Johann Thorsson
I just finished Greg Buchanan's Sixteen Horses. It's a fantastic book, but I was a little misled at first. You see, I thought it was a thriller. In fact the phrase "...highly suspenseful thriller..." is in a blurb on the back cover. My friends, Sixteen Horses is not a highly suspenseful thriller. What it is… Continue reading SIXTEEN HORSES – Book Review
I reached a milestone in my career today. The first review of Whitesands, my first novel, is up on Goodreads. I don't know the reviewer, though I have talked with him on Twitter in the course of getting him an early copy of Whitesands to review. And what a review! How far are you willing… Continue reading First Goodreads Review for WHITESANDS is in!
The time is upon us! The stars have aligned and the altar is ready. Place upon it your copy of Chuck Wendig's THE BOOK OF ACCIDENTS and together we shall collapse this wretched existence into the darkness from whence it came! Ahem. The Book of Accidents is a tome. It is at once the future… Continue reading Book Review – THE BOOK OF ACCIDENTS by Chuck Wendig
I finally got myself a copy of Brian Evenson's LAST DAYS, a book that had been out of print for a while. While reading it I was struck by how much it reads like a surrealist play. The dialogue is quick and witty, reminiscent of plays much more than dialogue. Add to that Evenson's style… Continue reading Is Evenson’s LAST DAYS a horror version of Waiting for Godot?
What a fantastic book. Andrew and Eric are on a holiday at a cabin with their adopted daughter, Wen. Wen is playing outside when a man approaches her, the tallest man she's ever seen. He tells her that none of what is about to happen is her fault. Wen then notices three more people behind… Continue reading Book Review – The Cabin at the End of the World
What follow is a post, verbatim, from the Valancourt Books Blog, posted on Saturday, October 27, 2018 and reprinted here simply to help them get the word out. Between print books, Kindle e-books, and Audible audiobooks, these days Amazon accounts for at least 90% of our sales. Although our books are available on plenty of… Continue reading Valancourt Books Give Amazon an Earful
These days I'm re-reading Raymond Chandler's masterpiece, The Long Good-bye. I do this as I'm nearing the completion of my own book; I don't avoid fiction as some writer's do to avoid being overly influenced but knowingly read books I want to be influenced by. In this case it's mostly four books I read and… Continue reading Now That’s a Simile
Sometimes you come across passages that remind you again of what good writing is. I just started the classic Wuthering Heights last night (yes, you need to read the classics) and was taken aback by a passage not just because of the quality of the prose but also by the tone. It was like the… Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week – Wuthering Heights
Graphic novels, comic books and kids' books with too many pictures are given a bad rap. But a surprising new study shows that we are wrong to worry. (Not that I was worried). Parents are often in a rush to get their kids away from comics and over to "proper" books. But now, thanks to… Continue reading I Just Realized Why Books With Pictures Are So Great for Kids
In my edition of The Hobbit, cheap mass-market paperback, there is an introduction by Peter S Beagle from 1973 that contains not one but two passages that are amazingly political and powerful. A Quote For Today, From 1973 The Sixties were no fouler a decade than the Fifties - they mere reaped the Fifties' foul… Continue reading Two Awesome Quotes From The Hobbit’s 1973 Introduction
On Books and Writing 