Brent Meske

*Brent's just started up a cover design biz from home, and is offering five dollars off a cover for a review posted to Smashwords/Barnes and Noble/Kobobooks/the iBookstore (optional for iPhone/iPad users). Check out http://meskebrent.wordpress.com for detailses.

Brent is a husband, father, teacher, writer, and sometimes artist living in Seoul Korea, originally from Detroit, Michigan. Brent reads Stephen King, Brandon Mull, Jim Butcher, and a hundred others. You should too.

Find some horror: Deadlines (Comet Press)
Find some dark sci-fi: Breaking Benjamin
Find some of my thoughts at the Eloquent Atheist

*If you're like me and you don't like to be cheated, please don't use Authorhouse.com. In fact, since finding Smashwords I intend to republish 'Breaking Benjamin' in its entirety here soon enough, and I'm also looking for a print publisher, if you'd like to have one on an actual bookshelf.

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• Inheritance (From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross)

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Francis W. Porretto
Latest book: Kink!. Published February 8, 2014.
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• The Alien Who Took Control of Earth on Dec. 02, 2012
  
  Please tell Trent S. to keep up the good work. Soon he will have the power to rule the world. -some writer in Korea.
  
• Perfect Weather for a Baby's Funeral on Dec. 11, 2012
  
  A well-written, dark, often cynical look at the human condition. I was on hand to read many of the first and second drafts, and I'm glad I have them all in one place. Well done, Guy.
  
• The Warm Lands on Jan. 19, 2013
  
  A powerful tale of magic and desperation. I've never really rad fantasy as a short story...usually when you label something epic it's weeks and months of getting sucked into the setting and the travel and the history all made up by the author. This story was an exceedingly adept micro-epic tale. All those elements were there, just compacted down. The title is a bit strange for something 'epic'...but fits the story. Thank you for the read, Fran.
  
• Elysium Part One. Another Chance on Feb. 05, 2013
  
  There are some enormous pluses to this book, such as believable and well-drawn characters, interesting plot developments, and Roper handles the pacing very well. Here's the trouble...Mr. Roper has trouble with apostrophes, and there are a limitless number of these issues spanning the whole book, distracting you from what's going on. Secondly, and this is what kept the book from being four stars, is TO BE CONTINUED. This is part of Smashwords don't do list: don't upload a book that's not finished. If it had a resolution of some kind, I could let it go, but the way this ends practically begs the author to get a bazillion fan letters saying 'cripes, finish it already!' Stars for nice setting, interesting idea, very good treatment and very good characters, minus stars for proofing errors and a nonexistent ending/resolution of any kind.
  
• The Last Ambassadors on Feb. 06, 2013
  
  It's so refreshing to finally find a short story on Smashwords that holds its own as a story, even if it's supposed to be attached to a series. The characters, events, history, and world are fleshed out enough that I can put pieces together without being forced to read the series itself. That alone should have given 'The Last Ambassadors' top marks. However, I'll add this: this story's got good ideas, fully realized sci-fi that sounds really cool and maybe only a tiny bit farfetched. It's polished, begins and ends, and has a really nice premise as well. Thanks for this, Fran.
  
• The Soul Shifters Begins: Jake Greyland: A Short Story on June 30, 2013
  
  WARNING. SPOILERS BELOW. I really enjoyed almost everything about this story! It was clear, well-paced, and surprisingly, I wasn't confused. Normally with series-linked short stories you run the risk of not understanding a single thing. Not so here. I gave this story four stars because of some strange formatting at the end of the book (some HTML that popped up in odd places), and the one thing that didn't really make sense. (SPOILER HERE): Jake makes the leap of logic that the girl is going to be shot in the chest. How does he make this leap? He obviously can't see the future, but there's no explanation why the bad guys would jump from hiring a guy to hit Jake on a bike, and then change over to shooting somebody. If there is some logic in the choice, I couldn't see it.
  
• The Last Bite on July 02, 2013
  
  I'm going to give this five stars. Awesome little story. Well-written, well-paced, with a wonderfully voiced main character, memorable details, and a great ending. Thanks for this.
  
• Empty Vessels on July 04, 2013
  
  In large part, I had the same feeling about Empty Vessels as Phillip Berrie. However, while I loved the beginning of the story, once we got into the middle and toward the end, the pace was a bit too fast and characters seemed to have quick mood swings (I'm dark and brooding one minute, joking with my buddy the next minute, shouting and crying a minute later). I felt the story could have been explored further, and that the ending was a bit unsatisfying. This is still far and away better than most other Smashwords authors out there. Keep up the good work, Lisa.
  
• The Gods in the Jungle on July 31, 2013
  
  A great, meandering stroll through the jungle, complete with wildcats, dangerous trees, and dragons. I was a bit skeptical when it came to the beginning of this book, the forward, but I was immediately put right by the beginning of the story. It centers around a conflict between the Servants and the Tall Ones, the latter the ruling class of courtiers, Lords and Ladies. From the start I was entranced by the beauty of the storytelling, the clear and unmistakable voices of the various, well-written characters, the setting with its Machiavellian political machinations and Byzantine social structure. Tuuke was my favorite character, and probably the author's as well. Perhaps I presume too much. My only gripe was with the setup of the world. In the beginning, with its dusty streets and open markets, seemed a sort of high fantasy setting (in the jungle). Fast forward over a hundred pages, and here comes steam driven machines and electric lights! Even later on, we have guns! We need mention of this before the halfway point in the book. Overall, I give this book five stars for aspects I don't often see in Smashwords books: great formatting, clear and powerful storytelling, a complete story (no breaking it into parts and tacking on TO BE CONTINUED), for drawing me in and making me care about the characters, and for having a great vision. The thematic elements, of views on life and death, of upper versus lower class, only slowed down the story in one tiny place and really, if that's the biggest problem with a book on Smashwords, it deserves six stars. Mostly those thematic elements held the story together exceedingly well. Last note: there were two character names that got stuck in my teeth, and no matter how I tried to wiggle my brain, I couldn't dislodge them. Most of the names were just fine. But these two were main characters, and it was very distracting at times to read those unpronounceable names over and over and over again.
  
• Ripple, A Tale of Hope and Redemption on Aug. 21, 2013
  
  Ripple: a heart-breaking and hopeful tale I received Ripple for free in return for an honest review…and found it to be pretty incredible. Because of this, I’m going to spend a long time explaining exactly why Ripple gets four (and a half) stars instead of five. Ripple is a multi-dimensional look at the lives of the survivors of rape: the women, their children, the husbands they later have, their work lives, all of it. The author paints a really heart-breaking picture of several lives that have been directly and indirectly affected by this, and mechanisms they use to cope. Ultimately, Ripple ends up being a tale of growth and overcoming the demons that haunt women unfortunate enough to be preyed upon by men. I don’t generally read books like this: I’m a strict believer that tales ought to take me away from the world, and that I can orbit the planet, slip back in time, ride mythical beasts, or shoot salsa from my fingertips at will. So Ripple is a massive departure, slamming me in the emotions with plenty of reality. Some features of the book that were really staggering in their excellence: the author does an amazing job of coming across as a legal expert, horse rider/enthusiast, long-distance runner and (definitely far from least) a survivor. It’s these details, along with her well-crafted, realistic dialogue, that kept me with the book even though it was far outside my genre preference. The author also maintains a number of strong voices (and by strong I mean consistent): the gutsy female attorney who keeps her emotions largely in check versus the emotionally ravaged teenager. Writing in consistent voice is tough, and the author pulls this off well. Stylistically, I wasn’t put off at all by the large amount of italicized stream-of-consciousness episodes that appeared in the book. They were a great gateway into the characters’ minds. The pacing built up very well, until about sixty percent of the way through…as events began to really heat up, I was slowed down and a bit bored by very detailed explanations and analyses of cross-country running. Still the book picked back up again, and finished off with my only large gripe. As a pure Smashwords, indie-written and produced book, I would give this seven stars out of five. However, I’ve chosen to review this book more like a piece of literature. I believe it’s that sort of quality, and deserves to be on bookshelves with ‘Bestseller!’ stickers with yellow explosions meant to draw the eye. Overall I really enjoyed being submerged in this dark other genre and coming out of it with a light heart. So it’s with a bit of a heavy heart that I conclude with my only con about the book, which happened to be too big to ignore. SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: The bad guy didn’t convince me. From the first of the first-person point of view chapters, I didn’t really buy it. I guess there was a bit of guilt on my part, being a guy and reading about men who victimize women, and possibly ever being seen in this sort of light. I thought about this guy a lot, about how he’s not like any of the guys I know, but yeah, there are definitely men out there who think about nothing other than football and whose pants they can get into. Okay, that I can buy. My problem with the bad guy was that he was too flat. First, it seemed strange that the rest of the book, pertaining to the actual survival and coping process, should be in third person, while this jerkbag should get to narrate directly to me. Second, it didn’t seem like he wanted to succeed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do not want rapists to succeed. But they do all the time in real life, and it didn’t seem to me that this guy, quoted as being ‘the best at what he does’ (paraphrased actually), should be so monumentally stupid about finding and raping the girl he’s obsessed with. He’s painted with a brush that makes him look stupid and slovenly, yet he’s ‘the best’. We can’t really have both. If he’s smart (and we don’t get enough about how he’s smart) he would be doing more to cover his tracks, like planting kiddie porn on his neighbor’s computer and then having his neighbor steal his wi-fi connection, for instance. If he’s desperately suicidal and this is his last big fun hurrah before he offs himself, we don’t get that from the book either. Instead we get a two-dimensional monster that’s so bent on finding and raping a little girl that he doesn’t care about committing multiple murders (or being killed himself) just to get in one girl’s pants. I suppose that, for a fictional story, this is okay. I suppose that many of the people reading this will also need solace in trying to cope with their own trauma, and this guy getting his comeuppance will make them feel better. The problem is that all the other characters (especially Gary, who ends up being in less than five pages of the whole book!) seem so real. I was sort of incredulous at the beginning of the bad guy’s parts, and kept hoping it wasn’t going to turn out like I expected…and then his subplot went the way I hoped it wouldn’t.
  
• Psychic Wisdom on Love and Relationships on Nov. 11, 2013
  
  Psychic Wisdom on Love and Relationships: Definitely Worth It 4.5 stars I was skeptical going into this book for a number of reasons, but I want to lay out the advantages and strong points first. The book itself offers realistic, positive advice from a number of angles regarding what individuals ought to do in relationships. Despite any fundamental differences of opinion I might have had about the worldview of the author, the writing was clear, sometimes humorous, and well organized. I felt myself reflecting on my own relationships (past, and on my current marriage), thinking about ways to strengthen my own marriage. In this respect, definitely a win, because not only was the book written mostly for women, but I'm a guy and took something away from the read. Each chapter included general advice, several examples from the author's experience as a help line adviser and psychic, and ended with several bullet points which were actually the most helpful suggestions. The bulleted suggestions were really nice to think about, and the layout of the book helped, again, with organization. It's likely a reference I'll keep and check back in on. From a formatting or textual standpoint, there were a handful of typos, which didn't bother me really. However, a couple of sentences had some strange wording, or seemed almost run on. This is the cause of the half star loss. The enormous difficulty, of course, is placing the book as non-fiction. I don't personally believe in psychic phenomena or even God, but the book is full of the author's feelings from her 'guides'. The entire chapter on intuition was difficult, though I believe the author handled it very carefully. Earlier in the book, she was careful to point out that 'God' could mean any spiritual guide, as well as your own inner self. This sensitive presentation of a very touchy philosophical and controversial topic was essential for the book's readability and credibility. Overall, this book is a quick and helpful resource for anybody looking to reflect on their relationship status. While I'm not certain the author is a psychic, I believe she knows relationships through years of hard work and experience with singles, the relationship-bound, and married folk. The wisdom, wherever it comes from, can be useful to just about anybody. I received a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.