Mystery DNF: ‘The Neon Rain’ by James Lee Burke

Thank goodness, was my first thought, when this came up as the monthly choice for my reading group. A detective novel – now that’s something I’ll enjoy. Boy, was I wrong. This is a male fantasy book: a cop who swans around talking big to all sorts of lowlifes, and then gets captured/beaten up/tortured many times, which he miraculously survives. It’s full of blokes who act tough and beat each other up (both cops and villains), women who are either murder victims or whores, villains who are moustache-twirling caricatures, a main character who survives impossible levels of violence and survives/escapes through sheer dumb luck… There are some good points. The setting of New Orleans is beautifully evoked with a multitude of small details, great use of dialect and an atmosphere so thick you can feel the sweat dripping down your back. You could argue that it’s a tad overdone, but, […]

Posted March 12, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

The great self-published blog-off

Following some discussion about the difficulties of promotion for self-published authors, Mark Lawrence, author of the Broken Empire series, came up with a great idea: get some established fantasy bloggers lined up, and throw self-published books at them, 25 apiece, with a six month window to work through their ‘slush pile’ and find just one book to promote. The chosen books would then be looked at by all the bloggers and rated, to produce an overall winner. Mark threw the idea out into the blogosphere, chose 10 bloggers from the many who volunteered, accepted submissions from self-published authors, randomly assigned each to a blogger and sat back to watch the fun. Now, I’m not big on competitions, and writing competitions, in particular, seem to be more subjective than most. However, the opportunity to have my book at least looked at by a blogger who wouldn’t normally even consider a self-published […]

Posted March 11, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing, The Plains of Kallanash / 2 Comments

Urban Fantasy Review: ‘Twiceborn’ by Marina Finlayson

I almost missed out on this one. I started reading, loved the opening, really got into it, things were just rolling along merrily when… werewolf. Now, werewolves are part of the unholy trinity, along with vampires and zombies, that I never read if I can possibly avoid it. So… oh dear. But then I discovered that the book has dragons in it… DRAGONS! Yes! Dragons make everything better. So I started again, and boy, am I glad I did. Because this book was just so much fun (yes, even the werewolves). Here’s the premise: Kate is a twenty-something Sydneysider, recovering (not very well) from a messy divorce and the death of her young son. To keep herself busy, she undertakes occasional courier jobs for friend Ben, and if the jobs are a little suspect, and involve disguises and evading strange people tailing her, she’s too sunk in gloom to worry […]

Posted March 10, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 2 Comments

The work-in-progress blog tour: The Mines of Asharim

Yes, folks, it’s another of those fun blog tour thingies. The rules: link back to the previous blog post, then describe your current work in progress, with the openings of the first three chapters, and finally tag another author blog to carry things onwards. So, just another excuse to talk about writing… You can blame Marina Finlayson for this one. She’s the author of Twiceborn, an urban fantasy featuring both werewolves and dragons (yay for dragons!). It’s also cool that it’s set in Sydney, which makes a refreshing change from London or various US cities. You can read her blog post here. My current work-in-progress is called The Mines of Asharim. It features a young woman escaping from traumatic events, trying to find a refuge. What she finds instead is far more powerful, and sets her on a path to restoring her people’s fortunes. It’s set in another part of […]

Posted March 9, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in The Magic Mines of Asharim, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Five Star Archives: ‘Ready Player One’ by Ernest Cline

I read this back in November 2011. I’d expected the author to have a whole string of other books out by now, but no. The follow-up, Armada, is due out this year. That’s a long wait between books. I wonder what he’s been doing in the meantime? Enjoying himself with the royalties, I hope. Anyway, I still think this is a great book. Flawed, but great fun. PS I’ve only just noticed the tiny pixelly person on the cover. 🙂 I loved every single word of this book. I actually read most of it with a silly grin on my face, even the seemingly boring info-dump bits that started off ‘X was born in…’ – it was just pure pleasure, especially the parts set in the OASIS (the avatar-populated artificial universe where most of the action takes place). I’m not even much of a geeky technophile – OK, I love […]

Posted March 5, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Archive, Review / 3 Comments

‘The Mages of Bennamore’: cover reveal

I love the covers that Glendon Haddix (of Streetlight Graphics) has been creating for me. They really jump out at you, whether on the cover of the paperback, or as a thumbnail on Amazon. I know from the many compliments I’ve received that lots of others like them too. So I’m thrilled to show you the latest in the sequence, and it may be his best yet. Here at last is the cover for The Mages of Bennamore, which will be released in May: You can see the hi-res version of it here. The war between Bennamore and the coastal region was over almost before it began. Now the victors are bringing their spellcraft to the Port Holdings, unaware that the coastal folk have their own less conspicuous magical ability. But the uniquely powerful mage who negotiated the alliance is dead, and the coastal folk are restless, and suspicious of […]

Posted March 1, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in The Mages of Bennamore / 3 Comments

Fantasy Review: ‘Forging Divinity’ by Andrew Rowe

Sometimes it seems as if every possible approach to fantasy has already been done a thousand times. So it’s lovely to find a new author capable of putting an original slant on the genre, whilst also having a lot of fun. In some ways this is a conventional story – young man with powers and a special sword, a monarchy under threat, active gods and goddesses – but it constantly took me by surprise, and combined some glorious punch-the-air moments with laugh-out-loud humour. Even the opening, which seems to be heading in one direction, veers straight off in a different one almost immediately. I love a book which surprises me, so this was a very good start. Here’s the premise: a young man wanders into town carrying a particularly striking sword, a religious artifact. He immediately becomes the focus for various factions who want to protect him or relieve him […]

Posted February 28, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Brave or crazy? Author Holly Hook sets herself an unusual challenge

Holly Hook is the author of ‘Twisted’, a story where a girl swept up in a tornado emerges… somewhat different. But it hasn’t been selling as well as she’d hoped. So, to bounce up a few extra sales, she’s set up a sales challenge: if the book reaches 2,000 sales, she’ll let a live tarantula crawl over her face. And if it reaches 10,000, she’ll emulate the heroine of her book, and go twister-chasing. Crazy or what? Actually, the tarantula would worry me more than the twister, but that’s just me. If you want to help Holly on her way, you can buy the book at Amazon and other major eretailers. Or you can follow along with the challenge at Holly’s blog. I wish her every success. I think…

Posted February 24, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Uncategorized / 3 Comments

Paranormal Fantasy Review: ‘Song of the Sea’ by Jade Varden

This book is way outside my usual sphere – YA, not-quite-human creatures, some romantic difficulties – but the opening is charming, and I ended up enjoying it a lot. Here’s the premise: Brenna is a high school student with a best friend, an almost-boyfriend, a fisherman father and a mother who likes to stand looking wistfully out to sea for hours on end. When Brenna discovers something unusual in the attic… at this point, I knew exactly what was going to happen. And when it does, and Brenna decides to head for the high seas alone in a small boat, frankly I wanted to sit her down and tell her just what a stupid thing she’s doing. But – teenager. There’s no reasoning with them, so I can accept this as part of her character. Out on the oceans, Brenna runs into the inevitable difficulties, plus a rather nice young […]

Posted February 18, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Beta readers wanted!

So here I am again, asking for your help. The Mages of Bennamore is now as revised as I can make it without more pairs of eyes on it. I have a couple of beta readers already, but I’d love some more. If you’d like to help, all you have to do is read the book and let me know what you thought worked and what didn’t work. It’s about 150,000 words (approximately 380 pages), and I can supply it is mobi, epub or pdf format. If you’d like to beta read it, you can email me. Here’s the detail: The war between Bennamore and the coastal region was over almost before it began. Now the victors are bringing their spellcraft to the Port Holdings, unaware that the coastal folk have their own less conspicuous magical ability. But the uniquely powerful mage who negotiated the alliance is dead, and the […]

Posted February 18, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Uncategorized / 0 Comments