SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

It’s Friday, and I have a couple of new books to share! Even though I’m on holiday–sort of, it keeps getting moved to later in the week *sobs*–I’m sticking with just two books this time.

[FYI: The book links are free from affiliate codes.]

The Work Read

The new work read is Inciting Incident: How to Begin Your Screenplay or Novel and Captivate Audiences Right Away (While Accomplishing Your Long-Term Plotting Goals) by H. R. D’Costa, but we’ll call it Inciting Incident. Don’t let the long title put you off. HRD, as she’s known online, is a fantastic teacher and person.

If you’ve been a visitor to the site over the years, you’ll have seen me mention her a lot. I’ve used her books to get me through the outlining of four of my Deniable Unit Series works-in-progress (WIPs). I’ve also been lucky enough to have had her as my teacher on her Smarter Story Structure course.

I don’t doubt that this book will be just as valuable to my study of the craft as her other books and course has been to me.

Inciting Incident on Kindle (£6.99)

Inciting Incident on Kobo (£6.99)

The Fun Read

Trapped with the Secret Agent by Julie Rowe

I was going to dive right into another Anne Stuart book, well, her Ice Series… but that would have led me into the Fire Series, and that would have led me into the worst book hangover ever–again! And, as if on cue, Kobo emailed me to tell me that a book on my wishlist was FREE for a few days.

That book is by a new-to-me author. The description sounded like my kind of thing–spies, terrorists, and hidden agendas–so I thought I’d lose nothing by giving it a go. So far, I’m about 5% in, and I feel like I’m in the capable hands of an experienced storyteller. Now, I’m not saying she’ll be enough to lure me away from the siren call that is The Ice Series, but there’s only so long I can ignore that.

Trapped with the Secret Agent on Kobo (£3.49 on Kobo)

Trapped with the Secret Agent on Kindle (£2.99 on Kindle)

The Me-Time Read

As I said above, I only have two books this time, but I didn’t want to neglect last time’s Me-Time read, A Spy’s Guide to Strategy on Kindle.

As non-fiction books go, this series has been an excellent overview of thinking and planning processes. This book, number two in the series, gives great insight into how others think, how they strategize to get what they want, and how you can work backwards from their endgame to see their strategy–and stop it if that was your goal.

I use that strategy when I’m working out why my bad guy does X or why he wants Y, and then I work back to plot out his moves, his motivations.

It was such an entertaining read–the anecdotes from his CIA training days had me in stitches–that I one-clicked the next in the series. But I’ll share that next time.

Do you have book series or authors you can’t stop reading and re-reading? I’d love to hear your reading plans for the next week…

Until next time, take care, and happy reading!