Tragicomic Fiction Author

Category: Book Reviews

Tales of Horror: A Review of the Short Story Collection ‘The Devil Took Her’, by Te Tai Tokerau Indie Author, Michael Botur

Oh, God, not another bad hair day.

Image by Khusen Rustamov from Pixabay

A review of The Devil Took Her: Tales of Horror, by Michael Botur

I’ve read a couple of Botur’s short story collections (True and Lowlife) and he’s a masterful practitioner of the form. While the stories in these collections are eclectic, they are connected by both Botur’s powerful and distinctive personal voice and a focus on life at the edges of contemporary society. The Devil Took Her is a little different in that it’s Botur’s first horror-themed collection. That organising principle alone makes it more focused than previous works, but Botur is certainly no one-trick pony and the eclectic nature of his imagination still shines, with the requisite monstrosity of the genre appearing in different guises, from actual monsters (most notably the giant and voracious spirit bird of The Day I Skipped School), through to monstrous people, and on to people trapped in monstrous situations.

The Devil Took Her, by Michael Botur

In The Devil Took Her, the focus is again on characters operating (or perhaps struggling to operate) on the fringe, isolated from society proper. This makes sense, for isolation is one of the key conventions of the horror genre, and even in stories where the protagonists aren’t physically isolated, they’re psychologically or emotionally isolated; there’s something about them that means they just don’t fit in, no matter how desperately they might try.

Along with the monsters, the tone of these stories is also eclectic. Some are gross and gory, some are haunting, some are creepy, some are threaded with Botur’s trademark black humour. All of them are disturbing. This is not a criticism. I enjoy watching horror movies, or at least ones fueled by good storytelling and genuine scares rather than blood and guts. Watching movies tends to be a social activity and in that environment, being scared can be fun. Indeed, that would be one of the major factors in my judgement of quality — that I enjoyed myself, that I had fun. I know I’m not alone in thinking that.

Reading, on the other hand, is not a social activity and (aside from Underground, the story of an ambitious record label exec’s descent into hell), the stories in The Devil Took Her are not fun. What they are is disturbing. It’s a mark of just how disturbing that my reaction to them was physical. At times, I found myself short of breath, mouth dry, skin literally itching, as if I’d been for a bush walk and brushed up against some evil, toxic plant. At other times I felt sick, my stomach clenched tight, on the verge of nausea. It got to the point where after a few daily sessions I had to take a break from reading because I couldn’t deal with the physical symptoms anymore. Yet compelled, I returned a few days later to finish off.

So, in the end, it’s a challenge to make a judgement call on The Devil Took her. Did I enjoy reading it? Ahhh… no, not really. Does that mean it’s bad? Oh God no, quite the opposite. Would I read it to my kids before they went to bed? No I wouldn’t, but then they’re a little young. Your average older teenager, being the strange, twisted creatures that they often are, could get a real kick out of it. Do I want to read more short horror stories by Botur? Hell yeah, but not today, thanks. I’m more in the mood for something comedic, perhaps even with a touch of romance. I’m just gonna have a squiz in our DVD cupboard. I’m sure there’s a copy of The 40-Year-Old Virgin in there somewhere.

Have you read The Devil Took Her, by Michael Botur, or any of his other books? Let me know in the comments.


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What Friends Are For, by J.B. Reynolds

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

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Cowboy vs Redhead: A Review of the Small-Town Romance Novel, ‘Forever Dreams’, by New Zealand Indie Author, Leeanna Morgan

Montana Horses

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

A review of Forever Dreams (The Montana Brides Book 1), by Leeanna Morgan

I was lucky enough to meet Leeanna when she was presenting at a writers’ conference a few years ago. She was bubbly and vivacious and full of good advice. She’s a Kiwi and lives in NZ but writes romances set in and around the town of Bozeman, Montana. She’s a prolific writer and has published more than fifty books in several different but interconnected series. Forever Dreams is her first novel.

Forever Dreams, by Leeanna Morgan

It’s about a Kiwi primary school teacher called Gracie Donnelly who travels to Bozeman on a mission to find her long-lost father. Trent McKenzie is the handsome cowboy who works the ranch she’s arranged to stay at while she’s in town and as soon as he picks her up from the airport to bring her home, the sparks begin to fly.

As it turns out, Trent is also searching for someone special; a new wife. Despite her attraction to him, Gracie makes it clear that she’s not interested in filling that role. Until, that is, the couple end up in Vegas together, Gracie gets rolling drunk and they decide that the best way to ice the cake of their Vegas experience is with a spontaneous wedding.

In the cold light of the morning after, that decision doesn’t seem so clever, but rather than letting what happens in Vegas stay in Vegas, they compound the calamity by bringing it back to Bozeman. The pair forge a deal; Gracie will continue with the marriage charade so as to get Trent’s meddling matchmaker of a mother off his back in return for his help in finding her father. If that seems like an unnecessarily complicated arrangement, it gets worse. Despite their utter failure to keep their hands off each other up until this point, they instigate a no-touching rule in their shared marital bed.

It’s a preposterous setup and it’s not helped by having a hero and heroine who are somewhat clichéd — she’s a feisty, red-headed city girl who doesn’t know her ass from a donkey while he’s a strong, silent country boy who struggles to communicate his innermost feelings — but it’s an easy, breezy read with some genuinely amusing touches and a smattering of steamy moments. Besides, who doesn’t love cowboys? And descriptions of wild, Montana mountain scenery? After reading it, I know I wanted to have a holiday in Bozeman.

Have you read Forever Dreams, by Leanna Morgan, or any of her other books? Let me know in the comments.


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What Friends Are For, by J.B. Reynolds

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK >>

Book Review: Friends with Partial Benefits, by Luke Young

This is NOT the recommended grip for playing a forehand drive.

Image by Martín Alfonso Sierra Ospino from Pixabay

A review of Friends with Partial Benefits (Friends with Benefits Book 1), by Luke Young.

This book was suggested to me by one of my subscribers, Tom. Thank you, Tom, for your suggestion. It’s a romantic comedy about a recently divorced romance writer called Jillian Grayson and her developing relationship with her son Rob’s best friend, Brian Nash.

Friends with Partial Benefits, by Luke Young

Jillian has done well in her writing career. She owns a nice house with a swimming pool and a tennis court. She first meets Brian when Rob brings him home from college to stay for Spring Break. When Rob heads out, leaving his mum and best bud at home, Jillian and Brian play tennis. They also go swimming. It turns out Brian loves swimming and tennis just as much as Jillian and despite their age difference, an intense mutual attraction soon develops.

Initially, for Rob’s sake, they attempt to keep a lid on their feelings for each other. This proves to be a challenge and Jillian’s best friend, Victoria (who also likes to swim), doesn’t make it any easier. Victoria doesn’t seem to serve much purpose other than being brain candy and the sexually liberated foil to our sexually frustrated protagonist, but with her encouragement, Jillian and Brian strike a deal to become somewhat more than just friends. Soon after, their physical play moves from the tennis court and into the bedroom.

The blurb says it’s a laugh-out-loud comedy. I’ve learned that whenever a book blurb makes this claim, it pays not to believe it. This isn’t because I’m a curmudgeon — it’s because laughter is a social behaviour, while reading isn’t. Like yawning, laughter is infectious and it’s easy to laugh when you’re in the company of others. When you’re on your own, it’s much harder. I love reading comedy, but any author who can elicit an out-loud-laugh from me is doing very well indeed. I treasure the few that can.

Based on my reading of Friends with Partial Benefits, Luke Young is not one of them. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. It’s easy to read, chugs along at a steady pace and there are some genuinely amusing moments in the story, amongst all the swimming and tennis. There’s also a fair whack of sex, and some of that sex gets pretty steamy. Intriguingly, Young has written an expanded version of the book, under a pseudonym and with a different title, with even more (and more explicit) sex scenes. I haven’t read it so can’t vouch as to whether it makes for an improved reading experience. As an author, it seems a little like cheating to me but I guess it’s one way of getting more bang for your buck.

As an aside, in writing this post I did a little browsing to find a suitable image to go with it. The picture below is what you get when you combine ‘tennis’ with ‘sex’ as image search terms.

Image by Udo Feyerl from Pixabay

I get the ping-pong paddle (although God only knows why you’d hold it in this position — perhaps she’s trying to suppress a fart), but what is with the bikini and jandals (flip-flops, for those unfamiliar with the Kiwi vernacular)? I assume she’s supposed to be at the beach, but have you ever tried playing ping-pong at the beach? I don’t recommend it. In a stiff onshore breeze, the ball swirls around all over the place.

Anyway, if you’re the kind of person who’s into sweat, both of the John McEnroe-related and bedroom variety, then Friends with Partial Benefits could be right up your alley. There are also several sequels featuring the same cast of characters, so if you do like it, there’s plenty more to whet your appetite with.

Have you read Friends with Partial Benefits, by Luke Young, or any of his other books? Let me know in the comments.


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What Friends Are For, by J.B. Reynolds

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK >>

Book Review: Chemical Cowboys, by Lisa Sweetingham

A man with two glow sticks
“I’ve got these here glow sticks and I’m not afraid to use ’em.”

Image by Paul Barlow from Pixabay

A review of Chemical Cowboys: The DEA’s Secret Mission to Hunt Down a Notorious Ecstasy Kingpin, by Lisa Sweetingham

Chemical Cowboys, by Lisa Sweetingham, is an account of the illegal Ecstasy market in the U.S. and around the world in the 1990s. I found it on the discard shelf of my local public library for fifty cents and thought, this looks interesting.

Chemical Cowboys, by Lisa Sweetingham

It is. In the mid-nineties, the USA’s ‘War on Drugs’ was centred on cocaine and heroin. DEA Special Agent, Robert Gagne, however, wanted to take his inquiries in a different direction and focus on the growing problem of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) or Ecstasy, as it was commonly known. Prior to Gagne’s investigation, Ecstasy was not a priority for the DEA; it was considered ‘kiddie dope’. But as the decade progressed and its popularity exploded to the point where it became the drug du jour for the young nightclub and dance party set, there became a growing awareness of its addictive properties and the potentially tragic consequences of its heavy use.

As the story’s central protagonist, Gagne is one of the few rounded characters in a long and often unsavoury list (we’re talking about drug manufacturers and dealers here, after all), struggling to balance his desire to ‘catch the bad guys’ with the demands of family life. The action bounces around the world, from the US to Israel to the Netherlands and back again. With all this globetrotting and the frantic pace of the story, I found it difficult to keep track of all the players. Not that it particularly mattered; Sweetingham is an accomplished journalist and the book is meticulously researched, yet it’s never boring. I was swept along with the energy of the story, fully engaged, entertained, and informed from beginning to end.

At times, the book almost reads like fiction. Perhaps the most tragic example of this is the story of ‘Club Kid’ king, Michael Alig, a New York nightclub promoter who ends up murdering fellow ‘Club Kid’, Andre Melendez, over a drug debt. Not knowing what to do with Melendez’s body, Alig keeps it in the bathtub of his apartment until it begins to decompose. Worried about the smell, Alig takes it upon himself to dismember the body, placing the pieces into garbage bags which he subsequently dumps in the Hudson River, before bragging about his gruesome deeds to his friends and followers. Initially, nobody believes him, thinking he’s just doing it for attention, but in the end, justice is served and Alig is imprisoned for his crimes. It’s just one of numerous events in the book that prove truth is often stranger than fiction.

I was a student at the University of Otago in Aotearoa in the mid-nineties. I was a rocker rather than a raver (or at least an indie-rocker, my wardrobe consisting of ripped baggy jeans and checked flannel shirts rather than studded jackets and leather trousers), but Dunedin was a small town and entertainment was at a premium so I found myself attending the occasional rave.

One in particular sticks in my memory, held in the crumbling ruins of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum.

The Seacliff Lunatic Asylum
The Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, prior to its demolition and the invention of euphemisms.

Now, you can make what judgements you like about the link between ravers and the mentally ill (it’s all right there in the name). Still, in reading Chemical Cowboys, I found it fascinating to join the dots. Who would’ve thought a crowd of sweaty, swaying youths in fluoro face paint, dancing and waving their glow sticks at each other until sunrise on a remote island at the bottom of the South Pacific, could be directly connected to an international drug-trafficking racket centred on the Israeli mafia? Certainly not me; not at the time, anyway, but now that I’ve read Chemical Cowboys, I know better.


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What Friends Are For, by J.B. Reynolds

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK >>

Beards and Biceps: A humorous review of the sci-fi romance novel, ‘The Protector’, by American Indie Author, Elin Peer

A review of The Protector (Men of the North Book 1), by Elin Peer.

I finally got around to reading this after it was recommended to me by one of my subscribers, Erica. Thank you, Erica, for your suggestion.

The Protector, by Elin Peer

I enjoyed it. Not as much as Erica, I think, but it was a fun read. It’s set 400 years in the future, where some kind of apocalyptic war has resulted in a North America divided into two distinctly different countries. How’s that any different from now, you may ask? Well, in the old United States, south of the Canadian border, lives a futuristic matriarchal society, run by and populated mostly by women. North of the border (including Alaska) is a feudal patriarchal society, populated almost entirely by handsome, burly men with long hair and beards. What’s not to like about that?

Trade between the two countries is highly restricted, and the movement of people across the walled border even more so. So when the ‘Men of the Northlands’ ask for the South’s help in excavating a recently discovered archaeological site, the request comes as a surprise. The South’s decision to send Christina Sanders, a female archaeologist, is even more of a surprise for the men and results in confusion and a gladiatorial competition to find her a bodyguard to protect her from the threat of hormonal, hairy men as she goes about her work. Unbeknownst to Christina, the ceremony that crowns her ‘Protector’ is actually a wedding and the man who wins the competition will become her husband! Will the winner be Alexander Boulder (great name), the handsome, burly, bearded man that has Christina all hot under the collar? Or will it be his opponent, another musclebound yet less hirsute ogre, his villainous nature and lack of moral fibre indicated by close-cropped hair and a smoothly-shaven chin?

Sounds ridiculous? You betcha! So it’s probably no surprise that there are elements of the world-building that don’t stand up to close scrutiny (not the least of which is the fantastical ratio of men to women in the Northlands). Some might also find the implications of the gender politics disturbing, but it would be a mistake to take them too seriously. Peer certainly doesn’t. This is a story fuelled by silliness; just switch your brain off and enjoy the ride.

There’s also a healthy dose of sex. Despite all the ice and snow, Alexander really struggles to keep his shirt on. It’s all too much for the repressed Christina and her feminist sensibilities. She has a sexbot back home in the Motherlands, but it seems nothing compares to the real thing. Boulder may be a beast, but he’s a damn sexy one.

Peer is no Jane Austen and there’s no great art to her writing style. But if you like your romance steamy and you’re prepared to suspend your disbelief (like, seriously), the characters are fun and the story is an entertaining one. And, as Book 1 of the Men of the North series, there’s plenty more to follow up with.

Have you read The Protector, by Elin Peer, or any of her other books? Let me know in the comments.


FREE BOOK!

What Friends Are For, by J.B. Reynolds

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK >>

Book Review: Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), by Jeff Tweedy

Jeff Tweedy

Photo by Chris SikichCC BY 2.0

A review of Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc. by Jeff Tweedy

I’m partial to the occasional rock star biography, so when I saw Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), by Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer and songwriter of Wilco, one of my all-time favourite bands, amongst the pile of books for sale at the 2019 Auckland Writers Festival, I snapped it up. 

Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), by Jeff Tweedy

There’s no guarantee that just because you can write great songs, you can write great books, but on this occasion, Tweedy manages it.  As is usual with rock star biographies, some space is devoted to exploring the personality conflicts between bandmates, but there’s a warmth and humility to the writing that is atypical for the genre. There’s no braggadocio to these anecdotes, nor does Tweedy have any axes to grind. He’s happy to admit that he only got to where he is today with the assistance of others, most notably his family. The book includes a couple of transcribed conversations with his wife and children which provide an authentic insight into their family dynamic. It’s a little gimmicky, perhaps, but it works. It also delves into Tweedy’s struggles with mental health, drugs, and addiction in a way that is refreshingly honest. 

What I most enjoyed about the book was the personal exploration of both Tweedy’s dedication to songwriting (he tries to write a song every day), and his songwriting process. Tweedy’s lyrics are often open to interpretation, and it’s no wonder when one of the lyric writing exercises he uses is to take a list of random verbs and another list of random nouns and then pair them up. “It might start as gibberish,” he says, “but it’s amazing how hard it is to put words next to each other without some meaning being generated.” Inclined to agree, I thought I’d try it out. Here’s the list I came up with (I swear these were the first words that popped into my head):

Nouns
Chicken
Refrigerator
Tractor
Laptop
Children

Verbs
Run
Fry
Smoke
Swim
Love

And here’s the resulting ‘lyric’. Appropriately, for a verse inspired by Jeff Tweedy, I can hear it as an Alt-Country song called something along the lines of The Modern Farmer.

Hangry
Laptop fried and tractor smoking,
I run inside and scan the refrigerator.
It’s empty.
Aside from a lone chicken wing,
Swimming in brown sauce.
I love my children
But man, can they eat.

Anyway, back to the book. If you’re a Wilco fan, then I highly recommend it. If you’ve never heard of Wilco but like rock star biographies, you might enjoy it too. Then go listen to some Wilco. They’re awesome.

Are you a Wilco fan? Do you like rock-star biographies? Read any good ones lately? Let me know in the comments.


FREE BOOK!

What Friends Are For

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK >>

Book Review: Are Organisms Just Algorithms?

A review of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari

 My reading tastes are fairly eclectic. Recently, I heard the term ‘genre slut’ used to describe such a person, and I guess I’m happy to own that. I’ll read pretty much anything—romance, crime, thrillers, science-fiction, fantasy, literary fiction, western, action, humour—you name it. I’m not particularly fussed about the age of the target audience either. I’m just as happy reading a well-written YA novel as something targeted at adults. Heck, I’ll happily read a book aimed at pre-schoolers if the pictures are attractive and the story’s a good one.

Since 2016, when I began to take my writing more seriously, I’ve also read a fair bit of non-fiction related to the craft of writing and the business of indie-publishing. Outside of that, my non-fiction reading is very rare indeed. In the last two years, for instance, the number of non-fiction books I’ve read that weren’t related to writing amounts to exactly two. One of these was Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari.

Are organisms just algorithms?

I discovered it while perusing the shelves of my school library during an English lesson. The somewhat cryptic title piqued my interest, so I put down my copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and had a closer look. On the back cover, the blurb contained the following headings:

WAR IS OBSOLETE—You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict;

FAMINE IS DISAPPEARING—You are more at risk of obesity than starvation;

DEATH IS JUST A TECHNICAL PROBLEM—Equality is out, but immortality is in.

I was hooked.

The book is 500 pages long. I always get a little nervous when starting a book of this kind of length, especially if it’s non-fiction. It’s a considerable time investment to make, and time is one thing of which I don’t have much to spare. I’m not one of those people who will stay with a book until the bitter end—generally, if a book doesn’t keep me hooked I’ll toss it, especially so if it’s non-fiction. Life is too short to read boring books.

Are Organisms just Algorithms?

Thankfully, Harari’s writing is eminently readable and he does a fine job of translating complex ideas into accessible prose. The book covers a lot of territory, diving both into humanity’s past and projecting into its future. Essentially, it argues that modern science has more or less determined that humans are the sum of their biological algorithms, and thus not so far removed from the algorithms that shape our digitally connected lives.

In a world where dataism is poised to overtake humanism as the ‘religion’ that makes the world go round, and where digital algorithms are already better than biological ones at many things and are speeding to surpass them in the areas where they are currently lagging, the book ends by posing the question of what will happen when digital “algorithms come to know us better than we know ourselves.”

I, for one, like to think optimistically about the future. I can’t wait for our algorithmic overlords to come and take my job over, so I can kick back and write books, grow sunflowers and play guitar all day. But I can’t help thinking that once the algorithms are better than me at not only teaching but writing books, growing sunflowers and playing guitar, then it would be hard to blame them for questioning my usefulness.  I’ve seen The Matrix.

Are organisms just algorithms? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.


FREE BOOK!

What Friends Are For

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK >>

Book Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
Photo by Giammarco on Unsplash

A review of A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

I listened to the audiobook version of this while commuting to work. It’s a captivating book, and I would often find myself sitting in my car in the carpark at work, reluctant to get out and start the day because I wanted to keep listening. I love the way Bryson has managed to take all these disparate ideas and historical scientific figures and bring them together and connect them in a meaningful way. He also manages to take complex scientific ideas and break them down and present them in a way that is easy to understand, even for the scientifically uninclined. And, of course, there is the gentle humour that runs through all of Bryson’s writing.

There are numerous anecdotes about scientists that provide a fascinating insight into the personalities behind their science. My favourite one was about Hennig Brand, a German alchemist who was trying to turn urine into gold (as you do), but ended up inventing matches instead. One of the themes running through the book is just how much of our current scientific knowledge has been acquired by accident.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a book chock full of fascinating information and Bryson conveys an appealing sense of wonderment at what we know about the enormity of the universe in which we live, as well as a sense of humility about our tiny, insignificant place within it. But perhaps the most prominent theme running through the book is the idea that despite all our technological and scientific advances over the past few millennia, what we do know is still vastly, unimaginably outweighed by what we don’t know.


FREE BOOK!

What Friends Are For, by J.B. Reynolds

A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK >>

Book Review: On Writing, by Stephen King

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King

A review of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King 

I must confess; I’m in my forties now and this is the first book I’ve ever read by King. This hasn’t really been a conscious decision — I’ve always been curious about him and his books and I’ve seen some of the movies made from his works — but I’ve just read other stuff. So, having finally taken the plunge, what do I think?

It’s fabulous — entertaining, informative, inspirational — full of amusing anecdotes and wonderful writing tips. I mean, if you’re going to get writing tips from famous authors, Stephen King is as good a place to start as any.

There are three things King says in the book that stuck with me. Firstly, he compares writing to building a house. He says that paragraphs are bricks and that if you put your paragraphs together in the right way, you can build any kind of house you like. All you need is a toolbox filled with the tools of writing — vocabulary, grammar, description, narrative, dialogue etc. I like this idea, perhaps because my father was a builder and he passed on to me a love of tools. I have a garage full of ’em (some of which I even know how to use). But I also like it because it simplifies the craft. Instead of being some arcane art, full of bubbling cauldrons, blood sacrifices and the casting of spells, writing is just a trade, like building or plumbing or drain laying. Just bring your toolbox and your knowledge of how to use the tools within it.

Secondly, he compares writing to excavating fossils. He says that stories are found objects, buried like fossils in the ground and that once the story has been found, it is the writer’s job to carefully excavate that story and reveal it to the world. He advises against actively plotting stories and says that the plot will reveal itself — organically and quite probably in ways the writer never expected — through careful excavation. I like this idea too; I think there’s a lot of truth in it, although I wouldn’t go so far as advising against plotting. Plot, by all means, but don’t be so attached to your plot that you aren’t willing to take the time for some detours along the way.

Thirdly, he says that writers are arranged in a pyramid of four layers. At the bottom, in large numbers, we have the bad writers. Above that, still in large numbers, we have the competent writers. Above that, in much smaller numbers, we have the really good writers. At the top of the pyramid, we have the great writers — King names Shakespeare, Faulkner and Eudora Welty among these — a select few writers who are intellectual freaks of nature, geniuses of the profession.

King goes on to say that it is impossible to turn a bad writer into a competent one. As a teacher of high school English, I’m not sure I agree with this entirely, but the task would certainly be a challenging one. If a student turns up in my class at Year 9 without having a grasp of the fundamentals of written English — sentence structures, grammar, punctuation, paragraphing and the like (let alone any concept of how to tell a good story) — three or four years in my classroom isn’t going to make them a competent writer. Perhaps that just means I’m a bad English teacher (it’s certainly not the first time this thought has crossed my mind), but let me break the numbers down. Four years at forty weeks per year (max) at four lessons per week at fifty-five-ish minutes per lesson equals a grand total of five hundred and eighty-six point six hours in class. Only a fraction of this will be spent doing any schoolwork, and only a fraction of that schoolwork will be writing. Much of these five hundred and eighty-six point six hours will be spent coming to class late, leaving class early, gossiping, arguing, conversing, searching for a pen, searching for a book, going to the toilet, asking stupid questions (although there are no stupid questions), flirting, swearing, worrying, daydreaming, sleeping, cracking jokes, laughing, chewing gum, making paper projectiles, throwing paper projectiles, listening to music, messaging their friends on whatever social media app is the favour of the month, watching videos on YouTube, making videos on TikTok, playing computer games, and half a hundred other things that kids get up to in the classroom that bear little resemblance to what they’re actually supposed to be doing. In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes 10,000 hours to become really good at something. It’s little wonder that the bad writers who enter high school tend to exit high school as bad writers still.

And do those bad writers then spend the next ten years of their lives working to improve their writing? Of course not. They just go on to become builders and farmers and plumbers and truck drivers and lawyers and doctors and nurses and parents who can think of a thousand and one things they’d rather be doing than writing.

King also says that it is impossible for a good writer to become great. I see no reason to disbelieve this. I too think great writers are freaks of nature. I suspect you are either born with that talent, or you are not. So that leaves only room for the competent writers to become really good writers. I agree with him here too. If you are a competent writer, becoming a really good writer is entirely possible, likely even, if you have the desire. It will take time, effort, and lots of practice, but that’s okay. Good things take time. If you want to be a better writer, any time spent reading On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King, is going to be time well spent.


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