K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 27

Book Review: The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette

I got a recommendation for this when I asked for an apocalypse book. I was told the book hooked them instantly and that it was getting better by more they read. I have to agree. This was a highly entertaining book to read in terms of plot, characters, and writing. The book follows a group of survivors of an apocalypse. They have no idea what has happened to other humans in a world riddled with monstrous wildlife. There is no electricity, no bodies of those who have died. It is like the whole wor...

what is going on

Hi everyone,

I have been on a hitatus mode lately. There has been just too many difficult things going on in my life. I have even taken a break from writing, which pains me and a lot. But I’m optimistic that in two weeks I can get back editing and finishing my fourth book. I’m past halfway point from the first edit. Then there will be two more editing rounds before the book goes to my editor and betareaders. If you are interested in being a betareader let me know. I would mor than appreciate ...

Book Review: The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck

Karin Tidbeck has a funny way of tapping into nostalgia—the sense I had as a child. Maybe it is because our cultures have entwined pasts. Sweden once ruled my country, and our stories were transported to them and theirs to us. The Memory Theater is a retelling of my country’s folklore about fairies and stolen children. I grew up with such stories, knowing that if you ventured into the woods following laughter or fairy fires, you would get lost, and there would be no return. Karin Tidbeck plays w...

Book Review: Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? By Julie Smith

Self-help books are always questionable. They oversimplify the world and leave you wondering what the heck is going on. You could say that about any advice ever given to you, as situations are always unique, and the people in them are too. But then there is the fact that we have some basic understanding of how our minds work, let’s say, when we are anxious. There are patterns that most people follow in such a situation. Add to that: we have tons of scientific research, which has found tricks to ...

Short Story: Fixing the Bugs

Change comes in dark times. So they say. So she had seen. Making the darkness even scarier. Not even the good that might come later can mitigate the pain of the now, the fear of the unknown, and the alteration of events one never considered needing any alterations. Ever since her dark time, she had become obsessed with all the paths the cosmos was composed of. The little elements that made it what it was and hid its reality from the general public. It was nothing like what they said it to be. Th...

Book Review: Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

As always, short story collections are hard to review as they always have hits and misses. The easiest thing to review is the language and story structure. It was superb here. Ottessa Moshfegh knows how to write vivid language to make you see and be in the situation. But I didn’t want to be there. The stories weren’t for me. There was only one that had an exciting start concept-wise, but then it was like the other stories about self-obsessed humans who were weird and confused in creepy or icky s...

Book Review: Sign Here by Claudia Lux

I picked up this book because of the notice of it being turned into a TV show. I got intrigued by the premise of someone working at Hell’s bureaucratic machine. So I went and got the book. I happily read onward, finding the mystery of how two storylines would connect together. The book follows Peyote, a worker at Hell, whose job is to get humans to sign away their souls and the Harrison family and their twisted lives. Unfortunately, the farther I got with the book more disappointed I got. The pr...

Story: Where the Crows Won’t Fly part II

I looked out of the train’s door to the snowy city, wondering if the feeling you get when you return to your hometown should have a special name to it. A word that would explain the sense of threat and nostalgia combined with a chance of decline and buried secrets bursting out. I lingered there, but the people pushing past me forced me to leave the train. Every part of me wanted to return to the warm car, but my sister had already spotted me. I could see her standing next to her SUV. She stayed ...

Book Review: Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro

I have been putting off writing this review for a week now. Still, I can’t wrap around my head if I loved this book or if it was just entertaining and okay. It could be because while the book was so well written, the story intriguing, and the setting to my liking, the characters were cliche, one-dimensional, and weak compared to everything else. But I’m rushing with my review here. I have yet to tell you about the setting or the book’s structure.

The book follows several characters who are un...

Story: Where the Crows Won’t Fly

I’m testing out a story that has haunted me since my father died. So here is the start. It might come into a long book, or I might forget it and return to it someday. I have yet to completely map out what it will be, but it is in the vein of every book, where the protagonist has to go back home and face their past. It will have either magical realism elements or full-blown magic in the sense that I see dead people. It is about family trauma, sisterhood, and facing who you actually are.

The ev...