UPDATE 5.2019 - irritatingly, all the links to Jon Evans' novels below were to copies available free of charge on Feedbooks, which has now shut down its self-publishing platform - so the links no longer work.  Happily though (as at the time of updating), you could still find all the novels listed below on Wattpad free of charge - the main disadvantage is that you can only read them through Wattpad's interface on a web-enabled device (unlike Feedbooks, there's no option to dow...

Scroll down for reviews of "Retirement Projects" and "A Burned Over District"

This collection of short stories by Charles Hibbard is thought-provoking, varied and beautifully written.  And if short stories aren’t really your thing – although in this case I would urge you to make an exception - the author has a number of other longer-form fictions available on Smashwords (discussed briefly below). 

But getting back to “The Inelegant Universe,” what can you expect from t...

This is a very interesting and well written novel by Sean Boling, whose collection of short stories (“Pigs and Other Living Things”) I have already reviewed on this blog.  It’s about an attempt by Islamic terrorists to insert a long term “sleeper” agent into the US.  This is to be done by smuggling a pregnant Algerian woman into the country and passing her off as a South American immigrant;  her son, the Abraham of the title, is to be raised to carry out as yet unspecified tasks on ...

"The Hole in the Wall" by Clare Fisher is another mid-length piece (longer than a short story, shorter than a novel) of the type which I have been trying to promote on this blog because it is so under-represented in modern fiction (but I recognise that I may now be in severe danger of boring people to death with this point).  Luckily, we live in the age of the e-reader, which seems to be (slowly) helping to create more of a market for mid-length fiction - so maybe, eventually...

UPDATE 8.2016:  Sadly, Bibliotastic is no longer operating - apparently the software supporting the site wasn't being updated and as it was all being done for free, the owners couldn't afford to update it.  This is a shame because I liked the idea of the site, particularly its focus on getting readers to submit reviews.  However, through the wonders of YouTube, you can still watch this tongue-in-cheek promotional video (and this one).

Here’s an email interview with James Cra...

UPDATE 3.2022 - although this book no longer seems to be available for free and seemed to have disappeared from view for a while, I was pleased to see that it has now popped up on Amazon at £0.99.

This short book describes eight appearances of the medieval “Saint” Christina the Astonishing (the unofficial patron saint of people affected by mental illness) in the near and distant future.  The “real” Saint Christina is said to have risen from the dead during the course ...

3 is a collection of three long-ish, meaty short stories by Moxie Mezcal.  By “meaty” I mean that they could almost qualify for the novella tag – because there is so much going on in terms of plot and interesting ideas that by the time you’ve finished, you are left with the kind of feeling more commonly associated with longer fiction. 

The first story, “Home Movie,” is about a porn store DVD which has been replaced with what appears to be a snuff movie – is it ...

“The Prodigals” is an ambitious contemporary novel by Frank Burton, who runs Philistine Press (click here for an interview with him on that subject).  It follows the lives of four troubled young men in Manchester.  Well, that bit of the review was easy, because I have just copied it straight off the book description on Smashwords.  And it is a perfectly accurate description – but I can see why the author pretty much stopped there, except for adding that the book is also...

“Trade” by Lochlan Bloom is narrated from a point in the not too distant future when an internet platform (a sort of cross between Facebook and Ebay) has radically changed the way that people approach sex.  Sometimes you have a feeling from the first page that something is going to be worth reading - and for me, “Trade” delivered on that initial promise.  The premise was sufficiently intriguing and enough happened in terms of plot to justify the label “novelette,”...

It’s the 1980s.  Lizzie, our narrator, is 14.  Her father has left home and her mother doesn’t seem to be coping too well in his absence.  Lizzie spends an unhealthy amount of time holed up in her bedroom, practising her calligraphy, tending her Victorian bottle collection and making devious and elaborate plans.  These generally involve eloping with Mr Phillips, the shopkeeper (if only he would stop being so obtuse and realise that he and Lizzie are destined to be togethe...

As I have no contact details for Martha Deighton, who’s recently penned a quite lengthy review of my novel on Smashwords, I’m going to say “thanks” here.   Actually, “thanks” feels a bit inadequate really because she has clearly put a lot of time and careful thought into her review – and although I never expected my novel to have broad appeal, it’s great to know that it worked for her.  She has also picked up on all sorts of things which I hoped readers would ...

“Unpredictable” is a collection of 3 short stories by Bryan R Dennis available as an ebook free of charge on feedbooks.com. UPDATE 5.2019 - well, not any more, as Feedbooks has closed down its self-publishing platform - but happily, as at the time of updating, you could still get your hands on a copy from the good folks at getfreeebooks.

Oh no, I hear you sigh, not another collection of short stories (e.g. see here and here for previous reviews of short story collections).  But let me ...

Well, I always knew it couldn’t last – having been fortunate enough to get five stars from my first few reviews, I now find myself the proud possessor of a 2 star review of my novel (equating to a rather unenthusiastic “it was OK”)  on goodreads.  This particular reviewer, Juanito, appeared to like one or two aspects of it but overall, he felt that it was too depressing and the protagonist wasn't sympathetic enough.  In fairness, he explains that he likes stories which are “redempt...

The starting point of the novel is simple: after one beer too many at the Munich Oktoberfest, our rather hapless hero, Gordy, is unable to resist passing himself off as a Fulbright scholar, ...

I seem to be on a bit of thriller binge at the moment – just finished “The Afrika Reich” by Guy Savile, a rather more conventional action/adventure-focussed thriller than “Endgame” (which I reviewed last month).  I was interested in it for two reasons. 

Firstly, I gather that its author initially tried it out on the peer review site yourwriteon.com, which is something I’ve done with my own writing – so I was interested to see the final product, once he’d been signed up by...

Avid readers of this blog (are there any?  I wonder…) may have concluded that I do not exactly appear to have my finger on the literary pulse (see this post, for example) – but how wrong they are, because not only have I read Books 1, 2 and 3 of the thumping great tome that is Haruki Murakami’s "IQ84", which has only been out since October last year but Lo!  here is my review of it:

First of all, I should probably make it clear that I’m a fan of quite a lot of Murakami’s earlier...

In my last post, I discussed using peer review sites as a way of trying to get positive reviews in order to promote my work.  But is it really OK to use these reviews (or snippets from them) as part of your own publicity material?  Well, this post from the management of You Write On.com (YWO) suggests that it is OK so far as they are concerned:

http://www.youwriteon.com/forum/quoting-crits-on-blurb-Topic-11796-1.aspx

But there is a lot of online commentary suggesting that you need permis...

This blog is supposed to be about my attempts to self-publish my novel and so far, I’ve been a little coy about how exactly I plan to tackle this Herculean task (I do have a plan, honest – more on this in later posts).  But I suppose the first question is why self-publish – why not try to get a “proper”, professional publisher to take me on?

Well, my experience of publishers is not good – admittedly, it relates to non-fiction rather than fiction, but in both cases the publishe...

I also read “One Day” by David Nicholls – yes, that one with the orange cover that you’ve probably seen people reading on the train etc.  Many, many people have read this book, so I can hardly claim to be at the cutting edge of new fiction by reviewing it now.  I can, however, claim to have a unique perspective, being possibly the only person in the world to have tackled it after reading a moderately obscure work of Polish science fiction (see previous blog entry).  

Just back from holiday, during which (among other things) I read Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel “Return from the Stars”. It’s about an astronaut, Hal, who returns to Earth following a near-light speed mission.  This means that time passed much faster on Earth than it did for him, so everyone he knew at the time of his departure is long dead.  The world he returns to is considerably more technologically advanced than the one he left and human civilisation has lost all interest in spacef...

Hello and welcome to my first ever blog post.  My name is Paul Samael and I’ve written a novel.  Saying that, I feel as if I should be at some kind of self-help group called “Novelists Anonymous” where people with a similar affliction can unburden themselves with a view to preventing the recurrence of this dangerously futile activity.  Why do I regard it as dangerously futile?  Let’s look at some facts and figures:

Google estimates there are already about 130 million books in the wor...