This is Not A Writing Manual

Kerri Majors
Writer's Digest Books
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary


Real-world writing advice, minus all the lectures.You're an aspiring writer. Maybe you've just discovered your love of words and dream of being a novelist someday. Maybe you've been filling notebooks with science-fiction stories since middle school. Maybe you're contemplating a liberal arts degree, but you don't know what the heck you're going to do with it. The last thing you need is another preachy writing manual telling you how you should write.

This book isn't a writing manual. It is a series of candid and irreverent essays on the writing life, from a writer who's lived it. Kerri Majors shares stories from her own life that offer insights on the realities all writers face: developing a writing voice, finding a real job (and yes, you do need to find one), taking criticism, getting published, and dealing with rejection.

Don't have enough time to write? Learn how to plan your days to fit it all in. Not sure how your guilty pleasures and bad habits translate into literature? Kerri explains how soap operas and eavesdropping can actually help your writing. Need a reader for your first novel? Find a writing buddy or a writing group that will support you. Nervous about submitting your first piece? Learn from Kerri's own roller coaster journey to find an agent and get published. "This Is Not a Writing Manual" is the writing memoir for young writers who want to use their talents in the real world.


My Review


I was looking for something to read in the YA section, but I wasn’t in the mood for paranormals or romances. The title and the wide-open mouth on the cover enticed me to take a closer look. Normally, I don’t read books about writing. Other than keeping a meticulous journal during my childhood and teen years, I have never done any serious writing other than what was required of me for school or work.

Writing requires time, effort, self-discipline, patience, and a thick skin. Since I’m the greatest procrastinator around and don’t deal too well with rejection, I’m not convinced that being a writer is the best use of my time. But I do love words, and I love that other people have the ability to string them together in meaningful ways that make my heart sing. Reading books makes me happy, and any book that helps young, aspiring writers gain confidence is very important.

Even though it was on the YA shelf, there are plenty of useful tips that could benefit writers of all ages. Look elsewhere if you want to learn the mechanics of writing. Kerri Majors uses personal anecdotes and solid advice to show the reader how to attain the creative life. I loved this book’s conversational tone and enjoyed reading about the author’s journey to publication.

Read this book and be the best writer you could possibly be! The world needs more writers so I can have more books to read.

A FINE BALANCE BY ROHINTON MISTRY

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.’ ”


A Fine Balance

I sometimes take a moment to focus on the corner of my office. The way the two walls come together forming a line, a demarcation. I think of it as bringing the two halves of my brain together, to focus, to think, to ponder. It is an illusion of course, but I’m fortunate that some of my life can be given to fanciful thoughts like thinking I can marshal the powers of my mind by staring meditatively at a conjunction. We all worry about things, ponder things, and even dream about being somewhere else or about being someone else. We all have loose threads that bother us, sometimes they are consuming us, and little do we know these bothersome threads are becoming stronger, like a man imprisoned, who spends vast amounts of time doing pushups and situps, waiting for the bars to open.

But it is a small matter,

because I eat three meals a day, take a hot shower every morning, and sleep six solid hours a night on a bed that is not too soft nor too hard.

I have rights that protect me from my government (at least for the moment). I have law enforcement that doesn’t have to be bribed to protect me from those that wish to do harm for harms sake. I have a circle of family and friends who wish me well and will lend a shoulder to lean on if I falter. I have healthcare and life insurance in case I am unlucky. I live in a bubble of civilization that almost insures me a certain length of life span.

So when I do get time to snip those loose threads of my life I’m doing so with a brain that has the luxury of worrying about something more than just NEEDS. As large as my “problems” become they are still,

but a small matter.

There are a vast array of characters in this novel. Some are at a slightly higher economic level than the rest, but regardless of their circumstances no one can feel safe, no one can worry about matters beyond the most basic needs of water, food, and shelter.

The bulk of this story occurs in 1975 in an unnamed Indian city by the sea. It is the time of The Great Emergency which really means that the government has declared a form of martial law...for the safety of the people of course. They have implemented a rigorous Family Planning Program that at first entices people with cash and better ration cards for food if they are willing to have the operation for sterilization. When bribery doesn’t elicit the results the government wants their methods become more invasive and more drastic.

The government also implements a beautification program that translates to bulldozing all the temporary structures that have been erected around the city. These were thrown together to house the influx of country people coming to the metropolis to try and scrounge a living doing what others don’t want to do. The hodge podge of housing built out of cast off materials, rubbish to people of means, is not beautiful, not in the way that we are taught to evaluate beauty, but the creativity and the determination to build something for themselves is beyond beauty. It is simply magnificent. As they make a little money they fix something, add something, make it more their home.


You build it and they will come. There is no field of dreams in this India.

So the government eliminates these eye sores, but does not provide a place for these people to live. They are thrown to the elements to shift for themselves. If truth be known the government would like to see these people vanish, stacked in the same pile as the rubbled remains of their homes.

“What sense did the world make? Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things he allowed to happen...”

The two tailors Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash were there when the bulldozers started knocking down homes. Only after all the homes were destroyed did the monster machines stop for twenty minutes to allow people to salvage what they could.

The tailors are working for a woman named Dina Dalal who is fortunate to have her own apartment. She still mourns the death of her husband taken from her in a freakish accident many years ago. She nearly went over the brink with grief. “Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.” She has a relationship with her brother that is complicated. She dislikes having to accept his help; and yet, finds herself going to him for money when she is short of rent. In a bid for more independence and more financial security she decides to start making clothes for a large manufacturing company, but her eyesight is failing and so she hires Ishvar and Omprakash to do the sewing.



Further help arrives in the form of Maneck Kohlah, a rich boy in comparison to the other people in the apartment, who contributes much needed rent while he is going to school.

She is not supposed to run a business out of her apartment. She is not supposed to sublease. The landlord is looking for any reason to get his hands on this apartment so he can finally break the rent controls. It is a recipe for disaster born out of desperation. It is a bid for freedom.

“After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”

Through a series of unpredictable events they all end up living in the apartment together. The tailors out on the veranda. Dina shoehorned into the sewing room. Maneck in Dina’s old bedroom. There are difficulties mainly because Omprakash begins to resent Dina’s position as overseer. Om perceives her as a big shot, a rich person, when nothing could be further from the truth. Being a manager myself I really identified with Dina’s issues. She would try to be more lenient and the two men would take more and more advantage of her. She would try yelling and the men would become resentful. She would try negotiating with them, but any concessions she was willing to make was never enough. How quickly the men forgot how bad things were before the found the benevolence of the woman with an apartment.

Despite those issues for a little while, too short of time, they were happy.

“…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.”

The mystery of happiness. It is so hard to obtain and so difficult to duplicate. You can bring together the same people under the same circumstances and not be able to achieve it again. There is a magic missing, a zing, a spice, a mood or just the will to let it happen.

There are a host of satellite characters who add so much vitality to this novel. My favorite was the Beggarmaster. As his title indicates he managed and took care of an army of beggars. He also, for a price, extended protection to people like the tailors, to people like Dina. He is as powerful as a magistrate and the police know not to mess with him or his people. He sees everyone the same whether they are people missing limbs or people still retaining every body part they came into this world with. He sees the world through the lens of the poor.

”Freaks, that’s what we are--all of us.”... “I mean, every single human being. And who can blame us? What chance do we have, when our beginnings and endings are so freakish? Birth and death--what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it’s freakish, let’s face it.”

The Beggarmaster would have been perfectly at home stepping into a Dickens novel as would many of the characters in this novel. Many reviewers have made comparisons to Charles Dickens and nowhere is it more apparent than in the cast of characters that Rohinton Mistry has assembled. Dickens would have also certainly loved taking on the issue of forced sterilization, the issue of sanitation, the issue of deprivation, and the overreach of a government completely out of touch with the largest majority of their population...the poor.

You will find yourself living with these characters. You will even feel like you are sharing their deprivation through the power of a gifted writer’s words. Success is fleeting. Disaster ever present. Hopelessness is a shadow around everyone’s heart. No one is immune and everyone is walking on the ledge hoping the wind doesn’t blow. The things that matter to them the most are the essential things. The very things the rest of us take for granted.


Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry very well may have written a masterpiece. I want to thank Lynda McCalman for not only recommending it, but also for saying it was her favorite book. I can’t resist when people say a book is their favorite book. So what I would like is for everyone to share their favorite book with me on the comments thread. I will do my best to eventually read every one of them that I haven’t read before. This novel is Highly Recommended!





View all my reviews

Running Down a Dream

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
2009
Reviewed by Diane K.M.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


You don't stop running because you get old; you get old because you stop running.

After hearing my running friends rave about this book for years, I finally got around to reading it. And now I owe them an apology, because I had gotten so sick of being preached at about chia seeds and running barefoot and vegetarianism and ultramarathons that I have been quietly rolling my eyes whenever anyone mentioned this friggin book.

But once I got into the story, all of my eye rolls stopped. Sure, there were a few groans about McDougall's punchy, magazine-writing style that doesn't always translate well to book form, but overall, this was an engrossing read. It covers a motley cast of outdoorsy characters from America and Mexico, including the elite runners of the elusive Tarahumara Indian tribe, several incredible foot races, research on running and training methods, and there is even a captivating digression into how the Bushmen of the Kalahari go hunting.

At its heart, the story is about human endurance, compassion for others, and the theory that our bodies were "born to run." There is a thoughtful chapter on the evolution of homo sapiens from other mammals, and the ways in which the human form is designed to be able to cover an incredible amount of distance.

"Know why people run marathons? Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human -- which means it's a superpower all humans possess."

As mentioned, there are also sections on the nutritional power of chia seeds, vegetarianism, and a training theory that runners should spend more time barefoot to build up their strength. I won't lecture you about any of that as I had found it exhausting when others preached to me (there is a line between enthusiasm and evangelism), but I did find the information interesting and will take it under advisement.

Along the way, McDougall shares his own stories of running injuries and how he found different trainers to teach him ways to run more efficiently and with more joy. Yes, joy.

"How do you flip the internal switch that changes us all back into the Natural Born Runners we once were? Not just in history, but in our own lifetimes. Remember? Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled at to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed all, and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors' backyards ... That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain ... Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else."

The narrative builds to an amazing foot race in the blazing hot Copper Canyons of Mexico, with some top American athletes competing against a group of Tarahumara runners. Friends, I would be lying if I said I made it through that incredible story without getting choked up by the beauty of what happened that day. I could share quotes, but I think you need to read it in context and experience the grit and grace and humanity for yourself.

This book was so inspiring that I vowed to make an effort to go running more often. And I shall run with joy and compassion in my heart.

Lost in the Forrest: An Interview with Forrest Aguirre

Today's guest is Forrest Aguirre, author of Heraclix and Pomp.

The first time I remember seeing your name was for the Leviathan 3 anthology.   How did that come about?
Jeff VanderMeer was then actively running Ministry of Whimsy Press. I had contacted Jeff at one point to let him know just how impressed I was by Stepan Chapman’s The Troika, which I found at my local Borders. As a result of that contact, I joined the Storyville writers’ email group, a group of 15 or so authors and editors, mostly from the UK and the US. Jeff was a part of that group. Through our discussions there, we realized that we had a shared taste in aesthetics. He had already edited Leviathan 1 and 2 with co-editors, and asked if I’d be interested in being a co-editor on Leviathan 3. I had read the first two Leviathans, along with The Troika So I was very excited for the offer and accepted immediately. I really owe it all to Jeff. He mentored me on how to edit and helped me to avoid some of the pitfalls that sometimes plague new editors (who are also writers), giving advice such as “never put your own story in an anthology you’re editing.” I learned a lot from Jeff in that editorial process.

 Some time after that, your short stories started popping up.   Was the transition from editor to short story writer a difficult one?
I had begun writing short stories before editing Leviathan 3, but I was not very good at it. Editing Leviathan 3 helped me a great deal in understanding good story construction and, probably most importantly, the concept of “voice”. When you first start writing you can trip in one of two ways: 1) your writing is so generic that you have no “voice” or 2) the other extreme, where your “voice” gets in the way of a reader’s understanding. Now I had read a lot of fiction before that time and done my share of literary analysis in college, but I hadn’t seriously written fiction until my last year of graduate school. Since I was coming from an academic background, my writerly voice was awfully stilted and overly intellectual. I recall asking Jeff to have a look at a story I had written wherein I had used the word “myriad” a . . . well, a myriad of times. After red-penning that word several times, he simply wrote in the margins “You have to stop using that word!” And he was right. So doing the editing on Leviathan 3 gave me a more keen eye for my own errors, repetitive words, and bad constructions. It wasn’t a difficult transition to move from seeing the errors in other people’s work to honing my stories from the raw mess of a first draft to something more polished.

For those unfortunate souls who are unaware, give us the elevator pitch for Heraclix and Pomp.
Heraclix is a flesh golem, an artificial magical construct made up of the pieces of several dead men. Pomp is a fairy. They are thrust together by their mutual victimization by the Faustian sorcerer, Mowler. Pomp, who is immortal, is nearly killed by Mowler and must face the prospect that she can die. An accident kills Mowler, and Heraclix and Pomp are freed. Now Heraclix is mystified by himself. If he is composed of all these parts, who is he, really. Or, more properly, who was he before dying and being reborn? Underlying all these existential questions is the premise that Mowler might not be so dead, after all and, in fact, he might be striking a deal to seal his own immortality, at the cost of both the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires.

How did you hook up with Resurrection House for Heraclix and Pomp?
Mark Teppo knows my agent, Kris O’higgins. Mark was starting this new endeavor, Resurrection House, and Heraclix & Pomp had caught his eye. He offered, we accepted.

What would you say the big inspirations behind H&P are?
H&P started as a conversation in an apartment building hallway with one of the guys in my old Dungeons and Dragons group. We were talking about how you could run a cool 2-person adventure. I came up with the idea of a flesh golem and a pixie, simply because their respective strengths and weaknesses would complement each other well in the context of the game. That led to a short story, which is now embodied in Chapter 1 of Heraclix & Pomp. I submitted that story to John Joseph Adams, who sent a very nice rejection letter saying that it was on his short list for the anthology he was doing, but that he felt it would be best served with more “breathing room” as a novel. So I considered the end of the chapter and thought “well, what happens next?” This led to the novel. I was heavily influenced by certain music to provide a mood for each character, and that is reflected in the acknowledgements. As far as literary influence goes, there were several, including Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Schacter’s Searching for Memory, Andric’s The Bridge on the Drina, and Guy Davis’ graphic novel The Marquis: Inferno. I have a complete list of “Heraclix & Pomp’s Top 20” at my blog, which spills all the beans. Thematically, I wanted to explore what would happen when an immortal, timeless, and carefree being was suddenly faced with the real possibility of death. And, since I’m reaching middle age, I thought a lot about the role that memory plays in who I am today and how I see myself. But what if I didn’t know my past? How would that affect the way I think, my desires, my actions? And what if I wasn’t who I thought I might be? I’ve changed a lot since my teenage years – my high school classmates would hardly recognize me, not because of physical changes, but because of mental, emotional, and spiritual changes. So these questions were in the back of my mind the whole time I was writing the book.

If there was going to be an animated Heraclix and Pomp movie, whose voices would you use?
Heraclix would have to be Ron Perlman, either animated or live-action. Pomp would be Kate Bush in all her eccentricity that weird, squeaky voice she sang with in the 80s would be perfect for Pomp. Mowler would be voiced by Ian McDiarmad after he had gargled some hot gravel. Porchenskivik, Christopher Lee, the kinder, gentler version. Von Graeb would have to be Benedict Cumberpatch. I'd want the sexiest male voice I could think of, and that's it. For Von Helmutter, Werner Klemperer (Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heros). Remember him? But he’s dead and probably not for hire. Second choice, Richard Griffiths. I'd want Neve Mcintosh as Lady Adelaide, simply because I loved her as Fuchsia in the BBC production of Gormenghast. Mark Hamill could do all the other voices by himself, probably.

Are you into historical fiction?   H&P seems more akin to historical fiction than fantasy at times.
That has more to do with my academic training than anything. I have a Master's in African History from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Truth be told, I haven't read much historical fiction, but I have read a lot of history!

When Forrest Gump was in the theaters, how long did it take you to want to strangle all the people making Forrest Gump jokes at your expense?
What people? Oh, are you talking about the corpses buried in my back yard? In all seriousness, That still happens. My snarky rejoinder is “Oh, ha ha ha ha! I've never heard that one before!” followed by the look of death. Seriously, people, can you come up with something more original?

Who is your favorite author?
Italo Calvino. I wish I could write like Italo Calvino. There's a dainty elegance undercut by a faint hint of cynical irony that I love in his writing. I have several others that I love to read, including Brian Evenson, Thomas Ligotti, Rikki Ducornet, Gene Wolfe, Alistair Reynolds, along with the classics, like Poe and Lovecraft. But Calvino takes my most-favored author slot.

What is your favorite book?
The one I'm writing at the time. It's impossible to pick one book that is my favorite. I have favorites in several sub-genres. For example, Hamlet's Mill is my favorite book on whatever it's on (good luck finding a thesis), while The Roots of Civilization is my favorite work on paleontology and Schacter's Searching for Memory is my favored book on neuroscience. But I'm hard pressed to think of a single non-fiction book that is my absolute favorite. As far as speculative fiction goes, I suppose Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun is my favorite science fiction series. I don't read a ton of fantasy, to be honest, but that Erickson guy has a good thing going so far. My favorite type of books are surreal, with a touch of magic, dark, and philosophical.

What are you reading now?
I just finished reading Hofstadter's Gdel, Escher, Bach, which was grueling and rewarding. Right now I'm reading Mieville's Perdido Street Station. I've read his other stuff, but had missed this one. I had a conversation with him once at a convention where we talked politics for about an hour. Thankfully he didn't ask if I had read it. By the way, China is a gentleman of the best kind. A scholar and a gentleman.

Is there a book that made you want to be a writer?
Yes! Stepan Chapman's The Troika. When I first read it, I was blown away. “People can actually write this cool stuff and get it published?” I said to myself. Apparently, they can.

What's next for Forrest Aguirre?
I am currently working on a science fiction novel tentatively entitled Solistalgia. I'm about 80% done with the first draft. It will need some draconian edits, but I'm pretty happy with the story and the characters, thus far. In the meantime, I'm sure you'll see the occasional short story popping up here and there. I'm also working on a role-playing game supplement that will take a while to get done. I have no illusions about actually making money from it, though, and will probably have to self-publish it as a labor of love. Of course, there's always kickstarter . . .

Any advice for aspiring writers?
Stop surfing the net and start writing. At the very least, take some quiet time to observe the world around you and write the perfect sentence about something or someone that catches your attention. Then build from there.

Heraclix and Pomp

Heraclix & Pomp by Forrest Aguirre
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When his creator is killed, a golem named Heraclix leaves Vienna with a fairy named Pomp in tow in search of answers. Heraclix seeks the former life (or lives) of his constituent body parts and Pomp wants only to understand the human way of life. They travel to the Near East and back again with a short detour to hell. Will they ever find the answers they seek and will they like the answers they get?

Forrest Aguirre has proven himself to be a hoopy frood in recent years so when he asked if I'd read an ARC of his first novel, I could hardly say no.

Heraclix and Pomp brings a lot of different elements to the table. It's part historical fiction, part fantasy, with some political intrigue thrown in. Forrest Aguirre's prose feels like a mix of Peter S. Beagle and Gene Wolfe to me, dense but with a certain poetic beauty to it.

Heraclix, the dour golem, and Pomp, the curious fairy, go from one European locale to the next in their search for answers, encountering ghosts, demons, Turks, Romani, necromancers, as Heraclix slowly pieces together who his body parts used to belong to. Intrigued yet?

Forrest's depiction of Hell was one of my favorite parts of the book. The Lord of the Flies and his minions were pretty grotesque. I wasn't a fan of the political intrigue at first but I was sucked in eventually.

If you're looking for some beautifully-written fantasy that doesn't trod along all the familiar paths, you'll enjoy Heraclix and Pomp. Four out of five stars.



View all my reviews

Countdown City

Countdown City by Ben H. Winters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When retired policeman Henry Palace is approached by his childhood babysitter to track down her missing husband, he's on the case. But with only seventy-seven days until an asteroid crashes into Earth, will he be able to track the missing man down amidst rioting, looters, and the rapidly disintegrating infrastructure?

The second Henry Palace book is even better than the first. It sees Palace riding his ten-speed bicycle all over New Hampshire, looking for a former state trooper that doesn't want to be found in a world with no internet and no phones.

As with the previous volume, the case takes a backseat and the book is really a character study of Henry Palace and the rest of the inhabitants of the world. What would you do with only seventy-seven days to live?

Palace has grown on me quite a bit. His single-mindedness has begun to remind me of another favorite character of mine, Roland the Gunslinger, only Palace's Dark Tower is a missing man named Brett Cavatone. Neither of them like what's at the end of the quest, either. Even Palace isn't sure why he does what he does. Hank Palace has gone from being an overgrown hall monitor to a non-alcoholic version of Matthew Scudder fairly quickly.

The supporting cast is pretty interesting, all good examples of what life in a pre-apocalytpic world must be like. Nico, Palace's sister, was both infuriating and endearing. The college campus/anarchist encampment was both ridiculous and all too likely. I imagine a lot of people would offer services similar to Cortez's if the manure was about to hit the windmill.

Once again, the case was a tough nut to crack. I had no idea what was going on and I really have no idea what's going to happen in the third book. Will the asteroid be deflected after all?

Like The Last Policeman, Countdown City is very self-contained. There's no cliffhanger and you probably wouldn't even need to read the first volume to enjoy it. 4.5 out of five stars.

View all my reviews

Dani Britton Is On the Run in Redemption Key

 
 
 























Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars

In The Widow File: A Thriller, S. G. Redling introduced a young data analyst named Dani Britton who worked for an exclusive and secretive security company near Washington, D.C. One afternoon, while Dani was away from the office, virtually all of her co-workers were murdered in an effort to conceal some of the work that the company was doing. The villains behind the attack on Dani's firm then sent a savage hit man named Tom Booker to finish the job by eliminating Dani. Booker failed in the effort, and both he and Dani wound up badly injured in the course of his attack on her.

Nine months later, Dani is now mostly healed, but she still bears both the physical and psychological scars of the attack. Determined to put her past as far behind her as physically possible, Dani takes a job at a fishing camp called Jinky's on Redemption Key in south Florida. She's basically doing grunt work--cleaning rooms, making repairs, wrangling kayaks and tending bar. She's also vigorously working out, attempting to get back into shape and otherwise trying to keep her head as far down as possible.

A place like Redemption Key naturally attracts a lot of odd, strange and curious characters. Many of them, like Dani, are on the run; not all of them live within the strict confines of the law. The owner of the place where Dani works is a guy named Oren Randolph. Randolph is basically a good guy and a good boss, but he does provide a service to various criminal elements. His fishing camp, far off the beaten track, is an excellent place for people to do deals that they'd rather not consummate in the light of day. For a fee, of course, Randolph provides the meeting room and serves as a facilitator, keeping the peace between and among parties who are not always peaceful and who do not always trust each other.

Dani's area of expertise while working for the security company involved her uncanny ability to "read" people. Randolph soon recognizes her talent in this regard and begins assigning her to tend bar and serve food and drinks at the meetings he's facilitating. She can read the mood of the room and of the meeting participants and help Randolph keep things on an even keel.

Inevitably, though, sooner or later one of these complex negotiations is bound to blow up, causing major problems for everyone involved, Dani included. And when it does finally happen, it couldn't come at a worse time, because other dangerous threats from the life Dani fought so hard to leave behind are suddenly converging on her once again.

It would not be fair to say any more about the plot, but Redling has created here a cast of very intriguing, off-beat characters and dropped them into a well-drawn setting and a riveting story. The tension mounts with every page, and the climax is as unexpected as it is heart-pounding. This is another excellent entry in this young series.

Old Myths As Familiar As An Old Shoe

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Odd and the Frost Giants is such a short and easy read, you'll gulp it down in an instant and be shouting to Neil Gaiman, "Next!"

This is the most childish Gaiman story I've read yet and that's saying something. But it's not saying something as negative as some might take it. Odd... is intended for the kiddies.

It's not a terrible introduction for youngsters into the realm of Norse mythology. In it, a crippled boy meets a few anthropomorphic animals who turn out to be outcast gods, who need this mortal's help in tricking their frost giant enemies so they can get back into Asgard.

Gaiman falls back on very familiar territory for this one, tapping Odin, Thor and his hammer, and the crafty conniver Loki in his usual role of mischief-maker. There is very little new or inventive stuff going on here in this mini adventure. It reads like a tv producer who's taken a classic episode of a popular show, rearranged the scenes a little, and presented it for your viewing pleasure.

And it is a pleasure! It just feels all too familiar.

Unlucky 7

Seven Wives and Seven Prisons by L.A. Abbott
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Some one has said that if any man would faithfully write his autobiography, giving truly his own history and experiences, the ills and joys, the haps and mishaps that had fallen to his lot, he could not fail to make an interesting story." Well Mr. Abbott, I'm not sure that's true for everyone, but it's certainly true for you!

I knew nothing about Seven Wives and Seven Prisons, but with chapter subtitles like "My first and worst wife" and "My own son tries to murder me," it's been a long time since I got this excited about reading a book, and I wasn't disappointed.

In the early-to-mid 1800s, Abbott bounced around the United States northeast from one state to the next, getting married and - more often than not - getting thrown in prison because of that marriage.

"She said she was lonely; she sighed; she smiled, and I was lost."

Says Abbott, "I was a monomaniac on the subject of matrimony" and after reading a mere couple chapters you will believe him through and through.

The man seemed incapable of even looking at a woman without ending up married to her. Not bothering to get a divorce from his first wife caused many of his problems, as - even though he was still married to her - he continued to elope with other women. Dude needed to get his priorities in order. But time and time again, he fell into the same old trap, never seeming to truly learn from his mistakes: "As my readers know by this time, all experience, even the bitterest, was utterly thrown away upon me; I seemed to get out of one scrape only to walk, with my eyes open, straight into another."

Aiding and abetting him was his love of liquor, an underlying sort of disdain for authority and a fancy-free attitude, an almost vagabond's outlook on life. He may not be to blame for these tendencies, as it appears his father had a wayward nature that forced itself on young Abbott's upbringing. As a young man, he started off as an apprentice blacksmith to his father, moving with him here and there upon his father's whim.

And then - BAM! - Abbott just kinda became a doctor. As an author, he doesn't dally on the little details. He speeds up the timeline of his life so much that occasionally important questions like, oh I don't, "how did you become a doctor?" for the most part go unanswered.

After a while I was asking myself, like poor little drugged up David after the dentist on Youtube...

Is this real life?

This guy's life is almost too ridiculous to believe. He reminds me of Candide. All manner of mishap befalls him. At any second I was expecting him to get one of his buttocks chopped off. Granted, stories can sound like legend when only the most interesting highlights over the length of one's life are compiled into one tightly packed narrative. But in the very least, I would guess that Abbott is giving us a biased account of his side of the story, maybe with a dash of fisherman's-tale embellishment.

I've tried to verify the story, but there is scant info on the man. In the end, does it really matter? This is just a hell of a fun story. Read it and enjoy it.


If you're interested, you can find Seven Wives and Seven Prisons for free at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4667

A Morning for Flamingos by James Lee Burke

A Morning for Flamingos
James Lee Burke 


Reviewed by Carol

Recommended for fans of PI mystery

★    ★    ★      1/2

 

With some series, you fall in love with the main characters. Watch with interest as they confront their problems, admire their decisions, root for them during lows, and celebrate the victories. Dave Robicheaux is the protagonist in James Lee Burke’s series of the same name, and I’m not particularly sure I like him (Robicheaux, that is, not Burke). I do know one thing, however–I’m in love with Burke’s ability to bring a setting to life. In fact, if Burke ever leaves the mystery gig and heads into travel writing, I’ll be there in a hot minute:

“It has stopped raining now, and the air was clear and cool, the sky dark except for a lighted band of purple clouds low on the western horizon. I drove through the parking lot to the back of the building, the flattened beer cans and wet oyster shells crunching under my tires, and through the big fan humming in the back wall I could hear the zydeco band pounding it out.” 

In the fourth installment, Robicheaux has returned to a detective position on the New Iberia, Louisiana police force. Unfortunately, soon after his return, he’s wounded in an incident at work. A hospital stay and prolonged recovery causes a resurgence of post-traumatic stress disorder and he finds memories from Vietnam are invading his thoughts. Even after returning to light duty, he continues to struggle with depression until a friend with the DEA suggests going undercover in a drug sting. Robicheaux takes the job despite misgivings, lured by the opportunity for revenge more than any concern about the federal War on Drugs. The job also gives him a chance to work with his former partner, Cletus Purcel, now running a club in New Orleans. Even more challenging, it means infiltrating the mob and getting information on Tony Cardo, aka Tony the Cutter, a rising wiseguy in the Gulf drug trade.


It’s hard to sum up a plot of a mystery without giving too much away, but suffice to say that this is relatively straightforward. In general, Burke’s plots aren’t particularly formulaic, but there does seem to be a particular pattern of conflict within each book. Robicheaux is largely reactive, driven by his demons and his emotion, and alternates between a more idyllic conflict-free existence in the bayou, periods of active self-destruction and periods of depression. Progress and action on the mystery is driven by either his mood or external forces acting on him. Meanwhile, in his personal life, he eventually finds a woman who represents everything he’s missing and then crashes into disappointment when she fails to live up to his expectations. This particular story isn’t as casually violent as others in the series, although there remain a couple of nicely tense action scenes and one gratuitous Godfather moment. There are a couple of plot points that cause wrinkled brow or stretched credulity, and a B story that isn’t integrated as well as it could have been, so it is slightly less satisfying.


Characterization is stellar. I believe Robicheaux exists somewhere out there, although I’m not sure I’d like to spend significant amounts of time with him. I remain especially disappointed that he is so quick to leave his adopted daughter Alafair with friends or family when he’s following one of his cases. Alafair has had extensive loss–her father likely killed by Contras, her mother dead in a plane accident, her ‘adopted’ mother killed. While Dave recognizes this, he still is driven enough by his obsessions to ignore the consequences to leaving her. It is precisely due to Burke’s skill in characterization that I feel such sympathy, and such frustration. It is also interesting witnessing Robicheaux’s dealings with the black people in the book, as there is a degree of emotional complexity that doesn’t easily boil down to categories. While he has some sympathy for a black prisoner, Tee Beau, and his grandmother, later in the story he is very disrespectful of their belief in a black witch-woman. However, Tee Beau is comfortable calling him out on it, which says something for the quality of their relationship: “In one way you like most white folks, Mr. Dave. You don’t hear what a black man saying to you.” Ultimately, it can be sad and tiring to bear witness for Robicheaux; although he is very human with moments of generosity and kindness, I get the exhausted sense I’ve done this before. Burke doesn’t write mysteries quite as much as he writes an exploration of the human spirit in all its contradictions.


Overall, a solid installment in a detective series exploring inner conflict. I’ve already planned for the next, A Stained White Radiance.