Tag: publishing

A Woman Underground by Andrew Klavan

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

February, month of Posts of Stuff I Love, continues with the category “novels by Andrew Klavan” for 500. What I didn’t anticipate was the way that putting title and author together would make the author sound a bit like a serial killer. Anyway … onward!

Here is Andrew Klavan, known by some as “hot Gandalf.” (No, I’m not kidding.) Ironically, given that he is a fiction writer, my first discovery of Andrew Klavan came through his autobiography, The Great Good Thing, where he chronicled his journey from tough, noir-loving Jewish kid from Long Island to tough, Jesus-loving Jewish geezer from California. Klavan always loved the old-school tough-guy private-eye stories and aspired to write more of them. He got really good at tension, pacing, and action scenes. He’s also good at psychology, and particularly loves stories where the character isn’t sure he can trust his own mind.

Now, in his golden years and arguably at the peak of his art, Klavan is finally writing a mystery series. (His other novels have been stand-alones, plus movie scripts and a fantasy trilogy.)

The hero of this series is Cameron Winter, a former poor little rich boy and former spook whose Apollonian good looks and tweedy job as an English professor do a poor job of hiding the fact that he is still a dangerous man. Because this is by Klavan, about 30% of each novel is spent in Winter’s shrink’s office, where we find out through a series of sessions about different aspects of Winter’s tragic past. In the very first book, we heard that Winter’s childhood crush was Charlotte Schaefer, the daughter of his German-immigrant nanny. Winter has been looking back on Young Charlotte as his feminine ideal, and kind of not really growing up partly as a consequence of the Ghost of Charlotte. In this book, Winter finally has to deal with that. He has to go to the aid of the real Charlotte. But time has been flowing for her, too, of course, and Real Charlotte has her own ghosts.

(By the way, A Woman Underground is book 4 in the series, but I had to go crawling on my hands and knees to Amazon to find this out. Please, Mysterious Press, put the book numbers in a prominent place both on the spine and on the title page!)

I won’t give anything further away, but like all Klavans, the book weaves through time, giving us satisfying action in several different forms: international spy games, local mystery that is really none of Winter’s business, sentimental looks at the way things used to be … or did they? Plus a psychologically satisfying twist at the end.

You may wonder, since this is a series, do you have to read the earlier books first? No, you don’t, because Klavan does a fine job making each book work on its own. However, just in case you want to, here they are:

  • #1 When Christmas Comes
  • #2 A Strange Habit of Mind
  • #3 The House of Love and Death

So, what do you think? Do these sound like something you would like? Are you also in favor of book numbers being put on spines? Let me know in the comments!

Fantasy Cast for The Long Guest Movie

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

Above is the cover for my epic fantasy/alternate history book The Long Guest. Today, I’m going to tell you which actors I would cast for The Long Movie. I got this idea from Riddhi, who “cast” a favorite book here.

N.b.: This list is really a fantasy for a number of reasons. One reason is that many of these actors would have to be younger than they are now to play these characters, and they would have to conveniently not age until the movie was ready to be made. The character Nimri, for example, is 130 years old, but in the world of TLG that’s only middle-aged. Zillah starts the book in her early 60s, practically a spring chicken. Zillah’s children, of course, are even younger.

Also, sorry I’m only picking mostly big-name stars. One wrinkle with “casting” an imaginary movie is that I’m limited to actors I actually know about.

Nimri: the antihero

Denzel Washington has the look and the gravitas to play Nimri, an arrogant aristocrat related to the Assyrians and Egyptians (he’s “Cushite”) who is taken in by a group of strangers when he suffers paralysis.

Washington usually plays morally upright characters, but he’s a great actor who has been known to play against type, such as in the movie Training Day:

Washington would need a wig, since Nimri has long, curly hair, like the Assyrians.

Update: Ben has suggested Jason Momoa for Nimri. This is a brilliant idea. I didn’t think of Momoa, because I’ve never watched anything he’s been in. But he has the hair, and the roguish vibe.

Imagine this dude screaming at you unintelligibly to take him back to the Tower.

Zillah: the wise matriarch

Widowed at the beginning of the story, Zillah acts as the conscience of her family as they navigate the postapocalyptic chaos. It is she, in fact, who insists they save the life of Nimri, even though he is paraplegic, doesn’t speak their language, and appears to hate them.

Zillah and her family are “Japhethites,” which in my book means they belong to the group that became the ancestors of both Europeans and Asians. They can look like modern-day Europeans, Central or East Asians, or (later) Native Americans. Zillah has medium-fair skin and straight black hair so long that anyone playing her would need a wig.

Any of these ladies could play Zillah:

Sandra Oh

Maura Tierney

Mariska Hargitay. She starred in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit for so many years that I’m sure playing Zillah would actually seem like a nice break by comparison.

Golgal: Zillah’s dead husband

Golgal is killed right before the story opens, but if we needed to portray him in flashbacks, he could be played by Liam Neeson sporting long black hair and a long black beard. And dark contacts.

Enmer: the hyper-responsible son

With his father dead, it’s up to Enmer to get his family out of the riots in the city of Babel. Enmer never really gets over the apocalypse, but he does his best throughout the rest of the book, guided by Zillah.

Kiowa Gordon is an American Indian (Hualapai) actor who played Jim Chee, among other roles. This tense, tragic look on his face is perfect for Enmer.

Ninshi: Enmer’s uptight wife

Lucy Liu has exactly the take-no-nonsense face that Ninshi is usually sporting.

Endu: the cocky young prince

Endu, the second son of Zillah and Golgal, is handsome and cocky. He doesn’t mind letting Enmer lead the group of refugees, but he’d like to have his own kingdom some day.

I only ever saw Johnathan Schaech in That Thing You Do, and never again. But the character he played in that movie was pretty close to Endu’s.

Endu could also be played by a much younger Robert Downey Junior, or by a much younger:

Michael Greyeyes.

Endu is quite a bit darker complected than all these guys, though.

Sari: Endu’s mousy wife

Late in the book, Endu marries a sweet, shy widow who he thinks should be really glad to get him.

I’ve always thought Grace Dove would do a fantastic job as Sari.

Sut: the sunny third child

Sut doesn’t make it very far in the book, but he could be played by either of these handsome young fellers.

Timothee Chalamet

Frank Dillane

Ninna: the little sister

Ninna is only sixteen when the apocalypse happens. She remains a player in the family story throughout the entire trilogy.

Mindy Kaling looks exactly like I picture Ninna (and, in fact, her daughter Magya): dark, pretty, short, sweet, super feminine.

Hur: the slave turned brother

Golgal acquired Hur as a slave when Hur was fourteen. Hur’s father had gotten into debt, and the family was being sold off to pay it. Hur is the same age as Enmer (31) when The Long Guest opens. He is a very capable person, and it doesn’t take him long to insist to Enmer that he be given his freedom and made one of the family, or he will take his skills elsewhere.

Hur is the only member of the initial cast who does not have black hair.

Jeremy Renner looks more or less as I have always pictured Hur. In Wind River, he plays a character who is similar to Hur, as well.

You May Now Complain

Okay, that’s it! If you have actually read The Long Guest, you may have found this post enjoyable (or, perhaps, repulsive). If you haven’t read it yet, I trust that my casting choices have not ruined the mental images you will develop while reading it.

And yes, The Long Guest could be cast almost entirely with American Indian actors, Korean actors, or Bollywood actors. I’m just not knowledgeable enough about the industrie(s) to assemble such a cast in a blog post.

Readalong with Bookstooge: Love Saves the Day

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

My faithful fellow blogger, Bookstooge, is doing a readalong of a book someone, possibly as a prank, recommended to him: Love Saves the Day by Barbara Cartland. I went so far as to order this book from Amazon in order to participate. I don’t usually read in the romance genre, but I have read a few, and I don’t despise the genre or its readers or anything like that.

I waited to post this until after Bookstooge’s first reaction post went up on Friday, but I am composing my reaction before I see his.

First, let’s talk about this cover, eh? The word “terrifying” comes to mind. The guy looks more like Dracula – or a 60-year-old uncle- than like a romantic hero. Note that he is grasping the heroine by the upper arms. She, for her part, appears to be very concerned and trying to get away. I don’t mind the fact that this is impressionistically rendered – I don’t even completely mind that her hair is not, as it is described in the book, curly — but the emotional tone of this cover does not match the promised content.

I am, as of this posting, almost all the way through Chapter 4 because I mistakenly remembered that Bookstooge was going to be writing about chapters 1 – 6 in his first post. My impression so far: the plot is a very capable romance plot. The heroine is young, brave, idealistic; the hero is a little older, world-weary, etc.; there’s a rival romantic hero in the picture who is young, blond, and charming; financial circumstances are forcing the couple into co-operation they wouldn’t otherwise undertake. There’s even a bitter, scheming housekeeper a la Rebecca. I can’t see any big holes in the plot.

My first impression of the wordsmithing is that this is a first draft.

There are a ton of comma splices. There is head-hopping. (Though that may be intentional; sometimes it’s hard to tell head-hopping from an omniscient narrator. I omnish, myself.) The tone of the dialog is slightly inconsistent. It’s as if Cartland wants this to be an Edwardian-era novel, like Austen, or even earlier, but it’s set in 1903, and sometimes it comes off as if the characters are pretending to be from an earlier era. I can’t tell whether clothes, technology, and so forth, contain any anachronisms. The clothes are fairly generically described, but there are “omnibuses.” (Edit: I just looked it up, and oops! Edwardian is 1901 – 1910. So, spot on. So, the language sounds like it’s going for … Victorian? But obviously I’m not very savvy about this, so perhaps her language is also period accurate.)

Anyway, after noticing that this read like a first draft, I then went back to the introduction (which, like a good fiction reader, I had skipped), and, lo and behold …. it is a first draft.

Dame Barbara Cartland[‘s] most amazing literary feat was to double her output from 10 books a year to over 20 books a year when she was 77 to meet the huge demand.

She went on writing continuously at this rate for 20 years and wrote her very last book at the age of 97, thus completing an incredible 400 books between the ages of 77 and 97.

Her publishers finally could not keep up with this phenomenal output, so at her death in 2000 she left behind an amazing 160 unpublished manuscripts, something that no other author has ever achieved.

Barbara’s son, Ian McCorquodale, together with his daughter Iona, felt that it was their sacred duty to publish all these titles for Barbara’s millions of admirers all over the world who so love her wonderful romances.

So in 2004 they started publishing the 160 brand new Barbara Cartlands as the The Barbara Cartland Pink Collection, as Barbara’s favourite colour was always pink — and yet more pink!

The Barbara Cartland Pink collection is published monthly exclusively by Barbaracartland.com and the books are numbered in sequence from 1 to 160.

–the introduction

Barbara Cartland was cranking out about one novel every two weeks for twenty years. I’m not even mad, I’m impressed. And I am now a little bit jealous of her. Imagine having such high demand for your books that you can just dash off all your ideas and the publisher will publish them as fast as they can.

Also, I’m tickled. That selection above gets funnier every time I read it. I mean, it sounds made-up, like something from a Bertie Wooster novel. Even the names of Barbara’s son and granddaughter sound like characters from her books. And the fact that they are calling it the pink collection because that was her favorite color … the fact that she loved pink so much … the fact that her author photo looks like this:

Now that I think about, the section above might be my favorite part of the book. The romance between Tiana and Richard is going to have to get awfully good in order to compete with Cartland herself.

Reminder: Purchase The Scattering Trilogy for your Bookworm Loved Ones for Christmas

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

But don’t take my word for it!

Reviews of The Long Guest

On onlinebookclub

On Amazon

Reviews of The Strange Land

Didn’t like the abuse scenes: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=535834 ,

Didn’t like the tribal rituals scenes: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=552727

Liked the bear scene: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=519407

Liked the whole thing: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=563318 , https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=523075

Reviews of The Great Snake

Wanted more relationship development: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=521141

Wanted more cowbell snake: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=533607

“I felt her pain, her joy, and everything in between”: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=545809

New Review of The Great Snake

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=521141

This review is through the Online Book Club, a book discussion site where volunteers review books in exchange for a free copy or, sometimes, a small fee. As an author, I had purchased a batch of reviews. They are done by book lovers who select the books to review based on whether it sounds like something that would interest them. They agree to give an honest review.

I appreciate this review by Li Zapata. She has picked up on how The Great Snake is the story of not just one person, but of a community and how they develop. (This is true of the entire trilogy, actually. Ensemble cast.) The weaknesses she found in the book have been noted by others as well, so I can’t fault her there.

Check out her review, my book, and onlinebookclub.

Out of Babel, the movie

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

Some of you may be aware that a while back, I sold my url outofbabel dot com to someone else. Well, what have they done with it?

https://outofbabel.com/

They are making a really cool movie that is due to come in out 2026.

No, it’s not based on my books in any way, but it has all the themes of my series, turned up to 11. I mean to say, if you click on the link above, you will see that their web site features American Indians fighting a dinosaur. Things do not get cooler than that, and as it turns out, they also do not get better historically supported.

Here is a quote from their FAQs section:

The Walam Olum or “Red Record,” which is central to our movie, is very much not alone from multiple Native American historical narratives that provide a clear and consistent telling of giants—especially giants associated with the mound builders and earth works, of which there are tens of thousands in America. The Lenni Lenape’s account of the Nephilim is central to their history (see the “snake people” and the makowini, translated “big men” that existed before and after their Flood account, were part of the reason for the Flood, matching our Bible history). See the Glyphs in Book 2 and Glyphs 1-2 in Book 3. Several other historical documents also mention giants affiliated with tribes around the Lenni-Lenape people.

In other words, these people are kindred spirits, which is why they wanted to buy my url in the first place.

My little url is all grown up, and I couldn’t be prouder.

Still buy my books, I mean. They have their own peculiar charm. But by all means, go and see this movie too.

These cool kids also have a YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/GenesisApologetics

And a previous movie about the Flood: https://genesisapologetics.com/ark/

Small Town Festival, 2024

On By Jennifer Mugrage12 Comments

Here was our sales booth at this year’s American Falls Days. We did OK. I sold two Long Guests and my son sold some paintings.

Here are a few other vendors, visible from our corner of the park. The Navajo Tacos are to die for: basically taco fixins on fry bread. I get some every year.

Vendors were ringed all around the city park, with food trucks parked on the street.

Also, there was this adorable dog, the tiniest sheep dog I have ever seen.

But the kickoff event for American Falls Days was the town parade. If you have never seen a summer parade in small-town America, may I just say you are missing out. I had to stay in our booth while the parade went by. (My son, meanwhile, went off to collect candy. All the floats threw candy.) Anyway, I was close enough to the street that I could zoom in and photograph the parade from a distance, as if in miniature. So here’s your guided tour.

First of all, we have veterans bearing an American flag and a state flag.

This float belongs to Lamb Weston, a potato-processing plant and a major local employer. Near the front of the float you can see a giant box of French Fries. At the back is a giant potato with a face and, apparently, black hair, similar to Mr. Potato Head.

Lots of little golf-cart sized vehicles that you can barely see.

a trolley (?)

Politicians in open cars with flags. What parade would be complete without them?

The local Tae Kwon Do dojong’s float, with all the students in their doboks riding it.

Other students parade behind, doing poomsae moves.

I’m not sure who these purple-clad, Muppet-like people are, but they’re interesting.

Here’s a little yellow school bus. I know someone who would love this!

Now here come the utility vehicles. Fire truck, siren blaring …

Crop transport vehicle, a.k.a. “farm truck”

Teen volunteers riding on a ladder truck (siren also blaring) …

Senior citizens (your parade has to have them!) in a giant Radio Flyer

High schoolers (also mandatory)

A boat? What are people in Idaho doing with boats??? For your information, we have a reservoir, and many people boat recreationally on it.

Beauty queens. Every parade needs at least one beauty queen.

Classic car. The owner probably just wanted to show it off.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think this yellow thing may represent a bee hive. That’s a popular Mormon symbol for a large, happy (polygamous) home.

This is the coolest thing ever. Those large wheels are irrigation lines of the kind that you can spot in any field around American Falls. If you look closely, you can see that they are spraying actual water.

ACTUAL WATER!!!

Trailer, for some reason

This float was by the local Spanish-speaking evangelical church. They had a Tejano-style praise band, with speakers, loud enough to be heard past the sirens.

After the parade, they brought their float back, parked it in a nearby parking lot, and did some more songs and testimonies.

Being pulled behind the band is a small model of their church building.

This is the Green Machine. It had an entourage of people dressed in green marching behind it.

Now, for my absolute favorite float of all the floats. This is the Idaho Power cherrypicker truck. It’s the one they send out to our rural road to fix our power lines and restore electricity whenever a storm has blown the lines down, which has happened more than once. The brave Idaho Power employees will go out in winds and storm to restore power.

And look! It’s displaying a huge American flag, which strikes me as entirely appropriate. A local power company is indeed doing a lot to keep the country strong. If the power went off for any length of time, the region or country would quickly disintegrate into apocalyptic conditions. A nation needs its energy so its people can focus on anything except survival.

I’m not sure what the towerlike object on this float is, but I think it might be a model of the old town’s grain tower.

The town of American Falls used to be built closer to the banks of the Snake River. When the dam was built, the entire town was moved uphill, out of the way of the waters of the coming reservoir. (A lot of Shoshone-Bannock lands were also flooded.) To this day, when the water is low, you can still see the remains of the old town’s foundations. The most striking of these is a cement grain tower, which still sticks out of the water year-round. You can gauge the water level by how high up the tower it comes, or whether the tower is, in fact, on the shore.

A piece of construction equipment holding a beam. We small-town folks love our construction equipment.

And of course, a John Deere tractor. One of many.

And last but not least, beautiful cowgirls riding horses and carrying an American flag. These girls may be Indians. One year, the parade featured the Sho-Ban rodeo queen riding a horse, with a leather “crown” that fitted over her cowboy hat.

I’ve taken a lighthearted tone with this post, but honestly, I loved this parade and I love this town. Every community has parades to celebrate the things they love or that they are being made to love, whether it’s Dear Leader or a god or goddess. In this parade, we had: old people, young people, first responders, and people and vehicles who build, maintain, power, and farm the land. Horses. A float dedicated to praising the God of Heaven and proclaiming His goodness. This is just about the best, most wholesome parade you could ever hope to see.