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For several years now, I’ve been reading about millennial offspring moving back in with their parents. Not to worry, won’t be us. Ah, but the chickens have come home to roost… My daughter and son-in-law are now living with us. They had resided in Los Angeles for five years, but it became clear (as it had for us when we lived there), that they couldn’t afford a house and they grew tired of their 900 square feet. Plus many of their closest friends are here in North Carolina. So they made the big trek back across the country- in one week – bringing their jobs with them since they can work from here. They had a lot of fun in LA – the weather, the endless sources of activities, things to see, and good restaurants more than make up for the cost of living. It did for us, too. But there came a time when roots needed to grow and a family started. And North Carolina isn’t exactly chopped liver. I’m still having a good time looking at houses for them, since they have a mortgage set up and don’t plan to live with us forever. What I’ve learned is that a lot of houses are dogs, as I mentioned in a previous post. Truth in advertising is not necessarily part of selling real estate. This past weekend, Cameron went to the beach with her three closest friends since high school. They named themselves the Red Hot Mamacitas beach back then; now they’re just the Citas.The last of them married a month ago, they are all now living in Chapel Hill, and they had their photos taken together in their wedding gowns on the beach. This is a special group of young women. So wSo far,  we’re doing just fine with the new arrangement – my daughter and I have a strong bond and her husband is an easy-going bloke. Would love comments from folks with their grown children living with them. How’s it going? 0 0

I’m in love with dragons so I just had to re-post this by Charles Yallowtiz. Stay tune for information on his new book!   Toothless We’ve all been there.  Minding our own business when we stumble onto a sign that there are dragons nearby.  If we’re lucky, the beast is already gone or simply passing through the area.  Yet there are times where they stick around.  So here’s what to look for to see if you need an exterminator. You haven’t seen the cat in days.  Sure, Princess Tangerine wanders off from time to time.  This feels different.  Maybe it’s because she hasn’t reacted to you running the can opener over a loudspeaker.  Could even be the that her food bowl is missing . . . along with the floor it was on. There’s a lot of smoke in and around the house.  You’ve called the fire department, but that hasn’t stopped the problem.  Then again, the truck has been outside for the last few days, so maybe it’s a really big fight where you can’t see it.  For now, just keep the ceiling fans on. Sure are a lot of earthquakes lately.  Nothing severe, but the house keeps shaking.  It would make more sense if you were on a fault line.  You’re not, but maybe it’s one that hasn’t been identified yet. Somebody keeps leaving gold coins and gems around the house and yard.  Not that you’re complaining.  Finders keepers and all that.  Still, it’s getting hard to explain to the bank and local jewelers.  Also, gold coins are not as accepted as gold cards. Random bursts of wind keep knocking trees over.  This tends to happen along with sudden darkness that lasts for a second or two.  You called the local weatherman who told you to use Facebook instead.  Even then, all he could say is that predicting weather is more of an art than a science.  You get the sense that he’s been drinking to forget something. A band of short, armored men with an array of beards keep showing up on your doorstep.  Sometimes they show up with a tall, old guy that spontaneously disappears for other business.  You think you saw a kid with them too, but it could have been a trick of the light.  Unlike the people with large saddles, these guys don’t seem to take ‘No’ for an answer. Uh, you see a dragon.  Seriously, they aren’t that good at hiding in suburbia. 0 0

I decided to read this book in preparation to review the second in this series, based on a terrific review by a fellow blogger. I was so taken with it, I decided to review this one as well. This book is a really wrenching description of the future of mankind in its third age, and as a result, I really don’t want to know how we got to a third age! The story opens lovingly, with the President of Hemera injecting his wife and children with a drug that will let them sleep away the next hundred years, to avoid the ravages of the imminent nuclear destruction of the planet. His hope is that when they awaken, he can lead in the rebuilding of the planet. One hundred years later, a distress signal from Hemera is received on its sister planet Erebus, notifying the corrupt government there that the President and his family are alive and expecting rescue. Lane is a bounty hunter, having been dishonorably discharged from Erebus’ army for a friendly fire incident, and he is chosen by Colonel Padon to be a member of what Dugan hopes will be a lost mission. Padon, a man who Lane loathes, was Lane’s immediate superior when he was in the Army, and he blackmails Lane to force him to join the mission. The operation is expected to be straightforward, because every indicator describes a planet as a dry shell of barren sand, all forms of life having been extinguished by the nuclear war. Intelligence reports weren’t intelligent, and the operation is anything but what was planned, and the person leading it was in on that secret. The team is composed of soldiers who mistrust and even hate each other, including a former lover of Lane’s, whose brother was killed in the friendly fire. Egos and over confidence are rampant, at least until they land, a landing which almost doesn’t succeed because of mechanical difficulties.  Another reviewer describes Hemera as a “yellow ball of misery,” and I couldn’t have said it better: desert dry sand for miles and no apparent life, at least until the ship is attacked by feral inhabitants. Think Mad Max. The author does an excellent job of painting the bleakness of the landscape and the rubble and ruin of the capitol city of Magna. Tension ramps up as the team makes its way to the origin of the signal, tracked and picked off by horrifying monsters, the product of ghastly genetic mutations. Lane faces the toughest battle of his life to survive the operation, with the additional danger of a team member sent with orders to kill him. This was a gritty and occasionally gruesome tale, with more graphic violence than in my usual reading choices. However, the author does such a good job that I bought into the characters and their emotions – loyalty, love, hatred and mind-numbing fear.  It’s a story told from multiple points of view, although Lane’s is the core. I was never confused and seeing through different eyes enriched my understanding of the world the author has created and of the various motives of the characters. This book is not for the faint of heart.  Think it’s appeal with be stronger to men and to those readers who have an affinity for dystopian worlds. Nevertheless, it’s a heart-stopping adventure and I will read the sequel soon. Four and a half stars About the author (from Amazon): Dylan J. Morgan was born in New Zealand and raised in the United Kingdom. He now works in Norway and writes during those rare quiet moments amid a hectic family life: after dark, with limited sustenance, and when his creative essence is plagued the most by tormented visions. A member of the Horror Writers Association, he has published 8 books, all available on Amazon. You can find him: @dylanjmorgan https://dylanjmorgan.wordpress.com/ https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3156560.Dylan_J_Morgan You can find The Dead Lands on Amazon and Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22591375-the-dead-lands?ac=1&from_search=true 0 0

I decided to dip my reading toe into some science fiction with this book, and I found it intriguing and entertaining. What would you do if you could live forever? That’s the premise of this book, and the results reinforce Newton’s third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s 2125, and thanks to prophylactic pill called Chulel, aging is a thing of the past. Fertility has declined, population growth is non-existent, and people live young, healthy lives for centuries. But if you live that long, can your brain possibly store all your memories? Not to fear, your memories are now under corporate control. Jenda Swain is a living the life of a valued cog in the Dallas offices of Your Journal, having worked there for 90 years. Everyone relies on YJ as a secure repository for their personal stories, photos, thoughts and feeling. She is content with her life and career until she meets an aged woman who claims to know her, but of whom Jenda has no memory. She wonders if she ever had. Jenda is about to take a required, every-seven-years sabbatical, and on the spur of the moment and with the vague recollection that she used to paint, decides to trade her reservations for a year in California for an artists’ colony in Mexico, where her mother had gone a few times. Her decision is fateful. There she meets handsome Luis-Martín Zenobia, an anthropologist by training but following a study of the traditional arts and crafts of the surviving native populations of Mexico, has become an artist of some note. They fall in love, and Jenda discovers Luis-Martín is a retrogressive, painting in real oils on archival canvasses and has dissident tendencies, untrusting of a corporation that stores memories.  He introduces her to some of his friends, who share his distrust, and triggers memories she can’t jibe with what she knows of herself from YJ.  This leads her to discover what truly happens after each person’s sabbatical and how YJ manipulates society. The answer to the question I asked is woven into the romance of these two – Jenda, who becomes aware that large parts of her life, as it exists in YJ, are missing, and discovers how the company is manipulating everyone’s lives – and Luis- Martín, who embraces enduring creation and has plans to disrupt YJ and essentially restart society. The book is full of futuristic surprises: a wrist-worn digilet, which is a computer with a colloidal drive; clothes that are designed to be thrown away after one wearing so no washing is required and fashion is always up to date; paintings that are three-dimensional facsimiles and recyclable; fabricated trees which produce new leave according to a timetable; pills for everything, including the enhancement of the sexual experience and the slightest feeling of anxiety or sadness.  However, the issues of the story line are familiar to all of us: social media, corporate politics, consumerism. The author has just taken these issues and extended them into the future. Did I like this book? Yes and no. Its premise is inherently interesting, it made me think, its various threads are woven together neatly, and it has an emotional ending. The problem was the fact I couldn’t connect with Jenda until about halfway the way through the book, when her struggle to find her lost memories and reclaim her past finally got to me. This may have been because there was a lot of telling and as a result, I felt more like a watcher than a participant in her life. Despite my differences with the writing style, the book kept me engaged, more so in the second half, and I intend to read the second volume in this series. About the author (from Amazon): Donna Dechen Birdwell is an anthropologist whose curiosity about what makes human beings tick propelled her to travel widely, listening to the stories of many different cultures and eventually coming up with a few of her own. High on the list of countries she knows and loves are Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, England, Ireland, Spain, Nepal, India, and Tibet. Her work is deeply influenced by the stories and imagery of these places. Donna is an artist, poet, and photographer as well as a novelist. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University and previously taught at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. She now writes, paints, and photographs in Austin. You can find Donna Birdwell at: https://www.facebook.com/wideworldhome/ @wideworldhome @donnadechen And you can find Way of the Serpent on Amazon at: 0 0

Here is the cover you voters selected. It was a very close vote!  I think the artist did a great job with all my suggestions, and thanks so much for your choice! Death by Pumpkin has gone to Create Space, the indie publisher I have used for the previous two books. After a few bumps and with the hope there are no more of them, I hope to have it up on Amazon and Kindle by early July. Get ready to find out what lies behind this cover, literally and figuratively! 0 0

As promised, but a little late, my cover reveal will be posted next week! I have been largely absent from the blogoverse this past week while I re-polished the polished polishing of my third book, but it is being sent off this weekend.  So I will be more visible soon. In the meantime, there will be some book reviews and I need to introduce you to new followers. So, see you soon — same bat place, same bat station. 0 0

May is here and I’ve been swimming outside since March, admittedly in some pretty cold water (60o and up). When it was too cold to do laps, I just netted detritus from the top and cleaned out our bottom-cleaning robot. As the water has warmed (it’s a glorious 70onow), life has returned to its waters. So far this month, I’ve removed three dead voles and a dead rat stuck in the robot (yuck factor there), several frogs, a juvenile snake, and the usual assortment of spiders.  I’ve also netted a goodly number of frog eggs. Our pool area when the weeping cherry is in bloom.       I am always accompanied to the pool area by my two faithful companions, Elijah Moon and Angel, in case you were wondering. Angel walks around on the pool deck, guarding it for me, while Elijah sprawls upside down on the warm pavement with his legs stretched out. Hedonist. Yesterday, while skimming off the pool, I put my hand into the water and was stung by a bee floating by. I pulled out the stinger, but today my index finger looks like a sausage. I’ve got to be a little more aware of what’s floating by, I guess. Today while doing laps, I came across two things that told me summer was coming: pink feathers from cardinals, who like to bathe in the water when it’s warm enough, and a water strider.     I have a space in my heart for these little fellows. In order to make money when I was an undergraduate, I took a job feeding water striders kept in a large tank in the basement of Clapp Laboratory at Mount Holyoke College. Three times a week, I’d head down into dark and damp to dump containers of fruit flies on the surface of the tank water. The Gerridae are a family of insects in the order Hemiptera which includes water striders, water bugs, pond skaters, water skippers, or jesus bugs. Gerrids have the unique ability to walk on water because they are anatomically built to transfer their weight to be able to run on top of the water’s surface. They are aquatic predators and feed on invertebrates, mainly spiders and insects that fall onto the water surface. So our outside pool is a gourmand’s dinner table for them – it has small flies, ants and spiders in abundance. Last year’s water strider grew to an enormous size before disappearing. Perhaps it was eaten by a large spider, since these also can walk on water for short distances. Every day is a chance for a new discovery while I’m swimming. Bring on summer. 0 0

It took me a while to get through Breadline, written by Alain Dizerens, mostly because it is so descriptively rich that it was like eating a double chocolate fudge cake with dark chocolate icing: you can only digest a little at a time. This is an autobiographical novel of a man trying to experience, and find his place in, the world – while trying to support himself. He is a self-proclaimed “adventurer of dreams” and his first adventure is in Vietnam during the war there. He experiences the conflict first hand, never expecting to see the next day’s dawn, until he decides he’s had enough and returns home. He wallows in the comfort of western civilization for a few weeks, before the feeling of well-being wears off. There follows a series of experiences that leave him discouraged: a distributor of laundry powder samples to housewives, never being able to fulfill his quota; an assembler of tiny components in a sewing machine factory; a hunting guide who’s never fired a gun in Cameroon; part-time custodian at a Picasso exhibit; a night watchman who’s afraid of the dark; a volunteer in a kibbutz after the Yom Kippur War, where he works in a brush factory while reading the Torah at night – all of these jobs are described with great wit and not a little humor. His descriptions of being a custodian at the Picasso exhibit resonated profoundly with me; as a tour guide I experienced many of the appalling and curious tourist behaviors he did, but was never as sanguine. I certainly couldn’t describe them with as much fun. His descriptive paragraphs are vivid, if composed of one long run-on sentence: “On miniature stuffed wicker stools in front of small bistros with a single, nanked light bulb and walls painted in absinthe green of Sahara blue, unshaven men in the black and white checkered keffiyeh drink coffee in tiny dirty glasses while others, wearing turbans and wrapped in old coasts, string their sup’ah absently to the sounds of lamenting Arabic music.” Home again in Europe, he takes a dream job (good pay, nights off, and the use of his creative skills) in a professional training center with several thousand, minority apprentice mechanics, masons, electricians, fitters, butchers, hairdressers and florists. There he teaches a bit of law, accounting, correspondence, French, civics and economics. More laughs, this time out loud. Unfortunately, he runs into the brotherhood of ‘sworn-in methodologists,’ which make his job a nightmare. And more laughs, this time based on my own personal experience. And then, he writes a book… To read Breadline is a unique experience, and one I recommend everyone try. Part philosophy, part humor, part captivating prose – this book has it all. The one minor flaw was the tendency of the prose to assume a shade of purple in some spots, a little over the top. Perhaps because this book is a translation from the French? In any event, I can recommend Breadline. I know many of Rosie’s followers will enjoy it, even in small bites. 3.5 stars About the author Excerpted from Amazon: Alain Dizerens was born in Geneva in 1948. In his 20s, feeling restless and with a constant urge to explore the world, he finds a job with a humanitarian organization and so his adventures begin, often more life threatening than recreational. Breadline is his autobiographic recounting of these adventures. After a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and several decades of teaching, Alain Dizerens also presented a variety of “crosstalk kinetic” (dance, electro) performances, particularly in the context of the Swiss summer in Geneva in 1986. He has written other books – Miroir-Temps and l’Arpenteur sidéral among many as well as published a number of photo e-books. Written with a poetic touch, his books quickly absorb the reader in a realistically magical universe, which at the same time never lacks a bit humor. You can find Alain on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dizerensalain/ And twitter: @alaindizerens Breadline is available on Amazon: 0 0