Back In The Saddle, Sans Spurs

Now Playing -
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy  by The Puppini Sisters

Life - 

Well, I had planned on being more regular with my posts...

I spent the last week in Belfast, ME, setting up a new store and immediately derailed a few things. My roommate was a great guy, but MAN did he snore! ANd not just a heavy sawing, that I could have handled, this was a jittery, hodge-podge of sounds. Anything from a slight wheeze to a barking, sharp cough, interspersed with some slight mumbling. This, coupled with the warmth of the room (I typically sleep with the room quite cold, in the low fifties) I had an incredibly difficult time sleeping. And because I spent a week in a hotel working 10-11 hour days, I also ate in restaurants for all of my meals, which temporarily shot my diet to hell too. 

On the plus side, it did prompt me to slide on my headphones, queue up Pandora and type to drown out the Adam Sandler movies they seem to play on repeat on TBS. Why do they do that, anyway? One night, they played the same insipid, horrible Sandler movie three times in a row, starting the next showing before the credits had even finished rolling. Madness. Then again, my roomie kept falling asleep and waking up in time to cath the next showing... SO there's that, I guess. 

My wife and I have started to avoid the the TV like the plague on vacation. I know a lot of folks that turn the TV on in a hotel room before they even flick the lights or set their bags down, and one of the managers I worked with even left hers on all night as a kind of strobing, loud, night light. I'm not sure when it happened, but we never even touch it anymore. I think it's kind of a good thing. What about you, fellow readers? Do you run the TV in the background or find other ways to occupy your time on vacation?

 

Reviews Of Unusual Size
Books

THE INCUMBENT
by Alton Gansky
  2004, 336 pages, ebook

Re: When Mayor Madison "Maddy" Glenn's confidants, advisors and friends start disappearing mysteriously, with only cryptic clues remaining, and signs that the abductor knows more than they should, Maddy must make a choice. Hide in fear or carry on like she has always done things, confronting the abductions and even a killer bravely and headfirst.

Outstanding: This was an interesting idea, and I thought the small town in California where it was set to be very appealingly described. Most of the characters were well rounded and had some personality.

Unacceptable:  Unfortunately, the story never grabbed me. It was a slog to continue reading as page after page was filled with emotional drama, the story focusing on her tears and internal turmoils and minor aches and pains with her job, rather than the kidnappers and the investigation, which was a genuinely good idea and could have been an engrossing story. There was also a major side story featuring the daughter of a victim and her estranged father that did nothing for the story but give it a broadly defined man to hate and some drama that should have come from the main story instead.

Summary: What tries to come across as a kidnapping thriller behind the cover of a legal thriller ended up being something more akin to a chick-lit book with a kidnapping. It could make a pretty dramatic movie of the week on Lifetime, with her constant bickering and fisticuffs with the estranged father and self-absorbed sniffling. The Incumbent feels like a novel written by a county clerk that wanted to write a police thriller but didn't know enough about police investigations or thrills to actually include any in the book.

1/5     
 

Weighty Matters - 

My Current Weight - 298

  Progress Thus Far -   
Backsliding. Damn the crappy choice in restaurants in Belfast!



Writing - 
 I'm actually pretty happy with my progress so far. Not as substantial as I'd hoped, but I'm at just under 74,000 words on Graves, and I've started the plotting on my second adult novel.
 

The Last Sentence - 
"I wrecked this beast on my own." 

From - "Graves" (WIP)