H.S. Stone's Blog, page 4

Soulless cover reveal

I'm on my second round of revisions for Book 3 in the After Z-Day series, which will be called Soulless. While I can't provide a release date yet, it will most likely be sometime this fall. In the meantime, I want to share the cover of Book 3 with you all. 

I'm looking forward to the release of this new book, and I hope you are too!

Counting Sheep

Last weekend, I had trouble sleeping. I tried counting sheep, thinking that was supposed to help people fall asleep. After a few sheep wandered across the imaginary field in my mind, my thoughts drifted to a story about counting sheep. I wound up spending way too much time working on the story in my head, and hardly slept as a result. Such is the life of a writer. On the other hand, I have a story that I can share with all of you. It's only about 1,000 words long, so it won't take long to read. ...

The classics are not for me

 

In January, I embarked on a new reading challenge to make my way through the classics I haven’t read yet. I’m on my fifth book now, and so far, I admit that I’m not enjoying this reading challenge.

The classics are not for me. They remind me of books I had to read in high school English classes, probably the only time in my life that I didn’t enjoy reading fiction. Part of it is the writing style and language. English has evolved since the 1700s (the earliest publish date of the books I've read...

Finally done with first draft of After Z-Day Book 3

I'm over three months late, but I finally finished the first draft of Book 3 in the After Z-Day series. My initial goal was to complete the first draft by the end of 2022 so that I can release the book around the middle of 2023. Since the first draft is so late, I'm now targeting a late-summer or early-fall release.

There were two key reasons for the delay in finishing the first draft. The most obvious is that my day job has been crazy busy for the past year. It's been busy for years now, but the...

Why ChatGPT won't be writing my books

ChatGPT is all the rage these days. In a nutshell, it is an AI chatbot that has been trained and can be trained on any library of existing text. As a result, it learns how humans write and can imitate that writing. Since its introduction, we've seen a growing number of books written by ChatGPT or through the aid of ChatGPT. In some cases, the situation has gotten so out of hand that magazines such as Clarkesworld have stopped accepting new submissions due to the deluge of ChatGPT-written stories...

When you won't read a book because the cover is too scary

When I published the first two books in the After Z-Day series, one of my considerations was how the book covers should look. I wanted to convey the genre of the series (zombie apocalypse) in an immediate and obvious way, but I also didn't want covers that were too scary for someone who isn't a fan of zombies to be afraid to pick them up. 

The reason why that's important to me is that there are books I won't read because I'm too scared of the cover. For example, one of upcoming books that I'm see...

2023 reading challenge - books to read before I die

 

I read a lot of great books in 2021 and 2022 as part of my Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge, and I plan to continue reading finalists from last year's Goodreads Choice Awards. However, for 2023, I'm going to change the formal reading challenge that I track. 

As I get older, I'm thinking more and more about bucket lists. When it comes to reading, there are lots of lists of books to read before you die, and 2023 seems like as good a year as any to start plowing through the classics. The q...

Favorite reads of 2022

Happy 2023, everyone! Before 2022 recedes too far in the rearview mirror, I want to share my favorite reads from last year. Without further ado, here are my top ten:

1. Warbreaker - Brandon Sanderson My Brandon Sanderson journey continues into 2022, and it shouldn't come as a big surprise that one of his books--albeit an older one--landed at the top of my list of favorite reads. (By the way, this is the second year in a row where my favorite read was by Brandon Sanderson.) Not only does Warbre...

What I read in 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, it's time to revisit the books I read this year. Once again, I set myself a goal at the beginning of the year to read 100 books. I managed to hit that goal, with 102 books read this year.

The average rating for the books I read was 4.04 stars, a hair higher than the 4.03 average from 2021's books read. The breakdown by star rating was:

5 stars - 33 books4 stars - 40 books3 stars - 29 books

The numbers are uncannily similar to 2021's, the difference being that I read one fe...

2022 Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge recap

After reading all the great books from last year's Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge, I decided to do it again. My goal was to read at least two books a month from the list of 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards finalists, for a total of 24. I ended up reading 28.

The books I read were (in alphabetical order by title):

The Anthropocene Reviewed - John GreenApples Never Fall - Liane Moriarty
Appleseed - Matt BellBeautiful World, Where Are You - Sally Rooney
Bewilderment - Richard Powers
The Book of...