Since this is my first blog post (I’ve been meaning to get into the habit and now seemed as good a time as any), I figured I’d just wing it and see what ends up on the page ...

I should confess I’m really just getting started with trying to familiarise myself with Goodreads.

Until some good friends started to get into the publishing game, I was actually a die-hard ‘real’ books over electronic and so I avoided all the online forums and so forth that go hand-in-hand with that. Now here I am, having taken the plunge into e-publishing myself. Scarier than a Stephen King special on a dark night with the lights out, I can tell ya!

Got that SK reference in pretty early, did I?

Yeah, I’d pretty much read the phonebook if I thought the horror-meister had a hand in writing it.

"I’m as open-minded as the next Literature graduate, but I do have a thing for thrillers and crime fiction and horror, oh my."

But generally, I’m pretty open-minded. My criteria when it comes to what I read are pretty broad. A book’s got to hook me, but then it’s got to reel me in and captivate me. I love vivid worlds I can practically see spilling out in front of me and characters that, whether heroes or villains, make me care about them. I want to love to hate a bad guy, I want to root for the good guy. The only thing I can’t stand is indifference. Anything I read has to make me feel something.

Different genres and different books bring different expectations, but depending on my current choice, I want the shivers down my spine or the breathless anticipation. The tears or the goofy grin. I love the books that leave you an emotional wreck or those that have you flying high.

No cardboard cut-out characters, no plodding predictability and no guarantees – that’s all I ask. I don’t see the point getting invested when all trace of urgency is gone and the outcome has an overwhelming sense of inevitability.

A tale well told. That’s all I ask.