Book review: Defining Zach

My friend Vonda Frampton has written a YA novel entitled Defining Zach, and she asked me to review it for Amazon. Writing honest reviews of friends' books can be touchy; how do you write something less than positive without putting your friendship at risk? In this case, the book is fine, though YA isn't what I usually read. My only issue, I told Vonda, is that at times it seemed a tad preachy in spots. She graciously accepted the comment.

Here is the Amazon review:

Zach Patterson wants to dazzle the world. At thirteen, he will try the most daring stunts he can think of, as long as witnesses are on hand to verify his derring-do. Hurtle in his toboggan off a ski jump at the risk of life and limb? You bet. He hopes one day to match the great Evel Knievel. There is the problem of slipping grades in school, though, and the fact that his stunts don't win him all the acclaim he feels is his due. Worse, he must deal with a menacing classmate named Gary, whose personal problems make normal growing pains seem like a picnic. Their mutual hatred drives the plot to a different level than first seems apparent. Author Vonda Frampton understands adolescents well, and she understands how to build the tension in a story. What looks at first like a normal YA tale turns dark and potentially deadly as the underlying conflict becomes clear. But Zach often hears a Voice that no one else can hear, a guardian angel who tries to nudge him away from complete disaster. The angel has his hands full. 

Defining Zach will appeal to mature pre-teens and young teenagers and to their parents. Sometimes the life lessons are laid on a bit thickly, which might put off a few readers, but those lessons are right on. Parents of young children will certainly appreciate this well-written book as a reminder of how hard it is to grow up.

Trying out Scrivener

I'm sitting on my sister-in-law's deck in New England, 2400 miles from home, waiting for the mosquitoes to leave and my older brother to arrive from New Jersey. Meanwhile, I have been trying out Scrivener to write my new novel. The actual writing will still be in Word, but Scrivener seems like a nice tool for building the elements, including characters and plot points. Plotting has always been a problem for me; I get it done, but usually the hard way. Let's see if this software makes it any easier. At least I'll know what scenes to write.

Jean Henry Mead's Murder on the Interstate

I just finished reading Jean Henry Mead's Murder on the Interstate on my Kindle today, and I recommend it as a fast-paced, lively read. Two little old ladies--well, they're about 60, which from my vantage point is still the flush of youth--have the rather odd and dangerous hobby of solving murder cases. Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty are toddling along in their RV when they discover a car that's gone off the road. They stop and discover that the driver has been shot dead. Soon they realize that as witnesses they become targets themselves. Eventually Dana's daughter Kerrie gets dragged into the adventure as well, making the case a family enterprise. The women are relentless. Between the fact that "A beautiful young woman died needlessly" and "It got personal when he tried to kill me as well," the bad guys ultimately don't stand a chance.

At the beginning, it looks like an ordinary murder case, but our heroines soon learn that they have uncovered a plot with national implications. What first seems like a relatively light mystery turns dark and tragic, but the women never flinch and remain in the thick of the trouble right to the end.

Mead's road mystery made for a good summer read as I took my own RV road trip this week. It's a nice addition to my Kindle library.

How he sold 1 million ebooks

Today I am re-reading How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! by John Locke. Some of this short book comes across as a salesman's cheerleading, but that's fine with me. He does get down to specifics that seem both possible and sensible, and his book is well worth the $4.99 I forked over. By all means self-publish, he suggests, and decide on your target market before you begin writing (Now he tells me!). Then price your ebook modestly, but at a price where people who don't know you will readily take a chance. His novels are all 99 cents each, which obviously works for him. He claims not to be a great writer, although it's perfectly fine. Writers need for their writing not to "suck" and for their stories to be entertaining; meet those two criteria and follow his marketing advice, and you'll probably sell some books.

There are so many people wanting to make a buck off wannabe authors. The other day I saw an 11-minute video where someone was offering his publication secrets, stuff the big guys supposedly don't want the little guys to know. The video itself offered absolutely nothing of substance, but promoted its $400 package that would tell you everything. When I published with iUniverse, they once tried to sell me a $20,000 publicity package, honest to God. 

You can pay hundreds for email campaigns that blast a message about your book to a half million book buyers, or for advertisements or press releases. As my New Jersey brother would say, fuggedaboutit! Don't waste your time and money. Just buy Locke's book for five bucks. Read it, underline the good stuff, and re-read it. Then go follow his good advice. 

Ode to Our Cats

George lands on my head as I lie here in bed.

His claws need trimming for certain.

I toss a pillow as he nips at my elbow.

Soon he’ll be climbing the curtain.

I’d risen before at quarter to four

Commotion assailing my brain.

He’d got in a race, he’d chased sister Gracie

My sweet dreams aswirl down the drain.

Now I might as well rise with sleep in my eyes.

Is that shiny object the sun?

The cats plan to nap when I give them my lap.

Contented, their work here is done.

You should be sixteen

I notice a lot of roadside crosses marking traffic deaths in the Southwest, much more so than in New England where I came from. My trip from Taos today inspired this poem about an imaginary young woman. (A Quinceañera is a party for girls who turn fifteen.)

You should be sixteen now.

You grew up so fast,

You left us so soon

It feels like yesterday

Your Quinceañera had

Brought prideful tears

To mother and father.

Your gown with pink ruffles

And pendant of pearls

Tresses cascading

Framing your dark eyes

Not seeing your future

Blind to the white cross

And corsage of lilies

Remembering you sadly

Mere yards off the road.

The Internet Review of Books

This is an unhappy day, because my good friend Gary Presley and I have decided to stop publishing the Internet Review of Books effective October 1. Our staff once numbered six, but with the recent resignation of our fiction editor, we are now just two people: Gary for the blogging and me for the editing. We could continue--we're not overwhelmed--but as with others who left before us, we believe it's time to move on.

Our enterprise began in the mind of Carter Jefferson, who noted the shrinking outlets for book reviews in the press. With his leadership we launched our website in October 2007; four years and roughly 1,000 reviews later, I believe we have accomplished a lot. Granted, we never made any money, but we have earned a solid reputation as an outlet for honest, professional reviewers. We made a point to be open to self-published and small-press publications that looked worthy.

So don't stop reading the Internet Review of Books. We'll continue publishing high-quality reviews through the summer.

Musical shorts

Technology simply baffles me. I have a laptop, an iPad, and an iPod Touch, which I commonly carry around in my pocket. The Touch has a nice note-taking app, so when a brilliant idea occurs to me I can tap-tap the screen and record it. That's much better than stuffing my shirt pocket with jottings on scraps of paper napkins from Subway, or forgetting the idea altogether. It also has a little camera that's let me snap images of street signs in case I've forgotten where I left the car. Often, though, I'll place it on my desk and play classical music from my iTunes collection.

All that is very nice, but there is this one little quirk: it doesn't have an Off button. Oh, it has a button to turn off most of its functions, but none for the music. If I've had enough music for one day, there is only the Pause button. And ninety percent of the time, that's just as good as Off.

But then it goes into my shorts pocket, and perhaps I go to a writers' group meeting. It can be handy there, especially to jot down those to-do's that inevitably arise. Then when someone is talking, usually making a serious point, we're all treated to a lovely orchestra playing Brahms's Fourth or The Red Army Choir bellowing out The Volga Boatmen.

My iPod Touch just goes on by itself, perhaps to liven up the meeting, perhaps to embarrass me. Has it bumped against the side of my chair and activated Play? Maybe, but sometimes I could swear I wasn't fidgeting in my seat.

Apple makes terrific gizmos, sleek and efficient, without a smidgen of superfluity. It even goes on without prompting.

Who needs a button for the sound?

Remembering the Sixties

This is an essay I plan to submit to a local writing competition. Any suggestions, comments, or memories of your own are most welcome.

Robin Williams joked that if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t there.

I remember. How could I forget?

China took its Great Leap Forward and almost leaped off a cliff. The Cold War nearly heated to thermonuclear temperatures over the Cuban missile crisis. Vietnam burst into America’s consciousness like a bad LSD trip. The civil rights activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner ended up in a Mississippi landfill. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy all died by gunfire. My father died of a heart attack. Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon. The Beatles conquered America. I married my girlfriend.

I commuted to Boston University back then. As a transfer from a junior college, I decided to join ROTC in my sophomore year to make the most of my inevitable military service. A sergeant in the Army ROTC office told me incorrectly that they didn’t accept transfer students, so I stumbled into the Air Force ROTC program.  One afternoon, I walked into Economics class to hear that President Kennedy had been shot. Our instructor grimly refused to cancel class, but I could not focus on her lecture.

After my graduation in 1965, the Air Force sent me to the deep South to be a weapons controller, a job that placed me in front of a radar screen to direct fighter pilots running practice intercepts in case of a Soviet bomber attack. Many of those pilots went on to fly combat support missions in Vietnam. The experience convinced me not to become a civilian air traffic controller.

That first duty assignment landed me in Montgomery, Alabama, from where I toured radar sites in the Southeast. Once I looked up a cousin in Biloxi, Mississippi, and had trouble finding him, so I rolled down the window of my Volkswagen bug and asked a young black woman how to get to Kuhn Street. She kept walking as though I didn’t exist, which I suddenly wished were true.

After three years I received orders to spend 1968 at Fire Island Air Force Station in Alaska, within sight of Anchorage and the Chugach Mountains. Fire Island is about three miles long and a mile wide and accommodated about one hundred unaccompanied men and an unknown number of moose. People drank too much, slept too much, and in early summer played softball until after 10 p.m.  Once at midnight, the ghostly lights of Aurora Borealis shimmered above us.

One day, a light plane tried to land on the narrow beach but caught its landing gear on a power line, flipped over, and exploded. In December near the end of my tour, I said goodbye to an Army officer who had been assigned to our unit on temporary duty from Fort Richardson. Lieutenant Murphy hailed from Southern California, so we called him Murph the Surf. A couple of days after our farewell, he boarded a plane to the Aleutians, replacing his boss who had come down with a cold. The plane disintegrated in mid-air in sixty-below-zero weather, its pieces scattering across a frozen lake. No one survived.

Alaska put me far from the battlefields of Vietnam and America, but the daily disaster reports reached us by television. We heard Walter Cronkite read the daily body counts from places like Pleiku—with dead enemies stacked so high, how could we not be winning? Life Magazine reported a visit by General Westmoreland to his troops who had just returned from combat. A soldier said he had killed an enemy.

“How did you know he was dead?” asked the general.

“Because I cut him in half,” the soldier replied.

“Good,” said the general.

I wondered if America had gone mad.

In Chicago, the Democrats convened amid disaster, while police beat both war protestors and innocent onlookers. Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic presidential nominee, but by the time I mailed in my absentee ballot, his position on the war seemed little different from that of Richard Nixon, except that Nixon said he had a “secret plan” to get us out of Vietnam.

After my discharge in 1969, New York Life hired me to sell insurance. Around the time of the Woodstock Festival, I sold a $6,000 policy to a recent Navy veteran who killed himself in a car wreck a week or so later. Months later, the company issued a $12,000 double indemnity check to the 19-year-old widow and mother.  I’d planned to quit my job anyway, so my delivery of the check to the woman’s father-in-law marked the end of my sales career.

For me personally, my marriage to Nancy provided the one enduring legacy of the Sixties. In 1961 we went to the high school senior prom together, and in 2011 we will attend our fiftieth high school reunion together.

So I do remember the Sixties. How could I forget?

Slang from the bad old days

Do you ever think back to expressions popular in your childhood? In my case, that's the 1950s. If you write about an era, it's good to recall the jargon people used then. My childhood was surrounded by blatant racism. Back then blacks were widely called negroes, and anyone who thought they had any rights was likely to be labeled a nigger lover. An important secret, especially an unsavory one, was the nigger in the woodpile, but if you did someone a kindness, that was mighty white of you. If you asked too many questions, you might be asked in return if you were writing a book. Of course, we all knew there was a sucker born every minute, so you shouldn't take any wooden nickels. If you were lazy, you'd better get on the stick, and if you said something stupid, your friends would want to know if your mother had any kids that lived. And you didn't want to call that palooka a homo, because he'd have a cow. Then you'd be cruisin' for a bruisin' and hurtin' for certain. You'd wind up with a knuckle sandwich, maybe even be pushin' up daisies.

How about you? What were your decade and the expressions you wouldn't touch today with a ten-foot pole?

Mesilla gate

This is the lovely gate to Josefina's Restaurant in Mesilla, New Mexico. A few short steps away is the town center and the site of the jail Billy the Kid broke out of after he'd been sentenced to hang. Walk a little farther and you arrive at El Comedor, where our Fiction critique group meets.

Emailing to your Kindle

If I send you one of my novels for your Kindle, there are a few things you have to do (Amazon's rules, not mine):

1. Go to http://tinyurl.com/topnav. You'll need to sign in to your Amazon account.

2. Scroll down to the section marked Digital Content, and select Manage Your Kindle.

3. Add my address, desertwriter1@gmail.com, to your Kindle Approved E-Mail List.

4. Send me your Kindle email address, which you can find on your Kindle under Menu/Settings/Device E-mail.

This will allow me to send the file directly to your Kindle. Unless I'm on your list, they will automatically screen my mail out as spam.

All three of my novels are available in Kindle format. Happy reading!

Midwest Book Review on Little Mountain

Here is a brand-new review of Little Mountain that captures the essence of the novel:
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/jun_11.htm

Introducing Dorothy Webb and Chindii Woman

Let me introduce Dorothy Webb, a writer who lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Dorothy's murder mystery, Chindii Woman, is set on the Navajo reservation where she grew up. The heroine comes to the reservation to learn about the apparently accidental death of her brother and gets in serious trouble when she asks too many questions.


I've read Chindii Woman and found the story, the characters, and the setting appealing. Dorothy recently answered a few questions about the book.

Your main character, Darcy Redbird, is a Lakota Sioux. Why does she feel so out of place among the Navajo?
From being raised in Chicago by her adoptive parents, Darcy knows nothing about being a Native American, much less the Navajo culture. But she tries to learn. She is aware that the Native Americans are closer to nature but cannot accept their belief in the supernatural, like spirits and other things that cannot be seen.

How much research did you do for Chindii Woman, and how much came from your personal knowledge?
All of the information in Chindii Woman is from my personal knowledge. There really was a legend of the Chindii Woman who lived in a very dangerous canyon called Satan's Pass that we had to go through in order to get to Gallup from Crownpoint.  The other taboos, spirits and ceremonies were part of my daily life. I asked friends who continue to live on and near the reservation to read parts of Chindii Woman to insure that I had them interpreted correctly. 

What are the traditional beliefs that drive the story, and to what extent do Navajo still hold to those beliefs?
Of course, the legend of the Chindii Woman drives this story. Depending on the Navajo individual, the traditional beliefs continue to be practiced. For example, a deceased person's name may be mentioned within the three days after the death only if it is done respectfully.

Darcy is an appealing heroine. Do you have another adventure in store for her?
Many who have read the book have asked for a sequel, using Darcy and Raymond. As soon as I get to a place where I can concentrate, I'll see what I can come up with.

Learn more at Dorothy's web site, dorothyancewebb.com. Books can also be obtained from Author House (authorhouse.com). Search on her name and the book will pop up. It is available in hardback, soft cover and e-book. Chindii Woman is also available from Amazon and  Barnes & Noble. For an autographed copy, contact her at redtruck66@comcast.net. ($15 plus $3 postage).

Tour schedule for Little Mountain

Coming soon to a blog near you! I'll be a guest blogger at ten sites in June, writing about my new mystery, Little Mountain. Please plan to visit the tour. I'll be giving away a prize at every stop, so you'll have ten chances to win!

Blog book tour schedule

June 1 – Blog Book Tours  (Winner: Kathryn Craft)

June 2, 3 – Stephen Tremp  (Winner: Lynn Kelley)                         

June 7 – Marian Allen   (Winner: Cara Lopez Lee)                      

June 9 – Diane Wolfe   (Winner: Karen Lange)                             

June 10 – Alex Cavanaugh   (Winner: Michael De Gesu)               

June 11, 12, 13, 14 – Helen Ginger   (Winner: Christopher Hudson)       

June 15 – Acme Author’s Link    (Winner: Deb Larson)        

June 20 – Make Mine Mystery     (Winner: Maggie Toussaint)           

June 21 – Blood-Red Pencil       (Winner: Maryann Miller)         

June 23 – Patricia Stoltey       (Winner: Simon Hay)              


Grand prize winner:  Cheryl Malandrinos    

Book review

Here is a thoughtful review of Little Mountain that Lynne Hinkey posted it on Amazon:


Bob Sanchez's latest murder mystery, Little Mountain, offers an engrossing look into the Cambodian refugee community that came to the US after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. A departure from Sanchez's previous two comedic detective romps filled with quirky Hiassen-esque characters, Little Mountain is gritty and gory. Set in Lowell, MA fifteen years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, it explores the relationships of immigrants to each other, their new country, and the horrors of the place they fled.

Detective Sambath Long, fully integrated into his life as a US citizen and police detective, tries to distance himself from his painful past in Cambodia, where the rest of his family was killed by the Angka - the brutal organization in charge of the Khmer death camp, Little Mountain. As Sam investigates the murder of a Cambodian landlord, the past pushes its way into his life, reminding him, and us, that the past makes a person who they are today. Little Mountain will draw you in to Sam's life, and that of the Cambodian community.

Initially, I was worried about navigating the many unfamiliar, foreign names of the characters, but Sanchez has created such unique and authentic personalities they quickly become easy to distinguish and identify. The mystery behind the murder, the slow revelation of Long's experience as a teenager at Little Mountain, and his relationship with his American wife and her family keep the story fast paced and complex. Sanchez skillfully intertwines Long's past and present, and personal and professional lives into a compelling, haunting story with a thoroughly satisfying ending. 

Thanks, old girl

Yesterday I officially retired my old, dependable LaserJet 4L printer after 20 years of dedicated service that dated well before the reign of Carly Fiorina at HP. Purchased in 1991, the darned thing just wouldn't quit. But it lately started printing heavy gray streaks on the pages and wouldn't respond to my cleaning ministrations. The HP website acknowledged that yes, they once made such a model but offered no specific information about it.

The old faithful LaserJet 4L and her Brother
at her retirement party

That old gray mare must have printed tens of thousands of 300-dpi black and white pages for me, and truth to tell, it still works. But for sixty bucks, less than the price of any replacement parts, I bought a Brother laser printer that cranks out 600-dpi black and white pages and may well serve me into my dotage.

So thanks, old girl. You've given me my money's worth many times over.

Reviews of Little Mountain

There are three quite complimentary reviews of Little Mountain on Amazon. Have a look at what readers think.

Cambodians and local politics

Soon we learned that Tong was the young girl's nickname, apparently given by her hated brother-in-law. Her real name is Mni Sarapon. She and Sceur Ly asked for our help in gaining permission for members of their family to come to the United States from one of the camps, so we filled out detailed paperwork for them and sent it to the State Department. The group was large--13 family members--and the bureaucratic wheels ground for months. A number of other Americans got involved, most notably our congressman Chester Atkins. But my paperwork was critical, and someone--I will never know who--got it into his head that the lack of progress in reuniting the family was my fault. So one day I received a phone call from Kitty Dukakis, who said she'd been told I was ruining everything by not sending in the paperwork. I gave her quite an earful, letting her know exactly what I had done and when and to whom it had gone in the State Department--and by the way, she had a nerve calling me when she didn't know what she was talking about...blah, blah. The paperwork was quite involved, and I said I'd do it once more and only once more. She backed off. I felt defensive and angry, but it sure felt good to tell off a big shot.

But the person who went way out on a limb was Atkins. He made a big public show of helping reunite the family, which eventually occurred. He lived in the affluent town of Acton, in the same district as Lowell but culturally like the other side of the Moon. A whole lot of people resented all the attention he paid to refugees as opposed to the needs of his working-class constituents. The local news carried a man-on-the-street interview where a young working-class man expressed his anger that Cambodians were coming to Lowell and the government was giving them cars, which was completely untrue. What did happen was that several members of a family would pool their resources and buy a car for all of them. There was welfare, but there were also many refugees who had jobs and worked hard at them.

The political upshot for Atkins was that he lost his congressional seat. Other factors came into play, but my Cambodian friends were an unwitting factor in the election.

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Learn more by clicking the Little Mountain tab at the top of this page, or purchase a copy by clicking the book image at the right.

Our Cambodian friends

The family was deferential to us, but when we weren't around they fought among themselves. Song tried asserting his authority, but his ten-year-old sister-in-law was having none of it. He occasionally hit his wife Sceur Ly, and when word of the abuse got back to us, we told him that wife-beating would land him in jail. "It's okay," he insisted. "It's Cambodian custom." We reminded him that he was in America now, and he had to obey our laws or else. Some other Cambodians we consulted indignantly said that it was not a Cambodian custom, but I came to suspect there was a degree of truth in his claim.

We had a large dog at the time, a sweet-tempered black Lab-Doberman mix named Divot. When Song wanted to say something was excellent, he'd say, "Oh, that's number one." Something bad was number ten. My wife and I were going to work and dropping our son and Tong off to school, leaving Song and Sceur Ly home alone with their baby. Song hadn't found a job yet. Divot stayed outside on a leash and a run. Song told us that in Southeast Asia, dog was excellent food. "In Cambodia, dog is number one!" he said. That scared me, because I didn't know how big a cultural or language gap we were dealing with. Did they plan to cook Divot?  "If you hurt my dog, you're number ten," I told him. He got the message that Divot was a pet and not a food source.

Our good friend Tong

Our guests proved unpopular among the increasing number of refugees living in the Lowell area. Song had a hard edge to him--his English was rapidly improving, and he did a good deal of translating for other people. But he quickly gained a reputation for cheating his fellow refugees in various business dealings. He always dealt with us honestly as far as we could tell, but among some Americans helping other families, his reputation threatened to rub off on us. Luckily, many people who disliked him actually liked and felt sorry for the rest of his family. A rumor even circulated through the city that Song had once been a Khmer Rouge--now, wouldn't that have been interesting? I spoke privately to his wife and sister, whom my wife and I were trying to protect from him. "Is it true? Was Song part of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia?" No, they both insisted, he wasn't Khmer Rouge. He was just a jerk.

Even that was only partially true. The whole family including Song were hard-working. Song was an entrepreneurial sort, apparently outworking most of his fellow countrymen. Sceur Ly got a job on an assembly line where she became known for her hard work and reliability, and Tong assimilated well into public schools, eventually going to George Washington University. They always showed us respect and gratitude for sticking with them. 

After they moved away from the area, Sceur Ly from time to time drove back to Lowell to visit friends. Invariably she would show up at our house unannounced (without her husband), with her little boy in one hand and a box from Dunkin Donuts in the other. She used to talk to us about divorcing her husband, but she never did it. We haven't seen them in years now, but I think they've made their peace.

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Learn more by clicking the Little Mountain tab at the top of this page, or purchase a copy by clicking the book image at the right.