Ralph Jones's Blog
January 17, 2017
Open to Reviewing
Still open for people to send me books / links for review. As you can see by my reviews I am generous and will also give you honest, private and detailed feedback.
January 12, 2017
Book Reviews
Well I've downed tools on my writing for the moment and have taken to reading and reviewing books by other authors, whose works have had little exposure so far.
This has been a good experience and I have read some great stuff most notably from Colin Knight who has penned a couple of great efforts which are well worth a read.
I would also highly recommend "The Killing of John, John, and John" by Elizabeth O'Neil. Now this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoyed such classics as Nil By Mouth, Once Were Warriors and Scum then this will be for you. It's amusing and tragic and a great book that will stay with me for a long time to come.
This has been a good experience and I have read some great stuff most notably from Colin Knight who has penned a couple of great efforts which are well worth a read.
I would also highly recommend "The Killing of John, John, and John" by Elizabeth O'Neil. Now this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoyed such classics as Nil By Mouth, Once Were Warriors and Scum then this will be for you. It's amusing and tragic and a great book that will stay with me for a long time to come.
December 16, 2016
Book Review
Just finished reading Bad Analysis by Colin Knight. It's not my usual thing but was excellent and can highly recommend it.
This weekend I will be mostly re-reading and mopping up errors in The Slaughter. It's an endless task for those of us who can't afford a professional editor. Every read yields more issues and just like debugging software you can never be sure its bug free :)
This weekend I will be mostly re-reading and mopping up errors in The Slaughter. It's an endless task for those of us who can't afford a professional editor. Every read yields more issues and just like debugging software you can never be sure its bug free :)
December 11, 2016
My first post :)
I'm fairly new to this writing game and knocked out my first five books in record time, put them up on amazon (as you do) and then sat back hoping for the best.
After nothing much happened, apart from a couple of kindly reviews, I went back for a re-read. Oddly they were nowhere near as good as I remembered and certainly not good enough for anyone else to read. So I took them all down again and am now in the process of reworking.
So that was my first excellent lesson. Always go back and re-read your stuff having had a decent break from it.
Also it seems that you improve with practice. I'd heard this said before but didn't think it applied as I thought I was already doing my best. But certainly the re-writes are turning out far better than the originals.
I still don't know whether my writing is any good, and it may be total pants. Certainly it's the type of stuff I like to read; full of fantasy gore and horrible nasty bits, but of course nothing too real and upsetting.
I currently only have The Slaughter to offer and am beavering away at making the others 'good'. I hope you will take the time to read it and leave some impartial feedback, even it it's "You're wasting your time Ralph. Go do something else instead!" :)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slaughter-Bo...
After nothing much happened, apart from a couple of kindly reviews, I went back for a re-read. Oddly they were nowhere near as good as I remembered and certainly not good enough for anyone else to read. So I took them all down again and am now in the process of reworking.
So that was my first excellent lesson. Always go back and re-read your stuff having had a decent break from it.
Also it seems that you improve with practice. I'd heard this said before but didn't think it applied as I thought I was already doing my best. But certainly the re-writes are turning out far better than the originals.
I still don't know whether my writing is any good, and it may be total pants. Certainly it's the type of stuff I like to read; full of fantasy gore and horrible nasty bits, but of course nothing too real and upsetting.
I currently only have The Slaughter to offer and am beavering away at making the others 'good'. I hope you will take the time to read it and leave some impartial feedback, even it it's "You're wasting your time Ralph. Go do something else instead!" :)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slaughter-Bo...
