Fiction Friday - The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery

Like the icon? It's supposed to be a book wyrm, i.e. a dragon that devours books by the scores. I would love to be a book wyrm like this guy. In fact, when I started the Fiction Friday posts, it was with the intention to do a weekly review on what I was reading. Unfortunately, I don't get to read as often as I would like. I still intend to keep doing Fiction Friday, but I can't guarantee it will be every week (unless I somehow magically get my act together).

Having said all that, I did recently read that I wanted to talk about - The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery. I actually happen to know the author, Tee Morris. Not know know, like in that sense of "Oh yeah, Tee! I've known him for years! We're best friends!" But I do know him in the sense that Tee's the one who got me started podcasting.

I first met Tee at RavenCon three years back, where he did a weekend-long workshop on podcasting. Tee also wrote the fantasy books Morevi and Legacy of Morevi, as well as some technical books including Podcasting for Dummies (which I refer to often for my podcast), Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies, and his latest book All a Twitter. The man definitely knows what he's talking about when it comes to podcasting and social media. But what caught my attention about Tee's work was that he was podcasting his fiction, making his novels available a chapter at a time for free in audio format. I was desperate for some good books, but with a toddler and a preschooler on my hands, I couldn't find time to sit down and read. So after RavenCon, I went home, bought myself an iPod Shuffle, and downloaded Tee's novel, The Case of the Singing Sword: A Billibub Baddings Mystery.

This was the first Billibub Baddings mystery, a story about a dwarf from a fantasy realm who falls into the heart of Prohibition Era Chicago and becomes a private eye. This story quickly became a favorite of mine, and I looked forward to downloading a new chapter every week to listen to. At that rate, it took me a while to get through the book, but I didn't mind. I had something fun to listen to while I exercised and did chores around the house. This was a win for me.

Then last August, the second Billibub Baddings book came out, The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant. Both this book and the first centered on the mysterious appearance of magical artifacts from Billi's world appearing in Chicago. Such articles in the wrong hands, like say, Al Capone's, could prove more than disastrous, so it's up to Billi to find the items in question and put them safely away. Along the way, he ends up dealing with gangsters, the FBI, the Chicago Police, various femme fatales, and more shady characters than you can shake a stick at. The books aren't Raymond Chandler, but only because there's a good deal more humor in them. Billi is a hard working detective with some unusual skills at his disposal, and he goes all out to solve the cases presented to him. The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant opens up in Chicago, following the disaster of Black Thursday. Everyone is struggling to survive, including Billi, but the love for baseball, the national past time, still runs strong. There's a new baseball team, though, the Baltimore Mariners, who play far better than they should. When Chicago Cubs manager Joe McCarthy shows up in Billi's office, asking him to look into things, the dwarf takes on the case. It's a dream job for Billi, who's a big fan of the game, but then things take a nasty turn when two murders, apparently unrelated, occur. And when Al Capone shows up, things just get that much more interesting.

I read The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant in just a few days, which says a lot. For me to read that quickly, I had to shove some other things off my busy schedule, like sleep. But I was too busy enjoying myself to really complain. I love detective novels. I love seeing gumshoes put together a case, piece by piece, and Tee let's the reader put the pieces together on their own as well, providing a few clues to what's going on without bludgeoning you over the head with a lot of wasted exposition. The setting for the story is spot on, exactly what I would imagine Chicago in 1930 to be. And while I'm not a fan of baseball (honestly, I'm not a fan of any team sport), my lack of knowledge on the subject wasn't a problem. Tee wove in enough background on the sport and its history so that I could understand what was going on without feeling like I was drowning in an info dump. In fact, Tee made everything about the story engaging, with the right mix of fantasy, history, humor and mystery to keep me up late three nights in a row.

So yeah, I would definitely recommend The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant, and The Case of the Singing Sword. The latter you can listen to for free if you like, over at http://www.teemorris.com/billipodcast/. And if you're interested in The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant, you can pick it up on Amazon.com.

But don't try to borrow my copy or the Book Wyrm will get ya!

Fiction Friday - Dune Vs. Frida Kahlo

After the unexpected surprise of enjoying the teen fluff romance of Twilight, I decided to dive into some serious science fiction just to prove to myself that I had not gone completely soft in the head. I hit Fictionwise.com and picked up a copy of Dune: Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I love the Dune series, both the original books and the first trilogy of prequels written by Herbert and Anderson. Given that the events in Butlerian Jihad happen over 1000 years before the original Dune, I really expected something exciting in terms of getting into the back story of the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, and the whole history of the House Atreides/House Harkonnen feud. Really, this sort of stuff is right up my alley.

At least it should have been up my alley. I cannot tell you how disappointed I've been with this book. The story is set during the age when Thinking Machines rule most of the galaxy. The Thinking Machines want to wipe out the remaining free human planets, but a sort of stalemate has been going on thanks to the development of planetary defensive shields, called Holtzman Shields, that fry the computerized brains of any machine that dares to breach it. However, not all the Thinking Machines are powered by computers. A select group, called the Cymeks, are actually human brains encased in machine bodies, and the Thinking Machines figure out they can drop those human brained Cymeks through a Holtzman Shield to lead an attack.

The Cymek led attack on a human free world is the plot for the first chapter of Butlerian Jihad, and it irritated the crud out of me to have to slog through this. The miltary strategy was so simplistic it was ridiculous. To make things worse, the hero of the story (who just happens to be a Harkonnen, a member of the house that will eventually evolve into some of the vilest villains of all sci-fi) can't figure out what the goal is of the Cymek lead element when they land on the planet.

Now let's think about this carefully. Your planet is defended by a shield that keeps out all computer-run ships and assault equipment, yet a vast armada of computer-run ships is sitting in orbit overhead. These computers drop a small group of giant mechs controlled by human brains onto the planet. The human brain-controlled mechs proceed to attack while the computer-run armada waits overhead. What do you think is the goal of this lead attacking element? Do you think maybe, just maybe, they might want to shut down the shields that are the only thing keeping out the armada overhead? The armada that's just sitting there with enough firepower to wipe out the entire planet if only they could get through that stupid planetary shield?

I hate stupid main characters, and I'm afraid Dune: Butlerian Jihad presented me with a doozy of one. Xavier Harkonnen is about as thick as they come, a promising but love-sick military officer who obviously can't grasp the most basic concepts of military strategy. Not only is he slow to figure out what the initial attack on his planet is about, but he makes further dumb mistakes later on, mistakes anyone who's studied even a little bit of military history could figure out (I was a transporter in the Army Reserves -- a transporter, not an infantry man, mind you -- and I could see what the Thinking Machines were going to do next before the machines themselves even made the decisions in the book!). What's worse, Xavier Harkonnen is in love with the fair but boring Serena Butler. Serena wants to do good in the universe and save lives, and she'll willingly puts herself into danger to do so. Just as with the military tactics of the thinking machines, I could see what Serena was going to do long before she even did it.

It does not help that all the characters come across as cardboard cutouts, the dialogue is horribly stilted, and most of the book is just one massive info dump of back story. There's a basic rule in writing that goes "Show, don't tell." Having your characters actually act out the plot rather than spoon feeding it to your readers via info dump solves so many of the problems that Butlerian Jihad suffers from. But somehow, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson forgot this rule when they wrote this book. I can't understand it. They did a good job with their previous Dune books, bringing to life the histories of so many characters who played essential roles in the original series. I made it through seven, maybe eight chapters of this one before I gave up reading any further.

Not knowing what to read next after such a disappointment, I simply decided not to read anything at all. I had picked up a few art books back in February and I thought I'd amuse myself by looking at the pictures inside. One book was Frida Kahlo: Beneath The Mirror by Gerry Souter. I found this book in the bargains section at my local Barnes & Noble. The paintings in it are so beautiful. Since I had never read about Kahlo before, I decided to skim through the first chapter to see if I could get a summary of her life. Wouldn't you guess, I ended up reading the whole book in just a few days? What the Dune book lacked in terms of exciting plot and fascinating characters, Frida Kahlo more than made up for. I don't think I could have imagined a more bizarre life for an artist. Souter did an excellent job of presenting the basic facts in a clear, easy style, without leaching Kahlo's life of all interest. My only complaint about the book is that Souter frequently discusses particular pictures that Kahlo painted at various points in her life, but the paintings don't appear on the same page or the next page so you can look at them while you read what he says about them. In fact, the paintings are scattered through the book in no logical matter. Souter talks about a painting Kahlo did early on in her career right after she marries her husband, but the image doesn't show up until the very last chapter, sandwiched between the pages of her funeral. Early on in the book, there were a few instances where Souter listed what page the painting was on when he described it, but that quickly stopped after the first two chapters. Another note, at one point in the book, there is a huge, blatant printing error where a paragraph cuts off in the middle and there is an inch or so of blank space, and then the paragraph starts again and the writing contiues on. I think it's for these reasons that the book ended up in the bargain section as opposed to the art section of the store.

In any event, Dune: Butlerian Jihad turned out to be a big FAIL in my book, while Frida Kahlo: Beneath The Mirror was an unexpected win. I have no idea what I'll read next. I'll ponder that question this weekend and start a new book on Monday.

Fiction Friday - twilight

Twilight was one of those books I just had to read. You see, I'd already read so much about it, and what I'd read was divided into two camps. People either seemed to absolutely love the book beyond all reason, or they absolutely loathed it to the point of vomitting at the mere mention of the title. I had a hard time imaging a book that could invoke two such extreme reactions, but after reading a few reviews and synopes of the book, I had a feeling I'd probably fall into the loathe camp rather than the love camp. The whole thing sounded too much like a bad romance too me, and I'm not a romance reader by any stretch of the word, especially if the romance in question is bad.

So this sounded like the kind of book I normally wouldn't have wasted my time and money on, but like I said, the reactions were so extreme, I just had to find out for myself what the book was really like. Sort of like a car accident, you know? You just have to see how bad it really is.

With all that in mind, I did want to give the book a fair shake. I wasn't sure how easy that would be to do, given my personal biases against romance and the fact that I already knew the plot in advance (honestly, I think there was no way for me not to know what the plot was once the movie came out). Still, I promised myself I'd read at least three chapters before writing the book off as a waste of my time.

Imagine my surprise when I ripped through the book in just four days.

Well, not exactly four days. I started the book, got through the preface and the first two chapters and then I stalled for a couple of weeks. The opening was just so slow, and the main character, Bella, rather dull. It was only my decision to get through at least one more chapter (along with the recommendation of the ever-sensible Patty, one of the moms in the Screeching Harpies) that made me pick up the book again. My family and I were getting ready to visit my parents in Arkansas for a week, and I thought maybe I'd squeeze in that third chapter then. Somewhere during that first day of travel to distant, rural Mountain View, I got hooked. I stayed up late the first night to read "just one more chapter (or three)" and then spent the next two days with my nose buried in my netbook, devouring the rest of the story. It was definitely a romance, but not a bad one, and better than even most good romances I've had shoved into my hands.

The book isn't perfect, of course. There's an article on Salon that gives a very complete and accurate list of the flaws, and I agree with a lot of that list. Myself, I found the opening preface to be entirely pointless, and the book would have been better without it. Also, the first two chapters were pretty slow. I understand the need to set the scene and introduce the characters, but this seemed tto happen at a glacial pace. The story starts out with the main character, Bella Swan, moving to Forks, Washington, to stay with her father. Once she gets there, a lot of mundane events unfold around her - she goes to school, meets the other kids, runs into Edward Cullen, who eventually becomes the love interest in the story. She complains a lot about how much she hates being in Forks.

And that's about it.

Have you seen the movie Coraline yet? It's a similar set up. Coraline moves to a creepy house in a rainy area (either in Washington or Oregon, I think), and she complains about how she doesn't want to be there. But the very first thing Coraline does when she arrives in her own personal hell is to go exploring. She makes a dowsing rod and looks for an abandoned well. She explores the house and finds a tiny locked door, which she eventually goes through to find a magical world on the other side. Coraline goes in pursuit of the adventure, the adventure doesn't come creeping to her.

But that's not what happens in Twilight. Bella is very passive. She doesn't explore her surroundings, and she certainly doesn't go looking for adventure. She just plods through her day to day routine, and that's boring. It isn't until things start happening to her that the book gets interesting. In fact, I'd say about 98% of the book deals with what happens to Bella, rather than with what she does herself. Bella is constantly reacting to the events around her, never really taking action herself to make anything happen in the book. She's in love with the mysterious Edward Cullen, but never dares approach him. Instead, he initiates all the contact, and sets the course for the relationship (which may be why so many of the negative reviews I read called Edward overbearing and domineering). Bella does get into into trouble a lot, but not because she goes out looking for it. She is, in Edward's words, a trouble magnet, someone simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Getting out of said trouble always involves someone else, i.e. Edward, showing up in time to rescue her. In fact, it isn't until the final chapters of the book that Bella takes any initiative to act on her own. I wish I could have seen a lot more of that sort of thing scattered throughout the book. When Bella took action at the end, I felt more of a sense of danger and excitement that the rest of the story lacked.

None of this is to say that Bella is completely useless as a main character; she's got plenty of wit, plus a snarky sense of humor that I found enjoyable. I even found her extreme clumsiness, which is practically pounded home with a hammer throughout the book, to be entertaining. But the real interest in the story is Edward Cullen. Is he a vampire or isn't he? (Actually, that question got answered so early on in the book, and in such a clumsy fashion, that I was left very disappointed.) And why is he alternately hateful and then friendly to Bella? Edward's got some serious problems to deal with, including his love for Bella warring with his instinct to sink his teeth into her and bleed her dry. This is where the romance comes from, and this was what had me intrigued. Not because I had any doubts that Edward would give in and turn Bella into a midnight snack (that would have been fun to see, but this is romance, which I've been told requires a happy ending). But there was something about the dialogue, the descriptions of Edward, his interaction with Bella... It was fun to watch Edward fall in love (Bella was hopelessly in love from the get go, so her point of view on things wasn't so exciting).

Of course, Edward is flawless, and it's oh-so-easy to understand why Bella falls in love with him. He's perfectly handsome, perfectly smart, perfectly strong and fast, and perfectly tortured. Meyers manages to hit all the right notes when writing Edward, making me want to see more of him. But she also left me asking the same question that Bella asks throughout the book - why the heck is he interested in her?

I can't answer that last question. Like I say, Bella initiates almost no action, is in constant need of saving, and is in no way outstanding physically or otherwise. But perhaps the more important question is will I pick up the next book in the series? After all, the point of a series is to keep people reading and get them to buy more books. At this point, I'm willing to say yes. I've bought the second book from Fictionwise. Now to see if I tear through that as quickly as I did the first. There is the promise of a werewolf in the next book, after all, and I can always hope that Bella gets a little more interesting. If not, I might just keep reading to see what happens with Edward.

After all, I could fall in love with him just as easily as Bella has. But hopefully I'm a little more interesting that she is.

Book Lust vs. Writing Lust

A month or so ago, I bought a book reading journal. It's very cool. The title of the journal is Book Lust, and it's full of blank entries for me to record all the books I read. Each entry has a space for the title, the author, and the date I read the book, and then a page of space for my comments on what I thought of the book. I was really excited about this idea of recording what I’ve been reading, because lately I’ve changed interests. I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction and fantasy. In the last few years I’ve added horror and historical mystery to that as well. But very recently I’ve dropped all that for more "literary" stuff. By literary I mean I’ve been picking books that show up either on the NY Times bestseller list or on the “What’s New” shelf at the library and book store.

It’s quite a change, like suddenly going from eating meat to being a vegetarian. But I like it. I was getting tired of reading a lot of the same stuff over and over again, to the point where I had quit reading all together because I couldn’t bring myself to pick up another sci-fi book. Of course, I don’t always like what I pick up in the “literary” section either, but then I made a deal with myself. If I don’t take a shine to a book within the first two chapters, I don’t have to keep reading. This means I’m getting most of my books from the library, because I can’t afford to buy a bunch of books and then put them down after two chapters, but my local library does keep a pretty good selection, so I'm good.

One of the things I’m most interested in reading right now are books put out by the major publishing houses that are billed as “erotic.” Now you know I write erotica, so I have very particular ideas about what is and isn’t erotic. To me, an erotic story means a tale with sexually explicit writing whose purpose is to arouse the reader. There is no “fade to black” when the sex takes place. There are also no veiled euphemisms or purple prose used to describe sex acts and genitalia. Things like that only smother what’s erotic. They don’t add any value at all.

So I’m reading what the big wigs in the publishing industry consider to be erotic. And my conclusion is these guys have no frikkin’ clue about what’s erotic. I’m not saying the books I’ve read are bad. One book I read, Vertigo by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, was actually quite good. Vertigo is the story of Emma, a Victorian housewife, who makes a resolution one year to be a better person. Her husband, a novelist working on a book about prisons, suggests Emma write letters to a prisoner he’s met during his research, to boost the man's morale and act as a friend. Of course, Emma falls in love the prisoner, named Chance Wood, and the rest of the story focuses on their affair and Emma’s discovery of her sexuality. The book was interesting, thrilling and suspenseful in fact. I do not think it was erotic though. There were sex scenes in the book, and to Ms. Baratz-Logsted’s credit, she covered sex acts that most folks won’t discuss even in the privacy of their own bedroom. But the way she wrote those scenes made them seem wooden and dull. Again, I blame the use of euphemism and purple prose. She came close to going into detail about what was going on, but never really hit the target. It was like watching ants mate - biologically interesting perhaps, but in no way arousing to me.

I have this fear that all the “erotic” big sellers I intend to read are going to be like that, and it annoys the hell out of me. Why won’t people write about sex in a way that shows how exciting it can really be? We write about murder and violence with so much abandon, but sex? No, we can’t do that. Or maybe I should say, they can’t do that. You know I can. I do it all the time. In fact, I’ll be busting my ass today to finish up a short story I intend to submit to Best Women’s Erotica 2008. An older woman with a porn addiction seduces a much younger man. Hot stuff. And you better believe that the sex scenes are explicit. In fact, I have more sex scenes in this one 7,000 word short story than Lauren Baratz-Logsted had in her entire book, a fact I find to be quite funny. And once I’m done writing this short story, I’ll be starting on another erotica book. I’ve been e-mailing my editor at Mojocastle Press about some ideas I have and she’s very gung-ho, so I’m feeling pretty good these days. In fact, I’m feeling like a professional writer, which feels better than I ever possibly imagined it could feel.

I love reading. I love writing. I may never get published by a big printing house like some folks, but that’s okay. I love getting up each morning and knowing that I’m going to be doing the stuff I want to do. So life is good, folks. Life is very good.