K. Makansi's Blog, page 19

Book Review: “Tinkers” by Paul Harding

In the style of The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy, L’Etranger by Albert Camus, and Native Son by Richard Wright, Tinkers by Paul Harding is a novel about death. It’s a story of the connected lives of a generation of men, from grandfather to father to dying son, and, ultimately, it’s the story of each man’s death. Most books that […]

The Sowing is an “Irresistible Read”!

I rarely toot my own horn on my blog, but recently something big happened that I just have to announce and share with the world. A few weeks ago we submitted The Sowing to a new website called Compulsion Reads, which reviews and endorses independently-published books. I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that The Sowing has […]

Possession

I think sometimes that the ancients had it right, that we ought be buried with what we own. That too many spirits inhabit these things of ours for them to be anything but haunted. This vase here that was grandmother’s a generation ago is too valuable to be used, a cabinet piece, a thing in […]

Meet Tyler Nitbone (and a Special Cyber Monday Deal)

Here today on The Z-Axis I have Imran Siddiq, author of the Divided Worlds Trilogy and a new release called Tyler Nitbone. Imran is one of my favorite indie authors, and I find both his works and his presence on Twitter to be a constant inspiration to me to write more and to write better. Imran’s […]

Book Review: Neuromancer

Neuromancer was one of those books that drew me in purely by virtue of the title. Neuromancer, I thought, what’s that? Like, Necromancer? But with the brain? Wow, I’m intrigued already. It was on a friend’s bookshelf and I picked it up almost without thought, without really knowing why. I’d heard the name William Gibson but had no […]

Twittiquete: How Not To Suck At Twitter

Welcome! This is the second post in my Twittiquete series: How To (Not) Suck At Twitter! If you’ve been following this blog, you know that last time, we learned all about how to offend the hell out of everyone on Twitter and make yourself universally reviled! Did you follow those ten steps? Congratulations! Now it’s […]

Twittiquette: How To Suck At Twitter

Here are ten quick and easy things you can do to suck really hard at Twitter. Want to create a social network that absolutely loathes your presence? Follow this simple guide and you’ll have alienated your entire fan base in the span of just a few tweets, unfollows, and DMs!  1) Post your follow/unfollow stats […]

Winter Dreams (Reprise)

I always love going back and re-reading some of my early works, before I ever would have dreamed of calling myself a writer. I wrote the following paragraph in 2008, when I was a sophomore in college. It appeared in an early version of this blog when I was still on Blogger.  There is something precariously […]

Book Review: Infinite Jest, Truly

Infinite Jest is, no joke, a work of near-infinity and plentiful jest. Weighing in at 981 pages, not to mention another 98 of microscopic-font-size footnotes, at the beginning the book was a hassle to read just because of the challenge of balancing it on my chest as I was reading in bed. I quickly relegated it […]