The Big Book List of Cats

It's National Cat Day in the USA and Toshio, my beloved Bombay rascal, is here with The Big Book List of Cats! 

1. The Case of Jack the Nipper (The Chronicles of Mister Marmee #1) by H.L. Stephens: Follow Mister Marmee, a cat detective in training with Sir Happy Heart the savvy dachshund detective as they track a killer canine in Victorian London.
2. The Dalai Lama's Cat #1 by David Michie: A rescued kitten becomes the Dalai Lama's cat. She shares her wisdom on how to discover happiness in our busy world.
3. The Familiars #1 by Adam Jay Epstein: Aldwyn the stray cat rushes into a magical pet store and is picked up by the wizard, Jack. Aldwyn isn't a real familiar, but he does his best to help save the kingdom of Vastia from an evil queen.
4. Carbonel: The King of Cats #1 by Barbara Sleigh: Rosemary sets out to clean houses for the summer, but ends up buying a broom and cat she doesn't need. The cat is Carbonel, a feline under a spell that has stolen his kingdom from him. Soon Rosemary is off on an adventure to return Carbonel to his throne.
5. I Am A Cat #1-#3 by Sōseki Natsume: An unwanted cat shares his observations about human life, a classic in Japanese Literature.
6. The Girl with the Cat Tattoo (Cool Cats #1) by Theresa Weir: Max the matchmaking cat sets out to find the perfect man for his owner, Melody.
7. Catalyst: A Tale of the Barque Cats #1 by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough: The Barque cats help keep the spacecraft free of vermin, but when a widespread epidemic threatens the lives of all the cats, a group of kittens and humans set out to save their lives and possibly the universe.
8. Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams: The fantastical tale of the tom Fritti Tailchaser.
9. Into the Wild (Warriors #1) by Erin Hunter: For generations for clans of cats have ruled the forest, but now two of the clans are at war and Rusty the house cat just might be the hero that saves them all.
10. Catwings #1 by Ursula K. Le Guin: Four kittens are born with wings and when they set out on their own from the city, they find the country to be quite challenging.
11. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot: A whimsical collection of cat poems illustrated by Edward Gorey.
12. Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales (Catfantastic #1) by Andre Norton: An anthology of fantastic cat shorts.
13. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (#1) by Lilian Jackson Braun: Jim Qwilleran and his crime fighting cat, Koko solve a murder together. The start of an award winning series.
14. Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág: An elderly couple searching for the perfect cat to call their own end up bringing home a million cats because they can't decide. This is the tale of how they found the perfect pet.
15. The Book of Night with Moon (Feline Wizards #1) by Diane Duane: Rhiow and her feline friends work with human wizards to keep the dark forces at bay in New York City.
16. Esteemed Vampire Cat (Colt Harper #1) by Tyrolin Puxty: Colt has been sent to community service at a theater. He despises humans, but finds himself falling in love with a woman he must save from the chasers.
17. Bunnicula #1 by James and Deborah Howe: Harold the dog and Chester the cat must solve the mystery of the mysterious new bunny that's entered their household.
18. Varjak Paw #1 by S.F. Said: Varjak Paw sets out to the solve the mystery of The Vanishings and save his human family from a similar fate after being pushed out into the streets for the first time. He must survive the gangland cats and find out what's going on before it's too late.
19. All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat by Suzy Becker
20. The Wildlings #1 by Nilanjana Roy: Follow the story of a wild band of cats running the streets of Delhi.

Fight Injustice with Your Writing - Case #3

My writing is my super power. I don't have a fancy cape and a cool secret identity, but I do have an internet connection and like to think I write faster than a speeding bullet. I'd love to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I doubt that's happening any time soon. *smirk* Instead, I use my writing to fight injustice, something we all can do.

Amnesty International is a human rights organization with chapters around the world fighting injustice, crimes against humanity, corrupt government, and censorship. It only takes a moment to send a letter. Snail mail is an effective option because a large volume of letters is not easy to ignore, but email campaigns are successful too. Amnesty International has a searchable database by country and cause, which is easy to use. They have a variety of letter writing campaigns, so everyone can find a cause that speaks to them.

As a writer, I value free speech. If people do not have the power to question and criticize government institutions, they lose the power to live in a society where human rights and freedom prevail. A free and independent press is needed now more than ever as a check against tyrannical governments, but here in the USA and other countries this right is threatened.

Nguyễn Ngọc Như Quỳnh, also known as blogger Mẹ Nấm (Mother Mushroom) in Vietnam, is sentenced to ten years imprisonment for “conducting propaganda” against the state under Article 88 of the Penal Code. Her blog criticizes the Vietnamese government for land seizures, police brutality, and stifling freedom of speech. Her famous tagline is, "Who will speak if you don't?" She is currently held incommunicado, preventing her lawyers from finalizing her appeal. Mother Mushroom has spoken for those who cannot defend themselves and now she needs us to speak for her.

Information to participate in this and other campaigns can be found on the Amnesty International USA site. Participants do not need to reside in the USA; anybody can write a letter for any campaign around the world. Please join me.

Guest Bloggers Wanted!

Are you an author, blogger, or passionate reader? I'm looking for guest bloggers. My blog is a nonpaying market, but I am happy to post any links to your own work and social media accounts. If you're interested, please fill out the contact form in the right hand column. Thanks!

Classism in Vampire and Zombie Literature by Guest Blogger Damon Sutton

One thing to note about horror is that horror is almost always about one thing, anxiety. The Big Bad Wolf in grandma’s clothes? That’s the anxiety that the family members closest to you actually want to do you harm. The Headless Horseman who chases Ichabod Crane over every hill and valley? That’s the anxiety of time coming for you to take everything away from you and your utter powerlessness to stop it. This is why different cultures have such different flavors in their horror, because different cultures have different fundamental anxieties. Different cultures think about different things and as such they fear different things.

So, what anxieties are reflected in the classic horror mainstays of vampires and zombies?

For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll limit myself to the classic stories involving these scary elements. Once a classic story has taken root, other writers rewrite, reboot, deconstruct, and reconstruct creating countless cases of examples that prove the rule, so to keep things focused I’ll focus on the classic stories.

Which goes back to the mainstays discussed in this blog post, Vampires and Zombies. Vampires are not Zombies, but the two are actually very fascinating reflections of class anxiety.

The first thing to note about vampires is their aristocratic default. As much as later writers have tried to diffuse this, they have only been partially successful. The famous Dracula was an aristocrat and almost every other vampire story embraces this either literally, financially, or metaphorically. Vampires are defined by being in an elite, usually a financial elite, hidden among humans and feeding among them. Vampires are the fear the lower class of the upper class. Aristocratic, seductive, yet ultimately parasitic.They're in charge, people tell us it's because they're better than us... but that's so obviously untrue it's more likely to be dark forces and dark hungers... That "I'm losing my loved one to The vampires" that is endemic in vampire fiction is the anxiety of the lower classes that if they have children who are intelligent, and productive, that the upper class will 'seduce' them and they'll lose their children to it. It's working 3 jobs to send your daughter to Harvard... where she marries a rich boy and raises your grandkids in The Hamptons, having taken all your help but leaving you totally behind. One of my favorite elements is the horror of realization. The sexual nature of vampires underlies this, the rich always did desire the young and attractive members of the poor.

There is another layer here. Did the peasants under Dracula’s rule know he was a vampire? Of course they did, but they willfully pretended otherwise. This is a layer of this terror, that even putting words to it puts you in danger, an anxiety I think known all too well given current events among powerless actors and actresses and predatory Hollywood producers. 

Zombies are more subtle in their class consciousness, but equally as based in such anxiety. For starters, Zombies are almost never hidden, in fact they are defined in contrast by being everywhere and unable to avoid. Instead of intelligent and calculating, Zombies are crude and bestial. Zombies are the converse anxiety, the fear the upper class has of the lower. "They're everywhere, and they hunger!" is how the rich see the poor. Stupid, hungry, yet inexplicably everywhere 'why haven't they all died yet!?'. Even the bizarre 'how can our heroes end up so under threat by such basic beasts!?' suspension of disbelief is part of the genre. Zombies are without even the facade of legitimacy, little more than hungering animals, and yet contagious, reflecting how more often than many are comfortable with, upper class people get 'close' to the lower class and gain sympathy with them... oftentimes internalizing sympathy and more 'rough' cultural ideas, it's your daughter having a liking of rough men and falling into a poor and rough crowd, and now you can't invite her rough family over. Of course the rich talk endlessly about what to do with the poor, but despite gate guarded communities, armed guards, and private schools for some reason they can’t be avoided. I would argue this is an innate problem, for even the wealthiest financier of a Golf Club will need poor people to park the cars and he’ll be aware somewhere in the back of his head that his wealth would be scant protection if his valet simply decided to bean him with a golf club.

In both Vampires and Zombies is the anxiety that you will lose your identity to the other, and become a threat to those you love, so keep away, don't try to talk to them (they'll either beguile you or they'll just be too hungry to make any discussion fruitful) the only hope to save yourself is staying separate, stay out of biting distance. The anxieties monsterize the ‘other’, or simply convey that the difference in perspective just may make the other dangerous to talk to. Contagion is always a key marker in such anxieties. Vampires are contagious, as are Zombies. Werewolves are a similar anxiety, but instead of upper and lower class, Werewolves are the anxiety of the urban for the rural.

Keep these things in mind, in particularly as one watches modern and attempted explorations/deconstructions of the mythos. I’ve had fun with iZombie but have been struck as the more sophisticated it makes the Zombie genre, the more vampiric it becomes with factions, hiding in plain sight, and the seeking of power among the prey as a tool of self preservation. Conversely, the bestial and ubiquitous vampires of I am Legend are nothing more than fast moving zombies.

Modern interpretations are settling on what I would call the liberal supernatural horror hypothesis. Whether it’s The Walking Dead or True Blood, modern incarnations of this concept have an underlying theme that the real problem is people rather than the supernatural. You can now have good vampires (Twilight), good zombies (Warm Bodies), and the real threats are the human beings around which these things coalesce. Modern horror has a theme of “Undeads aren’t so bad once you get to know them, at least no better or worse than normal people and all you need to do is properly understand them.”. It’s there, it’s omnipresent, it makes for interesting TV… I also think it’s sadly and drastically incorrect.

Can't get enough zombies and vampires! Hungry for more? Start with this meaty reading list of zombie literature. If those selections don't wet your appetite, stay tuned for my vampire reading list. I'm sure there will be something you can sink your teeth into!

Tell us what you think. Do you agree with Damon's classism theory or do you have a theory of your own you'd like to share?

Win A Copy of Caytlyn Brooke's YA Dark Fantasy: Dark Flowers

Hello! Thanks for having me! I’m Caytlyn Brooke, author of the award-winning YA dark fantasy/horror novel Dark Flowers.

Dark Flowers (published by BHC Press) is about two friends desperate to escape St. Agatha’s orphanage. When the timing is right, they flee and stumble into a beautiful fairy realm while running through the Louisiana swamps. The realm is magical and the silver fairies are bewitching, but

underneath the beauty lies sinister secrets that are impossible to outrun.

The first question everyone asks me is how did I come up with this idea? What inspired me? In truth, it was my younger sister. When we were little, we were obsessed with fairies and fantasized about finding them in our backyard. We built houses and made gifts, leaving them around the base of trees and amidst flower patches. We watched countless movies and read dozens of books revolving around the tiny enchanting creatures and that wonder and curiosity never left me. Fantasy is my favorite genre to both read and write because you can do whatever you like, let your imagination run wild with very little boundaries.

One day when my sister was visiting me a few years ago, we were outside and I noticed yellow pollen covering my arms and fingertips. I looked down and rubbed the soft powder between my fingers and said,” Wouldn’t it be cool if the pollen just sunk into my skin, like a drug?” Inspiration flashed and both of our jaws dropped. Immediately we ran inside and I grabbed my notebook (because I’m super old school and write down every single story idea I have in a notebook along with the date.) I have at least five floating around my house and every so often I stumble upon them and thumb through, flinching at some ideas and marveling at others.

We sat down at the dining room table and started mapping out a plot. The title instantly leapt to my mind but I needed strong names for my protagonists. I love Eliza because it’s not very common and my sister volunteered Millie. It sounded so sweet and innocent that the story just unraveled from the tip of my pencil in minutes. But unlike all the movies and media surrounding fairies, I wanted to do something different, something haunting and something totally unexpected that flipped the image of a beautiful, petal-wearing fairy on its head. 

I made my fairies bleached silver and naked, wearing nothing but billowing black shadows. Rather than tiny dew drops coating their delicate wings, I gave my fairies thick, knotted spider-webbed wings and needle sharp fangs that lust for blood. The fairies are beautiful, yet dangerous and the whole time Eliza is near them she can’t shake the eerie feeling that something isn’t right. I wanted to take something sweet and wondrous and splash a little poison onto the perfect image of a woodland fairy.

For this reason, I also chose Louisiana for the setting. I’ve never been to that part of the country, but no place seemed more fitting. The thick, humid air, the algae-covered swamps, and the chilling moss-covered bald cypress trees created the perfect image in my mind. I notice lots of writers set their novels close to where they themselves live or are familiar with in order to draw on famous landmarks. I’m the opposite. All of my novels are set in towns and cities that I have never been to. I Google lots of images to get an idea of the weather patterns, but then I let my mind do the rest and I feel like I have so much more freedom.

And it worked! I’ve had so many readers come up to me, angry almost and say, “I used to love fairies! Now they’ll never be the same!” I can’t smile any wider when I hear comments like this because that was my goal! I wanted to take a century-old idea and craft it into a novel with such a startling twist, that readers would be left gasping. In this day and age it’s really hard to create a new, original idea, just look at how many times they’ve remade the Batman movies. Yet my idea, actually angers and shocks people, because for most of them, after they read about my fairies ripping and tearing flesh to reach the warm blood inside…that image will never fully dissipate when Tinkerbell flits across their screen.

When my friends and co-workers read Dark Flowers it was so amusing to watch them come in and make eye contact with me. My good friend Kathy even said, “Who are you!” If you look at me, talk to me, there’s no way I could have written a horror novel. I’ve never been considered emo or goth, I have to hide behind a pillow during scary movies, and I sound like Minnie Mouse over the phone. But I have a wild imagination and love exploring the darker side. In fact, many of my ideas have come from my dreams. I’m working on one about witches and I came up with the idea because I dreamed about a girl in a flooded bathroom, drowning. In my dream, I watched her die and as soon as I woke up, I wrote it down in my notebook and cranked out four chapters.

All of my novels have a gritty, uncomfortable edge to them and I remember telling my sister that I wanted Dark Flowers to be creepy, terrifying. I want my story to give readers nightmares. Hopefully

that doesn’t make me sound too weird, but that’s when you know it’s a great book, because even after you put it down, the words and the characters stay with you. My friend Sean was one of my first readers and he told me he couldn’t sleep. All he could picture was Eliza at the end, staring, watching.

I love surprising people and Dark Flowers is a perfect way to give them a glimpse to the darkness lurking beneath my smile and polka dots. Thank you so much! Sweet dreams!

Win a copy of Dark Flowers. Visit the BHC Press website and fill out the contest form. The contest is running through next Thursday, October 26, 2017. Good luck!

PRAISE FOR DARK FLOWERS:

Read what reviewers are saying about Caytlyn Brooke’s multi-award- winning debut YA horror novel Dark Flowers.

…a work of paranormal fiction so utterly haunting and undeniably eerie it’s sure to tingle your spine.

~ Literary Classics

…a haunting story that the reader will not soon forget.

~ InD’Tale Magazine

a highly immersive read.

~Readers’ Favorite

ABOUT DARK FLOWERS:

Life at St. Agatha's School for Girls is anything but a fairytale. With ratty blankets and a torturous device called the box, it's not hard to understand Eliza's desperation to escape. When the timing is right, Eliza manages to run away with her best friend Millie, heading through the Louisiana swamps to the town on the other side. But the swamps may be even more dangerous than the orphanage.

Silver and black fairies invite the girls to experience a world where they can have it all, but Eliza doesn't trust the sparkling beauty. When Millie suddenly becomes violent and attacks another girl, Eliza knows something awful is about to happen. She will do anything to protect Millie but once Eliza remembers her own terrible secret, it is impossible to forget. The fairies' songs call to Eliza and it's getting harder and harder to pretend it's all in her head.

AVAILABLE FORMATS:

Available in hardcover, trade softcover, and ebook. Coming soon to audio! Visit the publisher’s website for more information and purchasing options.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Caytlyn lives in Elmira, NY with her husband Daniel, her son, Jack, and her orange tabby cat, Ana who is only slightly overweight. She can quote any Disney movie and believes that everyone should wear polka dots.