Mortal Thoughts?

Yep, blatant self promotion here, ladies and gentlemen.

Award Winning Author!

Yes folks, it's official, I can now call myself that. Carnal Machines the steam punk erotica anthology I was part of last May, has just won the gold medal for Erotica in the Independent Publisher Awards!

Sweet!

Well done to all my fellow writers who contributed and thanks to D L King for putting it all together. You all rock!

First we get the Hustler seal of approval, now this. Wow!

Note to self, must write more erotica...

I was sitting in work at my day job, bored out of my tiny, inputting stats when the only person I see outside of the hell hole comes bounding into the room like an over eager St Bernard.

"Happy Easter!" he says, and with a flourish produces a childs Cybermen lunchbox full of Suchard chocolates. I laughed out loud. It was so unexpected and crazy and fun and just what I needed to brighten my day.

So thank you, John, you get a blog mention for cheering me up. It's great when people know what you like and go out of their way to make it happen.

In other new, my website did not want to be updated this month, but after some fiddling about it's done. The lastest chapter (11) of Lean Times is up for your edification. Feel free to drop round and have a gander. I'm currently writing chapter 13 so I'm staying ahead of myself - just - though you may still find the odd spelling or grammatical error, it will get ironed out in the final edit.

I've begun a second play through of Mass Effect 3 and am enjoying it much more now I've found out where most things are. The maps don't work so well as the way point guide in Mass Effect 2 and since the devs descovered ladders, sometimes getting to your objective can be a pain. The multiplayer side has been a steep learning curve to someone used to stopping the action to take stock of where things are on the playing field and having to hope the real live people populating the avatars back your play instead of having your controllable team mates has been... problematic, to borrow a phrase from one of the characters in the main game. But I'm enjoying the fast paced variation on my favourite theme, nevertheless. I am also one of the few who didn't expect a happy ending and am not to troubled by what I experienced in the single player game. Though it will be interesting to see if the company (Bioware) decides to cave to fan pressure and make alternative endings to please them/us.

Easter, as previously mentioned, and a few days away from the day job are just around the corner and I'm looking forward to some more writing and gaming in the small hours, when I work and think best, without having stop and turn in because I have to get up at the crack of dawn to do the work that brings in the pay cheque at the end of the month.

Life is okay right now and I'm enjoying it well enough, now if it would just get a little warmer it would be perfect.

Enough already. More later when I have real news to report. Thanks for sticking with me. 5000 plus visitors to my website can't all be wrong. I owe ya.

“Hello darkness my old friend,
I’ve come to speak with you again.”
(The Sound of Silence)

Simon & Garfunkle didn’t know how truly they wrote. Many of us listen to their sad song and identify with it instinctively. How many of us commune with the night and feel more at home there, but lost in over bright daylight? The sparkle and glitter of the neon in our very own Summer Night City noir give us a sense of purpose and excitement that the cold light of day (and reality?) often lack. We dress and act differently, take risks we would never countenance, allowing ourselves the leeway we would never take, the gamble we would never venture and confidence we lack by day. A timid mouse in daylight is a confident adventurer behind the mask of makeup or a keyboard and monitor when darkness falls. Or perhaps we are even more of what we are by day? Larger than life? We get to act out our dearest dreams and darkest fantasies under cover of night that we could never do in reality or by day because the law or moralities are very different then.

It’s true that we must sometimes live with the consequences of our actions by day when the payment falls due, but most of us live a double life where never the twain shall meet.

I am no different. I find getting up early for my day job a chore, do my best work at night - whether it be painting a picture, laying a floor, writing a story or playing a game. My body clock is eminently suited to it.

The point of this digression? I have spent the better part of the last two weeks playing Mass Effect 3. Even with the difficult to swallow ending of the trilogy documenting Shepherd’s fight to save the galaxy (but who really wanted it to end? It was never going to be a an easy sell, no matter what they did) I am still in love with this game franchise. It took just a shade under 50 hours to complete the entire single player campaign and side missions. I enjoyed the final journey and will be making it again.

I have also put in a good few hours to the new multiplayer mode which has opened my eyes. The concept of sacrifice which loomed so large in the single player game was just as strong here, with players having to watch one another’s backs and saving them from death or keeping a look out while one hacked a computer terminal for vital data and was unable to protect themselves. I’ve never considered myself a team player in the real world, but I found myself hovering protectively over the new kids with less games under their belts or characters whose armour and weaponry was not as strong as mine, reviving those who went down then standing over them and blazing away at the enemy while they recovered enough to rejoin me to be oddly cathartic. And very unlike me. What makes it more interesting is that these are all complete strangers. And having the favour returned while I was learning the ropes was equally impressive. The players who figured out what I was doing without the ability to chat and backed my play outweighed the obvious cheaters who blazed into the game with supposedly 250 games under their belt yet died every five minutes on the lowest level and were only concerned with their kill ratio…

Hence my lack of blogging.

But the gaming coupled with having a real life and a day job hasn’t stopped me writing. Far from it. The sequel to my crime novel Personal Protection - Lean Times - has just passed the 100 page mark. You can catch the latest chapter on my website. I can feel closure to this one approaching. I think this will be the year I complete it. I am also waiting on the replies to some anthology queries where I have stories submitted while continuing to scribble more.

So don’t think I’ve forgotten you all. I drop by and read your blogs and I’ve been around but I’ve been living a different life as the saviour of the galaxy and that has been more interesting than the real world! But I’ve come back down to earth now, so to quote Arnie; “I’ll be back.” Soon.

So I've been promising to get this out there and not being the world's most prolific blogger, it has taken an aeon as usual to put fingers to keyboard but here it is.

For the second month running I have been under the weather with another cold. Not (thankfully) as bad as the last and on its way out now, but it has left me with a stiff neck (probably whiplash from all those violent sneezes) and shooting pains down the same side as my neck stiffness extending to my shoulder and arm. This has made me swear off any intensive keyboard activity including gaming, outside of my day job. So I've been a bit conspicuous by my absence everywhere. However a new chapter of Lean Times has gone up on the website and another is ready to follow it next month both written during my week off in January and I'm working on a further one which will get typed up when the painkillers kick in. Better living through chemistry! You heard it first here - cold and flu medicine brings out your creative side. Though to be fair it's probably all the caffeine rather than the aspirin and paracetamol that's to blame. (Note to self buy more Rockstar energy drinks.)

My niece just passed her driving test today - congrats Zoe! Yes, you now have your own entry on my website. See what happens when you ask to be one of the first readers of my novel? Now the world knows your name, or at least my little corner of it. Drive carefully and take care of that car your dad bought you.

And get well soon, sister mine, we may seldom see eye to eye but I don't think anyone deserves to be ill as often as you.

So what is next?

Hopefully better health, more writing, more gaming (really looking forward to Mass Effect 3 next month) and a little more mural painting (the double whammy of illness and freezing weather has stymied work on the last two panels). 2011 wasn't a great year for the number of my publications and most of those were contracts for reprints or conversions to e-book format some of which I hope will see the light of day in 2012. I'm especially hoping to get some new work sold this year, but as submission calls are a bit thin on the ground right now I'll have to concentrate on marketing some of my works to small and e-presses myself. I need to get Lean Times finished and ship shape and see if I can get that out there. I suspect this year Blighty will be too overwhelmed with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games to be much interested in anything else, but perhaps there are a few sport haters like myself and anti- monarchists like myself who have time for other concerns, so never say never and all that.

Consider yourselves updated. Apologies for the delay. A real blog will be forthcoming just as soon as I can think of something worthwhile to write about.

I’m not believer in New Years Resolutions. I’ve never kept those I’ve made and can’t seem to work up any guilt for not having done so. This arse end of the year when it’s cold, miserable and dark does not inspire in me the same desire to make myself over or catch up on things I should have done as - say, my birthday - when I am really a year older and supposedly wiser (though I have found it just means a year creakier and crankier) than some arbitrary point in the celestial calendar that the powers that be have declared the start of a year. It’s not the start of my year, it’s just the continuation of it three months later. True, the world des not revolve around me, but like Zaphod Beeblebrox I suppose I wish it did.


Christmas was okay for me this year. Traditionally, Christmas Eve is depressing, when I spend too much time alone dwelling on the people I’ve lost to death in my life, marinading and basting the meat that will form our Christmas day dinner, watching Patrick Stewart’s version of A Christmas Carole or going out with a few friends to find there is no atmosphere in any of our haunts and the other ‘revellers’ get up and go has got up and went as much as ours. This is usually followed by a titanic argument about next to nothing on Christmas Day. This year one friend and I went out to a five course Chinese banquet at our favourite Chinese restaurant The Ocean Palace and had a damn go time and the Christmas Day minefield was negotiated without a single family spat. The rest of my holiday season was all about kicking back, staying up all hours, sleeping late, god food and occasional good company.

New Year was less fun. By 30th December I was back at work and the cold from hell had me in its slimy grip. I toasted in the new year chimes and fireworks at midnight bundled up in flannel shirts and sweaters with a mug of Lemsip reading text messages from friends in similar straights while playing a point and click game that was all my exploding head and stuffed up reflexes would allow. At about that time I was wishing the Mayan’s were right and the world was about to end because I felt like complete crap.

I haven’t therefore been as productive as I might have been in the writing stakes. The next chapter of Lean Times is still languishing in my head rather than my PC or laptop and thus my website. Please accept my apologies. Rest assured that when it does come it will probably be a gusher. But have patience. I’ve printed off all 72 pages so far and am re-reading where were at and pulling all the disparate strands together as well as editing so I’m hoping you’ll see some real developments in the next post. Watch this space. Once its on the website, I’ll let you know.

The good news is that I am once more back in good health, though now of course everyone around me is in the throws of the cold - apart from the ones who gave it to me now!

So while it’s been late coming, happy new year to you all. Now let’s just hope those Mayan’s were wrong…

Life is a lemon and I want my money back. Thus sang Meatloaf (courtesy of Jim Steinman) and there are days when I second that emotion completely. Today is not quite one of them, but most of the Monday’s in my life have the dubious pleasure becoming that way.

When the nights start drawing in and the cold nibbles at your ankles even though you are practically sitting in the damn gas fire in your living room. When you want to do stuff but your body clock keeps insisting its too much trouble and its tired and you should hibernate. When the room you need to work in is unheated and you can see your breath in the air so its hard to motivate yourself to write…

And yet… the very things that put you off starting are the selfsame that inspire you. The freezing fog outside your window cries out for a horror story or a murder mystery. The floods? A disaster movie with daring heroes and heroines saving small children and cute dogs from the deluge. The howling wind makes one dream of wings of clashing brass and steam powered machines all gleaming pistons, fighting against all odds to get airborne and make history. Then of course there is Christmas, always a time to inspire stories of any stripe.

I have recently been motivated to complete paintings and odd jobs by my best friend and it has occurred to me that such motivation has been lacking in my writing for a while. The fire that used to make me write novels has been banked or is being burned up on other things. (Gaming?) I find I cannot even motivate myself to complete the short stories I have on going never mind full length tales. Time was, there was so much crap in the literary world that I almost had to write my own stuff to appease that “Where is my kind of person represented in fiction?” feelings. But reading less and gaming more has left me with more time to be choosy and buying less fiction so that what I do purchase fulfils that narrow criteria better. I don’t even need it as a therapeutic aid. Killing pixillated villains satisfies my bloodlust in a way that writing never did. While standing screaming at the top of my lungs or breaking things has been relegated to the past where no one can consider me unhinged. Hell, an estimated seven out of ten people play computer or console games in Britain. I’m not even in the minority any more. (Though being female and over 45 still places me in a smaller group than most.)

My friend and muse was also in large part responsible for elevating my writing from the dilettante to professional status having me read him what I’d written and suggesting better ideas or ways of saying what I needed to say. This coupled with the bloody-minded perseverance to keep entering writing competitions until I won one landed me with a second career I’d given less serious thought to than the idea I might be a rock star as a teen. Perhaps I wasn’t prepared for the graft of marketing and promoting, having been trained as a designer to work in advertising and coming from an era when such things were done by the publishers and booksellers through advertising rather than the authors themselves. All the arrangements were made for you, you just turned up on the day at the appointed hour and did your thing then retired to the nice hotel suite they’d booked you and got paid. Having hitched my wagon to a small publisher I enede up paying out more money to attend the functions they had us partly devise and arrange than I got paid for writing my magnum opus and the shine wore off pretty fast after that. While it didn’t stop me from writing, it changed my approach; it’s no accident that the greater part of my published work now takes place in other countries where I am not required to drop by the local bookshop and sign my work only to watch everyone ignore it on the shelves or pay to travel hundreds of miles only to have someone else hog my air/face time while the reading I’d panned gets cut to less than three minutes. (Bitter, who me? Damn right!)

So where do I go from here? A good question. New Year is always a good time to re-evaluate our lives and I am no exception. (Though I confess I usually feel more energised to do things on my birthday month of October than the bleak midwinter.) If I can manage to be motivated to finish paintings I have had hanging around for nearly seven years while I concentrated on my writing career surely I can be motivated to finish novels and short stories that have lain idle far less long too? I have always abhorred procrastination. The games will still be waiting on my hard drive when I come back, perhaps with a new appreciation for them. I won’t have lost anything but I might have gained much. After all I've just posted this second blog in as many weeks - something of a departure for me. Perhaps I am getting my words back. Perhaps I do still have something to say. Perhaps that's what the new year holds in store? We shall see.

Here we are at the start of a new month and just weeks away from Christmas and I’m sure many of you are wondering what to buy for your best beloved. Is she a reader? Then wonder no more.

Yes, yours truly has been nose deep in paperback fiction to provide you with reviews so you don’t have to wonder if that new book you‘ve seen is any good. So what book am I raving about this time?

As you know, I don’t make a habit of telling you about these things unless I have been gifted with a free copy or what I have bought is very, very good. (Unless I’m trying to finesse my way into an anthology and/or help my own publications along!) This I am happy to tell you falls into the former category. It is simply superb.

If you have any money set aside for stocking fillers this year go and by a copy of Catherine Lundoff’s A Day At The Inn A Night At The Palace. This collection of her short non-erotica stories is a feast of delicious prose, delightful heroines and lesbian derring-do. If I have any complaints it is that there are never enough pages when a collection is this good and with the exception of one story that didn’t work for me, I don’t have enough adjectives to adequately praise the superlative tales to the levels they deserve. No higher praise would be wishing I’d wrote the damn thing myself and almost - but only almost, mind - being jealous of this much talent in one place.

The sole story I am not in love with is The Egyptian Cat which sadly starts off the collection. Edging too far into Abbott & Costello meets Wolfman farce territory the intended humour is a bit heavy handed and never quite hits the mark. The addition of a minor bit of nudity feels tossed in to an otherwise juvenile tale, better suited to teens. This could put off browsing readers who would miss the hidden gems further within.

From the Letter of Marque the pace never lets up. It is here that Catherine’s love affaire with history shines through in stories that ring with verisimilitude. You are effortlessly transported from the 15th to 16th century of Will Shakespeare’s smarter twin sister, to 17th century female pirates and Opera players to the 1800’s in the Regency era, to fights of pure fantasy not out of place in a Dragon Lance anthology.

You are right there in every story; feeling the protagonists pain, the cold, the fleas, the dirt, the hunger, the lust and the longing. You’re rooting for the heroines and hoping they’ll find a way to overcome their personal demons or the times in which they live to win their fair ladies or be won by them. And you won’t even mind that most of these tales have happy endings because they are all so well done that by the end all you want to know is what happens next.

Was the story of how Amelie and her beau went to court in Paris ever written? (M Le Maupin). I find myself hoping so. Did the aliens invade in the wonderful film noire pastiche? (Red Scare). What I find myself hoping for the most is that there will soon be another collection of stories from this fine writer, who must surely soon be as well known for her adventure fiction as her super-sexy erotica. (Speaking of which, if you’re looking for a little present for yourself you could do worse than buy Nights Kiss, also by Catherine from Lethe Press…)

Though I was put off by a cover I personally found a bit creepy, I’m glad I overcame my prejudice to purchase this great collection. This book makes you believe in power of a happy ending. But don’t just take my word for it, go out and buy it for yourself.

It’s way too easy to fall victim to writer’s block, procrastination, or just being too damn busy with other things, so here is my monthly ‘kick in the pants and write something even if there isn’t much to report’ blog.

I’ve just updated my website with the latest real news and a completely newly written chapter seven of Lean Times, the sequel to my novel Personal Protection. Please feel free to drop by and have a gander. Make a little more time than usual though, as this chapter is a wee bit longer than many of the foregoing.

The contract for Untreed Press has gone off now. So hopefully we’ll see Periphery and my tale Mind Games in electronic print again soon.

I’ve just done a RAM upgrade on my elderly six year old laptop. One of the memory modules (the eagle eyed and long memoried among you may recall I had one of these replaced professionally at about this time last year) had failed. (Not the one I had replaced.) I decided it was time I learned how to do the job myself, so a crash course and a screwdriver later, I’ve fed it a full gigabyte and it seems very happy and speedy again. Now if I could just find a free security programme that updates with Google instead of Internet Explorer 8 that it likes…

I’m painting again (pictures, not DIY). Again, for those of you with long memories, you may recall I am a qualified graphic designer and spent the better part of five years in college, following school, getting qualifications in fine art, communication studies, photography, typography, computer aided design and general advertising. After initially doing this as my day job I realised the pressure involved in the trade was not for me and quit to do something less stressful and saved the creative stuff for personal time. (Then I went off and got into gaming as a tester and player and writing books as well as my day job, so you can see how that turned out! Guess I just wasn‘t cut out to relax.)

So the work… After a fit of decorating one of my rooms became a repository of the clothes, shoes, coats and other crap one needs to live that I could no longer bear to have crowding out my space in my bedroom, but being me, I couldn’t just have a walk in closet as that offended my butch sensibilities. So it's all packed away in wardrobes and cupboards in this room. But that seemed… dull. And so I stripped down one wall, painted an elaborate frame partitioned into four panels, whitewashed each one and began painting a mural. The fourth panel of the mural in my dressing room which has been a large black oblong for the better part of two years (after I started and painted it out twice) has now blossomed into the final part of my seasons/horoscope/times of the day women pictures. Constant nudges by friends and family and taking my own advice about not procrastinating, have shown me that I haven’t lost the knack and can still paint. When it’s done I’ll post the images as proof. This doesn’t mean I’ve jacked in the writing and gone back to art! But maybe there is room in my life for both after all. I’ve felt energised by this and am currently spending my Sunday afternoons working on the four foot by two and a half foot stretch of wall that now has a stormy dawn background, a rainbow, a Chinese woman’s profile and all kinds of math, language and scientific symbols oozing out of it! I figure about three more full afternoons should see her part done then I need a few retouch afternoons on the rest and the bottom part of the frame to finish the entire thing. I figure this will see me through till the new year. The acrylics I’m using like cool weather and stay malleable longer, so while I may have to wreck a pair of fingerless gloves so my hands don’t cramp up in the final stages and I have less natural light to do it in as the nights draw in, I’m really energised about this project. (This doesn’t mean I’m going to paint that medusa picture for you any time soon, John! But never say never and all that!)

But one creative thing leads to another for me. I tiled the back wall in the downstairs bathroom and have been working on the newel post of the banister rail on my landing, since the last thing I can stand is an Anne Maurice beige house! This thing is now a fantasia of red, gold, bronze, black and copper metallic paint and reminds me of the woodwork in The Forbidden Palace. I may roll this out to the whole banister rail and uprights if I like the final effect. (The colour scheme is in keeping with the boarders and carpet.) And all this when I had a couple of weeks leave from the day job.

Yeah, I know, I’m a writer, do you really need to hear all this? What relevance does it have to that, I hear you say? Well, the life of the mind is pretty damn important to us scribblers; the places we go and the things we do inspire us to write something. But the weather is about to take a turn for the worse so most of us won’t be going as many places to get inspired. I see we are in the nanowrimo month and know there are plenty of aspiring writers out there trying for the illusive 50,000 words. To them I say, everything in the world is your inspiration. Discount nothing! Get it down on paper or PC. You can edit it later, just get it down! I wish you all the best of luck in your endeavours. And if you need any help, here I am. Ask.

And so its your birthday,
And what have you done?
Another year over, a new one just begun.

Pardon me pinching from and paraphrasing John Lennon. Yesterday was my 48th year on this earth, and as usual I’ve been reviewing all I’ve accomplished and all I’ve yet to do. It’s good that I have accomplished anything, I don’t feel completely useless, but I know there is so much more I want to achieve before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

One lesson I’ve learned, that I would pass on to those younger than me, is do it when it is presented to you and don’t wait and think you’ll get round to it someday in the future, whatever it might be. Procrastination is one of the biggest crimes again the self. When you get older you ache more, its harder to motivate yourself and the learning curve is that much steeper for the things that used to be easy or that you took for granted. If you get an opportunity to do something which requires learning or physicality do it there and then, never put it off for some unspecified time in the future. While the pay off is greater later in life, because it took you more sweat to accomplish it, it is that much harder and you can do that much less. And there is no guarantee that you will be able to succeed later. You may have to settle for second best rather than first place because you left it too late.

It may sound like an obvious thing to say. And I may be making myself out to be an old crock well before my time. Don’t get me wrong there is still life left in the old dog yet! But I do have more aches and pains than I did twenty years ago. I do have problems getting up in the morning. I do have difficulty motivating myself to do the more physical tasks that have to be done. In an age where we are more likely to be sedentary, using computers in our work and leisure time, travelling in our minds rather than getting up and going there, (and don’t think this doesn’t suit the governments. A population fixed in one place is easier to control - look at the old USSR) this cannot be emphasised enough. Nike may have been right when they employed the advertising slogan; “Just do it!” (In moderation, of course. We’re not talking about a Crowley-esque society where; “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” here.) The bitter truth is that there will never be enough time for everything you want to do. So you should cram as much of it into now as you can. There may not be a tomorrow, but there sure is a today. Make the most of every moment and you’ll never have any regrets.

As I approach my first half century, I can honestly say I have enjoyed most of my life (that I had any control over) and I’m looking forward to what I can do in the next half of it. It won’t be the same as the first part, that goes without saying. But I think I’m up to the challenge. Without tempting fate, bring it on! I’m ready.

After my less than satisfying, yet oh so promising experience with JoSelle Vanderhooft’s Bitten By Moonlight, I was motivated to seek out more works she had edited. She clearly has an eye for talent. As I’ve just had a piece accepted for an anthology she’s editing, I wanted to see what kind of company I’d be keeping.

Sleeping Beauty, Indeed is a stellar collection of fairytales.

Imagine you knew you were a lesbian from being a child, imagine a world where such a thing was just another choice of partner. Where eminent story tellers - the Brothers Grimm of their day - went around the land collecting up stories with not only hetero but gay and lesbian protagonists and you would have a collection just like this. Each of these stories is a feast for the senses, a whole meal in itself. The only disappointing tale is the imagined aftermath of the Hansel & Gretel tale, and even this was beautifully told if disturbing in its implications. Standout stories were the lesbian retelling of The Mute Princess and the retelling of the Pied Piper (as Coyote Kate of Camden) Future Fortunes (which was like one of the better tales of 1001 Nights) and the title story Sleeping Beauty, Indeed where we are privileged to see the tale in a whole new light from the perspective of the fairy godmother. Lethe Press should be commended for republishing this brilliant work by talented authors at the top of their game. My only complaint was it was to damn short. (Again!) Gimme more, damn it. I read the whole thing in one day from getting on the bus in the morning to my day job, in my tea break and lunch, on the bus home and the final two tales while I was waiting for dinner to cook. 154 pages of stories is not enough for this voracious reader.

Steam Powered is also sheer bloody brilliance. As a writer of lesbian steam punk myself I am only disappointed that I didn’t hear the submission call for this myself and missed the boat. As we speak I am two thirds of the way through this much more substantial read (over 300 glorious pages) and haven’t a bad word to say about it. Steel Riders is the only tale which feels out of place feeling more Cyber Punk than Steam Punk or pure futuristic science fiction, yet even this is sufficiently good enough and different enough that I can overlook it. Love in The Time Of Airships, Brilliant and the unfortunately titled Effluent Engine have been the stand out stories so far and you can be sure I’ll be looking for more work by the authors in question. Which can only be good for their continuing in this business.

The very best short stories are those that we can fit in around our busy lives and when we tune back into reality afterwards it seems a little less dull and easier to live with because we were so completely transported to another world. We’ve walked a couple of miles in someone else’s shoes and suddenly our own problems seem less insurmountable. Both of these wonderful books do that.

I highly recommend both of them and thrill with anticipation to the news that Steam Powered 2 is on the way. It really shouldn’t matter that the protagonists are lesbian when the tales are so well told. These are books that anyone should be able to enjoy if they love science fiction, steam punk or fairytales. A good tale well told transcends genre and classification and just becomes a damn good read. I urge you to go out and buy them for that very reason. They are both as close to perfection as you can get.