Kindle Book Reviews

Like stories about Las Vegas? Good, because that's all I've been writing about for the past year. I started with 600 pages of FBI documents on the Mob, Las Vegas, and some interesting characters like Franks Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Benny Binion and many others, and found every link possible between them, and what I came away with was that the FBI really snooped into the lives of a lot of people, but they sure didn't do much with their information! The FBI is a huge investigatve body that keeps tabs on millions of people, and fortunately when it comes to crooks, gangsters, and Las Vegas badguys, their snooping makes for some very interesting findings in the lives of those very same casino owners! Vegas and the Mob is the story of forty years of frenzy as Mob families fought with players, registered owners, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, the FBI, and even their own members for control of the multi-million dollar empire of Sin in the Desert. Eventually there were o...

Into Another World is a book review and writing blog featuring author interviews and insight to how writers think about themselves, their work, and their careers. The blog is hosted by Susan Leigh Noble, author of a trilogy of fantasy novels about dragons, magic, and a telepathic cat. Her first novel, THE ELEMENTAL: SUMMONED , is the story of Lina, who discovers she carries the long-lost art of fire-starting, using nothing but her thoughts. When a strange urge compels her to travel from her homeland, she finds there is much in the world her family never told her. Her journey takes her to a foreign land filled with gypsies, magic, and mystical creatures she had only dreamed of. As she begins to use her innate Elemental power, she becomes more certain someone is using magic against her. There's more to the world than heaven and earth. As for Into Another World, Noble also includes advice on writing, and for her audience a basic concept is creating believable magic . Her advice,...

Right now I'm falling behind on my own stuff because I’m working on several projects for other people. I need to see progress, and I like to be busy, but reading over my own work for the third or fourth time makes me want to go sit on the couch and watch the old Dick Van Dyke TV show. I’m easily bored. That’s my little red wagon. The funny thing is that, my best work, what I’m most proud of, I can’t tell anyone about, but ghostwriting is still great work as far as I’m concerned. I’m a story editor, not a line editor, so when reading somebody else’s story, even a poorly written one, I’m excited, because I get to make the changes that turn their work into something substantial. I get to “improve” the story. How could I want more than that? Well, I do want more than. I want authors to have a chance to sell their work. And, I know one thing is certain in the life of an author: they have to get their books into the hands of readers. If only three people down the block from Geor...

Not every book starts perfectly, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Sometimes you've got to eat your veggies to get desert. I'm still a little hungry for sweets after reading Richard Sharp's The Duke Don't Dance, but I don't expect perfection these days - not on Kindle anyway. If I never mentioned it, I worked for a publisher once and had to wade through piles and piles of manuscripts every day, but sometimes I found stories written humor, usually unintentional. One of my favorites was about hunters up in the Pacific Northwest. The narrative explained that finally, after days of searching, the hunters saw several deer hiding up in the trees ahead.   Now this was exciting since I had never seen deer climbing trees, but I don’t hunt them too often. On the other hand, even Stephen King admits that he once sent out an early copy of one of his books to a friend who admonished him for a section that read, “When springti...

I was reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey this afternoon and I realized that while the author has a serious, life-threatening addiction to drugs and alcohol, I too have a serious addiction. I read, I write, and I am clinically insane according to a fairly smart guy: Albert Einstein. Einstein said the definition of insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome." Well, like an addict who spends all their money on drugs, I keep spending mine on housing, food, and student loans. That would be alright, but I'm not living in a nicer home, I'm still hungry every day, and I'm not any smarter. So, I must be insane. And, I keep writing blogs (here, there, everywhere - at least I'm consistent at my Casino Gambling Blog , and stories and books and I'm still wthout a best seller. Perhaps because I write books that I would like to read instead of what is popular. Bummer. Anyway, A Million Little Pieces is t...

Every Blog has to start somewhere. Now I don't know where you are reading this, but that's where this starts.