(Going Going) GONE

This year's special publication from Not One of Us, (Going Going) GONE, featuring my short story, In the Cage with Ghosts is available now from Genre Mall (scroll down).

CONTENTS:
Stories:
Patricia Russo: Claude’s Ghost Story
Eric Del Carlo: That Season
J. Michael Shell: Too Cute
Steven J. Dines: In the Cage with Ghosts

Poems:
J.C. Runolfson: Kumiho
Sonya Taaffe: The Golem in Flight
Sonya Taaffe: The Road to Volodny (Partisan Song)
K.S. Hardy: Shy in the Sky

Art: John Stanton (cover), Aunia Kahn

Hard Case Crime

If you’re looking for something to read on the bus or train to work, let me point you in the direction of the Hard Case Crime series. Starting in September 2004, founders Charles Ardai and Max Phillips have published one hardboiled crime novel every month since, recently passing the fifty mark with no signs of slowing down.

This is an easy genre to dismiss (I’m relatively new to it myself), but take some time out to read one or two of the HCC novels and you’ll find enthralling stories written in the kind of sharp prose that most authors can only dream of writing. I’m currently reading Little Girl Lost, the fourth in the series and my fifth HCC title so far (having bucked numerical order to read #13, Stephen King’s, The Colorado Kid), and the selling point is simply this: consistent quality.

So drop by their website, browse through the titles and authors on offer, or maybe even let the gorgeous cover art influence your choice...but make a purchase. Not convinced? Well, check out the price tag. Over at Amazon UK, HCC titles start out at as little as £3.53, at Amazon US, $7. Worth every penny or cent if you ask me.

Movie Review: Disturbia

While the build-up is superb in this homage to the Hitchcock classic, Rear Window, the movie descends into overblown slasher horror for its slightly disappointing climax. David Morse (perhaps best known as prison guard Brutus Howell in The Green Mile) has little more to do here than look sinister with a craggy face and slicked back hair, while fast-rising star Shia LeBeouf carries the entire movie on his young shoulders. He is a strange but watchable mix of James Stewart and Tom Cruise – a stuttering Everyman capable of springing into immediate action. A name to watch.

Modern technology features prominently throughout Disturbia. Whether it’s Xbox Live, the iPod, the mobile phone, the digital video camera, or the latest PC software, it serves the story without feeling too much like blatant product placement. In fact, one example is quite inspired. In Rear Window, James Stewart’s character, L.B. Jefferies finds himself housebound (well, in a wheelchair) following an accident. Disturbia’s creators came up with the modern equivalent for their troubled teenager – the house arrest ankle bracelet. It works brilliantly by confining LaBeouf’s character, Kale, to the family home and immediate surroundings while also allowing him full movement within that perimeter. It’s this kind of prop/idea that helps give the movie a fresh, contemporary gloss while also reminding the audience of its source material. Indeed, even as a massive fan of Rear Window I wasn’t offended by this movie. While not a shade on the Fifties classic, it’s good, solid entertainment with a working blend of thrills and laughter; a charming tribute with much to recommend it in its own right. As mentioned, the ending does let it down, and the movie probably couldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of the more fastidious viewer, but for simple, face-value entertainment, it ticks all the right boxes.

Movie Review: The Ruins

Take a group of Young Adults, preferably attractive ones, drop them into a Bad Situation, turn up the heat. It’s horror-by-numbers, but it works, dammit. The Ruins is highly watchable thanks in large part to its running time of 86 minutes. It's long enough to tell the story, short enough to keep its audience entertained. As horror premises go, it's irresistible. Our group of YAs find themselves trapped atop a temple in deepest Mexico, surrounded by superstitious locals ready to kill them if they attempt to escape, and trying to stave off the unwelcome attentions of the local plant life. The balance in The Ruins is tipped toward the red stuff more than the psychological, with a double amputation and some self-inflicted gouging with a knife by the Sexy Blonde Girl in Panties being two of its most visceral and memorable scenes. The special effects, particularly the gore, are above-par for this kind of movie, the performances likewise – to their credit all the actors play ‘scared’ convincingly well. The biggest star of the movie is the location; it’s simply stunning (Queensland, Australia doubling for Mexican jungle), and for that reason I regret not renting the movie on Blu-ray.

So, no big surprises and yes yes yes it's formulaic, but it’s a terrific example of a formula that works. You could do much worse than rent The Ruins.

Movie Review: Stephen King's The Mist

I’ve been waiting for my online DVD rental company to send me Stephen King’s The Mist for at least two months now. No luck. So, last night my wife and I took matters into our own hands, walked to the local Blockbusters, and for £25 bought the 2 Disc Special Edition on Blu-ray (along with Assembly, a Chinese war movie, which currently sits at 7.6 on imdb). Not the best deal, but not bad either. We opted to watch the colour version (there is a black-and-white version on the second disc, supposedly superior, the director’s version of choice) and here are my thoughts...

I had high hopes going into The Mist (pun intended), possibly the highest I’ve had for any Stephen King adaptation since The Green Mile. Frank Darabont directed both movies, so I felt in pretty safe hands. Well, it’s fair to say it is no Green Mile, and certainly no Shawshank Redemption, but it is a fun horror tale, a strange hybrid of Sixties throwback and modern shocker with obligatory gore. I admit to being extremely worried when the first monster showed up (in the form of tentacles reaching under a loading bay door) because the CGI was dreadful by today’s standards - too shiny, too stuck on. It wrenched me right out of the movie for a time. But the giant insects won me over again, and I was almost able to forget those tentacles. Almost. Another minor gripe was the performance of the lead, Thomas Jane of The Punisher and, er, Dreamcatcher. His reactions were unconvincing if not annoying at times. The rest of the cast put in solid enough performances. On to the good...the psychological aspect and the ending. The real horror in this movie, for we’ve all become desensitised to CGI monsters and gore thanks to the franchises of The Lord of the Rings and Saw respectively, is human in nature - the fast-formed religious mob with its murmurs of sacrifice in the name of ‘expiation’. If that doesn’t at least make you uncomfortable, check the colour of your blood. As for the ending...I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie. I will say it’s the most memorable and frustrating scene by a mile, and as such the scene you’ll want to discuss more than any other.

Stephen King’s The Mist isn’t perfect, but it is a welcome antidote to the torture-porn that seems to represent the horror genre these days. On a final note, though I haven’t done so myself yet - make it a point to watch the black-and-white version. I put it on for a few minutes after watching the movie in colour and it immediately felt...right. You’ll see what I mean. Even those shiny-ass tentacles didn’t seem quite so bad...

Revision: a vent

Last night, while revising my 2007 horror tale Manny Prior’s Halloween, it struck me that perhaps I am becoming obsessive about editing. I spent at least forty minutes on a single paragraph and ended up unconvinced I made any noticeable improvement. It’s very frustrating work. Time is short and I have many other projects I could be working on, including a novel that has lain stagnant for six months, and yet I end up endlessly circling the same group of sentences. Why? In this case it was tone. Many readers (and editors) probably wouldn’t even notice the effect of the changes I made, which begs the question: was it really worth it? Should I have stuck with a straight descriptive paragraph instead of trying to create a descriptive paragraph that also has a specific tone and intimates the narrator’s state of mind at a particular point in the story? In other words, should I have just moved on to free up time to work on something else? Compromise quality for quantity. The perfectionist in me screams, No! Faced with the choice, I’d opt for the former over the latter every time. But I wonder where other writers stand on this? How much editing is enough? Is it ever enough? Where do you draw the line? The easy answer is, of course, stop when it’s done. I don't believe it’s that simple.

Anyway, it’s lunchtime. Half an hour. Maybe if I skip lunch I can revise a sentence or two…

The Far Reaches, Homer Hickam

The first half of this novel, the third in Hickam’s Josh Thurlow series, failed to ignite my interest in the way his previous books have. I didn’t particularly like Josh in this tale. Indeed, his presence seems less important than some of the supposed secondary characters. This novel belongs more to them, Ready O’Neal (familiar to anyone who has read the previous novels) and Sister Mary Kathleen, a nun with a secret and possibly Hickam’s least interesting character to date, than it does Josh, virtually unrecognisable here from his previous outings. I hope Hickam revisits the series again, but this diminished return perhaps suggests he set it aside for fresher projects or at least until inspiration strikes. Still, it would be a pity if the series ended on a ‘medium’ rather than a high. Worth reading if you’re a fan, but by the incredibly high standards set by the author’s previous work, this was a little disappointing.

Listen to...the Murmur on the Wind

My gothic-esque short story, Hear Not the Murmur on the Wind, is available now from pulp fiction podcast website
Well Told Tales. J B Goodspeed reads.

Drop by, listen to my tale online, or download the mp3. Either way, I hope you enjoy it...

The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman

After watching the Roman Polanski film last year I felt compelled to read the book on which it was based. I did so in one sitting, and it’s one of those rarest of things: a book and film that compliment each other well. You might expect anger; you might expect bitterness, but Szpilman delivers a controlled yet unflinching vision of daily life in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation as well as his own incredible story of survival-against-the-odds. Like many tales of the Second World War, this is compelling, humbling, haunting stuff...read it.

It's 2009 and...

I just want to wish you all a happy and successful year.

Onwards...