By Alex Ness
April 2, 2021
HEALTH UPDATE
While covid and an array of horrible events are still ongoing, my health isn't getting any better. I was told to expect surgery to happen 3rd week of April or nearly so. It has been postponed before and might be postponed again, but in the meantime, I plan to have work appear on this blog consistently, and of quality. Among the things appearing will be 8 or so interviews with writers about their work, and about the writing process for them. I'll ask questions about the creative fire too. Some writers are comic book writers, others write plays and movies, one is a multi faceted talent doing work in many formats, and some work in a single genre, but are skilled and have writing in their DNA. So far the email responses to my questions have been genuinely moving. I look forward to sharing that with you.
REVIEW OF KIM CORMACK's CHILDREN OF THE ANKH
I considered it in poetry HERE . I've interviewed the very fun Kim Cormack prior to this (found HERE), and have another interview upcoming for the interview week. She is a force of nature.
The work in question is a five book (so far) series wherein the question of immortality is central. What is life like for beings who can live forever without fear of their life ending? Or, is life for them more a curse? They choose to create savage loyalties and build clans... who are tasked with repairing or destroying the normal human timeline's existence. They fight other clans, knowing they might win, or be cast into a very dark place, perhaps forever. The books build upon each other, and what you learned and were told in the beginning will matter later in the story. So you can't enter the world by whim and pick up the latest edition and think, this will give me enough of a flavor or taste to know the whole of it. It doesn't work like that. Now each book is individually satisfying... but if you didn't read the one before it, by book 5 you'll be wondering many things.
If you are looking at this thinking where it falls on what I've read before, what it reminds me most of is Interview with the Vampire, but Kim is way more about dark humor, and action than the more introspective and erotic Anne Rice work. Mind you, some will find eroticism in Kim's work too, I guess for me I am too old to be moved by such, however present that trait is. For the record, I remember reading Interview back in 1990 and thinking, holy shit, this is nearly approaching Lolita in some of it, and a romance novel in the rest of it. The quality of writing won out for me, I love Ms. Rice's work, but it faced some obstacles in my brain before arriving. Kim's work would be equally interesting if made in movie format. Perhaps she'll cast me as the grumpy old white guy too slow to avoid the impact of a fist or something. Ah stardom... one can wish...
3 AUTHORS & 4 BOOKS I LIKED THAT THEY WROTE
I am a fan of a variety of talents in different areas. This will be a small feature where upon giving you a small blurb about an author followed by an image of 4 books they wrote that I enjoyed. The 4 books are shared as suggested points of entry to that author's work. I'm not actually saying that these are the best of that author, more accurately they are books I really enjoyed. Some names will be familiar to you, but others will likely not be. I don't mean this to say these are the only great writers, obviously. Just to offer a taste and why I do like them.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Ernest Hemingway became a favorite writer of mine, when after a reading marathon where I'd read dozens of books at 12 years old I realized some writers work for me, and others, however good will not work for me. Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Tolstoy's War and Peace and a French author who I can't recall nor the book (Maybe it was Victor Hugo) were all great books. I could see why people liked them. But even after I'd read all of the great works they'd all had exhausted me. I wasn't a dullard, but I was age 12 so maybe I was unsophisticated, but still, I'd invested many hours, and got little back from the effort. I thought nuts, I'll go and build Lego buildings or something. On my way out of the room with the book shelf I saw a Hemingway title, For Whom the Bell Tolls and I thought, OK, I'm going to try that. That book and those that followed were a divine experience.
The work was pure, clear and thought provoking. The lack of description allowed me to fill in the blanks, and it worked especially well after reading the other others. The idea of shadows and light in photographer, lighting for plays and inks and dark areas for comic art are all similar, I find that it exists in Hemingway, because he gives you only the most important details, and in the absence of other details you partake in the story by filling in details. The characters feel real, act normally, and don't go into a many page long monologue. The action feels real, the emotions feel that way too. His work deeply moves me. And when I read the last of his works that I hadn't read yet, I thought to myself, why the hell didn't I get more to read from this guy? I wanted more.
PETER GREEN
I've read works by hundreds of historians. I've read some amazing stories from the recorded history of mankind. Being that history is the recorded events of the past, there is a cut off date from where we know from what we speculate. Archeology is needed for non recorded events. Peter Green, a British born historian made a beautifully well told story from the tapestry of human events. He used both data and information from the past, along with an ability to tell a cogent tale of what we know, and make it artistically beautiful. With a focus on trying to peel back the onion to the portion that seems to be completely accurate, he weaves a tapestry of human event that is layered, complex and thoughtful. Part of my degree field in history came in the area of the ancient Near East, Greece, Rome and Egyptian cultures. Within that realm of information I found the deadly dull, the wildly inaccurate, the false facts, and the political ideologies of the present being glued upon the backs of the past. Peter Green didn't do that, and his work being vibrant, well crafted, accurate, and deep, allows the reader to absorb a great deal of information, at the same time the crafting of the word is so perfect, it feels like you are watching as history unfolds. Very few writers achieve this, and far fewer Historians even come close to this. His ideas as expressed about Alexander the Great, and the Greco-Persian Wars are the most clear, the most persuasive and the most vital to an understanding of the past.
BRIAN LUMLEY
Brian Lumley writes in clear prose and poetry works of enormous power. He created characters who respond to the danger there are in, in a way that reveals Lumley's own life lessons and experiences. He is a retired military veteran who worked in the military police. Most people I know who like Lumley's writing are fans of his vampire stories and especially the character Harry Keogh. Some people I know who read him seem to think that that is all he has written. I did like his vampire tales, but I wouldn't say I loved them. However I think that it is in his Cthulhu work that he demonstrates a brilliance. He differs from some writers of the Cthulhu mythos by having characters who are brave, and thoughtful, without simultaneously possessing hubris, or lacking in wisdom or solely being victims. As much as I love HP Lovecraft's work, his main characters are rarely truly wise, brave or develop in ways in which I care for the works' survivors. In Lumley's character Titus Crow, the character possesses a sort of solidness of character that makes you appreciate his bravery, even in the face of uneven odds make him also, perhaps, risk taking or rash. His characters possess more agency and thereby more potency in their reaction to the cosmos' most powerful beings. In this way his work has characters who the reader might want to identify with, rather than be forced to accept. Lumley's Cthulhu and the beasts of the mythos are not less powerful, but not all encounters with madness or terror lead the main character to lose his mind or die most painfully and gruesomely. While it might well be that Great Cthulhu is so powerful that there can be no response that will save one's self, a Lovecraft character will go mad, flee, and perhaps die. A Lumley character respond with a punch to Great Cthulhu's scrotum, before being overwhelmed, and while madness or death might happen, it is only after great insults have been given. There is humor in this, and I think great quality of plot and dialogue. I trust Lumley to take me on adventures that I want to go with him upon.
SAD NEWS
Since December of 2019 I've lost a number of friends, and family. Some were lost to cancer, some lost to Covid, and one person was lost to a drug interaction that caused death. Two of these people were powerful supporters of my work, in terms of buying it, but also, sharing my links, doing proof reading and more. Their names are Marsha Nelson and Cherry Rose, and I miss them, and will no doubt realize how much more they did for me as time has a way of revealing. I know as a person gets older they have to deal with more deaths of loved ones, friends, family and more. But some wounds never heal. I know that I still mourn my mother who passed in 2012, and my wife's and my friend Cathy Roberts, who passed in 2014 on or around the date when I was declared cancer free.
ABOUT GETTING REVIEWS FROM ME
First off, I can be found on Facebook, Twitter or through email at Alexanderness63@gmail.com. I accept hard copies, so when you inquire at any of these places, I'll follow through by telling you my street address. I no longer have a post box, although I regret that. It was a crushing defeat to no longer have a p.o. box, when I came to realize I was getting so little product it made no sense to pay for the privilege to not receive mail at both my home and at the post office. If you send hard copies for review I will always review them, but if you prefer to send pdf or ebooks to my email, I will review these at my discretion. I don't share my pdf/ebooks, so you can avoid worry that I'd dispense them for free to others.
My Poetry Blog alexnesspoetry.blogspot.com
Published alexnesspoetry.blogspot.com/2007/01/My-Work.html
My Amazon Page Amazon.com/author/AlexNess
Lovecraft Horror cthulhudarkness.blogspot.com
Atlantis MU, Lemuria alexnesslostworlds.blogspot.com
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