I know, I know... it's been a few years (4+ actually). Just so you know... I'll never be up to speed on current reads and my reviews, well, they will always be me just writing about books in a random way. This has always been and will always be a random thoughts blog in the fullest sense.
I started the year reading November Road by Lou Berney. This was such an entertaining read even without the ending I had hoped for. You know me and my sappy, happy endings. The book reminded me of childhood days road tripping it to North Dakota to see our uncle during the summers. Though our road trips usually took a detour off the beaten path for spankings with twigs found on the side of the road by our step-mother Freda. Trust me, if I had known about Frank Guidry when I was six I would have summoned him up a time or two to save us. Speaking of Frank... Frank Guidry, the ever loyal lieutenant to New Orleans' mob boss Carlos Marcello. Carlos Marcello... every time I read that name I thought of Oscar Martello. *eyes glaze over* I'm sorry. Where were we? Oh, yes. Frank Guidry, the ever loyal lieutenant to mob boss Carlos. Frank is way too loyal if you ask me. He reminds me of me when I became too trusting and complicit with my medical care and out of total laziness I was just doing whatever the doctor told me to do until I almost died. Not that Frank's lazy... he's anything but. It's just, one too many errands later and now Frank's just another loose end in a world full of wasted lives. With a new take on the JFK assassination, November Road has plenty of suspense, love, murder, more murder, and wisdom. My favorite line in the book was given by Leo, personal assistant to the charismatically crazy Ed Zingel. When Frank inquires about how making decisions should come easy when you know the knack to a happy life, Leo replies, "With every decision we create a new future. We destroy all other futures." Clearly Frank took that to heart in the final pages of this book. Frank may have been just another wasted life on the run from Carlos in the beginning pages of this novel, but by the end... his life was everything but wasted.
~~~
I found myself silently screaming while reading this book. It is all of our current political nightmares captured in 340 pages with the added bonus of a happy ending. When Remy Stanton inserts himself as hero in an armed robbery, he finds himself thrust into the public spotlight and intentionally the new face of a ruthless business man's run for President of the United States. Secrets, secrets, and a little bit of love keep the novel moving quickly. Seriously realistic and brilliantly written, this novel gave me a glimmer of hope.
~~~
I didn't smile once while reading this book. It was that good. Seriously. I mean, this was a depressing look inside rural back country living where all roads lead to nothing but bad decisions, unemployment, misplaced hope, miserable memories, and insanity. All of the characters are broken. All. Of. Them. The Weight of this World is everything I would have expected from a novel by David Joy. The despair... hauntingly beautiful.
~~~
The Upper Hand by Johnny Shaw is a seriously fun read with lots of laughter and witty comments. After the death of their mother, a dysfunctional family reunites with a long lost relative and together they plot to steal millions from the televangelist that inherited their inheritance. Bonding over family secrets and stories of buried treasures, the Ucker kids create their own definition of family and pull off a heist their parents would be proud of. Or, at least, their father would be.
I'm a lover of church hymns so I was curious to hear the tune for the hymn sung at Bertha Ucker's funeral found on page 41. I know, I know... seems kind of bizarre, but this is the second book by Shaw that I've found myself googling a hymn after reading. I've attached the hymn, well, the versions I could find online, below. The words were written by S. Trevor Francis and the music is by John E. Gaul. Tune: Columbus.
If you have a couple hours to spare I highly recommend this inspirational book by Admiral William H. McRaven. Make Your Bed is really good. Seriously... listen to it.
And if you're willing to take a completely different path with your listening, I would also recommend My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her love of history and her heritage are so infectious you'll find yourself jotting down names of historical figures mentioned so you can learn more about them. The bonus of this book in audio is you get to listen to Ginsburg read her own opinions as well as listen to recorded lectures and speaking assignments. It really is fascinating and I can't suggest this book enough.
I've spent the last 17 months recovering from some complications with Lupus. A minor problem turned out to be major, and then my doctor didn't really know what to do and made some errors in my treatment plan. I almost died... twice in a two month period. So I did what most people would have done. I divorced my doctor of 14+ years and moved on.
Of course moving on came with its own set of complications. All fixable, though. I've been on a weekly dose of Methotrexate for just over a year now. Probably not the best drug in the world, but my options are limited. And I'll take what they give me to live, right? I take my poison on Saturday night and rest and recover on Sunday. And I'm doing incredibly well. This is the first time I've been pain free in 16 years. I feel great. I've taken up biking. Me... on a bike. It really is a beautiful thing! The only ongoing issue I've been having since I've started the medicine has been the headaches.
Yeah, the headaches.
They start early in the morning and continue through the day. And they've interfered with my reading. A lot! I think I've read, maybe, three books from cover to cover since last May. One book I read twice. It took me so long to get through Big Maria by Johnny Shaw the first time, that I decided to read it again. For the record, I found it just as hysterical the second time around. And I'm still devastated over the burros, Johnny. Just devastated... *sigh*
Itching to get back into reviewing I took up listening to audio books. Not an easy thing to do, by the way. At least it hasn't been easy for me. I started with some books that were on sale... Hey now, don't laugh. I didn't know if listening to books would be something I'd like, and I didn't want to shell out a bunch of money to audio books I would never listen to.
So I started with a legal thriller written by some guy named Adam Mitzner. It wasn't a bad book. I actually liked it. My only complaint was the use of the word ejaculated during what would have been a rather pleasant love scene.
Dear Adam- I don't care what your editor said about the use of the word ejaculated. please refrain from using the word in any future love scenes. Love, Me!
Maybe you didn't notice the problem... up there in the previous paragraph about the book I read listened to. I didn't realize the problem, either, until I sat down at lunch to tell a friend about the book. As I sat there telling her all about this book and how much I liked this author and hated the word ejaculated, she asked me what the title of the book was.
"I have no idea what the title of the book is..."
Not sure how I missed the title... but it seems to be happening with all the books I'm listening to. I'm assuming this issue will resolve itself over time. Maybe. *takes mental note to write down title of all future audio books* This girl that could memorize page numbers and paragraphs to reference later in reviews is finding herself jotting down minutes and section numbers with notations on what she's trying to remember. I'm also struggling with the voice of the reader... I find myself starting the book over after the first hour because that's how long it takes me to get used to the voice.
Hmmm... to avoid this problem Dan O'Shea should be the master narrator for all audio books. Just for me... please.
So there you have it. I'm listening to books now and reading when I can. And even though reviewing might take me longer to do... I just wanted you to know that I'm trying.
One day, when Chuck is super duper famous and one of the elite in Hollywood with a series on every major network in every country far and wide, I will be able to tell all my neighbor kids about the time I shared the backseat of a Mercedes with Chuck... while bonding over carsickness. I even brought him gifts for the occasion. And it was spectacular! Here's a picture of our time together... after the carsickness wore off. Thanks for being my guest today, Chuck.
Gavage
I’m kind of a foodie.
I figure, life is short. Might as
well eat well – and not just an “eat for pleasure” kind of a thing but also an
“eat for maximum health” thing. See, food is dirty. Its industry is largely
corrupt. Organic used to mean something but then lobbying
moved the goalposts. Monsanto wants to stick seeds in your farm-dirt that you
can’t reproduce from year to year and hey who cares if the stuff is becoming
pest-resistant and bred with pesticides in ‘em. Here in Pennyslvania we have
fights between Big Dairy and Little Dairy—the little guys won the right a few
years ago to sell raw milk long as it’s tested and regulated, and the Big Guys
tried suing the Little Folks just for saying that the milk is hormone-free, and
now the Big Guys are back with a new governor trying to push Little Dairy back
out of the picture again by making their organic raw milk illegal.
Food is full of scary people doing
scary things.
And those scary things often result
in what’s on our plate.
So, let’s talk about foie gras.
Foie gras is the liver of a duck or
goose—particularly a liver that has been fattened.
I’m not a fan of liver, really.
But I love me some foie gras.
It’s like eating some kind of magical
meat butter. It’s unctuous and creamy and has a tinge of sweetness to it. It’s
an amazing food. It sounds strange and off-putting. It’s not.
However, in some states, you can’t
eat the stuff.
Because it’s illegal.
Here’s why: opponents say that it’s
cruel. The act of creating foie gras requires gavage, or the
force-feeding of ducks and geese, and that sounds pretty horrible.
Force-feeding is something we do to prisoners and torture victims. Opponents
paint a picture of us shoving food into duck maws as they struggle to escape.
Two things, though:
First, if you’ve ever actually seen gavage,
the animals like it. If they’re raised on a humane farm, they’ll run to the
act of gavage, not away from it. Ducks aren’t like people. They don’t savor
their food. They just want it in their belly.
Second, if you’ve ever paid attention
to the way meat is actually produced in this country, it’s rife with acts a
thousand times more disgusting than gavage: mutant chickens with three wings
and tumors whose corpses end up getting fed to cows or pigs (called “chicken litter”),
and pigs are held in cramped containers that during their whole lives never
lets them turn around 180 degrees.
Gavage is a distraction. Opponents
fight it and then go home and eat a chicken breast from a headless chicken
force-grown into an adult chicken in less than half the time it would normally
take. A chicken pumped with water, hormones, and antibiotics. A chicken that
never saw the sun.
Ah, but! Gavage represented for me a
really interesting fictional opportunity—here’s this thing that’s illegal and
prized as a delicacy and ironically kept from the people who are willing to pay
to keep it ethical. And I wondered, could that open the act up to unethical practices?
Could people’s inability to eat foie gras lead them to black market foie gras?
Are there crime seeds in forbidden food?
And so, the story of “Gavage” was
born.
Hope you check out the collection.
Hope you like it!
Chuck is the author of the published novels: Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Double Dead, Bait Dog, and Dinocalypse Now. He also the author of the soon-to-be-published novels: The Blue Blazes, The Cormorant, Heartland Books 1/2/3, Beyond Dinocalypse, Dinocalypse Forever, Harum Scarum, and Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits.
Much of his writing advice has been collected in various writing- and storytelling-related e-books.
He currently lives in the forests of Pennsyltucky with wife, two dogs, and newborn son.
If I could encourage any writer to start a kid detective series it would be Johnny Shaw. I found myself grinning and giggling so much while reading about this hard-boiled, fedora-wearing kid detective, Simon Sez, that I finally had to leave my work desk and finish the story in the stairwell just so people would leave me alone and let me read in peace. Let's just say that if Simon Sez had been around in my younger days I would have been offering him bites of my cookies every day of the week... and, no, that's not a euphemism. I'm thrilled that Simon Sez in the Snickerdoodle Kerfuffle debuts in FEEDING KATE, and I really, really, really, really, really hope to read more detective adventures featuring this truly lovable character. Simon Sez in The Snickerdoodle Kerfuffle
I’m not one of those
writers that always wanted to be a writer. I didn’t write my first short story
at 5 or a picaresque novella at 8 or a trilogy of novels known as “the puberty
cycle” at 12. I don’t really remember what I wanted to be. Probably some bastard
combination of super-hero, architect, and farmer (Superarchifarmer?). The idea
of putting stories down on paper didn’t occur to me until college and even then
it was as a screenwriter (and as screenwriting falls somewhere between bumper
stickers and greeting cards in terms of literary merit, I’m not even sure that
counts).
And while I wasn’t a
writer as a kid, I was a voracious reader. I may have grown up on a farm in the
middle of the desert, but that house was filled with books. Not a bookcase
against the wall in the den, but overflowing with books. I’m talking tonnage.
When I packed the books up after my Pop passed away, there were over 10,000
volumes.
And a big part of my early
reading other than comic books was mystery series books: Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew
(yes, boys read Nancy Drew), Encyclopedia Brown, and The Three
Investigators. This was, of course,
before I graduated to Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, another
teenager converted by the awesome power of Frank Frazetta. It took me a while to get back to reading
mysteries, but I never forgot a lot of those childhood bookventures.
When I sat down to write
a story for FEEDING KATE, I knew that food had to be an integral part of the
story. The first idea that jumped in my head was stolen cookies. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I was hungry. Not too
hard-boiled, to be sure. I mean, I have a reputation to uphold (or so I sadly
tell myself). Stolen cookies? It sounded like an Encyclopedia Brown story.
But Encyclopedia Brown
was too Sherlocky. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were the Poirot and Marple of
the teen mystery set. And while the Three Investigators had some edge (their
hideout was in a junkyard!), they used their brains too much to be considered badass.
Where was Li’l Phil Marlowe or Sammy Spade? Where was the kid who was willing
to ask the hard questions, play rough with the boys and rougher with the dames,
and at the end of the day, have the grass stains to prove it?
That’s how the hard-boiled
kid detective Simon Sez came to be. At eleven, he’s got ten good reasons you
shouldn’t mess with him. His fingers when they’re in fists.
FEEDING KATE inspired
me. I enjoyed the hell out of writing the story, and I’m considering writing
more stories with Simon. We’ll see. I did see the titles “The Boy Who Was Not It”
and “The Dill Pickle Stickler” written in the margins of some notes. That might
be enough to get me started.
But for now, the only
place to read “Simon Sez in The Snickerdoodle Kerfuffle” is in the pages of
FEEDING KATE. Simon Sez says buy it.
Johnny Shaw is the author of the
novels DOVE SEASON and BIG MARIA. His work has also appeared in Thuglit, Crime
Factory, Plots with Guns, and various anthologies.
He is the creator and editor of the online fiction publicationBLOOD
& TACOS, a loving homage to men’s adventure paperbacks of the
1970′s & 1980′s.
I'm super happy to have the beautiful Holly West as my guest today. The two of us met on Twitter and then met in real life while attending Bouchercon in St. Louis, and I've since had the pleasure of seeing her several times in LA while attending Noir at the Bar (N@B). She's an amazing writer with several of her short stories being published online and in anthologies, and is currently awaiting the release of the her first novel Diary of Bedlam (working title) in 2014 from Carina Press. I know that she loves a good home improvement project and that she has a great eye for design, but what I didn't know until recently is that she's an accomplished jewelry designer. Man, the things you learn when you're stalking your friends online. *wink wink* Holly is a wonderful person... she's full of life and adventure, kind words, warm hugs, and a smile that can brighten the darkest of days. I'm thankful to have her as a friend. Aaaannd - after reading her guest post today I think we need to plan a Girl's Trip to Disneyland... we can be Mouseketeers together, Holly! Just Part of the Job There haven’t been many of them, but
of all the short stories I've written, my contribution to FEEDING KATE is my
favorite.
JUST PART OF THE JOB is about a
troubled young celebrity named Kate Partridge whose penchant for drugs and
alcohol has caught up to her. A tabloid favorite, she’s on probation and can’t
get work because the industry she grew up in is fed up with her hijinks. On her
way home from a night of heavy partying, she hits a bicyclist on Malibu Canyon.
Will she stick around to help him and take the heat or will she run?
Whew, boy. You don’t know the half
of it.
The culture of the entertainment
industry is pervasive in Los Angeles. Speaking of troubled starlets, the
jewelry store where Lindsay Lohan allegedly stole a necklace is located two blocks
from my house. It’s not uncommon to happen upon random film shoots and now and
then we get notices that filming will be happening on our street. For ten years
I lived in the same condo building as a very famous singer/songwriter and my
trainer at the gym is an actress. One of our neighbors is a middling reality
show producer.
My dog goes to the same veterinarian
as Leonard Nimoy’s and Rick Springfield’s pets.
I could go on and on but remember,
it’s not as if I’m involved in the “business.” I’m just an average Josephine
trying to get her write on. That’s what I mean when I say that celebrity
culture is pervasive here—it’s all around you even when you’re completely
unconnected to it and not really searching for it. That said, I love a good
celebrity sighting (Rick Springfield in the vet’s waiting room? I actually
swooned). And obviously, I can drop names with the best of them. I visit
TMZ.com regularly, but I draw the line at buying tabloids—somehow reading
celebrity gossip online seems less shameful than reading People
magazine.
Perhaps shameful is too harsh a
word. But I use it because there is a vileness to the celebrity gossip
industry; the hounding paparazzi coupled with the antics of attention-starved
publicity whores makes for a symbiotic yet toxic combination. My participation,
even if it’s only clicking on a link or two, makes me complicit in it. Still, I
can’t look away.
I suppose I’ve always had a
fascination with celebrity. My grandma had a regularly replenished pile of
movie magazines handed down from her sister and every time I’d go to visit, I’d
pour over them, mesmerized by the celebrities of the 1970s. Elizabeth Taylor
stands out the most for me; back then, the tabloids documented her every move,
from who she was sleeping with to how much weight she had gained or lost. By
age eight I had all of her husbands memorized (well, the ones she’d had up to
that point, at least).
As a kid, I wanted to be a
celebrity. I was obsessed with becoming a Mouseketeer, and I absolutely
convinced myself that I had what it took to be a star. I even devised a plan to
get to LA to audition. I was bitterly disappointed when my parents informed me
it was never gonna happen.
It seemed natural, then, that my
protagonist in JUST PART OF THE JOB be a former ‘tween star who’d grown up with
all the entitlements, ass-kissing, and scrutiny that such celebrity brings.
These, coupled with her excessive drug and alcohol use, makes for a rather
distorted take on both reality and morality and leads to what I think is a pretty
damned good conclusion.
Holly West’s short fiction appears
in several anthologies and her debut historical mystery will be published by
Carina Press in February 2014. She lives, reads, and writes in Los Angeles,
California with her husband, Mick, and dog, Stella. You can find more information about Holly at HollyWest.com. Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology is available from Amazon. All proceeds from Feeding Kate benefit theLupus Foundation of America.
What can I say about Steve Weddle? Steve is this all-around good guy that seems to have a knack for helping people. He's kind and witty, yet serious enough when he's kidding around to not know if he's really kidding around or not. Intimidatingly kind? Anyway, he's also one hell of a writer. If I had to describe his writing in one word I'd probably use the word... *thinks super hard* musically hypnotic? Okay, that's two words. But you get the idea. There is music in the words he's writing... or at least you can feel the emotional pulls and pushes of his characters in each story that he tells (and if I had a musical degree I'd compare this to a symphony or something, but I don't so... I won't). I'm talking about the emotional pull you get when you're reading about the hard-core mobster that tugs at your heart one minute while he's professing his duty to protect children, and then holding your chest and squeezing your eyes shut the next minute as said mobster takes a baseball bat to a child predator with such realism that you find yourself wiping away blood spatter from your face. And, yes, I'm assuming this has happened to all of us... you know, read something so real that you just knew you were actually there witnessing it? Steve writes like that. All the time. And this "musically hypnotic" writing can be found in the story he was kind enough to contribute to the Feeding Kate anthology. The Rewards is an incredibly realistic and hypnotic tale of a family gathering with one too many awkward moments. Moments I think we can all relate to... cringe-worthy even. In fact, it's almost like he's pulled a memory from my brain and shared it with the world. So weird.
Steve pulling memories from my brain...
The Rewards
When my wife said we’d been invited to meet some
family and visit the DC zoo, I had no idea how costly a night it would become.
We live close enough to DC that we can toodle in for
a day trip to the zoo or the Smithsonians and then toodle our way back home
after dark.
Her family connections were staying over in
Bethesda, so they thought we all might want to stay in the same hotel, enjoy
the pool the night before, have dinner close by. Sounded great.
The hotel has an indoor pool, which is kinda fancy.
When I was a kid, we went to a family reunion (some distant family relations)
in a Holidome. It was a Holiday Inn, but in a dome. They had indoor pools. And
shuffleboard. At which, I must say, I showed considerable sports prowess, as
you might expect.
In Bethesda, my wife’s cousin had made reservations
for us at the restaurant in the hotel. Which is fine. I didn’t know whether it
was Denny’s, as this wasn’t the LaQuinta, but I figured it would be fine.
I’d never eaten at a Morton’s Steakhouse before. I’m
more a Western Sizzler kind of guy. Actually, I’m more of a Bonzana fan, but I
haven’t seen one of those in a while. Big baked potato and an iceberg salad.
Jello cubes in a too-small bowl. An overcooked piece of beef I’d misordered.
Ah, Bonanza.
We got to Morton’s and headed for our table. Only,
it wasn’t a table. It was a room. The room I describe in the FEEDING KATE story
I wrote, “The Rewards.” While much of the story – the in-laws, the psychic
assaults, the baby problem – was fictionalized, the setting was pulled from our
Morton’s visit fairly whole cloth, as it were. Even the desertion of the women
as the check arrived was real-ish.
That setting helped me find the story for “The
Rewards,” that terrible awkwardness in the face of family stress, that
subterranean conflict cracking through.
I have never paid so much money for future poo-poo
in my life. Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll never have to again.
But I could, without the difficulty faced by the poor guy in my story. If I
were a better man, I could tell that the next day I dedicated myself to funding
a food bank for the hungry. I didn’t. Instead, the positive that followed is
that I spent the entire day at the zoo and never once complained about how
expensive their $7 hamburgers were.
Steve Weddle grew up
on the Louisiana/Arkansas line, holds an MFA increative writing from Louisiana
State University, and currently worksfor a newspaper group. He lives with his family in Virginia. His novel COUNTRY HARDBALL will be published by Tyrus Books in November 2013. The book is set for simultaneous release as hardback, paperback, ebook, and audio book.
Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology is available from Amazon. All proceeds from Feeding Kate benefit theLupus Foundation of America.
I couldn't help but smile the entire time I read Kamikaze Death Burgers at the Ghost Town Cafe by Thomas Pluck because it was just what I had expected from his character Jay Desmarteaux, and because it also introduced a character we had both talked about in the past, Kate. Well, that and the fact that these two meet up in a cafe sharing the same love of cheeseburgers didn't hurt. And the flirtatious fry sharing was pretty fun to read, too. And did I tell you that Kate gets to wear leather? Well, she does. AND she carries a dagger. I really hope this isn't the last we see of Kate, Pluckster. She's awesome... and she'd make a great side-kick every now and again for Jay. *wink wink* Sabrina is one of the most
supportive and inspirational people I know. I've written two stories that came
about after chatting with her. The first was a challenge to write an opening
line on Twitter. That turned into "Shogun Honey," about a samurai who
gets mixed up in a battle between a priest and yakuza. The next time, we talked
about favorite characters, and somehow "Kate" became a woman on a
motorbike with a penchant for leather and knives.
And that was the seed that grew
into "Kamikaze Death Burgers at the Ghost Town Cafe," for the Feeding
Kate anthology.
Jay Desmarteaux is a recurring
character of mine who has appeared in "Gumbo Weather" in Needle
Magazine, "The Rock Ridge Ringer," in Hills of Fire: Bare-Knuckle
Yarns of Appalachia, and will appear in my novel BURY THE HATCHET. He is an
ex-con who spent a quarter century in prison taking the fall for the murder of
a brutal high school bully. In some ways he is older than his forty years, and
in other ways, he is a lot younger. He had 25 years to hit the weight pile, box
in the ring, study in the library, spin gears in the auto shop, and chum it up
with lifer outlaws, made men, gangbangers and street thieves.
But we know none of this when we
meet him in the story. He is just a man driving a rare hand-built '57 Cadillac
Brougham, who witnesses a tragic accident on the highway and becomes embroiled
in a gang war between bikers and truckers in the Utah desert. The biker element
came from a story a man told me in a diner, about why he had an Iron Cross. He
had rescued a Hell's Angel from a bad spill and the biker gave him his cross as
a thank you, so if he ever needed help from an Angel, he could ask. I never
found out if he ever had to cash that chip in, but the story stuck with me.
And so did the image of Kate that
Sabrina and I had come up with. Jay is good at playing both sides against the
middle, but I wanted him to meet his match. And he is more than matched with
Kate, who became one of my favorite characters. Someone bound by law and
principle, but with a wild heart that yearned to be free. Just as Jay is
shackled to his young mistakes and fierce desire for elusive justice, he needed
a foil. And that was Kate.
And Sabrina being from Utah, I
had to set it there. I have only driven through the state on a trip to Burning
Man 15 years ago, but the desolate and stunning red desert backdrop cried out
for a highway chase. That reminded me of DUEL and the Mad Max films, and it all
came from there (that and my time working at the docks, driving my Mini Cooper
among the tractor trailers). I remembered a small diner in the town of Echo
that we stopped in. It still exists, and the "cafe" is based on my
memories there. They don't serve a "Kamikaze Death Burger" but they
make good breakfast and cheeseburgers.
I believe there is no food more
American than the cheeseburger. The idea of Jay rolling through the desert in
an iconic Cadillac in search of burgers and justice to be done made him into a
Don Quixote cowboy strutting out of American myth, to me. He was spinning his
wheels, no pun intended, until Kate came along and smacked him upside the head,
and gave him something to fight for.
Jay's like me, in that way. I'm
not happy unless I am working toward something. Once I get there, I need
another quest. Even if it's just to try the Kamikaze Death Burger at the Ghost
Town cafe.
Thomas Pluck writes unflinching
fiction with heart. His work has appeared in Big Pulp, The Utne Reader, Needle:
A Magazine of Noir, Blood & Tacos, Burnt Bridge, PANK Magazine,
McSweeney's, The Morning News, Beat to a Pulp, and numerous anthologies. He is
the editor of Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT. You can find him on the
web at http://www.thomaspluck.com and on Twitter as @tommysalami
His novel BLADE OF DISHONOR, an
action thriller spanning World War 2 to the present, will appear in 2013 from
Beat to a Pulp press. Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology is available from Amazon. All proceeds from Feeding Kate benefit theLupus Foundation of America.
Neliza Drew has a pretty good knack for telling stories. Her ability to create interesting characters clearly comes from the wide range of people she's been able to associate with throughout her life, and the people she tells you about in her blog post are the kind that I love to read about. In fact, the world needs more characters like Davis, Neliza. So, you know... get on it! I have to say that my only disappointment with Neliza's short story in the Feeding Kate anthology is that it was just that; a short story. Addictions The story that ended up in Feeding Kate had been in the works, in
fits and starts, for months before the crazy idea to do anthology happened on
Twitter one morning. At the time, it was more a collection of notes, snippets
of dialogue, the sorts of things “writers” build stories out of and I collect
in notebooks like a word-hoarder. Doing
the anthology pushed me to actually pretend to be a writer and assemble the
word piles into something resembling order.
Laura Benedict was gracious enough
to offer her editing support and without her input the thing never would've come together. It would have never found enough structure to call itself a
story. She is fantastic and I won’t let anyone tell me differently.
As for the content, the characters,
the snippets that eventually found themselves mashed together and forced to
play nice? It grew out of characters I’d met and characters I’d built out of
random traits and behaviors. It’s always all about characters for me. Rarely
does an event or plot come to mind so much as these fully-formed, or close to
it, people appear in my head and demand to be acknowledged.
This time, one of the main “people”
was a drug dealer who was a combination of a former neighbor’s pot connection
from years ago – a guy who sold just enough to buy a canoe – and the vegan
speaker who used to do presentations at my school. Merged, this guy I’d never
met (only heard about) and this guy I’d seen, but never really talked to became
the pot-and-pill dealer.
Davis, on the other hand, has been
living in my head so long, she’s like her own person – which can be hard to
explain to non-creatives. “Oh, no, there’s an imaginary person who lives in my
head. No, I don’t need medication. I’m fine.” Yeah, right. See, I've written
several longer “stories” about Davis, but none of them have escaped my
computer. Maybe one day. I like her. Well, I like her as long as she lives in
my head. If she were real, we’d probably never cross paths and if we did we’d
have nothing to say to one another. She’s dangerous and kinetic. I’m a lazy
bookworm who lacks coordination.
Her boss, Tom, grew out of a
private investigator I met years ago during my brief stint as a receptionist
for a bi-polar attorney. Tom’s inspiration was near retirement and used to hang
out in the spare office the attorney couldn't seem to fill with anyone else
because of his emotional outbursts and emotional abuse. I asked him one day why
he hung out in there. He told me he’d been a cop before he retired and he’d
already heard it all. It was cheaper than renting an office and it was close to
most of his clients, who were all other attorneys.
Come to think about it, Davis was a
little inspired by a former stripper who’d been the lawyer’s secretary for a
couple of years. She told me one day, after he’d called her a lazy stupid slut,
that she’d heard worse and every time she threatened to quit, he offered her a
raise. By the time I started there, she was making enough to put one whole
check a month into savings and had nearly paid off her condo. “As soon as it’s
paid off, I’m out of here.”
Other than that, she had very
little in common with Davis, whose past is largely a product of having spent
nearly a decade listening to kids in “juvie” tell me about their lives.Her attitude comes from a place of having been
a survivor in a landscape where everyone else was, too, to some extent or
another. It’s a fatalism combined with a resourcefulness and stubbornness that
expects to go down, but won’t do it without a fight, and probably a long, nasty
one.
And by now, I think this post is
almost as long as the story and probably not as interesting.
There are, however, much better
stories in Feeding Kate and if you
haven’t already picked up a copy, you should do so. Not only does it benefit a
great cause, but it’s a good way to meet Thomas Pluck’s former-convict, Jay,
who I hope you’ll be seeing again. Johnny Shaw’s tale is damn funny yet
heartfelt. Stephen Blackmoore’s is the sort of gonzo L.A. story I think we've all come to expect out of him. And Holly West makes being a good employee seem
like the creepiest thing ever. NELIZA DREW has worked with crazy lawyers, crazy boat captains, crazy advertisers, and crazy students. She lives in Florida with her husband and furry minions (okay, they’re cats). When not writing for the dust bunnies in her desk drawer, she’s a delinquent wrangler, awkward martial artist, and infrequent blogger (nelizadrew.com). She eats a lot of tofu, but makes up for it with booze and swearing. Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology is available from Amazon. All proceeds from Feeding Kate benefit theLupus Foundation of America.
I'm super happy to have Laura K. Curtis on the blog today. Not only is she the light of my life... *giggles* she's the tweeter behind the beginning of the Feeding Kate campaign, and a woman I'd love to spend a week walking the streets of New York City with. Her story, The Jaws of Life, found in the Feeding Kate anthology, has firefighter Kate reminiscing about her first extrication, solving crossword puzzles with an elderly Mr. Simmons in her free time, and redefining what it means to save a life. Laura's post today gives us a small look inside the world of firefighting; the men, the women... the heroes.
When we first started talking about creating
Feeding Kate, and my tweet stream was full of talk of jaws, my husband had just
been through extrication classes with the local fire department. So naturally,
all I could think of was the Jaws of Life (officially known as a Hurst
extrication tool). He loves to take classes which is good, because it means
that over the years he’s acquired a useful set of skills with the FD. And I am
super-glad I don’t have to do it, since the last one he took—pump ops—was all
math…and math is definitely not my strong suit!
The Fire Department is a big part of my life. Not
only is my husband an engineer and driver for his company, he’s their
commissioner as well. And then there’s the fact that I’m treasurer of the
Women’s Auxiliary. Which, if you knew me at all, might just make you laugh
yourself sick.
Fire departments are all different. In fact, fire companies are all different. In my
smallish town, we have four companies: two engine companies, a hook and ladder,
and what we refer to as “fire police.” Each of those houses has its own
character. People happy in one would likely be miserable in another. And our
town’s whole department—while set up similarly to the nearby towns’—is still
unique.
Some fire departments in the US—mostly in the big,
crowded, urban areas—are full-time, paid departments. Some have members who get
paid by the call they make. Some have officers and drivers who get paid by the
call. But the fact is that the majority of this country’s firefighters are
volunteers. Men and women who train for hours and risk their lives for no financial
reward. It’s easy to idolize that. It’s a really big deal. But I have a kind of
cognitive dissonance when it comes to the FD. I see how heroic it is that these
guys (because our town has no female firefighters) do what they do, but I also
see the underside: the frat boy aspects and the occasional drunken antics.
Anyway, I tried to put some of all of that into “The Jaws of Life.” Both the heroic and the
not-so-heroic. I hope you enjoy it.
Laura K. Curtis has always done everything backwards. As a child, she was extremely serious, so now that she's chronologically an adult, she feels perfectly justified in acting the fool. She started teaching at age fifteen, then decided to go back to school herself at thirty. And she wrote her first book in first grade. It was released in (notebook) paperback to rave reviews and she's been trying to achieve the same level of acclaim ever since. She lives in Westchester County, NY with her husband and a pack of wild Irish Terriers, which has taught her how easily love can coexist with the desire to kill. Her first novel will be out in November, 2013, from Penguin. http://www.laurakcurtis.com/blog/ Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology is available from Amazon. All proceeds from Feeding Kate benefit theLupus Foundation of America.
I'm super thrilled to have Dan on the blog today. Not only is Dan an incredible writer, he also has the voice of an... angel. Okay, maybe not an angel angel, but he definitely has a voice that can make your ear tickle with delight. He's the man behind the voice of bad-boy character Oscar Martello, and soon to be the voice behind the audio version of his novel PENANCE. FEEDING KATE opens with his short story WAX FRUIT, and Dan's post today shares the back story behind the story of Hilary Martin's depressing paranormal-like gift, heartbreaking loss, and sweet revenge. Why Blackbirds Don't Eat Wax Fruit So my story for Feeding Kate… yeah, kinda plagiarized that.
Well, not exactly.
Let’s back up. You’ve read Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds, right?
And Mockingbird?(Well if you ain’t, you
oughta.) See Miriam Black, the protagonist of those books, she’s got this
problem. If she touches you, she sees where and how and when you’re gonna die.
Which, if you get to thinking about it, would kinda suck.
Thing is, I read Blackbirds and, as much as I loved it,
something kept eating at me. Miriam’s reaction to her “gift” was to hit the
road, become a drifter. On one level, I get it. She avoids any permanent
attachments, so those folks she does touch, well, maybe it hurts less to know
all the depressing details of their final breaths if they stay strangers. And
besides, sometimes she finds ways to cash in on her knowledge.
Problem is, that’s exactly the opposite of how I’d react.
I’d never leave home again, never touch anybody again if I could help it. I’d become
a cross between Howard Hughes and Emily Dickenson.Maybe it’s a matter of personal temperament.
Chuck seems a tab extroverted, seems like the sorta guy who’d happily wander
the streets pantsless starting random, obscenity-laced conversations with everyone
who passes. I’m half way to being Howard Hughes as it is. And not the rich
genius part either. The never-leaving-the-hotel, don’t-have-much-use-for-people
part.
Which gave me this problem. I had Chuck’s kick-ass
death-touching premise rattling around my head, but I had this entirely antithetical
take on it, which left me with a story-telling itch I really wanted to scratch.
So I dropped the Chuckster a line, asked if he’d mind if I riffed in his
sandbox. Chuck graciously gave his permission, and Wax Fruit was the result.
Hilary Martin, my protagonist, seems about as far removed
from Miriam Black as she can get. Instead of Miriam’s hellish dysfunctional
upbringing, Hilary was raised in a relatively loving home. And she’s a genius. OK, she’s got her issues,
suffers her tragedies, but she’s got a lot going for her that Miriam doesn't
Funny thing though, the story ends up in a place where it just might have if it
had featured Miriam. I can almost hear Ms. Black giving out a dark chuckle and
saying “Thought you could hide from death bitch? And you think you’re the smart
one.”
Anyway, hope you like the story. Hope you like the whole
collection, ‘cause it’s pretty fucking hot.
Just like the chick who inspired it.
Dan O'Shea is
the author of PENANCE and the short fiction collection OLD SCHOOL along with
the forthcoming novel MAMMON. Dan is represented by Stacia Decker at
the Donald Maass Literary Agency. You can find him on the web at www.authordanoshea.com.
Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology is available from Amazon. All proceeds from Feeding Kate benefit theLupus Foundation of America.
This is quite the interesting post from Clare... I think I've learned more about her personality reading her story "That's a Sweet Invasion, Craig" and preparing this blog post than I have ever learned during our face-to-face conversations at Bouchercon. Believe it or not, I don't think I'd mind bowing down to a "telepathic cupcake as our imperial leader." Especially if said cupcake leader didn't place a ban on eating cupcakes in general. Alien Cupcakes, Gorillas, and why Magicians Beat Whistleblowers wh y Magicians Beat
My
story for the Feeding Kate anthology
was called “That’s a Sweet Invasion, Craig” and features a telepathic alien
cupcake appearing here as an advance scout for his persecuted people, or cakes,
whatever. Since the fiction collection was to benefit Sabrina’s ability to nosh
her favorite goodies, including a cupcake was pretty obvious, but once I got
the extraterrestrial notion combined with it in my head, I couldn’t shake loose.
I admit to enjoying lore of the strange and unexplained, and
so does my character Gracie, a misanthropic young oddball to whom appears the frosted
E.T. In one part of the story, she recaps the “UFO flap” over the skies of
Washington D.C. during late July of 1952. That’s real-live history, and thousands
of witnesses, FAA radar returns, citizen and Coast Guard sightings up and down
the eastern seaboard, and journalistic coverage exist. Here’s a Wikipedia page
with background info and more about the official decision to “debunk” in order
to calm public anxiety.)
It
shouldn’t be personally threatening or damaging to admit things exist we can’t
explain, should it? Science is a process by which we can expand and refine our
understanding. We, not to mention the world and universe, are filled with
as-yet inexplicable wonders, like yawning as one example. (Did you just yawn
reading that? Do you know why?) But this circumstance only makes for open issues,
not insults to reason and civilization.
So what about the particular subject of difficult-to-categorize
aerial oddities gets people so roiled, so ready to pigeonhole questioners as
members of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade, local order #WTF? Well, on this bit, I do
have a theory. In the following popular video, viewers are asked to count the number
of basketball passes made by one team’s players. While doing that, about half
of the viewers will miss seeing something important, and the psychologist who
designed the attention-grabbing experiment explains why:
If we have a limited amount of processing power to decode
the world around us into comprehensible pieces, it matters what you’re mentally
up for at any given time. If I’m running late to a nerve-wracking appointment, hearing
about traffic snarls ahead, then realizing I just forgot something and
calculating whether I have time to retrieve it, I won’t see the Invisible Gorilla.
Not even if he’s handing out free ice cream. Extraneous things that try to siphon
my attention—even a wave hello from a dear friend I didn’t expect to see—are
more liable to earn scowls than smiles unless I can force myself from one
mental groove and into another.
Now,
consider that there are several well-established think tanks concerned with
developing public guidelines for what they call extraterrestrial “Post
Detection Policy.”
I’m not arguing that these organizations assume
extraterrestrials exist. In fact, they assert there’s no empirical evidence for
that conclusion at all. What I am
asserting is that there are deep-pocketed people who’ve spent considerable
effort to figure out how to handle what would be the Big Daddy of Suddenly
Visible Gorilla problems, should it ever occur.
Other people speculate that whatever may be perceived in UFO
encounters (and there are many types
and classes), it’s existed side-by-side with humans for millennia. They base
this notion on ancient myth and representations, from cave art to Renaissance
paintings, and the way those dovetail with modern reports of incidents. We
didn’t used to know about microorganisms. Just seeing them via microscopy
didn’t make them any more inherently dangerous, but new awareness did make some
people extremely nervous, even to the point of risking the development of
superbugs through overuse of antibiotics and antibacterials. And maybe the way
the modern media typically handle stories—that is, with BIG, SCARY OMGs—has
something to do with that. I’m not on the side of the Presumed Gorilla Hiders,
if such exist, but I can see where the manner of introduction matters.
When you buy a ticket to a spectacular magic show, you’re hoping
to be fooled in a dazzling and entertaining way. In fact, you’d feel angry and
ripped off if they didn’t succeed in
deceiving you. But part of the fun of being fooled is your certainty that is
isn’t really supernatural at all. Today’s best magicians know a lot about
psychology, physiology, neurology, and the way people are both hard-wired and
culturally acclimated to respond, so they’re experts in hiding the gorilla. And
when you settle into your seat to enjoy their fictions (or, dare I suggest, even
ones on the page), you’re inviting the Invisible Gorilla trick to happen to you.
And that welcoming attitude of delight may make all the difference.
When unanticipated situations or truths pop into people’s
conscious awareness, perhaps even things that were always present but
disregarded or minimized, words come up like “horror” and “nightmare” and
“trauma.” Think about the confirmation of an awful family secret everyone
suspected. The unpleasantness is frequently compounded with utter “shock” that
such an unexpected, and therefore unwelcome, thing could have disrupted the
predictable rhythms of life. It’s always just an ordinary day until it isn’t.
I think vampires may have the right idea about needing to be
invited in. Look how popular the bloodsucking murderers have become in the
cultural consciousness while cattle mutilations and crop circles remain,
despite a lot more forensic evidence of their existence, relegated to wackadoos
on the fringe. I say forget about trying to push any topic people don’t ask to
hear. If they’re not primed, any revelation is pointless and may even be
counterproductive.
As Eleanor
Roosevelt said: “The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other
form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in
fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.” Want
to expose something uncomfortable, even awful, and have people thank you, as
opposed to pulling out the pitchforks? Tell them first it’s all a lie then make
them buy a ticket.
BIO: Despite Clare Toohey’s background in art and music, she gives store-bought greeting cards
and plays the ukulele poorly. As a writer, she aspires to genre hack-dom, and
as a fan, she appreciates the trashy and inventive. She’s the site editor and
manager of CriminalElement.com, Tweeting @clare2e and blogging more foolishness at WomenofMystery.net
P.S. Go Red Sox!
Feeding Kate: A Crime Fiction Anthology is available from Amazon. All proceeds from Feeding Kate benefit theLupus Foundation of America.
If you have a couple hours to spare I highly recommend this inspirational book by Admiral William H. McRaven. Make Your Bed is really good. Seriously... listen to it.
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