Scott William Carter's Blog, page 5

News & Muse (August 2021): There Are 17 Million Ebooks on Amazon, And More Than Half Haven’t Sold a Single Copy, But Please Buy Mine

We’re supposed to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit for three straight days this week, so another heat wave is on the way here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. I’m writing this from my back patio, where it’s a pleasant 80 degrees, a bit warm but nice in the shade. I’m hoping this is the last major heat wave of the summer, but experience tells me there are more hot days ahead before the cooler Fall weather arrives in earnest. And of course, if we listen to climate scientists (and we should), who knows what kind of weather extremes we’ll see going forward. 

The second Karen Pantelli book, Lethal Beauty, is out in the world. Those are my author copies up there pictured above. While I sell far, far more ebooks these days than print books, I have to admit that the former bookstore owner in me still loves holding that print copy in my hand. Even after publishing a couple dozen books, it never gets old. More familiar, maybe. But never old. 

For those of you who read the book and left a review somewhere, thank you. Even for those of you who didn’t like the book and wrote a review somewhere, I appreciate you too, because in a world where there are somewhere in the vicinity of 17 million ebooks on Amazon alone, more than half of which have not sold a single copy,* I appreciate that someone would care enough one way or another to share their opinion about it. Attention is the new coin of the realm, as they say, and if someone gave some of their finite attention to something I created, I am very grateful. 

I wish more writers thought this way. Heck, I wish I thought this way more of the time, but paraphrasing what my friend Kristine Kathryn Rusch once told me, most writers are a combination of ego and insecurity. And why wouldn’t we be? It takes ego to put something out in the world and think someone should read it. And only a writer who never risks making any part of themselves vulnerable would not occasionally feel insecure. That’s not the kind of writer I want to be, at any rate. Call me whatever you like, but just don’t call me bland. 

In any case, I’m writing something a little bit different right now, a book aimed at younger readers (and as I like to say, the young at heart), then I’ll be back to my cranky friend Garrison Gage for a bit. More soon.

*While 17 million may seem like a gross exaggeration, it might even be on the low side. Amazon does not make finding this information easy, but I arrived at this with some deft Google searching, both including terms that appear on every Kindle page and then excluding those that have ranks (since only ebooks that have sold a copy have a Kindle rank). Amazon’s Kindle ranks go up to about 7 million right now. I was frankly astonished that so many books haven’t sold a copy . . . until I started looking at them. Yikes. But still, they couldn’t even sell a single copy to their own mother? A more important question is, do I have too much time on my hands?

New Book Published: Lethal Beauty

I’ve got a new book out!

I don’t know about you, but it sometimes feels to me like the whole world’s gone crazy. In my second full book featuring Karen Pantelli, Lethal Beauty, I try to capture a little of that feeling. Weather, politics, a world slowly recovering from a pandemic, it’s hard to get a sense of what’s normal any more. What better way to take a look at that world than through the eyes of a “professional drifter,” right?

Set “just a bit” into a possible future, the book starts when three big guys in suits walk into the family pizza joint where Karen’s currently working. What do they want? She’s about to find out . . .

More info about the book and links to various retailers are below. While these books can be read independently, check out Throwaway Jane if you want to start with Karen’s first full-length adventure.

Thanks for reading!

Lethal Beauty
A Karen Pantelli Novel

Never mess with a woman with nothing left to lose.

Another state. Another city. Another dead-end job. A stellar FBI agent until tragedy set her adrift, Karen Pantelli finds herself working at a pizza joint in Billings, Montana, trying to ignore the increasing global unrest dominating the news, when three armed men walk through the door. Soon a shocking turn of events launches her on a cross-country quest for a former college classmate, an alluring but manipulative woman with just one goal in life: to marry rich. Very rich.

But what happens when this stunning beauty ensnares the richest, most powerful man of them all? He may have a singular ambition of his own … with lethal consequences for a world already in turmoil.

Ebook: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks | Google Play 

Paperback: Amazon 

Cover for Lethal Beauty (Karen Pantelli #2)

The second Karen Pantelli book, Lethal Beauty, is just about done. I’ve finished going through the copy edits and the book should be out in the world in the next week or so. That’s the cover below. A description to follow soon, but needless to say, Karen gets herself in a whole lot of trouble again. She’s great fun to write. Very different than Garrison Gage, of course, and very different kinds of books, but I’m glad she’s finding her own fans. I happen to like her quite a bit.

A few readers have asked if the Pantelli books will be available in audio. The answer is . . . yes. Eventually. I’m debating some options there. Sorry I can’t say more, and that they’re not available now, but I do plan to make them available in audio eventually.

As a quick reminder, if you want to be one of the first people to know when I’ve published something, please do sign up for my very infrequent newsletter. I don’t spam. I don’t give your email to others. It really is just a way to make sure that people who like my work know when I’ve got something new in the world. It’s getting harder to break through all the noise these days, so my email list is the best way to make sure you don’t miss something, especially since I continue to be such a social media minimalist. (And I do try! I just don’t seem to be wired for it!) I’ve been thinking of doing a few more special discounts and giveaways just for my fans, so if you’re thinking of signing up, now’s a good time.

More soon.

News & Muse (July 2021): Record Breaking Heat, An Appearance in Pulphouse Magazine … 27 Years in the Making

That’s Paisey up there, sitting in my office window, enjoying the air conditioning as the street outside my house bakes in the sun. We broke all the heat records on Sunday. In Salem, Oregon it hit 113F, beating the previous recorded high of 108F (which we last hit back in 1981) by a long ways. Then we beat that record on Monday, hitting 117F. You read that right. Even some of the hottest cities in the United States have never reached that temperature, which an extremely rare “heat dome” allowed to happen here in the rainy pacific northwest.

The next Karen Pantelli book is now with the copy editor. I’ll have more information about that soon, including a cover, which is almost done. Really had a lot of fun with this one.

My story, “Exchange Policy,” about a widower who wants to exchange his android wife for a different one for a very unusual reason, just appeared in issue twelve of the new incarnation of Pulphouse magazine. The issue is chocked full of great stories. You can buy an individual issue in both print and ebook, or subscribe to the magazine.

I’ve had the good fortune to have my stories appear in many wonderful publications over the years, but this one means quite a bit to me. I “sold” my first short story to the editor, Dean Wesley Smith, back in 1994. I put “sold” in quotation marks because the magazine ceased publication before the story could see print or I could be paid for it, but it didn’t take away from the satisfaction of that first sale, especially since Dean bought it at the life-alternating writer’s workshop I frequented for a few years when I was in Eugene attending the University of Oregon. I learned more about writing at that workshop, which included such luminaries as Dean, his wife Kristine Kanthryn Rusch, Ray Vukcevich, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jerry Oltion, and many others that came and went over time, than I ever learned in my college writing classes. We met every Tuesday in the banquet room of the greasy G Willikers Neighborhood Bar & Grill (which went out of business long ago) and it was generally open to all writers, which made it all the more amazing. Michael J. Totten, a fellow student at U of O who would later became a prize-winning journalist, novelist, and editor (and lifelong friend of mine), stumbled upon the workshop when he was working at a convenience store across the street and one of the attendees wandered in and saw that Mike was reading a copy of F&SF. This writer said something to the effect of: “Hey, did you know the editor of that magazine is across the street right now?” (The editor being Kristine Kathryn Rusch, of course.) That was how Mike first attended, and how he invited me to the same workshop a few weeks later.

That first “sale” to Pulphouse, an extremely short piece called “With Dignity,” was later published in Buried Treasures, an anthology put together by Jerry Oltion of orphaned Pulphouse stories. However, I was always sad my work never got to appear in the magazine, since it was just the sort of genre-bending periodical that I loved. (I remember scouring Escape While There’s Still Time Books, a genre bookstore in Eugene run by the late Bill Trojan back then, for back issues, which I believe I still have somewhere.)

Anyway, Dean brought Pulphouse back to life a few years back, in different form but still with the same basic spirit, and I’m pleased as punch to have a story appearing in its pages. It’s extra special because over the just shy of 30 (!!!!!) years I’ve known them, Dean and Kris have been mentors, teachers, co-teachers, and finally friends, so that makes the story’s publication even more special to me. (And please keep in mind that I was eighteen years old when I walked into that writer’s workshop, so don’t think I’m ready to start collecting Social Security checks or anything.)

Incidentally, Dean also bought my first real short story sale as well, for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthology, but I will save that tale for another time.

News & Muse (June 2021): A Brief Post From My Backyard

That’s a shot of our backyard patio nestled in the trees, where I’m writing this post. (We also have what we call our “urban patio,” on the east side of the house, which gets a lot more sun, so we have options depending on the weather.) Early June can often go either way in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, but today it’s gorgeous and sunny. The grass is lush and green. The roses are in bloom. I’m coming to the end of another book and feeling good about it.  Not much to report, otherwise, and I’m trying to stay focused on the book, so I’m making it a quick post this month.

News & Muse (May 2021): One More Adult in the House

My daughter turns eighteen in a few days. I have to say I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I’m so proud of the young woman she’s become, a great student, thoughtful, conscientious, and living a well-balanced life, already admitted to the university of her choice and about to embark on the next chapter of her life. On the other hand, it means I’m definitely getting older. It seems only yesterday that I was bringing her home from the hospital, wondering if I had it in me to be the kind of father she deserved, my life changed forever the moment I looked down into her eyes for the first time. Congrats, kiddo! Now you get to vote in the next election. It’s only for the local school board, but still, use your power wisely.

Writing productivity is up. I think I’m finally starting to unwind some of the fairly entrenched habits I had that might have served me well when I was a part-time writer with a day job but actually get in my way now that I work at this full-time. Coming to the end of another book, but no news other than that. It’s something of a running joke around the house. Other people talk about their days, and when it’s my turn, since I seldom talk about works-in-progress, usually all I can say is, “Well, I wrote 10 pages.”  What an exciting life I lead. 

A Bit of Whimsy: Sunset in Newport, Oregon

That’s a shot at sunset from the balcony of our hotel in Nye Beach, in Newport, one of our favorite places on the Oregon coast. Heidi and I, along with Rosie, our intrepid Irish Setter, made a quick two-night jaunt to the coast in mid-April. It hit nearly 80 degrees Fahrenheit that first evening, almost unheard of on the Oregon coast, though it was fifty-five and foggy by the time we left, more the norm. There is a reason they sell a lot of sweatshirts on the Oregon coast. Even longtime natives seem to have a hard time remembering, despite repeated experience, that it can be in the mid-nineties in the valley and be forty degrees colder once you get over the coastal range. I actually love this, it makes escaping an oppressive heat wave no more than an hour’s drive away, but people who step out of their cars in shorts and tank tops are usually too busy shivering to appreciate it themselves.  

Scott Recommends

Another Man’s Moccasins by Craig Johnson. I continue to be impressed with the breadth of Johnson’s skills. There is a granular detail to his writing that really brings these tales of Sheriff Walt Longmire, and the fictional Absaroka County in Wyoming where he resides, to vivid life, and from the very first page I feel like I’m in the hands of an author with a strong voice and in full control of his craft. This one starts with discovering the  body of a young Vietnamese woman alongside the interstate, a woman who just may have a connection to Longmire’s service during the Vietnam war. Just superb. 

“J.K. Rowling” by Natalie Wynn. I know I’m venturing into controversial territory, but once again, I came to Wynn’s YouTube video (part of her ContraPoints series) a little late in the game. This time it was because I was deliberately seeking out intelligent dialog on a difficult subject and found multiple people recommending Wynn’s video. What difficult subject are we talking about? Why, Rowling’s comments (both on Twitter and on her blog) that many regard as transphobic. My own views are irrelevant except to say that I think we need a lot more listening and empathy these days, and I mean real listening and empathy, the kind that comes without judgement, agenda, or with the barely concealed impatience of someone just waiting for their turn to speak.  I was happy to listen to Wynn deconstruct Rowling’s essay in a thoughtful, entertaining manner, and you just may be too:

Airlie Winery. Almost two years ago, on one our trips to Newport, Heidi and I stopped at Airlie Winery, a cozy vineyard in the coastal range that feels much more remote than it really is, just a few miles from Highway 99 off Maxfield Creek Road. There were two Irish Setters roaming the property at the time, big beautiful dogs, and I said, “You know, if we do get another dog, I think I might like one of those.” Well, Heidi ran with this, of course, and there we were two years later returning to the winery (finally open again after closing during the pandemic) to enjoy some wine, cheese, and crackers while Rosie, our own Irish Setter, was able to occasionally roam and visit with other dogs, including the owner Mary’s setters. We heartily recommend Airlie to anyone in the area. The first shot below is of Rosie running among the vines. The second is from the creek below the main building, where we sat for a bit and enjoyed a pleasant afternoon.

News & Muse (April 2021): A Shot in the Arm of Optimism

I’m happy to say both Heidi and I are fully vaccinated (Moderna for us), as are both my parents and my in-laws.  Hopefully the kids will be allowed to get vaccinated in the near future, though my daughter turns 18 in about five weeks (yikes, how did that happen?), so she’ll be eligible soon enough. If you have an opportunity to get vaccinated, I’d encourage you to do so. While dangers still lurk (people letting their guard down too early, new COVID-19  variants on the loose), I’m feeling a metaphorical shot in the arm of optimism for the world at large. It might also be the weather, since I’m typing this on a warm spring day, with my wife’s tulips beginning to bloom out front, and our long wet winter has resulted in everything being lush and green.

I’m halfway through a new Karen Pantelli book and feeling good about it. The last book, the big one that I had to put aside for a while, still gnaws at me, and I’m sure I’ll be returning to it soon enough, but I still need just a bit more distance from it. It’s not like anything else I’ve written. Writing that book had me thinking more about my writing process as a whole, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, even if it’s never fun, and even a bit depressing, to work so long on something and feel (even temporarily) that it might have been wasted work. If you want to  keep getting better as an artist, there’s a real danger in getting too comfortable with your methods, and if you’re not failing regularly then you’re probably not growing.  Writers who get too dogmatic about a particular way of doing things run the risk of calcifying their creative abilities, I think. Heck, this is true about just about anything really. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started questioning myself anytime I’ve started sounding a bit too rigid in my thinking.

My productivity has been pretty decent lately, though a year and a half into my stint as a full time writer I’m still experimenting with methods. Jerry Oltion, a great writer who was a regular at an amazing, and quite frankly, life-altering writer’s workshop I had the good fortune to attend for a few years when I was barely out of high school, and was therefore barely ready for some of the lessons it had to impart to me, once told me that the definition of a professional writer was a writer who never thought he or she was writing enough. I try to keep that in mind when I’m beating myself up too much.

A Bit of Whimsy: Red Barn on a Lush Green Hill

Heidi took this one from the road. With my daughter testing for her brown belt in Kempo at a location halfway to our destination (she passed!), and spectators not allowed in because, you know, pandemic, the rest of us took a sunny afternoon hike at McDowell Creek Falls, near Lebanon, Oregon. The hike, while a bit mucky in places, was great, but I enjoyed the rural drive through the foothills of the Cascade Mountains almost as much.

Scott Recommends

Just a brief aside on why I have no books to recommend this month:  I did read a few, but I generally subscribe to the belief that if you don’t have anything good to say about a book, then it’s usually best to say nothing. It’s just my opinion, after all, taste being a subjective thing, and besides that I don’t think there’s much point in giving attention, which is the currency of the realm in the modern digital world, to something unless you really want someone to read it. 

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability. As usual, I’m late to the party on this one, but somehow I missed Brown’s amazing TED talk on the power of vulnerability when it was released back in 2010. Only twenty minutes in length, and interwoven with her personal story of how her academic research into shame, courage, and empathy changed her own life, it became one of the most popular TED talks of all time. Well worth a few minutes of your time:

Nomadland. Speaking of being vulnerable, I can’t help but think of Frances McDormand, one of the best actresses working today, in this quiet but powerful film. If the best kind of entertainment often defies easy categorization and critique, then this movie, which netted McDormand a best actress nomination for her portrayal of Fern, a widow who sets off on a road trip in a ramshackle van after the collapse of a company mining town in Nevada, certainly fits the bill.  It had the feel of a documentary (perhaps partly because a few of the supporting characters weren’t characters at all, but actual nomads), and does not offer any easy answers about modern America, and yet, it’s all the more powerful because of its unconventional nature.

Normal People. If my recommendations this month seem to be fitting a theme of vulnerability, it wasn’t by design, but I have to say that the exquisite love story about Marianne Sheridan and Connel Waldron, two Irish students whose complicated romantic relationship begins in secondary school on Ireland’s Atlantic coast and continues later as undergraduates at Trinity College in Dublin, wouldn’t have been nearly as compelling without the risks the two leads took to deliver such outstanding performances. My description above doesn’t do it justice. Watch the first episode (they’re all available on Hulu) and see if you can stop yourself from watching the second. I couldn’t.

News & Muse (March 2021): A Year of Fire and Ice . . . and Here Comes Spring, Again

I mentioned last month that I was seeing hints of spring. As usual in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where we often get one last whiplash from winter before it leaves for good, we had the worst ice storm two weeks ago this area has suffered in 40 years. It wreaked havoc on the city’s trees and resulted in widespread power outages for days on end. While we were one of the lucky few who never lost power (well, for fifteen minutes, which hardly counts), there were thousands without basic electricity for over a week. And yet today, as I type this, the sun is out, daffodils and crocuses are blooming, and even though I see plenty of downed tree across the street from my office window, spring is well on its way. Of course, we’ll see, right? After the the last twelve months, who knows.

And those twelve months have been a heck of a ride: a global pandemic (and the economic shocks that accompanied it), the end of Trump’s toxic presidency, devastating forest fires raging less than thirty miles from my house, and finally a wicked ice storm. My own family has been very fortunate, however, and for the most part, I’ve just continued plugging away. I did have to temporarily set aside a long book a couple weeks ago, which was very painful, but the longer I’ve been at this the more I’ve come to trust my own process. (I pretty quickly switched to another book). I also think it’s important to take some creative risks, both with your choice of material and your processes, and this book was certainly a big one. It can’t be a risk if you don’t occasionally fall flat on your face. My gut tells me I just need some perspective on it, but we’ll see. 

Not much other news at the moment. Since I’m not using Instagram for much these days, I decided to occasionally post daily practice drawings over there for the fun of it, and for extra motivation to keep practicing. You can find them over at http://www.instagram.com/scottwilliamcarter

A Bit of Whimsy: Joy Unleashed

Heidi and I took Rosie to the largest and most wild park in the city and found a big empty field for her to run. We’re still practicing her recall with our now nine-month-old Irish Setter, and she’s generally pretty good about it, but we do have to be careful. Seeing her unadulterated joy as she gallops around off-leash is pure heaven.

Scott Recommends

A Promised Land by Barack Obama. Like many people, I saw Barack Obama’s keynote address at John Kerry’s Democratic National Convention in 2004 and was captivated by his oratorical skill and his life story. Was he just a flash in the pan that could give a good speech, though? The more I learned about him early on, even before he won his Senate race—in his interviews, in his books, etc—the more I became convinced that his public speaking ability wasn’t even his  greatest strength. His evidence-based intellect, his cool-under-pressure temperament, and his optimistic orientation toward life (an optimism grounded in political acumen, which his opponents would often underestimate at their own peril), he had many attributes, I thought,  that could possibly make him a successful President someday, if the stars aligned. Well, of course the stars did align, and his first post-Presidential book (the first of two volumes) is a great chronology of his rise to power, a balanced historical perspective of his first few years in office, and a wonderfully written memoir by its own merits. As someone who generally follows the news fairly closely, much of the actual information wasn’t new to me, but it was still a great pleasure to read. 

Better Angels: Why Violence Has Declined by Stephen Pinker. I listened to Pinker’s exhaustive but very convincing case on why the world is more safe, more peaceful and more civilized for more people than at any other time in history as an audio book, which made it take a long time to finish, but it was well worth it. I love books that challenge conventional wisdom, and do so with such deft. Progress does not come in a straight line, and to say we live in a much better world overall than our ancestors does not diminish the challenges of today. I also love writers unafraid to take on any particular group’s sacred cows so long as they adhere to the credo of allowing your conclusions to be guided by evidence and not the other way around. If you’re feeling down about the state of the world, this book is a great antidote. 

The Ezra Klein Show (podcast): The Senate is Making a Mockery of Itself. I’m not a big podcast listener. I don’t subscribe to any of them, really, but I sometimes end up listening to a few now and then because of a topic or discussion I want to learn more about. Klein’s discussion with Adam Jentleson, the author Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy, is as good as any about why getting rid of the 60-vote threshold in the Senate (the so-called filibuster rule) might just be the most important change that needs to be made if the United States wants to prevent gridlock from grinding our country to a halt. Just about every argument in favor of keeping this arcane procedural gimmick—a fluke which is not in the Constitution, and only came about as a mistake — is a myth. Definitely worth an hour of your time.

News & Muse (February 2021): Hints of Spring, A Little Writing Advice

We had some snow the other day. Just an inch or so. As usual in the Willamette Valley, it didn’t last long. Otherwise, I’m seeing hints of spring everywhere—both in reality and metaphorically. The days are getting longer. On my daily walks, I’ve started to see crocuses and other plants start to bloom. A new President in the United States has brought a palpable sense of relief to those of us who believe in decency, democracy, and at least an attempt to adhere to the truth. The vaccine roll out, while bumpy, is picking up steam. We’ve lost a lot of good people to COVID-19, and the winter of this pandemic isn’t over by a long shot, but at least it feels like we’re heading in the right direction.

Productivity has been pretty good lately, mostly by just sticking to a daily word quota and staying off the Internet until after 5 p.m. Funny how straightforward it is, really, and how I have to keep reminding myself of the basics year after year. I feel like a Zen Buddhist coming back to the breath. Read a lot (breath comes in), write a lot (breath goes out). When I’ve taught writing courses, I generally start out by telling the students that if they stick to a daily word count of new material no matter what, plus read at least a book a week, they’ll probably get good enough to eventually develop an audience. If they don’t, no matter how many classes they take, they probably won’t. I tell them if half of them quit the class right now and did just that, while the other half went on to MFA programs but didn’t commit to being at least moderately prolific writers and voracious readers, I would bet on the half that quit my class. I usually got a lot of shocked expressions, but it really is true, I think.

Here’s a last little thought on this, to illustrate that being “moderately prolific” is not as difficult as some might suggest. A lot of people consider Robert B. Parker, a grand master of crime fiction, a fairly prolific writer. Now, we don’t know if he wrote under other names, or how many manuscripts he had to throw away, but if you take him at his word (always a dubious proposition for someone who makes stuff up for a living), he was a light outliner who mostly wrote one draft and he didn’t write under pseudonyms. He published something like 70 books that he wrote himself (I’ve probably read half of them), which amounted to about 4 million words. His books were fairly short by modern standards, so keep that in mind, but few people would argue about the average quality (he has duds like all long-term writers). He had about a 50-year career before he passed away. If you do the math, he would have had to write . . . about 250 words/day.

One manuscript page.

I know that’s pretty amazing for a lot of folks, and yes, these weren’t epic fantasy tomes we’re talking about, but still, he just did the work day after day. Certainly there are writers who have written much, much more, but I mention Parker because few would argue that he didn’t leave behind a substantial body of high quality work. Because when you get right down to it, being prolific is just another way of saying you’re consistent.

A Bit of Whimsy

That’s a quick five-minute sketch of an Irish Setter from one of my drawing notebooks. Not long ago I committed to at least a drawing a day. Some days I only do one, some days five or more. They’re not really meant for public exposure, but I thought it might be fun to share one now and then. The goal is very simple, whether I’m drawing something I see, something from a magazine, or a picture that I bring up on my tablet: to recreate a sense of what I see (the fundamental skill of all visual arts, or so it was explained to me by a very good professional artist and teacher once) in just a few minutes.

Scott Recommends

The Roadside History of Oregon by Bill Gulick. Back in my twenties when I owned a used bookstore, I used to dip into this book when it passed through the store, but I’d never taken the time to read it cover to cover. When my daughter gave it to me as a Christmas gift, I figured now was the time. I’m glad I did. Gulick’s sprawling history of my home state, using the highways as a loose structure, is full of fascinating anecdotes of the many colorful figures who populated Oregon’s early days. It’s particularly wonderful since I’ve visited the majority of the cities listed. I’ve always said that Oregon is like a microcosm of the country as a whole, since it has a little of everything: high desert, lush valleys, coastal regions, mountain peaks, all within a day’s drive, all the regions very distinct from one another. There’s a climate and style of life for just about everyone in Oregon, which makes it such an absolute gem. 

American Hustle. I missed this David O. Russell’s film when it came out in 2013. A New York grifter and con man (a nearly unrecognizable Christian Bale) is forced to work with an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) to perform an elaborate sting operation to avoid jail for himself and his lover (Amy Adams). Loaded with other stars (Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Robert De Niro), it’s the kind of film that often loses its way when too many actors ham it up on screen, but that didn’t happen here. Great acting, great writing—it was a fun film with some nice twists.

Love Just Screws Everything Up by Lynn Johnston. The 17th collection of the popular For Better or For Worse comic strip, following the life and times of the Patterson family, this strip ran for 29 years and ended its run in 2008. I’d caught the odd strip here and there over the years, back when I was still mostly reading the comics via the funny pages in a newspaper, but I’d never bothered to read a full collection. It’s great stuff. Unlike most strips, Johnston ages the characters (not quite real time, maybe a a third of real time?), so you follow the family’s many ups and downs in life just like the rest of us.

Bad Business by Robert B. Parker. Spenser starts off investigating whether a woman’s husband is cheating on her and ends up uncovering corporate malfeasance on a massive scale, a very unorthodox love triangle, oh, and several murders to boot. A fun read, and the extended cast (the beautiful and intelligent Susan, the inscrutable Hawk, and others) always help bring the story to life. While I enjoy Parker’s spare writing style, this was a bit bare bones even for him. It really is the bare minimum, I think, and there were scenes with almost no setting whatsoever. Still, it’s always a pleasant afternoon I get to spend with Spenser and company.

Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane. A books that begins as a fascinating character study and picks up steam as the suspense, and twists, mount, Lehane’s book chronicles the story of Rachel Childs, a once-promising journalist who becomes a shut-in, and the mystery of a husband who may not be what he seems. I haven’t read too many of Lehane’s books (mostly the Kenzi and Gennaro P.I. series, which I’m a big fan of ), but I will definitely be looking for more. My issue is that I seldom want to read a book if I’ve seen the movie it’s based on, and since I’m seldom reading what’s popular now, I’ve often seen the movie before I get to the book. Certainly a problem for me, not Lehane!

Now in Audio: A Deep and Deadly Undertow

Just a quick post: The seventh Garrison Gage novel, A Deep and Deadly Undertow, is now available in audio for digital download. Once again narrated by the talented Steven Roy Grimsley, you can find it at Audible and iTunes.