Review: A Haunting at Collingwood House by Jack Rollins

A Haunting at Collingwood House by Jack Rollins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a brief and brutal introduction to Jack Rollins style and writing.

It's a tale of school bullying and Rollins really encapsulates the sheer terror when you are the victim. And this terror is mixed with the scary, creepy location they end up in. It delivers a nice little horror punch.

If you are looking for a new horror author to discover, this is a great starting point for Jack Rollin's books.

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Review: The Balance, by Kev Harrison

The Balance by Kev Harrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have read a few of Kev Harrison's books now and this was one of his earlier stories, a novella. It's one of those books where you think you know where it's going, then it goes beyond.

The story is set in a village that is surrounded by forest in the middle of winter, and it tackles the division between pious religion and those that follow the rhythms of nature. It doesn't shy away from depicting church goers shunning herbalist or holistic living - seeing it as pagan and witch-like. If anything it shows how the witch hunts came about. (I live in Holland where I can visit the Witch-Weighing house that used to be considered the authority in the country - if you got a certificate from there saying you weren't a witch you were untouchable. But it only took your neighbour whispering it to someone to get you put on trial).

Anyway, Kev captures this kind of mindset in this dark tale, and then we get to see the consequences, which went further than I expected. An excellent bit of story telling and well worth it.

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Review: No Excuses, Brian Tracy

No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline by Brian Tracy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I spent my time reading this, my first book from Brian Tracy, and I took a lot from it. Each chapter offer something, even though sometimes they follow a more 'sales' orientated pitch.

There are actions and questions at the end of every chapter which really help you focus, and Tracy drives home the need for self discipline and how to go about it through three overall themes: personal, work and lifestyle. And how you apply self discipline to several aspects within them, laying out a perspective and action to take.

This was very much the book I was looking for to help train myself into getting more out of my day to day life. I'll definitely be dipping back into it.

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Review: Wide for the Win, by Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Wide for the Win: Strategies to Sell Globally via Multiple Platforms and Forge Your Own Path to Success by Mark Leslie Lefebvre
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have been self published for a long time, and I was looking for some help with going wide. I felt this book had some tips but was mostly full of padding. The first half deals with whether or not to stay exclusive with KDP (Amazon) and the author used other people's articles (with permission) about this (one a particular anti-Amazon take), to flesh this out.

The author talks a lot about their success - not least making money off other author by selling this kind of book - despite them actually starting in self-publishing years ago, long before it became the challenge it is today. This book is also four years old and some of the information is already dated. This book is a platform to upsell, things like courses by Mark Dawson (who sells how to get published courses for extortiate amounts of money - when you get them free from people like David Gaughran and Dave Chesson (Kindlepreneur)), and also for his courses and other books.

He is one of the founders of a facebook group called Wide for the Win, that does has some valuable information, but is also a conduit for those selling courses to authors. I paid 100 dollars to one of the founders for a course, but realised it was just a single video (though a long one) from a webinar they'd done, and even though I had questions there was no option to get them answered. Shame.

I skim read this book. And although there were bits that were interesting, it didn't offer much that was new to me. Personally there are better places to get this information.

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