Tag: fiction

Book Review: ‘The Miracle of Mercy Land’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews8 Comments

The Miracle of Mercy Land: A NovelThe Miracle of Mercy Land: A Novel by River Jordan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This wise, well-told 1930s-era story about a young woman from the back woods of Bittersweet Creek, Alabama, who moves to a nearby city to work for the newspaper will haunt the jaded cloak off a cynic and the bloom off a Southern Magnolia in the arena of pure beauty.

A preacher’s daughter, protagonist Mercy Land is steeped in the spiritual and plain-spoken common sense of the rural South. She carries her heritage deep in her humble soul when she begins work for Doc on the Bay City “Banner.” While Doc is the epitome of a caring, community oriented small town newspaper editor, his kindness contains sad flaws.

The focal point of the novel is a shining book of light that appears out of nowhere on Doc’s desk. The book knows everything, roads taken and roads not taken, about the residents of Bay City. It contains secrets only an arrogant individual would dare to know. But then, why did it appear? To read or not to read is the bittersweet question that follows Doc and Mercy with more urgency than the daily news.

Like any good editor, Doc finds it difficult to sit on the story of a lifetime. Like any young woman who fondly recalls her formative years, Mercy cannot ignore what the book knows about a childhood companion who vanished without a trace years ago.

From Mercy’s point of view, “To say that it became a distraction would be a flat-out lie. It became an obsession. Doc swore me to complete secrecy so that no one in town knew a thing. But that wasn’t the toughest part; he swore me to keep the secret from everyone in Bittersweet Creek.”

As Jordan writes in a note to the reader at the end of the book, this is a story about choices and their impact on a person’s interconnected relationships. The novel’s fine-spun wisdom, mysterious and engaging plot and shimmering magical realism are the stuff of dreams and wondrous storytelling.

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Book Review: ‘Evenings on Dark Island’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books2 Comments

Evenings on Dark IslandEvenings on Dark Island by Rhett Devane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What do the rich and famous, a Florida swamp, an expensive upscale spa, a rat-faced dog, state-of-the-art galas, NASCAR, pot, an inner garden of rare hybrid plants and vampires have in common?

The standard answer is nothing.

But in Evenings on Dark Island authors Rhett DeVane and Larry Rock have turned the highly improbable into a hilarious and tastefully bloody neck biter that’s quite something.

Vincent Bedsloe, who has party planning in blood that’s not altogether his, is the flamboyant, details-oriented master of an exclusive spa set in the middle of an isolated Florida island where the rich and spoiled come to be drained of their income–and perhaps a bit more–while they are ramped up into an ecstatic level of health and fitness.

Bedsloe, who ponders over the emotions of his guests–emotions he no longer has–often retreats into an inner sanctum where he watches old movies and gets his kicks by debunking the silly vampire lore flowing out of Hollywood like blood from a burst artery.

Vincent is a kind-hearted vampire who cares about his human guests. Even his NASCAR-crazed, white trash vampire mechanic Jimmy Rob has an occasional redeeming thought: “He led her to the far, shadowy corner of the bar, behind a thick hedge. Kissed her again. Nibbled her neck. Bit down and drank until he felt her knees buckle. He pulled back abruptly. No need to kill the gal. She’d had a hard enough life.”

The only somewhat normal person in the book is DEA agent Reanita Geneva Register who has been inserted into the mix by the Feds at great expense to prove the obscure island is a haven for drug smugglers. Posing as a rich heiress, Register not only feels naked without her gun but a little nonplussed by her ability to enjoy the island’s pleasures.

The tight-lipped Dark Island staff are notoriously loyal to their employer and, with the annual Blue Blood Ball benefit for the American Hemophiliac Association fast approaching, much too busy to be easily questioned about the strange boats passing in the night.

The authors advertise Evenings on Dark Island as a fang-in-tooth spoof of the vampire genre. And what a spoof it is. This book is not only inventive and well crafted, but it’s filled with the kinds of one-liners and puns that will even wake the undead.

The plot, characters and setting work to perfection without blood, gore and body counts. While the spa at Dark Island may not be the transfusion you need for your physical health and well being in real life, DeVane’s and Rock’s collaboration has a high-clotting factor as well as the kinds of hijinks that will have you laughing all the way to the blood bank.

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Malcolm R. Campbell , who would never dream of writing about vampires, is the author of Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, a novel that satirizes the blood suckers in government and the newspaper business.

Fiction: the little true-life details

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing6 Comments

When I write fiction set in real places, I like including the real names of stores, streets and attractions, both past and present.

These little true-life facts help describe the places even though readers unfamiliar with the areas usually won’t know whether those details are real or made up–especially if the details don’t refer to widely known local attractions and buildings.

For example, in my adventure novel The Sun Singer, I mention Glacier National Park’s Many Glacier Hotel.

Cypress at Tate's Hell
In Garden of Heaven, I mention Florida panhandle locations such as Alligator Point and Tate’s Hell Swamp. The names alone conjure up impressions in the readers’ minds even before my characters get there and experience the beach and swamp locations that aptly characterize the North Florida environment.

In some cases, my details come out of the past, adding to the “historical record” so to speak while functioning in the novel as places to shop and things to see. Set in the 1960s to 1980s, Garden of Heaven mentions the particulars of the family’s 1950 Nash Ambassador as well as the fact that it was purchased at Bopp Motors in Decatur, Illinois.

In this case, it was easy to write about my protagonist David Ward’s family traveling in a Nash since that’s what my family had when I was six years old. As for Bopp motors, I could have called it Smith Motors or Illinois Motors, but our Nash came from Bopp, so I used the real name of the dealership.

The old Nash was part of my experience as a child just as, in Garden of Heaven, it’s part of David Ward’s experience as a child. To some extent, the little true-life details are simply part of “writing that you know.” But they also help nail down both the action sequences and the place settings in the story.

Example from the book:

He was riding with his parents and grandparents in the proud 1950, blue Nash Ambassador equipped with latest of everything from Airflyte Construction to Duo-Servo brakes to Hydra-Matic drive, from Great Falls, where they visited random aunts and uncles to Pincher Creek, Alberta, where they visited assorted cousins. The car was hot, in spite of the Weather Eye ventilating system.

Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley adds ambiance to The Sun Singer whether I made up the name or not. So, too, Tate’s Hell Swamp near the mouth of the Apalachicola River at Carrabelle, Florida. I could have called these locations Glacier Resort Hotel and Murky Waters Swamp, but I like the authenticity of the real names and places.

In some ways, those obscure true-life details give readers who remember the old days and/or who have traveled through an area in my novels, a little something extra.

—Malcolm

Related Post: Impeach Earl Warren – About the old signs that used to appear throughout the Florida and Georgia countryside at the time Garden of Heaven is set.
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The Sun Singer is gloriously convoluted, with threads that turn on themselves and lyrical prose on which you can float down the mysterious, sun-shaded channels of this charmingly liquid story. –Diana Gabaldon, Echo in the Bone (Outlander)

Odysseys – multiple adventures

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, fiction, heropath

We can’t see the word odyssey without thinking of the epic Greek poem attributed to Homer that begins (in Robert Fagles’ translation):

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

Indeed, the word stems from Odysseus’ trip, meaning a long and wandering physical or spiritual quest with multiple adventures and changes of fortune.

My novel Garden of Heaven is subtitled “an Odyssey” because protagonist David Ward ends up in many places with many people before returning to the Montana ranch where he grew up.

The novel has multiple locations: Glacier National Park, the Florida Panhandle, Chicago, Hawai’i, the Philippines, the Netherlands, central Illinois, Pakistan, and the Gulf of Tonkin. In each place, new problems and adventures occur.

But there are some common themes. One is his first lover’s relentless quest for revenge which is caused by a problem of which David is unaware. Another is David’s spiritual journey which begins on a vision quest in Glacier National Park and then haunts and inspires him from one end of his odyssey to the other. And, like Homer’s Odysseus, David also has a way with words, though it remains to be seen whether this is more of a blessing than a curse.

Untangling the lies and truths strewn throughout his journey will take David quite a few years. In the process, he will serve aboard an aircraft carrier, climb one of the most difficult mountains in the world, work as a professor at a small college, and consort with horses, eagles and ravens. Garden of Heaven is not one adventure, it’s many. And, as in “real life,” David’s good fortune often looks like bad fortune, and vice versa.
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Garden of Heaven is available as an e-book from OmniLit for $5.99.

For more information about Garden of Heaven, see my August 3, 2010 interview on BookBuzzr.

Review: John Atkinson’s ‘Timekeeper II’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, John Atkinson, reviews

Timekeeper IITimekeeper II by John Atkinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In John Atkinson’s 2008 novel Timekeeper, Johnnyboy leaves his dysfunctional Virginia home at fourteen after his father “Bugdaddy” beat him again. In Oklahoma, Chief calls him “Timekeeper” and sends him on a vision quest to find himself. He does, but he is not yet whole.

At the beginning of Timekeeper II, scheduled for a September 21, 2010 release from il Piccolo editions, Atkinson writes, “I went to the Sacred Mountain in the flesh, but didn’t see it clearly until I returned in a ghost world dream.” Timekeeper II isn’t a clock-time, linear novel. It’s a dreamtime novel where all the dualities that haunted Johnnyboy must be brought into harmony in order for Timekeeper to face the world and himself as a fully integrated person.

The dualities arise in Timekeeper’s mind like opposing armies: a humiliated, illiterate man in a world where the ability to read is not only mandatory, but presumed; a man of mixed white and Native American parentage who is unaccepted and foreign in both worlds; a seeker on the path who left home to find himself while leaving his mother and first spiritual teacher Morning Song behind to face the wrath of an abusive father who once said, “Don’t turn Indian on me, boy! I’ll kill you dead in your tracks.”

Timekeeper II is a rare treat, a window that opens and re-opens into a dreamer’s world where events and personages from the world of form and the world of spirit mix and interact and sometimes contradict each other. Neither Chief nor the illusive and powerful Round Woman will give Timekeeper clear and definitive self-help lessons. Instead, he must take on the role of a shaman and enter the ghost world and find spirits who will help him heal himself.

Once again, John Atkinson has conjured up a gritty, highly original story where reality itself turns in upon itself and carries both his protagonist and his readers through the fires of transformation into a world where all conflicts disappear. Timekeeper II is highly recommended for all adventurous readers.

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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Garden of Heaven,” “The Sun Singer” and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”

Book Review: ‘Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books9 Comments

Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge by Ramey Channell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Perhaps it was fate, but cousins Lily Claire and Willie T. were born the very same instant just after their mothers Sara Onselle Nash and Rachel Bodicea Nock got into a fight about something or other and just about trashed their shared hospital room.

After that, Lily Claire and Willie T. couldn’t help but be inseparable friends and playmates throughout the old roads and backwoods of Moonlight Ridge near Eden, Alabama during a long-ago time when skinned knees, grubby hands and natural music were more prevalent than they are today.

Protagonist Lily Claire relates that Willy T. “was the meanest little booger you’d ever want to see. In the early years, before we started to school, we fought about as much as we played. And then it got so that, for the most part, we couldn’t tell the difference between fighting and playing.”

There’s a lot of laughter in “Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge.” Author Ramey Channell has filled her charming story with a boocoos (that’s a Southern word meaning “a lot”) of well-drawn, quasi-eccentric mountain people. When they come together, they’re just naturally funny even though that’s not always their intention.

They’re good people, too, and no-nonsence pragmatic, the kind it would be a pleasure to know. In the novel’s introduction, Channell says that even though she’s not Lily Claire, she used to be a lot like her. Channell grew up on a mountain like Moonlight ridge, one that “seemed like a mystical place then.”

Channell has a good memory, and she writes in the kind of lyrical prose that comes from a writer with an ear for the language of the place where her characters are coming to life on the page. Moonlight Ridge is filled with magic and mystery. As it turns out, Lily Claire and Willy T. have a better handle on what’s what in the magic and mystery department than the adults.

After this charming story comes to an end, readers will discover a handy glossary that defines words like “boocoos” and “Arby-vida.” There are some recipes, too, for those who can’t wait to try Granny’s Persimmon Cookies, Cabbage Chow-Chow or barbecued ribs with Sam Nash’s “Secret” sauce.

While one expects a talented storyteller like Ramey Channell to spin a fine backwoodsy yarn, finding food at the end of the tale is a bonus. As Lily Claire says about almost every wise revelation, “I guess it just goes to show you.”

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Malcolm

Ask not for whom the Minotaur waits

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn heropath4 Comments

In the classic Greek myth, Theseus enters King Minos’ labyrinth at Crete, finds and slays the dangerous Minotaur at its center, and finds his way back out by following a linen thread he laid down to mark his path on his way in.

16th Century Engraving - Wikipedia Commons
The story is symbolic. Labyrinths, writes Jodi Lorimer in her book Dancing at the Edge of Death: The Origins of the Labyrinth in the Paleolithic represent both order and chaos. It depends on one’s ever-changing point of view.

They also represent the unconscious and an individual’s self. Until one knows himself, part of it is unconscious and filled with fears, demons and the basic energies of primal needs. The Minotaur is an apt symbol for these and slaying it is an apt symbol for facing one’s fears and subsequently becoming more whole and more aware.

The silken thread, a gift of King Minos’ daughter Ariadne in the original myth, represents the hero’s intuition, his present (though possibly faint) connection to his higher self, a self the Greeks personified as one god or another.

The hero’s journey, as described in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces has been used as a template for understanding classic myths, exploring the depths of oneself, and creating compelling novels and screen plays.

In fiction, as in myth, the purpose of the story is always the hero’s transformation or his failure to achieve it. He undertakes a dangerous physical or psychological journey and in the process of doing that finds and slays his inner demons. The physical journey, complete with friends, enemies, demons, angels, trials, and tribulations is–in fiction and myth–the catalyst for the hero’s growth.

While the hero’s journey as a template is often the most obvious in epic films such as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, it also serves as a structure for stories involving characters we might consider to be “every day people.” These stories always contain conflict, a conflict that typically cannot be successfully resolved until the main character comes to grips with his or her own failings, fears, phobias, blind spots and prejudices. If one can’t personally identify with the journey and the minotaurs in Titanic and Spiderman, then Dirty Dancing and Annie Hall may be easier to vicariously experience.

The twists and turns of the action-packed physical trek, battle or other conflict mirror the main character’s inner journey through the labyrinth of self. At the conclusion of the novel or film, we not only expect to see that the battle has been won or the crime has been solved, but that the protagonist has changed in the process.

Without facing a Minotaur of one kind or another, the hero cannot grow. None of us can. Most heroes don’t set out to consciously change themselves. Harry Potter, for example, didn’t vow to confront his worst fears. Instead, he went to school to learn magic, he ended up fighting the evil Lord Voldemort, encountered his worst fears in the process and triumphed over them, ending up as quite a different person.

Whether he’s overtly conscious of his inner journey or not, no hero in fiction or myth asks for whom the Minotaur waits because he knows it waits for him. Every good story has one and perhaps every good life has one as well.
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As a personal note, when I watch Hollywood films, read novels, or consider stories I might want to write, I don’t envision the storyline and ask “Where’s Waldo?” I ask “Where’s the Minotaur?”

Then, at the conclusion of the novel or feature film, I don’t just want to see that the Luke Skywalker has destroyed the death star, that Indiana Jones has gotten the lost ark away from the Nazis, or that Erin Brockovich has defeated a corporation that’s been dumping hazardous materials into the groundwater. I want to see that Luke, Indiana and Erin have personally changed, for that change is they axis on which the ultimate story ultimately turns.

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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two hero’s journey novels (complete with figurative labyrinths and minotaurs), Garden of Heaven and The Sun Singer.

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For the Florida connection in this novel, see my post Tate’s Hell about a wild swamp in the panhandle near where I grew up that made a perfect counterpart in the novel to Glacier’s Garden of Heaven valley.

Review: ‘Awakening of the Dream Riders’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, magic

Awakening of the Dream Riders Awakening of the Dream Riders by Lynda Louise Mangoro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kyra has discovered how to fly.

As Lynda Louise Mangoro’s magical novel “Awakening of the Dream Riders” begins, fourteen-year-old Kyra is trying out her new talent: “Her favorite unicorn poster suddenly loomed directly ahead. Pulling back, she slowed just in time to avoid a collision with the wall and sent herself tumbling backward through the air, rolling head over heels in a clumsy display of aero-gymnastics.”

Before Kyra discovers what she’s doing, veteran readers of paranormal fiction will guess that her joyful and liberating flight is astral projection. But she’s too elated to concern herself about technical terms. She can’t wait to share her stunning discovery with her best friend at school.

This well-told story moves at light speed, as fast as a person flying in their “light body” can soar across town in the blink of a thought. Soon, Kyra and her friends, Ray, Lauren, Crystal, and even the science-minded Noah are talking about “dream riding.”

On the back cover of “Awakening of the Dream Riders,” Mangoro describes Kyra’s world as “a quiet street in a picturesque English seaside town.” As Kyra and her friends discover, that’s only one reality, and it’s heavy and dense when compared to dream riding.

But unknown shadows await them within the infinite scope of the bright reality that knowing how to fly has offered them. Kyra and her friends will discover their unique dream riding talents, talents they must develop quickly in order to survive a tragedy their freshly opened eyes do not yet see.

“Awakening of the Dream Riders” plunges the reader into an inventive paranormal adventure. The high-energy magic of the story arises out of the fact that Kyra’s world on the ground and in the air appears very real. And there’s more to come: Mangoro’s debut novel is the first in a projected series of open-your-mind fantasy adventures for young adults and adults.

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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two magical realism novels, “Garden of Heaven” and “The Sun Singer.”

Book Review: ‘We Hear the Dead’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Rap twice for “yes.” Rap once for “no.”

If spirits weren’t talking through raps, taps and other assorted sounds in the darkened rooms, how were the girls doing it? Some said Maggie and Kate Fox were frauds when they first claimed to hear the dead in Hydesville, New York in 1848.

Perhaps Maggie, the protagonist, had a gift for counseling and perhaps her more adventurous sister Kate truly had the evolving abilities of a medium, even though the whole thing began as a prank. Their mother believed more than they believed. Their older sister Leah saw that if “spirit circles” were properly presented, there was money to be made.

Welcome to the world presented in living color through the well-focused lens of Dianne K. Salerni’s very readable novel “We Hear the Dead.”

While the dashing military hero and Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane, who had his eyes on Maggie, did not believe the rapping came from the spirit world, many of the rich and famous did. The Fox sisters, who were born on the wrong side of the tracks, became sought after by high society. One of the strong points of this novel is the dynamic interplay between historical and fictional characters in believable settings as the sisters travel and attract press attention and large audiences.

Before you begin reading “We Hear the Dead,” you will know that the story is true. As you read, you’ll quickly discover that the Salerni’s wonderful historical novel not only brings the Fox sisters to life, but the dead with whom they spoke as well.

“We Hear the Dead” is real because Salerni knows how to weave solid research and meaningful historical details into a novel that begins with two confessions, moves on to the haunting, and remains strong and vital throughout.
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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Garden of Heaven,” “The Sun Singer” and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”

Fine storytelling: ‘Above the Fray, Part II’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Above the Fray Part Two Above the Fray Part Two by Kris Jackson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Part I of “Above the Fray” (CraigsPress, May 2009) follows the exploits of protagonist Nathaniel Curry, a fifteen-year-old telegraph operator from Richmond, with the Union Army Balloon Corps from the Peninsula Campaign during the spring and summer of 1862 through the Battle of Antietam that September.

Part II begins as General Ambrose Burnside, who was placed in command of the Army of the Potomac in November 1862, is pushing into Virginia with the objective of capturing the Confederate capital at Richmond. En route, the Union Army will suffer a costly defeat at Fredericksburg in December with a battle plan that Nathaniel sees as “simple to the point of folly.”

Richmond will not fall until the spring of 1865, two years after Chief Aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe has resigned from the balloon corps due to pay and logistics disputes. The Union Army Balloon Corps, a civilian contract organization, disbands in August 1863.

Curry, however, is not out of the war. There’s no precise way to say just how he stays in the war without giving away the inventive plot. Both the Union and the Confederacy want him to spy for them, for he is either an exceptionally streetwise chameleon or a man protected by the gods. He is equally at home with generals and prostitutes, with Southern slaves and northern infantrymen, and with soaring above the fray of a battlefield and with slogging it out under fire on both sides of the lines.

Taken together, parts I and II of “Above the Fray” give the reader a balloonist’s view of the Civil War from Atlanta to Richmond to Washington, D.C. Jackson’s research is broad and impeccable, his ear for dialogue is well-tuned, and his rendering of the war from multiple theaters and perspectives is stunning.

One evening Curry and his friend Vogler are sitting in camp with several of the many historical characters, Thaddeus Lowe, James Allen and Ezra Allen reading mail.

“‘Solly,’ Nathaniel Curry said, ‘you get more mail than the rest of us together.’

“‘Vogler looked over his glasses at him and smiled.

“‘What are you reading now? What language is that?’

“‘It’s German. This is the journal of the Royal Society of Prussia.’

“‘Wouldn’t they speak Prussian?’

“‘No. You’re thinking of Russia where they speak Russian.’
“‘Oh. The letters aren’t the same as ours.’”

Vogler then tells his fellow aeronauts he’s reading an account of several record-setting balloon ascents by aerialists Henry Coxwell and James Glaisher in England who reached a height of over 37,000 feet. The second flight occurred about the same time the balloon corps was at Antietam. The aeronauts are excited about the record, and they discuss the impact of the cold temperatures and thinner atmosphere on both the aerialists and their balloon.

Such accounts expand the reach of the novel to events far from the field of battle, greatly adding to the perspective of both the characters and the reader. Similarly, events Nathaniel observes at the Second Battle of Bull Run in “Above the Fray, Part I,” bring him to the attention of those conducting the controversial court-martial of Union General Fitz-John Porter in Part II where the issues of politics, command competency and scapegoats intertwine.

Is it likely that a young telegraph operator from Richmond would be on speaking terms with President Abraham Lincoln, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and multiple officers in both the northern and southern chains of command? Perhaps not.

But Kris Jackson makes it credible and entertaining. “Above the Fray, Part II” is fine storytelling by an author who knows the territory. When Nathaniel Curry approaches Appomattox Court House in the spring of 1865, he has come a very long way from that long ago day when he inadvertently rode a balloon into the sky with Professor Thaddeus Lowe, that day when Lowe said, “The sun’ll not rise today, Nathaniel. You and I shall have to rise to meet it.”

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Note: The trade paperback cover of Part II looks slightly different than the one displayed here by GoodReads.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of “The Sun Singer” and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”