Moon Pool unabridged audio book

It was a week for surprises.

THE MOON POOL, my 2004 thriller from Leisure, has just been released as an 11-hour unabridged book on tape by Books In Motion. I know, because it's on their website under "Just in."

So, for $57.95 you can buy the CD Library Package. Or, you can rent it for $9.95 or own it as an MP3 download for $14.95. Also, I can't resist the urge to point out that you could have owned the original paperback for seven bucks. But then, you wouldn't be able to listen to it in the car, would you?

As I've lamented before, the author is always the last to know. Seems like some money should have shown up at my door in connection with this. Guess I'll make some calls.

At least the cover is cool.

What the hell?

Received the following email today from reviewer Nick Pelling about James Rollins' The Voynich Project. Had to read it three times. Pelling writes:

Here's the relevant part of my review:-

Rollins has clearly taken the time to read up on the VMs and to engage with its strange pictures, for which I applaud him (I even get a brief mention in the notes at the end, which is nice, however unwarranted). Unfortunately, one thing manages to spoil the whole party.

Briefly, what happens is: hero goes to the British Museum/Library to meet man studying the alchemical side of the Voynich Manuscript; because the man has disappeared, the hero instead meets his sister (who also happens to work there); they go to a pub in the East End; hero learns about the womans mysterious Celtic tattoo on her back; Nazi thugs enter the pub; she produces a key from above the back door; they escape out to the rear into a messy gunfight& and when the woman is eventually captured by the Nazis, her tattoo turns out to contain an ancient map / key to the secrets hidden in the Voynich Manuscript.

The problem is that this central storyline exactly reprises probably the best-selling (and quite possibly the best-written) Voynich novel yet, Max McCoy's (1995) Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone - you know, the one I recommend that all aspiring Voynich novelists should read first. If there had been just a handful of similarities, I could possibly have passed over them in silence - but this is all much too much for me to bear.

http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2008/11/10/review-of-the-voynich-project

Cheers, ....Nick Pelling.... // Cipher Mysteries

Lower Fox Creek School

Visited the Flint Hills on Saturday and spent some time walking around the Lower Fox Creek School (1882) just off Highway 177 in Chase County.