Here is the Thank You: Sincerely, to all who entered the Goodreads Giveaways for Blue Girl and the Stars, and The Scarecrow (Volume four of the Dark Tales of the Civil War series) I very much appreciate it! And, as usual, to those who won, Happy Reading. I hope you are enjoying the stories.
I had posted earlier (weeks ago) with a Thank you, but took it down after a few days.
Why? I realized, or felt at least, that I had gone off in too many different directions. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy letting things roll and just going with it. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I go off on various tangents. But I just felt like it was too much with the last one.
Anyway, I did mention in that post that I had stumbled across a handful of SCUBA diving mysteries. If you’re into that sort of thing (as I am), here are the books. Each of these books is part of a series. I’ll just list the first book in each series and let you explore the rest:
Swimming with the Dead (Hannah Sampson series) by Kathy Brandt
In Deep (Fin Fleming series) by Sharon Ward
The Girl Beneath the Sea (Sloan McPherson series) by Andrew Mayne
I had never read any of these authors before.
All of these books are good, and each has a female protagonist. I couldn’t help thinking of Sue Grafton’s character Kinsey Millhone while I was reading about Hannah Sampson. A reviewer of Sharon Ward’s book stated that Fin Fleming was reminiscent of Kinsey Millhone, so I guess that is true also. I don’t recall whether Kinsey ever donned a wetsuit and SCUBA tank, but I’ve only read up through the letter ‘I’ of Grafton’s alphabet mystery series, and that was a long while back.
Mayne’s Sloan McPherson is awesome. She doesn’t mind diving into the muck (Read the creepy first few pages to see what I mean. I’ll stick to clear, open water, thank you; I like to be able to see what’s swimming around me). Sloan is tough, and super hilarious. Her thoughts and witticisms had me cracking up the whole way through the book.
Not knocking the other two authors, but it was obvious two chapters into Andrew Mayne’s book that he towers above the other two as far as experience as an author goes.
I encourage you to check out all three authors, especially if you are into diving. All of the diving scenes were great. You are right there, underwater, fully immersed in the depths (pun intended).
Used to be pretty much the only SCUBA mystery/thriller out there was Peter Benchley’s The Deep. I do love The Deep (both book and movie). I also enjoyed reading Benchley’s book Jaws. Though it probably isn’t a good idea to read Jaws just prior to a dive–or a basic ocean swim, for that matter. Wonder if Jaws was ever on the list for a Top Summer Beach Read? Hmm. . .
Okay, there are the Clive Cussler books . . .
I’ll discuss those books in another post. Right now, I’m simply talking about normal humans (characters), not super humans like Dirk Pitt.
I did touch on Clive in the post I took down, and went into much more detail on him and about these books.
I also spoke of how I had been in a fog (which I went on to relate to Chief Bromden’s fog from Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Like I said, I was all over the place) and had not sat down to do any writing.
Since it is Halloween, I’ll share (as in Copy and Paste and then italicize) a little bit of what I had written in that post (the one I took down) that is apropos:
But, why don’t I sit down and start? That’s it. That is all I have to do. I just have to sit down and start typing.
Heck, I’ve got the next scene of the partial story from the last post floating around in my head. It is as though there is a finger in my brain scratching at the inside of my skull (Hmm . . . there’s a thought for the beginning of a horror story), trying to capture my attention. Why am I ignoring that finger?
***
Anyway, Thank You again to all who entered the Goodreads Giveaways for my books. I really do appreciate it.
Anyone up for being my Dive Buddy? Hee hee. Really, I’m harmless. Just having fun. I did order the shirt though.