Category: Writing

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Legitimate Business Is Out!

LBCoversmJust found out that Legitimate Business is out already. It all went very fast. That’s e-books for you. Once the cover was settled, the rest was easy. At least that’s what I assume since I didn’t have to do anything.

It’s exciting to see my book at Amazon. I can’t say “in print” because it won’t be in print. But it will live on people’s e-book readers. And those who don’t like Kindles, keep in mind there are Kindle apps for the iPad and Android tablets. And there’s a Kindle Cloud Reader.

I hope you buy it and, even more, you like it. Let me know. I’m curious to get feedback.

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Legitimate Business will be published by Endeavour Press

EndeavourEndeavour Press in London will publish Legitimate Business. Just got the signed contract back. So it’s a go. Look for it in a couple of months. Endeavour only publishes e-books, so there won’t be a print edition, but since that’s the way the book business is going anyway, I’m not sad about that. The good news is that the book will be out and available to readers.

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Call For The Dead by John LeCarré

Call for the Dead coverMy sweetie found this one on the free table at the local library. I’m a big John LeCarré fan, but I had never read this one. A Call For the Dead was LeCarré’s first novel from 1961. It’s also the novel that introduces George Smiley for the first time. Right on the first page of the chapter one we get to know Smiley in this unforgettable line, “Short, fat and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.” What powerful language to introduce your protagonist.

Over eight pages, we learn of all Smiley’s history, how he got to be a spy, worked in Germany under the cover of an exchange scholar to recruit agents for the British, how he was called back to London when his cover had worn off, and how he started preparing for retirement by checking up on high civil servants to make sure they aren’t spying for the Communists.

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Why I Quit Google

OgleI just closed my Google account. It was easy. Log in, choose ‘My Account,’ select ‘Delete Account,’ ignore dire warnings of your life as you know it ending, done.

Getting to this point took over a month. I signed up with Gmail in 2007. I was about to quit my job and needed a personal email address. Google was the cool new service on the block, so I signed up. Then came GrandCentral (which eventually became Google Voice), YouTube, Docs, Picasa, Maps, Analytics and probably more, all tied to my Gmail address. It took a while to disentangle my digital life from Google. I even had to pay three bucks to get my Google Voice number ported to my cell phone.

Why leave Google now? The NSA information released by Edward Snowden was the precipitating incident. Knowing that the US spooks were targeting Google both via FISC orders and by tapping into Google’s internal networks was disturbing enough. But it wasn’t the primary reason. I make regular phone calls to Germany and have know for a long time that these were subject to NSA interception. Yeah, yeah, they weren’t supposed to since I am a US person, but I wasn’t having any illusions about that. I also don’t believe that my current email address via my hosting company is any more secure. I might figure out how to do encryption but don’t hold your breath.

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Careless in Red by Elizabeth George

20131115-191155.jpgThis novel was my first introduction to the inspector Lynley mysteries. I may have seen one episode on PBs, but I had never read a novel featuring him. It was a long novel, very long, but, to its credit, I have to say the story kept me engaged.

George takes her time. The novel starts in media res, a lone hiker along the Cornwall coast finds a dead body at the bottom of a cliff. The young climber had obviously fallen from the cliff. The hiker finds the closest inhabited place, a weekend cottage owned by a vet. When she arrives up, she’s startled to find the stranger waiting in her house. He takes her to the body, she recognizes the teenager, they go off to the local inn to call the police.

That starts a long, meandering story as involved as a Russian novel with almost as many characters. The hiker turns out to be Lynley, who’s ran away from his life after his wife was killed by a mugger on the street in front of their house. The vet, Daidre Trahair, isn’t as uninvolved as she leads on. The local cops aren’t of much use. DI Bea Hannafort takes over the case. She has her own problems with shuffling her teenage son to her ex-husband so she can focus on the case.

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