Great Unknown Music

Every once in a while I like to highlight fantastic music that I feel is being unfairly ignored by the world. With the Stone Temple Pilots in the news recently and everyone raving about their taking on the lead singer from Linkin Park in place of Scott Weiland (due to his refusal to ever kick the drugs)--all of which I find sad, since the new single they released with the new singer just isn't very good--I thought I would focus on Army of Anyone.
Have you heard of them? Even some people who have heard of them have pretty much forgotten about them by now. It the musical members of Stone Temple Pilots with the singer from Filter. Why it got ignored by most people, I have no idea, since their album rocks. I have five songs from their sole album rated as five stars in iTunes, and that ranks them up with the better albums of any band in my collection. It is true, I think, that the songs need some time to grow on you, but it's worth giving them several listens to allow this to happen.

Check out my five favorites from this great but overlooked album:

Celebration Day!

I got good news today. I think my work-in-progress novel The Immortality Game (a sci-fi thriller) may just have been the fastest ever reviewed by the Harper Collins editor. My book 'made the desk' (which means making it to the top 5 overall at the end of the month) just ten days ago and I received the review today. Most reviews that I have seen have taken months.

I don't believe Harper Collins has published any of the books that they have reviewed from Authonomy. The review of my book was very good, and they have asked me to submit the full manuscript to them for their board of readers to check out. Sadly, this is an incomplete book, so I hope they are willing to be patient while I finish it!

Anyone wishing to read the approximately 3/4 complete novel can do so HERE.

My favorite line from their review:  This has very strong potential and I would certainly recommend it to the authonomy editorial board for consideration for publication.

Dived vs Dove

I've been reading the First Law series by Joe Abercrombie, and some of his Britishisms really throw me off, such as his use of the word 'whinge' in place of 'whine', but especially his common reference to 'fruits' in place of what Americans would more often call 'balls'.

He also used 'dived' when all my life I've heard people use 'dove'. I felt the need to look it up, and it turns out that 'dived' is the traditional correct way to use the past tense of 'to dive', but from about two centuries ago in the US the word 'dove' began to supersede 'dived' and has now become the standard. So, since I always recommend taking jabs at our lovely British friends, I will stick with 'dove', thank you!

Small Progress

Sorry I haven't been blogging. I have been concentrating on a busy work schedule and haven't done much else since playing in a chess tournament in March. I like to post when I feel I have something interesting or entertaining to say, and I haven't felt much of that recently.

The only new thing that has happened is that my work in progress The Immortality Game was voted into the top 5 of all books on Authonomy and so wins a review by an editor at Harper Collins. This could be good or bad depending on which editor gets it, as some reviews lately have been rather shoddy while others have been truly helpful. I can only hope I'll get one of the helpful ones!