Steven E. Wedel's Blog, page 8

Books of 2018

I once again failed to meet my goal of reading 50 books last year. I managed 44 books with a total of 11,604 pages, which is actually more pages than 2017 when I read 47 books. But it’s still a failure. Oh well. It’s a new year.

Here are the highs and lows of 2018’s reading list, starting with the bad. I didn’t bother to finish anything so bad I only gave it one star, but I had a few 2-star reviews. A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee leads that list because I just didn’t care about any of the...

Getting back on track

Here it is December and I’ve only made one blog post all year. It’s been an eventful year in my personal life. I’m not going to go into details here because, honestly, most of it is personal and nobody else’s business. But for the couple of you who may care …

After 32 years of marriage, my wife and I separated last year. The divorce became final this past October. I moved into an apartment following the separation and lived there for a year. About a month ago I started the process of buying a...

Walking Out: A Teacher’s Perspective

Tomorrow morning I’ll join many of my colleagues in voting yes to walk off my job as a teacher on April 2nd. It’s a vote that comes with a lot of anger, a lot of concern for my students, and a lot of fear for my own future.

Today our district superintendent laid out what will happen in terms of our salaries if this walkout drags on for an extended period. It isn’t pretty, folks. In terms of salary, there’s a cutoff date and if the walkout goes beyond that, teachers won’t get 1/6 of their annu...

Signing with Hartwood Publishing

This post may ramble a bit as I explain the situation, so let me just summarize everything right up front. I’ve signed a contract with Hartwood Publishing letting them publish my novel Bold Bounty, an historical romance that has ties to my Werewolf Saga.

Okay, now for the details …

I learned of  Hartwood Publishing by reading Gordon L. Rottman‘s novels The Hardest Ride and Ride Harder. I enjoyed both of them. They’re western novels, and the first one made The USA Today bestseller list. I’m ab...

Review: Take Me with You

Take Me with You by Catherine Ryan Hyde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Early on, I was thinking this was going to be a 5-star book. But the second half just didn’t hold up to the promise of the beginning. That being said, I did thoroughly enjoy the story despite some issues with it.

August is a high school science teacher and a recovering alcoholic. He lost his 19-year-old son to a drunk driver sometime before the book begins. Every summer he takes his RV out on the road to explore national parks...

Review: A Man Called Ove

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I came across A Man Called Ove while browsing Audible.com, not looking for anything in particular. The reviews were good, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s a strong character study about an old Swedish curmudgeon who learns to love before it’s too late.

Ove has always been a man of few words, like his father before him. He worked hard until he was told to retire, and now all he has to...

3 New Books for June

I’ve been busy since school let out less than a month ago. I’ve edited two books and published them, plus one more. All of them are outside my usual genre. Now it’s time to promote them and try to convince you to buy them.

[image error]First up is A Light Beyond. This is one I imagined several years ago, when I still had an agent who didn’t really believe in me. He shot the idea down, but it wouldn’t leave me. I wrote the book last semester, putting down a little over 50,000 words in a pretty short time f...

Review: Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Somewhere, sometime, somebody failed me. How is it I had never read Flowers for Algernon until now? Even my youngest kids say they read it in eighth grade, and they almost never read anything.

I make my AP Literature seniors do a tapestry of books they’ve read at the end of the year. A lot of them had Keyes’ novel on their tapestries. Then, Flowers for Algernon played an important role in Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything. So, i...

Review: West Texas Kill

West Texas Kill by Johnny D. Boggs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

West Texas Kill was pretty good, but certainly isn’t Johnny D. Boggs’ best novel. The structure is well done, with most chapters ending in a cliffhanger. The pace is non-stop action. The characters, though, were just lacking. The only one I really liked was Moses.

Boggs doesn’t let the story drag with too much historical detail, but he has enough real place names, real situations like tired horses, slow travel, empty guns, to keep i...

End of May

I haven’t blogged just to blog in quite a while. So, as I’m sort of between projects and figuring out what to do with myself at the start of summer, I thought I’d do an update on my life. Because both you readers care, right?

School’s Out for summer. It was an interesting year. Not always a good time, but come the end of the year all is forgiven and transgressions (mostly) forgotten. I’m going to really miss having those seniors in my life on an almost daily basis. They’re good young folks wi...