Thursday, February 8, 2007

Another interesting writer's blog

The blog is called Dreaming in Red, and is by a woman named C. Rooney. She also seems quite sharp, and has a similar-in-many-ways-to-mine but different-in-others history with writing, agents, and publishing. She's got a pretty interesting perspective, and writes reviews and entries on a lot of other topics other than just writing. It's always fun for me to find a new blogger to read.

5 comments:

Christopher M. Park said...

I keep a tab on the referrer urls to my blog, and when they are technorati searches, I tend to go see what else is on that search results page. Yours was right under mine when someone searched for "Marlene Stringer" (can you believe we're the top two results for that? Not the most relevant links...).

Anyway, thanks for stopping by! I'll definitely be checking back by yours to see how your agent search is going, in particular. I'm also especially intrigued by some of your book reviews.

Chris

Chandra Rooney said...

...I don't even know who Marlene Stringer is.

Thanks for the kind words about the book reviews. I need to get back into reading SF. Any recommendations?

Christopher M. Park said...

Whoops, I'm a liar. They had actually searched for Barbara Bova Agency. That was how I found you. Someone else had come to my blog by searching for Marlene Stringer (who is at the Bova agency), and I got that mixed up.

My recent reading list has been pretty eclectic, and I'm reading a lot of older stuff. All the Clancy books, and a lot of Stephen King. As far as SF goes, I've really been enjoying Connie Willis recently. I read the Doomsday Book not long ago (absolutely terrific), and I'm presently reading To Say Nothing Of The Dog (the sequel--slower so far, but enjoyable--my wife raves about the end). My wife just read Passage, also by Connie Willis, and she really liked it (though apparently it's kind of tough, being all about death and dying).

Also a recent find for me is Julie E. Czernada. I've read her debut book, A Thousand Words For Stranger, and it was very good. A few typical small rough patches in the writing style, but it didn't detract in any major way. She has two sequels to that, but I haven't read either just yet. My wife also just finished reading Czernada's Species Imperative series, which she really got into. Those are some of Czernada's more recent books.

Of course, my favorite book of all is Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. If you're much into Sci-Fi, you've probably read it already, though. Almost as good is Speaker For the Dead, the original sequel. Ender's Shadow is a couple of steps below that, in my mind. Then there's two divergent series beyond those books--Xenocide and Children of the Mind, which are adult-oriented in pacing and dryness-factor (but I love them)--and the more-recent Shadow books that I am less thrilled with. They seem to have a more YA slant, and just don't seem as real.

Also, I know this is outside of SF, but I just can't not reccomend this one: have you read Sunshine by Robin McKinley? You seem to like urban fantasy, so probably so--but on the off chance you haven't, you'll want to.

Chris

Chandra Rooney said...

Wow, thanks for all the titles. I'll go start looking into them. :)

I've never read Ender's Game, but my 14 year old brother had. He's read "Speaker for the Gods," too.

In thanks, I will offer some titles that you may enjoy: Forbidden Cargo by Rebecca K Rowe, The Terminal Experiment by Robert J Sawyer, and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

As for the fantasy side of things, I'm pushing Vicki Pettersson's debut: The Scent of Shadows. You may enjoy Charles de Lint's Spirits in the Wires which is mythic realism meets the internet. :)

Christopher M. Park said...

Thanks for the great ideas there! I very much enjoyed The Terminal Experiment, and I believe my wife has read Spirits in the Wires. She's very into Charles de Lint, though I have not read him yet. The others are all new to me (though there are several familiar names there), and I'll be sure to try them all.

Also, you had already intrigued me with your review of Pettersson's debut. Definitely another one I'll be reading in the next months.

Thanks!
Chris