Quiet Keystrokes and Midnight Ramblings

 Hey-O! It's been a long time since my last completed read. I'll be honest, life has not made reading easy and I've let it slip over the last year. But I got back into the pages of fiction with Half-Breed by Hickory Mack. My TBR has been so flooded, I honestly can't remember if this was a promotional copy I got from the author directly, or if I bought it, or if I downloaded it from a giveaway... all I can say is it was on my Kindle and looked like the most interesting thing to read at the moment. The novel follows a young girl who discovers she possesses magic. She leaves her abusive and oppressive life as a human to live with magical creatures in the woods, away from the humans who hunt them. If you love magic, Japanese culture, and a landscape that is as much of a character as any of the moving parts of the story, this may be the book for you. Grab it at Amazon here (paid link*) and get lost in a world of fantasy that isn't too far removed from our own. ---- * As...

My kiddo and I have been wandering through the pages of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia over the last year or so, and finally arrived at the sixth book, The Silver Chair. It goes without saying that C. S. Lewis is one the most entrancing authors in children's literature, and he didn't fail to disappoint with The Silver Chair . This book takes Eustace and his schoolmate Jill on a terrific adventure through marshes, mountains, and caverns as they go on a hunt for a prince who went missing many years before. While this is a wonderful book on its own, it wasn't my favorite of the Narnia  series. The characters didn't seem as alive as in the other books, and with man-eating giants, a magical snake-queen and the freeing of an entire nation of underground people, their flatness was a disappointment. We aren't deterred though. We've started The Last Batle, the final book in the series and it's going along much better. Although this is a serie...

Suzanne Hagelin is a Pacific Northwest indie author who I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with at several book festivals and conventions over the years. In typical "let's add to the TBR pile" style, I picked up the first book of her trilogy, Body Suit , and then sat on it for months. Possibly a year. Perhaps longer. Then, in a reading slump, I finally opened it up. Do you ever have those times where you smack yourself in the forehead and say, "Self, why did you put this off for so long?" That's exactly how I felt while reading Body Suit . Suzanne and I have discussed our love of the Portal video games in the past, and the A.I. cataloging human behavior and offering assistance (when it finds it convenient) is reminiscent of GLaDOS and Wheatley in the Portal games. Snarky, contemplative, and sometimes dependable enough to love. Sil, the main character in Body Suit  finds herself shipped off to the first settlement on Mars, forced to...

"Home is where the heart is. Or maybe the pizza." One of my very good friends, author S.E. Anderson , has just released the cover image for book five in her Starstruck series !  Book five, Starbound, is set to launch later this year. I'm so excited to get back to these characters again. If you haven't read this series yet, you're missing out on some hilarious Sci-Fi adventures. Sally and her friends jump around the universe, foiling would-be crimes, (accidentally) reigning supreme over alien races, and guest-starring on intergalactic television. Make sure you get caught up on this series before Starbound hits the bookshelf! You can check out the blurb from the book below, and remember to get the rest of the books in the series over on Amazon. Home is where the heart is. Or maybe the pizza. There’s no better feeling than being back home after a long week exploring the galaxy, though being abandoned by one’s friends and left to fend off...

I've been failing as an author. Okay, my husband would say I'm being melodramatic, and he's right. At the time of this writing, my biopunk novel,  Adaline , has been downloaded 8,500 times in just over 20 weeks. That's not failing. BUT, I have been struggling with my advertising spend. In late 2018, I figured out how to buy space on people's mailing lists and websites, which is how I got most of those 8,500 downloads. But I've had the worst luck in creating profitable ads on Amazon and Facebook. After working my butt off to do so/so with Facebook ads, (and seeking help from the book Help! My Facebook Ads Suck by Michael Cooper ), I decided to tackle AMS ad services. For months, I was running a couple of ads here, a couple of ads there, and not getting any kind of positive results. My best ad was running at a -70% return. Not good. I turned to the advice of my fellow authors on Reddit, Facebook and Kboards, and kept seeing Brian D. Meeks...

My kiddo and I have spent the last year or thereabouts reading A Series of Unfortunate Events . We've finally crested Book The Twelfth in the series, titled The Penultimate Peril . There are several things we love about these books. One is the fast paced language. Second, the explanation of difficult words and terms by the author in the middle of the storytelling. And third, the suspense of never knowing what dastardly deeds are coming next. With one book left in the series, we've been left unclear on if the Boudelaire orphans are becoming orphans, or if Count Olaf is becoming noble. One thing we have decided on is that most of the noble people in these books have suffered from a villainous case of indecisiveness where danger is concerned. Above all else, we are curious about what will happen in The End , book 13 in the series because we're no closer to solving the orphan's many mysteries than we were in book one. As a parent, I've enjoyed sharing these d...

I am in the midst of writing a biography to sit alongside a project I am working on.  This is probably the fifth biography I've written because no matter what I come up with, the next time I take a look at it I feel like it's so "blah".  For some reason, I just can't fit enough honest razzle dazzle into a paragraph or two about myself to make me feel like I'm the kind of person I'd like to know. (If that sentence doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry.  It doesn't make much sense to me either.) Whenever I do get the urge to sit down and rewrite the biography blurb, in addition to feeling like it lacks the pizzazz of my wit and charm, I also tend to be a little less than honest about some things.  For example, the biography has never said anything like, "Denise is a workaholic author, business owner, office manager, caregiver and paintball enthusiast who often spends the wee hours of the morning mentally drafting new policies, procedu...

Well, we've rushed into 2011 with much fanfare and although many of the bloggers around me are busy writing about their New Years Resolutions (mine can be found floating around a random forum somewhere, I'm sure) I am going to skip that train and move on to something that I know I'll actually follow through on. Writing is a lonely business, no matter how you slice it.  Sure, you accumulate a slew of proof-readers, editors and readers with thoughtful comments and feedback along the way; but when you are actually engrossed in the act of writing - the work of it - it's all you, baby.  Writing is most often a silent and private affair comprised of overwhelming amounts of caffeine, staring blankly out the window and spinning slowly in an office chair staring at one's feet and wondering when inspiration will strike. ...And God forbid you actually get words down on paper!  Then you have to go through days (or months) of nail-biting anxiety while you wait to bear back o...

It occurred to me this morning on the way to the office (out of bed, detour to the kitchen for some Chai Tea, across the living room in kitty rush-hour traffic) that there is no real and true way to define what makes a "good" writer, other than the words written on paper. When we read a good book, rarely do we find ourselves lost in thought over what the author's motivation was for writing it.  We don't wonder when we read an interesting news article if the writer was passionate about the topic, or if they were just trying to make their next car payment.  We don't search the words to try to discover if their creator was steady and dependable, writing each day from 6am to 4pm without fail; or if they were steeped in a fury of sudden inspiration and spent 5 days eating little and sleeping less with only the keyboard and furious fingers for company. From the reader's perspective, what makes a good writer has nothing to do with the company the author keeps,...

It has been a long time since I have read a book in less than 48 hours.  It has been a longer time since I have read a book that has truly caused me to think of how I perceive myself as a writer.  And I can't remember a time when both have happened in tandem. Yesterday morning I picked up How I Became A Famous Novelist  by Steve Hely, and about 20 minutes ago I finally turned the last page.  While thoroughly entertaining and a fantastic spotlight on how fickle the publishing world can be, the book has also prompted me to think about where I would fit in the broad spectrum of authors characterized in this fictional memoir.  Without going into great detail (since I believe you should find a copy and read it for yourself), I will say that I fall somewhere in the middle of the "Honest" and the "Literary Con-Artist" of writers characterized in the book.  I'd like to say I'm closer to honest than con-artist, but I suppose that depends on the day and t...