His entry begins:
As I answer this, it's August 2014. So it seemed appropriate to reread Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and remind myself of how humans can turn tiny blunders and misunderstandings into colossal catastrophes. I'm also in the middle of 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It's nice to see that Robinson predicts...[read on]About The Spirit and the Skull, from the publisher:
Murder is unthinkable to The People—a Paleolithic tribe crossing Alaska. For The People, among the first undocumented immigrants to enter the Americas, murder isn’t merely tragic, it’s forbidden. Murder poisons the entire tribe and puts it at odds with nature, the Spirits, and the mighty Earth Mother. A murderer must be removed in order to set the world back in balance.Learn more about the book and author at The Words & Worlds of J.M. Hayes website.
Raven is the aging Spirit Man to a band where a member has been garroted. Worse, witchcraft is involved—another appalling violation of The People’s beliefs.A woman claiming to be The Earth Mother declares only Raven can solve the crimes and restore The People to harmony. But Raven isn’t a Spirit Man by vocation. He’s an agnostic—his band needed someone for the job and he needed to secure his place with them. He begins having dreams of a strange man holding his, the Spirit Man’s, skull in his hands. How will a man who doubts the authenticity of The Earth Mother as a goddess satisfy her demands? What if she and the dreams of some future are both real and solving the crimes must lead to his death? An impossible situation becomes more terrible as Raven realizes he’s falling in love with a young woman of his band who, he suspects, is the guilty party.
The Page 69 Test: The Spirit and the Skull.
Writers Read: J. M. Hayes.
--Marshal Zeringue
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