Flash Fiction Library: A Touch of Darkness (McLachlan)

Flash Fiction Library, Volume 1: A Touch of Darkness, Keith McLachlan (2016)

[NO IMAGE WILL BE INCLUDED]

Okay, so I've been dabbling in a bunch of stuff over the past month or two, starting a couple of paper books, and even carrying them around, as well as starting (or resuming) a couple of crossword and cryptic crossword books that I need to work on or toss out. (And if you know me, I can't just toss things out.) And there is so much gaming material in PDF format that I'm currently plowing through.

At some point, either through FreeEbooks on reddit, or perhaps a mailing list, I found four volumes of flash fiction, which are usually good if you want a quick read, maybe with lunch or something.

This wasn't it.

I'm including this as an entry on my blog, because I tried. I even completed the first story when I should have given up after the second paragraph, and then again by the second page.

Self-publishing is fraught with peril, and if one cannot afford an editor, then one should at least run it past a couple of friends. Preferably one who is an English major. I wasn't, but even I could see what was wrong with this book.

And if you gotten to the point of creating four (short) volumes of stories, you should probably go back and correct the initial ones. Also, learn basic rules of writing, including the rule that says that you need to know the rules before you can break them.

This book on Amazon had only one review, which was a five-star rating and a summary that wasn't even true. I left a two-star review, with the second star being because I was overly nice, and I wasn't finishing this book.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1632 (or The Ring of Fire) (Flint)

Image
1632 (or The Ring of Fire) , by Eric Flint, 2000 In the year 2000, a freak occurrence, referred to as The Ring of Fire , sent the town of Grantsville, Virginia back through time and space, swapping places with a plot of land in central Germany in 1632, in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The small mining town quickly realizes the unlikeliness of a second cataclysm putting right what had been torn apart and sets out to acclimate to their way of life. And, of course, survive. Their weapons and technology give them a great advantage, but they no longer have the industry to produce that technology. Nor do the have the industry to produce the industry ... An alternate timeline is born as the United States of America is founded 144 years early (and on a different continent). History plays on around them. The book divides its time between brutal battles fought across Germany, building a new society and some overlong passages on just how well the Americans are getting along with thei...
Read more

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Halloween Rain (Golden, Holder)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Halloween Rain, Golden, Holder, 1997 An episode of the show which I hadn't seen. Killer scarecrow that comes alive during the rains on Halloween. Samhain can see through the eyes of any pumpkin and move if it's on a scarecrow. Quick read. Should've been quicker. Mind candy. There's a line that I left out that says, "Cute line about coupe....", except that I can't read my own handwriting, nor remember what the cute line was actually about. I'm also not sure if this was actually an episode, or if it was my belief at the time that it was based on one particular episode and not based on the characters from the series. Ultimately, it was forgettable.
Read more

Two Short Books

Image
Big Bullet Monster Bomb: lost little things: a short story for mature readers by Adam Archer (2020) The Race by John Russo (2021) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I don't remember where I found these stories. I don't think it was reddit. It could've been on Facebook or Twitter. Nothing about the Bullet Bomb book was particularly geared toward mature readers, other than the cover showing a woman wearing rags that barely cover what they need to. It seems like a story set in a larger world that I haven't read but I have no idea of this is the case. It's post-apocalyptic and the last of the human race is slowly morphing into cratures. This much is interesting. The main character is pulling a sled of her belongings (including guns) and looking for some place to hide so she can sleep. Her sleep c...
Read more