Cat Pollock Writes

We're going (almost) straight into the review today, folks. No pretty intro. Before we really get into this review, though, I apologize in advance for spelling/grammar/other errors. I've had a number of unexpected things come up in the last couple of weeks. I pushed this review back a couple of days to help accommodate them but one can only do that to a certain extent before it becomes overdue. Disclaimer Tag: The book for this month's review was provided to me for free by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review of the story. The Sentient Nadia Afifi, 2020, Flame Tree Press Description (from publisher): Amira Valdez is a brilliant neuroscientist trying to put her past on a religious compound behind her. But when she’s assigned to a controversial cloning project, her dreams of working in space are placed in jeopardy. Using her talents as a reader of memories, Amira uncovers a conspiracy to stop the creation of the first human clone – at a

From the free-write journal archives, here's a flash fic I wrote at the beginning of the year (and edited a bit recently). Enjoy! The Remote New Year's. I spend most New Year's Eves making a final decision about my One resolution for the upcoming year. Then I spend New Year's Day nailing down my plans to keep that resolution. Six months is how long, on average, it takes for one of my resolutions to stick.  Restarts are always part of the plan. I always restart multiple times. But 2019 was a hell of a year, so I decided at the last minute to take 2020 off from resolutions. Instead of crawling into bed by ten o'clock and waking up in the new year, I opened up my living room to a few coworkers to ring it in with me.  You know, the ones who never have plans but always wish they did. We played a wicked drinking game while watching the local ball drop, then they were gone in their ride shares by one o'clock. In the morning. On New Years. I can still hear the

Happy Tuesday! I thought I'd take a breather from recommendation analysis and thoughts on book review requests this week. A Q&A style post about one of my first-ever completed writing projects (outside of, you know, school) felt exactly right for today. If you've ever been curious about what I wrote first, now is your chance to read all about it! What is the title of your first completed writing project? HBF. It's an acronym for the original title, but I've referred to it as this for so long now that I struggle with remembering what HBF stood for initially. How long ago did you write it? About 15-20 years ago. And I just realized (for the millionth time) how old that makes me. Yikes. What genre is it?  Today, I think it would be something along the lines of Christian New Adult/Suspense. But New Adult wasn't a thing back in the day, so I probably would have just said something like Christian Contemporary Fiction at the time. Are you c

I've been hesitant to write this post. That is due, in large part, to how angry I get some days after reading book review requests. I curse, I rant, I snark. My cat will tell you it's not a pretty sight. But I also feel like this is a good opportunity to talk about what it is that makes me feel those feelings AND how to not stir them up. I'm not the only reviewer that gets frustrated when I see certain things in my emails from authors looking for a review. And I know I'm not the only one who gets triggered enough to ignore or delete those messages. I never feel good about doing it. It's just that I'm hitting the proverbial wall here and I want to hit it a little less often. So if you're an author looking for loving advice on how to approach reviewers (especially this one), read on. Review Requests I Always  Delete Before I get into what to do, I wanted to take a minute to look at what not to do (and how I handle it). Want to know what immedi

A year and a half ago, I wrote a post called " Dear Goodreads, Do You Really Know What Science Fiction I Want to Read? ", where I took a look at their recommendations for me in SF. I did a similar set of posts for the Amazon behemoth and I've been working on another post in the series for Google Play Books. Then I logged into Goodreads recently on a whim and headed over to their Browse tab. I'm not obsessive about updating my reading there these days, nor have I been actively avoiding doing so. It's been awhile since I've thought about it, so I figured the list of recommended reads would be similar to what it was at the beginning of 2019. It wasn't. Curiosity go the better of me on this one, so I've changed course from the standard fourth week book review, and today I'll be diving in headlong to see what has changed in the last nineteen months. I'm using a similar methodology to narrow down the list to 10 as last time (1 recommenda

Happy Monday! Two weeks ago, I shared a bit of a life (and writing project) update , so this week's post is an update on this website. If you were wondering what is coming up, here are some answers. When I Am Posting I decided to change the day of the week I post on. I've narrowed it down to early in the week. Why early in the week? From a statistical standpoint, it's because the posts on my blog have higher view counts when they go up early in the week. Why? I'm not sure, but I'm not going to fight with the direction the numbers are pointing in. Other reasons? I used to post on Tuesdays. My posts slid back to Thursdays because I would procrastinate about writing them. When Tuesday rolled around and nothing was ready to go, I pushed it back. Then I told myself giving myself an extra couple of days was fine because at least it would go up that week. My goal at the time was consistent posts, but I let myself off the hook because of my mental state