General Announcement of Publication

My good friend and fellow author, John B. Meilink, has just published his third book, The Unruly Guitarist: "Thank you, Modesto, and Good Night!". I haven't read it yet, but will just as soon as I find an afternoon or two when a dozen or more critical projects are not demanding my time and effort.

The author is a professional musician, and when he isn't holding a piece of wood in each hand and hitting stuff with them, he's living the life of a musician.  Although he might deny it, many of the situations in this book are based on real life events.

I can't say it's an excellent read, since I haven't read it yet, but if it's anything like his first two books it's worth reading.

Book Review: SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day (Author), Milo Yiannopoulos (Foreword)

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police 

by Vox Day (Author), Milo Yiannopoulos (Foreword)

File Size: 3739 KB
Print Length: 236 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Castalia House (August 25, 2015)
Publication Date: August 25, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B014GMBUR4
ISBN 9527065682

I just finished reading SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day (Author), Milo Yiannopoulos (Foreword).  This is required reading if you're involved in the modern business world. If you're independently wealthy and are positioned so as to be immune to social media attacks, it's optional reading.

Imagine that you're at a business meeting, or maybe an informal get-together of some sort. You make a joke about something - the upcoming election, the list of candidates, or maybe just one candidate - and everyone laughs.  Then bright and early the next morning your face is all over the Internet and you're being labeled a misogynist, a racist, and a pedophile. The number of hate messages in your email and social media accounts exceed the allocated size of your in box, and the company personnel director wants a meeting with you ASAP.  Congratulations, Ace. You've just been attacked by the SJWs, and if you're anything close to a rational human being, you have no idea what to do about it.

Vox Day outlines the phases of an SJW attack in great detail, cites several examples, then describes the counter attack that you, the victim, must make. He tells you what to expect from your friends, family, and co-workers, and explains how to cope with it. He also describes what you should be doing if you see this kind of attack happening to someone else.

This is not what I would call a light read. The information it contains is far too important to be skimmed over. But if you're going to thrive in today's world, reading SJWs Always Lie will tell you what you should know.

Riding With Mother by Momma Fargo, AKA Kathryn Marschalk Loving

Here's an excellent read.  The author, an ex-police officer from the State of Wyoming, takes her dear old mother in the passenger seat of her squad car for a first hand look at the dangerous, stressful life of a real policewoman.  Kathryn's goal is to show her mother what a self-sufficient, resourceful, and genuinely tough police officer she is.  What happens is hilarious!

Here's the link to Riding With Mother by Momma Fargo. Trigger warning: don't drink anything while you're reading this.

Book Review: The Distracted Drummer: "Thank you, Toledo, and Good Night" by John B Meilink

File Size: 576 KB
Print Length: 188 pages
Publication Date: September 2, 2014
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
ASIN: B00NAD8WMM

You can find The Distracted Drummer: "Thank you, Toledo, and Good Night" by John B Meilink for the Kindle ereader on Amazon.

Ever wonder how a rock musician got started? And once started, how they manage to keep everything together - work, bills, gigs, band members that fail to show, and fiendishly jealous girlfriends? This is the story of one musician's rise from rags to respectability, or a reasonable facsimile of same. It's painfully funny, and I recommend it to everyone who is looking for an enjoyable read.

Book Review: Joyland by Steven King

Joyland, the Illustrated Edition

Published by Titan Books
Copyright © by Stephen King

Print Length: 300 pages
ISBN: 978-1-78329-532-6

Book Review: The Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon

I can't remember where I stumbled across The Traveling Vampire Show Kindle Edition by Richard Laymon, but I'm glad I did.

File Size: 1178 KB
Print Length: 404 pages
ASIN: B0028T82EC
ISBN-10: 0843948507
ISBN-13: 978-0843948509

Book Review: This Is Me, Jack Vance! Or More Properly, This Is I

Jack Vance is one of my favorite authors, so when I discovered his autobiography had been published I naturally bought a copy for my Kindle and started reading it.  You can find a copy here: This Is Me, Jack Vance! Or More Properly, This Is I, which I encourage you to read.  Jack Vance is somewhat notorious for not talking about his writing process, and although he largely remains true to this idiosyncrasy, he does make a few exceptions in this book.

Vance is an acquired taste for most people.  He possesses a vocabulary that is well above that of the average author, and is on a much different level from the average modern author.  Whenever I read Vance I end up consulting a dictionary several times during the novel.  I find that having to stop reading and look up a word enhances the experience for me, but not everyone feels this way.  The typical Dean Koontz aficionado would likely give up after a few pages.

Vance starts with vivid memories from his early childhood, progresses through several attempts at college, and spends most of his time describing his married life.  If you're familiar with his work, you'll find a few familiar scenarios that appear in his novels.

A few things that I was interested in learning is that Jack Vance never wrote with a typewriter.  He wrote his novels longhand, using one or more fountain pens with various color inks.  When he finally lost his eyesight, his son arranged a word processor for him so that he could continue writing.  I was surprised to learn that Vance and his family traveled extensively, settling down in some exotic location just long enough to write a novel or two, then moving on.  The family ran out of money several times, but this condition didn't seem to phase Vance very much.

From what I was able to gather about Jack Vance and his writing process, and what I can surmise, I think he was one of these people who simply sat down and wrote the story.  Ergo, there wasn't really anything much for him to describe.  He wrote, sent his manuscript to his agent who then made a good deal with the publisher.  Vance didn't edit much, and he hated it when things were changed, such as a title.  Vance specifically mentions this a few times.

This book is an excellent read, and provides real insight into the life of a truly great author.  I recommend it to everyone.

Book Review: The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus

Due to click bait and an email advertisement, I've acquired a copy of the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus.  I bought it from Barnes and Noble, mainly because they offered it on sale and I had a gift card with B&N given to me by a kindly relative.  Here is the tome in question.

Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus

Published by the Oxford University Press

Copyright © 2012 Oxford University Press

Third Edition

ISBN 978-0-19-982992-7

Apx. 1003 pages, not counting various lists, explanations and references

Weight: 3.4 pounds

The beast originally listed at $40.00, and was reduced to $27.82 by B&N - probably because it didn't make the NYT Bestseller's List this year.  I used a 20% off coupon I got in my email along with my gift card, and I ended up paying $5.42 for it.  Not bad.

It includes a section on English grammar as well as a word usage section that is very nice to have.  All in all, a good buy.  Now I'll have to see how useful it actually is, as my somewhat grandiloquent protagonist tries to interact with the hoi polloi.

Book Review: The Bell Witch [Kindle Edition]

The Bell Witch [Kindle Edition]
John F.D. Taff (Author), James Roy Daley (Editor), Books of the Dead (Editor)
File Size: 4491 KB
Print Length: 266 pages
Publisher: Books of the Dead Press (August 5, 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00ED5QAZW

I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars.

This story is about the infamous Bell Witch, a legendary poltergeist which is said to have terrorized the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee back in the early 19th century.  The first third of the book is very good, and if I stopped after the first third I'd rate this at four stars.  But I didn't, and so discovered that the plot tended to stall out during the second third of the book, and by the final third I was wondering if this thing was ever going to end.

The characterization is average, or maybe a little below average.  This is a handicap that you can get away with if the pacing is solid and the scenes are exceptional - which isn't true here.  The scenes are okay.  Not great, not bad.  Just okay.  The pacing in the final chapters drags along with the tedium people experience while they wait for the dentist to come back in with the x-rays.  The ending is in sight, but no matter what happens the author refuses to take us to the end.

What I found disappointing was that the rest of the book didn't live up to the high quality of the first third, which I found very enjoyable. Too bad, because it didn't have to be this way.

Writing a Bad Review

If you're self-published, you are quite literally one of millions.  After you've completed the laborious process of getting your work listed on Amazon and fixing it so it doesn't look too awful bad on a kindle, you've got to somehow get yourself noticed by the multitudes who are going to read your work and want more.  One major part of that particular flaming hoop is to get people to give your work a review.

Most of us have friends and family who say that they'll do that right away.  Most don't, and there are some that you'd really rather not say anything at all.  I'm somewhat borderline.  I tend to be overly critical and when I give something a good review, it sounds a little like flattery no matter how sincere it is.  I write reviews anyway, and I probably shouldn't.

So my current problem is that I've been asked to review someone's work and tell them how good it is, and it sucks.  It's poorly written, formatting is non-existent, the plot is disjointed, the characterization has been skipped because it takes a lot of work and, well, if anyone's reading this they may understand what I'm talking about.  It sucks.  How do I say all that without taking a soldering iron to their fingertips, figuratively speaking?

I think the person in question is looking for a mutual admiration group.  I know these sorts of groups exist, but I've never tried to find one and I wouldn't be interested in joining if I did.  Maybe I should encourage the newly hatched author to seek out and join such a group, and eventually run for club president.