akshita1776 posted: " i am so proud about creating this, ngl ~ So, here I am with my first book review which I wrote after going through atleast 10 book reviews on Riddhi's, Nehal's and Sep's blogs quite naturally Blurb: For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" hau" Anthology of Akshita's Thoughts
So, here I am with my first book review which I wrote after going through atleast 10 book reviews on Riddhi's, Nehal's and Sep's blogs quite naturally
Blurb:
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.
Review:
I was so excited to get to this but I ended up not liking it very much, and no one could be sadder than me.
Plot: *Light spoilers*
As far as the plot was concerned, it was knitted and packed with everything you'd want in a story to happen. A broken past, romance, mystery and eventually a plot twist. Yet, there were a few questionable parts to it that I couldn't seem to wrap my head around. A girl who lives on her own, goes to buy groceries attracts the attention of the town heart-throb and yet she has no contact with anyone else throughout the years except for two guys and an old black couple. Isn't that a bit absurd? There are a few more parts to it that don't really make sense.
Characters:
The character of Kya was built up well but it felt like the author lost the thread of writing her after the first few chapters. It felt like she was telling us her character dynamics instead of showing it. Like throwing facts about her to our face and wanting us to accept it.
The other characters were comparatively better written but sometimes felt bland.
Writing Style:
While the lines describing nature are beautifully penned they tend to become a bit monotonous in a fiction book. In places where I wanted to see the plot moving ahead or the character showing emotions I was greeted with overly descriptive lines about the marsh and the wildlife in it.
The author tried to use the dialect while writing but that just ended being confusing and annoying at places where you couldn't make out what the character was saying.
The first half of it still manages to keep your attention towards the book but the second half fails miserably. When the story turns about to become a murder mystery, it suddenly feels like the author called upon someone to write those parts and then switch back to herself to write the rest of them.
Favourite Quotes
While the book made for a read that didn't make me feel much, there were a few unforgettable quotes-
"She laughed for his sake, something she'd never done. Giving away another piece of herself just to have someone else."
"I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full."
Rating:
/5 starts: OK
I wouldn't recommend to people who would go in searching for a touching story that is simultaneously intelligent as mystery books usually are.
If you enjoy descriptive writing, go ahead
And that's it for this one
Have you read this book? How did you find it to be?
Dave Bonta posted: " Download The Hidden Poems of Samuel Pepys, 1669 (PDF) Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.Ecclesiastes/Qoheleth 12:12 (KJV) You know I had to shout-out my favorite Biblical curmudgeon in the post tit" Via Negativa
Nine and a half years ago when I started making erasure poems from each entry in the Diary of Samuel Pepys, there was no way I even wanted to think about ever reaching the finish line, but here I am: elated that I'm done, and eager to begin the revision process.
I promise I'm not going to go full Tom Phillips—he of A Humument fame—and continue to make new erasures from the same text forever, but I feel I do owe it to the project to re-do the first couple of years' worth, before I really knew what I was doing, and then generate PDFs for the first four years. Vols. 5-10 are complete. When all that's done, presuming I don't burn out first, I'll see about pulling together a volume of selected poems from the project. (The PDFs will always be free.) If you're a small or boutique publisher and that sounds like something you might be interested in, let me know. My expectation is to self-publish, since it's easier and I get to control everything and keep the minuscule profits, but I could be persuaded otherwise.
Thanks to everyone who's offered support or encouragement over the years, and thanks to the readers of Via Negativa for not all cancelling their subscriptions over the unrelenting onslaught of erasure poems. Thanks most of all then to my co-blogger Luisa Igloria, whose daily poems here not only gave me the freedom to embark on such a niche project, knowing that readers would still have at least one solid daily poem to read, but were also a hell of an inspiration generally.
I'm also deeply indebted to Project Gutenberg and to Phil Gyford, the tech geek and Pepys enthusiast behind the online Diary edition I used. Being able to copy and paste each entry into an electronic document was key to my process, which involved lots of highlighting and drafting in Open Office, then pasting a final draft into WordPress and using HTML to handle the presentation. The active community of annotators on Phil's website helped bring the text to life in a way no printed volume ever could.
This was important to me since the original impetus behind the erasure project was to do a deep read of a crucial text in the development of blog-like literature in the West. (The Japanese, of course, have been writing literary diaries for more than a millennium.) With all due respect to Phillips and some of the other elders of the genre, I don't hold with treating a text simply as raw material to be exploited—even when the author is, let's be honest, a sexual predator and a major architect of the British colonial system. The gray-out approach to erasure poetry, which I first saw Jen Bervin use with Nets, her erasure of Shakespeare's sonnets, is not only more respectful to the text than blackout or complete removal (literal erasure), but is also I think much more appealing to readers. I remember my dad remarking, early on, how much he enjoyed being able to read Pepys' text and see where I'd gotten words from.
For now, the plan is to take a hiatus from this project—maybe for as little as a week, or maybe as much as six months, but no longer than that, I hope. I rather doubt that anyone is going to suffer from Pepys erasure withdrawal in the meantime, but if so, they can find links to the PDFs for everything from 1664 onward in the introductory paragraph to the erasure project's section of this website. Download, print, share, adapt, rewrite, erase! Have at it.
FaeCorpsInc posted: " Do we charge? Well, it depends on the situation and the status. If you are asking if we charge to read manuscripts or writing samples, then no. However, due to how busy we stay, we do not promise to send feedback (Unless we feel the need) or to rush " Fae Corps Inc
Do we charge? Well, it depends on the situation and the status. If you are asking if we charge to read manuscripts or writing samples, then no. However, due to how busy we stay, we do not promise to send feedback (Unless we feel the need) or to rush your read.
If we choose to publish your manuscript we generally take 25% of the royalties in exchange for the work we do. That means that you get the remaining royalties. This work often includes, but is not limited to, Editing, Cover Design, Formatting, publishing, Marketing assistance, and often more.
We do our best to try and bring your work to life in a way that you can be proud of it.
We do not charge to publish the anthology submissions...Depending on the anthology we even pay royalties for some of them.
If you are not publishing with us we do charge for editing - $2 per word in most cases with a 50-word free test edit. (The test edit is where we determine the final per word cost. If the manuscript is edit needy the price may go up. For lighter editing needs it may go down.)
If you want us to do cover design and are not publishing with us...the price is variable but usually around 30 per cover.
If you are not publishing with us, each of the services we do for our authors is available but with a variable price...on a case by case basis.
We try to be reasonable in our pricing because we want to see you succeed.
Kelsey @ There's Something About KM posted: "The days continue to fly past me, and I continue trying to achieve some sort of weekly stability and routine. I certainly did not intend for May to pass by without at least an April Wrap-Up and May Reading Preview, but here we are. At this rate, I'll be r" There's Something About KM
The days continue to fly past me, and I continue trying to achieve some sort of weekly stability and routine. I certainly did not intend for May to pass by without at least an April Wrap-Up and May Reading Preview, but here we are. At this rate, I'll be regularly blogging again by 2023... Read […]
Blurb: For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" hau" 
