COVER REVEAL: The Well Below the Valley, by Katherine Lampe

On May 31, 2016May 31, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading2 Comments

Katherine Lampe is a Twitter buddy and fellow independent author. I reviewed the first book in her Caitlyn Ross miniseries last year and enjoyed it a lot; this is book seven. This will be a big week for her around here, because she’s doing a guest post for me later this week too.

The cover is by the most excellent Matt Davis, who I plan on working with myself just as soon as I find the right project.

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Six months after the birth of her daughter, Caitlin Ross’s life is in a tailspin. Still suffering from what he endured at the hands of his former lover, her husband, Timber MacDuff, has drawn away. The gods have stopped speaking, except for vague hints in bad dreams. Unwilling to face reality, Caitlin goes about her daily routine as if nothing has changed while deep inside she longs for distraction.

When the county sheriff asks for help with a puzzling situation, Caitlin believes her prayers have been answered. A rancher has drowned in the middle of a desert, and the means appear supernatural. The case is right up Caitlin’s alley, but her interest pits her against Timber, who insists getting involved is too dangerous now that she’s a mother. Neither he nor Caitlin realizes a greater danger awaits. Strange events in Gordarosa have brought the area to the attention of a group known as Shade Tracers. Mundane mortals, they’ve taken it upon themselves to protect humanity from magic—with deadly force, if necessary. One holds Caitlin responsible for a personal tragedy, and will stop at nothing to see justice done..

Past and present converge in Caitlin’s darkest adventure yet. With her own life at stake, she must journey through time to uncover the truth behind the Shade Tracer’s obsession. Success could provide the key to solving the local mystery. Failure will doom her to a life on the run, forever hunted.

The Well Below the Valley will be released in print and electronic editions August 2, 2016.

EXCERPT

Just then, some odd flickers from the BLM land adjacent our property caught my eyes. Shading them with my hand, I squinted into the distance. A flash. A beat, and then another. No regular rhythm. They seemed to originate from the low hill from which we often watched the moonrise.

Some kids dicking around with a mirror. BLM land was public property, and this section lay convenient to town. Bored local teens partied there. Timber and I combed the ground a couple of times a month, picking up the trash they left behind.

I bent to retrieve my basket. As I straightened, the light flashed again, this time with a distinctive quality hard to define. Less like a mirror. More like a flame. I’d just settled on the difference when something whizzed past my left ear, and a cluster of berries fell off the rowan tree at the center of the garden. A split second later, a sharp CRACK! rang through the air.

My jaw dropped. What the hell? I lifted my eyes from the rowan berries to the hilltop in time to see the light flash again. At the same time, panicked voice shouted not three feet behind me.

“Jesus Christ, Caitlin! Get DOWN!”

A heavy object struck my back, knocking me to the ground. My basket flew from my hand, spilling my harvest. I hit the earth with a shock that drove the wind from my lungs. AS I lay there, cheek in damp soil, the intense, green scent of bruised tomato vines clogged my nose. A foot from my head, a pepper plant exploded. CRACK! Understanding washed over me, and I began to shake.

Someone was shooting at me.

About the Series

Rural Gordarosa looks like any small mountain town, with stunning scenery and locals who enjoy gossip. Witch Caitlin Ross knows, however, that there’s more to her hometown than meets the mundane eye. The caretaker at the local theater isn’t human, for example. And her best friend’s uncle is a demon. Sometimes Otherworldly forces get out of control, and Caitlin has to step in to put things right.

Walking the line between Urban Fantasy and Magical Realism, the Caitlin Ross series is unique in being written with a polytheistic Pagan world view, in which the gods are often as flawed as humans and the other is not necessarily monstrous. The books give readers access to a world where magic is an ordinary part of life, but, for all that, never commonplace. By presenting enchantment as a given, they highlight the wonder in the every day.

About the Author

Musician, DJ, and unrepentant Iconoclast, Katherine Lampe studied at the University of Michigan with Ken Mikolowski, and at Naropa University with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. The daughter of an English teacher and a self-professed heretic masquerading as a Presbyterian minister, she is interested in the individual’s relationship with the divine. Her work explores the interaction of the supernatural and the mundane in the lives of real people.

Memorial Day

On May 30, 2016May 30, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Miss you, Grandpa.

Just to make sure we’re clear…

On May 29, 2016May 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting3 Comments

…this is what a chimpanzee can do to a small creature that it finds in its enclosure and doesn’t want there. I suspect there is not much weight difference between a toddler and a large raccoon. There is, however, an enormous difference between the strength level of a chimpanzee and a silverback gorilla:

I just figured, judging from the chatter I’ve seen on the internet today, that this might be a useful thing to think about.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Insane Idiosyncrasies Edition

On May 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Stories3 Comments

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If we were having coffee, I’d be in a better mood than I am right now, because I’m not drinking coffee. (Note that it is probably best to interpret this post less as whining and more as look what an idiot I am. Calibrate your expectations accordingly.)

Our coffee maker took a shit a couple of weeks ago, developing a leak toward the base somewhere that necessitated its immediate replacement. The new hotness was a more expensive & more technologically complicated edition. It had a timer on it! My wife was super happy, as you could set everything up before bed and have hot coffee already brewed when you get out of the shower in the morning.

Sounds great, right? It also has an auto shutoff, meaning that there’s no more early-afternoon trips that feature one of us saying Did you shut the coffee maker off? because it automatically shuts itself off after some predetermined amount of time. And for whatever reason I haven’t taken the time to figure out how the timer works and how it can be adjusted, which means that there have been several times since we got the new coffee maker where I’ve wanted coffee and not had any, because for some reason the idea of reheated coffee creeps me out. Once that shit gets cold, it’s permanently undrinkable.

Note that I drink iced coffee every now and again. If it’s cold on purpose, that’s fine. If it’s cold because it got cold, it cannot be made hot again.

Yes. I know.

That doesn’t make any sense at all. I am aware of the problem and I have top people working on it.

I just wandered into the kitchen– yes, I know, it’s a quarter to twelve, shut up— ready for a hot cup of coffee only to be greeted with what was best lukewarm liquid that wouldn’t have been hot at all once I added milk to it. Turning the pot back on or putting the cup in the microwave is existentially impossible, and making a new pot seems wasteful. So no coffee for me this morning, again, because I’m too damn dumb/lazy to figure out how to extend that auto shutoff feature by another hour or two or, better, just disable it altogether.

I am not very bright, is what I’m saying here. On the plus side, I discovered cold pizza in the fridge that I didn’t know was there, so the morning isn’t a complete loss.

How’re you?

That time of year again

On May 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography

Anybody wanna do a guest post?

On May 28, 2016May 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking7 Comments

Short notice, I know, but: I’m out of town for my brother’s wedding Thursday through Sunday of next week. If anybody has anything laying around (or stuck in their brains) that could make a good guest post, either hit me up in comments or drop me an email.

On comics and candidates

On May 27, 2016May 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

Screen Shot 2016-05-25 at 10.21.08 PM.png So, Captain America’s a Nazi, supposedly. And always has been. He’s headed the Avengers for the majority of their existence and I think he was President once. But right now is the big time to play that card.

Sure.

I’ve been reading comic books for a while, guys, and I’m old enough to recognize bullshit when I see it. Remember how people got all mad about the recent revelation that Han Solo was married during the original trilogy? That was transparently a misdirect from the first panel and it got all sorts of people twisted up. Now, I suspect the first panel of Steve Rogers: Captain America #2 is not going to be Cap saying “…Psych!” and that this will last a little bit longer than Solo’s “marriage.” But for Christ’s sake, he got his original body back because a living embodiment of a Cosmic Cube decided to screw around with him. (Comic books. Shut up.) So I suspect there are probably some shenanigans going on here.

Now, all that said, I really don’t like this direction, and making Cap a Nazi squicks for all kinds of reason that are more specific to Cap than, say, when they made Iron Man an asshole a couple of years ago. Which, as it turned out, was a great storyline. I was going to buy this issue, if only because I love the artist quite a bit, but I can’t reward this nonsense with my money. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not fully aware that everything’s gonna get rolled back to normal in a few months. And once it does, they can have my money again.

I think– and if I’ve said this before, it’s indisputably true now– that I’m officially tired of Bernie Sanders now, and it’s time for him to go the hell away. There has not, to my knowledge, been a single debate between candidates of opposing political parties prior to the conventions in my lifetime, and there sure as shit hasn’t been one between the nominee of one party and the guy who came in second of the other. And yeah, he came in second. He lost. He lost the second he decided he didn’t need to contest the South. And it should have been obvious to everyone that he lost once New York happened.

It’s clear to me at this point that Sanders makes shitty decisions under pressure. The first example was his fucking ridiculous family field trip to the Vatican, funded illegally by his campaign, so that he could bother the Pope for five minutes in a hallway for no clear reason. And this “I’ll debate Trump” thing would be hilarious if he wasn’t clearly taking it seriously. It’s also sexist as fuck; I refuse to believe he’d be entertaining this nonsense if the person who beat him wasn’t a woman. Trump is transparently yanking him around by a chain right now and he doesn’t realize it. It’s fucking pathetic. And naming Cornel West to the platform committee at the convention is nothing more than a transparent attempt to blow the whole damn thing up.

Screw this guy. I can’t wait for Al Giordano to announce his primary run for real so I can contribute money to him.

While I’m ranting, let’s cancel the Olympics before they turn Zika into a worldwide epidemic. I think as soon as “the swimmers and boaters will literally be competing in human waste” became something that we just shrugged at they should have canned the damn thing, and that’s old shit by now. Add in a planetary infectious disease that causes microcephaly in infants and I just don’t really see the need for the floor competition this year.

Some quick thoughts about PREACHER

On May 26, 2016May 26, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television9 Comments

It’s weird that I remember this story so well.

I have every issue of PREACHER’s run as a comic book, and bought each of them on the day it came out. I bought the very first issue on a lark, and I remember spending a ridiculous amount of time and mental energy during the month between issue 1 and issue 2 thinking about whether I was buying the second issue or not. I don’t recall if money was especially tight at the time or what, because comics don’t really cost that damn much, especially in 1995 or 1994 or whenever it was when the book first came out. But it took forever for me to decide I wanted that second issue, and then it must have caught me, because I never missed another one after that. I haven’t really revisited the series since it concluded, but I have all of it in trade paperback as well. My wife recently read through them, and she finished the entire run but never seemed terribly happy about it; I have my doubts as to how well it will hold up.

That said, I watched the pilot of AMC’s PREACHER series last night, and… meh. I have a lot more to say that’s bad than I do that’s good (Cassidy’s casting is spot-on physically, but he rarely wears his sunglasses and I can’t understand a damn word he says) but I’m going to give it at least another episode or two before I stop watching, just because of the example the comic book set.

Some gripes, because why not:

The direction is schizophrenic and weirdly cheesy, with an opening sequence straight out of a crappy 1950’s B-movie and occasional weird filtering on the colors. There was one well-shot sequence, with Tulip’s fight in the car, and the rest of it was not so good.
Actually, that’s not quite true: the bar fight wasn’t bad. So the action sequences are well-shot and the stuff that should be easy has me wondering what the directors are smoking.
Arseface looks fucking ridiculous. Absolutely. Fucking. Ridiculous. I know he’s supposed to be a comic character, but… god, at least try.
Speaking of faces, there is something about Dominic Cooper’s face that makes me not want to look at him very much. I don’t know that I can explain it very well. He looks… squished? Maybe? And his acting hasn’t overcome the weird squick factor every time I see him on screen. For the lead, this is a problem.
It’s evident already that they’ve made a number of changes to the storyline, which is fine, but I’m irrationally annoyed that Jesse’s eyes don’t go red when he’s using the Word. I will probably get over this.

I dunno. I guess that’s not much, but when I have complaints and nothing really positive to say… yeah. I’ll update if the series improves, and it’s probably worth pointing out that I’ve seen people who are normally hard to impress raving about the first four episodes, but right now I’m not hooked.