Gold In Them Hills

 

Some three years ago now, I embarked on a quest to find new types of books to read. As you can see from a photo of my library, I've read a variety of books over the last sixty-some years, beginning with the Tom Swift Jr books in the right hand corner. They led to science fiction to fantasy, Sherlock Holmes and Fu Manchu to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and latter on to P G Wodehouse, sea stories, Victorian/Edwardian adventures stories, Joe Lincoln's Cape Code novels and Napoleonic era British naval stories, as well as books on London, the Blitz and Taoism. In short, a fair variety of books. However, my tastes for older books meant that they need be found in used book stores that were far away, plus, a quarter of a century ago, knowing that I would some day have to move all those books, I stopped, for the most part, buying books. I became content with borrowing books from the library. But even that became rare, especially once I was engaged on writing my own books. 

That said, for most of my life, if asked, I would've said I was a fan of science fiction, even as I read less and less science fiction. But some five years ago, I came to realize that I was never a real science fiction fan, and could no longer carry that banner. (I read them as old fashioned romances.) And more recently, I came to realize, though a writer, I was no longer much of a reader.

So some three years ago, I decided to get back into reading, to prospect for new books and genre to read. To that end, I collected a bunch of free ebooks on Amazon in different genres to see if anything clicked - with somewhat inconclusive results. I was also following blogs and watching YouTube videos about books. So between the free books, the recommendations I came across from the blogs and videos, and going back to reread favorites, I began to not only read again but to expand the scope of my reading.

It has been a rewarding experience. Over the last three years I've read books by W Somerset Maugham, Compton Mackenzie, Ellis Peters, D E Stevenson, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Jeff Shaara, Molly Clavering, Alexandre Dumas, Georgette Heyer, John Hadfield, and Beth Bower, Larry McMurtry, Jane Austen, James Clavell, and Yangsze Choo, just to name a few. I've found some wonderful writers and delightful books in the most unlikely places.

Of course there are genre that I have no intention of exploring, just as there are types of music that hold no interest for me - country, hip-hop, rap, and classical music prior to Ralph Vaugh Williams. Likewise, I have no desire to read horror, grimdark, or any sort of grim, dark and depressing work, no matter how literate, as well as vast epics, and ancient classics to name some genres off the top of my head.

What else isn't going to change, I think, is what I enjoy in my books - imagination, wit, charm, and cleverness in story and  the art of writing. But these attributes can be found across many genre, including, no doubt, some that I've no interest in reading, but you might.

So I just want to say that I hope that you might take my experience to heart, and to go prospecting yourself beyond your usual pastures. Go where you never read before. Cross genres, go back in time, sample this and that. Listen to what friends, bloggers, and video booktubers have to say about books to help chart your quest. There is so much joy to be found sitting on book shelves - once the books are opened and read. There is so much talent, so much imagination, so many worlds to explore, and characters to befriend, to be tied to just one or two genres.

Indeed, as a writer, I am humbled by the talent I've discovered in all the unexpected (for me) places. I'm currently reading a series of books that I'm simply in awe of. I would never have discovered them if my daughter hadn't recommended them to me - twice. I wish I had even half of the author's imagination. But oh well. I get to enjoy hers, at least. And this is just the most recent example of straying off the beaten path, the familiar pasture to find gold.

All I can say is that there's gold in them hills. Nuggets as big as your fist. You just have to leave your familiar reading pasture and go prospecting for them. 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 91)

I've fallen down a rabbit hole this time. Blame it on YouTube. 

After reading the Brother Cadfael stories, I was thinking that maybe historic fiction might be my new go-to genre. To that end, I watched a video on Tristan and the Classics, a YouTube book channel, and his video on ten historical fiction books that he recommends. I proceeded to pick up one of the books he described that happened to be readily available from my library as an ebook. So down we 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.

Black Sheep  by Georgette Heyer  B+

Historical fiction, yes, but also a Regency romance, by one of the queens of historical and Regency romances, Georgette Heyer. She also wrote mysteries, historical novels, and thrillers, which I will likely have to get around to sampling. Since, as you can see from my grade, I rather enjoyed this story.

The story itself is pretty classic. It is set in the English city of Bath during the first half of the nineteenth century, presumably during the Regency Period - 1811 to about 1820, I believe. Fanny Wendover, a seventeen year old heiress, has fallen in love with a very charming fortune hunter, Stacy Calverleigh. He is in desperate need of marrying a heiress to pay off his gambling debts and support his expensive lifestyle. Though Fanny's guardian is a straightlaced uncle who no one can stand, he had handed off the raising of Fanny to his two sisters. Thus she's grown up in the house of her two aunts. The elder, Selina Wendover, is your typical spinster, much given to (imagined) ill health, along with the younger aunt, also unmarried, the twenty-eight year old Abigail Wendover. She is a much more level headed woman, who is pursued by a number of very boring suitors. Abby  sets out to save Fanny from the fortune hunter - hopefully without turning Fanny against her. A almost impossible task since Fanny resents any ill words against Stacy. Enter Stacy's uncle, the Calverleigh family's black sheep, Miles Calverleigh. Some 20 years before, he had been packed off to India for some scandal, and who by chance, finds himself in Bath. Abby and Miles meet by a minor misunderstanding, and Abby, against her better judgement, finds that she is attracted to him, despite his dark reputation and rather careless attitude to just about everything. 

Black Sheep is no bodice ripper. It is all very proper, as are its characters. Which is good, as I like the understated in just about everything. The charm of this story is in the interesting and largely pleasant characters, plus a well researched glimpse of the life of high society of the period, the ton, who gathered in Bath to idle away part of their year. But ever more so, I enjoyed it for its clever and witty writing and dialog. I may have mentioned in previous reviews, (many times), but it bears mention, I like clever and witty dialog. Clever and witty writing trumps plot and story for me. While variations of this story have no doubt been written several thousand times since this one was written, and perhaps many times before, and the fact that I am likely outside of its target audience, speaks to its great charm. It's such a delightfully written book, that it earns a B+ in my grade book.

Glencrow Summer Is Now Available on Amazon

 

The ebook version of Glencrow Summer is now available on Amazon world wide for $3.99 USD. Customers within the US can purchase it HERE. Outside of the US, you can find it in your regional Amazon store.

The 364 page paperback version can be purchased, again in the US HERE for $12.99USD It is also available in every country where Amazon print on demand books are available.

As always, free versions of both the ebook add audiobook can be found on Google Play Store, Apple, B & N, Smashwords, and several European ebook retailers as well. (Links in this previous blog post HERE) I prefer to just share my stories, but I have to play by Amazon's rules when offering my books on Amazon and Amazon require a non-zero price. Amazon matches free prices, or not, as it is their whim, so please feel free to buy it:)

The audiobook version is now available HERE. It costs the minimum Amazon price of $3.99

I'd like to thank everyone who has already picked up their copy of Glencrow Summer.

Glencrow Summer Alternate Covers

 

This is the cover I eventually settled on

A you may have noticed in my last post on Glencrow Summer's production time line, I painted a number of pictures of the glen of the Crow River. I did so, in part, just to get back into painting. Another reason was, as the story churned in my mind, to put down some locales in paint. Given my non-visual mind, I hoped that perhaps I could make the locale more real to me by the process of painting the place. That said, I can't really say that the paintings ever quite matched the vague impressions of the scenes I had in mind. This is not surprising, since I've found over the years that the impressions I have in mind, have never quite translate into the actual scenes. My impressions are too vague, too undefined to be pinned down with my limited talents. The more practical purpose of painting these scenes was that I was needed to paint the cover I'd need for both the paperback and ebook versions. 

For the cover of a paper book that you want to wrap around to the back cover, most of the important action needs to be on the left half of the painting, which will end up being the front cover. My first effort  for a cover didn't work out at all so I repainted it with something else and then moved on to my next attempt, the painting below.

My first attempt at a cover

The problem I felt with this cover, at least I felt so at the time, was that the people in the distance were too small and remote for a book cover. I thought that what was needed was to have the characters more to the fore. Something less of a landscape painting and more of a book illustration. So I paint over parts of this picture, re-routing the river a bit to bring the two people fishing closer. Below was the result of this effort. I also added some black outline to the painting to sharpen it up a bit.

                       

In addition to this version, I also decided to use the second version of my first attempt at a cover that I mentioned above. As you recall, the original idea didn't work out, so I painted the same locale but from a different angle and called it a day as a mere landscape painting rather than potential cover. This is that re-paint effort below.

My first attempt was paining the scene looking directly at the wall from the meadow.

But then it occurred to me that if I switched things around on this painting, maybe I could use it as a cover, after all. The main problem with using this scene for the cover was that the potential locale for the action of the painting was on the left hand side, and I'd need it on the right for a cover. However, flipping the digital version over to get the road on the right presented no problem in software. So I did it, and then added several figures in the foreground who were getting together for an evening of fishing on the Crow River. I also added a fence line that was described in the text and pushed back the wall of the lodge further into the woods to better fit the book description as well. Both scenes are supposed to be in the mellow evening, so I altered the tone of the paints for a more golden glow.

A second alternative cover

Now, if I was an illustrator, both of these attempts would probably have worked better as covers than the one I eventually chose. But alas, I'm not. I'm just an impressionist landscape painter. I decided that these paintings, with the figures so large looked too clunky, too awkward, too sketchy. Too just bad. So in the end, I decided to just go with a revised version of my first cover, to just settle for mood rather than illustrations of action.

So I went back to my second version, the river scene, and painted over it yet again, restoring it to something like, but hopefully better, than the original. I decided to keep the original painting just a landscape, so I added the figures fishing from the original (digital) version in "post" i.e. I cut them out of the digital version of the original painting and patched them into the new digital version. 

And just to put everything right, I repainted the road scene painting again to eliminate those clunky figures. I did, however, keep the fence line and the wall further back in the woods.

The final version of the road painting

While I did need to come up with a cover, I was mostly just having fun with paint with all these efforts. I]m not convinced that covers matter all that much. At least not in the way we're told, i.e. to have covers "appropriate" for the genre. I see too many different styles for the same genre, and see how cover styles come and go out of style, to worry over much about covers. I simply go for covers that suggest the mood of the story, and play into my long suit, such as it is, with landscapes/street scenes. And I should add, that fit with my "brand". 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 90) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 ANOTHER SUNDAY REVIEW!

This was the other book I picked up at the library. It's a non-fiction book that one of the BookTubers said that it was one of his best books of 2024. The subject sounded interesting, so I decided to give my first book in 2025 a try.

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 Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity  by David Graeber & David Wengrow  DNF (Heck, I hardly started it.)

As I said in my intro, this sounded very interesting. It tells the story of what modern research has revealed about the lives of people who lived in "prehistory". Which is to say,  the several million years of humanity before recorded history. The major premise of their book is that we've gotten the wrong idea about how things where, and only in the last decade or two of archeology have we began to have a better understanding of their lives and how they have affected ours. The problem is, for me, that they seemed mostly intent on arguing their case, rather than telling their story.

The first two chapters recount the two old mainstream schools of thought about early man, and their philosophical, social, and economic repercussions. The first school of thought is some version of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that humans were hunter-gathers living in a state of prolonged childhood innocence in small, egalitarian bands. It was subsequent the rise of agriculture and cities that put an end to this innocence with laws, and a top down social order. On the other hand, we had Thomas Hobbes's contention that humans are selfish creatures living solitary, poor, nasty, brutish short lives and that any progress from this state is due to the development of governments, courts, and police in cities, which is to say the very things Rousseau saw as evils. The authors talk about these ideas and the political an economic fallout from them for the next 77 pages. No doubt fascinating reading if you're a poli-sci major, but philosophy, sociology, economic, and political debates are not in my wheelhouse. I was here for the history of the prehistory. So I skipped these two chapters hoping to start learning about early humans.

While they did start out talking about our earliest ancestors, explaining how diverse they actually where, not only in Africa, but around the world. And how the common idea of humanity coming out of Africa in one great movement, is not now considered valid. The problem for me, however, was that they continued arguing their case, always pointing out the perceived errors in previous understandings, and doing so in a very wordy fashion. I don't care about how wrong everyone was before them, I wanted to learn about how pre-historic people lived and society evolved. As Joe Friday might say, "Just the facts, Gents."  I would've loved to learn what they were saying in a more concise way with a lot of illustrations, maps and timelines, but running 536 pages long, with another 150 pages of notes, without very many illustrations, this book is simply not for me.

I'm sure this is an important book with lots of interesting lessons to tell about the people who lived before us - how they lived with so little in such a hostile world. But...  For the right person this book would be a great read.

The Saturday Morning Post (89)

 

As I mentioned in my last review, I intended to pick up Yangsze Choo's first book, The Ghost Bride, eventually. A day after Christmas I came across another book I thought I might find interesting. As it turned out, we were in the midst of an early January thaw, with temperatures above freezing and since both were on the shelves, according to the library website, I decided to venture out into the world to pick up those two books from the library. While it's only a ten minute drive down to the library, still, when temperatures are in the teens, that's ten minutes more than I care to spend outside in the winter. Not to mention the minute it takes to walk from the parking lot to the library... But thanks to the balmy winter weather, I have two books to read. One of them is over 500 pages... It review in a few weeks, but without further ado...

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 Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo  B

This is her debut novel, and as you can see from the cover, a roaring success, including an Oprah book of the week. I've now read her three books in reverse publication order. I like her latest book, The Fox Wife, best, her second book, The Night Tiger the least, and this one comes in second, not that it really matters. So what about this story?

All of her books are fantasies in that they featured Chinese and East Asian supernatural beliefs that, in her books, are real. Indeed, in each of the books, she has a section where she talks about the beliefs she used in writing the story. Each of the stories are set in the past of our world. This book is set in Malaya (her birthplace) in 1893, and in the city of Malacca. Or at least we start in Malacca, though we end up, for a time, in the Chinese world of the dead - a place where the dead await their judgement, which sends them to various levels of hell to punish them for their ill deeds before being reborn again.

Unlike her subsequent books, this story is told exclusively by the protagonist first person narrator, Li Lan. No messing around with a second, parallel, third person. plot line that eventually merges with the first person narrator. A big plus, as far as I'm concerned.

The premise is that Li Lan's father, after the death of his wife, retreats to writing poetry and letting his business partners eventually bankrupt him. The only son of an old friend, the very wealthy Lim family has died, and they have approached Li Lan's father with a proposal - would Li Lan agree to be their dead son's "ghost bride?" They would perform a marriage ceremony, without the bridegroom, and afterwards Li Lan would be considered a widow, and looked after in the household of her deceased "husband." Her father is considering this as a way to look after his daughter after his death as his money is all gone. Well, actually, it isn't so much the dead son's family, but the dead son himself who wants her as his bride. Though dead, he has managed to avoid going to judgement, and plans to avoid doing so for a long, long time.

As I said at the top, in this story ghosts, spirits and the spirit world are real, as Li Lan discovers... As usual, I don't want to go into the plot any deeper. Just know that you are going to take a journey into the strange world of the Chinese Buddhist afterlife, with many complications and adventures along the way.

As I said in my last review, this type of story is, in general, not my cup of tea. The fact that I enjoyed it and read it in two days says a lot about the writing and the character of Li Lan and the characters we meet along the way. If, like me, you read to take you to exotic places that you can't get to from here any other way, you may well enjoy this book, and indeed all three of her books.  

Glencrow Summer Is Available Everywhere

With all my beta readers having reported in, I'm delighted to announce the release of Glencrow Summer on the Google Play Store, Kobo, Apple, B&N, Smashwords, and more. The price varies from store to store, from $3.99 for the ebook on Amazon and Kobo, to FREE most other retailers, with the paperback version on Amazon costing $12.99 Free is my preferred price, but if you are locked into Amazon, it's only a penny less than $4.00, the cost of six eggs. Or less. As I explain below, the Kobo price is an experiment. Pick it up today at your retailer of choice.

Smashwords ebook  FREE

Barnes & Noble ebook  FREE

Google ebook FREE

Google Audiobook FREE

Apple ebook  FREE

Apple Audiobook  FREE

Kobo $3.99

Everand ebook  FREE to Subscribers

Vivlio ebook FREE

Fable ebook  FREE

Amazon ebook $3.99 

Amazon Audiobook $3.99 

Amazon Paperback $12.99

Kobo Pricing Update

Looking at my recent sales, or rather lack of them on Kobo, I decided to list my books at their Amazon retail price - for three reasons. The first is that I think Kobo buries free books in their listings. I've had trouble finding my books in their store, even when I put in my name. The second is that with the number of sales Kobo has generated, especially recently, I have nothing to lose. The third is that Kobo has its own lending library service like Kindle Unlimited. I'm thinking that maybe being able to read a book that costs money for free using the service might be more appealing than reading my free books, even if they could find them. I'm also convinced that the free book market is a distinct market from the paid book market, so that by putting a price on them I might, for these three reasons, actually find more new readers. We'll see.

And with  my Project 2026 tossed into the deep end of the pool, sink or swim, a year ahead of schedule, it's on to Project 2027!