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Maze 2:15:2

I got some good news! On the advice of a friend, I submitted my book to the Sacramento Library a few months ago. A Panel of librarians selected Maze and will be giving me — one of only 40 local authors chosen — a table at the Galleria for the second annual Local Author Festival, on April 10th… here is the link! — Author Festival — I will be signing and selling books and hope to see you there.

In the last episode 2:15:1 Ame and Bless ride their bikes to the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, to get some peace and quiet. Kell is nowhere to be found. They need each other more than ever now.

Book Two
Daughter of Darkness Series
Chapter 15:2

review

Review: I Heard That Song Before

I Heard That Song Before by Mary Higgins Clark
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I need to start by saying I have been reading MH Clark’s books since I was a teenager way back in the eighties, when computers were the size of small houses, Ronald Reagan was president, electric typewriters were fashionable, and photographs had to be developed to be seen (unless you had a slide projecter or viewfinder…uhh… S.O.S… what the hell is she talking about)? Anyway, libraries were still libraries and books were still books, then, and I read a lot of them in my alligator tee shirts drinking grape koolaid with a Canadian penny zippered inside the pocket on my sneakers. And all of her books I read were gripping, suspenseful, amazing!

Then I found this one a quarter century later, part of a Reader’s Digest collection of four, while watching my clothes spin in the dryer at the laundromat down the street. They have books lined up on a ledge which runs along the washers, and it’s give-a-book, take-a-book. So I took it and devoured it in a few days. Sadly the plot and characters and everything felt very rushed, almost like it was an outline for a much larger and longer work she didn’t have time to write.

The setup was interesting, all the players moving in and around an old mansion which had been taken apart stone by stone and transported to New Jersey from Wales and re-assembled on 50 acres just a few miles from Manhattan. And the haunting memory of someone who disappeared there. Someone who died there. And someone else who disappeared. Intriguing! Old money, New York City. Ambassadors, landscape artists, drunks, addicts, art thieves, and shady personal attendants fill the pages.

Sadly the book did not live up to its potential.
Ironic it was a stone’s throw from my spin cycle.

I know MH Clark has so much talent and I cannot end there, on a sour note, after having picked her up again. I decided I am gonna go back to her first bestseller she wrote in 1975 and read that one. I probably read it already, back when a trash compactor was your foot inside the bag, when Coleco and Atari were the gamer’s games, but I want that old feeling back, when I was gripped by suspense and she had me, amazed.

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Maze 2:15:1

In the last episode 2:14:7 Ame is waxing poetic on love and the orphans have come back from the seven eleven and are literally forcing her to play with them. If she refuses they might push her into traffic. Damn kids!

Book Two
Daughter of Darkness Series
Chapter 15:1

review

Review: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kay Jamison has spent most of her adult life studying mood disorders and living with bipolar illness. In this memoir, she faithfully shares her experience. She takes us inside a manic episode as she remembers it, and then the subsequent deep depression. Even breathing becomes a chore. She details the times she spun out and how the beauty of the world through fresh mania soon becomes lost in a whirlwind of racing thoughts and confusion. Anyone who has needed medication may relate to the resistance to taking it Kay describes so well, and the consequences of refusing meds when you need them. For years she started and stopped Lithium, and even when she knew she needed it, she would stop when either she fell dreamy in love with the memory of her mania, or the side effects became too much to bear. Turns out she was on a much higher dose than she needed. But the side effects of Lithium were nothing compared with the devastation which came of allowing her mania to resurface. Her marriage and friendships were poisoned. She maxed out her credit cards. Her professional life suffered. She wanted to end her life.

Miraculously, with the help of family and friends and therapy and meds, she was able to run a mood disorder clinic at UCLA, gain tenure, and today stands as a highly regarded clinician at Johns Hopkins. But most importantly she survived it all. Bipolar illness, aka manic-depression (although the latter usage has fallen out of fashion in diagnostic circles, she believes it sums up the experience), takes lives. People get attached to their mania, they dream of their mania, and some never come around to accepting they need meds. This book is a must read for anyone with bipolar illness.

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Maze 2:14:7

In the last episode 2:14:6 Ame waxes poetic on love, with observations on fear. Some sadness, some regret.

Book Two
Chapter 14:7

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Maze 2:14:6

In the last episode 2:14:5 Ame gets the feeling she’s just stepped into Oliver Twist, hanging around these orphans and the adulation party. She’s concerned they’re gonna make trading cards out of her, push her up against a stick of bubblegum… no need to worry, though, cause kids can see through you to the real you – to your heart.

Book Two
Chapter 14:6

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Maze 2:14:5

In the last episode 2:14:4 Ame confronts Kell’s known drug dealer, kicking his door in. The kids there watching her, have her figured for the one who took care of the thief who disappeared not long before.

Book Two

Chapter 14:5

story

Maze 2:14:4

In the last episode 2:14:3 Ame is realizing she’s not been as nonviolent as she imagines herself to be, and she worries that Kell does not want to be found because she’s rejected Ame and her lifestyle. Ame goes to see the orphans to validate herself through them, that she can still love and be loved. It’s a diluted way around the truth.

Book Two
Chapter 14:4

story

Maze 2:14:3

The papers bemoan “the death of a skater.”  In the last episode 2:14:2 Ame is cooped up indoors — meditating.

review

Review: Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dickens creates such an terrifying circumstance for the little tyke at the very start, one cannot help but wish to uplift young Oliver Twist (and his little friends). I wanted to take him home and give him some hot chocolate and a pat on the head, hell, I would keep him for sure! He has kindness and compassion in his heart which will not be easily corroded. Almost everyone is out to manipulate the kid, even the ones – like the young girl Nance – I hoped would be helpful to him. He is abducted to dark and narrow streets of London, where the dirt and mud and impoverishment reflect the broken spirits living there. He is taught how to be a thief. The Artful Dodger and Charley Bates are lively little crooks, underlings of Fagin, and Sikes (with his mean dog in tow) is a frightful and towering king of this underworld.

This book establishes a nice rhythm and is narrated very well (strong and consistent voice). Many of Dickens’ books were first published as serials in the London papers. I had to find out how Oliver would make out in the end, if he was to survive at all. Plenty of others like him died of starvation, fever, neglect, and broken hearts. Others turned to crime and saw the gallows. These were mean streets of old London, and Dickens does not spare us the details. In fact, he holds a candle to it all. He brings you into the darkest corners, then gets your adrenaline up as Oliver’s situation becomes inadvertently hopeful, before being lost again to the murky, insensate underworld. It takes one who initially betrayed him and others who gave up looking for him, to unite and try to save him from a terrible fate on the streets. In the process, the mystery of his birth is unraveled. Aside from his rich/poor politics and narrow portrayal of Jews, I love the way Dickens tells a story. This story.