Skip to main content

IWSG: Reviews Help Both Reader and Author

Logo for the Insecure Writer's Support Group depicting a light house in the background.


It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) post!  In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. The challenge to my writing that began last Thursday and lasted through Monday was a cold. That shows us winter is here, doesn’t it? I didn’t want to push myself too hard because I didn’t want to get more sick. If a writer doesn’t take care of their health first then they eventually won’t write well. I did get some work done on my current story that I'm revising for my upcoming book of short fiction, "Bad Apps" but it was very minimal. And I just barely posted my weekly blog post, which happened to be the monthly Book-To-Movie review, Monday evening in which I normally do that by the morning. I’m finally just getting back into my normal routine.


IWSG Monthly Question

Now for the optional IWSG question of the month: Book reviews are for the readers. When you leave a book review do you review for the Reader or the Author? Is it about what you liked and enjoyed about your reading experience, or do you critique the author? I try to leave a book review for both reader and author. I feel both can get something worthwhile out of it. The reader can use the review to help them decide whether it would be worth their time and/or money to read the book, and the author can use it as input that will help them better write the next book. So, I believe it's important to leave a review for the benefit of both reader and author. 

Author’s Newsletter

There was no newsletter last month because of the Thanksgiving holiday that kept my family and I busy enough. I was also still trying to recuperate from October's Halloween newsletter.  And the Christmas season is just as hectic, if not more, as the previous two holidays. However, I always try to come out with a Holiday edition of my author's newsletter each year and so will be working on that for the next couple of weeks. So, I'm going to try to release that about a week before Christmas. To sign up for my free author's newsletter, click here. In this upcoming issue I’ll try to give more details about "Bad Apps" and will talk about my most current story that I'm revising. 


That's all for this IWSG post. Because there have been two posts here at the Far Out Fantastic Site this week, this one and Monday's Book-To-Movie, I'm going to skip posting for next Monday as I usually do after an IWSG. I’ll resume Far Out Fantastic Blog posts the following Monday. By then, I may even have the newsletter released! 


Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: C. Lee McKenzie, JQ Rose, Jennifer Lane, and Jacqui Murray! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels! 

Do you leave book reviews for the reader, author or both?

Until next time . . .


Comments

  1. I usually get something out of reviews of my books that wlil help me with the next book.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sucks to get sick when you need to write.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yeah, it does. I'll try to write as much as I can but I still get held back. You can only do what you can at those times.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book-To-Movie: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I apologise for posting outside our regular post-day which is late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. However, I got behind on several things last week and so had to postpone the post to today.  I’ve been a reader of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books ever since I was 11. What I’ve always liked so much about the series is that, like a good horror story, the stories often take place in dark settings and involve bizarre cases. Conan Doyle’s novel, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, definitely contains these elements. It’s a detective story that crosses over into the gothic horror genre. Several movie adaptations of the novel have been made that go as far back as a 1915 German silent film. In 1959 Hammer Studios released a version starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. As much as I’m a fan of the Hammer horror films, I have not seen that one yet. The only one that I’ve seen so far is the 1939 adaptation starring that other big name in classic Bri

Book-To-Movie: ‘I Am Legend’

A vampire similar to the ones in 2008's "I Am Legend" which starred Will Smith. Credit: Pixabay.com It’s time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To-Movie, I review a book and its movie adaptations. This month’s book and its movies based on it is I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. While vampires were no longer in in the American pop culture of the the 1950s, science fiction horror in general was. So Matheson’s I Am Legend brought the scientificising of vampires into the pulp literary scene of that era. Not too long after, in the early ‘60s, the first of three book-to-movie adaptions appeared and was renamed The Last Man On Earth which starred Vincent Price. The other two were The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston in the ‘70s and I Am Legend starring Will Smith in the 2001s. Even though each one debunked the myth of the vampire as a supernatural being, each had its own depiction of the creature. ‘I Am Legend’, The Book Set in a near post-apocalyptic fu

Book-To-Movie: Stephen King’s 'The Raft'

Credit: Pixabay.com It's the third Saturday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie ! In a Book-To-Movie we review a book and its movie adaptation. One of the reasons I as a horror fan don’t read a lot of Stephen King’s work is because most of it consists of novels that go more than 400 pages. I have a short attention span when it comes to reading, ironically since I consider myself an avid reader, and so I normally won’t read a work that is much more than the equivalent to a 350-page mass market paperback. The other reason why I don’t read a lot of King’s work is that, as literary scholars will tell you, a lot of his writing is poor. However, he does have some good writing in his works, especially his earlier stuff, including his short horror tales. So if I read anything by Stephen King it’s usually his short stories or novellas. One of his collections I’ve read is Skeleton Crew which includes some of his good, or at least