Delving back into my pile of indie-reviewed work after not reading much for the last month or so, I decided to kick off the coming spring season with this interesting-sounding conspiracy thriller based on some very topical events. The author contacted me through theindieview.com in January offering up this intriguing premise: what if the LHC at Cern had caused the Fukushima Earthquake? What if switching it on has been responsible for a number of “natural” disasters in the last few years? Continue reading
independent published books
A Sci Fi Romance Story for Valentine’s Day
Yes it is that time of year again, the time that lovers buy each other chocolates and flowers, go out for a meal and sip wine into the small hours and generally revel in how loved up they feel. Well, not for everyone. Want a bit of romance in your reading? Believe it or not, I have written something with a slight smidgen of cupid’s arrow. I don’t expect to make a habit of it and the story still has its roots firmly planted in sci fi. Continue reading
Make Your NY Resolution to Read More
Hrrenvolk and Other Stories
It’s dark, it’s cold and if you live in the UK at the moment the endless stream of hurricanes is probably getting you down. You can’t go out in that and after the excesses of Christmas you probably can’t afford to go out. Maybe you decided to set yourself a New Year’s Resolution to read more? It’s cheaper than a night out at a club and you don’t have to get an overpriced taxi back home afterwards. Do you want to support an indie published author? Perhaps my recently released short story collection (Herrenvolk and Other Stories) might aid that. It has ten short stories featuring science fiction, fantasy and horror.
Start with a bit of light reading for these dark, miserable evenings. Read a light-hearted short story about a dinner date with a science fiction twist. In a post climate-change world, two people out for an intimate meal have very different ideas about the meaning of the world “travel”. Continue reading
Book Review: So Say the Waiters by Justin Sirois
Poor Henry, suffering from all the effects of the breakup of a long term relationship. He has lost a lot of weight, is going through a lot of soul-searching, he misses his ex and desperately wants her to take him back. He sends her text messages with “I miss you” tacked onto the end and then he mentally punishes himself afterwards for doing it. He seems lost, emotionally exhausted and looking for some new distractions in life. He is then, so utterly not the quintessential hero. He’s a protagonist that most of us can relate to even if we don’t actually like him as a character. Continue reading
Book Review: About Time By Mike Murphey
It is 2044 and the great mystery of physics in our time has finally been realised – yes, we have finally managed to travel backwards through time. Through a combination of money from world governments and giant corporations, everybody has come together to find discover what they can about the universe, to see if there is any commercial gain from doing so and to finally discover if you really can kill your own grandfather before you are even born. Continue reading
Angel’s Mass: A Ghost Story for Christmas
Below is an excerpt from my Christmas ghost story Angel’s Mass from the volume Herrenvolk and Other Stories. It is 1345 and the story is of young Brother Edmund of Tintern Abbey (south Wales) who is woken in the early hours of Christmas Eve by a ghostly voice calling him to the newly built church. What is the nature of the ghost? And what does it want with Brother Edmund? Find out in Herrenvolk and Other Stories, available exclusively on Amazon Kindle.
Get it now: amazon.co.uk | amazon.com | amazon.ca Continue reading
Book Review: Bill Smith Goes to College by David Stag
Ah, the university life (or college life to the Americans). I went as a mature student so I didn’t have the wild parties, the “Halls of Residence” experiences and living in a country with Frat and Sorority houses, going into the book I thought that most of the culture and the humour would be lost on me. Certainly, I could relate to some of it from friend’s experiences and things that go on around a university campus but no matter… as a university graduate I hoped to enjoy most of this anyway. Continue reading
Book Review: Dr. Homebrew by Snow Hudson
This short(ish) novelette is an intriguing tale of Doctor Mason, a psychiatrist by day who goes about his job largely uneventfully. But what happens when the doors to his practice close? He goes down into a secret vault – not to unleash secret and dastardly plans to overthrow the world powers… but to brew beer. This in his world is illegal and the Police are hot on the trail of the “Drink Criminal”. Continue reading
Who Wants a Free ebook?
Before I go giving away free stuff, I have good reason to be doing so. Finally, I unleash upon the world my first ebook collection. It is a collection of short stories going back right to when I started writing short stories regularly and putting my work on Elfwood – so some of these are 15 years old or more. They have been given significant editing and in some cases, new events have been inserted. In one or two cases, I have restored older material that never made it to Elfwood because I felt it was too long. There were some cases where I felt that the work suffered for having cut it down to that extent. Stories are as long as they need to be! The resulting work feels more complete. Continue reading
Book Review: First Aide Medicine by Nicholaus Patnaude
One of the best things about being an indieview reviewer is that you get requests for all sorts of stuff, the sort of things you might not ordinarily consider picking up. This one and the one I am about to read, might both qualify in that category. This is a short novella, around 17,000 words, but bulked out with a lot of illustrations. There’s no harm in trying something a little different. Continue reading