December Writing Update

Some old business first. 

Life - yes, that "life" - has reared its unwelcomed head, and together with the holidays, has resulted in my wife not yet getting around to reading the manuscript of The Idle House Ghost and Nine Again. This is not a major problem, since it being the busiest time of the year for many people anyways, I likely would not have plagued my beta readers with it until after the first of the year, in any event. And though it will not go out until after the first of the year it's target publication date in February has not changed. Much. I won't set an actual date until she had completed her read through.

As for writing fiction...

I have not been actually been doing much of that since my last report, for several reasons. First, of course "life" again had me doing and thinking of other things. Early on I did spend time early thinking about new angles and making revisions to reflect those thoughts for the first part of that Lorrian novel I had started, before setting it aside last spring to write The Founders' Tribunal, The Ilse House Ghost and Nine Again. However, I have to admit that it still fails to excite my interest. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I haven't found that something to make it sparkle. And if it fails to excite my interest, I have good reason to believe it will fail to excite the interest of most of my readers as well. Especially since most of my long time readers who are still with me, found my books while looking for science fiction, and that's not what I'm writing these days. While I won't say never, unless I can find someway, and some character, to spark my interest in the story, I may well leave this one in "the trunk." 

But if not that, what?

Looking ahead I see: {Blank}

I have no idea for a new novel.

What I do have is a gnawing sense that I need to write one more Red Wine story. A novella will do. A novella would be ideal. I rather like novellas these days. 

The premise of these stories is that they are prequels to the Red Wine Agency thriller novels of intrigue written by the fictional character, Tarashay Clare. in my story Chateau Clare. Which is to say, a fictional character of a fictional character. Since I don't think writing true thrillers is in my wheelhouse, I wrote these lighter stories with more modest stakes and set them prior to those novels, recounting the time when he is being  slowly drawn into the bare knuckle world of Great House intrigues. Given that premise, I feel I need to write one more story that would fully draw Red Hu into the Great Game as the mysterious Red Wine of the Red Wine Agency. And given the feeling that just one more story would wrap this series up, that is what I am hoping to write.

If I can come up with the story. Always a big if.

I am, however, happy to report that ideas are coming right and left, though I haven't a clear idea of the story yet. I have a premise and am running variations of some early scenes in my head during idle times which change daily as a new idea appears in the middle of the night. All these ideas have to be rustled together into a story. Given that task, I doubt that I'll be ready to pull all the loose ends together into a story that can be put into words on a screen much before the release of The Isle House Ghost and Nine Again. 

Not, mind you, that there is any urgency to get this story out. In my one novel a year project, this story would either be my 2028c project or my 2029a project. Either way I care to look upon it, I am far ahead of the pace I set for myself. And given the inexplicable burst of creativity that has seen the rapid writing of three novels and three shorter works in the last two plus years, I don't feel any urgency to get something out on any sort of schedule. That said, by nature, I hate putting things off, so if I am able to put together a story, it will out sometime in the late spring or early summer of 2026. It is, however, still very much a bird in the bush. We'll just have to see if I can get it in hand. Stay tuned.

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 162)

 

In this episode, I found a novel by the author of some non-fictional books that had an important affect on me. During my sophomore year in college, the stacks of the university library were opened up for all. Prior to that, you had to use the card catalog to select a book, and then submit a request for it and wait for someone to collect it from the stacks. Now, I could, and often did roam the stacks - six or seven floors of books. One of the subjects I searched out was had to do with naval matters, and having an interest in tea, I found a book about the tea clippers and the races they ran from China to London to bring the first tea of the season to London. A very romantic trade. I used the idea for one of my first (unpublished) stories, made a game of it, and tracked down more books on tea clippers. That first book was The China Clippers by Basil Lubbock. I have my own copy these days and a number of other books he wrote on that trade, the opium trade and others. Plus, he also wrote several novels. I have one in paper, and found this next one at Gutenberg.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Jack Derringer, A Tale of Deep Water by Basil Lubbock  DNF 41%

Alas, this effort was just too authentic for me. Lubbock set out to create an authentic story of life on a Yankee "hell-ship" on a voyage around the Cape Horn from Frisco to New York with a motley crew, most of whom had been shanghaied to serve aboard it, as this ship had a bad reputation with a ruthless captained and brutal mates. We follow the fortunes of Bucking Broncho, a cowboy who wakes up aboard ship after a night of drinking. He finds an old acquaintance, Jack Derringer, aboard, who is an experienced sailor and who takes him under his wing. Jack is an Englishman, with some education, who has taken to roving the world looking for adventure. The rest of the crew is made up of a variety of nationalities, and skill levels, all driven by those brutal mates who curse, beat, and kick men to make them work.

Lubbock himself was something very much like Jack Derringer, in that he was well educated, but had the itch for adventure. Giving university a miss, He sailed to America and the the Klondike gold rush of 1898. After that he signed on to a British sailing ship, and used that experience to write his first book, Around the Horn Before the Mast. After serving in the Boer War, he signed on for another sea voyage. In short, he knew of what he was writing about.

The problem with this book is, as I said above, it is too authentic, especially in the dialog of the motely variety of crew on board. The cowboy character talks like a cowboy from a very old western - dialed up to 11. And then you have all sorts of other nationalities, each using their own jargon. I simply found it too hard to follow what was actually being said. Plus, Lubbock did not bother to explain what these fellows where doing while working the ship. And though I have read a fair number of books and novels set in the age of sail, and so I have a general idea of what was going on in these scenes, the scenes themselves went on far too long for my taste, as usual. All in all, the story failed to engage me and so I decided to reluctantly call it a day for this novel.

Basil Lubbock is pictured on the cover of the edition I found to illustrate this book.

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 161)

 

As it happened, I had just downloaded this book from the library when the previous book became available. I decided to read that one first. But now, having decided that 500+ page contemporary murder mysteries are likely not my thing, I turned to this book, which, I had good reason to think, might be my thing.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

Arabella by Georgette Heyer  A-

As I mentioned in another review, Heyer's romances vary in tone. Some are more serious, well as serious as romances can be, while others are comedies. Arabella falls on the comedy end of that spectrum. It proved to be a very enjoyable antidote to that mystery story with all its unpleasant characters, "real" and  fictional.

In this story Arabella is the oldest daughter of a kindly clergyman. She has seven siblings that the clergyman must provide for on modest means. Her mother married this second son of the gentry, and is very happy, but she knows it will be hard to marry off her four daughters, and so arranges to send her oldest, Arabella, down to an old friend of hers in London, who married well and is now a rich widow in the hope of finding a suitable i.e. rich, husband for Arabella. Her friend is delighted to introduce Arabella into London society and goes about it as if she were her own daughter. 

However, along the week-long journey from the north, Arabella and her traveling companion's carriage breaks down and it being winter, they call on a local house for shelter while they wait on a replacement carriage to be sent out from town. This house happens to be he hunting lodge of a Mr Beaumaris, a youngish, very wealthy, and important figure in London society. They are welcomed, but she overhears Beaumaris telling his friend that he fears she is just another woman hoping to land him, and his money, as so many other women have tried. This makes Arabella angry, and she when their together again, she tells him that she has her own wealth and has no interest in him.

Well, word reaches London that she is a wealthy heiress, trapping her in her lie, and causing her to be besieged by scores of young men in need of a wealthy heiress to marry. And, of course, she meets Beaumaris in London, and his attendance to her ensures her success in London society. Can she escape her lie?

I found this a very enjoyable story. Heyer's writing is always witty and  entertaining, which I value highly.  Arabella is an engaging protagonist, her father's daughter, ready to stand up against anyone when she sees injustice or cruelty, be it taking charge of a battered orphan child who was being forced to crawl up chimneys to clean them by his master, or saving a little dog being beaten youths. My few cons were that there is a fair amount of "telling" as we are introduced to London society and all its ins and out. Plus, there is a typical Heyer sub-plot involving her brother in town and getting into deep financial trouble living wide and foolish. Plus gambling, i.e. the evils of gambling, and losing at it, are often featured in Heyer's Regency London stories.

I haven't exhausted as Georgette Heyer's catalog yet, so more of her stories will be on the way. And if you've read my last mid-week post, you'll know just how many more.

Thank You, Tristan

I owe a big thanks to Tristan, a booktuber who focuses on classic literature, for what turned out to be a stellar reading year. While not all of his suggestions that I have tired have turned out to be winners, he did motivate me to try some classics, and one author it particular that led to a my good reading year.

I've been trying to expand my reading horizons for the last couple of years, and finding his channel inspired me to search further. While he covers the classics, he does not stop at "The Classics" but talks about all sorts of books. For example he listed 50 books of suspense, two of which I had read, The Riddle of the Sands and The 39 Steps. From his list, I chose to give The Eye of the Needle a try, which, sadly, did not work out for me. I also tried Anna Karenina, which also did not appeal to me. I did, however, read Under the Greenwood Tree, Kim, and My Brilliant Career at his suggestion and enjoyed them.

I also gave Jane Austen a try, reading Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, and trying, but abandoning, Emma, and Pride and Prejudice before deciding that Jane wasn't for me. However, there was an unexpected happy side effect in trying Jane Austen. When my daughter heard that I was reading Jane, she suggested that I give Beth Brower's The Unsellected Journals of Emma M Lion a read, and as readers of this blog know very well, I loved those books. They all earned an "A" grade from me. Indeed, I've read them twice this year. They are one of the two most delightful discoveries of my reading year. 

Which brings us to the second discovery of my reading year, also thanks to Tristan and his lists 50 books, this time it was historical novels. One of the authors he highlighted in historical fiction was Georgette Heyer. And since the library has several pages of ebooks by her, I was quickly able to pick up several of her books, Black Sheep, which earned a B+ rating from me, followed by The Toll-Gate. I enjoyed them enough that since those two, I've gone on to read 17 more Heyer books this year, five of which earned an "A" grade, and nine a "B" grade, with only four "C"s and one DNF.

Brower and Heyer are the standout authors this year, along with L M Montgomery. They stepped into the shoes of my favorite author of 2024; Ellis Peters. And, at least for the Brower and Heyer books, it was Tristan who directly or indirectly brought to my attention to them. Of course he has brought many more books to my attention over the past year, some of which I hope will lead me to more delightful discoveries in the coming months. 

So how as your reading year? What where your standout books or authors?

I will post my entire reading list for 2025 after the first of the new year. It turned out I read a lot of books in 2025, and DNFed, a lot as well. 

 

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 160)

 

Once again we have a book suggested by a YouTube video I watched. Just a random one this time, and not the book he suggested, but one by the same author. And once again, I am going outside of my usual cow path of reading; a contemporary mystery novel. The library had ebook versions of it, so I put a hold on it, and got it sooner than I expected. So how did this experiment fare?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz  DNF 61%

As with all my reviews, I'm sharing my subjective opinions with you. This is probably a good book, just not one for me. I didn't hate it. You see how far I got into it before deciding that I didn't care to keep reading it just to say I finished it. Basically, there were too many unpleasant characters and the story too long for my taste. Indeed, I didn't even connect with the first person narrator protagonist enough to care how things turned out. Plus, at almost 600 pages (!), this murder mystery story runs way too long for a mystery. Even at calling a day at 61% mark, I basically finished a reasonable mystery story.

All those quibbles aside, I will say that it is an interesting book, with an interesting premise. More about that in a minute. This is the third book in the series, so a lot had happened to our narrator in the previous two books, which is brought up, and plays a part in this story, but I don't think it was necessary to read those two previous books to enjoy this one. The missing past wasn't my problem.

The first person narrator in this story is a freelance book editor. Returning to England from a less than successful love affair, she accepts an assignment to edit a book from an troubled young author. He had two unsuccessful books published by the publishing house she had previously been a senior member of. This author is the grandson of a famous children's book author, who was, in life, a very mean and domineering woman. She kept all her children close to her at the said Marble Hall by the ties that bind, i.e. the prospect of inheriting her vast fortune. This author had a terrible childhood, and is really messed up. Nevertheless, he was hired to continue the detective series of an author who had been murdered in one of the previous books, who was another unpleasant fellow, I gather.

As we go along with the story, the editor begins to realize that just like the murdered original author of the mystery series, this new author is using people he knows as the models for his characters in the murder mystery story he is writing, and perhaps events that happened at Marble Hall as well... 

What makes this story interesting is that we, as the reader, get to read this murder mystery he is writing a he is writing it. We are introduced to the "real life" characters and then we read the first 30,000 word section of the novel that he has turned in to the editor, right along with her. At this point, the story we are reading shifts to the story he is writing, set in a mansion on the south coast of France. After finishing that installment, we switch back to the present day. The editor, being familiar with previous events, becomes concerned, as I said, that the author is using real people he knows as characters in his murder story, perhaps family members, which could cause a lot of trouble down the road for both her and the writer. So she starts looking closer into his childhood, involving the reader in a second mystery running parallel to the fictional one. We then get another 10K-15K slice of the book before returning to the real-life mystery. An interesting concept, but at the cost of words. Lots of words.

The problem with this story for me is that I really don't like stories with unpleasant characters, and the author of the mystery story is this story is that in spades. He's a jerk who had just punched his wife in the story at the place were I decided to call it quits. Plus murder mysteries are not really my cup of tea, especially when there are two or more murders in a story in order to cover up the first murder, as in the fictional story within this story. That is a trope that I absolutely hate. And to top it all off, I think I had figured out who the murder was in the fictional story as well. It seemed almost too obvious, so when the editor didn't pick up on the clue...  I guess that was just enough for me to call it quits. I didn't care any more. Unlike my wife, I don't force myself to keep reading something I have to force myself to read. Especially since I have two other books waiting for me to read.

I have another mystery by Horowitz on hold at the library, and I will give it a try when it comes in, since it is in another series, and as I said, I had no complaints about the writing; only the characters.

The Founders' Tribunal is Currently FREE on Amazon

 

I just happen to notice that Amazon has price-matched my other venues and as of 6 Dec 2025, Amazon is offering The Founders' Tribunal for FREE. Save $1.99!  Act now!

THE FOUNDERS' TRIBUNAL ON AMAZON 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 159)

 

Another adventure story from an author that was one of my favorites. in my long ago youth. How does it fare in my old age? 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Prester John by John Buchan  C

The answer to the lede question; not well. Not that there is anything really wrong with the book, for what it is. It is just not for me anymore, for a number of reasons. But before all of that, the premise.

The story opens with several kids in Scotland. While playing hooky from church they discover someone performing some sort of pagan ritual around a fire on a deserted beach at night. This someone turns out to be a visiting black clergyman. Discovered, he chases the boys, but they escape.

Fast forward ten years, and the narrator is offered the opportunity to make his fortune in South Africa as a merchant. On the trip down, he discovered the same clergyman, who, of course doesn't recognize him. And well, the rest of the story is about the fact that this clergyman, a spiritual descendent of a fabled Ethiopian emperor said to be Prester John, is the leader of a great African uprising, that, of course, must be suppressed. One desperate adventure after another ensues.

Buchan spent two years in South Africa as an aide to the British high commissioner, so he knew the setting and the people, and could described it, in great detail and in authentic terms. Unfortunately, many of those terms meant nothing to me. And then there is my usual problem of not being able to picture what is being described, so that a lot of the words describing the scenery and such was wasted on me. He also has pages and pages of rock climbing descriptions, which like battles, just confuse and bore me. He also has a lot of internal dialog, which I may've put up with in my youth, but I find tedious these days. I did a lot of skim reading in the last third of the book.

Part of the problem with this book and similar ones, is that I don't care about the fate of the English Empire. So when you have these heroes giving it their all to save it, I'm not really caring all that much. For example, in this case, if this great leader rose and led the Africans to toss out the European colonialist, I'm on their side. Laputa, the black clergyman and leader of the planned uprising is sort of an African Fu Manchu, sharing Fu Manchu's desire to overthrow European colonial rule. Time has made these fictional villains the heroes of these stories.

I will give Buchan credit; he treated the blacks with respect and sympathy for their plight. The Laputa was seen by the first person narrator of this story as a great and noble man, and the natives were not serotyped savages. 

However, in the end, though there was fast paced danger and adventure, there were also long sections towards the end that read like history lessons, and for some reason my ebook reader would freeze every time I got to a certain page within the last ten pages of the end, so I never could read, or rather, skim to the end of the story. Oh well. I don't think I missed much.

I am probably not doing this book justice. John Buchan wrote a couple of my favorite stories and writes well. However, as in the case of Robert Lewis Stevenson, it seems that these old time adventure stories are no longer my forte. 

This book is available for free on the Gutenberg Project.

Some Random Thoughts on Contests

 

These random thoughts were inspired by the current Self Published Fantasy Blog Off "SPBO" contest. Which, I should add, my books are not part of. I had entered Beneath the Lanterns, and Sailing to Redoubt in the previous two contests, but this contest is a "Campion of Champions" contest that pits the ten winners from the first ten years of the contest. And well, it struck me, at least, as; how unfair was that! I felt sorry for those authors. They all had been champions... but when this contest ends in a month, well, ten champions will have been reduced to just one.

But on to my random thoughts...

Entering art into any sort of contest or juried show is a crapshoot. All art is subjective and all judges are to one extent or another subjective when judging art. The "winner" will be the piece that best matches the subjective taste and/or assessment of any objective criteria that the judges are tasked with evaluating. One needs to understand that the results of these contests are essentially a matter of luck, i.e. since it boils down to the choice of judges, in order to avoid soul crushing disappointments. 

There are, of course, ways in which contests attempt to camouflage the subjectivity of the results, often using popularity as a gauge of excellence on the theory that being more popular suggests greater success. For pure art popularity does not confer superiority. Pure art succeeds on an individual level. However, popularity can be a truly objective way of judging art - when art is considered as a product.

And, well, art can be, and often is, considered a product. In the case of books there is one objective way of measuring its worth, and that is the profit a book generates. Unfortunately, the publishing industry and most authors, are very closed mouth about how much money a book earns, which would be a truly objective way of determining what are the "best books," at least for the publisher and author. Contests that use popularity assume that the books that generate the most popularity reflect commercial success. So as long as everyone understands that the criteria of success is commercial appeal rather than artistic excellence, the results are authentic.

There are also in the book industry a number of contests that use some form of jury system to judge a book by its artistic worth. However, as I said above, the results will reflect the tastes of the judges, informed by the expectation of the genre and general readership. But these results represent a non-representational sample of readers, and as such, can be dismissed under the category of not ever being able to please everyone.

But even if you can come up with some sort of objective basis of judging art, what purpose does it serve? It must serve some purpose, or why bother? Officially it is "honoring" the creator for their outstanding effort. And there are no doubt artists who value that acknowledgement. But I can't help but believe that the main reason for contests is to promote sales. You can add "Winner of ___" to the cover of the book. And maybe it does. Anything is possible.

But what is not often mentioned is that there is a dark side to contests. Contests are, by their design, exceptionally efficient at producing "losers." The more people who enter their work in contest, the more losers a contest will produce. There can, by design, be only one winner. And while most contests give secondary prizes for runners up, there is still, only one winner. Every other entry has been judge inferior to the winner.

This feature of contests is obvious, but, as I said, often overlooked. Unless you're one of the losers. This effect struck me forcefully when I view the current Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest. For the last 10 years author Mark Lawrence has run a contest to promote self published fantasy books to a wider readership by running a contests that features 300  self published books submitted submitted by their authors. The books are judged by various fantasy blogs and YouTubers. My gut feeling is that the state goal of the contest haven't been very successful. I suspect that the people who read self published books don't need the encouragement, and the readers who don't, won't for reasons that publicity will do little to change their mind, if they ever notice the contest. Videos reviewing these self published books as part of the contest are often the lowest watched videos on any booktube channel. Still, I suppose any odd mention helps the cause. 

But,  as I said at the top; the current SPFO contest is a "Champion of Champion" which pits the winning books from the last ten years against each other. They were indeed, all champions in the year they were entered. Now, however they are being ranked against each other to determine which book is THE CHAMPION, the best and it doesn't matter how often any judge might say that they're all champions, at the end of the day, only one of them will be judged the best. And the other nine can only be regarded as losers, former champions.

Despite my negative attitude to contests, as I mentioned above, I have entered two of my books in the above mentioned contest and two in a similar contest for science fiction books. I did so on the grounds that it's free and easy promotion and the hope that I might hear what an experienced reviewer might say about my book after being forced, in a way, to read it.

The free and easy as promotion aspect has proven to be a bust. I never saw a sales bump for my fifteen minutes of effort. And as for the feedback, the sum total has been two reviews posted on two obscure blogs and on Goodreads for the two books, which was nice, but didn't move the needle. The other two contests resulted in nothing more than a mention when all the books were introduced, i.e. nothing. A waste of 15 minutes.

One bonus result of entering these contests was to give me a sense of anticipation and jeopardy for a while, i.e. add a little spice to life, which proved to be almost all that made entering the contest worth it.

Going forward, I won't be entering any more of my books in these contests, since I am not writing books that fit the usual mold for either genre. I have no reason to believe I even advance to the second round, but I might risk a iffy review out of the process. Plus, I don't need the publicity since my free book readers seem to find my books at a pace most self publishing authors would envy. So I might as well let some other deserving author take my spot and get their shot at glory.

So to sum it all up: little effort, little gain. However, not being naive about what the results of judged shows and contests deliver, I suffered no heartbreaks. Only disappointments...

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 158)

 

Something a very different today. I discovered a new genre.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Apothecary Diaries # 1 by Natsu Hyunga illustrations by Touko Shino

One of the booktubers I watch named the 11th volume of this series as one of her three favorite books of the month, and went on to say how much she liked the series. The premise she described sounded interesting since I like stories set in China, or something resembling China, and this story was described being that of a young girl making her way from the bottom up in a Chinese style court, with a mix of court intrigue and humor, all of which gave me Emma M Lion vibes. So I tracked it down both on Amazon and at our local library. All off which led me down something of a rabbit hole, which is the main purpose of this "review." But first a quick summery of the series.

This is a series of "light novels" featuring a young woman who was kidnapped and sold to the imperial court as a washer of clothes for the concubines of the emperor. Her father was a doctor, and she had acted as an apprentice and aide to him before she was abducted. In this first volume she inadvertently calls attention to herself with her medical knowledge. It seems that two of the concubines, having given birth to children who would become a prince and a princess, are wasting away, along with their infants. She recognized the reason why this is happening and contrives to warn them. One takes her advice, and both the mother and child recover, while the other doesn't, and the would-be prince dies, and his mother continues to waste away. This is as far as I got in the story itself.

I only read the first six chapters of this book, but I'm not going to count it as a DNF, since I was reading the sample pages on Amazon in order to get the flavor of the story. It would hardly be fair to say I DNFed it because in fact, I just stopped reading it when the sample ran out.

I was interested enough in the story to see if my local library had copies. In the online catalog they -seemingly - did have the first three volumes "on order," with a fairly short waiting list for them. I say "seemingly," because I discovered that there are two versions of this story. One is a manga and the other is the "light novel." 

What, you may ask, is a light novel? I did. So I asked Google.  Here a summery of the AI response:

A light novel is a style of Japanese novel that typically targets teenagers and young adults and is characterized by its short length, simple language and inclusion of manga-style illustrations. They are primarily markets to middle and high school students, but with a readership that extends to young adults and older readers. They are comparable to a novella, ranging from 40K to 50K words and frequently include both color and black and white illustrations in an anime or manga style.

Well, I learned something new. I further discovered that the books available at the library were the manga version of the story. I've never been a very ardent comic book reader, and have never even dipped my toes into manga or anime, and have no desire to. So if I wanted to read the light novel version of the story, I'd have to buy the books. I looked into getting the books second hand on Abe Books, my fist place to look when I consider buying a book, but the prices, including shipping were just about the same as new on Amazon. And with the ebook versions going for $8 each and not in Kindle Unlimited, they were also not an option, as anything for than $5 for a digital file is more than I am willing to pay. I'd rather pay more for a real, paper book.

However, returning to the story itself; the sample I read was certainly written at a middle school level, simple and direct, but cheerful enough. However, being a reader of writing rather than story, I found the writing rather sparse for my taste, though, as I said, its sparseness did have some charm to it. But not enough for me to pay money to read it. That said, I think that when one considers that there are currently 15 books in the series, which is to say, a story of more than half a million words, I can see that its simplicity might be very misleading, and how one might well get drawn into the story. If you could afford it.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 157)

 

Let's keep a trend going here. What trend, you ask? Since I've likely read all of the  Anne of Green Gable books I care to read, we'll move on to some other books that one might have read to one's children at bedtime, back when I was reading bedtime stories to my kids. i.e. a long time ago.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett   B

This is, of course, a very well known book, with the story adopted half a dozen times over the years in film, TV, and the stage. It concerns a 10 year old orphan, Mary, whose neglectful parents both die, as Europeans often did, in India of cholera or some such thing. She is then sent home to live with her uncle in England; in a great house on the moors of Yorkshire. Unloved Mary is a very unpleasant you child, raised by servants that she could boss around, and did. She now finds herself in a strange house of a hundred rooms, most of which are unused. Her uncle, with a bit of a twisted back, is still morning the death of his wife ten years before, so he's rarely at home, roaming the world, half mad with sadness.  He has a son, who fears he will end up crippled like his father, and much like Mary is used to getting his own way. However, in this house, Mary slowly discovers the love she was denied, as well as, a mentor in the form of a 12 year old boy, Dickon, who is one with the moors and the out of doors. And she steps up to give her cousin the love and courage to move beyond his fears and discover the wide world outside his windows.

Lots of nature, lots of gardening, lots of inspirational writing, with a touch of Gothic atmosphere, as two unloved children began to blossom with love, friendship, and a healthy helping of the bracing life of the Yorkshire moors. And did I mention, gardening? A nice uplifting story. I enjoyed it.

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett  B-

Like The Secret Garden, this is a book for younger readers, a century ago. Which is not to say I disliked it, but I could see children enjoying the riches to rags and riches again story of Sara Crewe. The story opens with Sara's father, a British Army Officer, comfortably supplied with money, bringing Sara to a London boarding school at the age of nine. Her mother had died, and he felt that India was an unhealthy place to raise a child, so he reluctantly arranged for her to say at this boarding school, lavishing her with fine things, including a pony and a maid. Sara is a very thoughtful young woman, gifted with imagination and much given to making ups stories to the delight of some of her classmates, but far from all. She is envied by some because of her privileged position as the daughter of a rich man, and is the pride of the school. But all good things must come to an end, and end they do, when her father, investing seemingly unwisely in a diamond mine, runs out of money, falls ill with fever, and dies penniless. Sara must now work for her room and board, and living in an attic room with a tame rat, she is very ill treated by all. And yet she is able to maintain her spirits and dignity by imagining herself as a princess, and only doing what a princess would do.

Once again, it's a nice story with lots of uplifting moral messages. Sara is a very nice and interesting character. A enjoyable read, if somewhat predictable. And it did, I am quite sure, improve my character. 

Robin by Frances Hodgson Burnett  DNF 16%

Now, this one is not a children's novel, but rather one about a young woman, Robin, whose mother, a widow is the mistress of a man reputed to be a rake and as such, not acceptable in polite society. Her rakish lover, however, sees that Robin is raised and educated in order that Robin can make a living, suggesting that he isn't all bad. The inciting incident of the story is when Robin as a young child, raised without love by servants, a running theme in Burnett's books to date, meets a boy in the local park and they spend a few days of playing together... until the boy's mother realizes just whose daughter Robin is, and after doing so, whisks her son away. They never forget those days, and meet again when Robin is 20 years old, when the world is on the brink of World War One. This is when the main part of the story kicks in. A promising romance set in a haunting time.

Alas, this adult novel still has all the moralizing and mush of her children-focused books. More of it, in fact.  Indeed, I found it filled so much of the characters' conversations, and musing on the phycological and moral effects of the early months of that war that the story just dragged on and on. It was very much a novel of its time. I found that I didn't care enough about the characters to wade my way through all the talk and anguish to carry on reading it.

All in all, I believe I've sampled enough of Frances Hodgson Burnett to check her box and move on.

My Writing Process

                                                                                                                

I spent last week finishing up on my current writing projects; The Isle House Ghost, a Red Wine novella, and Nine Again, another Red Wine story, but this time a short story. Nine Again is an extension of The Isle House Ghost, story, basically an afterthought, but an irresistible one. However, to have tacked it on to the main story would have destroy the symmetry of that story, and my ending, so it is its own separate thing. 

But that's not what I want to talk about here. I want to outline the steps I take to produce a story. And since I'm never at a loss for words, on a page anyway. let's begin.

Step One. Dream up a story. I usually spend three or more months just thinking about the story I want to write, getting to know it from beginning to end. Ideally. And often going over key scenes dozens of times, or more, in my head, so that when I sit down to write the story, I am telling a story that I know. Again, ideally.

Step Two. Write it. If I've done my job and know the story I want to tell from nose to tail, all I have to do is to put the scenes into words. Putting the story into words will add to and alter the original story somewhat as it goes along, but it will follow the outline of the story I dreamed up. I write it from beginning to the end. However there have been stories that I find, when I get to the middle of them, that I did a little too much handwaving over what happens in the middle, and have to stop and think about what I can come up with to fill in that gap. Sometimes I've had to put a story away for a while time, even a year, while I try to come up with stuff to fill that middle. Or in one case, just decide to make it into a novella. You don't need middles in novellas. I usually go back and start editing what I have written while I come up with things to fill out the middle of the story.

This first draft is the most important part of the story, since I do not make major changes to it in subsequent drafts, or edits, as some people call the process or revising the first draft. The first draft is the hardest part of the process because it sets the pattern, and so I need to be happy with it before going on, because I know I'll be only tinkering with it in subsequent drafts.

This step, writing the first draft, also takes about three or four months for a novel.

Step Three. Second draft. After finishing my first draft, I usually turn around and start my second draft. While experts often say that you should wait a while before starting to edit your work, I figure that the nose of my story is at least three months in the past, so that should be far enough in the past to view with an new eyes, and since revising is a lot easier than writing, the momentum of this draft will carry me all through this second draft. 

I don't make major changes. I will typically add 10% more words, as I fill out sketchy descriptions and dialogs. Most the changes involve straightening out my words; eliminating as many of my "and"s as I can, and taking all those phrases that I tacked on to the end of sentences and moving them forward to where they should be in the sentence. I seem to have heard somewhere that the German language adds a lot of phrases at the end, so this propensity to tack on phrases at the end of a sentence might be a heritage of my German ancestors. I also, of course correct all the typos I find along the way. But hardly all.

This second draft may take several weeks to complete.

Step Four. Third draft. I go over the story again, but hopefully I find less to tinker with. These days I do my third draft in Google Docs, as it has a better grammar checker, and the text looks different, which might make things I would miss going over the same text a third time, stand out more. I tried loading the document onto an ebook ereader, and then reading it, and then make changes when I found the clunkers when reading it as a book, but that proved to be too awkward. 

Ideally, after finishing my third draft, I should feel comfortable with the story as written. I know that anytime I read something of mine, I will find things I want to change, no matter how may times I've gone over it. So that at some point I have to say "Good enough." and go with it, or I would never get anything out.

Step Five. This is an optional step, but one I find I'm taking more and more; namely. a fourth draft. This happens when I don't feel completely comfortable after my third draft. The Isle House Ghost has gone through four drafts. It is an old fashioned mystery, and as I wrote it, I came to realize that I needed to change things that I had already written to be consistent, so this back and forth, even in the second and third draft left me uneasy. I did more drafts for The Girl on the Kerb, as I wasn't comfortable with my first "finished" version, and I had the time while I was querying it. 

Step Six. Online proofing. In the last several years I've introduced this step with great success. I upload my work, chapter by chapter to the free online version of Grammarly to find typos, wrong words correctly spelled, where to put commas, etc. Everything underlined with red. I don't use their premium grammar suggestions. This is just for proofreading. I then take these Grammarly-proofed pages and upload them to Scribbr's own online grammar checker, and correct all the mistakes that Grammarly missed. And decide who's comma suggestions I'll take and whose I wont. All of this is time consuming, and discouraging. They find so many mistakes. But well worth it.

Step Seven. I then print out a copy of the story and hand it to my wife to proofread and offer any comments or suggestions. Thanks to the online proofreading, her job is much easier than it used to be, with entire pages going by without needing me to fix anything.

Step Eight. When I've made all the corrections that my wife has found, I offer it to my beta readers. My beta readers mostly act as proofreaders - many of them became my beta readers by offering corrections in my published works that were far more prevalent in my early books. Some do offer suggestions as well, that I take into account.

Step Nine. Prepare epub versions. These days for Amazon, I use  their Kindle Create app on my computer to format the ebooks and audiobooks for Amazon. Otherwise, I use Draft2Digital to format my books for them and for Google.

Step Ten. I reformate my stories for paperback books using LibreOffice, the same program I write the stories in. It isn't too hard, and I'm not overly fussy. I grew up reading mass market paperbacks. I also have to paint or find painting for the cover of the books, both ebook and paper. And I do an interior page one illustration, and sometimes maps as well for the paper edition.

So that's my work flow. At present, I have turned over The Isle House Ghost and Nine Again to my wife for her proofreading. But with a release date in February 2026, there is no hurry for to get at it, as I will probably only sent it out to my beta readers after the holidays. I have a cover for The Isle House Ghost that would work for both the ebook, and the omnibus paper version of  Those two books and The Founders' Tribunal that I intend to release around the same time. But I have an idea for a separate cover for the ebook version of The Isle House Ghost that I would like to paint. We'll see.

So, with all of that, you are up to date with my writing. 

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 156)

 

Back to Prince Edward Island.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Anne of the Island by L M Montgomery  A

This volume recounts Anne's four years in college. And though, like all the books in this series, it is episodic, however, there is much more of an overarching plot to this book than in Anne of Avonlea and I enjoyed it a lot more. 

L M Montgomery spends a lot of time describing the scenery, and while I can't really picture it, I can imagine being there even so. She is also a wonderful character writer; you get to know all of the major characters in her books. Each has their own personality that stands out on the page. They are observed lovingly, but not blindly, each has their strengths and flaws, and as a result, they come across as real people. And I enjoy the subtle wit and charm of her writing as well. It is easy to see how these books have lasted and been loved for more than a century. 

On a more practical level, they offer perhaps a slightly romanticized picture of life in the countryside at the turn of the last century. You get glimpses of the small details of life, and of the hardships. And of the society of the time. The fact that there seemed to be no shortage of widows and widowers, suggests how easy it was to die of something back then. Death was a commonplace experience for the  the young, and middle aged, as well as the old, who by today's standards, weren't all that old. 

I am going have to watch the two Anne of Green Gable shows again to see how they fit the various stories together. I can tell that they rearranged events, and perhaps characters as well. I don't recall the college years in the show, but that might well be due to my poor memory. I know that the next book in the series (below) covers her year(s) as a principle at a high school. And that during that period she had something of a romance with a wealthy man with a daughter, but I don't think that will be the case here, as the show ended with Anne and Gil finally together, as did this book. We'll see. And you'll see, once I add Anne of Windy Poplars below.

Anne of Windy Poplars  (AKA Anne of Windy Willows) by L M Montgomery  A-

This volume recounts the three years Anne was the high school principle at Summerside on Prince Edward Island. It was first published 28 years after Anne of Green Gables. A significant part of the book has Anne telling her story in letters to Gil Blythe, who is at medical school training to be a doctor. As with many of the Anne books, it is an episodic novel, with character studies at the core of the story. Indeed, it is the characters, both young and old, who are often spun out of their unique conversations that are the great appeal of this story to me.

Perhaps it is for the convenience of the story, but as I mentioned above, there are certainly a lot of widows about in these stories, and tales of deaths at any age, young, middle aged and old of natural causes. Perhaps a lesson the anti-vaccine people might want to take to heart. It is also interesting that unless you lived at home, or were married, you lived in boarding houses - a room and a meal provided. Even the principle of  the high school was apparently not paid  enough to have her own flat. Though that might also reflect society of the time, where even the middle class of the day employed a maid and a cook. With wood or coal burning furnaces and hot water heaters, and wood burning stoves, it would be hard to have a full time job, and then have to come home to get everything fired up to eat and live without employing a servant to do so. Anyway, an interesting glimpse into everyday life a hundred years ago.

What was also interesting was how the 1987 TV show adopted the books subsequent to Anne of Green Gables into the sequel mini-series. What they seemed to do was to consolidate a lot of characters, giving them storylines taken from different characters in the book, as well as eliminating many characters, and consolidating the time-line. This book covered three years, and I seem to remember it was only one in the TV series. 

One example of consolidated characters; in the TV show has a wealthy man with the semi-abandoned daughter what a love interest in the TV show. This child is a student of Anne. In the book this love interest plays out as Anne's collage boyfriend in Anne of the Island. However, there is a story about an abandoned daughter in Anne of Windy Poplars but the child is only eight years old and her father only appears at the end of the book. Both versions of the child had her living with the matriarch of the Pringles. However his matriarch character was also consolidated with another ancient widow in the book who kept her 40 year old daughter waiting on her hand and foot. In any event, there are elements in the books that recall the TV series, but are still quite different as well.

 I will have to watch this again this winter. But the long and short of it is that in these last three books, you get bits of pieces of the stories in one form or another that appeared in the TV show, with some new material.  However, you also miss a whole lot of what was in the books, as one might expect going from books to a TV show. Still, I am fond of both versions of Anne. I think the TV show did a very good job of building a charming cohesive story out of the episodic nature of the material they used, without betraying the true Anne of Green Gables.

There are four more Anne books, cover her life until the age of 53. Plus some books about Avonlea, that she might make cameo appearances in. I think, however, that I will leave Anne still in her youth, and maybe read one of the Avonlea books. I have one on my ebook reader. But for now, it's time to move on, though were to, I have no idea. Stay tuned. Next week you'll know.

NOTE:

Wikipedia says that the original title was Anne of Windy Willows, but the US publisher thought it too close to Wind in the Willows, and there was some gory stuff that they wanted removed, so she did for the US version. My version, though a free Canadian ebook version used the American version.

It was also interesting how Anne is portraited on the book covers I searched for; she is often portraied  in the style of women of at the age of publication. I had a lot of covers, and so Annes, to choose from.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 155)

 

My last forelay into the War of the Roses period did not fare all that well. But never saying never, I'm back at it again with a new story set in England during that civil war. Along with that, I have also come across an unknown sequel to a very famous book. Does unknown mean "bad"? Find out below.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Black Arrow by Robert Lewis Stevenson  C 

This is indeed an old fashioned adventure story. It's young protagonist  Dick Sheldon, goes from one mostly disastrous adventure to the next from the beginning to the end of the story. Through his adventures and misadventures he does things that he comes to regret but grows up. 

I can only give this story an average, "C" grade for several reasons. First is the language. Stevenson tells the story using archaic language. Now when modern usages appear in fantasy or historical fiction they annoy me, but I found that the language Stevenson used to tell this story was just too authentic. It wasn't that I couldn't figure out what was going on, though in dialog it was sometimes very hard to follow. One of my chief joys in reading is the clever use of language, however, I found that the archaic language often needed to be deciphered. This made reading more work than pleasure.

The other factor that lowered my enjoyment of the story was that a lack of knowledge of the historical period. Knowledge of this age where alliances shifted with every triumph or disaster experienced by the two factions contending for the throne of England, and in this shifting landscape would have been helpful in knowing what exactly is going on. Not being up to speed on this period of history, I quickly lost track of who was for whom. Plus the pace of the story was pretty hectic and almost nothing turns out right until the very end. Which might not be a bad thing for many readers, but I guess I found it a little too fast paced.

To sum The Black Arrow up, I would say it was a classic adventure story, perhaps over-stuffed with adventure. And archaic language.

Catriona (AKA David Balfour) by Robert Lewis Stevenson  DNF 8%

This story starts right where RLS's Kidnapped ends. I read that story in 2023. I was looking back of my review of that book and I noted in my review that it had a very strange and abrupt ending. Indeed, I had to look up an online version to make certain that the book I was reading wasn't missing a page. Apparently it wasn't it was missing just a page, it was missing the last half of the rest of the story. Kidnapped earned only a "C" grade from me. I was still confused by the start of this story, and given my lukewarm impression of the first half of the story, and from what I read about what this story was about, I decided not to press on.

(I'll be honest; when I came across this book, for some reason, I had it in my mind that it was the sequel to Treasure Island, which is why I picked it up. If I had my wits about me, I likely wouldn't have bothered.)

Looking back over the RLS I have read, I don't think that RLS stories are exactly to my taste. At least in fiction. I liked his A Child's Garden of Verses though. I do have a very fragile 1906 copy of his Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, and An Inland Voyage that maybe I should give a try.