In a prior post, I wrote about following writing rules (then don’t). I referred to why you should follow the rules to avoid common mistakes. In this post, I’ll describe some of those mistakes and why they may diminish the writing. Indeed, I’ve made all these mistakes. Prologues and Epilogues […]
Paula Chaffee Scardamalia’s The Tempting Voice is a romance about a hidden Greek mythological world that co-exists with ours. The novel explores the tropes of forbidden love, personal achievement, the positive and negative of family, and monstrous enemies. The novel alternates point-of-view between two main characters – Nik and Marie […]
Grandfather’s Whispers, a novel by Stacy N. Elliott, examines in prose the burden that some of us bear through life. The novel is a magical realism story about Sarah, a seventeen-year-old girl, and her grandfather, Ralph. A group of raucous boys start off Sarah’s day by running her off the […]
C. Rae D’Arc’s Dead and Back Again series chronicles the life of private investigator Aeron Spade, also known as Earl Aeron Fromm, the Haunted, of Margen. He lives in the magical world of Novel where each “land” represents a literary genre. For example, on the map “Fantasy” exists across the […]
I’ve read several H.L. Burke’s novels before, including the excellent Heart of Curiosity, so I looked forward to her steampunk adventure of Nyssa Glass in the House of Mirrors. I had never read any of the other Nyssa Glass offerings and was intrigued by the title. This steampunk novella met […]
Benjamin Stevenson wins the award for most eye-catching title in recent memory for Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone. Admit that pairing this wordy title with a murder mystery has to intrigue mystery bibliophiles everywhere. But what’s in a name, or title? Does this book hold up beyond its […]
Peaflower by Jessica Tanner is one of the novellas in a series of retellings of fairy tales. This time, it’s The Princess and the Pea, or is it? This offering not only retells The Princess and the Pea in a new and refreshing way, but incorporates other fairy tales into […]
In the introduction to Beka Gremikova’s The Edge of a Knife and other Stories, the author states the stories presented within this collection are more on the darker side. They also reflect the triumph one has after walking on the edge of a knife. With this in mind, I gave […]
Simone St. James’ novel of murdered girls and cheap motels, The Sun Down Motel, is both a crime and a speculative thriller, similar to The Lovely Bones. The book is told from two perspectives across two time periods. In 1982, Vivian Delaney, or Viv, leaves home to make it big […]
Once Bitten is an anthology centering on the character of Dracula. Full disclosure that I was included in this anthology, so this is more of a reflection on the other stories than a typical review. The editors challenged the authors to be creative when writing their short stories. No retellings […]