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book reviews |
Debut author, Mark S. Moore, introduces us to his historical fantasy novel, “Rise: Birth of a Revolution”: Mark S. Moore's debut novel follows the fledgling Ricchan rebellion. A dark and gritty tale of war, intrigue, and betrayal. Rise is driven by a diverse array of complex characters and moral consequence. Between muskets and firebrands, Damien Flynn finds himself in the midst of growing turmoil. Political espionage, assassinations, scandalous affairs, underhanded deals, and dirty politics threaten to plunge the known world into chaos. What makes a patriot? What makes a traitor? The desire to be free and make your own choices is a huge part of the human experience, no one wants to be a slave. This book taps into that theme very effectively. Change a few names and this could be the story of every free society on earth. This book brings a great mix of big picture events, the people who cause them and the people who are caught up in them. I enjoyed the dialogue tremendously; personalities are captured so well. The action is plentiful without being overwhelming. The scene setting is very well done, just enough to avoid getting in the way. The characters are gorgeous, so real and full of life. I give “Rise: Birth of a Revolution” 4.9 stars! You can buy this book:
https://smile.amazon.com/Rise-Birth-Revolution-Flynn-Chronicles-ebook https://www.goodreads.com/rise-birth-of-a-revolution https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Birth-Revolution-Flynn-Chronicles-ebook You can follow the author: https://twitter.com/RedBeardFlynn http://marksmoorebooks.com https://m.facebook.com/MarkSMooreBooks Tags: historical fiction, historical fantasy, war, romance, politics, spies, rebels Copyright © 2019 Mark L. Schultz except for the author’s introduction
61 Comments
12/7/2019 04:41:01 pm
Ah, thank you for such a kind review. I'm glad I was able to weed out those pesky spelling errors with your proofreading assistance. I'm honored and humbled that you enjoyed the read.
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Mark
12/7/2019 09:15:44 pm
You are very welcome. I really enjoyed your story.
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12/7/2019 11:08:42 pm
Hm, something beyond my bio.
Mark
12/7/2019 11:28:33 pm
I don't think role playing games existed when I was in school. Certainly not in the small town I grew up in. A population of less than 2,000. I lived on a small hobby farm, 35 acres, in the hills south of town.
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12/7/2019 11:40:31 pm
I straddle the technology revolution. I grew up with things like AOL and dial-up internet but also benefited from the proliferation of high-speed internet while I was still young.
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Rocco Spanò
4/29/2024 05:24:21 am
Would you like to read my book?
Mark
12/8/2019 08:55:29 am
When I was a boy, we had a party line telephone. We had to count the rings, long and short, to know whether to answer or not. I thought we were rich when we got a private line. It was probably because I had discovered girls and was on the phone a lot.
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12/8/2019 11:25:59 am
I had a similar experience when we finally got a dedicated line for internet and I didn't have to balance it against the family landline.
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Mark
12/8/2019 11:31:12 am
15 covers, that is pretty good. Your work sounds interesting. Do you interview the students also? That would be quite interesting, I would think. 12/8/2019 11:42:28 am
I've also designed things like promotional bookmarks. Professionals would do a better job but until I hit that best seller list a little extra work is needed! As for my day job, I do extensively speak with our incoming students and often learn a lot about their personal stories which is very gratifying to be a small part of.
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Mark
12/8/2019 05:07:11 pm
Having skill with graphics is very handy. The more you can do for yourself, the less you need to pay out.
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12/8/2019 07:31:53 pm
Baby name websites and name meaning website are great resources. So are lists of historical figures. Mixing and matching names is great fun.
Mark
12/8/2019 07:53:36 pm
Did you make more money with a person reading your book on KU or less, compared to the person buying your book? I have always wondered about the economics for the author. It seems like a good deal for the reader.
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12/9/2019 01:28:49 pm
It's hard to say because they aren't split up like that. Kindle Unlimited is based off pages read where as ebook purchases are off the sticker price.
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Mark
12/9/2019 01:54:22 pm
I agree with you about the query process. It can be brutal and personal tastes come into play so much. Every book has an audience, people who will love it. The opposite is also true, there is a non-audience for every book. It takes time to find the former and cultivate it.
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12/9/2019 08:08:05 pm
It's important to tap into the emotions of the characters because if you don't it's easy to make them hollow which can expose other faults. We're all tuned to recognize different situations. There are certain expectations about how people should react on an emotional level.
Mark
12/9/2019 09:11:34 pm
I heard lots of boos about season 8 of GOT. You make a good point, readers want to identify with characters that are fully developed beings, including emotions. Anything less and the readers feel cheated.
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12/9/2019 11:20:52 pm
Over-writer, for sure. The first draft is always the longest version and I have to go and hack away at it. It's a mixture of a few things. There is often a lot of superfluous description that isn't necessary and I also tend to overindulge in filler words. It's sentences, but put them all together and they'd probably make a chapter. Second and third drafts I may add more content but it will still be less total words than the 1st draft.
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Mark
12/9/2019 11:37:47 pm
It gives you lots of options and choices. If I were a writer I would probably be similar. Fine tuning takes a while. But it sure is worth it. 12/10/2019 10:00:53 am
Oh, so many hours!
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Mark
12/10/2019 10:31:46 am
That seems like a good idea to focus more on events and the effect they have on the characters. A guest blogger, Rick Hall, has created a wonderful tool for writers, the character generator. It focuses on personality types and associated character traits to help creating characters that are congruent emotionally. You might find that interesting.
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12/10/2019 10:59:36 am
That sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. Thank you for the recommendation.
Mark
12/10/2019 11:13:50 am
I have heard it said that every villain is the hero in his or her story. That makes perfect sense to me. Perspective is everything.
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12/10/2019 12:21:47 pm
Absolutely. There's always an exception, of course, but in writing and in life I don't think anyone ever thinks they're the villain. There are justifications for every action. One could also say every hero is someone's villain.
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Mark
12/10/2019 02:12:23 pm
Well said. Every hero is a bad guy's villain.
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12/11/2019 11:15:44 am
Music was actually one of the driving forces to me writing at all. I think, at least for me, it is imperative. I've also heard other writers have to have absolute quiet. To each their own!
Mark
12/11/2019 11:16:39 am
One of my clients is a graphic artist, one day a story appeared in his mind from a picture he made. It's turning into a very good story. Please tell us how music drove you to write. That has to be an interesting story.
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12/11/2019 11:43:37 am
There's a song by a band called Breaking Benjamin, "So Cold." It's both the song and the music video that had a profound influence on me from the first time I saw and heard them. It's not a stretch to say that without that song and video, Rise would not exist.
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Mark
12/11/2019 11:56:24 am
Thank you for that story about the music video. I might have to look that up.
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12/11/2019 01:05:56 pm
There's definitely a need for an editor and proofreader for multiple rounds after using Grammarly. As you say, it doesn't catch most things. I have found it to be better than Word's built in spellcheck/grammar check, however.
Mark
12/11/2019 02:37:05 pm
I can see how the differences between British and American English would be a problem. In the 2016 edition of Word, using the Review mode, you can let Word automatically detect the language the manuscript is written in and you can lock the version you want to write in. Locking your manuscript to American English might be helpful.
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12/11/2019 03:12:12 pm
I looked into Scrivener before going with Campfire. I chose the latter because while Scrivener came with a word processor, Campfire had interconnected notations and a robust timeline. It's far from perfect but I really like the layout. I'm excited to see what they do with their browser version in 2020.
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Mark
12/11/2019 05:49:50 pm
Good to know that Campfire is an option.
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12/12/2019 09:45:59 am
Word count bloat is a real problem for me in first drafts and it is almost always narration.
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Mark
12/12/2019 11:14:45 am
You are following in the footsteps of many authors. Some marketing experts recommend starting the social media and website process a year or more before releasing the first book. It seems most authors are too busy writing that first book to do that. Better late than never works for most.
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12/12/2019 01:54:08 pm
I made my website a few months before Rise was published. Twitter was a little earlier than that, perhaps 8 months out. You definitely feel spread thin. I think that's one reason why a lot of authors seek out big publishers, the hope that they might not have to do everything themselves. I look forward to the day when I can farm out some of these responsibilities but for now, the hustle is there!
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Mark
12/12/2019 02:33:32 pm
Good on you for getting the early start on building a fan base. I think you are correct, many authors hope for the multi-book contract with a fat advance. Since Amazon has turned the publishing world upside down, those things are few and far between. Most publishers are scraping by on a very thin margin. They don't take big chances on unknown authors very much anymore. In fact, some publishers won't even talk to an author unless you have a mailing list of a thousand or three. To the publisher, this list represents near-guaranteed sales. Additionally, most publishers expect the author to handle their own book promotions. Of course, there are some publishers who promise guaranteed sales for a hefty fee, guess how often that pans out for the author.
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12/12/2019 05:55:34 pm
Mailing lists seem to be as good as gold. I wouldn't say mine is particularly robust. In some ways I'm clinging to the notion that the best promotion for your first book is your second.
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Mark
12/12/2019 06:20:17 pm
Books after the first certainly work toward building a fan base. Side stories, back stories, cover and title contests all help to build a devoted fan base. I know one author who took an early copy of her book on a long hike and did some editing. Later she auctioned it off to the fan who made the most posts on other s.m. platforms about her books in a certain period of time.
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12/13/2019 01:10:34 pm
I love the idea of background stories. My patreon is largely built upon that idea. Every other month I add a new background story. It lets me expand on some of the things I write as notes to give my world context.
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Mark
12/13/2019 02:03:44 pm
Tell us more about how Patreon helps you as a writer.
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12/13/2019 03:34:40 pm
I think Patreon is a great way for people to support their favorite authors and get exclusive content in return. It's more of a give-and-take relationship than say, gofundme. On Patreon you are paying to get something in return that is explicitly stated by the author. I researched a few different authors before setting up my tiers.
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Mark
12/13/2019 05:09:00 pm
Thanks. Patreon sounds like a viable vehicle for authors.
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12/14/2019 12:44:26 pm
It's very helpful to set parameters both for yourself and for your alpha/beta readers. It's a bit like setting expectations for any work or school project so you get the desired outcome. For me, that's improvement to the plot and character development.
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Mark
12/14/2019 03:21:26 pm
It seems to me that we both married up. My wife impresses me all the time and we have been married for over 42 years.
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12/14/2019 07:03:26 pm
I couldn't agree more about the 1st draft. I took longer to complete it on Rise because I was trying to polish while writing it. That just made more work for me later.
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Mark
12/14/2019 08:16:17 pm
I caught that about Nihonmin, it influenced my reading to think they were very oriental in clothing, manners, and fighting, with or without weapons. There is a great deal I like about the culture, ancient and present. My first martial arts movie was a samurai movie, in Japan Town, in San Francisco.
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12/15/2019 12:46:46 pm
My Master's degree was spent studying Japanese history so it is not coincidental that they are in my book as a not so hidden allegory but I still like to maintain that inspiration can lead in many directions and I've included other cultures in creating them as well.
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Mark
12/15/2019 02:46:05 pm
That is an interesting major. Do you speak or read Japanese? Have you visited Japan?
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12/15/2019 10:41:55 pm
Two years of Japanese language left me with a limited understanding of basics. I've never been skilled when it comes to learning languages, it's one of my greatest failures I think.
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Mark
12/15/2019 11:16:23 pm
My understanding is that Japanese is not the easiest language to learn. I love the food and some of the philosophy from long ago.
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12/16/2019 10:04:56 am
I've tried Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. To this point, Japanese was the easiest to me to speak and understand but the hardest to read.
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Mark
12/16/2019 10:42:55 am
I thought it would have been easier to learn one of the Romance languages like French. So many of our words in English are borrowed from those different languages. German is hard for me to pronounce, no question about that.
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12/16/2019 01:09:07 pm
I think it just goes to show that it's important not to....judge a book by its cover. I had to.
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Mark
12/16/2019 01:56:04 pm
We are told over and over to not judge a book by its cover. The truth is, we all do it. First impressions are priceless and cannot be done over.
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12/16/2019 03:08:19 pm
Sometimes its best to leave interpretations to the reader after the initial shock.
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Mark
12/16/2019 03:31:52 pm
If that is an open group, feel free to provide a link, if you would like.
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12/16/2019 05:09:05 pm
Happy to: https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/
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Mark
12/16/2019 06:09:29 pm
You have created some wonderful content and more is on the way. With more streaming services coming on line the demand for good content is growing dramatically, just as audio books are exploding around the world. I hope you investigate leveraging your intellectual property rights to create long lasting residual income.
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12/16/2019 11:23:01 pm
Thank you for the opportunity. I've enjoyed chatting about the various aspects of writing that I have experienced so far and hope people will find it entertaining and useful.
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Who am I?An avid reader, typobuster, and the Hyper-Speller. I am a husband, father, and grandfather. Archives
January 2025
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"I'm very pleased with all your efforts. Twitter promotion and proofreading were beyond what I expected with a book review. Your suggestions throughout the process of refining both books helped me immensely. I look forward to working with you again." A.E.H Veenman “Dial QR for Murder” and “Prepped for the Kill”
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