Have you ever noticed how people talk faster and louder when they have to defend a position they know is wrong? Like the Toronto cops defending the officer who shot Sammy Yatim nine times? A member of the commercial publishing industry is doing the same thing in blog form with statements like this: There are […]
“The guy with the bad attitude has been following me all week.” Seb Kirby gets right into the story in Double Bind. There’s not a wasted word in this book: no background, no world-building, no nonsense. The writing is spare and clean, active yet evocative, told in first-person present tense, which enhances the action and […]
Image borrowed from Zazzle In Foucault’s Pendulum, semiotics originator Umberto Eco wrote the argument that should have killed any conspiracy theory involving Templars, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, the Illuminati and any other secret society that manipulated governments, courts, corporations and international organizations. Sadly, the nutbar ranters of the world are not very well read. I received a […]
Here is a sample from my work-in-progress, Army of Worn Soles, based on the true story of my father-in-law, who was drafted into the Red Army in 1941, just before the Germans invaded. He fought across Ukraine, was captured, escaped a POW camp and made his way home. This chapter, “Battle at Poltava,” is based on […]
Here are more representative samples of the spam I get in this blog’s Comments. As I said in my last post, most of the time, I just delete these. But I thought I would present these to help any other bloggers who may be tempted to click on a link. Don’t do it! Asking a […]
When I started blogging, I was at first astounded by the amount of spam comments I get. Why do people bother with this? Today, my reaction alternates between being annoyed and amused. Normally, I delete all spam comments after a quick check — sometimes, Blogger puts a legitimate comment into the Spam folder, or rarely, […]
An independent novel review Bruce A. Blake is a professional fantasy writer after my own heart. I have already reviewed his first novel, On Unfaithful Wings, giving it a full five stars. Khirro’s Journey, Book One: Blood of the King is the first book in the traditional fantasy trilogy, and this one is not only […]