ConFur, by Kate Paulk

Thanks again to McChuck for supplying me with the book so I could review it. Bookworms appreciate true friendship!
Although this short story is part of Kate's Con series, almost all of the action takes place outside the con itself. That makes is much more readable for those who, like myself, have never attended a con. The main character, Jim the con-attending vampire, is present, and I believe I am correct when I say this introduces another character who is part of the series, Sean the Werewolf.
It's not necessary to read the rest of the series to appreciate this story. Without belaboring the point, Kate gives newcomers the information they need: Jim is a vampire who likes to go to cons for the same reason other people like to go to cons. He isn't a wholesale blood-sucker, and in fact is a bit of a peacemaker. When he is accosted by a werewolf mom, he subdues her without giving away her status, and gives her enough time to calm down and explain the problem to him: some other vampire + friends is leading the young werewolves out on destructive rampages.
Not much more I can say about this without entering Spoiler Land. Kate gives us great characters with depth, her sense of humor is present throughout, and she is just a great story teller.
Pick it up and read it!

Knights in Tarnished Armor, by Kate Paulk

I frequently save short stories and novellas to read /review until night time. They are a most lovely way to drift off into sleep; at least, that's usually the case with the writers I have chosen.
However, circumstances conspired against me with this weekend. Friday night and Saturday night were spent in fitful moments of sleeplessness. My physical activity level was significantly greater on Friday and Saturday, but I think what threw off the most was my Friday blog post, Meditations on Good Friday. That one reached deep into my heart and made me listen to the sound of life, so precious, and so uncontrollable. I've noticed that when I'm in in one of these deeply inward seasons, my reflections continue into sleep time, and it's not very restful.

Now, all of that sounds like serious stuff, and it is true that the subject matter I was considering was quite serious. However, once I had messed up my sleep pattern for the second day in a row, I traveled quickly from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I'd read a sentence or a paragraph, and then lapse into a dream state, with the characters and narrative from Kate's story making an easy transition over into my dream story. I don't know if Kate's story telling technique in this book (the story is told through letters written between the characters) makes these moments of sleep-writing particularly easy or not; maybe it was just the perfect amount of fatigue and reflection on my part. What I do know is that I had to read her work FOUR TIMES before my giggles were coming in at the right places for the right reasons. The first two times I read the book, my eyes would close, and I would insert a story about a young man using a row boat to gather wool in order to stuff a dragon skin, and there was a scene in which the wind came up suddenly, and all the wool was blown out of his boat, and others gathered to help him pick up the wet wool, and through this simple act of helping, peace was restored to the kingdom.Then my eyes would creep open, and I would look to find my place, and couldn't find it (because my place existed only in my head) and then I would read a few more lines, fall asleep, and then my brother in law Chuck was teaching guitar to the knights in an effort to build character in them.
Sometime yesterday, I finally caught up on my sleep, and realized what I had done. FORTUNATELY!!!! there is a semi-involved process I must go through to publish my reviews on my blog and on Amazon, and that may be all that saved us from a review about the Knights Who Used Brasso To Clean Their Armor and Then Learned to Cook Pies and Cakes.
Kate's book is MUCH, much better than that. As mentioned, it's in the epistolary form, and a comment in the author bio makes me wonder if these are Dracula's grandparents, but there is no internal evidence I can find that would make me believe this is the case. Of course, one who has studied the Dracula Canon may very well recognize names and places, but I didn't, even after I went back and scanned a review of Bram Stoker's book.
Kate's book is set in a Fairytale land, with Fairytale rules. Those rules seem to be repressive and random to the young knights and ladies in training, so they tend to disregard them. This produces as nasty a set of shallow-minded weasels and minks as you could wish for, which is particularly unfortunate, as non-fairytale consequences are beginning to bring the kingdom to it's knees.
In a well written farcical story, disaster is remedied by adding in ever more fantastic solutions, and we MUST rejoice at the appearance of the War Nuns, of the Sisterhood of the Broken Sword, under the able leadership of the Abbess Bahl-Bah-Rehka, a recent exile from the land of Mah Cho. Edith Friesner, your Chicks in Chain Mail are alive and well, and kicking butt as needed, but FORTUNATELY, they also hold the keys to....nope, not gonna go there. Read it for yourself!
A last note, which I should have addressed earlier: In the fairytale kingdom, prominent individuals take on the roles found in famous fairy tales. Therefore, a quite charming and gracious Francine, who actually is one of the most significant agents in the novella, aspires to take on the role of Evil Sorceress, and plans to marry Phillip, who will be designated the Black Knight. They won't EVER be nasty people, though, any more than the actress who plays Barbie at Disneyland is truly a heartless $$%^& who will cut you off at the knees and leave you bleeding in the dirt. (Umm... I KNOW the actress who played Barbie in 1992 was NOT heartless; she took extra time to talk with my daughter, who was three years old and was temporarily overcome with the heat. No reason to believe that has changed. So there.)

The Long Way Home, by Sabrina Chase

I received a copy of this book for review from a fellow MGC fan, Laura Montgomery. She has no affiliation with Sabrina Chase, other than being a fan of her work, and she thought I would enjoy this first book in the Sequoyah series. She is correct.
I have become more aware of cover art since one of my oldest friends, Mylon Gramling, has entered the field. "The Long Way Home" has a very evocative cover by Les Peterson, of a wounded space-suited figure being carried away by another, while a third guards the way. The theme of the book, dedication to comrades-in-arms, is thus established even before the you have read the first page. That theme continues, with the dedication "To the memory of Captain Carroll “Lex” Lefon, USN (ret) 1961–‌2012. Officer, gentleman, pilot, raconteur, father. He could fly anything with an engine."
I confess that I was unaware of the achievements of this aviator, but a quick Google search showed him to be one of the breed of warrior scholars; I wish I had been able to read his milblog as he wrote it.
The book opens with main character Moire in the middle of a dogfight in space. Her quick reflexes, accompanied by good luck, save her life, and she uses a piece of debris to allow her to close the distance to the enemy carrier and destroy it. Two highly significant points in the dogfight stand out: one to an observer, back on the home ship, and one to the reader. The observer notices that Moire banks her craft during the dogfight. That is a standard flight procedure in atmosphere, but not in space, because there is nothing pushing back on the airframe to make the tactic work. (By the way: if you didn't know it already, this shows that Sabrina is a writer who has done her homework. I caught it, because I am the son of a pilot, and when I analyzed the battles between the tie-fighters and the X-wings, I realized they were using atmospheric tactics in a vacuum. It makes for better movie scenes, but it's bogus.)
The second highly significant point in the battle is directed toward the reader: Moire is NOT a person who is acclimated to her current time. She has been pulled out of her history, and placed in this one.
A note to those who care: I really don't like 'lost in foreign culture' stories. They are too creepy. I've BEEN lost in foreign cultures, and the quick wits that save Moire from exposing herself are something I do not possess. Give me a working knowledge of the language, some money, and access to an embassy or consul, and I do just fine. Being totally ripped out of context, not so much.
Fortunately, Moire does have quick wits, and although we don't know at first how she got where she is, she knows. And Sabrina has her bring us up to date before I got to the point where my skin was itching so badly I couldn't stand reading it anymore.
I confess that I like Sabrina's characters. They are real people, and the good guys are good because they treat other people fairly. The bad guys are charming monsters, and the REALLY bad guys have clean nails and expensive suits and work in climate controlled offices. Those really bad guys have betrayed Moire, mostly in ways we don't even understand. However, we are given enough information about them to sympathize with Moire's decision to keep Sequoyah a secret from them. Even when we don't know what Sequoyah is.
The book is extremely well written, and most happily, is the first of a series. I LOVE series books. They allow me to immerse myself into another world for much, much longer periods than single books do. To be effective, though, they have to tie up plot developments reasonably. Yes, I'm looking at you, George R R Martin. You know what you did.

Meditations on Good Friday

I am no longer a member of one of the liturgical churches, those that celebrate a fixed order of service, and which have a church calendar divided into seasons with feasts, and fasts, and observations of holy days. I once was a member, as an adult Christian believer, of two of those denominations, however. Now, I'm a member of a high-commitment, non-denominational church, which accepts without reservation my marriage to my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, and I love my church, and would not change it. However, today I recall the power of prior years' spiritual preparation for Easter, as a formal part of the church calendar, and I miss that.
Strip away all the trappings; strip away the knowledge of what is to come, strip away even the convention that references to Deity are capitalized, and focus just on the devastating truth of today. Today we remember the nightmare horror of the brutal legal murder of a young man in front of his mother.
My first-born son is about Jesus' age. He's a lot like Jesus, too, in his charisma and his love for others. He, like Jesus, put his life on the line for others. Unlike Jesus, though, he did not have to pay the ultimate price; when the 155 mm rocket hit, he was not killed, just smashed into a concrete wall, suffering a brain trauma and a crippling knee injury. It's not the same, I know it's not the same. But it's what I have, it is my offering of love to Mary, Jesus' mother, when I think about what she went through on that Friday. Today, I have my firstborn son, and his beautiful wife, and their firstborn son, and soon I'm going over to their house to share a meal and a family time.
On that Friday, Mary watched her son die. Those sweet hands and feet that she had so often kissed when he was a baby were forced down on the rough wood of a cross, and mutilated by spikes. The back that she had stroked as she snuggled him close was bleeding from the lash. The hair that she had washed and brushed was crusted with his blood, and in place of the hands of blessing she had laid on him so often, a crown of thorns.
And a sword pierced her heart.
Mary, sweet Mary, obedient handmaiden of the Lord, how could you bear it? And when your boy, your strong young man, in the midst of dying, turned to you and John, and placed you in each others hands, did it make his death any easier, or just that much worse?
They had no call to put your boy to death, Mary. None whatsoever. They had no call to beat him, no call to mock him, no call to lay hands on him at all. You didn't deserve to have all of that thrown on you.
I have my son today, Mary. And when I see him, in just a few minutes, I'm going to hold him one second longer in an embrace that you could not give to your son on this day, not until his life was ended.
Sunday is coming, and without it, I would not be here. Probably none of us would.
But today is Good Friday, and today, I weep for Mary.

Company Daughter, by Callan Primer

I received a review copy of "Company Daughter" from the author, who was explicit about not expecting me to alter my review in any way. That's a particularly brave position to take, since I had just posted (as an April Fool prank) my intention to randomly savage books and authors to research the impact on book sales. Callan didn't blink an eye.
Do NOT attempt to read this book without yummy food close by. Here's what got me through: a great big bowl ( two actually) of navy beans and ham and cornbread, and this morning a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal with butter and brown sugar. A great big shout out to my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, for making it possible to read this book without lapsing into a culinary coma.
Aleta is a cook. Her mama taught her how to cook Goyoti recipes, which involve lots of peppers, clarified butter, honey, dacho, noodles, and auroch jerky formed into meatballs with flour and eggs. I'm guessing the planet Goyoti was settled by people from the Indian subcontinent, but could be the Philippines, Thailand, or Indonesia; at any rate, it's someplace where cooking is recognized as being IMPORTANT! Which is good for Aleta, because being a GOOD cook is as sure a guarantee of a future as anything you are going to get.
She does have other options, though. She just rejects them, and that has a LOT to do with her age and position. She is just shy of her 16th birthday, when a degree of emancipation is available, but ONLY if she finisher her BASIC course of education. Which, of course, she refuses to do.
Her mother was killed in battle when she was young, and her father is the commander of the Red Wolves Free Company, a mercenary unit housed in a gigantic, sentient space-going habitat. Aleta escapes his supervision every chance she can get, with the full intent of making it on her own. She is aided in her escapades by a secret link with Zelle, the heart and brain of the habitat. And she is always caught by Lt. Joe Park, the drop dead gorgeous young officer assigned to be her guardian.
You know what? That's just about as far as I can take you. You know, of course, that Aleta is going to escape the confines of the ship, and you know (because I told you) that she is going to use her cooking skills to make her way.
But it doesn't pan out the way I expected, and so that makes the next stage a spoiler, and I don't do spoilers (on purpose). And there are a LOT of plot twists on the way, which make for a great book, but really, you are just going to have to trust .me on this one. I can't tell you! Sure, it's a coming of age/responsibility novel. (You probably get that by looking at the ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS cover. The designer's name is Clarissa Yeo , who is, according to her web page 19 years old!!!) But all I can say, without spoiling your read of the book, is that she has adventures and through friendship and character (not just her own) she manages to make it through to responsibility and maturity.
This book qualifies for YA status, since it involves a youthful protagonist, and doesn't include explicit sex. The category makes me snicker, though, because invariably I find that I just enjoy the heck out of those books, and I'm 61 years old. Regardless of YOUR age, I recommend it to you without reservation.

Nocturnal Haunts, by Amanda S. Green

For the past 15 minutes or so, I've been eating Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Salted Caramel Popcorn, and trying to come up with the perfect words that would tell you what a great read "Nocturnal Haunts" is. The reason I'm having the internal discussion is because it's a novella, and all the rest of works in the series are novels. So I'm dithering.
Here's what I've come up with so far:
The room next to my man cave is the kitchen (because my man cave was originally a formal dining area (parquet floors)), and in the kitchen is my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA. She's doing something mysterious with sweet potatoes and cayenne pepper that involves a lot of utensils and cabinet doors. I can't go into details, because secret recipes.
Anyway, I can quietly go into the kitchen, and kiss her on the back of the neck, and she will lean her head back into my chest, and for that moment, we are in a timeless place of beauty of beauty and love. It lasts for as long as it lasts, and we are happy.
But last summer, we took a shortish vacation. We visited my mom in Macon, and my step-mom in Jacksonville, and we spent time on the beach. We talked and talked in the car on the way down there, and I sang silly songs to her, and for THOSE moments, we were ALSO in a timeless place of beauty and love. It lasted for as long as it lasted, and we were happy.
Doesn't tell you jack squat about "Nocturnal Haunts," does it? But I liked writing it.
Actually, it was the time spent eating the popcorn that gave me the idea to compare sweet brevity with sweet , um, lengthity. Maybe the caramel got to me. But my point is that even though the novella is shorter than the novels, both are delightful experiences while they last.
Anyway, "Nocturnal Haunts" is a nice, tightly-written police procedural. It does involve people who can shape-shift, but the plot requires much more that they be good cops than have the ability to take an animal form. It's got all the action and interaction that marks the rest of Amanda's work, and it's also got a great plot twist, and nasty Hollywood-types.
Get it. Read it. And kiss somebody you love on the back of the neck.

Reviewing & book sales: a closer view

Over the past few months, I've been reviewing the work of indie authors, many of them members or fellow fans of the Mad Genius Club. Despite the incredible talents displayed, the appalling truth is that these authors have received only the most minute fraction of the acclaim they so richly deserve.
Now, for a small fraction of the reading public, acclaim is measured by the number of industry awards received. At one point, this fraction was significantly higher, but through neglect, the awards process for the Hugo fell into the hands of those motivated more by politics than by popularity and reading value. Currently, there is a no-blood-spilled war being waged over the issue, but until the question is resolved, the integrity of the award is lost. Until then, there remains but one sure marker for indie writers, and that is sales figures.
Although it would seem that cash is an intrinsically level playing field, that happens not to be the case. Authors who are in the portfolio of the traditional publishing houses (always excepting Baen) are provided with difficult-to-verify statements of earnings of their royalties, in exchange for being able to take advantage of the publicity and distribution channels the house offers. Admittedly, the marketing done by the publishing house for someone like Stephen King, James Patterson, or the late Tom Clancy is a tremendous advantage for those writers, but those benefits do not accrue to those without celebrity standing. For many tremendously talented writers, the major publishing houses serve primarily in the role of the admissions committee of an exclusive golf club, keeping the less desirable elements out, less they contaminate the elite by their presence.
None of this is new information.
For the indie writer, all of the editing, copy proofing, design, and marketing must be done personally, or else contracted out. Unfortunately, whatever the skill set that makes for a fantastic writer does not necessarily transfer over to make an excellent marketer.
Enter Dorothy Grant.
Former Alaskan bush pilot, military brat, wife to a gentleman of enormously varied pursuits, but most importantly for this blog post: a freaken marketing genius.
Time flies, so let me quickly get to the point: Although I spend my day reviewing books, for the express purpose of making those books more popular, I have ZERO data to support the idea that my reviews have any impact on book sales. The ONLY information I have is that the authors appreciate my reviews, and my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA appreciates the fact that reading and reviewing keeps me happy and not whining for her attention. She also appreciates the fact that our fat black Manx cat SugarBelly sits on me while I am working, instead of whining for treats.
Now, in my prior life, I had the great good fortune to be exposed to the wonders of scientific and mathematical proof, with approaches as divergent as single case methodology and multivariate analysis. (Fast forward, fast forward, your eyes are glazing over)
Here's the punchline: since I have NO reason whatsoever to believe that my reviews are having the desired positive impact on the sales of your books, it's time to do research. So: in the future, I will be mixing my POSITIVE reviews with NEGATIVE reviews, done by random selection. The positive reviews will continue to point out how each book has affected me personally, your excellent use of words, and so forth. The negative reviews will be slash and burn attacks, with spoilers without spoiler alerts, and personal attacks on your writing ability, ethics, and your lifestyle choices. I will alert you in advance of each review, without giving you the option to cancel, because the science MUST remain impeccable.
I wish I could give you an example of a negative review, but I haven't written one yet. There are a few tongue-in-cheek reviews I did early on, but those were all positive, even when they intentionally missed the mark by a country mile.
So, to my beloved authors, especially to you of the Mad Genius aggregation, let the research begin!