Cameron D. James's Blog, page 47
June 30, 2013
Autumn Fire coming soon!
My very first publication, Autumn Fire, comes out on Tuesday!
I know it’s a little last minute, but I haven’t thought of any way of marking the date or celebrating the release.
I do have a few things coming up over the next month and a half, including a blog tour, a couple other non-tour blog stops, and the When Words Collide convention in Calgary in early August, at which I’ll be reading and signing Autumn Fire… but I don’t have anything lined up for release day or release week…
Any ideas or suggestions?
June 29, 2013
Book Review: The Pact
The Pact
Graeme Brown
Will Lesterall has grown up in the safety of his father’s castle, where tales of the outside world ruled by warring kings and creatures of nightmare have never seemed a threat. Yet on the night celebrating the two hundredth year of the sacred Pact that has kept Fort Lesterall safe, a secret intrigue ripens, and in the course of a few hours Will is confronted with a choice greater than he can comprehend.
Join an unlikely hero as destiny pulls him into the middle of an ancient conflict between fallen gods and ambitious women, one that demands blood, both holy and wicked, and the power of an ancient fire bound in steel. As swords clash below a watching wood, hope and betrayal war as fiercely as fear and valor, and whether he lives of dies, Will Lesterall will never be the same.
I found this short story / novella by fellow Champagne Books author, Graeme Brown, to be a dense and dark read. The tension begins right from the first sentence — “When you kill a man, look him in the eye” — and escalates from there. The setting? A dinner party. The sense of doom? Permeates everything.
Though it is a celebratory function, the reader can tell that something is amiss, that dark forces are gathering. The opening line, which is spoken by a character, is only one part of the gathering darkness. Brown manages to pull it off through the whole dinner sequence, with how characters interact, with how the celebration has a muted tone…
Having just watched the third season of Game of Thrones, I see a parallel between The Pact and The Red Wedding from episode 9 (which appeared in the third book of A Song of Ice and Fire) — both feature a celebration that is meant to be joyous and fun, but the reader and the central character just can’t shake the sense that something is very very very wrong.
The Pact features many of the long passages found in epic fantasy — passages that aren’t exactly my cup of tea, but Brown keeps them smooth and flowing. (Conversely, George RR Martin has a similar style, but I find he goes overly long in his detail and description. Brown keeps it relatively tight and relevant.)
The Pact is very compact — the dinner party soon turns into a disaster as the Unborns descend upon the castle to annihilate everyone, but Will is whisked away by friends. Plans made years prior, unknown to Will, have him sent through a tunnel and into the woods. In a matter of pages, we transition from a serene (though slightly off) dinner party to an all-out bloody battle.
The ending sequence is a tad confusing to this non-fantasy reader… there are evil plans, conspiracies, and counter-plans all happening at once. The reader is carried along, page by page, until the shocking end… It left me with a bit of a WTF reaction. However, I know Graeme Brown personally, and I know that his sequel project, A Thousand Roads, expands a lot on this, resolving some of the many questions left lingering in the reader’s mind.
About two years ago, I had never read a fantasy book in my life, and now I’ve read half a dozen or so… most of them have been good enough to appeal to this non-fantasy-reader, and The Pact is one of those books. It was short, it was tight, it never got boring, and it left enough questions and wonderings in my mind to make me want to read the eventual sequel.
June 23, 2013
Book Review: Plan B
Plan B
SJD Peterson
Danny Marshal has always lived his life out loud, but his androgynous appearance is only a small part of who he is. One night at a frat party, Danny meets Lance Lenard, football jock and apparent straight guy. Lance is shocked when he’s immediately attracted to Danny’s feminine side. Danny is happy to be the subject of Lance’s first man-on-man experiment—until Lance begins to struggle with the fact that despite his appearance, Danny is indeed a man.
Lance’s whole life has been focused on his goal of playing in the NFL, and he knows those dreams will be smashed if anyone finds out about his little secret. Although Lance has grown to crave Danny’s touch, he’s not willing to give Danny what he’s grown to crave: a boyfriend who’s proud to love him for every flamboyant and snarky cell in his body.
Life sends Danny and Lance in different directions, each of them focused on his respective Plan A. But the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
I have two words for this novel: smoking hot.
I have to admit that the cover blurb didn’t quite catch me, but on the recommendation of a friend, I gave this book a try. Boiled down to its premise, it’s pretty basic: an out and proud young twink falls for a supposedly straight jock. But, as I’ve often found, the best of novels can come from the simplest of premises. The key is how it’s carried out. And SJD Peterson carries it out extremely well.
The budding relationship between Danny and Lance is a joy to read — they are lifelike and their dialogue is realistic. The sexual tension (and the romance bubbling beneath) is evident on every page. As it grows and grows, and eventually reaches a head, the dramatic and difficult decisions Danny must make evoked very real emotional responses from me — something that doesn’t happen too often with a book.
The narrative is told in first person through Danny’s perspective and I think this is the one weak point of the book (but it’s only a minor weakness) — because we’ve got Danny telling us everything, he tends to get a little over-analytical at points. It could really be down to personal taste, though, as I have a strong dislike of first person narrative. All that being said, if the same over-analytical discussion were to happen in third person, it would likely be a lot more annoying to me — so the first person choice was really the saving grace for me.
The cover blurb also seems to imply there is a lot of the dual lives of Lance — gay lover and straight jock — but it really didn’t come up much in the book. I think the tension would have been increased nicely with a bit more of that going on. I found that the dual lives often came up in Danny’s thoughts — so it was told to the reader rather than shown. I kept expecting them to be seen in public and Lance totally dissing Danny — but I don’t recall that happening.
However, back to the positives. The only thing that was more enjoyable than the dialogue and budding romance was the sex. Of the gay erotica romance and gay erotica I’ve read over the past year, I’ve often felt that some of the sex scenes were a bit off… like something wasn’t quite ringing true. This is definitely one of Peterson’s strongest points — she writes smoking hot sex scenes that are very deep in emotion and sensation. They build up nicely, too, in the individual scenes and over the course of the novel.
Plan B was an emotional roller coaster — for the characters and for the reader. The joy of their relationship brought a smile to my face, the sex made my heart beat fast, and the rough scenes had me worried over how the characters would work it out in the end… and when things take a very bad turn and the next chapter jumps ahead three years, I distinctly remember saying “three years later??? What???” I didn’t want to make that time jump, I wanted to see how things would develop. (In hindsight, the time jump was a very effective move, as it made the ending so much stronger.)
Plan B by SJD Peterson is definitely one of my top gay erotic romance reads — enjoyable from cover to cover. It was steamy, turbulent, and enjoyable.
June 22, 2013
Book Review: Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Brinkmanship
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Brinkmanship
Una McCormack
The Venette Convention has always remained independent, but it is about to become the flashpoint for a tense military standoff between the two power blocs now dominating interstellar space—the United Federation of Planets and the recently formed Typhon Pact. The Venetan government turns to the Typhon Pact’s Tzenkethi Coalition for protection in the new order, and has agreed to allow three of their supply bases for Tzenkethi use. But these bases—if militarized—would put Tzenkethi weapons unacceptably close to Federation, Cardassian, and Ferengi space. While Captain Ezri Dax and the crew of theU.S.S. Aventine are sent to investigate exactly what is happening at one of the Venette bases, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise are assigned to a diplomatic mission sent to the Venette homeworld in order to broker a mutually acceptable resolution. But the Cardassian delegates don’t seem particularly keen on using diplomacy to resolve the situation, which soon spirals out of control toward all-out war. . . .
The entire Typhon Pact saga, which has gone on for several books now, has been a series of ups and downs for me. It’s a time of tension and unease in the Star Trek universe — old ties are broken, new ones are formed, and everyone is perpetually on the brink of war — all the while recovering from the massive Borg onslaught. I found the first few books so-so, the next few were pretty good, and that was followed by a superb duology (Plagues of Night and Raise the Dawn). And then there was this one… which I found to be pretty good, but a bit disappointing.
I found McCormack’s dialogue to be out of character, not ringing quite true to the characters we know and love… and the characterization was a bit off. I felt the characters, hardened Starfleet personnel, were super-over-reactive to everything… like everyone was shouting at each other and speaking without thinking. Characters who have served in crisis situations for years came across as, well, a bunch of first year cadets.
Awkward characterization aside, I did find the story quite interesting — a cold war type of plot — is the enemy actually preparing to attack? Are they just trying to intimidate the Federation? The answer is never really known, but creates a nice tension throughout.
McCormack’s greatest strength, and the true saving grace of this novel, is her world building of alien civilizations. She did it previously with the Cardassians in The Never-Ending Sacrifice — she took an alien civilization I’ve never cared to know too deeply, and she immersed the reader so deeply into it that I couldn’t stop turning the pages.
She did it again in this book with the Tzenkethi — an alien civilization I really know nothing about and have had immense difficulty even getting into. Half of the narrative of this story followed a Cardassian intelligence agent under cover as a Tzenkethi, allowing the reader to immerse themselves in the Tzenkethi civilization. McCormack pulled together a very alien society and made it tangible, something I’ve found many authors can’t quite pull off. This is truly one of McCormack’s gifts as a storyteller.
As well, in this novel, with her worldbuilding of the Tzenkethi and, to a lesser extent, the Venette, McCormack has managed to create very alien civilizations. Too often in Star Trek — and, really, all science fiction — the alien civilization is the same as human civilization, just with funky clothes or body modifications. The Tzenkethi and the Venette are both very alien to us, but at the same time it really isn’t gimmicky — McCormack carries it off with the seriousness and faithfulness of an author who loves the world she writes in.
So, I found this book to be a bit of a mixed bag — it was a quick read, which was a nice break given the very long books I’ve been reading lately — the characterization was a bit off, though, but the worldbuilding was superb.
Book Review: Oblivion
[Hmm... I thought I posted this a while ago, but I just found it in my drafts -- sorry if it's a duplicate post!]
Oblivion
Anthony Horowitz
Having escaped from Hong Kong, the Five Gatekeepers – Matt, Pedro, Scott, Jamie and Scarlett – are scattered in a hostile and dangerous world. As they struggle to re-group and plan their next move, the malevolent King of the Old Ones gathers his forces in Oblivion: a desolate landscape where the last survivors of humanity must fight the ultimate battle.
I found this book to be enjoyable, but my experience suffered for the fact that there was a gap of about four years between this volume, the fifth in the Gatekeepers series, and the previous one, Necropolis. I had remembered the vague outline of it — the Old Ones are somehow related to the Nazca Lines in South America, the five Gatekeepers have special powers, and… that was about all I remembered. Well, I also remember Necropolis ending with a “Holy crap!” I kept checking the Amazon and Chapters websites for news of the next book. Eventually, my interest waned as I expected never to see the fifth and final volume — and by the time it came around, I think my interest was still waning. I read it as soon as I got it in the mail, but I don’t know if the waning interest affected my enjoyment of it.
In recent years, Horowitz also wrapped up his Alex Rider series. That was a phenomenal series — the beginning was a bit slow, but the meat of the series was incredible… though the final book lacked the punch of the series’s high points. It was good to see a satisfying end to the series, but it lacked the punch of some of the other titles.
Oblivion was the same. It provided a satisfying resolution, but it still lacked that punch.
The strength of Oblivion, though, is that the reader can pick it up without reading (or remembering) the previous four books — each element, character, and complication is reintroduced in such a way that the reader immediately picks things up, but it won’t be a tedious section for the devoted fan.
The basic premise has to do with the doorways — the Gatekeepers can traverse through any of 25 doorways scattered around the world. They act like wormholes — step in one door and step out across the planet. At the end of Necropolis, they fled through a door in a hurry. Because they didn’t plan their journey through the door, they ended up scattered around the world — Jamie in England, Scott and Pedro in Italy, Scarlet in Egypt, and Matt in South America. Horowitz does a good job of following these characters. Since they are in vastly different places and situations, it’s easy to keep them straight — and by following each character for several chapters, you get to know the characters without jumping around a lot. That being said, Horowitz does head-hop a lot within a scene, sometimes switching in mid-sentence. It’s a style choice he made, but I personally don’t care for it. It can be a bit tough keeping track of who’s thinking what, and all that.
Anyway, when they fled through the doors and ended up scattered, the Old Ones intercepted somehow — the Gatekeepers (and two companions with them) found themselves ten years in the future, where Earth is almost a post-apocalyptical wasteland — and the doors are suddenly non-functional. So, five children need to get to Oblivion (which is on Antarctica) without the use of the doors, and in a world where almost no one flies or drives. The challenges and obstacles they face are a captivating read.
There are a lot of interesting themes in this book — trust, betrayal, self-sacrifice. The self-sacrifice one is particularly well done, and carried out by more than one character and sometimes in surprising ways. As well, while it is clear that the almost-post-apocalyptic world has largely to do with the Old Ones sending Earth on a downward spiral, it’s clear (and even alluded to once) that this same devastation could have happened without the Old Ones — if humanity suddenly stopped caring about each other and the planet — we are not far from this devastation. It was an interesting reflection.
There are several very meaningful and moving scenes in this book. The best one, the once that made me feel all tingly with sadness, was when Jamie ended up in England by himself. He’s Scott’s twin brother and, in many ways, is the least independent of the Gatekeepers. So when he ends up in a post-apocalyptic English town where he knows no one and is stuck there because the door doesn’t work, the reader finds him one evening at the door, pushing it open, walking through, and then repeating the action. That, and the conversation after, is a heartbreaker. Horowitz is particularly good at scenes like this.
Horowitz tends to do best when he’s working with a small numbers of characters in close-quartered action — like in the Alex Rider series. I find he loses some of his strength and tension when he stretches himself too thin, like in this book, which has an abundance of characters doing things. In the end, it felt a bit like a surface treatment of the story. However, at 590 pages, to go to a good depth might make the book a little too daunting.
So, overall, it’s a bit of a mixed bag — good story, good characters, easy to follow, but lacking in some depth.
June 15, 2013
Book Review: The Gay Couple’s Guide to Wedding Planning
The Gay Couple’s Guide to Wedding Planning
By David Toussaint
The go-to guide for a kick-ass wedding! Before you say, I do, you’ve got a lot to do! This book reveals everything you need to know about planning the perfect wedding, from telling the folks to budgeting to writing vows that express what’s in your heart. The Gay Couple’s Guide to Wedding Planning is the perfect book for male couples who want to understand how to take the stress out of every stage of putting together a memorable ceremony and reception. In his lively, witty style, Toussaint reveals how to deal with relatives who may not be accepting of your lifestyle, how to search for gay-friendly vendors, and what grooms need to know about grooming. There are also fitness tips to keep guys in great shape. Featuring over 100 color photos, this user-friendly, 12-month guide walks you through all the essentials. There’s practical advice on booking a site, hiring a band or DJ (or a drag queen), registering for flowers, and deciding just how gay you want your honeymoon to be. There are tips on other considerations: do you throw two bachelor parties or one?; who proposes to whom?; do you need two best men?; and is it still okay to throw the bouquet? Toussaint includes advice for every budget with money-saving cheap tricks that will help you celebrate without breaking the bank. Inspiring true stories of gay couples who found wedded bliss are included throughout. The Gay Couple’s Guide to Wedding Planning is an indispensable resource for creating the ceremony of your dreams!
Well, if you missed the previous post here on my blog, you might have missed me saying that I’m engaged now — my partner proposed on our two-year anniversary. Since I have a history of planning big events (church services, open house conventions, etc), it’s fallen to me to do the bulk of the planning for our upcoming wedding. My partner’s skill is on the finer detail choices, which is sometimes where I have difficulty — so for the most part, I’ll be filtering the massive info-dump of wedding ideas and then taking them to my partner to do most of the finer detail choices.
Still, despite all of that, I don’t know how to plan a wedding. Part of it is that I’ve been to so few of them — I think the grand total is three weddings, and none of them have been same-sex. Like, seriously. Most people I know go to wedding after wedding, but for the most part, my friends and family haven’t been getting hitched — so I don’t have a pile of ideas from things I’ve seen. So… I went to the local bookstore and picked up this, the only same-sex wedding book on the shelf. (The girl at the till said that they normally have more and will probably stock a few more titles as wedding season heats up this month.)
I have to say I’m partly disappointed, but also appreciative. I’ve seen the wedding planning books for hetero couples (as I used to work in a bookstore and the reference section, which contained wedding resources, was my section to manage) and know of the super useful checklists and binders and resources and planners and idea books and picture books that are available. But for a gay wedding, which has different needs than a hetero wedding book, there is a distinct lack of resources. So, while I would have preferred something a little more comprehensive, filled with ideas and tiny detail checklists, this will have to do.
All that being said, I greatly enjoyed Toussaint’s take on the gay wedding. He starts each section by describing how it works at a hetero wedding, then discusses what traditions can be done away with, what should stay, and what could be modified to fit a same-sex pairing. And, perhaps most helpful of all, Toussaint discusses a wide variety of options, helping the reader to shake off the weight of centuries of tradition, enabling the couple to create a ceremony and reception that is unique, creative, memorable, romantic, and personal.
Toussaint’s greatest strength in this book is his empowering of the reader to do what they want. For example, my partner and I hate dancing (and I realize we are atypical gays for saying that), so we really don’t want a dance floor or a traditional reception that features dancing till midnight — and Toussaint tells us it’s okay to break with tradition, especially if we want to redesign our reception to be enjoyable and reflective of us.
Hmm… in summing up this book, its strengths and weaknesses, I’m actually glad this book was laid out as it was. While a few paragraphs above I said it could have been a little more comprehensive, I’m actually quite glad it’s not. This book is a quick and easy read and it makes a perfect starting place for the engaged couple in the beginning stages of wedding planning. I think that comprehensive book I said I would have preferred would have actually been far too overwhelming, leaving me intimidated and insecure. This book, above all things, is empowering.
June 11, 2013
A general update: Guess what? I’m engaged!
So, given the glut of posts today, I guess it might be obvious I’ve got a bit more free time on my hands this week. :)
In fact, I start a new job on June 24 that’s going to give me two extra hours per day (no commute time as the new job is around the corner from where I live and the shift is a bit shorter), so I should be able to be on top of updating this thing.
I’ve been meaning to post about the Queer As Folk UK series, as the BF and I just finished watching it a few weeks ago. And, of course, there is the long-promised discussion on the differences between straight, lesbian, and gay erotic fiction. And my book, Autumn Fire, is in full editing mode now and should be on schedule to be released next month — so there should be regular updates about that, and I should be having a blog tour in July to hype up the book. And then I’ll also be at When Words Collide in Calgary in August, and I’ll post from there. So there’s lots coming!
There’s been a lot of big news in my personal life lately — new job, progress with my thesis project, various other things — but the big one is that my boyfriend proposed to me, so I’m engaged! We’re planning a wedding for June of next year — so we’ve got lots of time, but since June is a big wedding month, we have to plan certain things quick, like the venue and some caterers. Our loose plans so far involve us getting married on a farm and having a casual cake/coffee reception at the farm with a professional espresso/cappuccino bar.
The BF and I have a favourite song, This Light Between Us, by Armin van Buuren, featuring Christian Burns — this might be the music for our processional. Could you see starting a wedding by having the wedding party and grooms walk in to this?
Book Review: Llana of Gathol
Llana of Gathol
Edgar Rice Burroughs
“Llana of Gathol” is a collection of four novellas written in the Martian series of Edgar Rice Burroughs which was written for Amazing Stories in 1941. Llana, the daughter of Gahan of Gothol, is the perfect damsel in distress. “The Llana of Gathol” consists of four stories. First “The Ancient Dead” (originally “The City of Mummies”) followed by “The Black Pirates of Barsoom”, “Escape on Mars” and finally “Invisible Men of Mars”. The four books in this series is truly comprised of parody and satire. These books are a good laugh with many futuristic encounters and wild characters.
I found this, the tenth instalment in Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series, to be a particularly interesting one. I find a very long series, such as this one, runs the risk of being the same-old same-old. Many books have come across like that — a noble woman gets kidnapped, a virile young soldier (secretly in love with her) risks everything to save her and win her hand, people die in sword fights by the dozen, and the man wins the woman’s hand.
The primary difference between this and all other Barsoom books is the body count. There are very few deaths. In fact, many times John Carter would prefer to just not fight. It might seem out of place for someone at the beginning of the series, but there has been a progression over the titles, as John Carter gets older… he seems to understand that needless deaths serve no purpose, and sometimes battles can be won without a sword. There’s also a lack of mocking of indigenous religions, which is good — the series was getting a bit heavy on the colonialism a while back. And there seem to be stronger female characters, leaving the wimpy useless women behind. I’m not sure if it’s John Carter who has grown over the years, or perhaps Edgar Rice Burroughs. It makes me wonder what was going through Burroughs’s mind and life at the time of each book — I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that external events have affected the progression of the books.
The four novellas mentioned in the description above are actually all linked. Breaking it into novellas was wise because the Barsoom novels tend to do that anyway — they start somewhere, completely abandon that and move on, and then completely abandon that and move on again. It’s really jarring and tends to remind me of an episode of Simpsons or Family Guy — it takes forever to go on this very winding and twisty path, with lots of useless side paths, before we reach the end. But building it into the structure makes it expected. It was just a simple thing of putting a spacer page between the sections, but it improved my reader enjoyment immensely.
Though the plot development is similar to all other Barsoom books — someone is kidnapped, there’s a twisty journey to retrieve them, and they end up happy ever after — there is a self-reflective quality to the book and its characters that I greatly enjoy. I nearly stopped reading the series several books back. I’m glad I stuck with it. This is the stuff I like — the change in characters, the growth and evolution, the weight of experiences (good and bad) on the actions of the present, and the questioning of one’s actions (especially when they are actions the characters used to do freely, like slicing people in half with a sword).
In particularly, I enjoyed the first novella, The Walking Dead. It consisted almost entirely of talking. But it was fascinating. It had a sort of reminiscent quality… of remembering times gone by, friends long gone, mistakes made in the past, and the struggle to be a better human being…
So, really, if you’re looking for a good action sci-fi, Llana of Gathol might not be the best book to pick up — but if you like your sci-fi with some deeper elements, then this is definitely worth the read.
There are two more books left in the series — after that I might move on to Burroughs’s Venus-based series… I’m growing to quite like Burroughs’s writing and I’d like to see where he goes with that planet.
