House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Bev Vincent

It begins with the death of a woman named Maria, killed in a drive-by shooting as she worked checking IDs outside a Puerto Rican nightclub. The reason she was killed and the ever-shifting quest to identify the shooters is what motivates this novel of revenge and retribution.

Maria was mother to Bimbo (real name Andrés), one of a group of five lifelong friends who are on the cusp of manhood, fresh graduates of high school. They are as different from each other as possible: some smart, some thick; some tall, some short; some brown, some black; some fiercely loyal, some less so; some eager to move on to better things, some resigned to remaining in the poverty and violence of the place where they grew up. 

Over the years, these friends have always had each other’s backs in difficult situations, none more so than Bimbo. Most murders on the island go unsolved, so Bimbo knows that only he can bring the culprits to rough justice. When he calls upon Gabe (the book’s main point-of-view character), Xavier, Tavo and Paul, each boy-man must now decide how committed he will be to Bimbo’s mission of vengeance. They are all familiar with violence, having delivered beatings in the past to people who committed an infraction against a member of their group, but they understand that this is on a different level. If Bimbo finds the people who shot his mother, a beating won’t be enough to even the score. The book explores loyalty in the face of mortal danger and the possibility that they will go down a dark path from which there may be no return.

There’s another Maria on the horizon, a catastrophic hurricane destined to strike the island. Puerto Ricans are familiar with the devastation these storms deliver: loss of electricity, fresh water and communication for days if not weeks on end. There are other legends associated with hurricanes: People disappearing, nameless creatures traveling through the storm, and terrifying birth defects. The storm might thwart the fivesome’s plans; on the other hand, it might provide the cover they need for their mission, which threatens to put them up against some dangerous men.

Puerto Rico is also a place of legends from myriad cultures, a concept Iglesias describes with the apt word syncretism. Catholicism is strong on the Caribbean island, but there is also a wide variety of mysticisms drawn from Africa and France. Voodoo and Santeria are two of the better known of these, but there are others, and Iglesias adds a few of his own to the mix, inventing dark deities with fearsome powers and drawing from Lovecraftian mythology as well. Although the book starts out feeling like a straight dark crime novel, anyone who’s read his previous novel, The Devil Takes You Home, will know that supernatural elements are bound to creep into the story.

As the members of the crew negotiate the dangerous path from suspect to suspect, doling out increasingly violent payback for the nightclub attack, they also cause collateral damage. Their group suffers an unbearable loss. Gabe’s mother is beaten in her home to warn him off further pursuit of the people responsible for Maria’s death. They get things wrong time and time again, and Bimbo becomes increasingly manic. Gabe’s girlfriend wants him to follow her to the mainland and extract himself from this culture of violence and, though he’s tempted, he finds it harder and harder to get away. He may hate the things Bimbo suggests but he is compelled to do them anyway.

Maria arrives, laying waste to the island’s infrastructure, raising omnipresent resentment about the way this territorial island—many of whose residents are fiercely nationalistic—is ignored and mistreated by the nation that has colonized them, treating them as second class citizens.

Iglesias grabs readers by the hand and doesn’t let go as he drags them through a trail of violence and destruction. He immerses them in Puerto Rican culture and history and forces them to bear witness to terrible acts of revenge, even when it’s clear that the teens may be going too far. Like Gabe, readers may dislike Bimbo’s chaotic plans but they will continue to read about them anyway. This is dark stuff and the main question is: if the teens succeed, what will become of them in the aftermath?

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Review: First Frost by Craig Johnson

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Bev Vincent

At the end of The Longmire Defense, Sheriff Walt Longmire had made several powerful people unhappy because he exposed a decades-old embezzlement scheme worth billions. His under-sheriff, Victoria Moretti also made the surprising decision to move in with him.

The contemporary story in First Frost continues to explore the repercussions of those incidents. Walt faces a preliminary hearing to determine whether his use of force was justified, although the real reason behind his possible prosecution has deeper motivations. Unlike the TV version, where Longmire also had to defend himself against a justified killing but seemed disinterested in contributing to his defense, Johnson’s Longmire—the OG Longmire—is fully invested in the proceedings.

While he and Vic are arranging her additions to the household, Vic finds an old surfboard in the basement. As many people opine over the course of this book, Walt is too big a man to be a surfer, and it has been many decades, in fact, since he rode the waves off the California coast when he and Henry Standing Bear played football as students. The discovery, though, inspires him to reminisce about the incident in which the board was dented and what happened thereafter.

It’s May 1964, and Henry and Walt are bound for their respective calls to duty, Henry in Louisiana and Walt at Parris Island. Having graduated from college, they are no long covered by a deferment and have enlisted for the war in Vietnam. Their farewell surfing expedition takes an unexpected turn when a cargo boat gets in trouble. Walt, never one to stand by in the face of danger, immediately takes his mammoth board and paddles out to rescue any survivors of the sinking vessel, which turns out to have been carrying drugs. Walt and Henry’s presence at the scene draws the attention of the local police and of criminals who wonder if the daring duo made off with the missing drugs.

Although they’re supposed to stick around for a few days at the behest of the police, Walt and Henry head east, getting their kicks on Route 66. However, they take an unexpected detour, uncertain if they’re still in California or not, ending up in Bone Valley, the kind of small town that’s the setting for many crime stories. The kind where the residents are reticent of outsiders. The kind that has little more than a bar/cafe and a service station and yet seems to survive in a world apart from everything else. The kind that’s run by a strong-willed and domineering family and has a dark secret in its past.

Walt and Henry are stranded in town while awaiting replacement parts for Walt’s damaged truck, but no one wants them there and few people are willing to engage with them. Then strange things start to happen, including a tiny person—a child?—wearing a mask from traditional Japanese theater who only Walt seems to be aware of. Readers of the series will be familiar with Walt’s occasional flirtations with the supernatural, so it remains an open question whether this entity is real or not.

The town is also the location of a former Japanese internment camp. This isn’t the first time the Longmire franchise has explored this shameful part of our history—a season 4 episode from the TV series (“War Eagle”) covered similar ground. However, 1964 is a lot closer to the end of World War II than 2015, so the wounds are fresher and the repercussions more evident. Something terrible happened there in the not-so-distant past, and the townspeople—most particularly the powerful Everson family—don’t appreciate Walt’s determination to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The story is populated by a colorful group of secondary characters, including a man who has banished himself to the desert so long he doesn’t know about the Korean War, let alone the Vietnamese conflict, a big bruiser who goes toe-to-toe with Walt several times, an erudite yakuza and his team, and a half-Japanese woman who runs the bar and steals Henry’s heart for a while.

As Johnson explains in the book’s acknowledgements (which appear at the beginning of the text, not the end), the title is a metaphor related to how true cowboys change from their palm leaf hats to their wool felt ones at the first frost, describing this time in Walt and Henry’s lives as their first frost. This is a fascinating dive into the early days of the lifelong friendship, exploring a time when neither of them could guess what the future held in store. Plus, in the modern day (the book alternates frequently between the two time periods), Walt figures out how to save his bacon from those who would see him punished for doing his duty. This twentieth installment in the long-running series shows that there’s still a lot of gas in the tank for Walt and his friends.

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Review: I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Bev Vincent

No good deed goes unpunished. Never was this platitude truer than in the case of high-school teacher Richard Boyle, whose is turned upside down after he performs a courageous act. He’s lecturing his students on The Road by Cormac McCarthy when he sees a former student heading for a side entrance wearing what appears to be a bomb vest. He heads the student off, preventing him from entering the building, and talks him out of his planned assault on the school.

He is lauded as a hero for his quick-witted and selfless actions. However, everyone isn’t happy in the aftermath, including a fellow teacher whose reputation was besmirched and Richard’s wife, Bonnie, with whom he already has a rocky relationship, who criticizes him for risking his life instead of following protocol. The bomber’s parents sue Richard and another former student levels the kind of accusation at Richard that is hard for a teacher to successfully defend against, especially since a previous incident might lead people to believe there’s fire under all that smoke. While the truth may be on his side, he will be tried in the court of public opinion, where facts are irrelevant. Richard makes the sort of decision that launches many thrillers: he tells no one of the blackmail attempt and tries to handle the problem by himself.

Richard also finds himself confronted by a group of angry and frightened parents who challenge his decision to teach The Road and other controversial material. This subplot is one of the most interesting, as Barclay doesn’t paint the upset parents as ignorant book banners. They are given the opportunity to present their case to Richard, and he understands and sympathizes with their concerns.

Richard isn’t the only one in trouble. Billy Finster, his accuser, is in a hole with the people for whom he sells drugs. His latest payment was short and it looks like either he or someone close to him has been stealing from his supply. The people sent to sort Billy out aren’t the kind to take no for an answer. He needs to come up with a lot of cash, and fast. His wife Lucy is in her own corner because she sold some of the pilfered drugs to a colleague who refuses to believe she can’t get any more.

Rounding out the cast is Bonnie’s sister, a cop who had a violent run-in with one of the hardcases that Billy is dealing with. She’s a good cop and knows when someone is lying to her, which makes Richard’s situation all the more complicated. His only real ally is the school principle, who backed him up during his earlier troubles. But at every turn, Richard only makes things worse and eventually has to come clean to his wife, who has her own ideas about how to handle the situation.

These facts alone are enough to fuel a thriller. However, Barclay isn’t content to stop there. Nothing is as it seems, and the reversals and surprise revelations come thick and fast during the last section of the book. These aren’t arbitrary plot machinations created to surprise or shock; they’re all earned and logical, especially in hindsight. The book has an explosive beginning and never lets up for a moment from that point on. This is one of Barclay’s best.

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1917 was a long time ago. So was 2020

Posted on May 12, 2024 by Bev Vincent

I’ve been using (and re-using) a joke that goes like this: The last time I saw a movie in a theater was 1917. It only makes sense if you remember the great Sam Mendes war movie of that name, filmed to look like it was done in a single shot. My wife and I saw it in the cinema in January 2020 and, until yesterday, I haven’t been in a theater since.

We took the COVID pandemic very seriously. Maybe we’ll look back at some point and wonder if we over-reacted, but there’s no way of telling. We were nearly 60 when it started, and a lot of people far younger than us ended up on ventilators or dead, especially in the early stages, before the vaccines became available. My wife has had respiratory issues in the past, so we were extremely cautious. We locked down, hard. Avoided all person-to-person contact. Double-masked to buy groceries, but usually relied on pickup services and curbside delivery. We both started working from home full time and I’ve never gone back to the office since, except for a few in-person meetings.

It’s easy to understand, through this experience, how a person could become agoraphobic. It was never quite that bad for us, but when we started to emerge from lockdown I sometimes had anxious feelings. I’ve never been all that gregarious, but the idea of being around bunches of people seemed less attractive than ever. And with streaming services taking movies from the cinema to our living room in record time, we didn’t really miss going to the theater.

My wife had a day-long engagement yesterday, so I finally decided it was time to see what I’ve been missing. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes seemed like the ideal film for my return to a megaplex. As hard as it is to fathom, I’ve been watching POTA adaptations for half a century. I discovered the franchise through the 1974 TV series. Before I ever saw the original movies, I read the novelizations of the sequels (there never was, to my knowledge, a novelization of the first film), and even the Pierre Boulle novel that got the who shebang started. In those days, remember, you had to catch a movie when it aired on TV. No recording, no rental, no streaming. I was so fascinated by the TV show and the magazine/comics that came out around the same time that I taught myself to recreate the makeup with plasticine, first on my GI Joe action figures and then in full-scale on my goalie mask to wear for Halloween!

Was I nervous going to the theater yesterday? A little. The same sort of anxiety I tend to feel when I have to fly somewhere—not because I’m afraid of flying but because I’m on a rigid schedule where any number of things can go wrong to mess things up. I deliberately picked the earliest showing where I knew there wouldn’t be all that many people. I discovered two things when I did so: 1) I am now old enough to qualify for the senior discount, and 2) If you go first thing in the morning, it doesn’t matter how old…or young…you are, the tickets are all the same price!

So, how was the movie, I hear you ask? I enjoyed it. One of the cool things about this new series is the way they use touch points and elements from the originals in recognizable ways, but also completely reimagine them. I do miss the time-travel aspect that got the whole thing started, but there’s no way to recreate the surprise ending of the first film. Anyone who goes to one of these probably knows that they were (spoiler!) on Earth all along. So this new series tells the story chronologically, detailing how the tide of power changed one step at a time. It’s a different story, but the end result is somewhat the same. Apes learn to speak and people lose that ability (for the most part). And apes fall prey to the same weaknesses as humanity. This film takes place several generations after the end of the previous movie, which was released seven years ago (!!), so I rewatched it the night before to refresh my memory. There are peaceful apes living in a mostly agrarian society and warlike apes living like Romans.

The first section of the movie is very much “first act” in that it establishes the normal state of things. We learn who the characters are, how they relate to each other, and the rules of their social compact, which is then torn apart. Then it becomes a bit of a hero’s journey as the main character, Noa, sets out to put things aright. Then something happens to upset the applecart.

I enjoyed the Los Angeles/SoCal setting, with relics of familiar landmarks forming the background. I’m sure that if I knew the area better, I would have caught more of them, but there were a few anyone would recognize. Some shots of horses riding along the water’s edge could possibly have been filmed at the same places used in the original movie, although that was supposed to be on the other coast.

There’s an entertaining orangutan, a student of Caesar. In fact, Caesar is utilized in two ways in this time period. He is a legend, the original, the founder, the lawmaker, revered by those who know his story the best. But he’s also turned into something he wasn’t by people seeking absolute power. Read into that what you will.

I won’t say more because there are surprises best experienced firsthand. The nods to the original are subtle (alpha and omega references, for example, and some encounters that are reminiscent of the first film in particular). There’s one moment on a bridge where the soundtrack is a very strong and deliberate echo of the theme from the original movie.

I liked it very much. It left me wondering a bit about one character in particular, conflicted about that character’s motivations and actions. And there’s a hint at the end that maybe, maybe, the story will bring in something “otherworldly.” But whether or not we’ll have Taylor crash-landing in a spaceship remains to be seen. Given the audience will always know the truth, that could be interesting.

What else have I been up to lately? I finished the umpteenth draft of “The Dead of Night” and sent it to a first reader, as well as to my agent. Although my original idea was for this to be my contribution to Dissonant Harmonies II with Brian Keene, it occurred to me that, when bundled with an as-yet-unwritten third installment (I have the title, that’s all. Well, maybe a little more.), the three novellas could very well become a novel. It’s all part of the same story with the same characters and the same underlying conflict. So, I’m seeking my agent’s advice to see if that will fly. Fingers crossed.

I’m toying with a spring-themed story to add to the three stories I’ve had published in seasonal-themed Unsettling Reads anthologies. If it works out, I’m going to put the four tales together and publish them as an ebook/paperback minicollection.

Recent publications:

Also, my story “Severance Package” from Shivers VII is being released in Spanish by Restaurant de la Mente Editions. The translated title, “Paquete de indemnización,” doesn’t quite have the same double entendre meaning as my original.

“Payback” was written last September during a working vacation at our favorite beach house. While I was working on it, I was also rereading The Stand and taking copious notes to create a detailed timeline of that novel, in part for my own use but also to give to Brian Keene and Chris Golden as a reference they could use while editing The End of the World as We Know It: Stories from Stephen King’s The Stand. In today’s issue of Letters from the Labyrinth, Brian provides some updates about that anthology, which I’m pleased to be part of.

Still almost four months to go before the release of the Young Readers’ Edition of Stephen King: His Life, Works, and Influences. Preorders are available though. And encouraged! It makes a great back-to-school gift for the teen reader in your life.

Books I’ve read recently or am currently reading:

  • In the Distance by Hernan Diaz
  • The Maid by Nita Prose
  • The Night House by Jo Nesbø
  • Familiaris by David Wroblewski
  • First Frost by Craig Johnson
  • Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
  • I Will End You by Linwood Barclay

TV series: I really enjoyed 3 Body Problem (Netflix) and eagerly look forward to the second season. Alas, there won’t be a second season of Constellation, at least not on Apple TV+. I stalled out on that one, though I’ll probably go back and finish it. I watched Apples Never Fall (Peacock) and enjoyed it until the final episode, where I thought everyone was let off too easily for all the reprehensible things they did. My wife and I are getting a kick out of Elsbeth (CBS), which is a quirky Columbo-esque series based on the character from The Good Fight. We’re also nearing the end of Shogun, a terrific adaptation of the Clavell novel. In particular, it’s almost totally done in Japanese and is a testament to the power and influence of translators. Highly recommended. Did I enjoy Reindeer Baby? I’m not sure “enjoy” is the right word, but I couldn’t look away. Fascinating and disturbing in equal measure.

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Stephen King: His Life, Work, and Influences (Young Readers’ Edition)

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Bev Vincent

Where the hell did February go? We even got an extra day this year and still…gone. Finito.

So, what’s new? Well, on September, 2024 I’ll have a new book on shelves…bookstore shelves and library shelves, if all goes according to plan. We have produced a new edition of my latest book that is aimed at young adult readers. So many teens begin their adult reading journeys with authors like King. It seemed like a good idea to create an edition specifically for them. My publisher hired an editor who has worked in the young adult field for a number of years to refine the text and to focus the book on teens.

For many young readers, when the last page of Goosebumps is turned, the first chapter of Pet Sematary begins, and a world of terror crafted by Stephen King is revealed. His novels are as fascinating as his life, and in this ultimate illustrated guidebook, young readers explore the cultural phenomenon and legacy of the King of Horror.

From scare-seeking child to impoverished university student to struggling schoolteacher to one of the best-selling—and most recognizable—authors of all time, this engrossing book reveals the evolution and influences of Stephen King’s body of work over his nearly 50-year career, and how the themes of his writing reflect the changing times and events within his life. With tons of photos, approachable bite-size sections, and gripping details to captivate young readers. Young adults will covet this comprehensive yet accessible reference to their favorite horror author.

They asked me if I could find a librarian or someone similar to write a foreword for this edition. In a moment of inspiration, I remembered Sarah-Jane Smith, the Sussex (New Brunswick) high school teacher who was part of a year-long (and ultimately successful) campaign to get Stephen King to visit their school in 2012. (You can read more about that here.) She’s no longer at Sussex Regional High School but I was able to track her down and ask if she’d be interested in writing something for the book. She was! I haven’t yet read her foreword, but I’m very much looking forward to seeing what she wrote.

Stephen King: His Life, Work, and Influences (Young Readers' Edition)

Pre-orders are available everywhere books are sold. You can find all the links here.

In the fiction department, I’m off to a decent start to 2024:

I’ve done a few interviews this year, one of which almost didn’t happen. The initial request from ABC Overnights in Australia went into the spam folder on my hotmail account, which I never look at because I have my messages autoforwarded to gmail. But I was having trouble getting a 2factor authorization email for my antivirus software, so I looked in that folder and…voila! It had arrived the previous day. It was really fun to do a live radio interview (with someone who was on the other side of the world). You can listen to that one here. Two haven’t yet appeared—one will be in print in a magazine written in English for Spanish-speakers who want to learn English, which is a very cool concept. Speaking of Spanish, I was interviewed for Restaurant de la Mente: El mundo de Stephen King, which you can watch here.

We’ve seen some excellent movies already this year. Maestro was the first, a fantastic performance by Carey Mulligan, who is really the focus of the film. We enjoyed Oppenheimer and wouldn’t have cut a moment from it. Barbie was fun, but perhaps not as impactful as I’d hoped. The Holdovers was terrific and we also enjoyed the musical remake of The Color Purple.

The best TV series I’ve watched so far this year is season 5 of Fargo, perhaps the best season of the show. Just terrific. Recently saw the first season of The Tourist, which I’m calling Fargo Down Under. It’s quite unsentimental about its characters. A lot of them die in shocking ways. I binged all three seasons of Slow Horses and can’t wait for the next. Criminal Record was worth watching if only to see Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi go head-to-head. I liked the Spanish series Bitter Daisies (where I learned the word “margarita” means “daisy”), two seasons of the French series Black Spot, and Monsieur Spade, which puts Sam Spade in southern France many years after the events of The Maltese Falcon. I’m currently watching the Swedish series Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes, which is an interesting take on a popular trope.

Recently finished: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. Currently reading Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly, Owning Up by George Pelecanos, Trust by Hernan Diaz and Carrie by Stephen King.

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2023 – The Year in Review: (3) Movies and TV

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Bev Vincent

The interview that almost wasn’t: Beyond Horror: The Enduring Impact of Stephen King. I was interviewed by Tim Webster for the Overnights show on Australian public radio. Webster is a self-avowed fan of King’s work and was a knowledgeable interviewer. We spent a pleasant half hour chatting about all things King at 3:30 am local time. Apparently people are awake at that hour, as the producer reported they received a number of texts during the live broadcast. The interview almost didn’t happen because the initial email from the producer went into my hotmail spam folder. I have message autoforwarding set up on that account so I never, ever look at the account. Never. Except I was having trouble receiving a two-factor authorization email from my antivirus software account, so I checked there. Sure enough, there was the 2FA email and, lo and behold, from the previous day, the invitation to be interviewed. So thanks, McAfee!

We’ve seen a couple of good movies this week. Two nights ago we watched The Holdovers, with Paul Giamatti as a bitter teacher of ancient history at an all-boy’s prep school, where he himself was a student. His boss is a former student. that’s how long he’s been there. He has high expectations of the students, which means he’s harsh and uncompromising. He’s hated by students and fellow faculty alike. As punishment for his unwillingness to bend, he’s assigned to stay on campus for the two-week winter vacation with a group of students who have no place to go for the holidays. No one wants to be there, and shenanigans ensue. It’s one of those heartwarming movies where everyone discovers that if you find out things about other people, you might reconsider how you treat them…and how you behave in general. That’s not a bad thing. Carrie Preston (The Good Wife/Fight) has a nice small role as a possible love interest. Well worth watching.

Last night, we hunkered down for three hours with Oppenheimer. We’d had a chance to watch it with our daughter and son-in-law over the holidays, but they didn’t start until 9 pm, intending to spread it over two nights. We decided to skip it then—and they couldn’t find a good stopping place, so they watched the whole thing through midnight. I can’t remember the last time I was up at midnight. We even celebrated east-coast New Years at 9 pm in California! We got a much earlier start last night. It’s an intense film—we probably wouldn’t have wanted to stop halfway through, either. I know a lot of the characters from my years studying chemistry, including Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, and Edward Teller, but I only knew the Trinity project in broad strokes. It’s not a heavy science movie (although knowing about enriched uranium and heavy water adds a little to the understanding)…mostly about all the security issues Oppenheimer had because of his left-wing views and the people he associated with in the thirties and forties. Robert Downey, Jr. is the surprise “villain” of the piece, a man with thin skin and high political aspirations who takes umbrage over a perceived slight that had nothing to do with him at all. Definitely worth watching.

I watched 49 movies in 2023, either with my wife or by myself. None were in a theater—we haven’t ventured to the cinema since 1917 or, rather, 1917, the Mendes war film. Here is the complete list, if you’re interested. Here, in the order in which we watched them, are my top ten:

  • She Said (Peacock)
  • The Menu (HBO Max)
  • Living (Amazon)
  • Flamin’ Hot (Hulu)
  • No One Will Save You (Hulu)
  • Flora and Son (Apple TV+)
  • The Burial (Amazon)
  • Past Lives (Amazon)
  • Nyad (Netflix)
  • A Million Miles Away (Amazon)

As usual, I watched a lot of TV series last year. I binged Death in Paradise S8-12, Columbo S6-10, Lupin S1-3, Annika S1-2, The Bay S1-4, Wisting S1-3, Wilder S1-2, Above Suspicion S1-4, The Gulf S1-2, Dark Winds S1-2, Succession S1-4, Enemi Public S1-2, One Lane Bridge S1-3 and Haven S1-5. My wife and I watched all the episodes of The Prisoner and are on a complete rewatch of M*A*S*H in sequence, currently in season 6.

Regular shows I/we watched included All Creatures Great and Small, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Call the Midwife, Doctor Who and Great British Baking Show. I rewatched season one of Yellowjackets before watching the second season, which was a good decision. I also revisited the first season of True Detective, which will probably be a good primer for the upcoming fourth season. That season remains brilliant and I think binge-ing makes a lot of things clearer to me that were fuzzy the first time around.

Caught the most recent (and occasionally final) seasons of After Life, Picard, Perry Mason, Staged, Grace, The Mandalorian, The Tower, From, Beef, Barry, Manifest, Happy Valley, Ted Lasso, The Bear, Family Law, Good Omens, The Morning Show and Shetland.

Of the new series I/we watched last year, these are my favorites, in no particular order.:

  • Deadloch (Amazon)
  • Daisy Jones and The Six (Amazon)
  • The Rig (Amazon)
  • The Last of Us (HBO Max)
  • Poker Face (Peacock)
  • Dear Edward (Apple TV+)
  • Shrinking (Apple TV+)
  • The Diplomat (Netflix)
  • Black Butterflies (Netflix)
  • Rabbit Hole (Amazon)
  • The Night Agent (Netflix)
  • Silo (Apple TV+)
  • Hijack (Apple TV+)
  • The Changeling (Apple TV+)
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2023 – The Year in Review: (2) Books

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Bev Vincent

I’m trying to get back in the swing of things after a two-week vacation visiting family in northern California. That’s the longest I’ve been away from home in a long, long time. It’d been a year and a half since the last time we took a flight and I was a little anxious about flying during the holidays, but everything went pretty smoothly. Our outbound journey got us in to SFO early, our bag was among the first down the chute, we caught the inter-terminal train to the BART station, and our train arrived just as we got there, so it was nice.

On the return flight, we were delayed a bit. Our plane was parked at the airport overnight, but someone forgot to clean and service it, so it was late being tugged to the gate. Then they had a hard time finding cleaners, and the catering was under-serviced (according to the grumbling staff). Still, we didn’t have a connection to worry about, unlike many others on the flight, so we weren’t all that put out. When we landed, the crew asked for people to remain seated so passengers at the back of the plane with a close connection could deplane and make their next flight. Did everyone comply? No, of course not. If anything, it was the slowest deplaning process I’ve ever seen.

People.

I stumbled upon an interesting TV series on the flights. Six episodes of a show called Full Circle on Max, starring Claire Danes and Timothy Olyphant as married parents living in style in Manhattan because her dad has become a celebrity chef. There’s a kidnapping plot orchestrated by a Guianian syndicate led by a woman (CCH Pounder) who thinks she needs to lift a curse on her family. The kidnapping goes sideways but, in the process, it exposes some long-held secrets by both parents. Directed by Steven Soderbergh with Randy Quaid as the celeb chef and William Sadler as his brother. I liked it. Watched three episodes on each flight.

We did so. many. jigsaw puzzles! My three-year-old grandson had spilled a stack of puzzles, so some of the pieces got intermingled. We had to assemble them to figure out which pieces went with which puzzle, which was a bit of a challenge. One puzzle had unique pieces (matted front, distinctive backside color), so it was easy to sort them out, but for the others we just had to put them together. We had as many as three going at once! At the end, we had one complete puzzle, one missing a single piece and another missing a few pieces. My daughter advertised in a group on Facebook and was able to borrow some other puzzles, so we always had one going.

I thought I’d get some reading done while on vacation, but that didn’t work out. I received a couple of novels for Christmas (the latest from Grisham and Connelly) but they’re still unopened. The grandkids kept us busy and entertained. We watched a lot of Muppet movies and a couple of Diary of a Wimpy Kid films. My daughter rented the Taylor Swift concert movie, too—she and our granddaughter went to one of the California shows.

We also watched some football games. My son-in-law comes from a Michigan family, so there was intense interest in the Rose Bowl. He flew down to L.A. and attended the game with his parents. It was a real nail-biter. The championship game is tonight in Houston. He’s not here for that one, but I’m sure he’s nervously watching it on TV.

Despite not reading anything during the final two weeks of the year, it was a pretty good year for reading. In 2022, I read 37 books but last year I managed 57. Several were books I read to my wife, including a batch of King novels. If you’re interested, you can see the full list here.

Here are my top ten titles in no particular order:

  • The Deluge by Stephen Markley
  • Holly by Stephen King
  • All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
  • The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
  • A Better World by Sarah Langan
  • Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
  • An Honest Man by Michael Koryta
  • Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
  • Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott
  • Where I End by Sophie White

It’s quite a diverse batch. I only finished the Garmus book a couple of days ago so it became the first title on the 2024 list, too.

Of the books I read, I reviewed ten:

I’m already into my third book for 2024 (only one of them complete thus far). Time, too, to start another jigsaw puzzle!

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2023 – The Year in Review: (1) Publications

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Bev Vincent

The year 2023 is almost at an end and we’re staring down the barrel of 2024, which looks like it may be an “interesting” one, in the Chinese curse sense of the word. I find it instructive to listen to or read interviews from decades in the past (even stand-up comic routines) in which people talk about how terrible things are at the moment and I have to wonder When Will There Be Good News? (to purloin the title of a fine novel by Kate Atkinson. It’s all relative, isn’t it?

Didn’t go very far this year. We had a couple of vacations at our favorite rental house in Surfside Beach, once for each of our birthdays. The latter was a working vacation—we didn’t take time off from work and were at our respective computers during the daytime, but with the sound of the surf and the beautiful vistas in the background. I could do that again! While I was there, I reread The Stand for the first time in years and established a detailed timeline of the book for the short story I’d been invited to write for the Stand-inspired anthology edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keen. We prepared most of our meals—although we had a few at the nearby beach-front restaurant—did a jigsaw puzzle (there were a dozen pieces missing from it!), and watched old shows on MeTV in the evenings.

I do have plans for a couple of trips in the coming days, including attending Chris Golden’s House of Last Resort Weekend in January. I don’t look forward to the travel part of these events, but I am looking forward to seeing people I haven’t been with in over four years.

I’m still writing every day, although my day job has been encroaching on my weekends this past month or so. I also decided to learn some Spanish and now have a 75-day streak on Duolingo. After living in Texas for over 30 years, I figured it was time.

Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life and Influences is now or soon will be available in eight languages (other than English): Croatian, Italian, Czech, German, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian and Japanese. It’s been a lot of fun seeing the book get some press in other languages. For example, the Czech edition is featured in the December issue of Pevnost magazine. Maybe I’ll be able to read the Spanish edition one day.

The English edition is still a #1 bestseller in the category of Horror & Supernatural Literary Criticism. It was also nominated for a Locus Award. There’s a “discount” edition available if you have an Ollie’s Bargain Outlet in your area—it has a different cover, which is kinda cool. Be on the lookout for news concerning a new edition that should be available in late 2024.

This was a good year for short story publications, with an even dozen appearing in anthologies and magazines. They run the gamut from crime to horror to science fiction to fantasy.

  1. Life Saver, Still of Winter, February 2023
  2. A Girl and Her Dog, Shortwave Magazine, Feb 8, 2023
  3. Chapter 2, Sunny Pines (round robin novella), Cemetery Dance Publications, March 2023
  4. The River Heights Ripper, Black Cat Weekly #84, April 2023
  5. Crocodile Tears, More Groovy Gumshoes, Down and Out Books, April 2023
  6. His Father’s Son, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2023
  7. Freya Goes Viral, Mirrors Reflecting Shadows, July 29, 2023
  8. Grand-Père’s Last Transmission, Rhapsody of the Spheres, Third Flatiron Publishing, August 15, 2023
  9. Jurisdiction, The Perfectly Fine Neighborhood, September 2023
  10. Turning to Stone, Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol. 8, Hellbound Books, 2023
  11. Gemini, Mickey Finn Volume 4, December 11, 2023
  12. Helen Wheels, The Binge-Watching Cure III, Claren Books, December 16, 2023

I have several more in the queue for 2024 already as well (plus nearly another dozen in submission). I may taper off writing stories to concentrate on longer fiction next year. I have a very rough draft of “The Dead of Night” for Dissonant Harmonies II with Brian Keene and notes and a couple of chapters for a novel that I want to tackle starting in January.

In addition to a couple of columns and reviews at News from the Dead Zone, I published three essays this year:

I did my regular year-end roundup for the next Stephen King Catalog/Annual from the Overlook Connection, too.

I also took part in several podcasts/interviews:

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The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson

Posted on October 23, 2023 by Bev Vincent

One wouldn’t expect the discovery of a seventy-year-old rifle to generate more than historical interest. True, the weapon is associated with the long-ago murder of Bill Sutherland, a former state accountant, and it has long been theorized that Lloyd Longmire did the deed, but that doesn’t explain why powerful people try to keep Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire from digging into the past. Walt had a fraught relationship with his grandfather but he intends to investigate even if it means proving what has long been suspected.

It was Dog who uncovered the gun, hidden on the mountain side where Walt was searching for a missing tourist. Walt immediately recognized the rare and distinctive model for what it was. Amazingly, the bullet extracted from Sutherland’s corpse is still in evidence, so he sends the gun and bullet to the state capital for forensics investigation. He gets a supportive call from a woman—who also works in state finance—who says she’s Sutherland’s granddaughter. As Walt digs deeper, he discovers that two other people associated with the case died or went missing within a year of the murder.

As part of his investigation, Walt decides to disinter Sutherland’s body, enlisting the help of the local gravedigger. Although unauthorized, their efforts to find the corpse fail. However, someone is determined to dissuade them from pursuing the search, badly wounding the gravedigger. Things are getting serious.

Of course, things are never simple in Walt’s world. An ill-advised marriage proposal to his under sheriff, Vic, causes a rift in their relationship. She’s taken aback by his abrupt proposal and starts taking personal days off, going completely off the grid and, ultimately, disappearing completely. Walt wants to try to reach her but everyone—including people without a good track record with relationships—advises him to let her be for a while. She is the heir apparent to his job (will he retire or won’t he?), although there are others lobbying to be his replacement.

The case takes him to Casper—where he gets to visit his daughter Cady and granddaughter, with his old boss Lucian Connally in tow. Someone is stalking Walt, though, and an archivist assisting him in gathering information is assaulted in her home and left for dead. Walt has an unpleasant run-in with another state official (he threatens to throw the man through a window), people are fired from their positions without explanation, and suspicious characters start popping up in Durant, some seemingly friendly, others less so. Plus Walt has to deal with the once-missing tourist, who holes up in local motels without demonstrating any ability to pay her bills.

It’s a complex case, but Walt is going to see it through to the end. The title refers to a chess maneuver. Learning to play chess from Lloyd Longmire is one of the few pleasant memories he has of the man. The case takes him back to his grandfather’s ranch house and spread, a place he has deliberately avoided for many years, where he meets up with a childhood friend who is now an ATF agent. It becomes the setting for a harrowing and violent climax, as everyone with something to hide converges on Walt to force him stop his investigation one way or another.

There’s a certain comfort in returning to a familiar series, especially when the author finds new ways to shake up the characters. Johnson has a unique view on Wyoming and its people, especially the residents of Durant. Sometimes secondary characters are pushed to the background (Henry is rarely seen in this novel) and sometimes they emerge in interesting ways (developments regarding Saizarbitoria, Longmire’s Basque deputy, show the character in a new light). Longmire himself is getting longer in the tooth, although he can still throw a punch or a bullet when needed.

Johnson also has a few interesting literary quirks. For one thing, he seems obsessed with eye color. Characters are often defined by the color of their eyes, and the motion and focus of eyes often drive the action. People turn their eyes on Walt, look up at him or down at him. He also has the habit of beginning scenes without explaining who is speaking to whom. It can take several paragraphs for the identities of the participants in the scene to become clear. These are small quibbles, but they can be sometimes distracting or disorienting.

This is the nineteenth novel to feature Walt Longmire and company. Johnson has laid hints about Longmire’s grandfather over the years and this novel gives him the opportunity to delve into that relationship in detail. By the end of the book, Walt is forced to re-evaluate a man who he seems to despise while at the same time embarking on a new life adventure.

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I Feel Fine

Posted on October 20, 2023 by Bev Vincent

Brian Keene and Christopher Golden announced (finally!) the anthology they are co-editing: The End of the World as We Know it – Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand. Brian has been hinting about this project for some time, under the code name Operation Walkabout. The list of invited contributors is quite impressive: Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Scott Ian, Joe R. Lansdale, Maurice Broaddus and Wayne Brady, Bryan Smith, Somer Canon, Hailey Piper, Jonathan Janz and others, including yours truly.

Last month, when my wife and I were on a working vacation at Surfside Beach, I reread The Stand for the first time in a number of years. While doing so, I prepared a detailed, day-by-day chronology of the events in that book. King does a really good job of keeping track of the passage of time. I wanted to make sure my story blended in with the known timeline. My tale has been written and is now in the hands of the editors, awaiting their feedback. I had to pitch them my idea and they seemed quite happy with it. Hopefully they are equally happy with the end result.

King isn’t contributing a story to the anthology—nor are the two editors—but there will be an introduction from King. For those who’ve asked, this is going to be released by one of the big publishers, probably late in 2024. I haven’t heard that there will be any special editions, but it’s early days, so stay tuned!

On October 1, I pulled out a new moleskine journal and began writing “The Dead of Night,” the follow-up novella to “The Dead of Winter,” which appears in Dissonant Harmonies, a two-story collection from Brian Keene and me. I’ve added to it every day—some days more than others—and I’m up to 75 hand-written pages, which means I should probably think about wrapping it up fairly soon. I can only guess the word count. I figure it’s somewhere around 20,000 words. True to my mandate, I have been listening exclusively to the playlist Brian prepared for me, which you can find here. I have to say, the story has taken me in some surprising directions. I’m just thankful that each day, when I sit down to write, more of the story rolls out from wherever these things come from.

Other publication news:

My story “Turning to Stone” appears in the new anthology Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol. 8. It’s a monstrous mosh of fallen angels, prepubescent prescience, tempestuous incest, intergalactic blues, a Gulliverian massacre, cynophile racists, murderous rodents, a prehistoric Devil Head, the return of Bram Stoker’s forgotten hero, and so much more…featuring stories from Joe R. Lansdale, Emma E. Murray, Jae Mazer, Bret McCormick, Madison Estes, Chris Miller, James H. Longmore, Jonathan Louis Duckworth, Robert Stahl, Matt Micheli, Elford Alley, Iphigenia Strangeworth, Jacob Austin, R. L. Olvitt, Lawrence Buentello, Tom Bont, and E. R. Bills. And me.

I was interviewed by Kayleigh Dobbs in conjunction with the publication of The Perfectly Fine Neighborhood anthology, which contains my story “Jurisdiction.”

Recent TV series: Dear Child, a German series on Netflix that reminded me a bit of the Brie Larson movie Room, but only a bit. I watched Rose Red, which I don’t think I’ve seen since it first aired. Some really fine performances, although the square aspect ratio really makes it seem creaky and old. I’ve been enjoying the French crime series Lupin on Netflix, too. My wife and I have been watching old M*A*S*H episodes. We’re up to season 3 now.

I almost passed on The Boogeyman, but now that it’s on Hulu I checked it out and I quite enjoyed it. I don’t know why it took such a critical drubbing. I couldn’t get into the Pet Sematary prequel, though. It just didn’t work for me at all. My wife and I watched Flora and Son (Apple TV+) and The Burial (Amazon) with Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx, both quite good. I took a trip down nostalgia lane to watch Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe (Amazon). He, Casey and Finnegan were omnipresent in my youth.

I finished A Better World by Sarah Langan and Thirteen At Dinner by Agatha Christie, and we’re almost to the end of The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson. I’m also reading The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, which I remember much better than the other Christies I’ve read lately.

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