Tuesday, May 31, 2022
SleuthSayers: Where I Write by Michael Bracken
One Bite at a Time: Colin Conway, the Brain Behind The 509
Lesa's Book Critiques: A RIP THROUGH TIME BY KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Lesa's Book Critiques: A RIP THROUGH TIME BY KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Review: Fall Guy: A Joe Gunther Novel by Archer Mayor
It is late winter as Fall Guy: A Joe Gunther Novel by Archer Mayor begins and Joe Gunther, Field Force Commander of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, have been summoned out to a scene bathed in a sea of strobe lights from numerous agencies. It appears that the only party not there is the local dog catcher.
A stolen Mercedes four door sedan has been discovered
abandoned. The car was reported stolen by the owner, Lemuel Shaw several days
ago. Thanks to problems with the onboard GPS system, it was not tracked from
the house in New Hampshire to the final resting place here in Vermont.
If it was a simple stolen car that would be one
thing and would not have generated the massive law enforcement response. In
addition to numerous obviously stolen items in the car, there is a dead body in
the trunk.
If that was not enough, there were six cell phones
in the car. At least one of the phones has pornographic images of a young child
on it and the pictures are clearly very recent. That phone is also tied into
New Hampshire which creates an avenue for Joe and his team to join an Internet
Crimes Against Children Task force with their New Hampshire colleagues. It also
gives them a way to retain jurisdictional control over a rapidly more
complicated case.
The books in this series are always very complicated
and this one is no exception. The police family are always a major factor in
these books, on and off the job, and such is the case in this read as well. All
hands are on deck and repeatedly a part of everything as the team works to clean
up a nasty and extremely entangled mess.
Complicated and highly entertaining, Fall Guy: A Joe Gunther Novel by Archer Mayor is a solidly good read that keeps readers guessing in right to the end.
My reading copy was a digital ARC courtesy of the
publisher, Minotaur Books, via NetGalley. The book is currently scheduled to be
released September 27th.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2022
Monday, May 30, 2022
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 12 Paying Markets Open to Speculative Fiction Short Stories, Novellas and Novels - No agent required
SleuthSayers: Crime Fiction Rules: Rules, Schmules by Elizabeth Zelvin
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Cheater’s Game by Paul Levine
Cheater’s
Game
(Herald Square Publishing, 2020) highlights the recent college
admissions scandal in which wealthy parents bribed top universities to admit
their children who otherwise would not be accepted. Jake Lassiter comes out of
retirement to defend his 20-year-old nephew Kip who has been accused of taking
SAT tests in the place of college applicants. Max Ringle, the mastermind of the
bribery and testing scam, turned informant as soon as he realized the FBI was
investigating and made Kip his scapegoat.
Lassiter is hardly at the top of
his game. His past as a football player has caught up with him and he’s been
diagnosed with progressive brain damage. His doctor and fiancé Dr. Melissa Gold
does her best to bolster him for the strain of the job he’s undertaken, but the
stress of defending his nephew exacerbates his visible symptoms. He can’t
always control them in the courtroom. His scenes with the unpredictable Federal
judge trying the case are among the best in what is a very good legal thriller.
Of course the pivotal segment is Lassiter’s questioning of the wealthy entitled parents and their spoiled children, most of whom
were not charged. They show themselves to be positively despicable, presenting
them as blameless in a racket that could not have existed without them.
A secondary theme is the largely
unrecognized but widespread brain trauma so many football players suffer; the
story relays a great deal of data about chronic
traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The attempts of interested parties to spin the
research findings to their own benefit and to the detriment of the players are
highlighted. Unfortunately this part is probably fact-based too.
A thought-provoking, informative, and entertaining legal thriller. Highly recommended.
·
Publisher: Herald Square
Publishing (April 20, 2020)
·
Language: English
·
Paperback: 422 pages
·
ISBN-10: 173425100X
·
ISBN-13: 978-1734251005
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2022
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Sunday, May 29, 2022
SleuthSayers: The Boyz by R. T. Lawton
Guest Post: Practice Makes Perfect by Paula Messina
Practice Makes Perfect
by Paula Messina
After the
publication of his novel, a writer I know told me he was petrified of reading
in public. His admission was hardly surprising. Speaking before an audience is
said to be our number one fear.
I’d like to share
with you the advice I gave my friend, who not only excelled at his readings. He
learned to enjoy them.
First, let’s get the
nitty gritty stuff out of the way. Before you decide what section of your opus
to read, you need to nail down a few details. The time and place of the event.
Duh. The audience. Is it the local Little League team or the Society for
Classics Studies? Are you the only writer or will you be sharing the stage?
Will there be a question and answer period? Will you be paid? May you sell your
books? Will there be a signing after the reading? You can probably think of
more questions.
How much time will you have? This is one of
the most important questions to ask. You don’t want to show up with ten
minutes’ worth of material when you’re expected to speak for an hour. Nor do
you want to show up hoping to cram an hour’s worth of material into twenty minutes.
It’s wise to have more material than you need in case something happens. Maybe
the other scheduled speaker has laryngitis or his plane is still hovering over
Logan Airport.
If possible, go to
the venue beforehand to get a lay of the land. If that’s not possible, arrive
early so you can get a feel for the room and request any adjustments you deem
necessary. Make sure you’ll have water. If you’ll be using a microphone or any
other equipment, test it. Perhaps you don’t want to speak from behind a
gigantic rubber plant or you don’t want to share the stage with a life-sized
poster of Bozo the Clown. Ask for them to be removed.
If it’s a Zoom
session, make sure you are framed nicely on the screen and that your background
is pleasing to the eye. Instruct the host to mute the audience while you speak.
Above all, make sure the equipment is working beforehand.
Agatha-Award-winning
author Sarah Smith (https://www.sarahsmith.com) says, “If you're reading on
Zoom, consider using a teleprompter.” She recommends Teleprompter Pro
(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/teleprompter-pro/9wzdncrfjss3#activetab=pivot:overviewtab).
Provide an
introduction that is short and sweet. I recently attended a poetry reading
where the introduction went on for five minutes. Boring. Unnecessary. Just the
highlights, please. Tell the person introducing you to read the introduction
exactly as written.
This is rather
obvious. Decide which passage(s) you’ll read.
Joan Leotta, a story
performer, spoken word artist, poet, and author (https://www.facebook.com/joanleotta),
says, “Select material you like a lot. Balance the emotional arc of what you
are presenting...serious, humorous, poignant....don’t make it all of one kind.”
“Shorten your text.
Text that reads well on paper doesn't always work aloud,” Sarah Smith says.
“You don't have to read one long text. Read a little, talk a little, read some
more.”
Whenever I read in
public, I take advice I stumbled upon in a book by Dorothy Sarnoff, who worked
with Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, and Danielle Steel. Read your selection out
loud a minimum of three times. This isn’t the same as memorizing the piece.
It’s becoming familiar and comfortable with it. This allows you to glance down
at the page, know what comes next, look up at the audience, and say it. This
takes practice, but it’s easy to master.
This works even if
you only as a few moments to prepare. When I’m asked to read at the last
minute, I find a quiet corner where I can read the passage out loud at least
the requisite three times. This has never failed me. I am able to read with
confidence.
Time yourself. You
don’t want to read a passage that takes 15 minutes to read when you only have
ten minutes. This is comparable to a word count. You don’t want to give your
editor ten thousand words than she asked for three thousand, nor do you want to
submit five hundred words when he requested five thousand.
It’s helpful to
record yourself. You’ll know if you are hitting the allotted time, and it will
help you with your interpretation and delivery. Audacity is open-source
software (https://www.audacityteam.org/) that is easy to use. It’s also useful to
practice in front of a spouse or friend, but only if that person will be honest
and constructive.
When you practice
reading aloud, identify the pauses. You might find it helpful to mark them. If
you’re reading dialogue, consider highlighting each character’s lines in a
different color. You spent a lot of time making each character’s dialogue
distinct. You want to bring those distinctions alive in your reading.
Pauses are part of
your interpretation. They also help the listener. At that poetry reading
mentioned above, the poet read as if he were attempting to break a world record
for the fastest poetry reading. His poems went by in a blur.
Your audience needs
time to process your words. Now I’m not suggesting you join the Slow Talkers of
America (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysHUfjSMGWQ), but this isn’t a time for speed reading.
Robert Frost was a
master of the pause. Listen to him read “The Road Not Taken” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrBHd41YqTc). Frost takes his time. He
milks the pauses. He demands that you listen to him, that you hang on his every
word.
Breathe.
Ten out of ten
doctors recommend their patients develop this habit. It’s advice worth taking.
After all, breathing has numerous benefits.
You’ll survive the
reading.
Breathing steadies
your nerves.
Breathing helps
project your voice. If you are soft spoken, as I am, it’s helpful to imagine
that you’re speaking to someone at the back of the room or even across the
street. You could also ask someone to sit at the back of the room during the
event to signal if you are not loud enough.
Breathing helps with
your inflection and interpretation. Think about it. You used punctuation,
sentence and paragraph length to create pacing and tension. Those are the
places where you breathe. Those are your pauses.
Breathing helps your
audience absorb what you’re saying. I once watched a
demonstration of a pat down. The instructor said, “Slow down. If you go too
fast, you’ll miss something because your brain won’t be able to keep up.”
Stephen
D. Rogers (https://stephendrogers.com), author of Shot to Death and more than
eight hundred shorter works, explains it this way,
“Breathing creates a space where the last thought can echo and grow.”
How you breathe is
also important. We’re told to use diaphragmatic breathing, expand our belly,
but what is diaphragmatic breathing? It’s rarely properly explained and often
improperly explained.
Place your hand
below your belly button. That’s where you want to start breathing. Now, place
your hands on your sides. If you breathe properly, you’ll feel your rib cage
expand three hundred and sixty degrees. Here’s a useful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sgb2cUqFiY
Listening to great orators and actors is an excellent way to improve your
own speaking skills. Listen to Multi-award-winning writer David Dean read his short story,
“The Duelist” (https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/eqmm/episodes/2020-07-02T06_44_37-07_00).
To spare the
audience from staring at your bald spot, make eye contact. If you read your piece aloud at least three times, you’ll be able to make
eye contact with you audience.
Sarah Smith says, “Your
audience wants to like you. They want to have fun and be amazed. Remember that
and have fun too.”
One way to make your audience
like you is eye contact, something else we’re told to do but that is rarely
explained. Eye contact is simple. Select a member of the audience and look
directly into his eyes for a sentence or two or until you need to glance down
at the page. When you look up again, select another audience member and look
into her eyes. Repeat, working the room. If this seems too scary, look at a
person’s forehead. Eye contact
also takes practice. Eventually it becomes second nature.
Appearing before an
audience can seem overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be. Practice these simple
steps and you’ll be fantastic. Practice reading out loud a minimum of three
times. Pause. Breathe. Slow down. Make eye contact.
Finally, you worked
hard. Enjoy yourself.
Paula Messina © 2022
When Paula Messina isn't walking along the United States' first public beach, she's working on a novel set in Boston during the 1940s.
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