Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

My wife unintentionally reawakened my enjoyment of country music recently. Until a few days ago, radio has been our only option for music in the car. I think we'd both grown bored with the popular rock stations playing the same songs over and over again, so we ended up on a country station, a country station that now resides on one of my radio's presets.

We have a CD player in our car now - a birthday gift from me to my wife - and this morning I found one of my Garth Brooks albums and popped it in the player on the way to work. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy his music. Garth displays a high level of creativity and artistry with the music itself, and his lyrics always contain a delightful brand of poetry.

I don't have a lot of country music in my collection - just a couple of Garth albums and a double of Alabama's greatest hits. I simply don't collect much "popular" music since my tastes tend to run more toward Big Band, classical, swing, jazz, etc. But I do enjoy revisiting country from time to time, though I doubt I'll ever love the genre - I'm too much of a melancholic personality to want to reside there for any length of time. Country music sometimes recalls for me painful memories from the past, and being creatures of the past I see little need to dwell on them, as they have no effect on today. So, by necessity, country music remains a style of music that I tend to steer clear of.

Right now, I've got "Fit for a King" running through my head. It reminds me a bit of a Southern Gospel song you might hear or sing at a tent revival meeting. If all country music was like this all the time, I think I could listen to a lot more of it.

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Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

I've been a Dean Koontz fan since I was a kid; I even did a fair job of collecting a lot of his books at the time. A couple of years ago, I got reacquainted with Koontz through Odd Thomas. This is the story of a young man who sees ghosts and is often compelled to help them move on to the next life, whether it be through reassuring words or by resolving whatever unfinished business it is that is holding them here.

Odd has other gifts as well. One is something that he calls "psychic magnetism" - it is the ability that, when he thinks almost exclusively about a single person (living), he will inevitably be drawn to them. He can walk or drive, seemingly at random, but ultimately will nearly always find the object of his thoughts. Odd has discovered that this can also work in reverse, by drawing people to him of whom he is thinking. This is typically the less desirable option, as it can have the unintended consequence of drawing danger blindly to himself. So Odd prefers to seek out the object before it can find him.

There are also creatures that Odd calls bodachs, though that is not actually what they are. These beings are singularly evil, being shadowy creatures that are drawn to cataclysmic events - events that, if not prevented, end in immeasurable pain and suffering. These bodachs seem to delight and subsist on these horrors, so wherever Odd is aware of bodachs, he works to determine what this event will be and attempts to stop it before it can begin.

In Odd Thomas we are introduced to this colorful and unique character as he, along with the love of his life, Stormy Llewellyn, a girl every bit as odd as Odd himself, race toward an unknown but devastating event that has brought hundreds of bodachs to the sleepy little town of Pico Mundo, California. Odd and Stormy race against time, fleeing poltergeists, meeting with ghosts (who, incidentally do not communicate with the living), driving the ghost of Elvis around town, and seeking out ruthless killers. Not a bad day's work for a fry cook.

Like the rest of Koontz's work, Odd Thomas is fast-paced from beginning to end and captivating to the last page. Who else could literally resurrect the King of Rock and Roll without the effect being cludgy? You'll love Odd Thomas and the entire cast of characters that springs up around him - from a delightfully (but frightfully) obese author to the sheriff of Pico Mundo to the owner of the Pico Grille where Odd slings up hash every morning. This book is a great read and must-have for all Dean Koontz fans.

Upcoming Reviews: Forever Odd by Dean Koontz, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

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