Review: 'Force of Habit' is Extremely Habit Forming!  This is how to write a Novella!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 27, 2013
This first book was so good that within minutes of reading it, I downloaded book two. It really was that good. Now, I like novellas and I have lived in LA. I am also a big fan of James Scott Bell – but for his live seminars and How to Write books – which I think are among the best in the business.What I liked best about this story is how the author kept providing foundation and evidence for the rather incredible abilities of the heroine, Sister J. She is supposed to be an ex-movie star, a rather slutty star at that, who had been a drug addict and alcoholic but who also learned to be an expert at martial arts and who, when she hit 'bottom', saw the light and became a nun. Now she is a real kick-butt nun who can whip any man in a fight!To make Sister J believable, the author is always (and I mean page after page for the whole book) giving evidence or foundation to her character. For example, the author is always giving examples of real actors she’s been in movies with and the movies she got fired from and the parties she’d been to. It reads like nonfiction. These are all real people. Who does that in fiction? Also Sister J can hold her own in giving detailed critiques of movies. This is a character who knows what she is doing and talking about. Even as a nun she knows her theology so well as to argue convincingly with her superiors.The author is amazing at creating solid characters you can believe in.The next best writing feature of this story is how every scene is ‘weighty’ with emotional impact and character significance. There is no ‘stage business’ as you would see for a play. There are no insignificant transition scenes designed to move the story along. Whatever Sister J is doing is very important to the people she is doing it with – I mean important as in life or death.This story is a casebook on how to write this type of thriller. And that is what it is -- a thriller. I can say that reading this one novella gave me as much useful info on writing that I did not already know as an all-day $99 writer’s conference workshop. And I know what I am talking about here.I know, this review, as written by a writer myself, is really a way to look 'under the hood' of Bell’s craft. But that is what I do and that is what makes this story to interesting and fun to read. As I said at the start…after I read the last word of this story…I went online to Amazon and downloaded the second book. I also tried to find book three but there seems to be only two books in the series. I hope there are more. I also hope they stay novellas. There is a power in a novella that you just don’t get in full novels. An action novella, like this one, is like seeing two heavy weight ‘punchers’ pounding each other into exhaustion in three frenzied rounds of fighting. You just don’t get that in fifteen rounds!I’m 80% into the second book as I write this and it is just as powerful as the first book. I really hope there are more Sister J books to come. Until then I noticed that the author has a few old style Fight Game novellas. I will sure try one of those but I don’t think anything is going to top Sister J.