I’m currently rebuilding the website as the old one got totally messed up when i was playing around with things (no idea what happened).
So i thought that while it was a total clusterfuck mess of SQL, i would take the opportunity to give it a whole new life and everything.
So if you go clicking on things you might find that very strange things happen. Don’t moan, i know a lot of things are broken, i’m working on it, it takes time.
I’ve got tons of old posts and pages from three websites that i’m working through and will be gradually posting all the stuff i want to keep on here while fixing all the broken things as i go through, one post, one page, at a time.
On top of doing all that, i will, of course, be continuing to add more new content and my latest posts will always appear directly below.
Or, if you prefer, you can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest where i put a link to all new posts.
Enjoy
Orphan, Dodger, Soldier, Spy — Kathleen McClure
This is a back story to the main Gideon Quinn adventures, giving us a bit more of Gideon’s past than is revealed to us in the main books.
In this book we’re taken back to Gideon’s time in the war when Gideon takes a couple of his soldiers to go behind enemy lines to steal some secret documents. We also get to know how Gideon ends up with all the scars.
Only a short novella kind of thing, but still a good little episode that gives us a bit more history to Gideon’s character.
I would suggest reading this after Soldier of Fortune, and then follow it up with The Longest Shard, which i have jumped straight into after finishing this book.
Kathleen’s Page
#steampunk #kathleenmcclure
Outrageous Fortune — Kathleen McClure and Kelley McKinnon
Click on picture to get your copy.
In this story we get to hear all about the crew of the airship Errant, whom we briefly met when Gideon and Mia delivered Jinna for safe-keeping in Soldier of Fortune. Not only do we get to hear all about them and their pasts, but we also get to go on another great adventure on the planet Fortune with shenanigans galore.
To write this book Kathleen teams up with Kelley McKinnon and while i found there’s a slightly different feel to the writing, it’s certainly just as good as, and flows perfectly on from, Soldier of Fortune. Once again, we are feasted to our heart’s content with great characters who just keep the story rip-roaring along for the reader’s complete entertainment.
This book is mostly set at the same time of the events in Soldier of Fortune, and if you haven’t read that first then i would suggest doing so before embarking on this book.
Another winner from the brilliant writers at Outrageous Fiction.
Kathleen’s Page Kelley’s Page
#steampunk #kathleenmcclure #kelleymckinnon
Pastel Painting Atelier — Ellen Eagle
A super good book with Ellen taking us through everything she knows about art and her own approach to working on a artwork, from conception to completetion.
I would consider this book a must read for pastelists, but also i would think that a lot of artists of other mediums would also really enjoy it and get a few take-aways.
It’s also full of some wonderful art works, both by Ellen and others that she has something to point out about. I would rate it very highly as just a book to look at the pictures if that’s also your thing, as there are a lot of wonderful pictures to browse.
#art #painting #pastels #elleneagles
Soldier of Fortune — Kathleen McClure
Having been a long time fan of Kathleen’s books, i recently had the pleasure to read and review the first two books of Kathleen’s new sci-fi series that she co-wrote with L. Gene Brown, The Gemini Hustle and The Libra Gambit. Well worth reading if you like really good action packed sci-fi.
While reading those i found out that Kathleen and Kelley McKinnon are busy putting the finishing touches on the latest Fortune novel, The Crew Who Came in From the Cold. And it had me wondering how long it had been since i’d read the earlier Fortune books, and yeah, it had been quite a while. So long, in fact, that i could only remember totally enjoying them but not much else — there’s been a huge amount of books read in those in-between years that just dulls one’s memory.
So once i’d finished The Libra Gambit i quickly finished off another book i’d been itching to read, then i loaded up my newest Kindle with all the Fortune books i have and set out to re-read them all again, ready for The Crew Who Came in From the Cold.
Which leads me to this review. One thing i can say for sure is that my memory didn’t fail me in remembering that i had totally enjoyed this book, and once again, i totally enjoyed it. It was so good that my memory of the story had faded because i started reading people and places and dracos all came flooding back and it was like bumping into an old friend after years apart.
Gideon Quinn is our main protagonists, and he is so well written and such a great character, as are all the others. One of my biggest draws to Kathleen’s books, whether written on her own or those she writes with Kelley McKinnon or L.Gene Brown are the characters: they’re just brilliant.
As i’ve said in other reviews, Kathleen and Co make the goodies that perfect level of good and the baddies that perfect level of bad and the interactions between all the characters just roll along perfectly because of this.
And as usual with Kathleen and Co, the action is just non-stop. It’s like a super good action film in a book form.
And did i mention that this first book in the series is free to download? So why not give it a try, i can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed and will soon be reading the whole series.
So having finished this first book i’ve dived straight into Outrageous Fortune and i’m having a whole new blast re-meeting the crew of the Errant once again after all these years since i last read this.
Kathleen’s Page
#steampunk #kathleenmcclure
The Libra Gambit — Kathleen McClure and L. Gene Brown
Once more, before i begin, i just wish to add that this was sent to me by Kathleen to read and review.
So now that’s out of the way, what did i think?
I think this follows on superbly from the first book in the series, The Gemini Hustle. All our favourite good characters are back being their goodest best (my spell checker tells me that “goodest” isn’t a real word: stupid spellchecker!), the baddies are, once again, that perfect level of bad, and we even get some AI’s brought into the story: and i really like a good AI. Who knows where the AI thing is going to go in future episodes, but i’m certainly hoping very much to hearing more about/from them.
On top of this there’s all the different aliens that appear, and also the clones, they call themselves ADs (Artificially Designed Human Life Forms) who are made up of interesting selections of human genes all mixed up into one person or, apparently, a whole crèche.
And there’s so much more to enjoy. Like a hugely OTT prison break from a space station prison (yeah, in space), which starts off as a simple break-one-person-out and ends up just growing more and more OTT as the story goes on.
Once again, super fast paced which just keeps going and going, great characters, lots of different factions, a great universe setting, it’s just great all round. It’s got everything a really good action adventure sci-fi novel needs.
Kathleen McClure and L. Gene Brown make a fantastic writing duo and i certainly hope this writing collaboration keeps on going and going and going. I eagerly look forward to reading more from this universe.
Seriously people, if you haven’t started already, get reading this series. It’s super duper fun.
Enjoy. And be sure to check out the Outrageous Fiction website for some more great story treats.
Kathleen’s Page L. Gene Brown’s Page
#scifi #kathleenmcclure #lgenebrown
Thunderbird Email Client
Just a shout out to remind those of my 8 billion potential readers who use Thunderbird email client that it’s that time of year to go to the website and donate a little teeny tiny bit of money to keep this great project going.
And if you aren’t happy with your current email client and want a superb super good one, then check out Thunderbird today (or tomorrow) (or whenever you get so fed up with that crappy email client you’re currently using you can’t bear living any more).
#thunderbird #computers #reviews
30 Minute Pastel #1
20 x 15 cm. Using various hard pastels and pastel pencils on Winsor and Newton Tints grey pastel paper.
This was a painting of a painting from the book 30 Minute Pastels by Margaret Evans.
I really don’t like this paper, it was just soooo hard to get the pastel pencils to do anything with it and i ended up breaking a few leads pressing too hard just trying to make a mark. But it’s good to try various supports, maybe it’ll work better with soft pastels.
All in all i’m quite happy with how it turned out, even if it did take me quite a lot longer than 30 minutes.
Another painting for my living room wall though.
#5t4n5 #art #painting #pastels
The Gemini Hustle — Kathleen McClure and L. Gene Brown
Before i begin, i just want to let you know that Kathleen sent me a free copy of this book to read and review . . .
. . . which, having totally and absolutely enjoyed every other book of Kathleen’s that i’ve read (and i’ve read a few) i was soooo excited to do.
And also to mention that this is a review of the second edition, as the book was rewritten after The Libra Gambit was released.
And so, moving onto the review: having read all of Kathleen’s Fortune series, which are so seriously good books, the bar for this book was set quite high with my expectations and, free or not, it would still have to earn a good review on it’s own merits. But, i’m very pleased to say that this book didn’t disappoint me in the least.
Once again with Kathleen, the reader is thrown straight into the action, mayhem and shenanigans of the main protagonists, and once again, it just doesn’t stop until the end of the book. It’s just full on, turned up to 11, from beginning to end.
The characters were great, even the bad ones. And that’s something that Kathleen gets so right. For me, it’s a fine line to tread with baddies in books: if you make them so awful i just don’t want to read the book, and some writers really do make the baddies soooo cringeworthy i just delete the whole book. But if the baddies aren’t awful enough then the whole thing just doesn’t work and you might as well delete the book and find something else to read that’s more exciting. So yeah, Kathleen really gets her baddies at that perfect level of badness.
And the web of relationships between the characters that slowly gets revealed and built upon as the story goes on is seriously good also.
As a Trekky, one thing that i really, really enjoyed about this book was the Rasalkans. They’re like the Betazoids in Star Trek but they come in factions called houses and they have Rasalkans with all kinds of psychic abilities within each house. Which, giving us a deeper look into Betazoid society, is something that i think Star Trek seriously missed out on. This book, i think, fills in a lot of those gaps as to what a highly psychic/empathic/telepathic society would possibly be like. But similar to the Bene Tleilax in Dune where no one knows about the females, in this universe no one seems to know anything about the Rasalkan males. Hard core matriarchal society, Yeah!!!
All in all, this is fast paced, character driven, sci-fi story telling at it’s best. If you’ve enjoyed Kathleen’s Fortune books then you’ll certainly enjoy this, and if you haven’t read any of Kathleen’s books at all then i seriously suggest you giving one a go, you’ll have a great time.
Best of all, Kathleen also sent me the next book in the series, The Libra Gambit, to read and review, which, having enjoyed this book so much, i’m having no hesitation jumping straight into to see what our seriously enjoyable protagonists are going to get up to next. And i’m also hoping we’ll see some of those wonderfully bad baddies that got away make an appearance at some perfectly inopportune moment.
Kathleen’s Page
#scifi #kathleenmcclure #lgenebrown
Sleepover — Alastair Reynolds
Available in the collection, Beyond the Aquila Rift.
Definitely not Alastair’s greatest literary moment.
It just all seems a bit cobbled together out of various random sci-fi tropes. He even managed to shoe horn some dragons into this awful dystopia.
Ho hum, the greatest writers don’t always write great things.
Next up on Alastair’s list is Lune and the Red Empress.
Alastair’s Page
#scifi #alastairreynolds
Lune and the Red Empress — Alastair Reynolds
This is quite like Alastair’s previous story, Sleepover, in that it’s a collision of various genres tightly packed together into a novella: shaken, stirred, blended, and any other means necessary to squash them in.
Where it’s different to Sleepover, is that this novella actually works. Maybe Liz Williams’ co-writing helped.
I liked it anyway.
Alastair’s next story in the timeline of publishing is At Budokan.
Alastair’s Page
#scifi #alastairreynolds
Fiction
. . .me thinks it’s a good time to re-read Asimov.
Fiction
Nonfiction
Nonfiction
