What Is "Age Approprate" & Where Should It Be Applied?

When is a book age appropriate? I thought about that question a lot as I read Tempests and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce. 

[Yeah, I broke down and bought the hardcover book. Even read it through my hurting thumbs and bedtimes.]

The title promises all sorts of gore, but to my mind, it doesn't deliver. Which is probably ok since lots of readers under twelve will demand to read it, especially familiar with Pierce's earlier books. Which means nine and ten-year-olds will be reading it. Many young good readers  demand syntactically difficult reading matter than their years might suggest.

Oh, there are gladiators maiming and killing each other, murder, and other mayhem, but the telling of the tale foregos the the graphic descriptions. Most of it also occurs off stage, and the book itself is more concerned with mending than slashing. The book even casually includes light sexual references. At the same time, it doesn't feel like Pierce is pulling punches as you read.

My problem is I'm an adult, even, very close to being an old oldie. Yet I recently immersed myself in Crenshaw, a middle grade novel for ten year olds. And, I pushed through a 400+ page book in about three days, in spite of my thumbs, thinking the book was tame. I guess what I'm complaining about is the almighties deciding the book is for 12 to 17 year olds. My kids would have read the books when they were 10 and will still read it when I toss it into the family lending library. Why are there age boundaries on innoucuous material? [Yeah, I know. Guidelines. But the subtext gibbered at me while I read.]

Tempests and Slaughter lacks the tension of Pierce's female warrior novels. This doesn't mean that nothing happens during Araam Draper's first years at the mage university in Carthak. The tension of good storytelling is there in spades, but it's more intellectual than brawny. [I resisted the temptation of saying "brainy".] 

Read a sample and other people's reviews on

Amazon      Barnes & Noble [Nook]       Rakuten/kobo

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My Writing Rut

Am still editing On the Run. Guess I won't be done until April sometime. I still have copy edits to go, too, and the decision on how I'm to publish the novel.

While I'm working, I'm going to take a holiday. I've been hankering to re-read some of Pierce's other books. I've decided I'm going to read the quartets from the Lioness series to the Protector of the Small. Sorry I can't sent you a postcard from Tortall.

Bad to the Bone, So Bad, a Devil Wants Him

Clive Barker's Harry D'Amour is the classic bad guy with a heart of gold, so bad his actions, though logical, isolate him from most of his associates.

Yeah, not all heros are played up as good guys. Clive Barker came to the top of the gotta read list when I searched for something different to read, and I ended up grabbing The Scarlett Gospels. Wanted to get out of my comfort zone since it felt like I was reading the same authors over and over again. Well, The Scarlet Gospels was different, but not that much since R. S. Belcher has join my "'panwriterdom" of writers I buy without even looking at the book blurb. 

Lots of good stuff going on in The Scarlet Gospels, something you'd expect from a writer this prominent with so many books in his portfolio. Thought the characterization a little weak, but there was just enough sympathy/curiousity to keep me at least skimming through the pages. Norma, the character who sees ghosts, kept pulling me through the more cliched parts, a bad thing for a thriller, when you start getting the feeling been there, seen that. Harry D'Amour, indeed, is seedy beyond the max, but he never quite jelled for me like Jack Reacher does.

Found the trip into Hell interesting in light of my own demons, but thought the description rather bland. Liked the political turmoil of the plot line a lot though.

Worse point. I skimmed way too much of the book. Even was beginning to wonder if I was getting too sleepy to early, feeling older than I felt before I started reading the book.

Take a look at a sample and other reviews for yourself on

Amazon       Nook        kobo

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Other Interesting Reading

The "By the Book" of the New York Times Book Review section gave me a memory-chuckle again this week. Anthony Boudain, a food writer, made a comment about cooking snobbery--one of his favorite food writers was never a snob about food, even though he wrote about French cuisine. Don't know about you, but I've always equated French cuisine with snobbery.

My mind skipped to the snobbery of literary writing circles towards genre writing circles. Like, wondering how often to you get put down because you read genre fiction? I know I drew all sorts of comments the one month I tried to work on my college's literary journal, even heard the words "genre hacks" more than a few times. Did think it was ironic that I was the only one in the group that had been published...as a freshman. 

That's definitely not important now. But I did chuckle again when I saw the ad for Anne Rice's new book Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra. No, I'm not going to say that Anne Rice is an literary writer. But I did get a chuckle from the copy saying it was a blend of "historical fiction, fantasy, and romance."

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Going back to the point of The Scarlett Gospels putting me to sleep. Got Laurell K. Hamilton's new book. Stayed up until 1AM reading, even though her editors didn't do a good job of using the cutting room floor. Which makes me wonder why Hamilton's books haven't been turned into "film". Plenty of streaming services on there distorting books ala Crossroads, Texas.

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My Writing Rut

Have decided marketing books is an addtiction. I look at the promo stats even though I'm not doing any promotions. [Yeah, sales stopped.] Which means I'm wasting lots of time not writing. Not that I'm worried. It's the cookie baking time a year around our house. I do Greek 
cookies and 
baklava for Christmas presents. No one in my family needs any more stuff and buy what they need when they need it.

Would be negligent, though, if I didn't plug my short stories, you can check them out by clicking here. Showdown at Crossings is a prequel to There Be Demons. It tells the tale of Granny Nan's death. Britt Kelly, the protagonist of There Be Demons, worrys Granny Nan's advice like a sore tooth as her world crashes around her ears.

You can also access my 99c and Free short ebook versions on kobo.

Magical Murder Most Fluffy--A Cozy Mystery Shines

Murders needing to be solved isn't the only reason to read cozy mysteries. It's all the people surrounding the mystery solver. Yeah, I love the way Bailey Cates builds her characters. Potions and Patries gives several members of Katie Lightfoot's coven and friends moments in the sun with life changing information. Even the mystery solving protagonist gets life changing moment when she figures out what her foretold "sacrifice" is to be.

All satisfying, well, and good. But, how does Cates put her mystery together?

The book starts out with the promise of a "sacrifice" Lightfoot must make, the Traveler fortune teller dies before she can elaborate on her message. With character growth Cates' strong suit, Katie spends the book solving the mystery while wondering what sacrifice she's going to have to make as she and her fiance look look for a larger house than her beloved carriage house. Other characters are face other life changes, which is good for series readers. It reduces the chances they'll get bored.

The book may be feel-good and fluffy, but proving the fortune teller's "suicide" is really murder is the point of the book. All the clues are subtly there as Lightfoot pursues her witchy intuition that murder was committed. Danger follows with several attempts on Lightfoot's life when the perp tries to stop her.  All good clean fun for a mystery reader.

Read a sample and look at other reviews of Potions and Pastries on

Amazon       Nook        kobo    

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Other Interesting Stuff

New York Times Book Review section gave me pause again: a review of Jessica Buder's Nomadland: Surviving in America in the Twenty First Century by Arlee Russell Hochschild. 

Reminded me that real poverty doesn't appear often in the genre fiction I read. There Be Demons touches on it. But my characters don't really suffer physically from poverty, inconvenience abounds but the true pain of living in sub-existential conditions doesn't. With few counties in the US able to offer a one-bedroom apartment affordable by a single, full-time minimum wage earner, you'd think real poverty -- rather than the wanting-mores -- would get more "press" in fiction.

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My Writing Rut

Am trying to get Rondezvous with Demon jump-started. Tried doing NaNoWriMo for the first  time since 2010 when my back gave out. Failed again. My writing style, psychi just doesn't respond to competition. Plodding plodder, that's me. One step at a time gets me where I'm going, provided I have fun along the way. Any one else think fun is important?

Am making progess on all the stickey notes I've accumulated. Think half of them have been attached to chapters as notes. Today, I got a bunch of pages from a small spirel binder transferred. Have 20,000-plus words, and I haven't even started writing.

One of the ways I save ideas is to write tthem down on sticky notes. My computer is stacked with piles of them, in all collors, right and left. Started out with enough sticky notes to cover almost a fourth of my desk over an inch high. I decided gettig my ideas posting an approximate chapter a higher priority than just poundinng out words. Do have over 10,000 words connected to Reondezvous, about half coherent writing and the rest jotttings. Still have a 10x7x2 inches deep pile of pink, yellow, green, and blue bits of paper to place.

Not all the pieces of paper are connected to Rendezvous. Some a political tweets, that soothed my growls plus tweets promoting There Be Demons. Yeah, promoting a book takes lots of time. 

Next project is to work the list of review places I've discovered. So far, only have one 2*...because I included too much mundane stuff in the book. Don't know who she is or where she posted but it's not showing up on Amazon or GoodReads. Other readers appreciate my "magical realism".

A Heads Up

There's a giveaway of There Be Demons on Amazon for US readers. To win a chance for a free copy just follow this link.

How to Remove Your Characters from Their Cardboard Packages

    Since my to-read pile was larded with fluffy, cozy mysteries, I was rather upset after I put a bunch of them on the trade pile without finishing them. I vowed I was going to force myself to read the next one the surfaced to the bitter end -- in hopes of finding out why I had turned on one of my favorite forms of escapism. Only the book was Some Like It Witchy by Heather Blake. I discovered I looked forward to my nightly reading sessions to see how the plot developed -- and how the characters' lives changed.

   Murders seem to make the enchanted Salem village go round, and Darcy Meriweather, witch, wishcrafter, and sleuth, is right there in the middle of events to solve them in this series, helped by her romantic relationship with the village's top cop. This time, a real estate agent is murdered in the midst of showing a house connected to a famous diamond robbery. Of course, the diamonds have magical as well as monetary importance, and who wants them most isn't instantaneously obvious.

   So, what kept me reading when other best selling cozy mysteries got dumped on the trade pile?

   The summary sounds just like a hundred other cozies. The hook ended up being Blake's warmly human characters. The secondary characters had me reading "just one more chapter" until after midnight turned my eyes bleary...just to see how they'd react to the coming twist.

   Some Like It Witchy even created an innovative character type I haven't seen before in my reading. Imagine a person whose visiage turns from fair and inviting in the light to evil and menacing in the dark/shade. Definitely, not someone you want to meet in an alley ... even though all this character's actions depicted in the story line were rather blase plus a nice twist I won't mention for fear of delivering a "spoiler".

   But that one character isn't the only three-dimensional one in the book. Blake's Salem village is filled with individuals -- well-rounded characters who sneakily drop clues to solving the murder in the middle of innocuous conversations. More important, many of the characters have problems of their own that get expanded and/or solved during the course of the book. The people add complexities to the plot line which seem organic to people's lives rather than manufactured by the writer to create thrills.

   Too many of the mysteries I read get set on a one-lane highway to solve a murder, with most of the suspects just red herrings to hide perp. In Salem village, all the characters seem to have secrets which are or are not solved in the current episode in the series. Blake does a good job of wrapping up the loose ends, except for the on-going town secrets -- especially the identity of the mysterious town elder who acts as the "ruler" for the various witches/crafters in the village.

    I recommend Some Like it Witchy because the warm community Blake creates makes an enjoyable read. I could do without the puns in the title, but many more people must like them because so many publishers do it.

See excerpts and more reviews at Amazon and B&N Nook.

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An Interesting Link

What are the rules you think make a successful book? 

   Anyway The Writing Chimp [aka Georgina Cromarty] recently blogged about 9 Writing Rules Science Fiction & Fantasy Authors Should Break. You might take a look and see if your reading supports her claims -- when you're reading the work of a master writer, that is.

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My Writing Rut

    On the Run  continues to develop...or should I say, Pillar continues to develop right under my eyes, even though the story is probably 75% drafted. A critiquer suggested that Pillar needed to talk more; she didn't act like a normal teen. He thought Pillar needed to act more like a natural teen. --  I'm thinking about it.

   Yeah. That was a good critique suggestion if you look at it from how taciturn Pillar is. Maybe too much "action" does happen in her head.

   The insight gave me one of those ta-dah incidents. I spend a lot of time on Pillar's inhibitions on working magic/manipulating energies, but I hadn't thought of other attributes connected to her mixed heritage. Result, is I have a lot more blue notes at the head of chapters to incorporate into the story line.

   Got my demon transition chapter out of the way. This coming week I return to the meeting with Nate, who now will be a sort of love interest. This is where I originally started the novella last spring. Don't think I'll finish by Christmas, but it might be a possibility ... even though it looks like both Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be at my house this year. -- Good thing only family's coming. I don't have to clean up the books ... or, is that straighten?

   My desk, if not my house, is getting cleaned up though. All the yellow sticky notes I've used to save ideas as they occur are getting attached to the chapters that raised them or clipped to clothes pins for the stories I'm not currently working on. I can see the black finish of the desk top rather than a blanket of yellow, green and orange squares.

   Really need to get a new snippet up on my website. Incidently, you can find extended samples of my short stories there if you want to click. They are available on iTunes so I think you can download them on a smartphone to kill time in waiting rooms and sports events.