Author With A Day Job

Mild mannered working stiff by day, author at night.

  • Jumping Into a New Series

    Jumping Off the Planet is not your usual science fiction story. It is the first book of a three-part series the author David Gerrold calls the Starsider’s Trilogy. This is the story of three adolescent brothers and their struggle to gain their own independence from their feuding parents.   The protagonist is thirteen-year-old Charles Dingillian, who goes by the nickname “Chigger.” He lives with his… Read more

  • The uncertainty of fire. It really can go up in smoke.

    I picked up this hidden gem of a novel in an independent bookstore.  It is written by Stephanie Daniels, a self-published author. Most people would never know about this beautifully-written story except for blogs like this one bringing it to their attention.  Sixteen-year-old Whimsey Greatheart, the daughter of a wealthy Chicago banker, thinks her biggest worry is what the society page in the local newspaper… Read more

  • This is not ethical writing

    A lot of us who write, including myself, would like to earn extra money writing for others in legitimate activities such as editing, proofreading, writing projects and similar things. Just for grins, I took a look on Craig’s List to find out what writing services others were offering. Some of the things I saw turned… Read more

  • Screams In The Night: another good YA World War Two Novel

    I happened to pick this book up in a used bookstore because the combination of young adult and WW2 historical literature interests me. It’s Brian Crawford’s story of Julia, a teenage farm girl growing up in Nazi-occupied Poland during the second world war. In addition to the struggles of living under the Nazis, she must keep the farm functioning despite her stepfather’s alcoholism.   She thinks her life is complicated enough, until… Read more

  • Resistance – great ya ww2 story

    Jennifer Nielsen may be known for her fantasy novels like The Once and Future Prince, but she has a number of young adult historical novels, and Resistance is one of them. The heroine of the story is Chaya Lindner, a Jewish teenage resistance fighter in the midst of the Holocaust. Because she can pass as… Read more