Before Editing: A Recommended Reading List
Part of being an editor is noticing patterns—the motion of a character arc, the raveling of a resolution, or the fact that the past five paragraphs have all started with the same word. Here’s another pattern: I’ve been recommending certain articles and books to almost every client I work with, year after year. So why not share them here once and for all? These 12 short articles and 6 books delve into the writing techniques I comment on most frequently. Many of them formed the core of my own...
Read MoreWelcome 2018! (What I read in 2017 and where you can find me this year)
During the fresh, can-do spirit of the beginning of a new year, it seems like a good time to have another swing at writing for this blog! As I expected last year, blogging hasn’t been my biggest priority, though I’m glad I was able to get some book reviews and publication announcements in last year. So what HAVE I been doing? Fair question! Two big things, mostly: reading, and being paid for reading. (That is, copyediting. And also writing, of course!) 2017 was the first year I...
Read MoreBook Review: The Unholy Consult by R. Scott Bakker
The final book in any great series has a certain weight. Often literally. When I unwrapped my review copy of The Unholy Consult (many thanks to Overlook Press), it was as substantial as I could wish. Yet a lot of that weight is appendices–including two short stories, maps, and a glossary more than 100 pages long. The story itself is just 450 pages. At first glance, this seems too short given everything that’s gone before. And it is. Alternatively, the “Second...
Read MoreBook Review: The Great Ordeal by R. Scott Bakker
The Great Ordeal–penultimate volume of the Aspect Emperor No-Longer-A-Trilogy, the conclusion of which, The Unholy Consult, was released yesterday–is not only a compelling novel but also very useful as a physical object. A nine-inch by six-inch by three-inch rectangle with the words THE GREAT ORDEAL across the front in an emphatic font is basically the world’s best portable Demotivator. I read this book at the tail end of 2016. Which was not, by any possible standards, a...
Read MoreBook Reviews: Hear No Evil, Citizen Science, and The Grey Star
A sort of rapid-fire round of book reviews this week, thanks to Christmas reading!1. Be the Change: Saving the World Through Citizen Science by Chanda Clarke Though short (33 PDF pages), this was very readable and informative–it’s designed to teach the principles of citizen science/crowdsourced science to people who have never heard of it before. Now, I’d heard the term before and had vaguely positive associations, but couldn’t explain it to you if you asked me....
Read MoreReview: “Collegium Sorcerorum: Thaddeus of Beewicke” by Louis Sauvain
Another prize from the LibraryThing giveaways program, this one even came with a courteous letter from the author himself. I’m always one to be impressed by presentation, and the presentation of this book was fine indeed: I was especially impressed by the dozen or so illustrations by Sean Bodley scattered throughout the text. The back matter was also quite impressive: 40 pages of Dramatis Personae (not as excessive as it first appears if these characters continue to play a part in this...
Read MoreReview: Serving Time by Nadine Ducca
For this review, another thank you is in order to the LibraryThing giveaways program, and of course Nadine Ducca herself for offering the first volume of her Timekeepers trilogy. I’m a winner once again! Although I was often confused over what was going on, the original mythological background of Serving Time was strong from the beginning. The author has clearly spent time developing this mythology and shows it by demonstrating her characters’ familiarity with its workings. I...
Read MoreReview: Heaven’s Needle by Liane Merciel
You know how I said The White-Luck Warrior became horror a few pages in? The White-Luck Warrior would take one look at one page of Heaven’s Needle and run away crying. Which is why, despite it being marketed as high fantasy, Heaven’s Needle is my review of choice for Hallow’s Eve this year. (That’s a warning, by the way, that the following review will contain disturbing imagery and if you aren’t up for that, especially if you’re currently eating tasty food,...
Read MoreReview: The White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker
The White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott BakkerFifty pages in, I realized I had come to approach this as a horror story rather than epic fantasy, as if I was reading Stephen King or the Lovecraft Unbound anthology. I read horror in a much more defensive mode, trying not to get invested in any character’s survival, and nodding my head whenever a particularly disturbing (I would say, dryly, “quite effective”) scene occurred, making terror an aesthetic observation in hopes of...
Read MoreReview: Finding Nina by Stephen Hazlett
Another win from the LibraryThing giveaway program, which I highly recommend if you ever find yourself short of books to review ; ) . Finding Nina is the concluding volume to Stephen Hazlett’s City Different trilogy (“The City Different,” an in-story Jeopardy question informs me, is a nickname for Santa Fe). It’s been described variously as a mystery, a thriller, and an “edgy romance”. It’s more a thriller than either of the others–a high-stakes,...
Read MoreAbout Therese
Therese Arkenberg's first short story was accepted for publication on January 2, 2008, and her second acceptance came a few hours later. Since then they haven't always been in such a rush, yet her work appears in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Sword & Sorceress XXIV. Aqua Vitae, her science fiction novella, was released by WolfSinger Publications in December 2011.
She works as a freelance editor and writer in Wisconsin, where she returned after a brief but unforgettable time in Washington, D.C. When she isn't reading, writing, or editing (it's true!) she serves on the board of the Plowshare Center of Waukesha, which works for social, economic, and environmental justice.