A great little find

The third book in Ian Sales’ Apollo Quartet, Then Will The GreatOcean Wash Deep Above, is a treasure.  Like a sunken chest you’d love to discover snorkeling in St. Croix.  It is compact and contained, feels like it comes from a different time and packed full of precious little gems and nuggets that aren’t for spending.  They are for keeping.  “Wash” is a work of hard science fiction – alternative history – love letter to the space age - making this book about as rare as pirate booty.  And just about as valuable.

As with the other two volumes in the quartet, “Wash” is meticulously researched.  Ian puts together the pieces so nicely that it feels very much like our real history, rather than one that diverges during the Korean War.  The coda in the book remarks on the true story of the characters you’ve just read about and rather than serving as a footnote, the end cap acts to make the whole work – fact and fiction – that much more poignant.  Positioning the real and imagined together serves to illuminate the time and people and culture that helped spur mankind’s last great stage of exploration, above and below.

Human failures amidst humanities greatest achievements – we need to look at history from different angles, which is what this book (and it’s siblings) does so, so well.  We can learn from it and leaning – at the risk of sounding like an afterschool special – is one of our greatest treasures.


I am very much looking forward to the final book of the set.

And this title was just right

I had read a bevy of Suzanne Church’s stories before and became a bigger and bigger fan with each one.  When I heard the title of her collection would be “Elements” I humphed.  It seemed too simple to me.  Her stories cover horror, fantasy, science fiction (in a myriad of sub-genres) – with poignancy, bending tension and welcome dose of humor.  They are, none of them, simple.  After reading the bundle, I’ve changed my humph to a nod.  All the elements of great story telling are here and working wonders.  Families, fear, love, death – the fundamentals of being human drive Suzanne’s stories even when the characters are not human’s at all.  The combinations make the collection fun, exciting and tearful.  One of my criticisms of many things I read is their lopsidedness.  So dreary, so flighty, so thick with drama – that they become immersions in one emotion. The balance in this collection is refreshing in its perfection.  Not too hot, not too cold.  Just right.

The Milkman's nearly here

My new novel The Milkman is up at Amazon, pre-order only. This is not tremendously interesting as such - Amazon has more novels for sale than there are humans on the planet.  Still, it is my book and I haven't grown tired of it just yet.  Check back here in August, when my Amazon ranking is 1,889,997,451,003 and I'll let you know how I'm doing.

Winter Ends March 18

I feel pretty confident in stating the end of this year’s stupefying winter. Disney’s Frozen comes out on DVD and Blu-ray March 18. That is when they will end this nearly four-month long publicity stunt.

When the animated film slid past the $300 million mark on January 8, I thought they would turn the polar vortex machine off and give us all a little thaw. Then they re-released a sing-a-long version – so they kept the weather machine on ice (which means the opposite of what it usually does when you’re talking about a weather machine.) I thought this might end last week, but they announced the release date for take-home units and boom – the return of the Winter Kingdom (as it is called in South Korea, where the movie is setting records without all the weather-related promotion.)

 My theory is that Walt met with Nikola Telsa at the New Yorker hotel in 1943. Walt agreed to back a number of Tesla’s projects, knowing that a lot of them were going to be perfect for his grand amusement park plans. Tesla dies soon after. Nearly all of his personal notes were nowhere to be found. Of course, no one thought to look in Hollywood. (A great sequel to Savings Mr. Banks would be Nearly Saving Nikola.)

 Disney used Tesla’s weather machine sparingly – just a nudge here and there to help make the worthless swampland he bought in Florida habitable. His successors saw things differently in late 2013, leading us to the Frozen winter of ‘13-14.

 I’m asking Disney to turn the damn thing off if I pre-order the combo set. I’d like to let it go, let it go, but the cold does bother me anyway.

Under Siege

I have been losing ground in the house for several years. The toys have been spreading from the family room out like a plastic Sahara, advancing its primary colors into the kitchen, living room and, gasp, master bedroom. I’ve long faulted myself for lack of diligence. I had a one-toy rule for a long time. I’m still wondering what happen to it. Like my good flashlight or the key to the side door, I feel it here, around me, but of no use. And so the toys perpetuate their campaign, but I no longer blame only myself.

Yesterday, my eight-year-old Max built a Lego ambassador and sent him to the Skylanders. I overheard the meeting. They vowed an alliance, whereby they would work together to overthrow the house and subjugate (my word) the humans. Our time had passed. We could still pay for the food, heat and water; we could no longer rule.

I’m not really afraid of Lego and the Skylanders. Sure, they freakin’ sting when you step on them, but I can take ‘em. They know this, though. The Legos assembled another ambassador and sent him upstairs, to the girl’s room.

The Skylanders and Lego want to enlist the American Girls into their cause. (Nina, the girl of said room, thought this was hilarious.) There’s nine of those charming witches. They are indestructible, in that they’re too pretty and too valuable to injure.

The vacation week has just begun.

If this pact holds all is lost.

If this pact holds all is lost.

Body Wash Swinger

Somebody left his body wash in the shower at my gym. Mountain Stream. The body wash, not the gym. And . . . I am not, by nature, cheap. Yes, I’ve been using the same body wash for six years because my sister-in-law gave me a box of samples – but that just proves my point. I do not ration the body wash I brought into the shower. I have literally given the stuff away on occasion – homeless shelter, care packages for our troops, that kind of thing.

I am not particularly adventurous, either. I would take watching a show about the Amazon delta to visiting it any day. I’ve been in same house for 10 years, same job for 21, same wife forever.

Yet, there I was squirting the foreign blue goo into my palm. Couldn’t help myself. I’d never take a sip of someone else’s drink, left on the bar, but I had no qualms about slathering someone else’s soap. I didn’t need the soap, I just wanted to try something new.

And the scent. Owe. Like a mountain stream. Loved it. The Moroccan Spice samples I usually use have long lost their volatiles. It’s like washing with paste. This stuff opened my world.

I get out of the shower, dry off, and this guy comes over and reaches past me, into the stall. He takes his body wash, looks at me for a second and I swear his nostrils flared. I think he smelled the Mountain Spring on me and didn’t know what to do. He’s thinking, is this guy really a soap thief? To which I wanted to answer, no. I just like to mix up a little once in a while. You know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Instead, I said nothing. Another guy at he gym who thinks I’m odd. Ha. Two more and I get a free water bottle.

Like Riding a Skate

I treat clichés like potholes – trying very hard, sometimes too hard – to avoid them.  Still, many little phrases have become trite because they have value.  When people say “It’s like riding a bike” you know what they mean.  It will come back to you.  What gets less attention are the converse statements.  The things people don’t say.  There is no idiom: “it’s like ice skating” Because skating ain’t like riding a bike. 

This past weekend I put on skates for the first time in 28 years.  I can’t speak for everyone – I’d like to but I can’t – so let’s just say for me this skill seems to have run off with all the French I ever knew.  I had no strong skating desire bubbling inside for 28 years.  I wanted to assist my seven-year-old who’s just learning.  Which left us both crashing to the ice and the boy saying, “You’re not much help.”  Cold, man.  And I was already pretty chilled.

Now I have a nice shiner and a bunch of other clichés to remember.  Smooth as ice.  The bigger they are, the harder they fall.  You should see the other guy.  (Actually, he’s fine.  He had a helmet.)  An once of prevention is worth a pound of “Hey, what happened to your face?"