Short Takes: Three Novellas

Short Takes is a new feature here that focuses on works than can be read in an hour or less. Today it’s three novellas – a mystery, a work of suspense, and what I can only call a computer hacker procedural (a new genre in the mystery/suspense field, I’m sure). All three are actually introductions, either to larger works and / or a series.

Three Sisters by Helen Smith introduces a rather unlikely detective, Emily Castle, a young woman who is still mourning the loss of her dog. She lives in a south London neighborhood, and she finds an invitation to a party slide under her door. It’s a squat party, which means it’s being staged at a nearby house that is occupied by squatters. It’s a rather lavish party for the neighborhood, with food, drink and entertainment. Except one of the entertainers ends up dead. Or does she? Emily rather persistently (and slightly obnoxiously) continues to investigate.

Suspects abound, and it’s quite a trick for author Smith to keep them all straight in the relatively short narrative. She’s written full-length Emily Castle stories, and based on Three Sisters, they’re well worth checking out.

Before Paris by Adria Cimino is, I suspect, a rather large chunk of narrative removed from Paris, Rue des Martyrs, to help shorten the manuscript. Cimino has turned it into a novella, focusing on one of the four stories she covers in the full-length novel (the novella is subtitled “A Prequel to Paris, Ruse des Martyrs”).

The novella is the back story for Rafael Mendez of Colombia, who is resisting his father’s demand that he join his parents in the emerald trade, a rough-and-tumble, borderline criminal activity on a good day. Reluctantly, he goes with his parents for what turns out to be their last trip – they’re shot dead while driving to the mines. His father’s dying words are “Find Carmen,” whom Rafael determines lives in Paris – on the rue des Martyrs.

It’s not a complete story (it is finished in the full-length novel) but it is a good introduction to Cimino’s style and how she constructs a story. (You can read my review of Paris, Rue des Martyrs here.)

In Social Engineer by Ian Sutherland, we meet Brody Taylor, a self-described “white hat” computer hacker who makes a living by trying to hack companies’ computer defenses. He’s called to a British pharmaceutical company after the company learns that Chinese hackers are nosing around, trying to obtain the research on a new Alzheimer’s drug. Taylor tells the story on a double track – explaining how he was able to hack the company’s systems and his relationship with a new girlfriend. She thinks he’s a movie location scout, and is ignorant of his hacking profession.

Sutherland takes the reader on a few interesting twists, the most surprising of which brings the story full circle. Social Engineer is a fun read and a good introduction to computer hacking, and how it’s done. The novella is also the introduction to a series of Brody Taylor stories.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Short Takes: EBooks, Fujimura & Maggie the Fox

Short Takes is a new feature here focused on works that can be read in under an hour, give or take 30 minutes or so. Today’s post covers three recent works – a how-to, a preview, and a children’s book. All are ebooks.

Advanced Kindle Book Marketing

If you’ve ever wondered how much book publishing has changed over the last decade, here’s a good place to start. Advanced Kindle Book Marketing: How to Sell More Ebooks Online with New Amazon Promotions and Bestseller Tips by Lucinda Sue Crosby and Laura Dobbins. This is not so much about how to publish an ebook generally or how to publish a Kindle book, but rather how to develop marketing strategies and plans specifically selling books via Kindle (whether they’re original Kindle books or Kindle versions of hardcover or paperback books).

Crosby and Dobbins go extensively through the basics: from keywords and book categories to promos, book reviews and using social media. One chapter includes good information on the strategic use of “free days,” those times when you (or your publisher) can, or should, offer your book for free. It’s not as obvious or as simple as you think it might be.

Remember that the book is strictly about ebook marketing on Kindle and Amazon, and it’s exhaustive in that regard. You’ll need to seek other resources if you’re looking for a book on how to publish an ebook.

Related note: After 27 years, Big Sleep Books, an independent bookstore in St. Louis devoted to mysteries and suspense, is closing June 30. The owners attribute the closing to Amazon and Kindle – which only underscore the importance of ebook marketing for authors.

On Becoming Generative

Speaking of interesting developments in ebook marketing, artist and writer Makoto Fujimura has published On Becoming Generative: An Introduction to Culture Care. What’s interesting is that it’s a special preview to his soon-to-be-published book Culture Care. It’s a short work, some 25 pages, but it’s packed with the thinking of an artist who’s been considering ad writing about the idea of “making culture” for a number of years.

The preview includes a short personal storu about bringing beauty into our lives; a longer essay on “An Artist’s Journey Toward Generativity;” and then a discussion of what “culture care” actually is. Fujimura defines the purpose of culture care providing “care for our culture’s ‘soul,’ to bring our cultural home our bouquet of flowers, so that reminders of beauty—both ephemeral and enduring—are present in even the harshest environments where survival is at stake.”

The preview promises that the complete book will be thought-provoking, insightful, and an artifact of “culture making” itself.

Maggie Arrives

Those of us who live in urban and suburban areas are becoming more familiar with wildlife not normally associated with the neighborhood. Animals (especially deer) are finding ways to adapt to the encroachment of development. In my own area of suburban St. Louis, I have seen coyotes, opossums, raccoons and foxes (rabbits don’t count as wildlife).

The Adventures of an Urban Fox: Maggie Arrives by Yara Evans is a delightful children’s book, the story of an urban (or suburban) fox who begins showing up around the yard, driving two cats to complete distraction. Illustrated by artist Luciana Betti, it’s based on a true story (including the cats). It’s a story with a point or moral to tell – about what happens when ostensible enemies reach out to one another in a time of need.

On Yara Evans’ author’s page on Amazon you can see photos of the inspiration for Maggie and a video. Evans lives in London, and looks after two cats when she’s not keeping an eye out for Maggie.

Top photograph by Karen Arnold via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Short Takes: “Jack’s Wager" and “The Three Monarchs”

Short Takes is a new feature here that reviews generally short works (“short” defined as able to be read in under an hour).

Jack’s Wager

Both Halloween and Samhain in Ireland happen at roughly the end of the harvest season. Both have pre-Christian roots. And both share an emblem – the jack o’lantern, a hollowed pumpkin with a light inside. Such decorations sit on American front porches on Oct. 31 each year (including my own). The decoration spread in the United States with the large Irish immigrations in the 19^th century.

But where did the jack o’lantern come from? Writer Wirton Arvil has a creative suggestion, and describes it in detail in Jack’s Wagers. Using some of the legends and stories that have grown up around the jack o’lantern over the centuries, Arvil tells the story of Jack, a poor man for whom nothing ever seems to go right, but who manages to trick the devil not once but twice.

It’s a folk tale, written for contemporary readers, and it is great fun. One can image the story being told around a campfire on a moonlit Halloween night, the harvest finished, and the farmers and field hands fascinated with the a story of the devil being tricked.

The story is told in both English and Italian.

The Three Monarchs

Anthony Horowitz, writer for the popular British (and PBS) series Foyle’s War and the long running mystery series Midsomer Murders. In 2011, he wrote a Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk, that was authorized by the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate. And last year, he published a second Holmes novel, Moriarty (reviewed here last month).

He’s also written a Holmes short story, The Three Monarchs, available as a single story. It is remarkably like the original Holmes stories, so good that it could have been written by Conan Doyle himself.

Dr. John Watson has been married for a year, living happily with his wife Mary not far from 221B Baker Street. But, rather naturally, he’s seen little of Holmes during that time, pursuing his medical career to provide for his new family. But he misses the excitement, and one say his wife suggests he visit Holmes.

He arrives as Holmes is talking with Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard (a major character in Moriarty) about a most puzzling case. A burglar has been shot dead by a homeowner. And, as it turns out, the burglar had also visited two neighboring homes, stealing the exact same thing from each – a figurine of Queen Victoria for her Golden Jubilee, of which millions were made and sold. In other words, the figurines are worth virtually nothing. So why would they be stolen?

Leave it to Holmes to find the larger meaning in what seems inconsequential. The Three Monarchs is a story solidly within the Sherlock Holmes tradition.

Top photograph of a jack o’lantern licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.