Writing and sanity:

I’m a writer.

Therefore, I am not sane.

– Edgar Allan Poe.

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To Kill a Mockingbird ... excerpt:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. 

– Atticus Finch [To Kill a Mockingbird], 

filmed in 1962, based on the novel by Harper Lee.

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The Anaïs Assignment (The Bowin Novels #3), by Lee Holz:

This third book in the Tom Bowin series of thrillers begins with a daylight kidnapping in Bethesda, Maryland. Teenager, Diego Mendoza, is snatched as he waits for his girlfriend, Anaïs Bowin, to join him outside their school. Anaïs witnesses the incident and barely manages to escape being kidnapped herself as the bullets fly in a taught first chapter. Like the first two Bowin thrillers, the plot weaves over different continents and locations (France, Morocco, Bahamas, Maine, Washington, Ireland) and holds the reader’s attention, as we learn about Anaïs’ shocking past, from her being rescued from imprisonment by a sexual predator, to being saved and adopted by Tom and Alice, coming to terms with the guilt of her past, and the discoveries she’s yet to make. With references to the first two books, there is careful attention to detail and character development, distinguishing this series from many of the run-of-the-mill intrigue stories, in particularly with its focus on human emotions and relationships. As hard-hitting as the scene in which one character in a boat cabin gets a bullet through the forehead, this is another well-written and entertaining story. I’m looking forward to what Tom Bowin’s fight with global terrorism will bring in the fourth book: The Hawala Assignment.

Pet Sematary, by Stephen King:

I was reminded of King’s novel by – of all things! – a clip from the 1980 episode of The Muppet Show, featuring Linda Ronstadt. One of the sketches in the show had Rowlf the dog singing: ‘The Cat Came Back’, updated from the song by Harry S. Miller, originally written in 1893.

The Muppet version’s a hilarious sketch and hearing the following lyrics from the chorus prompted me to re-read Stephen King’s Pet Sematary:

But the cat came back

She wouldn’t stay away

She was sitting on the porch

The very next day

The cat came back

She didn’t want to roam

The very next day

It was home sweet home.

Yep! A nostalgia trip back through Muppetville brought me back to King’s creepy classic for the second time! As a double-whammy, the song is also mentioned in the course of the story.

In Pet Sematary, Doctor Louise Creed and his wife, Rachel, fall in love with their new home in Maine. They have two children: daughter, Ellie, and son, Gage, who is still a toddler. They also have a cat, Church (named after Winston Churchill). The location of their home is not without its drawbacks: there is a wide road with trucks that thunder back and forth across it at every hour. Their elderly neighbor, the wise and friendly Jud Crandall, saves Gage from wandering into the road before they have even set foot into the house. After Ellie spots the narrow footpath leading into the woods, Jud senses their curiosity and takes them on a guided tour. It’s a long trek that snakes right into the heart of the woods and leads them to a place, created and maintained by children over many generations, called the Pet Sematary. Rachel is immediately spooked by the place as it triggers her phobia of death, relating to the tragedy of her deformed sister, Zelda, a victim of Spinal Meningitis. Ellie is fascinated by the grave markers and Jud explains that cemeteries are places of remembering, where the dead rest and the markers speak. Rachel takes the children to see her folks, but Louis declines the trip because of tensions between him and the in-laws. While the family are away, Church is found dead on Jud’s front lawn, presumably another road-kill victim. Jud leads Louis past the Pet Sematary, to an ancient Micmac burial ground and instructs him to bury the cat there. Afterwards, he urges Louis to keep the incident a secret. The next day, the cat is back, but its nature is markedly different. Tragedy soon strikes again and this time Gage is killed by a speeding truck. Will Louis’ grief drive him to the burial ground again? I first read this novel in 1983, when I was 15. The ending made the hairs rise up on the nape of my neck and the story stayed with me ever since. It was a treat to read it again after so many years.

The characters are rich and there are some brilliantly described passages, particularly the long trek through the woods, where the loons howl in the distance. There are also lines of narrative and dialogue in both the book and faithful 1989 movie adaptation that resonate in the memory: ‘Each buries his own … The soil of a man’s heart is stonier … A man grows what he can and tends it … What you buy is what you own … And what you own, always comes home to you.’

This is one of King’s best stories about tragedy, loss, bereavement, and the high price that can come from giving in to temptation.

Don’t be tempted to mess with burial grounds – Micmac or otherwise. As Jud Crandall warns: “What you put up there, isn’t what comes back. Sometimes, dead is better.”

Stephen King sets the tone for this story brilliantly from the beginning: Death is a mystery and burial a secret.

Pet Sematary is an eerie, morbid pleasure.

Here’s to your bones!

Impediments (Sonnet Trilogy #1) , by Lee Holz:

Opening with a celebration on June 5, 1970, Gerard Letrange, on his 35th birthday, sits in contemplative mood as he looks across Lake Geneva. He reflects on his life so far, as he prepares to attend a family get-together in his honor. He was born into a privileged and financially secure family in the banking sector. His friends are similarly affluent and their lives and interactions are recounted here over two decades, as their personalities are forged through a periodic series of dances, study, chess, swimming, tennis, discussions on the popular culture of the day, hiking, poker games, college fraternities, the passions, pains and desires of the transition from youth to adulthood, along with the imposed manners and etiquette of high-society living, where people drive Rolls Royce cars and smoke Montechristo cigars.
Will these friends and lovers remain as such as time progresses and they strive to secure lucrative careers and positions in the world?
What changes will settling into marriage and domesticity bring to them?
Will life hold up to their high standards and expectations?
This is the first book of a trilogy that sets the stage for the next two books in the series: Alteration and True Minds.
Although a gentler story than his first two hard-edged Tom Bowin thrillers (The Abomination Assignment and The Honeymoon Assignment), this is another story that is thoughtful and accomplished in detail, pans out over separate continents and takes in a variety of well developed characters in an interesting period drama. I admire authors who don’t get mired down in one particular pattern of writing and what has impressed me about this book is that author, Lee Holz, has tackled different genres with equal skill.

Christine, by Stephen King:

Ever wondered about those guys who say: “I love my car”, and look like they really mean it? Have you ever sympathized with wives and girlfriends who had a pained expression on their face as they complained: “He loves that car more than me”?
Christine is a 1958 Plymouth Fury, as red as the blood spilt during every term of ownership, in one of author Stephen King’s best horror stories about man’s abiding passion for cars, the need for speed, a greedy jealous love, and an obsession that turns into possession.
Arnie Cunningham is a lonely dork, bullied and rejected at school because of his looks and demeanor, in a plot thread reminiscent of King’s earlier book, Carrie, with the tormented being pushed to breaking point and taking bloody revenge on their tormentors. In Christine, the bullies are rebel Buddy Repperton and his gang, who torture weaker kids whenever they get the chance. Arnie’s only friend is football playing jock, Dennis Guilder, who narrates the story as a witness to the unfolding horror and ensuing tragedy. Arnie’s talent and passion is for auto-mechanics and he yearns for his own set of wheels. When he sees Christine, rusting and rotting away, in caustic old timer Roland D. Lebay’s driveway, it’s love at first sight.
Unknown to Arnie, Christine is possessed by a malign evil force that at first seduces and then destroys every owner.
Arnie’s attitude changes with his taste in clothes. His mood becomes darker and belligerent as he fixes up Christine, wins the most lusted-after girl in school, Leigh Cabot, and then alienates both his parents and Dennis.
For a while, Christine becomes the only good thing in Arnie’s life. She makes him feel invincible. But, like some bad people in society; the narcissistic, the sociopathic, those with no conscience who use, discard when there’s nothing left, then move on to the next victim, Christine is spiteful, seductively evil and relentless in her quest to take her owners on a fast ride straight to hell.It was filmed and directed by John Carpenter in 1983 and still stands as one of the most memorable movies of that decade, with an effective soundtrack and some great moments, particularly in the scene where the car rebuilds itself as Arnie watches on, and other scenes where the car communicates via the lyrics of rock ‘n’ roll songs from the era it was built.
Like Arnie points out: the thing about love … it eats … it has a voracious, all-consuming appetite, leaving no room for anything or anyone else.How far will you go for your love?


When you look at that prized possession in your life, that which Stephen King might have referred to in another of his stories as a “needful thing”, ask yourself a question:
do you own it, or does it own you?

Megan’s Way, by Melissa Foster:

Beginning in Cape Cod, 1988, Megan and Holly are teenagers and best friends enjoying the lights and laughter of a carnival. Acting on impulse, they find themselves inside the tent of an old psychic woman who delivers them a cryptic and chilling premonition. Spooked by what they hear, the two girls flee from the carnival.
Time then skips forward to 2009. Megan is now 38-years-old and a single mother earning a living as a freelance artist, as she raises her 14-year-old daughter, Olivia. Megan is gravely ill. The cancer she had once beaten has returned with a vengeance and she knows instinctively that her time is short. Faced with her own imminent mortality, and the prospect of the end coming sooner than she wanted, she must deal with the problem of who is to be Olivia’s guardian after her death.
Author Melissa Foster is a fearless writer who has produced a highly-charged emotional roller-coaster that will break readers’ hearts, as they progress through the story, and are made aware of the best and worst of human emotions and behavior. The author tackles controversial and sadly only too real issues, particularly in the part when Megan has to rescue Olivia from the clutches of a predatory rapist who has stalked her via an internet chat-room. This is an important issue: to raise parents’ awareness of the potential dangers of children being allowed to surf the internet, and the need to protect them from deviants who prowl cyberspace and hide behind avatars and aliases.
This is also a story of pain on duel levels: with one focus being on the physical and emotional agony that terminal illness brings, not only for the victim, but also the anguish experienced by close family and friends. This is coupled with the drama of the guilt the characters have over decisions they have made in the past, and the consequential stress of whether they should reveal these secrets to each other.
There are many themes for discussion: the many stages of life, those we meet and fall in love with along the way, the complexities of human relationships, the pain of illness, the mystery of death … including the transition of the soul after.
The overall message is that love overcomes all pain, and that death, no matter how agonizing and lingering, is only a temporary separation from those who have passed before and are waiting for us to follow them to that ultimately better place.
Nothing in this world lasts forever. Sooner or later, death takes all those we are closest to. It’s how we choose to come to terms and deal with that period of temporary loss and separation that is important.
The story includes an interview with the author, and a list of eight questions that make this story an excellent choice for post-reading discussions in book clubs.

War of the Worlds (2005):

This is Steven Spielberg doing what he does best: the action blockbuster.

What makes Spielberg’s movies stand out from the usual predictable dross is the attention to detail, and the high quality of the performances and script.

Against the backdrop of an alien invasion we see a dysfunctional family finally pull together and work out their differences in the face of adversity.Almost all of us have a favourite book from our childhood. Mine is The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells. I loved Jeff Wayne’s version on double-album vinyl (now audio CD), liked the 1953 movie adaptation, even though the tripods became flying machines and there were many important book plot points missing from the simplified movie script. A gem of a movie is The Night That Panicked America (1975), Joseph Sargent’s TV movie, based on the true story of Orson Welles’ live radio broadcast, on October 30, 1938.


Welles recreated the story of War of the Worlds so convincingly that many believed the martians had indeed landed, resulting in a nationwide panic.

Welles is brilliantly played by Paul Shenar. To date this movie has been overlooked for a DVD release, to the chagrin of many fans.


Spielberg’s adaptation has excellent performances from all the cast: Tom Cruise as dock worker, Ray Ferrier, an “everyman” struggling to keep strained relations with his ex-wife Mary Anne (Miranda Otto), his son Robbie (Justin Chatwin), and daughter, Rachel (Dakota Fanning). Tim Robbins plays Harlan Ogilvy, a deranged survivalist who gives Ray and Rachel shelter in his basement.
There are also notable cameos by Lisa Ann Walter, as Cheryl, and Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, as the grandparents who appear briefly at end of the movie and were both the stars of the 1953 movie.
Despite the story being updated, it’s still a more faithful adaptation of the book, including in this version the “red weed”, a fast-growing organism the Martians let loose to spread across the surface of the earth, fertilized by human blood, in order to make the surface of our world resemble their own planet.
Just as many sci-fi stories, particularly of the 1950’s, were symbolic of the paranoia of Communism, in this movie there are visual and spoken references to 9/11 and our fears of terrorism. In the middle of a bright, seemingly-ordinary day, the world is changed forever by an attack that has come with no warning and has devastating results. Victims are reduced to dust, incinerated by the Martian’s “heat ray”.
The atmosphere is suitably ominous throughout and some of the images, like the initial attack, seem to strike from nowhere, particularly the scenes in which dead bodies float by on the lake and a runaway train thunders by with every carriage ablaze.
This is a more superior and intelligent modern sci-fi movie than many that have come and gone over recent years, with superb special effects, and a story that concentrates more on the dynamic of human relationships.
There are some nice touches: the dockside crane that Ray operates at his job is remarkably similar to the tripods; the earth and its micro-organisms defeat the Martians after mankind has been defeated, pushing out the alien invaders in much the same way that Rachel informs Ray that her hand will push out the splinter and, as Ogilvy points out: “Occupations always fail.”

Also recommended:
The Day That Panicked America The H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds Scandal (2005), a documentary covering Orson Welles radio broadcast and its aftermath. Included with the DVD is a CD with the original audio broadcast.