Kimmery Martin's Blog, page 3

Hot Books of Summer/Fall 2017, Part I

I'm back! Summer always unglues me, what with the heat and all the travel and the thousands of children running around and the alcohol. (Not that those last two are related.) What I lack in productivity and executive functioning skills, however, I make up for in reading volume. I've plowed through at least 15 pre-release books so far and have put together some mini-reviews of the first five, below, with more to come soon.Oh, and a small plug: please add The Queen of Hearts--my upcoming novel-...

An Interview With Lisa Duffy, author of The Salt House

One of the things I love most about reading fiction is the opportunity to inhabit a consciousness completely alien to my own. Recently I’ve been an astronaut fleeing a post-apocalyptic earth; a WWII-era British soldier; a 1980s New York financier; and now…a grieving, conflicted Maine lobsterman. Strangely, this last one is the most foreign to me; before reading this book, I’d have been hard-pressed to think of even one paragraph from the perspective of a coastal Maine man in an industry I kno...

Interview with K.V. Scruggs, Author of What They Don't Know

Today, I'm speaking with the author of a great new medical thriller, my physician friend K.V. Scruggs. See below for a description of her thought-provoking, intricately plotted futuristic novel as well as an interview about her story and her writing process.In the year 2030, the government has seized control of healthcare. Routine treatment is administered to patients and monitored via in-home telemedicine. Hospitals have been replaced by Centers for Standardized Medicine (CSM). No one is a b...

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

The problem with reviewing a large amount of books is it's possible to use up all the superlatives, particularly if you are excitable by nature and therefore prone to hyperbole. A list of words comes to mind after reading Chris Cleave's latest work:poignant, witty, searing, beautiful. However, I am fairly certain I have already used those words in relation to other books, and they couldn't possibly have meant the same thing in those cases. I'm going to have to invent new words to describe thi...

Kimmery's Monthly Reading Lists

Note: I read plenty of books I don't wind up reviewing, and sometimes I even remember to keep track of them. If I loved a book so much I can't stand it, I'll mark it with asterisks. Please feel free to make suggestions!May 2017:Edenby Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg (women's fiction);Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Livingby Manjula Martin (essays)April 2017:The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional(narrative nonfiction)by Agustin Fuentes;Everyone Brave is Forgive...

Kimmery's Guide to Iceland

Velkomin til Reykjavíkur!GETTING HERE:Unlike most of the people attending the Iceland Writers Retreat, who are flying Icelandair, I’ve somehow managed to book myself on a discount airline called WOW. We get off to a less-than-spectacular start with a three-hour delay. Once we finally board, however, the airline redeems itself with funky fuchsia carpets and an assortment of cheeky sayings stenciled onto the cabin walls, like some kind of airborne IKEA. Must be a Nordic thing. The captain makes...

An Interview with Jessica Strawser, author of Almost Missed You

Almost Missed Youbegins with an event so startling there is no possible chance you’ll put the book down. A woman named Violet is vacationing with her husband Finn and her little son Bear, luxuriating in the bright beauty of the Florida sun and sand, her mind drifting in lazy, grateful reminiscence. In one of those fantastic meet-cute situations, she and Finn had first encountered each other on a trip to this very beach—thrown together during an emergency in which there’d been no chance to exc...

Kimmery's Guide To Costa Rica

Bienvenido a Costa Rica! ¡Pura vida!  Here I sit in a paradisiacal jungle, with a cup of strong coffee and a view of the rollicking Pacific Ocean, watching a family of Capuchin monkeys gamboling around stealing my bananas and mangoes.We decided to stay put in one spot -- Manuel Antonio, on the west coast -- on this particular week-long trip, even though Costa Rica is comprised of an abundance of delightful ecosystems. I’ve heard that Manuel Antonio is very touristy, which trust me, is not a n...

The Last Kids on Earth

The Last Kids on Earthis about a 13 year old boy named Jack Sullivan, whose town and possibly the rest of the world has had a monster apocalypse.For all he knows everybody he knows has gotten eaten, ran away, or got bit by zombies and is now one of them. This is very bad. Jack is no match for hundreds of monsters alone, so he comes up with a plan to go exploring for survivors to build a team.It's not like Jack has no home or anything; he's got a tree house with catapults and video games. (Yes...

What Happens When You Write A Book, Part I

T-minus 10 months until my book is published and I am officially transformed from nerdy reader to nerdy writer. (February 6th, 2018! Prepare to party down!) This is enormously exciting to me and about four other people, most of them related to me. But I thought y'all might find a short history of my path to publication interesting, because one thing I have learned since obtaining my book contract is that many, many people dream of writing a book. Or an article. Or a blog. Or even a tweet.And...