Featuring The BookSmugglers

Featuring The BookSmugglers

  I don’t know that you’ll find a better voice in the blogosphere for YA books and SFF books that Thea and Ana from The Booksmugglers.  I’m not the only one who believes this.  The Booksmugglers are one of the most trafficked book blogs on the internet.  They are bloggers at Tor.com and are now [...]

REVIEW:  Gaijin by Remittance Girl

REVIEW: Gaijin by Remittance Girl

Dear Remittance Girl, Your novella, Gaijin, caught me by surprise. A friend recommended it to me on Twitter and then loaned it to me through my Kindle. I had heard about it and investigated purchasing it once before, but shied away from making an actual purchase. Somehow, I wasn’t expecting as much thoughtfulness as I [...]

GAME REVIEW: Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale

GAME REVIEW: Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale

I was pruning my hard drive when I stumbled across a game labelled Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale. I somehow forgot I bought this game last year. Since I was in the mood for a game set in Jane Austen’s fictional universe, I was all for it. Even when I discovered it’s not an [...]

Monday Midday Links:  Musicians Seek Self Publishing Options; Real Data About Ebooks from The BookSmugglers

Monday Midday Links: Musicians Seek Self Publishing Options; Real Data About Ebooks from The BookSmugglers

Musicians Realizing They Don’t Need Major Labels Anymore | Techdirt – ” Jordis Unga, a singer who has appeared on two reality TV shows (Rock Star: INXS and The Voice), has decided that she doesn’t need to sign a label deal. While she didn’t win on either show, she did build up quite a following, [...]

REVIEW:  The Saturnalia Effect by Heidi Belleau,Violetta Vane

REVIEW: The Saturnalia Effect by Heidi Belleau,Violetta Vane

Dear Ms. Belleau and Ms. Vane. I found this story by clickingclickingclicking through the various posted responses to our post about M/M romance and Fan Fiction. Heidi gives good blog and then I was intrigued, as I always am with prison stories, by the short she wrote with Violetta Vane. This story is fabulous, I’m [...]

REVIEW:  Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman   by JB Lynn

REVIEW: Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman by JB Lynn

Dear Ms. Lynn, Honestly, if someone told me a week ago that I’d be reading a book about a woman with a crappy life who survived a car wreck with only a concussion that now lets her communicate with a pet lizard and that in order to pay the astronomical medical bills pilling up to [...]

Reclaiming Your Copyright After Thirty-Five Years

Introduction This is a long article. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in.   I wrote this article and sent it to the RWR but it wasn’t suited for publication so I thought I would share it with you.   The right to sever a copyright grant after 35 years came to my attention when Evan [...]

Copyright Terms Should Be Shorter

Copyright Terms Should Be Shorter

  Copyrights, particularly lengthy ones, benefit the corporations that license and/or those copyrights.  The Copyright Extension Act of 1998 isn’t called the Mickey Mouse protection act because it is designed to protect individual creators.  It is designated as such because it benefits one of the largest owners of intellectual property, Disney.  As of 1998, the [...]

REVIEW:  Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

REVIEW: Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

Dear Ms. Griffin, I’m a big Edgar Allan Poe fan. Any book with a title referencing him is always going to get a second look from me. Combined with a striking cover, it’s almost guaranteed I will pick it up. I initially thought Masque of the Red Death was a debut, but your name sounded [...]

First Page: Adventures of Pearl Whyte

First Page: Adventures of Pearl Whyte

Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously. You can submit your own First Page using this form. Chapter 1: Death of a Legend A full moon illuminates [...]

GUEST REVIEW:  BadAss by Sable Hunter

GUEST REVIEW: BadAss by Sable Hunter

All right, so I may have gone overboard with the length of my last review. Smarminess levels were appropriate, but I freely admit I have difficulty shutting myself up sometimes. To avoid a repeat of that tl:dr trauma, and because I am a Geek and a Nerd and a Dork with NO LIFE, I decided [...]

What Jia Read in March and April

What Jia Read in March and April

Wow, has it been a long time since I last put one of these lists together! And I think I promised to be better about it in my previous post too. Obviously I need to learn not to jinx myself. The Scholomance by R. Lee Smith. Since lots of people were talking about Smith, I [...]

JOINT REVIEW:  Sheltered by Charlotte Stein

JOINT REVIEW: Sheltered by Charlotte Stein

Dear Ms. Stein: I’ve always been fond of your voice but often found the narrative running away. In Sheltered, the balance between the deep point of view and the emotional arc of the characters was better tuned here and for the most part this emotional journey was engaging. DA January and I engaged in an [...]

Friday Film Review: The Wrong Box

Friday Film Review: The Wrong Box

The Wrong Box (1966) Genre: Historical black comedy Grade: B I’ve been meaning to watch and review this one for ages but got the boost I needed when I saw it’s being shown today on TCM. Used to be it was impossible to find this one on DVD but recently both a region 1 and [...]

REVIEW:  Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

REVIEW: Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

Dear Ms. Mayberry— I think your novel Hot Island Nights is splendid—I love the rapport between Elizabeth and Nathan—and I was happy to learn your new self-published novel Her Best Worst Mistake is a companion/sequel to that tale. Her Best Worst Mistake chronicles what happens between Elizabeth’s wild best friend Violet and Elizabeth’s stuffy ex-fiancé [...]