I'm Sorry Amazon...I Want an Open Relationship

Dear Amazon,

When we first met in 2012 and you batted your lashes at me from across the room, you were clearly the alpha girl at the party with your sexy Kindle and #1 market share. Other e-readers just seemed to fall in your shadow. Then I bought you a drink and we talked a little. Free promotions? You'd put me in the Kindle Prime library and pay me some undetermined cut of a pool for every borrow? You were the whole package! All you asked from me in return is that we be exclusive and not see other people. Like every guy, I was a little hesitant about committing but in the end I just jumped in head over heels.

Then the honeymoon phase ended. You became a little clingy by automatically reenrolling me into another 90 days of KDP Select, but I didn't really think anything of it at the time. With our free promotions, while fun and exciting at first, you... well...you just seemed to get bored, as if your mind was elsewhere developing new promotional tools for more famous authors who could take you out to nice dinners at fancy restaurants. The once triple-digit free downloads promos slid into double-digit downloads and before long, I'm ashamed to say, we got to a place where our downloads only gave away like two copies of my novel The Golden Merra a day. What happened to our sales algorithms? Sure, you threw me a bone with your Kindle Countdown Deals, but you made it all complicated by saying I could only enroll after my price had been fixed for so many days and telling me I was ineligible because I had already used the free promo option. I couldn't figure you out! I thought you meant one thing, you meant another; we just didn't connect on the same level anymore! I'm sorry for that angry email I sent you, by the way.

Look, we'll always have some great memories... like the time my short story "Waves and War" almost had 1,000 free downloads in one day, beating out a Tom Clancy ebook for a hot minute. But I think it's time we started seeing other people. It's time we face facts here; our relationship has gone from KDP Select to It's Complicated. I'm not saying we can't still be friends or you can't sell my work. In fact, I know you've been selling the books of many other writers for a long time and I'm willing to accept that a part of who you are. I've done a lot of thinking the last few months, and I've learned a lot about myself, a lot about distribution and marketing strategy too. I've realized there are other fish in the sea: Nook has a great royalty rate for lower priced ebooks that will be perfect for my short fiction and Smashwords is just so easy to get along with.

I know it's hard. Please don't cry. It's not you, it's me. Well, okay, it's kind of you. But you're still Amazon, though, and you alway will be. You're great! And I'll never be able to live without you. What writer could? I know it'll be awkward for a while -- what do we tell the kids? What if the neighbors ask? But, you know, I don't think this is something to be ashamed of. We're just two very different people who need to focus on our own goals for a while. Besides, a lot of authors are doing multi-platform these days.

Yours,

Kevin

Review: 77 Shadow Street

77 Shadow Street

by Dean Koontz

The cover and description of this book would have you think that it is traditional horror tale about a haunted apartment building, something in the vein of Stephen King's The Shining. But, in reality, this is a sci-fi novel. The story is centered around the Pendleton, a once upper-crust apartment from the Gilded Age. The building has a history of its residents periodically going insane, and naturally the reader is about to join the Pendleton's current residents in one of those periods. 

Suddenly the Pendleton seems to change around the characters and the changes are not positive: bioluminescent grass outside, bizarre liquid metal/humanoid creatures and some entity known as the "One" who is hellbent on "exterminating" every single one of them. The trapped and disoriented residents can recognize this new Pendleton as their home plainly enough, but it is at the same time, quite different. Perhaps the most important difference is the mysterious figure known as "Witness" who roams this new apartment building.  

Now, I like science fiction; I like Dean Koontz. In this case, I did not like Dean Koontz writing science fiction. Koontz is a master at writing the suspense thriller, and he's pulled off some good sci-fi in the past. The Watchers was an excellent book (two or three terrible movies but an excellent book). Readers moderately familiar with dystopian fiction will be able to guess where the plot is going early on, and unfortunately once that happens, reading through to the end often feels like going through the motions. Koontz raises some interesting philosophical questions, as all sci-fi should, but while they are relevant questions, they have been thoroughly explored time and again.

Welcome to Creepy Island...please don't touch anything

The Doll

by J.C. Martin

In The Doll, worst parent ever Joyce Parker takes her 6 year-old daughter Taylor to the Island of the Dolls in Mexico. For those of you not familiar with the Island of the Dolls, look at some of the pictures below and you'll see why Child Protective Services should have been called as soon as the kid began telling friends and family how she spent her summer vacation. The Island of the Dolls is, in fact, a real island in Mexico that is covered with hundred if not thousands of dolls and doll parts, and it has become quite the tourist hot spot in recent years. Even ignoring the folklore that the island is haunted, it surely has to be one of the creepiest places on the planet. If you are interesting in seeing more of this truly bizarre locale, Josh Gates of Syfy's Destination Truth visited the island in 2009 (Season 3: Episode 2). As far as I know, the show is still on Netflix.

Back to this short story/novelette. I think Martin did a great job with The Doll. The whole thing is just so damned strange, and it was high time someone did something creative with it. Martin handled it very well. As stated earlier, the story begins with the Parkers taking a guided tour of the island. Whilst exploring its creepiness, they enter a hut inside which is a black altar. Readers are later informed that this is an unholy sanctuary for the black magic religion of Palo Mayombe, a dark derivative of Latin American Santeria. The number one rule when touring the Island of the Dolls is to never ever touch the dolls, and of course Taylor sneaks one home (in case we needed more evidence not to bring a 6 year-old here). Unexplainable phenomena begin happening not long after the Parkers return home, and I will leave it to the reader to uncover the rest.

The Doll was a delightfully creepy and unsettling story. Martin did a great job in capturing that old fashioned ghost story vibe to where, as I was reading at about 1 in the morning, I fervently hoped I wouldn't hear a noise through my daughter's baby monitor. I also need to commend Martin on her research. I knew a little about the Island of the Dolls from watching Destination Truth and some online reading, and what I read in this story seemed spot on. She also gave some background about Santeria and Palo Mayombe (without being tedious about it) that I found very informative. The one area I somewhat question is the opening premise of the story. I had trouble suspending my disbelief that someone would ever take such a young child to such a traumatizing place and then consistently display such an inability to tell that child no, and I don't mean no as in "No, you can't have candy before bed"; I mean no as in "No, don't touch that decrepit doll that's been sitting outside on a trouble island for years and is surrounded by black candles." I know, I know, this is a story about black magic and ghosts, and bad parenting is the thing I take issue with as unbelievable? Yep. However, this is not enough to seriously affect the story. Overall this is a fantastic read.

Lost in Suburbia

Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour - Volume 1

by Cathryn Grant

It is hard to write good flash fiction. The space constraints prohibit any kind of real plot or character development. That being said, Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour does it fairly well. This is a short collection of roughly a dozen stories that are anywhere from one to maybe five or six pages in length that deal with the underside of suburbia. We tend to think of the burbs as a purified middle-class sanctuary from crime and deviant behavior, but what Cathryn Grant manages to do is use the seedy and unsavory to break down their pristine palisade. In loosely Poe-esque fashion, her short vignettes tell such tales as the murderous grandmother who disapproves of her grandson's hussy of a girlfriend or the battle between a homeowner and his impertinent, puddle-targeting newspaper carrier. They're interesting little pieces and are best consumed one or two at a time for quick entertainment. I give that last nugget of advice because I took the digested the whole work in one sitting and by the end I grew bored. That is not to say the stories or boring, but I think the constant start-a-story-end-a-story just grows tedious after a while. Most readers tend to be novel people and I think they will tend to shy away from an anthology-style work like this. However, if you're a literary reader (or if you like atypical story lines) I suggest you check this out!

Assassins Assemble!

The Bounty Hunters: An Omega Sector Short Story 

by Vincent Pauletti

The Bounty Hunters is an odd duck. It is difficult to rate it either good or bad. I'm more inclined to give it a "not applicable," but that would involve me creating a new category. The premise of this work is that some Russian is assembling a cast of international assassins, bounty hunters and mercenaries for a mission that has its roots going back to Copernicus in the 16th century. First, let me begin why this is not in anyway a bad short story: the writing. From the very first page, author Vincent Pauletti immerses the reader in a vivid world of mercenaries and guns for hire throughout the world. I have never said this before on this blog, but I will say it now; this author could definitely be a NYT bestselling author right now. The characters in The Bounty Hunters, and there are roughly a half dozen of them from all over the world, each have unique personalities, and the author pulls off their dialects perfectly. I typically hate dialect in writing, but it is well done here. My personal favorites are those of the McManus brothers from Ireland. Additionally, Pauletti has a solid foundation of understanding for each locale his bounty hunters come from. I teach world history for a living so I can vouch for this. Now, why is this not a good short story? Well, The Bounty Hunters isn't really a story at all. It is a bridge between two novels, The Nostradamus Revelation and The Copernicus Connection. There is no plot to speak of, aside from an introductory scene for each bounty hunter where they get a call from "the Russian." After Pauletti introduces the reader to his cast, he includes the prologue and first chapter from the second book in the Omega Sector series, The Copernicus Connection. Perhaps in the context of the series, this short story has more relevance, but as a stand alone work I found it unfulfilling. That being said, I just downloaded The Nostradamus Revelation to my Kindle because I need to see what this Omega Sector series is all about. If Pauletti's writing is any indication, I may have stumbled upon a strong action thriller writer.

New Review: Sledge (A Mary Walker short story)

Sledge (A Mary Walker short story)

by Ernie Lindsey

Sledge is a fast-paced suspenseful thriller featuring author Ernie Lindsey's main character from his novel White Mountain. Private investigator Mary Walker was crippled five years ago by a serial cop killer nicknamed "Sledge" for obvious and uncomfortable reasons. In this short, we catch up with Walker, who left the force after surviving an encounter with Sledge to become a private detective, as she is conducting late night surveillance of a warehouse whose owner suspects his employees of stealing merchandise. Inevitably Sledge reappears, and Walker must confront the psychopath who crippled her and ended her career.

This book belongs squarely in the suspense and thriller genres and pulls off both fairly well. Once I began this piece I was compelled to finish it, especially after Sledge showed up in the narrative. This story has a bit of a creep factor too if you try to put yourself in the character's shoes and imagine what you would do in a situation with a sledgehammer-wielding maniac. Lindsey's writing in Sledge is not particularly stylistic and this has the advantage of resonating easily to the modern reader and not distracting from any of the action. Don't think that I am saying his writing is amateurish in the slightest, as it is very professional and polished. I believe that there is a certain style and tone that works with this genre, and the author nailed it. My one criticism of this piece is some of the dialogue, which I felt could be a little out of place given the dire situation. I think it falls into the familiar trap of the villain pausing to have an extended 20/20-esque interview about why he did it. Even though I'm not a huge fan of that method of exposition, Lindsey successfully manages to work in a fair amount of character development for a short story, and it makes me wonder what he can do with a full length novel. I expect that White Mountain (which calls itself A Mary Walker mystery and not A Mary Walker short story), will have a goodly amount of substance and plot, not to mention action. If you're a fan of Jeff Deaver, Patricia Cornwell, or novelists in that vein, I highly recommend Sledge.

New Review: The Mind Cafe

The Mind Cafe

by Lizzy Ford

The Mind Cafe is a thought-provoking short story with something to say. The main character, Rosie, is the creation of author Lizzy Ford and a person who would unfortunately be all too easy to find in real life. She suffered an accident in her past (she demarcates time in "BDA" and "ADA" -- "Before or After the Damn Accident") and has been left in the author's words "a human vegetable." Rosie is dependent on assisted living, aided by a rude young Guatemalan nurse who can barely speak a lick of English and has MTV playing constantly, which Rosie can't stand. Furthermore, Rosie's only form of communication is a "virtual keyboard" invented by her tech savvy sister that registers her eye movements and clumsily translates them into words on a screen. (I'm unsure if a device like this actually exists, but if not I think it was a clever stroke on the part of Ford. It's very logical and practical piece of technology that should be invented.) With not much joy to be had in the real world, Rosie slips into the Mind Cafe, a place that the reader, or Rosie for that matter, can't fully define. Is it a figment of her imagination or something more spiritual? In any case, Rosie, who while in her dream state has the body of her 24 year-old self except for her silver 60 year-old which she much adores, prefers her Mind Cafe to the MTV playing in her living room, and the narrative of this story focuses on her interactions with the people in the cafe. Some of the diners are important friends and family members and some are people she's never met. I don't want to spoil the conversations because they are the crux of the book, but there is one I want to mention that I thought was cleverly done. A psychologist whom Rosie has never actually met in real life and only knows from a book she read in college visits her to essentially act as her therapist. Interestingly, the man's face never really changes, no smiles or frowns, and that's because Rosie's only seen one photograph of him on the back cover of his book.

As far as being a story that asks philosophical questions (What is the meaning of life? Is death a blessing or a curse? etc) The Mind Cafe is excellent. As far as a fiction goes  I still think this is pretty good, but I think sometimes the writing gets a little murky. I found myself having to reread a few passages to understand exactly what it was the author was saying. I think fans of a more Literary-style fiction will be drawn to this as will people who enjoy contemplating philosophy. All in all, The Mind Cafe is a worthwhile read.