Movie Review: Battle Los Angeles

Will aliens never learn?

By now, you've probably seen the trailer for Battle: Los Angeles.  The trailer looked great -- a sky filled with marauding alien aircraft, strange figures moving stealthily through the smoke of battle, the pound and rattle of heavy artillery and automatic weapons fire.

As a sucker for effects-filled run-and-gun alien smash-em-ups, I awaited the opening of this movie with unseemly glee.  I was there opening night, crossbow loaded and ready to (quietly) dispatch any cell-phone talkers in the theatre, eager to finally see a movie that rivaled Aliens for sheer effects-laden fun.

Battle: Los Angeles did not disappoint.

There's no long windup.  We are briefly introduced to the small Marine unit we'll be following throughout the movie, and then the aliens just drop out of the sky and wreak epic havoc upon the city of angels.

We're also told the same thing is happening across the globe.  Cities are being wiped out as the aliens drop into the seas just off the coast and begin their deadly march inland.  No warning, no demands, no communication of any kind -- they just smash down, stand up, and start the slaughter.

The Marines are ordered to head beyond the defensive line, into the battle zone, to rescue a number of people trapped in a police station.  Go in, get them out, get them back to safety.

Of course, things don't work that way.  But enough said about that.

The action is intense and non-stop.  I mean it.  Non-stop.  These poor slugs don't get a minute of peace.  And the effects are miraculous; short of actually blowing the crap out of a none-too-affluent section of LA, including the freeways, I have no idea how they did this.  The look of this film is amazing.  I swear I was covered in a gritty layer of concrete dust by the time the credits rolled.

Do our brave Marines survive?  Does the obligatory child survivor oif the attack make it?  Do we finally show these upstart aliens how we do things downtown?

See the movie.  You'll have a blast.

That was the good.

Now for the ugly.  There may be spoilers ahead, minor ones, but if you're sensitive to these things please stop reading now and look to your right and click on a book and buy it.  Yes.  That one. Now buy another...


Nearly every alien invasion movie ever made shares some of the same dumb-headed flaws, which I shall enumerate below:

1) The aliens want our water.  Yes.  Our tasty, tasty H2O.  Forget the fact that the cosmos is literally awash in the stuff -- there's even plenty of ice on the Moon, for Pete's sake -- but apparently ours comes from sparkling artesian springs and lizard-faced space bugs just find the stuff irresistible. NOTE TO MOVIE MAKERS -- anybody with a high school chemistry lab can *make* freaking water.  Anybody with a space armada can just fly around and scoop the stuff up.  Fighting for it is just dumb.  But not as dumb as using water for fuel.  ANOTHER NOTE TO MOVIE MAKERS -- The amount of energy (chemical, kinetic, thermal, what have you) available in water is well-known.  You can break the chemical bonds between H and O all you want, but you're not going to power starships or weapons with it.  And even if you could, just grab it from places where heroic Marines won't fight you to the death for it.  Duh.

2) The aliens want our women.  Maybe they don't have any of their own.  Or maybe the entire alien attack fleet is composed of loser aliens who couldn't get dates.  But seriously?  I think maybe this speaks more toward the social lives of the script writers than anything else.  That wasn't a part of Battle: Los Angeles, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

3) The aliens want to eat us.  Again, the critters in Battle: Los Angeles showed no desire to do anything to humans but shoot them in the head.  Which is refreshing, since people don't taste too good and anyway they blew up all the liquor stores, so where would you get enough red wine to go with your meal?  Silly aliens.

Of the items above, only #1 applies, and that's if you count a news report blathering away in the background in a single scene.  I dismissed it, and enjoyed the movie despite it.

Favorite scenes from the movie:

1) The impromptu alien autopsy, conducted by a veterinarian and a seriously disgruntled Marine on a still-living alien.  Cutting up a twitching, chittering space baddie with a k-bar knife, looking for interesting organs to shoot -- that's just good fun.

2) The driving-an-armored-vehicle through a mob of surprised aliens scene.  Think octogenarian at a street market, but with .50 caliber guns blazing.  Hey, aliens!  What weighs six tons and just ran over your freakin' head?  This guy!

3) "We already ate breakfast."

So I give Battle: Los Angeles two furiously grinning thumbs-up.  It was loud, it was fast, it was fun.

Un-American Activities -- Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!

Pick pretty much any moment from any day, and you'll find a group of highly-paid Congresspeople sitting in a room and wasting their time and our money.

And that's fine.  I long ago reconciled myself to the notion that government is the well-dressed equivalent of a dog's breakfast.  Nothing of note ever gets done, but the messes left behind are always epic.

But there are days such as today, where even my abysmally low expectations are set far too high.

I speak of course of Representative Pete King, and his hearings on the subject of Muslim radicalization within the US.

You'd think these imbeciles would learn something from the asinine antics of their brain-damaged forebears.  Joseph McCarthy, anyone?  Communists hiding behind every shrub, every fountain, every comic book?  Except of course there weren't any.  McCarthy ruined lives and careers but his army of hidden Communists never materialized because they never existed in the first place.

Sigh.  Pete King probably has a brass bust of Joe McCarthy on his mantel.  Or full-length nude photos of McCarthy in his desk.  Because King is determined to not only follow in McCarthy's footsteps, but actually exceed the man's dedication to the ideal of finding monsters hiding in every corner.

This time around, it's not Communists, but....<gasp> Muslims.  Or, as Joe King doubtlessly prefers to pronounce it, moo-slims.  They're radicalized, infers Pete.  Radicalized and ready to throw down some jihad any second now!  Blood and apple pie will run in the streets! Hide the wimmin and grab yer guns, boys, 'cause the mooslims is a' comin!

So what does Pete do?

He drags Muslim Americans onto the Hill, and grills them, ostensibly in the hope that they'll get distracted by the cameras and blurt out their sinister plans to blow up the nearest Dunkin' Donuts before nightfall.

That's what outrages me.  No American citizen -- be they Muslim, Baptist, Hindu, whatever -- owes Pete King or anyone else an 'explanation' of their beliefs or their patriotism.

That's supposed to be one of the central perks of being an American -- that you don't have to explain your beliefs to anyone, least of all a bunch of jackbooted government thugs.

I've worked in a university setting all my life.  I've worked with Muslims.  I've worked with Hindus.  With Buddhists.  I've even worked with members of even more exotic sects, such as Methodists and Presbyterians.

According to Pete King, I should have been blown up years ago.  Or if not blown up, converted to radical Islam.

Oddly enough, neither has happened.

Not even close.

Okay, I have developed a fondness for Indian food.  Maybe that's the sinister gateway to terrorism.  From Chicken Korma to radical Islam, in five easy steps?

Want to know about the people I've worked with, laughed with, talked with, over all these years?

They're just people.  The Muslims wanted to go home and see their kids like everyone else.  The Hindus, ditto.  Aside from differences in lunchtime preferences, and who drank coffee and who didn't, I didn't see any significant variations in behavior.

Just what am I supposed to be afraid of?

These 'hearings' are ridiculous.  Ridiculous and insulting.  And as far as I can tell, the only people engaging in overtly un-American activities are Pete King and his cronies, who are obviously engaged in demonizing Muslims as part of a painfully transparent effort to revive the post-911 paranoia just in time for the 2012 elections.

To my Muslim friends out there, I apologize.  Fat lot of good that does, huh?

I Spy

One of my favorite blog-related activities is checking the 'audience' monitor to see where readers of this blog are from.

This week, we've picked up readers in Iran, India, Singapore, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Spain!  So hello to all you folks, wherever you hail from.

I imagine quite a few of my international readers first starting reading the old blog (may it rest in peace), which was basically a non-stop rant against a certain former presidential Administration and its penchant for instigating pointless military escapades.  I also devoted several hundred pages to describing the overly carnivorous eating habits of former Vice President Dick 'I Crave the Blood of Infants' Cheney, who I still consider one of the most evil men to have ever gutted a live wildebeast for his midmorning snack.

Well, sad to say, I've calmed down a bit.  Not because I'm a huge fan of the current occupant of the White House, but because I've decided it doesn't really matter who's sitting behind that desk.  They aren't the ones running the show.

But for my international readers, I will offer a brief summary of the current state of affairs here in the States.  To wit:

1) American Foreign Policy -- Troops in Iraq?  Check.  Troops in Afghanistan?  Oh yeah.  Billions poured daily into wars without goals or end?  You know it.  Payments to 'allies' such as Pakistan, which are immediately funneled into supplying the very people shooting at us?  Made daily.  The only conclusion I can draw is that American foreign policy is still being drafted by a super-secret combination of Ouija Boards which channel deceased Halliburton executives and are operated by meth-crazed Rhesus monkeys.

2) American Domestic Policy -- This one is easy.  400 -- that's four hundred -- Americans have more wealth than 155 million other Americans combined.  Which makes it easy for the super-rich to buy more than enough congresspeople to keep tax cuts for the rich and the industries they favor firmly in place, while the middle class vanishes like snow in a blast-furnace.  Everything else revolves around this simple axis of wealth.  Coming soon:  You'll either be rich in America, or very very poor.  Welcome to Third World Homeland.

3) The 2012 elections?  Get ready, folks, because this will be the single most stunning parade of sheer idiocy that you've seen since, um, 2008.  Gingrich, Palin, Santorum -- forget the carnival freakshow, because this is going to have it all, and then some.  And, as I said before, the real icing on the cake is the futility of the whole wretched star-studded spectacle.  It doesn't matter who wins.  The 'winner' is just a cardboard cut-out propped up on a stage for the rubes to throw things at.  The real decisions are made quietly, without any fuss, in a cherry-paneled room somewhere over snifters of brandy and five hundred dollar cigars.

See why I basically stopped even mentioning politics?

Anyway, welcome to the blog.  Drop me an email at franktuttle@franktuttle.com and say hello!

MidSouthCon 29 Approacheth!

First, a reminder -- hotel registration for MidSouthCon 29 is open until the 11th at the Con rate.  Eighty-five bucks a night for the Hilton isn't too bad, either.

This will only be my second convention.  I'm really looking forward to it -- it's fun to hang out with with my spiritual kin.  Too, I love the costumes.  And the dealer's room.  And the art show.  And the awards banquet, and the panels, and meeting various luminaries in the field.  It's a good time, and if you've never been to a SF/fantasy convention, MidSouthCon is a great first stop.

By the way, if I spot any Kindlers at the Con, I'm going to ask to take your picture (with your Kindle) and post it here on my blog.  I'm just curious about how many SF/fantasy fans are also e-book enthusiasts.

In other news, Markhat fans can expect the print version of The Banshee's Walk to hit the stands on June 7 of this year.

That's about it for now.  Time to get back to work!

Lots O Links!

If you hooked me up to a brain activity monitor right this moment, all you'd see are nice flat lines.  I don't know why, but I'm just spent.  There's not a clever thought or catchy phrase anywhere near my noggin now.

But a lack of anything significant to say has never left me silent before, and I'll be darned if I'll start now.

So -- links!

Passing the Narrows.  This is one of mine.  If you've got a Kindle e-reader or you have the Kindle app on your phone or other device, you can grab this for less than a buck.  It's a quick read, about a crew of desperate Confederate war vets taking their steamboat down a haunted stretch of the Yazoo River.  It first appeared in Weird Tales a few years back, and it's always been one of my favorites.  Guess who the character Swain is based on!

World War Z.  Yeah, this is zombie fiction -- but hang on a minute.  That's just the backdrop.  The book is nothing short of brilliant, in both its depiction of a world mauled nearly to death and the tiny acts of heroism and sacrifice that always go largely unnoticed in any massive catastrophe.  Read it, and I promise you'll never hear wind in the trees at night quite then same way ever again.

Living Ghosts.  This is music; specifically, the Amazon MP3 album by band Absinthe Junk.  If you want the iTunes version, well, search iTunes for Absinthe Junk -- if there's a way to link to an album in the iTunes store it's unknown to me.  But it's worth the effort!  Junk is sort of the angry love child of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

The Black Company.  This is an old-fashioned paper book.  It's fantasy, but unlike any fantasy you're likely to have read before.  Gritty, unflinching, brutally honest -- this is war in the trenches.  Not for the faint of heart.

Fark.  We're painfully aware that the world is a chaotic, dangerous place ruled only by the laws of Whim and Caprice.  Fark is a weird news website that collects the freakish best and random worst of Planet Earth and lays it all out in a neat column for your perusal.  With snarky one-line descriptions, and a weekly Friday game of 'Match the Mugshots With the Crimes.'  If you don't Fark, you should...

Regretsy.  You've probably never heard of a website called 'Etsy.'  I hadn't.  Etsy dot com is a marketplace for hand-made items of all sorts.  Think about that for a moment.  Yeah.  Exactly.  Etsy may have started out as a showplace for folk art, but wide swaths of it quickly devolved into a hilarious free-for-all of hilariously mis-shapen pieces of 'found art' which appear to have not been crafted by hand but rather with foot.  I know, I know, it's not nice to mock the clumsy and the inept, but man is it fun.


Enjoy!

Signed and Away

Just signed the contract for The Bonnie Bell! 


Which makes the sale officially official.  Stamped and sealed, even.  I'd have sealed the envelope with a big red glob of hot wax, but things are done electronically these days and it's impossible to scrape all the wax off the monitor.

So that makes six entries in the Markhat series, with another already in progress.  I'm happy about that.  Happy and a little frightened, because we all know what happens to most series after a few books.

Seriously.  Take Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books, for instance.  The first three were great.  But something happened after that, and I've not been able to follow the later books.  I'm not knocking Ms Hamilton; but for me, the series evolved into something I don't care for.

It doesn't happen with every series, of course.  Rex Stout managed seventy-odd Nero Wolfe books without a single fatal mis-step.  Jim Butcher's wizard-for-hire tales are bumping along as good as ever.  Kim Harrison and her Hollows books haven't jumped the shark.

Still, I worry.  But until I start getting rejections instead of contracts, I'll just stay the course and trust that Markhat and the gang know what they're doing.

Too, I have another project in the works.  A secret project, one that has absolutely nothing to do with finders or haunts or Trolls.  I think people will be surprised -- nay, amazed.

But that's a story for another time.  Right now I need to finish proofing the print galleys for The Banshee's Walk.  That involves reading the whole thing yet again, character by character and word by word, looking for any remaining hidden typos or sneaky format errors.

I live a life of glamor and excitement, I do!  Look -- is that a dangling participle, on which light yonder breaks?

The Lazy Man's Lament

The flu is gone.  It's time to get back to work.

I only wish my brain worked that way.  You see, being sick completely wrecked my self-imposed work regimen.  I didn't write; I couldn't.

What I could do is lie there and watch junk TV while all those fissures in my brain smoothed themselves out.  I had a solid week of nothing but the worst of the worst -- COPS.  Las Vegas Jailhouse.  Operation Repo.  Even, heaven help me, World's Dumbest.

And I loved it.  I loved every glorious empty moment of it.  I didn't have to create, or critique, or even consider.  All I had to do was watch.  Slime mold should learn to me as passive as I.  I was flatlined.  Coroners gathered at my door.  Undertakers made measurements.  Crows stood on one foot, ready to snatch up a tender eyeball at an instant's notice.

That is my natural state.  Mouth slightly open.  TV flashing.  Eyes blank and staring.  Nominal heartbeat and respiration, just enough to keep the TV remote in play.

Top of the food chain, Ma!

But now that my traitor body has fought off the invaders, I can no longer claim fever and fatigue keep me from the keyboard.  So here I am, fingers poised, ready to create Deathless Prose and Salable Manuscript.

I get as far as 'The' before some little voice whispers 'Hey, isn't 30 Rock on about now?'

It's a long slog back to productivity.

But here goes...

How Not to Survive the Flu

If you've been wondering where I've been, well, that shaking, coughing mound of what appears to be dirty laundry, over in the corner, covered under used tissues and empty bottles of Vicks NyQuil?

That's me.

I'd back up a bit if I were you.  That's better.

What felt like the onset of a mild cold last Monday evening was bone-aching, muscle-spasming flu by Tuesday morning.  I haven't been really sick in quite a while, but I'm making up for lost time.

I don't know what strain of flu this is, or what 4-letter acronym it goes by.  I'd suggest PAIN or HURT.  It starts with a few innocent seeming sneezes and then your brains are leaking out your nose and that cracking sound you hear when you cough is your sternum finally cracking.

Then it gets really bad.

The doctor put me on Tamiflu, which certainly put the flu in a bad mood.  My own efforts to self-medicate have been less than successful, possibly because in my delirium I mixed up a book of old folk remedies with a Betty Crocker cookbook and wound up trying a lot of chicken-based casserole poultices.

Here are some other treatments to avoid, during the flu:

* The old adage 'drink plenty of liquids' doesn't extend to include grain alcohol or Febreeze.
* Chicken soup does give me energy, because if I see another cup of it I'm going to throw that crap outside.  And believe me just walking to the door right now takes quite a burst of energy.
* Get plenty of rest, they say.  Oh really.  Because I was thinking about going outside and chopping a couple cords of oak firewood, but if prevailing wisdom says I should lie here and shiver in a pool of my own sweat, well, okay, I'll do that then.
* Zinc is said to have therapeutic benefits during colds and flu.  You know, I could eat my entire set of zinc cookware right now, and I don't think it would do anything but dull my teeth.  Okay, I ate a ladle, just in case, and nothing happened.

I'd write more, but I have to go huddle in a corner and shake now.  Am I not supposed to be at the top of the food chain?  All this over a microscopic twist of proteins, a mere virus, a thing with fewer brains and less muscle than Charlie Sheen?

I'd shake my head in disbelief if that didn't require so much effort.

Send pudding and potable beverages.

BP Kills Gulf, Delays Payments to Residents. Cartoon Villains Everywhere Green With Envy

We haven't heard much about the Gulf of Mexico lately, and what we have heard from BP is a cheery line of 'Well, back to normal!' that is <gasp> slightly less than true.

Vast regions of the Gulf are covered in a thick layer of crude and dead animals.  See for yourself here. But because the damage isn't visible from the top, BP and their best buddy Feinberg have been accused of underestimating the damage and dragging their heels in paying Gulf residents who lost everything in the spill the money these people were promised.

Now, to make matters worse, BP is complaining that Feinberg is being too generous in his meager payouts.  And that's while BP is flooding Washington with lobbyists and paid 'scientists' who are actively working to reduce the official total volume of oil spilled -- because that number directly affects the payouts.

Read about it here.

BP is doing precisely what Exxon did in the wake of the Valdez spill.  They drag their heels, throw legions of lawyers in every direction, and bide their time, knowing their petro-pockets are deeper than any of the plaintiffs'.

It's despicable.  But that's way big business is done.

BP and all the rest will be drilling in the Gulf again, before the summer is out.  And they'll be cutting corners and taking risks and generally acting like boozed-up seventeen year olds with their first taste of whiskey and freedom.

Live and don't learn, that's us.

I'm Looking at You, Italy

Let me start by stressing that I have no strong opinion either way concerning Amanda Knox, the American exchange student who was tried and convicted in Italy of murdering another college student.

Innocent?  Guilty?  I don't know.  I didn't follow the trial and barely noticed the verdict.  My own rule for traveling abroad is this -- don't lick the taxi seats.  Also, don't engage in drug-fueled romps with strangers and knives.

Those simple rules, plus my habit of always traveling under an assumed name after receiving extensive plastic surgery to alter my appearance, has always served me well.

But now I hear that the Italian police are suing Amanda Knox's parents for libel, after they reported mistreatment of their daughter by the cops.

Oh, so convicting their daughter wasn't enough, Italian police?  Now you've got to sue the mortified parents because they dared to insinuate you might have engaged in (gasp) mild police misconduct?

That's just not cool.  You got your verdict.  Justice was presumably served.

Suing Mom and Pop because they acted like parents just smacks of petty spite.

I hope the Knoxes tell you where to shove your libel suit.  Heck, Italian police, maybe you'd like to sue me for libel.  After all, I did just call each and every one of you a doorknob-sucking hacksaw snacker.  I also hinted that it takes six of you to count to four.  Too, your language sounds like a ferret sneezing.

Come and get me.

I'm in Rome right now, at the Hotel della Minerva, under the alias 'Samsonite M. Pennyfathing, Esq.'

I dare you.

Finally -- Anonymous Versus Westboro Baptist

The world is, regrettably, filled with people I don't like.

The offenders are plenty and varied.  People who text in movies.  People who drag jam-packed shopping carts into the 20-or-less line.  People who --

Well, most people, really.

So I'm not a people person.  But even the most touchy-feely huggy-huggy pro-people people must agree that the  members of Westboro Baptist Church are indeed the most repugnant examples of a truly subhuman species of lower primate -- and I wouldn't even give the Westboro bunch that high a rating.

For those of my readers across the water, the Westboro clan is composed of a senile old preacher and his mostly-inbred congregation of knuckle-walking morons.  Now, if this bunch of genetic mistakes kept to their own ragged hovels and only intruded into the lands of men long enough to raid garbage dumps or gaze longingly at dental offices, they'd not be the target of my ire.

But instead of quietly attracting flies in some damp corner of rural Kansas, the Westboro creatures spend their time trotting from funeral to funeral, where they disrupt the proceedings by yelling in their gutteral dialect and waving badly-made signs expressing condemnation of the dead -- right in the faces of the bereaved families.

Why they do this is a question best answered by a qualified clinical pathologist who specializes in severe mental disorders.  My own explanation is much simpler, and can be expressed by the equation 'inbreeding + innate stupidity + paranoid delusions = a bunch of complete wankers.'  Yes, there is a religious element to all this, but it's so juvenile and grotesque I won't burden you with a description of it.

They're just stupid hillbillies with an equally stupid agenda.

For years, they've been more or less tolerated, since they are after all the grimy underbelly of Free Speech.  Towns have gotten clever about granting them a space for their 'protest' and then making sure a few thousand actual humans show up and occupy that space before the Westboro primates can coax their aging minivans into town.

Motorcycle gangs and riders even meet the 'protesters.'  The bikers then park in front of the toothless Westboro troglodytes and rev their bikes to drown out their hoots and bellows.

When biker gangs note your activity and proclaim it unacceptable, man, you've really crossed a line.

Well, Westoboro has apparently crossed another line.

They have, reports indicate, provoked the wrath of Anonymous.

Anonymous is the shadowy group of elite hackers who have recently laid numerous high-profile corporate bullies to rest.  VISA, Mastercard, and at least one much-praised internet security company have all fallen prey to Anonymous lately -- and none of them had first cousins for parents.

According to a letter alleged to be from Anonymous, they've had enough of Westboro, and they've issued to them a warning -- crawl back into whatever damp hole you came from, or face the wrath of Anonymous.

The Westboro bunch can be counted on for one thing -- stupidity.  So they'll do the stupid thing, and call Anonymous out.

And then -- well, I'll start popping popcorn, because this will be hilarious.

It's one thing to wave signs at funerals, Westinbred.  But if you think your tinker-toy websites and your private info will remain even remotely intact if Anonymous sets their sights on you, well, you've got another thing coming.

And in my mind, it's a thing long overdue.

Go Anonymous -- FOR THE LULZ!

This Just In: New Markhat Novel Out in October 2011!

It's official -- The Bonnie Bell, a new Markhat novel, has been accepted by Samhain.  The tentative e-book release date is October of this year, with the print release a few months after that.

The Bonnie Bell is an all-new Markhat adventure, not a novella or an anthology of shorts.  I'm really excited about Bonnie Bell.  The whole gang is back, including Mama Hog, Gertriss, Evis, and even Three-leg Cat.

And Darla, of course.  I'd say more about her role in the book but my patient and all-knowing editor threatened to bring out the thumbscrews if I blabbed any plot details early.  So I can't tell you that the name of the book derives from a Rannite wedding ceremony.  No.  That would be telling far too much, and I just won't do it.

So, if you've been wanting more Markhat, you won't need to wait very long.

If you're new to the series, okay, here's the deal.  Markhat, our hero, lives in a world where magic works.  Ogres and Trolls rub shoulders with ghosts and vampires.  Only they don't so much rub shoulders metaphorically as bash heads literally.  This isn't a Tolkienesque world of lyrical Elves and wise old dwarves.  Lyrical Elves wouldn't last their first night in Rannit, Markhat's home town.  And the wise dwarves, if they woke up at all, would wake up shaved, robbed, and doing ten years in the work gangs for vagrancy.

Markhat earns his living as a finder.  Finding became a profession when the Kingdom abruptly won the Troll War and disbanded the Army where they stood, which left half a million soldiers stranded across the Kingdom's vast lands, and their families wondering who lived and who died.

Enter Markhat, former soldier.  He started out finding uncles and fathers and sons for a fee.

Now what he finds is trouble.

Here are the Markhat titles, in some semblance of order:

1) The Cadaver Client
2) Dead Man's Rain
3) The Mister Trophy
(All these available in e-book format from Amazon, or in print all together in the anthology THE MARKHAT FILES)
4) Hold the Dark
(Also available in print as well as e-book format)
5) The Banshee's Walk
(e-book now, in print on June 7 2011)
6) Coming in October: The Bonnie Bell


Look down below this post, toward the bottom of your screen, and I've got links to all these set up already, for your shopping convenience.

I'm already at work on the next one (working title is Brown River Queen).

But for the moment, let me bask in the glory of another sale to Samhain.

<pause>

Oh yeah.  Feels good.

But now it's back to work!

8th Oxford Film Festival Roundup

I know, I know, the Film Festival ended Sunday and serious bloggers pounded out their entries while the films were still fresh in their memories.

Well, how many of those smug smart-asses had a parachuting accident Sunday afternoon, huh?  Or crashed their Formula 1 race car into a fuel storage facility?

Not bloody many.  So I feel well vindicated for my tardiness, which matters of national security prevent me from explaining in detail.

I mentioned a film called Pillow earlier, as being my favorite at the mid-way point of the festival.

Pillow kept its place, and as far as I'm concerned, it was the best film shown at the Festival.

Taking second and third places are Worst in Show and The Happy Poet.  


Before I talk about why I liked Pillow, Worst in Show, and The Happy Poet so much, let me talk about a few things I didn't like.  I'm not going to mention any names -- just some general trends and traits that ruined quite a few other films for me, this year.

I'm a horror movie buff.  I love being frightened by a movie, although that seldom happens.

But people -- if you're going to be scary, be freaking scary.  And to be scary, you're going to have to be a bit faster on your feet than I am.  If you're making a movie about a man who has obviously been attacked by a vampire, and who we all bloody well know is turning into a vampire, don't expect us to be surprised, shocked, or even mildly amused when the newly-minted vampire chows down on the psychologist he summoned to his home in the middle of the night.

Really.  I saw that coming 15 seconds into the movie.  When it happened, I was almost dozing.

And I know I promised not to name names, but I'm looking at you here, Happy Face. Decent production values.  Good acting.  It seemed, at least, to be going somewhere.

But that movie fooled me, by thinking it had a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It didn't.  People drove to the middle of nowhere and engaged in a bit of impromptu facial surgery.  Yes?  that's it?  It's over?

Mm-hmm.  Nice try.  So did we run out of money or lose the last ten pages of the script?

No matter.  I don't care.

So, for next year, let's try and scare Frank, okay?  Make him jump, just a little.

Keep him awake at the very least.

But back to the good stuff.

I think I described Pillow as 'deliciously cruel.'  And it was.  I did not see that ending coming.  Or the middle. Or the beginning.  I think that's why I'm so enamored with this little gem -- it was new.  This wasn't a rehash of an old Twilight Zone episode, or a weak adaptation of Faulkner.  This was written by somebody who has lived in the South more than long enough to know its stories, its people, its mythology.

And not just that.  They know how the South looks, how it feels, how it makes you sweat, how the sun can beat down on you long enough and hard enough to make the grim fantastic perfectly plausible.

Southern Gothic is a well-traveled road.  I've tried my hand at it myself (The Powerful Bad Luck of DD Dupree).  Pillow takes you places Oh Brother Where Art Thou feared to tread, and it does it in a fraction of the time.

See Pillow.  


Worst in Show is a documentary about ugly dogs and the people who love them.  I'm a sucker for dogs -- ugly, pretty, big, small.  Of course, the real story behind Worst in Show is the people, who sometimes become the sort of obsessive monsters you normally see on Toddlers and Tiaras.  Not that I watch that.  Seriously, I'd rather watch American Idol, and that requires a gun to my head and a warning shot in the knee every time somebody cranks up an old Whitney Houston tune.

But Worst in Show was genuinely funny.  It's hard not to like the rare people who will champion ugliness without because they recognize beauty within.

Finally, The Happy Poet.  This was a full-length film, fiction, about a dude-speaking hipster who opens a vegetarian food stand in a park.  His home-made food is good.  His business sense is nonexistent -- and his delivery guy is using the stand as a cover for his own thriving weed trade.

The poor Happy Poet knows none of this, of course.  He thinks people are really into his eggless egg salad, because, dude, it's got, like, basil.

I won't spoil the ending for you, because it's sweet and funny.

I'd also be remiss if I failed to mention a funny little Western entitled The Hanging of Big Todd Wade. Half of Oxford had bit parts in it, and the gag was really funny.  I hope the gang submits it at other festivals, where I'm sure it would do very well.

That's my take on the 8th Annual Oxford Film Festival!  There's some amazing talent out there.  I had a blast watching the fruits of their labors, and I can't wait for next year!

Dispatches From the 8th Annual Oxford Film Festival

I was out past ten o'clock last night.  If you knew my habits, which are generally those of any 80-something retiree, you'd know that was news.

Oxford is holding its annual film festival this weekend.  We managed to catch several indie films, and while I don't have time to talk about them all, one does stand out.

It's a short called Pillow.  It contains less than a dozen words of dialog, all spoken by a character who never appears onscreen.  It's a twisted little tale -- devoted but dimwitted sons, monstrous mother, and a quest for a pillow as soft (literally) as an angel's wing, set in a nameless corner of the Depression-era South.  Deliciously cruel and inventive.

The documentary 'Mississippi Innocence' is easily the most powerful factual entry in the festival.  It's the heartbreaking true story of police and judicial incompetence in present-day Noxubee County, and the years-long struggle by the Innocence Project to set two blameless men free after they were railroaded by courts eager for a conviction, never mind the facts.

More later!  

The Unwriting Life

It is said that Tragedy is most often found on the heels of Triumph.

Nah.  I made that up, just now.  But it should be said, because in my experience it's true.

Take my triumphant completion of The Bonnie Bell, for instance.  I crowed about it in these very pages.  I even named a blog after the word count, which in retrospect wasn't a very smart thing to do, because that very word count came quickly back to haunt me.

The Bonnie Bell weighed in at a somewhat overfed 128,000 words.  Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with a novel being 128,000 words long.

Unless one's publisher has a firm 120,000 word upper length limit.

Oops.

So eight thousand words had to go.

I've known a few writers who would have balked at the very idea of cutting 8K out of a finished novel.  What of my vision, they would cry.  What of my artistic integrity?  What of my soul?

What of my bank account, quoth I.

I'm not one of those artsy guys.  If eight thousand words have to go, they have to go.

So I began the process I call unwriting.

Writing is easy.  You put words together so they bring the movie in your head to life.

Unwriting is harder.  You want to keep the scenes intact.  You want the flavor, the mood, the feeling of the words to remain intact.

But you've got to go into the text and make words disappear.  And you've got to do that without ruining the images and feelings they evoke.

It's like playing Jenga.  You've got a precarious, leaning tower of words.  Each word touches the others.  Removing even one is tricky.

Removing eight thousand is tricky indeed.

But that's what I get paid for.  And even my ego recognizes that if words I wrote can be removed without harming the work, then they should be removed, because they aren't vital.  And if they aren't vital, then they're just loafing around, and that's no way to write a novel.

So I'm unwriting.  Reading the thing aloud, listening for awkwardness.  Slashing when I hear it.  Tightening.  Tweaking.  Surgically removing dead tissue.

When I'm done, The Bonnie Bell will be leaner, meaner, faster, stronger.  And better. Much better.

It's back to the delete key for me.  I think it snowed earlier.  White cold stuff, that's snow, right?

No matter.  Back to unwriting!

Requiem

Like most writers, I've worked some unusual jobs.

Back in the 1980s -- yeah, I was of working age back then, but if any of you kids write in asking if I ever met Lincoln or what we did before radio, I'll drive to your house and smack you in the noggin -- I did shift work.  Graveyard shifts, mostly.

I met some fascinating people doing that.  There was Tom Yancy, who went on to become a Washington journalist.  Worked the White House Press Corps.  Tom commanded the quickest wit I've ever encountered, but he was kind soul and a hard worker.

We used to tune an AM radio to New Orleans radio talk shows while we burst and decollated all the computer-printed forms we generated during the night.  Most of the programs featured preachers -- not the cadaverous, monotonous lot we have around here, but flamboyant New Orleans late-night radio preachers to whom saving souls was a distant second in priority to selling their Hoodoo Bags and Magic Money Hands.

Those nights I spent running endless reams of paper through hungry bursters and listening to Tom critique charlatan hoodoo men were absolute comedy gold.  Of course, I didn't know that then.  I held it to be the worst sort of drudgery.  I was a man, you understand, bound for bigger and better things.

Fast forward a decade or two.

Tom passed a few years ago, far too soon.  He'd known he'd die young.  He even talked about dying, all those nights ago.  I wish he'd been wrong.

And today, I got the news that another of us is gone.  I won't say her name.  The incident which led to her death is all over the news, but they haven't released any names, and I won't either.

She was a nice person.  We all liked her.  And though she was very different from the rest of us misfits, she  laughed with us, worked with us, drank bad coffee and talked the night away with us.

The bursters are gone.  The AM radio too.  That whole room is silent now, and empty.

So, to the valiant members of the dreaded Third Shift, I lift my glass in salute.  Both of you left this world far too soon.

You will be missed.

Live From New York...

If you grew up in the US during the 70s, 80s, or 90s, then you're familiar with the TV show 'Saturday Night Live.'

Back in the day, SNL was the best thing on TV.  Akroyd.  Murray.  Murphy.  Belushi.  And the list of names goes on.

Yeah, the show today isn't what it was, although it does have its moments -- my favorite bits are usually the Andy Samburg digital shorts and the opening.  Hearing someone shout 'Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!' is something I've been hearing for lo these many years.  At the end of a long hard week, it's reassuring, on some primal level -- yeah, the world may be falling apart around me, but all that can wait.

It's time for SNL.

This Saturday's guest host was Dana Carvey, former cast member (86 thru 93, I think).  His characters are some of my favorites.  He did Church Chat, Hans and Franz, and of course, Garth from Wayne's World.

The Church Lady and Wayne's World, complete with a cameo by Mike Myers, were featured in Saturday's show.  I loved seeing the bits again -- until I realized just how many years have passed since they were fresh and new.

Can I really be that freaking old?

Surely there's been some mistake.

But while I check my records in a doomed attempt to establish my current age at 27, here's a link for you to enjoy.  It's my favorite Andy Samburg digital short.  Enjoy!

Andy Samburg's 'Gonna be a Great Day' video

Get Yours At Off Square Books

And now for a bit of shameless self-promotion!  My latest print book, THE MARKHAT FILES, has hit the shelves at Off Square Books in Oxford.  Here's a pick of the cover -- oh, and note that 2 copies of my other printed Markhat novel, HOLD THE DARK, are right beside it:

The Markhat Files

So, if you live in or near Oxford and you've been waiting for the book to hit the stands, they've hit! And remember, for each copy of THE MARKHAT FILES sold, an angel gets a puppy.  Or maybe it's a kitten.  Either way it's cute and fluffy and its got big trusting eyes and you feel a sudden irresistible compulsion to buy this book right now yes right now go go go...

So hit up Off Square Books and make a huge scene when you buy the book.  Really.  Run up to the shelf, grab the book with both hands, then scream "I have been looking for this book for ages AAAAAAAAGH here it is AAAAAGH MY LIFE IS COMPLETE!" before throwing wads of cash at the confused clerk and then charging out into traffic on the Square.  

Let's make this an event.

So, to recap -- THE MARKHAT FILES, Off Square Books, 662-236-2828, open 9:00 AM till 7:00 PM Monday through Thursday, 9:00 AM till 8:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, noon till five on Sundays, give me a call and I'll drive you myself if you'll buy a few books!

Snowmen in the Mist

If you live pretty much anywhere in the United States, here's your weather forecast, in a single image:

Sorry about that.  Those of you who have already endured seventeen feet of snow this winter are probably ready for a bit of sun -- but that isn't likely to emerge for some time now.

Here in Mississippi, all we're getting are winds and heavy rains, both howling down from a lead-grey sky.  I got a faceful of cold rain a while ago, driven by a gleeful gust that I suppose had been dying to slap someone since leaving Alberta.  I took the assault personally, and had words with the atmosphere. 

In non-weather news, I have decided to update my ancient version of Word at home before I'm too deep into the new novel.  Yes, I know, word is a product of Microsoft&Evil, Inc., but it's also the industry standard and unless one wants to pay for a WordPerfect to Word conversion and then re-write the whole thing because the conversion is flaky at best, one will use Word from the start and like it.

I want Word 2010.  Word 2007 is slightly cheaper, but not much, and I'll probably spring for the extra twenty bucks or so and get the latest and greatest.  I've looked at some of the new features in Word 2010, and it seems the biggest changes have been to add shadows and reflections to the various fonts.

Really.  Shadows and reflections.  Just what a weary-eyed editor wants to see -- squiggly Olde English characters, in light yellow, casting delicate shadows at their feet and dim reflections in the background.  Either one alone assures a quick sale.  Make a note of that, all you up and coming young writers...heh heh heh.

What I really get, though, is compatibility with everyone else.  My version is so old I have to use an actual pencil.  When I click HELP, a little old man eventually wanders up to the house and says "Eh?"  When I decide to save a file, I have to have a wax cylinder ready.

You get the picture.

I'm still working on the opening to Brown River Queen.  I'm taking it slow, having fun with it, letting the rest of the book plot itself out in my subconscious while I fiddle with the first paragraph.  You hear that, subconscious?  I want this thing plotted, paced, supplied with relevant subplots, and moving along a graceful story arc by the end of next week, or it's another marathon of old 'Love Boat' episodes for you, pal.

Oh, and if Microsoft is reading this, and I must assume that they are stroking a fat white cat and plotting world domination while reading this, you could generate some much-needed good karma by sending me a free copy of Word 2010 (the 64-bit edition, please).  

Chasing Chandler

"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved, and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars."

Raymond Chandler, THE BIG SLEEP

Now that, gentle readers, is how you start a novel.

Anyone who reads that opening knows they're in for a ride.  I've read and re-read that opening passage a thousand times -- ten thousand times -- just trying to pick apart every last nuance of it.

Darn right I'll steal, but only from the best.

Every time I start a new book, I try my best to start it with an opening as powerful as Chandler's above.  I do this for two reasons -- one, because it hooks the reader and draws them in, as surely as flies to trout.  And two, because no editor alive could resist the siren song of Chandler's prose, and verily, this author needs a new pair of metaphorical shoes.

So now that I'm starting a new book, I've got another shot at matching Chandler's famous opening.

There's a lot of drudgery, tedium, and just plain hard work involved in writing.

But this is one of those moments that is pure magic.

Once upon a time...