For my inaugural addition to The Sunday Salon, I’ll be posting about the current book I’m reading, the books I’ve already read and are still in need of reviews, and the next books on my reading list.

I’m easing into the second chapter of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle and I’m enchanted. The prose is lyrical and reminiscent of the old world fairytales; it’s difficult to believe this was written in the 20^th century.

This is one book that I’m anxious to finish and I’ll be snatching as much time as I can to do so.

Reconnecting with childhood has never felt so good. Continue reading »

In case the cat hasn’t been properly let out of the bag, I enjoy writing. But rather than let my writing pursuits seep into my reading pursuits, because I do like to keep them separate, I’ve created a sister site called (creatively enough) Today, I Wrote….

That’s the site where I will publish all of my writing book reviews, software tutorials, work flow examples, and other random bits of stuff about writing in general.

If you’re interested, please feel free to pop in and say hello and subscribe to the feed.

Sorry for the brief interruption; I now return you to your regularly scheduled book reviews.

What better way to get back into the blogging spirit than with a game of tag? Jace from Jace Scribbles has been tagged to participate in a highly interesting meme. (At least, highly interesting for avid readers.) Here’s the gist:

1. Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, and turn to page 56.
2. Write out the fifth sentence, along with the following two to five sentences.
3. Pass this along to five blog friends. (What kind of meme would this be if you didn’t require the (un)willing participation of others?)

Continue reading »

Avid readers tend to be writers, or aspiring authors, whichever you prefer, so in the spirit of the No Plot? No Problem! review and NaNoWriMo itself, I’ve decided to publish a brief outline of how you can use Liquid Story Binder XE (LSBXE) to breeze through your November novel.

LSBXE is a full featured program created specifically for writers–all writers, but especially fiction writers. It’s perfect for NaNoWriMo because it allows you to create goals (time and word count related), take notes, add pictures, playlists, and dossiers to keep you focused and inspired, all within the program.

To make an already great program even better, it also has a Work Log. This log keeps track of your writing progress on a per book basis. It tells you how long you’ve had the program active and how many words you’ve written for that day. It also tells you your total word count, calculates your daily average, and offers up the longest time you’ve spent writing and the most words written in a day.

As if you needed more incentive, after you’ve finished writing your novel, the program will allow you to easily compile all the chapters into a manuscript ready for intense editing, printing, or distribution. Continue reading »

Childhood, it’s a place we’ve all been at one time or another, where anything is possible and there’s usually that one (or possibly two or three) story that is its cornerstone.

Yesterday, I went on a mini-adventure as I was perusing the aisles of Amazon. I went through the usual adult fare, plucking out titles and covers I thought sounded or looked interesting. My shopping list grew, as usual. But before I clicked on the purchase button, I did something unexpected…I typed in the word unicorns. Continue reading »