2006-01-18
Out of Cabrini
I've been trying to be a good girl and read all the books I need to do reviews of before the 25th.
Two had me excited until I read the endings. Two were wonderful. One was OK but had some first book problems and a protagonist I could barely stand.
One, despite my best efforts, I tossed. Technically great writing. Textbook writing.
But I found myself skipping paragraphs. Then pages. Then closing the book and looking at it in disgust. Then finally, literally, throwing it into the "I wouldn't read this if they paid me" pile.
One of the wonderful ones was Out of Cabrini by Dave Case. I went into to it jaded and griping to myself about the first paragraph, thinking it was overwritten. I was over-tired. And I was wrong.
The story, back story and characters in this book are well-sketched and have depth, so I kept going despite my initial crankiness. Slowly, without my even being aware, I got sucked into the story. So much so, that as I read, I lost track of time. I lost track of all the things I planned on doing that night. I looked up in a breather space between chapters and saw four hours were gone.
Let me give you some background.
For the past nineteen years, Dave Case has worked on the Chicago police force. He's a Sergeant with the Special Operations Section which is made up of officers known for getting their jobs done and cases closed. He’s also a member of the Hostage, Barricaded, Terrorist Team.
Cabrini, the setting of the story, is a level of hell above-ground inhabited by people heading to the one below at a rapid pace. This is an area of Chicago abandoned to gangs, addicts and the poor while the rest of Chicago grew up and opulant. This is an area of Chicago that scared the shit out of me when I lived there.
Case writes of Cabrini in his foreward with a straight-forward ease that is jarring when he relates the small number of officers assigned to such an 'active' area. Case tells the tale of one of those teams.
The story begins and wraps around Lonnie Huggins. Huggins is out on parole after a short stretch in prison. He's a hard man by anyone's standards and is made a harder man by his time behind bars. Literally by the extensive weight-lifting that made the time go by and internally by what he sees and hears. A perfect place to make a sociopath go even more over the edge then he was on the street. Huggins has earned some compensation for not flipping on anyone on the outside. He's due some payback.
That payback comes in the form of four keys and whatever enforcers Huggins wants to expand Mickey Cobra drug territory into Minnesota. Huggins stashes the goods in his car and is ready to fulfill a need that has pressed on him since he went to prison. He visits his girlfriends Latricia.
Latricia had grown used to a life without bruises, broken teeth and bloody noses. Huggins is the father of two of her children but he acts like its nothing to him. Overhearing a phone call, she knows just how to get him back. She makes her own phone call and sets the cops on Huggins tail.
Here's the crux of the matter.
The police impound the car with all that it carries: Huggins future and his pact with the Mickey Cobras.
Through a bit of under-handed selling, the car ends up in the hands of a secretary as a gift from a boss wanting to thank her for all she 'does' for him. Huggins wants, NEEDS, that car back. He sets two of his enforcers on it. He wants them to get it back at all costs.
Detective Stacey Macbeth wants the car. After Laticia called him, he managed to get Huggins behind bars again. But the stash he expected to find wasn't. The car was auctioned off before he even knew he had to do a more thorough search.
As Macbeth and the Mickey Cobras each race to get to the car first, both following clues that leading them from one person to the next, bodies start piling up. Fast.
Somehow, Dave Case wrote a book that is not 'my kind of book' and made it my kind of book. He has up to five story arcs, all paralled, all tight and none of them loosing sight of the others. My muscles actually tensed up as Huggins enforcers get closer to the car mere steps before Macbeth.
And Macbeth himself was a revelation. I've read the smart-ass detectives that have seen it all. I've read the hard-boiled silent types who always get their man. Macbeth is one of the most human leads I've read in crime fiction. He won me over. Not by charm, or smarting off to his superiors or his drive for some vague idea of justice. But as a tenacious man that wants to get the job done. As a man of the streets who understands who he's going after. As a man whose brain and body can't rest until he's solved the puzzle.
This book also has one of the funniest and freshest opening chapters I've read since Sean Doolittle's Dirt*.
I managed to scrounge up one measily link on Case and his writing. It is brought to you by our friends at Hardluck Stories. It is Cases's short story, Cell Damage.
Out of Cabrini is due out in April of this year. Remember it. I'll be doing a full write-up for CrimeSpree and hope to spread the word on Dave Case, a man without a website but with a damn good book under his belt.
*One of my favorite books of all time and all genres.
Two had me excited until I read the endings. Two were wonderful. One was OK but had some first book problems and a protagonist I could barely stand.
One, despite my best efforts, I tossed. Technically great writing. Textbook writing.
But I found myself skipping paragraphs. Then pages. Then closing the book and looking at it in disgust. Then finally, literally, throwing it into the "I wouldn't read this if they paid me" pile.
One of the wonderful ones was Out of Cabrini by Dave Case. I went into to it jaded and griping to myself about the first paragraph, thinking it was overwritten. I was over-tired. And I was wrong.
The story, back story and characters in this book are well-sketched and have depth, so I kept going despite my initial crankiness. Slowly, without my even being aware, I got sucked into the story. So much so, that as I read, I lost track of time. I lost track of all the things I planned on doing that night. I looked up in a breather space between chapters and saw four hours were gone.
Let me give you some background.
For the past nineteen years, Dave Case has worked on the Chicago police force. He's a Sergeant with the Special Operations Section which is made up of officers known for getting their jobs done and cases closed. He’s also a member of the Hostage, Barricaded, Terrorist Team.
Cabrini, the setting of the story, is a level of hell above-ground inhabited by people heading to the one below at a rapid pace. This is an area of Chicago abandoned to gangs, addicts and the poor while the rest of Chicago grew up and opulant. This is an area of Chicago that scared the shit out of me when I lived there.
Case writes of Cabrini in his foreward with a straight-forward ease that is jarring when he relates the small number of officers assigned to such an 'active' area. Case tells the tale of one of those teams.
The story begins and wraps around Lonnie Huggins. Huggins is out on parole after a short stretch in prison. He's a hard man by anyone's standards and is made a harder man by his time behind bars. Literally by the extensive weight-lifting that made the time go by and internally by what he sees and hears. A perfect place to make a sociopath go even more over the edge then he was on the street. Huggins has earned some compensation for not flipping on anyone on the outside. He's due some payback.
That payback comes in the form of four keys and whatever enforcers Huggins wants to expand Mickey Cobra drug territory into Minnesota. Huggins stashes the goods in his car and is ready to fulfill a need that has pressed on him since he went to prison. He visits his girlfriends Latricia.
Latricia had grown used to a life without bruises, broken teeth and bloody noses. Huggins is the father of two of her children but he acts like its nothing to him. Overhearing a phone call, she knows just how to get him back. She makes her own phone call and sets the cops on Huggins tail.
Here's the crux of the matter.
The police impound the car with all that it carries: Huggins future and his pact with the Mickey Cobras.
Through a bit of under-handed selling, the car ends up in the hands of a secretary as a gift from a boss wanting to thank her for all she 'does' for him. Huggins wants, NEEDS, that car back. He sets two of his enforcers on it. He wants them to get it back at all costs.
Detective Stacey Macbeth wants the car. After Laticia called him, he managed to get Huggins behind bars again. But the stash he expected to find wasn't. The car was auctioned off before he even knew he had to do a more thorough search.
As Macbeth and the Mickey Cobras each race to get to the car first, both following clues that leading them from one person to the next, bodies start piling up. Fast.
Somehow, Dave Case wrote a book that is not 'my kind of book' and made it my kind of book. He has up to five story arcs, all paralled, all tight and none of them loosing sight of the others. My muscles actually tensed up as Huggins enforcers get closer to the car mere steps before Macbeth.
And Macbeth himself was a revelation. I've read the smart-ass detectives that have seen it all. I've read the hard-boiled silent types who always get their man. Macbeth is one of the most human leads I've read in crime fiction. He won me over. Not by charm, or smarting off to his superiors or his drive for some vague idea of justice. But as a tenacious man that wants to get the job done. As a man of the streets who understands who he's going after. As a man whose brain and body can't rest until he's solved the puzzle.
This book also has one of the funniest and freshest opening chapters I've read since Sean Doolittle's Dirt*.
I managed to scrounge up one measily link on Case and his writing. It is brought to you by our friends at Hardluck Stories. It is Cases's short story, Cell Damage.
Out of Cabrini is due out in April of this year. Remember it. I'll be doing a full write-up for CrimeSpree and hope to spread the word on Dave Case, a man without a website but with a damn good book under his belt.
*One of my favorite books of all time and all genres.
2006-01-17
But this goes up to eleven.
This is the season of my discontent and certainly not the most wonderful time of the year.
I am faced with choices I commonly make when restless:
1.) Should I change the color of my hair? Again?
2.) Should I re-arrange all the furniture? Again?
3.) Should I change the html of the blog? Again?
To the first I say nay. I've settled happily upon this Burgundy shade that gives my head a superhero sheen and a demon-like halo.
To the second I say maybe. The physicality of moving furniture all over suits my restless brain. And I may, as I usually do, find things I've lost and missed as well as things I've lost and completely forgotten about.
To the third I say it is a last resort. I'm rather pleased with the looks of the thing but this bout of restlessness is quite a tenacious one.
This is the season of my loving, though that evil genius Procrastination tells me to wait.
Why, oh why fickle fates, does this happen?
Boredom?
A need for change?
Not enough chaos to satisfy the maniacal needs of the muse?
All of the above. The gray gloom of the sky as it drops half-hearted flakes makes me yearn for the time when I spend more than half of my day outside reveling in the feel of dirt on my hands, the sun on my back and an ever changing landscape. Outside, all that changes now is the level of snow or muddy lawn and the number of squirrels looking for peanuts the crows nabbed five minutes after the squirrels so carefully buried them.
And my muse does thrive on chaos. As anal as I am about my desk (and little else), when I really write, paper, CD's, pens, reference books and half-empty coffee mugs cover every spare inch.
To soothe the savage beast that is me, I will move heavy things and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes suggests, take a music bath. The ever wise and very dead Holmes knew that music is to the soul as water to the body and I am in sore need of a cleansing.
I am faced with choices I commonly make when restless:
1.) Should I change the color of my hair? Again?
2.) Should I re-arrange all the furniture? Again?
3.) Should I change the html of the blog? Again?
To the first I say nay. I've settled happily upon this Burgundy shade that gives my head a superhero sheen and a demon-like halo.
To the second I say maybe. The physicality of moving furniture all over suits my restless brain. And I may, as I usually do, find things I've lost and missed as well as things I've lost and completely forgotten about.
To the third I say it is a last resort. I'm rather pleased with the looks of the thing but this bout of restlessness is quite a tenacious one.
This is the season of my loving, though that evil genius Procrastination tells me to wait.
Why, oh why fickle fates, does this happen?
Boredom?
A need for change?
Not enough chaos to satisfy the maniacal needs of the muse?
All of the above. The gray gloom of the sky as it drops half-hearted flakes makes me yearn for the time when I spend more than half of my day outside reveling in the feel of dirt on my hands, the sun on my back and an ever changing landscape. Outside, all that changes now is the level of snow or muddy lawn and the number of squirrels looking for peanuts the crows nabbed five minutes after the squirrels so carefully buried them.
And my muse does thrive on chaos. As anal as I am about my desk (and little else), when I really write, paper, CD's, pens, reference books and half-empty coffee mugs cover every spare inch.
To soothe the savage beast that is me, I will move heavy things and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes suggests, take a music bath. The ever wise and very dead Holmes knew that music is to the soul as water to the body and I am in sore need of a cleansing.
2006-01-16
We cannot turn back.
This is not just another day we don't get mail.
This is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Remember why it is. On January 15th, 1929, a child was born that was destined to change America forever.
To read and/or hear his I Have a Dream speech, go here.
R.I.P. 720C Inkjet Printer
My printer, the one that printed my first attempts at a novel, that printed my first publishing agreement, that has lived on my desk for over ten years, has come to a sad and loud demise.
Beyond the usual, "What's this? You want me to print? Well, for your information, I was taking a nap. See all this paper I'm sucking in? I'm printing two lines on all of it then spitting back out again. Ha!"
Beyond the occasional, "Oh, no. Oh, God! I don't feel so good. Must be the paper bunched up in my butt."
This was kind of a pull, pull, zap, buckle, bang, ergh, ergh, ergh, ahhhh noise. I opened her up and saw what I thought was a bunch of string. "What the...?" I pulled at it and realized, slowly, that this was the band that pulled the ink cartridges across the paper.
Got a new printer, brought it home (clever, no?), set it up about half way when I realized my old one was so old that they no longer make printers that need the big, clunky computer-to-printer cord. It is now a cute little computer-to-printer cord with the little USB plug.
This cord was not included.
Much profanity then acceptence of fate.
2006-01-15
I decided to turn my pain into a constructive force
As of this writing, Michelle Bachelet may well have received Sebastian Pinera's phone call conceding the presidency of Chile.
While you read the following, think to yourself, would a candidate like Bachelet win in an American presidential campaign?
Bachelete survived being a political prisoner of General Augusto Pinochet. Her father was arrested and tortured. She and her mother were incarcerated and beaten then exiled in 1975. She returned in 1979 to restore the democracy that Pinochet took away from Chile.
"I saw friends disappear, who were jailed or tortured. But I decided to turn my pain into a constructive force."
Bachelete was pleased and pleasantly surprised. Bachelet had expected resistance from Chile's conservative military establishment when appointed defense minister. "I was a woman, separated, a socialist, an agnostic ... all possible sins together."
She's determined to lower the 10 percent peak unemployment rate, improve public health/housing and education services. She wants to curb urban crime. And she'll tackle Chile's 25-year-old private social security systems to ensure better pensions for retirees.
Bachelet has professed another goal. This is the one that convinced me she would never make it in the United States as a politician. She wants to reduce inequities among the rich and the poor.
While you read the following, think to yourself, would a candidate like Bachelet win in an American presidential campaign?
Bachelete survived being a political prisoner of General Augusto Pinochet. Her father was arrested and tortured. She and her mother were incarcerated and beaten then exiled in 1975. She returned in 1979 to restore the democracy that Pinochet took away from Chile.
"I saw friends disappear, who were jailed or tortured. But I decided to turn my pain into a constructive force."
Bachelete was pleased and pleasantly surprised. Bachelet had expected resistance from Chile's conservative military establishment when appointed defense minister. "I was a woman, separated, a socialist, an agnostic ... all possible sins together."
She's determined to lower the 10 percent peak unemployment rate, improve public health/housing and education services. She wants to curb urban crime. And she'll tackle Chile's 25-year-old private social security systems to ensure better pensions for retirees.
Bachelet has professed another goal. This is the one that convinced me she would never make it in the United States as a politician. She wants to reduce inequities among the rich and the poor.
Star Set
God, sometimes you do come through.Today was a good day.
I write that with a feeling of awe and gentle thanks to the universe.
This last year, for various reasons, was hard for me. Towards the end of my days were characterized with suspended dread. I was an automaton, going through my days barely doing what was needed to keep going.
My writing came to a halt. My communication was made up of cyber grunts. I grew to hate the phone - HATE the phone.
Now, for the first time in a long time, I look out my window and notice the way nature paints the sky and colors the trees. Today for the first time in a long time music has stilled me and made me whole. Today for the first time in a long time, I am don't know dread. Today, for the first time in a long time, tears I have are for concepts and memories and a sorrow for the state of the world instead of tears of fear and loss.
Today I rediscovered that eating an orange while I work is a bad idea. There are little pieces of orange on the screen, on the desk top, on the mouse, on the phone and on the cd player.
From the start of this post to the end, the sky outside my window went from orange to pink to purple to gray to almost black and I had enough quiet in me to see it.
Hall of Shame
Have you been waiting your whole life to hear Leonard Newmoy singing PROUD MARY? Or Phyllis Diller singing (CAN'T GET NO) SATISFACTION? Or Pat Boone singing CRAZY TRAIN?
Then Fade to Black Magazine is the place for you!
Then Fade to Black Magazine is the place for you!
2006-01-14
"still acts like a cat on acid"
Iggy Pop, back on tour with the Stooges and still getting the crap beaten out of himself on stage, chatted with Penthouse magazine in an interview that will appear in the February issue.
Iggy has a lot to say.
"Everything about New York was cool in the '70s," he said. "People slouched when they walked, and they didn't look like they had anywhere to go. Everybody wasn't dressed for success. There were still peep shows in Times Square. To me, that created art." The singer also commented on the city's latest wave of rock bands: "The worse New York is doing, socially and economically, the better the music. Unfortunately, it seems like New York is doing awfully well these days."
"People are starving in general,especially when you get to white music, which just increasingly sucks. U2 is
a good band. There is a certain kind of reassuring white rock and some people do well with that."
Pop is appalled by do-good rockers like Bono, because he is convinced they aim to profit from their humanitarian actions. He says that musicians who seem to do nothing but fight for world peace and an end to hunger should give up their day jobs if they're truly serious about their causes, "It would be easier for me to believe someone's commitment to Greenpeace if that's all they do. I mean, work for Greenpeace if you believe in Greenpeace.
"Personally, I haven't done too many benefits but boy, when you do, you see the backside of it. I hear people talking about the angles and different things they're going to make off of it -- especially the managers."
Damn! Even Henry Rollins niced it up a little when speaking about U2: "While I applaud Bono's humanitarian efforts with great admiration, I think the music is for those who have lost their will to rock."
Blogging is Cheap
Henry Rollins, who've I've been in shock and awe of since Black Flag, has his own blog. Rarely is anger, passion and poetry so all out beautiful.
2006-01-13
United I Stand
I'm sure that most people that read this blog on a regular basis have a firm idea about my political leanings. You could toss out the word liberal and I guess it would apply. Frankly, I don't care what kind of name is applied to me or what kind of box I am put in - what I want for this country and it's people has nothing to do with political affiliation.
I want every person to have the same chance at a good education, health care, housing. I think at some point in everyone's lives, they should feel the future is wide open to them and all they have to do is choose where to go and what to do.
If you think that is already the case for everyone, you are gravely wrong and have been living in a bubble.
I've lived and work in places where intelligent, caring, good people are trapped by the irfinances and their background. I've seen it and felt helpless to do anything about it.
Before the current administration, I was not a political person. I was vaguealy aware of what was going on in the world but I was busy looking out for myself and felt I didn't have time to worry about anyone else, let alone the country or the world.
But I never liked Bush. I am not anti-Republican per se nor am I anti-American or anti-troops. I know some of the people going over there. I pray they'll come back. I wish I knew why they were going.
I am not a Democrat. I don't think they can magically fix the problems we have as a country. There is no panacea for this country except for one thing.
Every person takes the time to be aware of what's going on around them. To speak out when they are angry or when they don't understand what's happening. To care about what is happening to others. Except for those that have enough money to buy and sell corporations, any one of us could loose everything we have at any time at this point in history: our freedom, our savings, our rights to make choices about things that will affect us and even our lives in some cases.
Any President in office will make mistakes. They will probably lie to us. They will piss us off.
But this President doesn't seem to care about how what he's doing and saying is affecting us. I spend time at the truthout site and that alone will have more labels heaped on me. If there is the slightest possiblility that what is said there is true, the slightest possibility, then we are in trouble.
According to something I read today, Bush and the NSA have been spying on the people of this country - not just the terrorists, not just the bad guys, everyone - since before the war. I have a problem with that.
Because this is America, I am able to write all of my feelings and thoughts down and have others read them. Others can and will disagree to varying degrees and can share their thoughts and feelings as well.
That is part of what living in this country is about.
It's why the Ku Klux Klan are still around. I hate them and what they stand for but they do have every right to exist and to make their opinions known.
We all do.
And I just did.
I want every person to have the same chance at a good education, health care, housing. I think at some point in everyone's lives, they should feel the future is wide open to them and all they have to do is choose where to go and what to do.
If you think that is already the case for everyone, you are gravely wrong and have been living in a bubble.
I've lived and work in places where intelligent, caring, good people are trapped by the irfinances and their background. I've seen it and felt helpless to do anything about it.
Before the current administration, I was not a political person. I was vaguealy aware of what was going on in the world but I was busy looking out for myself and felt I didn't have time to worry about anyone else, let alone the country or the world.
But I never liked Bush. I am not anti-Republican per se nor am I anti-American or anti-troops. I know some of the people going over there. I pray they'll come back. I wish I knew why they were going.
I am not a Democrat. I don't think they can magically fix the problems we have as a country. There is no panacea for this country except for one thing.
Every person takes the time to be aware of what's going on around them. To speak out when they are angry or when they don't understand what's happening. To care about what is happening to others. Except for those that have enough money to buy and sell corporations, any one of us could loose everything we have at any time at this point in history: our freedom, our savings, our rights to make choices about things that will affect us and even our lives in some cases.
Any President in office will make mistakes. They will probably lie to us. They will piss us off.
But this President doesn't seem to care about how what he's doing and saying is affecting us. I spend time at the truthout site and that alone will have more labels heaped on me. If there is the slightest possiblility that what is said there is true, the slightest possibility, then we are in trouble.
According to something I read today, Bush and the NSA have been spying on the people of this country - not just the terrorists, not just the bad guys, everyone - since before the war. I have a problem with that.
Because this is America, I am able to write all of my feelings and thoughts down and have others read them. Others can and will disagree to varying degrees and can share their thoughts and feelings as well.
That is part of what living in this country is about.
It's why the Ku Klux Klan are still around. I hate them and what they stand for but they do have every right to exist and to make their opinions known.
We all do.
And I just did.
If Ye was invisible...
Ye Xiangtin from Yelou Village in the Yangzhunag Township of Wugang City, Henan Province, China, had two problems.
The first, that any stories written about him would contain abominably long first sentences with place names that most chaps or gals in the Western hemisphere would only try to pronounce if drunk or piqued or offered large sums of money.
The second, well, read on...
Ye Xiangting paid a visit to his local Yangzhunag police station to get a required photo for his ID.
He sat with the number he had drawn.
He listened to the drone of conversation and Muzak.
He twiddled his thumbs.
He dozed for a while, dreaming of far off beaches covered with Gummi worms, talc and strangely torn financial magazines.
Suddenly, it was his turn.
He sat in front of the camera.
He smiled.
He was told not to smile.
He stopped smiling.
A photo was taken.
But here I tell you that although the shutter closed and the machinations machined, no image appeared.
They tried again.
No joy.
They checked the camera.
No problems could be found.
The checked Ye's clothes, checking for anything that could interfere with the equipment.
They sat Ye down and photographed him from every angle.
No matter what they did, no photos of Ye Xiangting would appear.
When the staff had people stand with Ye, the people would appear.
Ye would not.
The staff gave up.
Ye Xiangting said this has never happened to him before.
The police station chief said there had been two similar cases. They are unclear as to why.
But we know why, don't we?
The first, that any stories written about him would contain abominably long first sentences with place names that most chaps or gals in the Western hemisphere would only try to pronounce if drunk or piqued or offered large sums of money.
The second, well, read on...
Ye Xiangting paid a visit to his local Yangzhunag police station to get a required photo for his ID.
He sat with the number he had drawn.
He listened to the drone of conversation and Muzak.
He twiddled his thumbs.
He dozed for a while, dreaming of far off beaches covered with Gummi worms, talc and strangely torn financial magazines.
Suddenly, it was his turn.
He sat in front of the camera.
He smiled.
He was told not to smile.
He stopped smiling.
A photo was taken.
But here I tell you that although the shutter closed and the machinations machined, no image appeared.
They tried again.
No joy.
They checked the camera.
No problems could be found.
The checked Ye's clothes, checking for anything that could interfere with the equipment.
They sat Ye down and photographed him from every angle.
No matter what they did, no photos of Ye Xiangting would appear.
When the staff had people stand with Ye, the people would appear.
Ye would not.
The staff gave up.
Ye Xiangting said this has never happened to him before.
The police station chief said there had been two similar cases. They are unclear as to why.
But we know why, don't we?
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