Note: This is not a collection of hilarious one-star reviews, but rather a post on reviews that are not hilarious. Or useful. Or worth writing. I generally try to remain positive on this blog. Today, however, I’m going to be as negative and sarcastic as your average one-star Amazon reviews. I read a lot of [...]
Imperium Giveaway Results
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First of all, Merry Christmas to all my readers and the great writers and readers I’ve connected with on social media. You guys rock and have made a good year great. Second, today is the day of the Imperium giveaway. I rolled the dice like a good gamer ought to, and the winners came out: [...]
Book Review and Giveaway: Imperium (Nicholas Olivo)
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Since purchasing my Kindle, I’ve been consuming a steady diet of books by indie authors (in between heaping helpings of Steven Erikson’s Malazan series). As with traditionally published books, results have been mixed – a couple of turkeys, some serviceable-yet-forgettable first efforts — and then there’s Nicholas Olivo’s Imperium, which made me an instant fan. [...]
Box Set Recollections
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I imagine every writer has one indelible moment that defined their reading lives — a single book or reading experience that eclipses all the rest and becomes the moment of “that’s when I knew.” For me, that moment was my twelfth Christmas, when my mom bought me the Foundation Trilogy box set. I hadn’t yet [...]
Why Is Throwing Away Books So Hard?
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Like most writers I know, I have a room full of bookshelves, all of them overflowing. Some have been read. Many haven’t. Most, I consider indispensable. A few, I have resolved to get rid of, but that’s like saying I want to be the world’s first ham-juggling world champ. I can say it all I [...]
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Kindle
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If you would have told me two years ago that I’d be a Kindle owner, I’d probably have laughed. My initial distaste didn’t stem from dead-tree Luddism (although I have been accused of such several times). I was reading e-books on my Palm Zire long before the Kindle came around. I was turned off by [...]
My 10 Favorite Books on Writing
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I realized belatedly that maybe I should have picked a snappier, less self-centered title, like 10 Books On Writing You Must Read in Order to Not Be a Total Asshole, but, whatever, too late now.) A friend recently asked for my favorite books on the craft of writing. I had originally intended to go through [...]
Mass Effect: Your Fantasy Novel is Too Long (And What to Do About It)
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And, right on cue from the previous entry: I’m in the middle of a fantasy novel at the moment (which shall remain nameless because I’m about to heap a lot of unfair judgment on it), and its leisurely pace is painfully reminding me of a common problem with fantasy novels: too many of them take [...]
Half-Witted, Stuck-Up, Scruffy-Looking Book Hoarder
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Some people’s reading histories have formidable pedigrees. For example, I have a close friend whose favorite book of all time is Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Another speaks highly of Stephen Jay Gould. Dig through my literary history, and you’ll find nuggets of Melville and Dostoevsky buried under broad strata of Dragonlance. My earliest reading memories from grade [...]
Zen in the Art of Bradbury, Or, Buck Rogers Needs Blood to Survive
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Whenever someone brings up the subject of Westerns (which is pretty much never), I tell them that my favorite three Westerns are Tombstone, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Unforgiven. I love them not only for their inherent awesomeness, but because collectively, they cover all the Western narrative bases. Where Tombstone is a straightforward, rollicking adventure, [...]
