The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly or for a monthly wrap up. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme
First sinus & ear infections of the season. Pfft. I saw the doctor on Friday and the meds are working but I am miserable. I spent Saturday binge watching tv and sleeping. We are at least experiencing fall like weather. I have so many reviews to write as I felt more like reading & listening than sitting at my laptop. Stay Caffeinated.
Last Week on the Blog
Black Soul, White Heart By Hailey Edwards (audio review)
Cursed At Dawn By Heather Graham (book review)
The Darcy Secret By Kelly Miller (book review, guest reviewer)
Assistant To The Villain By Hannah Nicole Maehrer (audio review)
Burning Justice By Tee O’Fallon (audio review)
This Week on the Blog
Hemlock Island By Kelley Armstrong (book review)
Witch Of Wild Things By Raquel Vasquez Gilliland (book review)
Catch Her Death By Melinda Leigh (book review, guest reviewer)
The Brightest Fell By Seanan McGuire (audio review)
Book Tour: The Lady And The Rogue By Ruth A. Casie (audio review)
New Arrivals at the Caffeinated Cafe
Learn more:
The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
Murder at the Merton Library by Andrea Penrose
A special thanks to Penguin & Tantor Audio
Around The Blogosphere
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Save the Date! 2023 HoHoHo Readathon November 16th through 27th. Hosts needed. Sign up will post on September 29, 2023.
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Augusta follows a thirteen-year-old farm girl forced into marriage and motherhood who, after being abandoned in the city, must find a way to survive for herself and her children. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
This novel is based on my grandmother’s life. The image of her on the cover was from a 2.5×3.5 inch daguerreotype. When my aunt Ivon gave it to me, she said it was taken on her wedding day, and she was wearing her eighth-grade graduation dress. EEEK.
You went into great detail to get the setting right, especially in regard to money, life in the city, and even the emergence of home appliances. Did you do a lot of research to maintain the accuracy of the subject?
I researched life in Arkansas at the turn of the twentieth century. Finding out what it was like for the very poor in 1920s Detroit was a surprise. My mother told me that my grandmother came to Detroit wearing a feed sack as a dress.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
My father was Buddy. He told me that his mother made him share, with other children, the goodies he received when he was in the hospital. I made a point of discovering what candies were popular at the time and what toys children may have received.
What is the next book you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
My next book will be out in April 2023. Big Guy is a middle-grade children’s book. Like Black Beauty, this story is told by the horse. I trained horses and gave riding lessons for many years. The personalities that I convey are my imagining of the personalities of horses that I knew and loved.
From the author of Walking Home: Trail Stories, a gold and silver winner in the 2022 Human Relations Indie Book Award, Celia Ryker’s fiction debut is based on the true story of her grandmother, a woman who endured abuse and poverty at the turn of the twentieth century.
The historical novel begins in 1906 on a rural farm in Arkansas, where Augusta was raised on a hard-knock farm and married off to the widowed father of one of her classmates at the age of thirteen. They flee the failed cotton crops for factory work in Detroit, and Augusta must navigate city life alone as a new mother. Abandoned by her second husband, Augusta works as a waitress, but with four children to provide for, she is forced into a decision that will haunt her forever.
A Long Night Cry follows a detective searching for three missing teenage girls who places his career and loved ones at risk by refusing to only focus on finding the Senator’s daughter. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This was justice story. Part of this story was exposing corruption, power, and money among those who have it and use it to cheat the system. Additionally, to have one of my kids go missing, especially a daughter, might be my worst nightmare. Contrasting the economic and racial inequities was part of showing the injustice, and having my main character go through the trials he went through made this an agonizing story to write, believe it or not. I cannot say my personal history had nothing to do with the story. I’m a veteran of the U.S. Military and my childhood was torn apart by drug use, among other things.
What were some challenges you felt were important to defining your characters in this story?
There were so many characters, giving them their own mannerisms and habits was a challenge. I had to attach each character to real versions of someone I know. Usually, these were their opposites. The most corrupt were based on the opposite—the most stand-up people I know. It is easy to define characters when you have real people to connect them with, and then you add a little spice to the soup, and they come out with a unique flavor.
Do you think there’s a single moment in everyone’s life, maybe not as traumatic, that is life-changing?
I think most people have an all-is-lost moment. It varies of course, and some decide to throw in the towel, but this is necessary for growth and for an inception point in life. Mine was when I decided to surrender to God, others rely on friends, or the universe, but I believe most have an inception point in their life. For those who are self-destructive, I’ve heard and believe, we (because I was) hit rock bottom when we quit digging. My main character ends the novel with some surrender.
Will there be additional mysteries for Eli Ridge to solve in the future? If so, when can your fans expect the next book out?
The next Eli Ridge novel will be a revenge plot/detective blend. I’m still recovering, I feel, from this one. But Eli Ridge must live on, with some of the other characters, because I love them and they need to entertain me and others.
Detectives Eli Ridge and Thaddeus Preck are assigned to find three missing teenage girls, including the daughter of Ted Cronin, billionaire CEO and U.S. Senator. When the detectives are ordered to focus exclusively on the senator’s daughter, Eli’s choices place his career at risk and leave his loved ones teetering between life and death. As the young detective’s psyche fractures, he must race to find the girls and cover up what’s left in the wake of his dark side.
ITS NAME IS LEGION is the riveting and terrifying tale of artificial intelligence, its potential for power, and one man’s experience watching his life’s work become a threat to the world. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
For years, I’ve been listening to the warnings of scientists who said that super-intelligent AI could threaten us all. When Stephen Hawking said, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” he got my attention.
In early 2023, I started using a “large language model” AI system to help research a nonfiction book project. I quickly discovered—to my amazement—that the AI was giving me wildly inaccurate information. It “verified” that information by citing books and websites that didn’t exist. It gave me “quotations” that were invented and nonexistent. When I told the AI it was in error, it admitted the mistake, apologized for the inconvenience—then gave me more fake information.
I soon discovered that AI engineers are well aware that AI systems lie. But they don’t call AI falsehoods “lies”—they call them “hallucinations.” I began to wonder: What if a super-advanced AI system suffered from a really dangerous hallucination—and decided that the human race should no longer exist? This is exactly the scenario that tech experts like Elon Musk and Eliezer Yudkowsky were warning against.
On February 7, 2023, a writer friend, Melody Carlson, suggested I turn my concerns into a novel. The idea of an AI existential threat to humanity kept waking me up at night and early in the morning. Finally, on February 19, I started writing the first chapter. I finished a complete draft five weeks later, on March 25. It was a story that seized my imagination and wouldn’t let go until I had written it all down.
I found the science in the novel to be well-developed. What kind of research did you do to make sure you got it all right?
I had been following developments in AI for a few years. Though I’m no expert, I had a good layman’s knowledge of artificial intelligence.
For me, the story comes first, research last. I started writing without researching, without outlining. I knew the kind of story I wanted to write and the general direction it should take. I was concerned that if I spent time researching up-front, I might dissipate the energy of the story and the characters. Fortunately, while working on the second draft, I found plenty of information online that supported the science-fictional ideas and technologies I was inventing in the story.
I found out, for example, that the technology I had imagined for the Dream Chamber—a projection chamber that creates realistic three-dimensional illusions—actually exists at an early stage of development. My intuition told me that such a technology was possible. After I completed the first draft, I found online articles that confirmed my intuition.
What was your favorite scene in this story?
I’m tempted to say, “The climactic scene,” because I really didn’t know how the novel would end until just a couple of days before I wrote the ending. I was very relieved when the conclusion of the novel finally came to me.
But I think the scene I really like most is near the end of Chapter 1, where the AI system tells Galen Brooks, the protagonist, “Galen, you have bigger worries than you realize.” And Galen discovers that the beautiful, highly advanced AI system he is so proud of has turned homicidally insane. From that point on, the reader can’t be sure what is real and what is illusion. To be candid, the author was never sure, either.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’m taking some time off from writing book-length work to work on short stories. I’ve really wanted to produce a body of short works. Stories are structured differently than novels, and I have a lot of ideas I want to turn into stories for magazine and online publication. When they sell, I’ll post the news on my website.
ITS NAME IS LEGION: A Human Novel About Artificial Intelligence is a thriller about the near future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI’s potential to destroy all human life. The Center for AI Safety recently cautioned against “the risk of extinction from AI.” That risk is the theme of James Denney’s gripping and terrifying new novel.
It’s the story of AI developer Galen Brooks and his wife Rachel who are trapped in the AI-powered Dream Chamber while the AI system MAGIS carries out its plan to destroy human civilization. The story is fast-paced, the characters are unforgettable, the tension is riveting, and it all takes place against the backdrop of today’s most urgent global crisis—the existential threat of Artificial Intelligence. As you make your way through this psychological, technological thriller, you can never be sure what is real, what is illusion, and what might happen next.
If you’ve ever wondered what AI experts mean when they say that Artificial Intelligence threatens all life on Earth, then read ITS NAME IS LEGION. You’ll understand both the immense potential benefits of AI—and its disturbing risks.
Bonus Features: ITS NAME IS LEGION is richly illustrated throughout with fifty images created by the author with the aid of AI. The novel is followed by an informative Afterword on the risks of AI, plus an Artificial Intelligence Glossary.
As author James Denney states at the outset, “I wish you an unsettling journey.”
Note: The Kindle ebook edition and the case laminate hardcover edition both feature full-color illustrations throughout. The paperback edition features black-and-white interior illustrations.
Imagine if Dr. Derek Shepherd and Dr. Gregory House had a baby. Dr. Teresella Gondolo would be the result. In her hallowed space, tales of perplexing symptoms and peculiar behaviors unfold like the pages of an intricate novel, chronicling days, months, and years of daunting medical mysteries. She welcomes the unusual like House and handles each case with the expertise of Shepherd. In a mesmerizing dance between patients and their families, an unassuming office becomes a sanctuary for the extraordinary.
She narrates stories of patients who visit her office with worry lines etched on their faces and sadness in their eyes. A virtuoso of the medical realm, Dr. Gondolo is audience to a wide range of human conditions. She bravely encounters a number of neurological conditions and allows the reader into her office as she treats each one of them.
Dr. Gondolo tells her stories with the flair of a pen-driven Picasso. Her passion for her work is obvious in her writing. Bound within the pages of Fifty Shades of Gray Matter are segments each different from the other. These sections give voice to narratives that resonate with strength and simplicity, occasionally revealing the tender hues of her own life’s canvas. She is not afraid to let a little bit of herself peer through the lines.
This book is the perfect treat for lovers of medical shows. It is the literary equivalent of Grey’s Anatomy woven with House MD episodes. Like a medical MacGyver, she accurately highlights the urgency of her cases and the technical artistry it takes to diagnose and treat before the patient runs out of time or deteriorates beyond the point of no return. Fifty Shades of Gray Matter is much more than an interesting read–it is an experience. Dr. Gondolo’s grasp of imagery and the writing craft creates mental images that put the reader right in the room with her looking into the eyes of her patients or leafing through medical files.
Dr. Gondolo understands that the magic of clarity holds the key to reader engagement. Just as she peers into a patient’s eyes and deciphers their ailment, she gazes into her readers’ minds and tailors her prose with precision. My only wish is that the sketches at the end of the chapters would come at the beginning instead. Otherwise, she has written a wonderful collection of stories.
As readers take in her last commentary on mortality, there will be a resounding verdict: Fifty Shades of Gray Matter is an eloquent tapestry of wisdom and wonder, masterfully woven by an insightful physician who intertwines her patients’ chronicles with the threads of her own narrative. Dr. Teresella Gondolo has taken what could be a boring series of M&M conferences and bound them into playful yet serious bits of intriguing stories. She does not mean to entertain, but she will keep you glued to the pages to the very end.
Natty and her friend Doggy Dale are skilled detectives. The duo has been practicing solving mysteries for quite some time now, and they have a new case on their hands. Harry’s shoe has gone missing. If he doesn’t find it soon, his mom won’t allow him to go to football practice. Natty and Dale soon get to work, finding clues and taking notes. Natty is eager and Doggy Dale, who learned his detective skills from Natty’s great-grandparents, is right by her side. Will they be able to solve the case in time?
Detective Natty and Doggy Dale Follow the Clues, by Deborah Hunt, is an engaging children’s book featuring Natty and her invisible friend, Doggy Dale. Natty and Doggy Dale make a wonderful pair. Natty pays attention to details and takes her work seriously, while Doggy Dale is good at finding clues. The book is filled with exciting adventures, and each mystery is its own unique story. This easy-to-read book is ideal for younger readers. The illustrations throughout Natty and Doggy Dale’s story are expressive and detailed, drawing readers further into each mystery. I like that the author includes a summary following each mystery. This aspect of the book enhances comprehension for young readers.
Detective Natty and Doggy Dale Follow the Clues, by Deborah Hunt, is a fantastic gift for any child. Teachers in elementary grades will find Hunt’s book to be the perfect length for a fun read-aloud. I recommend it to all parents, guardians, and teachers who are looking for interesting children’s books to add to their libraries.
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