The Professional Freelancer

`I hate my job!'

Review by Grady Harp

Canadian author Rory Scherer on the surface appears to be a businessman having an MBA from The Schulich School of Business - York University in Marketing and employed by the DAC Group, SR Entertainment Inc., having been affiliated with Impact Mobile, Odd Thought Inc., Siebel Systems as a digital product strategist and architect and on and on with experience and titles and awards and volunteer work. All of that and more is important, but the aspect of this very bright and creative young Toronto man that for this reviewer shines most brightly is his gist at writing - first his hilarious RHYME TIME and now with his over the top (in the best sort of comedic writing) THE PROFESSIONAL FREELANCER.

Scherer wisely yet oddly opens his hilarious take on the current human condition (or at least his narrator-cum-main-character's) tied to a chair in a warehouse, surrounded by Mafioso like goons: various forms of secretions/excrements sour his securely trapped body. From there Scherer takes us into the pre-captured life of a man who has been through what seems like an endless parade of futile and boring jobs. Scherer's prose is so alluring that some should be shared at this point: `You see, like a Depression-era tramp carrying a bindle stick traveling as a stowaway on the railways from town to town looking for employment, I dabbled through working the grill at a fast-food restaurant... before the big fire, then telemarketing... before the Securities Exchange Commission shut us down, then door-to-door selling bibles... until I was assigned to a Muslim neighborhood, then house painting... until I fell off the ladder, then a lifeguard at a public pool... until the incident that the media dubbed "Urination Abomination", then... well, I think you get the point now. It was about four more dreadful jobs until my close friend Will finally pulled some strings to get me one at a software company. I dabbled in coding back then, but I was nowhere near the Zuckerberg-level of expertise that Will has.' (Will, by the by, is addicted to internet pornography)

On every page of this over the top masterfully written novel is enough parody, bordering-on-unbelievable situations, curious jolts of various forms of crime and more absurd realities than any author has been able to condense into what ultimately feels like the everyman version of The Rake's Progress. Blisteringly funny, brimming over with prejudices, embarrassingly crude at times (because of the proximity to our own realities), and ultimately such a superbly constructed comedic novel, Rory Scherer needs to write more. Nobody else is this funny. This just may turn out to be the job he loves! Highly recommended.

TITLE: THE PROFESSIONAL FREELANCER
AUTHOR: RORY SCHERER
PUBLISHER: AMAZON DIGITAL SERVICES
ASIN: B00KGK91B6

A Question of Humanity

A Review of Ken Hart’s Behind the Gem 

By Joey Madia

Behind the Gem is an entertaining and thought-provoking journey through one man’s experience with an alien race. Solidly sci-fi, but with the kind of sentiment and romance not usually found in the genre, Hart’s tale provides plenty of action, technology, and telepathy as it poses many of the Big Questions.

When a hostile race of aliens called the Baleorans attacks Earth, a group of humans, trapped in a building transplanted on another planet, struggle to make sense of their present and their future. One of their number, a man named Raymond Meinhardt, winds up the captive and soon after the Consort of one of a race of kangaroo-horse hybrid type beings, eight feet tall, called the Draasen. They are a race of telepaths with advanced technology and a feminine-ruled society.

Raymond, a former Army Ranger with experience in Vietnam, struggles to adapt to his new surroundings. His resistance, conformity, and ultimate independence within the society of the Draasen makes for fascinating reading and the opportunity to consider questions such as: What makes a Human human? Is it physiology or behavior? Molecules or morals? When we are in a foreign land, whose rules apply? How does individuality co-exist with a society based in many ways on groupthink and Protocols?

Double-Ought Buck

`There's always the unexpected, isn't there.'

Review by Grady Harp

Don E. Webster is a former US Army officer and Vietnam veteran. An award-winning author, writer, and columnist, he currently lives in California. His prior book, BURY ME IN MY WADERS: AN OLD DUCK RECALLS HIS FOWL PAST demonstrated a keen eye and ear for comedy. IN DOUBLE-OUGHT BUCK we find an entirely different approach to writing. This book is many things - a passionately real memoir of the effects of combat (especially in Vietnam) on the minds of veterans, one of the more sensitive descriptions of male/male friendships, a terrifying description of a heinous crime, and the development of a love between two disparate people who come together over shared coping with illness and death, threats on their lives and coincidences that manage to weave on e of the most tenaciously sensitive stories currently written, Don E. Webster is a surprisingly fine writer.

We meet Vietnam veteran, retired game warden Riley McGavran in a drunken stupor, answering the telephone to learn his closest friend Biff is dying of lung cancer. Riley, whose life is not pretty due to chronic depression, alcoholism and PTSD, decides he must travel form his home in California to Biff's bedside in Idaho. He strikes out on the road, notes a female hitchhiker, eventually picks her up as a passenger and learns her name is Abilene Kirkpatrick, a San Francisco artist who is trying to get to Montana to see her ill mother. They hit it off well enough until during a pit stop Abilene wanders off, is raped by two trashy men who Riley sees and kills them both. Their trip continues, each gradually learning about the other's life, and they bond. Riley reaches Biff and his attentive wife Cheryl (Abilene has insisted she come along to support Riley), Biff succumbs to his cancer, and eventually Riley and Abilene set off for Montana - except now they are receiving threatening notes on their truck's windshield. How they cope with the stalkers and open up to each other, uncovering painful inner wounds accompanies them to the end of the story.

Webster's ability to tell a story is impeccable, but even more impressive is his use of his literary skills to mold a moment. He drops little phrases through the book, such as `only the personal is valid', and `Soldier who've fought in a war are on an island all by themselves. There's no escape, and in that sense, all they'll ever have is each other.' Writing of this quality is rare and most welcome. Webster simply has the gift, on so many levels. He has arrived.

by Grady Harp

TITLE: DOUBLE-OUGHT BUCK
AUTHOR: DON E. WEBSTER
PUBLISHER: CREATESPACE
ISBN: 9781493624379

147 Million Orphans (MMXI-MML)

Always avant-garde

Review by Grady Harp

Eileen R. Tabios is a poet working in multiple genres and in-between. She also loves books by writing, reading, publishing, critiquing, romancing and advocating for them. 147 Million Orphans is the first book-length haybun poetry collection. A haybun is a combination of hay(na)ku and prose. 147 Million is an often-used estimate for the number of orphans worldwide. The book also features a dozen guest poets also writing in the same form and theme (William Allegrezza, Tom Beckett, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Patrick James Dunagan, Thomas Fink, jj hastain, Aileen Ibardaloza, Ava Koohbor, Michael Leong, Sheila Murphy and Jean Vengua).

MMXVII

Endowed
Faith catapulted
Perplexed coddle pamper

The one who has never been coddled was informed she would be adopted and she cried out in response, THANK YOU SO MUCH!. We mothers hate hearing this story - no child should learn to be grateful for an effect of loss. Yes, we can understand why she is grateful. But no child should learn to be grateful for an effect of loss. This is but one example of how perplexity can be the most appropriate reaction. Her new mother told her the family would take her on a vacation. She asked for a camera - perhaps what can unfold will become real for her only when affirmed by photographs, objects she can touch and recover. She's learned at too young an age that memory is fragile and lapses too often to desire. Because my faith has not yet betrayed, I see her easily in my mind's eye: frolicking on what could be a Hollywood movie et of beige sand blue water green mountain a grove of palm trees, looking back frequently at her new Mom to grin, carefully tip-toeing around the delicate sea creatures laid on san by an ocean calmed form witnessing her eager joy, looking back frequently at me. As I call out, Be careful. Have fun. Yes, it's all lovely.

Eileen Tabios continues to challenge the borders of poetic communication while all the while touching us deeply with her ability to create honest caring and love. Highly recommended collection of poetry, of thoughts, of insight.

by Grady Harp, May 4, 2014

TITLE: 147 MILLION ORPHANS
AUTHOR: EILEEN TABIOS
PUBLISHER: GRADIENT BOOKS

ISBN: 978-0984635320

A Review of Eileen R. Tabios (et al.’s) 147 Million Orphans (MMXI-MML)

Two years ago I reviewed a precursor to this book, by Eileen R. Tabios and j/j hastain, titled the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA (New York: Marsh Hawk Press, 2012; ISBN: 978-0984635320). The book impressed upon the reader the function to carry forth the work begun in its pages, which I endeavored to do in the review.

147 Million Orphans takes as its basis, not the word problems of the previous title, but a list of words that Tabios’ son was required to learn in the course of a school year. Ever innovative and groundbreaking, Tabios, and her impressive list of guest poets, used the words to create hay(na)ku [from the back cover: “a hay(na)ku is a diasporic poetic form; its core is a tercet-based stanza with the first line being one word, the second line being two words, and the third line being three words”], which are then followed by additional text, to form a “haybun.”

In the years that I have been reading and reviewing Tabios’ work, I have been continually awed and propelled in my own work by her commitment to the writer’s role as social voice, conveying both unique media and social justice messages that resonate with the reader in a compelling dance that requires and inspires action. Like the work of a gifted playwright or screenwriter, the truth here is clear: if the reader’s relationship with the words ends when the book is closed, there is something lacking—like fruit that is not eaten, like seeds that are not planted [and watered and cultivated], it becomes Momentary; a Fragment without Function.

A Heavily Haunted State

 A review of Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s The Big Book of West Virginia Ghost Stories

by Joey Madia

It’s always a pleasure to read and review a new Rosemary Ellen Guiley book. Not only are they based on interviews and fieldwork coupled with a thorough review of secondary sources; I have also had the privilege of accompanying her on several paranormal investigations, including on the three acres on which I live. Some of the experiences of my family have been chronicled in other of her books (e.g., on Ouija boards), and in this book on West Virginia hauntings, there’s a segment about the arts center my wife and I used to run.

These personal connections aside, as an author who often uses the supernatural in my stories, novels, and plays, my growing collection of Guiley’s books is an indispensible part of my research library.

The Big Book of West Virginia Ghost Stories, broken up by the eight geographic locations designated by the WV Department of Commerce, is a riveting read and a must-have for anyone interested in the folklore, traditions, and paranormal abundance that the “Wild and Wonderful” state of West Virginia provides.

As a resident of the state for the past seven years, I have had the opportunity to travel to most of the areas described. I have a particular affinity for the Fairmont area, where I live, as well as Parkersburg, Point Pleasant, Weston, and Wheeling. I have witnessed interesting phenomena in several of these locations, which I will mention briefly in the course of the review.