AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!! NOW I HAVE TO WRITE A REVIEW!!

While most of the world is talking about the new Dan Brown bestseller, Second Wind Publishing, LLC has quietly released another thriller -- Staccato by Deborah J Ledford. You won’t find all the elements that have become Brown’s hallmarks: cartoonish characters, amateurish prose, tin-ear for dialogue, internal inconsistencies. What you will find is a well-written, well-constructed story that will keep you enthralled.

The product description on Amazon says it better than I could: Performed against the backdrop of the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, Staccato transports readers to a behind-the-scenes glimpse of professional musicians, the psychological twists and turns of its characters, and in the end, retribution that crashes in a crescendo of notes played at the literary pace of a maestro’s staccato. The only drawback to Staccato is that it doesn’t come with a soundtrack -- each meticulously chosen piece of music enhances the mood of the scene it accompanies, and unless you are much more informed about music than I am, you will miss some of the brilliance of this composition.

Readers are in for a treat, and me? Aaaarrrggghhhh!!! I have to write another review! Well, I don’t have to, but the book deserves all the attention it can get. So, I will add it to the stack of other books I’ve promised to review, yet haven’t:

Lacey Took a Holiday by Lazarus BarnhilL
The Medicine People by Lazarus Barnhill
Steel Waters by Ken Coffman
Toxic Shock Syndrome by Ken Coffman
Mazurka by Aaron Lazar
Heart of Hythea by Suzanne Francis
and now, Staccato by Deborah J Ledford

Although all these books are much more literate, readable, and enjoyable than Dan Brown’s pap, the best I can come up with for a review right now is, “Good book. I liked it and you will, too.”

My Blogtalk Interview. What Fun!

I had a special treat last night — I was a guest on Rita Schiano’s blogtalk radio show — Talk to Me . . . Conversations with Creative Uncoventional People. Oddly enough, I wasn’t nervous, though I should have been. I did not prepare at all. Turns out it was just as well — I wouldn’t have been prepared for the questions Rita asked anyway. We ended up talking about my live chat group on gather.com (which you are welcome to join — we meet every Thursday night at 9:00pm ET at No Whine, Just Champagne (http://nowhine.gather.com – the featured article is the current topic.)

The highlight of the night was when Deborah J. Ledford (author of Staccato soon to be published by Second Wind) and Suzanne Francis (author of the Song of the Arkafina series) called in at more or less the same time. I met Suzanne through my blog, and I met Deborah through an online contest, and I finally got to hear their voices!

The best part of the whole thing, though, is that the interview is online, so if you missed it, you can still hear it. I hope you do. (Just ignore all the times I used the word actually. I actually didn’t realize how often I actually used the word actually.) You can find the interview here: Talk to Me . . . Conversations with Creative Unconventional People.