Tag: reading

Open Mike Night: Thoughts from the Morning After

As promised, here’s my report on Open Mike night for my writer’s group. Now, I should explain that my writer’s group isn’t, I don’t believe, typical. We don’t read to each other, or critique each others’ work. What we have is a space to write, coffee, tea, water and wi-fi provided, and a ‘den mother’ who strictly maintains the ‘no conversation, no phones’ rules.

So while we (mostly) recognize each other, we have no idea what anyone else is working on. So this yearly open-mike night is a chance to get to know each other a bit, as well as read our work. We started with drinks and munchies and conversation, and after half an hour or so of that, our ‘den mother’ got us started. I volunteered to read first, since that meant, firstly, I got it over with, and secondly, that I could then really listen to other work, instead of being nervous about my own reading.

Lights in the face, can’t see the room (this is good); my voice wavering a little at first but then steadying. I read my piece – an excerpt from Reverse Migration, chosen by all of you who voted here or on Twitter or privately e-mailed me. It sounds good, the words strong and flowing. The applause is hearty, more than polite, I think. And I don’t fall down (or up) the stairs.

About ten or twelve people read: award winning authors who make a living at this, and aspiring authors, some of whom read their rejection letters. Poems, short stories, self-help, memoir. A room full of talent, from twenty-something to seventy-something. Supportive, encouraging, genuinely interested in what each other is writing. Nice people. And now we know each other all a bit better.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and to those of you who asked for a report. The world is a better place when we listen to each others’ voices.

A Review of Chained by Susanne Valenti

Chained, by Susanne Valenti

A fast-paced, well-plotted young-adult dystopian novel by first-time author Susanne Valenti, Chained is concerned with the familiar theme of teenage protagonists challenging the structures and tenets of their society in a post-apocalyptic world. While this theme is the basis for most dystopian novels, the characters of and the story told in Chained are original enough to keep readers interested. Before I write anything else, let me say this: Chained is worthy of a read if young adult dystopian fiction is a genre of choice. Fans of the Divergent series, The Hunger Games series, and similar works should enjoy this book and look forward to the sequel.

Now, for a few niggles.

The society against which Maya, the heroine, and her companions rebel is imagined and described in enough detail to give the reader a sense of how this world works. The society into which she escapes is less well realized, perhaps because it reflects, more or less, current Western society, and therefore is supposed to be already familiar to the reader. I found I had questions about the functioning of the society outside of the city from which Maya and her companions flee which were not answered in the narrative.

Maya’s thoughts and reactions to situations were not always made clear, and at times she appeared to observe what was happening to her and narrate rather than respond. In one or two cases – especially after a scene in which she is brutally assaulted – her reactions did not to me ring true. Overall, though, this does not impede the action of the narrative, and should not be a barrier to enjoying the the story.

A few production issues were mildly irritating, and perhaps the manuscript could have benefited from one final copy-edit. The author’s use of ‘alright’ rather than ‘all right’; the contraction of ‘going to’ to ‘gunna’ rather than the more familiar ‘gonna’; inconsistent capitalization of City in “Harbour City”, and an unconventional use of quotation marks in multi-paragraph dialogue were all distractions for me, pulling my focus away from the writing – which overall is effective – when they occurred.

But these are niggles only. Let me repeat that Chained, overall, is a well-told story, and I will be reading the sequel when it comes out. My overall rating for Chained? 3 ½ stars out of 5.

Chained by Susanne Valenti is available as an e-book from Amazon.

This is an independent review of a purchased book. The review was not sought by the author nor written for any benefit. The opinions stated here are mine alone.

And now for something completely different…

Here’s a short story I wrote a number of years ago for my husband’s birthday party – his birthday is just a couple of days before Hallowe’en, so every few years we do a costume party with a theme.  This particular year it was horror stories.   You can read it on Wattpad  or on my website.

Spider

A Map of the Empire

MAPTAKE1

Here’s a map of the lands known as ‘The Empire’.  It’s perhaps 800 miles north to south, two hundred and fifty miles across. Two hundred thousand square miles in area – twice the size of the UK, about the same as France, half the size of Ontario, just a bit bigger than the Dakotas.

Note that the villages of Delle, Serra and Tirvan are shown in relation to the Road, but actually are on the coast below the Road.

Download Empire’s Daughter for free for a limited time!

Upon reflection, I decided that serializing Empire’s Hostage without making Empire’s Daughter equally free for readers wasn’t logical.  So, for a limited time (until September 15th), you can download Empire’s Daughter from www.smashwords.com for no cost, using the coupon code available on the About this Project page of Empire’s Hostage.

Available e-book formats: : epub mobi pdf rtf lrf pdb txt html

Enjoy!

Marian

An update on Book II: Empire’s Hostage

Empire’s Daughter has done well in the months since it was published.  I’m pleased with it.  But in the interim, I’ve been thinking hard about why I write, and what it means to me.

I write neither for profit nor fame.  I write because I need to tell stories, and have since I was a child.  It’s as simple as that. I also heartily dislike trying to publicize, sell, or otherwise promote my work, and I run a hundred miles from public speaking or book launches.

I have chosen to serialize the second book in the Empire’s Legacy series, Empire’s Hostage, here.  Eventually I probably will publish it as an e-book, but perhaps not. We’ll see. This is a ‘real-time’ project:  I will be adding posts, generally of between two to three thousand words, a reasonable reading chunk, as I write and edit them.

Do you need to have read Empire’s Daughter?  It will help, but I’ll try to recap where I can in the sequel without it being too awkward or contrived.

This is speculative fiction, and an alternate reality.  If you’re only comfortable with conventional marriage, or with heterosexual relationships, or, you’re looking for magic and high fantasy, these aren’t the books for you.

I hope you’ll visit the site and begin reading.

Marian

Serendipity

I don’t buy a lot of books any more, for reasons of both economy and a concerted effort not to buy what I don’t need. Libraries provide me with most of what I read.  But I will buy a book if I need it for research, and I can’t get it any other way, or, it falls into a category I call ‘contemplative books’:  books I will read several times, books that make me think about my relationship to the world.  Mostly these are books like The Wild Places, by Robert MacFarlane, or Four Fields, by Tim Dee, thoughtful, insightful books written about the relationship between nature and humans.  Mostly British, as this is the country I love best of all the world.

So when Amazon.co.uk sent me their most recently generated list of ‘books recommended for me’, one stood out.  (By the way, I don’t understand the algorithms they use, but they get it right 95% of the time.  I want to buy almost all of them.  I resist.)  The Green Roads into the Trees:  A Walk through England, by Hugh Thomson, ticked enough of the boxes. My libraries didn’t have it  and weren’t interested in getting it – too specialized.  I was pretty certain I would read it more than once.  So it became one of the rare books I bought.

I was busy, so I didn’t look at it for a few day after it arrived.  But when I opened it….call it grace, call it serendipity…but it ticked a box I hadn’t realized it would.  The book is about the author’s walk from Dorset to Norfolk on an ancient trackway called the Icknield Way, a route and an experience I need to research, not for the Empire’s Legacy series, but for another novel which is in the very early planning and research stage.  I was absolutely delighted. And if I know the way of things, there is a good chance that somewhere in this book there will be a line, a comment, that will inform and change that novel in a way I can’t foresee.