Year: 2009

Elephant-faced man.

I hit the ground with a thump, danced around a little, and then grinned cheerfully at nothing in particular. The elephant-faced man hit the ground a few feet behind me, but at a considerably higher velocity (due to the additional mass he carried in the center of his face). “Oho!” I cried, dancing around my

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Hello?

Been a bit quiet lately. With good reason too – if you check the “I love it when this happens” post below, you’ll see that I’m working on a book. Well, I’m now about 23,000 words into the first draft and that’s only made possible by not spending loads of time writing on here. So

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The Hunt for Red October – Tom Clancy

Okay, so I work in I.T. As a result of this, I know more than my fair share of acronyms – both three-letter and otherwise. This notwithstanding, I found this book bewildering in the extreme. Not because it reads like stereo instructions (it does) and not because of the acronyms (after all, they are spelled

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I love it when this happens.

It started out with a short, funny, story about a seance, written by a very talented bloke at my writer’s group. “I’ve never written a story about a seance,” I thought. Then I started thinking “What if…” and before I knew what had happened, I had a 2,000 word short which I was quite proud

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Exodus – Julie bertagna

I haven’t finished this, and I’m not going to. There are two compelling (for me) reasons why this is the case. Firstly, it’s written in the present tense and that irritates the hell out of me. I have no justification for this – it just does. The irritation of the tense is simply greater than

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I can’t write.

My head is full of the characters, plot and setting of the Twilight series. This is not good. I thought reading Exodus would act as an antidote, but I just can’t get into it because it’s written in the present tense and Twilight is just too close to what I was originally working on. So,

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Twilight Saga – Stephenie Meyer

I make no apologies. I really enjoyed these books. I’m also glad I decided to split my mini-reviews as well, although I should have just covered all four at once. So, we know the plot – human girl meets vampire boy, romance ensues, strife arises and is resolved. The End. As far as the plot goes,

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Enemy of God – Bernard Cornwell

My recently awakened inner teenager has been effectively slapped down by a quick and brutal application of mud, steel, mud, murder, mud, betrayal, mud, sinister priests, mud, torture and mud. Once again, Mr Cornwell’s prose lurches between exhilirating drama and tedious history lectures, but to a lesser degree than in Winter King. In other words,

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New Moon – Stephenie Meyer

Cringe. Ahem. I really really enjoyed this book 🙂 It’s pretty lightweight and can be read in two days (as I did) but I’d really recommend reading it over three. It’s the middle-third that does it. It’s so reeking with love-lorn teenage angst (put it this way – it quotes Romeo & Juliet) that if you

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