An Apple for the Creature
Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner
Publisher: Ace Books
ISBN: 978-0425256800
Pub. Date: September 4, 2012
Pages: 352

I had kept an eye on my local library's online catalog when An Apple for the Creature would come in and luckily the library actually got a new book on the week that it came out. I rushed over to the library and checked it out. I only wanted to read the new Sookie Stackhouse story, but I ended up reading the entire book.

Playing Possum by Charlaine Harris finds Sookie Stackhouse arriving at her nephew's (Hunter Savoy, who is actually her cousin) classroom with cupcakes to celebrate his birthday. She meets his new teacher Ms. Yarnell, who happens to be a witch! Hunter assists Sookie by going out to her car and getting the rest of the party stuff. The school's secretary’s psycho ex-boyfriend has arrived at the school with a gun. Sookie tells Hunter to return to his classroom and tells his teacher to get the students under their desks. Sookie hopes to stop the madman before anyone gets killed.

Super Cyclone
Director: Liz Adams
Starring:  Nicholas Turturro, Dylan Vox, Andy Clemence, Ming-Na
Studio: Asylum Home Entertainment
ISBN: ASIN: B00834JR1S
Release Date: September 18, 2012
Running Time: 90 minutes
Unrated

What happens when you blend in the scripts from Armageddon, 2012, Twister and Volcano? You get the direct-to-DVD Super Cyclone.

I've never cared much for disaster movies, even though it seems like there is a new one on the SyFy Channel every other week. To me they are basically all the same. A natural occurrence happens destroying cities and our government tries to stop it with some unbelievable plan. I have reviewed a few other Asylum titles this year and they kindly sent me a free invite to stream this movie online through Fordela in exchange for an honest review.

The Malice of Fortune
By Michael Ennis
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 978-0385536318
Pub. Date: September 11, 2012
Pages: 416
Buy Link: Amazon

Juan, Duke of Gandia, was murdered while on his way to visit his love, Damiata, causing Pope Alexander VI to become emotionally drained as Juan was his favorite son. In another twist, Damiata also went missing the night of Juan's murder, having witnessed her lover's death.

Five years go by and the Pope Alexander VI sends Rodrigo Borgia to find Damiata and bring her to him. The Pope believes that she is responsible for his son's death, but gives her a chance to prove her innocence by finding the real killer. Thinking that she will just run off and hide again, he takes her son Giovanni as leverage.

Damiata heads to Imola, where she finds out there have been a string of similar murders. The bodies have been buried throughout the city and the bodies' parts were specifically arranged to resemble a geometric design. Soon she meets a Florentine diplomat named Niccolo Machiavelli who assists her efforts in finding the killer or killers. Now here is another twist, the one and only Leonardo DaVinci, the famous Renaissance painter, is also investigating the murders and DaVinci eventually teams up with them.

Times were hard on families during the Civil War years. In The Bucktail Brothers of the Fighting 149th, the Cole family’s barn burns down to the ground. Money is tight and they don't know where they are going to get the money to rebuild the barn, until their sons Henry and Willie Cole decide to join the 149th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry lead by Lieutenant Colonel Walton Dwight. Their mother is distraught at the thought of her two teenage sons going off to war. Their father felt that way at first but the $100 cash for the boys joining would help raise a new barn and keep the farm going for awhile.

Henry and Willie say goodbye to their parents and head off with their infantry. They quickly learn the ways of being a solider, even though Henry is a little cocky at times and Willie is stubborn. The two brothers become part of the Pennsylvania Bucktails that fought on the fields of Gettysburg. Their fellow soldiers fell dead and others are wounded, but with great courage the boys fought forward.

1) Where did you get the idea for the novel? 

The idea stemmed from a really weird dream I had. In my dream, I needed my appendix removed, and the surgeon replaced it with pot roast , for some reason. (I snuck out and ate some of it before my surgery!) After the operation, I woke up and discovered everyone had turned into zombies. An attractive Irish doctor (who inspired the character Padraic) saved me and gave me the details about the zombies. Instead of the usual slow moving, eat-your-brains zombies, the zombies were fast and alive…but rip-your-face-off crazy. When I woke up—and after thinking it was the most random dream ever—I thought it would be really fun to write about zombies. I tossed ideas around with friends and came up with the plot for all three books.

2) Your title. Who came up with it? Did you ever change your title?

Contagious was called “Zombie Book #1” for a while since I couldn’t come up with a good title. A friend actually came up with “Deathly Contagious”. Contagious had the working title of Deathly Contiguous until it was close to being published. Another friend suggested “The Truth is Contagious” would make a good title for the second book. I found it to be more fitting for the third, so I came up with the idea to have the word “contagious” in all three books. So, Deathly Contagious got bumped to book 2, and “Contagious” was decided to be the title for book one.

3) Since becoming a writer, what’s the most exciting thing to ever happen to you? 

I overheard some random people talking about books at Barnes and Noble and a girl said that Contagious by Emily Goodwin was one of her favorite books. I was like “Oh my gosh—that’s me!” It still feels very surreal and I am so grateful for all my readers!

Cargo of Coffins
By L. Ron Hubbard
Director: Jim Meskimen
Starring: R.F. Daley, Keli Daniels, Lori Jablons, Jim Meskimen, and Tait Ruppert
Studio: Galaxy Press
ISBN-13: 978-1592121700
Release Date: July 14, 2009
Running Time: Approx. 2 hours

During the 1930s and 1940s struggling writers would make some extra cash by writing fiction for the many pulp magazines that were on the market at the time. Pulp magazines didn't have to rely on fancy glossy paper with expensive artwork or the superior production values. What they did rely on was the well plotted stories from real storytellers with crazy villains, plot twists at every corner, and adventures set in faraway lands. The authors didn’t get paid much, mostly a penny per word, so many of them wrote like crazy and had their stories appearing frequently. Some of the most popular pulp writers of the time were L.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury and L. Ron Hubbard.

Galaxy Press has been releasing the short stories written by L. Ron Hubbard to paperbacks and audiobooks under the Stories from the Golden Age, in which they nicely sent me a free audiobook in exchange for an honest review.