Scorpio Rising: book review by Horoscope Guide

20 Mar

 SCORPIO RISING, by Alan Annand, Sextile.com

358 pages, paper $11.99 (available at Amazon.com or Createspace.com). Digital versions for all ereaders available ($2.99) through Smashwords.com.

Independent investigator Axel Crowe has promised to look into the murder of a friend’s sister, who was found dead under odd circumstances on a New York street. Having been allowed access to the detectives assigned to the case, he asks first for the basic details of the murder: where it happened, approximate time of death, and so forth. As the cops give him the requested information, he is thumbing his smart phone, glancing at it from time to time, not the kind of gesture that gets much attention from anyone these days of course. What he is doing, though, is having an astrology app do the chart, and a Vedic chart at that, for the date, time, and place of the murder. He glances down at it and thinks to himself:

With Scorpio rising, a fixed sign suggested murder connected with a family member. The seventh house was Taurus, a female sign, and its ruler was Venus, a female planet. Together, they indicated a female killer. Venus in dual sign Pisces implied more than one person involved. An exalted Venus, in planetary war with Mars, described an aggressive professional who was into sports or martial arts…   

And neatly with a few strokes of a thumb and a not insubstantial fund of knowledge gained from his former guru, Crowe has outlined the clues that begin to lead him to the murder. Earlier in the book Crowe’s guru had cut him loose as someone too much taken with his vices (relationships, drinking, and gambling) to give proper attention to spiritual tasks.

That kind of character work I found refreshing almost from the start of Scorpio Rising, as over the years I’ve read probably most of the small number of works of astrological fiction published, and a major fault in most (with the exception of Barbara Shafferman’s Addie Price in The President’s Astrologer, published in 1998) is that the main character tends to be a type, not a person. One can’t imagine them falling in love, having any bad habits (if they have habits at all), and certainly one can’t conceive of them ever making a mistake. Crowe is good at what he does, but he is not perfect, and he is good at being human, though again not perfect.

Though I’ve started this review with a quote that is firmly astrological, protagonist Crowe is also a palmist and uses other intuitive and symbolic techniques such as vastu shastra (similar to feng shui, though there is only a partial overlap between the two). Mostly though, he is a smart, observant detective who knows how to put together little bits and pieces of clues to make the big picture that leads him to the culprits. While there is no doubt that astrology, supported by these other techniques, is a central player in the untangling of the mystery, that app on Crowe’s smart phone is introduced only where it makes a difference and this is done in such a way that the reader isn’t required to know much, if anything, about the subject.

The story revolves around three murders that occur on the same day in geographical locations far removed from each other, and though from very early in the book we have an idea of who the culprits are (by nature if not by name), just how the murders might be linked, and how that could relate to the motives is always just a chapter or two ahead of the reader. I happen to gravitate toward mysteries in my off-hours reading (and more so since the advent of the Nook and library e-loans), and they tend to fall into two categories: those you read to the end in order to find out what happened, and those you read (sometimes grudgingly) to the end to confirm what you already know.

The first category is the best of course, and Scorpio Rising falls firmly into that class. Around page 150, though I was enjoying the read, I was quite sure that I had figured out most of the key elements of the mystery, but two chapters later I had to stop patting myself on the back when a couple of additional details told me that I had totally misjudged two of the characters, derailing most if not all of my detective work. And so it went, all the way to the end.

What it comes down to is that Scorpio Rising is an engaging mystery with twists and turns that keep you reading all the way to the last page of the last chapter. Axel Crowe is a new kind of character on the mystery scene, who is a quick study when presented with a baffling murder in part because he combines his own mix of intuitive methods with a thorough understanding of methods used by police and crime labs the world over. Though his intuitive insight may give him an edge and put him a level or two above the more tedious tasks of police work, Crowe is not some shiny mystical figure travelling on a higher plane, but rather someone who deals every day with the limitations of his own imperfections.

A good mystery all the way around!

~ Kenneth Irving, editor, Horoscope Guide

For all the latest REVIEWS of Scorpio Rising, see: http://pinterest.com/alanannand/scorpio-rising/

To purchase Scorpio Rising (digital $2.99, paper $11.99)


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Scorpio Rising: book review by Astrology Toronto

13 Mar

SCORPIO RISING by Alan Annand

(book review by Julie Simmons)

Usually when I read a book I like I just say to whomever I think might enjoy it, “You should read this book. It’s great.” I don’t think of myself as a reviewer. But here I am reviewing Alan Annand’s book, Scorpio Rising. Before I get into the telling details, let me just say, “You should read this book. It’s great.”

Everyone loves a good mystery. Astrologers might love mysteries more than most because we are all detectives on some level although most of us are not called upon to solve the perfect crime. Rarely if ever do we find a mystery novel (worth reading) that features a major character who is an astrologer as well as a palmist with an active spiritual life.

Axel Crowe, the brilliant investigator of Annand’s book, is just such a character. He manages to present and defend his use of astrology to the cops in such a way that they accept him. We can all use some of that. His view of the world as a seamless web of connections is always present. I had the feeling that synchronicity itself is the unnamed character in this book.

One of my favourite things in this novel is the way Crowe rectifies a chart. It’s as though he pulls information from the air. And he’s cool, so cool he steps up to sit in with the band at a blues club on New York’s legendary Bleecker Street.

Axel Crowe is Agent 007 for the New Age set. He’s a pacifist at heart, but knows how to handle himself in a fight. He doesn’t drink and he lives a moderate life despite having access to plenty of money for a more excessive lifestyle. He is a genuine student of the mysteries and lives in a world he has charmed into speaking to him thanks to his years spent sitting at the feet of his guru.

Then there is the actual plot. The supposedly perfect crime can only be solved by reading clues and connections that only an astrologer could find. Crowe reads the twisted minds, hearts and personalities of the criminals and tracks them to their lairs. He can see a lot in a fingerprint or the chart of the moment. We are never bored as he journeys to different cities and encounters the good, the bad and the ugly. There is even a car chase and shoot-out in the desert.

Personally I enjoyed every minute of this book at many levels. I was entertained, intrigued and delighted to be along for the cosmic ride. Annand refers to his book as the first in a New Age Noir series. I look forward to reading more and it’s not just because I’m a Scorpio rising.

Julie Simmons is a full-time astrologer in Toronto, Canada. She writes a monthly astrological column for Vitality Magazine and has published two books on astrology: Passion Signs, and Earned Wisdom. http://www.juliesimmons.ca

For all the latest REVIEWS of Scorpio Rising, see: http://pinterest.com/alanannand/scorpio-rising/

To purchase Scorpio Rising (digital $2.99, paper $11.99)


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Scorpio Rising: book review by NCGR newsletter

2 Mar

SCORPIO RISING, by Alan Annand

(reviewed by Donna Van Toen)

And now for something completely different… It’s not common to see a novel where astrology plays a major role, but that’s exactly what we’ve got here.

The protagonist, Axel Crowe, is a criminal profiler, finder of missing people and things, damned fine detective, and just for good measure a Vedic astrologer and an excellent palmist as well. When we meet him early on, he is also a follower of a guru, known only as Guruji. Guruji dismisses Crowe early on, but his pithy comments appear throughout the story – which is definitely not the story of an aesthete living in an ashram. There are murders, there is mayhem, and there are plenty of women.

The action takes place all over the map – in Toronto, in New York, in California, and elsewhere. Annand has a good eye for setting tone, a good ear for dialogue, and excellent ability to whip up a fast-paced plot. And he throws in just enough astrology and palmistry to pique our interest. Not gratuitous astrology or palmistry either – it’s an integral part of Crowe’s bag of tricks and definitely a part of the story.

Annand is a seasoned writer of detective stories and this one doesn’t disappoint. It’s fast-paced and has enough twists and turns – as well as enough astrology and palmistry – to keep you turning those pages and distract you from your more mundane chores. I enjoyed it immensely. I did wonder though, how someone of non-astrological bent might relate to it. So I passed it along to a non-astrological friend. The verdict – he liked it too. “But,” he asked, “is all that stuff about palmistry for real?” I assured him it was, and that the author – in addition to being a good writer, was a pretty fine astrologer and palmist as well.

If you like thrillers and detective stories, this one is a terrific read. You may even be able to justify reading it as “study” because chances are that you will learn a few tidbits here and there. My one caution would be: Don’t lend it until you’re really ready to let go of it. When I went to track down my copy, it had already been loaned to a second person and it took me two weeks to get it back so I could do this review. The borrower did, however, give me a pound of cashews by way of an apology. Guruji would not have been pleased, but I’m pretty sure Crowe would have smiled. He’d know that just like cashews, this is a book to indulge in.

Donna Van Toen is an astrologer, teacher, and author of “The Astrologer’s Node Book” and “The Mars Book.” She coordinates the annual State of the Art (SOTA) Conference, and speaks for groups and conferences throughout the world. http://www.donnavantoen.com.

Scorpio Rising, Sextile.com, 2011,  348pp paper $11.99, digital $2.99

For all the latest REVIEWS of Scorpio Rising, see: http://pinterest.com/alanannand/scorpio-rising/

To purchase Scorpio Rising (digital $2.99, paper $11.99)

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Bananarama (humor)

31 Jan

Many years ago, inspired by the stellar example of the Buddha, and a bizarre association with one Wild Bill Periwinkle, an American New Age writer I’d met in the backwoods of New Brunswick, I decided to become a vegetarian.

It was a sensible thing to do, although desperation played a part. After years of struggling to make it as a writer, I was ready to emulate the virtues of any good role model, and since Wild Bill had already carved a niche for himself in the publishing world, I figured that if it worked for him, it might also work for me. According to Wild Bill, if only I’d free my body from the bad karma of all those hapless animals sacrificed for my dining pleasure, my luck would turn, and I too could soon see my name on a book jacket. Equally important, Wild Bill explained, there were also significant health benefits.

“After years of eating meat, the heavy mucus coating in the colon thickens to the consistency of truck tire rubber, becoming a host of putrefaction. As noxious debris seeps through the bowel wall, the capillaries to the colon suck up these toxins and distribute them freely among the organs and tissues of the body.”

Wild Bill took a long draw on a skinny joint and passed it to me. He was a normally reticent fellow, but as soon as he had a lungful of ganja smoke inside him, he became as gabby as a talk-show host on amphetamines.

“Thanks to years of encrusted fecal buildup, some colons under autopsy have measured nine inches in diameter, with channels no bigger than a pencil through which one can barely pass a rabbit pellet, never mind the super-sized leftovers of yesterday’s fast food meal. I’ll bet you didn’t know, Elvis had 60 pounds of this crap jamming up his exit route.”

“Is that why he died on the john?” I said.

“To rid your body of all that intestinal gunk, and pave the way for a better life, both now and in your next incarnation, you’ve got to undergo a cleansing diet,” Wild Bill told me in his most seriously spiritual tone.

It seemed like a worthy goal, and although I’d followed Wild Bill’s advice on any number of other quasi-mystical regimens that had failed to manifest any noteworthy benefit, I was always game for another adventure in consciousness-raising. According to Wild Bill, it was simply a matter of faith and perseverance before my colon would be running as clean as a mountain stream.

The program was deceptively simple, as outlined in The Canadian Whole Earth Almanac, a copy of which Wild Bill loaned me as proof this wasn’t just another of his crazy ideas, but was in fact endorsed by one of the flagship publications of the counter-culture. In the best New Age tradition, with a strong bias for all things cosmic, the diet would start on the New Moon and finish on the Full Moon. Fifteen days, in which I should eat no more nor less than nine bananas a day. To wash it down, I could drink all the orange juice I wanted. And if I needed to suppress any gas resulting from the consumption of enough bananas to feed a small tribe of monkeys, I should add three cardamom seeds to this daily regimen. That’s it, that’s all.

This being my first diet, I decided to keep it simple. I’d never been one to suffer from gas, so I didn’t trouble myself with hunting down the exotic cardamom seed at a natural foods emporium. Instead, I went to the nearest supermarket and bought a case of almost-ripe bananas, and a gallon of orange juice. The checkout girl looked at me kind of funny.

“Do you have a pet monkey?”

“Yes, but he’s a naughty little primate, and I frequently have to spank him. Do you love animals? Maybe you could help. What time do you get off work?”

She hurriedly gave me change and turned her attention to the next shopper in line. I shouldered my case of bananas and headed home.

My first day went something like this: two bananas for breakfast, three bananas for lunch, three bananas for dinner and one banana for a late-night snack. The first couple of days went fine. I liked bananas and they seemed to like me. I noticed, however, that despite all this volume, my bowels seemed to have gone on strike. Maybe they were just trying to adjust to this pH-neutral food that was so good for them that they didn’t know how to deal with it, somewhat like the aboriginal peoples who didn’t get it at first that the arriving colonists would, contrary to all the initial evidence, eventually improve their quality of life, turning them from itinerant hunter-gatherers into business-savvy casino operators.

Finally, on day three I had a bowel movement that should have prompted me to get a photo and/or a witness to register it for the Guinness Book of World Records. It was the size of a banana-colored anaconda, and took several flushes of the toilet to banish it to the netherworld of the sewage system. My inner monkey got quite a primal fright in seeing this snake-like phenomenon so up close and personal, but after it was gone, I felt distinctly lighter in all respects. Maybe I was now on my way to cleanliness of body, soul and spirit, just as Wild Bill in a temporary lucid state had prophesied.

Around day five, I began to suffer gas attacks the like of which World War One trench soldiers had never experienced. At first it was just a minor thing, a bit of intestinal bloating, followed by a relieving wind that smelled distinctly of bananas. It had quite a sweetish odor, actually, and in the volumes being emitted, quickly precluded the need in my apartment for incense to mask the odor of stale kitty litter or the catnip my feline friends were fond of smoking day and night.

I rushed out to the nearest health food store and bought a hundred grams of cardamom seeds. I didn’t have anything with which to grind the seeds to a powder, so I just gobbled a handful. An hour later, I lay doubled up on my bed, nearly paralyzed by terrible stomach cramps.

Meanwhile, it was obvious that the cardamom seeds had none of their desired effect, and by day’s end I was discharging gas almost continuously, at an industrial rate of production. My lower bowel had been transformed into a banana methane factory.

I called my girlfriend and cancelled our usual Friday night date. She was miffed but I preferred not to explain. On Saturday night I skipped a movie I’d planned to see with some buddies. I didn’t go to church on Sunday morning. I missed classes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, however, I had a test in American Lit 409 that was so important I couldn’t avoid it, so by hissing wind all the way to the class, and then completing a multiple choice questionnaire in record time, I made a beeline to the washroom where I cut loose a wicked one that nearly blew the door off the stalls. Temporarily deflated, I retreated to self-imposed solitary confinement in my apartment. Ironically, my reading assignment for the weekend was Gone With the Wind.

Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, Nietzsche said, but he never had to go through this. Suffering in the name of a good cause, however, I maintained a stiff upper lip and a flaccid sphincter. Four more days and my colon would be ollie-ollie-toxin-free. Although I desperately craved pizza, beer, potato chips, pork rinds, salted peanuts – anything but the sweet mush of another banana – I hung tough. God in his wisdom had something good for me at the end of all this, I believed, my faith as unshakeable as those Kamikaze pilots who rode their planes down to destruction with what they called a divine wind at their backs. Trouble is, when I looked over my shoulder, the wind at my back was nothing short of diabolic.

The hiss of gas was a constant background noise. My upstairs neighbors called the utility company to complain about a leak. When a technician arrived with his gas monitor, I told him to go ahead and check the place, I was just going out for a walk. I hurried across the street and into a cemetery where I hunched behind a gravestone and liberated some bowel steam. Squirrels in the trees above swooned like canaries and hung from the branches with sick expressions on their furry little mugs. When I returned to my apartment half an hour later I found a note from the utility man saying everything was fine with the gas lines, but maybe I should empty my garbage can, which was overflowing with rotten banana skins and empty orange juice cartons.

On the afternoon of day 15, the Full Moon, I was down to the short strokes on this inhuman diet, which by now I was convinced must have been dreamed up by Hanuman, the fierce monkey god of Hindu cosmology, as some bizarre rite of evolutionary progress. No dessert until you eat your vegetables, and no rebirth until you eat your fruit. I was counting, if not the hours, then certainly the bananas. 131 down, only four more to go. I could do it. Before me lay only dinner and a bedtime snack, and then one last night’s restless sleep, during which I would toss and turn and billow the bed sheets with enough banana methane to heat a house.

The doorbell rang. It was Wild Bill, come to town for his once-a-week grocery run, during which he invariably dropped his wife off at the local health food store while he popped around the corner to shoot the breeze and share a joint with me. As was his custom, it was already dangling from his mouth, his lighter cocked in his right hand ready for ignition. As he ambled in, he said, “Whew, that’s some funky-smelling shit, man, you need to open a window and vent this place out.” But before I could say, wait, don’t light that up in here, he flicked his lighter and a tiny flame erupted in a fiery cloud of gas.

They said the blast was heard a dozen blocks away. A fire truck was there in minutes, followed shortly thereafter by a hazardous materials unit and an ambulance, and later by the police and the arson squad. Wild Bill and I were released from the hospital that evening, after criminal intentions had been ruled out, suffering only minor burns incurred at ground-zero of what the haz-mat team called a low-concentration methane explosion of organic origins. I returned to my apartment, whose broken windows had been temporarily sealed with sheets of plastic. I opened two of the windows to create a cross-draught and set a place for dinner at the kitchen table. I pureed one banana in the blender to make soup, ate two more normally as the main dish, and diced the last one to eat for dessert. Exhausted but full, I went to bed.

Aside from the diabolic wind, I slept well, and on awakening to the smell of rotten banana skins, I emptied the garbage and swore that occult vegetarian diets would no longer be a part of this writer’s lifestyle. From this day forth, I resolved to revert to my omnivorous ways. With the dawning of a new day and a new lease on life, I hastened off to my favorite breakfast joint and ordered one of everything on the menu – eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, grits, beans, cereal, muffin, hash browns, toast, and a big pot of coffee.

Recognizing a ravenous man when she saw one, the waitress asked me, “Do you want a fruit cup with that?”

After a moment’s hesitation I said, “Yes, but hold the bananas.”

 

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Scorpio Rising: book review by The Mountain Astrologer

13 Jan

Scorpio Rising by Alan Annand, part of the New Age Noir series, is a gripping murder mystery with a Hitchcockian twist. Private investigator Axel Crowe is an appealing and upstanding protagonist who uses astrology, palmistry and other esoteric techniques to solve crimes. With bits of Vedic wisdom sprinkled through­out, this book is an enjoyable read and an engrossing narrative.

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Scorpio Rising by Alan Annand, part of the New Age Noir series, is a gripping murder mystery with a Hitchcockian twist. The protagonist of this story is a private investigator named Axel Crowe who uses esoteric techniques to solve crimes – intuition, numerology, palmistry, horary astrology, Ayurveda, Vedic astrology, and a well-developed sense of smell. One FBI agent refers to Crowe’s bag of tricks as “whatever it is you do.” Years of observing the subtle signs of the environment have given Crowe the courage to follow his intuition.

He also looks for signs in the form of synchronicity. Here is one unusual method for determining someone’s ascendant: “Out in Central Park, the blue kite wheeled high in the air. Blue was the color of Venus. Libra was an air sign ruled by Venus. On the wall was an Ernst litho­graph, Portrait Bleu, featuring a bird-like figure. More corrobo­ration. [She] would have a Libra ascendant.”

Crowe, of course, has to deal with a lot of skepticism from law enforcement officials regarding his methods. When someone suggests that it is quite a leap from criminology to astrology, Crowe responds: “I suppose, although some would say, they’re both black arts.”

Crowe is an “infomaniac,” according to his Vedic teacher, Guruji, who had tutored him for 14 years and taught him that our greatest enemy is our own desire. (The novel attempts to prove this maxim.) Crowe was quite attached to his guru: “His heart brimmed with love for the man who had shown him the narrow trail through a bramble thicket of ignorance and misperception.”

The bits of Vedic wisdom sprinkled through­out this book were my favorite parts. For example, here’s what Crowe has to say about women: “Women were mothers, sisters, lovers, angels and rarely, but possibly, demons. Every now and then you might have the bad luck to meet a Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction, and she would add your head to her collection of skulls.” We meet one such demon in this novel.

This is not a whodunit. By page 60 of the book, a pattern has emerged, and we know who has done what to whom. The reader simply waits for Crowe and the detectives to find the pattern and locate the parties responsible for the murders.

Scorpio Rising is an enjoyable read and an engrossing narrative, but it is not for the super-squeamish. (If you set out to read this book, it is recom­mended that you have at least one Scorpio planet in your chart.) There are several unsa­vory characters here – murderers, adulterers, and thieves – but the police detectives are painted as real working-class people, warts and all, and Crowe is an appealing, upstanding guy who is nonetheless not quite perfect.

– reviewed by Jan de Prosse, The Mountain Astrologer, Feb/Mar 2012

Scorpio Rising by Alan Annand, Sextile, 2011. Softcover, 352 pp, $11.99. ISBN 978-0-9869206-4-6.

For all the latest REVIEWS of Scorpio Rising, see: http://pinterest.com/alanannand/scorpio-rising/

To purchase Scorpio Rising (digital $2.99, paper $11.99)

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Harm’s Way = hard-boiled excitement

31 Oct

“For Canadian writers setting hard-boiled stories in Canada, the closest approximation yet to a US-style private eye is Montreal investigator Lee Harms in Harm’s Way by Alan Annand.” – David Skene-Melvin for Rara-Avis

My fifth novel, Harm’s Way, was published under pseudonym by St.Martin’s Press, one of New York’s venerable houses, in 1992. The book received some good reviews but never enough to make it a bestseller.

In the last few years, publishing has been through a paradigm-shifting upheaval. The mass paperback market is down, bookstores are closing and e-books are on the rise.

Having seen the writing on the wall, I’m now self-publishing. In 2012, I released three novels. Two were new mysteries – Scorpio Rising and Hide in Plain Sight – both available on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com.

The third novel was a re-release of Harm’s Way, whose copyright I had recovered years ago when it went officially out-of-print.

After refreshing my memory about what reviewers had said about the book back then, I gave it some ruthless editing and a total re-write. One criticism was that I hadn’t adequately captured the ambience of Montreal, one of North America’s most vibrant cities. So in my re-write, I worked very hard to bring this great city into focus.

Along the way, I tightened up every chapter, until the book moves at the pace of a runaway train. Once you get started, you won’t be able to put it down.

Here’s the jacket copy for Harm’s Way:

Lee Harms, free spirit and investigator-for-hire, is on the cusp of an on-again, off-again love affair with longtime confidante and astrologer Celeste when fate serves him a witch’s brew of trouble.

Start with a broth of sexual intrigue, toss in a kidnapped redhead, stir in two kilos of pure cocaine, dissolve a few pages from a psychiatrist’s notebook, and bring to a boil the fury of an underworld gang whose favorite son has died in an all-night bacchanal. Money ignites the fire under this cauldron, but the fuels that keep it bubbling are sex, violence and the darker forces of human nature.

Although Harms has the advantage of Celeste’s astrological insights to guide him, he must rely increasingly on his own wits to out-maneuver crack-crazed thugs, libidinous porn stars, and a deranged young woman with a dark secret. It’s dangerous enough for Harms, but when his own ten-year-old daughter is taken hostage by the underworld, he must pull out all the stops to rescue her from harm’s way.

Here are more reviews of the day:

“Harm’s Way is a solid P.I. thriller, a nastier-than-you’d-expect slab of pornography, cocaine, gangsters, incest, madness, torture and vengeance.” – Thrilling Detective 

“Underneath the New Age trappings, divorced ex-cop Harms is plenty hard-boiled, using fists, guns and sheer wit to escape the many tight spots here.” – Publisher’s Weekly

“Energy, superior punch-‘em out sequences, and humor.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Harm’s Way is a fast-paced action drama featuring an unlikely variant of the private detective. The writing is above average, the plot convoluted, and the characters well-developed with a past, present and future, something often lacking in the detective field.” – The Westmount Examiner

“Annand has a gift for storytelling. There’s more than enough menace to keep a reader intrigued.” – The Montreal Gazette

“A well-written, quickly-paced story with colorful details of Montreal. And Harms is a likable character – the reader wants to know what happens to him.” – The Daily Gleaner

To purchase Harm’s Way (digital $0.99, paper $8.99)

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Video interview: “New Age noir” author Alan Annand

20 Sep

Last week, courtesy of Nadiya Shah Productions, I enjoyed my second video interview, and the first in which I got to discuss my New Age noir mystery novel “Scorpio Rising“:

A criminal profiler investigates the killing of a New York City heiress and discovers her death is linked to two other murders on the same day: a dot-com millionaire in San Francisco, and the team leader of a CIA counter-terrorist project in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Available on Amazon: $12.99 paper, only $2.99 digital

www.amazon.com/Scorpio-Rising-ebook/dp/B0050IOY6I

Usually, in this kind of foreign environment — a woman’s apartment, bright lights, and two cameras trained on me — I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but on this day I was surprisingly composed.

Perhaps it was thanks to my charming host and interviewer, Nadiya Shah, who is a local-area astrologer, writer, videographer, and consummate professional in all these matters. Check out her website http://nadiyashah.com/ and look for her on-line show, where she has interviewed many other astrologers, both local and international.

Here are the YouTube links for my interview:

Part 1:
Part 2:

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Scorpio Rising: book review by North American Jyotish Newsletter

20 Sep

Book review of “Scorpio Rising” by Michael Laughrin (michael@jyotish.ws) in his North American Jyotish Newsletter (August/September 2011)

There are dozens of different varieties of mystery novels, and I have read at least 2000 of them. Some of these books feature ex-cops who have become PIs (private eyes). Some mysteries, mostly written by British female authors, are called cozies because of their genteel manners and settings. Then there are mysteries in which the setting is all-important — New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago being some of the more popular cities.

Then there is a whole category of mysteries that feature certain professions — lawyers, doctors, chefs, and musicians come to mind. Another genre features certain animals — horses, dogs, cats, and parrots.

Alan Annand has created — or expanded upon — a whole new genre: Vedic Astrology and detective. Our hero in “Scorpio Rising” is also a fine palmist, numerologist, and expert in Vastu (ancient Vedic laws of architecture) and Ayurveda. Being a lover of mysteries (especially the “hard-boiled” type) and of all things Vedic, I believe this book is a 5-star winning combination.

Without giving any of the plot away, here’s the gist of it: Criminal profiler Axel Crowe investigates the killing of a New York City heiress, only to discover that her death is linked to two other murders on the same day: a dot-com millionaire in San Francisco, and the team leader of a CIA counter-terrorist project in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

A finder of wayward people and stolen possessions, the enigmatic Crowe profiles subjects in a distinctly unique manner, using astrology, palmistry and other techniques drawn from Vedic lore. Facts are gross, but the truth is subtle, Crowe’s guru always told him. And although the truth behind this three-way conspiracy lies buried in the past, Crowe is relentless until he uncovers it.

If you think about it, astrologer and detective go together like fish and chips. Astrologers look for that which is hidden, and so do detectives. Both professions value intuition and logic equally. Mr. Annand has done a masterful job in creating a believable character who is personable, intelligent, and multi-faceted in his approach to crime solving.

“Scorpio Rising” is a truly great book. And according to the author, it is just the first in a series of several books featuring this astrologer-detective character. If you love Jyotish, palmistry, etc, READ THIS BOOK! You will learn a lot of predictive techniques because Mr. Annand, besides being a writer, is also a very fine Jyotishi.

Enjoy.

Scorpio Rising is available from Amazon — paperback $12.99, digital only $2.99.
http://www.amazon.com/Scorpio-Rising-ebook/dp/B0050IOY6I

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The Date Square Killer (short crime fiction)

28 Aug

Ken liked to relax at the Mercury Café. No one there knew he was a killer. He could drop in for a coffee and a date square and sit in one of their dumpy club chairs and read the newspaper. No one would be talking business – explaining to him their beef with someone, and asking him how much it’d cost to have their beef turned into hamburger.

It was a slack day and he had time on his hands. He took out his mechanical pencil. It was a beautiful red Pentel he’d taken from an accountant who’d borrowed far more cocaine money than he’d budgeted for. He worked on a Sudoku puzzle. It was a beginner’s level because he wasn’t that good with numbers and if he got frustrated and started to hear the voices of his grade school math teacher echoing in his head, terrible things could happen.

As he worked on his puzzle, he nibbled on a date square. He patronized the Mercury Café because of their perfect date squares. If she weren’t dead, he could have believed his mother had made them. They had just the right amount of date filling, husk-free and not too sweet. They stuck together perfectly, so he could hold one in his free hand and eat it until it was gone and it wouldn’t fall apart on him. Some of these other places, you needed a whisk broom to finish the damn things.

He was sitting in his favorite chair in the back corner when a couple came in. The guy was maybe 21, 22, but looked like he’d got stuck in high school mode and couldn’t squirm out of it. He had a skateboard in one hand and a can of Red Bull in the other, tats up and down his arms and calves, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of those ridiculous baggy pants that came down to just below the knee.

There was a girl with him, she looked maybe 19 but stretching for a few years beyond, like she couldn’t wait to graduate from being a girl and turn into a beautiful young woman. She wore a sleeveless white cotton summer dress, briefly translucent as she was framed in the sunny entrance, and had a thick tangle of blonde hair that obscured her face.

They stood at the counter while the guy ordered a couple of coffees from the barrista. It was the end of the afternoon and the place was pretty busy so the good seats in the front half of the café were already taken. After they cased the joint and came to the same conclusion, they walked into the back and sat on the old sofa that was next to him.

The guy propped his skateboard against the sofa and put his feet on the coffee table. The girl sat beside him, but closer to Ken, keeping her knees together and smoothing her dress around her thighs as she settled in. Her tanned legs were the color of coffee ice cream. She carefully removed the lid from her takeout cup, took a brief sip and grimaced at the heat. She blew on the surface of the coffee and Ken noticed how pretty her lips were, pursed like that, as if she were blowing a kiss.

“Are you coming to Mom’s birthday party?” she asked the guy with her.

“I dunno. I want to go to a party in Oakville.”

“That skank you met on Facebook?” she said.

Annoying rap music erupted from somewhere inside the guy’s pants. He pulled out a cell phone and said, “Whazzup, bro?”

It turned into a long conversation, something about a girl that the caller had a hardon for, but it was apparently going nowhere fast…

Ken knew the feeling. Women didn’t dig him. It was like they had a sixth sense, they looked at his hands and knew he’d done so many bad things with them, and they couldn’t stand the thought of him touching them, and they ran away as fast he appeared on their horizon. He could write a book about unrequited love.

“Are you finished with that section of the paper?” the girl asked him.

Ken looked at her. She was looking at him. Her eyes were like emeralds with lights behind them. He was blinded, like a raccoon in the middle of the road, and a Jaguar bearing down on him. Whump. That was the sound of her tires running over his heart.

“Uh, yeah. Help yourself.”

She took the newspaper, the Entertainment section, and began to read the cover story.

Ken looked at the numbers on the Sudoku grid and couldn’t make sense of anything. His mind was like one of those paperweights that had been shaken, little snowflakes cascading down upon a landscape vaguely familiar and strange, hiding his tracks so that he wasn’t sure how he’d actually got here or how he was going to get home again.

The guy was still talking on the phone. Ken couldn’t believe how rude he was, ignoring the girl beside him. He understood from their three-line dialogue they were probably brother and sister, not boyfriend and girlfriend, but still. People with cell phones didn’t deserve to have friends, or family for that matter, if they were going to behave so badly.

Some days when Ken was in a bad mood he made lists of people he would kill for free. People who abused and abandoned their pets. Drivers who didn’t signal their turns. People who tossed litter on the sidewalks. Owners of very expensive cars who always seemed to have handicapped placards on their dashboards, but not a handicap in sight.

He looked at her again and wracked his brain for something to say. Her beauty was a frightening hurdle, like a mountain in the distance that he wanted to climb but knew that he would run out of oxygen and die before he reached its peak.

She turned the page in the newspaper, picked up her coffee, sipped it again, and her eyes drifted briefly his way.

“Would you like a date square?” he said to her, regretting it immediately. Could he have picked anything more ridiculous to say?

She looked at him and after a moment a crooked little smile appeared on her lips. “Who you calling a square?”

It took him a few seconds before he got it. Word play. She was messing with him. He liked that. His heart started pounding like a big bass drum.

“You’d never make it as a square,” he said. “Too many curves.”

“The better to roll with the punches,” she said.

“Anyone punched you,” he said, “I’d tear their arms off and club them to death with the stumps.”

“Ooh, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.”

“Did I…? Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I was only thinking it. Sometimes things slip out.”

“Yes, I know. It’s like that motherfucking Tourette’s Syndrome. Don’t you just hate when that happens?”

“Don’t get me started. There are so many things to hate.”

“You know what pisses me off?” she said. “Take a walk along Avenue Road, see how so many handicapped people seem to drive a BMW, a Mercedes or a Porsche. I’d like to line up the doctors who signed those permits and run over their legs with a bulldozer.”

Ken couldn’t believe his ears. It was both shocking and exciting to hear someone who thought so much like him. He stood up, but he wasn’t sure whether he should walk or run away. The last time he’d expressed an attraction for a woman, she’d called 911.

“Would you like something? Date square, chocolate brownie, macadamia nut cookie…?”

“What? I thought you were asking me for a date. Now who’s square?”

He stared down at her. Was she still messing with him? This was worse than Sudoku. The numbers didn’t add up. She was beautiful and innocent, and he was a beast with homicidal hands. What kind of children would they have?

Ken looked from her to the other end of the sofa, where the guy was now curled up like a pretzel, still on the phone. “I wouldn’t have said something like that, not when you’re with someone.”

She made a dismissive wave. “My idiot brother?” She looked at her watch. “We were supposed to catch up, on account of we haven’t seen each other, for like a month, but he’s been on the phone all this time and now my break’s over and I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Gap on the next block.”

She stood up, made the universal thumb-and-pinkie signal to her brother. Call me, asshole. And walked out.

Ken followed her into the sunlight. Briefly, it was like something out of a movie, where the earthlings step out of the spaceship and the new world is all bright and shiny and marvelous and they know somehow everything’s going to be all right.

He saw it too late to warn her. Some idiot had left a juice bottle lying on the second step. She slipped on it and would have taken a header onto the sidewalk if Ken hadn’t reached out with reptilian reflex and grabbed her bicep in his hand. He held her steady until she was on the sidewalk.

“Oh my God, your hands are so amazingly strong.” She looked up at him with gratitude. “And warm.”

“Thank you.”

“You can let go now.”

“Sorry.” His mother had always said, you find what you want in life, you hold onto it tight and never let it go. He wondered about that sometimes, and why she hadn’t held onto her own life, instead of spiraling down the drain in a swirl of cheap wine.

“I’ve got to get back to work.” She pointed down the street.

“What’s your name?”

“Barb.”

“I’m Ken.”

“Barbie and Ken.” She smiled. “My friends are going to rip me a new one over that.”

It took him a few moments before he got it. Was she making fun of him? He looked at her, still standing there, smiling with teeth from a dental ad, waiting for him to say something clever…

“What time do you get off work?”

“Six.”

“Would you like to go to dinner with me?”

“Only if you’ve got a lot of money, because I am really hungry. Not to mention, thirsty.”

“I have money.” It had been a good month. He’d killed two guys and he had another one to do this afternoon, although he wouldn’t get paid until tomorrow.

“If you’ve got the money, honey, I got the time.”

Ken had to control himself from having a nostalgic meltdown right then and there. His mother used to sing that song when he was a kid, and waltz him off his feet around the kitchen in their shitty little two-bedroom apartment, until he got too big for her and she got too drunk to dance.

Ken looked at his watch. “How about if I meet you right back here when you get off work?”

“Deal.” She offered her hand.

Reluctantly, he shook hands with her, feeling her little palm swallowed up inside his big paw. Her hand was very warm and slightly moist, like a burrito that had just come out of the microwave.

“Okay, I’ll see you later.”

“You know, maybe I shouldn’t say this,” she said, “but you have awesome hands. They give me the shivers, you know, in a nice way.”

“I get that a lot,” he lied, and he knew by the way she laughed that she knew he was full of it and she didn’t care. She waved bye and headed off toward the Gap.

He turned and walked away. He gritted his teeth, telling himself not to get all mushy and look back at her. He started to hum a tune to himself, observing the debate going on between his ears. There was the old Ken who insisted she’d stand him up and he’d never see her again, and there was the new Ken who believed he’d see her for dinner tonight, and then who knows what could happen…

He walked back to his car, a 14-year-old white Volvo – solid, dependable and unremarkable, very much like himself. He got inside and drove across town to Danforth Avenue where he parked on Logan in the heart of Greektown. It was wall-to-wall restaurants and bars and cafés for half a dozen blocks along this stretch. It was a warm and sunny September afternoon and there were lots of people on the terraces. He found the restaurant he wanted and went inside and saw the guy sitting there with a couple of friends. He was wearing a yellow shirt that stuck out like a banana in a haystack. Perfect.

Ken checked his watch and walked back to his car. He knew the guy had to be somewhere else at five o’clock, and he’d have to leave soon. But if Ken had his way, he wouldn’t get far.

He got back inside his Volvo and opened the glove compartment to take out a pair of flesh-colored latex gloves. He pulled them on and then reached under his seat to take out the gun. It was a .22-caliber Comanche revolver with a 9-shot magazine. They were pretty cheap and he bought them by the six-pack for a discount. The originals had 6-inch barrels but he’d taken a hacksaw to all of them and cut two inches off the muzzles. All the work he did was close up and personal, and he didn’t need a gunsight to hit a frontal lobe.

He got out of the car and slipped on the double-breasted blue blazer with the gold buttons that he kept in the car for his work. He looked around to make sure no one was looking and stuck the gun into his waistband. He took a pair of sunglasses from the dash and slipped them on.

He opened the back door and picked up a soda can from the floor. He’d stuffed it lightly full of cat hair that he’d accumulated from weekly brushings of his 12-year-old Angora cat, whose name was Boston Blackie. The rate at which Blackie was shedding was sufficient to handle about three hits a month, and since Ken rarely achieved such a level of business, he had a bale of hair at home, enough to stuff a couple of pillows or knit a few sweaters.

He locked the car and headed back to the Danforth, occasionally raising the soda can to his lips and pretending to take a sip from it, but all he got was a whiff of pussy hair. Typical. Sometimes a whiff, rarely a taste. But all that could change…

He glanced at himself in the window of a storefront. Lookin’ sharp, man, like a car salesman in a recession, all dressed up and no place to go. A couple of songs danced through his head, competing for his attention. He’s a real nowhere man, working with his awesome hands… And those bearded Texas bluesmen, singing Everybody talkin’ ‘bout a sharp-dressed man…

He was a hundred feet away from the restaurant when the banana shirt stepped out onto the sidewalk. That was one thing Ken had, it was a sense of timing, like he was right in lockstep with destiny. He followed Mr. Banana a dozen stores down the street, and stood looking in the window of a bookstore until the guy re-emerged from a convenience store. Mr. Banana tore the cellophane off a pack of cigarettes, ripped out the foil-wrap sleeve and lit a cigarette with a lighter. He crumpled the waste in his fist and threw it half-heartedly at a trash bin, totally missing the waste paper aperture, and the garbage fell onto the sidewalk.

Ken gritted his teeth, picked up the litter and placed it in the Paper & Plastic compartment. It wasn’t much, but it was the principle of the thing. What was the matter with people these days?

He followed the guy around the corner onto Carlaw. A dark blue Porsche Cayenne was illegally parked in a commercial zone. Its lights blinked, its horn made a little toot, and its engine started up as Mr. Banana approached it. Ken crossed the street with him, glancing around him as he went. No innocent bystanders to witness what was about to happen, the nearest pedestrians on Danforth a good twenty yards away.

Mr. Banana opened the door and slipped behind the wheel. Ken was just five steps behind him. He saw it was a Cayenne Turbo, which listed for about $125K. Interestingly enough, there was a big blue Handicapped placard lying on the front dash. Oooh, bonus points!

He caught the door just before Mr. Banana swung it shut and in one smooth movement he pulled the Comanche from under his jacket, jammed its barrel into the mouth of the soda can and popped the guy one right under the armpit. The home-made silencer burped discreetly. The guy leaned away from him, pawing the air like he was trying to shoo away a bumblebee, and his voice gagged in his throat, like the noise Blackie made when he was trying to cough up a hairball. Ken grabbed the flapping hand, held it tight for a moment, and popped the guy another one right in the temple.

There was no big splat from an exit wound because a .22 didn’t have the power to do more than one cranial wall. The slug just went in and bounced around once or twice and that was all she wrote. The Cayenne’s cream leather interior would be left unspoiled and the wife could either keep the ride or, if she felt any guilt about it, sell it like new.

“Now you’ve got a real handicap,” Ken told the dead guy.

He kept the soda can but dropped the gun on the floor and closed the door. He looked around. Not a soul was looking in his direction. He’d always been lucky that way too. He walked back to Danforth and headed for his car. He stopped at one of the litter bins and inserted the soda can into the compartment marked Cans and Bottles. He peeled off the latex gloves as he walked along the sidewalk, glancing at the happy couples eating pikilia and drinking wine.

There was a small square at the corner of Danforth and Logan dedicated to Alexander the Great. Ken put the gloves in the Garbage compartment of another litter bin. A place for everything, and everything in its place, his mother used to say. Just that he’d never understood why she had to go so soon to the place most people tried to avoid.

He unlocked the Volvo, took off his jacket and laid it flat in the back seat. He was hungry and there was a souvlaki joint right there on the square, but it was already after five, and he didn’t want to spoil his appetite.

As he headed back downtown, he ran through a short list in his mind of places where he could take Barb for dinner. But mostly, he wondered what he’d tell her when she asked him what he did for a living.

– The End ‑

————————————————————————————————-

Did you like this short story? Want to try something longer, with a whole lot more action? Read some of the reviews for my novel Harm’s Way:

“For Canadian writers setting hard-boiled stories in Canada, the closest thing yet to a US-style private eye is Montreal investigator Lee Harms in Harm’s Way by Alan Annand.” – David Skene-Melvin in Rara-Avis

“Harm’s Way is a solid P.I. thriller, a nastier-than-you’d-expect slab of pornography, cocaine, gangsters, incest, madness, torture and vengeance.” – Thrilling Detective

“Energy, superior punch-‘em out sequences, and humor.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Underneath the New Age trappings, divorced ex-cop Harms is plenty hard-boiled, using fists, guns and sheer wit to escape the many tight spots here.” – Publisher’s Weekly

Harm’s Way

A private investigator searches for the runaway daughter of an aspiring politician only to find that, on or off the campaign trail, honesty is the rarest commodity. As mystery descends into mayhem and murder, he confronts an unsettling truth – the innocents are always the first victims.

Kindle: www.amazon.com/Harms-Way-ebook/dp/B005LVXIA2

Other: www.smashwords.com/books/view/86740


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Madame Ovary, by Dr. Gustave Flaubert (humor)

14 Jul

The life and loves, and death of Emma Ovary, a beautiful woman married to a small town gynecologist, Charles. Dissatisfied with her marriage, Emma has a series of reckless love affairs which eventually lead to a nasty fungus, marital ruin and death from sexual exhaustion.

Charles Ovary, the only son of a middle class family, becomes a gynecologist and sets up a practice in a rural village. He consents to a marriage of convenience with an older woman who owns the building where he rents an office. When she dies, he marries the daughter of a patient with a history of yeast infections.

For a little while, young Emma is delighted to be the wife of the only gynecologist in the county, and enjoys listening to her husband’s after-dinner shop talk about genital warts, incontinence, irregular menstruation and uterine fibroids. After awhile, however, Emma becomes envious of those other vaginas being probed by her husband while hers, a model of feminine health, offers little mystery or challenge for Charles. Despondent, Emma becomes anorexic and refuses to eat.

In an effort to revive their marriage, Charles relocates his practice to a larger town where society life promises to perk up Emma’s spirits. Almost immediately after she gives birth to a daughter, she falls in love with Leon, a paralegal she meets when she and Charles revise their wills.

When Leon goes off to law school, lonely Emma completely abandons her duties as wife and mother and embarks on an adulterous affair with Rudolph, a local businessman who owns a chain of dairy farms and blacksmith shops. When he abandons her for a younger lover, Emma discovers she’s acquired genital herpes.

Because she can’t reveal her infidelity to her husband, she goes to another doctor in the city and by chance runs into Leon again. Still hoping to be cured of her herpes, she returns to the city again and again, ostensibly for shopping sprees and culture appreciation, when in fact she simply rents rooms in expensive hotels and indulges her libido with Leon.

With his help she gains a power of attorney over her husband’s bank accounts, and runs up huge debts. When the creditors come knocking, Emma turns to Rudolph for a loan, but he refuses to help her. In despair, Emma returns to the city and Leon, where she takes an overdose of Spanish Fly and goes out in an orgy of passion, dying of sexual exhaustion.

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