It's not raining now. Well, maybe a mist. It's been raining. Last night it was heavy when I was driving home from Spartanburg. It's going to rain some more. A lot more. On The Weather Channel, it looks like a wall of fire is coming through South Carolina on Saturday. Any old rain is light …
Category: Books
The Future Is Harsh and Scary, but the Kids Give Us Hope
For the first half of Jake Lingwall's action-packed, young-adult novel, Kari Tahe spends a considerable amount of her waking hours in virtual simulation, testing her drones in a wide range of combat scenarios. This is the future, when the lines between games and reality are blurred. As the story advances -- forgive the vulgarity to …
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Download and Let the Good Times Roll
This isn't the first time I've tried to let you know you can read my new novel, Crazy of Natural Causes, without owning a Kindle. Before Crazy was selected as a KindleScout winner, I wasn't knowledgeable, either. All three of my novels, and several of my non-fiction books, are available in a Kindle version, …
My Fiction and Welcome to It
Let’s see. What’s the most boring, clichéd way I can begin a blog? Oh, I got it. Good news and bad news. First, the bad. Sales of Crazy of Natural Causes have been sagging recently. Rather than ranging from 15,000 to 50,000 in the ever-changing rankings, the range has shifted to 50,000 to 200,000 over …
So You Like ‘Real’ Books, Huh?
My novel, Crazy of Natural Causes, has been out for almost six weeks now. It's gotten a good response. The sales have been decent, particularly since it remains available as a Kindle ebook only. It only costs $3.49. You can download free apps that allow you to read it on a wide variety of …
Brontes We Can Understand
What Amy Wolf has achieved, in her novel The Misses Bronte's Establishment, is to make, in the guise of fiction, a distinguished family of writers human. What the Brontes meant to me, before I read Amy's work, was Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights). They were remnants of an education grown ancient. I try …
Not Just Another Baseball Novel, and Not Just Another Sports Writer
I've read Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, about a ragtag baseball team during wartime. I've read fiction about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. I've read novels with a supernatural element. What I haven't read is a novel like Matt Caldwell's The Lost Tribe, which combines the themes above with a few more subplots thrown …
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‘The Road’ Seeks Redemption
The Long Road Home, by Roan Poulter, is the third of his Motorcycle Chronicles Series, and a matter of a young man, Jordan Carter, finding peace in a variety of ways. Jordan is the son of a literary icon, and the tale begins when news arrives of her violent death in Argentina. Anne Carter comes …
In Order to Write … One Must Read
It's hard to read the work of another writer without comparing it to one's own. Being in Amazon's KindleScout program has had the somewhat unexpected consequence of being joined, mainly via Facebook, with other writers whose novels have been published in the program. One effect has been pride. We help one another. We read one …
The Possibilities Are Endless
Olivia Vetrano's Neverland is about an intelligent young girl who, wracked by the scars of tragedy, retreats into an irresistible world of both fantasy and self-destruction. It is a world Hayley inexplicably finds comfortable, and neither a devoted boyfriend nor a best friend who knows her all too well seems to be capable of …
Nightrider's Lament 