Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


Leave a comment

And the first review is in…

The Raiders of Bloodwood hits the digital shelves next week (the paperback will be out in September), and already the book received a rave review on Goodreads – five stars and all.
This is the power of the ARCs.

Mana’s storytelling is wonderful, they create both tension and suspense in equal measures to engage and keep us hooked. The characters while not all my favourites were all likeable in their own ways and had some interesting arcs throughout. I was personally biased to Brix but anyone who knows me probably saw that coming.

You can find the whole thing here.

And yes, I always knew Brixida ‘Brix’ Lovell was a winner.

What I did not know – nor could I imagine, or hope for – was that one day my work would be compared to Dragonlance – quite a compliment, for a gaming-related novel.

In the next few days, if anyone’s interested, I’ll do a number of posts on the book, the characters, my experiences writing it and all that.

In the meanwhile, we wait for the other ARC reviews to drop.
There will be negative reviews – it can’t be avoided, because we cannot please everyone, and the only perfection is in the talk of those that talk about it, but don’t do it.
But we’ll see the bad reviews when they come.
Right now, I am quite happy.


2 Comments

These are not the cavemen you are looking for

The things one learns! While I juggle writing jobs (having divided my day in three chunks – morning, afternoon and after-dinner), I am reading – mostly at lunchtime – and looking for missing bits of documentation. And considering I am revising a neolithic-style story, I thought it might be fun to check out a few novels about the primitive world. I love Burroughs’ Land That Time Forgot and Pellucidar series, and I think I have already mentioned Lin Carter’s Zanthodon. And then, in a totally different league, there’s Kim Stanley Robinson’s Shaman.
But I am game for more – this might be the right time to go to the library and check out a copy of Clan of the Cave Bear.
Is there anything else? Let’s look around for some new reading stuff.
Well, this is the twenty-first century – so I googled “caveman books”, and I found a big fat list on Goodreads, twenty-five pages and… oh!

Continue reading


Leave a comment

All the right rules

support-authorDo you guys read reviews on Amazon, or Goodreads?
I do – not only those for my books, but also those for other people’s books.
I try and write a few reviews, too – feedback is important, and it’s good to try and help spread the word about good books.

So, yesterday, I was waiting for dinner time browsing a few amazon reviews, and I chanced upon a thing that sort of scared me.

No, really, I was scared.

Continue reading


2 Comments

My Shy Fans

goodreads-logoYou may have noticed a Goodreads Widget appeared in the sidebar here on the right, last week.
I’m not a great Goodreads user – after the initial “feeding frenzy”, the two days solid spent recording all the books I read and listing all the books I’d like to read, I sort of drifted away, and in the last few months I checked my account maybe once every three weeks.

ttexcover2smallWhat caused me a certain surprise was finding out, last Thursday, that not only all of my free ebooks are listed in Goodreads, and have quite good ratings, but even my recent short story, Tyrannosaurus Tex, which went on sale through Amazon ten days ago, is there on Goodreads already, and has a great rating!
And I even have four (count’em, four!) self-proclaimed fans of mine.
I have got fans on Goodreads!
And they’ve been there – reviews, ratings and fans – since goodness knows when.
And I did not know about’em!

It certainly never came to me the idea of doing a vanity search, and on Goodreads of all places.
And my fans, and my highly positive reviewers… well they did not even drop me a line!

And it’s weird, because the web is such, right now, that I’m painfully aware of my negative reviews – because having given you a good thrashing, they’re quite happy to let you know about it.
And at the same time, my fans and those that like my work are too shy to get in touch with me.

So I’m taking a moment to send out a belated Thank You, Guys!!

I do not have many readers – but this is fine, as I’m just starting out in the ebook arena, and hopefully more will come.
But as I have a small numbers of readers, it seems to me like a good opportunity for getting to know them.
Because without them, of course, my stories and essays are meaningless, lifeless, useless.

I’ll have to find a way to cure my fans of their shyness.
Any suggestions?
The comments section is always open…