Alexander Pyles's Blog

So, I realize I’ve been silent for quite a while. Well, I mean not really if you check out my Twitter. I haven’t posted any book reviews since February and not even a single writing/reading update since then either. I wanna talk about that and what I hope to do for the future of my book blog and this site in general.

I’m going to break this down into parts, in so far as what to expect going forward and what the status of these various things are.

Book Reviews: I’m not going to have as...

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I’m a little late on my first post for Women in Horror Month, but this was dozy to start with! THE COUVADE, by Joanna Koch, is a hauntingly gruesome struggle between Martin and his past, while he protects with jealous brutality, his partner Jerome. When the pair wander into a trap, Martin will have to decide if he is willing to resurrect the aggression he buried a long time ago.

Beginning with the typical trope of a haunted mansion, owned by a relatively unpleasant relative, which seems to...

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This is another long overdue post, so I’ll make this more short and sweet.

2019 was one of the best years I’ve had thus far when it comes to writing. I submitted 75+ times and had numerous drabbles accepted, while also having my first-ever standalone publication released.

I wrote in total (including revision edits/outlining/free writing) around 180k words for the entire year, which is pretty incredible. This also doesn’t include the handful of articles I either attempted to wrote or did...

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I wasn’t too sure what to expect from Joshua Chaplinksy’s debut collection. I had been wanting to read something from the indie publisher, Clash Books for a while, and I was intrigued by the collection’s title, WHISPERS IN THE EAR OF A DREAMING APE. I was grateful that Chaplinksy could send me a copy of the book and I dove in. I was not ready.

I don’t think I have ever encountered such a broad scope and style of short stories in one collection before. Each one was a new perspective, a new...

I have a hard time picking favorites when it comes to books, which is why lists (that don’t have a specific order) are probably my go-to. Stories and other narratives just mean different things to me at different times and yes prose/ideas come into play, but there are plenty of books I like for purely mattering to *me*.

So, what I’ve done here below is break down my “Best of” are the books that I read in 2019 to the main three genres I have read from(and Nonfiction), along with a...

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Finally managed to get around to another Nebula nominated book, and THE POPPY WAR by R.F. Kuang is a marvelous debut, that is layered in all the right ways. I listened to it on audio book, narrated by the perfect Emily Woo Zeller and it is a riiiide.

Content warnings: sexual assault, rape, extreme violence, self-harm

Rin is a war orphan from a backwater province, dropped on the doorstep of a seemingly good matured married couple. They try to manipulate her in order to achieve better leverage...

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THE ARMORED SAINT by Myke Cole was one of the last books I read last year. It’s a romping mix of steampunk and fantasy that feels as brutal as the game DIABLO, yet remains tender in the quieter moments. It was a fun, brief read and I cannot wait to get back to this world.

When magic has essentially been banned, because it could open a portal to hell, the Order rides to silence any offenders by any means necessary. This sometimes amounts to the hard rule of killing innocents, but this is to...

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This was my first finished read of 2020, which seems oddly approriate for a myriad of reasons. THE DEEP by Rivers Solomon (with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes of clipping), is a quietly intimate, fantastical dive into the ocean of memory and generational wounds.

We begin with Yetu, who holds the memories of her people as the historian. Her people are the descendants of pregnant African slave women who were thrown overboard, who have now become a water-dwelling civilization...

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So, after a long silence – I am finally back! I’m sorry for the lack of communication, but there was a much needed mental health break that needed to happen in December and I’ve been taking my time in recent weeks to have a full brain reset to prepare for the coming year.

What’s happening this year? At first glance, nothing! I don’t have any upcoming releases or even stories out on submission. I don’t have any real goals per se, other than to continue working on longstanding projects (my...

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So, its that time of year that I tend to do wrap ups and other things, but for the first time, I’m going to highlight what I listened to, since I tend to listen to a lot of things when I write. It’s one part focusing, one part inspiration. I listen to both songs with or without lyrics and find them useful at least for my creative purposes..

Another part to this, is that my process often involves music in order to translate tone. I change genres or artists based on what part of a book or...