Homicide Trinity by Rex Stout My rating: 4 of 5 stars The thing about Rex Stout’s writing is that it’s tight, matter-of-fact yet visually, auditorally, and smell-o-vision live. The characters are so strong it’s like they’re standing in front of you. By the time you finish your first Nero Wolfe mystery, you know Archie, Nero, [...]

The Torso by Helene Tursten My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m enjoying this series set in Sweden. The Torso is rather gruesome but not relentlessly so. Humour, personal conflict, doggies, and vivid descriptions of Goteberg and Swedish life add welcome counterpoints and keep one engaged. I also like the peek this series gives into [...]

After my first NaNoWriMo, I took only a couple of days off and then got right into revising my novel, while I could still remember it. After my second, I didn’t. Big mistake. Between the inevitable loss of motivation, impetus, and memory issues, revising Aban’s Accension became difficult and almost didn’t happen. And so for [...]

I learned a valuable lesson this NaNoWriMo. As some of you many know, I began my own self-devised hypothalamus treatment in 2010 to try and address a variety of organic problems that resulted from a traumatic brain injury in 2000. One of the nice side benefits was my exercise tolerance slowly improved. Then this past [...]

I won NaNoWriMo!!! Phew. Winning National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) means I wrote 50,000 words of a novel in one month, the month of November. What it doesn’t mean is I’m finished. I wish! Nope, not finished. Sigh. I took a break Monday from writing once I had completed my novel (which is officially 65,637 [...]

The final week of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) was difficult. I’d get back to my outline, only to go meh and deviate again. Plus once I won NaNoWriMo on the 24th — reached 50,000 words — I really, really, really wanted to finish my novel Time and Space so I could rest, see how [...]

Dying Light by Stuart MacBride My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is a needlessly big book and it’s filled with visual imagery that so realistically conveys the grimness of life and its grossest aspects that you just want to go kill yourself or hide under a rock. The day I got to the point [...]

Good grief! Week three of NaNoWriMo is over already! It’s been a week of straying more and more from my outline while still heading to the same ending for Time and Space I’d envisioned many moons ago. It’s been a week of fighting fatigue and of energizing excitement over letting my imagination loose. And the [...]

I can’t believe I’m still going strong this National Novel Writing Month. Some days are harder than others, tis true, but haven’t yet hit the mid-month slump as you can see on my brand-new NaNoWriMo Word Count Widget on the right sidebar. The Office of Letters and Light was a tad slow in getting the [...]