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book reviews |
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Multi-volume author, Cedrick E. Wilson, introduces us to his latest story, “Psychos Anonymous”: A serial killer thinks he overstepped his bounds on his last murder. He attempts to seek help on the serial killer website REDRUM. A psychiatrist who believes he can help psychotic killers through counseling sets up a group therapy meeting dubbed Psychos Anonymous. Six masked murderers attend the meeting but one of them is not there to be counseled.  So much passion and psychoses, murder and manslaughter. Whether physical or mental, the mayhem barely stops to take a breath. I am an old, retired guy and must be getting soft. I normally read in the evening, but I had to read this book in the mornings; it was giving me nightmares and disturbing my sleep. This book really drew me in quite deep. This is not just guts and gore; this book is quite well written. The main characters are fully developed and have serious struggles, some of them are in a lot of emotional pain. Some don’t handle the pain very well. Do any of us? The settings are pretty good, and the dialogue is excellent. The action is gruesome enough for serious fans of the genre. The squeamish might want to avoid the worst parts. I award 4.7 stars to “Psychos Anonymous”.  You can buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Psychos-Anonymous-Killer-Network-trilogy-book-1 https://www.goodreads.com/-psychos-anonymous https://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychos-Anonymous-Killer-Network-trilogy-book-1 You can follow the author: https://twitter.com/WordsOfCedrick WordsofCedrick.com https://www.instagram.com/wordsofcedrick Copyright © 2021 Mark L. Schultz, except for the author’s introduction
79 Comments
Mark
1/24/2021 02:37:45 pm
You are welcome. Your book took me to places I don’t often go.
Mark
1/24/2021 07:42:19 pm
I have been to San Antonio Texas, for basic training. That is the sum total of my experience in Texas. I have also been to Disneyworld once, we are planning to move to Florida, near the Mouse House, in a few months.
Mark
1/24/2021 08:31:35 pm
It sounds like writing is something that you enjoy, but you don't always have the energy for it. Not every writer even has the use of all of their limbs. Some writers are blind and use a dictation system to write and read websites on the internet.
Mark
1/25/2021 01:30:32 pm
Very few authors make any money in the early years of their writing career. Almost all go into the whole for quite awhile. Yes. I still write screenplays. My dream would be to see one of them on a movie screen or even a streaming service with my name in the credits. No, my work or my past work have any influence on my writing. It's weird, I can tell you what inspired just about every one of my stories but Psychos Anonymous just kind of popped in there. Maybe my fascination with Korean crime thrillers and there is a movie called the Five Deadly Venoms where the fighters wear masks when they were training and once they left they didn't know each other's real identity. I always wanted to do something like that.
Mark
1/25/2021 02:33:57 pm
Just as there is an active writers' community on Twitter, there is also an active community of screenwriters. I follow a number of them and even have a list of them on my Twitter page. I have also proofed a number of screenplays, as well. A guy that goes by Renzero. I found him on Fiverr. He redid my first book as well. I chose the white background because when you watch movies, the insane person is usually in a padded white room. The chairs in the circle represent a support group. The various weapons were supposed to represent the murder weapon that each killer used.
Mark
1/25/2021 04:15:34 pm
The white cover is great, very stark. Coming up with the title was somewhat easy. I think the first title I had was Serial Killers Anonymous but; I looked it up to see if anyone else had the name and if I remember correctly it was the title of a video game club or something. I had Killer in every variation but there were too many titles with the word. After the process of elimination, it just became Psychos Anonymous. I'm horrible at naming characters. I usually just make something up out of nowhere. The major character's last name was Troy because of the story and movie where the gift of the Trojan Horse wasn't what it seemed. It's lame, but I like I said I'm just not good with giving names. I just tried to think of names that were attached to despicable people or relative to the theme of the story. I named Lilith after the female demon. Other than that, they were just random names.
Mark
1/25/2021 06:18:43 pm
Good process for the title, it works well. I'm not planning any other formats as of yet. My third book is being edited. I'm working on ideas for the cover as we speak. It should be out in a few months. It's about the 2008 bank bailout. Ex-cons come home to find their city is in a recession and how the banks received help, but the citizens didn't. They go back to robbing banks, but this time they give the money to the people who need it.
Mark
1/26/2021 09:26:38 am
A modern day take on Robin Hood. It sounds interesting.
Mark
1/26/2021 10:28:59 am
An honorable mention is nice and almost a win. That puts you ahead of a lot of others. Uh, that's a tough one. I would guess they would expect a lot of serial killers who murder for different reasons. Some who are just outright evil and some that they may empathize with. Murderers who have their own world where they communicate with each other through technology. That along with a story that is never what it seems. I hope that's what they're looking for, because that's what I'm going to give them. I have a horror story, apocalyptic, and two science fiction stories I've been working on. Apocalyptic stories probably interest me most because every time I read or watch the news, it seems that it's close to being possible.
Mark
1/26/2021 11:34:44 am
I hope that is what they are looking for also. Your story has some interesting twists and turns. KU seems to work okay, I guess. Being that my marketing budget is next to zero, it's the only way I can think of to get a few downloads and hope that a person or two reads my book and leave a review. I have both of my books available in KU. As of now, I can't really say if it helps or hurts. Never been through the query process, but I think it's the same headache of trying to sell a script. Someone telling you that what you worked on for years is not good enough, or they want you to change some things to make it more palatable for a certain audience. I didn't want to go through that at this stage in my life. It's probably not as bad as I envision it, but for now I'll just do my own thing.
Mark
1/26/2021 02:39:41 pm
Many authors think (hope) that if they find the right promoter or marketer all of their worries will be over. Other authors think (hope) the traditional publisher will take care of all the marketing. Neither of those ideas are true. Marketing a book or other product is far more akin to an ultra-marathon rather than an imagined sprint.
Mark
1/26/2021 04:56:40 pm
Okay. I am glad you haven't run into a scammer, they certainly are plentiful and constantly upgrading their game. Recently, some of them have started impersonating real agents and publishers, and sending out unsolicited requests for manuscripts to evaluate them. What a thrill for an indie author, to have a major publisher knocking on their door. Still your racing heart, otherwise you will wind up on a ride to nowhere. No, I haven't started my own imprint. Maybe in the future. The experience of publishing my book with Amazon is frustrating at times. I mean, you can do everything right on your end, but when you upload somehow some things get out of whack. It's usually an easy fix. Uploading a cover is the devil. That never seems to go well for me. Some times it takes me weeks to get the cover uploaded. Other than that, it’s not too bad.
Mark
1/26/2021 10:18:24 pm
You are way ahead of me. I have never uploaded a book much less written one. I would imagine that like most things it gets easier the more you do it. Yes. Twitter has been very helpful for marketing. I found Wordrefiner using Twitter. I also use Instagram but I haven't got a hold of that yet. I've never used Amazon ads or Facebook. I have used other sites to promote my book such as Bookzio, Bargain Booksy and others. I'm always looking for alternative places to advertise my book.
Mark
1/27/2021 09:32:20 am
Ads on the major platform are a mixed bag for a lot of authors. Some do great and others have a different experience. Many blogs have been written about ads on Amazon and Facebook. No, I don't subscribe to any author's newsletters. I don't have a newsletter that I send out to fans. The biggest reason I don't have a newsletter is because I don't have many fans as of yet. Also, I do not know what I would tell them. In the future, who knows? As of now, I'm more concerned with putting my work out there.
Mark
1/27/2021 11:11:55 am
It might be to your advantage to subscribe to author newsletters to see what others are doing. Newsletters are another hot topic for bloggers. A newsletter is a good way to build up your fanbase. It doesn't happen overnight, but one thing for sure, nothing will happen if you do nothing. I'm probably going to do a book giveaway and a lot of promotion on different websites. So far, the most rewarding avenues have been sites that promote free books or books on sale. I always get good returns from them. Why did I pick you? Why not you? It's been awhile since I found out about Wordrefiner.com but I probably came across this site on Twitter and I researched it and liked what I saw. You review the book, promote the book, conduct interviews and offer your services to look over the book for mistakes. What's not to like?
Mark
1/27/2021 04:14:00 pm
Glad to hear you have a plan. Many authors don't. Keep up the good work. How does my book compare to a book published by a major publisher? Well, I guess coming from screenwriting to book writing, my stories seem quick and to the point and not overly descriptive. Most people don’t mind that, but avid readers tend to want a lot more detail. Story wise, I think my book is right up there in the big leagues. Where I dropped the ball was editing. It wasn’t a huge problem, but it could be better and it will be from here on out. Unethical practices? I haven’t been in the game long enough, but I guess it would be these people on Twitter sending you DMs to review your book for hundreds of dollars.
Mark Schultz
1/27/2021 08:30:50 pm
I think you might be onto something there. A lot of readers of action genres do like fast action. You do that quite well. Your screenwriting experience has helped without question.
Mark
1/27/2021 11:14:21 pm
Audio books are expensive to produce. You might want to check out the interview that included the narrator of an audio book. Put Green into the search box below.
Mark
1/28/2021 10:16:36 am
I guess I am not surprised that horror is your favorite genre. Well, they say writing is thinking, so, If I have a good writing session then I feel energized afterwards. It's a great feeling when you're able to get your thoughts down on paper in the way that you imagined. I think tapping into the emotions of your characters gives the readers a better experience. I believe most people whether they're watching television or reading a book fall for the characters first.
Mark
1/28/2021 12:33:26 pm
Most writers report having feeling of satisfaction even if they are tired. Accomplishment is its own reward. A writer should pay attention to the world and the different cultures that live within it. They should always put themselves in other people's shoes and try to understand why people do the things they do. I think if we as writers do that then we will create genuine characters and not stereotypes that readers will enjoy. My first goal is to always entertain the reader. My second goal was to pose the question of are Serial Killers born evil or does the society we live in make them evil? And can they be counseled to not be violent? I wanted this to be a three-part series where I pose a different question in each book. Did I achieve it? I think so only because I just posed questions. The difficult part would be answering those questions and that what makes serial killers intriguing because we don’t know the answers.
Mark
1/28/2021 09:33:38 pm
You hit all those marks pretty well. That is the task of the novelist, wrap fiction around truth so the reader can see the truth better. I would say it turned out a bit differently. I didn't expect to be diagnosed with Meniere's at all, especially early in my life. I expected to be further along in my writing career. But as the saying goes, you make plans and God laughs. No, I have never done NaNoWriMo.
Mark
1/29/2021 10:28:52 am
Very true, no one expects to be diagnosed with a potentially debilitating disease like Meniere's. It can be brutal. I'm definitely an under-writer. I always need to add more to flesh it out. It's usually more or just different action scenes. Some scenes work and others don't or maybe I have to shuffle the order around. I always go over the dialogue multiple times and adjust it to make it more organic.
Mark
1/29/2021 02:10:52 pm
I am not sure, but it might be easier to be the under-writer. Taking out words seems harder to me than adding them. I prefer action beats, but I try to mix a little of both. How do I flesh out characters? Good question. It depends on the story and what I need for it to make sense. For example, Justice, the Badge Burier, I needed a reason for him to seek help so I had to give him a bit of empathy and a code which I think pushed the story forward. Or for Detective Douglas, I needed a reason for what he did at the end of the story, so I added stress of the job and family problems. There's usually always a reason why people do things and once you can pinpoint the reasons, then you can add depth to their characters.
Mark
1/29/2021 03:25:32 pm
I prefer action beats also. They serve to move the story forward without a lot of contortions trying to avoid a plethora of he said and she said. Those things are so ubiquitous I don't even notice them when I am reading. I think for me, basing a character on someone I know or met would be weird. It's easier to invent characters and worlds. I have never used myself as a character for a starting point in a story. My politics may show up in a story that they would recognize. For instance, my next book deals with the 2008 recession. I believe people should've been bailed out and not the Banks who caused the mess. After reading that, the people who know me might say it sounds like something I would write.
Mark
1/29/2021 06:23:43 pm
Many authors say almost the same thing. They don't use someone they know to create a character. A few have admitted to using quirks or interesting foibles to help flesh out a character, but that is as far as they went. Well, I didn't want the reader to know what the character's quest was. You could even say the reader doesn't even know who the main character is until halfway through the story. Once there, all the reader knows is that one serial killer is stalking other serial murderers. The anti-hero's major problem is himself. He's in a world he doesn't understand. Dealing with people he doesn't understand. I tried to use his naivete, recklessness, and sorrow to cause trouble for him. Tough questions. I hope I answered them.
Mark
1/29/2021 09:20:35 pm
That explains my confusion while reading the book. I wasn't supposed to know who the protagonist was. A lot like Agatha Christie's books. A modified who dunnit. Well done. I expected one of the detectives to be the protagonist, you certainly had me fooled. 1/29/2021 10:05:41 pm
Mark, I think it's unfair that you marked down your review of this book due to "the handful of spelling errors" you found. You ALWAYS find errors in any book! :)
Mark
1/30/2021 09:12:27 am
Thanks for visiting, Robert. You are almost right. I find spelling errors in almost every book. Once a year I find a book that has no spelling errors. That rate has held for the last 6 years. There are so many, but the main baddie would be the politician. If it wasn't for him, then the protag wouldn't be on his quest. In this case, the antagonist was more fun. Lew was always ten steps ahead of everyone else and when the walls started to close in, he did what rich people always do. He bought his way out. So, writing him, I was taking a stab at our society.
Mark
1/30/2021 09:07:08 am
Lew was a good antagonist. He good partially bring his psychosis out into the open. Some of his constituency appreciated his public message and encouraged him. His money kept him out of trouble. A touch of cynical reality. The one thing I hate about my protagonist is he didn't follow through with his plan. He was already in so deep, but at the end he wanted to do the right thing and it backfired. The one thing I love about my antagonist is, he's not the smartest guy in the room, but he pays attention to everyone in the room. Everyone is a genius at something and he was good at reading people, which in the end kept him ten steps ahead of them. My writing routine depends on what stage I'm at in the process. Once I get an idea, I’ll research it. Once that’s done, I move on to writing the first draft, which I like to write on paper. From there, I’ll type it up and edit a bit as I go. More than likely, after that, I’ll toss the second draft into the closet for a few months and work on something else. After a few months pass, I’ll drag the project out of the closet and by then I’ll have more ideas to flesh it out. Then the process is rewriting, back into the closet, and rewriting again. This could take months or even years until I feel it’s right.
Mark
1/30/2021 10:37:43 am
Your routine works well for you. It is very close to what I have recommended for quite some time, minus the writing-by-hand part. Write a draft and then put it out of sight for a time. Work on another project. After several months, your eyes and brain treat it as a new document and it's much easier to see what is going on. I write in a straight line, but in my head sometimes I have a scene or two I think would be cool, but I won't write it down until I'm at that point. No, I have never experienced writer's block, but I may get to a part of my story where it needs to make sense and it doesn't. When this happens, I just listen to music, and that usually does the trick. The type of music depends on the story or the character that I need inspiration for.
Mark
1/30/2021 03:51:46 pm
You are a blessed man, many writers have struggled with writer's block. They deal with it in different ways. Some engage in outdoor activity such as hiking or bicycle riding. Others do a common household chore, something that doesn't require a lot of decisions. Others work on different projects. There seem to be many ways to beat the block. I believe the pace and the flow of a story are equally important. If a story takes too long to get going or takes awhile with having interesting bits in between, then most readers will check-out. At the same time, if a story is incoherent, then this will cause confusion and frustration to the reader and they will check-out. I think the only way to control it is to do a numerous amount of rewrites. Get a second pair of eyes on it if you have to. Be honest with yourself and brutal and cut scenes that aren't working and constantly go over dialogue to make things organic. My writing process stayed the same, it's just that I learn more about the craft as time goes on.
Mark
1/30/2021 07:05:54 pm
I had a hunch you would have a good answer. You didn't let me down. Both, pace and flow are important. It was a trick question. The author controls it. I'm probably going to get it professionally edited. I just paid someone to proofread for grammatical errors the first go round and you still found some spelling errors. My story seems to read more like a script than a book, and I want to get it as close to perfection as possible. But story wise it's done. How does it relate to the world we live in today? Some serial killers in my story were created by the bad things that happened to them. That’s also true in society. For example, men who abuse women witnessed their mothers get abused. Racist people usually grew up in a racist household. Your surroundings and environment help mold you to the person you will become. Last but not least, if you have enough money you could avoid all accountability and become whoever you want to be, and it doesn’t matter if you have the experience or not.
Mark
1/30/2021 09:48:21 pm
A professional edit is a good idea and following that up with a final, proofreading polish will make it as good as it can get. I read 50 to 60 books a year, a lot of them edited, sometimes twice. Like your book, I still find the spelling errors, except once a year. Once a year I read a book without finding any spelling errors. That record has held for six years now. Oddly enough, my love of storytelling didn't come from authors. As a child, I just loved movies. I would stay up all night watching films on the weekends. And as a teen, when I moved to Florida, while in English class a kid walks up to me and asked did I know how to rap and I told him no. Back in the 80s and early 90s, hip-hop told stories. So I would write a tale and he would rearrange it to make a song. He moved, but I kept writing. After high school, I found an ad in a magazine about the Writing Store. That piqued my interest, so I sent for a brochure and that’s when the world opened up to me. I had no idea; I thought writing was just something rich people did when they were bored. So I ordered a book on screenwriting and wrote my first script. You have to understand the internet wasn’t a thing yet and diversity wasn’t either, so as a Black kid stumbling across a book that jumped at you was scarce. The only stories I read at the time were the ones that we had to read in school. In my early twenties, when I did read, it was mainly autobiographies. So yeah, movies and music influenced my writing. My favorite author came to me by the way of a movie. Devil in a Blue Dress. When I saw that I was blown away. I later found out it was a book first, so I bought it and became hooked on the Easy Rawlins character. If I ever met Walter Mosley, I would ask him how did he get into writing.
Mark
1/31/2021 09:29:47 am
Great story. Thanks for sharing that. I never met a famous author. Microsoft Word is what I use to write my books. It’s easy to use and I can save my work in OneDrive. Amazon KDP is what I use to publish my books because they just dominate everything. I tried Draft2Digital where you can publish your books to different outlets, but I did not make one sale. I'll try them again in the future. Google Docs is what I use to keep up with characters and events.
Mark
1/31/2021 05:03:51 pm
MS Word is everywhere. Huge installed user base. That is what I have also. It will do a lot. Probably a hybrid. I usually know some parts of my story before I write, but I don't know how I'm going to get there until I write. The story never swerves, but the characters sometimes go on a different route than I planned. For example, I didn't plan on Justice and Lilith becoming a couple, but when I was writing the support group scenes, they were telling me to hook them up! The story was always going to be a crime mystery thriller that ended in tragedy, but the characters drove the car.
Mark
1/31/2021 06:55:28 pm
A lot of writers are a combination of plotter and pantster. I think it makes the writing easier if you know what the ending is supposed to be. But not all authors do. Having the ending in mind allows the writer to stay on target.
Mark
1/31/2021 10:29:21 pm
Film is really in your blood. I think dialogue is easy to write because there is a class wherever you go. The grocery store, the post office, or pretty much anywhere you can listen to how people speak. Are they vulgar, do they have an accent, or do they just have a way with words? The best part is the classes are free. The easiest sense to write is probably sight. Everything has a certain color or shape. The hardest for me is taste. Something either tastes good or it doesn’t. I don’t know why I just have a hard time describing taste. I guess I’ll never have a job as a taste tester. This is something I need to get better at.
Mark
2/1/2021 12:29:21 pm
We live in a dialogue laboratory! How true. I never thought of it like that. My wife has a good ear for accents, she is able to mimic several quite well. I am not as good as she is. The research process depends on the story. About a week but now and then I research as I write too, in case I want to add a different wrinkle to the story. How much time passes from idea until story depends. One story idea came in 1990, but I didn't start writing it until the late 90s. Other stories had my attention, plus I was working two jobs at the time and still trying to get a handle on the craft. It was a script first, but I decided to turn it into a book around 2016. It was my first book; We Don't Die. Nowadays, I have more time on my hands so, I'd say a few months. I can write a first draft in about a month. The first draft your ideas are flowing and you’re not worried about making mistakes.
Mark
2/1/2021 03:32:49 pm
That is not a bad amount of time to research at all. Some genres might require more time, of course. Like historical fiction or maybe science fiction. Yes. I get ideas for a future book in the series while writing. While writing Psychos Anonymous, I got ideas where I want to take the surviving characters in the next book. Inspiration can strike at any time. We Don't Die idea came from an album cover. Another came from an actress walking down the red carpet. Just seeing her gave me an idea for a detective story. It could be a news story or a magazine article. Ideas come from all kinds of weird places. To preserve them, I write them down in an app or think about them when I'm trying to go to sleep.
Mark
2/1/2021 05:02:38 pm
Inspiration and new ideas can come out of thin air at times. Other times it's a matter of looking at something familiar from a new point of view. Leave a Reply. |
Who am I?An avid reader, typobuster, and the Hyper-Speller. I am a husband, father, and grandfather. Archives
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