Singleton Hippie Art, The Crying Moon

(c) Singleton2009The Crying Moon"She sat sky highin the paisley colored night,weeping...and a zillion milesawayunder her tattered lace petticoat,rhinestone stars twinkling...the world danced.Silly little stick people..."Watercolors, pencils, ink, markers on 9 x 12 Strathmore paper...A little hippe hoo~hah whipped up the morning after the full, full moon....

'True Detectives' is a Jonathan Kellerman Book that Barely Mentions Alex Delaware

Review of TRUE DETECTIVES (Random House Audio 2009)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, Jonathan Kellerman; read by John Rubenstein

If you are expecting the usual Kellerman fare of a French bulldog-owning shrink and his gay detective friend Milo, bleeepppp . . . rewind. The TRUE DETECTIVES are half-brothers, one white and still on the force, the other black and now a PI.

Their fathers used to be squad car mates. When one is killed, the other marries the first one's wife. Mom started out a little hoochy, then married rich. So no pathology to see there, keep on walking.

First introduced in BONES, Moses Reed, the white cop, is neat, orderly, humble and serious. His half-bro Aaron Fox is hip, drives a Porsche and is a self-styled player. His friends and sources are dotted around "the business" in LA, which is handy because the two are sort of informally teamed up on a missing persons case of a young college student, which soon leads to various DBs (dead bodies, to the innocent), libidinous housewives, skeevy hookers and pimps and a missing infant presumed hideously disposed of.

The wisecracks keep coming and Kellerman's endearing habit of describing in detail the clothes each person is wearing is intact, thank goodness.

TRUE DETECTIVES only leaves you with one question. . . . Are these guys really detectives? For the longest time, they drive around in cars and mull the people and clues. All that mulling.

On the upside—Blanche the French bulldog is mentioned. She is straight-up cute.

Star Lawrence is a writer in Chandler, AZ, and can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com. She's a frequent contributor to The Book Grrl and authors the blog Do the Hopey Copey, a humorous how-to guide to handling the recession.

'Valley of Bones' Revisits Santeria-Afflicted Detective Jimmy Paz

Review of VALLEY OF BONES (Audio Editions 2005)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, Michael Gruber; read by Nick Sullivan

You are talking with a rawboned Florida woman found in a Miami hotel room where an Arab has just been thrown out of a window and her face changes for a split second, her blue eyes turning black, then back to normal. Did you see that—or not?

If you're Jimmy Paz, a devil-make-care (my stars, what an expression) detective, whose restaurateur mother is regularly "ridden" by Santeria "saints" and who tangled with a hideous witch doctor in TROPIC OF NIGHT, you know this might not be good.

Turns out Emmylou has a checkered background, starting with child abuse and murder and ending running a backwater war over Sudanese oil in her capacity as a nun. The woman had such a boring life, it's a wonder it made it to a book. But it does—in the form of four confessional notebooks she writes out for Paz to keep the devil from making her blurt out wrong information. Yes, he will do that.

Taking the notebooks from Emmylou one-by-one is her therapist, Lorna, a focused woman who is a hypochondriac and can't bear to wear a bathing suit because she is convinced she is fat. But Paz likes what he sees anyway and flirtation leads to more flirtation. Will Paz give up his University of Girls, the institution that seems to flourish between sheets, but which he credits for teaching him all the beguiling poetry he seems to know?

Lorna is not big on the University of Girls, but she is also busy trying to stay alive as "The G," various mercenaries, a rich order of nuns, a former police partner of Paz's who has found the Lord, a schizzy homeless person, and various other folks scamper around at the devil's behest. Or is it God's idea, all this? Emmylou thinks so.

How does it end? You know how to find out. But you may not look people in the eye for a while. You wouldn't want to see anything weird, would you? And then not see it?

Star Lawrence is a writer in Chandler, AZ, and can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com. She's a frequent contributor to The Book Grrl and authors the blog Do the Hopey Copey, a humorous how-to guide to handling the recession.

Singleton Hippie Art, The Whisper

(c) Singleton 2009The WhisperHe whispered to mefrom a ghost town,pale blue voicein the wind..."Look...Listen...Believe..."And on the wingsof every butterflythat passes,every breeze thatplays woodland music outside my kitchen window,I hear him still...."Vinyl LP reincarnated to send the message round and round and round....Altered archival print of The Eternity Angel embellished with the

My Pleasure to Announce . . .

I'm thrilled to say that my short story "A Woman Who Thinks" will be included in the anthology CHESAPEAKE CRIMES 4, to be published by Wildside Press in March 2010.

Will keep you posted on this. Don't have a cover yet, but here's a link to CHESAPEAKE CRIMES 3. Maybe it'll be something similar.

The Problem with Li-tra-cha

Walter Benn Michaels claims so-called "literary writers" need to make their work more about class issues and the social order of contemporary life. Michaels says they should follow the lead of David Simon, who examined such issues in the HBO show The Wire. (That's really something when a literature professor says novelists should follow the example of television writers. Particularly television writers in "crime genre." In publishing circles, many consider "literary" fiction different and somehow better than "genre" fiction. Plus, at one time, television was considered inferior to books, i.e., the "Boob Tube." Am I over killing my point about the irony? Probably. Oh, well.)

I loved The Wire. It was a great show. But I'm not sure that means we all have to emulate it. There are many types of great books. Some of them focus on class issues and contemporary social order--some of them don't. Some of them are overtly political--some of them aren't. And the ones that deal with personal or timeless issues aren't necessarily self-indulgent or boring. Besides, people who write on class issues and society are fully capable of doing so in a self-indulgent and boring way. (Read any Ayn Rand lately?)

Maybe what we're really talking about here is writing a good story. Whether it's on politics, social order, personal problems, economics or whatever. Literary novels (whatever that term means) are most memorable when they tell a good story. Regardless of topic or theme, good story rules. That's why we read books.

Singleton Hippie Art, The Psychedelic Sea, The Original

Psychedelic Sea(C) Singleton 2009SOLDHe followed the sound,guitar strings and tambourines,southern voices in the wind...knowing thatthere in the nightcrowdhe would find me,barefooted and gypsy dressed,dancing in the ocean spray...Full moons,martini moons,and a gazillion empty moonshave passed...And I gothere still...a mermaid ghost...dancing on the dunes,at the edgeofapsychedelic sea....And in