Gaijin & Splinter re-released on Kindle, ePub and PDF #burningbookpress
Well, it doesn’t rain but it pours. I’m really glad to announce the re-issue of two of my novellas: Gaijin and The Splinter. I confess that Gaijin was a disturbing story when I wrote it, and it still is for me now. In retrospect, I’m proud of myself for having the balls to write it […]
Burning Book Press
It’s my very great pleasure to announce the launch of what I hope will be a wonderful literary project. Burning Book Press is an indie press dedicated to intelligent creative writing for grown-up readers who don’t require hand-holding, moral guidance, or limited vocabulary reading matter. For many years, Aisling Weaver, Wyeth Bailey, Raziel Moore, Ximena […]
My Response: A Writer’s View
After attempting to edit an anthology myself and failing miserably, I have a deep appreciation and respect for anthology editors and the work they do to compile a cohesive yet varied collection of stories that will be salable and, to one extent or another, feature something to everyone’s taste. They often have to cull through […]
The Handmaid’s Tale Revisited: All our Dystopian Tomorrows @MargaretAtwood
I was 22 years old when I read Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.‘ I remember being angry for days after I read it. My father, who read it at the same time, laughed at me and told me to be a more critical reader. He said it was a novel that typified feminist hysteria. My […]
The Sense of an Ending
I feel free to appropriate this title because, although it happens to be the title of Julian Barnes’ celebrated piece of literary fiction, he borrowed it from an older, and much wiser book by Frank Kermode: The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Despite the title, Kermode’s book isn’t really about […]
Who Do You Write For? Are we simply producers of product? Can I get a refund?
This question should haunt every writer. Certainly, there is no writing course in the world that doesn’t confront students with it. It seems like an easy one to answer, but it has levels of complexity that, for the most part, only get discussed within their own, embattled spheres. There is, philosophically, the overarching issue of […]
Prigs with Web Hits
This article at at the Guardian made me see red: Ebooks roundup: Fifty shades of new erotica and roll the dice for a price Populist titles tick the genre boxes, publishers get creative with eshort tasters and price-setting takes a new twist I love how the author manages to get her web-hits by name dropping […]
My Disaster Cover #bookcovers
After writing the last post, Sandrine Lopez, (@sanpezzers) tweeted and asked if I’d ever had an experience of having to live with a bad cover and would I do a post on it. I have to confess, this cover is so bad, it has tainted how I feel about the story as a whole. The […]
Cover-rage: Why Writers Need to Care about Covers #bookcovers
I had a horrible nightmare last week. I dreamed that my novel was released with a cover featuring a blonde bimbo with fake tits sandwiched between two rambo clones. I could see it so clearly, in all its revoltingly literal, misleading, exploitative glory. The scrolled, wedding-invite font was the last straw. I broke through into […]
Perfect Abs and Emo Too: Bared To You Reviewed
I decided to read Bared To You because it was sold as a well-written version of Fifty Shades of Grey. And I thought: hey, maybe the optimists were right! Maybe FSOG was a flawed but timely incursion of erotic fiction into mainstream literature. To give credit where credit is due, Sylvia Day is not E.L. […]