Author of the Princelings of the East fantasy and Viridian System scifi series
Bad reads. Two books I don’t recommend, that the librarian inflicted on our bookclub recently. I think she hasn’t read either of them. Bear in mind that I’m one of the younger members of our bookclub, even if I am, officially, retired!
It’s Fridayflash time! I’m a week late with this one, as I explained last Friday, but I think this one’s worth it. Chuck Wendig is back with a subgenre mash-up – and you know how I like those. I got
Old Wives’ Tales is the prompt for the month’s Fiction in Fifty words #Fi50, the brainchild of the BookShelf Gargoyle. I enjoy doing these miniature stories, the purpose of which is to create a full story in exactly fifty words.
Finding time to read: you remember I started the month with the announcement I was doing the Clean Sweep ARC Challenge again this month? I thought you might like to know how it’s going at the end of week 3.
Uncorking a Lie is the sequel to Decanting a Murder, which I reviewed last year. I’m delighted to be reviewing this book as part of the Great Escapes Book Tour. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway after you’ve read the
Termagant. I didn’t even know what it meant (I’m not sure I do now) but it was a random ‘roll two dice’ to get a combination title from Chuck‘s lists two years ago. I didn’t remember it, either, and only
Today’s question for the Book Blogger Hop from Coffee Addicted Writer is: If you read a book you ended up hating, would you stay away from future books by that author, or would you give them a second chance? (submitted
I featured Abducted Life in a launch party last autumn, and took advantage of the special offer on the book. I don’t often read YA, but this one was special, as you can tell from the opening chapter/excerpt I posted
So there was this picture on the Story Reading Ape’s blog that he’d reblogged from somewhere else. Brilliant prompt, I thought. If you look carefully at the bottom, you’ll see it’s one of our favourite flash fiction venues. It’s 1000
Reflections… As far as I was concerned, the A to Z Listless Challenge lived up to expectations. That is, after all, what the A to Z Hosts want to hear. The online survey gave options that I answered truthfully. They
The Camelot Kids is Ben Zackheim’s second series, or at least I think so. He started publishing it after the Shirley Link series, and I’ve already reviewed a few of those. I read Part 1 of the Camelot Kids without realising
Compost – one of my favourite subjects, since I have done time as a volunteer in Norfolk’s award-winning Master Composter programme. The incident of the pills described here happened to one of my neighbours, and therefore the question of ‘how
The Clean Sweep ARC Challenge runs throughout May and it’s one I look forward to each year. I should have posted Monday, but was too wrapped up in my own problems. Now I’ve got an excuse to post on May
Doing writing research is not something I do a great deal (see my U post for the A to Z Challenge to discover why). This month the Insecure Writers Support Group suggested tackling the question: What is the weirdest/coolest thing
May day brings a sense of relief. The AtoZ Challenge is over for another year, and I can get back to more relaxed blogging. Strange that just two more posts a week (in general) should create such extra stress and
Zanzibar’s Rings is the working title of the third book in the Viridian System series. It seems a bit daft, really, since I haven’t republished The Perihelix yet, which I withdrew after it got reviews which showed it really needed
Oy Yew is a book I got as a result of the Read 4 Review programme on Goodreads groups. Ana is a member of the Good Middle Grade Reads Group; I took up the offer of a free ebook March last
I was looking forward to finding a title beginning with X for my flash fiction today, although I was also tempted to borrow Rebecca Douglass’s spaceman Xavier Xanthum. Then I realised it was the last Friday of the month, so
Willoughby starts with W. What better way to fulfil the W post of the #AtoZChallenge than launching my latest book. It’s out today on all platforms and should be in all the online stores. If you haven’t read any of
Victor has appeared on the A to Z several times – in 2015 when I was about to launch his book Bravo Victor (Book 6 of the Princelings of the East), my theme was the phonetic alphabet. That gave me ample
Updating my biography was a topic I promised when it came to J for Jemima. But Tuesdays used to be when I did haikus and I promised some during the A to Z Theme Reveal. I like doing haiku, although
To Be Read was not a concept I knew about before I started blogging. Or maybe it was before I started writing seriously – if you can call what I do ‘serious writing’. I bought books, I put them on
See you in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng, is a middle grade listed book that I had from Net-Galley to review prior to its publication in March. So this review has been on Goodreads and on the Amazon site for a few weeks. I
Red Sky at Night was the saying I took for this week’s flash fiction prompt. It needed to begin with R for the A to Z Challenge. I stole the idea for the quest from Ben Zackheim’s The Camelot Kids Book 1,
Do you question things enough? Sometime in March one of my regular newsletters mentioned this quote: The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question. palaeontologist and biologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)