Sheila's Guests and Reviews

 Today I'm delighted to welcome Kathryn Elizabeth Jones, author of " I walked with Jesus ," to my blog. I very much enjoyed her short stories retelling miracles from the life of Christ - we clearly have faith and short fiction in common with each other.  I loved how historical, real, and relevant Kathryn's stories felt. You can find my review here:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4904771188 . I'd love to meet the author and chat in person, but inviting her to my blog is the next best thing, so I asked her to let me and you how she finds her audience. Here's what she told me. Why I think my audience is beginning to find me by  Kathryn Elizabeth Jones One of the hardest things to do as an author, other than writing or marketing a book, is to find that often illusive audience. It’s easier with mysteries or children’s picture books, probably because you know who reads them; adults and teens who love sleuthing and children and their parents who love reading....

I read somewhere that poems are meant to cut straight to the emotions. One of the books I read recently was a poetry book where the photographs reached out to the emotions too. Another was an intriguing depiction of four worlds through the eyes of fascinating characters, with intersecting emotions and separate lives--it reminded me of Ursula LeGuin's Malafrena. And then there were the anthologies. And then... Meanwhile I'm writing chapters, one by one, of my Hemlock series, delighting in the reaction of friends who seem eager to read the next bit... but they're friends; the real test will be when I try to get it published. Anyway, here are a few more book reviews as I struggle to catch up on catching up: Beneath all this Beauty by Danny Newman, photos by Nili Shchory , is the illustrated poetry book I mentioned--short, but beautifully put together, with fascinating photographs and smoothly biting words. Enjoy with a strong, dark, five-star coffee. Next is  neXt by L...

Our writers' group is busy preparing our next anthology, to be released for Christmas. We've done one a year for the last few years, and Fine Lines was our last effort, in celebration of the lines on my mother's 90-year-old face. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1731536100/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4 Meanwhile members have submitted stories and poems to various anthologies, and one of my friends was recently published in the Itty Bitty Writing Space. So I had to get a copy and read it. And here are reviews of Itty Bitty plus various other short story collections and anthologies that I've read recently. Find some coffee. See what you'd like: First, of course, is the Itty Bitty Writing Space edited by Jason Brick and Dani J Caile , a truly eclectic collection of truly short (shortest!) pieces, each less than 1,000 words. It's a perfect book for picking up and putting down, but also an enthralling anthology to read straight through from beginning to e...

When Shelfari closed and Goodreads absorbed its reviews, I found myself landed with tons of new shelves on my Goodreads page. Every tag was now a permanent link between (some of the) books I'd read. And the books I'd so carefully shelved before were now scattered among the morass. One tag I'd used on Shelfari but not Goodreads was "literary," which got me wondering, what did I mean when labeled a book that way. Is all writing literature? Do the books I labeled literary somehow have more literary merit? Or maybe it's lit if it's character driven and just fiction otherwise? Which then begs the other question, what is "just fiction"? I remember when I was growing up, I graduated from the children's to the adult library, aged around 10, and delighted in those yellow backed Golancz science fiction novels. My granddad read James Bond adventures and Westerns, so of course I read all of those too. Mum and Dad had library books hidden under the be...

Recreating ancient history can be fraught with interpretations. But recent history must surely be just as hard. They tell us we should "write what we know" but I'm always afraid what I know might be skewed by what I thought I knew. If I painted the world I grew up in, I know my brothers would disagree. My older brother has already complained about things I said as a young adult that I can't even imagine wanting to say. There again, in fiction, the world is seen through a character's eyes. So perhaps I can write what I thought I once knew through a stranger's eyes and make it real, even if it's not what was really there. Mesu Andrews recreated the ancient world of Israel in Egypt beautifully in Miriam . Her ancient history includes interpretation of Biblical events, scientific theory, historical record and more. It convinces me. Fill a suitably complex four-star cup with coffee and enjoy. War Brides by Helen Bryan is set (mostly) in England before a...

Every once in a while I get to review a short book. It gives me a break from the long ones, refreshes the parts other books can't reach, to paraphrase an old English beer commercial, and lets me feel good about getting a few more book reviews off the waiting list. Of course, reviewing a short book takes just the same amount of time as reviewing a long one. But reading it's faster. Oddly enough, writing a short book isn't necessarily that much faster. It's faster than writing a novel, simply because the fingers don't have to fly over quite so many keys and pages. But editing short takes way longer than editing long. With fewer words, each one has to count, whether in a children's book or an adult's. With fewer pages, every error sticks out like a sorer thumb. And those fingers that typed so hard hover over the keys while the eyes hover over the words. I'm editing my Fred and Joe stories at the moment. Each short story needs editing on its own. Then I ...

I read three science fiction entries, two Popular Literature--Fiction, and only one short story during judging in the Dan Poynter Global eBook Awards. But they all might equally have fellen under science fiction, so I'll group the reviews together: Laughter in the Canyon, by Laura Thompson combines past lives, mythology, Reiki, and National Geographic beauty into the story of a woman's journey to follow her heart. Drink a complex 4-star cup of coffee with this one. The Dawning, by Linda Pendleton , made the winners' circle. A fairly literary science fiction tale, it takes a group of genius children, their parents, scientists, the military, and a native American lawyer, quickly moving to abduction, danger and search. Nicely balanced, though very detailed, this one should be read with a 3-star nicely balanced coffee in hand. Kappa Hunter by J.K. Swift won the short stories--fiction section and is a fascinating tale of a bear hunter meeting a kappa hunter in the for...