Tell us a little about your book.
It’s a humorous mystery novel in which wealthy patriarch James Boyle is murdered in a bizarre fashion, and his relatives gather for the reading of his will. One by one, they start to die. A pair of amateur detectives, namely long-lost Boyle relative Bradley Smith, and a friend of his, reporter Eric Maxwell, take it upon themselves to solve the puzzle. What inspired you to write this book? An overdose of true crime books inspired me, and I developed an interest in narcissistic personality disorder and sociopaths. I went out and dug through some of the psychological research about the subject and decided to write a novel containing what I hope is an accurate description of the disorder. How are readers/reviewers reacting to your book? I’m getting pretty positive responses so far. Most people seem to like it. What was the biggest challenge you faced writing this book and how did you overcome it? Everything has to fit together perfectly. I’ve got scenes with a dozen characters all interacting at once, and they require a lot of coordination and thinking about probable outcomes. In a way, it’s like watching subatomic particles bouncing off each other according to their own internal logic. Mysteries also have to be clever enough to fool the other characters—and the reader—long enough to sustain suspense until the end. You also have to come up with good explanations for why the characters are deceived for so long. What is your next project? Though fiction comes naturally to me, and I really enjoy producing it, eventually I’d like to tackle some nonfiction. I love well-written essays, and I read a lot of history. My next book requires historical research, since it’s going to be set in the 1820s. Any advice for other writers/indie authors out there? You need to learn how to be meticulous and detail-oriented, and this will be tough if it’s not a natural part of your personality. Target each one of your writing weaknesses, and rewrite your book focusing on improving those particular areas. Be willing to rethink your writing. If a book/chapter/passage/sentence doesn’t work, rethink it until it does. Can you blend, reposition, cut, summarize, or change narrators to make your writing work? Being flexible and thinking outside your mental box are absolute gold in writing. Many authors are wedded to their rough drafts. Edit the heck out of your work. I often write my essay on my book to see what I need to improve. Have your computer read your story aloud to you, because it makes your mistakes much more obvious.
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In Service to the Mouse
by Jack Lindquist and Melinda J. Combs Chapman University Press/Neverland Media Copyright © 2010 ISBN: 978-0615410814 248 Pages $26.95 HardCover $8.99 Kindle Edition In Service to the Mouse by Jack Lindquist with Melinda J. Combs was sent to me as an electronic copy in response to a request for review. This is a light, loving reminiscence of a career working within one of the most public of public companies in the world. It is the chronicle of a man who touched millions of lives and whose influence is easy to understate standing as he did in the shadows of people who saw themselves as larger than life. My favorite quote from the book is the last paragraph: But after my 38-year adventure, the principal player who epitomizes the intangible that made it all important, all worthwhile, was that one little guy with the big black ears, the short red pants, and the white four-fingered gloves: Mickey Mouse. He predated Disneyland, and without him, there never would have been other theme parks throughout the world. In all the Disneylands throughout the world, from Tokyo Disneyland to Paris Disneyland and all the places to surely follow, his presence embodies the heart, the soul, the magic, and the promise of the child that dwells within us all. His appeal is universal — without a political or religious agenda — he is loved and accepted by children, seniors, and the young of heart at every age. He is Walt’s greatest creation and his greatest legacy. And he is my friend. Four Stars content, Five Stars everything else. I would give the book five stars all around based solely on what it contains, but having lived in the shadow of the Mouse most of my adult life, my concern is not with the contents of this worthy history, but rather in what was left out. The book is wonderfully well written. It is easy to read and is suitable for use as a middle school history book. It is organized in a logical order, not always chronologically, but deviating from the strict order of events as necessary to put them in their proper context. by B.E. Scully
CreateSpace Copyright © May 2011 ISBN: 978-1460907009 360 Pages $9.99 Paperback $2.99 Kindle I really really wanted to like this book, and I was totally enthralled by the first half of it. I love a good mystery where the lead character is not a police investigator or FBI detective. Here, we have Elle Bramasol who is a true crime writer who is elicited by a big Hollywood director named Eliot Kingman to write his story after he ends up in prison for the murder of one of his researchers. Elle is given access to a centuries old document in Kingman’s possession which turns out to be the diary of a vampire named Verland. And it is Verland’s story that Kingman really wants Bramasol to tell. Despite the “not so new” elements of this story, like I said, I was totally intrigued. It’s hard enough to try to reinvent a vampire story these days. Much of the book is the diary entries themselves, so while you are given a detailed perspective of Verland’s life, it had a real close feel to Seth Grahame-Smith’s “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” to me. Unfortunately, the diary is what killed it for me, no pun intended. I found myself caring less about Verland’s war time efforts in Germany and wanting to get back to Elle and Kingman and their real purpose. For me, the book also brought back elements of a classic fav of mine – Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs where we have a somewhat fragile heroine playing quid pro quo with a pompous genius behind bars in order to learn about a dangerous killer on the loose. Unfortunately, by the time we actually meet Verland he just isn’t as dynamic as any reader will expect and hope him to be. While Kingman is the human bringing up references to immortality because he longs to be a vampire, he is stagnant as a character being behind bars. The book is thrown off balance when the attention is given to Kingman’s research assistants instead who also have an odd obsession with death. By the end, Bramasol gets her story handed to her without really having to work for it, and in turn the reader is spoon fed a drama built around a vampire diary which turns out to be more developed than the story itself. |
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