Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

A big shout out to Scott J Robinson fellow Mad Genius Club fan, for recommending Dave Duncan to me. And another big shout out for reminding me of that fact, BECAUSE I had absolutely no recollection of downloading the book. No, I do not drink, but I do occasionally sleep, and sometimes right before that, I do things. Not BAD things, but things like watch part of a movie, and then the next morning...what was I talking about? Did I say that out loud? Once upon a time, there was a princess named Inos. She lived in a tiny little kingdom as the daughter and only child of the kindly king. She didn't like to dress up and have her hair done, but she loved riding her horse and digging for clams on the beach, and she played with the other children without regard for station in life. Okay, did that sound even the LEAST bit pretentious or hoity toity? No, it just sounded like the start of a great story that you'd love to read for yourself, and then read to your children and grandchildren.

What if vampires WEREN'T the creepy blood-lusting monsters Bram Stoker described? What if they were regular folks who had one bad date too many? Well, that's what I found out when I was loaned this short story by my fellow Mad Genius Club fan The Real McChuck. Seems it's rather difficult to live a normal life in Houston if you are a regular guy, and a vampire. The benefits (including the speed and muscle power) just don't offset the hassles of trying to get a college schedule consisting of nothing but night classes meeting after dark. Frankly, as a person who scranched my way through taking night classes for three degrees at Georgia State University, I might recommend moving from Texas to Atlanta, but then again, it seems that everybody else in the country has already had that idea, to judge from the traffic, so I'm not going to offer that as career advice. Just, you know, you always have options, even if you are a vampire. Heck, I saw plenty of undergrad art stud

Well, if I'm not in Texas, I seem to be in Australia. At least, that is the impression I'm getting by the books I've been reading. I have only JUST now gotten back into the swing of things of reviewing. For some bizarre reason, Pam Uphoff's "The Lawyers of Mars" took four days to read, which is longer than I spent reading "Gone With The Wind." That is NOT a criticism of Pam's work, by the way, I loved it. It's just that life, the universe, and everything seemed to conspire there for a bit to put me off schedule. And after reading about Martian lawyers, I found myself with two books in my queue, and no idea of how I put them there. I'm sure I had a well thought out plan, and so far, it's looking like a good choice; just no memory of adding these two items. However, I can at least identify the source of the book I'm reviewing today. Scott J Robinson, of Woodford, near Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, is a fan of The Mad Genius Clu

First, I must offer my profound apology for going so long between book reviews. This was totally a function of life as we know it, a buzzing, incessant turbulence of irritations and stimuli, separated only by the blessed surcease of sleep. There, I've used my quota of purple prose, now I can get to work. I've been squeezing in reads of The Lawyers of Mars in between other things, and that's not entirely a bad thing. This is one of the books that I have had mutually contradictory thoughts about. On the one hand, I wanted to read read read fast so I can find out how the plot resolves. On the other hand, it is SO well written that I wanted it to go on forever. So, I indulged Hand Two for several days, and today I finally indulged Hand One. And the Gripping Hand is this is a funny, engaging book that keeps you on your toes throughout. Xaero is the hero. She's a lizard, and a lawyer. You are hooked already, aren't you? You never expected lizard, lawyer, and hero all to b

I haven't finished my current book, Lawyers on Mars, so here's my first gun review. It's almost a universal consensus: the absolute best home defense is a shotgun. NOT, by the way, the double barrel type mentioned by a certain elected official, but a standard pump action, such as the Mossberg 500 held by my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA. A double barrel is much better than a rock, but it's only got two shells, and then a slow reload. A standard pump will give you more than twice as many shots, even if you elect to keep the chamber empty in order to manifest that intimidating racking sound to warn off the bad guys. But a shotgun doesn't have to be your ONLY option. If you live in a house with more than one level, as we do, you might want to keep the shotgun on one level (the bedroom, for example) and then have your alternative ready on another (the man cave, perhaps). And, while ther

I received a loaner copy of this book for review from The Real McChuck, a fellow Mad Genius Club fan, and a friend of the author's husband. I specifically asked to borrow this book, because I've reviewed nothing but F&SF for so long, I wanted to try my hand on something else. (Ummm...now that I think about it, I realize that the wicked, wicked authors at MGC made me read some other stuff as well, notably Farmhands by Liliana Begley (Cedar Sanderson's pen name), but I still love them.) Here's the plot: Lorraine, or Rainny to her friends, works security for a firm in New Jersey. She's relatively new to the company, and so she's the one who gets sent to guard museums, warehouses, and porch swings in the pale moonlight, while her more senior colleagues get the prestige jobs as body guards for Very Important People. This changes when Shepard, an old friend from WAY back, now a major movie star, calls her and asks if she come to a movie set in Atlantic City and ke

I hate doing taxes, and so I don't. Eventually, though, that bites me on the keester, like last summer when the IRS got tired of me, and took a ferocious bite out my paycheck for four months. I couldn't complain, really, I did it to myself. So, with another tax deadline approaching, and my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, was getting progressively more antsy. She didn't get ugly about it, mind you; it's just that she doesn't have the ability to ignore things the way I do. So, to please her, I decided it was time to get the job done. Our church is built around the small group ministry, and at our last home group meeting, I asked the group to expect me to file at least one of the three years I was ignoring. So, I waited until the last day, and went for it. I downloaded the software from TaxACT ( a great package, if you do your own) and sat down to sort through three years of un-opened

First, the reason you will get no review from me today: I am going to work on income taxes. Well, on year, at least. See, there are THREE years I haven't done, and it was making my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA a bit nervous. More than a bit, actually. So, two weeks ago, I asked my church home group to hold me accountable for filing at least on years' worth of taxes by the time of our next meeting, which is tomorrow. Yes, I did put it off the the last day. I have ADD, and that's how I roll. So, after I finish breakfast, which I am eating while I type, I'm going to devote the necessary time to do taxes. It will be a piece of cake. I don't like cake. What about the bread? the gold? and the missing knife? Well those are all sorta related to the breakfast. On Thursday, Vanessa and I took me to get a haircut. (begin RABBIT TRAIL) It was my third haircut in the past seven months; the one

I'm going to start light, and then I'm going to get heavy; probably as heavy as I have gotten in reviewing. Here's the light part: thus far, in reviewing Michael Hooten's Bardic Tales, I have managed to avoid hard names. Cricket's Song was easy; I just called him Cricket. And I discovered just now that when I reviewed Bard Without A Star that I wrote the review without once using the main character's name, or any character's name actually. That's because they've got these long consonant-ridden names like Cwddngkrg Twndfrgkn of Lndgdwnggth, and I'm a redneck. Bubba, Bill Andy, Ruby Jo, and Beulah; those are all family names. Those I can do. I've avoided the tough stuff, but I can't do it any longer. Here are the main three characters: Gwydion, the Bard; Llews, his son; Arianrhod, Llews' mother. There, I got that out, and I wish that I could say with certainty that I spelled them correctly, but if not, your spell check will be returned

If you are not going to use the link, but want to read the book, search for it with the title, not the author name. Reason: it's listed as being by Wzlter Daniels. Now, frankly, I think Wzlter is a very nice name, and when it comes to brand differentiation, you can't go wrong with a Z. But, YMMV. Joe loves kids. He always has. He has none of his own, but he has a reputation of being the go-to guy for stories among his nieces and nephews. He's a nice guy, but circumstances haven't been nice to him. Cars like to hit him, and he is now mostly confined to a wheelchair. So, when he gets a phone call asking him if he'd like to have some seasonal employment, his initial reaction is to say 'Bye-Bye!' and hang up the phone. He doesn't, of course, and you know who was on the phone, because the title of the book, right? It was Santa, the REAL Santa, the current Santa, and he's looking for someone to help spread Christmas around to children who need it. What do

I'm 61. Do I qualify as a Young Adult? Well, based on my reaction to Jinxers, I'd have to say yes. Jin is a street rat, fighting for survival in a bitterly cold winter in a city of Thama. (I'm thinking London-ish, but YMMV.) He's cold and hungry, and he lost his shelter in a fire. He's on the run from thugs, who think he might have stolen gold from his deceased benefactor; actually, he thinks he stole the gold as well, but the truth is that he took it to the undertaker to pay for a decent burial. It's a neat little plot point, which keeps him on the edge, regardless of the other circumstances. While searching through the ruins of a burned out building for something he can swap for another day of life, he finds... Okay, I promise this won't be a very long rabbit trail. When I was around 10, marbles suddenly emerged as a wonderful thing for boys to have. Nobody that I knew ever played with them like Tom Sawyer, but we collected them and swapped them. Some of t

This is such a pleasant, pleasant book! There is a lightness in the way it is written, that even in the scenes where Korton (The Ugly Knight) and Elzi (his resolute love interest) face the Ultimate Evil, it's almost...peaceful. There is one exception, which I'll get to later. I THINK that the reason the book is so pleasant has to do with the nature of Korton. He is an unassuming young man, the son and grandson of a tailor, so he doesn't have snooty attitudes to get over before he becomes likable. He succeeds in his difficult apprenticeship process because he works hard. He gets up early. He takes care of his own horse. And while he does not have the raw, natural talent of Jelan, a senior squire who befriends him, he just keeps practicing and hammering away until, pretty much to everyone's surprise, he finishes early and with greater skills than any of his peers. It's true character, not just a role that he is playing. On his first quest, to kill a dragon, he takes t

In the coolest science fiction, you get to play around with the powers and the limits of the gadgets. You get to undertake incredible missions, and discuss the impact on the travelers as well as those left behind. An finally, for me at least, the real story is about how the author makes people come alive, and observes them being human. And Eric and Dave have done all this, and given us a great swashbucking adventure at 0,3 lights, even throwing in aliens, one of whom has a much worse case of PMS than humans will ever, ever experience. Somewhere I've got a copy of the ideas Larry Niven came up with for space ship worlds. The form of the ship in Slow Train offers a lot of advantages over some of those ideas, at least in the sense that it doesn't require technology that we just don't have yet. What we have is a series of nickel iron asteroids, heated in a solar mirror and expanded by water flashing into steam. Build the habitats separate them from each other, and populate eac

5.0 out of 5 stars "I couldn't be a fisherman when I wanted to be, and become a kid again when it was too hard." March 17, 2015 By Pat Patterson (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from: Paddavissie (Kindle Edition) Lot of talk recently about the wisdom of 'write what you know.' I guess that sounds best to me when I read something that just absolutely rankles, and it seems to occur most with gun issues. However, I'm not of the extreme camp, that believes that you can ONLY write about your own experiences; that may go with the turf, given that I'm primarily from a sci-fi background. ( By the way, "Nightfall" is usually regarded as one of the very best short stories ever written, but there is no way that the orbits can be worked out. It's written as if the suns orbit the planet. ) HOWEVER!!!!!!!!!! When an author DOES write from their own experience, the results can make your eyes water. And that's what happens here. When Little Abie,

Even though "Sweet Alice" is included in the Bonus Content section of "Crawling Between Heaven and Earth," it's also offered as a separate transaction on Amazon, and that's how I got it. So, I'll give it a review of its' own. My first introduction to Sarah Hoyt was "Draw One In The Dark," which I picked up on Baen,com. I don't remember if I got it when it was part of the Baen Free Library or not, but it was there and still is, and whether the first taste was free or not, I got hooked enough on the stories of the Athens Diner to read all of them. Sweet Alice is the back story of one of the main characters (or should I say 'mane characters') in the series, Police Officer Rafiel Trall, of the Goldport Police Department. He's a shape-shifter. A lion. And when we meet him, he is in that form, and he wants to ...snuggle...with the main character, Kyrie, who also happens to be a shape-shifter (a panther). Despite the intense chemi

Perhaps it's only in the nature of young teens to really, passionately long for the things in science fiction to become real. I wanted a burner SO BAD when I was raking leaves (age 12), so bad I could taste it. And I remember saying at the dinner table, at around the same age, "We've GOT to solve the mystery of anti-gravity!" Some of that lingered on until my freshman year of college, which was when I first read "Stranger in A Strange Land," but a year later it was gone. I read "Starship Troopers" for the first time while I was in my Army medic training at Ft. Sam, and I remember thinking how cool it would be to be a part of the Mobile Infantry, but I didn't crave it the way I had, even the year before. As I think about that, it makes me realize that for me at least, the first year of college was just an extension of childhood. I don't know if that's true in every case, but for me, at age 18 in 1971, it was true. I still love science fi

Sarah went into the hospital yesterday, for what she assures us will be a relatively minor procedure, but everybody wanted to Do Something. I said that before, but I still feel that way. Or should it be, I still feel That Way? Not sure how New Yorker style cuteness translates for Georgia rednecks. Any way, I decided to review the last few items of hers that were available to me on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. So, I checked out Crawling Between Heaven and Earth, a collection of short stories, Whom The Gods Love, a novella, and Sweet Alice: A Shifter's Short Story. As it happens, Sweet Alice is contained in the Crawling collection (an added value), but I will review it in a separate posting. Crawling Between Heaven and Earth opens with Sarah telling us how the book came about, and how it came to be presented in it's current form. The intro is worth reading for anyone who is a fan of Sarah's, but beyond that, anyone who is interested in becoming a writer. Beside the main int

As a sign of my gratitude for the many hours spent in Sarah's Virtual Diner, sipping the excellent coffee and losing my cares in the company of the regulars, I am marking the eve of Sarah's surgery by tasting some of her fantastic literary dishes. You could do worse. 5.0 out of 5 stars Little people, doing little things, and that's what makes it all go. March 15, 2015 I don't remember the first story I read about traveling arcologies. I don't know if the term 'Universe Ships' covers the entire genre. The Big Ship is of the type in which everybody is awake all for the entire voyage, making it a multi-generation ship. In other stories, nobody is awake, the people and animals are all in what used to be called 'suspended animation', but seems now to be known as 'cold sleep.' And sometimes there is a caretaker crew. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle use the caretaker crew to take over the ship and force a loss of status on the sleepers in last least

5.0 out of 5 stars No power without responsibility, no love without committment. March 15, 2015 By Pat Patterson (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from: A Bard Without a Star (Kindle Edition) I don't suppose there ever was a little boy anywhere who didn't wish he had some kind of special powers. Michael Hooten's Bardic Tales give full expression to that desire for special power, and do not fail to warn that with special power comes special responsibility. "A Bard Without A Star" is set in the world of "Cricket's Song," and predates those events by about 200 years. The players are different, but the music and the magic are the same, and remain beautiful. As I was reading the book, I saw many of the same themes as in "Cricket's Son," so many that at one point I wondered if this was a re-telling of that story from a different perspective. It's not, in the literal sense; these are different people, there are differences in relati

See, this is what happens when I don't get requests to review. I run home to Pam. In the last 24 hours, I've read Mall Santa and now Explorers and unless I change course, I'm going to read something else she wrote. THERE ARE WORSE FATES! 5.0 out of 5 stars Any sufficiently closed mind cannot distinguish magic from technology. March 13, 2015 By Pat Patterson (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from: Explorers (Wine of the Gods Book 4) (Kindle Edition) A L-O-N-G time ago, some parents on Earth had their children's genes engineered to provide them with superior abilities. It didn't turn out well, because non-modified people were jealous/suspicious/paranoid. So the Earth powers put the superiors in concentration camps, then used them to open up doorways to parallel universes, and finally deported them all. The superiors developed in isolation. And that's all you HAVE to know of the backstory to #4, although you'll be missing a bet if you don't read 1-3,

With the review of Cedar's "Dragon Noir," I am facing an empty book review queue. So, last night, I figured I'd toss out something short and sweet, with this little item. It was SO sweet, that I read it to my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA. She loved it, even though she is not a science fiction person. When I finished the story, she said, "Was that Jesus?" "No, it was Eldon." She thought for a minute, then said "That ought to be a Hallmark movie." I agreed. Make it so, please! 5.0 out of 5 stars Alien Santa Christmas Magic March 12, 2015 Pat Patterson (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from: Mall Santa (Kindle Edition) It doesn't have to be Christmas to enjoy a good Christmas story. This is exactly the kind of story that kept me reading past bedtime, and as such, it has a special place in my storage banks. Back then, technology WAS magic. This

"Riding a charging rhino doesn't get any easier the second time." And it is PRECISELY sentences like that which make it possible to write this review. I received a pre-publication copy for review, which lets me in on the plot while the rest of you have to wait, which is a benefit, but on the down side, I have to be PARTICULARLY sensitive about spoilers. But with Cedar's work, that's not going to be particularly difficult. What makes her writing stand out isn't the surprise when the Death Star explodes, because who knew Luke could do that with the Force, right? Yes, there are battles, both great and small. That's not a spoiler. Yes, here are creepy places with creepy villains which have to be, uh....crept through. And that's not a spoiler either. I promise you: you will get your adventure fix. But with Cedar's writing, you don't have to wait until 'THE END' in order to enjoy yourself. It occurs to me as I write this that Cedar enjoys coo

...by life. To be specific, by the medical aspects of life, which have been roughly intruding on my life for over 10 years now. I have a chronic pain condition, due to the fact that somewhere in the distant past, I have a Neanderthal ancestor. That is discovered by running a rather rare blood test, called HLA-B27, and I was positive. That means I had a higher likelihood of developing ankylosing spondylitis, and I did; it means I am ALWAYS running high levels of inflammation, and I hurt. Mostly in my back, but all joints and even sometimes my eyes. I was diagnosed in May of 2005, and have been receiving treatment from the same clinic since them. We've used anti-inflammatories, surgery, electrostim, accupuncture, and narcotics. The last 10 years have not been nice. Here's the deal: I determined to get off the amount of morphine I was on a few years ago (165 mg/day), and in order to make that happen, I tried the (at the time) super anti-inflammatory, meloxicam (Mobic). And it work

I realized as I was waiting for this review to post on Amazon that if they mess up, I have to re-write the review. Maybe I'll publish it on here, first. Anyway: 5.0 out of 5 stars Tasty, filling, and packed fully of yummy nuggets! March 10, 2015 By Pat Patterson (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from: The Sky Suspended (Kindle Edition) I've tried to come up with something to compare this book to, but all I get is 'fruitcake' and I am NOT going to go with fruitcake. I don't LIKE fruitcake, and I like this book. If my big fat Manx cat SugarBelly will cooperate by staying off my left hand and not playing with the touchpad, I will explain the comparison. MOVE, SUGARBELLY! There, that's better. You will find many little 'stop and look at me' moments, particularly in the beginning, that you probably are going to want to read the book a second time, just to appreciate the descriptions. For example, the book opens with the chase of a young man on the Wash

5.0 out of 5 stars Such a GREAT follow-up to the FIRST pixie book I really liked! March 7, 2015 This review is from: Trickster Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 2) (Kindle Edition) Full disclosure statement #1: I received the beta version of this ebook for review purposes. Full disclosure statement #2: I love reading Cedar Sanderson's work. Trickster Noir takes place immediately after the events of Pixie Noir. It's been four months since I read Pixie Noir, so I did a quick re-read of Pixie to make sure I was up to speed. That may have been a mistake, in one respect: I found myself wishing I had re-read the entire book, just because this series is so much FUN!!!!! But I can re-read Pixie Noir at any time, and probably will. So, Lom the Pixie Bounty Hunter is near dead, and his love Bella has power she hasn't learn how to handle, and there is Intrigue In Court. And prospective pixie mothers-in-law. The lady is TIRED! (Tired of playing the game, tired of (no, wait, that's Madeline

I've just read Trickster Noir, and will post that review, but I thought it best to first post my review about the first book in the series. This was posted on Amazon on November 7, 2014. I'm a fan! 5.0 out of 5 stars Rednecks really do love fairies; HONEST! November 7, 2014 This review is from: Pixie Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 1) (Kindle Edition) Look: I'm a Southern redneck, motorcycle riding, truck driving gun owning U. S. Army veteran. I read Kratman and Ringo and Correia and (now) Torgerson, and this fantasy pixie pink unicorn stuff: I just pass it by. Boy, have I ever been an idiot. Whattya want? Ya want action? You got it. The heroine shoots a troll three times in the back with .44 mag hollow points while the hero shoots him in the eye with her rifle. Ya want mystery? How about waking up to find your true love has rescued you....or has she? Ya want sports? Ummm, I don't remember any sports... But intrigue, conflict, self-sacrifice, honor, courage, and yes, one dare

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally an enlisted hero who isn't infantry, and a new BEM! January 27, 2015 This review is from: The Chaplain's War (Kindle Edition) There is enough action in the book to satisfy shoot-em-up fans (and I'm one of these) but where this book really excels is in character development. Now, I confess to being a non-impartial reader, because of the selection of the main character. Harrison Barlow is an enlisted man, serving as a chaplain's assistant. I'm third generation in a four generation family of U S Army enlisted. The hero in most military fiction is either an officer, or in the infantry, and Harrison Barlow is neither. He's just a guy, doing his job the best he knows how to do. And, in fact, that's what most people in the military are: just ordinary people doing their jobs. They take care of the mules, load the ammo, make sure that the water is clean, and only sometimes are on the front lines with a rifle. So: this speaks to my personal

5.0 out of 5 stars “But you created it. It has to obey you.” “You obviously don’t have children. ” Cricket's Song March 6, 2015 By Pat Patterson (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from: Cricket's Song (Kindle Edition) This is a collection of all three Cricket books in one package, One of the differences between reading ebooks and reading dead tree books is that you can't tell by looking how big the book is; I was wondering why it was taking me so long to read Cricket's Song, but it turns out (I just checked) that it's approximately 356 pages. That is a lot of WONDERFUL STORYTELLING!!!!!! You know the Jerry McGuire quote "You had me at hello?" Well, Cricket's Song had me in the very first scene. Cricket is an orphan, being raised by a small village. He has lots of questions, but nobody has much time to answer them, because they are farmers, and farmers work hard. The one person Cricket can count on to answer is an old man called Harper, who shows

Pi Day is just around the corner, and it's making me think about God. We get an approximation of Pi Day every year, on March 14. But this year, we get Pi Day of the Century, because we can express Pi all the way out to the second. Saturday a week from now, the clock will tick forward, and for one, glorious second, it will be 3.14.15 9:26:53 and that's all the pi we can ever reasonably hope for. Of course those who own a cesium clock can claim to have Pi nanoseconds, or something above that, but for humans to be aware of an experience, it has to last longer than that. We could go to tenths or hundredths of a second, but let's just be thankful that a watch with a sweep second hand can celebrate the event, shall we? Of course, Pi is not primarily a number. It's a relationship between two of the most common art works kindergarteners draw: the line and the circle. Drop of water hits the ground, get a circle (with splashes). And the line drawn from one point of a circle throu