Farewell, Anne

Anne McCaffrey crossed the veil yesterday (Monday).  I am saddened by her passing.  It's always sad to me when the truly great writers pass on, leaving some very large shoes to be filled, if that's even possible.

"Annie Mac" as she was affectionately called by friends, and I actually communicated via email once or twice, and she was very gracious to me.  Also, years ago when I was 24 and in need of direction, she communicated some wisdom to me through a friend we both knew, saying that it really didn't matter what she or anyone else might think of my writing.  If it was bad, she said, no one could help it but me, and if it was good, it would stand on its own strength and not someone else's.  I have never forgotten her words to me, nor her gracious reply when I reminded her of the advice she'd given to me and thanked her for it, years later.  She was the very first published writer to be kind to me, and I took her advice very much to heart.

Thank you, Dragonlady Anne, for your words and your kindness to a young woman who did not yet understand who and what she was.  You and your fabulous stories fired my imagination and drive to write and write well, and though the arena has changed, your advice is still valid.  You will be missed.

Plastic Steampunk?

A brainstorm that came on suddenly one day seems likely to result in a new novel, a YA fantasy steampunk.  Steampunk isn't exactly my usual thing, but I certainly can't knock it because of that.  The last time I went outside my usual venue, the story I wrote got published, so maybe this is exactly the direction I need to go.

As a sort of fun activity related to the concepts behind steampunk, my older daughter and I decided to look into the notion of crafting a few steampunk objects d'art, in the form of jewelry, and possibly miniatures.  We knew we'd need a few things like gears and cogs, etc.

Now, you'd think one of the most obvious places to find gears and cogs would be to look inside an old-fashioned windup clock, wouldn't you?  We had one that no longer worked because something had broken inside it, so we thought, "Great; we'll take that apart and there will be all sorts of cogs and gears inside it that we can mine for parts."

No, not exactly.  We got it apart, sure.  But once it was apart, one particular thing which really bugs me about the modern world became immediately obvious: most of the innards of this clock were plastic.  Nasty, white plastic.  Obnoxious, cheap, and no doubt the primary reason the clock had broken in the first place.  Clearly, if we want metal cogs and gears, we'll have to look elsewhere.

Cheap white plastic cogs and gears.  In an actual wind-up clock.  Meh.

On the Road

Pookatales Press recently participated in a miniature show in Portland, Oregon, over the weekend of the 1st and 2nd.  It was a long drive, but we made contacts and handed out many business cards, and got to meet clients face-to-face.

Perhaps one of the biggest new developments for the business was the release of our newest mini book, the "Book of Shadows," also known as the Book of Magic or Mini Grimoire.  Content, much of which takes the form of tables of magickal correspondences and the like, was written by me over my years of study.  Illustrations are primarily public domain images from Dover, although my own distinctive Wheel of the Year drawing is also included.  This is the first new release from Pookatales Press in ten years, and celebrates our ten-year anniversary.

We're about to unveil a brand-spanking-new shopping cart, which will include all our original mini books, mini maps, and mini readable greeting cards, as well as other new mini collectible designs to be added as soon as they're ready for release.

Also on the docket is the upcoming release of "The Truth One Sees" in e-story format, which will soon be available from Pookatales Press as well as other e-retailers.

Back Up and Running

I have a new-to-me PC to replace my old PC that died two years ago, and the big laptop that just recently died.  The new machine is a refurbished former business machine, and seems to be doing a great job so far.  Did you know that Linux can run a Windows virtual machine that works almost as well as a real machine, and both operating systems can run on your actual machine at the same time?  Amazing and mind boggling, both.  So I now have Windows to satisfy the publishers who want any and all manuscripts submitted as a .doc file created by a genuine Word for Windows program and not by a clone like OpenOffice, and I also have Linux to satisfy the huz, who prefers Linux as an operating system.

Plans to release my previously-published short story for e-book readers are underway.  I'm one title page, one disclaimer page, and one cover illustration away from an actual release of the story for your e-book readers, so stick with me and I'll get it done ASAP.  Yes, I'll be doing the cover art myself, so we'll see how that goes.

My general plan is to release it on the Autumnal Equinox.  It sounds like a reasonable plan, provided the cover art doesn't prove trickier than I already suspect it will be.  I've done all the interior illustrations for all of the Pookatales Press books, so I think I can come up with something that will work just fine.  And given the Tarot-reading background of events in the story, I think I've got just the idea to suit the story.

Crash

My big laptop crashed last night, after two years of trying to take the place of my main PC.  It only had half a gig of memory.  I bought it in...2004, I think it was, after I'd gone to Donald Maass' week-long Breakout Novel Intensive course, which the Moxie affectionately dubbed "boot camp."  The old laptop I had at the BONI had shutdown issues; it sometimes took multiple tries to get it to shut down properly.  So after I returned home, I bought my big laptop especially for the purpose of going to writer's conferences with it.  It weighs 8 pounds and is a chore to lug across an airport concourse, but it has a nice large screen and multiple USB ports, and was the best thing for the money at the time I bought it.

Since I never intended to use it all that often at home, and because I'm not as tech savvy as I should be, I never made a recovery disc for it.  I never expected to need it; it was only supposed to be my travel computer for writing, and I never expected it to hold all of my data and function as my main computer.  So now it's toast.  It passes the hard drive test, but will not boot up Windows.  I lost some data there--not my writing, it seems; because I use the little red laptop just often enough, I had copies of the writing files on it and on thumb drives.  But until we see if we can recover the data on the hard drive, I've lost email addresses, about two years' worth of emails, and some pictures, not to mention a few downloads of songs on Windows Media Player purchased from Amazon, plus all my playlists that weren't on the red laptop.

When the PC was about to die, it gave me warning, and I had everything backed up in time and lost virtually nothing.  This time, however....not the same situation.

The little red laptop is a wonderful computer.  I love it.  But it doesn't even have a CD drive, so I can't rip or burn CD's, play DVD's, or make backups on CD.  Everything has to be transferred via thumb drive.  So I'm off to buy a new 8 gig thumb drive while they're on sale, because after the PC died, I learned from experience that the entire contents of my writing folders, etc. can be contained on two 8 gig thumb drives.

Talk about traveling light....

Dubious Trends

I was cruising the Web last night and found this article about current trends in urban fantasy and romance.  I think this blogger has pinpointed the current problem exactly.  Everything she mentions in her article is something I've seen time after time in both genres, and I'd have to agree with her; each of these trends is becoming very, very old.  For writers, this is definitely worth a look, and publishers might do well to take a look themselves.

Inspiration

People have asked from time to time where writers get their ideas.  Of course, there's no one answer that works for everyone.  One old gem of wisdom (read: one opinion as stated by one writer in the past but which may not work for everyone) that is often bandied about as advice to new writers is "Write what you know."  That's fine, sort of.  We do tend to write what we know, or we tend to write about what is familiar to us or what, in modern parlance, "resonates" with us.  However, that old bit of advice to "write what you know" is a bit limiting, in my opinion.  If a writer is drawn to something strongly enough, be it a locale, job description, way of life or belief system, the dedicated writer will do the necessary research to learn enough about it to write about it convincingly.  You don't have to have known or practiced something for decades in order to write about it, though you should obviously care about your subject.  Caring shows in the writing.  Attention to detail shows.  Writers write about what they're drawn to or what fascinates them.  Just about anything in this world can spark enough fascination to inspire a book or story.  If we could only write about those things with which we were already familiar, we'd miss out on so many opportunities for learning new things!

When I sat down to write my short story "The Truth One Sees," I'd just been looking for a new deck of tarot cards.  I read tarot professionally, and I've tried quite a few different decks.  I'd learned about a new deck that would be released before long, called "The Transparent Tarot."  The concept completely fascinated me.  The cards are made of transparent plastic, as thin as normal cards but allowing for hundreds of additional possibilities.  They can be stacked on top of one another to present a multi-layered picture of events in a normal layout, or they can be drawn one at a time and then arranged in order, giving the impression of a series of events and symbols.  The possibilities and potentials for ways to use this deck are many, if not endless.

As I looked at the preliminary information about that deck, the clear, stackable cards made me think of holograms.  That got me wondering what a holographic tarot deck would be like.  What would a Tarot reading be like if one could go into a holographic theater such as a holodeck from Star Trek, and experience the reading there?  The notion intrigued me so much that I sat down one night and wrote "The Truth One Sees," in which my psychic main character uses an interactive holographic tarot deck for her readings.  However, in the story, some of the hologram figures are not simply holograms, but sentient beings with an agenda of their own.  Turns out my fictional aliens had phase-shifted themselves and all of their cities into another dimension so as to avoid potential bloodshed and conflict with the invading humans.  As I explored the concept of humans colonizing a planet without being aware that they'd just displaced an entire native civilization, I soon found myself with the first and only science fiction story I've ever written.

This story made me stretch my boundaries in ways that my fantasy fiction hadn't done.  Suddenly I found myself writing about a world where what I'd previously viewed and written as magic had to be explainable with science.  Suddenly I needed to use terms like "quantum decision points" and "temporal interface," and come up with a possible cause of sudden death for a pilot whose shuttle had malfunctioned.  It was a far cry from my usual fare, but all my usual metaphysical underpinnings were still there.  After all, what is a spirit or a ghost to the typical human but just another being who is not currently in the same dimensional or vibratory phase that we are?  And does it really matter whether people in a future society could transmit information mentally to one another via actual telepathy or through a special implant in the brain?  As long as the effect is the same, it doesn't really matter whether you view it as science or magic.  So despite the fact that it was a definite departure from my usual writing fare, I completely enjoyed it, and it took me to places where I'd never gone before--or at least not quite in that way.

There have been a couple of reviewers who stated that they wanted to see more of the world of this story.  As a primarily fantasy writer, I suppose actually writing a whole science fiction novel would be my equivalent of skydiving.  At this point, I'm still standing in the open hatchway of the plane, wondering whether to jump.  Science fiction would be my wild blue yonder, and the fantasy I truly love would be my perfectly good airplane.

Skype

The conference call worked for Sunday's crit group meeting.  Val and I had to lean in close enough that the webcam on the red laptop could pick us both up, but we got to see Stef, live and in real time, for the first time since she moved to Florida.

Skype was remarkably easy to set up, and getting connected was far easier than I'd dared hope.  Also, along with the built-in webcam on my laptop is a built-in microphone, so we didn't have to jury-rig anything in order to be be heard as well as seen.

I highly recommend distance crit group meetings via Skype, if you can't all live in the same place.  The only issue is that we can't just pass her a paper copy of our work to read at the meeting, so in future, we'll have to make sure she gets a copy ahead of time so she can do her crit prior to the meeting and send it to us.  We'll do the same for her, and then then at the conference call/meeting, we can discuss any questions any of us has about the others' crit and impressions.

I'd still rather we were all here in person, but barring that, Skype was a relatively trouble-free way to compensate for the lack of proximity.

Conference Calling

Now that only two of the Moxie remain in town, we're trying to figure out how to organize videoconferencing for our critique group so that we can continue to have meetings.  In our case, this means Skype and webcams.  If we do this, our original fourth member may also be able to join us for meetings.

I have a laptop with a built-in webcam, and wi-fi is readily available, so all that remains is for me to make sure I'm set up to do this.  I've never used that webcam before, so it will be something new to try.  I have all of two days left in which to figure it all out, but I'm sure I'll get it done.

Some days, with e-books and tech gadgets everywhere, I feel like I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into the...ah...which century is it, again?

Revamp

I've finally acquired a copy of FrontPage, so I can finally edit the Pookatales website.  I have now gone through and made quite a few changes, including updates to item description pages and the news page.  I've made an announcement there that I might as well also make here.

Pookatales Press has been in business for ten years.  That seems amazing to me, as if the time flew by almost without notice.  But as it has in fact been a decade, I think Pookatales deserves the ten-year anniversary gift of a brand-new book release, our first in a very long time.

This August, my first traditionally published short story, "The Truth One Sees," will have been out in print for a year, at which point the rights to publish it elsewhere revert back to me.  So rather than search for a venue that may want it as a reprint, I've decided to claim it for Pookatales Press and release it as one of our miniature book titles.  I'm hoping to present it as a hardcover, but we'll see how it goes.  I'll have all summer to work on formatting it and getting it ready to be a mini book.  My intent is also to package it as an e-story that will be available for download from Pookatales Press for e-book readers like Kindle and Nook.

It's a great story, it's gotten some very nice reviews...this seems like the right thing to do with it.  And of course, it will continue to be available as part of the "Warrior Wisewoman 3" science fiction anthology--a collection of such thoughtful and well-written stories that it's easily worth buying a copy or three.

Superheroes

I recently found out that Samhain Publishing has put out a call for Superhero romance novellas for an upcoming anthology, and with superheroes on my mind lately--the new Thor movie comes out this week--I'm beginning to contemplate whether there's a way to present supers in a way that hasn't been done before.

Marvel, seemingly, has done it all.  We've had mutants, gods, aliens, ordinary people with unusual talents, people who have been bitten by spiders or exposed to strange substances or radiation...you name it and it's probably been done.

The trick here isn't so much finding something that hasn't been done, because it looks like that would be a near-impossible task.  The trick would be in finding something that's been done but doing it in a different and fresh way.

I know people still like superheroes.  If I want evidence of that, all I have to do is look at how many hits my old "Why We Need Superman" post has gotten over the more than two years since I wrote it.  The idea of a superhero romance is an intriguing one, since that's an area that so often gets overshadowed by the action and combat.  There have been a few famous superhero romances, sure, but still it seems a relatively undervalued subject when you look at the sheer number of superheroes that have been invented over the last few decades.  Also, I confess I've read a lot of storylines wherein the superheroes I hoped would end up or stay together simply...didn't.  Disappointing, if you like romance.

This call for submissions sounds like a challenge, but I still have a couple of other fiction projects in the works, so we'll have to see what calls the loudest.

Mini Les Bois Show

The miniature show was this last weekend. It went pretty well for us; my older daughter helped me at our table, and she also helped with production and packaging of some of the items we had for sale.

our table

display of miniature 1/12th scale greeting cards, faux daguerrotypes, and old-fashioned theater posters

display of books, sheet music, prize ribbons, postcards, and old-world maps

Pookatales Press catalog

Pookatales Press currently produces four mini book titles: Tam Lin, Mer Treatise, A Perfect Irony, and The Wolfhound.  However, we have some new projects in the works, with a possible new mini book release scheduled for this fall.

The good news is that several of our books sold during this weekend, to discerning collectors who told me repeatedly that 1. the books were underpriced, 2. they didn't think people realized just what I had here, and 3. they went to miniature shows looking for things like this that were truly unique.

The fab four Pookatales Press mini titles.  Each is roughly the size of a postage stamp, and all are readable.  Notice the complimentary magnifier included with the purchase!

I was very pleased with the outcome of the weekend, and we're looking forward to going back next year.  In the meantime, if you want to purchase any of our mini books, feel free to click on the Pookatales Press link above in the sidebar, and it will take you to the business website.  We happily accept credit cards via our PayPal shopping cart.

Production

I've been frantically producing miniature printed media. Valentines and St. Patrick's Day cards are completely done, and Halloween and Christmas cards will be done soon as well. I'm still formatting the Easter cards, and there are a whole lot of things to be printed out and cut, but all the product is turning out great.

For the most part, the miniature books are printed out and just need to be cut and bound. It's a busy week; the miniature show is this weekend.

It's been a while since I had to ramp up production for my mini book business, and with the sole proprietorship, I'm the whole one-woman production team. But it's fun, at least.

Preparations

We're still in the midst of preparations for the upcoming miniature show, cranking out product for Pookatales Press and getting display racks ready, etc.

The Pookatales Press banner arrived today from Vistaprint, and it looks great. Slieb Greeley, the artist who originally designed it for me, reinvented it in slightly different colors; it's now primarily black instead of electric blue, but the Pooka's mane and tail still have that blue-red color-changing flamelike quality. It shows up beautifully on white, and the size is perfect to hang off a display table. It's quite the professional look. Between the banner and updated business cards, about the only thing I don't have is a Pookatales logo T-shirt. Holding off on that, however, as I'd hate to spend more money on prep for the show than I'm going to bring home from it in sales.

Trade Show

I've got a spot for Pookatales Press at the Mini Les Bois miniature show in Boise in mid-April. Now I'm in the middle of producing a bunch of the standard Pookatales printed media to take to the show--mini greeting cards, postcards, music sheets, maps, and of course, the mini books.

Most recent business expense: a printing calculator that actually calculates change...perfect for math-challenged me to use.

One of the first things I've noticed about it is the clarity of its print; rather than being light and hard to read like many of the ones I've seen before, this one prints dark and clear. It also comes with its own power adapter, but will also run on standard AA batteries. I'm quite pleased with it so far.

The Origin of a Business: Pookatales Press

You know, this is the Pooka's Tales blog, and yet I'm not sure I've ever posted anything much about my miniature book business, Pookatales Press. I should probably remedy that, since Pookatales Press and my writing are connected.

Way back in 2001, I wanted to start a business of my own. I'd learned how to make leather-bound medieval-style books, and as I was interested in 1/12th scale miniatures as a hobby, I thought that the combination of the two would be fun. Plus, I had a couple of short stories that I wasn't currently marketing to magazines, so they were available for an alternative form of publication. I took those two short stories and formatted them into miniature books. This was an unusual niche market, and, inspired by the big 1/12th scale "Cinderella" castle in Chicago, I thought it would be great to make miniature medieval-style books that could actually be read--that had complete stories in them instead of pages filled with unreadable nonsense words just for effect. I also thought it might be fun to get paid for my stories...go figure. And so, Pookatales Press was born.

Pookatales Press has had one of its books, A Perfect Irony, reviewed in the publication "Bloomsbury Review." My books have also been purchased for special display at two libraries, including the University of North Texas Library. This is a photo which includes my books among their smallest in the display. You can see them grouped together in the upper right corner. Photo credit goes to Edward Hoyenski, Assistant Curator of the Rare Book and Texana Collections at this library.

So why did I choose a Pooka as mascot and logo? Because legend has it that the Irish Pooka is a fae shapeshifter who often takes the form of a mystical black horse--a horse that lures an unsuspecting victim traveler up onto his back and takes him or her for a wild, unforgettable ride.

That's my own aim in telling (and selling) you my stories. I want to take you places you've never been before. I want you to read something I wrote and then perhaps even see things around you in a new light. I want to entertain you, intrigue you, and whisk you away from dreary everyday life, if only for the length of time it takes you to read one of my tales.

Those initial two stories of high fantasy from my epic fantasy world of Ondine are still available in mini book form from Pookatales Press. If you like mini books, you can find the link in the sidebar of this blog. As soon as I figure out how to format them for e-book readers, I will most likely offer those stories and possibly others as downloads for sale at Pookatales as well.

Product Review - Journey to Wild Divine

I can't be the only writer who has stress--far from it.  Everybody has a different way of dealing with it.  But one of my favorite ways is the Journey to Wild Divine biofeedback program. Here's a handy link: Wild Divine 4 program bundle: Healing Rhythms, Passage, Wisdom Quest, Grapher Expansion


It is, quite simply, gorgeous.  The graphics are a beautifully visualized magical Asian-influenced faeryland, but there is so much more to it than just great visual effect.  The biofeedback device with its finger sensors provides you with feedback, in real time, of how you're doing with either raising or lowering your energy.  It incorporates teaching about how to control your breathing and heart rate and achieve a relaxed but alert mental state, while your actions in this regard affect and make things happen in the program.  They call these "energy events," and they range from making balls juggle to stacking stones, opening closed doors or making it rain, among many other visually stunning examples.  And unlike so many of the computer games that are out there right now just purely for the entertainment value--those with a storyline which, once you play through it, you really have little or no interest in ever going back and playing again--this is one I return to again and again.  I have never found another product quite like this one, so appealing to me as a lover of fantasy literature, and of a profoundly spiritual bent, both.

There are a few places where characters in the program go into a bit of a spiritual teaching mode, especially in Journey to Wild Divine, Wisdom Quest, which is the sequel program to Journey to Wild Divine, the Passage.  But even though the information presented has a very New Age slant, it touches on some truths that seem universal.  However, even if one has no desire to listen to the spiritual information and prefers to skip those parts, the product is still more than worthwhile in my opinion.  I would never have guessed when I first bought this program several years ago just how much it would help me deal with stress and thereby change my life for the better.

Changes on the Horizon

One of my crit partners is moving to Florida soon, bringing the number of local Moxie members down to two, counting me.  We'll miss her.  I'll hate not having her here with us.  But her husband has a new job and has already moved, and she's going to follow as soon as she can wrap up her affairs locally.

I hate to lose any of my writer sisters.  We've always had each other's backs, and in some sense, we always will.  But in trying to figure out how we might video-conference our meetings using a webcam and Skype, we realize it just won't be the same.  I like technology--without it I wouldn't have contact with some people who are very important to me.  But a video-conference will never beat the face-to-face dynamic that we've always had, just as, for me, an e-book reader will never really beat the texture and smell of paper and the comforting feeling of a book in my hand.

In so many ways, I'm a lot like Star Trek character Jean-Luke Picard; I like my Earl Grey tea, hot, and I like a real book in my hands when I want to curl up and read.  If technology advanced so far that I could only have these things if I replicated them, I'd always be replicating them.  Now, how in the world am I going to replicate the presence of my friend at our crit group meetings?

No doubt, the Huz's phone would just answer, "Droid!"

Reviewing Others

I've decided to include some book reviews here on this blog, among the other writing-related posts.  It seems like a good idea to post reviews of fiction I've read, but it might also be helpful to new writers if I post reviews of books on the craft of writing as well.  I've read many of them, and some helped me quite a bit in developing my craft and learning the ropes.  Perhaps once a week to start, and we'll see how it goes.

She's So Excited

A writer's dog's life: thrilling, isn't it? All that action and adventure....

Word of Mouth

It's amazing how much difference book reviews--or the lack thereof--can make to the success of any given book. The more reviews are out there, the more likely people are to buy, especially if the reviews are positive. I know that's certainly the case with me. When I'm shopping on Amazon, or even if I'm planning to go to a brick-and-mortar store and buy, I always read a good portion of the Amazon reviews of a book first, to see what the general consensus was. Sometimes the things people say they hate about a book are the very things that will make me buy it, and sometimes what people dislike about a book are also the things I know that I'd also like to avoid. It depends on what the issues are. But without the reviews, I would never know until after I'd spent money.

Careers can be made or broken upon word-of-mouth alone. Many people like to go with the flow. They like to trust one another's opinions. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. In the case of building success for a book or other product, it's essential. Everyone's experience of using a product is subjective, but if the general consensus about that product is positive, then people tend to go into their own experience expecting something positive. If all the reviews about that very same product had been negative instead of positive, then the person reading the review would have been expecting a very different outcome. They might not have bought the book at all, or they would have read it but been prepared to dislike it.

The interesting thing about this is that it's all about perception, and perception is often driven by consensus. What does that say about us as people? That we're all more dependent on and more connected to one another than we realize, perhaps.

Word-of-mouth (or word-of-speaker, in the following case) has extended to our machines and technology as well. Someone recently commented that whoever came up with the default text message sound for the new Droid phone had a stroke of genius in marketing. The phone exclaims its own name when it receives a text. "Droid!" has already become the new catchphrase in our family. You can't not know about it, and the way it sounds is also distinctive enough to stick in the mind. Consensus seems to be that it's cool. And so it spreads....

Always Leave 'Em Crying?

Okay, I have to say this. I hated, hated the last episode of Medium. I would have been fine with it being the last show in the series if it had ended on a different note. Their version of upbeat and my version of upbeat obviously differ. I was hoping for the characters to have a happy life together as well as a happy afterlife together.

I wanted to see Alison solve one last big case and make a big difference in someone's life. I wanted to see her and Joe grow old together, the typical version of "and they lived happily ever after." The key words here being "they lived." I did not want to see Joe die and leave her there to finish her lifetime alone...and I definitely did not want to watch her in the nursing home, just sitting there basically waiting to die. And even if they insisted on having Joe die--what's up with her having no contact with him for the duration of her lifetime? She could see/hear spirits, so why would he have had to stay away? Why couldn't he have kept talking to her when she needed to hear from him? Why would she have to die old and alone and then be surprised that he waited for her on the other side? It all just felt like such a letdown.

I really prefer Walt Disney's motto: Always leave 'em laughing. This last episode of what was otherwise a phenomenal series has left me feeling extremely disappointed in the writers and the network.  I will remember this episode for a long time--and not in a good way.

Thinking of You

My heart and thoughts go out to everyone in Queensland, Australia, and the other areas beginning to face flooding as well.

Newest Review

Here's a brand new review, from a blog called Tales to Tide You Over.

Every one of the summaries people have posted about my story have been interesting for me to see; I'm always curious about what message, if any, people took from what I wrote. This latest blogger has absolutely hit the nail on the head with her understanding of what I was trying to say with "The Truth One Sees."

Identity

"To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, is to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." --E.E. Cummings

I find that I tend to love the authors best who, in whatever genre or style they write, put their truth on the page and pour their hearts into it. Those tend to be the books I find myself coming back to and reading again and again. It's worth noting that most if not all popular trends were started by someone who took a chance, went out on a limb and dared to be an individual. There's a beauty and an irony in that.

SF Crowsnest Review

Here's a very detailed and well-thought-out review from SF Crowsnest; thanks to Doug Smith for sending us the link.

Doing a little happy dance here....