M.L. Doyle's Blog, page 4

Trifecta of creativity

How do you measure creativity? Is it liquid so you can measure it in a cup or a bucket and carry it? Maybe it’s wind since I often say someone’s creativity blew me away. Or is creativity something solid that smacks you upside the head?

Three things that carried, blew, smacked me this week.

First, is the novel, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North. I’d never heard of it, but evidently it was a big hit and all the talk when it first came out in 2014. Not her first book, Claire North made a name for herself after this one came on the scene and I understand why.

Harry August is born in 1919 and lives a life, then dies one way or another, and is born again on the same day in the same place in 1919. Crazy! Who thinks of this stuff? Evidently, Claire North does.

And it’s not just an interesting premise. The characters are vivid and remarkable, the conflict takes a while to unfold, but when it does it’s shattering and completely engrossing. North creates a world in which lots of people are reborn this way, living hundreds of years over and over again, many of them having a different outcome, but others having a predictability that gave the characters surety. They knew they might live to a particular age, die of a particular disease, survive a particular disaster … or not. I found myself thinking about this story throughout the day, wondering about fate and destiny and multidimensional worlds.

Reading time has been rare for me lately so I’ve been doing a lot of audiobook listening. On the way to and from work, anytime I was cooking or cleaning I looked forward to more of this story. Peter Kenney’s reading makes this one of the best audio books I’ve ever heard, with every character taking on unique voices. Harry August travels the world and I was dazzled by Kenney’s ability to take on so many accents. The American CIA agent is a particularly good one.

The second creative thing is actually an accumulation of creativity. On May 14 (tomorrow), I’m joining Ron Capps in a reading for the Creative Forces, National Capital Region Summit. Ron and I will be reading from a selection of works by veteran writers. The best part is, I was allowed to choose what I’m reading.

Of course it was ridiculously hard to select 60 to 90 seconds of stuff to read from various authors. It’s nearly impossible to narrow millions of amazing words down to just over a hundred or so each. I kept pulling books off my shelves and flipping through them. They were scattered all over the living room by the time I was done, and I had to pick my way out of the sea of books that were, each one of them, fantastic.

In addition to one of Ron’s poems called Ranger’s Rest, I’m reading words by Matt Hefti, Jerri Bell, Tracy Crow and Kayla Williams. All people I’ve met in the last few years and every last one of them remarkable writers.

As I was re-reading these works, shuffling through stacks of books and flipping through my favorite parts and fighting to stay focused instead of getting sucked into all of these great stories, I realized, after ten years of being serious about writing, if I had to read 60 to 90 seconds of words from every creative writer I now know, I could be reading for hours. They would be wonderful hours. I hope some of their magic will rub off.

The third creative thing is a music video. I’d been seeing all the buzz about Childish Gambino’s new video, This is America, on social media but hadn’t found the time to watch it. When I finally did, I felt gut punched. I walked away knowing I didn’t fully understand what I had just seen.

The next day, I watched it again and felt like I still didn’t fully understand it, and wondered if I ever would. I’d realized I don’t have all the references needed to get it, not 100 percent, but that’s part of what makes it so fascinating. It’s not just that there’s so much in it, it’s that there’s so much in it you don’t understand it drives you to reach out to learn what it’s trying to tell you.

These two images, the minstrel posture and the grotesque facial expression, happen in just the first 50 seconds of this four-minute video.  Put them alongside their references and you see there’s a lot to unpack. There are already millions of hits on videos and a handful of articles that are attempts to explain everything going on in this thing. They’re only scratching the surface –massacres, cell phones as weapons, apartheid, police violence, Jim Crow, mass incarceration. Like I said, I don’t have all the references, but I’m going to work on that.

We already knew Childish Gambino, aka has vision. If his aim was to get people talking, it worked.

That said, after watching Glover’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel, and after reading the interview with Hiro Murai, the video’s director, I am horribly disappointed. It was clear Kimmel didn’t understand the song or the video at all and Glover didn’t do anything to help him or me. Glover seemed to say, it is what it is and it didn’t deserve further discussion. Mauri at least expressed surprise at the level of interest and that it had been so well received. Aside from that, their combined reactions are blase’, as if this was a project they simply whipped up one day and now they’re both surprised by the reaction. After hearing from the creators, who KNOWS what their aim was?

Creativity. It’s not something that can be bought or learned, and it’s not always celar what it means, but I’m awfully damn glad people have it, because the world would be colorless without it.

I keep saying yes

I once heard someone say, “My dance card is full.” I understood what they really meant was that they were overbooked, had too much to do, maybe had said yes one too many times. There was a time when I lived by the creed that you could never have too many invitations to dance. If … Continue reading I keep saying yes

I keep saying yes

I once heard someone say, “My dance card is full.” I understood what they really meant was that they were overbooked, had too much to do, maybe had said yes one too many times.

There was a time when I lived by the creed that you could never have too many invitations to dance. If too many people asked, just bring ‘em ALL out on the dance floor! In my younger years, when I wore shiny silver platform shoes and dance shorts under my dresses for those times when I was flung over someone’s head, a good disco evening was when most of it was spent under the glitter ball, leaving your sweat on the multicolored floor of flashing lights.

I have no idea what year this is, but dancing and saying yes was a big part of it.

Lately, life is feeling a bit more like those good old disco days. I’m not doing a lot of dancing, but I’ve had a lot more opportunities to say yes lately, and that’s making me happy.

I said yes when I was asked to serve on two different panels at AWP this year. The Association of Writers and Writing Programs is always a huge (and expensive) event and it is shaping up to be a must-attend place for veteran writers. This year in Tampa, I got to hang with a bunch of people – the ones I have recently learned to think of as my tribe, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be, seeing old friends, making new ones. Plus, Tampa!

The team from the new gig with The Wrath-Bearing Tree, the professor, author and too cool for a website, Drew Pham, me, the author and lawyer you want on your side, Matt Hefti and the kick ass author, editor and photographer, Andria Williams. Their awesomeness rubs off so I plan to keep them all close.

I said yes when I was asked to be part of the editorial board for The Wrath-Bearing Tree. I have no idea why these cool people asked me to be a part of their team. I got to hang with several of them while at AWP — Matt Hefti, Andria Williams and Drew Pham, who is so cool he doesn’t even have his own website. I realized, these people are not only so creative they make your head explode, they are also really good human beings. It’s good to be around good humans. It’s so much easier than being around mean and nasty humans and there are far too many of those crawling out from under rocks lately. I think we should have a Wrath-Bearing Tree.com annual meeting just to ensure we get a regular dose of good human-itis.

Thomas Brennan, founder of The War Horse and awesome dude. We will forgive him for also being a Marine.

I said yes to Thomas Brennan when he invited me to be a fellow at The War Horse.org Writing Seminar in Boulder Crest, Virginia. Five days of hanging out with twelve of the coolest women I’ve ever met. The writing instruction from David Chrisinger was intense and opened up avenues of creativity for me I never knew existed. I wrote an essay that helped me purge an experience I’ve been wrestling with for years. It hasn’t been published yet, but as soon as I find a home for it, I’ll announce it here. Every time I think back on that week I feel humbled and honored to have been asked. I will never regret saying yes to that. I’m working on a podcast about the retreat and hope to have it done soon. I’ll link it here when it’s ready. Here’s a link to a podcast I did about David and his amazing instruction.

Eric “Shmo” Chandler is a hearty Minnesotan who evidently loves the snow. He’s also a bit crazy.

I said yes when this guy I met a couple of years ago asked me to come to Duluth for his Bridging the Gap writer’s workshop. Eric “Shmo” Chandler, is throwing his first writing workshop, military storytelling event and it’s shaping up to be a fantastic weekend. His latest book called, Hugging this Rock, Poems of Earth and Sky, Love & War, reads like the writer is someone who is most comfortable outdoors, because he is. The instructors for the workshop are David Chrisinger (our instructor from the War Horse Writing Retreat) and Randy Brown, a Minnesota native who published a book called Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire. Yes. Haikus. Don’t laugh. He won a gold medal in poetry from the Military Writers Society of America. Andria Williams and I are “guest authors,” and the best part about this opportunity to say yes is, it’s in my home state of Minnesota. I get to do my writer thing and see family too. Had to say yes to that. If you’re in the Duluth area, please join us June 2-3, 2018. See the link for details.

Another Marine — officer this time. I’m looking forward to joining Tracy Crow’s team at a couple of upcoming writing seminars.

I said yes when Tracy Crow (SUCH an amazing woman) asked me to be a part of her ON POINT Creative Writing Workshops. These two workshop weekends, one in Tampa (May 18-20, 2018) and one in Charlotte (June 8-10, 2018), are free and jam packed with instruction from a team of women authors. Jerri Bell, Jane Blair, Paula Broadwell, Brooke N. King, Anne Visser Ney, Abby E. Murray, Sally Parmer, Dr. Kate Hendricks and Laura Westley. Check out the link for the workshops. If you’re in the Tampa or Charlotte locations when these workshops are being held, you should treat yourself to a weekend with us. The workshops are sponsored by The Wounded Warrior Project, so they are free and worth every second of your time.

Ron Capps is another powerhouse in the veteran writing world. Read what it says on the board. WORD.

And I said yes when Ron Capps asked me to read with him during a Creative Forces Summit for the National Endowment for the Arts (la de dah, right?). At this event, on May 14 and 15 at The Meade Center for American Theater, we’re both reading from other writer’s works about their Iraq and Afghanistan experiences. Ron wants to break the rules a bit and include other conflicts with the goal of being as representative as possible. I’m down for that and I can’t wait!

That tribe vibe –that feeling you get when you know you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be? That vibe is no joke. I’ll keep saying yes to it as long as people keep asking.

This is my rifle

**Warning** political rant – I know. as an author I’m supposed to keep my trap shut when it comes to this stuff, but feck it. I can’t right now.** I’m a slick sleeve. I don’t have a combat patch. I don’t know what it’s like to hear a bullet meant to kill me as it … Continue reading This is my rifle

This is my rifle

**Warning** political rant – I know. as an author I’m supposed to keep my trap shut when it comes to this stuff, but feck it. I can’t right now.**

I’m a slick sleeve. I don’t have a combat patch. I don’t know what it’s like to hear a bullet meant to kill me as it zips by my head. I’ve never seen a fellow soldier killed nor have I ever killed anyone. The entire time I was in uniform, if you can imagine it, this country was at peace.  Perhaps my opinion about weapons, for those reasons, count for shit.

Despite the peace through which I served, I still had to fire a weapon at least annually. Every time I aimed my M16 at a human-shaped target, and every time I pulled the trigger, I felt mixed emotions. Part of me loved it. The power, the feeling of success for striking where I aimed –which was rare. I enjoyed the way I imagined I looked—all helmet and ammo pouches and dusty boots and that sleek looking weapon in the hands of a woman in the best shape of her life. I’d smile my wide, white smile, my dark brown skin glistening under a sweat stained helmet band and stroll out to the target, the business end of the weapon pointed down range, and count the holes I’d made. I’d analyze my shot group, which was usually crap, like I knew what I was looking at and knew exactly what to do to improve it. For most of my career in uniform I was a terrible shot.

But that didn’t stop me from looking forward to the times when we checked out weapons and spent a day on the range.

I’d get even more filled with myself when I trained with a nine millimeter pistol. That wide-legged stance, the tight, noise-dampening headphones, the safety glasses, the buck of the pistol in my fists, the unique and pervasive smell of cordite. I was much better with the pistol than I was with an M16. I loved the metallic cranking noise the paper target made as it flew at you along the trolley. That scene had been captured in movies and TV too many times for me to not see myself in some glorified role.

It wasn’t until I deployed to the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia that I had to live with a weapon for months at a time. I carried it and multiple loaded magazines while I also hefted my video camera and tripod, traveling all over the place, capturing video of the action around me, and listening to the stories people told.

I shot video of Bosnian soldiers removing landmines they’d placed but lost track of during the war, standing stupidly close and marveling at their casual attitude about the work. I shot video of old Muslim ladies throwing rocks at Serbians they accused of murdering their loved ones. They turned to me, screaming into my camera, shaking their rock filled fists. Frankly, I couldn’t blame them for their anger. It seemed as if everyone was angry at everyone in Bosnia and the hatred would never cool off long enough for the loathing to stop boiling in their veins.

But much of my time was spent shooting video of American soldiers as they labored long, hot hours in the sun, repairing roads, patrolling destroyed villages, meeting with community leaders and politicians. I went on a night patrol with a scout platoon and ended up spending more than eight hours, covered in manure smelling filth as we tried to free a Humvee from the deepest muck I had ever seen. I kept telling myself it was mud, and hoped I was right when one soldier sank up to his chest in it. No matter what they tried, it seemed, the disastrous scene only grew worse. They ended up having to call for help from an M1 tank. By the end of that night, I had even more respect for the tenacity, the ingenuity, the sheer bullheadedness of young men and women who end up thrown into shit that is literally over their heads but still find some way to get out of it.

For me and my time in uniform, my video camera and the stories I told with it were far more useful weapons than the M16 I wore strapped to my back.

I became so comfortable carrying it, the strap laying crossways on my chest, the weapon with the barrel pointed down, covering my back, that I felt naked without it. It never bothered me as I slept with it next to me on my cot, sometimes inside the sleeping bag with me, the hard metal of it like the hard metal railing of my camp bed. That weapon was my responsibility. The one with the serial number I memorized was my permanent accessory.

After reading theagingmillennialengineer’s blog post, “Fuck you, I like guns,” I felt as if, finally, I’d found someone who served in uniform, who’d fired a deadly weapon and who felt about it the same way I did. In the nine months I was deployed, my weapon was always ready. Cleaned, a magazine loaded, just waiting for me to pull back the charging handle. While I’d grown accustomed to it, while I’d spent long hours training with it, I never, ever wanted to actually use it.

Yes, I served in peacetime. Like I said, I’m a slick sleeve. I don’t have a combat patch. I’ve never been shot at. I’ve never seen a fellow soldier killed nor have I ever killed anyone. And admittedly, perhaps my opinion about weapons, for those reasons, counts for shit.

Except, the kids in that Florida school never had a combat patch either, until now. They’d never been shot at, until now. They’d never seen a fellow student killed, until now. And their opinions, in my book, count for a whole lot. Some asshats are calling them opportunists, fakes, tools of their gun hating parents who influence them.

I think the asshats are saying such things because these kids are changing the game and they are frightened. These kids are simply stating their well thought out opinions. They feel very strongly about them, because someone with a deadly weapon tried to kill them.

That night in the field, stuck in mud I could have drowned in, most of the soldiers I was with weren’t much older than those high school kids. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. If we can send kids that young to war they absolutely have the right to offer their opinions and to be heard and not to be accused of being mouthpieces for some nefarious purpose.

From what I hear them saying, what they really want is for grownups to be grownups. They’re asking, why haven’t we fixed this shit yet? They want to know how come, with all of our talk about what a great country we live in, we can’t come together to try to ensure a basic tenant of our constitution. Life.

Other countries do it. Why can’t we?

The conversation becomes polarizing, as soon as it begins. Mostly because, as theagingmillennialengineer’s post says:

“ We restrict what types of businesses can operate in which zones of the city or county. We have a whole system of permitting for just about any activity a person wants to conduct since those activities could affect others, and we realize, as a society, that we need to try to minimize the risk to other people that comes from the chosen activities of those around them in which they have no say. Gun ownership is the one thing our country collectively refuses to manage, and the result is a lot of dead people.”

I have a few ideas for how we can manage gun ownership in a way that will keep us from a lot more dead people. Here are just a few. They are not perfect. Some might not even be possible, but they are ideas that don’t include kicking in doors and taking people’s precious deadly weapons. All I ask is that you give them consideration.

Reinstate funding for the CDC to conduct studies into gun deaths and gun use and apply that scientific research to stopping it. We used science to study car fatalities to make driving safer. Let’s use the same methods to study gun fatalities. Remove everything that hampers the CDC and other scientific outlets from doing such research.
Treat mass shootings and gun deaths as the public health epidemic it is and put our best public health professionals on the issue. Study it in terms of mental health, public safety, individual rights and science. Use those studies to develop a multi-phased program to reduce gun violence and death.
Start immediate and massive communication campaigns that are aimed at reducing gun violence, and supporting responsible gun ownership so that those responsible owners are held up as examples of what right looks like. We need to stop vilifying people simply for owning guns. People who own guns are not all evil, war mongering turds. Those who support responsible ownership should be held up as examples so that more will follow their lead. We need communications campaigns that help us think that way. You may think, with all the crap going on, that a bunch of PSAs aren’t going to do anything, but at nine o’clock, I bet we all know where the hell our damn children are now, don’t we? That kind of shit works.
When a product is manufactured in a way that negligently harms people, we can sue the manufacturer. Repeal the laws that prevent people from suing gun manufacturers.
Invest in effective registration and tracking. Car registries are on national databases. With a plate number, you can easily track who that car belongs to and any patrolman, detective and law enforcement officer can trace the plate. You can even track it via GPS. We can’t do that with guns because most registries are not in useable databases and many registries are manually input and tracked … in 2018! Fix that shit! Make it easy for new information that violates registration to be added. Revoke registrations the way a driver’s license is revoked.  When a gun license is revoked, go get the weapons! (This might already be happening, I doubt it.)
BTW, that gun registration, license, permit, whatever you have…make that an annual or bi-annual renewal. In Florida, a gun license is good for SEVEN YEARS. A lot can happen in seven years. You want to own a gun, prove you know how to own it safely every dang year. Charge fees to pay for upgrading the technology to support the requirement.
From their own website, the ATF says:

“ ATF’s National Tracing Center (NTC) is the only organization authorized to trace U.S. and foreign manufactured firearms for international, Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies. Its purpose is to provide investigative leads in the fight against violent crime and terrorism and to enhance public safety.”

Ah, WHY? Why are they the ONLY ORGANIZATION AUTHORIZED? Stop it! Just stop. It’s nonsensical, it’s putting the information in a silo and it’s just fucking stupid. Make that shit EASY to get to. Make it easy to update and upload and keep it as technically efficient as possible.

You can’t sell a car without legally transferring the title and you can’t sell a car unless you legally vouch for it’s safety and maintenance. Make the same true for transferring ownership of a weapon. That shouldn’t be hard. A lot of this can be done with a new cubicle at the DMV. Take a number pal.
I can chip my cat. Why can’t weapons be chipped to track ownership? Make it impossible to remove serial numbers. Use implanted chips on the weapons to track them. Again, from the ATF website:

“The NIBIN (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network) Program automates ballistics evaluations and provides actionable investigative leads in a timely manner. NIBIN is the only interstate automated ballistic imaging network in operation in the United States and is available to most major population centers in the United States.”

MOST major population centers? Why not ALL population centers, major or minor? Not to mention, why are they crowing about having a “national network.” In this day and age, shouldn’t that be a given? Well, it isn’t.

Use pin numbers or thumb prints to unlock a weapon before it can be taken off safe. Add alarms that will alert an owner if a weapon is being used without their permission. Someone told me some gun manufacturer tried tried this. It didn’t work. Well, we tried going to the moon a few times too before we did it? Did we let that stop us? Why, WHY do we let people with these kinds of shithole arguments win?
Above all, find out what the hell is wrong with these men! It’s not enough to call them crazy. It’s not enough to say the school was a target of opportunity. Do we really think that if that school was impregnable, that kid wouldn’t have gone somewhere else to test his assault style weapon? This is why the CDC needs to be on this crap. There’s a sickness going around. How the hell can’t we stop young men and old men from being so damn violent? It’s not an easy answer. There are lots of smart people in this country. We need to put them on it.

I went to basic training in the era when we learned the old saying, “this is my rifle, this is my gun, (as the DI grabbed his crotch). One is for killing, one is for fun.”

But as wise as drill instructors were and still are, whether you call it a rifle or a gun, if it goes bang, it can kill. At some point we have to put the lives of citizens over the recreational pleasure or even the false constitutional claims of others. At some point we have to say a child’s life is more important than your right to own every killing machine you can get your hands on. And at some point we as a society have to say, we are sick. We’ve got a serious problem. And we need to put our best and brightest onto solving it, and guess what? Our best ain’t those dumb shits in Washington.

They have no idea what they’re doing and right now, all they can talk about are guns to ban, or which clips to ban or which rights we lose and that’s all bullshit. Their NRA funded cerebrums are FUBAR* when it comes to this crap. The AR15 and weapons that copy it need to go. That’s obvious. Stop mucking about with what we know and get on with it.

Let’s do one thing right. Let’s start by putting our best and brightest scientists and public health experts, specifically the CDC, onto figuring out what is eating away our brains. Let’s prove to our young people that we can be adults and figure this shit out. Because right now, those kids in Florida are adulting far better than we are.

*Fuck Up Beyond All Recognition

A different kind of writing contest

Once again, I’m helping best selling  author RR Haywood judge the semi-annual writing contest he conducts in his closed The Living Army or TLA Facebook group. The group, made up of a couple thousand mostly British, American and Australian fans of his Undead zombie horror series, has lately become populated with fans of his new best … Continue reading A different kind of writing contest

A different kind of writing contest

Once again, I’m helping best selling  author RR Haywood judge the semi-annual writing contest he conducts in his closed The Living Army or TLA Facebook group. The group, made up of a couple thousand mostly British, American and Australian fans of his Undead zombie horror series, has lately become populated with fans of his new best selling time travel series, Extracted.

His Undead series, which now numbers 26 books, each of them best sellers on their own, is the kind of series with which fans become obsessed and inevitably find themselves looking for like-minded readers. It’s that search for connection with others who share obsessions which spawned the TLA  group, many of whom have read the entire series a number of times, have listened to them in audiobook and spend days and days arguing over who should be in the dream casts for hopeful TV and movie adaptations. (Hint, hint, movie and TV producers. This series is screaming for TV time.) I reviewed one of the books in the series here.

Any author with that kind of fan following would probably count themselves lucky and RR Haywood, definitely feels appreciated by his fan base, but he obviously loves to write and isn’t going to restrict himself to zombie horror.

Haywood’s recent foray into the science fiction genre has been equally successful in drumming up appreciative fans, enough to make his Extracted series number one in both the UK and the US in the time travel sub-genre. Deservedly so. All thee books, Extracted, Executed and Extinct are entertaining, suspenseful and filled with the kind of endearing and complex characters readers loved from his Undead series.

All of this to say that his semi-annual writing contest is a bit different this time. In the past, he has asked writers to submit the first chapter (the first 500 words) of  a post-apocalyptic story.

Not this time.

Now he’d like writers to submit the first chapter (the first 500 words) in a science fiction story. ** I forgot to add that in addition to being science fiction, the story must also have at least one talking robot. It can be a toaster, a computer, it can have one line or 50. It simply must have at least one instance of a computer that talks.**

We’ve already heard a bit of push back from those who say they don’t read science fiction, therefore, they aren’t interested. Which is baffling. Lots of different stories take place in a science fiction setting. Mystery, romance, thriller, satire and even zombie horror could be told in a science fiction setting. According to Haywood, “Just set it in space.”

Which makes perfect sense.

The second thing that is different, groundbreaking, fantastic and amazing, is that Haywood is offering, for the first time,  CASH PRIZES for the winners! 150 GBP for first place, 50 GBP for 2nd place and 25 GBP for third place. He’s offering these cash prizes because Haywood is always encouraging new writers. The first book in the Undead series was the first book he’d ever written. Now 26 books later he’s writing full time, working on two very different best selling series and juggling a fan base that grows by the day. Read my interview with him here.  His success story is inspiring and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.

The contest starts this Friday, Jan. 19, and will probably only be open for a week or so. So don’t wait! Go to The Living Army Facebook group and request admittance if you aren’t a member already. When I won the contest more than a year ago, I wrote 500 words as the start of a story I loved and at some point, I still hope to go back and write that book. If you’ve never tried it before, take a shot at writing a science fiction first chapter and see what happens.

My best reads in 2017

I was asked by Andria Williams to participate in her annual Women Writers Recommend Books blog post she puts together for her Military Spouse Book Review, site. I never turn down a chance to spread the word about good books. And 2017 was an especially busy reading year since I had to take any and every opportunity to … Continue reading My best reads in 2017

My best reads in 2017

I was asked by Andria Williams to participate in her annual Women Writers Recommend Books blog post she puts together for her Military Spouse Book Review, site. I never turn down a chance to spread the word about good books. And 2017 was an especially busy reading year since I had to take any and every opportunity to escape from the reality of 2017 … if you know what I mean.

Some of the best I read this year were, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, by Nathan Englander, In Farleigh Field, by Rhys Bowen, A Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon and Janet Oakley’s expertly researched historical thriller, The Jossing Affair.

Andria told us to giver her our top three books of this year. An impossible task! So, I’m going to cheat and give you my top three picks, in no particular order, which all happen to be part of a larger series.

Scorch Series – I loved every single book in Toby Neal and Emily Kimmelman’s post-apocalyptic romance series, Scorch. All SIX books, yes six of them, are smart, well written, edge-of-your-seat thrillers that are also deeply moving love stories, each featuring one brother of the Luciano family. Trust me, it’s the kind of romance series you won’t be embarrassed to read.

I helped the authors as a military advisor on the books, so I can vouch for Neal and Kimmelman’s efforts for authenticity. Since the stories are told from different points of view in each chapter, Neal and Kimmelman split the work, each of them writing either the male or female POV depending on the book. I’d never witnessed this kind of author collaboration before and hadn’t expected it to be as successful as it turned out. These are delicious stories. Try not to gobble them all in one sitting.

The Fatal Flame – Also in my top three is another example of expertly researched historical fiction. Lyndsay Faye’s, The Fatal Flame, is the third book in Faye’s Timothy Wilde series. Wilde is a man of small stature with a hideously burned face he earned on the night both of his parents and hundreds of others were killed in a fire. The tough as nails, New York City Copper, navigates the 1840s city while displaying a soft spot for misfits and strays. The most dangerous misfit in his life is his firefighting brother, Valentine, who bloodies his knuckles in Tammany Hall brawls for the right to put out fires and save lives.

Valentine is a massive, handsome and charming, gay man who decides to run for office against a corrupt wealthy patron. Valentine is a larger than life character in this story of expertly drawn, three dimensional people you won’t want to leave when the pages are done.

The Fatal Flame is the third and final book in this series. Sometime next year, I’ll read all three of them, The Gods of Gotham, Seven for a Secret and The Fatal Flame, in a row. I think I’ll save them for a long holiday weekend or a beach vacation.

The Fifth Season- My final pick is The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, the first book in the Hugo Award Winning Broken Earth series. I’ve not read the other two books in the series, The Stone Sky and The Obelisk Gate, but I look forward to digging into them.

Jemisin starting winning awards for her fiction with her very first book and has collected a pile of them since. She’s known in the fantasy writing business for her rich world building that, not only draws place and characters and intricate plots but also culture, religion, political systems and language and it all feels naturally organic.

In The Broken Earth series, children born with the dangerous ability of Orogeny are murdered by their parents or killed by mobs if their capability to drive their will into the earth to shake the world apart is discovered. If orogenes survive discovery, they are sent to the Flucrum where they are trained to use their gifts to stop the shakes that plague the earth.

Jemisin tells the non-linear story from multiple viewpoints, all of them unique and unforgettable. She populates her world with exotically and wildly different characters, some with black skin, nappy hair, long twists, some are pirates and some are Guardians who are to be feared. I can’t wait to read the next two books in the series to see how it all shakes out … pun intended.

Have you read any of these books? What great reads would you recommend?

I love soup

I love soup. Almost every day for lunch I eat a salad and homemade soup of one sort or another. I’ve been making soup for years and it’s nothing for me to whip up something on a Saturday morning, freezing some so that I have enough to last a few weeks. I thought I knew … Continue reading I love soup