The Saturday Morning Post (No. 102) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 

Today we have a lighthearted homage to James Bond, Matt Helm, Napoleon Solo, and all those classic cold war spies in a briskly paced thriller.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

John Nuclear at the Perihelion Palace by Berthold Gambrel  B

The title character, John Nuclear, is a semi-retired special agent who is called back into service by his old boss for a mission to recover a certain mysterious item, the tianming. Exactly what the tianming is, (besides a MacGuffin) he isn't told. All he's asked to do is get it any way he can. And to do that, he must go to the Perihelion Hotel where the criminal who has gotten hold of the the tianming is auctioning it off to the highest bidder. Of course Mr Nuclear isn't the only agent that has been assigned to acquire the tianming. The others include; Tau Centi, a rather mysterious agent of which not much is known about, Ivan Volgakov, a subtle, charismatic agent, Professor Ulysses H Pinecone (pronounced peen - ah - conay) an inventor with a interesting bodyguard, and La Rouge Elite, the Queen of Hearts, one of the most dangerous and successful agent still active in the world. Over the course of the story Mr Nuclear get to meet and deal with all of  them, one way or another.

Since this is a novella length story, it's intricate plot unfolds at a breakneck pace, always with lots of twists, turns, and gunfights along the way. Only at the very end do we learn the purpose of the tianming device.

As I mentioned in the lede, Mr Gambrel has written a fast paced thriller laced with humor and cheerful shout-outs to all the staples of the Bonds and Solos of books and movies from the 60's and 70's - from beautiful spies, to unexpected villains, gunfights high stakes, and narrow escapes. A treat for fans of the genre

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 101)

 

We're back to Georgette Heyer this week, with a sequel of sorts. This book is set some twenty-five years after the events of These Old Shades.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer  B-

As I said in the lede, this book is something of a sequel to These Old Shades. In it we have the son of the romantic principles of that book, who is very much a rake with a violent temper, and who is much given to fighting duels in which he is known to have killed a man. In this story, he comes close to doing so again, and this time he is more or less forced to flee England,  incase his victim dies, since that would be considered murder. While fleeing England, he decides to take along a young woman, who in turn, hopes to force him to marrying her or risk a great scandal. However, her older sister is given his message by mistake, and she decides to take her sister's place and when this is discovered, (she wears a mask to pull this off), she plans to make it seem like a great joke. Unfortunately, when the rake, the Devil's Cub of the title, discovers this, he doesn't take it a a joke, but, in rage, takes the older sister to France with him instead.

In most of Heyer's books, she has the women fall in love with either "bad boys" or the unflappable domineering man, so you can easily guess the ultimate ending of this tale. But, as in this story, you always have intrigues, misunderstandings, and misadventures along the way to that inevitable ending. In this case, however, I really disliked the male lead, the rake, and could not credit his transformation to something other than a violent, short tempered rake. I pity the poor heroine who will have to put up with his violent temper, a temper that I seriously doubt would be tamed even by love. So, all in all, fine for what it is, a historic romance, but far from her best. 

My Secrets of Success, Such As It Is

I'm happy to say that, unlike many artists and writers, I've never suffered for my art. I believe in talent. My talents. Both writing and painting have, from an early age come naturally to me. They're gifts. Gifts that I've enjoyed all my life. As gifts, I take no credit for them beyond using them and having fun doing so. Writing and painting are not hard for me, they're not work.

The fact that I've never entertained lofty goals helps me enjoy my talents, such as they are. I don't anguished over my limitations in my art and writing. I'm content with what I can do, get better, if possible, and not regret what I can't do. Many people have far more talent than I. I give them the joy of it.

Time is another key component to my successes. Several aspects of time.

The first is that I started writing my published novels around the time I turned 60 years old. By that time, I'd read several thousand novels, and knew what I liked and what I didn't like. I just set out to write the stories I liked in the style I liked. Unlike younger writers, I knew what I wanted to write and how I wanted to write them, and didn't need all the books, articles, blogs, and seminars that younger writers feel, or at least told, they need to shape their writing. 

Another aspect of time is free time. The time and energy to write. While I did write several novels and some shorter pieces when I was working, it was only after I wasn't working that, over the course of the last 15 years, I've written all my published work. I've had the time and mental bandwidth to focus on writing, and have used it.

And then there is daily time. I write nearly every day. It is the first thing I do each morning, seven days a week. I don't leap out of bed eager to write. I crawl out and often have to force myself to sit down and start writing. But then, before I know it, an hour or more has just flown by and it's time for toast with marmalade and a mug of tea. Sometimes, when the story is going well or I'm nearing the end, I'll spend another hour or two in the evening writing as well. This consistency, for me, has been the key for getting books written.

Another factor is that, except for a few years of selling my paintings, I've not tried to turn art into money. With a few notable exceptions, notable because they are the few exceptions, art, in any medium, pays shit. I've long known that. If you really want to make money doing art, you need to find a real job with a paycheck every week or two in the field. And even so, it won't likely pay well. Free lance writing is a side gig, a hobby, a passion, or a dream. Not a job.

All of this is not to say that I haven't struggled. Mostly it has been dreaming up stories I want to write or scenes I want and can paint. This can be frustrating, but once I do have a story in my head, I find it easy to set it down in words. Perhaps too easily and with too many words. Oh well. I just like messing around, either in paint or words.

Treating writing as a work of art is another key to my success. I treat it as a form of personal expression. I write the stories I want, the way I want them. Thus, I have no need for critique partners, alpha and beta readers to read and critique my work while in progress. No second guesses. Only when I'm done writing three or more drafts, do I show my story to my beta readers, mostly for their help in proofreading, though I do make many of the minor changes they might suggest. But otherwise, I just trust myself and my talent.

This idea of writing for the fun of it, extends even further. Not only do I write for the fun of it, I refuse to do what isn't fun for me. I have no, or few and fleeting, unpleasant tasks in my writing and publishing. Things like, in LibreOffice, getting the first page of the story in the paperback version to start on page 1, while having no page numbers for the front matter pages. Little things like that, which are more challenges than anything else. I've had to innovate, try different covers, explore new venues and formats to achieve my sales, but truthfully, I find that interesting, a game to play, and rather enjoy doing things like that, so it's hardly work. 

A lifetime of having to watch my pennies means that I don't like spending money. And I don't spend money, nor time and effort, trying to sell my books. I'm not a social person, so X, TikTok, and the like, are well out of my comfort zone so I don't use them either. I don't spend countless hours posting, liking, commenting, trying to build a following and making friends with influencers in order to sell my books. I waste my time in other, more agreeable ways. 

I owe a great deal of my happiness with my writing and publishing to the fact that I decided that since the money I would likely make by putting a price on my books would not make an appreciable difference in my life, I'd forgo it. Instead, right from the get-go, I'd decided to measure my success in readers rather than dollars. Since starting selling books ten years ago now, I have always sold hundreds of books each month, every month, by selling them for free, without putting any effort into it beyond writing and releasing them. And as a result, I've now sold more than 1000,000 books. Oh, and made a penny a book, clear profit as well, thanks to Amazon's policy, not mine.

And well there is the fact that I just like just sharing my "hobby" with readers. It feels right. I never have to agonize over if I am giving my readers value for their money. Some readers will like them, others won't, but with my preferred price of free, I don't lose any sleep over those who don't.

Plus, I feel that if I had gone the usual route, you know, by actually charging money for my books to reflect all the time and "work" I put into producing them, chances are that I'd only have sold a couple hundred copies. Maybe. Given that, who knows how many of the books I would've actually written? Would I have grown discouraged and given up writing years ago? I don't know. I can only imagine how discouraging it must feel to write books and sell only a relatively few copies. Still, the value of art is in the art, not in its sales. Sales don't matter. Still, it is nice...

So, all in all, the secrets of my success can be summed up as keeping it simple, trusting myself, and keeping it personal. I write and publish for me and have fun doing it. Plus, I honestly enjoy being able to share my fun, and my worlds, with you, dear readers. That's all I need. That's success, in my book.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 100) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 

A milestone of sorts. My 100th book review in this format. I'm reading a fair amount of books these days, and not because I have a weekly book review slot to fill. No, I'm just back into reading, and luckily enough to stumble upon books that I enjoy reading, as I hope you have gathered from all my previous posts.

So what do we have this week? A bit of a break a return, once again, to last year's old standby in a special double book review!

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Brother Cadfael's Penance by Ellis Peters  B

This is, alas, the last novel featuring Brother Cadfael. I have several short stories to read to wrap up this saga - see below - which tell of his early years, so this is where we must take leave of Brother Cadfael.

Once again there is a murder, and once again, it hardly matters at all, save to drive the plot. This is not a murder mystery in any sense, but a historical novel of a quest that Brother Cadfael undertakes to find his son, said to be held captive, without a ransom after one of the castles held by Empress Maud switches sides to King Stephen. Those who preferred to stay loyal to Empress Maud where taken and held for ransom, save for Brother Cadfael's son. No one knows what happened to him. He feels compelled to leave the monastery and search for him, getting limited permission to accompany his old friend the Sheriff to a peace conference between Maud and Stephen, in hopes of hearing the fate of this son. This proves unsuccessful, and presented with the dilemma of continuing his search, or abandoning his vows of obedience, he finds that he cannot abandon his son.

There is a lot of history, and a lot of characters in this story, making it a bit hard to follow at times, at least when it came to characters - who was who and whom were they for, and how they were related. As usual, I just went with the flow, and gathered what was what from the context. Because of the nature of the story, we no longer have the story centered around the rather cozy life of monk and monastery, and venture out into the war-torn England of the time period. And so, as you can see from my grade, it was not one of my favorites of the series, leaving much of what I like about the series behind for this, the last entry.

The short stories will wrap up this series. I'll miss Brother Cadfael, but as you may've noticed, I've found another writer and another time period to discover and enjoy. Stories very different, but very entertaining in their own unique way. All is good.

A Rare Benedictine by Elis Peters  B

This is a collection of three short stories. In the first one we meet Cadfael a soldier in the service of Roger Mauduit who has been fighting alongside King Henry in Normandy. The war is over, Henry has won, and is returning home to England, as in Mauduit. Mauduit takes Cadfael and a scribe home with him. Mauduit is involved in a civil law case with the Monastery of Shrewsbury over property that was given to the monastery for the life of the giver, but Mauduit does not want to return it, the contract being a little vague. He, or his wife, hatches a plan to ensure a favorable outcome in the case to be tried before the King. Cadfael takes not only a hand in the affair, but decides to become a monk of the abbey.

The second story is about a gift to the abbey, and its theft, and how Cadfael, as usual, bends a few rules to set things right. 

And the final one, about the theft of the Abbey's rent money. Nothing too elaborate.

All in all, not up to the standard of the novels, but what can one expect from short stories? 

And so, as I said in the lede, this is  my fond farewell to Brother Cadfael and Sheriff Hugo. A great series of books. We'll have to see what I can turn up next. I did enjoy that series about a detective nun in Tutor times, I believe... 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 99)

 

This week we're giving Jane Austen another go.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen  C+

This is Jane Austen's first novel. She wrote it, sold it, but it was never published. She bought it back, but even then it was only published after she died. This is a novel where the writer is explicitly telling you a story, in that she comments on her story and characters as she goes along. I find that this technique puts the story at some remove. The characters, in the end, remain just that characters. On the plus side, it allows the writer to make witty and clever comments, which, as regular readers of this series knows, is my bread and butter when it comes to reading. And in this respect Jane Austen doesn't disappoint, at least in the first half of this novel. The second half is a bit more dramatic, though it is still poking fun at romantic novels with old, creepy castles and eerie intrigues.

The story concerns Catherine, a young woman of 17, one of a large, happy family of a man of the cloth, is offered a chance to visit the fashionable waterhole of Bath as a companion of a wealthy neighbor. In Bath we are treated to a description of polite society killing time, while the young people look for romance, or rather a wealthy enough suitor. Along the way she meets several new female friends, one is Isabella, and the other Eleanor Tilney, whose brother, one Henry Tilney she finds she's fallen in love with. Meanwhile Isabella falls in love with Catherine's brother, an Oxford scholar studying to be a minister, like his father. There are the usual mishaps and misunderstandings, one can expect in a romance.

Halfway through the book, Catherine is offered the opportunity to go with Eleanor, Henry, and their father, General Tilney, to their grand home, Northanger Abbey. General Tilney is a rather creepy and demanding father, and at least Catherine finds an air of mystery in Northanger Abbey. Since I don't like to spoil stories, I won't say anything more about the events in Northanger Abbey.

I found this story very amusing, in parts, with often keen and cutting observations on the society of the day. That said, the style of its narration, and rather old fashioned dialog, which, however cleverly worded, reads more like speeches, rather than conversations, and the remoteness of the characters by portraying them a mere characters detracted from my enjoyment. I think that in general this is probably considered by most, her weakest work, no doubt by virtue of it being her first adult novel, so I think I'm in good company with my opinion. I think Emma will be the next Austen book I try, when I get back to her. 

The Not A Novel Novel

 

I recently read a series of books, written in a diary format, none of which could really be called a complete novel, at least individually. Nevertheless they spin a wonderful story. All sorts of events take place. There are lines, well, threads, of plots running through the books, but there are so many of them, many seemingly leading nowhere, only to reappear and disappear in the next book. Characters are introduced, expanded upon, and yet remain mysterious.

But what is missing, at least as far as I can determine, is the rigid structure writers often use to construct a story. Still, the author says that she has an overarching plot, and knows where the story's going, but it will take 18 or 24 books to get there. As such, this is overarching plot is indistinguishable from the quantumness of life itself. I think this is wonderful. There's no three acts to be found in the books. at least that I can distinguish. The cat in the story doesn't have to be saved. And yet, I found that I had to limit myself each day on the time I spent reading these books, so as not to race through them too fast... Even so, eight books in two weeks... Plots, who need plots?

Some readers do. There are, no doubt, readers who do want and expect a plot, and will complain if there doesn't seem to be one in books that may be more focused on characters or ideas. I'm not one of them. I want pleasant characters, themes of friendship, and clever, witty writing and dialog. Give me that, and I'm very happy without a plot, or even a story. That then, is my bias when I say that I greatly appreciate the seemingly unstructured approach this author has taken with her books, even if they are not as unstructured as they appear. 

As I see it, life generally doesn't unfold in three acts. Well, maybe for some people, who live crisis to crisis, drama to drama, it does, but for most, its a series of, well, one damn thing after another damn thing, with, hopefully, a few bright things liberally tossed in as well. And I see no reason why fiction needs to make life so artificial to fit comfortably into a book in three acts. It's the journey rather than the destination sort of thing. I'm all in on the journey with good and witty company, and in no hurry to arrive. I suspect, however, that a lot of plot orientated readers care little for the writing itself, as long as it carries them to the destination. Everyone has their own tastes, so I give them their joy, even if it's not mine.

My bias is also reflected in my writing. I never think of my books in terms of acts, or cats. I simply want to tell some sort of story and tell it as entertainingly as I can. Now I do try to have some sort of satisfactory destination, but I try to arrive there naturally, and then, leave the door open for my characters to live on, their lives unrecorded.

By writing in the first person, the story is being told by a character from within the story itself. And I make it a point to have the narrator tell the story from within the story as it progresses, meaning that even as the narrator is "telling" the reader the story, he doesn't know how it ends himself. In several of my books, I use something like a diary format, used in the series of books that inspired this post, but not a believable diary, as no one would remember and record all the dialog I use as a diary-like entry. While recording a story in the middle of it makes for somewhat less that "proper" tenses at times, it conveys the idea that the narrator is in jeopardy, something that is missing when the narrator tells the entire story looking back on it. The one thing I don't like is stories told by old people telling stories of their youth. My characters don't get old. That has been my fate.

Most importantly, I do not want to see or sense the hand of the author in the structure of the novels I read. For me, when I see the hand of the author building the structure of a story, and making puppets of their characters, that curtain between the Mighty Oz and the little man in the corner, is ripped away. I become aware of the inauthenticity of the world, the characters that the author meant to bring to life. To heck with drama. I want life.

Reviews of the books that inspired this post are coming in April. Stay tuned.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 98) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 A SPECIAL SUNDAY EDITION OF THE SATURDAY MORNING POST

At the time I'm posting this piece in mid-March 2025, I've read, or at least tried to read, 31 books so far this year. A number of them have been novellas, and others DNFs but clearly posting one book review a week isn't going to work. I've been doubling up some and you can expect to see more extra issues until I get the backlog down to two moths, eight postings. I have a 16 post backlog at the moment.

Get used to it. There are plenty more where this one came from.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer  B+

Elinor Rochdale, age 26, is a woman of good birth whose father gambled away his fortune, leaving his widow and daughter destitute. Now alone in the world, Elinor is forced to make a living as a governess. Arriving on the stage coach late in a village for her next job, she is expecting someone to meet her. And indeed, there was someone, though it turns out, there were supposed to be two young ladies to be picked up, and one did not show, so that Elinor was picked up in place of the second young lady, her proper ride had not shown up yet. She is taken in a fine coach to a run-down mansion and there she meets Lord Carlyon, who assumes that the is the young lady he had engaged via an newspaper advertisement, the one who didn't show up.

It seems that Lord Carlyon has been looking after a wild nephew. This nephew has come to hate him, even as Carlyon has tried to do all he could for him. The nephew is rapidly drinking himself to death. As it stands, Lord Carlyon would inherit the nephew's estate when he dies, and fears that his actions would appear as if he is profiting from his guardianship of his nephew. The nephew, hating Lord Carlyon, wants to keep his estate (what is left of it) out of his Uncle's hands, and one way to do that would be to have a wife to leave it to. This arrangement suits Lord Carlyon as well, and for his reasons I has advertised for a wife for his nephew. As it turns out, just in time, and the nephew is severely wounded in a drunken fight, so if he's to get married on this side of the grave, there are only a few hours to do so. It is up to Lord Carlyon to talk a very reluctant Elinor into marry his dying nephew, and only the dreary prospect of being a governess the rest of her life, finally brings her around to agreeing to get married to the dying nephew.

Add to this set up a possible French spy, various new relatives, a young cousin with a rather wild, but goodhearted dog living in her "husband's" rather rundown estate with secret passages, and you have another Georgette Heyer Regency romance/mystery.