Waterstone Media

Waterstone Media Podcast #3 - Our Favorite Sci-Fi

After last week's discussion about our top fantasy reads, it was time to dive into sci-fi! Our audio and video worked a lot better this time, so I hope you enjoy! Also, if you just want to listen, you can find us on most major podcast feeds by going here:

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January Rewards (Host and Higher)

January Sagani Rewards

Project Hail Mary

Last weekend I finished Project Hail Mary [https://amzn.to/3tAE5Vt], and I’m just going to go ahead and say that I really, really liked it. Now that I’ve been sitting with it for a few days, I’m ready to claim that I like it more than

The Magic of Writing

Sometimes, I understand why so many writers think of the act of writing as a magical process. In the chapter I was editing this morning, I had a note to add a detail that would play an important role later in the story. It wasn’t much. Putting the detail

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

I tend not to write reviews about stories that didn’t work for me. But I wanted to write a review about this story, because even though I ended up not liking it that much overall, there was a lot about it I loved. The Long Way to a Small,

2021 in Books

2021 was a great year for reading! According to my Goodreads profile, I read 24,008 pages in 78 books. The number is probably a bit low, as I don’t record quite everything I read in Goodreads, but it’s pretty close. Looking through my reading last year, one

Demon

WARNING: Spoilers for A Sword Named Vengeance below! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! The train car wobbled, bodies tilting left and right in unison, as the monstrous engine pulled them away from the city. Tomas opened his window and leaned out as the train traveled along a long bend. The engine came

Crooked Kindgom

About a week ago I finished Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. It's the second book of a duology that starts what Six of Crows began, and I considered it a stunning triumph. One aspect that fascinates me about Crooked Kingdom is how similar to and how different it is from

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December Rewards

Reviews

Six of Crows

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo vaults to the top of my favorite reading of 2021!

Project Hail Mary and Mystery

This past weekend I had the pleasure of beginning Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, of The Martian fame. I’m not quite halfway through the book, but I can’t think of a time the first 100 pages of a book have propelled me forward so quickly. It’s

Thanksgiving 2021

Top o' the morning, all! I hope this post finds you doing well, whenever you might stumble upon it. Here in the US, it's the Thanksgiving holiday. My daughter is home from school, and family is gathering for a pleasant and relaxing long weekend. Although I still woke up early

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Behind the scenes

Back from Vegas!

I just returned on Friday from a week in Las Vegas at a trade conference, the largest in the world for independent authors and publishers. It was a tremendous week, and a fantastic opportunity to meet with author friends both old and new.

Last Sword in the West

Eyes of the Hidden World Released!

Eyes of the Hidden World, book 2 in Last Sword in the West, is officially live wherever books are sold.

When Inspiration Strikes

Pantsing (or writing without an outline), isn't for everyone. But for me, it delivers the moments of inspiration I crave.

Writing

Morning Walks

How I write changes from day to day. Somedays I type at my keyboard like a fairly normal author. Other days I write by hand. But more and more often, I've found myself going for walks while dictating.

King of Thorns

A man is made of memories. It is all we are. We are memories, strung on storylines—the tales we tell ourselves about ourselves, falling through our lives into tomorrow. Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns I’ll admit I wasn’t much of a fan of Prince of Thorns, the

Band of Broken Gods

The seeds that grew into the Band of Broken Gods

Writing, for me, is like planting an unknown seed. You water and weed for months, and are (hopefully pleasantly) surprised by whatever grows.

What I learned about reading (and life) from Malazan

I know that Malazan is a series that has been examined and reviewed to no end. And yet as a reader who just finished his first read through of the core ten book series, I can’t not talk about the experience I just had. And it was an experience

Reading, and not reading

This weekend, I was excited to crack open a new book. No matter how many stories I’ve read, there’s always something about that initial rush that hits me, a world of possibility at my fingertips. It’s a book I’ve had on my TBR pile for a