BookBum

My First Sci-fi Love: Gary Starta’s Gods of the Machines

December 17th, 2010 | admin

Based in a century when space travel and artificial intelligence are as common as catching a continental flight to Europe, science fiction writer Gary Starta fleshes out his futuristic tale, Gods of the Machines, with a kind of robot romanticism. When technology advances enough to populate a nearby planet called Ceres and create servant-like androids, a fresh parcel of problems arise between robots and humans with respect to the degree of humanity required for basic rights.  It’s the civil war all over again, computerized.

It starts with the murder of Carol Walker, a woman who has an affair with researcher Dean Flavin as they are examining soil on planet Ceres. In a holograph engulfed world, detective Sam Benson and his medical examiner fiancée arrive on Ceres, an infantile planet with a population of 300, to investigate. After a suspicious decapitation in Walker’s murder leads Benson to point fingers at a man-turned android named James Starkman, and things begin to get hot and heavy with his partner, Sharon Laviolette, Benson quickly loses his credibility as an investigator in the eyes of both the Ceres population and his wife-to-be.

As mind-boggling events unfold, like robotic bees killingdecision-makers and insect-alien entities blipping through walls to feed off humans, Benson suspects there’s much more going on than a fight to free androids from enslavement. Fending off obnoxious reporters and power-hungry earthlings looking to prod into the inner workings of robots for material benefit, Benson and his partner are later faced with something much deeper than they ever imagined, a clash between the ancestors of Ceres and its more recent, earthling inhabitants, culminating in a memorable end.

Gods of the Machines has to be the first science-fiction novel I’ve ever read and I absolutely loved it. The relationship between robots and humans, and their fight for basic rights to me seems like a precursor to our own future. With technology ever-advancing, it seems to me space travel and artificial beings will evolve sooner than most people think. That’s what I love about science-fiction writers. While I don’t read much of the genre, I’m familiar with the tall tales of alien beings and planet-hopping, and they always seem to have some secret idea of what how our world will evolve. Starta’s novel drew me in with both his ongoing dichotomy between robots and humans, and this subtle sexual tension between all of the male and female characters. It was like crime/science fiction, mixed with a little Katie Salidas. A fireside read indeed.

About Gary Starta

Gary Starta is a former journalist who studied English and Journalism at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

His love for science fiction compelled him to write his first novel ‘What Are You Made Of?’ published in 2006.  Inspired by Isaac Asimov, the science fiction novel focuses on intelligent artificial life and whether sentient androids should possess the same rights as humans.  The androids in Starta’s novel are created as hybrids – part machine, part human – further blurring the line between human and machine. Starta foresees a near future where humans will be forced to decide if intelligent machinery is indeed a life form. Possibly, in this near future, some humans will possess computer enhancements to overcome disabilities becoming hybrids themselves. The line between biological life form and mechanical life form will continue to be examined in a follow up novel now being written.

Starta cites Stephen King and Dean Koontz as inspirations for his 2007 novel ‘Blood Web’ which is also reminiscent of the The X-files television/movie series. Contemporary authors Laurell K. Hamilton, Rachel Caine, Jim Butcher and Kelly Armstrong also fuel his aspiration to create paranormal suspense. The follow up novel to ‘Blood Web’ – ‘Extreme Liquidation’ explores Caitlin Diggs’ supernatural gifts including the ability to see the future in dreams and to read a person’s character through emotions.

Starta’s crime novella ‘Murder By Association’ blends mystery with forensic investigation. It is a departure from previous books because it contains no science fiction or paranormal elements. Additionally, Starta foresees his 2008 novella ‘Alzabreah’s Garden’ – a fantasy romance – as another out-of-the-box effort.

Short story “Growing Pains” now published in Silverlight robot anthology THANK YOU, DEATH ROBOT

Latest sci fi novel, Gods of the Machines now available…
http://www.gypsyshadow.com/GaryStarta.ht…
See the website for all his books: http://www.garystarta.net including Extreme Liquidation, a follow up to Blood Web now available from Lyrical Press or go to Amazon.com for reviews and posts.

Readers may contact the author at ven123star@yahoo.com

        

Digging Up Helen of Pasadena

November 29th, 2010 | admin

I’ve never been a fan of archaeology, but I’ve always been a fan of Pasadena, and Lian Dolan brings us both in her first novel Helen of Pasadena. As a denizen of Pasadena herself, Dolan is also a blogger, talk show host, producer, social media consultant, and contributor to Oprah.com. How she does it all with two sons, we’ll never know, but she can sure grab a reader with her quirky, behind-the-scenes type narrative and on-spot humor.

I’ve read a lot of books of this caliber, from Weiner’s “Little Earthquakes” to Emily Giffin’s “Something Borrowed”. But what differentiates Dolan is her ability to intertwine something as historical as archeology into a present-day soap opera. After the death of her husband, death by panda rose-parade float that is, Helen finds herself in debt, widowed, and lonely with a teenage boy who is anything but interested in the direction of their lives, or his education. The sheer urgency of the situation requires her to take action–she must find a job, and sell their beloved colonial if she is going to stay afloat.

When she lands a job as a research assistant to anarchaeologist that looks more like Gerard Butler than a dusty scholar, Helen’s situation turns from fine to frenetic. Like the wartime feats that espouse all that is the history of Troy, Helen enters her own battlefield of prissy, competitive mothers vying for the great Dr. Patrick O’Neil’s attention, making it their personal duty to ensure everyone in town is on the up-and-up about Helen’s downtrodden situation. All the while she grapples with getting her son, Aidan, to take seriously his entrance into a reputable high school, and dealing with the last words her husband said to her before he died–he was leaving her for a Fox news anchor, which was enough to leave her with more of a bittersweet aftertaste at his funeral, rather than sour tears.

“Couldn’t you have died before you told me you were leaving?” Dolan writes as Helen is left to muddle through her anger and heartbreak. This is only one example of the brilliant humor Dolan brings to her ill-fated heroine. Her wit was savory and intelligent, causing me to laugh out loud on more than a few occasions in public. I was sucked in with the comical way Helen dealt with the obstacles she faced, which seemed to throw themselves in front of her just when she thought she was in the clear. Telling off the headmistress of a school who refused to let her take her husband Merritt’s seat on the board after he’d donated thousands to the school, and beating off “Neutron Melanie” with a stick, a has-been marketing exec-turned benefit chair, who becomes an ache in Helen’s side after her money dissipates.

Amidst all the madness in Helen’s life, however, there is always laughter. Dolan always seems to bring wit into every situation her character comes across, which makes for a terrific, by-the-fire winter read. I enjoyed this book immensely, and I hope Dolan doesn’t keep us waiting long for her next one!

        

A Look at Hidden Passages: Tales of the Crones

November 23rd, 2010 | admin

If I would have known Vila SpiderHawk’s Hidden Passages was going to be so enchanting, I would have cracked it open as soon as I received it in the mail. Having a 145 things on my mind upon receipt, however, I merely smelled the pages, and placed it neatly in my bookshelf until recently, when I picked it up and became immediately entranced with SpiderHawk’s smooth prose and spot-on word choice.

Vila SpiderHawk lives in a log cabin with her husband in a Pennsylvanian wood. After an interview with her on my column at Examiner, I discovered that even armed with a BA in Women’s Studies and French, she has, since the old Crayola days, always loved to write. And she’s good at it.

Hidden Passages is an anthology of eight terrific tales of discovery, beauty, enchantment, and enlightenment. On a whole, it could be called a celebration of women, as many of the stories are centered around said gender, but I found myself swept off my feet more by the magic of the stories, and the ease with which SpiderHawk captured the climate of each tale, as though she were experiencing it first hand. The prose flowed so smoothly, it was clear that SpiderHawk let the stories tell themselves, which spoke to me as a reader.

The procession of each story nicely dovetails with the ages of her characters, starting out with a story about a little girl, and ending with one about a fifty-something. Every tale in Hidden Passages encapsulates a journey of some sort, whether it be spiritual, fearful, powerful, morally instructive or meant to lift the soul.

From a literary standpoint, my favorite was the story of Heraulta, a chapter of Maiden, Mother, Crone. Heraulta’s story was a three-part series, where her granddaughter Cara goes through a journey to womanhood, her daughter goes on a horrific journey to find her daughter, and Heraulta experiences a journey of her own, as an elder Crone. While the journeys of each woman here unique in their own right, Heraulta’s is the most beautifully told. The narrative immediately matures into one as descriptive and poignant as that of a Bronte novel.

“Wrapped in the lace chill of fog with only the mist-blurred moon to guide our way, Donnata and I discuss our dreams in voices as intimate as the night. The dreams are often murky and complex, churning in and around themselves, and our pace slows as we shine this thought or that into the roiling brew.”

From an adventurous standpoint, my favorite was Nanu’s Story, which told the story of Tichu, an Unchosen One among the On-Ne tribe because she could not easily bear children. The journey Tichu takes from losing her first child to spinning large bales of cotton-like material to shelter people all over the land, and confronting the dominant male hunters who shunned her continuously is both heartfelt and inspiring. It took me back to old bedtime warrior stories from my own youth, and kept me entranced for the better part of an evening.

It was hard to choose, however, among the beautifully crafted pagan tales. Each was more inspiring than the next, and instilled a kind of warm, fuzzy feeling in the soul. When a book can do that to you, it’s a keeper.

        

Spotlight on Author Mike Manos

November 18th, 2010 | admin

About Mike Manos

Mike Manos is professor of Economics and a scholar of History and archaeology. He is also a poet and a freelance writer.

God’s Poor is his first novel.

Summary of God’s Poor

The sudden deaths of pregnant women rock the world. A deadly virus causes world panic. A dangerous heresy reemerges from the misty past. The Catholic and Orthodox ChristianChurches face an unknown enemy. Mossant reveals dangerous secrets that threaten religious foundations. The quest for immortality leads to the first Jerusalem and incredible revelations. Finally an earthquake produced by HAARP gives a temporary solution.

My Review

While I’ve never read any of Dan Brown’s books, I imagine they would be something like God’s Poor by Mike Manos. A novel where what you think is set in stone by religion, is upturned, involving deaths, scandal, and unrest in both the religious world and law enforcement.

I’m such a big fan of crime and psychological novels I really appreciated Manos’s inclusion of how the CIA and FBI worked to uncover the reason for the sudden deaths of all pregnant women. The very idea of all pregnant women suddenly dying held me in suspense throughout the book. Toss in the eerie, secretive monks from Holy Mountain and you’ve got a nicely paced theological thriller. With monasteries and Abbotts and high priests, Manos did a great job of making Holy Mountain seem like an exceedingly holy fortress where monks dedicated their lives to God, and had it out for women. None were allowed.

We later traverse the world from Washington to Mongolia, and come to find out an ancient Christian heresy by the name of God’s Poor, a sect of the Bogomils from long ago, has something to do with the sudden deaths of the women. From there the story quickly unfolds almost magically, as the perpetrators behind the panic inject shots of truth serum to get suspects to talk, crack viles of toxic gas to knock grown men on their feet, and turn iron keys that shape shift to fit any lock to enter any building they please. I can really appreciate this kind of fantasy element, as J.K. Rowling has turned me gullible as all hell when it comes to magic.

God’s Poor mixes this Harry Potter type fun with Dan Brown theological pacing, and James Patterson crime fiction. It’s a bit like having three of the best genres rolled into one.

Read an excerpt of God’s Poor here.

Where to Buy It

Title of the book: GOD’S POOR
Book cover photo: See attachment
ISBN: 0-7414-5140-9
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Publication Date: June 2009
# of Pages: 307
Buy the Book Here at Infinity Publishing: http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-5140-9
Or at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Poor-Mike-Manos/dp/0741451409/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275051691&sr=1-4

Follow Manos as he tours the virtual blogosphere!

        

Author Mike Manos on “God’s Poor”

November 9th, 2010 | admin

Everyone loves a good mystery, preferably one that keeps them guessing till the end. While murder mysteries of this ilk tend to be the most prevalent, religious and historical ones are becoming similarly sought after, thanks to writers like Dan Brown. Not all historical fiction writers can, however, claim to be scholars as well, like Mike Manos, author of God’s Poor.

A scholar of both history and archeology, the research put into God’s Poor took four years to compile. No one said shaking up the foundations of religion in a novel was going to be easy. The story is built around the sudden deaths of pregnant women, world panic, the quest for immortality,  and a dangerous heresy, good fodder for a conspiratorial thriller.

Currently, Manos is touring the blogosphere through Pump Up Your Book Promotions for the entire month of November, and I was able to interview him via email for a closer look at how God’s Poor was birthed.

(LB Examiner – Me writing from my Examiner column)

LB Examiner: As a scholar of History and Archeology, what made you decide to write a novel?
M.M.: It was the fascinating history of the first centuries of Christianity and the powerful heresies that rocked the Church.

LB Examiner: If you could describe you’re novel, God’s Poor, in one word, what would it be?
M.M.:Extraordinary.

LB Examiner: What real-life stories or experiences, if any, inspired you to write this book?
M.M.:The inspiration behind my book is the survival of the heresy of the Paulicians, under different names, till our days.

LB Examiner: What is your writing routine like? How long did it take to write?
M.M.: I usually write during the night since I have to work in the daytime. I needed four years of painful research in order to complete my novel, GOD’S POOR.

LB Examiner: When I was first acquainted with your novel, it was described to me as similar to Dan Brown, plot-wise. Do you agree or disagree?
M.M: Of course there are similarities, since the story of a heresy has a lot of religious elements. But my book has a supernatural touch without a central hero, so the plot is quite different.

LB Examiner: What was more ardous in composing this novel, the writing or the research?
M.M.: Both, if you consider that I needed four years to complete it

LB Examiner: What authors, if any, do you aspire to be like?
M.M.: It was the book about the old heresies written by Panteleimon, the late Bishop of Corinth, Greece, that inspired me to write GOD’S POOR.

LB Examiner: What advice would you give to burgeoning writers, struggling with their first novels?
M.M.: Work hard, do your research, never give up.

LB Examiner: I hear you also dabble in poetry. Who are you’re favorite poets? Did any of their work inspire your fiction?
M.M.: My favorite poets are Rabindranath Tagore and Joseph Rudyard Kipling, but my book wasn’t inspired by any of their poems.

LB Examiner: Thank you so much for interviewing with me, Mike. Best of luck on your virtual tour with Pump Up Your Book!
M.M.: Thank you very much.

God’s Poor is available on Amazon, and you can read more about his tour here.

        

Growing Up A Black Child to Black Woman–Review

October 27th, 2010 | admin

How many diary entries would it take to tell your story? For Cheryl Bannerman’s young protagonist Tara Walker, only a few, each one more stinging than the the one before.

It’s only right for Bannerman’s Black Child to Black Woman to begin with a child. Nine-year-old Tara Walker pilots us through her youth, noting subtly, as only a child would, that her father comes home late in a “happy” mood because of “acka hall”, and her mother never seems to be happy about it. Fairly early on in Tara’s childhood we get a sense that her father is an alcoholic, and as she matures, is praised highly for her developing body by neighborhood boys and cousins alike.

In school, Tara excels, and despite a difficult transition from grade school to high school, she otherwise succeeds, graduating from college a few years later. Not without, of course, her share of tumultuous relationships.

After struggling to find a job, dealing with men both hot and cold, and the drug-induced death of her two brothers Enrique and Darrell, Tara’s misery reaches its zenith. Or so she thinks. Later pregnant and wed  to a discourteous man of questionable sexuality, she begins unraveling at the seams. Always one to get up and keep going, however, Tara eventually leaves with her daughter, Destiny, and goes it alone.

Amidst all this swirling calamity, it almost seems like a miracle Tara makes it out alive. Not only alive, but happy. Throughout the diary, Bannerman portrays Tara as the kind of woman who doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet. She is up and moving on to the next phase in her life without spending too much time brooding in sorrow.

Aside from a few entries I felt were a tad contrived, like journaling at her graduation ceremony, Bannerman’s ability to transition Tara’s voice from child to woman is at once cogent and impressive.  As with all diary entries, reading them is like going back and learning about a self you never knew existed. In Tara’s case, her story reads like a childhood you might have had, if you could only remember.

        

A Saucy Look at “Halloween Fantasies” By Katie Salidas

October 26th, 2010 | admin

If you’ve ever pondered the kind of evening you’d have holed up in a hotel suite with a vampire–ponder no more. It’s 6 days to Halloween, and with Katie Salidas’s latest Halloween Fantasies, it’s the perfect time to indulge in these kinds of thoughts. Er, reads.

After her Greek Goddess costume is soiled by a thick gray hairball from her cat, Boose, young Sasha is forced to squeeze into skintight leather pants, a close-fitting corset, and her roommate’s rather compact boots as a Vampire Huntress for one of the most burlesque events of the year–the annual Halloween Fantasy Ball. With a broken wooden spoon for a stake, and a silver cross adorning her chest, Sasha and her roommate Angela make their rounds at the ball, downing “liquid courage” from the bar, and eventually eying two men in different costumes, and unbeknownst to them, bearing fangs.

While inwardly coveting her desire to meet a real vampire at the ball, Sasha finds herself transfixed by the vampire prince we come to know as Dante, as they awkwardly tumble together on the dance floor on account of Sasha’s teetering boots. Whether or not this was actually an accident though, is left for the reader to decide. Awkward start aside, Dante and Sasha eventually get close on the dance floor, while Angela gets even closer to Trevor, Dante’s brother as they make a beeline shortly after for Angela’s hotel room. It gets tricky though, because Angela doesn’t share the same affinity for vampires as her saucy roommate, but the concern for her friend doesn’t stop Sasha from downing another tequila shot, and inviting Herr Dante to her suite to indulge in some of those coveted fantasies. And believe me when I say there’s a twist.

Having read Salidas’s House of Immortal Pleasures, I pretty much knew what I was in for with Halloween Fantasies, and I was more than willing to partake. More than that though, I’ve come to appreciate Salidas’s attention to detail and sassy word choice. When she gives her readers a glimpse into the mind of not only a lusty vampire, but a woman grappling with other-worldly fantasies, it’s akin to hoping that the protagonist in a horror novel will not open that door, and ultimately wanting her to as she reaches for the knob. I should stop there.

Check out an interview with Katie Salidas at Examiner.com, and also take a look at her virtual book tour info for the month of October at Pump Up Your Book.

        

Putting Aside for Poetry with Anne Stevenson

October 20th, 2010 | admin

Image by Ernestine Ruben

Is it possible to become so rapt with a poet in the span of oh, ten minutes? I read Drench by Anne Stevenson in the latest batch of poems I received via email this week from Poets.org. I read a brief bio on her at the same site, browsed the front page of her own website, hit a link on an interview with her in The Sunday Times, and suddenly she’s my latest favorite. Why? Listen.

She’s in her late seventies and never won a single prize for her poetry until she was 74. Her response to this?

“If your poems are good, they win the ultimate prize of surviving you.”

Wow. Writers. I’d like to tell you I write all day for nothing, because I love it. But it’s not 100 percent true. I do love it, but I love it even more when I get paid for, or recognized from it.

She was born in Cambridge, England in 1933, married four times, read all of Shakespeare’s stuff by the time she reached college, and has published 18 volumes of poetry. Not only that, but here’s the real kicker: she wrote a biography on Sylvia Plath (my end-all for early 20th century poets) in 1989. I was THIS close to clicking the affiliate Amazon link on Poets.org and buying it, but I resisted. I bought Plath’s published journal (which I just found out was actually published back in 1982) not too long ago and still haven’t finished it.  I just read on Wikipedia also that the unabridged version of her journals was released in ’99 I believe. Need that. You see how one mention of Plath has some kind of off-topic snowball effect on me?

As far as Anne Stevenson is concerned, I’m liking her by the hour. Approximately two hours ago I finished my second piano lesson this month, and straight after it I was reading Stevenson’s poem “Drenched” as if I were reading notes on a page, pausing after commas for a beat or two. Feeling each syllable in my mouth like music as I read each line off the page.

And it turns out Stevenson had a similar affinity for poetry and music, as was quite the little cellist. “But she never abandoned music,” the interviewer of the Sunday Times writes. “–it became the springboard and the backbone of her verse, ‘the sound leading the hand’, as she writes in Making Poetry”.

For the first time ever, I understand what that means. I’ve never been conscious of beats and measures and counts in poetry, until now, after a grueling piano lesson. And to think someone, some poet, has had a similar experience, I feel like I’m meeting a long-lost sister for the first time. And then she says something that moves me, and I’m hooked.

“The great thing is learning not to take oneself so seriously. Life is short–veryshort–and you’re going to be dead a long time.”

Thank you, Anne Stevenson. Here’s the poem that hooked me from beginning to end, but mostly at the end.

Drench

by Anne Stevenson

You sleep with a dream of summer weather,
wake to the thrum of rain—roped down by rain.
Nothing out there but drop-heavy feathers of grass
and rainy air. The plastic table on the terrace
has shed three legs on its way to the garden fence.
The mountains have had the sense to disappear.
It's the Celtic temperament—wind, then torrents, then remorse.
Glory rising like a curtain over distant water.
Old stonehouse, having steered us through the dark,
docks in a pool of shadow all its own.
That widening crack in the gloom is like good luck.
Luck, which neither you nor tomorrow can depend on.

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Putting Aside for Poetry with John Koethe

October 20th, 2010 | admin

        

The Girl Who Played with Fire–630pgs Squeezed into Roughly 600 Words

October 18th, 2010 | admin

I’m a fan of trilogies. I like the idea of a story being so broad and all-consuming that it takes up three books to tell. So, in effect, when I discovered the Millennium trilogy, I was all tingly about it. I’m probably the last person in the world who hasn’t read all three, but Stieg Larsson’s dead. This is my attempt at keeping him alive in the literary sense.

Here’s the story: Lisbeth Salander is trying to keeping things on the down low at the outset, travelling around the world with the millions she made in the first book. You’ll have to bum around with it to figure out why. Friend and former lover Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of Millennium magazine, is trying to expose the sex trade via a book and an entire spread in the magazine. Nils Bjurman, Salander’s legal guardian and closet sadist, is trying to kill her for abusing him for abusing her. Again, in the first one.

Salander finds out, naturally. Turns out Bjurman is buddy-buddy with corrupt police officers and judges in the very sex trade Blomkvist seeks to expose, and somehow, people get shot, Salander is wanted for murder, and Blomkvist is there behind the scenes, trying to put two and two together. In the end, there is a huge twist I never saw coming involving a man named Zala. And that is all I have to say about that.

The summary here is short and sweet because I want to get on with the way I feel about it and all that. First and foremost, I want to tip my hat yet again to Larsson for making a 4-hour flight to Kentucky feel like 1. Secondly, I’m pretty sure I was turning those pages in the plane with such ferocity I may have woken up a sleeping child. His knack for suspense is the oddest thing I’ve ever experienced. You get tons and tons of pages of just random people talking about this and that and then BAM. Someone gets shot. Or BAM. Someone is…well, not who you thought they were. Hence savage page turning.

A note on brevity. I don’t know who Larsson’s editor was, but if I were them, I would have slashed about 250 pages from it and called it a better novel. There’s way too much excess fluff in that book. Okay, fluff is not the right word for it. It’s more like flab. Just way too many short paragraphs really not talking about anything but how someone walked from their car to their front door and was a little spooked by it. Or how someone left a hectic day at the office for a coffee shop for their favorite coffee. Not much going on there. Now I’ll admit, some things did need to be said, but in all honesty, some of it was just flab.

Then of course the fact that it was translated into English. For a murder mystery, there shouldn’t be a whole lot going on with lyrical prose and all that. It should be “Sal was shot, Bruno was convicted, but it was really Flavio.” Which is what you get with this one. But some of the lines were just flat out cheesy. I wish I would have underlined them, but there are some phrases that should really stay in Swedish.

All told, the book was amazing. It made me chuckle, it made me hungry for sandwiches, thirsty for coffee, and brimming with questions. I can be slow on the uptake at times. But somehow, Larsson put me in the head of a selfish, bi-sexual, computer-hacker sociopath, and I was okay with it.