Benedict Martin's Blog, page 4
July 21, 2015
My Review of Ulla Hakanson’s Price of Silence
Poor Amy Robinson. There she goes getting engaged to someone she assumes is a decent man, only to discover he’s involved in an illegal drug ring. And what does he do when his criminal dealings go sour? He pulls Amy down with him.
In a lot of ways this book reminds me of a good monster movie. Just when you think Amy’s safe, danger somehow finds its way through the door. Fortunately Amy is one tough cookie, surviving not only on wits, but determination as well.
This book is exciting, there’s no other way of putting it. The characters are colorful, and Ulla Hakanson does a brilliant job of bringing British Columbia’s unique personality to life. I lived in BC for many years, and I found myself visualizing many of the locations described in the book. It actually made me homesick, which is weird considering it’s such a scary story.
I really enjoyed this story and I look forward to reading more of Ulla Hakanson’s work.
(If you’re interested in purchasing The Price of Silence, you can download the book here.)
July 20, 2015
Meet the Fiends in my Sock Drawer: Geoffrey Gooms
I always thought vampires were supposed to be charismatic creatures, or at the very least, frightening. Mr. Geoffrey Gooms manages to be neither, spending the majority of his time either on twitter or cocooned in a 1970s era sleeping bag in the corner of my sock drawer. Even the story of how he became a vampire is boring: he was bitten by a mosquito while weeding. Or was it a monkey? Other than that, I know nothing about him: his age, his powers, his views on god; I don’t even know where he gets his blood from. And to be honest, I don’t really care.
July 19, 2015
Meet the Fiends in my Sock Drawer: Eddie Russells
When I discovered an author had moved into my sock drawer, I thought, Finally, some culture. But then came the announcements: Monday, Eddie Russells was working on a trilogy that would turn the fantasy genre on its head. Tuesday, Eddie Russells was working on the first science fiction novel to be written entirely in Aramaic. Wednesday, Eddie Russells was penning a script for an edgy animated series about pixies living in a sewer. Over a period of fourteen days Eddie Russells announced 14 different projects. Naturally I wondered if he was on drugs. So I had a peep at his website, and though it was full of posts detailing the amazing things he’s working on, in the end, all I could find of his work was a badly written haiku about a woman’s bum. I’m beginning to suspect Eddie Russells is full of shit.
July 17, 2015
Meet the Fiends in my Sock Drawer: Pubby the Naughty Imp
Being an imp, Pubby is prone to doing naughty things. Nothing catastrophic (like filling a car with seawater and eels), he simply takes great delight in dabbling in the annoying. For example he never flushes the toilet. And he’s always adding drops of Tabasco to the juice in the fridge. His favorite trick is convincing someone to pull his finger and then vomiting all over their shoes.
July 15, 2015
Meet the Fiends in my Sock Drawer: Willem McGee
Did you know there’s a condition where a person’s organs are on the opposite side of the body? It’s true, it’s called Situs Invertus, and it comes in very handy if you’re in a gunfight. Or at least that’s what Willem McGee told me. He’s a gunslinger, you see, and thanks to his wrongly placed organs, he’s survived over a dozen duels, suffering only shattered ribs and punctured lungs when anyone else would have had their hearts exploded. I didn’t believe him at first, but then he showed me his chest, and let me tell you, there’s nothing quite as odd as seeing a man’s right nipple where his left nipple should be.
July 13, 2015
Meet the Fiends Living in my Sock Drawer: Mr. Fuzzy Buns
Science has known for years that many creatures possess natural compasses that allow them to travel great distances without becoming lost. (Monarch Butterflies, for example. And pigeons.) Mr. Fuzzybuns has a compass. Unfortunately it’s broken, causing Mr. Fuzzybuns to become disoriented going around a corner. Thankfully nature has equipped Mr. F. with prolific bowels, and using the popular children’s tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’ as inspiration, he has learned how to retrace his steps by following the little trail of pellets he so consistently leaves behind.
July 11, 2015
Tales From the Sock Drawer: Cheep
Back when my oldest daughter was 4 years old, I made the mistake of getting her a subscription to Cheep magazine. The magazine itself was fairly benign. Every month it featured stories and cartoons about the eponymous bird interacting with his many neighbors and friends. But my daughter found it boring, and once the year was over, we were happy to let the subscription run out.
Except the magazines kept coming.
I didn’t give it a second thought until one day I got a phone call from someone threatening to break my kneecaps if I didn’t bring my account up to date. I assumed someone was playing a joke on me, only to wake one morning to a large yellow bird smashing the windows on my wife’s Toyota.
Turns out Cheep is also in charge of his magazine’s collections department, and let me tell you, he’s nothing like the adorable little fuzzball portrayed on the cover. He’s a thug, and that’s why I’ve given very clear instructions to my children that if they ever see a big, bat wielding bird in a trench coat approach the house, they are to turn off all the lights and hide downstairs.
