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Review: Domain by Mike Baron

About halfway into DOMAIN by Mike Baron, I was wondering if maybe Mr. Baron hadn’t gotten two versions of the same novel mashed-up together and mistakenly published them as one. Give me a minute and I’ll explain.

In the first version, we have Kendall Coffin, a moderately successful comic book artist who due to an unexpected financial windfall is able to purchase an extraordinarily lavish and baroque Los Angeles mansion that looks like a cross between 1930’s Art Deco and a Mayan temple. It’s a mansion that was built by an eccentric architect and owned by an even more eccentric Hollywood producer. As in any good haunted house story, the mansion is rumored to have been the location of depraved sexual acts, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, Satanic rituals, pedophilia, necrophilia, and Great Cthulhu himself only knows what all else went on in that joint. That’s why Kendall is able to buy it cheap.

He settles down to his new life, meeting new neighbors, engages in romantic and business relationships and even gets himself a dog. But as he explores his new house and finds new rooms full of Hollywood memorabilia and remnants of the former owner’s depravities it begins working on his conscious and subconscious mind. Are there spirits of the dead infesting the house and subtly influencing Kendall? Maybe even to the point where he is committing murder without being aware of it?

In the second version Kendall Coffin goes to work for a thinly disguised Disney knock-off as a storyboarder. The studio is moving in a new direction and their latest production is an erotic thriller. While the job pays extraordinarily well, the subject matter is distasteful. And it’s in this version that Coffin wryly and cynically observes and muses on pop culture, comic book culture, Hollywood, TV, The Cult of Celebrity that has infected this country, video gaming, religion, the pros and cons of drug use, mortality and The Meaning of Life.

Don’t get me wrong, the two versions co-exist side-by-side and at times I actually found myself wanting to see more of the version with Kendall navigating his way through Hollyweird, wondering if this is truly the life he wants. There are chapters that are nothing more than Kendall going through his day and rather than being boring they do indeed enhance the story, providing characterization and doing something that a lot of horror stories don’t do; remind us that even though horrible things are happening around us, life does indeed go on. We still have to feed the dog, put out the garbage and make a living. We still have to deal with loss and we still want to find love and have sex.

This is the fourth novel of Baron’s I’ve read and as always, I enjoy his freewheeling, don’t-give-a-damn prose. Baron writes as if he’s out to entertain himself first and foremost and it’s a tactic I wish more writers would adapt because if the writer is enjoying himself then it can’t help but translate into an enjoyable reading experience. I also like how he’s not afraid to use brand names, the names of real and made-up rock groups, movie and TV actors, song titles, movie titles. There’s a name for this, y’know. It’s called “The Fleming Effect” named after Ian Fleming, the creator James Bond. A good case could be made for him inventing Product Placement since he name dropped left and right in his James Bond novels. I like it myself. It gives a novel an added layer when I’m reading about characters eating in the same restaurants I do, reading the same books and watching the same TV shows I do.

If you’ve read Mike Baron’s other books then you know what you’re getting and I don’t have to twist your arm. If you haven’t, then I’d recommend you sample “Helmet Head” (which reads like the best John Carpenter movie John Carpenter never made) and “Skorpio” before diving into DOMAIN. But no matter which of his books you decide to start with, you’ll be entertained, trust me. Mike Baron writes in a highly cinematic style that puts me in mind of the best of 1980s grindhouse movies. True, his books have a lot of build-up but it’s there for a reason and the payoff is always worth the wait. Highly Recommended.

{This review was previously posted by the author on another site.)

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Review: Gumbo Warrior: Recipe of a True leader

Gumbo Warrior: Recipe of a True leader

Truth to tell I’m not much for books about cooking as I’m a fairly basic cook. I’m no Bobby Flay but I can throw together an edible meal that’s reasonably tasty. I’m also not much for books about leadership and teaching you how to be more assertive and focused in life. Self-help books really turn me off. So how did I end up not only reading but reviewing a book entitled Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader which is exactly what it sounds like: a cookbook about the skills and tools of leadership, using the writer’s family recipe for gumbo as the template for acquiring and learning those skills and tools?

Same way I usually end up reading and reviewing a book: it was recommended to me by a friend and my friends usually have good taste and I trust that they wouldn’t recommend a book to me unless they thought for sure there was something in the subject matter that would interest me. And there is a good deal in Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader that did interest me.

Mr. Mayfield’s prose is a bit rough at times and he tends to stray from time to time, zig-zagging from his family reminisces to his career as a Marine to make his point. The effect sometimes gives the impression of a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. But it’s more than that. It didn’t take me long to get into the book to realize that Mr. Mayfield feels intensely about the subject he’s writing about and it truly does come across in his writing. His deep love for his family, his country, his service in The Marine Corps and yes, his cooking is strong enough to overcome the roughness of the prose.

Mr. Mayfield takes the highly unusual notion of adopting his family gumbo recipe that he learned from both his grandmothers to apply the various ingredients of gumbo and how they go together to create one delicious dish to the various ingredients that go into the making of a leader. Mr. Mayfield recounts many incidents from his life as a youth growing up in New Orleans and his time in the Marines to illustrate these ingredients and how they made him the leader and the man he eventually developed into.

It works a whole lot better than my rather clumsy synopsis would lead you to believe. As I said earlier, Mr. Mayfield believes and cares deeply about his subject and he communicates that belief very well indeed. I like how he always uses his own personal history to illustrate the points he’s making. As a result, in reading this book I feel I got to know Mr. Mayfield as a person. At times while reading the book I felt as if we were having a conversation. Not an easy thing to pull off in prose, I assure you. I’ve tried.

Mr. Mayfield has a simple, relatable style of writing that works for him and makes reading his book entertaining. Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader has a lot going for it in terms of being a positively inspiring and uplifting read that will give you a lot to think about if you decide to give it a chance. May make you even think about learning how to make gumbo.

GUMBO WARRIOR: RECIPE OF A TRUE LEADER
By Morris Mayfield III
2018
ISBN-13: 987-0-692-07687-3
Johnson’s Publishing Co.

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An Interview with Keith Gaston

Keith Gaston

Who is Keith Gaston and why do you write?

I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and I’m number 8 out of 13 children. If that sounds like a lot, well let me tell you that it is. Eighty percent of my wardrobe had consisted of hand-me-downs that were either too long or too short. Growing up, my siblings had to share pretty much everything, except toothbrushes, that’s disgusting. I’ve found out in my adulthood that my mother named most of us from characters from movies and television shows. My first name is Darin and you guessed it, she used to enjoy watching “Bewitched.” My only question is whether I was named after Dick York’s or Dick Sargent’s version of the character?

2020 marked twenty years of marriage and my wife and I have been blessed with two teenagers – a boy and a girl. Over the years I’ve posted many stories on social media about raising my children… I’ll rephrase that, I’ve shared many posts about how my children helped raised me. After all, I’m just an adult-sized kid at heart. Being a parent isn’t easy, but there are more positives than negatives and I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, there was that one time my family went bowling and my son’s bowling ball stopped rolling after a couple of feet on the lane. I tried calling myself a hero and stepped out onto said lane, and well… Have you ever seen those cartoons where the guy slips and does a triple somersault in the air and lands hard on his back? That… that, I would change.

As a child growing up in a house with absolutely no privacy, I would find a corner with pencil and paper in hand and worked on creating characters and stories for my comic books. As I submerged myself into these stories, I drowned out the rest of the world and found solitude in an otherwise crowded space. So, whenever I’m asked why I write, I always tell people it’s because it pulls me out of the real world and permits me the freedom to express myself in ways I couldn’t in the real world.

Wicked & Preternatural: Awakening

Where do you live and what do you do when you’re not writing?

Currently, I live thirty minutes outside of Detroit. I work full-time in the Information Technology field. I’m perhaps one of those rare people who actually enjoys their job. Because of COVID, I’m been working remotely working from home and still somehow manage to be late for work occasionally.

When I’m not writing or working, I like to play video games. I’m into first-person shooters (FPS) — Call of Duty, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Serious Sam types of games. I’m also a big movie buff. I enjoy classic film noir detective and low budget science fiction movies. My kids used to tease me about why I still watch old movies. I would make them sit there and explain it. They don’t pick on me much about it anymore for some reason.

What keeps you motivated to write?

My motivation to write is easy, I enjoy it. I love storytelling. Also, I get to revisit some of the ideas I came up with during my comic writing days. I get a kick out of introducing heroes and villains into my novels that everyone is clueless about except for me.

How long have you been writing and what have you learned about yourself through your writing?

My writing adventure started when I was a kid. As I mentioned previously, I drew comic books from my preteen years all the way into young adulthood. While I served in the Army, I got into reading paperbacks and it sparked my interest in writing novels. But it wasn’t until after I’ve completed college that I took writing books seriously.
What I’ve learned about myself is that as much as writing takes me out of reality, it doesn’t let me forget my past. In all my books, a part of my history has been inserted into the story, it may be one of the character’s traits or it might be the setting or it may be the product of watching too much television growing up.

What audience are you trying to reach with your work? Is there an audience for Keith Gaston?

The audience that I had written for originally has changed over the years. In the beginning, I tried to be wide-ranging to pull in readers who enjoyed different genres. XIII, my first novel was a thriller with elements of horror, action, humor, and a diverse cast of characters. My next book was Lost Hours, a murder mystery featuring a private detective going through mental hardships while trying to solve a twenty-three-year-old murder case. I bounced around between genres with each book, which made it difficult for readers because they were expecting a mystery but got a supernatural thriller instead.

Later, I wrote under two pen names (Keith Gaston and D K Gaston) to try to be less confusing. It helped for a while, especially when attending book conferences. If the conference was about mysteries, I brought only my mystery novels and if the subject was speculative fiction, you guessed it, all the supernatural books came out.
Currently, I write for myself. If I write with an intended audience in mind, it takes the joy out of writing.

The Friday House

How would you describe your style of writing?

I write my books in a cinematic movie telling fashion with broad visual strokes, full character building, and a well-paced tempo. What I do not do, is spend too much time on certain details that you might find in other books in the same genre. By details, I mean, filler information, this being what variety of perfume a character sprayed herself with or the exact brand name clothing someone is wearing. If it’s not relevant to the story, I don’t tend to include them because I believe it slows the pacing of my stories.
A great example of my cinematic style would be in The Friday House. I tried to put the reader into every scene and have readers go through the story, discovering the conspiracies and threats as the protagonists uncovered them.

Tell us about your latest book.

Wicked & Preternatural: Awakening is about monster hunter Zoe Daniels. The setting is in Detroit. For some, monster hunting can be a lucrative lifestyle for those bold enough to battle the forces of evil, for others… not so much. She speaks with a potential client, a mysterious elderly woman named Ms. Olson about a job that other monster hunters had passed on. Down on her luck and desperate for work, Zoe accepts the work which is to find Ms. Olson’s grandson, E. Ms. Olson cautioned Zoe not too underestimate E. The child is far more than he seems, she warns. It turned out she was right. E has uncanny abilities, and its growing by the hour.

Zoe pursued an uneven trail of chaos and destruction left in the child’s wake. At first, she thought the boy aimlessly drifted the streets. But as she closes in on her target, she discovers E has a mission that he’s dead set on finishing, and he won’t let anyone stop him no matter the cost.

What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on a sequel to Wicked & Preternatural called Bitter & Demonic.

Anything else we need to know?

The audio of Wicked & Preternatural: Awakening will be coming out in September 2020, narrated by a fantastic voice actor, Kylah Williams.

Thank you for this interview, I have enjoyed it.

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An interview with Ruth de Jauregui

Ruth de Jauregui 1993

Who is Ruth de Jauregui and why do you write?

I’m a California girl, born and raised. I’m also Welsh and a mutt of the palest persuasion, so yeah, I’m a white girl. My Mom’s family is from the South, so we have the usual Cherokee story. Trust me, it’s just a story, proven by both DNA and documentation (many, many thanks to the Facebook Cherokee Genealogy group who researched our tall tale and proved it wrong).

My last name was acquired from my ex-husband, who is a good guy. We were young and just not right for each other. It’s all good. He’s Basque from Spain via Mexico and on to the United States. You pronounce de Jauregui like this: they-how-rhey-ghee …but look, just call me Ruth.

Why do I write? I’ve been a reader since the day I could pick up a book, and then I discovered science fiction and fantasy. Probably Edgar Rice Burroughs from my parents’ bookshelf, but then I discovered Andre Norton at the library! I was in heaven. Well, actually, I was on the Solar Queen or looking for the Zero Stone or meeting aliens on a strange new world. The Lord of the Rings, Mercy Thompson, The Rivers of London, Mona Livelong, and more fill my bookshelves.

I’ve always wanted to write books, but it took me a long time to get started. Work, kids, kicking it down at the club on the weekends, you know how it is. I was busy.

Where do you live and what do you do when you’re not writing?

I currently live on the southern edge of the Pacific Northwest. When I’m not working on the next novel or writing home-and-garden articles for eHow and SFGate, I’m reading or sleeping or working the phones at my part-time job (Actually, in my home office. COVID allows me to work at home so that silver lining thing is definitely happening here).

How long have you been writing and what have you learned about yourself through your writing?

My first book, Ghost Towns, was published in 1988. I was given the opportunity by Bill Yenne, my boss at American Graphic Systems. I spent 10 years designing books. Writing brought out the fact that I’m a horrible procrastinator. It took five years to write my first Bitter novel, but Bitter Sins is going quicker.

I’ve also found that I’m a pantser when it comes to fiction. I’m tapping away on the keyboard and all of a sudden, the characters take over and where the heck did that come from? Strangely, I’m the opposite with nonfiction. I outline the whole article or book before I start.

I’ve also learned a lot about writing characters. I can write a BIPOC woman in the context of the story, but I can’t write how it is to be a BIPOC person because, well, I’m white. There are nuances to every action. I’m fortunate that my daughter (who is the face of Bitter) is able to get me back on track when I’ve overstepped my boundaries and drifted into the ditch.

What audience are you trying to reach with your work? Is there an audience for Ruth de Jauregui?

Well, the nonfiction is all about history, cooking and gardening. There’s always an audience for all of that.

Fiction? Well, I write California-based, BIPOC main characters set in the diverse world that I live in. My audience? Well, I hope there’s an audience for complex, ornery women who navigate an urban fantasy landscape that’s just down the street and around the corner from our “real” world. Maybe I should put it the other way – if a person is offended by BIPOC main characters – well maybe that individual isn’t my audience.

What are the elements of a good story?

Complicated characters, a snarky sense of humor, imaginative settings and plot lines and for god’s sake, no more “white guy saves the universe” tropes. They’re boring. Been there, read that, it’s old.

Tell us about your latest book.

Bitter is a homicide detective in Sacramento, California. She’s well known in her world as an extremely successful detective, which leads to reporters following her around and unexpected encounters with admiring fans.

She’s ornery, middle-aged, has a tuxedo cat named “Gato,” and buys tamales and elote from the tamale man who comes around her Alkali Flat neighborhood every week. She drinks wine and listens to Brazilian jazz. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, or things that go bump in the night, but strange creatures live in her city and some she’s seen with her own eyes.

Bitter

And when something hisses from a dark alley, it’s not always a cat.

Where do you see your writing career five years from now?

I hope to have at least five Bitter books out, as well as the four book fantasy series that I was working on when Bitter was conceived. She shoved everything else aside, including a steamfunk alternate history set in 1840s California. I have at least five projects on the back burner.

What are you working on now?

The second Bitter book, Bitter Sins, is nearly done. She’s gone outside of her usual stomping grounds and found plenty of mayhem and murder in Las Vegas. I’m in the midst of the big rewrite and edit. There’s still work to do though – I’ve misplaced a body. Darn.

Anything else we need to know?

Oh, gee. I’m a mom and grandma. Three kids, three dads, yeah, lots of life experience to weave into my stories. Mi familia es todo. Forever and ever.

Professional life includes retired public employee, graphic artist, and writer. I’ve held a wide assortment of jobs and gigs, including security guard, disc jockey, signmaker, inventory specialist, and food service worker.

Ruth de Jauregui
Ruth de Jauregui

Oh, and I have a science fiction and fantasy website geared toward teens and young adults of Color, Alien Star Books. It’s all about getting our kids to read, by any means necessary. Representation is important and every child should be able to see themselves as the main character and hero of exciting adventures.

About the interviewer:

Derrick Ferguson is a pulp, western, and thriller author from Brooklyn, New York. His current books are the Dillon series.