Author of the Princelings of the East fantasy and Viridian System scifi series
Ghoulish Guinea Pig and Kit’s Wilderness featured in my TackleTBR in September, and both MG reads, strangely, feature ghosts. I thoroughly enjoyed both of them, although they are probably at opposite ends of the middle grade reader range. Gasp of
Sounds of Silence is my contribution to Goodreads Horror Week this week 16th-22nd October. There were a dozen prompts, and I felt one of them was more up my street than the others. You know I don’t write horror, but
Website performance seems to be the latest tool to get bloggers in a spin. The Story Reading Ape reblogged an interesting post by Jean at Jean’s Writing asking Do you know the visibility of your website? Naturally, I spent yesterday evening
Two Norfolk crime novels were among the books I read in the Tackle TBR Readathon in September. The Outcast Dead is the sixth Ruth Galloway novel by Elly Griffiths, and A Siege of Bitterns is the first Birder Murder Mystery
Guinea pigs came into my world on 26th July 2007. A red-letter day indeed. It was probably the first day of the rest of my life. At first I resisted making them my post for the Cherished BlogFest 2017. Then
Time to go down the TBR Hole again. In August I did the first sweep at reducing my To Be Read list using the strategy devised by Lia at Lost in a Story. Then I did it again, and took the
Austral caught my eye when it came up as a Net-galley ARC. I was delighted to receive a free review copy from the publisher. Antarctica, climate change, geo-engineering, and a thriller – plenty in there to float my boat. I
The Cassini Conundrum emerged on the day the Cassini mission ended with the probe plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere. Chuck Wendig’s prompt that weekend was “You have to break something before it can be mended” (or something like that). I wrote
Memoir or Fiction? There’s something for Insecure Writers to get more insecure about. If we are to write about our own experiences, how far do we go before it becomes a memoir? I’d already started thinking about this as a
I’m mapping the Realms again. I can understand if you don’t understand that, but it’s a little extra you can find on the Princelings website – a map of the Realms, the Princelings world, as relevant to books 1-5. Why
I’ve been stuck in a good book or five for the last month, as part of the TackleTBR read-a-thon, although I’m including two I’ve reviewed in September too. Now, thanks to Val at Stuck in Books, I’m offering you a
The last Friday of the month is FlashbackFriday, started by Michael D’Agostino and recently fallen by the wayside. I’m trying to keep it going, so if you want to join in, add the link to your FlashbackFriday post in the
TackleTBR is over for another year. It’s been an awesome two weeks and I’m delighted that so many people joined in my Challenge last Monday. The winner of my 21st Page Challenge was… Shash (MomIsReading). You should have an email
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH was a Book of the Month for the July/August period on the Great Middle Grade Reads Group. We ended up with a shortlist of seven books to read over the summer. A surprising
I thought you’d like an excerpt from The Princelings of the North this week, since I used the first sentence of the 21st page in my Challenge example on Monday. I was hoping to work on an idea for Chuck
Oops! is a little early for the Fiction in Fifty Words #Fi50 meme this month, but I wanted to have it ready to link to Rebecca Douglass’s new page for the Challenge. Rebecca has relieved the inventor, Bruce Gargoyle, of
My 21st page Challenge is for everyone who visits my blog during the Tackle Your TBR Readathon, not just participants. But if we pique your interest, you have until tomorrow (Wednesday 20th) to sign up to the Readathon and join
Equus was a book I received from LibraryThing, as part of their first reads initiative. It is nothing to do with Equus the play. But it is Latin for ‘horse’. Equus Ed. by Rhonda Parrish There’s always something magical about
Good versus Evil. That’s what Chuck wants today, and that’s what he gets. I stopped at 800 words; it was what I wanted to do, and I don’t think it needed more. Any genre, he said. I have no idea what
It’s Anthology Contest time! I may be in the middle of #TackleTBR, but other things go on apace. Checking round the IWSG posts last week, I realised that it was time for the Annual Anthology contest. It’s the fourth one,
TackleTBR 2017 is off and running. If you missed my advance warning in August you can read all about this Readathon there. In May I did the Clean Sweep ARC to get some of those new releases off my shelf.
The Ship Who Sang, by Anne McCaffrey, was picked as the book of the month for August by the Goodreads Space Opera Group. Despite all the others on my plate, I jumped at the chance to reread something I remembered
We Never Heard Them Coming is a type of Random Title or Must Include flash fiction offering. Chuck Wendig has been collecting titles, first sentences and last sentences from his readers, ten of each. Now’s the time to select from
Surprise! It’s the first Wednesday of the month and time for the Insecure Writers’ Support Group. I’d already started thinking about the suggested question for the month when I got a horrible surprise. I’m going to try to work out
Time to go down the TBR Hole again. It’s only a couple of weeks ago that I did the first sweep at reducing my TBR using the strategy devised by Lia at Lost in a Story. Since then, I’ve read