I Still Don't Know What I'm Doing

 

I don't know how to write. I just do it. This has been clear to me for years. Over the last dozen years, I've read numerous pieces on how to write, and seen many videos by authors talking about how they go about thinking and writing their stories. They all talk about things like story structures and character arcs and such. Stuff I never think about when writing, and stuff I have never bothered to adopt, because it seems so deliberately artificial. And to me, so wrong. 

Blame it on my youth.

I spent my youth in the dark ages before all the world's knowledge and disinformation could be carried around and consulted via a device in your pocket. Before the age of the internet. Before the age of the personal computer. Back then knowledge would be found in paper books, and those could be found on libraries and bookstore shelves. However, the amount and breath of knowledge was limited by the size of the local libraries and books stories. Plus your awareness of such knowledge. I really don't think I knew that how-to-write novels books existed, back then.

They must have existed. Right?  Well, yet maybe not. I haven't bothered to research that question on the internet Wait, I just did... 1884 The Art of Fiction by Walter Besant and 1925 The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton, so say Gemini. It's that easy today. But back then... who would know?

In any event, it never occurred to me to read a book on how to write a book.

I did do some research and discovered that the first master of fine arts programs was established at the University of Iowa in 1940. A workshop, The Iowa Writers' Workshop had been started there four years before. MFA programs in colleges only began to proliferate in the 1960's & 70's. Which is to say, about the time I started writing. It was almost three decades after I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, that it started their MFA program in 2002. In 1968, as a freshman, I wanted to write science fiction novels, not read, study, and discuss moldy old classic books. I wanted to learn how to write, so I listed my major as journalism rather than English, which even then was considered a mostly useless major. I changed my major to International Relations (another largely useless major) the following year when I realized I was too shy to be a journalist and interview people. 

I just decided then, and still believe today, that if you had the talent to write, you could develop it all on your own and write. That talent ruled all creative endeavors. Sure, you could study any of the arts, and learn the mechanics of them, but to be really good, you needed to have been born with a talent for them. I felt that if I had the talent to write, I would learn how to write over time, with practice, and by absorbing the art and craft of telling stories through reading stories. A long road, but one that leads to an authentically personal style.

My first published piece was a review of the war game Vietnam which appeared Vol 1 No. 8 of Strategy & Tactics magazine, "A Journal of American Wargaming." in the 1967. The magazine is still being published today. I did a few spot art illustrations for it as well. I doubt I was paid for the piece or the art. My first paid piece was a review, in some magazine, some time in the 1980's I believe, for the Franklin Spelling Ace, one of those stand alone spell checkers they had around before the personal computer became affordable and widely available. My latest published piece is upcoming next month in the local writer's group yearly literary journal, Barstol & Grand. I have a short story in Vol 10, though I waived the modest payment for a few extra copies of journal. And, well, except for the a small collection of rejection slips for my fantasy novel and science fiction novella and short story in 1980, that is the sum of my lifetime achievement in writing, save for writing and self-publishing sixteen novels, six novellas and a short story all of which I wrote after the age of 60, the product of all those long years on the road to a dream and a lot of free time.

Not the most impressive resume, for a lifetime of writing when viewed through a conventional lens. Nor a particularly compelling argument for talent, as opposed to being formally taught the techniques of writing as a craft. And yet I still, perhaps foolishly, believe in talent over training. And I still find something unsettlingly wrong in thinking of stories in three acts, plot points, and character arcs. I think writing fiction is a process of breathing a ghost of life to a life in words as it is felt. Not constructing some sort of facsimile of it according to a blueprint. 

A MILLION PAGE VIEWS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

My modest blog has now just crossed the million page view milestone today! 1000346 to be exact. I would've never in a million years dreamed that being the author of a 782 blog posts I would have attracted a million views. And counting! We certainly live in an age of wonder. 

I am truly humbled by the idea that my (apparently) tens of thousands of fans have looked in on this humble blog over one million times in the past eleven and a half years. I want to thank each and everyone of you for the support your visits have given me and my poor attempts to entertain and inform you. As well as for the comments you have contributed. Even the ones advertising some sort of scam or another that I've had to delete. It is nice to think that you believe my poor blog is such a valuable advertising platform. This is one of the proudest days in my life....

...Wait. What are you saying? Really, you think its bots rather than people who are visiting my blog... That the 2,000 to 3,000 plus visitors every day are not real human fans of my stories at all... That they're just bots crawling the web and sucking up content for who knows what reason? Really? Really... Oh well...

I am truly humbled by the idea that literally hundred of thousands of bots have looked in on my humble blog over one million times in the past eleven and a half years. I want to thank each and every bot of you for the support your visits have given me and my poor attempts to entertain and inform you. As well as for the comments you have contributed. Even the ones advertising some sort of scam or another that I've had to delete. It is nice to think that you believe my poor blog is such a valuable advertising platform. It is one of the proudest days in my life that my writing has become part of the digital DNA of our future robotic overlords.

SINCERLY, THANK ALL OF YOU, FRIENDS, HUMANS, AND BOTS! IT HAS, AND CONTINUES TO BE FUN TO WRITE THIS BLOG.

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 207)

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

Sticking with detective fiction, but this time around with a fantasy world thrown in. I'm also sticking with rereading books from my collection. The best of my collection. In theory.

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. 

Petty Pewter Gods by Glen Cook   C-

This installment was, I believe, the next book I needed to reread the series in order. I didn't bother to look back on my posts to find out, mostly just going by what I remembered of the covers. Since they are mostly stand alone stories with continuing characters a background timeline, it didn't matter too much. I knew this was likely my most least liked book in the series, and as you can see, it hopefully is. I think I've gotten a bit more critical over the decades, which likely explains just how much I did not like this book, because I certainly liked it more in the past than I did now or I would've had stronger memories of just how much I disliked it. Oh well.

Like most of these stories, the action takes place in the fantasy world, and in the city of TunFaire, where every imaginable fantasy creature, and really anything else as well, exists, including things like dinosaurs, and in this case, gods, of a sort. Though the gods appear to have been refugees from some other dimension. There is a section of the city of TunFaire, the Dream Quarter, with its Street of Dreams along which all the religions of the city have their temples, the more believers they have, the higher up the street their temple is. As they loose followers, the they must move their temple down the hill towards the river. A new religion has arrived with more followers than the two at the lowest end of the street, so one of them must go, and going means the end of its pantheon of gods, or at least they become mortal without followers. To choose which of these two religion loses their temple, the commission of gods have created a quest for a special key, and our hero, Garrett is recruited by both sets of gods, very old school gods and unpleasant gods a that, to find that key.

Now, these books are a tongue in cheek satire of the old school PI school of stories, with the PI being great hunks of men who women are always throwing themselves at, which, I guess, is a trope that hasn't aged well. And in this case, a cynical view of religions in general. The problems in this book, are numerous, even overlooking women and female gods always throwing themselves at Garrett. Mostly it is an account of Garrett being chased and captured by the various factions of gods who then try to compel him to find the key for them. This happens time and again, giving Garrett little agency. This time the banter between him and the Dead Man, is often lame, not very witty at all. The sort of "found family" vibe other stories have by including a wide cast of reoccurring characters is largely missing in this story. And the mystery that Garrett and the Dead Man must solve, such as it is, is very confusing. All in all, a very tedious book, one in which I did a lot of skimming this time around, earning it, at best, its C- grade.  I chose it only because it was the next in the series. If I had known just how bad I would find it this time around, I would've skipped it entirely. Oh well.

Angst

There seems to be a lot angst in the author/publisher community these days. Though to be fair, there is always a lot of angst amongst author/publishers. The sad fact is that unless you choose to measure success by some personal metric other than revenue, it is nearly impossible to succeed in the conventual understanding of success, i.e. making a ton of money. You only hear about successful authors because making a lot of money as a writer is so rare.

Now, I can't claim to be well connected to the self-publishing industry, so I can't say to what extent the situation I'm about to describe is universal, but I feel it is fairly accurate for your average small self-publishing authors.

Sales are down. Enthusiasm to write and publish is down. Thoughts of giving it all up, are up. The big question is, "Why bother anymore?"

Three cause of this bout of despair are offered up: the market is being flooded with AI produced books, the economy, and the declining number of fiction readers.

Of the three, the flooding of the market with AI books is certainly a factor in dampening the spirits of small self-publishing authors. For many it seems that getting your books noticed, much less purchased, is almost impossible. Oh, there is social media, of course, but often authors are just following other authors and being followed by other authors. Not readers who might actually purchase your book. And well, I've heard it said that AI produced books are dominating some of the bestselling list of some romance sub-genres. While there are those whose motto is "Never AI," it appears that Kindle Unlimited readers prefer their formalistic genre fiction to come with good grammar and no typos, no matter the source. Art and soul be damned.

Steps are being taken by the publishing platforms themselves as they find themselves flooded by these mass-produced books. Amazon recently limited the number of books that can be uploaded and publish to two a week. And Draft2Digital charges an activation fee of $20 for new "authors" and a $12 a year fee if your books don't earn at least $100 in royalties. Both measures are meant to slow down the flood of AI books. But they won't stop the trend, using AI in some manner is becoming just too useful to writers of commercial fiction. Little wonder that people who write books the old fashioned way are feeling down.

The economy is suggested to also be playing a role in the downturn in sales, though I tend to doubt this. Most of the authors complaining about poor sales have their books in the Kindle Unlimited program were readers read their book for free after paying Amazon's monthly fee. People who read enough books in a month to justify that fee would seem unlikely to cancel it, since it's a relatively minor expense for the entertainment they derive. I suppose the economy may be a factor in individual book sales rather than page reads.

The third reason often cited is that the percentage of the population reading fiction has been declining for a decade or more. Often this seems to boil down to them young whippersnappers are spending all their time on social media and consequently, have the attention span of gnats. Which is to say, a version of the classic "the world is going to hell in a handcart" one hears from an older generation whenever the younger one doesn't do what they did, back in the day. I doubt this has much, if any, effect on declining sales, seeing that it is probably the casual, one book or two a year reader who has fallen off the wagon. Besides publishing companies' sales are actually increasing, though the higher price of books may account for some, or all of that.

There is one extra factor that I think must be considered in this discussion. And that is fashion. When a writer is producing commercial work, i.e. stories written for a specific market and reader, that subject/style will grow old and inevitably fall out of fashion with readers. The savvy author may be able to pivot with the trends, but even so, their back catalog still falls out of fashion. And if they don't quite catch the latest wave of hot sub-genres and style this time around, they can become yesterday's news. Many readers are fickle. (And with short attention spans!) So when I hear of writers selling far less than they once did, I have to think that perhaps readers have just moved on and left them behind.

As I said at the top, while expectations are always high, selling books, especially as a self-publishing author, has always been a tough go, and rarely successful. And even when it is, success often does not last for long. Fashion is ruthless and fleeting. Judging from my experience giving away books, it is indeed harder to sell books today than it was five or ten years ago. But given how hard it's always been, would most self-published authors really notice much of a difference?

Perhaps all this despair is really just the realization of how hard selling books is and has always been, which is finally filtering down into the hopes and dreams of writers. But probably not.

However, remember folks: No One Undersells Crazy Charlie's Book Emporium!

Bring it on, AI!

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 206)

 

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

The smaller booktube channels, the ones that don't cover the newest releases or the ones trending on social media, often offer special reading "events". Things like "June on the Range" were viewers are invited to read westerns in the month of June. Or "Rocket Summer" where you read vintage SF throughout July. The book I'm reporting on today is a "PI July novel."  And when it comes to PI's you know who I turn to ...

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 Little Sister by Raymond Chandler   A

It has been decades since I read this book. but in my memory, I remember considering it the best of the bunch. It proved to be every bit as good as I remembered it. And, as I side note, I love the covers of this run of Chandler stories, this is the mass market paperback that I own. They are all great.

As for the story, we have a young lady from Manhattan Kansas. Miss Orfamey Quest, arriving at Philip Marlowe's office. She wants to locate her brother, Orrin, who has stopped writing to her and her widowed mother. She has come to LA to try to find him, fearing something is wrong with him. She's rather strange, but talks Marlowe down to a $20 fee to look for her brother at his last known residence, a seedy apartment building in Bay City (i.e. Long Beach), a city that has not delt kindly with Marlowe in the past. Well, within three or four hours Marlowe has encountered two murders... which is typical Chandler. I won't go further into the details, as Chandler doesn't do who-done-its, and in this case, I'm not really sure who did what and why. You just go with the flow, the flow of language. 

Raymond Chandler is a key figure in my taste in reading and writing. I discovered him in my early 20's, likely because I was a big fan of Humphry Bogart, and The Big Sleep movie that he stared in was based on a Chandler novel. Reading Chandler opened up my eyes to what writing could be. Prior to that I had read mostly science fiction stories, with a little Sherlock Holmes and Dr Fu Manchu tossed in. Many of them were very good and entertaining stories with competent, if non-descript writing styles. 

Chandler showed me what writing could be. He showed me that there was more to a story than a story. There could be style, there could be flavor, there could be fun in how words could be put together. Just the way a sentence read could be a joy completely independent of the story. While there are many masters of writing, who have their own styles, it is Chandler's and not long after, Wodehouse's way of stringing words together that became my preferred style. The interesting thing is that both Chandler and Wodehouse went to the same school, Dulwich, outside of London, and within a few years of each other. I owe a great dept of gratitude to whoever taught them how to write. 

Chandler's stories are chaotic, his writing exuberant, his characters deftly drafted with a minimum of words. I don't know how they've aged. They well may be too florid for this day of age, but they are a part of my youth, and I simply marvel at how he writes. To hell with plot.

On (Not) Reading

 

In the world of booktubers, for whom books are "content", it would be said that I'm in a "reading slump." Or I'm "burned out" on reading. I don't think those terms are an accurate description on my reading, or lack of, though they do describe my current state of reading, i.e. not much. 

I'm simply not in the mood to read these days. I'm not burned out from reading too much. And since I don't really have any reading goals or a TBR lists to complete, not reading isn't really a slump in the sporting sense. As I said, I find that I'm simply not in the mood to read. What books I have been reading these last several months, have been just rereads of books from my book shelves. Perhaps I've grown tired of looking for new books to read.

I've been trying many new books, authors, and genres on the recommendations of booktubers, and bloggers over the last several years. But, with the notable exception of Emma M Lion, I find that I do not really click with newly released books. There is something in the style books are written today that doesn't click with me. I certainly don't like stories set in contemporary times, I want to be taken somewhere else. However, even the historical stories they write today seem to have a modern sheen, making them seem unauthentic.  

Earlier this year, as in the past several, I was reading new to me old time authors. The problem is that they are often not available in the library, so to find more of their books I would have to buy them as ebooks, if available, or used paper books. Spending money on books is something I do only for special books. I've never said "I want to read this or that book" and without further thought, followed it by thinking "I have to go out and buy this or that book." There is no connection in my mind between reading a book and buying a book. I've always turned to libraries for my books... Though, I will admit, my wall of books sort of puts a lie to that statement. I was sort of into collecting books in my youth, but then again, most of those books were purchased more than 25 years ago. Many are second hand, purchased cheap at charity stores, or go way back to my youth and the days of  $.50 paperbacks. And even then, many were purchased used at half price. We've gotten a little off topic, but what I am driving at is that going out and just buying books that maybe sound like I might like them, is not something I do. Not at full price, anyway. Borrowing a library book is my book reading choice these days.

So, faced with no compelling reads - the next Emma M Lion book comes out in Feb. 2027 - what reading I have been doing has been going back to reread my old favorites. Even so, I've found some surprises, good and not so good. I won't say more than that, since I still have nine installments of my Saturday Morning Post book reports in the can that will cover those books. That also means that there will not be any crisis on Saturday mornings until at least December. I will say this, however, I'm not going to read books just to create "content" for my Saturday Morning Post. We'll have to see how things go on that front.

Even with the current lack of reading, I have read a fair amount of books this year.

I started 46 books and finished 38 of them. Not exactly a serious dry spell in reading. It is just that I'm reading significantly less books than in years past. I recorded starting 106 books on my 2025 list, 89 for 2024 and 102 for 2023. I may have been already feeling the lack of compelling books back in January, since my goal for 2026 was 50 books. With two and half months left, I may even make it. 

I guess, all said, it is more than numbers of books I'm talking about. It is my attitude. I don't miss reading a book or two every week. Honestly, right now, I don't miss reading at all. These days, I'm simply content to pick up an old favorite and read a chapter or two in the evening, and call it a day. And really, this lack of drive to read is not a new phenomena. There were many years in this century when I read very few books. Instead, I was writing my own stories, and only had room in my head for those stories. It is rather surprising that I found room for both my stories and books these past few years. 

I am still writing my own stories... and the current one needs all the attention I can give it these days.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 205)

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

I needed an antidote to the dreary grimness of the last book, This Tender Land, so I returned to O Douglas, who I knew would serve up a nice quiet story. One without two killings in the first 40% of the story. I believe this one is one of a set of three set in the same general area, the Border Lands of Scotland, with a few minor cross over characters.

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.

Love Comes Home by Molly Clavering  C+

To date I've enjoyed all the Molly Clavering novels I've read which include: Susan Settles Down, Touch Not the Nettle, Near Neighbors, Mrs Lorimer’s Quiet Summer, Dear Hugo, and Because of Sam. Like the first two books on the list above this was last of her first four books that she published under the pen name of B. Mollett. It was written in 1937. I think Molly was trying to be hip and modern in this one, unlike her more domestic focused stories later on.

Most of the story takes place in Scotland. The main characters are young people. The title character, Love, is the younger sister of Jane, the point of view character. Love has just returned from a year "finishing" in Paris. With her arrival home their mother summons Jane home as well. Jane had been living with her best friend, Kitty, and her husband, George, a naval officer stationed at Chatham naval base. Just before Jane returns to Scotland, George's best friend, John, corners her and asks her to marry him. These were the days when you had to get the brides father's consent, unless you were black sheep. So they decide to keep their semi-engagement secret for a time. However, once home, Love has other ideas as to whom Jane will marry, and after some mishaps and misunderstanding the occur when John is invited to visit Jane at home - he has a new posting in the navy that took him to Scotland - Love sets out to break up their their attachment by seducing John herself. And so the story plays out. You get a generous helping of the life of the Scottish gentry, roam the scenic Scottish countryside, plus some political observations, as the celebrations around the new king who was just coronated, the civil war in Spain, along with a passing reference to Nazi Germany.

The thing about this story is that it has the hackneyed device of both Jane and John refusing to make any effort to clear up the minor misunderstandings that keep them apart. If they had, the story could've called it a day after chapter four. But, since it is a romance, I'll give Molly a pass on that. What I found interesting, and, as I said above was her trying to hip, or at least modern, by making John and Jane's best friend Kitty morally free and easy. It was clear nearly from the beginning that after Jane left, her love, John, had an affair with Kitty, his best friend's wife. And in it was made clear that Kitty was as much to blame as John. But still, your best friend's wife? She has George, Kitty's husband, seemingly tolerating her affairs, which are not rare. And when Jane and John make up, she intends to tolerate his as well, since she knows that he won't be faithful to her. In short not very good people tolerated by better people, however unwisely in my view.

Miss Clavering as always delivered an entertaining read, but the rather unsavory nature of its characters substantially reduced my enjoyment of the story. I think the characters need not have been so unsavory and it still would've been a good story. But I have to think she wrote this way to attract a young, modern 1937 audience. Oh Well.

The Sunsets of Summer, 2026 Edition

 

I try to watch every sunset over the course of the summer, sitting in my rocking chair at the edge of our garage. And it has become a little tradition to post the best sunsets I saw while doing so. The photos of the sunset above and the two below were taken in May. We had some striking sunsets early in the summer, and then again late in August and September.

Below is not a sunset, but a storm cloud near to sunset. If I used AI I suppose I could get rid of the powerlines. But I don't. This is an authentic photograph. Well as computational photography can get to authenticity.

Below is a very rosy June sunset and another rather fiery one.

And now we skip to August for several sunsets. The first for the flock of little clouds. The second for a brooding sunset. The last one is a sunset in blue.

And finally, an October 1 sunset, from our back yard. It was a very intense orange evening for a few minutes with this sunset.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 204)

 

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

Another O Douglas story. At the time I was reading these stories, it was summer, and a hot week of summer at that, and so I had nothing better to do then move on to the next story in the omnibus ebook version that I have of O Douglas stories.

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 Proper Place by O Douglas  C

Another book of character studies. This time, the plot, such as it was, was meandering, actually disjointed, or perhaps, it might be described as a collection of plots. I don't know why this cover has this old lady on it. There are old ladies on it, but they're hardly key to the story, such as it is.

Our main character is Nicole Rutherfurd. age 24. She is a free spirit, loves everyone and everyone loves her. She lives with her widowed mother and her cousin Barbara, who is far more aloof and concerned with social status. They are of an old family, fallen on to hard times, so that they had to sell their country home and live on modest means in a house far enough away so that they don't run into their old circle of upper class friends. While Nicole readily accepts their fate and finds a new life, Barbara keenly feels their fall from their aristocratic stature. 

Throughout the story we get to know various people, like the people who purchase the Rutherfurd's country house, and the various residents of their new village, including a young boy, again. The story, such as it is, meanders through lots of meeting and mundane events, typical of O Douglas stories. What his story lacks is a sense of direction to drive the reader though all these character study moments, and the reflections on life and whatever, they generate. And what plot(s) there are are pretty predictable. 

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these novels is the effect of World War One on England, as most every family lost young men in the conflict. 

Comparing the Text-to-Speech Quality

 

I was curious as to how my books sound. Curious because I never listen to them. I probably should. If I had, I wouldn't have used "apparently" twice in the same paragraph... Oh well. So to compart the four auto-narrated book services I offer my readers, I recorded a brief section from the opening of The Darval-Mers Dossier, which happens to be on all four services; Amazon, Google,  Apple, and Spotify.  The Apple sample did not start at the beginning, but shortly after the other three, so it should give you a good idea of how it sounds.

With Amazon, Google, and Spotify, I chose the voice. I always choose a British English narrator. I usually have at least several to choose from, and choose the older, deeper voice. Apple does not give authors a choice of narrators. You get Jimmy Olson.

Below is a link to my Google Drive with a two minute audio-only video with the voices of the four services.

AUDIOBOOK SAMPLES

While I could make a game of it, I'll tell you the order. Let me know what you think of these voices and what one is best.

Amazon ($3.99)

Google (Free)

Apple (Free)

Spotify (Free)

Note: I recorded this on my phone from my Trivoli Audio radio and then played that recording from the phone to my computer, so that the quality of the sound is compromised. What we're concerned with is how human-like the narration is.

Note: 2 Since posting about my books being on Spotify, I learned that I can only publish 5 books with the current beta program. So the 4 Red Wine stories are up, and the first of the Nine Star Nebula Adventure/Mystery story, The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon are available on Spotify. 

Some Small Dive Ebook Released

 

The ebook version of my great experiment Has been released and can be obtained from the fine bookshops listed below.

I'm looking forward to discovering just how my most boring book sells. Will readers take me at my word, and avoid it, or will they take my claim as a challenge or as a tease, and pick it up to see if it is as boring as advertised? Only time will tell. 

For several hours of late night, moody music to listen to while reading Some Small Dive, I put together a eclectic playlist on YouTube Music called, you guessed it, "Some Small Dive." It is a public playlist and you should be able to find it by searching for Some Small Dive.

Links to the book in the various store below the blurb, as they go on line.

Here we go!

My most boring book ever!

This from the author of “the dullest book I have ever read” – a reader, and “the only thing it did was put me to sleep” – another reader, another book.

I believe blurbs should honestly introduce the book to potential readers so they know what to expect. That being the case, I must tell you that this is the most mundane of stories. Only the fact that it is set on a world other than Earth makes it slightly different from a light literary fiction novel. Readers who have found my work via science fiction and fantasy, may perhaps find this story boring. You’ve been warned. But what can all readers, new and old, expect to find in this novel?

First off, it is the third book in the loose series of my “Lorrian Novels.” It is preceded by Chateau Clare and Glencrow Summer. However, all of the novels are stand-alone stories. This one is set entirely in the city of Celora, half a year after the events of Glencrow Summer. Once again, it features a new cast of characters, along with a few cameo appearances by characters from Chateau Clare. However, unlike those first two novels, there are no science fiction/fantasy elements in this story. This story concerns the everyday concerns of the after work patrons of the Bleu Moon, the small dive of the title, including a slow burn romance or two.

Most of these patrons come from the newspaper industry. A managing director, several editors, a critic, an actor, and a novelist make up the central cast. Set in the distant future, all of the characters are very human, but now with a lifespan of around two hundred years. Thus, over the course of two centuries, most people will change aspects of their lives, jobs, and relationships at least several times. In this novel, all of the patrons of the Bleu Moon find themselves facing opportunities to change their lives. Some will take it, others not. Some Small Dive is their story.

Amazon paperback at $12.99 HERE

Amazon ebook at $3.99 HERE

Amazon audiobook at 3.99 HERE

Apple ebook Free HERE

Apple audiobook Free HERE

Bookshop.org Free HERE

B & B ebook Free HERE

Google ebook Free HERE

Google audiobook Free HERE

Kobo ebook Free HERE  

Smashwords ebook Free HERE

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 203)

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

I needed an antidote to the dreary grimness of the last book, This Tender Land, so I returned to O Douglas, who I knew would serve up a nice quiet story. One without two killings in the first 40% of the story. I believe this one is one of a set of three set in the same general area, the Border Lands of Scotland, with a few minor cross over characters.

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.

Pink Sugar by O. Douglas  B+

Kristy Gilmour, an orphan since the age of eight had been living with her stepmother for many years. Her stepmother was a restless person, living from hotel to hotel for years, so when she dies, Kristy decides to return to her home in the Scottish Border Country to settle down. To that end, she rents a modest house, part of a larger estate, with the intent of helping her fellow human beings in little ways. Her first task in this regard is to take in three young children, along with their young governess/ Their mother has died, and their father, broken hearted, wants to travel to get over his grief. The children are related to her only through her best friend. She falls in love with the children, and dreads the return of their father, although he is very nice and attractive.

The first thing I've discovered about O Douglas is that most of her stories are about exploring all sorts of characters. Her plots serve to bring characters she wishes to talk about to the fore. In this case, she uses Kristy to introduce the reader to the various characters in the small Tweed River-side village she settles in. This provides the modern reader a window into life a hundred years ago in England and Scotland. How they lived, what they did to pass the time, and their various attitudes. Most of her characters are either wealthy enough to live without working, or have husbands who are working and wealthy. It is this idle class that we get a glimpse into, where the women go around visiting each other, having tea, or dinner with others of their class.

The second thing I've discovered about O Douglas is that she adores small boys. She grew up with a bunch of older brothers, and I gather she ran with them in all their adventures. And this love of the life of boys is reflected in all the stories I've read so far. In this case, we have two boys and one girl. The girl hardly gets mentioned. One boy is devoted to fishing, and gets some air time. But it is the young, "bad" boy who is always getting into mischief who is the star of the show. You'll see this repeated in the next O Douglas book report as well. Which is fine, I've nothing against it, I just find it interesting at  how large part these boys play in her stories.

Though the character studies play an important part in this novel, there is a plot to it, several romances, the question of the fate of the children, and several of the characters evolving as the story goes along. I enjoy the glimpse of the past and the company of nice people going about their everyday life. I think some of the other woman authors of this period wrote more focused novels, but I enjoy my time spent in the company of O Douglas's creations.

My Audiobooks On Spotify

 

I am happy to announce that a selection of my stories will be available as audiobooks on Spotify.

Spotify recently announced that they will be offering to convert ebooks into auto-narrated audiobooks at no cost to indie-publishers. So, of course, I've taken advantage of their offer. I must admit that I've not made any deep study of audiobooks on Spotify, but I've heard here and there, that they have a growing business in audiobooks, and that Audible, though still commanding the majority of audiobook sales is seeing its market share fall as a result of competition like Spotify.

The best news, for me, is that I can offer them for free on Spotify. That said, I have very guarded expectations. The other venues offering my audiobooks, are more focused on readers, with the audiobooks offered as an alternative to ebooks. With Spotify it is an audiobook play only, and I'm not sure how many people, if anyone, will come across my books. However, I don't believe in passing up opportunities. We'll get to see just how free audiobooks on Spotify fare.

There are, however significant limitations at present. The first is the length of books they are willing to convert. That limit is 500,000 characters. When I tried to upload my first published book, A Summer in Amber I discovered it was too long to be made into an audiobook. My next attempt, The Darval-Mers Dossier which I knew to be shorter, worked. The Darval-Mers Dossier comes in with about 290,000 characters. To put that into real terms, its print version runs 164 pages. On the other hand, A Summer in Amber comes in at 626,000 characters, with a print version running 335 pages. 

Given those character limit, I will be able to offer only a limited selection of my books. I believe I'll focus on the two series that I know will come in under the limit. They are:

The Red Wine stories that include;

The Darval-Mers Dossier, The Founders' Tribunal, The Isle House Ghost, and The Poison Pill Will

And the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories;

The Secret of the Tzarista Moon, The Secrets of Valsummer House, Shadows of an Iron Kingdom, and The Aeirie of a Pirate Prince 

While I have several other books that would likely clock in under 500,000 characters including, Keiree, A Night in Isvalar and Some Day Days, I will hold off on those at least until I see what, if any, sales and feedback I garner from Spotify.

Update; I discovered that the program is limited to five books only. In addition, you can only make four "generations" of a book, i.e. revise it four times, including setting it it. For instance, if you change the voice after generating the audiobook, but before submitting it, that is still a generation. And once made, they can't be swapped out for a different book. So it looks like it will be the Red Wine Series, all of which are now available, and The Secret of the Tzarista Moon available on 1 October 2026 for now.

Like any new service there is a learning curve. 

You first have to find where to apply. It isn't on their usual web page. You'll have to Google to find it. Try "Spotify for Authors." You have to sign up for Spotify, if you aren't already.

It is only open to residents of the United States. You'll have to register your bank and tax info, so they can distribute your royalties, and file tax info to the tax people.

Once signed up and on the site you'll be given, or choose some company id, since this system is also used for companies uploading their self-produced audiobooks as well. To upload your ebook, you'll need to select the ebook input option. You then upload you ePub file... and the funny thing is that it generates your blub automatically. No doubt some AI scraped it off Amazon or some other site, which was weird. You then put in all the usual information, title, genre, categories, etc.

They offer a modest selection of voices, some 6 male and 4 female voice to choose from, including an English voice, which is the one I always choose. It sounded pretty darn human. They also provide a list of words that you might need to edit the pronunciation for, which is helpful.

An interesting twist is that you can select a 3-5 minute selection from your story to act as a free teaser for the book, making it easy for listeners to sample your writing and the narration without buying.

All in all, while the set up is different form the other services, it is also the same. The same basic pieces looking and acting a little differently. Audiobook covers have to be 2400x2400 pixels or larger.

As of this post I have only uploaded my trial story, The Darval-Mers Dossier, but I will be uploading the rest of the planned books over the next week or two.

Spotify users should be able to find The Darval-Mers Dossier on Spotify HERE for free.

I'll let you know how this experiment goes. Stay tuned.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.202)

 

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

Another bookbube book. A number of people, including my wife, had said very favorable things about another book by this author, but the premise of this story of his sounded more inviting.  So here we are...

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.

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger DNF 45%

This book was sold to me as a homage to Mark Twain's Huck & Tom. It may be, but a homage to the dark side of those stories. I'm not a fan of dark fiction. I read 200 pages of it in the first day, before I realized I was just making myself read it, without really enjoying it. I guess I continued because he's said to be such a good writer. Still, good or not, half way through, I decided that it wasn't the book I was looking for. I had other books to read. So I moved on. 

Still, what is the story about, you ask?

The story involves two brothers, 12 & 16, orphans in a Minnesota orphanage mostly devoted to Native American children. Through the eyes of the 12 year old narrator, we are given a glimpse of the grim life of orphans in 1930's America; poor food, lots of work, no fun, and physical and sexual abuse. The younger brother is constantly getting into trouble. A hundred or so pages in, he incurs the wrath of a brutal sexual abuser, who drags him out to the quarry where he intends to kill him, eventually. The boy, however, manages to escape his clutches, narrowly escapes falling to his death, which is a fate the abuser does not escape, thanks the thoughtless action of the boy. Then, together with his older brother, they rescue the the recently orphaned daughter of one of the workers from the clutches of the evil orphanage director, rob the orphanage of its ill-gotten gains, and then, along with the 12 year old's his best friend, a mute Indian, they take off in a canoe down the Gilead River. Along the way they meet more unpleasant people, the 12 year old shots and kills a murderous farmer who, in a mad fit of anger, probably would have killed them. Not long after this point, I decided I didn't care to travel with them further.

I have several problems with this book. Unlike Mark Twain's boys, this reads like the narration of an adult. It is simply too nuanced for a 12 year old orphan narrator to be believable. And yet, not nuanced enough, at least in one respect. That being the phycological toll of the violence of the story, including the killing of two men by the narrator. This is not touched on. The 12 year old remorselessly kills bad guys like a pulp story hardboiled PI. Of course a first person narrator tells the story how and what they wish to tell it, it is probably the 12 year old as an old man, but still, I found the story told neither believable nor entertaining.

The second problem is related to the first; the unnecessary amount of violence. I would think you could take a canoe trip down Minnesota's Gilead River in the 1930's without everyone you meet being either a murderous farmer, an Indian cowboy recognized you and likely intent on turning you in for a reward, or a band of religious con men. Moreover, I'd have thought spending several full days traveling downstream in a canoe would put a fair amount of miles behind them, and the events they were fleeing. And that any news story concerning a three runaway orphan boys would not make much of a splash in the smalltown mid-America newspapers of the 1930's, and yet everyone they meet recognizes them, seemingly only to propel the plot, while conveniently, they appear to have been the only people canoeing on the river, sailing down it all day unobserved. As a result, I found that the incidents felt contrived for the sake of keeping the plot moving along rather than an organic reflection of the time and place of the story's setting. 

Huck Finn certainly encountered bad people, but there was also the joy of adventure. This story lacks that leavening element.

Nitpicks, perhaps, but the bottom line is that I found the story contrived, and one that brought no joy. Not my type of book.