As you might have noticed from previous reviews, I’m a great fan of Japanese literature. I’m also a great fan of cats. Combine the two, and this review of The Travelling Cat Chronicles, by Hiro Arikawa, was the result.
Indeed, I’m writing this review mere minutes after I finished the book, as the impact is still very fresh in my mind. You should also know that I finished reading the book in a few hours – it’s one of those books that simply flows effortlessly.
So, what is The Travelling Cat Chronicles about? Much more than what the premise lets you think.
Note: the following article on Mary Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal” is a modified excerpt (pp. 74-76) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which is available for free from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, presentations, etc. feel free to visit the main Home for Fiction website and the relevant page there.
In Mary Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal”, the sociocultural as much as existential aspects of immortality play a central part, as the title emphasizes.
In the story, one of the students of Cornelius Agrippa gets his inexperienced hands on his master’s elixir of eternal life. It is interesting to note that Agrippa is one of the masters whom Victor Frankenstein studies during his attempt to create his monster. Winzy, the young apprentice, unwisely unleashes a curse of similar proportionsWinze means curse (OED, “winze, n.2”), a very relevant name for the main character of this story. upon himself.
He witnesses his young wife becoming old while he remains the same, with the abnormal situation having terrible repercussions, as he assumes the role of the caregiver, while she becomes jealous and grumpy.
Much like in Frankenstein, the kind of immortality offered in “The Mortal Immortal” is a fake one. The source of anguish for Winzy (and of course the reader) arises from the unsolvable conflict between past and future, between life and death.
In Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal”, an unwise apprentice drinks the elixir of eternal life, with disastrous consequences(more…)
The term “beta readers” refers to people who read your novel before you publish it. They can be invaluable in helping you find problems in your fiction. That is, if you know how to use beta readers in the first place.
You see, most authors have a rather flawed idea of what a beta reader does. For many authors, a beta reader is someone who tells you whether your book is “good or bad”. If you don’t find that idea stupid, you really need to see my post on “good and bad” books.
Indeed, one reason why authors use beta readers is simply to get an advanced rating or review. That’s fine – as you’ll see later, getting advanced reviews for my fiction is basically the only reason I’ve personally used beta readers – but that’s not what a beta reader is there for.
In today’s post we’ll take a look at how to use beta readers skillfully. That is, how to use a beta reader to actually identify problem areas and fix them, rather than just hear “I liked it!” or get a 5-star review.
Whether you need beta readers or not depends on whether you care about your audience or not(more…)
