M.L. Guida's Blog, page 13

M.L. Guida’s Haunts: The Queen Mary

The Queen Mary

Since I write about vampires and pirates, it was about time I tackled haunted ships. One of the most infamous ships is the Queen Mary, once a luxury ocean liner, located in Long Beach, California. In World War II, she was stripped of her cruise line luxury, painted gray so she’d be harder to detect, and converted into a troop ship. She was called the Grey Ghost. Her job was to transfer soldiers from U.S. to England. Supposedly, Hitler put a bounty on her head.

When I was a teenager, I visited the ship and one of the scariest places is the pool room where visitors reported being haunted by ghost children. The rumor is that a little girl died while playing on a banister. She fell and broke her neck. Now she visits the pool hunting for her mother and her lost doll.

I remember the pool. What struck me was the dreariness of it. Cold. Cement. Green. Goose bumps broke out on my arms and unease gripped me. I didn’t want to stay there long. Did I see the little girl? No. Did I feel something? Yes.

My sister was freaked out by a gigantic propeller that was displayed in a small dark room. Gave her flash backs of Gene Hackman’s Poseidon Adventure.

Another frightening area is the engine room where a young sailor, John Pedder, tried to escape a fire, but ended up being crushed to death by the watertight door. Sometimes the door is too hot to touch. A guard was walking his dog, a Doberman, and when they approached the watertight door number 13, the dog growled and refused to move. The guard searched the engine room, but there was nothing there. When I visited the engine room, it was damp, cramped and creepy, but it still wasn’t as eerie as the pool room.

Have any of you visited the Queen Mary? Tours are available and there is a resident psychic, Peter James, who claims to have communicated with a 150 ghosts. http://www.queenmary.com/attractions-events/haunted-encounters.php It’s one of the most haunted places in America. If you get a chance visit this Grand Ole Lady and tell me what you experience. Did you see the little girl? Touch the hot door? Or see something else?

M.L. Guida’s Villains

Recently, I went to see the movie, Noah, with Russell Crowe. If you haven’t seen this movie, I do have spoilers. I’ve seen posts where he is described as a hero. A hero is someone who risks everything to do the right thing such as firefighters rushing into the burning Twin Towers building in New York or police officers who respond to domestic violence calls where a gunman is threatening to kill his family. A hero is not someone who ponders killing his own children or leaves a helpless girl to be trampled to death.

Is Noah a villain in the movie? No, he’s not. He’s a religious zealot and by the way, not for God, for the Creator. Not once in the movie is the Creator referred to as God. His obsession to save the animals is noble, but his desire to wipe out the human race is not. Even if you wanted to follow Machiavelli’s philosophy that man is evil, does that justify man being destroyed? I believe in hope and in this movie, Noah has definitely lost his.

There are no male heroes in this movie. Villains abound. Nick Nolte’s Samyaza is disgusting, but even this character isn’t truly developed. A good villain has plausible reasons on why he commits atrocities. In Silence of the Lamb, Buffalo Bills kills women and skins them to make a women’s suit since he’s been denied a sex change operation. Horrifying? Yes. But it makes him a powerful villain. Samyaza is your basic evil guy that takes what he wants. Weak motivation.

If there was one character I did like, it was Emma Watson’s Ila. Noah and his family find Ila after her family is attacked. She is wounded and based on her wounds, cannot bear children. She fights to survive throughout the movie and isn’t afraid to stand up to Noah and his zealousness. Something Noah’s sons and wife are not able to do.

The movie could be stronger if the motivations had been believable. What did you think? Was a Noah a hero or a villain?

RITA's

Romance Writers of America just announced the finalists for the RITA and I am impressed on how many indie authors were nominated. Indie writers do write books that are well edited and well written. Otherwise, they never would have made this list.
Congrats to all the authors, both indie, small press and traditional, who made this list. Well done!

Sale

Luck of the Irish to ye! Saint Patrick's Day is only a few days and it's a time for green beer, corn beef and cabbage. To celebrate this fun holiday, I'm putting A Pirate's Curse on sale for this long weekend. It will go back up to the usual price on Tuesday.
So, this weekend, be merry and be safe.

Spring Back

Daylight Savings is this weekend and its always such a shock. Are you like me? Losing that one hour is so hard to recover and when the alarms goes off, I want to hit the snooze button over and over again.
But I have to look at the bright side, it's one step closer to warmer weather. I'm ready for a change of clothing—flip flops, short sleeves and shorts. Come on sun!

M.L. Guida's Villains - Anne Bonny

Another episode of Starz’s Black Sails airs tonight and one of the villains is Anne Bonny.
In the Golden Age of Sail, she was as ruthless and heartless as her male counterparts and in the first episode she stabbed a man with two knives when he approached her. In my new book, A Pirate’s Revenge, I have a demon, Natasa that would put Anne Bonny to shame. Natasa’s idea of a good time was putting men on the rack and stretching them until their limbs threatened to pop out of their sockets. Who says women couldn’t be as evil as a man?
Born in County Cork Ireland, Anne was not a fictional character and lived a colorful life. Her family moved to America and against her father’s wishes, she eloped with James Bonny, a known pirate, but Anne was fickle and left him for Jack ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham, captain of the sloop ship, Revenge. Together they recruited a crew, captured ships, and accumulated a vast amount of treasure. They even had a child together that Anne left in Cuba with friends so she could continue her exploits with Rackham.
However, loyalty to her husband was not one of Anne’s traits. When he was about to be hung in Jamaica, Anne was quoted as saying, “Sorry to see him there, but if he fought like a man, he need not have been hang’d like a dog.”
Of course, Anne escaped the hangman’s noose by claiming her pregnancy. There was no report of her being hanged and some say her father, a plantation owner, rescued her from a deadly end.
Like Anne, loyalty was not one of Natasa’s traits, either. When the God of the Underworld demanded to know why she failed in her mission, Natasa gladly pointed her finger at the demon she loved. True or false, she had no intention of being thrown into a freezing demon hole for centuries.
In Starz’s Black Sails, rather than having her own ship, along with Rackham, Anne is a member of Captain Charles Vane’s crew. Since loyalty is not one of Anne’s qualities, will Vane still command his own ship or will Anne slit his throat so she and Rackham can rule the sea together?

Starz's Black Sails

Starz's new series, Black Sails, debuted last tonight. This is not a Disney version but a genuine pirate movie on the high seas. Captain Flint of the notorious ship, Walrus, is desperate to find the missing page of a captain's manifest which would reveal the launch of a Spanish Galleon's most prized treasure. Someone aboard his crew has already stolen it. Flint is losing the faith of his crew and rebellion is brimming to the surface unless he can restore their allegiance, he's liable to find himself at the bottom of the ocean.

Flint is not above murder and lies to achieve his gains which is unlike my hero, Captain Kane O'Brien, in A Pirate's Curse. O'Brien has the loyalty of his crew, but has lost faith in himself. He blames himself for the curse and like Flint, he's desperate to find a cure and will do anything to get it, including to whip the truth out of a captured cabin boy.

Ruthlessness and determination are what makes a great captain and both Flint and O'Brien possess these qualities. At the end of Black Sails, Flint takes a gamble to prove to his crew that he's the bloody captain and I found myself hoping he'd win. In this series, there are villains galore, but I found myself asking, who are the villains and who are the heroes?

Of course, I write dark paranormal and I like the twisted characters-Captain Flint, Anne Bonny, John Silver and Captain Vane. I look forward to the next episode of Black Sails.

I'd love to hear what you thought of the series. Who were your favorite characters?

M.L. Guida's Villains

Villains. You gotta love them. Star Wars would not exist without Darth Vader. His famous line—I am your father—has become legendary. Darth Vader had a motivation on why he performed such atrocities. He wasn’t evil just to be evil. He would have become a flat character.
The best villains all have a purpose that makes sense to them. It’s not just to kill for the sake of killing. Even Thomas Harding’s Buffalo Bill had a purpose of why he killed and skinned large women—he was making a woman’s suit because he’d been denied the transsexual operation. Gross, but motivating.
I’d like to explore other writer’s villains and the motivations on why they commit the atrocities that they do in their books. So, I’m going to start inviting other authors to my blog on the second and fourth Friday of every month.
This month, I will start with one of my favorite villains, Gryffin Drake, in my soon to be released novella, Dark Promise. Gryffin is a dragon demon and likes to torture creatures. Other demons fear him and he wants them to fear him. The other dragon demons are growing dark, including our hero, Eric Wyvern, because the Golden Tree is dying. Without the Tranquil Song of the Golden Tree, dragon demons turn to their savage nature.
However, Gryffin was dark before the tree started dying. He doesn’t want the tree to be healed because he wants to carry out his atrocities and to accomplish this he needs the tree to whither and die. The king listens to him and he is encouraging the king to conquer the other demon kingdoms and then attack Earth. He will have an abundance of victims to torture.
His goal is not to be king. He prefers to be in the shadows and perform his dark tortures. The hero threatens his position and Gryffin urges the king to allow him to torture his son to stop him from saving the tree.
Dark Promise is the first book of three where Gryffin will appear. (At least, I hope so.) He develops new and darker goals in the next two stories. One will be a novella and the other a full length book.
What kind of questions do you have about villains? Who are you favorite ones? I’d love to know so I can ask authors these questions.

2014 Challenge

This year, I did not make my goal of reading 25 books. My excuse: writing and life. How dare they get involved with writing. I have so many books I want to read but I'm lowering the number of books I'm going to read.

I know. I know. The coward's way out.

This year I will read 15 books. That's a little more than one book a month. I can do this!

And you? How many of you made your book challenge for 2013?

NaNoWriMo

It's in the air and my favorite time of the year. NaNoWriMo pumps me up and I'm planning on writing the third book, A Pirate's Obsession, in the Legends of the Soaring Phoenix. I'd love to make 50000 words, but I'm shooting for 30000. I have my book outline and ready to start getting the first draft out. Wish me luck!
How many of your are participating?