Review: The Grace Year

 I usually review independent authors. I normally give my star review and leave the written reviews to others when a book is a NYT bestseller and has over 2,000 reviews. It isn't because I don't care, but because I want to support the author who is trying to create a following.

There are some exceptions. These are books I come across and I am simply compelled to write a review for some reason. For The Grace Year by Kim Liggett that reason is the novelty of the idea. It reminded me of several puritan works I read by Nathaniel Hawthorn in the explanation of the women's magic powers and near evils during their grace year. And yes, not all the girls are coming home. 

A truly compelling idea turned into a page-turning story. There were very few subplots but the main thread kept me engaged. It draws on the tensions between science and faith, gender roles, tradition vs contemporary, generational sim, coming of age, and, of course, throws in a bit of a love story.  Worth a read.

The story is set in a dystopian future where girls are sent into the woods the year before they are married to "get rid of their magic." While there, they must gain control of their magic powers but also stay within the camp confines. If they venture out, poachers will capture them and harvest body parts for potions to be sold back in the town.

The main character ends up crossing the fence into poaching territory. There she finds there may be some scientific explanation for the women's madness. She also finds out her parents are not who she thinks they are, learns about herself, and finds love. Over all, it is worth a read or, if you have audible, worth a listen.

Review: The Family Buisness

BUY HERE

 I was given an advance reader copy. Opinions are my own. I received my copy at Dragon Con last year during a panel with Baen Books. If you are not familiar with Baen, you should be. Their stuff is tremendous. Great authors, great stories. All fun pulp reads. Mostly sci-fi. Haven't had a bad title yet. In fact, I always go to their panels at conventions because they give away free reads. They have a bunch up fornt to select form and offer trivia. They also always ask first responders (me), active service, vets, and police to come up and get one as a thank you. Great company and great products.

VISIT BAEN HERE - TOTALLY WORTH IT!!

Here is my review. It is short and sweet. 

Didn't want to give away some cool twists on the more familiar tropes:

Good story with a great set-up / premise. I know series are all the rage, but I enjoyed the stand alone novel. Fun, action packed once you get fifty or so pages in, and some good twists. It is set not only after the horrible alien invasion but after us earthlings battle back. A world where history changes the possibilities of the present, including new abilities like physical or mental enhancements. People are still people though and Kupari writes them well.

Review: Mandalay Hawk's Dilema

 

"Tom Hawk had come to accept that his daughter - his very smart and very motivated, but extremely unprepared daughter - was going to try to march to Washington without any plan or parental support"

I was given a copy of this book for review. You can find my review and original book image at 

https://www.amazon.com/Mandalay-Hawks-Dilemma-United-Anthropocene/dp/1732077533/

"Tom Hawk had come to accept that his daughter - his very smart and very motivated, but extremely unprepared daughter - was going to try to march to Washington without any plan or parental support"

Mandalay suffers through a hurricane, leading her to the impetuous action of burning a bunch of school property (donated by an electric company). What follows is her journey to activate her generation for climate change. It read much like The Day After Tomorrow watched - singular agenda driven. All characters are defined by the main thrust of the book: environmental issues. From Mandalay's red lipstick message WE READ: "THEY CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING-LIKE ALL POWER COMPANIES USING FOSSIL FUEL!! HOW STUPID CAN WE BE? IF WE DON'T STOP GLOBAL WARMING NOW, IT WILL BE TOO LATE! IT WILL MAKE THE PANDEMIC OF 2020 LOOK LIKE A PICNIC IN THE PARK!!!... ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! THIS CR** HAS TO STOP NOW!!!" It is ALL CAPS, bold face here matching the text in the book.

There is a great scene early on between Mandalay and Gertrude where Gertrude asks, "please tell me how you and your friends plan on saving the world." The response made me chuckle, "Nothing embarrasses a kid more than having their own words or actions shoved right back in their face."

I suppose time will tell if books such as these can help us change collectively in such a way as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle once did for the meat industry. Here, marches, rap songs (I was ill prepared for Mandalay as an eloquent rapper), and rooftop gardens are the proposed solutions, leaving this reader to close the book feeling preached at without any discernable path forward.

I was given a copy for review.

Review: MD Cooper's Outsystem

I met Cooper at a convention this past year. She was pleasant enough and enjoyable to talk about the craft of writing. She writes a very niche genre: Military Sci-Fi with lesbian protagonists. The book is one of her first and stars one of her major characters: Tannis. The author is super prolific with hundreds of books published in the sci-fi world she has created. 

There is actually a pretty cool KDP (Amazon Authors) video interview worth watching if you are interested in how authors can make it through independent publishing. One well respected system is definitely the "Put lots of stuff out there." More notably, I see theories like "20 books to $20,000" or similar titles. Cooper seems to have made it work for her and kudos. 

See her interview HERE

My Review on Amazon:

 A cocky protagonist saves the space colony from a nuclear explosion. What follows is a mystery / conspiracy laden sleuth in space with cyborg body parts, tech and AI. There is some character development but the real reason to get on this rollercoaster is for the non-stop thrills. The author writes excellent action scenes that put you in the moment.

Review: The Bootlace Magician

 

As a kid, one of my favorite Wonderful World of Disney specials on Sunday night was Toby Tyler. He was a young boy who ran away from the circus. He was welcomed into the circus family, but didn't have a "place." Micah Tuttle is such a boy in this book. It is not the first book in the series, and perhaps I would give it 5 stars if I had read the first. It took me a long while to catch up to the backstory. To my credit (or my excuse) I was given a copy for review at DragonCon and was never told it was book two.

The opening seemed slow though even after I realized I wasn't in the first book and read a quick synopsis of book one. However, I loved the themes of family and overcoming darkness in the world.

I enjoyed the magic system and the coming-of-age element as Micah learns more and more how to use his magic. 

Definitely check out book one before this one if you have not done so. That said, I would not hesitate to recommend both and will be picking up book one soon.

I was given an ARC copy at Dragoncon for review. The thoughts and opinions are my own.

Short on Time but want to edit your WIP?

Visit Original 

I have learned a lot since I started writing a few years back. One is that those of us who work full time, have families, second jobs, and other committments often struggle to write. For me, I enjoy the flow of a good story and it is easier to find time to put words on paper than it is to go back and edit. 

Let me make clear, what follows is not a comprehensive edit. You should have beta readers, content editing all the way down to line editing and proofing if you want your book to find traction with readers. Some of this you can get friends to help do, some you can do yourself, and some simply must be hired out (especially I would argue the final proof needs to be fresh eyes).

What I have here are not comprehensive edits. Rather, they are the "I have an hour but can't really sit down and go deep for another two weeks" edits. It keeps you in the work (though pauses and breaks are great for editing too) but does not involve you keeping every detail of your story fresh and top of mind. What's best? they are all free.

Visit Original

-1.Check your adverbs

    Adverbs. In a draft they often come quickly (uh... I mean with rapidity). Why say someone walked softly when you can say they tiptoed. Or he ate greedily when you can say he devoured. Or that someone suddenly jumped out of the window when you can just say they jumped. Adverbs have a place and I don't necessarily believe (oops - I don't universally subscribe) that they all should be eliminated like enemy ships in a video game. But English is a beautiful language in part because it has so many excellent words. 

So... her eis the edit task. Go to your word processor and pull up your document. Then go to the FIND ALL function. Type in "ly" "ly" with a space bar after may narrow the results and eliminate words like fly, ply, and lye. Then look at each occurance using whatever time you have. Consider why you used the adverb and if there is a better way to write the sentence. Maybe you knock out a paragraph, a chapter, or half a book. Either way, you will benefit from the edit in your final version.

-2. Scan for passive voice

    This FIND ALL may have more false alerts, but it is still a good use of a short window. FIND ALL words like "be." "has been." or even words like "was." What will come up within the results are your uses of the passive tense. Sometimes the passive tense is okay. It is a great way to keep mystery ("The body was found in the living room" doesn't tell us ho the killer was). However, in general it is a weaker tense. So take a moment to find where you used it. Is there a way to write the sentence in the active voice? Knock out a few sentences to better your novel... rather than the novel was knocked out by you editing.

-3. Polish character ticks, mannerisms, or dialogue

    Do you have a character (this is especially helpful with side characters) who has a particular catchphrase, mannerism, or physical tick? Again, use FIND ALL and search for a key word you used. "Y'all," "tapped knee." "fingers hair." or " you betta." If you have chapters where that character plays a prominent role but no hits it means you may have let your character slip out of character. Or, like me, you may find you allow other characters to adopt things you assigned to only one character. It can be a good character check within a very short amount of time.

-4. Get rid of excessive exclamation marks... and rewrite so you don't need it!!!!

    You don't need them. Maybe if your characters are reading a poster outloud that a second grader made. "Lemonade sale tomorrow!!!!!" Otherwise, use minimally. So, what do you do? Yes, you guessed it. Do a FIND ALL for "!." But don't just delete them and put a period in its place. You chose that punctuation for a reason. In your draft you felt excitement, fear, or energy in the passage and wanted to convey it. Now is your time to craft a better sentence or passage. Take out the exclamation mark and insert words that do the heavy lifting for you. "The dog entered the room snarling!!!" can change to "Everyone spun as the dog snarled. It's normal overbite and cute front teeth sticking out of its lip grew grotesque as other teeth joined in a gesture of hate." Maybe not my best work, but you get the drift.

Original

-5. Scan first two words.

    Take a chapter. Look at the first two to three words in each paragraph. What do you see? "Joe shouted..." "Janie sat..." "Joe got up..." "Janie stuttered" Here you are looking for two things primarily. Obvious signs of head hoping and if you need to change your starts to create a more readable rhythm. Of course, the latter will relate to the book you are writing and the section you are in. It might be a good time to have short, choppy action sentences. However, if every paragraph starts out with a participle phrase you may tire a reader.

-6. Participle search or other copious occurrence.

    Try FIND ALL for "ing." Unlike the exclamation mark where you are seeking out weak writing to create better writing, here you may need to judge case by case. Either way, it may uncover tendencies you have. If I could, this technique can be used for any number of instances. I grew up with an elderly school marm whacking my fingers with a ruler as I pecked away at a typewriter. Therefore, I inevitably double space after sentences. Here I can FIND ALL "  " ("space-space") and use REPLACE ALL to correct the problem.

Original Post

Review: Billy Summer

Buy Here (link to image also)

 

A sprinkle of political jabs throughout read as distracting to me, but if Bruce Springsteen can shout political opinions then I suppose King can too. Maybe too many, especially since it was published after Trump's presidency. For me it was not the issue he was thrusting his political opinion out there - Lord knows lots of authors promote their agendas - it was that he did it in a way that pulled me, the reader / listener, out of the novel.

Otherwise, it is two excellent interwoven novellas. The first about a Birman performing a job. The second about a man who rescues a girl from a bad situation. The second story is built on the first and uses the hit man’s unfinished business as its catalyst.
I loved the nods to Cormac McCarthy and O’Brien. The ending recalled a lot of The Things They Carried. Like almost every King book I read a little, got hooked, and devoured the story.

Not horror fiction in the way It or Carrie are. But 100% King and a great intro to King for any newbie. Or do yourself a favor and jump into The Dark Tower.