Dusk Before the Dawn

Eric Shaw has visions, visions which ruined his promising film career in Hollywood and has damaged his marriage. Returning to Chicago, he makes documentaries about the lives of the deceased, paid for by their families to be shown at their funerals. His visions help him pick out key details, often surprising those viewing.

At one such viewing, he is recruited by Alyssa Bradford to make a documentary about her wealthy father-in-law, whose unknown history is tied to a small resort town in Indiana, West Baden. She gives him an old bottle of Pluto Water, for unknown reasons a prized possession of Campbell Bradford, the elderly and dying father-in-law. Even in the heat of the summer, the water bottle stays ice cold. As Eric gets to West Baden to research his project, his visions increase; when he takes a swig of the water bottle, his visions become lifelike. The visions are of the Campbell Bradford of the past, powerful and violent ruler of West Baden; to many, he was the embodiment of evil. Eric struggles with his sanity: are the visions real? Is the water causing them? Or is he simply insane?

Author Michael Koryta employs the element of doubt…Eric’s doubt about his sanity, doubt about his work…and changes that doubt into one of growing belief in himself. The supernatural part of the book is intermingled with the story line; is Eric sane, or are these visions just that? The author also adds to Eric’s “normal guy” status (a regular hero wouldn’t doubt himself) by having Eric make mistakes, lose in a fight, and generally act ungrateful to his wife and her family. This makes for a much more believable character.

Also unique about this story is the setting. Really, a spa/mineral springs in rural Indiana (near French Lick, home of Larry Bird!) is usually reserved for stories like Hoosiers and other sports oriented themes, not supernatural thrillers.

The ending (no spoilers here) offers a few surprises, and could have been warped to provide room for a sequel…kudos to the other for tying up the loose ends.

My review of The Astounding, The Amazing and The Unknown by Paul Malmont has been posted on SFSignal.

An excerpt:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: John Campbell assembles a team of science fiction writers to work with the Government during World War II. Led by Robert Heinlein and joined by Isaac Asimov and others, the team works to make science fiction a reality to help the war effort. Lost manuscripts and testing notes from Nikola Tesla lead the team on a merry chase for a super-weapon that could end the war.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: As with The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins; great tie-ins with the previous novel; believable characterizations of our heroes, Heinlein and Asimov.
CONS: My mama always told me that voyeurism was bad, but in this case I’ll make an exception. (Sorry, Mom!)
BOTTOM LINE: Picks up where the first book left off; with strong characterizations of Heinlein and Asimov, and return appearances by Gibson, Dent and Hubbard, an enjoyable blend of historical fact with adventure fiction.

An interesting confluence of events in my reading chronology ends with this review. Shortly after reading and reviewing Malmont’s The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, which features Doc Savage author and co-creator Lester Dent, I was invited to read the first new Doc Savage in 18 years by Will Murray, based on notes from Lester Dent.

The cycle is complete with this novel, which includes Dent and Walter Gibson from the Chinatown book, but features Robert Heinlein (who also appears in the first book), Isaac Asimov and other science fiction writers.

I must admit to feeling that I was invading the privacy of my author heroes, as if they were reduced to tawdry tabloid stories. Marital issues? Mental asylums? Sex? Not Lester Dent and Bob Heinlein! No way. These guys were superhuman, above the petty concerns of the masses. (Lester and Norma Dent are portrayed as the quintiscential all-American couple, and though I never had the honor to know them, as a Doc Savage fan boy I think this is as it should be.)

And therein lies the subtle elegance of these two novels, the blending of fact and fiction in a way that makes the reader question which is which. Several times, I caught myself asking “Did that really happen?” and being tempted to do research to answer that question. But I did not, because that would have spoiled the effect. As Malmont writes, or has Dent say in the first book, the difference between pulps and reality are the “lies” the author sticks into the story.

The story itself revolves around Heinlein, who is leading a team of science fiction authors working for the government to try and make science fiction a reality to aide the war effort, and a young Asimov, who is on the team. L. Ron Hubbard (who was in the first novel along with Heinlein) joins the team after partially getting thrown out of the Navy. A side story involves Hubbard’s encounters with different new age and old school religions and philosophies as he questions the direction of his life and loves, apparently as a precursor to his Dianetics book (a future Malmont subject??).

Through their attempts to help build super-weapons and super-defenses, Heinlein and the team (put together by John Campbell) discover an old experiment by the late Nikola Tesla, an experimental version of which may have been responsible for the destruction of a forest in Siberia. (Heard of Tunguska?) As with the Chinatown novel, the authors become the adventurers, finding old safes under the Empire State Building, escaping through forgotten underground rivers, engaging in one-upmanship pranks with their Navy cohorts, experimenting with science, and generally trying to save the day like the heroes they write about. They get harassed by the government from all sides: the part that hired them, the part that thinks some scifi writers are commies, and the part that may want Tesla’s invention for themselves (if it really works).

My review of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont has been posted on SFSignal.

An excerpt:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The authors of Doc Savage and The Shadow become adventurers as they try to find the ending to a pulp-like mystery in Chinatown and track down H.P. Lovecraft’s murderer.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Strong characterizations of Lester and Norma Dent, Walter Gibson, L. Ron Hubbard and the pulp business in general; draws a fine line between where reality ends and where pulp begins; well interwoven with a story of China just before World War II.
CONS: Would like to have seen more Lovecraft…but that’s a quibble.
BOTTOM LINE:Fantastic re-imagining if you are into the pulps, and a great adventure story even if you are not.

Take a rivalry between Walter Gibson (author/creator of The Shadow and prolific pulp writer) and Lester Dent (author of most of the Doc Savage pulps, a prolific writer in his own right) and give them their own pulp adventure/mystery to solve. Throw in youngsters (at the time) L. Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein. Include the death (murder?) of H.P. Lovecraft and intertwine it all with a storyline of the Chinese pre-World War II battles, and you have Malmont’s fascinating The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

The adventure begins as the two pulp giants (Dent and Gibson) argue about a story concerning Chinese tong wars in 1909 based in China and New York City’s Chinatown called “The Sweet Flower War”. Both claim it is a real story without an ending, and argue whether it would make good pulp or not. The rivalry and argument lead Dent and his wife Norma to Chinatown to investigate, to try to find the true ending. Gibson, meanwhile, learns of Lovecrafts death, and decides to head to Providence to attend the funeral, shadowed (pun intended) by Hubbard. In Providence, Lovecraft’s Aunt tells Gibson and Hubbard that Lovecraft was indeed murdered. As Dent was pulled to his story, Gibson, the inquisitive writer always seeking a story feels compelled to investigate.

A separate storyline involving Zhang Mei, a Chinese warlord also known as the Dragon of Terror and Peril, is intertwined, and ultimately brings all the storylines and Dent/Gibson together in the end.

My review of Jonathan Mayberry’s 3rd Joe Ledger book, The King of Plagues, has been posted on SFSignal.com. If you haven’t read the books, I strongly suggest reading them from the beginning; they are all “can’t put them down” reads (and I have to read them immediately or my son will steal the books out of my hand).

The Chronology of the series (with links to reviews or download locations):

• “Countdown“, a short story prequel;
• Patient Zero (linked to my interview with Maberry at SFSignal after this novel was released)
• The Dragon Factory
• “Material Winess”, the short story that bridges novels 2 and 3 (to get it, click here, sign up and it will be emailed to you
• The King of Plagues
• Assassin’s Code (4th novel, to be released in 2012)
• Unnamed 5th novel 

After I read John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany (which is an outstanding read) several years ago, I went on an Irving reading rampage; I stopped because though the writing was exquisite, the stories had elements that repeated throughout.

That was several years ago. I read Last Night In Twisted River because my wife read it, and in her description it reminded me of why I liked Irving’s books: they take ordinary people, who have strange twists and turns in their lives, and follow them through life, love, loss and usually across America through time. unfortunately, it also has all of those elements that repeated throughout many of the previous Irving novels, making it repetitive and ultimately nothing new…which is why I stopped reading this author the last time.

Last Night in Twisted River is like that, following Danny Baciagalupo and his father Dominic through the years, starting when Danny is twelve and accidentally kills his father’s girlfriend, thinking she was a bear. The girlfriend, Injun Jane, also happens to be the local cop’s girlfriend as well. This starts a life a running and hiding for Danny and Dominic, aided by woodsman Ketchum, Dominic’s sometime friend and Danny’s protector…who was something a bit more to Danny’s wife than just a friend.

Thus starts a string of tragedies, common in the Irving books I have read, which seem to have an individual impacted by a multitude of horrible events. Tragedies, sex with older women, rants at the Vietnam war (and multiple ways to keep men out of the war), rants at America, people getting fingers, hands or arms cut off…and bears; all elements observed from other Irving novels (there is even mention in this book of using a similar method to that employed in Owen Meany to keep a young man out of Vietnam). 

The story follows Danny and Dominic from Twisted River to Boston, to Iowa, Vermont and to Toronto, always hiding from the mean cop…or the thought that the cop will come after them. Irving’s descriptions of the scenary and the activities (in this case, cooking as Dominic is a cook) are a pleasure to read. And, as in the other novels, the ancilliary characters were quite interesting and well developed, as was Ketcham the woodsman. Danny becomes a famous writer, and Irving mentions interactions with some of the famous writers he learned from (the great Kurt Vonnegut) as being Danny’s.

But at the end of the book, I started skimming, as the story had similar plot lines to novels read before (though certain occurences at the end of the story (which I will not spoil) though difficult to believe, were new and different).

Heidegger’s Glasses combines the events of World War II and the Holocaust, mixes in a Nazi obsession with the supernatural, and adds a stubborn German philosopher named Heidegger who needs a new pair of glasses. The idea and concepts were interesting and i enjoyed the read, though I found the characters (especially the Germans) running together and the ending loose. This book was an uncorrected proof sent through Amazon’s Vine program.

The story revolves around a hidden camp, where Jews with particular language skills are pulled from the concentration camps and made to answer letters that come in for those whom have died in the camps.

“Himmler had forbade burning them. He believed in the supernatural with a vengeance and thought the dead would pester psychics for answers if they knew their letters were destroyed - eventually exposing the Final Solution. Goebbels, who despised the supernatural, wouldn’t burn them for a different reason. He wanted each letter to be answered for the sake of record keeping so there wouldn’t be any questions after the war. In order to look authentic, he decided the letters should be answered in their original language: hence the compound’s motto Like Answers Like.”

Elie is the lady with past whom takes care of the scribes and loves their German handler, Gerhardt, when she is not helping to smuggle Jews out of Germany. Their existence is strained, with the Scribes, Elie and the Germans assuming they wipe all be called to task by different masters soon.
(more…)

Fiction that interweaves historical fact, especially the World War I or II time periods, are among my favorite reads (and I enjoy writing them as well). Sarah’s Key fits that bill very well, mixing the tragic events of the holocaust in Paris in 1942 with a modern journalist seeking her own truths in the past and present. Yet another excellent choice by my wife who suggested this book.

The titular Sarah was a young girl who was part of the round up of of Jews in Paris in July of 1942 known as the Vel’ d’Hiv (strangely enough, code named Operation Spring Breeze). French policemen were complicit in the round up (later apologized for by French President Jacques Chirac in 1995), where several thousand Jews were kept with no food, water or facilities for days, then shipped to camps outside of Paris, then onto Auschwitz and other concentration camps. As with the Bombing of Bari, Italy, this remains a little known episode of World War II, outside of those it directly affected. (more…)

In the summer of 2005, I was about to venture into my third
small start-up company, wrapping up the last items with my previous employer. As luck would have it, my previous employer had offices in Europe, in Milan, Munich and London. We were lucky enough to wrap in a non-business trip to Greece, including the island of Paxos around my visiting the European customers and offices.

I was hiking around that island one day, being pursued by thoughts of start-up company financing, when I came across a large villa, facing out across the Adriatic Sea towards Italy. Wouldn’t it be great, I mused, if there were a nice angel investor in that villa who would like to invest in this next venture?

What if he were an Italian drug smuggler?

That was the genesis for my new novel, Software by the Kilo.

But it wasn’t until last November, several years after that first trip, that the novel was finished, with a World War II back story that tied the original start-up plus Italian drug smuggler story line together.

It is no coincidence that the book is released on December 2, the anniversary of “Little Pearl Harbor”, the bombing of Bari, Italy in 1943, which ends up as a pivotal setting in the novel.

Of course I had to add in that one of the Italian henchmen loves Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, and that led to the body count game…

I never thought it would be more than three years between novels; obviously Stephen King I’m not, in more ways than just output. But I’ve enjoyed thoroughly the writing process, getting the pieces of the story to fall into place, bouncing ideas off of friends and fellow writers. The voices in my head never shut up, so my therapy to keep what little sanity I have left is to keep putting them down on paper.

The book is available at your local independent book stores like The Twig in San Antonio (now in the Pearl Brewery!), Books Inc. in California, BookPeople in Austin, Murder by the Book in Houston, Katy Budget Books in Katy Texas (if they don’t have it, stomp your feet and ask them to order it, please), at Amazon (.com and overseas), Barnes and Noble, and other outlets.

If you have any questions or feedback before, during or after, please let me know. More info on the novel is here.

Thanks to Paul Levinson and Robert Flynn for the excellent quotes, and Kenny Manchester for a great cover. The novel should be available in December.

For the fourth year in a row, I’ll be at the Trinity University Alumni book signing on campus in Ruth Taylor Hall. For the third year, my partner in crime (and excellent author) Robert Flynn and I will share a table, which is dangerous just in the intent. Also for the fourth year, beer drinking and mexican food consumption will commence shortly after the book signing (or as Bob calls it, being ignored by non-readers) ends.

My next novel will not be ready in time for the signing (I will have information on it), but Bob’s latest Echoes of Glory will be there. Bob was the writer in residence at Trinity about a hundred years ago, and has won many awards for his Texas and Vietnam based fiction, and for his excellent collection of humorous essays. I’ve read Echoes of Glory and enjoyed it, my notes on it are here.

Come on by if you are close.