All By Myself🎵

Plus a book review of The Evil Inside by Heather Graham

The Husband left this morning to go on a golfing trip to (I think) Virginia Beach, VA. I say "I think," because this is information that I'm sure he told me, but I don't remember. Of course, this means ... yet again ... that I am all by myself ... and left to my own devices. The dog wasn't too pleased the last time this happened. So in the spirit of golf, I decided to write a list of things that I am going to do this weekend without him.*

Midjourney prompt: Create a realistic image of a man taking a golf swing at golf course. Use a Nikon D850 DSLR camera with a 200mm lens at F 1.2 aperture setting to isolate the subject and add a blurred backdrop of the ocean. The golf course should have rolling hills. Use dramatic lighting with sunlight and shadows to create a dynamic image. Use the Midjourney v5.2 with photorealism mode turned on. --ar 4:5

* Okay, so those two concepts have nothing to do with each other.

All By Myself For The Weekend

1. Write. AHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

2. Watch a lot of Korean dramas on Netflix, Viki, and Amazon Prime. If I can't have The Husband, at least I can spend time with Lee Min Ho. Even if I wouldn't go so far as to call him a god.

3. Watch the next episode of The Wheel of Time even though I got mad that they are releasing new episodes each week.

4. Forget to send out the newsletter on time.

5. Read a book instead. Or three.

6. Pretend to be productive.

7. Clean the house. The house never looked so good.

8. But refuse to throw out the roses he gave me for our wedding anniversary (last week).

9. Send him a text message. Whoops. He was in the middle of a swing. Of all the luck!

10. Buy lots of things on Amazon. Hey, I've always wanted one of those [fill in the blank] ...

11. Look up lots of things about golf in an attempt to write a Midjourney prompt for this week's newsletter, even though I have zero interest in golf and I cannot even remember where he is.

12. Still pretending to be productive. But those K-dramas are calling to me ...

13. Go back to writing. AHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

The Promos

This week I'm promoting Chained by Conviction by R.M. Demeester. It's free on the Kindle Unlimited and $2.99 to buy.

From the Amazon page:

The community is outraged when Robert Hall, a philanthropist and devoted family man, is murdered by Kobe, a stranger.

Among the chaos, Elle, Kobe's fiancée, is certain of two things: Kobe loves her, and he did not kill Robert. But as the weight of circumstantial evidence swallows Kobe whole, Elle vows to exonerate him at any cost. Yet, in a world that doubts his innocence, who will dare to believe?

Book Review: The Evil Inside by Heather Graham

This past week, I read The Evil Inside by Heather Graham. It is book #4 in the Krewe series, which is apparently about a certain FBI unit kinda like Mulder & Scully in the X-Files. With the notable exception being that the X-Files is awesome, and The Evil Inside is not.

On an aside note, I kept thinking the book's name was The Evil Within.

Anyhoo, this book is about a woman named Jenna, who works at this secret FBI division, and Sam, an attorney. They basically defend a kid named Malachi, who was accused of murdering his parents ... mostly because he was found in the middle of the road (by Sam) with covered in blood.

I give this book 1 out of 5 stars because it's so terrible.

First of all, Sam would never have been able to represent Malachi. That's because there is a very strict rule against advocating for and being a witness in the same trial. Any prosecuting attorney worth his or her weight would seek to disqualify Sam. And frankly, Sam would already know this. And wouldn't take Malachi's case.

Second, the book is riddled with factually inaccuracies. One or two aren't bad. But the book had tons of them. For example, Sam says at one point about "changing the plea to one of insanity if I don't believe we can get reasonable doubt into the heads of the jury." Sam cannot change the plea ... a prosecuting attorney offers a plea. And Malachi is under absolutely no obligation to take that plea, even if he is not fit to stand trial.

Another irritating point is that Jenna was an RN before she went into the FBI as an agent. An RN is an associate's degree. The FBI has a strict minimum requirement of a Bachelor's degree, with most agents having a Master's or a J.D. (In fact, it's pretty much standard to have a graduate degree to be an FBI agent.) If Jenna was a nurse, she would have had to hold a BSN, or she must have had to get a BSN, before applying to the FBI.

Aside from all the inaccuracies, the book is badly written. The dialogue ... an entire page of one person talking ... yeah. I have absolutely no idea how this author got published, by an imprint of Harper Collins, no less. After the introductory chapter of finding Malachi, it also has zero plot or storyline until about halfway into the book. Mostly filler, backstory, and really bad dialogue.

Happenings

If you got this far, you noticed that I put a book review in my weekly newsletter. I decided that I was going to read a book a week for the next year, writing out my reviews of said book in each newsletter. The reviews will be shorter than my normal review ... I mean, I have to give a bit of humor first, amirite?

I've also made a goal of trying ... note the word trying ... to make a new recipe to match the book that I just read. This week, I made New England Baked Scrod. As far as the book is concerned, the mention of the scrod was probably the most interesting part of it. This is not the recipe from the back of the book. I did, in fact, write, cook, and photograph this recipe, ha! And I ate the leftovers for lunch today. It was delicious, if I do say so myself.

I'm finishing up The K2 on Netflix rn. It's a Korean drama, sadly not featuring Lee Min Ho. But it does have Yoona, who is my second favorite Korean actor.

I will be (finally) starting on The Wheel of Time book series for next newsletter. 

Also here's All By Myself by Eric Carmen: