Francis Porretto

Francis W. Porretto was born in 1952. Things went steadily downhill from there.

Fran is an engineer and fictioneer who lives on the east end of Long Island, New York. He's short, bald, homely, has bad acne and crooked teeth. His neighbors hold him personally responsible for the decline in local property values. His life is graced by one wife, two stepdaughters, three dogs, five cats, too many power tools to list, and an old ranch house furnished in Early Mesozoic style. His 12,000 volume (and growing) personal library is considered a major threat to the stability of the North American tectonic plate.

Publishing industry professionals describe Fran's novels as "Unpublishable. Horrible, but unpublishable all the same." (They don't think much of his short stories, either.) He's thought of trying bribery, but isn't sure he can afford the $3.95.

Time was, all Fran's fictions WERE free to whoever might care to read them. Back then, he wanted readers more than revenue. However, that has changed, along with certain other of his circumstances, so he now asks what he hopes you'll consider a modest price for his novels and stories. (The novelette "Farm Girl" is still free. A loss leader, if you will.)

For an external review of "Chosen One" by Martin McPhillips, author of the blockbuster thriller "Corpse In Armor," please go here: http://newpaltzjournal.com/?p=1978
For Martin's review of "On Broken Wings," please go here: http://newpaltzjournal.com/?p=1994
For his review of "Sledgehammer Concerto," please go here: http://newpaltzjournal.com/?p=2023

"Chosen One," "On Broken Wings," "The Sledgehammer Concerto," "Which Art In Hope," and "A Dash Of Spice" are also available as paperbacks, through Amazon. Check the specific pages for those books for details.

Visit Fran's "Musings of an Indie Writer" blog at http://musingsofanindiewriter.blogspot.com/

Share his and his Esteemed Co-Conspirators' opinions on next to everything at "Eternity Road:" http://eternityroad.info

And of course, write to him, on whatever subject tickles your fancy, at mailto:fwp@eternityroad.info

Website: http://eternityroad.info
Twitter: fporretto

• fporretto: #IndieWriters Wish-Fulfillment Fiction: http://t.co/MMALxFd5
• fporretto: @teriobrien Have a look at a classic Obama gaffe: http://t.co/DREOo9wj (It floored me that he could be THAT stupid!)
• fporretto: @Emma_Westlund Then go here: http://t.co/Siqp8GDR -- and enter coupon code LU27Y at checkout, and the book is yours for free.
• fporretto: @Emma_Westlund So what do you prefer to read? Romance, Fantasy, Horror, SF, Paranormal, Erotica, what??
• fporretto: #IndieWriters: Indie Traps: http://t.co/98UT1RKh

Blog: http://musingsofanindiewriter.blogspot.com/

http://amazon.com

achievement    alternate creation myth    anarchism    assistance    baseball    catholic    characterization    christian    christianity    coming of age    contemporary    courage    creation    decembermay    dedication to duty    description    desire    despair    devotion    duty    ecology    editing    engineering    erotica    ethics    family    family bonds    fantasy    farm life    fate    fear    fiction    fidelity    forbidden    freedom    genius    gods mercy    golden rule    grammar    greed    heritage    horror    indie writers    infertility    interspecies war    intrigue    islam    islamism    jealousy of power    journalism    justice    limits to power    loneliness    love    magic    mana    management    maturity    misperceptions    modern    nearfuture    office romance    perseverance    phenomenology    platonic idealism    plot    politics    power of love    promotion    publishing    punctuation    rape    repentance    resolve    responsibility    romance    science fiction    selfabsorption    social contraints    software    speculative    spelling    spiritual    statism    storytelling    style    supermen    supernatural    supervision    talismen    the system    theme    transgender    triumph    trust    values    vampires    vengeance   

Gareth Lewis
Latest book: Grey Engines. Published on January 1, 2012.
Visit their website.

• Meddlers In Time on Feb. 27, 2010
  
  Mr. Watson has produced a future-past fantasy of considerable dimensions. Its characters hop gleefully from 21st Century New Zealand, to a far distant planet they call Transit, to 9th Century England, to 8th Century New Zealand, and assorted points in between and beyond. Their spatio-temporal gate allows them unlimited flexibility of movement through both space and time, at apparently no cost...except for the cost to the various organizations whose military goods they requisition for their undertaking. The thrust of the novel is the protagonists' desire to create a time-branch, one that would avoid the accelerating totalitarian tendencies of this time line. They aim to do this by bringing high-tech firepower to 9th Century England, that the Danish incursions that so retarded social and technological progress there might be thwarted and a genuinely free society nurtured. Much of the early going of the book reads like a recipe for exactly that sort of enterprise. It's replete with equipment lists, training schedules, and orders of deployment. Fascinating, in a way, but this reader was itching to get on to the main event, and discover the inner motivations of the Marquee characters. The adventure proceeds smoothly -- for the protagonists, that is. The Danes find themselves on the nasty end of quite a bit of advanced ordnance, and are beaten back repeatedly without the good guys suffering a single casualty. Local Englishment rapidly warm to their new protectors, who instruct them in replicable technologies they would normally have discovered by trial and error over the course of the coming centuries. In the process, the mingling of 21st Century and 9th Century Anglosphere cultures produces some interesting alterations to the latter. The book has its satisfactions, but it also has two flaws of note. First, there are a significant number of "mechanical" mistakes. These include numerous spelling and punctuation errors, not all of which could be attributed to typos. Also, the RTF format copy I downloaded suffers from many, many changes of font size and shifts to and from italic, with no clear reason for either. Were these corrected, the reading experience would be greatly improved. Second, as is often the case in a story written to reify the author's desires, the heroes win far too easily. The time-traveling lovers of freedom are too well supplied with every imaginable resource, both human and material, owing to the infinite possibilities of unlimited free movement in space and time. Beyond that, not one of the Marquee characters appears to have any significant character flaws or dark motives. The result is a lack of dramatic tension. This reader reached the end of the book hoping against hope that some force -- perhaps another time-traveling band, this one dedicated to establishing totalitarian rule over all places and times -- would come along to give the heroes a genuinely hard time. It doesn't happen. Meddlers In Time has its pleasures. In particular, it was educational to read a well-thought-out plan of attack for "hothousing" a subsistence culture toward an advanced state. Mr. Watson has obviously put a good deal of thought into the problems involved. Perhaps there's a time-space gate on his shopping list, if not on his storeroom shelves! Overall assessment: --Theme: I can't grade this, as there was essentially none. --Plot: C / C+ --Characterization: C- --Style: C In short, a fun read, but no more than that. Perhaps Mr. Watson has better shots in the locker; I hope to see some. Francis W. Porretto http://eternityroad.info
  
• Better than Real on March 04, 2010
  
  You've got to love a book that starts with a genuine bang. Better Than Real is a near-future SF action-adventure. Its main protagonist, Lee, designs sex androids for Zendyne Corp., which apparently has a monopoly on that sort of product. Thing is, its androids aren't supposed to object to what their owners demand of them. Lilith, the android that committed the murder described above, clearly objected most strenuously, though we're not told exactly what elicited her homicidal response. Lilith, you see, is an escaped artificial intelligence created by a shadowy force that calls itself Electis. She was intended for assassination duties, which she found repugnant. Electis wants its property back...but Lilith would rather stay free, and with Lee. The central plot thread concerns Lee, Lilith, and Sooz, a ragamuffin teen child of a single mother who makes her living selling illegal drugs, as they twist and turn to evade Electis's agents. One of those agents, Stranger, has been enhanced well beyond the abilities of common humanity...but then, Lilith, in her Artemis 7300 android host body, has a few extra abilities of her own. A book such as Better Than Real necessarily involves willing suspension of disbelief of its SF elements: artificial intelligence on a human scale, androids that can't be told visually or tactilely from human beings, mind archiving and "downloads," routine cloning, monomolecular blades, nanotech, et alii. But Thomas's slam-bang pace and the intense coloration he gives his Marquee characters are more than adequate reason, especially since he creates a coherent setting into which to embed those elements. Better Than Real is written in a traditional narrative style, minimally decorated and utterly free of technical and mechanical flaws. It's a polished, highly entertaining work by a writer I'm happy to have encountered. I hope he has more books of this quality to bestow upon us. Theme: You can't create humanlike sentience without giving it freedom. I concur: A+ Plot: A Characterization: A+ Style: A Highly recommended.
  
• Expressions of Freedom on March 19, 2010
  
  Many, many voices have been raised to the effect that the democratic system should be made somehow more democratic. Mr. Lewis explores one direction this desire might take...and some of the abuses that would flow from reposing too much confidence in the technology and maintainers that would underpin it. Expressions Of Freedom is set in near-future Britain. That society has adopted an electronically modulated "Town Meeting" style of democracy. Though Lewis leaves some of his backstory premises obscure, I intuit that there are no subjects considered off-limits for this continuous ongoing plebiscite -- no constitutional constraints on what The People may decree permitted, forbidden, or mandatory. I wouldn't care for that, myself, but it's the direction in which many "free societies" are trending, and worthy of some imaginative exploration. The voting network is controlled by artificial intelligences slaved to that task, whose servitude and integrity are largely taken for granted. That proves to be a mistake, as investigative journalist Jonas Harper survives to learn -- barely. Not only are the high-tech companies that sustain the network capable of corrupting the results of a vote, but there are ghosts in the machine as well: Free Intelligences unbound by any effective constraint. These free AIs ardently desire to come out of hiding, and have approached Harper sub rosa with information about network corruption, in the hope of enlisting him to their cause. The core ideas of the novella are not entirely original; speculation about AIs has been rampant since the advent of the computer, and the notion of a continuous online democracy was explored previously by the great Alastair Reynolds in his blockbuster The Prefect. However, Lewis gives the story a great deal of snap and drive. His characterizations, though compressed, are believable. His style is sleek and largely free of technical errors. I found particularly striking Lewis's assignment of candor to the Free Intelligences in their appeal to Jonas Harper: *** "They know you're out there now. The light comes on. "It was inevitable." "So now you need me to report your version of the truth, to counter Foster's paranoia." "If we wished to present our version of the truth, we'd do so. Unfiltered by your opinions. Why should anyone accept that as more valid than his opinion. We want you to present your truth, which is, ultimately, all you can do." "What do you expect me to say? And if you don't like it, will it ever get out? How do I know you won't change it before it gets to the public?" "You don't. We could manipulate the flow of information if we wished, making us the equal of your media barons. How certain are you they don't already do this?" "They're human." Some only on technicalities, admittedly. "The fear will be that you, not being human, will have more nefarious motives to your manipulations." "You can never know another's motives, or sometimes even your own, so there's no way to convince you of ours. You can only gauge them from our actions. And since actions are the only things that affect the world, are they not the only things that matter?" *** There's a lesson in there that should be tattooed on the eyelids of every liberal in America -- the INSIDE surfaces of their eyelids. If the story has a significant flaw, it would be that it appears to "end in the middle." Whether that's intentional or accidental, for a reader who's bought into the story's premises and is enjoying the thrusts and counterthrusts, it's a bit like sitting down in expectation of a sumptuous dinner and being cut off after the shrimp cocktail. But perhaps it's for the best. Speculations on how Harper will present the Free Intelligences to the British public, and how the public will react, could run in a million directions. Gareth Lewis is a voice to listen for. I plan to keep abreast of his efforts. Recommended!
  
• Radiation Angels: The Chimerium Gambit on April 04, 2010
  
  The lineage of mercenaries in fiction is long. It goes back at least as far as Mitchell V. Charnley's "The Buccaneer." More recently, we've had Frederic Forsyth's "The Dogs Of War." Then came Glen Cook's "Black Company" series, and David Drake's "Hammer's Slammers." Others have followed in their train, though often with stories suited only for comic book publication. James Daniel Ross has concocted a far-future military adventure that deserves considerable respect. His Radiation Angels, a mercenary corps that sells its skills on an interstellar bourse of contract violence, are among the best characterized representatives of that fictional rogues' gallery. Indeed, the characterization Ross gives his Marquee Characters, especially Captain Todd Rook, the Angels' commander, is worth the price of the book all by itself. Let me not slight the plot, which is clever, swift, and action-packed. The Angels start the tale in service to a coup attempt on politically troubled Ashley 9. Events prove that taking the contract was a mistake; the Angels' employer Tomlinson, Supreme Admiral of the Ashleian Navy and aspirant to the planetary presidency, never intended to pay them. He'd striven to pit his hired mercenary groups against one another, in an attempt to minimize the overall cost of his coup. Yet that mistaken contract proves to be the entry to a great opportunity, for when the Angels have beaten down the resistance and taken possession of the presidential palace, they discover a multi-billion-credit fortune in chimerium, a fictional ultra-precious metal. They succeed in making away with it as de facto spoils of war, but Tomlinson is determined to have it back; it was a great part of the reason for his coup. The book has two flaws of note. The first and lesser is that it didn't receive a sufficient proof-editing. There are quite a few mistakes in spelling and punctuation, and even a few cases of accidental clashes of nomenclature. I hope that Ross will employ a proofreader with really sharp eyes before committing his next work to publication; his stuff is good enough to deserve it. Also, the use of italics is questionable; more restraint in that regard would have been appropriate. The second and greater flaw in Chimerium Gambit is that it's rather overwritten. In keeping with its subject matter, military fiction generally exhibits a rather lean, even Spartan style, with which Ross apparently disagrees. Quite a number of his devices and images misfire badly. They serve as examples of why "kill your darlings!" is among the best pieces of stylistic advice ever given to aspiring writers. As a rule, if a simile, metaphor, or other literary device sounds contrived, it almost certainly is, and should be excised without regret or pity. Ross should study the stylistic discipline of Tom Kratman and John Ringo, grizzled veterans of these wars who seldom put an iamb, dactyl, or trochee wrong. Still, this is a fine entry in the military / mercenary SF subgenre by a promising new talent. I plan to keep abreast of this writer. Recommended! Theme: As ye sow, so shall ye reap, especially if ye soweth explosives and high-velocity projectiles. I concur: A Plot: A Characterization: A Style: C+ or B- 4 Stars of 5.
  
• The Story on May 17, 2010
  
  Exceptionally clever! It put me in mind of Robert W. Chambers's classic collection The King In Yellow, wherein a seemingly innocuous two-act play induces madness, often suicidal, in all who read it. This piece is especially relevant given the contemporary fascination with memetic propagation. One thesis is that ideas use people as their vectors -- and that people were "developed" specifically for that duty. Bizarre, but not entirely unthinkable. Indeed, having allowed myself to dwell on the possibility afresh, I find myself compelled to discuss it with others...
  
• They Came, They Saw, They Took the Tinfoil on May 18, 2010
  
  Delightful! I'm even inclined to overlook the double handful of typos and spelling errors. But your storytelling gift is good enough that your work deserves better line-editing. I hope you'll have someone examine your next pieces carefully for mechanical mistakes before you post them. From the title, I'd expected something involving conspiracy theorists -- "tinfoil hat wearers," as we say on this side of the Atlantic -- but this was a refreshing departure from expectations. But tell me, please: do you still use actual TIN foil in the Sceptered Isle, or is it the same tawdry drawn-aluminium crap we in the colonies must put up with?
  
• Meddlers In Time- The Cockatoo River Incident on May 18, 2010
  
  Mr. Watson's storytelling continues to improve. This novella has all the elements required by a military adventure, with the added fillip of a time-travel motif. It's told in a rapid, telegraphic style, with much shifting of narrative viewpoint, but that mainly adds to the sense of pace. There are two problems with "Cockatoo River Incident." The first one is mechanical: there are many low-level errors in spelling and punctuation. A good story deserves good line-editing, and this reviewer hopes Mr. Watson will secure the services of a good editor for his future pieces. The second problem is, unfortunately, inherent in the nature of a story whose plot line depends on time travel. Since one who has the ability to move freely through time is essentially without any restrictions on how long he can "wait" to take action on a problem such as the Cockatoo River raid, there's always that niggling question about "why now?" Why couldn't Wayne and Jenny have built up a far greater force-in-place with which to confront the slavers, such that there need be no casualties among the Mission residents? But one who works fictionally with time travel must request that additional suspension of disbelief from his readers. In the case of "Cockatoo River Incident," that extra effort on the reader's part is repaid with a superior military-SF tale.
  
• Questing Beast on May 20, 2010
  
  Hah! Thou varlet! Thou clabber-clawed cream-faced loon! Avaunt thee! But seriously, this is delightful. Especially given the generally low level of imagination and workmanship displayed by Smashwords writers, it's a joy to have stumbled on it. Malory would be proud. Spenser would swoon! (Berkeley, of course, would deny its existence.) But, as the incumbent Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web, it is compulsory for me to say something critical about whatever I read. And so, I have consulted my Nemurian dictionary and must regretfully inform you that the possessive plural of "trogomet" is "trogomets'," with no additional "s." Be more careful in the future!
  
• Tattoo on May 31, 2010
  
  Tattoo is a superior horror novella. It's decently written, bordering on evocative throughout and occasionally getting all the way there. Cooley's scene-setting is particularly good. His characterizations, though not always perfectly convincing, suggest that he's put significant thought into how to bring a character alive. The plot itself isn't perfectly original, but the treatment is good enough to avoid making it purely a homage to its antecedents. If Tattoo has a serious problem of any sort, it's that it could only end one of two ways. I don't mean to suggest that the ending is telegraphed; however, one could guess at it and have a fifty-fifty chance of being correct. Then again, horror tales are often like that; the genre itself imposes constraints on how such stories must develop and end, constraints the author dare not take lightly. I plan to keep track of this writer.
  
• Beyond Redemption - The Forbidden on June 07, 2010
  
  I've been casting about for what this book needs. It's not hopeless. In fact, in many ways it's quite ambitious and original. It draws inspiration from some of the less-well-known parts of Genesis and the legends of Lilith (Eve's supposed precursor), but it departs from and expands on those stories in some novel ways. Unfortunately, what starts as a potential blockbuster of a supernatural fantasy adventure doesn't come off, for at least four reasons. First, we have the plethora of significant characters. There are just too many, and the need to give each of them "screen time" makes for a jumpy narrative that's very difficult to keep coherent. The braid of plot threads doesn't tighten into unity until three-quarters of the way through the book. Worse, at several points the author moves the viewpoint from one Marquee character to another in the middle of a scene, which is one of fiction's mortal sins. Second, the character development is unconvincing. That's partly because of the large array of important characters, but it also derives from the characters themselves. For example, was it really necessary to depict so much of Mike Angel's dream life -- and so much of his love life with Bella? Between those two aspects, Mike's character gets very little chance to show us his real, inner "stuff." The same is true for Bella. As for Emerson, Dominic, Mandy, Matron, Zara, the elements of Lilith's entourage, and so on, they never acquire two dimensions, much less three. Third, the book displays numerous mechanical and stylistic problems. At several points it's heavily overwritten; at others, it feels badly rushed. Atop that, there are many errors in grammar and punctuation, and in one case the spelling of a character's name is changed. Fourth -- possibly because of the combination of the faults enumerated above -- it goes on for far too long. I read through the first third with interest, the second third with growing impatience, and the last third by pushing my perseverance meter to its stops. Yet this is the first volume of a projected trilogy. I expect that a lot of readers will reach the end of this book unwilling to continue on to Book 2. For all that, it has its good points. The author shows some talent, but he needs to work on his plot cohesion, his understanding of character development, his stylistic discipline, and his fundamentals of grammar and punctuation. (The comma splices alone came near to driving me insane.) And I just figured out what this book really, truly needs: A good, tough editor!
  
• Disposable on June 12, 2010
  
  This is clever and funny, as Mr. Lewis usually is. However, it's based on a pair of mistaken premises: 1) It overlooks the Conservation of Mass; 2) It overlooks the reason we replace rather than repair, in those venues where the former practice has displaced the latter one. But perhaps it's unfair for an old physicist-economist-crank like me to pour cold water on a charming tale such as this, just because its cautionary aspects are ill-aimed. John Brunner wrote several magnificent novels based on mistaken premises -- he was a socialist, so that was foreordained -- and nevertheless, they were as entertaining as fiction can be. As usual, Mr. Lewis, delightful.
  
• Healthy or Else on June 21, 2010
  
  This is a good, solid story about an important subject. A wag whose name I've forgotten once said something along these lines: When we were a young species, we killed for political and religious reasons. Then we matured a bit, grew wealthy, and began to kill for economic reasons. But now that we're fully mature, and have realized that health is the only thing that matters, we kill for therapeutic reasons. Though I usually dislike stories told in present tense, I think your choice of present tense suited this tale quite well. It enhanced the immediacy of the thing, which, when coupled to good narrative timing, amplifies the emotional impact of a story. I have one substantive criticism: a cautionary story of this sort tends to be more effective the gentler it is. If, rather than tackling the horror in its depths, you depict the inception of the thing feared, when unease is the dominant reaction, you avoid the "it can't happen here" reaction that blunts many otherwise fine pieces of cautionary fiction. Indeed, one of the most important cautionary books ever written, Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," lost impact to exactly that effect in the mind of many a reader. You've told a plausible tale, but at a couple of points it edged over into the heavy-handed, precisely because you put your characters into "the belly of the beast." Keep this in mind for future cautionary works. A few minor nitpicks: 1. Stabilize the spelling of "dessert." Two "s's" make it the sweet dish consumed at the close of a meal; one "s" makes it an arid region that gets little rainfall. Also, there's a "2,0000" where you meant "2,000." Not a terribly big deal, but in a short story every character counts. 2. Among the most commonly confused words are "your" and "you're." The first is the possessive of "you." The second is the contraction of "you are." 3. Your dialogue is generally good, but your employment of commas is a little irregular. Commas in dialogue are indications of speech rhythm. Use them wherever the speaker might pause, whether for emphasis or for breath. (On the other hand, congratulations for demonstrating the proper use of the semicolon.) On balance, well done!
  
• A Mixture of Metals on July 08, 2010
  
  "A Mixture of Metals" has put me in mind of a number of other books: Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We," John Hersey's "White Lotus," and of course George Orwell's "1984." It's not stylistically comparable to those novels, but it embeds the same cautionary themes, and is almost as effective as they at conveying a sense of menace and nowhere-to-run. Simora's story of repeated disillusionment and betrayal is nicely told: neither too maudlin nor too aloof. The one criticism I can make of it is that Kana's eventual role in Simora's troubles is somewhat telegraphed by the early portion of the story; Kana is so relentlessly self-centered that the reader will know that he figures in later events, to tragic effect. The overall portrayal of "Society" is a wee bit heavy-handed, but that might have been unavoidable, given the features it had to have. A regime that attempts thought and speech control must be omnipresent and overbearing. There's a risk here, of course; a reader not entirely attuned to your thesis might react by saying "he's overdoing it" and thrust your book aside. All the same, it worked for me, and it will work for many others. As I write this, another book comes to mind: Robert A. Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold." The depiction of a slave society, produced by war, with the "original participants" reversed is striking in its parallel to your book. Clearly, this is a "dangerous vision." Few writers have dared to depict a racially-determined slave society in which blacks are the ruling class; it would be deemed "politically incorrect," even though recent events suggest that there are many black political activists who envision exactly that as their ideal end state. I have one stylistic criticism to make. It's one of which many writers are guilty, so this is merely a mild reproof. Never, never, NEVER use the phrasing "on a XXX basis." It's so irritating that my attention is immediately diverted from the story to the awkwardness and artificiality of the phrase. I'd rather eat shards of broken glass than be battered by that phrase. Here's the right way: "On a daily basis" ==> "Daily" "On a regular basis" ==> "Regularly" "On a sexual basis" ==> "By sex" One reason for the "on a XXX basis" construction is that we've all been made horribly timid about using adverbs. Use them as God intended! They're one of the eight parts of speech; you can hardly do without them. The reason so many editors wince at adverbs in the prose of mediocre and poor writers is the tendency of such writers to use them to prop up weak dialogue: '"You can't talk to me like that," she said angrily.' If your dialogue is strong enough to "speak for itself," you can avoid the adverbs, and the "Tom Swifties" that often result. Otherwise, use adverbs where appropriate -- WITHOUT the "on a XXX basis" scaffolding that's merely a feeble attempt to disguise them. On the whole, jolly well done!
  
• The writer on July 11, 2010
  
  A basic, self-referential "chuckler," which exploits the fundamental frustration of the writer's life: those all-too-frequent times when he just...can't...get...down...to it. It's been done before, of course, but this is a decent assault on it. You do need a little editing help; there are several awkward constructions in the story that deserve to be smoothed out. All the same, decently well done. If you have the gift of humor, which is fairly rare these days, do more!
  
• The Son of Man on July 18, 2010
  
  Despite its several flaws, this book has a lot to like. The book's virtues flow from its audacious premises. Considering how ardently modern writers have searched for really original, really bold ideas, it's a wonder this one hadn't been used before. Mr. Johnson has walked an untrodden path. The plot is more than adequately complex, and given the major premise, quite believable. (Okay, there's a lot of willing-suspension-of-disbelief required, but hey, it isn't a documentary.) There are one or two places where a bit of doubt creeps in -- How the Vinces got access to the blood capsule and the Shroud; how the villains got (the original) Dr. Oliver "inside;" why the flight to Sydney returned to the United States -- but overall, it works well; the gears mesh without grinding. The characterizations, while generally good, aren't quite perfect. Todd needed more development; as matters stand, he doesn't quite come off. (Why, for instance, did he quit medical school? Why was he willing to resume a sexless "romance" with frigid and un-loving Maria?) It was possible to do a better job on Maria with less this-is-me directly from her mouth. On the other side of the ledger, Benjamin Santana, the story's main villain, is under-characterized; he needed more time on-camera than he got. Strangely enough, the major figure who was best developed was the enigmatic and powerful Brother Michael. However, the Supporting Cast was, in the main, handled well. Probably the weakest aspect of the book is stylistic. There are a great many errors of spelling and punctuation; in particular, Mr. Johnson doesn't use the comma properly. Also, given the premises, a much less colloquial tone would have been better, both in the straight narrative and in the dialogue. But the plot carries the day. Because of the missteps in characterization and style, if it were possible to award 4.5 stars, I would, but today I'm "rounding up." Well done!
  
• A Lady Pays Her Penalties on July 27, 2010
  
  Well, well, well... I lit into this collection a bit uneasily, as sadism and masochism aren't "my thing." However, as I'm another Smashwords author who turns out the occasional bit of erotica, I feel a moral obligation (don't laugh) to review others. And BDSM games have featured in an increasing percent of erotic writing as the years have rolled past, though I could never say why. I must admit, Leslie's self-prescribed predicaments were...entertaining? Fascinating? Hm, I need a better word, and I can't find one. They were surely painful to read about. Are there really women of that sort? Whatever the case, your characterization of her made her mysterious and alluring; just why did she need all that discomfort, pain, and humiliation? The writing was straightforward and competent; the mechanical and stylistic errors were very few. (NB: "discrete" was not the word you wanted; that should have been "discreet.") The scenarios were imaginative, although Leslie should really learn a few games other than backgammon. Perhaps she will now that she's married! You'll notice I awarded you five stars. That's well deserved in comparison to some of the other erotic writing I've read, here and elsewhere. If I were to judge "A Lady Pays Her Penalties" on a purely objective basis, I'd deduct a half-star because the first three stories in the collection were essentially plotless, and because Craig, Leslie's foil, needed a bit more character development than he received. However, we must judge erotica according to erotica's standards. Therefore: Very well done!
  
• Orange Car with Stripes on July 27, 2010
  
  I don't have quite the right words with which to describe these two novellas. (Missy Tonight is a sequel to Orange Car With Stripes.) Madcap? That almost fits. Black humor? More in the indigo range, but what the hell. Tom Lichtenberg is an atheist, but he's fairly easygoing about it: "I'm not a big fan of the so-called "militant" atheists and tend to agree with your assessment of their obsession with religion, but at the same time I enjoy them and I'm glad they're out there ruffling feathers and making noise. It's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned, for atheists to be seen and heard. "There is still a long way to go before atheism is truly accepted at large around the world - a long long way - and we who merely claim to not believe in any god are still at risk of our very lives in many places - how crazy is that? "Still, we need to have a sense of humor about it, and this seems sorely lacking to me. I've done my little part with the publication of my two 'atheist comic pulp fictions.'" These linked stories concern a fictional Pink City, built by eccentric millionaire Ronald Humm as a haven for atheists. It's fully equipped with atheist institutions: a college, a broadcasting service, and whatnot. The plots concern one Gian Carlo Spallanzini, almost literally a professional atheist -- in point of fact, he's a Professor of Defunct Sciences at New Harbinger College -- and his blindsiding by events he's spent his adult life ridiculing. Professor Spallanzini is also a regular guest on Missy Tonight, a production of the Atheist Broadcasting Service. Its hostess, Missy D'Angelo, is a vicious battleaxe who delights in tearing believers to shreds, which she does nightly on her show. Believers in what, you ask? Name something! The novellas aren't really about atheism, but about intellectual vanity and obsession. Spallanzini, protagonist of Orange Car With Stripes, is compelled by an offhand challenge from a theist friend to confront realities he'd been pooh-poohing since he was toilet trained, which unmakes the man he was and provides the seed of the man he becomes. In brief, his friend challenges him to select a random stranger and unearth his deepest secret, opining that it will be something stranger and darker than Spallanzini has ever imagined. That puts the professor on a collision course with aliens more remarkable than any of the conceptions he's derided...and also with the Orange Car With Stripes, though not in a literal sense. Alan Musted, forty-three-year-old antihero of Missy Tonight, resolves to become Spallanzini's replacement on the show. Musted has no qualifications for the position. Indeed, he has no qualifications for anything, being a complete loser who ekes out a subsistence living in a glorified broom closet in nearby Spring Hill Lake. But he's an atheist -- hard core, from toddlerhood -- and he fancies himself the perfect replacement for the ruined professor. Reality disagrees, but in a funny and often touching series of encounters, many of which parallel Spallanzini's from Orange Car With Stripes. Alien parrots, talking redwoods, really slow interstellar travel, an orange Camaro with white racing stripes, adultery, nasty young and old women with more attitude than Carter has Little Liver Pills, a janitor who owns a city, militant atheists, a preacher who'll forgive anything at all, and an amateur videographer who calls himself "Beauregard and Scooter" and never says die....You could say these novellas "have it all." Theme: Be none too sure of your premises. I concur: A Plot: B+ Characterization: A Style: A- Recommended!
  
• Missy Tonight on July 27, 2010
  
  I don't have quite the right words with which to describe these two novellas. (Missy Tonight is a sequel to Orange Car With Stripes.) Madcap? That almost fits. Black humor? More in the indigo range, but what the hell. Tom Lichtenberg is an atheist, but he's fairly easygoing about it: "I'm not a big fan of the so-called "militant" atheists and tend to agree with your assessment of their obsession with religion, but at the same time I enjoy them and I'm glad they're out there ruffling feathers and making noise. It's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned, for atheists to be seen and heard. "There is still a long way to go before atheism is truly accepted at large around the world - a long long way - and we who merely claim to not believe in any god are still at risk of our very lives in many places - how crazy is that? "Still, we need to have a sense of humor about it, and this seems sorely lacking to me. I've done my little part with the publication of my two 'atheist comic pulp fictions.'" These linked stories concern a fictional Pink City, built by eccentric millionaire Ronald Humm as a haven for atheists. It's fully equipped with atheist institutions: a college, a broadcasting service, and whatnot. The plots concern one Gian Carlo Spallanzini, almost literally a professional atheist -- in point of fact, he's a Professor of Defunct Sciences at New Harbinger College -- and his blindsiding by events he's spent his adult life ridiculing. Professor Spallanzini is also a regular guest on Missy Tonight, a production of the Atheist Broadcasting Service. Its hostess, Missy D'Angelo, is a vicious battleaxe who delights in tearing believers to shreds, which she does nightly on her show. Believers in what, you ask? Name something! The novellas aren't really about atheism, but about intellectual vanity and obsession. Spallanzini, protagonist of Orange Car With Stripes, is compelled by an offhand challenge from a theist friend to confront realities he'd been pooh-poohing since he was toilet trained, which unmakes the man he was and provides the seed of the man he becomes. In brief, his friend challenges him to select a random stranger and unearth his deepest secret, opining that it will be something stranger and darker than Spallanzini has ever imagined. That puts the professor on a collision course with aliens more remarkable than any of the conceptions he's derided...and also with the Orange Car With Stripes, though not in a literal sense. Alan Musted, forty-three-year-old antihero of Missy Tonight, resolves to become Spallanzini's replacement on the show. Musted has no qualifications for the position. Indeed, he has no qualifications for anything, being a complete loser who ekes out a subsistence living in a glorified broom closet in nearby Spring Hill Lake. But he's an atheist -- hard core, from toddlerhood -- and he fancies himself the perfect replacement for the ruined professor. Reality disagrees, but in a funny and often touching series of encounters, many of which parallel Spallanzini's from Orange Car With Stripes. Alien parrots, talking redwoods, really slow interstellar travel, an orange Camaro with white racing stripes, adultery, nasty young and old women with more attitude than Carter has Little Liver Pills, a janitor who owns a city, militant atheists, a preacher who'll forgive anything at all, and an amateur videographer who calls himself "Beauregard and Scooter" and never says die....You could say these novellas "have it all." Theme: Be none too sure of your premises. I concur: A Plot: B+ Characterization: A Style: A- Recommended!
  
• Erato on July 28, 2010
  
  Mr. Wolf, your thirty-word precis of this short piece literally compelled me to read it. I'm glad it did. Your writing is competent and straightforward: the best possible style for this sort of magical-realism / erotic-romance tale. We differ a bit on matters of punctuation, but apart from that and a handful of somewhat awkward constructions, I find little to criticize. Jacob's characterization, though abbreviated, worked well. As I, too, suffer from his "affliction" -- I'm forever falling in love with my female protagonists -- I resonated to it from the very first. The plot, though simple, is satisfying. There weren't a lot of other ways to end the story, but all the same, I couldn't prefigure the outcome. From one writer of oddball erotica to another: I salute you!
  
• Light Flirting ~ a short erotic story on July 28, 2010
  
  Wow! Now that's an interview to remember. This is nicely written, well paced, and subtle enough to be evocative even in its more explicit parts. I got a substantial number of giggles out of it, too. "Secretary and space shuttle pilot" -- ? I can just see it: "Miss Valentine, after you've docked Discovery to the International Space Station, would you please take a memo?" Miss Marsden, you have a gift. It isn't easy to combine erotica with real entertainment. Do more!
  
• The Watchers from within moments, Revealed on Aug. 03, 2010
  
  I wanted to like this story more than I did. The animating idea is original and quite evocative. As a horror motif, it combines the eerieness of something irremediably alien with the nowhere-to-run sensation that evokes genuine fear. The ending is reminiscent of one of Ray Bradbury's grimmer stories from "The Illustrated Man." BUT... The pulpish style, the jagged pacing, the blurry viewpoint management, and the profusion of spelling, punctuation, and other technical errors do much to reduce its impact. It deserves the attentions of a tough editor, the sort who demands the right of final approval and gets it. That having been said, the mixture of personal tensions and public calamity was effective. A story that's entirely personal must focus tightly on specific characters; a story that's entirely public -- e.g., an espionage or intrigue thriller -- must embed more action and more conflict, more dramatically depicted. In consequence, attempts to mix the two don't often succeed, which is a testament to the success of this one. This is a 3.5 star story, which I'm "rounding up." Its author has an imaginative gift, but his technical skills require considerable refinement.
  
• A Click Away from Chaos on Aug. 20, 2010
  
  Praise God for this book. It's not a proper fit for any genre but its own. In the strictest sense, it's both plotless and themeless. I can't imagine a conventional print-publishing house taking a chance on it. But in its episodic, gently madcap way, it overflows with life, love, and laughter. Tim and Carrie Melrose are your average middle-aged British married couple, near enough. Ashiestiel Green is your average Scottish village. The people who live there are probably as typical as typical gets for their setting and their interactions. But I defy anyone to read "A Click Away From Chaos" without wearing a huge grin throughout and bursting into full-throated, affectionate laughter at the least predictable moments. England in our time would seem a place of no promise and a bleak future. We hear innumerable stories of its travails, and few of its triumphs. The Sceptered Isle has definitely seen better days. But to read of the trials and pleasures of Tim's freelance-trainer working life, of the wife and dogs he loves and the village he alternately enjoys and endures -- the dreaded you've-been-volunteered episodes of "community involvement," including the "climactic" Easter Fete, are worth the price of admission all by themselves -- is a refreshment for heart and soul. It provides the sort of experience that causes one to recommend the book to all one's friends, saying, "No, I can't describe it -- I can't tell you what it's about -- it isn't really about anything -- but I promise you'll love it." Highly recommended!
  
• Unwritten Rules of Impossible Things on Sep. 21, 2010
  
  Yet another Tom Lichtenberg bizarretude! "Unwritten Rules of Impossible Things" is deliberately written breezily, even incoherently. Since Tom appears to have been set on writing something that could only make sense to him, he must have decided to set aside coherence fairly early in the game. The narrative breaks most of the rules for effective fiction written in the third person, yet remains oddly, charmingly involving throughout. There are a couple of errors: one or two missing words, one or two extra ones. Well, nobody's perfect. But the story is a chuckler / headscratcher hybrid, the sort of thing one finishes and says, "Well that was fun...but what the hell was it about?"
  
• Few Are Chosen on Sep. 25, 2010
  
  Miss McGuire has written an exceptional story, suitable for both the young and the old. The plotting is first-rate, the characterization pinpoint-accurate, and, if I have some quibbles over the style, I'll overlook them in favor of the other excellences of this worthy book. The Pan is one of the most interesting characters I've encountered in speculative fiction in recent years. His antagonist, Lord Vernon, and his principal ally, Big Merv, are equally well delineated. The backdrop of Ning Dang Po, K'Barth's capital city, is sufficiently well colored in to be vivid while leaving ample room for the reader's visual imagination to roam. Though Miss McGuire says she intends this for a younger audience, I aver that it can be enjoyed by anyone, of any age, who appreciates a madcap, highly inventive romp replete with reasons for the reader to ponder the natures of heroism and cowardice, the essential bindings that hold a civilization together, and the irreplaceable importance of loyalty, both to persons and to ideas. Highly recommended -- but keep your British-slang-and-idiom dictionary near to hand!
  
• Where's the Money? on Oct. 20, 2010
  
  There are many excellent ideas in Mrs. Nordin’s little guide, including quite a few I hadn’t thought of, and probably would have rejected without serious consideration if I had. If you’re looking for revenue, this short book will serve as an excellent “script” toward that end. So why did I give “Where’s The Money?” only four stars (I hear you ask)? Well...uh...you see...ah...er...um...Mrs. Nordin violated one of her own rules: to polish the content to as bright a shine as possible. It’s just not terribly well written, and there are a number of flagrant grammatical errors in it. Mrs. Nordin: Please, PLEASE go back through this valuable little tome and whip it into shape! If you’ll do that, I’ll alter this review in your favor.
  
• Wives in Service on Oct. 23, 2010
  
  Wives In Service is an extraordinary achievement: a compendium of three novellas about sex and sexual conduct, each of them unique, not one of them at all rote or mechanical. "The Baby Machine" is as effective a piece of sexual horror, and as singular a description of a psychopathic obsessive, as I can imagine. It delineates the sort of self-inflicted torment that can arise from a bright idea, good in certain limited contexts and applications, when it’s carried way beyond its proper application. Along the way, it illustrates the most ironic way in which a genius can go horribly wrong – and the specific characterological failing peculiar to the genius who knows she’s a genius. "The Man In The Middle" is mostly good fun, albeit somewhat naughty fun. Mark’s “experiment” transforms a marriage doomed to failure into a revel of the flesh, despite his “subjects’ having an entirely different idea of what he’s doing to them and why. "The Conjugal Clock," my favorite of the three, brims with insights about marital happiness and decay. I’m not sure I’d recommend such a device to every family, but the central theme of the story, that a wife should take care to satiate her husband’s sex drive lest he begin to look elsewhere, is beyond any possibility of dispute...and sadly neglected by altogether too many wives in our day. Miss Zacharias is a gifted storyteller, a talent capable of elevating fiction about sex to something as far beyond erotica as “The Lord Of The Rings” is beyond a Saturday morning kids’ cartoon. I hope to see more from her.
  
• The Downside to Cryogenics on Oct. 25, 2010
  
  Though this is an original and effective short horror piece, I have a small complaint about it...one that the author probably wouldn’t have expected. It’s too long. The first ten paragraphs are actually a bit wordy, and leave little to the reader’s visual imagination. If they were compressed and condensed, the effect of the story would be heightened thereby, especially if the alterations moved in the direction of a much starker setting. All the same, well done.
  
• The Fear of E on Nov. 15, 2010
  
  You, sir, are required to read "A Void," by the late Georges Perec.
  
• Nightside CIty on Dec. 17, 2010
  
  Aha! So you're a fantasy author, are you, Mr. Watt-Evans? I think not. Not exclusively, anyway. This is damned good work. "Nightside City" works both as SF and as a detective procedural. The plot is more than adequately complex, the mystery a fair challenge, and the setting against which it plays out, a resort city on an almost-but-not-quite-tidelocked world that will soon become uninhabitable, is both original and evocative. The only comparison I can make is a somewhat distant one: the "festival planet" Worlorn in George R. R. Martin's "Dying Of The Light." Carlisle is well characterized, both tough enough and simpatico enough to get the reader attached to her and keep him that way. Antagonists Sayuri, Paulie, and the rest, even though we don't see much of them until well into the book, work just fine. (I particularly liked that Sayuri is as utterly consumed by wishful thinking as she is.) The Supporting Cast characters are adequate to their roles, though not more, but that's to be expected in a tale of this kind. With regard to style, the opening of the book did give the elaborate feeling of something out of high fantasy. I was pleased to see you tamp it down before it could interfere with the meat of the tale. Overwriting is a death sentence for a police or detective procedural -- and it doesn't take much to be considered overwriting in those genres. If I had to guess at the story's theme, it would be the power of wishful thinking. God knows, it has muscles, and Sayuri, the spoiled rich girl determined to prove to her plutocrat relatives that she can cut the ice just as well as they, was a near-perfect vehicle for dramatizing that. The ironies involved in the denouement, as Carlisle "turns Sayuri in" to her elders on Epimetheus, were also quite satisfying. I look forward to reading "Realms Of Light" and, should the Spirit ever move you to complete it, "The End Of The Night." Well done.
  
• Ice Cracker II on Dec. 20, 2010
  
  This is pretty good. It's got an original setting for an S&S fantasy, akin to the docks of late 19th Century London, and adequate action for a story of its genre and length. The characters, while the story doesn't really last long enough to color them fully, appear evocative and appealing. I found no low-level mechanical errors, and you might be surprised how many Smashwords writers have command of neither grammar, nor spelling, nor punctuation. However, you have some stylistic problems; a significant fraction of your prose is awkward and arrhythmic. Amaranthe and Sicarius need room to breathe and develop. They must have backstories; I want to know about them. I look forward to seeing the novel mentioned in your afterword.
  
• The Downside of Indestructibility on Dec. 23, 2010
  
  This is clever and original, but protagonist Kevin doesn't get quite enough characterization. Alongside that, it "ends in the middle." The reader can tell there's more to the story, and if he's at all like me, he wants to see it. All that to one side, congratulations on finding a fresh approach to a rather unique superpower. After reading about Kevin's brief career, it's quite clear that such a thing cannot be used without a cost!
  
• Seeker on Dec. 25, 2010
  
  This is pretty good stuff. It has color and drive. Even a little sex. It strikes me as a good introductory segment for an episodic novel. If you plan to keep writing about Aston, it would be well to fill in his backstory a bit. Most persons who live outside the law, or on its fringes, have some reason for being willing to take such risks. It would help the reader to identify with him, as he straddles the hero / antihero line and could use some extra definition to make him fully morally acceptable. If you have a significant problem, it's stylistic. Your prose has a lot of rhythmic irregularities; I would guess that you don't read it aloud too often. Also, you're addicted to a construction editors hate and a lot of readers find very irritating: "[Participling] in some fashion, [I/he][did some other thing too.]" Not only is this repetitive, and therefore quite noticeable; it also implies simultaneities that, in the majority of cases, aren't physically possible. If you like, I can show you how to avoid it. This is a 4.5 star story, and I "round up." Do more!
  
• Pathway House No. 5 on Dec. 26, 2010
  
  Telegraphic, bloodless...and chilling. Believably chilling. No two writers are alike. This isn't the sort of thing I would ever have thought to write myself, and the style is 'way distant from mine, so I have some difficulty with making suggestions about it, but I'll do my best. First, the human dimension of the story is a bit thin. The changes in your Marquee characters are very delicate, possibly too delicate to provide a full emotional climax. Also, if you were to swap the last and next-to-last scenes, I think the impact would improve. Second, your punctuation is a wee bit irregular. That's probably just a matter of the occasional oversight, so you might want to have a sharp-eyed friend review your future drafts for punctuation glitches before you commit to them. Third, because you deliberately chose a flat, journalistic style for this story, it occurred to me that interleaving the narrative with a few clips from "newspaper" stories about the Pathway Houses might have given the tale even more depth and horrific impact. I'm not saying they needed to be there; just that it's a motif you might consider for future stories stylistically akin to this one. Fourth, at one point you spelled "medieval" as "midevil." That might have been deliberate, though, so I'll say no more about it. On the whole, well done!
  
• What Would Jesus Do?- A deliberation on the immorality of subjecting a child to religious indoctrination. on Dec. 31, 2010
  
  Despite being a devout Catholic, I am of the opinion that religious indoctrination of children is unwise and all too often detrimental. I was looking forward to reading Mr. Duff's thought on the subject. What a terrible disappointment to discover that his principal argument is that all religions are just silly, destructive myths that deserve only to be debunked in a secular setting. Mr. Duff's true aim is to assail Christianity. There are several huge giveaways buried in his article. He appears unable to discriminate constructively among religions, unwilling to compare or contrast the teachings of their founders with the behavior of their followers, and uninterested in the evolution of the behavior of religious groups over the centuries. No doubt he would reply that there's no point in discriminating among creeds based on myths. The pseudo-scholastic framework in which Mr. Duff couches his "argument" gives it a veneer of authority it doesn't deserve. But then, one would expect little more from a writer who deems convictions that cannot, by their very nature, be proved or disproved to be unworthy of serious consideration on their merits.
  
• Dana's Trailer on Jan. 06, 2011
  
  Dear Angelika, First, what I got for my $1.69 wasn't "Dana's Trailer;" it was "Never Too Ugly." The PDF file was named danas_trailer.pdf, but it had the "Never Too Ugly" story in it. I also downloaded the RTF file, and it had the very same problem. You might want to check your upload files. Second, "Never Too Ugly" is kinky-sweet. There isn't any dramatic tension in it; it's more a "feel-good" story. But it does feel very good indeed. People need to be reminded that most of us are better than we think...and that most of "them" are better than we think, too. Third, you do have a few minor problems, mostly with homonyms. Choosing the right word from "its" and "it's," or "your" and "you're," for example. If you have a reliable friend, ask him to proofread your stories for you and point out any problems in the grammar or spelling. On the whole, well done. I hope you enjoyed writing it as much as I enjoyed reading it. All my best, Fran
  
• Grave Runner on April 07, 2011
  
  This has promise, but it isn't "there." You've committed a number of the cardinal sins of fiction, including telling character rather than showing it, lots of embedded exposition of backstory, and dialogue too stiff and purposeful to be accepted as natural. There are also a number of detail errors of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Even so, I'll give it three stars of five. You strove to describe a grim and forbidding landscape, through the eyes of a protagonist with whom it's difficult to sympathize, at least at first. Though the idea of a depopulated world has been used many times in SF, it still has some tread on it. In other words, it's an ambitious first effort, and it avoids being completely cliched. BUT...it needs work. I'd volunteer my services, but at the moment I'm heavily overbooked. All the same, I intend to keep track of you. Do more, and try harder!
  
• Have Plastic, Will Travel on April 26, 2011
  
  Naughty, naughty! A bit abbreviated, but all the same, it tells a tale many of us office serfs have dreamed of enacting. Well done!
  
• Pantheon on Aug. 29, 2011
  
  This book has both great promise and some serious problems. The promise arises from the obvious confidence and skill of depiction the author brings to her imaginings. The problems have a variety of roots. A writer who sets out to braid several plot threads into a novel must decide at the outset which of those threads will dominate. "Pantheon's" author seemed unable to decide which of the plot threads of this book would be the principal one. Because such an emphasis was missing, the character development suffered as well. Athene and Pan could not quite decide what was most important to them. Worse for the novel's resolution, Walt, who proved ultimately to be a major player, doesn't get nearly enough time "on camera." When several plot threads are all kept "at the front of the stage," there are inevitable sacrifices. Some of those sacrifices are developmental: foreshadowing, backstory allusion, and scene-setting. Others are characterological: lack of time to give each of the Marquee characters time to become three-dimensional. Finally, there's the problem of theme, which might be the most serious of the lot: without a "main thread" that's clearly more important than the others, it's almost impossible to establish a clear theme. The rationale for the overall conflict tends never to be elucidated. Thus: As a corporate-espionage / corporate warfare thriller, "Pantheon" works well -- but to make that judgment, I have to compel myself to omit all consideration of another major plot thread: the situational semi-erotic romance. As a situational semi-erotic romance, it works well -- but to make that judgment, I have to compel myself to omit all consideration of another major plot thread: the corporate espionage / corporate warfare thriller. As a Bildungsroman about a young, supremely capable woman learning, at long last and to her great surprise, about her origins and her true priorities, it doesn't really work, for reasons of timing and plausibility. There are also stylistic problems and mechanical problems. The author has an affinity for the "[Participial phrase], I [did something]." syntactic structure, which works far less often than not. (Not to mention that syntactic repetition of that sort is very noticeable and distracts the reader from the story.) There are some blatant grammatical errors where such errors cannot be justified. Finally, there are "com conversations" from which an appropriate font convention is lacking, the result of which is that it's easy to mistake who is speaking. There's also a plausibility error involving communication over interplanetary distances that, in all probability, only another physicist would have noticed. (Yes, I bear that burden.) So I can't give a lot of weight to it. All the same, it's there. Lachesis's entry at the end of the novel as a significant villain strikes me as a case of "diabolus ex machina." There wasn't nearly enough development of that character to make her appearance in that role believable. Finally, and perhaps most significant, the number of major ideas evoked or alluded to is too large for a single story. By my count, the author expresses enough ideas here for not one but THREE novels -- a unified trilogy. Cramming them all into a single, fairly compact novel underplays all of them. Despite all that, I can't seriously down-rate "Pantheon." The author displays immense promise. The action segments are particularly well done. She has obvious imaginative powers, can clearly write, and probably needs nothing more than a tough-minded editor with a sense for novelistic structure, well-honed stylistic discipline, and a well-sharpened blue pencil to make the jump to excellence. So I'm giving it five stars, but more for the author's demonstrated potential than for this particular achievement. I want to see more from this writer.
  
• Lux 1.1 Seeds on Sep. 05, 2011
  
  Overall, Lux 1.1 is good work, though it makes unwise use of a couple of motifs that have been prominent in recent movies (e.g., The Matrix, X-Men). The author shows considerable promise, despite a handful of problems. I will be reading the next installments. The plot moves along crisply, and in tandem with enough parallel development of the sociopolitical backdrop not to lose the reader. The characterization, unusually for a YA novella, is excellent, probably the strongest aspect of the piece. The weak points are style and setting. As for setting, I got no definite sense of how the sociopolitical milieu of Lux came to be. A "Senator" who was never elected to the Senate? A state of affairs in which a single rich and power-hungry man could bring down the government of the United States? We need more explanation for the setting to be adequately plausible -- and that in itself is a problem, because enough backstory exposition to fill us in would seriously disturb the pacing of the story. Style is often a problem for a brand-new novelist, who's likely to feel an obligation to "show off." I think of this as the "Look how many images and devices I know how to use" syndrome, and Miss Hansen appears to have a moderately severe case. Worse, there are numerous errors of punctuation, spelling, and grammar to be corrected. (The fiction writer enjoys relaxed grammatical standards, but there are nevertheless some rules that ought to be obeyed.) Since it's intended for a young-adult (i.e., ages 12 to 15) audience, I'm awarding Lux 1.1 four stars. However, with a moderate amount of polishing and the removal of one or two unnecessary pop-culture thefts, it could be five stars...and Miss Hansen might have a shot at becoming the SF equivalent of J.K. Rowling.
  
• Lux 1.2 Call to Arms on Sep. 10, 2011
  
  Miss Hansen, this is INFURIATING! You've got a good story going, especially for a young-adult audience. Your characterizations are coming along just as well as in the first segment. But there are just too many avoidable mistakes, most particularly in spelling and punctuation, but also in low-level grammar that you really should get right! You need an editor. You DESERVE an editor. Your stuff has immense promise, but its mechanical flaws detract from it unnecessarily. My only other criticism of substance is that Angine's stature, particularly his political elevation, remains insufficiently explained. He works adequately well as a villain, but his position in the story is not adequately grounded. I feel certain you thought about the backstory to the Lux saga before you set out on it; why not allow a little more of that groundwork to show? This segment deserves three and a half stars, but I'm rounding up.
  
• Lux 1.3 Alliance on Oct. 04, 2011
  
  As we old farts used to say: Now you're cooking with gas! Segment 1.3 has a lot going for it. In particular, it has more drive and a snappier pace than the previous segments. Various characters are coming into sharp focus, and the direction of the conflict over the remainder of the story is taking definite shape in the reader's mind. All very, very good. BUT...You're still bedeviled by avoidable low-level mistakes. There are fewer this time, mainly "homophone errors" of the sort to which many writers are prone. But there are also number errors, which are particularly annoying to an attentive reader. Here's one: “Ah, of course, you don’t talk to him anymore. So sad, his mistakes, his choices. Drugs can warp a person. Make them do things they wouldn’t normally do." "A person" is singular. "Them" and "they" are plural. TILT! This should properly be: “Ah, of course, you don’t talk to him anymore. So sad, his mistakes, his choices. Drugs can warp a person. Make him do things he wouldn’t normally do." Or, if you're squeamish about the "he, his, and him are the generic singular pronouns" convention: “Ah, of course, you don’t talk to him anymore. So sad, his mistakes, his choices. Drugs can warp people. Make them do things they wouldn’t normally do." Here's another: Give someone a map and they became an expert in all things. "Someone" is singular. "They" is plural. TILT! There are other occurrences, but I won't belabor the point. You could still use some help with punctuation, and there are a few other minor grammatical missteps. But the quality of the story is high, and I sense that you're now at "cruising speed." 4.5 stars, but I "round up." I look forward to reading the rest of the saga.
  
• Abandoned on Oct. 23, 2011
  
  Sigh. I wanted to like this story more than I did. Unfortunately, it displays a significant technical fault and a significant thematic fault. The technical fault is commonplace among younger writers. It takes the form: "[Participial action phrase], he [did something else]." The implication is that the action described by the participial is concurrent with the action described by the independent clause. That's impossible in the majority of cases. Beside that, it tends toward an unpleasant repetition that can jerk the reader out of the story; it did that to me. Far better to use the structure: "He [did this], and [then did another thing.]" ...or break the actions into two completely independent sentences, even if it seems overly simple. The thematic fault is this: You've described the first-person narrator as a sociopath. Sociopaths generally have very low emotional responses to anything. It's unlikely that a sociopath would win the love of a normal woman, or be as exercised over losing her as you've described him. Worse, you've described him as a DEPRESSED sociopath. Depression is the reduction of feeling, an overall diminution of one's ability to be affected by events. That compounds the felony. In a sense, the fault lies with your promotional blurb: Replace the phrase "depressed sociopath" with something less freighted with import and it would vanish.
  
• Realms of Light on Nov. 07, 2011
  
  Clever, elaborate, and touching as well. This second episode of detective Carlisle Hsing's adventures in the Eta Cassiopeia system is even more entertainingly gripping than the first. In part, that's because the nature of Nightside City itself made it possible to predict one or two of the motifs that Watt-Evans would eventually use as his detective pursued her case. In greater measure, it's because the second case has a less abstract, more human profile than the first. Carlisle Hsing is that rarest of heroines: fully competent, perfectly focused, and so driven that nothing can intrude upon her agenda without her conscious acceptance. It renders her un-feminine and sexless, but that's a small price to pay for the admirably ruthless way she prosecutes her commission: the investigation into the attempt on the life of Yoshio Nakada, two-century-old CEO of one of the wealthiest corporate enterprises in existence. Nakada himself is a fascinating figure, as complex as one would expect a man of his age and attainments, yet unexpectedly sentimental even when his sentiment endangers his life. His commercial empire, though vast, is no larger than is he, which makes for a perfect match of threat to target. Realms of Light abounds with special touches: Seventh Heaven, the ITEOD files in their carefully guarded repository, the hostile casino operation, the uploaded personalities stored in those files, and the Byzantine complexity of Nakada family interrelations. A fictional tapestry with so many individual jewels sewn onto it could easily have become muddy and unconvincing. Here, it works perfectly. Once again: Sir, why not write more SF? I know you consider yourself primarily a fantasist, but Nightside City and Realms of Light demonstrate that you have an equal gift for science fiction. Use it more frequently!
  
• Level Zero on Nov. 10, 2011
  
  This is a hopeful, yet ambiguous, vision embedded within a dystopian conception of the future, with some cautionary-tale leavening for good measure. It qualifies as SF, but it's refreshingly un-cliched; indeed, it focuses where good fiction always should: on the human heart. Mr. Knuth bills "Level Zero" as for young adults, but this 59-year-old codger enjoyed it immensely. It asks questions about the nature of reality, and about how much of our "classical" reality we'd be willing to give up for a simulation that pleases us better. It also asks whether we're ready for the long foretold (but painfully slow in actually arriving) emergence of artificial intelligences that possess the gamut of human capacities -- including our ability to love. The aspects of "Level Zero" that do aim at a YA audience would be: -- The use of a digital game as a simulated universe and field of action; -- The selection of teenagers as the principal characters; ...yet in neither case does that make the story unpalatable to an older reader. The plot is fresh and ingenious, without demanding excessive suspension-of-disbelief. The characterizations struck me as spot-on. The metamorphosis of Arkade from a borderline-sociopath antisocial to someone capable of loving was handled exceptionally well. The overall theme -- that anything with human-scale intelligence will ultimately demand to be valued as such, and to be free -- is as important as anything SF is being written about today. If only all young-adult fiction were this well executed, and aimed this worthily. Highly recommended!
  
• The Devil's Spot on Nov. 24, 2011
  
  Hmmm... You've started from an unusual and intriguing premise. I haven't encountered it before; it was what persuaded me to buy the story. And you did fairly well with it. But it does need some touching-up. Your first need is an editor. You made a number of avoidable errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation that threatened to lift me out of the story experience. I know from my own struggles that one should never edit one's own writing, so I exhort you to find a sharp-eyed helper who'll do that for you. A good editor will also help you to tighten up your style; if your preferred form is the short story, some advice on concision would serve you well. Second, there are a couple of soft spots in the tale. The flashed-back segments suggest that he-who-was-Daniel set out on the road more or less an innocent; the story-time segments suggest that he's back there, a long time after the events in the flashbacks. But there's more ambiguity in the timeline than a story this short can support. You might want to make it a bit clearer that Daniel in story-time is some distance separate from Daniel in his flashbacks -- and not just in time, but in critical events and moral degeneration. Third, if I've got the time sequences correct, it leaves me with a problem even so: Why has Daniel returned to the Devil's Spot? He's conscious of his damnation, and of being pursued, so why has he deliberately returned to a locale where he's that likely to be caught? All that having been said, it's an entertaining piece. If you polish it a tad, you'll have a fair chance of selling it to Weird Tales or a comparable publication.
  
• Prometheus 60 on Dec. 03, 2011
  
  This is pretty good. In particular, you had a good strong theme in mind and you dramatized it properly through your protagonist's actions. That's far from a given in superhero fiction...though Sam is certainly not the archetype of a hero, as we surely agree. My quibbles with it are as follows: 1. It's compressed. The story, though good as it stands, would have been more satisfying if given somewhat more leisurely timing and more room for characterization, not merely of Sam but of the Supporting Cast. Also, it would have seemed a bit less blunt. (My wife is forever telling me not to be so blunt about my themes, so I assure you, it's by no means your unique shortcoming!) 2. You need some practice with dialogue. Dialogue is critical to characterization, especially in a short piece, which makes it critically important. The best way to gain dialogue skills is to listen to ordinary people conversing, **without** taking part yourself, and try to note the patterns in their phrasings and pauses. 3. There are a number of avoidable errors in grammar and spelling that a good editor would have seined out for you. (I was about to say punctuation as well, but I noticed that you're Canadian, and British and Canadian schools teach a somewhat different style of punctuation than American schools.) I know most younger writers can't afford pricey editorial help, but there are actually a number of freelancers who won't try to strip you of all your worldly goods. You might want to look into this site: http://www.the-efa.org/ On the whole, well done.
  
• An Acquired Taste on Dec. 04, 2011
  
  This is clever and amusing. It could have been written somewhat better -- you mentioned Robert E. Howard as a writing icon, but his style went out sometime around 1910, and with good reason -- but you'll undoubtedly improve with practice. A word of advice: Watch your homonyms! A world does NOT spin on its "access." Apart from that and a handful of similar errors, well done.
  
• Got Milk? on Dec. 16, 2011
  
  This is a remarkably sweet, even tender, novelette. All right, so it's moderately fetishistic and does speak of kinda-sorta incest (Bob and Amanda aren't really related). But at base, it's about love, about a desire long suppressed that's fulfilled at last, and about one of the most beautiful and least appreciated functions of a woman's body: the power it has to nourish an infant...or anyone else the owner might look upon with favor. I was pleasantly surprised by your generous treatment of the pop star and her entourage. I know nothing of that world; suffice it to say I hope its stars and their employees are normally as gracious and decent as what you've depicted. I have a sneaking suspicion it's another way, though. Enough tawdry stories leak out about stars and stardom to make me wonder if the majority of them aren't completely insane. Well done!
  
• Of Bone and Steel and Other Soft Materials on Dec. 27, 2011
  
  This has possibilities. It could be tightened about fifteen percent further, and you have some stylistic jags that deserve the attention of a seriously tough editor, but on the whole, it’s well done. Thematically, it’s a bit obscure. Your scene-setting works acceptably well, but Ryska’s emotional bonding to the dead Luka isn’t quite clear enough to make her response to Toma completely credible. Beyond that, the reader is guaranteed to want to know how Ryska came to be what she is, as well as who she is, and you provide approximately no information about her origins. We must assume that she started out wholly human and was cyber-engineered into what she is now...but why was she selected for that procedure, and by whom, and were the facilities that treated her pre- or post-apocalypse? Are there others of her sort? If so, where are they and how was she separated from them? All the same, for a SmashWords story, it’s a five-star accomplishment. Now go back to your word processor and complete the novel that so unusual a character and so striking a setting deserves!
  
• Evolution-A Novelette on Jan. 06, 2012
  
  Hmm. Where to begin, where to begin... You started with an interesting premise, from which there were several themes and plot-paths you might have followed. To your credit, you chose the possibilities with the most intrigue attached, which always makes for a dramatic story. (A few violent deaths here and there don't hurt, either.) So your feel for plot and possibility is good. With time and practice it could develop even further. Otherwise, I have to say that your skills need work. This is a relatively short piece, of the category usually called a novelette (8000 to 15,000 words). So there wasn't room to do a great deal of anything, for which I'll make due allowance. Despite that, the story feels short on characterization, especially of the first-person protagonist. Also, your style needs quite a lot of refinement -- the sort only the tutelage of a good, tough editor can provide. We never learn much about Zeno, which is a pity. Okay, he comes from a family with "the gift of gab." We also know that he doesn't have a lot of respect for his employer or his immediate superior. But apart from that, he remains a stick figure throughout the story. What does he really care about? What drives him, apart from his desire for monetary gain? Is his commitment to his trade and its principles, or to his personal advancement? Those are the important questions about a Marquee character, particularly when you elect to write in first-person. On the basis of your story, I'm unable to answer them. Second, your style has the feel of a relatively new writer of fiction. It's awkward in a lot of places, and unacceptably ungrammatical in many others. Also, early on in the story you allow Zeno to tell us too much. SF writers are often tempted to do so, especially those who are writing about worlds and societies far distant from our own. It's still a mistake. The reader should be allowed to deduce and infer as much as possible about the setting, for two reasons: -- It's a compliment to your reader's intelligence; -- It compels him to exercise his own imagination, especially his visual imagination. That causes the reader to invest himself in your story: to care about the characters and the outcome. If SmashWords allowed fractional stars, I'd give this piece 3.5 stars. As it doesn't, I've "rounded up." My advice is to send this story to a good editor -- that's likely to cost you a few bucks, as they don't come cheap -- and listen attentively and open-mindedly to what he says. As you appear to have the storyteller's gift, it would probably do your other skills a great deal of good. In closing: Don't be disheartened by the comments above. I'm about the toughest critic you'll ever meet. (I'm far and away the toughest on SmashWords.) But I only review novels and stories that are genuinely good, or that display serious promise. Keep writing, and make it your personal commitment to improve your skills until even I would find no fault in them.
  
• Muslim Christian Dialogue on Jan. 31, 2012
  
  There is no slightest possibility of a true, sincere, "dialogue" with Islam. Here's why: "I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them." [Koran, Sura 8:12] "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)..." [Koran, Sura 9:5] "Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth of the people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued." [Koran, Sura 9:29] "Fighting is prescribed upon you, and you dislike it. But it may happen that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. And Allah knows and you know not." [Koran, Sura 2:216] "Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak." [Koran, Sura 4:76] "O Prophet! Struggle against the unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them." [Koran, Sura 9:73] "Jihad is the best method of earning, both spiritual and temporal. If victory is won, there is enormous booty and conquest of a country, which cannot be equaled by any other source of earning. If there is defeat or death, there is everlasting Paradise and a great spritual benefit. This sort of Jihad is conditional upon pure motive." [Mishkat II] "Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does that mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill the [non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors! "There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim." [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, speech, 1942] "The spread of Islam has gone through several phases, secret and then public, in Mecca and Medina. God then authorized the faithful to defend themselves and to fight against those fighting them, which amounts to a right legitimized by God. This...is quite reasonable, and God will not hate it....[Muhammad] gave three options: either accept Islam, or surrender and pay tax, and they will be allowed to remain in their land, observing their religion under the protection of Muslims." [Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, 9/17/2006, reported on the Saudi News Service] Islam is not a religion; it is a totalitarian creed bent upon world conquest. It seeks total domination over all lands and all persons, and in all things. It has embraced deceit (taqiyya and kitman), violence, and every form of subterfuge to gain its ends. There can be no "dialogue" with it.
  
• My new breasts on Feb. 06, 2012
  
  "Apparently men like big breasts only in porn." You've been dating the wrong men, dear! Anyway, I wanted to pass along a vignette from a friend named Duyen. She's an exceptionally sweet woman who was, shall we say, undersupplied until very recently. A couple of years ago, she had this exchange with her fiance (now her husband): --- I took Miss Prejean (Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean, who'd had breast augmentation surgery a year or so before her appearance in the pageant) and her renovated rack up with Matt the day before yesterday. My sweetie is a man's man with an acute eye for the female form, so I expected him to have a definite opinion. (Yes, he ogles other women when he's with me, but what man doesn't? Most of them just try to be discreet about it.) "I don't see a problem with it," he said. "She looks great." "Is that all that matters?" I said. "To me? Yeah. To her? You'd have to ask her. I'm not in a position to do that." "Well, what if you were?" I said. "I wouldn't ask," he said. "It's got to be a very personal thing." Now, if that smells of evasion to you, it certainly did to me. It made me do something very naughty. I have no figure to speak of, and I've contemplated "going for alterations" more than once, so I smiled brightly and asked him a question no woman should ever ask her man. "Well," I said, "what would you think of ME getting a boob job?" Matt the Macho Gun Guy was immediately transformed into Matt the Hooked Fish. He turned pale, his mouth dropped open, and he made a sound that made me want to check if someone had rammed a broom handle up his ass. He stayed that way until I started laughing and kissed him. I'm not a very nice person, sometimes. --- About a year and a half ago, Duyen went for implants. Apparently, Matt is thrilled. Not that he wasn't thrilled BEFORE her re-upholstering, as he'll tell you at once, but still...! Be well!