R.B. Young
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The Reader Reviews Are In

6/18/2021

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Picture(Photo: George Milton, from Pexels.)
Kirkus Reviews has reviewed my debut novel Crimes of Disrespect, and now readers are submitting their experiences with the book. So, here are three reader reviews posted on Goodreads.com, a literary social-media website.


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The Indie-Author Stigma Is a Falsehood

4/30/2021

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Talented? Too bad, she self-published. (Margaret Atwood)Photo: © 2015 Larry D. Moore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Meme text by R.B. Young.
What's the definition of "insane optimist"? A first-time novelist.

But seriously, if a new fiction writer spent years taking workshops, being published by literary journals, and placing in competitions, then agents and publishers should give them consideration, right? Well, no.

To be clear, I'm talking about commercial publishing here, not the small regional presses printing books of a rare or experimental tone. In Canada, a system of government grants subsidizes these elevated outfits, and other countries promote their own artists and culture with similar programs. These firms have their own criteria and networks. What follows below doesn't, broadly speaking, apply to them.


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Sol Fitzgerald: Trauma, Anger, and Hope

3/25/2021

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Janitor with broom handle, red baseball cap.How Sol Fitzgerald might appear. (Photo credit: unknown.)
Sol Fitzgerald is angry. A 24-year-old janitor at a private school, he's also an alcoholic. And he recently spent two years in prison for aggravated assault. All these characteristics and events are not his fault: they're the effects of sexual abuse he suffered from ages nine to twelve.

As a main character in my novel Crimes of Disrespect, Sol's  bubbling hostilities and criminal record put him on the suspect-list early in the investigation of a double murder. By necessity, he looks into the incident, in which he himself had found two bodies in the quadrangle of Woodmore Academy, the elite high school where he works.


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Learning the Two Row Wampum Treaty

2/22/2021

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What's the banner the marchers are holding in the photo here? What do those two purple stripes symbolize? If you're a non-Indigenous North American, you can be forgiven for not knowing; your education failed you.

The photo itself is from a 2019 protest for Indigenous rights that took place in Toronto. So, do you know the answer?
Protesters carry the two row wampum at an Indigenous rights march in downtown Toronto, 2019. (Photo: Justin Brake/APTN)
(Photo: Justin Brake/APTN)

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Review: The Only Good Indians

1/22/2021

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In The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones marries the horror genre with an indigenous slant to storytelling and theme. So, the book succeeds as a chilling horror story but also a meditation on respect and compassion for animals: I found it hard, emotionally, to read the character Lewis's initial killing of a young elk. That scene wasn't overdone, just unflinching in its details.

Here's a handful of other fiction elements that really work in The Only Good Indians: Standard third person point of view tells most of the story, but Jones's judicious use of second person viewpoint (narration with "you," not "he/she" or "I") for the elk-spirit was deliciously creepy:


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Kirkus reviews Crimes of Disrespect

1/19/2021

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The reputable Kirkus Reviews has released its opinion on my novel Crimes of Disrespect. In a nutshell, its judgement is this: "A well-paced, topical whodunit." Read the full review.

Kirkus Reviews is American book-review magazine founded in 1933. It previews thousands of books per year. In 2014, the company established the $50,000 Kirkus Prize.

Crimes of Disrespect is my debut mystery novel. It is currently available online, in print and e-book form, on Amazon. Worldwide availability -- in brick-and-mortar bookstores and other online booksellers -- is scheduled for April 1, 2021.
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(Re)Launching Write Ideas

12/3/2020

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R.B. Young's school photo, circa 1971.
This is my blog, welcome to it. Admission: over the years, I've probably had a half-dozen blogs; they've each lasted for three posts -- or perhaps six, at best.

But I will regularly write here. I will! It'll take more discipline than I had as a schoolchild; goofy, Hardy-Boys-obsessed kid that I was.

Part of the reason I've found a blog hard to maintain was my vlogging, which I was doing around 2018, under the channel title Write Ideas on YouTube: www.youtube.com/rbyoung.


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    Author

    R.B. Young is the author of the novel Crimes of Disrespect and of short stories in Canadian and American literary journals. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.

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