All Quiet...

Aside from a couple of book reviews I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front. So here’s a brief update:

I’ve been writing (on-and-off, the opening of a short story, notes for a mainstream and possibly highly commercial novel), reading (a lot, by my standards—The Great Escape, Homer Hickam’s latest, and a Raymond Chandler biography), as well as doing some general pondering (something I do in quiet moments, which don’t seem to come around as often as I would like) about possible future directions for both myself and my writing. Rejections have been trickling in, too. No acceptances, but I have stories sitting in the final stages of consideration at several good publications. Meanwhile, my wife’s grandma has been recuperating in hospital from a fractured shoulder and my flat has been flooded by a burst water pipe. The vagaries of life. Fingers crossed, the month of May should hold some good news. Then, I shouldn't tempt fate...

Hope you are well.

Book Review: Red Helmet, Homer Hickam

Romantic fiction and coalmining: two things I'm not naturally drawn to, but when they're delivered by Homer Hickam, one of my favourite storytellers, I'm willing to make the exception. This unabashedly romantic tale of Song Hawkins, successful New York City businesswoman, and Cable Jordan, superintendent of a modern West Virginian mine is told with such heart and passion it's hard not be moved. Sure, with some clunky dialogue and O-T-T religious moralising, it's like a child that continually misbehaves, but darn it if it doesn't have a good heart and the very best of intentions. In this cynical climate we should make room, now and then, for such tales of love and faith...