Marian Halcombe: A Most Dangerous Woman picks up where Wilkie Collins’ famous The Woman in White leaves off. So a few words about The Woman in White. It first appeared in Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round from 1859-60, and is … Continue reading
It is scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his censors and vindicate his own productions, but I may be allowed to make here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first edition … Continue reading
A frequently asked question, especially at writers’ conferences and conventions is: What is point of view, why does it matter, and how do I choose which one to use? Okay, I guess that’s three questions. I shall attempt to answer them. … Continue reading
These days there has been a lot of talk about daring narrative voices and experimental playing with fiction and truth (as in real life experience, to skirt around the gigantic elephant of what constitutes “truth”), and it’s great that more … Continue reading
The thing that stands out about Sara Stamey’s prose, for me, is how taut it is, while managing to convey an image-rich atmosphere while keeping the pace headlong. All her books are like that—running action and image in tight-wired tandem, … Continue reading
When I first immerse into a book I am no longer I, but ego dissolves away into an eye, absorbed completely into the world of the story, remerging at the end with that snap of the spiritual umbilicus. I use … Continue reading
Lord Hervey’s Memoir, by Lord John Hervey. Hervey is one of the most interesting figures of English history of the mid 1700s. About him it was said that there are three sexes–men, women, and Herveys. Not only was he flagrantly bisexual, … Continue reading
Before I had quite finished writing the manuscript that became THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime, Oct. 2018), I penned detective Gina Miyoko’s genesis story, Tinkerbell on Walkabout, and posted it as a novelette here on Book View Cafe. Some of … Continue reading
On the YA fantasy front, author Rosamund Hodge has been making quite a splash with her moody, dark, intensely atmospheric reworkings of myths and fairy tales. So when I had the chance to review this collection, Desires and Dreams and … Continue reading
Here’s a question for you, Dear Reader. What publisher would have taken Bram Stoker seriously if his villain had swept onto the page and said, in sepulchral tones, “I am Count Humperdink. I want to drink your blood”?
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