"Accuracy is so important to me,” Goyhood #author Reuven Fenton told The Algemeiner. “People assume that the ultra-Orthodox #Jewish community is the Jewish version of the Taliban and that’s not true at all.”
“Whenever you see anything media-oriented that has to do with Orthodox #Jews, if you’re part of that world in any way, you look at it and roll your eyes because they never get it right. It’s full of flaws, exaggerations, and misinformation,” added the first-time author, who is also the only Orthodox Jewish reporter on staff for the New York Post. “I felt it was my obligation, [and] that the least I could do in writing this #novel was to get everything on the money.”
A RELUCTANT HITWOMAN’S COMPLICATED life gets a bit more difficult when her imperious aunt orders her to run a charity race and her mobster boss commissions her to assassinate a dictator. Cozy thriller combines action and fun. SOLID B
TWO SISTERS, VETERANS of World War II and still eager for “excitements” in their late nineties, find more thrills than they had bargained for on a trip to Paris. Charming adventure for fans of the Thursday Murder Club and Mrs. Pargeter. B PLUS
HORRORS BOTH HUMAN AND SUPERNATURAL roll out with a relentless, breathtaking pace in this final installment of the Indian Lake Trilogy. As ever, Stephen Graham Jones’s deft characterization and vivid sense of place drive the chill deep. B PLUS
AN ASPIRING THIEF OF MAGICAL jewels falls into a series of predicaments that leave her responsible for stopping a murder before it happens. Charming fantasy mystery with plenty of wit and action. B PLUS
THE CONQUISTADORES’ ARRIVAL, REIMAGINED in a playfully serious tale that darts as kaleidoscopically as a hummingbird between culture and culture and between the empires of past and present. Powerfully visual, sardonically witty. SOLID A
SUMMONING THE DEAD was only the first mistake Alex made—things got a lot worse after that. Sharp, evocative horror novel has a powerful sense of place and of the terrors of suffocating slowly in dead-end towns. B PLUS
A PERSONAL REINVENTION REVISITED with added layers of distance; French writer Édouard Louis retells the story of transforming himself from a poor village boy to an elegant Parisian autobiographical novelist. Thought-provoking yet a bit artificial. B PLUS
It is my pleasure to announce the upcoming release of my new #scifi#novel : "Echoes of the Metal Mountain". It will be available on April 30th both in French and English.
Friday #SelfPromo!
If you're looking for something new to #read this weekend, might I humbly suggest my debut #novel Far North: Running? The first book in a planned four book series. It features a tortured soul and a young naive girl, the mystery of a frozen land, and mysterious wealthy new neighbors that move into town.
You can find it on itch.io in PDF and EPUB format: https://byrdbrnz.itch.io/far-north-running #writing#books#bookstodon
A DAZZLING PUNK-ROCK NARNIA blends magic and the everyday into a gritty, sweet, terrifying, and touching story about how life is built on love and anger and dreams. A MINUS
#WritersCoffeeClub April 8
Do you think of your books as having a particular length? <-- catching up.
The only time I consider the length of my books is after they're written. Then, I check to see what qualifies as a #novel or #novella.
Since jumping into the #webnovel arena, one platform has demanded chapters be no greater than 15k characters—this is because of the fiction-on-phone readership's alleged 'short attention span'. rolls eyes
AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF EARTH and most of its colonies, a post-human crew and its sentient space fleet traverse the universe in search of other life. Fascinating interstellar adventure blends action and complexity. B PLUS
WITNESS PROTECTION IN A RETIREMENT community isn’t most 31-year-olds’ idea of fun, and with a murder on the grounds and $2 million missing from community accounts, it’s not very protected. Fun Florida cozy has lots of pizzazz. B PLUS
INTENSE, VIVID, DREAMLIKE novel captures how a family shatters under the burdens of addiction, infidelity, and growing alienation. Timelines shift and collapse in ways that mirror the subjective experiences of heartbreak and grief. B PLUS
A WOMAN’S INTENSE OBSESSION with an older artist and her teenage daughter flowers disturbingly on a summer trip to Greece in this elegant yet creepy Swedish novel. B PLUS
Today in Labor History April 2, 1840: Émile Zola, French novelist, playwright, journalist was born. He was also a liberal activist, playing a significant role in the political liberalization of France, and in the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer falsely convicted and imprisoned on trumped up, antisemitic charges of espionage. He was also a significant influence on mid-20th century journalist-authors, like Thom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion. Wolfe said that his goal in writing fiction was to document contemporary society in the tradition of Steinbeck, Dickens, and Zola.
Zola wrote dozens of novels, but his most famous, Germinal, about a violently repressed coalminers’ strike, is one of the greatest books ever written about working class rebellion. It had a huge influence on future radicals, especially anarchists. Some anarchists named their children Germinal. Rudolf Rocker had a Yiddish-language anarchist journal in London called Germinal, in the 1910s. There were also anarchist papers called Germinal in Mexico and Brazil in the 1910s.