Brigid's New Book

I know that many of you have been following Brigid's blog ("Home on the Range") for years. But did you know that her fifth book has just come out?

She's a best-selling, award-winning author - you owe it to yourselves to read her work. Besides, you know you want to order it.

New Book

Peter Grant’s third book in the Cochrane’s Company trilogy is up!

Click the cover to get it!

The Blurb-

The shadow war started as a simple contract to defend a system against asteroid thieves. The harder Andrew Cochrane and Hawkwood Security fought, the worse things became. Now they find themselves embroiled in an interstellar war with an entire mafia!

Worse yet, the proceedings are so profitable – not to mention bloody – that they’ve attracted the attention of some of the worst criminal organizations in the galaxy. If Hawkwood is to survive, it’ll need all the wits, cunning and ingenuity it can muster – and the unwavering courage and dedication of its people.

The galaxy’s not big enough for both sides. One or the other will go to the wall. 

Peter Grant's New Book Out Today!

"The Stones of Silence", Peter Grant's (aka Bayou Renaissance Man) new book, the first volume in the "Cochrane's Company" trilogy, is now available in e-book format on Amazon.com.

Volume 2 of the trilogy, "An Airless Storm", will be published in June, and Volume 3, "The Pride of the Damned", in July. And all three books will be published in print format in about three months' time.

Peter Grant's new e-book on Amazon

The secret is out – the Mycenae system is the hottest new mineral find in the spiral arm. Now it’s about to become ground zero in a gold rush by every crooked company and asteroid thief in the galaxy. 

Andrew Cochrane, with his crew of the finest veterans and cunning rogues, have an even better scheme. They’ve conned the owner into hiring them as a mercenary security company to defend the system. With no oversight but their own, Cochrane’s Company plans to seize the richest pickings for themselves. 

But nothing ever comes easy. If they want to keep their loot, they’re going to have to outwit and outfight every smuggler, bandit and renegade after the same prize – and their boss, too!

I have the privilege to be one of Peter's proofreaders, and WOW is this trilogy good. Highly recommended!

New Book Alert!

From Old NFO's blog*, this morning:

Peter Grant, over at Bayou Renaissance Man, has his new book out! This one is titled King’s Champion, and was written based on the requests of his fans. It’s a medieval fantasy, and I’m happy to have been one of the alpha readers for it.

You can click on the cover to go directly to the Amazon page! Go, buy, enjoy!

The blurb-

After decades of peace, war is threatening the Kingdom of Avranche. Its old foes are stirring, in a new alliance with darker powers. Black wings bring death and torture in the night.

Owain, former King’s Champion, hears rumors of sorcery. Visiting the grave of his sword brother, he stumbles into a deadly raid, and uncovers coded orders for a larger plot.

The kingdom’s enemies know Owain is now their greatest danger. He must race against time to find and deal with them… before they deal with him!

 

Plenty of twists, turns, and action with well fleshed characters will make for an enjoyable couple of hours of reading! And remember, we love honest reviews!

* Go to Old NFO's blog for his books - they're awesome, too! I've recommended them before (J.L. Curtis, remember?)

New Book

My friend Peter Grant (also known as Bayou Renaissance Man) has his second Western book out.
You'll like it, I promise!

What's it about? I'm glad you asked:

In the post-Civil War West, the railroads are expanding, the big money men are moving in, and the politicians they are buying make it difficult for a man to stand alone on his own. So, Walt Ames moves his wife, his home and his business from Denver to Pueblo. The railroads are bringing new opportunities to Colorado Territory, and he's going to take full advantage of them.

 

Ambushed on their way south, Walt and his men uncover a web of corruption and crime to rival anything in the big city. And rough justice, Western-style, sparks a private war between Walt and some of the most dangerous killers he's ever encountered, a deadly war in which neither friends nor family are spared.

 

Across the mountains and valleys of the southern Rocky Mountains, Walt and his men hunt for the ruthless man at the center of the web. Retribution won't be long delayed... and it cannot be denied.

A Very, VERY Good Read!

I've just finished reading a friend's new novel. In fact, since he mentioned me by name as one of his beta readers, I suppose there's no point in keeping it secret.

Peter Grant (all y'all know him as Bayou Renaissance Man) has just published Volume 5 of the Maxwell Saga, "Stoke the Flames Higher".

 

 

I've been an avid reader of science fiction, both hard science and adventure, since my high school days. For brevity's sake, we won't go into how long ago that was, at this point.

 

But I digress.

I've read 'em all: Asimov, Heinlein, Card, Beam, Polk, Norton, and all. (I'm no fan of the current trend to produce much that is thinly-disguised written pornography in a vaguely sci-fi framework. But that's another topic.) Let's just say I have a number of decades' experience in reading and evaluating such stories, and leave it at that.

IMHO, this book puts Mr. Grant in the Top 10 writers of space opera. Period.

When I read a really good book, I forget that I'm reading, and become one with the narrator. I see through the characters' eyes, and feel what they're feeling. When things get tense ... honestly, so do I. My pulse quickens, and I practically inhale the pages as I want to know what's going to happen next.

 

Stoke the Flames Higher is such a book. It reads like the best of Heinlein, and I can't think of any higher praise.

 

If you like military-related sci fi or space opera, you're going to love this book.

Caring For an Alzheimer's Patient

A lady whom I met through the 2008 Presidential campaign - she was a huge Sarah Palin supporter - had recently lost a dearly-loved companion due to Alzheimer's.

Lynda Armstrong spoke about Alzheimer’s Disease on KENS 5, a CBS affiliate out of Texas. She shared her experience of being a caregiver for a close friend who died of the disease. Thus, Alzheimer’s hits close to home and statistically will hit close to home for many of you reading this.

She wrote The Face of Alzheimer’s As Seen From the Heart of a Caregiver, after taking caring of a loved one. She watched as her friend’s mind slowly disappeared, and she no longer knew family and friends.  It’s a book that will tell you things you can do as a caregiver, and how you as the caregiver survive when your job as a caregiver is over.

You can buy The Face of Alzheimer’s in paperback for $6.99 or an e-book for $4.99. The e-book is available at the same price as an Apple iBookstore download for use on iPhones and iPads.



Note: Lynda is an extraordinary lady, and I provide this link as a favor to her. No money was exchanged nor promised, nor will it be. This book is a reflection of the knowledge gained through the heartache of watching her friend slip away. I hope you never need it, but if you do, this will help.

Two New Books From Friends

Those of you who have been reading these scribblings for any length of time will know of Old NFO and Bayou Renaissance Man, whose blogs have been on my sidebar since ... well, forever.

Each of them has just published a new book, and both are worth a look.

Old NFO, better known as Jim Curtis, has just released Rimworld - Stranded, and it's a humdinger of a military/sci-fi adventure, with a protagonist I think I encountered many times in my Navy days. Jim is a Navy retiree, among other accomplishments, and knows the gent even better than I.

It's a fast-paced story, but worth every moment you spend looking over the guy's shoulder. :)




Bayou Renaissance Man, Peter Grant, has released a real, honest-to-goodness western novel that reads like Zane Grey, only better IMHO. Brings the Lightning is a historically accurate post-Civil War novel.

If you know the firearms, technology and accoutrements of the era, the attention to accuracy will be pleasing. If you just want a good yarn, that will please you, too.

Forge a New Blade is a VERY Good Read

Peter Grant's new novel is available on Kindle today, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Fast-paced, suspenseful, and a real page-turner ... okay, a "next-page button presser". If you enjoyed the first installment, you'll like this one even more!



* * * * *

As you might notice by the new header at the top of this blog, we did finally hit the road this weekend, and I have some new pix of Alaskan scenery. I haven't had a chance to edit them yet, so you'll have to wait until later today for that. Sorry.

We did spend some time hiking in bear country, and I found myself wishing the .357 was a .44 when we came across some very large tracks on the trail.

There was a mama moose blissfully nesting along the roadside as we drove by, but there was no chance to get a picture at the time. When we came back later, she was long gone. Ah, well.

Y'all have a wonderful day, even if it is a Monday, and thanks for stopping by.

Book Review: "War To The Knife"

Online Dictionary defines "war to the knife" as "mortal combat; a conflict carried to the last extremity."

Peter Grant (all y'all know him as Bayou Renaissance Man) has drawn on his own combat experience to create this story in the same universe as his first three novels (The Maxwell Saga: Take The Star Road, Ride The Rising Tide, and Adapt and Overcome).

War to the Knife starts out like an episode of Firefly, a familiar-enough setting: small frontier town, rough-and-rugged individuals, on an occupied planet. There are veterans of a recent war, occupying forces, and enough injustice to start the war back up again.


Soon the scope widens as we meet more people, and the reader comes to realize that it's a planet-wide scenario - and the veterans are the backbone of the Resistance.

But there's a problem: the occupying force has nearly exterminated the people of this planet, to take their natural resources. The remnant of survivors in this battle for survival are outnumbered, and out-gunned, and nearly out of options. They decide to fight back with everything they have in one final, decisive battle, knowing that many of them will not survive.

The characters are real, the action fast-paced, and the plot compelling. The phrase "page turner" gets over-used, but you can trust me on this: you won't want to put it down until you find out what comes next.

Book Review: "Walls, Wire, Bars and Souls"

I've just finished reading Peter Grant's latest offering, and will try to communicate my thoughts.

Amazon.com describes it this way:

“Walls, Wire, Bars and Souls” is a first-hand account from a chaplain's perspective of the real word behind the razor wire in America's high-security prisons. It ranges from hideous brutality to mundane boredom and everything in between. In these pages you'll meet everyone from some of the most evil psychopaths in existence, to those whose only crimes were on paper and hurt nobody. They're all dumped into the penitentiary meat-grinder together, with results that are sometimes agonizing, often frustrating, and occasionally very funny.

The author describes himself in his blog as a former military man and a medically retired pastor. His compassion for those inside our penal system is obvious, as is his very common-sense approach to dealing with those sentenced to reside there. He spent years as a Chaplain in the prison system at all levels, and offers some very insightful proposals to improve the current state of our penal system, which demonstrably isn't working.

He tells the stories of a number of inmates, in their own words (carefully avoiding identifying anyone or any place specific), and the level of pain, bitterness, violence, anger and denial may shock you. He describes, in vignette fashion, a typical day in the system. For those who have never been exposed to the post-conviction phase of a criminal's life, it is stark and gripping: uncomfortably, disturbingly stark in some cases.



This book is not a novel, and is most definitely not fiction. It is, rather, an unvarnished look behind the walls of the federal prison system, among others. He also spends time writing of the penal system in the United States: why it is the way it is, how it came to be that way, and how it might be improved.

It may be a disservice to the author to quote him out of context, but consider this snippet from his many ideas on the subject:

I propose that a misdemeanor crime should never be punished by a sentence of incarceration. Some States already do this:  others have prison sentences for more serious misdemeanors. Let's remove this class of criminal from our prisons once and for all. They don't need to be there, and there are plenty of alternative punishments for them. If a crime's serious enough to warrant imprisonment, it's serious enough to be classified as a felony. (That includes imprisoning someone who persistently refuses to comply with the non-custodial sentence imposed for a misdemeanor crimes. We can define such defiance as a felony offense in itself, and for that offense he can and should go to prison. If he won't do it the easy way, he can do it the hard way.)

Please read this book.  Consider his carefully-crafted suggestions on how to improve the entire system. You're free to disagree with him, of course. As he writes, "If you have better ideas, let's hear them."

Like it or not, you won't be able to ignore the too-real description of inmate life, and the consequences thereof.