Lots of reading this month for the anthology workshop at the end of the month, plus some line editing. I still managed to find time for some other reading, but it was a push. I got a new mystery from one of my favorites, started it, and immediately stopped. Turns out our newly retired hero […]
Continue ReadingFortunately, I read a lot of really good books this month, and stories, and articles.
Continue ReadingI read a lot in December, too much of it forgettable. I read a Christmas novel by one of my favorite romance authors, a reissue that I had missed, and was pretty disturbed by the behavior of the male protagonist. I read two other novels that just didn’t thrill me, and a lot of short […]
Continue ReadingRead a fun middle-grade novel this month, and realized that while I had loved, loved, loved the first book in the series, the second disappointed—not because it was worse than the first. It might have been better. It disappointed because half the fun of the first (from an adult perspective) was the riff the novel […]
Continue ReadingAgain, I did a lot of Fiction River reading this month, and you will see the results over the next year. The first volume of Fiction River, Unnatural Worlds, appeared on April 23, and please consider the stories in there as part of this recommended reading list. I’m not going to tell you my favorite […]
Continue ReadingAgain, I did a lot of Fiction River reading this month, which took up some of my fiction reading. So you’ll see my recommendations in the upcoming issues. It’s so fun to be editing again—and it’s fun to be doing it part time. I got stuck in two novels in the middle of the month. […]
Continue ReadingMost of what I read in February was for the Fiction River anthologies and for the various workshops I did. Most of that will receive recommendations from me—or you can just consider Fiction River its own recommendation. But for the rest of February, I researched a new novel and read some stuff that mostly did […]
Continue ReadingI keep storing up links and information to share on this blog. I always imagine those bits of found knowledge will become a column all by themselves, but some are too short and self-explanatory for that. Others simply reinforce things I’ve discussed in previous blog posts. So, I’ve decided to do an information round-up this […]
Continue ReadingI taught a weeklong short story workshop in June. This means I read a lot of great stuff that I can’t share with you because it’s not published yet. But in keeping with my policy, I’ll share that stuff with you when the authors let me know the story’s in print somewhere. I have no […]
Continue ReadingI read a lot of short fiction in May. I didn’t finish a lot of books. I dipped in and out of anthologies, collections, magazines, and individual short Kindle titles. I was exhausted, a lot happened this month, and I couldn’t sustain concentration long enough to finish many novels. In fact, I often forgot I […]
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