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Category: Books
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Eat This While You Read That: JL Curtis
While most of the authors I talk to and ask to participate in ETWYRt are science fiction or fantasy authors, not all of them have to be. I read and enjoy many other genres, like JL Curtis’s books. The Grey Man is a little hard to quantify, beyond ‘action’ because they aren’t quite military and…
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Eat This While You Read That: Ryk Spoor
When I asked Ryk for a dish, he sent me not just one, but two recipes. You make one to make the other. It took me quite some time to get ’round to making it, and part of the reason was the ingredient pictured above. Habanero peppers… But before I get into the recipes, let’s…
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Review: Son of the Black Sword
I was talking to a fellow writer the other day about whether or not there is a market for a ‘thinking man’s fantasy.’ We were specifically talking about that sub-genre, Sword and Sorcery, the genre made famous by the likes of Conan the Barbarian, and oft-mocked as being ‘thud and blunder’ rather than ‘blood and…
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Broad Reading
I’ve talked on the blog and elsewhere many times about the importance of reading if you plan to become a good writer. I’m sure you can write without reading – well, knowing how to read seems to be a requirement, but reading other works is technically optional. Stephanie Souders wrote a wonderful essay about this…
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Review: Her Brother’s Keeper
Don’t pick this book up and get past the first couple of chapters if it’s late and you’re trying to fall asleep. This is not the book to help you sleep. Mike Kupari’s first stand-alone novel, Her Brother’s Keeper, is a space opera, and it’s a good, solid read. Once you get past the first…
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Self Images
Written by Sanford Begley I re-watched an old western last night. How old? It was released the year I was born. The movie was called Cowboy and was about a kid learning to be a man. Some of the things the movie thought represented manhood look silly today, and Jack Lemmon was too old to…
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Curmudgeon Reviews: Steelheart
Steelheart (Reckoners Book 1) by Brandon Sanderson A review written by Sanford Begley I think I owe Brandon Sanderson an apology, though I’ve never met him. I have avoided his books like the plague because in my opinion he couldn’t write an ending. I am happy to be proven wrong. This is the first book…
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Halloween Sale!
A bunch of Indie Author friends decided the Labor Day Sale was so much fun, we should do it more often. So, Oh Best Beloved Readers, here are a bagful of treats for you… Books on sale, even some for free! Check the sale prices, they will be changing through the weekend. Herding authors is…
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And the books lie in mouldering heaps
I was noodling around on the net and ran across a book last night. As I downloaded it, because it’s a Project Gutenburg book (free!), looks interesting, and I might read it, something occurred to me. We keep hearing that the book as a form of entertainment is dying. I know people who proudly proclaim…
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Review: Aggregation
While I have been reading this past week or so, I haven’t read any of the books I’d planned to review. I read Dave Freer’s deeply tongue-in-cheek noir detective send up, The Bolg and the Beautiful, a continuation of the adventures of his immortal Pictish king turned private eye. This one centers around Freya, her…
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It’s all Literature
From the Encyclopedia Brittanica: “Deriving from the Latin littera, “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing.” It is only within that broad generalization that we see…
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Curmudgeon Review: Zombie Fallout
Written by Sanford Begley Zombie Fallout-Mark Tufo. Big thumbs down I don’t normally review a book I haven’t read in its entirety. Sometimes though, sometimes the fail is so big you must give fair warning. This story might get better later on. I doubt it. It starts out with Swine Flu mutating into something virulent, and…