So Many Books, so Little Time: More for the TBR Pile

I've been compiling a list of good and great biographies for a new site that's about to go up, and have been bookmarking books as if I just learned how to read.  I expected that.  What I didn't expect is how many books I'd stumble over in the course of posting my daily story story blog entry over at 365 Short Stories.  Today's entry was by Jack Scalzi and in reading his blog, Whatever, I was introduced to Jo Walton's alternate earth history/mystery Farthing.  I LOVE alternate history and mysteries, so this book (about an alternate 1949 in which the Brits made peace with Hitler) is right up my alley.  And there are apparently more.  (Of course there are.) Here's a list of her books with a picture of her rocking a fedora like Kelli Stanley's Welsh cousin.
By the way, the story of the day is Scalzi's HILARIOUS, Hugo-nominated fantasy parody "The Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue." Here's a link to it.

Separated at birth--Aaron Sorkin and Peter Dinklage

Ever since I saw Station Agent, I've had the nagging suspicion that Peter Dinklage  looks like somebody I' know and today when I saw this picture of Aaron Sorkin on the Deadline Hollywood site, it finally came to me.  Peter Dinklage and Aaron Sorkin look alike. I have worked for John Wells' Productions, the company that made West Wing, and have seen Sorkin a couple of times.  He's got real charisma.
He's also a fantastic writer as everyone who saw Social Network knows.  (He also wrote Moneyball, a movie that was full of fine acting and great moments.)

Like everyone else, I could watch Dinklage play Tyrion Lannister the rest of his life. (Only one more episode of Game of Thrones this year?  Noooooooo.) But the project I really hope is still alive is the one based on George Chesbro's books about Robert "Mongo the Magnificent" Frederickson. The book optioned was the third in the series, Affair of the Sorcerers, and Dinklage was attached to play Frederickson.
It's a great role. Frederickson is a criminologist who moonlights as a private investigator, often helped by his brother Garth, who's a cop. "Mongo" was his stage name when Frederickson worked as an acrobat in the circus and his best friends still call him that.
The books started out very real-world, but as the series went on, they got more and more out there.  The last of the books, called Lord of Ice and Loneliness (all the books have really poetic titles) is only available in a French translation; it has never been published in the U.S.

Sandra Seamans on Sale!

Sandra Seamans' debut collection Cold Rifts is now available from Snubnose Press. And when I say it's "on sale," I mean right now it's FREE.  I snagged my copy around 12:01 a.m. and I can't wait to start reading it. Get your own copy here.

There Can Never Be Too Many Book Blogs

New Yorker Magazine enters the fray. Their blog is called Page Turner. Check it out here.

Feminist Fiction Friday: The Dystopian YA Edition

I am not a huge fan of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. I prefer her wonderful Underland Chronicles, the first of which, Gregor the Overlander, is particularly good. But one thing Hunger Games did, and did really well, is open up the market for books about young heroines who aren't torn between two lovers. Katniss Everdeen is a kick-ass character, and thanks to Collins, she's not the only one out there.

Illustration by Jason Chan

Hugh Howey's Wool (originally self-published as five separate books) features reluctant heroine Juliette who discovers the terrible secret kept by those in charge and ends up the unlikely leader of a growing rebellion. The world of Wool, an arcology that determines status by the floor, with the higher regions reserved for the politicians and those who run things, is worked out neatly. There are a lot of great characters and romance and treachery and political shenanigans. Juliette is thrown into a difficult situation and it only gets worse. it's a very satisfying read and there are clearly a lot more stories to come.
Then there's 16-year-old Yukiko, the heroine of Jay Kristoff's dystopian Japanese steampunk novel Stormdancer due out in September (in the US). It's the first book in a planned series called The Lotus War. check out this site for more information on the book and the world.
If you love that Stormdancer cover (I do), check out the interview with the writer and the artist on Tor.com showing the evolution of the image.
Lauren Oliver, whose lovely Liesl & Po is one of my favorite books, has a series featuring 17-year-old Lena, who has defied the law against love in her Portland, ME community. The first book is called Delirium; the second, Pandemonium, was published in February.
Sixteen-year-old Tris Prior is the heroine of Veronica Roth's Divergent. (The cover art shamelessly evokes the "Mockingjay" logo of Hunger Games, just in case readers don't immediately identify the book's genre.)  Book 2 of the series Insurgent, was published this month.
Graceling actually came out the year before Hunger Games (2009) but its intrepid teenage heroine Katsa is a bold woman whose particular skill is killing. Written by Kristen Cashore, who has written a "companion volume" called Fire.
YA has changed a lot since I was a YA. I love that young women have their own action heroines now. Romance is fine, but give us sword fights too!

Update to Less is More

The new winner of the longest title for a biography goes to Dr. Thomas Noguchi for:

Coroner; America's Most Controversial Medical Examiner explores the unanswered questions surrounding the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Janis Joplin, William Holden, Natalie Wood, John Belushi and many other of his important cases

 

Knock Knock. Who's There?

It's Mark Satchwill who has written and illustrated the first NoHo comic strip story "Knock Knock," "Knock, Knock" will be published tomorrow and will be available for download as a pdf. Stop by the NoHo site tomorrow to check it out. And please leave a comment.

Book Titles: Less is More

I freely admit--I'm terrible with titles. They either occur to me right away or I end up agonizing over them for way too long and go with something lame. However, after compiling a list of biographies and memoirs for a new site (details soon), I don't feel so bad. You would not believe the number of authors who couldn't let well enough alone after coming up with a catchy title and saddled the book cover with the longest subtitles they could think of.
For instance: We Bought a Zoo.  Not the greatest title in the world but it tells you what you need to know about the story, But just in case a reader has reading comprehension problems, the author added this subtitle: The Amazing True Story of a Broken-Down Zoo, and the 200 Animals That Changed a Family Forever. Then, when the movie tie-in audio book edition was published, it got an even loner subtitle:  the Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed Their Lives Forever.  That's a total of 26 words. A couple of other book titles matched that total but so far, I haven't found any that surpassed it. There were a lot of titles in the 20-word range though.
Makes me even more appreciative of one-word mystery titles. And here's a  link to a column by Bill Morris about the Appeals and Perils of the One-Word book title.

Pulp Ink 2 is coming!

I just signed off on Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan's edit of my story "Thicker than Water." And what graceful edits they were! I am thrilled to be in the company of so many great writers and cannot wait to read their stories. You can see the lineup here. Check out the great cover art.

Review: BLOOD WILL TELL by Christine Pope

A woman searching for her father’s killer.

A man looking for his next score.

Miala has nothing in common with inter-galactic adventurer Eryk Thorn, but when fate throws them together, they discover they have more in common than an instinct for survival. 

Author Christine Pope returns to the sci fi world of Breath of Life in this sexy, savvy space opera. 

Blood Will Tell begins with  Miala undercover in the compound of Arlen Mast, the  criminal mastermind who had her father killed. She's determined to take her vengeance and clean out his treasury while she's at it and she's got the hacker skills to do just that.

When fate intervenes and she finds herself in a position to claim Mast's booty, she also finds herself partnered up with the notorious Eryk Thorn, who hides his face under wrappings and keeps his past a secret.

But he's not the only one with secrets, and the longer Miala is around Thorn, the more complicated it gets. And just when we think we know how it's going to end, Pope surprises us by raising the stakes, raising the temperature and raising our expectations. The book is Pope's best yet. Not only that, but this book reads like the first in a series. I can't wait.

Feminist Fiction (Film) Friday

I played hooky earlier this week and went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I didn't really have the time to spare but I knew if I didn't go to see it this week, it would be gone by this week. And I was right. Marigold is not a particularly good movie. Every single plot twist in the film is telegraphed before hand. And yet...messy as it is, predictable as it is, the movie is totally enjoyable. Not the least of the pleasures is watching the actors. Judi Dench. Bill Nighy. Maggie Smith. Tom Wilkinson, Dev Patel (of Slumdog Millionaire). It's kind of like watching an actor's master class.
Nighy and Dench have worked together before in Notes on a Scandal, and although that is a very different movie it has something in common with Marigold--it has a couple of terrific parts for women who are no longer young; who are in fact ... old. Both Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are 78. (Tom Wilkinson is 64; Nighy is not yet 63.) Both Smith and Dench have resumes that go back to the middle of the last century. Dench's first credit on IMDB is 1959; Smith's first listing is 1955.  That's 1955 people--pre-Space Age.
In Marigold, both actresses play women who have been betrayed by the people they love. They're victims who ultimately refuse to be victimized and on their own terms, find happiness. They are not glamorous women. The camera zooms in on their fragile, wrinkled skin and it's a cruel contrast to the lovely, smooth-skinned ingenue who plays Dev's girlfriend in the film. And yet, the stories the audience want to see belong to the older actresses. (Nighy and Wilkinson are terrific in their roles too, but we are talking of women here.)

A day after I saw the movie, I started seeing the stills from the next James Bond movie, Skyfall. and there was a photo of Dench as "M" looking...stunning. Judi Dench and I are the same height (5'1") and believe me when I tell you how short that is. And yet...she looks like she could face down a couple of dictators before breakfast and still have time to whip out an economics treaty. In the movies that have always defined a very particular male fantasy, she is the woman in charge. I love that.
Then there's Maggie Smith.  Her role as the Dowager Countess is the reason everyone is so addicted to Downton Abbey. She is playing a powerful woman whose power has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with intelligence and cunning.
I love that these women are still getting terrific roles. As with Helen Mirren (67) and Meryl Streep (63), they are defining what it means to be a woman of une certain age on screen They play women of substance.
Just as I was the oldest person in the audience when I went to see Twilight, I was by far the youngest person in the audience at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I sat behind a row of women in their 80s who loved every single moment of the movie. A lot of movies coming out of Hollywood these days marginalize women, make them into sex dolls and cartoons. But there is hope. Women like movies too--even women old enough to be great-grandmothers. It's nice to see a movie that celebrates life even in the "golden years."

Feminist Fiction Friday

One of my clients is looking for books featuring women cops who are partnered with other women a la Cagney & Lacey.  The book he had was really not good, so he challenged me to find one better. There's the Rizzoli & Isles books of course, but that's already been turned into a series. I realized that I couldn't think of any other books off the top of my head except for C.J. Lyons' books and her sleuths aren't cops, they're doctors and nurses.  Anyone have any ideas?

Seriously?

My alarm radio went off this a.m. and I woke to the voices of various people urging me to come see them on the Gulf Coast. Men and women with heavy Southern accents were saying their names and their home towns (Biloxi, Mississippi is the only one I can remember) and urging me to come on down. The sponsor for this travel commercial?  BP.  That's right. The people responsible for despoiling said Gulf Coast. 

Mother's Day Reading: "Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu

Mother's Day is coming and I have been reading stories about mothers for the 365 Short Story Challenge I've been involved in. I ran across this story by Ken Liu, which is in the archives of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. (You can read it online here.)
"Paper Menagerie" is a beautiful story, nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula Award and I don't know what won instead but this is a story that will haunt you. Check it out and then go to Liu's site to read his other stories, which have similarly been picked out for honors. He's a tremendously good writer.

Feminist (Non-) Fiction Friday--Erma Bombeck

When I was growing up there were a number of women writers whose stories of family life were published in magazines like Ladies Home Journal and McCalls and Good Housekeeping and in newspapers coast to coast.  There was Jean Kerr (wife to theater critic Walter Kerr and author of Please Don't Eat the Daisies), there was Peg Bracken of the I Hate to Cook cookbook. (Great recipe for oatmeal cookies but most of the other recipes are ...let's just say the title is not a joke.)

And then there was Erma Bombeck, whose obituaries described her as a "housewife humorist" when she died in 1996 at the age of 69. 

  Doesn't that sound ... dismissive? The "housewife humorist" had an audience of 30 million readers in 900 newspapers in North America. From 1965 until her death, she wrote more than 4000 newspaper columns. Every once in awhile when I'm looking for a recipe in one of my mother's cookbooks, I'll find a Bombeck column that she cut out and used as a bookmark. They always make me smile. "Housewife humorist?" I guess people need their labels. But she was no hobbyist proto-mommy blogger, the lady could write.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'.--Erma Bombeck (See more quotes here.)

Billy Bishop Goes to War--the Movie

One of the best experiences I ever had at the theater was at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. where John Gray and Eric Peterson performed their play, Billy Bishop Goes to War. (It won the L.A. Drama Desk Award.)
Billy Bishop Goes to War is a musical based on the life of Canada's WWI flying ace, Billy Bishop of Owen Sound, Ontario. Peterson, one of Canada's best-known actors, played Bishop and a host of other characters, zipping in and out of the roles with the ease of changing a prop. It was an amazing show.  I've since seen it performed in other venues, by other actors, including, David Ogden Stiers (of M*A*S*H). He was so physically different from Peterson (tall, robust, balding compared to Peterson's slight, wiry frame and red hair) that it was strange at first but it was also an excellent performance.
Gray and Peterson have been performing the play for 30 years and now they've re-imagined it, tailoring the title character to Peterson's real age. They've also filmed it. It was supposed to be released on DVD last November, but if you search for it, all you find is a paperback copy of the play. You can watch the trailer here. You can buy a copy of the play here. I am going to track down the movie.

Richard Godwin interviews me

Richard Godwin, author of Mr. Glamour and Apostle Rising, as well as many, many short stories (including "Getting High on Daisy" in the Drunk on the Moon anthology) has interviewed me on his "Chin-Wag at the Slaughterhouse" blog.  We talk noir, Joseph Conrad, what scares us and more. You can read it here.

It's Here--Drunk on the Moon!

Drunk on the Moon, the anthology of stories based on the werewolf/private investigator character created by Paul D. Brazill is now available at Amazon and OmniLit. (It'll soon be available in other stores, including B&N, but they take longer to publish.) This is the e-pub version. The print version will be out early in May.
There are 11 stories in all--including a prequel by Brazill, and the stories were gathered from an international group of writers--Julia Madeleine, John Donald Carlucci, Richard Godwin, K.A. Laity, B.R. Stateham, Paul D. Brazill, Jason Michel, Frank Duffry, Allan Leverone, and me!!
My story, "A Fire in the Blood" features Roman facing off against a Persian fire demoness with the help of another wolf and a mysterious freelance pharmacist.
The stories offer a little something for everyone, and shortly there will be blurbs, including a lovely review from Les Edgerton. The book is $2.99 and well worth it.

Seriously?

According to Blogger stats, the second biggest source of traffic to this blog is a site called Americans Who Hate Obama. WTH?  Not sure what anyone who is on that site could possibly see on my site that says we'd be kindred spirits.

Feminist Fiction Friday

It is Feminist Fiction Friday and I'm fried. I am in week three of the computer changeover from HELLLLLL and last night it took a new and even more annoying turn as we switched over from the Google Cloud to the Microsoft Cloud. Only one of my email addresses works, and it's not the one I use for business. Only one computer (the new one) is linked to the printer but that printer doesn't have word installed at the moment since we were going to try Google Docs.  Grrrr.
So I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself. And then I read about Musine Kokalari.  She was an Albanian writer (the first female Albanian writer) who was persecuted after the Communists took over in her country, imprisoned for 18 years, prohibited from writing after that and died in poverty in 1983 after being forced to work as a street sweeper. According to Wikipedia, when she was terminally ill with cancer, she was refused a hospital bed.It's really hard to find any of her work. Her novel Vepra is available from an amazon affiliate seller for $39.

Resources on Women Writers::

Women Writers Online--the excellent project housed at Brown University. Check it out here.
Emory Women Writers Resource Project. Info is here.

Knit Your Own Cat!

You know, my sister knew how to knit and crochet but that gene just skipped a generation with me. On the rare occasions I sit down to watch television, I don't feel the need to keep my fingers occupied with knitting needles because they're usually busy conveying food to my mouth.
I'm also not really a whimsical person. Yes, I once bought a cement Statue of Liberty for the garden in back of the house I was living in (it was taller than I was and awesome), but it's not like I inflicted my whimsy on passersby, the way I would have if I'd put out a pair of pink flamingos for example.
And yet, when I saw this book, i found myself wishing that I could actually knit because this is the kind of whimsy that tickles my fancy.  (I actually thought it was going to turn out to be a self-help book or something, like the screenwriting manual Save the Cat.)
Knit Your Own Cat. Own the whimsy.

What I'll Be Reading Next: I Am an Executioner

I ran across an interview with writer Rajesh Parameswaran here, and found myself wishing I could have been at the release party for his collection of short stories, I Am an Executioner.  It's one of those books where the publisher has priced the Kindle edition ($12.99) at just four dollars less than the hard cover ($16.99), but from what I've read, the book is clearly the harbinger of a brilliant new talent. I can't wait to read it.

I will make wine of your blood

Photograph by Roger Kirby

Sometimes, short stories insinuate themselves into my work hours, even when I'm completely engaged in an activity (in this case, reading Paul Tobin's fantastic novel Prepare to Die (it'll be out June 5 and if you love great writing, superheroes, love stories or any combination thereof, you will want to buy it).

I kept thinking of Zora Neale Hurston's quote about gods and their worship. Here's the quote:

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”


And then I started thinking about a goblin character I've been playing with, a bad-ass gangster goblin who vows vengeance on a rival. And then I started thinking about the ridiculous but oh so quotable movie line, "I will drink your milkshake."


And then I came up with the line, "I will make wine of your blood." I am not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I know there's a story there.

Saturday Self-Promotion: Four Birds Calling

Photo by Dave Di Biase

I have a ton of deadlines coming down the road in the next two weeks--the release of the Drunk on the Moon anthology, the 5K short story "Broken Angel" for Italian publisher Lorenzo Mazzoni, a couple of book reviews, my submission to Pulp Ink 2.  And the annual deluge of scripts to prep clients for the Cannes film festival is just around the corner too. And in there I'm working on Misbegotten and my shared world project Starcaster.  And while all this is going on, I'm putting together the sequel to my Christmas collection, tentatively entitled 12 More Nights of Christmas. The original collection came out right before the holidays last year and although I think it's a strong bunch of stories, it hasn't really sold well. So all new stories themed to the dark side of the Christmas song--stories of leaping lords and bioengineered partridges and tainted milk sold by a soulless agribusiness company.
Here's a story from the original collection:

Four Birds Calling

 Reg could see the two birds out of the corner of his eye. They were looking at him and giggling, being none too subtle about it.

He knew what they were thinking.

Is it him?

Could it be?

The resemblance really was quite striking. He had the same blond mop-top, the same bedroom eyes, the same succulent lower lip.

He even styled his wardrobe after Thomas, the photographer his doppelganger had played in Blow-Up. The white pants and powder-blue shirt rolled up to the elbows. It was a good look for him.

The shirt matched his eyes.

And eyes are the windows of the soul.

Reg never looked birds in the eye though; he always focused on their lips. Eventually they’d notice and ask, “What?”

He’d always say, “You have the most beautiful lips.”

It worked a treat, that line.

Free books--offer good just for today!

There's a kindle promotion going on for today, Friday the 13th.  A hundred books in genres from cookbooks to supernatural romance.  A little something for everyone.  And free:

100 FREE BOOKS - April 13th #Kindle #Book Bonanza - All Genres - All FREE - http://bitly.com/Ii3hjO

Friday Fantasy Fiction--Review of Brent Weeks' Way of Shadows

I used to read a LOT of fantasy in my teens and twenties and I hoovered through all the multi-book sagas and story cycles out there. I was a big fan of Susan Cooper's books, and Guy Gavriel Kay and the Deryni Chronicles. I especially loved Robin McKinley's Beauty and Patricia McKillip's novels. And Anne McCaffrey--loved the Dragonriders series. Somewhere along the way, though, all the books started to feel the same. Maybe it was because a client hired me to read all five thousand Dragonlance books and synopsize them.  Whatever it was, I pretty much stopped reading the genre for years.  And then I read Brent Weeks' Night Angel: The Way of  Shadows.  The timing was perfect. I'd just geeked out on the first season of Game of Thrones and was ready for something complex and compelling to get me through to the second season.  (I made the decision not to read the books because I don't want to know what's coming.  If I'd known what was going to happen to Ned Stark, I'm not sure I could have watched.)
I thought Night Angel was fantastic and was very happy to discover that ... there are more books in the series. In fact, the complete trilogy is now available.  If you love densely plotted stories of fantasy, you will love this series. Here's my review:

Night Angel:  Way of the Shadows is a richly textured, multi-layered fantasy crowded with characters who have substance and cast shadows. It is a coming of age story played out against a backdrop of politics and magic, The first of Brent Weeks’ epic story cycle, it compares favorably to George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” books in terms of complexity and world-building.

The relationship between an orphan “guild rat” and a master assassin named Durzo Blint is at the heart of the story, but both Durzo and the boy have lives that connect to a web of other people.  Durzo warns his apprentice that “love is a noose,” but by the time they meet, it’s already too late for the boy to heed the warning.

This is an epic story filled with darkness and cruelty but also stuffed with terrific characters, great friendships, large themes and genuine emotion. The early chapters are especially grim, and almost unbearable at times, but also familiar to us—the fantastical extension of Dickens’ version of poverty.  This world is not sentimental and those who escape the pull of the Warrens are grateful for their reprieve.

The world-building here is outstanding, on a par with Frank Herbert’s Dune or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or the afore-mentioned George R. R. Martin’s Seven Kingdoms.  There is very real magic here, with “talents” that range across many different disciplines and mages that must hide their magic. There are places where a fan of the genre can almost identify the author’s influences (because they’re the classic books every fan has read) and he hits all the tropes and memes out there.  Which is not a bad thing. 

This is a “Chosen One” story, filled with humble beginnings and magical artifacts, and impossible loves, and politics both personal and grand. The chance for betrayal is everywhere and not necessarily because those doing the betraying are traitors.

Gender Analyzer--via K. A. Laity

So the debate about whether women can write crime fiction has flared up again with interesting posts from Sandra Seamans, Heath Lowrance, and Cat Valente. In response to Heath's post, "Chicks Can't Write Crime Fiction"(which is NOT his position at all),  K.A. Laity, who writes crime, horror and romance, shared a link to the site Gender Analyzer, which uses AI to determine if a woman or man wrote the home page of a site. I ran this blog through it and GA suggests, with 77 percent certainty, that a woman wrote it.  They're also 88 percent sure that a man writes NoHo Noir. (And I guess, to be fair, they'd be right about 50 percent of the time since I share posting duties with Mark Satchwill.)  Running material through the analyzer is addictive and, may I add, a most excellent way of procrastinating.
If you're still on the fence about whether women can bring the hard-boiled, you need to do some reading. Heath's post and the comments will give you a reading list.

Le French Book--Resource for International Crime Writers and Readers

Don't you love Google Alerts?  I have one set for "French crime" (because you know, keeping up with American crime just does not keep me busy enough).  This morning I received a link for this site:  Le French Book. The site includes mini essays on French police procedure, interviews with authors like Frederique Molay. and sample chapters and short stories. If I knew the idiom, I'd say "Go check them out" in French. The best I can do is... Allez voir les!

Straight but not Narrow

I'm a sucker for organizations with clever names, particularly when they do good work.  I just heard about "Straight but not Narrow," which is, as you might expect, a group that advocates tolerance and support for lgbt youth.. It's specifically aimed at straight males, but they're inclusive. Check them out. 
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Book review: Jo Nesbo's Nemesis

In Nemesis (now out in paperback) Jo Nesbo’s melancholy, alcoholic detective Harry Hole looks into the murder of his partner while solving a bank robbery that’s actually more complex than it looks. 

Bank manager Stine Grette has been gunned down by a robber, even though he got away with millions of kroner.  Harry teams up with nondescript detective Beate Lønn, who spots numerous little details he’s missed, and the two of them are convinced that there’s a larger crime behind the crime they’ve witnessed.

Harry, though, is somewhat distracted. His ongoing obsession with the murder of his partner (beaten to death by a baseball bat) continues to affect his work, and a woman from his past has shown up just as Rakel, his current girlfriend, flies to Moscow to deal with her young son Oleg’s father, a Russian who wants custody of the boy.

New fiction: Book of Knowledge

Book of Knowledge

By Katherine Tomlinson

Usually Yael hated shelf-reading, walking along the rows of library books making sure that none were out of order. It was tedious work and ultimately pointless because the books would only get disarranged the next day unless they were shelved in sections where the public was not allowed, like the gated foreign-language reference area or the priceless collection of sacred texts that were so ancient they were kept locked in environment-proof drawers.

Back in the stacks it was dusty and the dust played hell with her allergies. It was hard to keep focused on the numbers in the dim light, and much too easy to give way to day-dreaming. There were times when Yael felt shelf-reading was a metaphor for her life—lots of aimless movement without ever actually going anywhere.

Yael hated shelf-reading but working in the library was a condition of her scholarship and as a scholarship student, she got stuck with all the mindless chores.  Still, shelf-reading wasn’t as bad as working reference retrieval.  Whoever ended up with that job was kept running ragged from the time the library opened until it closed, with students requesting books and bound periodicals one at a time, as if there was a penalty for using too many books at one time.

Today, though, Yael didn’t really mind the work. It gave her a chance to think. She needed to think. She needed to make some choices. And there was no one she could talk to. Her father, a Talmudic scholar, didn’t approve of anything about Yael’s life—not her choice of college major, not her choice of boyfriend.

There was no way she could tell him she was pregnant.

She didn’t know what to do.

Revidew of Moshe Kasher's Kasher in the Rye

Not the Wonder Years

The last thing you’d expect a memoir about drug addiction to be is hilarious but comedian Moshe Kasher’s chronicle of his struggles with drugs, alcohol, culture clashes and low self-esteem is often very funny when it isn’t breaking your heart. Unlike James Frey’s A Thousand Little Pieces, which has scenes that are way over the top even for fiction, there’s no sense in this book that Kasher is exaggerating for effect. If anything, we suspect he’s holding back.

Born Mark Kasher (he refers to Mark as his “slave name”) the younger (hearing) son of two deaf parents,  Moshe was in therapy almost before he was toilet-trained. Bounced between a bitter, matriarchal household in Oakland (his mother was a third-generation divorcee whose own mother had nothing good to say about men) and his father’s strict Orthodox community in Brooklyn where he and his older brother David were mocked for not knowing the “rules,” Moshe ended up one of “those kids.”

Hanging out with a gang of teenage losers, he masterminded a money-making drug-selling ring despite being so marginalized at school that he’d been shunted over to the special ed track. (Yes, he rode the “short bus” to school.)

He turned to drugs at 12 and they helped, but after awhile, Moshe wanted more.

Kasher in the Rye is a coming-of-age story that will give hope to every kid who ever felt hopeless. In and out of rehab and mental hospitals and schools both public and private, coming close to falling through the cracks altogether, Moshe’s message is, in the end, “It gets better.”

Feminist (Non) Fiction Friday: The Travel Edition

These days women writers who travel to foreign lands are not considered adventurers. They're either tourists or journalists or wanderers or seekers.  And that's too bad because there was a wonderful tradition of women travelers coming back from far-flung places with terrific stories of discovery and observation.
Over at A Celebration of Women Writers, they're currently showcasing Lady Alicia Blackwood's A Narrative of Personal Experiences &  Impressions During a Residence on the Bosphorus Throughout the Crimean War (1881).  The full text of Lady Blackwood's book is here.  Lady Blackwood was an interesting woman, a painter and a nurse who was commissioned by Florence Nightingale herself to create and run a hospital for wives and widows and children of soldiers. You can learn more about her here.

Then there was Englishwoman Gertrude Bell, archaeologist, aristocrat, friend to T. E. Lawrence and very possibly a spy. A woman who refused to accept limitations, she was very well respected by the Arabs she encountered, who were mostly wary of Brits.  Her Arabian Diaries and personal papers make fascinating reading. Georgina Howell has written an excellent biography of Bell called Gertrude Bell, queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations.(She was there when Iraq was born as a nation out of what had been Mesopotamia.)

My personal favorite woman adventurer is Freya Stark.  She was born at the tail end of the 19th century but came of age in the 30s. She worked a nurse in Italy during WWI and then started traveling around.

 I first read her Valley of the Assassins when I was in high school. The book chronicles her trip (with just a single guide) in wild areas between Iraq and what's now Iran. She went places NO MAN HAD GONE BEFORE.  I loved that. She was often sickly but she was fearless and she became one of the most famous travel writers of her generation. She lived to be 100 and when she was 77, she published an account of her last expedition, a trip to Afghanistan. (The book was The Minaret of Djam: an Excursion into Afghanistan, which is still in print.)

These women kindled my love of travel--I'm never without a valid passport--and I just wish I had their courage. (The adjective most often applied to Gertrude Bell was "intrepid."  I'd like to be intrepid.)

Curried Lentil Soup Recipe

It has been raining and gray for two days here and since my limit of tolerance for rain is about two hours, I am looking for something to make that is tasty but not fattening. (Given my preference, I'd make hot chocolate and cinnamon toast but that's not going to happen.)
Soup is the obvious choice.
This soup is perfect because when you first put it together, the colors are so bright and lovely. (I have a clear glass stockpot, so it's nice to use it for this.)

Curried Lentil soup

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon oil
1 medium onion, chooped coarsely
1 pound carrots, chopped
2 large leeks, sliced in half lengthwise, cleaned, then chopped
5 cloves garlic
¼ tsp ginger (1 tablespoon if fresh grated)
2 tablespoon curry powder, medium-spicy
1 tsp. cumin
1 cup green lentils, picked-over
6 cups water or vegetable stock
1 dash salt, optional
Directions
Sautee the onion in a large soup pot over medium heat while washing the carrots.
Chop carrots into 1/4″ to 1/2″ rounds and add to onions. Stir. Let them sautee while washing the leeks.
Cut off the root and the thick leafy green part of the leek, leaving only the tender white part. Cut in half. Remove outer layer. Wash. Chop into 1/4″ to 1/2″ half rounds. Add to pot. Sautee while preparing garlic.
Add garlic to pot.
Sautee until leeks are tender. (Carrots should still be slightly firm.)
Add curry powder, cumin and ginger and stir so vegatables are evenly covered with the spices.
Add lentils and 6 cups water or vegetable stock. Cover and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat to low and simmer until lentils are tender.
Add salt to taste. If you are using a vegetable broth that is already salted, this may not be necessary.

Note:  For this soup I use plain old chrome yellow curry powder. There's no need to use fancy (pricey) spice blends.

Judging a book by its cover--Toxic Reality

Sometimes you can just be a little too subtle. I was happy with the cover of my book Toxic Reality, but despite great reviews, it just wasn't selling. Over the weekend, Joy Sillesen at Indie Author Services whipped up a new cover for me and within minutes of it going up on Smashwords and Amazon.com, I'd sold more copies than I had since I first published it. 
Being able to swap out a cover in minutes is one of the reasons I love indie publishing. You can do A/B cover tests. You can goose sales with a new cover. You can play around with multiple covers the way magazines sometimes do. (I remember TV Guide testing covers with Star Trek captain covers--clearly meant to entice collectors.)
I admit it--I'll pick up a book because I'm intrigued by the cover. (But I'll also buy a book that intrigues me even if the cover is awful. And if you were an early reader of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels, you know just the ugly covers I mean.)
I like this new cover. There's nothing subtle about it. But then, the stories aren't subtle either.

St. Patrick's Day Recommended Reading

It's St. Patrick's Day and what better way to spend it than catching up with some Irish mysteries written by women?
Start with Erin Hart's Haunted Ground and its sequels, Lake of Sorrows and False Mermaid. The protagonist of all three books is American pathologist Nora Gavin, who lives in Ireland. Her books blend forensic science, Irish myth and mystery in a wonderful way.
Learn more about Erin at her website
You can follow her on Twitter @Erin_Hart
For a very different reading experience, check out If I Never See You Again, Niamh O'Connor's first novel (she was best known as a true crime writer before). Taken is the sequel. You can read about her here
Here's a link to an interview she did in support of her book Blood Ties, about the real stories behind some of Ireland's most notorious murders.
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Feminist Fiction Friday: Anne Holt

You like Nordic Noir?  Looking around for something to read now that you've hoovered through Jo Nesbo's oeuvre? You might want to check out Anne Holt, a remarkable Norwegian writer whose background includes a stint as a Minister of Justice, a news editor and anchor and a lawyer. She's also a mother.
She made her fiction debut in 1993 with Blind Goddess, a novel that kicked off a series "starring" Hanne Wilhelmsen, a lesbian police officer.
I'm currently reading What is Mine, the first in a series of mysteries featuring Adam Stubo and Johanne Vik.  It's a really dark story involving child-napping and murder, with a subplot about a man wrongfully convicted of the same sort of crime decades ago.
Holt is Norwegian, although she's spent time in both the US and France, and her work reflects the Scandinavian attitude toward sexual equality. In What is Mine, a little girl casually mentions that her grandmother is an electrician, a job that is still, at least in the US, more likely to be man's work. the fthers of the children involved in the plot are all directly involved in their upbringing, and in some cases are more nurturing than the mothers.  Adam is a widower whose wife and daughter died in a horrible accident that's almost ludicrously unlikely, but he is incredibly tender with his grandson and with Johanne's mentally disabled child Kristiane.
From the first time Johanne and Adam meet, there's a frisson of sexual attraction, but it is not without complications. These people are adults and their lives are complex and they have pasts and they have responsibilities, The portrait of Kristiane is an excellent fictional portrait of a child with a mental disability, right up there with the autistic characters in Speed of Dark and Memoir of an Imaginary Friend. No one quite knows what's going on with Kristiane and her mother is driving herself crazy looking for answers.
Holt has written a number of books in the almost 20 years she's been a novelist and she's one of the best-selling writers in Norway.
She's on Facebook
She's got an author page at Simon & Schuster's site..
Here's a podcast where she talks about her new Hanne novel (a locked-room mystery).

L.A. Nocturne II--More Tales of the Misbegotten

My collection of short stories L.A. Nocturne II (More Tales of the Misbegotten) is now up at Amazon. There are nine stories in this collection, some of them written just for the collection and not previewed anywhere else.

Joy Sillesen did the cover through her Indie Author Services, and you should check out her current promotion because she's offering $10 covers for ebooks all month long.  Joy has already created the cover for Misbegotten, which should be out in September.  (Hold me to that deadline.)

One of the stories in the book, "Bear Baiting" introduces two of the characters who are part of the cast of characters of my novel--Detectives Lee Park and C.J. Bowe who work in the paracrimes division of LAPD.  Lee's second-generation Korean-American, C.J. (named for two of my friends) is his long-time partner but they've recently realized there might be something else there. (You know what they say about proximity.)  I really liked writing their relationship.  I'm interested in knowing what you think...  (The two briefly appear in "Fairy Story," which is another "Tale of the Misbegotten.")

Feminist Fictionistas Take Note: Women Talk Sci-Fi

Three writers in Australia (Eugenia, Gerri and Writer X) talk about science fiction. Check out their site here.  They haven't updated in awhile and their "about us" section is sadly lacking, but check them out on Twitter @GENEWS_WTSF

Review of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick De Witt

Death follows in the wake of two brothers headed to California to kill a man for their employer, a wealthy man known as “The Commodore.” 

In The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt has done a 180 from his first novel Ablutions, a dark, grim story about the denizens of a seedy Hollywood bar.  His new book is a darkly comic Western noir that serves notice with its whimsical title that DeWitt’s west is not the same place as the west you’ll find in a Louis L’Amour novel.

There is a lot to like here.  The story is episodic and reminiscent in some ways of Little Big Man, only taking place in a more focused context.  Eli and Charlie Sisters seem to run across a whole cross-section of Western types (the diligent Chinese house boy, the luckless prospectors, the soiled doves and so forth) that Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) would recognize.  There’s also a tinge of superstition and the paranormal (the weird gypsy) that unsettles us a bit.  What the story mostly reminds us of is a graphic novel, even though this is a fully fleshed tale that doesn’t need illustrations.

First of all, the dialogue is absolutely great.  Eli’s horse-trading when he sells the Indian horse that simply walks up to him is reminiscent of Mattie’s dickering in True Grit, and there are other places where we suspect the writer might have been influenced by the Charles Portis novel, if not the movie(s) of the same name.

Is this a fiction challenge in the making or what?

Over at BuzzFeed, they've compiled a list of 60 completely unusable stock photographs from sources as diverse as Getty Images and ThinkStock. The images ae hilariously, atrociously bad. And yet. They're also strangely compelling in the stories they suggest--the gas-masked mother and child engaged in a tug of war over a sheet of cookies, for example; or the guy with the Mona Lisa superimposed over his tongue.  Then there's the girl with the Hitler mustache and the gingham dress peeling potatoes. Really, you have to see this group of photogrpahs for yourself here. And tell me if at least one of them doesn't suggest a story.