Welcome to my blog

Hello visitors. On my blog I'm talking about my books, but also about what I'm currently working on and, maybe, some other stuff. Browse through my posts and don't forget to check out my older posts in the archives. If you are interested in my books, please, visit my website Fictitious Tales for more information and a few excerpts. Also, take a look at my second blog Herbert Grosshans, where I talk about fun-stuff and things that concern me.

Monday, December 29, 2014

After Christmas



Christmas is over. Time to relax, but innstead of relaxing, I spent the last two days looking for a lost receipt. I didn’t find it, but I did some much needed organizing in my office. It is amazing how much printed material I had stacked up, even in this day of ‘going paperless’. I threw away and shredded pages and pages of old files and needless stuff. Suddenly, I have so much room in my filing cabinet and things will be easier to find. In fact, one of my New Year’s resolutions will be not to print out everything under the sun and just create organized files in my computer. With 2 TB of memory on my hard drive there certainly is enough room.

Why do I print out so much? The thing is I still like to look at printed pages and it is easier to have information handy, especially when I’m writing. For every story I have to create characters, make outlines and have back stories for the main characters, which means I have to be able to look through the material as I’m writing the story. When I print out the information, all I need to do is flip through the pages. That is more difficult if I have to look it up on a file in my computer.

I’m slowly getting over my cold. It helps to stay home for a few days and to drink a lot of water, which means many trips to the bathroom during the day. We are not getting caught up in the Boxing day/week madness. No sense to buy something just because it is on sale, especially if you don’t really need it.

There isn’t much on TV right now, mostly reruns, so we’ve been watching some movies. I downloaded for free (OMG I committed a serious crime!) the movie ‘The Interview’, just to see what all the fuss is about. I think North Korea should be much more concerned with the quality of the movie instead of getting upset about the content. We only watched about ten minutes of it and then we stopped it. We could not take any more of it. There is no danger many people will see this movie. It is supposed to be a comedy. Sorry, that type of comedy escapes me. The movie is stupid, the acting poor, and I feel sorry for the people who paid to see it.

Instead of #‘The Interview’ we watched #‘Edge of Tomorrow’, a Science Fiction film with #Tom Cruise. It was another ‘invasion of the Earth’ movie, but actually quite good. A few days ago we watched #‘Gone Girl’ with #Ben Affleck. It started a bit slow but then it picked up and it was another movie we enjoyed.

My wife is a fan of #Arnold Schwarzenegger. One of his latest movies #‘Sabotage’ was okay. He plays a DEA agent and the movie ended with a bit of a twist. Not one of his best but still enjoyable, if you like Arnold.

A couple of weeks ago we started watching #‘Extant’. Also Science Fiction. It is about #Androids and alien invaders. What a great series. We were watching 3 episodes an evening sometimes. It ended with episode 13 and now we are hooked. Hopefully, it comes back next year.

Right now I’m looking for something to watch tonight. I have #‘Pacific Rim’, another invasion movie, on my computer. If I can persuade my wife we may watch it tonight. I’m a sucker for Science Fiction and easy to please. My wife is more selective. She’s not crazy about monsters, zombies, and huge mechanical robots. I’m afraid there are some on Pacific Rim. We’ll see.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

A wonderful review of #Daughter of the Dark

It's been awhile since I posted on this blog. I'm concentrating more on my personal blog 

http://www.hergros.blogspot.com/ . To keep this blog going I need to talk about my books, new published ones, especially. I don't have anything new coming out right now. I'm at 75,000 words with the book I'm currently writing and much more to go before it is finished. These days, I'm not writing as feverishly as I did years ago, mainly because I want to do other stuff. My dream of becoming a successful writer, by that I mean someone who sells millions of books, hasn't realized, and somehow I've lost the drive to spend all of my free time writing. There are many reasons why my books don't sell, but I think the main reason is marketing. There is a ton of competition out there, thousands of book published every day. How can my books be noticed among all of those books? And I can't see myself spending thousands of dollars on advertising.


I still enjoy writing, it's in my blood, but I write other stuff now besides stories, and I'm enjoying that also.

 People who read my books, tell me they enjoy the stories and say I'm a good writer with a fertile imagination.Maybe I write the wrong stuff. I'm not into romance stories. When I write I want to enjoy it. I love Science Fiction and that's what I mostly write. I even spiced it up with plenty of Erotica and the books sold. Then people told me they would enjoy the Science Fiction stories but not the Erotica. Now I don't write Erotica anymore. My latest books have little or no Erotica in them. Do they sell any better? Hardly.

I got a big boost a few days ago when I went to the Goodreads site and read a review about the very first book I published. It is Book One of my The Xandra series, which has grown into eight books by now. The Book is 'Daughter of the Dark'. Here is the review:



Daughter of the Dark by Herbert Grosshans
Rate this book
12047226
Elly Helcl's review
Sep 23, 13

5 of 5 stars
Read from September 22 to 23, 2013

Wow. Just wow. Where do I even begin?

Before I began reading this book, I expected it to be a fantasy novel of some sort. I did NOT expect it to be an erotica (not that I am complaining).

First, it was refreshing to read an erotica, written from a man's point of view, by a man. So many men try to write an erotica from a woman's point of view...and it just turns out awkward. Kudos to this author for avoiding that slippery slope.

This book was just so unexpected. From being an erotica, to being a fantasy/sci-fi novel...just all of it. But I am surprised in a good way.

So, what is this book about? Well, other than sex.

This book is literally all about a new planet that can sustain human life called, Nu Eden. On this little planet, unbeknownst to the humans, is a goddess who rules this planet. She gives everything on the planet life..so to speak.

What makes this book so interesting is the meld of sexual fantasy into something straight out of a cross between Star Trek and Pandorum.

I recommend this book to those who enjoy erotica. To be honest, you don't even have to enjoy the sci-fi or the fantasy world to enjoy this book. Heck, I really don't read sci-fi and I five starred the book!
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 OMG!!! This is quite possibly one of the best erotica books I have ever read! It is a full length story (I don't know if there is a number two or not), it is full of steamy fun, and it has a very interesting story line! Sigh...WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO LATE?!?! I want to keep reading! And here I was worried by this authors lack of reviews...pfft! It's only because he hasn't been found.



Needless to say, I am wildly pleased with this review and quite excited, and my head is a little bigger today. I only wish, everyone who reads the book, or any book of mine, would write a review. It would help me tremendously. 
 I sent the reviewer a thank you note in an email, but she hasn't replied. She may have her reasons for not doing so and I respect that. I just want to say here, "Thank you, Elly. I'm glad you enjoyed the book."