M.R. Graham's Blog, page 26

In the Shadow of the Mountains – Working out the last kinks!

So, the current plan is to release In the Shadow of the Mountains around Christmas or New Year’s. It’s actually been complete for quite a long while – since before I even started on The Wailing, in fact. It’s a bit different, after Daniel’s point of view. Actually, it’s a bit different from all the rest of the books planned for the series, which makes me reluctant to put it out so early, but it does introduce several characters who will show up a lot in later volumes. At any rate, anyone who writes about vampires needs at least one “Scooby Gang” style book. Love.

It always bothered me that high school students seem to have such an easy time of monster-hunting. I don’t think it spoils anything to say that Aaron, Chris, Liz, and Mina don’t get out of this ordeal intact. No one who tangles with the Other gets out unscathed, or at least unchanged. Some Lost Knowledge was lost for a reason.

Review – Chemistry (Jodi Lamm)

Chemistry

Jodi Lamm

ASIN: B009YLVXH0

151 pages

 

From Amazon: “You don’t want to read this book. I’m warning you. This isn’t a heartwarming, boy-meets-girl, high school romance. I wish it were—God, do I ever. No, if you read this, you’re going to be angry… with me, mostly. You’ll probably yell at me, if you’re the type of person who yells at books. You’ll tell me not to be so stupid, but I won’t listen. I’ll be exactly as stupid as I need to be to destroy everything I love because that’s who I am: a walking, talking tragedy. That’s who I’ve always been. But if you’re determined to read on despite my warning, I may as well introduce myself. My name is Claude Frollo, I’m nineteen going on ninety, and this is my story. It isn’t pretty, but it’s honest. And it’s the only story I have left to tell.”

The Premise:

Chemistry is a modern reimagining of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, told in first-person, present tense from the perspective of the high school senior Claude Frollo. It tracks his dysfunctional relationships with everyone who looks up to him; his growing obsession with the new girl, Esmeralda; and his downward spiral into self-destructive sociopathy.

The Good:

Chemistry is addicting. I ploughed through it in less than a day, and even when I had to put it down, I stayed caught in the horrible, piercing, electrifying world Lamm has created inside Claude’s head.

Insanity is becoming an over-used trope, especially in tragic romance, but Lamm refreshes it and makes it unnervingly real. Claude is a maniac – dangerously charismatic inside his own mind, even though he cannot be in real life. The horrors he concocts are made all the more filthy by the good he has done and the heights he dreams of reaching. The worst part is that, right up to the end, you want him to win. He does a fantastic job of convincing the reader that he deserves his little sins, even though the words themselves press constantly for condemnation.

The story Lamm has woven is enthralling, stomach-turning in the best possible way. I went in with high expectations and came away with aching teeth and a burning throat, simultaneously shattered and satisfied.

The Bad:

I’m still a bit shell-shocked.

In Conclusion:

Masterful.

Review – Eggs, Butter, Sugar and Disaster (Alicia Wright)

Eggs, Butter, Sugar and Disaster

Alicia Wright

ISBN-10: 0956785212

256 pages

 

From Amazon: “An entertaining comic fantasy in which Seralina accidentally becomes the Goddess of Puddings, meets dwarves and valkyries and sets about trying to help other Gods and Goddesses as well as figure out what she will do for eternity. Unfortunately things go a bit wrong …Recipe for Ragnarok First take a generous helping of Seralina, whisk up into the Norse pantheon, add dwarves to taste and sprinkle with a dash of immortality. Leave to mature for just the right amount of time. Now settle back and enjoy a fun trip through numerous afterlives and see if Seralina can stop Ragnarok.”

The Premise:

Seralina, a fairly average graphic design student, ignores the warning label on a can of Idunn’s Finest and accidentally becomes a goddess. Unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of jobs available for goddesses, so she’s stuck as a valkyrie – a celestial waitress-cum-chauffeur – until she can find something better. She makes friends with Hermes (who likes to hang out in the Norse afterlife despite having a perfectly good realm of his own), works at Freya’s Ginza Bar (Yes.), mistakenly labels herself the Goddess of Puddings (which sticks), builds a cat-dragon (who isn’t particularly grateful), and may or may not be responsible for the second Ragnarok.

The Good:

Eggs, Butter, Sugar and Disaster reads like a Young Adult mashup of PG Wodeouse, Terry Pratchett, and JK Rowling. Wright has constructed a brilliantly humorous world of selectively-modernized mythology in which there are no longer enough warriors to fill up Valhalla, gods advertize, dwarves are contractors, and deities carry credit cards. It’s all terribly silly, but the really fantastic part is that it all makes perfect sense.

Wright’s cast of characters starts off strong and only gets better. We are introduced to Seralina, the newbie part-time valkyrie and Goddess of Puddings, whose good intentions don’t always yield ideal results. Hermes, the divine mailman, wants to start his own logistics service but isn’t quite sure where to start. Freya, goddess of love and war, is tired of all the drunks wandering around Asgard and wants to inject some class into her establishment – with a touch of Japanese flair. Even the secondary characters are fully-fleshed and endearing (Heimdall with his gold teeth and his puppy-dog demeanor; jolly uncle Osiris, inexplicably green and in need of a vacation; the snarky, snobbish Domestic Goddess in her frilly apron).

Seralina herself is not the standard heroine. She is not seeking love or destiny. She isn’t fated for something special. Like the rest of us, she makes mistakes and just has to plod through whatever life throws at her, doing the best she can with what she’s got. For a Goddess of Puddings, she’s pretty awesome.

The humour is the best bit. It’s subtle and relies largely on wordplay, which is my favourite sort. Mythology, religion, and the human condition provide much of Wright’s material, interspersed with just the right dosage of goofy puns.

The Bad:

There’s not much I can really call “bad” about E,B,S&D. The plot was a little slow in a couple of places, and I did notice some tense scenes where the extended dialogue was a little improbable. There were a few typos – missing periods, comma splices, and the like – but infrequent enough to be overlooked.

My only real complain is that Seralina’s pudding cult – which is given prominent mention at the very top of the first page – is sort of glossed over. I would have liked to see a lot more of them.

In Conclusion:

It’s not my usual genre, but I loved it. The characters are adorable, the plot a hoot and a half, the ending satisfying. I’d read a sequel.

Writing List – Version 2.0!

Updating the Writing list! Things have changed.

The Books of Lost Knowledge: (Previously Judge Not, hanging around my hard drive under the inauspicious file name of “VAMPIRE STUFF”)

The Wailing: Available for purchase
In the Shadow of the Mountains (Previously Judge Not): Formatted. Soon to be released!
The Lions’ Den : first draft stage
The Sparrow’s Fall: outline stage
The Cold: outline stage (with a few blurbs; provisional title)

The Siren: Current project. Nearly done with first draft.

Cassandra: simultaneously outlining and drafting (which is probably a bad idea)

The Road to Damascus: outline stage

Swordmaiden: re-outlining

The Vigil: re-outlining

Bells: idea

The Incredible Voyages of Juliet and Verne Voyager: first installment outlined

The Eye of the Crow: Holmesian pastiche. Will probably be in the works for a very, very long time.

In the Shadow of the Mountains: Sneak Peek!

Still working on the formatting, etc., but for now, here’s a peek at what’s next:

In the Shadow of the Mountains: Ch. 1

The sky grew dark, gestating a winter monster nourished by a cold northerly gale. The first stinging flakes, tiny needles of ice driven horizontally by the bitter blasts, whisked across the cracked asphalt and clung to the clumps of parched grass that lined the lonely road. The clouds, pregnant and writhing, bulged downward and in a great final heave gave birth to a howling whiteout.

Far below, a tiny convoy struggled north against the wind, racing the growth of the snow banks that soon would strand it. In the lead, a decades-old, green Lincoln Continental ploughed stoically onward, its windshield wipers battling furiously against the snow. It was followed by an eighteen wheeler, its trailer marked “Anderson and Sons Logistics: Texas’ Best Movers!”

Together, the two plodded on up the road toward the dearly-desired terminus of their interminable journey, the end of a seventeen hour drive.

A stile loomed up suddenly in the road, forcing the sedan to brake hard and then swerve to avoid being butted by the truck. A hard squint through the swirling white revealed a frozen pond to the left, and so the Continental turned right, exchanging the frozen asphalt for a vast expanse of loose gravel, pocked with slush-filled craters but at least free of the treachery of black ice. The car lurched and bumped, swaying from side to side along the pitted path, more cattle trail than road by now, until it came to another stretch of tarmac beyond which rose the first few buildings, snow-encrusted outliers of the hidden town beyond:

CITY LIMIT

BURNS CITY

Pop. 2,315

Beneath the city limit sign was another, hand-made of plywood and peeling around the edges, which cheerfully proclaimed a welcome from the local chapter of the Future Farmers of America.

The convoy turned and turned again, circling the sad yellow brick courthouse that squatted toad-like in the center block of the quaint town square, guarded by a platoon of bare, skeletal oak trees and a small copse of squad cars, huddled together against the cold in the tiny parking lot.

They passed Phelps’ Grocer, which stood beside Phelps’ Deli, which stood beside Phelps’ Electronics. They passed Einstein’s Salon, which had been named after its first owner a good ten years before the mussed mathematician became famous, its windows darkened but its sign highly visible, sporting a caricature of Albert himself in hair curlers. They passed Barrett’s Consignment and the Magpie’s Nest, an antiques and curiosity shop that boasted the entire Beanie Babies collection in the front window, arranged artistically on a broken rocking chair, a scuffed-up armoire, and a rusted Radio Flyer wagon.

Of all the buildings on the square, only Miz Leanne’s Ribs ‘n’ Burgers was open, a neon-lit bastion of humanity in the midst of nature’s onslaught. The Continental and big rig continued on past, turning from Dooley onto Van Winkle, unnoticed by Miz Leanne’s shivering patrons. The two vehicles proceeded past the high school, the elementary and the junior high, and into the residential area. They ploughed down Macgregor and turned onto Cypress, then onto Mulberry and down to the cul-de-sac. The eighteen wheeler stopped on the street, the scream of its brake lost in the wind’s deafening fury, and the Continental rolled on up the driveway and into the garage of the empty two-story house at the end.

Two men, heavily muffled in scarves and wool hats, got out of the truck and began unloading through the snow. First out was an upright piano wrapped in plastic, then a bookcase, then a big wooden desk in pieces. Four hours later, they packed up and disappeared back into the storm. Within twenty minutes, there was no trace of their tracks.

Mrs. Moncrieff pulled her head back from the window and called Mrs. Simmons, who in turn called Ms. Greer, Mrs. Lyle, and Mrs. O’Toole. By eight o’clock that night, half of Burns City knew that there was a stranger in town. By eight o’clock the next night, rumor had transformed the new person into a whole spectrum of characters, from an evangelical preacher to a professional photographer, but by the end of the week, when the stranger had failed to appear even once, the stories began to die.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAINS © 2012 MR GRAHAM

Lest we forget.

In Flanders’ fields, the poppies blow,

and we who walk among them know

that here men fought, and bravely died

with equal courage, side by side;

the lark has overcome the crow.

We touch the Dead in memory –

embrace them through the century.

The earth enshrines their valiant hearts

in Flanders’ fields.

The torch has guttered years ago;

the enemy has been laid low.

And though your names should slowly fade,

your blood a better world has made.

Rest you now where the poppies grow

in Flanders’ fields.

Vampires, and an introduction to Daniel.

Daniel Leland has been bebopping around in my head (and objects fiercely to the use of that phrase, as to bebop is thoroughly beneath his dignity) since early 2005, when I myself was bebopping around on Gaia and discovered vampires.

Now, I had some vague notion prior to that discovery that vampires showed up shortly before Halloween time and then retired into the dark recesses of holiday kitsch to wait out the rest of the year. Vampires were seasonal. Being a cinema buff, I also had some vague notion that vampires looked a bit like Bela Lugosi and a bit like Max Schreck and would pop up out of a coffin as though spring-loaded if you were dumb enough to let them out. (I confess that I took Nosferatu perfectly seriously until that one scene, in which Orlok does indeed lever up out of his box like he’s lying on a hinged board. Then I cracked up.)

Gaia’s forums introduced me to a different sort of vampire. Actually, several different sorts. The first sort was the twipire, and I do reluctantly admit that I did read the entire Twilight Saga. (Not a saga, by the way. Terminology is important.) I’m actually not sure why; while I did find it fascinating and hard to put down, I never did actually enjoy it. To this day, I cannot explain that phenomenon. The second sort was the ricepire, which still confuses me greatly. I had already familiarized myself with the parallels between vampires and sex, thanks to Google searches, but Rice left me flummoxed. (I love her writing, by the way. I just can’t stand her books, if that makes any sense.)

Unable to see any real connection between Dracula, Orlok, Edward, and Lestat, I turned to the old stuff, because clearly, the new stuff hadn’t gotten its act together yet. That brought me to Varney, Carmilla, and a variety of divergent mythologies that only seemed connected by the idea of something stealing something from a human being. It was usually blood, but even that wasn’t a given.

Somewhere in there, I decided I was going to try to write a book again. It was high school, and this seemed like a good idea, despite the fact that my last attempt at a fully-fledged novel had petered out some time in second grade and involved a main character with silver hair and colour-changing eyes who rode a dragon and could talk to animals and might possibly have been part fairy and had a hidden destiny and a magic ring that could change her beautiful flowing gowns into silver armour…

Yeah.

Why I thought vampires would fix this problem, I have no idea. At any rate, I decided to be ironic about it.

New character:

Male. Okay. That fixes at least part of the awful self-insert problem.

Silver hair. But this time, it’s because he’s freaking old.

Colour-changing eyes… Still tricky. I’ll give him cola-bottle glasses so I can keep that, but no one notices. Now he’s half-blind and nerdy.

It was high school, so obviously he couldn’t be a normal person. The colour-changing eyes would make that a bit goofy. So he’s a vampire.

And he’s cranky.

Cranky, myopic boffinpire stuck eternally just past his midlife crisis. Oh, and he’s Catholic. Bingo.

Art by the incomparable Leah Reddington. He will beat you to death with that book.

I stole “Daniel” from a Bible opened at random (because y’know, Victorians and their biblical names…) and “Leland” from a Leland Stanford Junior College mug I had sitting on my bedside table at the time.  There’s a lot of complicated backstory to explain the inexplicable Scottish branch of the Leland family. Fortunately, history came through for me, and the way-back-when Leylands moved north to escape Elizabeth I’s persecution of Catholics. Win.

Daniel of 2005 was a lot more of a creeper than he is today. There was icky romance between him and a high school student, and he was sad and tortured and just needed someone to love. Fortunately, he and I both got over that, and now he’s just an angry, snide asshat who thinks he’s tortured but is really just a dripping ball of obnoxious self-pity. It’s more fun to torment him this way, because I know he can take it. And I just love good guys who aren’t good people.

His story is fleshing out nicely, now, with one volume published, a second undergoing formatting for publication, and a third in the first-draft stage. From that one character, I’ve managed to stretch out an entire mythology, and every secondary character who’s come along has insisted on a book of his or her own. Lenny, Sebastian, Jerzy, Aniela, Kim, Jadwiga, Aaron… I’ve expanded way past vampires, I’m pleased to say. There are many things mankind once knew, but has chosen to forget – volumes upon volumes of Lost Knowledge.

Goodreads

I’ve decided I have a disproportionate love for Goodreads.

ALL THE BOOKS.

Andandandand you can ORGANIZE THEM. And keep track of the ones you want to read! And which ones you own! And rate them and review them and collect them!

This is so much better than the spiral notebook I was keeping.

(And I know that I’m totally late with this discovery, but shhhhhh, I love it anyway.)

My one gripe is the star system. There is no way to differentiate between “This was not a good book” and “I didn’t like this book.” They’re not the same thing, you know. Unfortunately, rating the books based on quality winds me up with recommendations for similar – which I don’t want. Rating the books based on my personal preference I feel unfairly slights some books. We can’t have that, now.

Anyway, I am toodling around on Goodreads and Shelfari. Go ahead and add me.

It’s Halloween, and The Wailing is here.

It’s up on Amazon and Smashwords, and my life is happy. In my head, Daniel is not so happy, but I’ve told him to shut up. He’s not a very social person, and I’m not sure how well he’ll tolerate having people actually reading his bitter reminisces and the catalogue of all his various misdeeds. He’ll just have to put up with it, though, because I’m nowhere near done with him yet.

(It’ll be out on Barnes & Noble soon, but I’ve been having technical difficulties. The print version should be out in a couple of days.)

 

 

I celebrated with gingerbread Daleks, provided by the wee sister, who is awesome and much better at cooking than I. You can see the Dalek, Doctor (with fez, bow tie, and sonic), wee Amelia Pond, K-9, and TARDIS. The creepy, faceless three floating up above them… We’ll just say those are Autons. We are a wonderful, lovely, nerdy family.

 

Happy Halloween!

Me and The Wailing!

So here is my dorky, self-congratulatory photopalooza. You know, because that’s what I do.

 So, first I was like…

And then I was like…

And then I went…

And then something went wrong…

 

In case anyone was wondering (which no one was), yes, the sweater has reinforced elbows. I am infinitely awesome in my pseudo-academic costume.