Friday, July 29, 2011

Indie Author M.T. O'Neil - Break Room Anthology: Mystery and Horror Stories

I've discovered a sure-fire way to get a book bumped to the top of my to-be-read list. Send me a hard copy of the book. Oh, and it helps if it is written well, otherwise, I may put it down and forget about it for a while. At any rate, I love getting books in the mail, so much cooler than getting a file emailed to me. When I open the packages, my two year old likes to look at them, flip through the pages, and then "keep them safe" for me.

I got Break Room Anthology: Mystery and Horror Stories Break Room Anthology: Mystery and Horror Stories (link to paperback on amazon) in the mail a few days ago and sat down to begin reading it yesterday. I finished up with the final story today. I'm not sure that I would classify these stories as horror, but my definition of horror may be too narrow. They are more like stories with horrible endings. I don't mean that the author did a bad job with the ending, in fact, I love the way the endings were never over explained. They didn't seem to be under explained either, which in my opinion, is a difficult task. The actions of the characters, or the circumstances of the endings, were just crazy. I was actually horrified at what some of these characters did and got away with. Stories with a twist ending.

My biggest complaint with the book was the author's use of commas. Commas aren't needed before every use of a conjunction. Overused commas, fortunately, don't typically kill a book for me. (Underused commas, however, can kill a book, IMO.)

The first story in the book is written from the point of view of a child. Probably an elementary school aged child. Poor, too. The author does an excellent job capturing the voice of an underprivileged child in about second or third grade. Having worked with kids in this age group, and socioeconomic status, it was frightening. I could picture some of my former students concocting a plan similar to this child's, even if they would never follow through with it.

The author does a good job throughout the twenty five stories with the characters' voices. I never went from one story to another confused; it was so clear that someone else was doing the telling. Each character had his or her own personality, his or her own voice. (Another author who did this well was Monique Mensah in Who is He to You.)

My personal favorite story was about a grieving husband who is a suspect in his wife's death. It is clear to the police that she had been poisoned with cyanide, but no one seems to know where it came from. By the end of the story, the husband is cleared, the death ruled an accident, but the reader is fully aware of who the killer is. I can generally guess where an author is going with their mystery ending before the grande finale, but this one got me. I had no idea, and that pleased me.

I'm looking forward to more of M.T. O'Neil's short stories. Hopefully, we will see some in the coming issues of eFiction Magazine.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Indie Author Marie Simas - Douchebag Roulette

Douchebag RouletteA book of essays. This is not generally my 'thing', but I'm starting to find that what I thought of as my 'thing' isn't quite accurate. More specifically, it isn't broad enough. I've agreed to read some novels that I thought I would have to suffer through only to find that I absolutely loved the entire story. (For example, In the House of Five Dragons.) Other times, I'm dead on. This was one of those times: dead on. I should have listened to my gut. Fortunately, the book wasn't very long.

The blurb about this essay collection, Douchebag Roulette, said that it was funny. I believe I even read the word hilarious. I found it to be crude. There was potential for funny, but crude won out in the end. I realize that some people like crude and that in itself makes it funny to some, but the stories built up and built up and then just ended.

Most of the stories went something like this. There was this girl/guy once. She/he did these awful/gross/selfish things. Narrator gives examples. Tension builds. Ugh, what a jerk. The end.

As the reader, I felt let down by the endings of the various stories. The climax was mostly there, but the story just fizzled after that. I realize that writing a good ending can be difficult, but the readers need something so they don't feel cheated out of closure and satisfaction. I was often left wondering, "What the hell?"  This is not that good kind of wondering that you sometimes do after a book or story. You know, when you mull over what happened, how the characters felt, and how everything fell into place. This was just "Really, that's it?"

I really wanted to like this collection. I tried to. I love short stories. Especially since being at eFiction Magazine, short stories have a special place in my heart. But I just couldn't get into them. Short, flat, crude.

I suppose if crude is your form of funny, this may be a selection worth reading.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Indie Author LA Jones - Tales of Aradia

Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1If you are a fan of Twilight, you will either love Tales of Aradia The Last Witch or hate it. If you have strong negative feelings regarding Twilight, steer clear of this one. While the plot line does not follow Twilight, there are some glaring similarities.

An abandoned child is found in a cave by a loving married couple who is unable to have children of their own. They have no explanation for the crazy powers this little child has, but they know that they must protect her and raise her as their own.

Flash forward about 12 years.

Aradia is a powerful witch who is sent through time to avoid detection of a group of vampires who want her dead. Blissfully unaware of the dangerous life she is narrowly avoiding, Aradia and her parents move from Arizona to Salem so Aradia can have a fresh start after her powers and awkwardness have made her a social outcast.

Surprisingly, Aradia finds that she fits in quite well in her new school except for with a group of people who she calls the "too perfectly freaky" people. This group of people seem to hang out only with one another and stare at her as she walks through the halls on her first day of school.

Having no idea why "the too perfectly freaky people" stare at her, Aradia decides to simply ignore them. These 'perfectly freaky" people are a threat, something that Aradia never considered. The master vampire had been waiting centuries to find the last witch, the child who escaped him 300 years before, and exterminate her. Aradia was rumored to be the most powerful witch ever in existence, and she didn't even know it.

If some of the descriptions and scenarios you come across while reading don't remind you of Twilight, its only because you've never read it. The similarities were so frequent and obvious that, when telling my mother about this book, I actually face-palmed myself. Now, I'm going to make an admission here that I will never admit to again. I read Twilight. I enjoyed it. That being said, I don't want to read it again.

The basic plot of the story was good. The book could have been excellent, but the author couldn't separate her style from other, overly popular styles of writing. The author tries to sound 'older' or from another time when narrating the story and when the characters, especially the vampires, are speaking. In the end, she sounds like she is trying too hard. In just a few pages, I noticed the phrase "in such a way that" at least twice. She could have, and should have, simply said "so that" or something similar.

Another problem that I found with this book is over explanation. Lots of it. The author dedicated an entire ebook page to describing Aradia's ability to control the elements. First of all, the elements described are: earth, wind, fire, air, light, dark, metal, and wood. I think there is some overlap there. The author starts by saying that she can control and create the elements, bend them to her will. She then goes on to give examples of the depth of the powers. She then described how Aradia could find her way home in her current predicament, finally saying: "This explained Aradia's assurance of her being in the woods at night and feeling completely safe." As the reader, I had already long since figured that out.

My last complaint (that I will write about) is the use of parentheses in dialogue. I had no idea that a person could talk like this. It seemed silly. A comma would have been the proper way to separate out this text.

I will say this, I was compelled to read the story. I wanted to know what happened. It is a YA book, and if asked by a teenager (who loved the Twilight Saga) I would recommend this book. It wasn't too bad, just not written to my liking and normal standard of reading.