Category: Reviews

Amateurs do it for love

The word amateur is misunderstood nowadays to mean someone not very good. Amateur! It’s a term of contempt.

But the word derives from the Latin verb Amo – love. (Amo, amas, amat, amamis, amatis, amant is just about the only thing I remember from Latin class long ago). Whether they are amateur book reviewers like me, amateur writers (almost like me, I don’t earn much) or amateur footballers who turn out on the Downs every Sunday morning to play, they are doing it because they love it. In this age of declining mental health that can’t be a bad thing. Hurrah for the amateurs!

As to mental health, the government is spending more money on it but I think it’s a symptom and the cause is how our society works. Fix the society and the mental health might get better.

The Martian Wave

My review of The Martian Wave 2017, an anthology of space exploration tales from Nomadic Delirium Press was just posted on SFcrowsnest.  Read it here.

The book can be bought direct from the publisher and other sources here or from Smashwords here if you want to give me an ipsy-wipsy teenee-weenie affiliate fee. I already have a yellow polka-dot bikini and what business is it of yours anyway. Smashwords provides books in multiple formats and even do a mobi version for kindle as they are not seeking to crush all competition and get a complete monopoly of the book trade.  If you really want to help small presses survive, buy it from the publisher.

Caitlin R. Kiernan

I was banging out my 2000 words for Nanowrimo yesterday and began wondering wistfully, not for the first time, if it was possible to make a living as a short story writer. It isn’t unless your name is Stephen King. I’m not a natural novelist and start to get a bit bored after 20,000 words. I expect I’ll finish it but it will be a novella of about 30,000 words. I can’t be bothered making up any more plot complications to extend it.

Anyway, thinking of good short story writers my mind wandered to Caitlin R. Kiernan. Reading various anthologies for SFcrowsnest, I have often come across her stories in volumes of horror, weird or Lovecraftian fiction. So I looked her up and it turns out she has a blog – Postcards from the Red Room. I perused it for a while and it’s interesting to read the daily life of a real professional writer.

Enlightening, too. I was under the vague impression that real writers bashed out 10,000 words a day but Kiernan gives her totals and they are between one and two thousand. Mind you, she writes very high-quality stuff – literary – so it’s no real surprise that she’s not churning it out with Asimovian ease. On the other hand, her dense, emotional fiction is best read, I find, in a mixed anthology. Whereas you can breeze through a book of Asimov short stories without too much trouble, a solid anthology of all Kiernan like The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories is tough. Excellent, you understand, but not easy reading. Here’s my review on SFcrowsnest. Or, for a different perspective, read this review of The Drowning Girl by my Crowsnest colleague Pauline Morgan.

Anyway, I’d recommend her. She has written several novels and won many prizes but reading her blog she’s not a happy soul. Training in Palaeontology has given her a realistic view of the extent of time and space and a Lovecraftian view of the insignificance of woman. Man, too. So she’s bleak, like Conrad, but all the more interesting for that.

And she doesn’t make a living writing short stories either. Back to the drawing board.