Hello everyone,

Mondays are going to rotate between “My Favorite Reads” and “What am I Reading?”. Since last week I posted a review of my favorite book, this week is about my current reads.  Right now, I don’t have anything exciting on my nook to share.  I’m reading two books: “A Quest for Heroes” (Book #1 of the Sorcerer’s Ring) by Morgan Rice and “Book Launch” by Chandler Bolt.

I’m only about 30 pages into “A Quest for Heroes,” and I find it to be pretty well-written but somewhat predictable so far.  It’s the tale of a young lad who wants to join the King’s elite knights, but he’s the youngest of four boys and very different from the others.  His father and brothers treat him poorly, but he sees greater things for himself. The kid is likable. The father is very one-dimensional, but I get the feeling we don’t hear much from him after the first chapter. The brothers seem to be a good match for Cinderella’s step sisters: as Sondheim puts it in Into the Woods, “beautiful of face, but vile and black of heart.” I’ve just reached the point in the Hero’s Journey where he meets his mentor and steps across the line to start his journey. It’s pretty formulaic, but formulas do tend to work for a reason.  I’ll keep you posted as I get further into it.

“Book Launch” by Chandler Bolt probably seems like a no-brainer as to why that is on my nook at present. It was a free ebook “guaranteed to show you how to sell your book and fill your pockets with passive income.” My impression so far is this book was written by a frat-boy drop out who is VERY impressed with himself. He spends a great deal of time talking about how everything he has written has been a best seller and how much he hates writing and was a C-student. After reading the first two chapters, I see why he was a C-student. His writing style feels more like it was dictated with voice-recognition software while he was downing a few beers with his bros at the draft house. My other big problem with this book is that it feels directed at non-fiction. The ad said it’s useful for both fiction and non-fiction, but so far it’s all about how to promote your business by replacing your business card with a best seller. I’m hoping there are some actual tips in this thing to help me sell and market my own book when it’s ready, but so far, I’m not holding out much hope for Mr. Bolt’s advice.  We’ll see.

Have a great MLK day.  Now, I’m back to editing.

 

SD