Authors, Uncategorized

Rainy day musing

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It’s one of those loose end nights. I’ve accomplished little today, and the book I’m reading goes slow. Above is a video I found, in which a saga scholar discusses the influence of the saga writer Snorri Sturlusson on J.R.R. Tolkien, citing his own interview with one of the Tolkiens’ Icelandic au paires.

Today was a rainy, cool day, devoted – in my world – to worrying about buying a car. I’d made contact with a guy who had one to sell that interested me. Last night I made all kinds of plans for getting over to Woodbury, where he’s located, to look at it (without a working car of my own). This morning all the plans fell apart, as it appeared somebody else was considering the car. I studied the ads over again, increasingly aware how rare is the plausible vehicle that I can actually afford. But later today the guy called me back, inviting me to call him tomorrow morning to make arrangements; he’s willing to drive the thing to my place so I can test-drive it.

I have a feeling I’ll buy it after all that trouble, unless it’s visibly smoking or trailing oil, or smells of dead bodies.

I’m already thinking of my brief adventure with Sigrid the Haughty, my Subaru Forester turbo, as a kind of midlife crisis (a little late in life, but that’s mostly how I roll). Sigrid was fast and exciting, but expensive and not really suited to me. The car I have in mind looks to be a little more bourgeois and conventional.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man in the Arena,’ by David Tindell

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I was with a group of guys from my church last evening, and one of them told me he’d started reading one of my books. He said, “I was wondering, ‘How come we don’t have these in our church library?’ And then I read the first page….”

I assumed he was talking about The Year of the Warrior, which begins, as you may recall, with a rape.

That goes to the ongoing issue of how much realism we can allow in Christian literature. I assume this question also faced David Tindell, author of The Man in the Arena. I’m not entirely convinced he got the balance right.

Scott Armstrong, our hero, is a former Air Force Special Tactics officer, whose career was cut short when, in a bad situation, he made the morally right choice rather than the politically prudent one. Now he’s back home in Wisconsin, middle-aged and fit, wondering what he’s going to do with the rest of his life.

He begins to find an answer when he meets Beth, a local single mother. They quickly fall in love, and he starts to act as a father figure to Emily, her beautiful, athletic teenaged daughter.

They have no way of knowing that drug dealers in the area are planning to move into the lucrative business of human trafficking – and they’ve set their sights on Emily for their first abduction and sale. Scott will need all his combat skills, as well as all the principles of character he learned growing up, to protect his nascent family.

The writing in The Man in the Arena wasn’t bad, in terms of word use. But the author tends to talk too much, and the story takes a long time before getting into the action.

But what really threw me for a loop is the presence, in a book which seems to be purposefully Christian (it includes a scene of a pastor sharing the gospel clearly with a misguided young man) of a sex scene that’s borderline porn. I’m not saying you absolutely can’t have any kind of sex scene in a Christian book, but this one got way more explicit and detailed than I was comfortable with.

So I’m not sure I can recommend The Man in the Arena. The author shows promise, though, and ought to keep at it.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Viking Fest Minnesota is history

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For a while there I didn’t think I’d survive it, but I did.

The above statement is pure hyperbole, of course. I was never worried about survival, only about exertion and inconvenience, in the way of old men. In actual fact, the weekend went just fine.

A friend drove me to a rental place on Friday, to pick up a car. I got a Buick Enclave, which served me impeccably. This was the first time I’d ever driven a car with those new touch screen controls, and I was a little uneasy about it. But I worked it out all right. (Still prefer buttons and knobs, though.)

What surprised me about the car was that the shifter was located on the steering column. I haven’t driven a car with “three on the tree” (D, N, and R in this case) for many years. I find this configuration an odd choice for an SUV. Don’t we buy those things in order to at least pretend we’re powering across the tundra, up mountains,  and through swamps in something like a classic Jeep? The steering column shifter lets that fantasy dribble away completely.

Anyway, I got up at 5:30 a.m. the next morning, so I could be at the set-up point by 8:00 a.m. My awning was already in place there, ever since last weekend, but the stall needed setting up, and books needed to be set on tables. The weather was chilly, more appropriate for the time of year than the unseasonable heat of the weekend previous.

Both days went fine. Saturday was sunny, and the shade under my awning crept steadily back until I was sitting in a corner. Good sales, mostly of Viking Legacy. I sold that out completely on Saturday. Sunday was cloudy, but not as rainy as we feared.

My book sales were a surprise to me. The ambience of Viking Fest Minnesota was (and businesswise this was brilliant, I think) historic Viking side by side with Renaissance Faire cosplay. The central camp was kept historically pristine, so that I, with my paperback books, had to operate outside in the vendors’ area, next to a woman who sold cute sculptures of mushrooms. But I was just at the entrance to the Authentic Camp, thus occupying a kind of intermediate state, like Plato in Dante’s Limbo.

One would think that this would be the perfect place to sell historical fantasy novels. And yet, sales of those were only so-so. What people wanted was the hard history of Viking Legacy.

I must ponder this mystery.

In any case, my old bones made it through two days of the festival, and I got home safe and sound, and with a little money in my pocket. Special thanks to the young men of the Viking Age Club & Society, Sons of Norway, for toting that barge, lifting that bale, and taking the load off me in general.

Next job – figure out what to do about my car.

Uncategorized

Norwegian celebration, a day late

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As should surprise no one, I forgot to mention Leif Eriksson Day yesterday.

However, for Norwegian Americans, the day offered an added celebration. Precisely 200 years after the original sloop Restauration docked in New York City, loaded with 52 Norwegians (the first organized Norwegian immigrant group to the US), the replica sloop sailed in yesterday. They were greeted by cheering crowds, plus the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway. I looked for video of this event to share, and could find none. I suppose nobody cares but us. The promotional clip above will have to do.

(The coincidence of dates is not a coincidence. Since nobody knows what date Leif Eriksson arrived in America, the people who organized the holiday just chose the day of Restauration’s arrival. Good enough.)

The original sloop was not met by jubilant crowds. In fact, they were met by government officials who promptly confiscated their boat, on the grounds that it was illegally overloaded. It took an appeal to Pres. John Quincy Adams to reverse that action.

The passengers on the original Restauration came mostly from the Stavanger area. The majority of them were Quakers (converted as prisoners during the Napoleonic wars), fleeing Norway because their religion was illegal at the time. But a few Haugeans (my people) were along tooo. I had ancestors who were leaders in the Haugean community in Stavanger, so they certainly knew some of the Sloopers.

The group did not prosper at first. They bought land in Kendall County, New York, but were undercapitalized and barely survived. Eventually they found their way to Illinois, where they founded a permanent Norwegian colony.

You may recall my posting this picture back in 2022, during my last trip to Norway. This is the replica Restauration herself, sitting at the dock, as the owners were trying to figure out a way to finance this voyage. I’m glad they succeeded.

URGENT REMINDER: I’ll be selling books at Viking Fest Minnesota, at the Dakota County fairgrounds in Farmington, tomorrow and Sunday. I’ve rented a car for this weekend, so in theory I should make it there and back without trouble.

Uncategorized

Viking Fest Minnesota, redux

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For immediate release:

I plan to be at Viking Fest Minnesota again this weekend, in spite of my tiresome agonizing over car trouble. (The status of my Subaru remains uncertain; I have somebody who thinks they might be able to get her fixed cheap. If not, I’ll be replacing her. But it won’t happen before the weekend.) I’ve reserved a rental car, and have a friend planning to take me to the rental place to pick it up tomorrow.

My great nightmare is that, since the car will certainly have one of those computer screen control panels, something I’ve never worked with before, I won’t be able to figure it out, and I’ll be left sitting in the rental lot.

Anyway, the video above showed up on YouTube. These people went to the festival on Sunday, the day I wasn’t there. The day it rained. As they’re speaking, my books are getting wet.

Somehow they seem to have missed the combat shows, the best part of the event. Or maybe they were aiming for a non-violent presentation.

My personal awning, with its distinctive red cross, can be seen at two points, as I recall around three minutes and five minutes in.

Saturday should be cool, and there’s a good chance of rain on Sunday. (Sigh.)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Made in Blood,’ by W. H. Clark

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Way back in 2015, I found W. H. Clark’s first novel, and praised it in these words:

The book under consideration here is an example of a type of novel I like very much. It’s a “small” mystery, localized and character-driven. No international conspiracies; no shadowy government agents. 

In 2022, I reviewed his second novel positively, though I complained that it was rather dark.

My imagination suggests to me that author Clark must have seen my 2015 review and hated it, because he seems to have designed his third novel, Made in Blood, to counter almost everything I said in praise in my first review. Made in Blood is a far-flung mystery, covering a lot of territory. It concentrates on international conspiracies and shadowy government agents. (I’ll concede that it was pretty character-driven, though.)

“Ward,” (he never explains whether it’s his first or last name), our continuing hero, was once a sniper in the Afghanistan war. Later he was a Texas Ranger, and now he’s a cop in Montana. He’s still recovering from the trauma of his last case when he gets cryptic phone call from a stranger. He immediately understands the message. His old friend, his one-time Army spotter Randall, has been killed. It will now be Ward’s job to avenge him.

The story that follows ranges episodically over a lot of country and time. Periods of inactivity will be punctuated with violence, abductions, and torture. Long flashbacks will tell us what happened to him in Afghanistan. Ward will kill men. Women will flirt with him, but he’ll brush them off. He will uncover an ugly story of war profiteering, political corruption, and ruthless terrorism.

I found Made in Blood a little implausible. The character of Randall was so extreme as to challenge belief. The fact that the author strayed into politics did not charm me, though I stayed with the story to the ending – an ending which I found just creepy.

On the plus side, the writing, as always before, was quite good. Though the author is English, he handles American idiom extremely well – except that he seems not to know that what he calls a “catapult” is known as a slingshot over here.

I’m done with W. H. Clark. He’s a good writer, but I’m not interested in what he’s selling these days.

Fiction, Reviews

‘If She Wakes,’ by Michael Koryta

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Abby had been on the fringes of the PI game only a few months, but already she understood what sustained the profession: people lied, and people were stupid.

I am, and have never concealed it, an unreconstructed male chauvinist. For this reason I avoid action novels with female protagonists – I don’t like to see women put in harm’s way.

In spite of that, I bought Michael Koryta’s If She Wakes, just because he’s such a fine writer, and I seem to have run through all his male protagonists for the present. And I can report that it’s a superior, intensely gripping novel.

Tara Beckley is a student at a New England college. She’s assigned to drive a visiting dignitary to his lecture, but he unaccountably insists on taking a detour. Then an auto accident happens. When Tara next awakens, she’s in a hospital, coming out of a coma. She sees, hears, and understands everything going on around her. But no one can tell, because she cannot move any part of her body. She’s “locked in.” To her horror, as she listens, her family discusses turning off her life support. Suddenly, her only hope is in her protective, gratifyingly stubborn older sister.

Abby Kaplan is a former race driver who transitioned to Hollywood stunt work. Life was great until one driving mistake left her movie star boyfriend dead. Now she’s phobic about driving. A friend got her a job as an insurance adjustor, and she’s assigned to examine Tara’s accident scene. But something’s wrong there. The driver’s account doesn’t match the evidence. She does not know that her assessment is very important to a particular group of people, people who will spare neither money nor human lives to get hold of a particular object, an object whose location only the paralyzed Tara Beckley knows.

If She Wakes was an extremely good thriller, full of twists and surprises; the kind of story where we fear for the protagonists even as we root for them to overcome their obstacles and grow as human beings. Well worth reading, with cautions for the usual things.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Viking sales and setbacks

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My apologies to anyone who may – possibly – have come to Viking Fest Minnesota in Farmington on Sunday, and found me not among those present. It was due to what television announcers, when I was young, used to call “circumstances beyond our control.”

I drove down to the Dakota County fairgrounds on Saturday morning, without incident. I babied Sigrid the Haughty, my Subaru Forester, as planned, and she did not overheat. My confidence in her grew – I felt I could probably continue driving her lightly until I get a different car – as long as it’s soon.

The day went fine. The festival is set up in two sections – there’s the central area for the hard-core reenactors, so that visitors can get some idea of an authentic, period Viking camp. Few or no modern objects on view.

Around that is the periphery, where I was posted. Mostly vendors. A lot of people from the Renaissance Fest. Crafts, mystical crystals, knickknacks. I was there, with my tables of books. I had a friend manning the booth with me, selling a few of our club’s white elephants. We chatted pleasantly. Many people came by, and a fair number of them bought books. I saw a couple visiting friends. The weather was unseasonably warm – almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit. And the wind was annoying – not as bad as Minot had been, but several times we had to set things aright after they’d been knocked over.

When it was over, at 6:00 p.m., we moved my books and gear into a friend’s tent for the night. My plan was to go home to sleep, and return the following morning.

As I headed for the parking lot, I was stopped by someone (I won’t identify them, or even their sex) whom I didn’t know personally, but who knew who I was. Facebook friend. They greeted me and told me they were on my side. They were aware of some trouble I’ve had with a different Viking event – something I haven’t written about here, and still won’t for the time being. They said  they didn’t entirely agree with my opinions, but they supported my right to express them. I told them this was very gratifying, which it was. I left with a warm glow.

That glow faded as the engine temperature in my car spiked, just a couple miles outside of town. I ended up calling AAA for a tow home. I called one of the Vikings to tell him I wouldn’t be able to be there on Sunday. I no longer trust Sigrid the Haughty to get me places.

It’s not practical to replace a head gasket on an old Forester with turbo. So I’ll be getting a different car. Just as soon as I can move some money around.

If I can get it in time, I plan to be at the festival next weekend. If not, so be it.

Oh yes – it rained yesterday and some of my books got wet. Not the fault of the guy whose tent was sheltering them – these are the chances you take when you camp out. Or when your books camp out. Books are essentially indoor pets.

I’m not griping. I have my health (mostly). I am alive, and free, and not living on the street. This too shall pass.

Bookselling

Personal appearance alert: Viking Fest Minnesota

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God willing (especially in regard to my transportation), I plan to be at Viking Fest Minnesota this weekend and next, Oct. 4-5 and 11-12, at the Dakota County Fairgrounds in Farmington, Minn.

I will be in the vendors’ area, selling and signing my books.

Thanks to the Viking Age Club and Society of the Sons of Norway for making my presence possible.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mystery Explosion,’ by Ed Benjamin

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The mundane title should have tipped me off. Mystery Explosion is actually a novella, the first installment in a series of four books (to date), entitled Bulverde Beat, after the Texas community where the stories are set.

The main characters are Harry Miles, a private investigator, and Luke Remington, police detective, who sometimes hires Harry as a consultant.

A female county prosecutor is killed in a heater explosion in her home. Harry is immediately suspicious – the “accident” was suspiciously timed, and he suspects the victim’s husband from the get-go.

But the story proceeds (commendably) in proper procedural fashion, as Harry and Luke question various witnesses and suspects, gradually eliminating false assumptions.

I didn’t mind the story as such – I like the procedural approach, and this narrative seemed (to this amateur) relatively realistic.

My problem was with the writing. The author isn’t a bad wordsmith, but he needs to learn to cut text. He talks too much – throws verbiage at an idea rather than selecting the exact words he wants. He runs up long lists of redundancies in some places.

Also, he hasn’t learned how to use quotation marks. Tip: When a character’s speech goes on for several paragraphs, you omit the closing quotation marks at the ends of the interior paragraphs. This tips off your reader to the fact that the character has not stopped talking yet. It saves a whole lot of confusion.

A further sin is that the characters are almost never physically described.

Mystery Explosion wasn’t awful, and it had the virtue of being pretty short. But I can’t recommend it highly.