Million Dollar Murder: A Review of It's Murder, My Son by Lauren Carr

My Book Review of It's Murder, My Son: 

It’s Murder, My Son by Lauren Carr is an entertaining mystery romp.  It’s perfect for a rainy day read or a relaxing weekend.

The first book in the Mac Faraday mystery series, It’s Murder, My Son, begins with a new chapter in former homicide detective Mac Faraday’s life.  Recently divorced, he finds himself the heir to a multimillion dollar fortune of a late mystery author, a woman who was the birth mother he never knew.  And along with the money and property, he inherits a couple of murders and a whole lot of trouble.

I enjoyed reading this novel.  It had a nice pace, charming and believable characters and reasonably good conflict, while never losing its sense of fun.  The main character of Mac Faraday was especially likable and I was pleased with the way the author had him interact with his new world.  There was no smooth transition to the world of money; he behaved like an uncomfortable fish out of water.  I also liked the main female character/love interest of Archie; she’s smart funny and there’s a nice chemistry with Mac.

I did have a few slight problems with the storyline in that I found some of the plot points a bit easy to figure out, although the author does give the reader plausible reasons as to why the characters haven’t come to the same conclusions.  Also, there were one or two twists that I didn’t see coming, so the plotline considerations are minor quibbles.  Overall I can give this book a recommend.


It’s Murder, My Son can be found on Amazon in Print and Kindle formats

Interview With Poet And Writer, John Lavan

Today we have a wonderful guest stopping by for an interview, poet and blogger, John Lavan.  Enjoy!

Interview with John Lavan

Why don’t you begin by sharing a little about yourself.

I have a lovely wife and three sons. I live mostly in Yorkshire, in the UK; sometimes in Cumbria (UK). I work as a management consultant and travel a lot, so I write many of my poems on trains.

As a poet, where do you find inspiration for your poems?

My eldest son, Andrew has Down’s Syndrome and he is my greatest muse. Love between father and son is not well explored in literature and I ‘go for the mystery of love’ in many of my poems. Of course, my other family members also inspire me! That’s why the collection is called ‘Familial’.

You’ve published a collection of your poems, Familial.  Can you tell us a bit about the book?

I have 2 blogs: http://poemsfromreality.blogspot.co.uk/ and http://beautifulwordpoems.blogspot.co.uk/ with over 600 poems there. I like to write a poem every other day. I selected the poems for Familial from those on the blog with most hits and comments. So Familial is a democratic collection! Apostrophe Books found me on Twitter (@Toltecjohn) and eight weeks later Familial: Selected Poems (http://apostrophebooks.com/books/poetry/familial/) was out! That’s magic.

What drew you to write poetry?

In my early 50’s, I re-married and started writing short poems to my new wife. I found I had some talent and my passion grew – for studying, reading and writing poetry. It is indeed spellbinding.

What is your favourite aspect of writing? Your least favourite?

I like the first creative expression – forcing out the poem onto the page from an inner feeling. That can make me grunt out loud on a crowded train. There is no least favourite. Crafting the poem from a first draft is also fun.

You have a significant blog and Twitter following.  How do think social media has impacted you as a writer?

It has opened up grand and global possibility! I remember reading somewhere in a creative writing book ‘The internet poets are coming!’ and I guess I decided to become one. I love to believe that ‘a cuppa and a Kindle’ can associate reading a couple of poems with a coffee (without dragging paper around). We could reframe the public’s appetite for poems as a way of starting to feel! … to easily feel alive!

Do you have any advice for aspiring poets?

Write every day. No exceptions – and write about what’s happening now. Pinch ideas from other poets.

Do you any authors you admire, or have inspired you?

Emily Dickinson – she has unmatched insight, mystery, compression and feeling.

What’s next for you?

An epic poem – I’m half way into it. First, though, a cup of coffee and a Kindle!

Familial is available from:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Z125L8

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/familial-selected-poems/id553587715?mt=11&uo=4%22%20target=%22itunes_store%22

and will soon be available from 130+ other retailers, through http://apostrophebooks.com/books/poetry/familial/

You can also find out more about Familial on Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/apostrophebooks/familial-selected-poems-by-john-lavan/) and on Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15838108-familial).

Interview with Frank Fiore

 Today we have a fascinating interview with the intriguing writer Frank Fiore...

An Interview With Frank Fiore

Why don’t you begin by sharing a little about yourself.

Though most of my life I’ve been an entrepreneur, I’ve always enjoyed being a teacher. In fact I hold a Masters Degree in Education. This ability to help people learn translates into the kind of books I write. My non-fiction books are all about learning how to market on the Internet, how to start and online business and how to shop online. I’ve sold over 50,000 copies of those types of books. 

You’ve written a thriller series, Chronicles of Jeremy Nash.  Can you tell us about it?

Jeremy Nash is a noted debunker and skeptic of conspiracy theories, urban legends and myths is drawn into pursuing them.  Each Nash chronicle in the series is a thriller that sends Nash on an investigation of these myths and legends. Though he doesn’t believe in any of them, he is forced into pursuing them by threats to the lives of his family members or himself or threats to his reputation. The Chronicles is three book series that is available on the Nook, Kindle and Apple platforms. I am currently running a promotion for the books. Two of them are selling for only .99 cents and SEED, the second book is being offered as a serial of 15 parts that can be downloaded from Smashwords for free. 

Like myself, readers love challenges and my stories seek to challenge their minds. The kind of stories that reflect the personal challenges that they face in their day-to-day lives.  My stories, in many ways, reflect the challenges I had in my life. The back-story, so to speak, of the novel. I hope my fiction through the characters and what they face in my stories, can open the door a little wider and cast light on how we deal with the world and face it’s challenges.

You’ve written numerous successful non-fiction books.  Why did you decide to write fiction?

I’m turning my talents to writing fiction to both entertain and to teach.  That kind of writing is called geek fiction. Geek fiction breaks the boundaries of formulaic writing. It introduces intellectual acumen and provides a thoughtful, entertaining diversion for the reader. While the genre niches I write in can be varied – thrillers, action/adventures/ speculative history, short stories, and mainstream fiction - my books challenge readers and surprises them with well-paced, well researched and compelling stories.

My readers have higher-than-average IQs or advanced educations, and are looking for intellectual challenges and extraordinary entertainment that is well-crafted fiction transcending traditional genre boundaries, providing both literary character development and an interesting plot.

Was it difficult to transition from writing non-fiction to writing a fiction series?

In a way, my non-fiction taught me how to create a logical progression of ideas.  In the case of fiction, it helped me create an entertaining and logical plot. But though I can write interesting characters and unpredictable plots, I need to have a story polisher ‘beef up’ my prose. I use one for every one of my stories.

Early in your career you founded, wrote and edited the New Times newspaper.  What was that experience like?

It was my very first foray in to the entrepreneurial world. I knew nothing about the newspaper business – less about journalism. But several college dropouts and myself came up with an idea for an alternative newspaper in a very traditional community. It hit and nerve and took off.  Though I left the paper early to pursue other opportunities, it is now a multistate operation and part of the establishment now.

You’ve worked as a researcher, designed and taught courses and seminars on the future of society, technology and business, and served on several vital committees.  How much has this social and educational work influenced your writing?

Much. I have always been interested in all the disciplines and have read extensively on many subjects. This knowledge acquired over the years acts as source material for my novels like CYBERKILL, the Chronicles of Jeremy Nash.

Can you tell us about a few of your other books?

My first novel is CyberKill. It’s a techno-thriller that answers the question “How far will an artificial intelligence go for revenge?” It’s garnered 5 star ratings on Amazon.

What advice would you give beginning writers?

Don’t write for money or fame. Write because you enjoy telling a story. If that story is good enough, the money and fame will come. 

What’s your next book or project?

I’ve just finished a novel called Murran. Murran is the story of a young African-American boy named Trey coming of age in the 1980s, and his rite of passage to adulthood. Trey is a member of a ‘crew’ in Brooklyn and is enticed into helping a violent street gang. He is eventually framed for murder and flees with his high school teacher to the teacher’s Maasai village in Kenya. Trey goes through the Maasai warrior’s rite of passage, becomes a young shaman, and returns to America to confront and defeat the gang leader that framed him.

How can people find out more about your book? 

Go to my author site at www.frankfiore.com and my blog at http://frankfiore.wordpress.com/ 

Teaching Sci-Fi Stories in a College Lit Class

Another guest blogger joins us today, Maria Rainier, to talk about using sci-fi in the classroom.

Teaching Sci-Fi Stories in a College Lit Class

Until recently, I was a graduate student who taught English at a large public university in the American South (I won’t name it, because of what I’m about to write in the next sentence, and because I’m paranoid). After two years of teaching freshman composition (which is just about the most dry, boring, futile, and demoralizing job one could hope for), I had a chance to teach Introduction to Fiction. Yay! Fiction! My passion in life, my favorite avocation, the whole reason I went to grad school in the first place. Now I would finally be able to inculcate the younger generation in the love of fancy prose and made-up stories.

We had a big anthology for a textbook, the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, with hundreds of short stories representing the whole world’s literary traditions (all translated into English, of course). I tried to organize my syllabus thematically, starting with classic “literary” workshop-style short stories by the likes of Carver, Cheever, Updike, then moving on to some older European and American stuff, and bridging into Halloween (it was a fall course) by means of Kafka and Poe. Finally, I did science fiction, and some experimental stories by Borges, Cortazar, and Nabokov.

The experimental stuff was a mixed bag, some of it too difficult for my sophomores...but the sci-fi ones went over like gangbusters, which pleased me to no end because this was the genre that had gotten me into literature to begin with. I don’t know if “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson counts as science fiction. I suppose it does. In any case, it’s eerie, an alternate-reality story with a lot to say about our real world, like all the best speculative work. The horror stuff went over big (who doesn’t like Poe, you know?) but here, as with Jackson, a problem I hadn’t considered was that they’d mostly read “Fall of the House of Usher” already in high school.

“The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever could technically be considered sci-fi, though to explain why might be a bit of a spoiler (hint: the title object). You should check it out yourselves for an example of very restrained, realistic fiction about technology.

The biggest reaction the class had to any story was to “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, the famous and colorful sci-fi chiller about children doing unspeakable things with their virtual-reality simulator. The class immediately drew the connection with their own electronic upbringings and it was kind of amazing how much the story’s concerns hadn’t dated. We also watched two Bradbury-related YouTube videos on the projector screen: one a great documentary/interview on the (voluble, affable, charismatic) writer and his career, and one a fairly inappropriate music video by a fan entitled “F--- Me, Ray Bradbury,” which had them laughing uproariously and chattering all the way out the door.

It was the best class we’d had all semester. This year, when Bradbury died, I thought, what a testament to a writer and a human being that his work still had this kind of impact on kids and adults over half a century later. I felt the same way recently when they named Curiosity’s landing site on Mars after him. Bradbury may be dead, but the spirit of science fiction is alive and well. May it live on into the future and beyond the solar system.

Maria Rainier fell in love with blogging before it was cool, and now she's lucky enough to make a living out of it. She generally writes about subjects related to online education, including for onlinedegrees.org, where she expounds on universities that offer competitive online associate degrees and online bachelor's degrees for the 21st century college student. Please share your comments with her!

Five Classic Sci-Fi Novels Worth Rediscovering

We have a guest today, writer Aniya Wells, who stops by with some recomendations for scifi reading:

5 Sci-Fi Classics Worth Rediscovering

Though my reading has been concentrated in other genres lately, science fiction was truly my first love, and I retain the same affection for it today that I had when I was a teenager. I made my way through most of the attested classics of the medium, hungrily poring through lists of the most critically adored novels, and this process set me on a journey of mind expansion that taught me how to think, how to question, and how to wonder. Here are my five personal favorites within the speculative canon:

1. Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Naturally, I could as easily have chosen any number of other Dick masterworks. A Scanner Darkly and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said are not far behind. And The Man in the High Castle may be an even better book, but I feel its alternate-history framework doesn’t fit as comfortably into the quintessential ‘sci-fi’ rubric. Ubik, on the other hand, best embodies all the queasy, paranoid, wildly imaginative glory of Dick while setting out from a recognizable sci-fi starting point. A mind-boggling and unsettling dissection of the unreality of reality, like all the master’s best, soaked with the particular kind of existential fear and sadness that made him more than a cerebral trickster.

2. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

Again, I like this one about equally with The Stars My Destination, but The Demolished Man wins the tiebreaker with its virtuoso mystery ending. This tale of telepathy, conspiracy, and murder in an apparently crime-free society must have been dog-eared by Dick back in the 50s; it contains many of the seeds of the work discussed above.

3. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

The hype is all true. This one is simply the most fun book I’ve ever read. Stephenson employs a postmodern kitchen-sink approach, throwing in enough good, funny, crazy ideas for 10 sci-fi novels and somehow making it all work. Hiro Protagonist, hacker and pizza boy for the Mafia in a Balkanized America of corporate city-states, meets...oh, you’re just going to have to read it (or re-read it) yourself.

4. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

One of the most formally perfect novels ever written (minus the controversial and, in my opinion, regrettable final chapter). Many are scared off from reading this by the narrator’s use of an invented slang called Nadsat, but it’s all part of the total aesthetic package of the book and is music to my ears, as much as Alex’s beloved Ludwig Van is to his.

5. To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

Unlike many sci-fi fans, I don’t go in much for series: I want a different thing every time and am always suspicious of the motivations behind stretching out a “franchise.” The point being, I haven’t read the rest of the Riverworld series but I hear they’re good. This first one certainly was. It portrays a strange kind of afterlife on another planet where people from different times on Earth wake up and try to figure out what is going on. Peculiar and intriguing...perhaps I ought to read the rest after all.

Aniya Wells is a freelance writer and blogger. In an age in which consumers have access to unprecedented amounts of information, Aniya hopes to help her readers decode this information to make better decisions about personal finance, parenting, health, and more. She can be reached at aniyawells@gmail.com.