Author Archives:

Author Love, Multimedia Style

Heldig with my books.

When I really enjoy a book or an author, I tend to collect more than 1 copy of the book – paper, ebook, and audio. A few of you may be looking at me askance, but I think most of you know exactly the kind of book worship I’m talking about.

Guy Gavriel Kay, Jacqueline Carey, Orson Scott Card, Kevin Hearne are just some of my favorites I do this with. And, oh, that guy who’s book is coming out tomorrow, Cold Days by Jim Butcher.

Here you can see I have paperbacks, hardbacks, a graphic novel, and a disembodied audiobook (there was an accident with a cat, don’t ask) all by Jim Butcher. I also have a few ebooks and some audios on Audible.com.

Who do you worship with multiple copies and medium?

And if you’re having trouble waiting for Cold Days, Chapters 1-4 have been made available through Butcher’s site:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

It’s too cold!

Chupa and The Dresden Files, graphic novel style.

I need to curl up in a cozy place with a cat, hot tea, and a pile of Dresden Files. Let me specify:

This is Chupacabra. I bottlefed him on goat milk. He likes to slobber on me and whatever I am working on. So while he may get to sit and slobber on my Reminiscence pile of Jim Butcher, he will NOT get to sit with me on my first read of Cold Days, coming out next week.

Oh, and here is a great interview through Sword and Laser with Jim Butcher talking about The Dresden Files, his Codex Alera series, and his new project in the works.

Tales of the Talisman: SciFi

Pico snoozing with my magazine.

With Issue 1 of Volume VIII of Tales of the Talisman, I am caught up on my short story reading. Once again, I thank the folks of Talisman (D. L. Summers and Kumie Wise especially) for bringing the reading world quality poetry, illustrations, and short stories. Below are the highlights of the stories I enjoyed the most, but honestly, this volume was especially great and I found it hard to limit myself to chatting abut just a few of the stories. Tales is now available in e-print on Amazon.com.

Sol Crystalis Miracalis by Quincy Allen kicked off this issue with a mining story and the discovery of organic particles where none were expected. I liked the conflict of private asteroid mining made legal as long as there is a Federation xenogeologist.

Through a Lens, Brightly by Brock Marie Moore was short and elegant. I loved the whole idea of microzoos, folks gathered around enlarged images of microscopic life enjoying the weird and unexpected tiny life that fills up the corners of the livable universe. This tale is about a hunter who seeks out and gathers these special life forms.

Touch of Silence by Simon Bleaken I enjoyed simply because it did not end how I expected it to. What happens when the tables are turned on the hunter? Check this story out to find out. There are living buildings and genetically programmed garbage disposal bugs involved.

End Run by Robert Collins harkens back to classic science fiction on a universe-scale. Perhaps the stubborn alien race doesn’t appreciate unexpected guests and the equivalent of a calling card should be sent around first? I also loved the illustration (by Russell Morgan) for this story.

The Devil You Know by M. E. Brines was a fun and unexpected take on a time travel tale. What would you do if some apparent sociopath takes you hostage by gun point into a Winebago and tells you that you can never have children and that there is one absolute way to make sure that never happens?

The Ultimate Astronaut by K. S. Hardy had me chuckling out loud at the ending. In the far future, if you lose a limb or eye or your skin, it can all be replaced. How will that affect your job opportunities? This story is accompanied by yet another great illustration (by Laura Givens).

Streaming Light by Kelly Dillon was an intense story about a failed experimental long distance space trip. A breakthrough in science and engineering must be made in order for humans to populate the galaxy and with this brand spanking new ship with locally tested and true travel technology, these astronauts think they will be the lucky few to try it out long distance. Unforeseen complications suck.

Portal by Glynn Barrass had mech warriors and an invading alien species that used our own against us, turning humans into monsters. I got a kick out of this story, even with the cliff-hanger ending. I hope the author continues the tale. Again, awesome illustration (by Tom Kelly).

Tales of the Talisman Steampunk Style

Streak with Tales of the Talisman

I got a little behind in my reading over the summer with farm chores left and right. Gladly, I have jumped back into reading short stories through the most entertaining Tales of the Talisman Volume VII, Issue 4, which features a steampunk motif throughout. There’s art, there’s poetry, there’s book reviews, and there’s short stories (my favorite part of the magazine), all thanks to the hard work of the editors David Lee Summers and Kumie Wise.

Below is a smattering of what entertained me the most and kept me up too darn late reading.

The Banks of the City Thames: A Tale of the Steam Table started off this issue with bank robberies, the resultant investigations, and a steam dragon. After reading this story, I had to check out the author’s site (Patrick Thomas) to see if there are further adventures of the knights of the Steam Table. While I couldn’t find what I was looking for, his website has plenty to please the avid reader. As prolific a writer as he is, I can hope for further tales of Lady Thistle and Sir Bult.

Project Lilith: Memento Moria by Jeff Hughes, set in the Ottoman Empire in 1916 was dark, disturbing, and had me reading something light and happy afterwards before sleep and dreams took me. I read this story the day I finished Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis (a dark fantasy set in Europe, WWII time period) and the two really complemented each other. Project Lilith is told through a series of diary entries. The first sentence caught my attention fully: ‘My name is Sergeant-Major James MacGuigan, and I am a good man who does terrible, terrible things.‘

Chin Song Ping and the Dragon Merchants was a fun romp through 1906 San Francisco. Laura Givens even included Teddy Roosevelt as a main character. I included a photo of the illustration (by Tom Kelly) here on the side because I thought it was too darn cool. The story starts out with Ping avoiding a few knifes in Chinatown while on a quest to track down an appropriate dress for his soon-to-be wife. Ping is instantly memorable because of this fix he finds himself in. There’s hatchets, dragons, and a little lie about the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. I hope to see more of these characters in future issues of Tales of the Talisman.

When Thieves Cannot be True by Douglas Empringham was my favorite tale in this collection. It really stood out for me because of the double-crossing thieves, the wee Princess Tatara’s demands for an extravagant doll, and the man-made magicked cockatrice. Our hero desperately needed a weasel  to nullify the deadly stare of the cockatrice. Unfortunately, he had to rely of brains and instincts! Definitely an entertaining read.

Albion is an intense tale of a young lady super hero (code name Albion) that starts off simply with kids acting out her good deeds as captured in serial comic books. But soon the author Jonathan H. Self has Albion facing a superhero’s worst nightmare: the uncovering of her true identity and family and friends being threatened. Albion takes a horrible loss and I hope to see how she responds in the long term in future stories. While Jonathan Self doesn’t have a website, he can be found on twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/JonathanHSelf

Negativity Versus Negative Review

No matter what you are reading reviews on, the constructive ones are the useful ones. Simple statements like, ‘I don’t like this product’, ‘This book sucked’, ‘The online service department failed to meet my standards’, etc. are useless.

Worse, they are asinine comments. They tell me nothing. Perhaps I’m not planning to use that tea kettle, butternut squash, or dog shampoo for it’s intended use (don’t ask), so I need more depth in my reviews.

Why didn’t you like the product?

What about the book turned you off?

What are your standards?

When I am looking to lay out my money, I scan the reviews and look for the wordier ones. Then I read the first sentence or two and if there are phrases like the above one, I move on to the next. I also avoid book blogs that have reviews along these lines.

If a book didn’t suit you because there were convenient psychic powers that miraculously appeared and saved the day (Watership Down), all the characters are driven by a nugget of meanness (The Thrall’s Tale), or the characters lacked depth and did not grow through out the book (Passion Play), then those are valid comments about the book. Constructive criticism is professional. And helpful to those reading your reviews.

To all those fantastic book bloggers out there, do not apologize for your professional negative reviews. Perhaps you have a thing about books that use the mechanism of story-telling through letters – you dislike them intensely. But I love them. That’s OK. Put that in your review and I can put it on my TBR pile. It’s all good.

I know authors agonize over negative reviews (because they blog too) and many of them make a distinction between constructive criticism (professional) and bad reviews (ranting).

Check out how some of these authors deal with negative reviews:

Mande Matthews

Denise Jaden

George Angus

What do you look for in a review? Do those nothing-but-gushiness reviews bug you? Do you take the time to leave reviews?

Laid Up and On Books

Your local favorite Tuesday Dork managed to twist and sprain an ankle this past weekend. There were dogs involved…..and potted plants. Don’t ask.

Needless to say, I’ll be laid up for a few days to up to 2 weeks. Crutches are my best friends. Even in the shower (hence, no pic with this post).

So, what am I reading while I am laid up? I’m been crunching away at The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield (audio version), Greatshadow by James Maxey, Wolfshead by R. E. Howard, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (audio version). Now all these books I had started before my mis-step. But these won’t tide me over for the entirety of my convalescence. What else should keep me company and entertained while I have my ankle elevated and wrapped in ice?

Some of the books I am considering – vote on your favorite!

What do you like to read when you have the stomach flu? A broken bone? A toothache?

Rate My Squeamishness

The Roasted Squash Seed Rating System

Rating systems make me squeamish. You see them everywhere – Amazon, Goodreads, movie review sites, etc. Specifically, the ones on book review sites make me squirm a bit.

False Sense of Reality in Rating Systems

  • My reading tastes do not equal everyone else’s reading tastes
  • Folks sometimes poopoo a book because a favorite character died and not because of technical flaws
  • Folks rate the book without reading it
  • Naughty folks on purposely rate a book high as a favor to the author or in exchange for similar favor
  • Some readers are just idiots and don’t realize that Simon Green is the epitome of Space Opera

How do I know that my 5 stars on Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson means the same thing to everyone? I also give 5 stars to the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett and to Bonk by Mary Roach. These are all very different books, yet they do what I expect of them to the highest quality (dark epic fantasy, twisted humor, investigative journalism nonfiction). I have no qualms at all giving these books 5 stars, but what does that mean to other folks?

I love Terry Pratchett’s work, but can’t seem to get into Piers Anthony – yet both authors have long-running series (Discworld and Xanth) in the same field and are held up as classics of that genre. I don’t read a whole lot of humor fantasy because I often find it full of cliches and one book after another can get to be redundant. I’m more of a dark fantasy or series scifi nut, yet I do happen to like Pratchett.

Even within an author’s repertoire you can have a variety of ratings by one person. For instance, Pillars of the Earth and World without End by Ken Follett are two of my favorite historical fiction novels of all time. Follett’s other books, like Whiteout and Hammer of Eden, are great for modern-day thriller/action fiction but I wouldn’t put 5 stars on them because I know he has more to give. Yet, if I had not read his two biggies, I would give his others book 5 stars because they are really good compared to other stuff in the same subset genre.

So, can you see my quandary over using a rating system? A simple number rating system doesn’t tell the browser looking for the next book to read anything useful. The stars have been overused and the book hunter must now go back to the Middle Ages way of book recommendations – books traded in secret among book connoisseurs or simply trusting your own hunter instincts in that dark alley book store.

Or you can trust your friends here at Darkcargo and other (non-paid) book bloggers to keep providing recommendations.

Please, Keep It Real

I love my fiction – Fantasy, Scifi, Historical, Mystery, etc. I like it nitty gritty, with flawed people, messy situations, and imperfect endings. I like to watch my main characters stumble, my bad guys to have a soft spot for kittens, and my make believe worlds to be full of impure governments.

But lately I have noticed a trend on the blogosphere to have clean romances, sanitized murder mysteries, and proper etiquette among sailors.

WTF?

I feel constrained in my everyday life to edit not only my language, but subject matter. Society pressures me to ignore the everyday cruelty inherent in life, because ‘it is none of my business’. I can do this, in order to make my coworkers, relatives, and grocery store bag boys feel more at ease.

However, when I pick up a book, I want to know a handful of petty thoughts my hero has on the latest fashions, how folks 2500 years into the future handle human excrement in space, learn some new love techniques (in case I come across a besotted vampire), and how to cuss like a 15th century Chinese sailor. Really, I do. I love these little nuances that make me feel normal, and hence, more a part of the story. If the heroine is always clean, knows exactly the right words to say, and never takes an impatient action, then I feel completely disconnected from the character. I want to know that my characters succumb to fatigue, eat the wrong things, and occasionally give The Bird.

Just like us every day folks.

So, please, keep my fiction real.

Makes Me Laugh So

I know this is a silly picture. This cat, Picabuche (Pico), sits on top of this wok set which is on top of the fridge.

Behold, Wok Kitty!

And do NOT snicker!

Pico is one of the biggest cats I have ever owned and that adds to my smile every time I see him sleeping up here. Every once in a while he misses the jump from the kitchen table to the fridge. There is a VERY LARGE Thump! when that happens.

Being a book-oriented person, this set up makes me think of Terry Pratchett books. I have to wonder if his life has been full of such circumstances and happenstances like Wok Kitty which give him inspiration for his books.

Living on a small farm, I often see things that my once-city-eyes would have found odd – like a little 2 pound game cock mounting an 8 pound hen. (Ridiculous) Donkeys running through the snow, farting the entire time. (Juvenile Humor) The goats getting into a head-butting contest with the geese, and loosing. (Dorks).

How about things in your life that could end up in a book? The strange coworker as a basis for an odd character? Beyond ridiculous office rules as basis for a far flung space bureaucracy?

The Apocalypse Has Hit!

OK, so Lord Voldemort has taken over the world, or The Change is underway, or the zombies really are treating humanity as that jubilee buffet – and you are stuck in some underground safe haven until the worst of it can pass by. You took advantage of the opportunity to ransack a library before being sealed in the belly of a mountain, what were the 10 books you managed to grab?

For myself, I am going to say that I have a rational grip on reality and I know that power supplies are going to be very limited in this rock warren, so I grabbed paper books.

Herodotus – Pretty heavy, but should keep me entertained for years, as he did lots of traveling on foot in the ancient world and wrote it all down.

Jacqueline Carey – Kushiel’s Dart – I love this book. In fact, my current copy is falling apart form having been read too often.

N. K. Jemisin – Any book from her first trilogy as they stand alone and each is fascinating.

Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth – A great historical fiction set in England, centered around building a cathedral.

Neal Stephenson – Cryptonomicon – Another thick historical fiction book, and one I could read multiple times before getting everything out of it.

Brandon Sanderson – The Way of Kings – So far my favorite book by him and the first I ever read.

Professional Gunsmithing – Just in case I want to repair some weapons or learn the basics of making ammunition, ya know, in case we get the chance to reclaim the Earth’ surface.

Neil Gaiman – American Gods – We could make a play based on this book and keep kids and adults entertained for a long time.

National Geographic Complete Survival Manual – Seems too practical to pass by and there are pictures, so even I would understand some of it.

Terry Pratchett – Wee Free Men – This is the first book in the Tiffany Aching series, which takes place in Discworld, and it still makes me laugh so hard I cry and nearly piss myself.

OMG, I can’t believe I forgot to pack my other favorites! Why did I hesitate over trilogies and prequels! I should have just grabbed one of each – Patrick Rothfuss, Karin Lowachee, Guy Gavriel Kay, Alan Dean Foster, Walter Jon Williams, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mary Renault, and so many more.

So what would you grab and maybe we can share?