Richard Abbott

A Sip of Fear, by Brian Rush, is a sort of contemporary urban fantasy set on the streets of Seattle. The year is deliberately unspecified, but you can easily imagine the events playing out today anywhere in the world. Having briefly lived in Seattle, part of the charm for me was the occasional sense of recognition of the places visited. However, the appeal of the book goes well beyond that. A Sip of Fear explores issues of spirituality and humanity, life and death, good and evil, and how these motivate men and women in rather different ways. Readers of Brian's blog will not be surprised, since these are matters he likes to explore. So there are occasional magical conflicts, but these are brief, and secondary to the main theme - human growth and development, on both the personal and collective fronts. Brian's writing encourages readers to grapple with deep issues for themselves, and successfully avoids speculating about the ultimate nature of the world. The book, and the characters, remain agnostic as to whether there is a Supreme Light beyond the lights they follow. Instead, they are concerned with the next step along the way, and the human frailties which help or hinder that. The strength of their moral compass - or its absence - is crucial to the quest. Personal, intimate relationships are neither dismissed nor idealised, but are celebrated as expressions of life. Despite the use of magic, and the purposeful commitment to a life of spirituality, those factors ensure...

Today I am welcoming Suzanne Adair to an author interview. I first came across Suzanne's writing at the end of last year, and have been getting more familiar with it since. I have previously reviewed Hostage to Heritage and Camp Follower. She writes about the American War of Independence, so an interview for July 4th seemed perfect! Q. Suzanne, what first attracted you to write about the war of independence? Suzanne Adair A. Thanks for inviting me to be your guest today, Richard. What fun, talking about the American War of Independence on the Fourth of July—on a Brit’s blog, of all places! Although a number of wars have been fought on American soil, the War of Independence has always resonated the most with me. I’m fascinated with the changes in Western people’s heads during the late eighteenth century. They were exploring with telescopes and microscopes and even periscopes. The printing press made it possible for many to own books and become better educated than their forebears. Middle-class people could find leisure time. Government and religion weren’t as tightly bound as they’d been in previous centuries. And the stirrings of the women’s rights movement can be found during this period. For over two hundred years, history scholars focused almost exclusively on the northern theater of the American War (especially New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts). About fifteen years ago, they finally began researching the southern theater (the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida) in earnest. As new documents come to light, and field...

Written as one of “The Review Group” Review Volunteers, see http://thereview2014.blogspot.co.uk It is a very long time since I read a Western. Back in school we had Shane as a class book, and from the same era (and I'm showing my age here) I was a keen watcher of the two television series The Virginian and The High Chaparral. But since those long-ago days I think I have only encountered the Western genre in films. To this British reader, coming across placenames like Rio Verde or Yuma evokes a feeling of going into a fantasy land, where anything might happen. So it was with an entirely appropriate sense of riding into the unknown that I started this book. There were familiar elements that you meet almost at once. There is the mysterious man with the shady past, the abandoned wife struggling to make ends meet for her family, the lawman balancing his sense of natural justice with the pedantic legalism of "wanted" posters, Indians of several kinds, the optimistic prospectors hoping to strike lucky, and a whole mixture of diverse individuals making up the rest of the small town. There are motives of hate, love, revenge, self-sacrifice, over-protectiveness and partnership. The human environment was intricate and intriguing. What I had not expected was so much enticing description of the natural world. The untamed beauty of the region comes over vividly in the writing, and successfully imparted a delight in these days of wildness. Mounds of brittlebush dotted the incline. Dried...

Today I am welcoming David Frauenfelder to an author interview. Up to now I have been staying this side of the Atlantic for these interviews, but it’s time to go across the pond now. I first came across David’s writing towards the end of 2013, and have been following as he has tackled a couple of different genres.    Reviews: Skater in a Strange Land - http://richardabbott.datascenesdev.com/blog/index.php/2013/09/09/catching-up-with-things/  The Skater and the Saint - http://richardabbott.datascenesdev.com/blog/index.php/2014/02/08/review-the-skater-and-the-saint/  The Mirror and the Mage - http://richardabbott.datascenesdev.com/blog/index.php/2014/11/05/review-the-mirror-and-the-mage-by-david-frauenfelder/    Q. David, I first came across you in connection with Skater in a Strange Land, about which I wrote “a sort of cross-over science-fiction / fantasy book that mostly defies description but kept me reading avidly to the end“. What drew you to write about Borschland, a fictitious continent appearing from time to time in the Indian Ocean? A. I am an inveterate reader of maps and creator of worlds. I have pretty often had dreams where I am looking at a map and suddenly I dive into the place the map represents.   If I am in a boring meeting, I will sketch a map of an imaginary place from whatever is percolating in my brain at the time. If something like Dasht-e-Kavir comes out (a real desert in Iran), the world will be a wasteland with Persian and Arabic place names.   From there, it’s a very quick step to imagining peoples, cultures, and history. It helps that as a child I read all the fantasy standards from Lloyd Alexander...

Today I am delighted to welcome Paula Lofting to the blog, who has kindly answered a number of interview questions. Some while ago now I reviewed Sons of the Wolf (http://richardabbott.authorsxpress.com/2014/01/04/sons-of-the-wolf-a-review/), but as you read on you will find out lots of other things about Paula. Q. Hi Paula, could you first give us a little introduction to yourself. A. Yes, indeed, well my name is Paula Wilcox, but I use my maiden name of Lofting as my author’s name. I decided to use it because I didn’t want people thinking that the actress Paula Wilcox was writing my books lol, plus there is an old famous author called Hugh Lofting of Dr Dolittle fame and I am a distant cousin, so it seems appropriate to use it – *laughs.   I am a psychiatric nurse by day and in my spare time I love to write. I’m working on my second novel at the moment but time is at a premium, especially as I help run The Review blog and also re-enact Dark Age history. So finishing a book takes me a lot of time as I have to fit my writing into my daily life where I can.   Read more at http://richardabbott.datascenesdev.com/blog/index.php/2015/03/21/author-interview-paula-lofting/ ...