RFAK No. 12: Poison’s Kiss, by Breeana Shields

Poison’s Kiss, by Breeana Shields, 295 pages.

Confession: I did not have time to read this book before it was time to pick finalists for the Whitney Awards. In fact, it remained the only young adult fantasy finalist I hadn’t read.

And this book is going to get my vote as best young adult fantasy novel in 2017.

I know there are favorites in the category – Blood Rose Rebellion being the top contender, at least as I peruse social media. And I liked Rosalyn Eves’ story. But Poison’s Kiss . . .

Why is this my topper?

It’s a demonstration of the banality of evil.

For a very long time, you get the feeling there’s only one evil character in the book – Gopal, the creepy tender of Iyla and Miranda. And even his creepiness comes out in fits and starts, startling the reader with each reveal.

Then you come to realize that there are other evil characters, even if they don’t really consider themselves to be evil – because like Hitler’s Nazis (I’m borrowing the “banality of evil” phrase from Hannah Arendt’s book “The Banality of Evil”) these characters believe they’re acting in the best interest of the powers that be, not knowing, of course, that the powers they work for are the evil ones afoot.

Shields also successfully creates a rivalry – not a friendship, and you get the feeling it’ll never really be a friendship, even if these two characters were together for a thousand years – that balances on the perception of evil that each sees in the other. Miranda and Iyla will likely associate with each other for the rest of their lives, each believing the evil in their past and present is kinda the fault of the other.

Sheilds’ characters are what pop out in this novel. They’re complicated. Certainly not sugary. I’d like to hear more from them.

Making Prime Work Part V

NOTE: This is the start of a very intermittent series on this blog, wherein I review anything I may have watched, read, or otherwise gained from our Amazon Prime membership. This is partly to continue justifying the cost of Amazon Prime as it takes yet another leap, and to remind me what a wonderful cornucopia of media there is out there that I have yet to witness, or re-witness as the case may be.

Part One: Revenge. REVENGE! (Shhh!)



I remember, vaguely, reading The Count of Monte Cristo in late junior high or early high school. I rather enjoyed the story (the Abbe Faria part, not necessarily the revenge part).

I also remember watching the Richard Chamberlain 1975 version of “The Count of Monte Cristo” as a classroom reward after we finished reading the book. I remember it as my introduction to the Hollywood tradition of monkeying with storylines.

Caderousse isn’t a tailor, but a sailor who crosses Edmond Dantes as a thief.

And I guess that’s about it, aside from a lot of characters and situations who are just left out of the story.

They tightened the story. Which was a good thing. As the story really needed tightening. (I tried to read the original, unexpurgated version. In French. It needed some tightening.)

Rewatching it now is an education. Partly an education on bad acting – de Villefort and his pretend fisticuffing-turned-buffonery in court stands out. And then there’s Donald Pleasance. Always a delight. And clearly when I watched this the first time, I had no idea who Tony Curtis is.

Then there’s Richard Chamberlain counting down his successful revenges. Corny.

Also, he shoots at modern playing cards in the run-up to the duel with Albert Mondego. And they had a sword fight ON THE TABLE. How awesome is that? Old school. But awesome.

The story of the futility of revenge still shines through.

Because he gets his revenge. He counts down his One. Two. Three. Four. And Mercedes leaves. For Marseilles, home of her misery. Where he loses Mercedes – the Countess Mondego – all over again. Sniff.

Part Two: An Historian Writing a Made-Up History

I approached the documentary “The Real Middle Earth” with a bit of trepidation, particularly after reading a bunch of one-star reviews of it at Amazon. However, the documentary is better than what these reviewers claim.

Part of the documentary’s charm – and its shame – is that typical British “HEY THIS IS A FANTASY” treatment of the material: Spoopy creeping clouds, the whiz-bang of the special effects meant to offset the clunky practical effects, spring-sproing music (marimbas, xylophones, glockenspiel, etc.) just like what you see and hear typically in treatments of Terry Pratchett’s stories*, viz:



Of course, there’s a lot of speculation when it comes to real places inspiring places in The Lord of the Rings, and of the effects Tolkien’s experiences during World War I had on the novels. But it’s hard to imagine these places and experiences not having an influence.

If I can criticize something, it’s the continued re-use of the same images during the World War I segment of the documentary. Surely there were many more pictures to draw from than the less than half dozen the use over and over. Also, about half the documentary is spent wandering about the geographic possibilities of The Shire, kinda leaving the majority of Middle Earth out.

*I’m not saying this kind of treatment is bad, per se – compared to the schlock American cinema produces (which tends to focus on grit, gore, and the banality of good v. evil). I am saying it’s clearly British.

Eagle Project Update

If all goes well Sunday with district approval of Isaac’s Eagle project, we could be doing said project the first Saturday of July.

Our only glitch may be getting volunteers to come help. His Scoutmaster has a family reunion that weekend, and it is the weekend following the Fourth of July, so many Scout families may not be around to help. As it is, I’ll have to go to Treasure Mountain Scout Camp to retrieve Isaac – and likely his brother and sister – to help with the project, unless I can coax Michelle into coming home Friday night rather than Saturday afternoon. I might be able to wing that.

And you know what? I don’t think Isaac cares whether or not many of the members of his Scout troop come or not. We just want to get the project done. He’s got an odd relationship with Scouting. He loves Scout Camp and hanging out with the boys in the context that he’s kind a cool being on camp staff, but when it comes to doing things with his own troop, he gets frustrated since they’re working with younger Scouts on stuff that he’s already finished. I can’t help that, and I wish I could get across to him that he could be a role model and a help to the younger Scouts in his troop. Also part of it might be that he’s disappointed that I wasn’t Scoutmaster for his tenure in the troop; he only got to be with me for a year, not the two years he anticipated.

Best news about this is that we know the other Scout, who has to complete sanding and peeling of the benches before Isaac and crew can stain them, is on the same approval track that we are – we both ended up meeting with the folks from Camp Cumorah Tuesday night for a little signature party. That Scout will do his project on July 5 – we’ll head up on the 7th.

So that means I gotta make a Home Depot run to get some tools and supplies. We’ll provide the tools – the camp will provide the stain, which is great, since the stain is pretty spendy. And I don’t mind buying the tools. We learned doing Liam’s Eagle project a few years ago that the local hardware stores get inundated with requests for donations from Eagle Scout candidates, so it’s not even worth asking for donations. That goes for the mom and pop shops (we do have a few) and the national chains. But I’ve already got some turpentine and spending a little money on gloves and rollers and such won’t break the bank, and it’ll meet the No. 1 goal of the project: Getting it done.

The only real variable we’re working with here is wondering whether the eight gallons of stain the camp has will be enough to do the benches. It all depends on how much stain the benches soak up as we work. I guess we’ll paint until we run out of benches or stain, and then see where we stand if the stain runs out first. Hopefully these pine benches aren’t as thirsty as my cedar fence is in the back yard.

Depending on how quickly the follow-up paperwork goes, Isaac could get his Eagle before he turns 14 in August – something he’d like to do, just for the bragging rights of getting his Eagle while he’s at Scout Camp to be showered with adoration from his fans there. And it would mean Mom and Dad no longer have to be pushing to get a project completed. We’ll see how it goes.

[Insert Good Headline Here]

Good headlines are like any other kind of writing -- you have to write thousands of them to get the good ones to come out.

And what do I mean by a "good" headline?

That all comes down to what headlines are for.

Headlines are hooks. They're the first bit of information you toss out to your readers. They're the first bit of information your readers judge to decide if they want to read the rest of the story.

Here are a few rules I follow (mostly unconsciously now) when I write a headline:

1. Be as specific as you can in the space you're allowed
2. Don't use journalism jargon
3. Use wordplay or puns, with two caveats:
       a. Don't force them
       b. Use sparingly
4. Bring your readers into your story
5. Not every headline you write is going to be great.

The most important rule to remember is No. 5. But the others help a lot.

Here are a few examples of what I mean:

1. Be as specific as you can in the space you're allowed

Headlines used to mean economy of words, particularly in newspapers. That real estate has loosened up over time with the advent of the Internet. Still, you don't want to go on forever in a headline (readers are impatient, and going on forever is what the story is for).

Here's a great specific headline (courtesy of the [Boise] Idaho Statesman:

This headline packs a lot of information in only 12 words. We get the who: Drivers. We get there where: Interstate 84. We get the what: Lane closures. And we get the why: Contributed to crash that killed 4.

Combined with the picture, this combination is one that I'll bet a lot of people read (also because it follows one of the oldest journalism rules in the book: If it bleeds, it leads.) The headline puts the reader into the story, and many were probably thinking, "Yeah, I drove I-84 before this accident, and the lane closures sure didn't make a lot of sense."

2. Don't use journalism jargon

I see journalism jargon in mostly newspaper reporters, though all of us are guilty of it from time to time. What do I mean? Things like this:

"Washington Girds for Battle Over Kennedy's Replacement"

Let me ask you a question: When you prepare for something, do you use the word "gird"? Ever use that word when you speak?

I don't. Unless I'm trying to be ironic.

Journalists always have people girding for battle. They always have police throwing a cordon around a crime scene. And it's almost always the Pontiff -- not the Pope -- who comes for a visit.

Better headline, same story:

No journalism speak. And I'll bet this headline got a lot more people riled up than what the Gray Lady presented on the same day.

Note: I'm not endorsing any kind of politics here. Doesn't matter if you don't like the NY Post, or the NY Times. This is about headlines. And truth be told, some of the best headlines I've ever read have been in the likes of The National Enquirer or the Weekly World News.)

3. Use wordplay or puns, with two caveats:
       a. Don't force them
       b. Use sparingly

Writing a headline like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity:

If you have the opportunity to write a headline like this and you don't take it, I probably won't like you as a person.

That being said, if EVERY HEADLINE you write is like this, your readers and your editors are going to be all:

Puns and wordplay help a good headline become a great one, but if you use puns and wordplay in every headline, you're going to dilute the effect. And some of the headlines you come up with will be mediocre puns at best.

So strike light lightning when you can. But don't overdo it.

4. Bring your readers into your story

We've seen a hint of this in an earlier part of the discussion. But let's continue here.

First, there's this:

Here's your typical Who What When Where headline, and it gets the job done. But the words harassed and threatened are pretty commonplace. Harassed how? And threatened to what degree? We have to read the story to find out. And with everyone across the nation either covering this story or using Associated Press copy of this story, a good headline can help one writer's story stand out.

Sometimes digging deeper into the story itself -- or even reading the story that's presented -- offers much better possibilities.

Consider this quote from the LA Times' story itself:

Now imagine the story with this headline:

But with better typography and kerning (I'm not a graphic artist).

By looking into the story, we find a headline that is more specific and draws our readers into the story that generic words like harassed and threatened just don't have the power to do.

One more look at this story in particular. Which headline here is better? And why?

5. Not every headline you write is going to be great.

This is at the same time the hardest and the easiest rule to follow. Hard, because we want everything we touch to be worthy to hang in the Louvre. Easy because if you're like me, you'll end up for years writing, as Dave Barry puts it, "boring stories on municipal government." There are only so many clever headlines you can write about local improvement districts, what diameter of sewer pipe the city should buy, and how well the local bowling league is doing.

And it sounds like most of you have hopes that take you beyond local journalism. But the same rule applies, just on a bigger scale.

Scan any national news outlet and for the most part, you're going to see run-of-the-mill, pedestrian headlines. Oh, a few will stand out. But the vast majority of them are just going to be there, doing the job, but punching out at 5 pm and going home to have a beer.

So don't stress about every headline, because not every headline is destined for greatness.

Making Prime Work Part IV

NOTE: This is the start of a very intermittent series on this blog, wherein I review anything I may have watched, read, or otherwise gained from our Amazon Prime membership. This is partly to continue justifying the cost of Amazon Prime as it takes yet another leap, and to remind me what a wonderful cornucopia of media there is out there that I have yet to witness, or re-witness as the case may be.

Part One: A Film Set in America Yet Featuring Comically Impossible Italian Cars

I’m not a big fan of the zombie/vampire film genre. There’s only so much you can do with a story about hiding out from the baddies. Particularly when the baddies are of the slow, mumbling, gonna get you when I actually get around to it variety.

And I’ll admit when I saw "The Last Man on Earth" was based on the book “I Am Legend” as the opening credits spooled, I was surprised the book was that old (given its recent treatment in the Will Smith vehicle of the same name).

And eh. I could live without this film.

Though it was fun to see all these comical Italian vehicles in a film that’s supposed to be set in the United States, or so I assume when “his excellency the governor” appears on TV to say his state too has been declared a disaster area.



Vincent Price seemed ill-fitted to the role. His character needed the cocky assurance of Charlton Heston a la The Omega Man, another film based on this book. Yet Price’s vulnerability, brought about by the inevitable laughter over memories begetting tears over the same memories, is undeniable.

And where did the organized group of vampire-killers get their matching outfits?

Part Two: These Days, Anyone Can Make A Documentary

First of all, I was right. That is Elliot Gould narrating "The Soyuz Conspiracy".

That’s been the only thing I’ve liked about it.

Well, there was the background used for one of the experts interviewed for the film: a touristy book on Russia, some nesting dolls, and a big map clearly labeled, Batmanesque, “Former Soviet Union” tacked to the wall behind him.

While the story told is compelling, everything else about this film feels amateurish, from the schlocky graphics to the “put more Russian stuff in the background” set dressing.

There’s little about this film that feels new – maybe it was in 2000. Looking at it now, it’s hard to tell what the “new footage” the documentary touts is, as most of what we’re seeing is film of Soviet parades.

And in describing the death of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, bada boom, it feels like Gould goes off-script. Or maybe he stayed on a terribly-written script.

In any shape or form, this documentary feels slipshod, just like an early Soyuz.

Damnation Memoriae

We live in an inconvenient world.

It’s not perfect. Far from it. And while we lurch back and forth on the march to perfection, sometimes getting better, often getting worse, we make mistakes.

That’s inconvenient.

So to compensate, often we overcompensate.

That’s a mistake.

For example:

After months of deliberation, the organization behind a prestigious book award has decided to remove the name of author Laura Ingalls Wilder because of her portrayal of Native Americans. The Association for Library Service to Children gives out the "Laura Ingalls Wilder Award" yearly to authors hose work has made a lasting impact on the world of children's literature. The honor will now be known as the Children's Literature Legacy Award.

Now, I’m about to make a silly comparison.

Silly, because the ALSC says it’s silly on its face. And for what it’s worth, I believe what they say:
"Changing the name of the award, or ending the award and establishing a new award, does not prohibit access to Wilder's works or suppress discussion about them. Neither option asks or demands that anyone stop reading Wilder's books, talking about them, or making them available to children. These recommendations do not amount to censorship, nor do they undermine intellectual freedom."
Yet, since I get that poem quoted at me when I dare suggest that comparing the current situation on the US border to the Holocaust is a bit of an overcompensation, I’m going to go there.

Memory holes.

George Orwell describes memory holes in his novel 1984 thusly:

“In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.”

So I will concede I’m wrong (a little bit) on the border issue. Because of the slippery soap on the slippery slope.

In compromise, can we say that renaming this award is a bit like the first step to shoving books we don’t like into a memory hole?

Now, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’ve never read anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I didn’t even watch the TV show based on her books all that much. Maybe in passing when that prissy girl whose parents owned the store was on the screen, because she wasn’t as saccharine as the others. But not much beyond that.

Here’s something else to consider: Are we going to begin scrutinizing everything for stuff that’s bad? I mean, *you* can still read it, but the enlightened folks won’t because they know it’s bad. So scratch Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” because astronaut Alan Shepherd? He’s all sorts of racist with his Jose Jimenez impersonation. And he got his comeuppance. That’s all in the book. And the movie.

There’s this to consider: Who decides what is offensive?

I’ve read some books I cannot recommend because of reasons. Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man? Terrible. Yet if I I decided to denigrate the book or its author in some way for reasons, I’d get a snootful.

Whose reasons weigh more? And whose hands are on the scale?

Pick up that scrap of paper. Don’t read it. Just lift the grate and toss it in the hole.

Eagle Project!

Finally, after having phone numbers in his possession for many months, Isaac called them. He now has a good Eagle Scout project lined up at Camp Cumorah, up in the foothills east of town. Providing we can get the requisite approvals, the project will be done soon.

What is he doing? He’s going to stain 40 benches at a new amphitheater at the camp. Another Scout is going to sand and peel the benches, so we have to wait until he’s done. And the camp is kinda anxious to have all this done before their family reunion season starts up mid-July. So technically we could be doing this project next week, if the other Scout is on the ball.

Making the call and then driving up to Camp Cumorah this weekend was penance for both of us, since a misunderstanding between Michelle and I led to Isaac not going with his Scout troop on their “scout camp” campout this week. (I don’t know what the big deal is, as the only actual event he was going to participate in was their swimming in Jackson on their first day; the rest of the time he was going to be in camp with Michelle, underfoot and babbling. But it’s not mine to guess.)

We’ll meet with the unit advancement chair on Tuesday, and hopefully with the Camp Cumorah representatives either Tuesday or Wednesday so we can get signatures – then we have to meet with the Grand Teton Council guy who approves projects. Hopefully we can get in to him quickly. Good thing is he lives just up the street from us.

We’re hoping this turns out to be a good project. Logistically, it’s simpler than Liam’s was – he painted house numbers on curbs in part of an Ammon neighborhood for the fire department. We learned quite a bit from that one, namely not to do it again (but if we did, we sure know better how to handle things, and that would include laminating the templates so they didn’t fall apart on us so quickly.)

So far, the worst part of the thing was tracking down the folks at the different camps (there are two up there) who were in the know enough to tell us what they needed and, more importantly, be the ones we’d hit up to sign the paperwork). Here’s to hoping it goes smoothly.

Doleful Creatures in Poetry

Been working on this for a while now. It's better, but I'm still not satisfied with it.

After the light, after the darkness,
After the deep of the blue.
After the green, before their coming –
Before the storm clouds flew;

Come The Lady, come the dragon –
Come le loup garou.
Come the time of subtle voices,
To the garden say adieu.

Kept the hope remaining
Kept the songs of the heart
Kept the light a-shining
Though for a time we dwell apart.

Watch for the return of the Minder
Watch for the coming to start
Watch for love everlasting
Though for a time we dwell apart.

RFAK No. 11, The Dragon Orb, by Mike Shelton

The Dragon Orb, by Mike Shelton, 326 pages.

Some books are a slow burn – which is why I rarely stop reading a book, even if the beginning is a bit iffy.

That’s the case with Mike Shelton’s The Dragon Orb, a book that starts out with a klunk (with some wonky writing) but ends with a flourish of storytelling that made me glad I didn’t give up.

A few of the characters are a bit too perfect, but that’s okay.

The writing, especially at the beginning, is stilted, but that’s okay.

Why okay? Because the story pulled me through. As I read I began forming visions in my head of what the characters looked like, and began placing them in bits of geography I’ve visited as Shelton told his story. To me, that’s a sign of a good book.

I think part of the klunk came from the king-men and other vocabulary borrowed from the Book of Mormon. Not that it’s terrible the author did that, but the familiarity had my head hollering “B of M” every time it came up. Nevertheless, I got used to seeing such wording in the book, so that passed. To anyone not familiar with the borrowed vocabulary or concepts, there won’t be an issue.

Shelton’s characters are prefab, and we only get to see one of them grow as the story progresses. The rest are driven by the narrative and the (obvious) roles they’ll play in future novels. Shelton suffers the same characterization affliction I do – his characters pretty much sound the same.

The book might win the award for Least Likely Poisoning – I’m not sure anyone could successfully lunge up to someone and force them to drink out of a little glass bottle without the victim vigorously fighting back and succeeding. But I’m not a poisoning expert.

We are Men of Action

It’s hard to say whether this is what we’ve become, or if this particular beast has been slouching toward Bethlehem for a very, very long time.

We have lenses that magnify it.

Oh, there were lenses with the beast all along. But the Internet, that great social equalizer as long as you have a device and an Internet connection, that’s the lens of all lenses. It puts the theses-writers and pamphleteers to shame. Because now each and every one of us can spout off our nonsense and it doesn’t cost us a thing. Except time.

And boy do we have time. Clay Shirky talks about cognitive surplus. We’re cognitive surplussing left and right, and in all dimensions.



But that brings me to today’s comic strip: Truth to Power vs Lies to Weasels. Both have existed since the beast began lumbering, and to varying degrees, Truth wins and Lies wins.

The lenses we have today don’t increase the chance of either side winning. They just make both sides really, really loud.

And what’s important is to be right. And if you’re wrong what’s important is that somewhere, somehow, the person who is right did something wrong, and is thus wrong as well.



No matter this finger-pointing, virtue-signalling, or social justice warrior-ing doesn’t really fix the problem at hand – what’s important is to score those all-important points through the lenses everyone else builds their perceptions on.

Because perception is what counts these days. I look like I’m doing Something, so that’s enough.

What did you do in the war, daddy?

I was right on the Internet, son.

[Hero worshipping intensifies]

But doing  Something is important these days. Because to do nothing means You. Are. Hitler. Or at least one of his minions.

This is going to get quoted at you. A lot:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

And it is powerful. It calls for action.

Action. Not “Something” that signals virtue or wags fingers or being right on the Internet.

Action.

Look for action in those who use it.

Action is hard to find.

Dragons at Crumbling Castle

Dragons at Crumbling Castle, a collection of stores by a teenaged Terry Pratchett, is the kind of book that gives aspiring writers hope.

As Pratchett himself writes in the book’s dedication, young Pratchett is a writer in larval stage. “To my younger self, who thought these stories were pretty good,” Pratchett writes “Oh, I could teach that lad a thing or two.”

In these stories lies Pratchett’s inventiveness with names, his skill at seeing things from just that slightly different angle, and the beginnings of the satirist we love. And yet for the aspiring writer, here’s proof that not everything a writer writes – and gets published – is gold.

Doubtless all writers dream that someday they’ll be so successful historians and other curious creatures will poke through the rubble of their earliest writings to find the gem of the genius. There’s plenty of that to be found in this collection. But there’s also enough cringe in the writing to say, yeah, Ray Bradbury is right in saying a writer has to write a lot to get the bad stuff out before the good can make it to the page. Paraphrasing of course.

I’m not sure I’d recommend Dragons at Crumbling Castle as an introduction to Pratchett, as the stories are so much different than his Discworld novels. A young reader going from Dragons to Discworld might be better served with the Tiffany Aching series as an intermediate buffer.

Also of note: Almost every review I read of this book comments on the illustrations by Quentin Blake. Nope. These drawings are the work of Mark Beech, who is blessed/cursed to draw in a style imitative of Blake’s. But it’s not Blake.

No Disintegrations

So Sunday morning, as water dripped through the kitchen ceiling into the pan I had soaking on the countertop, I decided a little action was called for.

Shut the water feed off to the house. Yanked out the valve in the shower above the kitchen and replaced the valve. I knew it was leaking into the tub and figured it was probably leaking into the wall as well. Hoped that would fix the problem and, if the drier kitchen is any proof, it did.

I just know I need Darth Vader to come to our house and issue his famous line:

Houses are true proof of entropy, and likely evidence why elves lived in forests or in buildings hewn from stone.

Our house has rigorously tried to dissolve itself wince we moved in six years ago, particularly the bathroom above the kitchen. I’m hoping the new shower valve will stave off the disintegration for at least a month or two while I get other jobs done.

Status:

MAIN FLOOR TILE. Need to tile bathroom and foyer closet, and grout laundry room. Fix soft spots in the kitchen.

ROOF. Finish ridge cap on the upper portion of the roof and replace shingles on the porch and kitchen window pop-out. Also haul off the discarded shingles. Yesterday’s gullywasher also reminded me I need to clean those gutters out. Maybe if it’s not raining this evening . . .

SIDING. The siding damaged by the April hailstorm still has not been replaced. I may decide to tackle it myself, once the roof it done. In the meantime, we’ll cover the holes with tape.

FENCE. Once the other two projects are done, replace front fence and start on back fence, particularly the portion only being held up by the Turpins’ bushes.

MASTER BATH. Really need to re-tile and get some cement underneath the bathtub. That’s probably another year down the road or until that bathroom starts leaking, whichever comes first.

May have to get the house a disintegration-proof vest.

RFAK No. 10, Waking Beauty, by Brittlyn Gallacher Doyle

Based on Internet searches -- and the popularity of the Sleeping Beauty tale -- it's clear the question of "What happened to Aurora and her prandsome hince after [insert evil fairy's name here] curse was reversed?

I've not read the others. And I'll admit, this book took a while to grow on me. But I liked its message of finding oneself after the powers -- both good and ill -- fade. I'll leave it there with no spoilers.

Perfection is indeed a character flaw, as Claire nee Aurora discovers in this journey. And -- not really a spoiler here because who couldn't see this coming -- another character flaw is believing the prandsome hince who kissed you awake is the one who's kiss is supposed to break the curse. Though it seems like cheating to have the kiss of some rando waken you when the non-rando's who's supposed to deliver the real curse-breaker is right there.

One annoying aspect of the book: When the prandsome hince isn't needed in the story or would interfere somehow in some interesting way, he's easily shooed away. Maybe too easily. Particularly after suspicions are aroused. But maybe that's just me.

One note for the author and editor: Horses have reins. Not reigns. And it's clear in several passages here that both author and editor have some trouble with homonyms. But that's a small matter.

RFAK No. 9, Billy Blacksmith, The Demonslayer; by Ben Ireland

One of the things I detest the most about your typical high fantasy story is the inevitable training montage. Pupative hero has never wielded a weapon more deadly than a spoon, yet shows natural talent in the arena or ring or whatever when the skeptical trainer puts him or her through the wringer. A little blood is shed and before you know it, WHAMMO, you’ve got the Hero trained up and thumping baddies’ skulls like he or she’s been doing it since they were children.

It’s not often you see such a training montage be mostly baseball, a blood ritual, and a plucky, comic-relief sidekick who’s kinda scary with her fascination with throwing knives.

At least she didn’t end up as bait in the trap to get the hero to go to the spot where the baddies are waiting (that fell to the nebbish book-nerd friend, natch).

And here you have the tale of Billy Blacksmith, Demonslayer.

This is entry-level fantasy, I have to remind myself. Those looking for the kind of tale in which the characters sound like their bums are stuffed with tweed best look elsewhere. Ben Ireland isn’t that kind of writer, clearly. Though it’s also clear he loves a good adventure, and is good at action scenes.

The comic asides are, well, kinda predictable. Humor is much more difficult to write than action. The humor here smacks of the typical in your superhero movie. Battle, smirk, characters say something funny, more battle. It’s fine in its way.

I’m not getting much of a connection with the characters – though sometimes I have to read a book more than once for that to happen. Ireland’s characters are just what you expect them to be – Billy, the tubby baseball player turned hero, amazed at his gnarly powers which came about with the help of a visiting demon who performed one ritual to trigger the “demonseed” blood in Billy’s veins.

There’s Ash-lea (yes, just like that), the throwing-knife champion, who battles right alongside Billy despite NOT having any demonseed blood in her aroused. Then there’s the nerdy Greyson, along for the ride to be the helpless victim. Billy’s a foster kid whose parents (spoiler) died defending him and his slightly older brother as waifs from invading spiders, similar to the one that tries to get Billy at the opening of the novel. So the orphan thing, combined with his terrible foster parents, the Fosters (snigger), are supposed to make him sympathetic.

Eh. It’s been done.

Contrariwise, the rich redneck family going hell-for-leather to rescue their son? Loved every minute of it.

Overall, this is a good, contemporary tale that would probably pull reluctant readers into fantasy novels, and that’s no mean feat.

Showing Up

The phone in my pocket rang. So I answered it. It’s what you do.

Jerome. It’s always Jerome, and he starts a conversation with you by finishing first the conversation he was having before he dialed your number.

He’s talking, and I can hear some numbers. They mean something so I latch onto those numbers, but all the while I can see the sail of the Big Southern Butte in the bus window and I’m confused because it means the bus is going the wrong way.

We’re heading home. Which is confusing why Jerome is calling about these numbers, which identify procedures. We’ll get them out, but tomorrow. I’m going home. Except there’s the Big Southern Butte in the window, and that means we’re not going home.

Did Jerome talk to the bus driver and get him to turn around? It’s possible. The butte is rather green – we had a slightly wetter spring than normal. And it is getting closer.

It’s morning.

It’s Thursday morning. Not afternoon, when we’re heading home.

So I stuff the phone back in my pocket. Jerome was probably done talking anyway. And I try to catch a few more minutes’ sleep.

This is adulthood. What so many of the youngsters want.

They can have it. And all the foggy drowsing on a bus, feet pinched again into steel-toed boots, throat dry from coughing during allergy season, and all the other trappings.

My patriarchal blessing says I should learn to do hard things, as doing hard things can lead you to accomplishing even harder things.

Younger Me assumed – and there’s still some of this assumption left – that this meant I’d be able to write the books I want to write.

More often than not, the hardest thing is showing up.

This morning, for example. After ten hours’ of stress over procedures that have to be revised quickly and then published, followed by a three-hour Scout meeting and then five short hours of sleep, the hard part is showing up.

Showing up.

80% of life, so the Internet says Woody Allen says, is showing up.

Sometimes, showing up is this:



That’s what makes us not want to show up at all. I was teetering on that brink this morning.

But we show up.

Because the brinks we teeter on often are of our own making. And products of our imagination. The brink I faced this morning crumbled as I got to work, got done the things I needed – not as expeditiously as you’d hope, but done nonetheless – and life goes on.

Life goes on.

You show up and life goes on.

You don’t show up and life still goes on.

So show up.

I won’t get into a debate about depression. Paranoia gallops through my family, and paranoia is in many ways different sides of the depression coin. Depression may keep you in bed, but paranoia is likely driving me to a grave earlier than most.

This is me. Either one.



Still. Pain and Panic showed up.

Despite the fog.

Despite the thought that, as that butte came closer, that it was the AM, not the PM.

It’s now 11 am. The brink has continued to crumble, with only one more hillock to overcome before I can peacefully drift into the weekend.

I’m glad I showed up today. Shows I can do hard things. Maybe I will get a book written after all. Though there are other hard things looming that I’m not too happy about. But that’s as it goes.

Are You Boys Cooking Up There? Are You Building an Interoicter?

WARNING: Spoilers.

There are two ways to go with science fiction. You can go the way where a good, science-based tale is told through the eyes and ears and minds of characters you like, but who don’t necessarily get in the way of the science. Then there are those characters who show up and demand FULL ATTENTION while the science just kinda happens in the background, and you leave disappointed that the book wasn’t better.

The latter is the case with Matthew Mather’s “Nomad,” a book I really wanted to like, but one that, at the end, is meh.

Is there time, I ask, for relationship-based jealousy as the world ends around you? The answer to Mather appears to be yes (and sets us up NICELY for the villain of the next book in the trilogy).

Also, can a bunch of refugees really hide from an phenomenon that incudes massive earthquakes and volcanic action in an area already naturally prone to such disaster by hiding in CAVES? I had a hard time with that part of the story.

Mather tells a good tale, and his science, with a few exceptions, seems to be okay. But those characters demanding full attention? They got in the way. A lot.

And it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why. The characters in, say, Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” don’t exactly sit back while science happens to them. But there is enough plausible awe in them that they keep themselves in check as they go about their sciencey explorations. Not so with Mather’s characters, who are all sorts of irrational as the irrational goes on alongside them. Want to settle a century-old bout of bad blood? Make sure you’re doing it as the world is ending around you. And by all means compress Armageddon, terrorism, and sexy times into as few days as possible just to make sure you hit the socio/religio/economical BINGO card as much as you can.

The best disaster stories are those where the protagonists don’t know what’s going on all around the world; they struggle to know what’s going on just in their tiny little neck of the woods.

This book smacks of building an interocitor. You have the plan, you know you’ve got 2,535 parts, and by golly you’re going to follow the plan and use all those parts, no matter if they’re related to soft-serve technology. Nomad checks off the boxes, but it’s poorly written. Every time you see a spool of magnetic tape, or a floppy disc, or a compact disc, the author’s going to remind you of the era that item is from. The opening paragraphs should be your first clue:

“Big enough to what?”

“Destroy the entire solar system,” repeated Dr. Muller, a sixty-something, pot-bellied man with thick spectactles below a tangle of gray hair. “And the Earth with it.”

Ben Rollins stared at him in dumbfounded silence and rubbed his bleary eyes. “That what I thought you said.” He wiped his hands down his face to pinch the bridge of his nose between his forefingers, squeezing his eyes shut. Opening them, he brought his hands away from his face together, as if in prayer, and exhaled slowly.”

RFAK No. 8, The Fire Queen, by Emily R. King

I’ll start off by saying this:

Be careful when you write in the first person.

This I’m learning firsthand as I read “The Fire Queen,” by Emily R. King. I set the book aside while on vacation – it’s tradition to read Terry Pratchett while on vacation – and coming back into it, I’m confused. The author writes in the first person. I’m right now at a loss trying to remember who is who, and who is the “I” speaking in the current chapter. She uses the characters’ names as names of the chapters to aid the reader, but more on that later.

Setting the book aside may be part of the trouble. I’d have to review any book thus abandoned and picked up again to get myself resituated in the story. But writing in the first person is risky, particularly if you’re relying on your readers to keep track of things. I’m a relatively unreliable and lazy reader, so I don’t like to look too far back in the text to find contextual clues.

And while using the characters’ names as chapter names is a good help, it’s more of a hurt as readers are inclined to use chapter headings as kind of an index to find places in the book (I’m using a version of the ebook that doesn’t allow bookmarking, so trying to find my place again when the chapter names are nothing but character names is difficult.)

This difficulty set aside, I’ve enjoyed The Fire Queen. While the gnarly powers I’m a little weary of are still there, it’s refreshing to see characters also engaging their wits as King’s characters do. (Small spoiler coming.) Kali could have used her control of fire to blast her way out of the underground labyrinth she’s imprisoned in at the outset of the contest of skills she’s thrust into, but she uses a rock instead (never mind the labyrinth is supposed to be impenetrable but we only spend a chapter in it).

And maybe this is all a good learning experience for me as I write my own books. Those I’ve read for this contest are tightly edited, with none of the little tangents I tend to find myself going towards as I write my own books. And that’s both good and bad. Avoiding the tangents keeps the story moving, but sometimes going off on a tangent can be something that pays off later.

Back to the labyrinth for a ferinstance. Kali encounters some spooky chiller glowing eyes there, and she runs from them – as we all would. But that’s all that’s said of the spooky eyes. Doing more with them might have made the labyrinth live up to its hastily-mentioned reputation. As it is, all we get are the spooky eyes. And maybe that’s just foreshadowing something else that happens in the books. I guess it’s wise to choose which tangents to go down.

I give King much credit for managing the differing storylines, despite my occasional difficulty in remembering whose story I’m reading, exactly. She does enough to demonstrate when one story is happening compared to the others, and showing us only what the other characters know (despite what we’ve seen already) to help heighten the tension.  And there is a lot of tension, which King builds nicely, particularly as various characters continue to sow lies and discontent leaving even the reader to question characters’ loyalties. To a point.

Altogether, this is one of the better books I’ve read for the 2017 Whitney Awards. A strong contender.

RFAK No. 7, Winter Falls, by Jacque Stevens

Oh, so this is a retelling. Of a Hans Christian Andersen story, “The Snow Queen”. It’s one I’ve never heard of. But that’s not saying much, as when it comes to HCA, I haven’t read a lot.

So I didn’t go into reading Jacque Stevens’ Winter Falls with any preconceived notions or baggage about how the story should go.

There are two worlds here. The first is the snowy world of Katie Graham and her family, and the roguish Shay. There are inns and ice skates. Logging and trains. There’s a Model T at one point, if I recall, and another male on crutches and with an IV in his arm. This world is muddled. At first, it felt like the timeless, somewhat wooly world created by Lois Lowry in The Giver, but the more I read, the more this world entered the wool of ambiguity. Katie’s specific slice of the world seemed pre-industrial revolution. But then there was the Model T and the IV. So I don’t know.

The second world is richer – it’s the world of fairy tales where (spoiler) Katie finds the mother she never knew and just leaves her there.

Like all fairy tales, this is a tale of wanting something. Katie wants a lot. But there are a lot of complications in Katie’s way, least of all the Snow Queen who comes to her vaguely time-defined village and takes away Shay, who could probably be played by sleazy-cool John Cusack if this book were filmed. (He might be a little old for the role, but you get the picture.) Katie’s biggest obstacle is, of course, Katie, something she learns while on her journey through the fairy tale world, which she entered after leaping after Ophelia off a bridge into the water.

Things just kinda blandly happen in this book. Even the battle between good and evil at the end is fairly bland, with no real sense of menace (you’d think a Snow Queen would get tired of freezing her enemies or creatures-as-tools, but nooooooooo). And the encounter with the fairy of fall? Borr-ing. This is where Katie meets the cat-like woman who is her mother, lost in this fairy tale limbo between life and “the light,” which is left undefined. Her mother shows little interest in her, and we learn why (no spoilers this time). Even the How Do We Solve This Problem denouement at the end is kinda bland.

Stevens falls into the same trap I do as a writer – all of her characters sound the same. There’s little variation in voice.

It’s an okay book if you’re a fan of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, and want a slightly soppy romance. Other than that . . . 

RFAK No. 6, The Crystal King, by John M. Olson

It was over rather quickly.

And I mean quickly. Within the span of a few pages, the evil invading king and his evil invading army were defeated by the plucky underdogs. Shortly thereafter, in what’s sure to be a setup for a sequel, the leader of the plucky underdogs is unanimously if begrudgingly appointed leader of them all and will marry the daughter of the defeated evil king.

Nobody made mistakes.

No major characters died.

Pretty sure only one named character died.

And here we are, finished with John Olson’s The Crystal King.

A fine story. But it feels written. Written to hit all the proper points of a novel. And I know it seems callow of me, an unpublished author, to say so – but this book won’t be winning the Whitney Award for fantasy for 2017.

I lost track of the pretty bows in this book.

The rebellious, slacker son of a baron grows up into the role and makes no mistakes but gosh darn it just feels so inadequate in the job but he does Everything. Right.

The spy of the baron, held in thrall by the baron because the baron has enslaved his wife with one of the magical crystals, betrays the baron to help the rebellious slacker son, whose mini crystal-controlled mercenaries rescue said spouse not really knowing who she is.

The rebels defend themselves against all odds using a rag-tag, fugitive fleet of cats, badgers, cows and rodents trained to perfection by those who Shouldn’t Be Meddling in Such Affairs.

And the big, bad baron dies but his evil plotting is twisted enough by the rebellious son to redeem him at least on paper with his people, so he can die as a martyr or something rather than a traitor.

The rebellious, slacker son doesn’t get the girl, or at least the girl he wants.

Olson writes a good battle scene, I’ll give him that. But the book feels like it was written to a checklist, rather than to a story.

RFAK No. 5, Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson

We might have a winner, folks.

If I can have my way come judging time for the YA fantasy nominees at the upcoming Whitney Awards, Sara B. Larson’s “Dark Breaks the Dawn” will be the winner.

I was told this story was a retelling of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” Which probably shows how unfamiliar I am with the story in Swan Lake – though I’ve long loved the music.

So I don’t know how faithful the basic storyline is – I assume it is fairly connected – but what makes Larson’s novel work is the crisp – often too spare – storytelling, and the little twist at the end astute readers will see coming yet it comes as somewhat of a surprise nonetheless.

And there’s very little smooching in this book. And the betrothed is apparently (spoilers) dead at the end. And the lady’s a swan. So I could have my daughter read this book and not have to explain anything. That’s a good sign in my book, as this is the first entrant in this category that has met this qualification for what you’d think would be a given for LDS-written YA fantasy.

I wonder if part of Larson’s success with this book is due to her maturity as a writer. This isn’t her first go-around with fantasy, nether her first start at a trilogy. So she knows the ins and outs of YA fantasy and is able to avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve read in other entrants.

Not that there aren’t a few.

The battles are short. The visit with the giant spider, anticlimactic. And as the fra’as were busy guarding the farmlings with theirkrytoses a lot in this book, I had a hard time keeping up with the jargon. (I know Tolkien set a high standard when it comes to inventive language in fantasy – as does Shakespeare – but Tolkien was a linguist at heart and Shakespeare was a genius, so they get a pass.) Writers generally fall into two camps with creative language – they either get it right and don’t let it get in the way of the story, or they get it almost right and the reader has to stumble around a lot trying to remember what ALL THESE WORDS MEAN. This book falls into the latter camp.

None of the characters in this book are standouts – they’re pretty typical fantasy fare: the menacing baddie, the brooding baddie’s son who might be a closeted good guy, the evil queen, the good queen, the spunky heroine, the spunky heroine’s lady-in-waiting, the main love interest, the love interest of the spunky heroine’s lady-in-waiting, etc. We get glimpses of them enough to know what role they play in the story, but little else. And Larson’s world is pretty devoid of anything but humanoids. Which I know reveals I like much messier books (though not "Little,Big" messy).

Check out Walter Wangerin Jr’s “Book of the Dun Cow” and “The Book of Sorrows,” if you want an idea of the kinds of messy books I like.

RFAK No. 4: Crystal Blade, by Katnryn Purdie

So the trend, it appears, in YA fiction – LDS YA fiction, no less – is for strong heroines who have to have a semi-sexy scene in order to take the curse off, what I don’t know.

I feel like with every book I read, I’m sitting in the advertising executive’s room listening to the preliminary pitch for Simpsons’ Individual Stringettes:

A Wapcaplet: Sex, sex, sex, must get sex into it. Wait, I see a television commercial – There’s a nude woman in a bath holding a bit of your string. That’s great, great, but we need a doctor, got to have a medical opinion. There’s a nude woman in a bath with a doctor – that’s too sexy. Put an archbishop there watching them, that’ll take the curse off it. . . 

The archbishop there watching in the case of Kathryn Purdie’s “Crystal Blade” is probably the LDS audience (intended or not, I’m not sure since the book isn’t billed as LDS fiction) reading. There’s nothing explicit. The sexy scene – coming right after a minor character’s suicide, no less – is brief. But again, I can’t recommend it to my daughter saying “An LDS author wrote this, so it’s okay.” Because it’s not.

Other than that, I have no quibbles with Purdie’s novel, second in a series. In fact, of those I’ve read for this contest, it’s the one that’s captivated me the most to want to find its predecessor.

Okay, one quibble: Too many emotional descriptors. Just let your character be emotional – sad, angry, what have you – in what they say, not in how they set their jaw.

In this way, reading these books for the Whitney Awards is an excellent education in writing. I get to see what works and what grates – and then I get to translate that into my own fiction.

Purdie’s story is top notch, with a heroine seeing and acknowledging her flaws, wanting to use her powers as a means to an end, but seeing that means as evil, even if the end is good. More of Popeye’s philosophy of “Wrong is wrong, even if it helps ya.” So that’s a great aspect to this story.

The betrayal part – the novel’s tagline is “Betrayal Cuts Deep” is maybe augmented by reading the first installment. I mean there’s betrayal here, but I’m not sure at the depth of it.

So, a good story. One I might hesitate to have my daughter read, because of the aforementioned scene.

I will now continue to scour the earth for smutless fires.

RFAK No. 3: Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

I've been rightly told I need to get more female characters into the books I write.

I'm not sure this is the way to do it.

Because, first of all, there's this:



Not that I mind a good kissing book. "The Princess Bride," for example. A great kissing book.

Then there's Tricia Levenseller's "Daughter of the Pirate King." Also a kissing book. But it's kissing for all the wrong reasons.

I've just had to endure two foreplay scenes within seconds of each other. With different men. And all for nefarious reasons: Princess Alosa isn't above using sex, or at least the promise of it, this is the Whitney Awards we're talking about here, to get what she wants. I'm sure nothing will consummate until Alosa weds the winsome First Mate Ridenm but even then I don't want my fourteen-year-old daughter reading this book, marketed as it is as YA fantasy (that's the category I'm reading for the awards, you see).

There's a bit of this here as well:



I am also guilty of this. I'm very aware of this. Which is why it stands out so much in this book.

Witness:

"What did you do?" he asks.

I quirk an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"You . . . you just changed. You looked off for a moment, but I thought I'd imagined it. Now you look yourself again."

I don't know how to quirk an eyebrow. Raise, maybe? But everyone raises an eyebrow. Too cliche. Invent a new one, apparently. There are better ways to show the confusion (perhaps made a little harder by Alosa's constant shifting between real confusion and feigned confusion).

Also -- spoiler alert -- Alosa is half human, half siren. We learn this right before this exchange. Right after this exchange she's concerned Riden, the dreamy-scummy first mate of the Night whatever pirate ship, senses she's using her gnarly powers. When he could have just been commenting on her taking a pensive moment. In other words, lady, he has no idea what's going on -- he's just a guy.

There's also a lot of what I call the Neil Diamond Effect: I am, I said. I am, says I. Lots and lots of attribution when attribution could be eliminated to make the dialog flow more smoothly. Trust your readers to know who is saying what, and only offer attribution when there might be doubt, that's the rule I'm struggling to pound into my own head.

There is certainly a woman in this book. But if a guy wrote this, it'd be creepy. And whether it's girl or guy, I can't recommend this book to a YA fantasy audience.

RFAK No. 2: Blood Rose Rebellion, by Rosalyn Eves

Anna Arden is a chimera. That’s why she’s a Barren – a person unable to perform magic. Two souls inhabit her body and rather than cooperate with magic, her souls tear it apart. So she’s uniquely positioned to be the One to rip apart the Binding holding magic back from everyone but the elites in the magical Europe imagined by Rosalyn Eves in “Blood Rose Rebellion.”

Oh yeah. I should probably say: spoiler alert.

But I bring up this pivotal plot point not just to spoil the book for readers, but also to discuss the book as a reader and critic.

With “Blood Rose Rebellion,” Eves has created a chimera that’s part Jane Austen drama of manners and part alternative history such as Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.”

“Blood Rose Rebellion” starts out heavily on the Austen side, with Anna Arden the embarrassment of her establishment family, chased by the foppish Freddy Markson Worthing, who should have stuck to singing about the lilacs on the street where she lives. She quickly injects the magic – thank heaven – as Anna clumsily breaks her sister’s debut spell and recalls crippling her younger brother with magic gone awry at an earlier ceremony of her own.

I’ll confess my interest in Austen’s novels extends only as far as playing the Simpsons “Tapped Out” game on my Kindle while my wife listens to whatever it is Colonel Brandon is talking about, so I was worried as I read this book. But much like Homer hollering “Woo hoo!” whenever something in the game goes his way, I soon found myself getting lost in this book, even when it shifted from Clarke back to Austen and then back again. She relies just enough on the Austen side to remind us she’s straddling two stratified societies, and that Anna doesn’t fit into either one of them.

Eves nails the surface of the otherworldly, alternative history vibe that makes such novels so appealing. It’s natural to assume that had magic existed at the time of the Hapsburgs, there would be a political and magical alliance as both wanted or needed each other to stay in power, and that the egalitarian streak running through Hungary at the time would also sweep up Luminates – and Barrens – tired of the old order.

Where the book goes awry lies in the muted message on the good and evil that the Binding – a magic spell put in place by the Luminate, who believe only those of certified blood lines should practice magic – hold at bay. Maybe the hinting at menace is meant to heighten the tension, but oft times the tension can’t be there if the hints are too subtle. Sometimes, the reader has to see cards the characters can’t yet see. Especially calling one of the evils Hunger – a personification that, if literal, makes no sense, unless the implication is that hunger, with the lower case, is abolished via the binding. Maybe I’m misinterpreting. But there’s a serious lack of menace on the evils the Binding traps, and a serious lack of blessing on the good – one is mentioned, briefly – also held in check. Some of that comes out in the story’s climax, but there’s an awful lot of it missing, too.

Perhaps that’s why there’s a “Volume 1” printed on the flyleaf of this book.