Review: Triune, by Andrew Bowen

A Jew, a Muslim and a Christian walk into a bar....

It's okay, you can laugh at whatever punchline you can imagine to finish that sentence. When it comes to religion and religious differences, I'm pretty sure Andrew Bowen would prefer we all laugh a little more and bicker a little less. Andrew recently published his novella, Triune, and it is available both in print and in Kindle format.

Product description from Amazon:

No one--not even the band themselves--expected Triune to go this far.

Jaron, Sam, and Noah have a simple mission: bring unity and peace among the faiths of Abraham through killer music. Triune's members: Jaron--a Jew with strong Israeli roots, Sam--a Palestinian Muslim, and Noah--a devout Christian with a haunted past, set out across the United States to spread their message and face acclaim and disaster at every turn. The country is taken by storm as Triune blazes a trail of revolution across the Plains toward a record contract in California. But when tragedy strikes Jaron's family and the Palestinians declare total independence from Israel, the Holy Land errupts into civil war. Secrets from the past and old rivalries emerge, forcing Jaron, Sam, and Noah to pick sides in a conflict that threatens to rip the band, their spiritual homeland, and their lives apart.

When I began reading, I was chuckling every few paragraphs it seemed. Jaron is a wellspring of comedic moments, whether its his substitutions for Amen at the end of prayers (Ra-men, Gay-men) or popping golf cart wheelies in the middle of a round of golf with the Reverend of a church. There are plenty of moments to laugh, but also plenty of moments to think.

You'll get to know and care about all three members of the band throughout the book. Sam's struggle to be her own person under the watch of her strict Muslim parents is touching, and something we can all relate to on some level. Noah is mysterious, seemingly haunted, and provides a quiet voice of reason. While each band member has their own “book” in the story, I feel Jaron is really the central focus of the plot. His actions are the catalyst for much of what happens, and he is the character I most identified with. He is light-hearted in his faith – something some may interpret as a lack of faith, or shallow faith, but it's not. He's prone to whimsical decisions he believes are divinely inspired, and this makes not only for some funny moments, but also his dramatic end.

Triune has an ending you have to read to believe, so I won't give it away here. I'll just say that Jaron takes some actions that surprised and saddened me. The ending stuck with me. I had to think about it for a while. I wished desperately that it hadn't ended the way it did. At first. Then I realized that, really, it couldn't have ended any other way. It was a logical progression of events where the characters behaved according to their personalities, not some author-contrived ending simply intended to shock (c'mon, I know you've all read at least one book like that and wanted to toss it across the room afterward, right? No worries about that here.)

I think the best word I can use to describe this story is unassuming, and that's a good thing. If someone wants to tell you a parable or fable, you expect a message. If someone wants to quote to you from the Bible or other holy text, you expect a message. Sometimes, expecting a message gets in the way of receiving that message. With Triune, Andrew has crafted a story that is entertaining and will pull you in, have you rooting for these three friends as their band tours the country, and hoping for their safety when things take a turn for the worse. Before you've had a chance to look for a message, you'll have learned it.

Review: Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex

This is my first time reading anything written or compiled by Rachel Kramer Bussel, so I wasn't sure what to expect – I only knew that there is a lot of mediocre erotica out there. I was pleasantly surprised by this collection of short-short stories. Definitely better than just mediocre.
For the most part, the stories are very well-written. There were a handful that simply didn't do it for me in terms of the author's writing style, but the positives far outweighed the negatives. One of the best things about this collection is that all 69 stories are under 1200 words, so it's easy to pick up and put down when you can't make the time commitment for longer chapters. Not to mention the fact that the heat level rises quickly and gets to the point without any contrived set-up. That's not to say there's no plot or story arc, because there is – another aspect that sets these stories a notch above the rest. I was surprised by the emotional depth encapsulated in so few words in many of the stories.

Regarding the erotic content, there's something for everyone in this collection: light bondage and BDSM play, stranger sex, public sex, the deep bond of long-term partners, and much, much more. Bussel has done an excellent job of structuring the anthology as well. The first story, Seven-Letter Word by Heather Lin, is fun and sexy, and it sets the tone so that you won't want to put the book down after just one story. The last story, Robert Peregrine's Vacation Pictures, has a unique voice that combines the erotic with a touch of humor and leaves you with the desire to flip back through the book the way you'd look back at snapshots from your own favorite vacation to relive all the best parts. The first and last stories are among my favorites, and here are a few others:

Too Wondrous To Measure, by Salome Wild – fun, humorous, and inventive. You'd never expect Godzilla to show up in an erotica anthology, and yet this was one of my favorites by far.
Eat Me, by Marina Saint – It doesn't mean what you think it means. This is for anyone who's ever craved a burger with the same carnal urge as you'd crave your lover's body.

Downpour, by Elle – A sweet story that shows we only get more beautiful, confident, and sexy with age.

Intercept, by Burton Lawrence – Space sex! Need I say more?

Last-Time Lesbian, by Geneva King – This one will make you think, and not just about the sex. It addresses the difficult emotional dynamics in a transgender relationship.

Going Bald, by Craig J. Sorenson – Women can be their own toughest critics when it comes to their bodies, so I loved this story giving a male perspective on the beauty of the female form.

I liked this book so much, I will definitely be checking out other titles from Rachel Kramer Bussel. Highly recommended

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the editor in exchange for a review on Amazon. But I assure you that didn’t affect my review in any way.)

Review: From the Query to the Call

I recently told you about the ebook I purchased, From the Query to the Call, by Elana Johnson.  This is my review, but first I wanted to mention that Elana has just snagged herself an agent!  Congratulations Elana, you definitely deserve it.  Can't wait to be able to hold one of your books in my hands!

Okay, back to her ebook.  I absolutely dread writing query letters.  For Confessions of a Non-Believer, I actually formulated the basic query even before I started writing.  The whole concept just fit very neatly into query format.  I got lucky there.  But Sorry's Not Enough has been a very different story.  It's a very character-driven novel, and while the plot elements (such as the love affair between two people suddenly going very wrong when they're placed in the roles of student and teacher) certainly garner interest, it's really the emotional journey of the characters that's the most important aspect.  Every time I tried to get advice on my query, I got lots of advice saying "sum up the plot" and "cover the important plot points" or "what happens in the story?" and in trying to answer those questions, the query would end up bogged down in pointless details.  When I tried to focus on the emotional elements, people would say "but what happens?" or "too much psycho-analysis" and "do you really know what your book is about?"

Well OF COURSE I know what it's about! 

So, needless to say, query-writing is a high-anxiety activity for me.  I've read a few of Elana's queries before, and had seen her in action critiquing (very insightfully) other people's queries.  I had high hopes for her ebook, then.  And I can happily report that she did not disappoint.

I expected 20, maybe 25 pages of advice on writing a query, but NO.  The book delivers 63 pages on everything from what a query is/is not, why you need one, and how to write one.  Then, it goes on to discuss researching the best agents for your novel, strategies for submitting and surviving the wait, as well as the rejections, and finally, how to handle "the call" when an agent is interested in representing you. 

It is an interactive ebook, with links to the websites of writers whose query letters she uses as examples, websites to help with your query, and websites to help with agent research.  There's also a link to a set of worksheets to help you craft your query.

The query advice is much more than vague statements about what each paragraph should include - which is much of what I'd encountered previously (e.g. Start with a one or two sentence hook, then give a brief summary of the plot.....etc.)  Elana breaks down the query into small, definable, non-threatening parts and dissects them - there's the hook, the set-up, the conflict, and the consequence.  She explains the purpose of each section, and gives examples from her own and other queries.  As the book progresses, you can see the query taking shape from the examples she gives.

One of the best pieces of advice I took from the book is to write the hook last.  I've always tried to crank out a great hook first, which was stressful.  Using the worksheets, I answered the questions necessary to write the hook, but didn't write it until I had finished writing the rest of the query.  It was actually much easier to come up with a hook at the end.  I also had a major a-ha! moment when she pointed out the circular sense of closure that should come from the query - take the hook, add on your consequences sentence, and that should be your book in a nutshell.  Not sure why that never dawned on me before, but it was a great moment.

This book also helped me realize 1. I need to do more research into the agents I submit to, and 2. I need to expand my potential agent list!

So I still have a few minor tweaks to make on my brand new query before I send it out, but if I get a good request rate after I send some out, I'll share it with you all.  Meanwhile, I highly recommend From the Query to the Call for any writer who wants to craft a strong query and who need a little bit of guidance on what to do once you've got a killer query.

Don't forget to check out Elana on her website, and her blog.

Review: How Can You Mend This Purple Heart

I finished reading How Can You Mend This Purple Heart, by T. L. Gould, a few days ago. I can’t tell you how nice it was to jump back into the story after reading the beginning so long ago. It was like old friends welcoming me back. So here’s a review.

In Purple Heart, you get to know a motley crew of Marines wounded in the Vietnam War as they recuperate on Ward 2B at a Navy hospital in Philadelphia. It’s told through the eyes of Jeremy Shoff, a Navy radioman who never made it to ‘Nam because of a terrible car accident. The preface states that Purple Heart is a story about “boys who returned from combat as men; men who left the better part of their youth, a bit of their souls and a lot of their flesh in Vietnam. It’s a story about longing to recapture the spirit of boyhood and rekindle the optimism and fearlessness of youth. And it’s about their struggle to be whole again—or at the very least, to feel whole.” That’s a perfect summary of this book.

But you didn’t come for a summary, did you? You came to see me pick it apart, right? Well, okay. But I’m warning you… I didn’t find much to pick at.

Mr. Gould’s style of writing may be different than some readers are used to. There’s nothing strange about the way he structures his sentences, or his grammar, or anything like that. He doesn’t use dashes in place of quote marks. He doesn’t do anything else way outside the norm. But simply the way he tells the story is a little bit different than the rigid first-person or third-person points of view we often come across. As I said, the story is told by Jeremy, in first-person narration. You could think of the book as one giant flashback, with a much-older Jeremy looking back and telling the story of these two years of his life. However, as you read, you will very often forget that Jeremy is there. Information that he may not have learned until very late in the actual timeline of things, he presents to the reader up front.

For example, each important character gets a sort of “nutshell” introduction. Not all at once, of course, but at the appropriate times each character is introduced to the reader with important information that you’ll think about every time the character speaks or acts: physical appearance, personality, some tidbit about their background, etc. I personally like that Mr. Gould chose this technique because it really fits the subject and theme of the book. Essentially, each introduction is not saying “This is who they are,” but is instead saying “This is who they were.” The book is about how the characters try to reclaim the lives they used to lead, the young men they used to be, but we all know they can never truly go back. They have to move forward, adapt, change. In order to fully appreciate who they become, we need a good idea of who they were, and Mr. Gould’s way of introducing each character gives us just that.

The way the first person narrator seems to disappear at times also mirrors how Jeremy would see himself in the story. He is dubbed a “non-combat motherfucker” by one of the other characters, and it’s a brand Jeremy feels to the core of his soul. He’s ashamed to be in the company of heroes when the only thing he did to get there is get drunk at a party before his deployment. Though he wants desperately to belong to this group, he can never be more than an “honorary Marine,” and his telling of the story shows just how much he valued and cared for the Marines on Ward 2B.

This leads me to the other characters - those Marines. Mr. Gould spins a tale in such a way that you’ll root for guys you might otherwise want to punch in the face. I even grew a soft spot for Earl Ray, a racist triple-amputee with one hell of a mean streak. (Can you guess who gave Jeremy his cherished nickname?) At one point, in the middle of the book, a Vietnam Vet-turned-war-protester comes to speak at the hospital with his long-haired hippie girlfriend on his arm. He denounces the war and says he’s ashamed of what he did as a Marine. Earl Ray just about flies out of his wheelchair to beat the crap out of the guy with his one good arm. In my own real life, had I been alive in that time period, I may well have been that long-haired hippie girlfriend, but caught up in the emotion of the book, nobody was cheering harder than me for Earl Ray to get in a couple good hits before the MP’s pulled him away.

Earl Ray aside, my favorite character by far was Ski. Alex Dante Yavoshky, known to his friends as Ski, has a quiet strength beneath his youthful innocence. The way it’s written, his Roosian accent is easy to hear, and adds a vivid dimension to his character. Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt that I envision the adorably toothless Alex Ovechkin (Washington Capitals ice hockey, if you’re wondering) every time Ski speaks. I cried when Ski received an unexpected visit and a very special Executive Order. (You’ll have to read the book to find out what I mean!)

So after all this praise, where’s the criticism I promised? I was engaged in the story right through to the last page. But once I got to the last page, I wanted more. I’m not talking a sequel or anything (though that would be interesting, to see how each guy ended up say, 10 or 15 or 20 years later). I just wanted a little bit more from the ending. A little more oomph, or more “the moral of the story is…” or something like that. But then again, why should an ending be completely definitive and sublimely happy, especially for a story like this? It ends on an ironic note, with Jeremy living up to his nickname a second time, yet unable to find in San Diego the same kind of camaraderie he found with the guys on 2B. I don’t dislike the ending, I just wish it could be different, in the same way you look back on a tragic event in your own life and say “If only it had been different.” But it’s not. So we learn, we live, and we move on, just like Jeremy, Ski, Earl Ray, and the rest of the Purple Heart crew.

As if supporting a fellow writer - one who’s trudging the publishing route on his own - weren’t enough reason to buy this book, the strength of the story is. I dare you not to fall in love with every character in the book, and I dare you not to come away from this story wanting to hug every soldier you meet. I don’t think you’ll be able to do it.

How Can You Mend This Purple Heart is available at http://www.purplescribe.com/