“26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss” by Kij Johnson

ByJohn Brown

Why is Kij smiling?

Because she knows how the blasted monkeys do it!

And she’s not telling, neither. Neener-neener.

I just read Johnson’s story and enjoyed it. I enjoyed the inexplicable trick, the narrator, the transport to this odd and wonderful traveling troupe, and dang it, even the ending. Furthermore, there are moments in the story that capture the wonderousness of these fellow animals so well that they shine like jewels.

I always wanted a monkey friend. You can read about someone who has 26 of them.

 It’s on her website, free, just waiting to be enjoyed. Kind of like a delicous mango or bananna.
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  • I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

    ByJohn Brown

    IAmNotASerialKillerYou can scare the crap out of me (Aracnaphobia), and I will love you forever. You can make me bite my nails in terrible suspense (Wait Until Dark, The Village) or throw supernatural at me (Poltergeist) and I will sing with praise. But the moment you do gruesome, the moment you start showing me entrails and organs, my discomfort level shoots through the roof.

    And this is why I would not have finished  I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Well’s if I had just picked it up off a shelf–because the main character is the son of a woman who owns a mortuary. We get to see him help process a mutilated body very early in the book, pumping fluids in etc., and Wells knows his craft so I was THERE. I’m sure it’s not too gruesome for some, but I just have issues with organs. I don’t know why. I also have an issue with clowns.

    Clowns are, by far, the scariest things around. And this is not because I read the book IT by Stephen King as a wee lad because I didn’t. It’s because they’re painted vessels of evil. End of story. They’re perfect examples of the freakazoids that lurk in the uncanny valley.

    Anyway, I’d heard Wells read a portion of this book that had all of us in the room crying because we were laughing so hard. So I read on, telling myself I had to at least get to that part. And I am so very happy I did. 

    I Am Not A Serial Killer is young adult story about a good-hearted teen named John Cleaver who is a sociopath with all the traits shared by serial killers. John’s in counseling, but more importantly, he is convinced he can prevent himself from becoming a serial killer by keeping rules he’s made for himself like not watching people for too long and complimenting someone when they make him angry. Such rules, he hopes, will keep him from feeding compulsions he won’t be able to resist.  The problem is a real serial killer has come to town (but unlike any you’ve seen before). And John may be the only one who can stop him. Will he let go of his rules to save the town? Or will he keep his monster asleep while others die around him?

    It’s a fascinating situation (without a clown in sight, may the writing gods be praised). And Wells takes the reader on a journey through it that includes mystery, dread, and humor. In the hands of some other author, that would be enough. But Wells does more than entertain us. He gives us things to think about. He gives us great characters to boot–come on, when was the last time you read a book where the hero was a likeable sociopath? And most of the gruesome is up front anyway.

    Read this book. Skim the body processing if you must. But you simply don’t want to miss the rest. It was a fabulous read and I recommend it highly.

    The US version comes out in March of 2010. But you can get the UK version now on Amazon UK, Borders UK, etc. The links are all here on Well’s site.

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  • The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

    ByJohn Brown

    Good_Guy_Dean_KoontzSo let’s say you’re in a bar and a guy shows up, mistakes you for someone he was meeting, and you play along. Just for fun. You’ll let him know his mistake sooner or later. But then he slides a manila envelope to you and says, “Half of it is there. Ten thousand. You’ll get the rest when she’s gone.”

    Would you say, “Sorry, dude. I’m not your hit man”? A woman’s life is on the line.

    In Dean Koontz’s The Good Guy, Tim Carrier is too astonished to react. The man leaves. Carrier opens the envelope. There’s ten thousand in cash and a 5×7 of the woman. She’s Linda Paquette who lives in Laguna Beach.

    A few minutes later the actual killer shows up. Makes the same mistake. What do you do?

    Carrier plays along, tells the man that he’s decided not to go through with it and to take the ten thousand as a “kill fee.” The man leaves. Carrier goes to alert the woman. But very soon the killer and those who hired him realize the mistake. And now they’re after both Carrier and the original target.

    The Good Guy was a wonderful story of action and suspense. It’s also a love story. Koontz portrays a deadly and frightening killer. But he also includes lots of banter between Carrier and Paquette. Both have secrets which are interesting to learn. And then at the end of the book, when you think it’s all about a kill, Koontz twists it. Then he twists it again. I loved this story and enjoyed the characters immensely. But the book went beyond mere entertainment. It’s a book that also makes you think about how you live.  

    I should be working hard on draft 3 of Curse of a Dark God. But every now and again I need a break. I’m glad I took this one with Koontz.

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  • Brown’s Breakfast Burrito, The Way Back

    ByJohn Brown

    The Way Back

    GULag is the acronym for the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems in the early 1900’s. In Romanized Russian that’s “Glavnoye upravlyeniye ispravityel’no-trudovih lagyeryey i koloniy” which means “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.”  The term “Gulag” quickly morphed to represent the camps themselves, which housed a wide range of convicts and many political prisoners.  It’s also come to stand for the repressive Soviet system with its arrests, interrogations, transport in unheated cattle cars, forced labor, destruction of families, years spent in exile, and early and unnecessary deaths.

    The Gulag was a meat grinder. An estimated 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953.

    Some of those camps were in Siberia, one of the most remote and harsh places on earth. Sawomir Rawicz was one of those who claimed to have escaped such a camp in Siberia. He wrote about it and his subsequent 4,000-mile walk to freedom in India in The Long Walk. That story inspired Peter Weir to write and direct The Way Back, which tells the story of a group of men who attempt to escape out of Siberia, across the Mongolian wastes, and into India.

    The film stars Ed Harris (who is interesting in anything he does), Colin Farrel (also starred in Ondine), Mark Strong (the villain in Sherlock Holmes), Saoirse Ronan (the fabulous lead in Hanna), and Jim Sturgess (the boyfriend in One Day). One of the group is an outright murderer. The others are all political dissidents—a teacher, priest, businessman, artist, etc. I found the performances honest and believable. But it wasn’t just the characters–the screenwriters subtly used syntax and word choice to transport the viewer.

    But more important than the believability were the various tensions and stories contained within the escape plot. Each of the men, and the lone girl, has a story, and the film gives space for the stories to be told. As for the lone girl: Ronan was amazing in Hannah.  She’s amazing here. Furthermore, the role she played here leavened the whole film with something it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

    The story will surprise you, make you shed a tear, think, and laugh. When you’re finished, you’ll talk about it. It’s that kind of a film. If you like dramas with action and suspense, I think you’ll like this film.

    As always, use KidsInMind.com to see if it contains things you might find objectionable.

    Brown’s Breakfast Burrito

    How about a meal that’s so good you’ll want to slow way down to savor each bite? A breakfast that will keep you full until lunch? A tasty repast that isn’t loaded with mind-numbing calories? Let me suggest the John Brown breakfast burrito. It’s full of succulent umami, bursts of piquant pepper, healthy mushrooms, and lots of filling protein. And it only takes about 10 minutes to prepare. The recipe below makes one burrito. Scale it up to feed more.  

    VEGGIES

    • 1/4th red bell pepper, chopped into small pieces
    • ½ to 1 cup of mushrooms, sliced
    • Dash of thyme

    EGGS

    • 2 eggs (120 calories)
    • 1 T milk or half-and-half
    • Salt
    • Pepper
    • Dash paprika
    • Dash garlic powder
    • Dash onion powder

     THE REST

    • Pam cooking spray
    • 1 tortilla (150 calories)
    • 1 ounce of Jimmy Dean Premium Pork sausage (90 calories)

    If you don’t have one of the spices, don’t freak out. It will still taste great. But the spices really take it to the next level. Here are the instructions. 

    1. Start with your veggies. Spray pan with Pam and sauté peppers for two minutes on medium high heat. Add mushrooms. Give them a spray of Pam and dash with salt. Cover until the mushrooms sweat (release their water).
    2. Next is the sausage. While mushrooms are cooking, start your sausage frying.
    3. Finish veggies. Uncover mushrooms. Just before you finish them, sprinkle with a dash of thyme. When the spice becomes fragrant (its smell rises up in delicious glory from the pan), remove the veggies from the pan and cover to keep them warm.
    4. Cook eggs. Turn heat down to medium low. Beat eggs, milk, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder.  Spray pan you used for veggies with Pam, then cook your scrambled eggs on medium low heat, stirring and scraping the whole time. And keep it on medium low—no browning or burning of eggs allowed! Cook until the eggs glisten with the last bits of moisture. Remember: you don’t want dry desert eggs. You want soft succulent ones.
    5. Assemble the glorious concoction. Put the veggies, scrambled eggs, and sausage in your tortilla and wrap it up smartly. (What does “smartly” mean? I don’t know, but it sounded good, didn’t it?)
    6. Go to heaven and return singing. This means you eat your breakfast burrito, but you do it savoring each bite. This is food meant to be enjoyed, not gobbled.

     As for calories, I estimate about 360 for the main ingredients. Veggies really don’t count in my book. Come on! Nobody gained weight eating turnips. But I’ll round it up to 400 just to be safe. Add in a glass of water and a piece of fruit and you’ve got a 450 calorie breakfast that starts your day off with delight, gratitude, and the joy of redemption. It could also make those you cook for kneel down upon the floor in well-deserved homage. And that’s always a nice thing for the cook.

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  • Cranford, Balsamic Vinaigrette, Nebo Grotto Falls

    ByJohn Brown

    Cranford

    For those of you who love stories like Pride and Prejudice, have I got a TV mini-series for you—the BBC’s five-part Cranford.

    The series is set in the 1840’s in England in the fictional village in North West England and focuses primarily on a handful of the town’s single middle-class ladies who are forced to deal with lace-eating cats, marriage prospects, and prank valentines, as well as death, loss, and a changing culture. There are also two stories about the male inhabitants woven in as well—one about a new doctor and another about a young boy of the lower class who has a chance for something better.

    I will confess that when I saw this arrive in the Netflix envelope, I wasn’t at all excited. The cover’s too cold–all blue with a bunch of sour-looking women. In fact, I decided not to watch it. But the laughter of my wife and daughters lured me back upstairs to the TV, where it took about seven seconds for me to revise my earlier decision. The characters are delightful. In fact, some of their lines are such a joy to listen to, we had to rewind many parts to watch them again and again.

    The series is based on three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, a British novelist, which were published between 1849 and 1858. The sets made us feel as if we where there. For example, one of the things I noticed was the lighting. Incandescent bulbs weren’t invented until the late 1800’s and took many more years to find their way into most houses. So the directors, instead of making it feel all Hollywood, seemed to rely heavily on the light at hand, as those inhabitants would have. When a scene was in a house, it felt as if they were only using the natural light coming in the windows or the candles being burned. Of course, this is just one of the many details that made this series an excellent period piece.  

    The best news of all is that I just found out there’s more–a two-part special called Return to Cranford. I can’t wait until it comes in the mail. Don’t let the cover fool you. This is a wonderful mini-series. It has poignant and sad moments, but is also full of humor and wit.  And the ending is perfect.   

    Kroger’s Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing

    I love balsamic vinegar and oil on bread. But I never think to make it. And I never thought of what else it might go with. That was until a relative left behind a bottle of Kroger brand Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing.

    I just happened have a homemade bagel handy, squirted out a bit onto a plate and dipped.  Lovely.  So then I tried it on salad and even splashed some on tomato or turkey sandwiches. It’s delicious. Only 80 calories for a whole tablespoon. In fact, it was so good we bought four more bottles because I don’t want to run out.

    Kroger, of course, is a grocery conglomerate. In Utah, it owns the Smith’s, and that’s where you’ll find this delight.

    Nebo Grotto Falls

    The mountains and canyons of Utah are literally desert oases. That’s where our clear streams run, the forests grow, and the wildlife congregates. In the summer, the canyons are a refreshing source for cooling winds. All this meant that, as I grew up, “forest” and “refreshing” became intertwined in my mind. Only when we moved to Ohio did I learn that some forests can also be muggy and hot and not at all refreshing to a desert boy perishing in the humidity.

    Because I love Utah’s canyons so much, we hike and walk them all throughout the summer.  We recently went down to enjoy the Stadium of Fire and the heat (yes, I love dry heat) in Provo. However, we didn’t just hang out in the city. We made time to hike a few trails in the surrounding canyons.

    We love Rock Canyon (just above the Mormon temple in Provo), Hobble Creek Canyon (Springville), as well as Mapleton and Santaquin canyons.  However, there’s another special place that you’ll want to visit should you find yourself in the Provo area. It’s a short little hike just off of S Canyon Road (also known as Nebo Loop Road) which runs from Payson south through the Mt Nebo Wilderness area to Highway 132.

    The trail head is just a few miles into the canyon south of Payson and is marked with a simple sign that says “Grotto.” There’s a little bit of parking on the side of the road. The hike is 0.6 miles along a wooded stream.  The grotto itself is more than worth it.  You can find directions here: http://www.utah.com/thingtodo27245.htm

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  • Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

    ByJohn Brown

    MonsterHunterInternational_LarryCorreiaThere’s a joke that all horror movies would be over in two minutes if you just made the hero smart and gave him a gun.

    Well, Correia gives his likeable hero a gun, but not just any old thing. If you’re going to kill a vampire, why not use a rocket propelled grenade or a flame thrower? In fact, if there were enough monster outbreaks, you might have a government agency. You might also find that agency was willing to outsource some of the monster hunting to private contractors (ala Blackwater). And you can bet they won’t be hunting with pea shooters. They’ll be doing it right, with brains and firepower. Correia, someone who loves guns (used to own a gun shop and shoot competitively in rifle, shotgun, and pistol) and monsters, wrote a story that does just that.

    The idea of Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International might remind you a bit of X-Files or Men in Black, but it’s neither. However, it is as  good as or better than both. Correia tells the story of Owen Pitt, a big lug of an accountant, who, as he was working late one evening, gets called into the office of his boss. No big deal, right? Except the fat man is naked, transforming into a werewolf, and vows to eat Pitt’s heart. It’s not quite how you want to end your day tallying debits and credits. Pitt almost dies in the encounter, but manages to “live the American dream” and throw his incompetent jerk of a boss from the fourteenth-story window and splatter him on a double-parked Lincoln Navigator below.

    Good work for a bean counter. When Pitt finally recovers, he gets an offer he can’t refuse (mostly because of the alluring agent that comes to recruit him), and he joins Monster Hunter International (MHI), the private contractor who sends out special force teams to use any means at their disposal to kill monsters. Unlucikly for Pitt, one of the baddest monsters around is just about to ruin the world forever, and Pitt finds himself in the middle of the fight.

    Correia fills the book with enough action for any red-blooded male, a variety of bad mamba jamba monsters, and wonderful characters. There’s romance and heroism (I got a lump in my throat at one part toward the end), but his signature is his humor. I laughed again and again.

    Part of that humor stems from the fact that Correia has an ear for good lines. Part stems from his delight in taking common tropes and stereotypes and twisting them. And this is another one of the things that I enjoyed immensely about the book. For example, the team of newbie hunters that Pitt joins is not made up of square-jawed males and females with Navy SEAL backgrounds, although some in the company do have that. Nope, Correia puts together an accountant, librarian, school teacher, and stripper (all people who faced some kind of monster and are ready for payback), and he makes them believable hunters. 

    This tongue-in-cheek tweaking is everywhere. There are elves in this book unlike any you have ever seen. But he also makes it personal. Owen is not your typical accountant. Even a number of the minor characters get this treatment. For example, one of the people on the team is a Black guy with Rasta hair. But Correia doesn’t choose from what Correia calls one of the four Hollywood stereotypes. Nope, this guy plays against those types. He isn’t the comic relief, the gangsta, the sports dude, or scary male. He’s his own man, a shy virgin with a good heart. Correia also gives his characters interesting backstories. And one of the delights is discovering them.

    I encountered a few minor flaws in the presentation, but these are easily overlooked. Easily. There’s also quite a bit of profanity (and so those who wish to avoid it are forewarned). However, when I turned the last page Friday night, I looked up at Larry who was lying on his bed in our La Quinta hotel room in Denver, his concealed .45 and 9mm guns on the floor beside him, and said, “Wow. WOW.” And then I think I said, “Dude, what a marvelous read” or maybe it was “Oh, great lord of zombie destruction tales do not smite me,” but I’m not sure because I was still thinking about the perfect last line of the perfect last scene of the last chapter.

    Now, those exclamations of satisfaction and delight had nothing to do with the guns on the floor, that Larry’s a deadly shot, or that he’s a big 6’3″ Portugese. It has nothing to do with the fact that he and I were on a book tour together. I don’t read books that don’t grab me. End of story. I stopped doing that long ago. I don’t care who wrote them. And I don’t give false praise. False praise irks me to no end and does nobody any good, especially not the receiver. The truth is that Larry’s book was simply too good to put down. It pulled me in with the opening quote and kept delivering the goods until the end. And if you don’t believe me, you read the quote that both inspiried and opens the book and tell me you don’t want to turn the next page.

    “You know what the difference between me and you really is? You look out there and see a horde of evil, brain-eating zombines. I look out there and see a target-rich environment.” ~Dillis D. Freeman Jr.

    Yeah, it got ya, didn’t it. The ride is waiting folks. Just go on over to Amazon. Correia is going to be a writer to watch.

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  • If you want to work with publishers, you need this. Right now.

    ByJohn Brown

    thenineworstprovisionsinyourpublishingcontract-by-vandagriffWriters who want to deal with publishers need this book: The Nine Worse Provisions in Your Publishing Contract by David P. Vandagriff. And it’s currently free!

    Vandagriff is a lawyer whose business involves high-stakes intellectual property litigation. He has negotiated major contracts with a wide range of opposing parties, some of which include Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Intel, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, AOL, Disney, Hallmark, plus other large publishers, agents and etailers.

    He’s also publishes The Passive Voice, a news blog on the publishing business that includes many posts from his lawyer perspective.

    Don’t fall for contract terms that turn you into a slave.

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