There’s nothing like a dose of ambivalence to add unwelcome melodrama to your life. Allow me to introduce Grammar Nazi. She takes up space in my head, and like any good nazi she’s always looking to expand her territory. I think I remember her from sixth grade. No way am I a grammar nazi. […]
Author Tahlia Newland has offered me the opportunity to join in this blog tour. The idea is simple. I answer a series of questions on my writing process and my current work, then I tag new authors to answer the same questions, and the chain carries on, a pattern of infinite growth. Unfortunately, the authors […]
An Animal Life: The Beginning by Howard Krum with Roy Yanong and Scott Moore follows a group of students through their first semester at University of Philadelphia School of Veterinary Medicine in the 1980s. For readers interested in what vet school is like, this novel offers a full experience of demanding class work, raucous parties, […]
The Fourth Season is the fourth and final book in a mystery quartet by award-winning Australian author Dorothy Johnson. (The others are The Trojan Dog, The White Tower, and Eden.) I read the book with the disadvantage of not having read the earlier ones, so I knew nothing about the protagonist, Sandra Mahoney. She lives […]
I don’t remember much from the summer I was thirteen, months of boredom punctuated by moments of emotional violence involving my father and/or my stepmother and/or my grandmother and/or me. I lived with Nana in a trailer behind the tavern Dad owned. The trailer had a small yard with a dusty cacti garden and a […]
Recently divorced, Mary Bellamy buys a house in the small town of Lawson, New Hampshire. The breakup of her marriage hasn’t shattered her. Far from it. She’s glad to be rid of her childish, self-centered ex. She envisions a contented life as a single woman with a cat and a secure job as an editor–a […]
A warm welcome to today’s Discovery tour guest, Pavarti K. Tyler. This week, my erotic romance Sugar & Salt released and I’ve been having oodles of fun posting reviews and talking about erotica with readers. But in the mix, I don’t want to forget the Literary Fiction novel that came out in July. Not that long ago […]
I was flattered when reviewer Dan Hagen described Talion as “The Silence of the Lambs meets The Turn of the Screw.” Of course Thomas Harris’ famous thriller is quite different from Henry James’ classic ghost story, but my novel owes a debt to both. Talion explores the twisted mind of a serial killer and leaves […]
M. M. McVey’s novella The Trashcan Opera Society tells the story of the doomed love between Jordan, a onetime attorney who lives on the streets of Los Angeles, and Hannah, an aging stripper. The two meet when Jordan inadvertently saves Hannah from a violent patron by vomiting on the man. McVey’s omniscient point of view […]
I’ve been working hard to finish the current revision of Daemon Seer. It’s not the final revision (is it ever?) , but the novel is complete except for minor changes. My monomaniacal focus on finishing has led me to neglect Ancient Children, so instead of a book review or feature I’m offering the first couple […]
Redfern Jon Barrett builds his dystopian novel Forget Yourself on a Kafkaesque mystery. The narrator, Blondee, lives in an enclosure with dozens of other people. None of them remember who they are. They assume they must be criminals since they are imprisoned, and they separate themselves into groups based on the severity of their crimes. But they can only guess at what they did wrong.
I found plenty to admire about Melinda Field’s novel True. In polished prose the author creates a world of memorable characters and a lavishly described rural Northwest American setting. She knows and loves horses. The novel’s title is taken from one character’s description of horses as “true to their ancestral memory, their environment, their instincts, […]
