POD People

Review -- Patient Zero

2012-01-25T14:51:00.005Z

Author: Jim Beck
Genre: Zombie
Price: $2.99
Pages: Kindle
ASIN: B005STSYXS
Publisher: Black Rooster Creations
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

I don't read many zombie stories unless they have some profound socio-political edge to them or are just plain different. Last one I read was Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which was brilliant. In most zombie stories, the zombies are more or less irrelevant, a nuisance to be dealt with so we can focus on the real story, which is about the characters and how they deal with life under duress. In Beck's Patient Zero, we have poor Bob. Bob has a tumor and has opted for an experimental procedure to remove it. Bob dies during the procedure, and the Zombie virus is born. The whole procedure/virus/mutation scenario was an interesting and believable one.

But what makes this flesh eating tale a bit different is that the story is told from the point of view of the virus. It's a callous and uncompromising point of view, but then again, it is a virus. It sort of reminded me of Jeff Lindsay's Dexter in The Dark, in which entire chapters were devoted exclusively to the point of view of Dexter's dark passenger, which also seemed virus like in its ancient physiology. Aside from the point of view here, the rest of Beck's story is pretty standard zombie fare. Bob will eventually become a zombie, and his son might just have to blow his brains out. Readers will be able to connect with Bob, such a sad sack of a troubled man who never seems to get dealt any luck in life, and even though the point of view is a detached one, often over the course of the story, we get the impression that the virus feels bad for Bob too.

This was a short, enjoyable read, though my Kindle file seemed to have some paragraph formatting issues.

Createspace discontinues Pro Plan

2012-01-24T23:32:00.001Z

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Createspace has announced the end of Pro Plan:

:"We're happy to announce that Pro Plan has been discontinued and now it's free for ALL CreateSpace authors to receive the higher royalty payouts and lower pricing on owner orders that was previously available through Pro Plan! Any existing books that were previously on the Standard Plan and new books that you set up will automatically receive the benefit of improved royalty payouts and lower unit costs on orders."

Good news for anyone, except those who recently paid for Pro Plan.

REVIEW: Saucerers and Gondoliers

2012-01-09T19:57:00.002Z

Title: Saucerers and Gondoliers
Author: Dominic Green
Genre: science fiction (young adult)
Price: $0.99
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
ASIN: B005OD71EQ
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

The “back of the book” blurb for Saucerers and Gondoliers says, “Flying saucers do not land in country parks. They are not piloted by Englishmen. They do not bear nameplates saying "HAWKER SIDDELEY AVIATION." And they are never, ever filled with smuggled catering packs of Monster Munch.”

Well, except for the flying saucers of Dominic Green’s newly-released book, they don’t. The book, written in the same spirit as 1980s “Doctor Who,” complete with a British Brigadier (well, Commodore, which is the RAF equivalent) has all that and more. The story is that of Ant and his friend, girl, Cleo, a pair of modern 12-and-a-half-year-olds who come across the Hawker Siddeley flying saucer in an English forest. For a variety of reasons, they get abducted, and end up arriving at an “American” colony called New Dixie.

It seems that, in 1947, the Americans discovered flying saucer technology. This was shared with the British and stolen by the Russians, and the three parties set up secret programs to exploit said technology, secret even to US Presidents and Soviet Premiers. These programs created colonies, a group of which broke away from Earth. Now, the colonies send saucers back to Earth to steal supplies, including packages of crisps. (I think that’s British for French fries.)

So, the premise is a bit out there, and much of the science doesn’t withstand a hard look, but darned if Saucerers and Gondoliers isn’t a fun romp. Mr. Green has a very British sense of humor, which colors the book. I suspect that “smart” kids will like that (I did when I was the target age for this book). There is a bit of redeeming social virtue in Saucerers – Cleo is black while Ant is white, a fact that confuses the local New Dixie-ites. At any rate, I found Saucerers a perfectly enjoyable short romp.

8/10

REVIEW: Escaping Reality Without Really Trying

2011-12-30T02:52:00.003Z

Title: Escaping from Reality Without Really Trying
Author: Robert Jacoby
Genre: memoirs
Price: $17.95 (paperback) $9.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: Cloud Books
ISBN: 978-0615434896
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

As an ex-Navy man, when Robert Jacoby queried POD People about his book, Escaping Reality Without Really Trying, subtitled “40 Years of High Seas Travels and Lowbrow Tales,” I had to request it for review. The book proved to be an interesting read.

The book is the story of “Ronnie,” a 40-year veteran of the US Merchant Marine. It’s written in an extremely conversational tone, as if Ronnie is sitting across the bar from you (if you know Ronnie, this would have to be at a bar, bordello or at least with a bottle in hand) telling you all his old sea stories.

I have to say, Ronnie either has an encyclopedic memory or some kind of log book, because he remembers every ship and every captain he served under. I also have to tell you that Ronnie considers his true occupation as drinking, screwing hookers as a second job, and working on a ship as a hobby. All of this does not make for a tale to be read at your local Sunday School picnic. But then sailors are rarely seen at Sunday School, so it all works out in the end.

As a work of literature, Escaping Reality is somewhat unique. There is no plot, merely a long string of anecdotes of Ronnie and his various escapades. Most of the anecdotes are interesting, including his two weeks as a stowaway on a British merchant ship, sailing into Cambodia while we were bombing it during the Vietnam War, and more shipboard and pier side shenanigans then one can shake a stick at.

I personally found the exhaustive length of the book, well, a bit exhausting. At 526 pages, this is not a quick read. In my personal case, having been to sea as a working mariner myself, I wasn’t terribly shocked or surprised by Ronnie’s exploits. Had I been writing Escaping Reality, I would have made a tighter work. But that’s me, speaking from having done a few of the things Ronnie’s done. If you haven’t been to sea (and no, riding a Carnival Fun Ship does not count) your mileage will vary. If you are interesting in learning what life in the Merchant Marine is really like, or just want to escape your cubicle, then I can highly recommend Escaping Reality.

Rating: 7/10

D-pressing

2011-12-15T18:55:00.000Z

Dymock's was called on their self-publishing contract which grabs all right to a work (including subsidiary) for life of copyright. Their response seems to have been to make the contract harder to understand, but not actually change it.

2011-12-09T20:11:00.003Z

Title: Morgue for Whores
Author: Roy Edroso
Genre: mystery
Price: $2.99 (Nook or Smashwords)
Publisher: Smashwords
ISBN: N/A
Point of Sale: Barnes & Noble SmashwordsReviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Roy Edroso is a freelance writer in New York, and enjoys a modest amount of fame writing a left-leaning blog. Back in 2008, he got a deal to publish his first novel, the modern hardboiled Morgue for Whores. Alas, the publishing house he signed with went bankrupt, so he eventually decided to e-publish the book. Since I read his blog, I decided to buy the book.

The book is the story of Jim Berends, a Brooklyn-ite with a dead-end IT job, no serious relationships and a bit of a drinking problem. Well, Jim didn’t think he had a drinking problem – he got drunk, passed out and woke up the next day. Then Jim wakes up from a drunk with a pair of dead and naked bodies in his apartment. Jim decides to ditch the bodies instead of calling the police. This proves especially problematic when an additional body shows up.

The rest of the plot of Morgue for Whores is Jim’s quest to figure out where the bodies are coming from. This being a modern hardboiled novel, a fair amount of sex and violence are involved in the process. The book is by no means torture porn, but neither is it for younger or sensitive readers.

For the suitable audience, Morgue is an entertaining read. Edroso wrote the book in first person, which is deceptively difficult, but in this case works well. The narrator is a witty sort, while being an appropriate mixture of self-doubt and competence. The investigation of “who dumped the bodies,” which drives the book, proceeds at an appropriate pace – not to briskly (Berends, the investigator, is an amateur with a day job) but not too slowly. Several characters, including Berends’ apparently hyper-normal neighbors, were well-concealed surprises, which Edroso pulled off without making his narrator look stupid.

Apparently Edroso sprang for a good editor, as I found the technical aspects of the book solid. About the only thing I thought was a bit off was the actual explanation of why the bodies were showing up. That’s a quibble in an otherwise highly enjoyable book. I can wholeheartedly recommend Morgue for Whores as a book well worth reading.
9/10

Same Old, New Old

2011-12-08T03:19:00.000Z

It seems that Writer's Digest has tired of just offering lots of advertising space to predatory and over-priced self-publishing services, and decided to get into that business for themselves.

Scores

2011-12-06T19:46:00.000Z

Out of idle curiosity I decided to look at what is happening with the number grades attached to our graded reviews. The grade distribution shows a bias towards higher marks. The average grade given to a reviewed book seems to be about 7/10.

I think that strikes a reasonable balance between being not too fluffy and also not too bitchy? Number grades are all a bit arbitrary anyway... but I think they bring out whether the book was basically enjoyable or not. That isn't always clear from the text of the review.

Become a POD person!

2011-12-05T18:59:00.000Z

The POD people blog is seeking 'occasional reviewers'. This not-very-onerous position gives you access to the review request yahoogroup. If you see a book you would like to review you reply to the author directly and CC the group to let others know the book is taken. We would then hope to see a review posted (or forwarded to me for posting) within three months.

Occasional reviewers have no participation requirement and, like the rest of us, receive no compensation other than review copies and a linked byline. If you would like to join our merry band please send an email to podpeep@gmail.com with a sample or link to a review you have written (or other evidence that would lead me to expect that you are capable of writing a book review).

REVIEW: Aurora in Four Voices

2011-12-05T08:04:00.000Z

Author: Catherine Asaro
Genre: Science Fiction / Fantasy
Price: $30
Publisher: Isfic Press
ISBN: 978-0-9759156-9-1
Point of Sale: publishers site
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I am a regular attendee at Windycon, my local science fiction convention. Since I’ve been attending, Isfic Press, which is owned by the same organization as the con, has been putting out a book. This year’s edition was Aurora in Four Voices, a collection of five novellas by the convention Guest of Honor, Catherine Asaro. Isfic Press has a tradition of putting out fine quality books, and this year they kept up the tradition.

Catherine Asaro is a true Renaissance woman – her day job is as a PhD in mathematics, but she dances, sings and writes wonderful stories. All five of the stories in this book were previously published, but are collected here for the first time. They are each a gem, well worth reading. The stories are:

Aurora in Four Voices – drawing on Catherine’s mathematical background, this story involves a convicted murderer, not terribly math-literate, who is trapped in a city that revolves around math. In a pleasant switch from the same-old-same-old, he is rescued by a woman.

Ave de Paso – this story is a straight-ahead fantasy, set in contemporary New Mexico. I found it very haunting, with strong emotions and complex characters.

The Spacetime Pool – this story won Catherine the Nebula Award, and it’s easy to see why. It appears to be a fantasy, involving a woman being magically transported from the Appalachian Trail to a realm of castles and armored men on horseback. But Janelle, the woman so transported, is smart and too active to wait for rescue. Unfortunately, Janelle’s understanding of mathematics allows her to discover that returning to her own world is not possible.

Light and Shadow - this story is based in part on a scene in the great space movie “The Right Stuff.” In that scene, Chuck Yeager is seen walking away from his plane, crashed during a test flight. Here, Catherine puts Kelric, the hero of several of her Skolian Empire series, in the Chuck Yeager role. Mathematics also figures prominently, as Catherine uses imaginary numbers (such as the square root of -1) to build a faster-than-light engine.

The City of Cries – this long novella was written on commission for Mike Resnick, who included it in his anthology Down These Dark Spaceways. The novella is a hard-boiled crime / space opera set in Catherine’s Skolian Empire. There’s not much math involved in this story, but Catherine has a lot of fun inverting the tradition of cloistered women.

The book is rounded out by a non-fiction essay in which Catherine attempts to explain some of the mathematical concepts introduced in the other stories. She proves to be a good teacher as well as writer. Overall, I found Aurora in Four Voices highly entertaining. You should order a copy today.

10/10

Short story review: Le Cirque de Magie

2011-12-01T02:47:00.003Z

Title: Le Cirque de Magie
Author: Marsha A. Moore
Genre: Fantasy
Price: Free

Point of Sale: Smashwords
Reviewed by: Emily Veinglory

At around 7000 words, Le Cirque de Magie is certainly a short story. Moore throws us into an intriguing and vivid word where divine beings scrape by as performers in a depression-era-style circus. The plot is minimal: defeat the villain, get the girl. But the fantasy world is wonderful and I can only hope there might be longer stories to come, in this same setting? The only real disappointment here is the cover art, which completely fails to capture the rich, ornate, gritty notes of Moore's creation.

7/10

REVIEW: Finding Fiona

2011-11-29T23:45:00.001Z

Title: Finding Fiona
Author: Emily Ann Ward
Genre: YA/science fiction
Price: $2.99
ASIN: B005P44Z5W
Point of Sale: Amazon, Smashwords
Reviewed by: Emily Veinglory

Finding Fiona is an accomplished, fast-moving novel. It involves a amnesiac teenager who uncovers her past as the child and assistant of researchers who were developing a radical technique for creating human replicas. The first third of the book zooms along with a sequence of revelations about what led to the fire in which Fiona's family died, and the real motivations of the people around her.

The pacing seems to slip a little with a sluggish middle section and, in my opinion, the wrap up at the end seemed a little rushed. Also there is not so much as a hand-wave explanation for the underlying science of creating human "replicas". But perhaps this is wise given the difficulties inherent in making such a process even remotely plausible.

Finding Fiona might be of interest to readers who enjoyed one of my favorite books: Chion by Darrel Sloan. Finding Fiona is also a fast-moving story with an intriguing scientific premise, and suitable for a young adult audience. The plot and writing are clean, well structured, and enjoyable--and Emily Ann Ward is clearly a writer to watch.

8/10

Some Final Thoughts from a Pod Peep

2011-11-21T15:27:00.014Z

It is with great joy and sadness that I announce my departure from the Podpeople blog and the Indie Book Bloggers Review arena.

Over the past year, my writerly focus has shifted a bit. I put my own current WIP on hold and decided on a whim to dedicate my attention exclusively to the short fiction community, specifically, the flash fiction community, a genre generally misunderstood and sorely in need of advocacy and publication venues. Self-publishing has gone mainstream since I began advocating for the industry back in 2005, and I have reviewed many a good book and have seen many of those authors move on to traditional publishing contracts. I have also read and reviewed a good many excellent books whose Indie authors have chosen to stay the course, myself included, and I wish much success to everyone and anyone who has the guts to take their words and put them out there.

I have finished reviews for authors in my queue who paid for and sent me a hardcopy of their book. All eBook queries in my queue will remain, though I cannot specify timeframes on when they will be read or even if they will be read and/or reviewed. I do hope to get to all of them eventually, time permitting, and if I do, the reviews will be independently posted by me to Amazon and Goodreads, but not necessarily to the Podpeople blog.

Change is good, and often we need to reevaluate not only our work but also the direction we have chosen to take on our artistic journey. This year, I have had over sixty-five of my own short stories published and/or accepted for publication at various online and print journals and have already published dozens of excellent authors.

It is just time for me to move on. I want to focus on publishing other authors now instead of just reviewing them. To me, publication has more impact than a review. I have my own publication imprint, and I thought that now might be a good time to take advantage of it in creative ways other than simply publishing my own work.

I do hope you will visit me at my new flash fiction eZine: Apocrypha and Abstractions.

If you write micro flash, feel free to submit. We are listed at Duotrope's Digest, and if you love reading it, we are currently working on our eighth issue with possible print editions in the future. You can also find me over at Fictionaut, the premier short fiction networking community.

Thank you for being a Podpeople supporter. As always, Emily is looking for book reviewers, so if you are interested in taking my place, give her a shout.

Good luck to all the Independent writers out there. Rock on! Keep doing what your doing, unless of course, it’s bad editing.

Happy Holidays from a peep.

Review: Just a Few Seconds

2011-11-21T15:19:00.005Z

Title: Just a Few Seconds
Author: Nemo James a.k.a. Derek Newark
Genre: Autobiography/Memoir
Price: $9.95
Pages: 266
ISBN: 978-0956798602
Publisher: Derek Newark Publishing
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Description: A Story From The Hidden World of Music and Beyond Derek dreamt of becoming a professional musician from the first time he picked up a guitar following a talent contest disaster. Thought of by his friends as being the person most likely to make the big time he turned professional but was continually side tracked by the need to earn a living from music. His journey takes him all over the world from private gigs for the rich and famous to the roughest pubs. Starting in the late sixties when heavy rock was born, through to the 1980's and 90's when discos and electronics decimated live music in dance halls. An amusing and heartrending story of perseverance showing how the road to success can lead us down the strangest of paths.

I don't normally like reading memoirs of any sort simply because most of them are of the "I went here and did that and met these people and they were like this, then I went here, did that and it didn't work out, so I went here and did that ... over and over again and over again." Most memoirs tend to lack the flare and fiction writer’s finesse that I normally like in my reading material, and this is really no exception. If you like memoirs like Running with Scissors then you will find this autobiography interesting but not all that entertaining. It's frank, sometimes funny, but for the most part, the futility makes it kind of a depressing read. You want Derek to succeed, but even in the end, he never really attains the level of musicianship and fame the reader hopes for him.

Just A Few Seconds is the story of Derek Newark, and it charts his rather muddled path as he tries to make it in the music business. If you are looking for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, you will not find it here. This isn't the memoir of a rock star, it's the story of an average guy who has a passion for music, but for the most part, he just can't seem to make it work as a self-sustaining lifestyle/profession. Many musicians, and I know quite a few, will be able to relate to the struggle, as will the indie author.

Newark is a self-taught guitar player who struggled with reading music, so you do have to admire his stamina. He perseveres when most people would have called it a day and just given up. From dance halls to failed garage bands, from rough London pubs to ski resorts, and from private parties to nursing homes, Derek survived it all, making little to nothing for his efforts over many years. Failed business, failed relationships, and mounting credit card debt would have been enough disappointment for most people, but through it all, Derek always seems to find his way back to music, which is inspiring, if not a little crazy. It's the life and times of a working musician: the session guys, the backing bands, the wedding entertainers, the cruise ship musicians, and the guys who play the local pubs. Not glamorous. The pay is shit, and the music business as he describes it has a lot of similarities to the book publishing industry: rejection, rejection, rejection.

“There are two types of musicians: those who are famous and those who are not. But while there is a mountain of material written about the famous, there is almost nothing written about the unknown ones. Whilst no musician ever sets out to become unknown, most have it thrust upon them,” said James. “It is an absurd notion that only famous musicians have stories to tell.”

Despite the constant failure -- and not just as a composer -- Derek Newark struggles on through failed racquetball clubs, failed restaurants, and failed relationships of all sorts. For most, the defeat would have been too much to bear, especially having to move home and live with your parents as a grown man, but Newark always remained optimistic. In this story, everything really did happen for the best, and there was always another opportunity around the corner. The crap opportunities counted as much as the good ones in Newark's book.

"Yes, it's been quite a journey. I failed in nearly everything I did and yet always loved life and ended up enjoying the kind of success that the rich and famous only dream about. All that effort and hard work and yet it was nothing more than blind luck that brought about my success. No amount of talent or hard work can replace luck."

As for the read, there were enough serious grammatical issues that it became somewhat of a frustrating endeavor. Newark seems to have a comma aversion complex, which made the rereading of sentences necessary a lot of the time. That said, the chapter titles were very funny, even if the linear timeline felt bogged down by repetitive details. "Cheeserat & Gorilla" was probably my favorite chapter because it had the absurdist flare I tend to go for.

All in all, If you're looking for a celebrity autobiography, you won't find it here. If you're looking for a fiction writers poetic flare and sense of the absurd, you also won't find that here, but if you are looking for an honest look at the life of a struggling want-ad musician, then you will get that in spades. It's a working Joe story, a light hearted reflection of a work-a-day guy. If you like that sort of thing, then you won't be disappointed. Success is what you think it is, and Derek Newark seems to have found his.

Derek Newark a.k.a. Nemo james now lives in Croatia with his wife and family. If you want to read more about his life, his book titled Croatian Diaries will be released in December 2011.

Sunday Picture

2011-11-20T01:07:00.003Z

What Does A PODPeep Read - Well Of Sorrows

2011-11-18T21:59:00.003Z

Title: Well of Sorrows
Author: Benjamin Tate
Genre: Fantasy
Price: $16 (trade paperback) / $7.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: DAW
ISBN: 978-0756406028
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

POD People, or any people for that matter, should broaden their reading horizons. Based on that idea, I decided to take a flyer on a fantasy novel recommended by somebody in my LiveJournal friendslist. They suggested Benjamin Tate’s first novel, Well of Sorrows.

Well of Sorrows is the story of Colin Harten. When we first see him, he’s twelve, and living in some unnamed fantasy world with a vaguely feudal European feel and technology-level. Colin and his family are refugees, fleeing to the New World to avoid a war in the old one. However, Colin (in particular) and the fugitives (in general) aren’t fitting in, and Colin’s fights with the younger son of the local lord dominate the first third of the book.

Due to circumstances beyond everybody’s control, Colin and Walter, the lord’s son, are sent out as part of a small party to settle the wilderness just inland from their coastal city. Here the story takes a radical turn, as the party is attacked first by gazelle-riding dwarren and then the unstoppable Wraiths. Colin survives by drinking of the titular well, and the last two-thirds of the story is set a half century later as Colin attempts to broker a peace between various warring factions.

Well of Sorrows is very much an epic tale of high fantasy, told in epic length. I did find the book well-written, with solid characterization and full of action. I also liked the way Tate riffed off of the European settlement of America. I found the first third of the book, which involved Colin and company working as mere humans, quite engrossing.

Alas, I am not the target market for epic fantasy, and starting from the point where we learn that Colin has drunk of the titular well, I started caring about him much less. Since this is Colin’s story, that proved problematic. Again, I am not the target reader for epic fantasy, so take this with a grain of salt, but the last two thirds of the book felt to me to be twice as long as needed. It wasn’t that nothing happened (a lot of stuff did) but I wanted to cut to the chase.

Epic fantasy is hard to pull off. Well of Sorrows does have a lot going for it, but in the end it’s just not my cup of tea.

My Story – Spin the Plate, by Donna Anastasi

2011-11-16T09:00:00.006Z

Why did you choose to self-publish, why did you select your specific publishing company, and what were your expectations?
Black Rose Writing is a small independent publisher. Truthfully, I picked up the “Writer’s Market” and by the time I had hit the “B’s,” I’d received a request for the full manuscript and shortly after an acceptance letter. That said, I do think it’s been a good place for the book in its first year or two of publication. My non-fiction animal care books are with a large, traditional publisher. With an indie publisher, for good or bad, you have almost complete control. As far as my expectations versus reality, as someone who has published (non fiction) with a large traditional publisher, I did not realize how much of the work of preparing the book, cover, and promotions I’d be doing. I also didn’t realize how much freedom I’d have and encouragement to “go for it” when it comes to ideas on the book content or marketing.

How is it going so far? Are you achieving your goals?
It has been a huge effort that has taken up much of my outside of work time. The book is widely available and has been receiving recognition from several indie book awards. It has been extensively reviewed and featured on many blogs. I think it is going well. It’s on the right path and is positioned to succeed, though of course I’d love to see the sales sky rocket.

Tell us a bit about your latest release and what have you been doing to promote it?
I’m doing a three-leg virtual book tour with Jennifer Walker for my novel Spin the Plate. To help promote the tour, I did a Goodreads giveaway of two paperback copies. Over 400 people requested the book and of those about 40 marked the book as “to read.” I offered a coupon for a free ebook off smashwords for these 40 Goodreaders and asked them to follow me on the tour. I’ve gotten extremely positive responses to the ebook giveaway, and several offers from bloggers to include their reviews of the novel on their blogs. My wackiest marketing idea was to promote the free short story version of the novel on my inexplicitly popular YouTube video which features a real-life rat who is the basis of one of the animal characters in the book. You can see “Muzzy” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRIPoOVS73k

What advice would you give a person who has completed their manuscript and is considering self-publishing?
Today there is a whole continuum of publishing options – self publish, transitional publisher, and all sorts of indie publishing options in-between. And, there are a tremendous number of options for ways to self-publish. Smashwords is one example of a place to self-publish; if they like your work Smashwords will automatically distribute it for you on iTunes, kobo, Sony, B&N, Amazon, etc. You may want to provide a free Smashword version (for me, this was Spin the Plate Short Story), in addition to the full-length novel you sell. I’d recommend researching the pros and cons of differing publishing routes and asking questions on writers, forums. Email other authors for any avenues you are seriously considering. I’ve found authors to be very generous about taking the time to respond, especially once your manuscript has been accepted by their indie publisher.

Sunday Picture: Dash

2011-11-13T01:06:00.004Z

A Writer Publish America Probably Doesn't Boast About

2011-11-04T15:44:00.000Z

It seems that author J D Bauer is actually convicted serial killer Charles Kembo.

Whoops.

REVIEW: The Price of the Stars

2011-11-01T09:00:00.001Z

Title: The Price of the Stars, Book One of the Mageworlds
Author: Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald
Genre: science fiction
Price: $6.99
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
ASIN: B005QPBDCI
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I’ve heard of James MacDonald, half of the dynamic writing duo Doyle and MacDonald, through the blog Making Light, where he’s one of the co-bloggers. But I had never read any of his fiction, so when he announced that he was e-publishing his backlist, I decided to give his stuff a shot. I’m glad I did.

The Price of the Stars is your basic space opera. Humans are zipping across the galaxy on faster-than-light ships, cracking wise with alien beings, and shooting blasters at each other whenever the mood strikes them.

And damn if it isn’t a cracking good read! I mean, who wouldn’t want to crack wise with an alien, or zip from star to star with the same ease as flying to Pittsburgh for a shoe salesman’s convention? (If you wouldn’t want to do the above, you can stop reading now.)

In this space opera, some thirty years ago, humans had fought a knock-down-drag-out war with the Mage Lords, a separate group of humans. This was a nasty war, with planets melted down to bare rock and biological weapons deployed. The good guys, the humans of the Republic, won, and a somewhat uneasy peace has settled onto the galaxy. Beka Rosselin-Metadi, co-pilot of a starship, is happy with that peace.

Then she discovers that somebody has assassinated her mother, the Domina of Entibor, in a very public way. Besides making her the new Domina, a political post that she despises, it also proves to have put a massive target on her back. She also has decided to go off on a private vendetta to figure out who pulled the trigger on her mother and why. This being space opera, the answers are neither simple nor immediately forthcoming.

Now, space opera tends to get a bad rap because of cardboard characters who seemingly never get hurt. In Price of the Stars, there is no cardboard, and people are not bulletproof. Everybody has a past, and that is reflected in what they do now. Price of the Stars is a fast paced romp through an interesting world.

Rating: 9/10

REVIEW: Snow Comes to Hawk's Folly

2011-10-30T09:00:00.001Z

Title: Snow Comes to Hawk’s Folly
Author: J. Kathleen Cheney
Genre: Fantasy novella
Price: FREE at Smashwords
Publisher: Smashwords
ASIN: N/A
Point of Sale: Smashwords
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I’m very fond of the works of J. Kathleen Cheney. She’s a newer writer, working in fantasy, and at the moment she’s writing that hardest of works to sell, novellas. She wrote two novellas set among the horseracing set of Saratoga Springs, NY around the turn of the last century. One of them was published in Alembical 2, reviewed on this site. The other novella, Snow Comes to Hawk’s Folly, came out in Panverse Two. Well, in an effort to get more readership, Cheney released both novellas in ebook form. Since I hadn’t read Snow, I decided to download and read it. It was a very pleasant experience.

Imogen Hawkes inherited a horse farm when her first husband, Henry died. During the events of Iron Shoes, she met and married a puca, one of Ireland’s Lesser Folk, a man who could take and hold the form of a horse. This union resulted in a child, Patrick, who has more than a little puca blood and abilities in him, alas somewhat problematic in a two-year-old child.

Snow Comes to Hawk’s Folly starts with the arrival of mysterious visitor from Ireland, a man named Finnegan. Imogen can tell that he’s got magical powers of his own, and is concerned to learn that he’s bought the house next door. Very quickly thereafter, a freak September snowstorm blows in, and little Patrick goes missing. This sets up the events of the rest of the story, in which a number of people aren’t who they seem to be.

Ms. Cheney has a gift of writing magical systems that are believable, as well as a gift for characterization. Both those gifts are on full display in this short work. Imogen’s concern for her son, and even the motivations of his kidnapper are logical and well-thought out. The story has just the right pacing, not feeling rushed or cramped in any way. In short, Snow Comes to Hawk’s Folly is a wonderful read.

Rating: 9/10

REVIEW: Pandora's Grave

2011-10-26T19:12:00.002Z

Title: Pandora’s Grave
Author: Stephen England
Genre: thriller
Price: $19.99 (paperback) / $3.99 (Kindle / Smashwords)
Publisher: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Point of Sale: Author’s website
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

As promised, here’s a review of one of the four books that recently came my way, the thriller Pandora’s Grave by Stephen England. The premise is simple – a group of American and Israeli archeologists working in Iran discover in the ruins of an ancient city an especially virulent form of bubonic plague. This attracts the attention of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who kidnap the researchers with a goal of exploiting the plague as a weapon.

The CIA, not aware of the plague but knowing Americans have gone missing, sends in Harry Nichols and his team to get the Americans out. But apparently there’s a mole in the CIA, as the Iranians are waiting for Harry. Let’s just say things get complicated from there.

One of the ways to dismiss a book, especially a thriller, is to call it “formulaic.” This is unfair to thrillers, or for that matter any work of fiction. All fiction has certain formulas, also called conventions, which need to be followed in order to meet the readers’ expectations. It’s the difference between a well-executed recipe and throwing random stuff into a pot then calling it dinner.

So, yes, Pandora’s Grave does follow the thriller formula, but, with one minor exception, the formula is well-executed. The paperback clocks in at 422 pages, but the book is a real page-turner, and delivers a lot of high-voltage thrills. England has a couple of opportunities to engage in cheap sentimentality which he avoids while keeping his characters believable. My one nit was the identity of the mole – England spent too much time painting one of two suspects as the mole, leading me to automatically suspect the other person.

One of the highest forms of praise in the self-published world is to say that the book was just as good as the best commercially-published works in its genre. Well, Pandora’s Grave is just as good as any Ludlum or Carre novel. If you like thrillers, or just entertaining reading, you should read Pandora’s Grave.

Rating 9/10

Coming Attractions

2011-10-19T15:59:00.004Z

We've all heard the saying "feast or famine." Well, it seems like we at POD People have been in the famine mode when it came to books to review.

I have good news - the cycle has swung, and now we have a feast of books. Here's what's coming down the pike, listed in no particular order:

1) From Stephen England, a contemporary thriller ebook Pandora's Grave.

2) From political blogger Roy Edroso, a novel Morgue For Whores. Apparently it starts when the protagonist wakes up to find two naked and dead people in his bedroom. Roy had a conventional publishing contract for this book in 2008, but his publisher went bankrupt.

3) From Joshua Palmatier writing as Benjamin Tate, two fantasy novels that will be under the "What a Pod Peep Reads," Well of Sorrows and the sequel, Leaves of Flame.

4) From the team of Debra Doyle and Jim Macdonald, the self-published ebook re-release of their space opera The Price of the Stars.

Darn, I got tired just typing all of that! Looks like a busy fall review schedule.

Publishing Is A Business

2011-10-12T14:37:00.003Z

while Writing Is An Art. Found from Tobias Buckell, very sage business advice on the sustainability of an Indie Author. The writer asks (and answers) the question "will self-publishing survive?"

REVIEW: Quartershare

2011-10-11T16:14:00.002Z

Title: Quartershare
Author: Nathan Lowell
Genre: science fiction
Price: $10.87 (paperback) / $4.95 (Kindle)
Publisher: Ridan Publishing
ISBN: 978-0982514542
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Amazon has a “recommended for you” list that I occasionally visit. Now that I buy ebooks, I’ve noticed some new authors showing up on the recommended list. One of those authors was Nathan Lowell, a very prolific SF author publishing through Ridan Publishing. Ridan is a small commercial publishing firm that uses POD for their paper books and does a lot of marketing on their ebook line. Their marketing was sufficient to convince me to spring for the $4.95 and buy the Kindle version of Quartershare, the lead book in Lowell’s “Golden Age of the Solar Clipper” series.

Lowell’s book starts, ironically, in a very similar fashion to my first novel The Mars Run, in that a young 18-year-old is forced by circumstances to sign on as a crewman on a merchant space ship. In Lowell’s case, the 18-year-old is Ishmael Horatio Wang, and the circumstances that force him to ship out are the death of his mother. They are living on the planet Neris, a “company planet” where you’re either an employee of the company or need to pack up and leave. Thus Ishmael gets a berth as a mess steward on the Lois McKendrick. As a mess steward, he is eligible for a quarter share of the ship’s profit, thus the title of the book.

I suppose the nice way to describe how the rest of the book unfolds would be to say “gentle.” A less nice way would be to say “nothing happens,” because, well, not much happens. There are no aliens, pirates or other serious bad guys in Quartershare, and the one serious event, a mugging, is off-screen. Quartershare is the story of Ishmael figuring out how the society of the ship works while handling the everyday drills and work of the crew. There is absolutely no formal training or orientation offered to Ishmael, which I found very unusual.

Having called the book “gentle,” I should say that I found it both enjoyable and interesting. In writing, a work falls on a continuum from “plot-driven” to “character-driven.” Quartershare is definitely a character-driven book, and it works because, thanks to the author, we care about all of the characters. They are realistic, interesting and likeable, so the fact that they’re not running around saving the Universe is okay. The author spent a few years in the US Coast Guard, and his experiences there show through in subtle details about what lubricates shipboard life.

Quartershare is a short book, clocking in at 282 pages, but one I found quite enjoyable to read.

Rating 8/10

Publish America Shows its Spots

2011-10-09T16:27:00.000Z

This is an actual letter sent to an author requesting return of rights from Publish America:

"Oh, stop the whining already. We're sick and tired of hearing your ilk bark up the wrong tree, so either shape up or shut up you dumb idiot.

Listen Eistein, this no rocket science. We publish 50,000 books. Each one is produced, manufactured, published, and made available to bookstores worldwide the exact same way. Everything is the same. We don't do preferential treatments for no one, especially dicks like you. Instead we do the whole thing for absolutely free.

Did you get that numbskull? Free....want me to edit that for you by the word. Regular people don't argue with free. Misguided people like you do. You are seriously misguided, stupid.
Some books sell very well, in the millions. Some books sell very few copies, even none. Everything else is the same.

The difference despite the exact same treatment? Different content, different author.
Those who sell well never give us this kind of crap, ever. Those who don't occasionally barf just like you. Because they can't handle the thought that maybe it's them, or their story.

It gets old. Go away now. You're wasting our time. Your book remains under contract.
Thank you,"

Sunday Picture

2011-10-02T00:38:00.003Z

Review -- Airmail

2011-09-23T15:13:00.007Z

Title: Airmail
Author: Naomi Bulger
Genre: Novella/General fiction
Price: $9.31 (paperback) / $7.69 (Kindle)
Publisher: I Universe
ISBN: 978-1450235495
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Book Description: Reclusive old Mr. G.L. Solomon's favorite things are single malt whiskey, Steve McQueen movies, and gingersnap cookies. He hates processed cheese, washing detergent commercials, and the way the teacup rattles in the saucer when he picks it up. Solomon has become accustomed to his lonely routine in Sydney, Australia-until the day he begins sporadically receiving letters in his mailbox from a complete stranger. On the other side of the world, Anouk is a mentally delicate young woman living in New York who insists she is being stalked by a fat woman in a pink tracksuit. When Anouk declares to Solomon that she is writing "from the Other Side," the old man breaks away from his daily grind of watching soap operas and reading Fishing World and travels to New York to find her. As he is drawn into Anouk's surreal world of stalkers and storytelling, marbles and cats, purgatory and Plato, Solomon has but one goal-to unravel the mystery before it is too late.

Part epistolary confession, part Alice and Wonderland, part journey into madness, this quirky little book winds up being quite the philosophical handful. When I first began reading it, it reminded me of a clay animation film titled Mary and Max about an eight-year old Australian girl who randomly begins to write to an obese middle-aged man from New York with Asperger's syndrome. In Air Mail, the main character is a young woman, an ex-patriot from Australia living in New York City, randomly writing to a retired gentleman in Australia whom she chose from the phone book. Yes, seems very similar, and it is to a degree. Anouk relives all the depressing details of her life through her letters to Mr. G.L. Solomon, but when she thinks she is being stalked by a fat woman in a pink tracksuit, things take a more fantastic turn, Anouk's looking glass being the marbles that hold the stories of her life, stories that are being manipulated in a much larger universal game in which pink tracksuit is only one of many storytellers who may or may not be what they seem reminiscent of the angels in A Life Less Ordinary.

Anouk is a psychologically fragile young woman, and she finds solace in her unsolicited scribbling to Solomon. Her writing style is much the same as we often see in psychiatric patients. Solomon is intrigued, but generally unmoved by the letters and gifts until he receives the marbles. Routine is all Solomon knows, and he is comfortable with the way the twilight of his life is playing itself out, until one day Anouk writes him from the "other side," proclaiming that she is dead. This is the trigger, and promptly Solomon buys a plane ticket to NY and leaves his entire life behind. He believes Anouk is in trouble, and he believes he can help her. He can, but not in any traditional sense of the word help.

The story is very well written, full of the fantastical, the surreal, and the philosophical themes I love so much in this sort of story, yet it still stays grounded in the realities of mental illness without being overbearing about the subject matter. Anouk could be suffering from schizophrenia or any number of psychological issues, and Solomon clearly has a severe case of OCD. Or do they? Maybe their souls are simply on a journey. We can ask, do marbles hold the stories of our lives to be played and manipulated by a bunch of intellectual hippy-angel storytellers? Who knows. This sort of story is left to reader interpretation, as it should be. The characters were well developed, and the letters, sometimes frightening, were never overly sentimental. The "yes" letter being the most disturbing and the most telling in the entire book.

The book has been called charming, funny, quirky, profound, and yes, it is all those things. It is also very dark and insightful and compelling. I have to say, this is one of the better books I have read all year. Easily done in one sitting, but a much better read if taken slowly. As for presentation, the cover is lovely and the interior formatting is pleasing to the eye. Very well done. You know that old philosophical saying: A life unexamined; well, here is a perfect example of the miraculous things that can happen when a life is.

Thoughts on The Craft -- c.anne.gardner

2011-09-23T07:00:00.000Z

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. -- Allen Ginsberg

Depart too far from the norm of human experience and you bore the reader, who will no longer care what happens to your characters once they have stepped through a dozen dimensions of time and are consorting with twelve-sided green monsters somewhere in interstellar space. The true artist, who knows how to deal with elusive material, is more likely to work his tricks right in your living room, where the reality of familiar things lends strangeness to whatever he may conjure up.
-- Philip Van Doren

I love the Literary Fantastic in fiction. Yes, even to the extent of Tolkien’s hobbits, Adam's lunacy of space travel, Kafka’s human insect, and Carroll’s Wonderland, but much of the Fantastic that I am particularly attracted to is of the sort where human psychology goes very wrong, where the familiar becomes strange, where the world we live in somehow animates itself and turns upon us.

I have always been attracted to the Gothic and the Dark Romantic literary subgenres. Many of my mentors wrote with a Dark Romantic’s heavy hand: Poe, Lovecraft, Bataille, Kafka, Marquez, Ungar, even Shakespeare's tragedies ... the list could go on an on. Much of what strikes me about this style is the macabre and supernatural feel the stories have to them without necessarily being bona fide “horror” stories, which include supernatural creatures. In many of their works, the macabre and supernatural aspects of the story are firmly “grounded” in the human psyche. Man is the monster, and the natural world is the essence of supernatural. Write fiction with that logic and you cannot go wrong.

These authors have taken the vile aberrations of humanity and transformed them, some into allegory, some simply into a deeper look at the human psyche. Nevertheless, what all of these writers have in common is their ability to make the elusive not only tangible but relatable. These authors have been able to combine perfectly the ordinary and the extraordinary in such a way that we don’t question it. This goes back to my earlier discussion on subjective details. Fiction readers don’t necessarily want a state of the union, a “this is how things are” bricks and mortar view of the world. They want to feel the world through the characters. They want character perception, perception that is uniquely different than their own, and for that to happen, an author needs to provide detail which is fluid yet fully grounded in reality, is passionately associative and wildly dissociative, is sketchy yet vivid, and all the while, is plausible without a doubt. Tall order.

Yes, it is possible for an author to take great leaps of faith with credibility "if" they stay rooted in humanity. Kafka’s main character in The Metamorphosis awoke one morning and found he was a bug. Literally implausible but psychologically frightening because emotionally, it can happen. Another example is that the mirror is said to have two faces. How often do we struggle with our own reflection, and so Alice’s looking glass portal becomes very very real, and the philosophical conundrums she is presented with transcend the fantasy world. This type of transcendence is potent. So much so that we can sympathize with Dr. Jekyll’s struggle with his alter ego, Mr. Hyde.

There are many modern authors who have succeeded in this endeavour quite splendidly: Ellis' American Psycho, where the "status quo" has become surreal to the point of absurdity in that it not only creates the monster but allows the monster to "be" unrecognized and unnoticed; or Palahniuk's Fight Club, where the emasculated narrator feels alienated from prevailing social versimilitudes, ; or Johnson's Jesus' Son, where the nickname "fuckhead" defined the narrator's entire existence, and, more so than the heroin upon reflection, coloured his view of the world.

So, even straight literary fiction can benefit from the principles of the Literary Fantastic. When we struggle with humanity’s deep psychological, moral, and philosophical issues, we often find ourselves at odds with what is real or what we have naively perceived as being real. Nevertheless, we are innately capable of analysing our own "dream" logic. On a daily basis, when the world itself becomes dark and foreboding, when our fears manifest themselves, our personal perceptions of the world are often challenged, even negated. This is the realm of the fiction author. The realm where, with a little bit of prowess and a lot of finesse, the objective details can be manipulated and the truth can be exposed. This is the realm of the author who knows, as Clive Barker so eloquently put it, how to “tap the vein” no matter what genre you choose to write in.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Sunday Picture: Reviewing

2011-09-18T00:24:00.004Z

Review: Flashes From The Other World

2011-09-16T14:56:00.001Z

Title: Flashes from the Other World
Author: Julie Ann Weinstein
Genre: Flash Fiction Collection
Price: $15.99 (paperback) / $5.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: All Things That Matter Press
ISBN: 978-0984621644
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Book Description: Magic without the hocus pocus, these stories explore the ethereal blur between reality and not, between dream and sleep, between love and 'other than' love. They present relationships with a tender wackiness. Tossed into the mix are mischievous ghosts, who give the talking plants and even the seductive and vocal grains of sand a run for their money. Quirky and offbeat, these stories will touch your heart, although they may tug at your funny bone first.

As many of you know, I put my own WIP aside this year in order to devote the entire year or more to writing and working strictly within the flash fiction community. I have had dozens of stories accepted for publication, and I am currently a contributing editor at Apocrypha and Abstractions, a flash fiction e-zine specializing in micro flash, so when I received the query to review Ms. Weinstein's collection, I was thrilled. I was no less thrilled reading it.

Ms. Weinstein is a very insightful writer, and her flash fiction has that ambiguous surreal quality I look for when I am going through submissions for the e-zine. I would accept her work in a heartbeat, especially for the way she approaches the darker themes.

This collection is quite an assortment. You never know what you are going to get from one story to another. We have absurdities, paranormal encounters -- real and imagined -- and we have all manner of relationships, deliberate and coincidental, happy and sad and disturbing. Weinstein has the ability to take the mundane and make it wild and extraordinary. There are some hauntingly sentimental paranormal stories, and stories that were so hilariously bizarre, you will never look at your produce the same again. In contrast, many of the stories delve into darker territory, addressing many common and perplexing psychological issues, and those were probably the ones I loved the most. Each story is unique in a cirque du strange sort of way. The thematic treatments and artistic license used here demand a reader's undivided attention, and Ms. Weinstein’s voice shines through. Writing flash fiction is a difficult task to take on. It requires a certain sharpness of vision, a command of the language, and a discipline the longer forms can ignore to a great degree. In Flashes, Ms. Weinstein is fearless in her experimentation, and that, to me, was worth experiencing. My only concern is that the cover needs a whole lot of work and does not match the quality of the words contained within.

Sunday Picture: Anvil of Doom

2011-09-11T00:19:00.003Z

Sunday Picture: Out of Sight

2011-09-04T20:57:00.000Z

REVIEW: Below The Line

2011-08-31T20:07:00.004Z

Title: Below The Line
Author: Brian Tobin
Genre: novel
Price: $14.99 (paperback) / $3.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: Createspace
ISBN: 978-1463684976
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

There’s a type of crime novel that is best described as “a simple plan.” It’s where a group of people come up with a simple criminal plan to make a bunch of money and nobody will get hurt. The plot then revolves around watching this simple plan go seriously wrong, usually due to the greed, incompetence and general bad luck of the main characters. Brian Tobin’s new novel Below The Line is an enjoyable entry into that genre.

The novel is set in 1993 Los Angeles, and stars a cast of characters not exactly out of Central Casting. The closest character to a hero is Peter “Squeak” Bartholomew, a ne’er do-well from a small town in Upstate New York. He’s got family problems and money problems, the solution to which comes to him from his buddy Martin Oals. Martin, Squeak’s childhood buddy, moved out to LA and became an actor. Alas for Martin, not a very famous or wealthy actor, one who’s career peaked with “also appearing” roles in movies and TV series, and those had largely dried up. So, Martin had taken to dealing drugs, selling same to his collection of Hollywood contacts, including one Joel Opatkin, a studio VP with delusions of grandeur and a cash problem. A decision to migrate from sales to production, funded by Opatkin on borrowed money, is the simple plan that leads everybody to disaster.

Brian Tobin, the author, lives in Los Angeles, and for this his 4th novel (including two from St. Martin’s Press) he vividly incorporates the movie business into this novel. The novel’s title refers to an imaginary line in movie-making. Everybody “below the line” handles the details of actually making the movie, while those “above the line” have creative control. In this book, everybody is below the line, in that they really have very little creative control over their lives.

Having said that the characters have no control, they are both believable and (by their lights) reasonable. This is of course the beauty of the “simple plan” – it really shouldn’t be that hard to do what they are trying to do. But Murphy (or in this case author Tobin) is alive and well, making things difficult. I have to say that I found Below The Line an enjoyable romp through the mid-1990s.

Rating 8/10

Sunday Picture: Dragons

2011-08-28T09:00:00.000Z

Sunday Picture

2011-08-21T09:00:00.004Z

REVIEW: Kitemaster and Other Stories

2011-08-15T09:00:00.002Z

Title: Kitemaster and Other Stories
Author: Jim C. Hines
Genre: Fantasy
Price: $3.99 (Kindle)
Publisher:
ASIN:
Point of Sale: Barnes & Noble Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I’ve been a fan of Jim C. Hines for several years, so when he announced that he needed reviewers for his ebook short story collection Kitemaster and Other Stories I jumped at the opportunity. I’m glad I did.

Kitemaster is a collection of six previously-published short stories and a preview chapter of Jim’s upcoming novel Libriomancer. The common theme of this collection is that these are the stories that don’t involve goblins, which Jim is famous for writing about.

The lead story, “Kitemaster,” is unusual in that instead of the bog-standard European fantasy realm, it’s set in a feudal Chinese environment. It’s also unusual in that the lead character, Nial, has as a companion a magical, talking (at least to her) kite! In the author’s notes, Jim says he got the idea from a throwaway line about fighting kites in a Robert Zelazny book. I found the story quite enjoyable and refreshing.

The next story in the collection, "Untrained Melody," was written for an anthology edited by the author Julie Czerneda, and features the coolest weapon I’ve ever heard of, the “dwarven battle flute.” Also in the anthology are two stories starring the man-and-woman pair of thieves, Alycia and James. The first story, “Blade of the Bunny” is an interesting tale of a magical knife, while, later in the anthology, “Spell of the Sparrow,” features our criminal duo, their daughter and a somewhat bird-brained sorcerer. Sandwiched between these two delightful tales is “Over the Hill,” a story about a trio of not-quite-too-old women who do daring deeds daringly.

The final story in the collection, “The Creature in Your Neighborhood,” is written as a screenplay. Jim has small children, and one day, a little too much children’s television caused him to snap in an unusual (and very funny) way. Let’s just say werewolves and stuffed animals don’t mix! Jim wraps up the collection with the first chapter of his upcoming book Libriomancer. In this universe, people can (deliberately or by accident) pull magic through the pages of a book.

This is a short collection, only available in ebook, but highly recommended.

Rating: 9/10

Indiereader

2011-08-14T18:09:00.000Z

Indiereader started out as a site for readers of self-published material to mingle and discover new books. What they discovered, and most people already knew, is that dedicated self-published books readers are a demographic that barely exists outside of the authors themselves (and sometimes not even them).

Readers want books. Actively and indiscriminately seeking out self-published work would be a strangely masochistic thing to do. Even those, like me, who have a particular intest in off-mainstream material buy it based on authors we know and trust or off-mainstream genres that we are willing to take a risk on.

Therefore Indiereader has taken the predictable path, into the vanity model. You may not be able to make lots of money of the readers of self-published books, but you can always tap the new waves of authors looking for a short cut to fame and fortune. Sell them advertisements or amorphous promotional packages. Better yet, offer an "award" the ultimate in ostensibly valuable intangibles.

Enter the Indiereader Awards, where you pay a $150 at the slim chance of getting a ghettoised "Kirkus Indie" review (they don't make it clear it is not a standard Kirkus review) and a pretty sticker. There is also a soft promise that terribly important people will see your book.And something to do with "Book Ends Entertainment" which, if you Google them, seems to be most famously involved with Indiereader rather than... whatever unspecified wonderful things they are meant to do for the winner.

The awards have 49 categories but a winner is declared only at Indiereader's discretion--perhaps based on whether the number of entries would allow this to be done without threatening the profit margin. A good deal? I think not. In my opinion holding such a high-fee prize, like buying reviews, is quite possibly more of a handicap than an advantage.

Any site that genuinely connects with readers, or runs an award program secondary to their main activity and without the primary motive of making money, might be able to bestrow an award that would impress me as a reader and reviewer. Indiereader does not tick these boxes.

REVIEW: Deadly Straits

2011-08-10T00:46:00.003Z

Title: Deadly Straits
Author: R. E. McDermott
Genre: Thriller
Price: $2.99 (Kindle or Nook)
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
ASIN: B0057AMO2A
Point of Sale: Amazon author's site
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

A word of warning – when you sit down to read R. E. McDermott’s first novel, Deadly Straits, make sure you have time to read it in one sitting. You will not want to put this book down!

The book is the story of Alex Kairouz and Tom Dugan and how they get involved in a multi-national plot to disrupt world oil shipping. Alex owns Phoenix Shipping, a London-based firm which has been forcibly subverted by a mysterious “Captain Braun.” Tom is an American who runs a ship operations consultancy. He’s friends with Alex, and Alex is his biggest client, so when Tom is approached by the CIA to investigate a suspicious hijacking he agrees with reluctance.

Since all this happens in the first few “pages” of this e-book, I’m not giving away much. But that’s about all I can say about the plot, as a key component of this story is figuring out who’s doing what to whom where and when. The author, McDermott, is a graduate of the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy and runs a ship operations consultancy in the US and Singapore. This detailed knowledge of ships, the sea and modern merchant operations colors Deadly Straits, to good effect.

As you can suspect from my warning at the top of this post, Deadly Straits is a thriller, with a lot of straightforward action. Having said that, McDermott avoids the of “too much information” trap that’s typical of thrillers. We never once hear of the type of engine on McDermott’s ships, for example, because we don’t need to know that. If we do need to know, well, he tells us in an interesting and readable fashion.

Another problem of thrillers is the cardboard character. Now, don’t get me wrong – Deadly Straits is nobody’s idea of a character-driven cozy – but the characters are generally believable and not typically drawn from Central Casting. There are two exceptions to this rule – one of the CIA characters is your typical political hack boss, and Alex at the end does something I didn’t find quite believable. These are minor flaws which in no way hampered my enjoyment of this wonderful book. I highly recommend Deadly Straits to anybody looking for a fast-paced and enjoyable read.

Rating: 9/10

Thoughts on The Craft -- c.anne.gardner

2011-08-04T07:00:00.001Z

Art is not a mirror to reflect the world but a hammer with which to shape it.
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
-- Anais Nin

I think these two quotes go hand in hand. Our world is our perception of it. In order to change the world, we must first hammer away at perception. Quite a daunting task if you ask me, since everyone’s perception of the world is slightly different. So, how can an artist approach an obstacle of this magnitude? Well, we can use the familiar to our advantage. We can decisively attack those perceptions which have become so familiar and so widely accepted that they have become dogma. True that there is no new story, but simply by changing the perception of it, we create it anew. Our modus operandi might be a hammer and chisel, or a paintbrush, or a whisper, but however we choose to manipulate the truth through fiction, it’s our perception of the truth that hopefully will affect change. Then again, art requires a bit of an intuitive approach, so, not everyone will see the truth even if we bludgeon them with a hammer.

The surrealist art is L’appel de la nuit by Paul Delvaux, 1938

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Thoughts on The Craft -- cannegardner

2011-07-28T07:00:00.003Z

"The most serious problem Goya solved while mixing the paints for his tapestries was hitting upon the right dose of sugar; a dab more and they would have been good only for the tops of boxes of chocolates." -- Oliverio Girondo from "The Scarecrow and other Anomalies"

Again, this goes back to my earlier post on self-censorship versus letting the art speak for itself, sans the sugar coating. Goya, a court painter to the Spanish crown, was a master at sugar coating his sharp, satirical wit. His commissioned work was known for its disinclination to flatter, but he composed these pieces in such a way that any insult was not obvious. The Merry Festival tapestries Girondo speaks of were the portrayals of idyllic aristocratic daily life. He knew who he was painting for as he did much later during his "Black" painting period, where sugar was not the order of the day, and his subversive macabre view of the world was unabashedly laid bare, as seen in the painting: Saturn devouring his Son. Girondo, by comparison, was as equally gifted, and this is from the anti-preface by Karl August Kvitko, publisher of Xenos Books: "Girondo has a wicked penchant for cramming a phrase with multiple meanings: symbolic, satiric, ironic, lyrical,rhapsodic, paradoxical, and the absurd."

Isn't that what art is all about? Sure, we could write a story where every sentence could be taken literally, where the plot might be nothing but manifest destiny, a mere linear historical account. But why would we want to do that? Why, when we can take that very black and white snapshot of humanity and reveal its infinite mysteries, subtle as they might be ... so subtle, that if it weren't for art, they would and could very deliberately escape notice. Did Stoker write just a vampire story? Did deSade write just pornography? Did Kafka just write about a delusion man who thought he was a bug? I think not, and therein lies the measure of a good story: not only does it devour our innocence, but in the process, it restores our faith in it. This, I think, can be said of all art.

On a side note: Girondo self-published "The Scarecrow" in 1932 and sold it while parading through the streets of Buenos Aires in a mortuary coach, shouting his marketing madness through a megaphone. 5000 copies sold out in 15 days. My review of this title is on Amazon.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Review: Tides from the New Worlds

2011-07-25T09:00:00.000Z

Title: Tides from the New Worlds
Author: Tobias S. Buckell
Genre: Science Fiction
Price: $4.99 (Kindle or Nook)
Publisher: Tobias S. Buckell
ASIN: B003N3UZYM
Point of Sale: Amazon / author’s site
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I recently acquired an ebook-reader (a Motorola Xoom, to be precise) and so found myself in need of something to load it with. Being a fan of Tobias Buckell, his short story collection Tides from the New Worlds came immediately to mind. Let me recommend it highly.

Tides is a collection of 20 previously-published short stories, spanning Buckell’s entire career. Several stories, such as “Fish Merchant” and “Necahual” are set in the worlds we see in Buckell’s novels, a world in which humans are under the thumb of various alien races. Several other stories, including “Toy Planes” and “Death’s Dreadlocks,” reflect Buckell’s Caribbean birth and heritage, and are set in those islands.

Although Buckell is noted as a science fiction writer, several of these short stories are fantasies, including “Smooth Talking” (a real estate salesmen persuades trees to move), and “Something in the Rock” starring a dwarflike “digger.” Also included are a couple of Buckell’s real gems. The first one, and one of my favorites, is “Io, Robot,” in which Buckell takes Issac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics on an interesting spin. The other gem is “All Her Children Fought,” a short and heart-tugging story about childhood and war. Lastly, the short story “Aerophilia” has perhaps one of the best opening lines I’ve ever read. Fortunately, the story just keeps getting better from there.

Reviewing Tides from the New Worlds is actually rather difficult. There’s so much to the book that there’s literally something for everybody. Twenty short stories for under five buck is hard to beat, especially when they’re written by one of the best new writers in science fiction. I highly recommend this book!

Rating: 9/10

Review: Are You Sitting Down

2011-07-21T19:47:00.003Z

Title: Are You Sitting Down
Author: Shannon Yarbrough
Genre: Fiction/Literary
Publisher: Shanlian Wordlit Press
Price: $ 10.95 Kindle Edition $1.99
Pages: 270
ISBN: 978-0984238330
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Book Description: A rape victim raising a biracial baby. A drug addict haunted by a dead girlfriend. A homosexual mourning a dead lover. A teacher having an affair with his student. And a businesswoman sexually harassed by her boss. What do they all have in common? They all sit at Lorraine White's holiday dinner table; they are also her children. But Lorraine's children are not the only ones in the family dealing with ghosts of the past. This is the first Christmas the Whites have spent together since the death of their father. And it very well could be their last, as arguments ensue, secrets are revealed, and perhaps a murderer walks among them. In his latest novel, Yarbrough explores the damaged soul of one small town family and breaks through the boundaries of love, convincing his readers that no matter how hard life gets, sometimes the support of family is the only true foundation we have left to depend upon - whether we want to or not.

---

Let me just preface this review with a full disclosure. I know Shannon Yarbrough. We travel the same Indie review circles, and I reviewed an earlier book of his titled Stealing Wishes, which I enjoyed a great deal. As a matter of fact, the author thanks me in the back of this book for simply "getting" his writing. When he queried the Podpeople for this book, I happily snapped it up. I wasn't mistaken in doing so, because true to form, Mr. Yarbrough always gives the reader compelling characters and thought provoking storylines, albeit in this story, some of those storylines are quite disturbing. I reviewed this from an uncorrected proof copy, so there were quite a few formatting and grammatical issues to wade through, but I am sure these were rectified in the final edit.

As in all Mr. Yarbrough's work, the family members in this story are revealed to us with an honest objectivity some might find troubling. This book really begins at the end, if you will. All secrets are revealed with stark acceptance. All the characters have had time to dwell on their sins, and all have reconciled their various justifications. There are no labored confessions here to tug on our heartstrings. Everyone at this point has lived through their struggles and has accepted who they are, what they've done, and that the scars are permanent. The author makes no judgments here. Every crime is weighed equally, and by crime, I mean the crime each character has tried, convicted, and punished themselves for.

The story is told in alternating first-person points of view, each chapter devoted to one character, and aside from everyone being bludgeoned to death by Southern small town life, each character is connected to everyone else in the story not simply by familiar family bonds, but by the secrets they keep. Bigotry, infidelity, rape, murder, terminal illness, addiction, sexual orientation, sexual obsession, love, hatred, loss, and death, these are the ties that bind in this story.

As for the structure, it is much like any ordinary family holiday dinner: chaotic, which I felt served the story well. Each character is present "in the moment" and yet not because the past weighs heavily on each and every one of them. It felt to me almost like an American haunting of a sort, as if each character were a ghost cursed to reflect on what they had become instead of what they could be. Always drawn back into the past to dwell on the misery leveled upon them over the course of their lives. For some, that misery came with a poorly made choice, and for others, like Travis, the misery is downright unjust.

They say in a small town everyone knows everything about everyone else, and this story serves to debunk that myth. Here everyone knows what they think they know, and in reality, they only know what's relevant to their own personal struggle, and their attitudes towards the secrets that they think they know are really just reflections of their own inner turmoil. No one really knows anything deeper about the other characters aside from the surface wounds, which is sadly true to life. We talk to the people in our lives, but we rarely really listen. We claim to "share" our most intimate feelings with a certain few, but we rarely tell anyone the unadulterated truth about anything. That realism and truth about the collective consciousness is driven home quite powerfully in this story.

In this book, Christmas is a time for giving and healing, and what the reader gets to unwrap are the intimate confessions of a family who has never chosen to be honest with itself. The reader must decide where sympathy should be given and judgment passed. All the various perceptions in the story lack any real peripheral vision, allowing the reader to supply that on their own, which I loved. The reader is offered the rare opportunity here to be the psychoanalyst, and that, for me, made it a very engaging read. Nothing is ever really resolved by the end of the story, but the reader is left with the possibility of redemption to ponder well after the last page is turned. Very well done.

9/10

Thoughts on The Craft -- cannegardner

2011-07-21T07:00:00.001Z

Eroticism opens the way to Death. Death opens the way to denial of our individual lives. Without doing violence to our inner selves, are we able to bear the negation that carries us to the farthest bounds of possibility. – Georges Bataille

That quote is from the book “Eroticism, Death and Sensuality” by Georges Bataille, a writer whose philosophical essays on Death and Sensuality in art and literature provide for a clarity never before achieved by any other writer, in my opinion, with regard to the duality of violence and tenderness ever-present in the human spirit.

Bataille also wrote: “The taboo is there in order to be violated. This proposition is not the wager it looks like at first but an accurate statement of an inevitable connection between conflicting emotions. When a negative emotion has the upper hand, we must obey the taboo. When a positive emotion is in the ascendant, we violate it. Such a violation will not deny or suppress the contrary emotion, but justify it and arouse it. […] Concern over a rule is sometimes at its most acute when that rule is being broken, for it is harder to limit a disturbance already begun.”

Those of us who write sex are familiar with this theory. Those of us who write sex as a metaphor thoroughly understand the implications, and those of us who write taboo have grasped hold of its subtle subconscious nuances and cast ourselves straight into the abyss.

The art this week is the cover from my own novella “The Thin Wall”, and while not graphic in its imagery, the sexual proclivities of the characters and the implications of said proclivities might be a bit disturbing for readers of a certain disposition. Nevertheless, as I have said in many posts regarding the issue of censorship, the implications were necessary. The metaphor was necessary. After all, the story is an exploration in self-abuse as it relates to the issue of co-dependence. However, I am a tried and true romantic, so for those who don’t mind taking a walk in the dark, you will be rewarded with an HEA. I just can’t write a romantic story without it, and yes, the thematic treatment of the subject matter might be a bit dark for most, but, self-awareness doesn’t generally come without a twilight struggle. An author should never be afraid to obliterate the boundaries in order to express the oftentimes ugly epiphanies that come with such a struggle.

That said, of late, I have been experimenting with flash fiction, and I have found that the form allows for much more experimentation when it comes to fringe subject matter. I mean, some of this stuff is best taken in small doses, for instance my abortion eating cannibal story "Doll Heads", or the body-image fixated "Margaritas and Razor Blades – After Five Porno for Skeptics", or even the sexual motivation for homicide in my most recent piece "The Shadow Factory". I want to exploit the experience as much as I can in a story; I want to deliver the dark and the disturbing, but I want to do it without bludgeoning the reader. Less is better, I've found. And by less, I mean less words, not less intense, so that the experience is still bludgeoning but brief. I've even started writing hard-core erotica -- under a pseudonym, obviously -- which has been published and well received. No, I am not going to link to it because that would defeat the purpose of the pseudonym, right? Anyway, the point I am trying to make here is that we can step into the dark very purposefully as did Artaud, Bataille, and deSade, and many others for that matter. Sure, anything we write has the potential to offend someone, but that doesn't mean we, as artists, shouldn't endeavor to "go there."

For further reading of Bataille, I might recommend some of his novellas: The Story of the Eye, L’abbe C, or My Mother, Madame Edwarda, and the Dead Man.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Review: Ladies and Gentlemen... The Redeemers

2011-07-13T12:22:00.006Z

Title: Ladies and Gentlemen… The Redeemers
Author: Michael Scott Miller
Genre: Action Adventure
Publisher: Createspace
Price: $7.95 Kindle Edition $0.99
Pages: 286
ISBN: 978-1456363475
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed By: Guest Reviewer Susan Helene Gottfried

Book Description: "Ladies and Gentlemen…The Redeemers" tells the story of Bert Ingram, once a successful rep in the music industry, who has lost his way. Desperate for redemption, the perpetual dreamer decides to put together a band, recruiting musicians who have only one thing in common: the need to overcome a significant obstacle in their lives. The volatile mix of the musicians' personalities and backgrounds threatens to derail the band at every opportunity, but in time, the Redeemers begin to realize they have more to gain from one another than they ever could have imagined.

I'd been hearing about this Michael Scott Miller dude and his book, Ladies and Gentlemen... The Redeemers for a while now. My friend, author Darcia Helle, told me she thought I needed to read it.

How could I say no?

And then Michael himself dropped into my inbox, and in short fashion so did Cheryl, both asking if I'd review the book for them.

And so, here I am. A two-fer, so to speak.

Ladies and Gentlemen... The Redeemers is a heck of a tale. It's the story of down-on-his-luck Bert, who decides to take a bunch of misfits and miscreants and turn them into the band that'll end his down-on-his-luck days. And theirs.

Most bands form because they are drawn together by something intangible. They have chemistry, a shared hunger for success... something. Not the Redeemers. They are drawn together because of Bert and the strength of his ambition to reclaim a part of himself.

Whether or not they'll first find all the people they need to fill out the band properly, if they'll gel as a group, if they'll overcome their natural distrust and, sometimes, dislike of each other... this is what the story is about.

It's a great story. It's one anyone who loves to dream needs to spend time with.

But, of course, this is Susan West of Mars doing a review here, and that automatically means there are faults to be found with this book.

Not many, I'm pleased to say. And in this case, I suspect the fault I found with the Redeemers is one of style.

You see, for me, there is a narrative distance. This means I don't get into the characters' heads, they don't come fully alive. In this book, it drove me nuts. I wanted to really get inside these guys. I wanted to share their thoughts and dreams and desires. I wanted to look to my left and be surprised they weren't real people, right there beside me.

To be honest, I have no idea how Miller could have pulled this off. He's got a huge cast of characters; this point of view was the most logical choice he could have made for telling this particular story. Anything else would have run the risk of turning the book into an absolute mess.

Still, I wanted more of the guys. They are compelling. They have great backstories. They have a great storyline. They probably have a great future, but let's not get ahead of the book here, folks. Although... with a story like this, it is tempting to do.

When I review a piece of rock and roll fiction, I always consider if the page breathes with music. In The Redeemers, it doesn't. It also doesn't need to. This is a book about the personalities behind the music. It's about this band named the Redeemers who are off looking for their own redemption, either personally or musically. These aren't necessarily people who live and breathe music. On the other hand, they are people for whom music is an expression and, in some cases, a way of life. In other cases, it's a dream, something to stretch for and be terrified of.

That is every bit as valid as having the music throb off the page.

Overall, I liked this book. A lot. I'll tell people to read it. I may even hold it up there with some of my top reads although, truthfully, I don't think the (good) execution held up to the (fantastic) concept. It was a hard goal to achieve. Miller did his best, and his best is quite good. I wanted fantastic. I think Miller can and will bring us there in future books.

I can't wait to follow him.

Susan Helene Gottfried is the author of ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes — Year 1, ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes — Year 2, Trevor’s Song, and ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes -- Year 3. She can be found online at http://westofmars.com, where you can find The Meet and Greet, among other goodies. A tone-deaf rocker-at-heart, Susan worked in retail record stores, in radio stations, as stage crew, and as a promoter while earning two college degrees in creative writing. Susan walked away from a continued career in the music industry in order to write books, so it makes sense that most of her fiction revolves around rock bands. Once you get those record stores, radio stations, and fellow roadies and promoters under your skin, they never leave.

Reading to Write

2011-07-07T19:02:00.005Z

I am currently writing The Night Watch, a sequel to my upcoming novel Pirates of Mars (November, Hadley Rille Books). A large part of The Night Watch is a battle between two space ships. Now, I had a general idea about the battle, but the specifics of it were Just Not Coming Together. This was greatly hampering my writing progress.

Then, and (at the time unrelatedly) I read Neptune's Inferno, which is a history of the naval battles for Guadalcanal. A little-known fact about those battles is that the US Navy suffered over twice as many people killed as did the US Marine Corps. Due to a variety of factors, from the inability of carrier air groups to operate at night to a simple lack of carriers on both sides, these casualties were largely incurred in several ship-vs-ship night actions.

Now, the battle in The Night Watch is not in whole or part taken from any historical battle. However, the flavor of the battles will be in the book. For example, as the battles were largely fought at night and in the infancy of radar, there was perpetual confusion as to where ships were and whether or not they were friend or foe. Also, many of the men below decks had little or no idea what was going on until their ship got hit. Lastly, in several of the battles, captains and admirals decided to back off after taking some initial hits.

These real-life factors will be in my story. They will hopefully improve the story, and point to the importance of reading in order to write.

Image: USS Helena (CL-50), a veteran of the Guadalcanal battles. Image from Wikipedia.

Thoughts on the Craft -- cannegardner

2011-06-30T07:00:00.001Z

“One cannot hide his identity under cover of the third person narrative, nor establish his identity solely through the use of the first person singular.” – Henry Miller

Many quotes strike to the core of an author, but none so deeply for me as this one. Let’s take a step back to the Vitruvian Narrator for a moment. When I am writing fiction, I never consciously choose my narrative voice. When the stories come to me, they usually come to me in the voice that is meant to tell the story. Since I write novellas -- by the literary definition of the term -- and since those novellas are an emotional, psychological, and philosophical portrait of a particular character, I oftentimes use the first person singular. I like the intimacy. However, in the case of The Thin Wall, I struggled with the level of intimacy – for eighteen months and two editions to be exact. It seems a simple thing, to just choose, but all artists know that the choice of colour, or depth perception, is not an easy one, nor is it a choice to be taken lightly.

I finally came to realise, in the throes of late night agony, that my main character and narrator, Laleana, the woman suffering in the thrall of love; Laleana, the co-dependent; Laleana the delusional middle-aged woman, was not a reliable narrator. I came to realise that she was far too emotional to narrate the story. Now, epiphanies are great and all that, but through that epiphany, I had pitched myself into a new dilemma. I knew I didn’t want a third person omniscient narrator because I wanted to retain a certain level of intimacy, a confessional level of intimacy, for that was what the story demanded of me. Therefore, what was the answer? Well, humans have the unique gift of duality, and so the choice -- the only choice I had really -- became clear. In the end, I decided to have Laleana, the prim and proper librarian, narrate the story for the most part, using third person limited, as I felt that this was the only way I could show the duality of her being, could illuminate her secret internal struggle – her intimate struggle with her own shadow. Yes, it seems a bit psychotic, to look outside ourselves as if we are an alien entity, but in fact, we do that all the time, for it is the only true path to self-awareness. Carl Jung talked extensively about the shadow, and this type of narrative depth is very effective. Even Ellis allowed Patrick Bateman to step outside of himself for one chapter in American Psycho; hell, Fight Club is written entirely from the shadow perspective, and isn’t our own inner voice The Dweller on the Threshold of a sorts and respectfully analogous to Jung’s shadow. Although in these examples the principles of Jung’s shadow have been reversed, the shadow-self being the benevolent in these cases and not the one to be overthrown. I thought so, and so I decided who better to narrate my story -- the supressed inner voice of reason.

So hopefully, my attempt represents well on paper. The Art is by Gustav Dore from Milton's Paradise Lost.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Review: Color Me Grey

2011-06-29T15:58:00.004Z

Title: Color Me Grey
Author: J.C. Phelps
Genre: Action Adventure
Publisher: New Pub
Price: $9.99 Kindle Edition $0.99
Pages: 147
ISBN: 978-0981769004
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Book Description: Meet Alexis Stanton, a 5' 4" petite young woman with a yen for adventure. She grew up as a tomboy wishing she could have all the adventures boys could have. She has since decided that being a boy instead of a girl has its advantages, but being a woman is much better. Raised in a family with money, she was able to pick and choose her education. She had been schooled in everything from being a lady to courses with Special Forces instructors. Her desire for adventure and her boredom with her current employment and a strange 'Help Wanted' ad causes her to quit. She finds that job she could 'just die for'... and it looks like she just might!
-----
Oh my! Alexis Stanton. Only a privileged angsty twenty-something would brag about living off mommy and daddy, quit her job, and go apply for another one without a clue as to what the company does or what the job entails, but that's the sort of story you are in for when you pick up Color Me Grey, a Bondesque coming of age story.

The Alex Stanton chronicles are slated to be a series of books, so in this, the first one, we get a lot of expository background info straight away so we can get to know Alex. The book is told in the first person, so to me, it feels more confessional in it's story telling style than your typical action thriller, which would be mostly scene and dialog versus summary. Some readers may not like this writing style, and some readers may not like Alex. She is your stereotypical spoiled twenty-something: all attitude and very little life experience to back it up, but she gets by, and I, as a reader, just wanted to see her survive herself.

Alex comes from a rather sheltered background. She comes from money; her father is an Admiral and now works some kind of secret ops job, and her mother paints. Both are retired, and both are very forgiving when it comes to their daughter. She is home schooled, though anyone familiar with home schooling will find some inaccuracies in Alex's particular scenario, and speaking of inaccuracies, those familiar with the military might take issue with a few things as well. If you don't take the book too seriously, it's a much better read.

Anyway, Alex is spoiled, and she decides out of pure boredom to up and quit her data processor job to scour the want ads for something just a little bit more high adventure, maybe she'll miraculously find a job where she might be able to use her convenient hacker skills and some of her ninja combat training. She finds a mysterious ad and heads downtown for an interview. Yes, Alex has a set of brass ones. No one in his or her right mind would head off to some unknown company office for an interview without getting some background information first. At the very least, a job description would be in order. But this is a fantasy adventure book and this job just happens to be Alex's ideal fantasy adventure, so I just went with it.

Of course, instantly our little Alex develops a teen crush on the very hot-ticket owner of the firm code-named Mr. White, but too bad for her she won't be spending much time with him. She'll be off at a mountain retreat with Mr. Black learning some useful survival skills along with all the other superspy maneuvers she will need to complete the jobs she might be assigned. Her training is quite brief before she gets slammed into her first full on terrorist retrieval operation, which she fumbles and winds up killing someone. Oh well. In this job, it just goes with the territory, so she sucks it up and moves on rather quickly. The book sort of reminded me of the movie Point of No Return in that the dark handsome black ops man trains this petite young thing to become one of the best spy-killing machines in the business, until things get a little to close to the cuff for her. In this case, Alex has no desire to "get out" and when her family is targeted, she refuses the option to stand aside. The only thing lacking in Color Me Grey was the deep internal conflict. Alex happy go luckily quits her job, gets no flack for it from her parents, waltzes into an interview, is perfectly qualified, and gets everything she wants. It's just a fun read plain and simple.

The story is also a very feel good pro-woman story. Alex can hold her own with the best of the boys, and I had no problem believing that. We've got women in combat, we've got women truckers and construction works; we've even got women boxers and body builders too. I had no problem with a woman working as a secret ops agent. If we weren't allowed to do that Angelina Jolie would be out of a job. It's a short book, so there isn't a whole lot of detail when it comes to the actual combat training, so some things just have to be taken on faith, which I had no problem doing since the inspirational " you can do anything you set your mind to" message to young women was much appreciated and duly noted. Since this was an adventure story and a short one at that -- being the first of several books -- character and relationship development was a little thin, but those will probably be expanded on over time. This isn't a novel; it's a series, and readers will need to be patient while getting to know Alex. She has the potential to grow into quite a complicated character, and what sort of spy reveals everything about themselves on a first meeting anyway?

7/10 for some editorial issues

REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes: My Life

2011-06-25T09:00:00.039Z

Title: Sherlock Holmes: My Life
Author: Sherlock Holmes/Lawrence Spencer
Genre: Mystery
Price: $2.99 (via Smashwords)
Reviewed by: Veinglory

"My Life" is a clever but very rambling ostensible autobiography by Sherlock Holmes. The conceit of it is that Sherlock Holmes is not a fictional character that some people like to pretend is real, but a real person who is rendered fictional by a dastardly conspiracy. Many other Victorian characters and authors get scraped into the faltering narrative from Alice in Wonderland to Gilbert and Sullivan.

I predict that an enthusiast of the Sherlock Holmes stories will find this work interesting and irritating by turns, other readers will be pretty much bemused from the outset. The cover does not quite strike the right tone which is more whimsical and convoluted than dark and suspenseful. The editing is strong sentence by sentence, but I feel heavy-handed editing would make for a far better book, and the formatting is a little erratic.

Overall it is hard to say how this book will work for other readers, but I will give it a tentative 7/10 for entertainment value alone (even if it is of the 'I see what you did there' variety).

Thoughts on the Craft Redux -- cannegardner

2011-06-23T07:00:00.001Z

From the Guardian
April 9, 2009

How much do authors owe their readers?
Readers can become very proprietorial about books, but authors' imaginations need to remain their own.

"It's a sweet anticipation, awaiting your favourite author's latest book, or better yet, the next in a gripping series: that longing to know what lies in store, tinged with the fear that things might not go the way you secretly wish.

For George RR Martin fans, however, enough was enough. After announcing yet another push-back on the completion of A Dance of Dragons, the latest volume in his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, the author admitted on his blog to finding himself facing a "rising tide of venom", as frustrated readers deluged his inbox with complaints. They took him to task for watching football, going on holidays, and "wasting time" on other writing projects, as well as toying with his own mortality by being "60 years old and fat".
It's only natural for readers to feel a certain possessiveness over the characters with whom they spend so much time – but what exactly does an author owe his or her audience? And where does this responsibility start and end?

Some would argue that authors simply owe their readers an ending; a sense of narrative closure...

Read full a article here."
--
This is a very sensitive subject, apparently. I have seen readers slam authors for killing characters, making characters gay, and generally writing a book in a way the readers didn't want it to be written. I have seen readers assume that the fictional events were fact, and that the narrators of books were actually the authors.

As an author, I do feel a certain loyalty to readers who have taken a chance on my work. I owe them a debt of gratitude. They trust me, and I trust them. I trust them to accept me, no matter what I write. I trust that when they read my work that they will remain objective and understand that the story is fictional, a mixed metaphor for whatever message I am trying to convey at that moment, and that the emotions used to construct the story are invariably my own. I may call to mind the emotion of someone else, but the interpretation is my own. I also trust that they understand that those emotions are culled from years of personal experience and do not necessarily correlate literally to a scene in one of my books. I may have written about the suicide of a husband in The Kissing Room, but I have never lost a husband to suicide. I lost my father very young to cancer, and lost many friends and lovers to drug and alcohol addiction, so the emotion of loss is very real to me, but the circumstance in the book is fictional.

This can be true of our favorite characters in literature: we have lived with them; we think we know them; we connect with them; but in reality, we are really connecting with the reflective images and echoes of various parts of ourselves. The characters are fictional. As a reader, I have no right to dictate how they grow or how the author designs each individual character's psyche. They are the artistic renderings of an author's experience merged with their imagination. Do we as readers have the right to alter them, to steal them away and make them our own, to insist that they belong to us. I think not. Authors grow and change, just as their stories and characters do. They mature with time, and even though they may not mature the way we, individually, want them to, does that diminish the writer or the stories they write? Again, I have to agree with the Guardian here ... no, it doesn't. The only thing that seems to diminish is our ability to accept change. To quote the Guardian article: "We might occasionally wish to tear into the authors' imaginary worlds and take up control of their characters, but reaching into an author's home life to dictate what, how, and when they should write is surely a step too far."

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Review: Little Miss Straightlace

2011-06-22T16:16:00.004Z

Title: Little Miss Straight Lace
Author: Maria Romano
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Publisher: Createspace
Price: $10.95 Kindle Edition 3.29
Pages: 370
ISBN: 978-1453868140
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Book Description: When a dedicated researcher learns a bit too much about her client's new drug, the horrors from her past seem destined to return. Just as her life begins to spin out of control, a dashing computer security expert arrives from South America and seems the perfect antidote. But is his sudden arrival just the happy coincidence it seems? Find out in this complex novel of romance and suspense that takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of murder, mayhem, sex, and drugs—of the pharmaceutical variety, of course—until the very last page.
----
This book is a romantic suspense novel, but I felt it was a little more heavy on the romance than the suspense. Josie Natale is a genius bio-statistician who works primarily on pharmaceutical trials. She's your average brilliant person, great with the numbers, but not so great with the basics of life. She can't cook; she's always late; her apartment is a chaotic mess, and she has some difficulty forming lasting romantic relationships. Her current boyfriend Henry is younger than her, a bit mentally distant, and all her real friends think he's a prick. Josie Natale is one of those women who barely seems to have control of her life. Everything happens TO HER in this book like she is some sort of lightning rod. She knows this, and she blames her weakness on an assault she suffered as a teenager and then a later assault by a client when she refused to alter the data on one of her research projects, which would inevitably bankrupt the company. Josie's take-no-shit attitude and her closed off emotional state makes for no shortage of enemies and haters.

This all sets the stage for the suspense plot in which we have threats from a religious cult called the Warriors of God, leading to subsequent break-ins at various clinics. Research data is being stolen and altered, and when Josie's friend winds up in the hospital, it's time to call in the big guns: Enter security agents Nic and Robert. Nic is a security expert and his friend Robert, who looks like the man who assaulted Josie when she was a teenager, is an expert in cult ideology, having been rescued from one when he was a child. This will come in handy later in the story, which is a rollercoaster ride of drinking, eating, shopping, golfing, sleuthing, kidnapping, attempted murder, actual murder, and medical experiments with nefarious drugs.

The plotline of this book is all over the place with a lot of twists and well placed coincidences in order to lead the reader down various assorted sinister paths. Is Nic really a good guy or not? being the most obvious. There are a lot of characters coming and going – some readers might find this on-stage off stage scene setting a bit hard to handle -- but all were firmly grounded in their world. No one was super extraordinary, which made them believable. Nic seemed a little too perfect in the beginning, but he has his flaws too. In real life, you could run into any one of these characters on the street or in the boardroom. The romance is messy, all the characters are not without a few uncomfortable secrets here and there, and the detail is almost impeccable. My only problem with the book was that I thought it was a bit long, and the pacing slowed for me during the mundane moments of shopping and girl talk and golf games and evenings with friends along with all the Freudian internal exploration and examination. I was more into the suspense plot not the romance between the sexy petite genius and the uber wealthy Latin security god, but that’s just me: I am not a big romance reader. However, those who love romance will be thrilled with this one. The emotions are well articulated, and the romance is not without it's struggle.

As for the suspense plot, I thought everything was tied together quite well, and even though the HEA ending was predictable, it was not without its thrills. The book tackled quite a few unpleasant and important issues such as rape, religious cults, and most importantly the safety concerns we have about the pharmaceutical industry. Overall, I enjoyed the mystery, and I especially enjoyed the close knit friendships that existed at the start of the book and the new ones that were made by the end.

8/10

This book was reviewed from a PDF provided by the author.

One way to get your self-published book featured on the Daily Show....

2011-06-22T14:03:00.000Z

Is, um, to be a former major of New Orleans. Oh well. Full show here, interview at 15:00.

On The Business of Writing - Author Readings

2011-06-20T14:44:00.005Z

My co-blogger Cheryl Anne Gardner writes here often about the craft of writing. I'd like to talk a bit about the business of writing. First, a little background.

I am a self-published author. My first novel, The Mars Run, came out in 2006. Since then, for various reasons I decided to try and go the traditional route. I've had some success at that, and my new novel Pirates of Mars will be coming out by Hadley Rille Books in November, 2011. Coming from the self-published background, I've been working on marketing the new book, and this past weekend attended Duckon, a local science fiction convention.

At this convention, another, much more well-known author and myself were scheduled for a reading. Only one person came, for the other author, who decided to go back to his booth in the dealer's room. So no reading. I then attended a session put on by the leader of the Literary Underworld, and she had several tips to pass on to me:

1) Authors must promote their readings themselves! Even if you have a "captive" audience, like at a convention of science fiction readers, you have to tell them what you're reading.

2) Bribes are helpful. Consider a "reading with chocolate" or other munchie.

3) Murphy is alive and well. At this particular convention, figuring out what room each event was in proved challenging. So, don't put the room number on your flyers until you get to the event and confirm the location. If, as is typical in these events, your assigned room is off in Lower Slobovia, you may need to add directions to the room.

4) If the book is already out, be prepared to sell books at the reading. If not, have a marketing giveaway for people to take with.

5) ETA: Here's another thought about author readings: signing and dating the typescript and leaving it behind for whoever wants it. It doesn't draw more people to the reading, but it is a nice giveaway that costs nothing and makes somebody happy.

I write because I want to tell stories. Storytelling requires an audience, and I need to tell a story to my audience about why they should listen.

Thoughts on the Craft Expanded Redux with Story Links -- cannegardner

2011-06-16T07:00:00.004Z

“Believe me, I grow daily more convinced that the atmosphere is an inexhaustible source of countless beauties. It is up to we artists to learn, hour by hour, to penetrate it…to understand about Distance, to know the Air and space, which is never still, but always vibrating and wiggling. The tiniest oscillation is, in itself, a motive for art – it is a new beauty: fluttering, creaking, disjointed, and buoyant.” -- Mario De Sa-Carneiro

That quote is from the short story titled “Wings” by Mario De Sa-Carneiro found in “The Great Shadow” collection put out by Dedalus Classics. De Sa-Carneiro’s writing is so tantalizingly beautiful, one can get lost it, and I think it mirrors Miller’s comment from last week regarding an artist’s ability to get beneath the facts. Sometimes, I find that the facts clutter my writing, especially when I am writing historical fictions. We want the facts in order to give the story a sense of authenticity, but as artists, I think we have to be mindful of the innately cumbersome and didactic qualities they posses. Yes, facts ground a story in reality, but it’s easy to overdo it at the expense of emotional depth. We must constantly ask ourselves if the facts are relevant to the story -- what do they mean to the story – and that requires the artist to dig deep beneath those facts, to not only make the facts known, but to imbue the fiction with their mysteries.

Since I began writing flash fiction, my ideas about facts have become somewhat blurred. I found myself initially struggling to find a place for them. 500 or fewer words isn't a whole lot of space to work with, and I found myself having to rethink what the facts really mean to a story and how they can be conveyed without literal inclusion. That was a hard, tall, drink of ice-cold water, but in this case, the answer lies with metaphor, or rather, what words can one use to allude to the facts without ever really presenting the actual facts to the reader. I mean, shit, the facts are the point. I don't write a story unless I have some thesis I am arguing or some statement I am making in the abstract. That's just how I write. A story is never just a story for me, and fact and conjecture are a huge part of the storytelling, for me anyway, so I had to find a way to "write in" the facts on a more subliminal level. I think I am making headway in my struggle. I have a few published this month that focus on some very chaotic moral and political hot topics. I do like to stay relevant as much as possible, but the bottom line here is, the facts themselves are often integral to the story, but they don't always have to be expressed at face value.

Here are a couple of stories I had published this month so far. Yes, I have been dabbling more in the horror genre of late. Warning: Doll Heads contains mature and disturbing/potentially offensive content Reader Discretion is advised.

Pin Head Fiesta at Dark Chaos

Doll Heads at Carnage Conservatory

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Thoughts on the Craft Expanded Redux-- cannegardner

2011-06-09T07:00:00.000Z

"I thought that a man, to be a writer, must do at least five thousand words a day. I thought he must say everything all at once -- in one book -- and collapse afterwords. I didn't know a thing about writing. I was scared shitless. But I was determined to wipe Horatio Alger out of the North American consciousness. I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book, and I was in love with it. [...] I didn't dare to think of anything but the "facts." To get beneath the facts I would have had to be an artist, and one doesn't become an artist overnight." -- Henry Miller on The Tropic of Capricorn.

That quote is from the book "Henry Miller on Writing." A very good friend of mine, and fellow author, sent this down to me, and even though I am only a few chapters in, there is a lot that can be gleaned from it. No, it is not one of those notorious style guides, and no, it isn't one of those how to write for the market books either. It's simply the very objective thoughts of man as he took a moment to reflect back on his journey, the journey that made him a great artist. I think any artist whose passions are driven by the word will find a kindred spirit on the page. It's full of all of the joy and all of the futility of being a writer, written in Henry Miller's very blunt and often times crass style. Well worth the read for Indies and pretty much any artist, writer or not. Miller is a self-styled and self-taught talent. I don't always care for his subject matter, but his genius is without question, and his lessons are those of the "hard way" variety. We can all take value from them.

There has been much debate over the last week or two -- heated debate -- about daily word count. Some writers are just very prolific and enjoy working on a schedule. They write every day, and they feel productive when doing it and lazy when they don't. Other writers simply can't write to a schedule, or the writing schedule is muddled up with other things such as contemplation and research and outlines and … living a life even. Your writing schedule in no way defines you as a writer nor does it indicate whether or not you will be a successful one. Writing isn't just about the literal act of putting words to paper. That's just too narrow a view for so creative an endeavor.

If you write non-fiction or historical fiction, research is a huge part of the writing process, and the writing tends to come in the form of extensive note taking. In Fiction, you can make up a lot of shit. Fiction allows for that, of course, but making shit up will only get you so far. A little time and effort in the research department goes a long way to suspending disbelief in the reader. Sadly, I have read way too many self-published books where it was obvious the writer didn't do enough or, in some cases, didn’t do any at all.

It takes me a long time to write a book, with or without research. The words have to be just right because my inner poet tells me so, or rather, screams it until my eardrums bleed, so I have days when I seem to be cranking out the words, and I have days of note taking and outlining and out-to-see-the-world time, which is also very important. I also have a family, other hobbies, and a full time non-writing career, so writing gets squeezed in where I can, when I can, but I never force the issue. If I don't feel like writing because I can't get my head in the game, then I don't write. The words will be shit, and I can't deal with that. I can and do work on multiple writing projects at the same time to avoid such editorial burnout, sometimes it's a blog post, sometimes it's a journal entry, and sometimes it's flash fiction. I do try to write one flash fiction piece a day during the workweek, 500 words or fewer, but sometimes that doesn't pan out either, and again, I don't force it. There is a huge difference between procrastination and your muse taking a smoke break. Unless you are a deadline junkie and can create under that kind of pressure, then it is best not to force the words. I've seen forced words, and they stink like an editor’s rotted lunch sack. If I had to force five thousand words a day, I often wonder what kind of words they would be? Probably a lengthy dissertation on my own impending suicide, no doubt. Writers write. No Shit! Can't argue with that, but so do people in insane asylums, in feces, on the wall. They do it all day, every day, and it's not like the psych review board is announcing Pulitzers every week, month, or year.

If you want to be a writer, you are going to have to write, but don't let anyone else tell you how to do it -- except when it comes to grammar. Every writer has to get Zen with their own process. Find one that suits you and your writing will come easier. Adopt your own philosophy. Think for yourself. Being creative is not about strapping yourself into some arbitrary schedule designed by the latest productivity guru. It's about finding your own creative identity and crafting your writing life around it. When you got a good fit, you’ll know it.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Revew: Reboot

2011-06-08T02:30:00.004Z

Title: Reboot
Author: Carl Rauscher
Genre: science fiction
Price: $1.99 (Smashwords)
Publisher: Smashwords
ISBN: N/A
Point of Sale: Smashwords
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Reboot, a novel by Carl Rauscher, is an interesting entry in the science fiction subgenre of “post-apocalyptic” writing. The book is set a few years after The Pulse, a man-made electromagnetic event designed to destroy all micro-processors, including the ones in your car and PC. It’s the story of Oscar Ridell and Bonnie “Rabbit,” an eight-year-old girl who is working as a messenger. After The Pulse, America has reverted to an early 19th-century technology level, and Oscar is one of a group of people sent out (belatedly) by Washington to get some level of technology (think 1950s) up and working. Oscar arrives at a small town in Iowa beaten and shot, and he spends the winter working on his mission while dealing with the local heavies.

Now, I rather liked the premise of Reboot, and the story is generally well-written. However, I have several issues, the first of which can all be boiled down to the author playing a game of “let’s keep a secret.” Oscar is a major character in this story, and large parts of it are told from his point of view. Yet, we the readers aren’t told a number of key facts that Oscar knows. These are the sort of key facts that would be “front of mind” for Oscar.

Now, I understand that Oscar can’t announce these facts to the world, but he can (and should) tell them to us, the reader. Not knowing these facts is supposed to generate suspense. It doesn’t work – rather it generates irritation in that we’re being kept in the dark. This irritation hides the real tension, which should be between the townspeople and the (unknown to them) Bad Guys.

My second issue is related to this. We have a Bad Guy who is somewhat hidden from the townspeople. But he doesn’t need to hide, or at least his need to hide is not well-explained. As written, the Bad Guy is a not-very-bright mustache-twirling caricature. I would have liked to have seen more from this character’s point of view.

Despite all of this, I did in fact enjoy reading Reboot. I found it an interesting twist on the concept of rebuilding after the apocalypse, and technically well-written and executed. I also felt that Oscar Ridell and Rabbit were well-written characters. In fact, with the exception of the Bad Guy, all the characters worked for me. Overall, I was pleased with Reboot.

Rating 7/10

Thoughts on the Craft Expanded Redux -- cannegardner

2011-06-02T07:00:00.004Z

“If the brush strokes I have used disturb and distress you, then your redemption is nigh, and I have accomplished what I have set out to achieve. But if you find the truth they depict offensive, if they provoke you to curse their author…then, wretched reader, you have recognised your own self and you will never change your ways.”
—The Marquis deSade
--
I have spoken before on various other forums regarding censorship in art. My own work deals almost exclusively with cognitive dissonance and our deeper and darker thoughts. Often the imagery I choose to use is disturbing to some. Many people who have read my novellas know that I am not afraid of the dark. I don't go there too often or too deeply, or at least, I haven't in the past, but since I became obsessed with flash fiction, I have found myself staying in shadows much longer than before. Recently, my flash fiction piece titled Beware of Dog was accepted over at The Carnage Conservatory -- a new flash fiction horror ezine who is currently looking for your darkest work. I do try to stay away from overly descriptive gore, but that's not really a self-censorship issue as much as it is a style issue. I find subtly can often be more frightening. So instead of a long dissertation on deSade's very poignant quote, I'll leave today's thoughts with yet another question: Sometimes, a truth about life finds its way into the work, be it intentionally, subconsciously, or otherwise, and perhaps this truth might be something rather disturbing. Should you alter the story to make it more acceptable? And if you endeavour to soften the edges, will the truth you seek to expose lose its virility or its purpose? In other words, should an artist self-censor their work, alter their choice of imagery, symbolism, and metaphor to make a story more palatable for a wider audience? Will it lose its truth should we leave its symbolic nature open for interpretation or non-interpretation? Is the story really telling a truth about the human condition, and shouldn't we, as artists striving for truth, endeavour to lay bare that truth which might be construed as beautiful and poetic in one person’s eyes and yet offensive in another’s?

Religious Painters like Bosch certainly believed in the truth, and I do too; however, when you are running the submission rejection gauntlet, the question of self-censorship has the tendency to slam into you like a car crash. I doubt my story Beware of Dog would have gotten accepted at very many places. I am glad it found a home, but that isn't always going to be the case. At the moment, I have one very dark story about a serial killer who was abused as a child by the grade school's head nurse, who happened to be a transvestite. I explore a lot of very dark territory in a very small amount of words. I love the story, but I doubt I will be able to place it because of the subject matter. I know one thing though: I do so love the story, and whether it gets placed or not is irrelevant because I won't rewrite a thing. I don't always mind rewriting as long as it's for the good of the story. In Beware of Dog, I originally ended it at meeting the mailman at the gate. Carnage felt it needed one more punch in the end, and so I added the last couple of sentences. Minor editorial rewriting to me is not censorship. Had they asked me to take out all reference to her having sex with her lunatic husband, then I would have had to decline.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Free Book Friday Winner Pending

2011-06-01T12:51:00.001Z

We have selected a winner and we are waiting for their reply.

I'll give it until the end of the week. If I don't hear by then, we will select another winner.

Thanks All.

Page 99 -- The Mirrors of Fate: Out of The Past

2011-05-31T07:00:00.000Z

Page 99 from The Mirrors of Fate: Out of the Past
A YA Paranormal Romance
By Cindi Lee
Reprinted with Permission. Copyright Cindi Lee, All Rights Reserved

Book Description: Her academy’s community service program brought them together. Time and tide drew them apart. From the day Maria met Emma, she knew the little girl was different. An orphaned seven-year-old whose unnatural ability to recreate the past was even more frightening than the story of her family’s death. Obligatory time at White Crest Hospital soon became treasured time as ninth grader Maria Jaghai became friends with the child who spoke of a living dead brother.

But with the next school year looming and her own less-than-ordinary problems to worry about, Maria Jaghai moved on with her life and didn’t look back upon the child whose name she allowed to become a distant memory. Now as a high school senior, the present is Maria's only concern as she desperately plots to prevent an arranged marriage her parents are planning before she graduates. A new and pleasant distraction comes in the form of a handsome student named Alan, but behind his smiles lie dark intent, and soon the truths about the forgotten little girl and the horrors that haunt the child’s family come crashing down upon her. Maria will quickly learn that you cannot forsake your friends; you cannot control your fate; and you cannot escape the ghosts of your past. To heal the past and secure the future, Maria must leave the world she knows for a world of magic, wars, and fate science.
--------

Instinct or maybe paranoia told her what he might say next. This was the tradition for most girls, was it not? Thanks but no thanks. You’re not the girl for me. Or heaven forbid it was something like, Look you’re a nice girl, but...

She mentally prepared herself for whatever it could be and envisioned barricading herself behind an imaginary red-brick wall of safety. Whatever he had to say, she wouldn’t let herself be disappointed. Prepare for the worst. Don’t let his words or bad news penetrate you. Be strong.

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked after the awkward silence.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for this school.”

Oh hallelujah! They were not the words she dreaded, but Maria still frowned. “What do you mean you’re not cut out for here?”

He lowered his head and stared at the floor. “I just don’t belong here. And soon, I’ll be leaving.”
A whirlwind of distress threatened to topple her over. Maria went up to him. “You’re leaving? Why? You’ve barely spent any time here. Is it the workload you can’t handle? Because I can help you...although my grades aren’t as spectacular as they could be.” She laughed a little to lighten the mood, but his demeanor remained the same. “I mean, I don’t think you should give up just because of something silly. Naturally you just started a new school and it takes time to adjust. I don’t know how they teach things up in Iceland, but come on, think about it. You shouldn’t just give up like that.”

This was more than her rationality talking; this was desperation making a plea. If he had given her this information any time at all before their date, she would’ve been able to handle his announcement and wished him the safest trip home possible. Instead, her willingness to help him was nothing more than a deep unwillingness to see him go. He couldn’t leave. Not now. Not after she found someone like him. He was someone who paid attention to her. Someone real who seemed to love her company. Someone who...she was developing deep feelings for.

“I really think you should reconsider,” Maria told him again.

“I can’t. I never planned to be here long from the start anyway. My time here is limited.”

Maria’s voice dropped considerably. “Oh. I see. You didn’t tell me that before.”

“Why do you think I didn’t?” he asked, finally turning his face to look at her for the first time since they began speaking. His gaze pricked her like a thorn meant to cause bleeding. “I didn’t tell you because you weren’t worth telling.”
--------
Cindi Lee, born Cindi-Lee Bernard, was born in 1986 on the island of Jamaica. Living on and off in the United States, she attended schools in both Jamaica and the US. Cindi Lee earned a Bachelors in English at the University of the West Indies where she also studied Japanese. Her taste in books ranges widely, enjoying works by Christine Feehan, Alfred Bester, Jamaica Kincaid, Graham Greene, Charles Dickens, Judith Guest and more. She draws her writing inspiration from all avenues, but especially television, movies, video games and Japanese anime. Cindi Lee enjoys photography, calls herself a fitness nut, and enjoys writing articles on a wide range of topics. Visit her at her author Website: http://www.CindiLee.com

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

Sunday Picture: Comfort Reading

2011-05-29T09:00:00.004Z

Free Book Friday

2011-05-27T11:29:00.002Z

Title: Rolling With The Punches
Author: Jamie Kerrick
Genre: GLBT/Dramedy
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Price: $14.95
Pages: 236
ISBN: 978-1432754471

Book Description: Rolling With The Punches is what Joey Doulgas's dad always told him when things got rough. He explained that the punches in life were something you always had to deal with. Joey grew to understand once he got older, but it was a life long lesson. We start with a young Joey feeling he was different due to his sexual feelings toward men. Living in a small town in Kentucky only made it worse. There were three things Joey didn't want to be:gay, alone, and alcoholic. He was all three. This is his story, which can only be described as a dramedy for gay recovering alcoholics and addicts because it's both funny and tragic. We follow him as he grows up, goes to summer stock in Virginia, to study in Europe, New York, California, and finally back home. At one time alcohol was his answer to life. But it took over his life and he had to ask for help. But Joey is a slow learner. It takes him nearly 21 years before he found Alcoholics Anonymous and a new way of life. But the punches continued to come. The only difference is, he became aware of how to handle them. Find out how in this entertaining novel. You'll find yourself rooting for him, while identifying with him as well.

My review can be found here: http://podpeep.blogspot.com/2010/11/review-rolling-with-punches.html

To Enter this month's contest, please leave a comment with a valid email address by Midnight Sunday May 29, 2011. Winner will be announced on Tuesday May 31st after the Holiday.

Good Luck and Happy Reading.

Review: On Gossamer Wings

2011-05-27T09:00:00.000Z

Title: Drumlin Circus – On Gossamer Wings (Copperwood Press Double #1)
Author: Jeff Duntemann and James R. Strickland
Genre: science fiction
Price: $11.99 (paperback) $2.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: Copperwood Media, LLC
ISBN: 978-1932084016
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

From 1952 to 1973, Ace Books published their “Ace doubles” – two short science fiction novels bound back to back in the same volume. Each book had its own cover, upside-down from the other book. For various reasons, this process died out. Well, recently my friend Jeff Duntemann decided to revive the process via his self-publishing operation, Copperwood Press. Although they are physically one book (even the Kindle edition has both titles) I’ve decided to review the novels separately. Since I started with Jeff’s book, this review focuses on James Strickland’s novel On Gossamer Wings.

Gossamer Wings is set on the planet Valinor, in the same world as and just before the events of Drumlin Circus. Some 250 years prior, a human spaceship appeared in the system and suffered a massive malfunction. The colonists and crew evacuated to the surface of the Earthlike planet and set up housekeeping. Shortly after arriving, they discovered Thingmakers – alien devices that, when a 256 bit code was tapped or drummed on them, would make something. These tools, called “drumlins,” proved vital to the colonist’s survival.

At any rate, society on Valinor is very similar both technologically and culturally to that of 19th Century America. There are, however, several key differences. Specifically, there is an organization called the Bitspace Institute, which is dedicated to improving the levels of science and technology so that their spaceship can be repaired. The Bitspace Institute spends a lot of its time suppressing and denigrating the use of Thingmakers. Opposing them are groups called the Grangers and The Tears, consisting of people who are perfectly happy to use Thingmakers and stay on Valinor.

Natalie Bishop is an autistic girl, a teenager, who has not learned how to speak. She has, however, learned mathematics and science, and seems to have an innate ability to drum up whatever she wants from a Thingmaker. So, she’s been busy drumming up the parts needed for a flying machine, something that’s not been seen in Valinor’s skies since the last shuttle landed from orbit. The Bitspace Institute really doesn’t want to see Nat’s machine at all.

Further complicating matters, Tommy McQueen, Nat’s neighbor, has a crush on her. This crush is opposed by most of the locals, including Tommy’s bigger brother / bully Billy. Resolving these various conflicts drives On Gossamer Wings.

One of the really nice things about the Drumlin universe is that authors get to play with steampunk technology and 19th Century American society. Nat is unacceptable as Tommy’s wife largely because 19th Century women must cook and clean. She can’t (or won’t – some of the story is from her viewpoint) do that. The fact that she can build a powered aircraft is not only not relevant but is a strike against her.

I greatly enjoyed reading On Gossamer Wings, and I found it a great complement to Jeff’s Drumlin Circus. My request from both writers is “more, please!”

Rating: 10/10

Thoughts on the Craft -- cannegardner

2011-05-26T07:00:00.002Z

My thoughts on the craft this week relate directly to one of the Publishers Weekly review comments highlighted in Carol Hoenig’s article “Selling Cartoonish Characters with Wooden Dialogue.”

I wanted to speak to that this week simply because, for some writers, dialogue is one of those literary tar pits. We all know that characters must speak in order for them to become real; that is, of course, providing that they are not disabled in some way that would prevent them from speaking. That is a whole other issue, but having a character speak is much more complicated than putting something in quotes and following it up with the word: said. Yea, we could throw in a thousand adverbs to indicate the mood of the conversation, the tone and attitude of the speakers, and we can even change that said to something else, like shouted or whimpered … but that really won’t fix the problems most writers have with dialogue, and oftentimes, those easy tricks actually end up making the dialogue worse. So then what? Well, every writer needs to be a good listener and a little bit psychologist/sociologist. Why? Because we have to listen and understand, not only what people say, but also what they aren’t saying. That isn't always the same thing.

When I was a kid, I used to love contemplating humanity through art. I could stare at a painting for hours creating in my mind all the various conversation the subjects of the painting could be having with each other. The painting above by Bingham, for example, is titled “Fur Traders on the Missouri” and it dates to 1845. In reality, we don’t even need to know they are fur traders; we don’t need to know it’s the Missouri River, or that it’s 1845. We can imagine the day, the river, the solitude … how quiet it must be. We get all that from the description. But when you look at the two men, they are full of expression, not only in their faces, but in their body language as well. We might imagine that the man in the hat is the trader and that the young man might be his apprentice. The apprentice is rapt, having slung himself forward in a completely relaxed and attentive posture, as if the older man has been enthralling him with a tall tale from his youth. On the other hand, it might be a father and his devoted son. We can get all that from the action in the scene. Good dialogue encompasses the entire scene: the words and the action. There are always bits of action interspersed throughout the dialogue, gestures being made or not made, words being said and not said. Of course, too much detail again will stifle the flow of the dialogue and too little will render the conversation emotionless, so it all takes a bit of practice to get those beats right. We see and feel people when they speak to us, we don’t just hear them, and in this case, showing us the emotion is better than telling us what the characters are feeling. We have to let the reader experience the characters emotionally, intellectually, and physically.

There are no hard and fast rules for dialogue other than a writer should be honest and be true to your characters. Everything else really depends on the effect you are trying to create. Keep your dialogue poignant, use it to further your story and open up your characters. Pages of idle chitchat are boring. Show the readers just enough detail to make the scene feel realistic; don’t over define the action or emotions. Keep your beats in time with the ebb and flow of the conversation, every conversation has its mood. Don’t clutter your dialogue with conversational verbs or adverbs. Using is "said" is perfectly fine, and if the reader can determine the person speaking, then the dialogue tag is unnecessary and ends up being just something to trip over, ruining the flow. Be careful with this though. In first person narratives, a dialogue tag is important, especially if you combine one character's speach in the same paragraph with the first person narrator's thoughts. Be sure to punctuate your dialogue tags properly as well. If you don't know how, learn how, and do it right quick.

Now I write novellas and flash fiction in which the characters are generally struggling with deep emotional issues. Cognative Dissonance is always present in my stories, so I keep the dialogue strictly to those scenes where I want to reveal something about how the characters relate to each other or feel about themselves and the world they are often forced to inhabit. Sometimes I have a character articulate what they are feeling, and sometimes I don’t say anything at all, using just body language instead -- a beat. Sometimes -- rarely -- I use an adverb if it works, and sometimes I just use said or nothing at all. My characters also tend to be very crass when they are with each other but not in their work-a-day lives. I make sure my dialogue reflects that duality.

I have a few things I like to keep in mind when writing dialogue: Are the words your characters use -- their language and their emotions -- true to them? How often do you interrupt your dialogue, and does it fit the mood of the scene? Are your descriptive beats mundane like lighting a cigarette, looking out the window, or eating something, and do your characters do those things too often? And lastly, do your descriptive beats expose your character? Yes, we want that. Actually, dialogue is all about exposing the characters and exposing how they relate to each other. Let them be who they are and steer clear of clichés.

I was listening to a comedy show while washing dishes the other night, and in one line of dialogue I got all I needed to know about the speaker and the two other characters she was speaking to, without even seeing them. It went like this: “I get paid for what I do, and not in animal pelts like you two butt-fuckers.” That tells us a great deal about who she is and her perception of the other two people in the room. Then after watching the scene, I got all the body language and silent reflection I needed from the other two characters, who said nothing in the scene at all. That’s good stuff.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Page 99 -- Cyberhug.me

2011-05-24T07:00:00.000Z

Page 99 From Cyberhug.me
A Science Fiction Adventure
By Allan R. Wallace
Reprinted with Permission: Copyright By Allan R. Wallace. All Rights Reserved.

Book Description: When evil resists a push, it doesn't push back, it immediately seeks to destroy. Boldness is required for first limiting and then overcoming evil.
Of course surviving is nice too.
------

"Do you know how the gang members are situated at ambush?"

"Quite simply. The leader and his strongest two fighters are hidden behind the fallen tree. Five or six other gang members are in hiding on either side of the road, just enough forward so they won't hit each other with cross fire. When I left there was a gangster on your right with an antique rifle. There was no evidence of its use in the village, so he may have little ammunition for it. There are two outlaws further in the woods to your right, holding children. These guards have sidearms, but they use clubs and whips when driving children."

"How many children, and how old are they?"

"Over twenty children, most ranging in age from about six to twelve years old, other children were killed, although we did rescue a few left for dead or hidden. Adult survivors were tortured trying to find any hidden cash. " The gaffer shakes a bit, but continues on.
"They did take one pretty five year old girl - my granddaughter."

"What of the ambusher's weapons?"

"They all have energy weapons, although most also carry knives or machetes. Some of the energy weapons may be broken, these are treated more like jewelry than weapons. There may be other outlaws about, we think they are headed toward a permanent camp. They don't rest often, or stay in one place long."

"If we engage the ambush, will your group be able to protect and free the children?"

"We are already as close as we can get, give us a distraction and we'll try. We may be old warriors and grandmas, but we will not hesitate. We've made plans each time the gang separates, hoping for a chance to attack successfully."

"Would you like to ride with us, we will go up and talk to these outlaws, if talk they will. Otherwise we will engage the ambush on their terms."

"Can you give me an hour to get back to my group? I'd like to join in freeing the children."
------
Allan R. Wallace (aka: BFuniv) Trains Visionaries
Contrariwise: I write things that annoy the obdurate.

Allan is author of cyberhug.me - hacktivist cyberwars for human rights. He has also crafted a financial insight web site, Speculation Rules; and a slew of shorter works.

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

Review: Drumlin Circus (Copperwood Press Double #1)

2011-05-23T09:00:00.000Z

Title: Drumlin Circus – On Gossamer Wings (Copperwood Press Double #1)
Authors: Jeff Duntemann and James R. Strickland
Genre: science fiction
Price: $11.99 (paperback) $2.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: Copperwood Media, LLC
ISBN: 978-1932084016
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

From 1952 to 1973, Ace Books published their “Ace doubles” – two short science fiction novels bound back to back in the same volume. Each book had its own cover, upside-down from the other book. For various reasons, this process died out. Well, recently my friend Jeff Duntemann decided to revive the process via his self-publishing operation, Copperwood Press. Although they are physically one book (even the Kindle edition has both titles) I’ve decided to review the novels separately. Since I started with Jeff’s book, this review focuses on his novel Drumlin Circus.

Drumlin Circus is set on the planet Valinor. Some 250 years prior, a human spaceship appeared in the system and suffered a massive malfunction. The colonists and crew evacuated to the surface of the Earthlike planet and set up housekeeping. Shortly after arriving, they discovered Thingmakers – alien devices that, when a 256 bit code was tapped or drumed on them, would make something. These tools, called “drumlins,” proved vital to the colonist’s survival.

At any rate, society on Valinor is very similar both technologically and culturally to that of 19th Century America. There are, however, several key differences. Specifically, there is an organization called the Bitspace Institute, which is dedicated to improving the levels of science and technology so that their spaceship can be repaired. The Bitspace Institute spends a lot of its time suppressing and denigrating the use of Thingmakers. Opposing them are groups called the Grangers and The Tears, consisting of people who are perfectly happy to use Thingmakers and stay on Valinor.

In previous short stories by Jeff, the conflict between these groups and the frequently-quirky drumlin technology have resulted in fun-to-read stories with more than a whiff of Boys Own Adventure to them. In Drumlin Circus, Jeff goes darker. Here we discover that the Bitspace Institute has, quite literally, lifted whole pages from the Spanish Inquisition. Torture, kidnapping and assassination in the name of science are perfectly acceptable.

Don’t get me wrong – dark is okay, as is Boys Own Adventure – but it was a bit surprising to me. Having said that, I found Drumlin Circus very enjoyable and readable. Jeff has created a wonderful world to play in. It’s steampunkish yet willing to take a hard look at cultural assumptions both good and bad. Nor is everybody absolutely good or bad. Although the kidnapping of a woman starts the story off, by the end we wonder if the kidnap victim was entirely as innocent as she seemed. (I can’t be clearer than that without spoilers.)

I also found Jeff’s world a wonderful place to operate in. The drumlin technology has a consistent set of rules, and the 19th century manufacturing with 22nd century knowledge leads to some interesting problems. Lastly, Jeff is (I think) having fun with his narrator by inserting a woman from a much different era into the plot. The bottom line is that I thoroughly enjoyed Drumlin Circus, and my message to Jeff is “write faster!”

Rating: 10/10

Sunday Picture

2011-05-22T23:24:00.004Z

Two Thoughts On The Business of Publishing

2011-05-20T09:01:00.002Z

Thought #1

Jeff Duntemann, chief cook and bottlewasher at Copperwood Press, had been publishing his output thru Lulu. Well, for various reasons, he's moved, releasing his latest novel via CreateSpace. He's also got a short story collection that he's trying to put out electronically, entitled Cold Hands and Other Stories. He's got some interesting thoughts on the process so far on his blog.

Thought #2

Many moons ago, I reviewed Charles Sheehan-Miles' novel Republic. After I reviewed his enjoyable work, I rather forgot about it. It turns out that Sheehan-Miles has been making a decent amount of income from the book. At least, he was, until Amazon changed their website. But for those that are interested, you can stop by his blog and hear what he's doing about it.

Thoughts on The Craft Expanded Redux -- cannegardner

2011-05-19T07:00:00.003Z

The Vitruvian Narrator?

"Sometimes in conversation the sound of our own voice distracts us and misleads us into making assertions that in no way express our true opinions." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

This week I wanted to talk about narrative modes and narrative techniques, particularly Point of View.

When you look closely at DaVinci’s Vitruvian man, we can see that it is the image of one man and many different and alternative views of that same man. In narrative fiction, a story is often comprised of many different views, or rather, what I like to call angles of vision, if you will. Within those various angles of vision lies the interpretation of your story. Ever ask a couple of friends to retell an event they all witnessed? You’d be surprised how different the story is each time. Simply defined, this as what we call point of view -- person, technique, and perception – and the combination you choose to you will dramatically affect your so story, so choose wisely, you have a lot of options. Your story can be interpreted through the eyes of just one character or many, and in some cases, the interpretive narrator might not even be a character in the story at all – doesn’t have to be.

I have heard many a rotten dictate when it comes to handling POV, specifically who should and should not narrate a story and what they can and cannot do within that narrative mode. I hope that my essay today might dispel some of those outdated myths.

First off, literary point of view is comprised of three aspects:

The Narrative POV: First Person, Second Person, or Third Person.
The Narrative Technique or Voice: objective, subjective, stream of consciousness, dramatic, direct/indirect internal monologue, and omniscience, whether it be limited or not, etc., and
Perception: The person(s) whose perspective is being captured within the narration and whether or not the person(s) is/are actually a character in the story.

These three elements can be used in a dizzying array of combinations, and each has its benefits and pitfalls, but there are no rules. I write Novellas. By their very nature, they tend to be intense character studies with the main character’s viewpoint, opinions, and personal philosophies being the underlying thrust of the story, so I tend to favor the more intimate narratives styles: doesn’t matter if it’s First or Third person as long as the technique and perspective is subjective and limited. For my flash fiction, I tend to use either First or Second person. I like the Second Person POV for Flash fiction because it adds a layer of creepiness I can’t necessarily get with First or Third.

By default, many First Person narratives are limited and subjective, focusing on the thoughts and feelings of the narrator, who is usually the main character in the story. In this sort of narrative, the other characters are actualized mostly through dramatic scenes and dialog. As a reader, I personally like the intimacy of a First person narrative, but it too has its pitfalls. Technique, in this case, makes all the difference between a reflective, self-aware character and a whinny or self-obsessed one. Therefore, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, just depends on your intent.

One hears all the time that FP narrators cannot know the thoughts and feelings of the other characters in the story, but that again is one of those rotten dictates, especially if the storytelling style uses the past tense and a reflective First Person voice. The story has already happened and the narrator, or the main character, is reliving the story and already knows its truths with respect to the other characters and events. Even in a present tense story, the FP narrator can make known the feelings of another character because humans are notoriously guilty of making assumptions, and in that case, the narrator would be an unreliable one, but still within the boundaries, nonetheless. FP narrators often interject their own diatribe into the narration, which would make them subjective, but they don’t always have to, making them objective. Third person narrators work well for epic works with lots of characters, as the narrator can be removed from the story and offer the objective, all knowing and all seeing view, or they can be an actual character within the story, offering their limited view as well as their subjective take on everything and everyone else.

We are also not restricted to one consistent point of view, as long as your transitions are deliberate or so subtle that the reader does not get confused. For example: Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a multiple First Person subjective narration, using letters, journal entries, newspaper articles, ship logs, etc. to allow each character to reflect on how the story affected them personally in their own language and their own emotive sense of style. The letters, journal entries, and articles are the demarcation lines to keep the narrative from getting confusing. In addition, nowhere do we have Dracula represented except through the eyes of the narrators. His entire character is nothing more than an idea presented through the eyes of all the other characters, each with their own interpretation of him. In Ellis’ American Psycho, we have again another brilliant First Person subjective narration, and for a brief moment in one chapter, the narrator/main character shifts to an out of body third person limited point of view, which added even more suspense and psychological creepiness to the story.

Third person narratives are oftentimes the all knowing, all seeing, objective translator of the story, but, they are also allowed to be subjective, interjecting their own viewpoint. If you should choose to go that route, you just need to make sure your narrator has his or her own distinct voice so that he or she does not become confused with the other characters in the story, that is, of course, providing that your third person narrator isn’t one of the characters.

In reality, point of view, and all the various techniques used in combination with it, is all about manipulating distance to create emotional effect and varying levels of intimacy. You have all of them at your disposal, in any combination that works well for your story. Use it all, but watch for the pitfalls. If you end up with pages and pages of italics indicating internal monologue, then maybe you need to reconsider mode and technique. If your narrative seems too detached or too personal, or if your narrator and characters all start sounding the same, then again, it’s time to rethink your POV.

In one of my novellas, The Splendor of Antiquity, my narrator is dead. He is relaying the volatile love story between the archaeologist who dug him up and her rebuffed lover. Most of the narrative is in Third Person omniscient, but, he shifts often to his own first person subjective voice, interjecting his own take on the events unfolding in the story, whether the events are related to him or not. So in essence, he may be all knowing and all seeing, but he is an affected narrator, a flawed human spirit; we can share intimate knowledge with him even though we know that his view is often not reliable.

Second Person is a bit trickier, and I reserve that narrative voice for my flash fiction. In this case, the use of the personal pronoun “You” brings the reader into the story as an actual character. Depending on the context, this can have positive and negative effects. The aim of a second person narration is to create an intense sense of intimacy and can often leave the reader feeling powerless. For deep psychological impact, it is also used to place the reader in unfamiliar and disturbing situations in order to subliminally explore the demarcation line between the internal “You” and “I.” However, some readers may find it too uncomfortable to read from this POV without feeling alienated from their own consciously identified sense of self, so be careful with it.

Art is all about experimentation. I’ve written entire stories in one POV only to realize during revision that I had chosen, not necessarily the wrong POV, but a POV that didn’t necessarily deliver the emotional impact I wanted for the story. I will then rewrite the first 4 or 5 chapters in a different POV and let my beta readers have a go at it to see which one the majority prefers. I never ask which one they like, I simply ask them how each POV made them feel. With that, I can determine which POV works best for what I am trying to say with the story. You just never know what will happen, how the entire tone of a story can change, and that’s half the fun of it.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Page 99 -- Galen's Kids

2011-05-17T07:00:00.000Z

Page 99 from Galen's Kids
A College Retrospective
By Kevin Doyle
Reprinted with Permission: Copyright By Kevin Doyle. All Rights Reserved.

Book Description: College. Tests. Future. Career. My Life. Why am I here?

Galen’s Kids traces the story of Brian Murphy, a sophomore attending St.Barrows College, a small private college in Helena, Montana. Away from his mid-west roots, he tries to fit in as a pre-med student facing a withering academic curriculum. Out of sync with his classmates, the Montana environment, his roommate, and the mid 1970’s; Brian finds himself “in way over his head” amidst a crew of focused, hard charging collegians. Galen, the famous ancient physician — whose therapeutic traditions still influence today — brought to the medical discipline, curiosity, confidence and relentless study that consume so many of its students. Brian is one of those kids, faced with a collegial perspective he doesn’t get, a cultural state of mind that he doesn’t relate to, a personal confidence he doesn’t have and a Big Sky Outlook he doesn’t understand. He struggles to fit in. His search for his own identity is influenced by his support network: the wizened loner, the quintessential doctor-to-be, the psychological misfit, a couple of sociopaths and most importantly . . . Sandie. A pre-med student herself, she leads Brian on his journey and shows him his own path. He may not be pre-med material but he’s still a collegian. Maybe in the true liberal arts tradition, he could be a future college professor. Just choose, decide, focus, stay on track, be like us, Sandie hopes. But can he? Facing personal demons, temptations, downturns, short-term victories and distractions; he drifts from Sandie’s oversight and vision. But to where? Can he make it back? Join a modern pilgrim’s quest in a small town college, whipped along by his decisions and their consequences. College is the laboratory where we first heat the test tube of our lives, where we face the discovery of who we are and what we need and why we choose what we do. If you’ve sweated college, your future and how you fit in; you have to read Galen’s Kids.

------

After a two minute walk over to their wing, he could hear Dan’s cheap stereo playing a Marshall Tucker song. “Fire on the Mountain, Lightning in the Sky.” Except fire was pronounced “fahr.” What the hell is a “fahr?” ‘Why can’t these country western music stump jumpers pronounce “fire” correctly,’ he wondered? He peered into their room and saw they were both there with a couple of other “bio” types. There was strong evidence that drinking was occurring. Brian was offered a beer. Third one in less than ninety minutes. One of these days, he would learn “food first, then drinking.”

"Well, Brian, where ya been, buddy? Don’t believe you were in your dorm room last night.”

“What?”

Maybe if Brian feigns confusion he can get out of this.

“Well?”

“Well, what?” No, not looking good here.

“Didja spend the night with Sandie?”

Women accuse men of bragging too much about their bedroom exploits, perceived or real. There wasn’t anything to brag about in this situation. Sandie and Brian stripped down to appropriate nighttime garb and shared a few hours of sleep together. That was it. Oh yeah, and five minutes of reproductive organ exploration too. But who would believe him? Telling anybody anything would eventually get back to Sandie. This heavy relationship stuff was getting more complicated by the minute. Going to Sandie’s mom’s house for dinner was looking to be a good option at this point.

“Where I was or who I was with doesn’t matter.”

“You bagged her, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t bag anybody. Will you two depraved fuckheads shut up and knock it off?”

Brian was just pissed and embarrassed enough that Danny and Sam momentarily backed off. There would be another time to face their questioning and he could give them enough details to shut them up. But for now they’d have to let it go.

“OK Murphy, we’re cool, have another beer. What are you up to tonight?”

“I’m supposed to hook up with the still virginal Sandra and go out or something.”

“How do you know she’s a virgin? Maybe in high school or before you hooked up with her . . . some wild stuff happened?”

Brian was part surprised and embarrassed by Danny and Sam’s third degree. It was meant in good nature and they weren’t sure if Brian would ‘fess up’ anyway . . . . but it was part of the ‘if you run with the "pre-medders," you better come prepared to play’ mentality.

--------

Kevin Doyle was born in Portsmouth, Virginia and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended three colleges before graduating from Indiana University as an English major. He joined the Navy in 1980, serving five years aboard ships. He was stationed in Yokosuka, Japan for three years, then received orders to San Diego. Taking time off from the active duty Navy, he went into the family´s desktop publishing business and spent eight years being a part of the entrepreneurial work ethic.

A new career opportunity arose and he went into commercial printing and rejoined the Navy as a reservist. He returned to his university town of Bloomington, Indiana, working at a commercial printing plant.

The sad events of "9/11" changed many lives and careers of Americans. Mr. Doyle returned to active duty in Mayport, Florida as an anti-terrorism officer for a sixteen ship naval surface group. Two and a half years later, he mobilized with US Central Command (USCENTCOM) in Tampa, FL. He was assigned to and provided staff support to the Combatant Commander´s Interagency Coordination Group. This experience allowed him a unique view into the overlapping world of military, law enforcement, intelligence and State Department activities in the war on terror.

Departing active duty and now working as a contractor in Force Flow Management, he remains at USCENTCOM, and commutes between Jacksonville, Florida and Tampa.

Overseas travel has included trips to Japan, Korea, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Italy, Puerto Rico, Germany and to the mid-east country of Qatar.

He is married to the former Elizabeth Evangelista of the Republic of the Philippines and is the father of an adult and teenage child, Alison and Ian. His hobbies include motorcycling, a firearms enthusiast, reading and being an inveterate "homebody."

The story, Galen´s Kids, has been under development for some years and is a fictional recollection of the times he spent at college in Montana. It looks at students, their pressures, attitudes and private college life in the mid 1970´s.

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

Sunday Picture: Books are Books

2011-05-15T09:00:00.004Z

Thoughts on the Craft Expanded Redux -- cannegardner

2011-05-12T07:00:00.006Z

Between subjective and objective there is no vital difference. Everything is illusive and more or less transparent. There are no solid facts to get hold of. Thus, in writing, even if my distortions and deformations be deliberate, they are not necessarily less near to the truth of things. The truth is in no way disturbed by the violent perturbations of the spirit.

– Henry Miller

Subjective: Existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought.

Objective: Of or pertaining to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality.

Today's quote by Miller intrigues me, as I think it is the perfect definition of art, whether that be a painting, or a story, or a poem, or a piece of music. The reality that each of us creates in our fiction is a perfect blend of the subjective and the objective, fantasy and reality. A story may have certain facts that ground it in reality, certain truths, but the characters’ interpretations of those truths may be distorted and deformed, thus rendering the objective illusive and transparent. That does not mean that they are any less the truth. Sometimes in a story, I think those distortions actually push us more towards the truth than the facts can. I often discuss this theory with other writers with respect to descriptive details.

The book cover displayed is from Roland Topor’s The Tenant, which I received in the mail the other day. The cover itself is an exercise in subjective vs. objective details. As far as the story, the writing is brilliant, and it beautifully manipulates the truth through the subjective and the objective. In this bit of narrative exposition, our protagonist is about to move away forever from the room that had been his home for many years:

“Even now he no longer really felt at home in this room. The uncertainty of his situation had intruded on his last days here. […] He had given up such concerns as cleaning and dusting, filing his papers, or even making his bed. The result had not been a wild state of disorder – his passions were too few to cause that – but an atmosphere of vacancy, of sudden cancelled departure.”

The Objective details ground us in the room: the bed, the papers, the dust. But the Subjective details, which are more prevalent, tell us what the room really looks like to our protagonist, and not only do we know what the room looks like, but we understand the character’s state of mind in that moment. We can see and feel the connection between the room and the man, and thus, we can know the man. So when deciding how much detail to add, one needs to focus on emotional intent and remember: The devil is in the details, and the truth lies in the subjective ones. If we hyper-focus on objective details, our characters become caricatures, one-dimensional beings against that scenic backdrop. The story of life, fiction or not, is about relating to the world around us. How a character relates to his/her world is the essence of a story. As a reader, I don’t necessarily want to know what the characters see; I want to know what they feel, or rather, how they feel about the world they inhabit. Why? Because I want to know if they feel like me. Simple as that. I want to relate in some way with the characters, and I can only do that through their subjective view of the world they live in.

Most of you know I have been devoted to strictly writing flash fiction of late, and let me say that writing in the short form like this has really tightened up the writing, I think. Flash fiction is an exercise in subjective detail, especially when you are writing in the abstract. In this case, every detail counts, metaphorically speaking. In my flash piece titled Persian Cat, published at Dustbin April 10, 2001, illustrates how I like to use subjective detail as metaphor:

You were on a New York subway train in the middle of the night...
It stank of sweat and urine, scattered newspapers stuck to the floor as a field of lilies in fuchsia flew past us off in the periphery. You could hear Pan skipping along the roof of the rail car, his hooves trot trot trotting as they tinned and plinked off the steel, idle dreams flitting away in the whirlwind of jolly notes from his flute. He played that song for a near-sighted girl, spilt milk dripping down her leg as she needfully explored the barren landscape that was her own flesh. She smiled at you -- I smiled at you -- and you, in the flickering fluorescent light, smiled back.

Every single detail I used was a metaphor for the past and present state of the two characters' romantic relationship with each other: the filthy vile state of the train; the beautiful lilies flying past them in the distance; the nearsighted girl; Pan and his melody of hope; even the spilt milk. I didn't need to come right out and tell the reader a single thing about their relationship; it's all in what the girl sees, and more importantly, how she sees it. How she sees herself in relation to her current predicament. Even in the long form, this approach can be used to the writer's advantage. It creates mood and an abstract level of intimacy that can affect a reader on a much more subliminal level than any objective detail ever could. I also found that the use of the Second Person Narrative POV just further intensified the intimacy I wanted to create. Here, the reader is not just a simple voyeur. Course, this is all just one person's artistic opinion, and for this story, it worked.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Review: The Scent of Jade

2011-05-11T09:00:00.000Z

Title: The Scent of Jade
Author: Dee DeTarsio
Genre: Adventure / Romance
Price: $2.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: Amazon
ASIN: B00466HRVY
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Dee DeTarsio send an email in to POD People asking for somebody to review her novel The Scent of Jade, which she described as “chick lit with action.” Even though I’m not a typical “chick lit” kind of guy, I am an action guy, so I decided to take a flyer on her book. It was an interesting read.

The book is narrated in a very conversational tone by Julie Fraser, a California woman married to Colin, a scientist. Julie decides to surprise Colin by flying down to Costa Rica to join him at a convention he’s attending. He’s very surprised indeed – he gets caught very flagrante delicto at the foot of an altar in the jungle just outside the resort. This sets up an adventure involving guns, a jade statue and a few amazing coincidences.

Although I found the book enjoyable overall, I did have some issues. First, chapter 1 is all about Julie, having gotten lost, camping out in the jungle overnight. I found that start entirely too much in the middle of things. A more conventional start would have worked for me. Second, and this is very much a personal thing, the book is told in an extremely conversational tone. It’s very much like Julie is sitting across from you telling her story. This was (for me) entirely too much Julie, as I found the character a bit scatter-brained. However, this is a convention for “chick lit” so Your Mileage May Vary.

Having said all of that, the book was entertaining, and there was some real danger mixed in with the romance. It’s a bit conventional, cinematic in a movie-of-the-week sort of way, but then movies-of-the-week are popular and enjoyable.

Rating: 7/10

Page 99 -- Rebirth

2011-05-10T07:00:00.000Z

PAGE 99 from the second book in The Judas Syndrome series - Rebirth.
A Post-Apocalyptic Novel
By Mike Poeltl
Reprinted with Permission: Copyright By Mike Poeltl. All Rights Reserved.

Book Description: Although Mike Poeltl never intended for The Judas Syndrome to be the first of a series, he caved in to reader demand in the spring of 2010 and began working on Rebirth, a continuation of the popular post-apocalyptic tale that one Facebook reviewer called “a stark and uncompromising vision of the future of our world.”

Narrated by Joel’s girlfriend Sara, Rebirth is a story of survival,betrayal, and hope. After giving birth to their son, whose evident purpose is to fulfill the destiny that Joel had forsaken, Sara realizes that her home is no longer a haven.

Menaced by a power-obsessed Earl and frightened by the deterioration of a once-tight group of comrades, she flees north- into a nihilistic world inhabited by dangerous nomads, new friends, and old enemies.

----

“This is a good reading.” Carol stood and moved through the room towards where Leif lay nestled on my lap, oblivious to all of the energy being generated in determining his future. “I would like to perform a séance with the boy. There is a great deal of spiritual energy surrounding him. The others are busy.”

“What would a séance do?” I was nervous about this next step into the unknown. A séance was like the Ouija board to me, a dark, misunderstood magic of sorts, talking to the dead and all that.

“I will be better able to speak with the boy’s guides, to know what they know.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s up to you of course, Sara, but it is in the boy’s best interest that I perform a séance. The more we know, the more guidance we can offer you.”

“Okay, if you truly believe it’s in Leif’s best interest, I’ll consider it.”

“Enough for tonight,” Beth interrupted. “We have enough now to meditate on. Give the girl time to decide.” With that the women retreated to their cots.

*****

The two days following Leif’s Tarot reading gave me plenty to think about. Leif’s life plan was beginning to take shape and with it, mine. As I rummaged through the cold room, another fifteen steps below the bunker, Carol approached me.

“Have you made a decision as to whether you’d like for me to speak to Leif’s guide?”

“I think so.”

“Good, Sara. Good. I have a strong feeling this guide can help you.”

“How can you know that?”

“My own guide has warned me against channeling this spirit.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t, Carol.”

“Perhaps.” She tilted her head to the left and looked down timidly.

“But it is because of my guide’s warning that I feel I must try.”

“If you’re sure.”

She smiled and nodded. “I’ll prepare for the séance. After dinner, we’ll begin.”

----

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Michael Poeltl earned his diploma in Interpretive Illustration and began a career in the field while educating himself on the art of writing. Writing quickly became his passion and after completing several shorts, he undertook his recently published work, The Judas Syndrome.

Drawn to the dark places of the mind, Poeltl often works through his own demons when putting words to paper. When the author lives the words he writes, experiencing each moment as it passes, it becomes more than a story,it becomes tangible, something the astute reader will pick up on.

And as with the Yin and Yang, he can appreciate the good in people, and the hope, and the dreams, and the work that is put into building a better life. This too can be found in both his writings, and in his own life. An example of that would be his membership in the Free Masons, where the motto is, "Taking a good man, and making him better."

Poeltl lives in Ontario, Canada with his family, wife Lisa, daughter Tatum and dog Jackson, and was Voted Best Writer/Author for 2010 by View Magazine: A weekly alternative newspaper reaching over 1 million potential voters/viewers. Visit him at: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2972105.Michael_Poeltl

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

Sunday Picture: Smashwords

2011-05-08T09:00:00.006Z

Thoughts on The Craft -- cannegardner

2011-05-05T07:00:00.000Z

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” –Saul Bellow, Nobel Price in Literature 1976.

I counter that quote with a tale/myth from the life of James Joyce: One day he managed to write seven words, and while that was good for him, at least, he didn’t know what order they went in.

We have all felt humbled by the juxtaposition of elation and frustration when it comes to writing and editing. Some days I am lucky if I even get seven words down. Though since I wrote this post originally, two years ago, much has changed. I could go for days only scratching out a sentence or two, but since I shifted my focus to the abstract flash fiction I have been writing of late, I am now writing more prolifically then I used to, sometimes to the tune of two or three flash pieces a day. This has helped me immensely during the revision/editing process of my novella length pieces.

Even so, I still love waking up in the middle of the night with what I call the afterburst, and by that I mean when my mind has been so consumed with a bit of narrative or a scene I just wrote during the day that a brilliant burst of clarity comes to me during my sleep. This happens often for me, and while I normally never touch the odd bits and pieces of prose or poetry that are conceived in that state, it doesn’t mean I should write in a perpetual fugue state.

Dreaming is where vision is given life. Editing is where the alchemy happens.

The editor’s desk is the dank fume-laden laboratory where we can take all our knowledge of literary technique and transform those magnificent tidbits of virtual nuance and metaphor into something cohesive. It’s where we transform the story into truth. For example, I was recently editing my novella And Death Dreamt Us All, and something just didn’t feel right to me. I had hit a wall in the first chapter. So I thought on it, reworked it, added more, rearranged it … etc, ad nausea, and still – it didn’t feel right. Then later that evening, frustrated beyond reason, I was watching the movie Girl with the Pearl Earring, which is about one of my favorite painters Johannes Vermeer, and the scene in particular had to do with the painting above. In the original painting, according to the movie, there was a chair in front of the woman. In the movie, the maid subsequently moved the chair out of the scene. He later repainted the scene with the chair removed. When Vermeer asked her why she had moved it, she said, “The woman looked trapped.” In that moment, something hit my subconscious, and I realized, yet again, what wasn’t right about my start: My intent was trapped behind unnecessary character monologue that would work better later in the book, after something actually happened, and so I cut and then rearranged the chapters before and after. Now it reads right, to me: The idea I wanted to hit the readers with is more subtle. Left for a quieter moment, my intent has become clearer. So in my opinion, the true brilliance of a story, any story, seems to originate from the subconscious mind or the dream state, where creativity lives unbound, but when we edit, we need to be consciously aware of our intent. Vermeer was painting from the subconscious emotion he felt, but his maid, by her very nature, was able to see the clutter and the apparent misplacement of the details.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Review: The Chosen

2011-05-03T07:00:00.005Z

Title: The Chosen
Author: John G Hartness
Genre: Religious Urban Fantasy/Dark Humor
Publisher: Createspace
Price: $7.99 Kindle Edition 4.95
Pages: 206
ISBN: 978-1453770627
Point of Sale: Amazon.com
Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Our story opens at a Las Vegas casino, specifically at the gambling tables, where we find Lucky (Lucifer) and Big A having at a game of blackjack. Big A or rather, Adam -- yes that Adam -- and Lucky are trying to do a little bit o' the smash and grab at the tables, Lucky counting cards, and Big A trying to pass off 25 year-old chips from a long-demolished casino. This, of course, doesn't work. However, Adam and Lucifer's run-in at the casino is anything but coincidence, and Adam knows it. In days to come, an old girlfriend will be thrust back into his life along with a child he didn’t know he had.

This book reminded me of the movie Dogma. It's style and campy flavor reminiscent of the pulp-fiction religious satire you'll find in that film. The physical events in the book are relatively mundane. It’s a road trip story filled with bars, diners, strip clubs, and casinos. Your disenchanted group of derelicts on a quest type story. Pretty standard fare, no dead bodies, zombies, explosions, glowing briefcases, or anything interesting like that, but the subtle moments along the way, the actual conversations, which are primarily used for exposition, make it a fun read.

It was the mid-eighties and I’d gotten pretty tired of the New York music scene, what with all the pretty boys and androgyny going around. I’ve never looked very good in neon clothes, and while I didn’t mind the earrings, it’s always been important to me to be able to tell the boys from the girls. So I headed to the one place where New Wave had not gotten much of a foothold: Texas.

And of course this one from Michael when Adam asks when he became "British."

“Just now. It’s a pretentious decade and I can’t possibly fit in without an appropriately posh accent.”

And there were some very man-tastic sentimental moments, like when Adam describes his attraction to Eve.

"She laughed whenever she felt like laughing, and was so moved at the beauty of the sunset that she wept, big tears rolling down her cheeks to nestle in the hollow of her throat and collarbone while she grinned a grin that kept the sun up a couple extra minutes just to bask in her light.

So yeah, we fell in love. I guess we invented it, at least among mortals. The Seraphim had a whole different level of love working, what with their nigh-infinite intellect and capacity for emotion and all. But we fell in love, and we had babies, and then we had an unfortunate interaction with a certain Seraph with ambition that had managed to lose a celestial corporate takeover bid and develop a reputation as the most disgruntled of employees. You all know how that turned out. Then there was the whole Cain inventing murder episode, and things spiraled out of control between Eve and I, and that all culminated in a certain number of butterflies in my stomach as I sat in a relatively disgusting bar in New Orleans watching my ultimate first wife take her top off for dollar bills."

The book raises some interesting religious questions, albeit through some very gritty skepticism. Some overly sensitive readers might find themselves offended by the fact that Adam is a basic low-life drifter, that Cain is still a psychotic bad-ass, and that Eve works at a strip club. Oh how far the fallen have fallen. Not to mention that Archangel Michael is a fast-talking double-dealing troublemaker who makes Lucky Lucifer seem like a saint, which he is, sort of, but no spoilers here. In general, the entire cast of characters is what you would expect in a spaghetti western. Everyone is sarcastic and everyone has a few one-liners. It's not the funniest dark religious comedy I have ever experienced, but the plot is interesting. I did like the fact that Eve was set-up in the garden and that God, The Father, was the one who set her up, not Satan, and knowing this, had allowed her to carry that guilt for an eternity until she drives herself mad. God, The Father, comes off here like a manipulative dick and Archangel Michael as nothing more than a toady, like is brother seraphim Lucifer. This is the story of the Bible, in a sense, if the Lone Gunmen had been the scribes. We've got a lot if conspiracy theory here and a lot of conceptual religious scrutiny, scrutiny that makes you think about shit for minute or two, especially when Adam calls the Bible "a novel." Yes, it's also the kind of religious scrutiny that pisses people off, so again, this isn't a book for sensitive religious types.

Despite quite a bit of editorial awkwardness, this book was an enjoyable read from start to finish. There's not a whole lot of action here, but the drunken philosophical debates, the sarcastic monologues directed at the reader, and all the snappy one-liners move the story along at a nice pace. The chapters are very short, which makes sense because the book actually started out as a serial on Hartness' website. The brevity of the chapters, however, really made the editorial issues stand out, and there were a lot of editorial issues: fiddly bits that a decent proofreader should have caught, issues that readers will notice. The biggest problem area for me was with the dialog. There were strange dialog tags, incorrect punctuation before the tags, and some areas where dialog tags were missing altogether, which made me have to go back and reread portions to figure out who was actually speaking. This was particularly difficult when the dialog of one character was combined in the same paragraph with the narrative voice of another. Some readers might also find the dialog over-expository, resulting in a lot of sitting-around talking type situations at the expense of the plot. The plot being the group's quest to find some general nobody, who, after thousands of years and millions of other people, has been randomly chosen to make another "Great Choice" thus determining the fate of humanity. Tall order. The group has to trek across the country to find this modern nibble head and make sure he/she makes the right choice, whatever that might be, and save humanity. By half-way through the story, the merry band of immortal fucktards has just barely managed to stop hating on each other long enough to get the plot in gear: the merry band of players being Adam, Michael, Adam's first son Cain and his last daughter Emily, his ex-wife Eve, and his ex-girlfriend Myra. Lucifer sets the plot in motion and then you don't see him again until midway through the story where he appears "just to talk" for only about a minute, but don't worry, he takes center stage during the choice making session, and he ain't the bad guy.

So is there a point to be made here? Sure. There's a lot of "being who you are" metaphors, some loosely thrown about ten commandment type stuff, and a few overt stabs at the accuracy of the Bible such as this when Adam tells the Chosen one that he is not Christian:

“Junior. Take a deep breath. Now let’s remember, I am Old Testament. I predate Christianity by about 50 millennia, give or take a couple thousand years. I met the Carpenter. The Nazarene was a good kid, but he wasn’t the first or the last to speak that speech, so I’m not inclined to follow some hippie kid just because he says the Father loves us all. I know the true face of my Father’s love, and I know I don’t need an intermediary to get me there. All I need to do to talk to God is talk to him. I don’t need to do it just on Sundays, or just in rooms with a lotta stained glass, or just through a mouthpiece. Now I liked the Carpenter. He did some good things, and he had a fantastic speaking voice. But I’m a little more old school in my religion. A little more direct, if you get my drift.”

Take it for what it is. Overall, the story has a great concept. Eve made her choice in the Garden so that Adam wouldn't have to make one, ever, or so she thought, but that deal was a lie, or rather, a misdirection, and now Adam will have to make his own choice, which is all tangled together with the choice of the "other." There is a pulp flavor to the comedy, and all the players are gritty wisecracking wannabe gangstas. Biblical gangstas that is. So if you don't mind your Christianity dressed in black -- a black velvet thong and cowboy boots -- and you don't mind your saviors tattooed and pierced like a pin-cushion, not to mention all the bar brawls and Angels who drink, swear, and muck things up, then you will love this story. I sure did. It's a snarky satirical Sunday school adventure for mature adults, so if you weren’t even the least offended by the movie Dogma, then you will love this book.

7.5/10

Sunday Picture

2011-05-01T09:00:00.000Z

Free Book Friday

2011-04-29T07:00:00.002Z

We are doing things a little bit differently this month. No Contest. Everyone who wants a free eBook gets one. How bout that.

For this month's free eBook, we are featuring Editorial by Arthur Graham. Mr. Graham alerted us to his free ebook promotion, and since we reviewed the book here, we thought, why not make sure our readers know about it.

You may download your free copy at the Editorial sales page over on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49722
using Coupon code: LC43P

The coupon is good until May 31, 2011.

For More Information on the book, see my review below:

Title: Editorial
Narrator: Arthur Graham
Genre: Humour/Novella
Price: $ 9.99
Paperback: 136
Publisher: Createspace
ISBN: 978-1450550789
Point of Sale: Amazon
Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

At the onset, our protagonist is sent to live with an aunt/uncle after the untimely death of his parents, and he finds the routine and familiarity therapeutic in a sado-masochistic sort of way, until the day comes when his aunt and uncle basically throw him out on his own with nothing possession-wise to speak of other than his porn mag collection. Well, at least our narrator handles it well: with wit, sarcasm, and what was probably a heat stroke induced delusion.

"Most of my time was spent reading and masturbating in my room, activities that seem equally self indulgent in retrospect. Hours of page-peeling and penis-pumping (and sometimes penis-peeling and page-pumping, when things got really out of hand) were punctuated only by mealtimes, when I would descend the stairs to eat with the strangers who presumably read, slept, and pleasured themselves in the room down the hall from mine."

Either way, he makes his way and quickly discovers, via a travelling salesman who "befriends" him, that sex for cash is an easy way to make a living. Then the narrative shifts from a first person to a close third person narrative, still in the head of our original narrator. The initial shift is jolting. We aren't sure if it's the same person we have been intimately familiar with up to that point, but the inscription in a small leather journal will get the reader back on track. Personally, I liked the shift. It felt to me as if the narrator was now looking upon his life as if it were foreign to him, as if he no longer knew or understood himself, and that his life was nothing more than surrealist fiction. Then in the next chapter, we jump again from editor in an office cubicle to a merchant marine ship powered by solar energy.

The Gulf of Mexico...welcome a frigid July morning in the year 2484 CE, well, frigid until the 3 suns rise and radiate everyone on deck to a crisp.

Cut back to our Editor
Cut again to our travelling sex-a-holic salesman
Cut yet again to the Whitehouse at the onset of a nuclear holocaust...

And so it goes on like this in a very hyperbolic Burroughsesque Fear and Loathing in modern America style of storytelling. Although their really isn't a story here, just a series of victims, cataclysmic events, witty suppositions, political postulating, and philosophical musing.

I did find the juxtaposition of the end times of the world and a young man's adolescent end times to be intriguing. The boy’s transmutation into his reptilian self fit well with the de-evolution of humanity theme going on in other chapters. And don't worry; this is one of those books in which it's perfectly ok NOT to know what the hell is going on. That’s part of the adventure, so don't look for mainstream writing via a nice linear plotline and one restrictive point of view, because you won't get it here. It’s experimental for sure, and while the writing is sarcastic and very dark, I wouldn't categorize the book as humour like the author did. It's more existentialist fiction with a black comedy bent to it.

Young man loses his parents and is forced to live with unsympathetic aunt and uncle, relatives he doesn’t recognize as his own and suspects them of being demons...
Young man is thrown out on the street...
Young man gets seduced by travelling salesman...
Young man turns into a snake...
The world is nuked by greed...
An editor's personal manuscript gets stolen and sold to another publisher...
But all books have all been destroyed by a virus...
Eve is taught how to pleasure herself by a really really bored serpent...
End scene and cut to editor on trial for crimes against humanity...
Until a lunatic starts screaming on a domestic airline flight prophesizing that the plane is going to crash, and yet, our editor continues on to Florida to write the fictitious biography of a client who shall never be identified by name but only by non-descript pronouns. I love this bit of meta-fiction BTW. Bravo!

In my opinion, I felt the central theme to this work was humanity's evolution, or rather, our lack of, and how, no matter how much time we have, no matter how much time is behind us, we just seem to be doomed to a repeat performance of the past. Our logic never changes, our ideology never changes, and like lunatics, we expect different results after each performance, so we, self-righteously so, are shocked an appalled by the same ole shit when it happens to us. We can excuse it away, say we have a mental illness or an addiction, but the real reality is that Humanity distorts reality to suit its own needs, whatever they may be at the moment, because we are fickle, and we have no fucking clue what we need to begin with, and much in the style of Vonnegut, our author here makes it his mission to point out the obvious when it comes to human idiocy. Maybe if we all stopped trying to hard-line the divide between fate and choice, we could all see the possibility of everything. We could all see that fact and fiction are not that easy to distinguish from each other over time.

As for technical issues, I noticed a few editorial problems along the way, mostly with the formatting and presentation. In the PDF I reviewed, the matter pages were nonexistent. I do expect a book to follow proper conventions with regard to interior content, even if it's an ebook. This did not, so I had to take off points for that. I could not address the cover except by the image on screen, but it looked to be very rudimentary and very reminiscent of some of Vonnegut's covers from back in the 70s. Beyond that, there were some other fiddly proofreading issues, none really bothersome or prevalent enough to affect the read. I did note that the author used the ellipsis in a more European way, so I did not count that in err since I noticed the word gray was spelled "grey" and there were a few other spelling and usages that, while not American, were not actually incorrect, so I didn't count any of it as an issue.

If you want a straight story with everything all nicely written to mainstream writing conventions then this book is not for you. However, anyone who likes experimental literature will probably just love this book. To me, it had a Vonnegut/Naked Lunch/Hunter eS.que feel to it, and I don't mind feeling disoriented during a narrative providing that a thesis is being argued in the process. That is certainly true of this book, which is darkly humorous and even a little obscene. NC-17 warning here for mature content.

Bottom line: Fans of Breakfast of Champions, Naked Lunch, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas will feel like they are in familiar territory and will probably give the effort a thumbs up even if it doesn’t say anything new -- but then again, that’s the point I think -- and Apocalyptic fiction lovers will also be pleased at the indulgent retrospective. This is an odd little book, but not without its merits especially to those readers who like the above mentioned authors. It may be an emulated style, but it’s still nice to see someone attempting to keep it alive. It's an intellectual read and a fun one at that, provided you don't mind a strange trip; though I felt the author didn’t really “need” to justify the absurdist nature of the narrative like he did in the end.

8/10

Thoughts on Grammar and Style from a Reviewer's POV -- c.anne.gardner

2011-04-28T07:00:00.002Z

Writing isn't about words; it's about sentences. Sentences are made up of two parts: vocabulary and grammar. The Words = The Idea, and Grammar = The Tone, The Mood, and The Inflection, or rather, the grammatical choices you make directly affect how the idea moves through the words.

There once was an author who had taken to rant on their personal blog. Nothing unusual there, writers tend to rant, and I do it all the time, but this was a rant specifically leveled at reviewers, and this particular rant specifically addressed the question: Why can't we [the reviewers] be more specific when we mention editorial issues in a review?

As a reviewer, I can be blunt and simply respond to that by saying: Reviews are for readers, not for authors.

Too blunt? Ok, I will elaborate then. It is not generally a reviewer's job nor is it generally their inclination to proofread and/or to edit a book for an author via pointing out all the grammatical and/or structural problems in a review. Potential readers want a book review; they want to know how the story and the reading experience affected the reviewer. They don't want a list of all the errors that the reviewer caught while reading. Simple as that. That sort of detail is best left for the workshop or for the beta read, not for the review. A review is an overall critique of the reading experience, not a copy edit. If I stumble during the read due to grammatical and structural issues such as poor punctuation, missing words, homonyms, poor sentence structure, etc. I will just say "editorial issues" in the actual review. I will also let potential readers know if they were pervasive or not and whether or not it affected the read for me. Sometimes, if I am reviewing from a PDF and the file isn't locked out, I will highlight the issues and make comments during the read, and in some cases, I will share those with the author privately if they ask. I prefer not to make a nitpicking spectacle of a book in a review. Some things should be left only with a mere mention. The rest can be taken offline.

This is not about style here. This is strictly about grammar, and there is a huge difference between the two. A missing comma here and there isn't going to rock a reviewer's world or even reduce a review score, but if they cannot deduce what you are trying to say because they have stumbled over your ineptly placed clauses and your litany of redundant adjectives and adverbs, then yes, there is a problem, and they will probably mention it. Readers don't give a rat’s ass about statistics; they don't want a laundry list of your faux pas; they want a review. If you want to pay a reviewer for a comprehensive copy edit along with your review, then by all means, I am sure they would be happy to do so, but when someone is reviewing -- FOR FREE -- they normally note the errors and move on. Sure, there are typos and errors in traditionally published books too, but they tend to be an occasional thing. That, unfortunately, isn't the case with some self-published books.

Now, you can call the reviewer a grammar Nazi if you want to. I am sure they don't mind or care. I know this because I've made my own share of mistakes over the years and have gotten slammed for them. I still trip over my words sometimes, but I am not going to take a lackadaisical attitude towards grammar and say it doesn't matter because grammatically and structurally sound writing makes the writing virtually invisible to the reader, as it should be. Again, I am not talking about style here. Style is subjective. Grammar is not. I love the language, and I respect it, as well. It can take a bit of manipulation, but when it comes to clear and concise thoughts, you need to follow some rules. Personally, I don't care if you use an extra period or not, or put in extra spaces or not, when using an ellipsis. Both are acceptable. I do care if you use a hyphen instead of a proper em-dash because the two are not interchangeable and it makes the read confusing when you mix them up. Most reviewers expect authors to take care with word usage, punctuation, and spelling. If you practice lazy writing, then the reader/reviewer has the right to feel as if you don't respect them, more so if they paid good money for your work. Now, I am not talking British versus American English either. I have mixed the two deliberately with little complaint. I am not talking about adverbs, or first person/third person head hopping shit, or present, past, future, and infinite tense nonsense. Those are stylistic choices, not language issues. Push the boundaries at will here; you'd just better know what you are doing before you decide on anarchy. Some reviewers out there don't appreciate anarchy, and some don't even know what anarchy means. Yes, that was a shot at those fly-by one-line Amazon reviewers who can't spell.

I also realize that our language is ever changing -- the lesser/fewer debate rages on -- but the way to express clear and concise thoughts has not. Verb tense and placement, dependent and independent clauses and their placement, the use of participle phrases, and all the wonderful bits of punctuation at our disposal help us say what we mean in a universally understood manner. Language is a glorious thing, and you can get as simple and/or as complex as you want. Even so, there is a little something we call Basic English, and with that comes a few basic rules. Learn them, love them, and live them.

As for style, I've spoken at length about the so-called style-guides and the mainstream writing conventions/fashions of the time. Writing should not, and in many cases, cannot always be confined to traditional structure. In this case, writers and critics can take the style guides too literally. I have seen stories suffer due to hack and slash editing based upon misconceptions and misunderstood principles, many of which were gleaned from the latest and greatest Writing for Dummy books. Maybe the confusion lies simply in the definition of the word guide. Guide and Rule are two completely different animals, and in the case of writing tutorials, they are often used interchangeably, so the confusion is understandable.

Grammar has rules. The art of writing is a wondrously different beast, well beyond the basic physics of the see-spot-run sentence construction. The only rule is concise thought, and grammar takes care of that. You have to know proper grammar. Everything else is open to manipulation. Strong writing has a strong foundation. Grammar is that foundation. Great writing goes beyond just being well written. Great writing is beautifully written. Great writing is where the author has been able to combine grammar and style. Grammar works from a set of logical principles; style is where the basic mechanics are put aside for more poetic and experimental construction, where the focus is on the underlying theoretic principles of literature and not just the physics of a story. Every author would be wise to understand both and the distinction between the two.

And not all literature has to fit traditional convention. I think Kafka would agree with me on that one. Standardization destroys original thinking and thus destroys art. So how seriously you take style guides and the conventions of the day really depends on what you are writing. How seriously you take grammar depends on how seriously you want to be read.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Note: I have not read Mr. Fish's book titled How to Write a Sentence and How to Read one, but it is getting rave reviews across the net. The equation in the beginning of this article is not from the book; it's my own theory. However, the basic premise of the book is: In order to learn how to write a great sentence, you have to read great sentences and understand what makes them great.

Page 99 -- Trap Door

2011-04-26T07:00:00.000Z

Page 99 from Trapdoor A Novel
By Vixen Phillips
Reprinted with Permission: Copyright Vixen Phillips.
All Rights Reserved.

Book Description: Raven and Pegasus each have their own reasons for denying their feelings for one another, but once they are all they have left in the entire world, how long can this charade really hold out? Sometimes, if you wish hard enough, dreams can come true, even if you should wake to find them gone like shadows in the morning. Set in Melbourne in the late 90s, Trapdoor is a psychological journey through darkness and light-a story of love, obsession, and beautiful self-destruction.

--

A shabby sign lurches drunkenly over the doorway, announcing the word JoJo’s to the sleepy alley. As we linger outside the entrance, the ghosts of soulful guitar riffs echo behind the curtain.

“Here we be.” Raven lets go my hand to light up a cigarette before leading me in. “Our very first date.”

Somehow, indoors, it’s even darker—the only lighting comes from the fridges by the bar, and the stage, where a feather-and-jewelled woman with dark skin perches under a spotlight, crooning and wailing alternately about her latest love gone wrong, while the cool cats in her shadow look suitably laid back as they jam effortlessly around her melodies. There could be more people here than the handful scattered around the stage and the bar, but it’s too dimly lit to tell.

Raven guides me to sit at a table by the wall, and squeezes my hand. “I’ll get us a drink.” His warm breath against my earlobe sends a shiver down my spine. I lean back, try to relax, and keep an eye on his shadow as he lopes off towards the neon glow of the bar. He takes a seat next to a man wearing a big straw hat and a spotted fur coat, with a younger boy playing ruined-glamourous on his arm. I don’t allow my thoughts to linger on this boy too long. Not so short a time ago, that could have been me. I can spot my own kind, even in the dark of a smoky club that probably isn’t even open, legally speaking.

Now what are you up to? Money’s changing hands between Raven and the faceless older man, before he takes our order from the skimpy barmaid. A moment later he slides back to our table, and finishes his drink in a couple of mouthfuls, all the while pretending to ignore me. But when I look away, from the corner of my eye I can see him glance at my glass. “Better start drinking, if you want to keep up with me.”

My heart sinks. So this is how it’s going to be. No protection, no remorse. You want me to be as sick as you were before. You don’t want to be in control.

To hell with it, it’s not like I care anyway. I scull the Midori and lemonade as fast as I can without gagging. It’s a lie, of course.
--

Vixen Phillips was born in Ballarat, Australia, in 1975. Mostly, she writes, programs computers, and plays guitar and keyboards, but in former lives she's also worked as an audio engineer, in & around various media production studios, as a graphic designer, and in computer sales. http://trapdoor.lostviolet.com

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

New Review Site

2011-04-25T14:01:00.001Z

Please welcome a new review site from indie and small press books: Good Book Alert.

Sunday Picture: Pundits

2011-04-24T09:00:00.001Z

Thoughts on Vacation -- c.anne.gardner

2011-04-21T07:00:00.002Z

Well, I am officially on vacation for the first time this year, and exhausted already would be putting it mildly. Too much smoke, too much drink, to much food, too much sun, and more hard labour in the garden than my body can stand. The allure of a spring day and the scent of freshly dug earth is far too enchanting to go unnoticed. I will have to resume my book reviewing duties shortly, but for now, Mother Nature's poetry is enough for me.

You see, gardening, to me, is art at its most chaotic. It's pure romance: Beethoven's fifth symphony and the subtle words of Shakespeare's pining poets all muddled together. It's a thousand brushstrokes, some delicate, some ardent, and some violently streaking across the landscape. It's dance and song and colour in an orgy of wild exuberance. The bleak winter sky has retreated, and as the plants push through the wet earth, awakened once again by the sun's sumptuous embrace, it feels as if all my long lost friends have come back to me. The summer birds are returning; nest building has commenced with unmatched fervour. The animals have come out of their burrows to dance and shower each other with dewdrops and spring kisses, and the air smells like cow shit. Well, it's not as romantic as Shelly would have described it, but you get the point.

"Nature's first Green is Gold." -- Robert Frost

Nature feeds the soul, and it's the soul that feeds the artist.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Sift Books Reviews

2011-04-20T09:00:00.001Z

Quite a few years ago I suggested that the next step for self-published book review sites would be genre-specific sites. And it seems like just such a creature has arrived in the form of Sift Book Reviews:

"At Sift, we're here to help Readers make educated purchases by providing detailed reviews of self-published science-fiction and fantasy books."

Page 99 -- Serpent's Keep

2011-04-19T07:00:00.000Z

Page 99 from Serpent’s Keep
A Fantasy Novel
By David R. Beshears
Reprinted with Permission: Copyright By David Beshears. All Rights Reserved.

Book Description: "I bequeath to my nephew, Jacob Quigley, all that I own, all that I dream, and all that I am, in the hope that my life's quest will become his quest."

-- Last Will & Testament of Tobias Quigley

Those few cryptic words send Jake into a bizarre world that couldn't possibly exist. In his quest to gather together the Artifacts, he will befriend a network of eternal Guardians, defend against an ancient enemy no one has ever heard of, travel a series of Gateways to Other Worlds, and if his quest is successful, sacrifice his freedom.
----

Meara thrust the staff toward the lead wolf, keeping it and its companion at bay. The two stayed just beyond the reach of the weapon, continually watching for an opportunity, studying and reevaluating, knowing that sooner or later Meara would make a mistake.

Jake rolled up onto his side and attempted to sit up. He froze then, suddenly, hearing the sound of snapping brush and breaking tree branches.

Something was coming out of the mouth of the ravine.

Oh, great…

The dragon pushed its way between two trees and came roaring into the clearing. With two quick strides it was on the wolves. The lead wolf jumped aside, but the other wasn’t fast enough. The dragon dropped its clawed foot down on the animal and held it. The wolf struggled to free itself, digging frantically with its front paws, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Ignoring its efforts, the dragon turned its attention to the other wolf.

The leader of the wolves had moved to the far edge of the clearing, where it stopped and now watched and waited. It clearly wanted to get back into the fight, to win whatever prize it had come for, and was displeased at this turn of events.

It knew that it had lost, and didn’t like it one bit.

It gave its companion a final glance and looked up into the eyes of the dragon that held it prisoner. Knowing that it could do nothing to save the other wolf, it growled angrily at Meara and Jake, then turned and disappeared into the surrounding woods.

The dragon turned and looked down at Jake, gave him a studied, knowing gaze. Jake nodded, as if to say yes, I have it…The dragon then curled its claws around the wolf, gripping it so that the helpless animal couldn’t move. The dragon opened out one great wing, stretching it its full length, then stretched out the other wing. It gave two heavy beats of these massive wings, pushed off with its powerful rear legs, and leapt into the sky. It circled high overhead and turned into the darkness of the ravine, carrying the wolf with it.

“Master Jacob!” Meara ran to Jake and dropped to her knees. She grasped his arm and held him up.

“I’m okay,” said Jake.
---
David Beshears is an author, a screenwriter, a programmer and a teacher. He founded Greybeard Community Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping those with disabilities and their families, after his son was severely injured in Afghanistan. He established greybeard publishing to support the creation of the community center. All proceeds from the small publishing company go to the fund for the center. Among the titles is "Climb the Mountain", the story of his son’s struggle to recover from severe traumatic brain injury. David is currently training to climb Mt. Rainier this summer and will be making the ascent in the name of his son, SFC David M. Beshears, recipient of the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He lives in McCleary, Washington with his wife Sylvia.

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

Sunday Picture: Stories

2011-04-17T09:00:00.004Z

Rejection Sometimes Simply Means Finding The Right Market -- c.anne.gardner

2011-04-14T07:00:00.005Z

My very first piece of flash fiction was accepted and published this weekend. More on that later.

Many of you know from my constant blathering that my current pet writing project of late has been and is flash fiction, specifically the micro variety 500 words or fewer. [BTW, I hate the term "fewer" in this context. It has no rhythm even if it is the grammatically correct way to use it. 500 words or less just rolls better off the tongue.]

Sorry, I am easily sidetracked these days, I was talking about flash fiction, I think? Yeah, that's right. Anyway, I've been writing a lot of it: abstract, difficult, literary type stuff, because that's what I like to write. It just suits my writerly mindset. However, that sort of writing can be hard to place, and the more difficult, the more literary, and the more art-house you get, the more rejections you are going to get.

Now, being rejected isn't all bad. Sure, the form letter variety is annoying as hell because it says nothing of the writing. You're left in limbo to wonder was it them or was it you? I hate that, which is also why I rarely submit my work and why I went the self-publishing route directly with my novellas. I am way too high-strung of a scab picker to handle the whole submission/rejection process. I do it every once and a while for a piece of poetry or something, but I let the longer works alone. Lately though, I have been cranking out the flash and have quite the impressive collection at this point, so the question becomes: Now What? Sure, the work has improved my ability to think outside the cliché. The form works wonders if you are trying to expand your range when it comes to experimental styles and voice, and there is the off chance you may be able to slip some of it into a longer piece. Should a freak astrological occurrence occur, say if the sun happens to be in Aquarius on the third Tuesday of the month, which coincides with a gibbous moon, a particularly good piece might wind up as the inspiration for a novella or a novel, but barring all that, what do you do with all the dark fiddly bits?

I decided to slip a rubber bit in my mouth and submit a few to various online lit journals specializing in flash fiction. My very first story submission was titled Persian Cat and it tells the story -- in the very abstract surreal way -- of the reconciliation of two estranged lovers on a train.

It went almost 75 days in the submission queue over at Every Day Fiction. I was thrilled to death it made it past the slush readers. Sadly though, it was rejected, which I will share with you now because it was one of the nicest rejections I have ever seen, let alone received.

****

Thank you for your submission to Every Day Fiction. I regret to inform you that we are unable to use it at this time.

Very lyrical writing. Lovely. It reads more like poetry than prose fiction. Sadly it doesn't have enough plot for this venue. -- Nicole [last name redacted]

Nice imagery. But we tend to go for pieces with a strong story arc and good character development at EDF. -- Aliza [last name redacted]

The prose is solid and but for so short a piece it really makes the reader work to figure out what is going on. I don't doubt this will find a home in a more literary-minded venue, or a micro-specific market. Engaging read. -- John [last name redacted]

We wish you good luck in placing the story elsewhere.

****

This is the sort of rejection you very rarely see. It was clear that they liked the piece but that it just wasn't a good fit for their site as their editors tend to look for a more traditional story structure in the work they accept. My piece was just too abstract and too experimental, which is the whole reason I started writing flash to begin with. It's a very malleable form. Anyway, I probably would have set the piece aside if it weren't for their reassuring and positive commentary. The next day, I resubmitted the story to another online journal, one that seemed to favor the super literary, quirky, what-the-hell-just-happened sort of thing, and it paid off. Within a week, the piece was accepted and was published at Dustbin on April 10, 2011 with these remarks:

New author in the house, Cheryl Anne Gardner, writes this short, fiery story of a little over 100 words that stumped us the first time we read it. Then we read it again. And again. And again. And then, we smiled. We’ll leave you to experience it your way. http://d.ustb.in/week-26/

Needless to say, I was thrilled to death. This is my first published piece of flash, and I hope to have many more. Nevertheless, it wasn't the acceptance that thrilled me so much, it was the hope it gave me. Not hope for my own writing; as you all know, I do not lack confidence in my own writing. I mean, in order to survive in this business – the business of writing – you have to have at least a modicum of delusional belief in your work, and validation is just not my style. So what does it give me hope for, you ask? Well, it more revives my hope in that literary, or rather, difficult, abstract, art-house, thinky fiction is not a dying art and that there are readers out there who appreciate it.

What's the moral of this story? Rejection sucks, of course, but then sometimes it doesn't. Don't read into anything, and don't automatically think the work sucks rubber bands just because you got a standard form rejection. Lastly, and the most important lesson of all: Research Your Markets. The submissions process is work -- hard work. Don't spam your writing to the world. Before you submit, research the venue in order to ascertain if the work suits their style and suits their current publication schedule. I am a subscriber to both of the sites I submitted to. Both are literary sites, one is just a bit more edgy than the other is when it comes to form. I took a chance, lost out, and then ended up winning on the rebound. Your chances of this are much better when you make a good match. It works the same for review sites. Write what the market wants simply means find your market first and then write to it. You have to write what you love and what suits your voice. If you do, your odds of success are much better, keeping in mind that certain markets are harder to work in than others are.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Page 99 -- Vengeance

2011-04-12T07:00:00.022Z

Page 99 from Vengeance
A Crime Thriller
BY J.E. Taylor
Reprinted with Permission: Copyright By J.E. Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Book Description: Living large in New York City as a corporate lawyer for the most savvy drug lord on the East Coast, Special Agent Steve Williams carefully plots Charlie Wisnowski's downfall. His plans go to hell when his wife Jennifer survives an attack by a serial killer. With her life in jeopardy and his undercover guise threatening to unravel, he orders Charlie's arrest. But the sting goes woefully wrong and Steve becomes the target of a mafia assassin hired by the biggest crime boss in America. Escaping from the city, Steve and Jennifer settle back into their quiet life on the banks of Mirror Lake. Their peaceful existence shatters with a crippling loss and Jennifer's visions escalate, forecasting a brutal assault on their family. Armed with scant details from her dreams, Steve trudges through a litany of past connections, searching for the key to stop the course of fate. What he uncovers chills him to the core - a brother with a grudge, a serial killer and a mafia assassin are all on his trail. The hunt begins . . .
--

“What exactly does Bondino want?” Charlie sat on his couch, his arms extended comfortably over the back cushions.

“He wants a bigger cut,” Kyle answered.

“Bullshit! He can take a flying leap off the Brooklyn Bridge.” Charlie stood, crossing to the window of his penthouse. “I’m the one whose ass is on the line.” He glanced at the reflection in the glass. He hadn’t seen Kyle in years and this wasn’t the reunion he’d imagined. It would have been better if Kyle had left after the play last night, but no, Kyle had to be interjected in the middle of the business arrangement he had with Tony Bondino, the biggest mafia boss in America. Kyle was Tony’s personal assassin, so the current conversation laid out more like a threat than a friendly visit.

Kyle didn’t say a word. He just leaned back in the seat with his arms crossed.

Charlie turned toward him. “Why did he send you?”

Kyle smiled and shrugged, keeping silent. His orders were to lean on Charlie, but that wasn’t going to happen. Tony Bondino was not aware of the ties between them and neither Kyle nor Charlie was inclined to enlighten their boss.

Charlie turned away, his hands curled into fists. “Tell him to pound sand.”

“You really want me to do that?”

Charlie grinded his teeth. “No. How much does the bastard want?”
----

J.E. Taylor is a writer, an editor, a manuscript formatter, a mother, a wife and a business analyst, not necessarily in that order. She first sat down to seriously write in February of 2007 after her daughter asked:

"Mom, if you could do anything, what would you do?"

From that moment on, she hasn't looked back and now her writing resume includes four novels either published or targeted for release in late 2010 and early 2011 along with several short stories on the virtual shelves including a few within upcoming eXcessica anthologies. Ms. Taylor also moonlights as an Assistant Editor of Allegory, an online venue for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and as a "slush slasher" for Dark Recesses, an online venue for literary horror. She also lends a hand in formatting manuscripts for eXcessica as well as offering her services judging writing contests for various RWA chapters.She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children and during the summer months enjoys her weekends on the shore in southern Maine.
Visit her at www.jetaylor75.com

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

REVIEW: Goblin Tales

2011-04-11T08:00:00.000Z

Title: Goblin Tales
Author: Jim C. Hines
Genre: Fantasy
Price: $7.99 (paperback) $2.99 (Kindle)
Publisher: Lulu
ISBN: 978-1-257-04941-7
Point of Sale: kindle paperback
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

I’ve met Jim Hines at various SF conventions, and found him to be a likeable guy. He’s also very helpful to new writers, which is probably why I named a spaceship after him in my upcoming novel! Jim’s published seven novels with DAW, a big New York publisher, and various short fiction. He decided to gather five of his short works into one volume. The result is Goblin Tales, which I purchased and recently finished reading. It’s very much worth the price.

Jim’s first three books were the Goblin Quest series, starring a runty goblin named Jig and Jig’s pet fire-spider, Smudge. Three of the stories in this collection (Goblin Lullaby, The Haunting of Jig’s Ear and Goblin Hunter) deal with various bits of Jig’s back story, including in Goblin Lullaby how the runt came to be cared for in the first place. Much like Jim’s longer fiction, these short stories are humorous and suitable for all ages. Jim does not take his Goblins very seriously, and neither do they.

The forth story in the collection, School Spirit, follows Veka, a secondary character from the novels as she goes to a school for wizardry. Like all goblins, Veka’s not what you’d call a high performer. Yet despite (or maybe because of) that, she accomplishes quite a bit at the school.

The final story in the collection, Mightier than the Sword, serves as a prequel to Jim’s upcoming Libriomancer series. In the Libriomancer world, magic allows people to physically pull stuff into our world through the pages of a book. If it fits, it comes through. If, as Jim does, you add that power to your typical Chicago-area science fiction convention, sparks will fly!

The book Goblin Tales is a slim volume, at only 132 pages, but it packs a lot of fun reading into a small package.

Rating: 10/10

Sunday Picture: Promo

2011-04-10T09:00:00.004Z

[click picture to enlarge]

How to Respond to a Review, or rather, Take That Sh*t Offline -- c.anne.gardner

2011-04-07T07:00:00.012Z

Note: Sensitive Readers may find the rather ranty words in this article mildly offensive. Reader Discretion is Advised.

Some days, I just have to shake my head and wonder WTF is wrong with some people. I wonder why it is that some people seem clueless to the fact that their behavior is making them look like screaming baboon ass-monkeys to the rest of the civilized world.

Yes, I am talking about that author who shook a big stink fist at a reviewer over a less than stellar review of her book a couple of weeks ago. Stink fist is putting it mildly. She actually called the reviewer a liar and eventually told them and every reader commenting on the site to f*!*k off with multiple exclamation points and everything. No, I will not provide a link to the blog, and no, I will not mention the author's name because, for our purposes here, it doesn't matter, and I will give the author and the vicious detractors no more attention than they deserve.

Now, I've talked about this before ... many, many times before. So here, again, are my words of advice: Sometimes reviews suck. Not every review of your work will be kissed with sunshine and candyfloss. Not every reviewer is going to nurture your delusions of grandeur. SO ... it's best to take the red pill BEFORE you read any reviews. If you cannot manage that, then take the blue pill, crawl naked into a corner with your spit cup, and chill the f*!*k out. DO NOT, under any circumstances, respond to the review while your chasing marbles on a glass floor. GOT IT? Get a fork, stick it in a socket, and suck on some rubber for a minute or two. Even after that, DO NOT, under any circumstances, respond to a review in the comments section of the reviewer’s blog unless your response is a simple "thank you" for taking the time. If the critic/reader emails you directly with their "complaints," again, do not respond with anything other than a thank you. Emails can and do show up on the Internet. Reviewers search the net and are less likely to review someone who has a history of going mental in public. On the net, your mistakes will haunt you forever.

If you do feel the desperate desire to address a bad review, or any review for that matter, then by all means do so, after you have returned to some sort of relatively normal state of mind, and only if you can come at if from an analytical perspective, and only if you plan on posting it to your own blog or website -- NOWHERE ELSE. Please people: contain your mania, and if your abacus is broken, don't write a single word. Walk away ... move on. If you must write to kill the demon, do so, but only on paper, and only in that journal you keep under the floorboards. The one with your illegible love scratchings, voodoo incantations, and clippings of your first boyfriend/girlfriend's pubic hair.

Readers should be able express their views and they should feel comfortable while doing it. Whether we agree with their viewpoint or not is irrelevant. We should not attack the reader. Likewise, readers should not attack writers. As professional writers, we should not hijack review blogs for our temper tantrums. No matter what. We all know that some reviewers are excellent, knowledgeable, and qualified beautiful literary people, and we also know that some reviewers are no more than nose-picking troglodytes who like to troll places like Amazon dusting little fairy turds of inept wisdom like some of the reviews profiled in this article. However, in this case, the reviewer bolstered his review with a few excerpts from the book's text, and all I can say is that the prose has some, shall we say, serious technical issues: grammatically and structurally. As a reviewer, myself, I wouldn't have even reviewed this book. It would not have got passed my query process. Kindle books come with a free sample. A book with as many issues as this one would have been glaringly "off the mark" in the first few pages, so why review it? I wonder.

Of course, I made no comment on the blog in question, because part of being professional is having the ability to distance yourself from this sort of thing. I never ever directly engage in mêlées of this sort no matter the subject and no matter what side I am on. Why? Because I don't like the mob mentality and I don't want to be associated with that sort of online circus, and neither should you, if you care about your reputation as a writer. I was tempted, especially when I saw some ignoramus who didn't quite grasp the definition of the term Independent, and thus, tried to make it all about self-publishing, but the suit in me knows better, so I didn't engage. You can't get through to the pitch-fork-wielding self-righteous flaming-torch-bearers, so it just isn't worth the effort.

The fact is, your gonna take a lot of hits during your time as a writer. We all make mistakes, and not everyone is going to love our style or our story. If you can't deal with criticism, then you're not ready to publish your work. Everyone is a critic, and generally speaking, critics aren't nice. I wish the world wasn't like that, but it is. However, should you feel that strange magical compulsion most artists feel, that need to send your work out into the universal void, then you need to find some way to get Zen about this sh*t. I like whiskey and chocolate and cigarettes and reviewer voodoo dolls make from goat flesh, graveyard dust, and sweat from an old dude's ball sack, but that's just me. Yoga might be fine for most people.

On a side note: DO NOT ask a reviewer to go out and download or purchase your book. You must provide a copy to the reviewer, and they will review from the copy you gave them. If you have not finished editing the book, or there is some other reason it might be littered with errors, then do not ask for a review. If it's out for sale to the public, it is no longer a draft or an ARC. It's fair game. If you want us to review the "clean" copy, then send us that one to begin with.

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Review: Mercy

2011-04-06T07:00:00.002Z

Title: Mercy
Author: Joshua Grover – David Patterson (Author's site)
Genre: science fiction
Price: $2.99 (Kindle) - other formats available
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
ISBN: N/A
Point of Sale: Amazon Author's site
Reviewed by: Chris Gerrib

Here at POD People, every week we get from 5 to 10 requests to review self-published works. Since this is not anybody’s full-time gig, we simply can’t accept all of those books for review. But even if we could, it’s usually clear to me at least from the query letter which books aren’t going to be worth the review. The queries are poorly written, and usually the story outlined is the same generic stuff that I’ve seen dozens of times. It’s easy for me to take a pass on those.

Then we get something interesting and different, of which David Patterson’s book Mercy is a good example. The book is the journal of Georgina Fulci, a wife and mother. Her husband Rob gives it to her so that when she gets back from her missionary trip to Ethiopia, she can tell a coherent story. Unfortunately for Georgina, on the way back, her plane crashes on a deserted island in the Atlantic. The reason for the crash? A zombie outbreak.

This crash sets up a very interesting Lost meets The Walking Dead story, as the handful of non-zombiefied people struggle to survive the rigors of the island, the zombies from the plane, and figure out what the hell is happening in the rest of the world. This is a small spoiler, but when a boat finally shows up, it’s not at all clear whether that’s a good or a bad occurrence.

What impressed me most about Mercy was Patterson’s characters. There are a handful of non-zombies, including an 11-year-old girl and a flight attendant who was looking forward to retirement. All of these characters are well-defined, believable and people I found myself caring about.

I also liked the journal format. It’s hard to generate suspense in first person narration (I know – been there, tried it and got the T-shirt) but Patterson pulls it off. Tricks like a journal entry that read in their entirety: “We lost [character name]. I just wanted to make sure the date was written down somewhere” can be very powerful.

The only nit I have was that there aren’t a lot of small and uninhabited islands in the Atlantic, so part of me was trying to figure out “where are they?” Although in defense of Patterson, the efforts to figure that out by the characters is part of the story. At any rate, I found Mercy to be an outstanding read, and highly recommended.

Rating: 10/10

Review: Cinders

2011-04-05T07:00:00.001Z

Title: Cinders

Author: Michelle Davidson Argyle

Genre: Fairy Tale/Fantasy

Publisher: Createspace

Price: $8.00

Pages: 184

ISBN: 978-1453629956

Point of Sale: Amazon.com

Reviewed By: Cheryl Anne Gardner

Book Description: Cinderella's happily-ever-after isn't turning out the way she expected. With her fairy godmother imprisoned in the castle and a mysterious stranger haunting her dreams, Cinderella is on her own to discover true love untainted by magic.

Poor disappointed Cinderella, or rather, Christina, in this case. Her wish was granted, and now, ironically, life isn't turning out to be the ideal happy ever after she wanted or expected. Written in the gothic styling of traditional fairy tales like Aesop's Fables, what we have here is a "be careful what you wish for" cautionary tale. An allegory, if you will, about the brutally honest awakening -- the enlightenment -- of an impetuous child dissatisfied with her current life. Sure, we all know the story: Cinderella’s father died and her step-monster and sisters have abused and tormented her, but in this case, there was another man, so to speak, come before the Prince. But in Cinderella’s haste to avenge herself and serve the desert best served cold, she allowed herself to be manipulated by magic into making a choice that was not mature and not entirely her own, which ultimately would betray her heart and the heart of another. Most girls would be hard-pressed to resist when confronted with this situation. The thought of being offered a chance to escape a life of misery with one wave of a fairy Godmother's wand. The thought of being a Princess and of having a charming handsome husband who dotes on you and lavishes the tenderest of affections on your flesh in the quietest of hours, hell, who wouldn't jump at the chance for that? It's that sort of impetuousness that leads us to temptation. Cinderella seeks nothing more than the fulfillment of her desires without actually contemplating anything beneath or beyond the surface. Our Cinderella, in this case, will discover the truth behind her naive and childish choice, and she will find all this out the hard way. A person is defined by what they do and what they don't do, and every choice or action has a positive and a negative reaction equal in strength and ferocity. She has been warned. Even if the choice she makes isn’t the right choice for her upon later reflection, it’s too late. With some choices, you cannot go back. The fact that she even asks this is very telling.

Therefore, our Cinderella in this story is not an easy character to empathize with. She has everything, and all she can do is complain. She pines away in secret for another man, whom she met before the Prince and now believes may be nothing more than an artifact of a dream. Her in-laws, the King and Queen, are not the kindest and gentlest of rulers, and she isn't sure her husband, the Prince, would actually truly love her if it weren't for the spell cast upon him. She finds her dresses too heavy, the castle too cold and boring, and the laws of the land too unfair, even if she secretly wanted her Step-mother to suffer -- just a little bit. Cinderella herself can often be cold and unyielding, and by mid-story, we find that she has grown little from the experience, and predictably and selfishly, she allows herself to be manipulated again for the second time in her life by the same magic that put her in her current predicament. However, this time, people will die because of her fickleness of heart. The powers manipulating her know this and have conspired to use her immaturity to get exactly what they want.

In the end -- no spoilers here -- things end badly, depending on your perspective. Cinderella winds up in a predicament much worse than what she was in before, but, we can hold fast to the hope that she has gleaned some enlightenment from the circumstances thrust upon her. In the end, she has a real chance to make some positive choices, choices that will be entirely her own. We can only hope she chooses wisely. She does keep one promise, so that’s a start.

All in all, I loved this book. It is a true novella in every respect. The cover is beautifully done. The writing is lovely and imaginative and simple in its tenor. It’s a quick fluid read. If there were any editorial issues, I certainly didn’t notice them, and the interior layout is designed with ample whitespace and clean elegant styling. Even a young reader will be able to understand the concepts being presented here. The feel while reading it is that of a much older fairy tale, fairy tales which were rather dark, gruesome, and abrupt, written mainly to teach a lesson by scaring the crap out of impressionable children. And while this book, like the original fairy tales of old, is loaded with abuses and intrigue and death, the treatment of these issues is quite subtle, so to sum up, if you are looking for the story of Cinderella annexed as a romance novel, you will be disappointed. If you are looking for Cinderella erotica, a la Anne Rice, you will also be disappointed, but if you are looking for a real tried and true Fairy Tale with all the grimness and subterfuge fables like these have to offer, then this is what you want. Enjoy. I certainly did.

9.5/10 I only took half a point off because I felt the “other man” could have been explored just a little bit more.

This book was reviewed from a print copy provided by the author and will be offered as a giveaway in one of our upcoming monthly contests.

Author's Note: Cinders as a stand-alone novella will be going out of print in the next few months. It is scheduled for re-release in the Fall of 2012 as part of a fairy-tale themed omnibus titled Bonded through Rhemalda Publishing, a small publisher based in Washington. For more information, readers can visit Michelle's author page here: http://www.michelledavidsonargyle.com/2010/10/thirds-promotional-coming-soon.html

Sunday Picture: Indie Bob

2011-04-03T09:00:00.004Z

Thoughts on The Craft -- cannegardner

2011-03-31T07:00:00.009Z

Francis Bacon is one of my favourite artists, and even though this quote from his journal applies to painting, we as writers can glean a good deal of inspiration from its overall meaning:

“To me, they mystery of painting is how can appearance be made. I know it can be illustrated, I know it can be photographed. But how can this thing be made so that you catch the mystery of appearance within the mystery of the making? Van Gogh speaks of the need to make changes in reality, which become lies that are truer than the literal truth. This is the only possible way the painter can bring back the intensity of reality … He has to reinvent realism … to wash realism back into the nervous system by his invention … We nearly always live through screens—a screened existence. And sometimes I think, when people say my work looks violent, that perhaps I have from time to time been able to clear away one or two of those veils or screens.”

Viktor Shlovsky comments further on this technique when he asserted that: “The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important. The essential purpose of art is to overcome the deadening effects of habit by representing familiar things in unfamiliar ways. Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things."

I agree. I agreed then when I originally posted this quote, and after two years, I thought I might like to circle back around it again. My own writing has been thought of as violent. The Kissing Room and Logos particularly so, but I don't really like the term violent. Sure in both books there is a great deal of physical brutality; I am not opposed to murder and mayhem for the sake of making a point, but physical violence is only one component of a larger idea. Our characters are meant to struggle; that's what people want to read, but not every struggle is physically violent. Not every struggle is about force and action. Much literary fiction is based on an existential struggle, which is more internal than external: more changeable, flighty, fleeting, transient, threatening and tending to fluctuate -- sharply. That is how we often portray an emotional struggle, and struggles of that lot are most engaging to a reader. Those are the struggles that hit at the core of what it is to be human -- volatile versus violent.

Subtlety is not my thing. In Kissing Room and Logos my characters tend to externalize their struggles in the form of cruelty and aggression towards others. That's what worked for those two particular stories. In Thin Wall and Antiquity, my characters tend to internalize by expressing themselves intellectually, often without shame. Sometimes my characters like to get all abusive and stabby, and other times, they tend to favor introspection. I like to dig in and really feel the psychological rage. Physical violence, or force and action, if you will, isn't always necessary to do that. But alas, that is a question of semantics and a discussion for another day because I think I am treading into the "write in scenes" territory.

So, how violent should you get in your story? Well, it depends on the story, or more precisely, it depends on the characters in the story. Should an artist get extreme or should an artist censor their work, alter their choice of imagery, symbolism, and metaphor to make a story more palatable for a wider audience? Will the story lose its truth should we leave its symbolic nature open for interpretation or non-interpretation? Is the story really telling a truth about the human condition, and should we, as artists striving for truth, endeavor to lay bare that truth which might be construed as beautiful and poetic in one person’s eyes and yet offensive in another’s? Do you need to be violent if volatile will work equally as well? Or should you strike a balance between the two?

I've asked this question before. Would Ellis' American Psycho have had the same impact had he chose volatility over violence? Bateman was quite introspective on occasion, but his addiction to externalizing his inner conflict was what made him a killer and not just a man with a mental illness. Ellis' character was capable of handling that sort of physical force, and the story just wouldn't have had the impact it did without it, in my opinion. For me, the truth is the art, and the truth an artist seeks to portray directly affects how the scenes are written and what language and depth of emotion the writer chooses to use, not to mention which boundaries can be pushed, crossed, or even obliterated. My own work primarily deals with love, romance, sex, death, and societal dogma, on the surface, but ultimately my stories are of the redemption variety -- every single one of them. We all know that sometimes redemption is a physical journey and sometimes it isn't. Laleana in Thin Wall was an academic and an introspective thinker, violence happened to her, as it did for grief stricken Merle in Kissing Room. Joliette in Antiquity was an extremely physical being, climbing mountains, digging holes in the earth. She subjected her body to the torturous forces of nature in order to seek the enlightenment she was denying herself by refusing to look inward, and in Logos, Selena is immortal. Whether someone died or not was ultimately her decision. She had taken all the abuses heaped upon her soul, and, under the guise of duty, had turned around to wield her hurt with a vengeance. She was strong enough physically and mentally from a lifetime of pain to carry the history of violence on her back. So in that story, I could get away with a whole lot more of both volatility and violence. It made her weakness for love stand out all that much more.

Ultimately, you, the author, will have to make the decision. You'll hear the old cliché: sex and violence sells, but in truth, when it's gratuitous and poorly executed, it doesn't. In the end, writing is all about making choices. You can censor yourself and your characters, but then that wouldn't really be making a choice, now would it?

Cheryl Anne Gardner

Experiments in Self-Publishing: Goblin Tales

2011-03-30T09:00:00.003Z

My friend, Jim Hines, is a writer who's published seven novels via commerical publishers (mostly DAW). Three of those books were his Goblin Quest series, which is a fun-for-all-ages fantasy romp starring goblins. For various reasons, he decided to move on from that to fairy tales, starting with a re-imagining of Cinderella.

But Jim still likes his goblins. He's also a short-story writer, and he had several characters in the Goblin Quest universe who could support a short story. So, he decided to write five such short stories and release them via Lulu. Effective today, the collection Goblin Tales is available in paper and electronic versions at Lulu. If you're looking for some humorous fantasy, drop on by. I know I will.

Page 99 -- Cafe Express and Other Ramblings

2011-03-29T07:00:00.000Z

Page 99 from Express Cafe and Other Ramblings
A Story Collection
By Heather Crouse
Reprinted with Permission: Copyright By Heather Crouse. All Rights Reserved.

Book Description: This book is comprised of a collection of works about the different paths that life can take. Each work is separate, but still relates to the human condition in some manner.
-----
Instantly, the pantry was illuminated and my gaze locked onto the figure behind the cereal box. It was only there for a split-second, but was imprinted on my memory from then on. Dark-headed and small with liquid brown eyes that begged for pity. Eyes like Alex’s…or Julian’s. Then it struck me like a madman gripping my heart. The creature undoubtedly resembled my son. But, he’s dead, I thought. It couldn’t be. Could it? "Julian?" I whispered. "Julian, is that you?"

Desperate to find the creature again, I began tearing boxes and cans of vegetables off of the shelves, still calling his name. Frantically, I searched the pantry, but the creature had somehow vanished. "Please come back!" I felt a hand on my shoulder and spun, ready to confront the creature. The light shone on Alex’s stunned features and brown eyes.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Alex was rarely upset with anyone. He was known for his calm way of handling things. The tone he used now frightened me as nothing else could. I suddenly felt that I did not know the man standing before me. Helplessly, I gestured to the door behind me, heedless of the pile of junk at my feet. "Julian," I whispered. There was fear now, the desolate kind, in Alex’s eyes as he pulled me close. "It was Julian," I told him.

"I know, baby. I miss him too." He pulled away enough to look at me. "Emily, I don’t want you to worry anymore. I promise I’ll take care of you."

I nodded, knowing I would always feel safe with him. As he led me away to bed, I couldn’t help wondering if I had truly seen my boy in the features of one of the cazadores. Is that where everyone went when they died? Was it a kind of afterlife? Did some people, instead of returning as their most favored animal, come back as merely a miniature version of themselves? I didn’t want to care about it anymore. I wanted to go back home to Minneapolis. But, I didn’t know when Alex would be ready to return. I still worried about him considerably.

I didn’t hear anything else creeping in the kitchen the rest of the night. Alex held me close, but not tight.
----
Heather Crouse has been writing since she was nine years old. She has always wanted to be an author and has spent most of her life trying to fulfill that dream. She recently finished writing her first romance novel. She has had two short stories published in a private university publication. Her focus is in the romance genre. She writes both contemporary and historical romance stories and novels, and also writes literary fiction.
Visit her at: http://marielavender.webs.com/

If you would like The Podpeople to feature your Page 99, send us an email to: podpeep at gmail dot com with the subject line Page 99. Please include a link to your preferred e-commerce site, a cover jpeg, and paste your page 99 into the body of the email or attach it as a .TXT file. If your page 99 happens to be a chapter start or chapter end and does not contain a full page, you may use the full page before or after your page 99. One page only please.

We Have A Winner!

2011-03-28T13:54:00.003Z

Friday was a Free Book Friday, and 13 people entered. Thanks to Random.org, our winner is Karla Vollkopf!

Sunday Picture: Middle of the Road

2011-03-27T09:00:00.005Z