DB Books and Reviews

INTRODUCTION  All too often, I find that sequels just don't provide a worthy follow up to the original or that sometimes the original story is just so incomplete that I hardly have  any desire to move forward for fear of never receiving a satisfying conclusion. For this reason, I often stay away from sequels and even series in general, at least in terms of books. I think this is part of the reason it took me so long to pick up Suzanne Collins' CATCHING FIRE (The Hunger Games Book 2) despite having read the original and seen both of the respective movies a long while ago. The CATCHING FIRE movie adaptation was one of the few movie sequels that I ever thought to be drastically better than the previous film in every way possible. That's not to say that it made me like the first any less, just that I felt it had improved in all aspects. And so I went into this book with timid excitement, hoping I would feel the same way. HOW I CAME UPON IT  As both a sequel to a book I

Digitarum is on sale for $0.99 for the next five days. This is the first time I have been able to experiment with a Countdown Deal so I will have to see how it all turns out. Sadly, you can't split up the days like you can on a free promotion, so I am using my maximum of seven days all at once. It can be picked up at Amazon .com (U.S. only I do believe).

INTRODUCTION This one will be a very special sort of update post because it is a bit of a different reading schedule. Since setting up a Goodreads profile I have slowly been growing a collection of books I have read and reviewed and chipped away at my 2015 reading goal one book at a time. What I have also done is accumulated a somewhat unnerving list of books that are on my To Read shelf. This isn't necessarily a problem in itself, but if there is one trend I've noticed among other users its that a lot of people have excessively long To Read lists. I'm talking in the hundreds and even thousands. While this is totally their right to do, I feel like there's also no way that they have any intention of reading that many books in any reasonable amount of time. Mine has grown to 28 books that includes classics, indie published books, and popular releases. 27 isn't so bad, but it's also just frankly a few more than I intend to read in any reasonable amount of time

INTRODUCTION It's not often that I go into a book KNOWING that I will love it. I've gone in confident I will love something, but even with sequels, there's never really any kind of surefire guarantee. That's all a bit different when I am re-reading something. Such is the case with Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES . This is a book that I actually originally read for a class on popular fiction and I loved the book every bit as much as I loved the movie. Each new film that comes out, I promise myself I'll read the book first, but that has yet to happen so I have vowed to read through the trilogy before I go watch MOCKINGJAY PART 2 once it comes out. In doing so, it felt right that I should review all of them despite their widespread acclaim and to do that, I wanted to do a re-read of the first in this trilogy. Now that I am all brushed up on the details of this book, I am ready to do a review and to move forward with the other two books, both of which now sit

INTRODUCTION  I've already introduced this book in at least one or two previous posts so I will keep the first two sections relatively brief. Basically, I entered a whole bunch of Goodreads Giveaways for various science fiction and fantasy novels and actually won the drawing for E.S. Wynn's WHISPERS OF A WORLD THAT WAS . I entered the drawing because 1) The cover was pretty tight and 2) the synopsis kind of made this sound like MAD MAX meets Lovecraftian monsters. I was certainly a bit sketchy on the details and did note that this belongs to something called the Wraeththu Mythos, but had no idea what that meant and since this is a standalone title, I decided to give it a shot. HOW I CAME UPON IT  Like I said, I won the Giveaway and within about a week, this showed up in the mail. Being that this is the first thing I have ever won off of Goodreads, I was definitely pretty excited and decided to dive right in. HOW I RATED IT  4/5 This is going to be a somewhat hypocri

Bloggers don't really do book hauls or anything like that, but recently I picked up two new short stories from author Cy Wyss and received the paperback copy of WHISPERS OF THE WORLD THAT WAS, which is the book I won in a Goodreads Giveaway. Since I am just about halfway through THE HUNGER GAMES and UNSTABLE PROTOTYPES, it will probably be a while before those two reviews are posted so these three titles will help keep the reviews flowing while I continue to indulge in my main reads. The best part is that two out of the three were free since a giveaway is obviously free and Cy Wyss informed me that the first two Inspector Richter stories are alternately free on Fridays when I reached out about my having read and reviewed "Sinking" which came free with signing up for the monthly newsletter.    This weeks freebie was "Polygraph", which is the first Inspector Richter Mystery Short. I could have waited a week to get "The Bloodless Mask" (Inspector Ri

INTRODUCTION: Giveaways are a bit of a double edged sword in several ways. They are essential for authors, especially new ones, who want to get their name out on the market and generate buzz for new, upcoming, or existing publications. As readers, they're very fun to enter for and even more fun to win. They offer a chance to discover a new author and potentially sample their work, FO FREE! Word of mouth is a powerful thing and if the free book happens to be the first in a series, then that's one way to make sure that the future installments have an audience. Since I am both an avid writer AND reader I have a little experience with both so I figured I would share my most recent experiences with two different ways I made DIGITARUM available for free. NOTE: While this post isn't  directly  tied into my WRITING INSIGHTS series of posts, there are certainly some thoughts on marketing from different perspectives to be found here.  DIGITARUM: Free Promotional Days Whe

INTRODUCTION  It feels like forever since I've read a short story. I've read short novels and novels that I'd really consider novellas, but no short stories. I used to read them all the time, but ever since getting into writing and starting to read books again, I just haven't even really thought to pick up a short story in a while. I was inspired to change that when I got one for free. HOW I CAME UPON IT  Like I mentioned above, this story is free to anyone who wants to sign up for Cy Wyss's newsletter (I will leave the link at the end). Cy is an author of several indie books and this short story features a character named Inspector Richter who appears to have his own series of shorts, the first of which is already out and this one seems t be an advanced copy of one yet to be put up on amazon. I figured this would be a nice chance to sample the author's writing as well as meet a new character that I could potentially follow in a other work should I find h