PUBLICATION NEWS

My flash story 'Love Apples' has been accepted for the first edition of the digital magazine Epistemic Literary, to be published in August 2023.

July's Writer's Showcase: L.N.Hunter

 

L.N.Hunter

So far in this series, I have showcased the talented authors Ruth Loten, Jane Langan, Beck Collett and Ron Hardwick. This month I’m going to showcase a member of the OU Write Club, fantasy writer L.N.Hunter. The Write Club is where I first came across his fabulous writing. I am a huge fan of his work and I was always delighted if there were pieces of his writing waiting to be given feedback on the Write Club forum, because I knew they'd be exactly the sort of thing I loved reading. He was also brilliant at giving insightful feedback on my own work, so I'd like to take the opportunity to thank him for that while I'm here! L.N. is excellent at writing comic fantasy, being witty and imaginative, with a wry intelligence. If you like the work of Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, Tom Holt, Robert Rankin, you’ll probably enjoy his stories.

L,N,Hunter

Biography

L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp (published by Three Ravens Publishing at the end of 2022), sits alongside over twenty short stories in anthologies such as Best of British Science Fiction 2022  and Hidden Villains: Arise, as well as several issues of Short Édition’s Short Circuit and the Horrifying Tales of Wonder podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less entertaining. When not writing, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire along with two cats and a soulmate.

Here are a few short examples of L.N.'s work, with his comments:

The Prayer of the Humble Monks, from The Feather and the Lamp

O, Great Lord—or Lady, for We Do Not Know,

We are not worthy of Thy Attention.

We are insects. No, we areth less than that. Parasites on insects, verily,

Remaining far distant from Thy Being, or possibly Beings,

So as not to cause offence in Thy Gaze.

Not that we merit an acknowledgement within Thy Sight.

Of Thee, we beseech nothing,

For we deserveth not even of the scrapings of Thy Boots,

If, that is, Thou wearest Boots and not, say, Sandals or Flip-flops,

For we desire not to maketh assumptions on Thine Apparel.

Or anything else.

"Being somewhat artistically challenged, I used Lou’s request for pictures as an excuse to play with Bing’s image creator. The chapter containing that prayer is where we first meet Brother Nobody: ‘Light flared from a torch held by a skinny, tonsured man wearing a grubby brown cassock and carrying a carpetbag.’ I gave that sentence to the image generator, but got nothing particularly nice; the carpetbag was just too much for the program. In the end, I used ‘a brown-robed tonsured monk carrying a flaming torch in a tunnel’ as the prompt—he’s a bit tougher-looking than I imagine Brother Nobody, and the tonsure was ignored, but still, it’s better than anything I could produce myself.

Sometimes my characters come fully-baked, even down to which actor I imagine playing them in the Netflix TV series (sigh, if only)—incidentally, Anton Lesser is my choice for Brother Nobody. More often, though, they’re just a voice and a few mannerisms. Occasionally, I’ll do an image search for similar types of people for inspiration about all the missing details, but I imagine I might start noodling with these image generation tools too."

Mackerel Swimming Through Swiss Cheese

Bouquet of cheese and rancid fish:

the smell of bin bags when they squish.

Too soon, all things go grey and green:

old bacon shines with slimy sheen,

releasing thick and powerful stench

of loathsome, dead, decaying tench.

Abandoned cup of milky tea

contains a hint of charmless brie,

with texture of some bubbly snot

exuding strands of stringy rot.

Which fish is it that smells so mean:

brown trout, or cod, or smoked sardine?

Why does all cheese go off and stink -

hard or gooey, blue-veined or pink?

Oh, why do bin bags, when you squeeze,

all smell of mackerel and Swiss cheese?

"Poetry and I don’t see eye to eye, and the part of my creating writing course that I liked least was the segment on that topic. When it came to writing something for the course, I decided to be ornery and picked the most ridiculous subject I could think of, and this was the result."

Start of First Date

I watched one of those old movies the other day—you know, from when nobody wore masks. It was a little disturbing to see all those strangers’ naked mouths, and sometimes it was tricky to tell what was happening, since a lot of old-timey actors weren’t very good at showing their emotions in their eyes. Afterwards, I spent ages trying out different facial expressions in the bathroom mirror, trying to get my mouth to match what my eyes and eyebrows did naturally—it was hard!

I got a DM from Remy as I was doing it—my SomaNet had tripped an alarm because of my elevated heartrate and breathing, and signalled everyone I’d registered as my health watchers. That’s Mum, my sister, best friend Joss, and—of course—Remy. The others probably didn’t even notice, but Remy overreacted, as usual—I guess it’s kinda sweet that she worries so much.

I gave her a vidcall back, and she laughed when I explained what I’d been doing. It was weird how laughter in the movie differed from hers, as if the bottom halves of the actors’ faces were somehow loose while their foreheads were unnaturally static.

Mind you, I did notice that Remy’s mouth seemed a bit too rigid. I wondered if she’d joined in with that fad for botoxing your cheeks that a lot of the girls, and a few of the boys, at school were doing. It seemed rude to ask.

When she stopped laughing, she asked, ‘Still coming over tomorrow?’

I felt a sudden chill, and wondered if she noticed that on SomaNet. I swallowed. ‘Sure, nothing can keep me away.’

"First Date was inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic—more on that later. There’s a bit in the story about a robot travelling along a train to check passengers’ health, though as you can see in the picture, the image creator seems to have forgotten to include the people. Still, it’s a nicely atmospheric image.

Just one more comment on these images, or rather the generative AI technology which is raising hackles in creative circles at the moment. A few decades ago, people were decrying the rise of inexpensive synthesiser technology in lowering the bar to music creation—we were going to wallow in quagmire of awful music. True, some of the music wasn’t great, but many more people were able to be creative than before. There’s an aspect of that in these new tools too: people who ‘can’t’ write or draw are now able to produce something at least OKish. My images aren’t going to win any awards, but are better than anything I could produce by hand; they’re also not important, nor are they going to affect any actual artist.

We do have to be careful that we’re not stealing people’s work (cf. sampling in the music industry) nor their livelihood (like most technology as its use becomes widespread, AI will take away some jobs—for example, I don’t like the idea of cover artists being replaced by AI—but we need to compensate for that). The technology is here and can’t be ignored, and it will get better over time, for good or bad. My own view is that what we have now is fun to play with, but should be used for inspiration rather than final work."

And finally we come to The Big Interview, where L.N. kindly answers writing-related questions and lets us into some of his writing secrets...

 

How old were you when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you off down that journey?

Let’s just say I was a late starter and leave it at that. Oh, all right then…

I grew up in the era when one had to pretty much choose between science or arts at age 14, and ne’er the twain shall meet. I was much better at the former than the latter—I’m pretty sure some of that was down to teachers, since I had great Maths and Physics teachers. The way English Literature was taught didn’t help, and as far as I know that hasn’t changed much: painfully detailed analysis of a piece of writing sucks all the potential for enjoyment out of it. (It was years before I thought about picking up any of the ‘classics’ for pleasure, and I still can’t face John Steinbeck.) The result of all that was a Computer Science degree and then a career as a software developer (about which I have no complaints).

Anyway, quite some time after school and university, there were two triggers for starting to write. The first was a book by a famous author; up until then, I loved everything he wrote, but this particular novel was awful. I remember thinking even I could write something better—it didn’t take me all that long to realise I was totally deluded and I put away my pen. Nonetheless, a small seed had been planted, albeit in not particularly fertile ground.

A few years later, I embarked on a distance learning Psychology degree, which included a small segment on Phenomenology. At one level, that came across as concocting detailed stories, and when it came time to pick one of my free choice modules, I selected creative writing as a treat to myself. It was a total blast, and the most enjoyable module of the whole course.

And I was off!

 

Tell us about the books and writers that have shaped your life and your writing career.

My first favourite authors were the old guys of science fiction and fantasy—Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Dick, Moorcock. I found gadgets and magic much more interesting than people. I probably still do, truth be told.

The authors who really clicked with me were Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde, as much for their playfulness as for the story they were telling. I love that the cleverest mathematician in the world is a camel who uses his skills to aim gobs of spit (Pratchett’s Pyramids), and the FootNoterPhone in Fforde’s Thursday Next books is inspired, especially when it starts getting nuisance calls. I’m a fan of Douglas Adams too, but more of the radio version of Hitchhiker’s Guide than the books—I think I got my love of snappy dialogue from him. Andy Hamilton’s scripts are great for that too.

I’d like to think I’ve absorbed some of their dialogue styles and sense of the absurd in my writing, though it sometimes comes out as horror rather than comedy.

 

How would you describe your own writing? 

I’m all over the place and haven’t found a niche I want to settle in, besides ‘offbeat.’ Almost everything I write is speculative in some form, whether it’s fantasy, horror or sci-fi, and often has a sprinkling of humour. Possibly because of my scattered approach, I tend to spit out short stories—each one is a chance to explore some random idea quickly. The Feather and the Lamp happened almost by accident, and it was much more difficult than the equivalent word count’s worth of short stories.

Are there certain themes that draw you to them when you are writing?

Things I get annoyed about are often triggers for a bit of scribbling, though the end result might exhibit little of that trigger. For example, Skin Deep started off as a look at superficial vanity, and Eternal Soldier is a comment on the wastefulness of war. I’ve got a heap of possibly unpublishable stories inspired by British politics, but writing them was quite cathartic.

I like pushing things to extremes, including my characters who sometimes verge on caricatures. Looking back through my publications, I see that I more often than not give people in my stories a hard time, and not every ending is a happy one. I dread to think what that says about me, not to mention the editors who chose to publish me.

Tell us about how you approach your writing. Are you a planner or a pantser? 

In software development, there’s the notion of ‘top-down programming’ (i.e., planning) and ‘bottom-up programming’ (pantsing), but the reality is a mix of both, and undoubtedly based on years of programming, I approach writing in the same way: a loose outline which grows outward (somewhat akin to the snowflake method), and a few scenes or set pieces that come from the components—er, characters—themselves to be glued into an overarching narrative. I find that too much planning sucks the pleasure out of actually doing the writing, but too little leads to a meandering story—I’m not sure I’ve got the balance right yet.

 

Do you have any advice for someone who might be thinking about starting to write creatively?

I think what was holding me back was needing ‘permission’ to write—part of the creative writing module was about just writing. Anything, anywhere, anytime, with no regard to quality or end results. It probably sounds silly, but it wasn’t until then that I realised I could just put words on paper.

The next thing that I feel is important is letting someone else read your work and give you feedback.

 

Are you, or have you been in the past, a member of any writing groups, online or face-to-face? 

My first scribbles were shared within a small online group associated with the university I studied at (where I first encountered Lou). The first time you ask someone else for feedback can be daunting, so I really appreciated the friendliness of this group. Sadly, the active core of the group is fairly small, and I felt I might be asking too much from them to critique everything I wrote, so I’ve been looking for other places too. I’m bit sad to have drifted away from that group, especially after it gave me such a fantastic start.

There isn’t a convenient face-to-face group near me, and in any case, it could be tricky to find totally compatible writers. There are numerous critiquing websites (something I wrote about recently), and these sorts of places tend to have a sufficiently large membership that you can find someone with similar tastes. I’ve settled on Scribophile and pretty much everything I’ve written has a few critique passes there before submission.

Whatever sort of writing/critique group style you like, I think it’s essential to have something. Besides the sense of community and the support, it’s better to have someone there point out flaws rather than have publishers and editors discover them, when it’s too late to address them.

You don’t have to react to everything people tell you (though if nine out of ten critiques are telling you the same thing, maybe there’s something that needs to be looked at), but it’s good to see how people react to a story before you treat it as complete.

 

Have you studied creative writing on a formal course? 

Only the one short course mentioned above. I’m not a literary sort of person and would find ‘proper’ further academic study dull and frustrating. There’s also the issue of paying for it!

However, there is plenty of free ‘training’ material out there on the web, and I’ve learned a lot from various blogs and podcasts. A couple I particularly like are K.M. Weiland’s and Writing Excuses. One particularly valuable season of Writing Excuses a few years ago (still available online) was essentially a ‘course’ in writing a novel from beginning to end. Brandon Sanderson has put his entire creative writing course up on YouTube for anyone to watch, which I thoroughly recommend.

I’m much more interested in ‘doing’ than studying, which might be limiting my artistic development, but I’m having fun!

 

Beyond your family and your writing, what other things do you do? 

Keep fit—hahahaha! That’s something I really need to do. Sometime.

I’m currently in the process of redecorating the whole house, which leaves little time for anything else (including writing, alas).

 

Would you describe yourself as a ‘cultured’ person? 

I’m thoroughly uncultured and lowbrow, and I’m sure I have school to thank for some of that. (It was decades after school that I considered going to a Shakespeare production a valuable use of time.) I don’t have enough patience for literary reading, but I do like a nice turn of phrase. Probably the most (which isn’t actually saying much!) literary writing I’ve done is the material Short Édition published, though I’m not entirely sure where that came from.

 

Are you interested in history and if so does it impact on your writing? 

I’m not all that interested in recent history, but ancient is a different matter—I’ve got a part-done middle-grade novel which uses a lot of Egyptian mythology. As for other domains, science and technology fascinate me, and I keep an eye on developments in those areas. I often push whatever’s happening now to extremes, such as Eternal Soldier (appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2022) where I project bioengineering and military technology into a ludicrous future, or Hiding in Plain Sight (in Hidden Villains: Arise), where AI gets a bit too big for its boots (written well before ChatGPT existed).

I don’t think writers need to know everything about history, sciences, politics, etc., but more interesting stories come from expertise in a few specific domains. There are enough other people reading books that such stories will appeal to someone.

 

How did the Covid pandemic affect you as a writer?

During lockdown, not having to endure a couple of hours commuting gave me a lot more time to write, and I did produce a lot of short stories during that time. Only a few were actually inspired by the pandemic, one of which was First Date, which most recently appeared in The Start. (I really like this anthology. Most collections of short stories have a few good ones and a few, shall we say, not as engaging. However, I found everything in The Start to be excellent—Tiffany and the other folk at Rebellion LIT did a great job.)

Something I found writing to help with is dealing with things that make me anxious—it’s as if putting them on paper helps get them out of my head or to explore in more detail instead of focussing on the worst that can happen, as well as being easier to deal with if it’s someone else (i.e., my characters) having to cope with whatever it is.

 

There is a lot of talk at the moment about political correctness, about the Woke movement, about cultural appropriation, about diversity. What are your thoughts on this, with regard to writing? 

As a member of the relatively privileged, I might actually be blind to what really matters to some people, though I believe that my Psychology degree helps me understand others’ positions somewhat. (Or am I guilty of fooling myself? It’s difficult to tell.)

I think writing can and should explore difficult topics, but needs do so sensitively. Cultural appropriation is tricky—I don’t want all my characters to be variants of me, but I also don’t want to cause offence. The Feather and the Lamp includes one very Australian character—am I ‘allowed’ to do that? I would have liked to include aspects of The Dreaming, but I know I wouldn’t do it justice, so I limited myself to the occasional ‘G’day’ and barbie on the beach. I did get a few people from different parts of Australia to look at the relevant parts of the book, but despite their thumbs up, I still worry… I did once get asked why I made the main character of the novel female, as if that’s something I shouldn’t have done. There’s a cut-off in what’s permissible somewhere, and it depends on the characters’ roles within the story, but I’m not sure I know exactly where it is.

I’ve already mentioned another novel I’m working on which uses a lot of Egyptian mythology—I wouldn’t want to be prevented from doing that because of misappropriation, but am I being too selfish?

Most of the time, I try to avoid the issue in my own writing by not having my characters be or do anything that would step on someone’s toes. I guess it helps that I tend to focus on the speculative rather than realism.

 

Where would you place your own stories, on a continuum with PURE FANTASY at one end and COMPLETE REALISM at the other? 

First, what’s the definition of ‘fantasy?’ The Cambridge Dictionary leans towards magic and a medieval setting, which would rule out sci-fi…

Psychology has the ‘type’ theory of personality and the more modern ‘trait’ theory—the first gives people specific labels, while the second defines personality as a combination of a number of different aspects. I think stories are the same—the notion of fantasy or thriller or romance as a genre is the legacy of having to find exactly one place on a shelf or in a catalogue for each book. I believe all stories are combinations of varying amounts of fantasy, technology, adventure, romance, humour, etc., and can sit on multiple shelves simultaneously. Sure, there are ‘pure’ stories that slam the slider against the rail on one dimension while the rest hover close to zero, but I’m much more interested in combinations. Scott Lynch’s Red Seas Under Red Skies is a wonderful heist novel that happens to be set in a fantasy world; Star Wars is a fantasy with space technology. 

My own tastes are for the unusual, so I lean towards stories with a high speculative (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) quotient, and tend to shy away from stories set in the real world with real people. Having said that, I love Gill Sims’ Why Mummy Drinks series, which is realism underneath all the humour.

You can find out more about L.N. or get in touch via:

https://www.facebook.com/L.N.Hunter.writer

https://amazon.com/author/l.n.hunter

(Complete-ish list of publications) https://linktr.ee/l.n.hunter

Thank you very much, L.N.!

 

In August, I will showcase the creator of the novels Lydia's Song, Home Truths With Lady Grey and most recently T for Tolerance – 

Katherine Blessan. 

Not to be missed! 

BOOK REVIEWS: what I’ve been reading this month

 

The Solstice Baby and Other Stories by Jane Langan

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that Jane Langan studied on the MA in Creative Writing at the same time as me and she has appeared on these pages several times before. I reviewed her self-published book of poetry, Blood Kisses, when it came out and she was spotlighted in my monthly showcase at the end of April this year.

Jane recently published this collection of short stories. Some were first published elsewhere, such as in Makarelle, the literary journal she co-edited with two other MA alumni, Ruth Loten and Dini Armstrong. Others have been written for competitions or specifically for this collection.

One thing they have in common is that they are brilliant. Knowing I was going to write this review today, I re-read a large number of the stories in bed last night, and I was, yet again, absolutely blown away by them.

The tales in this collection are an eclectic and wide-ranging mix. My favourites are the fairytales for grown-ups, but there were stories I loved in every section of the book. In fact, I don’t think I came across a story I disliked, though they do vary in quality of course. Langan gives a lucid introduction, explaining how she has organized the work under different headings, so there is something that will appeal to everyone. The links in the Kindle version made it very easy to move from the contents list to individual stories, and I have to say that the Kindle edition is very good. The paperback is also beautifully presented and set out very clearly and logically.

I know that Jane has taken great pains to proof-read the stories, but I did come across a number of minor technical errors as I read – missing full-stops, occasional spelling errors (tic-a-tape instead of ticker-tape, for example), the odd clumsy sentence. However, I have read hundreds of self-published books (and ones published by traditional publishers too) which all seem to have such errors in them – often much, much worse than in this collection. So, I have decided that it doesn’t matter. The errors are small and don’t affect the reading enjoyment. I mention them purely on the grounds of full disclosure. In her Q & A below, she acknowledges her own difficulties with ‘grammar’ but in fact I found the stories to be well-written in all the ways that truly matter when it comes to reader-enjoyment. Yes, there are occasional minor glitches, but Jane writes with confidence, in a pacy readable style, and the odd missing punctuation mark will not spoil your pleasure in these terrific tales.

The problem with reading work by people you know, people who are members of your writing group, people who you think of as friends, is that it is sometimes difficult to get over that barrier of viewing them as still being ‘learners’ as writers. As I read through these stories, I suddenly realized that I had leapt over that barrier - I found myself forgetting it was ‘lovely Jane’ from the Masters course who’d written these stories, and suddenly seeing her work through new eyes, proper reader-eyes. This writing is professional, confident and highly imaginative, and I was immediately drawn into the worlds she has created here.

There is no obvious way to sum-up such a wide variety of narratives, but for what it's worth I particularly enjoyed 'The Self-Cleaning Woman' (for its honesty), 'The Solstice Baby', 'Puca', 'The Queen and The Soldier', 'A Scattering Of Boys', 'Book Club', 'Fairy Clocks'. But actually I enjoyed every story I read - I still have a few left to savour at my leisure. It is unusual for me to not find some story to complain about in a collection, particularly one as varied and full of stories as this one.  

Langan has an interesting imagination and she writes fearlessly, with a mischievous streak. Her characters are realistic, her dialogue authentic, her descriptions often original and delightful. Many of her tales are flash fiction, and most of the ones that aren't are relatively short, which makes them easy to dip into. I love her fantasy stories but she writes realism equally well and I would imagine most readers would find something in this volume to entertain them, and make them think.

Rating:   ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Q & A

What inspired you to write this book?

Answer: That’s a tricky question as each story came from a different place. Some of the stories, like Púca and The China Doll were written for my masters in creative writing with the Open University (OU). Others came from writing prompts or just out of my imagination. The Solstice Baby story is a version of my story. I’m adopted and my parents got me on the Winter Solstice. Other than that the story is pure fiction.

 

What did you learn from writing your book?

Answer: I have always written something. I have written a diary since I was a child and still do. I have written a blog since 2009. I have written poetry and stories in the back of notebooks for years. I just decided, around the time I was fifty, that I should stop putting them at the back of the books and bring them to the front.

What I have learned is that writing is a job. You need to set time aside for it and then put your pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard and just write – it may be nonsense and it may be nothing. But occasionally a gem of a thing emerges. I have also learned my grammar is rubbish and I have to work really hard to ensure it isn’t!

I also learned, when I was editing The Solstice Baby and Other Stories, that all these stories hold up in their own right (in my opinion) even the ones I thought weren’t as good after I had just written them. They are a body of work which I have poured and stressed over and I should be proud of that.

 

Which is your favourite story in your book?

Answer: That’s like choosing a favourite child, but if I must – I like Socks. It’s a 50-word story that really gets to the essence of being a parent. For a longer piece, probably Púca – not necessarily because I think it is the best story, but because I poured everything I had into it. It was the first story I handed in as coursework for the OU. It has been rewritten, renamed and re-edited. It is also, probably, the closest to the style of fiction I like best. I like stories set in reality, but with a twist.

 

You say you treat writing as a job, how many hours a day do you write?

Answer: My day starts at 9am and usually finishes about 3pm so I can cook dinner for my family – my husband works shifts and my youngest daughter gets in about 4pm after school and they are usually famished. I can’t always write all day – like most writers I have a side hustle. I have a little shop on Etsy that sells gifts and curated vintage things. 

Most mornings I fill in the spreadsheet to show what I have sold, print out packing slips and postage labels and at lunch time package items up. I go to the post office every other day, except at Christmas time when it gets really busy and I have to go daily. After I have done that, I check the Castle Priory Press email and respond to any queries there, if Ruth hasn’t got there first. I also make any amendments to the website etc. 

After that, it’s time to write – usually by about 10am – 11am. I write poetry, short stories and novels. When I am novel writing, I tend to be quite focused and do nothing but that. When I am working on poetry or short stories, I also look at competitions I can enter or magazines who are looking for submissions. Sometimes, If I don’t feel I have done enough, I will work in the evenings, especially if my husband is on the late shift.

 

If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager in order to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?

Answer: I was quite wild as a teenager, but always into reading and writing. The only O level I got an A in was English Literature. I also did OK in English Language – although I think the curriculum back then let me down, which I realised when I came to do my BA and realised how awful my grammar was. That stopped me writing. My first degree was in Drama and English Literature. In the first year, my English lecturer made me feel like a complete idiot, sent me to ‘special’ classes to help my grammar and made me rewrite numerous essays. I only just scraped through my first year. The whole thing bashed my confidence and I stopped writing creatively for a quite a while. If that hadn’t happened, I think I would have gone down the Master’s route sooner. And the more I write, I believe, the better I become at it.

I read somewhere that it takes about six novels to become a good novel writer – I have written three. The first still needs so much editing, it scares me. The second is in a good place but I know it could be better. The third is written but again needs editing. So, I just have three more to go and then, who knows?

The paperback costs £7.49 from Amazon

Kindle version costs £1.99 or is free on Kindle Unlimited

Links:

The link to the book is here:  https://mybook.to/SolsticeBaby

Interested in Hybrid Self-Publishing - www.CastlePrioryPress.com

Jane's personal blog - http://howilikemycoffee.co.uk

Jane's little shop of beautiful gifts - https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/HowILikeMyCoffee

***

And here are a few other books I've read this month:

The Good, The Bad and The History [book 14, the final novel in the St Mary’s Chronicles series) by Jodie Taylor

For fans of Jodi Taylor, this final instalment in the St Mary’s Chronicles provides a satisfying ending to the series, while leading into her spin-off Time Police series (the Time Police series consists of at least four novels already published, so this is a nice touch for a series about time travel!). It is fast-paced, tense, very funny and full of all the pleasures Taylor’s readers have come to expect. Great fun and an excellent conclusion to a brilliant series.

When I was doing my MA in Creative Writing, one dreadful useless tutor told a fellow student that his excellent fantasy novel didn’t work because ‘no one believes in time travel, do they?’. This shows such a lack of understanding about the way fantasy and sci fi work that it defeats understanding. If the success of Dr Who wasn’t enough to convince this tutor that time-travel stories are popular, Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary’s ought to do the trick.

Exciting, funny, satisfying

Rating:    **** recommended

 

***

The Nothing Girl, The Something Girl, Joy To The World by Jodi Taylor (The Frogmorten Farm series)

                       

 

                                              

I gave my old Kindle to my sister as she is a huge Jodi Taylor fan and could read my copies of the books on there, and she read these three books which I had uploaded onto it at some point but never read myself as they didn't appeal to me. My sister told me she'd enjoyed them, so, looking for something light and easy to read in bed, I decided to give them a go. 

I discovered a sweet, cozy fantasy – no time-travel this time, just some implausible but entertaining familial shenanigans and an invisible golden talking horse which might be a figment of the protagonist’s imagination, or might not be. There are moments of genuine pathos and lots of Taylor’s trademark humour, but this short series is undemanding fun to read. The third book, Joy To The World, is actually a long short story told by the main character Jenny’s teenage daughter, about thirteen years after the events of the first two full-length novels.

There is actually a fourth instalment, Little Donkey, that I haven't yet read.

Delightful, restful, cozy.

Rating:  *** Worth reading if you enjoy 'cozy'

***

 

Winter Gifts by Ben Aaronovitch (a novella, part of the Peter Grant series)

Our hero Peter Grant doesn’t feature in this novella, though he is mentioned. Well away from the usual setting in London, this story is set in a snow-covered north Wisconsin and stars FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds.

I was expecting not to like it much, as I’ve never really warmed to Kimberley when she’s appeared in Peter’s stories, so I was reading it out of an OCD-ish desire for completion and a feeling of brand-loyalty. However, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s exciting from beginning to end, with a genuinely scary supernatural threat, interesting characters and the pace just never lets up. I found it unputdownable.

 Exciting, scary, with wry humour

Rating: ***** Highly Recommended

 

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