Art, Products, and Me

A Self  Portrait of An Author in the style of Van Gogh 

I'll start by defining the terms as I use them in this essay.

Art. I use the term very broadly: art is the product of a creative effort to bring something of one's own into the world. 

Artist. This includes everyone who uses their creative talents, for example; painters, writers, composers, musicians, dancers, photographers, and a host of other creative endeavors. In this essay I am usually these terms referring to stories and writers.  

Product. A product is an item offered for sale. In this essay, we are talking about a work of art, like a story, that is offered, or created for sale.

Amateur. While there are several definitions of amateur, the one I'll be using is that of someone who produces a work of art for the joy of the process and results, rather than for money. A pure amateur does not create to sell their work. However, I feel that an artist may still be considered an amateur, if their primary purpose is the creation of art even if it is offered for sale.

Professional. A professional is someone who works, or creates, for the purpose of making money, not necessarily someone who is proficient at what they do.

Right then.

I have always considered myself an artist. I work in inks, paints, and words, and have for the last seventy-some years. The evolution of my art has been a long and enjoyable journey. At several points in my life, I have attempted to sell my creative works for money, and so, perhaps for several years I could've been considered a professional artist, though not very successful one. However, for most of my life I have pursued art as an amateur. I still do so today.

In the case of painting. At the age of 42 I decided to get semi-serious at painting, and for some 11 years, I painted 30 to 40 watercolor paintings a year. At 53, I decided to give making a living as a professional artist a chance - a now or never sort of thing - and with enough money saved up to pay my room and board for a few years, I quit my day job to paint. I sold my paintings online, and over the course of 5 years or so, I grossed some $20K. I had the starving artist thing down pat. 

However, this episode taught me some important lessons. 

The first is that as a professional, you create for your customers, not for yourself. This is very basic, but what I discovered is that I didn't like doing that. For example, I quickly learned that watercolor paintings command much less money than oils, so that within months I had to start teaching myself how to paint in oils. I can still remember sitting in front of the easel muttering "I hate this. I hate this" But like it or not, I needed to master oils and later acrylics. I also felt that I needed to follow trends in art and decor, i.e. the "hot" colors. Fashion rules commercial art. Moreover, I found that my potential customers preferred realism over abstractness. As a result of  I found myself painting pictures with the question "Will this sell?' always in mind. And well, realism wasn't, in my mind, my best work, and so, my best work wasn't getting out into the world. My dissatisfaction grew, and when the Great Recession took a bite out of my sales, I decided to wrap that endeavor up.

The type of painting that did not sell, but that I like. And yes, I did get to love painting in oil and then acrylics, so that being a professional and having to do what sold did, in fact, make me a better artist. Though my wife would disagree. But you can never please everyone. So please yourself.

I took my experience in art and applied them to my writing. I would write like an amateur, which is to say, I'd tell the stories I wanted to tell in the way I wanted to tell them. Customer preferences would be considered. I'd not write stories that I thought might appeal to the mass market wanted, unless they appealed to me as well. However, , my experience in art had shown me that there is a market for all art, it is just a matter of how large and how hard it is to reach it.

Unlike art, which is complete in and of itself, the end product of stories are books, which have to be published. If I wanted to write books, which I did, not publishing is not an option.

Luckily, this being the 21st century, there is nothing in the process of producing and selling  a book as an ebook, which requires money to change hands, so producing a book as a non-product product, as it where, i.e. a product that did not generate revenue is possible. There are two advantages to this approach; nothing is lost by selling it for free if you're not trying to make money in the first place, and second; it sells itself, which goes a long way towards solving the problem of finding a niche audience.

Thus, between ebooks and ebook stores, I could create art in the form of the stories I wanted to write, and still have some expectation of reaching an appreciative audience. Plus, I never had to ask myself, "Will it sell?" 

This not to say that I entirely ignore "the market" when writing my books. It is simply not a major concern of mine. For example, The Bright Black Sea is my bestselling book, by far. So, back in 2019 or so, I decided to return to that "universe" using a younger version of a character that appeared in that book. These stories became my Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventures. 

I have also come to realize that fantasy outsells science fiction, so I have steered away from science fiction to find other genres to at least label my books.

But sometimes I just don't care about what sells when writing a story. My Lorrian Novels, like Chateau Clare and Glencrow Summer are examples of this freedom. Though I pitch them in the blurb as cozy fantasy, they much closer to plain literary novels than most genre novels care to be. Sometimes this freedom to do something different, pays off. In my case, these books have found a good audience. They serve to illustrate that at mix of pure creativity with the widest possible (free) marketing can succeed, if making money is not your endgame.

I should add that I don't think there is anything at all wrong with using one's creative ability to make art for money. It is that in my case my tastes do not align with the mainstream, presenting me with a choice; do what sells, even if I don't like it, or do what I like, and don't expect it to sell in any great numbers. I chose the latter. 

The bottom line, for me, is that there is art, a joy, and there is work, i.e. a job. Many, if most artists dream of making art their job. But if you do, you no longer have two things, joy and work. You just have a job. 

 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 175)

 

More Kindle Unlimited books this week. More mysteries, but of a "cozy" variety this time around. Will cozy be the charm needed to enjoying mysteries? My first cozy mystery from two weeks ago, says no. But was that just a fluke? Read on.

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 Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood  C+

This is very much the archetype of "cozy mysteries" i.e. it involves ladies, one of which is at least elderly, investigating a murder in their village. In my search on  Amazon for both mysteries and humous stories, this appeared on both lists, so I decided to give it a try. Unlike most of the cozy mysteries, this book was traditionally published. And, I discovered after starting it, that it has been turned into a TV show that can be seen in the States on PBS's Masterpiece Mysteries. All of which gave me confidence that it had more going for it than that retired assassin book I tried a couple of weeks ago. Was it warranted?

Well... Yes. Maybe. I did read it to the end, which says something, more than desperation. And while it was written tongue in cheek with a genial nod to the conventions of the sub-genre to traditional publishing standards, and not to be taken too seriously, it was, okay-ish. However, it not only committed the mortal sin, in my opinion, of mysteries, i.e. having two murders, but it had three. Not good. The only saving grace is that, as I said, the story was not to be taken seriously.

You have the mystery of these murders. And though you might figure out the mystery in a general way, I don't think this is a reader solvable who-done-it. The setting is a small town set on the upper Thames River. The main character is an elderly widow living in a somewhat run down house on the river. She hears the gunshot that marks the first murder while swimming in the river, and thus gets involved in the mystery. Along the way, she meets a dog-watcher who knew the second victim, and the young wife of the curate who feels obliged to be the perfect housewife of the curate, but gets tempted by the adventure, along with the female police detective in charge of the case. The characters, though I presume fairly blog standard for this type of story, are the saving grace of the story, well written, likeable, each a character in their own right. The story earns its "C+" on the basis of these characters.

The exciting climax was, in my opinion, too long, too over wrought, really quite over the top. I mean, this is the first book in a series, the main character is going to live... I found myself skimming through it, which says something...  And the explanation of the mystery... motivations for the murders seemed rather thin, but I suspect that is par for the course. Bottom line; a good cozy mystery if that's your thing. I'm not a mystery fan, but if you are, you might want to consider this a "B" grade story or more.

The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods  DNF 67%

This book had several things going for it. It has a 4.1 star rating on Goodreads with 48K ratings. It has a first person narration, though with third person interludes from the past and a view of the romantic male lead's life. It was set somewhere else; in France. But it also had downsides. First off, it is a contemporary story, which I generally dislike. And as it went along it began to fall into well worn tropes... 

Gave it a good go, but alas, eventually I found that I had no desire to keep reading, since life, at my age, is to short to force myself to read something I'm not really enjoying.

The premise is that a 30 year old woman has been staying at home to take care of her mother with Parkinson's disease. After her mother dies, she,  at the urging of her father, sets out to start her own life, applying for and getting accepted as an assistant manager of a bakery on the Rue de Paris... Which she assumed was in Paris, but it is actually a small bakery in Compiegne, too small to really need an assistant manager. Which is one of several mysteries going on in the story including a maybe ghost, that we discover as we go along. Luckily, murder is not one of them, at least as far as I read. There is also a budding instant-romance plot with a very nice, rich, man as well.

Where the story goes off the rails for me is, first, it follows the bog-standard romance blueprint with the inevitable breakup, this time at the 2/3rds point. All that would have needed to prevent this, is an honest conversation. Who's fooling who here? We know they'll get back together and live happily every after. But then there is the second half of the story where our plucky hero steps up to help save the bakery from mean developers. And we know how that is going to end as well. 

In short, a cozy, sugar-sweet romance if you like that sort of thing. 

The Poison-Pill Will First Draft

I am happy to report that I have completed writing the first draft of another Red Hu/Wine novella, or two. The first, whose working title is now The Poison-Pill Will (nee The Little Game) clocked in at a modest 23K words. Then, like with The Isle House Ghost, I wrote a companion piece that will be publish it along with it. This time it is a 14.5K word long novelette/novella, entitled The Reckoning. These two pieces will complete my Red Wine Agency Prequel series. Maybe*.

Writing these two pieces took a week over two months, which is a slower pace than I used to be able to write at, but writing's not a race. I'm just glad I managed to get a complete first draft done. That's the hard part of writing for me - once I come up with a story, that is -  and both are an accomplishment these days.

I still have a lot of work to do on these stories. Indeed, more than most of my first drafts, since the plot of The Poison-Pill Will is very thin, and the plot of The Reckoning is non-existent. I'm not able/willing to alter the plots, so I'll need to is enhance the characters, the setting/mood, and my writing style to make these stories worth publishing in my subsequent drafts.

This series has proven to be a godsend, in that as novellas and short stories, the scope of the story has been small enough for me to tackle and finish them, after having run into issues with my more ambitious novel. 

The Darval-Mers Dossier was suggested by one of my beta readers, however, the follow up stories are entirely accidental as in "any port in a storm" sort of way when the novel ran aground, so to speak. Not feeling capable of writing a real thriller novel, I envisioned them as prequels to the real fictional Red Wine Agency books that were featured in Chateau Clare. As such, I wanted them to show Redinal Hu's transformation into a secret operative within the rival Great House which I envisioned the fictional novels to be. This evolution has proved somewhat hard to do, given Red Hu's character as I write him. Still, seeing that these are the planned last stories in the series, I had to make that transition as plausible as I could. I think I still have some work to do on that.

The good thing is that I have the time to make it so. My tentative plan is to release these two stories as one volume sometime in the summer of 2026. 

In addition to the ebook of these two stories, I will combine all of the novellas and short stories into one omnibus print version, The Red Wine Dossiers mostly because I like to see my work on my book shelf.

*I find that I spent almost half of The Reckoning writing about one of the supporting characters in The Poison-Pill Will, for no good reason, assuming that I'm not going to continue the series. So why did I do it? Mostly because I like the character, and is a character who plays a role in the transformation of Red Hu into who I would imagine him to be in the fictional Red Wine Agency books. And, if I should ever continue the series, this character would be its co-star. But, as I said, I've no plans to continue on writing this series... 

What I am determined to do is to tackle that novel that I was working on before I started this series of novellas, starting today. I'm intended to finish it, no matter how boring it turns out to be. I'm going to embrace boring. Or so I say now. But if not, well maybe I have plan "C", or is it "D"? queued up.  

In any event, I'll talk more about that down the road, as well, more about The Poison-Pill Will and The Reckoning in future posts. Stay turned.

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 174)

 

Believe it or not, two more murder mysteries today. Both are pastiches. How do they fare against the originals?

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.

House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz  C+

If you like mysteries more than me, you will probably give this a grade of B. But me being me, I found it, okay. Just okay.

What makes this interesting is Horowitz's take on Sherlock Holmes. How does he write him different than Doyle? Or does he?

He writes his story with Doc Watson as the narrator, as in the originals. However, Watson is very elderly now, and the story written after the Great War and Holmes' death, so it is a bit more sentimental. But not only is Watson more sentimental, but so is Holmes. A lot more sentimental. Holmes is less remote, more friendly, and shown to be more human and haunted with guilt than Doyle's Holmes. He is also a little more stupid, at least when needed for the plot. For example, he visits an opium den to search for clues, without any sort of disguise, and thus falls into a trap. The real Holmes would never have done that. He would've gone as some sort of half-breed seaman or some such character that one would expect to find in a Dockland opium den, just as Nayland Smith would've done. And Holmes lets Watson tag along as well for back-up, something the real Holmes would not done, nor needed to do.

There are have been several thousand Sherlock Holmes pastiches written. I've maybe read a handful of them, so I can't say with any certainty just how this pastiche compares to the run of the mill Holmes pastiche, but I don't think that it necessarily stands out. As I said at the top, fine for what it is. If you can't get enough Sherlock Holmes, then you won't go wrong with this book. But I don't think it's a must read for fans of the great Holmes.

Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz  C

One of the essential ingredient of the original Sherlock Holmes stories is cleverness. And conciseness. Both of those elements, I feel, are lacking in this book. 

The premise of this book is that it takes place immediately after the supposed death of Holmes at Reichenbach Falls. Both Moriarty and Holmes are presumed dead. Enter a Pinkerton Agent who is following an utterly ruthless criminal from America, Clarence Devereax, who has taken over the role of crime boss of England from Moriarty, after his organization was put out of business by Holmes. This Pinkerton agent, Chase, partners with Scotland Yard Agent Athelney Jones to track down this ruthless American gangster and his trusted thugs.

This investigation is conducted much like a game of Clue, going to different houses, clubs, and embassies asking if Clarence Devereax is there. Along the way we meet minor characters from the original stories and references to them. Horowitz also tosses in a lot of period color and such, but as I said, going around asking Devereax's henchmen if he is there, (and no, he's not), gets rather tedious. And anything but clever. You also have a lot of people getting their throat cut or shot along the way, something thankfully missing in the original stories.

There is a twist at the end, which I won't spoil, except to say what you think of it will likely affect what you think of the book. I was bored with the story, and I must admit that I was doing some skim reading towards the end, just to finish it, so I didn't care about the twist. I don't think much of this story made sense, if you stop to think about it, but I can't go into why without spoiling it.

Sherlock Holmes does not appear in this story. But if you are one of his fans, you might like this, but I believe is rating is less than the Silk House, so it is likely more divisive. 

And with this book, I think I've read enough of Anthony Horowitz's books to say, "enough."

The Ephemeral Career of Authors

A Self  Portrait of An Author in the style of Van Gogh 

Hope springs eternal. At least in the minds of would-be authors. It amazes me how many people, myself included, want to be writers. I think most avid readers would like to write their own books. And these days, is seems, most do, dreaming of making a living working in their pajamas for the rest of their lives. I did dream of being making a living as author, though a long time ago, though working in my pajamas was not one of my ambitions. 

Sadly, it seems to me that very few aspiring authors have looked beyond landing their first book or series deal. Because if they had, they would know that even if they got very lucky and landed a publishing deal, the chances of staying published, is also very, very slight. Especially these days.

I have heard it said that half of the traditionally published authors are out of the business, i.e. having no publishing deal, after their first contract, or within five years or less. And that 90% are out of the business within ten years. Now these numbers may well be just anecdotical, but I am also pretty certain that there is more than a grain of truth in those numbers, since, even with my very limited exposure to mid-list authors, my own anecdotical experience illustrates the shortness of a traditional writing career in the 21st century. Off the top of my head, I have followed the careers of four authors over the last decade. One makes his living off of his writing, that being Mark Lawrence, who has sold over 3 million books since 2011. The other three are "mid-list" authors. Aryan works part time, Donne has a full time job, and Shackle is a stay at home dad.

I will use the number of ratings on Goodreads as an approximate yardstick of book sales. According to Mark Lawrence's research you might multiply rating by a factor of 4 to 5 to get a ballpark estimate of the number of sales. Imprecise, but good enough.

Let's start with Stephen Aryan. He had a YouTube channel that offered writing and publishing advice as a "Traditionally Published Fantasy Author". I even joined his Discord channel for half a year or so. He published his debut fantasy trilogy beginning in 2015 with one of the big five publishing house.

Aryan's first three books have, 3.3K, 1.6K 1.3K ratings, good enough, back then, to earn him a second contract. This second series, however, garnered only, 1K, .6K, .5K ratings, and didn't earn out, so he wasn't offered a third contract. 

He did, however, land a two-book contract with a small press, the first book published in 2021 garnered 3.4K ratings, but the second only has 1.K ratings. Perhaps on the performance of the first book, he landed a second contract for a three book historical fantasy series. The first book only has .7K ratings, and well, the other two books were dead on arrival, with about 200 and 100 ratings. After the first book in the series came out, he dropped "Traditionally Published" from his title. The handwriting may have been on the wall. When I wrote this piece he did not have a book deal - 10 years after his debut*. He self-published a novella in 2023 and hopes to publish the sequel this year. In the meanwhile his agent has had two of his novels out on submission since the fall, so he may make a comeback. But as it is now, he is out of the traditional publishing business.

*UPDATE

Since writing this post in January, I received Aryan's February newsletter in which he hints that he has indeed, sold the two novels he had out for submission, though the papers have to be signed before he can officially announce this. In the newsletter, he offered this insider's look at book publishing:

"Publishing is a weird, weird business and moving forward in this career is never a straight road. I thought it was a set of steps but it really isn't. It's snakes and ladders. Sometimes it's two steps forward and one back. Getting published was incredibly difficult. These days, I would say it's more difficult to stay published. In my decade, I've seen a lot of people fall off and disappear for various reasons."

While this is a "happy ending" in Mr Aryan's quest to remain a published author, it does confirm my observations about the often fleeting nature of a career as an author. I have further examples of this sad fact.

There is Alexa Donne, a YA author who also had a YouTube channel of writing advice. Her first YA science fiction book was published in 2018, earning 4.8K ratings, and a second one in 2020, with 4.6K ratings She then switched to YA thrillers with The Ivies in 2021, which garnered 19K ratings. She followed that with two more thrillers, the first garnering 5.3K ratings, and the second, 2K ratings. She is also no longer under contract and so would be considered out of the business. She has written a romance that she hopes to sell, but once again, it seems that when you fail to meet expectations, you are shown the door. Plus, you leave with a reputation of not meeting expectations, making it hard to get back into the business. 

Last we have the case of Mike Shackle. He was on the Aryan's Discord server when I was on, so I interacted with him a little. He was writing self-published fantasy novels when he got offered a traditional publishing book deal after submitting his work in one of those open submission windows offered by Gollancz in England. His trilogy came out in 2019 thru 2021, garnering Goodreads ratings of 3.3K, 1.7K and 1.3K ratings, but apparently these numbers were not enough to offer him another contract. Though it should be noted that these are current numbers, after being something of a fantasy booktube darling, getting good reviews and guest appearances, as recently as last year on YouTube, so they were likely less when the last book was released. I know that he has written and self-published a number of crime novels since then, but when I went to his website the other day, where he was offering a series of short stories that readers could buy, I found that it no longer existed. Read into that what you want.

I am sure there are many similar stories on BookTok and other social media of which I am not a part of. But the fact that two out of three mid-list authors are seemingly out of the business within ten years of their debut novels, says something.  

There are two realities facing would-be authors; the first is that there is an overabundance of would-be authors, so they are expendable. And the second, because they are expendable, the industry audition them, one after the other, and discard them if they fail to be a bestselling author, the ones who pay the bills.

All of this makes it seem nice to be a self-published author. No one can fire you. You can strike your tent and move on, but your fate is in your hands. Now all of these author have made a whole lot more money than I have, and likely would've made if I tried to sell my books like everyone else. They had a "career" and I didn't. But by tempering my expectations and defining my yardstick of success as sales rather than revenue, I'm still in the business. And a success by the standards I set. 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 173)

 

This week begins my 2026 reads. I found both of these books on Kindle Unlimited, and both are contemporary murder mysteries. One is "cozy" the other is not.

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 Retired Assassin's Guide to Country Gardening by Naomi Kuttner  DNF 12%

The series is titled "Assassin's Guide" and the listing calls it a New Zealand Paranormal Cozy Mystery. Naomi Kutter lives in New Zealand, and I thought we might get something New Zealandish. As far as I got into the story, it seems to be a bog standard cozy-ish murder mystery with a very generic feel to it. A cookie cutter murder mystery story with, I guess from the subtitle, ghosts. 

I didn't get to the ghost.

I only got as far as the murder. 

The premise: a retired assassin, Dante, buys a home in a NZ village. Then along comes a rich developer, Ted, who seems to know enough about him to want to hire him for a one night bodyguard job where he plans to wines and dines the developers in hopes of sell them the village. He threatens to start rumors about Dante unless he agrees to do the job. Daunte does. Already, I'm out of the story. If Ted knows enough about him to want to hire him as a bodyguard i.e. that he's a dangerous man, he should also know enough not to blackmail him into doing so. And Dante, even if he is trying to put that life behind him, should be tough enough not to be blackmailed into accepting the offer, but to, instead, threaten Ted with, shall we say, consequences, should rumors crop up. This type of fuzzy thinking to aid in plotting the story, really annoys me, even if we turn a blind eye to "the " Ted knows anything about Dante in the first place.

As for the mystery. After deciding not to continue, I pages ahead to find out if the most obvious murderer did indeed do it. And he did. I don't know enough about cozy mysteries to know if the mystery is important or not. Maybe the mystery being so obvious is not a minus. But I have to wonder; did the author really think her murder mystery was clever? Or does this reflect a lack of reading actual mysteries outside of the cozy genre? I must admit that I find a lot of self-published works are written by people who do not appear to be very widely and well read outside of a very narrow genre. On the other hand, it may be that they know their readers' tastes who aren't ones who don't read outside of a very specific genre, and so, with books written to very specific markets, they produce often simple books for simple readers. Who knows?

Perhaps, after my three months of Kindle Unlimited, I might have a better idea if this is the case.

Certainly in this case, this reads like a very ordinary book for this genre, which is probably a plus for its target audience. But I'm looking for something different.

A minor gripe is that it is formatted with every "enter" separated by a blank line, rather than by indentations. I find this method annoying. I don't like reading chunks of words. I want the story to flow.

So, all in all, off to a DNF start 2026. But then 2025 started with a DNF as well, and it turned out to be a great reading year, so there is still hope. 

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz B-

There're a forest of murder mysteries in the Kindle Unlimited library which I'm going to have to find my way out of. But this one I had already intended to read. I had placed a hold on it in my library's ebook catalog. So this is a premeditate murder mystery book.

If you recall the previous Horowitz book, The Marble Hall Murders, you will no doubt recall that the twist in that story was that there was a second, fictional mystery story set within the "real" mystery. A character in that book was writing a mystery story, and the point of view character in the story, an editor, was reading the first two installments of that story, which we, the readers, read along with the editor.

This story also has a twist. The twist here is that the narrator of the story is Anthony Horowitz himself. He is "Watson" to a modern day Sherlock Holmes by the name of Hawthorne. Hawthorne is a fictional consulting detective hired by the police to investigate a fictional murder. Horowirtz, the author of almost a hundred books, from children's books to adult mysteries, as well as a screenwriter for shows and movies including Foyle's War, blends his real life seamlessly into this fictional murder case. 

Hawthorne is a modern Sherlock Holmes clone, even to the point of using his observational prowess to make accurate deductions. In this story, Hawthorne approaches Horowitz with the idea that Horowitz would accompany him on his investigation of a recent murder, record it, and then write a story based on it, splitting the book royalties 50-50. At first Horowitz resists the idea, but when challenged at a book festival audience member to write something real, instead of fantasies, he decides to take Hawthorne up on his offer.

The story involves the murder of a wealthy lady on the very day she decides to arrange her own funeral. Coincidence or not? Unlike his last mystery, it is not overlong, and kept me guessing as to who done it. I don't think you can, but that, I think, is preferable to sticking in an obvious clue to "play fair." like the last Heyer mystery I read... and well, DNF'ed, not to mention the one above.

As I said when reviewing the Marble Hall Murders, Horowitz is a good writer, and he tells an interesting story filled with damaged characters. This is the first of five books with a sixth coming this year. I don't think I will continue with the series, but I might try his Sherlock Holmes story, also available on KU.

Spoiler Alert

 

I have finally finished reviewing my 2025 books, so the next issue of the Saturday Morning Post will be the first to discuss the books I've sampled or read in 2026. 

Over the holidays Amazon offered three months of access to Kindle Unlimited for the low, low price of $.99. I decided to take them up on their offer, though, based on my previous experience last year, with no great expectations. Since all of the first dozen books I will be presenting come out of KU, spoiler alert; my expectations have been met. I only finished half of the 12 books I have started. 

This year I have a better technique to search for the "free" KU books than I used last year, which was just to go through the list of the suggested books on my Kindle app. The new method is to search by genre on Amazon with the "Kindle Unlimited" box checked, which gives me only KU enrolled books. I search them mostly, I will admit, by their covers and titles. Mostly what I'm looking for is something that may be original, since many of the covers yell "Me too!", i.e. telling the potential buyers that they are clones of the popular novels in their genre, at least in self-published books. I'm looking for the books that aren't written to the current hot market.

In a very real way, I am simply sampling books; searching for the hidden gems. And as such, "reviewing" each book that I sample might be seen as a bit unfair, since I do not give the book a full chance to reveal its full worth. However, I feel that I do give each book enough of a chance to draw me in, and if it doesn't, I can explain why. As such, the "review" is as much or more about me and my tastes as it is of the book itself, which I usually acknowledge that in the review. Most of the books I read come with high star ratings and many are quite popular, so, clearly I am not the typical of most of these books. Still reviewing them gives me a chance to talk about writing.

The books I have sampled to date are a mixture of traditionally published books, some older pre-2000 books, some post 2000 books, and some self-published. I started off with mysteries, which regular readers of this blog will know, is not my favorite type of story. That choice alone may've contributed to the DNF total. Then I switched to sea stories, but, alas, they fared no better. 

As a regular blogger, I guess I can be considered a "content creator" as YouTubers like to call themselves. As such, there is a certain pressure to create content, and in the case of my reviews, read books, whether I want to or not. I find myself somewhat in that position; I'm currently not very motivated to read books. I may be experiencing what those YouTubers call, a "reading slump" or a "reading burn out" and perhaps part of the reason for so many DNF's is that I'm not in a reading mood these days. So I don't, even when I am in the midst of a book. However, it may also be a case of not having a compelling book to read, so that after a day or two of not picking up the book I've started, I simply decide that the book is not worth continuing. It gets the "Did Not Finish" designation and a post discussing why it failed to engage me. It is hard to know where to lay the blame for that; on me in a reading slump, or on the book being not a book for me.

The fact that I am a picky reader certainly had contributed to my DNF rate. I know what I want, and have no problem putting down a book if it does not deliver what I look for in a story. I feel no obligation to finish any book I start. At the start of 2026 I am sampling books of unknown qualities in a search for my next favorite authors, and so I am a lot less picky about the books I'm auditioning. As such, process itself is prone to produce many more disappointments than if I was reading the books of known authors.

Hopefully, I will find some gems before my subscription runs out. So far, only two books earned a B- grade, the rest that I completed were only C or C+ reads. .

As for those DNF'ed books; some simply did not appeal to me for various reasons that I discuss in their reviews. Others, however, had flaws that, as a writer, I could not overlook. Reading stories as a writer, I am sometimes peeking behind the curtain, so to speak, and questioning the author's choices. And there are certain choices that annoy me, such as having characters do a dumb things just to drive the plot along. Nor do I like meandering narratives, or using very unlikely events or premises to make the story work, with a lot of handwaving. And plot holes. I hate plot holes. And being a critic, I like to point those things out. Flawed books are gist for my mill. Which, if I am honest, is why I bother to review DNF'ed books.

So, while I would love to be positive in all the books I present to you, I fear we're in a weedy patch at the moment. Hopefully, I'll find some gems...But if not, I have a wall of books that I can turn to, when I feel like reading a known good book. But until my subscription runs out, I will be looking for those KU gems...