Michael Offutt's Blog, page 155

City of Light and Stone by Laura Diamond

This weekend I read "City of Light and Stone" by Laura Diamond. It's a short story featured in the dark fantasy anthology: Day of Demons (cover pictured at right). In short, Day of Demons is a collection of stories featuring the conflict of demons and humans over the course of a day.

The main character of Hector in Laura's story is a tormented soul that belongs to Satan. He is in his situation because rejection drove him to murder the woman he lusted after, and in the story, he's offered redemption if he can fulfill Satan's bounty of one pure soul at a place called Point Zero before the sun sets.

I think that as writers, we can all slip into the skin and understand Hector's hatred of rejection. Sure, our souls do not belong to the devil, but allegorically-speaking, why couldn't they? And who is to say that the ultimate homicidal impulse for a writer isn't the act of "selling out".

What wouldn't some of you do to obtain an agent, a Big Six contract, and a huge book deal? How is this not in many ways just a caveat to truth? I think that at the end of the day, we are all enslaved by our own personal demons. And if we ever want to stand out from the masses, we may have to do things that go against what we really want and do so before the sun sets...before it's too late.

If you like dark fantasy, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Day of Demons and read Laura's story. As far as short stories go, I'd give it five stars out of five. It's a quick read with a powerful moral...if you deal with demons, don't waffle on what you say and be punctual! To do otherwise will put you at risk of eternal damnation.

Visit Laura Diamond's blog located HERE.

Purchase Day of Demons from Amazon located HERE.

Mark Day of Demons "To Read" on Goodreads located HERE.

HBO's The Newsroom makes me thankful for NPR

Jane Fonda as News Director Leona LansingI'm really liking Aaron Sorkin's new drama on HBO. You can read my first post on this located HERE.


This week's episode of "The Newsroom" brought up a topic that I had not previously considered...that it's important for there to be one hour devoted to news per day that doesn't have to compete for the same advertising dollar as the audience of The Jersey Shore.

Will McAvoy gives an opening "Editorial Comment" in which he plays an apologetic senator's recorded tape and uses this to launch into his own apology, in which he cites his show's failure in the past to report responsible news. In short, ratings instead of content has been driving the national discussion.

I have to say, Will McAvoy has got an excellent point.

Then enters Jane Fonda. Now, Fonda is pretty much a legendary star. And she said basically nothing during the majority of this episode. But I was expecting her to say something. When she did, it was in answer to the aftermath of the congressional elections of 2010 in which many TEA party candidates were elected. In the episode, Bachmann was compared to McCarthy. I can definitely see the resemblance. But Fonda in the role of her character...not so much. I think the intent of bringing that up though is for the viewer to decide because we are the "fly on the wall."

All of that aside, an interesting dilemma was posed by Fonda's character who is the head of the Newsroom and essentially calls all the shots. She said that she has regular "business" in front of "this congress" and stated that McAvoy needed to tone it down and stop making them look stupid (even if they are stupid) because that would make her job very difficult. I don't like this at all, and it had me thinking...how much of our news comes down to us from people who may be afraid to ask the tough questions?

How much of the political and economic discussion in this country is driven by fund raising?
I guess I am more thankful now than ever that we have National Public Radio. I support them when I can, but I will definitely try to do so more often. So my question to you is this. Do you listen to NPR? Where do you get your news for the issues that are important to you? And do you support NPR during their fundraising campaigns?

Helena Soister and The Compass Master

At 523 pages and some 100 chapters, The Compass Master is not a book for the people who gobble up Twilight fan-fiction like it was cotton candy. Fortunately, I'm not one of those people.

So what is The Compass Master? In short, it's a book that chronicles the discovery of extraordinary Biblical artifacts: the alleged final epistle by Paul written by the apostle himself, another by the granddaughter of a female apostle who debunks the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, and one by the monk who hid both of these.

The story is told through differing points-of-view (third person omniscient). The main one is Layla Daltry, a sexy, athletic, and incredibly smart heroine who (when teamed with Zach--an equally sexy male counterpart) is able to unravel a mystery that the Catholic church has kept secret for centuries. Another character is a nun who is in her own right a heroine with church secrets to protect. Finally, there are the bad guys, twin brother assassins in service to an American who want to stop Layla Daltry from fulfilling her quest which could create a firestorm among the academic and religious authorities of the Christian world.

So in analyzing this book, it may be best to start with the question "Who are the Compass Masters?" They were men who called their drawing compasses "diviners" because they believed in sacred mysteries which they could divine through mathematics. In other words, they attempted to explain mysteries through secret codes that they then built into actual structures.

I tend to think that the title "The Compass Master" is a nod to Zach who is essentially one of these "Compass Masters" if not actually a part of that society because he figures so much out by using math. In fact, there is throughout this novel, a theme of numbers and geometric shapes. As Helena points out in this book, it was Plato who taught that by studying geometry a person purifies the eye of the soul. "To them and other medieval intellectuals, numbers were a manifestation of divine order, a human fulfillment of the words God uttered in Genesis: 'I have made everything with number, measure, and weight."

The Compass Master is one of the most cerebral reads that I have taken on since Murukami's 1Q84. I found myself pausing often to reflect upon what the author was pointing out about our knowledge of the Book of Revelation and how it was essentially put into The Bible because the Catholic Church desired control. "Fill them with fear and tell them that your religion alone holds the key to their salvation...Have them focus on the next world while religious and political leaders control wealth and power in this one." Conspiracy theories abound in this tale. But then, you really can't have secret societies and not go into conspiracy theories. That's where all the fun is.

I give The Compass Master five stars out of five. I have read the Dan Brown novels (DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons), and I think this book could easily sit on the shelf with those other books. The amount of research that went into this novel boggles my mind. I tip my hat to Helena for weaving such an intricate pattern of mystery, thrilling history, and a courageous examination into questions not often demanded from The Bible. I hope that she's planning another Layla Daltry book so I can see how the fame she garners from the discoveries in The Compass Master affect her life. I'd also like to see if she and Zach will ever get back together. They seem meant for each other. It is sad to note that the abbey in the book is closing because they no longer have enough young nuns to keep it open. It's kind of a poignant "sign of the times" that as the world becomes more educated, the sun begins to set on the Catholic Church.

If you love historical thrillers, I strongly recommend you invest in this book.

Helena blogs at Becoming Layla located HERE.

You can purchase her book on Amazon for $3.50 on Kindle located HERE.

You can be supportive and mark her book "To Read" on Goodreads HERE.

Pretend

Sometimes I think that the world of "pretend" is so far away. Life becomes too complicated too fast. Maybe we should all just take a lesson from A Bug's Life and return to the world of "Pretend" often. I hear it's a source of great stories. :) Too much reality is a real downer anyway.
I shall be taking next week off. See you the second week of July and have a great Independence Day!

With regard to genre, are you an elitist snob?

If this dragon rode in a spaceship,
is it still fantasy? What if the
spaceship was headed to Eden?
is it still fantasy even though now
it is infused with spirituality?According to sci-fi super magazine io9, San Diego Comic Con 2012 is set to be overwhelmed with fantasy picks this year, chief among them are legions of George R.R. Martin fans followed closely by Hobbit buzz which is filling in the gap for Star Trek 2 (which is absent this go around).

Now, I started to look at the titles of all the things that are going to be there, and I saw the following list:

List of Fantasy at Comic-Con 2012:

MOVIES:
- The Hobbit
- Breaking Dawn
- ParaNorman
- Evil Dead Remake (not confirmed)
- Maleficent (not confirmed)
- Oz: The Great and Powerful (not confirmed)
- R.I.P.D. (not confirmed)
- 47 Ronin (not confirmed)

TELEVISION:
- The Legend of Korra
- Game Of Thrones
- True Blood
- Once Upon A Time
- Vampire Diaries
- Adventure Time
- Dreamwork's Dragons: Riders of Berk (the TV show version of How to Train Your Dragon)
- Teen Wolf
- 666 Park Avenue
- Supernatural
- Once Upon A Time
- Beauty And The Beast
- Grimm
- Merlin
- Being Human
- American Horror Story (not confirmed)

It gave me pause to think...what exactly is fantasy? Is science-fiction just another flavor of fantasy in which there is pseudo-scientific techno babble instead of pseudo-Latin sounding spellcasting? Can "Twilight" be called a fantasy? What about the "Evil Dead" remake? What about the fairy tale shows like "Once Upon a Time" and "Grimm"? Maleficent is a dragon but it's also a repackaging of the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale.
"Merlin"...yes that's a fantasy. So is "Game of Thrones" and "The Hobbit". But none of these others seem to fit the type of fantasy that I have in my mind. The kind that has a medieval setting with knights, wizards, and dragons yet tries to hold to the authenticity of a world and is not structured from anything written by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson.
I struggle with genre labels. I labeled my own book as science-fiction because it has techno babble galore, and some spaceships, and super cities, and some neat gadgets. There is no magic in it though. But you could kind of call what Jordan does as "magic". However, I use scientific mumbo jumbo to explain why it's happening so that makes it more science-fiction, right? The protag is 17 so that counts as young adult right? But not really, if you see what happens to him in the story. When we talk fantasy do we mean this?... ...BUT NOT THIS?One elitist snob on Amazon that absolutely hated my book said, "Now I guess if the reader likes a lot of spirituallity mixed up with their science fiction, it may be just fine. But to me it just sounded ridiculous and pulled it down..." I wanted to respond to this person and ask, "What exactly do you think science-fiction is? What exactly do you think fantasy is?" I'm sure the response would have been "Science fiction should only happen where the main characters are a man and a woman and in space (and barring that please god don't let them get together and get busy because it's blasphemy I tell ya...)"
Humor aside...I think that there is a strange kind of nonsensical, non-logic that flows through the minds of some of the elitists of science-fiction and/or fantasy. It's similar to the kind of nonsensical, non-logic that occupies the minds of those who oppose gay marriage. Maybe the writing and plots have gotten so weird and crazy as authors and writers seek to distinguish themselves with an original idea, that boundaries in fiction essentially no longer exist with the lone exception being that of the obsessive compulsive elitist with boxes clearly labeled for organization and consumption of stories.
In other words, I think that "Twilight" and "Being Human" are now as much science-fiction and fantasy as "Ender's Game", "Dune", and "Foundation". "Harry Potter" IS science-fiction. "Battlestar Galactica" IS a fantasy. They are two sides of the exact same coin.
As for me, I'm going to keep churning out stories for the time being that infuse spirituality with scientific techno babble that no one understands anyway. I'm going to do it until I grow tired of it and then move onto something else.
My question to you is, would you agree that paranormal, cyberpunk, medieval fantasy, science-fiction, steampunk, horror, dark fantasy, and countless other similar genres are now all blended and stuck on the same coin?
With regard to genre, are you an elitist snob?
How do you categorize what you write?

Start spreadin the news cause Laura Eno is top of the heap with WRAITH

Pssst...I have an announcement :).
Today is the worldwide launch of Laura Eno's Wraith. You may see it everywhere. But if you somehow live under a rock and have missed it, here's the amazing blurb!
Someone wants them dead. Another wants them captured. No one can be trusted. Secrets, lies, and revelations await Raven and Mikael as their search for Mikael's missing friend leads them to Wraith, a mysterious moon owned by Jeffrey Hamilton, cybernetics genius and Ben's creator. How much of the Oracle's technology does Hamilton possess and where did it come from?

Raven's nightmares from the past threaten her sanity, while Mikael's guilt slowly consumes him. Ben's in more danger than anyone as they race to find the answers to uncertain questions—questions which could lead to death for them all.
Available for only .99!
AmazonUS
AmazonUK
Nook
Smashwords
As a bonus you can download the first book, Raven, for free today only! Click here and enter the code PU65D to download your copy in multiple formats, including PDF.
Visit Laura Eno at any of the below places to get to know her better!

Website - Blog - Facebook - Twitter - Goodreads
That is all. Have a great Wednesday.

Will McAvoy stole the words right out of my mouth

On Sunday night following this week's episode of "True Blood", HBO launched "The Newsroom" with a one-hour premiere episode. You can watch this pilot for free without subscription on the HBO website.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the man behind this endeavor, Aaron Sorkin, he is the one that gave us the frank and sometimes disturbing movie "The Social Network" and the presidential drama "West Wing".
The opening title montage of the Newsroom is a throwback to nostalgia, looking back on an era of idealistic news broadcasters like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

The show opens with a tirade from Jeff Daniels who is in quite a departure from the role he played in "Dumb and Dumber". I have to say that I like this new role for Mr. Daniels. Now the afore-mentioned tirade I spoke of is sparked when Jeff in his role as Will McAvoy (in front of a room of journalism students) is asked to answer the question, "why would you consider America to be the greatest country on Earth?"

Here is the transcript of the answer in the form of a tirade. I have to say, that Jeff Daniels stole the words right out of my mouth, because I have been thinking these very same thoughts for some time now.

"And you—sorority girl—yeah—just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about?! Yosemite?!!!"

So why would I say I've been feeling this for some time? Well, despite my love for popcorn television, I'm also dismayed by the fact that some of my friends don't know who the vice-president of the United States is. I'm dismayed that Christian fundamentalist textbooks tout the Loch Ness monster as proof of Creationism and that these kids will become adults and believe this hogwash. You can find that article HERE if you don't believe me. I'm dismayed that there is a universal decline in literacy in this country and that we've gone from a country that used to support poor people to one that now attacks them. I'm dismayed at the partisan divide which has grown so wide, it is difficult for me to see how it will ever be fixed. I'm dismayed that we have the best colleges in the world, and Americans can no longer afford to attend them.



I'm looking forward to many more scenes like the opening of Aaron Sorkin's new drama on HBO because he has a proven track record of filming intelligently written dialog that will cause you to reflect upon the narrative piping in over your television every night. He also knows how to pick out and create memorable characters. This cerebral "popcorn" television may do nothing to ease any of the troubles that plague the United States (economy aside), but I can tell Will McAvoy is being written by someone who feels just like me.


Below you will find an embedded video of Neil DeGrasse Tyson expressing perfectly how I feel regarding the state of education within the United States right now. If you have time, please watch.
So...did you watch the Newsroom? And are you as frustrated as I at what is going on in our country right now? I look forward to reading your comments.

My list of the awesome things I saw in Brave

Here is my list of the awesome things I saw in Brave:

1) Merida's flaming red hair. You just have to see it.2) At last, a female protagonist in the Pixar line of movies. I guess "Elastigirl" kinda/sorta counts, but Merida is better.3) I saw animated haggis!4) I saw a witch who used a cauldron as an answering machine!5) The queen's hair with the two pony tails looked really cool.6) And the lesson that the most important thing between a parent and a child may be communication. In other words, both sides need to really just stop and listen and then comprehend.7) Bagpipes. I love bagpipes. More please.8) Pixar animation. It gives me goosepimples. Cutest baby bears ever! "A Lady does not leave her WEAPONS on the table!" Remember that ladies!Have a great Monday!

Stories that deserve to be made into movies and a little rant

J.K. Rowling has been talking with Warner Brothers this last year about rebooting the entire series
with an all American cast to see how that works (instead of an English one).
How do you feel about that? "The Great and Powerful Oz" is an upcoming prequel being filmed by director Sam Raimi. It stars James Franco (Oz), Michelle Williams (who plays Glinda), Rachel Weisz (Evanora), and Mila Kunis (Theodora). The three ladies play the witches that Oz has to deal with in the takeover of the yellow brick road. I know nothing about the plot other than that. Oh and it's supposed to come out in 2013.
The first promo picture for The Great and
Powerful Oz. Franco seems like he's trying
to hard to look sexy which is not what I
associate with the Wizard of Oz.
If you aren't familiar with Sam Raimi's work, you need look no further than the show "Drag Me To Hell" (sucks) or the Evil Dead series (good if you're drunk and with stupid friends--IQ 80 required). You'll either love him or hate him. There is no in-between. But for the record, I think Spider-Man 2 was a masterpiece.

Anyway, this is where I shake my fist at Hollywood. Why are you going to ruin a classic? A prequel to "The Wizard of Oz" is going to lead to a sequel which is basically...a REBOOT of "The Wizard of Oz".

Judy Garland is the only person I can see playing Dorothy. And her singing of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" still makes me pause every single time that I hear it.

And yes, as I discussed earlier this week, Lion's Gate is already planning on rebooting "Twilight" with a whole new cast and "Breaking Dawn, part 2" hasn't even been released yet. Plus you have a reboot of "The Hunger Games" being discussed and the Batman franchise has already been greenlit for a reboot after Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" hits theaters this summer.

Enough already.

There are so many stories that are so amazing that have not been given a silver screen treatment.

Here are just a few on my list:

1) David Eddings' Belgariad could become five blockbuster fantasy movies. As a side note, I hate that Christopher Paolini endorses Eddings on the cover. Eddings is 100 times the writer Paolini will ever be. I tried to read Eragon...what utter crap. Yet it got a movie treatment. R.I.P. Eddings...you did good. I will miss your stories.
2) What about Neuromancer by William Gibson? It won both the Hugo and the Nebula in the year it was released? Talk about the king of cyberpunk, why the hell has this not been made into a movie?
3) For the vampire enthusiasts, how come the Anita Blake series hasn't ever been cast or discussed? This story by Laurel K. Hamilton is superior to the one by Charlaine Harris in my opinion and she is repeatedly a New York Times bestseller.
4) Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.
5) The Dragonlance books by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis. Holy cow...this would be incredible!
6) Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality. The story in this was brilliant.
7) Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. Again, just absolutely mind-blowing in his world-building.
8) Lloyd Alexander's Prydain chronicles. Disney screwed over The Black Cauldron...please, someone with talent make these five books into movies.
This is what I hate most about what capitalism does to art. The artist in me longs for a socialized art/movie industry that uses taxpayer money coupled with money from a fund setup to receive all the profits from successful movie projects to continue to back new projects. In other words, to make the entire movie industry break new boundaries in film.
When this is all that matters, you have to dumb down your
product so that it appeals to as many people as possible to
make the biggest return on investment. To appeal to so many
different tastes in my opinion causes artistic expression to go
out of the window and into the trash can. Hence why Madagascar 3
continuously beat Prometheus in theaters. One is G-Rated and the
other is rated-R. But Ridley Scott took more of a risk with
Prometheus...a thing for which I am thankful. And he made a
far superior and more artistic creation.In my socialized art/movie industry, we would say "No. 'Twilight' has already had a run. It's very successful and generated two billion dollars for the fund. We will not be rebooting it with a new cast. Instead, we are using the remaining funds after all invested parties have been paid handsomely to invest in a book that has never had a movie treatment. An entirely new story if you will. I'm sorry if that disappoints you."

Anyway, that is my rant. I'm just tired of how we are being spoon fed more of the same. Here comes another Snow White movie...here comes another reboot of "Total Recall"...

Do you have books in a list that you keep in your head for which you'd like to see a Hollywood treatment? If so, please say so in the comments.

How do you feel about reboots of both Twilight and Harry Potter (with an American cast instead of a British one)? Would you go and see them en-masse if they are released in 2014? Do you think the corporate greed is such that it is destroying creativity by only going for projects that are sure to generate some serious cash?

I honestly think I live in a weird time of human history. I never would have envisioned a time when I thought mass produced entertainment would be stuck on repeat. Don't you people out there ever get tired of seeing the same old thing? Furthermore, can you explain to me why reboots seem to make such huge fists of money? A lack of money is the only thing that is going to kill reboots and make greedy corporate pigs look at investing in other projects and taking risks.

I will leave you with Judy Garland singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", mostly because hearing it brings peace to my mind. Have a great weekend.

Wherein I review House on the Corner by Andrew Leon

Cover Art by Rusty Webb, a blogger buddy, who simply kicks much ass when it comes
to this kind of thing. My hat is off to you Rusty.I should have done a review of Andrew's book a long time ago. Better late than never I say, so here it is:

In general, I liked this little yarn spun by Mr. Leon. It took me back to the eighties, had plenty of nerdy D&D references, and really made me remember how cool Star Wars was as a kid. I mean...it was pretty cool (especially the whole Hoth sequence).

I'm 40, single, and don't have kids. This illustration shows what
I wanted to email Andrew during the first 100 pages. But I am
not this book's target audience. However, I stuck with it!I think that the first third of this book will appeal to people who just like to hang out with screaming kids (let's call it "character building" for lack of a better description). If asked for a synopsis of these chapters, I would say "a family with three loud and annoying kids moves into a house". Personally, I could have done with a hundred less pages of "character building" since the story for me didn't start until Chapter 15 entitled "the imagination room".
That's where the story finally got interesting. The imagination room is kind of like a gateway to another world, similar to the wardrobe in Narnia. And there is magic, monsters, strange food, and Arthurian legends enough to make any kids' eyes pop. Now, I LOVE all things Arthur. As a caveat to the naysayers who groan at Arthurian stuff, I know it's been done to death, and I too borrow from the legend in my own writing. But I never get tired of it. Does any guy NOT like knights in shiny armor and magic swords? If you answer yes to this question then WE CANNOT BE FRIENDS :P. Just kidding, but be careful what you say. Morgana is a great villain in the show Merlin.That icy stare
sends shivers down my spine. So you better not be dissin'
on Arthurian legends. We need MORE!
Morgana is watching! =====>>>
We find out later that although there is something special about the imagination room, the true magic resides in a very rare bloodline that produces one wizard and one guardian to a mystical tower that has a lot to do with King Arthur, Merlin, and the sword Excalibur (how's that for a kickass legacy). When I was 7-years-old, I wanted nothing more than my own Excalibur. I read bunches of knight stories and wanted so much to see the movie called Excalibur (it was rated-R). My parents refused to take me because it was "smutty". My parents wouldn't let me watch Excalibur, most likely,
because of this scene which has Uther ravishing Igraine
and includes some pretty hot armor sex. io9 did a
whole article on armor sex HERE .
The book doesn't have any bad language. I would rate it PG-13 because there is a death in it, but only after a nifty fight scene with a troll named Scromb. The book is also written in first person up to Chapter 22. I don't mind reading first person, but Andrew chose to alternate points-of-view in each chapter to one of three children (their names being Tom, Ruth, and Sam) and you never have any idea who is talking until halfway down the first page of each chapter. Then the book shifts into full-blown third person omniscient in Chapter 22 without any warning to prepare the reader. Maybe this is artistic expression? It doesn't work for me. But I think 13-year-olds and younger won't care, and these are the people for whom I believe the book is aimed. And the content of the story is pretty good. You've got magic, monsters, wizards, a spooky house, mysteries, old books, strange neighbors, and a lot of pop culture references, including the old G.I. Joe dolls from the sixties.
So if you're looking for a book that you can read out loud to your class or to your children, you might want to give House on the Corner a try.
I give this book 3-1/2 stars out of 5.
********************
Check out Andrew's blog HERE.
If you want to own House on the Corner, you can buy it on AMAZON . I don't recommend purchasing it on the NOOK at this time as my copy had severe formatting issues. Andrew was kind enough to supply me with a complimentary pdf to read.
You can mark Andrew's book "to read" on Goodreads HERE, if you would like to be supportive.
Have a happy Thursday my bloggy friends :)