I had some good advice given about one of my earlier books. I haven't even cracked the spine on it in two years and I thought hey I'll go back but I doubt I'll have to make many changes because that was a pretty good book I wrote and by far my favourite. I hang my head in shame. I was awful. There is tons of exposition and I take forever to get to anything of worth. The action is told instead of shown. How could I have been that bad? I have just given myself a massive job to

Two authors are out to lunch, one new the other well established. The New Author asks the other for advice. They tell them get a good editor, get some beta readers until their book is the best it can be. The New Author gets upset. This is the wrong way to take advice. I rushed my first books. I didn't get them edited like they should and even my later books still need work. I look back at them and I get itchy fingers to redo them. I just never have the time and I acknowledge

Okay, let's start with what bothered me. A little too much exposition at the start and my fingers itched to fix formatting but man I was intrigued right off the bat. The author certainly knew how to throw in those words that peaked my interest. A girl carrying a sword bag was certainly the first that made me sit up and say, hey I want to know how a kick butt girl like this is part of this story. Pity there would be no way you'd be able to get a sword onto a plane in this day

Impostor syndrome is really kicking my butt this week. If you don't know what Impostor syndrome is then here is a pop culture version. It is when you think you aren't good enough for whatever position or acclaim you receive. By day I'm a teacher and we are doing something new at school. It is scary but also very interesting. No one else has done something like this in the whole country and certainly not in our little town. And yet when we talk with parents we have to sound li

From RJ Conte, weaver of deep, emotional fiction, comes a touching collection of short stories about love and unique relationships - including the bestselling Lucent Sylph! RJ Conte, formerly Rachael Lynn Thomas, has kissed only one boy in her entire life. And she married him, inspiring her to write about sweet or powerful love stories ever since. She writes a blog on parenting, publishing, painting, and perorating at http://blonderj.wordpress.com/ RJ Conte writes realist

It was a slow start but well written so I thought, I'll read another page and then another and then another and by that stage I just had to know what happened. The mystery is so compelling. Leo is your regular Jock. Dating the prettiest girl at school. Then he notices little things are different. A tree, the colour of the wall, his class schedule. Until it leads to his brother's death he didn't realise just how serious those changes really were. This story is intricate and th

I didn't think I would like this story. First off it was a gift and I have the worst luck with books given as gifts and secondly it is in first person present tense. I hate the present tense because my dyslexic brain freaks out when it reads it. The fact that I love this book is a testament to how brilliant it is. I stuck with it because one of the characters has my name and that made me feel like I was part of the story. That was the theme of the day because, man, I am so Be

I read a lot but that doesn't mean I'm not picky. When I'm in the right mood I can read quite trashy stories but they all have to meet certain criteria. Here is my list what I need from a book to be able to read it. 1. Give me people not perfect prose I can't stand those books that spend two pages describing the farmers in the field, only for the farmers to have absolutely nothing to do with the story. Instead, I want the story to be about people. 2. Don't be lazy when you do