Lorina Stephens's Blog, page 41
April 3, 2014
Two recent 4-star reviews for Old Growth
available in print and ebookfrom Five Rivers Publishing
and online booksellers worldwide
Old Growth, the second novel in the Sid Rafferty Thriller series, by Matt Hughes, recently received the following two, four-star reviews on LibaryThing.
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.Sid Rafferty, a writer for hire, lives with his girlfriend in a small town in Vancouver. The many threads of this novel include, but are not limited to, the preservation/cutting of old growth forests, historical events that might or might not become a movie, relationship issues that need to be dealt with, deaths that might be murder, illegal activities, politics, past relationships that impact the present and personal issues that may or may not be dealt with. Mr. Hughes has managed to tie everything up in a tidy story that is interesting left me wondering what will happen in the next book about Sid Rafferty. ( 
)
| 
flagCathyGeha | Apr 1, 2014 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.This book takes place on Vancouver Island, BC. As a BC girl I always enjoy a great story that occurs in places I am familiar with. This book was no exception. It combines a compelling mystery with a bit of romance and weaves in a lot of environmental issues that are relevant to the area. I enjoyed the story and the characters and look forward to the next in the series.I received this book in exchange for an unbiased review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. (
)
| flagbooksgaloreca | Mar 29, 2014 |
March 27, 2014
Prix Aurora Award nominations
It's that time of year again, and nominations for the Prix Aurora Award are once again open.
This year Five Rivers has several books eligible for nomination. We hope you will register with CSFFA and consider nominating Five Rivers' eligible titles.
Online nominations must be submitted by 11:59:59 PM EST on April 12, 2014.
Voting will begin on May 3, 2014. Online votes must be submitted by 11:59:59 EDT on September 6, 2014.
The Aurora awards will be present during V-Con on the weekend of Oct 3-5, 2014.
Both nominations and votes may either be submitted via the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association's online system or by mailing them the paper form. If you have questions please contact them at adminprixaurorawards.ca. (change the to @ before you email).
To nominate a work, you must be a member of the CSFFA, which costs $10.00 and can be paid through PayPal.
Five Rivers' eligible titles are:
Novels over 40,000 words
88by Michael R. Fletcher
The Tattooed Witchby Susan MacGregor
Indigo Timeby Sally McBride
YA Novels
Out of Timeby D.G. Laderoute
Typeby Alicia HendleyNovellas
The Runner and the Wizardby Dave DuncanArtist
Jeff Minkevicscovers for Five Rivers Publishing
March 21, 2014
D.G. Laderoute to make two appearances
D.G. LaderouteD.G. Laderoute will appear at Chapters, 797 Memorial Avenue, Thunder Bay, Ontario, on Saturday, April 5, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. He will be signing copies of his debut novel, Out of Time.
Later in the month, April 24, at 7:00 p.m., Laderoute will do a reading for the Friends of Thunder Bay Public Library, as the keynote speaker at their AGM. Event is to be held at the Mary J.L. Black Public Library, 901 Edward St. S., Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Out of Time is available in both print and eBook directly from Five Rivers, or through online booksellers worldwide, as well as select bookstores.
March 14, 2014
Interview with Leslie Gadallah, author of The Legend of Sarah
Five Rivers' publisher, Lorina Stephens, recently interviewed Leslie Gadallah, author of The Legend of Sarah, about Gadallah's new release, writing, and what's next.
Leslie GadallahLS: The Legend of Sarah was originally published as The Loremasters in 1988 by Del Rey, and has now been revised and re-released under its new title. Tell us a little about how that original publication came about and was received by the public, and then how it came about Five Rivers’ editor, Robert Runte, approached you for a revision.
LG: The Loremasters was the second manuscript I sent to Del Rey. It got a number of horrible reviews when it first came out, and it didn't sell all that well. One could blame the silly title, or the not too impressive cover, or the lack of publicity, or any number of other things. It doesn't follow the American rules, of course. No hero comes striding over the mountain to make everything right in the final pages.
And those were the days when the American model was the only model for SF.
But life goes on. I was busy with Cat's Gambit, and then with a lot of technical editing, and writing popular science for a number of newspapers, and a radio series, and family, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and assumed this story was a dead issue for twenty-three years. And then, about two years ago, Robert sent me an email. It was a bolt out of the blue. I had no idea he had been using The Loremasters as course material, or that people were complaining they couldn't get copies because the book was out of print. Robert likes it because it does not follow the American model.
LS: It has been said Canadian fiction, and in particular Canadian SF, differs greatly from American publications in that we tend to focus more on the individual’s struggle in society and with the environment, and deal with unlikely heroes. How do you respond to that assertion?
LG: I think the whole business of heroes is an American concept. Conceit? Hardly anyone gets up in the morning and says to himself, I think I'll do something really evil today; neither does anyone say, well, Wednesday needs to be truly heroic, so I better go save the world. The vast majority of people do what they think is best as well as they can, and heroes and villains are really separated only by whether or not we agree with their arguments. Even those individuals everyone says are wicked probably believe they are doing a thing that needs to be done. (Though you have to wonder at Stalin.) If the necessary is also personally advantageous, so much the better. We rationalise a lot. Much of the tension in The Legend of Sarah arises from differing ideas of what is right.
LS: How does this new release differ from the original?
LG: A number of big ugly info-dumps that stood in the way of the story have been removed. A couple of technical issues were resolved. Robert got me to nail down the point of view much more securely than it had been. Some things that were being misread were changed. We removed a few anachronisms and renamed the Bush Wars to avoid tying the reference to an unfortunate president. We redid some transitions. Robert picked up a few grammatical faults. But it is the same story, cleaner, smoother, and easier to read.
LS: What was the original inspiration for this story? Was it person, place, or concept? And how did you go about developing that inspiration into a novel?
LG: When my son was in high school, I noticed that the school community was deeply divided along several planes and these sub-communities didn't interact very much. A microcosm of the world, really. The most important to my son was the division between the technologically competent—what we would now call nerds—and the others. Nerds and non-nerds had little common ground, and hardly any girls joined the nerd community back then.
A science fiction writer's natural response to such an observation is: well, if this goes on—
Things churn in the back of the mind. I began what would become The Legend of Sarah thinking I would write about a society coming apart along technological lines, with the non-nerds having a pretty poor time of it, but when I started working it out, that seemed ever less likely to be what would happen, and the interesting place to tell a story became the point at which the technocrats were beginning to see their own limitations. While modern society as a whole is hugely dependent on technology, technology is hugely dependent on resources, particularly, dense energy sources. You can grow sheep with an energy source no richer than a pasture, but you can't power a cell phone network with grass. (Any kind of grass.)
LS: Despite being originally published in 1988, there is a timeless element to The Legend of Sarah. Was that a conscious decision on your part, or simply part of the nature of your subject matter?
LG: I can't honestly say I thought, oh, yeah, in twenty years time folks'll still love this. But if a story is not too dependent on a whiz-bang new, or soon-to-be-new, technological marvel, it can have some resonance for awhile. We still read Chaucer and Caesar's Gaulic Wars. And the walls of pyramids.
LS: How does one get from being a chemist in analytical, agricultural, biological and clinical chemistry to being a writer of SF?
LG: Mm. I don't know. I always read a lot. There were already some chemistry papers out in the technoverse with my name on them, but those things are formulaic reporting, and don't really count. The first serious, I may actually show this to someone, creative writing I did was for a newspaper's writing contest, and it won a prize. A couple of years later, I won another one. Maybe that was when I started to think I could actually do this. I had done a fair bit of editing for various scientific people by then, and understood I had a fair grasp of the mechanics of the language. I just had to be convinced that the stories I wanted to tell were ones somebody wanted to hear. There in after, I wrote a lot of stuff that wound up in the bin, and rightly so, until Cat's Pawn got accepted
LS: Next year your novels Cat’s Pawn and Cat’s Gambit are scheduled for re-release. If you wouldn’t mind, tell us a bit about those stories and where you’d like to take them in the 21st century.
LG: Cat's Pawn was written with this in mind: it would be nice to have a good old space opera in which the hero was not the son of kings, didn't have special powers, and didn't know the make and model of every weapon in the universe; someone who was just an ordinary Joe caught up in extraordinary things. It worked out pretty well, and I thought I was done with that particular story. But a lot of stuff was left hanging and it was a fun place, so Cat's Gambit came about. There should be one more, called Cat's Game, and maybe I'll do it some day.
Gadallah's novel, The Legend of Sarah, is available in print and eBook directly from Five Rivers, and online booksellers worldwide.
Leslie GadallahLS: The Legend of Sarah was originally published as The Loremasters in 1988 by Del Rey, and has now been revised and re-released under its new title. Tell us a little about how that original publication came about and was received by the public, and then how it came about Five Rivers’ editor, Robert Runte, approached you for a revision.LG: The Loremasters was the second manuscript I sent to Del Rey. It got a number of horrible reviews when it first came out, and it didn't sell all that well. One could blame the silly title, or the not too impressive cover, or the lack of publicity, or any number of other things. It doesn't follow the American rules, of course. No hero comes striding over the mountain to make everything right in the final pages.
And those were the days when the American model was the only model for SF.
But life goes on. I was busy with Cat's Gambit, and then with a lot of technical editing, and writing popular science for a number of newspapers, and a radio series, and family, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and assumed this story was a dead issue for twenty-three years. And then, about two years ago, Robert sent me an email. It was a bolt out of the blue. I had no idea he had been using The Loremasters as course material, or that people were complaining they couldn't get copies because the book was out of print. Robert likes it because it does not follow the American model.
LS: It has been said Canadian fiction, and in particular Canadian SF, differs greatly from American publications in that we tend to focus more on the individual’s struggle in society and with the environment, and deal with unlikely heroes. How do you respond to that assertion?
LG: I think the whole business of heroes is an American concept. Conceit? Hardly anyone gets up in the morning and says to himself, I think I'll do something really evil today; neither does anyone say, well, Wednesday needs to be truly heroic, so I better go save the world. The vast majority of people do what they think is best as well as they can, and heroes and villains are really separated only by whether or not we agree with their arguments. Even those individuals everyone says are wicked probably believe they are doing a thing that needs to be done. (Though you have to wonder at Stalin.) If the necessary is also personally advantageous, so much the better. We rationalise a lot. Much of the tension in The Legend of Sarah arises from differing ideas of what is right.
LS: How does this new release differ from the original?
LG: A number of big ugly info-dumps that stood in the way of the story have been removed. A couple of technical issues were resolved. Robert got me to nail down the point of view much more securely than it had been. Some things that were being misread were changed. We removed a few anachronisms and renamed the Bush Wars to avoid tying the reference to an unfortunate president. We redid some transitions. Robert picked up a few grammatical faults. But it is the same story, cleaner, smoother, and easier to read.
LS: What was the original inspiration for this story? Was it person, place, or concept? And how did you go about developing that inspiration into a novel?
LG: When my son was in high school, I noticed that the school community was deeply divided along several planes and these sub-communities didn't interact very much. A microcosm of the world, really. The most important to my son was the division between the technologically competent—what we would now call nerds—and the others. Nerds and non-nerds had little common ground, and hardly any girls joined the nerd community back then.
A science fiction writer's natural response to such an observation is: well, if this goes on—
Things churn in the back of the mind. I began what would become The Legend of Sarah thinking I would write about a society coming apart along technological lines, with the non-nerds having a pretty poor time of it, but when I started working it out, that seemed ever less likely to be what would happen, and the interesting place to tell a story became the point at which the technocrats were beginning to see their own limitations. While modern society as a whole is hugely dependent on technology, technology is hugely dependent on resources, particularly, dense energy sources. You can grow sheep with an energy source no richer than a pasture, but you can't power a cell phone network with grass. (Any kind of grass.)
LS: Despite being originally published in 1988, there is a timeless element to The Legend of Sarah. Was that a conscious decision on your part, or simply part of the nature of your subject matter?
LG: I can't honestly say I thought, oh, yeah, in twenty years time folks'll still love this. But if a story is not too dependent on a whiz-bang new, or soon-to-be-new, technological marvel, it can have some resonance for awhile. We still read Chaucer and Caesar's Gaulic Wars. And the walls of pyramids.
LS: How does one get from being a chemist in analytical, agricultural, biological and clinical chemistry to being a writer of SF?
LG: Mm. I don't know. I always read a lot. There were already some chemistry papers out in the technoverse with my name on them, but those things are formulaic reporting, and don't really count. The first serious, I may actually show this to someone, creative writing I did was for a newspaper's writing contest, and it won a prize. A couple of years later, I won another one. Maybe that was when I started to think I could actually do this. I had done a fair bit of editing for various scientific people by then, and understood I had a fair grasp of the mechanics of the language. I just had to be convinced that the stories I wanted to tell were ones somebody wanted to hear. There in after, I wrote a lot of stuff that wound up in the bin, and rightly so, until Cat's Pawn got accepted
LS: Next year your novels Cat’s Pawn and Cat’s Gambit are scheduled for re-release. If you wouldn’t mind, tell us a bit about those stories and where you’d like to take them in the 21st century.
LG: Cat's Pawn was written with this in mind: it would be nice to have a good old space opera in which the hero was not the son of kings, didn't have special powers, and didn't know the make and model of every weapon in the universe; someone who was just an ordinary Joe caught up in extraordinary things. It worked out pretty well, and I thought I was done with that particular story. But a lot of stuff was left hanging and it was a fun place, so Cat's Gambit came about. There should be one more, called Cat's Game, and maybe I'll do it some day.
Gadallah's novel, The Legend of Sarah, is available in print and eBook directly from Five Rivers, and online booksellers worldwide.
March 12, 2014
LibraryThing praise for Old Growth, by Matt Hughes
Two short but sweet reviews from book-lovers on LibraryThing for Matt Hughes' latest Sid Rafferty Thriller, Old Growth.
available in print and eBook
from Five Rivers
and booksellers worldwide
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.“Old growth forests are living lessons in the power of vegetative persistence”. Matt Hughes shares his knowledge of Vancouver Island forests, coalmines, small town costal life and the vagaries of being a free-lance writer. The tangents are interesting and the outcome satisfying ( )
| flagJaiW | Mar 5, 2014 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.My first review, first person written, easy to become involved, an attractive way to highlight a Canadian setting, deforestation, the impact on industry, settlements, native rights, environmentally sensitive on-going issues, while including mystery and familiar relationships. I truly like it. Thank you. ( 
)
| flagbarbara.kilpatri2558 | Mar 3, 2014 |
available in print and eBookfrom Five Rivers
and booksellers worldwide
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.“Old growth forests are living lessons in the power of vegetative persistence”. Matt Hughes shares his knowledge of Vancouver Island forests, coalmines, small town costal life and the vagaries of being a free-lance writer. The tangents are interesting and the outcome satisfying ( )
| flagJaiW | Mar 5, 2014 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.My first review, first person written, easy to become involved, an attractive way to highlight a Canadian setting, deforestation, the impact on industry, settlements, native rights, environmentally sensitive on-going issues, while including mystery and familiar relationships. I truly like it. Thank you. ( )
| flagbarbara.kilpatri2558 | Mar 3, 2014 |
March 10, 2014
First book of Shakespeare for Slackers series releasing May 1, 2014
In 2012 Five Rivers received a pitch for a series of books called Shakespeare for Slackers. At once outrageously irreverent and funny, there was also a very pragmatic interpretation of some of The Bard's famed plays, employing modern dialogue and humour. The result is a series of side-by-side publications which will be of interest to educators, students, theatres and lovers of these timeless plays.
The first of the Shakespeare for Slackers series is Romeo and Juliet.
You know, back in the day, Shakespeare wasn't considered elite. Oh sure, his plays were performed for royalty, but they were actually written for tradesmen, shopkeepers, average Joes, anybody who could pay a penny for a ticket. Mostly he wrote plays for the common man, using the language of the times.
Times have changed.
In Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, not only do you get the original play written by William Shakespeare, but you also get what a few of us think he probably would have written if he were still around today. (And if he sat around watching a lot of television.)
It's Shakespeare translated, retold, vandalized, brutalized, and outright demolished to suit the language of the times.
Why? Because we can.
Who are the we? A trio of brilliant if misguided miscreants:
Aaron Kite is a writer, an artist, a vandalist of great literature, and a self-confessed jackanape. Though t’was his wish to become a doctor as a lad, he learn’d of the healing power of laughter and decided t’would be far less work to become a roguish clown instead. He hath written three novels, resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is oft seen getting slapped whilst attempting to compare comely maidens to a summer’s day.
Audrey Evans walketh a bard’s path, mayhap tripping more oft than she hath stepped. T’was Fortune that made of her a vassal to a churlish monarch of claws and fangs; she toils on the page betwixt the purr of her sovereigns’ fickle attentions. Each winter, she strapeth herself to snowboard and danceth upon nature’s snowy bosom, crushing a flagon of spirits to defy winter’s cold cruelty. Audrey hath dreams of inking more pages and resigning her accursed post of daytime drudgery to pursue a writer’s fancy.
Jade Brooke is a voracious reader and a stalwart protector of the many thousands of books in her charge. Her essays grace the pages of several manuscripts, and she aspires to one day pen a tome of her own. She oft converses with her familiar; a cat who takes her name from the inconstant moon that monthly changes in her circled orb.
Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, releases May 1, 2014 in both 7 x 10 trade paperback ($21.99) and eBook ($4.99). The print version has both the original and modern text side by side for ease of comparison. The eBook version threads the original and modern text in alternating paragraphs to accommodate the dynamics of reflowable text, as well as contains the complete original, and the complete translation, for those who wish to immerse either in the past or the present.
In August the second of the series, Shakespeare for Slackers: Hamlet, is scheduled for release, and the third in 2015, Shakespeare for Slackers: Macbeth.
All three make perfect companion pieces in the classroom for John Poulsen's Shakespeare for Reader's Theatre: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night's Dream.
The first of the Shakespeare for Slackers series is Romeo and Juliet.
You know, back in the day, Shakespeare wasn't considered elite. Oh sure, his plays were performed for royalty, but they were actually written for tradesmen, shopkeepers, average Joes, anybody who could pay a penny for a ticket. Mostly he wrote plays for the common man, using the language of the times.
Times have changed.
In Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, not only do you get the original play written by William Shakespeare, but you also get what a few of us think he probably would have written if he were still around today. (And if he sat around watching a lot of television.)
It's Shakespeare translated, retold, vandalized, brutalized, and outright demolished to suit the language of the times.
Why? Because we can.
Who are the we? A trio of brilliant if misguided miscreants:
Aaron Kite is a writer, an artist, a vandalist of great literature, and a self-confessed jackanape. Though t’was his wish to become a doctor as a lad, he learn’d of the healing power of laughter and decided t’would be far less work to become a roguish clown instead. He hath written three novels, resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is oft seen getting slapped whilst attempting to compare comely maidens to a summer’s day.
Audrey Evans walketh a bard’s path, mayhap tripping more oft than she hath stepped. T’was Fortune that made of her a vassal to a churlish monarch of claws and fangs; she toils on the page betwixt the purr of her sovereigns’ fickle attentions. Each winter, she strapeth herself to snowboard and danceth upon nature’s snowy bosom, crushing a flagon of spirits to defy winter’s cold cruelty. Audrey hath dreams of inking more pages and resigning her accursed post of daytime drudgery to pursue a writer’s fancy.
Jade Brooke is a voracious reader and a stalwart protector of the many thousands of books in her charge. Her essays grace the pages of several manuscripts, and she aspires to one day pen a tome of her own. She oft converses with her familiar; a cat who takes her name from the inconstant moon that monthly changes in her circled orb.
Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, releases May 1, 2014 in both 7 x 10 trade paperback ($21.99) and eBook ($4.99). The print version has both the original and modern text side by side for ease of comparison. The eBook version threads the original and modern text in alternating paragraphs to accommodate the dynamics of reflowable text, as well as contains the complete original, and the complete translation, for those who wish to immerse either in the past or the present.
In August the second of the series, Shakespeare for Slackers: Hamlet, is scheduled for release, and the third in 2015, Shakespeare for Slackers: Macbeth.
All three make perfect companion pieces in the classroom for John Poulsen's Shakespeare for Reader's Theatre: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night's Dream.
First book of Shakespeare for Slackers series releasing August 1, 2014
In 2012 Five Rivers received a pitch for a series of books called Shakespeare for Slackers. At once outrageously irreverent and funny, there was also a very pragmatic interpretation of some of The Bard's famed plays, employing modern dialogue and humour. The result is a series of side-by-side publications which will be of interest to educators, students, theatres and lovers of these timeless plays.
The first of the Shakespeare for Slackers series is Romeo and Juliet.
You know, back in the day, Shakespeare wasn't considered elite. Oh sure, his plays were performed for royalty, but they were actually written for tradesmen, shopkeepers, average Joes, anybody who could pay a penny for a ticket. Mostly he wrote plays for the common man, using the language of the times.
Times have changed.
In Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, not only do you get the original play written by William Shakespeare, but you also get what a few of us think he probably would have written if he were still around today. (And if he sat around watching a lot of television.)
It's Shakespeare translated, retold, vandalized, brutalized, and outright demolished to suit the language of the times.
Why? Because we can.
Who are the we? A trio of brilliant if misguided miscreants:
Aaron Kite is a writer, an artist, a vandalist of great literature, and a self-confessed jackanape. Though t’was his wish to become a doctor as a lad, he learn’d of the healing power of laughter and decided t’would be far less work to become a roguish clown instead. He hath written three novels, resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is oft seen getting slapped whilst attempting to compare comely maidens to a summer’s day.
Audrey Evans walketh a bard’s path, mayhap tripping more oft than she hath stepped. T’was Fortune that made of her a vassal to a churlish monarch of claws and fangs; she toils on the page betwixt the purr of her sovereigns’ fickle attentions. Each winter, she strapeth herself to snowboard and danceth upon nature’s snowy bosom, crushing a flagon of spirits to defy winter’s cold cruelty. Audrey hath dreams of inking more pages and resigning her accursed post of daytime drudgery to pursue a writer’s fancy.
Jade Brooke is a voracious reader and a stalwart protector of the many thousands of books in her charge. Her essays grace the pages of several manuscripts, and she aspires to one day pen a tome of her own. She oft converses with her familiar; a cat who takes her name from the inconstant moon that monthly changes in her circled orb.
Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, releases May 1, 2014 in both 7 x 10 trade paperback ($21.99) and eBook ($4.99). The print version has both the original and modern text side by side for ease of comparison. The eBook version threads the original and modern text in alternating paragraphs to accommodate the dynamics of reflowable text, as well as contains the complete original, and the complete translation, for those who wish to immerse either in the past or the present.
In August the second of the series, Shakespeare for Slackers: Hamlet, is scheduled for release, and the third in 2015, Shakespeare for Slackers: Macbeth.
All three make perfect companion pieces in the classroom for John Poulsen's Shakespeare for Reader's Theatre: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night's Dream.
The first of the Shakespeare for Slackers series is Romeo and Juliet.
You know, back in the day, Shakespeare wasn't considered elite. Oh sure, his plays were performed for royalty, but they were actually written for tradesmen, shopkeepers, average Joes, anybody who could pay a penny for a ticket. Mostly he wrote plays for the common man, using the language of the times.
Times have changed.
In Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, not only do you get the original play written by William Shakespeare, but you also get what a few of us think he probably would have written if he were still around today. (And if he sat around watching a lot of television.)
It's Shakespeare translated, retold, vandalized, brutalized, and outright demolished to suit the language of the times.
Why? Because we can.
Who are the we? A trio of brilliant if misguided miscreants:
Aaron Kite is a writer, an artist, a vandalist of great literature, and a self-confessed jackanape. Though t’was his wish to become a doctor as a lad, he learn’d of the healing power of laughter and decided t’would be far less work to become a roguish clown instead. He hath written three novels, resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is oft seen getting slapped whilst attempting to compare comely maidens to a summer’s day.
Audrey Evans walketh a bard’s path, mayhap tripping more oft than she hath stepped. T’was Fortune that made of her a vassal to a churlish monarch of claws and fangs; she toils on the page betwixt the purr of her sovereigns’ fickle attentions. Each winter, she strapeth herself to snowboard and danceth upon nature’s snowy bosom, crushing a flagon of spirits to defy winter’s cold cruelty. Audrey hath dreams of inking more pages and resigning her accursed post of daytime drudgery to pursue a writer’s fancy.
Jade Brooke is a voracious reader and a stalwart protector of the many thousands of books in her charge. Her essays grace the pages of several manuscripts, and she aspires to one day pen a tome of her own. She oft converses with her familiar; a cat who takes her name from the inconstant moon that monthly changes in her circled orb.
Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet, releases May 1, 2014 in both 7 x 10 trade paperback ($21.99) and eBook ($4.99). The print version has both the original and modern text side by side for ease of comparison. The eBook version threads the original and modern text in alternating paragraphs to accommodate the dynamics of reflowable text, as well as contains the complete original, and the complete translation, for those who wish to immerse either in the past or the present.
In August the second of the series, Shakespeare for Slackers: Hamlet, is scheduled for release, and the third in 2015, Shakespeare for Slackers: Macbeth.
All three make perfect companion pieces in the classroom for John Poulsen's Shakespeare for Reader's Theatre: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night's Dream.
March 7, 2014
Praise for The Runner and the Wizard at LibraryThing
available in print and eBook
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.Quite fun for a short novel, Runner and the Wizard effectively made me laugh and kept me interested to the point I wouldn’t have minded it being a little longer — although I think the length is perfect. I have been meaning to read Dave Duncan for a long, long time, and thanks to this, I am motivated to finally do so!Recommended for a light fantasy read. (
)
| 
flagIgnolopi | Feb 21, 2014 |
March 5, 2014
Wasps at the Speed of Sound receives Amazon praise
available in trade paperbackand ebookAmazon readers praise Derryl Murphy's collection of environmental, dystopic short fiction.4.0 out of 5 stars an interesting collection, January 11, 2014By tarsh - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Wasps at the Speed of Sound (Kindle Edition)A collection of 11 apocalypsi (apocalypses?) - I think the thing that impressed me the most was how very different all the apocalypsi were, apart from a common environmental theme. Well written stories, and I enjoyed reading all excepting one (What Goes Around, which I just didn't get). My favourite is probably The History of Photography, but Blue Train, The Abbey Engine, and Those Graves of Memory also made pretty good impressions. Day's Hunt didn't overly appeal - it was pretty gruesome in fact - but still well-written. I have the feeling if I met most of the protaganists in the street I'd possibly cross it to avoid them, but somehow despite that Derryl Murphy made me care about almost all of them, leaving only the viewpoint character in the final story (Laura, from Summer's Human's) and everyone in the aforementioned What Goes Around that I was happy to leave.
Bottom line: Skip the foreword, go straight into the stories. A lot of interesting apocalypsi await you.
Note: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programmeHelp other customers find the most helpful reviews 4.0 out of 5 stars Good Sci fi, January 3, 2014By Solaria 42 - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Wasps at the Speed of Sound (Kindle Edition)This is the newest edition of Wasps at the Speed of Sound, with 11 short science fiction stories (the original had 10). All of the stories have an environmental warning but this enhances the stories rather than detracts from them.
My favourite story was the Blue Train in which most of humanity that still exists after an extreme water shortage travels the world on a gigantic train in search of water and their subsequent freedom from this train by one man who dared to question the company's monopoly on the earths water.
Murphy constructs the world of each story so well, with little extraneous language as possible so the reader can create a vivid image of their own. Truly a pleasure to read for any science fiction fan and possibly for any environmentalist too.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, December 21, 2013By Sandra Lynne Padgett - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Wasps at the Speed of Sound (Kindle Edition)Very thought-provoking and entertaining stories. Most of them have an underlying environmental element to them. My favorite story is Those Graves of Memory-about a boy, memories and a very distant future. Others go from a human who has a chance to leave the earth and save himself and possibly humanity or stay and die, to changes in the human body on an alien planet far from earth. These stories are well told with characters solid enough for a short story. The good variety is one reason I read short stories. I received this free as an ebook through Library Thing giveaways for an honest review.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
March 3, 2014
Praise on Amazon for Sally McBride's Indigo Time
available in trade paperbackand eBook5-star reviews from Amazon readers for Sally McBride's Indigo Time.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent writing, great plot!, October 5, 2013By Amazon Customer - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Indigo Time (Kindle Edition)This was a terrific read! I really enjoyed it and looked forward to settling down for a good long read each evening. The writing was clever and intelligent, with a fast moving, interesting plot and well developed characters. Each unique character's contribution to the plot was credible and well thought out and added great dimension to the whole story. This is a relatively new genre for me and I delighted in the descriptions of such things as crescent shaped time storms, saurs, the city of Bralle, the strange contents of the sikku box, and most especially the descriptions of the mind bending powers of Marrula Tamara. The writing flowed beautifully and in such a way that I was caught up in the suspenseful moments and didn't want to stop reading. I also liked the back and forth chapters that took time to build the story that was really taking place in two places at the same time. As the plot unfolded, each chapter held more surprises to a most satisfying end.
No need to give more plot detail. You should find out for yourself. There are so many books and so little time, but you should put Ms. McBride on your list. You won't be disappointed.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put this book down. A well written novel., October 2, 2013By Cheryl Maude - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Indigo Time (Paperback)Indigo Time captured me from beginning to ending. The ending left me with a good feeling. The author kept me on the edge while spinning a tale of twisting emotions.
This is an intertwined story of true evil and good.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
