A Brush of Darkness (Off-Topic Review)

Series: Abby Sinclair (#1)
Genre: Romance/Adventure
Author: Allison Pang
Publisher: Pocket Books

There are two things that convinced me to go off-topic to read this book: Cyna's uncharacteristically gushy review, and a quote from the author's website: "I had a naked incubus in my bedroom. With a frying pan of half-cooked bacon and a hard-on. And a unicorn bite on his ass. Christ, this was turning out to be a weird morning." So when I sat down with A Brush of Darkness, I was expecting some kind of urban-fantasy version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well... no. Not that the book I got is bad, but if you've seen this book hyped as a comedy, the hype man has it wrong. It's a far more complex book than that.

Bloodthirsty (Off-Topic Review)

Series: Stand-Alone
Genre: Comedy
Author: Flynn Meaney
Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company


Bloodthirsty is a zeroth novel that has seen print. To elaborate: there's the first novel, which is released and -- with luck -- sets the stage for a prosperous writing career to follow. And then there is the zeroth novel, which is written before the first novel, but fails to find an agent or a publisher. For good reason. Most authors have a zeroth novel, which embodies everything they don't yet know how to do right. I do, and most of my writing friends do as well. If it's not a novel, it's a collection of unfinished stories and juvenalia, which likewise demonstrates severe deficiencies in craftsmanship. Ask my parents, who had three kids, of which I am the oldest: the first one is where you make all your mistakes.

This isn't a bad thing. Writing, like any creative endeavor, is one that has to be developed. Early on, you make mistakes. And you have to make those mistakes to realize your weaknesses and improve or compensate for them in the future. But in can be embarrassing to have them in print, because for all the care and enthusiasm you put into it, the zeroth novel is inevitably you at your clumsiest and most ignorant.

You think I'm going to bash Bloodthirsty now, don't you? Think again.