science fiction author
I totally forgot to update my NaNo status… I did it! I won! I wrote 50,450 words in 29 days (and then about 125 more on the 30th) and then have taken a bit of a break since then. My novel is up to about 70k words now, and I figure I have at least 30-40k left to get the first draft complete. I was ahead of schedule for the first week, but November was…
We return again to James Holden and his crew, this time exploring a world out beyond the ring. I’ve been super busy at work and so this one took me more than 2 months to read, but it was as enjoyable as the rest. Maybe I am getting used to the characters or the way this author plots, but there were a few places (that I won’t spoil) where I knew what the solution was…
I just decided tonight that I will be doing NaNo this year. I spent 3-4 months last year plotting and prepping and doing the snowflake method and then I stalled out and wrote short fiction. But I really need to do this for myself, so I am committing to it publicly. I will spend October reviewing my notes and outlines, reordering chapters, and getting ready to write. Nov 1… here I come!
A Black woman moves into her new home with her husband on her birthday. While unpacking, she gets nauseous, and finds herself transported back to Maryland in the early 1800s where a child is drowning. Her great-great-great grandfather points a gun at her. Her terror sends her back to her shocked husband. This novel is fantasy, and it explores dark themes. And sadly, it is just as relevant today as it was when it was…
I realized that I haven’t done an update in a long time. I’ve been posting the books I read and I’m trying to include details about what I’m learning along they way, but what about me? Starting in about December of 2020 I recommitted myself to writing. I joined a biweekly writing group, I meet approximately weekly with an accountability buddy, and I’ve been doing a lot of writing. So far in the last 8…
This is book 3 in the Expanse series and it continues to follow James Holden and his crew as they travel around the solar system. There isn’t a lot I feel I can say about this book that you won’t find reading a review on Amazon, and I don’t want to give any spoilers. This series continues to be good quality hard SF and I really have enjoyed reading it. The authors are careful to…
I’ve heard a lot about this book. It was highly recommended and for me this book checked all the boxes. A new crew member joins a starship to take over record keeping but she has a complicated and secret past. The captain is a good man, trying to keep everyone happy with a firm but gentle hand, and yet he too has a secret… his girlfriend must be kept secret because the xenophobic race she…
I became aware of Dotson’s writing on social media (twitter, specifically), mostly because Gareth Powell regularly lifts her up. I love space opera and so I decided to look into this author. In many ways, her life story sounds a lot like mine. We both created worlds as children and young adults, wrote stories and fleshed out our characters, but are not full time fiction writers. The difference, of course, is that she has followed…
Shards of Earth is a space opera that takes place in a future where the Earth has been destroyed. This is not a spoiler, as it is in the prologue. The Architects have come, giant moon sized entities who do not respond to our communication attempts, and they destroy settled worlds while leaving empty worlds alone. There is a rich cast of characters including heroes from that war, merchants, bureaucrats, religious cult leaders, several alien…
I really enjoyed the first installment of the Expanse series so I was looking forward to this one and I was not disappointed. The book follows the same set of main characters from Leviathan Wakes, Holden, Amos, Naomi and Alex, and introduces/focuses on some additional characters, such as Bobbie, a Martian marine, Prax, a botanist on Ganymede, and Chrisjen Avasarala, a high ranking member of the UN. The switching between the four PoV characters (Holden,…
