The SoapBoxers

Baseball bell lap has begun, with just one month remaining in the season.  As baseball winds down, there are several story lines to watch.

Teams I’ll Be Watching

Pirates closer Joel Hanrahan

Pittsburgh Pirates – The last time the Pirates has a winning season, I was still in high school.  Barring a complete collapse down the stretch, the Pirates should at least get to 82 wins.  Pittsburgh is currently 2 1/2 games out of the final National League wild card spot.  Although I also like the Cardinals (who currently hold the final spot), I’m definitely pulling for the Pirates to make the playoffs.  I think it would be great for the fan base to have a playoff appearance.  Although an entire generate of young fans doesn’t realize it, this is a franchise with a proud and successful past.

Orioles closer Jim Johnson

Baltimore Orioles – Through Monday, the Orioles were 15 games over .500 (74-59) with a run differential of -31.  Of all the other teams with a run differential worse than -25, the next best record is the Mets at 64-71 (7 games under .500).  The Orioles bullpen has been great, allowing them to win close games (which allows a team winning percentage to exceed the projected based on run differential).  It remains to be seen whether they can make a playoff run … but through Monday, they were just one game behind the Yankees. 

Players I’ll Be Watching

Mike Trout

Mike Trout – At this point, Trout has the American League Rookie of the Year award in the bag and is making a strong case for MVP.  Although Ichiro won the MVP in his “rookie” season, he was already a well established professional player at that point.  The only “true” rookie to win the MVP was Fred Lynn in 1975.  Through Monday, Trout was hitting .336 with 25 homers and 43 steals (caught 4 times) and 108 runs scored in 112 games.  If the Angels managed to make the playoffs, it will be due to Trout.  Trout spent the first month in the minors.  However, it’s hard to blame the Angels for sending him down to start the year, as he was sick during much of spring training.  Trout’s season is going be one for the ages.  He has a shot to win a batting title, hit 30 homers, and steal 50 bases (in an abbreviated season) all while providing signficant defensive value in the outfield … in his age 20 season. 

The real challenge may be in trying to match his 2012 output in future season.  Trout could conceivably have a Hall of Fame caliber career while never touching those numbers again.  A .290 career batting average with 450 homers and 500 steals would almost certainly get him into Cooperstown – something he could do by averaging 23 homers and 25 steals over a 20 year career.

Albert Pujols – After signing a monster contract with the Angels in the off-season, Pujols struggled mightily in April.  He has righted the ship in recent months.  Through Monday, Pujols was hitting .287 with 29 homers and 92 RBI.  He’s still a tick below his career numbers, but that will happen when you basically throw a month away.  I think we need to be a little slower to judge players who switch leagues.  Some guys take a bit longer to adjust, but do just fine once they get locked in.  Matt Holliday was the same way in Oakland – after his initial struggles, he really hit well before being traded to St. Louis.

Stephen Straburg – Strasburg’s season will likely come to an end September 12.  The Nationals have an innings cap and will shut him down once he reaches that number.  This means that Strasburg will not be a part of the post-season for the Nationals.  I personally think this is a wise move for the Nationals.  Putting 220+ innings of work on a recently Tommy Johned elbow seems to be a risky proposition.  This is a team that is built to contend over the long run.  Don’t blow out a young arm.

Bryce Harper

Bryce Harper – Harper gets overshadowed on his own team by the Strasburg talk and doesn’t fare well in comparisons to Mike Trout.  To be fair, no rookies will ever fare well in a comparison to Trout.  However, Harper has actually been a slightly above average hitter this year.  That’s actually an incredible achievement for a 19 year old.  Most 19 year olds in professional baseball are playing in cities like Grand Junction, Cedar Rapids, and Delmarva.  Harper’s career is still 100% on track.

Plenty more to watch

These definitely aren’t the only story lines to watch.  The Nationals are looking to make their first playoff appearance and do it with the best record in baseball.  The Angel, despite the heroics of Trout and Pujols, are still outside the playoff picture.  The Devil Rays are knocking on the playoff door … and could the backsliding Yankees fall out of the playoffs?  Those stories and more as the regular season winds down.

Congrats to Kevin Goldstein

Kevin Goldstein

On Friday, it was announced that Kevin Goldstein would become the professional scouting director for the Astros (professional scouting pertains to minor league and Major League players, as opposed to scouting of unsigned amateurs).  A lot of scouting directors work their way through the scouting ranks of an organization before being promoted to an executive role.  Goldstein moves into the job after writing (and podcasting) about prospectus, mostly for Baseball Prospectus.  His expertise is very well respected, but it’s still a somewhat out of the box hire.  The move also resulted in the death of my favorite baseball podcast, Up and In.

I’ve been working on my first novel for a few years now.  I got the first draft to about 10,000 (not terribly long) before deciding to completely re-baseline.  It’s hard to basically throw that work in the trash, but when I wrote it, I was basically trying to get some words down, knowing that I’d be heavily revising.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve had a lot of irons in my literary fire.  Recently, I’ve decided to shelve many of these ideas in order to work on the novel.  Here are some of the challenges I’ve been facing.

Finding time to write

With a 5 year old and a 2 year old in the house, much of my “free time” is already spoken for.  Simply finding a spare 20-30 minutes each day to write can be quite a challenge.  NaNoWriMo is looming in November.  Although I don’t plan to birth and develop and entire novel during the month, I am aiming to make significant progress on my novel during the month.  My goal is to add 25,000 words in November.  That’s a relatively modest word count compared to NaNoWriMo winners, but it would push me to the point of being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Baseball winds down around the same time, which will remove one competitor for my time.

Slow down

I’ve always had a tendency to race ahead in my story telling, focusing almost solely on the action.  I’d rather write a kill scene than anything else.  It’s always been difficult for me to spend any time describing the scenes or daily life.  Lately, I’ve been doing a better job of this, trying to get inside the heads of characters and looking around to see what they see and listening to hear what they hear.  Essentially, I have to tell the story telling part of my brain to pause while I stop and smell the roses (and describe them for you).

Exploring my feminine side

Although I’ve had strong female characters in many of my stories, my novel is my first longer work to have a female driving the plot forward (although there will be shifting perspectives in the book).  I have to take care in how I develop the role of Marina, a female detective.  As a homicide detective, I want her to be strong, but not over-the-top like Dirty Harry.  While I can write from a male point of view fairly easily, I actually need to put some thought into how my female characters act.  Marina is going to have to deal with situations that her partner Jake won’t ever encounter – and I need to make sure she handles them in a way that makes sense to my female readers.  Then there’s the matter of female clothing, accessories and makeup.  Dresses, skirts, blouses, stilettos, flats, mules, foundation, blush … Just getting a female character dressed and out the door in the morning can be a job unto itself.

How many of you are working on a novel?  What are some of the challenges you are facing?

This week is the Republican National Convention.  Anger seems to be the word of the week so far.  The convention got off to a rocky start when hurricane Isaac threatened Florida, forcing a very abbreviated first day session that lasted exactly two minutes.  Oddly, hurricanes also affected the 2004 and 2008 conventions.

Ron Paul

Ron Paul has always had very devoted supporters.  The average depth of support among his fans is certainly greater than that of any other candidate.  The only probably is that a “eh, I like the guy” vote counts just as much as a “I’d die for the guy” vote.  Paul has never been able to muster a strong breadth of support – and that’s what really matters.

While Paul was basically a non-factor, his supporters have claimed that while he didn’t win, this campaign was the start of a revolution, and that the Ron Paul 2012 campaign would set policy within the Republican party for the next generation, on par with Ronald Reagan.  Really?  A fringe candidate with support of a small minority of party members is on par with a two term president?  If Romney wins the presidency, I’d expect the GOP to close ranks behind him a bit and at least shift somewhat toward him. 

Paul supporters did cause at least one change, though.  State delegates will now be bound by the results of the state’s primaries and caucuses.  Paul’s support had been able to lobby to become delegates, such that their representation as delegation was far out of proportion with the percentage of votes Paul had received in primaries and caucuses.  In other words, they were essentially disenfranchising the voters by making the election results irrelevant.

The platform

The Republican platform is far to the right of where Mitt Romney stands.  It has been characterized as “activist written”.  The platform advocates making English the official language, banning all abortions (even in case of rape), and changing medicare to a voucher-based system.  So, basically, the platform alienates legal immigrants, women, and senior citizens.  Prominent Republicans such as John Boehner and Jeb Bush have spoken out against the platform.

I’d expect to hear the Romney/Ryan commercials tout their own platform, while essentially ignoring the official Republican platform.  There is a link to Romney’s plan at the bottom of this article – it’s a free Kindle download. 

It will be interesting to see what role the platform could play in congressional races, however.    A Democratic candidate could push an opponent to either embrace the platform (alienating independents and affected groups) or reject it (possible reducing voter turnout among their base).

This is how we feed the animals

One of the lowlights from the convention were two partygoers who threw nuts at an African-American CNN cameraman, saying “this is how we feed the animals.”  The two attendees were immediately removed by police.  I realize that a large amount of alcoholic beverages are probably consumed by convention attendees, but is it asking too much to remain civil?

The convention released a statement condemning the acts.  I’m sure that the vast majority of Republicans would condemn this behavior as well.

The national race

I always laugh when I hear people talking about the national polling number.  It’s almost as if they believe there is a national election for president.  That’s not really the case.  We operate on the Chuck E Cheese model.  There are 51 presidential elections.  The winner of each elections get a certain number of tokens.  If you get 270 tokens, you can trade them in for the big prize.

You can safely ignore the national polling numbers and the numbers from about 3/4 of the states.  A handful of battleground states are the only ones that really matter.
 

This is based loosely on the experience of Baseball Prospectus writer/podcaster/managing partner Kevin Goldstein.  He became fascinated with his weird neighbors, who were constantly throwing out mattresses on trash day – until they were evicted today.  Nobody ever saw mattresses coming in, but they always saw them on the curb waiting for the garbage truck.

If you’re a baseball fan and you haven’t checked out the Baseball Prospectus site, take a moment to visit.  it’s a great site.  And if you enjoy your baseball information with a heavy dose of pop culture, sarcasm, and non-baseball related content, be sure to check out the Up and In podcast, which often weighs in at a hefty 2+ hours.

“Another mattress!” Kevin exclaimed.

“How many mattresses is that?” Jason asked, half an internet away in Brooklyn.

“It has to be like ten?  They’ve put one out for the trash almost weekly for the past three months.  What are they doing that causes them to throw away that many mattresses?”

“It could be a brothel,” replied Jason helpfully.  “You know, the average life span of a mattress is probably based on an average of eight hours of use per night, with the assumption that most of the time will be spent sleeping.  If they’ve got a happening brothel, they might be keeping those beds active 24 hours per day.  All that rolling around and groping is probably pretty hard on the springs.”

“I think I’d notice the traffic if there was a brothel next door.”

“Maybe there’s underground parking with direct access to the inside.  Valet parking, maybe – guys with the funny little hats.”

“It’s DeKalb, Jason.  There’s not an underground parking deck with valet parking.”

“Maybe left over from the underground railroad.”

“It’s probably something mundane.  They’re probably a distributor for some knockoff mattress company, and it’s cheaper to just dump the defective mattresses on the curb.”

“That’s probably it,” Jason agreed.  “They’re probably selling Snerta and Stealy mattresses on the internet.  Wonder if they can use one of those fixed rate boxes from the postal service?”

Kevin rolled his eyes, but it was lost on Jason and the listeners.  Time to shift the conversation back to baseball.

The stocky man turned his head and yelled int the back room.  “Hey, Chas.  Come listen to this.”

The old man grumbled, but pulled back the lever on the recliner and slowly stood up.  “This had better be good, Harris,” he said and he ambled toward the front room.

Harris was busy doing something with the newfangled computer.  As Chas sat down, Harris hit a button and the computer began to talk.

At the end of the segment, Harris hit a button to stop the audio.

“Do you think it’s him?”

“Certainly sounds like him.  He always did go through mattresses as often as some people change underwear.  That massive bulk coupled with the insomnia – that man could demolish a new mattress in a few days.”

“What next?” asked Harris.

“We’re off to DeKalb.  Grab an umbrella and your Glock.”
 

 

Melky Cabrera

Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera has been one of the positive stories of 2012, building upon a solid 2011 season with another good season.  A $50 million contract extension was within grasp.  Then he got caught using synthetic testosterone and face a 50 game suspension.  Even if the Giants were to make the playoffs – a more difficult proposition without Cabrera in the lineup – he would be not be eligible to play until the NLCS.

If the story had ended there, it would be bad enough.  Later, news came out that Cabrera had blamed the positive test on a contaminated supplement.  Had this been true – that an unlisted ingredient caused the positive test – this would have been a get out of jail free card.  To bolster his case, Cabrera (or those working for him) created a web site promoting a non-existent supplement that was purportedly the cause.  Melky had engaged in a cover-up after the positive test.  Major League Baseball was not fooled.

In my opinion, Cabrera is getting off easy if he simply serves a 50 game suspension.  I feel that he should be punished both for the actual drug use and for attempting to deceive Major League Baseball.

As a tech guy, I’m curious exactly what Cabrera did.  Did he simply register a brand new domain under his named (easily sniffed out using a WHOIS) – or did he step up the level of sophistication by purchasing an “aged” domain and registering it under the name of a different entity?

Colon also busted

This week, former Cy Young winner Bartolo Colon also tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.  Colon had been pitching well for the A’s after a solid year last year for the Yankees.  Colon had encountered injuries after his 21-8 2005 campaign and was on pace to eclipse 200 innings pitched for the first time since that year.

Hamilton Breaks Record

Billy Hamilton – 148 steals so far this year

19th century player Billy Hamilton – #3 in Major League career steals.

Reds AA shortstop “Sliding” Billy Hamilton stole four based on Tuesday night and in the process broke Vince Coleman’s 30 year old single season minor league stolen base record.  Coleman’s record was 145; Hamilton is at 148 and counting.  Hamilton was promoted the AA in mid-season and has a chance to lead two different leagues in stolen bases in the same year.  He is now 3 stolen bases ahead of Josh Prince for the Southern League lead (despite playing only 40 games compared to 127 for Prince) and is 19 ahead of Rico Noel in his old league, the California League (despite playing 40 fewer games than Noel.

The question marks surrounding Hamilton are whether he’ll be good enough to stick at shortstop, and whether he’ll be able to walk at a decent clip in the majors.  He has a good walk rate in the minors, but his anemic power may cause pitchers to challenge him in the majors and take their chances on batted balls.  He’s a “not good, not bad” defender at shortstop, but his great speed could make him a very good center fielder.

Around the Majors

Other news of note:

Nationals GM Davey Johnson says that the Nats may sit Stephen Strasburg down in later September, causing him to miss 2-3 starts.  No word on whether he would pitch in the post-season.  Strasburg is coming off Tommy John surgery and the Nationals are trying to limit his workload in order to prevent future arm problems.

The Houston Astros fired manager Brad Mills.  While the Astros are certainly having a very bad year (36 1/2 games out of first place in their division), it could hardly be characterized as disappointing.  The Astros have traded away nearly all of their players in an effort to cut costs and stockpile prospects.  As a result, the team Mills put on the field every day was always outmanned by the other team.  Mills will get another chance to manage.

A surge by the Cardinals has dropped the Pirates into third place in the National League wild card race (the top two non-division winners make the playoffs).  It will be interesting to see if Clint Hurdle can get the Bucs into the playoffs.  At the very least, he needs to get them 15 wins so that they can finish with a winning record for the first time in 20 years.

Time to “shut it down”?

The Missouri Senate seat held by Claire McCaskill was one being targeted by the Republicans this election.  Missouri historically is a swing state, McCaskill narrowly won in 2006, and she had been dogged by issues related to use of a private plane, including allegations that she failed to pay $280,000 in property taxes on the plane.

In short, McCaskill was vulnerable, and the Republicans were about to dump a ton of money into this race in an effort to tilt the balance of the Senate.  Representative Todd Akin emerged the winner of a three way primary and appeared to be on track to unseat the incumbent.

And then Sunday happened, and Akin uttered this quote in an interview.

It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare.  If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child. – Representative Todd Akin

If you’re not familiar with the medical science Akin is referring to, don’t feel bad.  The reason you haven’t heard about it is because it’s not true.  Akin later apologized, saying that he misspoke.  This wasn’t a case of someone misspeaking.  Mitt Romney accidentally introducing Paul Ryan as the next president of the United States was an example of someone misspeaking.  Akin’s comments seemed well rehearsed – he meant what he said.  He was simply wrong.

Republicans Distancing Themselves

Republican leaders have been quick to criticize Akin’s comments.  There’s a very good reason for this – this don’t want to be associated with Akin in any way.  Membership in a political party creates a guilt by association (on the flip side, party members can claim credit for the good deeds of other party members).  While many Republicans may have abortion views that are somewhat similar to Akin’s, most (all?) don’t agree with his comments about a woman’s body being able to prevent pregnancy after a rape and they find the use of the term “legitimate rape” to be offensive.

In or Out?

Until 5 PM today, Akin can withdraw from the race fairly easily.  After 5 PM, it would require a court order and he would be forced to pay for the re-printing of any ballots.  To this point, Akin has been insistent that he will stay in the race.  Republicans are trying to get him to withdraw so that they can replace him with an unsoiled candidate.  On CBS radio news this morning, they reported that a Republican operative was frustrated after conversions with Akin.  The operative was quoted as saying “you can’t reason with an idiot.”

His opponent, McCaskill, agrees with him, stating that the voters chose him and they have a right to have him on the ballot in November.  The fact that she’s be able to hit him over the head with this issue repeatedly definitely works to her advantage.

Senator Claire McCaskill

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has told Akin that if he stays in the race, they will not back him.  For those who aren’t familiar with this group, they raise a large amount of funds at a national level, and then spend it on races where the money can make a difference in determining the outcome.  (Yes, the Democrats have a similar group, and there are corresponding groups for the House.)  Without the support of the NRSC, Akin would be limited to whatever funds he can raise (or borrow) on his own – putting him at a decided disadvantage, since the National Democratic Senatorial Committee will almost certainly spend money to support McCaskill.

Even if Akin drops out of the race, McCaskill is likely in the position of advantage.  Whomever is picked as a replacement will not have received a plurality of support in the primary – and may not have even participated in the primary.  McCaskill could attack the Republicans as circumventing the traditional process by hand-selecting her opponent, rather than letting the voters decide.

In the end, the Republicans are between a rock and a hard place, although having Akin drop out would probably be best for them.

Effects on the Presidential Race

Missouri is one of just a handful of states that is truly up for grabs in the presidential election.  The majority of states are pretty solidly red or blue.  Recent polling in the state shows a virtual dead heat between Romney and Obama.  It’s possibly that Akin’s statement may cause some undecided voters in the state to have a negative opinion of the Republican party as a whole – causing them to either flip to Obama or simple staying away from the polls.  If Obama wins an electoral college squeaker due to a narrow win in Missouri, Todd Akin’s comments might be what puts him over the top – another reason why the Republicans are desperate for Akin to drop out.

Crunchy doesn’t have an article today.  She does, however, have a new baby boy.  He was born yesterday morning.  That’s 4 little boys in her house now …

I don’t feel like writing an article about one particular thought this week, so I’ll bounce around a bit.

Olympics

I didn’t get the chance to watch nearly as much of the Olympics as I would have like.  I did make an effort to keep up on what was going on, though.

My personal highlight was Jake Varner’s wrestling gold medal.  Jake and I share an alma mater – Iowa State University.  I’m very proud to have Varner add his name to a collection of Iowa State wrestlers who have gone on to win gold – including living legends Dan Gable and Cael Sanderson. 

London organizer Sebastian Coe caught some flak for failing to state that Michael Phelps was the greatest Olympian ever.  While Phelps is definitely one of the greatest ever, Coe was caught in the difficult position of trying to compare athletes from different sports.  Swimming (and track) afford an athlete more opportunities to medal.  Let’s take boxing, for example.  If a boxer were to match Phelps’s record of 22 medal, it would require medals in 22 consecutive Olympic games, spanning 84 years.  While in raw numbers, this would simply match Phelps, in reality it would be a far more impressive feat.  If we only look at raw medal counts, this would mean that only athletes from a handful of sports could ever make the claim to be “great” Olympians.  It’s simply not feasible for boxers, wrestlers, basketball players, or hockey players to win 10+ medals.

Melky

Melky Cabrera was one of the feel good stories on 2012.  He was hitting .346 for the year and was the All Star game MVP.  After years of struggling, Cabrera was putting up good seasons in back to back year and appeared to be turning into a very good major league player.  The dream season came to a crashing halt Wednesday, when Cabrera was suspended 50 games for using testosterone.  The loss of Cabrera puts the playoff chances of the Giants in serious doubt.

Paul Ryan

Mitt Romney selected Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate.  Expect the budget to become a major issue in debates.  Ryan’s budget plan was the one the Republican congress pitted against Obama’sd budget.

Aside from a stint as driver of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, Ryan has worked in the political arena his entire career.

What are you watching?

I managed to get a chance to see Avatar this week.  I found the story very enjoyable.  While I usually don’t dig too hard to find a deeper meaning in a movie (I prefer to simply be entertained), it’s pretty hard to misss the point of Avatar.  It’s a sci-fi movie, but also has an interesting love story.  I definitely recommend it.
 

Mitt Romney

Harry Reid is saying that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes in past years.  Romney has released his 2010 tax return and will release the 2011 return when it is ready – but that’s a far cry from the 12 years of tax returns that his father released when George Romney ran for president.

Republican leaders are calling Reid a liar, and the result of the entire exchange is that there’s as much focus on Mitt Romney’s taxes as there is on how to solve the current unemployment problems.

That begs the question:

What is Mitt Romney hiding?

There are several possibilities.  Some are far more likely than others.

• Romney is not hiding anything – The returns from the last ten years may be near carbon copies of 2010, and Romney may be refusing to release the earlier returns on principle alone.  In my opinion, this would be a bad decision, as the failure to release earlier returns gives the definite appearance that he is hiding something.
• Romney is committing tax fraud – It’s also possible that Romney is committing outright fraud, either by failing to report income or by taking illegal deductions.  However, unless Romney and his legal tax are complete morons, this seems a pretty remote possibility.
• Romney was born in Kenya – Romney may be paying millions in taxes to the Kenyan treasury
• Romney paid $0 tax in some years – This is actually quite possible.  I’m sure that Mitt’s stock portfolio has taken a hit in several recent years.  It’s quite possible that he sold stock to lock in capital losses that would offset other income. 
• Romney had very high income – On the flip side, if Romney had a bad feeling about the market, he may have sold stock to lock in gains.  Are there years where Romney had $20, $50, or $100 million in income?  It’s definitely possible.  it’s even possible that he locked in huge gains as the market was plummeting.

Something to keep in mind is that a capital gain is often the result of many years or accumulation.  For the sake of argument, let’s say that Romney had a $100 million capital gain in 2008. The stocks in his portfolio may have appreciated over a span of 20 or 30 years, and a rate of a few million per years.  Sure, that’s a lot of money, but it’s not as if Romney opened an eTrade account one day and reaped a $100 profit the next.  The huge gain may have been recognized in 2008, but it was building up gradually over the years.

Likewise, if Romney locked in some capital gains in an effort to drop his income to $0, these losses may also have been building up for years or decades.

If you care about how much money politicians make, you really should be focusing on the average income over a long span of time, rather than cherry picking a handful of years.  If someone earns $50 million for each of five consecutive years, this is a higher total income that a person who has $0 in income the first four years and $150 million in the fifth year – even though the $150 million catches they eye.

Honestly, as long as Romney fairly reported income and deductions and paid the proper amount in taxes, I really don’t care how much he paid in taxes.  His effective rate is fairly low due to the fact that most of his earnings are capital gains.  That’s not Romney’s fault – that’s simply the way the tax code is written.

Clara Schumann

It takes a good author to get me to read a book on a topic that doesn’t particularly interest me.  Louise Marley accomplishes this feat with her book The Brahms Deception.  While my eclectic music collection does contain a handful of album of classical music, it’s usually an afterthought – and when I do listen to classical, it’s generally Tchaikovsky.  Marley got me to read – and enjoy – a book featuring Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann.  For a reason that eludes me, Amazon thought I’d like the book and recommended it to me.  The price – $2.99 – was right, and I like the summary, so I bought the book.

The plot

The basic plot is that a company has found a way to transport people into the past … sort of.  Participants can hear and see what is going on in a particular place and time in the past, but they can’t interact with the people.  It’s a great way do to academic research on a topic – researchers can get information from directly observing the subject of their interest.

Then, during one such voyage, something completely unexpected happens – and it threatens to alter the fragile timeline.  Kristian North is called in to try to help resolve the situation.  Kristian quickly find the problem – but solving it is a far more complex endeavor.

I love time travel stories that are well done, so this element convinced me to buy the book.

Characters

Kristian is the main character in the book.  He’s definitely a flawed character, but it’s still really easy to cheer for him.  He tries to do what he feels is right, even if others may disagree with him.

Many of the other modern day characters are females.  In general, Kristian’s life is largely influenced by the women in his life – his sister, his former lover, the barmaid at the place where he plays piano, and others.  It’s notable how few men make any sort of impression in his life.

Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann are also a big part of the book.  I hadn’t even heard or Schumann before I read The Brahms Deception, and I knew very little about Brahms.  I ended up hitting Wikipedia a few times as I read through the book, seeking bits of information about Brahms and Schumann.  Not only does this book educate, but it entertains.

Other

The characters moves around through a few different geographic locations.  A considerable amount of the action occurs in Italy.  Some of it in 1861 Italy and some of it in current day Italy.  Considerable attention is given to the sights and sounds of 1861 Italy.  There’s also more focus on the food than you typically see in a book.

While music is a focal point of the book, it doesn’t completely overwhelm the plot.  You can enjoy this book even if you don’t have a considerable amount of musical knowledge – as was my case.

There are also a few instances of foreign language being used – some German and some Italian.  Most of this can be figured out based on the context.

Verdict

I loved the book and immediately wished there was a sequel.  I tried to figure out the twists and turns, but more often than not I guessed wrong.  I really like the way that Marley handled many of the aspects of time travel, including the always troubling issue of how a change in the past ripples forward into the future.

You could say this is a suspense novel, a romance novel, or a novel about music.  Whichever you enjoy, there’s a good chance you’ll like The Brahms Deception.

Many of your know that I’ve been working on a serial killer novel for a while now (and it’s very far from finished).  Until this point, I’ve shared the writing with almost nobody.  However, today I’ll tease you with the prologue for my novel, Casting Stones.

Prologue: Practice

When she regained consciousness this time, she was blinded by the early morning sun spilling in through the open door. She quickly closed her eyes to block out the light. Her brain slowly processed the information. The door was open.

She scrambled to her feet, her sneakers struggling to find purchase on the straw-covered floor. When she felt her foot finally touch down on the grass, she knew that freedom was within her grasp. Run like the wind, she told herself. She was quickly twenty yards away from the barn, then fifty yards … racing toward her freedom.

Her heart sank when she saw him angling toward her from the left. She forced herself to channel her adrenaline and pushed forward with a burst of speed. She was still twenty yards ahead of him when she reached the fence. The woven wire buckled slightly under her weight as she scrambled over the fence. As her feet hit the ground, she felt his arm encircle her chest. He pulled her roughly back over the fence, and the barbed wire that topped the fence sliced into her.

He straddled her as he yanked the knife from the sheath. She felt the blade prick her skin as he sliced open her dress. She saw droplets of blood on the knife as he held it to her throat with his right hand while groping her breast with his free hand. His sweat dropped onto her face as she struggled for her freedom. No! No! This can’t be happening to me.

His left hand released her breast and moved under her dress. She felt him yank down her panties, and she was filled with disgust as he entered her.

The blade cut into her neck with each movement, but she fought through the pain. She would not submit to this monster – ever. Her attacker responded to her struggles angrily, slapping her roughly across the face. He moved his face within inches of hers and snarled. He sounded more like an animal than a man.

She smashed her head into his and heard him grunt from the force of the impact. She wrenched the knife from his hands and plunged it blindly into his body. He howled as the blade punctured his flesh. She left him on the ground, grasping for the handle of the knife.

As she raced for her freedom a second time, he struggled to his feet and pulled the gun from his waist band. A single shot brought the exercise to a halt.

He hefted her body back toward the burial trench. He threw her next to the others and covered her corpse with fresh, black earth.

Another failure. Once again unable to restrain and kill with the knife. Forced once again to use the impersonal weapon to prevent an escape. He needed more practice. He would spend a few days recovering from his wounds and would then troll the highway again, seeking another hitchhiker – a disposable victim to serve as his sparring partner. The game would soon begin, and Je’Mien needed to hone his skills.