Review: Aerie by Anne Riley

I met Anne Riley at an author event at Jan's Paperbacks in Portland, Oregon this past summer.  We shared a table, talked writing and sold some books.  She's a very interesting and pleasant lady with roots in the area, and I have to say in the past year involving promotion of my own work, that one day in July was probably the best day possible.  At the end of the day we exchanged purchases of work.  Anne read and reviewed The Favorite, and I read Aerie with every intention of reviewing it.  I'm horribly late.  That introduction (and a hearty apology to Anne) aside, here's my review of Aerie.

Aerie by Anne Riley

Okay, I don't do romance novels.

I'm not normally for overtly sticky stories about longing and temptation, about the internal struggle between what you want and what's good for you, about the normally melodramatic reasons why a hero or heroine would deny themselves the right person that's standing right in front of them.  Nothing against the genre, but I always found those stories to be kind of hokey.  So, all things being honest and equal, it's hard to say that I opened the book with an open mind.

It didn't take long to convince me.

Aerie tosses aside the normal convention of impossibly many hero and damsel-in-distress, and instead plays a budding romance against a strong workplace drama and with legal and techno elements.  It's sounds like a weird recipe that shouldn't work when you say it out loud, but like a peanut-butter bacon cheeseburger the first bite is surprisingly satisfying of all tastes.

The story centers on high powered systems analyst Cara Larson, whose tech firm Pyramid is contracted by Liam Scofield, CEO of an outdoor-wear company, to help develop a computerized distribution and payment system for his company.  The year is 1991 and the system is quite literally ahead of it's pre-worldwide web time.  The potential of this system to revolutionize the way business is done is recognized by Cara's bosses at Pyramid as well as the lawyers working for Liam's company WindWear, so when they systematically try to cut Liam out of his potentially billion-dollar idea, Cara and Liam work frantically to save it.  In the midst of this is the love-at-first-sight drama between Cara and Liam, the potential romantic rival in Liam's lawyer Lauren Janelle, and even a heaping helping of corporate greed.

Anne Riley's mastery of the tech aspects of Aerie draw you into a realistic world of pre-Internet computer jargon that is easy enough to follow even if you don't have a degree in computer engineering.  She makes that part of the world she's created plausible and accessible, which is no easy feat, making us care about the product everyone is fighting over.  However that would mean nothing without good characters.  Ms. Riley's leads, Cara and Liam, are very well-developed and even if you are like me and not a romance buff, how and why they're into each other makes sense, even though for much of the book their organizations are pitted against each other.  It's very West Side Story.

Anne Riley has created a very appealing romantic story that, like the movie Jerry Maguire, slips the romance in under a Trojan Horse of typically guy stuff, like money and tech.  Even though the romantic part seemed a little hokey to me, I really enjoyed this book.

Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

"It's... it's a cookbook!"

Ah, the Fourth of July.

Independence Day.  A where we celebrate our love for our country, where we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It is a day that is marked by time-honored celebration, where we indulge our love for the things that are so incredibly American.  Such as:

Recreational explosives.

Meat.

Apple pie.

Baseball.

And Twilight Zone Marathons.

Since I was a kid, I had a fascination for reruns of The Twilight Zone. Summer nights routinely had me staying up late to watch the episodes at 2 and 3 in the morning on WPIX.  That was back before the CW ran it, back before the WB ran it.  I could watch that show anytime, anywhere.  To date there isn't an episode of the original 1956 series that I haven't seen at least once.

Imagine my glee when, at 10 years old, WPIX announced the first 12-hour Twilight Zone marathon.  It's rare on a summer day when a kid wants to stay inside, especially in a New York City summer with no air conditioning.  But on that first 4th of July marathon, I wasn't going anywhere.  Up at 7 to watch "Time Enough at Last," done at 7 with "Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."  I became familiar with old actors unburdened from classic roles, like Burgess Meredith not playing Mick from Rocky, or William Shatner as someone other than James T. Kirk.  Jack Klugman was not Oscar Madison (The Odd Couple), and he was alongside Jonathan Winters.

Mostly though, the draw for me was the storytelling.  A lot of my early writing hinged heavily on slightly supernatural plots, science fiction and twist endings, and that is all stuff I attribute to watching this genius show.  It's creator, Rod Serling, was one of the master storytellers of his day.  His writing credit appears on such classic episodes as "I Shot An Arrow Into The Air," and his iconic deadpan delivery of the shows monologues are hallmarks of that show.  A lot of that found its way into my writing as a teenager and some still filters through today.

As a matter of fact, the title of this post, if you are uninitiated, is one of the series most quoted lines, from the episode "To Serve Man."

So, I leave you today, to visit a dimension not of sight or sound, but of mind. A dimension where the only limits we know are the limits of imagination.  A dimension called...

Discipline

It kind of came to me as I stepped out of the shower and stepped onto my bathroom scale.

That used to be a ritual I had before I went anywhere. My day would begin (or end, considering I work nights) with me getting home from the gym, showering, and taking a step on the scale, being proud that a workout ended in a slowly but surely shrinking number.  This ghost of my routine kicked in at the end of its cycle and I stepped on the scale without doing all the previous stuff, and the number I saw reminded me of it.

I haven't been to the gym -- not consistently, anyway -- in quite a while.

People are slaves to routine, followers of habit.  They do what they do with repetition, as the repetition is comfortable.  It's why bad habits are so hard to break; they become hardwired into our daily lives until our bodies and minds crave it.  Creative types -- artists and writers for instance -- are even more susceptible to habits, both good and bad, as they drive how and what we create.  I thought about that as well as I dried off and sucked in my gut as I looked in the mirror.  I've lost all my good habits.

I haven't written -- not consistently, anyway -- in quite a while.

We all have our reasons for this, of course, and some of them are even valid.  Good habits, for instance, are invariably the ones that are more difficult and more of an investment in time, and sometimes changing life situations -- good and/or bad -- make it tough to keep good habits.  Or sometimes we get lazy, as bad habits are easier, more instantly gratifying, and creep in when we least expect it.  Either way, whatever the reasons or excuses, the problem comes down to one thing: discipline.

My life situation has changed a bit.  I find myself less willing to engage in the high-energy, cardio-intensive routine of early-morning basketball two to three days a week, and more willing to spend that time in bed.  I end up talking myself out of my workouts as I drag my feet to get to the gym.  I'm completely unwilling to go for a run in the midst of the recent (and absolutely, insanely bitter) cold snap.  I find myself writing less, and I give myself reasons like "Gotta promote the novel," or "Don't have time right now.". Or, if I'm being truthful, the reasons are "I don't feel like it," or "I'm not in the headspace to produce anything good."

Damn that.  No more excuses.  Life is passing us by as we fill the days with stuff we should have done and reasons why we didn't do them.  Our bad habits are killing us.  My bad habits are killing me.  Not with any disease or anything, but with malaise and missed opportunity.  The game is not called because of cold.  We -- I -- just have to find the find the discipline, to create the good habits, that restores the natural order of things.

And with that, I reveal the number I saw. 271.

I say this a lot, but now I'm saying it publicly over the internet, which will hold me accountable.  I will reduce that number by 30 in the coming months.  It's going to take planning, hard work, and discipline.

The other thing, the writing?  Well, something must be done about that too.  At the beginning of the year, I set forth an unreachable goal: to write a million words of fiction.  I know the goal is insanely difficult, but I set it with the idea that if I try and don't make it, I'll stilt have done an unbelievable amount of work.  So far, my word count isn't all that impressive.  I'm going to take a NaNoWriMo-style approach and try to generate 1200 words a day of fiction.  Yeah, I'll be well short of my million-word mandate, but the point wasn't a million words, the point was forging the discipline to transition into a writing career.

And I trust the internet to hold me accountable.

Mr. Candidate (Re-run)

As it's Election season again, I dug up an Facebook note that I humbly submit as a conversation starter.


Hello, my name is Franklyn Thomas and I'd like to announce my candidacy for... well, whatever you got.  I'm not a politician, nor do I have any political experience, but that hasn't stopped some out there (I'm looking at you, Mr. Paladino from New York).  I'm not terribly angry as much as I'm tired of people who claim to have my best interest at heart, but don't.  I figure, hey, these guys are running on sound bites, I might try to run on something else: ideas.  Duh moment: this country has problems.  We need solutions.  Not the solutions that have been crammed down our throats for generations, new solutions from this era.  From us, not some wrinkled old dude.

For starters, as Americans we've been conditioned to believe for the last 30 years or so that the wealthy will save us if we just hand them money.  That is the essential concept behind trickle-down economics.  The problem is, it doesn't work.  Not in this economy.  It may work in a situation where we made stuff, manufactured things, but these days our prime export is debt.  We buy and sell debt like it's wood or brick or steel.  We don't manufacture anything on a global scale anymore.  This is a problem that is endemic to the bottom and has worked its way to the top of our system.  People would prefer to be ballers than bricklayers, to be power brokers instead of handling power tools.  How do we combat it?  We address the bottom of the structure.  As your elected official, I would push forth legislation that would allow the government to make it easier for our children and young adults to be educated, and for our educators to be better compensated and appreciated.  This would include a mandatory minimum salary for teachers in the public system that would provide a 50% increase in pay across the board.  In return, I would insist that a similarly mandatory accountability system that would be handled by an impartial group of parents, alumni, and teachers in the region to rank our teachers and the job that they do.  From the student's side, I would introduce legislation that would sponsor optional region-specific curriculum to better prepare students for post-educational life in these regions.  For instance: our farming states in the middle of the country would benefit from eduating our youth in how to work a farm, how to manage crops and farm labor, animal care, how to turn a profit.  This educational approach could be applied to a wide variety of problems plaguing our society today; teach our children how to better their communities, and those communities will better their towns, their states, and the country on a whole.

Expanding on this point, my government would be willing to abate most or all of the collegiate expense of the children and young adults who enrolled in a program that addressed a specific need in their region or in the country as a whole.  our infrastructure is crumbling, especially in smaller towns and cities across the United States; we need visionary engineers to help us fortify it.  My administration would set up a "farm system" of sorts, where we pay for engineers to be educated to their bachelors level, and they work on rebuilding our roads and cities for 10 years.  We need educators; students who would be willing to nurture their love of teaching would find the United States very appreciative of their efforts.  We need to solve our energy crisis within my lifetime so that my grandchildren will not have to bear the punishment of what we have put into our atmosphere for so many generations.  My administration would be willing to fund the dreams of the wide-eyed optimists entering college expressly to figure out how.

I believe in the ideal that the role and purpose of government is not just to defend, but to invest in its people.  The best of those investments in the education and the health of its people.  And even though I'm sure it would cost me voters who believe that socialism is communism, I would support the defeated Public Option for healthcare.  As a healthcare worker, I can tell you that the insurance companies do not care about you.  They care about their profits, same as any other business.  I would not deny them their right to make money, however part of their purpose is to make it so that being ill doesn't make you broke.  The insurance companies have not been living up to that.  Capitalism is the theory of letting the market decide.  I believe we should introduce a government backed option, similar to the option that is already extended to federal workers and politicians, that offers reduced cost health care.  The response of the industry could only be to reduce their cost, to not repel customers and to end the general (excuse my French) fuckery they have perpetrated on us for the last 30 years.  This may not be as important to the people of New York or Washington state, who already have the benefit of several insurance companies competing over your hard earned dollar.  However, states like Alabama or Tennessee, whose single, statewide insurance companies leave options limited to "eat shit" and "like it" could benefit from this.

The third prong of my campaign falls under energy independence.  This isn't simply about finding new oil wells on our land and seas; this is about changing our worldview.  The reason why the Middle Eastern nations are such an important thing to us is solely about the vast reservoirs of oil they sit upon.  We make bad deals over it.  We fight bad wars over it.  Our mindset must change.  Developing a new, sustainable energy source must be our top priority, if for no other reason than it will remove the leverage of groups like al-Qaeda, who can find refuge in oil-bearing nations who love our dollars and hate our ways.  We can end the extortion by finding another way.


My ideas on this are a little different.  This country is not homogenous.  The landscape alone could be divided into six different nations with six different needs and six different sets of resources.  We can make practical use of the winds in the midwest, the sun in the desert, the water along the Mississippi and so forth to power our nation.  The point is, we can figure out a way to power our nation without fighting another oil war, without worrying about another oil rig exploding.  Ever.  And as your elected official, I would work tirelessly, day and night to do so.

Lastly, and most importantly, I'd like to outline my plan for the unemployment rate.  Harsh, severe taxation for American companies who do more than 20% of their manufacturing overseas.  There is simply no room for that kind of outsourcing in today's economy.  There is no reason why these practices should be allowed to continue.  Conversely, I would like to initiate tax breaks for companies who bring their manufacturing jobs back home.  Overseas companies who do manufacturing in the US would be subject to the same taxation; heavy taxes for not utilizing American workers for products made and sold in the US, tax reprieves for high employment.

So, in conclusion, my fellow Americans, I would look forward to seeing you on Election Day, and we begin the work of saving our country and our planet.

... ah who am I kidding?  I'm no politician.  And this liberal-leaning blog post has probably cost me more friends than I would have had votes.  Still, it's nice to dream about a politician who had more than his career in mind when he voted on shit.  Oh well.

Hero Worship

I've been obsessed with super heroes since I was old enough to read.

To be honest, I'm surprised, even at my age, that something like that is far-fetched, or somehow counter-culture, or unacceptable. This notion that comic book love equals nerd never quite computed with me.

Super heroes -- Spider-Man, Batman, the X-Men -- give us the opportunity to fantasize and experiment with people and concepts that simply don't exist in the real world. We are exposed to a concept of absolute justice -- the good guys win, the bad guys go to jail. we are given the opportunity to experiment with power and the consequences of its use. Through these heroic figures, we learn about tolerance and acceptance, about the greater good, and such.

I got beat up a lot as a kid. I have many less than fond memories of running as fast as I could with a 30 pound knapsack on my back, trying to get on a bus and away from tormentors. It's a story many of us can relate to on some level. Comic books were an escape for me, a way for to witness -- safely witness, from the infinite distance of fiction -- justice being done to villains very similar (in my head, at least) to the ones that were in my own life. Spider-Man swung in and kicked guys in the face. Batman did his scary, bad-ass voice. Superman did the laser vision thing. And the bad guys fried. It was all kinds of awesome.

As I got older and puberty set in, I saw myself in a lot of these characters. In my mind, Spider-Man was me, except caucasian and older than 13. It gave me hope because he was married to Mary Jane, an impossibly hot model/actress with gravity-defying body parts and a thing for nerdy guys. Come on, how do you not see the appeal? Batman was, you guessed it, me, billionaire playboy by day, psychotic badass by night. I mean, I'm still working on my first billion, and haven't quite developed my psychotic bad-assery yet, but still. Superman? Right again, me! Mild-mannered writer until the call came in, a plane fell out of the sky, or Timmy got stuck in a well or something, and there I would be, looking to save the day.

People have this appreciation now for these heroes as this massive marketing deal, or this huge movie-making force or what have you. I sincerely hope that we as a people haven't gotten so cynical so as to only reference these cultural icons by their ability to sell tickets and popcirn, because these stories represent much more than that. Super heroes are our Greek Pantheon. Comic books are our American mythology, the tall tales that will define our culture long after we are dust. These stories represent an ideal that is prevalent in the myths and legends of all great civilizations; that the powerful protect the not-so-powerful, shield them from harm, seek justice in their name. It is a noble ideal, that I would pass down to my own children.