R.W.W. Greene's Blog, page 2

Advice for the High-School Class of 2024

This morning, while looking for something entirely different in my old “teacher” Google Drive, I found this “Advice for the Graduating” list I used to write on the whiteboard at the end of every school year.  I’d put on a show of it, adding items to the list as they ‘occurred’ to me. Sometimes I’d throw it up there during the last day I had with seniors, sometimes during finals. Not everything made the board every year, and the list evolved with time.

Freshmen will be reporting to college soon, and folks who aren’t going to college are about to face a strange-feeling September, so I figured I’d share the list here.

Condoms are good things. Use them.

Drink a full glass of water after every “adult” beverage.

Male college sophomores think they are hot shit and like to prey on freshmen women.

Bring lots of quarters for laundry and vending machines.  (NOTE: I’ve been informed this is no longer a concern, but a roll of quarters still makes a decent self-defense item.)

You don’t have to go to college right away. It can wait; so can you.

Any romantic entanglement you go to college with is likely to end by October. Be prepared.

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Watch out for each other. It gets scary out there.

Men, don’t rape anyone. If you think you are about to, blow a whistle or something to let people know so they can stop you.

Sexually transmitted diseases that start with “H” last forever. Avoid them.

Learn how to play guitar.

Share your pronouns. It’s not virtue-signaling; it’s letting people know you are safe harbor. 

The Freshman Fifteen is real. So is homesickness.

The best conversations of your lives will happen at 2:30 a.m. in the laundry room.

Avoid debt like the plague. You don’t need a credit card right away.

Maybe take a year off before college and do CityYear.

Photo by Who’s Denilo ? on Unsplash

For the next five years or so, you’re likely to be happiest when you are single. Don’t get tied down.

The world is going to change a lot in the next fifty years, but there’s still going to be a world. Prepare but don’t panic.

Don’t get pregnant.

Your employer probably doesn’t care about you.

Study abroad even if you don’t go to college. Fill your backpack with underwear and socks and just go.

Put down your goddamned smartphones!

Learn the “recovery position” for your own safety and that of your friends. Maybe carry Narcan.

Get some basic First-Aid skills down.

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

Drunk or unconscious does not mean “Yes, I want to have sex!” Seek clear consent.

Allow yourself one skipped class per subject per semester, and stick to that budget.

College should not be transactional. Take interesting classes and talk to interesting people. Broaden your mind.

Practice humility, even if you are hot shit. Maybe especially if you are hot shit.

Communicate with your parents occasionally. They love you. But if they’re terrible, feel free to broom them. 

Leave all the high-school bullshit behind. Some people can’t/don’t, and they will suck eggs for the rest of their lives.

Go outside. See live music. Go to art museums.

Sex is great as long as you’re doing it for the right reasons. There are many right reasons. There are also many wrong reasons. 

Learn how to make things. Banana bread. Furniture. Potholders. Anything. Be a producer, not just a consumer.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Be informed. Read. Listen to podcasts. It’s the only way you can make good decisions. Don’t be an earthworm.

Spend real time with the people you care about. Leave your phones at home and look them in the eyes as you talk. Be real.

Don’t be a dick.

Read fiction.

Choose a hairstyle that is really easy to maintain. You want to be able to get up and go, not spend a lot of time fucking with your hair. Worst case: Get a good hat.

Be prepared. Carry a multitool of some kind and keep a go-bag in your car

There are three types of people you can be, a -1, a 0, or a +1. Aim for being a 0. That means you  are pulling your weight, making your contribution, and not dragging anyone down. Some days you’ll be a -1, but hopefully those will be rare. On really good days, you’ll shine as a +1.

If it can’t be recycled, don’t buy it. In case of emergency, you can boil water in metal bottles. 

Know what you stand for and what you believe, but don’t be afraid to reevaluate. Only idiots never change their minds.

Unlubed, no-spermicide condoms can be used as emergency water bottles.

Write every day, even if it’s just a brain dump before you go to bed. 

Be mindful. Everything you do matters in some way. It affects the Earth, it affects other people (sometimes half a world away), and it affects you. You don’t have to change what you do, necessarily -- although sometimes you should. Just be aware.

Embrace your oddities. They will one day be the things that make you hireable. 

Anyone have other pithy tidbits to offer?

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This Is Also Climate Change

A glut of bush cherries in my urban New Hampshire backyard.

Layout-wise, I don’t like putting a picture between the headline and the body of an article, but I wanted you to see the cherries. Because of this long, hot, rainy spring, we got a lot of them. Raspberries, too. Mulberries. Blackberries. A squash seed that survived a winter in the compost pile has taken over one of the raised beds (the one the rabbit birthed her babies in a month or so before). A plague of grackles (that’s what a group of them are really called) have grumbled into the nearby trees to eat their fill.

A 17-year resident of this house, I’ve never seen grackles here before, and we’ve never been host to this kind of agricultural abundance.

The insane squash posse.

This is also climate change, the same force that’s whipping up superstorms, raising sea levels, killing the moose and fish, and melting glaciers. Like all change, it will hit all of us differently. New Hampshire, Southern and Central Maine, Vermont — within a few years they’ll have the growing season the Mid-Atlantic States have now. I read an article in the Bangor Daily News the other day that the Viles Arboretum in Augusta, Maine are planting tree species native to the Mid-Atlantic States to make up for the projected loss of spruce, fir, cedar, ash, beech, and possibly pine. Researchers at the arboretum say, in fifty years, the Maine woods will look a lot like the forests of New Jersey and Maryland, full of oak and hickory, poplar and sweetgum. This will happen on its own naturally, in response to climate change, but helping it along, with so-called ‘assisted migration,’ could smooth out the messy-middle bit (acres and acres of dead trees and teeny saplings).

In fifty years, the Maine woods will look a lot like the forests of New Jersey and Maryland, full of oak and hickory, poplar and sweetgum.

People are going to come, too, from all over the world, looking for a safe place to live and bring up children. Climate migration will be de-colonization, as folks from all the places the Western World has exploited, stole from, and manipulated over the centuries show up at the door for some of what we built from the spoils. They deserve their piece, their place, as recompense, and because we’re the ones who ruined things with our addiction to petrol, power, and plastic.

Photo by Jas Min on Unsplash

My fear is that we won’t open the door. We have a history of doing that, and a pattern of calling people in need ‘criminals’ and ‘invaders,’ when all they really want is some of what we took from them (resources, stability, etc.).

Assisted migration would help out there, too. Planning ahead and funneling refugees to places that need people and have the capacity to absorb them, cities like Detroit, Mich., Cleveland, Ohio, Utica and Buffalo, NY with declining populations and under-used infrastructure. We have to build new cities, too, in the now chilly places that climate change will make more appealing

This is going to require far-seeing. Fifty years ahead, a century. It’s another thing we’re not good at. But for an example, for now, we can look to the trees.

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While My Keyboard Gently Weeps

I repaired a shed and a door and a stair tread, but mostly the shed.

The shed. Call it Ned.

It came with the century-old house we bought seventeen years ago, and I estimate (based on the type of nails used in its construction) that it might be forty-years old. After the cladding came off that left side, I discovered the sill there was rotten through.

Uncool.

I replaced the sill only to learn no one still made replacements for the tongue-and-groove beveled cladding. I improvised, and I improvised some more on the right side to fill in the rotting frame of a window we no longer needed. (The right sill was fine, BTW.) I repainted and rehung the door, and now I am in the process of repainting the whole thing.

The stair tread was pretty easy, although cleaning the space under the stair unit was not. I needed to replace the tread so I could move our washing machine and dryer (both well broken) out of the basement to make room for the new. Our neighbor’s tenant left their washer and dryer behind, and we’re inheriting them.

I also picked and pitted a lot of cherries. Our bush cherries are bountiful this year. The mulberry tree was particularly fecund, too, and the peaches and apples are looking good.

I nearly forgot! I also fixed up the front porch and started repairing a wooden chair.

Porch Chair.

I forgot to talk about the door, but that’s OK. It’s just a door on the garage. I stripped the peeling paint off it and repainted it.

I cleaned and reorganized the basement. Painted the floor there, too.

All these chores are necessary, but their real value is as a distraction from the first draft of a novel I’ve left cooling/rising/whatever in the drawer. I like to put some time between the first draft and the first revision. It gives me a chance to forget what I wrote and that I wrote it at all. I can approach the thing with new eyes and WTF attitude.

It’s almost time to reopen the file.

Almost.

Time.

NEWS: I’m on Gabriela Houston’s podcast, “The Gabriela Houston Project.” We talked about storytelling and science fiction.

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Generation eXit

Thirty years ago, the undergraduate Class of 1994 -- I’m writing specifically about my class (430-ish strong from Wheaton College in Massachusetts) and generally about all the Classes of ‘94 -- left campus to follow our dreams of career, family, money, and making a difference. Little did we know we’d disappear.

Our graduation speaker, CBS anchor Connie Chung, related a dream in which she shat in a garment bag, and Wheaton president Dale Rogers Marshall, in her speech, quoted a line from a column I’d written recently for the school paper … some trite bushwa about feeling old and tired and wise and stupid. 

The author, at college in 1994.

The Class of ’94 was born in 1971-72, putting it squarely in the middle of Gen X (1965-1980). We were told we’d be the the first generation in history that would be less successful than our parents, that the careers we’d end up in probably didn’t exist yet, and that we’d have to be ready to switch jobs every eighteen months or so. When we graduated, Bill Clinton was in office. He was a breath of fresh air compared to the twelve years of Reagan-and-Bush before him but also several different flavors of terrible.

In the self-reported ‘Class Notes’ section of the Wheaton Quarterly, the mid-to-early Nineties classes have never been well-represented. The same names, the same faces. It stands to reason that some of that absence is due to the hard feelings engendered when Wheaton went co-ed in 1988, but some of it appears to be a vanishing act, willing or otherwise. ‘Famous’ alumni from the time period are thin on the ground. We’ve done OK for ourselves, but we’re not, ya know, leading.

Maybe it’s the Gen-X thing.

“I thought we would have done more by now,” said my spouse, driving home from my 30-year Wheaton reunion last month. 

She’s also a Gen Xer, part of the so-called ‘slacker generation’ with Elon Musk (1971) and Mark Zuckerberg (1984). World leader-wise, we get Justin Trudeau of Canada (1971) and Emmanuel Macron of France (1977). Ten years ago, only one of the world’s most populous countries had a leader seventy or older. Now, eight of them do, and the new president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, is a Boomer. 

The average age of the U.S. Congress has been increasing since 1981, and the 118th Congress is the third oldest Congress since the late 18th century. In the Senate, only 10 of the 100 senators are under 50, with a median age of 65.3 years. The average age in the House is 56.8 years. The youngest Baby Boomers will turn 60 this year, the oldest are almost 80. The oldest Gen Xers will be 60 in 2025; the youngest a sprightly 45.

Beyonce (1981) and Taylor Swift (1989) are both Millennials. Dave Grohl (1969) is Gen X, as is Alanis Morrisette (1974). Both Bjork and Beck are ours, thank goodness.

Gen X literary luminaries include David Eggers (1970), Zadie Smith (1975), Gary Shteyngart (1972), Colson Whitehead (1969), and Celeste Ng (1980). Colleen Hoover (1979) and J.K. Rowling (1965) made it in, too. Chuck Palahniuk (1962) and the Jonathans Letham (1964) and Franzen (1959) are fuckin’ Boomers. So is Brett Easton Ellis.

Where are the rest of us? Where is the Voice of Gen X? Where are its leaders? What is our rallying cry? We had all kinds of dreams and ideas when we graduated … didn’t we? We had rocked, right?

The fact that Gen X is oft forgotten has become a running joke at this point, almost click bait. But maybe we made overlooking us too easy. For years, we went home after school, let ourselves in the house, made a snack, and sat down to watch television. Are we still doing that? Or are we waiting too patiently for it to be our turn, maybe not realizing that the Boomers aren’t going anywhere and that the Millennials are coming up fast?

Does it matter?

Or is it, like, well … whatever?

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The Nothing Between the Stars

Rob Note: I took this one out of storage for a reading recently. It was originally published in Daily Sci-Fi, somewhen in 2017.

The Poet, a mound of lime-green flesh in a tank of 35-degree Celsius ooze, squelched. Its cilia rowed slowly to keep its massive body centered and upright, navigating the torpid jets that kept it oxygenated. The ooze smelled like horse sweat and roses, and the Poet gurgled when it laughed to itself. Its nucleus, the center of all of its art and beauty, drifted like thought inside its dimpled membrane.

Amelia lifted her hand to her mouth and swallowed the pills inside. She coughed politely.

“Salutations,” the Poet said. There was a computer inside the tank and a ring of speakers outside of it. Humans weren’t nearly quick enough to decipher the rapid sphincter contractions the Poet used to communicate with its own kind. It took sophisticated computers to translate the vibrations into Earthspeak. The computer-generated voice was deep and mellifluous. Amelia wondered if the Poet had picked it or if the computer had assigned it at random.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

“Hello,” she said. “Amelia Banks. I’m to serve as your liaison to the Arts Council.”

“Do you write?”

Amelia nodded, not sure if the Poet understood the gesture. “Some,” she said.

The Poet consulted the computer. “On matters dark the universe ponders/ And on the spaces between us all,” it recited. “It’s quite beautiful.”

Amelia’s face heated. “Thank you. Graduate-school drivel. It’s really nothing.”

The Poet gurgled. “Which was your point.”

She laughed. “True.”

“Is that why you were chosen to liaise with me?” the Poet said. “Your writing?”

“I suppose it helped. I’m well-educated and published, but not famous enough to have an ego.” She smiled. “Or not much of one.”

“By that logic,” the Poet said, “I must have an ego the size of a moon.”

“Do you?” she said.

“The most famous writer in two star systems? Of course. But I don’t let it go to my head.” It gurgled loudly.

Amelia smiled. “Had I head, I would not know down from up.”

“Led blindly by the nose, instead of guided by all gravity’s directions.” The Poet finished the stanza. “It was better before it was translated. That collection has not been released in this system yet. How do you know it?”

“Inside information,” she said. “A benefit of being your liaison.”

The Poet hummed to itself and squelched in its tank. “How should we get to know each other, Amelia Banks?”

“We could talk,” she said.

“Most definitely. And you can share more of your work with me.”

She dipped her head. “I’d be honored.”

“The honor would be mine.” It slid to one side of the tank. “Join me. The fluid is warm, and humans find it pleasing. It’s even good for the skin.”

Amelia laughed. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”

Photo by blackieshoot on Unsplash

“Propriety will not be stirred.” A motor hummed, and a seat unfolded from one inside wall of the tank. “Come in. We’ll talk.”

Amelia shed her clothing. Her manicure clicked against the ladder rungs as she climbed the side of the tank. She stuck a toe in the ooze. It was thicker than she’d expected, like baby oil, and nearly blood warm. The Poet drifted closer to Amelia’s side of the tank. “Fear not, dear friend, but freely live your days,” it said.

Amelia put both feet in the tank and sat on the edge. “Robert Louis Stevenson. I doubt he would have known what to do in my place.”

“The human race has advanced much since then. Sailboats to fusion ships. Exploitative colonialism to partnerships across the void.” The Poet shifted, and the surface of the ooze rippled, sending a fresh wave of pheromones into Amelia’s face. “Come now. One small step --.”

She slid the rest of the way into the tank and hooked her feet under the seat’s supports to hold herself in place. Chemicals in the brew began to work on her, creating feelings of relaxation and euphoria.

“Let yourself float,” the Poet said.

“My hair --.”

“You’ll find it washes out easily enough.”

Amelia unhooked her feet and stretched out in the tank. The Poet floated nearby. “Have you ever been off planet?” it said.

“Off Earth? No. My brother went, but he’s home now.”

“Is he a writer, too?”

“Was. There was an accident.”

“I listen to the water on nights I drink away,” the Poet said. “And the sadness becomes so great I hear it in my clock.”

“Bukowski knew a bit about grief, I think,” Amelia said. “It’s worse, maybe, that my brother isn’t all the way dead. My mother can’t bear to pull the plug. He’s a vegetable.”

The Poet slid closer. Amelia felt its cilia like a breeze on her arm. “Allow me to recite something in my own language,” it said.

“I won’t understand it,” she said.

“Not the words.” The Poet moved closer. “But you will know the feelings behind it. I call it ‘Ode to Sadness’.” The Poet ordered the computer to discontinue its translation and began to recite, sphincters all over its body opening and closing rapidly, setting up patterns of soft force in the ooze.

The vibration moved over Amelia. It touched her everywhere, relaxing tense muscles, massaging her scalp, warming and loosening her thighs. The next stanza buzzed even deeper inside, moving Amelia to tears and joy, arousing her. The Poet secreted hormones into the ooze to enhance the bond.

Amelia moaned. The Poet covered her, tasting her with a thousand eager tongues, pushing her under the surface of the ooze. It was careful to leave her face above the surface. It had made mistakes in the past. Humans were fragile creatures.

The third stanza put her over the edge into ecstasy. Amelia moaned and wrapped her arms around the Poet. The first orgasm took her, and she dug her artificially sharp fingernails into the Poet’s tough outer membrane, tearing it open. The Poet exploded, its last words rumbling into the mix of ooze and cytosol with orgasm number two.

Amelia pulled herself onto the edge of the tank. There hadn’t been any cameras when her brother had climbed into the Poet’s tank years before, and there likely wouldn’t be any now. She wrung the scented ooze from her hair. The hormone blockers she’d taken had kept her from the worst of the Poet’s powers; her need for it would be little more than a pang compared to the raw need suffered by its other conquests.

“Into the dark we go,” she recited. “Alone together. Together alone.”

Unpublished, unheralded, the rest of its span lost in her brother’s damaged brain, the verse faded into the nothing between the stars.

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A Carnivore Looks at Life at 50

My spouse and I went down to one car during the pandemic -- we both work at home now, and of late I’ve been experimenting with other ways to walk more softly upon the Earth. My carbon-and-etcetera footprint has never been huge, but I’ve done my share of damage over the past (Holy Hell!) half century.

I’m mostly vegetarian these days, in part for the planet and in part because I want to stop eating things that exhibit play behavior. My first sighting of vegetarianism came due to a James Blish novelization of the Star Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays.” In the episode, Spock and McCoy are trapped five-thousand years in the past, and Spock begins to revert to the ways of his violent, meat-eating ancestors (the idea being that the modern Vulcan has evolved beyond the point of needing to take animal life to survive). Later, in the late 1980s in Maine, I dated a vegetarian who was pretty much limited, when we went out, to Wendy’s baked potatoes and french fries. Now, that I’m learning to cook vegetarian, I’m a much better boyfriend.

Spock readies to lick bacon grease off Mariette Hartley’s lips.

I’ve always been a thrift-store guy, but now I’m trying to cut leather out of my wardrobe. As my leather goods wear out, I replace them with something that never had a pulse. I started with my watchbands, brown and black. This got complicated because I’m trying not to do synthetics, either, so I ended up with two identical hemp watchbands that suggest I’m much more fond of reggae than I really am. Still, problem solved. 

I loved these things.

The boots went about six months ago, the beautiful brown leather boots I bought myself as an early retirement present in 2017, the only shoes I’ve owned that caused random strangers to compliment my taste. Nothing leather-esque seems as good as the real thing, so I switched to fabric. I’m not sold on them yet. They’ve not proven how well they’ll hold up. The black boots, ten-year-old Docs, I mostly use for shoveling snow.

My brown leather belt went last month. It’s probably twenty years old and served well until the very end. I’m probably going to go hemp again, although I haven’t bitten the bullet. As long as I wear the black canvas boots when I leave the house, I can continue to wear the one leather belt -- also about twenty years old -- I have left.

I am under no illusions that I’m saving the planet or sparing hundreds of animals from the slaughterhouse. The world doesn’t work that way. And, yes, I know if the situation were reversed, those belt-and-boot-making cows would be happy to eat me and turn my hide into fashion, but I have thumbs and money enough for “chicken nuggets” made from pea protein and they do not. 

And if I can walk a little lighter and have the capacity to demonstrate the results of all those years of evolution and human civilization, shouldn’t I? Yeah, probably.

NEWS: My thirtieth college reunion is coming up, and number thirty-five for high school. That’s crazy. My brother and his very cool spouse just had a baby, so welcome to the family Jasper. Pride Month is nigh, and I’ll be appearing virtually at UK’s Cymera Festival June 2. Meanwhile, my agent Sara Megibow is shopping a new book around, I’ve another one in the bag, and yet another on my plate. 

Until next time, friends, walk easy. -Rob

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'Cowboy Carter' and Me

This is a little experiment in format. If y’all like it, maybe there will be more. -rob

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Wisdom from Ursula K. Le Guin

In this age of massive digital-storage spaces, I am a bit of a pack rat, and I ran across this bit of Ursula wisdom while organizing some files today. I think it holds true:

"I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom." —- Ursula K. Le Guin, while accepting her Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, at the 2014 National Book Awards.

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Twenty-Five Sci-Fi E-Books for $15!

You heard it here, friends: sci-fi-loving readers of e-books can pick up my second novel, Twenty-Five to Life, as part of a Cyberpunk Bundle offered by the fine folks at Fanatical. The price range runs five books for $5, ten for $8, or 25 books for $15. It’s a sweet deal with a lot of great titles involved.

Beyond my own offering, I’ve read quite a few of these. Might I suggest HellSans by Ever Dundas, The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier, World Running Down by Al Hess, Moths by Jane Hennigan, The Subjugate by Amanda Bridgeman…

Hell, at these prices, just get them all. Fill your e-reader for the whole summer and enjoy.

In other news, I’ve a short story coming out in Metaphorosis Friday, April 5th. It’s the first short I’ve had out in a while, and I’m grateful to Metaphorosis for picking it up. The story was inspired by a box of warped and mildewed record albums.

In other-other news, it looks like our honeybees survived the winter! It’s volunteer hive, meaning the ladies just showed up from somewhere and took over an empty hive, and I am happy they chose to stick around. We supplemented their honey stores with sugar and crossed out fingers.

That’s it, chums. Until next time. -rob

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How to Write a Book Review

      Friends, a book review has three parts, made up of at least three paragraphs. Part one is the summary of content, part two is the critical assessment, and part three is the answer to the Big Question.

     The summary of content is generally one to three paragraphs long. In this part of the review, you tell the reader what you are reviewing, who made it (including some other things they may have made), what genre and subgenres the thing represents and what the thing is generally about. Important: This is not a summary. You are writing a review to let people know whether or not they should try it, not to tell them the ending. Don’t be a spoiler!

“Should your reader seek out the thing you are reviewing, and try it herself? Why or why not?”

     The critical assessment can be one to three paragraphs. In here you get down to brass tacks: What you liked about the thing and what didn’t work for you. Maybe the plot was great but the characters seemed fake. Maybe there was too much garlic or not enough banjo. Maybe the dialog was fast and realistic, but the costuming was weak. Important: It’s not enough to say that you liked or did not like something; you have to say why.

 Your review will end with the answer to the Big Question, which usually takes the form of a short paragraph. The Big Question is: “Should your reader seek out the thing you are reviewing, and try it herself? Why or why not?”

Sample Book Review

A nearly Perfect Circle

Touted as a cross between Stephen King and playwright Henrik Ibsen, writer Sean Stewart is a rare find — an author who keeps you in the dark. Stewart’s tale, Perfect Circle, is a ghost story of sorts. Protagonist William “Dead” Kennedy was born with the ability to see ghosts and it hasn’t helped him out much.

Dead Kennedy (DK) is a slacker, recently fired from a pet store job because he ate cat food in front of a customer to prove a point. It’s only the latest in a series of dead-end, low-skill jobs he has held since his wife left him for a Marine 12 years ago. His short marriage resulted in a daughter, who DK gets to see about once a month. DK doesn’t drive a car — in the dark he can’t always tell the dead from the living, a fact that has resulted in a couple of accidents — and his soon-to-be teenage daughter is losing her interest in the monthly trips, via bus, with her wastrel father.

Enter a distant cousin with a ghost problem; he claims he’s being haunted by the spirit of a girl he ran down with his car. DK also is haunted, by the love he still has for his ex-wife, his failures as a father, by certain tracks on his favorite CDs and, eventually, by a ghost who vows to kill everyone DK loves.

Stewart’s writing is occasionally beautiful; some of his descriptions of happenings and scenes — and DK’s inner monologue — stay with you solely for the grace of the writing. His character development skills are also strong: DK is a wreck but you can’t help but liking the guy. (He also utilizes one of the best unarmed combat strategies I’ve ever read.) The book’s ending is a little rushed, however, with a tipping point that smacks more of “god in the machine” than logical plot and character progression.

I’m new to Stewart’s writing and was happy to find out that he wrote seven novels prior to Perfect Circle. Now, while waiting for his next book, I can busy myself with his earlier efforts. You should check him out, too.

This sample is perhaps longer than it needs to be. A paragraph truly needs not be more than a single sentence. That’s, like, three good sentences per review!

Feel free to practice your new skills on any or all of my books. The Amazon algorithm likes that kind of thing, and a review helps me out by letting other readers know about them. You can post reviews at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, GoodReads, Edelweiss, or Your Local Library’s Online Book Catalog. Try it out on all the books you enjoy!

Many thanks and much love. -rob

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