My Goodreads Review of "Killing the Blues", by Michael Brandman

Robert B. Parker's Killing The Blues by Michael Brandman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought this was a great addition to the Jesse Stone series. I agree that Michael Brandman captured the late Robert Parker's style very well, and he does his portrayal of the character justice. Jesse Stone is a flawed character with enough virtues to balance out his flaws a little, unlike the character in the tv movies. I think he's written a bit too much on the miserable side for tv, but that's just my opinion. The story was solid from beginning to end, with just enough of the relationships between Jesse, Molly, and Suitcase featured to flesh out the characters. It was nice to see some of the other recurring characters as well (Gino Fish and councilman Hasty, for example) written with most of their nuances intact. I did miss Sunny Randall, as it seems that Mr. Brandman is choosing a different direction than Mr. Parker was going with Jesse's personal life. But if the future stories are as good as this one was, I think I'll get over it.

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I'm ba-a-a-ck...

Hi all,

I just came back from 3 days in the Poconos with my sweetie for our anniversary.   The cabin we stayed at was beautiful, and the scenery was too nice for words.   I'm attaching a few pictures.   I hope this works.   They really don't do the place justice, though.

Saturday morning view from the cabin

Our cabin the other side of the brook

The other news of note is that the book contest over at Dream (http://dreamonus.com) is finished, and I got the names of the winners this morning.  They are:
Antane Armstrong of Bloomington,IN
Sabrena Pattat of Anderson,IN
Gary Green of Satellite Beach, FL
and Holly Markoski of Shillington,PA

Congratulations to the winners, and a big thanks to everyone else who entered!  There were over a hundred entries, which honestly was a lot more than I thought I'd get.  I hope people stay this interested in it!

Until next time...

Greetings from.....

Sorry for being away for so long (is it really almost a month?)  An unhealthy level of insanity at the job which supports my writing habit and a lack of interesting things to say have kept me on the blogging sidelines.  A few notes this week, though.
As of this morning I had 81 people entered in the drawing to win one of 4 copies of Treos Dilemma on dream.com.  That surprised the hell out of me, because that's 81 more people than I expected!  I'm so happy about the turnout that I've decided to make them autographed copies.  The drawing goes off on April 15, so if you haven't entered yet, please do!
I've been selling copies of the other two books by hand through very limited word of mouth lately, and I've gotten some pretty nice feedback on them.  I've been told more than once that "I don't usually read science fiction, but I liked your book."  And to me, that's a pretty nice compliment.
And finally, I'm still having trouble getting my head around this myself, but I just got finished doing my first interview as an author!  It was with a blogger named Patti Roberts, and as soon as she sends me the exact link, I'll be sure to get it posted.  I tried to be funny, without coming off like too much of an ass.  I hope I succeeded.
Until next time....