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I write fantasy since I don't get out into the real world enough to write contemporary stuff. So welcome to a hermit's eye-view of the writing world.
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Reading this last week has been disappointing. Am reading three books at the moment, none of which is keeping my attention for more than an hour or so. I'm just hooked enough to go back to the book, but none of them is pulling me along for "just one more chapter".
Would you believe they're all thrillers,
books duty-bound to keep me reading in spite of sleep?
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It always feels nice when I managed to complete some writing task for
On the Run. This time it's the sticky notes. They're all incorporated with their chapters. Now I have to go back and revise for my beta readers. It's a tedious process. *grin* But, I'm progressing and am further ahead than my co-readers.
More important. I found the rough idea outline for a short story/novella, Pissing at the Green Onion. Who knew Cahal [from: There Be Demons] was living in Taddledon? I didn't until I found the situation floating floating in a college town. Of course, Taddledon is a major city, but that doesn't mean it lacks a beer scene. Am thinking about a sequel combining the character of the two manuscripts, so plopped Cahal into the short story notes. Managed to add about 300 words for a tentative beginning.
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Did you miss R. S. Belcher's debut novel,
The Six-Gun Tarot, when it first came out?
I know I did. I can't even remember seeing the striking cover in the new books sections of the two bookstores I frequent. Fortunately, the family lending library treated me to the read. Guess New York City stores get to sample more books than the boonies where I live. Not only did the book keep me reading past my bedtime, but it snuck up on me with a lovely, believable steampunk subplot.
The Six-Gun Tarot takes place in Golgotha, Nevada on the other side of the 40 mile Desert from Reno/Virginia City. Belcher gives us one of the most ethnically mixed populations I've encountered in my reading and integrates the various belief systems into a complicated, occult fabric that's one of the most original takes on the western fantasy arcana I've seen. Yeah. The Tarot plays a big part in it.
Belcher develops his characters with extensive flashbacks which almost stand as novellas. Each of the main characters having some occult power or other ... even the supposedly Christian ones ... was just frosting on the read. Through the flashbacks, the reader learns about the acute danger the town faces.
Of course, the wounded hero and his pals must save the sheep like citizens. Sound like the cliches runneth over? Don't believe it. All the characters have odd-ball pains and strengths that will save the people of Golgatha ... if they can only arrive at the pit in time.
So recommended, I've been lending or suggesting the book to all my writer friends, even the ones that don't read fantasy. See excerpt and reviews at
Amazon and
Barnes & Noble.
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Interesting Links
To Blog or Not to Blog. Rachelle Gardner recently posted some interesting comments about effective social media and writers. It all boils down to what you are passionate about. Makes me wonders why I'm blogging. Is it just a marketing myth?
You can read it by clicking here. Care to comment on what you think?
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My Writing Rut
Guess I'm back. Just ran out of steam over the winter doldrums. Medical issues didn't help. Besides I was/am tired of doing
book reviews. Reminded me too much of English classes, I guess.
I'm in the process of revising my whole media presence. keeping Facebook ... because I interact with people I know there as well as having an author page, where it's easy to interact to comments -- when they happen. Yeah, I'm a pipsqueak, but the only media that turned out humanish was Facebook, in spite of all the manipulations.
May continue on Twitter, too, where I have two accounts: a "personal" one and a promotion one. Chances are you're reading this by responding to a tweet.
Oh, yeah. The writing. May have been scarce on social media, but I've been writing. I've finished the draft of On the Run. The 50 page novella turned into a 280 page draft with an entirely different protagonist than the one I started out with. Guess there won't be a sequel to Noticing Jamilla. The short story did give me a better idea of my demons than the outlined world I used in Night for the Gargoyles and There Be Demons, but I guess Cassy Mae will remain a singleton quick read.
Now I'm incorporating all the addenda into the draft so I can get On the Run to my beta readers. Then, I get to go back to edit There Be Demons because the world is more complicated than it was before.
Wasn't going to review Eighth Grave After Dark by Darynda Jones, but the other book I'm enjoying is over 500 pages long and complicated -- and I'm helping my old man learn enough Word so he can transfer his written memoir into a computer. Not that Eighth Grave is an unworthy read. But ... *shrug* Yah only can do so much in a week, especially when you're in the winter doldrums.
Do you get the idea my feelings on Jones' series are mixed?
The few urban fantasy books of hers I've read have great, action-filled plot lines. Jones has built up a cast of interesting, revolving characters who usually do intriguing things to push and pull the plot along. Then, there's a main character, Charley aka Charlotte, who I find about as mature as my fourteen-year-old granddaughter, which is especially annoying to me after the revelations in Eighth Grave After Dark. She's going to be responsible for saving the world from Satan ... when she's got the hots and is married to the Son of Satan?
A lot is going on in Eighth Grave After Dark. Charley, who is terminally pregnant with the child phophecised to off Satan to prevent the end of the world, is hosting a wedding for her assistant to her uncle in the confines of an abandoned convent because twelve hell hounds lurk on the boundaries, waiting to rip Charley's throat out so said child won't be born.
Yeah, complicated. But that's not the only thing going on in the book. Huge numbers of ghosts are gathering on the convent grounds, including a mysterious nun who refuses to talk to Charley. The wedding goes off with all sorts of weird relatives gathering, including Charely's stepmother who made her childhood miserable. Said Son of Satan is acting strangely. Charley has contacted the parents he was kidnapped from in spite of his forbidding her to contact them. Oh, did a mention the FBI comes to her for help in locating a kidnapped neice of one of the agents?
And that's only the first third of the book.
If you're a writer, I recommend you get the series and map out what the main secondary characters do in each book. You'll get a great idea on how to squeeze the most out of the characters you create. On the other hand, I recommend you pick a grown up for your main character unless you're writing young adult or children's books. I really got tired of reading Charley make one dumb decision after another, especially when she was putting her child in danger by being an adolescent idiot.
Yeah, I'm recommending the book because it's so entertaining. The craftsmanship is outstanding too. I don't think the pace slowed down much more than to give the reader a chance to absorb the next facts -- though sometimes these were confusing. The book left me wondering why a character couldn't be snarky and grown-up at the same time.
This review getting posted "late" is just another example of my
winter doldrums.
Enjoy the typos.
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My Writing Rut
Got a lesson on why taking a break from your writing can be beneficial. Took a look at the
"chapter" I was trying to fit into the current version of On the Run and realized why the action wouldn't fit. The fact that the main character was called "Cass" should have been a clue. Yeah, I'm still back tracking ... but I think I'm making the manuscript more coherent.
I hope.
Still, I'm in the doldrums though ... but now its the marketing of my short stories which seem to be getting ignored.
Am wondering how often your give up on a favorite author/series because the last book Bored You.
I lose interest in books I'm reading all the time. Often, I miss a following book because the I didn't finish the previous book in a series because my interest wandered, ie another book stole it.
Sometimes, I think even publishers seem to get bored with long running series and try to mix things up a bit. Think Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery series might be an example. Or, maybe I'm just digging for an excuse why I've missed a couple books because I didn't see them in mass paperback. Still, the Pitt mysteries, totaling more than thirty, are running strong if their rankings are any measure.
Yeah, I ended up reading a trade paperback. When I sent the trade pile to the store, I stumbled over some copies of Perry's newer Victorian mysteries while I waited for my credit. Haven't read the Monk one yet, but I rushed to read the Pitt one,
Midnight at Marble Arch -- mostly because Aunt Vespasia is one of my favorite characters. I wasn't disappointed.
In Midnight at Marble Arch, Perry explores the sexual mores and the privileges of rank when several proper young ladies are raped by a rich banker's son, including the daughter of the Portuguese ambassador. Then, there's the seemingly unrelated rape/death of a society matron. Pitt is settling in with his new promotion to the Special Branch [a political arm of the government] ...and is nostalgic for the simpler days when he was solving murders and other crimes. Charlotte is regaining her society chops but hasn't lost her fearlessness or compassion -- though she doesn't do much active sleuthing in this book. Pitt learns the identity of the privileged perp early in the book, and the problem becomes bringing him to justice, especially after an innocent man is convicted of the similar crime.
Relationships -- both personal and societal -- are the keystones in Anne Perry's mysteries. In fact, they take the plot lines in new directions in this book. Don't think the hinted attraction between Charlotte and Narraway, Pitt former boss in the Special Branch, had much traction for others as well as me. Perry seems to opening up the story lines with the Pitts' matturing children and a romance between Vespasia and Narraway. That the latter possibility has me intrigued enough to go looking for the next in the series ... provided it isn't a hard back. [They cost too much and hurt my thumbs when reading for much longer than a chapter.]
Recommended. First, mostly because of Perry's socio-political chops. She gives as good a feeling for the Victorian age as Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey did/does for the Edwardian period, especially the conforming mindsets of the better classes. The moralizing got a little tedious, but I skipped that. Second, because her plot lines are complex and intriguing. Plus, interesting subplots featuring ongoing characters with different problems, including boredom.
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My Writing Rut
Writing?
Did I hear you say writing?
My brain still hasn't pushed into gear. It's not like I've writing block. I keep acquiring sticky notes. But I don't seem to be getting words added to my new chapters. Maybe the stock market has me reading more financial newsletters than cleaning off my email? Maybe I'm just feeling lazy? S. A. D. syndrom? Quien sabe?
Whatever. I'm not promoting my aging short stories. I'm not writing new short stories. I'm not working on On the Run. I'm not editing any of the manuscripts in my computer. I am watching the birds at the feeder.
I'm also setting up my old man a computer so he can transfer the handwritten notes of his memoir into a computer. Must say Windows 10 is much easier on the eyes than 8. In fact, Windows 8 is one of the main reason after costs that I have gotten a smartphone.
Hope your new endeavors are progressing faster.
First:
Back at the Salt Mines?
Hope you all enjoyed the holidays --
which ever ones you celebrate.
Guess I'm showing my northern hemisphere bias in thinking
the dark time of year is a good time to party.
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Dipped into the to-read pile a lot over the holidays. One of the most enjoyable reads was Alma's Alexander's The Hidden Queen. Think the book languished there for years because I looked at the jacket and went "eh". How many books have you read about a lost princess whose throne was usurped by an unworthy pretender?. Thought I read it all before, but I'm still trying to get rid of the piles of book laying around. So, I gave the book its try and was hooked.
The book quickly moves from the battlefield where the king, Red Dynan, is killed with nine-year-old Anghara, his legitimate heir who also possesses the magical Sight that sustains the kingdom, surviving back at the palace. But she has a grown half-brother, Sif, who takes control of the army and sets his sights on becoming king even though he doesn't possess the Sight. Anghara is spirited from the palace by loyal retainers and fostered by obscure members of her mother's family. Several years later, she is betrayed by a jealous relative after she unwittingly displays her growing powers. The result is a pogrom where Sif uses genocide to rid his country of any magical influences. Anghara escapes over the border into a hostile desert land where she homes her powers.The plot line's a cliche. So why was I hooked?
First Plus. The book is more than another medieval Europe rehash with an overlay of magic. A good part of the book takes place in a desert culture well-flavored by Silk Road nuances where the main character's magic is tempered. At all stages of her journey back to her throne, Anghara is supported by nicely rounded characters.
Second Plus. The book's told from several points of view which adds layers of complications to the plot as Anghara struggles to survive long enough to control her magical powers.
Third Plus. The sensory detail of Alexander's writing is lush to say the least and all her characters well motivated.
The big negative. The Hidden Queen ends with her decision to return to reclaim her country. There is a sequel but it is not readily available. Still, I recommend it if you run across The Hidden Queen in a used book store. It was published in 2009. It's a well-orchestrated read.
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Didn't really write much over the holidays.
Just reread a bunch of books
because I enjoyed them the first or fourth time around.
Nothing like lazing around and talking to visiting relatives.
'Tis the season to make merry.
And I wish you lots of fun and joy during the season
without too much hassle.
On the other hand, we've been going though some minor, but time consuming, health hassles, and I won't be blogging for a few weeks. Tried to keep going the previous couple weeks. But. I've found I don't have the energy to juggle everything.
Slow writing week, but I managed to read three books -- given added reading time while waiting for the Christmas cookies [gifts] to bake. Skimmed one book with flat character development but got drawn in by two Yasmine Galenorn books. Flight from Death won my reading derby this week because I thought the characters were more original, even though it's an Otherworld spin off. Maybe because Flight is complicated ghost story featuring a dragon and the other book felt like a predictable urban fantasy.
Galenorn has a talent for creating three dimensional characters. She layers enough quirks and problems on her characters to make them live and breath. More important, their quirks add to the twists, turns, and suspense of the plot--even when the lsupernaturals land well within fantasy norms. Yeah. Galenorn's characters break cliches.
What's more, even her secondary characters stand out as individuals. One example, the all important lore-resource character has flaws that both make him more likable and ratchet up the danger in the plot line when he makes mistakes in judgement So, much for the all-wise guru. [Sorry if you think that's a spoiler.]
Imagine. Shimmer, an orphan blue dragon exiled to the earth plane without most of her magic for a stupid adolescent-type prank/revenge on a bully, must survive in a world where supernaturals are tolerated on the edges. So, she broke the rules in a society that favors clan, lineage, and wealth above all. But being indentured to a vampire private investigator?????? I really liked that twist. The kid's definitely an underdog, errrr under dragon.
Flight from Death the the first in a new series for Galenorn. Loosely set in the Seattle of her Otherworlds fae/multi-sup series, it looks like she is letting the book gets its legs under it without playing into the previous saving-the-world-from- the-nasties plot. The book takes us to Port Townsend, Washington where ghosts riddle the town, including the house where a former vampire friend of the boss wants to open a bed and breakfast for supes. Only there is something nastier than discontented ghosts haunting the place, and Shimmer proves she more than just another urban fantasy pretty face with attitude.
Liked that Galenorn managed to recycle her Otherworld world so it felt new rather than a rehash.
Recommended. Oh, I felt there were a few missteps where Shimmer exhibited fad/fashion knowledge too subtle for the length of time she'd spent on earth, but these were minor glitches. Overall, the read gallops. A great start for a new series with an intelligent protagonist.
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My Writing Rut
What writing?
Granted I revised an originally drafted chapter to fit the Pillar, the current main character of On the Run. Since I had two such chapters in the que, it should've been a breeze to pound out both of them last week. Didn't get that done. Can only blame baking cookies. At least, I spend very little time in stores trying to find gifts for family.
Still, it feels good to finally be using material written last spring when I had an entirely different main character for On the Run.
By:
M. K. Theodoratus,
on 11/30/2015
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Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya is a classic coming of age story filled with magical realism, where magic is part of the fabric of the normal world touching everyone. That the writing itself is magical is just another literary dimension -- and enjoyment. I could almost see a Jesuit nodding, like a deus machina, in agreement as Antonio, the protagonist, begins to weave various threads gathered from the world around him into who he will become as an adult, making the decisions that favor one possibility over another. But then, I'm weird.
How weird? I actually miss the summer evenings when the neighborhood ladies, about 3 to 6 depending on the day, would gather after supper and chat -- before TV arrived -- on rotating porch steps. Think teens miss a lot by not hanging on the edges and listening to the mothers chat about the news [gossip] and the events of the day.
Bless Me Ultima takes place in similar times...before TV, in New Mexico at the end of World War II when Hispanic hamlets were mostly separate from Anglo world, but that didn't mean that conflict didn't exist. The Hispanics separated themselves into different cultural groups too -- those of the plains who herded cattle and farmers, religious and non-religious, traditionalist and more modern. Antonio's parents were rooted in different ways of organizing their lives, between the freedom of the plains and the structure of the farm. Antonio's family was also isolated from the rest of the village by a river because the father grew up on the plains and preferred the freedom of the wind to being cloistered in town.
All of the above elements create the conflict in six/seven-year-old Antonio's life, and come to a head when the local, elderly curandera, Ultima, comes to live with them -- because the old lady had saved Antonio's mother's life in childbirth, a much more risky endeavor back then, and the family felt obligated to her. Bless Me Ultima chronicles Anotonio's growing awareness of the world around him and how he balances all the elements against the happenings at school, preparing for his First Communion, and the traditions of his people.
Highly recommended if you haven't read this classic before. I had forgotten how beautifully written the book is. More to my mind, I kept thinking of the imaginary Jesuit sitting in the background, muttering I get him as a priest when he grows up. No such luck, I think. Yeah, a great coming to awareness novel.
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My Writing Rut
Took it easy this week with Thanksgiving and all. Just spent time "back and forthing", adding bits and
On the Run where they were needed, I think. I won't know for sure until I get an ending on it and printed out to actually look at what I wrote. Yeah, my old-fartism [or should I be polite and say "old ladyism"?] influences how I write. I really like looking at screens less and less.
Also added bits and pieces to several possible short pieces --
Trapper Tremaine, Trial by Lies [set in the early days of Andor], Renna's tales about the early days among the Far Isles Half-Elven, and a sequel to
The Ghostcrow. Who knows which one will jell first? Of course, I could do a loop-de-loop and do something entirely different, finish up
Black Tail's War, a sequel to
Troublesome Neighbors.Or, I could finish the revisions of There Be Demons,
the first of the Demon Trilogy.
Do I dare think of starting something new from scratch?
Perish the thought.
Feel like I'm sitting in the middle of a puddle of words.
By:
M. K. Theodoratus,
on 11/23/2015
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Decided to review on the odd side this week, the last of the Odd Thomas series--Saint Odd, by Dean Koontz. When I picked up the first book, I first thought, "Interesting. Koontz is writing about an idiot savant. Might be interesting."
Koontz had me hooked by the second or third chapter. Definitely by the time Odd was on the run. The abandoned hotel is one of the scariest settings I've encountered. It's still in my mind several years later.
Scary, supernatural "things" or is that "entities" are the norm in Odd Thomas life as he weaves a path between the good and evil, building mystical skills beyond his ability to see ghosts and mourning his lost love who was killed in a terrorist attack at a shopping mall, even though they are destined to "be together forever". Yeah, Odd Thomas suffers from "survivor's guilt".
Koontz uses a very narrow, first person point of view in the Odd stories. The reader knows nothing but what Odd tells them. Fortunately, Odd is a minute observer while he wonders about people, things, and the supernatural. I won't go into the technical aspects of Koontz's writing. He's a master, and the construction of the novel is masterful, even if he did leave a huge number of dangling loose ends.
The hallmark of a Koontz story is action. In Saint Odd, the villains are chasing Odd from the get-go as he tries to sneak back to the town he left because something significant's going to happen. More important, I think, is Odd's distinction between "killing" and "murder". Odd Thomas is the good guy, but he only ends a human life to save himself or other innocents. Murder is the killing for selfish purposes. For some reason, that thought keeps bubbling up to the surface of my mind. So, I'll consider it profound.
Definitely recommended Saint Odd, but you might want to read some of the other books in the series if you haven't done so, especially the previous volume. An epic tale of good vs evil. Granted it gets a little boring when good wins, but that's what we're rooting for. Right? Too bad it's the end of the series. But, there is the possibility of a continuation if Koontz every gets around to it. Meh.
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Interesting Link
Cate Hogan, a writer/editor of romance novels, recently posted an article on
8 useful tools for writers , information that can improve writer's communications and money making ability. The tips also apply to anyone who emails a lot. I realize emails are a little old fashioned in this day of smartphones. But, when I want to "talk" to people, I prefer the amount of information I can convey via emails as opposed to texting.
Of, course, I could write a letter... ... ...
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My Writing Rut
Ended up backtracking last week. Added another chapter to
On the Run where Pillar learn moreabout her past and her abilities.
Sigh.
Maybe I'm done with the academy now and can get on to Nate. Not really much to say. I've been under the weather and just didn't have the energy to stare at the computer as long as usual. For some reason, I don't feel the enthusiasm I felt last week. At least, I'm getting back to the part of the story I wrote last Spring. And then, I have to have the showdown with the demon -- about which I don't have a clue outside of the brief description of the aftermath when Nate gather's up Pillar's pieces.
By:
M. K. Theodoratus,
on 11/16/2015
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The to-read pile rewarded me again. This time with Nora Roberts' Divine Evil. Don't know why I don't read her books more often. Her mystery and paranormal ones keep me reading, and I know there is one trilogy on my keeper/reread shelves, though I can't remember which one it is other than it's the haunting of a small town by a spirit of pure evil trying to break through into our dimension.
Yeah, there are three romances connected to the battle, but they carry the substance of real relationships.
I think I just surprised myself. Makes me wonder, even more, why I don't read more of Roberts' books. I usually pick them up as a last resort in used bookstores when I want to buy something to help the owners' cash flow.
Divine Evil gives readers another example that returning to your home town can be dangerous to your health...even though a gorgeous hunk is waiting to fall in love with you again. I can be snide here because the book is not a romance, whatever Roberts reputation might lead a readier to think. This is a horror cross-over. It's dark, violent, and gory. I say this because the ritual killings happen on scene, though Roberts doesn't concentrate on the gore, just people's reactions to the aftermath. Some might think the violence excessive. I'd say it primes the fear pump and make the reader care more for the protagonist because her possible fate is known, not suggested.
Clare Kimbal has achieved fame as an upcoming sculptor, but she returns to her home town to confront the nightmares that have haunted her since her childhood -- after witnessing a mysterious ritual in a forest and discovering her father's body after his suicide. As Clare settles in, she becomes the target of the leader of the local evil worshiping cult. The tension between the two sides makes the book, but more important, the fast, twisting plot line is a lot more complicated with the secondary characters adding their own twists.
Oh. How fast does the plot move? Fast enough that the 500 pages felt more like the usual 300-50.
Characters? Nicely done ... Roberts' skills really shine when she contrasts the leader of the cult's public persona versus his cult one. The depiction of Clare carries the book well, but Roberts integrates the relationships and motivations of the secondary characters to add depth to the story line.
The setting is a nice little small town, but Roberts makes the case that it's better for your health to stay out of them. All to often dangerous evil lurks under the their calm veneers.
Recommended because the book has more substance to it that it first seems because the villain isn't the villain the reader thinks it is. Gotta love a book that takes care of the threat but leaves an open ending for mayhem in the future.
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An Interesting Link
Have you noticed all the new interest in the Harry Potter series lately. I was surprised when it rose to the top of the New York Times series listings again. People must be getting excited about the upcoming play. Anyway, T P Keane wrote a fun blog
on creating a Hogwarts ambiance at home. You might want to take a look if you're the artsy/crafty type or have a birthday party coming up for a fantasy reader. -- Seems like she's been doing a series on creating signature items that might even make some nice presents.
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My Writing RutSurprise. Surprise!
I completed two chapters of
On the Run last week, finishing the Academy part of the book. Pillar is turning out to be more than I thought. In fact, my next chapter is returning to Grylerrque's viewpoint. I know someone's going to complain about the difficulty of my demon names, but I think the name is close enough to Albuquerque to fly.
I'm still in the drafting stage. But it's nice to see the ending in sight ... like maybe before Christmas. Yeah, I've already started to collect huts for the Christmas baking.
Really like exploring the lives of my characters rather than posting stuff all over the web. Will keep up on Facebook -- if only because I don't want to miss any of the the new Bloom County strips by Berk Breathed. Yeah, the gang is taking on the foibles of our modern times, including two spaces after a punctuation.
Check out the new strip here.
Decided to indulge in some softer mysteries this week. After tossing a couple cozies on the trade pile, I ended up with a historical: Lou Jane Temple's The Spice Box.
My reward was seeing several inches of wall underneath the picture hanging over three to-read piles. It's still white. I was beginning to wonder. [Who knows? Gremlins might have snuck in and painted it a different color.]
The Spice Box focus's on the Irish experience in New York City of the 1860s ... where a former street rat, Bridget Heaney, is achieving her ambition to become a chef when she is employed by a prominent Sephardic Jewish department store owner. Things turn south when she finds her employer's son's body in the dough box [a large cupboard where bread dough is put to rise]. The book was off and strolling through enough twists and turns to make the story line interesting, if somewhat unbelievable.
Yeah. The book sometimes felt anachronistic, but is readable. More and more women were breaking out of their "little women" stereotypes. I don't think I'm being insensitive, but the protagonist felt a little too modern to my expectations. I also thought the sub-plot of searching for her long missing sister felt like an after thought and the renewed relationship between the two sisters rushed. But it did bring the book to an end and threw a sop to the cooking theme of the mystery.
Never heard of Lou Jane Temple before, but she has quite a few books under her name, released by a major publisher. Guess she sold a few even though she hasn't garnered as many reviews as other popular mystery writers. The book was published in 2005 so she operated in a different environment than today. So, I'm guessing there was a copy editor checking for facts so my feelings about anachronisms may be off the mark.
The plot line was better developed than the characters. Other than the main character, not enough of the other characters had enough quirks to round them out. But they did their duty in carrying the plot along. Can't complain too much.
Recommended, +/-. Some of the history bothered me, and I kept waiting for the characters to break out of their stereotypes. But I was too lazy to check the background or just too busy. Still, the book kept me reading. I give it a pass since the other two books I started ended up on the trade pile without getting finished.
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Interesting Links
Folklore has writers needing coffee like vampires need blood. "Ilona Andrews" of the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series blogged about her coffee troubles recently,
The Keurig Quit. Must say she reinforced my perceptions of the machine...besides the fact they're expensive to use unless you get those little re-useable containers to old the coffee like some cheapskates I know.
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My Writing Rut
On the Run has another chapter down ... at least until I start revising. Amazing what concentrating on dialog can do to speed my writing pace. Of course, the setting and tags limp along or are absent, but I guess something has to be sacrificed in the name of speed. Tried to get those mended over the week-end, but too many extraneous things happened. Of course, I could stop editing was I write ... but ideas keep popping into my head about the characters as I write.
Sounds like I make more excuses for slow writing than actually writing.
Still, haven't gotten to my website. It must be feeling as much an orphan as Bridget Heaney. Maybe next week.
Still, haven't gotten to any of my short story outlines...
.
Picked up William C. Dietz's Redzone: The Mutant Files off the to-read pile and rocketed off to the days of yester-year when my reading was confined to comic books -- because my teachers had convinced me I couldn't read. Don't know why the book was there. It's not the kind of book I usually read. But, if you want a thriller filled with action, the book won't disappoint.
Redzone isn't just another dystopian novel, set after a bioterrorist killed off most of humanity and turned a sizable portion of the survivors into despised mutants. Political boundaries have realigned with Pacifica, along the west coast of the US, for normal people. Nevada-Utah-Arizona has become a land controlled by mutants. Casandra Lee, a detective with the Los Angeles police, travels into the redzone where mutants are in control to seek her missing mother. That the story does this in the middle of a serial murder investigation feels weird, but Lee lands in an assassins sights, which ups the action. Thrills are the goal here, not logic, I guess.
Casandra Lee isn't the usual dysfunctional detective with a drinking problem. She tends to kill suspects at a faster rate than normal, but then, she is attacked more often than most cops. Lee's the target of two would-be assassins, the group of mutants, who follow her back to LA from Nevada, and the Bonebreaker, the serial cop killer the department had mobilized to capture. Yeah, for the record, Lee will be is next victim, but that villain doesn't seem to be in any hurry.
Character development isn't the strongest point in action thrillers. Yet most of Dieitz's characters come across as people rather than space-fillers. Lee is a sassy, kick-ass, intelligent protagonist with a temper that gets her into trouble as often as not. Sounds like a cliche, but I didn't think so while I was reading. The support characters were believable, too, if standard, including a love interest.
The medical basis of the plague that created the mutants bothered me a bit.
Yah gotta be remarkable to survive for fourteen books. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child persevere by writing about murder most ingenious, so ingenious that their main sleuth, Aloysius Pendergast almost didn't survive this book. Yeah. Obviously, I kept reading Blue Labyrinth. It's a complex mystery filled with arcane lore by accomplished masters of the art.
What's not to like, besides the chilling spook factor, common in most of the Pendergast books. It barely registers in this volume? The book concentrates on fast moving twists and turns between two interrelated murders of the mundane kind.
Turns out Pendergast's fabulous fortune is based on a grandfather's lethal patent medicine, and the main villain seeks revenge on Pendergast. Sounds like a simple enough except for all those twists and turns. Plus, the secondary characters get to shine as they put the pieces of the puzzle together to save a cantankerous friend and mentor.
Yeah, super sleuth Pendergast is brought low by an villain seeking revenge for crimes he didn't personally commit, but I thought the writers a little too coy. I felt they took too long to introduce the mastermind. You have a super obsessive behavior here, ready to carry revenge unto the third and fourth generations. I would have liked more details on the ultimate villain in this episode of Pendergast's dealings. The authors gave the villain way to short a shrift.
On the plus side, I didn't get annoyed that the book was 500+ pages. I'm guessing that super-short chapters do speed up the reading of a book. Granted you still read in information-arcs, but they seem to speed along, helped by action and questions and unsuspected murders and with the clues buried in the vaults of the New York Museum of Natural History. [It's inspiration is one of our must-sees when we go to New York City.] Anthropology gets as good of PR from Preston & Child as Aaron Elkins gives forensics.
This story is character driven with the secondary characters given important roles in the sleuthing. Granted I always feel that Pendergast is a little too invincible to be true, but the team makes the "hero" super vulnerable in Labyrinth, leaving the other characters to solve the conundrums of fast-paced, twisting plot.
Highly recommended. Make sure you block out good-sized reading sessions because the odds are this book won't have you reading "one more chapter" past your bedtime, but five or six or more. The time adds up even if the chapters are short.
Read excerpts and more reviews of Blue Labyrinth on
Amazon and
B&N Nook.
There's also sample chapters of
Crimson Shore, the next book in the series.
~~#~~
My Writing Rut
Ta Dah!
Would you believe I got my demon attack on the Beccon Academy first-drafted? Heh. Heh. I'm not going to tell you what happened, other than Pillar survived. Soon she'll be on the road again. Excuse me while I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.
May have to change the cover for On the Run. Found this lovely picture of a house that's almost perfect for the book's middle. Just thought I'd share it to show how I waste time on the internet. Need to get an ending on the book before I try to fiddle with anything else. Yeah it's going to be another demon fight, but she soon meets an ally.
Good thing I liked the only book I read last week. [I read the magazines I didn't read last week while tangled in volcanic Armageddon.]
Yeaht, I wondered if I'd have anything to review. While the big, bold "Demon" in the title first drew my attention and the opening plot point set an eerie situation, I wasn't finding Diana Rowland's demons captivating.
For almost a third of the book I was thinking I deserved the let down for jumping into the middle of a series. Yeah, I knew the book was part of a series because the blurbs told me so. Secrets of the Demon turned out to be the third book in Kara Gillian's story of coming to grips with her arcane abilities.
Fortunately Gillian is a homicide detective, and the cop part of the story kept me reading--especially after it became the focus of the book rather than what Gillian should do with her demon lord lover. And no, the demon secrets don't really pertain to the demon lord. It's all tangled up in how the plot points twist and turn.
Secrets of the Demon is an urban fantasy with light romantic overtones. Gillian has problems with human guys, who may or may not be demons, as well as with her demon lord...and doesn't quite resolve them. Rowland depicts the dilemma in realistic terms so Gillian feels like a real person trying to sort through her relationships. She does resolve the mystery in rip-roaring fashion which kept me reading beyond midnight.
Really liked Kara Gillian as a character. She'd be someone I'd enjoy having coffee with. I wouldn't have to censor my thoughts as much as I usually do. Besides a raucous sense of humor, she smart and thinks fast on her feet. Her arcane abilities are treated more like a pain in the arse than a wondrous superpower. Rowland's nicely rounded secondary characters take on personalities of their own rather than being cardboard plot point stand-ins too.
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