H.S. Stone's Blog, page 21

A House in the Woods release annoucement

Are you a fan of dystopian fiction? How about fairy tale re-tellings? Now you can have the best of both worlds! A House in the Woods is a collection of three dystopian fairy tale re-tellings based on "Hansel and Gretel," "Little Red Riding Hood," and "The Elves and the Shoemaker."


Dystopian fiction meets fairy tale re-tellings in this collection of three short stories: 

"A House in the Woods" - At the conclusion of a scavenger hunt for Old World artifacts, Hansel and Gretel find themselves...

Book review: The Benders by Katie French

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Description:
The third book in the award-winning, best-selling dystopian series.

They’ve escaped the Breeders.

They’ve broken out of the Citadel.

Now, after all they’ve been through, Riley, Clay, and Ethan know one thing for sure: nothing tastes sweeter than freedom. And no one can rest easy with Auntie Bell in bondage. The group journeys home to rescue her and liberate Clay’s town from the cruel Warden. But when an ally betrays them, they must face the very enemy they’ve been t...

Favorite reads of 2014

In my last post, I summarized the books that I read in 2014. 29 of them received 5 stars, including 9 that were indie published. Among those 5-star books read in 2014, here are my top ten:


1. Horde - Ann Aguirre
This was an awesome conclusion to the great Razorland series, which I highly recommend, even if you're not a fan of zombie books. You really need to read all of the books in the series to appreciate the character and story development that led to Horde being such a fantastic finale!

2. F...

What I read in 2014

For the second year in a row, I read at least 100 books! Having never read that many books in a year until last year, this is a big deal to me. However, I'm not going to promise to read 100 books again in 2015. :-)

The ratings for the books I read this year broke down as follows:
5 stars - 29 books4 stars - 45 books3 stars - 27 books2 stars - 1 bookThis comes out to an average rating of exactly 4.0 stars per book read in 2013.

Of the 102 books that I read, 43 were indie published. While that was...

99 Cent Holiday Sale

The Christmas holiday season is my favorite time of year, and to celebrate it, I'm letting all of you readers buy my books for 99 cents or less on Amazon! That's right. Every one of my books will be on sale for 99 cents or free on Amazon from now until the new year!

99 CENTS (novels):

George and the
Galactic GamesIn the Hands of
ChildrenBeyond
New Eden
Keep Your
Enemies CloseGifted
FREE (short story):
Drive
FREE (short story anthologies):
Through a
Tangled WoodCelestialStories on the Go
Happy holidays!

The Benders and an interview with Katie French

I read the first book of Katie French's The Breeders series in early 2013 and it became one of my favorites of the year. Then I read book 2 in January of 2014 and loved it as well. I'm excited to announce that the third book in the series, The Benders, is now available on Amazon! Katie has also graciously agreed to participate in an interview that you can find below.


The third book in the award-winning, best-selling dystopian series.

They’ve escaped the Breeders.

They’ve broken out of the Cita...

What I learned from NaNoWriMo

I finally participated in NaNoWriMo this year! It was quite an experience trying to write at least 50,000 words over the course of 30 days. To my amazement, I actually reached the 50K word count goal! However, it wasn't pretty, but NaNoWriMo is about quantity, not quality, right? So what did I learn from the experience?

It IS possible to write 50,000 words in a month.
I may have been selling myself short, but I honestly didn't plan on reaching the goal. Initially, I intended to just give it my...

Series finales and rankings

So many YA series that I've been following came to an end this year. Some were published last year, but I didn't read the final book until this year. Others released their last installments in 2014. It was a great year of series finales for me, but at the same time, I'm a little sad to say farewell to some of my favorites.

Without further ado, these are the series I finished in 2014, ranked by how much I enjoyed the overall series.

1. Series: Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry
Books: Rot & R...

Reading Outside the Box recap

In January, I set out to read a book for each square in the Reading Outside the Box challenge. Surprisingly, with a month to spare, I managed to finish it!


This was a fun challenge to undertake. I read some categories that I usually never read, like Romance, where I was pleasantly surprised by the book I chose, Star Struck by Jamie Campbell. Of the 25 books I read as part of the challenge, I rated 6 of them as 5-stars, 13 as 4-stars, and 6 as 3-stars.

My three favorites (in order of date read)...

Book review: Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George

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Description:
On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without shipping there would be no clothes, food, paper, or fuel. Without all those dots, the world would not work.

Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisibl...