f(x)=x

The Dangerous Husband: A Novel by Jane Shapiro
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I am ashamed to say that I didn’t finish this book and will very likely never finis this book. It is definitely not up my alley. If you like gratuitous over use of excessively pretentious language, then you might find this intriguing. It’s not a matter of vocabulary so much as it is a question of deliberately applying the most round about way of stating the simplest things. That and the 200 word sentences. The author is exceptionally found of paragraph length structures with nary a period among a sea of commas.

I will say that I made it to page 39 before I set the thing aside while the front cover claims that something worth “bursting out laughing” over could be found on page 54. The few parts of what I read that weren’t so clouded as to be opaque carried an intense sexual undertone to the. Some degree of the husbands — not personality, say character — was beginning to filter through the narrator’s about the time I closed the book. It was starting to feel more concrete by that point but the clouded daze that went before was too much for me to wade through.

This is the kind of thing that I would expect to see an English professor delightfully inflicting upon their students. I can read Lovecraft’s stuff. I can read Tolkien. This stuff burned me out in 39 pages.

View all my reviews

Posted in Reading - The Other Half of Writing

Well, I just spent three or four hours, I’m not entirely sure which, going over the edits to That Which is Nameless, and I can definitely say that comma’s are a big problem of mine. I left off at around page seventy of a hundred and twenty something page manuscript this evening. If all goes well, I should be able to finish it up tomorrow and work on verifying that I didn’t miss anything. One of the issues with doing things the way I do is that most people in the writing profession don’t use the same tools. So, I’m stuck copying changes made to a Word document into the source text files in for That Which is Nameless.

Ah well, such is life!

Posted in That Which is Nameless, Writings - Fiction

That Which is Nameless just made it back from editing. Now I have to go through it and see just how much blood there is on the floor. That should be an interesting process! In another few days, I’ll post an update to the book and see how things go! I’m thinking that I have another round of free promotion days available to the run through.

Work on The Empty is coming along, but slowly. I’m having difficulty finding a moment to sit down and write. Maybe I’ll have to do some of that over my lunch hour . . . Ah well, there’s never enough time!

UPDATE: Well, I’m 27 pages into merging the edits and I’ve conclude that comma rules are my bane! Wow, I’d say a good 95% of the things that needed to be fixed were comma issues.

Posted in That Which is Nameless, The Empty, Writings - Fiction

A short while back I spotted a reference to the Scare Us event over at Lit Reactor. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t heard of Lit Reactor prior to then and I’m not entirely sure what to make of the site. Before I make a final call on them I’ll have to try taking advantage of some more of their resources. Either way, their event provided the perfect avenue for me to take a break from (read that as procrastinate on ) my current project and give something a less involved a shot. Hence, A Thousand Cuts was born. The story is right around 3200 words and seems to grow a little bit every time I run through and edit.

I decided to take a slightly different approach to the tools I’m using this time. Rather than use Sphinx I went with reStructuredText and DocUtils directly. As usual, everything is stuffed into a git repository to make tracking changes simpler. The advantage of doing things this way is the that I can use the rst2odt.py front-end to produce a nice OpenOffice document. From that it is really easy to produce the .doc file expected in the competition. I’ll have to take a look at the rst2pdf at somepoint as well. It looks like it could save me a step or two in the final build process and maybe eliminate the need for OpenOffice to be involved at all.

I’ll be getting back to the The Empty soon though. I can’t very well let that story fall of the edge of the world. Also, That Which is Nameless is about shortly to be going through another round of editing. When that is finished up, I’m thinking about getting it into a print version. When the Scare Us event is over with, I’m thinking about doing something with A Thousand Cuts. I might turn it into a stand alone epub and push it to Amazon . . .

UPDATE: So much for thinking I had the final draft. There will always be something to fix or do better in a story, no matter how clean you think you have it!

Posted in The Empty, Writings - Fiction

I spent a few hours today writing on The Empty and I would have to say that there’s probably too much Lovecraft in my present reading diet. Hopefully Jack and the creature from Outside don’t turn out to be overly sadistic. On the other hand, how do you prevent the actions of a creature that has a hunger for life itself from looking like pure evil? Do I really want it to not look evil? Ah fun! In any event, the text just hit 13685 words and I’ve written the first actual death scene. This one was a ‘red shirt’ moment though, not a character that you would actually care about. I’m trying to decide who to kill off next . . .

Heck, I’m probably giving away too much information as it is! This is all still a rough draft. If I were to take King’s words in On Writing to heart, you wouldn’t hear anything about this little tale until much later in the game. I’m not sure that I can really write that way though. I just have to talk about what I’m writing. It helps me think through what happens next. Still, I can’t give away all the secrets or there wouldn’t be a story. Although, I might write up that ‘red shirt’ moment from the victim’s perspective, just to drum up a little interest. We’ll see . . . If anyone is interested, leave a comment . . . I might still write it up for the fun of it.

Posted in The Empty, Writings - Fiction

Enemy of the Fae by India Drummond
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclosure Note: I received a copy of the book to review from the author.

With this episode in the story of Eilidh and Munro the world of the Fae takes on an element of reality and depth that was not visible before. The Druids learn that their new world is not so far removed from that which they left, Eilidh must decide what it means to be a Queen, and they all learn the consequences of power.

India has done an amazing job of taking a realm where even the smallest child has the power to bend reality to their will and bringing it down to Earth. Another author I’ve ready made the assertion, “An armed society is a polite society.” Enemy of the Fae explores what happens when the rules are broken and old crimes take on a potency when colored by the power of the Fae.

This book can really tear at your heart. Still, India does show that life goes on and that there can be joy and hope after hurt and betrayal. Old ghosts do pass and new friends are there to be found.

Enemy of the Fae is definitely worth the read.

View all my reviews

Posted in Reading - The Other Half of Writing

It’s been a while since I commented about my own writing so, I though it was about time that I gave an update on The Empty. The book is taking me a touch longer to write without the constant pressure to churn out words you find with NaNoWriMo. Of course, the fact that I have a cat sitting on my chest as I write this doesn’t really help things. Integra can be a bit of an attention hog when she want’s to be. Ah well, that’s the way of things when living with a cat. As Heinlein said, I should just get used to the idea.

Well, enough of that for now. I need to turn 11000 words into 12000 or so.

Update: I didn’t quite make 12000 but 11893 is not a bad stopping point. Especially if you consider that it was about 1 in the morning when I stopped there.

Posted in Cats, The Empty, Writings - Fiction

Azuri Fae by India Drummond
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclosure Note: I received a copy of the book to review from the author.

With this story, we revisit the world Caledonia with Eilidh, Munro and the others and find that there is more to the world of the Fae than their arrogance and vanity. We find that their scheming and plotting could rival any merely human royalty, that their secrets are just as deadly, and discover the cost of duty.

I found this story to be much more smoothly paced than the first book, Blood Faerie. I found myself reveling in the intrigue and building conflict. It has always been enjoyable to watch an underdog find that the bully is really not as big as they think they are. This book had me chuckling with glee as the story played out. Ok, I’m weird and probably a little nuts.

There is a little something for everyone in this story: conflict, love, hate, intrigue and well, you’ll just have to read it to find out.

View all my reviews

Posted in Reading - The Other Half of Writing

Blood Faerie by India Drummond
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure Note: I received a copy of the book to review from the author.

It’s been quite a while since the last time I’ve read a book in what was effectively one sitting. There were a couple of breaks for dinner and driving back from a trip to a nearby lake which made this several marathon sessions rather than one continuous one. Still, anything that can keep me that focused is worth taking note of.

The story primarily follows Eilidh, an outcast Fae, and Munro, a police officer in Perth Scotland, as they hunt a killer who is well beyond the abilities of human authorities to handle. Life throws them together in a way that neither of them could have imagined, nor really believe, and they find something extremely rare and potent that will change each of the forever.

If I had to put forward one word to describe the feel of this story it would be whirlwind. As I said, I read the book from cover to cover (it was in ebook form so they were virtual covers) in a little over nine hours time, so that might have had something to do with the rushed feeling I had while reading. The pace of the story left me a little breathless and, in a few places, wishing there was more meat to things.

Overall, I would rate this book at 4 stars. Even if it went a little fast, Blood Faerie was a good read and well worth the time reading it.

View all my reviews

Posted in Reading - The Other Half of Writing

On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a book I would recommend to anyone who has even a hint of a desire to write or wishes to learn a bit more about what makes King tick. The entire first half of the book is autobiographical, a Curriculum Vitae as he calls it, written with the goal of documenting the formation of a writer. King follows this up with to the point advice on the contents of a writers toolbox and a short run down of his experience “being hit by a bus”. Throughout it all, he kept a smooth pace and even flow which made what could have been a dry treatise into something fun to read.

View all my reviews

Posted in Reading - The Other Half of Writing