Category: books

Review: ‘Telling the Difference’ by Paul Watsky

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews5 Comments

Telling the DifferenceTelling the Difference by Paul Watsky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

During the 1960s, high school English teachers carefully served from the literary canon a poesy stew of skylarks, nightingales and albatrosses with a few leaves of grass for seasoning. Contemporary poems howling through the streets in their underwear were adjudged unsafe in the classroom. We were left to discover the likes of Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti after school—at which point, our imaginations became enlightened.

Paul Watky’s collected poems in Telling the Difference (il piccolo editions from Fisher King Press, 2010) are an explosion waiting to happen that today’s students will only discover in a state of reality where lesson plans and outlines are prohibited even though Watsky prohibits nothing.

When yin and yang, sacred and profane, and laughter and tears are encouraged by the poet to sit side by side—perhaps even hold hands—in his work, the result is poetry that’s unsafe at any meter. In the book’s acknowledgements, Watsky notes that he is grateful to his wife and sons “for putting up with what poetry puts people through.”

Let this acknowledgement serve as a warning to the reader that Telling the Difference has the power to unleash the imagination at the borderline of chaos and enlightenment. Bound together, uneasy laughter and joyful pain have great power whether they are borne by a pet crayfish named Cumbersome “all tarted up with dust bunnies,” diver ants who’ll chew up “the fortuitous drunk passed out in the wrong place, Granny when she falls and can’t get up,” or a girl tied to “the nearly-wiggled-out pin of a fragmentation grenade.”

Watsky’s has organized Telling the Difference into four sections, “”Temple of Kali,” “The Closest,” “What People Learn,” and Piglet Mind,” bookended neatly in between a prologue called “All Good Things” and an epilogue called “Twins Discuss Heaven.” When the prologue suggests that saying “all good things must come to an end” is mere consolation like the “dummy nipples proffered between feeds,” the book’s stage is set for multiple associations between the transitory and the infinite. In the epilogue, George says “I believe in outer space. There isn’t room for heaven” and Simon explains that if heaven were real, we “would see Grandpa Seymour flying around in his coffin.” What else is there to say?

In reality, Watsky says a lot within the illusory confines of this 81-page collection. He speaks volumes about Bluejay’s warning in “Toad Fever,” a man who smashes walnuts with his manhood in “The Magnificent Goldstein” and the danger of words in “Language Fallen into the Wrong Hands.”

Telling the Difference is a wondrous, no-boundaries delight. However, if your hands are the wrong hands for a volatile serving of unsafe words, please remember that you’ve been warned that Watsky will put you through heavens, hells and hoops you didn’t know existed.
View all my reviews

—Malcolm

Review: ‘The Witch of Babylon’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews11 Comments

The Witch Of BabylonThe Witch Of Babylon by D.J. McIntosh

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

D. J. McIntosh begins her planned Mesopotamian Trilogy with the page-turner “The Witch of Babylon” about a prospective royal treasure trove that may have been hidden away when the city of Nineveh fell in 612 B.C. Written in the ancient-secrets-modern-adventures style of fiction pioneered by Katherine Neville in “The Eight,” McIntosh’s story focuses on New York antiquities dealer John Madison’s sudden involvement in a ruthless treasure hunt for gold and gems in war-torn Iraq in 2003.

John’s late brother Stephen, a specialist in Assyrian archeology, may have been holding an engraving saved from looters at Iraq’s National Museum. After Hal Vanderlin purportedly steals the engraving, Hal dies of mysterious causes, giving opposing groups of treasure hunters the impression that John either has the artifact or knows how to find it.

Like other novels in this genre by Neville, Dan Brown and Raymond Khoury, “The Witch of Babylon’s” plot only makes sense to readers as a series of experts throughout the story continuously discuss (and sometimes lecture about) the relevant myths, history and arcane wisdom. This trademark of the genre can, at times, make readers wonder if they’re reading ancient history or modern fiction. In spite this back-story information, McIntosh keeps her plot moving. John Madison, who has had no time to come to terms with his brother’s death in an automobile accident, is always in danger; he can never be quite sure which of the other players in this deadly game are the good, the bad, or the ugly.

“The Witch of Babylon” features interlocking plots within plots from ancient Nineveh to Baghdad to New York City. The ancient history, which involves one of the Bible’s minor prophets, is just as compelling as the modern tragedy of antiquities looting in war-torn countries. Like his late brother, John believes the engraving belongs in a museum. Most of the other characters only see dollar signs and will kill anyone who gets in their way.
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You can learn more about the novel, the history and the problem of antiquities looting on the book’s website.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey,” “The Sun Singer” and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”  His new novel “Sarabande” will be released this fall.

Hard drive crashes, finished novels, book chats

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books4 Comments

Dear Dell Computer

My wife and I have been leasing and purchasing Dell computers since the 1980s. Suffice it to say, we’ve sent you a lot of money over the years. So, when I’m in the middle of finishing my adventure novel Sarabande, I feel rather let down when my two-year old Dell Inspiron 330 quits on me with a hard drive crash.

The PC is totally non-functional. Won’t boot. Using some trusty SpinRite software, I find that the hard drive is so bad that even trying to extract my data from it might cause it to be even more trashed than it is—whatever that means.

So now, we are forced to buy a new box, complete with new software because—naturally—the software we purchased with the 330 can’t be moved to another PC. Yes, we’re buying from you guys again, but we’re less than pleased.

Finished Novels

I realized several days after the Dell Computer crashed how lucky it was that I had backed up the most recent version of Sarabande on a flash drive a nanosecond before the computer was toast. Consequently, even though the book was done, I kept tinkering with it because it was a miracle it existed at all.

I did add a new scene that I dreamt about adding in the middle of the night, so I think my muse was right about that. But otherwise, I was just tinkering, just refusing to let go.  So, I sent it to Vanilla Heart Publishing yesterday just to get it out of the house. It should be available this fall.

Smoky Talks Books

My friend and colleague Smoky Zeidel is having a VHP Day on her blog Smoky Talks Books this coming Monday, July 25th.  She will be chatting with Vanilla Heart Publishing authors Malcolm R. Campbell, Vila Spiderhawk, Robert Hays, Melinda Clayton, S R Claridge, Collin Kelley, Charmaine Gordon, Marilyn Celeste Morris, and Janet Lane Walters.

Fortunately, I didn’t go on a rant about Dell computer because that would have taken up all the space on her blog. Stop by and see what makes us tick rather than what ticks us off.

—Malcolm

Review: ‘The Butterfly’s Kingdom’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, fiction, reviews2 Comments

The Butterfly's KingdomThe Butterfly’s Kingdom by Gwendolyn Geer Field

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gwendolyn Greer Field has woven together the lives of the career-oriented Elizabeth Bishop and her old friend Annie into a compelling and complex psychological and spiritual coming of age story. Bishop, who plans to leave her increasingly empty high-profile New York City job visits Annie in a small town because Annie’s life is falling apart and she needs help.

Annie’s husband Arthur committed suicide a year earlier, plunging what had appeared to be a perfect home into a world of secrets and doubt. Annie’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Betsy—who was Arthur’s favorite—blames Annie for the family’s ills. Her eight-year-old brother, Sam, who was ignored by Arthur, is less overt about his feelings.

Without realizing it, Elizabeth steps into a minefield of doubts, secrets and mysterious undercurrents, many of which cannot seem to be openly discussed. The cast of characters also includes Arthur’s former best friend Jackson, whom Annie despises for reasons she will not say, and Luke, Elizabeth’s high-school boyfriend whom she hasn’t seen or heard from in years.

“The Butterfly’s Kingdom” focuses primarily on the multiple conversations between these characters as they try to understand each other and their complicated relationships. Elizabeth, who went to Annie’s side as a rescuer not only has to come to terms with who her old friend has become, but with the fact that she herself also needs to be rescued from whatever sent her away to New York in the first place.

Field allows her characters the time and space to get to know each other and discover where their lacks of trust begin and end. While the conversations are therapeutic and demonstrate that all of those involved need to confide and trust each other more than they do, they also show that a temporal solution isn’t going to fix all the discordant lives.

“The Butterfly’s Kingdom” is also about spiritual journeys. While the spirituality has a clear Christian focus, it should resonate well with readers from many faiths.

This beautifully imagined book has a pervasive editorial flaw. The characters’ conversations all follow the same pattern: When one character makes a pithy and revealing statement about another, the statement is followed by “you’re not mad at me for saying this, are you?” or by “do you know what I mean?” This device for transitioning from the pronouncement back into give-and-take dialogue is overused throughout the book and tends to blur the characters’ personalities because they all do the same thing.

Nonetheless, this book of mysteries and secrets provides a thoughtful plot, issues that many readers may be experiencing in their own lives, and beautiful spiritual images and analogies en route to a satisfying conclusion.
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Upcoming Reviews :

The Witch of Babylon by D. J. McIntosh

Telling the Difference by Paul Watsky

Soul Stories by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

—Malcolm

Another Glacier Park Novel

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books3 Comments
Mt. Gould - NPS Photo

When my next novel Sarabande is released this fall by Vanilla Heart Publishing, it will become my third novel set partially in Glacier National Park. Sarabande’s Glacier Park locations include Mt. Gould, the Angel Wing, Lake Josephine, Swiftcurrent Lake, Many Glacier Hotel, and Chief Mountain.

When the novel begins, my protagonist Sarabande has just finished spending the night on top of the Angel Wing. I’m sure the park service prohibits this practice, but then she lives in a look-alike universe that is accessed via several portals in the park. Her world is the 1970s. Our world, at the time the novel is set, is the 1980s.

99 cents on Kindle

She has much to learn about our world, from electricity, to the existence of a major hotel sitting where there’s an empty space in her world, to cars and highways, and how to travel across country. The Many Glacier area, as I mention in my e-book Bears; Where they Fought: Life In Glacier Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley, is rich in history, trails and mountains to climb.

The popular valley is not only a draw for tourists, but is my favorite place in my favorite park. I can think of no better place for an adventure novel. We have the extremes of weather, of dangerous high places and the chances of meeting grizzly bears or moose or ospreys or wolverines.

I’m looking forward to the release of Sarabande for many reasons. It’s my long-promised sequel to The Sun Singer.  It’s told from a female protagonist’s point of view—a first for me. And it gives me an excuse to write again about Glacier National Park.  I have been posting about the heroine’s journey itself in my Sarabande’s Journey weblog.  It’s been fun to explore the differences between the solar journey in The Sun Singer, which follows Joseph Campbell’s well-known series of mythic steps in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the lunar journey which is quite different.

Lunar journeys are usually much darker and much for frightening because they focus on the lore of the night and the unconscious and, as we see in many myths, the domain of the underworld. Nevertheless, Sarabande is an adventure story with its primary scenes in a mountain world that park visitors know so well. The story also unfolds along U.S. Highway 2, the wetlands of northeast Montana’s prairie pothole region, and in Decatur, Illinois where Robert Adams, the Sun Singer lives.

As we get closer to the release date, I’ll begin posting excerpts of the book. It will appear first as an e-book on Amazon’s Kindle and in the other formats available at the smashwords.com site. A bit later, it will also be available as a paperback. If you’re a fan of Glacier National Park, I hope you will enjoy both the story and the location.

—Malcolm

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books1 Comment

Historian David McCullough first caught my attention with his excellent and highly readable Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt in 1982. He’s also focused on President Truman, the Panama Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge.

In May his publisher Simon and Schuster released The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, a book that Kirkus Reviews calls, “An ambitious, wide-ranging study of how being in Paris helped spark generations of American genius. . . . A gorgeously rich, sparkling patchwork, eliciting stories from diaries and memoirs to create the human drama McCullough depicts so well.”

I am definitely adding this book to my wish list. Meanwhile, you’ll find an interesting article about the book on the NPR web site called The Best Of The Louvre, On A Single Canvas. Among the Americans mentioned in the book is Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. Morse also fancied himself an artist, painting a huge canvas showing the then-famous paintings in the Louvre.

You can see the painting at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C and online on the NPR web site.

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Upcoming Reviews

When the de la Cruz Family Danced by Donna Miscolta

The Witch of Babylon by D. J. McIntosh

The Butterfly’s Kingdom by Gwendolyn Greer Field

—Malcolm

Novel samplers – Examples of a writer’s work

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books
1760 Sampler - Wikipedia

Students learning needlework used to demonstrate their skills in samplers that showed examples of what they could do. Traditional samplers included motifs, borders and alphabets in various kinds of stitches. Those of us who like chocolate see the same approach in the famous Whitman’s Samplers, the boxes of candy with a representative assortment of the company’s many varieties.

Vanilla Heart Publishing is taking the same approach to its novelists’ and short story writers’ work. The publisher is bringing together samples of a writer’s work in free PDF documents that can be easily downloaded and then sampled.

I like the idea. As publishing transitions from bricks and mortar bookstores to online bookstores that provide either paperbacks or e-books, it’s nice having a way to see what we’re buying before we click on the BUY button. In a neighborhood bookstore, you can pick up a book and see what it’s like, browsing, reading a bit here and a bit there. Amazon has addressed the issue of excerpts with its READ INSIDE service. Smashwords gives readers a free look at the first chapter or so of each book.

Malcolm's Sampler

The samplers, though, bring multiple works together in one document. My sampler, for example, includes examples of my Jock Stewart stories, excerpts from my two Glacier Park novels (“The Sun Singer” and “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey”) and some of the lunacy from my satirical “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”

I can’t demonstrate my skill with the many variations of chain stitches on a decorative square of fabric. But my publisher’s sampler brings a bit of humor, adventure, description, and excitement together in one file. In an e-book world, it’s a good way to get the feel for a book before you decide to put it on your Kindle or your Nook, or order the paperback version for your shelf.

—Malcolm

You can find more novel samplers for Vanilla Heart Publishing’s authors here.

Where do writers go when they write?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, Glacier National Park6 Comments

When I’m working on a novel, I’m not really here in the real world. That’s what my wife tells me.

I’m variously not present, not listening, forgetful, zoned out, in limbo, or in a cocoon.  When I emerge—hopefully with a completed manuscript for a book that will no doubt soar to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list—I hear what I’ve missed:

  • The neighborhood was taken over by rogue ground squirrels.
  • Iran and Iraq both filled out the paperwork to become U.S. states.
  • Jennifer Lopez appeared at the front door in her new snakeskin blouse and miniskirt and asked if Malcolm could go library and museum hopping with her.
  • All the known planets lined up, creating some interesting birth charts and a few more predictions about the end of the world and/or the end of good taste.

My wife is always the first to know when I type the words THE END on a major draft of a manuscript. I’m like a man who’s just come home from the war, amnesia or prison. And trust me, I have a lot of catching up to do.

Meanwhile, as I typed the words THE END on the manuscript for my newest Glacier National Park novel, Sarabande, today I felt like a child on Christmas morning. Those are very exciting words for an author even though they don’t mean the book, much less the work, is done.

They are a new beginning. The manuscript is fine-tuned. An editor takes a serious look at it, weeding out all the misspelled words, punctuation glitches and any inconsistencies the author hasn’t discovered yet. Cover artwork and release dates are discussed.  And, as I wondered when The Sun Singer and Garden of Heaven were in their about-to-emerge-from-the-cocoon status, I thought how will readers react?

After an author lives inside his story for a while, missing J. Lo’s visit to the front door and the ground squirrels romping through the yard, he hopes readers will also enjoy losing themselves in the story as soon as it appears as an e-book and a paperback.

I don’t put a warning label on it, though. You’re on your own recognizance. If you zone out and miss exciting international events or important wedding anniveraries and birthdays, don’t call me. I’ll be zoned out in another universe.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the recently released Bears; Where they Fought: Life in Glacier Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley, a glimpse at the dramatic history of the most beautiful place on Earth. A Natural Wonderland… Amazing Animals… Early Pioneers…Native Peoples… A Great Flood… Kinnickinnick… Adventures… The Great Northern Railway.

“Give a month at least to this precious reserve.  The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and will make you truly immortal. — John Muir, “Our National Parks,” 1901

New Glacier Park E-Book Explores Swiftcurrent Valley

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, Glacier National Park
Swiftcurrent Valley two months ago - NPS photo

“The road up to Swift Current in its present condition has been known to make a preacher curse, and I have my opinion of the man who makes the trip over this road (!) without breaking the 3rd commandment or perhaps all ten of them.” — Dupuyer, Montana “Acantha,” March 3, 1900

Bears; Where They Fought: Life in Glacier Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley, a new e-book by Malcolm R. Campbell, steps back in time to the short-lived mining boom town of Altyn that prospectors and developers believed would be Montana’s great center of copper and gold mining.

Today, the remains of Altyn sit at the bottom of Lake Sherburne less than a mile from the present-day location of Many Glacier Hotel. Altyn came and went as did the two grizzly bears whose fight attracted the attention of a Piegan hunting party about 1860 and lent a long-forgotten place name that came out of one of the valley’s many stories.

The new e-book, from Vanilla Heart Publishing, looks at some of the valley’s other milestones between those long-ago fighting bears and, the hotel’s construction and development by the Great Northern Railway and the floods of 1964 and 1975.

After employees saved Many Glacier Hotel from the Heaven’s Peak Fire in 1936 and wired the Great Northern that the structure survived, the railroad sent a telegram back with the word “Why?” Though the railroad was beginning to doubt the viability of its Glacier Park holdings, they owned an operated Many Glacier and other hotels and chalets in the park for almost another 30 years.

The hotel was saved in 1936 and, since then, it’s become a National Register property and another enduring legacy of a valley that stretches far back into the past in the land of shining mountains. I first walked into the Swiftcurrent Valley in 1963. Since then, I’ve gone back many times. Bears: Where They Fought is my way of capturing the spirit of the most beautiful country on the planet.

Bears; Where They Fought is available for 99 cents on Kindle and in multiple e-book formats (including PDF) at Smashwords.

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“On a quiet day, however, those walking alongside the relatively recent Lake Sherburne reservoir may hear the voice of grandfather rock whispering a secret: within the scope of geologic time, all rivers are new, and the men and women who follow them are as ephemeral as monarch butterflies on a summer afternoon.” — “Bears; Where They Fought”

—Malcolm

Western Books, Briefly Noted

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books2 Comments

“Forced to Abandon Our Fields: The 1914 Clay Southworth Gila River Pima Interviews” by David H. DeJong – 192 pages with eight photographs and three maps, March 31. 2011.

Publisher’s Description: During the nineteenth century, upstream diversions from the Gila River decreased the arable land on the Gila River Indian Reservation to only a few thousand acres. As a result the Pima Indians, primarily an agricultural people, fell into poverty. Many Pima farmers and leaders lamented this suffering and in 1914 the United States Indian Irrigation Service assigned a 33-year-old engineer named Clay “Charles” Southworth to oversee the Gila River adjudication. As part of that process, Southworth interviewed 34 Pima elders, thus putting a face on the depth of hardships facing many Indians in the late nineteenth century.

Reviewer’s Comment: “DeJong’s presentation of the oral interview transcripts is excellent. These interviews are a rich source of cultural and historical information about the Pimas.”—David Rich Lewis, Utah State University

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“Montana Moments: History on the Go” by Ellen Baumlier – 200 pages, September 14, 2010, by the Montana Historical Society’s interpretative historian.

Publisher’s Description: Forget dreary dates and boring facts. Montana Moments distills the most funny, bizarre, and interesting stories from Montana’s history into pure entertainment. Meet the colorful cast of the famous and not-so-famous desperadoes, vigilantes, madams, and darned good men and women (and a few critters) who made the state’s history. You’ll get a laugh from the story of the transient vaudevillian who wrote Montana’s state song. Captain James C. Kerr’s tale of the Flathead Lake monster might make you shiver. No matter your reaction, the episodes recounted here always entertain. Best of all, each vignette takes about ninety seconds to read. So have fun exploring Montana – and enjoy a little history as you go.

Reviewer’s Comment: “The pages of Montana Moments overflow with enjoyable historical vignettes that cover nearly everything important that has happened in Montana’s history. Newcomers will find an excellent introduction to what makes Montana tick, while Baumler’s careful research and entertaining writing style will delight old timers.” — Harry Fritz, University of Montana

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You may also like:

Montana’s Historical Highway Markers by Jon Axline and Glenda Clay Bradshaw

Montana Place Names from Alzada to Zortman by MHS Research Staff

Montana Native Plants and Early Peoples by Jeff Hart

–Malcolm

 

set in Glacier National Park