The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail My rating: 5 of 5 stars Prophetic, timely, a difficult book but compelling read. Fittingly finished reading this book today, 14 juillet, Bastille Day, but I wonder if the French revolutionaries of 1789 would be in The Village or on the beach. View all my reviews This […]
The Alpha-Beta Soup of Men
Reading books by men has become a regular activity for me. How better to understand the nature of the king? As a writer of romance, the male of the species takes a lot of my attention. We won’t find many romance writers for whom that is not true. For me, it also helps that I […]
War & Writing
I do not know why we allow it nor why so many men and women offer their lives in sacrifice to it but it seems that war is always with us. What are we fighting for? I am one of the Vietnam War generation. My parents and siblings were products of the two World and […]
Review: Boneyard 11
Boneyard 11 by Linton Robinson My rating: 4 of 5 stars Lin Robinson delivers a hard-hitting, intense and topically explosive story, full of characters who challenge our preconceptions about the criminal worlds of prostitution, drug trafficking, gang warfare, hired assassins and more! The adventure into the southern California and Baja underworld is a trip most […]
Re-Post: Something Wicked This Way Comes & Why Writers Could Be in Great Danger
I am reposting this blog from Kristen Lamb because she has written about issues that are so critical to writers and citizens that I hope all my readers will have an opportunity to read this and think about what she has said. Something Wicked This Way Comes & Why Writers Could Be in Great Danger. My […]
Interview with Richard Turner: Author of Black Dragon
I have the pleasure and honor of introducing Richard Turner, author of Black Dragon, which was launched on May 16, 2014, the sequel to Goliath. According to his biography on Author Central, “Richard Turner proudly served in the Canadian Army for more than thirty years. Starting his career as a private and finishing it off as […]
Upcoming: Author Richard Turner | Black Dragon
Richard Turner’s new thriller, Black Dragon, will be launched tomorrow. I’m pleased to announce that Richard will be my guest in the near future. In the meantime, here is a brief description of the book now available on Amazon: 1945 – with the Soviets preparing to invade Japan’s northern islands, a top-secret military installation rushes to […]
Review: The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton My rating: 5 of 5 stars A book of its time, brilliant exposé of the constraints of social order in the late 19th, early 20th Centuries, New York. Hard to imagine the willful entrapment within these constraints and the acceptance members of that society met the dictates. Wharton’s […]
Lilacs Trump Fear
Here in California, we think of lilacs as cultivated garden shrubbery, container plants for decks, flowering in Spring. In Maine, lilacs grow in the wild, spreading into groves so large a four-year-old can build an imaginary dream house fit for fairies and elfin princes. We start building our dreams as soon as we have the […]
The Great State of Maine
Maine is one of those far off places we know with a mystical quality. We are close to Canada and far enough away from the big cities, bordered on the west by New Hampshire and on the east by the rockiest coast and the Atlantic. Our neighbors keep watch over us and keep to themselves. […]