Audrey's Corner - Unique Reviews for Up and Coming Authors
Book reviews taken to the next level for the benefit of aspiring authors. This includes a unique novel-development analysis of contemporary novels by Algonkian Editor Audrey Woods. If you're in the early or middle stages of novel writing, you'll get a lot from this. We cannot thank her enough and look forward to her future thoughts and manifestations.
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If you're a fantasy or science fiction fan, then few things are more classic than the trilogy arc. Dating back to Lord of the Rings (probably even long before that), there's something about the three-book structure that calls to the human subconscious. We like stories that break into three parts, that travel from humble beginnings to epic middle to explosive end, especially in genre fiction. And I've seen few modern trilogies as successful at this arc than Pierce Brown's Red Rising series. [SPOILERS AHEAD] Red Rising starts, as many books do, with the origins of its hero. In a high-tech future where humanity has colonized the solar system and stratified int…
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I confess, I'm not much one for romance novels. My few early introductions into the genre were bodice rippers featuring Fabio's bulging pectoral muscles and a woman swooning beneath a bold-face title. Needless to say, I ended up squarely in the science fiction and fantasy genre, where at the very least the covers were more discrete. However, in the age of Kindle and cheerful cartoon cover designs, I decided to take another gander at what's going on in Romancelandia and check out Evie Dunmore's debut bestseller, Bringing Down the Duke. I am pleased to report that, while there was some bodice-ripping-adjacent shenanigans going on, I found this novel to be both highly e…
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If you can write an excellent heist story, I can all but guarantee that fame and fortune will come knocking on your door. Everyone, and I mean everyone loves a well-constructed caper. Oceans 11, The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Lies of Locke Lamora, Mistborn, etc. The list goes on and on. As consumers of fiction, we love the feeling of the story shifting beneath our feet, of being outsmarted but reveling in the fact that we could have figured it out if we'd only been clever enough. Everyone knows the joy of a good twist, or a great mystery, and heist novels are chock full of both. Writers beware: it's one of the more difficult plot-lines to pull off, rig…
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Is there a more classic story than man vs. nature? I think we all know how much fun a good survival story can be. It awakens our most basic instincts as human beings, as animals. Watching a character fight for their life against the terrifying vicissitudes of an inhospitable wilderness will get anyone's empathy-neurons firing. But only if done well. I don't know about you, but I've plodded through enough snooze-fest survivalist yarns to be suspicious of the genre. One can't just plant a dude in the wild and watch him survive. A writer can pour all the blood, guts, lions, and quicksand into the story that they want. They can make it fast-paced and snarky, o…
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Stephen King's War on Plot
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Grace Burrowes, Sci-Fi, & More
Pastry Love Pastry Love by Joanne Chang is $4.99 and a Kindle Daily Deal! This is Chang’s latest baking book and we’ve featured her Flour collection on here a few times. If you’re in the Boston/New England area, you may already be fans. I know both Shana and I are! A must-have baking bible from the James Beard award–winning baker and owner of the beloved Flour bakeries in Boston. James Beard award–winning baker Joanne Chang is best known around the country for her eight acclaimed Flour ba -
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Desmond’s Drops: April Edition
Welcome to our third edition of Desmond’s Drops! This month, enjoy three drops about: Your story’s midpoint The inciting incident Establishing an image system Email subscribers, please click through to view. Look for more of Desmond’s Drops in May. Have your own bit of wisdom to share? Drop it in comments. About Desmond HallDesmond Hall, author of YOUR CORNER DARK, was born in Jamaica, West Indies, and them moved to Jamaica, Queens. He’s worked as both a high school biology teacher and English teacher, counseled at-risk teens, and served as Spike Lee’s creative director at Sp -
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Kickass Women in History: Josephine Cochrane
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/posts/kickass-women.jpg For this month’s Kickass Women in History we turn to the nerdy end of the spectrum with Josephine Cochrane (sometimes spelled ‘Cochran’). She was the inventor of the modern dishwasher. Born 1839, Josephine Garis came from a nerdy family of engineers and inventors. In 1858 she married a wealthy man, William Cochran, who had earned a ridiculous amount of money as a dry goods merchant. When they married, Cochrane took her husband’s last name -
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4 Ways to Find the Energy You Need to Write
It doesn’t matter who the writers are that I’m talking to. It might be my critique group. It might be my accountability group. It might even be my students. If someone is having troubles getting their writing done, they will blame it on time. And that makes a certain amount of sense. There are only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. We can only get so much done. But long before most of us run out of time, we run out of energy. Think about the language that you use when you hit that low. You say you are run down, you don’t have any . . . energy. To find the energy you need to wri -
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Whatcha Reading? April 2021 Edition, Part One
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/bigstock-Bath-tub-with-flower-petals-an-289054378-e1565266807687.jpgHappy April! I hope you all enjoyed the site’s April Fools joke. We have such a fun time planning it every year. Spring is upon us. I wore short sleeves and sandals the other day in New England. Also, if you haven’t tuned into out Twitch channel yet, this Sunday, some of us at the site will be playing silly Jackbox games at 2pm eastern. We also invite our audience members to play to! Elyse: I just started Someone to Cherish by Mary Balogh. ( A | BN | K | AB ) -
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Alternate History - Shola Adedeji - War Gods Of Africa
The unmistakable scent of burning flesh rushed through his nostrils having been carried inside by the newly opened door. The burning flesh catches my attention. I am confused though by what's being carried (the scent?) and how a newly opened door can carry a scent. Can you instead say something maybe about the "scent wafted through the open door"? Something like that. A trio of papal enforcers entered in from the tower’s staircase. I think I need more of a scene set. Right now there's a door, and a tower, and a room? Is the room inside the tower? Is the room at the base o -
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Blood Animus Scene 1
As part of her recent nightly routine, Alex Mercer watched from across the street as Henry Shen stepped out from his doorway with his briefcase and firmly locked the door behind him, oblivious to her shadow across the street cast by the streetlights. I got confused by what seems to be a POV hop. Alex seems to be the one whose viewpoint we're following, but when you throw in "firmly" and "oblivious to her shadow" I start to think we're hopping from Alex's POV to Henry's. Adding a "seemed to be" might help like "he seemed to be oblivious to her shadow across the street…" so that we can stay -
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Young Adult Speculative, Tatiana Schlote-Bonne, THE RULES OF HAUNTING
Your beginning is very good, gets my attention right away. I like this line as an explanation to her feelings: Why am I not freaking out? A wave of hysteria should be hitting me like a wrecking ball, but for some strange reason, it’s not. Normally, I have a panic attack by lunch. However, I notice this same explanation comes up several times in this same chapter. "Why am I still so calm about that? Trying to parallel park normally has me short of breath, blood pounding in my ears. Maybe that's it: no blood, no anxiety." "that was always one of my biggest fears, yet I'm pict -
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Adult Historical Fantasy - Minglu Jiang - THE LAST SORCERESS OF ROME
Hey Minglu! Just to start off, the imagery was well done. I was reading it outside and had been sitting on a bench for quite some time and didn’t realize how cold I was until I read the bit establishing setting. That's gotta count for something. This is only the opening so I tried to relegate my suggestions to things that maybe have general application. I will refer to the sections of the narrative that my suggestions apply, hope it doesn't add too much bulk and makes sense for you. "They had followed the shouting and stomping, uncharacteristic of a Forum usually rife wi -
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Staff Picks: Comma Splices, Nice Zones, and Ladies Alone
Nona Fernández. Photo: Sergio Lopez Isla. Courtesy of Graywolf Press. There is an incantatory quality to Nona Fernández’s The Twilight Zone, a feeling of walking, as though under a spell, and then accidentally tripping into the murky unknown. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, the novel traces the reverberations of Pinochet’s dictatorship throughout Chilean life from the eighties to the present day, using pop culture—in particular the television series The Twilight Zone, though Ghostbusters, Billy Joel, and the Avengers movies are also invoked—as a jumping-off point. This is a br -
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Young Adult Science Fiction - Laura Neibaur - BLOOD OF THE BELLFLOWER SERIES - BOOK 1: THE SIFTING
Hild was reminded of stories of desert tribes and unmarked paths across dangerous territories, but only warriors leave Buclaminta, and only the best return. Hild sighed. I'm not sure why you changed tenses here "only warriors leave Buclaminta." It reads better to me to keep it in past tense. "only warriors left Buclaminta, and only the best of them returned" something like that. Also, I get from reading your opening that Hild is sighing because he is not a warrior but a slave and therefore cannot leave (is that right?) but I don't think that comes across alone. Could you put here somethin -
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Adult Fantasy, Jinju Richards, THE SLAVE AND HER MAGICIAN
Hi Jinju! Thanks for posting! You did a great job setting up your world. From just these first 500 words, I've already gotten a good sense of how your world works. Yoonis is immediately sympathetic. I felt her anger with the injustice in her world and how it's affected her daughter. I just have a few suggestions. Like I have told everyone I've given feedback, take everything I say with a few grains of salt as I'm still learning. -The feather is otherworldly, immediately introducing the reader to the magical aspect of your world, and plays an important role in the scene, but it may not be -
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Podcast 452 Your Transcript is Ready!
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/podcast/header_05c.jpg The transcript for Podcast 452. Historical Pandemics and Ye Olde Social Media with Anna Lee Huber has been posted! This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks. ❤ Click here to subscribe to The Podcast → View the full article -
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Young Adult Science Fiction - Laura Neibaur - BLOOD OF THE BELLFLOWER SERIES - BOOK 1: THE SIFTING
Hi Laura! Thanks for posting. Your writing is lovely, and I'm extremely intrigued by the world you're building here. I love the part with the Kadai guard--it shows immediately whom we should be sympathizing with. I have just a few suggestions, and do take them with several grains of salt as I'm still learning as well: -I want to live in this place, it sounds so beautiful (minus the slavery and cruel imperial guards, of course). Your descriptions are absolutely gorgeous. It might not be the most riveting way to start the chapter though. -Razya is mostly introduced through Hild think -
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Adult Historical Fantasy - Minglu Jiang - THE LAST SORCERESS OF ROME
I was confused by the first paragraph, too many new names and new places, Lydia, Marcus, Forum, the Theikos. It took me a few re-reads to realize that Lydia and Marcus were investigating the Forum because the Forum was being noisy in a new way (since marketplaces are usually noisy this wasn't an easy concept to follow). I think you show what the Forum is and why Lydia might want to investigate it in a much better way with your second paragraph. Would it work to go from your first sentence "Lydia stopped…" straight onto a second sentence "People were crowding the city square, pressing up agains -
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Weekend Reading Sales with New Books and Old Skool Romance
Please feel free to drop any sales you’ve noticed in the comments! Cry Wolf Cry Wolf by Charlie Adara is a KDD today at $1.99! This is book five in the Big Bad Wolf series, a series that has a LOT of fans. It has a 4.5+ star average (WOW) on GoodReads, and the series was recommended by Aarya in our Ready Set Go: Best Shifter Romance thread, too. Alas, I don’t know if you can jump in at book 5, but I’ve never held back from d
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