A new review of GOB on the horror fiction review was posted.
Read it HERE. (it's a September 2011 review).
Colleen Wanglund reviewed calling 'an excellent story'...and 'a character study worth reading'.
Doesn't that make you want to zip on over to amazon and buy a copy?)
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
New review
Another review for STG at fantasy book critic. Yay.
Not my strongest review, and a bit rambling and hard to follow, but over all Mahir thinks I wrote a good book that could be better. A true statement of just about everything, isn't it? (And at 'goodreads' he rated it four out of five stars.) But to be candid, I had a lot to say and STG was the best book I could have said them in at the time I wrote it.
I was also happy to see that the critic hit on several of the things I wanted to say in the book (themes....ooohh no, literaryness). STG is a story about flawed people making choices. It's about living with those choices and realizing that the choices you make don't have to define you for the rest of time. It's about relationships, it's about faith, and it's about doing what you think needs to be done, even if you know the outcome won't be in your best interest. (think 'cowboying-up')
Several of the critics also picked out the stylistic components that I was shooting for; noirish, epic themes on a personl level.
This has also been a criticism; 'angels and demons? Where's Armageddon, why such a 'small' book?'
My answer to the smallishness was that most of us make personal decisions that in the grand scheme of things are pretty small scale, they don't change the whole world, most people don't even know we have made them. But that doesn't make them unimportant. In fact the small decisions we make everyday, to show humanity, to do the right things, to be a positive and uplifting influence- rather than making the selfish or thoughtless choices, are the decisions that I think are the most important of all.
If this doesn't make sense, I suggest you read the 'Screwtape Letters' from CS Lewis, then get back to me.
Not my strongest review, and a bit rambling and hard to follow, but over all Mahir thinks I wrote a good book that could be better. A true statement of just about everything, isn't it? (And at 'goodreads' he rated it four out of five stars.) But to be candid, I had a lot to say and STG was the best book I could have said them in at the time I wrote it.
I was also happy to see that the critic hit on several of the things I wanted to say in the book (themes....ooohh no, literaryness). STG is a story about flawed people making choices. It's about living with those choices and realizing that the choices you make don't have to define you for the rest of time. It's about relationships, it's about faith, and it's about doing what you think needs to be done, even if you know the outcome won't be in your best interest. (think 'cowboying-up')
Several of the critics also picked out the stylistic components that I was shooting for; noirish, epic themes on a personl level.
This has also been a criticism; 'angels and demons? Where's Armageddon, why such a 'small' book?'
My answer to the smallishness was that most of us make personal decisions that in the grand scheme of things are pretty small scale, they don't change the whole world, most people don't even know we have made them. But that doesn't make them unimportant. In fact the small decisions we make everyday, to show humanity, to do the right things, to be a positive and uplifting influence- rather than making the selfish or thoughtless choices, are the decisions that I think are the most important of all.
If this doesn't make sense, I suggest you read the 'Screwtape Letters' from CS Lewis, then get back to me.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
New Review
Well, I have certainly been neglecting this blog, haven't I?
Work has been a Lot-O-Busy, the holidays, the War College (I'm doing a Masters in Strategic Studies through the US Army War college as an Army Reservist), family obligations, and of course farm chores. Oh, and I have a host of other lame excuses, if you'd care to hear them.
In the past two months I've continued to flesh out the WIP (work in progress) a little, okay barely, but I have scratched away at it. I finish the masters in July and plan to begin writing again in earnest, after that, promise.
But what I really wanted to tell you about was my new review from the Deepening. (Click on Deepening) Overall it's pretty positive, but there is a negative about the editing. And of course the editor takes time to underscore that negative, but he's right. No excuse for writing a good story and then editing it poorly.
Work has been a Lot-O-Busy, the holidays, the War College (I'm doing a Masters in Strategic Studies through the US Army War college as an Army Reservist), family obligations, and of course farm chores. Oh, and I have a host of other lame excuses, if you'd care to hear them.
In the past two months I've continued to flesh out the WIP (work in progress) a little, okay barely, but I have scratched away at it. I finish the masters in July and plan to begin writing again in earnest, after that, promise.
But what I really wanted to tell you about was my new review from the Deepening. (Click on Deepening) Overall it's pretty positive, but there is a negative about the editing. And of course the editor takes time to underscore that negative, but he's right. No excuse for writing a good story and then editing it poorly.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
"Succumbing to Gravity" is a riveting read that will be hard to put down.
My Midwest Book Review review came in, and they liked it. About 20 book reviews down in the fiction review section [here]. They were also kind enough to five star me on their companion Amazon post.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Book Reviews...
STG has popped on the 'currently reading tab' at Paperback Horror! Paperback Horror is a book review blog that covers the horror genre, which Succumbing to Gravity can fall into.
Remember in a previous blog post where we discussed genre? I don't think what I write falls neatly into a genre bin, but you have to put a label on books so that they can be filed in the right section of the book store, or library, right? And I am a member of the horror writers association...so.
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror are often grouped under the title 'Speculative Fiction' or Specfic. Horror can be further split into a large number of 'subgenres'; supernatural horror, psychological horror, splatterpunk (think blood splatter) and on and on. It gets more complicated when you realize that the psychological horror novels are often also marketed as crime. Think Silence of the Lambs or the Red Dragon- psychopathic serial killers. Sounds like Horror to me.
As I mentioned, I don't think STG fits neatly into a genre, though I am glad PBH is reading it. The non-neatness-of-fit is not just my opinion. I sent it off to a number of agents before I sent the manuscript to Reliquary and a common complaint was that it didn't fit 'neatly' into a genre. Complaint because agents want big books that can be easily marketed, not untidy books that one must equivocate on the genre from the start. STG had elements of religiously or supernaturally inspired horror, dark fantasy; one agent even said after review that it seemed more urban fantasy than horror but with elements of both. (I queried around 50 agents, 20 of them asked for partials to review and almost half of those asked to read the whole manuscript. So I did get a good sampling of people who knew what they were talking about.) And here I thought it was just a little road-trip book about a fallen angel, with a heroin habit, that was just trying to get by in the world.
Anyway, I can't wait to see what the reviewer thinks about STG. Unless he pans it, of course. That I can wait for.
Remember in a previous blog post where we discussed genre? I don't think what I write falls neatly into a genre bin, but you have to put a label on books so that they can be filed in the right section of the book store, or library, right? And I am a member of the horror writers association...so.
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror are often grouped under the title 'Speculative Fiction' or Specfic. Horror can be further split into a large number of 'subgenres'; supernatural horror, psychological horror, splatterpunk (think blood splatter) and on and on. It gets more complicated when you realize that the psychological horror novels are often also marketed as crime. Think Silence of the Lambs or the Red Dragon- psychopathic serial killers. Sounds like Horror to me.
As I mentioned, I don't think STG fits neatly into a genre, though I am glad PBH is reading it. The non-neatness-of-fit is not just my opinion. I sent it off to a number of agents before I sent the manuscript to Reliquary and a common complaint was that it didn't fit 'neatly' into a genre. Complaint because agents want big books that can be easily marketed, not untidy books that one must equivocate on the genre from the start. STG had elements of religiously or supernaturally inspired horror, dark fantasy; one agent even said after review that it seemed more urban fantasy than horror but with elements of both. (I queried around 50 agents, 20 of them asked for partials to review and almost half of those asked to read the whole manuscript. So I did get a good sampling of people who knew what they were talking about.) And here I thought it was just a little road-trip book about a fallen angel, with a heroin habit, that was just trying to get by in the world.
Anyway, I can't wait to see what the reviewer thinks about STG. Unless he pans it, of course. That I can wait for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
