Michelle L. Levigne's Blog, page 174

Off the Bookshelf: STARFIRE: The Mending

Confession time: I had planned to read through all my books published by Marcher Lord Press before going to the Realm Makers Conference in St. Louis this week ... but time ran out!

This novel by Stuart Vaughn Stockton is the first book in a series -- evidenced by labeling it Book 1.

How many books in the series? Not sure, but considering the vast amount of world-building the author put into it ... I'm guessing the war between saurian races and the prophecies to be fulfilled and all the complicated politics and soul-searching and military maneuvers to come ... decades, generations will be covered in the coming books. It could go on forever!

I have to admire the world-building and all the thought and effort and organization expended on this book. I lost count of all the different species, the colors, the sizes, the personality types involved in the many saurian races who inhabit this world and this book. It almost makes my head hurt.

What's that? Saurian? Yeah -- the characters in the book are all different species of sentient dinosaurs. And they're at war. If I was a dinosaur fan I would probably have devoured this book in 1/10 the time it took me to read it, even discounting editorial deadlines and making a living and Vacation Bible School and other things. But I'm not a dinosaur "person," so that slowed me down -- but here's the thing: I was able to ignore the things I wasn't "into" quite often with this book, caught up in the action, the conflict, the problems that the hero, Rathe, faces. Which tells you just how good this writer is. If you're into military, dinosaurs, massive world-spanning conflicts and heroes who just can't seem to win ... any combination of these factors or all of them together -- Read this book!

Jane Bondservant #22

Here's a deep, dark secret.Even librarians get to go on field trips.But wait, before you feel envious, consider this caveat:Field trips mean taking STUDENTS out of the school, keeping them out of trouble, and making sure they get some actual WORK done.
On the day in question, I took two vans full of students to the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library. The field trip had a double purpose: to teach the children how to do research with many different kinds of media not available in our tiny Christian school library, and also help them get gobs (yes, a highly theological term, just ask my former Sunday school teacher!) of research done for their term papers.
I spent most of the trip walking around the library, trying to keep track of twenty-five sixth and seventh-graders. Fortunately, everyone wore uniforms, which meant they stood out very well from the average library patrons, who for the most part were in sweatshirts and jeans. Still, between me, the library liaison and four teachers' aides (who foolishly thought that a library field trip would be fun -- how quickly they forget how these same children act in the classroom!), there was an awful lot of room to cover and many students to keep track of. I took personal charge of a handful of girls who went up to the third floor of the library to track down the books they wanted for their papers. The fact that it was very quiet here on the third floor did not reassure me in the least.
Students are always at their most dangerous and mischievous when it is very quiet.
My mind was on how many more minutes I had left until I needed to start rounding up the girls and then make the slow, floor-by-floor trek through the library to gather up the other students and teachers' aides. I came around the corner, out from among bookshelves that required a ladder to get what was on the top shelves, and saw something that threatened to weld my new shoes to the carpet and sent a numbing chill through me.
Dr. Noway was at the library.
To be more specific, Dr. Noway walked around one of the big glassed-in "cages" that held one of the special collections.
The Special Collections are old or rare books and notebooks and research materials that are too valuable to be available to the general public. They cannot leave the glass cage that has an electronic lock and a librarian always on duty inside the room.
What could Dr. Noway possibly be looking for in that specific Special Collection? I had no idea, and knowing that I didn't know just upped the tension threatening to give me my first migraine. Oh, joy …
And if that didn't give me a migraine, reporting this incident to O would do the job. Big time.
I certainly couldn't call O, standing fifteen feet away from Dr. Noway, and make my call to O. He would hear me! But I felt obligated to watch him. If he got into the Special Collection room, what if he did something utterly evil -- such as rip a page out of a book?
Then I realized something really unsettling: I didn't want to believe Dr. Noway would do something like that.

Instead of watching him, maybe I needed to call O and request a full physical and a psychiatric examination, because I had either been drugged or brainwashed!

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Jane Bondservant #21

When last we met, dear readers, I was heading for a meeting of the games committee for the community outreach festival at my church. Not something I was eager for -- not in the bubbly, "Oh, this is gonna be FUN!" sense. More along the lines of knowing my talents lay in background support and the ability to organize a campaign against long, sometimes perilous odds. A clandestine infiltration with the risk of being disavowed by the Agency if I was discovered or organizing games that won't cost an arm and a leg and yet draw the interest of a wide range of ages and intellects -- not much difference, if you really think about it. Both guaranteed a headache and silent prayers of "Take me NOW, Lord?"
To add to my apprehension, who should I meet up with on my way to the meeting room but Dr. Noway. Yes, I knew he volunteered for the meeting, because it was announced in our Singles Sunday class. But did I remember, with everything else going on in my life and all the concerns and worries in my mind? Even several days later, I feared that yes, I had been drugged. What else could explain my tendency act slightly ditzy and make inane comments that the uncharitable could possibly, with extreme cruelty, label as flirting with Dr. Noway? It didn't help that he had a smile like hot fudge sauce on strawberry ice cream, with double whipped cream.
Well, yes, I could blame my very long, very busy day at school. Being the school librarian and part-time helper in the office does not guarantee a relaxed schedule. O gave me a permanent waiver from physical fitness refresher sessions for the Agency because of the exhaustion and wide range of activities associated with my job.
Yeah, lucky me …
What happened in the games committee meeting? Regretfully, I cannot tell you -- it was labeled Top Secret by the committee chair, and as a pseudo-semi-secret agent, I do know how to keep a secret. No one outside the games committee was to know what was planned for the community outreach festival until the day of the festival.
One thing I could reveal, however, was my very real fear that I would not live long enough to work at the outreach festival.
It wasn't so much all the work I had to put in, finding all the props and equipment and helping round up the prizes for the games. A lot of work, yes, and guaranteed to eat up what little free time after work that I had. The problem was that I got teamed with Dr. Noway!
Will I survive? Will I fall under the spell of his kind eyes and gor-geeeee-ous voice?
Come back next week and see!

VIRTUALLY DEAD -- for Free!

COMING in August:

The scientists of the colony world of Ayvystal slept through the destruction of their civilization. Now, a new civilization has risen on the ruins of the old -- and is threatening their existence. Members of their virtual reality Community have vanished -- either cut off, or their life tubes destroyed.

Caspya is their Sentinel, their guardian, and it is up to her to make contact with the world above them and find help to rescue the scientists before more of them are cut off, their life tubes destroyed -- or they are found by the heirs of the ancient enemies who sent them into hiding in the first place.

Problem: Language and culture have changed in 600 years.

Bigger Problem: Finding someone who will believe her.

Biggest Problem: Caspya can't leave her life tube -- so the only way to make contact ... is by animating the recently deceased.

INTERESTED?
Go to Writers Exchange and learn how to sign up for a subscription to get each episode of the novel delivered to you every month for FREE!

PLUS:
In January, you can get the entire novel with EXTRA MATERIAL not originally released in the novellas, along with KHYBORS, the first installment in the Commonwealth Universe Guide -- learn about the people, places, history, technology, and synopses of all current Commonwealth novels.

And we might just have a New Year's Eve party, right here on the blog, to celebrate the release.

So check back for more details as time goes on.

But go to Writers Exchange right now and sign up. You don't want to miss a single episodes!

Jane Bondservant #20

Ever wish the floor would drop out from underneath you?Don’t ever make that wish, because I’ve had it happen to me a few dozen times in the course of my duties -- fortunately, when I was in the process of rescuing some idiot, and not because I made a couple dozen stupid mistakes in a row -- well, at least most of the time. The sensation is not fun.
But right that moment, as I looked into Dr. Noway’s big, warm, kindly eyes -- do they sell contacts for super-villains to make their eyes look like they belong to friendly puppy dogs? -- I wanted to believe he really had turned over a new leaf, or even better, he was Dr. Noway’s nice, normal, kindly twin and not my archnemesis. And I admitted, feeling a little queasy again, that yes, I could definitely be accused of flirting with the man.
Well, I was supposed to make friends with him -- that was my assignment, right?
I thought, just for about two seconds, I just might be sick. That wouldn't be nice to the church custodians. I had to get control of myself. What was WRONG with me?
I wanted to run into the bathroom and pull my emergency drug testing kit out of my purse, to see if Dr. Noway had flooded the church hallway with some kind of gas to make me lose my mind.
Instead, Bill and Gretchen, the leaders of the games committee, stepped into the library doorway, just a few doors down the hall from where we stood smiling at each other. They called for us to hurry up, that the meeting was starting.
I was trapped!
It just showed what extensive, reliable training the Agency gave us, that I could hold onto my acting skills in the face of total interior breakdown, manage a normal-ish smile for Dr. Noway, and we walked down the hall to the library together. As if nothing world-shaking had happened. After all, what kind of a semi-pseudo-secret agent would I be if I ran for my life and left my classmates and friends to face Dr. Noway and whatever his nefarious scheme might be?
If somebody told me that Dr. Noway had come to our church specifically to distract me that moment while some of his not-so-former minions set off a device to shake the earth’s crust loose at that moment, I would have believed him. Because yes, despite my previous words, something world-shaking had happened.
I just couldn’t figure out WHAT, yet.

Jane Bondservant #19

Maybe I had an aneurysm? Or some other kind of brain damage? Or maybe it was shock.
Yeah, that sounds good. Shock set in during my Sunday class, after the announcement that Dr. Noway had not only joined our class but volunteered for MY committee for the community outreach festival. Shock is the only explanation for how I got through class and got home and went through the motions, and somehow or other got up the next day and went to work, without falling to pieces or panicking or letting out some more primal scream therapy.
Yeah, fat lot of good that did me.
Somehow or other, I got through the first three days of work in the school library and found myself heading back to church on Wednesday evening for the games committee meeting, and DIDN’T remember that a certain someone -- who, granted, was my assignment -- was going to be there. Like … DUH!
Yeah, shock. Or brain damage. Maybe a stroke. Could I use it as an excuse to retire?
"Miss Smythe?"
I was in such a fog, when that getting-kind-of-familiar voice came out of the intersecting hallway to my right as I headed toward the meeting room, I jumped up three inches in the air and turned 180 degrees in half a second. And then I remembered what my brain, in some sort of survival mechanism, had been trying to forget for the last three days.
Right then, I reflected that it was a very good thing that I couldn’t bring any weapons to church, because if I had, I would have turned Dr. Noway to a pile of ashes -- or an unreasonable facsimile -- on the floor before remembering we were at church, and before I remembered that Dr. Noway claimed he was leaving B.L. Zebob Industries.
Besides, it would be very unkind to the church custodians to leave a big, probably greasy, pile of ashes in the hallway for them to clean up.
"Dr. Noway." I managed a smile and prayed I didn’t look as flustered as I felt. "My mind was a thousand miles away. I didn't hear you coming up behind me."
"I'm sorry. Occupational hazard." Dr. Noway had a very nice smile, which in some ways was the most horrible thing about him. How could someone who has done the terrible, mean, rotten, no-good things he has done smile like he had a good, kind heart and a clean conscience?
"Occupational hazard?" A moment later, I didn’t know whether to be proud that I remembered to pretend I didn’t know anything about him -- or to slap myself for sounding like a total ditzoid.
"In my duties at B.L. Zebob Industries, I was required to be ... stealthy. Noise was not welcome, let's say." Dr. Noway looked up and down the hallway. "I'm looking for the library. I'm supposed to be in a meeting."
"The games committee for the community outreach festival. Yes." I shrugged and hoped my smile looked a little sheepish and not as stiff and fake as it felt. "Me, too. I saw you in class on Sunday, but I was caught up in some things and didn't get a chance to come over and say hi."
"And I had to hurry out to take care of the girls." Again, Dr. Noway flashes that nice smile that subliminally said I believe in baseball, apple pie, Mom, and the 10 Commandments. "If I follow you, will you lead me to the library?"
"I don't think it's smart to follow me -- I get lost a lot."

Dr. Noway laughed, and his laugh was even nicer than his smile. It sounded like hot fudge on strawberry ice cream with extra whipped cream. That mental image combined with the queasy feeling in my stomach -- and no, just because my knees went wobbly, that didn’t mean I was seasick. I got queasy because the horrified suspicion washed over me that I was … maybe … Oh, please, O, don’t let it be real … FLIRTING with Dr. Noway?

Jane Bondservant #18

Last week, I related how two members of my class, Craig and Tomas, stepped up to welcome Dr. Noway to my Singles group Sunday class. My fear/hope was that the moment Tomas tried to speak Spanish to Dr. Jose Noway, who definitely was not Latino, despite his name, trouble would erupt.
My mission was going to be over before it began, because Dr. Noway would have blown whatever mission he was on the minute he pulled out the latest B.L. Zebob Industries high-tech destructive weapon cleverly disguised as a pen or cell phone or something else deceptively innocuous, and blew Tomas away.
Hmm, that might be a win-win situation. Tomas was running for president of the class and leader of the church and mayor and governor and commander general of the entire northern hemisphere of the planet, all at the same time. Get rid of him, life would be nicer in church. And as an added bonus, Dr. Noway would have to leave.
That wasn't a nice thought, was it? I needed some major disciplining training for my thoughts.But that realization fled as I stood there and watched Craig and Tomas and Dr. Noway stand there and talk and laugh together.
What was going on?
I really wanted to slip out into the hallway again and have another conversation with O. With the way my day -- no, my week, even the last month -- had been going, I would find out that, “Oh, by the way, Agent 777, Craig and Tomas are both agents. You were assigned to this town to act as their backup. Sorry about the bureaucratic mix-up that didn't direct us to inform you before this, even though you've been living in this town for the last five YEARS.”
Yeah, that was what I feared. I did not need to hear that, so I did the next best thing. I stayed at my station at the refreshment table, cutting cake and chatting with my friends. My unsuspecting, somewhat innocent friends, who thought the most important concerns in their lives were getting their homework done for a night class or finding someone to go to a movie with them that afternoon or trying to avoid another encounter with one of the class mooches who would follow them to a restaurant and invite themselves to sit with them and dominate the conversation and then when the bill came go into shock because their wallet was empty and say, “Could you make a loan to a brother/sister in Christ until payday?” and then conveniently forget to repay the loan or act shocked and hurt when their loan-er actually followed up and asked for the money back or depended on the fact that no one wanted them to have hysterics in front of the whole class and therefore just avoid asking for the money back.
Dr. Noway glommed onto Craig and Tomas. Or more accurately, Craig welcomed Dr. Noway and invited him to sit with him, and Tomas glommed onto them. Hey, I’m an agent, dedicated to protecting the truth, and I always try to call a spade a spade. Especially when Tomas managed to borrow money from me twice and terrified me into ignoring the debts when he insisted that he should pay me back by taking me out on a date! I’m no fool -- well, yeah, technically I was, but only the second time it happened, and then I learned my lesson and learned to avoid Tomas. Too bad I couldn't borrow stealth technology from the agency for personal reasons!
Class started without incident. Who said miracles didn't happen in the modern church? I settled down in the last row. Not because I was trying to avoid being seen by Dr. Noway, but because  that was where the last few empty seats were located. Unlike the sanctuary, people preferred sitting at the front of the classroom. My theory was that they: 1) wanted to be seen in their newest clothes/haircut; 2) they were still trying to avoid using glasses anywhere outside of work and their cars; 3) the women wanted to get a good look at the new guy in class and all the men wanted to size up the new competition; 4) one of the helpful souls who worked in the background without recognition, like those of us handling the classroom refreshments, saw we were running out of chairs and set up another row so we wouldn't have to walk to the front of the classroom while announcements were being made.
Whatever the reasoning or justification, I was seated, class had begun, no one had been threatened or hurt, and Dr. Noway hadn't seen me. I was home clear. At least, until class ended and I ran the risk of Dr. Noway seeing me as we all got up to leave. And just how would I explain seeing him and not making contact, seeing as how we had had actual conversations already, meaning I was technically already a friend, someone he knew in our church?
I would leave that problem for after class. Announcements were being made, after all, and I had an obligation to concentrate.
After our lesson, Dr. Hooper introduced our newest member, Joe Noway -- hmm, Dr. Noway wasn't introducing himself as a doctor and had changed the ethnicity of his name. Interesting. Why?
That question fled my mind at Dr. Hooper’s next words: our newest member had already jumped in feet-first to get involved. Craig had included him on the games committee for the upcoming community outreach festival.

That was MY committee.

Off the Bookshelf: OXYGEN

Ever feel like you're jumping on the bandwagon so late, you almost missed and ended up face-down in the dust?

People have been talking about OXYGEN by John B. Olson and Randy Ingermanson on various Christian writing loops for what seems like YEARS. When the book was re-packaged and re-released by Marcher Lord  some time ago (don't ask me how long, but it was near the bottom of the list on my iPad Kindle reader, meaning it was one of the first books I got) I decided to get it.

Wish I had read it sooner! Yeah, I sometimes had a hard time with all the astronaut lingo and acronyms (occupational hazard when dealing with the government/military/sciences) and wondered when the promised romance would gain speed (the tagline proclaims it a science fiction romantic suspense), but the book kept me reading. Even when I should have been doing something else, like meeting deadlines for my own publishers!

The story: A manned mission to Mars (say that ten times fast!), all the prep work, personalities involved, politics, paranoia, and all the soul-searching and struggle for survival that takes place when things go very, very wrong with life support, when there's no chance of turning back or help reaching them in time.

What can I say? Wow. Thoroughly thought through, grabbing at your emotions, and threatening to give you a sore throat from holding back vocal arguments with or warnings to the main characters while reading in public. I'm just not into the space program -- I prefer my stories where we're already "out there" -- but this held my attention and interest. Good job, guys.

Interesting side note: At the back of the book is lots of bonus material, talking about how the book was written and sold, the collaboration between the two authors, and how they came up with the sequel. I haven't read all that material, but from everything I've heard about Ingermanson and Olson, definitely something a serious writer should read, just to learn from them.

Should you read OXYGEN? You better believe it.

Jane Bondservant #17

Last week, I had just recovered -- okay, let’s be honest, I started to recover -- from the shock of seeing Dr. Noway standing in the doorway of my Sunday classroom, when my supervisor, O, responded to my comment that this was a horrid situation.
I looked around, wondering where the voice came from this time, but I knew better than to ask where O was hiding. When I didn't see any video cameras in the room, I excused myself from the refreshment table and stepped out into the hallway through the second door of the classroom.  (First rule for semi-pseudo-secret agents: always make sure there are two exits in a room, so when the enemy comes in one, you can go out the other.)
In the hallway, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. It only looked like the latest smartphone, but was much more. Fortunately, smartphones were so ubiquitous that no one looked twice or even reacted when they saw images on the screen and heard voices coming from it. Yes, the agency had two-way TV phones. Fortunately, despite chronic budget problems, we did manage to justify having the latest technology about five years ahead of the commercial world.
Sure enough, my smartphone was lit and O was looking at me. I barely managed to catch myself before asking -- confession time: just short of shrieking -- why O was contacting me on Sunday. A momentary rewind of the last few minutes showed me that once again, I said "Oh," which sounds like "O" and O obviously thought I was calling him. So technically, I contacted him on Sunday, and he was responding, rather than him calling me.
(With all this nit-picking and hair-splitting, it was a wonder my hair ever looked decent and I didn’t look frightful enough to terrify my enemies -- and unwanted blind dates -- without the aid of usually contravened weapons.)
"Sir, Dr. Noway is at my church. He's in my Sunday class. What more could go wrong?"
"I suggest you get back into your classroom and find out, before you get an unpleasant surprise, 777." But O was smiling, so I didn't feel too bad.
Or maybe I should have. I mean, think about it -- O was smiling. Not a good sign for me. He was smiling when he gave me my assignment to befriend Dr. Noway. Could I really trust this guy? I’m not talking about Dr. Noway -- that was a no-brainer -- I’m talking about my supervisor, the one who was to advise me and guide me and send help when I got in over my head, but as I had learned long ago, was usually the one who sent me in over my head and if I didn’t move fast enough, he gave me a good hard shove into the deep end and over my head!
When I stepped back into the classroom, my head had cleared enough, I could identify the two idio -- err -- two welcoming committee members who met Dr. Noway when he walked into the room. Craig and Tomas.
Oh, great. Tomas would do like he always did when he met someone with even a slightly Hispanic name -- he would spout Spanish to them. The truth was that being named Jose was the only part of Dr. Jose Noway that was even slightly Latino or Hispanic or however you wanted to label it. The man was a genius, and spoke a multitude of languages, but that didn’t guarantee he spoke Spanish. I immediately calculated the chances of Tomas surviving more than ten seconds of embarrassing the newcomer to our class.
Would Tomas survive this encounter with Dr. Noway? Would the class be disrupted for this Sunday? Would I drop cake all over the next person who stepped up to the refreshment table?
Come back next week and find out!