It’s been a while since I’ve posted about a recent read.
So I had to go back and read this one after finishing Brandon Sanderson short story Mitosis (Read my review here). I didn’t realise at the time that it was a story between two books but I enjoyed it enough to give the series a go. I’d already read his Mistborne series and really enjoyed it. I wasn’t disappointed in this first book either. I enjoy his world building and learn a lot about it through his book (I went back many times and had a look at how he crafts it). This book is a story of superheroes but not as you know them. Brandon seemed to transfer his use of magic building to great use when building a superhero system. I’m looking forward to getting into the 2nd book. Read on below to the book description or get a copy for yourself through the affiliate link below.
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The craft of writing is interesting in itself to me. I came across an article this week which spoke about writing short stories and how it’s an important vessel for authors to help in creating and increase their presence. The example offered was Author A writes an 80,000 word novel while Author B writes 8 x 10,000 word short reads. Author B can produce and publish these short reads at a quicker rate which starts building an audience with each release while Author A has to rely on one release. It was also outlined that Author B has the ability to tap into a greater number of keywords and and categories they can target. It was a really useful article and I’m glad I read it. I’ve only ever used short stories as writing prompts (up to 1,000 words in most instances) but this article spoke about an area in Amazon that I wasn’t aware of which is Kindle Short reads. I’ve been waiting for Kindle Vella to be released in Australia which is where authors write serialised pieces but this was different again (and available to me now!). So I went searching for some short reads and I began with some authors I was already familiar with. I started reading Brandon Sanderson this year and really enjoyed his Mistborn Series. Unbeknownst to me the book I selected was a short story between full length novels. It was a good taster of the series though and I’ve subsequently started reading the first book (Steelheart) which has been awesome so far. I got into some of the Jack Reacher books after seeing the TV series which I think is far superior to the Tom Cruise movies. Alan Ritchson is great and I’ve been a fan of his since Blue Mountain State. It has me rethinking my approach and I’m starting to lean towards maybe working on one or two short stories while still developing my novel. The links below to buy now are affiliate links to Amazon Australia.
What a fun little adventure this book provided.
I was searching for another Aussie author, this time in the action/adventure genre and Matt’s name popped up. As soon as I read the description on this book I knew it would be right up my alley. I wasn’t disappointed either. It was a great story of good vs evil and while easy reading, it captured the violent confrontations with in-depth detail. I not only enjoyed this book but I learnt a lot from it too. The narrative of the book which utilised flashbacks regularly wasn’t something that I’d come across before and it gave each character time to shine through the eyes of the main character. I’ll definitely be checking out a few more of Matt’s books. So I thought I’d kick off my ‘Bookshelf’ updates with something that’s a bit left field for me. Romance. Yep, I put aside the fantasy/sci-fi novels and went to work on this novel by Rachel Armstrong.
Rachel is also a Townsville local and the facilitator of the popular fiction writing group through Townsville Writers and Publishers Centre. Unfortunately I’ve only got to attend this writing group once since joining TWPC but from that one session. After reading that this book was set in a fictional town in NQ Queensland, it ticked a number of boxes for me for areas of writing I wanted to learn more about. Like how an author writes about
My own book that I’m working on at the moment is set in a small town in Central West Queensland and even though the main narrative of my book isn’t romance, I wanted to explore writing some of it in. Having little (actually no) experience writing romance, this book was a great introduction to the genre. Rachel does a great job of building suspense and real relationships between the characters. Anyone that’s visited a small town could relate to the warmth and hospitality of the people. The link to Rachel’s website is below where you can buy the book, it’s worth checking out. |
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April 2023
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