Quiet Keystrokes and Midnight Ramblings

   My son and I have developed a strange game called, "Where's James Patterson?" We find his books everywhere. In libraries, stores, any mix of genres and age ranges. James Patterson is always there. Imagine my not-surprise when my son found House of Robots on one of the endcaps at our local library. We checked it out, cracked it open, and never looked back. House of Robots is a fun book about a kid named Sammy who lives in a house FULL of robots! His mom is an incredible inventor, and she's created robots that can do just about anything. Her latest invention isn't sitting too well with Sammy though, because she's designed it to go to school. The BEST part of this book, although much of it was wonderful, were the passages that talk about Maddie. Maddie is Sammy's sister, and she has an illness that makes it so she can't go hang out with the other kids because she might get sick. My husband is chronically ill, and Maddie's story helped my so...

Suzanne Hagelin is a Pacific Northwest indie author who I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with at several book festivals and conventions over the years. In typical "let's add to the TBR pile" style, I picked up the first book of her trilogy, Body Suit , and then sat on it for months. Possibly a year. Perhaps longer. Then, in a reading slump, I finally opened it up. Do you ever have those times where you smack yourself in the forehead and say, "Self, why did you put this off for so long?" That's exactly how I felt while reading Body Suit . Suzanne and I have discussed our love of the Portal video games in the past, and the A.I. cataloging human behavior and offering assistance (when it finds it convenient) is reminiscent of GLaDOS and Wheatley in the Portal games. Snarky, contemplative, and sometimes dependable enough to love. Sil, the main character in Body Suit  finds herself shipped off to the first settlement on Mars, forced to...