Book review: Misery’s Fire by Kim Jewell

28 Tuesday Sep 2010

Posted by A. J. Braithwaite in Indie writing, Reviews, Websites, YA fiction

The books I’ve reviewed here so far have all been available from Smashwords. This is the first Authonomy book I’ve reviewed. As the books on Authonomy are not really published, but are on the way to publication, I’m not sure of the etiquette around this. But in the hope that I’m not breaking some unwritten rule, I’ll go ahead and review it anyway. One of the main disadvantages is that you can’t download it onto an ereader, but if that doesn’t bother you, read on.

Misery's Fire

Misery’s Fire is about 19 year-old Grant Williams, who wakes up in Hell after avenging the death of his sister in a fatal fire. Nothing that the demons of Hell throw at him is capable of causing him greater suffering than the loss of his sister, Misery, so they decide to send him back to earth to endure an alternative Hell: High School.

The descriptions of Hell and its activities drew me into the book straight away – I love the idea of the denizens of Hell being responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes and, er, potholes. Once back on Earth, Grant has to cope with a new body, four years younger than his old one, and find a way of surviving with no home, no money and no family.

I read the book at one sitting – I really wanted to know how Grant would manage to escape the clutches of Hell. The book is an enjoyable read and I’m sure there will be plenty of other fans of YA books out there who would also find it engaging.

Small pleasures

21 Tuesday Sep 2010

Posted by A. J. Braithwaite in Indie writing, Websites

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I’ve talked about Feedbooks here before. Design-wise, I think it’s one of the best-looking ebook sites, it’s easy to upload and update books on, and I do like their reporting on where ebooks are being downloaded from. The other part of the site that I enjoy is the ability to see users’ bookshelves. There’s something deeply satisfying for an ‘indie’ author in seeing their work on a virtual shelf alongside more established writers. This screenshot has my book on a user’s shelf near to works by D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and John Buchan (Jerome K. Jerome was just off the screen, too).

Feedbooks bookshelf

It’s a small pleasure, but a profound one. 😉

Plotting

20 Monday Sep 2010

Posted by A. J. Braithwaite in Websites, Writing

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A discussion on one of the KindleBoards forums/fora last week caught my eye. The original poster asked whether you need to have a plan before you start writing.

The responses (predictably) ranged from ‘yes I plan everything out in advance’ to ‘plotting kills novels’. Interesting. One of the respondents mentioned the Snowflake method, which I’ve just read up on and which sounds as though it might be useful.

Like most first-time novelists, I didn’t have a well-thought-out plot for The Roman and the Runaway. By the time I got down to writing it in earnest in 2007, I realised that I only had half a novel (part one of the book as it is now). Those were the scenes I had been carrying in my mind for the previous twenty years. It was another year and a half before I got past that road-block and was able to write parts two and three.

My metaphor for the process of writing the last two parts is that it felt like I was doing a brass-rubbing. The story existed but was hidden and I needed to work hard to reveal the details of it, which were revealed, line by line.

I’m working on a sequel when time allows (which is not often!). This story has a central idea and I’ve written a number of scenes (around 17,000 words) but there is, as yet, no detailed plot. I’m comfortable with that, because it’s my hobby and there’s no rush for this story to be finished. I can imagine that if I was writing to deadlines and had a publisher demanding to know where the sequel was, then it would be much more important to have those detailed plans in place and be writing to meet them.

Sounds a lot less fun, though.

Free book! Only $1.24!

07 Tuesday Sep 2010

Posted by A. J. Braithwaite in Websites

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One of the useful things about having a book on Smashwords is the way that the site acts as a distributor to other ebook retailers. The Roman and the Runaway has now been available through the Apple, Barnes and Noble and Kobo stores for a few months.

Today I noticed that the book is also appearing in the Diesel ebook store. Where there is one significant difference:

Diesel's price

Where it is free on the other sites, with Diesel, the book is priced at $1.24. I went back to look at the Diesel announcement on the Smashwords blog and can’t see any mention of this price change for usually-free Smashwords books. I assume that none of that money will be coming my way.

I could choose to opt out of the Diesel distribution, but that seems fairly pointless. Perhaps giving the Diesel people $1.24 per sale for the privilege of being listed on their site is worthwhile? I don’t know. I do know that I wasn’t very happy to see a price tag on my book.

Interesting Authonomy news

01 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by A. J. Braithwaite in Websites

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I was pleased to see the announcement today from Authonomy that they will be changing the way their site works. I mentioned a while ago that the site, ostensibly designed to find good new books, was suffering from a sort of social networking blanket-bombing. The Authonomy team accept that this is the case:

In recent months, we’ll admit that the site has been suffering from a kind of ‘vote inflation’ where support was given (or traded) very freely and as a result the rank of all books has been somewhat cheapened. The site functionality supported this and, until now, we haven’t stopped it.

So they’re going to somehow change the system to make this gaming less possible. I’ll be interested to see how this works. I drifted away from Authonomy for a while because I found all the ‘I’ll back you if you’ll back me’ nonsense distracting, but I’ve been popping back in of late and am still finding some great things to read there. One part-novel that I particularly enjoyed in recent weeks was The Cambridge List by Henry Miller. It’s a revenge tale, narrating the story of a failed classics student from Cambridge whose mind is occupied by Greek gods after taking an experimental anti-depressant drug.

The site is well worth visiting for the chance to read things that are simply not available anywhere else. But it will be even better if they can fix the social-networking madness.