Robin Davis's Blog

This first novel by a talented new writer is an excellent legal thriller with a very engaging female lead. The pacing and character development are excellent. The story begins at a fast pace and continues that way to the end, but without simply skimming through a bunch of cardboard characters and cliches. I think you'll enjoy every minute you spend with this novel.

I'll leave it to you to read the summary on the cover or the webpage, but I found both the legal aspects and the biotech angle to be well handled. I also liked the toughness and vulnerability of the main character - a challenging balance for a writer to achieve.

I'm looking forward the next novel by Ms. Tobisman.

You won't go wrong with the second novel by the talented author of Russian Winter! I can say without reservation that the time you spend with Daphne Kalotay’s Sight Reading, immersing yourself in her tale of self-discovery and love told against a backdrop of the performance and creation of beautiful music, will be time well spent.

Sight Reading is far more than merely an entertaining, but mindless, beach read. Entertaining, it definitely is, sucking the reader into the story within the first two pages and holding the reader’s mind and heart captive until the final two words. But this masterful work of fiction does far more than simply entertain; it transports the reader into a fascinating journey through the passions, failures, and triumphs of four intelligent, but flawed, characters engaged in separate but overlapping, twenty-year quests for perfection in art, love, and life—a perfection that always seems to be just beyond grasp and can only be closely approached at the cost of sometimes bitter sacrifice. . .” Kalotay brilliantly makes music a metaphor for the harmony and dissonance created by the characters’ choices and actions as they fail to achieve all they imagined they might in their younger and more naïve days and yet come ultimately to the denouement and peace.

Not only are the characters well-rounded people you may recognize as similar to people you know in real life, but the story is told in artful language and with compelling insights that conjure new ways of looking at the prosaic. For example, window shades with “thick blue paint a shade away from cheerful,” and “one of those little customs that settle in by default until one day you realize that the custom itself has become precious to you.”

When I came to the last page of Russian Winter, I eagerly awaited a second novel by Daphne Kalotay. Now, with Sight Reading next to it on my bookshelf, I eagerly await her third.

Check out my newly published collection of short stories. Six Shades of Seduction: Erotic Stories for Cold Winter Nights is now available in paperback and for the Kindle at Amazon.com. Here's a quick snapshot of two of the stories you'll enjoy:

In Little Kitten, Gabriella doesn’t care about politics, but duty, loyalty, love, and lust demand hard choices in a time of civil war.

What does the dog see in the autumn darkness? You'll find out if you read In the Forest of Hidden Gold and Lost Virginity. You'll also discover why Theresa removes her clothes and walks naked along a path so seldom taken, and what the choir girl did in this deserted spot with the football player who claimed to love her voice.

There's more, and if you're looking for good erotic stories with interesting characters and engaging plots, Six Shades of Seduction is for you!

After weeks (or is that months?) of nonstop news coverage of the U.S. presidential race, I got sick of the spin, distortion, and trivia even though I don't watch television. So, rather than continue scanning news stories for nuggets of substance, I began ignoring politics and focusing on almost any other topic.

It's amazing how much interesting news is out there, how many fascinating people there are going about real lives rather than trying to "govern" others, and how much good poetry, music, and literature is being created every week.

As tempting as it is to bog down in cynicism fueled by incessant media coverage of political hooey, it's nice to have good reasons to remain optimistic about the fate of humanity.

Yesterday I stopped in my local book store on the spur of the moment and spent an enjoyable fifteen minutes browsing. I looked at several books I randomly encountered that I would never have thought to search for online, and I even bought a book I was not shopping for.

What will be lost as the world moves to ebooks and electronic publishing? I wonder if bookstores with real books on their shelves will survive.

On the other hand, I do appreciate the relative freedom electronic publishing has given writers who might not have the patience to break through the musty old world of agents, editors and paper-based publishers.

Thanks for stopping by my new blog. I'm an author, but more importantly a reader. From time to time, I'll comment on interesting stories I've read, and perhaps even post a few of my own. For those of you who enjoy erotic romance, check out my book,Ceremony. Let me know what you think.