I live in Gladstone, Missouri, a small suburb of Kansas City, where I spend most of my time reading, writing, or reading and writing.

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• On the Great Wall of Texas on March 30, 2010
  
  An eerie, somewhat unsettling look at a possible future; one that puts politics aside in favor of fiction, merely asking "what if?" rather than jamming ideas down the reader's throat. My only complaint is that the first-person narrator seems to be too omniscient, even making what felt like an unneeded reference to the age of a character he's just met; the story feels like it would work a bit better from a third-person perspective. Still, the story itself is a good one, very concise and very possible, which is what makes it so intriguing.
  
• The Morning Light on April 06, 2010
  
  I love this story. Besides a few minor errors, like misplaced commas or tense changes, it's very good. I like how it doesn't really spell out what exactly is going on, how the reader will miss out on the story if they aren't paying attention. It's very clever.
  
• Legend of the Ztarr Ch.1: The Offworlders on April 27, 2010
  
  I find it difficult to write an accurate review based on what is just the beginning of a story, and almost couldn't bring myself to give it five stars for the same reason. The story thus far seems captivating and incredibly promising, but in this volume can be just a bit confusing at points; it currently isn't long enough to tell whether or not it'll prove to be very original (I was reminded somewhat of Star Wars, to be honest.) The artwork is excellent, though a few of the scenes transitioned a bit roughly. The potential here is endless, and I'm definitely looking forward to more. There's something here everyone can enjoy, be it the comedy, action, romance, the colorful characters (including what I hope will prove to be a strong female lead,) the science fiction and RPG-like elements, or the beautiful fantasy aesthetic provided by the artwork and the story. Overall, it's a very promising piece of fiction, and I hope future parts won't fail to deliver.
  
• Stay Dead: A Day With The Dead on June 14, 2010
  
  An intriguing and emotional story hindered by a few technical and grammatical errors. The length of the story is holding it back from what it could be; the unfortunate lack of depth or further development ironically prevents the story from being human, which it definitely appears to be trying to be. All in all, a good story which falls just short of being a great story.
  
• Sharing on Oct. 06, 2012
  
  I wanted to give it four stars, but in the end I couldn't justify it. I'll start with the more negative aspects and move onto the positives, so I can end this review on the high note that this book deserves. Unfortunately, the book reads as a bit amateurish the whole way through. There are a lot of typos and formatting errors. We all make mistakes, but there were times where I'd find two or three typos on the same page (and I read it on an iPod Touch, so a page is basically two paragraphs at most). There were also several basic rules of writing that were completely ignored for no apparent reason. I think breaking rules can be great if it serves the story, but here it seems more like an accident. For example, in one of many long-winded segments of dialogue, the author put quotation marks at the end of every paragraph, even though the speaker didn't change. Typically, you'd only put an opening quotation at the beginning of each paragraph to remind the reader it's still speech, but you'd leave off the closing quotes because the speaker isn't done talking. Curiously, the author did this exactly right one time in the book, and wrong all the others, again for no apparent reason. There were also more serious issues. Some of the events in the story seemed like they were there more for shock value than anything else. It's not a huge problem because in most cases it worked, but others it didn't. Other events seemed like they happened less because they made sense and more because they were convenient for the author. Sometimes rules set up within the world of the story get broken, again, with no apparent reasoning behind them, and I think of all of these issues, these ones contributed most to my lower rating. The dialogue also tended to get on my nerves. There's a classic writing tip, which is to read your dialogue aloud to see if it sounds like actual speech. The author could have benefited from this. Much of the dialogue sounds like something no one would ever say, especially not children. Sometimes they use words I had to stop reading to look up, but then don't know what other, much simpler words and concepts mean. The dialogue also tends to come across as robotic; characters almost never use contractions. "It's" in place of "it is", when writing dialogue, can go a very long way, especially when it comes to children, who tend to try to talk fast and short. The book also seemed a bit wordy in general; I think a good 10,000 words could have been cut away without changing the story at all. A good part of this would be the similes. Nearly every action by any character in the book is described and then given a simile at the end. Sometimes they didn't even make sense. I thought it was charming at first, when the action was slower and the children were getting used to their fantastical surroundings. Later it served only to annoy, interrupting the action to basically describe what had already been described as though I didn't understand it the first time. Basically, I think the book could have used another round of editing, especially from someone who had never seen it before. Onto the positives. This is probably the most creative and imaginative thing I have ever read. A lot of other reviewers comment on its originality. It has a lot of it. There are also some classic, tried-and-true tropes here, but even these have Jones's creative and very unique spin to them. There were times I thought it was obvious where the story was going, and when it got there it was miles from where I'd suspected. Jones seems to me to have a good grasp on biology. There is a certain "magic" in this story, but the author doesn't use it to fill any creative gaps there might be, which tends to be a huge problem when writing stories of magic. Instead, all of the places and all of the creatures are carefully planned and carefully described, and they just plain work. Despite the errors mentioned above, there is a lot of genius in the story and at times in the writing itself. My last impression is that Jones is a good writer who needs a good editor to turn his good writing into great writing. All told I will say Sharing is more than worth the read, and I'll be moving on to the next book in this series shortly.