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rgr-pop · 6 years ago

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Regarding the McMansion critique, some of the environmental impacts are very, very valid. But I think we tend to overlook that there are residents living in these structures. We tend to put a lot of stereotypes that we hold about the houses, and about the suburbs themselves, on these residents. The thought is that because they have a big house, the residents are anti-environmental, they don't value community, and they only care about themselves and about their privacy. These houses are assumed to be one, universal; and two, universally bad.

I spoke to the residents that are actually living in these homes and asked them what these homes meant to them. And in doing so, a lot of the stereotypes fell apart. That’s because a lot of those stereotypes were constructed in a post-war white middle-class framework, and don’t necessarily hold up in the face of new immigrants that are moving to suburbs. [...] The McMansion becomes that symbol of a lot of things that Asian Americans aren’t doing right to assimilate. Even the design critiques of these homes are about how they’re too outlandish. They’re trying to do this faux-Mediterranean look, but they're not even doing it right. It’s too tacky, you know? That, to me, is a broader critique of immigrants never really being American enough. I challenge the notion that Asian Americans should fit into a suburban neighborhood exactly the same way a white middle class family does.

This interview with Willow Lung-Amam is the first thing I recommend reading to start unraveling the mcmansion critique and its racial tones. Her book, Trespassers: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia, about Fremont, CA, is one of many studies on American ethnoburbs, but one of a handful that deals directly with the specter of the mcmansion--Lung-Amam is a professor of architecture.

I feel a few ways about what she’s saying above, that a critique of mcmansions might emerge from a well-meaning assumption of the whiteness of suburbia, (and the contents of that suburban whiteness), an assumption that no longer maps onto how (and where) people are living in America. I basically agree, and I think it’s diplomatic. But her work (and the work of others, which I’ll get to) shows that in many cases, planners, critics and neighbors actually develop this critique of the mcmansion after the act of racialization, and wield that critique politically. In some cases, even, the same problematic houses don’t become a problem until they become inhabited by problem residents.

But take this a little blurb on Fremont: mcmansions are built in suburbs that look like a different kind of suburb, and that difference is made political through zoning, design review, etc. Those quotes in there are really something. In this case, it would be hard to convincingly argue that neighbors imposed an existing critique of the white mcmansion onto their neighbors. In their case--and this is my first major stake in this argument--the “white suburb” is imagined to be single-story, a modernist suburb. The whiteness of, say, the modernist ranch, is just as fantastical as the whiteness of the mcmansion, but it’s become unfashionable to make such a critique of those postwar suburbs, and I really don’t think it’s because your average Curbed content creator has read Andrew Wiese’s Places of Their Own, Bruce Haynes’s Red Lines, Black Spaces or Becky Nicolaides’ My Blue Heaven, or any of the other new suburban histories that complicate a history of white spaces (and white architecture). In fact, I think a rise in critique of the excessive mcmansion* has bolstered a new and growing mythologizing of modernist architecture, one that is intimately connected to what’s happening to modernist real estate right now. Remember that Curbed is a real estate website.

*to be clear, there have been critiques of the mcmansion since the mcmansion has existed, and these critiques have come from a lot of different perspectives. but it is true that these critiques have been multiplying, as have their platforms.

But I really agree with Lung-Amam’s implication that as architecture critics, we (yes we, I can be whatever I want to be) can’t know anything by looking, certainly not (ffs) by looking at staged real estate listings. Or, let me rephrase: what can we know about a space, just by looking? That’s my second major stake in this game, and it is my biggest fucking stake. Eight years ago Alexandra Lange wrote that Nicolai Ouroussoff's criticism "shrinks the critic’s role to commenting only on the appearance of the architecture. He might have been the perfect critic for the boom years, when looks were the selling point, but this formal, global approach seems incongruous in a downturn,” and, not to lowkey call out someone I look up to in the field, but what do we have now? We have 1000 words on how the style of houses that were made after the fifties is Bad.

Let me take a few steps backward, because what I just said is not actually my stake. It’s not that I’m unconcerned with image in architecture, and it’s absolutely not that I’m concerned only with program and function (god, function) in architecture. It’s also not even that I care that much that architecture critics can’t think themselves out of a paper bag with Style written on it. It’s that I outright reject an architecture criticism that mistakes a taste objection for a political position. It’s hollow and it is, wholesale, in every case, racist. I’ve been listening to a lot of Vincent Scully lectures lately and I find it hard to believe that this great defender of play and eclecticism, a man who told students that Venturi reclaimed wallpaper as a feminist statement and that anti-ornament manifestos of the turn of the century were homophobic, was really paving the way for us to write about how disgusted we are by an Armenian doctor’s Greek fountain, or that Muslim-Americans should plan the spaces of their home more economically if they want into the polity. Ohhkay! I feel I’ve digressed again.

As you know, my main fight is about interiors. And I’ve learned a lot by watching a meme critique of staged interior decoration launch itself to the top of so-called architecture criticism. Just as you can’t look at the elevation of house and learn (as much as people want to believe) about the sociopolitical content of that home, I believe it’s either dangerous or useless to stake social claims based on a photograph of an interior. I mean: looking at interior space, represented, instead of asking (not rhetorically asking), why might the people who live in this space have configured it as such? what is this space used for? where did these items come from?, the mcmansion critique says: this is wrong, it’s repulsive, it’s amoral. And worse: my revulsion is not only a critical position, but an ethical one. Questions become accusations: Why would anyone need an extra set of bedrooms? Why would anyone need an empty room with a stupid persian rug on the floor? Why would people want to have Mediterranean or Chinese things in their home? Why would an Australian have a corrugated metal roof? Moralistic judgments about lifeways based on the scopic only. I use “scopic” here because I think of this action as fundamentally an action upon, and I want to frame dumbass ethocentric judgment (cast as “criticism”) as a mode of cultural domination.

And okay, so many of these judgments are just funny mistakes that we can laugh at (why would someone in the county with the largest amount of house fires caused by lightning strikes have metal rods on their roof?). But my point is that it is a fundamentally ethnocentric (racist, is the word I like to use) (we’re just going to set “disabled people exist” aside entirely for now) project to advance a critique of bad taste (style) from a position of practicality, one centered on what you understand to be the right way to inhabit a space. Really a lot of words for something very simple! Really impossible to convince anyone of this! And, I conclude, the mcmansion critique is not a political critique, and (you’re gonna hate to hear this, tough love) a politics can’t emerge from a taste claim. The mcmansion critique is nothing more than a taste claim, one very hastily staked.

I actually came here to offer you a short bibliography and nothing else, whoops! I mention Lung-Amam’s work as the one that I’ve found really takes the category of the mcmansion to task, looking at what was just as often called the “monster house” in Fremont. Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, an anthropologist, wrote a book about Southern California historical preservation (Protecting Suburban America) with a chapter on San Gabriel Valley’s Alhambra. That chapter looks at the conflicts between the preservation board, design review board, planning commission etc. and residents, specifically immigrants. She notes how different understandings of governmentality (as in, the need to get certain kinds of permits, etc.), and different ways of living created conflict between local government and immigrants. There are bits about planners’ paranoia about remodels that promote density, like adding too many extra rooms to a historic house, or remodeling interiors in a way that might encourage subletting, that I find pretty disturbing. But the author only mentions the major point: these forms of intensive governmentality in the name of historical preservation were put into place as Alhambra witnessed the transition of nearby suburbs into ethnoburbs. Preservationist policy emerged as a governmental response to a perceived loss of white control. (Much has been said about Arcadia, Chinese investor development, “mansionization.” h/t @prettylittlecrier for this article!) I can’t say that I recommend this book entirely, unless you’re involved in preservation planning.

I’m not sure we can accurately call all of these homes in the SGV “mcmansions,” but people sure love to. In Lawrence-Zuniga’s chapter, Alhambra’s bungalow landscape “needed” to be defended from Arcadia’s mansionization--larger scale teardown and redevelopment, but also from any kinds of additions and modifications to existing bungalows that would alter their scale in relation to the lot and the neighbors, as well as (importantly) their inhabited density. I think it’s worth thinking through the differences between all of these things: subdivided land developed for large houses on small lots, redevelopment for the former, large houses built for large families on small surbuban lots where more “modest” houses might have once stood, or just... big houses on big lots.

I must have mentioned Becky Nicolaides and James Zarsadiaz’s “Design Assimilation in Suburbia: Asian Americans, Built Landscapes, and Suburban Advantage in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley since 1970,” I was so excited when they published this article. They look at San Marino, and consider what they term “design assimilation” to describe the ways (and reasons) Chinese suburbanites chose to consent to preservationist codes and design review, and why they lived in a community that imposed these kinds of racialized codes:

For some, these suburban landscapes seemed to materialize positive images of America they harbored as children back in Asian home countries. Some openly appreciated the classic European inflected architecture, others the open spaces and aesthetic styles of country living. Asian suburbanites also grasped that support of American landscape aesthetics offered certain social and fiscal benefits. To their neighbors, it conveyed a willingness to assimilate through aesthetic behaviors, which helped maintain community peace and ensure social acceptance. Embracing American design styles also conferred a status distinction that positioned these Asian homeowners above those around them—including those in the ethnoburbs. In design-assimilated suburbs, property values were higher and schools were better, signaling a racialized valuing of space not lost on Asians themselves. Design assimilation, thus, was a facet of the production of affluent suburban space, in which white and ethnic Asian suburbanites played complicit roles.

They don’t pick up the McMansion explicitly, but they are marking its absence in a landscape. This is a really constructive piece, chiefly, here, as a concrete example of the ways that some suburbs were understood to be aesthetically Chinese by the eighties, that the mcmansion criticism can be seen to have been racialized by then.

I want to close with an excerpt from anthropologist Aihwa Ong’s 1996 article, “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making,” which picks up the problem of taste but also the figure of international wealth, and the Chinese developer rather than the middle class Chinese immigrant:

In wealthier San Franciscan neighborhoods, residents pride themselves on their conservation consciousness, and they jealously guard the hybrid European ambiance and character of particular neighborhoods. In their role as custodians of appropriate cultural taste governing buildings, architecture, parks, and other public spaces, civic groups routinely badger City Hall, scrutinize urban zoning laws, and patrol the boundaries between what is aesthetically permissible and what is intolerable in their districts. By linking race with habitus, taste, and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984), such civic groups set limits to the whitening of Asians, who, metaphorically speaking still give off the whiff of sweat despite arriving with starter symbolic capital.

Public battles over race/taste have revolved around the transformation of middle-class neighborhoods by rich Asian newcomers. At issue are boxy houses with bland facades--”monster houses”--erected by Asian buyers to accommodate extended families in low-density, single-family residential districts known for their Victorian or Mediterranean charm. Protests have often taken on a racialist tone, registering both dismay at the changing cultural landscape and efforts to educate the new arrivals to white upper-class norms appropriate for the city. While the activists focus on the cultural elements--aesthetic norms, democratic process, and civic duty--that underpin the urban imagined community, they encode the strong class resentment against large-scale Asian investment in residential and commercial properties throughout the city. A conflict over one of these monster houses illustrates the ways in which the state is caught between soothing indignant urbanites seeking to impose their notion of cultural citizenship on Asian nouveaux riches while attempting to keep the door open for Pacific Rim capital.

In 1989 a Hong Kong multimillionaire, a Mrs. Chan, bought a house in the affluent Marina district. Chan lived in Hong Kong and rented out her Marina property. A few years later, she obtained the approval of the city to add a third story to her house but failed to notify her neighbors. When they learned of her plans, they complained that the third story would block views of the Palace of Fine Arts as well as cut off sunlight in an adjoining garden. The neighbors linked up with a citywide group to pressure City Hall. The mayor stepped in and called for a city zoning study, thus delaying the proposed renovation. At a neighborhood meeting, someone declared, “We don’t want to see a second Chinatown here.” Indeed, there is already a new “Chinatown” outside the old Chinatown, based in the middle-class Richmond district. This charge thus raised the specter of a spreading Chinese urbanscape encroaching on the heterogeneous European flavor of the city. The remark, with its implied racism, compelled the mayor to apologize to Chan, and the planning commission subsequently approved a smaller addition to her house.

However, stung by the racism and the loss on her investment and bewildered that neighbors could infringe upon her property rights, Chan, a transnational developer, used her wealth to mock the city’s self-image as a bastion of liberalism. She pulled out all her investments in the United States and decided to donate her million-dollar house to the homeless. To add insult to injury, she stipulated that her house was not to be used by any homeless of Chinese descent. Her architect, an American Chinese, told the press, “You can hardly find a homeless Chinese anyway,” Secure in her overseas location, Chan fought the Chinese stereotype by stereotyping American homeless as non-Chinese, while challenging her civic-minded neighbors to demonstrate the moral liberalism they professed. Mutual class and racial discrimination thus broke through the surface of what initially appeared to be a negotiation over normative cultural taste in the urban milieu. A representative of the mayor’s office, appropriately contrite, remarked that Chan could still do whatever she wanted with her property; “We just would like for her not to be so angry.” The need to keep overseas investments flowing into the city had to be balanced against neighborhood groups’ demands for cultural standards. The power of the international real estate market, as represented by Mrs. Chan, thus disciplined both City Hall and the Marina neighbors, who may have to rethink local notions of what being enlightened urbanites may entail in the “era of Pacific Rim capital.”

#i think i'm forgetting a sociologist...#architecture #landscapes of production #interiors

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instantlit · 6 years ago

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Book review: Radio Silence

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Summary: Frances Janvier spends most of her time studying. When she’s not studying, she’s up in her room making fan art for her favorite podcast, Universe City.

Everyone knows Aled Last as that quiet boy who gets straight As. But no one knows he’s the creator of Universe City, who goes by the name Radio Silence. When Frances gets a message from Radio Silence asking if she’ll collaborate with him, everything changes. Frances and Aled spend an entire summer working together and becoming best friends. They get each other when no one else does. But when Aled’s identity as Radio Silence is revealed, Frances fears that the future of Universe City—and their friendship—is at risk. Aled helped her find her voice. Without him, will she have the courage to show the world who she really is? Or will she be met with radio silence?

Rating: ★★★★★ - If you’ve ever been a teenager, you’ll get it.

Full review under the cut!

“In Distress. Stuck in Universe City. Send help.”

Well, I had a fantastic time reading this book.

And to think that I almost didn't read this. I almost missed out on Radio Silence, like WTF!

Seriously, STOP WRITING SYNOPSES THAT MAKE THE BOOK SOUND LIKE SOME GOOEY CLICHÉD ROMANCE FFS THAT'S SUCH A TURN OFF!!!!! I'm so mad!

Now, let me scream at you enthusiastically inform you about all the reasons why Radio Silence is an excellent book.

➽ It's an incredibly feel-good book. One of the reasons I went through this book so quickly is because I was just happy to be here, happy to read this story, to share this journey with the characters. I was never bored and, even though it's not an action-driven book and the short chapters don't end with cliffhangers, the story is still extremely compelling, and it makes you want to keep going.

“I can take a little beating now and then, old sport, believe me. I've been in this City fr as long as I can remember, it seems. This hardly qualifies as a distress call anymore - by gods, if anyone was listening, I would have heard from you by now. I can take a little beating now and then. I'm a tough one. I'm a star. I'm steel-chested and diamond-eyed.”

Now, I'm not saying that it's fluffy all the way through, there's an undercurrent of mystery, plus you definitely know that something dark is going on with Aled (can we talk about how University City is basically a metaphor for his mother? Or maybe not, because it just makes me want to rip my eyeballs out) which gives gravitas to the story but still manages to balance it perfectly with light-heartedness.

To me, it makes a perfect summer-read.

➽ Frances is a brilliant protagonist. She's just brilliant, period. Girl, you get me:

“[...] but I really didn't want to go. Firstly, everyone was just gonna get drunk, which I could do perfectly well by myself in my den while watching Youtube videos instead of having to worry about catching the last train home or avoiding sexual assault.”

I just love her so much because of everything that makes her who she is on the page: her awkwardness, her nerdiness (more on that later), her drive, her iinsecurities, her love. She keeps saying that she's a loner and doesn't get along with most people, but she's such a generous person when people make the effort of scratching the flimsy façade.

She's someone who struggles a lot with the pressure she puts on herself, and the expectations that she has about how her life should be, so she's not someone who opens up easily but, under that, she's worth it. She's the Samwise Gamgee, she's the Hermione Granger, she's just the kind of person you should want around.

“And my drawings were all pointless anyway. It wasn't like I could sell them. It wasn't like I could share them with my friends. It wasn't like they'd me into Cambridge.”

➽ It's ALL ABOUT THE FRIENDSHIPS! I know not everyone is all romance-repulsed as I am, but you have no idea how good it feels to have a story where, first of all, there's very little romance, and second of all, the focus is on the friendship. Like, friendship is actually the whole plot of the book! How great is that?

The relationship between Aled and Frances is the most precious thing. I also loved the characters who hooked themselves along the way because they make a really wholesome and heart-warming little band. Absolutely loved the banter as well. As "diverse group of friends who are more like family" is definitely a trope I'm into, this group checks all my boxes.

Just look at them!

Also, cookie points for the amazing mother-daughter relationship. Frances' mother is the boss and their relationship is just #GOALS.

➽ There's real racial and sexual diversity, and it's done brilliantly. The little bonus is that everything is nicely labelled. I know that some people don't adhere to the whole label-thing, but it's nice when an author doesn't shy away from these words. The second little bonus is that "demi-sexuality" is written, black on white, and I think it's magical.

I also love that none of it is the whole point of the book, there are "coming-out moments", which just naturally happen when you become friends with someone new. These moments are generally received with a shrug, like it's no big deal. To me, the whole thing feels really organic and, at least so far, kind of reflect every interaction of this type that I've ever experienced.

➽ I'm going to write this next point exactly how I wrote it on my phone while I was taking notes: "they're all giant nerds omg uwu" And it's woven into the story so well, too. It's all in the details: it's in the way they decorate their rooms, in their clothes and accessories (like, who doesn't have one object/piece of clothing with their Hogwarts House on it?)... They don't have to talk non-stop about Harry Potter or Avengers, it's all the little things that are integral parts of their lives. So, props to Alice Oseman for doing it right.

➽ It is so, so very relatable. I never know how these types of books will fare in the future, because they're so full of current pop-culture references, of memes and social media that are so quickly outdated (I mean, Vine is mentioned, and it's already ancient history), they're so anchored in their time that they're immensely fun to read in the moment.

Fortunately, the message remains the same. I seriously would have loved to read this book when I was 17 but, even so, there are so many moments that made me reminisce or that are still true: the whole fandom side of Tumblr is still very familiar to me, the breaking down because you're putting too much pressure on yourself and you just can't fucking write this particular essay (*sigh* good times...), the whole Cambridge interview was so relatably cringey, it gave me war flashbacks.

It's maybe a little over-dramatic at times, with a large dose of miscommunication, but those are the only flaws I could find, so who cares?

It's a fantastic book and, if you've ever been a teenager, Radio Silence will get to you, and you will get it in return.

#alice oseman #radio silence #5 stars #reviews

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christinaengela · 6 years ago

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Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 20th newsletter: August 2018! Coming up in this edition of Another Round @ The Crow Bar:

Regular updates, new releases, and a monthly spotlight on one of my books, this time, the new release of “Dead Beckoning“.

Hello!

I’ve been keeping busy with a few things in the past couple of months, including completing and releasing “Lange’s Legacy” – book 4 in the Galaxii Series (released on July 13) and since then, another project I’ll be telling you about later in this newsletter – look under the “new videos” section for more about that!

As I mentioned last time, MoboReader, a Chinese company that deals with ebook distribution, approached me in June with a request to list my e-titles. I agreed, hoping that this should expand my reach somewhat, and signed a contract with them. I’m curious to see what effect this will have on my sales, if any – which is also why I also made all four books in the Galaxii Series available via Smashwords. So far it hasn’t been very encouraging, since I haven’t seen any notice of sales via these two channels, at least not yet.

The long-awaited fourth title in the Galaxii Series, “Lange’s Legacy” was released via Lulu to Amazon and everywhere else on July 13, 2018. This book features brand new illustrations, and there’s also a book trailer video.

I’ve also been working on book 5 in that series, “Where Darkness Softly Treads“, but I’m still not sure how long that’s going to take me *wink*. I’ll keep on plugging away at it, and keep you posted!

This time, under new releases, I’ll be telling you about “Lange’s Legacy“.

On with the show!

New Releases

“Lange’s Legacy” “Lange’s Legacy” is a story about Sean Lange, a man who works on a huge star-liner as chief of security. It’s a monotonous routine job, and with around 3000 guests and 1500 crew to look after, there’s no rest for the wicked. Space travel is pretty exciting, as he would tell you – which only means you get to see your life flash before your eyes several times a day – but can’t hear much dialog over the sound of your own screaming.

The disappearance of the Red Star Liner “Demeter” becomes one of the great unsolved mysteries of commercial deep-space travel, until one day, a military ship on patrol spots an object drifting in space – which turns out to be a shuttle from the long-lost mystery ship, Demeter. They find a body onboard – a body clutching a very long letter…

“Lange’s Legacy” is the fourth title in the Galaxii Series by Christina Engela.

Back Cover:

“My name is Sean Lange, and you will probably never have heard of me. I always wanted to leave some kind of a legacy in this life, and perhaps to be remembered in a good way. Instead, circumstances have arranged it so that this is probably the last time I will ever use that name, and it probably won’t be remembered very kindly.

By now you will have noticed the name and registration of the shuttle. Demeter. I’m sure when you run it through the interweb, or if you’re from a military ship, through your own database – you’ll see that you’ve stumbled across a relic of one of those great mysteries of deep space, and probably one of those missing ships people like to write spooky stories about. Well, whatever they wrote, buddy, they got it quite wrong. You can take it from me. I was the chief of security on that civilian behemoth, and I saw it all go down. Hell, I was right in the center of it.

‘Paradise between the planets’, they called it. Most of the time, that’s how it was. But not this time. On the last voyage of the Demeter – a deep space star-liner with the Red Star Line, passengers and crew got more than they bargained for. Way more.”

Christina Engela is that rarest of authors – able to seamlessly blend together elements of dark horror and sci-fi to create stories that will stay with you long after the last page has been turned.” – Mark Woods, author of Time of Tides and Fear of the Dark.

Order: Paperback (Lulu) / eBook (Lulu) / eBook (Smashwords)

Currently Available Titles:

The Galaxii Series

Blachart

Demonspawn

Dead Beckoning

Galaxii – Into The Abyss (a special omnibus of the first three titles in the Galaxii Series)

Lange’s Legacy

The Quantum Series

Black Sunrise

The Time Saving Agency

Innocent Minds

Dead Man’s Hammer

Loderunner

Prodigal Sun

High Steaks

Underground Movement

Moon Jockeys

Fortitude

The Last Hurrah

The Quantum Series – Keep Off The Crabbygrass (an omnibus of The Quantum Series titles 1, 2, 3 and 4.)

About The Quantum Series will give you more background about the series, its settings and characters. To get a better idea of what the latest two titles are about, read What Readers Can Expect In “Prodigal Sun”, “High Steaks”, “Fortitude” & “The Last Hurrah”.

Work on the next four titles in this series, (“Underground Movement“, “Moon Jockeys“, “Fortitude” and “The Last Hurrah“) is still pending at this time.

Panic! Horror In Space

Panic! Horror In Space #1

Panic! Horror In Space #2

Panic! Horror In Space #3

Panic! is a sci-fi/horror series, which will have some decidedly sci-fi characters encountering some decidedly horror entities – ghosts, haunted objects, zombies, etc. along with my usual twisted brand of humor! The first three titles are available in paperback and ebook versions on various distribution platforms including Amazon and Lulu.

For Children

Other Kids Are Kids Almost Just Like You

Ramalama-Side Up! (coloring book)

Non-Fiction

Bugspray

The Pink Community – The Facts

The Peed-Off Peasant’s Collection Of Awesome Parking Memes

Don’t Get Left In The Dark

Edited By Christina Engela

African Assignment by Theo Engela

A Way Of Life by Theo Engela

Shakandazu Valley by Theo Engela

Op Vreemde Weë by Yvonne Lorraine Engela

When Day Is Done by Yvonne Lorraine Engela

Afrikaans Titles

Some of my titles have been translated into Afrikaans – but as you could imagine, it’s a full-time job – and when you use translation software “sickbay” comes out as “Telaxian stoofpot” instead of “siekeboeg” – so you could imagine!

On A Personal Note

Fan Mail & Honorable Mentions

Noticed in the past month by my shiny new wife and PA, Wendy K. Engela, ( 😉 ) were the following honorable mentions:

In July, I had an awesome interview with the folks from “Awesome Gang – where awesome book readers meet awesome writers”. 🙂

I display my Fan Mail & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You are always welcome to have a look.

Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

The past month was (another) rather quiet on the hate mail front. (What am I doing wrong?) I’m sad to say I have nothing new to show you this time! (I may have something to show you next time though!)

(I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review it here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking or you might choke while laughing at it!)

Interviews

In July, I had an awesome interview with the folks from “Awesome Gang – where awesome book readers meet awesome writers”.

If you would like to do an interview with me about my works, please do get in touch!

New Videos

Have a look at my videos on my Video Channel for book trailer videos, interesting snippets, and other information.

A new video is on its way, based on my short story “Innocent Minds” – or rather on the little story inside that story called “Bang! Splat!” This will be a short animated film, entitled “Bang! Splat!“, with narrative by Morne’ Condon, and some really awesome sound effects! The video and effects parts are already done, pending final edits – and even without the narrative track, it’s already enough to leave me in stitches. No, really. More details about this video next time.

New Listings

As you can see below, my books now seem to be listed just about everywhere!

CHRISTINA WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU! A few nice words go a long way! Please leave your REVIEWS on Academia.edu, Amazon, Anobii, Apple iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Bol, Book Depository, Dilmot eBookMall, FictionDB, Fnac, Foyles, Goodreads, !Indigo, Kobo , Lulu, Lybrary, MoboReader, Nook, Smashwords, Takealot, 24 Symbols – or wherever you see Christina’s books – or just send her an email via the Contact form!

Support The Author

Although most titles listed are available in paperback and/or ebook formats through most online retailers internationally, Christina prefers readers make their purchases via Lulu. This is because while all retailers charge the same price to YOU the reader, Lulu gives the author the largest portion of the proceeds from your purchase.

Monthly Book Spotlight [Spoiler Alert]: “Dead Beckoning“

Order: Paperback (Lulu) / eBook (Lulu) / eBook (Smashwords)

“Dead Beckoning” is the tale of Adam – a former Corsair working to expunge his bloody past by doing good… Starting with helping the imperial star ship Antares to track down and capture one of the most powerful and feared Corsairs in legend: Sona Kilroy… aka The Hammer.

The terror of the marauding Corsairs was supposed to be over, but it wasn’t. Not just yet.

Like every warrior who leaves home to go to war, Adam hopes to return to the arms of his love – but Adam isn’t exactly a soldier, and Marsha… well, Marsha isn’t exactly standard spec either… but if he did return, he hoped to return to her.

“Dead Beckoning” is the third title in the Galaxii Series by Christina Engela.

Details:

Published: Second Edition, June 12, 2018

Pages: 158

Words: 51,980 (Flowing Text eBook)

Binding: Perfect-bound Paperback

Dimensions (inches): 6×9″ tall (US Trade)

‘Like’ Dead Beckoning by Christina Engela on Facebook

Economize! Buy “The Galaxii Series Omnibus 1: Into The Abyss“, containing the first three titles in the Galaxii Series by Christina Engela: “ Blachart ”, “Demonspawn” and “Dead Beckoning” – all in one big omnibus, for LESS than buying all three separately!

Back Cover:

“Meradinis! The stuff of myths and legends! The Turtle Island of the stars – home planet to the fearsome Corsairs – the terrors of the black, the monsters in Human form who killed innocents and waged a campaign of terror against the colonies for nearly a century! Then the day came when the Corsairs luck finally ran out…

The Battle of Turtle Island darkened the skies with the dead. After nearly two days of fierce fighting, the Terrans finally had their venomous, defeated foe cornered in its own den. In orbit, where the battle was fought, the remnants of the once feared predatory Black Fleet drifted, blazing, while the Corsair civilization below breathed its last.

But not all the great Corsairs of legend had been captured. Some – including one Sona Kilroy – the most dangerous of them all – had slipped the Terran’s net, and threatened to rebuild the Corsair menace. It was up to Mykl d’Angelo, captain of the Antares, and a mystery-man called Adam, to stop him.”

“Engela’s eye for the quirky humor of even the darkest situations sets her writing apart from the masses. Her fiction combines oddball humor, in the tradition of writers like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, with the best of traditional science fiction.” – Sarah Rutledge Fischer, Focus Mid-South Magazine.”

CHRISTINA WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU! A few nice words go a long way! Please leave your REVIEWS on Amazon, Anobii, Apple iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Bol, Book Depository, eBookMall, FictionDB, Fnac, Foyles, Goodreads, !Indigo, Kobo , Lulu, Lybrary, Nook, Smashwords, Takealot, 24 Symbols – or wherever you see Christina’s books – or just send her an email via the Contact form!

Synopsis:

[Spoiler Alert]

“Dead Beckoning” is the third title in the Galaxii Series, a saga set in a distant future.

Sona Kilroy is the one that got away – a Corsair – but not just any old space pirate – the most cunning, vicious and dangerous of them all – Sona Kilroy, ‘The Hammer’ – former Admiral of the Black Fleet and brother of the Patron of the Black Palace!

Having survived the Terran invasion of the Corsair home world and the fall of Meradinis, and escaped the full might of the assembled Terran Space Fleet, Kilroy has done the seemingly impossible – he captured the very same Terran warship sent to capture him! Now, using the Indomitable, he has set about gathering Corsair stragglers and rebuilding the Corsair culture on another world in the dark depths of the Omegan Quadrant, from where he threatens to wreak piratical vengeance upon every Terran colonist in deep space – and further, he’s put a bounty on the head of his former colleague Blachart’s for good measure!

The I.S.S. Mordrake and I.S.S. Antares under way together.

Nearly four months later, the Terran Space Fleet discovers what Kilroy has been up to when a small surveillance base in an asteroid field is destroyed, and hastily charges the crews of the Antares and the Mordrake, two very experienced ships, with the task of bringing Kilroy to heel. For Captain Joe Lofflin of the Mordrake, it’s a chance to get back into the swing of things after a three month shore leave on Tremaine following serious repairs for his ship. For Mykl d’Angelo, Captain of the Antares, dealing with Corsairs is not a safe bet without the assistance of someone who knows Corsairs – and Kilroy intimately, so his first goal is to find and recruit the man formerly known as Blachart the Bloody.

Blachart is a reformed Corsair who, while making the most of his new Terran pardon – and going by the name Adam – has only just begun to forge a relationship with Marsha, a girl who came to the fringe to make a fresh start, and to get away from her former male past. For Marsha, life out on the fringe is definitely not what she expected, and for her, having met someone she can finally feel safe and open with is a relief met with the counter-weight of risk to her safety by whatever it is this man has got himself into.

Adam is found on the barely-established new Terran colony of Caries, and recruited by Mykl d’Angelo – the closest thing Adam has to a friend in the universe – to join their task force to help them hunt down Kilroy, to end the threat of Corsairs once and for all, and to put an end to the bounty on his life. They embark on a wild adventure to find, capture or end Kilroy – before it’s too late! This leads to the Second Battle of Turtle Island, and a climactic confrontation between the forces of good and evil, while the fate of the civilized galaxy hangs in the balance.

This is the third episode in the Galaxii Series, consisting of “Blachart“, “Demonspawn” and “Dead Beckoning”.

Summary:

This is the third book in the Galaxii Series, packed with comedy, suspense and action, and tells the tale of Adam – a former Corsair working to expunge his bloody past by doing good… Starting with helping Mykl d’Angelo – captain of the imperial star ship Antares to track down and capture one of the most powerful and feared Corsairs in legend: Sona Kilroy… aka The Hammer.

Reviews:

One Of The Best Voices In Sci-fi Right Now

“Quite simply, Christina Engela is one of the best voices in sci-fi right now and to not read her work would be to miss a treat!

If you like classic space opera with an ultra-modern twist, you should check her out. Having read previews of her forthcoming work [Dead Beckoning], I can guarantee you the best is yet to come…” – Mark Woods, author of ‘Fear of the Dark’ and ‘Time of Tides’

Author Questions:

1) In Dead Beckoning you bring Mykl d’Angelo and Blachart the Corsair back together again as a team; what is the nature of their relationship?

Mykl and Blachart started out in “Blachart” as adversaries, but by the end of that story they were already friends. Their initial adventure concluded, Blachart went on his way to try and make a fresh start in life, traveling, trying to leave his Corsair past behind him as ‘Adam’.

Blachart is found on a small fringe colony, trying hard to make the most of his Imperial pardon, and experimenting with alternate identity… He has been living under assumed names for so long, this man of mystery can barely remember his original names… if at all. The new freedom given him by his pardon is balanced out by the price on his head, offered by his former masters who had fled Meradinis.

In “Dead Beckoning”, Blachart is re-introduced as a ‘special consultant’ engaged to assist the Space Fleet in hunting down Sona Kilroy. They pick up the the threads of their friendship, and build on it, learning to trust each other further.

2) Tell us more about the character of Marsha. Who is she, what is she, and what part does she she play in relation to the character of Blachart?

Marsha is a girl who came to the fringe to make a fresh start, and to get away from her former male past. Life on the fringe is definitely not what she expected, and for her, having met someone she can finally feel safe and open with is a relief met with the counter-weight of risk to her safety by whatever it is her love interest Adam/’Blachart’ has got himself into.

Adam finds himself fighting off would-be Corsair assassins working to track him down to earn the bounty put out on him by Kilroy – and this is not only annoying, but also endangers the life of his new love – a girl who seems to have ‘a few extras the other girls didn’t leave the factory with’.

Marsha is someone who he fears sharing his background and past with, on account of it being so ugly and filled with horror that he thinks she will leave him if he does so. So they play a ‘name game’ every day, in which they both adopt different names and pretend they have never met before. At least, until the weight of reality intrudes in the form of another pair of assassins that he is forced to put down in front of witnesses, including her.

She represents Adam’s motivation to get through the trials ahead, someone to return to when it’s all over. Marsha represents the challenge: what would you do to earn the right to come back to the one you love? What would you do to make yourself worthy of a future with that person?

3) In “Dead Beckoning” you include the main characters from the two previous books, “Blachart” and “Demonspawn” – since these are two different sets of main characters, did this create any problems for you?

Yes, but nothing I couldn’t overcome! The main characters in “Dead Beckoning” were pretty much the main characters from “Blachart“, while the characters from “Demonspawn” played mostly supporting roles in this story. Actually, it was mostly just Captain Joe Lofflin from “Demonspawn” who made a few appearances and had some dialog in the new story, with mostly just ‘mentions’ of his ship and crew appearing in “Dead Beckoning”.

4) Tell us about the villain in this story – Sona Kilroy?

Sona Kilroy is a famous Corsair, the main Admiral in their black fleet. He is experienced, sly and also without conscience. “Dead Beckoning” picks up just after the resounding defeat of Meradinis, the former Corsair homeworld in “Blachart“. In the ensuing chaos, several powerful Corsair figures manage to escape the long arm of Terran justice – including Kilroy! But not all Corsairs are so willing to let go of their way of life, and of these, none is more feared – and respected – than the man known as Sona Kilroy, the Admiral of the Corsair fleet!

Seeking vengeance, Kilroy puts a bounty on Blachart’s head, and sets out to rebuild the Corsair civilization on another planet hidden deep within the Omegan Quadrant. In a big way, he represents everything Blachart could have been if he’d continued on the Corsair path – a nemesis for the new Adam.

In Closing

Well, that’s all, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction! Until next time, keep reading!

Cheers! 🙂

If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website. If you want to know what Christina Engela’s focus group or target market is, please read here. If you would like to read more about Christina’s life and experiences, please go to her Biography and the article “Timeline of Milestones, Awards & Achievements“. To leave her a message, please use the Contact form. Visit her Shop. ‘Add’ Christina Engela on Facebook (Profile). ‘Like’ Christina Engela on Facebook (Page). All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2018.

Another Round @ The Crow Bar #20 – August 2018 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 20th newsletter: August 2018! Coming up in this edition of Another Round @ The Crow Bar:

#art #author #christina engela #drawings #fantasy #female #Galaxii Series #horror #Illustrations #Images #LGBT #newsletter #Panic - Horror In Space #quantum series #sci-fi #science fiction #sketches #South African #transgender

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Hannibal: Did Author Thomas Harris Try to Destroy Dr. Lecter?

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It’s appeared for a while now that Dr. Hannibal Lecter–the forensic psychiatrist, cannibalistic serial killer, and pop culture icon featured in four novels, five movies, and a TV show–has been unstoppable. Several of those projects were highly acclaimed by critics and tremendous hits with audiences. And Anthony Hopkins even earned an Oscar for playing the doctor The Silence of the Lambs, which itself went on to sweep the Academy Awards.

So why did it seem like Thomas Harris, the reclusive author who created Dr. Lecter and wrote the novels, tried his best to kill off the public interest in Hannibal–if not Hannibal himself–at the height of the character’s fame? Because that appears to be almost exactly what Harris attempted to do with Hannibal, the third book featuring the erudite monster, which was published in 1999. Less than two years later, the film version arrived in theaters (20 years ago this week, in fact) and received just as polarizing a response as Harris’ book.

Two decades later, Hannibal, a top shelf, A-list Hollywood production directed by Ridley Scott and featuring Hopkins in his second portrayal of Lecter, remains a bizarre, flawed artifact. Mostly faithful to the equally weird and at times repugnant book, it’s a borderline insane movie that turns the murderous Lecter into ostensibly a hero and, while not going quite off the deep end as the novel, features one of the most gruesomely bonkers climactic scenes ever filmed for a mainstream motion picture. Why?!

Well…

The Road to Hannibal

Harris, now 80 years old and a former journalist for the Associated Press, published his second novel, Red Dragon, in 1981. That story introduced Hannibal Lecter fto the world for the first time. When the book begins, Lecter is already imprisoned for his ghastly crimes, having been caught by the haunted FBI profiler Will Graham. When Graham is called out of retirement to catch another killer, he consults with Dr. Lecter on the case despite the serial killer’s ability to manipulate Graham psychologically. Lecter is very much a supporting character in Red Dragon, which was also reflected in the first film made from the book, Michael Mann’s Manhunter.

Released in 1986, the movie starred William Petersen (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) as Graham and Scottish actor Brian Cox (Succession) as Lecter (spelled “Lektor” in the movie). Cox is only in a handful of scenes, but makes a strong impression in his few minutes of screen time; both his performance and the film–which was not a success with either critics or audiences in its initial release- have grown in popular stature over the years.

Two years later, in 1988, Harris published his third novel, The Silence of the Lambs. Dr. Lecter is a much larger figure here, as he’s called upon to advise on a new serial killer case by Clarice Starling, an FBI agent in training whose innate decency and compassion stirs respect and even admiration in the otherwise psychopathic doctor. The parallel storylines, the introduction of a superb character in Clarice, and the further development of Lecter, plus the macabre aspects of the narrative made the book an instant classic and one of the great psychological horror novels of its time.

The Silence of the Lambs was a runaway bestseller, but this time the book’s success was equaled by that of its screen adaptation. Jonathan Demme directed the 1991 film based on Harris’ novel, in which Anthony Hopkins played Lecter for the first time, earning for himself both full-fledged movie stardom and an Oscar for Best Actor. Jodie Foster played Clarice, also landing an Oscar for her work; and the movie was just the third in history to sweep all five major awards by also picking up Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

With the film version of The Silence of the Lambs a box office success, and Lecter entering the pop culture zeitgeist (along with catchphrases like “A nice Chianti…”) as a monster with intelligence, wit and taste, the movie’s producers and the public began to clamor for a sequel.

Hannibal Emerges from His Slumber

It was 11 years before we heard from Thomas Harris and Hannibal Lecter again on the page, with Harris in no rush to deliver a new adventure for the doctor. In his book Making Murder: The Fiction of Thomas Harris, author Philip L. Simpson quotes Harris as saying, “I can’t write it until I believe it.” But in 1999, he finally delivered Hannibal, his longest book to date (484 pages in first edition hardback), and the first in which Lecter is clearly, and perhaps ill-advisedly, the central character.

Taking place seven years after The Silence of the Lambs, the story finds Clarice facing a career crisis when she is blamed for a botched drug raid. But when a letter from Dr. Lecter to Clarice shows up, the FBI puts Clarice back on the doctor’s trail. Meanwhile Lecter is living in Florence under a different identity but is pursued by an Italian detective named Pazzi. The latter aims to collect a huge bounty placed on Lecter’s head by Mason Verger, an incredibly wealthy pedophile who wants revenge on Lecter for disfiguring him during a drug-fueled therapy session years earlier.

To Harris’ credit, Hannibal does not simply retread the same ground as the classic novel that preceded it. According to a new introduction he wrote for Red Dragon, Harris reportedly “dreaded doing Hannibal… dreaded the choices I would have to watch, feared for Starling.” The book is nothing if not filled with dread, and its main theme is that every single human being is capable of corruption, evil, and depravity–a bleak assessment of the species, even for this book series.

Harris expounded upon his theme by making Hannibal his grisliest novel. Lecter murders Pazzi by disemboweling him and hanging him from Florence’s famed Palazzo Vecchio while the hideous-looking Verger, his face and body all but destroyed, plans to enact his vengeance on Lecter by feeding him alive to wild boars. Verger himself meets his end at the hands of his sister, who chokes Verger to death with his pet moray eel–and after violently extracting some of his sperm so she can have a baby with her lesbian partner.

The book ends on its most controversial and polarizing note: Lecter rescues himself and an injured Starling from Verger’s plan, then captures Starling’s nemesis at the Justice Department, Paul Krendler, and prepares a dinner in which he and Starling eat a portion of Krendler’s brain before Lecter kills him. Lecter then digs up the bones of Starling’s father and uses hypnosis to allow her to “see” her father and say goodbye to him, after which Lecter and Starling become lovers and vanish to Buenos Aires.

In the book’s logic, Starling finally accepts the love of the one man in her adult life who has treated her with respect.

What Was Thomas Harris Thinking?

Hannibal, the book, was the second biggest pop culture phenomenon of the summer of 1999 after the release of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Some 1.5 million copies of the novel were shipped to bookstores. Other publishers, like movie studios getting out of the way of an Avengers flick, shifted their big titles away from June of that year. An advance review from no less an authority than Stephen King called it “one of the two most frightening popular novels of our time,” placing it alongside The Exorcist, in his New York Times review.

Then more critics got to read and review it. So did the public.

The novel, and especially its shockingly subversive ending, scrambled the brains of everyone who read it. An analysis of the book by the influential Kirkus Reviews had positive things to say about Harris’ “baroque new approach” to the serial killer genre and his “audacious epilogue,” but directly compared the Dr. Lecter saga to Star Wars in the sense that both had become a brand.

It was true: in the years since the release of The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter had transformed into a tangible intellectual property, becoming the subject of jokes and parodies, and a meme before we even knew what those were. The terrifying monster of Red Dragon and Silence had become the murderer everyone loved and laughed over–a transition which even Anthony Hopkins reportedly found unfortunate and disturbing.

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Yet it’s worth wondering then if that is the point in Hannibal. Harris is an intensely private person who did not care for the public spotlight. He told the New York Times in 2019, in his only interview in decades, that he found fame to be “more of a nuisance than anything else.” It is easy to imagine he might’ve viewed Hannibal as a way to short-circuit both the overhyped expectations of the public and the evolution of Lecter into some kind of weird fictional celebrity. And perhaps he saw his book as a way of moving past Lecter himself and freeing himself to write new stories?

“I like to think Harris at least partly ups-the-grotesque-ante in Hannibal to rub our collective noses in our collective love for a serial killer,” wrote Patrick J. Sauer in 2019–the book’s 20th anniversary–at Crimereads. “Maybe Harris knew another straight-forward thriller wouldn’t cut it, so he had no choice but to go Grand Guignol on his readers.”

Professor Mark Jancovich of the University of East Anglia (UK), mused in the same article that Harris had other ambitions. “I think Harris might just have wanted to finish Lecter off like Arthur Conan Doyle tried with Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “But there’s also the sense he might have been under huge pressure by the publishers. It’s not really clear what the impetus for the book is, other than the obvious commercial one.”

Whatever Harris tried to do with Hannibal, it doesn’t really work. While the book is gripping and the prose precise, making Dr. Lecter the ostensible protagonist is a mistake. We learn more about his background for one thing, including the unspeakable death of his younger sister during World War II, but that robs him of being the unknowable, terrifying force of nature that he is in the first two novels.

Meanwhile the once-formidable Starling is reduced to an almost passive supporting role, buffeted around without agency until she just essentially gives up and is saved by Lecter. Maybe Harris really did want to turn off his public so that he would never have to write about Hannibal Lecter again.

Hannibal Now Playing at a Theater Near You

The film rights to Hannibal were snapped up in record time for $10 million by Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis, who had produced Manhunter yet passed on Silence. But there was a problem: Director Jonathan Demme, star Jodie Foster, and screenwriter Ted Tally–all major components of the success of Silence, along with Hopkins–had no interest in coming back after reading the book.

Demme was reportedly disappointed by the novel’s copious gore and skewing of Starling’s character, with Foster also dismayed by the latter. Although she said at the time that she was committed to another project, she later came clean and told Total Film, “Clarice meant so much to Jonathan and I, she really did, and I know it sounds kind of strange to say but there was no way that either of us could really trample on her.”

Hopkins did return, however, and the role of Clarice was recast with Julianne Moore taking the part. According to the “making-of” feature on the DVD, Angelina Jolie, Hilary Swank, and Cate Blanchett were all considered as well. However, Hopkins personally lobbied for Moore after working with her in Surviving Picasso.

“In instances like this, the comparisons are inevitable and of course there’s some apprehension about it, because Jodie was really, really fantastic… I mean, she’s a great actress,” said Moore on the DVD. “But it’s a different movie, so that’s the way I have to approach it.”

An unbilled, unrecognizable Gary Oldman played the disfigured, malevolent Verger, while Ray Liotta took the role of Krendler. Inheriting the director’s chair was Ridley Scott, of Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator fame, while the script was handled initially by David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) and then again by a major Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) rewrite. With all that talent, the budget was said to exceed $100 million.

But there was a problem: that ending. While Scott found a certain baroque tone that echoed Harris’ book in some ways, and was perfectly happy to retain the gutting of Detective Pazzi (played by Giancarlo Giannini), the wild boars, and even the cooking of Krendler’s brains by Lecter–a scene which ranks high on the all-time insane list–there was no way the filmmakers were going to alienate audiences by having Clarice Starling eat those brains and then make love to the doctor. Not a chance.

“I couldn’t take that quantum leap emotionally on behalf of Starling,” Ridley Scott told the Guardian at the time. “Certainly, on behalf of Hannibal–I’m sure that’s been in the back of his mind for a number of years. But for Starling, no. I think one of the attractions about Starling to Hannibal is what a straight arrow she is.”

In the film, Clarice does not dine with Lecter and does not fall into the drug-induced hypnosis of the book. With the law closing in on them, Lecter finally professes his love for Starling, and when she manages to handcuff the two of them together so that he cannot escape, he sacrifices either his own hand or at least a finger (it’s never made clear) to slip out of the cuffs and escape into the night.

When we last see him, he’s on a plane to a destination unknown and he’s feeding a slice of leftover Krendler to a young boy seated next to him. Starling remains behind, her future also unknown.

Hannibal, the movie, was released nearly 10 years to the day that The Silence of the Lambs arrived in theaters. The R-rated movie scored $58 million in its opening weekend, the highest opening for a film with that rating until The Passion of the Christ came out in 2004. The movie ended up earning $165 million in the U.S. and a total of $351 million worldwide, good enough for 10th highest gross of that year.

Critics were less kind than audiences, with the film scoring just 39 percent at Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews were split along the same lines as those for the book. While some critics praised the film’s style and audacity, others bemoaned the lack of great character interaction and thematic resonance that made The Silence of the Lambs a masterpiece.

And it was true: Hannibal, as both a movie and a book, exhibits the same strengths and suffers from the same problems. The projects are stylish, exquisitely written/produced, and possessed of a fair amount of black humor and boldness. But putting Lecter front and center, while robbing Starling of her agency and motivation, creates a box from which the story cannot escape. Both characters are offscreen (so to speak) for long stretches while the Verger and Pazzi stories play out, and the story is so damning of essentially all of humanity that it’s hard to get a handle on anybody.

Yet both the book and the movie were monster hits, so if Harris really did intend to stop Lecter in his tracks with that bizarre ending, he failed.

The Aftermath of Hannibal

Producer Dino de Laurentiis insisted on making more Lecter movies. First he ramped up a faithful remake of Red Dragon, this time under its original title and with Hopkins once again in the role of Lecter, joined by Edward Norton as Will Graham and Ralph Fiennes as killer Francis Dolarhyde. Directed by Brett Ratner, the film grossed $93 million in the U.S. and $209 million worldwide, with critics again giving it mixed reviews but actually rating it higher (68 percent) than Hannibal.

De Laurentiis demanded more, and told Harris he’d move forward without him if the author did not wish to be involved. So Harris wrote a novel and a screenplay at the same time: Hannibal Rising, which explored–in excruciating detail��Hannibal’s entire early life, robbing him once and for all of any mystery he might have clung to. The film also didn’t really work, with French actor Gaspard Ulliel playing the young cannibal. He ultimately became the George Lazenby of the franchise. The movie was a dud all around, grossing just a paltry $82 million worldwide.

That seemed to be the end of the meal for Lecter, until he was resurrected again in the form of Mads Mikkelsen in the NBC-TV series Hannibal. The series, which ran for three years and featured elements of Red Dragon and the book Hannibal in addition to original material, was acclaimed for its macabre tone and painterly production values. Yet it never became more than a cult favorite, with ratings unable to sustain it past three seasons (although talk persists of a revival). Yet another TV series, Clarice, entered on special agent Starling in the years between Silence and Hannibal, also just premiered on CBS All Access to mixed reviews.

Even if Thomas Harris wanted to strip Hannibal Lecter of his popular veneer and make him a monster again with Hannibal, it didn’t really work. He left us instead with his most bizarre book to date and a movie that has its own depraved charms, yet ultimately pales next to its predecessors. And in the end, Harris may not quite be done with his most famous creation yet. While discussing Cari Mora, his latest novel, and the first in 38 years not involving Lecter, Harris teased the Times that “the Hannibal character still occurs to me, and I wonder sometimes what it’s up to.”

Perhaps creator and creation will once again sit down to dinner. Someday.

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caseysbell · 6 years ago

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW with DARRELL KING Was writing something you’ve always known you wanted to do? Yes! I really liked both drawing & writing as a kid, but I just stuck with writing as I grew older. Anyone(s) who you contribute to you wanting to be a writer? The authors, Edgar Rice Burroughs {Tarzan}, Donald Goines {Kenyatta’s Revenge}, Stephen King {The Shining}, K’wan {Road Dawgz} What was your first book published? Give a brief synopsis. “Mackdaddy: Legacy of a Gangsta” A tale about to young New Yorkers, whose parents relocates to Los Angeles, where they become involved in L.A.’s dangerous street gang culture. Set in the 1970s and early 1980s. What inspired you to write this book? The motion pictures, “Colors”, “Menace to Society” and the gangsta rap group N.W.A. What was your feeling the first time you held your first published book in your hands? The feeling was unbelievably ecstatic! What is you latest book? Brief synopsis. The latest novel is actually a novella that I've published as a indie publisher. It's penned by a bright young author named Lakiesha Carter. Her novella is dubbed “Summer Madness”. It tells the tale of a young FBI agent dispatched to Miami in order to bring two warring drug cartels to justice, however in doing so he falls for the beautiful daughter of one of the very criminals whom he is stalking. She seduces him and a dangerous turn of events begins. Are you working on anything new? All the time! Are you drawn to any specific genre or are you game for anything? Though I primarily write urban/street fiction, I also both write & publish a variety of genres, including but limited to; Horror, Thrillers, Sci~Fi etc. Between writing, publishing, and marketing, what was the most difficult for you? Marketing is super fun, but can have it's challenges as well. Do you have any unique marketing ideas to share with your fellow authors? Yes. I generally also love to make people laugh with my “Darrell King’s Dank Ass Memes!” 😂😂😂 Darrell-King-DANK-MEMES-375422213220270/ What advice would you give someone who wants to publish their first book? Do you full measure of research first. This way you can avoid unnecessary pitfalls. Believe me I know. If you weren’t a writer what would you be? A Youtube celebrity Where can we find you and your books (website, email, social media, etc.)? Okay here it is… my Facebook url. https://www.facebook.com/darrell.king.39 Anything else you would like to add that was not covered? Well yes, I just want to say thank you for extending me the opportunity to interview with you and your audience! I look forward to all of those book reviews and laughing out loud at my hilarious dank ass memes! “Live, Laugh & Read!”

#books #book readers #reading #book lovers #bookworm #book nerd #author #books to read #fiction #Darrell King #bookstores #publisher #publishing #bok publishing #reading books

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brigdh · 8 years ago

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Reading Wednesday

The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island by Mac Griswold. A fascinating piece of microhistory focused on a single family farm in Eastern Long Island. The Sylvester Manor, as it's now called, was first settled by an English-Dutch family in 1652, and the current house dates to the 1730s. And yet was still being lived in as a normal family home! Griswold, the author, literally stumbled over the house while rowing around Long Island and made friends with the current owners, eventually even convincing them to allow multiple seasons of archaeological excavation in their front yard. The book is based on those excavations, as well as historical research, family legends, and Griswold's own speciality as a landscape historian (she was particularly interested in how the various trees and shrubs came to the plantation). Although there's three centuries of history to cover, the focus is very much on the first generation of the family, with everyone later than 1801 getting short shrift. Which was fine by me, since that's the period I was most interested in. Griswold makes a valiant effort to put the focus on the enslaved Africans and Native Americans of the plantation, but inevitably there's simply many more documents and details available about the white masters. I think she does a good job with what she has to work with, and does produce some fascinating finds, but it's just not much in comparison to the European history. As is, sadly, so often the case. Sylvester Manor was a northern provisioning plantation, which means that it grew the food, bred the horses, and crafted the barrels necessary for the running of their partnered sugar plantation down on Barbados. The history of Northern slavery has been mostly forgotten (or erased, depending on your perspective), and this book does an excellent job of demonstrating how closely tied together North and South were economically, rather than the antagonist perspective you get from many simplistic histories of the Civil War. A good book, though I'm still searching for my one ideal history of NYC slavery. (For a comparison, if you want to read just one book about slavery in the NYC area, I'd highly recommend this one over last week's New York Burning.) The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World by Abigail Tucker. Despite loving my two cats very much, and enjoying watching YouTube cat videos as much as any person on the internet, I am not actually one to read many books about cats. Everything from cozy cat mysteries to true-life inspirational cats turns me off. In fact, a cat on the cover is more likely to make me turn a book down than to pick it up. (I might make an exception for I Could Pee on This, and Other Poems by Cats.) And yet here I am, reading a book about cats! The Lion in the Living Room is a pop-science book (very much in the style of Mary Roach or Sarah Vowell) about the history of cats. Her main topic is how they became domesticated – or if they even are domesticated – looking at the archaeology, biology, and history of humans' relationship with cats. She also covers topics from how good cats actually are at controlling rats and mice (spoiler: not very), Victorian cat shows, newly developed breeds, the impact of cats on the environment, the rise of the NTR (Neuter-Trap-Release) approach to controlling street cat populations, the history of the LolCat meme, toxoplasmosis (the parasite in cat's urine that might attract sufferers to cats), Egyptian religion, and interviews internet star Lil Bub. There's a ton of fun and fascinating facts sprinkled throughout the book. I particularly liked it for its straightforward scientific approach to cats, without much fluffiness, which unfortunately seems to be causing many negative reviews (I guess if being told that housecats are massively contributing to the extinction of birds and small mammals hurts your feelings, this may not be the book for you. Though I don't know how any reasonably well-informed adult doesn't already know that). Highly recommended for a breezy look at the history and science of cats. The Resurrectionist by Matthew Guinn. A novel I'd been stumbling across in different bookstores for the last several months, always being intrigued by the cover but never quite enough to buy it. And then I found it for $2 in a second-hand store and finally brought it home. Well, I'm glad I only paid $2. In 1999, Jacob Thacker is a doctor with the South Carolina Medical College, currently stuck on administrative duty as he recovers from a Xanax addiction. This past makes it easy for the Dean to blackmail him when a construction team uncovers dozens of human skeletons in the college's basement. Jacob is ordered to cover it up without the press finding out, even if that means reburying the bodies somewhere secret. In alternating chapters the book jumps back to the 1850s and 60s to tell the story of Nemo Johnston, first enslaved and then free, who is also employed by the South Carolina Medical College. The school's very first Dean used Nemo as 'resurrectionist', a grave robber with the task of procuring dead bodies, mostly of other black men and women, for the school's students to practice on. Nemo is, of course, the source of the skeletons Jacob is being forced to deal with. Jacob is kind of a terrible human being. He refers to his partner as a "woman in a man's world" because she's a lawyer; describes an ethnically Japanese coworker in this way: "Janice is as American as he is, but he can never help feeling that there is some reserve of samurai in her, some native allegiance passed down in the genes, that views him as the foreigner every time they meet"; and, when he first learns about the existence of Nemo, calls him "the poor, dumb bastard". It was around that last line when I decided that the author was deliberately writing Jacob as a dick, and perhaps that is the case since Jacob's entire plotline revolves around gaining enough courage and empathy to not accede to the cover-up. But since it takes being fired, blackballed, and rescued from his ensuing suicidal despair to consider that, hey, maybe the current African-American community has a right to their ancestors' remains!, I think the author drastically underestimated how incredibly horrible Jacob comes off as. Even if that wasn't the case, Nemo's story is simply vastly more interesting than Jacob's. Unfortunately he gets much less page time and not really a plot arc so much as a series of random vignettes at different times of his life. At one point he gets elevated to the role of teacher – a black professor of a medical college! in the South! before the Civil War! – but how this came about or his feelings regarding it are never explained. And some of what little page time he gets is taken up by the story of white nurse Sara Thacker, who (spoiler, I suppose, but it's super obvious from page one) turns out to be Jacob's great-great-grandmother. I think Guinn was trying to do something about class or women's rights with this idea, but the plotline honestly is so thin that it feels like a last-minute addition which never got fleshed out enough to be worthwhile. At least Nemo doesn't turn out to be Jacob's great-great-grandfather, because I honestly spent at least fifty pages terrified that a tragic mulatto novel had somehow been published in 2014. Overall: interesting premise, terrible execution.

(LJ post for easier comments | DW, ditto)

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dazzledbybooks · 4 years ago

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The first in an fantasy duology inspired by West African folklore in which a grieving crown princess and a desperate refugee find themselves on a collision course to murder each other despite their growing attraction. For Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. But when a vengeful spirit abducts Malik’s younger sister, Nadia, as payment into the city, Malik strikes a fatal deal—kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom. But Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. Her mother, the Sultana, has been assassinated; her court threatens mutiny; and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic . . . requiring the beating heart of a king. And she knows just how to obtain one: by offering her hand in marriage to the victor of the Solstasia competition. When Malik rigs his way into the contest, they are set on a course to destroy each other. But as attraction flares between them and ancient evils stir, will they be able to see their tasks to the death? Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49629448-a-song-of-wraiths-and-ruin Amazon: https://amzn.to/3bb61Do B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-song-of-wraiths-and-ruin-roseanne-a-brown/1134858719?ean=9780062891495 iTunes: https://books.apple.com/book/a-song-of-wraiths-ruin/id1478613303 Bookdepository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Song-Wraiths-Ruin-Roseanne-Brown/9780062891495?ref=grid-view&qid=1587062543544&sr=1-1 Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/a-song-of-wraiths-and-ruin-1 Google Books: https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Roseanne_A_Brown_A_Song_of_Wraiths_and_Ruin?id=AQAAAEBs_nG-DM Excerpt: https://aerbook.com/books/A_Song_of_Wraiths_and_Ruin-261829.html?social=1&retail=1&emailcap=0 Review: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown is the first book in a new young adult fantasy duology inspired by West African folklore. I was so excited to dive into this book. I have been looking forward to it for months. This book takes a bit to get into at first because there is just so much world building and introduction to the characters and their lives in the beginning. I really liked every second of it. The folklore behind this story is amazing. I really found myself wanting to know more. I think the gods and creatures are very interesting and I look forward to reading the sequel. Let's talk about love. I feel like the "love" or "relationship" between Malik and Karina came across very insta-love. I really wish it had more depth to it. Don't get me wrong I think they would be great together, I just wish we had a bit more of a build up vs jumping right into that relationship. Let me also say that romance doesn't play a huge part in this book. I am not too worried about it either. When it came to the magic system, I do with is was explained a bit more. We get so much explanation of the characters and the world that I felt like the magic system was a bit lacking. It wasn't explained to the reader why magic wasn't common and it wasn't explained why some people randomly get magic. I definitely feel like the magic system is lacking and it leaves the reader with a lot of questions. \ Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I will be participating in a reread starting June 12 with a group of people. Why would I want to read a book I just finished? Sometimes when I liked an ARC so much, I like to reread a finished copy to see if anything changed. Other times, I just really want to reread the book. I look forward to diving into this book again ASAP. Definitely check out A Song of Wraiths and Ruin. Pre-order Campaign: Link to the pre-order submission form: bit.ly/ASOWARCampaign A pre-order/order from any retailer or a request to your local library will get you: * A bookmark! * 2 character cards featuring Karina and Malik! * A limited edition signed bookplate * An exclusive digital fairy tale from the A SONG OF WRAITHS AND RUIN world! An order from indie bookstore Books With a Past will get you: * A bookmark! * 2 character cards featuring Karina and Malik! * A limited edition signed bookplate * An exclusive digital fairy tale from the A SONG OF WRAITHS AND RUIN world! * A handwritten note and personalization from the author! Rules: * You must submit proof of purchase/library request. Screenshots and photos of receipts are fine. * Only orders and library requests dated through June 30, 2020 are eligible * Only orders made through Books With a Past (https://ift.tt/3dLSqUg) will receive the note and personalization. * All swag will be sent out on a rolling basis starting June 2nd * Entrants under the age of 18 must obtain parent/guardian permission before entering About the Author: Roseanne “Rosie” A. Brown was born in Kumasi, Ghana and immigrated to the wild jungles of central Maryland as a child. Writing was her first love, and she knew from a young age that she wanted to use the power of writing—creative and otherwise—to connect the different cultures she called home. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor’s in Journalism and was also a teaching assistant for the school’s Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her journalistic work has been featured by Voice of America among other outlets. On the publishing side of things, she has worked as an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing. Rosie was a 2017 Pitch Wars mentee and 2018 Pitch Wars mentor. Never content to stay in any one place for too long, Rosie currently teaches in Japan, where in her free time she can usually be found exploring the local mountains, explaining memes to her students, or thinking about Star Wars. Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18395190.Roseanne_A_Brown Website: https://roseanneabrown.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosiesrambles Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosiesrambles/?hl=en Giveaway: Prize: Win an ASOWAR bookplate, bookmark, two trading cards, and access to the exclusive short story (INT) Starts: June 2nd 2020 Ends: June 16th 2020 a Rafflecopter giveaway Tour Schedule: http://fantasticflyingbookclub.blogspot.com/2020/04/tour-schedule-song-of-wraiths-and-ruin.html June 2nd The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club - Welcome Post June 3rd BookCrushin - Story Behind The Cover + Instagram Moonlight Rendezvous - Review + Favourite Quotes A Dream Within A Dream - Review Small Stained Pages - Review + Playlist + Favourite Quotes Vee Reading - Review Lit lemon books - Review + Favourite Quotes June 4th The Paperback Voyager - Review Colby Wilkens - Review Kait Rose - Review + Favourite Quotes Belle's Archive - Review + Video Interview Sage Shelves - Review SeizeThePage - Review + Playlist Paws and Paperbacks - Review June 5th Bookish Looks - Tell Your Story in GIFs Write, Read, Repeat - Review Books.Bags.Burgers - Review + Favourite Quotes Sometimes Leelynn Reads - Review + Dream Cast Black Bookwyrm Reads - Review Enthralled Bookworm - Review + Mood Board by blogger June 6th A Court of Coffee and Books - Review + Favourite Quotes Utopia State of Mind - Review Morgan Vega - Review + Favourite Quotes Tea.Books.Magic - Review + Instagram Caitsbooks - Review + Favourite Quotes + Mood Board by blogger Books and Ladders - Review June 7th Kait Plus Books - Character Interview Hooked on Bookz - Review + Favourite QuotesBiblioJoJo - Review The Layaway Dragon - Review + Favourite Quotes In Between Book Pages - Review + Favourite Quotes Empty Kingdom - Review + Favourite Quotes + Mood Board by blogger June 8th A Gingerly Review - Mood Board bforbookslut - Review L.M. Durand - Review + Mood Board by blogger Dazzled by Books - ReviewConfessions of a YA Reader - Review + Favourite Quotes The Reading Corner for All - Review

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thenatureofpages · 5 years ago

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Tweet Cute: An Absolutely Adorable Rom-Com for the Ages

*Disclaimer: I received this book as an ARC courtesy of both St. Martin’s in exchange for participating in the blog tour.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

A Non-Spoilery Review by The Nature of Pages

Genre: YA Contemporary

Favorite Quote(s):

Pepper smiles, then—actually smiles, instead of the little smirk she usually does. It’s not startling, but what it does to me in that moment kind of is.

Before I can examine the unfamiliar lurch in my stomach, the bell rings and knocks the smile right off her face.

Synopsis:

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming — mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.

Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

All’s fair in love and cheese — that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life — on an anonymous chat app Jack built.

As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate — people on the internet are shipping them?? — their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.

Rating: 5 Stars

What Made This Book Unique:

Where do I even start? The fast-paced banter of the characters, the incredible twitter war, from start to end this book is a rom-com for the ages.

Okay, buckle in because not only was this one of my favorite reads of the year, this is one of my favorite reads of all time. *fangirls screeches*

The characters. The characters. Holy cow, everyone, I was rooting for the characters from page one. Pepper, type A perfectionist is so incredibly easy to relate to, from her desire to keep everything under control to the cute baking moments we get to see. She’s also a blogger, so that’s super neat! Books with bloggers in them are my weakness.

Our favorite soft class clown boy Jack is so easy to find adorable, y’all. He’s genuinely funny and had me laughing out loud as I read his sections. The internal sarcastic comments we get from his point of view are so great – it’s a battle of wits with these two.

Also, they’re all Hufflepuffs??? Can we all screech heck yes in unison?!

I’m such an absolute dork for this book that I actually had the opportunity to interview the author herself, Emma Lord!

Our new writing royalty herself!

Hi, Emma! Thank you so much for letting me ask you a few questions!

Q: Did the plot or the characters come to you first when writing this novel?

A: This one was an odd one for me because the plot came LONG before the characters, in the form of a tweet I made in 2017 joking that there should be a rom-com about social media managers from warring fast food chains falling in love. Usually I’ll think of a character first and build plot around them, but I had to go through about five iterations of characters before landing on Pepper and Jack.

Q: What was your favorite part about the process of writing Tweet Cute?

A: For sure writing with my friends! We try to meet up once a week and are constantly bopping around in the group chat. I wrote Tweet Cute in a month and a half while holding down a full-time job, so my brain was basically just leaking memes by the end of it, but those sessions we spent writing in coffee shops after work were my best memories of the process.

Q: As a debut author, what was a surprise when it came to writing your book?

Uh, people READING it. That was profoundly surprising to me. Like, logistically you understand that people are going to read it if it’s getting published, but usually I’ll write something, stick it on a fan fiction platform anonymously, and that’ll be the end of it. I’m still not over the surprise any time someone reads the book and tags me in something about it!

As you can see, Emma Lord is not only a fantastically wonderful writer, she’s also incredibly sweet! Make sure to check my Twitter (@natureofpages) as the month goes on – I’ll be reposting other blog posts with her other interviews as they get posted!

Hopefully by now, you’re as excited to read this book as I was, so here’s a sneak peak!

JACK

“Look.” I glance into the classroom, where Ethan is thoroughly distracted by Stephen and no longer keeping an eye on us. “I may have . . . overreacted.”

Pepper shakes her head. “I told you. I get it. It’s your family.”

“Yeah. But it’s also—well, to be honest, this has been kind of good for business.”

Pepper’s brow furrows, that one little crease returning. “What, the tweets?”

“Yeah.” I scratch the back of my neck, sheepish. “Actually, we had a line out the door yesterday. It was kind of intense.”

“That’s . . . that’s good, right?”

The tone of my voice is clearly not matching up with the words I’m saying, but if I’m being honest, I’m still wary of this whole overnight business boom. And if I’m being honest, I’m even more wary of Pepper. If this really is as much of a family business as she claims it is—to the point where she’s helping run the Twitter handle, when even I know enough about corporate Twitter accounts to know entire teams of experienced people get paid to do that—then she might have had more of a hand in this whole recipe theft thing than she’s letting on.

The fact of the matter is, I can’t trust her. To the point of not knowing whether I can even trust her knowing how our business is doing, or just how badly we need it.

“Yeah, um, I guess.” I try to make it sound noncommittal. My acting skills, much like my breakfast-packing skills, leave much to be desired.

“So . . .”

“So.”

Pepper presses her lips into a thin line, a question in her eyes.

“So, I guess—if your mom really wants you to keep tweeting . . .”

“Wait. Yesterday you were pissed. Two minutes ago you were pissed.”

“I am pissed. You stole from us,” I reiterate. “You stole from an eighty-five-year-old woman.”

“I didn’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, but still. You’re them, and I’m . . . her. It’s like a choose your fighter situation, and we just happen to be the ones up to bat.”

“So you’re saying—you don’t not want me to keep this up?”

“The way I see it, you don’t have to make your mom mad, and we get a few more customers in the door too.”

Pepper takes a breath like she’s going to say something, like she’s going to correct me, but after a moment, she lets it go. Her face can’t quite settle on an expression, toeing the line between dread and relief.

“You’re sure?”

I answer by opening the container she handed me. The smell that immediately wafts out of it should honestly be illegal; it stops kids I’ve never even spoken to in their tracks.

“Are you a witch?” I ask, reaching in and taking a bite of one. It’s like Monster Cake, the Sequel—freaking Christmas in my mouth. I already want more before I’ve even managed to chew. My eyes close as if I’m experiencing an actual drug high—and maybe I am, because I forget myself entirely and say, “This might even be better than our Kitchen Sink Macaroons.”

“Kitchen Sink Macaroons?”

Eyes open again. Yikes. Note to self: dessert is the greatest weapon in Pepper’s arsenal. I swallow my bite so I can answer her.

“It’s kind of well-known, at least in the East Village. It even got in some Hub Seed roundup once. I’d tell you to try some, but you might steal the recipe, so.”

Pepper smiles, then—actually smiles, instead of the little smirk she usually does. It’s not startling, but what it does to me in that moment kind of is.

Before I can examine the unfamiliar lurch in my stomach, the bell rings and knocks the smile right off her face. I follow just behind her, wondering why it suddenly seems too hot in here, like they cranked the air up for December instead of October. I dismiss it by the time I get to my desk—probably just all the Twitter drama and the glory of So Sorry Blondies getting to my head.

“One rule,” she says, as we sit in the last two desks in the back of the room.

I raise my eyebrows at her.

“We don’t take any of it personally.” She leans forward on her desk, leveling with me, her bangs falling into her face. “No more getting mad at each other. Cheese and state.”

“What happens on Twitter stays on Twitter,” I say with a nod of agreement. “Okay, then, second rule: no kid gloves.”

Mrs. Fairchild is giving that stern look over the room that never quite successfully quiets anyone down. Pepper frowns, waiting for me to elaborate.

“I mean—no going easy on each other. If we’re going to play at this, we’re both going to give it our A game, okay? No holding back because we’re . . .”

Friends, I almost say. No, I’m going to say. But then—

“I’d appreciate it if even one of you acknowledged the bell with your silence,” Mrs. Fairchild grumbles.

I turn to Pepper, expecting to find her snapping to attention the way she always does when an adult comes within a hundred feet of disciplining her. But her eyes are still intent on me, like she is sizing something up—like she’s looking forward to something I haven’t anticipated yet.

“All right. No taking it personally. And no holding back.”

She holds her hand out for me to shake again, under the desk so Mrs. Fairchild won’t see it. I smile and shake my head, wondering how someone can be so aggressively seventeen and seventy-five at the same time, and then I take it. Her hand is warm and small in mine, but her grip is surprisingly firm, with a pressure that almost feels like she’s still got her fingers wrapped around mine even after we let go.

I turn back to the whiteboard, a ghost of a smirk on my face. “Let the games begin.”

*flails* AAAAHHHHH so many feels just from that snippet alone!

Tweet Cute is such an adorable cute rom-com, full of witty banter, spectacular characters, a ship name to die for, and a hilarious Twitter war! I, for one, will be heading to the book store the day it comes out and already can’t wait for the next Emma Lord book!

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord is hitting the shelves on January 21st, 2020!

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hermanwatts · 5 years ago

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Sensor Sweep: Witherwing, Lankhmar, Mid-List Collapse

Writers (Less Known Writes): David William Jarrett was the son of Mervyn Spencer Jarrett (1906-1986), a works engineer, and his wife Olive Elizabeth Jenkins (1907-1997), who were married in the summer of 1940. He had one older brother. Jarrett’s novel was Witherwing (London: Sphere, 1979: New York: Warner, 1979). It begins as a kind of heroic fantasy novel in which Witherwing, the youngest of six princes of Tum-Barlum (the name clearly modeled on Twm Barlwm, the name of a hill in south Wales, but that has no significance to the story).

RPG (Walker’s Retreat): With last weekend’s Big Brand marketing event masquerading as a fan convention came the announcement–with no release date–of the fourth installment of its iconic isometric dark fantasy action RPG franchise. You know which one I’m talking about, and it’s not the MMORPG. I thought I’d take the time to give you all some alternatives that you may have overlooked or forgotten about, beside Path of Exile and adaptation of other Big Brand properties. This is not an exhaustive list; most of these will be linked to their Steam entries, but I advise you to look at GOG also if you want DRM-free versions or see if you can buy used physical copies.

News (Niche Gamer): On October 22nd, the United States House of Representatives voted 410 votes to 6 (16 abstained) in favor of the CASE Act- dubbed the “Anti-Meme law” by its critics. The “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019” was introduced by Representative Hakeem Jeffries (Democrat, New York) on January 5th, 2019. The bill’s purpose was to help content creators utilize a small claims court for copyright infringement, as the current law means copyright disputes must go through the more expensive federal courts.

Publishing (Kairos): Where have we seen this blockbuster-chasing mentality before? Oh yeah, in the likewise floundering Hollywood film and AAA video game industries. As Western civilization rapidly burns through the cultural capital inherited from Christendom, expect to see more industries falling into hit-obsessed death spirals. It’s a seductive trap. A company stumbles upon a big hit, scrambles to replicate what is in fact a black swan event, and cannibalizes its own seed corn in the process. It’s an old story.

Comic Books (Paint Monk’s Library): Since Paint Monk’s Library began covering Marvel’s new Conan the Barbarian comic, I’ve received a slew of emails and private messages, mainly from people agreeing with our reviewers about the direction the House of Ideas has taken with such an iconic property. But for every five or six encouraging emails, I get one message from an angry reader telling me that I’m out of touch and if I don’t like Marvel’s new comics to quit reading and “go back to the nursing home to read Bugs Bunny” (Yes, I really did receive that email last month).

Writers (PulpFest): Not long after midnight on the morning of November 5, 2019, the pulp community lost one of its cornerstones. Tom Johnson passed away after a long battle with cancer. Tom and his wife of many years, Ginger Johnson, were the longtime editors and publishers of ECHOES, a fanzine about the pulp magazines. For nearly twenty years, Tom and Ginger could be counted on for a new issue of ECHOES every other month.

Star Wars (Digital Bibliophilia): Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is a story that takes place about a year after the events of Star Wars (or A New Hope if you prefer). It begins with Luke and R2-D2 aboard Luke’s X-Wing fighter, and Leia and C3PO aboard a Y-Wing travelling to the planet Circarpous IV to a meeting with an underground movement that had arisen against the Galactic Empire on that planet. They are to formally offer their promise of support from the Rebellion Alliance and encourage the movement rise against it’s oppressors.

Art (DMR Books): Howard Pyle has rightly been called “The Father of American Illustration.” Before Pyle there was a virtual nothingness when it came to American art. After, there was—perhaps—a flowering of painterly excellence unparalleled in the entire history of art. In the late 1890s, Pyle established various schools of art in Wilmington, Delaware and beyond. Pyle’s movement has been called the “Brandywine School” in reference to the river that ran along the banks next to Pyle’s various artistic seminaries.

Cinema (Jstor): Long before First National Pictures began production on Doyle’s dinosaur story, a young marble cutter named Willis O’Brien was sculpting tiny T-Rex figurines. According to The New York Times, O’Brien began experimenting with animation models during an apparently slow day at work. Inspired by his background in boxing, he molded a mini fighter out of clay. His coworker whipped up another clay champion, and pretty soon the two men were acting out a full boxing match with their primitive action figures. Lo and behold, O’Brien’s next production was a short test film featuring a cave man and a dinosaur (made of modeling clay and wooden joints) shot atop the Bank of Italy Building in San Francisco.

Author Interview (Pulp Hermit): It’s not easy thinking of Will Murray as a new Pulp Author. William Patrick Murray is an author everyone should be familiar with in the new pulp movement, and definitely known throughout pulp fandom since the 1970s. He should be familiar to everyone in the new pulp community. He is one of the most prolific and knowledgeable people in the field of pulp fiction. The author of well over one hundred books, he has penned 40 Destroyer novels, and two-dozen Doc Savage novels (many based on Lester Dent’s uncompleted stories), plus King Kong, Tarzan, and The Shadow. He has also contributed to the Executioner and Mars Attacks, as well as numerous anthologies.

Science Fiction (Quillette): But this is not the spirit of our moment. Instead, as speculative fiction becomes more diverse, the sense that it must be corrected grows, and author and art are evaluated together. There is a notable asymmetry in this evaluation. Most fiction readers are women, and many fiction genres are dominated by women. Men who write romance novels or cozy mysteries must write under female pseudonyms, because the audiences for these genres will largely avoid books by men.

Writing (Pulprev): When writing a tactical thriller with heavy action elements, you have to get around to talking about the hardware. Tools drive what the characters can and can’t do, and weapons are a big part of that. Also, guns are cool. When writing guns in fiction, a common approach is to simply drop generic terms like ‘rifle’ or ‘pistol’ and leave it at that. Some slightly more sophisticated writers drop brand and/or gun names: FN SCAR, Beretta M9, Barrett M82. It may well work for them. Most readers just want to get on with the action without being bogged down in too much detail. But I prefer a more sophisticated option.

Pulp Fiction (Rough Edges): As you know if you’ve read this blog much, H. Bedford-Jones is one of my favorite pulp authors and indeed one of my favorite authors, period. I think he was at his strongest with historical adventure novels, so it’s no surprise that YOUNG KIT CARSON is a top-notch yarn that’s been out of print since 1941, when it appeared in the fiction supplement of a Canadian newspaper. A copy of it was discovered recently, and it’s about to be reprinted by Bold Venture Press.

Fiction (Tentaculii): I’d never heard of Ivy Frost before, but I like the sound of him. These gun-blazing mystery-science stories all appeared in Clues Detective Stories magazine from 1934-37 (not on Archive.org), so one assumes that Lovecraft was aware of them. One wonders how may ‘little nods to Lovecraft’ Wandrei might have snuck into the stories.

Fritz Leiber (Goodman Games): You might have heard about our recent DCC Lankhmar release. It’s a wonderfully in-depth take on the classic novels by Fritz Lieber, and licensed by his estate. If you are a fan of those novels, you might have heard of something called Rat-Snake. In the back alleys of the city of Lankhmar, money is won and lost, and lives are sometimes wagered as the ultimate prize, all on the roll of the dice. All part of a game called Rat-Snake.

Art (DMR Books): Stephen Fabian was selling macabre artworks very early in his career, batting one out of the park with his classic cover for Whispers #2 in 1973. He would go on to do more work for Whispers over the course of that groovy decade, including the first-ever illo for Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks.” Stephen did several evocative paintings for Arkham House during that period, as well as covers for Centaur Press and Donald M. Grant. All in all, the 1970s were a great preview of the glorious horror art Mr. Fabian would produce in the 1980s.

Gary Gygax (Warp Scream): I had the opportunity to interview Gary a number of years back, when I worked at CGM. I very much enjoyed talking to him, and it was fascinating to hear the history of D&D and gaming in general from his perspective. Like many people here, I’ve been a D&D geek for ages; I thought others might be interested to read what he had to say about the history of it all.

Gaming (Walker’s Retreat): It is nice when the Fake Gamers out themselves so readily, but this performative virtual signalling is really meant to be part of the gatekeeping campaign to push their enemies–those not of the SJW Death Cult–out of the subculture and hobby, or at least its public-facing elements, so that they can control the narrative surrounding tabletop RPGs. Narrative control then becomes cultural control and feeds into political control.

Sensor Sweep: Witherwing, Lankhmar, Mid-List Collapse published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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israel-jewish-news · 7 years ago

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FOCUS: After Defeating Gary Cohn, Peter Navarro Is On The Rise Again

New Post has been published on http://hamodia.com/2018/03/08/focus-defeating-gary-cohn-peter-navarro-rise/

FOCUS: After Defeating Gary Cohn, Peter Navarro Is On The Rise Again

National Trade Council adviser Peter Navarro at the White House. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

President Donald Trump’s nationalist trade adviser Peter Navarro has staged a startling comeback.

Last year he nearly disappeared from view when his small operation was subsumed under the White House’s National Economic Council, which was headed by his rival, Gary Cohn, the free-trader who was president of Goldman Sachs. Now Cohn’s on his way out while the steel and aluminum tariffs that Navarro advocates are on the verge of becoming national policy.

And he might even take over Cohn’s job. It “absolutely” could happen, said Harry Kazianis, a friend of Navarro who is director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest. “Trump’s going to look to Peter and say, ‘I know this guy. I can trust him.'”

One factor behind Navarro’s surprising resurrection is that Trump has taken renewed interest this year in trade and national security — Navarro’s issues — after having focused in 2017 on health care and tax cuts. The second factor is that Navarro is as relentless as a honey badger. He’s been in front of tv cameras repeatedly over the past week championing the tariffs. Trump plans to sign a proclamation over the tariffs Thursday.

After losing to Cohn in the White House turf wars, someone else might have packed up and gone home to California. Instead, Navarro kept working the issues and building the case for stronger action. Even now he’s not letting up, according to Michael Wessel, a steelworkers representative who speaks with him regularly.

“He is certainly excited about where he is and what’s going on because he has worked a long time to get here,” said Wessel. “But he’s running at warp speed and probably doesn’t have much time to think about it.”

Free-traders are elbowing one another aside to express their dismay about Navarro’s ascendancy — and Navarro welcomes their disdain. Although he holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard and taught the subject at the University of California-Irvine Paul Merage School of Business, Navarro accuses his fellow economists of blindly adhering to free-trade principles at the expense of national security.

“The president said very clearly that we can’t have a country without steel and aluminum industries, and I totally agree with him,” Navarro told Bloomberg on March 7. Echoing Trump, he added, “All the countries that trade with us are getting the better part of the deal.” He also said he is not on the list of candidates to replace Cohn.

Today’s Navarro has a monkish demeanor. He’s wiry, almost gaunt. Running shoes by the door of his office attests to his habit of running to work. He works such long hours that he stifled a laugh when a Bloomberg interviewer asked him about his “day” job. His closest administration ally is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a fellow trade nationalist.

Navarro’s not-so-secret weapon in the White House turf wars is that he has a lot in common with the president. They’re about the same age: Navarro is 68 and Trump 71. Also, neither backs down from a fight. “Peter has always been a contrarian, someone who’s never been afraid to defend his views vociferously,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

Most important, both Navarro and Trump are former Democrats who feel no compunction to stick to Republican orthodoxy on trade. Navarro was actually kind of a liberal once. He served in the Peace Corps, surfed, and later campaigned against uncontrolled real-estate development in the race for mayor of San Diego in 1992 — ironic now that he’s working for the world’s most famous developer. One poster for his 1996 congressional race read: “Peter Navarro. The Democrat Newt Gingrich fears most!”

Speaking to Bloomberg on March 7, Navarro heaped praise on his boss and described his own role as that of an enabler.

“This is the president’s vision. My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters,” Navarro said. He compared the White House to a successful football team. “The owner, the coach and the quarterback are all the president. The rest of us are all interchangeable parts.”

The interchangeable part labeled Peter Navarro got off to a strong start last year when Trump pulled the U.S. out of negotiations on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, one of his first acts in office. Navarro also spearheaded the president’s “Buy American, Hire American” initiative, which tightens enforcement of federal procurement rules and cracks down on alleged abuse of H-1B visas and other foreign-hiring programs. In April, Trump called Navarro “one of the greats at trying to protect our jobs.”

Then Navarro started to fade from view. Trump turned his attention to the unsuccessful effort to repeal Obamacare and after that raced to get tax cuts passed by the end of the year. John Kelly arrived as chief of staff at the end of July and restricted access to the Oval Office. In September, Kelly folded Navarro’s office into the National Economic Council. Navarro was required to copy his new boss, Cohn, on emails. He wasn’t invited on Trump’s state visit to China in November.

But Navarro never stopped pushing his agenda, which intertwines economics and military readiness and puts China at the heart of U.S. policy. He pressed the Pentagon to seek increased funding for Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, in part to keep open the factories in Ohio and Pennsylvania that make them, according to Wessel, who represents United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and is a congressional appointee on the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission.

He also argued successfully for the Pentagon to seek funding for another Littoral Combat Ship, again to keep the shipyards where they’re made afloat. And, according to Wessel, Navarro was behind Trump’s executive order requiring a broad review of the nation’s defense industrial base. It’s due in April.

Navarro has come a long way from his roots as a mainstream economist. He supported free trade in a 1984 book, “The Policy Game: How Special Interests and Ideologues Are Stealing America,” arguing that tariffs “protected the profits of a small core of domestic industries” while harming consumers. (He explains that because “the globalist erosion of the American economy” was just getting started, he hadn’t recognized it then.)

By 1993 he was expressing some misgivings. By the 2000s, China was on his radar.

He concluded that it owed its success to unfair trading practices. In 2006 he published The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought, How They Will Be Won. In 2011 he wrote Death by China: Confronting the Dragon — A Global Call to Action (co-authored with Greg Autry), which argued that the U.S. and China are on a trajectory for armed conflict.

Navarro essentially barged into the China-watcher community without an invitation. “Navarro is not known in any China circles,” James McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, told Foreign Policy magazine last year.

But it was “Death by China” that caught Trump’s attention. Trump provided a blurb for a 2012 documentary film based on the book: “Right on. … I urge you to see it.” The trailer features a knife, representing China, that’s plunged into a red, white and blue map of the U.S. Blood leaks from the tricolor corpse. “He gets criticized for the ‘Death by China’ meme, but he’s been way more correct about China than almost any other observer,” says Paul, the Alliance for American Manufacturing chief.

Plenty of observers wouldn’t agree with Paul that Navarro is correct on China, or much of anything else. That’s unlikely to bother someone who’s followed a convoluted path to power, and who revels in his outsider role: the economist and self-made China expert who’s regarded with suspicion by other economists and China experts. And in Trump’s White House, none of that hurts him a bit.

—

With assistance from Andrew Mayeda

#Trade

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woohooligancomics · 7 years ago

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Webcomic Whimsy: Parhelion

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! I've given a couple of interviews in the past, but this is my first experience with reviewing. If you have any suggestions for improvements, feel free to leave a note. If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Parhelion

Author: Riley Smith • Twitter • Tumblr

Site: ParhelionComic.com • Patreon

Genres: Experimental, Dystopian, SciFi, Space Opera, Black Comedy, Experimental, Surreal, Action/Adventure, Gay Space Pirates, A day in the life of a bargain-bin Han Solo

Rating: PG, T for Teen - adult situations, some language

Updates: ??

Synopsis: (from ParhelionComic.com/about) - The World’s Collective, an ambitious plan to unite the galaxy, has just formally collapsed. A despondent interpreter hires a pirate to retrieve some personal files from his office, and they hit it off. Meanwhile, wheels are turning throughout the galaxy, with all kinds of plans at cross-purposes. Warlords lock horns, Boltzmann Brains fight for freedom, and plenty of people just want some peace and quiet.

The first thing anyone is bound to notice about Parhelion is its experimental art style. I suspect this will be a case of "love it or hate it" with very few people in the undecided camp. It certainly has its appeal, with a kind of "baroque simplicity", (which in English means it looks more complicated than it is). Although later chapters get some monochromatic coloring, there's never full color and it might be better that way. Even when a character is human, the lines of the form often don't intersect, leaving a gap at a joint like a waist or elbow, so full color might look out of place. With alien characters, all bets are off, as there's barely a passing nod to notions of anatomy. One drawback to this style is the ambassador from the Planet of the Floor Lamps! (See, it's like Planet of the Apes but...)

A small side-note: so far, Riley is the only author I've reviewed who maintains an annotated synopsis of all his chapters. It's a nice touch if you'd like to see the whole outline of the story in advance.

If you don't mind an occasional character who looks like office furniture, there's a dystopian space opera here that you might enjoy, hot on the heels of a failed galactic government called the Collective. The first page opens with, "like it or not, civilization is built on stimulants, pornography and worse." I'm not sure if the author thinks poorly of porn or if they expect the reader to. I personally think porn is like other industries, there's some bad stuff to be had, but there are also unscrupulous insurance people making money off of the death or misfortune of others. So I won't personally single-out the porn industry as "bad stuff", and stimulants? Meh... coffee is a stimulant. But if you're expecting any porn in this comic, remember that any dick picks will inevitably look like a Tinkertoy with this style of art. (There isn't any porn, it's T for Teen.)

But I digress... that opening line is intended to set the mood of Parhelion's dystopian future. The main character, Peter, is jaded while not being entirely cynical, describing the recently collapsed Collective as "a beacon of hope, smothered at birth by a pack of vultures."

Peter meets his alien, soon-to-be partner, a translator named Cerril, at a bar. In fact, Peter interrupts Cerril's week-long alcoholic bender, mid-gargle-blaster. You see, Cerril's an ivory tower jackoff who used to work for the Collective, before it's untimely collapse just days or weeks before the story started. That's why he needs all the booze. What he didn't know is that Peter needs a translator.

This is also a good time to point out another small problem with the art style, which is, when you use straight, perpendicular lines for your dialog balloons, especially when you're drawing in black and white, the dialog can easily get lost in the illustration, like it does at the bottom of the above page. Or it can create parallel tangents or fake panels like at the top of the previous page.

There's also a fair amount of black comedy or "gallows humor" in Parhelion, like Peter insisting to terms for his own murder, specifically that it be an involved and painful mano-a-mano affair. And Riley occasionally gets technical. Unlike Star Wars in which the function of the protocol droid C-3PO is simply assumed, Riley stops for a couple pages to explain why Cerril's job title is "translator" instead of "office clerk". Oh, but I was wrong about the Tinkertoys...

Several pages are devoted to developing the characters for Peter and Cerril before there's been any real plot. Peter presents himself as a happy-go-lucky space pirate, a kind of bargain-bin Han Solo. And it turns out that the falling-down-drunk Cerril isn't entirely cynical either.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but I see a lot of what I feel is slow pacing in the webcomics I'm reviewing. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm being a little overly critical on this point. Having said that, I'm seventeen pages in and while I've gotten some good character development for Peter and Cerril, I still haven't seen any plot development beyond "you need to bring me the translator and you can't refuse because I'm your pirate-boss and you're in deep." For reference, a standard issue of a Marvel or DC title is twenty to twenty-four pages, so if this were one of their books, we'd be on the very last couple of pages with only just the basic character development covered.

That's when we see Peter's gnarly missing-eye scar... or is that mechanical? Hard to tell.

But I do think they make a good team... it's basically that bargain bin Han Solo teamed up with a drunken, curmudgeonly C-3PO.

Note that in the bottom half of this page, those are supposed to be fully human, factory-direct hands, with no modifications. It's that sort of thing that makes me say I think this art style will be fairly polarizing: you'll love it or hate it, there won't be a lot of indifference. The hand on the left looks like a bunch of straw sticking out of a sleeve and the one on the right looks like a garden rake. Yeah, he's a bargain bin Han Solo, but this picture makes him look like a badass, one-eyed, space-pirate scarecrow from the land of Oz.

At the beginning of their three-day trip, Cerril asked Peter to steal something for him. By day three, Cerril finally explains that it was just some personal files he wouldn't be able to retrieve from his offices after the Collective collapsed. That's when it's revealed that these particular space pirates are gay, although that reveal is weirdly subtle and kind of sprung on the reader out of the blue like a jump-scare in a horror movie, or maybe a Rickroll. (I'm bringin' back ALL the dated memes, bae!) Pete and Cerril mention "neck marks" without any indication they had been playing tonsil hockey, although that's preceded by some peculiar seating arrangements that weren't foreshadowed in any way. So in a storytelling sense, it feels like we went from teeth-clenched teamwork to the power of love while skipping the middle part where "I'm going to murder you in your sleep, you slaver" gradually becomes "let's slip into something more comfortable".

And then they touch-down on what appears to be literally the land of Oz, right off the yellow-brick road, just outside of the Emerald City. There's even an old-fashioned hand-made crossroads sign.

Just in time to let us know that three days alone in the ship wasn't nearly enough time for sex! Seriously, you need at least a week for a proper blowjob.

But if you thought Peter's missing eye looked painful, it's nothing compared to the hopelessly tangled earbuds that comprise the "face" of the tyrant known as the Basilisk.

Although some of the Baroqueness is rather nice.

We've had a few budget cuts, so the part of Parliament's architectural columns will be played by butt-plugs. (You can't unsee it! You're welcome.)

Starting in the second chapter, Riley starts getting creative with the lettering, occasionally replacing a character or two with an alien symbol. The only pattern I can see is that a particular letter or combination is always given the same symbol, so what would be "th" becomes a single symbol that vaguely resembles a J, making "the" look like "je". It's obviously not used for the purpose of censoring swearing, since the page starts with the phrase "fucking joke" (a priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into an orgy). Given that, I can only imagine that these random substitutions are purely for the purpose of adding an alien flavor to the narration or dialog of certain characters. Personally, I'm not on-board. Riley's already added some similar decoration around the dialog box, and I feel like that's the more appropriate way to create that flavor. These substitutions in the text keep interrupting my reading flow as I have to stop to workout what "video#at" or "fai#ful" mean. It's only a fraction of a second for any individual word, however even that fractional pause is noticeable and mildly irritating as a reader. Like I said, the style of this comic is experimental, and experimentation always comes with some risk and sometimes it pays off. I just don't feel like, as experiments go, this text experiment was a keeper. What do you think?

It isn't until the fourth page of chapter two that Peter and Cerril officially become partners, with a little light comedy that reminds me a little of C-3PO's pitch to uncle Owen in Star Wars IV, except that Cerril is arguing against going with Alison. (That may have a lot to do with my already saying Cerril reminds me of C-3PO.)

While the writing on this page is good and Cerril's body language is well done, the page as a whole has several trouble-spots. There are several ways the first panel could have been composed without letting the dialog cut into the top of Alison's head. While it's not hard to figure out in this particular case, dialog from a character off-camera is frequently shown as it is here in the 2nd and 3rd panel. This is problematic for a couple of reasons, one because there's no visual difference between these dialog boxes and a narration box. That's not confusing on this particular page, but I could easily see it becoming confusing on other pages. Second, and more importantly, I've seen a few more recent pages where this is done in a scene with three or more characters and it's not always apparent who's speaking. Use of colored dialog boxes or a small symbol indicating the character could resolve this issue, although as an artist myself, I would work a little harder to keep the speaking characters on-camera. I might still use the symbol on some infrequent occasions if I were having a really difficult time with the composition of a specific page. I just don't think the off-camera boxes should be a frequent occurrence... reserve them for when Dorothy finally meets the Wizard.

And on page six of the second chapter, we're finally on to our dynamic duo's first suicide mission (of many, natch). I'm pretty sure they have one of those hole-punch coupons, they get a free sandwich after every fifth suicide mission they complete. Loyalty is important, yo!

Don't worry though, the veteran Peter has a plan! Peter's plan is to show up unannounced to a definitely hostile, likely heavily armed facility, and say "Hi! I'm peter! Go fuck yourself!" Which, of course, works every time. No, seriously, nobody even mentions it being weird and they make plans with the manager of the hostile station to go get tacos later.

But Peter wants to to know you don't fuck with a space-pirate's tacos, you spineless corporate cuck!

And since Parhelion is more of a black comedy than an adventure (I'm sure it's in there somewhere), this taco tirade is the big mistake where shit gets real. (Yeah, no, it's totally not lazily waltzing in on a hostile, likely heavily armed base. That part was cake.)

I really like that dramatic last panel on page fifteen of chapter two, so that's where I'm going to end this review.

So there's my pitch. If you enjoy tongue-in-cheek space opera, surreal and experimental illustration, and gay space-pirates, it's worth a look at Parhelion!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review rules here.

If you enjoy my reviews and would like to help ensure I'm able to continue publishing them, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help me out by checking out and sharing my own webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thanks! Sam

#webcomic #review #scifi #space opera #black comedy #gallows humor #dystopian #GLBT #experimental #surreal

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mysteryshelf · 8 years ago

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BLOG TOUR - Murder on the Mullet Express

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Breakthrough Promotions. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

ABOUT THE BOOK

ISBN-13: 978-0-9964209-7-6 (Print),

978-0-9964209-8-3 (Kindle)

Mystery and Horror, LLC Paperback: pages

September 2016

Also available for Kindle

It’s 1926. The West Coast Development Company is staging its biggest land deal in Homosassa, Florida, selling pieces of a planned city to speculators who dream of a tropical paradise. Army nurse Cornelia Pettijohn takes leave to travel to Florida with her ancient uncle, who claims that he wants a warm winter home. When their car breaks down, they take the local train, The Mullet Express, into Homosassa. By the time they arrive, though, a passenger has been poisoned. A second murder victim boards the train later, iced down with the fish. Uncle Percival’s hidden agenda makes him the sheriff’s prime suspect. Cornelia and Teddy Lawless, a twenty-year-old flapper in a sixty-year-old body, must chase mobsters and corner suspects to dig her uncle out of the hole he’s dug for himself.

INTERVIEWS WITH THE AUTHORS

GWEN MAYO

What initially got you interested in writing?

I blame my little sister for my writing start. She was afraid to go to sleep at night, so I would tell her stories. I had to start writing them down when she hit the age of wanting to hear the same story over and over again. The little twerp would sit up in bed and tell me if I changed the tale in any way. She taught me the value of committing a story to paper.

What genres do you write in?

My books are all historical mysteries. The Nessa Donnelly series is set in the late 1870’s, although the short stories with her range from the American Civil War era to the turn of the century. The new cozy mystery series I’ve teamed up with Sarah Glenn to write is set in the 1920’s.

With short works, it is harder to pin down what I write. My published work goes from literary journals and poetry collections to science fiction, horror, and mystery anthologies. I even write drabbles and strange little micro-fiction stories. I always come back to history, though, and usually crime.

What drew you to writing these specific genres?

The books I read in my youth had the biggest effect. Books were hard to come by in my hometown. There was no public library or bookstore. The school library was woefully inadequate for my reading level. There was a rack of mass market paperbacks in the local grocery. These were not children’s books. My choices were romance, mystery, or westerns. The lurid covers of the romances ruled them out. Mom would have taken them the moment she saw the cover, and my mother saw everything. Budget constraints also played a role in my genre choices. At slightly over a dollar each, I could purchase one or two a month. This made me very picky about which books to buy.

I became very familiar with the work of Zane Grey and Agatha Christie. Readers can still see traces of their influence on my writing. Christie was always my first choice. Other mysteries came second, but only when I couldn’t find a Christie novel that I didn’t own. I was very loyal. Her puzzles were amazing. I suppose that loyalty still draws me to mysteries. Whether writing or reading, there is nothing I love more than a quiet room and a new mystery.

What do you find most rewarding about writing?

I love the moment when the plot comes together. My big reward is that moment when I know what my protagonist has done that creates a do or die situation. She knows who the murder is and is in direct conflict with the killer. When I get to the point where both hero and villain are locked into an inevitable confrontation that leads into the climax of the story, I want to dance.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

The biggest challenge for me is killing my darlings. I hate cutting pieces of work that are solid but no longer accomplish the job of either moving the plot forward or giving the reader insight into my character. I tend to save scenes that don’t work for this story into a file titled “cuts.” They may end up trashed, but not before I review them again to see if I want to use them for another story.

What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field?

It is a tough and crowded field. Be prepared to work hard in every aspect of the craft: writing, editing, improving your skills, finding an agent/publisher/editor. You have to learn to pitch your book; even if you decide to publish yourself, you have to be able to succinctly tell people what your book is about. Come up with a marketing plan. Build relationships with your local writers, bookstores, and libraries. Build a website and social media presence. The success of your work depends on skill, planning, hard work, and luck, in that order.

What type of books do you enjoy reading?

I love mystery, mostly historical mystery, Louise Penny is the most notable exception. I also enjoy historical nonfiction, the occasional thriller, poetry, short mystery and some science fiction.

Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you?

Gosh, I hope so. I’d be a pretty dull person if all I did was write. In my twenties I was a locomotive engineer. In my thirties, I went to college on a poetry scholarship, spent a summer in Trinidad and Tobago as an arts exchange student, and help build a school with Habitat for Humanity in Nicaragua. I was in my forties before I started my first novel. I’m a huge history junkie, an award winning chocolatier, and most of all a wife, mom, and grandma.

What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?

From my personal site, gwenmayo.com, my blog at http://gwenmayo.blogspot.com/, and the website for my press, mysteryandhorrorllc.com .

Sarah Glenn

What initially got you interested in writing?

I loved to read. I loved reading, and I began writing stories set within the worlds of my favorite authors; I didn’t want to leave them. Later, as I grew older, I started to develop my own characters and settings. I can’t think of anything nobler than creating a place of imagination that other people would want to enter.

I did take a different path than many authors. Most of my early stories were comic books stories, including artwork. I learned to draw the human figure from Betty and Veronica, and then got caught up in the Dave Cockrum era of the X-Men. I didn’t try my hand at prose until my introduction to Roger Zelazny’s Amber series.

What genres do you write in?

Mystery, horror, and stories that are just plain weird.

What drew you to writing these specific genres?

Mystery and horror are the genres I enjoy reading. The weird is just an extra service I provide.

How did you break into the field?

Persistence. I wrote, and then looked for a market. On a few occasions, I became intrigued by the theme of an anthology and wrote a story for submission. I wrote short stories because I was—and am—impatient, so I subbed to a number of anthologies and magazines. Eventually, someone would surrender.

Nepotism was a strong factor in getting my first novel, All This and Family, Too, published. My spouse had a book published with Pill Hill Press (which, sadly, is no more), and I joined the author forums. I mentioned that I had a novel about a vampire fighting her homeowners’ association, and Jessy Roberts, my soon-to-be-editor, told me they were looking for vampire stories and suggested I submit. I did, and was accepted. It wasn’t an easy pass, though; she did a real content review on my work, and after several rewrites I had a much better story than I started with.

What do you want readers to take away from reading your works?

If I thought about such things in advance, I’d never get any fiction written. When I write nonfiction, I write to educate or persuade, but my first goal in fiction is to amuse the reader—to create a good story. I like to tuck details about the setting in the narrative here and there, but I do that to make the world come more alive for the reader.

What do you find most rewarding about writing?

For me, it’s at the end, when the whole story comes together and I see that it doesn’t suck, that the details have come together, and the product is genuinely good. This feeling isn’t limited to my own work; when an anthology I edit comes together, I have the same great feeling.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

Finding the nerve to write. I am very self-critical, and I have to push myself. The words come easier when I’m with other people who are writing, oddly enough: something I learned about myself when I tried NaNoWriMo. It’s usually my most productive month of the year.

What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field?

First: write the stories you want to write—don’t go with what’s hot in the market. Unless you’re submitting a short story on spec, or write as fast as Stephen King, trends will change by the time you finish writing. Worse: if you don’t find the subject matter interesting, you might not finish at all.

Second: take some time to learn the craft of writing. Learn how to write a coherent sentence and stick with a single verb tense throughout your story. That’s your responsibility, not the publisher’s. Join a writing group, even an online group. Feedback will help you become a better author.

What type of books do you enjoy reading?

I like books with a strong sense of characterization and place. I want to be immersed in the world of the story. Stephen King is very good at this, as are Louise Penny and Anne Perry. I also enjoy Robin Cook, but in his case, the place is the human body and the character is often the practice of medicine itself.

Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you?

I enjoy humor and wordplay immensely. I love the hashtag funnies on Twitter, posting memes, and solving crosswords. On a darker note, I also watch programs about true crime, listen to creepypasta on YouTube, and am a fan of True Tales of the ER. Plus, I’m a poison enthusiast. I don’t have a degree in the subject, but I have an unhealthy interest in the topic. Fortunately, I can’t cook.

What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?

I can be found at my Twitter feed at @SarahEGlenn, my blog at http://saraheglenn.blogspot.com/, my website at sarahglenn.com, and the website for my press, mysteryandhorrorllc.com .

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gwen Mayo is passionate about blending her loves of history and mystery fiction. She currently lives and writes in Safety Harbor, Florida, but grew up in a large Irish family in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. She is the author of the Nessa Donnelly Mysteries and co-author of the Old Crows stories with Sarah Glenn.

Her stories have appeared in A Whodunit Halloween, Decades of Dirt, Halloween Frights (Volume I), and several flash fiction collections. She belongs to Sisters in Crime, SinC Guppies, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, the Historical Novel Society, and the Florida Authors and Publishers Association.

Gwen has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Kentucky. Her most interesting job, though, was as a brakeman and railroad engineer from 1983 – 1987. She was one of the last engineers to be certified on steam locomotives.

Website URL: http://www.gwenmayo.com

Blog URL: http://gwenmayo.blogspot.com/

Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/Gwen-Mayo-119029591509479/

Twitter: @gwenmayo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwen-mayo-41175726

Skype: gwen.mayo

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4108648.Gwen_Mayo

Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/Gwen-Mayo/e/B003PJNWJE/

Sarah E. Glenn has a B.S. in Journalism, which is a great degree for the dilettante she is. Later on, she did a stint as a graduate student in classical languages. She didn’t get the degree, but she’s great with crosswords. Her most interesting job was working the reports desk for the police department in Lexington, Kentucky, where she learned that criminals really are dumb.

Her great-great aunt served as a nurse in WWI, and was injured by poison gas during the fighting. A hundred years later, this would inspire Sarah to write stories Aunt Dess would probably not approve of.

Website URL: http://www.sarahglenn.com

Blog URL: http://saraheglenn.blogspot.com/

Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/Sarah-E-Glenn-177315008966709/

Twitter: @SarahEGlenn and @MAHLLC

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-glenn-216765b

Skype: sarah.glenn63

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4710143.Sarah_E_Glenn

Amazon Author: http://www.amazon.com/Sarah-E.-Glenn/e/B004P3MI2Q

BLOG TOUR – Murder on the Mullet Express was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf

#shannon muir #pulp and mystery shelf

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