L.C. Champlin's Blog, page 3
July 15, 2017
Behold Darkness – Soundtrack
Let the Music Play
Every chapter in the book has a theme song.
You might say I enjoy music, yes.
This is, in order, the track list for Wolves of the Apocalypse: Behold Darkness.
Nightmare – Avenged Sevenfold
I Just Wanna Run – The Downtown Fiction
Monster – Imagine Dragons
Safe and Sound – Capital Cities
Ghosts That We Know – Mumford & Sons
We Stand Alone – Covenant
The Phoenix – Fall Out Boy
This is Gonna Hurt – Sixx:AM
The Howling – Within Temptation
Broken Glass – Three Days Grace
Animal I Have Become – Three Days Grace
Been to Hell – Hollywood Undead
The Devil Within – Digital Daggers
Not Gonna Die – Skillet
Undead – Hollywood Undead
Believe – The Bravery
Get Lonely With Me – George Ezra
I Am a Rock – Simon and Garfunkel
Never Back Down – Nine Lashes
Keep Me Breathing – Ashes Remain
Blame It on Me – George Ezra
Roads Untraveled – Linkin Park
Let’s Kill Tonight – Panic! At the Disco
Landmine – Three Days Grace
The Draw – Bastille
Carnivore – Starset
Awake and Alive – Skillet
Now Is the Time – 10 Years
On Top of the World – Imagine Dragons
Antigravity – Starset
I Get Wicked – Thousand Foot Krutch
The Call – Regina Spektor
Pardon Me – Incubus
Get Out Alive – Three Days Grace
Shoot It Out – 10 Years
Ready, Aim, Fire – Imagine Dragons
Over My Head – The Fray
Aim for the Head – Creature Feature
Radioactive – Imagine Dragons
Living Dead Girl – Rob Zombie
Something’s Gotta Give – All Time Low
Throne – Bring Me to the Horizon
The One You Feed – Crown the Empire
This is the House that Doubt Built – A Day to Remember
One Step Closer – Linkin Park
Goin’ Down – Three Days Grace
Rise – Skillet
Heathens – Twenty One Pilots
The Strength to Go On – Rise Against
Shoot It Out – 10 Years
Cut the Cord – Shinedown
Hard to See – Five Finger Death Punch
Warrant – Foster the People
Seize the Night – Wolf
Meet Me in the Dark – Otherwise
Chasing the Rapture – 10 Years
We Are – Thousand Foot Krutch
And We Run – Within Temptation
Way Down We Go – Kaleo
Life in Color – OneRepublic
Control – Halsey
Wilder Mind – Mumford and Sons
Cough Syrup – Young the Giant
Fix Me – 10 Years
Flesh and Bone – Killers
Me and Mine – Brother’s Bright
Iron – Within Temptation
Buried Alive – Avenged Sevenfold
Dogs of War – Blues Saraceno
Take It from Me – Kongos
Human – Rag’n’Bone Man
The Draw – Bastille
Devour – Shinedown
Bleeding Out – Imagine Dragons
Something Wild – Lindsey Stirling, featuring Andrew McMahon
Jungle – X Ambassadors
Evil Ways – Blues Saraceno
Short Change Hero – The Heavy
Drive – Incubus
Trenches – Pop Evil
Radioactive – Imagine Dragons
Natural Born Killer – Avenged Sevenfold
No Light, No Light – Florence + The Machine
Warrant – Foster the People
Grit, Sweat, & Love – Brothers Bright
God Hates Us – Avenged Sevenfold
Leave My Body – Florence + The Machine
Skyfall – Noah Guthrie
Destroy the Obvious – Evans Blue
Ghost Town – Egypt Central
Not Ready to Die – Avenged Sevenfold
Nobody Praying for Me – Seether
Enemies – Shinedown
My Demons – Starset
Fiction – Avenged Sevenfold
Fix You – Coldplay
Raised by Wolves – Falling in Reverse
Man in the Mirror – Noah Guthrie
Unsteady – X Ambassadors
Inside the Monster – Brainstorm
All I Have – Matt Kearney
The Globalist – Muse
Take the World by Storm – Lukas Graham
Lost In the Echo – Linkin Park
If I Ever Feel Better – Phoenix
Take a Bow – Muse
Hear Me Now – Hollywood Undead
Blood on My Name – Brothers Bright
Dear God – Avenged Sevenfold
On My Own – Ashes Remain
June 30, 2017
Shooting the Kriss Vector CRB 9mm: First Impressions
For shooting bio-organic weapons designed by shadowy corporations.
I got a chance to shoot the Kriss Vector CRB today. I’d seen it on Resident Evil: Retribution, so when I saw it on the Blackstone Shooting Sports rental wall, I couldn’t resist.
It was chambered in 9mm Luger, so I got 100 rounds. As a general rule, I don’t like 9mms. Don’t get me wrong, they’re enjoyable enough to shoot, sort of like a .22, but not what I consider useful in a self-defense caliber. And no, I’m not going to sit here and argue. I carry a .45 semi-auto. I can even operate it proficiently with left (weak), single hand grip.
Let’s shoot!
On the range, my two favorite range officers welcome me. They’re both over age 50 and I’d wager have military and/or law enforcement experience. I was curious to see what they thought of the gun.
Loading:
The Kriss Vector uses a standard Glock (yuck) pistol mag. You have to angle the rounds and push them just so to stuff them in. And the 9mms are so tiny! I didn’t have a speed loader, so that was a pain. However, using a fairly common pistol mag is a great idea.
The mag release is in an awkward spot: right behind the vertical foregrip on the left, way in front of the trigger.
Aiming:
I set the target at 10 yards in the indoor lane.
The Kriss Vector came with a red-dot sight. They’re not my preferred sights, night use aside. I like my iron sights, ghost rings, or traditional scopes.
I had to futz with the adjustable stock to get it to the right size. Once I did, the red dot settled in, but I still found myself having to correct up and to the right. I’m not as accurate with the dots as I am with my irons or ghost ring. There’s just something distracting about the dot.
Overall, though, the weapon feels comfortable. I find myself using a no-thumb grip on the forward grip.
Standing in my usual tactical AR posture/platform didn’t seem as comfortable. Neither did the traditional rifle shooting stance.
Shooting:
It’s a 9mm, so you barely know you fired the thing: minimal recoil and bang. There’s also hardly any recoil because it gets channeled down the angled bit in the front, which is called the “Super V recoil-mitigation system.” Thus, it’s easy to get the sight back on target quickly. It has a full auto variation, which is where this system shines. Or it should. According to this review on The Truth About Guns, it doesn’t.
Accuracy:
I advanced the target to 15, 20, and 25 yards. I was best at the 15, but that’s largely due to my dislike of and unfamiliarity with the dot sight. I only shot a few using stabilization; the rest were from standing.
In short, with stabilization, it was spot-on, punching the bull’s eye out.
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The right one is at 10 yards, first shots. The left is at 25, rapid fire.
Fun:
I blasted through 100 rounds in 35 minutes, which should say something! It was fun to fire, especially doing rapid fire, since it was so easy to get back online with the target. Shooting what one of my range officers called a “space gun” is always neat just for the sheer “look at me!” factor.
Outside opinions:
The range officers thought it was an interesting weapon, but the oldest of the two said he really wasn’t sure what the weapon was designed for.
I shrugged and said, “It’s for looking cool.” He agreed with that.
I said I liked my AR-15, which is chambered in 5.56mm, better. They were approving of this.
The guys at the desk outside, who are in their 20s, liked it more. They were more interested in the “fun” aspect than the practical uses.
When I said I preferred my AR, the young guy at check-out said the Kriss Vector was useful in “certain situations” by “some police and military units.” I didn’t ask what they were. I think they probably the BSAA storming Umbrella Corp. BTW, I don’t believe any official organization – law enforcement or military – uses the Kriss Vector.
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To be honest, though, those are of the Special Duty Pistol version.
Final Thoughts:
For the 9mm version, I think you’d do just as well with an AR carbine or the Sig MPX.
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June 27, 2017
The Cover Artist Myth – When to design your own
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Thou Shalt Not
Don’t do your own cover art, the omniscient They say. Well, I thought I new what those inhabitants of the Q Continuum meant: let the artistic pros do their work to design and produce your cover. Easy! Just give them some details about your book, maybe even a chapter, then sit back and wait for their visual arts and Photoshop skills to do the rest. They went to school for this, they do this as their J-O-B, and people P-A-Y them to do this.
One Does Not Simply FIND a Cover Artist
Armed with this idea, I headed out on my quest to find a cover artist, with all the gusto of Frodo leaving the Shire to drop the One Ring in Mt Doom. My fuzzy feet took me across the Interwebs in search of a capable but affordable artist. After elevensies and second breakfast, though, I started to lose enthusiasm. See, all I found were people who knew how to stick text layers on top of images in PS.
The other advice They give is that the cover is your main advertising. It’s what makes people click on your book, then read the title, then read the blurb, then…click Buy. You have a split second to trip all the switches their reticular activating system needs to kick the image from subconscious to the “stop, stupid, this is relevant to our interests” level. No pressure!
With that in mind, the importance of picking the right cover artist skyrockets. They’re now your marketing department, assuming you don’t have a marketing coach on board. I’ve seen some really, really bad covers. A quick Google search provides hilarious examples (I kind of want to read Time Ninja, though, and learn how to make a denim kimono), but we’ve all seen plenty of cringe-worthy examples on Amazon.
After much searching and hardship, I located Damon Za. His work is, as his slogan says, awesome. It’ll take you a good half an hour just to go through his gallery! Well, it all looked great until I hit the price page. You get what you pay for at around $500 for a custom cover and $200 for a pre-made one. I had time, though, so I put it on the back burner.
It was at a writers conference that I learned about [redacted]. On the contact page there’s nothing much except a basic contact form and a comment to message them if you’re interested. “Cool,” said I.
I contact them and send a description of my book, the characters, and the themes. I also give some of my ideas, or at least covers I like. However, I say that as long as they get the concept and genre across, that’s good.
I’d post the original first cover here, except I’d have to cite the artist. See my rendition:
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It’s basically two mirrored skulls and a hand with blueberry juice on the tips of the fingers. The font is one of those round, sloppy, “handwriting” types. I’m 99% sure that cover came from their stock of pre-made covers.
Um…other than there are hands in my book, since my character are human, that’s all that’s relating to my book’s concept. I clearly specified that in the first book, the main villains are terrorists. The cannibals/zombies are there, yes, but they’re just getting traction. Not until the next book do they have a population explosion.
At this point I had the realization that I have to tell them exactly what I want, despite them saying they can come up with something from just a book description. It appears I misunderstood what that “something” was, naively assuming it would accurately convey my concept.
Since they were hassling me for input, I had to think fast. So I threw Rise of the Governor at them. It’s like a lot of zombie books, where there’s a city skyline with some silhouettes of figures looking at it. They handed back a crooked – artistic! – shot of San Fransisco, with a silhouette looking at it. There’s a giant skull randomly in the top right corner like an asteroid about to hit the city.
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So I tell them to hold on until the next day. I spent that day looking at covers on Google, Amazon, and Goodreads. I combined a few covers and ideas. Then I busted out the Gimp and spent 2 hours making a cover that was pretty passable.
They come back with, “I’ve already done two concepts and don’t have time to do another.” When did you say I was limited to two? Also, how does the first one count? it was one of your pre-mades that had nothing to do with my book. I’d bet donuts you didn’t even read what I sent about the novel.
I offer more money. Suddenly the story becomes that it’s not their style and is beyond their skills. Say what? Uh, I whipped this up with my laptop, which has a bare-bones version of Gimp, in two hours.
Thus, I spent my weekend making my OWN cover. It looks great, IMO. But you’ll have to wait till the cover reveal to see it.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, if you have the skills, and you know the design will work (I based mine on a number of books that are good sellers), go for it. Otherwise, check out Damon, or the cover artists this blog lists. You can go to Deviant Art, but that’s a rabbit hole. Look at their portfolios and see if the books match your genre. Check out their pricing, too, and any small print.Have in mind what you want; don’t rely totally on the artist.
Premo service that I use:
https://www.shutterstock.com/
Free stock image sites:
https://www.goodfreephotos.com/
https://burst.shopify.com/
https://stocksnap.io/
What do you think? Are cover artists always needed? Have you ever designed a cover? What’s the worst cover you’ve seen?
Comment!
And don’t forget to join my newsletter so you can get updates and the first twelve chapters of Behold Darkness for FREE!
June 17, 2017
STD Fungus in the Brain Creates Zombies
Zombie beetles. Good name for a B horror movie?
The brain of a goldenrod soldier beetle, that is.
Scientists are studying the effects of the fungus Eryniopsis lampyridarum on soldier beetles. When it infects the insects, they make a bee line for flowers, their usual food. It then prompts them to lock onto the plants with their mandibles. As the fungus multiplies, the beetle dies. After the beetle’s been a corpse for 15 to 22 hours, its wings pop open. Other beetles find this sexy and so take the moment to mate with the dead bug. Necrophilia, anyone? This spreads the fungus.
Imagine: if there was a fungus like this for humans, the infected person would run to the nearest singles hookup and latch onto a table with their jaws. Then they’d die. But they’d look alive. So alive that people would be game for a one-night stand. This would spread the fungal STD.
Or in a tamer example, a person who’d been dead for a day would suddenly sit up.
A zombie apocalypse doesn’t seem so far-fetched when you see nature…
Read the full article at:
Fungus creates zombie beetles that crave flowers before death
May 27, 2017
The Walking Dead Episode & Villain Review: “Hearts Still Beating” – Is Negan?
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Love what you do, do what you love
Who doesn’t like Negan? just won MTV’s Best Villain Award for his portrayal of the brutal but fair dictator from The Walking Dead AMC TV series. According to a poll on Gold Derby, 76% of respondents say he’s the Best Villain of the Year.
He’s a fan-favorite, and by that I mean people love to hate him. And to watch him. This is true even more than it was with the Governor, who is my favorite TWD character. (We’re talking about the AMC TV series, by the way. I don’t like the Governor in any other incarnation besides ‘s portrayal. I do like Negan in the graphic novels/comics, though.)
I started out loathing both the Governor and Negan. For both of those characters, I said to myself that I’d never like them, even though I usually root for the antagonist/villain. Well. That didn’t last long. The Governor was a multi-layered character with a rough past and a desire to help his people. Ah, but what about Negan?
Why do people like Negan? I’ve read a few articles. A good one is 15 Reasons Why We Love Negan From “The Walking Dead.” It breaks it down well, so I’m not going to rehash it. The reasons are some of the same reasons why I like Negan. So why do I like him? It has a lot to do with Jeffrey’s portrayal of him. He’s got charisma a politician would kill to have. He’s terrifying while also being understandable and sometimes even downright hilarious. He’s deadly but honest. Nobody keeps it more real than Negan. And most of all? He just seems to get such joy out of what he does! In a world where everybody is one container of black eyeliner and a razor blade away from being an Emo Goth, he’s having a blast. He’s not wantonly cruel, either, unlike the Joker in Batman. But maybe because he does have a flavor of the Joker about him, we find him so out of the ordinary that we can’t help be intrigued.
But this is an episode review, not a discussion about Negan. I will, however, be focusing on him, as the article title should have clued you in about. You can read other episode reviews if you wanna analyze Rick’s every twitch and Carol’s every eye roll and Carl’s every hair flip.
Note: I haven’t watched past this episode, so I can’t and won’t reference anything that happens after. I also only know as much about him as the AMC TV series tells to this point.
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Hey, at lest he’s not pissing in your fireplace.
Negan is still waiting for Rick. In Rick’s house. With Rick’s kids. He knows how to turn normal into creepy and awkward. That said, he’s not being threatening. He’s genuinely playing the part of an visiting uncle or family friend. It’s only disturbing because you know his past. Other than a reference to Lucille being hungry, he doesn’t even make veiled threats. Heck, he even says please pass the rolls.
In another part of town, everybody’s least-favorite pretty boy is preparing to suck up to Negan. I’m frankly surprised Spencer’s lasted this long.
In other parts of the tri-county area, our regulars are working up their killing urge for Negan:
Michonne carjacks one of the Saviors, but she quickly rethinks her plan when she sees the scale of Negan’s operation. Smart. She’s learning.
Rosita and Eugene teamed up to make a suicidal plot involving her shooting Negan with a single small-caliber bullet that Eugene’s cobbled together.
Enid, Sasha, and Maggie are at the Hilltop. Sasha plots her own assassination attempt against Negan. Maggie eats pie.
Richard, one of Ezekiel’s knights, is trying to drag Morgan and Carol into fighting. The best part of all these scenes was Richard saying, “Carol, I imagine that violence and fighting is something you haven’t been a part of.” Hilarious! Even better is his acceptance of Morgan saying she’s the most capable fighter in the room.
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Say it with me: porchdick!
Meanwhile, Negan is blissfully chilling on Rick’s porch with Carl. Then Spencer arrives to commence boot licking. He’s brought liquor to kick off the bad-judgement fest! He sweet talks Negan, who acts happy to see some cooperation.
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Negan busts some balls.
Thanks to Spencer’s ingenuity, they play pool in the street. The game is a symbol for the game Negan is playing with, well, everybody.
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Spencer, you’re out of your league with this shark.
Spencer commences trying to con Negan into killing Rick. I respect Negan here, because he sees through Spencer’s plot and calls him on his treason. While Rick is out “gettin’ shit done,” Spencer is backstabbing. Negan doesn’t care who rules, I don’t think, so long as they sort it out themselves and keep getting him his goods.
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Those are some nice guts you got there. It would be a shame if something were to…happen to them.
Negan also calls him out on his cowardice. With a knife. To the stomach. Turns out Spencer did have guts after all! Not anymore, though.
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Negan loves his job.
I know this is supposed to be a villainous move, but…it falls flat. Nobody liked Spencer in the first place. He’s screwed them over before. Now he’s trying to get Rick killed? Oh, that’s not cool. So really, Negan just spared everyone drama and trouble.
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Speaking of drama, Negan is a show in himself. Watch this scene with the sound off for more amusement.
Rosita thinks this is a great time to act. You know, because everybody in town is now standing around. Don’t sneak up behind him when he’s drinking with Spencer on the porch. No, that wouldn’t be sporting!
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Best friends!
It’s the perfect combination of crappy workmanship and equally crappy marksmanship. Result: the bullet gets stuck in Lucille. That is one seriously under-powered round. And how bad does your skill/luck have to be that you hit a 3 inch piece of wood but miss a guy who’s almost 2 feet across? The thought that one small-caliber bullet would kill him is also misguided. It might, but odds are he’ll survive long enough to order the Saviors to kill everybody.
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At this point I don’t even care what characters die.
Now, I was expecting Negan to have another “catch a tiger” scene. Or just walk up and hit a home run with her skull. Nope, he just says one of his minions should cut her face and kill somebody else. Just one person, though. Never mind that Rosita won’t tell who made the bullet and she tried to kill him. And Negan doesn’t even kill Olivia personally. At this point, we all knew Olivia was going to die soon. I was just surprised she hadn’t been murdered or eaten earlier. I’m not saying she wasn’t liked, I’m just saying it wasn’t a surprise to see her draw the short straw.
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Wow, what a gutsy sacrifice! What torture! What suffering!
Rosita gets a cut on her face. Yep, just a cut.
Eugene goes as a prisoner of the Saviors to make bullets for them. Negan is smart; don’t kill the bullet maker, use him.
When Rick finally arrives, Negan does a great painting himself as the hero while the sheriff was out of town. And…he’s right in an objective way. He didn’t kill Carl; he babysat him and Judith instead. He made them spaghetti!
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Carl’s actually in the house. Negan’s the only character so far who’s been able to keep him there.
Then he took out a traitor that everyone hated. The mess with Rosita, Eugene, and Olivia was regrettable, but what’s a man to do when somebody tries to shoot him in the face? The Nazis would have wiped out the whole town. Yes, Rick and Co are still in the hole as far as resources go, and are expected to find more, but they were supposed to do that anyway.
When Negan lays it all out, it doesn’t sound that unfair, or even that villainous. He’s the occupying force, but he’s not going around randomly raping, pillaging, and plundering.
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Rick could have become a Negan easily.
After the initial episode with Glenn and Abraham, Negan has apparently had a softening of heart. After all, Carl rolled up and shot a bunch of Saviors, and he’s still alive. In fact, Negan gave him the grand tour and sent him home fed and clean. No beatings. No face ironing. No Easy Street. Yes, yes, I know Negan had a strategic reason for that. But his threat as a big bad villain is dwindling.
So I’m left wondering: was Negan’s day trip to Alexandria a mistake for him in the long run? The more familiar people become with their bogey men, the less frightened they become. The fact that he was as fair as he was regarding Rosita (only killing one person, and that after Rosita wouldn’t tell who made the bullet) might actually backfire in the intimidation department.
What’s interesting is that it wasn’t so much what Negan did that finally convinced Rick that it’s better to die fighting than live on your knees. No, it was what his Saviors did to Aaron that seemed to make the biggest impact on Grimes. “We are Negan,” eh?
Random Mid-Season Thoughts
Oh look, it’s another mid-season finale. And is it ever long. These have gotten really old. If you’re going to break the season, say it’s the end of the season, and the seasons are just very short. As it is, these stupid tricks to get viewers artificially hyped are cheapening the story. Writers have to break with the careful build up to a powerful climax, trading it for a structure with a semi-climax at the middle, then forcing another at the end. The semi-climax steals some of the force from the actual season finale. Now you don’t have a powerful ramp up to a climax that’ll knock your socks off. Nope, now you have two watered down climaxes that kinda just make your feet itch. Then the final finale ends up deriving all its suspense from the question of “who will die?” This is getting old too, especially when favorites get killed and no one replaces them.
It’s not as if the fans won’t wait for the next season. For decades, we TV peeps have been waiting over half a year for the next season of our shows. We’re well trained now. Cutting it off in the middle of the season’s flow actually makes me less interested in the show. Honestly, if I’ll wait over a year for one episode of Sherlock, I’ll wait for a whole season of TWD.
What’s your opinion? Did Negan surprise you? Is he still as powerful a villain, or is he losing his edge? Do you like mid-season finales as a season/series structure?
May 1, 2017
What’s the defrost setting for a human brain?
I doubt this one is viable.
Because we don’t already have enough people on earth, we’re now trying to bring back the dead! That’s right, Professor Sergio Canavero, Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, is planning on thawing out a cadaver that’s been frozen at -320 degrees Fahrenheit, removing the brain, and dropping it into a “donor body’s” cranium.
The Good Doctor is enthused about his experiment:
“If we bring this person back to life, we will receive the first real account of what actually happens after death. The head transplant gives us the first insight into whether there is an afterlife, a heaven, a hereafter, or whatever you may want to call it or whether death is simply a flicking off of the light switch and that’s it.”
Are you mad, sir? Have you never read Mary Shelley’s Post Modern Prometheus, aka Frankenstein (named for the scientist who created the monster)?
It’s also more than a little amusing that the scientific establishment, which has in the last century done its level best to distance itself from any hint of religion outside of Atheism, is now interested in the afterlife. “Science” doesn’t believe in a soul or spirit, as it can’t prove one exists. I wonder what Canavero’s personal beliefs are? Is this all an attempt to prove or disprove his beliefs? Or perhaps he wants tangible proof before he believes one way or another? Whatever the motive, it would make a great novel!
I should also mention that his idea that the Revived can tell about the afterlife is flawed. What if the body comes back with no soul, like in Pet Sematary? What if the brain is fried and is a vegetable? What if the parts of the brain that remember the afterlife are Jell-O? What if you can’t remember the afterlife, aside from the Near Death Experiences people have?
Read the whole article here:
Cryogenically Frozen Brains Will Be ‘Woken up’ and Transplanted in Donor Bodies Within Three Years, Neurosurgeon Claims
The end of the article says it best:
Even if it did work and the frozen brain did “wake up,” there’s no telling what kinds of complications the patient could experience, from decreased mental faculties to unimaginable mental trauma. Though we do now live in a world in which the seemingly impossible is becoming possible, some experiments might be better suited for works of sci-fi than modern hospitals.
