Jimi Cabot made one mistake as a starving college student. When she went to work for the San Francisco Police Department, it nearly cost her the job. The union stepped in and they had to reinstate her. They did so by assigning her to the duty nobody wants, Grinder Squad. Grinders are people who use back room surgeries to enhance their bodies with computer chips, and various kinds of hardware. Jimi is sure that if she can just bust one grind shop, it will be her ticket back. Paired with veteran cop, she soon learns that Grinder Squad is a cash-cow for the department. They are nothing more than glorified patrol cops, and generally get the worst assignments. Matchless is the most wanted grinder of all time. He disappeared years ago, leaving only the evidence of those he enhanced during his career. With these pieces, Jimi picks up the cold trail to try working her way back to more respectable duty.
Praise for Grinders
The creativity of this world is off the charts. Every page brings some new wonder or futuristic element that is vividly portrayed. Between the story and inventions, I was mesmerized. A highly original work!
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
An alien race with powers. We’ll destroy them before they take what’s ours. Investigator Bill Taggart is a troubled man with a missing wife. Ahead of a population transfer from Earth, he is sent to monitor the species known as the Indigenes. Prior attempts to catch them have been futile. The Indigenes are strong, fast, and appear able to “detect” human trackers. But Bill must succeed because he believes they know where his wife is.His lone crusade for answers leads him to a woman with top secret information on the Indigenes. When Laura also reveals an illegal conspiracy threatening to destroy the transfer programme, Bill realises everything he’s been told is a lie.Now they must join forces to discover who is behind the plot before Bill loses his wife and Laura’s betrayal is discovered. And it starts with learning who the Indigenes really are.
Praise for Becoming Human
I had a great time reading Becoming Human. I am hooked, definitely needing to read the rest of the Exilon 5 trilogy.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
There is an old and for the most part true adage among writers that a good writer will ‘show and not tell’. In other words, a good story ought not to be a technical report of events; rather, the reader should be made to mentally witness the events and understand for themselves what meaning there might be hidden behind them. In my opinion, there are very few authors who do this quite as well as Ernest Hemingway, and for the sake of this post I want to take a look at the way he accomplishes this using character dialogue in the short story, ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ (first published in Men Without Women 1927).
‘Hills Like White Elephants’ is set in a bar at a train station in the middle of nowhere and focuses on a very awkward conversation between an American man and a girl who have been apparently having an affair. The girl is pregnant and is travelling for an abortion. She is having second thoughts about it, or perhaps more accurately is having second thoughts about the affair she is having with this (perhaps older) man. He, on the other hand, is desperate for her to have the abortion so that their life can continue as it was before she got pregnant. What is so remarkable about this story is that absolutely none of this is explicitly stated. It is simply implied, not only through what the characters say but what the characters are also not saying. Indeed, there is very little narration in the story at all (only three or four short paragraphs); the vast majority of the story (which is just shy of 1500 words long) is made up of dialogue between these two (ex?)-lovers.
This is ‘showing, not telling’ at its very finest. There’s lots that can be said about this tiny little gem but the thing I really want to talk about is Hemingway’s extraordinary use of dialogue through-out this story.
The first five hundred words or so of the story feature the two characters having the most trivial of discussions: what they are drinking. They simply do not mention their relationship, their feelings about each other, the pregnancy, the abortion or anything else of significance before this point.
Five hundred words! That’s almost a third of the story done with already and they haven’t given any hint whatsoever that they are anything more than casual acquaintances. I should also mention that during this time, the characters knock back no less than three drinks each. This is a long, drawn out conversation about nothing punctuated by awkward silences. Hemingway doesn’t need to describe the awkward silences. They’re apparent to the reader through the fact that they get through so many drinks while saying so little. If we had any doubt that the silence was a tense one, we only need to look at how quickly their trivial conversation turns into conflict:
‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.’
‘Oh, cut it out.’
‘You started it,’ the girl said. ‘I was being amused. I was having a fine time.’
‘Well, let’s try and have a fine time.’
‘All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?’
‘That was bright.’
‘I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?’
‘I guess so.’
~ E. Hemingway 1927
Maybe I’m just more laid back than most, but it strikes me that these two characters are having anything but a ‘fine time’. This is a tense and awkward discussion about anything other than the one thing that’s on both of their minds.
When the conversation finally does come around to ‘the operation’, the two characters continue to dance around the subject and each other. They never once talk about a baby or an abortion, or even the fact that they have had any kind of physical relationship. Instead, Hemingway nudges the reader towards an understanding of what is going on for these two characters through their vague and awkward dialogue. The best clue we have that the girl is going for an abortion (rather than some other kind of ‘operation’) is that they are both clearly very uncomfortable about it. They talk about it with euphemisms, like how it is a ‘simple operation’ to ‘let the air in’ and so forth. This euphemism itself also gives us a clue that the girl is having something removed from her body… something they’re both embarrassed to talk about but are both desperately concerned about.
Hemingway goes on to make it apparent, through the characters’ dialogue, that these two characters have very different feelings about their situation. The man consistently tries to goad the girl into going ahead with the abortion using reassuring phrases such as ‘It’s perfectly simple’ and ‘You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it’.
There is one interesting point where the girl explicitly asks him, ‘And you really want to?’
Does he give a straight answer? No. Instead he tries again to persuade her:
‘I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to.’
Even in the middle of this conversation about the actual issue they are both facing, the two characters utterly fail to communicate. They’re playing verbal tennis with each other but it is clear that they are on different wavelengths entirely. The man continually tries to persuade her that everything will be all right and that their relationship will go back to how it was when the abortion is complete; the girl, on the other hand, increasingly realises that this is not the case. When she does, she drops the conversation. She’s no longer interested in hearing his persuasions; her mind is set. Again, this is not explicitly stated by any narrative; it is simply made clear by the dialogue:
‘I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do -‘
‘Nor that isn’t good for me,’ she said. ‘I know. Could we have another beer?’
‘All right. But you’ve got to realize – ‘
‘I realize,’ the girl said. ‘Can’t we maybe stop talking?’
~ E. Hemingway 1927
Notice how the girl interrupts the man by finishing his sentence for him. She knows what he’s going to say. She’s heard him spin this line a million times before (he certainly spins it often enough during the story and goodness knows how many times before the story actually begins!). She isn’t interested in hearing it any more. In spite of his assertions that he cares about her needs, the man actually has no idea what the girl needs and is more occupied with his own fear that she might actually have this baby. The girl, on the other hand, seems to mature in wisdom almost immediately before our eyes.
This is all made clear to the reader with the narrator barely uttering a word through-out the entire story. Instead of simply being told the facts, the narrator leads us to this train station in the middle of no where and leaves us there to eavesdrop on a private conversation so that we can glean all the details for ourselves as we go.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well. Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, who believes in fairytales that her world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside. But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained. Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight. One way or another, the walls of the Blue are going to come down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.
Praise for The Gilded King
I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book, and once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
So, there’s a writer inside you and he’s already sowing the seeds of a best-seller in your brain. Your inner-writer’s urge to write that story is overwhelming. Night and day, he nags you to let him write. You fear that it may only be a matter of time before you have to quit your miserable office job that you love and become a professional author instead – all because you couldn’t silence the voice in your head which said ‘Let me write!’. Because the urge – no, the need – to write is so powerful, you know you’ll never be able to simply ignore it.
All you can hope to do is keep your inner-writer at bay by pacifying him with false promises of writing. So if you want to make sure that best-seller of yours never makes it to the first draft stage (never mind the best-seller shelf!), here’s a few simple steps you can follow.
1 – Find New Writing Equipment
Remember, the trick is to make your inner-writer feel good about himself without ever letting him do any writing, so set aside your manuscript (‘just for a second’) and fire up your preferred app store or shopping website and start hunting for new equipment or software that might help you to become a better writer.
The reason this is such an effective means of dodging that completed manuscript is simple: it feels like you’re helping your inner-writer to accomplish his goals when in fact you are simply wasting his time. Because there are so many resources you can spend your time perusing, you can easily spend your entire day doing it instead of actually writing. The obvious thing to look for is new software that you can write your novel with (or perhaps some nice new stationary, if that’s how you roll); perhaps something that allows you to organise your notes and drafts in a particular fashion, or perhaps you would prefer to look for an app like the Hemingway Editor which marks your writing style for you.
2 – Study Your Craft
The only danger with the previous step is that if you do happen to find the perfect writing software (i.e., Scrivener), your inner-writer will insist you buy it and then let him start writing his novel with it!
If this happens, quickly appeal to your inner-writer’s sense of vanity. It is his greatest weakness! Tell him you want to make sure he writes to his fullest potential… and to do that, he must learn all about the art of writing before he can write in a way which does justice to his natural genius.
The internet is your best friend to this end. With just a few well-phrased search terms, you will soon find that you’re absorbing the wisdom of writers and writing-coaches from all the four corners of the world. The more you read, the more excited your inner-writer will become about how great a writer he is going to be – not realising that hours may have passed without a single word of fiction actually being written by you.
3 – Figure Out Whether You’re a Planner or Not
So, you’ve got your brand spanking new notepads, pens, writing software, chair and everything else you need to write and you’ve finished reading up on how to be a writer (not that you’ll ever truly read everything the internet has to offer!). Suddenly you’re struck with a horrifying thought:
I have no more excuses not to write!
But don’t give up! You still have a chance to kill time. Remember what the internet taught you about planning your novel: that some people naturally need a plan to write successfully and others naturally do better without a plan. So, waste a bit more time trying to figure out which applies to you…
4 – …Then Plan/Do Not Plan Accordingly
If you have decided that you are a planner, then plan. Plan, plan and plan some more. Plan until you are up to your nose-hair in character profiles, chapter layouts, back stories, mind-maps, doodles and whatever else you can think of to refine your story without actually writing a line of narrative. If you’re struggling a bit, get back on the internet and research your subject. Is your antagonist a pirate? Then be sure to research everything the internet has to offer on piracy and don’t stop refining that antagonist’s profile until he accurately reflects all the facts you’ve learned. Plan until there’s not so much as a hint of a rough edge left anywhere in your story. I can guarantee that you will never actually start a draft.
If, however, you have decided that you’re not a planner, then write without a plan. Remember all that stuff I said last week about knowing what your story is about? Forget I said it. Write fifty odd chapters, or more if you can manage it! Then, when you finally realise that your story can proceed no further, spend a few weeks or months feeling dejected. Repeat this process as many times as required until you finally give up.
5 – Tell Everyone About the Great Novel You’re Writing
If, by some miracle, you have actually managed to complete all of the above steps and you still have a little time left over to write your novel then stop.
You’ve already got your new writing software. You already know how to craft and structure the perfect novel (and have the jargon to prove it!). You have completed all the planning you need. Your inner-writer probably feels pretty smug about the fact that he is ready to write a killer novel and still has a few spare hours to do it. Your last hope is for you to tell all your Facebook friends and Twitter followers all about the exciting story you’re writing. Perhaps even post a little excerpt to demonstrate to everyone what a truly splendid writer you are and maybe get them to critique it for you.
While you’re here, have a look and see what everyone else is up to on the internet, especially other writers. There’s nothing your inner-writer likes more than to feel like he is a contemporary of your favourite published authors. This is also a good place to look at up writer’s memes, or something along those lines. This will make your inner-writer feel good about himself, because he gets all the jokes that include literature jargon about narrative voice and what-not.
These five steps should be more than sufficient to waste every precious minute of your inner-writer’s writing time. So long as you’re procrastinating, you’re not writing and if you’re not writing, you’re not a writer. If you find you still have time to write then I can only conclude that you are simply not procrastinating hard enough and are spending far too much time writing your story. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but if you find yourself in that position then I fear that you may, finally, be a writer.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
Chino and the Boy Scouts introduces the mysterious world of Summerhill, a western island state with high immigration from the world over and a mysterious connection to India, the most outstanding feature of which, being its unusual schooling system, taught through the medium of Scouting. Chino is talented, ambitious and eager to prove his excellence to his father. It’s the final year of school and Chino learns of the existence of a map, through which he might unfold the legend of the G.W., an item long speculated to be a myth and highly coveted at Eden Gardens Grammar School. On their way to the school’s annual camp, they set off on what they think is a suitable adventure, to find their treasure and gain acclaim. Little does he know, he is not the only one bold enough to embark on this quest. What at first seems like a fun, if academically hazardous venture, spirals more and more into a world of danger and magic, as the school’s hidden past and depths reveal themselves to the ironically unprepared scouts.
Have you read Chino & The Boy Scouts? Why not leave a wee comment below and let us know what you thought of it.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.
I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.
Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.
