K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 66

Book Review: The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang

What can I say? The premise of the book fascinated me: grave robbing, Victorian-era medicine, immigrant, and extraordinary girl. The book was just that, but it wasn’t anything else. While the book brought up the era’s strict views of who to marry, what is proper for a woman, and how to cope when you don’t fit the bill it was only scratching the surface of those issues. The story and subject were handled with a light touch and was too romance centered for my taste. That said I have nothing aga...

Book Review: Men at Arms

Who wouldn’t like a who-done-it-novel in a fantasy setting with well-thought characters and city burning from an intricate political situation, the racial-kind (between Dwarfs and Trolls)? Men at Arms is a fast-paced and fun to read. There behind the main storyline is Pratchett’s snarky societal commentary.

I love City Watch series, especially Vime’s realism combined with pessimism when it comes to humanity. It always makes me smile, and often enough I agree. Men at Arms felt lighter than the...

Writing: Hiatus of Thought

This post has no purpose nor meaning. It started me lying on my sofa with my cat, wondering the emptiness I feel without a typed word. Since I finished editing my second book and gave it to beta readers (I got four) to have their way my days have been hollow. I have let the third book occupy my mind, but I have written not a single word down. I have an idea. I have my characters. I have a setting. I have a subject to toy with, but what I lack is the opening scene which usually draws me in. I...

Book Review: Time’s Eye (A Time Odyssey #1) by Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter

I say it up front: I loved this book. So much, in fact, I moved to read the second book in A Time Odyssey series. This book has that 50-70’s sci-fi feeling I love. It is about science, discovery, wonderment, and human nature. And Arthur C. Clarke is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. There is that.

This book is about a time shift and how present, past, and future people stranded on this strangeness cope. I don’t care for time shifts or time travel as those things frustrate me, because the cha...

Book Review: The Company by K. J. Parker

There are books with a good premise, with a plot that draws you in, but when you get past the opening, you don’t get what you signed for. Sometimes that is a good thing, but with The Company this wasn’t the case. The book’s plot and direction were clearly written by discovery. And while that works on Tom Holt’s (K. J. Parker’s) comic fantasy books, The Company would have needed planning. The ending was horrible. Characters and the happenings were messy in the middle. The pacing was slow.

Howe...

Writing: Morris Reinhardt, Character Sheet

Hi!

I’m sorry that I post this new character sheet this late. I have had a hectic day. Two more project days and I’m finished with senior citizens’ recollection group. Today I took my good friend to take photographs of their hands, and those pictures along with their stories I have helped them to create will go to the local museum for a three-month long exhibition. Yay.

What is new on my writing front? As you might have read, I have finished editing my second book. It is now being read by bet...

Book Review: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It is easy to dismiss this book by thinking it is somewhat arrogant, but that would be foolish as it doesn’t remove the importance and rightfulness of the message; it proves the point we are fallible and have hidden biases which influence our actions and reactions. Not to mention that chance plays an important role in our lives. More than we like to admit.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb goes over the thought patterns we have and how they affect our risk-taking, planning, and how we judge others and ou...

Book Review: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

“Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb.”

When I read the opening of the book, I was instantly hooked. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive by mail and get it to my hands. This had to be good, but it did not deliver and not because of the opening was better...

Book Review: Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey B. West

Our lives have developed beyond the basics (food, shelter, heat, copulation.) There are such monumental things in the world like cities and (mega-multinational) companies which affect our lives. Geoffrey B. West has looked into their lifespan, growth, and innovation strength from physics’ perspective, or to be accurate through scaling laws.

The book comprises an introduction to the scaling laws. What they are, how they work, where do they ably, how they affect organisms on the planet (animals...

Self-Publishing: Beta Readers + Call for Beta Readers

Hello! It is time to stop polishing and seek for second sets of eyes. The writing and reading communities are delightfully weird and supportive that there are people who like and are willing beta readers. That is so wonderful as I think books are a communal effort. They might be typed down by one person with a typewriter, but the finished product isn’t a book without readers, editors, cover artists, publishers, agents, and beta readers. It demands a variety of expertise. Also as a writer, it...