Monday, April 16, 2012

Review - The Taker




The Taker
BY: Alma Katsu
PUBLISHED BY: Gallery
PUBLISHED IN: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9706-6
Pages: 456



After midnight, Dr. Luke Findley of St. Andrew, Maine gets an unusual patient, murder suspect Lanore MeIlvare. A young man’s body had been found in the nearby woods along with “Lanny”. As Luke attends to this young woman, who the police said looks “pale”, which is probably due to the cold Maine temperatures, Lanny begins to tell the doctor an unbelievable tale. The man’s body that is now in the morgue is none other than the body of Jonathan St. Andrew, which cannot be true as no St. Andrew has been alive for a few hundred years.

    Pleading for Luke to help her escape, Lanny continues her story which starts in 1811 and talks about her admiration for the town founder’s son, Jonathan, despite her father’s and brother’s hatred for the St. Andrew family. You see St. Andrews were quite wealthy, while everyone else struggled to get by. Secretly, and despite being a few years younger, Lanny develops a friendship with Jonathan that later turns into a fling, one that results in her pregnancy. Lanny tries to hide her situation from her family. Jonathan becomes engaged to another very young girl, an arrangement made by his father. With nowhere else to turn, Lanny tells her parents of her pregnancy. Her father is furious and embarrassed. The decision is made that Lanny will be sent to Boston to live at a nunnery, in which the baby will be given up for adoption.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Guest Post with author Nicole Borgenicht

Creating Interesting Characters

By Nicole Borgenicht, 
author: The Kids of Dandelion Township

There are many aspects to creating interesting characters. First of all, they have to seem true to life in some of their traits, and at the same time inhabit unique qualities so a reader will not always guess what each character will do or say. Secondly, three dimensional characters have spark and sizzle since they are deep in their feelings and thoughts as we all are in real life.

The creation of characters derives from an amalgamation of traits that we recognize as well as original ones from our imagination. When people describe the writing of characters as though ‘they write themselves’, this too occurs at times. Dialogue and/or action seems to jump into the story before we’ve had a chance to fully nurture it. Then comes the revisions and editorial process. None the less, between the muses and the unconscious, there is a whole active world inside our minds and in our spiritual existence, that is simply waiting to explode and dance on paper and in digital form! It is up to us, to release this energy when we feel it, and control portions of this in order to unleash characters that have deep inner conflicts as well as challenges they face externally.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Review - Lock & Key Volume 5: Clockworks



TITLE: Locke & Key Volume 5: Clockworks
PUBLISHER: IDW Publishing
RELEASE DATE: July 24, 2012
ISBN:  9781613772270
WRITER:  Joe Hill
ARTIST: Gabriel Rodriguez




IDW Publishing and NetGalley have kindly let me review the upcoming Lock & Key Volume 5 graphic novel which consist of six issues. Only the first issue, Chapter One - The Locksmith's Son, was available for me to review, which is set in the year 1775 at Lovecraft, Massachusetts Bay. Sixteen year-old Ben Locke and his younger sister Miranda watch helplessly as their parents are hanged by the redcoats. Ben promises to settle his father's debts which leads them 120 feet below ground, where they meet Colonel Adam Crais and what is left of his minutemen. The Colonel and his army had dug up a strange door, and when it was opened, it unleashed bloody thirsty demons. Ben Locke is a son of a locksmith and he is determined to create a lock strong enough to hold the door shut forever.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Guest Post with author Peter Brandt



What an exciting topic and thank you for inviting me…I am addicted to both coffee and writing so I should fit right in.

To say that creating real characters is the most important thing in a story would be an understatement. Books are about people and we need them to be real, even if they are not. Your characters drive the story and in the end, are the people who will make readers love your book.

What do I mean by that? Sara Maple is the lead in my newest novel "Maple Express." She became a real person in my mind long before I put her on the page. I started by giving her a complete backstory. I wrote up a list of her family, her likes, and dislikes, where she lived, her grades in school and so on. I left nothing to chance. By the time I wrote her into my story, Sara had become a young girl that both appealed to me and repulsed me. She loves her friends but treats them terrible when she doesn't get her own way. She can be sweet when she wants to be but acts like a spoiled brat and is a bully at times. Yet, she shows her compassion by working at the Alzheimer clinic as a volunteer. In the end, she has a mother and father, a best friend, and a boy she has a crush on, just like every other girl. As well, Sara suffers with the same insecurities we all face in life.

In Alan Watts 90 Day Novel Alan discusses how important it is to sit down and write extensively about your character. Your character needs a full life. This is necessary to bring your character into the real world because readers are good at identifying a fake character.

"No one would do that," or "no one would act like that," is a sure sign something went wrong during your character development. I once wrote a semi-biographical novel about things that actually happened to me while I was growing up. A publisher reviewed my book and sent a nice letter to me explaining that the writing was fine but that no real character would do that. My wife and I had a great chuckle over that. I agree my younger years were a little bizarre but the things I wrote about did actually happen.

DVD Review - Friday the 13th Part 3

Since today is Friday the 13th, I thought I would honor one of my favorite horror movies from the 80s titled Friday the 13th part 3. Released in 1982 when I was one-year-old, the movie picks up a day after the Camp Crystal Lake killings from the second film. Chris Higgins, along with her pals Shelly, Debbie, Andy, Vera, Chuck and Chili, returns to her family cabin, called Higgins Haven, the first time since she was attacked by a disfigured man two years earlier. Already at the cabin is Chris's boyfriend, Rick (who is way to old for her).

Shelly (the goofball of the group) and Vera run into a group of bikers briefly. The bikers follow them to the cabin, where the bikers attempted to burn down the barn, but Jason is hiding there and he gets rid of them. While Chris and Rick go out for a drive, one by one Jason slaughters her friends Then he slips on the hockey mask for the first time.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Friday 56 - Princess Alessa and the Frog War



 Had it all been just a dream? If the Frog had been forbidden to predict the future of the royal family, he had to obey. The King could have had him hanged otherwise. Alessa was more and more convinced that her conversation with the Talking Frog had only taken place inside her head. 

page 56, Princess Alessa and the Frog War by A.L. Albino

DVD Review - The Best of Archie's Weird Mysteries



I recently won a giveaway that including several cartoon DVDS and as soon as I ripped open the box I saw the cool cover of The Best of Archie's Weird Mysteries, which is a homage to the 50's and 60's B-movie posters. I recall watching the Archie Show when I was kid, but I was unaware of this incarnation. After doing an online search, I learned that the series lasted only one season, 1999-2000, with 40 episodes.

In this release from Cookie Jar Entertainment consists of ten episodes: 

  1. Attack of the Killer Spuds
  2. Me! Me! Me!
  3. Driven to Distraction
  4. Attack of the 50-foot Veronica
  5. Invisible Archie
  6. The Haunting of Riverdale
  7. Cure of the Mummy
  8. Fleas Release Me
  9. Mega-Mall of Horrors
  10. The Jughead Incident