Vacation Reading

We just returned from a week of camping. I love the slow-paced vacation option camping offers our family. Swimming, kayaking, fishing, biking, campfires, S'mores, and my favorite, reading! There is no better way for a writer to tweak his or her story telling ability than through reading a variety of authors. You can learn from those who've mastered the craft, and you can learn from the mistakes of others. As you can see from the covers above, there are some excellent storytellers in my list from this past week.

I began by completing Luana Ehrlich's debut novel One Night in Tehran. The second book in the series, Two Days in Caracas, recently released in June. This was a great read for a debut novel. I have made an intentional effort this year to read both new-to-me authors, and indie authors. This book qualified in both regards.

The next book I read was really more of novella from Stephen King. Many years ago, I watched the movie Langoliers. This was my first exposure to King's unique story telling ability. While I am not a big horror fan, Langoliers is more of a speculative fiction than some of his more traditional horror stories. So, in preparation for my vacation reading, I picked up the Four Past Midnight ebook, which contains the Langoliers story. I'm not usually one to read or watch a story more than once, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story.

From there, I went on to read a couple series continuations. The first was Silver Hand by Stephen R. Lawhead. I really enjoyed book one of this series, though I haven't written a blog review of it. These books do stand alone, but there is a tight thread running between them. Whereas, the next series book I read, Watcher in the Woods by Robert Liparulo, is really more like the second act in a three part story. This series has a great premise, but I would have preferred the books had been combined rather than sold as three separate novels.

The final novel, which I began reading while camping, and I hope to finish yet this weekend, is Distortion by Terri Blackstock. I was first introduced to Terri's writing through her great series called Cape Refuge. I read these books back before I started writing In The Image of Man. Without a doubt, Terri's writing along with Frank Peretti's Darkness series had the most significant influence on my own writing.

Back to reading. . .

'Till next time.

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