The world's best Caribbean boat bum

I mentioned before that I'm writing new trilogy of Ron Anejo stories (tropical mysteries with a twist). While you wait, you can listen to the original story. The audiobook is available for free right now... first come, first served. And sign up for my newsletter to learn when the new books are available.

Free samples of humor and chatting about mystery stories

There is a new web site called Book Samples. During this month, you can read a sample of The Legend of Ron Anejo, the story of the world's best Caribbean boat bum, right there.

Even better, Ron is only 99 cents this month and you can buy a copy at Amazon in the US, UK or wherever you like to shop. For instance, click on the cover below to get it at Barnes & Noble.

I also have an interview about my Martin Billings stories up at Omnimystery News. Two sides of me this month.

The Music From the Story

My good friend Edward Null, who is a wonderful songwriter and folksinger, took the time to read a draft of my new novel, UNDER LOW SKIES and claimed he enjoyed it. When I asked him if he liked it well enough to write some songs based on it, he said yes. I think he actually said "Hell yes" but then that is what I wanted to hear, and I think I'll stick to that version of the history.

Things never go exactly as intended, and of course, the album that got finished isn't exactly about the story I wrote. The story is a murder mystery/suspense story that takes place in Venezuela, where I lived for seven years. As things developed, we wound up with songs were inspired by the kind of life of the main character Martin Billings, who captains an inter-island freighter in the Caribbean, leads. As we worked on it, I decided that was probably a better result (more fun, more interesting), as it doesn't contain any spoilers or any contrived lyrics stuffed in to sell the book. It's just good music that relates to life on a boat in the Caribbean. Hey, what more could you want?

In putting together the material, Ed decided to re-rerecord a couple of my tunes that fit the theme, as well as write some new ones of his own, including the title song. I got to tweak the lyrics a bit, even enough to get a co-writing credit in one case, and play a harp fill on one song. I couldn't talk him into using another song of his that is excellent as he didn't think it fit.

It was a fun collaboration and seeing as Ed is in Missouri and I am in Cambodia, we were tickled with how well it came together. I am trying to get enough photos and video material to do a trailer for the book that will feature the song UNDER LOW SKIES. Don't hold your breath though. When it comes to visual stuff, I work kinda slow (and painfully).

I've posted the album cover below. The music should be available for download soon, if not already, at Edward Null's CD Baby site. If it isn't there yet, well Hurricane Rosie is a damn good listen too.

 Now those of you with a nautical bent  are going to notice that the boat in the graphic to port isn't an inter-island freighter, but a sailboat. Yes, sharp eyes there, mate. But then, as a I said, the songs are the right feeling for the book, not actually the story, and well, the sailboat wound up fitting the songs better than a freighter would.

Below is a little another graphic I did that pushes the album and book into one space. That is sort of an advertising gimmick--inserting gratuitously and then pointing it out provides a convenient excuse for me to stick a link to Amazon where you can buy the book (print or kindle) online. But it is also available from iTunes Bookstore, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

So this is the latest push from Float Street Press. We have some other exciting books and miscellany in the works and I will be talking a bit about our intention to publish our first romance novel. If things stay more or less on what passes for schedules around here, we will be releasing it in November of this year. But it is a rather large book, so there is much to do.

UNDER LOW SKIES

Recently my agent, Rebecca Pratt, contacted me with the news that a publisher in the US was interested in my mystery novel UNDER LOW SKIES. We negotiated and I am happy to say that Glass Page Books will be publishing the book later this year.


This is the story of Martin Billings, an exSeal who is captain of an inter-island freighter. It is a tough life and requires an independent spirit. In this story, his younger brother is accused of murdering a Venezuelan fisherman. Martin goes to Cumana, Venezuela to try and sort things out and finds that the mess his brother has stepped into is a lot bigger than he could have imagined.

The publisher did this cover, which I think is great, and my good friend Derek Marabolí corrected both my Spanish and a few errors I made in place names in Venezuela. 

Needless to say I am looking forward to its release.

Out of writing and into publishing

For the past couple of years, I've been working with my friend Jim Beckett to write a novel about a writing and the dynamics of the current publishing world. It is now it the last stages -- out of writing and into production. We have the cover done and here is what it looks like.

The proof copies will be done soon (tomorrow, I hope) and, assuming all is well, it will soon be out in paperback (304 pages) on Amazon and CreateSpace. We will be making it available in ebook form on Amazon and distributed through Smashwords -- they get it into the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, the Diesel eBookstore, Kobo, PageFoundry, and  Baker & Taylor.

We have chosen not to distribute through bookstores, because that would raise the price. Bookstore distribution requires a markup of 40% and I know I wouldn't want to pay that sort of price. The paperback will be $9.99 and the ebook we are still debating how to price. Actually that is untrue -- I am waffling on the price is what is happening.

The book runs about 96,000 words, which is substantial, though not huge by contemporary standards. But it is long enough to tell the story. A number of people were happy to tell us where we fell short in earlier drafts and some major rewrites addressed those shortcomings. It is a story of an overeager book editor, an actor, a publisher, a brilliant but reclusive writer and the problems that  mix brings.

Print books

I still love printed books and I know I am not the only one who does. So I have released the short book Two Stories of Sailors and the Sea in paperback. This volume contains two short stories about quite different sailors, and their interaction with the sea.

It isn't available through bookstores, as we wanted to keep the price low and bookstores need a high enough price to discount. But you can find it for only $5.99
at Amazon and CreateSpace. Of course it is also available, more cheaply in ebook form at Amazon and Smashwords and Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, iTunes, and Diesel.

I hope you enjoy the books.

Cows and bats

If it seems like I am on a roll talking about interactions with animals, it is because I am. Living in a rural place, even if it is a small community, tends to put you back in contact with the creatures we share this world. I enjoy most of it, even if I would be happier if certain creatures (insects, turkeys...) were left out of the equation.

Recently I noticed that Mr. Sau, who takes care of the grounds, using a new lawn mower. This was  a nice upgrade for him from the weed eater they were using to cut the grass. There is a lot of grass now, and that is a slow way to get the job done. Doctor Philippe, the landlord is quite proud of the new lawnmower, and rightfully so. They are not common here.

Nonetheless, I wasn't surprised to look out the other day and see the supplementary equipment at work.

The animal belongs to one of the neighbors, and I assume that Mr. Sau came to an arrangement with him. So every afternoon, this beast is tethered somewhere on the grounds, filling her stomach while taking over part of the lawn maintenance burden.

The other recent encounter was nocturnal. When we first moved onto our boat in the Caribbean, we had no electricity. So the evenings were spent in the dark. When we got electricity sorted out, we found that we preferred spending evenings in the dark. There were fewer insects and you could see what was going on around you under the moonlight. We were an exception and most people turned on lights at night. When we visited other boats, looking out into the black night seemed odd. We preferred things our way.

In our house here, we like to sit in the dark. Habits die hard, and there is still the issue of insects. They love light. Our neighbors turn on porch lights and we watch the mosquitoes plan their attacks. But we have no reason to be smug. Darkness brings like-minded creatures around. In this case, a bat. The bats fly around in the evening catching bugs. They fly through our porch.

One bat, however, was not content with this routine, and on an evening not long ago, as I sat contemplating the universe, I was assaulted with bat guano. Now this is a rather nice form of that substance, and not caustic like that of the fruit bats in Venezuela, and certainly not as troublesome as the vampire bats we had there either.

But I didn't like it. We used a broom to discourage the little guy; I just poked it near him and he flew off. The next night he came back to the exact same spot under the porch roof--directly over my chair. We turned on the light and he left. The next night, he decided the light was okay, and he would stay, but I turned to chemical warfare and sprayed in his direction with bug spray. Again he left.

  Here he is hanging right above my chair. 

So what are you going to do with a guy like that? We like him to come around and eat bugs. He would even be rather welcome to hang around if he would pick a different spot, but he has not shown a willingness to negotiate. So we close curtains at night now and hope he will find a nicer spot. Maybe he can go hang on a roof beam over the cow and they can talk over the craziness of people.

Turkeys on the porch

I've learned a number of lessons in this current incarnation of living in Asia.

• Asians are not in the least inscrutable (they yell at you when they are pissed just like everyone else.).
• Eating fruit for breakfast every morning makes me feel good.
• I don't like turkeys.

Of course, none of these lessons is in the least profound, and perhaps none are useful, except for the bit about fruit. And the only real surprise is the last one.

So I will explain a bit about how I came to uncover my dislike for turkeys.

At the moment, my writing days are spent in a small cottage a few metres from our house. It looks like this.

This is a wonderful place to work, except for the turkeys. Bear in mind that throughout Asia, poultry are inescapable, even beyond the dinner plate. Chickens and turkeys have the run of the place, despite the risk they run from motorbikes and cows. Mostly it works out.

Chickens are okay. I am not a chicken lover, at least until they are cooked, but we get along. But the turkeys on my porch are vile and nasty and noisy. 

It isn't all their fault. They did not build the coop next to my porch, but in all fairness, neither did I, and we should all have to come to some agreement on how to share space. They run over the entire compound with their shrill chorus (and it is always a chorus... you never hear one turkey) echoing, and I really have less problem with that than with the piles of turkey dung (large) they drop everywhere. 

But I can deal with that. 

The problem is that when I am trying to write, the word gets out and they assemble on my porch and sing to me. Unfortunately I don't care for the song, have heard it before, and actually would prefer a Sousa march as music to work to. I suspect this is all down to my evil neighbor telling them about the US holiday of Thanksgiving, and hanging the responsibility for the role turkeys play in it on me. There doesn't seem to be any other explanation that fits the few paltry facts.

I don't understand their intent (that of the turkey's not that of my evil neighbor) but it has antagonized me and I am in the process of ordering some cook books that focus on turkey dishes to give as presents to the Khmer people who take care of them.

I am sure an equitable situation will evolve over time. Patience is of utmost importance here. After all, I have to send off for the books, and the mail is slow here.

Mango Rain

Since I posted that we were waiting for rain, it seems only fair to let you know that we got some. Not the full blown "look at it come down!" kind of rain we will get in the next month or so, but a number of the nice rains that mean good mangos and papaya in the market (psaa, in Khmer).

So after the first rain it looked like this. The soil is a clay that gets very slippery and, well I believe the technical term is "yucky" after a nice rain.

On the other hand, it also is soft, which means Dr. Philippe's minions can pull weeds. They are planting grass in the bare patches and he bought around 100 acacia trees to plant around the property. That is supposed to reduce traffic noise and add privacy. We will see.

New Stories

I've recently published a couple of new short stories. To be honest, one isn't exactly new. I wrote it for a small book I did a limited run of when I was living in the Caribbean. It is an account of some real, but fictionalized people in a real, and not particularly fictionalized place--a rum shop.

The other book is based in Hong Kong and tells the tale of a sailor too often trapped in the corporate world, but determined to get out onto the high seas. His story is a little chancy.

Both books are available at my

Amazon and Smashwords author pages.

A visit to Phnom Penh

The name Phnom Penh literally means "Penh's hill", but the city is rather flat and quite walkable. Our neighbors in Kampot suggested we try a guest house owned by friends of theirs. The name was inauspicious. The Lone Star Saloon does not conjure up images of the pearl of the orient. Still a reference is a reference and these folks are usually pretty good, so we gave it a try. Our regular taxi driver, Mr Mao, took us right to the door in time for lunch.

Our trips to the city are infrequent and usually based around the need for things not available in the provinces. Our favorite way to shop is to hire a tuk tuk for the morning and take advantage of the local knowledge as well as transportation.

Here are some tuk tuks outside the wat that is just at the end of 23rd Street where the Lone Star is located.

They actually seem to do a brisk business ferrying monks back and forth from where ever monks go to when they aren't at the wat.

By the way, The Lone Star was great. Most of the folks working there are Khmer, although the lady who owns it admits to having been to Texas. Her husband is from Texas and the sentiments are his. The rooms were comfortable and quiet and good value. The location is perfect for prowling the city, regardless of what you are prowling for.

Another wedding and its music

The folks at the basket maker's house next to us started setting up the tents for a wedding on Saturday. I call it the basket maker's house, because when they aren't having weddings, they make huge baskets out of reeds--all day long. A very industrious group. So they deserved a party.

You can' see the house in this photo. It sits back from the way and the tent runs all the way from the road to the house. The second tent, to the right, is in an empty lot. I suppose it is for friends of friends of the family.

The daytime music, which is largely traditional music, which I was told was written specifically for weddings, is interesting. Khmer music uses five tones, but they aren't the same as the Western pentatonic scale (the "rock" scale). It is all whole tone steps, no sharps or flats. And the arrangements tend to be rhythmic. The music has no harmonies, and independent melodies are interwoven. At its best, it is really nice, kind of Asian Dixieland. At its worst (according to my ears) it is like a bad jam session.

The nighttime music was certain to be that terrible mixtape of Santana (long instrumentals by a Santana clone who is good but little imagination) and pop and awful Karaoke. So went to the city for the evening. Stayed at a nice wooden guest house on the river front. We had a khmer massage, which is a very soothing way to spend an hour, and ate frogs legs while watching family hour on the riverfront. We call it family hour because the vast majority of the traffic is motorbikes with Mom and Dad and a couple of kids on board. They stop at street vendors and buy boiled corn on the cob, or beer, or some of the other interesting foods available. But more on food another time.

The right temperature

It's the hot season in Cambodia. May will be hot too. But each day is different. Some mornings it gets hot early, while on others it stays pleasant until ten or so. In the evening it might cool quickly or stay hot until nearly midnight. So far, however, it always cools off at night.

Our house

Yesterday evening, about six, I tool a stroll to the front gate of the compound that the house we rent is part of. Actually, I was taking out the garbage, but everyone knows that writers don't take out garbage, so I was taking a stroll, communing with the universe. Those are things writers are expected to do, and I intend to represent my group proudly.

It had been a hot and still day, but suddenly I noticed that the temperature was absolutely perfect. I didn't recall a moment when it began getting cooler,but clearly, while my attention was elsewhere, it had dropped to a perfect temperature. Now don't expect any numbers from me in either Celsius, which is what we use her, of Fahrenheit, as  if I had a thermometer it would most likely be in whatever oblivion I assigned my watch to many moons ago. Time and precise measurement don't fit this kind of living well. The very idea of quantifying pleasant is, well, unpleasant.

Pretty much every day, since it likes regularity, the Kampot sun sets behind Bokor Mountain, which is behind our house. If you guessed it was to the West, you've been paying attention. When I returned to the house from my stroll, and the garbage mysteriously taken care of, I was still enjoying the evening, so I hung out on the porch. I noticed our neighbor Andreas standing in the yard looking at something. He pointed behind my house.

"The sky," he said.

I looked and saw a yellow orange sky, fading out as the sun set. I should mention that he is from Sweden and the idea of sunset always being at six is a bit of an adjustment for him, even though he lived for a time in Thailand before coming here.

This morning was cool. We eat a breakfast of fruit on the porch and look out at the river. Some mornings are too hot to sit long, but clouds rolled in from Viet Nam with no Visa whatsoever and blocked the direct sun. The weather pattern is already shifting. The clouds were coming from the Northeast and now they are from the Southeast. Perhaps the rains will come soon and May won't be so hot.

We find that it is easy to deal with the heat when you become aware of those magic moments when the temperature is perfect. It's easier to deal with anything that isn't going well when you see the magical light of sunset and sunrise surprising you with its choice of colors and patterns.

Perhaps I am easily amused these days, but it feels like a gentle time.

The Twelfth Year

Moving into the twelfth year of something is important in Cambodia. A nearby house starts its twelfth year of existence soon, and the owner brought in monks and held a small ceremony to ensure it will be propitious. I find it interesting that the idea is to celebrate the year at its beginning, but it makes a lot more sense than the normal cry of relief that we give in the West to announce that we have survived another year.

Closer to home for us, a local couple invited us to the party for their wedding anniversary. Having been married for eleven years, they are moving into that auspicious twelfth year. Parties are important here, so we got fancy invitations telling us that Mr Sor Yuthka and Mrs Yuos Sophy, known to us as Ka and Sophy, were having a party and we were invited.

 An anniversary party here looks a lot like a wedding party. There is a huge tent or two, lots and lots of speakers for the LOUD sound system (that plays music really LOUD! And I mean REALLY LOUD!). As an honored guest you get to sit in front of the speakers. Fortunately, we were on foreigners and able to suggest that we sit slightly off the main target range and further back (stupid foreigners never know a good thing).

When enough guests arrive to fill a table, the food starts to arrive and people chat as well as the music permits, and toast each other. So you face the prospect of a well dressed housewife looking you in the eye, clinking glasses with you and saying "joul moaay", which means you have to drink your iced Cambodia beer down in one go or face incredible humiliation in the eyes of everyone around.

Early guests getting ready for the feast

We left not long after the food was done, but the party proper was just ramping up. The emergence of a generation of karaoke artists caused the volume of the music to increase, with a commensurate increase in distortion. We were going to hear it anyway, at least until midnight, but decided to put some distance between ourselves and ground zero.

We find it interesting that Cambodians almost universally love loud noise. The old and young alike have no use for a volume control set even a micron below maximum. It seems hard to relate this quality with their many virtues.

Happy New Year from SE Asia

Here in Southeast Asia, New Year is approaching. In a few days it will be 2556 BE (Buddhist Era) in Cambodia. Laos celebrates on the same days (April 13 through 15) as it is the end of the harvest season. The Thai New Year is a little off; maybe they like going to two parties. At any rate, throughout SE Asia, the monsoon should be coming soon, and with it the rains. It is hard to travel in the rainy season.

It's a big holiday for the Khmer people, and they are not content to settle for the three official days, as this is an opportunity to return to the provinces and see family and just have fun. The Khmer people have a great aptitude and appetite for partying.

Theoretically, each of the three days has a specific function that is tied closely to activities at the pagodas. The first is Maha SongKiran, when offerings are made; the second is Virak Wanabat, which is supposed to be about charitable work and helping the poor; the third day is Tngay Leang Saka, and if you do it right, you cleanse the statues of Buddha with perfumed water.

It is a little crazy all over the country this time of year. Khmers sort of warm up with celebrating the Chinese New Year in Feb, and brought in the year of the dragon with some great revelry. So we expect stores will be closed. We've been stocking up and getting ready to hunker down. Traffic gets wild, and there is more than the normal amount of drunkenness, as you might expect. After all, it will soon be 2556, so check your calendars.

Waiting for the rain

It is getting warm in Cambodia now. The nights still cool down, but the afternoons are often quite hot. I can't tell you exactly how hot it gets, because I have given up on getting information from weather reports. There is no weather station here, and the weather is quite different in the big city where there is one, but take it from a kid who loves the tropics--it does get hot. It won't get cooler until the rains come.

April is the cruelest month according to Thomas Stearns Eliot, the American poet who wanted to be a British poet, and did a fair job of that. In Cambodia, which tried being French for a while, April and May are the hottest months, tempered by, at some point, the advent of the mango rains, which produce the best mangoes in the known world. Good mangoes offset any perceived cruelty in my book. And the mangoes are tasty even now.

A mango tree in March, waiting for April showers

A Cambodian mango, but it tastes international

One of the many things I enjoy about Asia is the fresh food. The produce doesn't look like it was factory made. Oranges come in different sizes and some are mottled. They are flavorful, and that is what counts. Cambodians have an interesting way of talking about some fruit. The Romanized pronounciation for the word for orange is groach bpoasut, which doesn't do much justice to the way it sounds, really, and anyway all you need to say is groach to make your point. When I saw tangerines in the market, I asked my neighbor Nak what they were called. She said groach. When I pointed out that that was the word for oranges, she agreed. So I asked how the heck you could send someone to the market for tangerines and make sure they didn't come back with oranges. She said you say Battambang groach, which means oranges from the province of Battambang. Of course the word for mango is pretty close to the word for monkey, so I am learning to be careful what I ask for.

After the mangoes come the rains. The rains are often heavy to an extent those who haven't been to the tropics can't really imagine, but it is a good time of year. Roads are impassable, tourists go home, and the place is relatively cool and quiet. And wet.

Visiting Phnom Penh

The capital of Cambodia is a city that has been through more than its fair share of turmoil, but it has proven resilient. If commerce and hustle are valid markers for the health of a city, it seems to be thriving. Markets are everywhere and the low rise skyline is gradually lifting to meet the aspirations of foreign investors who seem to want buildings tall.

That doesn't mean that you can get all that you might want there. It is small as capital cities go. That makes it more manageable and friendly, but it also means you don't always get what you want. But you can get a clean, air-conditioned hotel room for $25 and good food in a variety of cuisines.

In some of the markets you really have to want to shop. This was taken early in the morning at the food market near the guest house we stayed in. It is just a couple of blocks from the riverfront.

Of course Asia means temples and the city grows up around them. 

We go to the city mostly to shop for things that don't make it to the provinces on their own. Although I have a rather iffy relationship with cities at the best of times, I can enjoy PP for a few days and the more khmer I learn, the more I enjoy it, which you'd expect.