Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit




Blurb:

Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago—and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with P.O. box addresses in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for the benefit of a project that didn’t exist as far as the public knew. Though they were strangers, they joined together—adapting to a landscape as fierce as it was absorbing, full of the banalities of everyday life and the drama of scientific discovery.

And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.

Review:

The Wives of Los Alamos is told in first-person plural.  It made me wonder whether one of the women who actually lived there may have dictated her memoirs to Ms. Nesbit.  As a Navy Veteran and volunteer at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, I meet World War II veterans every day.  They’re quite elderly now, in their late eighties, early nineties, and even a few centenarians—but many of them are still quite lucid and able to recall their experiences from those days.  So it’s just possible Ms. Nesbit spoke with someone who was there.

The blurb says much of it.  They came from everywhere.  Some of the families had time to say goodbye to loved ones back home; some didn’t.  Most came from academia.  Very few were prepared for the hardship, the secrecy, the discipline or the red-tape of the military.  “Why can’t we name the new puppy Plutonium?  You’re a chemist and it’s on the Table of Elements.  It’s cute.”  “What do you mean we can’t say that word?”  “I’m Mrs. Fermi.  Why do I have to tell people my name is Mrs. Farmer?”  “What do you mean the General is in charge?  I thought the Director was in charge.”  “You said we’d have a house.  This is an army cot in the community room in a lodge.  They say our house won’t be ready for a week.”  “Why can’t we have a bath tub?”

Eventually the Army Corps of Engineers built the little houses.  The ladies got used to showers with rationed water instead of baths.  They learned which words they could and could not use and what they could name their pets—Spot or Fluffy, not Uranium or Plutonium.  They got used to the thin walls and hearing their neighbors’ beds squeak at night and nine months later they helped each other get to the hospital when their husbands were stuck at The Project.

The latter reminded me of Navy housing in Hawaii. We lived in a four-unit townhouse.  ;-D  Debbie’s hubby was at sea when she was due, so we planned that she would knock on Chris’s wall and Chris would knock on mine.  Chris would drive Debbie to the hospital and I would babysit for Chris.  Her hubby was also at sea.  We didn’t bother with phones in the middle of the night on baby-watch.  We all kept our windows open and a phone ringing at two a.m. would wake everyone in a three-block radius.  But, I digress.

They learned to ride horses and went on picnics in the desert.  The endured the heat, the dust, the mud, and then gloried in the beauty when the desert bloomed.  The Wives of Los Alamos is a warm, witty, intimate look at life at Los Alamos and the women who supported the men who changed the world during The Big One.  It will be released in February.  I highly recommend reserving a copy now.

Length:  240 Pages
Price:
Hardcover:  $17.16
Paperback:  $15.90
Digital:  $9.99

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Dioscuri by Chrystalla Thoma

Blurb:

When you are Zeus’ immortal son, you know you can get away with mostly anything. Bringing back the dead is not one of those things. Yet this is what Polydeukes does when his mortal twin, Kastor, dies. According to the dark deal he strikes with one of the gods, the brothers must alternate days in the land of the living, and Kastor cannot be told, or the deal is off. On top of that, If Hades was to find out, all hell would break loose. Literally.

But Kastor begins to put two and two together, and keeping the secret becomes difficult for Polydeukes. Will Kastor break his brother’s deal and save Polydeukes from an eternity of punishment in Tartarus, or will Polydeukes find a way to save them both?

Review:

It’s modern-day Athens, digging the foundation of a skyscraper opened the doorway between Olympus and the human world and the gods and mythical creatures mingle with people.  Tourists flock to the area to catch photos of creatures of which they’ve only read.  Which part of the Hydra will kill you do they not get?  Polydeukes and Kastor, twin sons of Zeus are members of the Resistance army sworn to protect the silly humans.  Pol is immortal, but Kast is mortal and dies in one of the skirmishes.  Pol makes a deal with a lesser guardian of Hades—he’ll spend alternating days there so Kast can live, at least part time.  But Kast can’t know what’s happening.  Of course, Kast starts to figure it out.

Dioscuri is a young-adult novel, but is a fun read even for someone like me who is over the proverbial hill.  At fifty-nine pages, it moves quickly, but the characters are well-drawn and the situations get rather humorous as Kastor tries to fill in the blanks when people refer to things Pol did on the days Kast was dead—especially when he inadvertently stands up a girl he likes.  It’s even worse when she runs into Pol and he keeps the date.  Because of course, the boys’ personalities are very different.  Kast is serious and this was a date with the daughter of the owner of his favorite bookstore.  Pol is fun-loving with no interest in reading.  They even smell different—something neither of them ever thought about, but girls notice those things.

This book would be a great way to introduce your kids or grandkids to Greek mythology, or to refresh your own knowledge of the Gemini twins.

Length:  59 Pages
Price:  $3.50

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Electric Storm by Stacey Brutger


Blurb:



Everything changed when Raven, a conduit, accidentally walks in on a slave auction. She only wants a night out with her friends before her next case as a paranormal liaison with the police. Instead, she ends up in possession of a shifter and his guardian. When your touch can kill, living with two touchy-feely shifters is a disaster waiting to happen.



To make matters worse, a vicious killer is on the loose. As mutilated bodies turn up, she can't help fear that her new acquisitions are keeping secrets from her. The strain of keeping everyone alive, not to mention catching the killer, pushes her tenuous control of her gift and her emotions to their limits. If they hope to survive, they must work together as a pack or risk becoming hunted themselves.



A Raven Investigations Novel : Book 1



Review:



I received this book in return for an honest review.  Unfortunately, that's what I gave to it.
 
The blurb I read for Electric Storm was shorter and did not include the obvious errors this one does.  The first sentence should read:  "Everything changES when Raven,...walks in..." or "Everything changed when Raven,...walkED..."



Blurbs should always be written entirely in present tense, but even more importantly, one should never change tenses in the middle of a sentence.  And there should not be a space between the word "Novel" and the colon, either.  This book is riddled with grammatical errors such as this.  The author thanks her editor, but I have to wonder if her editor ever took third grade English.  One reason I prefer working with a publisher is that my books go through two editors--one for content and one for spelling and grammar.



Otherwise, the plot is engaging and the characters are well-drawn.  Maybe Ms. Brutger's editor was strictly a content person.  Electric Storm is told entirely in the point-of-view of Raven, so there's no pesky head-hopping from one POV to another.  There's plenty of action without too many "info dumps"--long narrative passages that slow the action without furthering the plot.  I would have liked to have learned more about the labs that created Raven's condition.  A flashback would have been nice, but Ms. Brutger's allusions to them gave us a pretty good idea of the horrors there.  Finally, the consistency's good.  She doesn't have a cast on her right leg in one scene and on the left in another (a famous anomaly from Hitchcock's Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart).



Finally, while Electric Storm wraps up the case upon which Raven is working, it leaves many questions unanswered about her personal life, and ends on a cliff-hanger.  Admittedly, it is the first book in a series, but it does not stand alone.  A good series is written in a way that is compelling enough that you want to buy the next book, but neatly enough that each book stands on its own so you don't HAVE to buy the next book.  Each book should have its own beginning, middle and end.  It feels manipulative to end one book with the beginning of the next.  I don't want to have to suffer through another travesty of bad grammar to discover who the people were who knocked at Raven's door at the end of Electric Storm.  They belong in the first chapter of Electric Moon.  You can always include the first chapter of Book Two at the end of Book One.  That gives the reader a choice whether or not to read the teaser that continues the series.



If you failed third grade English and phrases like "becoming hunted" instead of "being hunted" or "had gave" instead of "had given" don't bother you, this book should entertain you.  If grammar matters to you, then give it a wide berth.  You'll be too distracted mentally doing the job Ms. Brutger's line or copy editor should have done to enjoy the story.



The Chicago Manual of Style is the preferred grammar reference for most editors.  I suggest all authors who plan to publish independently purchase a copy and study it, or hire two editors--one for content, and a copy or line editor who owns The CMoS.  Write your first draft and let it sit for at least a month.  Then go over it for content--head-hops, info dumps, and consistency.  Let it sit another month while you study The CMoS and then go over it backward and look for grammar errors.  After you've done that, send it to a good editor who also owns The CMoS, because you'll never catch everything on your own.



Length:  342 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $11.99

Digital:  $3.99



Thanks for visiting.  RIW