Carl Alves's Blog, page 41

Two For Eternity: Ancient Egypt

Considering that Two For Eternity takes place over a twelve thousand year span, I had to use some ancient societies as backdrops. The two that immediately came to mind was Egypt and Babylon, widely considered the two earliest civilized societies, although there is some argument that some Far East societies may have pre-dated these. I was originally going to start the first part of Two For Eternity in 10,000 B.C. in Central Africa, where it is first believed that homo sapiens started on this planet, but I really wanted to start the novel with a fast pace action piece, and Egypt provided me with the perfect opportunity. Egypt was a highly advanced, highly militarized society that was expanding its empire throughout Africa. This section of the novel is highly fictionalized. I wasn’t big on where the Egyptian empire was miltarizing or how they were going about it. I was mainly interested in the concept that this was happening, that the Egpytians were conquering nations.

My main character, Raiken, had been part of the Egyptian military but no longer had the stomach for all the war mongering, so he tries to get out. That would be too easy for Raiken. As he tries to start a new life in Central Africa near Kilimanjaro, the Egyptian army attempts to conquer his village. His immortal counterpart, Vrag, is part of the Egyptian army setting the stage for their first of many conflicts. You can read more when my novel Two For Eternity comes out on November 1st.

10 Questions with Brian Matthews

1. Where did you come up with the concept for Forever Man?

The idea came to me back in 2010. President Obama had just been elected to his first term, and the talking heads were making a big deal about his race, his nationality, all the crazy stuff that was going on back then. Well, I was driving to a haircut appointment one day, listening to news radio, and chuckled when I thought, “Wow, what would they do if one of the greatest forces for good in the world was a black man?” That how many of my ideas form: the “what if” scenario. Anyway, the genesis of Forever Man began with that lone thought. The rest consisted of fleshing out the story and the back story. It was tremendous fun.

2. Who has been your biggest influence as a writer?
There have been many influences— Bradbury, King, Ellison, Donaldson—but the biggest influence was probably J. R. R. Tolkien. I cut my reading teeth on fantasy more than horror, and much of my writing has a fantasy basis. The Forever Man series is more urban fantasy than supernatural thriller or horror, though it contains elements of all three. For example, I shy away from using traditional monsters like vampires or zombies and prefer to create my own. That’s very Terry Brooks. Or Clive Barker, who I think of as a master of blending fantasy and horror.

3. Did you intend on Forever Man being a series when you first started writing it?
Yes. That was the plan from the start. I had been reading F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack series, where the books are loosely connected except for the main character, and thought Bart Owens would fit well into that scheme. Revelation, which is the follow-up novel to Forever Man, in not a sequel—it does not pick up where Forever Man left off—but another book in the series. There are threads connecting the two, and the other Forever Man novels that will eventually be written, but they will be stand alone works. You don’t necessarily have to read one to understand or enjoy the other, though reading them in order will help enhance the enjoyment.

4. What current writing projects are you working on?
I am working on my first non-Forever Man novel. Like most of my works, Emersville it is set in Michigan. It involves a child psychologist, Brad Jordan, who starts to experience weird phenomena. Together with his best friend, police detective Frank Swinicki, they investigate these bizarre occurrences and find themselves embroiled in a dangerous battle with…well, that would be a huge spoiler, wouldn’t it? I’ve had a great time writing it, and I’m looking forward to how readers feel about it.

5. You got off to a later start in your writing career. Why did you decide to start writing?
A good friend of mine, Jeff LaSala, asked me to contribute to an anthology he and a few others were putting together. He knew I liked to write, and that I had some skill. Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero was a cyberpunk anthology with a twist: it contained a music CD, and each story was paired with a soundtrack. My story, “Lament,” is about mob hit man who runs afoul of his past. Then later, when a writer had to bow out of the project, Jeff and I ended up co-authoring a story to replace that missing one. “Graveduggery” is, I feel, one of the best stories in the anthology, and contains some of my best writing to date. After Foreshadows had ended, I found I wanted to write more, and Forever Man was the result of that desire.

6. How do you use social media to promote your writing?
I’m pretty basic when it comes to social media. I have an Facebook author page, where I post updates and such, and I use Twitter on occasion, but that’s about it. I know other authors (Brett Talley comes to mind) who are savvy with social media and use it effectively, and I’m trying to pick up a few points from them.

7. If Forever Man was made into a movie and the producer asked you to cast the role of Bart Owens, who would you choose to play him?
When I was writing Forever Man, and later, Revelation, I kept seeing Don Cheadle’s face when I worked on Bart’s scenes. I think he would be great in the role. Morgan Freeman is too old now (which is ironic, when you think of Bart’s age). Denzel Washington is too well known, too established. I couldn’t see Cuba Gooding, Jr. or Terrence Howard in the role; they just don’t have the right gravitas for me. Yes, if I had a say in any casting, I’d pick Don Cheadle.

8. What books are in your to read list?
I just finished DarkNet by John R. Little. Now I’m deep into Revival by Stephen King. I’m looking forward to Red Equinox by Douglas Wynne. It’s a contemporary Lovecraftian tale, and Doug is a marvelous writer, so it should be excellent. But the one I’m really waiting for is Inspector of the Dead by David Morrell. It’s the follow-up to his outstanding Murder as a Fine Art. If you haven’t read that book, you need to. It blew me away.

9. In Forever Man, you only gave glimpses into the backstory and mythology in the world you created. Do you plan on diving further into this backstory in Revelation?
[Laughs] I certainly do! I received enough grief the first time around for being too cryptic that I felt some outright explanation might be needed. In my defense, though, there are enough hints in Forever Man that an inquisitive person should glean something of Bart’s mysterious past. And how will readers react to this, if I may say, revelation? Some may be surprised. Some may even be angry. Some may say, “I knew it was him!” It’s hard to tell. Reactions are as varied as the patterns on a snowflake. But the back story was formed from the very beginning, and I wasn’t about to change it now.

10. If you could pick one other author to collaborate with on a novel or story, living or dead, who would it be?
That’s easy, and shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: J. R. R. Tolkien. The man was brilliant. He created a myth so expansive, so compelling, and so heartwarming that it lingers decades after it was introduced. I remember crying at the end of Lord of the Rings, when Frodo sailed away with Bilbo and the elves. It felt like I was losing a family member! Professor Tolkien’s work established the role of fantasy in contemporary fiction, and to sit side-by-side with him and craft a story would be a dream come true.

Forever Man by Brian Matthews

When I first started reading Forever Man, I thought this was going to be your basic monster story as a creature of unknown origin attacks a high school couple late at night. Not that there is anything wrong with that, since I certainly enjoy a good monster story. However, as I continued to read, I realized that this had a much more complex storyline than I originally figured. It first started with the appearance in town of Bart Owens, ostensibly an unassuming musician who has come to town to play some gigs at a local bar. Bart turns out to be anything but that. He is an ancient being with mystical powers that get slowly revealed. Then there was a second mysterious character, Darryl Webber, who clearly has malevolent intentions as well his own set of mystical skills. The final piece of the puzzle is a young boy with a rare form of autism that seems to be at the center of what is happening.

As I mentioned, this is a novel with a complex storyline that is rich in mythology and world building. The writing is, in one word, professional. As a fellow writer, I appreciate the craftsmanship and attention to detail that Matthews exhibits. It’s remarkable than this is his debut novel since it comes off as the work of a veteran writer who has honed his skills over the years. The pacing, the flow, and the tension are just right. The story starts off with a bang. It delves into the significance of what is occurring. There is escalated tension in the middle, a big buildup, and then an epic confrontation—a textbook recipe for a successful story. If I could add one piece of criticism is that the backstory is glimpsed and by the end of the novel, the reader is still in the dark about most of it. However, Forever Man is just the first book in a series, and I can only assume that more will be revealed in future books in the series, which I very much look forward to reading. Get a copy of Forever Man and you will most definitely agree with me.

Movie Review: Into the Woods

Into the Woods is a combination of Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Rapunzel adapated from a Broadway musical. All of these fairy tales are woven together by a baker and his wife who was cursed by the witch, played by Meryl Streep. The baker and his wife can’t have any children unless they lift a curse placed by the witch. On the blue moon, they must accumulate a white cow, a ruby red cape, golden shoes, and long blonde hair, all possessed by the aforementioned fairy tale characters. About halfway through, it appeared that there would be a Disney ending where all would be well with the world and everyone would live happily ever after, but then things took a darker turn when a giant invades the village in search of Jack, who killed her husband.
There was a lot that I liked about the movie. There were strong acting performances by several of the actors. There were good action scenes and I liked some of the songs. The overall plot was interesting. Where the movie falters is that it is too long. There are many slow spots in the movie. It seemed as if the director wanted to include every scene from the musical, but I thought it would have benefited by dropping a few of the songs, since that was generally when the slow spots occurred. In the end, it was a decent movie, but it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

Movie Review: The Interview

I felt it was my patriotic duty to watch The Interview and stick it to the dictatorial bastards who run North Korea. With that in mind, I really wanted to like the movie. On the flip side, I heard mostly negative reviews about the movie so my expectations were lowered.

To start with, the movie has an absolutely brilliant high concept: The host and producer of a cheesy celebrity interview show are recruited by the CIA to assassinate the dictator of North Korea, who happens to be a huge fan of the show. Also in its favor was Seth Rogan and James Franco, whose movies I’m a big fan of. With all of this going for it, how can it possibly go wrong? After watching the movie, I couldn’t really understand why Kim Jong Un was so upset about the movie. The movie was silly and goofy and hard to take serious. Rogan and Franco played it for laughs and often achieved it. They made fun of the United States and their policies as much or more than North Korea. The North Korean reaction to the movie pretty much proved the point that they were trying to make—this is an amateurish joke of a regime with a lunatic clown in charge of it.

I had quite a few chuckles during the course of the movie. This wasn’t the greatest comedy I’ve ever watched, certainly not as good as the last time Rogan and Franco collaborated in This is the End, which may have been the funniest movie I’ve ever watched. But the movie is well worth watching. As for Kim Jong Un—chill out, grab a bucket of popcorn, and watch the movie. You might get a couple of laughs.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies review

When watching The Hobbit, it’s hard not to compare it to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was in my humble opinion the greatest epic fantasy movies ever made. By any possible standard of comparison, The Hobbit does not measure up to it. What both series have in common is that the final movie in the series is the best one of them. What has plagued the previous two movies is that although there are great action scenes and drama, the movies are overly long and there are many slow spots. Since this movie was very action driven and was loaded with fight scenes, that wasn’t so much the case. It’s only the last ten minutes of the movie that I found to be anti-climactic.

There were some good character arcs on this display, mostly from Bilbo Baggins and Thoren Oakenshield, the leader of dwarfs. There were also memorable special effects, especially the dragon, Smaug, obliterating Laketown. Although I found the re-occurrence of some familiar characters from The Lord of the Rings to be neat, it was hard to reconcile that the characters in this movie were younger, but the actors who played them were about a decade older since their last appearance in these roles. In the end, I enjoyed the movie. If you stuck through the first two movies, you will definitely want to see it through, and you will likely be pleasantly surprised.

10 Questions with Sam Weller

1. Describe what your relationship with Ray Bradbury was like and what he meant to you as a writer?
I worked, perhaps, more closely with Ray Bradbury over the course of the last 12 years of his life than anyone else. We worked on three books together, several articles, and spent countless hours in each other’s company. He was more than just a biographical subject. We became incredibly close and dear friends. He was a father figure to me and my finest and most important creative mentor. My entire approach to writing was indelibly altered by his creative philosophy. He somehow affects every word I write. He taught me the importance of the subconscious in writing; to trust one’s artistic impulses; and to write first drafts quickly so as to be honest and true. “In delay,” he said, “comes an effort for style.” He also taught me that love must be at the epicenter of all creative pursuits.

2. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?

The Stories of Ray Bradbury. This book contains 100 of his best. He was a master of short fiction and this book collects 100 of the crown jewels including “The Veldt,” “The Fog Horn,” “The Lake,” “There Will Come Soft Rains and so many others. His wife once told me that of all of the mediums he worked in, he was best at the short story. I completely agree with her.

3. If you could create a Mount Rushmore of the four greatest speculative fiction writers, who would they include?
1/ Bradbury as a child in his Waukegan years.
2/ Bradbury as a teen at the time he roamed Hollywood as a star struck imaginative dreamer.
3/Bradbury in his thirties, during his golden era as a writer —the 1950s.
4/ Bradbury in his late sixties/early seventies as the elder statesman of imaginative literature.

I cheated, didn’t I?

4. What advice do you have for beginning writers?
Write and read. Constantly. Don’t do it if you don’t love it. Read classics across the genres. Socialize with other artists and writers to learn. And be curious! If you are not curious about the machinations of the universe, of the world, of humanity, of life, you won’t make it. I also think it is important to emphasize that you must be disciplined. You cant wait around for inspiration, you need to conjur it. You do this by reading, watching films, listening to music, reading poetry, going to art museums and training yourself to see story under every unturned stone.

5. What type of scenes do you most enjoy writing?
That’s a really interesting question. I have been mostly publishing short stories in the last two years. Evoking a sense of place is very important to me. Stories are set somewhere. I like to establish setting. So many of the southern writers are so good at this. Flannery O’Conner had her deep south, as did Faulkner and Capote. Bradbury owned Mars and conjured it solely from his own imagination. I love writing about desolate and lonely places. Windswept fields; forsaken cemeteries; blighted urban locales; quiet places at the soul’s midnight.

6. What made you start writing?
It was an inner-calling to be creative. I heard it when I was ten or eleven. I must have a creative outlet everyday or I am spiritually discontent. I tell my family that the only thing I need for Christmas is a few hours to write.

7. What writer did you most enjoy working with on your Shadow Show anthology?

That’s a tough question because there are so many great writers in the book. My co-editor, Mort Castle, is such a good man he doesn’t seem real. I wonder sometimes if he is just a banjo picking, horror writing, Disney Animation?

I guess if I was forced to pick a writer I worked with closely on the book it would two:

Neil Gaiman lives up to every expectation you might have. In this way he reminds me of Bradbury. He is brilliant, charming, and just deeply, deeply generous. He deserves every bit of success he has earned. And his story in SHADOW SHOW, “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” is so profound and, ironically memorable, it is just a perfect metaphor to begin the book. Working with him was easy and fun.

I also would single out Margaret Atwood. She helped us launch the book on the west coast and we quickly fostered a bond. While she is completely different from Ray Bradbury, the way we interacted and connected reminded me a bit of the bond I shared with him. She is charming, funny, challenging and exudes genius. I love people who defy their years and stay current and cool like that.


8. If you could pick one other author to collaborate with on a novel or story, living or dead, who would it be?

I think I’ve already done it. I collaborated with Ray Bradbury. He did ask me to finish his last collection of short stories for him—Nightmares and Daydreams. He was very adamant about this. His health wouldn’t allow him to complete the book. I was hesitant and his agent, rightfully, wanted to protect his work as being solely created by Bradbury. But now, with him gone, the only way this book will ever see daylight is if it’s released as an incomplete work, or if someone else completes it. He wanted me to do it and I’ve reversed my thinking on this. I spent so much time with him that I can think like him, and write like him. I can assume his voice very easily. He would sometimes ask me to write emails for him and it was a little eerie how I could channel his persona. And thinking about this, there are some recent works of music with other artists completing works by Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and others. I think I’m now up for this challenge. I’d love to try it. Most importantly, he wanted this. The book could be billed as Ray Bradbury stories finished by his biographer.


9. What books are in your to read list?

I just read the entire catalog of Chuck Klosterman, who I think is hilarious and really pop-culturally brilliant. He’s sort of the nerd emeritus of pop. Next up, I’d like to read The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman; James Baldwin: The Last Interview, and I still haven’t read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.

10. What do you prefer, writing fiction or being an editor?
Definitely writing fiction. I have a short story collection that is almost done. It is very much in the tradition of early Midwest gothic Bradbury.I have a novel that will be completed in 2015—an existential love story. Of course, Mort Castle and I have been working on the SHADOW SHOW comic book series through IDW. That’s been a joy. The trade paperback of this series will be out in the spring of 2015.
You can follow Sam on Twitter @Sam__Weller

Find out more of the latest going on with Sam on his blog www.listentotheechoes.com

Shadowshow, edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle

In most of the anthologies that I’ve read there are often some good stories, some bad stories, and some in between. The end result is that I usually feel ambivalent. When I first started reading Shadow Show, I thought this anthology would be more of the same after reading the first story, which was written by Neil Gaiman As it turns out, Gaiman’s story was the weakest in the anthology, which is chocked full of quality writing and quality stories. Shadow Show is a tribute to Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest science fiction writers to ever live. Some of the stories clearly struck a chord in giving a definite Bradbury feel. Even the ones that didn’t still were generally high quality and entertaining.

There were so many good and interesting stories that it’s hard to say which ones were the best. If I had to single out two stories that really stood out were “The Girl in the Funeral Parlor” by Sam Weller, which had a great haunting quality, and “The Companions” by David Morrell, which is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read, the sort that stays with you long after you read it. The list of authors is quite impressive including Joe Hill, Robert McCammon, and Ramsey Campbell. If you are a fan of Bradbury or quality speculative fiction, this is an anthology that you will want to read. The vision that Sam Weller and Mort Castle had in creating this was definitely fulfilled, and it is a fitting tribute to Bradbury. This is perhaps the best anthology I’ve ever read.

10 Questions with Eric Luke

1. What medium do you prefer writing: screenplays, comics, audiobook narration, or novels?

One great thing about working in the digital age is that you have so many different kinds of media to choose from. You can even make a movie on your phone, which just wasn't possible even 5-10 years ago. So you can look at any narrative and say: what's the best way to tell this, not just in terms of storytelling, but in presentation. INTERFERENCE is a story about an audiobook, so that was a natural choice. And there are all kinds of interesting meta moments that happen when you make that choice: the listener realizing that he's listening to an audiobook about an audiobook, the narrator speaking directly to the listener ABOUT the fact that he's listening to an audiobook. The different levels of reality start to echo off each other in exciting ways. So the short answer is: no favorite; it's whatever works best.

2. Who has been your biggest influence as a writer?

For modern horror Stephen King is one of the greats. His style is so effortless, the storytelling so simple, and it holds you in the moment like few other modern writers, horror or otherwise. His ON WRITING is one of the best books about the craft. For really enjoyable page turners, George RR Martin, China Mieville and Joe Abercrombie come to mind. When I was younger I loved the greats: Verne, H.G.Wells. Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast is amazing. And in my teens: Kerouac, Raymond Chandler.

3. What current writing projects are you working on?

I'm working on the followup to INTERFERENCE. It will be an audiobook as well, and will continue to play with the levels of reality in new and exciting ways. Cinema has been using the "found footage" trope for a while, and I'm exploring the audio equivalent. The internet is a vast and scary place; who knows what lies coiled in the stygian, unplumbed depths...? (cue theremin)

4. Is there an overall theme to your writing?

For me the theme is always discovered in the narrative, which always comes first. A general theme that keeps emerging is that people are basically good and want to do the right thing, and my villains are people who put self-interest over empathy, but beyond that... I think it's awkward to interject a theme, or even start with it. You have to explore what you found exciting about the idea and make sure it's as strong as it can be by finding the theme and focusing it. For me it's first and foremost about a compelling narrative; finding the theme will strengthen that every time. It will even help you find narrative moments you would have missed otherwise.

5. What was your favorite writing project?

Writing EXPLORERS was the first screenplay I wrote where I really caught fire: couldn't stop writing, was consumed by the process. Since then I've found you have to treasure those moments, because it's not going to happen every time. In fact you're lucky if it does at all. INTERFERENCE was like that also: you sit back after a couple of hours of writing and realize you've lost track of time. Some of it writes itself, and that's a gift.

6. What made you choose audiobooks as a device for your antagonist to use in Interference?

Audiobooks are still mostly seen as secondary, an afterthought to the original book, though that's changing. I really enjoy audiobooks, and wanted to write a project where the audiobook format was essential to the narrative. Audiobooks are all about an intimate, shared experience between the listener and narrator. Most of us had books read to us before we could read ourselves, so the words were being perceived on a much more primitive level, a process we didn't fully understand yet. I wanted to capture the power of that process, and then have the antagonist use it to twist and manipulate events for its own purposes. Also, the protagonists don't fully believe what's happening, that their audiobook is speaking directly to them, so it's easier for it to work its way into their psyche. By the time they do believe... it's too late. (again, cue theremin).

7. What type of scenes do you most enjoy writing?

Any scene that surprises me. It can be a key piece of dialogue, a discovered character trait, an unexpected action sequence, a moment of visual description, something out of your past that you didn't know you had stored away. Anything that makes you sit back and say: where the hell did that come from?

8. What made you start writing?

I couldn't stop myself. I've wanted to tell stories ever since I can remember, and each medium that opens up, digital or otherwise, is a new way of exploring that same basic need: to tell a good story. Of course, every time you sit down at the keyboard, you learn something new. I'm still discovering how to tell a good story every time I try.

9. What was your experience like narrating Interference?

I've been working with audio drama and narration for years, in animation, podcasts, voiceover, volunteering for the Braille Institute's books on tape. It was great to finally use those skills for my own project. It took a long time to get here, and I enjoyed the whole process. I've written for movies and TV for decades, but those scripts are always blueprints for the finished project, which somebody else is usually directing, editing, performing, etc. This was the first time I was working on the piece itself, the thing that was being delivered directly into the hands of the reader (or ears of the listener).

10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?

The first thing that comes to mind? Absent friends. Lost to death or circumstance, who I'll never see again in this life. The particulars are personal, meaningful only to me.

Or maybe not.

Maybe there's a good story there...

Interference by Eric Luke

I listened to the audio version of Interference narrated by the author, and I found it to be very well narrated. The story runs in parallel from about fifty years ago where a boy in Centerville, California is part of a production similar to Orson Wells’s War of the Worlds one year after the famous radio production. In present time, several individuals are listening to audiobooks where the narrator is communicating with them directly, telling them things that are happening in their lives and giving them instructions on what to do. Behind all of this is an evil, monstrous entity that is trying to destroy humanity. It failed fifty some years ago, when Jim Morton as a young boy foiled its plans, which disfigured and crippled him in the process. Now it is back, pulling strings to attempt once more to destroy humanity.

I had a hard time getting into this novel, because although the basic concept was very interesting, the story seemed to be scattered. Around half way through the novel, it really coalesces and starts to come together. The story lines began to meld and the tension grew. The story really built momentum and was a fascinating read. Unfortunately, I thought the ending fell a little flat to me. I don’t think the conclusion was well explained or very believable. Having said that, I like the characters. The method of the villain perpetrating its actions, through audiobooks, was unique. There was a lot that I liked about this novel. Had the conclusion been more satisfying, this would be a great instead of a very good novel. As it is, I found the novel to be enjoyable and worth reading.