Category: Writing for the Web

This was one of the few books I have enjoyed reading recently. It is crime thriller and an easy captivating read.
Continue reading Borrowed Light

I have been writing my whole life. I started with my sister, writing down our Barbie sagas played out on the floor of our shared room. From there I moved up to a desk and, depending on what I was reading at the time, wrote in various styles.
The Brontes were such an inspiration that I wrote an entire three hundred page novel in minute script, with a fountain pen, in a series of tiny note books.

Writing has always been my passion, that by which I define myself. I became a great traveller and, along with a rugsack I carried a pile of journals with me always.
Whether being splashed by foamy waves on yacht decks, flying between continents, or hitch hiking down a tarred road, my journals have kept pace with me.

I have written many different styles, as needs have presented themselves.
? some journalism for the E P Herald
? an in house newspaper for AECI
? scripts for television and
? scripts for corporate clients (including Pick and Pay and Spur)
? copy for web sites
? a blog for the last two years (the Blah Blah Blog)
? a column in a local newspaper

That great unfinished novel keeps calling, and in between raising children, and endless moves from place to place, pages of words get scribbled down.

At the moment I write on a gold netbook with a butterfly cover. I sit on our wide white veranda, if the weather is fine, and there is only bird song anywhere near me.

I keep indoors mostly though, and its a battle to ‘show up at the page’. I distract myself with a floor that needs to be swept, or a cup of tea that must first be made.
The space around me must be silent, and preferably these days, absolutely only filled by me. Its a solitary thing. Lonely even.

Having a novel published is just about the only dream I have from childhood. The other precious details of my life, like having children, were things I, recklessly, assumed would happen, and they have.

Some years I hardly write, but like a true friend, when we meet again, the blank page and me, its like no time has passed at all.
So, if Destiny is a thing at all, then being a Wordsmith must be mine.

Words are food for me, of the most nourishing and sustainable kind. Delicious some are too of cause, and caustic, bitter, salty some, like tears.
Anyway, give me something to write, and I will.

Where it comes from , this writing down words, no one knows.
Its the strangest thing, but I feel all those sentences and paragraphs and characters, gathered around me like low lying clouds, just waiting to rain down words.

michelle@askthelocals.co.za

Readable but only just. I needed the help of Google to recall the story line of this book by Mark Billingham.

The unfolding plot is both clumsy and contrived. In particular, the attempt at an erotic twist in the tale. Inserted for impact rather than content, the punch line falls flat. Clumsy and puerile. Only suggested if there is nothing else to hand.

Another Dud.

Note to self: Nominated for….Winner of…..Shortlisted for…..is no guarantee

Didn’t take long to decide that this book was not working for me

Mike Mason is one of the few local web content writers I have managed to make contact with. He is a mature and experienced copywriter, proofreader and editor based in the Eastern Cape close to Rhodes University. Mike is widely experienced at writing articles that have been optimized for Internet search engines, and this is his forté. His talents don’t stop there – he has several of his own websites that are on the number 1 results page in Google searches and he specializes in WordPress sites. You can contact him direct at +27(0)46 636 2505

You can see sample articles by Mike as well as an anthology of his poetry on his website at www.mikescopywriting.com

A work of fiction woven out of historical facts. The melodrama is overdone but it was interesting enough to keep going.

Covering perhaps one of the most interesting periods in the history of the Moghuls. A time when the seeds of conflict were sown, a conflict that has boiled over and which has split the continent between Hindu and Muslim.

I could use people who can write. But it seems you either end up with people who cant or writers you cant afford. Is there no middle road? This is what I am looking for.

Lost me very quickly. Tries far too hard to be that voice of the modern Chinese American teenager. Found it contrived, coarse and abrasive. Not the slightest bit stimulating. Simply irritating.

“[Jenny Zhang’s] coming-of-age tales are coarse and funny, sweet and sour, told in language that’s rough-hewn yet pulsating with energy.”—USA Today

“One of the knockout fiction debuts of the year.”—New York

“Compelling writing about what it means to be a teenager . . . It’s brilliant, it’s dark, but it’s also humorous and filled with love.”—Isaac Fitzgerald, Today

Afraid I don’t get it.

Another action thriller from Andy McNab. Cold Blood precedes the other two in the series which I have read.

An easy read with all the usual hardcore exploits expected from a fictional Special Forces operative.