Flooding, Flooding, and More Flooding

According to the pundits, in this case, the newscasters, city mayors, councilmen, engineers, etc., our annual flooding throughout much of the country should now be accepted as the new way things are. They evidently accept it, and they want the rest of us to accept it too.
We build dams, levees, diversions, and fill sandbags to control floods. I get tired just watching it on TV. The photo by the way, shows the water approaching my garden and eventually swallowing it, where there never has been water before. The cottonwoods have stood in three feet of water for three years...they are dying. Last year I saw a piddling of green growth on about four trees. That water, folks, came from somewhere else. In other words, "It came down on me." Which is how flooding works: It starts at the very source and finally ends in the ocean, flooding and causing heartache on untold numbers of people on its way.

So, do we really have to accept what the Powers-that-be say? NO! A resounding NO! Anyway, aren't you volunteer sandbaggers getting tired of this shit? Flooding will never be controlled until the problem is approached at the source. And what is that source?

Out-of-control drainage for agribusiness and other development. Oh yeah, I did hear that drainage of wetlands has slowed down, but what about all the prior decades of drainage? Some people say "We had floods in the 1800s too!" That's true, before white man really had done much ditching. Well, folks, that was nature at work. Back then water stayed where it was until it got full, then it would just overflow and hightail it to the river through natural channels.

Today we have something that didn't exist in the 1800s. We have gazillions of miles of roads (barriers) and ditches on both sides of those roads (containment ponds.) But before all those roads and ditches can be used for that, those wide open ditches that drain agricultural land need to be closed with culverts and traps. If the water is held on the farmland even for a few days--and I mean "all" farmland--and then released slowly, there need never be another flood, nowhere in the country. Sure a temporary inconvenience for Agribusinessmen, but what about all the inconvenience and damage to homeowners and cities in the floodplain? I suspect they're getting really tired of having to fight unnecessary floods year after year after year.

Here's an annoying fact: The rain and snow that falls far into Montana, at the head of the Missouri River, will eventually contribute to flooding in Mississippi and Louisiana, and any moisture falling east of the continental divide in North Dakota will eventually contribute to flooding on the Red River of the north. My god, you say, that one drainage ditch I have contributes to flooding? Sorry, sir, but Yes.

So how could the water release be controlled? I'm pretty sure a satellite could be parked directly overhead of all the drainage basins for the rivers that flood. The satellite with its state-of-the-art cameras and computers could tell us what fields to drain first. A computer operator sitting in a dry office--hundreds of miles away--could send a signal to the culvert and begin the release, just like drone operators control killing of terrorists half way around the world.

Here's another annoying fact: That trap in the culvert would have to be locked (computer-controlled) so the land owner couldn't cheat. I remember a neighbor actually using dynamite to blow up a county road to get rid of his water faster, which, of course, just sent that water streaking toward his neighbor to make his flooding worse. But that's how floods work, folks, it's neighbor's water coming down on neighbors until it reaches the flood plain and wants to spread out, what water has done naturally since time began. Unfortunately, we have now built cities and beautiful homes on the flood plain.

Sure, setting up such a satellite and computer process could take time and be expensive...but wait! More expensive than building dams, diversions and levees...and the continual fighting of unnecessary floods?

I wish some people smarter than me would take a look at this idea. And it's possible somebody will, as I place my posts on Facebook, where each friend can share with possibly hundreds of other friends; I also use Google+ and Twitter, where it's possible to get retweeted. If this idea is totally unreasonable and unworkable, it would be nice to know why...?

Thanks for reading

Author’s notes

(Digital downloads and paperbacks vary in price)

 In my fiction I do not try to create super-heroes, but rather bring alive common and regular people who try to find love, survive, and react to circumstances as best they can, and, usually, try to do the right thing. The books are more than one genre, from war to sex and violence to romance to humor to horror to fantasy to science fiction to adventure, I write in third-person with viewpoints by men, women, and children. 

Contact

nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com                          email
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S   Author page at Amazon
http://morninginapril.weebly.com                   Website & Blog
https://www.facebook.com/#!/                         Facebook
http://subron7.hubpages.com/                          HubPages
https://twitter.com/PMGOLD                             Twitter

Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed) (The world is full of psychos and wackos)

A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Prices vary from $0.99-$4.99 for digital; $10.00-29.95 for paperback

Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a day, sometimes more than a day. Look for those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook

One last thing: When you visit my website, please check out the Freebies page.

Day of the Hawk

It's already late April, 2013, the ground is still covered with snow, and I'm still feeding the birds and other wildlife. The east window is where the action is, and the first place I check after dressing. This morning the feeding area was buzzing: Fox Squirrels, Cottontail Rabbits, Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds, Mourning Doves, plus the usual "all-winter" birds like Chickadees and Goldfinches. The hanging feeders were covered and the ground was covered. Plus there's the indoor garden to check, and where I'm at on the computer, plus I'm working on a new heritage box. Besides all that I keep a regular check on the feeding area.
On my next check I see the place is deserted. Quite unusual for nothing to be there, but it does happen. As usual I look all around and finally see the reason: A hawk feeding on what I figure is a Junco. A Junco is a friendly little ground-feeding bird about the size of a sparrow, and quite naive about the ways of the world. I suspect the hawk caught it without much trouble.
Sorry it's not a great picture. If you have a good imagination you can see the feathers on the ground in front of it. I snapped eleven shots hoping for at least one good one. The one that would have been really good I didn't get. I'm known for getting bored, unfortunately, if I have to stand in one spot too long. The hawk seemed to be taking forever to eat its kill and move, so I got impatient and started running around doing other things. You see, I had hoped the big guy, after eating, would hop up to the horizontal landscape pole and give me a good shot.

On a return trip the good hawk was doing exactly that, but impatient me did not have the camera ready, so the hawk disappeared...but didn't go far. With just a little searching I found it in a nearby tree, still within good camera distance. Again, not a great shot, but for bird enthusiasts one can now see a couple field marks more closely: The bars on top of the tail feathers and the chestnut-colored breast, plus it's probably more than twice the size of a Robin. I'd guess 20 inches in length. The white spots on its back...I don't know. If I had to make a guess I would say the spots make it a juvenile, or, it could be molting...I don't know about that either. The "faint" breast speckles (that show up on the next shot) also suggest a juvenile.

Here's the best shot. While on the branch this classy bird cleaned itself by rubbing its bill on the branch, rubbing both feet, and ruffling its feathers several times. This is my first experience with a hawk this close, and I had never witnessed one feeding and then cleaning itself.
Then, to punctuate my experience, when it took flight, it dropped a white piece of poop.
Wow, and I saw it all.
To end this post, I have a pretty good bird identification book, one from National Geographic: "Field Guide to the Birds of North America." It's just paintings but pretty good ones. I'm going to make a wild stab here and call it a Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus.) The size is right 16-20" and the range map puts it from South Dakota clear to Hudson Bay for summer.
Any whiz-kid nature freaks out there who want to help me with identification, please speak up.

Thanks for reading

Author’s notes

 In my fiction I do not try to create super-heroes, but rather bring alive common and regular people who try to find love, survive, and react to circumstances as best they can, and, usually, try to do the right thing. My books are more than one genre, from war to sex and violence to romance to humor to horror to fantasy to science fiction to adventure. I write in third-person with viewpoints by men, women, and children. 

Contact

nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com                            email
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S     Author page at Amazon
http://morninginapril.weebly.com                    Website & Blog
https://www.facebook.com/#!/                         Facebook
http://subron7.hubpages.com/                          HubPages
http://twitter.com/PMGOLD                              Twitter

Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed) (The world is full of psychos and wackos)

A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Digital Prices vary from $0.99-$4.99. Paperback from $10-$29.95

Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a  day, sometimes more than a day. Look for those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook

One last thing: When you visit my website, please check out the Freebies page.

The Winter That Refuses to End

This winter has been long. It hasn't been cold, and only one wimpy blizzard, but after the middle of February, unending snow continues with the temperature far below average.
I don't mind winter. It gives me time to write and do other things I don't have time to do in the summer, namely, take care of a fairly large garden, a few fruit trees and bushes, and other miscellaneous details required by a homestead. This winter the rabbits got into the fenced garden and, I'm afraid, did some damage. Rabbits are like the grasshopper in Aesop's Fables: They screw around and sing and dance all summer, so, when winter arrives they are totally unprepared and tend to eat whatever they come across, including the bark and twigs of fruit trees and bushes.
How did they get in? The garden is fenced with heavy wire to repel deer and stray cattle and chicken netting to repel rabbits. Unfortunately, when I added the chicken netting I ran out of the four-foot stuff and used two-foot, which is fine in summer, but not this winter. The snow reached a depth of two-three feet everywhere, and without drifts, so the little darlings went right over the buried chicken netting and through the large gaps in the heavier wire.
Oh well....
The photo above shows where I start my bedding plants, everything from tomatoes and cabbage to annual and perennial flowers, to cucumbers and watermelons to eucalyptus and Cockscomb Celosia. It's not that hard. The basic metal tray is four and one half feet long. To keep things dry I cut sheet metal and bend the sides up one inch all around (honestly, if you decide to do this you want to keep any loose water inside the tray.) Valley tin from lumber yards comes in two-foot-wide rolls, which is a perfect size to hold one plastic flat. Mine in the picture holds two flats lengthwise and one crosswise. Depending on how many bedding plants you raise, there is room for five flats crosswise.
In the photo you can see three 15-watt bulbs which serve for a little heat, and two four-foot florescent bulbs for the grow-light. You can get fluorescent bulbs rated near the power of sunlight, but I use basic shop lights and they work fine. The distance from the metal tray to the bottom of the florescent bulbs is eight inches. That works fine for sprouting (I leave the lights on 24 hours/day.)
The photo shows one domed tray (still in sprouting mode) sitting crosswise. The few left to sprout are in the middle of the flat, otherwise there would be two domed flats only, to take full benefit from the light and heat.
As you can see there are two other flats with very tiny plants. Normally they wouldn't be in the sprouter this time of year (April 18, 2013.) Also, they are a little close to the bulbs, and the heat will tend to dry them out so must be watched. (The seeds in the sprouter won't dry out for a long time, thanks to the dome.) The reason the tiny plants are there is because it's too cold yet in the unheated greenhouse, or, as in my case, greenroom (if you look at the freebies page you can see the greenroom on the right end of my unfinished house.

The next photo shows where the plants are kept at night, and, like today in the daytime (no sun, cold south wind, and heavy snow.) The photo shows six flats; there are fourteen total, and all in this small washroom. Right beyond that green curtain is the door to the south greenroom. Close, for when I can get them out again.
This room is also where I do the transplanting. The plants you see have already been transplanted for a long time. Just yesterday I put some of the larger vines into six-inch round plastic pots, because some are blooming already. Vine plants can be hand-pollinated. Right now there are only the male blooms. Wait for the females, which will have a little growth nugget right behind the bloom, so take the male bloom and rub the female bloom (sort of like we humans do.) I haven't tried hand-pollinating yet, but I know it can be done. Also moved several larger tomato plants into four-inch square pots.
Because of the late spring, all this moving of flats has been a lot of extra work for me, and definitely was the wrong year to plant things extra early, but, I want tomatoes earlier than August, and a watermelon earlier than late September. In a normal year these plants would already be out in the south greenroom by now, 24 hours per day, and the biggest plants would already be in the outside coldframe.

Here is one more photo of the small washroom. As you can see I can't wash any dishes right now. The two flats shown have smaller plants so they get to be higher and closer to the three two-foot vertical florescent bulbs, and the two four-foot bulbs on the ceiling.
Something I didn't mention earlier (in case someone wonders) I use the smallest pots (two and one half-inch square plastic pots for the actual sprouting. You can use cut up margarine tubs for labels. Some pencils write on some plastics, probably better using markers.
Yes, I do order a few seeds every year (sometimes a lot, depending on the budget) but one can save that half a pack till next year (most seeds can store for years and still be viable; some, of course, can't) (onions, for instance, are two years, tops.) Also, one can save your own seeds. I have a book "Seed to Seed," by Suzanne Ashworth. It's not clear who published, but the Seed Savers Exchange, 3076 North Winn Road, Decorah, Iowa 52101, is mentioned.
In that book are clear instructions how to grow and save seeds of every vegetable one can imagine. (Book covers only vegetables.) For flowers and other exotics, all I can say is read the seed packet...or, look online.
One thing though: Don't try to save the seed from hybrids, as hybrids have many parents and will never grow true what you thought you planted.

Every day (if it's warm and sunny) I haul everything out to the greenroom, first to the south window, then, about 2pm I move everything over to the west windows (where they are in the photo) and then, depending on how cold, I've been hauling everything back inside about 8pm.
I do this not only for the good sunshine, but also to control the temperature. Even if it's warm in the greenroom when the sun is shining, the air is still colder. Starts out at 40 degrees, maybe gets to 60-70 degrees for awhile, then soon goes back down. But that colder temperature is what keeps the plants from reaching for the ceiling, in garden terms "stretching." Believe me, you have to keep your plants short and stocky, especially during a year like I'm experiencing right now.
The three important things to worry about. Temperature, light, watering. Balance those three entities and you will have success.
If you have a question, go ahead and ask, and please use the contact page. But no guarantees.

Thanks for reading

Contact

nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com                          email

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S   Author page at Amazon

http://morninginapril.weebly.com                   Website & Blog

https://www.facebook.com/#!/                         Facebook

http://subron7.hubpages.com/                          HubPages

Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed) (The world is full of psychos and wackos)

A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Prices vary from $0.99-$2.99.

Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a  day, sometimes more than a day. Look for those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook

One last thing: When you visit my website, please check out the Freebies page.

Boi Meets Grl, A David Sloma Book Review

Vampires, are they all around us, as some books and movies suggest? Is that cute-but-scary-looking little bat fluttering about your face actually a vampire? A vampire ready to emerge as human, bite your neck and drink your blood? Or worse, make you one of them? Is the sun already down? Dare we go anywhere after dark? But hiding in your house won’t help. Vampires are hugely strong, and will get in no matter what. You have a gun, you say? That won’t help either, not unless you have silver bullets—oh wait! I believe silver bullets are for werewolves.

About your best bet against a vampire is a wooden stake driven into their heart, or, just wait for the sun to come up and hope the vampire will stupidly step into the bright sunrays. A vampire? Commit suicide? Good luck with that.

David Slomas’s novella, Boi Meets Grl, is all about vampires. It’s a fun romp through the dark clubs and alleys and souls of Montreal and Quebec City. The hero and heroine (Alex the guy, Josephine (“Jo”) the girl) I would put in their mid-to-late twenties. These two spend their free hours in what I would call an eighties “punk” club, in the novella it’s called a Goth club. Whatever. It’s a dark place with black lights, and people dress…well, probably not how I would dress. The club is where Alex and Jo meet...and then keep meeting, and forming their new friendship.

Jo eventually gives Alex a necklace made from black pearls that she found in an antique store. Unknown to her it belongs to Count Weldheim and he wants it back!...which sets the stage for these two kids to have to learn some survival skills.

The count has two main servants/slaves, Valic and Bahuck, who he sends out to retrieve his necklace. The count also has a whole bunch more servile vampires living in his mansion on the hill in Quebec City, with a basement full of humans whose blood these…beings, live off of.

A book about vampires would not normally be my choice, were I buying something off the shelf, but this digital version caught my eye. I have read one other book about vampires, far in my past. It wasn’t my favorite book of all time but it scared me and I still remember it. And while reading this novella I couldn’t help but think of the movie with George Clooney, Dusk till Dawn. I will never forget the most beautiful vampire in that clan, Salma Hayak.

Boi Meets Grl is written in first-person, and gives us a contemporary look at contemporary vampires. Hmmm, I said that as if I believe they really exist. Maybe they do. And may they live forever to keep us well-filled with blood-letting vampire literature.

David's book is available for a digital download, free April 11, 2013, until April 15.

Thanks for reading

Contact

nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com                          email

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S   Author page at Amazon

http://morninginapril.weebly.com                   Website & Blog

https://www.facebook.com/#!/                         Facebook

http://subron7.hubpages.com/                          HubPages

Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed) (The world is full of psychos and wackos)

A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Prices vary from $0.99-$2.99.

Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a  day, sometimes more than a day. Look for those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook

One last thing: When you visit my website, please check out the Freebies page.

The Liberal Drums Just Keep on Beating

This does not make me happy to keep beating on the "other" drums; I will be so happy when this gun control issue is over, but as long as the liberals keep pushing the heart-breaking massacre at Sandy Hook to further their agenda of, in the end, registration and then eventual confiscation of guns, then I will have to keep responding.
Twice, recently, when the parents of the Sandy Hook children have been on national news reports, I have changed channels. I hear they will be on CBS's 60 Minutes this Sunday, today, April 7, 2013. I feel for those parents (I've lost a child too, but not to violence) but I don't plan to watch 60 minutes. I refuse!
Now I'm going to bring up something that the so-called liberal media has totally ignored in favor of attacking law-abiding gun-owners instead. I would have missed this story but for a letter-to-the-editor which appeared in The Forum, Fargo, North Dakota, April 6, 2013. The headline reads "No one has right to kill a baby."
It seems a doctor from Philadelphia who provides late-term abortions has been killing babies regularly, and it has not made the national news. (Let me be clear: I hate the thought of abortion, and though leaning far to the right lately, I am, and always have been, totally pro-choice on abortion.) This man's name is Doctor Kermit Gosnell, 72; he is on trial right now for killing seven babies. (I guess one of his helpers just couldn't take watching such an act any longer and turned him in.) Had he killed the babies while still in the womb (with a drug, I suppose) he wouldn't be getting charged with those murders, but he has a unique way of killing after the baby is out: He sticks scissors into the back of their neck and snips the spinal cord. Are you screaming right now in disbelief and horror? You should be. You should also be screaming for this story to go on the national news right beside Sandy Hook.
I had to go to the internet and punch in "Philadelphia, trial, seven babies..." I forget what words I used, but if you want the story, it's there, buried in the internet, not on the front page of every media source worldwide, where it should be.
Sorry I had to tell this story, but the liberal, left-leaning, block-headed, media, needs to take a fresh look at themselves.
Here's another story that I'm not sure if it got national attention. It's been in the media locally, but the trial has seen the story go far inside the newspaper (page 8.) Here is some verbatim: "On July 10, 2013, Aaron Schaffhausen called his ex-wife and said 'You can come home now, I killed the children.'" Well, he definitely had, he had slit the throat of 11-year-old Amara, 8-year-old Sofie, and 5-year-old Cecelia--yes! He slit the throats of his three daughters! 
This story maybe got national attention when it first happened, I don't know, but even if it did, it likely would have been mentioned only once. It didn't go on and on and on, like Sandy Hook continues to, but then scissors and other sharp instruments and hammers and even fists, never get the attention of guns, because the liberals don't want to ban scissors and hammers and fists...andcars.
Here's the clincher. The ex-wife filed a police report after an earlier phone call on March 7. More verbatim: "...he wanted to drive down there and tie me up and make me pick which child he killed and make me watch while he killed them."
I'm not "really" trying to horrify you, I'm trying to make a point: After this threat the guy was not arrested (to my understanding) he also did not have to have a mental evaluation--Why not? Why call the police? What is the purpose of laws? This guy is obviously psycho-whacko (meant in a slang way) but he was allowed to--three months later--go and murder his three daughters. He had to have planned it down to the last detail, and now the guy is on trial claiming "not responsible due to mental illness." 
So here's the gist of this post: Bloomberg of New York is spending his own money to saturate certain states (including North Dakota, "my" state) calling for comprehensive background checks to stop criminals and the dangerously-mental ill from buying guns. (The criminals and mentally ill likely have gotten smarter about trying to buy guns the legal way.) But what does the law do when somebody is "caught" trying to buy a gun? Not much, evidently. I've heard about 2,000,000 have been denied guns through the Brady Bill handgun checks, and what has the law done when these guys were caught? Not much. I'm pretty sure 2,000,000 guys didn't go to jail. So what is the point of this new "comprehensive" background check? What would they do to those guys if they "did" catch any? Not much, likely.
It's a cleverly-worded way of registering all guns, and then an eventual confiscation, the disarming of the American Minuteman to set the stage for...what? Tyranny? Nazi Germany first disarmed the Austrian public before taking over that country. Russia and China both murdered millions of their own citizens. Cambodia, Rwanda, Syria, the murder marches on.
One more tidbit about the mentally ill: The Aurora shooter had threatened his psychologist and made threats during meetings; she even reported it months before the theater shooting, so what did the law do about it? And our mental health system? Evidently nothing. (We must protect the rights and privacy of...?) I hope Bloomberg reads all my posts, so that when he gets his way, and sends the men-in-black....
You think nothing bad can happen in America? Think again. But we have Smart Phones now...!
Sorry, just needed to add a little sarcasm here at the end.

Thanks for reading

Contact

nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com                          email
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S   Author page at Amazon
http://morninginapril.weebly.com                   Website & Blog
https://www.facebook.com/#!/                         Facebook
http://subron7.hubpages.com/                          HubPages

Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed) (The world is full of psychos and wackos)

A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Prices vary from $0.99-$2.99.

Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a  day, sometimes more than a day. Look for those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook

One last thing: When you visit my website, please check out the Freebies page.

Run, Witch, Run (The Mountain Witch Saga) A Review

Normally my choice of books to read would not be about witches. It's not that I don't like witches...not that I know any, that I know of...well, over a lifetime I suspect I've met at least a couple who would fit that category. But this post is not about the women I've met over a lifetime. It's a review of Jonathan Grimm's novel "Run, Witch, Run."
The title caught my eye so I looked at chapter 1, and then looked at chapter 2, and saw that it jumped back two months. No matter. I already liked main character Rachel so I bought the book and read it--no, not in one sitting, but in one day, while mixing in the other chores and activities necessary to run a homestead, finished by 10:30 pm, just in time to watch Jay Leno's standup comedy. (The next day I discovered that "Run, Witch, Run" very likely is part of a series, but it also did very well standing alone.
Witches have always been an oppressed lot, even today with more and more groups obtaining equal rights. But of course there are always those who will never give equal rights to a group they don't approve of.
In my neck of the woods (the Outback of eastern North Dakota) I have twice in the summertime seen a sign pointing to where a witches' meeting was being held. No, I didn't go. My reason was not from perceived fear of them but quite the opposite. Because I'm always looking for new interests I would have liked to visit and observe. Unfortunately, observing would not have been enough. I would have wanted to learn more and study with them, and not necessarily become a witch, but at least learn some of their magic.
And after reading "Run, Witch, Run" the next time I see that sign I might just go.
To get back to the novel, the main character, Rachel, had me immediately. I liked her because she was socially shy (like me) an orphan (an abused orphan) very smart (smarter than most adults about the ways of the world) and her youth. She was a junior in high school, and I liked that she was in love with learning, especially what she evidently liked best: Physics. But then, physics were helping her in her quest to learn how to be a witch.
Little Katie (the other main character) was a great help there, although Katie wasn't a true witch and used Rachel's true (but undeveloped) powers to take Rachel to unbelievably stunning places of beauty.
Another thing I really liked about Rachel was her planning and then determination to leave her safe and warm (though not necessarily emotionally warm) home and go live in the wilderness, where she will eventually find...well, I'll let you, the next reader, find that out on your own. Personally, I really liked what she found and then I liked her choice to keep going and learning more and more.
The first part of the story shortly becomes a true thriller, as Rachel has to run and hide, and run some more. Then the middle slows down a bit (as many novels do, but remains very intriguing) as she gets herself oriented with the Mountain Witches, and then the end speeds up again.
I found the story to be believable from the start--if I "don't" believe, I close the book and move on. This one caught me and held me. Without destroying the plot I believe I can tell of two scenes that truly affected me emotionally. The hallucinatory rattlesnake in the tent: I nearly died until the snake changed back into being part of the sleeping bag's zipper. The other was when the lady detective following Rachel's case involuntarily "crossed over." Every square inch of my body turned into a goosepimple, and, sorry, folks, that's all I'm going to tell you.
In the end, a really good read! Here is Jonathan Grimm's Amazon author's page: http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Grimm/e/B007LEDV4U/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1364927656&sr=1-2-ent

Thanks for reading

Contact

nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com                             email
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S      Author page at Amazon
http://morninginapril.weebly.com                     Website & Blog
https://www.facebook.com/#!/                         Facebook
http://subron7.hubpages.com/                          HubPages

Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed) (The world is full of psychos and wackos)

A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Prices vary from $0.99-$2.99.

Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a  day, sometimes more than a day. Look for those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook

One last thing: When you visit my website, please check out the Freebies page.