Book Review – Time Lies by Rowena Tisdale

Back when I was in college, I did competitive speaking. One of the events was after dinner speaking, which was a humorous speech about a serious topic. I won every now and then, but the big goal was always winning at the United States Airforce Academy tournament because there was a) a big dinner event for an awards ceremony and b) the winner got to deliver his or her speech at the dinner. I never won that one, but a buddy of mine did. His speech was on the unforeseen aspects of time travel and one of the better zingers was: “Imagine waking up in the future. Everything is strange, nothing makes any sense, and you have trouble understanding even the simplest things that regular people take for granted. Those of you in a sorority, you’ll understand.”

Well, I thought it was funny.

Rowena Tisdale is a romance author with a couple of books under her belt. Her latest, Time Lies, is one of a very few romance stories I’ve read. To date, my experience with the genre has been Romancing the Stone and L.A. Story, a couple of beta reads, and that one weird-ass book of Bigfoot erotica. In short, it’s not a genre I’m usually drawn to. Surprisingly, especially to me, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Time Lies is a time travel romance, one of the many subgenres of romance, and that was part of what drew me to it. Tisdale manages to take my friend’s warnings about time travel and put them in human terms and without zinging all the sorority sisters out there. In short, you’ve got a man who got zapped out of time into the world of a self-entitled woman who has everything except someone to share it all with. Star-crossed or time-tossed or chronologically-challenged romance ensues as our heroine slowly realizes who she is once you get past the tough exterior and our hero has a hidden superpower that brings out the best in almost everyone around him. Such is the tale of Shannon and Azariah

Okay, so that’s basis of the story. Man falls through time, finds woman, and they both fall in love even though they know the whole thing could be doomed by the whims of Chronos. Like most plots, it’s straightforward and it’s up to the talented pen of the author to breathe life into it. And that’s where Tisdale’s skill really shines through. It’s a wild premise and Tisdale not only treats it with respect but she wields a deft and subtle hand showing how each of the characters changes throughout the tale. Seriously, look at Shannon and Azariah at the end and contrast them to the beginning and the changes become obvious, but they’re very quiet through the story. If you pay attention, even Shannon’s language changes a bit through the story as more and more of Azariah rubs off on her. Ditto the other direction. So that, in my opinion, is the magic of the story. Sure, some people will dig the steamy sex scenes, but I loved the way Tisdale wove a tale that was slightly to the left of normal and made the whole thing seem real. That was beautiful.

Even if you’re not necessarily into the romance genre, this is a book that sucks you in and makes the outlandish seem real and intriguing at the same time. I heartily enjoyed it and I heartily recommend it.

Shannon Kellogg is a spoiled heiress. She’s shallow and self-centered, but after her third divorce, she vows to become a better person. Practicing kindness and empathy is her prescription for self-improvement.

As if on cue, a young man with a strange accent, dressed as a colonial cosplayer appears in her yard during a thunderstorm. He’s lost and confused, and something about him tugs at her heart. She sees an opportunity on her path to change, and decides to help him.

It turns out to be more of a challenge than she anticipated. Azariah Scott was unwillingly tossed through time and the only way to help him is to send him back to 1750. She doesn’t know how to honor her commitment to him; despite his belief she’s a witch, she doesn’t believe in magic.

As they work together to find a gateway to the past, love blossoms, and Shannon comes to regret her promise.

Get your copy on Amazon

Check out Rowena on Twitter

Check out her website

#WATWB – Your Monthly Shot of News That Doesn’t Suck

Thanksgiving is the quiet time before the madness as far as I’m concerned. For those of you that don’t live in the US, the day after Thanksgiving is widely known as “Black Friday”. Not to commemorate the stock market crash of 1869 or the stock market crash of 1929 or the stock market crash of 2008, but rather it’s because this is the one magical day when retailers hope to “get into the black” and hopefully become profitable. So, like all good Capitalists, they drop some blood in the water in the form of cheap-ass electronics no one needs at deep, deep discounts and let the consumer sharks feast on each other.

In past years, Black Friday has been responsible for a number deaths by trampling and at least one person waving a gun around in WalMart because she really, really wanted that XBox. It’s also the day I stay as far away from stores as possible. Partially because I don’t really like crowds and hate being trampled, but also because it’s all just a bunch more crap I really don’t need. So, I largely eschew buying a bunch of presents and focus on being happy that I’ve got my wife and son around.

Samantha Baines, a children’s book author, took things one step further and pledged to send a gift-wrapped copy of her own book to anyone who asked for it so no one will have to wake up Xmas morning without a gift under the tree. You can read her story here.

But, you know what? That kind of got me thinking. I don’t have a bunch of copies of my own books lying around, but I have plenty of digital copies. So, if you want one of them or all of them, drop me a line and tell me what format you want and I’ll be happy to email you copies.

Our lovely and talented hosts this month are: Sylvia Stein and yours truly.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~
1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible. (Wow, I totally missed that mark this time around).
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity and brotherhood.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. If you’d like to join the madness, check out our Twitter feed or Facebook page.

And now, your moment of Zen.

#WATWB – Your Monthly Shot of News That Doesn’t Suck

I got both my Covid booster and my flu vax shot last night. Same arm. One show two inches above the other like a badass. Other than a bit of soreness in my arm that may just be due to my earlier badass workout, I’m all good. No second head. No super powers. No 5G brainwaves. No more government tracking than usual. It could be the tinfoil fedora I wear around, but it’s beginning to look like all the horror stories of the vax turning people into slavering mutants were just the fevered dream of people who know fuck-all about how the world works.

But I digress.

We’ve tried vaccinations and masking and while those work to some extent, there’s still a contingent of mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers out there who seem hell-bent on dragging this whole pandemic out as long as possible in the name of their freedoms. At this rate, it doesn’t seem like there’s that much we can do to smash Covid in its tiny balls. It’s too quick for us, too ready to change, too fully ingrained into the environment for us to ever be completely rid of it. Which means years from now you could be innocently planing boards or robbing sperm banks, take a breath at the wrong time and – bam! – your sense of smell and taste have borked off and a fever is treating your body like a two-dollar whore.

The vast majority of people who get that level of sick – especially when they’re fully vaxxed – is will walk away from it within a few days. But what about the drooling idiots who refuse to wear masks because reasons and refuse to get vaxxed because they’re worried they’ll grow a second head? Or, worse yet, what about all those countries that simply cannot afford to vaccinate their populations?

Take those problems together and you’ve got yourself a recipe for problem soup with a side of endemic bread topped with a delightful ivermectin crema.

Fortunately, the big pharma groups have decided to play a little ball with the world. Don’t worry, they’re getting paid so it’s not like they’re going hungry. Merck, for instance, developed a pill that seems pretty damned good at stopping the bad Covid infections before they become disastrous put-you-in-the-hospital-with-a-tube-rammed-down-your-throat-and-not-in-a-sexy-way infections. And Merck, possibly looking forward to an endemic future where Covid pills are a regular thing, has agreed to share the formula royalty-free with others until the WHO (not the one with Pete Townsend, the other one. The one with the doctors) has decreed that Covid is no longer a world-wide emergency. Considering the fact that Covid will be with us probably forever, that means Merck has years of royalties to look forward to even after the pandemic is “over”.

So, on the one hand, good for them. Merck’s putting people over profits at least for the time being. On the other, maybe we don’t need to throw out our shoulders patting them on the back since Covid will never fully go away.

Check the original story here.

Our lovely and talented hosts this month are: Sylvia McGrath and Belinda Witzenhausen

~~~GUIDELINES~~~
1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible. (Wow, I totally missed that mark this time around).
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity and brotherhood.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. If you’d like to join the madness, check out our Twitter feed or Facebook page.

And now, your moment of Zen.

Book Review – The Evening Lands by C.L. Spillard

Some people get guardian angels. Others get guardian devils.

That’s a key element in The Evening Lands, a philosophical masterpiece from Dr. C.L. Spillard. Evil isn’t necessarily something we are, it’s something we do. So, even though Mills is a guardian devil, he has something of a close relationship with Verity Player, a woman who’s outplayed him in the past. This interplay between human and devil is at the heart of Dr. Spillard’s deep dive into the nature of evil.

It’s not the entire plot, but it’s a key portion of the plot. The basic plot is in the blurb below. Anyone who’s read this blog for a while now knows a couple of things about my reviews. Notably, I very rarely regurgitate the plot – this a book review not a book report. I also won’t review a book I didn’t enjoy. If you want to read negative reviews of books check Amazon, there’s always someone who didn’t like a book and wants the world to know about it.

While I very rarely discuss plots, the subplot of Mills and Verity is an import piece to understanding a book that sometimes reads like a dream. That’s not a bad thing. We need more books that read like dreams and we need more tales where not everything is laid out in easy-to-digest chunks. Sometimes pondering a portion of a book is a good thing. It makes us think through things the author wants us to think through.

The Evening Lands isn’t a completely traditional book. The important elements aren’t necessarily the things happening in the foreground; they’re the parts happening in the background. The vague shapes lurking in the shadows, ready to leap out at you. It’s also one of the rare books where the plot is moved along largely through dialog rather than traditional narrative.

It is, in a word, brilliant.

It’s an easy book to read, but it’s not an easy book to get, at least not to squeeze the important parts out of it. But much like climbing a mountain, the view from the top makes it all worth it. If you’ve ever seen black box theater with all of its intimacy and grandiose nuance, you’ll recognize what The Evening Lands feels like.

Dr. Spillard is asking big questions here. What is evil? At what point does regular dickishness tip over into bald-faced evil? Fortunately, she’s not shy about providing some answers. She’s also not shy about poking the United States in the eye because, let’s face it, we in the US are full-on into dickishness and it would take just a nudge to push us face-first into evil.

Her guardian Devil plans to drive the world mad through fear—the fear on which he feeds. Verity needs allies—and fast. She crosses the ocean to meet The Professor and agrees to participate in his gruesome, dangerous experiment into the nature of Evil, hoping that in return he will use his knowledge to help her.
She never expects him to hold her captive and threaten to destroy her mind!
Can Verity escape The Professor’s lab and save the world from the wrath of her Guardian Devil?

Get your copy on Amazon

Follow Dr. Spillard on Twitter

Check out her website

Follow her on Instagram

Your Author Website And You

Web design is one of those things I never could completely wrap my head around. I’m decent at print design, bordering on good when the right inspiration strikes, but I suck at web design. Which is kind of odd since I’ve been a graphic designer and I am a programmer. You’d think that mesh of skills would work, but whenever I start designing website, I fall back to the mid 90s and start throwing animated gifs at the screen until it looks like Homer’s site.

I honestly miss the flying toaster screensaver. Or screensavers in general.

Fortunately for me, there are skilled and qualified folks out there who create site templates and sell them. Then, I can leverage my programming skills to modify the raw code until it’s more to my liking. Add in a purchased URL and an AWS S3 bucket and I’m good to go.

In case you’re wondering, my author website is here: http://ericlahti.com

Why no www? Because I hate www, that’s why. If the world wide web consortium had been on the ball, they would have standardized on web instead of www. One syllable instead of nine. Talk about a cost savings. Also, the www isn’t technically necessary. www is supposed to indicate a website in a DNS name, just like mail indicates incoming mail, either POP3 or IMAP and smtp indicates outgoing mail. See what kinds of interesting but useless bits of trivia you learn when you hang out here?

Anyway, websites.

Like I said, I’m crap at designing them. I’d much rather be lurking in the back-end of the server space setting up databases and service code. But the fact of the matter is, any author should have a website. Fortunately, it’s a hell of lot easier to get one up and running than it used to be. About ten years ago, all sites were custom-coded html and css hosted on a fly-by-night hosting service run out of some backwater. Hosting was expensive and painful to set up. So much so, that I finally got frustrated at one point and set up my own server and hosted my site straight out of my house.

Nowadays, you’ve got AWS, Azure, and whole host of cheap, effective hosting systems that are easy to set up and maintain and don’t require you to build a server and do a whole lot of port forwarding on your local router.

I have no idea what this is supposed to prove, but it’s apparently a firewall gif.

Or, you can go the easier route and use a company like Wix or WordPress that not only have slick interfaces for building your site, but will host it for you, too. Often for free. Don’t worry, they get their money by putting ads up on your site, so they’re not going to go hungry.

If we break down the pros and cons of each type, you’ll find there is no clear answer. Wix and WordPress are free and have snazzy tools for design, but you’re limited by what they make available. AWS and a custom site aren’t free and take more time to implement, but you can do exactly what you want to do. The choice is yours.

But all this stuff begs a question: What the hell is an author website and why do you need one? We’ve got Twitter and Facebook and blogs and Instagram and all these other places that you can get information out to people with. Why a website?

Aside from the simple fact that you can put whatever you feel like on your website without worrying about character counts or getting lost in the maelstrom, your author website is your home. It’s likely going to be the first thing people come across when they look for their new favorite author. (What’s that website address again? That’s right: http://ericlahti.com. So much awesome.) It allows you to brand yourself, display your wares, drop the occasional free short story, set up mailing lists, list all your social media, market yourself, tell the media how to contact you, and is a perfect place to drop that dancing Jesus gif.

Never gets old

Ingram Spark, who knows a lot about these things, put together a nice list of what to include on your author page. Check it out here: https://www.ingramspark.com/blog/what-should-i-put-on-my-author-website. Then go check out what other authors are doing. Kinda feel like I’m beating a dead horse here, but…http://ericlahti.com is a nice place to check out with lots of cool images and very few pictures of Lahti himself.

I reached out to the writing community on Twitter to get some samples of sites to check out. You’ll soon find out there is no standard template of what to do or how to do it, but there are some good ideas to pilfer borrow for your own site. Just remember to set aside some time. An author site requires a lot of work to set up and should have the same level of polish as your latest novel.

Casey Kimberly’s blog: https://caseykimberly.wordpress.com/

R.A. McCandless’s site: https://www.ramccandless.com/

Rowena Tisdale’s site: http://rowenatisdale.com/

Damyanti Biswas’s site: https://www.damyantiwrites.com/

DK Marie’s site: https://dkmarie.com/

Ryen Lesli’s site: https://ryenlesli.com/

Robert People’s site: https://robertpeople.com/

Peggy Sue Perry’s site: https://dragons4me3.com/

Nancy E. Dunne’s site: https://nancyedunne.com/

Eric Lewis’s site: https://ericlewis.ink/

In researching this, I found there’s a lot of technical elements to setting up an author presence. Getting hosting, buying domain names, stuff like that. Over the coming weeks, this blog will be taking a deep dive into the technical abyss to better explain what things like DNS, SEO, AWS, and so on are. Don’t worry, I’m a professional; it won’t be overly confusing or boring, and you might just get some useful information out of it.

#WATWB – Your Monthly Shot of News That Doesn’t Suck

Remember Rick Perry? The dumbass who wanted to shut down the Department of Energy because he thought all they did was study alternative forms of energy like hippie solar panels and liberal windmills. The same guy went on to become Secretary of Energy and therefore in charge of the Department of Energy where he hopefully learned that the DOE is in charge of all things nuclear, including the fun stuff that makes the big ol’ kaboomies.

The DOE actually does do a lot of stuff; it’s not just a bunch of people playing with nuclear weapons. To be fair to Rick, they do research into alternative means of energy – it is part of their charter to do energy-related research among other things – it’s just not all they do. But, contrary to popular belief, there is no liberal conspiracy running wild at the DOE to take away your car and make you ride bicycles everywhere. There is, however, a deep desire in the DOE to make sure that nuclear weapons don’t go off unexpectedly, nuclear reactors keep reacting correctly, and no one makes off with enough fissile material to level the Eastern seaboard.

See, energy production and use is big-time national security stuff. Any time you have to do business with people who don’t really care for you, you’re running the risk that someday the other shoe will drop and your supply of sweet, sweet crude will dry up. That’s in addition to the environmental hazards of things like internal combustion engines and the looming threat of simply running out of things to burn for fuel. Bottom line: Traditional energy mechanisms are outdated and dying off and something has to give or we’re all gonna be walking everywhere.

So, it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Department of Energy has set up a fund to help support scientific innovation and energy research in the civilian corporate arena. They’re doling out $127 million in Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfers to see if they can get corporate American to help bring government breakthroughs to market. Yes, you read that correctly: Breakthroughs that happen in government-funded research are being handed off to small businesses along with a check and a request to turn those breakthroughs into viable products.

In case you’re wondering, my idea of strapping a piece of buttered toast to a cat’s back and then dropping the cat has NOT been approved. Since toast always lands buttered side down and cats always land on their feet, there’s no way either could ever touch the ground and the resultant spinning in space could be tapped for endless energy. I guess it’s just too advanced a project for some people. Study it out, eggheads!

At some point, advanced government research will trickle down into day-to-day life. Maybe it’ll be cheaper electricity, more efficient solar panels, or a Texas power grid that can sustain the pressure of being used. So, the next time some knuckle-dragging dirthead screams about shutting down the Department of Energy, kindly remind them that the DOE a) has nuclear weapons and b) does some important stuff that can directly impact you in a good way.

Anyway, if you’d like to read the original brief article, you can find it here.

If you’d like to connect your blog and help spread a little joy (or snark, like I do), it’s easy to sign up. Just ask and ye shall receive. Or go check it out here: here.

Our lovely and talented hosts this month are: Sylvia McGrath and Belinda Witzenhausen

~~~GUIDELINES~~~
1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible. (Wow, I totally missed that mark this time around).
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity and brotherhood.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To sign up, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List below.
This is a Blog Hop!
Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

And now, your moment of Zen:

Book Review – Owl Eyes Motel by Barbara Avon

No matter what that huckster on late night TV claims, no one actually knows what happens to you when you die. Yeah, yeah, yeah, bright lights and a sensation of floating. Maybe some angels doing angel stuff or some devils shooting dice in an alley. When my dad died, I had a dream where he had managed to get a message to me that basically said the afterlife was a place to unlearn all the bad shit we’d done in life. An anti-college, if you will, where forgetting was the key. Probably no raging keggers, either. So, kind of like going to Oral Roberts U.

Personally, I think it’ll be different for everyone and I’m hoping somehow or another drag racing factors into the afterlife equation. Not because I’m good at drag racing or have even ever drag raced, it just seems like it would be fun and if you’re already dead it’s not like drag racing accidents could make you even more dead. Plus, I’m sure dragsters in the afterlife would be bumpin’ AF.

Owl Eyes Motel, the latest work from multi-genre author Barbara Avon, does not have any drag racing in it. But that doesn’t make it any less entertaining. What the motel does offer is a full service afterlife experience including clean rooms, an experienced staff, and an on-site psychotherapist. Think of it as a stopover on the road between life and death where you can wash up, relax, and get excellent room service. Which, if you think about, is almost as good as drag racing and significantly quieter. And, when you realize that most of the people in the Owl Eyes don’t realize they’re dead, the place makes even more sense. It also explains the lack of drag racing since the recently deceased suck at driving. But don’t let anyone know I told you that; it’s a secret.

It would have been easy to simply tell a story about each guest’s death whether untimely or expected and call it good. Drop a little morality play in there and you’ve got comedy gold. But Avon took it a bit further and even though most of the stories center around a single person’s death, the novella as a whole revolves around the hotel itself. While individual deaths could be interesting for a while, even spinning yarns about people managing to run themselves over while back out of their driveways can get old. But hints of history and purpose about a stopover point for the newly dead that includes a breakfast buffet and nightly lounge acts? That’s cool stuff right there.

Avon writes with a certain glee, not necessarily happy that people are dead, but rather a tone that she appreciates her words and wants them to live and breathe. While the subject matter may vacillate from melancholy joy to crushing sorrow, the words – and the characters they represent – hop off the page to tell you their tales. In this collection, Avon is the thrilling narrator, but the stories all belong to the characters.

All in all, a good weekend read that doesn’t get bogged down with its subject matter. I’m not sure I’d fully classify as horror because horror doesn’t carry your luggage or provide room service, but it’s an excellent musing on life, death, and what comes beyond those things.

Get your copy on Amazon

The year is 1985, and there’s a storm brewing. It’s the kind that forces even the derelicts to retreat to their gutters. Each room is its own unique story; each chapter, a room. Check in at Owl Eyes and stay a spell, won’t you? There’s always room for the dead.

“Come in! Come in! Welcome to the Owl Eyes Motel. My name is Milton and I am the owner of this fine establishment, situated on Route Number 666. That’s six-hundred and sixty-six. Owl Eyes offers impeccable service. There is no lack of creature comforts at this here motel. At Owl Eyes, we pride ourselves on our attention to detail. Management kindly reminds you that we are not responsible for lost luggage…or souls.”

*Some scenes depict dark and sensitive themes.

Check out Barbara on Twitter

Check out her website

WATWB – Your Monthly Shot of News That Doesn’t Suck

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men – cries out for universal brotherhood – for the unity of us all.

Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator

It’s Thanksgiving in America, that magical time where we slaughter turkeys to celebrate something or other. Honestly, it’s usually just a good time to hang out with friends and family and enjoy a shit-ton of food. 2020, of course, had to change all that. The sane among us celebrated only with close family or alone or wised up and used some of the many tools we’ve used this year to stay together while remaining apart. The insane, or at least the completely uncaring bastards among us, got together and threw monster parties because reasons. Maybe a bit of luck will shine through and we won’t see a massive spike in sickness and death just in time for them to repeat the trick around Xmas.

But beyond the pandemic picking away us like the rats in Johnny Got His Gun. Even beyond the fact that economies are teetering on the brink and idiocy is still running rampant in Washington. Even beyond all the madness of 2020, there is still a shining light out there.

We live in a magical world.

I tweeted earlier today that I should Microsoft a thank you letter for XBox Live. Now, I don’t much care for online gaming, but it’s saved my son’s sanity in a time when seeing his friends in person means yelling across the park at each other. Now they can spend all night shooting each other or racing each other, hooting and hollering, and still keep safely apart. Seriously, if it wasn’t for online gaming, he probably would have lost his shit by now.

We all would have. Twenty years ago video calling was relegated to specialized setups that cost a small fortune. Now, you can do it on the phone in your pocket. I’ve spoken to people who set up Zoom meetings and had Thanksgiving dinner with their families even though they were scattered all over the country. We’re connected eight ways to Sunday and none of this technology is brand new; we’re just discovering how important it can be.

Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was released in 1940. It was the first time he spoke in a movie and that last speech was amazing. It was a time when radio and airplanes were the same approximate age as teleconferencing is now. They were still magical things. Game changing things. Things that helped people come closer together. Flash forward 80 years and we have our game-changing things, our own ways to bring ourselves together.

Normally, this would be the point where I’d bust out some feel-good story to prove that the world’s not going to shit. That, after all, is the WATWB way; share a little love through some happy news. There’s plenty of that, too. Not one, but three possible Covid vaccines. A new era in Washington. A bit of new hope on the horizon. But I didn’t become a writer to follow the rules. Here’s your bit of happiness: Even though we’ve been pulled apart, we have ways to bring ourselves back together. All we have to do is use them.

If you’d like to connect your blog and help spread a little joy (or snark, like I do), it’s easy to sign up. Just ask and ye shall receive. Or go check it out here: here.

Check out this month’s co-hosts: Lizbeth Hartz, Inderpreet Uppal, Shilpa Garg, Damyanti Biswas, and Roshan Radhakrishnan 

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible. (Wow, I totally missed that mark this time around).

2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity and brotherhood.

3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.

4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.

5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.

6. To sign up, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List below.

This is a Blog Hop!

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

And now your moment of Zen.

WATWB – Your Monthly Shot Of News That Doesn’t Suck

The country is slowly reopening. It’s like coming out of a short-term, fucked-up relationship followed by a nasty breakup. Walking around in one of Albuquerque’s many indoor flea markets – albeit with masks and social distancing – felt almost like being alive again. Sights! Sounds! Things that weren’t my house or the odd trip to my abandoned cubicle at work. Stuff other than food. I found an original copy of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome To The Pleasuredome on vinyl and it brought back all those wondrous moments of misbegotten youth when I didn’t have to worry about pandemics or riots or a renegade president threatening to change the rules because Twitter applied the rules to him.

Normally, these posts are supposed to be about a recent news article that was uplifting. Dog finds its way home. A tiny bit of justice happens somewhere. Stuff like that. It’s kinda hard right now to find positive news articles that don’t include cops getting arrested for murder or Twitter slapping warning labels on tweets. Those are good things, don’t get me wrong, but they’re band-aids over wounds that have been hemorrhaging and festering for years. A step in the right direction, but nothing more. So, I’m not going to link to any positive news articles. Let the WATWB police come after me.

So, to quote Moshav, the whole world’s on fire.

It’s times like these that you have to look for the small things. The last broken Oreo in the package, that single shot of bourbon you forgot you had, the half-smoked cigarette when you wake up in the middle of night and can’t get the dream out of your head. Follow the smoke up into the æther and find some peace.

Or it could just be that old record (in mint condition! Frankie says Relax!) or the free concert from Le Chat Lunatique that those amazing Albuquerque mainstays put on tonight over the web or even just eating frozen custard at a roadside shop and enjoying the weather.

There have been more people eating in parks than I’ve ever seen. People in my neighborhood have little get-togethers on their front lawns. The little roadside trail I ride is filled with people. It’s like America suddenly discovered there’s more than just reality TV and trying to get laid in bars. That there’s a life outside of the life we thought we had.

To quote Colonel Kilgore, “Someday this war’s gonna end.” So, here’s your uplifting bit of news. Yes, the Cronizzle is still out there. No, it probably won’t go away any time soon. But everything comes to an end. And what’ll be important isn’t what happened. It’s what you carry with you out the other side. The riots will end, the incompetent oaf running the country into the ground will end. Or, as Charlie Chaplin said in The Great Dictator:

“To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. …..”

Lines like that keep me warm at night.

Keep what you’ve learned. Hold it tight. Never let it go.

If you’d like to connect your blog and help spread a little joy (or snark, like I do), it’s easy to sign up. Just ask and ye shall receive. Or go check it out here: here.

Our lovely and talented hosts this month are: Susan Scott, Lizbeth Hertz, Shilpa Garg, Mary Giese, and Damyanti Biswas

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible. (Wow, I totally missed that mark this time around).

2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity and brotherhood.

3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.

4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.

5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.

6. To sign up, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List below.

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And now your moment of Zen.

Book Review – An Audience of Corpses by John Maygrove

It’s not often you get to read a first novel and think, “Ah, this author’s gonna go somewhere”. First novels are oftentimes clunky, kludgy affairs. A labor of love, to be sure. And for that reason alone there’s usually something good lurking in the text. But to come across first novel well-written enough and complicated enough to feel like it came from someone seasoned is a rare thing.

Which is exactly how I felt about John Maygrove’s An Audience of Corpses. It’s a brilliantly conceived story arc that manages to incorporate serial killers, a murder where the victim is caught on tape wandering around an hour after his death, and an apprentice private eye unsure of his own skills, and not only wrap it up nicely, but put a black silk bow with skulls on the package.

I have a particular love affair with crime noir. You know, the stories where the criminals didn’t do something pedestrian like knock off a jewelry store or file their taxes late. Stories with some meaty sections. Human trafficking, cavorting with evil, selling tainted drugs because reasons, stuff like that is what gets me hooked and keeps me interested. Because, let’s face it, a string of convenience store robberies was probably perpetrated by some poor schmuck who just wanted to feed his family. But the guy who figured out how to weaponize religion and use it to gain wealth and power probably has some interesting psychological ticks.

The hard-boiled private eye story has been done. It’s a classic thing and there’s certainly nothing wrong with doing it again, so long as there aren’t any black birds driving the plot forward. What separates Maygrove’s work from the classics of the genre is not what it does, it’s where it starts. Classic private eyes tell their tales from a place of long experience. They get to draw on experiences and reference histories. Maygrove’s P.I. has just buried his teacher and is starting on his own on his very first day. Some experience, sure, but it all came from working with a mentor. Now, in the midst of losing a friend he’s dropped into the middle of a case with nothing to draw on but the musings of a dead man.

That adds something special to the genre. It’s an origin story. And, one would hope, won’t be the last mystery Jack Hornby has to unravel.

Apprentice P.I. Jack Hornby had only just buried his friend and mentor, stricken with grief and contemplating his future. Sitting alone in the office they once shared, he is accosted by an eccentric woman in desperate need of help. Reluctantly, he agrees. But a case of suspected infidelity turns out to be so much more when his target winds up dead in the middle of a grisly scene.

Jack finds himself pitted against his old nemesis- now a highly decorated police investigator- in a bid to uncover the truth behind what really happened in that seedy hotel room, and just how the victim was sighted walking down the street shortly after his death. In a case where nothing makes sense and no one is what the seem, Jack’s only ally is his old mentor’s peculiar yet alluring niece, the former secretary from the now-defunct detective agency.

Get your copy on Amazon

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Check out his website