I am honored and excited to be a part of the Blog Tour for the Driven to the Hilt series. Book #3 in the trilogy will be released by author DG Lamb on November 1st. I can’t wait to read the thrilling conclusion to this extraordinary young adult, sci-fi series. For my part in the tour, I thought I’d revisit my initial impressions of the first book and talk a little about how the series as a whole has affected me personally in a good way.

My Experience as a Reviewer

I read the first book in the series, The Deepest Cut, last fall as one of my earlier assignments as a reviewer for the website Readers Favorite. The thing about reviewing is you only have a short description and a cover to go by when choosing a book to review. There is no guarantee that the book you choose to invest 8 to 10 hours into reading will be enjoyable at all. Before choosing The Deepest Cut to review, I was already becoming discouraged as a reviewer having chosen more duds than gems for my reading assignments. However, I knew within a few pages that this book was different. I was drawn into the story immediately and soon I found it difficult to put the book down. I was hooked on the story of the eleven-year-old boy named Joshua thrust into a horrible situation on a strange planet, alone. Click here to read my original review.  A few months later I wrote a blog post that listed my Top 10 books of 2017. The Deepest Cut landed at #2 on that list. Read that post here.

My connection to that great book didn’t stop with my review. The author, DG Lamb, found me on Facebook and reached out to me. As of this writing, I’ve done 45 reviews for Readers Favorite and DG Lamb is the only author to seek me out and thank me for my review and then go on to seek out a professional friendship with me. I have not met Mr. Lamb face to face, but through email and Facebook Messenger, we’ve become good friends. We are both independent authors, and we found that we had lots to talk about concerning the world of book writing and marketing. Trying to write and market a book all by yourself (without a publishing house to share the load) can get quite discouraging at times. DG and I have been able to encourage each other when the writing journey seemed to be going nowhere. A few months later, he sent me his second book in the series, Forging the Blade in trade for another honest review. I eagerly accepted as I couldn’t wait to see what happened next to the main character Joshua. You can read that review on his Amazon page, here. Now, I find myself waiting on pins and needles to see how the series concludes.

My Experience as a Writer

I am currently hard at work, writing my own YA sci-fi novel. This is new territory for me, as my two previously published books, Glazed Man & Rat Girl, books 1&2 were meant for a much younger audience. I read DG Lamb’s book, The Deepest Cut, just as I was finalizing the outline for my book. My story, about a group of teens being abducted by aliens and carried away to an alien planet, is very different kind of story. However, I think I was inspired by The Deepest Cut in two profound ways. First, I loved how he created a great character in young Joshua and then thrust him into situations that looked in every way completely hopeless. He had me hooked to the point where I had to keep reading to find out what happened. Second, he had great, well-rounded characters. I’ve noticed as a reviewer that the books that I read that end up being my favorites, in every case, have strong characters. DG Lamb’s background is as a neuropsychologist and he uses his knowledge of the human psyche well when writing about the human experience.

That brings me to the present and this new blog post. Book #3, Tempered Steel will be out soon. If you have not read the first two books, I encourage you to get started. Get a print copy or a Kindle ebook on Amazon, or go to Smashwords to get an ebook for iBook, Barnes & Noble, and more. If you’d like more info about the book series and the author, go to the author’s website at driventothehilt.com. On the homepage, don’t forget to register to win autographed copies of all three books. Connect with the author on social media at the following links: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Follow the Driven To The Hilt Blog Tour by going to the blogs listed below.