Sarah Chorn's Blog, page 24

I want to talk about COVID-19

So, here’s the deal. COVID-19 (the coronavirus) is going around, and people are either freaked out, or making fun of the people who are freaked out. Now, I realize that this is supposed to be a book blog, for reviews and yammering about my writing and whatever else, but I want to take some time to talk about COVID-19 from the perspective of someone who has immune system issues.

First, I have a chronic illness called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. While my version of it does not compromise my immune system, I am always either recovering from an injury and/or surgery, or I am injured and/or waiting for surgery. This means my body is always dealing with some kind of stress, and yes, stress can impact your immune system. Furthermore, I have had cancer three times, and I have fought it three times, but it really, really impacted how I get and handle illnesses.

Here’s an example of how things typically go for me.

Back in November of 2018, I got a cold. I treated it the way colds are usually treated. I used Dayquil and Nyquil and waited for it to move on. However, it never did. While everyone else in my house got it, and recovered within a few days, it was a month later for me and my sinuses felt like they were going to explode and my cold was no better. I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a sinus infection and given some pills to suppress my coughing (I still had that cold) and antibiotics for the sinus infection. No big deal.

I went home, and I did what the doctor told me to do. I religiously took my medication. I rested. A few weeks later, I was no better so I went back to the doctor, was given even stronger medication, and told to do the same thing.

In January, I started getting bloody noses. Not like, your normal bloody noses. Mine were so bad I’d bleed through entire shower towels. I’d stand in the shower for almost an hour with blood just running down the drain. The shower looked like a murder scene. So I went back to the doctor, and was given a nasal spray and he cauterized my nose, and he gave me some pills and said I still have a sinus infection, and still had a cold, and he thought the cold led to the sinus infection because it had already taxed my immune system and it just gave the bacteria in my sinuses room to play.

I made an appointment with my private doctor at this point (I was using Instacare until now). So a week later I went to him. He couldn’t see anything up my nose because it was so full of blood. He tested my blood to see my iron count and I was severely anemic. He put me on iron pills, and gave me MORE prescriptions to take to combat any infection, and more pills to help deal with the discomfort of the cold, and said I needed a blood transfusion. Then he said my case needed a specialist, so he sent me to an ENT.

Off to the ENT I went. He did a CT scan and confirmed that likely my cold had turned into a sinus infection (or rather, it laid the foundation for a sinus infection to grow) that was antibiotic-resistant and was eating through my sinus passages. So he booked me in for surgery. Now, the cold that started in November was turning into surgery in April. He ended up grafting some tissue around to fix some of my sinus passages, cleaning out my sinuses, and fixing a deviated septum which, he said, was making it so I didn’t get enough airflow into my nose and making my nose a perfect place for bacteria to procreate.

So he does this thing, and we all think that I’m done. That was it. I’m finally cured from the cold I got in November. Yeah, it took until April, but hey, it’s over. Right? Wrong.

In May, I went for my yearly checkup with my cancer doctor. He booked me in for an ultrasound and we found lumps in my neck. Four, I believe. Now, for a little background, since about January of 2019, I’d been feeling… off. Not just due to all this illness due to my cold/sinus infection, but off other ways too. I had night sweats. I felt sick all the time. I was super lethargic. When I drank water, I tasted metal. The list goes on. So cancer doctor books me in for an ultrasound and we find lumps. I’ve had cancer three times already, so I basically knew what this meant. He sent me to my surgeon who removed my original tumor years before, and I go there to talk to him.

In May, my doctor informed me that I was showing all the symptoms of lymphoma. Even the lumps looked right. With my history, it was pretty much a given. We talked about surgery and chemo. We talked about what happened next. We prepared me for cancer. My parents were planning on renting a place nearby so they could help me through chemo. I mean, everyone KNEW I had lymphoma.

So the doctor books me for surgery, and removes the lumps. We wait on pins and needles for the biopsy results and when they came, he called me into his office and said we had to talk.

TURNS OUT the cold, which turned into a sinus infection, which already required one surgery to repair the damage from it, ended up warping some of the lymph nodes in my neck in such a way that they tricked my body into thinking it had lymphoma. Basically, I had all the cancer without actually having the cancer. We determined this because the doctor and his team had only seen this happen a few times before, and it was usually caused by some serious infection in the teeth or the sinuses that was either untreated, or SEVERE and nearly untreatable. We had to track my medical history down, and we kind of investigated all of it back to the source, this damn cold I got in November of 2018.

The fun part of that is, once my lymph nodes start doing this, they don’t typically stop, so now for the rest of my life every time I start feeling like I have lymphoma, I have to get an ultrasound, see if there are lumps, and get them surgically removed. Then I will be A-Okay.

So by July of 2019, I’d had two surgeries, a blood transfusion, been on (if I remember right) six rounds of antibiotics, and was planning to undergo chemotherapy. And it all started with a cold. Not even an exciting cold. Just your average, run-of-the-mill winter cold.

And if you’re all, “But it’s over now!” Well, let me inform you that I am going back to my ENT next week because I’m still having bleeding problems and I’m still having issues with my sinuses, specifically on the left side of my face. I’m also on a lifetime dose of this special medicated ointment I have to put up my nose twice a day, and in June of this year, I have to get more ultrasounds done to make sure my neck isn’t throwing a party again.

So please understand, that while most people may have minor symptoms, those of us who see “minor symptoms” and “most everyone will be fine” are not comforted. All of this started with a cold for me. One cold. I didn’t even feel sick enough to stop going to work (I don’t work around people so there was no real chance of me spreading it around). It was absolutely nothing out of the normal for winter in my area, and here it is, March of 2020 and I’m still going to the doctor in a week to deal with some of the fallout from HAVING A COLD.

I’m not saying you should panic about COVID-19. I am saying that for those of us with immune issues, we are likely looking at this virus in a completely different way than a bulk of the people out there. I will never, ever, ever just shrug off a cold again. Because my cold is something I’m still dealing with. Your cold might be uncomfortable. Mine made everyone on my medical team think I had lymphoma and needed chemo.

Protect yourself. Please protect yourself, but remember that not everyone can laugh this threat off. I have, and am, canceling travel plans and convention plans due to this. It’s just not worth the risk, and that’s OKAY. I am going back to work next week (I took some time off due to extensive hip surgery), and I have spoken with my husband about a plan of action if we start seeing community spread in my area–I will either go on a leave of absence or I will quit and make editing my full time, 100% job.

These threats are real, and they are scary. If you are not a person who has ever had to think, “Well, I wonder if this cold will land me in the hospital with two surgeries, six rounds of antibiotics, and a blood transfusion” then you are lucky, but if you are one of those people, please don’t feel ashamed of being worried, or preparing. I understand. I don’t look at illnesses as just an illness anymore, and I haven’t in years. I don’t bounce back. It knocks me out and drags me down every time and it’s terrifying.

And that’s really the entire point of this post. Maybe, if you can see what has happened to me, then maybe you can understand how “minor symptoms” and “but just about everyone will be fine” are not comforting. And those of us who look at this thing like it’s a very real threat, aren’t being dramatic. It’s a REAL THREAT and it’s SCARY. You can’t see it coming, all you can do is prepare, be careful, and hope for the best. But please, when you mention that there is a 2% death rate like that’s a small number, so “no big deal” understand that there are those of us out here who see that 2%, and are not eased by it at all.

So, COVID-19 sucks, and it’s scary, and if you don’t feel like you need to be overly alarmed by it then I am genuinely happy for you. I wish I didn’t. But don’t forget those of us who do see it as a very real, looming threat. Maybe, if you are one of the people who aren’t concerned by it, take the time to check up on your immunocompromised and disabled friends, neighbors, and family members and see if you can help them at all.

Ultimately, it doesn’t cost you anything to be kind.

There are a lot of scared people out here. Instead of har har-ing about all the people stocking up, and all the people “overreacting”, maybe just reach out, check in on others, and see what you can do to make it a bit easier on them.

The Unwomanly Face of War – Svetlana Alexievich

About the Book

Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Svetlana Alexievich shares stories of women s experiences during World War II on the front lines, on the home front, and in occupied territories. The Unwomanly Face of War is a powerful history of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.”

Buy the book
This is a review of the audiobook, which I own.

Today, I’d like to talk about something a bit different. This, as it happens, is one of my favorite books. It’s also one of the most difficult to read. Not because of the writing style. In fact, the translation is superb, and the writing flows so well you can lose yourself in it. No. It’s difficult because of the subject matter, and Alexievich’s unflinching way of covering it.

Before I continue on, I will say that I’ve listened to this book numerous times, and the audiobook performance is unreal. It is so well done, I doubt I will ever enjoy this book any other way. It’s a full cast recording and it’s just absolutely stunning. So, if you are into audibooks, I highly recommend this one.

Now, back to the book. Alexievich has won the Nobel Prize for Literature due to her books. She sort of blazed her own trail and created her own subgenre of historical nonfiction. Her books are all “oral histories” where she interviews people who lived through certain events, and then writes down their interviews in a rather pretty style. In fact, her writing is… well, it’s something else, and it was personally very, very, very influential to me.

I recently had someone write me a letter about Seraphina’s Lament, and in this letter she said the prose in my book reminded her of Svetlana Alexievich’s writing. She hit the nail on the head. I’ve read all of Alexievich’s books, and I’ve read them all multiple times. I studied her work intensely before (and while) I wrote Seraphina’s Lament, and the reason is because she has a knack for marrying beautiful–absolutely gorgeous OMG I want to hang this in an art gallery it’s so pretty–prose with heavy, difficult, ugly subject matter and I wanted to do that in my own book. Alexievich is HUGELY inspirational and was one of my bedrock influences when I wrote Seraphina’s Lament. The way she tells horrific stories so beautifully was nothing short of inspiring for me.

The Unwomanly Face of War was first written in the 1980’s. It’s been updated a bit and translated into numerous different languages, and it’s a book I routinely throw at someone if they ask “what’s the best/most important book you’ve ever read?”

Alexievich interviews a whole bunch of women who fought on the Soviet side of World War II, and tells their story. She doesn’t hide any of the ugly details, does not shy away from the things that will make you uncomfortable. She’s also one of the first modern women who have told the story of female soldiers, and unflinchingly at that. She gives many of these woman voice, and while it’s horrible and hard to read, it’s eye-opening to see the war from their perspective. In all honesty, this book singlehandedly reframed how I saw and understood World War II, and my research since I’ve read this book has just underscored that.

Out here, at least where I’m at, we covered a whole lot of the western end of World War II. What I mean by this is, we covered a lot of France and England and the concentration camps. There’s not a whole lot taught about the Soviet Union, or the Bloodlands (Poland, Ukraine, etc.) I wasn’t really aware of just how horrible that part of the war was until I started doing research on it for my own series. I also wasn’t aware of the fact that women fighting wasn’t a thing that was common outside of the Soviet Union (or that women fighting was even a thing INSIDE of the USSR). Nor did I understand just how brutal that side of the war was, and how women were thrust into the center of it, and how unique that was at that time period.

This book talks about a lot of things. Women who were conscripted or willingly joined, some are as young as twelve (they lied about their ages to join the army and fight for the Motherland). She interviews female fighter pilots, who actually learned their internal organs had moved around in their bodies due to the pressure of flying and the speed and frequency with which they did it. She talks about how the war threw off menstruation cycles and finding love on the battlefield. Instances where, in order to survive, one person had to be sacrificed for the whole. She dips a toe into the mental effects this had on the women she interviews, what happened to those who were disabled, to the survivors and more. She talks about life on the battlefield, and paints emotional portraits that will stick to your ribs long after you finish the book.

It’s haunting, and honest, and absolutely must be read.

This book really transformed my perspective of World War II, and brought a lot of the color and context of the war to light for me. It also was a jumping-off point for a lot of my World War II research. More than that, though, is the fact that this book gave voice to many female soldiers and their stories, which would have been forgotten if not for Alexievich.

I am a huge, huge fan of Alexievich’s writing, and now I gobble down everything she has out (in English). I read her books numerous times. I study her prose, and I internalize her stories. The thing is, we so often look at the big historical picture. We forget that history is full of individual voices, that the generals and the presidents and commanders are important, but the truth of what happens is often written on the broken backs of the average people, and that’s who Svetlana Alexievich gives voice to. Her oral histories reframe the events I thought I knew, and by giving voice to those who would typically be forgotten, she gives them a certain measure of power. She immortalizes them.

In World War II, the Soviet women jointed the fight in droves, and it’s not really something many people in the West know much about. We are currently thrown into a war of ideology where words like “fascism” and “socialism” are spoken of without any real understanding of what those words mean, or even that “socialism” and “communism” are not the same thing. We do not, very often, understand the battles that were fought in the name of these two ideals, which were horrific and bloody in the extreme. We do not see the faces of the soldiers who fought bravely, died, and survived. We do not hear their stories, or see their faces. We don’t take time to understand, and maybe that’s part of the problem.

I digress.

There are some books that are just knock-your-socks-off good. There are some books that are important. It is a rare thing indeed when those two factors merge and become one, but Alexievich has managed it. Not just here, but I’d argue that all of her books are like that. This one, however, might be the foundation from which all her other books spring. This is the one which I think everyone, everywhere should read. Period. It will haunt you. It will disturb you. It will never, ever leave you.

Seriously, just read it.

Of Honey and Wildfires: Cover Art + PROLOGUE

I should have posted this this morning, but I will level with you, dearest internet. I’m pretty freaking terrified right now. There is a certain vulnerability involved in this that I’m not quite sure how to get over… so I’m just holding my nose and jumping.

Yesterday, Fantasy Book Critic was kind enough to post my cover art reveal and an interview about my upcoming book (check it out here). I’m going to post my cover art for anyone who missed it, and then… the prologue of the book and dear god let it not suck.

So, here it is.

Links

Goodreads
PRE-ORDERS ARE HOW YOU HUG AN AUTHOR WITHOUT BEING WEIRD.
FOR REVIEWERS: I’m planning on having arcs ready in the first week-ish of March. I’m making a list, so if you want one, feel free to hit me up.

And… here’s your excerpt. I’m going to go hide now.

PROLOGUE
MATTHEW ESCO
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Matthew Esco stood atop a hill,
surveying his kingdom.

Well, it wasn’t his kingdom yet, but
it would be. Soon. Very soon. The sun was rising, painting the world in colors
of indigo and violet. Beautiful. A flushed earth, so full of that liquid gold.
That shine. It would make him richer than god. And it would help so many.

He was not here to bask in the new
day, however. No, he was here to commit himself to a cause. This final act of
his would secure his daughter’s future, and all of her children, and their
children after that. This shine. It was his legacy.

But to keep this find under his
thumb, he had to do something horrible. Already other businessmen with big
ideas were heading out west to claim this land as their own. Already, people
were trying to chip away at what was his.

He refused to let that happen.

This last step was the hardest. It was so… final, and uncertain. Nothing more, really, than an idea he couldn’t let go of. It was a risk, but it was worth taking.

His daughter would inherit it all.
When she lived a life of luxury and security, untouchable and immovable, she
would thank him for his sacrifice.

This was love, this burning. It was
not as sweet as honey; rather, it was a wild thing. A tempest. A raging forest
fire. It was hungry, and it demanded. For what would a father not do for his
child?

The world was such a fickle thing, hard and merciless. He’d seen so many souls ground under the bootheel of Fate. So many promising lives changed in the blink of an eye. Unpredictable. Insecure. He didn’t want that for his daughter. Didn’t want her to be at the mercy of turbulent waters or the storms and winds that buffeted a person’s days. No, he wanted her to have a safe harbor to call home, and the financial security to last generations. She would not be forgotten, overlooked, or overwhelmed. Not Lila. He wouldn’t allow it.

His mind flashed to his ex-wife, all those years ago. She’d left him, and their daughter, with nothing but empty pockets and each other.

Matthew knew desperation. He knew
fear.

It was Lila’s first, wracking cough when the winter chill hit. It was not having the money for a healer. It was not knowing if she would survive the cold months, to see the spring.

No. He wouldn’t walk down that road. This moment was
not about yesterday, but tomorrow. He refocused his mind on the present.

Lila. He loved her so much it hurt.

He would do anything for her.

Even if it hurt. Especially if it
hurt.

The well was open at his feet. Open,
with all that shine pooling down low in it, glistening like a rainbow. Like a
promise. He shivered.

Shine does that which is in its
nature, directed by the wishes and thoughts of its user. The more a person
gives it, the more it does. So, he would give it everything he had.

Absolutely everything.

This was his last love letter to his
daughter.

Resolve filled him up, hard as stone
and just as unyielding. It was time. No more delays. No more memories. Action
was required.

The knife was sharp as he drew it over his wrists, being sure to cut all the way down both arms. The bite was cold. Agony filled him up inside. Blood ran from the wounds like lava. Hot and potent. Full of life.

He fixed his thoughts on all the
shine under his feet, in what would soon be his territory. No, Lila’s territory.
He thought of how it belonged to him, and his daughter, and then her children
after her. Then, brought his focus to what really mattered: How desperately he
longed to protect this place. It would be a little haven, both part of, and
away from everything else.

Sanctuary.

All the shine held in the belly of
this land, all the wealth that could be made from it, untapped and waiting. It
would always, eternally, be hers. No one could ever take it from her. This
place would be protected and held.

For her.

Always.

Fate, he loved her.

Legacy was such an odd word, full of long, stretching vowels and
even longer consonants. It filled his mouth up like wine, heady and
intoxicating, demanded to be savored.

His. Hers. Theirs. Forever.

The world was going gray around the
edges, soft. He wished he could have seen her one last time. Wished he’d had
the strength to tell her what he was about to do. She wouldn’t understand. Not
yet. Maybe in a few years, she would, but for now, she was too rebellious. Too
headstrong. She would only see death, where all he saw was life.

His mind drifted and he pulled it
back, locked it down tight. Thought of all that shine, pouring all his desire
into this one pivotal moment. Shine.
Protected land. Lila. Legacy.

He wasn’t afraid.

That was a lie. He was terrified.

Blood. So much blood. He had no idea
a body could hold this much. It was everywhere, spattering all over the ground,
pouring into that well. All that ruby falling like rain from heaven to be
swallowed by that hungry oil below. That promise with teeth, feeding on
whatever he had left. Demanding it all, and he was giving it. Freely.

He fell to his knees beside the well.
He could almost feel the heartbeat of the world under his feet, sluggish but
there, a dull throb at the edges of his senses. His own heart was matching that
rhythm. Synchronicity. It was agony and ecstasy. It was the pain of becoming
something more. His last, exquisite birth.

He repeated his purpose in his mind. Shine. Protected land. Lila. Legacy.

The world was going dark.

Something happened… a sound, or a
motion. Something that cut through the ocean-roar of his ebbing life and
focused his attention. A boy somewhere off to the side, wide, dark eyes, brown
hair already going violet from all that exposure to shine. The boy was
watching. Watching Matthew Esco die.

He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t see
this. He was a weakness he and Lila could not afford. He had to be dealt with.

There was no time.

He felt Fate step up beside him, felt
its weighty hand on his back, pushing.

Falling, it turned out, felt a lot
like flying.

***

The boy had seen people die. Of
course, he had. A person didn’t travel all the way across the known world with
nothing but a wagon train and hope without seeing death a time or two. He’d
helped bury bodies. He’d lit the Fate fires beside each grave, and watched
during the long night, hoping he wouldn’t have to scare off wolves.

Yes, he knew death.

But he had never seen a man kill himself before. Not like this. Not with a knife so sharp it looked like it could cut the world in half, nor with such cold, calculating intent. He’d never watched someone bleed out. Never watched their color go from healthy and hale, to gray and pallid, and then… gone.

And if that wasn’t horrifying enough,
now he was watching as a shape formed. Wispy and ephemeral at first, like a
dream, something his eyes hinted at, but couldn’t latch onto. He witnessed,
cold with dread, the shape become real and solid, and another man who looked
exactly like the dead one, took his place on the lip of that same well, feet
planted in the hard earth, shoulders back, dark purpose carved into his every
line.

Alive, but not. A man, but not.

The boy didn’t understand. He didn’t
need to. Didn’t need to know the details of what happened to know it was
terrible. The wrongness was in the air all around him. It was a pressure, a
chill, like a creeping sickness. Quiet, but no less dreadful for it.

He didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to understand what he saw. That man-not-man stood at the edge of the well, staring at all that shine now stained with blood, at the dead body, exactly like his own, that was likely floating in it. Staring down, unmoving, not even breathing.

Suddenly, all he could think about was being away from that place, from whoever he’d seen die, and whatever he’d seen born. Away and away. His heart beat like a drum, and his legs twitched. His foot snapped a twig, and the man-not-man looked up, fixed on him and…

The boy ran.

THE INTERVIEW
CASSANDRA
CURRENT DAY

I am here to tell you my story. Here,
in this small, lightless room. You want to open me up and examine my beating
heart, stir around the embers of my soul. You desire to know how I came to be
what I am.

To understand the end, you must know
the beginning. I will dissect myself for you. I will open my veins and I will
bleed.

You likely find comfort in the fact
that you have me contained. That I am here, waiting for my fate. You have made
me out to be a monster. I ask, what is a monster if not a warning against the
dark? I have done you a service. Perhaps you will recognize that, someday.

You have not yet realized this ending
was inevitable. My path was set for me when I was five. This outcome is not a
mistake. You made me.

We may not share blood, but I am your
child all the same.

All I ask is that you spare Ianthe.

It is not her fault that I love her.

Prosper’s Demon – KJ Parker

About the Book

In the pitch dark, witty fantasy novella Prosper’s Demon, K. J. Parker deftly creates a world with vivid, unbending rules, seething with demons, broken faith, and worse men.

In a botched demonic extraction, they say the demon feels it ten times worse than the man. But they don’t die, and we do. Equilibrium.

The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out—he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.

Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.

112 pages
Published on January 28, 2020
Published by Tor Dot Com
Buy the book

I purchased this book because it’s KJ Freaking Parker and I autobuy his books.

Here’s the deal. It is probably unwise in the extreme to be reviewing this book right now. I am soooooooooo tired and my post-surgery pain is really kicking my butt today, but I finished this book last night and I’d feel a bit remiss without saying something about it.

So, here I am.

It’s no secret that KJ Parker is my favorite author. Something about the mix of cynical wit, dark humor, and his realistic worlds just work for me on every conceivable level. While I love Parker’s novels, I think his real talent is novellas. He’s taken the shorter form novella, and really made an art out of it. In fact, Parker is the first author I read who really got me to look at novellas seriously.

I know that’s horrible to admit, but there we are.

Anyway, I learned that Parker dropped a new novella two days before my surgery. While I’d usually blaze through it, it’s taken me a bit longer just due to recovery and exhaustion. I was reading after my family had fallen asleep last night, finishing the book up and I actually ended up laughing at a turn of phrase so hard I woke up literally everyone, so that was fun. My copy of the book is just covered in highlights, too.

The thing about Parker is, you can’t really ignore how precise, almost knifelike his prose is. There’s never a wasted word, and whether he wants you to laugh or to think, he knows exactly what to say to pull out that specific emotion in his reader, in spades.

Prosper’s Demon has a lot going on. Like all Parker novels, it’s playing on a few different levels. The narrator is morally ambiguous and untrustworthy, which is always fun. However, this is a Parker novel, so you aren’t just getting a morally questionable narrator, but a narrator who is… well, rather a mystery. You never learn his name. You never even really learn why he’s doing it other than he feels like it’s his job. He doesn’t really give the steam off his piss for the people he extracts demons from. There’s just so much you don’t know and… well that’s part of the draw, to be honest.

In the end, you’re left wondering about the morals of demon extraction in the first place. Who is the better party? Are these people actually being saved? Is harm done in exchange for “survival” (in whatever form that may come) worth the price? You don’t even really realize its happening, but before you know it, Parker has pretty much torn every brick out of the wall of “the ends justify the means” and then sort of spins the whole idea on its head and makes you wonder why the hell that saying exists in the first place, regardless of how trite it may seem. It’s a pretty powerful concept, and only Parker can so ritualistically gut it in such a short novella.

This book is kind of hard to talk about without giving things away. It’s a novella, not much here to extrapolate on without giving it all away. That being said, I’d absolutely bake Parker (aka Tom Holt) cookies and ship them to him every month for a year if he would please, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, set more books in this world because it’s just so deserving of more Parker treatment.

I couldn’t get enough. What an amazing book.

The too long, didn’t read version:

PARKER BLEW MY SOCKS OFF, YET AGAIN.

5/5 stars

Self-Published Gems You Should All Be Reading

Alright, so this year has been a real kick in the pants so far. I’ve had some health issues (shocking, I know) which culminated in a pretty big hip surgery on January 30. I’m currently recovering. I’m quite medicated, and I’m also bored. I have a pile of editing I need to get to, but I still feel a bit too mentally foggy to get to any of it, so I’ve decided to make a list to occupy my time.

The thing is, I’m a proud indie author. I love being indie. I honestly can’t ever see myself deciding not to go indie. There are a ton of reasons why I’ve thrown my hat in this ring. I do, however, feel like I’m one of the most unknown authors in the history of the world, and I know what a rat-race it is to get recognized and how every single mention matters.

I really need to say that the more I read indie books, the less I have an interest in reading traditionally published books.

I know, I know, that goes against pretty much everything everyone ever says, but there’s a reason for that. Despite the glamor and etc of traditional publishing, I find the diversity of the indie marketplace (including small presses) to be positively intoxicating. You just don’t really see the variety you find in the indie marketplace anywhere else. Yes, people poo-poo the extra work, occasionally the cover art, more often the editing and yeah, I get it. But you know, I’m seeing those same complaints leveled against the traditional marketplace a lot more often these days… so… *shrugs*

We all do this for love of the craft, no matter which road we decide to walk down. I just have recently been finding the indie marketplace to be a lot more vibrant, active, and promising than the traditional one and I’d like to give it a bit of a spotlight.

So here I am, throwing what muscle I still have on this internet-thing to maybe bring some well-deserved attention to other indie authors who deserve recognition.

In no particular order, here are some indie gems you really need to be reading. (Note: Some of these are books I have edited. I’d think they are awesome even if I haven’t edited them, but I will make you aware of which books they are when I get to them.)

This is the first book of Galley’s that hit my radar. He’s published a lot of things since book, he’s landed a fancy agent and all those wonderful things and I’m so excited for him, but really when I think of Ben Galley, I think of this book. A sort of weird west fantasy hybrid thing, the writing is fantastic, the plot is relentless, and the book itself really made me want to write my own weird west/fantasy hybrid. So, I guess we could all say that Ben Galley inspired me with this one.

I really love this book. Well, to be honest, not just the book but the cover art. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over this cover art. That being said, Patrick has a way with pushing a story to its limits, and really challenging the reader, while keeping them completely immersed all the while. This is the first book in the series, and if you ask me, the series just gets better with each book. Patrick is a strong voice in the indie community, and his work is just a stunning blend of fantasy and myth that works for me on nearly every possible level.

I’m going to be honest here. There are two reasons I wasn’t sure whether I should add this book to the list. Neither of them have to do with quality. The first is because I want this list to feature lesser-known books, and this one has 900+ ratings on Goodreads. Secondly, because I’m still reading this book so I don’t have an overview of how wonderful the entire thing is yet. I can say, however, that I just love this damn book so much so far, and it’s basically everything I ever wanted to read in my epic fantasy.

This is another one of those books written by an author who has made quite a splash since this one landed. Hayes is known for a lot of things and has published a ton of books, but this one really put him on my map. He has a way of writing a really fun story, with complex characters and a really well-crafted world. His books are relentless, almost fever-pitched in places, and I love that about him. Not only does he keep the stories going though, but he has a way with his craft that makes his books absolutely addicting.

Now, this is a bit off my beaten path. I don’t typically do romance or urban fantasy, but I loved this book. I mean, I really loved it. I don’t know if it was the writing, or the unique storyline, or the blending of mythology and fantasy, but I can tell you that I’ve been dying to read more in this world and I really, really hope Hamill gets cracking. If you’re in the mood for an a-typical urban fantasy with subtle romance notes, this is your jam.

I’m a HUGE sucker for books that refuse to tell a story in the standard, or expected way. This book really speaks to that love of mine. A series of interconnected tales, this book is delicately, meticulously crafted with stunning use of language and a remarkable way it all comes together. What I love the most, though, is how Brindle was so free to tell this story, this particular way. I don’t think it would have worked any other way, and that’s one of the benefits of indie, IMO. You can do what you want, rules be damned, and in cases like this it really, really works.

This book isn’t easy, but it’s not supposed to be. Fantastically written, and as epic as epic gets, I think this one has flown under the radar and really shouldn’t have. As a debut novel, this one really packs a punch. However, it also calls upon all those things that so many of us love about fantasy in the first place. Sprawling battles, lots of tension, death, trauma, blood… and have I mentioned the prose yet? So if you’re in the mood for some battles, epic struggles, and magic, by damn, look no further.

Now, G.R. Matthews is a friend of mine, and has been for years. He’s also just been signed on with an amazing agent, and I could not possibly be more happy for him. With that out of the way, Matthews has always appealed to me because of his pretty constant deviation from the norm. Here, we have an Asian-inspired fantasy which, unless I’m wrong, was his debut. I really loved this entire series and I don’t think I’ve done enough to make it better known. It really is just amazing all around and worth your time.

Now, here’s the note you’ve all been waiting for. I edited this book. Also, I want to note that I want to write like Fletcher when I grow up. He’s just so damn talented I almost hate him as much as I love his books. This one is a perfect example. I was basically swearing at him the entire time I was editing the book, “Damn it, Fletcher, why the hell are you so freaking talented?” Just, give me a break, dude. Leave some talent for other people. Anyway, dark, devastating, surreal. Perfect.

Another book I’ve edited, which I think is criminally underrated. A clash between good and evil. Nothing is what it seems to be. Set in a flintlock world with evocative prose and characters you can’t help but feel for, this one really pulled me in instantly and kept me hanging on for the ride. It’s a well-deserved finalist for this year’s SPFBO and I have high hopes for it. Black has a unique voice, and a one-of-a-kind vision, and I think fantasy is better for having her in it.

As long as I’m throwing out books I’ve edited, here’s one that’s upcoming that you really, really need to fix your eyeballs on because I almost hate Rob Hayes for how good this entire trilogy is. I mean, my god, between him and Fletcher, there’s no freaking talent left for anyone else. This series is basically everything that Hayes excels at, but perfected. I’m talking, this trilogy is dark and uncomfortable and it’s everything I have always wanted to read. Editing it has been a joy, but screw you, Rob. Screw you for being so damn skilled.

Black Stone Heart by Michael R. Fletcher

Another book I’ve edited, which will drop in early April. Now, I’ve ready everything – literally – this man has written and every damn time I do I say, “this is his best book ever” and *clears throat* this is his best book EVER. It’s dark, brutal, devastating, and spends basically all its time in that moral gray area I love so must. It’s also really, really smart, and the story basically is nothing I expected it to be, at any point at all. So yeah, this one will knock you on your ass. My suggestion is to buy Hayes book first (it comes out in late March) and then Fletcher’s book next (as it comes out in early April) and set yourself in for a week of reading. Have your heart paddles ready, because you’ll have some uncomfortable starting and stopping going on.

So I was up all night last night with pain and discomfort. I started reading this book and I damn near finished it in one sitting. Why? Because it is THAT FREAKING GOOD OH MY GOD. Why the hell aren’t you reading this book? It’s got EVERYTHING I ever want in my fantasy. World building. Moral quandaries. Complex characters. Dark themes. Deception. AND THE WRITING. OH MY GOD JUST READ THIS FREAKING BOOK BECAUSE IT BLEW. ME. AWAY.

This is my first foray with ML Spencer, and I have to say, I’m wondering what took me so long. I haven’t finished this book yet, but I can already tell that it’s not going to be my last ML Spencer book I’ve read. Dark plot, great characters, and like Hayes, the pace of her book is just relentless. What maybe gets me the most is how nothing — literally nothing — is wasted in these pages. Everything matters. Maybe not right away, but there are a lot of times I’m all, “Oh, so that thing that was mentioned twenty pages ago was actually a big deal. COOL.” I love that.

Another book I’m not quite done reading yet (sorry, I’m so freaking busy I can’t even…) but I feel like it deserves a place on this list. I’m new to both Suttkus and Phipps as authors, and I really like their style. Sort of a lighter affair than what I typically read, with a bit more of a UF bend, but really, really engrossing, fast-paced, and pretty unique. I really enjoy the twist on the bounty hunter trope (which I seem to see a lot in one form or another in UF) and just generally dig this book a whole bunch.

I have not read all of Jesse Teller’s books, but of the ones I have read (I am currently reading another one I really love as well) this one stands out to me. There are a few reasons for that. I love the nature of the stories being told, how they are interconnected, but not obviously at first. I love the voices, but mostly I love how Teller really packs his characters full of emotion. He doesn’t just tell a story, but takes readers on an odyssey, and it’s not really obvious until things get cracking how the four different novellas here are interwoven, but they are, and I just… I really loved this book. It really moved me.

I just finished this book and I plan to write a review of it when I’m less… you know, overwhelmed by life and recent surgery and catching up on editing gigs and all this stuff. Anyway, dark fantasy tale about a woman who is taken captive by a truely repugnant puke of a person. Interesting story, sort of a coming-of-age feel, but with very mature undertones and a nice layer of hope sprinkled throughout to flavor it all up nicely. It’s the start of a series, and it really made AM Justice an author to watch. I just loved how this started, and I cannot begin to guess what will happen next.

My last entry onto this list will be Ulff Lehmann, who writes unparalleled military fantasy with superb execution. You know, I’m not really big on military fantasy, but I really did enjoy this book. It’s not just military, but also just so very human, with three-dimensional characters and a whole lot of forethought and insight. Every detail matters. A very strong voice in military and epic fantasy. highly recommend.

I know I’m missing so many books, but I’m tired and my laptop is about to die, so hopefully, that gives you some great indie jumping-off points for some lesser-known gems that really deserve more attention than they are getting.

Go forth and read!

Deep Dive | Kit & Adelaide Carson

Hello, readers. It’s been a while. We have myself to blame. My health took a bit of a downward turn, and I’ve been buried in editing gigs so I just haven’t had much time to do anything on my website.

I’ve been mulling over this Deep Dive a bit. I wasn’t sure how to attack this topic, and I think I finally figured it out.

As you (may or may not) know, the things I write are very often, if not always, based on history. Seraphina’s Lament was largely based on the Holodomor and Stalinism. An Elegy for Hope is based a lot on World War II, specifically the Operation Barbarossa part of it.

Of Honey and Wildfires, which will be published in March, is set in a Wild West/frontier-based secondary world. I’ve already talked a bit about worldbuilding and how I used oil as a basis for the magic system. (Go ahead and read that post here.) Today I want to talk a bit about picking and choosing which bits of history I use, and which I decide to pass over when I write. I’d like to use Kit Carson and his eldest daughter Adelaide as an example.

Ready? Here we go.

Possibly the earliest picture of Kit Carson.

If you say the name “Kit Carson” out here in the west, there aren’t many people who haven’t at least heard his name. Kit Carson is a historical figure who is larger than life.

Whether you think of him as a murderer, criminal, or Wild West hero, chances are, you’ve heard of him.

He worked for the army, he was a mountain man, fur trader, trapper, hunter, and worked as a liaison with many Native Americans. He hit the open road as a teenager and never looked back. He was instrumental in a lot of the things that happened in the great drive west in the United States

Kit Carson moved west as a boy along with his family. Eventually settling in Missouri, Carson’s father died when he was clearing a field and a tree branch fell on him. This left Kit, the eldest son of a large family, someone at odd ends. He ended up becoming an apprenticed to a saddler in Franklin, Missouri. The work did not suit him, and he hit the Santa Fe trail.

It was during this time of his life that he was introduced to the great wide west and his ability to wander through it must have been intoxicating. Meeting up with a bunch of mountain men, he learned how to hunt and trap with them, and eventually made his way to a rendezvous, wherein he met his first wife, an Arapaho woman named Waa-nibe (Different sources spell this name different ways, so I kind of just picked one spelling and ran with it), which roughly translates to “Singing Grass.”

(Note: Carson did have a wife after Singing Grass died, and before Josefa, but the marriage didn’t last long and was not happy so I don’t mention it here.)

Now, this is where sources differ, depending on who you’re reading. I am going to tell you what was said in the book Blood and Thunder, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Carson and Singing Grass got married (all signs point to the fact that he loved Singing Grass deeply), and they had two daughters. The eldest daughter, Adelaide (nicknamed “Prarie Flower”) survived. However, his wife died shortly after the birth of his second daughter. He took his two children to Taos, New Mexico and sometime when he got down there, he realized that Adelaide needed education and stability and the life of a mountain man wasn’t suited to that. He left his youngest daughter in Taos, in the care of others, and took Adelaide back to Missouri to be raised with his younger sister. The way it is told in Blood and Thunder, shortly after he left Taos, his youngest daughter fell in a vat of soap when it was being made, and died. Thus, many sources you read online will say he only had one child with Singing Grass, not two.

Anyway, Carson takes Adelaide up to Missouri and eventually settles on leaving her with his sister to be raised. He bought her dresses, and cleaned her up so she would make a good first impression. After he left, heading back down to Taos, his sister said that Adelaide was so wild, she would pull up plants and attempt to eat their roots.

Adelaide did not live a long life. She died at 21, and if you look online, there really isn’t anyone that knows how or why, though it is assumed she died in childbirth. She is buried in California. Even then, there are some claims that she lived longer than the plaque on her grave claims, as there was an Adelaide Carson living alone in the 1860 census of Tulare County, CA, which is some years after she is claimed to have died.

I haven’t been able to find much information about her other than speculation, so I’ll leave her story there for now.

Kit Carson, however, is very much larger than life and was even more so back then. His stories, often embellished, were featured in dime novels. His exploits were known from sea to shining sea. In Blood and Thunder, I found the small details of the man to be intoxicating. He was illiterate. He was quiet and rarely spoke in any way that gave away his personal thoughts and emotions. He was fiercely, doggedly loyal to his wife Josefa, and his children.

Okay, so let me leave things there for now. Kit Carson is so big, so well-known, that I really don’t need to say much more than that to get to where I’m going. Which is… how does all this impact Of Honey and Wildfires?

Of Honey and Wildfires is very much a family drama. The story starts out with Christopher Hobson, a single father, outlaw, and mountain man, leaving his five-year-old daughter, Cassandra, with his sister to be raised.

Already you can see some similarities, right? They aren’t on accident. I named Christopher Hobson “Christopher” as homage to the Kit Carson who very much inspired him. There’s a bit very early on in the book where Cassandra is being discussed, and it’s said that she dug up some bushes and started to lick the roots of the plant to see if they were edible (which was in a letter written by Carson’s sister, quoted in Blood and Thunder.).

“She’s half animal, Imogen. She came here in buckskins and a tunic, hair in braids, five minutes away from howling with the wolves. I caught her, just yesterday, digging up one of my flower bushes, licking the roots, wondering if she could eat them. She speaks our language well enough, though she’s uneducated. Chris was never a man of words, and he’s been gone for… It’s been so many years. Whatever manners he had, disappeared. Then his wife died. He loved her, and it broke him. He dragged his poor child through the mountains and didn’t teach her a thing aside from survival.” 
– Of Honey and Wildfires

More difficult, though, was how hard it was for me to decide which parts of the actual Kit Carson man, and his daughter Adelaide, to take and put in my development of the characters in my book.

I like to use history as a springboard, but not as the entire basis for what I’m writing. Kit Carson was just too big, and so when I was developing Christopher Hobson, I decided to take those parts of Carson that were positively human, just small details many people overlook, and use them to make my own Christopher Hobson. Christopher Hobson cannot read. His wife, whom he loved dearly, died in childbirth, and so now he has a five-year-old daughter and doesn’t know what to do with her, as well as all his grief, and that’s how Cassandra ends up being raised by his sister Annie, in Shine Territory.

“He’ll come back, Cassandra. He’ll come back as soon as he realizes what he’s left here. Don’t blame him for being broken. Sometimes the world is too hard for the people who live in it.”
– Of Honey and Wildfires

Christopher Hobson is also more comfortable in nature, never staying in one place too long. He’s a man of few words, and rarely goes into how he feels about a thing. He’s got his own moral compass very few people actually understand.

“Are you staying?” Annie asked, voice full of hope. “You could hide out somewhere—”

“I can’t,” Da said. He cast his eyes to the far wall, as though he could see through it. “You know me, Annie. My life wasn’t made to be lived in one place.” 
– Of Honey and Wildfires

All of this was inspired by Kit Carson. For me, it wasn’t as much bringing Kit Carson to life, as using the human things I discovered about the man to make my own character, Christopher Hobson.

Adelaide Carson was a bit harder for me to work with, and she required a lot more imagination on my part. I don’t have Native Americans in my book, but the people who live in Shine Territory are different than the people who live outside of it, and Cassandra has the blood of both in her veins. She spent her childhood with a mountain man, and then ended up on the frontier, forced to learn how to live a life of dresses and school and social norms and all that.

I imagine that Adelaide very much felt like a girl with one foot in two different worlds, and I imagine that caused a lot of inner conflict and termoil, especially at first and that’s not even considering how society must have treated her. I imagine that life on the frontier was easier for children like Adeliade, though still not easy. She must have felt very torn between two different and I think that would have been very confusing and painful. That “torn” feeling, that inner conflict, the feeling of being torn between two lives is something I tried to catch with Cassandra.

I imagined a lot when it came to Adelaide.

I straddled two worlds. The world of Annie on one side, complete with civilization and dresses, letters and numbers. Propriety. On the other side was the untamed and my father. A life where the only rules that really mattered were the ones that kept a person alive. The frontier was a fertile place for someone like me to grow, someone with the mountains in her bones, first learning the ways of civilization.
– Of Honey and Wildfires

I tried to bring some of that to life, though Cassandra’s situation is a bit different due to the world I’ve created and the problems surrounding this specific area. Mostly, I tried to bring some of the humanity of Kit Carson to life in Cassandra. I tried to take the things I envisioned him wanting for his daughter, wanting them enough to travel to Missouri and leave her with relatives he hadn’t seen in sixteen years. I tried to show how that experience would impact a little girl, like Adelaide. Like Cassandra.

Because so little is known about Adelaide, a lot of my development of Cassandra was based on what I dreamed up, based on what I knew of Kit Carson. Here was a man who’d lost his wife, a woman he’d loved. He had spent most of his life trapping, and living in the mountains, alone sometimes, with Native Americans sometimes, sometimes with other mountain men. He knew how to hunt and trap, he knew how to survive. He did not know much about how to raise a girl. He must have been overwhelmed with suddenly finding himself alone in the world with two daughters. Overwhelmed enough to travel to Taos, New Mexico, and then, upon realizing his eldest daughter was old enough to go to school and become a lady and he was utterly unequipped to deal with that, travel again with her to Missouri, a place he’d been gone from for sixteen years, with family he hadn’t seen in just as long.

All of that makes me think that Kit Carson was a bit out of his depth, and desperate. Plus, in the way of all fathers, he wanted so much more for his child than he knew he could give her. Though I tell most of this story from Cassandra’s point of view, I tried very hard to put the tangled emotions from both Christopher and his daughter into her narrative.

What kind of man leaves his only child in the arms of strangers? What kind of pathetic daughter was I for being so easy to leave? 
– Of Honey and Wildfires

That’s what I tried to use when I built Cassandra. A father’s desperation, his grief, his worry, and his desire for his daughter to be something more than what he could make her, and give her opportunities he couldn’t. So, in the first chapter of the book, Christopher ends up leaving his daughter, Cassandra, with his sister, Annie, whom Cassandra had never heard of before. She lives in a cabin on the frontier, goes to school, makes friends, but life is not easy.

“Don’t forget me,” he whispered, gripping my chin with his thumb and forefinger. 

Perhaps being forgotten is the worst thing an adult can imagine, but as a child what mattered wasn’t the forgetting, but the removal. Being isolated. I was a stranger in a strange world, too small to navigate these waters. Too young to understand what was happening. Everything narrowed. Reality became defined by the shattered-glass sound of my own frozen screams.

I did not know that a person could feel so powerfully. I did not know that sorrow could scald. 

I was not sad that he would forget me, or I him. I was afraid, because suddenly I knew what it was to be cold. I was frightened, because now I understood the awesome power of the word alone. 

When I was a child, I did not know how much life could hurt. 

I have gained one truth over the years: The heart is a knife. Each beat of it cuts. 
– Of Honey and Wildfires

There are small things I added in, in homage to what I know of Adelaide.

Her father cannot read, and he really wants her to learn how to, so she spends a lot of her childhood trying, very hard, to fulfill her father’s wish for her. Kit’s nickname for his daughter was “Prarie Flower” and Christopher Hobson’s nickname for Cassandra is “Little Flower.” But mostly with Cassandra, I had to imagine how hard life must have been for Adelaide, the desperation of the situation, the pain of being left, the inability to fit in, no matter how hard she tried. Constantly an outsider, I think she probably had happy moments, but I also think there was a lot of pain in her life, as well.

Writing from history can be a lot of fun, but the story of Kit Carson was probably one of my biggest challenges, just due to how absolutely huge the man is in American history. For me, it’s not as much figuring out how to fit history into my writing, but figuring out which bits of history to use, and which to toss away. Writing in a secondary world gives me a lot of freedom, but it also means that carefully choosing which real-world history bits to use to infuse my world and characters, and which to leave aside, can be a real challenge, and can change the entire course of the book, for better or worse.

I tend to really enjoy the small details of history, and I usually focus on the more human aspects of the people that populate it than the bigger, more dramatic picture. Kit Carson is a good example. He was almost so big a figure he became superhuman, and I instantly knew, when I decided to use him as a basis for Christopher Hobson in Of Honey and Wildfires, that I had to do away with all the superhuman and focus on the man or the book wouldn’t work. That’s why I decided to settle on the fact he couldn’t read, his dogged loyalty to his family and wife, his love for Singing Grass, the decision to leave his daughter in Missouri after his wife had died. The grief he must have felt. The desperation that must have fueled that decision.

Adelaide’s rather mysterious life was unfortunate, because I’m really interested in what it must have been like for her, the daughter of this infamous man, left with relative strangers on the frontier at such a young age. I cannot imagine any of her childhood being easy. I ended up having to imagine a whole lot about her, and then sort of building up Cassandra from the things I knew of Kit Carson, life on the frontier, and my own imagings about the situation as a whole.

Did I do a good job of it? I don’t know. You’ll have to decide when Of Honey and Wildfires drops in March.

The Mastermind – Evan Ratliff

About the Book

The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur

It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hitmen in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them.

The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux—a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the twenty-first century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined.

For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed.

Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing LeRoux’s empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age.

480 pages (hardcover)
Published on January 29, 2019
Buy the book

This book was a library loan. Yay libraries!

I’ve been on a bit of a nonfiction kick, recently. I ran across this book online, and immediately ordered it from the library. The reason? Apparently criminals interest me, and criminals who rule over empires, virtual or not, are just fascinating. I saw this, and figured it was just the right amount of weird, technical, and unique to really float my boat.

I read this book in two days. To put that into perspective, I’m editing two books for clients right now, going through one of my own books before I get it ready for editors, and writing another. I do not really have time to read, but I was so completely captivated by this novel, I put everything on hold so I could read it.

This book tells the story of one Paul Le Roux. (I totally suggest you google him. You won’t regret it.) Le Roux is sort of an uncanny operator. He’s not really the person you’d expect to rule a drug empire, but there he was. He had the right mixture of brains, and an entrepreneurial soul to make all of this work just right.

He basically started out in the “gray market” of online pharmacies in the United States, basically cornering the marketplace with RX Limited, and it’s tons and tons and tons of affiliated sites, basically amounting to gaming the system, so people could order almost whatever pills they wanted, and they’d show up. It was pretty easy to do without prescriptions. This, of course, got the attention of the DEA, and by the time it was all said and done, a ton of small mom and pop pharmacies that got involved in this thinking it was all above board, and a bunch of board certified doctors (involved for the same reason) ended up being arrested and/or paying huge fines.

ANYWAY.

So it starts out with online pharmacies in the United States, wherein Le Roux made absolute bank. Then he moves to the Philippians, and things get… weird. He starts hiring bodyguards, there are rumors that he was trafficking women, he started selling meth from North Korea. He had a squad of hitmen who assassinated anyone his paranoid brain thought was betraying him. He basically funded a militia in Somalia. He had a whole bunch of people assassinated. He laundered his money through lumber, diamonds, and gold in Africa, filling up a ton of safe houses with gold bars, which he’d rely on his people to transport from location to location. He also ran a healthy identity theft operation, which he used to open up just tons and tons of front companies all over the world.

He paid off almost everyone he could in the Philippians, so no one could, or would, touch him. Everyone was afraid to talk, and even after he was arrested, the author seems to have had a hard time finding people willing to go on the record about this guy because who knows if his network is still functioning.

Anyway, all of this stuff is going on, and he’s managing it all from the comfort of his own home, via computer. Things happen, and he gets caught. Then, oddity of all oddities, he begins to turn on his own people, reporting to the authorities who is doing what, where, and when to catch them. He ended up taking down most of his own network. Dude is now in prison, and so are a whole bunch of the hitmen and drug movers and shakers that worked with him.

This book tells that entire story, from inception to takedown, and then an epilogue saying where people are now, and what they are doing and it’s gripping. I mean, this is some stunning, surreal, incredibly readable reporting, and if it doesn’t get made into a movie I will eat my shoes.

The author did go into quite a bit of detail, really boiling down some things to their most minute points. It can possibly be a bit “too much” to some readers, but I honestly found myself on the other side of the equation. I wanted to know more. Specifically, I wanted to know a lot more about this meth and North Korea angle, which is really just glossed over rather than reported in detail. I want to know how that worked out. I want to know if exporting meth from North Korea is common. I’m interested, because I didn’t expect it. How do you get meth from one of the most closed off countries in the world? Fascinating.

Anyway.

Mastermind pulled me in and didn’t let me go. I was fascinated and horrified. It’s stunning. Shocking. Frightening. This guy likely won’t spend his whole life in jail, and that’s also scary. A lot of the people who worked with him are unknown, or have disappeared, and that’s something that left me with a cold chill as well. The reporting, however, really does deserve to be admired. It’s not often that a reporter gets this in-depth with a figure that is this powerful, and this frightening. He really got into it, tracking down sources, and speaking to everyone he could, from hitmen, to people who only had brief interactions with Le Roux, to the investigators in the United States who started looking at this guy and spent years trying to take him down.

Immensely readable, this book just blew me away. It’s the kind of nonfiction book you have to keep reminding yourself is nonfiction. It’s just… surreal, almost. This guy was everywhere, with hands in so many different pies, and his network was beyond extensive and so secretive. He’s in prison, but it really left me thinking that prison might just be another front. I mean, how can you really take the head off an organization like this?

So yeah, this book really gripped me and I think it got into my head a bit and made me look at the internet differently, as well as how we use it. More than that, though, I was just fascinated by the story of this person who rose up from obscurity to rule an empire. It also made me wonder how different things could be if people like Paul Le Roux decided to use his substantial skills for something good, rather than running drugs, laundering money, and liberally shifting pills around the United States.

If you’re into true crime, or if you’re really just into action in general, you really need to read this book. It’s probably one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. It sank its teeth into me, and it hasn’t let go. I can’t stop thinking about it.

And that, friends, is the mark of a truly good book.

5/5 stars

The Millennial Manifesto – Michael R. Fletcher

About the Book

Only barbarians plan terrorism before tea.

Tired of ineffectual marches and rallies, Millennials turn to terrorist tactics to force change on Corporate America. Setting their sites on the company responsible for poisoning the local water supply, they declare war.

But now they swim with sharks.

After all, you don’t claw your way to the top of the corporate ladder by being a pushover. 

Published on December 2, 2019
Author’s website
Buy the book

I edited this book, so take that into consideration before you read further.

You know how sometimes you run across an author and you end up loving their stuff so much they become an auto-buy for you? Well, Fletcher is like that for me, only I’m so damn lucky because he’s hired me to edit a few of his books, and I’m hoping there are more on the horizon. I love working with him. Not only are his books action-packed and addictive, they are also always thought-provoking. Fletcher doesn’t just write on one level. His books always seem to poke at deeper themes.

The Millennial Manifesto is not your typical Fletcher book. If you turn to his books for your regular infusion of grimdark fantasy, you won’t find that here. This book is a different breed altogether. It takes place in the modern world, sans magic, and minus fantasy. Instead, you’ve got a thrill ride through a Tarantino-like hellscape. There isn’t one second page without action or the planning/anticipation of action, not one moment where you aren’t on the edge of your seat. It’s a nail-biting, adrenaline-infused trip through a fraught world where the heroes and the villains often change roles, where nothing is obvious, and whatever you’re expecting to happen? Well, don’t hold your breath.

This story tells the tale of a bunch of modern-day millennial revolutionaries, sick and repulsed by environmental issues, by corporate greed, by insufficient political activity, by just about everything. Things need to change, and so they decide they will be the ones to change it. On the other side, you’ve got the high-tech, hardcore bodyguards for one of the corporate people that these millennials revolutionaries target.

What ensues is a pulse-pounding cat and mouse game that will have you on pins and needles. I read and edit so many books, that I’m at the point now where I can almost predict the ending for every book that is set in front of me within the first three chapters. I tell you honestly, friends, I DID NOT expect the ending that we got here. I also didn’t expect the depth, nor how carefully, and insightfully Fletcher poked into issues of politics, and morality.

It’s not a comfortable book. There were quite a few times when I was editing this beast that I said something along the lines of, “I can’t wait to see how many people you offend with this line.” That’s not a bad thing, though. I am a firm believer that a person needs to be uncomfortable sometimes, that often, the only way that we can see the world differently is by breaking out of our comfort zones, and books like this do just that.

I’m also a huge sucker for books that strip away the black and white perception we frequently have of our world. Who is good and who is evil? I think it just depends, and that moral gray zone is somewhere that I just absolutely dig, and very few authors seem to play in those waters as well as Fletcher does.

As I’ve said, this book is nonstop and the fact that it is not terribly long makes it an easy book to devour quickly, if you desire, and you probably will (once you start, you won’t be able to stop). My comparison to a Tarantino movie is apt. There’s over-the-top (yet perfect) action, and deeper themes, plenty of surprises and lots of blood. And it’s all delivered with typical Fletcher-like poise.

He makes it look so easy, doesn’t he? I envy his talent.

It’s not a comfortable book, but it’s not supposed to be. This is the kind of book that is written when an author has something to say.

This book is important.

You really need to read it.

5/5 stars

On the Shared Experience of Being Weird (IE: An Exploration of Vulnerability)

I’m going to open up to you, dear readers, and it will probably be a little weird, and vulnerable. I’m going to take you on a little journey regarding my headspace since Seraphina’s Lament publication. It’s not pretty, and it’s long, but I’m going to lay my personal experience out there because I think it’s something every author feels to one extent or another. I think this is something we can all commiserate on.

Also, there’s an excerpt from An Elegy for Hope at the end, so if you want to just read that, scroll to the end and skip my angst.

This whole writing thing since Seraphina’s Lament has dropped has been easy in some respects, but absolute agony in others, to the point where I almost wanted to just give up and walk away from it all but I can’t not write, so that’s really not an option. I’ve been writing my whole life. It’s just not in me to suddenly stop the thing I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. So, let me tell you a bit about why I’ve been in such a funk.

First, let me talk a bit about Seraphina’s Lament. The reviews of this book have been largely positive, and that’s both surprised and thrilled me. It isn’t everyone’s bag of oats, but I knew it wouldn’t be from the start. I knew that that kind of book would polarize my audience. People will either love it or hate it, and that’s pretty much stayed true since publication. I’m okay with that. I’ve been reviewing for long enough to know that not every book pleases every reader and that’s perfectly fine.

Another thing I expected but also didn’t, was how many people would remark on how different the book is. Look, I knew it was weird when I wrote it. I’m a weird person. My brain has always seen the “path” people trod on, and said, “That’s cool but why don’t we turn left and go wandering in the weeds a bit and see what happens. Normal is so… ug.” Rules bore me. The “tried and true” is fine, but… meh. I think sometimes unbalanced things are more interesting. So, I wrote Seraphina’s Lament, and sort of plotted out the path of this trilogy, and thought, “Okay, it’s weird. I know it’s weird, and I’m okay with that.”

You write what you want to read. I love mythology. I love lyrical writing. I love emotions and the power of people that can just tear you apart sometimes. I love how characters can be entire universes, if created well. I love the gray area, the toying with morality, personal transformation, and the fact that almost no one sets out thinking, “I’m going to be a real evil asshole, because I need to be the antagonist.” Most people do what they do because they feel like its right, regardless of how ugly it is, and I love, LOVE toying with that–with belief and transformation.

So I wrote a book about it.

However, I did not expect just about every single review to remark on how different it is (Seriously. Every. Review. If you don’t believe me, go read the reviews on Goodreads). I mean, in my head I knew it was an odd duck, but I didn’t expect it to be SO OUT THERE everyone felt the need to comment on it. From, “There’s nothing out there like this” to “I don’t even know what subgenre to put it in” and everything in between.

And that’s cool, right? It’s really cool. I love being the “only one.” It’s kind of a huge badge of honor. But…

But.

As the reviews started coming in and I saw those sentiments stated over and over again, it started freaking me out. Being “the only one” is fine, but it’s kind of also really… scary? awkward? weird? I’m standing out here all alone and I think it got into my head a bit. Did I miss a memo somewhere? Was I supposed to turn left back there and I just missed the marker? When I started writing An Elegy for Hope, I kept trying to make my weird trilogy, this round peg of mine, fit into the square holes that everyone expects, that most books flourish with.

I saw these comments, and while one side of me is saying “Awesome! Damn the man! Blaze your own trail! Woo!” This other part of me was like, “Okay, so obviously this is too weird, and I really need to adjust my books so they fit more in the neat and tidy boxes people want to put books in and WHY CAN’T I DO ANYTHING NORMAL. I mean, at least people should know what the hell genre this damn series belongs in.”

And here’s the thing, I know you should write for yourself, and I do. Trust me, I do. If I didn’t believe in this story, if it wasn’t burning in my blood to be told, I wouldn’t be writing it. I wouldn’t bother with the headache. But, marketing matters, and being different is cool, but I kept seeing these comments in reviews and thinking, “God, I’m just too fucking weird and it’s cool now, but what happens when it stops being cool? I will start losing people if my books can’t be defined or confined to certain labels. If it doesn’t fit, no one will read it and then is it worth the effort to write it?”

So it all got in my head, and I started trying to write An Elegy for Hope, but sort of trying to lose a lot of what made Seraphina’s Lament so unique, and it just didn’t work. I kept getting about 20k words into it, and then just hating it. The story would die. The characters stopped interesting me. I hated everything about it. It just felt so… stale. I think I’ve wracked up well over 100k words in false starts on An Elegy for Hope while I’ve been trying to normalize my beast and get this trilogy more on the path, more in line.

Eventually, I realized I needed to take some time away from all of it. I stopped looking at my book reviews, relying on friends to tell me when there was a new one I needed to see. I basically completely pulled out of the SPFBO mentally almost right after the contest started because the risk of seeing reviews and etc just freaked me out. I wrote Of Honey and Wildfires, which I think is more mainstream than The Bloodlands trilogy (and is about to hit editors in the next week or so, but also maybe it’s not more mainstream? I feel like I’m a terrible judge.). I just realized I had to completely unplug, and reboot. I either needed to reach a point where I was okay to keep going on the course I began with Seraphina’s Lament, or I had to just be done with it.

I got to this point about two weeks ago where I told a writer friend of mine, “I don’t think I’m going to continue with The Bloodlands series. It’s just too weird, I think. Everyone focuses on how different it is and I’m pretty sure that it’ll narrow the readers down and not make the continued effort to finish the series worth it.”

I was going to make an announcement in January saying that Seraphina’s Lament is now a standalone.

And then it happened.

I’m a firm believer that sometimes the right thing happens at the right time and all you have to do is be open to it when it happens. Right around Thanksgiving last week, I was playing Uno with my family when my phone pinged with an email. I opened it up expecting to see spam. Instead, I got an email with the subject of, “Seraphina’s Lament: many awed thoughts.”

It was written to me by someone who read my book. She was born in Kharkiv, a city in Ukraine that was one of the most heavily impacted by the Holodomor. The author explained to me how her family survived the Holodomor, and how my book impacted her, and what it meant to her, and thanking me, essentially, for bringing the story of the Holodomor to western audiences. It was long, and it reduced me to tears. I’ve never read anything like it, but it was also exactly what I needed to see. It really got me out of this funk, out of this spiral of “Great job, Sarah, you’re book is known for being the weird one” cycle that I was stuck in.

That email refocused me. It forced me to sit back and examine this headspace I’d gotten myself into. It made me poke at whether being on “the path” is really where I want to be, and it made me realize that the entire reason I’ve had so many false starts with An Elegy for Hope was because it just refuses to play by the rules. I refuse to play by the rules. I never have in my life, so why would I start now? This is a story that needs to be told a certain way, and I either need to be willing to continue on the way I’m going, or I need to just bag the entire effort, because trying to paint my zebra to look like a horse won’t make it a horse. Should I really give words other people have said that much weight toward my own personal trajectory?

No. God, no. Why did I waste so much time worrying about what other people think?

But I got that email, and it really cut through all my intimidation (yes, intimidation. It is kind of scary to keep seeing “I’ve never read a book like this before” over and over again). It unfroze me. It made me look at why I’m doing this. Why I’m writing. Why I’m publishing. Why I’m doing what I’m doing, and it’s not so I can walk on a path that others have walked on before. I’m doing it because I’ve got a story to tell, and it’s apparently just as weird as I am, and THAT IS OKAY.

It’s okay, because if it impacts one person, ONE PERSON, who writes me an email to tell me that I’ve profoundly touched her with what I’ve created, it’s worth it. It’s okay, because sometimes stories refuse to be categorized. Sometimes things just can’t be defined. Sometimes life is messy and there aren’t clear protagonists and antagonists, and hope is subtle and fleeting and I really love lyrical writing so let’s throw that in as well.

It’s okay to be different. It’s also okay to not read reviews (which I think I’m not going to do anymore because good god they get into my head something fierce, as evidenced by this post.)

Writing is such a solitary endeavor. It’s a thing we do alone, in our houses, by ourselves, in our own heads and I think I had to get to that point where I felt like I could stand up and say, “Yep, my book is weird, and my trilogy is going to continue to be weird, and hey, that’s fine because normal is boring.” It took me a while to thaw out my Bloodlands creativity, and feel it coursing through me again.

Ultimately, I’m not different. I think these thoughts hit every author to one extent or another when they publish, whether traditionally or indie. It’s an exercise in vulnerability, and I think, for a time, my vulnerability kind of kicked my ass. The reason books are so wonderful is because they are all so different. Every one of us is weird, and isn’t that great? We’re all telling stories about people as seen through the prism of our experience, and since no two experiences are the same, no two books will be, either. I tell my editing clients all the time, “I want to read YOUR book with YOUR voice. If I wanted to read someone else’s book, I’d read their book.” I think I had to get to a point where I had to internalize that, and feel it in my bones as applicable to me as well as everyone else.

So we publish, and we write, and we love, and we worry, and sometimes the worry overwhelms the love, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it takes a very beautiful, very heartfelt email to remind us why this vulnerability of ours is necessary. Sometimes we have to remember why we’re doing this. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that going out on a limb is worth it. After all, that’s where all the fruit is.

And to end this really long diatribe, I’ve started writing An Elegy for Hope again and I’m in love with it. The prologue is told from the perspective of the moon, so if you’re all, “I wonder if it’ll be just as different as Seraphina’s Lament“, I believe you’ve got your answer.

I’m going to post a snippet of the prologue here. It’s unedited. Wording will inevitably alter before publication, and I don’t look at grammar until after I’ve got my first draft down, so it’s not perfect, but it’s proof that things are happening, and I’m hoping for an early summer publication date.

To the person who wrote me that email, I owe you a reply, and you will get it this week. But, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for thawing the ice, and reminding me why I’m telling this story.

To be an artist is to be vulnerable. We all have to make our own journeys and learn to be okay with our differences, and with those things that make us feel vulnerable. There are a lot of us out here in the weeds talking to butterflies and pondering our navels. Being different is what makes your work shine, so don’t tame the wild in your soul.

It took me most of this year to really internalize that message. I hope, maybe, by laying out my headspace, it’ll make someone else who has/is experiencing similar thoughts not feel so alone.

Shattered Dreams – Ulff Lehmann

About
the Book

Epic Fantasy filled to
the brim with Grimdark Reality



If one looks too long into the abyss, the abyss
looks back. Drangar Ralgon has been avoiding the abyss’s gaze for far too long
and now he turns to face it.



For a hundred years the young kingdom of
Danastaer has thrived in peace. Now their northern neighbor, mighty
Chanastardh, has begun a cunning invasion.



Thrust into events far beyond his control, the
mercenary Drangar Ralgon flees his solitary life as a shepherd to evade the
coming war and take responsibility for his crimes.



In Dunthiochagh, Danastaer’s oldest city, the
holy warrior Kildanor uncovers the enemy’s plans for invasion.



As ancient forces reach forth to shape the world
once more, the sorceress Ealisaid wakes from a century of hibernation only to
realize the Dunthiochagh she knew is no more. Magic, believed long gone,
returns, and with it comes an elven wizard sent to recover a dangerous secret.

518 pages (kindle)
Published on March 16, 2018
Published by Crossroads Press
Buy the book

This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

First, dear reader, you need to
know that Ulff Lehmann is a friend of mine. Also, I’ve been meaning to get this
review written and published for basically an eternity. I apologize for taking
so long, but the moral of this particular story is that I really suck at
multitasking.

Dark fantasy is my jam. I read it. I write it. I edit it. I love it. I really do. There is something about a dark world (or “crapsack” as Rob Hayes calls it, which I think might be one of the best words ever so I’m going to plant my flag on it and use it here) that just works for me. Show me all the crapsack parts of your world, and give me one thin vein of hope for the characters to hold onto, and I’ll be there with bells on.

The thing is, I like details. I
really do. I like it when nothing has been overlooked. When all the small parts
work together to create a really intricate, detailed whole, and Lehmann really
notices every little thing, and gives it space in his narrative. This makes his
world feel incredibly well built, but also well researched. The benefit of
this, ultimately, is a world that feels superbly real to readers. I felt personally
invested in it, and that’s what I want as a reader. I don’t want to read about
stuff that happens to other people, I want to feel like this stuff is happening
to me. It’s not a battle far away, but it’s a battle I have personal stakes in
because I feel invested in both the world and the characters. By and large, in
this respect, Lehmann hits all the right notes.

Once upon a time, this world was probably a pretty good place to live, but things have changed. It’s not really bad yet, but it’s moving in that direction. The elves have disappeared, leaving humans to wallow in their own problems. The wizards are extinct, and life sort of moves on. Perhaps one thing I really loved the most about this book was how complacency, or perhaps comfort, is one of the initial driving forces behind whatever happens next. People get comfortable. Things happened so long ago. Life moves on and it’s good enough so why bother? This leads to some degradation of governmental systems, ineffective rulers and the like. And, of course, all of that leads to the central issue of the book.

Of course, things are changing. Peace is becoming a thing of the past. There are threats on the horizon, whispers of new war looming. Invasions. Wheels are turning and various players are moving their pieces around this specific gameboard in anticipation of what is going to happen next. Foundations are being laid. A wizard wakes up after a long, long sleep. Weird things are happening in an elvish city. Kingdoms are glaring at each other across borders. Armies are being prepared. The pot is on the fire, and in this book, the water is starting to boil.

Shattered Dreams follows the path of a few different characters, and with most books that have multiple points of view, you’ll enjoy some more than others due to your personal preference and all that. I felt a lot of kinship for the ex-military hermit, but all of the characters really did shine brightly in their own ways. Like the world building, it’s obvious that Lehmann put a lot of love and eagle-eyed focus on how he developed his characters, who they turned into, and what types of people they were. The push and pull between the world and character development was really intriguing. I loved seeing how people evolved as things happened, and how they reacted to the situations they found themselves in the center of.

The plot doesn’t quit. In fact, I was rather amazed by just how go, go, go it really was. When I started reading fantasy, I got into it because I loved these epic, sprawling series full of conflict and adventure, and at times I felt like I was back in that place, where sprawling adventures were happening with a group of conflicting characters who are all trying to find their way through this crapsack (sorry, I really love that word) world. Don’t get me wrong, Lehmann has written his own beast here, but I loved the way it felt like I was getting back to my roots, to the sort of books that made me love fantasy in the first place.

This book is grimdark. It’s dark. Kinda part of the subgenre, but if you read it thinking, “oh, this is fantastic adventure fantasy” don’t get all offended when things get dark and graphic. That being said, there are threads of hope. There are reasons people do the things they do. There are personal beliefs and ideals central to each character, and I really enjoyed teasing those out. This wasn’t just a bunch of things happening because they needed to happen. Lehmann is laying down the very intricate foundation for a five-book series, and the reasons for various things are beginning to be exposed to the light.

The writing is beautiful. I
love the daggerlike precision Lehmann uses to tell his story. Never a word
wasted. Never a phrase used that doesn’t absolutely have to be there. He is occasionally
poetic, but always powerful, and I just absolutely loved it. There’s something
about the juxtaposition of gorgeous writing and a dark world and fraught plot
that just does it for me in every respect, and Lehmann really nailed it. I
found myself, not a few times, sitting back to just admire his turn of phrase. I
almost loved this book as much for the prose as for the plot.

So.

Shattered
Dreams
lays the foundation for what promises to be one of the most undeservedly,
criminally underrated books in epic and grimdark fantasy. Why more people aren’t
reading this series just baffles me. Everything you could possibly want is
here. Great characters, stunning world building, complex conflict, and
absolutely flawless writing. There is a bit of a cliffhanger at the end, but book
two is already out so don’t let that hold you back.

I’m really glad Lehmann sent me
this book to read, and I’m just sorry I didn’t get around to reviewing it
sooner. As you can tell, I loved everything about it and I think you will too,
which is why I’m rating it five stars and shouting its praises from the
rooftop.

5/5 stars