Review of George Mann's WYCHWOOD

TITLE: Wychwood

AUTHOR: George Mann

349 pages, Titan Books, ISBN 9781783294091 (Print)/ 9781783294107 (ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (back cover copy)  After losing her job and her partner in one fell swoop, journalist Elspeth Reeves is back in her mother’s house in the sleepy village of Wilsby-under-Wychwood, wondering where it all went wrong. Then a body is found in the neighbouring Wychwoods: a woman ritually slaughtered, with cryptic symbols scattered around her corpse. Elspeth recognizes these from a local myth of the Carrion King, a Saxon magician who once held a malevolent court deep in the forest. As more murders follow, Elspeth joins her childhood friend DS Peter Shaw to investigate, and the two discover sinister village secrets harking back decades.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: George Mann’s Wychwood is one of those hybrid creatures: 90% straightforward murder mystery, 10% possible supernatural thriller. It’s a style I particularly enjoy when done well, and George Mann does it well. Although different in focus and authorial style, Wychwood reminded me very much of Stephen King’s Cujo: was the titular dog really possessed by the spirit of an executed serial killer or was it just rabid? I found myself asking the same question here: is the serial killer really employing supernatural means for some, if not all, of the kills, or does the killer only think the supernatural aspect is working? By the mid-point of Wychwood, the answer becomes apparent to the reader if not to the investigating characters.

The investigators are that very typical British pair: the intrepid reporter and the rule-bending Detective Sargeant. Elspeth Reeves has barely had time to settle into a between-jobs visit to her hometown when she stumbles upon a murder scene practically in her mother’s back yard being investigated by DS Peter Shaw, who happens to be a childhood friend she’s fallen out of touch with. It’s a meet-cute (or remeet-cute, if you will) the author thankfully gets out of the way early in the book, so the characters and reader can concentrate on the series of murders that need investigating.

It’s no surprise that Elspeth is the most well-developed character in the novel; at least 80% of it is told from her point-of-view with occasional break-aways for a peek into the mind of the killer or the victims. Elspeth is a strong, capable lead, with an engaging personality and clear investigative chops, but also with the kind of impulsiveness necessary to launch her into the dangerous situations and crime-scene misunderstandings this type of story requires. To Mann’s credit, these scenes never feel forced – there’s a reason for every questionable decision Elspeth makes, and they all work. Peter Shaw is somewhat less well-developed: his role mostly seems to be to feed Elspeth details she shouldn’t otherwise know, to drive her from place to place, and to provide an awkward potential love-interest for Elspeth to write off and other characters to comment on. In those terms, he performs the role well and does what’s needed of him to keep the plot moving and the excitement high.

The suspects and ancilliary characters are diverse and suburb-colorful: local newspaper staff, local theatrical troupe, local business owners who all provide clues to what’s going on whether they realize it or not (and also of course provide a fair number of red herrings for the reader and the main characters). Some are fun (stage manager / newspaper columnist Rose), some are infuriating (thriller author Mick Williams) and some are harmlessly pretentious (bookstore owner Philip Cowper).

The clues to solving the mystery are parceled out fairly; the reveal and resolution don’t come from out of left field. This is partially and very effectively because of the cutaway scenes to the killer’s POV providing hints that Elspeth and Peter don’t have access to, provided in such a way that the reader doesn’t become aware of the killer’s identity too far ahead of the main characters.

The background world-building is also wonderfully rich. The murders are based around a local legend of the Carrion King and his ragtag court. Like the hints about the killer’s identity, the details of the legend are slowly revealed throughout the novel. I believe Mann created this legend from whole cloth, but it’s so well-crafted I keep expecting to find it in an old collection of Anglo-Saxon tales. And Mann also takes full advantage of the fact that stories change depend on whose telling them. The details of the Carrion King’s life and end vary as Elspeth reads old sources (a childhood book of legends), consults local experts (bookstore owner/author Cowper and college professor Byron Miller each have different takes), and talks to those whose work is influenced by the legends (thriller author Williams and playwright David Keel). The varying details in each recounting enhance the overall mystery, providing clues and fake-outs both.

The novel ends with a thriller-type chase through dark woods (naturally, given the book’s title and the legend’s setting) straight out of the type of books the Williams character is famous for writing, another nod to the hybrid nature of Wychwood as a whole.

Wychwood is a fun read, with something for fans of the cozy mystery, the thriller, and the supernatural investigation genres.

Note: I did receive an advanced reading copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Website problems prevented me from posting the review before the novel’s publication date.

SINNER MAN - Book Review

Book: Sinner Man

Author: Lawrence Block

ISBN: 9781785650017

Price: $9.95 (paperback) (also available in hardcover, e-book and audio)

Publisher: Hard Case Crime

Synopsis: To escape punishment for a murderhe didn’t mean to commit, insurance man Don Barshter has to take on a new identity: Nathaniel Crowley, ferocious up-and-comer in the Buffalo, New York mob. But can he find safety in the skin of another man … a worse man … a sinner man?

My Rating: FOUR out of FIVE STARS

My Thoughts:  The story behind the novel is as interesting as the novel itself: this was the first crime novel Block wrote. It was published under a pseudonym and then forgotten for fifty years. The author conducted an extensive search for the book he vaguely remembered writing but not publishing, and now that it’s found Hard Case Crime has brought it out in a handsome hardcover as well as affordable paperback and ebook editions.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Block’s work, whether he’s writing hard-boiled crime / noir, as here or the more cozy mysteries featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr or anything in between. This book has everything the fans of Block’s noir work have come to expect: a lead character you want to like but can’t approve of; a female lead who is more than capable of holding her own despite, or perhaps because of, the men who use her; and dialogue that’s rich in patter and short on soliloquies.

Also as expected of Block when he’s written full-on noir like this: the book gets off to a hot, fast start (with the accidental murder the synopsis describes), slows down for some character building in the middle (as Barshter/Crowley becomes a part of the mob scene), then punches into high gear in the final pages with an intensity that really leaves you wondering who, if anyone, will come out of this thing alive.

I’ll be clear: Donald Barshter isn’t likeable even before he accidentally murders his wife and decides to go on the run rather than face justice. He’s even less likeable as he worms his way into a situation in which the reader knows, if not Don/Nate himself, that he’s in over his head. But that doesn’t stop you from wanting to know how it all turns out, wanting to know if in fact the law from back home will catch up to our “sinner man” or not. There were a few times throughout the book when I thought “Block could end it here, and I’d be satisfied.” But the author teases out the exact moment the other shoe will drop several times, and never in exactly the same way — building the suspense to a low rolling boil.

This is one of Block’s books that I could easily see Alfred Hitchcock adapting back in the day, if he’d been aware of the story. I pictured Tippi Hedren as Anne several times while reading.

And of course, because it’s a Hard Case Crime book, there’s a cover by Michael Koelsch that would be equally at home on Double Indemnity.

I’m definitely glad this lost early novel of Block’s was found and brought back into print. It’s a fun, suspenseful ride even if you don’t like the main character.

LATIN @ RISING - Book Review

As a way of perhaps easing myself back into blogging and doing interviews with creative folks again, I thought I’d start posting occasional book or short story reviews here that go into more depth than my planned monthly reports.

LATIN@ RISING: An Anthology of Latin@ Science Fiction & Fantasy

ISBN: 978-609405243

Publisher: Wings Press

Edited by Matthew David Goodwin

Introduction by Frederick Luis Aldama

My Rating: FOUR out of FIVE STARS

My Thoughts: There are only so many books one can read in a year. My limit seems to be about 100, which barely scratches the surface of my “to be read” pile(s). So I rely on short story anthologies and magazines to introduce me to authors I’ve never heard of, to help expand the range, depth, and breadth of my reading experience. The Kickstarter for Latin@ Rising was brought to my attention through Twitter, by one of the authors involved whose work I was already familiar with. I’m glad I did.

I was familiar with the work of a relative handful of the authors between these covers (Junot Diaz, Daniel Jose Older, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Carmen Maria Machado — four out of twenty!). So the Table of Contents alone helped me to realize just how woefully under-read I am in the realm of Latin@ speculative fiction. There are a lot of authors in this anthology with whom I was not previously familiar, many of whom I suspect I *should* have at least heard of by name. Thankfully, this book came along to help me become a little bit more well-read in this realm.

The stories range in length from flash fiction to almost novelette length, plus a few poems and something akin to a photo-essay, so there’s something for every attention span. The authors are male and female, straight and queer (various values thereof). There’s science fiction and fantasy and magical realism and some stories that don’t fit neatly into any one category. Many are rooted in our real world or variations of same, some take place farther afield.

Junot Diaz’s “Monstro” posits a fungal/viral outbreak on the Dominican/Haitian island, drawing a picture of the complicated relationship between not just the two nations but between lighter- and darker- skinned natives. And he manages to sandwich a tale of unrequited love in there, too, with language that is practical and lyrical at the same time.

I can’t review every story in the book in this post, so let me concentrate on the four authors I already knew and a few of those I’m interested in becoming more familiar with:

Daniel Jose Older fills in a bit of the back-story of his Bone Street Rhumba urban fantasy trilogy in “Red Feather and Bone,” sending Carlos Delacruz on a bird-watching mission with lasting repercussions. I’ve always found Daniel’s writing to be musical, each novel in the Bone Street Rhumba series a mash-up playlist of sonic influences, and this story is no exception.

In the almost novella-length “Sin Embargo,” Sabrina Vourvoulias takes the tricks of translation and uses all of them to comment on how easy it is to misunderstand someone’s history and intent when you don’t understand which meaning of a given word they intend. The story also touches heavily on the lingering impact of the Guatemalan “dirty wars” of the 1980s, and how those who grow up in war zones never really leave.

Carmen Maria Machado’s “Difficult At Parties” broke my heart a few dozen times. I loved the way she makes the reader feel intimately connected and yet distanced and removed through use of perspective and detail. My reading experience mirrored, I think, what the main character is feeling (or not feeling). The speculative element is very subtly woven in. (Perhaps a trigger warning is necessary for this one, as the main character is a rape survivor trying to find her way back to “normal.”)

Alex Hernandez’ “Caridad” explores a world where technology allows family members to be permanently “psychically” connected to a single member who has ability to processes everyone’s experiences and opinions into a cohesive whole. Family loyalty versus wanting to be your own person is always a potent theme, and Hernandez makes it real and raw without being cloying or simplistic.  I also loved Marcos Santiago Gonsalez’ “Traditions,” which treads some of the same ground as Hernandez, in terms of family loyalty and who will carry on magickal traditions in an advancing technological society. Both of these stories have endearing teen female lead characters.

The joys and pressures of family and history also inform Kathleen Alcala’s “The Road to Nyer” and Diana Chaviano’s “Accursed Lineage,” two very different and equally effective ghost stories. Each author explores how much we understand (or don’t) that our family history, traditions and interactions affect our view of the world around us. Alcala’s story has a bit of the wistful about it, with some amazing sensory detail. Chaviano’s is also full of very different sensory detail and very definitely the scarier of the two. Also impressive is how both authors manage to keep the heaviest violence in their stories “off-screen” and yet manage to make us feel every punch, kick or fall.

And I can’t end the review without mentioning the really unique bit of alternate history about the Moon Landing by ADAL, the “photo-essay” (for lack of a better term) I mentioned earlier. The story has a ton of impact, with a bit of humor, using very few words. Speculative fiction, after all, is not limited to the printed word, and ADAL shows us that the way a story is told can be as important as the story itself.

The stories that I enjoyed the most may not be the same ones you would enjoy most. That’s the great thing about multi-author anthologies: something for everyone, and your mileage may vary. But I highly recommend checking out Latin@ Rising. The variety of voices, all grounded in what is unique and shared about the Latin@ experience, is well worth listening to.

2016 WRAP UP POST

A couple of folks have asked, so I’m finally putting together my wrap-up post for 2016: what I wrote, what was published, and what I read.

WRITING

Not much to report on this front. 2016 was not my most consistent year for creating new content. I didn’t blog much, and I didn’t really track how much writing I was doing, other than knowing that there were a majority of months where I didn’t write or edit at all. I finished a couple of stories, including “Chasing May” which sold to the anthology Kepler’s Cowboys from Hadrosaur Productions. I sent out a few attempts at getting reprints sold, as well, but not much came of that. (Admittedly, I didn’t make the strongest effort I could possibly have made.)

PUBLISHING

2016 saw the release of three anthologies with my work included:

• “Threshold” appeared in One Thousand Words For War from CBAY Books
• “Stress Cracks” appeared in Galactic Games from Baen (My first professional-rate story sale!)
• “Yeti” appeared in Robbed of Sleep, Volume 4 from Troy Blackford.

I also sold one story, the aforementioned “Chasing May,” which releases in just a few weeks from this writing.

READING

I set myself a variety of reading challenges in 2016. I managed to complete a few of them.

On Goodreads, I challenged myself to read 100 books. I read 105.

Here’s the breakdown of what I read:

• Fiction: 97 books
  • 4 anthologies
    • 1 noir
    • 2 horror
    • 1 fantasy
  • 1 single-author collection (1 urban fantasy)
  • 17 graphic novels
    • 11 super-hero
    • 4 YA adventure
    • 1 YA comedy
    • 1 comic strip collection
  • 12 magazines (all issues of Lightspeed magazine)
  • 43 novels
    • 1 crime
    • 1 mystery
    • 1 noir
    • 1  Fantasy
    • 1 historical fiction
    • 1historical fantasy
    • 2historical romance
    • 3historical urban fantasy
    • 3alternate history
    • 3 horror
    • 1 literary
    • 4  pulp adventure
    • 2 science fiction
    • 13 urban fantasy
    • 1 YA urban fantasy
    • 1 YA science fiction
  • 8 novellas
    • 2 horror
    • 3 fantasy
    • 1 science fiction
    • 1 urban fantasy
    • 1 mystery
  • 1 picture book
  • 1 playscript
  • 10 short stories published as stand-alone ebooks
    • 4 urban fantasy
    • 3 mystery
    • 1 modern romance
    • 1 thriller
    • 1 historical fantasy
• Non-Fiction: 8 books
  • 5 Memoir/biography
  • 2 History
  • 1 Writing Advice

Other Book Stats:

# of Authors/Editors: 86 (including graphic novel artists); 34 of these were female authors. (I didn’t do a good job of tracking other sub-group metrics, such as writers of color, queer writers, etc. I’m going to make a better effort this year.)

Shortest Book Read: 20 pages (Forbid the Sea by Seanan McGuire)

Longest Book Read: 496 (Feedback by Mira Grant)

(Interesting that the shortest and longest read were by the same author, albeit one under a pen-name.)

Total # of pages read: 24064

Average # of pages per book: 229

Format Summary:

• 4 audiobooks
• 28 ebooks (5 Nook, 23 Kindle)
• 73 print
  • 17 hardcovers
  • 56 softcovers

On my Livejournal, I challenged myself to read 365 short stories (1 per day, basically), but I only managed 198 this year. I did not read as many anthologies or single-author collections cover-to-cover as I have in previous years.

Those 198 stories appeared in:

• 5 Magazines
  • Asimov’s
  • Cemetary Dance
  • Daily Science Fiction
  • Disturbed Digest
  • Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
  • Lightspeed Magazine
  • One Story
  • One Teen Story
  • The Dark
  • The Strand
  • Three Slices
  • Unbound
• 10 Anthologies
  • Candle in the Attic
  • Clockwork Phoenix 5
  • Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop
  • Dark and Dangerous Things III
  • Ghost in the Cogs
  • In Sunlight or in Shadow (Stories based on the paintings of Edward Hopper)
  • Robbed of Sleep Vol 4
  • Shattered Shields
• 1 Single-Author Collection
  • Two Tales of the Iron Druid by Kevin Hearne
• 8 Stand-alone (self-pubbed or publisher-pubbed in e-format)
  • Seanan McGuire (mostly from her website)
  • Jordan L. Hawk (email newsletter)
  • Lawrence Block (purchased in e-format via Amazon)

Those 198 stories were written by 166 different authors. 82 of those were women (again, didn’t do a good job of tracking any other author-identifying metrics). The work was published by 26 different editors, roughly (there were a few for whom I’m not sure who the editor was / who to credit).

So there you have it: my writing, publishing and reading, by the numbers, for 2016. (I was going to include other media consumed, like music, movies, and television, but I didn’t do as good of a job compiling those numbers in 2016. Oh well!)

JANUARY 2017 BY THE NUMBERS

I did a horrible job of posting to my own blog in 2016. My intent is to do better this year, by at the very least tracking my own writing and reading. Hopefully some of these posts will inspire folks to comment and chat a bit. Today’s post is basically a “by-the-numbers” accounting of my writing in January.

WRITING

At the end of 2016, I set myself a challenge for 2017: write at least 5 days a week, and write 1,000 words a day. I’m putting together a blog post about why I made this particular challenge, and why the same challenge might not work for anyone else.

I’m using a pretty simple spreadsheet to track “new words written” by day and week, with a column for notes (about projects worked on, totals for week/month, etc.)

The first week of January I wrote 3 out of 5 days, and managed 2,198 new words.

The second week of January I did no writing at all.

The third week of January I wrote 3 out of 5 days and managed 4,833.

The fourth week of January I wrote 5 out of 5 days and managed 5,225, words.

In the three days of January 29-31 I only wrote 1 day, but wrote 2,580 words.

Each month’s goal is roughly 20,000 words (1,000/day x 5 days/week). In January I wrote 14,836 words. In the process, I completed a previously stalled short story and wrote a complete second story.

I’m feeling pretty good about those numbers, given how little I wrote in the second half of 2016.

EDITING

Where I’ve dropped the ball in January is in editing/rewriting. I have three stories that I received really valuable feedback on from beta-readers/critiquers in Nov/Dec., and those stories are still waiting to be reworked with that feedback in mind. (One of them, the feedback was actually part of a rejection letter. Not a “revise and resubmit,” but still very personalized feedback fromvery busy editor!).  And of course, I now have the two stories written in January that will need editing/revising. First drafts are great, but they’re rarely ready to send out.

I clearly need to find a balance between the writing time and the editing time. I’m going to work harder on that in February, as I continue to work on that writing goal mentioned above.

SUBMISSIONS

I have three stories out on submission right now, one of them something I co-wrote with a more well-known author. I could have more, but I was as bad about submitting stuff in the second half of 2016 as I was about writing or editing. Hey, at least I’m consistent.

SALES

A few days ago, the ToC for KEPLER’S COWBOYS, edited by David Lee Summers and Steve B. Howell for Hadrosaur Productions, was announced. I’m very glad to be able to say that my story “Chasing May” is included, alongside work by authors like David L. Drake, Jaleta Clegg, Gene Mederos and others. You can preorder the Kindle version here, or the print and other ebook versions here. I loved Summers and Howell’s previous anthology, A KEPLER’S DOZEN, and anticipate this new anthology will be just as fun.

And that’s about it for January on the writing front. A separate post about January’s reading will follow tomorrow.

JANUARY 2017 READING

Yesterday I posted about my writing accomplishments in January. Today’s post is about my reading.

I set myself several reading challenges each year, and I’ll write about this year’s challenges in an upcoming post. (I also need to write up a post about how I did with my reading challenges for 2016, but first I have to find the word doc in which I crunched all those numbers…) For now, here’s a look at the two I do every year, and how I’m progressing:

BOOKS

I set myself an annual goal over on Goodreads of 100 books. I track books the same way GR does, so self-published short stories in ebook format count, as do magazines if I read the entire issue and not just a story or two. January’s books read were:

1. Locke and Key Vol 1.: Welcome To Lovecraft, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. I’ve been meaning to read this series for a while, and finally got around to it because my nephew Brandon forced it into my hands during a December visit. I’m glad he did. Really enjoyed the set-up, and am looking forward to reading the rest of the series soon.
2. Battle Hill Bolero (Bone Street Rhumba #3) by Daniel Jose Older.  I love urban fantasy. If you love urban fantasy, and you’re not reading Older’s NYC-set story of ghosts, magic, and political machinations … well, why not? This third book closes out the Rhumba series, but I’m sure Older isn’t done with these characters or this world. And his writing has a musicality to it I can’t remember feeling with anything else I’ve read.
3. Lily, by Michael Thomas Ford, with illustrations by Staven Andersen.  Classic fairy-tale tropes (Baba Yaga, hidden villages, a girl with a power she doesn’t understand, adults who try to suppress that power) come together in a modern setting. Some types of stories stay true no matter when they’re set, and Ford does a great job of balancing the fantastical with modern realities. And Andersen’s illustrations are disturbing and beautiful at the same time.
4. Heaps of Pearls by Seanan McGuire. McGuire publishes a lot of stand-alone short stories from her various fictional series worlds on her website and her Patreon page. This one details how two secondary characters from the October Daye series, Patrick and Dianda, first met. It takes place prior to book one of the series but is probably best read after book 9. And what a meet-cute it is.
5. Lightspeed Magazine #80 (January, 2017), edited by John Joseph Adams. I’m the proofreader for the Kindle ebook edition of Lightspeed, so it’s the one magazine I read front-to-back every month. The eight stories and one novella in each issue also account for 9 of the short stories I read every month. (See below for brief thoughts on those.)
6. Lumberjanes Volume 5: Band Together, by Shannon Waters, Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen and Carolyn Nowak.  My good friends Kay Holt and Bart Leib introduced me to the Lumberjanes collected volumes on a visit to Boston last year, and I’ve eagerly awaited each new volume (since I don’t buy individual monthly comics anymore for a variety of reasons). I love the characters, the mystery, and the pacing. I have to admit that the change to the art in the run of issues collected here didn’t quite work for me: some of the characters barely looked like themselves for me. The art’s not bad, it just took some getting used to. But the story is a lot of fun.
7. In Sea-Salt Tears by Seanan McGuire. Another short story in McGuire’s October Daye universe, this time telling a tale of romance and secrets involving everyone’s favorite sea-witch, The Luideag. I know, I know: “romance” and “the Luideag” are not words one expects to hear in the same sentence. Best read after book five of the October Daye series.
8. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire. A new novella from McGuire that doesn’t seem to connect to any of her other existing series (although I can see it connecting to her novel Sparrow Hill Road in some ways). There’s some great world-building around a main character whose voice clicked with me right away, making me want to know more about her and the characters around her. A very satisfying “done in one” story.

So: eight books read in January, and Goodreads tells me that means I’m “on track” for my yearly goal.

SHORT STORIES

I also set myself a goal each year of reading 365 short stories: 1 per day, theoretically, although it doesn’t always work out quite that way. (366 in leap years, of course)

I didn’t quite hit the “one per day” goal in January, but here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too:

The first 9 stories come from the January 2017 issue of Lightspeed Magazine. The first 8 are available to read for free on the magazine’s website, while the 9th story is only available as part of the ebook edition.

1. Rate of Change by James S.A. Corey. A look at a future where brain/spinal transplants have become the norm — how does that affect our basic humanity.
2. The Whole Crew Hates Me by Adam-Troy Castro. First person narrative about why the title of the story may be true. As soon as I finished reading it, I thought “man, this would make a fantastic acting monologue!” Great, is-he-paranoid-or-not voice.
3. Tracker by Mary Rosenblum. Intriguing future (?) world where seeming gods control the weather, population, etc., and the title character is trapped in the middle of a power struggle.
4. Nine-Tenths of the Law by Molly Tanzer. What happens when your husband is replaced by an alien intelligence just as you’re getting ready to divorce him. There’s a bit of comedy and tragedy mixed together here.
5. Seven Salt Tears by Kat Howard. Another moving, very personal story from Howard, this one about how childhood stories involving the ocean impact a woman’s life.
6. Daddy Long-Legs of the Evening by Jeffrey Ford. I read this one years ago, was completely creeped out by it, and am happy to say the reread was just as creepy. Urban legend about a boy whose brain is infested by a spider.
7. The West Topeka Triangle by Jeremiah Tolbert. This one really brought back middle school memories, even though I didn’t grow up anywhere near Kansas nor in any urban setting. I love that lingering question as to whether anything supernatural is really happening, a tone Tolbert expertly keeps up throughout the story.
8. Nine by Kima Jones. Fantasy trappings on a real-world setting: Tanner, Jessie and Flo run a motel for blacks moving west after the Civil War, but even the three proprietors are running from something that seems destined to catch up with them. Heart-breaking and full of love at the same time.
9. Awakening by Judith Berman. Aleya wakes in a dungeon full of corpses, unsure how she got there. This story takes more twists than a D&D campaign, and each one is layered brilliantly onto the previous. It kept me guessing throughout as to how it would end.
10. Heaps of Pearls by Seanan McGuire. (self-pubbed on the author’s website). As mentioned above, a really cute story about how Patrick and Dianda met. It has the feel of a screwball rom-com.
11. Stage of Fools by Seanan McGuire. (self-pubbed on the author’s Patreon page) A story of Tybalt, the King of Cats, during his days in London, long before Toby Daye was even born. The first of three connected stories about how Tybalt re-opened his court after a long period of being alone.
12. The Voice of Lions by Seanan McGuire (self-pubbed on the author’s Patreon page) The second connected story about Tybalt reopening his court in London, with some interesting political intrigue thrown in.
13. Lunching with the Sphinxes by Richard Bowes. (from Grendelsong magazine, issue #2). A story set in Bowes’ Big Arena (NYC) future-history. Political intrigue from the perspective of a person who never thought she’d be a politician. I’d not read this when it first came out, but it seems a bit prescient in light of recent political events here in the US.
14. Singing Wings by Keffy R.M. Kehrli. (from Fireside magazine #27). Aduaa is about to go through her species’ natural transformation, which means saying goodbye to those she’ll no longer be able to interact with. Kehrli really sucker-punches you with a depth of emotion we all recognize when life forces us to move on.
15. Bones at the Door by John Wiswell (from Fireside magazine #27). Mandy starts discovering animal bones left at her front door, which leads to life changes she never could have expected. Eerie and disturbing.
16. The Closest Thing To Animals by Sofia Samatar (from Fireside magazine #27). The narrator discloses a history ofher failing relationships in a city closed off from the rest of the world due to a plague that doesn’t kill. Great world-building, interesting story structure.
17. The Acts of Hares by Seanan McGuire (self-pubbed on the author’s Patreon page). The third of the connected Tybalt stories, this one about how he finally finds that last reason to re-open his court to other cats, putting him further on the road to being the Tybalt we know in the current Toby Daye books.
18. Beks and the Second Note by Bruce Arthurs. (from the December 2016 issue of Alfred Hitchcock magazine). Appearances are deceiving and not every case is as simple as it seems, as Detective Beks discovers investing a case of a good gun-carrying citizen killing a bank robber.
19. Whatever It Takes by Lawrence Block (from the December 2016 issue of Alfred Hitchcock magazine)  An old, previously-unpublished Block tale of a group of cops trying to get a man to turn informant against a big time, almost-untouchable gangster, and the lengths to which they’ll go. The dialogue-heavy story structure makes it an even more fun read.
20. Through This House by Seanan McGuire (from the anthology Home Improvement: Undead Edition). Another story set in McGuire’s Toby Daye universe, but in modern times compared to the others read this month. Toby, May, Quentin and Danny must figure out how to reopen the sealed fairie Knowe of Goldengreen before it kills them. It’sbit of a haunted house adventure, with all the creeping shadows and jump-scares one would expect.
21. In Sea-Salt Tears by Seanan McGuire (self-pubbed on the author’s website). As mentioned above, this one is set prior to the first novel of the Toby Daye series and doesn’t involve Toby herself. But it’s a great love story, slowly and carefully told.

So: 21 stories read in January, which means I’m 10 stories behind on my “read 365 stories this year” goal. But I suspect I’ll be catching up soon. One of my problems is I keep buying short story anthologies and then setting them aside for when I have time to read “the whole thing.” Which rarely seems to happen. So I’m making a sub-challenge for myself that each time I buy a new anthology, I will read at least one story the day I buy it. That might help with this a bit.

Clearly, between books and stories this has been a Seanan McGuire heavy month. She is one of my favorite authors, and I’ve been working towards finally reading all of the stories connected to her main novel series. So there’ll be another batch of McGuire reviews in the wrap-up post for February’s reading as well.

GALACTIC GAMES - Short Stores

I made my first professional rate short story sale last year, and the anthology it appears in is now out in print and ebook forms. The anthology is GALACTIC GAMES, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and published by Baen. The theme is “science fiction sports stories,” including both currently real sports adapted to SF settings as well as completely new sports invented by the authors. The author line-up includes luminaries like George RR Martin, Seanan McGuire, Robert Silverberg, Todd McCafferey, Mercedes Lackey, Beth Cato … and little ol’ me.

My story, “Stress Cracks,” is about a young star athlete, the “face of his sport,” whose family history threatens to overshadow his athletic accomplishments. The sport he’s the face of? Downhill Figure Skating. (Picture standard figure-skating combined with freestyle skiing, on icy (instead of snowy) mountains.)

You can buy the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or in an actual bookstore –either one of the chains or support your local independent store by asking them to order it!

ONE THOUSAND WORDS FOR WAR - Short Stories

According to Amazon, ONE THOUSAND WORDS FOR WAR ships this week. This wonderful anthology includes my short story “Threshold.” In fact, my story is mentioned in the back cover copy / product description:

Imaginative and original, One Thousand Words for War explores in various fantastic settings the different types of conflict—from powerful internal and external conflicts with the potential to destroy the main character’s world to the peace that comes from accepting change. Whether it’s a transgendered girl standing up to bullies or a child soldier trying to save his fellows from war, this collection shows the powerful ways teens can overcome and embrace extraordinary circumstances.

You can buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or get your local independent bookstore to order it for you!

DONNA PEDERSEN GOFUNDME - Helping Others

Donna Pedersen, my sister Lorraine’s close friend and coworker, has been fighting cancer for some time now. She’s been through 6 different chemotherapies and two rounds of radiation only to be told that there is nothing more they can do. Donna’s been offered a chance at a brand new therapy that insurance companies don’t cover, but it’s expensive and she needs help covering costs. I’m sharing her GoFundMe page in the hopes that my friends who can afford to will contribute, even just a few dollars, and in the hopes that those who can’t spare the money right now with boost the signal on this. Please help in one way or the other!

LATEST NEW SONG "SOMEDAY"

While I’m plugging away on revamping this site and plugging away on writing more short stories, I finally managed to upload the third of the songs I’ve co-written and recorded to my Bandcamp page.

It’s called “Someday,” and it’s based a bit on the school experiences of at least two kids who are important to me (but who shall remain nameless for reasons). It’s about overcoming bullying and ostracizing and adversity, and being who you are, and all the fears that go along with that.

I wrote the words. Barry Mangione wrote the music and played guitars. Darrell long added some percussion and a bit of keys while he was producing the song.

It’s actually the first of the songs I co-wrote and recorded, although it’s the third to come to internet availability.

All proceeds will be donated to Reverse The Trend, a non-profit I’ve mentioned before. RTT brings anti-bullying and self-esteem programming to middle schools around the US.

I hope you’ll give the song a listen, and perhaps a purchase, at the link embedded in the song title above.