Finding a good book
I’ve always been a reader, which is a good background to have if you want to become a writer. When I was younger I would grab whatever seemed interesting and self-selected into fantasy and science-fiction stories and while I read widely now, I always come back to spaceships and magic whenever I feel burnt-out. There’s nothing like getting lost in a good story and struggling along with the hero to smite the evil, solve the mystery, get the girl, or realize that there’s an even bigger mountain out there to climb.
Then after a while, you feel like you’re smiting the same evil, it’s always the butler that did it, you and the girl are not really into each other, and you’re sick of climbing mountains. You’re stuck. You want to find a good book but nothing calls out to you anymore. That’s happening to me more and more often now, a combination of reading the same plots with the same characters and the occupational hazard of knowing how story formulas are put together. Don’t get me wrong, I still get surprised, and I still like retellings of certain stories in the same way I like to have pizza every Friday night.
But can anyone out there recommend a book for me? Please let me know!
This week, I finished A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, a science fiction book which someone once called “bureaucracy porn,” capable members of government working together to solve a mystery while other capable members of the opposition work against them. Despite the dry premise, I was surprised to find a story with plenty of action and tension to pull me in and keep me reading. I’ll do a full review next week for the blog, but if you found the politics and power struggles in Game of Thrones interesting, you’ll like this book.
Burying the lead
The second edition of Badlands Born will be out November 19. Pre-orders are live right now on Amazon for $2.99. That’s the superfan launch deal, and will expire a week after the book is live. Now you could go out and place your order right away and get the best price, but I have another proposition for you. If you would like a spot on the 12-person Advance Reader ground-team, email [email protected] and I’ll send you an advance reader copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review posted to Amazon on the 19th. Why? Because good reviews help me promote the book to other readers who haven’t already heard about my stories and right now a dozen good reviews are worth more to me than a dozen sales. So if you think you can commit to finishing a 170-page book in two weeks and leave an honest review, let me know!
Until then, don’t let the deaders get ya!
-Wade
