Angels Are Coming... (pictures I like)

...but is that really better than the Demons?

Epitaph (a book review post)

When I was a kid, before I discovered dinosaurs (which I did at the age of four), the very first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. My grandfather had cows on his farm, so I figured that made him a cowboy, and that's what I wanted to be. Imagine my surprise when I got to my American history class in high school and learned that the term "cowboy" became popularized and associated with the west because of a band of rustlers operating in Arizona in the 1880s know as the Cow Boys. Yeah, you heard me; the Cow Boys were the bad guys.

Interestingly enough, it was these same Cow Boys who would create the enduring legacy of Wyatt Earp and, by extension, Doc Holliday. Wyatt Earp, who was possibly the ultimate frontier lawman... right up until he wasn't.

Of course, there are those who would argue that he was never a lawman, just an outlaw posing as one, but, mostly, those are the outlaws who accused him of that. Or men like Johnny Behan, and we know Behan was crooked, so it makes his accusations a little less believable.

At any rate, Epitaph is not really a book about Wyatt Earp. Which is not to say that it's not a book about Wyatt Earp, because it is. Mostly, though, it's about the conditions that lead up the shootout that was not actually at the O.K. Corral and the fallout after it. The enduring legacy it created.

The temptation, here, is to get into the history of it, but that's in the book. To say that Mary Doria Russell is a meticulous researcher is probably an understatement. We'll say instead that I trust her research. And, sure, I'm biased and, sure, this is historical fiction, but I believe the facts are mostly in place and the suppositions logically follow from the facts.

That said, it's Russell's ability to allow the reader to walk along with her characters that is her greatest asset. And that's where her research really shows, I think. She writes as if she knows these people, as if she spent time with them, as witnessed these things herself. It creates a completely believable world.

Basically, I can't recommend this book or Russell more highly. And, although this is a companion piece to Doc, Doc is not required reading; Epitaph is not a sequel.

Whether you think Wyatt Earp walked with the angels or the demons (and it's not unreasonable to suspect either considering that he was never shot; even when his clothes ended up full of bullet holes, he never received a wound), this book is worth reading for the insight on the situation. The incident "at" the O.K. Corral formed a view of the Old West that has never been shaken, one of showdowns and street fights that never really existed. And maybe that's okay, because it's the legends we look up to and aspire to be. Parts of me still want to be a cowboy.

The Graveyard Shift (a book review post)

Did you ever buy a CD for that one song you loved even though the rest of the CD pretty much sucked? Maybe you knew that ahead of time, maybe you didn't; I've done it both ways. Of course, you don't have to do it like that at all, anymore, but that's how it used to be back when you couldn't buy any individual song that you wanted to. Back in the day, not every thing got a single.

Well, you'll be glad to know that this book isn't like that at all. If you like... hmm... not exactly horror... suspenseful? They are certainly suspenseful. Stories with odd twists? Yeah, that's closer. Stories that will leave you feeling like you have bugs crawling on your skin. That's it exactly. That's not a genre, is it? Well, it ought to be. At any rate, if you like that kind of stuff, there's a good chance you'll like this whole collection.

An interesting thing they've done with this collection of tales is made the book a book within the book with a story of a guy reading the book as bookends to the book. Not that this is an original thing to do, but it's not done all that often, which makes it notable. That story will make bugs crawl on your skin, too. Especially since... Oh, you'll have to find that out on your own.

Since I generally talk about how well edited the Beer Guys' books are, I figure I should mention that. This is the least well edited I've seen of their books, meaning I had to go two hands instead of being able to count mistakes on just one. Mostly, there are some formatting quirks in various sections where the paragraphs indentations shift back and forth. Other than that, though, it means that this book is still has better editing than virtually all traditionally published books I pick up (including the one I'm reading right now).

I should mention that the very excellent "Like an Axe Through Bone," that Bryan Pedas wrote based on my world from The House on the Corner is included in this collection, although he seems to have shortened the title to just "An Axe Through Bone." If you haven't read that, you really should.

My favorite story is "These Walls." It's a different take on the typical haunted house story, and I really enjoyed it. I have to say, I would love to live in a house like that. I'll be nice; I promise.

"Bedridden Honeymoon" and "Life and Limb" are both quite disturbing, but I think Honeymoon wins by a corpse, considering it was inspired by a true story.

And, then, there's the story about a deal with a demon... And I haven't decided how I feel about that one, yet. I alternated between wanting  the guy to defeat the demon and wanting the guy to get "eaten" by the demon. Probably, one of those options happened, and I'm not sure if I approve of the ending or not because I'm still ambivalent about how I feel about the protagonist. But it's a good story.

There are more that I haven't mentioned. Seriously, if you like stories that are liable to make your skin crawl, you should give this one a look or three.

Angel, Mr. Hyde and Vampires

Let me just say right off the bat, I am not a fan of vampires. [Pun totally intended.] I've never been into the whole vampire craze. Not in the 80s when it was driven by Anne Rice or in the 90s when it was, again, driven by Anne Rice and not in the time since when it's been driven by Twilight and True Blood and almost everything else. Seriously, I hate that whole noble vampire thing, all that tragic, romantic bullcrap that vampires have become. Give me my vampires evil..., so I can kill them.

And that's probably why I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vampires are evil, and we spend our time trying to kill them.

Well, except for Angel. And, well, Angel is a show I like even more than Buffy. That sounds like a conundrum, doesn't it? I mean, Angel is full of all of that tragic, romantic shhhtuff. I realized why recently that I'm okay with Angel. It's not a vampire story. Not that he's not a vampire, but that's not the kind of story it is. It's a Jekyll and Hyde story. I love Jekyll and Hyde stories.

The central conflict in Angel is man vs himself, specifically Angel vs the demon inside him. It's a story about someone seeking redemption. It just so happens that he is a vampire, but that's not the driving force of the story. It's that ongoing conflict that Angel has with himself that makes the series interesting. Good vs evil bits. Whedon does a great job with it, but you should still read Stevenson if you haven't done it.

Speaking of vampires, I appreciate that Jim Butcher has kept his vampires evil. We're gonna give Thomas a pass, because there's something else going on there. Since I'm not all the way caught up yet, I don't know if it's been revealed or not, so don't go saying anything.

None of this is to say that I haven't written my own vampire story. A short one. But he was evil, so it's okay. It was just kind of to make a point.

And all of this to say that next week is going to be vampire week here at StrangePegs. There's a new vampire story I need to review and, let me just say, it's fantastic! No, I mean it. But more on that next week. Also, in the spirit of Halloween, I'm going to tell you all about how to be a vampire. And, maybe, there'll be other stuff. I'm not quite sure, yet, what all next week will have in store for you, but there will be vampires, so stock up on garlic.

The Religion of Writing: Part Six -- The Prosperity Doctrine (an IWSG post)

For thousands of years, we have had the belief that god, whatever god it happens to be, rewards the just and punishes the wicked. If something bad happens to you, you must have displeased god and are being punished. If something good happens to you, you are being rewarded, which shows that god favors you. Even more, if you are rich, through whatever means, god really, really likes you, so you must be one righteous dude and, therefore, you are justified in whatever behaviors you've been doing to get ahead even if they're wrong. God wouldn't be rewarding you unless you were doing what he wanted you to do, right?

There's something primal in that belief, no matter how ill-founded. It goes right along with that whole "beautiful angel"/"ugly demon" thing. We tend to forget that Lucifer, the head (and arguably worst) demon is also described as the most beautiful being in creation. [And we forget that whenever anyone in the Bible ever saw an Angel, the first response was always the wetting of the pants. Or loincloth. Or whatever. That was followed by the Angel saying, "Do not be afraid."] So it's very attractive to believe that rich people are somehow better than everyone else. If, that is, you are rich. European culture survived off of that belief for centuries. And, if you're not rich, you want to be rich so that you can finally be proven correct in your internal belief that you are, in fact, just as better than everyone else as the people that are already rich.

The prosperity doctrine started getting popular in the United States in the '50s, but it really took off with the charismatic movement and televangelists in the 1980s. The basic idea is that God wants you to have health, wealth, and happiness. The only problem is that, well, you have to pay for it. Now, there's all kinds of theological background and stuff I could go into here, but that would be a whole series of posts all by itself. So let's just put it like this: Just like with the whole Pentecostal thing of having to speak in tongues to get to go to heaven, the prosperity doctrine cherry picks just a few passages upon which to base the entire philosophy. [The central passage that's used is an Old Testament passage that they pull completely out of context.] What it boils down to is that people who are wealthy are "good" and everyone else is not. Which, of course, pushes the "nots" to try harder and give more, making the wealthy richer and "gooder" and everyone else "notter."

I'm pretty sure most of you out there would not say that having lots of money (success) makes a person somehow better than those that don't have lots of money, but that's not how we act. And, more importantly, that's not how they act. Rich people tend to act as if they are inherently better than other people. More valuable. More deserving. The money they have doesn't make them better; they have money because they are better. The cream, as they say, has risen to the top.

And we believe that in publishing, too, even when it's glaringly obvious that the cream does indeed not rise to the top. Unless we are now claiming that Twilight and its ugly step-sister Fifty Shades of Grey are the cream. If that's the case, well... actually, I'm not sure. If that's the cream, then there's no real hope for humanity.

The truth is, in most cases, the best books go completely unnoticed. There can be many reasons for this, none of which are important (and would take too long to list); the main thing is realizing that the statement, "the cream will always rise to the top" is a falsehood. Or, maybe, it's not, but, then, books aren't cream. The point is that the "best" things most often do not enjoy the most success.

Most of the people in the world that are the most "successful" are not people we would say are the best people. Sure, there are a few good ones, but most of them got there by taking advantage of other people or stepping on other people or cheating or lying or maybe even just dumb luck. And, no matter what people say, cheaters do not always lose. The most successful hamburger in the world is not one that I think anyone other than, maybe, Briane Pagel would say is the best. And it got there by just being the same anywhere you buy it. Which is no small feat, but it's hard to not find a "better" burger (although some might argue that its sameness does make it the best). And the best books... Well, the best books get run over by the ones that appeal to the masses. Like those hamburgers. They succeed not by being good but by being the same. Simple language. Simple, straight forward story. Plain.

Which is not to say that exceptions don't come along. Things like Harry Potter and Middle Earth succeed despite their "goodness" by being something new and different. Novel. (heh pun intended) But Rowling has proved to us that "good" does not equal success with her experiment in publishing under a pseudonym. The cream does not always rise to the top.

All of that to say that a lack of sales does not mean that your book is not good. And massive sales does not mean that it is. Books sell well for one of two reasons: 1. The author has put a lot of work into writing books and become known through being a steady and dependable writer. 2. Luck. The book just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So to speak.

But, still, we like to worship success here in the United States, so I'm sure we will continue to use such statements as "the cream will always rise to the top" and, even worse, continue to believe those statements.

What I want to say about it is that you shouldn't rate your "creaminess" on whether you're on top or not.

Today's post has been brought to you in part by Alex Cavanaugh and the IWSG. The rest was all me.

How To Be... a Ventriloquist

I've been involved in puppetry at various times in my life. It's actually something I have really enjoyed. Now, you don't need to be a ventriloquist to do puppets. At all. You don't even have to talk. When I was in high school doing puppets at church, we only ever used taped skits. Yeah, on, like, cassette tapes. That's just how we did it. Which was fine except for that one time when the cassette player ate the tape during a performance. Mostly, we worked on hand movements, because the hand movements are actually difficult if you want your puppet to look natural. But that's beside the point...

Anyway, working from a recording worked fine. Most of the time. Until that time we were doing this day camp thing out at an actual campgrounds and could only take the castoff puppets and no recorded shows. It was my idea, but the guy in charge of the puppets wasn't going and wouldn't let us take all the proper equipment, so I decided I was just gonna improvise. And I did.

I had this old puppet I called Mr. Purple, because, well, he was purple. Bald and purple with a red nose. I made up this voice for him that I can no longer remember, and I used to get behind a table turned on its side and talk to the kids. It wasn't so much performing as just interacting with them and being crazy and silly. They really loved Mr. Purple. Things were fine like that for a few days until, one day, when it was time to go, one or two of the kids wanted to say goodbye to Mr. Purple, but there was no place for me to hide. This kind of thing had never happened in one of our regular puppet shows, and I didn't know what to do. I mean, the rule, the BIG rule, was to NEVER let any of the kids see you with a puppet on your arm or talking for the puppet. NEVER break the illusion.

But the kids were really heartbroken over not getting to say goodbye to Purple. I caved and brought him out on my arm right there in front of them and tried to not move my lips as much as possible. After that, for a while, I practiced not moving my lips, but some of my... antics... with Purple required full vocalizations, and I couldn't do those without opening my mouth all the way. What I found out, though, is that the kids didn't care. They just didn't. To them, I was the one attached to Purple, not the other way around. They loved him, not me, and they had to be able to give him hugs when we needed to leave everyday. It was really sweet.

I learned a lot that summer about a child's ability to create reality.

And that's your free story for the day, because it doesn't have anything to do with ventriloquism other than my failed attempt at it.

I find ventriloquism fascinating, and I love to watch a good ventriloquist.

But none of this is how ventriloquism started. No, it's not. Let me just say:
Have you ever wanted to start your own religion?

See, the Greeks believed that the spirits of the dead spoke to people through their stomachs; that's what causes stomach noises, you know, the dead trying to reach the living. Some people could interpret these noises, and the voices of the dead would speak through the living without the lips moving. These people were called... are you ready for this? No, really, are you? It's awesome. Seriously.
They were called gastromancers. And, yes, the practice was called gastromancy.
It was also through gastromancers that the gods spoke to people in the temples and such.

And that's how you can use ventriloquism to start your own religion. Just tell people it's "god in your stomach." Works every time.

Through much of history, then, ventriloquism has been used as a religious or spiritual practice. A notable exception to this was during the Middle Ages in Europe, when it was viewed as a form of witchcraft. You definitely didn't want your belly speaking up in those days or you'd be accused of being possessed by a demon or the Devil himself.

Eventually, though, in the late 19th century, it became a stage act, which brings us up to modern ventriloquists.

So the main thing here is just to practice (a lot) with keeping your mouth still while you talk. BUT you don't have to keep your lips completely still, because the real art of ventriloquism is the art of illusion, just like any stage magician. You make the audience look where you want them to, make them believe that you believe you're talking to some other object or that the sound is coming from somewhere else, and they will believe it, too. That was really the trick I had with Mr. Purple. I treated him as if he was real, not like he was a puppet, and, so, he was real to those kids.