Just received the e-mail this morning; New Apartment Achievement is unlocked. Hopefully will be able to move in by mid-March. This will undoubtedly be one of the easiest moving experiences in the history of the sordid act. The new domicile, which will either be christened the Citadel of Nastiness or Mad McCready's International House of WTF, is a block away from where I currently live. This means that I can simply walk the majority of my possessions over to the new place, making the moving of the remainder of the big stuff a short process. My personal stuffs are few, as I'm not a fan of lots of stuff. At any rate, go me.
Just finished reading this
Lovely piece of work, edited by a gentleman who went to my alma mater, Sonoma State University. Overall, an excellent read. Not all the stories revolve around Ol' Squidface. In fact, many of the stories in the anthology go quite far in the expanding upon the bizarre nature of the Cthulhu mythos. A couple of the stories were so abstract that I unfortunately had to give up on them. (No, I'm not going to tell you which ones they are, as YMMV.) At any rate, with writers such as Brian Lumley, Cherie Priest, Charles Stross, and Ramsey Campbell in the mix, you can't go wrong. Four out of five stars.
Also, got a Pinterest account today. Don't know yet if it's social media craze that's going to sweep the nation, but damn it if some people don't take awesome pictures. If you want to add me on it, you can do so here.
Also, I forgot how incredible this band was. Miranda Sex Garden. Madrigal singers with a love for Nick Cave.
My G+ account was linked to a gmail account that I hardly ever use anymore. Got tired of having to log out, then in again to see what was going on in G+ (FIRST!WORLD!PROBLEMS!). Since Google doesn't allow you to migrate your G+ account, I just started a new one. Add me here.
Oh my, but I've let this go recently. Go ahead, yell "WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT'RE YOU DOING IN MY RSS FEED?!!?" I deserve it. I could tell you I've been busy in far off lands with no wi-fi connections, but I'd be sitting on a throne of lies. I'll just start off with general blathering to make up for lost time.
I lurves me a good ghost story, and this one hits all the marks. Tense atmosphere, bleak settings, and loads of "Oh shit, I just flung my popcorn everywhere." moments. Daniel Radcliffe plays a very non-Harry Potter lawyer who is sent off to a 'orrbly goffik village in Victorian-era England to assess the property of a recently deceased client. The villagers shun him when he gets there, as 'orrbly goffik villagers will do, and do their best to impede him for reasons unknown. When he gets to the desolate mansion of the client out in the marsh (You're gettin' beat over the head with 'orrbly goffik at this point. It's wonderful!), he sees a woman dressed in a long black dress. Shit gets real after that. Here's an example
Griffin's Matthew Swift series started with A Madness of Angels, centering around Matthew Swift, a sorceror in modern day London who gets killed, then comes back to life, and things go horribly downhill from there. In A Madness of Angels, Griffin creates a dark London and exists within and alongside the "real" London comparable to the works of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and Ekaterina Sedia's The Secret History of Moscow. The Midnight Mayor expands upon the world she puts forth in the first book, where our hero(?) is put into a position where he needs to find who wants to totally destroy London, why they want to destroy London, and hopefully put an end to such shenanigans. Fans of the Hellblazer comic books series would find definite, positive comparisons between John Constantine and Matthew Swift, and Griffin's descriptive and world building capabilities are nothing short of amazing. Definitely check this out.
That's it for now. In future episodes:
*Trying to get a new apartment! Like you care!
*What the hell am I going to do with this ham my co-worker gave me?
I love Urban Horror, absolutely love it. There's a starkness to it that just butters my toast. For a video game fix of it, I have Silent Hill. For a music fix, I have The Axis of Perdition (It's an acquired taste. Trust me on this.) With Concrete Grove, Gary McMahon has filled out the literary avenue for me.
Concrete Grove is the tale of a low-income, high-crime housing complex in Newcastle, England, and the people who live there and around there. The day-to-day, grimy, very tragic lives of these people is being intruded upon by something primal and dark, something all the more terrifying because they don't know if it's for the better or worse. Things start off bad, and then get worse. To tell you more than this regarding the plot really would give too much away.
McMahon's characters in Concrete Grove are, quite honestly, some of the most broken ones I've ever read. It's a hard call to say whether or not the supernatural elements of the story are worse than what the main characters have endured and currently endure in their mundane lives. You find out early on about the histories of each of them, and they are straight across the board horrible. The major horror comes from where these histories lead them too. Overall, the supernatural horror elements play second fiddle to the human horror. This isn't to say the supernatural elements aren't utterly disturbing and terrifying, it's that they're the condiments, not the main course.
As you may have guessed, this is a disturbing, harrowing read. I'm not saying this in a "I frikkin' dare you!" type of way, it's just a warning. If the combination of the potential bleakness of the human condition and supernatural darkness that's never fully explained is your thing, you do yourself a great disservice by not reading this. Otherwise, consider something that'll let you sleep at night. At any rate, I'll definitely be checking out McMahon's other work after this. Rating: Five out of five cracked-out monkeys.
Ok, here's what a want you to do: Imagine you're a vampire (Not the sparkly and never-seen-a-comb type. If that's your thing, poop on your fist and punch yourself.) Now, imagine you come out of your years-long slumber to find that a zombie apocalypse had started while you were napping, and that it's still going on.
Now I want you to imagine how bad it could be.
You're not trying hard enough. Try harder.
Nope, still not there.
With Double Dead, Chuck Wendig portrays how truly bad it could get, then digs deeper just because he can. The story revolves primarily around Coburn, a vampire who is for the most part very comfortable being what he is. Yes, a by-product of this is that Coburn is a major asshole. You don't so much get the "Antihero" vibe from Coburn as you do the "I Have Absolutely No Good Reason To Ever Want To Meet This Guy" vibe.
The problems start off right away with Coburn trying to find living blood in a post-zombie apocalyptic world. After that, he has to deal with zombies, Uberzombies, Christian fundamentalist militants, and juggalos. I honestly don't know which of those groups would be the worst to have to deal with. Having to deal with all of them makes for one hell of a ride.
Wendig's writing style is fantastic. His wit and descriptive abilities are focused and razor sharp.
If you want to get an idea of what you're in for, check out his blog Terribleminds. Tons of fun to be had there. Rating: Four out of five cracked-out monkeys
...But I'm not going to say it's faster either. It's enough to make one believe the internet is made up of tubes.
So, I finished my NaNoWriMoYaMoBeThere writing. 50,009 words. Are you ever going to see it? Definitely, in about seven or eight different pieces probably. I did the math, and in order to complete this to my liking, I'm looking at about 140-150k in word count, and that's getting a bit too War and Peacey for my personal tastes. I'm going to melt it down and reuse the components elewhere. And now....
What I learned from NaNaWriMoBettaBlues
1. It is easier to write two thousand words you want to than is to write five hundred words you don't want to.- Enough said.
2. Vector of approach is everything.- When I looked at what I was doing as a potential novel, I hated it. When I looked at it as ton of writing notes, it became useful.
3. Getting in the habit of writing 1500+ words a day is worth any inconvenience.- This is where I would say "I would do it all over again to learn this." which is totally true, except for the part where I actually do it all over again.
4. Completing your goals is kinda neat.- Once again, enough said.
So now I'm going to take what I learned and apply it to my actual WIP. I let it go for a bit to complete the more challenging bits of the Calliope Project, then did the NaNoWriMoFoPartyPlan, so my baby has been left to percolate for a good couple of months. Looking forward to it.
