Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors Volume 1 is another DVD that I won in a recent giveaway. I didn't recognize the name or the cover art. It wasn't until I played the first episode that I finally, more like vaguely, remembered the show, as I was a four-year-old when it aired on television. Actually, I don't recall much about the show, but I do the toys, which were released by Mattel before the show was created. Mattel needed a way to explain the strange looking silver vehicles and the even stranger looking organic/machine vehicles, thus Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors was created. Talented writes such as Larry DiTillio, Barbara Hambly and J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, wrote most the episodes.

Here is the series main plot: Audric, a botanist, was experimenting with biotechnology, and developed a crop that could grow in any environment.  A burst of radiation from a solar flare mutated one of his crops, transforming it an evil creature called Saw Boss. The other plants transformed as well and were called the Monster Minds. Audric created a magic root to destroy Saw Boss, but time was not on his side as his laboratory is being attacked. He splits the magical root in half and gives the other half of it to his faithful servant, Oon. He commands Oon to take the root to his son, Jayce, and serve under his command.

Oon (a magically animated suit of armor servant) finds Jacye along with Gillian (a wizard/scientist), and Flora, who was created from a flower by Audric. With the help of a Han Solo ripoff character, Herc Stormsailor - a pilot and  mercenary, they become known as the Lightning League. They use their ground vehicles to battle the Monster Minds vehicles, that are grown from vines. The Lightning League travels to planet to planet by the Pride of the Skies II, Herc's space barge, as Jayce searches for his missing father.

Recently, I won a bundle of DVDs from a blog giveaway. One of those DVDs was Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century ...on the Case, featuring the first 10 episodes from the short lived 1999-2001 series. Honestly, I have never heard of the cartoon series before. The nifty cover art caught my attention, so I decided to give the series a try. I suppose this series was released to tie in with the recent Sherlock Holmes film franchise.

The episodes in this release are:

1. The Fall and Rise of  Sherlock Holmes
2. The Crime Machine
3. The Hounds of Baskervilles
4. The Resident Patient
5. The Scales of Justice
6. The Five Orange Pips
7. The Adventures of the Beryl Board
8. The Adventures of the Empty House
9. The Secret Safe
10. The Adventure of the Mazarin Chip 

With an unique title, Princess Alessa, the Frog War, and a cool cover to go along with it, I was very eager to jump into this young adult fantasy. I was looking for a quick read in between reviews, and, well, I was shocked to find out the book was over four hundred pages. There is nothing wrong with a four hundred plus length. Some of the best books for children and young adults are way over it.

We, the readers, journey into a land called Gracbog, where the Princess Alessa has a strange encounter with a talking frog, Erwin, from a gypsy circus, warning her that the High Priest was plotting to kill her father the king. Of course, this is to throw the kingdom off as the frogs, yes I said frogs, starts a war with everyone.

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.

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.

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.

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.