Dark, soulful tales that haunt long after the last page.
Gone to Texas by Forrest Carter My rating: 4 of 5 stars The movie The Outlaw Josey Wales is probably my favorite Western film, and one of my favorite all-around movies. I’ve been watching it for years and years without reading the source material, so I was a little nervous about taking on the novel…
I had to downgrade my old rating of 5 stars on this one. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that. While I still found The Riddle-Master of Hed to be worthy of 5 stars, re-reading the second book in the series some 20 years after my last previous read, I just didn’t enjoy Heir of…
“I shouldn’t like to give too enthusiastic a review of this novel,” the reviewer said. “Oh darling, can’t you at least try?” his conscience pleaded. “Perhaps,” he answered, smiling. “But only after I’ve had another whiskey.” He paused as his sarcastic side muttered something into his beard. “What’s that, old boy?” the reviewer asked. “To…
What the heck did I just read? It’s been a long, long time since I finished a book with such thoroughly unlikable characters. There was absolutely nobody in this story that was likable. Not even a little. The writing itself is beautiful, and was the only thing that kept me slogging through the train wreck…
The following is a story I wrote for my AP Literature class’s 4th quarter benchmark test this year. It makes allusions to every novel and play we read in class during the school year (except Fahrenheit 451, which I forgot to work in) and they had to answer questions to identify the source. How many…
For their fourth quarter benchmark I required my Leadership students to write and present an essay about what they hope to leave behind as their legacy. Some asked me about my own. This is what I would have liked to have written/said to them. For many decades now I have hoped to leave a literary…
After Obsession, the young adult novel I wrote with Carrie Jones (released in the U.S. in Sept. 2011) is now available in German. I really like this cover! To mark the German-language release, Darkstars Fantasy News has published a brand new interview with me and Carrie. You can read it here. Or you can read…
After having watched a good film adaptation of this novel several weeks ago, I had high hopes for the actual book. In places it lived up to those, but overall, just not so much. Knowing where Greene was going with the story made me impatient with the long buildup and non-linear format of the first…
One of the more interesting zombie novels I’ve read. This one is set about 20 years after the zombie apocalypse and focuses on a 10-year-old girl who is very smart, but must come to terms with the fact she is a Hungry, which is the name given to zombies in this story (the word zombie…