Reposting, as is my tradition:

I am the self-proclaimed Scrooge of Valentine's Day, and in that spirit I imagine the following someday happening:

Anthonius Scrooge is hard at work in his office when his nephew enters with a large cardboard heart filled with chocolates.

Nephew: Happy Valentine's Day, Uncle!
Scrooge: Bah! Humbug!
Nephew: Valentine's Day a humbug, Uncle? Surely you don't mean that.
Scrooge: I do mean it. It's a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 14th of February .. chocolates, hearts, cards, gifts.  I'll say it again: Bah!  Humbug!!
Nephew: Well I don't think it's a humbug at all.  I think it's a day when human caring is at its strongest, and we show our love for our family and friends.
Scrooge: Then keep the day in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.
Nephew: But Uncle, you DON'T keep it at all!
Scrooge: Then let me leave it alone! Good afternoon.
Nephew: Happy Valentine's Day!
Scrooge: Good afternoon!

(This year, again with added romantic-Ron-Weasley-icon!)

Got home from Austin on Thursday. Slept barely an hour before having to be up at 3:00am to be ready for my shuttle to the airport for my 6:30-ish-am flight home. Managed to stay awake on the whole flight (reading the wonderful RAISING RYLAND by Hillary Whittington) and even for the rest of the day (which involved lunch, a bookstore run, a haircut, and watching Legends of Tomorrow). Crashed around 9:30pm.

Friday was not as productive as it should have been. You can imagine how long I slept.

Today I sped over to Mahopac for my god-daughter's First Communion (in the same church I made my communion and confirmation in). It was good to spend time with not only immediate family but also with some cousins I don't get to see often.

Now I'm packing. The shuttle to the airport comes at 7:30am. Detroit and Chicago this week, St. Louis and Kansas City the next.

Well, that was a very fast "almost month of no traveling for work." Most of April was spent in the office doing content development and beginning my studies on yet another new (to me) subject to teach. I did have some weekend fun travel, all within driving distance of home. I journeyed over to Katonah to spend an afternoon with my pal Barry Mangione. We recorded my vocals for the song I co-wrote with Michael Walker of Paradise Fears (said vocals are on their way back to Michael for final editing of our song, which I'll then put up on my Bandcamp page -- hopefully, that'll happen by the end of the month) and we also recorded an episode for his podcast "Self-Help Rock Star," wherein we talked about fostering understanding in ourselves and others. The conversation was free-form but inspired by my Facebook posts about hearing "I have nothing against those people, but I wouldn't want to pee next to one" throughout my childhood (in reference to gays) and now hearing it said again about friends. It's a good half-hour, if you're interested in listening.

I also had the chance to voyage into NYC to see Rosanne Cash be interviewed and perform a few songs at the New York Public Library. I got a picture or two and an autograph, which was fun. Here's a photo of Rosanne and I:



The final week of April took me to Oregon for a few days. I flew out on Saturday to spend time with old friend Jim Savenkoff and his family. We had a good 24 hours of geeky comeraderie, including watching Avengers: Age of Ultron and going to a nature sanctuary. Then I taught a class down in Albany OR before taking the red-eye home Tuesday night.

This weekend, I had family over to help me at least begin the project of culling, cataloguing and containerizing my various collections against the inevitable-but-delayed move I'll be making once my landlords/employers sell this property. We organized the books I'll be selling, and also cataloged and boxed up about 70% of my remaining book collection. We left un-boxed the stuff I've committed to reading before the end of the year, along with all of the books in the dining room and foyer. Still, it was a fantastic start.

Tomorrow, I leave for a couple of days in Austin TX. I'm actually attending a conference for work (rather than being the presenter/trainer). Should be interesting. I'll fly home from Austin on Thursday, attend my god-daughter's First Holy Communion ceremony in my hometown (Mahopac, NY) on Saturday, and then fly out on Sunday for another full two weeks of training.

That trip, which will cover the second and third weeks of May, will take me to Ann Arbor, Chicago (O'Hare airport area), St. Louis, and will end in Kansas City, where I'll be staying an extra day to attend Planet Comicon. It looks like I'll be volunteering at the Wordfire Press booth on the Saturday of the convention -- and thus am guaranteed to at least have a short conversation with Kevin J. Anderson, and possibly Jim Butcher and some other authors. I'm excited!

And that, in a nutshell, is what I've been up to and what I will be up to in the next few weeks!

2016 Book 24: Chaos Choreography (InCryptid Book 5) by Seanan McGuire; isbn 9780756408138; 356 pages; Daw Fantasy; paperback; $7.99

The Premise: (from Goodreads):   Fifth book in Seanan McGuire’s funny and fast-paced urban fantasy InCryptid series featuring ballroom dancer and monster expert Verity Price. Verity Price is back on the West Coast and getting back into the swing of the family business: cryptozoology. She’s rescuing cryptids from bad situations, protecting them from monster-hunters, and generally risking life and limb for the greater good, with her ex-Covenant partner/husband, Dominic, by her side. Her ballroom dance career is behind her—or so she thinks. When Verity gets the call from the producers of Dance or Die, the reality show she almost won several years before, she finds the lure impossible to resist, and she and Dominic are off to L.A. for one last shot at the big time. Of course, nothing is that simple. When two contestants turn up dead, Verity will need every ally she can find with the investigation, without blowing her cover. It doesn’t help that her official family backup is her grandmother, Alice Price-Healy, who thinks “subtle” is something that happens to other people. Winning this competition may have just become a matter of life and death.

My Rating: 4 stars out of 5

My Thoughts: So much to say. The question is, how much can I say without wandering into the realm of Spoilers (other than what the book description already reveals)?

First: it was great having Verity back at the center of an InCryptid novel after a two book hiatus. Note: I am not an Alex Price hater. His two books have a different tone than Verity’s, and I enjoy both characters’ voices immensely.  Verity’s voice is more irreverent than Alex’s, and perhaps a bit less technically-oriented (since he’s the scientist and she’s more the adventurer).
Second: From the moment we met Verity at the start of Discount Armageddon, it was inevitable that her past as professional dancer Valarie Pryor would be revisited. Too many mentions were made of her time on the competition show “Dance or Die” for it not to resurface later in the series. I’m glad McGuire has brought it to bear on the present so quickly, and even more glad that it’s not just as window-dressing or prelude to a “more important” adventure. The show itself is not just setting, it’s almost a character in its own right.

For the third time in five novels, we get introduced to a whole new gang of secondary characters. Most of them are part of Valarie’s dance world. While I miss the secondary characters from the NYC setting of the first two novels (cousin Sarah most notably, as well as Ryan & Istas), the new supporting cast is as diverse and interesting. It didn’t take long to feel connected to Brenna, Pax, Lyra, Anders and Malena. They bring out a very different side of Verity – still competitive, but in a very different way from the competitiveness that Verity’s siblings or Dominic bring out in her. Some of them also enable us to glimpse cryptid communities we haven’t spent time with in the preceding four novels. I’ll leave off discussing exactly who, since the reveals were part of the fun of the book.

Speaking of reveals, I have an admission to make. When it comes to authors I really love, I have a tendency not to read the back-cover (or cover-flap, if it’s a hardcover) matter. Thus, things that are clearly spelled out as enticement to read the book often catch me completely by surprise. The arrival of Alice Price-Healy on scene was one of those moments. Yes, I saw another young woman on the cover with Verity. I assumed (wrongfully) that it was her sister Antimony. So when the unexpected visitor in Valarie’s quarters, claiming to be her long-out-of-touch sister, turned out to be Grandma Alice … I was pleasantly surprised and jolted out of my assumptions about how the book would progress.

Anyone familiar with McGuire’s work knows she writes great fight scenes, and there are several in this adventure that stand out, all leading up to the boss-fight and reveal of the actual villains at the end. I never have a problem visualizing how these characters are moving, regardless of whether they’re human or cryptid. On top of the great fight scenes, the dialogue is tight and often brutally snarky but not lacking warmth and camaraderie as well.

If I have any complaint about the book, it’s a relatively minor one: while there are plenty of hints and red herrings about who is behind the killings, the reveal doesn’t tell us as much about their motivations and connections as I’d have liked to hear. That’s one of the problems with first-person narration: the author can’t easily put us into the head of any of the other characters, and there were two in particular I’d have liked to delve into a little more deeply as the Bad Shit finally went down in the final chapters. But it’s a minor thing, really. McGuire doesn’t leave us hanging as to motive.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next full InCryptid novel, and whatever short stories McGuire throws our way in the meantime.

Playing catch-up on book and story reviews as quickly as I can. This entry contains reviews of three interconnected short stories. (Goodreads counts separately e-published short stories as "books," and so I include them in my counts here and in my database as well.)

All three of these short story / novellas are part of seanan_mcguire's Incryptid universe, which I have made no secret of loving. They all take place during the year (character-time) break between the series novels Midnight Blue-Light Special and Chaos Choreography, and tell of Verity Price's travel across the US with her boyfriend Dominic DeLuca. (Why they're traveling cross country and staying under the radar / out of the public eye is explained in MB-LS, and I'm not going to spoil any of that here.)


2016 Book 21: The Ghosts of Bourbon Street by Seanan McGuire; 51 pages; SeananMcGuire.com; ebook; $free on website

The Premise: (from Goodreads): Verity Price and Dominic De Luca are currently putting their relationship through what can only be termed the ultimate stress-test: they're traveling from one side of the country to the other in a rented U-Haul, accompanied only by Verity's colony of Aeslin mice and the contents of her iPod. (Dominic is receiving a crash course in modern dance and pop music.) But what's a road trip without a hidden purpose? Verity knows she's driving Dominic toward the biggest confrontation of his life—her parents—and that means she needs to start easing him in gently. What better way than with a stop in New Orleans to drink layered cocktails and meet her fun-loving Aunt Rose, who just happens to be a Predeceased American? Poor Dominic didn't set out to become part of a ghost story, but it looks like that's exactly what's happening, as the old, new, and undead collide all over Bourbon Street.

My Rating: 4 stars out of 5

My Thoughts:   This is the first of three novellas that fill in the year-long gap between McGuire’s InCryptid novels Midnight Blue Light Special and Chaos Choreography. Falling on the short end of novella-dom, it’s a tightly-written, quckly-paced tale that trades on character more than action. As the start of a trilogy of linked tales, it sets stages (Verity and Dominic are road-tripping across the country, stopping wherever Verity’s whim or a Cryptid-in-need takes them) that will pay off both in the trilogy-of-shorts and eventually in the InCryptid novels. But it also stands very well on its own, with a solid beginning, middle and end. (Having read McGuire’s linked short stories of Verity’s great-grandparents Fran and John, I expected no less.) Drinks with Aunt Rose (the main character from McGuire’s novel Sparrow Hill Road) leads to a mystery that needs to be solved. We get to explore a bit of the ghostly side of this universe that we don’t really see in the novels, we get a better sense of Rose’s connection to the family, and we get some character development for Verity and Dominic.
We also get a little bit of a fight scene, because what would a Price family story bet without at least one punch being thrown? But unlike the novels, this story’s fight doesn’t lead to some massive game-change for Verity’s world. Although, one never knows what McGuire has planned further down the road.



2016 Book 22: Snake in the Glass by Seanan McGuire; 40 pages; SeananMcGuire.com; ebook; $free on website

The Premise: (from Goodreads) After New Orleans, Verity and Dominic are continuing to put their relationship through what can only be termed the ultimate stress-test: after all, there's a lot of country left to cover before they get to Oregon, and it's not like Verity is picking the most direct route. After all, she'd like him to meet her extended family before he meets her parents. Her parents are more likely to let him live if he has a few letters of recommendation. The Carmichael Hotel in Chicago has long been a favorite destination of the Price family when they need a home away from home, and what better way to test Dominic's evolving attitudes toward the cryptid world than by dropping him into a nest of gorgons? Besides, any excuse to see Uncle Mike and Aunt Lea is a good one...although there may be a few complications. There always are. When the modern world meets tradition and tradition meets practicality, it will be down to Dominic and Verity to show that sometimes, the ways you think are best are the ones that won't do anything to save you.

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Thoughts: This is the second of three novellas that fill in the year-long gap between McGuire’s InCryptid novels Midnight Blue Light Special and Chaos Choreography. This time, Verity is introducing Dominic to extended family. There’s a lot of character building for Dominic in particular. In fact, in its own quiet way, this is the story that convinced me Dominic is sincere about leaving the Covenant behind and joining the Price family. The story has a slower pace than the stories that precede and follow it, giving the reader as much a respite from the usually-hectic pace of the InCryptid world as Verity herself gets. Readers familiar with the Carmichael from its appearance in some of the Fran-and-John InCryptid stories will enjoy catching up with the gorgon family that runs the establishment; even more so I enjoyed another look into the gorgon community (and mentally couldn’t help contrasting this long-established urban settlement with the more rural settlement McGuire shows us in Half-Off Ragnarok). McGuire, as always, packs these 40 pages with a ton of world-building, character development and interpersonal development, but it never feels overwhelming.



2016 Book 23: Swamp Bromeliad by Seanan McGuire; 40 pages; SeananMcGuire.com; ebook; $free on website

The Premise: (from Goodreads): The next stop on Verity and Dominic's great road trip brings them back to where it all began: Buckley Township, Michigan, the town where two expatriates from the Covenant of Saint George once decided to settle down and rebuild their shattered family. It's a sleepy, rural community, long removed from the excitement of those early days...but the woods are still dark and deep, and the things that dwell there are still dangerous to the unwary. When two little boys appear at the Old Parrish Place, claiming that a flower has devoured their friend, it's up to Verity and Dominic to go out into the woods and see whether or not there's something left to save. It's a journey into someone else's dark place, and it's hard to say who's more frightened by the idea: Verity, who knows how much she has to lose, or Dominic, who has no idea. It's time to see where the past meets the future, and how the echoes of the one continue to inform the other. It's time to return to the woods of Buckley, and see what can be seen there. It's time to bring a child home.

My Rating: 4 stars out of 5

My Thoughts: This is the third of three novellas that fill in the year-long gap between McGuire’s InCryptid novels Midnight Blue-Light Special and Chaos Choreography.  These novellas are more than just an attempt by the author to fill in some of the “missing time” for Verity and Dominic while Verity’s brother Alex takes over the lead in the InCryptid novels. They’re linked not just by chronology but by theme. There’s a sense, reading them back to back, of both “the journey is the destination” and “the past is present.” Verity has been trying to soften Dominic’s first meeting with her parents and younger sister by introducing him to blood and extended family; he started this sequence meeting one ghost-aunt and ends it visiting with another. Mary Dunlavy has always watched out for the children of the Price family, and this visit is no different. One of the subtler tissues connecting all three novellas is that Verity’s aunts and uncle don’t do much more than observe: they’re watching to see how Dominic fits in, but I think almost as important they’re watching to see how Verity supports Dominic’s immersion into this world (of which he’s always been aware but has also always been an outsider to). This connectivity of family watching out for us, and judging, and hopefully finding worthy, the people we fall in love with, is something I didn’t consciously notice the first time I read each of these. 
It’s also always a delight when McGuire focuses on a previously unknown, or at least un-detailed, cryptid – this time it’s the killer plant “swamp bromeliad.”  And that’s another thing that ties these stories together: Dominic’s exposure to different types of cryptids in each story (ghosts in the first; gorgon society in the second; predatory plants in this one).  He’s likely familiar with the types thanks to his Covenant training, but we get to see him have some first-hand experience – which involves making mistakes. That humanizes him even more.

And so, another month has passed without an entry here.

At least it's for good reason. Work travel, to an extent. But also lots of writing. And rewriting. And editing. And rewriting. And writing.

You get the point.

Because I've been doing so much writing, along with a bunch of television-watching and household chores and things like that, the book and story reviews have fallen behind.  Honestly, I've done precious little reading since the beginning of March. Part of that is that I haven't been flying for work, and the trips I have taken have been "quick turnaround" (meaning, for instance, drive up to St. Albans VT on Monday, teach Tuesday, drive home Tues night. Or drive to Plainfield CT on Sunday, teach Monday, drive home Monday night).

But I still have a few book reviews to write and post, and a small pile of short story reviews to put out there as well.

Writing wise, I did probably the heaviest rewriting I've ever done during this past month. Two different stories went through deep cuts and extensive rewriting. The process was both traumatic and cathartic, and if these two stories sell, a good portion of the credit will go to the beta-readers who were bluntly honest with me that earlier drafts just weren't working for them.

One of those heavily-revised stories was sent out to an open call yesterday; the other will go out in the next day or so. That will bring me up to 8 stories currently out on submission, which is close to my goal of 10 stories out at any one time.

Also in writing-related news: today I received my contributor copies and copies I'd ordered from Amazon of the anthology ONE THOUSAND WORDS FOR WAR, edited by Madeline Smoot and Hope Erica Shultz and published by CBAY Books. The anthology includes my story "Threshold." You can purchase it in print and Kindle formats from Amazon now. You can also buy it in print and Nook formats from Barnes & Noble.

2016 Book 20: Resume Speed by Lawrence Block; aisn B01BVQS3A0; 60 pages; LB Productions; ebook; $2.99


The Premise: (from Goodreads): From the legendary author of A Walk Among the Tombstones comes this gripping tale of sudden endings and new beginnings. When a man called Bill spots a sign in a restaurant window, he grabs his carry-on and gets off his bus. Within an hour he’s got himself a job as a short-order cook, and a start on a whole new life in Cross Creek, Montana. Things just fall into place. He applies for a library card, and the next thing you know he’s having dinner with the librarian. One thing leads to another, and he can see a whole new life stretching out before him…

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

My Thoughts: There are many facets of fiction-writing that Lawrence Block is an acknowledged master of, in either short story or novel form or both. One of those is the "slow boil," especially in his shorter fiction. I realize that sounds like a contradiction in terms: how can a short piece have slower builds than a novel? The thing with a novel is, the slow build of tension is a necessity. The author has to set several plots to heating, and has to fill several hundred pages before any of them can come to a full boil. In novellas and short stories, that type of gradual increase in tension is much harder to pull off, and Block usually manages it well. So it's no surprise he does that here. In a scant 50 or so pages (Amazon says 60, but that includes cover and end matter), he introduces us to Bill Thompson, a wandering man. Bill is a nice guy, a hard worker, a charmer. But he's on the run from something. Block lets us go for almost half the story before we even start to get hints as to what that might be ... and it's not frustrating at all. We're so engrossed in  how Bill is settling into this small Montana town that he picked simply because he saw a "help wanted" sign in a restaurant window as his bus glided through town, that we're not really paying attention to the small clues the author is dropping that something's not quite right.

This novella is also a quiet story. No gunfights, no graphic sex (the main character does have sex, but Block modestly glosses over it), no thefts, not even a bar-fight. And that makes the slow boil even more effective. Because of how intimate and quiet and nice most of the story is, because of how "in Bill's head" we get, the ending hits even harder. I saw what was coming, hoped to hell I was wrong, and walked away feelling it was both inexorable and inevitable.

NOTE: Goodreads counts stand-alone e-published short stories and novellas as books, so I do too, just to keep my counts consistent between LJ, GR, and my database. This review was cross-posted to 365shortstories as well.