Wednesday, September 28, 2011

... *sigh*

Sarah Palin is a complete and utter moron... That is all.

You'll never believe it...

You probably won't believe it, but... Matt Damon can act. Yeah, I know, I thought hell would freeze over first too, but he was actually very good, for the first time in his life, in Contaigon. Mostly, I think, the fact that he was playing a normal, every-day guy, dealing with more realistic sorts of things made him seem far more believeable than any action role he has ever been in.

Anyway, I really liked Contaigon, however, I believe that many people (people without taste, and who prefer explosions or pratfalls to a solid and well done story) will find it a bit boring. Don't go in expecting action, or someone to have a big AHAH! moment and save the day for a happy ending and you should find it a pretty enjoyable movie to watch.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Book Review: The Demon King

I've got another book review up, this one is on The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima, you can read it by clicking here.

Enjoy =)

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

The Eternal Chain Chapter 2 First Draft

I've finished the next chapter of The Eternal Chain and you can read it at the bottom of this page.

In this chapter, again, much has changed from the original version. Brand shows that he knows who Raven and Kriss are, and that they are worth quite a bit of money. Raven in turn shows Brand that the Three Great ORders of Sorcery have bounties out on HIS head, and procees to explain that for some reason the Priory and the Seven want him dead, and that he may be the key to Raven's own revenge against them for the murder of his sister. Instead of Brand following after them, Raven, instead asks him to come with him so they can look for the answers to all of their collective questions together.

In the original Beyond the Lost Horizon, almost the entire book was written from Brand's point of view. In this book i'm going to try something different. Each chapter will be from the point of view of a different character, going in order, Brand Kriss Raven, and repeating. When Temari joins the crew her point of view will also be added to the rotation. In my opinion this will give a broader view of the story and the world, a more intimate experience with each of the characters, and make for a deeper and more detailed story. Also, it will allow for me to break the pattern in the end to make things seem a little more hectic and frazzled.

Book Review: New Spring

I've put up another book review on Goodreads.com for New Spring by Robert Jordan and you can read it by clicking here.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Rocket Man

Once upon a time, long, long, loooooooooooong ago, William Shatner considered himself to be a serious actor. Then came Star Trek and ruined that notion for him. It took him several decades to realize that his entire career was basically one big joke, but once he did, he just sorta rolled with it, and every single thing that he did became utterly hilarious. Nothing really changed outwardly, but you could tell that once he just accepted the fact that he was the world's biggest joke, he was having fun. Then you could look back on some of the things he'd done and see that he'd really been joking with us for a very long time.

Things like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvQwXOCKNLY

and this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Ar79f8aN8&NR=1

Thursday, September 15, 2011

I am Nobody - Chapter 4

Ive finished chapter 4 of I am Nobody and you can find it at the bottom of this page.

In this chapter the Hunter arrives and leaves a gruesome message for Mia. You get to see a of her whole Grim Reaper work.

The plot of this story is going to move along rather rapidly once I get it going, because I'm shooting to keep it under 70,000 words as a young adult book should be, it's going to be short and simple to follow. One thing that is nice about writing a book geared for young adults rather than adults is that you don't really have to explain how everything works perfectly. Young adults are a little more willing to accept that supernatural things just happen and that's the end of it so I don't have to spend too much time giving you explanations and that will cut a pretty big chunk out of the length of the story. When I don't have to tell you HOW Death's magic sword works, just that it sucks the life out of anything it touches, it makes it a lot easier to focus on the more important elements of the story and make it a lot more compact.

I Am Nobody - Prologue-Chapter 3

I've finally gotten around to posting the first few chapters of the young adult supernatural thriller I've been writing very slowly in my free time called I am Nobody.

This is a story about a teenaged girl who happens to be the daughter of Death. She is a part time Grim Reaper, and she is being hunted by a supernatural serial killer that devours the souls of the dead, seeking the ultimate delicasy of a Reaper's soul.

You can read what I've posted of this story so far by clicking here.

Enjoy =)

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Book Review: The Omen Machine

I've written up my review of The Omen Machine so you can read exactly how bad I thought it was. click here to read it.

Enjoy =)

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

New Book Review Host

So rather than spend the time building a new site to put my book reviews on I'm sticking them up on goodreads.com. You can read all of my reviews by clicking here. Click the link marked "View" to the far right side of the book to get to the review.

I've also added two new reviews that I wrote while my site was down: The Gunslinger, by Stephen King, and The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind.

Patrick Rothfuss is a Goodreads member and I IMed him to be sure to check out my review of his book on a site that he CANT get it taken down from.

Enjoy =)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Omen Machine

For those of you who are fans of Terry Goodkind, you may want to steer clear of his new book, The Omen Machine. He makes it blatantly and painfully obvious that he couldn't care any less about his fans with it, only the money in their pockets. The book is badly written, poorly paced, relies heavily on deus ex machina solutions to problems rather than letting the characters work out their own innovative solutions, and every single chapter, every single page, and every single word in this book is extraordinarily contrived. The entire story just feels fake and forced. Things happen and people do things not for any particular reason excapt because the plot says so, and they find answers to their uestions seemingly out of thin air. It's full of false tension, (that's when the writer tells you there's tension rather than actually making you feel that there's tension), unbelievable events and character reactions to them, and it just plain sucked. After the abortion he dared to publish as a "sequel to The Sword of Truth" called The Law of Nines, I'm starting to think I'm just going to stop buying his books now that I've read this one.

Once I get a ew book review site put up I'll write a more detailed review of it, and possibly The Law of Nines as well. These are two books that deserve to be torn apart by my cynacism.

The Eternal Chain Chapter 1 first draft

Okay, so, I'm rewriting Beyond the Lost Horizon. As this book will be including the story of all three books in the trilogy that Beyond the Lost Horizon was starting I've decided that the title no longer fits, and have changed the name to what the third book would have been called: The Eternal Chain.

Anyway, I've finished the first chapter of The Eternal Chain and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

Almost everything in this chapter has changed from the original. The setting is different, the characters are different, they meet under different circumstances. However, at the same time, it is generally the same area of the world, and generally the same things are going on in the world. The motivations for the characters are different than they were, but they're still relatively the same people. In this version Raven is no longer trying to save Maree, the love of his youth. He's trying to avenge the death of Mari, his twin sister, and he's recruiting people who have a grudge against the Seven to hunt them down and kill them all. He's also protecting those whom the Seven want dead, which is where Kriss and Brand both come in. Brand is a bit older than he was, and a bit more bitter at the world, and Kriss is failing miserably at trying to pass herself off as a boy to hide herself from the Seven. She's fleeing ritual sacrifice at the hands of the Priory of the Blessed Radiance, a third order of sorcery that I've added to this book, rather than an arranged marriage.

The fact that Brand feels strong deja vu, and the fact that he feels he once knew and horribly lost Kriss are new elements to the story as well. Though they would have been brought in somewhere in the third volume of hte original trilogy, I felt that I should introduce them as early as possible in the new version so that I don't have to rely on the tired and ridiculous premise of love at first sight as I did in the original.

Also, in the original all of the characters had a distinct way of speaking that gave them a bit more color and personality. I haven't done much of that here yet. That is something that i typically change in later drafts once I've got the story and what people need to say at what parts more solidified.

Anyway, Enjoy =)

P.S. well, it looks like Google is pussing out over my book review site. Patrick Rothfuss actually filed a lawsuit against them if they don't keep it down and, understandably, they'd rather just take down my site rather than pay legal fees to protect the first amendment rights of someone they know as an e-mail address in a database. If I felt the great urge I could file my own lawsuit against him, but meh, it's not that huge of a deal. I find it far more entertaining to publically ridicule him on hs own forums and twitter feed for it, as well as make a new site with a different host and just put the review back up for people to read, as well as a detailed explaination added to it about what a dick he is.