Writing and reviews with an environmental, science fiction, and fantasy touch
A Long Petal of the Sea is my first Net-galley book of 2020. It is published on 21st January, i.e. Tuesday. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General
My Best of 2019 included all the books I read last year – this giveaway hop has prizes of books only released last year! Thanks as always to Mary at Bookhounds for organising this hop. When you’ve entered mine, hop
Several books got away without a proper review last year – and not just ones crammed in at the end to try to scale my Mount TBR. I try to keep up my reviews here and on Goodreads as I
SpaceTime Reading Challenge 2019—thank you for taking part. How did you get on? It would be delightful if you’d come back and tell all—and reveal your favourite Spacetime reads for last year. Mine was a hard choice between The Unwinding
Yes, welcome to 2020, all insecure writers. Thank you to Alex J Cavanaugh and the IWSG team for letting us miss New Year’s Day as our posting date this month! The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the
My Book of the Year for 2019 is… one of the following. Book of the Year 2019 long list I long list nearly all of those I’ve given five stars on Goodreads during the year. So those are (links to
I love a Reading Challenge or two. It appeals to my sense of order. Apart from the happiness of finishing a book, I love to punctuate it by including it in a challenge list. I know many people think this
Record of a Spaceborn Few is the third of Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series. Like the second, it is more set in the same universe than a series, although clever folk may recognise characters linked with the first book. I’m not
Book bargains for your eReader, whether you got one for Christmas or you’ve been carrying it around for years. Smashwords End of Year Sale is now on. All my fiction books priced more than 99c are ON SALE with 25%
Reasons to be in Iceland tonight: Jolabokaflod PS watch out for tomorrow’s ebook sale announcement!
Dragon’s Gate was picked by the Great Middle Grade Reads members as a book of the month some time ago. I added it to my list, and bought a cheap second hand copy on Amazon. It took a while to
Behind the Curtain is the prompt for this month’s Fiction in Fifty words #Fi50. I’m posting earlier than usual because there’s a rumour of some sort of celebration going on in most parts of the world for one reason or
Midwinter’s Eve is always my last giveaway of the year. I’d like to thank Mary at Bookhounds for continuing the tradition! This hop is a Christmas tradition for me; you can take it in your stride, enter as many or
Spotted Lily arrived on my Kindle in a Storybundle group in July 2015. I think I should group the Storybundles for that date on my To Read list to see what it has in common with the others. Possibly ‘weird’.
Footprints, and December, came together to give me some inspiration at last. So I’m back in the saddle for the December WEP+IWSG flash fiction adventure. I think the team at WEP have done a great job of turning what seemed
I’m delighted to feature Death By Library today, the 4th in the Pismawallops PTA Mysteries by Rebecca M. Douglass. This is part of the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours running between December 2 – 13, so I reckon I made it
My 2019 in books – a typical look back at what I’ve read in 2019, along with half the rest of the book-blogging world. But no, this is not my book of the year. I’ll do that later this month
My Sister’s Bones has been on my shelf for ages. I received a courtesy copy at Noirwich in 2016, when it was still in pre-publication mode. In a somewhat unusual reading pattern for me, I started it in September, got
The December question from the Insecure Writer’s Support Group relates to hopes and the reality. It suggests that insecure writers still in the ‘aspiring’ phase write about where they see themselves in a few years time. For those who have
A Difficult Mirror is not an easy read. It is fascinating, though. I have had this book on my TBR for ages, and can’t remember how I came across it. It may have been on offer, it may have been
SpaceTime Sign-up time! Searching for a Science Fiction Reading Challenge? I had been for years. I found some with lists of classic or ‘new classic’ books to read, but I’ve either done those or rejected them for good reasons! Last
The Earthkeepers: I thought it might have survived a few passes of Down the TBR Hole, as I knew I had the cover in my system here. It turns out I uploaded it in 2014 for a blog tour. I
Forging Ahead is this month’s prompt for the Fiction in Fifty words meme that Rebecca and I continue to plug on with, in hope that some other people will join us. It’s really good to have to craft a fifty
Today is a book review on Justine Laismith’s blog tour for Secrets of the Great Fire Tree. I ‘meet’ Justine on the GMGR Goodreads group, and I’m delighted to host her today. The tour organiser is Aurelia Leo. Secrets