Editing by Elizabeth

March 02, 2011

A Razor Wrapped in Silk by R.N. Morris

A Razor Wrapped in Silk by R.N. Morris “Can you make anyone confess to anything?” – Captain Mizinchikov

Given his long and illustrious track record of solving even the most baffling of cases, said question is a fair one to be posed to Investigating Magistrate Porfiry Petrovich. Yet, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, the third outing for Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous investigator under the skillful hand of author R.N. Morris, finds Porfiry Petrovich challenged with solving two seemingly unrelated cases and, for the first time, beginning to question his skills as an investigator.

The intrigue begins when Petrovich is approached with a request from a privileged young woman to investigate the disappearance of several children. Barely more than indentured servants working long hours in a factory under horrendous conditions, disposable in the eyes of society at large, their absence was noticed by the young woman when the children stopped showing up for lessons at her free school.

Petrovich agrees to look into the matter, but when another young woman from the world of the aristocracy is murdered shortly thereafter while attending a play the full resources of the police force are brought to bear on that case, and the missing children investigation falls by the wayside.

As his investigation of the society murder progresses Petrovich begins to see connections between it and the missing children, connections that bring Petrovich into conflict with both the disdainful aristocracy and the distrustful revolutionaries, and which ultimately set Petrovich on a collision course with the Tsar himself. →

February 28, 2011

Set the Night on Fire by Libby Fischer Hellmann

Set the Night on Fire by Libby Fischer Hellmann “I believe you. And I believe you want answers. For all the right reasons. But some things are better left alone. This is one of them.” – Tom Reimer

For Lila Hilliard it’s too late to leave things alone. Not after her father and brother are killed in a house fire that would have also taken her life had she not stepped out to run a quick errand and, shortly thereafter, a mysterious man on a motorcycle takes a few shots at her as she’s walking home one evening.

That attack is foiled by another unknown man, who again rescues Lila when a subsequent attempt to kill her by blowing up her apartment is made. Lila knows she’s been targeted by someone, and that she also has a guardian angel looking out for her. What she doesn’t know is who, or why.

When she goes digging for the truth she discovers her guardian angel, Dar Gantner, is a recent parolee who knew her father more than 40 years ago in Chicago during the turbulent anti-war student protests of the late 60’s. Gantner tells Lila a story that reveals a side of her parents she never knew existed, causing her to realize they were not the people she thought they were. →

February 25, 2011

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

I’m going to do this a little differently than I usually do reviews because, quite frankly, my reaction to this book was a little different than I usually experience when reading a book. Very rarely am I ambivalent about something I’ve read. Love it or hate it – or so despise it I don’t even finish – my feelings about what I read are usually crystal clear. And yet, days after finishing Beatrice and Virgil I still can’t decide: do I love it, or hate it?

Of those who actually read, I may well be one of the few humans left on the planet who has not yet read Yann Martel’s Man Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi. Everyone I know who has read it raves about it, so when I was offered the chance to read Martel’s most recent offering Beatrice and Virgil, which sounded like it had a very similar presentation stylistically, I took it.

I knew something was off when, shortly after I started reading it, my husband asked me how the book was and the first – and only – word out of my mouth was “weird.” At the time I was about 60 pages into the book and, quite honestly, very seriously thinking about giving up on it. So far all I’d learned, in painstaking detail, was that a renowned author named Henry had given up writing after a book he had been working on for 5 years was soundly rejected by his agent and publisher. Having packed up his wife and moved to a major, yet unnamed city, Henry was living a jolly old life working in a chocolatería, responding to fan mail, and acting with an amateur theater company. Um, ok.

Things start to pick up, a little, when Henry gets a letter from a local fan with a short story by Flaubert, a few pages from an uncredited play involving two characters (Beatrice & Virgil), and a cryptic request for help enclosed. His curiosity piqued, Henry writes a response and hand delivers it to the return address, which he discovers is a taxidermy shop. There he learns the shop’s proprietor is the author of the play, and that Beatrice and Virgil are two of his creations, literally. Beatrice is a donkey, Virgil a howler monkey, and both are specimens which have been fully preserved by the taxidermist. →

February 24, 2011

Pike by Benjamin Whitmer

A new e-book edition of Pike is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in April 2016.

“I’m capable of anything I need to be capable of.” – Pike

Pike, the novel’s eponymous main character, is not a good person. Never was. Be it running drugs and people across the border, beating his wife, going down the rabbit hole of drug and alcohol addiction, or committing murder, Pike’s past is a bleak portrait of a squandered, meaningless life. And he knows it. →

February 23, 2011

Electric Barracuda by Tim Dorsey

Electric Barracuda by Tim Dorsey “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” – Morpheus

Ok, that quote and Morpheus aren’t really in Electric Barracuda, the latest offering from Tim Dorsey in the Serge Storms series. However, I thought it an appropriate quote since that’s what I felt like as I sat down to write this review: No one can be told what the Serge Storms series is. You have to experience it for yourself.

Nevertheless, as this review is a part of Tim’s blog tour in support of the book’s release I figure they are probably expecting a little more than that, so here goes…

Serge Storms is a severely in need of medication serial killer who roams the state of Florida with his perpetually stoned sidekick Coleman in tow dispensing “justice” to anyone who offends his moral sensibilities. This dynamic-duo from Hell is rude, crude, and couldn’t find socially acceptable with a preprogrammed Garmin and a month to get there.

Where we do find ourselves in Electric Barracuda is dropped into the middle of Serge’s latest scheme: offering theme vacations on his travel blog. After all, as Serge points out to Coleman, “Florida is a theme park, and the theme is weirdness.” Serge is calling his particular brand of weirdness the “Tourist Fugitive” package, with the idea being to lure people to Florida for a vacation where they pretend to be on the lam from the law, visiting the fascinating “underbelly” of the state in the process. →

February 22, 2011

The Long Strange Trip of “The Sinister Mr. Corpse” by Jeff Strand

So, that pesky Jeff Strand is back with another takeover of my blog. This time he’s here to talk about the e-book release of The Sinister Mr. Corpse (you can read my review here).

The Sinister Mr. Corpse by Jeff Strand My introduction to the world of e-books was back in 1999, when author Pauline Baird Jones encouraged me to send one of my novels to an electronic publisher. My initial reaction was “Sure, or, in a similar vein, I could print out my manuscript, sprinkle a little Fresh Step on top, and let my cat defile it.” But after a little more research, I decided to give it a try, and in 2000 three of my unpublished novels came out as e-books. (Out of Whack was also supposed to come out that year, but its route to publication was hampered by the minor detail that the publisher sucked.)

Back then, you were an “e-book author” before everything else. Stephen King had given the format a bit of legitimacy with Riding the Bullet, but 99.999% of the e-book authors were not Mr. King. I could’ve played a drinking game with the number of times I heard “Let me know when it’s a real book.” Despite my insistence that my publishers provided cover art, formatting, editing, etc. there was still a very real perception that E-Book = Self-Published = Crap.

But, hey, I threw myself into e-books full force. I spent three years on the board of EPIC, an e-book authors’ organization, two of them as President, and emceed the EPPIES awards banquet (in a tux!) nine times. I continue to emcee awards banquets (in June, I’ll emcee the Bram Stoker Awards for the third time) but I will never, ever, ever, ever be on the board of a writers’ organization ever, ever, ever again. That way lies a descent into the gaping jaws of madness. →

February 21, 2011

How to Get a Book Published, in Four Easy Steps by Sara J. Henry

Right on the heels of reviewing her wonderful debut novel, Learning to Swim, I am very happy to welcome Sara J. Henry for a guest post. Think you can’t write a book? Well let Sara explain how writing is the ” great equalizer.”

Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry The formula is simple:

1. Read a lot of books.

2. Write one.

3. Get agent.

4. Sell book.

Step 1 I began around age five, and kept it up pretty much nonstop. Step 2 I got through primarily because my writing partner, Mac, and my friend Linda were waiting for me to churn out chapters, and because I didn’t stop long enough to realize that I had no idea what I was doing or to talk myself out of it. Steps 3 and 4 were unexpectedly fast for someone who had girded herself for rejection – admittedly, so the opposite was a bit confusing. I’m still not quite sure I’ve adjusted.

Okay, I guess between Steps 2 and 3 I left out “Learn to rewrite” and “Revise like mad” and “Work until your fingers are so sore you have to wear Band-aids to type.” I also left out “Stick novel in a drawer for years because you know the middle is dreadful and don’t know how to fix it.” And “Go to writing conference and then not write for a year because some writers were so dismissive of you – and then stupidly and doggedly return the next year with the exact same material you had the year before, but this time your novel gets a lot of attention, so you decide you’d better rework it.” →

February 21, 2011

Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry

“If I’d blinked, I would have missed it.” – Troy Chance

The blink of an eye. That’s just how quickly freelance writer Troy Chance’s life irrevocably changes in Learning to Swim, the debut novel from Sara J. Henry.

While on the deck of a ferry bound for Vermont, Troy sees what she believes to be a small child fall from the deck of a ferry traveling in the opposite direction. Instinctively Troy dives in and swims to where she saw the object enter the water.

Several frantic dives under later Troy discovers it was indeed a child, a boy about six years old, and she’s shocked to discover a sweatshirt tied around him binding his arms to his body; clearly the boy was meant to drown.

No one from either ferry saw the events, so Troy has to make an arduous swim to shore with the boy in the ice cold water. Upon reaching shore she can’t shake the feeling that taking the boy to the police is the wrong thing to do, and the decision she makes to take him home with her instead sets in motion a chain of events that turns Troy’s comfortably low key life upside down.

Living for the most part with no close friends, only minimal contact with the majority of her family, and involved in a relationship that’s more friends than lovers, Troy is used to moving through the world with minimal attachments. Therefore the strength of the feelings awakened in her when she saves the boy overwhelms and takes her completely off guard. In fact, Troy finds herself obsessed with the mystery of who tossed the boy from the ferry, so much so that even after the boy is reunited with his father and the police are finally involved Troy refuses to stand down on her own investigation, despite the increasingly dire consequences of her continuing. →

February 18, 2011

Late Rain By Lynn Kostoff

“At bottom, everything’s a question of character. Always has been.” – Stanley Tedros

Characters, and issues of character, abound in the latest offering from author Lynn Kostoff, Late Rain. The sleepy, second tier resort town of Magnolia Beach, South Carolina wouldn’t seem to be the ideal setting for a drama of Shakespearean proportions, yet that is precisely what Kostoff delivers.

Corrine Tedros, unhappy with her husband’s lack of a sense of urgency in persuading his uncle, Stanley, to sell his highly profitable soft drink empire, decides to speed the process along…by hiring a hitman to take Stanley out of the picture. →

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