Don't Fear The Liquor

Don't Fear The... Liquor

Apologies to Blue Oyster Cult 

Don't Fear The Reaper - BLUE OYSTER CULT - Official Music Video

Occasionally, even the most MAHA of us has to open a tin. In my case, it was a tin of tiny shrimp

because I needed to revive a curry that I had already served 4 times. Curries generally get better every time they are cooked, especially if one adds additional fresh garlic or its cousins (leek/onion).

The concept has a respectable French name: rechauffe... which reminds me, Dave Edmunds had a song about warmed over kisses and left over love.

The liquor is usually briny/salty, but tastes fishy. Should you pour it down the kitchen sink drain? Not necessarily. 

Pour the liquor into a small saucepan, bring to fast boil, add dry barley (also, finely diced kale stalks, cauliflower stalky parts, carrot leaves, Brussels sprout nubs, any veg that is otherwise

unappetizing in the yellow-green color range, and that needs 10  - 20 mins cooking).

While boiling continues ---and you need to watch and shake or stir to be sure it does not stick-- add kernels of corn, thumbed from a raw cob of corn. Add water if necessary. Peas work, too.

This is an excellent barley and veg, pescetarian side dish... just don't serve it with other sodium rich dishes.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Scams Out The Wazoo (And Spies All Over)

Most online dictionaries seem to think that the Wazoo is a region where the sun does not shine, but one cannot have "tourists out the wazoo" .... unless a multi-host parasite such as a tapeworm could be thought of as a tourist... so I prefer the Cambridge version: wazoo as an expression of great quantity.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/out-up-the-wazoo

Where to begin? 

Victoria Straus (Writer Beware), asks whether or not writers are uniquely vulnerable to scams, in comparison with actors, models, musicians and other creatives.

Are Writers Uniquely Vulnerable to Scams? - Writer Beware

https://writerbeware.blog/2025/03/07/are-writers-uniquely-vulnerable-to-scams/

I've wondered that. There are scams and scammers that specifically target writers, of course, but writers may not be the juiciest of targets, financially speaking.  There are reports of professional sportsmen (and maybe women), and professional touring musicians whose homes are targeted for burglaries when the victim is known to be playing an away gig or game.

Writers tend to write at home, when they are not at a convention or retreat. But there are other scams. Angela Hoy of Writers' Weekly has an informative link on how to spot a predatory publisher, and what their tricks and traps entail.

11 Ways to Know If a “Publisher” or Other Service Provider is an Overseas Scammer (You’ll probably only need to check #1 to prove it!) – by Angela Hoy, Publisher

And also

A List of Publishers and Services That ALL Authors Should AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

At this time of year, there are plenty of tax scams for the unwary. The IRS is not likely to telephone you, text you, or email you out of the blue, and if they do, they will not demand with threats that you go to a grocery store and avail yourself of Western Union to send funds.

Here's what the IRS says about tax scams.

https://www.irs.gov/help/tax-scams/recognize-tax-scams-and-fraud#:~:text=Tax%20scam%20warning%20signs&text=They%20pressure%20you%20for%20personal,be%20true%2C%20it%20probably%20is.

Comcast (Xfinity) has advice on tax scams and protecting yourself from fraud

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/protecting-from-fraud?MID=ENG_Tax+Fraud+Newsletter

Docusign may be a reputable company, but Sender information can be changed, and an email from Docusign.net can look very legitimate, but if you are not expecting an invoice or a contract, it is better not to open the email.

Recognizing and Reporting Suspicious Activities

The same goes for emails that "notify" you that a major purchase was made on your account at Amazon, or Apple, or PayPal. Some of these scam heads-ups are all the more evil because they might mention some site you've recently visited. You can blame ad trackers.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation has a helpful article on what to do to protect yourself:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/find-out-how-online-trackers-follow-you-web-effs-cover-your-tracks-tool

In the same vein, EFF reveals the spies on the street, via fake cell towers, that can switch your smart phone to a lower security level, and much more.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/meet-rayhunter-new-open-source-tool-eff-detect-cellular-spying

You are not safe from spies in your car or truck, either. Derek Kravitz of Consumer Reports explains

Your Car May Be Spying On You. Here’s How to Get It to Stop. - Consumer Reports .

Hence.... scams, spies, and stalkers out the wazoo.

PS.  There are also Toll Road text scams.  Toll Road operators do not text threats.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/personal-finance/susan-tompor/2025/04/16/toll-text-scam-payment-unpaid-violation-notice-michigan-department-transportation/83114549007/

Happy Easter!

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Inheritance & Other Stories by Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb by Karen S. Wiesner

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Inheritance & Other Stories

by Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb are both pen names for Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, an American author of speculative fiction. As Lindholm, the stories tend to be shorter and less detailed in a variety of genres. As Hobb, characterization, settings, and conflicts are deeper and wider, producing much larger works. Hobb is best known for her The Realm of the Elderlings fantasy stories, and that's how I became a fan of hers. I'd read the novella "The Homecoming", which is connected to The Realm of the Elderlings in that it's set in the Rain Wilds positioned at the far west edges of the Six Duchies. The Rain Wilds are all but uninhabitable swampland near the mountain ranges. Within this umbrella series, she's written five "miniseries" and numerous short stories. 

"The Homecoming" by Robin Hobb was my favorite story in the review I did February 28, 2025 on the Alien Romances Blog for Legends II: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, edited by Robert Silverberg. I'd never read anything like it, and I wanted to know more about this "Rain Wilds" setting, as well as the lost civilizations and Elderlings mentioned in it. While I'm writing this particular review, I'm reading her very first trilogy in The Realm of the Elderlings, The Farseer. I read Book 1, and, while I was waiting for Book 2 arrive, I'd already received the copy of The Inheritance & Other Stories I'd ordered, so I thought I'd start on that. Having done some research on the author and her offerings under these two pseudonyms, I knew that the author herself said she found when writing as Hobb she "wrote with a depth of feeling that I didn't usually indulge". I did find that to definitively be the case here. 

This collection of stories written under both pen names includes: 

Megan Lindholm

"A Touch of Lavender"

"Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man:

"Cut"

"The Fifth Squashed Cat"

"The Strays"

"Finis"

"Drum Machine" 

Robin Hobb

"Homecoming"

"The Inheritance"

"Cat's Meat" 

There is definitely a marked difference in tone and style evident between the pen names. For the most part, I wasn't enamored with the Lindholm stories, though I expect a lot of readers will find meaning in these pieces that felt more like slice of life vignettes to me. For me, the stories in these comparably much shorter seven pieces seemed to form suddenly out of thin air, never gaining a lot of flesh and blood, and, just as unexpectedly, dissipated almost beyond recall. To be more specific, they reminded me a lot like of paint splatter art. Colors are thrown across the room at the page without rhyme, reason, let alone forethought. The writer almost leaves it up to the reader to decide if what's created of this has any lasting value. 

To be fair, Lindholm is a good writer and her work in this anthology was some of her earlier material. Beyond that, she's received countless awards and accolades as a writer for her work, and most of the pieces here have in fact won many honors in the industry. I believe those are well-deserved. However, what I've learned from reading this collection is that I will probably only focus on the Robin Hobb offerings from this point on. 

I think my biggest problem with the Lindholm stories is that I felt like they could have been set anywhere and in any time, in the point of view of any other character, and the outcome would have been exactly the same. In each story, there was little or no development with character, setting, or plot. They all just showed up for a single purpose, and once that was accomplished, it was over. Nothing about them will last very long in my memory as a result of what felt like intentional carelessness. I'm afraid this is exactly what the author was going for with each of these stories, no justifications and no apologies. 

"A Touch of Lavender", the first Lindholm story in the anthology, was, if nothing else, compelling in an absolutely off-the-wall way. I'd gone into it not sure what to expect of the Lindholm pen name. For that reason, I admit, I probably gave it more of a chance to win me over than any another of the other six written under this pseudonym. (Also, "Finis" gave a hell of a twist, again, if nothing else, and that's really all I have to say about the rest of the Lindholm contributions.) 

Within this collection, the author included a brief introduction to each story, telling us a bit about what inspired her to write it. I love those sorts of insights. The preface to "A Touch of Lavender" spoke of something intriguing that, to me, summed up all her Lindholm stories very succinctly. She said that she will receive at times odd sentences that intrude in her mind. She writes these down, knowing they're intended to be the first line of a story she doesn't yet know. She has a whole desk drawer full of them. She calls these "butterfly lines"--ideas that have to be captured immediately or they'll flutter off forever. Cool. But I'm not actually sure this is a good idea for any writer, as I'll explain in a second. 

Later, she plucked one of these first sentences out of the drawer and used it as the basis of "A Touch of Lavender". This butterfly line is: "We grew up like mice in a rotting sofa, my sister and I." This is the longest of the Lindholm contributions, and she then proceeded to tell a tale in which the point of view character didn't have a sister at all, not until the very end of it. At that stage, it almost felt as if the author felt compelled to tack something onto this story she'd written to justify the first sentence. To me, the "tack on" didn't really fit the rest of the story, nor did it really warrant being included, since I believe it almost intruded on the theme. 

What was the theme? I'm not entirely sure, and the reason for that is because I don't want to resort to allegory, which I distrust and even hate when it comes to fiction. There's a huge tendency these days for readers and reviewers to serve a biased agenda by forcing a story to fit some allegory about the real world. The authors may have intended nothing like what's built up to be allegorical to a modern-day trend. 

In my research of this author and her body of work, it seems to me so much of her work (especially her Robin Hobb offerings) is forced into allegorical renderings by those with an undeniable agenda. I stopped short of researching whether the author has ever commented on all of this because, honestly, I don't want to know any more. I'd prefer to accept the author's works as she's written them and not read something in that she may or may not have ever intended. 

Anyway, "A Touch of Lavender" was basically a futuristic story about a dead-beat Mom, living on aid, who's drawn to music (and, not surprisingly, dead-beat musicians who mooch off her and her kid, who was conceived of with a former dead-beat musician boyfriend whose long since gone the way of the dodo in both of their lives). Meanwhile, the Earth at this time has been invaded by aliens who have weird musical talents. The story is told from the POV of the kid. Boundaries between humans and aliens are challenged and unexpected things happen as a result. As I said, a strange, mildly compelling story that came, went, and disappeared like so much dandelion fluff, leaving not much more to linger in its wake. 

As with Legends II, my favorite story in this anthology is "The Homecoming". But since I've already reviewed that, I'll focus here on the other two in this collection: "The Inheritance" and "Cat's Meat". Both are connected to Robin Hobb's The Realm of the Elderlings, "The Inheritance" and "Cat's Meat" taking place, respectively, in Bingham (in the far southwest of the Six Duchies) and Buck (close to Forge, a pivotal setting in the first book in The Farseer Trilogy). Both feature heroines who have suffered at the hands of bad men. "The Inheritance" tells the extremely unexpected tale of a necklace cameo that the main character inherited from her grandmother. "Cat's Meat" is the story of a woman who was used by a man she'd loved, got pregnant by him, and was abandoned in favor of someone richer and prettier, and then that jackass returns to her, expecting to be forgiven and taken back as if he's done nothing wrong. The unexpected twist in this story is a cat who feels very protective of the main character and her son. 

Both stories are well-written, intriguing if not more than a little frustrating because the women displayed such love-sick stupidity until the end, when they finally became strong enough to change the course of their own lives I found that worth rooting for. All three of the Hobb stories featured women who were downtrodden by society and the men in their lives in these old-fashioned time periods, expected to be and do only what females were allowed then. I appreciated how they turned the tables on everyone--with a little help from magic. The catalyst for them doing what they all eventually go on to do in each case is packed with a supernatural surprise and consequences that are far from predictable. While neither "The Inheritance" or "Cat's Meat" had quite the depth and atmosphere that "The Homecoming" evoked for me so profoundly, both were still good and worthy of a read to enlarge the world Hobb has created in The Realms of the Elderlings. 

I do intend to review all the subseries within Robin Hobb's overall series in the future, so stay tuned for those in coming months. I have the highest hopes for all or most of them to live up to everything I'm looking for in this complex series. 

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

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

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

Fungal Possession

I recently read THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS, by M. R. Carey. I'm not a great fan of zombie fiction or films in general, because typical zombies aren't so much characters as rampaging forces of natural destruction. This book is something else, though. The monsters responsible for the collapse of civilization are called "hungries," never zombies, although most of them fit the Z-word stereotype. Melanie and the other children in her "class" on a prison-like military base, however, are different. They're conscious and sapient. She doesn't remember any life outside the building where she's confined to a cell except when escorted to the shower or the classroom. She doesn't know she and her friends are hungries, since the staff follows strict protocols to avoid activating the instinct to attack and feed. Still less does she suspect the children are experimental subjects, kept alive solely in hope that studying them may reveal a cure for the pandemic that triggered the apocalypse. Nor does she know what happens to her friends who disappear.

Their condition is caused by a fungus that infests and takes over a human body, replacing the brain with a network of mycelium threads. The resultant fleshly automaton alternates between two states of being, passive immobility and ravenous attack mode. Children like Melanie, in contrast, have varying degrees of cognitive capacity as well as, apparently, emotion and free will. Most of the uninfected people on the base agree with the sergeant in charge that these alleged traces of humanity are just mimicry by the fungus-infected host. From observing Melanie's inner life, we know better. She's more than a "dead kid" animated by a parasite. In this next generation of hosts, the organism has established a form of symbiosis.

A fungal network also breeds "zombies" and causes societal collapse in the post-apocalyptic TV series THE LAST OF US (which I haven't seen):

Fungi Superhighways

One of my favorite horror novels from T. Kingfisher, WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, retells "The Fall of the House of Usher" in science-fiction terms as a story of biological possession. A fungus lurking in the tarn has long since crept into the walls of the Usher mansion. From infiltrating the bodies of the hares that inhabit the nearby countryside, it has progressed to invading Madeline Usher. As a single super-organism with a hive mind, the fungus becomes more than sentient -- borderline sapient. It not only spreads through Madeline's body -- ultimately keeping her quasi-alive after she has technically died -- but takes root in her brain to learn from her. As the author's afterword notes, imagine how much the human characters could have learned from the parasite (and vice versa) if only they could have explained to it why most people dislike seeing dead things walk around.

The fungus in the walls of the gloomy mansion in Silvia Moreno-Garcia's MEXICAN GOTHIC doesn't kill its human hosts. Rather, its symbiotic infestation confers healing and potential immortality. The protagonist, though, in trying to rescue a relative from her terrible marriage to a member of the family, discovers the less than desirable side of this seductive trap.

Fungal possession in horror fiction is based on a real phenomenon, the notorious "zombie ant" parasitism.

Zombie Ants

In tropical forests, a fungus invades the bodies of hapless carpenter ants and takes over their brains. It compels the ant to perform the unnatural behavior of climbing to a height and hooking itself to a leaf, where it soon dies. The fruiting body of the mature parasite bursts out of the insect's corpse and broadcasts spores.

Unlike traditional demon possession, this kind of "invasion of the body snatchers" can't be cured by exorcism. The climax of THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS discovers a way to coexist with it, but at a heavy price. On the other hand, suppose a similar organism existed in true symbiosis with human hosts, bestowing not only healing and prolonged life but enhanced intelligence or some kind of hive-mind telepathy?

Margaret L. Carter

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

Memorial for My Dear Friend by Karen Wiesner

 

August 28, 1982-April 6, 2025 

When I met you, I could tell you'd weathered a lot in your life. I could see the shadows lurking behind you, just barely held back from escaping again. You loved the darkest time of night, I think, because it's easy to hide from even the deepest, most menacing shadows in those quiet, isolated hours where you could be all alone in the universe. Despite everything you faced, all your regrets, you had a light that I saw in you from the first time I met you--you, the stray cat who wandered into the backyard and I never wanted to leave. How many hours we spent talking and laughing. It was so easy to be around you. You always said I mothered you, something you desperately needed, and you did the same to all those around you. I didn't ask you about the shadows that haunted you because you were so determined to start over, build a brand new life, and become the person I think you always wanted to be…the person that all the horrors in your life seemed determined not to allow you to become. You loved Monarchs, hummingbirds, cats, flowers and plants, music, dancing, football, motorcycles, storms, Halloween. You wanted to surround yourself with friends who could accept you for who you were in the present. You were trying so hard to accept yourself and plant deep roots that would never choke you. I know you wanted to be redeemed from all the heavy regrets you carried. That's why you gave everyone you met a chance, no matter what. I got to be in the garden of your new life for a few years, and I'm so grateful for all I've learned from you. I was so proud of the person you were becoming, however shaky that journey was as you moved forward, trying not to let the darkness behind you hold you back or overtake you. I believe you were so close to healing and emerging from the cocoon that kept you safe since you arrived here, broken, and I'm glad I got to love you as you put yourself back together. Be forgiven, beautiful butterfly, be healed. You're free now, and the light you wanted to bask in is waiting to embrace you. I'll miss you and I'll never forget you. I'll always see you in every sunflower along my path.

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

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

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

Villainous Motivations

In a presentation on Dark Lords at this year's ICFA, the author of the paper raised the question of whether villains need a complex backstory for their motivations to make them credible as characters. The author didn't think so. He pointed out that a villain can have a realistic but simple, straightforward motive. He mentioned Wile E. Coyote, who just wants to eat the roadrunner. Granted, that original goal has apparently been complicated by feelings of frustration, with a competitive drive to prove a silly bird can't get the better of him. Nevertheless, I admit appetite or greed can be a sufficient motive by itself. A bank robber or a pirate can serve as a believable antagonist if he simply wants the loot. But what about a Dark Lord (or Lady) or other supervillain?

Hannibal Lecter in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS offers an interesting example. He's a highly educated, brilliant, cultured, insightful psychiatrist who, as a villain, doesn't display particularly complicated motives. He's a sociopath who has fun manipulating people and, incidentally, likes to indulge his cannibalistic fetish. When HANNIBAL and HANNIBAL RISING gave him a backstory with what TV Tropes calls a "Freudian excuse," he underwent a fundamental change that subverted his portrayal in RED DRAGON and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS as an enigmatic, not-quite-human monster.

The Star Wars series, in my opinion, made Darth Vader more interesting by giving him a backstory to explain how the heroic Jedi warrior Anakin Skywalker became Vader, even though I think it falls short to some extent. Pre-Vader Anakin, to me, doesn't come across as a very engaging character. He grows from a rather nice kid into a whiny teenager, something of a disappointment as a future Dark Lord. And I never quite believed in his romance with the princess in the prequel trilogy. I found both characters more believable and engaging in the midquel animated series. Still, the prequel trilogy does give Anakin credible motives for turning to the Dark Side. The most prominent current example of a sympathetic villainous backstory is, of course, WICKED. It's been a long time since I've read the book, so I don't recall many details, but the movie (part one of Elphaba's story) does a wonderful job of showing the future Wicked Witch of the West as a misunderstood person who starts out good and is driven to the rebellion that gets her labeled as "wicked."

If a writer wants me to believe in a villain impelled by greed for limitless wealth or domination, I need to know more about him or her, because I can't identify with such motives. One can spend only so much money in a lifetime. As for ruling the world, why would anybody go to all that trouble? Such an antagonist, in my opinion, would be improved by a backstory to explain why he or she feels nothing will ever be enough. Otherwise, they remind me of a supervillain organization in an old cartoon series (I don't remember what) whose goal was "to destroy the universe for their own gain."

Lord Voldemort's drive to conquer wizard society in the Harry Potter series has credible roots in his bitterness about his Muggle father and his "weak" witch mother's death and, above all, his own terror of death. Fundamentally, all his actions spring from his obsession with attaining immortality.

Revenge is another motive for which I take some extra convincing. I've used it myself in my vampire novel CHILD OF TWILIGHT (direct sequel to DARK CHANGELING, although I think it could stand alone), but I consider it plausible only because the antagonist has been in suspended animation for the whole time since the event she's avenging -- the death of her brother. Therefore, her grief and rage are as fresh as if the death happened yesterday, not thirteen or so years in the past. I can imagine striking out in rage against an enemy at the moment I'm attacked or soon afterward. I can't empathize with the "revenge best served cold" philosophy. Spend years or decades brooding over an injury and plotting a complicated vengeance? What a waste of time and energy. So the avenger needs well-developed personality traits that make his readiness to act this way plausible.

One archetypal villain has generated much speculation over his motive in the past two millennia -- Judas Iscariot. "He did it for the money" is not convincing. As Dorothy Sayers explains in her commentary on THE MAN BORN TO BE KING, her twelve-part radio drama series about the life of Christ, Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels (who "knew what was in people") wouldn't have chosen an obvious crook as a member of His inner circle. Nor would He deliberately choose a villain for the explicit purpose of setting him up to damn himself by turning traitor. As Sayers points out, neither of those scenarios would make a convincing story. Judas must have begun as a loyal disciple and undergone a change that made him decide betraying Jesus was right. Two principal motivations have been proposed: (1) Judas wanted Jesus to lead a military revolt against the Roman occupation and thought being arrested would goad Him into taking that route. (2) Afraid Jesus' public actions were putting all of them in grave danger from the Jewish and/or Roman authorities, Judas hoped being arrested would frighten Jesus into behaving more cautiously. Dorothy Sayers's own explanation for the betrayal takes a third tack: Judas mistakenly thought Jesus was plotting violent revolution, became disillusioned, and betrayed Him to stop the nonexistent uprising.

The topic of supervillains always reminds me of the Evil Overlord list, which you may have read, an exhaustive catalog of things a sensible Dark Lord should or shouldn't do. It's a hilarious deconstruction of all the familiar villainous tropes and cliches:

Evil Overlord List

Margaret L. Carter

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

The Deadly Silent T... or E

For a car guy, the best thing about Janis Joplin's materialistic sung prayer, was that she pronounced Porsche correctly. That might have been a happy accident owing to her use of the plural voice.

Porsche is Por-sh-eh or Portia (not Por-shhhh). It's a family name. Respect that!

One the other hand, there is a huge difference between "cache" ("cash" --a hiding place, or that which is hidden in a hiding place), and "cachet" (cash-eh) which is a quality indicating distinction.

Some TV newscasters do not know this.

Other horrible mispronunciations on TV are "perspective" for "prospective"; "prosperity" for "posterity"; gold "bouillon" (a thin French broth) for "bullion"; also in the case of criminals "perpetuated" for "perpetrated".

A slip of the tongue can be forgiven, but then there are the captions, which all too often do not reflect the spoken word... and all the while, AI is being trained on this inaccurate abuse of English.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Middle of the Night by Riley Sager by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Middle of the Night by Riley Sager

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager is his latest novel, published in June 2024. In this story, the main character Ethan Marsh is still haunted 30 years later by the disappearance of his best friend Billy from the tent in the backyard they were camping out in at the age of ten. When Ethan woke in the morning, Billy was gone, the roof of the tent slashed. Billy was never seen again. Now, as a 40 year old, Ethan returns to the New Jersey cul de sac Hemlock Circle, where it seems Billy is trying to get his attention, maybe from beyond the grave. In this place, then and now, nothing is as it seems--least of all those who populate the area. 

As usual, this novel skirts the line between horror and the supernatural, which I love in my fiction. However, all my usual complaints (when it comes to a Sager story) are here--and in ample supply. First, the book was a good 150 pages longer than I believe was actually necessary. Also, there were far too many characters to keep track of and for the author to flesh out adequately--which, I know, is what's wanted in this niche genre (made popular by Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, S.J. Watson, and Sager himself, among others) where the narrator of any given story simply can't be trusted to tell his or her own story with any degree of veracity. Sager upped my stress level by telling Middle of the Night from the entire cast of characters' point of views within this book. I've read four of his eight available titles written under this pen name, and thus far he usually keeps it to a single POV within a story. So now I had to juggle a whole host of suspicious people doing disturbing things, all sporting their own nefarious motives.

Now when most people read psychological thrillers, they know to expect unreliable narrators, unexpected plot twists, and featuring characters who are not only complex but usually also liars (to themselves and everyone around them). That's the name of the game. If you like that kind of story, there's no reason you wouldn't love this book. It's got all of that and you won't ever feel entirely sure who's the culprit while reading. 

Despite that the tension was aplenty within this tale, my pet peeves about Sager's works became overkill. Even for Sager, the sheer number of characters and viewpoints, the overabundance of motives--certainty developed far more than the individual characters were--all packed into this weighty 365 page book (hardcover) left me weary. The more I read books like this, the more I don't like and trust the author. I felt overwhelmed by all the characters, all of whom seemed guilty of something, their half-truths and skewed perceptions. What really cinched it for me was that one of the characters in the book was barely mentioned the entire length of the story until the end. When he was pulled like a chicken (instead of the expected rabbit) from a hat, all my hackles rose and I cried "Unfair! Cheater!" 

For the most part, usually I believe this author has played fair with readers--if we're really paying attention from one page to the next--we can't deny that the answers were all there, buried deep in multiple levels of deceptions on everyone's parts. Here, I argue that we weren't given the information we needed to make the leap. Or maybe the book was just too long and convoluted and I missed that vital bit. Who knows? For me, neither the ghostly aspects nor the shocking, twisted denouement could save this story, let alone top his previous endeavors. Ultimately, Middle of the Night did receive more than fair reviews elsewhere, so if this is your usual type of suspense, you may end up much more satisfied by it than I ultimately was. 

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

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

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

What's Horror For?

As I mentioned last week, one of the speakers at this year's ICFA proposed that horror articulates feelings and experiences for which we often can't find the words. It gives concrete embodiment to metaphors for our fears.

In IT, which I still consider one of Stephen King's best novels (even though an older one), he creates a monster that incarnates fear. It appears to people in the form of whatever they're most afraid of. I always get irked when commenters reduce the eldrich cosmic entity in IT to a "monster clown." Pennywise is only one of It's many faces. As the narrator reflects at one point, It prefers to feed on the emotions of children because their fears are more concrete, raw, and primal than those of adults. Grown-ups are afraid of dull, mundane threats such as heart disease, old age, and financial ruin. In the nightmares of children, deeper horrors show up unmasked.

King's nonfiction work DANSE MACABRE suggests that ultimately the work of all horror is to portray our fear of death in shapes we can deal with. In horror fiction, the monster can frequently be destroyed. A boy character in King's vampire novel 'SALEM'S LOT declares, "Death is when the monsters get you."

At ICFA, our panel on changing concepts of monsters in popular culture discussed the phenomenon that classic folklore and literary/film monsters often serve as metaphors. Werewolves and other shapeshifters may represent the beast within, the animalistic or savage side of human nature, as the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does. Lycanthropy can also suggest the trauma of puberty, an uncontrollable transformation of one's body accompanied by strange new impulses. Body horror in general (for example, a pair of anthologies I recently read that focus on pregnancy and childbirth), too, portrays the experience of one's physical self in an out-of-control state. Characters such as the Phantom of the Opera and Quasimodo illustrate revulsion toward deformity and disability. Vampires serve as metaphors for disease, foreign invaders, forbidden sexuality, transgressing the barrier between life and death, forced transformation, toxic power dynamics, and allegedly threatening Others of countless types. Both vampires and zombies embody the horror of a loved one changing into an unrecognizable Other. Ghosts may awaken guilt about how we treated the dead during their lifetimes and what revenge they may take on the living.

Conversely, nowadays the horror of monsters often comes from the image of an inhuman or no-longer-human creature as the persecuted outsider. In stories of this kind, ordinary humans can become the real monsters while the Other represents the oppressed and abused victim. Frankenstein's creation, of course, is a classic example of body horror and a monstrous violation of the line between life and death as well as a victim of persecution.

Margaret L. Carter

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

These Old Bowels Of Mine

With apologies to Rod for today's totally inappropriate earworm: "This Old Heart of Mine" by Rod Stewart and Ronald Isley of the Isley Bros.... but he invited it with the line, "You've got me never knowing if I'm coming or going"....

Writing tends to be a sedentary business, which can lead to a spreading butt and through-put issues. In my case, which is possibly TMI, I have to give up eating potatoes. So, this morning, after I'd baked aging cod (on sale at half price), and prawns (also aging and half price) in Guernsey Farms cream -- because one always cooks fish in milk when it might be on the fishy-smelling side--I wondered what I could do to soak up all that good, wicked, creamy/fishy liquor, and turn the dish in a MAHA direction.

M.A.H.A. is "Make America Healthy Again".

A week or two ago, I would have thickened it with commercial Knorr Hollandaise powdered sauce, and put mashed potato on top, but my arthritis would have flared up and I would not have been able to walk (without pain) for a month.

I could have tried pasta, but that is basically durum flour and water, which is not all bad, but pasta causes constipation in some unfortunate individuals. Which is not, as The Bard said, "A consummation devoutly to be wished."

So... I seized three handfuls of Red Mill barley, and simmered it in the liquor (after setting aside the cooked fish and prawns). Then, I mixed the lot together in a casserole dish, put sliced yellow summer squash on top, to prevent any barley grains from getting hard and breaking a tooth.

 https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/barley-benefits

I would not be sharing if it did not work out deliciously. One benefit that the healthline writers omit is that barley is also good for the bladder bladder (as opposed to the gall bladder). The British use lemon barley water as a cure for UTIs. Americans use cranberry juice. It is actually worthwhile to make cranberry-barley juice. But, consuming barley might fend off a UTI in the first place.

Barley is also good for preventing various cancers, including bowel cancer, for lowering cholesterol, for preventing heart disease and diabetes, and much more. It is also quite inexpensive.... possibly less expensive that a "pre-biotic" product being advertised on TV, costing $50 for 60 capsules which, an actor brazenly avers, "helps my daily bowel movements," and brings out the pedant in me.

How does one "help" something as insentient (one hopes) as a bowel movement? It might help the generator of the bowel movement to eliminate fecal matter by softening it, or bulking it up. A more accurate line would be, "helps me to have bowel movements daily."  

Alas that advertisers are permitted to bombard us all with horrible grammar.

Raw oats has many of the advantages of barley. I think I've written about that before. For the perfect meal at each day-start, use Quaker rolled oats or quick oats, add half a cup of strained Greek yoghurt, a cup of boiling water, blueberries, raspberries, sliced banana, stir and leave to sit for about an hour.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in these reviews. 

The House Across the Lake was Riley Sager's 2022 release, a thriller that went on to be compared to Hitchcock's Rear Window. I really thought I had this author figured out after having read three or four of his previous books (though not in order of publication). Almost without fail, he puts a too-curious-for-her-own-good female who's on the edge in a precarious situation where nothing is as it seems. He also plays the "unreliable narrator" card so often, I can see it coming in five words or less now. I've learned to never, absolutely ever trust his narrator because her (so far as I've gotten in reading his backlist, all his lead characters have actually been female) perspective is forever going to throw false impressions and skewed perspectives all along my path. Additionally, I can always be certain this viewpoint isn't innocent because there are secrets yet to be unearthed--sometimes not until the very last pages. Finally, I can be assured this author will insinuate supernatural involvement somehow in his novel, which is something that probably draws me to his books more than anything else. 

From the first page until well past the middle of this very long book, I couldn't have been more haughtily convinced I knew exactly where the plot was going. Everything felt predictable and even stereotypical. My interest waned often. I felt as though I'd read this basic scenario many times before and at least a few times better executed. Then literally out of nowhere…!!! A typhoon on a sunny day, and hell on earth instead of the tranquil paradise I was beginning to fall asleep in. I just didn't see the hurricane coming until I was hit full-force by it. I guess the author lulled me into a state of lake-time oblivion, given how I was almost literally snoring when the nightmare hit me blindside. Talk about a twist! But there was much more in store for me--a diabolical twist on another draw-dropping twist topped with a final, stunning sucker punch twist. Wowza! I couldn't catch my breath until I devoured the second half of the book within little more than an hour (after drowsing through the first half of the book over the course of a leaning-toward bored several days). 

The surface story here is that a recently widowed actress named Casey has retreated to her family's lake house in Vermont. Been there, literally, done that, right? But it's not that ho-hum. There are a few interesting points. Lake Greene has gained some notoriety of late with the disappearances of three young girls who are presumed dead, the victims of a supposed serial killer. Lake Greene is also associated with a neat urban legend. Based on the Victorian-era belief that reflective surfaces can trap souls of the dead (and therefore the living covered all the mirrors after someone died), the tribes that lived in this particular area long before European settlers arrived went still bigger with their beliefs--lakes could also be considered reflective surfaces, so if a person saw their own reflection in the lake after someone died in that body of water, they could become possessed by the soul trapped beneath the water's surface. I do have to comment that one of the characters told this old wives' tale in a shocking bit of cabbageheadism, which basically means that the reader needed to know this so the author spoon-fed it from one character to the others in the scene. In any case… 

Grief has made Casey a drunk and apparently a voyeur when she realizes her new neighbors are a controlling tech innovator named Tom and his former supermodel wife. After Casey saves said wife Katherine from drowning, she begins to realize something is very wrong with their marriage. Then Katherine abruptly vanishes, and Casey suspects Tom had something to do with it. 

One more aside: Sager made reference to his fictional setting of Camp Nightingale from his novel The Last Time I Lied, which I reviewed back in January of this year, when Katherine claims she was a "Camp Nightingale girl". Cool! I love it when the author wants to see if his fans are paying attention. 

The twists in The House Across the Lake are what made this story compelling. It was well-written with good characterization, however, as I said, I've read a few of Sager's books now and all the main characters strike me as similar. They have different names, settings, and situations, but they could easily be swapped out for each other from one of his books to the next. 

Additionally, (another thing I've said nearly every time I review one of Sager's books), this novel is just too darn long. He could have cut half of the 349 pages that were in the hardcover edition and came out with essentially the same story. As is almost always the case, everyone is a suspect--including the one who vanished as well as the one investigating the crime--and all have a secret that makes them a likely killer. Motive and opportunity aplenty for each and every player in the book. Culling his list of suspects so there weren't so many red herrings could have helped a lot.

If you'll remember, I did state from the beginning of this review that my interest was seriously flagging at the halfway point. If not for that first twist, I'm not sure the whodunit (or more aptly, who didn't do it? since it was anyone's game for most of the story) could have been salvaged. I was a single word away from "skim"-reading (which is what I do when I'm at least semi-committed and then a story disappoints me too much to continue reading word for word) just to get through it to the end. 

I think a lot of readers might have maintained interest all the way through--namely, those who are fans of this type of "unreliable narrator" thriller genre. I've read a couple truly good ones (Ruth Ware is a solid favorite of mine in this category), but the majority are usually not my cup of tea. This one was saved at the eleventh hour by the twist so it is worth reading. If you're patient, there is good stuff in store for you. 

Incidentally, in March 2023, there was talk about Netflix making a film adaptation, and I think that medium would be ideal for this particular tale. 

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

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

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

ICFA 46

The 46th annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was held in its usual Orlando hotel last week. Guests of honor were Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of MEXICAN GOTHIC and other horror fiction as well as an editor of the sadly now defunct Innsmouth Free Press online magazine, and guest scholar Sarah Juliet Lauro, a zombie specialist. The con focused on the theme of "Night Terrors" (not in the technical meaning of a specific sleep disorder, which one attendee who's a medical doctor as well as a horror film scholar brought up, but in the broader sense).

My plane took off an hour late because of an unspecified maintenance-related delay but miraculously landed only 30 minutes late. Orlando had bright sun all week. However, Thursday was unusually cool for this time of year and Friday downright chilly. Saturday warmed up nicely.

The two luncheons and the Saturday night banquet served abundant and delicious food, as usual. Happily, each meal's dessert included plenty of chocolate. (Sometimes banquet menus miss the point on that requirement.) They're always buffets, so there's something to please everybody and lots of it.

At the guest author lunch, Silvia Moreno-Garcia proposed that horror fiction articulates experiences we can't find words for in mundane contexts. She also discussed the concepts of "hostile architecture" and the horror of the "unplace." Sarah Juliet Lauro's guest scholar lunch talk elaborated on the connections among zombies, slavery, and capitalism.

Some other items I particularly enjoyed: A panel on horror in comics. A paper on Dark Lords, their motivations, typical traits, etc. A session on fairy tales and folklore, including a presentation on diseases that helped to shape the folkloric images of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. The annual iteration of "Fifty Shades of Nay," about issues of consent in speculative fiction.

I read three flash fiction pieces at a "Worlds and Words" short-reading session for multiple authors. People seemed to enjoy all of the stories, especially my own favorite, "Interview with a Reluctant Vampire." (All my experiments in flash fiction are available as free reads on my website, whose URL is below; click on "Complete Works" in the sidebar and scroll most of the way down.) I also participated in a panel called "Reimagining the Night," on the development of monsters in popular culture, especially contemporary fiction and film. It was organized by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, our vampire and revenant division. A lively, fun discussion with good attendance.

The annual LRA business meeting took place on Friday, followed by a screening of THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, Hammer Studio's adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla." The film adheres fairly closely to the original story, aside from pointlessly switching the names of Le Fanu's heroine (Laura) and her friend who's killed early in the movie. The LRA awards for work produced in 2024 were announced at the Saturday banquet: Fiction, WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, by T. Kingfisher (my top choice among the many novels considered); nonfiction, THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK OF THE VAMPIRE, edited by Simon Bacon; other media, a tie between ABIGAIL and the latest adaptation of NOSFERATU.

My Sunday return flight launched on schedule and arrived home on time.

Margaret L. Carter

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

The Atlantic Making Waves

Kudos to The Atlantic for providing a search tool so authors can type their name into a search bar and find out if they are included automatically in the copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta (formerly Facebook) for using 7.5 million pirated books.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/

The Authors Guild has a check list of 5 actions for affected authors to take.

https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-need-to-know/

Thanks also to SFWA and Authors Guild for sharing this information.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews of George R. R. Martin's

A Song of Ice and Fire and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,

Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

As I said last week in this two-part review, I feel bad for Martin. He went head-first into A Song of Ice and Fire and there was no stopping the epic as it grew larger and larger in many different ways, not simply from a writing standpoint but also in the market for the series as it crossed boundaries into TV and other media and merchandising. 

With series that have overarching plots like A Song of Ice and Fire does, finishing in a doable amount of time becomes a nightmare if the entire series isn't written in toto, in advance of publication. Now, obviously, even when he wasn’t as famous as he now is, Martin had a much, much larger audience than I'll ever have as an author, so I've had several luxuries in my writing he's never had. As authors, both of us realize only too well that an overarching series (as opposed to the kind of series with standalone story installments) can't be put off or set aside for too long without becoming off-track and distracted, momentum derailed, and mindset potentially being upset irrevocably to the point of feeling that, as a writer, you're trying to pound an enormous square peg into a very small round hole. In Martin's case, he's spoken of feeling like his books are delayed because he's trying to untangle "the Meereenese knot" (a reference from his own series concerning a nearly impossible act of contortion, and named after the city of Meereen in Slaver's Bay), perhaps in regard to chronology synching up with all the various plot threads. 

Authors who are in the middle of a long, popular series that has left readers dangling for countless years between installments have a tremendous amount of pressure put on them. Who's to blame for that is a combination of many influences, predominately the author's own, the publisher's, and the fans. In this case, Martin had the HBO series aspects added to his stress. However, that pinnacle of outright terror they--Martin in particular--must feel could very definitely impact the quality of writing. I would absolutely hate feeling like practically the whole world was waiting on me to deliver something. Nothing about the scenario appeals to me, though authors who have gone through this situation may have all the money and fame a writer could possibly ever wish for. Does that make the torment worthwhile? Depends on who you ask. Added to Martin's already ponderous burden is this question I imagine he faces each and every day: What if readers are disappointed when he finally provides series arc resolutions with second-to-the-last and final volumes? If there are special types of hell for writers, that's one right there, for sure.              

I've also often wondered how he deals with the fact that the HBO series is finished and he still hasn't finished the book series. The producers were forced to continue on with the conclusion without him, though he reportedly did provide input. Keep in mind, though, that, 1) The writers and developers of films and television have different audiences and opinions on viewer satisfaction than book authors do, and 2) I can't imagine a writer wanting to give away key details about an unfinished book series that may incite readers to feel they have no reason to continue following the series in literary form when he finally finishes writing it. Because the TV show supposedly screwed up the end of the series (according to critics anyway), this gives Martin a unique opportunity to offer the end of the series the way it was meant to be, especially if his rendering is mind-blowingly fantastic. Martin is just too polished and concerned with quality to provide any less than that. But it must be a concern that bugs him even when he's not aware it's there lurking like the harbinger of doom. I also wonder if he's actually watched the portions of the TV series past the point where his published book series ended. As an author, I absolutely would not have watched it or read anything about it. He's said that he doesn't read message boards anymore to prevent his writing from being influenced, so I wonder if that means he avoided watching the final seasons of the TV series, too. I'm not on social media enough to really know whether he did or not watch it or stop after a certain point. 

How a writer ties up the end of a series can either lead readers to becoming lifelong fans or dire enemies, banning that author forever. Like I said, I don't envy authors in this position, regardless of their money and fame. Maybe the challenge is part of the fun for many writers. Nevertheless, those are risks I simply never want to take as a writer because they could so easily blow up in my face. As they say, fame and infamy are two sides of a coin. 

As a writer, I tend to be adamant about being certain even before I begin work on a project that I can actually finish the series in a satisfactory way…or at all. That's for my own peace of mind as well as for my readers. With both of my overarching series writing projects, I made a point of working on the installments one right after the other. For Arrow of Time Chronicles, I completed all four volumes over the course of about 2 1/2 years. They were only published after I finished writing them. They came out one a month from January to April 2020. The three novel parts of Bridge of Fire, Book 10: Woodcutter's Grim Series were written back-to-back and published within days of each other in September 2021. A series with overarching plots absolutely requires successful release dates to keep fans invested and, let's face it, given these days of social menacing, less vicious. While, as I said, Martin probably didn't have the option or maybe even the desire to hold back this series until he'd finished writing all of them, he wouldn't have had to face the monumental pressures he is now if he'd only completed writing the series before editors, publishers, TV networks and producers, and fans got involved. I suspect a fair portion of the delay in finishing Books 6 and 7 is due to wanting to make them both absolutely perfect, far beyond what fans of the TV series are expecting or even hoping for. 

While I wait as patiently as I possibly can for further installments, I'm reading what else the author has to offer apart from A Song of Ice and Fire, mostly enjoying it, and also looking for other "Game of Thrones" connected fiction, like House of the Dragon and the Egg and Dunk adventures, which I'll review below and hopefully provide something to tide you over for The Winds of Winter. 

 

I first read "The Hedge Knight" in the Robert Silverberg edited Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy collection (1998). This story is associated with George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, set in that world 90 years before the events that take place in the novels. 

It's hard to find a definitive title for the series "The Hedge Knight" is part of because, I suppose, this story was the first and therefore not well-defined at the time it was published. I saw it called Tales of Dunk and Egg, Dunk and Egg Adventures, A Knight of the Seven Kingdom, as well as simply Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The three currently available short novels in the A Knight of the Seven Kingdom series (which is what it was called in the trilogy compilation published in 2015 as well as what it will be called for the forthcoming HBO series) are touted as being part of the A Song of Ice and Fire, or even as a prequel. I don't think either are good descriptions. The storylines are completely different. I would call A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms an off-shoot of that series, at most. 

"The Hedge Knight" takes place while the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and it does include characters from A Song of Ice and Fire--Aegon Targaryen (known here as Egg, the future King Aegon V) and Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk, the future Lord Commander of the Kingsguard). In case you're wondering, as I was when I first started reading this, a hedge knight is one without a master that travels the kingdom searching for employment (and sleeping in the hedges). Hoping to gain the interest of a lord as a knight for hire by participating in a tourney, Dunk instead finds himself fighting for his life when he crosses the wrong Targaryen in order to save a young, pretty puppeteer artist. 

The first time I read "The Hedge Knight", I'd just started getting into the "Game of Thrones" world and its massive cast of characters. I didn't really know that series as well as I do now, having both read the books and watched the HBO series countless times since. I had no idea how these characters fit into that world and series. Additionally, the Dunk and Egg (as in, "dunk an egg") aspect seemed silly to me. Beyond that, I have an even stronger opinion of tourneys than Ned Stark--what a waste of time, money, energy, and blood. So I can't say I appreciated the story the first time I read it. However, when I reread it recently in connection with my review of the two Legends short novel collections, it was with a much clearer comprehension of the primary series. I really liked and rooted for Dunk and Egg. As soon as I finished this story, I ordered the trilogy of novellas, published together in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. In large part, I suppose I gave this story more of a chance the second time around because I'm ravenous--more like absolutely famished--for more Ice and Fire world stories. 

"The Sworn Sword", the second story in the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms series was originally featured in the Legends II collection (2003). I started reading "The Sworn Sword" within that anthology but my copy of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms came, so I jumped over to that collection of the three stories the author has written thus far in the series. I read this short novel in almost no time, and I was unable to keep myself from going on to the third story instead of returning to Legends II. I absolutely loved "The Sworn Sword" in which, a year or so after the events of "The Hedge Knight", Dunk and Egg find themselves sworn to the service of an aging, has-been lord with secrets the old man hasn't bothered to reveal to his "employees". When the water on the land of this lord is stolen with a dam built by a neighboring house, Dunk and Egg go to the thief who's been painted as black as night by their lord. But things aren't at all what they initially seemed. 

In the third short novel, "The Mystery Knight" (published in 2010 in the Martin and Gardner Dozois edited anthology Warriors), Dunk and Egg are on the road, staying out of sight after prior events in the other two stories but longing for a soft bed instead of the hard ground, and good food instead of the hardtack that takes away the will to chew, let alone live. When they hear about a wedding taking place nearby, complete with a feast and mini tourney, Dunk decides maybe winning the tilt will provide the means for him and his squire Egg to make their way to Winterfell to see about serving one the lord there. They quickly become embroiled in another deadly conspiracy, this one involving a dragon egg. This series is absolute must-read, as is the one it's set in is. 

The compilation of all three short novels was a joy to read alongside illustrations by the fabulous Gary Gianni. Prior to the frequently placed, amazingly detailed black and white sketches, I'd pictured Dunk as a much older knight (I was inadvertently thinking about the actor Liam Cunningham who played Davos Seaworth in the HBO Game of Thrones series). I also imagined Egg as being older and much larger. The illustrations show a much younger man for Dunk, and small Egg is adorable with his bald head in Gianni's artwork.

In 2011, it was reported that Martin was working on a fourth novella for A Knight of the Seven Kingdom (The She-Wolves of Winterfell) but he was forced to stop writing it with the demand for the next title in A Song of Ice and Fire. In 2014, Martin said he'd roughed out another Dunk and Egg story, The Village Hero, set in the Riverlands. Which will be written/published first remains up in the air. He also has notes and "fairly specific ideas" for a number of other installments with potentially revealing plot titles: The Sellsword, The Champion, The Kingsguard, and The Lord Commander. 

The first three stories were adapted as comic books and reprinted as graphic novels. Additionally, after talk of this series becoming another HBO TV adaptation in the Ice and Fire universe, it was given a straight to series order in 2023 and filming began on the first season, consisting of six episodes, in June 2024. Release date is supposedly late 2025. I can hardly wait! 

If you're a lover of high fantasy similar to The Lord of the Rings (but much, much more graphic) with timeless characters and rich, medieval settings, suspense and danger galore, I can't imagine you wouldn't absolutely love both of George R. R. Martin's connected series, whether reading the books or watching the series, just like I do. The added appeal of dragons, blue-eyed ice creatures, hedge knights, and would-be princes in hiding sold me from the moment I heard about them. There's a lot already available here in this amazing universe with the promise (though I've probably wisely stopped holding my breath) of still more to come. 

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

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

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