Karen S. Wiesner: Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

by Karen S. Wiesner

Note that this book is also published under the title The Lost Book of Salem. I was drawn to the cover of this book when it first came out in 2009 (see it below, though the reproduction is washed out). The cover you see below the original is a newer version. The first edition, in tones of brown, doesn't include the girl on it. The original, I feel, is such a beautiful cover and the back cover blurb on the slipcover leaves of the hardcover was equally compelling.

I took a chance and purchased it when it first came out. I was very pleased with the wonderfully written story with deep, complex characters and a thrilling mystery. The main character, college student and daughter of the university president, Connie Goodwin, is working on her doctoral dissertation. She's spending the summer clearing out of her grandmother's cottage so it can be put up for sale. While there, she comes across a parchment including the name of one of her ancestors--Deliverance Dane, an accused witch from 1692. From there, Connie hunts for Deliverance's spell book, The Physick Book, and in the process discovers her own, previously unimagined power. (Incidentally, physick--pronounced fizz-ick--is what medicine was called in those times, usually implying herbal remedies.)

I personally love books that are set within halls of academia and scholarly research. (Favorites of mine include Charlie Lovett's books--which have little or no supernatural elements--and are similar to this, just as fascinating.) This one is intertwined with 17 Century witch trial narrative, another fascination for me. Combined with danger and nail-biting suspense, you really can't go wrong. If you've already read The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane once upon a time, it may be time for a second perusal. In the course of writing this review, I discovered there was a sequel called The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, following Connie's adventures as an expert on America's witchcraft history, which I intend to pick up and possibly review here at a later time.

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.

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/

Grumbling About Adaptations

The second season of the current INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE series has begun. I'm ambivalent about this project. It has lots to admire. The series format allows far more delving into and expansion on the novel than the movie did. The TV version restores the subplot of Louis's religiously devout brother, replaced in the movie by a simplistic premise of "my wife died young, so I have nothing to live for." Presenting the interviewer, hardly more than a boy in the book, as an aging, sickly, cynical veteran journalist revisiting his youthful conversations with Louis to set the record straight impresses me as a stroke of genius. Among other things, this technique cleverly justifies discrepancies between the novel and the new adaptation.

I dislike two major changes made by the series, however: First and less critical, the aging-up of Claudia from a little girl to a 14-year-old. Of course, the metafictional reason is obvious. A child actress would outgrow the role too fast, whereas Claudia is supposed to be frozen at the age when she was turned. But making her old enough to pass for late teens or even early twenties (though we haven't seen her do the latter) loses both the horrifying and tragic dimensions of an adult mind potentially stuck for centuries in a child's body. The preview of next week's episode, though, does show her exploiting that frightfully perverse situation as an actress in the Theatre des Vampires. She wears a frilly baby-doll costume and introduces herself as a murderous vampire trapped in the shape of a little girl.

More importantly, I was disappointed by the time shift. Sure, early 20th-century New Orleans has exciting possibilities as a setting, but so does antebellum New Orleans from the original source. Although the producers claim they didn't think audiences would find the early 19th century interesting or relatable, I suspect them of being too lazy or stingy to recreate the period. What, TV audiences didn't embrace GAME OF THRONES (medieval-style fantasy world) or OUTLANDER (mid- to late-18th century Scotland and America)? Antebellum New Orleans had a thriving "free colored" population (as richly portrayed in Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January historical mystery series). I would have loved to see Louis as a free Black businessman in that era. A fantastic opportunity wasted, in my opinion.

I recently read FRANKLY, MY DEAR, a film scholar's in-depth analysis of GONE WITH THE WIND, mostly the movie but with cogent comparisons to the novel as well. As epic movies go, this one mostly sticks about as close to the source material as could reasonably be expected in the allotted running time. A miniseries version, which would allow inclusion of the subplots left out of the movie, would be highly desirable -- except that it's hard to imagine a convincing new Scarlett with Vivian Leigh lingering in the audience's mind's eye. Not to mention Rhett Butler. (I didn't mind the replacement actress in the sequel, SCARLETT, because she's older there than in most of the novel, so it's believable that she would have changed some. Rhett, though -- to me, Rhett IS Clark Gable.) The censoring of language, required by the film code of that era, is more amusing than annoying. It's not as if we don't know what they really mean, and the director doubtless had to make concessions to earn Rhett's final "damn." For instance, Prissy can't say she'd be skinned alive for entering a "ho house"; she has to say something like "Miz Watling's place." The prudishness rises to a level of absurdity, though, when Scarlett banishes Rhett from her bedroom. In the book, he tells her, "Keep your chaste bed." In the film it's, "Keep your sanctity." A mention of chastity was considered obscene? LOL.

The one major change I disapprove of is the omission of Scarlett's first child, the boy fathered by ill-fated Charles Hamilton. We don't miss her daughter by Frank Kennedy, who's little more than a cipher in the novel anyway. But Scarlett's first pregnancy helps to explain how she could get through Melanie's rough delivery with only the dubious help of Prissy, who notoriously doesn't know anything about birthin' babies. In the real 19th century, well-to-do women often provided aid to poor families during occasions of sickness or childbirth, as Scarlett's mother does in GONE WITH THE WIND. Unlike Marmee in LITTLE WOMEN, however, Ellen O'Hara apparently shelters her daughters from such activities. So Scarlett's first pregnancy serves a plot purpose in the book, and its omission in the movie leaves her relative competence in the Atlanta childbirth sequence unexplained.

While I reluctantly realize that fiction and film are two different media and no movie or TV adaptation can capture everything in its source material, for me the book is always primary. When viewing a film version of a book, I want as faithful a rendition of the original as possible. For example, ROSEMARY'S BABY is practically perfect in that respect, and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS comes close. The miniseries versions of WINDS OF WAR and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE (available on DVD) do an impressively good job, not surprising with a script written by the author of the novels, Herman Wouk. If the producers and directors of an adaptation don't really like the story as it comes to them, why do they bother making a movie or series of it? (Such as the travesty of STARSHIP TROOPERS, which lifts the title and superficial plot elements from Heinlein's novel to construct a script that leaves out the most important scenes of his book -- the flashbacks to the high-school ethics course, one fragment of which is included but twisted to convey the opposite of what's meant in the novel -- and directly contradicts its core message.) So the first thing I look for in a book-to-film transformation is respect for and maximum feasible fidelity to the author's story. After that, one hopes for all the other elements to be good, too.

Margaret L. Carter

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

What The LLC ?!

Working writers, and even retired writers, need insurance. For many of us, putting ones writing pursuits under the umbrella of an LLC.

Legal blogger Dave Griswold of the law firm Wolters Kluwer shares helpful insights in an article explaining the ins-and-outs of Limited Liability Companies.

https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/how-to-form-an-llc-what-is-an-llc-advantages-disadvantages-and-more

Of course, an LLC should have its own bank account, and assets should not be co-mingled. If you co-mingle your assets, you might endanger the protections. It's called "piercing the veil". 

As of this year, there's not much to the "veil", because one must file a Beneficial Ownership Information report with FinCEN. For more information about the BOI, see here:

https://www.fincen.gov/boi

One also needs insurance. Maybe you assume that you have it, but it might be wise to check on that every few years.

Last week, legal bloggers Scott P. DeVries and Torrye Zullo for the Hunton Insurance Recovery blog owned by Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, shared a drily fascinating analysis of a new trend in insurance coverage relating to social media activities: Defence Coverage.

https://www.huntonak.com/hunton-insurance-recovery-blog/social-media-and-insurance-coverage-the-next-emerging-trend#page=1

The trouble with some insurance is, it may cover bodily injury but not mental injury, or it might cover both types of injury. One need to check ones insurance. These days, there are increasing numbers of lawsuits from plaintiffs who are concerned about epidemic-levels of social media addiction among young people.

Apparently, reading something "distressing" can cause physical harm.

"Some courts have held that a mental injury, accompanied by physical manifestation, qualifies as “bodily injury.” Physical manifestations have included weight loss, hair loss, fragile fingernails, loss of sleep, headaches, stomach pains and muscle aches."

The focus is on insurance protection for the wealthiest of social media companies, but they do refer to "influencers" and advertisers, too. It is unlikely that a lowly author would be worth suing, and one does not want to put ideas into anyone's head.

One can take that last clause in more ways than one!

Happy Memorial Day to all American readers!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com

http://www.rowenacherry.com 

 

Karen S. Wiesner: Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Diaries of the Family Dracul Series by Jeanne Kalogridis

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Diaries of the Family Dracul Series

by Jeanne Kalogridis

by Karen S. Wiesner

The author also writes under the pseudonym J.M. Dillard, and many will be very familiar with those works, as they include novelizations of popular movies (The Fugitive, Star Trek), and many episodes of Star Trek (including the original, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise). However, it was this series with a ton of advantages that made me snatch them up when I first saw them. The first book in the trilogy, Covenant with the Vampire, takes place fifty years after the events of Dracula, and focuses on Dracula's great-nephew, tasked with the inheritance of managing the family estate (and, consequently, his great-uncle's appetite)--and there's a threat that if he doesn't bring the count victims, those he himself loves will be in danger. Each book in the trilogy is written in diary form, which I adored in the original and that manner of conveyance really worked here.

These books can only be read compulsively. They grabbed hold of me immediately and were very hard to put down. I segued from one to the next almost without pause. Written even more sensuously than Anne Rice's vampire tales, with myriad taboos shattered, there are some very disturbing scenes included that aren't for the faint of heart. But don't let that put you off. The author's passion for her topic is blatant and lush, exploring every aspect of this haunting, horrifying, unforgettable legacy.

If you love Dracula, you'll want to visit the same world in the compelling further adventures of Prince Vlad Tsepesh, as told from the point of view of a descendant touched by good instead of evil.

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.

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/

Fantasy Trope What-Ifs

Peter S. Beagle, author of THE LAST UNICORN, has just released a fantasy novel titled I'M AFRAID YOU'VE GOT DRAGONS. What if dragons weren't huge, majestic, terrifying beasts, but household pests the size of small lizards (at least as far as the characters know to start with)? The protagonist doesn't hunt dragons with armor and sword; he cleans them out of walls by the dozens or hundreds like mice or cockroaches. Of course, what he and his friends know at the beginning of the story isn't the whole truth, and things soon get much more complicated.

Fairy tales, myths, and legends, having countless traditional variations anyway, lend themselves especially well to rewritings from different viewpoints, imaginative re-visionings, and "what ifs?"

Snow White returns to life from a deathlike state in a glass coffin. What if she were a vampire? In Tanith Lee's "Red as Blood" and Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples," she is. What if the allegedly wicked fairy in "Sleeping Beauty" had an excellent reason for keeping the princess in suspended animation? Read T. Kingfisher's novel THORNHEDGE to find out. There's also at least one pulp-era short story (I can't remember the title) that presents Sleeping Beauty as a vampire. What if Maleficent in the Disney SLEEPING BEAUTY animated film wasn't truly evil? They made a movie proposing that alternative themselves. The more we ponder the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, the less sense it makes. If he can create gold, why does he bother accepting bribes of jewelry from the heroine? Why does he want the baby? If he plans to eat it, couldn't he snatch random infants rather than going to all that trouble to get a queen's firstborn? How could he be careless enough to proclaim his secret name in song? The six stories in THE RUMPELSTILTSKIN PROBLEM, by Vivian Vande Velde, attempt to answer these questions in deviously inventive ways.

The characterization of the boy who doesn't grow up in James Barrie's original PETER PAN includes hints of darkness -- absent from the Disney adaptation, naturally -- that blatantly invite speculation and re-visioning. What if Peter had a complex agenda for bringing abandoned or abused children to Neverland? THE CHILD THIEF, by fantasy artist Brom, explores the shadowed forests of Neverland through the lens of such a motivation. What if Peter was outright evil, as in the TV series ONCE UPON A TIME, which deconstructs numerous other fairy tales as well? What if he returned to the mundane world, grew up, and forgot his magical past? In the movie HOOK, he does. What if he were transgender? In Austin Chant's heartrending YA novel PETER DARLING, Peter is Wendy or vice versa.

Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series, beginning with THE FAIRY GODMOTHER -- what if Cinderella became a Godmother instead of marrying a prince? -- rings a multitude of changes on familiar stories. Any fantasy author searching for plot ideas can find a bottomless treasure trove in traditional folk tales, as illustrated in the long-running anthology series edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, beginning with SNOW WHITE BLOOD RED, still available on Amazon.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Much More Than Blurb

When I lived in Germany, I belonged to an ex-patriate group whose name I forget, but it was nothing at all like Real Housewives of the Taunus. They had a DIY ringbound cookbook which they published among themselves and probably to a wider audience, but this was well before the internet.

It was called Much More Than Mushrooms, and it was very helpful for Brits and Americans who were living in a strange land, and cooking with strange ingredients (including the morel mushroom that looks like grey, thoroughly chewed chewing gum) and an unfamiliar system of kitchen measurements.

I cannot find it through a quick Google search, although I did find a lot about magic mushrooms, radioactive wild mushrooms and game. Some of that radioactivity could have come from Chernobyl...

That cook book is the inspiration for the Much More Than part of my title.

Blurb is not only the promotional prose that we writers craft with great precision and care, and then refer to with a term that sounds self-deprecating. 

Blurb is also a rather good, DIY publishing platform and bookstore that I would say works best for scrapbooks, hobby books, project books, memoirs, special event commemoration, coffee table books with lots of illustrations and so forth.

I've helped my husband put together six or seven car-related books using Blurb for our own private enjoyment. So that is the preamble.

Recently, I have been thinking about selling books, though not for myself. Lizi Dorney, the daughter of a dear friend, asked me to take a look at a marvellous little children's book that she has written called Rainbow Lane.

https://lizi-dorney-art.sumupstore.com/

Lizi is an incredible artist, and you can find out more about her on Facebook or Instagram, but one has to log in to those sites so see what's what.  Here are some helpful articles from Blurb "influencers" that I have shared with Lizi, and am sharing today with you.

One of the most interesting points made by Dan Milnor is the importance of newsletters. He cites a Kinsey study that claims that using email (for instance for newsletters) is forty times more effective than promoting your books on social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram.

How to Sell Your Book with Dan Milnor

Dan uses the example of a birding book, and starting to interest and involve a birding audience before one even starts to write. IMHO, his article is well worth a five minute read.

Simon Batchelar blogs for Blurb about ethical marketing, which is a refreshing concept in today's frenzied, and often-of-putting marketplace of hyperbole and desperation.  

Behind the Book with Simon Batchelar

Simon's is a longer piece, but in a Q and A (interview) format, that includes a three-step plan and excellent advice involving charting. It might be worth bookmarking!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

Karen S. Wiesner: Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Wendy Ward Series by John Passarella

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Wendy Ward Series by John Passarella

by Karen S. Wiesner

A bit of an explanation: Wither, winner of a Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, was written by the authors John Passarella and Joseph Gangemi (writer of Inamorata) under the pseudonym J.G. Passarella. The rest of the books in the series were written by John Passarella alone. Wither was his very first book, and it was intended to be a standalone. Passarella might be better known for his media tie-novels from the series Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Grimm.

Wither follows Wendy Ward a college student who's a white witch living in the fictional town Windale, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Wither is a late 17th century witch who, with a murderous coven of witches, terrorized the town. Now she's reawakened and intends to find a human host for herself and her most faithful.

Wendy was an engaging character along with Abby, an abused eight-year-old, and Karen, a pregnant professor. Wanting to see them succeed became more and more intense as the story progressed and on into the follow-up stories. There was something slithering about this series, starting from the very first installment. The terror crept up until all I could do was jump, bite back a scream, and then hold on with clenching fingers. I found a used copy of it, but, before I'd even finished, I rushed out and purchased the next two books in the series, Wither's Rain and Wither's Legacy. Both were equally enjoyable. Additionally, a collection of short stories in the series is published under the title Exit Strategy & Others, but most of these stories are also available in other anthologies as well. According to his website, the author is currently working on a fourth Wendy Ward novel.

   

If you like supernatural terror combined with characters that you can emotionally invest in, this is a great series to read nonstop over the course of a stormy weekend.

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.

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/

Why Is the Internet Getting Worse?

In Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column, he analyzes why everything on the internet is in his view "(suddenly, simultaneously) getting (much) worse."

The Villain of Their Own Story

He begins with how online platforms decay -- in the sense of no longer working to the benefit of users -- and proceeds to the questions of why they do so. He summarizes the "progression of the disease" thus: "First, companies are good to their users. Once users are lured in and have been locked down, companies maltreat those users in order to shift value to business customers, the people who pay the platform’s bills. Once those business users are locked in, the platform starts to turn the screws on them, too." The process sounds like the decline from a Golden Age or the fall from a primal Eden. Not that I suppose Doctorow claims the internet was ever perfect.

This essay focuses on his explanation of why it's all "suddenly, simultaneously" getting worse at the present time. According to Doctorow, it's not because the companies changed from beneficent providers of services and content to greedy Scrooges. They've always used algorithms to "twiddle" the figurative digital dials in the direction of the maximum profit to themselves. It's just that there used to be "constraints" on this strategy that no longer exist or at least not to an effective degree. The essay lists the principal constraints and explores how they've been weakened or eliminated in recent years.

As Doctorow puts it, "No one is the villain of their own story." Not even mega-corporations. "The tech bosses who once made good products told themselves they did so because they were virtuous, but much of that virtue stemmed not from their character, but from the consequences of failing to deliver good products at fair prices under ethical conditions." With the eviscerating of the consequences, as he sees it, the "virtue" built on pragmatic foundations has crumbled.

What, if anything, can consumers do to ameliorate this situation? We're left with an apparent scenario of inevitable decline -- a rather depressing prospect.

Doctorow elaborates on this topic in a more technically detailed post here:

Algorithms

Margaret L. Carter

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

If You're Going Through North Carolina...

I am not going to recommend that you wear some flowers in your hair. Such a disguise might not help at all. But you might want to read an article that has been thoughtfully shared by our sometimes copyright-unfriendly friends at the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article286920890.html

In my early days of bsp (blatant self promotion), there was a start-up company that did a very good deal on promotional postcards, and they also did car magnets. I remember embarrassing my daughter (and she was right that my behavior was inappropriate) by driving around with a shopping- bag-sized car door magnet displaying a bare chested hunk and promoting my alien romance novella, Mating Net.

If EFF and NewsObserver has it right, I should stop at the North Carolina welcome center rest stop near Asheville, and slap my old hunky door magnets on for the drive-thru of NC, because the plethora of surveillance cameras can even look at bumper stickers and share images with policemen everywhere. It would be better promo if I wrote first responder romances, of course.

Talking of promotion, Angela Hoy of Booklocker writes a fantastic weekly newsletter, which I highly recommend. Last week, she shared a feature article comparing the ROI (of time) of a newsletter vs a blog.

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/email-newsletter-vs-blog-which-sells-more-books-dawn-colclasure?utm_source_platform=mailpoet

What do you think? 

Maybe I am an outlier, but I tend to read the posts of the blogs to which I subscribe, and to delete unread the newsletters. I only stay subscribed because I don't want to hurt the authors' feelings by unsubscribing.

Also, a blog is searchable, and if one bothers with labels and so forth, blog posts show up in a by-topic search. Below are just two fantastic blog recommendations.

For excellent promo and marketing advice, you might want to add Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts to your list.

https://amarketingexpert.com/the-best-book-marketing-company-blog-in-publishing/

Another blog that ought to be a must-follow for not-yet-well-established writers is Writer Beware.

https://writerbeware.blog/

Happy Mothers' Day to all!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

Karen S. Wiesner: Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Hatching Series by Ezekiel Boone

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Hatching Series by Ezekiel Boone

by Karen S. Wiesner

Despite my avid fear of spiders (little bitty ones and big ones alike; monster queen ones? well, let's not even go there, except within this series), I couldn't resist something that was described as "Independence Day meets World War Z, only with spiders". In other words, apocalyptic stakes riddled with horror galore. I love horror and end-of-the-world stories. I took a chance of ensuring myself lasting months of nightmares all including the creepy-crawlies lurking around us, mostly unseen.

I devoured the first book, The Hatching, in almost no time at all, all the while feeling like I was about to be devoured by some arachnid monster creeping up behind me--and what the heck was that moving along my leg?!! I couldn't put this book down. Readers were taken all around the globe, given a piece of the puzzle from multiple angles. It starts in the heart of a Peruvian jungle, where tourists get the surprise of their lives when an ancient, long-dormant evil awakens…and feeds. Meanwhile, FBI agents are sent to investigate a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis with gruesome connections. Mysteries crop up around the world: Disturbing seismic patterns in India are stumping scientists in an earthquake lab. The Chinese government unfathomably decides to drop a bomb in a region of their own country. A package from South America arrives in a DC lab, and all hell breaks loose.

Mike Rich, an FBI agent, is an engaging main character. On the personal front, he's dealing with an ex-wife who's remarried, something that still wrecks him, and being a father to their daughter Annie while juggling a demanding job that barely gives him time to breathe. Professor Melanie Guyer is fascinated with all things spider, and she's also a loveable slut. The attraction between Mike and Melanie, after they meet through their work, is fun and an enjoyable reprieve from all the action and tension in this otherwise non-stop nail-biter.

Finishing the book was torture for me because I purchased it after it first came out--July 2016. At that time, I had no idea when the follow-up would be released, but I waited about nine months (April 2017). At that point, I was still interested in reading it so I went ahead and purchased it. Skitter was nearly as good as the first, but not quite as compelling. I still liked Mike, but Melanie's insistence on treating sex as unemotionally as she would a mindless massage was really starting to wear on me, especially since Mike was so lovable and her inability combined with unwillingness to commit to anything serious put me off rooting for her or Melanie and Mike as a couple. Zero Day came out in February 2018. I did buy it, mildly enjoyed it, but I think the huge lapse in waiting from one book to the next really harshed my initial buzz. I do intend to read them again back-to-back, as a series, instead of a drawn-out marathon of patience, like my first time around. Now that all the books are readily available, it's a great time to binge-read them again. The stories would also make an amazing movie series.

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.

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/ 

If We Could Do It Over Again

Recently, I've often pondered the question, "What if you could live your life over?" Many works of science fiction and fantasy explore this provocative idea, such as the 1986 movie PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED. Peggy Sue, disillusioned with her marriage, gets transported back to her senior year in high school. Her second chance, however, ends with her making the same decision as before, becoming engaged to her future husband just as she did on the first go-round. Would I take such a chance if offered? The prospect of avoiding so many past mistakes is attractive. OTOH, there are many things I would dread living through again, such as the hard work of getting through college and grad school And live one's life from what date? If I had to start over as a child (say, at the age of eight when my father remarried) with full memories of my first life, it would sound more like a nightmare than a gift. The idea of reliving childhood with an adult's mind -- and being treated as a child, with no significant power to affect events -- would be frustrating and depressing, I think. If I had to pick a "reset" point, I would probably choose to start over on the day after our wedding. But how could I convince my husband to make the desired changes? He'd think I was joking or crazy.

Anyway, in practice the memories would get fuzzy and confused after a while, so that one would eventually lose most of the advantage of hindsight/foresight (which would it be?). Maybe writing a detailed letter to oneself at an early age would work better; there's a country song about what advice the narrator would include in a message to himself at seventeen. With everything in writing, one couldn't forget the details with the passage of time. (How granular should one get, anyway? "Don't let that salesman in Albuquerque talk you into buying a sewing machine; it will be a waste of money.") But -- as soon as a few significant alterations were made, the past as I remembered it would go off the rails anyway. A shift in a day or two would mean different children would be conceived, rendering a lot of the memories moot. And changes might end up making things worse instead of better. Science fiction provides an abundance of cautionary tales about time travelers who try to "fix" the past and precipitate disasters instead (e.g., the protagonist of Stephen King's 11/22/63, on a mission to prevent President Kennedy's assassination).

On the whole, it may be better we can't do that. There's a TWILIGHT ZONE episode (based on a short story) about a rich man who wants the fun of returning to the prime of life and building his fortune all over again, so he strikes a deal with a demon. It turns out he doesn't enjoy the early 20th century as much as he thought he would on the basis of his rose-colored memories. Also, he keeps waiting to turn young again, which doesn't happen, so he dies of a heart attack (no modern medicine available). The demon appears to him and points out that he wanted to travel back to the time he remembered -- "Can we help it if your memory is lousy?" -- and he never mentioned having his youth restored. I'd probably tell the demon or genie, "No, thanks," and play the hand I've been dealt.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Tis The Season...

'Tis the Season to be jolly. Not. At least, "not" in the sense of expecting a portly foreigner to come down the chimney bearing gifts.

It might, however, be the season for romance writer conferences and retreats and spring flings. Many will be live and in person. Some may be over Zoom or through Microsoft Teams. If you are giving a presentation at one of these events, legal blogger Kiera Boyd of the law firm Fasken IP has some timely advice about copyright and presentations.

Copyright and Presentations: How to Avoid Presentation-Related Copyright Infringement

I've not seen a legal blog on this topic for years, if at all. There was a time when a speaker at a private conference could probably get away with using other people's photographs, music, video, or words, but now that everyone (almost) has a smart phone, one never knows when one is being photographed, recorded, filmed, or streamed. The chances of being exposed are greater than ever.

Also, at least in America, the legal laissez-faire approach to "Fair Use" (known as "Fair Dealing" in Canada, is tightening up.

Frank D. D'angelo of the law firm Loeb & Loeb writes warningly about a bit of a sea change in a couple of high-profile copyright infringment cases.

https://quicktakes.loeb.com/post/102j6l8/appeals-court-signals-narrowing-of-fair-use-doctrine-post-warhol#page=1

If you are an author, speaking at a convention, it is always best to get permission in writing from the copyright owner, even if you don't think that you need it, and even if it ought to be obvious that you are giving great publicity and promo to the author you are quoting or whose cover art you are displaying, or the musician whose music you are using to set a mood.

The most important rights to be aware of when jazzing up a presentation are "public performance rights", and "reproduction rights" (in the sense of copying, publishing, distributing).

Once upon a time, there was some tech titan who claimed that it is better to ask forgiveness after infringing someone else's copyright than to ask permission (and perhaps be explicitly denied permission) beforehand. This writer does not think that that is good legal advice! 

If you cannot get permission from the copyright owner, make very sure that you do give attribution to the owner, and that you make it clear that your use is either news reportage --preferably with commentary--, educational instruction, criticism or illustrative for research purposes. There are other potential "Fair Use" defenses that would not make sense in a the context of giving a seminar (or whatever) at a readers-writers shindig, where your purposes are self-promotion.

Copyright infringement lawsuits are expensive for both the plaintiff and for the defendant, and the outcome is unpredictable. Best not to give a copyright owner the provocation, IMHO.

For more on Fair Use, check out the CopyrightAlliance.

https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-fair-use/

Check out Kiera Boyd's article, with special attention to what she suggests are best practices for using images that you find online. 

Assume that any image you see online is protected by copyright, (even if the copyright symbol and attribution has been removed), but if the copyright symbol and attribution is on the image, that does not mean that you have a license to cut and paste it.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com
EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday  

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I picked up Leech by Hiron Ennes at a used bookstore and bought it because 1) it was in the science fiction/horror section, 2) it sounded like a combination of genres I love and the back cover blurb definitely appealed, and 3) I liked the intriguing cover, which, by the way, my wastewater treatment manager husband immediately said, tongue in cheek, "Look, a BOD bottle--but what's that weird, black gunk coming out of it?" 

I barely know where to start with this review. I've never before read a book quite like Leech, which was published in 2022 and was the debut novel by the author, who works in the field of medicine. Leech runs the gamut when it comes to genre classification: Gothic, Victorian era literature, historical, science fiction, horror, medical mystery, speculative and post-apocalyptic fiction are some of the fitting categories, along with two others that may also (but I'm not quite sure) qualify: steampunk and body horror. In the case of the latter, I've only heard of such a thing in relation to Caitlin Starling, an author I really like who's also a narrative designer that creates art exhibitions. These could be considered (by the squeamish like myself) body horror. 

The back cover blurb barely seems adequate to cover what takes places in this unusual novel. But maybe that's the best place to start, with a posting of the blurb on the book. This reveals to us what the author and publisher intended to give away freely about the major themes in the story. 

Meet the cure for the human disease. 

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies. 

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed. 

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again. 

There are strongly overt clues running all through this blurb as to what the underlying plot is, but it's not really something that's realized fully until the reader is well into the novel--something I'll talk about again soon. 

I instantly liked this story when I started reading it because it has evocative depictions of the Victorian era--the picturesque setting (in this case, a desolate one filled with frigid, imposing mountains, dense forests, and a ruin of a "castle"); the genteel manners and mannerisms practiced by all with the classes of society always firmly occupying their proper places; the quiet, subtle, eerie, and insidious sense that absolutely nothing is as it seems on the surface. In fact, one of the things I liked most in those beginning chapters was how much the main character (who isn't specifically named through most of the story--it's written in first person point-of-view) reminded me of Jonathan Harker, a new solicitor, traveling to Eastern Europe to meet with his very first client. Leech takes place mainly in Verdira, located in a remote, frozen stronghold where wheatrock--an extremely valuable commodity used for many different things--is mined. 

What the back cover blurb plainly hints at but doesn't firmly verify for most of first two-thirds of the novel is that the pathologist the Institute has sent to investigate the death of the previous one is in fact a hive-mind body host of a parasite that's replaced all medical practitioners in existence in the past five-hundred years since it established predominance over living creatures. This very same parasite was in part responsible for most human beings being transformed into mutated states while some other, unspecified (but hinted at being caused by a "{galaxy?} flying machine") physical disaster turned the world's oceans acid, shattered the moon, and created feral machines called ventigeaux ("orphans of biotechnology", as the author describes them). 

Most of the characters in the book were transformed by that parasite in one way or another from mechanic hearts, to vestigial tails to Verdira's Baron being kept alive mainly through arcane machinery. The author intended it to be the norm in this world for regular patients to display "unconventional physical attributes" such as "a mechanical limb or a migratory birthmark or a literal doppelganger". 

In this feudal society, while the Institute handles all medical matters, powerful barons run local areas. In addition to the misery-inducing Baron who rules over Verdira and doesn't have a kind word for anyone living in the crumbling chateau with him are his family and servants. His grown son Didier cares nothing about the lost miners and numerous massacres that have and are taking place in Verdira so long as the precious wheatrock is capable of being mined to contribute to their ongoing wealth. His wife drinks but never escapes the fact that she is, sadly, little more than a breeder. Her only worth is in producing heirs. And she knows it. Due to the mutations from the pathogen, she's suffered a long series of stillborn births. Her only surviving progenies are twin girls creepily described as "A tangle of dark hair…two small bodies sprouting like stems from its middle." Additionally, there's the tragic houseboy, Èmile, the last survivor of genocide against indigenous cave and mountain dwellers. 

While the back cover blurb and the writing itself were almost blatant about touting the "symbiont" parasite that's running the medical show in this world, it wasn't immediately apparent what exactly was taking place in the story as I read through the first two-thirds. It took me that long to make all the necessary connections to comprehend that I was reading a book that was in the point of view of a pathogen for most of that time. (Guess having been in the POV of a dinosaur in another book I read isn't as odd as I formerly thought compared to this.) Only later in the story, when the previous owner of the host body re-exerted her (or them-) self and emerged despite the controlling parasite inhabiting the Institute's hive-mind also being there, did it become clear that the true horror of the story was that the main character in the host body had come to realize what had happened to her or them. At the same time, the hive-mind of that parasite had identified a brand-new parasite called Pseudomycota that killed the former doctor's host body and infected nearly everyone in Verdira. 

Stated in an interview on the BookPage website as the author's main influence for writing Leech are "…the stories science can tell us about our own cells. … Deep in our mitochondria lives a strand of DNA…an essential piece of our cellular network without which we would die. …Scientists…propose it is the genome of a foreign organism that hitched a ride inside us back when we were single-celled. It’s been sitting there ever since, perpetuating itself. … Does it care about me, or does it only care about my reproductive success? … You stay awake so many nights thinking about stuff like that, and eventually you write Leech." I found this to be one of the most unique premises I've ever heard for a story. It's part of why I found it so tantalizing as I tried to piece together the tapestry of what was happening. 

It's a brilliant story that was well-written…up until the last bit of the book, where the narration shifts from hive-mind parasite to former host-body consciousness. While this does make sense in the theme of the story, the end made for a lot of curse words strung together with poor grammar in an almost too modern tone of voice that I don't believe fit the previous Victorian style. Or maybe that was the point. I also felt like the book dragged on too long near the middle. Firmer editing in both these situations wouldn't have been remiss. 

Beyond that, the unfortunate side effect of keeping readers in the dark about the basic scenario of the story is that, when details are finally given to fill in the many, many gaps that'd been deliberately left hanging earlier in the story, now suddenly readers are overwhelmed, smothered, even crushed beneath the weight of it all. I found the last third of the book very hard to process, and quite honestly, I didn't understand the end scene one iota. It almost seemed to imply that one of the characters turned into a werewolf or a dog, like the ones he cared for at the chateau (gulp! a ventigeaux???). I wasn't entirely sure, and I could be completely off about that. 

In reflecting after I finished reading the book and then allowed myself to research it so I could figure out all the things that seemed foggy while I was reading, I asked myself if I actually liked the story. My answer is kind of the same answer as I would give for Never Let Me Go written by the absolutely brilliant author Kazuo Ishiguro. You can read Margaret Carter's review of the book here on Alien Romances Blog: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/01/clones-as-organ-donors.html. Ishiguro is the same writer who gave us The Remains of the Day, which will probably always be in my top ten of favorite novels. When I read Never Let Me Go, I felt like I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle--the one in fact that would give everything else there focus an intense meaning. Without it, nothing made sense. I had flashes of feeling like I understood what was going on in the story while reading it, but nothing cohesive, nothing strong enough to help me bridge the gap. When I finished the book and then, again, allowed myself to research it, I found myself deeply and irrevocably disappointed. If the author had given me one crucial bit of information, I would have not only liked the book I would have loved it. Instead, I felt disgruntled by the lack of clarification that should have been given within the book--in my opinion, as early as possible. Without it, I had no sense of cohesion or resolution, and I felt cheated. I was left angry enough to not read another Ishiguro book to this day. I know, sad. I've decided this manner of not quite finishing a book in a way that brings everything full circle isn't really my cup of tea when it comes to reading. 

In a similar but nowhere near as drastic way, Leech kind of gave me everything other than the illuminating key to understanding the whole book until the very end, at which point I did eventually get most of what was needed for clarity and closure. Nevertheless, I did feel that a search for deeper explanations to bring everything together was needed even then. Unfortunately, a lot of the websites that I found information about Leech saw this as an allegorical tale. Like Tolkien, I distrust and abhor allegory, and I try not to include it in any of the books I write. So I passed over all that without reading much, not wanting or even being willing to read "real world parallels" into a fictional story. I do recommend Leech, especially for those who love speculative horror set in the backdrop of Victorian-era-like literature. 

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/

RavenCon 17 (April 2024)

Last weekend, my husband, our daughter, and I attended RavenCon near Richmond, Virginia. Here's the convention's website. Information about this year's con is still up.

RavenCon

Guests of honor were editor Ellen Datlow and author Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher. Since she's one of my favorite writers, I was thrilled when I learned she'd be there. Her reading consisted of excerpts from a new "Sworn Soldier" novel -- sequel to WHAT MOVES THE DEAD and WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, yay! -- and a novel about an angel and a demon teaming up to solve a mystery in a small village. (She mentioned her dismay when the GOOD OMENS series premiered, after she was well into the book.) I watched part of her interview later, fascinating background information about the origins of her writing career.

I appeared on panels about Writing Believable Characters and Geeks Parenting Geeks. The latter especially was a lot of fun, the whole session filled with memories and anecdotes about introducing our children to the worlds of fantasy, SF, and horror, plus the works our kids turned us on to. My husband took part in discussions on Writing with a Partner and Writing a Series. Together we appeared in "How Will Religion Change in Space?" Well attended, that was lively and thought-provoking but slightly chaotic. In our opinion, the moderator opened the floor to questions too soon. Eager audience participation is always desirable, but people kept prematurely derailing topics in progress. I never did get to say much about Mary Doria Russell's THE SPARROW, one book I especially wanted to delve into, but anyway it was a worthwhile and memorable panel.

The most heavily attended session I watched, surprisingly, was a lecture with slides proposing that the folktale of "The Smith and the Devil" is the "world's oldest fairy tale." The room was packed, with people sitting on the floor and leaning against walls -- at 9 p.m. on Friday. An interesting late-night presentation I watched only part of was called "Ask a Necromancer," by a licensed mortician answering questions about her profession. On Sunday morning, a slide show about angel lore in myth, fiction, and film mentioned some works new to me that I may watch on video streaming. I brought up C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, strangely (from my viewpoint) omitted from her book list even though she cited several other things that sounded rather peripheral to the topic.

At the Saturday evening masquerade contest, even though I recognized hardly any of the costumes, I marveled at how impressively elaborate most were. Even the "cosplay showcase" of people who didn't enter the official competition featured many dazzling outfits. One I did recognize immediately -- the Queen of Hearts, complete with flamingo, with the equally regally dressed King of Hearts hovering in the background.

Fortunately for getting to events on time, the hotel restaurant offered buffets at all three meals on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday. Not so fortunately, we had to fend for ourselves at Friday dinner in the only food venue open, the bar. With the resulting crowd, we didn't get fed until half an hour after ordering, when the opening ceremony had already started. Aside from not being present for the self-introduction of guests, though, we didn't miss anything vital.

We drove there and back uneventfully. We arrived home on Sunday afternoon to find the house and the cats in good condition.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Sunshine and Unicorns

One has to be careful of unicorns. They may be the stuff of fantasy and fabulists, but like "black swans", they can also be understood in stock market terms. A unicorn company is valued at a billion dollars before it is launched on the stock exchange. A black swan is an event that almost no one saw coming.

In terms of advertising law and "truth in advertising", Sunshine and Unicorns could well the fair game and the stuff of puffery. 

Puffery is not illegal. Puffery is a claim that is so exaggerated that a reasonable person would not take it seriously. It's a bit like obscenity (except that obscenity is illegal) in that one knows it when one sees it.

The sun is generally accepted to rise out of the East, and not out of a cereal container, or container of pieces of fruit clearly supplemented with great deal of sugar as explained on a list of nutritional facts. Sunshine is a commmon metaphor for "happiness".

The legal influencers of the Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance (GALA) explain what is and is not puffery. Authors may extrapolate how far they can go in their own advertising, based on the lines that purveyors of so-called feel-good food may toe, but should not cross.

http://blog.galalaw.com/post/102j5hv/is-goodness-and-nutrition-a-claim-requiring-substantiation

If an advertising claim is vague and aspirational, it is puffery.

The legal bloggers of Crowell & Moring LLP discuss puffery and many parameters of lawful versus illegal (misleading) advertising in a helpful Q & A format.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7f2682ea-a6cb-4e1d-b65b-75964f33decf

"In the United States, ‘puffery’ is generally viewed as exaggerated statements or empty superlatives that no reasonable consumer would rely upon. For example, ‘the best coffee ever’ functions as puffery because the statement is so subjective that no consumer expects it to be truthful."

Advertising can become problematic if it suggests something about a product that is not true, especially if it is demonstrably not true and a customer relies on the statement to make a purchase.

I extrapolate that it would be fine for me to claim that "Insufficient Mating Material" is the best book that I ever wrote for publication. That is obviously subjective, and I probably believe it.  

Disclaimer: if there is such a book as "How To Survive On A Deserted Island" I have never heard of it, I have never read it, and I intend no comparison with it except as an academic exercise in crossing the line of puffery... but if I were to write "Insufficient Mating Material is 'How To Survive On A Deserted Island' but with aliens and a lot of sex", I might cross a line. 

For much better advice, read the Crowell article by Amy Pauli, Dalton Hughes, Emily Kappers, Raija Horstman , Roy Abernathy, and Suzanne Giammalva which if full of insights and sound advice.  One striking point they make is that it is permissable to compare unlike products, but it might be considered disparaging to compare your work product with that of a named rival and claim that yours is better.

Even if you could prove that your work is better, it will be an expensive process and you could be spending your time writing your next best-seller (or not).

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Karen S. Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Way of the Drow Series by R. A. Salvatore by Karen S. Wiesner

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Way of the Drow Series by R. A. Salvatore

by Karen S. Wiesner

The Way of the Drow is just the latest in an ongoing series of novels written by R. A. Salvatore focused on one of the most iconic D&D characters ever created, Drizzt Do'Urden. I wrote a review of the first trilogy he was a central figure in previously on this blog (find it here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/07/book-review-dark-elf-trilogy-by-ra.html). The three books in The Way of the Drow were published between 2021 and 2023. In the previous series including Drizzt, Generations, a demon uprising was settled and two years of peace followed. Now rumblings from Menzoberranzan, where Drizzt was born, prove a civil war is in the making. Many of the drow are beginning to question the influence of Lolth, the Spider Queen. Drizzt, followed by his most faithful allies, can't stand on the sidelines if there's any chance the Underdark can be set free from the chaotic evil that's held them prisoners for as long as anyone can remember. Drizzt was the first to escape this place where absolutes rule without compromise. In a winner take all battle, the drow ranger is the only one who can lead the captives to freedom. Once again, the Realms will never the same again.

As usual, Salvatore's execution is flawless, and most of the characters that have been the most beloved in his Drizzt series are all here, joining the fight. Each book draws in the countless threads, tightens the noose, and distills into one epic battle.

I'll admit I didn't read the last Drizzt series, nor many of the ones that came before. I wasn't lost--I've read just enough that I recognized and knew most of the players and understood the places and events in this latest series installment.

I tend to get bogged down while reading these stories almost exclusively because the Drizzt's books are connected to a greater, larger, almost mind-blowingly expansive universe with Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms. Stories and places and characters (many created and written by countless other authors) fit into this setting in the form of books and games (board, card, video, and the kind that most people think of when D&D is spoken of), as well as movies. The 2023 Dungeons & Dragons movie Honor Among Thieves (which wasn't the first film adaptation--but was certainly one of the finest) made the whole franchise a bit more accessible for noobs. There's also talk of a live-action TV show in development that may include Drizzt. Instead of being a household name in die-hard gaming circles, the dark drow might finally become known by anyone who enjoys fantasy entertainment.

Whenever I read Salvatore's Drizzt's books, I can feel the weight of all that surrounds it pressing down on me. It's not the author's fault this happens, but when the characters in his books talk about past events, I can't help feeling a bit of dread because there's a whole world behind these references that's suffocating, considering how little I know about any of it. When I read Drizzt's books, I tend to dart in and out of them, worried that if I linger, the ceiling will shatter and the ponderous, tangential rest of it will crush me beyond recognition. It's a tremendous amount of pressure.

That said, fans won't be disappointed with this worthy installment in the Drizzt legacy.

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/