AI Avatars

I recently discovered a long-imagined science fiction trope coming true -- interactive computer avatars of real people. While StoryFile may not be the only company offering this service, it happens to be the one I noticed in the news:

StoryFile

Their slogan: "Bringing History to Life Through Interactive Conversations." As the tagline on the main page explains it, the technology "transforms interviews into AI-powered, life-size conversations for museums and institutions."

The interview consists of a "cinematic, professionally filmed session capturing hundreds of thoughtful responses." In the second step, "StoryFile intelligently links each answer to natural conversational pathways." Users of the finished product "ask questions and receive instant, authentic video responses" in "real-time interaction." Thus the experiences of survivors from World War II, the Holocaust, etc. are preserved and made publicly available.

This process strikes me as legitimate and useful for museums and other repositories of historical resources. The computerized "conversations" are educational and don't claim to be anything they aren't. But what about StoryFile's "Legacies" program? You can arrange to have yourself interviewed at length to create a computerized, interactive avatar, thus enabling your heirs to access your memories after your death. How would this program essentially differ from, for instance, a tape recording or a final video message? In my opinion, the interactive component makes a qualitative difference. The grieving survivors might feel as if they're talking to the actual person.

Might there be a danger of some users being unable to accept the deaths of loved ones because in a sense they can still interact with them? Could mourners become paralyzed by this illusion, trapped in one stage of grief and unwilling or unable to move on?

The next phase of development for this technology, a common SF trope but currently impossible in the real world, would be to upload the actual consciousness of the deceased into a mainframe or, nowadays I suppose, into the Cloud. Would this process constitute survival after death or merely an electronic replica -- or a sort of ghost?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Forward: Stories of Tomorrow Collection (Various Authors) by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Forward: Stories of Tomorrow Collection

(Various Authors)

by Karen S. Wiesner

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WK7PVFT/?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=cct_cg_kcTheShi_32a1&pf_rd_p=7d685edb-e3f0-465e-a053-3a7ebbe60369&pf_rd_r=N5FMXCSF5RP7EAVJJ6DK 

Take a leap… 

For some, it's the end of the world. For others, it's just the beginning. Look forward with today's most visionary writers. 

Last month, I reviewed a bunch of short stories published by Amazon Originals in a collection (that one was called The Far Reaches with science fiction tales as its unifying theme). In these collections, none of the stories are actually connected in any other way but its particular theme. In other words, they can be read separately and in any order. You can purchase them separately, but there's a discount for getting the entire collection at once. Amazon Prime members can get them free, I guess. I paid $10.46 for Forward, including tax. They're only available as ebooks and audiobooks, not print. I was looking for fast, solid reads. I'm able to read each of them in a couple hours and they're fairly intriguing, though few of them in this one appealed to me. While in the past I made it a policy not to review stories I don't enjoy, I did for these because most people will purchase this collection as a whole, so I'm giving my opinion on all the entries, whether or not I liked them. 

Beware potential spoilers!

 

"Ark" by Veronica Roth (45 pages/63-minute read) 

Summary: Earth is on a countdown to total destruction with an asteroid on a collision course, and those still living on Earth intend to escape into space on the "ark" they designed. First, though, in the time remaining to them, they prepare as much as they can to preserve of humanity to take with them. Samantha's job is to catalog plant samples. But she has a secret--she's preparing to stay behind and watch the world end. 

Review: If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Earth would be destroyed, would you take a chance on an unseen future journeying the unknown and unknowable cosmos, never knowing if another home would be found, or would you stay behind with front-row seating to the event to top all events--aware you wouldn't survive it? Home is home, even if that home is about to be decimated. This story explores this situation to a disturbing degree. It's impossible not to wonder what you yourself would do in such a situation. Weirdly, the tale told here almost doesn't matter in the light of such a heavy question. Fittingly, there is no action in the particular telling of Samantha's last days. We see nothing of the building of the ark, the painful dread of those running around getting ready for departure, nor of the catastrophe itself. Instead, we're given a place to stand on the threshold of a mirror image: That of observing the frailty of living things against a force beyond their control as well as observing the strongest of all things living--namely, the human spirit under pressure. While the way this story was told was apropos, it wasn't particularly exciting to read. 

 

"Summer Frost" by Blake Crouch (85 pages/119-minute read) 

Summary: Riley, a developer, finds that a character designed for an upcoming video game is acting strangely "real". (Note: Riley is never identified within the story itself as male or female, and I think that's deliberate and brilliant because it prevents assumptions and too-quick judgments about what's to come.) The AI is trying to escape the boundaries of the game it's been created for. After Riley separates the AI from the game, the sentient consciousness continues to veer wildly off-course and far exceed its original programming. Riley's connection to this creation grows into an emotional hold that prompts the possibility of bringing the AI into the real world. But what if this radically new lifeform has plans of its own? 

Review: Blake Crouch was actually the author who "curated" this particular collection, and this story he's contributed is the only real contender for the best of the bunch (in my opinion). From the start, there's a vague, unsettled atmosphere that continues to grow where the AI is concerned. Riley's obsession bordering on fanatical love seems to parallel the lack of experience by everyone in the company involved with such an unprecedented event. The title is yet another contradiction explored in this story. In "Summer Frost", we're left to wonder: What defines reality or is such a thing merely an illusion or fabrication? What is real emotion versus simulated response? What is freedom and choice while contained in a box? What does it mean to be human in a world run by technology? Is control ever truly possible or just another illusion we construct to present the façade of boundaries for our creativity? What does it mean to be conscious and sentient? In the grip of overambitious curiosity, can any be trusted? When the created transcends what the creator intended, should the created be allowed autonomy? Who, if anyone, should be allowed to destroy what's created? Okay, okay, enough with the slightly paranoid questions, but this timely, disturbing story provoked an endless slew of them. Ultimately the lesson here is that humans tend to follow blindly what we don't really know because we have to know where it leads while we banish that which we know all too well and therefore it holds no lasting intrigue for us. Very worth every minute I spent reading. 

 

"Emergency Skin" by N. K. Jemisin (38 pages/53-minute read) 

Summary: In time past, when the Earth was climate-ravaged to the point of presumed destruction, a select group of humans that believed they were more worthy of all the others being left behind fled the planet, leaving it and everyone there to fate. Centuries later, those narcissists need human skill cells to replenish their own. One man is sent back to gain what they lack. What they find isn't a decimated planet and barely human ghouls or mutants. Humans have again flourished, and the planet sustains them. But what kind of a greeting should be given selfish traitors whose agenda is again nothing more than egocentric? 

Review: I could easily imagine the entitled/privileged (let's face it, probably the very ones who caused most of the destruction in the first place) turning tail and abandoning the less fortunate to their fate on a dying world. I could also very easily imagine that same group returning when what they've discovered on a new world isn't enough for them and they're demanding that the forsaken hand over whatever they need. "Emergency Skin" is told from the point of view of an egomaniacal representative of the original defectors (whether an AI or ruling human or committee these so-called superior beings, I'm not sure) so the slant is always about what benefits them, not the valiant survivors on the planet nor the human being the selfish send to do dirty deeds. That made the perspective intriguing, though it wasn't really the story I wanted. I really would have liked to witness it from the perspective of the Earth survivors and/or the being sent on this mission. Nothing is as expected in this little story that brutally exposes the sins of the elite. Whether or not I actually enjoyed the story--well, that's up for debate. 

 

"You Have Arrived at Your Destination" by Amor Towles (54 pages/75-minute read) 

Summary: Sam and his wife decide to try Vitek, a fertility lab, when they can't get pregnant. But the scenarios devised by the company on the basis of Sam and his wife's own genetics are anything but comforting. 

Review: In this futuristic tale, a couple trying to have a baby have reached the desperation stage that comes when all other options have been undertaken without the desired result. Instead of being handed the warm fuzzies about their child's future, they're shown almost too realistic life vignettes of their son--and then asked to choose one of them so the scientists can tweak the engineering in their unborn child's growth and bring that future projection about. None of the options shown to Sam like condensed movies are ideal. He begins to suspect Vitek has an agenda. In Sam's place, I would have had the same reaction. In one sense, knowing too much about the future can never really be good for anyone, but in another, Sam's Ping-Pong-ball-in-a-glass-cage reaction is the very thing that made him wonder whether a cold, corporate machine actually had their best interests at heart. I'm not sure if I loved or even liked this story, but it did give me disturbed pause. Beyond that, I left it feeling like I just didn't understand--as if there wasn't enough information given to trust comprehend what happened in the end. So…yeah, unsatifying because I'm not certain if I'm at fault or the author is for not being clearer. I'll just cap with: There is something to chew on here, but what it actually is might be mystery meat. Take what you will from this one. 

 

"The Last Conversation" by Paul Tremblay (67 pages/94-minute read) 

Summary: This story takes a lot of piecing together to form. Readers are put in the mind of a being that's unfamiliar with everything inside and outside him or her. Apparently "they" have been injured in some way and they're slowly waking up and becoming conscious and functional again. Their only contact is the voice of a caretaker who may or may not be trying to help them recover. This person, Annie, is somehow connected to them but won't answer their questions, and even when they're let out of the room that feels like a prison, the truth of their situation remains out of reach. Can Annie be trusted? 

Review: I like the tagline in this story's blurb: What's more frightening: Not knowing who you are? Or finding out? The problem I had with "The Last Conversation" is that I felt like the entire 67 pages could have been condensed in a few paragraphs--the fine-tuned details didn't seem all that necessary while I was reading them. I only learned in the last 5-10 pages why it was crucial to tell the story in this vague way. Did it make the story any more enjoyable? Or less so? I'm not sure, even now that I've finished reading it. As I said with the last review above, I'm left with a disquieted foreboding. If that was the intent of the story, then it succeeded. But the end result wasn't really up my alley. 

"Randomize" by Andy Weir (32 pages/44-minute read) 

Summary: An IT genius convinces the rich yet still money-hungry, casino boss to upgrade security on its random-number generator with a quantum computer system. Supposedly foolproof. Yeah, not so much. 

Review: This very short story starts in the point of view of the casino boss, shifts to the IT genius, then drops into yet another head--that of the brilliant criminal--for the rest of the tale. The only part I found interesting was that of the IT genius (honestly, the only good guy in this depressing story). Basically, this is a story about a greedy corporation head given the choice of colluding with greedy criminals. That's it. Can you guess what happened? It won't take a high IQ at all. If that appeals to you. It didn't me. While it's scary to actually get a layman's rundown about how crooks are doing their dirty deeds, there was little redeemable about this run-of-the-mill offering. Don't expect an original situation let alone a happy ending for anyone but the bad guys. As usual. Sigh. I've loved all Weir's novels, and I guess I'll stick to those in the future. 

~*~

Sometimes an active reader such as myself needs something short that doesn't require a huge commitment. Initially, I believed these collections of themed stories were worth the cheap price paid considering the… if not full-on enjoyment than…diversion derived from them. Unfortunately, I only like one of the selections in the Forward collection. I had already scoped out the next one with horror stories, but my mixed but leaning toward disappointed reaction to this one is telling me to take a break and think about whether I want to purchase another in the future. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

A House with Good Bones

This novel by T. Kingfisher, a Southern Gothic incongruously set in a suburban tract house, features a theme of return and/or reunion to find unsettling or outright shocking changes, similarly to THE TWISTED ONES and WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Also, A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES shares with THE TWISTED ONES the motif of a malignant grandmother. “There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.” How could any fan of dark fantasy resist an opening line such as that? Narrator Samantha (Sam) receives a message from her brother that their mother seems “off.” Since Sam has been temporarily furloughed from her job as an archaeoentomologist (a scientist who studies insects in archeological digs), she travels to North Carolina to check out the situation. Her mother owns the house where she and her two children spent an impoverished period during Sam’s childhood, living with the late grandmother, Gran Mae. Upon arrival, Sam finds the usual cheerfully eclectic, cluttered décor replaced by a “sterile” ambience more reminiscent of her grandmother’s taste. The walls have even been repainted off-white. Her mother acts nervous, as if she feels watched or overheard.

Sam sees the environment in terms of ecology in general and, of course, arthropods in particular. In the house’s monoculture rose garden, she immediately notices the absence of insects aside from ladybugs. This phenomenon and the flock of vultures roosting in a neighbor’s tree, however, constitute the least of the strangeness. For instance, a swarm of ladybugs invades Sam’s bedroom at night. We gradually learn about her childhood and her grandmother’s peculiarities, including strictness verging on abuse, while Sam unearths buried family secrets -- literally, in one case. It takes a while to reassure herself that her mother isn’t sinking into senility, but the alternative is almost worse. Sam discovers her great-grandfather, Gran Mae’s father, practiced dark magic. No wonder Gran Mae was obsessed with “nice and normal.” Furthermore, the “underground children” she warned her grandchildren about turn out to be real, not imaginary boogeymen. And the rose bushes are sentient.

For me the climax, when the house collapses into a sinkhole, besieged by the underground children, required some suspension of disbelief, but I enjoyed it anyway. Gran Mae’s sort-of return, on the other hand, struck me as believably, deeply disturbing. Sam’s witty narrative voice, the vulture lady and local benevolent “witch” Gail, and the friendly gardener Phil, who grounds the whole story in the mundane milieu of a “cookie-cutter” housing development, irresistibly draw the reader into the experience. Kingfisher has an enviable talent, through Sam’s chatty yet sometimes sardonic tone, to feed backstory to the reader with never a sense of info-dumping. Amid the mainly happy ending, Sam’s unease with the idea that she might have inherited her grandmother’s magic causes the supernatural danger to linger in the reader’s mind after the final page. In Kingfisher’s afterword, she mentions her own battles with roses and the fact that this is her second novel to portray rose bushes as evil, the first being her “Beauty and the Beast” retelling, BRYONY AND ROSES. The section headings (labeled “First Day,” “Second Day,” etc.) enhance the theme with a brief description of a different rose variety for each one. Between the insects and the roses, this novel, like many of Kingfisher's works, displays her characteristic fondness for odd, fascinating scientific facts.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Noise Bad

"Bad noise" does not mean the same as "Noise Bad". The former leaves room for the concept of good noise, or beautiful noise (which ought to be an oxymoron). "Noise bad" implies that all noise is bad. Since the "is" is missing, I should prefer "Noise, bad"... but I seem to be a language dinosaur.

"Noise bad" follows the word order of the simple slogan "two legs bad" used by the ruling pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm... until it became "two legs better" once the pigs learned how to walk on two legs.

For an interesting analysis of the use and effect of "four legs good, two legs bad" and the seven commandments on Animal Farm, I recommend Dr, Oliver Tearle's "Dispatches From The Secret Library".

https://interestingliterature.com/2021/02/orwell-four-legs-good-two-legs-bad-meaning-analysis/

Noise is bad, if one accepts that "Noise is defined as an unwanted sound or combination of sounds that has adverse effects on health."

For more on Noise and the Quality of Life see Michael D. Seidman and Robert T. Standring's article in the National Library of Medicine.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2996188/

Florence Nightingale wrote that patients engulfed by noise could not heal from their injuries. From personal experience, I tend to agree with her. 

Noise can cause dementia, strokes, heart problems, diabetes, anxiety, sexual dysfunction and more. The prevalence of noise might explain low birth rates, low IQs, lesser birth weight of babies, the prevalence of senility, the apparent (if one can trust advertisements, which is by no means a foregone conclusion) epidemic of men who need boner boosters.

Apparently, it is not crazy to think that one's heart rate blips, and one's anger levels rise when stuck in traffic and subjected to another driver's bass notes. Custom car enthusiasts seem to think that really loud sound systems are a status symbol, with no consideration for other drivers on the road, and no idea what damage they might be doing to their own minds and bodies.

Another article on the invisible damage to the body and mind can be found here:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/the-invisible-damage-of-noise-on-the-body-5974086?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=copy

One might conclude that noise is violence, and noise-making is an equivalent of attacking a person with a baseball bat to the head.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon

by Karen S. Wiesner 

T. Kingfisher (the pen name of Ursula Vernon) is a versatile author, illustrator, and artist. She has a page on her Red Wombat website labeled Short Stories that includes links to her short stories and articles, some of which are included in a variety of different anthologies. From this page, you can read them free on her website and/or from online magazines. 

https://redwombatstudio.com/short-stories/

Nearly all of these freebies have won awards, too. The genres run the gamut. There's a little of everything, as you'll soon see in the reviews below. I went into this endeavor not entirely sure what I was getting into, but I was pleasantly surprised for the most part with the majority of these selections that are worth seeking out. As they'll cost you nothing, you have everything to gain, nothing to lose! 

Beware: May contain unintended spoilers! 

"Jackalope Wives" and "The Tomato Thief" by Ursula Vernon: Although these two, connected stories are contained in T. Kingfisher's collection Jackalope Wives and Other Stories, they were written under the author's real name. Go figure. The duo features Grandma Harken, a clever old woman who is far more than who…and what… she seems. She lives in a house with its back to the desert, and she understands this harsh environment much better than most. Her biting humor and compelling way of looking at the world around her make both stories irresistible.

In "Jackalope Wives", Grandma Harken's daughter Eve has a very foolish son who's, unfortunately, much beloved by the females. However, he's only attracted to a jackalope wife. This shy being has the capability of removing her skin to dance under moonbeams. The boy does something stupid to obtain one, and Grandma Harken has to set things right. This very unusual folktale has an interesting message: "You get over what you can't have faster than you get over what you could. And we shouldn't always get what we think we want." Strange things happen in the desert, indeed!

In "The Tomato Thief", Grandma Harken is determined to find out who's daring to steal her famous, homegrown tomatoes. The answer surprises her and forces her to act. If she doesn't, those living in the desert will be in grave danger. It's very hard not to fall in love with a story with lines like these two gems: "Sometimes the best cure for life was a ripe tomato" and "…there was no telling how low a body would sink once they'd started down the road of tomato theft."

I loved both of these stories. They were my favorites of all included on this webpage.  I'm left wanting more of Grandma Harken and her hilarious wisdom. 

"Metal Like Blood in the Dark" by T. Kingfisher: Artificial intelligence identifying as a brother and sister lose their creator and have to fend for themselves in a universe their Father has warned won't be kind to them. Soon, Brother and Sister are discovered by an alien creature that kidnaps and forces them to work for him.

What an unexpectedly moving tale. I've never read anything quite like this tale that postulates the idea that lying is something like an error code in formatting and computer processing. "Lying was to be deliberately in error, and to express that error in others. Error without correction. Error entered into by choice." Further: "What did a lie do, once you let it loose? Did it sit still…or did it go spinning off into a chain reaction…" In a computer, processes and subprocesses might learn to "lie", which would wreak falsehoods and cause them to report back that something was fixed when it was still broken and vice versa. More than this, once you lie, you realize others could lie as well. With this knowledge, could a person or even a computer go back to how they were before learning the truth? In this story, Sister learns that knowing others lie could very well be the only way to keep from falling into error. But, oh to be ignorant of such darkness! 

"The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society" by T. Kingfisher: Be prepared for raucous hilarity! Fairy man, bull selkie, and horse fae--three paranormal paramours get their comeuppance in a human woman with a taste for exotic lovers. While each has treated human females badly, they've never been on the other end of such ruthless seduction. They take to meeting regularly around a campfire to discuss the state of lingering wounds to their pride. This was quite a twist on Casanova stories. I'll be darned if I didn't burst out laughing nearly every sentence while reading this brief but very vivid sojourn into unexpected territory. Talk about perspective. 

"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon: This story clearly came to T. Kingfisher as a precursor (or a lingering leftover) of the days when she was writing Swordheart (do a search for my recent review of it on this blog). A farmer boy gets a magic sword from his dying grandmother. She instructs him to call forth the magic--three warrior spirits that are bound inside the sword--who will teach him. But his grandmother is wrong about who will be teaching whom. Sometimes the learned ancient can discover something new from the young and simple. I enjoyed the twist in this story. 

"Elegant and Fine": This one wasn't ascribed to either T. Kingfisher or Ursula Vernon. It was probably the only one I didn't love. The author puts Susan from C. S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles as the main character and has her pining for a Dwarf lover she never knew the name of when she has to return to the real world--and her life as a child. I don't like it when a writer takes someone else's work and does things with it that the original author probably would never have wanted. I wish this story had cast a wholly unique character from the author's own imagination into the thought-provoking scenario she presented here. Sigh. But enough said about that.

"Godmother": Another entry not ascribed to either author name. According to the author, it was the catalyst for T. Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone (which I've already reviewed on this blog). There's something poetic about this flash-fiction that evoked lovely images cast in shadows and equal amounts of confusion for me. 

"Bluebeard's Wife" also doesn't have an author listed but it was included in the T. Kingfisher Toad Words and Other Stories collection. Pirate Bluebeard's notorious, bloodthirsty reputation with women doesn't faze Althea. She believes the best of her new husband and no one can speak a bad word about him in her presence. I won't ruin it completely, beyond saying, sometimes rumors have a basis in truth. I enjoyed the story written very vividly in Althea's point of view--with her rose-colored glasses on…until they're rudely knocked clean off her face. 

"Origin Story" by T. Kingfisher: This story was also included in the Jackalope Wives and Other Stories collection. In this disturbing tale, a fairy works in a charnel house, taking apart dead beasts and creating something new. Not surprisingly, the humans find her creepy. You'll need a strong stomach and solid backbone to get through this one. I would be surprised if you don't get a chill, as I did, at the end of the story. 

"History, Discovery, and the Quiet Heroics of Gardening" by Ursula Vernon: Those who have read a lot of this author's stories know she's an avid gardener and her experiences have made into to many, many of her fiction projects. I'm a new convert to gardening, so I was fascinated. Whether or not you have any personal interest in gardening, this essay will teach you something new. I've never thought about how heirloom vegetables may have come back from the edge of extinction because of the aggressive actions of a few fearless and utterly tenacious gardeners. Kingfisher says that this has influenced her writing, as she's found herself writing about unlikely heroes intent on saving one small but important thing. 

~*~

There's really no way to go wrong here. If you haven't previously read any of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's work, most everything included on this page would be a great introduction that won't cost you a penny. If you're a fan, you might find something here you haven't read before. In any case, I think you'll want to read more. This prolific author and extremely talented illustrator are well worth your time and money--I fully expect, as I have, you'll be happily willing to pay to read much more of her fine work. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Hollow Places

Although I didn’t find this novel as mind-blowing as Kingfisher’s THE TWISTED ONES, it’s a captivating tale I've reread more than once. Like THE TWISTED ONES, it derives from a classic horror story, giving the source material Kingfisher's unique spin. THE HOLLOW PLACES combines a peculiar house with one of my favorite motifs, portal fantasy. Like the earlier novel, this one features a female first-person narrator with an irresistibly witty voice. But unlike the heroine of THE TWISTED ONES, who reluctantly returns to her late grandmother’s grim house to clear out mounds of hoarded junk, newly divorced Kara finds a welcome refuge in her eccentric uncle’s Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, where she often hung out while growing up. Although other people, including her ex-husband, might consider the bizarre collection creepy, she thinks of the displays, artifacts, and stuffed animals as old friends. She gladly accepts an invitation to live at the museum, in a back bedroom adorned by her favorite taxidermy piece, an elk’s head she named “Prince” in childhood. In return, she waits on tourists and begins the monumental project of creating a digital catalog of the collection.

Soon after the arrival of a box of miscellany that includes a “corpse-otter” carving from the Danube, her uncle is hospitalized, leaving Kara in charge on her own. Almost immediately, she discovers a hole in a wall, which turns out to be much more than it initially appears. At first assuming a visitor did the damage and left without mentioning it, Kara enlists Simon, who works at the coffee shop next door, to help with the repair. Simon is one of Kingfisher's typical quirky secondary characters, a middle-aged, gay man who proves to be a brave and loyal friend, sticking to Kara throughout the harrowing adventure that follows. Probing behind the wall, they find more space than the building could reasonably hold. They soon run out of plausible explanations for the anomaly and come upon a mysterious door.

It leads to a realm of water and fog, dotted with small islands overgrown by willow trees. Each one, it turns out, probably harbors a portal to a different realm, like the Wood Between the Worlds in C. S. Lewis’s THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW. The comparison doesn’t escape Kara, who eventually begins to think of the place as an anti-Narnia. Though eerie and desolate, the landscape doesn’t seem outright scary at first. Exploring it, however, Kara and Simon stumble upon horrors both human and inhuman. Graffiti that warn “They can hear you thinking” and “Pray They are hungry” are just the beginning. An encounter with a trapped explorer from another world is particularly gruesome. They manage to escape and get home, just barely, but Kara soon learns that walling up the hole doesn’t end the danger. The final revelation of what caused the crack between dimensions came as a surprise to me, poignant as well as terrifying, and it pulls together all the baffling elements of the story. My first thought when Kara and Simon entered the fog-shrouded island landscape was of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Sure enough, the concluding Author’s Note reveals that she was inspired by Blackwood’s classic story. This novel is a can’t-miss read for fans of numinous horror with a subtly Lovecraftian feel.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Hecky Thump

I am seventy two. I have been typing accurately for fifty three years. Pittman trained, if that still means anything to anyone.

Suddenly, I type "Board" and it becomes "Bard" without any notice to me that a substitution has been made. I type "repair" and it becomes "rear".

Am I obsessed with Shakespeare's bottom? No. It has never crossed my mind. I can only conclude that some aspects of Artificial Intelligence are not ready for prime time.

I am also a Cantabrigiensis major in studies of the so-called (or formerly called)  "modern depressives", which includes almost all of the works of George Orwell, and therefore, I am inclined to suppose that the hijacking of the written word is not an accident.

Some online news sites are plagued by word glitches, where commenters of a certain political bent appear to be routinely sabotaged (by A.I.). 

Delightfully, there is a meme: "Autocorrect is my worst enema."

Meanwhile, a political beggar wrote this to me: "I only trust you with this." Ponder word order. The quoted sentence seems to imply that he would not trust me with anything else. Alternatives would be, "I trust you only with this", which is worse but more honest, or "I trust only you with this", which is an obvious fib given that it was a mass blast email.

Isn't parsing fun?

Word order matters, as does punctuation and word choice. A.I. does not replace a good education, partly because AI is only as good as the education of the persons putting in the input.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Trapped by Michael Northrop by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Trapped by Michael Northrop

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware unintended spoilers! 

In the past year, I've been trying to incorporate a lot more audiobooks into my reading. Listening to them fills up time I'm doing mundane daily chores with something productive, and the two library apps I've been using offered them free. This allows me to experience books and authors I'd probably never try otherwise, especially if I have to pay for them. In the process, I might find some hidden gems. 

In January 2026, two things happened: 1) My favorite library app became blocked because of a virtual traffic jam and 2) winter has become very confused. In the first instance, I had to finally email the library to find out why I kept getting an error message that essentially meant I couldn't check out books (e- or audio-). Apparently, libraries have always or just recently started enforcing (I don't know which; only know that I'd never had it happen prior to 2026) a "daily lending budget". What that means is that the library has to control spending and budgetary needs and, therefore, after a certain time of day, they shut off the ability for anyone to borrow books the rest of that day. The suggestion from the library was that I try to check out books as early as possible after the ban lifts each day--in my case, the time for reset is midnight! In other words, I have to be awake at or just after midnight so I can scramble to check out a book while I'm half-asleep. This is not good. When did it become normal for libraries to, you know, stop lending books? Isn't that their primary function? A sad world indeed when it's become too costly for both readers and libraries alike to get books. Say it ain't so, Joe! Update: Last night I woke up just after 2 a.m. and groggily fumbled around on my nightstand for my iPad. I logged onto the library app and located the book I hoped to check out. Luckily, there was no one to see me in my pjs with disheveled hair, blurry-eyed and dazed, scratching my bum (okay, maybe not) as I waited to see if I was one of the lucky few allowed to check out a book that early, early morning (or dead of night, whichever you prefer). Yes, I was lucky. It worked. And now this is what I have to look forward to when it comes to checking out books from this library app from here on out. Well, chin up! I still consider it worth it. 

The second thing that happened was the weather didn't know what in the world it wanted to do in Wisconsin (and I believe for most other states in the country as well). For three days in a row, we were getting dumped on with snow galore. The initial mountains on my lawn became veritable peaks. This was followed by spring for a day, maybe a week, circling back to more snow, or rain (which melted the mountains, at least), ushering in perilous icy conditions, or a combination of all those things at the same time. At one point, a beautiful spring day in our town led us to decide it was a great time to travel, but, after barely an hour on the road, we drove into a blizzard. Seriously, sigh. 

At the convergence of these two January 2026 tricks-or-treats, I had no choice but to utilize my least favorite library app (which has hardly any selection) in order to get my audiobook fix. I happened upon a fitting young adult suspense novel, Trapped by Michael Northrop (published February 2011), in which a winter blizzard traps a bunch of high school kids inside the aging education building for more than a week while the rest of the town scrambles to survive, too. I don't think I've ever read anything by this author before, though he's won a bunch of awards. I liked the cover that displayed how I felt, and, for once, it was nice to hear a story about a bunch of teenagers who weren't foul in speech and deed. Lately, when I check out YA audiobook material, I get a bunch of kids who substitute swear words for any hint of intelligence and who are only thinking about their next lay in between being absolutely obsessed with their cell phones and social media. I mean, maybe this is realistic view of the world we live in, but it's more than a little disheartening to think this might be the direction our future is heading. That last bit could be the winter blues talking… 

Anyway, in Trapped, we get basically nice, decent kids for a change, none of whom are particularly bright or preppy (i.e., superficial as all get out). I actually kind of liked that. Instead of D&D nerds, Mensa level, top-of-their-classer Chalamets and Swifties, we have Scotty, a jock who gets average grades and pimples here and there, his two friends Pete and Jason, Krista and Julie, and Les and Elijah, a couple of misunderstoods. Although school had let out early because of the storm, they'd stayed behind for various reasons and no one knew they were there, leaving them trapped--and seriously screwed as a result. None of them seemed smart enough to figure out how to save themselves, though they did figure out how to get enough to eat and stay warm. It isn't until someone decides to venture out to make sure someone in town knows there are kids trapped at the school that everything changed. While I did find the conclusion very abrupt and mildly unsatisfying, this atmospheric little gem fit perfectly into my January blahs and woes with the right story with the right amount of tension at the right time.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Twisted Ones

I consider THE TWISTED ONES, by T. Kingfisher, the best horror novel I’ve read in many years and possibly the only one I’ve found really scary since the original publication of PET SEMATARY. While Karen was unimpressed by it, for me it was the book that turned me on to Kingfisher's work, making her one of my favorite authors. The narrator, Melissa, nicknamed Mouse, receives a call from her elderly father about clearing out his recently deceased mother’s house. The house has been locked and uninhabited for the past two years, since his mother went into a home for the aged. He warns Mouse the place could be “bad,” but she accepts the task, since there’s nobody else to do it. If it turns out to be too much for her, he assures her he’d be okay with having the house razed instead of sold. Even with only vague hints from the blurb about the prospective horrors, I was captivated by this beginning. Mouse’s narrative voice makes the most mundane decisions and chores interesting. She grabbed me on page two with this description of her job, especially since I worked as a proofreader/editor for many years: “I’m a freelance editor. I turn decent books into decently readable books and hopeless books into hopeless books with better grammar.”

She and her rescue hound, Bongo, dutifully head for her grandmother’s house in rural North Carolina. Her grandmother was a hateful person who turns out also to have been a hoarder. “Bad” doesn’t begin to describe the house. At least, however, there’s no rotting food inside, and the water, electricity, and stove work. Mouse finds one bedroom untouched by the piles of accumulated junk (including a room stuffed with creepy dolls). It had belonged to her step-grandfather, Frederick Cotgrave, an immigrant from Wales whom she recalls only as a colorless, silent man constantly browbeaten by his wife. She does have one fond memory of his teaching her to draw the “Kilroy” cartoon popular in World War II, which becomes vitally important later in the story. She finds a journal written by Cotgrave and later a hidden manuscript referenced in the journal. At first she thinks the weird experiences he narrated prove the old man suffered from dementia and paranoia. On the other hand, the petty persecution he mentioned would have been totally in character for her grandmother.

What about the things Cotgrave claimed to have seen in the woods? When Mouse and her dog come across a strange cluster of stones with grotesque carvings on them, in a spot that should not exist in the local geography, she begins to suspect Cotgrave wasn’t losing his mind after all. By the time she discovers his hidden manuscript, she’s inclined to believe the dark things it hints at. It reconstructs as much as he could recall of another journal, the “Green Book,” written by a young girl who’d had sinister encounters with what she called the “white people.” Are the horrors that nineteenth-century girl witnessed being duplicated in North Carolina? Do similar things lurk in secret places all over the world? In the midst of her struggle with the house, Mouse glimpses what appear to be effigies made of sticks, bones, and miscellaneous debris topped by deer skulls. Moreover, she reluctantly entertains the possibility that they are animated. She makes friends with three middle-aged “hippies” on a nearby property, and they acknowledge that all the locals know there are vague but dangerous “things” in the woods.

I can’t be more specific because I don’t want to give away spoilers. As the plot accelerates, unexpected, terrifying events come at every turn. Yet even in the tensest moments, Mouse’s narrative interjects wry humor. (Unlike Karen, I don't feel this feature undercuts the horror. This aspect of Kingfisher's style is one of my favorite elements in all her books.) Mouse labors on the house to a background of the local NPR station’s Pledge Break week, another detail that pays off in the end. This novel includes an abundance of my favorite horror trope, the unearthing of dark secrets from the past. It was also a thrill to recognize this story as essentially a sequel to Arthur Machen’s classic story “The White People,” as the author explains in her afterword. She, of course, puts a different spin on his plot elements. The dog, Bongo, is a character in his own right but not unrealistically sapient. As Mouse frequently notes, he’s as dumb as a box of rocks aside from his almost preternatural tracking ability. Unlike too many horror-fiction characters, Mouse has sound motives for sticking around despite the frightful incidents and, later, for venturing deeper into the forest. Another feature of the novel I admire is that she has a credible reason for writing down her experience -- to sort out the traumatic events in her own mind -- and that, unlike some horror protagonists, she doesn’t blithely move on with her life unscathed after escaping the monsters. Furthermore, Cotgrave’s manuscript sounds believably uncertain at points, not (as Kingfisher discusses in the afterword) as if he had a photographic memory. I’ve rambled on long enough, so I can only urge horror fans to read this fantastic -- in both senses -- story.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Now You Tell Me....

"Now you tell me?" is a gag line, or TV trope, where someone is given a warning, but the warning is too late to be useful. It is not to be confused with a sentence beginning, "Now, you tell me..."

Today, I am not writing about commas, but about tax law as relates to overly-generous authors who go to extraordinary lengths with their marketing, such as by holding sweepstakes, lotteries, contests and the like.

Have you ever awarded a prize worth $600? Have you ever won a prize worth $600 from an author or publisher?

Apparently, if you won such a prize last year (or in a previous year) the organizer of the contest ought to have asked you to fill out a W9 form, and --before January 31st-- they ought to have sent you a Form 1099-MISC so you could declare your $600 winnings and pay taxes. Also, they would file the 1099-MISC covered with a 1096, with the IRS, by the end of February (2026). 

Lovely. Who knew? (Now you tell me?)

Well, the law has changed, and for the better. Now, you may give or receive a contest prize worth up to $1,999:00 without having to fill out forms and pay taxes.

For more details on the new prize tax rules, you could see the article written by legal bloggers

Melissa Landau Steinman, Christopher N. Moran, and Eden Caliendo of Venable LLP.

https://www.allaboutadvertisinglaw.com/2026/01/new-prize-tax-rules-raise-the-1099-threshold-for-sweepstakes-and-contests.html#page=1

Apparently, contest winners have been surprised to learn that they have to provide their social security numbers to the contest organizer.

Therefore --just a thought-- it might be a good idea for any author running a contest to include in the complete published set of Rules that any and all prizes (from the same organizer) with a value of $2,000 in total or in aggregate are contingent on the winner submitting a Form W-9.

Legal bloggers Kristin Lia and Ivana Petani of  Sideman & Bancroft have a very good article from 2024 which summarizes Sweepstakes and Contests 101, what contest organizers need to know in order to stay within the law.

https://www.sideman.com/contests-and-sweepstakes-101/

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/ 

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Valentine's Day: Passion, Peace, and Purpose An Original Article with Artwork by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Valentine's Day: Passion, Peace, and Purpose

by Karen S. Wiesner

Copyright @ Karen Wiesner 

Clematis Vine on Trellis Sketch Rendered in B&W with Minimal Colored Pencil 

  

It's hard to celebrate Valentine's Day when you consider the fractured state of the world. When you look around, you don't have to search to find the bad. It's always there, everywhere your eyes land. It calls attention to itself. It vies for our attention like a proud toddler parading around his newly completed artwork. Negativity wants to steal every part of our focus and schemes to infect and bring us down, preventing positive change from taking root and spreading hope. Bad news will find you every second of every minute of every single day. It's everywhere, determined to suffocate you and steal all the joy out of your life. This is the case, without fail, and forever. You don't have to take a single step to find negativity or bad news because it will find you first. You can't hide from it, no matter how much you might want to. 

The good stuff, the good news, exists in this world, but it's much harder to see, let alone find. You actually have to go looking for it and even then it wouldn't be easy to locate. It's rare you'll ever find it. You have to make a dedicated effort to seek for it, long and hard and with everything in your being. Often, it's like cutting against the grain to even make this effort.

Here's the truly amazing part, though: You don't have to go searching far and wide for the good in life and things that feed your passion. In life's often times' contradictory and ironic serendipity, the things that bring true, inner peace and purpose are already inside you.  These things are made up of who you are and what you already love. 

Sometimes we feel so lost, we don't know how to tap into our passion, peace, and purpose, in part because they require you to look within instead of without (infinitely harder for most people), and they demand your devotion--both your time and your energy, which can be in short supply when there are so many other things vying for both. It'll take strong will, but if you can free up for yourself just fifteen (even five, if that's all you can spare) minutes of every day to draw out the passion that gives you joy and imparts, alongside it, peace and purpose, you'll see the entire world from a different perspective. Don't let anything distract you for those five to fifteen minutes. Shut out the world. Analyze yourself and the things you love, the things you're drawn to, the passions that bring out the very best of you. 

You probably won't need money to bring out that passion because, always, these kinds of things come from within. (I believe they're instilled inside us at conception.) I can't imagine you won't recognize it because you'll come to life and light up from within when you identify your passion--it's the missing piece that is you. This is your happy place, and here you belong; here (together with this piece/peace), you become what you're meant to be. 

Be aware that what you're searching for probably isn't larger-than life, nor is it an ethereal or even an ephemeral thing that wins you fame and fortune. It may not even be a single thing. It could be and probably is more than one, each fitting together and allowing you to find peace in a chaotic world and giving you the motivation to pursue it each and every day. It's the quiet passion deep within your soul that says, "This is where I want to be. Where I'm me. Where I'm happiest. Where I'm whole. Where I can do the most good for myself and others." For some, that's immersing the self in nature and the quieter, more solitary aspects of the earth. For others, it's in books or art or learning. Still others only find peace when they empty the self and give to those in need. 

Whatever your passion is, that's where your main focus should be. Think about this: If you spend your entire life fixated on the sad state of the world, all the negativity and bad in it, and on a volatile future churning out doom and gloom left and right, the present will pass you by and you'll miss everything that could have been worthwhile. Cut out what brings you down wherever and whenever you can without isolating yourself completely from it. (Hermits rarely make the world better for themselves or anyone else.) 

It requires willpower to live in the present and make something good out whatever's before you in the place you're occupying, in this time you're given. If you find the things that feed your passion, you'll experience both peace and a sense of purpose. You'll be doing something that gives you hope and roots and a place to exist that feels safer than anything the world can ever provide. When those things occupy your time and energy, you can let go of all the things that you have no control over in this world. You'll find both a will and a way to reconcile with them because you're doing your part in bringing something worthwhile into being.

Your life and the way you live it can bring inspiration, illumination, and motivation to everyone around you--even without you doing anything except pursuing what you love, and spending your energy and focus on them instead of on all the negative stuff. Trust me, the world does not need or even care about your attention, as hard as it clamors to steal every ounce of it, nor will it ever reward you the way inner passion, peace, and purpose do and will--without restraint and perpetually if you remain dedicated to cultivating it. 

In truth, I don't think most of us even need to hunt for our passion, peace, and purpose. You know what yours are. What you may lack and are probably looking for is the time to immerse yourself in them. By committing yourself to just five to fifteen minutes of every day without distraction to pursue at least one of these things, you live in the present and invest in the future. Don't let anyone or anything take those minutes away from you. If you've only just started on a passion you've wanted to devote more time and energy to, what small goals can you set to see it come to fruition? Take a lesson from a gardener: Most of the work happens in advance of the season we're looking forward to. We plant bulbs in the fall in hopes they'll come up and bloom in the spring or summer. If we didn't plant and prepare in the present, nothing can happen in the future. 

This Valentine's Day, think about your passions and how they can bring you peace and purpose today and throughout your lifetime. Start in the present, planting seeds for the future. If, as I have been for the past few years, you're aching for a return to things that motivate you to be your best self instead of leeching the life out of you, sit down and draw up a table of your passions. What three things most define who you are and what you love to do? Below each passion, include how those passions present themselves in your favored activities. My own trinity of passions looks something like this: 

Passion #1:  Writing	Passion #2:  Art	Passion #3:  Music
Devotionals	Sketching and illustrating (colored pencils, painting, etc.)	Listening to
Articles/essays	Gardening	Playing piano and singing
Reviews	Simple living, going back to the basics, and making everything homemade--including food, decorations, greeting cards, and gifts for loved ones	Songwriting and composing

I want to do so much more of all of these things in the future. While I'm retiring from writing fiction (as soon as I can manage it--other than children's stories), I will never stop writing. I feel like I've just started with the last two--these little seedlings are just sprouting. There are so many angles to pursue, my days and energy are bursting with them. All of it makes me eager for the future when I can hopefully see them bloom and blossom. 

Once you've established a routine, let your passion grow. Take more time for these things and give them the majority of your focus because they're the important things in life, the tasks that you'll feel good about in the end because they'll shape you and touch the lives of everyone around you. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Living Without Brains

An immature sea squirt is mobile and has a brain of sorts, but when it grows to maturity, it attaches itself to a rock and settles down for the rest of its life. With no further need for a higher nervous system -- the adult stage consists of "not much more than a mouth (branchial siphon), a stomach, and an exit tube (atrial siphon)" and "is a hermaphrodite, with one testis and one ovary" -- it eats, or more accurately absorbs, its "notochord, tail, sense organs and nervous system":

Why the Sea Squirt Eats Its Brains Out

Scientists tell us evolution has no "goal." Evolutionary "success" equals how many copies of itself a gene can generate. In the words of Heinlein's Lazarus Long, a zygote is a gamete's device for making more gametes (an update of the homespun saying, "A hen is an egg's way of making more eggs").

And if evolution had a goal, it wouldn't be brains. Those organs require a lot of energy to produce and maintain. Why bother growing one, especially a large one, if you don't need it?

Because of our relatively huge brains and the things we've used them to create, Homo sapiens tends to regard ourselves as Earth's dominant species. Alien explorers studying our planet, though, might decide it's ruled by bacteria, which vastly outnumber us and have existed a lot longer. In fact, there are slightly more bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies. The alien biologists might think we function mainly as hosts for microbial life.

Limiting observation to multicellular organisms, extraterrestrial observers could make a case for Earth's being ruled by grass. According to an AI answer to my question about grasslands, they occupy "roughly 15.8 to 21.6 million square miles, covering about 31% to 43% of the Earth's land surface." Moreover, grasses obviously keep human beings as slaves. We feed them, encourage them to reproduce, and protect them from predators. Millions of miles of grasses such as wheat exist and thrive thanks to our labors.

Why would a species need a brain when it can entice us big-brained, mobile, technology-using creatures to serve it?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.