Category Archives: Writing

A Year of Reviewing Indie Books 2023

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The dour seeds of my 2022 spread out into 2023 as the costs to cover the heating and appliance replacements brought about by the cold 2022 winter snap upended any plans I had for a 2023 vacation trip, as well as some other recreational ideas. More continuing hectic HOA and family issues continued to eat into my time which led to a very poor year of reading and reviewing fellow indie authors’ works. In the end, I was only able to read six books, two of which were combined into a two-part epic, bringing me to only provide five reviews this past year. Still, the works I read were very enticing reads with no review landing below the 3-star level.

For a quick reiteration of my review standards, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3- star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4-star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5-star effort.

The one 3-star review was a fictional tale of seeming horror in the late 1800s based on true historical details that felt slightly stretched in the telling. The two 4-star reviews were for works by authors I had previously reviewed, one a game of terror that horror fans will enjoy and the other the two-part intense epic of surviving a criminal life in Brazilian culture. My two 5-star reviews went to an expertly told mystery novel, one of a series of novels centered around an expert detective, and a WWII historically fiction tale of a Ukrainian family seeking to migrate away from Russian and Nazi oppression, a story concept that I felt resonated with the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

With the joy that I had experiencing these works and enjoying the creativity of these fellow authors, I wished that this past year would have given me more time to enjoy more works, a hope I wish will be more prevalent in this new year. With my two self-published works, I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge these works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.
My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

A Year of Reviewing Indie Books 2022

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The year 2022 proved to be a challenging year for many around the world. Even as the COVID pandemic signs began to improve, the global disruptions pushed forward a wave of economic inflation and uncertainty, a worldwide issue that was further exasperated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On my end, I was able to maintain some sense of calm in my life, but my travel plans were restricted to a single day trip to New Orleans. Along with the continuing HOA board issues in my community, I also found a way to host my sister for a month during the summer, while her husband handled a major renovation project in their home back east. Then, as a final blow from the year, my heating unit and water heater both died just prior to a major arctic blast in the midst of the holiday season. The pandemic easing did bring back the major book fairs, which finally gave me an opportunity to display my second book, but even this process was not perfect or easy. In the end, the see-sawing uncertainty affected my time and connectivity in reading and reviewing my fellow indie authors works, as I was only able to delve into 11 works this year, including 2 by the same fellow author. However, only one work landed below average in the 2-star range, with two works showing promise in the 3-star range, 6 works pulling forward in the 4-star range, and 2 works excelling in the 5-star range. It was still a good year to enjoy reading.

For a quick reiteration of my review standards, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3-star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4-star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5-star effort.

My one 2-star review fell on a long saga that seemed to start in the Victorian era that swept psychic para-normality within a mental asylum environment, but also brought back future time, creating confusion. My two 3-star reviews ranged from an epic dysfunctional family prequel that required patience in delving into the characters to a quick fantasy novella between a boy with teen angst issues suddenly helping a goddess-like star surfer girl find her way back home in space.

My thoroughly enjoyable six 4-star reviews were found in the range of a teenage mystery adventure, the finale of a parallel time universe series, a wintery rural police mystery, a Cold War spy thriller adventure in Eastern Europe, a novella log by a woman seeking to overcome the psychological hurt of a breakup through a course of non-emotional sex, and the true life blog posting adventure of the author experiencing a journey of homelessness with his pet dog. The different perspectives were very fascinating to experience within the stories that were well written.

The two books that gained the 5-star reviews were works from two authors from whom I have read previous works. The year before I read an interesting treasure hunt action adventure from Martin R. Jackson, but I realized soon after I had read and reviewed the book, that he was more excited about promoting his thrilling mystery series based in Victorian England, so this year I read his work, To Hook a Gilded Bird. The mysterious story and historical elements were truly exciting and well written, so I truly feel honored to actively promote this work.

My second 5 star rated book is the first of a new series from science fiction author, Doug J. Cooper, whose previous two series I avidly read. His new series brings the best elements of a police procedural mystery into a future space station community orbiting Earth, beginning with his first book, Lagrange Rising. His scientific knowledge and creative story telling proved to be a thrill to experience. I cannot wait to see what his protagonist’s next mystery will be.

Even as it was a light year of reading, it was a good year of reading and enjoying the creativity of fellow authors. With my two self-published works, I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge the works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

A Year of Reviewing Indie Books 2021

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Last year, 2021 started out in a scuffle with the breakdowns from 2020, then began to project hope with positivity through the summer until COVID and world political disruptions arose again to bring concern back to broad populations. Marketing opportunities for my two self-published books were still tampered down with COVID uncertainty, and political rifts even reached down to my community HOA board which disrupted projects and maintenance procedures, but the summer calm did give me a chance to take on a road trip around the Midwest states, fulfilling one goal of claiming to have visited all fifty states in the United States. At the same time, the same uncertainties I faced in 2020 in connecting with fellow indie authors once again lowered the number of works I was able to read and review from the previous year. Last year, I only had the opportunity to read twelve books during the year, but it was a good year for reading, as I only rated one book with 2-stars, three books at 3-stars, seven books with 4-stars, and finished out the year with a 5-star reviewed book.

Now to reiterate my review standards from the past year’s postings, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3-star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4-star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5-star effort.

To start out, the one work which I rated at the 2-star level hinted at a suspenseful mystery thriller, but severe plot errors, blended with the grammatical and typographical errors, could not reach the promise of fulfilling the suspenseful thrills. The three 3-star works provided basic enjoyable tales in multiple genres. In the procedural mystery, a private investigator, who is a former police officer, takes on a missing person case that turns into a job of protecting an innocent from a Russian cabal. The horror story has a couple leading their neighborhood in a battle against a zombie pandemic. The sci-fi fantasy has new residents of a future domed colony on Titan, one of Jupiter’s moons, discovering their family history has a more mythological, extraterrestrial foundation.

In the 4-star zone, one of the works was introduced to me by my neighbor, who was friends with the indie authors of the tale. The epic Bermuda Triangle yachting saga reaches across several genres from gambling thrill and heroic defense against villainy to legendary sci-fi fantasy to create an impressive adventure for readers who can keep up with the multiple themes within the epic. The other six 4-star books stretch across a broad range, including one historical non-fiction psychological comparison of Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley, and late 1800s American mass murderer, Anton Probst. The fiction works include a tough romance between a teacher getting out of an abusive relationship and one of her recently-paroled adult students working to get his GED, a murder mystery investigation novella based in London during the early height of the COVID pandemic, a romantic thriller between a teen sci-fi author and an artificial-intelligence entity who join up to fight a villainous business tech exec, a sci-fi thrilling start of a trilogy where a group of friends begin to deal with the news of an asteroid heading toward earth, and an action adventure treasure hunting tale with a recovery gang trying to solve the clues of a Knights Templar map while defending their actions against another group seeking to take the same treasure.

The last book I read for the year turned out to be the one 5-star book in my reviews. Innocent Bystander by C.A. Asbrey is the third book of The Innocents Mystery Series. Set mainly in the 1870s American Wild West, the leader of a train robbery gang and a female Pinkerton detective agent connect to track down the agent’s sister who has run off to San Francisco to marry a man that has a history of marrying wealthy women who mysteriously die shortly after the wedding. Normally, I would have started with the first book of the series, but the first two books of the series had already achieved a sizable number of good reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, and since my goal is to help fellow indie authors, I decided to read the first book of the series that was still light in reviews. Of course, the excellent reviews for the first two books were a good indicator of how excellent a storyteller I was about to experience and prove deserving of a 5-star review.

Even as it was a light year of reading, it was a good year of reading and enjoying the creativity of fellow authors. With my two self-published works, I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge the works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

A Year of Reviewing Indie Books 2020

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What more can be said about a year as historically disruptive as 2020. With a COVID pandemic that inflamed divisions within and among countries, the norms of exploration, economical developments, and the social aspects of gathering with friends and family were upended. It disrupted the standard marketing opportunities for me to promote my two self-published works, pushed back on my grander travel exploration plans, and upended the processes for my HOA board of which I am the current president to help maintain and improve the community. One would think that I would have more time to read and review more of my fellow indie author works during these homebound times, and I did read a few more than the previous year, but I feel the uncertainties of the past year reduced connections with other fellow authors, which is one of the reasons that I was only able to read and review fifteen books for the year. I did rate one novel at 5 stars and had rated two novels at the 2 star level, putting most of the books in the 3 to 4 star level. Basically, it was an enjoyable year for reading.

Now to reiterate my review standards from the past years postings, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3 star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4 star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5 star effort.

The Silver Horn Echoes: A Song of Roland, the one novel that reached that 5 star effort last year was an interesting historical fiction based on an eleventh century epic poem about an heroic figure in a battle during the conflict between Charlemagne’s empire and the Muslim realm in Spain. The skill in fleshing out the characters and building up strong storylines leading up to the main battle actually led to the book being mentioned in the final paragraph of the Wikipedia article about the original classic poem on which the novel is based.

Five of the novels landed in the 4 star zone, including the second book in Doug J Cooper’s time dimension series, Bump Time Meridian. When he reached out to me in 2019 to beta read the opening book in the series, I informed him that I was tougher with time travel stories due to the basic time travel conundrums that are difficult to gloss over. Doug continues to prove excellent writing skills with interesting story lines and entrancing characters. However, dealing with the time travel mythology added a bit more complexity in the reading, but the suspense and thrills were still enough to entice sci-fi action readers.

Three of the other four star novels land within the mystery genre, with two of them set in earlier historical times. One focuses on an investigative reporter in 1926 New Orleans looking into the murder of a wealthy businessman, adding a touch of the roaring 20s creole in the mystery. The other historical mystery brings a dark civil rights view in the 1960s Deep South, as a few parties seeks the truth behind the murder of a black musician and fellow band member, as the white mayor and police chief tries to brush the case aside with a false story. The third mystery is set in current day with a member of a police consulting firm being asked to help out the local police with a murder case while doing undercover work in a local bakery. The last four star novel is a romantic drama set during the Vietnam War when a pair of lovers is separated by one being drafted in the army and then going MIA after an ambush on his unit, another strong tale set back in recent history.

The seven works that landed at the 3 star level were in multiple genres. Three were mysteries, one under a police murder investigation that develops a conflict of resolution, while the other two focuses on main private eye characters. Two fell under the medieval fantasy fiction with a Game of Thrones persona. One was another sci-fi time travel story that focuses on a hidden human race within modern culture with the secret ability to time and space shift within their life spans, while the last work was a short story collection in the horror genre.

The two works that fell short in the two star range dealt with struggling characters, one battling hidden shadows and the other dealing with personal demons from alcohol to the death of a friend which he caused. In both works, a complicated plot structure and the difficulty in finding empathy within the characters made the stories difficult for me.

It basically was a good and enjoyable year for reading. With my two self-published works, I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge the works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

2019 – A Year of Reviewing Indie Books

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With the ringing in of the New Year, a calendar decade has ended and a new one has begun. Last year was a busy year for me, as I continued on in my position of president of my HOA board which dealt with many resignations during the year. At the same time, I completed my second novel and selected Outskirts Press to handle the self-publishing process. Disappeared and Found was officially published and released in November. In addition, the length of time that my first novel, Legacy Discovered, has been available as a solo published work has led to more decreasing connections with fellow indie authors on social media. It is probably for this reason that I only read and reviewed twelve indie books this past year. None of the books I read was rated at 5 stars, but most of them were rated at 4 stars, and only one had a rating of 2 stars. I enjoyed the group of books I read this year.

Now to reiterate my review standards from the past years postings, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3 star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4 star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5 star effort.

My main method of selecting the books that I review come from the fellow indie authors who retweet my key tweets promoting my book, but last year two of the books I read were direct requests from two fellow indie authors asking me to be a beta reader for their new works. One of these works, Bump Time, was a start of a new series from Doug J Cooper, who wrote the marvelous 5 star four novel sci-fi Crystal series. When he informed me that the new series was a multi-universe time travel series, I warned him that I am tougher with time travel concepts. His plot was very innovative and imaginative, backed by his excellent writing skills, but I was not distracted enough to avoid seeing the basic time travel contradictions, so I gave it 4 stars. He did inform me that he will address the contradictions in the second book of the series.

The second book I was asked to beta read was from another indie author that I had provided high reviews for a couple of his previous books. However, this book was a different genre from the previous works, so he was publishing it under another name. I noted and commented on some plot issues in his suspense action thriller, issues that I found that he had addressed when I purchased the published version later. The hyper action in this political thriller does walk the line at times which is why I only gave it 4 stars, but it was still a very entertaining and suspenseful tale.

The other five books that received 4 stars from me included a post-WW1 historical fiction action thriller, a very graphic abusive relationship drama at the high school age level, a dark young adult horror tale, and two action detective mysteries with one having a psychic element. All were very engaging with only minor issues that held them back from the 5 star level.

Only one novel fell to a 2 star level in my opinion, as the sci-fi tale of a complicated relationship between a woman celebrity and a couple of males from an extraterrestrial alien refugee community on earth had just a few too many complex contradictions in the character mythos to overcome in the tightly written thriller.

The four works that landed in between with 3 stars dealt with an erotic romance thriller of Greek gods in modern day culture, a relationship road journey in the hippie generation 1970s, a serial murder mystery with a psychic consultant, and a very short 40 page novella of a prison drama that mainly plays out as an introduction to a potential series.

It was a light year of reading, but still a good year. I now have two self-published novels, and I hope readers feel they live up to the standards I have used to judge the works of my fellow indie authors. If avid readers do check out Legacy Discovered and Disappeared and Found and decide to purchase and read either or both of them, I hope they decide to let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

Disappeared and Found: A New Novel

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Over seven years ago, I took a story idea and wrote my first novel, using the new process of self-publishing to put it out to reading community. Legacy Discovered received wonderful support from my friends and family, and generated a fair amount of good reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. However, as an independently published work, it has been a tough road to market this work among the millions of books that have been self-published during this time. Yet, I will not give up in promoting this act of creativity, which is why a close friend recently challenged me to try again by writing a new book. Soon after his challenge, I was watching a couple of new episodes from two cable reality docuseries that I enjoy when I had a creative story idea that arose by the combination of these shows’ premises. I wrote up an outline, got input from several friends, and then started out writing a new fiction novel. This new creative journey is about to cross the finish line as independent self-publisher, Outskirts Press, is within days of releasing it for sale through available outlets. The new novel is called Disappeared and Found.

The story is about a young woman, Dorothy, who inadvertently discovers that parents that raised her could not be her biological parents, which leads her to overhear her father tell a neighbor about his fear of her finding out that she was adopted. Dorothy had already faced dealing with the death of the mother who had raise her several years back, so when she faces her father, he tells her that they kept the adoption a secret from her in order to keep her love toward them as real parents, especially as his wife dealt with the cancer that led to her death. Dorothy tries to deal with the confession, but she wants to understand why and who had put her up for adoption, so she reaches out on her own to a cable reality show whose hosts help adopted individuals and biological parents to reconnect. The DNA test the show has Dorothy take seems to match closely with another person in the database, a potentially biological brother close match. The host reaches out by phone to this brother match for confirmation. Yet the young man, Scott, who answers the phone tells the host shockingly that he did not have a sister who was put up for adoption, but rather his mother took his sister out for a walk nineteen years earlier and disappeared, a cold case that is still open. In fact, Scott had just finished an interview with another investigative reality show that focuses on mysterious missing person cases, and the potential break in the case energizes their current production, as well as the local and federal agencies involved. What is the truth about how a missing baby girl wound up being raised by another couple in another state, and what happened to the missing mother?

The story is a much more direct mystery, a genre that I have a long love for. Yet, I am also drawn to the inner conflicts over family and uncovered hidden lies that the main character, Dorothy, has to struggle through. As I wrote the story, I had to empathize deeply with the dark mixed feelings all of our characters were feeling, and I hope that readers can feel and work their way through these conflicts while uncovering the answers to the mystery in a satisfactory way. I hope readers are intrigued to read it and find an enjoyable read in the journey.

 

2018 – A Year in Reviewing Indie Books

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2019 is here, which means that I survived 2018. Last year was an interesting year. A rash of resignations on my HOA board led to me landing in the president position on the board, taking a bit more of my time. I also had fewer connects from fellow indie authors through my social media campaign. At the same time, I developed another idea for a new book that I outlined and have started to write. All of this led to a lower number of books that I read last year from previous years, only 21 novels and novellas. Going over my reviews for the year, the quality range was quite broad with most ranking at 4 stars, but an equal number of books hitting the high range of 5 stars to the number of books landing in the middle range of 3 stars. A couple of books landed at 3½ stars which stayed at that rank on LibraryThing, but rounded up into the 4 star range on GoodReads and Amazon. Then, there were three books that slid down to the 2 star range. It was an interesting mixture of reads over the past year.

Now to reiterate my review standards from the past years postings, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3 star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4 star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5 star effort.

Of the four novels that landed in the top 5 star ratings, three of them were from two indie authors whose works I had previously reviewed. Doug J. Cooper’s Crystal Escape completed the four novel sci-fi series with the same level of storytelling as the first three, pushing me to gladly recommend the full series for sci-fi adventure fans. Western historical fiction expert John Rose Putnam’s Face of the Devil and Hang Billy Mulligan engaged me into the late nineteenth century historical adventure of the northern California gold rush days. The one 5 star novel from a new author was Beneath the Silver Rose by T.S. Adrian, which fully engaged the adventure of a medieval fantasy tale, even if it was adult-only erotica.

At the other end of the scale, the three novels that landed in the 2 star zone were basically stories that overplayed their hand, stretching plot devices and missing character connections, from a multi-year future history space fleet sci-fi tale to a couple of psychological horror stories, one with a seemingly unstoppable stalker and the other with a missing child case that upends a couple’s life.

In the 3 star range, three of the four novels were based in the sci-fi and medieval fantasy genres, showing some of the challenges in constructing a solid mythology to back up and support the plot and characters of these highly imaginative worlds, especially when erotic elements are added. The erotic element also interfered in the complicated love story of soulmates finding each other in the fourth 3 star novel. The two 3½ star novels take a step up in finding their base stories, one in a near-future zombie apocalyptic opening tale of a series and the other in an archeological high-adventure story.

The larger 4 star body of works I read had some very entertaining works, from a basic police mystery, a psychological drama of abuse, a sci-fi space flight fantasy adventure, and a graphic superhero team adventure to a family curse paranormal adventure, a 70’s English spy thriller, and a dramatic rebuilding of a shattered romance. The eighth 4 star work was actually a nonfiction how-to book for self-publishing, a book I bought directly from the author at a local book fair in Denver.

It was a good year of reading, and I hope that this year will be just as good. I will also be striving to complete this new dramatic mystery that will live up to the standards I have used to judge the works of my fellow indie authors. At the same time, I hope avid readers will check out the novels I read in 2018 and also check out my self-published novel, Legacy Discovered, and if they purchase and read it, let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

2017 – A Year of Reviewing Indie Books

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Welcome, 2018! Many of us wonder how we got through 2017. However, despite the angst of the year, I continued to find time to read works from fellow indie authors, racking up 30 novels or novellas. As I go back over my reviews for these works for the year, I find it interesting that my ratings were more centered this year. I wound up only rating one work with a 5 star rating, but before anyone worries about a loss of quality, I also notice that I did not rate any works below a 3 star rating. Beyond the one 5 star rating, the other works were pretty evenly split between the 3 and 4 star level. I rated 15 works at 3 stars, one at 3½ stars, and 13 at 4 stars. The 3½ star work could only maintain the ½ star on LibraryThing, but had to be rounded up to 4 stars on Amazon and Goodreads. I still felt some positive vibes from all of the works I read this year.

Now to reiterate my review standards as I posted over the past three years, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3 star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4 star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5 star effort.

The one 5 star novel was actually the next novel in Doug J. Cooper’s Crystal Series, Crystal Rebellion. Doug’s introductory novella and two previous novels in the series had also received 5 stars from me, so the complete science fiction series of an artificial intelligence crystal being and its human handlers battling alien invasions can officially qualify as a full 5 star effort. The characters are empathetic and exciting, the plots are well constructed, and the thrills are wonderful. I heartily recommend the series.

Two of the 4 star works were actually quick novellas, one even being closer to a short story looking for a few more equally good stories from the author to form a good anthology of shocking tales. The other novella provided a touching look at the world of autism. The other eleven 4 star works are standard novels that delve into a broad range of genres with a few suspense thrillers ranging from drug conspiracies to corporate secret agents, a couple of science fiction adventures from corrupt enterprises within space wars to an utopian genetic enterprise, two mysteries from a dark serial murder investigation to a dramatic romance seeking redemption within the resolution, a horror tale derived from paranormal religious conflict, a rugged historical drama, and a light comic erotic romance. The 3½ star work was a sports novel about a young golf prodigy and his mentoring by a local golf course pro. The broad range of themes and genres in this group means that many readers will find something in this list that will please their preferences.

In the 3 star list, one book was an anthology of 43 short stories, each story no more than 2 pages in length with the theme of food and murder. Each story was submitted by a different author, which meant that some stories had duplicative plots and ideas, and that not every story hit the mark. However, my 3 star review meant that there definitely were some top gems in the bunch in order to create a decent collection of tales. The other fourteen 3 star works covered a broad range of genres and themes that covered a couple of science fiction tales focused on underground communities and utopian military space action, two time travel fantasies that placed their characters back in the US Civil War and pre-Revolutionary British historical eras, an erotic historical romance in the antebellum South, three YA fantasy stories with magically gifted heroines having to face a little horror and action, a couple of dark murder mysteries that includes some psychic detective work in one of them, a couple of more YA teen tales from a romance after a rescue from danger to a teen against the world survival conflict, an erotic romance between social classes, and a Hollywood tale of four women’s relationships. For some of these novels, the general plot stretches held back some interesting tales, while in the others, the occasional stumble upended a basically strong theme. Still, there is enough in these works to provide a decent story for many a reader.

All in all, it was another good year of enjoying my fellow indie authors, and I hope avid readers will check out these earnest works, while I seek out more for the following year. I also hope that avid readers will check out my novel, Legacy Discovered, and let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are an indie author’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

 

2016 – A Year of Reviewing Indie Books

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Here it is 2017 and I am going over the books from fellow indie authors that I read in 2016. It was my first full year in Colorado to which I am still adjusting. Perhaps this is why I read about the same number of indie books that I read in 2015, 31 books total. I do notice that 2 of these books are actually short novellas, each tied to another book on the list, so maybe I should just count them as one book, making my reading list total as 30. One positive is this year proved to be an especially good year in the quality on the list with 8 books I rated at 5 stars. 2 of these 5 star books were the novellas to which I just referred, and the 2 books with which these novellas were associated also received 5 stars. I wonder if I should just count each book with its associated novella as one book, but I think I will just keep the total as is.

Now to reiterate my review standards as I posted over the past two years, I had to be open to all genres and not let a genre type affect the rating and review of a work. My focus was on whether the story was told well, the characters were relatable, the plot functional and understandable, and the pieces fit together. If I could follow an enjoyable tale while pushing aside the typos, grammatical errors, and historical or cultural anomalies, the book landed within the 3 star zone. If I could feel more emotional attachments to the characters and find myself drawn into the plot action with less distractions from errors, then the book was landing into the 4 star zone. When character and plot all came together nearly perfectly within the genre I was reading, and editing was well-done, it was a 5 star effort.

Of the 8 books which I rated 5 stars, 4 of them were additional works from fellow authors I had read earlier in previous years. Of these 4, two of them are one of the novel and novella combos to which I had referred at the start of this post. This combo, Crystal Conquest and Crystal Horizon, were written by Doug J. Cooper, the only author to receive a 5 star rating from me last year. Crystal Conquest was the second in his Crystal series, which has the artificial intelligence crystal and his handlers fighting off a new attack from the villainous alien race. Crystal Horizon was just an introductory novella that deftly introduced how our hero handlers initially met before the alien battles. The novella is offered free on the author’s website to introduce readers to his characters and sci-fi adventure flair in his writing. As to the other two additional works, one was another women-lit romance from Deanna Lynn Sletten, Walking Sam, about a widower and a divorcee that meet and connect through the widower’s dog. Two years earlier, I had rated one of her other novels as a 5 star work, and it says a lot that the work I read this year matched that level. The other work was Hangtown Creek by John Rose Putnam, a historical adventure fiction tale set during the California Gold Rush era. Last year, I had given his novel about Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto’s conflicts with native American tribes a 4 star rating. His rough adventure of the Gold Rush Era drew me in more.

The other four 5 star novels were written by new authors to me. Steve LeBel’s The Universe Builders: Bernie and the Putty was a very imaginative concept that equated universe creation as products of a high-pressure god engineering firm, where one nerdy god is harassed by a bully god while trying to build the ultimate universe. It is no wonder that this book has received a couple of indiebook awards. The next 5 star novel was an exciting spy thriller set in the mid-70s by Paul Hollis entitled The Hollow Man, in which an unnamed NSA hero uncovers a plot against the European economy while on a personal mission against a terrorist assassin. Finally, the last two books I read in 2016 was the other novel and novella combination referred to at the start of this post, Theo and the Forbidden Language and The Queen and the Dagger by Melanie Ansley. The main story is the opening tale of an epic fantasy series about a rabbit with the knowledge of language who is enlisted to be part of a group of apprentices to lead the animal communities against a villainous human empire intent on enslaving them with a pacification potion. The associated novella is an introductory back story of one of the other apprentices, a princess warrior rabbit, in this very well written fantasy saga.

Just like the previous year, I had three 2 star rated books. In the first one, the author was too focused on creating and intricately describing an erotic romantic relationship between the two main characters in the thriller, causing the villain characters to be barely formed and hyped up actions to seem like weak plot devices. The next disappointment was actually a second novel in a romance series, and its plot was mainly unbalanced between the lovers’ well-described physical love moments and the somewhat bland interactive moments with family and friends. The author attempts to create conflict with a minor villain, but this character’s actions just appear to be a forced plot device. However, the final 2 star turned out to be an extreme adult erotica tale based on sadomasochistic games, which challenged my commitment to being open to all genres. Yet, even though I admit I do avoid novels whose themes are basically based on adult erotica pleasure, my main issues with this tale was that none of the characters, including the main narrator, had any true empathetic features to draw the reader in and that the promotional blurbs for the novel really understated the true nature of the level of adult erotica, which is not cool to readers who would be sensitive to this type of genre.

The remainder of the books I read in 2016 were split down the middle between 4 and 3 star ratings. Even though the 4 star books spread over a broad range of genres and themes, half of them did land in the paranormal range from a psychic involved in murder mysteries, a secret religious society hunter seeking and battling monsters, and a secret intelligence unit fighting a dark mythological order to a mystical Celtic location and a saga of a vampire feud. The other 4 star reads dealt with a mafia tale of romance and power competition, a spy thriller uncovering a devious plot, a family and crime drama stemming from the 9/11 events, a complex character drama about friends whose lives are affected over the years by underlying acts of abuse and manipulation, and a coming-of-age drama about a decade of summers with two best friends during the 70s. It was an impressive range of creativity.

So it was another good year of reading, and I hope that next year I will be able to match or better my reading time from my previous years. At the same time, I hope that more readers will find my novel, Legacy Discovered, and let me know if they liked it and why through Amazon, Goodreads, and other book sharing sites. Good honest reviews are the writer’s best friend.

My reviews can be found on my Goodreads Author page at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6491046.Kerry_Reis.

Villains Are Characters Too

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When I go back over the indie books I have read over the past few years, I find myself interested in where a few of them were flawed or, in some cases, totally failed. To me, the core of good storytelling rests with a good balance between plot and character. Keeping the reader engrossed in the story requires presenting the characters in ways the reader can connect and understand their actions, while presenting a series of events that affects and directs these characters in a way that the reader can follow and accept the revelations the story presents. If the reader is truly embracing and understanding the story, the reader will begin to expect where the story is leading, but will still find satisfaction whether the actions and reactions follows expectations or takes a turn toward a totally unexpected resolution. The keys to whether the reader is accepting the story are whether the actions and events are explainable within the parameters of the story and whether the motivations of the characters are sensible in their reactions. For this reason, many authors work to empathize with their main characters, seeking to express the inner debate and growth these characters experience as they somewhat heroically face the challenges they are tasked to overcome physically or emotionally. However, when the author focuses too heavily on the main characters without taking into account the antagonists who have created and continue to push the challenges and dangers upon the main protagonists, holes will appear in the story that causes the reader to become confused and lose interest. In other words, the author needs to understand that villains are characters too, ones that are just as important for the proper balance of plot and character to keep the reader engrossed.

Nearly all stories deal with a major challenge or series of related challenges that are faced by a major character or set of characters. The reader is introduced to the major character or characters, gaining a quick understanding of who they are and where they are at a certain moment in a real or imagined time, then the elements of the challenge or challenges they must overcome are revealed. In some stories, the reader may be introduced to the main character or characters at the height or depths of the challenge, instantly enhancing the reader’s empathy with the character or characters. These challenges faced by the characters are the framework of the plot, and it is important that the segments fit together so the reader can experience the challenges with the protagonists. Often, these challenges are generated by other characters, whose actions run contrary to the general benefit of the main characters and the humanity they represent. These are the villains, responsible for the grief, danger, and obstacles faced by our heroes. It is when the author treats these villains like plot segments to generate story direction that the author risks losing the reader. This happens when the author depends upon a simple stereotype description – bully, terrorist, evil wizard – to present the villain, then just uses the villain to push the plot along at critical times. Sometimes this may work in a one-time fateful crossing of lives, like a bank robber who locks a man and a woman previously unknown to each other inside a safe, initiating a very unique environment to create a romantic connection before the two are rescued, or a terrorist bomber whose recent attack collaterally kills a woman, forcing her husband to spend the rest of the story trying to get beyond the loss of his soul mate. In these types of stories, the villainous party is not directly related to the main characters, so the reader does not have to ask why the villain created the situation, since the reader has become so engrossed in the aftermath of the villain’s actions on the main characters. However, if the story presents any connection between the antagonist and the main characters before a major evil action, or interaction occurs between the parties after the initial critical action, then the reader will become just as interested in both the motivation and ability of the villain to create the chaos and challenges to the main heroes. The villain is no longer a plot device, but rather a character of interest to the reader.

Of course, the reader does not need to delve too deeply into the back story and mental state of the antagonists of the story. The reader only needs to know enough to answer the “why’s” and “how’s” of the antagonists actions towards the main characters. The level of interest in the villain and any other secondary character who abets the villain’s actions will be dependent upon the level of interaction the villain and abettors have toward the main characters. If the interaction is somewhat random throughout the story, the reader will expect to discover an obsessive characteristic and a rash capability for action from the antagonist. However, if the antagonist and protagonist have a deeper history, then the reader will be expecting the author to provide a deeper understanding of the motivation behind the antagonist and a better sense of how the antagonist will be able to manipulate the actions toward the protagonist. Again, this includes abettors of the main villain.

As an example, I recently read a work about an erotic romance between a daughter of a well-to-do politico and a hunky owner of a small security protection agency. Some casual incidental meets at a night club and a coffee shop generate initial sparks, but her kidnapping and initial rescue by him and his team amps up the relationship to a new level. The kidnapper is revealed to an abusive and possessive mental case who had developed an obsession with our heroine, but before we can find out more, the hero security guy is informed by the police that the perp has escaped. How did he escape? To the author, this was not considered important. The escape meant that the heroine had to move into a safe house with the hero to be protected, creating the situation where the couple had to bond and submit to their carnal feelings for each other. However, as a reader, I had no real idea just how much danger our couple was in. How committed and skillful was this villain? If authorities were looking for him, why would he stick around? Was the escape skillfully planned or did it occur because of police error? After a period of time of this relationship, an ex-girlfriend villainess of the hero appears at the door and tells our half-dressed heroine that she is the hero’s fiancée, sending the heroine rushing home to her parents’ mansion. Of course, this ex doesn’t have to show off a ring on the finger to prove her lie, as the reader is supposed to accept this spur-of-the-moment attempt to reclaim an old beau. However, this little unrelated deception allows the kidnapper to come back and re-kidnap the heroine from her parents’ home that very night. However, the kidnapper brings the heroine back to the original location he held her before, allowing the hero to re-rescue her and re-capture the villain. But this does not tell the reader how the villain was able to escape in the first place. Oh, and how was the villain able to know when the heroine was back at her parents’ home? He had a cousin on the parents’ household staff who sent him a message when the daughter returned. No other information than the distant familial relationship is provided for why a loyal staff member would put the heroine in instant jeopardy. In the end, no matter how vested a good reader could get with the relationship of the two main characters, which wasn’t badly written when it was just about the interactions between them and their inner romantic insecurities, the reader begins to feel all of the antagonistic drama brought by the villains around them is just a bunch of straw plot devices to create action, slowly turning the main characters into straw figures of their own.

In the end, a well-defined villain or enemy actually enhances the empathy we have for our heroes and main characters. Whether the heroes are able to overcome or find reconciliation with their antagonists becomes a major part of a plot’s theme, which is why authors need to remember that villains are characters too.