Bryan Cassiday's Blog, page 14

Zombie Maelstrom is now an audiobook

Zombie Maelstrom, book 1 in Bryan Cassiday’s epic Chad Halverson zombie apocalypse series, is now an audiobook available at Amazon.  Happy Halloween!

Pop Lit to Replace Photos of Nude Women with Eye-popping Figures?

Playboy is no longer going to run glossy color photos of nude women in its pages.  What will the editorial staff put in their place?  Glossy photos of the Grand Canyon sandwiched between pages of hackneyed writing?  The articles and the fiction inside the pages of Playboy were never its long suit.  Even if you wanted to read the writing, it was virtually impossible to concentrate on the written word with the photos of nude women popping out at you.  I predict the magazine will go belly-up within two years with nothing going for it now.  When you take away the nude women, the Playboy logo of bunny ears stands for nothing.  To save the magazine, the editors will now have to come up with a way of attracting decent writers to compose for them if they want to become a purveyor of pop literature instead of a purveyor of photos of nude women with eye-popping  figures.

Audiobook Edition of Countdown to Death

We’re taking auditions for the audiobook edition of Bryan Cassiday’s new high-octane thriller Countdown to Death.  Production of the audiobook should commence soon.

Buy the paperback edition of Countdown to Death at Amazon now.

The Audiobook edition of Zombie Maelstrom will be available soon

The audiobook edition of Bryan Cassiday’s zombie epic Zombie Maelstrom will be available soon.  Zombie Maelstrom is the first book in the Chad Halverson zombie apocalypse series.  Hopefully it will be ready in time for Halloween!

Countdown to Death–a thriller

Bryan Cassiday’s new thriller Countdown to Death is almost here.

Pawn Sacrifice

Interesting movie about the chess master Bobby Fischer as he plays Russian roulette with a mental breakdown even as he becomes the number one chess player in the world.

According to this movie, the federal government was helping fund his participation in tournaments around the world, hoping Fischer would promote the United States of America as the Cold War raged and Russia was grabbing headlines with their dominance in chess.

Seemingly on the verge of a mental breakdown, Fischer takes on the Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky for the world chess championship.  Spassky thought Fischer’s public tantrums were an act staged to throw off Spassky’s game.  Meanwhile, Fischer was tearing apart phones in his hotel rooms searching for bugs.

Ironically, life hit the skids for Fischer after he became the world’s chess champion.  He refused to play chess anymore and disappeared from the public stage. He was convinced the US government was spying on him.  Indeed, they did issue a warrant for his arrest, which was why he couldn’t return to the US in his later years.  Like one of Fischer’s biggest fans Henry Kissinger said, even paranoids have enemies.

Narcos–where’s the rest of it?

I watched ten episodes of Narcos, and that’s all I could stream on Netflix.  Where’s the rest of the series?  Are they going to just let Pablo Escobar escape?  I wanted to see the end where the government hunts him down and kills him.  I felt gypped without being able to see the end.  Is the series to be continued?  If so, when?

Narcos

I’ve been watching Narcos on Netflix.  It seems a little long, but overall it’s fascinating how coke kingpin Pablo Escobar held Colombia in thrall as he alternately fought or bribed the government so he could continue his illegal enterprise and make billions of dollars.  It’s interesting to watch how the Colombian government tries to deal with this billionaire bloodthirsty gangster.  You never know when he’s going to erupt into violence.  One day he’s your ally, the next he’s your executioner.  And he has no compunction about assassinating politicians.

Goodnight Mommy

Goodnight Mommy is a creepy, unsettling movie that reminds me of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games in that regard.  But I didn’t find it scary.  It does have a good plot twist in the ending.  It’s sickening watching what the main characters do to each other, though. It’s up to you whether you would want to sit through this ordeal of psychological and physical abuse, which seems to go on for a long time.  It works on different levels as a horror movie and one that explores psychological hangups and how they influence individuals’ minds and their interactions with other individuals.  I found it more successful with its attempts at psychological examinations than with its attempts at horror.

They’re not telling you everything

Read Countdown to Death, a new high-octane thriller from Bryan Cassiday.