Customer Reviews

Summer Sketches

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This book is a small peek into the process Simmons uses to create his magic. We see his wonderful hand rendered sketches, discover outlines for past novels, and observations that became grist for his local-color mill in the settings of some of his work. A fun book to read and own. Most interesting, probably, to great Simmons fans and writers.

Peter Orullian

I have been amazed by Simmons since first being recommended Hyperion. A long-time SF enthusiast, I loved the whole series. In fact, he had kind of slipped by me somehow so it was an absolute delight to discover such a wonderfully good FOUR book series LOL.

Being a heavy reader, I checked out his other books and discovered a very rare writer indeed: able to span genres quite ably, thank you very much. An amazing writer -- someone who can span the world-scale horror dimensions of Carrion Comfort to the Hyperion series to the comic-Darwin-Award-relief of Darwin's Blade. I was and am amazed. Even the books that I had great difficulty with in starting, like The Crook Factory -- a historically accurate fictional tale about Hemingway -- I have come to have a deep and abiding love for (I will never forget Hemingway character's explanation of effective writing).

So this book is about his writer's insights and process. If you aspire to write full-time but haven't achieved that, are delighted by the ability of Dan Simmons' works to take you on journeys and are curious as to how he goes about it... and, lastly, won't get bankrupted by the price, buy this book. If the price makes you gasp, buy more blank paper, study his published works and keep writing.

The book is *very* short and expensively priced but, trust me, you'll reread it. The foreward alone is captivating -- I had to reread it several times at the get-go. This is an intimite view into the writer's mind.