Explore a broad collection of horse Ice Boots Online at Barn & Stable. We have best quality Horse Therapy Boots for sale at the best prices. Get amazing deals and discount on every product you purchase. Buy now!

the Huffington Post has an excellent article by author M.R. Cary on why genre fiction is valuable reading, and why literary snobbery is not only silly but often just plain wrong. 

on critics who spurn genre writing because it's too formulaic:

Yes, of course there are constraints when you write genre fiction. There are also constraints when you write literary fiction. Totally unconstrained writing would be (to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut) gibberish interspersed with exclamation marks. When you write -- when you write anything at all -- you write on the end of a tether. But it's a flexible tether, and it's all about the dance you perform on the end of that thing and how you work with it or strain against it or in some cases tie it into knots that were never seen before.

he later continues: 

But special pleading aside, look at the works of Ursula LeGuin, China Miéville, Lord Dunsany, Angela Carter, Ray Bradbury, Connie Willis, Mervyn Peake, Ted Chiang, Raymond Chandler and Don Winslow (just for starters) and see whether writing in genre made their work less resonant, less profound, less valid and affecting, than the work of any canonically approved genius you care to mention.

 

And while you're at it, there's fun to be had in trying to think up reasons why Hamletand Macbeth aren't genre fiction. Because they're old, maybe? Because there's an R in the month? One's a ghost story, the other one has witches in it, and both were written (whatever else was in Shakespeare's mind) in a sincere bid to break the record for "most groundlings in a theatre the size of a pocket handkerchief." 

incidentally, Cary's new novel The Girl With All the Gifts is supposed to be pretty darned good. i haven't read it yet, but i intend to.   

* the photo is of Jimi Hendrix reading the Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus (via Zola Books)

Title:  Heat Wave (Riders Up #2)
Author:  Adriana Kraft
Publisher:  B & B Publications
Reviewed By:  Arlena Dean
Rating: 5
Review:

"Heat Wave" by Adriana Kraft ...

"During an oppressive Iowa summer of drought and farm foreclosures, widowed Maggie Anderson makes a bold decision: She’ll merge her love of horses and her family’s three hundred and twenty acres into a horse farm and try her hand at nearby Prairie Meadows Race Track, where racing purses have just been augmented by the recently added casino gambling.

Down on his luck after being falsely accused in a racing scandal and banned from training, former Arlington Race Track trainer Ed Harrington has skulked home to Des Moines to drown his sorrows and wait for the dust to clear. He’s unprepared for the piercing robin’s-egg-blue eyes of pint-sized Maggie Anderson, who finds him at a flophouse and offers him a job. Can he pull himself together and meet the challenge?

As the two forge a tumultuous working partnership, they soon discover someone is out to get Maggie’s farm and will stop at almost nothing to force her off the land. Can they find and stop the culprit before someone is killed? Can they survive the far greater danger unleashed by the raw passion simmering just beneath the surface of their relationship?"


What I simply loved from reading 'Heat Wave'

This was a story of two people who were in  need of something...for Maggie not losing her family farm and taking care of her two children and for Ed after being falsely accused of cheating was band from racetracks had turned to the bottle (alcohol).  How these authors were able to bring it all together was really turned out to be a awesome read.  I really enjoyed how Maggie was a go getter not letting anyone stop her from what was important of her.  Ed with his personal problems had only tried to drown his sorrow away but after being offered a job would this give  him something else to think about?   It was very interesting seeing these two people learn to trust each other and even more for one of the Maggie's children to see that one of these people really could be trusted. 

The characters in 'Heat Weave' were really off the chart good...there were many showing to be well developed, rounded, colorful, believable and all in all being down right well portrayed giving the reader one fantastic read with many twist and turns. One of my favorite characters other than Maggie and Ed was Ben Templeton.  I will stop there not wanting to give too much away. 

"Heat Wave" was definitely one of those reads that will be hard to put down because these authors has given the reader such a intriguing and captivating mystery  read of who is trying to get Maggie's property. I found myself laughing out loud at some parts of the read to even becoming  very intense with other parts leaving me  wondering what and who had caused that situation to have happened.  But in the end...well this will be the time to say you will have to pick up the good read to see how it will be brought out to you.

My overall view:

"Heat Wave" by Adriana Kraft was not only  one well written  researched read but if you are into horse racing this is a read for you.  This read was definitely one of those that will give you a lots of  information not only the love of  horse racing but also the inside track of it all.  Very well done to the authors!

And this is why all the Dreamspinner Press ebooks I already own just sit in my TBR. If I research whether they're P2P before I read them and learn they are, I'll be mad I spent my money on them. If I don't do the research, or if my research fails, and I later learn they're P2P, I'll be mad I spent my money on them.

ETA: Kate Pavelle's other Dreamspinner Press book, Wild Horses, is also P2P fanfic. Not that Dreamspinner notes this.