[null, null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.ninjalibrarian.com/2017_02_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "https://img3.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0887-1/%7B13700200-B2AF-4DF9-80B3-1971E59B80A0%7DImg100.jpg", "src": "https://img3.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0887-1/%7B13700200-B2AF-4DF9-80B3-1971E59B80A0%7DImg100.jpg", "formatted_filename": "B B AF DF B E B A   DImg", "alt_text": "Title details for The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - Available", "rendered_width": 240, "rendered_height": 320}, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.ninjalibrarian.com/2017_02_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389237894l/52555.jpg", "src": "https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389237894l/52555.jpg", "alt_text": "52555", "rendered_width": 271, "rendered_height": 400}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.ninjalibrarian.com/2017_02_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347602096l/6609765.jpg", "src": "https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347602096l/6609765.jpg", "alt_text": "6609765", "rendered_width": 224, "rendered_height": 320}, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.ninjalibrarian.com/2017_02_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390171678l/18053242.jpg", "src": "https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390171678l/18053242.jpg", "alt_text": "18053242"}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://www.ninjalibrarian.com/2017_02_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "//lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K_XMNMghrBg/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAcc/wfiiMzEa5lw/s80-c/photo.jpg", "src": "http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K_XMNMghrBg/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAcc/wfiiMzEa5lw/s80-c/photo.jpg", "formatted_filename": "photo", "alt_text": "My photo", "rendered_width": 80, "rendered_height": 80}, null, null, null]

Fin50: A Marriage of Convenience This month's prompt is A Marriage of Convenience. I hope I did it justice. Actually, I totally cheated. This is non-fiction.

A Marriage of Convenience

Dad said he married Mom for her snow tires, or maybe it was the cute Simca she drove. Then he’d kiss her.

I like to claim I married my husband for his health insurance. We are still married.

Sometimes convenience is a good excuse for a long and happy marriage.

Special Promotion!

For today through Wednesday only, and just for readers of this blog post, use the coupon HR73Z at Smashwords.com to get a copy of the newest Ninja Librarian book for only $1.99! Click the book and start reading! Labels: coupon, Fin50, super-short stories


Flashback Friday: It's Flashback Friday, and time to pull something out of the archives that I think could stand a little more exposure. If you'd like to join the fun, clink on the image above to visit Michael d'Agonstino's A Life Examined blog and see how!

Okay, yeah, I know it's almost Saturday some places (Hi, Jemima!). The kid was off school this week and I got confused...But here it is at last, from June 2016.

Dead in the Water

The body washed gently against the shore, bumping up against the rocks and washing away, only to return with the next wave. The the blonde hair floated about the head like a halo. Marsha Harrigan, police detective, watched the corpse for a minute, and reflected that her peaceful lakeside vacation had just come to a crashing end. With great reluctance she pulled out her cell phone, looked up the number of the local police, and dialed.

She would have liked to just report the body and let the police take over, and go on vacationing. Except that Lilacs-on-Lakeshore was in her jurisdiction, and she knew the police chief. Alex Tormentino knew his limits, and he was very good at handling petty thievery, speeding, and excessively noisy parties. He had never, to her knowledge, handled a murder and he would want an expert at his side. Marsha was an expert, and she was on the spot. The boss would order her to cut short her vacation and take the case.

It worked about that way. Tormentino was on the spot within 15 minutes, studied the floating corpse for a few seconds, and turned to Marsha, who already had her orders.


“Pull her out, dry her off, and try for an ID.”

He gave the appropriate orders to his subordinates, then said, “Oh, I know who she is.” His tone said that there was a tale to be told. Marsha listened.

“Her name is Annalynda Smith.” Marsha raised an eyebrow, and Tormentino shrugged. “I know. Sounds like a fake. Probably was. She runs—ran—the local beauty salon.” His eyes drifted toward the dripping body that had been pulled from the lake.

“For how long?” Marsha distracted him. Tormentino was looking pale. She would have to examine the body, but there was no reason for the poor police chief to make himself sick.

“Maybe six months. I don’t know where she came from.”

“Do you know who she aggravated?”

Tormentino heaved a sigh. “Everyone.”


“The women complained that she flirted with all the men. The men complained that she flirted but didn’t mean anything by it. And the neighbors hated the smells from the salon she ran in her house.”

Marsha sent Tormentino off to see who had seen Ms. Smith last, and when, while she studied the body. The blonde wore an outfit that explained the complaints of men and women alike, and there were suspicious marks on her neck.

“Looks like she aggravated one person too many,” Marsha muttered to herself. Then, to the waiting deputies and EMT crew, “Take her down to the City and let the medical examiner get started.” No sense in being careless. You never knew what might be discovered with a proper autopsy. Meanwhile, she would do a close inspection of the shore to see what else might have washed up.
“Ah, Detective Harrigan. The Chief is waiting for you.”

Marsha walked into the Chief’s office and stopped. A collection of townspeople sat in folding chairs looking at her. “What’s this?”

“These,” Tormentino said sadly, “Are some of the people who had cause to wish Ms. Smith ill.”

“Look at us!” A middle-aged brunette with a bad haircut blurted, waving a hand at several similar women. “We all got our hair done yesterday and look what she did to us! I’m glad someone stabbed her! She deserved it!”

Marsha made a silent note that either the woman was misinformed or was being excessively clever, and looked at another citizen.

“Mr. Collins says she flirted with him right in front of his wife, and he had to sleep on the couch for a week. That gave him such a stiff neck he hasn’t been able to work.” Tormentino nodded at another man. “He lives next door to her. He’s had to move into the hotel because the chemicals from her salon trigger his allergies.” He went on, explaining why each of the persons present might wish the dead woman ill.

Then he said, “But they were all accounted for last night. Most of them saw her at the pub, where she ate a very late dinner of cheeseburger and fries, washed down with more beer than you’d believe. The bartender says Smith went out alone at about 1 a.m., and that’s the last anyone saw of her. She said she was going for a moonlight cruise. Most of these were home in bed by then, of course.”

“She didn’t go sailing alone. I heard the boat this morning, leaving after she was dumped in the water. Someone wasn’t home in bed.”

The townspeople looked at each other with new suspicion. “You mean someone took her out in a boat and shot her?” Another guess.
“No.” Marsha said. “She died of a heart attack. I suppose you could say the cook killed her, but the burger and fries were her own choice. But someone didn’t do right by her.”

A young man stood up, shaking. “I didn’t know what to do! I took her out in the boat. I was so sure—never mind. We headed out toward the Island, and suddenly she stood up and grabbed her throat. She was wearing one of those choker necklaces and she ripped it loose, like she couldn’t breathe.”

Marsha nodded. “She couldn’t.”

“I thought she was being dramatic, some silly game, and then she toppled over. Right overboard.” He was sweating. “I searched for hours. But I couldn’t find her in the dark, and when it started to get light, I panicked. I knew you’d all think I killed her! So I just—left. ” He began to cry, and Marsha let the others lead him out.

When they were gone, she turned to Tormentino. “You can decide if you want to press charges. I’m on vacation.” As she left, she fingered the broken necklace she’d found on the beach. No one could ever know who had broken it.


©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!
Posted by Rebecca Douglass at 12:00 AM 2 comments: Links to this post 


Audio Book review: Bradbury's Martian Chronicles Title: The Martian Chronicles
Author:  Ray Bradbury; read by Stephen Hoye
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, 2009. Original stories published between 1947 and about 1951.
Source: Digital library

Publisher's Blurb:
There were a lot of these to chose from, since there are dozens of editions of the book out. I share here the one that goes with the Blackstone Audio version:

I think I have to start with Bradbury's own take on the book, from the introduction to the audio book. He describes the stories as not really science fiction, or about Mars, but rather fables or parables, the author's exploration of humanity. Certainly the prose is lush and at times the stories are pointed. In fact, one thing I think no one could argue with is that Bradbury is a master of prose.

It might be best not to think of the stories as SF, since the date of their composition puts the vision of scientific advances at, shall we say, a disadvantage. I'm always interested, when reading classic SF, to see what writers got right, and what they got wrong. Bradbury creates a fully-automated house that a Silicon Valley billioniare could build today (and for all I know, may have). But other things are laughable: clear, instant telephonic communications between Earth and Mars, and private, "family rockets," used even for travel between different parts of the planet. Nor was there any imagination of the cell phone or the computer (let alone the PC)--not surprising, given when they were written. It doesn't matter, because the stories are about humanity and society, not science. (We'll leave aside what we now know about the surface of Mars; Bradbury went with the views of his time on Martian canals).

In one area of his critique of society, though, I had to admit to disappointment. I know this was early, and it's probably wrong of me to apply a feminist critique to a book from 1950. But still...even by the end of WWI, let alone WWII, women were coming into their own as thinkers and writers and persons with intelligence and will. Sadly, Bradbury failed to notice it. Every female, human or Martian, in the book is weak, insipid, silly, subjected, subservient, robotic, or some combination of the above. And all are dependent on men, most being absolute stereotypes of the 1950s wife.

I don't think I'm quite willing to let Bradbury off the hook for this. It's the scourge of early SF: it was, in essence, a masculine genre and at heart even misogynistic. I can only be glad that, however slowly and painfully, the genre has evolved to allow that maybe, by say the year 3035 or so, women might be held to be equal to men. We can hope.

My Recommendation:
Despite the above criticism, which as noted may not be fair, I do consider this a masterpiece, and a classic that ought to be read by all, especially by any afficionado of the science fiction genre.

FTC Disclosure: I checked The Martian Chronicles out of my digital library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." Labels: audio books, book review, classics, science fiction


Middle Grade Monday: The Quilt, by Gary Paulsen 


Friday Flash: Long Way Home

Long Way Home

“Stop running, Ilsa. You’re home.” Posted by Rebecca Douglass at 2:49 PM 2 comments: Links to this post 


Mystery Review: Death in Advertising Death in Advertising (A Tobi Tobias Mystery) 
It Takes A Really Good Slogan
By Laura Bradford

 


Friday Flash: The Last Buffalo

My usual source of writing prompts is up to something, and this week he only asked us to provide an exactly three word title. I did that, and then picked one to use for my own. This one is courtesy of Samuel Huddleston. It's 904 words, and seems to have been infiltrated by a favorite character from some of Jemima Pett's flash fiction.

The Last Buffalo

The hunters were having a wonderful time. The herds had been vast and the shooting good. They feasted on buffalo tongue and skinned out the best of the animals, leaving it to Caleb to tan them. Caleb got stuck with most of the scut work around camp, but this time it was of necessity. The man—really, more of a half-grown boy—was the only one who could tan a hide properly.

Caleb watched the other hunters while he went about his work. They were getting drunk, as usual. Carruthers was the leader, and he liked his drink. He wasn’t even really a hunter. He called himself an archaeologist, but what Caleb thought was that he was just an adventurer, and one who thought himself better than most other people.

They’d chase away the herds, noisy as they were. That wouldn’t break Caleb’s heart. There was a good chance they’d bring the Indians down on them, too. Most of them, like Carruthers and his best pal Jones, thought they were more than a match for a few Indians. Others thought that the Indians had been fully tamed in this region.

Tamed. Caleb snorted, not that anyone heard him. Starved, more like. But while hunger could make the fighters less able, it certainly didn’t make them any less angry. Caleb thought that pretty soon the hunters would be shut up for good.

Caleb was a half-breed, the despised offspring of a white trapper and a Lakota woman, which was why the hunters treated him like dirt. Never mind that his parents had been faithful to one another, and had known more about living on this land than these Great White Hunters would ever learn. Caleb was of mixed blood, and so was deserving of contempt. Carruthers was the worst. He called Caleb “boy” and ordered him to bring tea. Caleb poured coffee and made sure to spill some on the leader.

Caleb staked out the last hide, and began scraping it as he’d learned from both his mother and father. The early trappers in this area had had more in common with the Indians than with most of the whites who were coming into the country now. They had trapped too many beaver, because they were greedy, but at least they knew how to preserve the skins, and they ate as much as they could of any animals that were edible.

Caleb had to admit that these hunters also ate as much as they could. But even twenty big, loud men couldn’t make a dent in the meat of 50 or 100 buffalo in a single night, and they had been killing at that rate for a week. They were supposed to be doing it for the hides, which were valuable enough back east. But no one could save and tan that many hides, and when they went wild with the killing most of the animals were left on the ground untouched.

Only Caleb had noticed that many of the abandoned carcasses were butchered out overnight. Somewhere nearby a Sioux camp was smoking and drying meat in unheard-of quantities, and still they couldn’t save a tenth of what had been killed.

When he was done with the final hide, Caleb slipped off into the darkness. Carruthers was calling for him, to come do some camp chore or other, but the boy was finished. He picked up a pair of the fully-tanned hides, as much as he could carry, and disappeared into the night.

The hides helped ensure his welcome at the Indian camp. The news he brought did more, as did the rifle he hadn’t set aside when he picked up the heavy buffalo robes.

“They are drinking heavily,” he told the men. “Tonight would be a good night to stop the killing of the buffalo.” He indicated the well-tanned hides he had brought. “There are dozens more of these, and rifles, and coffee.”

The Indians didn’t seem to care about the coffee. That was a white man’s taste that Caleb had learned from his father, before that wandering man had wandered into the path of a buffalo stampede. It was his father’s death that had made Caleb join the buffalo hunters. Killing the animals had seemed like the way to avenge the old trapper, but Caleb had learned the hard way that revenge is seldom sweet, and never when taken on an animal. Now he felt only a soul-sickness at the thought of their butchery.

He had unleashed these men on the herds. Caleb, to his shame, had guided the hunters to the buffalo when they might otherwise have wandered in the grasslands until they died of starvation, never more than a few miles from abundant game. The white men were not hunters, but only killers. They couldn’t find their prey.

Now Caleb would set the balance right once more. Caleb led the Sioux warriors back through the darkness to where twenty drunken men lay carelessly asleep about the dying embers of a fire, surrounded by hundreds of dead buffalo.

Caleb heard the wolves howling, as they did every night. Wolves liked to kill their own meat, but they weren’t stupid enough to pass up a fresh corpse.

Tonight they’d have a new kind of meat, he thought, and shuddered.

He took a deep breath and led the others into the camp. These men had killed their last buffalo.

So had Caleb. Labels: buffalo, flash fiction, hunting, revenge


Non-Fiction Audio: Astoria, by Peter Stark Title: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire, A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
Author: Peter Stark; read by Michael Kramer
Publisher: Harper Audio 2014; original by Ecco, 2014, 336 pages.
Source: Library digital services

After that rather lengthy blurb, rest assured I won't go on as long with my review. I might take exception to some of what is said, or not  said, in the blurb, but the final paragraph is completely true: this is the story of a project that made some major strides toward opening the West, especially with regard to the routes through the mountains.

What isn't said in the blurb, but gradually becomes very clear as the book progresses, is that the difference between this expedition and the highly successful Lewis and Clark expedition couldn't be greater. Where Lewis and Clark exercised impressive leadership and brought their entire crew, and most of their scientific notes, back alive, the Astor mission was sent out with a commercial intent, and poor leadership led to deaths all along the way. And with profit as the primary motivation, not only for Astor but for those on the expedition, there seemed to be less reason to endure hardships, and men began falling away from the expedition as well.

The worst element, though, was the complete lack of understanding, empathy, or even humanity on the part of Captain Thorn, whose (what I see as) bull-headed arrogance cost the lives of pretty much his entire crew (and his own life, as well).

All of that said--I am condemning the venture, not the book. Mr. Stark presents the story intelligently and unfolds it well, with just the right amount of commentary to keep us from feeling he's a shill for the Astors. My main complaint about the book is that I'd have liked a little more on how the venture failed so miserably, yet ultimately led to the US settling and eventually owning the Northwest. Some of the explanation is in there (the overland party, or at least the return party, did discover a new and better route to the coast than what Lewis and Clark used), but felt a bit tacked on at the end. I could have used less about Astor's youth and more about the ramifications. After all, Astor may have initiated the project, and funded it, but he never left his comfy house in New York to traipse across the country (or beat around the Horn).

The audio narration is excellent, but I think that I'd rather have read the paper version, with (I presume) maps and all. Certainly anyone who doesn't know the area will be better off with those aides.

Astoria is a good addition to the history of the Pacific Northwest, and a chapter about which I recall learning only the vaguest outline back in school in Washington. If you have an interest in the area, or wonder what it was like to settle in that lovely wet climate, read on! Labels: Astoria, audio books, book review, history, Oregon Territory, Pacific Northwest


If I keep looking up, I can't see Monday coming Labels: clouds, photos, sky, weather

Participant once again! The Problem With Peggy Big Al and the Ninja Librarian are back! Rebecca Douglass
