Get Your Free Video Book Excerpt! Advent 17 Did you know I made a series of videos reading book excerpts? It started with this interview by the small town paper The Midley Beacon.
This is all part of my 25 days of Advent gift giving to you until Christmas.
Sit back, pour a glass of egg nogg, and watch the video excerpt below.
Jeremy Gentle fell flat on his face at therapy. That was normal since he had cerebral palsy. But his new superpower wasn’t normal. Then things got weirder when his best friend, Dan Elanga, got a different superpower. But Dan was still blind.
Kayla Verdera and Aubrey Wilcosky, two girls in their middle-school special ed class, discovered they too had new superpowers. Kayla was mute and needed a walker. Aubrey lost two legs and used crutches. But they were as powerful as the boys.
What should the four friends do? Jeremy knew if the word got out, it’d be a media circus. Then they started fighting crime, as the Secret Supers. Who knew a disability could be a perfect disguise? No one would ever think of disabled kids as superheroes. Then they ran into problems they never expected.
But wait! I have yet more turkey postings coming up.
Happy Thanksgiving Have a Zombie Turkey
There’s still more for you. How about the following–zombie dinosaurs!
Zombie dinosaurs! There's one I hadn't thought of.
Continuing on in the outer space for the Thanksgiving theme, we have the next post: a gorgeous video of the largest volcano in the Solar System–the size of France and three times the height of Everest!
And we’ll finish up with the largest planet in the Solar System.
Best September 2022 to October – Now for a classic Dystopia
Review of 1984
I couldn’t find my review of 1984, but I found a review I agree with.
I read Nineteen Eighty-Four when I was eleven years old. School had just let out for the summer, and my family spent that first Saturday down on Lake Moovalya on the Colorado River. It was my first time out in the sun, and I seriously overdid it, spending all day in the river and getting severely sunburned. The next day I could barely move. My mom told me I was “sun poisoned.” The weather turned ugly, too–we were hit with a howling dust storm, so strong and thick I couldn’t see across the street. I wasn’t going anywhere, so I looked for something to read. Our next-door neighbors’ son had gone off to college and his parents, knowing I was a bookworm, gave me a box of paperbacks, mostly science fiction. And in that collection was a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I don’t know why I picked that particular volume–I could have selected Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot or Andre Norton’s The Sioux Spaceman–but Orwell was what I went with.
Wow. When I finished the book a few hours later, I had never been so bummed in my life. I think maybe being so sick and miserable must have had something to do with it, but the experience of reading about Winston Smith’s futile, hopeless fight against Big Brother was so overwhelming, for years afterwards–until I read Robert Cormier’s I Am the Cheese—Nineteen Eighty-Four was my nominee for most depressing book ever written.
But even though I was thoroughly depressed after reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, I still rate it five stars. The total despair the book engendered in me is a testament to Orwell’s skill as a writer. As with all of Orwell’s work, fiction and non-fiction alike, Nineteen Eighty-Four is well-written–Orwell certainly knew his craft. It also captures perfectly life in the Stalinist Soviet Union. The utter bleakness of life, the omnipotent repression by the government, the controlling of the very language to restrict the ability of the populace to think, and the futility of rebellion, all were features of life in the USSR, and all are portrayed truly and vividly in Nineteen Eighty-Four.Hank Hoeft
Now here are my comments.
Think of them as my review, if you want my perspective.
It’s so depressing (I read it at about 17) that I rate it 2 stars, despite being still read seventy years after it was published. Normally I would give it 5 stars for that feat.
The real horror of the book is that Orwell was describing conditions in Soviet Russia at the time and that nothing has changed in human behavior since then. The same conditions exist in North Korea.
I understand where you’re coming from. And in reading your comment, I realize I need to amend, or add to, my review–I should have included why I rated it five stars.
Hank, I can make a strong argument to rate it five stars. 1) It’s a historically accurate portrayal of Soviet Russia and current North Korea and Cuba; 2) It provides an ominous warning against socialism and communism; 3) It’s still relevant 70 years after it was published; 4) It is extremely well written with gripping characters.
But ultimately my rating is subjective. I read it twice and hated both experiences.
I celebrated my sixth year as a published author in October and looked closely at my experience. Huh. I’ve had exponential growth. So why do I ever complain?
So, why were my sales growing? I thought of these reasons:
The more books I write, the more books I sell. Seems obvious, right? But now I saw how books would sell each other.
The more formats I have, the more I sell. I publish each book in print, ebook, and audiobook. The audiobook promotions with Audible allowed me to give away free books and get paid for them.
The more events I attended, the more I sold. Again, it’s obvious.
From these conclusions, I decided to promote my audiobooks even more, attend even more events, and write even faster.
What happened next? Sorry to spoil the surprise, but 2020 turned out to be even better. I’ll put that in my next blog post. Get all my posts through my newsletter. Click here.
Then they fight crime. Then go on vacation to a coaster park–where their worst enemy awaits, seeking revenge.
What happens next?
The Secret Supers are bored out of their minds during summer vacation-until they go to Space Camp. They learn all about the space program, try out moon gravity and zero-g simulations, and practice docking with the International Space Station.
But that’s the easy part. The villains they defeated in the past are back with a diabolical plot that renders the middle schoolers’ superpowers ineffective. Jeremy, Aubrey, Dan, and Kayla face the biggest challenge of their lives. Even if they escape the villains’ clutches, will they survive?
