Sarah E. Glenn's Blog, page 21

Friday: Lois Winston and Important Papers

Friday, January 27th, we're having a special guest on the blog: Lois Winston, the author of Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun and Death By Killer Mop Doll, will let us know about her favorite sinister characters. She's also going to be giving away some signed copies of the just-released Death By Killer Mop Doll to people who comment on her posts, so pay extra attention this week! Giveaways are rare in this economy, and even rarer on this blog.

Hmmm… favorite sinister characters. My least favorite sinister characters always seem to be running for office. Lois will only be talking about the fun ones on the 27th. 

For a good review of Lois' first novel, check out Kevin Tipple's review of Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun.

In other news: because my office is under the aegis of UK HealthCare, we have to fulfill the same requirements of all HealthCare employees, even though we don't see patients and aren't even located in one of the clinic buildings. This includes annual training on the safe handling of air tanks and recognizing signs of elder abuse. On Friday, I get to have a mandatory interview with Employee Health. I've been told to bring my most recent vaccination papers to the appointment. I'm wondering what they're going to do with me: the last time I needed vaccination papers was when I was in the Fayette County Public Schools, which I graduated from in 1980. They were in the custody of my parents, and after several moves, including one overseas, I doubt that they still have them or even dreamed that they might be needed one day.

What makes me feel even older? My last tetanus shot was received 'around the turn of the century', which I associate with 1901, not 2001.

The proper term for the appointment, IMO, is 'interview' rather than 'checkup' because the co-workers who've gone through it tell me that there is no examination involved. If they think I'll be applying for sick time to cover my time out of the office, they're in for some kicking; it's a condition of employment, and planning to be sick is also called malingering.

See everyone on Friday!
---

Review: Defending Jacob

Defending Jacob by William Landay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



In this legal thriller, assistant district attorney Andy Barber's comfortable and respectable life comes to a screeching halt when his fourteen-year-old son, Jacob, is charged with murdering one of his classmates. Andy is suspended from his position so he cannot unduly influence or garner information from the people he has worked with for years, cutting him off from the natural resources he needs to defend his son from the charges. Instead, he finds himself on the other side of the courtroom watching his greatest professional rival do what he can to put Jacob away for good. As part of the defense, Andy is forced to confront the dirty secrets of his own past, which he has never revealed to his co-workers, his son, or even his wife.

I normally don't read novels this length (421-page Advance Reader's Edition) unless I already know the author or the story itself grabs and holds my interest. Defending Jacob falls into the latter category. The description I gave above could easily be the trailer of a Lifetime drama, but this novel rises above a maudlin TV drama for several reasons. The disintegration of family trust is not a surprise, nor is it a shock to the reader when friends, neighbors, and co-workers turn against the family. What the reader doesn't get, though, is a reassurance that Jacob is innocent. Too many secrets aspects of the teen's life are revealed during the investigation: we learn that Jacob has a dark side. Bad decisions made by both the boy and his father (who knows better, but cannot help himself) also make proving innocence -or guilt- very difficult.

We also learn that Andy comes from a long line of violent criminals in which he appears to be the (only?) exception. He has spent his entire adult life keeping his heritage a huge blank spot, even to himself. Naturally, his family background comes out during the investigation. When the trial outcome appears darkest, the defense attorney tests Jacob for a specific genetic predisposition to violence that could mitigate his sentence. Andy is forced to visit his own father, Bloody Bill Barber, in prison to beg a DNA sample for corroboration. The relationship they begin to develop isn't pleasant, but it is interesting.

The ending has more than one twist. There is a certain point at which the reader may feel cheated, but stay tuned: the other shoe just hasn't dropped yet. Throughout the book, we read testimony that Andy is giving at a trial. It isn't until the end that we discover whose trial it is.

Spoiler alert:
A great amount of emotional focus revolves around the question of whether the Barber men are born killers or not. My problem with the genetic condition Landay employs (a real one) is that the trait is sex-linked to the X chromosome - the one chromosome men do not pass down to their sons. The novel specifically states that the allele is located on the X chromosome, which immediately jarred me out of the plotline and onto Google. Most people who read this sort of novel have taken enough biology to say "Couldn't Jacob only get that gene from his mother? Why aren't they testing her family, too?" Since my copy of the novel is an ARC, I am hoping some editor has already spotted and solved this problem.

Overall, Defending Jacob is an engrossing read. It is well-written, outside of the genetics issue. Andy's willful belief in his son's innocence and the desperate acts he commits to shield his son drive this story, and kept me turning pages till I reached its open-ended conclusion.



View all my reviews

Review: The Cradle in the Grave

The Cradle in the Grave by Sophie Hannah

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



From my understanding, this is the ARC of A Room Swept White, book 5 of the Spilling CID series. I have not read the 'final' print, so all comments pertain to this version of the novel.

I have noticed that many British authors fall into what I refer to as the Jane Austen Syndrome: it takes about 200+ pages before anything really interesting happens, although when it does it's damned interesting. P.S. James had the same problem in The Private Patient. This doesn't mean it's written badly, just not in the style an impatient American with Aries rising normally appreciates.

Fortunately, this was offset by the 'documentary' presentation of the original crimes and interviews with the women convicted of the child murders. I love true crime and reading the 'paperwork' involved, so this provided me with an early source of satisfaction that carried me until the heroine became interesting, too.

I was not at all sold on the relationship between Fliss and Natrass. Oh, I can believe he was a jerk, but I really don't understand how her ('her' being Fliss) attraction to Natrass particularly enhanced the storyline. I found Simon's dogged determination to hate his boss much more compelling. His outrage and mixed feelings upon finding himself on the same 'side' as his detested supervisor were very human and understandable.

Each of the bodies is found with a list of sixteen digits - four rows by four columns. When the solution to that clue came, I found it surprising and satisfactory.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but think it might have been better without the viewpoint of Fliss Benson at all. Perhaps, if they had revealed certain aspects of her background earlier, I would not feel that way. I have read that the final version was a superior manuscript. I hope so.



View all my reviews

Horror for the Holidays

I had a very pleasant surprise yesterday: a story I expected to come out in 2012 is available now! Horror Carnival is a collection of several vile stories by experienced horror and pulp authors. Some of the notables include Matt Kurtz (who was also in The Big Book of New Short Horror), David James Keaton (of Plots with Guns fame), and, of course, prolific editor and author Anthony Giangregorio.

I need to update my Web page and my store on Second Life with this and other items. By the way, my wife, Gwen Mayo, has a store on Amazon. All of our stories are on there, plus others by people like Marian Allen, Bertena Varney, Amy Mah, Lori Lake, Patty Henderson, and Jeanine Hoffman. The music section is an eclectic mix of things from the Rat Pack to Ke$ha. Just a little nepotism for the holidays, folks...

--

Decompression

The 2011 book tour is over, and NaNoWriMo is over as well. Finally, I get to come out of crazy writer mode - just in time to make the shift into crazy holiday mode. If I find the time between now and January, I might be able to do some book reviews. The great thing about attending Bouchercon is the number of free books and review copies the attendees receive. I have several interesting ARCs in the island of paper products surrounding my end of the couch.

Oh, yeah, I might want to sort that pile out. Right now, our living room looks like a ransacked library. Let's not discuss what the kitchen looks like.

But the first fun thing I'm getting to read is from my wife, Gwen Mayo. She's almost finished with the sequel to Circle of Dishonor. Guess who has the first 55K words of that sequel on a memory stick jacked into her laptop? You got it. I'm the person who sees her stuff before the beta readers. I guess that makes me the alpha reader.

Anyhoo: Sorry for the breaks between posts. I have been waaaayyy too active this year.

Oh, the Places I Went...

Gwen Mayo and I at Magna cum Murder. As always, it was a blast!
It's been a loooong time since I posted here. Honestly? Between traveling every weekend and trying to get regular and special errands done during the week, it's been hard to find the time.
What are 'special' errands, you ask? The most special one dealt with my late grandmother's Toyota. The cost of repairs finally outweighed the cost of replacing it, so we replaced it. I hated giving the Corolla up - it was Granny's, after all - but it was a twenty-year-old car.
On my father's recommendation, we bought a used Scion. This vehicle resembles a small milk truck and would definitely fit into the list of ugly cars the Reverend W. Robert Merrimon drove in All This and Family,Too. It carries lots of books, though, has a working defroster for the back window, and, most importantly, has brakes.
Bess the Bookmobile.
October is best defined as Before Granny's Car Died and After Granny's Car Died.
BGCD: We spent the first weekend delivering political yard signs. The second weekend, we traveled to Louisville to join our Sisters in Crime for a Ghost Tour of Old Louisville. A lovely trip, but it was on the way home that the brake light first came on. Sunday was spent delivering more yard signs and pouring brake fluid into the car.
AGCD: We did a signing at That Book Place, located in Madison, IN, on the 15th. Marian Allen did a lovely interview with us as part of promotion. The following weekend was the Halloween Expo at National College in Lexington. We didn't attend the masquerade ball after the Expo because we ran off to hear Cris Williamson sing at Natasha's. The final weekend of the month was spent in Muncie, Indiana at Magna cum Murder. Overall, we've been giving the new vehicle a baptism by car trips.
The final event before the holidays strike -er- arrive is the Kentucky Book Fair. That'll be in Frankfort on November 12th. Please drop by and say hello!

Halloween Releases

Gotta love the Cthulhu on the cover!
I have two new short stories out in time for Halloween, both in Pill Hill Press anthologies. The Big Book of New Short Horror has 58 (!) horror stories, many of them by excellent authors like Mark Souza and Deb Eskie.

My own story in the collection, "Patch Test", involves a horrific application of nanomedicine. It is one of the unfunniest stories I've ever written and is possibly (due to subject matter) the most controversial one as well. 


Nothing cutesy about these stories!Halloween Frights, Volume I, is Pill Hill's offering for the holiday. It contains thirteen scary stories, including another one by Mark Souza and one by my spouse, Gwen Mayo.

My own story, "Fire Insurance, Inc." takes place in a Hell House. For the uninitiated, this is a house of horrors set up by fundamentalist Christians to show teenagers where they could wind up if they make the 'wrong' choices. My question: what happens if Hell horns in on the action?

Both collections are very reasonably priced for Kindle, and, naturally, I encourage you to check them out. Print versions should be available soon.

--

Second Life: Odd Women's Bookstore

The ground floor of our store.
If you've been following me on FaceBook or Twitter, you know that I've been on Second Life since I was introduced to it at AuthorFest in April. Gwen Mayo and I took the plunge shortly thereafter and opened a virtual store on Book Island. We learned how to form posters of our books and link them to Amazon so people could read more and (we hoped) purchase them.

Gwen and I as SL shopkeepers.
At first, we just carried our own novels and the anthologies our stories appear in. We also linked to a couple of singleton short stories that you can download directly to Kindle. Even so, we hoped to carry works by other people, preferably authors we knew personally.

The first new author we added was Marian Allen. She is a member of the Southern Indiana Writers' Group and her stories defy categorization. Her newest novel, on display at our store, is Force of Habit.

The second author we added was Bertena Varney. Her book, Lure of the Vampire, is a nonfiction look at the vampire in folklore and popular culture.

Our newest author is T. Lee Harris. She also belongs to the Southern Indiana Writers' Group, and is both author and editor. We have two of her crime stories on display now.

At the rate we're going, we'll fill up that second floor soon enough.

Review: SNAP: The World Unfolds

SNAP: The World Unfolds by Michele Drier

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



SNAP: The World Unfolds
by Michele Drier

Maxmillia Gwenoch, aka Maxie, is the new managing editor of SNAP. After years of working in women's magazines, she's finally reached the top. SNAP is the name of a conglomeration of print magazine (with editions in five languages), blog, and television publications dedicated to celebrities. Maxie works out of the office in LA, but makes regular trips to Miami, Rio, and other glam locations to rub shoulders with The Beautiful People. She's being paid a remarkable amount of money for the job, more than she ever thought she'd make. She has a condo and a chauffeur. Finally: she has an assistant, Jazz, whom I would kill to have on my payroll (if I could afford her rate). The woman is wonderful: she arranges for Maxie's furniture to be unpacked while she's on the road, and dispatches personal shoppers to acquire suitable clothing in her boss' size when Maxie is invited to the castle of SNAP's owner. Did I mention that SNAP was owned by a Hungarian baron?

Then there's Jean-Louis, the art director. He's frightfully handsome, and interested in Maxie, but our heroine's mother always advised her never to get involved with someone prettier than she was. Still...

With these blessings come problems. There's the blood on the bathroom floor. There's the unexplained quasi-hospital setup on one of the floors in her office building. Then, there's the sudden attacks on Maxie. Someone is trying to kidnap her!

She discovers that the Baron Kandesky and his family are vampires, and Carlos the Chauffeur is a demon who's been engaged to protect her. That part is really cool, except for the Huszars, the vampires next door. They've been feuding with the Kandeskys for centuries, and they've teamed up with the local werewolves and wild boars. Yes, as in feral pigs.

The Huszars would like to replace the Kandeskys as the vampire source of celebrity gossip. Along with smashing them into the dirt, of course. And they want Maxie… because good help is hard to find.

This novella is a fast, fun read. I usually find the 'life of the celebrity' a turn-off, but it was very enjoyable here, seen through the eyes of a reporter who has to live part of what she's been writing about all these years. Maxie is a go-getter who doesn't give up when faced with challenges she has no preparation for. Plus, the notion that the Huszars want her for her skills is a twist I rarely see in romantic suspense. My only complaint is that the story is too short: it's an origin story for a series character. Good news, though: the sequel is due out in 2012.




View all my reviews

This Friday: North Carolina!

[image error]
This Friday, I will be joining four Sisters in Crime in North Carolina to promote Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology. Karen Pullen, Patricia Winton, Heidi Saunders and I will team up with the legendary Chris Roerden (author of the classic Don't Murder Your Mystery) to do readings and sign the anthology.

We will be at McIntyre's Books at 2 PM. The store is located at Fearrington Village in Pittsboro.

At 7:30, we will be signing at Quail Ridge Books and Music in Raleigh.

Heidi Saunders and I will be driving down together, since we are both from Kentucky and belong to the same chapter of Sisters in Crime. Considering how many submissions Fish Tales had, I consider it a coup for our group that two of us were selected.

If you're in the Raleigh area, we'd love to have you drop by!

--