Five Remarkable Books

30-Day Blogging Challenge - Oct 17th
Share a list of your top 5 favorite books and give us a short blurb on each.

I have to start off by stating that these five are in no particular order. I have always loved to read and over the years, I have found that these five books have stayed with me the most among the hundreds I have digested over the years.

"Salem's Lot" was Stephen King's 2nd published novel and though I read most of his work, this early novel has never been unseated as my favorite. The novel takes place in Jerusalem, Maine. Writer Ben Mears returns to his hometown to discover that the townspeople are being systematically turned into vampires. It is wonderfully campy, borrowing on all those original, "bump in the night" fears from one's nightmare landscape. King's descriptive prowess is on full display here, making even the most predictable scenes read with razor edge tension. It is a classic good verses evil story that pits faith and conviction against fear and corruption.

“You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross… the bread and wine… the confessional… only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes.” Barlow, Salem's Lot

Jim Lynch's "The Highest Tide" is an almost complete departure from my first choice. It tells the store of Miles O' Malley, a thirteen year old boy who battles insomnia by searching the tidal flats of Puget Sound for exotic sea specimens to sell. It is at the same time, about so much more. This is a coming of age story, set against the backdrop of a boy who finds a mysterious creature on the beach at night. At the same time Miles is making his discoveries, he is also dealing with the fear of his parent's impending divorce and a man-sized crush on the girl next door. At all times this book is sweet and sensitive but packs a really meaningful and engaging story. Lynch's descriptive phrasing is broadly appealing, especially for those who appreciate the ocean and its creatures.

"A feisty entourage of purple shore crabs scurried alongside the snail, their oversized pinchers drawn like Uzis. I thought about grabbing the moon snail, but I knew that even after it squeezed inside its shell like some contortionist stunt, it would still hog too much room in my pack. So I noted where it was and moved on until I saw the blue flash. It wasn't truly flashing, but with moonlight bouncing off it that was the effect. I steadied my headlamp and closed in on a starfish that radiated blue, as if it had just been pulled from a kiln. But it wasn't just the color that jarred me. Its two lower legs clung strangely together in line with its top leg and perpendicular to its two side legs, making it stand out in the black mud like a blue crucifix." Miles, The Highest Tide

"Of Love and Other Demons" by the amazing Colombia author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is the book that made me fall in love with words. Marquez's prose is so breathtaking beautiful, I can only imagine how much more compelling it would read in his native Spanish. The story is about a young girl, Sierva Maria, who is bitten by a rabid dog. She is sent to a monastery to presumably live out her days in isolation. She meets and begans a relationship with a young cleric there named Father Cayetano Delaura. It is a tormented love story that is ripe with beautiful anguish.

And without giving his panic an opportunity, he unburdened himself of the dark truth that did not permit him to live. He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. He continued to speak without looking at her, with the same fluidity and passion as when he recited poetry, until it seemed to him that Sierva María was sleeping. But she was awake, her eyes, like those of a startled deer, fixed on him. She almost did not dare to ask:
"And now?"
"And now nothing," he said. "It is enough for me that you know."


Peter Straub was another author I discovered at an early age. His novel "Ghost Story", was the first book that really scared me. It kept me up at night, literally. There is such an amazing story that kicks off with four men discussing the one tragic night and horrific mistake they all have in common. It is a tale that travels through decades with characters that climb right out the page and sit, waiting for you in the dark corners of your room. Both this movie, and Salem's Lot were made into movies...and neither film came anywhere close to being as good as these books were. Aptly titled, Ghost Story, this is the one you will compare all others too.
From its ominous opening line, it grabs on and doesn't let go.

“What was the worst thing you've ever done?
I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing...” Peter Straub, Ghost Story

My final entry to my top five is one of my favorite authors...James Lee Burke. While I have read all of his novels, "Tin Roof Blowdown" was my first introduction to this master storyteller. No writer can transport me to places better than Burke. His descriptive powers, in my opinion, are unrivaled. His characters are teeming with life and vitality. This particular novel kicks off with a shooting of two looters in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. This wasn't the first book to feature his recurring characters or the setting of Southern Lousiana, but it endeared Dave Robicheaux and his buddy Clet Pursell to me forever after. Burke has expertly crafted their characters and over the years, has given them lives that you can almost swear must exist outside the pages of his books. I repeated find myself reading a paragraph over just to more fully appreciate the care in which he has described a particular place or feeling. He is an absolute master of the craft.

"MY WORST DREAMS have always contained images of brown water and fields of elephant grass and the downdraft of helicopter blades. The dreams are in color but they contain no sound, not of drowned voices in the river or the explosions under the hooches in the village we burned or the thropping of the Jolly Green and the gunships coming low and flat across the canopy, like insects pasted against a molten sun." Dave Robicheaux, Tin Roof Blowdown.

There are so many other books that come close to making the cut that I can recommend. Like, Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants", "Horns" by Joe Hill, anything by Greg Iles...If you loved the show Stranger Things, I would highly recommend you check out, "Summer of Night" by Dan Simmons. I could go on but this entry is already pretty long and I surely must have lost most of my readers by now...

The Fearless Writer and the Super Moon

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
 DAY 1845: December 4, 2017 Prompt: "Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever." - Toni Morrison. What are your thoughts on this quote?

A long time ago I was lucky enough to have taken a creative writing class with author Wally Lamb while he was still teaching at my local high school, before the commercial success of "She's Come Undone" and that life-changing call from Oprah. I remember there was one thing he told us that I still keep with me to this day...he told us to "write about what we know." I've have tried to do that, keeping a grain of truth and personal knowledge running through even my fictional pieces. Even if you are writing about the unknown, some lateral universe like the Upside down in Stranger Things...if you infuse it with details and elements that are familiar to you, of which you have some insight and knowledge, overall it will make your work read with more credibility. If you always come through with a bit of personal expertise or perspective, the readers will have a much easier time of accepting your worlds, your characters and plot lines.

One of my favorite authors is James Lee Burke. He has written many novels set in different eras, not all of them ones he has personally experienced. There is enough of his impressions, enough of his experiences and details in those stories that one would think he might have time-traveled. His descriptions of the places and people are so enriched with his own experiences and insights, that they come alive. There is no doubt in my mind that someone could not write so profoundly about the sites and sounds of the such places without having listened to them, seen them, felt them on some molecular level.

“The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums, and a light rain had started to fall when I came to the end of the blacktop road that cut through twenty miles of thick, almost impenetrable scrub oak and pine and stopped at the front gate of Angola penitentiary.” The Neon Rain, by James Lee Burke

"It was the year none of the seasons followed their own dictates. The days were warm and the air hard to breathe without a kerchief, and the nights cold and damp, the wet burlap we nailed over the windows stiff with grit that blew in clouds out of the west amid sounds like a train grinding across the prairie. The moon was orange, or sometimes brown, as big as a planet, the way it is at harvest time, and the sun never more than a smudge, like a lightbulb flickering in the socket or a lucifer match burning inside its own smoke. In better times, our family would have been sitting together on the porch, in wicker chairs or on the glider, with glasses of lemonade and bowls of peach ice cream." Wayfaring Stranger, James Lee Burke

There is a fearlessness in Burke and in Lamb that inspire me. The ability to craft rich stories and lace such intimacies through them that we feel at once in step with their characters. These authors are giants in their talent in my humble opinion. I try to be fearless. I try to write without apology. I try to make sure I weave enough of me, enough of what I might know in the fabric of my stories. I don't know if I always succeed but it is one of the things I strive for.

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 1448-- December 4, 2017
Prompt: “The moon stared at me through sprinkled nighttime stardust and I alone smile.”
― Jay Long. On December 3 and 4 this year, we have the Super Moon. What kind of an effect has the full moon on you or some people you know or the characters you create?

Given the use-inspiring absolute ripeness of the super moon, its a small wonder that one had never featured prominently in any of my work.
As far as moon affecting people, there may be some truth to that. One has to wonder as fragile as human life can be, are we not at mercy to the pulls and tugs of celestial bodies moving in space? Who hasn't at one time or another blamed the irrational behavior of a co-worker, spouse or otherwise on the "full moon"?