Reading, Uncategorized

The Lobster and the looming shadow…

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Photo credit: @felipepelaquem. Unsplash license.

I should probably caution you that I’m about to talk about where I ate lunch. This troubles me, as I remember (vaguely) from my youth (long ago) that old people were always talking about where they ate lunch, and it was an incredible bore. I honestly make an effort not to be a bore, but genetics are against me.

I assure you, though, that the story does get bizarre. Not bizarre in a truly surprising way, but bizarre enough to write about on a day when I don’t have a book to review for you.

If you’re into middlebrow dining, you may be aware of the recent closures of many Red Lobster restaurants. It appears their attempt to drum up business by offering unlimited all-you-can-eat shrimp didn’t pay off in the long run. Shrimp does not, it would seem, provide an effective loss leader.

So they closed “my” Red Lobster in Golden Valley (yes, we have a suburb called Golden Valley near me). This has weighed heavily on my mind, because in my world Red Lobster constitutes pretty fine dining. I liked going there occasionally, when my wallet permitted. Me and my Amazon Fire, that’s a big date in my universe.

So today I drove to the RL closest to my location, way the heck up in Fridley (I think. Google Maps doesn’t actually tell you what town you’re in. Ever notice that?). It was almost identical to the Golden Valley place. Which is not, I suppose, surprising.

And I had the Wednesday special, and the waitress was polite, and I enjoyed it. Me and my Amazon Fire enjoying virtual face time.

As I left the restaurant, I dropped my Fire. I may have muttered some mild – but neither obscene nor blasphemous – expletive.

I picked it up and looked at it. One of the corners on the protective case I’d bought years ago had broken off. But that’s OK. It still has support on 3 corners and does not require replacement.

I came home, and went to work on my translating. A couple hours ago I took a short break and reclined on the couch. I opened my Android phone and happened to select the Amazon app.

The first thing I saw was an ad for protective covers for Kindle devices.

You know those horror movies, where people see obvious foreshadowings of impending, apocalyptic evil, and the characters ignore them, and you say, “Can’t you see it coming? Are you stupid?”

I think I understand those characters better now.

Uncategorized, Writing

Writer’s update: Dwindling into fall

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Photo credit: Jeremy Thomas, jeremythomasphoto. Unsplash license.

And here we are. Autumn. A beautiful season, of which I’ve never been very fond. Because – in spite of its initial glorious beauty – it always degenerates into winter, getting colder and darker and more monochrome as the days pass. It’s like an annual reminder of aging and…

No, no, no. Let us not go there. Normal people like autumn. Or fall. (In Norwegian they call it høst, which means harvest.) Why should I rain on their colored leaves?

Viking season is over, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I like Viking season. The string of reenactment events, slightly different every summer, in which I set up my Viking tent and sell my literary works. The Mankato event capped off a pretty heavy October – from Minot to Green Bay, to Moorhead (not a Viking thing, but a not insignificant drive), and then Mankato. I like it, but it gets harder every year. I’m ready to have my weekends back – not that I get to rest on Saturdays. It’s prime time for writing and translating. But at least I’ll be off the road.

So, back to the regular routine. Working on novels in the early morning. Working on the Norwegian heritage magazine I edit in the later morning. Translation in the afternoons and evenings.

I listen to music when novel writing, but for the other stuff I need old TV. For some reason. Sometimes I like to have old movies on (mostly black and white mysteries), but it’s nice to find a TV series I can binge. Just the right level of distraction if I want it, and ignore-ability if I don’t. I found “Newhart” on Amazon Prime. Just the thing.

Note that I’m talking about “Newhart,” where Bob runs an inn in Vermont, not “The Bob Newhart Show” where he was a psychologist in Chicago. For some reason I never like “TBNS.” I suspect I’m too neurotic to enjoy jokes about neurotics. “Newhart” is just surreal, and no threat even to me.

Currently I’m still in the first season, where the show hasn’t found its footing yet. I personally loved that first season – I liked the character of Kirk, the café owner, who had an honesty problem: “I’m a habitual liar… No, that’s not true.”

And I liked the character of Leslie Vanderkellen, the rich girl they hired as the maid, for some reason. She was played by a very attractive actress named Jennifer Holmes. In the second season, the producers decided to go full Salvadore Dali, replacing Kirk with Larry, Darrel, and Darrel. And Leslie with Julia Duffy as Stephanie, the rich girl with no working skills whatever. It all became increasingly bizarre, and funny on a new level. It worked, I’ll admit, and I relished it.

But I always felt sorry for Jennifer Holmes. She did nothing wrong. She was great in the part they wrote for her. And then they dumped her for a new concept. She’s still working as an actress, according to IMDb, but her career since has been fairly obscure.

It occurs to me that – essentially – they turned the show into a version of “Green Acres.” Which I always hated. (Because, I think, I was self-conscious, as a country boy, about seeing country people caricatured.) But I love “Newhart.”

I’m not sure why.

No, wait. I think it might have something to do with Mary Frann.

Fiction

New Indie Thriller: The Edge of Sleep

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Night watchman Dave and Matteo leave work early to catch a party and find three friends dead, apparently overdoses. They take to them to a nearly vacant hospital and find more people who have died the overnight. The trigger in every case is simply sleep. Within a couple hours, they find two more people who are still awake and begin to wrestle with how to survive a threat that may have killed the whole world.

I learned of this indie suspense thriller over the weekend. The Edge of Sleep started as a podcast with the same principal actor, Mark Fischbach, a popular YouTuber. Actors Franz Drameh, Lio Tipton, and Eve Harlow round out the main characters, and they all turned in good performances. Writers Willie Block and Jake Emanuel created both video and audio productions.

I didn’t intend to the watch the whole thing Saturday afternoon, but with each episode being 20-25 minutes, I couldn’t put it off. I’m sure a limited budget is the main reason for the short run-time. The core concept is strong enough to stretch it out to 30 minutes each. I’m curious what material they wanted to shoot (or maybe did shoot) that couldn’t make it into the show.

The Edge of Sleep has good tone, good intensity and pacing. I don’t want to say it’s a bit like Stranger Things, but a couple scenes could fit easily in that series. The characters and actors were natural, even though some of the dialogue grated on me. I mean, if you believed you were the only people alive in your city and perhaps the nation–maybe the world–taking a few minutes to stare on the window would be natural. Crying or panicking would fair game. So, why would the characters constantly ask each other, “Hey, you good? You gonna be okay?” I think we would be past that at that point.

Also, let me say episode one opens with something of a spoiler scene. I recognized it afterward, but while watching the series, that scene raised an unnecessary question for me and took the bite out of some later drama.

I enjoyed The Edge of Sleep and hope it gets funding for a second season, if not more. Season one raised good questions, so let’s have some answers by producing more episodes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Romeo’s Fire,’ by James Scott Bell

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I was tired. Tired of thinking about death. I remembered something Kafka said, that the meaning of life is only that it stops. I wanted to punch Kafka in the face. But he’s dead too.

James Scott Bell’s Mike Romeo books are pleasant, fairly light action mysteries in the hard-boiled genre. James Scott Bell, a top-level Christian novelist, knows his business. His main character here is a former cage fighter who now works as an investigator for a wise old Jewish attorney in Los Angeles. Mike is a great reader, always quoting the classics.

In Romeo’s Fire, they have a new client, a homeless boy who killed another homeless man with a knife. He claims self-defense – it’s the use of a knife in California that got him in trouble. Mike’s boss thinks he can plead down to manslaughter and get the kid off with no jail time. They get him remanded to a group home, from which he promptly disappears. Now it’s Mike’s job to find their client.

One amusing element in this story was that after Mike gets arrested (of course he gets arrested. Doesn’t every private eye get arrested in every private eye novel?), he solves the problem the old-fashioned way, by just bulling through a police guard. He makes it work too.

Also notable is the realistic depiction of today’s Los Angeles, especially its homeless problem and impotent police protection. There are also Christian themes, which author Bell renders more palatable through making Mike a seeking agnostic.

The Mike Romeo mysteries are always fun. I recommend Romeo’s Fire, and James Scott Bell is a fine storyteller.

Music

Sunday Singing: All Glory Be to God on High

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Today’s hymn comes from the Bavarian preacher Nicolaus Decius (1485-1546). He was teaching at the Church of St. Nicholas in Brunswick at the time he wrote this translation of the ancient Latin text Gloria in excelsis Deo, “common in doxologies used in the Greek liturgies of the early Christian church,” according to the Psalter Hymnal Handbook. The translation comes from the great Catherine Winkworth.

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
(Luke 2:14 ESV)

1 All glory be to God on high,
Who hath our race befriended!
To us no harm shall now come nigh,
The strife at last is ended.
God showeth His good will to men,
And peace shall reign on earth again;
O thank Him for His goodness!

2 We praise, we worship Thee, we trust,
And give Thee thanks forever,
O Father, that Thy rule is just
And wise, and changes never.
Thy boundless pow’r o’er all things reigns,
Done is whate’er Thy will ordains:
Well for us that Thou rulest.

3 O Jesus Christ, Thou only Son
Of God, Thy heav’nly Father,
Who didst for all our sins atone
And Thy lost sheep dost gather.
Thou Lamb of God, to Thee on high
From out our depths we sinners cry,
Have mercy on us, Jesus!

4 O Holy Ghost, Thou precious Gift,
Thou Comforter unfailing,
O’er Satan’s snares our souls uplift
And let thy pow’r availing
Avert our woes and calm our dread.
For us the Saviour’s blood was shed;
We trust in Thee to save us.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Woman Underground,’ by Andrew Klavan

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Since in Winters’s interior world, it was always the year 1795, he did not like to curse in front of a lady, so he swallowed his first reaction and said, “That’s awful.”

I wish Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter novels were two or three times longer than they are. It’s a gift of God that a writer of Klavan’s caliber has become a Christian, thus permitting the creation of amazing books like these (though the Christian subtext is always kept sub). I suppose not everyone reacts to them as I do. Some people don’t like them, after all. And perhaps I respond viscerally to the main character himself, because I identify with him.

In any case, A Woman Underground begins with one of our English professor hero’s stories from his past, as told to Margaret, his psychologist. It’s a disturbing story about a colleague of his from his days as a government assassin, the straightest arrow of all straightest arrows and a devout Christian, who disappeared on assignment in Turkey and Cameron was sent to find out what happened to him….

But Margaret interrupts him. She wants to know whether he’s phoned the woman he met in the last book, the one with whom he had a mutual attraction. No, he hasn’t. Why not? Well, he’s been dealing with some things…

Yes indeed, he has. He’s still obsessing about Charlotte, the girl he fell in love with as a child. She learned some shocking things about her family years ago, and just went off the rails, running off with a fringe political group.

You need to find Charlotte, to get some closure, Margaret tells him. And almost immediately, Charlotte appears – sort of. Cameron goes home to his apartment and smells her childhood perfume in the air. An examination of his building’s security recordings shows that a woman did come to his door. It looks like it might have been her. She’s carrying a book. That book will be the clue that leads Cameron on a trail into the shadowy world of the right-wing underground, to lies and betrayals and shattered illusions.

The previous Cameron Winter books have run on a formula – Cameron’s “strange habit of mind” kicks in – his brain enters a sort of fugue state, where he intuits a crime that the police can’t see. And so he goes in to meddle and see that justice is done. This time, the big mystery is his own, and though the “strange habit” makes its appearance, this time it’s to help him solve mysteries rather than to discover their existence. This way works just as well.

I know I’ll read it again. I read them all again. A Woman Underground is a stellar addition to one of the best mystery series going.

Bookselling, Fiction

Major publishing news!

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Due to tremendous popular demand, my novel The Elder King is now available in paperback form.

If you order it now, it’ll take a few days to arrive, as the engines of industry must be reconfigured to accommodate the expected sales rush.

But it’s in the system. It’s official.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Personal appearance alert: The Great Northern Viking Festival

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I’ll be doing a Viking event this weekend, and this time I’m giving you a whole day’s notice to make your plans to attend!

Because I love you and want you to be happy.

The Great Northern Viking Festival will be held Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19 and 20th, in Mankato, Minnesota. I plan to be there Saturday only, and only for the “family friendly” daytime hours. In the evening, I’m informed, they will let their hair down a little (those who haven’t inflicted History Channel haircuts on themselves). I myself am too old – and too conventional – for such shenanigans.

This is the first year this event has been held. I have no idea what to expect, really. Several Viking groups will be present, each doing its own peculiar thing.

For all I know, it will be a heathen thing, and I’ll have to flee like a monk at Lindisfarne, shaking the dust from my feet as I scamper. But we’ll see. I’ve loaded my car with a substantial supply of good and uplifting books, either written or translated by me, which ought to raise the tone in any case.

Come by if you’re in the area and feel like checking it out.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sins of the Fathers,’ by James Scott Bell

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But then the guy smiled. His teeth were like pylons coated with ocean grime.

I’m a great fan of James Scott Bell, one of our best Christian thriller writers (after Andrew Klavan, of course). But for me at first, Sins of the Fathers labored under a few handicaps.

First of all, there’s a female protagonist. I just avoid them in these days of Mary Sues (not that a male writer is likely to write a female Mary Sue.)

Secondly, the setting is early in the 21st Century, when conditions in our country (and specifically in Los Angeles, where this story is set) were somewhat different from today. This was the days of tough, lock ’em up LA prosecutors (I believe one of our current presidential candidates was part of this). It was a very different environment from what we see in California today.

Finally, this is an expressly Christian novel. It’s not the kind I generally prefer, where the Christianity is mostly subtextual (though Heaven knows I don’t practice what I preach in my own books).

So I was a little slow getting into Sins of the Fathers. But it won me over, decisively.

Lindy Field is a defense attorney, but she hasn’t worked in a while. She suffered a bitter defeat in the case of a minor she defended, and she suspects a police cover-up. She actually suffered a psychological breakdown, and hasn’t worked for a while.

But her legal mentor asks her to take on a fresh case. It’s a high profile one, concerning a boy who opened fire with a rifle on a middle school baseball game, killing several boys and one coach. Public anger is high. A powerful victims’ advocacy group is calling for the maximum penalty.

Even worse, the assistant DA who beat Lindy on the last case will be prosecuting this one.

But her mentor thinks she can win. Get a sentence of mental incapacity for the kid. He says he believes in her. So she takes the case.

It will lead to frantic social pressure, media scrutiny, and an attempt on her life. But Lindy – for personal reasons that are only gradually revealed – needs to hold on. She needs to save this kid.

In terms of characterization and plot, I’d say Sins of the Fathers is as good as any thriller novel I’ve ever read, whatever the intended audience. There were delightful surprises, and I was moved by the book’s resolution.

I’ll admit I thought there was a little too much “God talk.” People bringing up Christ and faith in casual conversation, so that the message of the book could be explicitly stated. Of course, this was nearly 20 years ago. Society was different then. You could probably discuss such things in an LA courthouse in those bygone days.

Anyway, if you’re looking for an overtly Christian thriller, written at the very highest level, I can wholeheartedly recommend Sins of the Fathers.

Uncategorized

Yet another old man’s rant…

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Photo credit: Getty Images. Unsplash license.

Everyone knows that it’s one of the infirmities of old age to be forever comparing the present to the past – and the past always comes off better. Entertainment was better when I was young… the clerks in stores were more polite and helpful… everyone dressed better… books and movies were better… etc.

Which is all true, undoubtedly. The People in Charge of Stuff Today don’t even deny it – they tell us the old ways were founded on oppression and exploitation. We should be happy to live in a smaller, meaner time now. We’ve got it coming to us.

Still, purely as an intellectual exercise, I can try to name some things I like better about the present.

  • I like having the internet. It makes research a breeze. It’s endlessly entertaining.
  • I like… actually, I can’t think of anything else. All the rest seems diminished and shabby.

Which brings me, in a meandering way, to tonight’s topic (such as it is). Something I’ve probably discussed before here.

At the Viking Festival in Green Bay, I had a conversation with a fellow Christian Viking, one of about my own age.

He talked about getting interested in Norse mythology as a kid. Reading the books, imagining the stories.

“But nowadays there are all these people around who actually worship Thor and Odin,” he says. “It makes it awkward.”

“They took the fun out of it,” I said. He agreed.

Thor was fun when nobody believed in him. Now he’s an object of active worship. Anything I do connected with Thor has become suspect from a Christian point of view. I’ve never worn a Mjolnir, a Thor’s hammer, because I don’t want to look like a practicing heathen. It could do injury to my neighbor’s soul.

Halloween is similar. If there were Christians warning against celebrating Halloween when I was a kid, I never heard of them. We kids dressed up, we Tricked and Treated (not me, living in the country, but I did attend Halloween celebrations at the schoolhouse in town), and it was innocent, because everybody knew witches didn’t exist.

Nowadays, there are lots of people running around calling themselves real-life witches.

It stopped being fun.

Let me be clear – I’ve said this many times – I don’t believe in witches as such. Not witches with magic powers. In terms of magic, I’m a thoroughgoing materialist.

But other people do believe. So it’s become an area where Christians probably ought not to trespass. Just to avoid the appearance of evil.

Thus, Halloween is taken from the children, and given over to adults, who’ve now made it a season of kink. (Or so I’m informed.)

For me, it’s pretty much all about candy now. Halloween means candy – not to give away to Trick or Treaters, but for myself.

At the grocery store yesterday, I found the Christmas candy was already out on the shelves. Including the little ones from Lindt – I can ration those out, just a couple a day, until spring (there’ll be Easter candy later).

Okay, that’s something good we have now that I didn’t have as a kid. Lindt chocolate.

Hey, when civilization is sliding into ruin, you enjoy what you can along the way.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture