Here's a first, I'm reviewing another author's book. Normally, I am working hard to get a reviewer to read my books. Then there's the whole "raising four kids" thing. Rarely do I have time for leisure reading. I literally have a stack of books waiting for me.
So my oldest daughter came home from school (yes, several months ago) carrying a book with the most intriguing cover. It was Dan Poblocki's The Stone Child
. She read the thing in two days flat. She said it was the creepiest book she'd ever read and this is coming from an Official Member of the American Chillers
Fan Club. After she finished, that cover kept calling to me. Mostly black with a hint of blue light surrounding the statue of a child. She holds out a book, beckoning the reader to peak inside. It wasn't until after I had a few chapters down that I noticed the creatures wrapped around her feet.
This cover pulled me in, much the same as the pendant pulls in the two different authors in the story. For a writer, I am one of the slowest readers you will meet. It took me more like two weeks to finish the book, as opposed to my daughter's two days.
Don't take that the wrong way though. I completely enjoyed The Stone Child. Basic plot: the outsider, Edgar Fennicks, moves to Gatesweed, an unfamiliar world. We get to know Eddie over the first couple chapters as he is set up to be the classic underdog. We get several hints that things are not right in this town and Eddie discovers an unusual book, hand-written in code, by his favorite author, who also happens to have vanished from this very town. The story begins moving once Eddie meets Harris, the son of the quaint, local bookstore owner. Eddie and Harris embark on a quest to unravel the code and hopefully find the missing author. With the help of another outsider, the quirky Maggie, the three junior detectives encounter a menagerie of creative monsters.The Woman in Black is the most effective as her vagaries torment both Eddie and the missing author whether they are awake or falling through a nightmare.
Things that worked for me: The suspense; The monsters; The Lilith mythology; The setting came alive and I could feel Poblocki's passion for the North Eastern countryside, especially when they went to pick apples; And a genui
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Blog: From the land of Empyrean (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Blog: From the land of Empyrean (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I've been spinning my own webs for a while now. One strand is my site (www.MillerWords.com), another is Facebook (and countless other social sites) and then, of course, this blog.
As the web grows, I seem to be catching a lot of delightful little things. I often find wonderful, positive comments from you, my readers. It really makes my day to see someone respond to my words.
Another neat thing is all the people in "the business" that I connect with. There are so many authors out there trying to do what I am trying to do. I know how busy each one is, yet many take the time to reply to emails and respond to friend requests. Who would have thought I would be "friends" with James Patterson, Vincent Zandri
or Dan Poblocki
to name a few. Then there are the bloggers and other people that work extremely hard to make our stories part of your life, like Giovanni Gelati
.
I know there are many others that I haven't listed, but thank you to all of you as well. Thank you to Comfort Publishing for giving me the first opportunity to spin this web.
I know this is kind of a random post, but that's the mood I find myself in and that's what blogs are for, right?
And thank you, reader, for getting caught in my web!