Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Harlan Ellison’s Angry Candy

Angry Candy by Harlan EllisonAs Harlan Ellison described it during his interview with Jim Bohannon on the Larry King show, Angry Candy is a compilation of stories that deal with “the sense of loss and grief that attends the death of loved ones.” However, he didn’t realize this theme until after the stories were collected. 

My favorites among them include:

“Paladin of the Lost Hour” – After being mugged in a cemetery, an elderly gentleman named Gaspar is rescued and taken in by Billy, a Vietnam vet. Billy soon discovers Gaspar’s gold pocket watch, but when he tries to pick it up, it levitates away and into Gaspar’s hand. The old man reveals that the watch is stuck at 11PM because it contains the lost hour that resulted from a miscalculation when the world adopted the Gregorian calendar. Gaspar is the latest in a line of guardians of that lost hour, charged with preventing the end of time. This story was translated into an episode of the 1980s Twilight Zone series. 

“When Auld’s Acquaintance is Forgot” – Jerry Auld will pay anything to have one last horrible memory erased, even if he has to resort to illegal means. 

“Broken Glass” – During a bus ride, a young woman daydreams about a sexual fantasy with two other women, only to have her thoughts invaded by a peeping tom. Elsewhere on the bus, a male passenger with telepathic abilities forces himself into her mind, causing her to panic until she turns the psychic tables. 

“The Region Between” – After his death, William Bailey’s soul is reincarnated into different lives throughout the galaxy under the direction of an entity known as Succubus who assigns souls to living bodies for specific tasks. Bailey, however, will have none of it! 

“Quicktime” – During an uprising in Galiopolis, a mob of peasants storms the towers and slaughters the royalty. Lord Garth manages to escape to the kingdom’s science building where a professor is developing a time machine. The machine has so far only been programmed to send an occupant back to the Upper Jurassic Period in the Mesozoic era. Garth arranges to travel there for a short time then be brought forward again once the revolution has ended. Best of luck with that plan, Garth. 

“The Avenger of Death” – After finding a cryptic note and an uncashed check inside an old book, Pen Robinson learns that he was to be struck down by an agent of death, until said agent spared him. When Pen catches up to the agent, he finds the man dying on the street—the penalty for his failures. Pen learns that these agents are called “Takers” and is given the task of killing as many of them as possible before they claim more victims. 

“Chained to the Fast Lane in the Red Queen’s Race” – A traveler in space and time pushes through the membranes between multiple realities, forcing his duplicate in the next reality to do the same until finally, one of the travelers finds the perfect life and refuses to move on. 

“The Function of Dream Sleep” – While mourning the loss of several friends, a man wakes up in the morning to witness a fanged mouth appear in his left side, exhale a cold breeze, then vanish. In his quest to find an answer to this vision, he learns that he is not alone. According to Ellison, this story was inspired by an actual dream that occurred when during a brief nap before a meeting. 

With Deepest Gratitude to Ashley Ottessen

“Hauntingly thought provoking. I loved the positive messaging of forgiveness and not allowing one’s past to, quite literally, haunt them…”
My deepest gratitude to the World’s Most Adorable Social Media Influencer, Ashley Ottesen, for her five-star Goodreads review of my paranormal mystery novel, Testing the Prisoner. Read the full review here. 
Testing the Prisoner print promo

Book Review: A Lit Fuse – The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison

A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison“You have picked a difficult subject for a biography.” – Robert Silverberg

Love him or hate him, Harlan Ellison was one of the most prolific and awarded writers of all time and influenced many who came after him, myself included. To quote one of Harlan’s closest friends, writer Josh Olson (A History of Violence), “Harlan is the guy who made me want to become a writer.” Same here, Mr. Olson. 

I found A Lit Fuse to be a wonderful companion piece to much of what I’d already known about Harlan from interviews, articles, his Sci-Fi Buzz segments, YouTube videos, and Erik Nelson’s excellent documentary, Dreams with Sharp Teeth.

There were events and experiences in Harlan’s life that author Nat Segaloff glosses over and for which details can be found elsewhere (such as in the aforementioned sources). Then there are other aspects that are more thoroughly explored in Harlan’s personal and professional lives such as the making of A Boy and His Dog, his experiences on the 1980s Twilight Zone series, writing the screenplay for I, Robot based on Isaac Asimov’s novels, the Dangerous Visions anthologies, his disastrous marriages before Susan, and the illnesses that slowed him down later in life. 

If Harlan Ellison is a difficult subject for a biography, that might be partly due to his reputation as a quarrelsome and cantankerous firebrand, but it’s also because Harlan’s life was replete with so many amazing experiences that it’s nigh impossible to encapsulate all of them into anything shorter than a tome or a multi-volume series. Nevertheless, Segaloff does an admirable job of presenting the human being behind the legend. 

Book Review: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.JPGI started this book with the hope of finding more insight into how trauma affects the mind and body and I was not disappointed. Decades after growing up with violent—and often sadistic—physical and emotional abuse, I continue to struggle with bouts of depression and anxiety. We all know that the mind and body are inextricably connected, but The Body Keeps the Score taught me precisely how trauma affects mental and physical health at a deeper level. It opened my eyes to new treatments for overcoming toxic stress and trauma-based fears that are far beyond psychiatry’s “assembly line” practice of doling out pills to every patient.

Using a combination of neuroscience, empathy, and compassion, Bessel van der Kolk presents methods for becoming attuned to our minds and bodies through such methods as EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), neurofeedback, mindfulness, use of language (speech and writing), honing our self-regulation and emotional intelligence, and enhancing our social connections. Further, van der Kolk’s voice and writing style are captivating, turning what could otherwise have been a dry, stultifying academic textbook into an engaging and enlightening read.

Book Review: Beneath the Yellow Lights

Beneath the Yellow Lights anthology cover featuring a young man sitting on a park bench on a city street while fairies and dragons fly overhead.For their second genre anthology, the amazing folks at Oddity Prodigy bring together 20 remarkable tales of witches, wizards, fairies, gods, trolls, werewolves, vampires, and many other fantastical creatures who roam the city streets both the day and night. Some are cruel and malevolent, others benign and helpful. As urban fantasy anthologies go, this one is a treasure.