The Dawn of Saudi

The Dawn of Saudi:
In Search for Freedom, a Contemporary Romantic Mystery
by Homa Pourasgari
(Linbrook Press / 0-977-97801-X / 978-0-977-97801-4 / June 2009 / 352 pages / $15.95 / Amazon $14.35)

Reviewed by Malcolm R. Campbell for PODBRAM

The Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia says that, “as documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House and even the US Department of State, Saudi women are among the most oppressed and marginalized citizens in Arab and Muslim countries.” In an author’s note at the end of her novel, Homa Pourasgari describes the social and legal environment in Saudi Arabia more directly: “Women have no rights and are considered the property of a man.”

Pourasgari’s powerful romantic mystery The Dawn of Saudi focuses on the lives of two young women who meet while attending college in Barcelona, Sahar Al-Hijazi of Saudi Arabia and Dawn Parnell of the United States. Sahar, whose travels have given her a taste of freedom, fights her family’s attempts to force her into a loveless marriage with Husam. Dawn, however, doesn’t heed her best friend’s warnings and marries a Saudi man whom she believes is a progressive thinker and finds herself trapped instead within a hopeless world.

“They buried her in an unmarked grave,” the novel begins. “Only in death did Saudi women and men receive equal treatment.” On the next page readers learn that Sahar collapsed on her wedding night, went into a coma, and died within an hour of an aneurysm.

In California, Jason Crawford worries over the news of Sahar’s death because he has business ties to the families involved and doesn’t want to see a pending merger with Crawford Enterprises jeopardized.

Subsequently, Dawn Parnell begins work as a housekeeper at the grand Crawford estate. While the house has a large staff, Dawn catches Jason’s attention even though she’s definitely not the eye-candy type of woman he usually dates and discards. Among other things, he notices that her intelligence, skills and interests greatly exceed those normally expected in a maid placed by an employment agency. How, for example, can she be an expert skier and horsewoman? Since Dawn won’t talk about her past, Jason can only wonder what she is hiding and why she hides it so fiercely.

Pourasgari’s inventive plot and strong characters not only open a wide window onto Saudi oppression of women, but make for a very strong story with the poignant moments of well-told romance and the twists and turns of page-turning mystery. Both the oppression and the fear associated with it are aptly shown from a woman’s perspective through Dawn and Sahar. Jason’s silver-spoon lifestyle and love-them-and-leave-them approach to women stands out in stark contrast to Dawn’s and Sahar’s experiences, and this adds greatly to the depth of the story.

The story’s pacing is disrupted in several sections due to the need to convey a large amount of background information to readers and to other characters about Saudi culture and conservative Islamic law through dialogue and narrative. A longer preface with basic Saudi facts might have reduced the strain on the story. An over-abundance of detail gives an intrusive travelogue flavor to a trip to a resort and a disruptive interior designer’s guidebook tone to walks through the Crawford mansion.

That said, The Dawn of Saudi remains a very satisfying novel with unforgettable characters who must fight through a labyrinth of Western apathy and frightening conservative Islamic beliefs in a search for freedom. The novel is both an education and an oasis for the human spirit.

See Also: The Author's Website
Malcolm's Review at Amazon UK
Malcolm's Review at Powell's Books
Malcolm's March of Books Review

North from Calcutta

North from Calcutta
by Duane Evans
(Pecos Moon LLC / 0-981-94540-6 / 978-0-981-94540-8 / May 2009 / 360 pages / $24.95 hardcover / $18.21 Amazon)

Reviewed by Jack Dixon for PODBRAM

A time bomb is ticking. It has been so for centuries, but the ticking has suddenly grown louder. Tension in Kashmir is about to explode in yet one more, perhaps final, international episode.

Tarek Durrani has always been driven toward what he considers to be the greater good. He has met unsought challenges with determination, and successfully balanced his humanity with the brutality of his life. From his early days as an anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan, to his current position as an officer of Pakistani intelligence, Durrani has sought only to do that which his conscience can reconcile.

Durrani is a loyal man. His intelligence-gathering mission for the Pakistani government seems, at first, inconsequential. But he begins to suspect that it is part of a larger, more sinister plot to upset the fragile balance of two vehemently opposed two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. He suspects that he may have become involved in an attempt to precipitate war over the long-contested control of Kashmir.

Durrani’s mission takes him on a journey of espionage and subterfuge, discovery and enlightenment, violence and love. While the dedication and allegiance of men like Durrani may be exploited by the opposing forces of volatile governments, Durrani’s integrity could turn out to be the Achilles’ heel of those who would exploit him.

While this novel neatly fits a long-established spy thriller formula, its setting is fresh and unique. It weaves a timely tale of extremist politics and terrorist plots with the insight of one who knows the field, and purely from the cultural perspectives of the characters involved. I was impressed by the author’s ability to tell the story from an authentically cultural perspective, rather than from a western point of view. I was occasionally distracted by editorial oversights, but on the whole the story is well-structured, and it flows nicely. I especially appreciated the cover art, as it accurately captures the essence of the story. North from Calcutta is a strong offering from a new author; I had to look twice to confirm that this was in fact his first novel.

See Also: The Author's Website

Ghost Notes

Ghost Notes by Art Edwards
(Defunct Press / 0-979-90661-X / 978-0-979-90661-9 / March 2008 / 212 pages / $14.95 / Kindle $7.99)

Reviewed by Celia Hayes for PODBRAM

For all the stories told, or perhaps just implied, this book could have been several times longer in the hands of a less disciplined writer. The plot is simple but intricately told through the brief lives of working musicians, hangers-on to the music scene, wanna-be musicians, roadies, agents and a whole constellation of lovers, wives, ex-lovers, ex-wives and absentee fathers. The thread that binds it all together is music and the life of Josh Hotle, also known as Hote, a bass player in a once mega-successful band, but now on a grueling tour schedule, and on the downside of the fame that he was looking for in the author’s first essay into the musician’s life “Stuck in Phoenix.” Now, that Josh has caught the brass ring, everything that he got into music for is turning hollow, routine, and savorless. Or maybe he has just – at long last – grown up enough to look at his life with a coolly analytical eye, and decide what he really wants out of it. He walks out on the band, mid-tour, leaving them short a bass player before their next gig. Josh is so burnt-out, and in shock that his wife has confessed to being unfaithful to him, that he doesn’t really care. He wants to go camping, and get away from it all, but he can never get away from people, or his own past.

There are a lot of characters in Ghost Notes, and a lot of back-story, but the writer has done an incredible job of delineating them, with just enough detail to flesh them out, make them real and sympathetic. The personal and professional world of Josh Hotle is dense, detailed and believable, without overwhelming the reader and bogging the narrative down in unnecessary verbiage. Each chapter or character sketch is a complete short story in itself; it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the author is also a musician and songwriter, expert in using just the precise word and phrase and not a syllable more.

See Also: Celia's BNN Review
The Author's Website

Murder and the Masquerade

Murder and the Masquerade:
Book 1 of the Dorothy Phaire Romantic Mystery Series
by Dorothy Phaire
(iUniverse / 0-595-44787-2 / 978-0-595-44787-9 / September 2007 / 316 pages / $18.95)

Reviewed by Dianne Salerni for PODBRAM

Dr. Renee Hayes is a married, 40+ Black psychologist working in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area who becomes embroiled in a murder case when a frantic phone call from a patient puts her right in the middle of a crime scene. Doctor-patient confidentiality issues are only one of Renee’s worries when the police arrive on the scene— because the homicide detective investigating the case is her lover.

Murder and the Masquerade, the first in a planned series by Dorothy Phaire, stems from a novel written by Ms. Phaire almost a decade ago that was later pulled from the market and revised to create this new romance/mystery novel. Phaire’s years of work on this novel have produced vibrant, believable characters facing the various personal and professional crises of Black professionals in the modern world. I found Renee Hayes, a successful doctor with an unsatisfying marriage and a desire for motherhood to be highly believable, as was Detective Degas Hamilton, a man a dozen years her junior who was drawn to her maturity and gentleness. Another major player in this cast is Veda Simms, a woman who has thrown away a husband and a daughter in pursuit of a love affair with a high-powered attorney, only to reach a breaking point five years later. Murder and the Masquerade is filled also with a cast of fascinating supporting characters that provides a rich backdrop for drama and romance, as well as contributing to the overall depth of the main characters.

Unfortunately, after a stunning prologue and a promising beginning in which the weeks previous to the murder are fleshed out, the central mystery fails to deliver. There are several plot holes, including important clues that are never explained and inconsistencies in the chronology of events. Toward the end of the novel, I felt the characters did not continue to act and respond as they did earlier in the book, and overall the solution to the crime did not satisfy. Nevertheless, this is a promising piece of work that should appeal to a savvy publisher. With a primarily Black cast, a complex and conflicted central female character, and an interesting premise for future sequels, I believe there is a target audience just waiting for a book like this. A good editor could clear up the inconsistencies, as well as the minor editing errors that appear throughout.
Murder and the Masquerade shows a great deal of promise, and I hope that we will see more from this author in the future.

See Also: The High Spirits Review
Dorothy Phaire's Authors Den Page
The Author's Website
Almost Out of Love by Dorothy Phaire
Reviews of Blind Delusion by Dorothy Phaire

Calling Out Your Name

Calling Out Your Name
by Ned White
(CreateSpace / 1-442-13242-6 / 978-1-442-13242-9 / April 2009 / 206 pages / $14.95)

Reviewed by Donna Nordmark Aviles for PODBRAM

Woody Elmont of Ogamesh, Georgia, has more on his plate, and on his mind, than most sixteen-year-olds. His father abandoned the family when his mother was pregnant with Woody’s younger brother. His mom later died leaving her two sons in the care of their Aunt Zee. By the time the story opens, the tables have turned and the aging Aunt Zee is the one who needs to be cared for as her mind and body begin to fail. To complicate things, Woody’s younger brother, Tick, is mildly developmentally disabled with little understanding of right and wrong. Woody tries to be the man of the house and handle all these circumstances, but when Tick is sent to a juvenile home for shoplifting, Woody has a guilty sense of relief that at least one burden is in someone else’s hands. When Tick disappears from St. Anselm’s after a questionable fire at the facility, Woody feels it’s his responsibility to bring his “zoo headed brother” back home before he finds himself in even more trouble.

Calling Out Your Name by Ned White is an exciting and adventuresome tale of one boy’s journey toward adulthood as he makes his way across the country seeking to find and save his brother. The story is chocked full of well developed, believable characters who each, in his own way, teaches Woody meaningful life lessons. A unique and surprising twist at the end of Woody’s journey helps him to fully understand earlier events in his life and leaves the reader with a satisfying ending. Mr. White writes with an authentic southern voice, placing the reader in the center of the action, thus making for an engaging, enjoyable read. Technically, this book is professionally presented with only a few errors – nothing that causes the reader to become distracted.

Although billed as a “novel for young adults”, Calling Out Your Name is a story that will be enjoyed by both young and old alike. Mr. White is a talented writer – this is the second of his books that I have reviewed – and I look forward to reading more.

See Also: Donna's Review of Place
Ned White's Authors Den Page

The Red Fog

The Red Fog
by Nicole Tanner
(CreateSpace / 1-442-14111-5 / 978-1-442-14111-7 / June 2009 / 168 pages / $9.99 / Kindle $5.99)

Reviewed by Dianne Salerni for PODBRAM

It’s 2am and nearly zero degrees outside. The streets are deserted, and a young woman is behind the wheel of a car. While she waits at a stoplight, a man crosses the street in front of her, and she realizes with horror that it is the same man who raped her at knifepoint some months previously. He spots her and leers at her, tauntingly displaying his switchblade. What does she do?

What Deana Simmons does and the consequences of her action are the focal point of The Red Fog, a psychological thriller by professional journalist Nicole Tanner. The protagonist of this short, suspenseful novel is a wounded, haunted art student at a small town college in Ohio. Her inability to emotionally connect with others stems from her past as an emotionally and physically abused child, as well as from a traumatic sexual assault in her first year of college. Suppressed memories trickle to the surface through her art, and an act of rage and vengeance triggers a nightmarish descent into vigilante justice, self-destructive violence, and madness.

The Red Fog opens with a violent act and a memorable first chapter, then retreats into a slow, suspenseful, unfolding of events as Deana’s sanity begins to collapse under the weight of her guilt and her triumph. Although I did not find every event in this novel believable and the secrets of Deana’s past were sometimes predictable, I can also say that I couldn’t stop reading the book. I had to know what Deana would and would not do next! Readers should be aware that the book contains scenes of graphic sex and violence, sometimes mixed together, but considering the theme and plot of the book, they were skillfully done. There are only a handful of editing errors, primarily missing words, which shouldn’t interfere with the reader’s enjoyment of the book. The Red Fog is recommended for fans of horror and psychological thrillers.

See Also: Nicole Tanner's Website

Winter Ghost

Winter Ghost by Don Meyer
(Booklocker / 1-601-45820-7 / 978-1-601-45820-9 / May 2009 / 332 pages / $16.95)

Reviewed by Dr. Al Past for PODBRAM

Start with a frozen naked woman "looking" in the window of a vacation home, hands on the glass. Call it an accidental death. Add in reports of an unknown woman visiting the home on subsequent weekends. Season with two more couples dying after visiting the home, a sheriff (Tom Monason), new to the small nearby town, several deputies, and a bar owner, and you have, in addition to a ghost story, the makings of a murder mystery.

Winter Ghost attempts such a recipe, and a promising one it is. I have some experience with the mystery genre, yet I cannot think of another example to compare it to. As the story is carried out, however, it never seized my interest. Beyond a few personal quirks, the characters were thinly developed, the setting was generic (beyond snow, a small town, and a bar), and the ultimately simple story line was strewn with stylistic infelicities.

That's a shame, because Mr. Meyer's other book reviewed on this site, The Protected Will Never Know, the memoir of a soldier during the Vietnam conflict, was excellent. Narrated through the eyes of an unprepared, naive young soldier, the style fit perfectly: the reader is able to see between the lines to share the frustrations and terrors of a pointless war. As a memoir it was not entirely fiction, and that was its strong point. Pure fiction must create the reality the reader needs to be fully at home in a story, and Winter Ghost did not adequately do this for me. For the general reader, The Protected Will Never Know gets my vote as the more definitely recommended of the two.

See Also: Don Meyer's Website

The Second Date

The Second Date:
Love Italian-American Style
by Mary Lydon Simonsen
(CreateSpace / 1-442-15721-6 / 978-1-442-15721-7 / June 2009 / 170 pages / $11.95)

Reviewed by Dianne Salerni for PODBRAM

Talk to any person in my generation with an Italian-American heritage, and you will find certain common characteristics. When they were growing up, they almost certainly had a room in their house where no one dared enter – the formal living room where the carpets bore no trace of footprints and the only visitor important enough to use it was the priest. Their mothers probably used wooden spoons as weapons. Dating a non-Italian was bad, a non-Catholic worse, and bringing home a Jewish date who didn’t even believe in Christ was a crisis of soap-opera proportions. Funerals were like Greek tragedies, and let’s not get started on Thanksgiving dinner.

The Second Date is, in part, a comedy romance revolving around the dating adventures of Sonia Amundsen (very Italian, in spite of her half-Norwegian heritage), but it is also an endearing web of family stories that traces several generations of an Italian-American family. As Sonia nears her thirtieth birthday, helpful friends and relatives set her up on a series of blind dates, which Sonia views as excellent fodder for the novels she writes, but not a likely source of romance for herself. In fact, Sonia has never gone on a second date with any of her blind dates and now views The Second Date almost superstitiously as the hallmark of Mr. Right.

Mary Simonsen’s narrative wends its way through Sonia’s family history, diverting occasionally into the stories of neighbors and friends. You’ll meet Aunt Gina and Aunt Angie, rival sisters always striving to outdo each other in histrionics. You’ll meet Sonia’s father, Lars Amundsen, an “adopted” Italian with eyes like boiled marbles whose calm and thoughtful nature has made him the neighborhood sage. The cast is rounded out with brothers, sisters-in-law, old boyfriends, blind dates, and a charming man who’d like to break Sonia’s no-second date curse.

My copy of the book was an unedited proof copy, but even so it was remarkably clean and a smooth read. I have no doubt the final version will be up to professional standards. The Second Date is a slim book, just over 160 pages. Like a good antipasto, it’s colorful, flavorful, and full of tantalizing little nuggets that aren’t too filling – an excellent summer read, in fact, for fans of light romance, or anyone who grew up Italian-American in the 80’s.

See Also: The High Spirits Review
Mary Simonsen's Authors Den Page
Mary Simonsen's Website
Mary Simonsen's Blog
Searching for Pemberley

Kindle Formatting

Kindle Formatting:
The Complete Guide
by Joshua Tallent
(CreateSpace / 1-440-48888-6 / 978-1-440-48888-7 / January 2009 / 158 pages / $19.95 / Kindle $9.99)

Let’s just jump right into the deep end of the pool and mention that Joshua Tallent’s Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide has a couple of very small negatives. There are about ten common proofreading errors in the relatively small amount of text. I did not actually verify this number with a running count, and that should tell you how insignificant this issue is in this particular book. All of these are contained in the simple text portions of the book. None affect the technically significant portions, which brings us to the second weakness of Kindle Formatting. This is not a very helpful book for those novice authors who freak out at the sight of HTML, however, I did not expect it to be. That is precisely why I reviewed Michael Hicks’ how-to-Kindle book first in The Kindle Report. For the prospective Kindle author who is somewhat more advanced in the field of computers in general and HTML coding in particular, this is an excellent guide for you.

Joshua Tallent is obviously far more the mathematician and programming nerd than is the average POD author who just wants to cash in from Kindle sales. If you just want to convert the Word document version of your Mr. Average Novel into DTP, then you have several options that may be more efficient for you than following the instructions contained in this book. These options include, in no particular order of significance: uploading your book directly from Word into the Amazon DTP system; running your document through the Smashwords Meatgrinder; downloading and utilizing Mobipocket Creator; or paying Joshua Tallent directly to format your book perfectly for you, a service he offers from his website. If you have a very complex book containing varied text layout or a lot of photos or other graphics, and you want it all to look as perfect as possible in the Kindle version, then hiring Mr. Tallent’s services is probably your best bet. If you and/or your book fall between the cracks of some of these scenarios, then Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide may be the best solution.

Kindle formatting is an exact science with a lot of human loopholes. Most of us write our books in Microsoft Word, but there are many other options that may be applicable. The Kindle DTP system chokes up like Powder Puff with a furball when it is fed a PDF document. The translation of a PDF to DTP should only be handled by a pro like Joshua or an experienced HTML wrangler with Joshua’s book next to his keyboard. There are so many delicate little decisions that go into the design of Dead Tree Books, as the Kindle fans like to call them, that we all take for granted. Most of these commonly printed elements of a book must be dealt with in a manner specific to themselves when converting the paper to DTP. There are countless things that might never enter your mind until you actually saw your book on a Kindle, and these are the same things that all PDF documents of printed books contain. If you are only a pseudo-nerd like me, you read blissfully through book after book without ever giving all those hidden little HTML codes a second thought. If you are a genuine nerd like Joshua, you may be fully aware of their existence, but you could certainly use a book like Kindle Formatting to speed up the complex process of making the Kindle version of your book look as perfectly professional as the paperback, or in Kindlese, DTB = DTP.

Is Joshua’s thin book worth $20 to you, or $10 if you have a Kindle? If you barely understood how to send your simple Word document to iUniverse, letting them design your cover while you contributed very little to your book’s design, then Kindle Formatting probably offers a lot more than you care to know. If you are somewhat more experienced, particularly with HTML programming, and you do not want to pay Joshua directly to do the job for you, but you want to produce a DTP version of your work that is somewhat more perfect than the result offered by the simpler methods, this will be money extremely well spent. Joshua will show you all the little so that’s how you do it! HTML coding tricks to make your Kindle book look like an escapee from your local Barnes & Noble. If you own a Kindle, you can get even more benefit from Joshua’s book because you can see the details of your efforts in perfect translation. One of my favorite issues covered in Kindle Formatting is that Joshua explains in text and screenshots actual differences between the Kindle and the Kindle 2. The book was released prior to the DX: maybe Joshua will update the material at some time in the future? Representing the most advanced installment of The Kindle Report, Joshua Tallent’s Kindle Formatting will take the experienced author exactly where he wants to go.

See Also: The BNN Review
Joshua Tallent's Website

Wai-nani

Wai-nani: High Chiefess of Hawai’i
- Her Epic Journey
by Linda Ballou
(Star Publish / 1-932-99388-6 / 978-1-932-99388-2 / May 2008 / 280 pages / $17.95 / Amazon $15.80)

Reviewed by Lloyd Lofthouse for PODBRAM

I met Linda Ballou at the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Festival. Later, in an e-mail, she told me it took her twenty years to do the research for this historical fiction and to get it out of the drawer and into the streets. The time Ballou spent on this work shows in the rich details that flow like lava from two of the earth’s largest volcanoes found on the island of Hawaii.

Wai-nani is rich with ancient Hawaiian culture and lore. The main character may be fictional but she is a reflection of Ka’ahumanu, King Kamehameha’s favorite wife, at one time the most powerful person in the Hawaiian Islands.

Today, the Hawaiian Islands may be an incredible tourist destination, but in the 18th century, they weren’t. When the islands were more or less isolated from the rest of the world, the Hawaiian people were often at war with each other and women were second-class citizens who could be executed for daring to eat a meal on the same mat or in the same room as a man. Men could take more than one wife and the rules were strict with death often being the punishment for breaking them. Ka’ahumanu, as represented by Wai-nani in Ballou’s novel, was an early feminist and helped bring about changes that elevated women to be equal with men.

Do not be surprised when you find Wai-nani making friends with a family of dolphins. Some readers may have trouble believing this part of the novel, but I didn’t. Before Christ, the Greeks recorded incidents of dolphins helping and befriending sailors lost at sea when their ships sunk. There are recorded incidents of dolphins still doing this in modern times. There have been stories of dolphins driving fish onto beaches to help feed starving African natives. Therefore, it was easy reading about Wai-nani swimming with her dolphin friends in the ocean.

Wai-nani also chronicles the clash between cultures when Captain Cook arrives in 1779, along with the same European diseases that devastated and killed so many North and South American Indians. When Europeans started to spread across the globe, their viruses and germs went with them and did most of the killing, making it easier for the land grabs that happened later. That tragedy is part of this story, too.

The Hawaiian culture, the characters and the setting are richly detailed. I have never visited Hawaii. It would be nice one day if I had that chance, but if that doesn’t happen, at least I have had the pleasure of being taken to this Polynesian paradise by reading this heavily detailed story.

See Also: Linda Ballou's Website
Linda Ballou's Authors Den Page

Moussaka to My Ears

Moussaka to My Ears
by John Manuel
(Otherwise Known as “Feta Compli 2!”)
Further Rambling from Rhodes and Other Diverse Parts of Greece
(Lulu.com / 1-409-26732-6 / 978-1-409-26732-4 / February 2009 / 312 pages / $21.31)

Reviewed by Celia Hayes for PODBRAM

This is a lively and enchanting account of living in Greece, on the island of Rhodes, written by a long-time expatriate. In his first book, Feta Accompli, John Manuel told a rambling story of how he came to fall in love with his wife, Yvonne-Marie – and the country of her birth, of how they drove all across Europe with their worldly goods to settle into half of a half-finished duplex on a raw building site of new properties. The sequel is a much more polished account, and even better, ornamented with pictures of some of the places and situations and characters which John and Yvonne-Marie encountered over the years. These included the German photographer with his roll of carpet, the man who sold botanical concoctions and his tiny second-floor workshop, poor Lady, the stray dog who charmed them all during her sadly brief life, and their indestructible neighbor Manolis, the 6-Million Drachma man … all of that and more. Greece is a place that visitors fall in love with at once and as irrationally as love always is. Some fall abruptly out of love upon encountering some of Greece’s more wayward and exasperating qualities: truly horrible drivers, the sort of winter weather that doesn’t feature in the tourist literature, a very utilitarian and un-sentimental view of animals as useful tools rather than pets, a certain carelessness about fire safety in times of drought, truly awful customer service when it comes to government offices and retail establishments. All of that tends to breed disillusion. But others fall even farther into love with Greece’s considerable charm: the look of the sky on a clear summer day, the smell of ripe figs, the feeling of having put in a good round of work at bringing in the olive harvest, and dancing at a taverna until the wee hours, and the kindliness and courtesy of the people. That minority will develop such a deep and knowledgeable love of Greece and the Greek people that it will carry them over those rough spots – cheerfully acknowledging such imperfections and moving on to the good stuff. This book explores all of that in loving detail, and what it is like to live there, slightly on the outside and viewing its foibles with a keenly observing eye. All in all, Moussaka to My Ears is a lovely evocation of a place and a people.

See Also: John Manuel's Website
Celia's BNN Review

Sappho Sings

Sappho Sings
by Peggy Ullman Bell
(CreateSpace / 1-438-21431-6 / 978-1-438-21431-3 / May 2008 / 350 pages / $15.95 / Kindle $3.99)

Reviewed by Celia Hayes for PODBRAM

Out of a mere handful of facts known about the life of a lyric poet so famous in her lifetime (or shortly after it) that she was known as the 10th Muse, and from the bare thousand or so lines left to us out of nine volumes of collected works, Peggy Ullman Bell has distilled an appropriately lyrical novel of the life of the woman known as The Poetess (as Homer was known simply as The Poet).

Like certain modern celebrities, Sappho has barely the single title and name: her writing was vivid, deeply personal – and beloved universally, seemingly acknowledged in her lifetime as a woman possessed of an incredible gift for language and music … or at least, when the universe seemed to encompass those Greek city states of the 6th century BC. She was of a wealthy and prominent family on her home island of Lesbos, she had three brothers, was sent into exile by a political enemy, married a rich merchant of Syracuse, had a daughter and was either a priestess of a cult ministering to women, or ran a finishing-school for upper-crust girls – possibly both – and may have indeed been small, dark and unbeautiful. She seems to have thought of herself as that, although that may be the poet’s elevated sense of self-drama and cultivated insecurity speaking out. Perhaps she preferred women as lovers; later Christian ecclesiastics certainly thought so, which may be why no great effort was undertaken to preserve her works. And she may have died, after a long, and eventful life, from falling off a cliff. Out of those sparse threads, the author has woven a brightly colored, and intensely-felt silken web of a tale, bejeweled with description and trimmed with poetical lace.

With a great deal of care, the author has reconstructed that world of Classical Greece: cultured, intellectual and wealthy, a world where skill in rhetoric and music was as valued as skill in war and in mercantile pursuits, where the gods were always just out of sight in the waves of a stormy sea or speaking through the mouths of oracles, and their deeds having left a print on the world around, a world familiar to us in some sense, and yet not. The language is archaic, yet not enough to seem unwieldy or inaccessible, in writing conversation. It is very clear in some respects that the author has not fallen into the sin of “presentism” – that is, presenting a modern world, with characters and concepts just a little dressed up in period garb and accessories. Sappho and her friends, her protectors and fellow poets, her family and her lovers are all vividly from a different world, and the details and the visual sense (as well as auditory and olfactory sense) are detailed, vivid and ultimately convincing. Sappho Sings is well worth the read, a little rich for reading all at once, as a box of very expensive chocolate would be, but a lovely treat for now and again, just for the beauty of description.

See Also: Peggy Ullman Bell's Website
Dianne Salerni's Review of Fixin' Things
Peggy Ullman Bell's Authors Den Page
Celia's BNN review

Six-Hundred Hours of a Life

Six-Hundred Hours of a Life
by Craig Lancaster
(CreateSpace / 1-441-45893-X / 978-1-441-45893-3 / February 2009 / 260 pages / $14.95 / Kindle $9.99)

Reviewed by Lloyd Lofthouse for PODBRAM

Most books are like seashells, lovely to look at but there are so many seashells that they are easily forgotten. Only a few are like gold. Six-Hundred Hours of a Life is one of those few.

Edward Stanton, the main character in this novel, is thirty-nine and a virgin. He lives alone in a small house in Billings, Montana. His life is ‘very’ routine, and he likes it that way.

I regret one thing after reading Six-Hundred Hours of a Life. Why did I give so many other books five stars on Amazon.com when this book was the only one that really deserves them? Maybe it was because I found those other books entertaining. Sad! Now I know that five stars should be reserved for books that go beyond entertaining.

In my defense, I can say that over the decades, I have read thousands of books and less than a handful stick around. Like so many things in this packaged, plastic world, most books are disposable even to our memories. However, a few novels achieve a depth of intimacy that are priceless. The last time I read a book like that was in the early 1980s. That was This House of Sky by Ivan Doig. That book was nominated for the National Book Award.

Now, I want to digress to make a point. I am going to complain about a book that did not invite me in. This book was from a Nobel Prize winning author. In fact, that book evicted me. While I was working toward an MFA in the 1980s, I ‘had’ to read and do an oral examination on Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. That book numbed my mind. I had to struggle to stay awake. I had to read passages repeatedly and still couldn’t stay focused. When Faulkner wrote that book, he entered the mind of Benjy, a mentally retarded man with the maturity of a five-year-old. Benjy lived in the past, the present and the future at the same time. His thoughts were an endless run-on sentence.

On the other hand, with Six-Hundred Hours of a Life, I had no problem joining Edward in his disturbed world. In fact, I did not want to leave. I gladly went. At times, I found myself laughing and was occasionally misty eyed. I was captivated.

Edward Stanton is mentally challenged similar to but different from Faulkner’s Benjy. Edward has a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder along with Asperger’s Syndrome. To maintain a semblance of control, Edward takes 80 mg of fluexitine (Prozac) daily. It doesn’t help that his father, Ted Stanton, abuses Edward physically and mentally making Edward’s slight grasp on sanity that much more difficult to hold onto. To cope, Edward has weekly sessions with Dr. Buckley, who helps him develop skills to stay in control of his well-ordered life. However, Edward is going to be challenged. He is about to meet a troubled neighbor with a young son, who needs a friend.

Edward’s world is regulated by repetition where he watches Dragnet daily and loves every episode. ‘It was one of my favorites’ he often says. When he drives to the market, he prefers right turns to left turns because right turns are safer. When he wakes up, the first thing he does is to record the time and temperature and the weather. He loves the Dallas Cowboys. Some of his favorite memories are going to games with his father. He eats the same frozen pizzas and loves spaghetti made a certain way. Edward's life is like a broken record but a fascinating one. Strange, when I finished reading, I thought Edward was the only sane person on this earth, and I identified with him.

If I cannot give Six-Hundred Hours of a Life the six stars it deserves when I post a review on Amazon.com, I shall do it here. I offered to give Six-Hundred Hours of a Life to someone else, so he could also enjoy it. I have decided not to. Instead, I’m going to put it on my bookshelf next to This House of Sky by Ivan Doig. Buy your own copy.

Editor's Note: This book has been re-released as 600 Hours of Edward.

See Also: Craig Lancaster's Website
Craig Lancaster's Blog
Craig Lancaster's Authors Den Page
Re-release title at Amazon: 600 Hours of Edward

Shifted

Shifted by Colin D. Jones
(Foremost Press / 0-978-97048-9 / 978-0-978-97048-2 / April 2008 / 360 pages / $16.97)

Reviewed by Dianne Salerni for PODBRAM

Shifted is not your father’s werewolf story. While drawing on some classic elements of the werewolf legend, Colin D. Jones’s novel breaks new ground in the genre, producing a theory for lycanthropy that incorporates quantum physics and the multi-verse theory and even traces its roots back to the Viking ulfhedinn, or berserkers. The result is a taut, well-developed novel that is more science fiction than horror and completely enjoyable by a wide range of readers.

Mark Arsenault is a young man with a terrible secret. He knows that some dark monster lurks within him, struggling to get out. Not being a fool and growing up in the era of 70’s horror films and comic books, he knows perfectly well that the term “werewolf” most appropriately applies to his condition. Yet, he does not fit the all the classic descriptions of a werewolf – “It” wants out all the time, not only during a full moon, and the touch of silver does no harm to him. Also, no part of the werewolf legend can account for the Ghost – a shadowy but familiar figure which tries to guide and educate him – or his occasional glimpses of the future.

Raised in a loveless and abusive household by a mother and stepfather who fear and hate him, Mark lives an isolated existence until a caring teacher takes an interest in him. However, a kindly offer of refuge might just develop into something deeper and set off a chain reaction of events, leading to a cataclysmic event. A government agency, which knows exactly what Mark Arsenault is, is seeking to enlist the boy for its own nefarious purposes. The visitations from Ghost, whoever he is, are getting stronger, and Mark’s own exploration of his darker side suggests – in the vein of classic horror films – that the monster inside him, while capable of great violence, is not a monster at all and may in fact represent the noblest part of himself.

Shifted is well-written and carefully edited, as well as craftily plotted to build suspense. Jones reels out the information carefully over time, revealing just enough to keep the reader understanding events but not enough to give away what’s coming next. Characters are well-rounded, and dialogue is highly believable. The scientific basis for Jones’s version of lycanthropy makes sense and is presented without resort to awkward exposition or phony conversation. My only complaint is that the cover image has a comic book feel to it that does not quite match the novel. I rather wish the image was made to look more like a 70’s comic book cover – which Mark Arsenault might well have been reading – or replaced with something more elegant and dignified, to match the cleverly designed scientific theory created by the author. Overall, this was a highly enjoyable novel that should appeal to science fiction readers as well as fans of horror/paranormal books and classic monster films.

See Also: The High Spirts Review
Colin D. Jones' Website
Colin D. Jones' Blog

Place

Place by Ned White
(CreateSpace / 1-442-14874-8 / 978-1-442-14874-1 / April 2009 / 236 pages / $16.95 / Smashwords $2.95)

Reviewed by Donna Nordmark Aviles for PODBRAM

Abigail Sipes is a highly sought after, independent corporate consultant. Hugh Ogden is a brilliant computer software engineer who is eager to sell his cutting-edge company, which harnesses distributed intelligence, before the tech bubble bursts. When their paths cross during acquisition talks, the attraction is immediate and intense.

Divorced for the past six years with a daughter in college on the East coast, Hugh’s marriage was failed from the start and he longs for a sense of place, a connection to planet Earth, a life free from the ordinary and expected. Abby, at thirty-six, has been a widow for four years although she willingly admits that she “didn’t like him much.” An unspeakable, life-altering event from her past has damaged her own sense of place and is preventing her – literally – from moving forward with her life. Together, Hugh and Abby seek to build a new family and repair that damage in an effort to become whole.

Place, set in a post 9/11 America, is a thoughtful exploration of family connections both in the here and now, as well as across the veil of time and space. Very well written with a unique, matter-of-fact prose, this intriguing story may leave the reader rethinking their understanding of what can and cannot possibly happen. The back cover blurb…A wounded life in a fractured land, she keeps disappearing… does not begin to touch on the depth and complexity of this story. Definitely worth the read, I look forward to reviewing Ned White’s earlier work, Calling Out Your Name.

See Also: Ned's Smashwords Page
Ned White's Authors Den Page
Ned White's Photography Site
Review of Ned White's Calling Out Your Name

The Treasure of La Malinche

The Treasure of La Malinche
(Volumes 1 & 2)
by Jeffry S. Hepple
(CreateSpace / Volume 1: 1-440-43341-0 & 978-1-440-44341-2 / 706 pages / Volume 2: 1-440-44345-3 & 978-1-440-44345-0 / 704 pages / November 2008 / $19.95 each / Kindle Volume 1 $2.39 / Kindle Volume 2 $.99)

Reviewed by Dr. Al Past for PODBRAM

Setting out the story line of the two volumes of The Treasure of La Malinche is no simple task. From the title, one would expect it to involve La Malinche and her treasure, and it does, but that is only one part of a long, complex, and evolving story line.

La Malinche was a real person, the Indian translator and wife of Hernán Cortez, conqueror of Mexico. Conveniently for purposes of fiction, very little is known about her, and there have been a number of fictional treatments of her life. One such is created here, in alternating chapters, in the guise of her autobiography. As far as this reviewer can tell, that autobiography hews fairly accurately to the known chronology of the conquest.

In between those chapters flows a modern narrative, beginning with the collection of clues to the treasure and the hunt for the treasure itself. We are introduced to a large cast of characters, and more appear later, though the reader is not as confused as this list might suggest. There is Margarita de Vega, a stunningly beautiful PhD who discovers La Malinche's journal. There is Robert A. Lincoln, the bored head of a security company, who de Vega hires to protect her when bad guys come after the treasure. There is her kinky, manipulative mother, of Spanish nobility, who has married a senior politician in the Mexican government for mysterious reasons of her own. Add in FBI agents, Mexican detectives and police chiefs, American professors, Mexican social and economic chaos, drug cartels running wild, a movement to unite Hispanics in a modern Aztlán, an unstable sex-fiend/murderous Chicano activist, a Colombian drug lord determined to take over the Mexican state of Chihuahua, a family of albino hit persons, luxurious estates which were formerly fortifications, multi-million-dollar bank accounts, and throw in for good measure the troubled souls and mysterious histories of some characters, lost and rediscovered children, machine guns, helicopters, carpet bombing, rescue missions, laser-guided bombs, and you have quite a stew of a story. If that weren't enough, many of the characters are not particularly endearing early on, but change for the better (some for the worse), fall in love, get married, die....

In volume 2, following the resolution of the cliffhanger end of volume 1, La Malinche's journal gradually fades out and the story turns from treasure to Mexican politics, international smuggling and drug dealing, and the relationships between the characters. The pace, if anything, picks up.

Fans of adventure stories, and stories tinged with a little speculative modern history and politics, would likely be delighted. The lover of historical fiction, perhaps intrigued by the title, would be disappointed. This reviewer had the feeling that if this story were to be attempted in visual form, it would not be a movie at all: it would be a TV series, an entire season's worth, perhaps several seasons, of high-voltage excitement. Frankly, it exhausted me, and I like adventure stories.

The author has a nice touch with dialog, fortunately. For the most part, the pages flash right by. At the same time it must be mentioned that the volumes are a textbook example of why a spell-checker is a poor editor. In addition to the understandable assortment of missing quotation marks, commas, and whatnot, mismatched homophones abounded, one every page or two, some new to me (as in people "clamoring" aboard a boat, or climbers having a difficult "assent," but an easy "decent"). Some readers might sail right over these. Those who find them jarring should be warned.

I have mentioned in other reviews that I have a friend who likes his movies lean and tightly edited, but prefers his novels by the pound, the better to wallow in them. If that friend were looking for the type of action/adventure described above, he would be in hog heaven. The paper editions of these books come to something like four and a half pounds. Mercifully, in my case I read the Kindle editions, the ideal way to read two giant page-turners with minimal risk to one's musculoskeletal system. Additionally, the Kindle editions are a great bargain.

See Also: The Author's Website
Jeffry S. Hepple's Authors Den Page

Publish Your Book on the Amazon Kindle

Publish Your Book on the Amazon Kindle: A Practical Guide
By Michael R. Hicks
(CreateSpace / 1-440-45694-1 / 978-1-440-45694-7 / November 2008 / 68 pages / $7.95 / Kindle $4.76)

This review of Michael R. Hicks’ Kindle how-to book has been a long time coming. I had hoped to finish the updated, 2009 version of my second book, Ker-Splash, and utilize the information and instructions in Michael’s book as I created the Kindle version. That plan, however, got too bogged down among my many projects, so I am writing this special instructional review without actually trying out Michael’s advice and hints. The reader of this review should not be substantially misinformed due to my already developed level of knowledge in the field of uploading a book to the Kindle system at Amazon. Although my latest book will not be ready for a while longer, I have already uploaded, modified, and uploaded again all of my four books at least once, so I have more than a little experience with the instructions Michael has presented, although my practical application of the material happened prior to my reading of his book.

You should consider this book review as something out of the ordinary for PODBRAM. It is intended more as an installment of The Kindle Report than a review per se. Mr. Hicks’ book is officially listed as having 68 pages, but that includes the front and back matter, a few blank pages, and many screen-shot-type illustrations. The actual reading material covers only 55 pages and I completed it in one sitting at my computer. Yes, you read that correctly. I read A Practical Guide in PDF form directly on my desktop, making notes in a Word document as I made my way through the document preparation and upload instructions. Unlike all other book reviews here at PODBRAM, this seemed like the most practical way to read the book and impart the helpful information contained therein to the PODBRAM audience.

There are several points you need to understand before we proceed with the description of the pertinent information contained in the book. First of all, I am going to give away most of the plot. A list of some of the points of interest I found will be stated for the readership. Secondly, you need to understand that because I had already uploaded books to the Kindle format numerous times before I read these instructions, the many graphics included in the book were of only a passing interest to me. I already knew exactly what to expect from Amazon’s operation in this department, and this sped up my reading of the book considerably. Most importantly, although I am about to tell you in this extensive review much of what is contained in Mr. Hicks’ small book, this should not deter you from purchasing the paperback version of this book and following the instructions as you prepare and upload your manuscript to the Kindle! I think Publish Your Book on the Amazon Kindle is an excellent guide for the Kindle novice. Soon I shall be reading and reviewing Joshua Tallent’s longer, more detailed Kindle how-to book in the usual paperback format for those who may be further along in the learning process. Most any Kindle novice should be able to cough up the measly $7.95 for this book, read through it once, make the manuscript modifications recommended therein, sign on to the DTP (Digital Text Platform) system at Amazon, and upload his or her book while following the illustrated instructions. Without further delay, the following are the most notable points that I feel should be imparted to the many future Kindle uploaders out there in PODBRAM-land.

(1) Mobipocket does not pay royalties until $150 has been accrued! You also have to go through PayPal to be paid by Mobipocket, which is located in France!

(2) Mike likes to use Mobipocket Creator to create the file and then upload it to the Kindle DTP, but when I did this with Daydream, the photos were omitted. He says you have to ZIP all the photos together and upload them as a single file. How exactly you do that is not described in the book. This omission, combined with the emphasis on Mobipocket, is my leading criticism of the book. A Practical Guide was written prior to Mike’s knowledge of Smashwords, and at least so far, I have found the Meatgrinder at Smashwords to be easier to use than Mobipocket Creator.

(3) Kindle particularly likes Word 97 and RTF files. Relatively simple PDF files convert well in Mobipocket Creator if the PDF is the only version of your book that you can access; otherwise the Word version is nearly always easier to convert than the PDF.

(4) Images should be at least 450 pixels wide to fill the screen width of the Kindle because text will not wrap around images on the Kindle. Photos should be no larger than 600 x 800 or 64KB. To upload a cover image directly to Kindle DTP, make the image 450 wide by 550 tall, and convert it to grayscale prior to uploading it to the system. The system will change color to grayscale, but it may not do such a hot job of it. The color image you upload for the book’s Amazon page should be of a higher resolution than the one discussed above to be downloaded in B&W by the customer.

(5) Mike explains in detail how to create a Table of Contents using Mobi Creator that is interactive in the Mobipocket format.

(6) If you send in your book uploaded with Mobi Creator to both Amazon DTP and Mobi, two versions with two ASIN’s will appear at Amazon. That’s why there are two listings for Mike’s books, and he discusses the pros and cons of the author utilizing this trick.

(7) Upload graphics other than photos, such as graphs, charts, and tables, in GIF format instead of JPG.

(8) Mike recommends clearing your browser cache just prior to uploading your book to Kindle, as the information stored in the cache sometimes confuses the DTP system.

(9) You can insert a page break into the HTML by placing certain code between the paragraph close tag and the next paragraph tag in each location where a page break is desired. (10) The number of Kindle books available changed from 285,000 to 300,000 on 6/9/09. Mike didn’t say that; I did. Wouldn’t you like your book to be number 300,001?

See Also: In Her Name Review
Mike's Kindle Website
Mike's Homepage

Dark Shadows Red Bayou

Dark Shadows Red Bayou
by John Atkinson
(Fisher King Press / 0-981-03447-0 / 978-0-981-03447-8 / June 2009 / 200 pages / $17.95)

Reviewed by Malcolm R. Campbell for PODBRAM

Somebody is killing prostitutes in the swamp.

To Sheriff Coles Bleu, the “job was everything; never mind the formalities of protocol. By his rules, he always got the bad guys. His office achieved the highest crime-solving rate in Louisiana. Now, that record was being threatened.”

John Atkinson, who brought us the unforgettable Johnnyboy in his powerful debut novel Timekeeper (2007), returns with three, rough-cut, equally memorable characters in the first book to be published under Fisher King’s new il piccolo imprint.

Coles Bleu, Bennett Morgan and Francis Lovain grew up together in a small town in the delta country around Lake Pontchartrain. Coles grew into a 300-pound, brute-force sheriff who rules his county with an iron hand; he’s both loved and feared, and he likes the South because that’s where people know how to work together and get stuff done. Bennett’s family had money, and as a stockbroker, Bennett still has it, along with his Rolex, large house, analyst and a powerful new convertible. The troll-like Francis, who lives in the swamp, sports platinum-capped teeth and a face not even a mother could love. The swamp, and its Put-In-Ditch channel where the bodies are being found, lives and breathes through Atkinson’s haunting word pictures as a wonderfully chilling location for this tightly written thriller. Francis loves the swamp, Bennett fears it, and Coles views it pragmatically as the place he went fishing as a kid and the place the murder investigation is luring him now.

“As adults, Coles, Ben, and Francis knew the catch basin held no prejudices when it came to nature’s rules. A wrong move could cost a life. Gambling with death was fun when they were boys with boundless courage. But as Ben grew older he was less inclined to do reckless things.”

Bennett thinks Francis knows something about the murders because Francis knows everything about the bayou. While Coles is inclined to give their strange childhood friend a little more slack, he concedes that Francis’ friendship with the Goocha, the shaman of the swamp, is disturbing. Plus, there aren’t a lot of leads and the last thing Coles needs is either New Orleans reporters or the Feds sniffing around his domain asking questions and causing trouble.

The killer believes he is doing the Lord’s work, showing wayward women the error of their profession. Like the other predators in the bayou, he kills with cold efficiency because the injunction is built into his psyche. Then, too, there’s the voice inside his head urging him to move ahead with the Holy task, but without his disparaging, profane language:

“Speak kindly, boy, you hear?”
“I hear. Ready or not, I’ll teach her a thing or two.”
“My child, that’s much better. Now mind your mouth.”

When, or if, this killer is stopped, depends greatly on the strengths and weaknesses of three characters whose lives are more obstinately tangled together than the vines in Red Bayou. These men, the novel’s rich location and non-stop action, and the liberal doses of offbeat humor make this dark mystery a satisfying experience.

See Also: John Atkinson's Blog
The March of Books Review

Roastbeef's Promise

Roastbeef’s Promise:
When Your Dad’s Dying Wish is to Have His Ashes Sprinkled in Each State, What’s a Son to Do?
by David Jerome
(Smack Books / 0-981-54591-2 / 978-0-981-54591-2 / March 2009 / 336 pages / $23.95 hardcover / $17.96 Amazon)

Reviewed by Celia Hayes for PODBRAM

To hear him tell it, in this rollicking account of the most disaster-prone road trip ever, if it weren’t for bad luck, poor young Jim “Roastbeef” Hume would have had no luck at all. He has embarked on a marathon journey through all 48 continental US states, in obedience to his adoptive father’s deathbed wish to scatter his ashes in every one of them. With not very much in his pocket, or a particular itinerary in mind, he drops out of college and sets out bravely, with three-fifths of his father’s ashes in a silver urn that looks like a teapot without the spout. (This is a compromise, as two of his sibs agreed with his plan, and the other two wanted a more conventional solution.) He starts out in his own car, which barely lasts through the first couple of states, thereafter advancing in fits and starts. He continues via other cars, hitchhiking, biking, moped, and intercity bus, and one hysterically comic interlude of hopping railcars under the guidance of an old man with emphysema, who recalls the most fun he ever had in his life, riding the rails as a hobo. He wishes to recapture some of that, if Jim will only carry along the oxygen bottle to which he is tethered. The scene where Jim must throw the oxygen bottle into a moving railcar and beans a pig with it is laugh out loud, tears down your face funny. In the meantime, he encounters a wonderfully assorted collection of characters: small town law enforcement, frat boys and sorority girls, Canadian dentists on a road trip disguised as bad-ass bikers, a lesbian who hires him to pretend to be her boyfriend for the duration of a family reunion, a young Marine and his very pregnant bride to be who are going to Las Vegas to be married by a Boy George look-alike, a conniving young man who gets his fun crashing wedding receptions, and a philosopher/launderette attendant … and many, many more. Jim winds up being arrested mistakenly in a drug bust, working in a family souvenir shop at Mount Rushmore, is dragged off to Tijuana by his father’s army buddy, AKA Uncle Spud, and finds Elvis’ toenail-clipping in the deep shag rug in a room at Graceland.

The overall tone is wry, deadpan and very, very dry – a Candide with more self-awareness. The narrator is an engaging character; as noted, he has consistently awful luck, but bounces back with verve and creativity, never losing sight of his mission and ready to try anything once, or for as long as it will take to get him back on the road. Some of the situations are comic set-pieces, which have turned up before, but they are well-told here … and anyone who has been on a long road trip across the United States – by any means – will recognize not only the places, but the assortment of people inhabiting them. In several ways, this book reminded me of Bill Bryson’s Lost Continent – much the same dry, comic tone, but with a much sweeter understanding of and liking for people.

See Also: Celia's BNN Review