TWO SISTERS, VETERANS of World War II and still eager for “excitements” in their late nineties, find more thrills than they had bargained for on a trip to Paris. Charming adventure for fans of the Thursday Murder Club and Mrs. Pargeter. B PLUS
HORRORS BOTH HUMAN AND SUPERNATURAL roll out with a relentless, breathtaking pace in this final installment of the Indian Lake Trilogy. As ever, Stephen Graham Jones’s deft characterization and vivid sense of place drive the chill deep. B PLUS
AN ASPIRING THIEF OF MAGICAL jewels falls into a series of predicaments that leave her responsible for stopping a murder before it happens. Charming fantasy mystery with plenty of wit and action. B PLUS
THE CONQUISTADORES’ ARRIVAL, REIMAGINED in a playfully serious tale that darts as kaleidoscopically as a hummingbird between culture and culture and between the empires of past and present. Powerfully visual, sardonically witty. SOLID A
SUMMONING THE DEAD was only the first mistake Alex made—things got a lot worse after that. Sharp, evocative horror novel has a powerful sense of place and of the terrors of suffocating slowly in dead-end towns. B PLUS
A PERSONAL REINVENTION REVISITED with added layers of distance; French writer Édouard Louis retells the story of transforming himself from a poor village boy to an elegant Parisian autobiographical novelist. Thought-provoking yet a bit artificial. B PLUS
It is my pleasure to announce the upcoming release of my new #scifi#novel : "Echoes of the Metal Mountain". It will be available on April 30th both in French and English.
Friday #SelfPromo!
If you're looking for something new to #read this weekend, might I humbly suggest my debut #novel Far North: Running? The first book in a planned four book series. It features a tortured soul and a young naive girl, the mystery of a frozen land, and mysterious wealthy new neighbors that move into town.
You can find it on itch.io in PDF and EPUB format: https://byrdbrnz.itch.io/far-north-running #writing#books#bookstodon
A DAZZLING PUNK-ROCK NARNIA blends magic and the everyday into a gritty, sweet, terrifying, and touching story about how life is built on love and anger and dreams. A MINUS
#WritersCoffeeClub April 8
Do you think of your books as having a particular length? <-- catching up.
The only time I consider the length of my books is after they're written. Then, I check to see what qualifies as a #novel or #novella.
Since jumping into the #webnovel arena, one platform has demanded chapters be no greater than 15k characters—this is because of the fiction-on-phone readership's alleged 'short attention span'. rolls eyes
AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF EARTH and most of its colonies, a post-human crew and its sentient space fleet traverse the universe in search of other life. Fascinating interstellar adventure blends action and complexity. B PLUS
WITNESS PROTECTION IN A RETIREMENT community isn’t most 31-year-olds’ idea of fun, and with a murder on the grounds and $2 million missing from community accounts, it’s not very protected. Fun Florida cozy has lots of pizzazz. B PLUS
INTENSE, VIVID, DREAMLIKE novel captures how a family shatters under the burdens of addiction, infidelity, and growing alienation. Timelines shift and collapse in ways that mirror the subjective experiences of heartbreak and grief. B PLUS
A WOMAN’S INTENSE OBSESSION with an older artist and her teenage daughter flowers disturbingly on a summer trip to Greece in this elegant yet creepy Swedish novel. B PLUS
Today in Labor History April 2, 1840: Émile Zola, French novelist, playwright, journalist was born. He was also a liberal activist, playing a significant role in the political liberalization of France, and in the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer falsely convicted and imprisoned on trumped up, antisemitic charges of espionage. He was also a significant influence on mid-20th century journalist-authors, like Thom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion. Wolfe said that his goal in writing fiction was to document contemporary society in the tradition of Steinbeck, Dickens, and Zola.
Zola wrote dozens of novels, but his most famous, Germinal, about a violently repressed coalminers’ strike, is one of the greatest books ever written about working class rebellion. It had a huge influence on future radicals, especially anarchists. Some anarchists named their children Germinal. Rudolf Rocker had a Yiddish-language anarchist journal in London called Germinal, in the 1910s. There were also anarchist papers called Germinal in Mexico and Brazil in the 1910s.
This week I decided to change it up and checked out a small #indie#visual#novel called "To Whom the Bouquet Falls" by #NaNoRenO2024 . A surprisingly delightful story about #magic, #romance and star crossed lovers. Join me as we take a look at the first part of this #story and see how the adventure begins to unfold!
Today in Labor History April 1, 1929: Textile workers struck at the Loray Mill, in Gastonia, N.C. Textile mills started moving from New England, to the South, in the 1890s, to avoid the unions. This escalated after the 1909 Shirtwaist strike (which preceded the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire), the IWW-led Lawrence (1912) and (1913) Patterson strikes, which were led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood and Carlo Tresca. The Gastonia strike was violent and bloody. Dozens of strikers were imprisoned. A pregnant white woman, Ella Mae Wiggins, wrote and performed songs during the strike. She also lived with and organized African American workers, one of the worst crimes a poor white woman could commit in the South. The strike ended soon after goons murdered her. Woody Guthrie called Wiggins the pioneer of the protest ballad and one of the great folk song writers.
Wiley Cash wrote a wonderful novel about Ella Mae Wiggins and the Gastonia strike, “The Last Ballad.” Jess Walter wrote a really great novel about the Spokane free speech fight, featuring Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, called “The Cold Millions.” Other novels about the Gastonia strike include Sherwood Anderson’s, “Beyond Desire,” and Mary Heaton Vorse’s, “Strike!”
Today in Labor History March 29, 1935: French illegalist anarchist Clément Duval died. He was a major influence on other illegalist anarchists of the era, including members of the Bonnot Gang. In 1886, Duval robbed the mansion of a Parisian socialite. He was condemned to death, but his sentence was later commuted to hard labor on Devil's Island, French Guiana, setting for the novel Papillon. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon." In a letter printed in the November 1886 issue of the anarchist paper Le Révolté, Duval famously declared: "Theft is but restitution carried out by an individual to his own benefit, being conscious of another's undue monopolization of collectively produced wealth."
Today in Labor History March 29, 1797: William Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft. Godwin was an English journalist, philosopher and novelist. And one of the first modern proponents of anarchism. His most famous books are “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice” and “Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams,” a mystery novel that attacks aristocratic privilege. Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, and is regarded by many as one of the founding feminist philosophers. Her most famous book was “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792). She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
THE GREAT MIAMI NOVEL may well be this devastating blend of satire, magical realism, and local history—the story of a wannabe gangster and the imprisoned orca that fascinates him. Startling, distinctive, surreal. A MINUS