H.S. Stone's Blog, page 7

Release announcement: Hopeless

I'm proud to announce the release of my latest novel, Hopeless! If you're a fan of zombie apocalypse stories (with a PG-13 rating), this book is for you.

Hopeless is currently available on Amazon. If you're a member of the Kindle Unlimited program, you can read it for free!

Description:

The zombie apocalypse happened faster than anyone could’ve imagined. 

On what she believes is a normal Friday night, seventeen-year-old Sara goes to bed believing that she’ll see her parents and her brother the next ...

Returning to normal?

It's been a difficult past fourteen months for everyone, no matter where you live. Who knew back in March 2020 that the specter of COVID would still loom large in May 2021? Fortunately, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the pandemic situation is under control more so than in many other parts of the world. With the initial rush over, vaccines are becoming easier to get, and our state continues to take precautions that make me feel safe.

I still haven't dined inside a restaurant or gone t...

Cover reveal: Hopeless

It's been almost three years since I published my last book, so I'm very happy to announce that I'll have a new book coming out in a month or two (fingers crossed)! In the meantime, I want to share the cover for the book, titled Hopeless. If things go according to my plans, Hopeless will be the first book in a new YA zombie series. I love YA, and I love zombie books, so it makes sense that I'd want to write a YA zombie series, right?

 

Description:

The zombie apocalypse happened f...

The Type of Monster Matters?

Some of my favorite books have featured monsters. By that, I don't mean serial killers (which some of my favorite books also have) but rather non-human monsters like zombies, aliens, and mythological creatures. The monsters can be the primary antagonists, such as the zombies in World War Z or the Rot & Ruin series, or they may be creatures that populate the book's fictional world, like the ones in the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books.

All along, I thought that I would like reading books with ...

A writing update (Feb 2021)

It's been a while since I gave an update on my writing progress. The last time I mentioned what I was working on in July 2020, I had just given up on a novel in the thriller genre. While that was disappointing, I didn't let that setback stop me. I started writing a new story back in the YA genre that I'm more comfortable with. 

The good news is that I finished the first draft of the YA novel in December! Since then, I've been revising the manuscript. I completed my first editing pass already, foc...

Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge

Every year, I try to come up with a reading challenge that I hope I will enjoy and that will expose me to new books that I wouldn't ordinarily read. Last year, my goal was to read a book a month from the top of the NY Times Bestseller list. While that didn't go as well as I had planned, I learned my lessons, and as a result, this year, I'm going with the Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge.

Every year, Goodreads asks its members to vote on their favorite books in various categories, culmina...

Favorite reads of 2020

Happy New Year, and good riddance to 2020! :-) Before we say goodbye to 2020 for good, here were my favorite reads from last year.

1. Scythe - Neal Shusterman

Before 2020, I heard a lot of good things about Scythe, and now that I've read it, I can say that the book deserves all the accolades it received. Now I'm wondering, why did it take me so long to read it? What can I say about a book that covers life, death, and humanity in a way that's both very entertaining as well as makes the reader p...

What I read in 2020

2020 has certainly been a unique year. Who would've thought at the beginning of the year that we'd spend more time at home than we ever wanted to? If there's one silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, it's been that I had more time to read. In 2020, I exceeded my original reading goal of 80 books by reading 99. Yes, I was that close to reading 100 books this year! The 99 books were also 15 more than the 84 I read in 2019.

The average rating for the books I read this year was 3.96 stars per book,...

2020 reading goals recap

I had two reading goals in 2020. I started off the year by wanting to read at least one NY Times Bestseller each month by an author who was new to me. In June, I added another goal to read as many books as I could on the Goodreads list of most popular mysteries of the past five years. It's time to see how each of those went.

I managed to reach my NY Times Bestseller goal despite not loving several of the books I read. Of the twelve books on the list, I only rated one of them as 5 stars. Four book...

2020 holiday sale

2020 has been a dreadful year, but what better way to end it than with a book sale? Between now and the New Year, almost all of my e-books will be on sale for 99 cents or FREE on Amazon! Get these titles before prices go back up!

99 CENTS:

      Beneath
the Earth  All That
Remains of Me  Beyond
New Eden  Gifted
      Transmissions  In the Hands of
Children  Keep Your
Enemies Close  George and the
Galactic Games
      A House in
the Woods  Protect  Search  Rescue

FREE:
      Drive*
  Through a
Tangled Wood  ...