Your turn to suffer is the kind of book some people will hate, and others will love. As a reviewer, I go beyond just the overall story; I look at structure, characters, style and the overall plot. If you enjoy Clive Barker-Neil Gaiman’s styles, you’ll love this book. It’s a horror novel peppered with the weirdness of a Lovecraftian tale — sometimes called weird fiction. The overall story wasn’t my typical go-to genre, however I loved everything else about it.
Interview: About Writing Tie-ins with Tim Waggoner
Review: Writing Monsters by Philip Athans
Philip starts by leveling the field and properly defining what a good monster is; what makes them scary, where they come from and how to define them as a monster or a villain (or both). Then he continues by encouraging us to describe their attributes, digging deep into creating three-dimensional creatures with skill descriptions that resemble a Dungeon & Dragons scoring system. I really enjoyed printing the monster creation form and going through each question to develop (or re-develop) the main villain of my story. He proceeds with an amazing section on how to write them properly on the page using the appropriate reveal, leveraging your five senses and some tricks to make them scarier and less cliché (ex.: don’t use vampires, werewolves or write them in a whole new perspective).
Review: Secret Santa by Andrew Shaffer
Secret Santa was a blast to read, short, but an interesting YA paranormal mystery. This 216 pages novella mixed the spirit of Christmas with the mysteries of a demonized doll and peppered it with a dose of humour. The principal character, Lussi, was well developed — we had a great sense of who she was — her reasoning. This made the ride all the sweeter. I especially loved the publishing world backstory, which represented a proper setup for the narrative.
Review: Villainous by Stonie Williams
After reading the graphic novel Villainous, I had mixed feelings. The story itself had all the tropes of a new superhero team/character coming together, but it felt rushed. I would’ve loved to get a bit more about Matilda’s relationship with her parents, to set the tone of her obligations to succeed. Also, every character from the Coalition or Villains felt one-sided or lacked depth, superficial. I understand this is hard to accomplish in comics or graphic novels, but a page or two on each character might have just provided motivations, personalities and some foundations for their character arcs. Like Showdown seemed to be a womanizer. It might have been a better read to see it in action (more than a frame or two), so we hate him as much as Matilda does early on. Also, some characters’ powers weren’t clear in the little time we spent with them, therefore when big action occurred, it was hard to understand the stakes in between them.
Review: Writing In The Dark by Tim Waggoner
As a starting writer working on a monster-horror novel, I’m always looking for books teaching how to improve my craft. And Tim Waggoner’s Writing in the dark didn’t disappoint. In fact, it was the first one I read focused on the Horror genre. When I started reading, I had just finished the first draft of my novel “From the mist”. I feel confident the 2nd draft will be that much better from the tips and tricks I learned from Tim.