Pick Your Poison!: sabian30's review of Pick Your Poison - A Short Story...
Pick Your Poison – A Short Story Anthology edited by Emma Nelson and Hannah Smith (2017) – Just in time for Halloween comes a short story collection with a clever theme: toxins. Whether venomous...
View ArticleWhere Do I Keep My Wallet?: sabian30's review of A Princess of Mars
Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912) – Before there was science fiction (the term wasn’t coined until the twenties), there were the amazing worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He’s known for...
View ArticleAn Earworm of an Anthology: sabian30's review of When You're Strange
When You’re Strange edited by Sarah Vestal and Danne Boyd (2017) – I’m not sure what’s going on with the cover, but the stories in this themed anthology dramatically bring out the differences and...
View ArticleOne to Bind Them All: sabian30's review of Fellowship of the Ring
Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1988) – There are several books on my shelves that I must reread every couple years because I miss them. The Lord of the Rings is one of them (along with...
View ArticleAs If Acne and Puberty Weren’t Enough – Confessions of a Teenage Dragon:...
The Guardian of Gildain, Book 1: The Snow Dragon by M. L. Miller (2016) – Too often, adult writers who deal with YA (Young Adult) for teenagers forget what being a teenager was really like. During...
View Article“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.”: sabian30's review of Zen...
While a lot of writing self-help books are about the basic mechanics and rules of good writing, Mr. Bradbury’s Essays on Creativity are more inspirational. He discusses what he has learned in his fifty...
View ArticleExercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the...
For the last ten years, I’ve heard this book on writing by the grand dame of fantasy and science fiction is the book every writer should have in his or her back pocket; however, I found it...
View ArticlePractical Guidance for Novel Writers: sabian30's review of Rock Your Writing
It’s rare I find a book so topical. Recommended by my local NANO (National Novel Writing Month) group, Rock Your Writing is actually a series of four smaller books: Rock Your Plot, Rock Your Revisions,...
View ArticlePracticing What You Preach: sabian30's review of Elantris
Okay, I said I was only doing writing non-fiction for Cannonball 13, but this epic fantasy is related to learning how to write. I took his 13-hour BYU writing class (on YouTube) and found it very...
View Article“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.”: sabian30's review of Bird...
Of all the writer self-help books I’ve been reading, this is probably the most personal. Ms. Lamott doesn’t write for fun. For her, writing requires she rip open a vein and expose every jagged nerve...
View ArticleThose Who Can Do, Can’t Teach: sabian30's review of How to Write Science...
I’ll admit to some prejudice to reviewing this. While I think Mr. Card is an exceptional writer, I find his homophobic comments hard to take. But this was on my list of books that beginning writers...
View ArticleSell, Sell, Sell!: sabian30's review of WRITING 21ST CENTURY FICTION – High...
I guess the law of averages says that all these self-help books on writing aren’t going to be winners, but I was disappointed at this book for a couple reasons. First of all, it was recommended by a...
View ArticleI’m Wearing Out My Copy: sabian30's review of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
There are several basic self-help books out there for amateur writers, and I was surprised I hadn’t heard of this one before a fellow writer used this book to point out some of my own misdeeds. Since...
View Article“Plant a Bomb on the First Page”: sabian30's review of The Craft of Writing...
The late, great science fiction novelist, Ben Bova (1932-2019) began his life in aeronautics and his incredible planetary fiction shows it. He didn’t cotton with malarky like wormholes and...
View Article“Things are as they are, and I am part of them.”: sabian30's review of Earth...
There’s something very pleasing about having a book recommended to you and discovering it is one you have read before and really liked. I blame it on the vague title, but this novel, written in 1949...
View ArticleAnd Now For Something Completely Different: sabian30's review of Making...
As I’m reading these DIY writing books, I find many of them are very similar to one another. They lay out the same steps for starting a writing process, what rules to follow, and how to get the most...
View ArticleThe Culprit Behind All the Gastrointestinal Distress: sabian30's review of...
For several years, editors and agents have recommended “showing” not “telling” and frequently use the Emotion Thesaurus as a means to show how it’s done. It’s simple really. Instead of saying “She felt...
View ArticleShould Writing Be This Painful?: sabian30's review of Writing Down the Bones
Writing Down the Bones is another seminal work all writers are supposed to read, but I found it to be a lot like Bird by Bird where the writer is expected to really struggle to put pen to paper and...
View ArticleYou Get What You Pay For: sabian30's review of Deepening Fiction – A...
I’ve probably read a dozen DIY books on writing this year and some of them have been truly exceptional, but Deeping Fiction isn’t one of them. It’s a textbook, a stogy, thick, and difficult to read...
View ArticleExcellent Ammo for Writers: sabian30's review of The Fantasy Fiction Formula
I don’t know if this book is so good because it’s so well written or if it came along when I needed it. I suspect the former. Ms. Chester does a great job of making the material really accessible and...
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