...shoOOonya...

  Book Review: The Chronothon (In Times Like These #2) by Nathan Van Coops   I rated the Book 1 of this series 4/5 stars and this one was even better so no other option but to give it a full 5 star rating. The book is BRILLIANT, AWESOME and MIND BLOWING   This is by far the best time travel sci-fi book I have ever read. Nathan's attention to detail is what gets me to like the book so much.   Nathan has paid attention to so many of the aspects of the complexities and paradoxes of time travel AND handled them beautifully in his narrative.   He is my next best fav author after Matthew Reilly. Nathan provides a fantastic action thriller with the twist of Time Travel ... and well played !!   Super Fabulous narration .. i look forward to the next one.   This book did not mess up the book cover like the first one. Showing the time travelling gadgetry on the front cover itself sparks off interest of the cur...

Book Review: In Times Like These by Nathan Van Coops   All the usual bells and whistles of time travelling ... and MORE. and Much More.   Nathan has touched upon time travel and its complexities at a level of detail that I have not seen before. He has spent quite some time on the mechanics of time travel and practicality / feasibility of it.   Fun is when you have the same person occupying the same timeline and same moment ... where one is unaware of the other while the other is watching out for the first so as not to bump into him. Fun increases when these two are in the same premise with a third one outside :)   Fun is also when a person exists in the timeline of his own childhood and comes face to face with himself :) ... and what if he decides to stay with the younger himself and not go back to his own time.   While these seem like spoilers for the story but trust me I am haven't spoiled the fun for you. Read the boo...

Reader’s Block   Very Short Story (VSS) 016   The writer’s block is common. As a writer, you just cannot write. Your brain feels jammed and it positively hurts to think about writing. Ever heard of Reader’s Block. Yeah. It exists and is equally painful. When you suffer from it, no matter what you read, it hurts your head and feels totally uninteresting. You want to give up reading. You want to read no more. Have you ever suffered from it? I have suffered. Those were the worst times of my life - It was crazy and my Mind was in chaos. I couldn’t find solace in books. ---------------------------- Quick Note: Very Short Stories are approx./max. 99 word stories that i am going to write through the year. These very short stories are part of my writing resolutions of 2017. My target is to write at least 50 VSS this year which is about 12-13 every quarter. Currently I am behind my target by a few stories but gradually cathing up :-)

Until I Met Her   Very Short Story (VSS) 015   Consulting is not as glamorous as it was made out to be during the campus placement talk. They said you will travel and see the world. They deliberately left out the detail that you will end up seeing only the airport, the hotel and the client office. I hated my job but still persisted … until I met her. She was a victim of overbooking. Wanted to join her friends for a Himalayan trek but airlines declined boarding. Something stirred inside me. I talked to the airline and offered my seat to her. I sent my resignation via blackberry.   ----------------- Quick Note: Very Short Stories are approx./max. 99 word stories that i am going to write through the year. These very short stories are part of my writing resolutions of 2017. My target is to write at least 50 VSS this year which is about 4 per month or 13 per quarter. Currently I am behind my target but cathing up :-(

Spy Chase   Very Short Story (VSS) 014   Trust Me. Spying isn’t as glamorous as James Bond makes it look like. And the chase is highly unglamorous as compared to what Hollywood shows. It is downright dangerous. And more often than not, the chase ends in the criminal escaping and you tearing your hair out. Every once in a while, the chase ends up bad for you … the one doing the chasing. Today is one such day. I am chasing. And I can see that I am heading for a head-on collision with a wall. And I can’t do anything to prevent it. ---------------- Quick Note: Very Short Stories are approx./max. 99 word stories that i am going to write through the year. These very short stories are part of my writing resolutions of 2017. My target is to write at least 50 VSS this year which is about 4 per month or 13 per quarter. Currently I am behind my target but cathing up :-(

  Worlds Colliding   Very Short Story (VSS) 013   Arriving at the coffee shop before time to meet her was part luck part chance. And there she was, parting with someone she was already meeting. I saw them parting and froze in my tracks as I saw them kiss good bye. I felt betrayed. How could she do this to me. She was my best friend and I was hers. I was supposed to be the first person to know about him … even before him.    But then the guy turned and I got a jolt. How could my very own brother not tell me? --------------- Quick Note: Very Short Stories are approx./max. 99 word stories that i am going to write through the year. These very short stories are part of my writing resolutions of 2017. My target is to write at least 50 VSS this year which is about 4 per month or 13 per quarter. Currently I am behind my target but cathing up :-(  

The Delayed Flight   Very Short Story (VSS) 012   Airports can be as interesting or as boring as you want them to be. I always found them boring and hence was always submerged in a book. But that one journey changed everything. We were on the same flight that got delayed. Held up in the airport for over 6 hours, we got talking. We talked over coffee & sandwiches and then continued in-flight. We talked literally non-stop for over 12 hours as if we would never talk again and had to finish every thread we started. By the time we landed, I knew I had found my soulmate. ---------------------- Quick Note: Very Short Stories are approx./max. 99 word stories that i am going to write through the year. These very short stories are part of my writing resolutions of 2017. My target is to write at least 50 VSS this year which is about 4 per month or 13 per quarter. Currently I am behind my target but cathing up :-(

Eating Robots and Other Stories by Stephen Oram     The cover of the book says “Nudge The Future Volume 1” and it makes sense once you have read the book. This is unlike any other sci-fi short stories book that I have ever read. While the total count is 30 stories spanning 125 pages, the fact is that there are only a few ‘stories’. Others are ‘situations’ of a future world. These so called stories are just about a few page in which Stephen introduces a futuristic real-world very-believable situation to you. Having read the short story, you pause, close the book and think about it. Think about the implications and the consequences. Think about how could humans end up in a situation like that and what will it lead to in further future. Often asking the questions … “How could we mess up so royally?” The stories in the book are meant to make you think. They are not entertainment but fodder for the fertile and intellectual mind to question and think. The though...

  The 365 Days by Nikhil Ramteke Not an easy book to review for multiple reasons. It is a story, fiction essentially BUT it is so close to reality that it is more like reading a documentary rather than reading a story/fiction. I have lived in Dubai around the timeline the story is taking place and even right now living here. While I could identify the storytelling, i could also easily point out (and be irritated about) the error in the storytelling - factual errors. There were one or two times, when i felt the author was making self-contradictory statements thro the protagonist which kind of disturbed the reading flow. BUT those are minor things. Important is how the book was written and did it achieve its objective of creating awareness. Overall, the book is an insight into the ugly dark world of the laborers life in Dubai. While Dubai is enjoyed and toured by the rich, it has been built by the labor of the huge labor population which remains out of sight. The av...