"Magic" by Olivia Newton-John reaches #1 1980

Magic, a single performed by Olivia Newton-John from the soundtrack of Xanadu, reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of August 2, 1980 and remained there for 4 weeks.

Billboard magazine ranked Magic as the 3rd most popular single of 1980.  It spent two weeks at #1 on the Canadian charts.

Cornerstone Deep: Book 1 by Charlene A. Wilson

I had the pleasure of reading Cornerstone Deep while in its draft form. Now in its final form, it is even more enjoyable. Cornerstone Deep reads as a science fiction/fantasy – romance, two genres that usually aren’t found together but Charlene A. Wilson makes them work.

Cornerstone Deep is a mythical realm ruled by lords and guarded by three wizard brothers: Cole, James and Vincent Shilo. Only the lords know of the brothers’ wizardry; the rest of the city knows them only as the founders’ sons.

They’re immortal but unfortunately their women aren’t. They have to ‘relocate their soulmate after she has been reincarnated. They will seek out her soul from lifetime to lifetime.

Women.

Sometimes they aren’t successful. Cole has given up hope of finding his beloved Mianna until they ‘harvest’ a curfew-breaker for one of the lords. He cannot ignore the calling of her soul to his even though now she is the property and under the control of Lord Dressen.

How can Cole rescue her without angering the Council of the Lords and the gods of this realm?

Wilson has a keen eye for detail and gives the planet /dimension Meridian, the setting for Cornerstone Deep, plenty of vivid details. She has created a beautiful world in which magic is powerful but has boundaries.

Love, however, has no boundaries. That is the underlying theme of Cornerstone Deep. Nothing can separate two people in love, not even the barriers of different dimensions in space.

Everything is tied up nicely at the end of Book 1, but Wilson does leave opportunities open for more excitement in Book 2. She has a knack for whetting the readers’ appetite for more. I’m glad because Cole, James and Vincent are certainly characters you want to see more of.

Pirate Ghosts: Tales of Hauntings at Sea

This compilation of horror shorts written by such literary giants as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch and Washington Irving promises the reader ‘with bloodcurdling buccaneers, spectral ships, uncanny experiences under the Jolly Roger and eerie spirits from a historic past that refuses to stay dead’. Pretty high expectations, huh?

The anthology could have been renamed Caribbean Magic Ghosts with some Piracy Themes Thrown in the Mix. Few had pirates as main characters and just as many did not even contain any manner of sea rovers.

This is not to say that the anthology, compiled by Frank McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg isn’t an entertaining read. The short stories contain some great horror themes and effectively scare the reader.

H. P. Lovecraft’s The Terrible Old Man is one such story that eschews the piracy theme but is as creepy as Robert Bloch’s The Red Swimmer, a great story of revenge on a bloodthirsty pirate.

The lengthiest short, Henry S. Whitehead’s Seven Turns in a Hangman’s Rope is a tedious read as he lays on one subordinate clause after another, extending sentences into paragraphs. The detail in which he describes the depth of the white witch’s knowledge and experience into voodoo and obeah was unnecessary, gauging its lack of impact on any of the climatic scenes.

August Derlith’s The Blue Spectacles, Carl Jacobi’s The Digging at Pistol Key and John Masefield’s Anty Bligh, along with the tales of Irving, Lovecraft and Bloch are just plain spooky fun. These are wonderful tales of vengeful ghosts, macabre magic (and a pirate or two) all thrown in with eerie tropical settings. Since I recently reviewed a biography of Jean Lafitte by Jack C. Ramsay Jr., I was pleased to see the dashing pirate appear in The Blue Spectacles. It and Irving’s story were the only two with pirate ghosts.

Clark Ashton Smith’s A Vintage from Atlantis is a short read that contains some of the best pirates in the book, but tended to get preachy. Before I Wake by Henry Kuttner is a slow-moving tale of a young boy haunted by dreams of sailing to magical places. Pirates are mentioned as part of his fantasy while the story clutches the island magic obeah tightly to its breast.

Lady Eleanor Smith’s No Ships Pass could probably be the forerunner of the Twilight Zone-esque ‘you are here now and there is no way back’ theme. Again short on pirates, but a great story.

Pirate Ghosts is a must read for lovers of the horror genre but not for the pirate aficionado or fan. The Caribbean magic has interwoven a spell among the pages and presides over the stories, and gives us a nice tropical scare.