Ilona Andrews’ Builds Kate Daniels’ SeriesTo Greatest Strength in Magic Strikes

The husband-wife writing team of Gordon and Ilona Andrews build fresh strength into their Kate Daniels’ urban fantasy series with the third entry, Magic Strikes. I devoured it, right after finishing Magic Burns.

Kate Daniels is a stone killer of ghastly supernatural beings in a world where magic and technology exist as erratically alternating realities that wash across the Atlanta landscape. The origins of Kate’s considerable magical resources – and magical sword called the Slayer – are cloaked in mystery in Magic Bites and Magic Burns. They become clear in the third novel in a back story as exotic and compelling as any of the thousand-and-one tales of Arabian nights. Andrews so deftly hides this back story that the reader is hardly aware of this missing element in the first two action-packed tales. We are used to stories commencing in media res (in the middle of things), and do not require every last detail about a hero’s biography. Does anyone care whether Sam Spade grew up in Iowa or California? Probably not. But Kate's back story matters. A lot.

Another subplot that keeps the stories steaming along is the mutual attraction between Kate and the lord of the shape shifters, the were-lion king Curran. His Beastliness, as the smart-mouth Kate calls him, has been keeping closer tabs on her than she’s known until this third novel.

“'His Majesty needs a can-I girl . . . and I’m not it,'” Kate tells a friend and a were-hyena at lunch. Asked to explain, Kate “leaned back. ‘Can I fetch you your food, Your Majesty? Can I tell you how strong and mighty you are, Your Majesty? Can I pick out your fleas, Your Majesty? Can I kiss your ass, Your Majesty? Can I . . .’”

At this point, Kate realizes the others have gone eerily silent. “'Technically, it should be may I’” Curran says without missing a beat from behind her. Like all cats, he has the gift of silent feet, even in human form.

This is a couple in the tradition of Hollywood’s fast-talking babes and smart-mouthed tough guys – a Nick and Nora Charles for a world where myth, murder, and mayhem meld in a seamless, intelligent blend. Long may they reign. In the first two books, they have slaughtered legions of the undead and vanquished an evil god trying to incarnate and destroy humankind. No wonder this busy pair do not have time for romance.

It’s taken three books for readers’ to get a figurative handle on Kate Daniels and for Curran to move in to get a literal handle on this killer chick with blood that can freeze in a cannibal villain’s veins, creating needles that rip him from the inside-out.

The denouement of Magic Strikes is a richly imaginative whorl of demons and monsters. Each new phantasmagorical creature is pulled from the far reaches of creativity that awe and delight me. How do the Andrews think of this stuff? The long story arc of the three novels, including the slow character development of Kate, astonishing revelations about the secondary character Shaiman, and the simmering romance, cohere gracefully. The third book was well worth the wait, and I am eager for four promised additions to this series.

Tea Makes the World Seem BetterEven When It's Not

Tea is a restorative drink, with as many shades of subtle flavor as wine. HBO has serialized The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency (books by Alexander McCall Smith). The number one lady detective, Precious Ramotswe (played by Jill Scott), enjoys a cup of tea to handle every situation. It is wise and altogether civilized.

I decided against reading the first book in the series a long time ago, but I may have to give it a second chance.

I have had only part-time work for a year now. This situation has called for a lot of tea drinking, as does having a job, working, relaxing, thinking, writing, and reading.

I’ve given up, for the most part, items such as cookies, breakfast Danish, chocolate, and steak. I’ve had to live on rice and beans in the past, and I can do it again. Rice and vegetables are healthy. I’m purchasing a cheaper brand of ice cream, too. And I’m wondering if I can afford to take advantage of the economic stimulus package tax credit to buy a new central air conditioning/heating system. This one has been limping along since I bought the place four years ago, and I’m not sure that even a shot of Freon will get the old cow up and going again.

I have not yet given up drinking tea. I laid in some English Breakfast tea, from England yet, at $2 a box from Big Lots, compared with $3.69 at the supermarket. It’s not always available, so I may go back next week for more. I feel a bit better when I open the pantry and see it stocked with something I love.

For that matter, I love opening the pantry, because it represents a really good buy and timely find. I was longingly perusing online stores for a free-standing pantry that would open with narrow shelves on the doors and inside. The cheapest one was $200 plus shipping, and it was a bit rustic for my style. Then I found one exactly the same color as my kitchen cabinets in a Goodwill Store for $40. Such a deal.

Tea and the occasional bargain are beacons of light in hard times. But I wish times were not so hard. I will be 61 on Monday, and I do not much feel like celebrating.

On a completely different topic, I am looking for feedback on my page about Chinese Clothes at FashionAfter50.com. I’ve also changed the template design for the whole site. I will be rewriting and revising many existing pages over the next month or two.

Cash-for-Clunkers: Another Tax-and-Spend Fiasco

A bill known as Cash-for-Clunkers is slipping in under the radar of most citizens, but it’s another government giveaway that will cost taxpayers. On the surface it sounds great: $3K to turn in your high-emission vehicle and buy a more fuel-efficient car.

I’ve been researching this bill for an interested organization, but I only write about what interests me on my personal blog. I'm all for fuel-efficient cars, but I do not want to pay for someone else's new Lexus hybrid while all I can afford is what I've got.

Here are some of the most important reasons why taxpayers are suckers – again – if we let Congress spend our money on this.

• The cost of producing each fuel-efficient vehicle offsets the lower-emissions that will be produced. There is no environmental benefit.

• The emissions standards are not high enough for the trade-ins.

• Fuel savings are not great enough to compensate for the new car payment over time.

• The reimbursement is so low that many people are better off selling their older vehicles privately.

• Destroying older vehicles drives up used-car and parts prices. Hobbyists who restore classic cars are very concerned and are among those who do not support this bill.

• Now that gas prices are lower, Americans are returning to their love for bigger cars. A cash or tax incentive is not going to change Americans’ love-affair with their cars.

• American car manufacturers are not in a position to benefit from a spike in sales; their lower-emission vehicles are not yet available in great numbers.

• The people who will benefit are those who already have enough money to trade in their older cars for a new one. Of course, this will be financed by ordinary people who are struggling to stay afloat.

One drawback I have not found many considering is what we are going to do with the toxic batteries from hybrid and electric cars. This makes sense because the bill does not require purchase of a hybrid car; most purchases will be fuel-efficient internal combustion engines.

Batteries are another cost of hybrid car ownership that often is not considered against the price of owning a hybrid or electric car; it run to a few thousand dollars to replace the battery/ies.

In summary, Cash-for-Clunkers not an idea whose time has come; it’s an idea that taxpayers do not need to finance.

If you want sources, I’ve got dozens of them.

McCullough's Hero with Chaos in HisEyes Disappoints in CodeSpell

CodeSpell is the third entry in Kelley McCullough’s series about Ravirn/Raven, a 23-year-old hacker descended from the gods and goddesses of the Greek Pantheon. The first book, WebMage, is a unique blend of urban fantasy and cyberpunk fiction, seasoned with Greek myth. The series starts with Ravirn, a mortal descendent of the deities with superhuman powers, and an implausible plot about a magical mweb through which the immortals communicate.

By the second novel, Cybermancy, Ravirn has been banished from the House of the Fates, handmaidens to Necessity. Necessity has become the not-so-artificial computer intelligence that runs the universe. The plot is about how Persephone codes a virus into Necessity, The virus secures Persephone’s permanent release from Hades, where she has been unhappily forced to dwell for the six cold months of the year since time immemorial. The virus also knocks out vast portions of the m[agic]web.

The swirling stuff of Chaos appears in his eyes when Ravirn is transformed into the Raven. He is able to transform himself into a large version of that bird and to travel through chaos with greater mastery. He also is now a lord of his own royal house outside of space and time, rather than scion of the Fates.

CodeSpell picks up the story. Ravirn is tasked with rebooting Necessity, down for the count with the Persephone virus. During the time of the reboot, Ravirn and powers competing to get there first will be able to refashion the Universe, should he or they presume to do so.

A secondary plot is Ravirn’s romance with Cerise, another child of the royal Houses of Fate. A true child of order, Cerise is a crack programmer to Ravirn’s rebellious hacker. She is disturbed by the chaos in Ravirn’s eyes. She returns home to the Fates, to work on security programs in face of threats from the broken mweb. This leaves the field open for Tisiphone, one of the three Furies, who lusts for Ravirn.

Winged Tisiphone is naked with fire where strippers usually strategically place sequins. This is too much like an adolescent’s wet dream to be appealing. No doubt this is McCullough’s target readership, not an old babe like me.

CodeSpell is proof that there can be too much of a good thing. WebMage was unique, one of those unexpected finds that appear serendipitously on a library shelf. Cybermancy was a good effort to wrap up some loose ends at the end of book one. Ravirn’s transformation to a character of comic-book proportions and the increasing incredulous plot twists mean that I may not make it to the end of CodeSpell, Ravirn Book 3. I won’t be reading Mythos, which will be released in May.

Night Illusions and The Dawn of Reality

Things that look brilliant or scary at two in the morning often don’t survive in the light of day. Have you ever awoken with a cold sweat, worried about a loved one’s health or your own survival – physical, financial, or emotional? Have you ever had a plan that seemed inspired during those quiet, dead hours and became quite ordinary after the sun rose?

This weekend, I discovered that my little website, Fashion After 50, has quietly been earning a few pennies from Google Adsense over the past few months. Indeed, even this blog followed only by a few dear fellow blog-hers and friends, may have had some click-throughs.

That $7.12 seemed like a fortune. For three days, I visited my Adsense account obsessively. I watched the affiliate marketing earnings mushroom to over $8.50. Watching seven dollars turn to eight-and-a-half, nickel-by-nickel and dime-by-dime, makes watching ice form look downright exciting.

I’ve worked throughout the weekend to revise pages, practice code to wrap copy around ads, and experiment with layout. I’ve updated and added new articles. I worked until nearly 3 a.m., and I was on fire with hope that I could turn Fashion After 50 into a place visitors love for finding fashion for older women.

Then I looked at the Alexa rankings for Fashion After 50. Alexa is the Supreme Court of online website rankings, wrecking sought-after judgments about who is in the coveted top 100,000.

I know that a little bitty affiliate marketing website with less one hundred visitors was not in the top tier. I just wanted to take a peek anyway.

The average time spent at Fashion After 50 by a guest is a half-minute. Thirty seconds!

Some things look so much better when it’s dark outside – like a Christmas tree trimmed with lights and ornaments that glitter and shine. Others look worse, like a darkened alley hiding threat, violence, and decay. Day dawns. The Christmas tree is merely a dying pine that needs water. The alley is simply a bleak cement space that needs cleaning and care. Illusions, for better or for worse, melt away.

The Bleak Look of RecessionFort Lauderdale, Florida, 2009

This cement wasteland was a bustling new and used car dealership near the heart of Fort Lauderdale. Cars whisk past on busy Sunrise Boulevard, heading toward the upscale Galleria Mall, just a few blocks away. Strip malls and businesses line this six-lane highway, some starving more quickly than others. These photos depict a panorama. Below, I am looking directly east, toward the Galleria Mall and ocean.


This view also faces east. The vast showrooms, guarded now by chain-link fencing, are a bleak memorial to American's economic distress.


The photo below faces north, directly in front of where I was standing at one-time entrance to the facility.



Facing west, the cement graveyard of the auto industry stretches many blocks in both directions.


This pile of rubble was a decorative island for plantings, on the fancy cobblestone drive into the auto dealership.


It hurts the heart to see the decay, the far-stretching emptiness of an economic boneyard such as this.

Changing Rainbow of Light: ArtAt Main Library, Fort Lauderdale

A new art installation in downtown Fort Lauderdale features an ever-changing rainbow of irredescent light. A woman sitting bottom left shows how large it is. It is located outside the Main Library. These photos show the colors as they evolve through one cycle.







The panels suggest solar energy may be the power source. Unfortunately, I took many of the early photos through the railing.

Significance of Place in Urban FantasyAnd Burke's Robicheaux Novels

The lyrical pose of James Lee Burke is no less evocative when he writes about the West, where he has lived and taught for many years. Yet I found myself unable to complete Swan Peak, the first time I have not completed a Burke book. My fascination with New Orleans led me to his detective Dave Robicheaux mysteries. The stories he sets anywhere else do not have the same effect on me. How even can the title, Swan Peak, compare with the gleeful rhythms and visions conjured by titles such as

• The Tin Roof Blow Down
• Pegasus Descending
• A Morning for Flamingos
• Jolie Blon’s Bounce
• A Stained White Radiance or, my personal all-time favorite,
• In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.

The dream of New Orleans is so deeply rooted in my soul I cannot trace its sinuous hold. Did it start because I had studied French from first grade until I was 20, and New Orleans is the only French-speaking city in the United States? If so, why did I not fantasize about Quebec, practically next door to my upstate New York hometown?

Was it the novel, Dinner at Antoine’s, on the library shelf that hinted at a place in America as foreign as France? By the time I discovered Dr. John in his voodoo chant regalia and the Mardi Gras Indian bands, such as the Wild Tchoupitoulas that were briefly popular in the 1970s, my interest in New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA) was cemented.

The first time my marriage broke up, I threw just about all the clothing I owned in the backseat of a beat-up Beetle (what else? in that era), crunched some uppers and drove to New Orleans in 24 hours. My first sight of the antebellum mansions along the Gulf Coast – now swept away by hurricane Katrina – is so strong that I have dared not visit that ravaged area since my last drive there in November 2004.

No wonder I have been drawn to Charlaine Harris’ Southern vampire series, with its Louisiana locale. None of the urban fantasy writers I have lately been reading are stylists of Burke’s caliber. I would rather read, perhaps, any tale set in the NOLA environs than a lyrical story set in Montana. This set me thinking about the role of place in the urban fantasy genre in particular and in compelling writing in general.

Ilona Andrews’ heroine inhabits a parallel Atlanta, a city I know a little after six years at the University of Georgia in nearby Athens. Harry Dresden inhabits Chicago, a city I’ve visited twice for conventions, backdrop for the V.I. Warshawski mysteries and sometimes seen in films. Kate Morgan, Kim Harrison’s witch, lives in Cleveland. Any of these places could be named Anywhere, USA, for all that sense of place matters. They are cities, concrete wastelands that look gray even on a sunny day. Character and plot hold my attention in these stories, not sense of place.

How important is place for a well-told tale? In the hands of a master word slinger, place is another character permeating every action with its history. Could Casablanca happen anywhere else but in the exotic locate of wartime Morocco? No other city but New Orleans has a street or A Streetcar Named Desire, the pulsing sense of place that throbs throughout Tennessee Williams play. The seething undercurrents of race and sex of the old South collide with the weather to create an explosive brew in Williams’ The Long Hot Summer. Weather and place also catalyze the drama of the film Key Largo.

Joshua Meyerowitz wrote an important book of media analysis, No Sense of Place. He persuasively argued that television had dissolved social norms between on-stage and back-stage. We have the outworking of this theory in the current craze for reality TV and the plague of social networking, in which nothing is too personal to be made public.

Me, I embrace a sense of place. I love where I live, and I am clinging stubbornly to this toehold in the sun despite the harsh economic climate. I escape into worlds of urban fantasy in which demons are no less dangerous but contained with charms and incantations, circles of salt, blood rituals, and alliances with creates that never were. These are other worlds with a verisimilitude to my own but different enough that it is the world of fantastical beings and events that captures my attention, not details of the cityscape. Harris’s Louisiana alone stands out as distinct. I hope that James Lee Burke bring Robicheaux back to Iberia parish and all things Louisiana.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files:Inventive Urban Fantasy

Harry Dresden is a wizard, the only practicing wizard-private eye in Chicago. Of indeterminate age but most likely in his 30s, Dresden is a hero in the wise-cracking, tough-guy tradition of Sam Spade and the other film noir private eyes. Butcher packs each book with rollicking action, plot twists, and ensemble characters. Working with the Special Investigations team of the Chicago Police Department, Dresden is their consultant for the scary things that go bump in the night and that people prefer not to believe are real.

In the series opener, Storm Front, Dresden battles a black magician. Lieutenant Kerrin Murphy heads up the Special Investigations team. She is embattled not only by the black magic murderer but by police politics; there are those in high places who consider her work unnecessary.

The adversaries of Dresden and Murphy include giant scorpions, a demon, and a power-mad black practitioner who rips the hearts from victims while not even being present. Dresden triumphs, just barely, with potions, power objects, and occasional gunfire.

Fool Moon introduces a pack of werewolves who channel their magical powers for good. He and Murphy barely escape from the bad werewolves; it would spoil the suspense to say who’s who. Dresden also comes by an attractive love interest.

Most of the series, which stops numbering the novels after nine, is available at one library or another in my area. The vagaries of availability led me to move on to the fourth book, Summer Knight. Enough of the third book, Grave Peril, is filled in so that I can make sense of what went before without knowing so much I no longer want to read it. In short, Butcher does a good job of allowing each book to stand alone.

Charlaine Harris’s Southern vampire series remains my favorite in the urban fantasy genre. Sookie Stackhouse is a nice Southern gal, the vampires come preciously close to being human in their motivations and comport, and gore is minimized. All in all, this series is endearing.

Lori Handeland’s werewolf/nightcreatures series is heavy-handed on eroticism. She seems to be evolving in both character development and plot twists.

Kelly McCullough’s webmage series, with three books so far, is closest in tone to the Dresden files. Both feature magical heroes – one human, one nearly immortal. Both pack guns, are rebellious smart-mouths, chivalrous, clever, and honorable. One channels his magical energy through the computer web; the other blows out computers and most other forms of technology when near them.

Kate Daniels is a feminine counterpart to Harry Dresden. Magic Bites is the first entry in Ilona Andrews’s promising series. Daniels is another freelancer magic worker who polices evil mayhem at the boundary between technical reality and sorcery. Andrews’ vampires are much different than those in the world created by Harris. They are mostly mindless, blood-thirsty and evil; they are compared to cockroaches. Wizards can animate the vampires' bodies for their own, usually nefarious, purposes. There’s great potential in a romance developing between a were-lion, king of the shape shifters, and Kate. Magic Burns is the second Kate Daniels’ book.

In summary, the Dresden files are fast-paced, entertaining books in which Jim Butcher creates a magical world ruled by its own laws. Harry Dresden is an appealing and entertaining hero in the ever-growing pantheon of urban fantasy novels.

Free DIY Planner Templates Personalize Your Organizing

The new year invites all of us to tackle those things that we didn’t get to or complete in 2008 . . . or 2007 . . .

Have you noticed how expensive some planners are? Many of them have almost cult-followings for organizing procedures that may meet some, but not all, of your needs. It can be a lot of money to spend on an organizing schema that gets you about halfway right.

To the rescue is the DIY planning website with dozens – probably more than a hundred – planner downloads. Templates come in a variety of standard sizes, from 4 x 6 note-card to 8.5 x 11 binder.

Do you need a storyboard planner for that screenplay you’ve been meaning to write? Got it. (See the creativity template.)

How about a way to track medication side effects? Diabetes symptoms? Moods? Or a dive log? Got it. Got it. Got it. There’s even a planner for your persuasive messages, based on the research of Robert Cialdini. Go to the Templates Directory.

There are dozens of suggestions for how to organize daily, weekly, and monthly planning sheets. Project planners, to-do lists, and various ways to organize shopping lists are available.

There is even an article for how to organize a prototype planner. If you want something tailor-made for your planning needs, without spending the weekly grocery budget on a planner. We also get to exercise our creativity to personalize our planner covers, if so inclined.

The best way to access the templates is from the templates tab on the horizontal menu bar at the top of the website.

Please let me know what you think if you visit this site. If you download a lot of stuff and have enough money to share and to spare, it’s nice to throw a few bucks their way to maintain the website. This is easy with a donation button. (Disclosure: I am not connected with this website, do not receive any trades from it, and I do not know the web owners.)

Happy holidays!

Handeland's Rising Moon and Hidden MoonAre Top Entries in Nightcreatures Series

Lori Handeland hits her stride in the last three volumes of her eight-book Nighcreatures werewolf series. The plots of Rising Moon and Hidden Moon have surprising twists, and it’s pretty hard to fool this lifelong bookworm. I don’t want to be a spoiler, so let me give an overview of the novels in order.

One thread that unites the books is the recurring presence of a mysterious secret government agency, the Jager-Suchers or werewolf hunter-searchers. A minor character in one book may emerge as the protagonist in another. These books follow the pattern of romance novels, with distracting sex scenes that contribute little to character development or plot. Handeland, nonetheless, creates an interesting multi-faceted world in these novels.

The series opens with Blue Moon and weird goings-on at a Wisconsin summer resort. Police officer Jesse McQuade and a native American professor Will Cadotte unravel the mystery. Edward Mandanauer, driving force behind the Jager-Suchers, arrives early, armed to the teeth with silver bullets in bandoliers slung across his bony chest. Jesse gets her guy; the werewolves get dead.

Leigh Tyler, a talented werewolf slayer, is the protagonist of Hunter’s Moon. The action moves to Wisconsin. Helped by Jesse, Will, and Mandenauer, Leigh becomes involved with the first good werewolf we meet in the series. Readers are introduced to Dr. Elise Hanover whose own werewolf adventure and love story is the subject of Dark Moon, third book in the series. Mandanauer’s own dark past is revealed in that tale.

Crescent Moon strikes off in a new direction. Diane Malone, a cryptozoologist, is hired to investigate suspicious disappearances in a bayou outside of New Orleans. Her sleuthing uncovers the family curse of the Ruelles and leads her into the arms of another rugged hero in the series, Ruelle scion Adam. Edward Mandanauer and Dr. Elise Hanover emerge like deus ex machina toward the end of the story.

Midnight Moon takes a minor character in Crescent Moon, voodoo priestess Cassandra, to Haiti. The nightcreatures theme broadens to include zombies and other shapeshifters besides werewolves. Devon Murphy, the love interest, is Indiana Jones with Captain Jack Sparrow beads and feathers in his hair. The Jager-Suchers and Edward Mandanauer are but a shadowy group pulling the strings off-stage.

Things really get interesting in Rising Moon, one of my favorites in the series. The action returns to the Big Easy. Private eye Anne Lockheart comes to New Orleans looking for her missing sister, meets mysterious blind jazz musician John Rodolfo, and the story goes from there. Cassandra and Devon, Diane and Adam, Mandanauer and Elise are on hand for the surprising denouement. The story also is appealing because the theme of redemption emerges with strength for the first time since weakly broached in Hunter’s Moon.

Hidden Moon takes readers to Georgia. Claire Kennedy, small-town mayor, is confronted with inexplicable happenings when a band of gypsies arrive. An element of sorcery emerges in the figure of love interest Malachi Cartwright. The theme of redemption is linked with that of love in a poignant climax (in more ways than one). Mandanauer and Elise Hanover make cameo appearances.

Finally, Thunder Moon returns to Lake Bluff, Georgia, and the theme of Native American mysticism that plays a key role in the plots of Blue Moon (book one) and Hunter’s Moon (three). Grace McDaniel, Lake Bluff sheriff, full-blooded Cherokee, and childhood friend of mayor Claire Kennedy, had a large supporting role in Hidden Moon. Now, her romance with Ian Walker, physician, Native American healer and warrior, continues to move the series away from werewolves into other permutations of shapeshifting and sorcery. Walker is revealed as a member of a Native-American society of monster hunters. The Jager-Suchers play little part and go underground, according to an epilogue.

It’s unclear whether Handeland will continue the series. The preview chapter of Any Given Doomsday does not suggest continuance of the moon-themed series. Yet Handeland leaves the door open.

To purchase all eight novels, please see my listing on ebay through Dec. 19.

WebMage by Kelly McCulloughIs Unique SciFi-Fantasy Romp

Kelly McCullough’s first novel, WebMage, cooks up a compelling dish of science fiction and fantasy, with a dash of romance. The recipe might look something like this:

Break off parts of William Gibson’s Neuromancer series, especially episodes about jacking into cyberspace and solving code mysteries. Crumble coarsely. Set aside.

Create a thick stew of spells, goblins, dragons, faeries, trolls, castles and warriors. I like the Harry Potter series for this purpose. Beat in some Greek mythos from Edith Hamilton and Bullfinch. Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Season with wisecracks from Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Bake for several hours.

The story posits web links where the world of the Greek Immortals overlaps that of geek mortals. For those of us who grew up when making a copy meant pounding out a document in carbon triplicate on an upright typewriter, praying that we’d make no typographical keystroke mistakes that could not be fixed with WhiteOut, the world that computers bring to our fingertips makes coding pretty darn close to magical spell casting anyway. So it’s a short leap to blend cyberspace with the Olympian space occupied by the gods and goddesses of ancient mythology. This is especially true if one had to take two semesters in ancient culture, as did I.

The plot concerns a fight for free will for humans and their webgoblin companions, as Eris, goddess of discord, battles the Fates, guardians of order, one of whom happens to be our hero’s great-great into ancient time grandmother. Our hero, Ravirn, experiences a value and identity transformation in the endlessly changing cosmos of chaos-verses-order. This may sound like a task for a brooding, romantic hero. Ravirn is more like a film noir detective, a man (figuratively speaking, for he is not human) of action, ready for anything, a quip on his lips while facing down death.

His is not the film noir world in which right and wrong are hard to distinguish admidst moody shades of gray. Rather, our web sorcerer’s reality is the brightly colored light dance of our times, in which colors and images flicker before his eyes in a dizzying and sometimes confusing array of cross-cutting. Truth, right and wrong, are still hard to discern as impregnable values.

WebMage popped off the library shelves as I was looking for a entirely different book by another author -- a happy happenstance. As it turned out, the other book was not to my taste, and I am returning it mostly unread. Not all fantasy worlds are created equal, and Cheyennne McCray’s witchy series includes S&M and too much predictable sex for my taste. If you have a taste for cyberpunk fiction or sword-and-myth fantasy, WebMage may be for you.

Pieces of South Florida Sky

November 29, 2008
Unenhanced

Florida, My Florida: Home Again & It Feels Great

South Florida makes me smile. Blue sky, warm sun on my skin. Sunglasses out of its case for the first time since I left Fort Lauderdale five days ago. Four days in the Northeast is about all I can stand.

There’s something to be said, I am sure, for a brisk walk in the crisp air, the feathery spikes of frost on a window pane, a blanket of white snow carpeting the ground, trimming the trees, and piling high on power lines. I am not the one to say it. I remember standing swaddled in a nylon snowsuit, snowbanks towering over me. I thought God had put me with the wrong family; surely I belonged with one in Florida. I moved South of the Mason-Dixon line as soon as I was old enough to do so. Baltimore was not warm enough, so eventually I moved to South Florida with little more than a Doberman and a dream of being able to stay. It has not always been easy.

My plane left Albany on a morning as gray as all the others of my Thanksgiving stay. Approaching Fort Lauderdale, the noonday sun reflects off canals and catchment lakes, turning them into sheets of hammered gold. Swaths of green are cut by black ribbons of roads as the plane descends. Grand homes on large lots yield to those closely huddled around cul de sacs.

In the first flush of leaving the terminal, all my gripes, fears, worries and concerns vanish in a rush of agape for this place. I love the feel of vitamin D soaking into my skin. The air kisses my face. I am home.

Text Messaging: Connection or Illusion?

I don't get it: text messaging, I mean.

I have officially reached old fogey status with my complete lack of comprehension for this convenience. Using my thumbs to communicate with people in hieroglyphic abbreviations is not so much not-doable as not appealing.

It may be useful in some situations, but I do not fall into any of the categories that suggest themselves to me. For example:

• A working mother who cannot take time out to talk on the telephone every two minutes with children but who wants to keep tabs on them and respond to their needs.

• An emergency medical technician taking a class but who must remain on call and similar work situations.
  

• A husband at work waiting for a call to take his pregnant wife to the hospital and other medical situations.

• A stock day trader (if there are any left in this sorry market) who must see the prices scrolling past moment by moment.

• Barack Obama, isolated behind intense security and constantly on the move in a campaign bus, keeping in touch with family and friends.

I grew up in an era when Be Here Now was the philosophy. My goal is to be deeply rooted in the moment. I want my body-mind-soul to be aware of their space-time connections. I do not want to splice off parts of my consciousness to text message. I'm not even all that fond of the telephone.

Moreover, I suspect that the messages I am most likely to receive are those that I least want. These would include late-night questions from students when I am too tired to care about their success in my class and scary announcements about elder relatives’ well-being that would jolt me awake in terror.

Text messaging has advantages: it less expensive than cell phone time, less obtrusive in many situations, can be used to answer a question quickly without the small talk or distractions of a conversation, and may consume less time than talking. My millennial students say that text messaging makes them feel connected to the world at all times. My philosophy is that connectedness starts within, not without. Test messaging is an illusion of connectedness, not the real thing.

Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire BooksBeat Handeland's Werewolf Nightcreatures

Lori Handeland has my respect as author; anyone who can make a living turning out novel after novel deserves accolades. This isn’t about trashing a penwoman. Rather, it’s an investigation into why I find one fictional world compelling and the other boring.

I am so enthralled by the world Harris creates in her Sookie Stackhouse novels (source of the HBO Trueblood series) that I became concerned about polishing off the eight novels too quickly. I can tear through a typical airport novel in a day. Handeland’s werewolf series earned many complimentary reviews on amazon.com. I purchased the Nightcreature novels as a set on ebay.

I have finished the first four novels in each series. Here’s five reasons why I love the world Harris has created.

Harris creates interesting, appealing multi-dimensional characters.

Heroine Sookie Stackhouse is so unique that 150-year-old vampire Bill Compton asks her several times, “What are you?” Sookie is a small-town waitress, psychic, and brave, but she has off-days like anyone else. I may be 35 years older than Sookie, but I can relate to her concerns, such as how to afford gravel for the driveway or a new coat to replace one splattered with the brains of a shapeshifter who tried to kill her.

The vampires are a mix of evil and good, like humans. I can move almost seamlessly from my world into the one Harris has creates for Sookie and her herd. Each Handeland heroine, on the other hand, has two interests: killing werewolves and having great sex with the guy in her life. Handeland also created a writing conundrum for herself by writing in the voice of a new heroine in each book. Handeland gets around the similarity in voice of the first two protagonists by playing it up. They become best friends. The third book was so by-the-numbers that I finished it in three hours while standing in line to vote, skipping over anything that made me yawn.

The Southern vampire stories are lightened with humor.

Sookie Stackhouse is a kind-hearted misfit. She tends to think charitably of those around her, living, dead, or supernatural. Her humor is more often self-deprecating than unkind to others. Handeland’s gals are tough, alienated, and often bitter. The humor often denigrates others and, most of the time, I don’t find what I am told are humorous asides particularly funny.

The Southern vampire plots are full of surprises.

In the course of four novels, Sookie has (not necessarily in this order) single-handedly foiled vampire drainers, exposed a vampire embezzler, broken up an evangelical group that burns vampires, traveled to Mississippi with a werewolf, hidden a vampire sheriff who has lost his memory from evil witches, participated in several bloodbaths, rescued her lover vampire Bill from being tortured, and become a valued friend of a pack of werewolves and a family of shapeshifter panthers.

Handeland’s heroines have killed werewolves and had sex. Once a Handeland heroine has a good lay, she is hooked forever on the guy. It does not matter if he’s a werewolf or the devil himself, she is in l-o-v-e.

Sookie Stackhouse is not ruled by sexual desire.

It’s tempting to dismiss the sexual obsession of Handeland’s heroines as the follies and hormones of youth. Sookie is young, too, and she is not ruled by her glands. Sookie rescues vampire Bill from his former lover, but she does not return to his arms. Sookie has something going on above the waist.

Sookie’s unexpected affair with vampire Eric, when he loses his memory and becomes uncharacteristically sweet, was inspired. Sookie quickly reject continuing the liaison when Eric returns to being his arrogant, confident, demanding self.

Handeland novels have the typical romance-novel plot: hunky hero, an obstacle that makes the heroine doubt him but not so much that she does not continue to fall into bed with him every time she's near him.

Harris treats sex scenes with a light touch.

Romance novels that started out with purple prose in the 70s have evolved to soft-core pornography. Aching loins. Swollen throbbing manhood. Got it. I don’t need five or six pages of details, thanks anyway Lori. I prefer my porn hard core. By the time I got to Crescent Moon, fourth Nightcreatures novel, the characters and sex was so predictable that I skipped the center, turned to the denouement, and wrapped up the novel in under an hour.

In summary, my unread Charlaine Harris Southern vampire novels are tucked away, a special treat to be anticipated and savored. Appealing characters, original plots, a touch of humor and tasteful sex make this series a winning combination.

Voting Was Torture inFort Lauderdale, Florida

Voting was torture. It took three hours. The Florida day was dank and cool. I was close to tears by the time I reached the polling booths, from the pain in my hip and the arthritis in my neck and shoulders.

I finished the last three-quarters of a trashy werewolf novel and had time to knock off a few pages in an internet marketing book I am slowly reading.

A man started standing next to me as I read. He didn’t seem to have been there before. I whisperingly asked the older woman behind me if he’d always been there. She said no. As he inched in front of me, I softly said, “Sir, I was wondering where you came from. Because I’m right behind him (I gestured to a man with a baby in carriage), and she’s right behind me.”

“I was always here,” he said.

The elders in line started shaking their heads at this bald-faced lie. “No, you were back there,” several gestured. He didn’t fall back, but waited where he had been standing as we moved forward. I expect he’d try to find another unaware person – as he must have thought I was buried in my book – or a more timid soul than I who would not challenge him. My hip simply hurt too much after two hours in line to put up with a young buttinsky.

Just as we reached the door into the voting room – a cafeteria in this small development of 10 condominium apartment buildings that served three districts – a busload of handicapped elders came in. They were given chairs and ushered into line before us. I mentioned that I was in severe pain, even though I wasn’t handicapped. People even older than I who had been standing near me also started to grumble. the woman behind me insisted that she go to the check-in ahead of two people who were pushed in front of her. She was 70, at least.

No one wants to be unkind to the handicapped, but after two and a half hours on our feet, our own aches and pains were screaming for attention.

I will never again vote at a polling place. Never, never, never. Absentee ballots are inconvenient, because often they are due before I have all the information I need about the local propositions and local candidates. Nonetheless, when a 19^th century voting system is in place, absentee ballot is how I shall have to do it.

Amazon 4-for-3 sale & SavingsWith GEICO

I am not getting any kickbacks, payments, or freebies from these folks. This is strictly my frugal shopping at work.

Amazon.com has a four-for-three sale right now. Not all books and home products qualify. If you buy four of those that do, the cheapest one is free. Select SuperSaver Free Shipping, and it can really add up. I've just made my second purchase since the sale started. I'm collecting all of the Charlaine Harris/Sookie Stackhouse novels.

I also was pleasantly surprised to save about $800 on auto insurance by switching to GEICO from Hartford/AARP, without losing anything much in coverage. Hartford/AARP is supposed to give a price break to people over 50. At first, it did. But over the years, it has jumped by leaps and bounds. I've had a clean record for more than 10 years, knock on wood.

I like the Hartford approach of issuing a policy for 12 months, not six. I've hesitated to switch, because a teaser rate for the first six months can quickly jump when it comes time to renew. If that happens, I will feel ripped off, and I will leave GEICO so quickly, it will make a scampering ghekko look like a turtle poking along. In the meantime, I will have saved a bundle, so it was worth going through the paperwork. GEICO also made that easy with online and telephone help.

I had GEICO many years ago, and I had no trouble with them, so I hope it works out.

Dreamworlds of Literary Space Are Haven from Economic Bad News

Maybe it's the economy, but I am plumb wore out on posting any opinions about the news of day. More and more, I am making time to sneak into the dream worlds of literary space. Last night's outing kept me up until three in morning, which meant I guiltily skipped my tao yoga group.

My adventure was in the cyberpunk dreamworld of Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward. I was impressed with his second novel, Spares, a tauter and more cohesive cyberpunk novel that I read at least five years ago. I can see how the themes of Spares are improved variations of those in Only Forward.

I am hoarding the remaining Charlaine Harris/Sookie Stackhouse series books. Like an addict with a limited remaining supply, I am afraid that I will tear through them too quickly.

Another current diversion is Diana Vreeland's autobiography, D.V., published in 1984. I'll comment on that at Fashion After 50. I hope you'll visit there to read my most recent post about this fabulous button coat, a scanned copy that appear here without publisher's permission. This fiber art creation is by Mario Rivoli.

Water Mall, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

The best thing I do for myself all week is attend a tao yoga class on Sunday mornings. It is located in an unusual mall that attracts many alternative health businesses.

There are four buildings, arranged as if a square had been bisected in each direction. The buildings are built on two levels, one slightly higher than the other. The center X is formed of fountains and waterways that run the length of the buildings. Water flows from higher pools to lower ones, over the escarpments. Visitors cross the waterways with steps and bridges. In some places, the trees seem as carefully trimmed as stunted Japanese plants. Oh, I wish I could think of the word for that careful asymmetry. Here are the photos.