Pete Aldin's Blog, page 10

Our scifi short story Illegal. Just yesterday, the #1 Am...

Our scifi short story Illegal. Just yesterday, the #1 Amazon Best Seller on 45 Minute Science Fiction short read list and the top Hot New Release. Plus it moved to number 4 in 45-minute lit & fic short fiction and is on that Hot New Release list. Pretty darn happy, Kevin Ikenberry. This picture is a cut and paste of both lists. You’ll have to click on it to see it clearly, but our cover is bottom left of both lists…

My Favourite Reads of 2015: Fluency

4.5 stars

Fluency (book 1 of a coming series) was an absolutely terrific read. Excellent characters and plotting. A great universe. One of the better first contact stories out there.

It lost a half star towards the end for the romance thread which was becoming slightly tired. But I loved the alien(s?) and the lead character was believable. Great story.

My Favourite Reads of 2015: Vampires in the Sunburnt Country books 1 & 2

Blood & Dust and The Big Smoke

5 stars

A page-turner. No, TWO page turners. I thought I loved the first one but the second took it up several notches.

Action from the first chapter. An interesting constellation of characters, each with their own motivation and trajectories which keep colliding of course. Book 2 especially uses Australia as an interesting setting for a vampire tale, the politics, the violence, the ethics and morality, the action. Highly recommend.

Review: Laughing at Shadows by PD Blake

A great tale well told. I guess this would be urban fantasy…though there’s no forced romance, no vampires or werewolves or fae, no angels or demons. But it’s fantasy and it’s set in urban England. You really must read it with an English voice in your head from the opening paragraph or you’ll stumble over the phrasing. Once you have that sorted, it really really works.

I love good stories where street people are main characters. The story is told sympathetically toward them, with a couple of v...

My Favourite Reads of 2015: The Great Divorce by CS Lewis

5 stars

To me, the greatest Christian philosopher and theologian of the 20th C, Lewis did it again with this narrative treatise on the afterlife. Probably inspired by Dante and McDonald. This is a bit of a talkfest, but it’s nonetheless gripping and it’s a short read.

The two things I loved best were:

1) Lewis’ mid-20th Century willingness to push against orthodoxy and rethink heaven and hell and purgatory with a fresh mind

2) the sheer pathos of the human condition and its willingness to tu...

My Favourite Reads of 2015: Madness: A Memoir

Breathtaking. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of a book that way before but it’s how I think of this one. If I could give it 6 stars, I would.

A mind-searing blend of magnificent prose (unbelievably beautiful) with the heartrending tragedy of mental illness. Seeing it from the inside is enough to make you want to cry at times and punch the air in victory at the small (and then large) gains Kate makes in reclaiming her life.

5 stars

My Favourite Reads of 2015: End Times at Ridgemont High

5 stars

I don’t know if this novel qualifies as “cosmic horror”, but it feels like it should. An epic tale told at the local level, End Times at Ridgemont High is a fun mix of American Graffiti, Lovecraftian tropes and Welke’s own fascination with alternate realities or dimensions (as demonstrated in his previous novel The Whisperer in Dissonance).

It’s not only the pace and the prose of Welke’s novel that appealed to me so strongly; his empathy for young people, for teenage angst and Gen Y...

James Jackson: 5 Questions & 1 Statement

A talented writer and generous host of the Ward Room website,James Jackson is the energetic force behinda new zombie apocalypseseries. He also serves as an outdoor survival instructor, and a Military Technical Advisor for several published authors.I enjoyed the first in his series and I thought I’d introduce him to you all by way of pitching five questions and a statement his way (my words are those in itallics) …

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1. James,Inotice a wealth of military knowledge in your writing. From when...

B is for Broken…and r is for release

B is for Broken – an anthology

Broken people, broken promises, broken dreams and broken objects are just some of the ways these 26 fantastic stories interpret the theme of ‘Broken’. From science fiction to fantasy, horror to superheroes the stories within these pages cover a vast swath of the genres under the speculative fiction umbrella.

I’m proud to be a part of this series and this volume. I feel like it might just contain my best short story yet. And I’m in excellent company…

~ Brittany...

Beth Cato: 5 Questions and a Statement

An extremely talented writer and cookie-chef,Beth Cato‘s short fiction can be found in Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other magazines. She writes for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The Clockwork Dagger is her first novel, and the sequel, The Clockwork Crown, will be released in mid2015.

I caught up with her recently and pitched five questions and a statement her way …

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1. Reading Clockwork Dagger is like relaxing on an inflatable mattr...