Howdy!

I’m looking for new recommendations. I just had a blast reading Jeff Strand’s Cemetery Closing (Everything Must Go), his latest Andrew Mayhem book, then dove into Lawrence Block’s Dead Girl Blues. The latter of which gave me interesting dreams.

I remember, roughly 20 years ago, reading a bunch of Jeff Strand’s books for free. Maybe he was published by Tor? Or Baen? I think both of those publishers were offering free ebooks at one time or another. The idea was to discover what that did to print sales. It increased them…the lesson from that was probably something along the lines of obscurity being worse than piracy. Obviously context-dependent. Anyway, I had Strand’s books in a .lit format that probably doesn’t exist anymore on a PDA running Windows CE. And I’d never heard of him. So, 20 years later, here I am loving his stuff. Buying it whenever something new comes out. I guess it worked.

Some of Strand’s stories are a bit more involved. A bit more bizarre. And with, you know, believable characters. That’s not what he does with Andrew Mayhem. This latest had pirates, cannibals, macabre death, and tons of humor: par for the course. As I said, I had a blast. (Strand often plays with a mix of horror and humor…sometimes supernatural stuff, sometimes not, but generally I love it.)

Then, the same day (yesterday) I finally started Lawrence Block’s latest. Oh boy. I want to say a lot about it…but what I really want is to converse about it. It is, in a word, dark. No fantasy/supernatural stuff here, as that’s not what LB does.

Okay, two things I guess I can say without worrying about spoilers, but if you’re not interested in occasionally reading really, really dark stuff maybe you should just skip this paragraph: (1) It reminded me, as far as “feel”/mood, of Donald Westlake’s The Ax, which was a very good book I may never reread, and (2) LB himself dropped this into his newsletter prior to publication…um…in the first chapter, the protagonist rapes and kills an innocent woman. And not in that order.

Hey. I said it was dark.

Anyway, the book is hard to talk about. I guess it’s safe to say it explores the limits of forgiveness and redemption. And left me thinking about just how much more disturbing a sociopath can be, once it becomes clear that he/she/they/it can actually love others. Some others. Clearly a limited offer there.

Still. LB wrote it. I’ll read anything he writes. And it was fun. In its own thoroughly disturbing way.

On the writing front, I’m making some progress. Lots of things have come up and redirected me in the last couple of weeks. Normal, I guess. More of that today, and tomorrow too (going to the river with the kids!). But, still, some progress. Trying some new stuff. More about all that later on.

I’m serious about looking for new authors/books to try out. I tend to read everything by anyone who can hold my interest–something that’s apparently more difficult as I’ve aged. I like to think it means I’m more discerning, but whom do I kid here? My capacity for paying attention has fractured into pretty focus-shards, good for a moment’s diversion but possibly not making me a good candidate for directing traffic. Especially not airplanes.

Ooh! I could write a story about airplanes….

Well, you see what I mean. Let me know if you have any ideas/books/authors to pass along?

And have fun out there!

J.A. Konrath, aka Joe Conrath, aka Jack Kilborn, is a heck of a guy. An “indie” superstar, he’s gone out of his way–many times–to help other writers. On top of that? He writes good books.

Most of his fiction is in the mystery/thriller range. But my favorites are his two Timecaster novels. Which probably says something or other about me, because these novels are campy, full of gratuitous and often weird sex, completely ridiculous, and…well, fun. Konrath describes them as “ecopunk,” which I think is almost irrelevant to their appeal. But maybe that’s your thing?

It may help if I tell you I’m also a fan of B-movies. Science fiction, horror, whatever. These books are just like ’em. Except that I actually prefer books to movies…

Quoting the description:

Talon Alalon is a timecaster—one of a select few peace officers who can operate a TEV, the Tachyon Emission Visualizer, which records events (most specifically, crimes) that have already happened.

With crime at an all-time low, Talon has little to do except give lectures to schoolkids—and obsess on his wife’s profession as a licensed sex partner.

Then one of her clients asks Talon to investigate a possible murder. When Talon uses the TEV to view the crime, the identity of the killer is unmistakable—it’s him, Talon Avalon.

Enough said? Probably. But I’ll also point out that Konrath has collaborated in the past with Jeff Strand, whose book I reviewed yesterday.

I’m linking to a page on Konrath’s site instead of to Amazon, because he sells autographed copies in both print and digital formats. And besides, I should probably link to authors’ sites rather than retailers anyway. I’m still figuring this “book review” thing out. But–here’s my only spoiler–Timecaster is also available via Kindle Unlimited.

Try it! I’ll bet you’ll be glad you did. I mean…in these books, I swear, if Konrath were talking about a tube of toothpaste, and if it were a completely standard tube of toothpaste indistinguishable from any other, he’d probably call it hyper-toothpaste just for fun. What’s not to love?

Have fun out there!

(New-fiction word count: zero. I got involved with a different project last night, and will probably be busy with it tonight too. It’s not good for the writing to let it get derailed like this, but sometimes life happens.)

I know. It doesn’t seem as if it should be hard to qualify for this. After all, how many books do I read in a week? (Probably 10 or so, if you’re actually curious and not just criticizing my post’s title for fun.) But I’m actually pretty damn picky about which books those are. I don’t keep reading if I’m bored…

Regardless, this one was truly exceptionally cool. I don’t want to spoil it for you…but it surprised me. Several times.

Disclaimer: I’ve been a Lawrence Block fan for years. Decades, even. I went to a book signing of his about 20 years back, and I can report that his self-deprecating humor was exactly what you’d expect…

More than that? I’ve benefited enormously from his books on writing. I’ve even used his “Write for Your Life” affirmations…meaning, yes, I had them playing over and over while I wrote and slept. (I’d probably do that still, but I lost the copies I downloaded. Might invest ten bucks in re-acquiring them at some point.)

So, all that said? I hate to say this next bit…but I’m a much bigger fan of his more recent work. By “more recent” I generally mean the books he’s published in the last…oh, I don’t know…30 years or so. Ariel is older than that.

But it’s amazing, in spite of my probably-stupid generalization above. Ariel is…well, it doesn’t easily fit into any sort of genre boundaries. In fact accurately fitting it into a genre would ruin much of the suspense. Occult? Crime? Coming of age? Maybe!

It doesn’t hurt, given my own recent interest in foster parenting, that the story involves an adopted child…but maybe that won’t matter much to most of you who read this. It’s astoundingly (why am I so surprised, again?) well-written. It kept me up late. I’d like to share it with you.

Want something different? I don’t care what you’ve been reading; this one’s different.

Truly a wonderful book. Go buy it if you’ve a mind (heh), or get it via Kindle Unlimited. Since it is in Kindle Unlimited, you’ll have to get the ebook from Amazon. Print versions are likely more generally available.

I thought about posting a review on Amazon. But, as an author myself, I have to be at least slightly careful about that. The ‘Zon’s review policy is, at best, a confusing mess. So I’ll just post this here, and maybe I’ll do a bit more of this reviewing-stuff in the future while I’m at it.

Hey, do you folks have favorite books you think I might want to read? I’d love to hear about them. In spite of all the fiction available, my Kindle still runs dry…

We’ll see how it goes. Meanwhile, have fun out there!