Still Reading...While Writing

I just finished tow very different mysteries:
Murder on the Cliffs - book with a famous amateur detective: Daphne DuMaurier and so set at the end of World War I
Stop Me - a very modern murder mystery that uses emails as clues and lures.
Both were very entertaining but Murder on the Cliffs disappointed me because I was looking for the DuMaurier atmosphere and voice. I have to read the orginal books for that.
Stop Me kept me turning the pages and up at night to finish it.
Along with reading those two books, I listened to Kathy Reich's Spider Bones - interesting premise and lots of Hawaiian scenery.
Total number of books by this date: 33

I'm not quite where I need to be to make to 100, but I'm moving along.

Impact - again

I'm  listening to this book by Douglas Preston and then there's this picture on CNN with lots of speculation about what it is. Very similar to the book but closer to earth. And that's all I'm going to say.

Read Impact - it's a fun ride.

Impact

Impact is one of the best thrillers I've listened to/read this year.
Douglas Preston hits this one out of the park...actually somewhat further...but I don't want to give anything away.
I was listening to Impact as I drove down the Northeast Extension of the PA turnpike and tried to guide my car from being in one of seven lanes, into being in one of two lanes. I was on my way to a work-related meeting - a meeting that was NOT pleasant in its message and I couldn't wait to get back in the car to listen to the story.

Listening to Preston Douglas or Lincoln Child or a Douglas/Child book is a tutorial in writing the thriller. I say "listening" because listening gives me, as a writer,  a deeper sense of how to move the action.

Going to Amazon now to see if I've missed one of his/his/their books.
But I doubt it.
Preston Douglas rocks and Preston Douglas and Lincoln Child rock!!!
Can you tell I'm a huge, huge fan?

Re-imagining Weres.....

I have to admit a fondness for were-animals.
I love the idea that humans have animal instincts and abilities and that those abilities could magically manifest themselves into the actual animal.
Shape-shifting has been a belief of many indigenous people and there must be good reasons - the closeness to nature or the need to feel one with all beings.
Somehow modern people have lost that feeling of connection.
Is that why we have the fascination with werewolves, cats, lions, bears....werewhatever?
Or is it because in a different shape we can transcend our human-ness and do what humans can't or won't?
I love wolves, so it's natural for me to gravitate to their weres.
And so I've been indulging in some werewolf books lately.
Shannon Delany's Thirteen to Life Series is a re-imagining of the werewolf legend by a new young adult voice.
The Kiss of the Silver Wolf  by Sharon Buchbinder is definitely a new way to look at the legend as are Lori Handeland's Marked by the Moon and Bonnie Vanak's Immortal Wolf.
My own werewolf novel is one of the books of my heart because I use the ancient legend of wolf as guardian, not predator, as its basis.
I don't think these stories will ever go out of style.
The legends themselves have been with us- through many cultures and many centuries.
Animals are our cousins, ourselves.
Maybe...just maybe...we all shift at one time or another.
Do you really know what you do, at night, when you're deep asleep?
Hmmmmm?

Sick but still "reading"

While running to Doctors to CVS for meds to home, I was listening to Impact by Douglas Preston. I'm a huge fan who reads anything and everything he and Lincoln Child write - together or separately.
Impact is (at least in the beginning) about an asteroid but Preston uses Corso  and Friedman as names for two of his characters.
Am I the only one that sees the relationship? As soon as I heard them, I went "Whoa!"
But that's because I'm weird.
I will be back to read more when the medications kick in.
But I'm also doing NaNoWriMo.