• Writing Resources

    New review for Digital Rights

    ‘Digital Rights’ my Writers of the Future winning story just received a new review today. “Digital Rights kept me interested. I was hooked right away, and I didn’t stop reading until I finished, despite its being fairly long for a short story at 12K words. There are a number of really good things about the story.” You can read the full review here. And the story is available in Writers of the Future Volume 26, along with a horde of fantastic stories or on its lonesome from Amazon or Smashwords.

  • Writing Resources

    Sacred Legends

    My upcoming On Spec story ‘Touch the Dead’ as well as the novel I recently completed both incorporate some aspects of Cree mythology. I had previously found a few Cree myths online but to better understand the tales which were influencing my ‘fictional world’ I bought a copy of Sacred Legends By Carl Ray and James R Stevens. This is an interesting collection of stories told by the Sandy Lake Cree in Canada and interesting artwork accompanies the stories. The book itself was compiled in the 70s and then updated in the 90s. I’ve read some of the myths elsewhere but most were tales I had never encountered before. At…

  • My Life

    Read this Week

    Read On Spec #82 this week; I’ve been slow to catch up on my magazine subscriptions because I’ve been reading some ‘research novels’. A strong issue, as always, with several interesting stories and really cool cover. And just as I finish it issue #83 arrives! Which was also a delight because at the end of it is a little blurb listing who will be appearing in upcoming issues and of course my name is there — my story ‘Touch the Dead’* will appear in a future issue. I also read the novel ‘Druids’ by Barbara Galler-Smith and Josh Langston (published by Edge), an epic historical fantasy set during the days…

  • Writing Resources

    Review for “Digital Rights”

    A positive though short review for Writers of the Future 26 went up at SF Site… not sure if its been there for a while but ego-surfing today I stumbled across it. My story and Adam Colston’s are the only ones really discussed, with both of us getting nice reviews. Specifically for ‘Digital Rights’ Sandra Scholes says Knowles writes with a fresh outlook on sci-fi and has created a strange new world that sounds daunting even if it is far away. Head over to SF Site to read the full review. And remember you can read Digital Rights by buying the Writers of the Future anthology or you can download…

  • Writing Resources

    “The Monastery” mentioned in Horton summary

    Last night I was pleased to see that in his annual summary for “Not One of Us” reviewer extraordinaire Richard Horton mentioned my story “The Monastery” which appeared in Hidden, a special Not One of Us issue that came out early in 2010. He said: From Hidden, I liked Erik Amundsen’s “Strawberry Ghoul”, a matter of fact story about a girl encountering ghouls, and Brent Knowles’s “The Monastery” Go read his full review… yearly he does a round-up of almost every magazine giving concise summaries of the fiction they have published in the previous year.

  • Writing Resources

    "From the Sea", nice mini-review

    Thanks to Tom Waters, a Writers of the Future finalist and up and coming writer for his review of the On Spec issue in which my story “From the Sea” appeared. His rating system is quick and to the point and he gave “From the Sea” a four out of five star rating. Yay! You can read the full post on his blog

  • Writing Resources

    New review for On Spec Fall 2009

    Up at EssentialWriters.com is a review of the Fall 2009 issue of On Spec. Nice things are said about this issue of the magazine, including a new review for my story “From the Sea”. Thanks to Judy Darley for the kind words and kudos go out to all the other authors who produced such fine work for the issue.

  • Game Reviews

    BioShock

    So I’ve finally finished another game out of the massive stack of games I collected while working for BioWare. I first started BioShock about two years ago, playing enough of it to get an initial first impression. Anyone who has played Dragon Age* will see a few of features influenced by BioShock, including the notification system that tells players new journal and codex entries are present. At the time that I was playing BioShock this was how I was primarily playing games, looking at dozens of them every month for strong (or weak) design features but only spending a few hours with each. Anyways, with more leisure time I finished…

  • Review,  Writing Resources

    Review On Spec #77

    A little late in reading this one as I just finished it before #78 arrived but I had to clear a backlog of other stuff first. Wish I hadn’t waited so long because this is certainly one of my more favorite issues of On Spec in the last while. The Resident Guest By Sandra Glaze A young woman working in a hotel grows up under the watchful eye of a ghost (a World War veteran) that lives in the hotel. This was a fascinating story, hitting the reader on several levels. Really enjoyed this one. The Far-springer by E. Catherine Tobler One of medusa’s sisters tries to survive in a…