Lloyd Pilling Tosoff's Blog, page 2
January 3, 2018
New Review
"Point of Return by Lloyd Tosoff is a story that revolves around Ian MacLeod, a naïve accountant who is hired as an auditor by the Glasgow based accounting firm RIA. But it turns out that he has been set up and gets caught up in a murder conspiracy. Ian is innocent and is forced to stand against the ruthless Scottish mob. This story is beautifully complex and enthralling and will take into the realm of crime and deceit.
I feel that the plot of the story is absolutely wonderful. The story begins at a moment of climax, and this adds flavour to the reader’s experience as the reader will find himself to be drawn to the story from the very first word. The first chapter is very important because it sets the precedent for what will come in the following chapters. I felt that the overall storyline was very strong and the author has done justice to the story by presenting it in his own unique way.
The author has not created a linear narrative, which can be restrictive for a number of reasons. He has fused together different events to form a more fluid narrative. There is also a consistency in the plot and it is difficult to find a disconnect anywhere in the story. I feel that in this particular genre, the most important thing is the plot and I feel that overall, the author created a well-developed plot.
One thing that I absolutely loved about the story is the way the author has sensitively differentiated between different dialects and speaking styles within the United Kingdom. It was really interesting to see that different cultures had not been put in the same box."
Watch for it on February 6, 2018 on Amazon and Kindle and be prepared to stay up all night.
http://lloydtosoff.com/novels/
#LloydTosoffAuthor #PointofReturnNovel
I feel that the plot of the story is absolutely wonderful. The story begins at a moment of climax, and this adds flavour to the reader’s experience as the reader will find himself to be drawn to the story from the very first word. The first chapter is very important because it sets the precedent for what will come in the following chapters. I felt that the overall storyline was very strong and the author has done justice to the story by presenting it in his own unique way.
The author has not created a linear narrative, which can be restrictive for a number of reasons. He has fused together different events to form a more fluid narrative. There is also a consistency in the plot and it is difficult to find a disconnect anywhere in the story. I feel that in this particular genre, the most important thing is the plot and I feel that overall, the author created a well-developed plot.
One thing that I absolutely loved about the story is the way the author has sensitively differentiated between different dialects and speaking styles within the United Kingdom. It was really interesting to see that different cultures had not been put in the same box."
Watch for it on February 6, 2018 on Amazon and Kindle and be prepared to stay up all night.
http://lloydtosoff.com/novels/
#LloydTosoffAuthor #PointofReturnNovel
December 12, 2017
Kirkus Review
After 8 years and tens of thousands of hours of writing as well as studying the craft I have earned a much coveted Kirkus review praising my soon to be released novel. I was on edge for weeks waiting for it. You see, Kirkus is the gold standard in book publishing and a review by them can either make or break a book, especially for an unknown author.
Read the review and please leave comments here https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
#LloydTosoffAuthor #PointofReturnNovel — celebrating success.
Read the review and please leave comments here https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
#LloydTosoffAuthor #PointofReturnNovel — celebrating success.
November 10, 2017
The past 8 years
Fall 2017 News Blog
This fall marks eight (8) years of full time writing since I left my career as an executive and primary leader in one of Canada’s Platinum 50 Best Managed Companies. Many people have asked why I left such a big role in a company I was instrumental in building. As much as I approached business in a very creative way and loved those I led, at the end I felt like a purple person in amongst a leadership group of yellow people. Money wasn’t enough, nor was the prestige; I just needed a different experience of my life while I was still young enough to pull it off so in an inspired move, I left and never looked back.
So here I am almost a decade later having studied the craft of creative writing at the University of Toronto during a period when I cut my teeth on a couple of business books just because that’s what I knew about. I began my first novel in the spring of 2011 and polished it during a course I took in advanced screenwriting, finishing it in the late fall of 2012. Turning the plot and characters into a screenplay as the basis of my studies, fast tracked my indenture as a novelist and in fact allowed me to develop a writing style that is highly descriptive, action driven, with colorful characters and conflict, including the all-important chapter ending cliff hanger. Readers have been very responsive to my work and for that I am grateful.
My first novel, “The Consultant” was written under a pen name and actually went as high as #2 in UK Kindle Crime Fiction which for a new author was a big accomplishment. It got a string of 5 star reviews that gave me the impetus to want to write more in the novel form even though I could have followed the screenwriter’s path.
Instead of writing a follow-up to my first novel, I was inspired by an elderly man who along with his two sisters, 6 and 10 escaped on a coal train from war-torn Konigsberg East Prussia when he was 14. I was so taken by his story that I could not resist using his experience along with a lot of writer’s imagination and arduous research, to pen another novel set in Europe at the end of WWII. “Escape From Konigsberg” is a touching story of love, loss and hope that underscores the strength that is at the core of the human spirit. My character Walter Heinrich struggles to survive against all odds in his search for his POW father during two years in which he comes of age. Although it has not been as well received as my Scottish mob action thriller, it was a very satisfying book to write.
I left behind my novel writing in 2014 after picking up my guitar and writing a song, my first in over 20 years. I was struck at how my thousands of hours of writing along with my academic studies translated into some really good songwriting. It’s not that music was new to me; I come from a very musical family with both brothers and daughter Amanda—a Juno nominated jazz artist—being full time musicians. Also, in the early 1980’s a song I wrote became a Top 40 hit here in Canada and gave me a taste of music business success. However, that’s also when I took a necessary turn toward the business world when the pressures of a young growing family became my priority. The rest is history.
With my brother engineering and producing and a handful of songs we collaborated, along with some of the best musicians in Canada, to produce a progressive country album, “Road To Somewhere”. It was extensively downloaded and played in Europe and other overseas locations but predictably didn’t get much play on the “New Nashville” biased commercial country stations.
I’ve never chased success, not even in my rise to the top of the construction business. I just do good work and let things take their own shape. You see, I’m not ambitious—I am intense, passionate and driven to create—but the trappings of the world hold little interest to me. Except of course for my addiction to Corvettes, LOL.
Earlier this year I called up John Ellis who I have the greatest respect for both as man of integrity and brilliance as a musician and producer. I told him I was thinking about another recording project that would honor the lost art of Nashville story telling. He was really into it due to his love of traditional country music. The result was a new album “Win, Draw or Lose”, an eight song collection that echoes back to the heyday of Nashville where the renaissance of country music began in the early 70s. Recorded live off the floor at Creativ Studios in North Vancouver, Canada, the minimal production features the mastery of Jay Buettner, Matt Atkins, Kirby Barber and multi-instrumentalist John Ellis, who also acted as producer for the project. Angela Harris complements my vocals with her transparent country voice reminiscent of Emmy Lou and Allison Krause.
`For almost 20 years, the telling of stories that touched a chord of truth and made us feel real emotions was the mainstay of traditional songwriters and recording artists, many of whom are now gone leaving almost no one to fill their shoes. The days of great songwriters like Bobby Braddock whose unsurpassed story telling gave artists like George Jones the inspiration to deliver songs that stopped time and took us into another dimension are all but gone. I am very proud of the fact that one of the songs on the new album has been lauded by the great Nashville songwriter, Gary Gentry who says that my “One Shot at a Time” is in the Braddock league. I cherish that compliment as if it were a million dollar royalty payment. My project is a tribute to times gone by.
With two music projects and a body of musical work that I am exceedingly proud of behind me, I’ve now moved on and returned my writing chops to the art of novel writing. My new project extends my first novel into an exciting three book action thriller series. The first in the series is a major re-write of my very first novel which will be titled “Point of Return” and will be released in December 2017 on Amazon. The following two novels, “Vanquished” and Highland Sanction” will be released in spring and summer 2018 respectively.
I have added a “Novels” page to my new website which now is a full representation of my body of work, both musical and literary. I invite you to visit the website at http://lloydtosoff.com/ and to take a look at the brand new page http://lloydtosoff.com/novels/.
That’s it for now and thanks for your support.
Regards,
Lloyd Tosoff, Author and Songwriter
This fall marks eight (8) years of full time writing since I left my career as an executive and primary leader in one of Canada’s Platinum 50 Best Managed Companies. Many people have asked why I left such a big role in a company I was instrumental in building. As much as I approached business in a very creative way and loved those I led, at the end I felt like a purple person in amongst a leadership group of yellow people. Money wasn’t enough, nor was the prestige; I just needed a different experience of my life while I was still young enough to pull it off so in an inspired move, I left and never looked back.
So here I am almost a decade later having studied the craft of creative writing at the University of Toronto during a period when I cut my teeth on a couple of business books just because that’s what I knew about. I began my first novel in the spring of 2011 and polished it during a course I took in advanced screenwriting, finishing it in the late fall of 2012. Turning the plot and characters into a screenplay as the basis of my studies, fast tracked my indenture as a novelist and in fact allowed me to develop a writing style that is highly descriptive, action driven, with colorful characters and conflict, including the all-important chapter ending cliff hanger. Readers have been very responsive to my work and for that I am grateful.
My first novel, “The Consultant” was written under a pen name and actually went as high as #2 in UK Kindle Crime Fiction which for a new author was a big accomplishment. It got a string of 5 star reviews that gave me the impetus to want to write more in the novel form even though I could have followed the screenwriter’s path.
Instead of writing a follow-up to my first novel, I was inspired by an elderly man who along with his two sisters, 6 and 10 escaped on a coal train from war-torn Konigsberg East Prussia when he was 14. I was so taken by his story that I could not resist using his experience along with a lot of writer’s imagination and arduous research, to pen another novel set in Europe at the end of WWII. “Escape From Konigsberg” is a touching story of love, loss and hope that underscores the strength that is at the core of the human spirit. My character Walter Heinrich struggles to survive against all odds in his search for his POW father during two years in which he comes of age. Although it has not been as well received as my Scottish mob action thriller, it was a very satisfying book to write.
I left behind my novel writing in 2014 after picking up my guitar and writing a song, my first in over 20 years. I was struck at how my thousands of hours of writing along with my academic studies translated into some really good songwriting. It’s not that music was new to me; I come from a very musical family with both brothers and daughter Amanda—a Juno nominated jazz artist—being full time musicians. Also, in the early 1980’s a song I wrote became a Top 40 hit here in Canada and gave me a taste of music business success. However, that’s also when I took a necessary turn toward the business world when the pressures of a young growing family became my priority. The rest is history.
With my brother engineering and producing and a handful of songs we collaborated, along with some of the best musicians in Canada, to produce a progressive country album, “Road To Somewhere”. It was extensively downloaded and played in Europe and other overseas locations but predictably didn’t get much play on the “New Nashville” biased commercial country stations.
I’ve never chased success, not even in my rise to the top of the construction business. I just do good work and let things take their own shape. You see, I’m not ambitious—I am intense, passionate and driven to create—but the trappings of the world hold little interest to me. Except of course for my addiction to Corvettes, LOL.
Earlier this year I called up John Ellis who I have the greatest respect for both as man of integrity and brilliance as a musician and producer. I told him I was thinking about another recording project that would honor the lost art of Nashville story telling. He was really into it due to his love of traditional country music. The result was a new album “Win, Draw or Lose”, an eight song collection that echoes back to the heyday of Nashville where the renaissance of country music began in the early 70s. Recorded live off the floor at Creativ Studios in North Vancouver, Canada, the minimal production features the mastery of Jay Buettner, Matt Atkins, Kirby Barber and multi-instrumentalist John Ellis, who also acted as producer for the project. Angela Harris complements my vocals with her transparent country voice reminiscent of Emmy Lou and Allison Krause.
`For almost 20 years, the telling of stories that touched a chord of truth and made us feel real emotions was the mainstay of traditional songwriters and recording artists, many of whom are now gone leaving almost no one to fill their shoes. The days of great songwriters like Bobby Braddock whose unsurpassed story telling gave artists like George Jones the inspiration to deliver songs that stopped time and took us into another dimension are all but gone. I am very proud of the fact that one of the songs on the new album has been lauded by the great Nashville songwriter, Gary Gentry who says that my “One Shot at a Time” is in the Braddock league. I cherish that compliment as if it were a million dollar royalty payment. My project is a tribute to times gone by.
With two music projects and a body of musical work that I am exceedingly proud of behind me, I’ve now moved on and returned my writing chops to the art of novel writing. My new project extends my first novel into an exciting three book action thriller series. The first in the series is a major re-write of my very first novel which will be titled “Point of Return” and will be released in December 2017 on Amazon. The following two novels, “Vanquished” and Highland Sanction” will be released in spring and summer 2018 respectively.
I have added a “Novels” page to my new website which now is a full representation of my body of work, both musical and literary. I invite you to visit the website at http://lloydtosoff.com/ and to take a look at the brand new page http://lloydtosoff.com/novels/.
That’s it for now and thanks for your support.
Regards,
Lloyd Tosoff, Author and Songwriter
