Reviews Is Migratory! And Middle School Chaos

For those of a certain degree of maturity, the talents of Johnny Hart in the comic "B.C." were a great source of humor. There was a running joke about nearly everything, but the one referenced is the set of clam jokes. Any time a clam manifested an unusual trait, some loud mouthed denizen would announce it to the world with great volume and pitiful grammar.

First, I think, was "CLAMS GOT LEGS!" Later, after a group of clams were discovered walking off into the distance, it was "CLAMS IS MIGRATORY!" Hence, the title of the review.

Well, I'm no Johnny Hart, and daly, I have no clams. However, I do have reviews. And, happily, it appears that I am able to copy them from Amazon to Goodreads. I did a trial run this weekend of eight reviews, and nothing blew up. However, I don't know whether the reviews exist where anyone who looks at the book can find them, or do they just show up on my profile. I also don't know how to add a title to the reviews; other reviews have them, but I haven't found the magic button.

I'll be MOSTLY making the reviews/clams migrate, although I also have a completed book to review, and another I'm reading, so I can experience some task variety.

Asd along those lines, I just went through what I believe was my 19th middle school orientation. All but the last two, admittedly, were from the other side, since I was a middle school counselor from 1991 to 2007, but it's the same chaos.

Dang it, I wish people knew how to walk in the halls, and how not to block a door.

But, I was able to buy almost all the school supplies for 6th grade Alicia and 7th grade Kenneth in one VERY quick trip to Publix and one slightly longer trip to Walmart, with no lines to stand in.

I also used the opportunity to train Kenneth in greeting adults. Firm handshake, "Hi, Mrs Cthulu, I'm Kenneth Emiohe, and I'm in your third period reading class." I finally gave up on the firm handshake; the best I could get was gelatinous. We will work on it. He's only 12, after all, and he's not used to being treated with respect.

I wonder how many of the teachers I'll be on speaking terms with in May?

Peace be on your household, especially those of you beginning the school year.

Asbaran Solutions, by Chris Kennedy, and the Border of Insanity

The condensed Amazon review may be found here, for those who wish to avoid commentary.

Said commentary, however, will of necessity be non-specific. There are too many stories which are not mine to tell, but I do want to talk about what I'm calling, for the lack of a better term, the Border of Insanity.

My undergraduate degree is psychology, and I have two graduate degrees in counselling, but when it comes to my definition of insanity, I rely on my personal experience of listening to the accumulated wisdom of recovering alcoholics over the past 29 years.  There are really two statements of the definition:

1. Doing the same thing, and expecting a different result. This is the one I hear quoted the most, even outside the meeting rooms. I heard it last from the lips of a wise non-alcoholic, while standing in his driveway yesterday. It's a great statement, with plenty of practical applications. That's probably why it has such broad distribution. However, it's the other definition I'm thinking about this morning.

2. Believing something is true, when it's not; or, believing something isn't true, when it is.

Maybe it's due to my own neuro-chemical-behavioral makeup, but I tend to see both of these statements as being primarily errors of logic, not of emotions or senses. However, rational thinking can be highly impacted by both of those, so it's not a philosophically pure process.

To illustrate, let me use the most drastic situation I had to face as a counselor: suicide.

The nutshell truth we bandied about was "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." It's so succinct that it tends to trivialize the issue. That's because, for the person contemplating suicide, the problem doesn't seem temporary at all. The overwhelming majority of the cases I had to deal with were triggered by the ending, or the anticipated ending, of a love affair. For the person involved, this did NOT seem to be a temporary problem; from their perspective, life was over, they would never be happy again, and everything was either meaningless or painful, and they saw no end to it.

They were standing at the Border of Insanity.

Now, as long as they were on the GOOD side of the border, counselling was helpful. They were being seduced by the false belief "If I die, it will solve all problems." As long as they hadn't given themselves over to that particular insanity, they were able to see the horrible impact that their death would have on other people. They could see that they had recovered from a similar situation in the past. Depending on the beliefs of the individual, there were appeals to their spiritual beliefs as well. And even if they themselves couldn't see a future, if they still had trust in others, they could rely on the fact that others believed in a future, and that could carry them through.

However, if they had crossed over the Border, and they were determined to carry out suicide,  the only fix was to have them committed to a mental health facility where they could be placed under constant observation, and provided the necessary interventions until they were stabilized. I spent the last half of my career working mostly with teens, and that population tends to act impulsively, rather than with a carefully thought-out plan, and they tend to rebound rather quickly.  

That's not the only country across the Border of Insanity, just the most lethal. I think it's far more common to encounter someone who is holding on to the idea that if they just give this failed money-making scheme a little more effort, it will work this time. Or, if they allow this abuser to come back in the home once more, this time it will be different. If they prevent this person from facing the consequences of their behavior just once more, they won't do it again.

It's easy to see the mistake, as long as you yourself aren't the one standing at the Border. But nobody ever said, "I think I'll take a stroll to the Border of Insanity today, just to take a look at the lovely scenery." They had good reasons for everything they did.

Which is why you may expect some difficulty to arise when you attempt to intervene. It is HARD for someone standing on the edge to give up their hope that it's going to be different, this time. However, with appropriate support, they may be able to accept the truth.

By the way: if you find yourself getting involved in these dramas a lot, take a look at where you are standing. It's likely you, yourself, are very close to the Border.

And that brings us to the Asbaran Solution.

So I almost forgot, I DID remember in time! Mad props to the people who did the cover, Brenda Mihalko and Ricky Ryan. Great spooky mecha art, and a design that fits in with the rest of the series.

Nigel Shirazi has spent his recent life hating his name. He hates his first name because it has become a personal acronym for repeated failure: "Never Is Good Enough: Loser." When taunted, he lashes out, and lands in trouble, sometimes in jail, and the cycle is then repeated elsewhere.

He hates his last name because it means that he is an unwanted member of the family that owns Asbaran, one of the Four Horsemen, the mercenary companies who survived the initial rounds of contract warfare when the Earth was admitted to the Galactic Union, with nothing to offer in exchange for economy-wrecking technology except fighters.

And Nigel doesn't want to be a mercenary. Nobody else wants Nigel to be a mercenary, either. He gets paid off to be a dilettante, a remittance man, someone who will stay away and not bother the important people who are carrying on the important business.

And then a bad thing happens.

Several bad things, in fact. All of the male senior members of the Shirazi are killed, the single surviving female is captured, and some strange events in the trading of securities and equipment have resulted in the company going bankrupt.

There is no alternative but to bring Nigel the Loser out of the junkyard, and put him in charge. He immediately dashes to the Border of Insanity, a place he has lived most of his life, and resolves to use the limited resources remaining to Asbaran to complete the same mission that has crushed everyone else.

There's something bizarre going on, though. It doesn't make sense that Asbaran would have been offered the mission in the first place. It's a garrison mission; go here, take up positions, and defend it, until a specified time. That's NOT what Asbaran does; they are an assault company. Drop in, kill things, then go away to the next mission. There's something funny about this, and it isn't Monty Python.

Excellent book. Lots of exploding spaceships. Lots of room for character growth. Lots of  Red Shirts. Lots of Bad Guys getting their just desserts. Buy it!

Peace be on your household.

Cartwright's Cavaliers, by Mark Wandrey

The condensed Amazon version of this review  may be found here.



I keep a list around here somewhere about things I just don't understand. The first four, of course, are found in Proverbs 30:

    19The way of an eagle in the sky,
            The way of a serpent on a rock,
            The way of a ship in the middle of the sea,
            And the way of a man with a maid.

Other items include WHY my fat black Manx cat SugarBelly INSISTS on sitting on my hands when I'm trying to use the keyboard; why I am the only person in the house who can put water in the water jug and re-fill the ice cube trays; and why did I allow myself to be persuaded to buy such an expensive iPhone and  iPad when I don't want to use any of those fabulous functions.

Well, there is another thing I don't understand: 

How is it that this book came out last December without me noticing it?

I started out fishing for books to read in the Mad Genius Club a few years back. I decided I was going to review the books written by all of the authors I found there. At first, it was just my intent to include those who were writing the columns, but I quickly added those who participated in the discussions to my to-be-read-and-reviewed list. And then, at some point, I discovered Sarah's Diner. And I adopted THAT as the source of my reading list.

And, inadvertently,  I stopped making sure I was reading MGC on a regular basis. I've fixed that, now, by the way, by subscribing, but I hadn't realized just how far I had slipped until the other day when I realized there was an entire series of Alma Boykin's that had escaped me. I'm fixing that, too.

But what STARTED it all was my review of "A Fistful of Credits, " launched at LibertyCon, just one hundred miles from my non-attending location. I devoured it with a passion, gobbled two of the prequel stories available online, and demanded MORE! Which resulted in the discovery of "The Winged Hussars;" which lead me to the brutal fact that the series had started in December, and I hadn't noticed.

I have NO excuse for that.

But, I did have a remedy! I got both of the previous works, and I read THIS one pretty much simultaneously with the first Alma Boykin series book I'd missed (you understand, I must have multiple books due to existing in multiple places, right?), enjoyed it IMMENSELY, and have already begun the second book in the series. When I finish that, I will return to finish 'The Winged Hussars,' and then pound on the table for more.

And I'm going to try to get Tightbeam to accept reviews of the two prequel stories. After I write them, of course.

But, that's all background. Here's where the review starts:

Shortly before the time the story begins, the aliens landed. We discovered they had a LOT of things that they wanted, but we didn't have much to give them in return. It was a bad thing.

Then, we found out that fighting was a rare skill, and various alien groups would happily hire humans to break things and kill people. Unfortunately, most of the jobs were sucker bets, and only FOUR of the first 100 groups of human mercenaries returned. It happened that all of them featured a horse on their insignia, so the groups became known as the Four Horsemen.

The greatest of these groups was Cartwright's Cavaliers. Through luck, hard work, luck, integrity, and luck, they became a dominant force in the industry. Thaddeus Cartwright was the commander of one of the grandest enterprises in human history, until his luck ran out, leaving elementary school-aged son Jim as the heir.

For reasons not clear to me, Jim's mother set out on a course that destroyed the mercenary company. Assets were squandered, contracts entered into without regard to profitability, and by the time young Jin turned 18, his inheritance was worth less than zero. A considerate judge allowed him a trifle which would keep him from starving for a bit.

If that weren't enough, Jim was NOT qualified for the life of a mercenary. To be blunt, he was obese, and rather uncoordinated as well. He had covertly had brain implants installed, so knowledge was easier for him to acquire, but he knew that without experience, he was pretty much good at turning pizza into solid waste, and that was it.

He needed a break, and after all the bashing he took as the lawyers broke his father's company to shreds, he really deserved one, as well. When the opportunity essentially dropped out of the sky on him, he was ready.

What follkows is some great scenes of exploding spaceships against the background of character development. Maybe it's the other way around, but it doesn't matter; the elements of  smashing great adventure are all there. Detractors may whine at the failure to consider horticulture as an acceptable alternative for an obese teen, or the appalling assumption that under-utilized humans will turn to crime, or the tendency of volcanos to erupt at inconvenient moments, but these are merely the quibbles of people who haven't gotten a nice nap recently. For everyone else, this is a great place to start reading the adventures of the  Four Horsemen.

Peace be on your household.

A Cat Among Dragons, by Alma T C Boykin, and Series Immersion

If you JUST want to read the Amazon review, with none of the trimmings, click here.

So, this morning I hopped out of bed at 4:00 AM, and drove our daughter Liz to the hospital, where she will shortly present us with grandchild number 12; BUT this one is a girl! We only have two other girl grandchildren, the delightful Vanessa Nicole, age 16, and precious Alicia Ann, age 11. In case you don't want to do the math, that means we have 9 grandsons, ranging from Esan at 18 to Isaac at 5 months.

I like 'em all.

In fact, I like them so much that there are three of them currently living at my house (four when the little girl comes home), and in a few minutes, my daughter who lives in Screven, in south east Georgia, will be dropping by with three year old Josh and the aforementioned 5 month old Isaac, for an all-too-brief visit. I bought donuts.

Are they not lovely? Designed to appeal to the palate of grandchildren.

And I made sausage and cheese biscuits.

Designed to appeal to the palate of adults.

And then, as adults and children were negotiating conversation space while wiping powdered sugar and or mustard from the lips, I fell asleep. And then Trey fell asleep, and then my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, fell asleep. In a home which is shortly going to receive a newborn, naps are a desirable commodity.

So, when I woke up, much too early, and placed the donuts into storage, I kept it quiet. They can sleep; I have a blog/review to write.

I've mentioned before that military sci-fi has been my clear favorite, at least since I discovered a frayed copy of 'Starship Troopers' in the day room of "C" Company, 2nd Battalion, while undergoing medic training at Ft. Sam Houston in 1972 -73. And so, with delight, I discovered  that , introduced at LibertyCon (which I didn't attend), was that outstanding bit of art known as "Fistful of Credits." I reviewed it here on Amazon, and blogged about it here, taking an extended and expanded view of one of the stories here.

And after that, I immediately read and enjoyed toy stories in the universe, which provide some back story; and THEN I got word of Mark Wandrey's release of "The Winged Hussars," which I obtained and began to devour, and THAT lead me to the discovery that the series goes back at least two more books which are already in print, and new ones are on the way.

Good news, and bad news.

Good news: I have a LOT more to read & review!

Bad news: I owe reviews to other authors.

Although I usually get one book at a time from a particular author, there are those times when I'll get several books sent my way. When that is the case, I try to be fair in my rotation. I have no research data to support my actions, but I do believe that there are advantages to alternate the authors I review. And maybe that's a discussion for  another time.

So, although when I am in top form, I can read and review one book per day, sometimes I'll sit on a review for a while. Sometimes it's because of a rotation issue, sometimes I'm just backlogged, and sometimes it's because I discover I've messed up.

And that's the case here.I have two books which are a part of a series. One is "Winged Hussars" by Mark Wandrey; the other is "Clawing Back From Chaos," by Alma T C Boykin. Both are the most recently released book in their respective series, and in both cases, I discovered I had not been paying proper attention, because I had read NOTHING in either series. Yes, I have read and reviewed other works by Boykin, but not the Cat Among Dragons series. I am in the process of rectifying that, and as a part of that process, I will be reviewing "A Very UnCONventional Christmas," by Stephanie Osborn, and "Minutegirls," by George Phillies, both of which were provided to me in exchange for a fair review some time back.

But the crisis was precipitated by my realization that I was having a great deal of time following along with the #9 book in the series, "Clawing Back From Chaos.". That's when I discovered I was going to have to go back to the beginning. THAT'S one briar patch I will GLADLY be thrown into.

The Cat, Rada Ni Drako,  doesn't want to be among Dragons. In fact, she would prefer to be left along. However, that option is not open to her, because the Traders, which represent half of her genetic inheritance, treat her as an abomination in the very best of times. Later, the situation escalates, and an open contract is placed on her. Anyone who captures her will be able to use the reward money to live the rest of their lives in luxury.

She goes into hiding, taking the most uninteresting job she can think of: doing the laundry in a licensed brothel, under the bland name of Brownie. Even this hideaway is denied her, however, when one of the administrators seeks to place her in the bed of a disreputable type with political power. She flees, to the only place where her skills might win her the courtesy of isolation: a mercenary guild.

She has training to supplement her superior reflexes, and is quite deadly in hand-to-hand combat of almost any type. Her mixed-race heritage has provided her with some rudimentary ability to detect others by their thoughts, and in some cases, to take control of them. This makes her an excellent training officer.

Meanwhile, and clue the Traders have that she is still alive sends them into a frenzy, and they escalate their offers for her. She is forced to leave job after job until...

...until I can't tell you any more, because of spoilers.

Beautifully written; excellent & complex characters, who are forced to make changes because of the things that happen to them, which gives us the means of seeing what drives character growth. Strange, powerful, secretive forces in the background, doing for others, for unknown reasons of their own. Conflicting rules of societies, which may no longer have any survival value.

And here's what I loved: I enjoyed these characters so much, that I often found myself wondering which book I was reading. I interrupted my reading of the Four Horsemen to return to this series, but some of the events could have been taking place just a few planets over from the other series. Boykin writes fight scenes so well; I loved her tales of Elizabeth and her killer mule Snowy in the Colplatschki Chronicles.

Sarah Hoyt, It's a Blast from the Past!

Right before I went to bed last night, I happened to be flipping through old blog posts. I found a post about rising above toxic parenting practices, prompted by a post Sarah had written about her trip to Portugal in 'According to Hoyt,' almost exactly a year ago. Then I posted in the 'Sarah's Diner' Facebook page, and asked others about their practices:

If you journal or blog, do you ever go back and see what you wrote a long time ago? And if so, does it make you laugh, or cry, or both?

Different points of view emerged. Some did, most didn't. Sarah said she didn't, because there was so much! And I get that, with an ink-soaked writer: You are so busy cranking out new content, there's not much opportunity to review.

And yet...

...and yet there have been times in which reading my old writings has been profoundly revealing. I remember reading, a year after they were written, the 1979 New Year's resolutions written when I was a poverty-stricken seminary student & beleaguered youth minister, and realizing they'd come true: I was no longer in poverty, because I had left the ministry, and was working in what would become my first career.

Sometime in 1988, a casual search of my closet discovered something I'd written the year before about my despair of ever being able to control my drinking. I was in the first year of sobriety when I found it, and I remember the deep sense of gratitude, and relief, that came over me when I realized I wasn't dragging that chain around any more. It's now been 29 years, 6 months, and 25 days since my last drink, and some of those 10,798 days have been doozies, but I am still grateful and relieved.

And on a slightly different note, there was a discussion in the Mad Genius Club some years back, cautioning writers not to burn their earlier attempts at writing. It was through that discussion that I discovered my true calling, which is to be a book reviewer, not a book writer. I talked about this in my blog post "The Bonfire Also Illuminates."

And so, I wonder. Sarah is right about the VOLUME of writing that some of us generate; but in that volume there are snippets, scenes where the adult female has a mid-life crisis on an airplane, and emerges with the understanding that she is "an American, born tragically abroad." That's an insight worth re-visiting.

Not going to go too far with it. I plan on looking ahead, reading the books, and writing the reviews. But, just as I take a break from time to time to re-read Heinlein (or Freer, Ringo, Kratman, & Drake), every great once in a while, I'll read some Patterson, too. Like to see if the boy has grown any.

Peace be on your household.

It's Been Difficult, But Well Worth It

Beloved, and all the rest who read:

These past two weeks have been difficult for me. I got very little reading done, and essentially no writing.  I had two MAJOR projects going; both of them were in the class of  "Major Life Events."

Both of them were EXTREMELY time-sensitive, with hard and fast drop-dead dates.

Both of them required me to be dependent on other people, NONE of whom had nearly as much invested in the projects as I do.

Both involved a significant degree of travel, for me as well as for other people. (I don't like travel.)

And, as you well know, there are some things that just can't be put on hold, no matter HOW many important projects are pending. People and pets still have to be fed. Babies have to be changed. Some minimal amount of laundry still has to be done. Toddlers require active supervision, or they will break themselves. Even WITH active supervision, SOMETHING is going to get broken.

But, as of today, projects are completed and were a resounding success.

Will my life return to normal? 

Are you kidding? Here's the outlook for the week:

1. Sometime in the next 48 hours, our youngest daughter (who lives with us) is going to present us with a granddaughter, who is grandchild number 12, and the first girl in 11 years. It will be a big and joyous event.

2. Our next youngest daughter will be trekking through with her two boys, ages 3 years & 5 months, while husband Sam is getting some company training. They live five hours away, so we don't get to see them often, so it's a big & joyous event.

3. One week from today, Alicia and Kenneth will each be given their walk-through of their middle school classes, and the next day, Tuesday August 1, the school year starts. It will be a big and joyous event; if not for them, it will be for me.

4. If my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, does NOT quit her job SOON (like, yesterday would have been good), I may have to go into downtown Atlanta and chew through the cabling connecting her office building to the grid. I need new teeth anyway, and there are so many lawyers in Atlanta, one building full of them won't be missed.

That's a lot of stuff, but actually, for the Patterson Household, that IS normal, sort of. Lots of family things, all important, some of it fairly difficult. Hopefully not as difficult as the concentrated effort of the last two weeks, but, here's my take-away:

1. It takes effort to produce beauty, and
2. It's worth it.

Beauty is found, mostly, in relationships. Relationships (and I mean HEALTHY relationships) convert the energy you put into them into joy, and intimacy, and understanding, and acceptance.
Frequently difficult, true. But it's well worth it.

Peace be on your household.

Straight Outta Tombstone

The link to my Amazon review will be found HERE,  and I made this editorial change at 1:13 AM Wednesday.

I got my copy from Baen, but you can get it from Amazon if you click the picture link .

Okay, we need to talk about the cover. It's by Dominic Harman, and I've seen his work before, BUT:

It's never sold me a book before.

As a matter of fact, I can't think of a time as an adult when artwork has ever sold me a book. Maybe when I was a kid, browsing the paperbacks on sale at Dorsey's Pharmacy in Macon, but even then, I'd mostly buy because it was by Ian Fleming. Yes, I was reading James Bond in the sixth grade. What's the problem?

But, the zombie cowboy with a pair of ...(stop right there.)

A pair of WHAT?

Six guns? Revolvers? Cowboy pistols?

No, those are sho 'nuff Colt Single Action Army. I hate it when authors make gun mistakes, and I LOVE it when they get it right. And I REALLY love it when the artists get it right. Listen: I just pulled one of MY Single Action Army Model 1873 revolvers out of the gun cabinet to verify. Dominic nailed it! He got the grip right, he shows the groove on top of the chamber because there are no rear sights on SAA, and in the gun held in the zombie's left hand, you can even make out the loading gate.

And before some smarty-pants critiques trigger discipline, these are SINGLE ACTION revolvers. It makes NO difference that the trigger finger of BOTH hands is in contact with a trigger, because the firearm in his left hand has the hammer down. It will NOT fire, until he points it at you, pulls back the hammer, and applies a certain amount of pressure to the bang switch, see?

So I'll SEE yer Four Rules of Gun Safety, and RAISE you a ZOMBIE COWBOY, okay?

And yes, the end of that barrel has a bore size perhaps best described as ...prodigious.
Because that's what a .45 Colt (or .44-40 WCF) looks like when it's in yer face, pilgrim. My pair are chambered in .357, and THAT'S enough to make ya whimper.

Sigh. I now leave off discussion of the cover art, which in my opinion is THE best story in the book, to consider the words which are written down. All of them, in some way or another, deal with CTOW,  Creepy Things Out West. There really isn't a 'best one!' story in this collection, in my opinion. Many different styles, of course, but even Waffle House has more than one item on the menu.

Not that I ever need to use the menu at Waffle House, but it's nice to have choices.

BUBBA SHACKLEFORD’S PROFESSIONAL MONSTER KILLERS by Larry Correia. Ever since Owen got to throw his boss out of the window, his fans have been clamoring for more. And, by going into the past, we can get a LOT more Monster Hunter stories. Some things stay the same: not all monsters are evil; chicks with guns are WAY cool; and NOBODY ever said “Dang, why did I bring all this ammunition?” Oh, yeah, and the government is mental.

TROUBLE IN AN HOURGLASS by Jody Lynn Nye. Well, her name isn't REALLY trouble. Beauty may, perhaps, be only skin deep, but mischief goes right down to the bone. Mom tends bar with a shotgun, daddy builds time machines in the shed.

THE BUFFALO HUNTERS by Sam Knight.  What do you get when you go hunting buffalo with a giant Russian count and his daughter? Well, you get buffalo, for one thing. Not much sport to it, but this sort of thing really happened. In this case, though, it's not the buffalo that are the biggest threat.

THE SIXTH WORLD by Robert E. Vardeman.  This story combines mad scientists, native spook stuff, and little grey men. The most sympathetic character gets killed first, but he was sort of a wimp.

EASY MONEY by Phil Foglio. Nasty, nasty man writes a story with a punchline at the end. It's a HECK of a good cowboy story, too.

THE WICKED WILD by Nicole Givens Kurtz. This could ALMOST not be a Wild West story, but it's the wicked ways of the Wild West that make the people possible. Umm, I didn't mean to do that much alliteration. Anyway, bad guys use to be able to get away with stuff until they got shot. Or something.

CHANCE CORRIGAN AND THE LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD by Michael A. Stackpole. Nicely steampunk in nature, a classic tale of the poor & downtrodden being taken advantsge of by the owners of the mine.

THE GREATEST GUNS IN THE GALAXY by Bryan Thomas Schmidt & Ken Scholes. After the Big Shoot-Out, there's always some kid who thinks he has to prove himself. Usually, the story ends with a pimply 15 year old staring up at a blue sky. Sometimes it ends in zombies. Or not.

DANCE OF BONES by Maurice Broaddus. When you take a man's money, you do the job he hired you to do. And if that means you have to do a little extra? Well, that's a risk you take.

DRY GULCH DRAGON by Sarah A. Hoyt. Would you want your sister to marry a dragon? There's really NOTHING I can say about that concept without the risk of offending a brother-in-law. Really. I've got some responses, but I think I may have gone a bit far already.

THE TREEFOLD PROBLEM by Alan Dean Foster. Mad Amos Malone and his trusty steed, Worthless, are not the sort you want to aggravate. Amos walks into a foreclosure situation, and, well, they just blow the competition away.

 FOUNTAINS OF BLOOD by David Lee Summers. It's rather a creepy title, but I don't know what I'd come up with to replace it. A hired gun goes beyond the necessary minimums to provide true service to the man who hired him; and there are vampires, and a bodacious lady marshal who rides a motorcycle called Wolf.

HIGH MIDNIGHT by Kevin J. Anderson. The Shamblin' Zombie Private Eye encounters the ethics of the Wild West through time travel. Sort of.

COYOTE by Naomi Brett Rourke. This particular story has just as much non-natural events as the others, but it reads truer. Some of the other stories NEED a volume like this in order to exist; this one doesn't. The story of the old man and his grand-daughter could appear anywhere from Boy's Life to Playboy to Good Housekeeping. Maybe not Popular Mechanics.

THE KEY by Peter J. Wacks. Sorry. Didn't get this one. It has lots of famous people in it, though. And there is whiskey involved.

A FISTFUL OF WARLOCKS by Jim Butcher. Everybody said Wyatt Earp was a tough lawman. He says, in this story, that he can't leave just because the bad guys want him to, or pretty soon everybody will be pushing him. Seems like a good philosophy for a Wild West lawman to have.

Peace be on your household.