The Tube Riders - By Chris Ward

One thing that any good book reviewer will tell you is that you never review any book without reading it in its entirety first - however, this was one book that I had to say something about before I even finished reading about it because it made me feel so angry. Needless to say, I did complete the book and have since edited my review to better reflect this.

If I had to place this book in a category, without any hesitation, it would have to be New Adult. Although it starts out simply enough to fit into the Young Adult sector, later on in the book, mature themes come into to and this is a book to avoid if you don’t like to read about murder and rape. Both play a large part in this story.

Personally speaking, I tend to steer clear of futuristic story lines after having read one too many attempts to write one where the author has gone badly wrong – but this one is well worth the time it takes to read it.

I didn’t really like the way that the book centers around an idiotic thing like jumping across train platforms in front of incoming trains and hanging onto the outside of trains because we already do too many daft things around the train tracks as it is without being encouraged to do more – that’s why Network Rail are always running adverts.

I found it to be a nice touch to see that death was included as a result of the activity undertaken by the young adults for no other reason than the fact that it was clear that death was a very real possibility.

One thing I did like is the way that the author really endears his characters to you – though it does make it that little bit harder when they get written out or killed off.

I also liked the idea of England of the future being divided into separate industrial zones and the way that this has opened up the option for the author to be able to pick up on this from a different zone if he wishes to at any point because I'd be interested to see how this would and wouldn't work.

The book is also well-paced and the plot is smooth – which has served to enhance my enjoyment of the book further still.

Bloom - By A. P Kensey

Bloom is book one of a three part series – it is suitable for readers aged 13 and over.

Bloom starts out innocently enough by following the story of a seemingly normal girl – however, it soon comes to light that she is anything but normal. After sneaking out to go to a party one night, she finds that her home is on fire – will she be able to make it home in time to save her parents and little brother? It doesn't take long for her to find out that she is anything but normal when she experiences a strange manifestation of her powers in the school cafeteria one lunchtime.

As if that wasn't bad enough, her little brother is missing, presumed  dead in the fire that destroyed the family home – could he really be dead or is there something that the law enforcement are missing?

As far as books go, this one is pretty good. There weren't any obvious typing errors, however, where I am, it seems that I always find something negative and in this book, it would have to be that it’s a little slow to warm up – but once you get there, it moves at a pretty fluid pace that does the author justice. I would have also have liked to have seen an “About the Author” section tucked in at the back rather than two tables of contents – if I didn't choose to go back to an earlier point of the book when I read the first table of contents, then it’s not likely I’ll change my mind if I read the contents again.

Wild-born - By Adrian Howell

Wild-born is a young adult book suitable for young adults aged 13 and over. It is the first book in a five part series... and the Kindle edition is currently free to read. UK readers can obtain their copy of the book here.

As far as books go, I found the beginning to be rather confusing because of the fact that the main character shares his name with the author... and the author has tried to convince readers that the story is, in fact, a true story.

Having read the book in its entirety, I must admit that I found the "true story" idea impossible to swallow simply because of the way that he sketched over some elements of the plot that were pretty pivotal to the overall plot of the story... and, ultimately, the ending of the story would have been impossible to keep out of the media if it were to be true.

The book is pretty slow to warm up, with not a lot of any interest happening prior to the accident, but it does get more interesting if you can hold on beyond that point.

As far as characters go, there is only one within this book that annoyed me - and, fortunately, she is ultimately written out by the midpoint of the book... though there are references made to her throughout the story.

The only thing that I didn't particularly like about the book was the ending because I picked up on the sense that the author was getting a little close to his word count for this particular book and as a result, the ending turned out to be a little choppier than I would have liked it to have been and left far too many loose ends that will be picked up on in book two.

Personally speaking, I am sitting on the fence about book two in this series after the book that I've just read. While I enjoyed the book as a whole, I don't think that I would be so keen to read the sequel if it takes as long to reach pace as the book that I've just finished did.

Top of my reading list for 2016!

I've been wanting to read this book for so long now that you wouldn't believe it. I have had it in my library before, but I was forced to remove it when a formatting issue made it unreadable on my Kindle with the settings that I commonly use when I'm reading  - this brings me nicely to the reason why I'm posting about this book without actually writing a review on it!

The problem that I had made highlighted sections of the story unreadable (they were blacked out) when my Kindle was set with a black page. Now, because I do much of my reading in bed at night, this setting would make the most sense for me to use since I don't sleep alone.

Since I happen to be friends with Quinn on Facebook, I took the time to send her a quick message to draw her attention to the problem that I was having. While I was waiting to see if anyone had any tips on how I could solve my problem, I was playing around with my Kindle when I inadvertently solved my own problem by changing my page colour to white. Quinn got back to me in the end and explained that the problem wasn't with the book itself, but was a result of a formatting error within Amazon. She explained that the issue is something that she is unable to fix because there is no fix since the fault is at Amazon's end.

While this in itself isn't a book review, I happen to know that Elfin is currently free on Amazon right now... so, if you have a little space for another book in your virtual bookcase, you could download it and read along with me... you can find it here.

I don't know a thing about book cover design!

When it comes to writing books, it seems that the first thing a new author thinks about is the cover of the book (I was exactly the same)... it doesn't really help that Wattpad places so much emphasis on the point that books which have covers are more likely to be read. What I'd like you to think about right now is this:- What is a book cover with no book?

That's right, a book cover without a book is just a pretty picture. By design, Wattpad will fix a blurred out image of your profile picture to the cover of your book until you specify an image to use as your cover in it's place. For the most part, this doesn't bother me... although there have been times when it's annoyed the crap out of me. Now, I have figured out a work around that I use for just this situation. What I do is take a photograph of my own and run it through the Wattpad Covers app or GIMP where I resize it to 256 pixels wide by 400 pixels tall (which is the size used by Wattpad.

From there, I add in the title of my book, followed by my author name and I save that to my computer before uploading it to Wattpad to remove the generic image that Wattpad uses.

If I'm brutally honest, the design of my cover at this point in the book is about as interesting to me as what you had for breakfast this morning. The reason for this is that, beyond this kernel of an idea, I have no idea how this book is going to turn out - or even if the book is going to turn out. One thing that you'll note about the image below is that only 2 of the books that you can see actually have covers at this point in time - and only 1 of those books has what I'd consider to be a proper cover. This is because I'm focussing more on the writing stage of these books as opposed to how pretty the cover looks - I can always create a cover at a later stage.

Sometimes, it is possible to be approached by members who make covers for you, you can request someone to make a cover for you within the Wattpad community or you could even make a cover yourself using the Wattpad Covers app, if it bothers you that much. I just feel that, at this point in the day, your energy is much better spent on getting the basics of your story in place.

It has been suggested that books without covers are less likely to be read by Wattpad members, however, I've not been able to find any evidence from my own experiences to either prove or disprove this "fact". I've found it to be an upward struggle no matter how I cut the cheese. Unless you happen to land lucky and fall right into the lap of a publisher or a promoter (which is a slim chance), it's going to be an uphill struggle to get those first reads regardless of what your cover looks like.

What is Wattpad?

I put together this button for my blog today (Note that this isn't a working button - the working button can be found to the right of my blog). Before I coded it up for use, I asked for constructive criticism on it since I plan on creating a bunch of them and using them for several jobs around the blog.

Anyway, one question that I get a lot is:- What is Wattpad? Since I plan on taking this blog in a slightly different direction, I think it's time that I answer this question right here on my blog.

Wattpad is a rather cool place where authors and readers gather to do what they do best - and that is write and read books. It comes as both a website and an app, so you can read while you are on the move as well as when you are in front of your computer. The app even allows you to write updates on the go, too... though you'll need an internet connection in order to publish your updates.

Many of my friends write and publish their work online for a living. Wattpad isn't like that though, because you don't get paid for the work you publish... but it can be a great resource for getting new books out there for a number of reasons. You don't have to wait to get feedback on your books in the same way as you would if you were to publish your book in the traditional way, you can get people talking about your book even before you decide to publish it as a traditional or Ebook, or even use it as a place to post teasers of books that you have already released traditionally.

As far as Wattpad goes, there are a lot of aspiring authors out there who write some truly remarkable work - and there are a few well known authors out there too (I'm not going to sit there naming them - you'll have to look for yourselves). My point is that it doesn't matter if you are a world renowned author or if you are lucky to get a poem published in the local newspaper - if you have a story to tell, then Wattpad is the place to tell it.

On a personal level, I've been writing off and on over there for 10 months now - and I love it. I know that I've had my ups and downs in my writing career over the past couple of years, but they have been related more to things outside of Wattpad rather than issues with Wattpad itself. My main issues have to be my own self confidence - but I intend to conquer that one way or the other.

What I like about Wattpad is that you don't have to write to read others' stories any more than you have to read to write your own stories - you get to be as involved or uninvolved as you want. I also like that you have the freedom to update as much or as little as you like. I currently have 6 books that I'm working on published (and many more in progress that you can't yet see). I have the freedom to write and publish a complete book, or I can take the more popular route of uploading a chapter at a time until I complete the book.

I also have the ability to edit the story in most any way that I choose without any issues - and no editor to tell me what I can or cannot have in my book, since I am my own boss.

If you'd like to join Wattpad, you can do so here:- https://www.wattpad.com - please tell them that BeckFletcher referred you in the box provided on the form.

Witchy, Witchy - by Penelope King

Witchy, Witchy is a young adults book suitable for young adults aged 13 and over. Though there is a scene of a near-rape, so I’d like to add a caution and parental guidance to the book, too.

Having some abilities similar to the lead character, I was drawn to read this book to see if there was any truthful elements to this book or if it was solely written from a fantasy level as many are.

It didn't take me long to get sucked into the story though. The characters are likeable, which added to my enjoyment. Although much of the book is written from a fictional angle, I’m pleased to say that there are some good factual elements regarding Calista’s abilities in there, too… although the fact that she was immediately able to locate Savannah left me with more than a few questions unanswered – especially when many of us don’t come into our powers properly until we reach our teenage years and she’d gone from a howling wreck on the floor to walking straight up to Savannah. That wouldn’t have happened in the real world.

I was 23 when I was hit by an experience similar to that described… and there was no way would I have been able to do that. Speaking on a personal level, I’m still affected by it on a daily basis. So there are things I’d like to see changed, but in general, the book is a great read that I really enjoyed – especially some of the witch side of things.