independent author

Sample Sunday: Initiation Rites—The blessing

As I’ve posted before, I used to participate in a Web round called Six Sentence Sunday. Each week, we participants would post six consecutive sentences from a writing project on our blogs. We’d include a link to the Six Sentence Sunday page and then post the link to our post on the central Six Sentence […]

Why Hallowe'en? Because we love to see fear in the mirror

  Ebola. Totalitarianism. Pandemic. Mass migration. Climate change. Terrorism. Judging from hyperbole in social media, we are out-and-out terrified of these things. Even to the extent of people getting angry at climate activists for “spreading fear.” We’re afraid of fear, like Franklin Roosevelt said. And yet, at this time of year, we choose to scare ourselves […]

Six-sentence Sunday: The Bones of the Earth

Once upon a time, when blogging was still young and the World Wide Web was comparatively innocent, there was a thing called Six Sentence Sunday. During this epoch, authors would publish six-sentence samples of their books, either published or works-in-progress, onto their blogs on Sunday morning, along with a link to a central site called […]

You have nothing to fear but ... yourself

This is a guest post that originally appeared on my former Blogspot blog. It was written by Scott Morgan, who at the time owned the Write Hook: Writing for the jugular blog and was the author of Character Development From the Inside Out and Short Stack.  It seems that Scott has since quit the writing […]

BondingBladeCover

An independent review The Bonding Blade by M.L. Doyle The premise is fun: the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sex, war love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, justice and power, Inanna (also known as Ishtar) becomes embodied in former U.S. soldier who lives in Minneapolis. Of course, where there’s Inanna, there has to be her […]

The best and worst of DG Torrens

This instalment of “the best and worst” is by mother, author and blogger DG Torrens. Her blog, My Books and I, covers the writer’s experience as well as book reviews and previews of her own book (kind of like this one). I have also contributed a guest post on her blog. But read this one […]

A well deserved review: A Silent Prayer

Independent review of the book By Samreen Ahsan A Silent Prayer is a book that deserves all the attention, including the many awards it has received. In just over a year since its publication, A Silent Prayer won first prizes at book fairs in Los Angeles, Hollywood and Paris, first prize in the Readers’ Favorite […]

The best and the worst of D.G. Torrens

This post originally appeared a number of years ago when I hosted my blog on Blogger, and I’m delighted to re-present it to you here today. Bestselling author and blogger DG Torrens. Her blog, My Books and I, covers the writer’s experience as well as book reviews and previews of her own book (kind of […]

Khirro’s Journey: An outstanding novel by a novelist with chops

An independent novel review By Bruce Blake Bruce 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 […]

Undrastormur: An independent book review

The best children’s books are those that also appeal to adults, and they do that by presenting characters with elements that readers of all ages can recognize in themselves. Undrastormur: A Viking Tale of Troublesome Trolls by Roger Eschbacher is one of those books. It continues the author’s oeuvre of middle-grade books based on ancient […]