Opening Tracks

by
Scott D. Parker

The good folks who run the NPR Music blog recently posed a couple of questions: Do opening tracks on an album matter? What are some of the best opening tracks?

My answer to the first question is an unqualified and resounding yes. I may be showing my age here but opening cuts on an album say something about the album. In some instances, the opening track is a microcosm of the entire album’s worth of songs. Take a classic example: Miles Davis’s “So What?”, the opening track on his seminal Kind of Blue LP. All that you need to know about the entire album is summed up with “So What?”. The vibe, the mood, the beat, the type of soloing, it’s all there. You almost--almost, mind you--don’t need to listen to the other songs.

A particular favorite sub-genre of opening track lore is opening tracks on debut albums. Some artists come out of the gate fully formed. In this camp, I put Chicago. The first track of their 1969 debut is “Introduction.” It is my all-time favorite Chicago track. Period. In this seven-minute song, all that I need to know about Chicago is present: awesome guitar work, tight horn section, ballad-live middle section, raucous ending. It’s a microcosm of all things Chicago.

Other stand-out opening tracks:
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” - Nirvana
“The Girl from Ipanema” - Stan Getz and João Gilberto
“Purple Haze” - Jimi Hendrix
“Break on Through” - The Doors
“Blue Rondo a la Turk” - Dave Brubeck
“Thunder Road” - Bruce Springsteen
“Where the Streets Have No Name” - U2
“If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” - Sting
“Like a Rolling Stone” - Bob Dylan
“A Hard Day’s Night” - The Beatles
“I Walk the Line” - Johnny Cash

Other times, an artist grows into his art. Here I’m thinking Bruce Springsteen. Not to speak poor of his first two LPs but, clearly, his third, Born to Run, is where Bruce Springsteen became Bruce Springsteen. I can think of others: Prince, David Bowie, Dixie Chicks, Diana Krall, KISS, Genesis, the Decemberists.

How does this relate to books and authors? I got to thinking how many debut books by famous authors fall into the former category (brilliant opening work) versus those authors who grew into their success. And I am counting books, not collections.

Brilliant debuts:
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Stephen King - Carrie
Mickey Spillane - I, The Jury
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

Grew into their art:
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon (3rd book)
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Dennis Lehane - Mystic River
Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

Seeing this short, and incomplete, list makes me wonder if it’s easier for a musician rather than an author to break out with a stunning debut. I tend towards yes, in the general sense, since an author’s “first published book” may not be his/her actual first book written.

What do you think? And can you add some names/books to these lists?

The writing on the wall (or maybe it'll look better on the mantlepiece...)

By Russel D McLean

I don't know - I really don't - whether to be amused or worried by this.

Yes, books as decoration.

I worry that its not just the books that are becoming decoration. I am no technophobe, but I have to wonder if the way we use the new technology lends itself so well to long, complex and attention-demmanding storytelling. Can we really read a novel length work on a device that allows us to switch within seconds to some other distraction? I'm writing this post with six windows open, all doing different things. I have research windows, story windows, email windows, and this blog... and I'm jumping between them all as I write this post. Fracturing my thoughts.

Would I be able to understand a full length novel working this way?

I don't think so. Not with the same depth of understanding, anyway.

Just as worrying in the article is this quote:

"I understand there are interior decorators who will choose books for you – you don't have to read them, look at them or even put them on the shelf."

The idea - one that always worries me - of books as status symbols, of texts that one hasn't read but has chosen to say something about the reader's personality, is horrific. And yet that is where we are heading. Because books are seen as "important" in the worst possible way, it says enough to own a book rather than to have read it. To be seen with it rather than to know it.

When people come into my house, they often ask, "have you really read all these books?"

I reply, "yes, more or less," and if I haven't, then I'm going to. Because its not having the books that's important, but its the reading them, the interacting with them, the joining in of the private conversation between text and reader that really matters to me. I have books because I love to read. And its not some fancy intellectual thing either; I love books in the same way I love movies, and even some computer games. Its about the narrative, the reaction and interaction between the entertainment itself and the person being entertained.

I sometimes think we have forgotten what books are and how to use them, how to interact with them. They are not indicators of intelligence, neccesarily. They are a means of communication. They can be entertainment.

Overhearing a parent talking to their child the other day, they said, "books are what make you smart."

No, I thought. Books are something fun. Books are a way into another world. Don't tell the child "books will make you smart" because that's not a compelling argument and its what's got us into this situation in the first place, where books can be a status symbol or mere decoration designed to make us think something about the owner that is not neccesarily true.

I love books and I buy books because they remain the ideal method of telling a certain type of story. And the idea of them being mere decoration is a mockery of the very reasons they were written in the first place.

Bad Reading Spot

by Dave White

I'm in a bad way.

I can't find anything to hold my attention. Everything I pick up to read feels familiar. I think I've read it before. And if it feels brand new, I get bored with it. I can't explain it precisely, but I just can't find something to read.

Even when I find something I enjoy and do finish, it takes me forever. I'm stuck reading a chapter at a time. Three pages here. A page there. It took me 3 weeks to finish a book that should have taken me 3 days.

Seriously.

I think I'm distracted. I've got a wedding coming up, short stories and a novel to work on, and it's the end of the school year. But it's disappointing. I want to read. It's a passion of mine.

Reading is what got me into writing.

And instead, I'm sitting around reloading sports message boards and watching baseball.

Though, at the same time, I've discovered BREAKING BAD. And that's a good thing.

Do you go through reading slumps? How do you get out of them?

The Notes Meeting

by
John McFetridge


Last week I had a notes meeting with the producer of the movie version of Dirty Sweet. It was a strange feeling to talk about the material – the characters and situations I’d created – as if it was something we’d found.

It was sort of like talking about myself in the third person.

But the notes were all good, which was a relief. The producer was one of the producers of Chicago so I was worried he’d want to turn it into a musical. Well, he also produced movies like Exit Wounds and Knights of the South Bronx so that’s good.

The notes all had to do with finding ways to show the characters develop, ways that in the books I would just put in the narration. Some things can be turned into dialogue but some things just don’t sound right.

The process is interesting and maybe it even helps to imagine how a scene would play out as a movie. On the one hand you’d get an actual person with facial expressions, subtle little clues to their feelings, you’d get music to help the mood along, you’d get close ups and wide shots with lots of characters. But on the other hand you wouldn’t really get inside anyone’s head.

There are a few flashbacks in the book, sometimes one character tells another about something that happened years ago and sometimes a character just thinks about something that happened years ago. In some cases the dialogue can be translated into the screenplay, but for the scenes in which a character is thinking about the past, the question of flashbacks came up. Some how-to books about screenplay writing say never use flashbacks. But a lot of my favourite movies have flashbacks. The same with a narrator. The books say never, but some of my favourite movies have narration.

What do you think? Flashbacks? Narration? Yes or no? Which movies have used flashbacks or narration really well and which ones are the examples for why those things shouldn't be used?

Four Lions

By Jay Stringer

I saw the film FOUR LIONS tonight. And if you've not seen it yet there is a big film shaped hole in your life.

It's the tale of four (later 5) British Muslims who are seeking to bring Jihad to Sheffield. You could say that each member of the team represents a different group within our society, from the father who indoctrinates his son through fairy tales, the failed and angry student who's really just rebelling against his family and teachers, to the two who are easily led but really just want to blow up crows or go to theme parks. Much of the most overtly harsh commentary, the radical, conspiracy seeking, slogan shouting extremism is given to Barry, a white guy who has converted to the more extreme elements of Islam. That decision provides some comedy and some tension, but also probably saves the director and the film from crossing a line.

They ultimately hatch a plan to suicide-bomb the London Marathon, but the details of the plot itself are really secondary to the characters and the comedy. Yes, comedy, honest. Such as a moment when the police have to learn how to tell a terrorist from everybody else; are a Wookie and a Honey Monster the same thing? Are they both a bear? Is it okay to shoot one and not the other? These are just some of the moral questions on display.

I found it an almost perfect film, something I'm glad i paid to see (fifteen quid for two tickets? Ouch.) The relationships are well observed and first time director (but British comedy legend) Chris Morris manages to find the soul and humanity of the story without ever losing sight of where these people are headed. I'm not really sure i could do the film justice in a full on review, but it has given me a few things I'd like to talk about.

First the comedy. This film is side-splitting, or at least it was to me and the audience i watched it with. And it doesn't pull any punches. How often have we seen films, TV or books that back off? That set something up but choose not to follow through? I've grown increasingly bored with stories that choose to back down, just as i don't seem to have any room left in my life for sit coms that reboot at the start of every episode. For comedy to have effect, real, lasting effect, it has to follow through. Same with drama, same with everything. FOUR LIONS recognises that the situation is as inherently silly as it is unsettling, and it plays both to full effect. We know these people and their foibles, not just as muslims but in all walks of life, so when we see them taking steps that we don't know, following through, it hits home.

I've made a promise to myself that at the first sign of 'wimping out' in a film, TV show or book, I'm going to put it aside and move on to something else. Same goes for my own writing.

The other thing I'm thinking about from the film is sympathy. Now, okay, the great sympathy vs. empathy debate is nothing new to crime fiction discussions. It's been raised at every panel or book signing I've attended, and probably belongs on one of Dave White's lists of blog cliches. I'm firmly in the not-caring-about-sympathy camp as are most writers that i talk to, so I'm not looking to raise it as if its anything new. But when you see it done well, it sets you thinking about it afresh.

The characters in the film, even the most likable and down-to-earth ones, are shown doing 'bad' things. Whether it's strapping a bomb to a bird, aiming a rocket launcher at a plane, telling your son that Simba lied to wage a Jihad, or plotting to blow up a mosque. The film never stops to say "these people are really the victims of a society that has alienated them, please give them a hug before they blow up," and neither does it try and absolve them of any wrong doing. It doesn't give them each a deep motivation or a get out clause.

The film is so well balanced, the story and characters so well told, that we do find time to like them in places, and to at east have some empathy with them in others. Perhaps it helps that there is no real moral compass in the film other than "death is a bit bad, old chap." There are no good guys on show; the police are shown to be just as trigger happy and prone to cock-ups as they people they are combating. The character who tries to talk our protagonists down off the ledge, a patient and kind Muslim, is still shown to be unable to talk directly to a female character.

With this lack of definite right or wrong, an absence of moralising, our own moral compasses reset. Suddenly we are dealing with something that feels real, that could be in our real world, that other place that lacks an overall sense of right and wrong. And again, as with the comedy, that only adds to the story telling. If the world feels like our own, if it feels like reality, then we are a little bit scared, a little bit uncomfortable, but we can also relate to whats on the screen in one way or another.

Now, that's not for everyone. Sometimes you just want to watch a movie or read a book for escapism. You don't want to be hit over the head with reality, or faced with moral uncertainty. Sometimes you just want to know that Indiana Jones is the good guy and he really needs to catch that truck.

But whilst films like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (my favourite) entertain me, films like FOUR LIONS make me want to raise my game.

Add to your reading list with FREE goodness

By Steve Weddle

We're observing Memorial Day weekend here in the states. The holiday was originally called Decoration Day and set up to honor fallen Union soldiers after the War of Northern Aggression. Following the War to End All Wars, the holiday was changed to include all our dead soldiers -- even the Confederates, presumably. I have soldiers all over my family tree. My father served during the Vietnam War and lived to talk about it. Some weren't so fortunate. Not that our fallen soldiers are reading this blog, but, you know, thanks to them.

Speaking of reading this blog, I doubt this is a weekend of heavy traffic. From honoring the war dead to grilling with your family, you could be doing many other things. Including reading some really cool stuff on the innerwebs -- for freesies.

I want to make sure you know about a few really cool books that exist complete or in part on these same innerwebs I'm communicating to your from.

John Hornor Jacobs, an Arkansan good with the art in NEEDLE, has a good start of his fancy, ass-kicking Western THE INCORRUPTIBLES, his "wester/fantasy/steam-punk" slice of brilliance.

We rode through fields burning like the plains of hell, Fisk on the black, Banty on the roan bay, and me on Bess, the mule, leading a string of ponies. We came up from the delta and the lush watershed of the Big Rill through the edge of the farmlands. Settlers worked the fields, shovels in hand, throwing dirt on the fallowfires. Poor folk, eking a living off the land.

"That aedile wants another hunting expedition, they'll be floating his body back to New Damnation," Banty said, low and through his teeth.

Fisk sniffed, glanced at the smoke billowing above us, and then back out over the Big Rill's sun-hammered silver. No one moves the way Fisk does. Slow and deliberate, each gesture languid and relaxed. Until it isn't.

The Cornelian churned the waters, bragrags whipping in the wind, steaming upriver, while we kept pace. Fisk and I took the escort contract from Marcellus out of New Damnation, but the aedile's tribune saddled us with Banty, the greenhorn, who was good for nothing, except big talk and no action. The tribune wasn't a bad fellow, but even good folks make mistakes.

Fisk watched the Cornelian, the sky, the land. He remained still but his eyes never stopped roving, grey eyes, bleached by sun and years in the elements. Partners for the last decade and I still didn't know anything about the man, other than scraps and pieces. Had a family once. Could shoot out the eye of a sparrow on the wing. Feared no man, nor Vaettir. No rest until the stretchers are gone from the earth. He hated them with passion only reserved for Gods, dangerous women, and whiskey.

Head count conscripts milled about on the boat's galleries, staring out into the West, no doubt scanning the horizon for stretchers, terrified. Up on the top deck in the shadow of the pilot's roost stood an an umbrella, and the frill of patrician women. The stacks, daemon fired, blew ash and cinder skyward as if answering the flames of the fields.

Fire calls to fire, they say. I believe that.

From where I sat on Bess, I watched the other scouts, Sharbo, Ellis, and Jimson riding the western shore, stirrup high in fallow growth. No farms that side of the river, so close to the mountains. Stretchers come down, raiding.

Fisk said, slowly, "How you figure, Mr. Bantam?"

Banty put a hand on his pistol, a Hellfire .32 with Imp rounds. Sure to sully his soul, but deadly.

"I'll kill him."

Fisk glanced at the young man, taking in the rumpled uniform, the tight grip on his pistol.

"You might be stupid enough, at that."

--

Another great piece of writing is growing each day on the innerwebs. Dan O'Shea has hooked up his treadmill to power his laptop (or some such craziness) and is running it full of juice and jabs to the gut. His GRAVITY OF MAMMON is already a few dozen chapters in. Here's how it opens.

Nick Hardin never thought his first Hollywood party would be in a big-assed tent on the Chad-Sudan border, but here he was, nursing a gin and tonic, hoping he’d set things up far enough west that he was out of RPG range in case some Janjaweed punk got a bug up his ass. Fucking Mooney and his do-gooder shit.

Hardin had run into Jerry Mooney in Khartoum almost a year back. Darfur was heating up as the PR play of choice for socially conscious Hollywood types looking to bump up their Q scores. Hardin was heading out on his usual fixer gig for one of the networks. Same gig he’d been running since he got out of the Foreign Legion back in 1996 – logistics on a file footage job. Camera guy, sound guy, some former BBC face with the right kind of public school accent and safari guide outfit. Get 10 or 15 minutes in the can from the hell hole of the week so Nightline’s got something for a slow news day. Run the film, then cut back to the studio where the talking heads and maybe someone from Medicines sans Frontiers or some Foggy Bottom undersecretary could cluck their tongues between beer commercials. A little of the self-flagellation that a goodly portion of the folks that actually watch Nightline like to engage in before bed – helps them sleep better. Hardin’s job? Line up some transport and some security that, when you bought them for a couple of days, stayed bought. Point the talent at the right locations, pay off the right warlords, make sure the face gets his interview without getting his throat cut and the crew gets out without having to buy back their equipment at ten bucks on the dollar.

The face in this case being Nigel Fox. Hardin liked Nigel, and Nigel liked gin. That’s why he was spending his twilight years stringing the massacre circuit when he used to cover No. 10 Downing Street for BBC 1. Hardin had done Somalia with Nigel, Liberia back in the Taylor days. Kinshasha, Rawanda. The beginnings of a beautiful friendship. Hardin waited at the Khartoum airport by the Twin Otter he’d chartered as Nigel walked across the tarmac with his crew, a couple of stoner Italian adrenaline junkies. And with Jerry Mooney.

Hardin had heard of Mooney, of course. Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor. Square-jawed leading man in a maybe dozen chart-topping flicks. Probably more than a dozen – Hardin figured a few had come out that hadn’t made it to the flea-bag cinema down the street from his place in Accra.

“Nick Hardin,” said Nigel, “meet Jerry Mooney.”

“Jerry,” said Hardin, shaking hands. He turned to Nigel. “We still shooting news or are we making a movie?”

“Little of both, old boy,” Nigel said. “Ran into Jerry here at the Hilton night before last. Splendid chap. Shared a bottle of Boodles, and let me have more than half. Anyway, he was headed down to Darfur for a look-see, some video-blog thing for his web site. Marvelously technical, beyond me of course. But his fixer bolted on him, left the poor man stranded. All for one and one for all, of course, so I told him he could pack along with us.”

“Nice of you spend my nickel, Nigel,” said Hardin.

“Hey, Nick,” said Mooney, “Look, I know I’m imposing, and I know you’ve got to make a living. The guy I was supposed to meet up with, he’d said $500 a day, American, plus expenses. Nigel tells me we’re back tomorrow night, so that’s two days. Suppose we say $2500, is that fair?”

Usury is what it was, but Mooney threw out the number. Mooney was starting to smell like the gravy train. With a capital G and a capital train.

“Yeah, OK,” said Hardin.

Mooney smiled. Big, dimpled movie star smile. “All right. Off to the heart of darkness.”

Hardin caught the little smirk from Nigel. They always do that, the first timers. Drop the Conrad on you. But the darkness wasn’t concentrated in a heart anywhere. It had metasticzed into hundreds of tumors. Some, like Darfur, were a thousand miles wide. But most of them were about the size of a qat-chewing 13-year-old with an AK-47.

Nigel waved the Italians back to the truck. “You’ve forgot the bloody gin.”

--

And now for something completely different. Malachi Stone has somewhere close to 84 novels completed. He's just waiting on his checks. Here's the newest one he's posting, NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE.

“Charred meat gets me hot.” She grinned at him, trying for lewd and crude. The steak joint was nothing special, one of those where they let you throw peanut shells on the floor and every twenty minutes or so they make the waitresses get up and line dance just in case your conversation lags.

His and her conversation hadn’t lagged. He’d never taken his eyes off of her, not once, even though the waitresses all wore tight jeans and skimpy western tops and danced right beside them, practically on top of them in fact, all of them twitching their butts and clapping their hands in rhythm to the country music. He’d ignored them. She was making an extra effort to be vivacious tonight, a rare treat for him. He was eating it up all through dinner.

He slipped a steak knife into his coat sleeve on the way out after leaving a generous enough tip so that nobody’d mind.

He opened the passenger door for her in the parking lot. She turned to slide in and was just starting to smile at him in that open-mouthed way she had—there was a black string of charred meat dangling from her left upper canine—when he put the knife in her, never breaking eye contact.

He put the body in a funny place. Then he drove home and went to sleep. Heavy meals always made him logy.

*******************************************************
The date of my appointment turned out to be the first day Brenda had the saddle splint off her nose. Both her eyes were still black like a raccoon’s but the bruises under her eyes and across her cheeks had faded to the colors of autumn. We both were weary of explaining their presence to every client of ours who’d wandered into the office over the past two weeks. I’m sure at least half of them, as well as most of the attorneys, clerks and judges Brenda and I dealt with every day at the courthouse, suspected me of being a wife-beater. The truth was more difficult to explain, but hardly less shameful, at least for me.

The nurse weighed me before ushering us into a sterile white examining room with a single print hanging on the wall. After a moment some long-ago vestige of my college art apprece course kicked in and I recognized it as William Blake. I pointed it out to Brenda.

"Michael Binding Satan,” she acknowledged, slurring her pronunciation of “Satan.” She still hadn’t had the repair surgery and her speech was affected in a subtle way. “Has kind of a yin yang thing going on, don’t you think? Appropriate for a sleep disorders clinic I suppose.”

“Why’s that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? The one having the nightmare is Satan. He represents the chaos of the subconscious mind. Check out the rictus of terror on his face, the reptilian tail flailing around like Leviathan. And see the Archangel Michael putting a sleeper hold on Old Scratch, getting ready to pin him to the mat? Michael represents man’s consciousness fully awakened, putting the sleep disorder devil under his feet once and for all. Don’t you find it encouraging?”

“I could have used you in first year art apprece class.”

“You’ve used me often enough since then, Darling. And don’t you love it how the pronunciation of college course titles reverts to a pidgin Italian? Art apprece. Or soce for sociology, as in, ‘I sold back my soce book and only got a lousy buck for it.’ Guess I’m more sensitive to pronunciation issues these days.”

“Non lo parlo molto bene,” I singsonged.

“You’re the only person I ever met who took Italian in college. Why, Bosco? Perchè?”

“I needed a language.”

“We all need a language, dear heart. We’re a communicative species. But why Italian? I don’t think I ever asked you that before. It must have been over a cute girl. It was over a cute girl, wasn’t it?”

Brenda was my second wife, Betsy had been my first, a big mistake but soon corrected. Even though I was still working my way through the B’s I knew enough not to rise to that bait. “I wanted to read Dante in the original language,” I told her. Mercifully, the doctor chose that moment to appear.

Addressing Brenda the doctor said, “Looks like you were in a knockout.”

“Thank you for noticing, Doctor, but I’m afraid the man sitting next to me is the patient.”

Still focused on Brenda, who despite her injuries was and is a remarkably attractive woman, the doctor asked her, “So how are you doing?”

“I’m still prone to mouth breathing and am often mistaken for Boris Karloff on the telephone, but other than that I’m hanging in there, Doctor.”

“Nonsense. No one with ears could ever mistake your lovely voice for Boris Karloff’s.”

“You’re very kind. I was referring to my lisp. A temporary condition caused by my deviated nasal septum.”

“I know a good man for that.”

“So do I, Doctor. The problem is finding the time for going under the good man’s knife.”

“Yes, I see from the patient questionnaire that you two are husband and wife attorneys. That must make for a busy and challenging life.”

“Mine’s busy,” I broke in. “Hers is challenging.”

The doctor took a history. From Brenda second-hand, a fact I found rather disquieting. He asked her whether I ever walked in my sleep, talked gibberish in my sleep, slept with my eyes open, or in general behaved like a zombie after bedtime. Brenda answered every question in the affirmative, a fact I found even more disquieting.

“Does your husband ever rise stiffly in bed?”

“I beg your pardon, Doctor?” Brenda replied.

“You mistake my meaning. What I meant was, does he sit up in bed stiff as a corpse from time to time?”

She told him yes.

“And does he often awaken disoriented or confused, or with a blank look on his face?”

“Yes, Doctor. He stays that way all day long, too. Just look at him.”

“I don’t know whether you’re approaching this matter with the appropriate degree of gravity, Ms. Hoël.”

“Gravity? You want gravity, Doc? Try going ten rounds with this one some night. It’s like walking blindfolded into a pitching machine.”

“I only meant—”

Brenda asked, “So what’s the bad news, Doc? Give it to us; we can take it.”

“In my time I’ve encountered enough wives and girlfriends with cracked ribs, dislocated jaws and deviated nasal septa to recognize a case of night terrors when I see one,” the doctor said. He looked to be about thirty and had the air of a driving instructor about him. A driving instructor who spent more time pumping iron in the weight room at Gold’s Gym than he did poring over the medical literature. And even though we were in the examining room I couldn’t help noticing him poring over my wife’s gracefully crossed legs and picturing him pumping her instead of iron.

“Night terrors,” I said. “I’ve heard of those. Isn’t that where you see little green men coming to take you away?”

“Not necessarily. Sometimes they’re more of a teal.” He studied Brenda’s face for any reaction, then lowered his gaze to her right foot bouncing with nervous impatience. “Yes, night terrors, with a generous side order of adult-onset somnambulism. I’m fairly well convinced of my diagnosis, but to confirm it I’m ordering a sleep study. How’s this evening sound? We’ll plan on checking you in at the center around eightish.”

“Sounds like a preposterously early bedtime to me,” I said. “What about elevenish? Or even stroke-of-midnightish?”

The doctor didn’t smile. His stare had crept up to Brenda’s thighs and nestled there. She tugged at the hem of her skirt.

--

All three guys, fellow Team Decker members, continue to work on posting their stuff up on the web, for free. Call it sharing, promotion, beta testing, whatever. It's great to see so much good stuff out here. Right now, you've got three hunks of brilliance to enjoy. Make a note and when these books are on the end caps at Barnes and Noble and the front page at Amazon, you'll have fresh pieces of awesome to use your rewards cards on.