Archive for July, 2013

The Quiet Game: Four Days Till The Release

Posted: July 13, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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4 days to go.

4 days to go.

Cable, Internet, and phone are back people, and so am I, with my constant reminders that my collection of short stories, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, coming out on July 17th, 4 days from now.

Or maybe 3 days and 2 hours, but you know what, that’s not important. It’s 4 days for me anyway. It’ll be 3 when I wake up tomorrow morning!

As such, I want to thank everyone for the constant support I’ve been given. Plenty of people have given me encouragement and told me how excited they are to read the book. Or at least they’re excited to buy a copy and have me autograph it, because they can’t deal with scary stories.

Still, I like that they want to buy a copy. And I’m sure some of them–most of them–will read the book and write a review on Amazon, which may encourage more people to read it, and then lead to more sales and more reviews. I love the whole cycle, don’t you?

But like I was saying, thank you all for your support. I’m working hard to establish myself in a rapidly-changing industry, and all the likes, comments, followers, and just plain support I get from readers, friends, and family every day keeps me going and encourages me to write.

See you all in the morning. I’ll have plenty to talk about tomorrow!

The Quiet Game: Five Days Till The Release!

Posted: July 12, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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5 days to go.

5 days to go.

At home, the cable, phone, and Internet is still out, no thanks to a storm on Wednesday that knocked all three out. I have a feeling that it’ll all be restored tomorrow during the Sabbath, when traditional jewish homes like my own don’t use cable, phones, or the Internet. Wouldn’t that be typical?

But enough about that. it’s five days till The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones is available, and I cannot wait! Already I’ve had several people come up to me or  email me or message me or whatever saying they cannot wait to either download the book or get it in the mail. As for me, I’m just excited that my book is coming out, that people want to read it, and all this hard work I’ve been putting in since I was ten is paying off. In five days, I can consider myself a published writer with a book on the shelves.

Or on Amazon. It’s print-on-demand, so if a lot of people and a couple of libraries order copies, I guess I can call it print-on-demand then.

Assuming the Internet’s working tomorrow, I’ll write another post for the four-day mark. Until then, I’m counting down the hours!

Laura Horn: First Chapter Written

Posted: July 12, 2013 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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The cable/phone/Internet may be out at home, but that can only keep me from doing what I have to do so much. And last night, while listening to classical music and with plenty of time on my hands, I wrote the first chapter of Laura Horn.

Like my other thriller Snake, the chapters of Laura Horn are short and quick, so I was able to finish by the end of the night. Also like Snake, Laura Horn‘s first couple chapters are the prologue of the story, and set up the conflict for the story. In this case, Laura doesn’t even appear in the prologue, but what happens in the prologue will impact her very soon.

While I was writing that first chapter, I really felt in the zone. The words were coming clearly and quickly to me, rapidly filling up the pages on my laptop. I finished with three pages and about nine-hundred words total, setting up for the continuation of the scene in Chpater Two. Of course, Chapter Two will have to wait for the second chapter of Video Rage to be written, but I have a feeling that won’t take too long to write.

I’ll let you guys know how things are going when I finish the prologue, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Until then, wish me luck!

Video Rage: First Chapter Written

Posted: July 11, 2013 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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And it has begun! Last night, with my cable/Internet/phone service out but my electricity still working, I set out to work on Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City (out November 1st). I had started on it several days ago, truth be told, but I had run into all sorts of distractions, so finishing just one chapter was not easy. But last night, with classical and opera music in my ears and no TV or Internet to get in my way, I set about finishing up the chapter. And sure enough I did, with 11 pages and a little over thirty-two hundred words total (page count is based on Times New Roman, 12-point font, and double-spaced lines, so that is not a reflection of what it will be when the novel actually comes out).

Video Rage starts about 11 days after the end of Reborn City, so besides setting the tone and the setting for the story, I used the first chapter to reveal what had happened to the ten main characters since they left the titular city in RC. Suffice to say, I did not make things easy for my characters. They are now wanted for crimes they did not commit and are trying to head east across the North American continent to find asylum somewhere. Of course, things don’t go as planned, especially when a powerful corporation with its own private army is searching for you.

And I’m bringing back a very fearsome and dangerous character from RC to further impede the progress of the Hydras (that’s the name of the gang my main characters belong to, in case you didn’t know). Mix in a little conflict between the main characters, and some rather bloody but heroic deaths, and I think I might have a decent sequel on my hands.

Now that I have one chapter of VR written, I’ll switch off to my other novel-in-progress, Laura Horn. The chapters for LH are much smaller than VR (which shows how differently I write thrillers versus how I write sci-fi novels). I’ll probably do another progress report on VR when I’ve written five more chapters, putting me one-sixth of the way through the novel.

Until that time, look out for a few more posts, including the announcement that I’ve finished the first chapter of LH. Should make for at least a good time-killer.

The Quiet Game: Out In Six Days

Posted: July 11, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Coming out in 6 days. Who's pumped?

Coming out in 6 days. Who’s pumped?

I had a special post prepared for yesterday, the one-week mark before The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones came out. But there was a huge thunderstorm and I lost my cable, Internet, and phone service, which made me unable to write and post the article. And it was going to be a good one too, with a short clip from the movie The Ring. You know, “seven days”? I did manage to get that clip on Twitter and Facebook though, so that’s something.

Anyway, there’s less than a week till The Quiet Game is available for download and/or purchase. The culmination of eight months of hard work and editing, it’ll be available as a print-paperback for $5.50 and as an e-book for $1.29. Five short stories, all pretty scary (or at the very least, pretty weird). I’m really looking forward to putting it out next week and I hope everybody enjoys reading it.

If you are interested in reading The Quiet Game and would like to know more, pleas visit the Short Story Collections page for a brief look at what is offered. I garauntee it’ll be worth the read. And if you would like to celebrate with me when The Quiet Game comes out, I’ll be throwing an online party on this blog the day The Quiet Game comes out. What will be there? Plenty: digital food and drinks, funny, groovy, and scary videos, and of course a link to the guest of honor: The Quiet Game‘s Amazon page.

Until then, look forward for more countdown posts and news from yours truly!

Why Gore Is Ruining The Horror Movie Industry

Posted: July 9, 2013 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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I’m never sure how popular these posts analyzing the horror industry (books or movies) are. But I am a horror writer, so I’m going to take a moment out of your day to let you know that gore is ruining the horror movies we’re seeing these days, and I hope you don’t roll your eyes and say this guy is either loony or one of those angry, self-righteous preachers who feels he knows everything and anyone who disagrees is an idiot who can’t grasp genius.

I’m more the former than the latter, which is very much like Sheldon Cooper.

Horror movies have one aim: to scare people. And they’ve done that in several ways. Usually it involved a monster or a ghost. Rarely did it involve excess amounts of blood, organs and severed limbs that were separated from the bodies in all manner of freaky ways (never had a problem with pushing the boundaries of sexuality, though). The movies that did employ those three I just listed were usually slasher films, and those were very difficult to pull successfully off to begin with. And when they did succeed, it usually led to many low-budget sequels.

But in 2004 a little movie known as Saw came out. And while its sequels could definitely be called slashers, the original was much more than that, a horror, a mystery, and a thriller all wrapped up into one neat little horror film. And if you haven’t seen the film, believe me, it was gory for its time. Bloody bodies and stumps and God knows what else. And it was a box office smash, breaking all sorts of records and winning all sorts of rewards. And so were its sequels, which always raked in several times their very low budgets. And ever since, more horror films have been utilizing gore in order to scare people silly.

Just one problem: gore is a turn-off. Studies show that people are disgusted by bloody scenes, such as car crash scenes or scenes from massacres. So why would you make it the main feature of your horror flick, if it just turns people off? I’m not sure. I really don’t understand the logic of Hollywood executives and filmmakers, except that it involves a modicum of profit-seeking. But I’ve seen too many movies that have used too much gore, Evil Dead being the most obvious example in my mind. And they’ve done badly when they could’ve been better.

Luckily for Hollywood, there are ways to still use gore without being excessive. Ever watch the movie Carrie? For those of you who haven’t seen the movie or read the book (and if you haven’t I feel so sorry for you), a telekinetic girl gets pranked at prom and gets covered in blood. There’s the gore. Now imagine that girl causing havoc with her powers, all while covered in blood and still wearing her burgundy dress. That’s scary, right? But not because of the gore. No. It’s the girl with the telekinetic powers going on a rampage! But the blood all over her does add to the terror.

Adds to the terror. Adds.

And it’s the same with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Say what you want about that movie, but with the hotel’s twisting and turning layout, chairs disappearing between shots, and the changing of carpet patterns within seconds serves to create a sense of unreality, a sense that you can’t grasp the situation, and that’s pretty damn scary in itself. The bloody elevator and the man with the split head just adds to it all.

So if you’re going to use gore, use it as a spice to your true object of terror, a frosting on the cake, an accentuation (I’m running out of adjectives, but you get the point, right?). Using gore to add to the terror is okay, but as a main thrill it just doesn’t work as often as it should.

Of course, I’d prefer that gore not used at all. Take a look at movies such as Paranormal Activity, the original Amityville Horror, or The Haunting in Connecticut, which use no gore at all, but rely on surprise, build-up of suspense, and a spooky sense of things-not-as-they-seem. Add in some special effects, and it’s scary as hell. Little gore, and it’s barely noticeable when you see all the other stuff that’s going on.

And they are the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. Freaks me out! And that’s not easy.

So Hollywood, if you’re reading this, please don’t think I’m trying to tell you how to do your jobs. But I do think that a smaller emphasis on the gore and more use of actual creepy angles, a sense of unreality, and just being scary would do some amazing things for your movies. After all, the upcoming movie The Conjuring looks like it doesn’t use any gore at all, and it’s already expected to do really well, if the reviews and the trailers are anything to go by.

Just a suggestion.

Individual Pages For My Books

Posted: July 7, 2013 in ideas, Living and Life, Writing
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I was reading a post on Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors the other day and one of the authors, Ruth Nordin, suggested that if I were to have a page for my books, I should have individual pages for my books, or at least individual books for each series and each stand alone novel. I decided that was a good idea, so I went ahead and created three new pages, one for short story collections, one for the Reborn City series, and one for Snake.

I think this was a very good idea, and I’m glad I did it. The page for short story collections leaves me a chance to put in more entries if I ever put out another collection of short stories (and there’s always a possibility of that, believe me), and so does the page for Reborn City and its sequels. And as for the page for Snake, I only wrote a fuller description for the entry, but I think it’s more enticing than what I had before, distinguishes the Snake as a protagonist and lets people know what the conflict is without giving too much away. I rather like it.

If you want to read the pages, please scroll up and look at the entries next to Home and About Me. They should be there.

An Idea From A Dream

Posted: July 6, 2013 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Writing
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It’s just amazing what you can find on Google, isn’t it?

Last night I went to bed sometime between half-past eleven and midnight, had some trouble falling asleep, had a nightmare or two, needed a drink of water, finally got to sleep, and then I had the wackiest dream. When I woke up, it was past ten and I was late for synagogue. But it was okay. You know why? That dream I had, the wacky one? It ended up being the basis for an awesome novel idea that I refined throughout the day.

The dream involved me and a bunch of wizards in a cabin. I was a young apprentice, and my own master was telling me to get a certain spell book for a spell that would recreate the ten plagues. In the dream, certain phrases kept going through my mind–Divinity of Israel, Vashta Nerada, etc–and in that weird dreamy way they were all connected and relevant and made sense.

When I woke up, I thought it was a weird dream to have and it was going to make me late for synagogue, but I later held onto the details of the dream and figured they were a gift from The Big Guy Upstairs, a little something to metaphorically chew on for the Sabbath. And I did manage to get to the synagogue for the second half of the Torah service. Heck, I managed to catch a few ideas for the novel from the rabbi’s sermon. If that’s not God doing me another favor, I have no idea what is!

And this is my 500th post. What an interesting thing to write about for it. Gotta give the Big Guy His props when they’re due.

Now I’m going to try and finish a book I started yesterday before I go to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to be doing so much writing I won’t know what to do with myself. Wish me luck!

Review: Dan Brown’s Inferno

Posted: July 4, 2013 in Review
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It’s good, but it’s not great. How sad.

Dante’s Inferno has always intrigued me on some level. It’s a very imaginative work, and one could make a case that the many layers of Hell portrayed in The Divine Comedy could be used for today’s society. That’s part of the reason why I was so excited to learn that Dan Brown had released a new Robert Langdon book based around Inferno, the first book of The Divine Comedy. The other reason was that I had loved Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol had cheered up a really uneasy sick day. I wanted to see what Robert Langdon was up to this time around!

Unfortunately, this volume makes it seem that Dan Brown is trying to hard to make a good story for Langdon to run around and save the world in. In what feels like a horrible and barely-believable cliché, Langdon wakes up in Florence, Italy with amnesia and can’t remember what happened to him. Almost immediately he’s into all sorts of trouble as he learns he’s been wrapped up in a confrontation between the World Health Organization and a shadowy operation meant to protect the interests of a dead geneticist who’s concocted something very terrible for the world and is paying for his plan to be carried out from beyond the grave.

At certain points throughout the novel, there are revelations and twists that are meant to be like what happened with the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 but instead leave you thinking it out for five minutes trying to understand what happened before going back through the nearly five-hundred page book and concluding that Brown didn’t even give any hints of these twists where most authors would have done so. And finally when you get to the conclusion things seem to be wrapped up a little too neatly with another twist that makes you say, “That’s nice, but it’s almost too nice. I could almost be okay with it.”

When you’re almost okay with a villainous geneticist’s plot, you know there’s a problem.

On the bright side, the first half of the novel has all the usual thrills of a Robert Langdon novel, and you do feel like you’re learning about a variety of subjects while you’re reading. There are plenty of exotic locales described in breathtaking detail that you wish you could go to yourself to see, and the character of Sienna Brooks as Langdon’s female companion this novel seems like a real person for most of the book, a poor girl trying to deal with her own genius and the pitfalls that have occurred because of it.

(Whatever happens to the women Langdon sees in the novels? We never find out what happened to the yoga instructor/physicist, though there’s hints of an untimely death or a break-up, we’re never sure of what happens to the descendant of Jesus who started to like Langdon, and the Masonic Grandmaster’s sister wasn’t even romantic, so I’m assuming there’s no break-up?)

All in all, I’m giving Dan Brown’s Inferno a 3.4 out of 5. Hopefully he can do better with the next book should there be (and judging by how popular the Robert Langdon books are, I think there will be a sequel. Whether or not there should be one and whether or not it’s any good).

Why I Can Be Proud On July 4th, 2013

Posted: July 4, 2013 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Reflections, Social Activism
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Whether I’m feeling particularly patriotic on Independence Day in the United States depends on a number of factors. For one, my homeland is always Israel, so although I was born and raised in America, Independence Day isn’t as big a deal for me as it is for others. Also, this country has its problems, and how those problems are being handled and who’s handling them can decide whether or not I want to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance or if I just wish it would be over so we can get on with the football game.

However this July 4th I’m feeling particularly proud. President Obama’s still in office, and while he’s not the perfect President (who is?), he’s a lot better than some other aspiring executive leaders I could name (but I won’t because I’m polite that way). Also, the Supreme Court (probably the most popular branch of our federal government) said last week that gay marriage must be recognized by the federal government, which means that I can now work for my own state of Ohio to adopt the practice. Not easy, considering that the rural communities are very conservative. But heck, Columbus is the LGBT capital of the Midwest, so that’s something to count in our favor.

And although the United States has some definite problems, including inequality, hungry children, an economy that’s constantly on the edge of another recession (seems like it, anyway), we’re a lot better off than some other nations in the world. In Egypt,  Morsi was ousted from the Presidency despite being democratically elected, and now key members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi’s party, are being arrested. While I don’t approve of the Muslim Brotherhood’s policy towards Israel, America, and religion and government, I can’t help but detect a whiff of dictatorship rising from all this.

And if you go northeast to Syria, you’ll see people still fighting after several years just to gain the right to even experiment with democracy. Meanwhile hundreds die everyday, and no meaningful action has been taken to quell the fighting.

And in other nations, democracy is marred by powerful interests, religious intrusion, rampant corruption, and several other problems. It makes me glad that I’m able to live in a nation where, at the very least, I have rights and access to things I desperately need to survive, such as food, water, shelter, and healthcare. I also have a shot at an education and maybe a job afterwards. And while I have all these things, I can work to fight for others who don’t have the same rights as me, both at home and abroad.

That’s something to be proud of, especially when strides are being made to rectify that inequality. Not many strides, but some good ones. And while I celebrate today, I’ll work to keep these strides coming tomorrow.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

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