Review Archives
| **** The Night Life is the Good Life Frederick "Peachey" Andrews Billy Graham was brutally murdered in 1986. This is a true story of a murder that involved the author. Told in his own words, it follows the events, including being in the witness protection program for a time, as well as having a hit put out on himself. Fred Andrews, aka "Peachey", is a used car salesman and an avid and very successfull gambler, once known from Atlantic City to Las Vegas and everywhere in between. |
Life was going great for him. Sales were up and so were the gambling profits, when one day his good friend and landlord, Charlie Dorn Smith inquired if he, Peachey, could arrange a hit on someone. Unsure if Dorn was serious or not, Peachey brushed the request aside.
Fast forward a few months and Peachey hears the news that a local farmer, Dorn's step father Billy Graham (not the famous reverend), died in his sleep when his house burned to the ground.
Knowing the likely truth about the death of Graham, and the nature of Dorn and his ring of friends, Peachey knew his life could be in danger if he went to the authorities. Amid threats to be silenced and stay close to his supposed friends, Andrews silently waited for the authorities to discover the truth.
But the truth would not be known without his own testimony. Despite his own safety, the author decides to contact the local law enforcement and give them his story, and how it can prove that not only was Mr. Graham murdered, but also who was responsible.
What follows is a terrifying ordeal that lasted some nine years before the guilty parties were brought to justice.
Available now in ePub format, and coming soon for Kindle.
| **** Receding Time Robert Archer Receding Time is a wild romp following Elodie Song through two different time periods. In 3052 she is a simple 8-year-old and the world she knows is confined to life in a small backwater village surrounded by a huge mysterious wall. Her only joy in life is the equally mysterious cove she found the previous year. Located through a crack in the monstrous wall, the cove is a haven from the dead, yellow grass that covers the land, as it grows a myriad of fruits and vegetables. Her family is becoming quite wealthy through the sales of the wonderful and rare produce. |
But things changed suddenly one day when her entire valley is destroyed by wildfire. Elodie is miraculously saved as the fire surrounded her.
She wakes up just over one thousand years earlier and ten years older.
A strange woman who claims to be a time-traveler and supposedly knows Elodie in the future, saves her from the confines of a concrete room built with no possible means of escape, in the middle of an enormous, barren desert; crawling with Troops of an evil army, scanning the entire country, looking for the two time travelers.
Elodie is enlisted to help the woman, Caroline, to rescue a scientist which has world-destroying consequences if not done successfully, before she is killed - six days, eleven hours and forty-two minutes after the two meet. With the evil Stell Diero—also a time traveler—bent on world domination, his unstoppable Army of the Three Red Streaks, and the odds naturally stacked against them, the two set off on a quest bound to succeed for one reason only: a book Elodie writes in the future says it is so—now only if she can live long enough to write it!
Available in print and kindle formats
*note. The above review was written for the author at his request. He liked it so much, I gave my permission for him to use it as the description on Amazon.com
| **** Dawn of the Hives Rebecca Troup Unlike most maggots, unbeknownst to her, maggot 53 has long life ahead of her. 53 is her name, for all in the hive arere numbered and not named. Unity, perfection, equality, and names indicated individuality, something that was shunned. For 500 years humanity struggled to fight against the hives, a culture that had slowly built up over the decades, built on the model of bees—and that was the set hierarchy: Maggot, Bee, Queen, and Master Hive. Few rarely made it beyond the level of maggot due termination if any sort of imperfection surfaced, and 53 was determined to be nothing short of perfect. Eventually her skills are recognized and she is promoted to the rank of bee and given the task of engineer. |
Again her skills are recognized, and she is given the dangerous task of infiltrating a community of Freers, humans still living outside the hive world, free from the forced life of the hive, striving to fight the hive and return humanity to its former way of life.
While in the world of the Freers 53 is forced to become one of them; she takes a human name, and she is faced with human emotions, something she has spent her entire life ignoring and forcing from her system.
53 struggles with her repressed humanity, even after her mission has ended and declared a blinding success—the Master hives used the knowledge gained from her experiences to nearly wipe out all of the remaining free humans.
But, will humanity survive a near extinction? What of 53? Will she be able to fight off human emotions, or will she succumb and join them?
Dawn of the Hives reads like Octavia Butler’s Brood series, and will have you examining your own morals and beliefs. Definitely a page turner.
This book is free to download in epub format.
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I find it humorous Moedano has two lead characters by the name of ‘Ad’ (ok, both nicknames), and it reminds me of my own book series wherein two prominent characters share a first name. One of the ‘Ad’s is Adrian Flodden, a 23 year-old college student/DJ whose only two aims in life are chasing older women and blasting classic heavy metal songs as loud as possible, and at every other available opportunity he is spouting statistics of said bands such as song titles, lyrics, album names and covers, and so on.
Though not exactly a rock opera on paper, Ricardo Moedano successfully weaves rock albums and song titles in and out of the story. A reader could even listen to the mentioned tracks to enhance the experience of this tale, though it is not necessary to do so.
Adrian Flodden is the main character in this twisted tale of rock and roll, and like the more famous characters in the bands he cherishes, leads a life of partying and chasing a myriad of women, most of whom, when caught, he gives up only to find another to pursue—though sometimes he is forced to find new prey, such as the time the girl of the hour found a love note in his room from a previous conquest.
Follow Adrian and his ‘Mötley Crüe’ of friends as they jump from party to party or concert to concert in between classes and part-time jobs. Do Adrian and his friends every really grow up once they graduate? Well, you’ll just have to read for yourself to find out.
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Like Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, Upload is fast paced and full of action, a story-noire set in a not too distant dystopian society. Have you ever had a problem you wish you could run away from in hopes that it would just go away? Raymond finds himself in a situation where he not only wants to run from his myriad of problems, but he has also devised a way in which he can just ‘disappear’ and leave everything—and everyone— far behind.
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As a young boy, he was essentially orphaned and spent most of his adolescent years growing up in state orphanages and group homes. He had no parental guidance and, short of loose supervision, very little adult guidance.
Early on he discovered he had a knack for programming and hacking, skills he later cultivated into both a job and profession. He landed his first job as a young teenager, building and maintaining the robots and computer systems of a wealthy elderly man whose only ambition was to spend every waking and sleeping moment in his VR chamber, held in the embrace of one virtual bimbo or another.
Using his exceptional computer skills, the boy hacks into his boss’s VR chamber and records the man’s every move in an attempt to create the perfect avatar: a computer likeness in the virtual world, indistinguishable from a human.
But then something terrible happens to the old man, and Raymond panics and makes a few...not so perfect…decisions.
Fast forward 9 years and Raymond, now on his own, has landed the perfect job: working in a university computer research laboratory— the old man very much in the past and at the back of Raymond’s mind.
Always a loner and never having experience love in any form, Raymond has devised a method to escape it all. The lab in which he works has developed a method to upload the consciousness of terminal animals, such that the now digitized creatures are unable to distinguish their new virtual realm from their former reality.
Having spent countless hours in the virtual realm, as well as having designed countless VR worlds himself, Raymond longs to shed his body and upload permanently, leaving his worldly cares—and past—behind.
In the middle of it all he discovers the one thing he failed to work into his mathematical equations.
Love.
At the last possible minute, and the worst possible time, Raymond falls for a beautiful co-worker as his hidden past creeps up on him.
Will he be able to pull off the ultimate getaway and escape his past? Or will his new found love help keep him rooted in the real world?
Upload is a well written story that not only tackles the scientific possibility of digitizing consciousness along with the ethical questions that arise with it, but it also asks the question : Can you really run from your past?
| **** All the Way Home, by Tom Melly (son of the late English jazz and blues singer George Melly) is a fun and fascinating story and reads like a Peter F. Hamilton novel (though thankfully shorter). Louie Gage is out with his classmates on a trip to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, when a terrible accident happens and he finds himself a long way from home, very lost, and unexpectedly wealthy. Follow Louie on his adventures as he puts survival skills learned from watching reality TV to the test when finds himself suddenly transported to a barren planet inhabited only by robotic mining equipment. Rescued by an artificially intelligent robot, young Louie learns the common language of the stars. Throughout his travels he quickly learns he is an ‘exotic’, or a being from outside the known universe. What he ultimately discovers about that fact is this: he is the only human within thousands upon thousands of light-years in any direction. |
But for Louie, his only ambition is finding his way back home, even if it means searching every star system till he’s old and grey. The problem is, as you may or may not be aware, is that pesky ‘theory of relativity’—the time dilation effect exerted on objects traveling at or near the speed of light—it may take him years to find Earth, but hundreds, if not thousands of years will have passed away in the same time.
Will Louie ever make it home again, and will he be able to find a method to circumvent the time dilation problem so he can still see his family again if ever does find Earth?
| I first encountered Luther Maddy’s book via an ad on the local craigslist and thought, why not? He’s local author, may as well support his efforts. I was not disappointed. |
He even takes you with him on a trip to Alaska and Hawaii (though not on a bike) where he discovers just how similar the scenery truly is. Humorously told from the author’s point of view, you’ll laugh at him because of both his sharp wit and cluelessness. Most of all, his style of writing not only tells a great and fun story, but he gets you right there on the road with him. It’s like you are in the saddle bags, in a sidecar, or even just riding behind him.
I’ve been to many of the places he describes, and have even lived in a few myself, but you need not have lived or visited any of these places as he describes them well enough, giving tidbits of interesting history along the way, such as the real name of Ratos NM, or why the Sunbeam dam in Salmon Idaho was breached.
I’ve had a maybe a whole 10 minutes of driving time on a motorcycle, from a 50cc as a kid to a failed rebuild attempt at a Suzuki 400 to riding my friend’s softtail and hoping not spill it, and he really makes me want to hop on and ride.
Definitely a page-turner. You won’t want to put it down, and you’ll want to go buy a big fat Harley or roadbike when you’re done.
Maddy has many other books, including a humorous computer how-to training manual, All Things Computed.
| *** I found this story on Barnes and Noble’s Free Book Friday blog. Leaving before It’s Over is heart wrenching story of a son separated from his own family due to a wide variety of circumstances, one being that of thankless parents, whose only love and affections are toward the other son who has decided to make the family business his ambition. Roy Vines separated himself from his family some 18 years ago and now lives happily hours from his parents in a sleepy town with loving wife and two daughters. He has tried desperately not make his family cold and calculating like his parents when he was growing up. The problem is, he has come up against serious financial hardships and has determined his only course of action is to turn to his parents and ask for assistance.
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What ensues is a story of both warmth and grief as Roy has to face both his past and a boy who has been raised thinking Roy was his absentee father. Roy is forced to return back home with the boy as part of the deal in return for the needed money. Luke hates his father, but who’s to blame him?
How will Luke fit in with Roy’s existing family, and how will he and his father get along?
Leaving Before It’s Over will keep you wondering what will happen next, and keep you hoping Luke doesn’t get hurt any more than he has already been.
Overall I enjoyed this novel; it really makes you think about your own humanity and how you treat others.
This is not necessarily a story for all readers, however. There is mild language and a couple scenes alluding to sex, though nothing gratuitous.
| **** People Who Clap at the End of Books Todd Caiazzo I first 'bumped into' Todd through the help forums of a publishing website. I liked the idea of his book so much I decided to give him a hand in setting it up for electronic distribution. (That, and he is giving the proceeds to a major national children's charity!) People Who Clap at the End of Books is a riot. I have to admit the cover picture grabbed my attention, and all through the book I was wondering “Where are the penguins?”
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By the time you reach the end of the book, you too will have realized that the answer to that question is simply :there aren’t any. I was also wondering why someone would clap at the end of a book. does answer that question. He also answers many more questions to things you never really questioned in the first place, like what would have happened if Lincoln almost didn’t find parking in the fifth row at the theater, and, had Washington had some sour cream, the crossing of the Delaware may not have happened.
You may also find yourself wondering why Lois and Clark are found in the Historical Shorts section, and not Louis and Clark. This answer, too will amaze you. As this book is full of interesting musings and hilarious ‘what if’s’, you will find that Lois and Clark are indeed historical figures, but only in a fictional sort of way.
Just remember this one important fact: As when traveling through Douglas Adam’s galaxy don’t forget your towel—when reading this book, don’t forget your glasses, and pray you do not get stuck behind ‘annoying lady’ at the deli. ---Booyah!
