Is your iPhone watching You?

So dig this, o Interwebs: I just learned from an article I am editing that mobile devices often track where you are without your knowledge or consent. "For iPhone users interested in seeing how powerful such sources of evidence can be, go to Settings / Privacy / Location Services, then 'Frequent Locations' to see a map of your most frequent locations. Many users are often unaware that such data is, by default, being automatically collected." Holy Big Brother Apple, Batman!

The Squeal of Tires, the Sizzle of Hot Writing (Review of Riding in Cars with Girls, by Evangeline Jennings)

Hey "noir" tough guys, watch out. The girls in Evangeline Jennings' Riding in Cars with Girls want to play, and they have been schooled in hard knocks of the kind most guys don't even know enough to have nightmares about. They're hot, sure, but they're not interested in you (and given the swinish males they have experience of, who dast blame them?) Look at them crosswise, or get in their way, and you're likely to get a bullet in the gut rather than a fist to the jaw.
The writing pops and sizzles. Graphic sex and violence done with high literary flair and panache. Highly recommended.
This review is cross-posted on Amazon and Goodreads.
Three Phoboses (out of three).

Anatomy of a Typical Rejection E-Mail

Passover Bellyachin'

I am eating peanut butter on my matzah, which according to Jackie makes me a "bad Boo" because peanuts are kitniyot, which according to the fanatical and illogical custom of our Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors may not be eaten on Passover. I have declared myself Sephardi Jewish for this holiday, based on my grandmother's folk etymology of her father's original family name of Rapoport as being derived from rofeh, Hebrew for doctor, and puerto, Spanish for port--being "doctors of the port" we must have come from Valencia or somewhere.
If I am wrong, of course, my punishment shall be as one who forgets Jerusalem: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my tongue cleave to the roof of mouth" (Psalms 137:5).

The Writing Life

Now that the first draft of my first horror novel is done, instead of getting drunk and sleeping for a week, I have to edit it. Being a writer is its own punishment.

Religious Hazards

Welcome to an Engaging Superheroine

I greatly enjoyed the first adventures of Gwen Maule, aka The Shrike, in Emmie Mears's The Masked Songbird. I like my heroines strong yet believably human, and that is what Gwen is, with her lousy accounting job she can't afford to quit, her scummy boyfriend she can't quite bring herself to dump, and the parents she hasn't visited in two years because she can't face watching her mother waste away with dementia. I liked the fact that even when she gets superpowers, she still needs other people, like the roommate who sews her costumes and the trainer who teaches her to fight, because having super-strength doesn't mean you know anything about martial arts... a point often overlooked in tales of this sort, along with the possible downsides of superpowers for a woman's body and various gritty physical discomforts that Mears describes vividly.
Now as to my critiques, cards on the table, I am not a supporter of Scottish independence, a crucial plot point in this novel. The reasons for my views aren't important here (and certainly aren't due to any dislike for the glorious land and people of Scotland). I was more than willing to root for a free Alba and to believe the worst of the Unionists for the sake of the story (and after all, the terrorist Orangemen in Northern Ireland certainly showed that supporters of Great Britain aren't necessarily civilized). But the bad guys in this novel behave in a way that isn't just one-dimensionally evil, it's also unbelievably stupid for people whose aim is for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom. The Shrike deserves fully fleshed-out villains to fight in her next adventure, which I for one am looking forward to.
This review is cross-posted at Goodreads.
Two-and-a-half Phoboses out of three.