H.S. Stone's Blog, page 38

Book review: Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

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Description:
In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn’t want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash—but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Review:
I never thought I...

Getting back to work

It's been a little over two weeks since I last worked on my novel. I finished the first draft and wanted to take a break from it before proofreading and editing. I'd say that the time off has successfully taken my mind off the story. Perhaps a little too much, because I'm having a hard time getting myself motivated to start proofreading. Writing is a lot like exercising. It's hard to start, but once you've developed a regular routine, it's not hard to continue. However, if you do stop, it's d...

Book review: The Grimoire: Lichgates by S.M. Boyce

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Description:
The Grimoire turns its own pages and can answer any question asked of it, and Kara Magari is its next target.

Kara has no idea what she's getting herself into when she stumbles across the old book while hiking a hidden trail. Once she opens it, she's thrown into Ourea: a beautiful world full of terrifying things that want the Grimoire's secrets. Everyone in this new world is trying to find her, and most want to control the new-found power the book be...

With Five You Get Fortune Cookies

My new short story collection, With Five You Get Fortune Cookies, is now available for sale! The collection contains five stories and costs only 99 cents! You can buy it from Amazon or Smashwords. It will be on the e-bookshelves of other retailers in the days or weeks to come.

In case you're wondering, With Five You Get Fortune Cookies is indeed a play on the title of the 1968 film, With Six You Get Eggroll . I chose it because there are five short stories in the collection and the first one is...

First draft done, and now for something (not so) completely different

Thanks to my productive Spring Break, I'm done with the first draft of my second novel! Instead of jumping right into proofreading and revisions, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off from working on it. Other authors have suggested I do this so that when I re-read it, my mind is fresh.

What am I going to do for two weeks? Sit on the sofa and watch TV? Play video games? No! I'm going to publish another book! I've been meaning to go through some short stories that I wrote in the past and publ...

What I did on spring break

A couple of weeks ago, the family and I went on a spring break trip to the east coast. It was fun and educational, as it was the first time that my kids had been to our nation's capital. It was also the first time that I've been to Washington, D.C. in many years, and the history I learned on the trip was more interesting than I remember it being when I was younger. As I get older, I appreciate history more than when I was forced to learn it in high school.

The trip was also very productive fo...

E-book pricing

One of the advantages that indie authors have over traditionally published authors is that indies can set their own prices. Traditionally published authors are at the mercy of their publishers, who care more about maintaining fat margins than what's good for their authors. Unfortunately, most indie authors have taken that freedom to mean pricing their books as cheaply as possible, or even giving them away for free.

I admit that I started out in the same "cheap e-books" camp because I thought t...

Book review: Hera by Chrystalla Thoma

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Description:
Hera, member of the Gultur race governing the Seven Islands, thought she knew right from wrong and what her future held in store. A chance meeting with a lesser mortal, though, will turn her world upside down and force her to see her race and the laws with different eyes. For Hera, knowledge means action, so she sets out to put things right and change her world.

Taking place in the World of the Seven Islands almost three years before the events in Rex Rising, this i...

Young adult dystopian rankings

You've read The Hunger Games or watched the movie or both, and you loved it. Now what? Well, I was in your shoes after reading the Hunger Games trilogy last year. I searched for other YA dystopian books and read a bunch. Here's how they rank IMHO. I hope this list helps you fill the hole that The Hunger Games has left.



1. The Hunger Games trilogy - Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games trilogy is simply the best set of books I've read in years. It's deserving of all the praise it's been getting, and...

Q1 2012 resolutions update

At the beginning of the year, I made two New Year's resolutions:

Finish writing my second novelRead at least ten books by indie authors
Today is the last day of the first quarter, so I wanted to review my progress so far.

I started writing my second novel last November, and I'm about 2/3 of the way through the first draft. My goal is to finish the first draft before the end of June, which should leave me enough time for editing, etc. so that I can publish it by the end of the year.

I'm ahead of p...