Looking for Your Next Book

Where do ideas go when we're done with them? If we believe in an idea enough, it becomes real. But if we abandon an idea that we once really loved, it falls into the Stillreal - a seedy segment of the Imagination.  It is here we find Tippy the Triceratops. Tippy was once the imaginary friend of a little girl who created him in order for her to make sense of the grown-up world. But when the girl's father dies, she's forced to face the real world and her imaginary friend Tippy heads to Stillreal.  There, Tippy passes the time by taking on odd detective jobs for other unwanted ideas.  It's convenient and unremarkable ... until Tippy makes the acquaintance of The Man in the Coat - a nightmare who can do the impossible ... turn an imaginary friend into an imaginary corpse. This book is ... wow ... I don't know how to define this. Imagine reading a book the way a child reads a book, believing and accepting the fantastic as possible.  Now imagine reading some specific chil

The great quake of 1868 split California into scores of labyrinthine caverns, mostly flooded with ocean water. But the quake also revealed a new substance known as "ghost rock" which creative individuals have discovered can be useful for making some inventive weapons, among other things. Ghost rock provides the source for many steampunk-like inventions. Right out of a classic 1950's western, our hero is a gun-for-hire, haunted by his past (quite literally in this dark fantasy), who wanders into a town that desperately needs a hero-for-hire to rescue them from a mad scientist who's  creating an army of undead. Assisting our hero is a British-educated American Sioux because ... well, why not?  It takes place in the old west so some Indigenous Peoples representation needs to happen. This was my second attempt to read the book. It is a long, drawn-out work that doesn't even come close to living up to the expectations, given that it's based on an RPG game and mashe

I've been working in the arts for four decades and I've seen a lot of changes in how arts organizations approach the business of presenting arts programming. Treating the arts as a business is probably the biggest change I've seen. This might seem like an obvious direction, but I've known very few artists who are wise with a business sense, and fewer still who enjoy the business side of the arts. Most arts business books I've come across have been about "producing" - gathering teams and resources in order to present your chosen art form. But to truly look at the business side of an arts organization one needs to understand the organizations strategic plan.  What's a strategic plan you ask? Well author Michael M. Kaiser has some answers for you in this book. Kaiser takes the reader through, step by step, with all the essential processes to creating an arts business. One of the key ingredients is having and understanding the strategic plan. And yet this

From the publisher's description, as found on Goodreads: After the Nova-Insanity shattered Earth's civilization, the Genes and Fullerenes Corporation promised to bring humanity back from the brink. Many years later, various factions have formed, challenging their savior and vying for a share of power and control. Glow follows the lives of three very different beings, all wrestling mental instability in various forms; Rex - a confused junkie battling multiple voices in his head; Ellayna - the founder of the GFC living on an orbital satellite station and struggling with paranoia; and Jett - a virtually unstoppable robotic assassin, questioning his purpose of creation. ... I think that's all you really need to know, although the description does go on.  Three beings wrestling mental instability, including a robotic assassin questioning his purpose.  Uhhhh....  That alone would suggest that either this is going to be a wild, Philip K. Dick-like tale or a messy conglomerate of

There was a time when I wouldn't have even considered reading a military fiction book, even military science fiction. But the descriptions I had seen for Sean Danker's Admiral looked really appealing to me so I thought I'd give it a read. I'm glad I did. A ship in deep space has for sleepers (individuals in a cryogenic stasis) aboard.  They are members of the Evagardian Imperial Service. The ship loses power and brings the individuals out of their sleep.  They all seem a bit groggy and unfamiliar with one another.  The last to wake is in a sleeper pod bearing an admiral's insignia. And so the individual takes command over the other three (an ensign, a private, and a lieutenant).  But is he really an admiral? They find themselves stranded on a planet, their supplies running out, no way to send a distress call, and their limited sensors indicate they may not be alone.  Can someone who may or may not really be an admiral command this small team and keep everyone safe

If you've been reading my reviews for any length of time you should know that I've become a tremendous fan of Seanan McGuire's work,  I believe she consistently has the best most regular, best urban fantasy being published today. Her world-building is fantastic (and I mean that word in all its definitions) and well-defined. Her characters are unique and relatable and always seem so real.  They deal with personal issues as well as the big picture problems around which the plot is built.   Though my memory is a little fuzzy and I'm probably remembering this a little incorrectly, I once heard the great Theodore Sturgeon respond to the question :"What is the difference between writing short stories and writing novels?"  His response was, "Short stories are about things people do and novels are about people, who do things."  McGuire's novels are definitely about people.  But let's not sell short the things these people do, because McGuire's st

  It is 1952 and World War II is over, but it's still fresh in people's minds.  And when you're an ace fighter pilot who worked privately for a secret branch of the U.S. government, you're now out of work and looking for excitement.  Samantha "Sam" Moxley is that fighter pilot - a dominant woman in a male-dominated service. Sam steps up and takes charge when things get tough and she thrives on adventure.  Now she realizes that the organization that she once worked for, known as "The Nine," has to be stopped from getting their hands on a special key that leads to the renowned Hall of Records. Sam pulls together a team to help her because she knows first hand the resources that The Nine have to draw from to get what they want, and right now they want Sam's sister. It's hard to imagine any reader picking up this book and  not  making the comparison to Indiana Jones or Benjamin Gates. In fact the book almost relies on the reader being familiar wi

It's Los Angeles in the 1970's (1974, to be precise) and Quincy Harker is a crime scene photographer. He is recognizing a killing pattern as the works of the infamous Dracula, but who would ever believe him? Well, Dracula's minions might.  Nearly 100 years earlier, Dracula's brides, seeking to live out their own undead lives, nailed their master to his coffin.  Now they are back as Dracula is making his presence known once again.  But are the brides back to assist their master, or are they looking to continued what they started a century earlier?  Is Harker a tool to the brides' achieving their goal, or because of his knowledge is he a danger to Dracula's return? I'm a sucker for any vampire/Dracula-related book or graphic novel so this was easily something I was looking forward to.  What I found was a real mixed book. The story, by Alex de Campi, is very much a one-note story. Some of Dracula's victims/spawn are rising up against him, but since they are

Is there an American entertainer who's had more written about him (or her) than Phineas Taylor Barnum? It's been 130 years since Barnum died and still we are fascinated by this celebrated huckster. P.T. Barnum was a man of action who took advantage of opportunities when they presented themselves and created opportunities when they didn't. He was a businessman, a politician, a philanthropist. He was an advocate of temperance, black suffrage, and animal protections (despite [or perhaps because of] losing animals in fires in his circuses). He was a colorful character, to be sure, and he was probably the first person to be a celebrity just by being a celebrity and also likely the first person to use social media (newspapers and magazines) effectively to draw attention to himself and his interests. I can only imagine what he might have done had he lived in this time with social media that can reach millions in a minute and more gullible 'suckers' than ever. Plenty has be

  I was interested in this book based on this description:  Never be lost for words again...with this book of lost words. Have you ever wanted to wield the silver tongue of Loki, or to hammer home your point like a Thundergod? Old Norse is the language of legends and the stuff of sagas, the inspiration for Tolkien and Marvel, for award-winning manga and epic videogames. It is the language of cleverly crafted kennings, blood-curdling curses, and pithy retorts to Ragnarök. Old Norse for Modern Times gives you the perfect phrase for every contemporary situation [...] With over 500 phrases inside (plus the chance to add your own!) it is the perfect guide for Vikings fans, whether they are re-enactors, role-players, or simply in love with Ragnar. What this doesn't say is that this is a humor book and not an actual, useful language guide. (Okay ... so I'm not sure how useful a language guide of an ancient language would be, but I think the description offers some suggestions.) The

Summer in Bordeaux and a heat wave is destroying the grape crop so the vintners are already on edge when a car accident brings in the Winemaker Detective and his assistant Virgil, drawing some unwanted attention to some personal, dirty secrets behind some of the most prestigious wines in all of France. This is the sixth book in The Winemaker Detective Mysteries series, though it's only the second book of the series that I've read. The idea of mysteries, using vineyards and wine as the backdrop, seemed really clever. I didn't enjoy the first book I read, but this one was easier for me to get in to and follow.  Still, it didn't have a deep draw and I had to really focus my attention and force myself to finish it. The book is quite short - only 164 pages, making it more of a novelette than a novel - and yet we get introduced to characters, an incident, an investigation, and a resolution.  Clearly we don't spend a lot of time setting up the story. We jump in and wait fo

We recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing. For those who missed it, there was plenty of buzz surrounding the event, with a release of high-definition video footage as feature-length documentary film, and plenty of books about the historic event.  I followed much of it, read many of the books, and so I didn't think I was going to learn many new things about the Apollo program with this book, but I wanted to read it because the event was memorable for me. I was wrong.  I learned a lot. I didn't know that there had been another spacecraft (not of U.S. origin) orbiting the moon when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were in orbit and the lunar module was about to make a descent. I didn't know who manufactured the spacesuits used for the first lunar expedition (and how they were chosen). I didn't know that a 25 year-old student with a notebook of handwritten notes had the power to abort the mission in the very last seconds and was asked if the