Brother Sun--Sweetest Harmonies since Simon & Garfunkel

I admit it, at heart I'm still a folkie. I love traditional American and English ballads and have been listening to a lot of them while prepping a new writing project. I was fooling around on YouTube looking for the Peter, Paul, and Mary song "Well Well Well," hen I stumbled across  this completely different song, also called "Well, Well, Well And that's how I found out that singer Greg Greenway is now part of a trio called "Brother Sun" along with fellow singer-songwriters Joe Jencks and Pat Wictor.  I've known Greg since high school and have followed his career from afar for years. In addition to his passion for music, he has a passionate commitment to social justice that informs all his work. He doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk. I admire that. For more information about Brother Sun, check out their website.

On the TBR pile Paul cornell's London Falling

This book sounds like it's right up my alley--a mixture of noir and fantasy. Read a review here and see what you think.

Ounctuation silliness

More proof that some people have too much time on their hands...

This is an unsolicited testimonial

I used to review books for the review site Bitten by Books, which specializes in paranormal books. I read a lot of great stuff, and found an intensely interactive community of readers. I did not know until recently that Bitten By Books offered advertising rates for authors who want to target those readers directly. I will definitely be talking to their sales people when Misbegotten comes out (in September if all goes well.) Check it out if you write paranormal; the exposure might be useful.  and even if you don't want to take advantage of their author services, you should check the site out. In addition to honest reviews, publishing news, blog tour stops and giveaways and contests, it's just a fun place to hang out.

Girls Write Now

I'd  never heard of Girls Write Now until today but I love the idea. The organization encourages girls to write their way to a better future. You go girls!

Death of a beach bunny

another baby boomer icon gone.
RIP Annette Funicello!

Review of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the orld by Hauki Murakami

Call this Inception by way of The Wizard of Oz.  In fact, readers that loved either of those movies should embrace Murakami’s work which mixes a stylized reality with a dream world populated by people from the “reality.” The protagonist is a "calcutec," a human data processor perhaps inspired by William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic.

The book slipstreams between science fiction, hardboiled noir, cyberpunk, horror, and literary fiction.  (There’s definitely a little Franz Kafka here.)  It's a dazzling, dizzying bit of writing that fits nicely into the "new weird" typified by China Mieville’s The City and the City, where two different worlds exist simultaneously in the same place.

Murakami is working with a palette that includes ambiguity, consciousness, and self.  In both sections of the book, the hero (an unnamed Narrator) is an outsider who’s being kept off-balance and trying to fit in. 

Perhaps the best way to read the book is to see it as a spy story in the Bourne Identity mold.  The Calcutec is a pawn in the info-war going on between the System and the Factory, and he ends up in End of the World severed from his shadow, the repository of memory.  The scenes where the narrator tries to help the librarian remember are filled with a delicate emotion that could be intense in performance.  (This material could easily be adapted into a play, with the different locations indicated by differing lighting.)

This novel is literate, adult entertainment with an edge of magic and a veneer of science fiction; a romp through the tropes of pop culture, and cross-culturally (and self-consciously) hip, in an almost cinematic way. In the end, this is a brilliant book.