O’Leary’s Luck, written by Teel James Glenn, falls somewhere between short story and novella. For this kind of story brevity works fantastically. You want something easy, fast, exciting, and a little grimy. The first pages of the story give the sense that the author will deliver on these points. You have a New Orleans race-yard junkie loser in the wrong place at the wrong time gunned down for overhearing something sinister. There to witness this, of course, is our protagonist: Jon Shadows. Shadows makes his living as a body guard and has become world-worn in the process. In this case, Shadows has dropped by the town to enjoy Mardi Gras accompanied with a beautiful performer he met previously named Flora. She turns out to be tangled up in the drama they witnessed and Jon’s vacation quickly tuns into a job. A murder, a mystery, a manly protagonist with a silly name, and a damsel in distress – this is getting good.

Some well executed characterization can be found in O’Leary’s Luck. You get a sense of O’Leary’s life and motivations which makes him a pretty sympathetic character when he’s killed in the first few pages of the story. The violence feels less random and pointless, and makes you root for Shadows to get to the bottom of the whole ordeal. A little background on Shadows himself makes him somewhat more interesting than the typical protagonist in these kinds of books. You learn a bit about his looks, his family, and how he feels about himself, which influences how you feel about him. Little moments like these are wonderful and essential for an indie book to become something that sticks out from the crowd.

Unfortunately, things start looking down a bit from here. The amateurish writing starts to become painfully apparent as the story progresses. The author, Teel James Glenn, has a tendency to not only break some basic rules of grammar – like getting it’s and its confused a handful of times – but to repeat the same word in a sentence or paragraph until you almost feel like you’re getting slapped in the face by it. Take, for example, this line from the story: “I wasn’t sure if I should try to make myself invisible or just flat out run for my life but that’s never how I’ve run my life; I generally run toward the sound of gunfire.” The run-on sentence combined with the repetition of the word “run” is enough to give the reader whiplash. If these issues only popped up in the story occasionally looking over it would be easy. But this line reads the way most of the book does. Not horrible, but strange enough to be a off-putting and to slow or stop the flow of reading.

The tone of the book is also somewhat of a mess. Everything feels a little too PG for a hard boiled pulp. Throughout the fifty three page story Shadows says “heck” instead of “hell,” talks about feeling like a kid at Disney World, and tells his date, Flora, about how he was a full grown man before he could grow peach fuzz on his lip. He also spends some socially awkward time with Flora’s mother. Nothing is inherently wrong with these things, but it certainly does not work well in a genre associated with violence and exploitation. Characters from the book talk like the forties or fifties even though the story takes place in modern times, which adds to the weirdness. No one calls anyone a “songstress” or uses the phrase “dandy of bygone days” anymore.

The Coup de grâce for O’Leary’s Luck occurs when enjoyable campiness evolves into bizarre cheesiness. For example, Shadows describes a fight in the book as “impromptu breakdancing,”. I had to set down my e-reader when Jon Shadows – the books supposed lead badass – says, “Some things are better the old way and some the new. At least that’s what my mom would say as she made me do traditional Ninja workouts when I wanted to play baseball.” I was dumbfounded when I first read it, and I remain so now. That line, and a few like it throughout the book, left me with the impression of Jon Shadows as a Napoleon Dynamite type character.

O’Leary’s Luck is disappointing not because it stinks, but because it falls just short of being a marvelously enjoyable pulp story and instead succumbs to the common pitfalls of indie books. With some stringent editing and a little rethinking of a few story elements I would not hesitate to recommend the purchase to fans of the genre. As it exists now, though, O’Leary’s Luck stands just a little above average in the giant heap of self-published books.

O’Leary’s Luck is available for both NOOK and Kindle for $2.99, as well as in paperback from Amazon for $6.99.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

While the inspiration for the Pied Piper – though debated – typically ranges from dark to sinister, the general plot of the story is the same. The town of Hamelin is suffering from a terrible rat problem, so the mayor hires a mysterious stranger to lead the rats away with his music. Upon completing the task, the piper fails to receive the promised amount of payment. In retaliation, the piper leads all of the children away. Depending on the version of the story, the piper either eventually receives his payment and returns the children, or the little ones meet a grisly or mysterious end.

Waters’ version takes a different look at the story. Rather than simply being a lesson about paying those who are due, the author digs into the motivations behind a few of the key characters. Part of the story focuses on the rats’ perspective, showing them to mean no intentional harm and failing to understand why the humans can’t coexist with them. The motivations of the Pied Piper himself are also made clearer. His anger is not so much about the fact that he didn’t receive the expected payment. It’s about how abhorred he is with the way the people of the town treat others. Once the rats are gone, the adults of the town quickly turn their pettiness and anger on their own children. As a parable, the story becomes a lesson about the proper way to treat everyone else in the world, regardless of species, age, or social status.

Children’s stories are a fantastic tool for teaching kids the valuable lessons of life, and Paying Piper is no exception. Being a childless adult I’m certainly not the core audience here, but Ilana Waters‘ take on a folklore classic appears to be a solid short story for parents to share with their kids. There are even some discussion questions at the end to emphasize to children some of the lessons they should take away. Even for some of us adults, it’s a fine reminder that if we don’t do what’s right, we’ll someday have to pay the piper.

Paying Piper is currently available for FREE on Smashwords, Kobo, and directly from Ilana Waters’ website. You can also check it out on Amazon, Amazon UK, and Barnes & Noble.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.