I (Heart) Joe Kenda

I don't read a lot of true crime. I remember reading Tim Cahill's book, Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer, and getting incredibly depressed. I later read that writing it depressed Cahill also. (I'm a big fan of his adventure essays, particularly the collection Jaguars Ripped My Flesh.) When I was researching Whipping Boy, I watched a lot of Forensic Files and Youtube videos on various subjects. But I had never heard of Lt. Joe Kenda, Homicide Hunter, until Thanksgiving last year when the family gathered to binge-watch the program.

In a world where so much crime goes unsolved, it's comforting to know that Kenda (retired from the Colorado Springs police department) had a phenomenal "clearance rate." He solved nearly 400 homicides during his career and watching the show is kind of like a master class in investigative procedure and criminal psychology. Plus, the man's bone-dry sense of humor tickles me and has inspired dozens of memes. I got caught up on Homicide Hunter this Thanksgiving. Can't wait until next year!

Having a hard time waiting for Beauty & the Beast?

It seems like 2017 is a long way away after you've seen the wonderful trailer for the Emma Watson, live-action Beauty and the Beast feature film. I feel your pain! While you're waiting, why not grab a copy of my retelling of the classic story, The Summer Garden.  It's free right now on Amazon.

Mega YA Book Giveaway Contest

There are plenty of freebie e-book offers out there right now. This one is a chance to win a box of 70 actual books by a number of best-selling authors, some of them signed. (I  love ebooks but I also have a fondness for "book" books.) Enter here.

The Resistance Reads: Stamped From the Beginning

Stamped from the Beginning, a history of racism in America, has just won the 2016 National Book Award for non-fiction. I hope that means a paperback edition is coming soon because my usual "go-to" book buying option (used) isn't really working here as on Amazon, the used version is twice what a new copy of the hardcover is. (How does that even happen?) 

Ibram X. Kenny, an assistant professor of African-American history at the University of Florida, also wrote a history of The Black Campus Movement.

Susan Sarandon is not the enemy

First of all, she didn't vote for Trump. It's disappointing that she gave her vote to a vaxxer, but California is the bluest of blue states and voting her conscience in a blue state is an act without too many consequences.

Second of all, she has been an activist for a lot longer than the people who suddenly woke up to a Trump presidency and said, "Holy shit, maybe I should spend a little less money on pizza and donate something to the ACLU." (I include myself in that category. I've donated here, signed a petition there, voted my Democratic conscience, marched against the war--several different wars--but have never been a true activist until now.)

So leave Susan Sarandon alone. She is not the enemy. Steve Brannon is the enemy. Jeff Sessions is the enemy. Pick your battles. There's true evil out there.

A book just for fun--Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding

In Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, a freak sports accident sets in motion events that will profoundly affect five people at a small Wisconsin college. The story-telling is occasionally a little clumsy.  (The message seems to be, “You can’t always get what you want but if you try, sometimes, you just might get what you need.”) The writing though—it’s beautiful, with some of the metaphors just stunning. 

The Resistance Reads: Infamy by Richard Reeves

I have a friend who was interned in a camp during the war. She was a child but she still remembers it vividly. She has told me a little bit about that experience and I have tried to convince her to write about it, especially now when President-elect Trump's surrogates are citing the Japanese-American internment camps as proof that similar camps for Muslims will be "constitutional." The memories, she says, are too painful, so I do not press her.

I have visited the Manzanar "War Relocation Center" in California. It's a bleak place and haunted. (Some say it's actually haunted. But take a look at these photos of daily life there, originally published in the Huffington Post.

Infamy is a book you need to read.