Are vampires “real”? More so than you may think. . .
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Clotho’s Loom Paperback now at Barnes and Noble, and through local Booksellers
In addition to Amazon, Clotho’s Loom by Shawn StJean has joined the millions of titles available from the B&N website (BONUS: as of today, at a 9% discount). This means a couple of important channels of availability have opened up. As it’s now listed in the Ingram catalog, the novel will begin appearing on many other online sites, for sale, soon to be optional in ebook form, too (end of January 2012). ALSO, you can now walk into a brick-and-mortar B&N store, or about ANY local bookstore, and order the paperback through them.
Search for ISBN 9781479271528 (this may work better than the computer-un-friendly name of “Stjean”
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: Imbroglio, by Alana Woods. Book Review by Shawn StJean
Book Review by Shawn StJean
If the title of my review seems far less original than that of the novel it explores, that’s because there are some clichés that well-earn their familiarity. For example, if overheard conversations, mistaken and assumed identity, and misdirected letters (nowadays more prevalent as lost or stolen e-mail correspondence and hacked computer files) are not fresh enough for your taste in fiction, then the entire suspense/thriller genre probably isn’t either. Alana Woods deploys them all–there’s even a diary–but recombination is everything.
Far more compelling than these stock conventions are the book’s two main characters, David Cameron (you may need a pen handy to keep track of his several aliases,) but more especially Noel Valentine, a heroine worthy of a series–though Woods doesn’t appear to be setting us up for one. Among all of fiction’s many self-made detectives, few are given a motive for their investigations–which lead them into all manner of professional and personal hazard–more credible than simple money. The universal catalyst, serviceable for everyone from Sam Spade to Jim Rockford. Oh, other reasons have been invented among the better writers: egomania for Sherlock Holmes, or the occasional impressment into service (Rick Deckard.) Woods’ David, like Hamlet, was bequeathed the task by his dead father. Good thing for audiences, too–for it doesn’t always wash, that the motives of those seeking truth are the identical ones held by those seeking to cover it up.
For Noel Valentine, the impetus necessary for the pursuit of semi-comatose David’s nearly successful assassins, leading to discovery of several convolutions of corporate wrongdoing, surfaces from the depths of her very plausible, damaged psychology. “Why not go to the police?,” she’s asked at several points, and the answer simply lies outside the realm of logic and reason.
Sure, she wants to ensure the man she dragged from a fiery car wreck heals, she wants a prestigious account at her PR firm, she wants the perks of her boss’ favor. It all makes sense, yet none of it is really accurate. In fact, one of the latent enjoyments of the novel is witnessing how many different misogynistic interpretations of her behavior can be put upon Noel by the old boys’ network, projecting their own malfeasance onto a vulnerable target. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a dirty, double-crossing dame,” says one of the villains of the Hollywood noir classic The Killers, and apparently little has changed in three-quarters of a century. Woods’ heroine must also endure multiple layers of claustrophobic pressure: from the confines of her tiny flat invaded by her healing counterpart, to sexual pressure from her boss and a nefarious client, and finally to the crushing depths of the sea itself.
No, for Noel, investigation is first about living dangerously–perhaps subconsciously attempting to carry out a long-time suicide wish of her own–and later, about simply living. In fact, when the bad guys provide her with the perfect opportunity to slip quietly into that good night, guiltlessly in the world’s eyes and her own, it’s only then can she recover the id-energy to carry on and survive that her efforts on David’s behalf have been attempting to revivify all along. That scene of crucible is worth the price of admission alone, straying so far as it does from the strictures of the genre, and invoking naturalistic archetypes from more high-brow literary fiction like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and even some Hemingway.
What difficulties there are can be faced down within the first half of the novel, which gathers much steam afterward–though thankfully eschewing many of the predictable action-elements we may expect (no car chases, and just a little obligatory gunplay.) Sex, naturally, plays its role, though not overdone. Woods provides several of her majors with fully stocked families, and various minor characters fill out the cast, necessitating full attention to relationships. As for the geography, the locales of Cairns and Sydney, while well-described, may feel less familiar to non-Australian readers than we’d like. However, it’s exactly this transportation of time, place, and generally stretching beyond the constricting neighborhood of the known-comfortable, among landscapes ranging to the deep psychic, that many will appreciate most.
Anarchists Recruiting Radicals Leading Liberals: Dominoes Leaning Left
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Among its failures, luminary Norman Mailer identified in The Armies of the Night that the Left in America was so splintered (writing from the perspective of 1968) that, even though well-intentioned reformers might stand for something worthwhile, they had great difficulty standing together. Too many different agendas: race relations, women’s rights, the anti-draft and anti-Vietnam war movements. Emerson, had he lived to be 150, would have called many of these well-meaning citizens “do-gooders” who should have concentrated, rather, on being good.
Today, it’s well-known that FBI agents, acting on orders, infiltrated some of the many organizations that did exist (Students for a Democratic Society perhaps only the most notorious,) in order to, among intelligence-gathering activities, combat forces that the federal government believed were manipulating the protesters: outside agitators, what Spiro Agnew called “vultures,” intent on destroying our society from within, by turning it against itself. But did these agents provocateurs really exist?
Rochester, NY – 11 August 2012. The atmosphere of today’s United States may not be as apparently violent in its ideological clashes as that of forty years’ gone, but many believe the rift has simply gone deeper, smoothing only the surface of our native soil.
Shawn StJean’s new novel, Clotho’s Loom (Glas Daggre Publishing, 2012) dramatically personalizes what could happen if these kind of foreign, cold warriors were to penetrate the divisive climate of American society in the 21st century. A former Marine sniper, now college professor approaching middle age and settling into academic “schoolhouse liberalism,” is reactivated: pulled between the demands of the Right and Left, and–due in part to a deep personal ambivalence toward his father, a Vietnam vet–succumbs to the recruitment efforts of the anti-Western border-runners. Meanwhile, his wife, a woman of conservative social background, is semi-wittingly abandoned just at the time when she discovers herself pregnant, at the age of forty.
The book can be interpreted as a cautionary tale on the ease with which a cavalier liberalism can be exploited for anarchic and destructive purposes–the protagonists both encounter a series of increasingly devious characters, both outside U.S. territory and upon it. The narrative spans the globe, from the midwest to the Middle East, and extends to the deserts of both continents.
The female protagonist must come to terms with the extremes of her own right-wing upbringing. The daughter of a failed farmer, she’s nevertheless been taught the values of adaptability in the face of circumstance, and to continue to support the values of marketplace competition, as a lawyer. Wooed by an opportunistic capitalist, she supports his mission to rehabilitate the languishing community into profitability—with himself, however, as benevolent dictator. And although this vision is hardly as chilling as the chaotic alternative—what one villainous character describes as “a deep freeze”–the author takes pains to present it as more likely and real.
Although the parallel structure of alternating chapters tends to evenly distribute the attention of the narrative, not only between the gender issues of men and women, but of Left and Right (with a balancing concluding chapter,) this literary fiction offers occasional symbolic cues toward its author’s ultimate biases. Fortunately, there is also enough ambiguity to accommodate the thematic enjoyment of readers of widely varying ideological temperaments. In either case, the characters find that both the individualistic values of the Left and those of the communal Right, at odds times self-serving, are best acquired not as inherited, youthful idealism, but rather as earned, hard experience leading to maturity.
ISBN: 978-1479271528
List $20.00 paper, ebook $8.99
540 pp.
Novel Clotho’s Loom Unraveled by Transatlantic Author and Reviewer
Boy, she looks a lot like Marilyn Monroe. . .
Emily McDaid, author of The Boiler Plot (a minor hit in the US and UK), has found time in her busy schedule for an in-depth look as Shawn StJean’s novel, Clotho’s Loom, newly published in trade paperback. The book was first available on Kindle, as of August 11, and will appear on Audiobook in early 2013. Have a look, and see if this 2-pound collection of ink and paper is worth YOUR time and paper. . .
http://www.emilymcdaid.com/blog/2012/12/3/a-rich-tapestry-woven-by-clothos-loom.html
Clotho’s Loom Trade Paperback for Order at Amazon–Hot off the Press (Literarily) for late 2012
And while I’m pleased this is happening as the holiday season kicks off, I want to caution you that AZ is being optimistic about how soon you can get the book (they say as soon as tomorrow.) As the publisher–who is in direct communication with the printer–I’d hate to have someone order the book only to wait impatiently for it. Createspace tells me next week, perhaps December 9th through the 10th, is realistic.
In any event, you’re welcome to place the order, and you will have your copy before the holidays! The “Purchase the Novel” menu item in the left column has several ordering options.
ALSO, for you road warriors, don’t forget that I’m working post-production on the Audiobook edition (production sample in the left column)–and that in addition to purchasing that as a standalone, it will eventually be bundled with the Kindle edition and/or the print edition–so there will soon be a multitude of ways to experience the novel.
Clotho’s Loom now available in Trade Paperback! Literary Fiction by Shawn StJean
Well, here’s a pleasant surprise for Yours Truly. I was able, by delaying my work on the Audiobook for a week, to put the Createspace proofs of Clotho’s Loom to bed a month ahead of schedule. The mass-market paperback will appear for sale on Amazon sometime next week. But the book is available NOW for holiday order, both directly from the printer, or fresh from the publisher, Glas Daggre (here at clothosloom.wordpress.com). Just click the “Purchase the Novel” link in the left menu to see the options. The list price is $20–I’d prefer it were lower, but it is a big, thick 540- page (205,000 word) book that you will not soon finish. And as a Season’s Greeting, I’m offering my kind blog visitors in December either a printer’s discount code, or FREE shipping from me–your choice. Estimated delivery, at the time of this writing, is December 17.
BTW, a “trade” or mass-market paperback has a large-format binding (6 inches by 9 is standard) and the same interior layout and paper/page quality as a hardcover book, but with a soft cover. It is NOT the small, disposable paperback book of the airport gift-shop.
LibraryThing Giveaway of Clotho’s Loom E-Book
In the spirit of the season, I’d like to offer those short on funds–and especially those new to this site (WELCOME!) a chance to obtain this novel for FREE.
Whether or not you’ve entered the GoodReads print-book giveaway for Clotho’s Loom by Shawn StJean (look to the left column if you haven’t,) you can get a chance for a FREE copy of the e-book over at LibraryThing until Christmas Eve or so! LibraryThing is a member-site similar to GoodReads, which provides a valuable meeting place for authors and readers.
http://www.librarything.com/er/list?program=giveaway (peruse the whole list while you’re there).
As I always like to say, what’s better than FREE?
Clotho's Loom, by Shawn StJean 