My Review of A Dangerous Harbor by RP Dahlke

A Dangerous Harbor by RP Dahlke

In this delightful romantic suspense, Dahlke has covered a lot of ground. Katy, a temporarily suspended police officer from San Francisco, sails into a harbor in Mexico. Not only wanting to get away from her job problems, she’s also licking the wounds from her broken engagement. Instead of a relaxing vacation, Katy runs into an old boy friend who is in hiding--and he’s not the only one. She gets involved in a murder investigation and learns more than she ever wanted to know about drug cartels. When she meets the handsome and mysterious police chief, the plot takes an intriguing turn.

In A Dangerous Harbor we’re given some quick lessons in sailing, and treated to the most unusual setting of a Mexican village that is a shelter to ex-patriots from America as well as its own natives. We’re given a realistic vision of the rich and the poor. What Dahlke does best is developing her unusual cast of characters while the mystery becomes more and more complicated. And if you like a bit of spicy romance, you’ll definitely enjoy this book. To pique your interest a bit more, believe it or not, a feather-less parrot plays an important part.

Highly recommended to all mystery lovers.

Review by Marilyn Meredith, author of Bears With Us.

Under the Dog Star by Sandra Parshall

Under The Dog Star

by Sandra Parshall

ISBN: 978-1-59058-878-9

a 2011 Poisoned Pen release,

303 pages

The story is already in full-bore action when you open the book. “In the silver moonlight, the dogs appear as a dark mass moving down the hill and across the pasture.” Contrast of light and dark. Questions immediately arise. Are these dangerous dogs? Feral dogs? Where are we and who is observing this? Why should we care?

In the hands of this careful, experienced writer, you know you are in for a wild ride. Veterinarian, Rachel Goddard, runs an animal clinic in the mountains of Virginia, a place where people are used to taking care of their problems in direct fashion. Wild dogs threatening livestock? Never mind they are or were somebody’s pet, shoot ‘em. This is anathema to Rachel and she mounts a county-wide attempt to trap and rescue the dogs before they are shot. The county is thrown into an uproar and her competence is questioned when a prominent physician is discovered with his throat torn out and plenty of evidence that a dog was the culprit.

Rachel’s lover, Tom Bridger, a deputy sheriff in the county is worried about Rachel’s safety as he struggles to understand the crime. Both Rachel and Bridger come up against one of them most dysfunctional families I have ever read about. There are other complications and false trails that have to be dealt with. The author handles dog fighting and other crimes is a forthright yet sympathetic manner. Readers will get the vivid pictures the author draws, but won’t have to wallow in the degradation. Parshall makes her points cleanly and evocatively, just as she illuminate the settings, both by contrast and depiction.

There were times when I wanted to grab Rachel and inject a little backbone into her and Bridger is sometimes entirely too controlling. Nevertheless, this is a strong, well-written chiller with crackling dialogue, great characters and a powerful resolution.

--
Carl Brookins www.carlbrookins.com http://agora2.blogspot.com, Case of the Great Train Robbery, Reunion, Red Sky

Help!

Yes, I need help.

I'm thinking, plotting, jotting down notes for my next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery.

I have lots of ideas, but I want the story to revolve around and old house with a past history of tragic happenings. Ones that might have left ghosts behind.

I've got some ideas but if you have heard of something along those lines and would like to share I'd love to hear (read) about them. For those I use I'll acknowledge you by name in the front of the book without saying which idea you gave me in case you wouldn't want anyone to know.

However, I've used many ideas I've gotten from actual events but I make enough changes no one recognizes where they came from. Same thing when I base a character on someone I know, the person never recognizes him or herself. (Except in the book that's coming out this fall where someone I  know asked to be a character in the book. I didn't use her name, just a lot of things about her.)

Anyway, folks, any of you out there have some ideas for me? You can either put them in a comment or email me at mmeredith@ocsnet.net

It will be fun to see what you come up with.

Marilyn

Hitler's Silver Box by Dr. Allen Malnak

Dr. Allen Malnak

About the book  

Hitler’s Silver Box is a modern day historical thriller set in Chicago, which begins with an elderly bookseller and Holocaust survivor, Max Bloomberg, being brutally murdered in his own home by a trio of thugs. Max’s closest relative, Dr.Bruce Starkman, chief ER resident at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital is shocked when he learns his Holocaust survivor uncle is dead—his body already cremated, a violation of his uncle’s religious beliefs. Max leaves a clue, allowing Bruce to find a hidden journal in Max's handwriting detailing his uncle’s ordeal some fifty years before in a Nazi concentration camp, during which Max is ordered by a Waffen SS Colonel to craft a silver box which is to be a birthday present for Hitler. The silver box contains a document written by Nazi leaders, which if discovered will lead to a worldwide Nazi resurgence. Max manages to escape and bury the birthday gift in a forest near Prague. 

Bruce decides to try and find the box and to solve the mystery of his Uncle’s untimely demise. He and an attractive Israeli female companion with a military background are pursued and attacked by present day Nazis intent on reviving the Reich. The novel leads from Chicago to Paris to Prague in swift, hair-raising turns. The full journal of Max Bloomberg is included in the book.

Background of HITLER’S SILVER BOX

When my father came to America in 1906 at age 16, he had only one distant relative in this country. He left behind in Kovno, Lithuania a large family, including his parents, eight brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. They ranged in age from the elderly to babies.

Dad died of natural causes during the Second World War and immediately following the war, my late brother Lewis and I began to try to track down our father’s European family. I was just 16 when the war ended. We wrote letters to everyone we could think of and after about a year received a detailed reply from the International Red Cross. Nazi records as well as witness reports indicated that all members of dad’s family had been murdered either in or near Kovno or after transfer to a death camp. Every man, woman and child!

So, one entire side of my family was destroyed by the Nazis. Of course, I became interested in the Holocaust and began reading articles about it even during my high school and college years. During my internship at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital, I read a short book DOCTORS OF INFAMY, which covered many horrendous medical experiments performed on concentration camp prisoners by Nazi physicians. The book was so disturbing that after reading it, I tossed it into a garbage can. My next book on the subject was Elie Weisel’s NIGHT.  I then became occupied with my professional career as well as with my growing family for many years. When I reached the age of forty, I decided I owed it to my dead family members to engage in a real study of that terrible time. I then spent perhaps two or three years of my limited free time reading every book I could find on the Holocaust.

Years later, I retired from the practice and teaching of internal medicine, and my wife and I moved to Bonita Springs Florida. I noticed in the Naples Daily News an article describing a course in writing fiction being held at the Naples Philharmonic. The teacher was Hollis Alpert a well known novelist, biographer, short story editor as well as a movie critic.

I took classes with Hollis for a couple of years. He would give us assignments, often listing several subjects that we should use as the basis of a short story. He would critique each story and at the next weekly session read some of them to the class.

One topic I picked was titled “A Silver Box.” For some reason, I decided to write it about a concentration camp prisoner at the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp who was forced by a Nazi colonel to make a silver box which would be a present for Adolph Hitler.

After reading the story in class, afterwards, Hollis suggested that this story could be expanded into a novel, and that started the process that eventually lead to HITLER’S SILVER BOX-A NOVEL. I changed the protagonist from Max, the silversmith, to his nephew an ER resident who searched for the silver box fifty years after the war and following his uncle's mysterious death.

While HITLER’S SILVER BOX is a work of fiction, it’s loosely based on the fact that during the Second World War, Nazi scientists worked up to the war’s end on a multitude of secret weapons on which Hitler pinned his hopes for a last ditch victory. 

These weapon systems ranged from very long range rockets that could be fired from underground bases to alternative physics, robotic warriors, new energy sources, radical germ warfare and of course, nuclear weapons. 

In the novel, the facts were modified to suggest that many objects which were later called UFOs were also developed by Nazi scientists in concealed locations, and various secret laboratories were set up around the world including in areas of both Arctic and Antarctic wastes where explorers had never trekked. 

HITLER’S SILVER BOX further develops this to suggest that as Allied Armies closed in on Germany from east and west, it became apparent to his top generals that the war would be lost. With Hitler’s reluctant approval, a group of high ranking Nazi officials decided it would be prudent to plan for a Fourth Reich. This would require keeping these scientists funded and working for many years. All knowledge about them including their exact locations as well as their discoveries would have to be kept secret until the time was right.

Thus the vital importance of the sole document containing this information placed inside the silver box made specially for Hitler. The box was taken from the Nazis in 1945 and hidden in a forest in what is now the Czech Republic.

Writing the novel required considerable research. Having worked during my training and military service in a number of emergency rooms as well as having been medical director of a large ER department in Chicago’s Mount Sinai Hospital, I was familiar with that aspect of the story. I studied articles and books on life inTheresienstadt concentration camp and had to learn a great deal about silversmithing.

Dialogue and careful descriptions were difficult crafts to understand and learn, but the hardest part of writing the novel was describing the conditions that Max went through in the concentration camp using the “particular” silver, the provenance of which nearly drove him and me mad.  

The dramatic ER scenes were easier because they were based on my personal experiences. Since like Bruce in the novel, I also have claustrophobia in tunnels, writing that scene caused me some discomfort.

 


Hitler's Silver Box Blurb:

Dr. Bruce Starkman, chief ER resident at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital, is plucked from total immersion in his profession by the mysterious death of his Uncle Max.

It’s only when Bruce finds his uncle’s hidden journal detailing Max’s ordeal some fifty years before in Theresienstadt concentration camp that the situation begins to make sense. Deciphering clues his uncle left behind, he has to decide whether to seek the truth about something from the past, or move forward with his medical career.

The young physician soon realizes a worldwide Nazi resurgence is imminent unless he can find and destroy a secret document written by Nazi leaders and concealed in a silver box, which his uncle hid in 1945. This forces Bruce to reevaluate his priorities and start his own search for the elusive box.

The search takes Bruce and Miriam, an aggressive, attractive Israeli woman with military training to Paris and the Czech Republic, while being pursued and attacked by groups of vicious neo-Nazis.

Can Bruce cross over from a healer to a person of violence? The world’s future may depend on it.

Written with an eye for detail and a dramatic sense of timing, Allen Malnak’s Hitler’s Silver Box is the kind of story that grabs its readers by the collar and tells them to hold on tight.

WEBSITE: http://www.hitlerssilverbox.com/

Links to Florida Weekly articles:

http://naples.floridaweekly.com/news/2012-01-12/PDF/Page_080.pdf

http://naples.floridaweekly.com/news/2012-01-12/PDF/Page_081.pdf

About the author:

Dr. Allen Malnak graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and interned at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. After completing a three year Internal Medicine Residency at the Research and Educational Hospitals of the University of Illinois and the Westside VA Hospital, he was Chief of Internal Medicine at the US Army Hospital, Fort Sill, OK.

Following military service, Dr. Malnak was a Clinical Investigator in Liver Disease at Mount Sinai Hospital of Chicago. He practiced in the Chicago area as a Board Certified Internist for about thirty-five years. During that time he was a Clinical Instructor at Chicago Medical School and an Associate Attending Physician at Cook County Hospital for eight years and following that a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Stritch School of Medicine of Loyola University for twenty-five years.

He was Medical Director of a number of organizations, including the Emergency Department of Mount Sinai Hospital and Principle Health Care of Illinois. Dr. Malnak also served as Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine, President of the Medical Staff, a member of the Board of Directors of Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Chicagoland.

His interest in the Holocaust was sparked by the fact that his father came to the USA from Lithuania at age 16, leaving behind a large family. All the men, women and children of that family were sent to a death camp by the Nazis and exterminated.

The retired internist is married and has three living children from his previous marriage. He and his wife, Patricia live in southwest Florida with their Whippet—Paige, and Parakeet— Kiwi.

Visit Dr. Allen Malnak’s Science and Health Blog.

Reading, Reading. Reading

I've managed to get in more reading than usual. Two big reasons: I get free books from Amazon Vine as long as I'm willing to review them. It gives me the opportunity to read books I wouldn't otherwise. Lately, I've been choosing Young Adult books and they've been amazing. The latest one I read was Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby.

Simon and Schuster has also been sending me books.The latest was Camilla Lackberg's, The Preacher.Though it's been compared to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for me the only similarity was that it's set in a Scandinavian country. Though the mystery is complicated and dark, the main characters were far easier to relate to because they seem like normal people, living normal lives. The Detective, Patrik Hedstrom and his pregnant significant other, Erica Falk are expecting their first baby when a murdered young girl is discovered along with two skeletons of missing girls from years ago. Patrik must interrupt his vacation to take on the investigation while Erica has uninvited guests drop in.

I'm reading a lighter mystery on my Kindle which I'll tell more about when I've finished. I enjoyed reading Stephen King's latest that was influenced by President Kennedy's assassination. Because of the number of pages, I was happy I read that one on my Kindle too.

I read most anything that tickles my imagination, but I'm partial to mysteries. I'm least fond of what I call the silly mysterious--the ones that work too hard to be funny. Now a bit of subtle humor like Mike Ordenduff's puts in his Pot Thief mysteries is wonderful. I also like dark, complicated tales, and I enjoy a bit of the supernatural too.

Does reading affect my writing? Not really because I only read in spare moments and the evening hours. I only do my own writing in the morning. And no, I don't pick up the style of other writers. Though I certainly envy those writers who seem to be able to capture something that goes beyond ordinary story telling.

Of course reading is what led me to writing. I've been a voracious reader since childhood--10 books a week from the library when I was a kid. I also read all of my mother's books from the Book of the Month Club--even those she told me I couldn't read. It seemed inevitable that I would start writing my own stories.
Wasn't so easy to get them published though--but that's a whole other topic.

Marilyn

The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing

 The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing

by Mayra Calvani and Anne K. Edwards

After reading this most comprehensive book on reviewing books, I wondered what the heck I was doing reviewing this book. Yes, I do review books on occasion, some that are sent to me by publishing houses and other by the authors themselves. Sometimes I review a book I liked because I want other people to know about it. As an author, I’ve also had my books reviewed many, many times.

Calvani and Edwards not only did a all encompassing job on this subject, I know that both of them have earned the titles of author and reviewer and know what they wrote about.

Frankly, I had no idea how they could fill an entire book about writing book reviews.

Part I is all about “The Art of Reviewing.”

As I began reading, I knew that they’d taken on a much bigger job than I anticipated and covered all the necessary aspects of book reviewing.

Included is a checklist to follow while reading a book to review and there was a different checklist for non-fiction and fiction, different genres, including children’s books.

Ever wonder what the star ratings mean? You can find out here.

The authors included samples of different typos of reviews, including a bad one.

One segment addressed what to do if a book is terrible.

The contest covered every question you might ever wonder about if you’re a new book reviewer including whether or not you should sell a book that you received for free.

One of the last chapters of Part I that particularly interested me was titled, “Reviewers vs. Bloggers: the Controversy.” Though I do post reviews on Amazon and write reviews for Kings River magazine, I also post them on my blog.

Part II is titled, “The Influence of Book Reviews” and covers libraries, bookstores, publishers, authors, publicists, book clubs and reviewers.

Part III, “Resources” tells how to get stated posting reviews, places to get your reviews printed both in paper publications and online review sites and publications.

The Appendix has a sample of a press release.

This is a book that anyone who is writing book reviews or would like to write reviews should have in his or her possession. The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing is well-organized, easy to understand, and cover every subject you need to know to be a book reviewer.

Just for fun, I thought I’d share what most irritates me in a book review—and that’s when someone gives away the surprise ending of my book or anyone else’s. And yes, that’s happened to me.

Great job Mayra and Anne!

Review by Marilyn Meredith

The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing

by Mayra Calvani and Anne K. Edwards

List $16.95

180 Pages Twilight Times Books
ISBN: 978-1-933353-22-7
Reference/Writing Trade paperback

The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing serves as an excellent reference tool and amalgam of resources. The book shows you how to write a well-written, honest, objective and professional book review.

Available online and at www.TwilightTimesBooks.com

About the Authors

Mayra Calvani writes fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. She’s had over 300 stories, articles, interviews and reviews published both online and in print, in publications such as The Writer, Writer's Journal, Acentos Review, Bloomsbury Review, Mosaic, and Multicultural Review, among many others. A reviewer for more than a decade, she now offers numerous book reviewing workshops online. She also offers workshops on the art of picture book writing. She's represented by Mansion Street Literary and Savvy Literary. www.MayraCalvani.com

Anne K. Edwards is an award-winning multi-genre author, reviewer and editor of Voice in the Dark Ezine. Her latest novel is the suspense thriller, Shadows Over Paradise, published by Twilight Times Books. www.AnneKEdwards.com

Awards:

ForeWord Best Book of the Year Award Winner under the Writing Category!

2011 Global Ebooks Awards Winner for Nonfiction/Reference!

*US Book News National Best Book Award Finalist!

*Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist!

*EPPIE Award Finalist!

*Used for reviewing course at 3 US universities and 1 university in the Netherlands.

Experts Offer the Ten Commandment of Book Reviewing

Experts offer The Ten Commandments of Book Reviewing

Are you passionate about books? Do you have the desire to share your thoughts about a book with readers, yet are unsure about what makes a good review?

Veteran book reviewers Mayra Calvani and Anne K. Edwards, authors of The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing, have written a book that explains how to write a well-written, honest, objective and professional book review.

Here are their Ten Commandments of Book Reviewing:

1.    Thou shall have no other gods before the reader. The review is not about the author, nor the publisher, and especially, not about you, the reviewer. Reviews are all about the reader. Don’t try to impress with pompous words in an attempt to glorify yourself or appear scholarly. Give readers simplicity and clarity. They’ll appreciate it. If they want verbose and fancy, they can read Shakespeare.

2.    Thou shall not lie. Honesty is what defines your trade. Without it, you’re doing nothing but selling copy. When you give facile praise or sugar-coat a book, sooner or later readers will take you for what you are: a phony.

3.    Thou shall try not to offend the author. Just as honesty is important, so is tact. There’s no need to be harsh or mean. A tactfully written, well-meant negative review should offer the author insight into what is wrong with the book. Instead of saying, “This is a terrible novel!” say, “This book didn’t work for me for the following reasons…”

4.    Thou shall not eat the evaluation. Some fledgling reviewers write a long blurb of the book and leave out the evaluation. The evaluation is the most important part of a review. A summary of the plot is not an evaluation. Saying, “I really liked this book” is not an evaluation. The evaluation tells the reader what is good and bad about the book, and whether or not it is worth buying.

5.    Thou shall not reveal spoilers. Nobody likes to be told the ending of a movie before having watched it. The same thing is valid for a book. If you give spoilers in your review, not only do you lessen the reader’s reading experience but you also risk being sued by the publisher or author.

6.    Thou shall honor grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Don’t be one of those reviewers who are more in love with the idea of seeing their name online than making sure their reviews are well-written and thorough. Your reviews may hang around on the internet for years to come and will reflect on your level as a writer. Run a spell check, edit, revise, and polish your review, as if you were posting a short story. Get a good book on grammar, and punctuation, take an online course or listen regularly to podcasts such as The Grammar Girl.

7.    Thou shall honor deadlines. If you join a review site where the turnaround for reviews is 3 weeks, then you should respect that agreement. If you promise the author to have the review ready in two months, you should honor this too. Be honest and straight forward from the beginning. If you’re so busy your turnaround is six months, make sure to let the person know. If for any reasons you cannot meet the deadline, contact the person and let him know. It’s your responsibility to maintain a do-able schedule.

8.    Thou shall not be prejudiced against thy neighbor. Don’t assume that a self-published or small press book is poorly written. Give it a fair chance and let it speak for itself. Likewise, never assume a book published by a major NY house has to be good. You’d be surprised by the high quality of some small press books by unknown authors, as opposed to those written by big name authors whose titles are often in the bestseller lists. In general, most subsidy books are mediocre, but there are always exceptions. If you’ve had bad experiences with subsidy books, then don’t request them nor accept them for review. If you decide to review one, though, don’t be biased and give it a fair chance.

9.    Thou shall not become an RC addict. RC stands for Review Copy. Requesting RCs can get out of control. In fact, it can become addictive. You should be realistic about how many books you can review. If you don’t, pretty soon you’ll be drowning in more RCs than you can handle. When this happens, reading and reviewing can change from a fun, pleasurable experience into a stressful one. If you’re feeling frazzled because you have a tower of books waiting to be reviewed, learn to say NO when someone approaches you for a review and stop requesting RCs for a while. Unless you’re being paid as a staff reviewer for a newspaper or magazine, reviewing shouldn’t get in the way of your daily life.

10. Thou shall honor thy commitment. Remember that any books you’ve agreed to review beforehand are being sent to you in exchange for a review. If your policy is not to review every book you receive, state it clearly on your blog or site so the author or publisher will know what to expect. If you have agreed to review a book, but have a valid reason for not reviewing it, let the review site editor, author, publisher, or publicist know.

The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing

by Mayra Calvani and Anne K. Edwards

List $16.95

180 Pages Twilight Times Books
ISBN: 978-1-933353-22-7
Reference/Writing Trade paperback

The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing serves as an excellent reference tool and amalgam of resources. The book shows you how to write a well-written, honest, objective and professional book review.

Available online and at www.TwilightTimesBooks.com

About the Authors

Mayra Calvani writes fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. She’s had over 300 stories, articles, interviews and reviews published both online and in print, in publications such as The Writer, Writer's Journal, Acentos Review, Bloomsbury Review, Mosaic, and Multicultural Review, among many others. A reviewer for more than a decade, she now offers numerous book reviewing workshops online. She also offers workshops on the art of picture book writing. She's represented by Mansion Street Literary and Savvy Literary. www.MayraCalvani.com

Anne K. Edwards is an award-winning multi-genre author, reviewer and editor of Voice in the Dark Ezine. Her latest novel is the suspense thriller, Shadows Over Paradise, published by Twilight Times Books. www.AnneKEdwards.com

Awards:

ForeWord Best Book of the Year Award Winner under the Writing Category!

2011 Global Ebooks Awards Winner for Nonfiction/Reference!

*US Book News National Best Book Award Finalist!

*Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist!

*EPPIE Award Finalist!

*Used for reviewing course at 3 US universities and 1 university in the Netherlands.

What People Are Saying

“There’s not a reviewer out there that wouldn’t benefit from this review of reviewing… this is a great reference book for libraries…”

–Heather Shaw, Editor-in-Chief, ForeWord Magazine

“This book from Mayra Calvani and Anne K. Edwards is the first ‘Reviewer’s Desk Reference’ for book reviewers at all levels.”

–Reviewed by Ernest Dempsey, The World Audience 

“As an experienced reviewer I learned that I do not know it all and will keep my copy of The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing for reference. It is not a book I will loan out because it won’t be returned…If you want to break into book reviewing, The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing is a must-have reference. Heed the author’s advice and you can write reviews that will get you and the books you review noticed.”

–Reviewed by Sharon Broom, Armchair Interviews.

“The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing is a useful took for both amateur and professional book reviewers, as well as book review editors. There should be no doubt that the good tips, thoughtful perspective and resource information can be of considerable value to anyone wishing to practice this art.”

–Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford, Allbooks Reviews.

“I do recommend The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing as a must-have resource guide. Calvani and Edwards present a well-written gold-mine to potential reviewers as well as a source of information for experienced reviewers and authors.”

–Reviewed by Irene Watson, Reader Views.

“The Slippery Art… is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in book reviews – writers, reviewers, publishers, publicists, librarians, booksellers and readers.”

– Reviewed by Francine Silverman, Editor of The Book Promotion Newsletter

More Practical Advice to Remember When Reviewing

•          Keep your writing style concise, direct and reader-friendly. Don’t try to impress readers with fancy words.

•          Whenever possible, try to specify the intended readership. Some books are specialized and appeal to only one group of people.

•          Stay away from clichés like “A real page-turner!” “Un-put-down-able!” It’s a pity, but even big newspaper reviewers sometimes use these expressions. You see them on the back of paperbacks all the time.

•          Don’t let a few typos affect your review if the book is good. Even books published by major houses sometimes have small errors.

•          Be advised that the most commonly preferred tense when writing a review is the present.

•          Read different types of reviews to get a feel of what a review should be like. Soon you’ll be able to differentiate the well-written reviews from the mediocre.

•          Try not to review books from family members, friends or people you know. The less you know about the author or publisher, the less chance of conflict of interest and the more freedom you have to be honest.

•          If you read all kinds of books, then review all kinds of books, but if you mostly read books in one genre, then it’s more sensible to only review books in that genre. Your reviews will have more insight, more ‘meat’ when you’re familiar with other authors and books in that particular genre.

•          Try to review books in the order in which you receive them. This will help in keeping up with deadlines and is only fair to the person who submitted it.

•          If you plan to review books in all categories, make sure you understand the various types of genres and subgenres. It’s embarrassing to complain in your review that a story has highly improbably situations if the story in question happens to be a parody!

•          Don’t be prejudiced. Don’t assume that a self-published or small press book will be poorly written. Give it a fair chance and let it speak for itself. Likewise, never assume a book published by a major NY house has to be good.

(See my review of this book tomorrow. Marilyn)