A Splintered Mind

"How come girls guides to everything are always stupid and contrived?" ~ My 15 year old daughter. If you are Beth Walker, you may want to skip by this review. It is not going to be kind. In fact, judging by the glowing reviews for your book over at Amazon.com this review may come as a surprise. I felt this book assaulted my attention span with a sledgehammer covered with sparkles. I had a hard time thumbing through it, nevermind reading it. However, I gave it the old college try several times and each time failed miserably to get through a complete chapter. I tried skipping about to see if the book improved but experienced the same results. At first, I cursed my Attention Deficit Disorder. That must be the culprit. It's only a book. I like books. Surely, I can read this one. Soon, however, I realized it was not my anemic attention span at fault. The author wrote in a colloquial style which was easy to read, but finding that prose was the hard part. She interrup...

Fool's Run is hard Science Fiction from Patricia McKillip , an author known for her elegant Fantasy Fiction. I usually settle into a Patricia McKillip novel like I would a nice comfy couch. She weaves her stories into complex tapestries with colorful words thick as yarn. How disappointing that this technique didn't translate well from high fantasy into deep space. Divided into three "Parts", Fool's Run tells the story of Terra Viridian , a mass murderer and psychic, seven years after she had been found guilty of slaughtering fifteen hundred civilians while she experienced a vision. This vision soon ensnares the lives of several other people, all brought together by the actions of Terra's twin sister, the Queen of Hearts , as she tries to solve the mystery of why her sister suddenly went crazy seven years ago. The story takes a while to get going. Part One is filled with various seemingly unconnected characters all experiencing life within the shadow of the...

The world seems to be on the brink of developing a way of suppressing or removing traumatic memories. On the surface this seems to be a great idea. Why should victims of rape or sexual abuse be forced to live with the horrors in their mind? Wouldn't they be happier if traumatic memories no longer affected their day to day living? Obviously, this introduces ethical problems. Some would say that removing memories deprives us of the very human experience that forms who we are as individuals. Others would say that anyone who would force a sexually abused child to live with the horror done to them is as abusive as the original perpetrator. I say, can you really trust these guys to effectively erase the correct memories? Would you want to trust a pill to modify your grey matter? Wouldn't you risk losing many precious memories as well? Some would say that forgetting traumatic events would be worth the risk. My personal experience with pills and their side-effects has not been so fa...

I bet you've been wondering if I'd fallen off the planet. Maybe you feared I had blogfaded and wasn't coming back. Well, darling, I just learned I earned 45¢ Google revenue last month and I'm thinking I can double that if I actually posted something once in a while. I'm in this for the money, baby - the piles and piles of coinage that Google Adsense sends my way. Oh yeah. If we keep this up I might be able to retire in opulence by 2031. Or was that 3031? At any rate, I hope you enjoyed the article I posted yesterday, and to sate your curiosity about where I've been I present the following: Writing Books I began my sabbatical by promising myself I would finish my juvenile fiction novel by my fortieth birthday. Alas, being a fulltime Dad, homeschool teacher, and graphic designer on the side just didn't leave any time for novel writing. Still, I kept at it. I also finished the second draft of a picture book I'm working on. Saving Christmas Righ...

Ah, the quintessential question of your life. "What is WRONG with you?" You've spent your life hearing it from one knucklehead or another, usually knuckleheads with authority. There's just something about you that doesn't sync with the people around you. You think differently. You work differently. You are different. And in a world where conformity is not only a job skill but a way of life, you, my friend, are too different. And that's bad . At least that's what they tell me anyway. My favorite part of that question is when you try to answer it. Any attempt to explain AD/HD, Depression, Insomnia, or Chronic Motor Tic Disorder (the disorders I have) is often met with contempt as if I'm trying to make excuses for being a loser. "Everyone can be absentminded," they say in a patient and sagacious tone. They also say things like "Anybody can feel down from time to time. So you have a sleep problem; take a pill," and my favorite,...