Alex C. Telander's Blog, page 55

“NOS4A2″ by Joe Hill (William Morrow, 2013)

Joe Hill should have a fairly good idea what it means to be an author, with a couple of books under his belt — Heart-Shaped Box and Horns — as well as a short story collection — 20th Century Ghosts – plus a successful ongoing graphic novel series called Lock & Key; but his latest novel, NOS4A2 puts him on a stage of developed storytelling with his father, Stephen King. The book has an epic complexity and depth in both character and story, with a villain that will haunt your nightmares for a long time to come, akin to King’s It or The Talisman.

Our hero is Victoria McQueen, a young girl with extraordinary dreams and one very powerful ability. When she is given the Raleigh Tuff Burner bike as a birthday gift, she knows it’s a little too big but very powerful, and when she rides it as fast as she can towards that old bridge across the creek that crashed and disintegrated years ago, she can see the bridge rebuilt and she can cross it to just about wherever she wants. Crossing that bridge lets her find things, like a missing bracelet or photograph, or what happened to her cat, as well as answers to questions she might not want to know. She just has to believe, and she is magically taken there, whether it’s Massachusetts or across the country. She is a girl with a gift that only few others have.

Our villain is one Charles Talent Manx who has the same ability as Victoria, except his mode of transportation is a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity license plate . . . yep, you guessed it: NOS4A2; this black demon car from hell is of course referred to as “The Wraith.” It is with this aged car that Manx takes children who he believes are destined to have traumatic, horrible lives, to his manufactured tinsel town known as “Christmasland,” where every day is Christmas and the children get to go on the rides, and eat candy canes, have snowball fights, and meet Santa; but there is also a cost for these children; something is being taken from them. And they never come back.

But because she is our hero, Victoria will have a meeting and battle with Manx and get him put away for a long time, not for all the missing children, but for something else. But then, many years later, Manx will return, because there’s one thing that’s certain: he’s not human. And this time he’ll be taking Victoria’s child up to Christmasland, and it’s up to her to get him back, before he becomes lost forever.

NOS4A2 shows that Joe Hill has the talent, skill and ability to write a truly great horror novel that puts him right at the top with other greats. NOS4A2 is a novel about many things: our wants and desires in life and that we don’t always get them; how sometimes our nightmares aren’t gone for good; how the love of the child will always supersede anything else, no matter the cost. It is also a fantastic horror novel that will make you simultaneously terrified of it and in love with it, unable to put it down.

Originally written on June 14, 2013 ©Alex C. Telander.

To purchase a copy of NOS4A2 from Amazon, and help support BookBanter, click HERE.

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Brandon Sanderson’s second book in the Stormlight Archive  series now has a cover. The release date has also been pushed back.

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[CONTINUE READING . . .]

Life Update Redux

Funny how week one of raising a newborn can be  a complete time suck and before you know it’s the end of the day and you’re still tired from not getting enough sleep the night before and you haven’t eaten enough . . . and he needs to be changed and fed again.

So the Saturday post didn’t happen due to the time just not being there, but I think we’re a little more settled going into week two and I’m shooting for two new posts a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with my plan to schedule one every week, so if I run out of time to actually write a post, I will at least have the one that was already scheduled to go up. And there will be at least one book review every week, on Thursdays, and the other post will be the surprise.

And here we go, week two . . .

Life Update

A brief update in the swirling dimension of limited sleep and full-time baby attendance which is my world at the moment. I will be cutting down my posting schedule from three posts a week to one, going up on Saturdays at the moment. I will try to keep the BabyBanter posts coming also when I have time. Now back to my very changed world . . .

“No Way Out” by Alan Jacobson (Premier Digital Publishing, 2013)

In the fifth Karen Vail installment, the great FBI profiler gets to take a trip across the pond and enjoy some bangers and mash, visit Big Ben and help out some bobbies . . . no, actually, it’s much more cooler than that. Vail finds herself on orders to help out New Scotland Yard with a special kind of case that soon turns into something much more complex and terrifying, dragging her from the world of profiling and tracking to outright black ops. But if there’s anyone who can handle it, it’s the awesome Karen Vail.

No Way Out opens with Vail teaching a class at a conference in Madrid, Spain and soon finds herself in hot water and on the wrong side of the policía. Before things can get too heated, Vail gets dispatched to jolly old England for the first time in her life to help out New Scotland Yard with an explosion at a private collector’s gallery. But constables are not expecting much from a “profiler,” even when Vail starts doing her detective work and putting the pieces together.

At the heart of the explosion appears to be an attack against the supposed discovery of an original folio of one William Shakespeare, penned in his own hand. What’s more startling is its possible link to a theory that Shakespeare’s works were in fact originally written by a “dark-skinned” Italian Jewish woman, one Amelia Bassano Lanier. Since England is more synonymous with Shakespeare than the Beatles, it would come as a shocking, thermonuclear blow to the Brit population as a whole.

But as Vail continues to dig deeper, everything is not as it seems, and the case is far more complex and sinister and has ties deep within the British government. Plus one of the guys involved in solving everything turns out to be an old friend of Vail’s, Desantos, who’s working undercover and will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of these terrorist attacks. Because the guy behind it all is on the world’s most wanted list, Desantos has a score to settle, both on an international and a personal level.

No Way Out is the best Karen Vail novel yet, because Alan Jacobson has outdone himself with the research. As someone with a British parent and friends in Britain and having taken a number of vacations to London and the surrounding areas, I take a perverse joy in nitpicking and critiquing novels set in Britain that aren’t always accurate. No Way Out whisked me away to London and planted me firmly there with the culture, the language, the vocabulary . . . Jacobson did a fantastic job.

As for the detail with the British police service, MI5, British military, and even a US aircraft carrier, Jacobson has again done the work and immerses the reader seamlessly into this world. There are also a number of scenes involving the unusual British aircraft the Osprey, culminating in a final action scene that may be one of the best you will read.

What makes a Karen Vail novel so enjoyable is that Jacobson makes them as real as possible. The characters try hunches and ideas and risky plans, but unlike most thrillers, they don’t all work. There are failures and the characters have to go back to the drawing board and start again. It makes for more interesting and believable conflict in the story and keeps that reader reading.

No Way Out goes beyond being a great summer read, and may be one of if not the best thriller of 2013. Fans will love it, and brand new readers will also. Jacobson explains any necessary back-story, escorting the reader along on one wild ride that the reader wishes partly to never end, but at the same time want to find out how it all ends.

Originally written on July 24, 2013 ©Alex C. Telander.

To purchase a copy of Now Way Out from Amazon, and help support BookBanter, click HERE.

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BabyBanter: Fun Fact About Due Dates

Okay, it’s now July 27th, which means it’s my wife’s due date and our Little Guy is going to be born today, right? Some magical biological alarm clock will go off and all of a sudden she’ll go into labor, her water will break, and contractions will automatically begin.

Right?

Nope, not likely.

Want to know how likely it is?

How about you take a guess at what percentage of mothers go into labor on their due dates?

50%?

Not even close, try again.

25%?

Hahah, no, try again.

How about  10%?

Nope, lower than that.

The answer is in fact 4%.

Yep, not a very big number.  And the range of mothers giving birth tends to fall in the range of the couple weeks before the due date, and the couple weeks after.

Me, I arrived eight days after my due date.

And my wife, after growing and carrying our Little Guy for a full nine months now, is pretty much ready to have him come out, but that of course is all up to him and when he decides to make his grand entrance.

Generally you’ll get two weeks after your due date to go into labor, and after that your doctor will likely want to schedule an induction date for you, where the birth is induced. This is something most aren’t in favor of (we’re certainly not), but ultimately it comes down to the safety of the child. There’s indication that after 42 weeks the placenta begins to weaken in its job to keep your child nourished and healthy.

The choices are either have labor and contraction and birth progress as your body dictates and when it dictates, or have it induced with medical help and your body jump-starts into labor and heavy contractions without being fully prepared for it. Also the chances of needing an epidural become much higher.

Think of it like starting a marathon and slowly working your body up to a fervor, building up your speed, and going along under your own control; compared to being in the 100 meter dash and needing to hit top speed in seconds.

So here’s hoping (and it’s very likely) we have our Little Guy decide to make his arrival some time in the next two weeks.

Only time will tell. But we’re as ready as we feel we can be.

Bookbanter Column: Get Lost in a Good Mystery Series: Karen Vail

When it comes to mysteries and thrillers, there are a lot of them out there.  And when it comes to a series, you want a character you at least like, enjoy reading about, and can look forward to with each book and a new mystery to solve.

Karen Vail is one of those characters.

She’s ones of the foremost FBI profilers who has done her work and time at Quantico, climbing the ranks, and is one of the more successful women working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Author Alan Jacobson put his work in with this character and series, working on it for seven years before publishing the first Karen Vail book.  He made friends with a number of people at Quantico and the FBI, learning and educating himself in just about everything so that when he starts working on one of his Karen Vail books, he has the FBI tools to make the characters real and the story not just plausible, but a great example of what goes on at in the world of the FBI every day.

[CONTINUE READING . . .]

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BabyBanter: Not All Cribs are Created Equal & Side Caring

A couple of weeks ago we made the call and traveled along to IKEA for a crib for our Little Guy. We’d already looked at a couple and had a few ideas about what we wanted, but nothing beats looking at the crib in person and being able to feel it, shake it to check its sturdiness, and get a good look at it in a bedroom setting. Not that we needed much convincing or a good reason to go visit IKEA, but it’s got to be one of best places to see an actual item in situ and help you decide if it’s right for you.

After checking out the various cribs in the bedroom scenes, we settled on the Hensvik.

It was strong and sturdy. I know we’re not exactly putting a heavy weight in it, but putting your hand on a wooden frame and feeling it strong and stable definitely helps in gaining your trust in it. The soft white was a nice color that would match just fine with our bedroom’s decor, and I really liked the curvy sweep of the top of the frame on the short sides. Plus the nominal price tag of $99 was definitely something I could get behind, having visited a number of baby stores earlier and seeing the range of cribs in all shapes, colors and sizes in the price range of $200-$500.

That was the other thing I liked about the Hensvik crib: it was a good large size, which may seem like overdoing it somewhat for a newborn, but we wanted a crib that would last a while and we could get plenty of use out of.

Side Caring

The other reason we needed to find the right crib that was again sturdy and one we liked was because we we’re “side caring” it. That’s side caring as in “car” not “care.” This is a relatively new “fad” in child upbringing that makes a ton of sense and is really more in the style of the way it has been done for many centuries previous to the 20th century. It really seems like scientists and pediatricians drank some special juice in the previous century that made them say a lot of stupid things, like breast milk isn’t that good for the baby, or the baby doesn’t need much skin to skin contact, or it’s good to keep the baby in a separate room, especially when it’s a newborn so it can start learning about being independent.

Seriously?

A newborn spends its first couple of months trying to deal with why it’s no longer in its warm, watery cocoon and what the hell is going on?

So we elected to go with side caring. This is basically using a crib minus one long side, so only three sides on it. The open side is then placed beside the parents’ bed, giving the mother full reach of her child in the crib. This does a number of things:

 The baby is calmer because its mother and parents are close to it all through the night;
Feeding is a lot easier, as the mother simply has to reach over and pull her child to her and feed him or her; supposedly mothers will do this almost automatically in their sleep;
If the baby starts crying or needs something during the night, the mother or father doesn’t have to get up and leave the room, but can attend to the child right away.

One of the most important lessons a newborn needs to learn is that its parents are always close at hand and will answer its cries, which helps the baby develop trust in its parents.

There are a number of websites that show you how to side car your crib for co-sleeping.  Here’s one, and here’s another. There are plenty more, and a Google search will turn up a number of them, along with YouTube videos showing in detail how best to do it.

For us, I think we did a bit of overkill as our crib is secured between the bedroom wall and the bed, but we also have long bungee cords going from the far end of our bed (it attaches around the handles used to lift the mattress) and goes under the mattress of our queen bed, then under the mattress of the crib and is secured on the far side spokes.

Like I said, I think it’s overkill, but this crib ain’t going nowhere, even if you try to drag on it.

So below is the finished product. And in a few weeks or a month or so (or the next chance I have a combination of being awake enough and having some free time after our Little Guy is born) I’ll do a follow-up post about how well this side car co-sleeping works. Of course, it’s always up to the particular baby, and perhaps our Little Guy hates co-sleeping and wants to be on his own in his own room; we’ll just have to see.

Today’s Giggle Brought to You by . . .

One funny anecdote I do want to share is when we were building the crib. I was following the instructions, but simply leaving one long side off. Little did I know that halfway through the detailed instruction book is a whole section on building the crib for side caring. Anyway, I thought I had everything set up, but had a couple of strange looking curled screws left over, but figured because I was building the side car version, I didn’t need them. Well, when we had the crib standing and ready, I added the mattresses to the base of the crib and it looked perfect for a whole two seconds, and then the bottom fell out and (along with the mattresses) dropped to the floor.

Turns out those strange screws were very important. Glad we did a dummy run!