Book Review: The Abbey by Chris Culver

Sometimes the cream really does rise to the top. Such is the case with Chris Culver’s The Abbey, a well-written, engaging novel that has become a national bestseller.

This thriller follows Detective Ash Rashid as he searches for answers after his teenaged niece’s mysterious death. Ash is Muslim in a way that many Americans will not recognize: a secularized semi-alcoholic man who just wants to live his version of the American dream. To put it another way, he is the Muslim equivalent of a C&E Christian; he prays more out of habit than faith and twists his faith’s teaching on alcohol to fit his circumstances. His niece is also a less-than-faithful Muslim, whose taste for adventure leads her to an untimely death.

This is one of the best indie novels I have read, full stop. Culver’s writing style is fluid and compelling. Every character – even the ones who only had walk-on parts – felt authentic and fleshed out. Although I spotted one continuity issue, it was a minor point. With just a few grammatical errors (mostly having to do with the proper use of hyphens), this book qualifies as an excellent read.

Chris Culver has revived my interest in reviewing indie authors. If only all indie writers took as much pride in their work as he does, we would gain the respected position in the literary world to which we aspire.

Kristina Jackson -- Talented Writer Living with POTS

To be perfectly honest, I'd never heard of POTS before I met Kristina on Book Junkies. Now that I have, I can't help but hope that researchers will find a cure for this disabling condition. The most basic definition of POTS is that it causes an abnormal heart rate increase when the sufferer moves from laying down to sitting or standing up, frequently resulting in fainting spells.

However, Kristina is not defined by her illness. She is a talented writer who deserves to be recognized as such. To that end, I am directing you to her writing blog, where you will find samples of her work. I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

Have a happy day, Kristina!

Preempting #Trust30: #WriterWednesday Interview!

I would like to interrupt this month of #Trust30 navel-gazing to promote another author’s blog: Aynoit Asher.

Aynoit has written two novellas focusing on abusers and the abused. In the last few months, she has also generously conducted and featured interviews of her fellow indie authors for #writerwednesdays. This week, she is featuring yours truly.

I encourage you to visit her site and see what I and some of my fellow writers have to say. If you're interested in reading my books, you can find them at Inknbeans Press, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and several other e-booksellers.

Book Review: Slave by V.S. Williams

What if God and Satan were still fighting over the very first soul to sin? That is the premise of Slave, V.S. Williams’s first novel. Ms. Williams’s central character, Eve, is a mostly friendless orphan who has only her cat for company. For the most part, this befuddled young woman is the still point at the center of the novel – the eye of the hurricane. Swirling about Eve are some well-drawn and unique characters, including a surprisingly large number of unhappy spouses.

Ms. Williams has a gift for phrasing that left me in awe and laughter on several occasions. At one point, a desperate, childless woman on the verge of divorce imagines her future:

“The coffee mornings would dry up, she'd be thrown out of the W.I. and so, ladies and gentlemen, there would end the briefest of sorties into an accepting society; by next month she expected to have rejoined the outcasts: criminals, prostitutes and single childless women with an eye on middle age.”

Later, another unhappy wife sums up life this way: “But life was like that, it was rubbish piled up next to palaces, orchids growing on dung heaps.”

Despite the large cast, Ms. Williams did a wonderful job of fleshing out her characters. Overall, the only character I didn’t care for was Eve. She was so oblivious to the surrounding world that I found it difficult to empathize with her or care very much about her fate. I was much more interested in the destinies of those surrounding her; in fact, I was heartbroken for one particular father and his daughter.

There are enough errors in the book – mostly punctuation and extra or missed words – that I believe a good copy editor is in order. However, these errors didn’t significantly impact my reading enjoyment.

This is a commendable first novel, given its topic and scope. I believe Ms. Williams has just begun to show us what she can do, and I can hardly wait to see her future work.

**UPDATE 6/3/11** I have been in touch with the author and provided her with my list of concerns, some of which, according to the author, are differences between American and British English -- something I certainly can understand. The others are being corrected and a new version will be uploaded soon, thus making future readers that much more impressed with her work. 

What Writers Write and How They Write It*

*I wrote the following article at my publisher's request. In February 2011, Inknbeans Press posted it on their website. I am reprinting it below with a few changes in celebration of the completion of my fifth novel, Forsaking the Garden. Enjoy!



In July 2009, I sat down in front of my computer and made a promise to myself: I would write a thousand words a day and not worry about editing what I’d written until I had a complete novel. Four months later, I had the 120,000-word manuscript for what would become The Thief of Todays and Tomorrows. The sense of accomplishment was so much more than I could have imagined – like getting high without all the nasty side effects, save one: I was addicted.

It took me the better part of three months to edit my first novel down to a more reasonable size of 90,000 words. Editing my own work taught me a lot and changed the way I write forever. I try to avoid words I know I will later want to edit out, like probably, maybe, and perhaps. I keep a character name list in an effort to ensure I don’t switch names around as I write (this is still a stumbling block for me, even with the list). And I read my dialogue aloud as I write it.

My desk is a cluttered jumble of reference books, including one that boasts 30,001 baby names. Because I know that I prefer names that start with hard Cs or Ks, I now force myself to choose the first letters of names at random. If I find myself unsure of what happens next, I visit Pogo.com and play a game or two while I mull it over.

I don’t create an outline before I begin to write because an outline ruins the story for me. The characters tell me where they want to go and I follow their lead. The end of one of my books is generally just as much of a surprise to me as it is to the reader.

Because I never want to be without an idea for my next novel, I keep a journal. Almost every day, I warm up by writing in that journal, usually using writing exercises to create short scenes. This journal has so far produced three novels: Circle City Blues, An Unassigned Life, and Forsaking the Garden, which will be published by Inknbeans Press in June 2011.

I still write a thousand words a day when I’m working on a new manuscript. If I don’t, I actually suffer from a kind of withdrawal. Writing is more than my job – it’s my addiction. And nothing feels better than finishing a book.

Editing Tips and Tricks to Strengthen Your Work

Originally, I intended to post a book review today. However, despite my best efforts to like the book, I simply don’t. It could be the genre; I’m not a huge fan of espionage fiction, though I love a good spy thriller now and then. Or it could be the fact that the book really needs an editor. In that vein, I’m going to share some tips for self-editing that I think authors could benefit from.

Misuse of Semicolons and Colons

Remember this: in general, a semicolon has a full sentence on both sides of it.

Example:

I went to the store to buy peanut butter; however, they were out of my favorite brand.

If you see a semicolon that doesn’t have a full sentence (a noun and a verb at the bare minimum), you’re probably not using the correct punctuation. While there are exceptions to this rule, they are rare – at least as rare as black-footed ferrets.

As for colons, you want to use them instead of semicolons in sentences like this:

Example:

I went to the store to buy my favorite peanut butter: Jiffy.

You see how that works? “My favorite peanut butter” and “Jiffy” are the same thing. The colon is used to show that they are equivalent. As a reader, I have noticed that the semicolon is frequently used instead of a colon in situations like this, and that is just plain wrong.

Homophones

In the last book I read, the author uses “site” when he means “sight” throughout the book. This is the only consistent error in the author’s spelling, which leads me to believe that he meant to find and replace one instance of “sight” with “site” and accidentally replaced every “sight” in the book. Nevertheless, a group of beta readers would have seen that error and pointed it out to the author.

As a writer, I keep a list of words that I frequently confuse. For instance, I have a problem with “where” and “wear.” When I finish a book, I search for all instances of those words and make sure I’m using the appropriate one. Everyone has their quirks – it’s just a matter of rooting them out and keeping a stern eye on them.

EditMinion

I highly recommend that you use editminion.com. This is a fantastic free tool that another author, Mari Miniatt, suggested. This tool will evaluate the strength of your prose and let you know the frequency with which you are using certain words. Just copy and paste a chapter into it and use its suggestions to tighten things up a bit.

Kindle

If you own a Kindle, you have a fantastic editing tool. When you’ve finished your manuscript, email the document to your Kindle email address and let the Kindle read your book to you. You’ll be amazed at how many mistakes you will catch simply by hearing your book read aloud.

If you don’t own a Kindle, I recommend reading your work aloud to yourself; I’d wait until the house was empty before I did it, though.

In conclusion, if you don’t have the resources or the inclination to hire an editor, at least attempt to edit your work yourself. Your readers will thank you for it by buying your books and recommending your work to others.

Support Independent Writers -- Read Their Work

“There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft.” – Jessamyn West, Saturday Review, Sept. 21, 1957.

So many people are writing today – perhaps there are more writers than readers, as I read recently in someone else’s tweet. As an independent writer, I hope it only feels that way.

Social media, in all of its varying forms, is the “neat critical garden” of our time. We sit in these gardens and console ourselves and our friends as we moan about the lack of readers. Yet all great writers are great readers.

Reading a book sends me into the “jungles of self, the world, and of craft.” Reading opens my mind, expands my horizons, and brightens my world. How many of us were first inspired to write by something we had read? Yet once we’ve written a book, many of us stop reading and instead spend all of our time in the critical gardens of the internet, trying to convince others to read our books.

If you are an indie writer, I challenge you to buy and read a book by another indie writer – you can find some real gems at Smashwords.com. Look around, take some samples, find something that speaks to you. When you finish the book, write a review for the author. If you blog, post the review on your blog, too. When you send out a positive message on behalf of someone else, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what comes back to you. I, for one, found a publisher.

 Happy reading!