I’ve been writing and publishing book reviews since 1999. It all started when a friend of mine became an editor with a community newspaper in a town near ours. He asked me if I would contribute a review every now and then for the weekend paper. Thus began my tenure with the Conroe Courier, which lasted for six years until they phased out the book review section of the paper.
After that, I started contributing reviews to a number of different venues. A few months ago, Brian Freeman from Cemetery Dance asked me if I would be willing to bundle up my reviews of Stephen King’s works into a chapbook. Why not? I decided to limit the collection to books published in the 21st century (which, by my ad hoc definition for this collection, starts in 2000). That gave me a loose theme and a title, Twenty-First Century King. As it turned out, there were 21 reviews and the word count ran to 21,000 words. Any numerologists out there? CD announced the chapbook today and it is in stock and ready to ship. Limited to 750 copies, all signed by me. (That’s the massive signing session I alluded to a while back). Follow the link for the product page.
I revised my new story a few more times this morning and sent it off to market. Fingers crossed.
My buddy Jeff Strand texted me before Survivor aired last night, saying, “Does it make me a bad person if I kind of hope that Abi Marie wins immunity tonight?” I didn’t think that was likely, given that Abi hasn’t come close to winning anything. Funny how things work out, isn’t it? So much so that a few people accused the producers of rigging things to turn out this way for dramatic effect. Then she came up with this idea to lie about what was on her “hidden advantage” scroll, a lie that seemed bound to fizzle at the immunity challenge, and yet she came up with a clever way to bluff through that, too. I’m not sure anyone believed her, but it was a valiant effort, and it paid off. The next question, then, was whether or not Penner could salvage the day yet again, but his luck finally ran out. He was so busy pointing out the flaws in Lisa’s game to her that he overlooked his own: his unwillingness to pretend to commit to an alliance. All isn’t lost for Penner, though. He whistled his way into the night and then turned Ponderosa from a toxic environment into a place where everyone now seems to be getting along.
I finished Weeds and was very pleased and surprised by the finale. After the tumultuous encounter between Nancy and Andy at the end of the previous episode, they jumped forward in time. It wasn’t all happily ever after, but it all made sense (except for Silas’s wife being so hateful toward Nancy). Much of the old gang was back in one form or another (but not all), and the future has some cool technology, although not all of it reliable (witness the SNAFU at the dry cleaners). Bringing everyone together for Stevie’s sort-of bar mitzvah (because he was only Jewish by association) was a good idea. It didn’t give Nancy closure—it gave her an opening. She no longer has to do crazy stuff to support her family. Now she can find out who she really is just for herself. An intriguing and, no doubt, daunting propect.
American Horror Story just keeps getting stranger and stranger. And stranger. And weirder. And stranger.
And there’s something weird about BBC America on our system. The sound reproduction isn’t always all that great, which means I end up using close captions so I can understand the thick British accents on The Hour. The NY Times review of the first episode talked about the show’s poor timing in that the BBC and hour-long news programs (which is what the show is about, in a way) specifically, haven’t had the best press of late.
