Book Review: All The Birds in the Sky

The end of the world is near in this off-beat urban fantasy by Charlie Jane Anders. Patricia and Laurence are awkward friends with special gifts that lead them into playing a major role in the Earth’s final hours. All the Birds in the Sky is a story of fate helped along by a little magic and technology. 

My Writing Essentials

The writing process can be lonely, introspective and at times down-right strange. We all have our quirks, those weird little tricks that help us scoop words from our heads and dump them on the page with the hope they will resemble something near readable material. If you can’t write properly without the right music or a special pen or being in a specific place, yeah I’m talking about you. About us. Outside of pen preference, here are my special writing essentials I just can’t live without.

Re-evaluating Your Protagonist: Overshadowed by Supporting Characters

Creating a supporting character is like baking. The measurements have to be perfect. You need just the right amount of unique personality coupled with plot relevance. Being off by just a teaspoon can leave you with a character too dynamic or too weak to perform their duties correctly. I added just a touch too much yeast to one of the supporting characters in my novel. Her original purpose was to lay the foundation for my protagonist’s flaw of being too meek. I created her with a loud and over-the-top personality on purpose but somewhere in the writing process, this intriguing character began to overshadow the lead.

Double Barrel Dean Koontz Review

 

 

After Odd Thomas died, I didn’t think I would ever recover enough to read another Dean Koontz novel. I know Koontz did what he had to do and fans of the Odd Thomas series saw it coming from the moment he took that bell in Magic Beach but dammit if it didn’t sting like lemonade in a papercut when it finally happened.