Brendan Reichs's Blog, page 8

CODE RELEASE DAY!!!

March 12, 2013 — Code is on bookshelves …. today! Purchase the third Virals adventure at bookstores EVERYWHERE!!!

Buy CODE right now!

The Virals are put to the ultimate test when they find a geocache containing an ornate puzzle box. Shelton decodes the cipher inside, only to find more tantalizing clues left by “The Gamemaster.” A second, greater geocache is within reach–if the Virals are up to the challenge.

But the hunt takes a dark turn when Tory locates the other box–a fake bomb, along with a sinister proposal from The Gamemaster. Now, the real game has begun: another bomb is out there–a real one–and the clock is ticking.

Shift Releases Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

SHIFT — a brand spanking new Virals e-story — releases on 3/5! Here’s a brief description:

Tory’s great aunt, Temperance Brennan, visits just in time to investigate a robbery at the Loggerhead Island Research Institute. As a renowned forensic anthropologist, Tempe is obviously qualified to figure out whodunit, but Tory and her Virals pack want to crack the case on their own. Yet the crime is puzzling. Who could have accessed the labs at LIRI, and how could they have gotten the equipment off the island?

It’s Brennan vs. Brennan in this short story that gives readers a brand new insight into the world of the Virals.

This story gives Virals fans a chance to see their world through a few very new perspectives. And Tempe fans will get a surprise as well. Pre-Order it now! (Seriously, go pre-order it. These links will help. You’re the best.)

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B7NPS06/ref=r_soa_w_d

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shift-kathy-reichs/1114589360?ean=9781101630594

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/shift/id597951487?mt=11

And look for the third installment in the Virals series, CODE, on March 12, 2013.

The Virals are put to the ultimate test when they find a geocache containing an ornate puzzle box. Shelton decodes the cipher inside, only to find more tantalizing clues left by “The Gamemaster.” A second, greater geocache is within reach–if the Virals are up to the challenge. But the hunt takes a dark turn when Tory locates the other box–a fake bomb, along with a sinister proposal from The Gamemaster. Now, the real game has begun: another bomb is out there–a real one–and the clock is ticking.

The good reviews keep coming. This may be our best Virals adventure yet. Pre-Order now!

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595144129/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0K1CAMAZ6N08TNNBA49T&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/code-kathy-reichs/1112901617?ean=9781595144126

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/code/id555155102?mt=11

Great Code Review!

Check out the amazing review of Code by Crime Fiction Lover! Code release in the US on 3/12/13!

Written by Kathy and Brendan Reichs – She’s best known for her novels featuring forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan, but Kathy Reichs is also carving a niche for herself in the young adult fiction market. Code is the third in the Virals series, and is co-written with her son, Brendan. Which is a neat move, as having a younger writer on board certainly helps to give the novel an authentic voice.

Virals features Tory Brennan, great-niece of Temperance. Although she’s just 14, Tory is certainly a chip off the old block. She is the only female in her band of four but definitely runs the show – she is intuitive, bright and feisty, and I loved her from the off. Tory’s fellow Virals are Ben, Hi and Shelton, and they are accompanied most of the time by Wolfdog Cooper.

So what is a ‘Viral’? Well, Code is my first foray into their world, so I will share what I’ve learned. In their earlier adventures, Tory and the boys rescued Cooper from the hands of an unscrupulous scientist who had been using him as a guinea pig to test a new virus. The foursome became infected during the rescue and now have extraordinary powers, which they are at pains to hide from outsiders. When the power is summoned, the gang become a pack, and combine to develop heightened senses and strength. Tory is the alpha, with added powers that can prove both a blessing and a curse.

In Code, the Virals try their hand at locating a geocache and are intrigued when they uncover a mysterious box buried in the ground. But what seemed like a simple treasure hunt soon turns into a labyrinthine game of puzzles, as it becomes clear that one false move will lead to terrible, explosive consequences. The clock is ticking, so can Tory and the Virals best the mysterious Games Master and crack the code in time?

The plot is fast moving and engaging and would have worked just as well without the sci-fi side-dish, but Code’s co-authors are to be congratulated for managing to make the storyline so believeable. It is very much set in the here and now, with the gang using computers, smart phones, iPads, deduction and good old plain common sense in their pursuit of the dastardly Games Master. These are geeks at their peak, with a splash of Scooby Doo style humour to keep the whole thing light. And, of course, these being teenagers, there are hormones aplenty to muddy the waters further.

Not content with foiling the deadly plans of a madman, the Virals’ secret is getting closer and closer to being uncovered – and they are desperately looking for an antidote that will cure them of their scary skills. Something to be developed in the next book, if the cliffhanger ending of Code is anything to go by.

I admit I’m well past the target audience for Code, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it.

CFL Rating: 4 Stars

http://www.crimefictionlover.com/2012/12/code/

 

Breaking Virals News!

Hello Virals fans! Tired of waiting for Code to release on March 12, 2013? Well, so are we. To make up for the long wait, Kathy and I have written a brand new Virals e-story to tide you over. Details to follow, but look for SHIFT sometime in the next few weeks! And don’t fret Tempe Brennan fans, she’s in this one too!

Tory’s great aunt, Temperance Brennan, visits just in time to investigate a robbery at the Loggerhead Island Research Institute. As a renowned forensic anthropologist, Tempe is obviously qualified to figure out whodunit, but Tory and her Virals pack want to crack the case on their own. Yet the crime is puzzling. Who could have accessed the labs at LIRI, and how could they have gotten the equipment off the island? It’s Brennan vs. Brennan in this short story that gives readers a brand new insight into the world of the Virals.

What I’m Reading

Fact: I love epic fantasy. Read it all the time. Huge fan. But I’m three-quarters of the way through the prequel to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, New Spring, and I have to get something off my chest.

First, let me be clear–I love these books. I immensely respect Robert Jordan. I think the Wheel of Time is one of the best fantasy series ever written. The world Jordan created is complete, detailed, functional, and consistent. The One Power is perhaps the most original and completely filled-in system of (quote-unquote) magic in the epic fantasy genre. Sure, the series spiraled a bit out of control somewhere around Lord of Chaos, and didn’t really right itself until Brandon Sanderson took over (in book, what, twelve?), but this a first-ballot Hall-of-Fame epic fantasy series. Without a doubt. Rest in peace, Mr. Jordan. You wrote something great.

That said … Jordan had one habit of characterization that is starting to wear on me. Every single character, or group of characters, in these books seems to be locked in a never-ending struggle to dominate everyone else. The personal interactions are a constant tug-o-war of getting the upper hand, and then bending the other characters by force of will. This is just as true among allies as enemies. There is very little cooperation in the books that isn’t forced by the dictates of a contested power structure. There is very little acknowledgment that cooperation is likely to work better than forcibly railroading the other party. The characters, for all their well-rounded attributes and intelligence, seem to have a serial inability to put themselves second. Instead, they spend dozens of pages glowering, burning with resentment, or sulking, because they didn’t get to do what they wanted to do at any given moment. It’s an epidemic of immaturity. How is it that these people are unable to work effectively in groups without resorting to pulling rank, every, single, time? The result is that everyone has to hide everything from everyone else, because they’re constantly refusing to work together effectively. It gets a little maddening.

And so you get Aes Sedai and Sea Folk constantly trying to batter each other into submission, despite being on the same side. People are forever prisoners of tribal and/or organizational hierarchies (the Aiel, the Children of the Light, Aes Sedai, Wise Women, Rand’s various alliances, the Asha’men, the Seanchan, the Forsaken, to name just a few). Indeed, Aes Sedai seem to spend most of their time fighting with each other, with the winner usually determined by who has the strongest ability to tap the One Power, or who, currently, situationally, has the upper hand. Everyone always thinks they are right, and everyone else wrong. This problem is most prevalent when the male and female characters try to work together. Often they seem utterly incapable of hashing out a reasonable plan, assigning roles, and getting it done. Rather, usually, each character thinks that they have the only workable plan, that they should do whatever needs to be done, without interference, and that the others are simply foolish and in the way. So they just go off and do their own thing without working together. Arrrgh.

This problem is front-and-center in New Spring, which spends quite a bit of time rehashing the training system for Accepted at the White Tower. Bottom line, the Aes Sedai treat their young trainees like borderline incompetents, despite the Accepted being in their late teens to twenties. They call them “child.” The training process involves chores, lessons from condescending teachers, and spankings. That’s right, spankings. The girls–learning to use an incredible supernatural power–plan pranks, squabble, and cry a lot. Everyone brags. They arrange themselves by personal power. It’s all disturbingly childish, in my mind. Why is the tone so often belittling? Why is the need to dominate the most prevalent factor in the personality of the Tower? I don’t get why there aren’t more “real talk” scenes, or why the Aes Sedai feel that a forced second childhood is the correct manner to train women who will have unspoken authority in every corner of the world. Because it results in immature, insecure, headstrong inductees, as the actions of the main female character who received that training bear out (Moiraine and Siuan in New Spring, and Elayne, Egwene, and Nynaeve during the whole series).

Don’t get me wrong. I like these characters. I love these books. But at times, I think Jordan strayed too far into harshly competitive interpersonal dynamics. It becomes refreshing to read the scenes where the characters form a plan, accept roles, and execute it without endlessly bickering over who’s in charge. I wish there was more of them. All that said, I’m looking forward to the final book, A Memory of Light, this January. Can’t wait, really. I’ll miss this series when it’s over.

Fantasy dork rant over. For now.

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What I’m Watching

Now that Game of Thrones is on a break — and I don’t have to constantly marvel (read: talk endlessly) about how fantastic it is — I have a gaping hole at “favorite show on TV.” If you casually mention this quandary in a conversation, you’ll get a lot of advice. Probably more than you want. People love to push their favorite shows. Often feel compelled to do so. So I’ve heard many arguments, most involving the new benchmark shows on cable, like Homeland (truly excellent, and filmed in Charlotte — woot!), Breaking Bad (just slightly overrated, but still very, very good), The Walking Dead (became an absolute train-wreck last season — leave the damn farm! — but vastly improved in season three), and, of course, Mad Men (solid, but not really “appointment TV” in my book). I will also listen to arguments for Bones (family pressure, and yes, it’s very good), New Girl (that cast just kills it), and Go, Diego, Go (this one is mainly pushed by my two-year-old son). But none of those shows really hit the mark. Neither do my two reality TV favorites The Amazing Race (one day I will run it, mark my words) and Survivor (still the purest reality competition of them all).

So, having given this some serious thought, I’ve come down to an answer, and it shocked me: right now, my favorite show on TV is Chopped. I watch it maybe five times a week. It’s the first show I pull off my DVR. I love that the food baskets are always absurd (“gummy worms, oak tree bark!”), that the judges are delightfully smug for a group of people no one’s ever heard of, and that the chefs like to give fancy names to finished dishes that look remarkably like Mac-and-Cheese. The show demands very little of me — I can miss twenty minutes to change of a diaper, or rescue my dog from a vicious cat attack, and still be up to speed. Plus it’s about food, which, for some reason, is a genre of reality show I can’t get enough of despite almost never cooking anything myself, and knowing that, intrinsically, I can’t really know who won, because I don’t get to taste anything But I still tune in. Man v. Food, Top Chef, Great Food Truck Race. I watch them all. I even watched the entire run of Extreme Chef, which was just terrible.

Look, I want to say my favorite show is Boardwalk Empire, or Downton Abbey, or something classy and highbrow. But this is my blog, and here we tell the truth. And the truth is, my current favorite TV show is an elimination cooking competition for $10,000, where contestants get browbeaten by haughty strangers and sometimes cut their fingers badly. It is what it is.

On second thought, Downton Abbey is way better. The Dowager Countess. Straight baller.

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Comic-Con 2013

Hope to see you at San Diego Comic-Con 2013. I’ll be there promoting CODE and trying to fathom LARPing. This guy has my back.

 

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What I’m Reading

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and I have to say, more than anything it: a) freaked me out that if my children weren’t born on exactly the right dates I’ve done them a horrible disservice as a parent; and b) convinced me that my own June birthday is solely responsible for the failure of my NBA prospects. I was a summer child, cruelly thrust into a grade level where I’d forever be nine months younger than most everybody else. According to Gladwell — and I could be getting this completely wrong — this creates a minor competitive disadvantage early that morphs into major one by the time you reach high school. Aha!

Now, tooting some horns here, I never had much trouble keeping up with my older, bulkier classmates on the academic side. From day one of kindergarten I blew people’s minds as a skinny-pencil-using, geography-knowing, vocabulary-word-crushing five year old. But this total-days-alive disadvantage must explain why I failed to achieve a greater level of athletic glory. I was disadvantaged early, and therefore overlooked late. I failed to excel past 13-14 AAU basketball only because the chronological deck was stacked against me– the other kids in my grade level had the insufferable advantage of being born the pervious September. The calendar has been my lifelong, dark enemy, and it, and it alone, kept me from self-actualizing as the starting point guard for the Chicago Bulls. Or at least the Bobcats.

There really are no other plausible explanations.

Thanks Mom and Dad. Good looking out.

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Bones Fever

My brief career at the Jeffersonian did not take off. Weak stomach. However, I met some nice people. Hit the link to seem me and some of the cast kicking it Bones-style.

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The Newest Addition…

My wife and I just welcomed the latest Viral to our family! Meet Alice, who has already taken a clear liking to her brother, Henry. I can already tell she’s Women’s National Soccer Team material.

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