his clear intention to titillate his male readers as well as shock (and maybe secretly thrill a few of) his female readers. On Gor, the average woman is a slave whose sole purpose is to please.

Norman's hero, Tarl Cabot, is a red-headed expat brit who went to the US. From there, he's snatched away by the mysterious Priest-Kings of Gor. These beings serve as deities on Gor, and set all the rules. Though, you get the idea very early on that they're not so much gods as just really, really advanced folk with technology that'd make an iPad look like a drawing in sand.

Cabot's educated, fit and, it seems, more at home on Gor than he ever was on Earth. He's also just a bit dim. All through Transman of Gor, he's constantly mystified by his fellow man. He picks up facts and figures alright - he uses his narative to explain this or that constantly. As for understanding what's going on? Forget it. He's also arrogant. Who else would use the term 'superhuman' to describe himself?

The setting is not bad by epic fantasy standards, but Norman's focus on the slavery aspect gets a bit boring after a while. The plot is complex enough, and upon finishing Tarnsman of Gor, you know there's alot more to come. Not boring. The violence is unbelievable, gory and almost pornographic, but the sex is implied. There's also an enormous amount of good luck involved. Tacky. Another example of the era (1970's) when Norman wrote it.

If anything, Tarnsman of Gor and the 28 books that follow it are great study cases. In many ways, they're examples of how not to write fantasy for today's market. But, they are also shining examples of the sort of detail needed to created a workable alternate reality... so long as you do it without so much waffle.

Norman's Gorean saga is an interesting read and should be considered required reading for any fantasy writer. 6/10

Wordcount be damned

2011-02-18T15:07:00.000+11:00

Wordcount be damned. When it comes to edits, reviews & rewrites, 2300 words is not an accurate reflection of work completed. When polishing a piece, I look at the percentage. Then and only then do I know how much I've got done. Of course I'm insanely jealous of those high-wordcount producers, even though I knOw when I'm being prolific, revisions surely must follow...

Book review 32: Septimus Heap, Book 1: Magyk by Angie Sage 6/10

2011-02-18T05:39:00.000+11:00

Septimus Heap, Book 1: Magyk is the first Angie Sage book I've read. It took me a while to finish it because I've had a lot on my plate this past fortnight. But finish it I did, and I'm looking forward to more. Sort of.

Now, I'm not sure how it looks in print, but the Kindle version I read was hard going. Sage doesn't just capitalise the first letter of her made-up nouns and proper nouns. She uses italic and bold. Annoying. Hard on the eyes.

That said, Septimus Heap, Book 1: Magyk is good solid kids & YA fantasy stuff. Sage's style is easy to read but a bit cute at times. Still, it's ideal for the target market. There's adventure, magic, humour and a bit of prophecy & mystery thrown in for good measure.

The main characters, Jenna, Boy 412, Silas Heap, Marcia and other assorted magical folk are mostly well-rounded and real enough. The supporting cast doesn't provide comic relief so much (they're not that funny) as they do lighthearted distraction. That's something Sage overdoes a little. The baddy, a necromancer called DomDaniel is nicely wicked and even more nicely flawed.

All up, I give Septimus Heap, Book 1: Magyk 6/10. It would have rated higher if not for the over-use of italic and bold.

The Department news & coupon.

2011-02-10T12:27:00.000+11:00

The Department upload process to Smashwords has had a few teething problems, but it's now live. It'll be up on Amazon soon and probably on Barnes & Noble, Borders et al some time soon.

I've set the regular price at $1.99. Hey, I'm in Australia - my cut is far less than it would be if I was in the US. But (yes, I know I shouldn't start a sentence with 'But') I have generated a 50% coupon: FZ26V

Just go to Smashwords, quote FZ26V, and The Department is yours for just $0.99. Enjoy!

Book review 31: Ravenmarked by Amy Rose Davis. 7/10

2011-02-08T16:44:00.000+11:00

Epic fantasy used to be just plain old swashbuckling stuff. From the days of Fritz Leiber and Robert E Howard, the genre has evolved. The likes of Robert Jordan, David Eddings and Raymond E Feist added a bit more romance to the genre - ok, Eddings and his wife Leigh. Until then, however, the genre'd been dominated by men. Finally, Anne MacCaffrey showed up, as did the likes of Sara Douglass, Katherine Kerr, and Isobelle Carmody and a great many other talented women.

These women have done to fantasy what Top Gear seems to have done for car shows: they both captured a female audience. There's more romance, less gratuitous sex but still good solid swords & sorcery action... most of the time. Some of the fantasy/romance blends out there are truly awful, and awful doesn't discriminate. It can be and is written by both male and female authors. You only have to look at the covers. Yes, books do get judged by their covers whether we like it or not. All those rippling torsos, topless women showing only their backs & shoulders, backgrounds of horses, waves and lightning - you know the ones I mean - haven't done the genre any favours. Fortunately, some writers out there aren't awful.

Cue Amy Rose Davis, centre stage. Ravenmarked, her first full-length indie outing is here to help save the day for epic fantasy/romance. In Ravenmarked, there's a whole new fantasy world with new types of sorcery. There are intricate plots within the feudal system, prophecies and plenty of blood and guts. Swords, daggers, arrows; they all get a good workout. There are enchanted thingamajigs, curses and shape-shifting baddies. Good stuff.

Ravenmarked's plot, like many a good fantasy, is prophecy-driven. There are underdog heroes and heroines, evil beasties, witches, rightful heirs to thrones and more all woven into plot that doesn't give itself away halfway through. More good stuff.

Davis' style flows with a rhythm that's easy to read. Her made-up accent sounds right when you read it aloud. It's also nice that Davis doesn't waste precious ink explaining every single thing. It's nice to figure some things out as you go along. Ravenmark is a fun read that doesn't treat the reader as if they're four. Sex is a very common theme in the book, but Davis manages to make most of it implied rather than blatant, which is good. There's enough detail to titillate, but not so much that I'd hesitate letting my daughters read
it, once they're old enough, that is.

One of the things I really enjoyed about it is how real Davis makes it. Her characters don't ride for days without getting smelly and needing to wash. They go to the loo. Injured characters take time to heal from wounds. As for those who don't heal - and this bit I really did like - Davis wins an extra point for Ravenmarked right there. When a guy gets disemboweled in a brothel, it stinks. I didn't like it because I'm some sort of bloodthirsty maniac. I liked it because it's true. I've been in a morgue. I know how much fresh human insides smell.

A couple of things bugged me about Ravenmark, though. The accents Davis made up are fine, as are the names. They're all obviously based on a celtic/scottish model. The problem I had was that a lot of those names sound the same. I had to flip back a few times, thinking 'who was that guy again?' Also, there's a teensy bit too much bleeding heart stuff when it comes to the repressed poor and human slaves.

The players are written quite well. The usurper king, his scheming bride-to-be and the games they play are interesting, but the luvy-duvy stuff between them gets a bit cloying. The underdog hero haunted by a tortured past, and rightful heiress and their romance is a bit drawn-out but not too soppy. The baddies are the kind of evil HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard would be proud of.

I hope Davis makes it available in print so I can buy a copy to keep on my shelf. I give Ravenmarked 7/10. Will I read more Amy Rose Davis? Aye!

Back in the queue

2011-02-04T12:13:00.000+11:00

The Department, a short story I attempted to put out via Smashwords is taking longer than I initially expected. Thanks to some very prompt advice from Smashwords co-founder Mark Coker, I'm trying again.

It's frustrating, but if the delay is purely due to my inadequate understanding of formatting, then it's my own silly fault. And, in keeping with the whole idea of this little project being a test run, I'm sticking at it until either the story ends up available on Amazon or it fails dismally.

If it works, and The Department becomes available on Amazon, then more, larger works to will follow.

If it fails dismally, then shucks, I'll have to go down another route. First, establish a Pty Ltd company, then set up a website, then pay a graphic artist for a logo etc, then get my head around yet more software (shudder... more formatting!) and then publish.

I know which I'd rather. The second option is expensive. That I can cope with. What I'm not sure I can stomach is the hours of paperwork and skull-sweat I'll need to put into learning more new software. I know I'm not a complete imbecile, but as I've mentioned before, I aint no jenius. When it comes to new software, it can take me weeks to pick up what takes many others mere moments.

In other news, I've commissioned artwork from a graphic designer for one of those ebooks I just mentioned. This is both exciting and kind of scary. It's also a great relief to my friends and family, especially Superwife. The poor darling has had to put up her irascible husband poring over countless drafts and his sporadic writing fits and spurts for far too long.

The Department

2011-02-02T06:09:00.001+11:00

A little while back, I woke up after a nightmare and immediately started scribbling. Nothing unusual about that. I scribble a lot. What was unusual was the nightmare itself. Most of my truly scary nightmares are pretty mundane - garden variety terrors about awful things happening to loved ones and so on. There's also a common light-at-the-end-of-tunnel one all retailers get about a shop full of customers and no stock. This nightmare wasn't like either of those.

See, I travel a lot for work. I probably spend at least two months of any given year living out of a suitcase. One thing I hate, one thing that drives me absolutely bonkers, is waiting in queues at customs/immigration counters at airports. Especially if I have a connecting flight to catch.

The nightmare I had was that I was stuck in one of those queues that never seems to move, only it wasn't at an airport: it was to have my name looked up in the biggest of books by Saint Peter. The result of my scribbling, was a little short story that I had no intention of ever doing much with, so it sat stored on my hard-drive. The words had flowed. By brain was purged of the need to explore the story. Job was done.

A little while later, the ebook revolution started. Now it's in full swing. Publishers are no longer the gatekeepers who decide who will pass the golden gates from obscurity into the bright paradise of the published author. Amazon, Smashwords et al have changed all that. And so, as nothing more than a test really, I resurrected the short story I wrote and put it out there through Smashwords. It's called The Department.

The test had a few aims, the main two being: #1 To see if I could get my head around the formatting etc required by Smashwords. #2 To find out what sort of timeframe I should allow a project to go from finished manuscript in Word format, to ebook.

The results? The story is still 'pending approval' at Smashwords. I managed to cope with the formatting, but I didn't enjoy it and wasn't 100% happy with the finished layout. I've some fiddling to do with dedicated ebook publishing software before I decide if I want to self-pub direct to Amazon, providing my own source files, or let Smashwords do it for me for 6%.

I'm not going to review The Department. I don't believe any writer should have to review their own work. If anyone else wants to, by all mean, go ahead. Tear it to shreds if you like. I've a thick hide and I'd actually be kind of grateful. Input like that should be treasured, not feared.

Just one last thing. The Department may be taken by some to be blasphemy/sacrilege/heresy or some other nasty poke at their religion. It's not meant to be. It's speculative fiction based on a DREAM. No insult is intended. If you read it (and thanks for doing so, by the way!), remember, I'm not trying to take the piss out of your religion so please don't stick some sort of fatwa on my noggin.

Books I've not been able to finish this month. Jan 2011.

2011-01-31T09:34:00.000+11:00

The following are some books I tried to read this months but gave up on:

The Blood That Bonds by Christopher Buecheler.

Origins (Spinward Fringe) by Randolph Lalonde

Boob Tube by Mark Coker.

Tahn: A Novel by L. A. Kelly.

Marked by Elisabeth Naughton.

The Paradise War: Book One in The Song of Albion Trilogy by Stephen R. Lawhead.

Origin Scroll by Richard S. Tuttle.

I won't go into why I gave up on these books on this blog. If anyone wants to know what I thought of any or all of them, I can be contacted at sjbgilmour@yahoo.com.

Yes they were low-priced or in some cases free. Yes, I know I'd probably find better books if I just ignored the indie/self-pubbed. But, I've also found a few good books by the indie/self-pubbed.

I've lost faith with major publishers' abilities to spot and publish good books. Too many are falling through the cracks. I don't like the way agents and submissions editors are so tightly-knit yet still take months and months to even look at a manuscript when an industrious writer can have his or her work available online in a matter of days.

I really don't like the way publishers, many submissions editors and even some agents still deplore the self-pubbed or indie writers, using the archaic saw that if the writer's work was any good, it'd have been picked up and pubbed by a 'respectable' publisher. That attitude is bunkum. I've more respect for a writers who put their work out online, regardless of price, than arrogant publishers and elitist submissions editors.

Book review 26-30: Guardians of Ga'Hoole (11-15) by Kathryn Lasky. 2/10

2011-01-31T08:30:00.000+11:00

There are seventeen books in this series. I've now read fifteen and don't have the stomach for the last two. The first ones were great, but the storylines became more and more tired after each book. Lasky's 'borrowing' of Churchill's war speeches was pathetic. Her rip-off of the line between Hydarnes and Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae (You don't have to have seen 300 to know this one) is truly awful.

The continuity problems the first ten had continue into the rest of the series. Frustrating. Also, someone should take Lasky aside and explain Darwin's theory of evolution, using short sentences and diagrams. She could also do with some basic physics and science advice form, oh I don't know... any 6th grader. Yes, the whole series is fantasy. There's an enchanted thingamajig and lots of other magic. But, in the time it would take for her new species to evolve, all traces from mankind (The Others) would have eroded away. There'd be no churches or bell-towers. Also, any and all printed matter, paintings and fabrics would have rotted. And don't give me any of that 'it's fantasy' stuff either - this fantasy doesn't make sense. If an owl or magpie can get its claws on books like Ray Bradury's Fahrenheit 541 or paintings and fabrics, so can moisture and bacteria. The damn things would be compost millennia before the species could ever have evolved.

Lasky also gives us weapons made of ice and burning coals. These little inventions don't wash either. Ice melts unless the ambient temperature is below freezing, which it isn't. Coals cool if the ambient temperature isn't above a few thousand degrees, which it isn't. Also, I get that owls could conceivably pick up an ember from a fire for a few seconds, but owl talons, like those of any bird, will burn. If an owl were to really hold a burning coal for more than a few seconds, its claws would burn.

That said, The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series is enjoyable if you're prepared to suspend your disbelief more than you'd normally have to for a good fantasy read. The flaws in her settings and dialogue probably won't matter too much many of her readers, given the ideal age reader for this series is about 10. Lasky's plot is pretty good, but becomes repetitive and her message becomes more and more preachy. That's a shame. I could cope with the gentle way she made her points in the first ten. As she went on, Lasky stopped being gentle. That sours things a bit.

I give the first five of the last seven of Kathryn Lasky's Gaudians of Ga'Hoole series 2/10. I won't read any more of her work unless someone can produce and argument strong enough (read $$$) to make me change my mind.

Book review 24 & 25: Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. 5/10 & 4/10

2011-01-28T07:18:00.000+11:00

Warning: Spoiler alert in 2nd last par of this post.

Catching Fire, book two in Collins' Hunger Games trilogy is every bit as entertaining, though predictable, as the first. Also, it's darker and with more teen angst. A bit too much teen angst and lovelorn trauma actually. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen survived her first Hunger Games (Duh, there's two more books after the first one - of course she survived) and is now in even more danger from Capitol as well as being torn between two love interests.

Peeta, the likable lad from Hunger Games is back and every bit as wet. There's also Gale, Katniss' pre-games best buddy. In a world where murder seems to be the order of the day, I found myself wondering why these two blokes don't just shoot each other and get it over with.

The body count is much higher in Catching Fire as the inevitable clash between Katniss & co (the underdog/repressed masses) and Capitol (the powers-that-be doing the repressing) escalates. Collins does manage to full a few surprises out of the bag, but all in all, Catching Fire, though entertaining and well-written, doesn't leave much to the imagination.

Mockingjay, being the last of the trilogy, tells the story rest of the story just by being printed. It's the last book, so obviously the fight between Katniss and Capitol will be fought and won in this book. That it's titled Mockingjay is also a dead giveaway. In Collins' world, a mockingjay is a the product of genetically engineered Capitol muttations (yes, there's an extra t there) breeding with ordinary birds to create a new species. It's also the symbol for the new revolution.

You may just see the book on the shelf, guess by the title what's going to happen and think 'Ah, so that's how it ends. Good for you, Katniss.' Or you might read the book then wonder why, since what happened in it is pretty much what you expected.

Mockingjay is tougher going than the the first two. The death toll is ridiculously overdone as is the wickedness of Capitol... Or is it the wickedness of the revolutionaries? There's a nice blurring of the lines there, but that's Mockingjay's saving grace.

Katniss' constant too and fro between Peeta and Gale gets so tired I just wanted to slap her. Her soul-searching and tortured-teen angst is overdone, also making me want to slap her. I almost found myself cheering every time she's injured, thinking 'Serves you right, kid. Now stop being such a drama queen and get on with it.'

Also wearing is the cloying nobility of Katniss' fellow revolutionaries, many of whom die to save her.Collins overdoes the noble soldier dying for the cause bit in spades. And the whole book turns into some kind of sermon. Collins doesn't just point out that absolute power corrupts absolutely, as she does beat you over the head with it then stick you in a gulag with it for twenty years.

The ending is twee and anti-climactic. Collins writes very well. Her story, however similar to other works, is a great read. Then her epilogue comes along and just makes you roll your eyes. Of course the bad guys from Capitol tumble. Of course the bad guys from the revolution tumble and the real good guys from the revolution take the reins. Of course Katniss ends up with one of her suitors. If you think about it, you know already which one: remember, the best buddy routine never works in teen romance.

Suzanne Collins can write. She can weave plot twists and paint settings quite well. Just not well enough to keep any but the novice reader guessing. Also only the novice readers are likely to not see the similarities the Hunger Games trilogy bears to other works. I give Catching Fire 5/10 and Mockingjay 4/10. What will I review next? Right now I'm finishing off the last seven of The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series by Kathryn Lasky, so it'll probably be them. Then I may just take a break from this reading/reviewing spree I've been on for a week or two.

2011-01-27T14:34:00.000+11:00

There's something quite Sisyphian about it all, maintaining one's mood. This boulder I heave endlessy upwards towards happiness, has inevitably crashed back down to the bottom of the hill where sadness fills the shadow cast by the very mountain I must climb yet again. I know the drug is working. I see some colour. My daughters' smiles, my wife's eyes. If it weren't for sodium valporate, my own personal chemical Rumplestiltskin, I wouldn't see these wonders. The desperate misery within would consume my wholly. But it doesn't. I can see some joy. I know the drug is working. I, like Zeus' former messenger, may be down in the cold darkness, but one day soon, I'll be up higher where there's warmth and light.

I pause often at this part of the cycle. I have to. My temper is more volatile and I see far more plots around corners. The plots aren't there of course, I know. I step aside in within my mind and look at the emotions like suspicion and rage, and tell myself it will be okay. Chemicals inside my brain are going nuts and fucking me over. There's no need for anger or suspicion. I breathe and tell myself these things over and over. I don't call it mindfulness, even though that's exactly what it is. I call it my own personal Jedi mind trick. This alone is enough to bring about a smile. I fire off a few Star Wars quotes and move on. As I do, I wonder what Sisyphus would have made of Yoda.

Book review 23: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. 10/10

2011-01-26T09:43:00.000+11:00

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach is a rarity. Until it came along, I could count the non-fiction books that made me a fan of the author on the fingers of one foot.

About six years ago, I bought first copy of Stiff in the Las Vegas airport. I started reading it the lounge and nearly missed my flight home, I was so engrossed. I spent much of the flight to LA giggling to myself and sometimes, laughing so loudly I annoyed other passengers. I finished it on the longer flight from LA to Melbourne. Other passengers asked what I was reading and wanted to borrow it when I was done. I didn't go straight home from the airport. Instead, I went straight to Borders. Bleary-eyed and probably quite smelly, I shambled to the counter to see if there was anything else by Mary Roach. There wasn't.

Stiff creeped me out, made me snort, giggle and laugh, and probably burned off several thousand calories by raising my heart rate right to the end. I've never been so hooked by a non-fiction book.

Roach's style isn't exactly tight, but it's succinct. She writes with dry, slightly self-depreciating observations and treats her subject with humility and respect. Immediately endearing. The subject could be perhaps the most morbid one could ever come up with. Instead of coming across as macabre or just plain sad, Stiff entertains, informs and delights. Roach's research is exhaustive and detailed; as far from boring as you can get. Footnotes perhaps even funnier and more interesting than the main text are scattered throughout. This book is brilliant.

At no time in any of my many readings of Stiff have my fingers itched for a red pen. The folk at Publisher WW Norton & Co must still have a giddy feeling when they remember seeing Roach's manuscript for the first time, the lucky blighters. Every publisher on the planet must envy them. It truly is a book to be proud of.

I give Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach 10/10. Buy it. Buy several copies and give them away as presents.

Since Stiff, Roach has produced a number of similarly styled books on subjects such as death, sex and traveling to Mars. I've read every bit of her stuff I've been able to get my mitts on. They're all great but none so wonderful as the first.

Book Review 22: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 3/10

2011-01-24T14:42:00.000+11:00

I had a nagging sense I'd heard this story before somewhere. Took me a while, but I figured it out. If you've not seen the movie The Running Man, rent it. Watch it. It has Arnie in it. And, it was based on a book by none other than Stephen King writing under the nom de plume Richard Bachman. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is in the same league as those countless rip-offs of Romeo and Juliet with vampires/werewolves/succubi/fallen angels. It might be entertaining and well-written, but it's still a rip-off of a classic. Some may argue that King's The Running Man isn't that original either, but that's not the issue.

The futuristic worlds are different. The Hunger Games' protagonist is a teenage girl, not the tough cop from The Running Man. That's about where the differences stop being so obvious. The Hunger Games is a fight to the death, broadcast by the powers-that-be to control the masses. The heroine is not interested in killing: she's only interested in surviving. The hardest part about that is her daily struggle for food. The Running Man is a fight to the death, broadcast by the powers-that-be to control the masses. The hero is a cop who got in trouble because he didn't want to open fire on people caught in a mad scramble for food.

Collins's style is tight and fun to read. The action is fast paced, the protagonist is developed nicely and the setting is very easy to picture when you shut your eyes. There's not to much gushiness either, which is nice. Katniss Everdeen may be a sixteen year-old girl, but she's a tough sixteen-year old and gushy isn't in her make-up. She's is believable and likable.

The real baddie, Capitol, is delightfully wicked the way only evil, crushing powers-that-be can be. The rest of the baddies and minor players are a bit two-dimensional. The love interest, fellow Hunger Games player (they're called called tributes) is a simple, unassuming fellow called Peeta. He's a bit wet, but overall not too bad. The story, even though you can guess what's coming pretty much all the way through, is great.

I was disappointed with the blatant unoriginality of The Hunger Games. I am really, really disappointed with Scholastic for not insisting Collins make The Hunger Games differ from The Running Man a little more. Because of this, I give The Hunger Games, what could have been a fair-dinkum original classic, a pretty crappy 3/10. Will I read the next two books Catching Fire and Mockingjay? Sure - just because I know the story already, doesn't mean it's not fun to read it.

Oh, and another thing... This is not the first time I've found myself mad with Scholastic. Some of their titles might be wonderful stories and are certainly popular, but they could be so much better. It's beginning to make it hard to approach a Scholastic title with the objectivity it deserves. I'm just sayin'...

Book Review 11-21: The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series by Kathryn Lasky. 6/10

2011-01-23T13:08:00.000+11:00

This latest mission of mine - to read all of Kathryn Lasky's Guardians of Ga'Hoole books - has been perhaps one of the more inspiring reading quests I've been on in a long time.

The series fits smack-bang into the YA market. It's epic fantasy with owls instead of humans (or elves, hobbits, orcs, dwarves... you get the picture) and it's brilliant. The books themselves aren't long. I managed to read ten of them in eight days. The plots are simple and the characters, even though they're owls, are remarkably human. Lasky's style is easy to read, as well as being fun. There's a bit of a redemption/anti-racism message in this series, but Lasky doesn't beat you over the head with it. It's nice to not be preached at.

The best thing about this series is its originality. Sure, it's post-apocalyptic and about animals instead of humans. Nothing ground-breaking there. The original bit is the depth of history and lore Lasky gives her world. Some of these owls aren't just ordinary owls: they're owls with superpowers. Brilliant. There's magic, classic good vs evil struggles, intrigue, war, a magical thingamajig and more - all from the point of view of owls. There's also plenty of references to poo. I've never known a YA reader not to like the odd poo joke and Lasky delivers in spades.

The series is let down a little by its continuity. Reading it, I got the feeling that instead of the books being so short and numerous, they were instead written as fewer, longer titles. If I'd not read them in order and closely after each other, I'd have had a hard time following them. Also, the terminology Lasky invents, though wonderful, isn't always explained frequently enough. In subsequent books in any such series, the few pars explaining the story so far et al should not be considered optional. If I'm right, and Lasky's work was originally longer works that have been split up into more, shorter titles by the publisher, then that publisher (Scholastic) should have paid a bit more attention to what they were doing.

If I'm wrong, and Lasky planned her works to be this short and numerous, then she may have fallen into the old 'I'm a published author! How dare you tell me my work could be improved?' trap. When penning an epic series, regardless of genre, it pays to have reader groups have a look at the books out of sequence. If the test subjects can follow the story, great. If not, a bit of explanatory editing is required. Every time a test reader puts up a hand and says 'I don't get it it?' is a chance to improve the end product. Either way, this is another case of a publisher dropping the ball. Scholastic, you get detention and a 1000 word essay on the importance of readers' groups.

I give Kathryn Lasky's Guardians of Ga'Hoole series 6/10. I'd have rated it higher if not for the continuity issues. Will I read more by Lasky? Abso-hooting-lutely!

Book review 11: Ritual by Mo Hayder. 6/10.

2011-01-19T19:55:00.001+11:00

Mo Hayder's first cop versus twisted sicko novel, Birdman, freaked me out. It was gritty, gruesome and gripping. The Treatment followed and I was less freaked out. By the time I finished Ritual, I was almost bored. Oh, it's just as gritty and gruesome as its predecessors, but Hayder's onto a formula and she's working it to death.

The baddies and their crimes are icky enough to satisfy even the most ick-thirsty reader. The minor players and the victims are well researched and given voices so real you'd think they live (or lived, as the case may be) just up the street. Great stuff. Playing second fiddle to the main protagonist is a police diver called Flea Marley. You can spot Hayder's plans for Flea and first violin, DI Jack Caffrey a mile away. Another little observation is how Hayder likes her protagonists tortured. Flea's grieving the loss of her folks. For a tough chick in a tough job whose family has a history of tough, dangerous hobbies, her grief is a bit overdone; she comes across, if you'll excuse the pun, a bit wet.

Then there's our hero, Jack Caffrey. It's often fun to see an author having fun with a character: you can really get an idea of just how the author feels about the individual. Hayder's got a bit of a Pygmalion thing going with dear old Jack. Shame really. At times you just have to roll your eyes and mutter, 'Jeez, Mo! Just bonk the dude and get it out of your system already.' Jack's a fairly believable copper in most ways, except he's the best looking and fittest of all the Mr Plods his age, and just a tad too brilliant and nice. His penchant for booze and hookers is too gushily forgiven because of his tortured past. Cue more eye-rolling.

Hayder throws the usual red herrings at you to try to keep you guessing who the bad guy is. She tried, but I saw it coming. If I can see it coming, so can most readers. After all, I aint no jenius. The Treatment and Birdman established her pattern pretty clearly. These things don't spoil Ritual too much. Despite all the eye-rolling and nodding, saying 'yup, that one's the killer right there,' Ritual is a good solid read to escape into for a few hours. Hayder does her research and it shows. Her work works.

I give Ritual 6/10. Will I read Skin and Gone; numbers four and five in Hayder's Jack Caffrey series? Of course. Just 'cos I'm a cynic, don't mean I can't enjoy a good, icky thriller. Even if I have to endure Hayder making cow-eyes at her top bloke.

Book reviews 8, 9 & 10: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic & City of Ghosts by Stacia Kane. 7/10

2011-01-13T15:13:00.000+11:00

Nice to have a new series to sink my fangs into. Off the bat, I have to say these books should come with an R rating. Violence and paranormal stuff is fine, but there's so much sex and drugs and so many seedy characters that I'm gonna try not to let my daughters get their hands on these until they're at least 30. Okay, sixteen, and then I'm gonna need a whole lot of therapy.

Very nice to read a futurist-type fantasy with a setting that doesn't involve some sort of nuclear apocalypse, plague or interplanetary invasion. Stacia Kane gives us ghosts. None of those benign live-in-your-closet type ghosts either. These spooks are nasty and for reasons never fully explained, they wiped out of lot of the living a couple of decades ago. Now they're controlled by the all-powerful Church and its witches.

The heroine Kane summons to deal with those specters not so well-controlled, is one tough little cookie called Chess Putnam. She's from the wrong side of the tracks. She had a nasty childhood. Now she's a witch with a nasty habit. Chess takes drugs. A lot of drugs. Over the three books, Chess's habit gets worse, as does her language and penchant for sex with shady characters. So far so good. Nice to have a protagonist who's not a bleeding heart or goody-two-shoes.

Then, the eyebrows start rising. Yes it's fantasy. No, it's not quite clear in the books what the kind or quality of drugs Chess takes are. She snorts speed like it's going out of style, but there are also 'Oozers', 'Dream', 'Cepts' and some sort of joints called 'Keshies'. Oh, there's booze too. Yes, she's a witch and may have some sort of super-duper constitution thanks to her arcane powers. But dammit, no junkie can take the punishment Chess does in her fights with ghosts and assorted human baddies, take such an enormous amount of drugs and then think as clearly about things other than her next fix. That's my main and only real gripe.

Kane's style is nice and tight. I like tight. The lingo she invented works. The world she's created is credible, remembering of course that it is fantasy. The supporting cast are so well-defined, clear-cut sleazeballs, thugs, pimps, hookers, dealers, bureaucrats, and priests (Elders) that they're almost comical. Great fun. The sex is hot, dirty and passionate without being too porno. A lot seems to happen in dark, dirty places and the scent of danger adds to the excitement. Not bad at all.

The fight scenes with ghosties get a little repetitive with Chess always at the very edge of her endurance, just about to die or go into withdrawal. Doesn't really matter because they're so gripping and original. The too-and-fro between her two main paramours also gets a little repetitive and predictable, but also still lots of fun. The plots are inventive and original enough to keep you guessing most of the time.

The ending of the third book, City of Ghosts was a tad anti-climactic. After the brilliant, action-packed grand finale, you're left blinking and waiting for more. Then it's just business as usual. Treat the last page or two as an epilogue and you'll be fine. An ending like that isn't really all that bad because it leaves such great space for more. I hope there is more. These three books are great. Read 'em.

Stacia Kane's Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic and City of Ghosts gets 7/10. Check out Stacia Kane at http://www.staciakane.net/

PS: I had a hard time getting these books in ebook format in Australia. City of Ghosts is available, but Unholy Ghosts and Unholy Magic aren't. Pity. Good thing I'm stubborn. I bought paperback versions just in case I couldn't obtain ebook versions while I'm overseas. If you can't buy these or any books as ebooks, don't download a pirated version. Get off your lazy bum, go to a bookstore (online or not) and shell out moolah for paperbacks. Booko will tell you where they're cheapest.

I picked up a few formatting problems with the 2009 Kindle version of Unholy Ghosts. I doubt they were editing/copy-editing/sub-editing problems. I won't say what they were. If I wasn't reading with my Mr Potato Head Angry Eyes, I'd never have noticed them. They didn't spoil anything for me and shouldn't for you.

I had a really dumb idea

2011-01-13T13:43:00.000+11:00

What the hell was I thinking? I mean, it's great to have goals, but sheesh! A weekly log of writing & reading's one thing, but weightloss? Shtoopid.

Really, my log should look like this.

This week 2: Read four books. Reviewed four books. Did a bit of writing but not enough.

Think I'll try rationing my time a bit better - you know; read less, write more? That kind of thing. Shouldn't be too hard to do since I'm now traipsing about in Germany & Italy. Hotel rooms are great for the time and isolation one needs for writing. I'll let you know how I go.

Thoughts on Tokyo...

2011-01-11T02:19:00.000+11:00

The tail end of my stopover in Tokyo included going to watch Sumo. Like many other things about Tokyo and Japanese culture in general, it was surreal. I was thrilled, intrigued and completely baffled by it. My only conclusion was that I must do it again when next I have opportunity.

Japan bothers me. The culture is complex and beautiful yet there's something a little Logan's Run - ish about it all. The mass conformity to a dress-code and system of manners, the sterility of the city... There's no rubbish on the tracks in the subway. Not even used chewing gum.

I envy the inhabitants of Tokyo but I pity them too. They have so much that the materialist in me admires longingly. Something, (maybe the artist, maybe something else) within me is troubled. I feel as if I've been witnessing a culture suffocating itself. The traditions, the topiary, the way they've turned food itself into art... Their literature... Their arts in all their forms are marvels of the world. Yet something, I know not what, pulls at me like gravity from an angle other than down. I fear these people are not truly free.

I leave Tokyo tomorrow. Two decades have passed between my first visit and this. And I hope my next is sooner. I cannot assess Japan: I've no pigeonhole for it. I can only wander and ponder, wide-eyed and anxious to return.

Book review 7: Room by Emma Donoghue. 6/10 (Really a 10/10)

2011-01-08T09:21:00.001+11:00

As I write this, I'm somewhere over an ocean on my way to Tokyo. I've just finished Room by Emma Donoghue and my insides feel they've just gone a dozen rounds with Iron Mike Tyson. I need pasta. I need to pace up and down and rub my hands over my face. I need to hug my kids. My hands are shaking: it's hard to type even though I'm in a business seat and the flight's smooth as a baby's bum. I found Room confronting. Very.

The style just blew me away. It's hard enough to write a thousand words in first person present tense. Donoghue does it for a whole book using the words of a five-year old. Well done indeed.

The plot is simple enough, but the story isn't. Not by a long shot. It's sadly all too realistic; you'll get what I mean when you read it. The story and the manner in which it is told deliver immense complexity and astute observations of the main characters. Donoghue takes you inside the heads of a two vastly different people who don't just share an experience, they are the experience. The ending is a little predictable, but even though I knew what was coming, I still wanted to applaud. I'm not saying if the ending is happy or sad. Read Room yourself.

The characters; Jack, his mum Ma and the supporting cast within Room and without, are written with frightening reality. Especially Jack. Donoghue must have some kind of mind-reading skill to get the insides of a five year-old's head so spot on. She didn't quite nail a couple of other non-centrals like cops or shrinks. The real heroine in the tale is Ma. Her struggles, triumphs and failures are there, warts and all. Something I really appreciated with Room was how real Ma is, how despite her flaws and weaknesses, her son Jack is her whole world and she his.

I gave Room 6/10. Mind you that's from a purely objective point of view. Room touched me for reasons you'll probably understand once you've read it. To me it's a 10/10. Do read Room. Do. I bought mine from Amazon.

What will I review next? Now that I've finally managed to get ebook versions of Stacia Kane's Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic and City of Ghosts, they're up next.

Book Review 6: The Gates by John Connolly. 9/10.

2011-01-05T14:04:00.000+11:00

John Connolly has delivered something special for YA and Adult readers alike. The Gates is brilliant.

The writing style is fun to read and flows beautifully. It has rhythm that's becoming harder to find in the YA market. It may sound strange, but the dozens of little notes - Connolly's asides to the reader - are quite wonderful and enrich an already fantastic tale.

I laughed out loud frequently. In fact, I laughed so often while I read this book that I was beginning to annoy others nearby. Not just by laughing either. Several times, I had to look up and go 'Wow!', even when there was nobody else in the room. While I read the last 15% of it in bed, I had a tough time stiffling the giggles and wows. My wife probably thought I was having convulsions of some sort. Either that or doing something she wouldn't want me blogging about, considering I was in bed after all.

The book isn't just funny. It's a great spooky story that will thrill youngsters every bit as much as Connolly's other work scares the pants off his more grown-up readers. The story has action, creepiness, gore, monsters, just a tad of pre-teen angst and more. Oh, it also has poo; essential for any good YA story, wouldn't you agree? JK Rowling could really have made Harry Potter et al more fun if she'd included poo.

The plot stands out because not only is so original, it's so well written. It often had me saying to myself, 'Gee, I wish I could make the Large Hadron Collider sound interesting and fun for a YA audience.' Think about it. The holy grail of geekery, quantum physics (and the possibility of creating a black-hole that could destroy the universe) and all, and Connolly comes along and makes it sound fun. For teens. That aint easy.

The protagonist, a lad called Samuel Johnson is written to a bit, well... different, shall we say. And he's spot on. The lead baddies are delightfully wicked. The not-so-bad baddies (some are even quite good, truth be told) are a hoot. The rest of the supporting cast are credible and three-dimensional.

The Gates gets 9/10 . Will I read more John Connolly? Tell you what: I'll keep his work on my shelves and in my Kindle and every now and then, when I feel like I deserve a special treat, I'll start reading one. I bought my copy from Amazon and when I see it in hardcover, I'll buy a couple of copies - one to read again, and one to keep in the 'no you touch it!' section of my bookshelf.

Book Review 5 : Aphrodite's Kiss by Julie Kenner. 4/10

2011-01-04T17:26:00.000+11:00

I'm not big on romance fiction. That's why it took me longer to read Aphrodite's Kiss than it normally takes me to read a book. Why did I start reading it to begin with? I've not read much paranormal romance. When I saw it on Amazon at a low price, I thought I'd give it a go to keep myself up to date. I'm sorry I did.

As a romance novel, Aphrodite's Kiss sucks. The heroine, Zoe Smith, is 25 years old, gainfully employed in a job requiring an IQ higher than her age and possesses super-powers. She shouldn't be flitting about like an absolute airhead/genteel old lady. She's forever coming out with little gems like 'Hera's handbag' and obsessing about what her mother thinks of her relationship status. Oh please.

Zoe's love interest is supposed to be a macho ex-cop but comes across as a limp-wristed dweeb. The supporting cast of mortals, even for jaded Californians, are way too accepting of the superhero stuff to be credible. Most of the non-mortals may as well be manikins, they're so bland. Only one, a fellow with the overused name of Mordichai, shows a little spice but not enough. What little action there is, is sloppy. The big final showdown is pathetic. As for the ending... You won't need Kleenex; you'll need a bucket.

If Aphrodite's Kiss is so awful, why did I stick with it? As a paranormal tale, the premise had such huge potential, that's why. I was prepared to tolerate the gushy gush-gush, just to see what happened with the paranormal stuff.

Kenner could have written a flat-out urban fantasy that could have made me forget to eat, sleep or drink till I read the last line. Superheroes spawned by the heroes of classic mythology, a hilarious ferret who can understand every language under the sun but has to play charades to communicate with mortals, slimy ghoul hit-men, a prophesy, a mystical thingamajig, a super-villain intent on taking over the world - Kenner had more than enough for a great tale right there. Her heroine has superpowers and super-charged senses. Oh what a ripsnorter of a read Kenner could have created. Then she overdoses the story with long, drawn-out gush and poor pseudo-erotica.

Aphrodite's Kiss gets 4/10 - 3 of those for reasons mentioned in the above paragraph. Will I read more Julie Kenner? Don't make me laugh. What will I review next? The Gates by John Connolly. I'm halfway through it and I can tell you already it's one of the best things I've read in a while.

2011-01-04T06:37:00.000+11:00

This Christmas and New Year's period has been a teensy bit busier, and stranger, than normal. For starters, I spent the whole time sober. First time since 1990. In fact, I've been dry since Jan 10, 2010. There are a lot of reasons for this sobriety which I needn't bore you with. The main one however, is having fluctuating moods as I do, too much alcohol, too often is bad. Crossing the streams bad. Now, I'm certain that the odd glass or two probably wouldn't hurt, but I've managed this far without it. Might as well stay dry. 'Nuff said

Another thing that's made the last fortnight different is the amount of work I've managed to to. I'm reading a lot more than I've been able to do since my eldest daughter was born. Thanks iPad. The ereader apps with the night feature are terrific for reading in bed. Somehow, I've managed to write a review/crit for every book I complete reading. For many years prior to becoming a father, I could read 4 or 5 books and produce 5000-8500 words of my own a week. I'm not quite back to that kind of pace, and don't expect to be for years to come. I am managing to knock off 2-3 books a week, with a review/crit for each one and churn out a lot more writing. The word count is probably only in the 2000-4000 arena, but it's still enough for me.

Now I'm not saying my increase activity with the written word and my sobriety are connected. I pretty sure they aren't. Not at all. What has definitely had an effect is a drug called sodium valporate. It's often used to help people with epilepsy. It also has remarkable effects on many people with bi-polar disorder. Me included. It acts as a mood-stabiliser. It puts a chain around my brain that won't let me go too far down the slope into despair nor up too high into manic ecstasy. I love and hate it. I still get the blues, but they aren't so bad. Love that bit. I don't get the manic highs either. Hate, hate, hate that bit. Oh, I still get energised every now and then. Sort of like I am now, but I'm hardly running amok. As much as I might whinge about it, it's actually something of a good thing.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. It's merely coincidental that my little plan came to be at this time of year. I've set a few goals I think are just a little higher than I'll probably achieve (Always a good thing. Never hurts to test oneself, does it?). They are: put out 4000 words per week, read and review/crit at least three books a week, produce one full novel and at least six novellas, and lose at least 15 kilograms.

And so, to keep an eye on this little project, Starting this week, I'll be posting a weekly snapshot of my progress that will look something like this:

Week 1. (That's this current week, by the way. It's not over yet so I expect the scores to be a lower than future weeks.)

Wordcount: 1563.
Edit count: 18 pages.
Wip type & progress: novella. 8%.
Weightloss: 0.25 kg's.
Books read/reviewed: 3.

This is an experiment, of course. Things might change from time to time. I may get hit with the blues and withdraw into a mental cave for a few weeks every now and then. Hell, I may give up all together. Or I may not. Who knows?

Frustrations.

2011-01-01T17:08:00.000+11:00

For my next review/crit I was going to read and review three Stacia Kane books: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic and City of Ghosts. Since I'll be traveling overseas for about two weeks, I was going to read them on my Kindle. D'ya think I could find Kindle versions available in Australia? Nup.

So, while I wait for Book Depository to deliver, I'll be perusing some of the usual suspects in my crime/thriller/horror sections: Mo Hayder, John Connolly, Steven King, Mark Billingham just to name a few. I'm unsure which I'll do next, but it will probably be something from at least one of these excellent scribes.

Book review 4: Silver Thaw by Amy Rose Davis. 8/10.

2011-01-01T13:25:00.000+11:00

Silver Thaw is a great little fantasy/horror novella. At approximately 28015 words, it does what a lot of other books try (and fail) to do with thrice the word count. Davis has pulled something out of the box that's a must for anyone fond of fantasy or things macabre. Brilliant.

The story is simple but implies massive layers of complex history, folklore and background that lets the reader's imagination glow like mystic runes. Davis doesn't bombard you with an explanation of every single detail. Instead, one of the aspects that makes her little tale so damned good is what she doesn't tell you. Heck, all you really know about the setting is that it's in northern mountain territory, somewhere, somewhen. That somewhere, somewhen is now a time and place I want to read more about. I hope Davis pens more in this setting.

The action is swift. The horror is chilling. The sex is titillating without being tawdry. The human characters are believable given the setting. At first I thought some of the characters' haunting by terrible pasts was a bit overdone until along came the baddie and then ooh whee! Read this story and you'll see what I mean. The emphasis is there for a reason.

The ending is fairly standard for a tale so short... sort of. Yes it's happy, but for how long? Nice thing about this baddie is, even though there's no mention of it in the story, you just know that there's more where it came from. Oh, I am looking forward to more from Amy Rose Davis.

Silver Thaw gets 8/10. Will I read more Amy Rose Davis? Absolutely. I bought my ebook from Smashwords
for $1.99 US but as soon as I find a printed copy, I'll buy that too and I won't mind paying a lot more for it either.

What will I review next? Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane. It might take me a while longer to do because it's the first in a series. I may decide to read and review the whole lot in one go. It's also proving frustratingly difficult to buy the Kindle version here in Australia.

NYE spent the best way in years

2011-01-01T03:05:00.000+11:00

Tonight I spent New Year's Eve in bed, until about 11.45pm that is. Then the fireworks started and my two dogs went nuts. So, sitting on the couch in the dark with a terrified German shepherd and panicking Rottweiller, I fired up the iPad and started reading. When I'd finished, I got up, hit the keyboard and scribbled the first draft of my next book review.

Lemme say, I've had a blast. If I'm going to make any kind of resolution, it's that I intend to spend more nights like this. It's 3.02am and I'm going back to bed feeling absolutely chuffed.

Happy New Year, folks. Peace on Earth and goodwill to all.

Book review 3: Edge by Jeffrey Deaver. Oh Deaver, what have you done? 2/10

2010-12-31T12:28:00.013+11:00

Jeffrey Deaver has been churning out top-sellers for decades. He's won awards aplenty. His work's been adapted for the big and small screen. He's even managed to secure the job of continuing the legend that is James Bond. He's a trained and practiced journalist. Dammit, the guy should know better. His latest work, cat-and-mouse thriller Edge, is disappointing and frustrating.

Edge loses points because it's badly edited. Considering the way the intro finishes, it should not have been written in the first person. Grade five schoolkids do that. The intro may as well have ended 'and I woke up and it was all a dream.' Coincidences and the protagonist's superhuman ability to have his escape plans and double-feints all work out perfectly, litter the crime scene like shell casings left by a psycho with an Uzi. Any editor worth his salt would have picked these up. Simon & Schuster Inc should really, really have pitted Deaver with an editor with the cahones to stand up to him.

The protagonist Corte is wooden and too perfect. One reason for his flawless level-headedness and cold devotion (possible loss of family) is hinted at with increasing detail just beautifully. Then it all goes belly-up when that reason turns out to be just homesickness. Pity. It could have been used nicely. Another is his disciple-like devotion to his dead mentor and finding said dead mentor's killer.

Parts of the dialogue, Deaver nails. Spot-on. Snappy. Great use of credible terminology. Other parts, like that of a 16 year-old girl, he like misses and like, smashes his like thumb like with the hammer. Like. Sixteen year-old girls can be handfuls, but they don't really talk that way. There's also the bizarre contrast to the air-head first impression of this teenager and the way she pans out.

After behaving the way Deaver wants us all to think a ditzy teenager behaves, tada! It's Superteen! This kid is: told she's a possible target for an assassin, almost abducted, locked up in a prison, abducted, shot at, gassed with smoke-grenades, nearly burned alive, escapes in and then crashes a car in the middle of a shoot-out then manages to just walk about as if everything's just dandy.

The protagonist's employer is another one of these pseudo-invisible government offices or agencies that is just too cliched to be plausible. To make matters worse, Deaver invents another mystical little operation to spice up a plot twist I saw coming a mile away. His assistant must be some kind of psychic quickling she can find out all the information she does in such a short space of time. This kind of stuff just doesn't wash.

Poor sub-editing sees Edge lose more points. Deaver's sub-editor... no, wait. He can't have had one. Must have done it himself. Unless of course, Simon & Schuster Inc screwed up again by sending another kitten to do a lion's job. Colons and semicolons paint the text like arterial spray in a sorority house slasher flick. Sentences are stretched by so many commas they've got ligature marks.

The plot is unoriginal and predictable. The twists are obvious. The red herrings may as well have been printed in neon. The ending is such a cliche I expected to see the line 'and they all lived happily ever after'.

Edge is a prime example of what happens when a publisher deifies a writer. Editors fawn and sub-editors become invisible.

Edge gets 2/10. I only saw it through to the end because Deaver wrote it. Will I read more Deaver? Of course. I want to see what he does with James Bond. Sadly, if Edge is anything to go by, I fear SPECTRE has finally beaten 007 and fully implemented its new world order. I bought my copy from Amazon.

What will I review next? Silver Thaw by Amy Rose Davis.

Book review 2: The Blood Countess by Tara Moss. 7/10. Me likey.

2010-12-29T09:53:00.006+11:00

I love supernatural stuff. Always have. Call me a stick-in-the-mud purist, but many of the new takes on established characteristics of supernatural folk set my teeth on edge. I'll take Anne Rice over Stephanie Meyer any day. Who the hell ever heard of vampires twinkling in the sunlight fer gossake?

When I saw The Blood Countess on Amazon, I groaned 'Not another one'. I needn't have worried. Moss didn't cover up a blatant rip-off of Romeo and Juliet by breaking the rules and adding vampires. She pulls you through a tale original enough to hang upside-down on its own two claws. The result? Me likey.

The Blood Countess is not one of these oh-so-serious manifestos that threatens fire and brimstone if you dare crack a smile. It's fun. Fun for lots of reasons. The plot itself is just a smidge formulaic, but there are none of those over-used surprise twists or red herrings that so many authors seem to think they have to have to create a decent story. It's not particularly scary, but there are enough creepy goings on to keep even the most die-hard horror buffs interested. The romance is kooky and not too gushy. The intrigue is written well enough that you don't guess the ending halfway through and it's very nice to get to the last page looking forward to the sequel.

What's wrong with it? Not much actually. It's a bit young for an old cynic like me but that's part of the fun. It doesn't take itself so super-seriously that you're left thinking the Moss must be every bit as unhinged as some of her villains. I'd like to have seen more blood and guts action, especially at the end, but even though it wasn't particularly gory, it was still creepy. Terms like 'gothic' might have been thrown about a little too much and the protagonist's home town probably didn't need to be mentioned quite so often, but these don't spoil the read.

I cringed a bit at some of the name choices. Still, Moss gets away with it by making the story so enjoyable and by using her considerable knowledge of the fashion and publishing industries. I've been in publishing. I've seen some of the pretentious crap that can go on like changing one's name to Morticia. It was also fun to see her tipping her hat to forerunners in the genre. The bad guy's (or bad thing's) evil plan itself is almost a homage to every comic book that ever had a super-villain who cried 'I shall take over the world! Muahahaha!' Even more entertaining was noticing Moss nicely pull off flipping the bird here and there too.

Moss writes her female protagonists well and even if she's reluctant to (publicly) slot her latest work into a pigeonhole, it's pretty obvious most of the readers who'll enjoy The Blood Countess are female and younger than me. After all, Pandora English is a 19 year-old young woman and I'm a 40 year-old bloke.

Is it 'chick-lit'? I hate that term. I refuse to apply it to anything I read or review. The Blood Countess is a paranormal tale. Booksellers may have a hard time choosing a section for it. Their problem. You'll have no trouble. Sort your books by author and put The Blood Countess in the M section and you'll do just fine. If you're not going to buy it, get to a library. Either way, it's worth it. The Blood Countess is great. Read it. I bought my copy from Amazon.

I give it 7/10. Will I read the sequel The Spider Goddess when it comes out? Yeasth, Misthtresss...

What will I review next? Edge by Jeffrey Deaver.

iPhone, iPad, Kindle, PC, Twitter, Facebook ... Aaargh!

2010-12-29T09:22:00.002+11:00

Syncing my Kindle PC accounts to my Kindle is easy. If I want to transfer my non-Amazon purchases that I made via my pc, all I have to do is copy the data to Kindle content via Windows Explorer. Simple. I can't do that with either iPhone or iPad. This isn't just annoying - It's just plain dumb. And rude. Mr Jobs, if ever we meet, you and I are having words. What's the point of having an iPad so I can read an ebook, write a review and post said review, if the cursed iPad won't let me read the ebook?

Next on my gripe for this fine Wednesday morn is the way Twitter and Facebook are treating me. Facebook won't let me track my friend requests. A stupid, frustraing oversight. As for Twitter, the only Twitter client I can find where, upon viewing a person's profile it tells me if @so-and-so is following me, is the Echofon app on my iPhone. Shtoopid. Tweetdeck for example, won't view a profile in its own application - it does it in Firefox which means I have to switch applications! What the hell is wrong with some people? To misquote another line from the delightful Mr Potato Head in Toy Story (1, 2 or 3 - I can't remember which) 'Did they all take stupid pills this morning?'

Also, for some reason only the gods below can fathom, Twitter and Facebook won't sync no matter how many times I 'allow' this function.

Spleen vented. Show's over folks. Move along, move along. I'll just do a quick proof of my review of The Blood Countess by Tara Moss before I post it. Then I might just go take a handful of Valium.

Bits & Bobs...

2010-12-27T17:31:00.000+11:00

Christmas is over. The extra family demands on my time aren't. This I'm not unhappy about one little bit. Today we hit the zoo, Miss4 got her face painted and I've been in slob mode all day. Brilliant. I might not be getting much writing done but I don't care. The knot between my shoulder blades is unraveling, Superwife is happy and all is right with the world. My family rocks. I'm even missing the in-laws who were with us for the past few days. Okay, I'm glad I can walk about the house starkers again, but it's also nice to have the joint noisy and full of people.

I'm also fiddling around with my new iPad and doing the odd bit of cooking. I might even turn off the tv tonight and read - on the new iPad with Kindle of course. Sooner or later, I'll get back into work mode. I've editing, corrections and formatting to do, more books to read and review (Mr Deaver and Ms Kane you're the next two in line) and an overseas trip for the day job to do. For now, all that can hurry up and wait while I enjoy this little spell of not doing much.

Borrow Mr Potato Head's Angry Eyes And Improve The Literary World!

2010-12-26T18:42:00.003+11:00

Usually I read a book I review twice. I read it once for the same reasons most people would read it. Then I read it again. The second time, I keep my mental red pen at the ready and borrow Mr Potato Head's angry eyes.

I watch the plot and characters develop. I look for plausibility. I watch how the writer observes the rules. I don't just deduct marks if any old rule gets broken. Some rules can be broken or bent if the writer knows what he's doing. Ignorance is not an excuse. Bad grammar makes my fingers itch for a red pen - most of the time. If a writer knowingly breaks a rule and lets it stand out, demonstrating his ability to write well, I add points. If he overdoes it to try to convince me he can write well and doesn't pull it off, blaaarp! Wrong answer. No dice, buster.

I don't bother summing up the story for a review. If you want to find out what the book's about, read it yourself. My review is my opinion of the story itself, my assessment of the skill of the author and a rating of the work.

I'm not scared of putting literary noses out of joint. Every writer I've ever met truly values the input of a good sub-editor and the advice of a good editor. All the writers I've ever met and probably most I haven't, need the input of a good sub-editor and advice of a good editor. Yes, there's a big difference between the two. Some editors however, are a tad slash-happy. Many stories need some filler. If it gets slashed back too severely, the reader's experience can suffer. If I notice this problem, it'll make it into the review also.

All in all, I don't write reviews to flatter writers or help sell books. I write and try to make what I write as good as it can possibly be. I adore reading the work of others who do the same. Luckily, there are many, many writers far more talented and skilled than I. Greedy of me, but I hope to discover many more yet. If my reviews please or help you find work by talented writers, great. If my reviews annoy, don't read them. Either way, feel free to put on your own angry eyes and comment. Be not fearful of bruising a writer's ego, especially mine. The more feedback writers receive, the more wonderful the literary world becomes.

How I Rate Books

2010-12-25T05:45:00.002+11:00

At the end of each review, I'll give the book a rating out of ten. Here's what those scores mean:

1/10 Don't bother. This was badly written, really needed an editor. It was dumb or simple plagiarism.

2/10 Give it a go, but I wouldn't blame you for giving up and tossing it in the recycling bin or deleting it from your ereader.

3/10 Not bad. I made it to the end without giving up and tossing it in the recycling bin or deleting it from my Kindle.

4/10 More fun than watching repeats of Mash on TV, but not by much. May have few a style or editing blunders.

5/10 Average. Once I've read it, I won't mind if I lend it to someone who then never returns it. I wouldn't miss it if I deleted it from my Kindle.

6/10 The story was good and the author can string a few words together in the right order. It can stay on my shelf or Kindle.

7/10 Now we're getting somewhere! This book was fun, exciting or scary enough to make going to sleep after reading it a challenge. This writer can write. Any blunders in style or editing are so small, they don't matter.

8/10 Oh boy. I like the paperback or ebook so much, I'll buy a hardcover and treasure it. You should too. The writing's top-notch.

9/10 You know the kind of book that once you finish, you immediately rush out and buy everything else the author has ever had published? This is one of those. The story's original and the writing's flawless. If they make a movie out of it, I'll be reluctant to see it for fear of the movie not living up to the book.

10/10 This book changed my life. Really. I'm going to re-read it again and again. I'll quote lines from it. It sets the bar. Everything I read or write have me asking 'is it as good as this book?'

Book review 1: When The Devil Whistles by Rick Acker. 3/10.

2010-12-23T11:44:00.002+11:00

This book had a lot of potential. That's not to say it isn't any good. It is an okay read if you're stuck on a plane and don't want to read the in-flight mag for the eighteenth time like I was. It could just be a whole lot better for three reasons.
The characters are cool, righteous, rich and good looking. Hardly a flaw among them. That's problem number one. They're too perfect.

Problem number two is the plot. It starts off okay, with a company being a front for some nasties from one of the Koreas. There's a murder or two and plausible-sounding private detective. Then it gets all convoluted at the end and I wound up thinking 'Huh? So this guy was on which side again?'

Number three is the big finale action sequence. To start with, the clue to how the hero saves the day was given away halfway into the book when the impossibly rich/good-looking/righteous lawyer is playing with a very expensive toy with a bunch of illegal attachments - the kind of illegal that an impossibly rich/good-looking/righteous good guy wouldn't have. Then there's how he uses it at the end. Without giving too much away, there's no way in hell Homeland Security would let this kind of thing #A happen and #B let it go without throwing the book at the whole lot of them. Consequently, the ending requires too much suspension of disbelief for a good thriller.

Acker does include enough detail of law and legal procedings to make that part of it sound plausible in much the same way Kathy Reichs or Patricia Cornwall do with their gory bits. The happy ending is twee, but let down by Acker's little question and answer bit about his religion in the pages after the end of the novel. That was a blunder. Inviting reader involvement is great but when the subject of the book is not religion, and then the writer starts getting preachy, it gets a bit icky.

All in all it gets 3/10. Will I read another Acker book? Yes, but probably only when I'm stuck on a plane and don't want to read the in-flight mag for the eighteenth time. I got my copy of this book from Amazon.

What book will I review next? The Blood Countess by Tara Moss.

Interuptions to the writing proc... Hey! My screen just stopped working!

2010-12-23T08:45:00.000+11:00

So there I was, peacefully minding my own business (by that I mean sticking my nose into everyone else's on Facebook and Twitter while occasionally doing a bit of editing) when along comes a new annoyance in my constant battle with uncooperative software and stubborn hardware. Phew, that was a long sentence. Maybe I oughta stick to an old editor's advice: If you can't say it in fewer than ten words, don't. He didn't see the irony that his rule had eleven words.

Anyhoo, my bigass fancy touchscreen decided not to play ball. The mouse pointer stuck in the middle of the screen and I couldn't unhighlight my text. Thank the gods for autosave. Hard shutdown and much use of profanities.

So, after half an hour of clambouring about under my desk, fussing with wires and dust, I can now see my work again. Well, I can see most of it. I dumped the new screen in a corner and resurrected an old, simpler screen. Yes, one corner is a funny blue color and there's crud all over it that won't wipe off, but it works.

And so, I have a new addition to my list of rules. # 19. Always have backup computer hardware.

Mood swings & blogging.

2010-12-13T09:47:00.000+11:00

Maybe I should have titled that 'Mood swings & blogging & every other damned thing in my life'. See, other than money, fame or the desire for both, there's a fundamental reason writers write: we can't help it. We HAVE to write. It's up there with with gravity, taxes and and Christmas music in shopping malls from November to January - you just can't avoid it.

What's also almost impossible to avoid is the way we write. Most writers I know write like traffic. Sometimes we rocket along. Sometimes we crawl. Sometimes, for no obvious reason, (at least to the observer) we just stop.

Every writer I know has, let's put it nicely, an interesting personality. Moods tend to fluctuate; hearts often worn fairly close to their sleeves. They can be infectiously enthuistic about their little 'missions' and can wrap up everyone around them in their joy. They can also slump down so deep into the blues that 'the end is nigh' might as well be tattooed on their brows.

At least that is the case for those among us who are not so heavily medicated we're little more than animated corpses (No, not zombies - no writers I know have ever had a hunger for brains, though we've all felt homicidal at times). I call my medication Rumplestiltskin. It offers so much, but there's a nasty little catch in the fine print.*

Yes, Rumple keeps my moods a lot more stable. Feeling that chemical bungy cord pull me back from the edge of a downwards mood swing is great. It makes those inexplicable stops in productivity a lot shorter. That's quite nice.

It also pulls me back from those lovely creative bursts that see thousands of words and great ideas simply flow onto the page. That sucks. It more than sucks - it's (expletive deleted) horrid. Unmedicated, sometimes the words are flowing so fast and bright that the rest of the world seems but a shadow. It's orgasmic. It's a joy I've never been able to reach any other way. Sex, driving at 300kph on an autobahn, recreational intoxicants - nothing has ever, ever come close to the supernova of joy that can be the hypermanic or manic state the bi-polar me can experience.

Medicated, all that goes out the window. Rumple kills the mood. It's like some enormous mental condom that numbs almost all sensation. Yeah, I get motivated to do some work, but much the same way I get motivated to eat a dry bit of toast. It might fill a gap, but there's nothing exciting about it.

Right now, I'm heading into what would normally result in me going into a frenzy of wordsmithery. I'm more active in my social media like Twitter and Facebook. I'm more productive at work and the keyboard's starting to get some more exercise. And I know I'm going to be cock-blocked by sodium valporate, aka Rumplestiltskin. So, dear reader, if I seem a little distracted, don't panic. It's not bah humbuggery or lack of sleep or me going into a downward spin. I'm in a good mood generally and all is right with the world... almost. I just get a little frustrated at times when I can feel the dial being turned down, knowing that I'm going to be missing out on the mental joyride of a lifetime.

* Not all writers need to be medicated. In fact I can think of a great many non-writers out there who should be medicated. It's just that on the whole, most artists I know, be they writers, painters, sculpters, musicians etc, seem more bonkers than the rest of the world. That's not a bad thing. We see the world in full colour while the rest of the inhabitants of this planet have to settle for shades of grey.

My answers to the Fantasy Novelist's Exam

2010-11-05T09:08:00.002+11:00

You may have seen this Fantasy Novelist's Exam posted by David J Parker: http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

Okay, first off, let's just ask ourselves who wrote up this exam in the first place. David J Parker. Who is this guy? A quick Wikipedia search tells me about a washed-up politician from Canada. Google isn't much more helpful. So, I guess David J Parker is either a washed-up politician from Canada (not a good pedigree for a fantasy fiction expert... oh, wait...) or a complete nobody like me.

Now, the exam:

1: Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages?

Hellooo, if nothing happens in the first fifty pages of any book, it's not much of a book.

2: Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage?

Huh? Okay, Eddings' character Garion was sort of a farmhand, but his parentage wasn't mysterious - they were just dead. Dumb question. Besides, the genre here is fantasy - more primary industry than tertiary. Otherwise it might be called sci-fi.

3: Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it?

Oh, please. C'mon people. Fantasy, remember? Impossible dreams and all that.

4: Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme bad guy?

Okay, that's a pretty common cliche. I'll give you that one, David J Parker, whoever you are.

5: Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?

Again, Fantasy. F A N T A S Y. Of course there a magical thingamajigs.

6: How about one that will destroy it?

See answer to question 5.

7: Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?

Wait a minute. How many fantasy novels have you read that really employ that old chestnut? Let's run through a few, shall we? Eddings - Guilty. Tolkein - Umm, not really. Feist - No. Moorcock - Nup. Leiber - Not on your nelly. Howard - Nope. Herbert - Kind of, but then Dune was more sci-fi than fantasy. I think you see where I'm going with this one.

8: Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?

You're sort of on the money there David, but the random bit is a bit harsh. Mostly characters like this - you know, gods, the living force of the prophecy itself given voice, a random stranger who remembered something long ago - those kind of characters, seem to show up just when the usual searches for information aren't doing much.

9: Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?

The greek gods seemed to do a lot of that stuff, but really only Eddings seems to be particularly guilty of this one. Maybe you've got a thing against Eddings, David?

10: Is the evil supreme bad guy secretly the father of your main character?

That's just plain dumb. Darth Vader is the most obvious reference here, but he wasn't the supreme baddie. High-ranking, yes, but hardly the head honcho. Besides, Vader was from a genre more sci-fi than fantasy.

11: Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician?

Let's just look at that, shall we? Most of these fantasy worlds have more than one king. Hell, even Tolkein had a bunch of different top dudes. His elves and dwarves were nobody's fools. The hobbits didn't really have much in the way of royalty. Only one old guy there really 'duped'.

12" Does "a forgetful wizard" describe any of the characters in your novel?

I've not read any that really fit this one. There are a few cases where wizards set to looking things up in memoirs or rifling through dusty old libraries for ancient scrolls. But being forgetful? Not really helpful for even a really dodgy plot unless the wizard in question finally remembers what he's forgotten in the nick of time to save everyone, destroy the cursed thingamajig and set a crown on the noggin of the rightful heir to the throne.

13: How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"?

Now this is a bit harsh. Not all characters have to be quick-witted and sneaky. There's almost always at least one honest guy, even if he is just a hired goon.

14: How about "a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons"?

Gandalf was good at that, but that made it fun. Haven't really come across many others though.

15: Do the female characters in your novel spend a lot of time worrying about how they look, especially when the male main character is around?

More dumb. For generations, females all over the world have been brow-beaten into thinking their natural faces aren't good enough and that they need to be covered in cosmetics to be attractive. Of course that kind of crap infects novels. Not just fantasy either. Ever read any historical romance, David? Pick up Sense And Sensibility again. I dare you.

16: Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?

Huh? That's fairy tale stuff. Watch Shrek, David. A fine example of how to take the piss outta fairly tales.

17: Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals?

What? There's always some kind of stereotypical character in almost every novel in every genre.

18: Would "a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword" aptly describe any of your female characters?

Fer gossake, that one's even dumber than number 15.

19: Would "a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan" aptly describe any of your female characters?

See above.

20: Is any character in your novel best described as "a dour dwarf"?

Tolkein seemed to make best use of Dwarves, and they weren't exactly dour. Grumpy and violent maybe. Dour? Look it up in a dictionary, David.

21: How about "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"?

How about characters torn between loyalty to their house and the true love of their lives? I think I read a book like that once... Romeo and Julie-something...

22: Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different?

Different? Different from whom?

23: Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?

Lets see... Kids are sometimes under four feet tall. Are they funny?

24: Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy?

Of course not. Sometimes they're used to, oh I don't know, CROSS AN OCEAN???

25: Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?

David, what the hell has a hay baler got to do with fantasy? Maybe we should have a genre like 'swords, sorcery and steam-irons' or 'fantasy with some real, mundane modern inventions thrown in'.

26: Did you draw a map for your novel which includes places named things like "The Blasted Lands" or "The Forest of Fear" or "The Desert of Desolation" or absolutely anything "of Doom"?

You forgot "Here Be Dragons" and "Dead Man's Chest".

27: Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you've read the entire book, if even then?

Oh, I get it. You were made to study Chaucer when you at school, weren't you. Let me guess, you too were forced to ready the academic's foreword and got bored out of your bean?

28: Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?

Epic fantasy is great for this. You could sew The Hobbit, Fellowship of The Ring, Two Towers and Lord of The Rings together and then split it up into three, five, six or twelve books if you wanted to. If a book is a part of a trilogy, it's more likely so because of the advice of the publisher.

29: How about a quintet or a decalogue?

I feel like a broken record sometimes.

30: Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?

Not if you have any brains or are really, really well paid and popular writer who now doesn't need the money and can do whatever the hell you want and don't have to listen to editors. Compare the page count of Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone to that of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

31: Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you're still many sequels away from finishing your "story"?

Question: Did the previous book you wrote get published? If so then a sequel is probably worth writing, isn't it? It's not 'I need to write eighteen books to finish my story'. It's more like 'I'd like to write eighteen more books to milk this thing for every cent I can.'

32: Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books?

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Every writer worth his or her salt creates at least some sort of background story for their characters. They're the building blocks for any manuscript.

33: Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far?

Oh, so maybe it's Jordan you've got a chip on your shoulder about, not Eddings.

34: Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group?

Let's reverse that. Dungeons and Dragons came about largely through work by the likes of Fritz Leiber and Robert E Howard.

35: Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?

What world are YOU from?

36: Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?

What the hell has that got to do with fantasy?

37: Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?

Day vid jay par ker.

38: Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named "Tim Umber" and "Belthusalanthalus al'Grinsok"?

No, but I really don't like the name Clarence.

39: Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?

Does sci-fi involve rocket ships or cyborgs?

40: How about "orken" or "dwerrows"?

Or nano-bots or aliens?

41: Do you have a race prefixed by "half-"?

Or self-aware computers?

42: At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?

What is it with you and Tolkein? He wasn't the only dude to write fantasy.

43: Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG?

See, now we're just going back to question 34. What makes you think I play rpg's anyway? I like backgammon and solitaire.

44: Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG?

I downloaded a clone of the classic '80's game Space Invaders. Sometimes I play that too.

45: Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast?

No???

46: Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls?

Of course not! They're for scantily-clad wenches with ample bottoms serving ale in tankards to mercenaries meeting to plan their next sortie to kill a dragon.

47: Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don't?

I'm not exactly sure about how our democratic process works either, but I seem to get along just fine. It's my story. If I wanna have dukes, viscounts, serfs, kings, peasants and a few other titles that I merely invented on the fly, then I will.

48: Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?

Fantasy, remember David? None of those nifty transporter pods or faster-than-light rockets.

49: Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won't break the plot?

What, you mean disclose the terrible secret that's haunting them from their deep, dark past?

50: Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as "fireball" or "lightning bolt"?

Hmm, let me see... Could they also use spells to heal wounds or turn them invisible?

51: Do you ever use the term "mana" in your novel?

No, but I do use the term 'Have at you!' in every single fight scene.

52: Do you ever use the term "plate mail" in your novel?

Do crime novels use terms like 'trace' or 'perp'?

53: Heaven help you, do you ever use the term "hit points" in your novel?

Oh, deary me. You're kidding, right?

54: Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs?

Do you know that getting the dna results from 'the lab' usually takes about a month?

55: Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest?

Can't they? I wish I was in a fantasy novel. I'd never need to go to the toilet.

56: Does anybody in your novel fight for two hours straight in full plate armor, then ride a horse for four hours, then delicately make love to a willing barmaid all in the same day?

No, but they do spend a lot of time trying to decifer old runes.

57: Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it?

You know, I watched Kull when I was a kid and I really wanted one of those big throwing star things that he had. My dad have me a boomerang and the first time I threw it and tried to catch it, I broke two of my fingers. When they healed, I made my own magic staff like Monkey had.

58: Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar?

Duh, you don't stab people with scimitars. You chop them in half with scimitars. You stab people with dirks or daggars. Even I know that.

59: Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor?

No, but I have thought of luring one armour-clad bad guy under one of those giant magnet things you find in wrecking yards, but then I get stuck because I find myself thinking if there's a giant magnet thing, then there might be cars or space ships or hay balers...

60: Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more? [info]

Even Eddings and Feist made points on numerous occasions about the weight of weapons. But, there's a cure for it - the magic weapon that seems to weigh nothing when weilded by its owner!

61: Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?

Hmm, time for more Austin. Pride and Prejudice this time, I think.

62: Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns?

What about forced rhyme?

63: Is your hero able to withstand multiple blows from the fantasy equivalent of a ten pound sledge but is still threatened by a small woman with a dagger?

ALL small women are threatening, David. They're kind of like mice: they couldn't possibly hurt you, but they're little, and they scurry about and make squeaky noises.

64: Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man?

I've seen Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I know an arrow to the chest only knocks you flat for a few minutes.

65: Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal?

Ever been really hungry and found that bit of cold toast didn't really taste that bad? I bet if I'd been riding a horse all day while wearing armour and not going to the toilet, I'd eat just about anything and think it was delicious... After I finally got the chance to go to the toilet, of course.

66: Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead?

David, tundra-dwelling nomads drink wine. The low-lifes in the bars with the scantily-clad wenches with ample bottoms drink mead or ale.

67: Do you think that "mead" is just a fancy name for "beer"?

It's not? Wait a minute. I know a few writers. I reckon 90% of the ones I know regularly drink booze. Ask any boozer what mead is, David.

68: Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?

I like to mix things up a bit. Some have three countries but no ruler. Some have multiple gods but no country. Others have several rulers, many gods but no country.

69: Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves' guild?

Heh. Check your fantasy shelves again, David. The most organised and most numerous group of people is ALWAYS the church.

70: Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death?

Villains like to kill things and usually any excuse will do, wouldn't you say?

71: Is your story about a crack team of warriors that take along a bard who is useless in a fight, though he plays a mean lute?

That bard also has useful contacts in every known land and is the secret crush of the Princess, so watch who you're calling useless, buster.

72: Is "common" the official language of your world?

I prefer "The King's Tongue".

73: Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before?

They thought about it. All the time. They were just too scared of the wargs, trolls and ghosts that haunted the tombs to do anything about it.

74: Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings?

No.

75: Read that question again and answer truthfully.

Hang on, I'll check. Nope, the answer's still no.

progress, progress, progress!

2010-08-24T13:16:00.001+10:00

I've been watching the the digital publishing world as an outside for a while now. It's been a lot of fun so far. There are ereaders aplenty, and a real scramble among the various major players to see who gets their ebook format to be the industry standard. So far, it seems Amazon might have the lead with kindle, but iBooks is sure to muscle in in a big way. Amazon's great and all, but gee whiz, iTunes is just so damned easy!

With all the hooh hah going on in the trade, as well as real, made-from-paper books being harder and harder to get into, I've made a little decision. Over the next month or two, a little change is gonna happen. First of all, there's the website. Then there's the digital release of books 1, 2 & 3 - all at once.

Now all that might sound simple, since the books are written and just need a little tweaking before I'm happy (is an author every really happy with the state of their work before it goes to print???) and hey, how hard can it be to create a website?

Tell you what. I'll journal the progress in here. For now, I'm off to my major shopping centre to buy an iPad, strictly for research purposes you understand...

sjbgilmour

Out of the dark.

2010-05-24T11:08:00.000+10:00

Whee! Nine weeks ago, my second daughter was born. I can tell you, it's been a real hoot. Yes, I'm sleep deprived and exhausted, but it's great. Superwife is fine, daughter number one is fine and all's well with the world. It's been a completely different experience this time around. I'm not smoking. I'm not drinking. My crazy moods are more well-managed than ever before. The arm and shoulder are on the mend, and even though I could probably lose a few kilograms, I'm fitter than ever. I'm even getting my vocabulary back.

Being strapped for cash, I'm used to. Having trouble finding things to say or write abnout, I'm not. Quite odd really. Until now, this lovely little nappy-filling machine seems to have existed by consuming both milk and my vocabulary in equal measure. For the last two months I've done almost no writing at all. Hell, I've hardly even done any proofing or editing. Still, that little light at the end of the tunnel has drawn ever nearer. Sleep. Precious sleep is no more the stuff of fantasy. It's real and it's mine almost every night. The result is amazing. I'm back at the keyboard and the words are beginning to flow again.

The break in my writing has come in quite handy, even though I've found it very, very frustrating. With fresh eyes, my manuscripts (Yeah, yeah, I know. There are a few of them) have become very easy to edit. Text needing work, slashing, or treasuring now stands out like the proverbial. Much of it I'd have missed a few months ago. Also, plot ideas I'd have stewed over before are now much easier to work in. It's nice.

Also nice, is the ever-so-gentle pressure, no scratch that. Let's call it 'support' from family and friends for me to publish again. And so, dear readers, that's my project at the moment - day job and fatherhood duties permitting of course. I promise I'll blog, tweet and facebook my progress more frquently from now on.

Swinging Straits

2010-02-13T12:09:00.000+11:00

Righteeho... I'm no bard but I have had some time on my hands of late:

Swinging Straits.

Up once more, my course is set. Immeasurable, inexorable as is Sisyphus’ route.
Safe now, past sixty degrees. There’s light enough to navigate icebergs so cunningly camouflaged.

Northeast this time. The wet has come again. Again minds migration steers through its tempests. Heave ho, billowed sails haul me. The deck is wet yet, frostbite free, my feet hold fast.

Winds propel me on. Spurred by good news and past ill, I tack. Equatic spirals blind my compass. Past Capricorn to Cancer, the helm holds true. O’er the crest till tropics weather. Ten degrees further hides a maelstrom.

Lightning! Oh crazy beacon, strike my tiller. All hands! All hands!
Spun, the tiller sets. Up or down, again I stray from centre. With passion lost, my blindfold course is set again.

My poles, my poles. Shall I dally with penguins or face fearsome bears? How odd that in such glare or shade, my passion’s stronger than when seas, even torrid, are more readily sailed.

sjbgilmour. Jan 31, 2010.

2009-12-18T17:56:00.001+11:00

Hiyall. Been a while. Writing schedule's back on track, goddesses are in their heavens and almost all is right with the world. Must admit to great amount of wasted time perfecting Miss3's frog enclosure. Much time and effort (and a little expense - hey I'm allowed to spoil my kid now and then aren't I?) has been put into this enterprise, however it's been worth it. Procrastination at its best.

Aside from the writing excuse for not blogging, I've been in recruiting mode. I hate recruiting. I feel for those poor editors and agents out there, whom I follow on twitter. Poor buggers inundated with crap from misguided hopefuls with no talent for writing, spelling or even drafting a half-decent resume or query letter. Lots of junk and little substance. Depressing. Seek.com provided me with hundreds of applicants. I booked twelve interviews. Five showed up. One got hired.

Now that the dial's been turned from 'recruiting' to 'snafu' (Situation Normal: All Fucked Up) I can spend more time being happy.

Happy's a big thing for me. It's no secret that I met my wife online and my tag line was 'Happysam'. Haven't been very happy lately. Tonnes of pressure's just fallen from my shoulders. Come tomorrow, I'll be bouncing off the walls. Having just done the hiring and follow-up calls to the lucky one and four disappointed, right now all I want to do is sit in a dark room and rock back and forth.

Seeya soon when I've recovered.

sjbg.

Thlot Pickens

2009-12-08T08:57:00.000+11:00

Heh. A week of non-scribbling has given the creative part of my brain time to come up with some new plot ideas. Orders have been placed. Size/width matrices have been formulated that may help us increase stock-turn. Truly amazing yard-tidying undertaken and best of all, Miss3 has started to do no's 1 & 2 on a grown-up loo. I've done and survived it all. Now, with only caffeine and lingering traces of nicotine in my system, I have a slate clear enough to allow me time to write and more importantly, I have the urge and ideas needed to do so.

My protagonist has a few issues. Most of them I know quite well (I'll not give too many secrets away here) like insomnia for example. Now, to hammer it all into my ms before arthritis locks up my fingers completely. This new surge of literary creativity should bring my ms well up close to the 80-90k word count target I've set myself. For now, It'll be head down, bum up for a while. If I don't blog again for a while, Have a happy silly season, folks.

Word count compulsivisms

2009-11-26T09:11:00.000+11:00

So close to finishing a draft now I can smell it. My dilemma? Words. Not too many: too few. Just shy of 50k. Fear my little tale will be ignored for being underweight. Hmm, what shall I do? Add dialogue? Nope, too boring. Add a plot twist? Another one? Don't think so.

Sex. The ultimate cure. So far, I've got brutal murders, action, delightfully flawed characters and a protagonist every bit as loopy as the bad guy. Think he needs to get laid. Heinlein's ranting in my noggin. 'Writing is best done behind closed doors and wash your hands afterwards' (from The Cat Who Walks Through Walls). Best stop procrastinating and get on with it...

Silly Season Bah Humbuggery

2009-11-25T12:06:00.000+11:00

'Tis the season to be cynical. Christmas in Australia and the rest of the English-speaking world bothers me profoundly. I get it's a time for families to come together and for holidays. I get it's a time for reflection and goodwill towards other less fortunate. What I don't get is why a date of religious significance must be such a money-spinner.

Following no particular religious path, the seemingly minor differences between religions and the troubles they create never cease to baffle me. If I were a religious fellow, I'd be offended by the commercial ruckus kicked up about the supposed birthday of the deity I hold most dear. I've read at least one version each of most of the major religious texts about and can't recall any instructing to me max out my Visa card.

I give gifts when I feel like it, not when the calendar says I ought to. My long-suffering wife gets flowers and other gifts when there's no reason other than I feel like giving her a little something that says I love her. If I'm in trouble, I say sorry. If we have a birthday or an anniversary, we go out for dinner. Simple as that.

Attendance compulsory Christmas parties also seem quite a waste of time. Spend five minutes in a room with people you only see once a year and you realise why you only see them once a year. This year, a barbeque in the backyard and a few gifts for Miss 3 ought to do it.

Four paragraphs of griping done. My spleen is vented. And so, in the true nature of Christmas as I understand it, I wish everyone good health and good fortune. To those less fortunate than myself, my thoughts are with you. Merry Christmas everyone. May there be peace on Earth and goodwill towards all mankind.

Harlequin Shmarlequin

2009-11-24T14:23:00.000+11:00

The sky’s not falling folks. What we’re seeing is progress, pure and simple. It’s not always nice and sometimes surprises us, but you can’t stop it and complaining about it doesn’t do squat.

So Harlequin has itself a self-publishing arm. Nothing new about that. Lots of vanity press about. Problem is: vanity press just isn’t that highly regarded. What the publishing world is about to see is something that happens in manufacturing all the time.

The cycle goes like this: A good brand temporarily debases its name by outsourcing design and supply to a generic factory, usually in China or India. Every time this happens, even if the quality of the product doesn’t suffer, the reputation of the brand does for a while. Customers don’t like it. Retailers don’t like it. Other brands smirk for a bit. Then, when the smoke has cleared, the customers get over it and the retailers get over it. The other brands stop smirking and do the same thing because now the brand that they were smirking at has a competitive edge.

Harlequin’s not the first mob to offer a self-pub function. Won’t be the last, either. Lots of writers choose to self-pub for legit reasons, but it’s fairly well established that most do so because they’re not good enough to be picked up by legit agents or publishers. Harlequin knows it. Deep down, we all do. They’ll let the sloppy manuscripts have their fifteen minutes, but that’s about it. The good writers will still go through the same rigours they always have. Their reward will be more marketing oomph and a darn sight more than fifteen minutes of fame.

Harlequin’s self-pub function has given them a competitive edge. The extra revenue means more cash to throw about in bidding wars and more marketing for their legit titles. That means every other house will have to do the same thing. The sooner we all get over it, the better.

Agent Provoker

2009-11-13T16:20:00.000+11:00

Tada! My first blog post. Blame Twitter. One hundred and forty characters aint enough anymore, ergo blog. What's this nobody on about? There are zillions of things folk who tweet are up in arms about. What got my interest is the argument about the necessity of literary agents.

My day job is in retail. I work in my family business to ensure I've a stable income for my growing family. The poor devils have to depend on me, so I have to provide. In what seems like a past life, I was a researcher, sub-editor and eventually writer for a newsletter and book publisher. I still write. One day, I may even produce something which I'll need an agent to flog. There, you can see which side of the fence I'm on already.

Hold your horses. There's fine print. I mentioned working in the publishing industry and being a writer for a reason. I work a lot in a job that has nothing to with publishing. I have a young family that barely spares me the time and energy to read a coffee mug, let alone a book. When I have got time, I bang away at my computer. The result? Even having worked in the trade, I know nothing about the current state of the publishing industry. I have no clue about who to approach about anything in it, especially how to get a book published.

I know I'm not the only one. There are more unpublished scribblers out there than there are published. If even a tiny percentage of them are like me, then the need for good literary agents won't go away.

Here's the fine print. I said good literary agents. Like any profession, there are good and bad people in that profession. Should the time come for me to seek the services of a good agent, I'll want the best I can find to represent me. It'll be sort of like taking my dog to the vet. If I try to fix my furry friend's torn knee ligament it will be a painful, messy failure, for which I would be sent to jail. If I take my dog to a bad vet and the dog dies, I'll want the vet sent to jail.

If I try to publish a manuscript myself, since I know nothing about it, I won't do a very good job. Though I won't get sent to jail, I'll almost certainly disappear into the black hole of wasted talent that is the fate for so many self-publishers and victims of vanity press. My manuscript will die. If my manuscript is represented by a bad agent, it won't get much exposure. It won't sell and it will die.

I will want someone who knows their onions to take the life of my precious manuscript in their hands and find it a good home where it (and hopefully my career as an author) will flourish. I will want a good agent. I'll pony up whatever the going rate is for good agents to keep my manuscript alive and thriving. Yes. I will want a good literary agent. Almost every writer should. If they don't then one should assume that they know the game inside out. The catch is acquiring that knowledge will use a lot of time which could be better spent writing.

Phew. That was fun. Also I want anyone who reads this to know that I'm not trying to curry favour with anyone, regardless of their profession or the possible future need I may or may not have for their services.

sjbgilmour.