My One and Two Star Reviews

I don't get a lot of written reviews or ratings these days. Not like the old days. I think most of what I call "book people" have gone back to reading paper books. Book people are those readers who buy hardcover copies, have stacks of unread books on their shelves and on their TBR piles, and keep spreadsheets of all the books they've read and want to read. They like talking about books, writing reviews, and hanging out on Goodreads. They mostly read traditionally published books, and as I said, have largely abandoned ebooks, especially self-published ebooks. My core readers are what I call simply "readers".  They read a book, and move on to the next without bothering with all the social aspects of reading. And in my case, are used to reading for free, via the library or free ebooks on the various stores. They're my people. I'm one of them. I don't usually leave ratings on Goodreads either. So I understand. That's my story anyway, and I'm sticking with it.

Reviews are a mirror that reflect booth the reader and the book. And I think negative reviews do reveal an aspect of my story telling style. So I thought it would be interesting to share my one and two star reviews with you, as a mirror to my style that I recognize. Almost all my books have at least one one star ratings, but I'm only concerned with the readers who took the time to say why they didn't like the book. 

As I mentioned, I think these reviews generally highlight one aspect of my writing, my focus on "small" stories, i.e. stories without vast implications, and stories that are not designed to wring powerful emotions out of the reader, focusing instead on providing entertaining adventure and mystery stories with pleasant characters. Many readers, I think, want more from a story. Still, it is an approach that I'm happy to own, if only because one can't please every reader, and shouldn't try to. Luckily, one and two star reviews and ratings are few and far between.

I value all my ratings and reviews, the good and the bad. I have opinions, and I express them on this blog. Everyone is entitled to also have opinions, and to express them as well. While I hope readers enjoy my books, as I said, I realize that I'm not going to please every reader, which can't be helped. I'm sorry when a reader doesn't enjoy the story, I try to be honest in my blurbs and not oversell the story. But in any event, I always appreciate it when readers tell me, and other readers, what they think about the story.

I've not listed the name of the reviewer, and I'm not going to reply to their critiques. I'm happy just to let them speak for themselves.

The reviews:

A Summer in Amber

* Awful. This was the dullest book I have ever read. Even though it was set in the future the dialogue was so old fashioned it was unbelievable. The story line didn't go anywhere and the love story was also not of a future century and dull.

* * A pastoral regency romance. Takes place in an alternate 1900 where there's cell phones but no cars. A Ph.D. is assigned to a quaint country house to transcribe a mad scientist's papers. But more important, the tempestuous daughter of the town's leader is catching his eye. She's a good character, as is the main character's cantankerous boss. But other than that, a lot of them don't have distinguishable personalities.

The prose is influenced by Jasper Fforde's slipstream, but the science fiction elements have no bearing on what happens. Nothing moves the goalposts back. The main character always has his antagonist in the palm of his hand, so there's no tension. I liked the fantastical elements, I wished there could have been more of them. The romance is the best part, and thankfully that's the main part of the plot.

The biggest flaw is that all it does it explain what's happening. There's no chance for the reader to make his/her own interpretations on motivations or character flaws. It has that early 20th century habit of spelling out everything that's happening for the reader. Not in an amateur way -- the story sounds professional -- but it means there's no element of surprise when someone's backstory comes to the foreground or a twist results. And as a result, it's hard to get invested for what's going on.

Some Day Days

* * A lengthy report about young students in the UK. Lots of repetition. A shame. The topic is very interesting. (Translated from German)

* * * (Bonus) Boring

Passage to Jarpara

* * Mostly a repeat of l the first two books. I like the author’s writing style but most of this book was many repetitive retelling of the two previous books. Every new acquaintance was told the back story. If the reader did not learn in the early chapters about Vente sorceresses, the adventures in the previous books, and that “no one can say ‘no’ to Sella”, they will certainly know it after umpteenth retelling. Indeed, the first three-quarters of the book could have been condensed into one or two chapters. The author needs a ruthless editor. Repetition seems to be a C. Litka habit: in another series the protagonist cannot stop repeating that he is “a very cautions fellow”. Yes, we know already! Tell us something new! For this book you can skip all the way to the secret island toward the end of the book and lose nothing of import.

Keiree

* * Even though this book was a cute sentiment regarding wives that had passed away It was hard for me to not fall asleep... The beginning was good, the middle was boring and I loved the ending. 

Same reviewer on Google: cute ending but pretty boring

The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon

* Bad

The Aerie of a Pirate Prince

* Awful. I have no understanding how this book received such high ratings from others. When one characters entire vocabulary consists of the word "Caw," and the action is about as exciting as they chase a stolen cargo shipment, this was an absolute waste of time. NOT recommended 👎

Chateau Clare

* * Story is not a great read as it is slow moving and cumbersome in details that are not really necessary to the plot. Odd references to unknown times and places with occasional hints of sorcery in prior era. This would be better as a short story, with concise details, character references, conversations and information direct to the plot.

Glencrow Summer

* (same reviewer of Chateau Clare) I don't know what to say about this book. After the whole thing was done I felt nothing and I'm not sure what it was really about. It was bland and held no excitement or adventure or interest or emotions for me. The only thing it did for me was put me to sleep, which sadly happened many times. I had to keep backing up to be sure I didn't miss anything and I found I hadn't because there was nothing to really miss. I can say I've ever read anything like it. I've never read anything that when finished, left me feeling so, well, nothing.

My eBooks Are Now Available on Bookshop.org

 

Now you can support your favorite bookshop with the purchase of my ebooks on Bookshop.org. You can find them HERE.

The price for all books is $.99 each, $.30 of which goes to your favorite bookshop, if it is affiliated with Bookshop.org, and another $.10 goes into the general fund for all bookshops.

Offering ebooks is a new feature at Bookshop.org, and my books are being offered there via Draft2Ditital. While I offer all my books that are distributed by Draft2Ditial for free on all the digital stores that support free books, $.99 is the default price of my books for those stores that don't offer free books, hence the $.99 price for my books on Bookshop.org. 

$.99 is almost free. A candy bar costs $3! (I just discovered that a few weeks ago), and I believe a fancy cup of coffee can cost twice that much. So while free is an unbeatable price, $.99 is, as MAD Magazine used to say; CHEAP! So, if you want to help keep bookstores around a little longer, you can do so by buying books via Bookshop.org, and with the $.59. I'll rake in, I'll be able to afford a candy bar with every five books purchased. It's a deal!

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 171)

  

I would imagine that you are getting tired of hearing about Georgette Heyer's books. I've been reading a lot of them recently. There is a simple reason for this; she is an author who I really enjoy, and her books are readily available as ebooks from the library. 

Now, if one could just type into the library catalog "give me a book I will enjoy," and get a book that I would enjoy, I'd do that. But you can't. And while exploring books can be fun, back when I was getting all these Heyer books, I wanted reliable books to read. I had a lot of time to fill.

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.

False Colours by Georgette Heyer  A

Evelyn and Kit are identical twins, and their mother, Amabel, is a beautiful, loving, but air-headed widow. She thinks the world of her twins, and they of her. More over, the twins are so close that they know when each other is in trouble, and both would do anything to help their brother. So when Kit returns to London from his diplomatic post in Vienna, to settle a modest inheritance, with an uneasy feeling about his brother. He finds that his brother is somewhere... when he should be in London, so he is talked into taking his brother's place at a dinner party with a family that his brother is expected to marry into, since his brother seems to have forgotten all about it.

The thing is that when their coldhearted father died, he did not settle the debts his wife Amabel had acquired... Very large debts as it turned out, as she has no idea of economy. Moreover, their father did not trust Evelyn, who was the "eldest" of the twins, as he is a rather happy-go-lucky young man around town. As a result, he put the assets of the estate in a trust until Evelyn turns 30, or until the uncle who manages the trust, feels that Evelyn has settled down enough to be trusted with the estate. Evelyn feels honor bound to settle his mother's debts, but he can't do that without selling some of the assets of the estate. The only way to get his hands on the full estate to settle those debts is to convince his uncle that he has settled down by marrying a very nice and level headed young lady - a marriage of convenience for both, as his prospective bride, Cressy, is eager to get out of the household with the new young bride of her father, who also would like to see her out of the house as well.

But, as I said, for unknown reasons, Evelyn has disappeared, and though he is expected back shortly, his twin brother Kit takes his place, meeting Evelyn's prospective bride and her family. And then is forced to host her and her domineering grandmother at his country estate... And you can guess what happens. But that happens halfway through the story. The rest is how to get everything - love, marriage, debts settled - right without a scandal.

Another delightful light-hearted story, with lots of witty dialog, great characters, and just plain fun. 

Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer  C+

Fine for what it is; a swashbuckling romance/adventure. Sir Nicholas Beauvallet is one of those Elizabethan privateers. He captures a Spanish galleon at the start of the story, carrying a sickly island governor and his beautiful daughter. In order to prove that he is more than an English pirate, he promises to restore the governor and his daughter to Spain, rather than take them back to England. Of course he immediately falls in love with his Spanish captive, and by the end of the voyage, she with him. However, keeping his word, he delivers her to Spain, and then promises to come to get her and take her to England within a year. And of course, he does so.

This is the type of story with as hero that Errol Flynn would have played to the hilt. He laughs at death, icy cool in the most dangerous situations, takes the most outrageous risks, and always wins. Indeed, Heyer pens Beauvallet almost over the top in his dashing, always equal to the situation attitude. As I said, fine for what it is, but I find that adventure stories no longer appeal to me as they once did. But if you like stories of danger and derring-do this is the book for you.

The Isle House Ghost

 

Official Release Date is Thusday, 5 February 2026 I will update this page over the next week with links to the book on various ebook store as the book becomes available.

A bonus release! Two Red Wine Agency prequel stories in one release; The Idle House Ghost, a 40K word novella, and Nine Again, a 9K word short story.

Redinal Hu, in his gentleman for hire guise as Mr Redinal Wine, is proposed as a detective to a wealthy industrialist by his inquiry agency friend, Roghy VonEv. The industrialist, Mr Colmara, is being plagued by a self-styled Compliance Agent Nine who is entering into his country home to leave a series of notes urging Mr Colmara to sign a petition for changes in government policy. Which, on the surface, seems innocent enough, except that they are being delivered at night despite the fact that the house is locked up tight. Besides being greatly annoyed by the notes and break ins, Colmara fears that the visits may soon become more than merely leaving notes. These are the days when the old order is slowly dying and the new order has yet to be determined. This struggle to define the new age within the Great Houses of Lorria, has become rather cutthroat. And thus, Mr Colmara wants these break-ins stopped and the intruder brought to justice. To this end, Red finds himself a rather unwelcomed guest at Isle House, the Isle of Autumn country home of Mr Colmara charged with capturing this Agent Nine.

Red quickly discovers that who the elusive Agent Nine is may be the more critical problem. Indeed, Mr Colmara’s son suggests, jokingly, that Agent Nine is a ghost. Red doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he’s at a loss to discover just how the notes are being delivered – a classic locked room mystery to solve. Though, at the moment, there is no body in the room. Yet.

In the bonus short story, Nine Again, Red discovers that no good deed goes unpunished. A powerful and ruthless old nemesis returns to demand that Red somehow “fix” what he did to solve the Idle House Ghost mystery in this direct sequel to The Isle House Ghost. A demand he dare not refuse.

These stories are written as a prequel to a series of fictional novels of intrigue known as the Red Wine Agency books, which played a role in the novel Chateau Clare. These two, along with the Darval-Mers Dossier, The Founders’ Tribunal, and a forthcoming new story chronicle how Redinal Hu, an ex-attorney, now majordomo of one of the Great Houses of Lorria, comes to create the Red Wine Agency, a shadow agency serving the Great Houses, or their opponents, in the secret struggles to shape the future of the Lorrian Commonwealth.

You can download The Isle House Ghost from these fine shores:

Amazon ebook $2.99

Amazon audiobook $3.99

Smashwords ebook FREE 

Vivlio ebook FREE

Google ebook FREE

Google audiobook FREE

Apple ebook FREE

Apple audiobook FREE 

Fable ebook FREE

Barnes & Noble ebook FREE

Everand ebook FREE

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 170)

 

After reading Anne of Green Gables, The Hidden Garden, and The Little Princess, as well as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, what is left?

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

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott C+

I have read that Miss Alcott did not really want to write this book. Her publisher did. She favored more livelier and exciting subjects. Nevertheless, write it she did, for the money. Even so, she felt that the first 100 pages were pretty boring, despite praise from other readers. I think she was right. However, the story did get more interesting as it went along, especially in volume two and her publisher proved to have known what readers wanted, as it is the book Alcott is remembered for. 

This book turned out to be something other than what I had expected. I have never seen any adaptation of the story, and knew its premise only vaguely - a number of girls living with their mother, who might have been a widow, in the 1860's. Thus, I was surprised to find that the complete story spanned something like eight years with the young girls growing up and having families of their own, as well as traveling to Europe and New York for extended stays. I won't spoil the rest of the story for you, as a lot happens over the course of it that I couldn't begin to summarize.

Perhaps what I found most interesting was that one of the sisters, Jo, is an aspiring writer, very much, I suspect a fictional Miss Alcott. Her struggles as a writer offer insights into what writing involved in the 1860's. It seems that one of the major components of serious novels was moralizing. When Jo was selling her gaudy stories to the newspapers, she had to strip out all the moralizing, which troubled her. Miss Alcott didn't have to do that for this book, anyway. For all I know, she may have skipped moralizing for the more adult adventures and melodramas that she wrote. However, in this story she liberally laced it with a lot of wholesome wisdom and moralizing reflecting the tastes of the time in worthwhile novels. I'm not complaining, just noting the fact.

As I mentioned, the first hundred pages or so are rather dry and episodic in nature, but as the story goes on, and especially in volume two, the writing gets more lively, and the characters deeper. There is, as usual with stories of this period, a lot of "telling" by the writer. But I did finish the story, which you can take as a stamp of approval, though I must admit I did not fall in love with it, as it seems so many readers have before me. I had to choose between a B- and C+ and well, recalling all those long passages of wisdom and sentimentality, opted for the latter

My second title this week is something I came across browsing the Gutenberg Project... I forget what I was looking for, but I read a chapter and decided to give another old book a try.

In Pawn by Ellis Parker Butler  C

Almost every book fades away a few years after it is published. A few, for some reason, remain read and so become classics. But are there books just as good and timely as the classics but that, for some reason, just fade away like ordinary books? 

Today we have one of those books and one of those authors, whose works have faded away. According to his scant Wikipedia entry, Ellis Parker Butler wrote something like 30 books and over 2000 short stories and other pieces for magazines and newspapers from the turn the last century to the mid-1930's. His work was published alongside Mark Twain and Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is not his most famous story, that being "Pigs is Pigs," which tells you just how fleeting fame is.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have found, from my rather slight acquaintance with the forgotten fiction of the first half of the 20th century, that these books are often weird in weird ways. There are things about the way they are written, what is written about, and the characters, that just seem strange today in ways that are hard for me to put my finger on. But they're there. The question is; were they also strange when they were written? And does that explain why they faded away? Or is it simply a matter of time and changes in society?

We have one such strange book today.

This story opens with a junk dealer Harvey Redding and his son Lem. The junk dealer is a character; fat and lazy, indeed, the laziest man in or near Riverbank Iowa. He has let his junk business wither on the vine from a lack of enterprise. He is portrayed as a comical character, who, after reading pulp stories and the lives of saints, decides to become a saint, since he can't see himself as a pulp story hero, but thinks he could be a saint living a simple life of good deeds and fasting. Owing $200 to his sister, he "pawns" Lem to her to look after in her boarding house, with the promise of using the money he saves on feeding him to pay her back from the $25 a month he receives from a trust his late wife set up for him from her modest fortune. If all of this sounds like a comic novel, it is. So far.

Next we meet the three lady teachers, two of which live at the boarding house of Harvey's sister. Being single, as teachers were required to be back in the day in a lot of places, and being too ill paid to live in their own houses, they boarded.

An aside; my dairy farmer grandparents boarded the male teacher of the one-room schoolhouse just down the road for a year, probably in the 1920's or early '30's. I guess grandma didn't like him around the house, so it was only for one year. Good grief, that was a century ago. Time flies.

Not that single people could work all day and come home to do all the work that was needed to keep a household running back in those days. So they must live at home with their parents or in a boarding house until they got married and become or acquire a housewife to look after the house, and if possible a servant to help her. 

In any event, one of these teachers, Henrietta Bates, is lively, attractive, and pleasant, 40 year old, who is very romantic, and addicted to telling lies about her imaginary romance. She even borrows money from the other two teachers, in part to pay for the gifts that her fictional fiancé supposedly sends her. So far, still light fiction.

But living at the boarding house is a very nasty young man. The story goes on to recount events that develop around him, Lem, and Henrietta, all of which leads to a great deal of unpleasant drama in the boarding house, which is not comedic at all. And yet, even with these events, there are slightly comic characters woven in and out of the story, from a wise old judge, refugee Jews from Russia, and a shop owner who's family is a big name in town an boasts that he always gets what he wants.

So you have, in this story, a strange collection of rather dark drama and comic characters mixed helter-skelter together in one story. And to top it all off, you have a chapter where the author steps out from behind the curtain to muse on some of the issues of the character he's writing about, and to explain the back story of Henrietta.

This mish-mash makes the story rather weird, fitting no one pattern. While this might seem like a plus, the situation and the characters seem, well just weird. I'm not sure this weirdness comes from me being so remote from the time and place this was written, or if this story would have seemed out of the ordinary back in 1921 when it was published. And if this strangeness is perhaps why the story faded away. All I can say is that so far in my reading of these obscure books from a hundred years ago, there is usually something about them, a strangeness, that is hard to pin down, but is present, nevertheless.

The Isle House Ghost Cover Reveal, Again

 

Something different in covers this time around. This represents a scene in the story, as Red, Ellington, and Goldie await the appearance of the "ghost." My first thought was to paint this scene, but that thought lasted 15 seconds. My next thought was to do it in pen and ink, seeing that I already have one cover in that style. My initial idea was to do it semi-realistically. The figures would still be mostly in silhouette, but the highlighted areas would have more detail, and there would be some perspective, and there would be a background, with shadows. Just ideas and wishful thinking...

On Monday, after putting it off for months, I decided to give this approach a go. I called up images on the computer of dogs and cats sitting in profile, and a man sitting on steps in profile, and using those as references, sketched out each of the figures on typing paper. And then, because my wife was on a facetime call with her sisters - typically a two hour plus gabfest - I retreated to my room and got down to work. No more procrastinating. 

Goldie, Ellington, and Red waiting for the "ghost."

I combined the individual sketches, tracing each onto a single sheet of typing paper (because it was thin enough to just see thru) as seen above. I then filled in the black areas with a black sharpie, and photographed the art. I uploaded it to my computer and in Gimp, my image manipulation program, I darkened the blacks and whitened the whites, and sized the photo of the art to fit in the cover. I toyed with the idea of adding some sort of background in "post." In Gimp, like Photoshop, you can add layers of additional art, texture, or lighting effects. I tried adding gratinated background, but decided that I really liked the stark simplicity of just the silhouettes on white, so all I did was just added a black border to the book cover and left it just this simple.

There is a rumor going abound that covers matter in book sales. And for all I know, it may be true. I, however, have changed my covers fairly frequently, and have never notice any results, positive or negative. Moreover, I think that if you  look at the covers of the 100 most popular books in any genre, you will find a wide variety of covers and cover designs. There may be clumps of similar designs, but there is always a variety of approaches. My takeaway is that the only distinction that matters in covers is; does it look slopped together, or designed?

I don't know how this cover will work, if it works at all. But I'm having fun with it.

I now have a solid release date: Thursday, 5 February 2026. I will put it up for pre-sale on Amazon for $2.99 on that date. For all the other stores, where it will be priced, as usual, for FREE. I may upload it on Draft2Ditital a day early to give the story a chance filter down to several stores by the 5th, and will upload it to Google on the evening of the 4th. Audiobooks should follow in a day or two.

How to Become Rich and Famous as an Author

Here's a quick little post for all you writers and would-be writers.

This is a link to a graphic flow chart explaining how to become rich and famous as an author. Since it is related to my next blog post, I came across it when doing a little research. Rather than swipe it and post the chart here, I'll just post a link to Mark Lawrence's  blog post. Lawrence is a full time writer of fantasy, who knows something about becoming rich and famous as an author. You can find the secret of success HERE

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 169)

 

This time around we have two "winter" books suggested by Tristan, my classics booktuber. One is set very much in winter, a few days before Christmas, and the other, covers one year but includes an evocative section of winter in it. Being familiar with both authors, I gave them a try.

And it is winter here. White with snow, and as I post this issue, it is -24 F, -32C, outside, which even we considered cold around here. But the nice thing about artic air is that it comes without clouds. And I'll take a cheerful sunny artic day to a cloudy and gloomy mild winter's day. It's still winter in either, but there is great beauty in a bright crisp winter's day - and night.

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 Box of Delights by John Masefield  C

First off, I am clearly not the target audience for this story, being nearly a century and seventy years away from the target audience. This is a children's story first published in England in 1935. It is a sequel to The Midnight Folk. I recall seeing at least part of a TV adoption of this story many years ago, when my kids were small. And I may've read The Midnight Folk to them, back when I was reading classic children's fantasies to them as bedtime stories. However, I don't believe that I was able to find this story. In any event, I did not find this story familiar.

It is a strange book. Kay, the protagonist is returning home on a train from his boarding school for Christmas vacation. I have no idea just how old he would be. He is an orphan, as most children's book characters are, parents being a very much a nuisance to children having adventures. He meets some shady characters on the train, as well as an old man with a portable Punch and Judy puppet show that he carries around on his back. The old man is being hunted - the wolves are running - for a very special box he carries, and ask Kay to give a message to a certain lady in town when they arrive, which draws Kay into a supernatural drama, as desperate criminals are after the box.

As I said, it is a strange story, a whimsical mix of mystery, danger, semi-comical villains and historic folk lore fantasy. Very much over the top in its plot. Our hero, Kay, ends up holding the box until the Cole Hawkins, the Punch and Judy man, can get clear of the criminals... but given the magic properties of the box that Kay uses, he shouldn't have had any trouble doing so... But does. The villains, gangsters with a flying car, in an effort to find the magic box, and start kidnapping everyone whom they think knows where it is including the entire staff of the local cathedral... Leaving no one to celebrate the 1,000th  Christmas of the local church. They must be defeated, and the local police are no help.

As I said, I found the story pretty over the top, it never made a great deal of sense, but that probably isn't a priority in a  children's fantasy story. It is also, rather sadly dated, though I could see how it could be made, with a lot of editing, into an interesting historical children's drama. I can't imagine any child of today being enthralled with this story as written.

The Blue Castle by L M Montgomery  B-

Sadly, Montgomery did not live a very happy life, and I think this 1926 novel reflects that. This is the story of Valancy "Doss",  told in close third person, and as in a lot of older books, includes a lot of "telling". We get to know Valancy and her mundane life and thoughts quite well leading up the inciting event.

The story starts with a view of the life of Valancy, age 29, who is living at home with her unloving mother, and a cousin. She had always been a fearful person, often sickly, who does everything her mother expects of her, fearing her cold anger, i.e. from not altering her bedroom decor, to always being on time for every meal, doing her expected chores... etc. She is not pretty and being very shy, she  never had any friends, nor suitors, and knows only her many relatives, whom she dislikes. She keeps her unhappiness and distain for her life and family all to herself, for fear of... of life? She believes that she has never known a happy day in her life. Her only comfort is in the imaginary world in her head centered around her "Blue Castle" where she is a princess in her imagination. Pretty grim.

Valancy has a lot of pain and spells centered around her heart, and one day decides to visit a doctor, one that the family does not use, to have him examine her. He does, but before he can talk to her about her condition, he rushes off - his son had been injured in a car accident. He does, however, send her a letter telling her that her heart condition is fatal, and that she might live a year, if she does not exert herself. 

Well, as she puts it "Despair is a free man, hope a slave" and knowing that she has no hope and is going to die shortly, she decides that she has nothing to lose by being free, free to say and do whatever she pleases, damn the consequences, i.e. braking the shackle of fear that had ruled her life until that point. She attends a family gathering, shares her previously unuttered thoughts about it and them, scandalizing them. They think she gone mad. She continues to flaunt her new found freedom by taking a housekeeping job with a disreputable character and a companion of his daughter, who had a baby out of wedlock and therefore shunned and who is now dying of TB. This move shocks her family and they fear that is will tarnish their standing in the community.

And with the death of the daughter, Valancy's "outrageous" conduct does not stop there. We continue to follow her life as she discovers life in her last year. 

I do think that there was a lot of wistfulness in this story, as I suspect it is an expression of Montgomery's unhappiness of the time, with the idea of finding a way escaping the grim narrow-mindedness of small town life and a cold, unloved husband.

I found it interesting enough to read it in two days, and it has a lot of the lyrical passages of nature that one finds in her other books. I have toyed with the idea of writing an essay on the "strangeness" of old and forgotten books, and this would be one of the books I would mention, as well as one coming up. The strangeness is in both the differences in the society of the time, the story the author chose to write, and how it was written. But it's a very nebulas idea, very hard to pin down, so suffice to say, there is a certain strangeness in this story.

Looking Ahead

 

With all the looking back on 2025 over an done with, it's time to look ahead. And that means starting the hype train for my next story, or rather stories; The Isle House Ghost and Nine Again. I am planning to release them as one ebook/audio book in February 2026. 

We'll start the hype train with the cover reveal of the current cover for the story. It is a scene from the story. Actually a key scene, though you would not realize it at the time. However, I have in mind what I think might be an even better cover; a black and white drawing like I did for A Night on Isvalar. But I haven't drawn that one yet, so it's one of them birds in the bush. I want to give it a try, but never seem to get around to doing it. We'll see. I have several weeks, and it's the work of a day.

So what is The Isle House Ghost about? I probably talked about a month or two ago, but if you haven't read that piece; briefly, it is the third story featuring Mr Redinal Hu, sometimes known as Red or Reddie Wine, a gentleman for hire in the Great Games played by the Great Houses of Lorria. Which is to say, a sometimes operative hired by the rich and powerful families of Lorria to further their ends, one way or another. In Red's case, for good causes. In this case, he is hired to capture another operative, known as Compliant Agent Nine, who is breaking into the country house of a wealthy industrialist to deliver notes urging him to put his name on a memorandum advocating social change in pre-revolutionary Lorria. Innocent enough, at the moment. The industrialist, however, fears it will soon turn into threats, or dire action, and given the ease this operative seems to have entering his house, he wants this intruder out of action before things go south. So he hires Red Hu to trap and captured this Agent Nine.

The story turned out to be a 40,000 word novella.

However, just as I was finishing writing that story, a follow-up "what if?" story,  occurred to me. To tack it onto the end of the story I'd just written would have given that story an awkward shape, and well, it would also have ruined the little gag at the end that I had written, which I really liked. That being the case, I decided to write it as a separate short story, which ended up running some 9,000 words. This short story, Nine Again, is a direct sequel two The Isle House Ghost, taking place less than a week after the events of that story. It will be included with The Isle House Ghost as a special bonus story rather than as a separate short story. I know a lot of writers release short stories as "books" on Amazon, but I personally don't like that practice, so it will not get its own release. 

Looking further ahead, I am currently about 10,000 words into the next, and the last, Red Hu/Red Wine story, with a target publication date in the May-June 2026 time frame. I had envisioned this series of stories as sort of a prequel to the fictional Red Wine Agency stories of the fiction writer character in my own Chateau Clare novel. I wrote them as prequels because I don't think writing the type of elaborate thriller stories that I envisioned the actual Red Wine Agency stories to be are in my wheelhouse to write myself. So instead, I opted to write less complex and more cozy mystery/adventure stories in which Red gradually decides to become the Red Wine Agency fellow of those fictional stories. 

In this last story, its working, but likely not final title, being The Little Game. The "Little Game" being family conflicts within the Great Houses, as apposed to the Great Game involving conflicts between the Great Houses. Stilh Alive might be a better title? Who knows? In it Red Hu is hired as a lawyer/bodyguard for one Constance Stilh, a woman who is about to inherit the estate of one of the Great Houses, becoming the Head of the House of Stilh. But she has two ruthless uncles and one ruthless aunt who are currently running the House of Stilh's three business ventures all three of them want to become the Head of the House themself. And at least one of them may be ruthless enough to see that Constance doesn't live long enough to inherit the Stilh estate. A real threat, seeing that Constance's grandfather died in a motor accident that, official report be damned, the collective staffs of the Rivers Borough Great Houses consider very likely to have been murder. While this is a variation of a plot device I used in The Darval-Mers Dossier, it is characteristic of the type of power plays that go on within the powerful and wealthy families of Lorria, and they type of stories that the Red Wine Agency books would have included. Progress is slow, but I'll be quite content if it also turns out to be a novella, and if that proves to be the case, I'm at least 25% in to it.

Stay turned for more details on The Isle House Ghost, and Nine Again, and progress on The Little Game. 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 168)

 

As I hinted last week, we have two more Heyer novels this week. Unfortunately I had to spend time in hospital waiting rooms and such for much of Thanksgiving week, so I loaded up my Kindle app on phone with library books to pass the time. And all I could think to look for was Heyer books. Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

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 Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer  C

The premise of this story is that a long lost and forgotten relative, Major Hugh Darracotton, has account of some unexpected deaths, become the heir to the title and estate of the Darracotts. Only his grandfather, Lord Darracott even knew of his existence, and when his whereabouts became know, Lord Darracott bites the bullet and invites him down the family estate in the hope of sanding off the rough edges off of Major Hugh Darracott, who is the son of his disgraced son who married a weaver's daughter and will now will inherit the title and estate upon his death.

Major Darracott shows up; a giant of a man, and on who seems good natured but pretty dumb, seemingly blind to the insults that of some of his cousins toss his way. But of course, he's not. The story shows him slowly becoming part of the family, that one day he will be the head of.

While the premise of this 1959 story sounded interesting, Heyer did not seem to be on the top of her game with this one. Major Darracott is a rather boring character for a lead in a comedy, and his foils are not especially witty. The story had the feel of a paint-by-the-numbers Heyer novel, and at least for me, felt flat. Plus, she has everyone thinking that Major Darracott is very slow dim-witted, despite the fact that he was a major in an army that had been fighting for years on the Peninsula. I found that hard to buy. And all the subplots are not very interesting. The last 10% of the story is one long scene that goes on way too long, in my opinion. Not a terrible story, but one that I would say you can miss, and not miss much.

The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer  A

Here's one you shouldn't. Another delightful comedy romance/adventure from Heyer. This time we have Richard Wyndham, a dashing & stylish young man about London, a "Corinthian" who, at the urging of his mother and sister very reluctantly agrees that, in order to carry on the Wyndham line, he must marry. And marry Melissa Saar, a cold, unpleasant young woman, who also must marry the rich Wyndham because her father and brothers have tossed the family fortune to the four winds. This is a common trope in Heyer's stories. However, the night before he is to call on Lord Saar to ask for her hand, he gets very drunk, takes the long way home in the early hours of the night, and discovers a young man climbing out of a window on a bedsheet. The bedsheet rope is too short and the escapee asks for his help to catch him. He does, and discovers that the young man is actually a 17 year old young lady, a wealthy orphan, escaping her aunt who wants her to marry her son, whose face reminds her of a fish. Something she is unprepared to do. Instead she plans to return to the countryside estate that she left five years ago, and to her childhood friend who had promised to marry her. 

Wyndham, reluctantly can not allow this young woman to be wandering around alone in the wee hours of the night and takes her home. And in the morning, he feels obliged to see her safely to her friend in the countryside. To avoid her aunt who would no doubt be chasing after her,  they take a stagecoach to Bristol... that ends up in the ditch, and so begins an adventure involving thieves, stolen diamonds, star-crossed lovers and murder. With predictable results.

These comedies of Heyer feature characters that would be found frequenting the Drones Club a hundred years later. The lead male is usually a dashing Jeeves sort of character, someone who is never at a loss, no matter how dicey the situation is. The dialog is always witty - though you have to get used to all the slang of the times she has her characters uttering - and so it is in this story. The difference between Heyer and Wodehouse, beside the age they set their stories, is that Heyer writes the story around the characters a little more, shall we say, substantial? By which I mean, slightly more realistic. Where as Wodehouse, as the narrator, is always writing to get a smile, if not a laugh, as he tells his stories. This gives the Heyer stories a little more heft, but they are still always clever and delightful.

The only warnings I can give a new readers is that, one; she often starts out her stories in the middle of a confab of characters who are discussing something the reader is at a lost to understand, and thus patience is needed to get through the first chapter or so. And secondly, as I mentioned above, she laces her dialog with slang terms of the age whose meaning you pretty much have to guess at from the context. I wouldn't lose any sleep over not understanding all of them though. I don't. But you do become more familiar with them the more you read Heyer's Regency books.

My 2025 Cealanda House Publishing Report

 

2025 was a good year for Cealanda House Publishing. Sales volume was up - indeed, it proved to be a record calendar year. Revenue, however, was down from 2024, so I'm lucky that I don't have any stockholders to bamboozle. My business results can be explained by five factors. Let's breakdown them down. 

The first is the frequency of publication. My goal is to release one book a year. This year I released three books, likely a record. I'm working ahead... They were:

Glencrow Summer (a novel) in on 20 February. It has sold 1,972 copies in 11 months. It has proven to be a very good seller. Indeed sales have picked up since June.

The Darval-Mers Dossier (a novel) on 27 May. It has sold 1,336 copies in 8 months. Another very good seller. I consider a 1,000 copies in the first year to be one of my "best sellers".

The Founders' Tribunal (a novella) on 6 November. It has sold 590 copies in 2 months. It is doing just fine as well. As I said, it's been a good year.

New books bring new sales across the catalog. 

Releasing three books in one year is perhaps the key driving force behind my success as a publisher this year. Not only do new releases sell well, but they tend to bump up the sales of back catalog books as well, since new releases are promoted on most platforms. Every new release increase the chances of introducing your books to new readers, some of whom then go on to buy more of your books. Since the early days of self-publishing, releasing books rapidly has been the bog standard way to sell lots of books. 

Over time I've adopted a willingness to write and release shorter novels and novellas. I like writing shorter works with less elaborate plots. And since they take less time to write, I can get them to market sooner. That said, I write books as long as I have a story to tell, not to a given length. 

The second key factor in this year's success is the size of my back catalog of books.

I have 23 books for sale on Amazon and Kobe where I sell The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea as a six book series rather than as a two volume omnibus. On all other platforms I offer 19 books for sale. The more books you have to offer, the more sales you can potentially make. The fact that I have been able to write and publish 16 novels and 3 novellas over the last fifteen years is paying off in sales, if not in revenue. But who cares about revenue?

The third key factor was my willingness to embrace auto-narrated audiobooks as soon as I was offered the opportunity to do so. 

This year 40% of my sales have come from audiobooks. This percentage is down from 44% last year. Recently ebooks have been outselling audiobooks by a good margin some months, but audiobooks have, over the years, taken up the slack as ebook sales have been harder and harder to come by.

The fourth, and on paper the driving force in my business, was getting my books into the Google Play store. I don't know why it works there, but as you will see below. It does, at least for me. Big time.

The fifth is price. I sell my books in a less competitive market; the free book market. Plus, it's a hard price to beat. And there is no friction for readers to give my books a try.

Right, so on to the numbers.

According to my vendors, I sold 22,269 copies in 2025. This is up from 14,970 in 2024 and handily beats my former record year of 2023, when I sold 18,198 copies.

Google:  9,965 Ebooks  7,704 Audiobooks  for a total of 17,669  79% of my sales

D2D: 2,635 Ebooks  1,146 Audiobooks  for a total of 3,781         17% of my sales

Amazon: 657 Ebooks  13 Audiobooks  19 Paper  for a total of      4% of my sales

Kobo: 162  Ebooks                                                                   a rounding error

Gross revenue however, was down about $50 from 2024 coming in at $307.13, all from sales on Amazon. I spend less that $100 for books and postage for my beta readers, so Cealanda House is still making a profit as a publisher; about $.01 a book thanks to doing nearly everything in house, with the help of some generous volunteer beta readers. A penny a book is razor thin margin, but we're still in the black and still in business after ten years, plus!

The bottom line is that this level of sales is due to releasing books frequently, having a substantial catalog, and selling my books competitively in all the market and formats available, and on Google.

However, these numbers should be viewed in their historical perspective. Ten years ago, in 2015 and for several years afterwards I was selling, on average, around 2,000 books per title per a year, on just Amazon and venues distributed by Smashwords - without audiobooks. In 2025 I am selling books at about half that rate, about 1,000 copies a book per year, but those sales include audiobooks that account for 40% of sales, and in additional stores. And I'd be selling 80% less books than I am, if it wasn't for the addition of Google as a vendor.

It's tough market.

The ebook market, especially on Amazon, has matured and consolidated. The casual ebook readers have likely returned to paper books as the newness of ebooks wore off. What remains are the very avid readers who read books of a specific genre or subgenre, and specific authors. I suspect that these readers account for the vast majority of ebook fiction sold/read. If your books fall outside of those mainstreams, and you don't spend money advertising, and hours a day on social media promoting yourself one way or another, the pickings are few, as my sales on Amazon clearly suggest.

The other factor to note is my dependence on Google for my sales. One would like to see a wider distribution of sales. Like many Amazon only authors, I have most of my eggs in one basket. But unlike most of Amazon only authors, who have no alternative market, I've taken every opportunity to reach every market. It just falls out that Google is my best choice, by far.

All that said, the bottom line is that these are just numbers. What I value is you, dear reader. Yes, the more the better, but in the end, I sincerely hope that I am entertaining readers like you, while at the same time, I am entertaining myself writing these stories. There'd be no numbers without you, and it wouldn't half as much fun. Thank you for making my day!

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 167)

 

This first entry is something like five weeks out of order. I inadvertently duplicated a Saturday Morning Post number for this post, and since I alternate paintings, I couldn't just change the post number without messing up this pattern. So I bumped it down the road to next open odd numbered review. This one.

This happens to be another booktuber recommendation, a science fiction novel in this case, which, as you likely know, is a genre that I usually give a miss to these days. But since she thought it was one of the best books she read this year, and even an all time top five book for her, I decided to give it a try, given that it was readily available as an ebook from the library, and was co-written by someone famous. What the heck?

This week's second book is also out of reading order, but it had its own solo review, so I lumped that in this issue to get my two books per week. But what do you care about my paper work? I will just say that this won't be the last book by this author you'll be seeing in the coming weeks. A bit of foreshadowing...

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. 

Windhaven by George R R Martin and Lisa Tuttle  DNF 21%

Maris is a young girl, a flyer, who as the cover illustration suggests, soars between the islands of her world on its stormy winds using a set of folding wings. She is very good at it. A natural. However, according to the tradition of the flyers, she must give up her wings to the son of her foster father when he reaches the age of 13. Taught by her foster father, she's been flying for some years and was really good at it. But now, as I said, she must give up flying, and she doesn't want to do so, especially since her foster brother is so bad enough at flying, that it will likely kill him, and well, he doesn't even want to be a flyer. He wants to be a singer, a troubadour. It doesn't seem fair that she has to give up the wings to someone who will only get killed using them, and who doesn't want them anyway. Still, it's tradition... and so she must. 

But, it really isn't fair! So instead, she steals the wings, and flies off to an island to get one of her flyer friends to call a conference of all flyers in order to plead her case, i.e. that the tradition must change; wings should be earned by skill not just automatically passed on to the first born, too many of which, she argues, haven't the talent, and only get themselves killed. This conference and all the speeches on this subject take up 17 pages of the story. It was at this point where I gave up on the story. 17 pages of speeches...jezz.

The thing is, I didn't care for Maris. While she accuses the other flyers of being arrogant and privileged snobs, she comes across as every bit as arrogant as all the rest of them. Her attitude is that because she's so good at flying she's entitled to be able to fly, tradition be damned. And so she wants to change the system to work in her favor. She seem blind to the fact that she's as arrogant and as self centered as those who want to uphold tradition. I found I could not root for her after stealing the wings.

The world building is sparse, at least in the first 21% of the story, and the premise; the seas being too dangerous to build ships, so that these flyers are the messengers between the islands is a stretch. If they can't easily reach the other islands, what's the point of carrying messages between them? And then there is the premise that a 13 year old boy or girl would have the muscles needed to control a twenty foot span of wings attached to them on a harness. But, what the heck, I'd be willing to go with the flow, if I had been able to connect to the main character. No doubt there is much more and bigger stakes ahead, but whatever charm this booktuber found in this story I missed entirely.

Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer  C

This is a pretty straight romance novel, and as such I haven't much to say about it. The story opens with the death of Serena's father, the Earl of Spenborough who leaves a young wife and no sons, so that the title goes to Serena's cousin. Serena further discovers that her father has named her former fiancé as the trustee of her portion of the his private estate, much to her dismay. Women can't be trusted with money.

This former fiancé is a very rude and domineering man, with a temper as well. When they were engaged, they argued all the time, which is why she had called it off. Now he holds her purse string, and like it or not, she must deal with him.

Serena and her step-mother retire to the dowager house, but soon find it very boring, so they rent a house in Bath. Here Serena meets the true love of her youth, and he promptly asks her to be his wife. She accepts - though with her being in morning for her father, this is just a private understanding.

However, the problem with this proposed marriage is that Serena, raised almost like a son, used to managing a great house, and so is rather free speaking and dominating, for a woman, with a temper to boot, which her fiancé comes to realize might not make for the ideal wife of his dreams. Plus her wealth far exceeds that of her current fiancé, which makes him uneasy as well. Still, a promise is a promise. He'll make it work...

There are also other romances tangled up in this story, hence the title, to fill out the story.

A pretty predictable outing this time around for Heyer, without much of her characteristic lively dialog, along with a sappy ending filled with sappy, heartfelt speeches. Okay for what it was, but not high on my list of Heyer books.