H.S. Stone's Blog, page 33

Free short story collections!

My two short story collections, Numbers Plus Four and With Five You Get Fortune Cookies , will be FREE for the next 5 days on Amazon!


This is a great opportunity to sample some of my writing without having to pay or to read an entire novel. However, unlike my MG/YA novels, these short stories are for grownups. There's nothing raunchy in them, but they may be a little scary for younger readers.

This free promotion will run until Feb 26.

Just when I thought I could write

It's natural for writers to have doubts. When I read what I've written, I sometimes think that what I wrote is brilliant and sometimes I think it's crap. The funny thing is, I'll think the same thing about the same passage, depending on when I read it.

With my latest book, I thought that I did a pretty good job overall. It was no Hunger Games, but I thought it was the best novel I'd written to date and maybe even better than at least half of the traditionally published books I read. I thought...

Book review: Die Trying by Lee Child

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Description:
When a woman is kidnapped off a Chicago street in broad daylight, Jack Reacher’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s kidnapped with her. Chained together and racing across America toward an unknown destination, they’re at the mercy of a group of men demanding an impossible ransom. Because Reacher’s female companion is worth more than he imagines. Now he has to save them both—from the inside out—or die trying…

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Review:
La...

Edits done on third novel

I'm done with the rounds of self-editing that I plan to make on my latest novel! It was probably a combination of thinking the manuscript was in good shape and my getting sick and tired of editing that made me stop. Seriously, although I enjoy writing, I don't like the editing process. Besides, based on my experience with my previous books, I've found that each subsequent round of editing leads to diminishing returns because any major flaws that I'm able to find on my own have been found by t...

Book review: Outpost by Ann Aguirre

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Description:
Deuce’s whole world has changed. Down below, she was considered an adult. Now, topside in a town called Salvation, she’s a brat in need of training in the eyes of the townsfolk. She doesn’t fit in with the other girls: Deuce only knows how to fight.

To make matters worse, her Hunter partner, Fade, keeps Deuce at a distance. Her feelings for Fade haven’t changed, but he seems not to want her around anymore. Confused and lonely, she starts looking...

Book review: The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell

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Description:
Zombies have infested a fallen America. A young girl named Temple is on the run. Haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, Temple is surrounded by death and danger, hoping to be set free.
For twenty-five years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her heart. She can't remember a time before the zombies, but she doe...

Done with first draft

This week, I completed the first draft of my newest novel in progress! After a slow start, I made great progress over the Christmas holidays and finished ahead of my original goal of February. More so than with the first two novels I wrote, this story spoke to me while I was writing it. There were times when it felt like a voice inside my head was reading the story to me, and my job was simply to write it down as quickly as possible. Either I was in "the zone" as a writer, or I need psychiatr...

Book review: Feed by M. T. Anderson

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Description:
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipr...

Authors A to Z reading challenge

In 2013, I am taking on a reading challenge that I call "Authors A to Z." During the course of the year, I will read 26 books written by 26 authors, each of whom have last names beginning with a different letter of the alphabet, starting with an author whose last name begins with A and finishing with one whose last name begins with Z. (I'm nervous about finding an author with a last name starting with X. Any suggestions?) Some of them will be authors I know with books already on my TBR pile,...

Favorite reads of 2012

It's finally time to reveal my top ten favorite reads of 2012. If there was one theme to this year's list, it was that 2012 was the year of the zombies for me, especially the Rot & Ruin series by Jonathan Maberry, which took the top spot, and with all three books landing in the top ten. In all, zombie books comprised half of my top ten list, including the only indie title here, Amanda Hocking's Hollowland.


1. Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry
The entire series was great, but the first boo...