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  • Welcome to my first newsletter-style monthly wrap-up! It’s been a while since I updated this site and it’s time to try something new. Each month, I’ll be pulling together some updates on what I’ve been up to, what I’ve read and written, and bring you a recommendation (or two). With the new year, that brings…

  • A little foreword: I read this last July (2022) and only put my review up on Goodreads at the time. Now, The Last Gifts of the Universe is through to the SPSFC2 finals I thought it best to have a copy here too!   It is hard to write a review that is more than just…

    Review: The Last Gifts of the Universe
  • Over the past few months, team Wayward Stars have been working our way through the books allocated to us at the start of SPSFC. Now we’re at the end of Phase Two where we can announce our Top 3 books – our semi-finalists! Below is each of the books with their blurbs to expand a…

    SPSFC 2: Semi-Finalists Announcement
  • I have tagged myself after reading The Shaggy Shepherd’s answers. It’s only a quick little tag of 6 questions/prompts but it will be interesting to revisit come the end of the year to see how things panned out! How many books are you planning on reading in 2023? 40. This is slightly out of sequence…

    New Year’s Book Tag
  • In 2022, I read (and finished) a total of 37 books, which was one more than my GR Challenge target. These totalled 10,257 pages, with an average page count of 277, which felt a bit low to me but I did blast through a few novellas and novelettes towards the start of the year that…

    2022 Top Reads & Book Awards
  • As we’re reaching the end of 2022, many of us are looking forward into 2023 to see what goodies and delights await us. In this case: new books. I made myself a shelf on GoodReads specifically for books releasing in 2023 that I’m interested in and it’s already over 30-strong(!) so I have attempted to…

  • A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell: by Luke Tarzian My rating: 4 of 5 stars ‘A Cup of Tea…’ is a clever, at times surreal, hard-hitting exploration of grief. If you have ever experienced loss, you may see yourself reflected in Lucifer as he deteriorates over a missing kettle. A kettle given…

    Review: A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell – Luke Tarzian
  • This was written as part of a weekly writing challenge on The Midnight Faith discord, which focusses on dark, spooky, creepy fiction. The prompt was: mountains. {274 words}   I sleep in the lap of the mountain. Turned on her side, she protects me. She provides food, shelter and affection. She loves me. No one…

    The Mountain Moved: A Short Story
  • Within each judging team for SPSFC there are roughly thirty (30) books assigned as their ‘slush pile’ and teams with multiple members then split the pile between them to begin reading. In Wayward Stars we have split things so that every book is read by at least two people. We aim to read 20% of…

    SPSFC: My allocations
  • As I mentioned in my last post, I have joined up with some fellow book bloggers as a judging team for SPSFC 2! What is it though?

    SPSFC 2: Intro