ReadingDiva featured The Scourge last week, and now her review is in! I couldn’t be more pleased to hear how much she liked it. Thank you again, RD!
Category: Blog
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The Scourge featured in July Dystopia Month on ReadingDiva.com
The Scourge, and yours truly, is featured this month on the fabulous book blog, ReadingDiva.com! Take a minute to check it out, and to rate The Scourge while there. The Diva’s review is forthcoming, but I’m blushing at what she said in her Blogger Note:
“I read The Scourge, I will be posting my review soon, if you are a Dystopia fan then you want to read this book. Expect to be blown away by the amazing characters and their quest to survival. I am amazed about A.G. Henley writing style. If you read this book you will have no choice but to become part of the adventure. Be warned, your heart will undeniably fall in-love with the characters.”
Thanks, ReadingDiva, I think I’m a little in love with you right now, too!
In other news, I’m now on Twitter. Learning to tweet feels a little like deciding to jump into a wildly raging river, but I’m working up to it. You can follow me @AG_Henley, or click on the Twitter icon to the left. See you under the water …
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If you could be a supernatural creature, what would you be?
Author Adriana Ryan recently blogged about what superpowers she wouldn’t want. She ruled out fat manipulation, a prehensile tongue, or bubble generation. Gotta agree with her on those.
The post got me thinking about supernatural creatures, and more specifically, which one I would choose to be if I had to be one of them. Think vampire, werewolf, zombie, ghost, witch, mermaid, avenging angel, troll, etc. And I’m not talkin’ Cullen vampires, Quileuete werewolves, Hogwarts witches, or Casper. I’m talking the blood-gulping, flesh-ripping, brain-eating, head-removing, sailor-drowning types of creatures.
English: A Vampire. Italiano: Un Vampiro. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) When I was around thirteen years old, I had a dream about a vampire chasing me. It felt VERY real as he caught up to me and grabbed me. I woke up still feeling that hand on my shoulder, and I actually saw the vampire standing next to my bed for a second.
People in my clinical work have said they’ve seen/heard/felt unusual things just before going to sleep, or just as they wake up. These experiences are called, in psychological jargon, hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, and they are considered normal. But being grabbed by a vampire—dream or no dream—is scary. Unless the vampire resembles a Cullen, that is. But that’s another kind of dream.
Ever since that experience, even before it, I’ve had a minor obsession with vampires. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, even the film, The Lost Boys, fascinated me. Vampires are a contradiction. Alive, and yet dead. Human, and yet other. Sophisticated, and yet primal. They’re so deliciously complicated. So I’d choose vampire. And although the drinking blood thing might be hard, I would take right to sleeping during the day and being up all night. I’m a night owl anyway.
So, what about you? Which supernatural creature would you be, and why?
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Breaking 1,000
Tuesday was an exciting day. I don’t know if it was the holiday week or what, but The Scourge shot through the #1,000 rank barrier in the Kindle store. As I write this, it’s ranked #681 overall (up? down? from about #1,400 overall Monday!), #9 in Children’s Action/Adventure and #17 in Fantasy and Magic. Here’s the teeny, tiny screenshot I took that I can’t seem to make any bigger:
(I read on Hugh Howey’s website [author of Wool that I recommended two weeks ago] that he took screenshots of his book moving through the Kindle ranks because he just couldn’t believe it would last. We have that in common.)
I’m also thrilled to have 64 5-star reviews out of 70 total! My readers are the best. Thank you all so much for helping to propel The Scourge this far.
On a totally unrelated note, annoying-yet-loveable dog Guapo has officially chewed up over $250 worth of shoes in our house since we got him last November. Here are his latest victim(s):
These Sanuk Yoga Mat flops are soooo comfortable. I’d love to buy a new pair to replace the ones Guapo ate – so potential readers, please buy the book. My feet will thank you.
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Time Suck: The Sequel
This post goes under the category of Just For Fun, or alternately, Time Suck. I came across the
website for Book: The Sequel which was a project to create a book comprised of readers’ ideas for first lines of (unwritten) sequels to famous books. This may have been big in 2009 when it was being compiled, but it’s the first I’ve seen of it. I spent time reading through some of the hilarious submissions, and trying to come up with a few of my own. Below are some examples from the website, and you can go here to view more. How funny or clever they are depends on how familiar you are with the book being spoofed, but I picked a few that I liked:Big Sister was everywhere, and she was always on the phone.—from 1985 (sequel to 1984 by George Orwell)
Where’s Papa going with that Ethernet cable?—from Charlotte’s Web Site (sequel to Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White)
After all these years I spent becoming a wizard, you would think I would know a spell that would allow me to sleep all night without getting up every two hours to go to the bathroom. —From Harry Potter: Escape from Hogwarts Retirement Village (sequel to Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling) Submitted by Adam Coates
In the late summer of that year, we started out with 5 sets of bicep curls and then moved on to weighted tricep dips.—from A Farewell to Flabby Arms (sequel to A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway)
Rosy-fingered dawn my ass: I’ve got f-ing RSI and Mr. World-Traveler won’t get his ass off the couch to lend a hand around here. —From Penelope’s Pissed (sequel to The Odyssey by Homer) Submitted by Anonymous
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a married woman in possession of a wealthy husband, must be in want of a divorce. —From Shame and Shamelessness (sequel to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen) Submitted by Ben Heller
We need a few more ribs.—from The Bible: For BBQ Lovers (sequel to The Bible by Unknown)
At night, I would lie in bed under my net, dreaming of blood. —From The Secret Life of Mosquitos: A Vampire Thriller (sequel to The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd) Submitted by Annie Scott, Writer, New York City
As it turned out, Rhett did give a damn. —From Back with the Breeze (sequel to Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell) Submitted by Shelby Sadler, Editor/Writer, Rockville, MD
Three fish, four fish, here’s some more fish, black fish, gray fish, catfish, crayfish, this one’s got a big cigar, this one’s drinking in the bar, what very naughty fish they are. —From the sequel to One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss Submitted by Carol Schneck, Bookseller, Okemos, MI
“WUU2? NMH” Me Alex & 3 BFFS Jaden Caden & Trip mkg plans 2nite TTUL bro PAW. —From A Digital Orange (sequel to A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess) Submitted by Laura Martineau, Grant Writer, Connecticut
One morning, as an intrusion of cockroaches awoke anxiously from a collective dream, it discovered that while sleeping it had been transformed into an identical mob of neurotic, banal, and ambition-less Eastern European males. —From Metamorphosis II: This Time, It’s Personal (sequel to The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka) Submitted by Angi Campbell, Writer, Washington
Holden Caulfield, divorced and with custody of his son, wished his teenager would just do his homework and stop mouthing off to him. —From The Catcher In the Rye: Reality Bites (sequel to The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger) Submitted by Jeremy Wagner, Struggling Novelist, Waukegan, IL
Now here are a couple I came up with:
After, Peeta whispered, “So, it’s an integer that has no integral factor but itself and 1. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.” — from The Prime Number Games (sequel to The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins)
When Edward grew a blood belly and Renesmee ran away from home thanks to being mocked for her ridiculous name, I started to rethink the whole immortality thing.
— from Blue Moon (sequel to the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer)Okay, readers, here’s your chance to suck some time. Submit a first sentence for a non-existent sequel in the comments. Be sure to say what it’s the sequel of, and the author. Bonus points to anyone who comes up with one for The Scourge. Good luck!
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Because I Said So: Wool by Hugh Howey
This week’s post is a recommendation of a series of science-fiction short stories called Wool, by Hugh Howey.
There’s an interesting backstory here. Howey, an Indie author, wrote the first of the Wool stories and offered it on Amazon one year ago. There was such a clamoring for the tale to continue that he wrote more, offering them in small, cheap, cliffhanging chunks, which people gobbled up like literate lemmings, propelling Wool into the top 100 overall in the Kindle store, and more recently into the NYT bestseller list. He eventually sold the first five stories together, the Wool Omnibus, which is what I read. Not surprisingly given the success he’s seen, Howey now has an agent and at least a UK publishing contract. And it’s all for good reason, because Wool is a solid story set in a very interesting world.If you have no idea what the story is about from the title, you’re not alone. It’s an obscure reference to the central conflict of the plot. In Wool 1, the first short story, Holston, the protagonist, is going out to “clean”. He must leave the safety of the half-buried silo where he and his people live to scrub the cameras (using bits of steel wool) that look out over the bleak, toxic world outside. And he can’t go back in. The community uses cleanings to get rid of people who either break the law, or go “crazy” and want to go outside, a taboo that is even forbidden to speak about. The catch: Holston chooses to go to cleaning, and he’s not crazy. Well, not very crazy. What he finds on the outside is surprising to say the least, and sets up the story to continue from there.
Howey’s strength, IMO, is his simple, clear writing, and intricate world building. I can totally picture the silo in which the characters live, despite it being a very alien world. He doles out information only as necessary, which drew me slowly, but inevitably, into the story. I was fascinated by the psychology of a group of people almost obsessed with the ability to see outside, but unable to even speak about wanting to go outside. The paradox was striking.
I did have a few gripes.**
The different parts of Wool 1-5 focus on multiple characters, which gave a broad view of the different levels of the 100+ floor silo, and the people who, er, people them. I understood that authoring choice, but it threw me off a bit. I found myself growing attached to characters who then were no longer the focus. It reminded me of reading Justin Cronin’s The Passage. I never quite recovered from losing what I thought was the main character about 100 pages into what felt like an 8,000 page novel. (To be fair it was only 800 pages. Too long, in either case.)
My other criticism, which might just be a personal reaction, was that I didn’t find Wool particularly compelling. I could put it down for a week at a time, then come back to it, without yearning for a few minutes of reading time so I could get a bit further. While it was well-written, had a great plot, and fully developed characters, somehow it didn’t = LOVE for me. Still, I recommend the Wool Omnibus without reserve. Do some Wool-gathering of your own, and let me know what you think.
** When I started this series of recommendations, I said I would not critique the books. But I can’t seem to help mentioning the one or two beefs I have with them. I’m sorry, but since this is my blog, I reserve the right to be capricious. If you don’t like it, you can send me out to clean.
