New for the TBR pile: Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

Recommended by my colleague Katy Lim as a "must-read," Sorry to Disrupt the Peace  sounds fascinating.  Here's the sales pitch from the Amazon page:

Helen Moran is thirty-two years old, single, childless, college-educated, and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She’s accepting a delivery from IKEA in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen’s adoptive brother is dead.

According to the internet, there are six possible reasons why her brother might have killed himself. But Helen knows better: she knows that six reasons is only shorthand for the abyss. Helen also knows that she alone is qualified to launch a serious investigation into his death, so she purchases a one-way ticket to Milwaukee. There, as she searches her childhood home and attempts to uncover why someone would choose to die, she will face her estranged family, her brother’s few friends, and the overzealous grief counselor, Chad Lambo; she may also discover what it truly means to be alive.

A bleakly comic tour de force that’s by turns poignant, uproariously funny, and viscerally unsettling, this debut novel has shades of Bernhard, Beckett and Bowles—and it announces the singular voice of Patty Yumi Cottrell.

I am always DEEPLY skeptical of books that are described as "bleakly comical"' but I trust Katy, so I'm going to check it out.

Holiday Gift Guide--part one

This has been a year of terrible natural disasters, from the hurricanes to the horrifying fires now burning in California to the deadly 7.1 earthquake in central Mexico. and that's not even counting flooding in various parts of the world. Even a little bit of money (what the politicians call "small dollar donations") can go a long way toward helping people who need help.

And because you work hard for your money, you'll want to make sure your money works hard for you. Avoid scamsters. check in with Be Wise to see how your charity stacks up.

California Wildfires

Here's a list the L.A. TIMES published of places you can send help.  Here's a more extensive list. An d because L.A. is my second hometown and I place I dearly love, I will donate 100% of the proceeds for every copy of my short story anthology, Just Another Day in Paradise, that I sell for the next six months.  Not my royalties, the actual purchase price. (It's only 99 cents.)  The cover image is by a firefighter who also takes photographs. The photo was from another of the apocalyptic fires that periodically rage through the area.

Mexico Earthquake

The most powerful earthquake I ever experienced was the Northridge quake of 1994, which had an official magnitude of 6.7, although I've seen estimtes that it was at least a 6.9.  The earthquake that hit central Mexico earlier this year was a 7.1.  Let that roll around in your head.  At 6.7, you actually hear the freight train roar of the earth grinding together. I can't imagine how much more terrifying that sound would be if it were magnified. L.A. was relatively lucky with that quake. A lot of us lost power and water,. There was structural damage all over the city. (A brick building a block from my apartment building SHOOK ITSELF APART.  It was pretty scary looking. But Mexico?  Not that lucky and they are still in dire need of help.

Here's the New York Times' list of places to send your help. Here's a special GoFundMe page, which has raised 17K (of an admittedly modest $15K goal)

Hurricanes

It's been nearly three months since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the people there are still pretty much on their own. Local agencies have taken up the slack and they desperately need help. Remote Area Medical (RAM) is an organization that's leading the way. Here's Save the Children's Hurricane Maria Relief Fund.  Here's an extensive list put together by PBS last month.

Shemless Self-Promotion...MISBEGOTTEN

Years ago, when I published Dark Valentine Magazine, I wrote a story called "Tired Blood" that featured a vampire so old he'd contracted dementia. I fell in love with the characters and the world, which was set in a UF version of Los Angeles. I've been playing in that world, off and on, for a decade now. (I wrote enough short stories in the world that I have a whole collection, LA. Nocturne.)

I've been working on the novel-length story in the world for nearly that long and next month--yes, next month--it's finally coming out. It's on preorder for 99 cents and if you like vampires and werewolves who aren't sparkly or tattooed, you might like it.

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

I was troubled by this book, a story set in the near future where a Joan of Arc-like figure has been martyred and an older woman has decided to die during a performance of a new kind of entertainment known as "grafting." She intends her graft to be a song of this new Joan  and an epic defiance of the fascist regime in which she lives.

The author is clearly talented and this book has garnered lavish praise and it's easy to see why. She has created an elaborate construct for her near-future story with its overtly political message--the villain is a "rage-mouthed" former lifestyle guru-turned unlikely celebrity-turned billionaire-turned politician. Who could that possibly remind us of? The book's prose is quite consciously incendiary--the novel's first words are, "Burning is an art," and much of what comes in the next pages has to do with the delicate art of "grafting," a form of scarification carried out as a medium of communication. (The details are not for the squeamish.)

Such a Sensitive Boy...flash fiction for a cold November day

SUCH A SENSITIVE BOY by Katherine Tomlinson

I wish Devin wasn’t such a sensitive boy, Marla thought as she watched her son happily chow down on a plate of store-bought chocolate chip cookies and a glass of skim milk. The cookies were a rare indulgence, a reward for the good grades he’d brought home on his report card. Marla didn’t want Devin to end up squishy fat like some character on a redneck reality show. (Like his daddy)

They didn’t have the money to eat organic, but she kept junk food out of the house as much as she could, trying to steer the boy away from the greasy fried pork rinds his father favored and toward apple chips and veggies with humus. Not that she called it “humus” around Lee, lest it set off a rant about “Ay-rab food.”

Her mother-in-law thought she was being mean denying Devin sweets, so whenever the boy went over to his nana’s, Marla felt like she had to search his backpack for contraband when he came home.

It annoyed her that Barbara wouldn’t respect her wishes. “It’s my job to spoil my grandbaby,” her mother-in-law always said. “A little love never hurt anyone.” Then she’d give Marla a significant look. “It’s no wonder he such a sensitive boy.”

Marla’s husband wasn’t much help. Lee still ate breakfast at his momma’s nearly every morning because she’d make him sausage gravy and biscuits like he liked while Marla and Devin ate yogurt and fruit.

Lee had voted for the president who’d won and ever since election night, he’d doubled down on being an asshole, like he was sure any minute a Mexican Muslim was going to show up in Huntsville and take his job as produce manager at the Winn-Dixie.

Not that it was much of a job any more. The store had cut his hours last spring and he still wasn’t bringing in a full paycheck.

Marla had been an inventory clerk at Redstone Arsenal before she got married, but Lee didn’t want her working “outside the home,” even though they could have used the extra income now that Devin was in middle school and didn’t need so much supervision.

“No wife of mine is going to work,” Lee had declared even as he sold off their washer and dryer to cover the rent one especially lean month.

Cover Reveal!! Secrets in the Shadows

A boxed set of shifters, shifters, and more shifters--coming out in May 2018.  Edited by Jena Gregoire, the set includes all-new material by writers Catherine Vale, Gina Wynn, Heather Hildenbrand, Liz Gavin, Nicole Zotack, Madeline Sheehan, Heather Magoon Felder, Brandy Dorsch, Victoria Cleave, and me, Kat Parrish. I'm quite excited!

A review of An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King

It's a few years in the future and China's now-discarded "One Child" Policy has created a surplus of middle-aged men who have no hope of marrying. To serve the needs of this demographic, which the State has dubbed, "the Bounty," a new form of marriage has been created--the Advanced Family. Women can marry two men (or even three, although that's a bit frowned on) and in the process, can collect a handsome dowry.

Wei-guo, who owns his own fitness business desperately hopes that Wu May-ling will take him on as a third husband but has no idea of just how complicated her relationships are. She's married to brothers Hann and XX and both men have secrets they've shared with her but which could get them sterilized--or even imprisoned--if the government found out. 

This is a debut novel from author King and it is spectacular. She tells the story from four different viewpoints, and each voice is beautifully crafted. Along the way there's a generous helping of Chinese custom as well as an overlay of the ponderous bureaucracy of the Communist state, and it all works really well. You can read an excerpt here.