Yes! Book Four in the series is ready for purchase! Click this link to get it.

I had a great time writing this book. A few chapters in, a can of awesome exploded like a dozen eggs in the microwave, splattering the entire story with stupendous possibilities. Naturally, I scrapped the rough outline in favor of the new found fabulosity. (I know that's not a word, but it makes the sentence sing like a rockstar Dean Martin and Nat King Cole, or maybe it's Martin and Lewis). 

Two of the supporting players from the previous books get a big share of the spotlight in book four. Both of these characters become richer and deeper. Additionally, a few new characters may be more important than they appear. Finally, more dragons rage against the cause of liberty--hence the carnage and flame promise, but that doesn't all come from the dragons. Prepare to be surprised.

I'm looking for reviews, so the price is currently only 99 cents.

____________________________________

Some thoughts about some different books:

I've had this book, which I'm not going to name, in my e-library for a few years but hadn't got around to reading it. I had picked it up for free (a habit I have). I finally read it. I found it pretty good until the last 20% when it went completely off the rails. It was a murder mystery with an ex-cop running a record store as the primary character. The end reveal of the murderer was so bizarre that I thought it might be a dream sequence--but it wasn't. It felt like there should've been another 10 or 20 pages of story to unravel the mystery, but instead the author opted for a weird reveal scene and info dump by way of conversation to conclude it. Don't even get me started on the romantic interest that seemed like it had been wedged into the story as an afterthought, or an editor's suggestion. I'll stop my criticism there because if the book had been bad all the way through, I wouldn't have been so disappointed. If the author had nailed the ending, I might have come away thinking that it was a great book. Instead the award-winning author totally goofed it, in my opinion, and left me feeling like I had found a dead mouse in my dessert.

I also finished The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton.

As you might suppose, I also got it for free. Unfortunately, the story was thin while the descriptions of the religion, politics, philosophy, technology, and a multitude of other details filled the rest. Reading it reminded me of some other story from a book or television -- but I can't remember what it was now. I cannot recommend the book.

I've started into Michael Moorcock's The Ice Schooner and have to admit that I like it, so far. I'm only thirty pages or so into it. It's quite different from the Elric of Melnibone -- which I couldn't bring myself to finish.

________________________

The weekend was a mixed bag. Friday was great. I went fishing with the musketeer and El Supremo and caught a record number of bass--record for me anyway. Those guys would have been happy to go home an hour earlier, but they stayed to humor me as I was having a good time catching the first, the most, and the last fish. They did finally switch their jigs (or jig trailers, or jig covers (I'm not sure what they're called) to match mine and they started catching as well, or almost as well. 

Saturday was a bust. I had two major things to accomplish at home. I spent all my time on the first one, and couldn't figure it out. I wasted a lot of effort and a lot of time.

Now I'm looking forward to getting Promise of Carnage and Flame formatted for paperback. As soon as that's done, I'll get to work on my dystopian thriller.

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them."
--Thoreau

I'm still dreaming of passageways to the moon and neglecting the wood-shed--and other things. I blame my parents, or my wife, or my kids; someone or something somewhere has had a bad influence on me. I would hate to think that I'm responsible for my own lack of success. Most people rant about wanting what they deserve. That's the last thing I want; I'd rather have something good.

***

Fishing this week--not with the musketeer, but with a couple of the musketeers. The fishing wasn't great--I only caught one good-sized bass--but it beat a day at the office.

***

On the other hand (as if that fishing thing only took one hand), the fishing and other matters, including but not limited to the weekly tour of duty on the Craftsman warmachine, a day spent in waging chemical warfare against a number of undesirables lurking within and without the curtilage of the demesne, and the actual job that provides sustenance for the family, all combined to distract me from writing on Power to Hurt. Oh, I did write; the sum total of the words written fell short of my goal. The current word count is at 22K and change--so still in the 25% complete region.

**

During my workouts on the M5 (or Daystrom's Delight as I think I shall call it from now on), I usually watch something on vidangel to beguile away the passage of those sweaty minutes. Over the course of a week or so, I watched The Hateful Eight. The film is a western. The high points of the movie are Kurt Russell and Bruce Dern. That's it. There's nothing else to say. Of course I will say more. If not for vidangel, the movie would have been unwatchable in my opinion. There is one other good thing that I could say about it: It reminded me of two better stories. I did see shadows of Ambrose Bierce's Stephen Crane's short story, The Blue Hotel, in the setup. One of Shakespeare's darker plays also came to mind: Titus Andronicus.

The smoldering resentment between those who fought on opposite sides in the Civil War has long seasoned American westerns with a strong, smooth flavor like that of smoked chili peppers. Bounty hunters and badmen upon not so distant points of the spectrum of justice have often provided the meat for the western meal. H8ful 8 uses that meat and seasons it heavily, unpalatably so. If you're not familiar with Titus Andronicus, you should read it--at least find the summary online and read that. I think it's Shakespeare's most violent, bloodiest, and gruesome play. H8ful 8 falls into the same category but lacks the charm (and the survivors) of either of the two works that it brought to mind.

Here are a couple quotes from Titus Andronicus from goodreads that give an idea of its general bent -- and yet fail to capture the awful, horrrible, acts of the play.

“Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head” 


“LUCIUS. Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

AARON. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day- and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse-
Wherein I did not some notorious ill;
As kill a man, or else devise his death;
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;
Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;
Set deadly enmity between two friends;
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' door
Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly;
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.”

Erotomania

From the 2003 French movie He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, starring Audrey Tautou, and Sam Le Bihan. It would be the former rather than the latter pictured above.
Audrey Tautou plays a promising art student in love with a married doctor. Unfortunately for the artist, the doctor is unwilling to leave his pregnant wife. The movie begins with the girl's face among the red roses of a flower shop where she purchases a single rose for her love. This cute little stick-of-a-girl finds disappointment in all of her attempts to become the sole owner of the doctor's heart. When the burden of this heaping pile of unfulfilled expectations drags her to the brink of ending her relationship with the doctor (and everyone else), she has a full conversion to the dark side; her efforts to obtain her desire intensify to full Mumm Ra mode. The film goes full noir from that moment. Neither her life, nor the doctor's life will ever be the same again.

To borrow from the lyrics of Red Rider's "Lunatic Fringe" (how's that for a segue?), I was "out upon the water"...except I just discovered that those are not the lyrics; that's just what I thought that I had been hearing all these years. Turns out the actual lyrics are "out along the walkway" which isn't nearly as interesting, nor at all a propos to a discussion of my fishing trip with El Supremo and The Musketeer. I only bring that up because of an exchange wherein El Supremo mentioned something about how quiet the environment was. The Musketeer agreed. Naturally, this reminded me of a gunman and sometime-sheriff. I mentioned that to my companions who appeared entirely lost by the reference. But of course they had not heard of that lesser known individual with the famous brothers...Quiet Earp, about whom the historical record is largely silent because of his calm and tranquil nature.

More importantly, another break-through on the noir novel. The death of an important character has left a void which requires filling. One character's entrance had already been planned, but another important character would benefit the story...and the more I thought about it, the more essential the character became. So now I have key players in place for the protagonist to interact with when he takes his investigation into the dangerous gambling den.