Gun Runner on Amazon! Order here! Autographed copies available from Uncle Hugo’s here! Podcast discussion with the authors here!
The is 100% Brown and Correia, which means it’s action-packed, full of fun characters, and none of that navel gazing business.
It’s about a guy named Jackson Rook who works on a crew that smuggles weapons. They’re active in a righteous cause, helping the oppressed peoples of various planets stand up for themselves against the whoresons with the money and power.
But then Jackson learns something about the current job that turns his gut. And he begins to think they might just be working for the wrong team.
Will he be able to set things right when just about everybody and everything on the godforsaken planet called Swindle wants to kill him or turn him back into the monster he once was?
Read to find out.
If you like action and science fiction, I think you’re going to love this book.
I just finished reading Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. It is the most gripping account of any battle I have ever read.
In 1992 a Somali warlord attacked and killed U.N. peacekeeping forces. As a result, the US put a $25,000 bounty on his head and attempted to arrest and try him for war crimes. On October 3, 1993, by the order of President Bill Clinton, a force of United States Army Rangers and Delta Force operators, the Army’s most elite warriors, set out to capture several lieutenants of the warlord’s militia in an area of the Somali capital city of Mogadishu that was controlled by the warlord.
The force of about a hundred U.S. soldiers helicoptered in during broad daylight. They roped down to the streets surrounding the target building. It was supposed to take them no more than an hour. They would bag the warlord’s lieutenants, put them on a convoy of Army trucks that had barreled into the city and were waiting right around the corner, and get out.
But the citizenry, loyal to the warlord, weren’t going to take it lying down. They began to swarm with guns and rocket propelled grenades. They attacked, almost heedless of the danger. One Somali with an AK-47 rode a cow out in a strange charge, a number of other Somali’s taking cover behind (yeah, he and the cow died). But the Americans were overconfident of their Black Hawk helicopters. They didn’t think the types of weapons the Somalis had could bring them down.
One chopper was hit and crashed. Then another. A third and then a fourth were damaged and barely made it back to safety before they crash landed. As for the Rangers and D-boys, they were in for the fight of their life.
The book tells the story of their courage, but it also brings in the point of view of a number of actual Somalis who fought and were injured. In the process, we get a view of the battle that is both thrilling and poignant.
Bowden did an excellent job researching and writing this. I could not put it down. It does include some military grade profanity, but it wasn’t there to titillate or shock. I’ve talked to those who saw the movie based on this book, and I could tell the book is, per usual, better than the movie. If you’re at all interested in the military and the military operations we conduct overseas, let me recommend that you read this book.
Delta Force Commander Shares Insights
Delta Force is the world’s most elite counterterrorist fighting force. Pete Blaber was a Delta Force operator that worked his way up to become a Delta Force commander and took part in some of the most dangerous, controversial, and significant military and political events of our time.
During his time in uniform, he learned a number of lessons about life, about how we make decisions and act on them. In The Mission, The Men, and Me, Blaber writes about a number of the missions he conducted and the lessons he learned from them.
The missions were conducted in Montana, Iraq, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. One featured a commander stupidly ordering Blaber to take his men into sure destruction. Another featured some of the first plans to capture Osama Bin Laden, before 9/11. Another included a man in a gorilla suit.
The lessons Blaber draws from these experiences are fascinating and apply to more than military operations. For example, the lesson he drew from the operation featuring the gorilla suit is something I use every day with my writing. Anyone who leads or manages or works in groups will find other critical lessons. This was another book I couldn’t put down. Anyone interested in special forces will love this book.
Not Waving But Drowning
“Not Waving but Drowning” is a poem by female British poet Stevie Smith. It was published in 1957 as part of a collection with the same title. The work is her most famous poem and describes a man whose distressed thrashing in the sea causes onlookers to believe that he is waving to them, not drowning
I hadn’t thought about this poem since I was a student at BYU. Then a local poet read it as part of his remarks at a conference I recently attended. The image and message lingered with me for hours. I thought about it off and on over the following weeks. This is, for me, an incredibly powerful poem. It needs to be read aloud, I think, to be appreciated. Not in some silly way, but with the appropriate feeling. I’m going to record a reading for my website, but you can read it aloud for yourself. Or have someone else do it for you. Then read it again.
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
How often does this happen? Those onlookers, caring only superficially, thinking it was too cold, thinking he was funning. But it wasn’t too cold. And his heart didn’t give out. He was struggling for his life, and they were too preoccupied to see it.
Too preoccupied to really see.
I wonder. Is there someone around me, that if I just looked, just paused from my rush, I’d see they were much too far out, and not waving, but drowning.
It’s interesting how many things we’ve added to the accounts we have in the Bible.
For example, nowhere does the Bible say that Mary rode a donkey. Mary might have walked. Or rode in a cart. Or gotten piggy back rides. We don’t know. We do know that there is no donkey mentioned in the record.
It also doesn’t say she had the child the night they arrived.
It only says she was “great with child” when they made the roughly 80-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And that “while they were there” in Bethlehem “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.”
So she had the baby sometime while they were there. That could have been during the first hour. But it could have also been a week or month later. We just don’t know.
It doesn’t mention anywhere the word stable.
Christ might have been born in a stable, or he might have been born in a cave, or inside the house, or out on the porch, or on the roof (lots of those places had flat roofs where they hung out). We just don’t know. What we do know is that he wasn’t born in a palace. And that they laid him in a manger because there wasn’t any room in the inn. An odd circumstance for a king.
Notice as well that there weren’t multiple inns.
It just says “the inn.” And if you look up that word in the Greek, it’s translated as “guest chamber” in the other spots where it’s used in Luke. So they could have been talking about the one guest room in the house where they were staying. Either way, we don’t have anything that says there was a mean innkeeper who later regretted turning the couple away or that Joseph went door-to-door looking for a place.
We have no record in the account of three wisemen.
It just says “wisemen.” So there might have been two of them. Or twelve. We don’t know. And it appears they came sometime after Jesus had been born because they first saw the star of his birth in the east and only then set out to find him. They might have been coming from Persia, hundreds of miles away. Or they could have been living in Bethphage, a mile to the east of Jerusalem. Either way, they didn’t know they should travel to Bethlehem because it says they went and talked to Herod first, in Jerusalem, and asked “where is he that is born King of the Jews?”
The question freaked Herod out (if you’re the current king, you kind of want to know who else is claiming your throne), and so he gathered all the chief priests and scribes to discuss it, and those guys said the prophecies said it would be Bethlehem. And so Herod met with the wisemen again and told them to go there. And only then did they go down to Bethlehem. So it doesn’t appear the wisemen were there the night of the birth.
There’s no record of camels hanging out with the baby either. Or sheep. Or goats. There’s not a lot there. But what is there is interesting.
Now, I want to go on record stating I have no problem speculating about the event and imagining what it might have been like. I love to do it. Good grief, I write fiction.
In fact, for many years I figured I needed to get in on the Christmas noun gig. You know what I mean. Every year we get heart-warming books about new Christmas nouns. We’ve had Christmas sweaters, Christmas jars, Christmas boxes, Christmas candles, Christmas carols. This year I see there’s one about Christmas fudge and other about a Christmas train. So I figured I’d do one. Mine would be about the Christmas rat. A little fellow who decided to snuggle up with the babe instead of giving him a nibble. One of these days I will get that hungry rat story written.
In the meantime, while there’s a lot of good stuff we’ve added to make the event special, it’s also nice to know what the record actually does say. Whether you’re Christian or not, it’s helpful when dealing with others to know what was recorded about this event that is so significant to the largest religion in the world.
And so the last bit of good stuff I recommend this month are the two brief accounts we have. The first one is in Matthew 2:1-16and tells the story of the wisemen. The other is in Luke 2:1-20 and features some shepherds.
I think I could write a horror novel about some dollar movie theaters. The unsuspecting movie goers are lured in. They blindly walk into the theater and take a seat, but, no! When they sit down, they find they’re trapped, their feet glued to the sticky soda floor. The doors close behind them. Outside the theater a man walking by thinks he hears screams. He pauses, alarmed. Those sound like REAL screams, people dying? But no, he thinks, it’s just a movie theater, just a scary movie, and he walks away. Moments later blood begins to seep out from underneath the theater’s exit door.
Too gruesome? Okay, how about this. You go in, swim through a sea of popcorn to your seat only to find that all the seats flop back and leave you staring at the ceiling. This means that while you could listen to the movie, you actually have to crane your neck forward for two hours to see it. By the time the ending credits roll, you can’t walk. Instead, you have to hobble out like a troll. When you finally reach the exit, you swear you can hear the theater owner cackling. A man in a doctor’s coat shows up and slips the owner a manila envelope full of cash. Suddenly, it all becomes clear—it’s not a theater but a medical scam perpetrated by those who sell orthopedic suits and chiropractics. Mwuhahahaha!
So you can see why the dollar theater dread fell upon me when I went up to the ticket counter at Logan, Utah’s Cinefour theaters and found out the tickets were only $3 each. Sweat began to bead on my brow. I looked around for signs of monster cockroaches that might carry me and my family away to feed to their young, but, to my surprise, the theater was, well, clean. When we entered, we found no sea of trash. No sticky floor. And the seats didn’t flop back into the dentist chair position (unlike another theater on the other side of the street). They actually supported our backs nicely.
We sat in the dimly lit theater like the old days when you didn’t watch a steady stream of commercials. We chatted. Then the previews started up, the film ran, and nobody came out to murder us. It was great.
Cinefour. Cheap movies. Nice little theaters. You can take the whole family out and still have money left over to buy a sink at Angie’s.
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If you love books as much as I do, you can easily spend your mortgage on them. Which is why libraries are so very nice. But even though libraries are great, there are still some books I want to own. One of the fab things about the internet is that it allows lots of companies and individuals to sell new and previously read (but in great condition) books for cheap. The bad news is that it’s hard to do comparison shopping to find the deals. But no longer–www.goodreads.com has solved that problem by doing the searching for you.
Simply go to the site and search for a book title. When the search results display, click on the book you’re interested in. When the book’s page comes up, you’ll see a little button below the cover that says “buy for” and lists a price. Click that button, and you’ll see a list of all the main vendors and prices. You can then link to one of the vendors and make your purchase.
So how much can you save? Sometimes a lot. For example, I looked up my own book. Its hard cover list price is $25.99. However, by using the goodreads.com feature, I found a brand new copy for $4.89. I could get a good used copy for one buck. ONE BUCK! Holy schnitzel, that’s a 96% discount. If you want to buy a book, go to goodreads.com to find the deals.
I love the sunny winters we get up at Bear Lake. I hate the
snow that my car brings into the garage. Because the snow melts, and the water
runs to the bottom corners of the garage and pools there, creating a huge mess until
I get out there with my cement squeegee.
Who wants to continually be moving crap in and out of the
garage so you can squeegee it? And in the winter when it’s freezing?
Not me.
For years I’ve wanted to do something about it, but what can
you do after the concrete of your garage is poured?
Well, this year, after the first big storm, I got sick and
tired of traipsing through the water and mud and cleaning all that crap up. So
I put my massive Google-fu skills to work. And, lo and behold, I discovered a
product called TruContain.
It’s a car mat for your garage. It’s made of thick vinyl and
has raised edges.
I bought one.
The UPS man delivered it not many days later.
The installation instructions were simple. Two steps. The
perfect number for me to manage. Step one was to let it warm up in the house
for twenty-four hours so it was easier to unroll. I did that. Step two was to unroll
and position it in the garage where we park our car. That took about a minute. So
far so good.
No soon after the mat was deployed, we had another snow
storm. The van went out for daily driving and came back with an undercarriage
covered in ice and snow. We parked the van on the mat. The ice and snow melted.
And the mat caught it and contained it.
I was delighted.
The next day the van went out for another day’s use and came
back all covered in snow and ice again. The snow and ice melted, along with a
bunch of dirt. And the mat caught it again!
I was whooping for joy.
I’m still whooping for joy because my garage is dry!
If we get a lot of water on the mat, I’ll use the shop vac
to suck it up. I took out five gallon of dirty, cold water the first time. Five
gallons that would have flooded my garage! If there’s not too much water on the
mat, I’ll drag the mat out with a helper and dump the water on the lawn.
I love my TruContain garage mat.
If you have winter water mess in your garage, you’ll want to
consider it. I got mine from the manufacturer garageflooringllc.com.
One word of advice. If you get one, don’t get one bigger
than you need. If it’s too big, then the mat will stick out from the sides of
the car, and when you go to step out, you’ll be stepping out into your mini
garage lake.
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I enjoy books about Army Rangers, Navy SEALS, Special Forces
soldiers, etc. Almost all of them are
written from the point of view of the operators. But I just found and enjoyed
one, not about the operators, but about a guy who helped them in Iraq.
The book is called Code Name: Johnny Walker and was
written by the guy the SEALs called Johnny
Walker with the help of Jim DeFelice.
Who is Johnny Walker?
He was a resident of Mosul and was what they called a “terp”,
an interpreter who went with the SEALs on their missions. He went on hundreds
and hundreds of missions with them. And he offers a fascinating glimpse into what
life was like in Iraq during the Iraq War for those Iraqis who helped the
coalition forces.
The SEALs appreciated his service. I know this because a
host of them have blurbed his book. Furthermore, they helped him eventually immigrate
to America. That’s how grateful they were for his service.
If you like these types of books and would enjoy new
insights, I think you’ll really enjoy the book. Johnny Walker does swear a bit.
But I tend to take people as they are. And it was well worth time I spent
listening to him.
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For Christmas my daughter received a number of seasons of The Great British Baking Show. It’s a
competition baking show. I’d heard about it before, but I’d seen episodes of American
competition cooking shows and didn’t enjoy them at all.
However, my daughter said this was nothing like the American
shows, that it was awesome, and it was so awesome she wanted to the DVDs for
Christmas so she could watch the episodes again. I needed to give it a try, she
said. So I gave it a try.
I’m happy to report that I and my family have are enjoying
the heck out of her DVDs.
The British folks that are competing in the challenges are down-to-earth
and interesting. Some of them are funny. The tips about baking are interesting.
And, best of all, the British show makers know how to create suspense.
They start each season with a group of twelve amateur bakers. Two professional bakers give them a baking challenge with a time limit and then judge the bakes. After a series of three challenges, the pros name a star baker for that series and then also announce who was at the bottom of the pack and will be leaving the show. If you like cooking or have ever found yourself watching a cooking program all the way through, I think you’ll really enjoy these fun, British bakers.
I’m supposed to do this tag thing where one author tells about his or her latest project and then tags other authors to tell about theirs and so on and so on until we turn into some weird internet author borg and eat your brains out.
Heck with that.
I want to simply share something cool with you instead. James Maxey (who tagged me in the borg fest) writes stories with lots of action, fun, and character that also make you think. They always start with a bang and never let up. For example, look at how GREATSHADOW, his last book, starts.
When Infidel grabbed me by the seat of my pants and charged toward the window, I didn’t protest. Partly this was due to the speed of her action, but mostly due to my inebriation from the sacramental wine we’d stolen.
If an opening like that isn’t going to make you want to read more, I don’t know what will. Especially when the wine was stolen from a lava-pygmy temple carved into the sheer cliff face of a volcano. I’m not alone in my appreciation of Maxey’s writing. Orson Card wrote this glowing review of GREATSHADOW earlier this year.
Here is the opening to Maxey’s “To The East, A Bright Star” which was published in Asimov’s. It has one of my favorite beginnings.
There was a shark in the kitchen. The shark wasn’t huge, maybe four feet long, gliding across the linoleum toward the refrigerator. Tony stood motionless in the knee-deep water of the dining room. The Wolfman said that the only sharks that came in this far were bull sharks, which were highly aggressive. Tony leaned forward cautiously and shut the door to the kitchen. He’d known the exact time and date of his death for most of his adult life. With only hours to go, he wasn’t about to let the shark do something ironic.
Which brings us to the fact that Maxey has another book out called WITCHBREAKER. That’s such a cool title I wish I could off Maxey and steal it for myself. The book has, as you have seen to the right, a fabulous cover as well. About 5000% better than the horrid thing Solaris put on GREATSHADOW.
Maxey talks about what inspired WITCHBREAKER in this blog post, which I recommend you read in full. But just in case you’re a lazy son-of-a-gun like me, here’s the meat of the thing. WITCHBREAKER is about a woman named Sorrow. Says Maxey:
Her father was a judge who hung his own mother after she was accused of being a witch. Sorrow rebelled by becoming a witch herself, but her hatred isn’t directed directly at her father, it’s directed at the religious and political institutions that empowered him. So, Sorrow’s life mission is to overthrow that system. She’s one woman against the world, fighting to make it a better place even though everyone she meets keeps insisting that the world isn’t so bad. I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for characters locked into a lifelong battle against forces more powerful than they will ever be.
Are you ready for a story that’s heroic and inspirational? And poignant. And action-packed. And all true.
I just finished Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown by Eric Blehm. And wow. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have read this book.
It tells the story of Adam Brown who was killed while on assignment in 2010. But this book isn’t about a special operations battle in Afghanistan, although the battle is detailed. It’s not a war book. Although it tells about many episodes in the life of a Navy SEAL operator. No, this book starts when Adam was a kid.
It like the story of Louis Zamperini that’s told in Unbroken by Laurel Hillenbrand (and, yes,the film adaptation missed so much of the story, including the most important part,that if you haven’t read that book, you are missing out on an absolute treat). In this one, Brown starts out as a boy with bright promise, but after he graduates from high school, he makes a number of bad choices and drives his life right off a cliff.
You’ll be flipping the pages to see what helps him turn it around and whether he can make the change permanent, or if he’ll lose everything, including the love of his wife and kids. You’ll also be amazed at his grit. It’s a tremendous read. If you can listen to it on audio, you’ll enjoy the narration by Paul Michael. Either way, if you like stories about redemption and triumph amidst struggle, if you like books about special operations forces and elite soldiers, then you’re going to love this book. Highly recommended.
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The 12th Man is a 2017 World War 2 historical drama based on the true story of Jan Baalsrud. He and eleven other Norwegian resistance fighters set off from the UK on board a fishing boat with six to seven tons of TNT to sabotage some German military facilities.
However, their mission falls apart soon after reaching Norway. A German warship attacks. The resistance fighters set fire to the TNT on their boat and jumped into the water just off shore. Eleven of the fighters are caught by the Germans. The twelfth, Jan Baalsrud, gets shot in the toe, but still runs across land and manages to elude immediate capture by swimming across the fjord, in the dark, in the freezing, winter water.
Yeah, and that’s just the beginning. The story is about his attempt to get to the safety of Sweden, a neutral country. I watched this with my teenage daughter, and we were riveted with the suspense and action. And we were amazed at what this guy endured.
You will have to read English subtitles during a large parts, but we found that after a few minutes, we really didn’t notice it. It was a great date night. If you like war movies and action, I think you’ll love this movie.
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Tonight I ate a dish that instantly became one of my favorites. My oldest daughter and her husband found it. They love it and shared it with Nellie. And since it was her night to cook, she decided to give it a try. My first bite was wow.
It’s a baked casserole, a cross between lasagna and spaghetti, called “MillionDollar Spaghetti” from tastesbetterfromscratch.com. Just click on the link the get the recipe.
Now, here’s the thing: you can use spaghetti pasta, or you can make it totally low carb by replacing the pasta with cooked spaghetti squash like we did. The low carb version was awesome. I can’t wait to heat up the leftovers tomorrow.
By the way, here’s a quick way to cook spaghetti squash.
First, cut the squash in half lengthwise. The easiest and safest way I’ve found to do this is to place the uncooked squash on a cutting board. Next, get a big knife and set it along the line you want to cut. Finally, rap the spine of the blade smartly with a thick stick or long block of wood until the knife cuts through all the way. Using a knife this way is called batoning because you’re using a baton, a stick. It’s a slick and safe way to cut a hard squash.
Once you have cut the squash in half, scrape out the seeds with a large spoon.
Next, pour about a quarter cup of water into the hollow of the squash, and then turn the squash hollow-side down on a plate or microwave dish. Microwave the half on high for five to six minutes. It’s done when you can easily pierce the outside with a fork.
Remove the plate with hot pads and use a fork to scrape out the cooked squash. Voila! Cooked spaghetti squash in less than 10 minutes.
You can also just bake the halves in the oven for 40 minutes on 375 degrees. Baking gives the squash a slightly richer flavor. In this method, you brush the halves with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper then put the sides face-down on a baking sheet. Again, it’s done when you can easily pierce the outside with a fork.
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And here’s one more because it’s Christmas. I attended a young women’s meeting for my local congregation not too long ago. As part of the program, one of the leaders read a picture book called You Are Special by Max Lucado.
It’s about these small wooden people called Wemmicks who stick gold stars or gray dots on one another. The pretty or talented ones always get stars. The others, like Punchinello, get the ugly gray dots. And then one day Punchinello finds a happy Wemmick that has no dots at all. In fact, no dots stick to her. How does she manage it?
It’s a great little tale with an important insight. After hearing it, I knew I needed a copy of the book to read to all my grown up kids.
2 Comments
Sure enjoyed this one! Hope to see more of this in the future.
I’m supposed to do this tag thing where one author tells about his or her latest project and then tags other authors to tell about theirs and so on and so on until we turn into some weird internet author borg and eat your brains out. 
Sure enjoyed this one! Hope to see more of this in the future.
Glad to hear that. It was a blast to write.