Lynne Simpson

…is that you can catch up on movies you’ve been meaning to watch for a long time. Last Christmas, my sister bought us a copy of the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. She’s a HUGE Pride and Prejudice fan like John and I are, and she has been after us for months [...]

The recent discussions about review fraud on DearAuthor, SmartBitches, and Karen Scott’s blog have made me wonder if 5-star reviews from fellow writers actually work against the book instead of helping sales. For example, if I see a page full of glowing reviews and every last one of them comes from an author, I often [...]

I’ve mistrusted Amazon book reviews for years. I mean, you read a book that’s sucky by pretty much any objective standard, and then when you look at its Amazon reviews, they’re all 5-star fangirl squees? Uhh, yeah. Like that happened legitimately.
Well, apparently there are gangs of writers and their fans who live for voting negative [...]

Currently Playing on iTunes: Wooden Ship, by Uttara-Kuru
You’re going to get the idea that I bought a truckload of books while I was in Canada, and you’d be right. :-) For once, I didn’t over-pack, so I was able to bring home a lot more stuff than I took with me. Just doing my [...]

Currently Playing on iTunes: Orestes, by A Perfect Circle
While I was away from blogging, I managed to break my months-long reading slump with Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. I took a trip to Vancouver in late July and bought the first of the series, His Majesty’s Dragon, in a little seaside shop in Gibson’s Landing. I [...]