Literary contest announces winners

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A novel that I’m writing has won second place in the Joanna Catherine Scott novel excerpt competition!  The prize is part of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, a global contest.

Judges based their decisions on the first twenty pages and a synopsis.  In my financial thriller, Coin Flight, a not-so-innocent salesman must stop his boss from pulling off a million dollar bitcoin scam.  I’ll post an excerpt from my manuscript at some point, but in the meantime a quick overview of my book is here.

All of the prizewinners are listed the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition’s website here including Ellen Herbert’s Paris in the Dark and James Kingston’s The City Island Messenger.  Congratulations to all, and I hope I get a chance to read their works.

Award winners are invited to read a sample of their work at a reception in San Francisco this March.  Although I probably won’t be able to make the trip, it’s an honor to be recognized.

The contest is named for Joanna Catherine Scott, author of Indochina’s Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, among several well-regarded works.

Book review: The Ascendant satisfies

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the-ascendant-by-drew-chapman

First, the pacing. Good. Fast paced. This book had the right balance of plot, action, and switching between long scenes with our main character friends in the U.S. and shorter scenes with minor characters abroad.

The characters are colorful. Even if they feel like TV characters. There’s the title character, Garrett Reilly, a brilliant jerk who hates the military but ends up drafted. There’s another soldier who wants to die for his country but can’t get deployed because of a medical condition so he has to be a stateside desk analyst. There’s the beautiful but tough-as-nails love interest with leadership chops. Plus others, they make up a band of quirky geniuses who must unite to save the world.

From whom? With a clever twist, the novel has a wag-the-dog scenario but it’s precipitated by the China, not the U.S. The China scenes are handled a bit better than I would have expected. Especially being written by somebody without a foreign affairs or national security background.

But the U.S. government isn’t blameless in this book either. Garrett’s brother was killed in action, but the details of his death were covered up by the military. And even though the government recruits and trains Garrett, elements of the government turn on him. When he doesn’t answer their questions, they waterboard him. A bit sudden and extreme? Yes, and it doesn’t quite work. It’s the weakest and most paranoid part of the book.

Three out of five stars.

A quick summary which is a spoiler appears below/after the jump. Continue reading

Throwback Thursday: A book review of Planet of the Dragons

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Choose Your Own Adventure book #75

Although I read dozens of Choose Your Own Adventure books growing up, this is one of the few whose contents I remember.  The evocative title, Planet of the Dragons, appeals to me as much today as it did as a youngster.  While rummaging through a box of old books in the attic (literally), what choice did I have but to rescue this volume from storage and re-live the old adventure?

Your escape pod crash lands on Tambor, hundreds of light years from Earth.  You crawl out.  Smoke rises from the plains—a sign of battle.  Do you venture in that direction, or take to the hills?  The choices you make will determine the story unfolds for you.

Broadly speaking, there are three main potential storylines in this book, each involving a mysterious race of mechanical dragons which are not native to Tambor.  In one plotline, you meet a human girl named Millie who is worried but knowledgeable about the dragons.  If you choose differently, you never meet Millie, but you meet a strange race of Hyskos, humanoid creatures with bird faces who live on giant bubbles in the sky.  They are threatened by the dragons, and they would be thrilled to come up with a way to defeat them.  The third big story involves the Derns, a hobbit-like terrestrial race that is scared of the Hyskos and of the dragons, but has scientific knowledge that could be useful in the fight.

The various sub-stories involved with Millie are probably the most relatable and fun with some of the better endings in the book.  The interactions with the Hyskos can go well or badly, and they are a vivid species that I think captured my imagination as a young reader.  I don’t remember the Derns when I first read this book, and now I realize that may have been because the Derns bore me.  Their story takes up a lot of the book’s 117 pages.

The common thread is the threat of the dragons.  This creates a sense of wonder, suspense, and doom, and some neat artwork, but the fact that the dragons are mechanical devices is a letdown.  Also, there are a few storylines where you never encounter the dragons at all.  Additionally, you never really figure out the origins of the space dragons either, despite foreshadowing about “the Taurans, an evil race” on the first page of the book.

The natives of Tambor tell you that there is a race of indigenous dragons who are different from the evil machines.  But the native dragons were driven into hiding when the space dragons attacked.  As near as I could tell, there is only one single sub-storyline that leads you to meet the native dragons, and they are only described for barely one page.  I felt that was a missed opportunity.  I would have loved to see some storylines where you end up joining forces with the local, genuine dragons against the invading robot dragons!

Anyway, I loved the overall concept, obviously enough to read it and enjoy it at two distinct times in my life.  The options you get to choose from are reasonable, and the endings are fair, as in, “Okay, my choices didn’t end well for me, but that was still fun,” or “Yes, I made the right choice!”  I feel this book is a very good example of the series.  But I would have chosen more flesh-and-blood fire breathing dragons!

Book review: The Whistler

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The Whistler by John Grisham

I enjoyed this legal thriller.  I figured that lawyers investigating a corrupt judge would be an interesting angle on the legal profession, and it was.

The judicial conduct investigators are Lacy and Hugo.  As they near the truth, their lives are in danger from a shadowy Gulf Coast syndicate.

I complain when books have too many characters.  The Whistler had many characters, but for some reason this was not a problem for me this time.  It may be because Grisham’s writing style is very lucid.  I never felt confused by who he was talking about.  The characters were crisply drawn, and the scenes and their motives were well defined, so the characters didn’t blur together.  One character in particular was very colorful—Lacy’s pugnacious real estate investor brother, Gunther.

That being said, there is probably one character that could have been cut.  Feeding information to Lacy and Hugo are three layers of snitches.  There is a mole, an intermediary, and an ex-con lawyer conveying information from the intermediary.  I was never quite sold on the need for three characters to be involved, when this could have been condensed fairly easily into two characters.

A number of Goodreads reviewers have suggested that the writing is good and the plot is fine, but that there’s a “missing spark” in this book, although they can’t put their finger on what it is.  I’d venture to say that it may have to do with a lack of conflict among the main, “good” characters.  Lacy and Hugo never bump heads.  Lacy and her boss Geismar have different approaches on how the investigation should proceed, but they never have a major difference.  Lacy’s love life is totally vanilla and progresses without fireworks toward the second half.  All the conflict is on the side of the villains/antagonists.  I think that the lack of a conflict or a personal transformation in Lacy’s life is probably how the air leaked out of this book’s balloon.

As usual, Grisham serves up various flavors of the South, with scenes in different cities throughout Florida, but also Mobile, Valdosta, and Mississippi.  Comments about race, real estate development, management of Indian casinos, and how organized crime in the South are all included.

Without spoiling anything, I would say that the ending was satisfying enough and brought closure to most of the plot elements.  However, there is a related case in the book about a wrongfully convicted inmate.  How things end up for him doesn’t really get spelled out.

The Whistler is nothing too deep, and everything comes together a bit too smoothly in the end, but it is still a pleasurable read with justice served.

Book review of Writer’s Market 2015

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Guide to getting published

Writer’s Market is a great resource to writers.  Similar to other editions, the 2015 edition included articles on publishing your work and reference listings of book agents, publishers, and periodicals.

The section entitled “Query Letter Clinic” is a highlight.  I regard Writer’s Market as the gold standard reference for how to format queries and manuscripts if the agent or publisher hasn’t specified anything different.  Writer’s Market 2015 has very good query advice including clear examples of what to do and what not to do.  To me, this is the most useful part of the book.  There’s lots of “free” advice from other sources online about writing query letters, but you get what you pay for.

That being said, although many Writer’s Market buyers are probably aspiring novelists, the articles within the book are geared more so toward freelance magazine article writers.  That’s where a typical writer can actually make income.  Unfortunately, the articles become repetitive.  The contributors must not have known what other contributors were covering, or the editors didn’t really care that so many of the same topics were being covered three or four times, or both.

The writing style of the articles is very bold and almost “in your face.”  Some of the articles read more like blog posts by individuals who are very experienced and knowledgeable about the publishing world but who are also extremely opinionated and didactic.

The listing of publishers is must have been a perfect resource in the days before the internet.  The deluxe edition of Writer’s Market provides access to the information on the web (for which 2015 access has expired).  But a lot of information about publishers and agents is available online for free.

I found the section on contests to be eye-opening.  Pursuing awards is not something I have given a lot of thought, but contests can be a good way to get feedback and advance your craft.  Reading through the different contests and their submission guidelines gave me helpful ideas about what to do with some of my projects apart from the usual pitches and queries.

Every writer should get an edition of Writer’s Market at least once as a reference.  But these days, once may be enough, and in other years you can buy other books about publishing that are more specific to your genre.

Book review of “LinkedIn for Military”

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LinkedIn for Military: A Warrior's Guide for Changing Careers

LinkedIn for Military: A Warrior’s Guide for Changing Careers provides tips on using the business social network LinkedIn tailored for veterans as they transition from military to civilian employment.  It covers how to convey your career experience in LinkedIn, writing your profile summary, avoiding military acronyms, how to use your contacts to expand your LinkedIn following, and tips on joining LinkedIn groups.

The surprising thing about this book is how short it is.  At 32 pages with 14 point font with generous spacing, this is really an article in book format.  Not that a book on best practices for LinkedIn needs to be very long, but I was expecting something more substantive.

For example, “chapter” 2 is about crafting a powerful LinkedIn summary for your profile.  There are helpful suggestions on how to go about having an elevator pitch for yourself and using your career highlights in your LinkedIn profile.  But it would have been even more helpful if the book included additional examples of strong summaries and bad ones.  Instead, each chapter only includes one or two examples, and they’re almost always Air Force examples.

One area that the book does not get into is how to share updates or posts with your LinkedIn network.  Posting information to LinkedIn periodically about your field can help reinforce your expertise and drive engagement within your business network.

The best tip in the book is that you should get some people to read your LinkedIn profile and tell you what they think.  That’s always good advice, and I would add onto it by saying you should try to get somebody without military experience to read it to make sure your military jargon is readable, and try to get somebody outside of your family to read it for an objective critique.

I liked the concept of a short book advising veterans about proper use of LinkedIn, but this book left me very underwhelmed.

Book review: Sabotaged

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Alaskan Courage #5

The premise of a thriller against the backdrop of the Iditarod sled race is an exciting one.  The novel (Sabotaged, 2015) starts strong.  Kirra’s cousin Meg is abducted.  Kira’s uncle Frank, a musher in the race, is coerced by criminals into doing a mysterious job for them before they will release Meg.  Frank is able to tell Kirra and her burgeoning love interest, Reef, what happened to Meg.  He wants them to rescue Meg without involving the police.

At first, Kirra and Reef appear to have a testy relationship.  The development of the romance between them is fairly predictable, and once it has developed, it unfortunately becomes a bit saccharine.  More conflicts or disagreements between the two as they investigate Meg’s abduction may have helped.  Though Kirra is nervous about Reef’s trustworthiness early on, he is generally depicted as strong, caring, tenacious, and faithful.  Kirra is scarred and impulsive, but he appears to have no faults, and I think because of that I became bored by their romance.

I was prepared to accept the exclusion of the police, but it did bother me after a while.  Kirra and Reef virtually become the police, seeking out leads and questioning them like characters are questioned in police procedurals.  The detective-style was an interesting but unexpected approach, and to me it almost became more technical than thrilling.

That being said, Dani Pettrey is a gifted writer who has a way with words.  The characters are grounded in Christian beliefs which is refreshing compared to other novels these days.  The Alaskan Courage series also has great covers, conjuring up a spirit of beautiful outdoor adventure.

I read this book partly because it’s on a Goodreads list called “Fiction: Police, Military & Service Dogs.”  It isn’t the fault of Pettrey that the book has been branded by readers this way, but unfortunately the listing (and cover and dust jacket involving the Iditarod) set up an unrealistic expectation for me.  I thought the Iditarod and the sled dogs would feature much more prominently in the plot.  Growing up in the South and being accustomed to labs and hounds, the idea of huskies and sled dogs always seemed very exotic and compelling to me.  I got my hopes up that I would learn something about the dogs of the Iditarod in this novel.  There was some information about the race itself, most of the action took place outside the Iditarod trail, and nothing about the dogs.

Oh well.  It was still an enjoyable romantic suspense novel if that type of book appeals to you.

Book review: Listening for Lions

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A moving little book, tenderly and achingly written.

In Gloria Whelan’s Listening for Lions (2005), Rachel is the daughter of a workaholic physician in Kenya.  The flu kills her parents and Valerie, a girl her age.  Valerie’s parents pretend to help Rachel, but actually intend her to pose as their daughter for selfish reasons to be learned later on in the book.

As an adult reader, your heart goes out to Rachel because you see how she blames herself for so many things that should be blamed on selfish grown-ups surrounding her.  Rachel fears that she will get in trouble for many things, like initially agreeing to Valerie’s parents’ plans, which, as an adult, you can see that she really won’t get in trouble for.  Despite Rachel’s intelligence and strength, she is too innocent or immature to foresee exactly what consequences will befall her if the truth of her identity does or does not come out.

Listening for Lions is written for young audiences.  It is marked by insightful, clear, but almost dreamlike prose.  At less than 200 double-spaced pages, it’s a quick read, but it’s not really the kind of book you’d want to rush through.  It encourages sitting back and weighing the words carefully, like you’re listening to a good old story from a grandmother or great aunt.

Just don’t expect much at all about lions.  Rachel loves Kenya, birds, books, and helping people.  She likes the roars of lions late at night, and she misses those sounds when she is in England.  But there is never a significant scene or deep connection involving a lion.  The lion’s roar is basically auditory wallpaper.  Compared to her lifelong interest in birds, making lions a title element is misleading.

Still, recommended, especially for smart or strong girls.

Book review: a star is born with Carrion Safari

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Jonah Buck's book about Denise DeMarco, who want to retire from the big game hunting business, but she gets an offer she can't refuse

I read a lot of novels about monsters on the attack.  Carrion Safari (2016) is the best one published since James Patterson’s Zoo (2012).  If Jonah Buck, its author, were a stock, I’d advise my clients to buy as many shares as possible, because he has a great touch and potential for growth.

Denise is a South African big game hunter and safari guide in the 1920s.  After being sickened watching a group of Belgian dentist clients mercilessly shoot a herd of elephants, she hangs up her elephant gun and quits.  But Herschel Hobhouse, representing the research arm of deep-pocketed corporation named Yersinia, offers her $100,000 to capture a specific animal.  She agrees, and travels about the Shield of Mithridates toward Malheur Island, an island of natives under vaguely Dutch colonial influence.  She finds that nine other hunters have been enlisted on the mission too.  It’s difficult to say too much more about their expedition without giving plot spoilers.

The reason that it is difficult not to reveal plot developments is because this is a well-crafted book that reveals significant developments in chunks over time.  I wouldn’t necessarily call the developments “surprises” or “plot twists”; more like miniature mysteries that are solved incrementally as the book progresses.  It makes for a nice atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety, and even wonder.

Through pithy comments and crackling soundbites by colorful characters, Buck exhibits a great sense of humor.  Carrion Safari includes vivid and grizzly descriptions.  Buck could easily write horror if he wants to.  The plot and pace of the novel are good, so he could write thrillers if he prefers.  I’d read more of his work either way.  If this book were made into a movie, and it certainly could be, I’d be there on opening night.

Before reading this book, I read a review or two somewhere complaining that Carrion Safari has too many anachronisms.  But the thing is, the whole premise is obviously made up.  It’s about a mysterious island with actual monsters.  Readers accept that, but somebody is upset that words and traits from the 2000s being used by characters in the 1920s?  Lighten up!  Check out blockbuster contemporary movies like “The Legend of Tarzan” and tell me that transplanting our values and catchphrases a century or so is that serious of a problem.  The anachronisms are designed for entertainment purposes—the modern-sounding comments and sarcasm are funny!—they are not for the purposes of rewriting history, and should be understood as such.

My one complaint is that there are too many characters.  Each of the nine or ten hunters has his or her own traits and backstory, and it’s way too much to keep track of.  I confused a couple of them and never really understood who some of them were, which impaired my ability to follow certain plot developments.  I wish there had been a way to condense the number to five or six, tops.  That would have made things tighter, clearer, and would have earned this book a fifth star.

Book review: The Valley soars

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Atmospheric war noir

In Afghanistan, Lieutenant Black is dispatched from the relatively secure and administrative environment of Forward Operating Base Omaha to investigate a complaint at Combat Outpost Vega up the valley to the north.  The Valley (published in 2015) is basically a detective novel in a war zone, or combat noir.

What Black investigates is an allegation that the infantry unit at Vega used excessive force in calming the villagers during a tense visit.  Nobody was killed or injured during the excessive force incident.  Black knows he will not get a friendly reception since he is basically a desk soldier being sent to interrogate soldiers who are spending every day fighting for their lives about a trivial incident.  But the reaction Black gets is more than chilly.  It is disrespectful, evasive, and venomous.  Through a painful series of interviews, a disastrous visit to the village, and glimpses of the commander’s personal possessions, Black becomes convinced that there is more than meets the eye at Vega.

Where The Valley soars is in its dark atmosphere, detailed military authenticity, and its careful ratcheting up of the tension surrounding the unknown mischief at Vega.  Black is not a conventional hero.  There’s a reason he’s been doomed to a desk job, although we’re not sure why.  He is cynical and almost friendless.  He appears to have a casual attitude about drugs, which is not impressive in an officer.  But the men he’s charged to investigate are even worse:  an insubordinate gang of sullen hotheads running Vega like a cross between Lord of the Flies and Kurtz’s station in Heart of Darkness.

Renehan manages to create true suspense and curiosity in the reader’s mind about what Black will uncover, and what will happen when he finds out the truth.  This makes The Valley worth the time to read.

The book also gives an on-the-ground flavor for being forward deployed in Afghanistan, which is essential to understand as an American, a taxpayer, and a voter 15 years into the war.  To be frank, it is amazing how little time and attention has been given by the news media and presidential candidates to discuss the vital subject of America’s involvement in Afghanistan.

A small, minor note:  it was tricky to keep mental track of the fictional COP Vega in relation to the village, the “Meadows,” the supply route, and the different observation points described in the book.  A one-page map in the front would have been helpful to understand what the characters had to go through to get from one point to another.

The first four-fifths of the book was great, but it became choppy and implausible toward the end.  It felt like the author, even at the end, didn’t want to come right out and say what happened, so we kept being fed crumbs and riddles.  That was annoying.  Don’t get me wrong, there is an explanation and conclusion, but it’s broken up across too many different scenes and characters throughout the final pages.  The ending is somewhat happy; for such a dark book with a cynical main character, that struck me as inconsistent.

But I would still highly recommend this book to anybody who likes thrillers, mysteries, crime, or military fiction.