Posts Tagged ‘living and life’

The Quiet Game: One Year Since Publication

Posted: July 17, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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tqg cover

One year. I can’t believe it’s been exactly one year since my first book, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones was released. Maybe that’s because so much has happened in that year: I finished my third year of college, went on a study abroad trip to England, France, and Germany. I began and finished Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City, and I’m very close to finishing Laura Horn. And I also released two more books. Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah, I moved into an apartment off-campus with a friend and I also turned 21, which causes certain members of my family endless worry about my drinking habits (though I usually only drink alcohol 1-3 times a week, and usually not that much).

Anyway, back on point. The Quiet Game emerged from an idea I had while the editing process of RC was going on. That process was going slower than I thought it would, so I thought to myself, Why not release a collection of original short stories? I ended up doing just that, writing all those stories during winter break and rewriting one of them during spring semester. I also included at the end of each story a little bit about how the story came about and what influenced me while writing it, which was fun because it gave me more ways to relate with my readers. And after many long months, I released it on July 17, 2013, not too long after the copyright process ended. And it’s been selling and scaring here and there ever since.

Besides also being my first published book, The Quiet Game is also my most popular book. I think that might be because it’s a lot shorter than the other two and it’s a lot cheaper. But that doesn’t mean people don’t like it. I’ve gotten ten reviews over the course of a year on The Quiet Game, and people have had some positive things to say:

5 wonderfully crafted tales! I purchased this as an eBook originally and put off reading it for quite a while, I really wish I hadn’t waited. Sometimes when one purchases a collection of short stories you expect some of them to be less entertaining or of lower quality than the others, but none of these disappoint. Well worth the money, especially considering after you read each story the author gives you creative insight into what inspired him to write each tale, which is really wonderful.

–Jeff D

Imagine if you will a young Stephen King penning dark scenarios inspired by his youth, and what you get is this anthology. Through this collection of short stories, Rami Ungar brings us into the world of dark urges, childhood traumas, ghosts, phantoms, and dark psychological thrillers. An inspired creation, and definitely a good intro to this indie author’s world!

–Matthew Williams, author of Whiskey Delta

All of the stories were really diverse and fun to read. I also enjoyed the authors blurbs about each stories origination and development. Keep up the good work!

–kimberly broulliard

These and other reviews have lead to The Quiet Game gaining a 4.3 rating on Amazon, which I am very happy about. It also encourages me and makes me think that this and my other books will continue to do well and that I will be able to write very good and very scary stories for years to come.

To the people who helped me create The Quiet Game, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me. You don’t know how much I appreciate it. To the people who have already read and/or reviewed The Quiet Game, thanks for your patronage and I hope in the years to come you’ll enjoy reading my books and getting scared by them. And to those who will read The Quiet Game and my other books, I hope you enjoy them. And whatever you think of my books, please let me know in a comment or a review. Bad or good, I love feedback.

If you’d like to know more about The Quiet Game, click here for its page here on the blog, or check it out for yourself on Amazon and Smashwords. It’s available in both print paperback and e-book, though the former is only available on Amazon.

That’s all for now. If I have anything else, I’ll let you know later in the day. Have a good one, my Followers of Fear.

Classic Who and Great Writing

Posted: July 16, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
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Today during my lunch I started watching the Fourth Doctor serial The Sontaran Experiment. Later this week or next I’ll start watching the Fifth Doctor serial Arc of Infinity, and by the end of the summer I’ll probably have watched quite a few more serials. In short, I’ve been bingeing and will continue bingeing on Classic Doctor Who for a while.

Classic Who is pretty interesting. The show lasted for 26 seasons, usually around 20 or so episodes a season, and ran from 1963-1989. They went through seven different leads, at least fifty companions, and a whole host of supporting actors, cameos, writers, directors, producers, and other crew members during that time, becoming one of sci-fi’s biggest staples and was revived twice, once in a TV movie and again in a new TV series whose eighth season (or series, as they call it in the UK) will premiere in a month and a week. This is all quite amazing, considering that Classic Who had a fairly limited budget for special effects.

And I mean fairly limited budget. Like Star Trek in its early years, and occasionally even worse than that. The first couple of years under the Third Doctor, most serials were confined to defending the Earth because of budget cuts preventing the filming of stories taking place in fantastic and strange locales. And even at the best of times, the special effects weren’t that great. Check out this clip from the Third Doctor serial The Three Doctors (also the first serial ever to feature a former Doctor return to the role). Near the end, you’ll see what I mean:

Yeah, that stuff at the end was an anti-matter monster. And apparently it teleported them somewhere. Not exactly high tech, was it? You watch enough classic episodes, you see that they had to make do with not a lot of money, which sometimes made the monsters look very homemade and laughable, or they had to be filmed in certain ways so that the kids at home wouldn’t see an actor’s two feet sticking out of a monster’s butt. Occasionally that even led to criticism of the whole story: the Third Doctor serial Invasion of the Dinosaurs was derided by viewers because the stop motion dinosaurs weren’t very good and seemed to take away from the overall story.

But that just goes to show how amazing the stories the writers told were, both then and now. What they didn’t have in terms of budget, they made up for in telling compelling tales where the Doctor had to fight in order to save the world (or worlds). Stories like the First Doctor serial The Edge of Destruction or the Fourth Doctor serial The Horror of Fang Rock are very suspenseful stories that rely on very little special effects to instead tell very character-driven horror/suspense stories, and the Seventh Doctor serial The Curse of Fenric was actually so terrifying I was a little scared! Not bad for a story whose special effects were mostly make-up and costumes.

Just a glance at that photo is enough to unnerve me!

These old stories contained much more than special effects. They had mystery, pretty funny jokes, history and science, and compelling plots that kept viewers coming back for more and more each episode. Not to mention how these episodes could confront and tackle complex social issues so that even very small children could learn from them. Dalek stories, from the original First Doctor serial The Daleks to modern-day stories are rife with Nazi Germany metaphors, which have been mentioned by various characters over the years. The Green Death dealt with environmental themes by showing what can happen when you let corporations run rampant over natural resources without enough regulation. And American viewers probably squirmed a little when they saw The Power of Kroll and saw in the conflict between the colonists and the Swampies the fight between white Americans and the Native Americans. I’m surprised the Doctor hasn’t been used as a teaching tool for different causes or issues.

And it wasn’t just the stories that drew the viewers in. The characters the writers created were pretty amazing as well. Heck, it was the writers who managed to keep the show going after First Doctor William Hartnell had to leave the show for health reasons and was replaced by Patrick Troughton. In any other show, the main character being replaced by someone who was a completely different character (but still the same person) would’ve ruined the show. It says something about the writers that they could keep the show going after such a change.

And not just the changes in Doctors. The other characters were amazing as well, helping the viewers to connect with the Doctor and see him and the events surrounding him from a human perspective (literally). Yeah, some of them were annoying (Peri Brown got on my nerves), but for the most part they were all a pretty awesome group of characters. Some of my favorites include Jo Grant, played by Katy Manning, who learned much from the Doctor and became quite a heroine in her own right during her time as his assistant. Or Ace, the last companion of the classic series and played by Sophie Aldred, a punk teen from London who nicknamed the Doctor “Professor” and was in many ways his protege. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen, one of the longest running companions and by far the most popular. She even had her own spin-off show for a few years. God, we Whovians miss her.

Not just the stories, but the characters made this show amazing.

All in all, it’s not surprising that nearly fifty-one years after two teachers followed one of their students home and into a police box that was much bigger on the inside than on the outside, the show is still going on all these years later. Sure, ther have been hiatuses and breaks, but there’s been a fandom big enough that the show has gone on to become one of the most popular and probably the longest running sci-fi franchises in the world. And I believe the writers over the years, especially the writers in the classic series, have played a huge part in that.

Anyway, I’m certainly having fun watching the old Doctor Who serials. I just wish it was easier to get hold of them. Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got the first draft of a novel to finish up, so I’m going to get on that hopefully tonight, but first I need to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. Wish me luck with that.

My Own Take on the Hobby Lobby Case

Posted: July 15, 2014 in Politics and Leadership, Social Activism
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I know I’m a little late to this conversation (though I did post a lengthy message on my Facebook page when it first happened) and I would’ve written a blog post about this sooner, but I’ve been busy with other work. Well, better late than never. Besides, Jon Stewart managed to make some jokes on it last night, so I can do it tonight.

There used to be a time when religious liberty meant that you could go to church ro synagogue in peace and without fear of ridicule or attack. Where your religion didn’t bar you from certain neighborhoods or trades. Where you didn’t have to wear a yellow star, and you didn’t suddenly have to leave country or convert in order to avoid death and suffering.

When the hell did it change that a couple of people could make decisions about the health of thousands of women?

As noted above, a lot has already been said about the Hobby Lobby case. However, I’m going to go over it because I find the majority ruling of the Supreme Court simply infuriating.

First off, Hobby Lobby says that it doesn’t want the federal government to force them to hand women employees birth control. Um, the people who will be handing birth control over will be the pharmacist. The insurance company your company uses will actually be paying for it, drawing on the money every employee puts into the company insurance policy to pay for the birth control. So basically everyone who’s on Hobby Lobby’s health insurance policy would be paying for the birth control. The fact that only a few people at the top can decide what everyone is paying for in their health insurance worries me somewhat.

Second, the owners of Hobby Lobby are objecting to contraceptive pills that “cause abortion”. Most fertilized eggs actually self-abort and don’t embed themselves in the uterine wall, so maybe you want to protest whatever mechanism causes that? Also, the pills that “cause abortion” actually a bit of a mystery, as scientists aren’t sure how they prevent pregnancies. So maybe you might want to figure that out before you start a lawsuit? Especially since you still cover Viagra and vasectomies, the latter of which basically makes the testicles useless and gives seed nowhere to go to procreate. I think the Biblical term for that is “spilling seed”.

Continuing on with this, I’m not so sure Hobby Lobby actually objects to birth control pills, as some of the companies, trust funds, and other financial mechanisms its owners have fingers in actually hold stakes in pharmaceutical companies that produce these very pills that are being protested. Is it really protesting on religious grounds to provide abortion pills? Or is it something about not having to pay for a product you already own?

And I’m really worried about this decision, which opens up some serious floodgates for lawsuits. The term “closely-held corporation” is a pretty loose definition. Already we’ve seen evangelical colleges asking to be exempt, and other companies as well that one wouldn’t normally think of as “closely-held companies”. Under the loose definition though, they might.

And if religious liberty can be used as an excuse to get out of covering contraception or other “objectionable” medical practices, what’s next? Catholics are against all forms of contraception. Jehovah’s Witnesses are against blood transfusions. Scientologists are against psychiatry. Christian Scientists generally don’t like traditional medicine. And what about objecting to other things based on religious belief? Other laws? What if a family bakery that got incorporated decides not to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because they believe it’s a decadent lifestyle? What if a print shop refuses to print flyers for an event hosted by the local Wiccan community because they won’t “help witches and Satanists”? As Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent, it’s a slippery slope.

All in all, I’m really troubled by the implications of this decision, besides the fact that a few people, mostly older white men, are getting away with making medical decisions for thousands and thousands of women and thinking that is okay. It’s already hard enough to purchase safe, affordable birth control, and some people need the help of an insurance company to afford it. Some of these women aren’t even taking birth control medications to avoid getting pregnant! Birth control medication is good for regulating menstrual cycles, prevent endometriosis, reduce the pain of cramps or migraines, and even fight acne! Most women actually take the pill for multiple reasons, studies find.

And they can’t just go looking for another job that offers birth control on the insurance plan. Some women can’t afford to leave a job because it’s all they have. The job market is still rather difficult these days, and leaving a job to look for one that might offer the right insurance isn’t exactly like walking through a park. In fact, it could lead some families to financial ruin.

Now that I think about it, most of the women who will be most affected by this decision will be women in the lower-middle, working, and poverty-stricken classes. Meanwhile, the rich can still easily afford birth control should they desire it, or own the companies that produce birth control. This si not just starting to resemble a new battle in the war on women, but also a form of class warfare and keeping the lower classes in their place. And I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s thought this.

What say you on the Hobby Lobby case? Where do you see this going in terms of consequences?

(Be aware I will be screening comments. So if I get the kind of comments from people who can’t bear any opinion but their own, it won’t show up on this blog)

Conversations with Pat Bertram

Posted: July 14, 2014 in Author Interciew, Writing
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pat bertram

Today’s interview is with an author who has a lifetime of experience and some really great books too. Pat Bertram is an author with Second Wind Publishing, whose books include the thriller novels More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire, as well as the non-fiction book Grief: The Great Yearning, a book about dealing with grief based on personal experiences. Pat also is an administrator and active participant in a Facebook group for suspense and thriller writers, and has two blogs, one of which she writes posts for at least once a day.

I was lucky to have a chance to ask Pat, whom I consider a friend, some questions on her life, her writing process, and what she’s up to these days.

How did you get into writing in the first place?

When I was in my mid twenties, I set out to be a writer. I quit my job, gathered up paper and pens, and sat down at the kitchen table to write. I thought writing was a type of automatic writing, that I just needed to put pen to paper and words would come. Didn’t happen. When I tried to force words on the page, I discovered I had no talent for writing, so when real life got in the way, I let go of my desire to write and turned my mind to other things. About fifteen years ago, I had some predicaments I wanted to work through, so I decided, talent or no, that I would write the story, which I did. And it was terrible! During the subsequent years, I have learned how to write, to pace a story, to write sparse but picturesque prose, but most of all, I have learned how to rewrite and edit.

How would you characterize the stories you write?

The unifying theme in all of my books is the perennial question: Who are we? More Deaths Than One suggests we are our memories. A Spark of Heavenly Fire suggests we are the sum total of our experiences and choices. Daughter Am I suggests we are our heritage. Light Bringer suggests we are  . . . ? So, perhaps my genre is “identity quest,” though I can’t see that as ever being a big draw. My only hope is to build an audience for “Pat Bertram books.”

What is your writing process?

I have no real process. When I do write, it’s usually late at night because all is quiet. I don’t set a daily goal — the words come hard for me, so I’m grateful for whatever words I manage to get on paper. Oddly, considering this is the electronic age, I still prefer to write longhand, though I am gradually doing more writing on the computer. As for the story, I know the main characters, I know the beginning of the story, I know the end of the story, and I know how I want the characters to develop, but I don’t flesh out the individual scenes until I start writing them.

You blog at least once a day, and you often talk about your personal life, both the good and the bad. What gives you the courage to share such information with your readers?

Before my life mate/soul mate died, I wrote innocuous — and fairly impersonal — posts about the books I read, the stories I was writing, general thoughts I had. After he died, I was shocked both by the true scope of grief and people’s ignorance of the process, so I made it my mission to tell the truth of what I was going through to help dispel the myth that after a couple of months, life goes on as it did before. I gained so much by opening up, that I have continued to be open as other traumas enter my life, such as my efforts to cope with both my aging father and my dysfunctional brother.

Are you working on anything at the moment?

Yes. When the members of my dancing class found out I was a writer, they suggested I write a book about them. It’s been fun —  all the characters have real life counterparts, so it has become something of a group project.

What is some advice you would give to potential writers?

Writing is not always about writing. Some authors can sit down and let the words flow and lo! There is a story! Other authors have to think about what they’re doing. So ask yourself, what story do you want to write? Why? What do your characters want? Why? How are they going to get what they want? Who is going to stop them getting what they want?

If you were stuck on a desert island and could only take three books with you, what would they be?

Three blank notebooks. And pencils, of course.

 

If you’d like to find out more about Pat, you can find her at her personal blog Bertram’s Blog and on Pat Bertram Introduces, where she interviews authors, publishers, and even book characters, as well as on her Facebook page.

Laura Horn: Part V Done!!!

Posted: July 14, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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I could just about start dancing in my seat! Well, I would but I’m typing up this post, and it’s getting very late, so no time to mess around.

Anyway, I’m proud to announce that I’ve just finished Part V of my novel-in-progress Laura Horn, leaving only three chapters left until I finish the whole damn thing! I’m so excited, especially this novel has taken longer than others to write, a little over a year at this point in fact. It’s also been a great challenge to write. That’s true for any novel, but this one was a challenge because it’s a lot more thriller than my other books (even Snake, which is thriller, is one with horror overtones), and there’s a lot of growth centered on one character, which I had to monitor and make believable throughout the book. All in all though, I’m happy witht he result. Sure, it may take anywhere between one and three more drafts to make ready for publication, but I don’t see too much of a problem.

And now I’m going to add up the pages and word counts to see where I stand in. Part V was 32 pages and 8,605 words. That brings the total number of pages (8.5″ x 11″ double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font) to 324 pages and the total number of words to 85,879. Wow, looks like that prediction on word count back when I finished Part IV was right. Though I can’t imagine the Epilogue to be very long. Five-thousand words or so, or twenty pages or thereabouts.

I hope to finish LH in the next couple of days, Friday or Saturday at the latest. In the meantime, I plan on writing up an interview and one or two blog posts and articles before I get onto the last three chapters. It shouldn’t take me too long. I hope, anyway.

That’s all for now. It’s late, so I’m heading to bed. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear.

Last Night At Sky Steele’s Show

Posted: July 12, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Writing
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Last night I didn’t feel like being cooped up in my apartment on a Friday night, so I went to this coffee shop near my place called Kafe Kerouac. Well, I say “coffee shop”, but it’s a bit more than that: it’s a cafe, a bar, a bookstore, a record shop, and a performance space. It’s a real cool place, sort of hipster-ish, and I felt going out and fishing for life there. I even brought my computer, in case I wanted to do the whole writer-in-a-coffee-shop thing. What I ended up doing was watching a small concert from singer Sky Steele, a singer who has been touring around the country before the release of his first album this winter.

It was actually quite fun. I’m not usually into the sort of music he plays (for samples of it, you can go onto his website with the link above), but he had some good songs, and I actually got lost in a few of them. And after the concert, I and a few people stuck around and talked with him. Sky was nice and very down-to-Earth, telling us about his goals and how he came to music.I even got an idea for a novel from something that was said during the conversation. And during the course of the talk, I had an opportunity to mention that I was a published author and that led to him and a few others showing interest in my books. One girl (I wish I could remember her name. Curse you, very poor memory for names and faces!), who styled herself as a big sci-fi enthusiast, said she’d check out Reborn City when she had the chance. It was definitely a good time, and I also said I’d check out Sky when I got the chance.

After the concert, I also went to the bookshelves, particularly the horror, suspense/thrillers, and sci-fi ones, and put my business cards in some of them. One of the readers on Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors had suggested putting your business cards and bookmarks into books similar to yours, with the hope that anyone reading said books might be interested in reading yours. Since the books at Kafe Kerouac can be read in the store or bought and taken home, I decided to try and see if I could get anyone interested in my work that way (and the next time I get a library book that’s similar to what I write, I’ll definitely try it there as well. In the meantime, I hope the cards I left in the books will lead to at least one or two more people reading my work. Maybe even a review if I’m lucky.

To round the evening off, I ended up doing the whole writer-in-a-coffee-shop thing and finishing a chapter of Laura Horn, which got me really excited, as I’m close to finishing up the first draft of the book. After that was done, I said goodbye to Sky and some of the other people who’d been at the concert (they’d all decided to hang out at the bar for a drink), and went home, where I somehow managed to knock out another chapter of LH before going to bed.

All in all, it was a pretty good evening. I met some really awesome people, saw a concert by a musician I might not have even bothered to listen to under other circumstances, possibly sold some books, and made some headway on a book that, after a year, I’m nearly finished writing the first draft. Not a bad evening at all. I hope tonight I can have a similar sort of nigh: I’m going to a friend’s 21st birthday party, so if there’s any time afterwards I’d like to do some more writing ad see where I get.

In the meantime, I think I’ll have a late lunch, write, and then maybe go for a workout. Have a good day, my Followers of Fear.

Snake: One Month Since Publication

Posted: July 10, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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snake

How far would you go for love and revenge?

I swear, unless there’s a review, this’ll be the last post I write about Snake for a while. I know by now some of you are so sick of hearing about it you want to strangle me, but hey, I’d be remiss in my job as an author if I didn’t do my fair share of advertising for my books. And the one month milestone is pretty big.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Snake is my second published novel, and my third published book overall. It follows a young man whose girlfriend is kidnapped by mafioso after she overhears something she shouldn’t. In order to get her back, this young man becomes the Snake, a serial killer who takes his cue from techniques used by the Russian mafia, and starts hunting down members of the family who kidnapped his girlfriend in order to find her. He will go to any lengths to get her back, including becoming a worse monster than the ones he is hunting.

I’m very happy with how this book’s been doing during its first month. I’ve had plenty of people checking it out, including two people from England and Germany who downloaded e-books within the past week (first time that I can remember having someone from outside of North America checking out my work). And I even got my first review on Snake, from fellow author and good friend Angela Misri. Here’s what she had to say on Snake in her four-star review:

Rami Ungar makes a promise to (the reader) in all his writings: he WILL scare you, and if he does “his job is done.” Snake will scare you. I am a huge Stephen King fan, so this should give you some idea of my tolerance level for gore, death and mayhem – I was scared. Rami takes you into places you would never have believed possible, and manages to pull his hero (and eventually his heroine) out of them against all odds. If you like to be scared. If you LOVE to be scared. You should read this book.

Considering that I’m a huge fan of Stephen King and I got favorably compared to him, this is probably one of my favorite reviews of all time. And I hope it leads to more people giving it a chance and checking it out.

If you’d like to get a copy of Snake, you can follow this link to Amazon and check it out (though I will be uploading it onto other sites soon). And if you like or hate it after reading it, please don’t hesitate to write a review and let me know what you think. I love feedback, positive or negative, so if you have some for me, please don’t hesitate to share it with me.

You can also check out the page for Snake here for excerpts and more information, if you wish.

That’s all for now. I’ve got a few things to take care of this morning before work, so I’m going to get on that. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.

Laura Horn: Part IV Done

Posted: July 7, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Oh, I doubted I would actually get this far. I mean, with all the delays and breaks and whatnot I had to take with this novel, I really despaired about getting to the climax of the book. I’m happy to say that after four or so days of working through Chapter Fifty, I whizzed through Chapters Fifty-One and Fifty-Two and finally finished Part IV: Inauguration Day of Laura Horn.

This part of the novel actually got longer and shorter while I was writing it. I added two chapters to give the antagonists more page time, and then I combined two chapters into one so that the flow of the novel would…well, flow smoother. I’m glad to say that it all went very well in the end. Now I’ve only got ten chapters left of the novel, seven of which are in Part V: Triumph, and three in the Epilogue. I can’t wait to see if I can’t get through these last ten chapters in the next seven days. Ten or twelve at the most.

And now for the page and word counts (and by page counts, I mean 8.5″ x 11″ pages). Part IV was fourteen chapters, comprising about seventy-five pages and seventeen-thousand, seven-hundred and ninety-four words. Combined with the preceding thirty-seven chapters, that’s a total of 292 pages and 77,274 words. Wow, we’re right up in the novel range. I’m going to make a guess between 85,000 95,000 words at the end of it all. Well, that’s around normal for one of my books, I guess. Video Rage was around eighty-four thousand, while Snake was 110,000. Reborn City was somewhere between them, around ninety-one or ninety-three thousand.

Huh…funny now that I look at it. The novels that had longer chapters but less of them had smaller word counts, while the novels with shorter chapters but more of them are much longer. I’m not sure why that is, but I’m sure it might have something to do with the books I read growing up and how I began writing with the goal of being as good as the books I was reading.

Well, I’m going to probably write an article for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors and a blog post or two and then get to work on finishing this novel about a girl with a very dark past who confronts her demons and ends up saving her country from a horrific coup. Should be fun. Wish me luck on it.

Well, I’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’m meeting someone who’s helping me find a job after graduation tomorrow morning, and if I’m lucky I might be able to pick up my new glasses beforehand. Plus another shift at work, so that’ll be my whole afternoon. I might as well go to bed now and get some sleep. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares to you all.

4 Horror Films That Can Teach You About The Horror Genre Itself

Posted: July 5, 2014 in Reflections, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while, but I had to find time (and enough films) to actually settle down and write an article worthy of this subject.

If you’ve seen movies like Scream or Cabin in the Woods, you realize they are not just really good scary movies, but they’re also great commentary on the horror genre itself. Scream was basically saying that, rather than restricting the creativity of film directors, the conventions of horror films, especially slashers, gave them considerable freedom to work with and explore new areas of fear, as well as being a sort of examination of slashers themselves. Cabin in the Woods gave you the impression that horror filmmakers were somewhat like slaves in the entertainment industry, having to abide by certain rules in order to please audiences or be ruined (occasionally that’s true).

These horror films below have their own lessons to teach on the genre, and I’ll try my best to convey them here (and possibly convince you, dear reader, to go and see them for yourself). Whether it’s on unique ways to tell a story, reinventing a familiar story, or even just finding a way to insert some philosophical musings into your movie, these movies all have something to share on the genre.

Urban Legend

The slashers that come after the classics of the eighties and the early nineties come in three categories: really bad sequels, movies that try to copy the classics and fail disastrously, and the ones that go above and beyond, often finding ways to redefine the slasher genre while they do it. Urban Legend is definitely part of the third category, and it shows how the slasher genre can change itself despite some critics’ claims of  “same story, different killer/kids/location/motive”. In this case, a killer begins attacking students and faculty at a remote college campus, but kills them in ways that mirror popular urban legends. Who is the killer, why are they killing like this, and what does all this have to do with one young student and her connection with the original victim? The answers will not only shock you, but it’ll make you appreciate adaptable slashers and those urban legends you all heard as kids and teens in new ways.

Devil

You know how in most horror films the audience knows there’s a supernatural explanation for why freaky stuff is happening and the characters in the film are looking for a rational explanation? In this movie, it’s different: you suspect there’s a supernatural explanation, but at the same time you look for ways it could be rationally explained. In this film based off an M. Night Shyamalan story, five people get stuck in an elevator and are murdered under mysterious circumstances while trapped inside. Who is the killer? Why are they killing? Is it a bizarre murder plot? A psychopath at work? Or maybe, as one security guard believes, it’s a mystical meeting between the damned and the Devil himself. A terrifying film, just watching how the filmmakers portray the unfolding events and make us wonder exactly what is happening is enough to give you some ideas on how to switch up your own stories. Or give you nightmares. That’s always a possibility.

Pulse

Known as Kairo in Japan, this supernatural horror film is as deeply philosophical as it is terrifying. In this movie, spirits manage to find a way into our world through the Internet, and start killing the living, though why they kill the living isn’t always clear. The movie follows several different people, particularly a young woman who is among the first to notice what is happening, and a college student who finds himself delving into the mysterious ghosts with a computer science co-ed he knows. The film besides being scary, offers great insight into our strange, modern world, which can be full of connections and isolating all at once, and why ghosts would want to return to this world in the first place. There’s an American remake of this film, but it loses some of its philosophical/psychological bite in favor of special effects and some more Western horror conventions. It’s not bad, but it’s not as good as the original. Anyway, check out both if you can. They’re both interesting takes on our Internet-obsessed society, if you ask me.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Our last entry is not even true horror, but horror-comedy and mockumentary. Behind the Mask follows a group of students filming a documentary in a world where famous killers like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kreuger, and Michael Myers are as real as you or I. The subject of their documentary is a man named Leslie Vernon, a would-be killer who is in training to become a famous killer himself and is preparing for his own night of carnage.  The film switches between documentary-style footage and the more traditional horror-movie footage, breaking down the conventions of the slasher genre as well as their philosophical and Freudian psychological meanings (particularly the role of the “survival girl” motif in these films). Not only is it a great story that examines, pokes fun of, and psychoanalyzes the slasher sub-genre, it also depicts a very doomed romance that is stll rather beautiful and lovely in a weird way. Whether or not you like horror, this is definitely not a film to be missed, because what you can learn from it is great.

Have you seen any of these films? What were your thoughts on them?

What are some great horror films you think can teach people about the genre itself? What is great about them?

Remembering Paris

Posted: July 4, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections, Tales from Abroad
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The entrance to the Louvre, surrounding by many fountains.

The entrance to the Louvre, surrounding by many fountains.

The other night, I was watching the classic Doctor Who serial City of Death (one of these days I will have to write an article on Classic Who from a writer’s perspective, because it deserves one), and I found myself freaking out because the serial takes place mainly in Paris, about thirty-five years before I myself was there. (Fun fact: City of Death was the first Doctor Who serial to be filmed abroad, filming between April and May of 1979. So yeah, 35 years before I would visit the city itself).

It was delightful for me to see all those sights in the actual episode, because I’d been to those places and I remembered what it was like to be there. I found myself reliving riding the Metro after a long day, trying to navigate my way back out onto the street after taking a twenty-minute train ride, because those stations can sometimes be little mazes in themselves. Or walking along the river Seine during a leisurely stroll and then sitting in a café near the Champs Elyesees and having a crepe and Orangina (I miss that brand of soda, by the way. It’s so hard to find here in the States).

The Eiffel Tower at night.

The Eiffel Tower at night.

The serial also had scenes set at the Eiffel Tower and in the Louvre. Both those places hold a lot of memories for me. For the Eiffel Tower, it was one of the very first places I visited when I was in Paris. My friend Ramsey Hardin and I decided we go on a late-night jaunt to see the Eiffel Tower at night, and we ended up somehow climbing all the way to the second level (not the top, because that was closed that late at night). It was an amazing view. From every angle you could see Paris at night, a lovely city of lights and mystery. There are hardly any skyscrapers in Paris, mostly due to the French’s distaste for them, so we had a clear view of the city at night. The tower itself starts having a light show with flashing bulbs bright enough to give people seizures about every hour or so, and that was fun to watch. While there we also had the opportunity to talk to a family from the States who were there for a special birthday celebration (the mother’s) and a group from a technical school in Texas that were there for their own study-abroad trip. If the Tower hadn’t had to close, I’m sure we would’ve spent another hour or two there talking to people and enjoying the views.

Ramsey and I at the Eiffel Tower.

Ramsey and I at the Eiffel Tower.

The Louvre has an altogether different feeling. There is more nudity depicted in that museum than in the world’s biggest strip club, and yet there’s just as much religious iconography and scenes to rival the Vatican. And through it all is an air of strange reverence, as if everyone is aware that they are in a temple as holy as any shrine. Even as people take photos of the Mona Lisa or Madonna on the Rocks or paintings so big they take up an entire wall or ones small enough to fit on a cramped bookshelf, there’s a subdued air, as if people are paying their respects to the products of old history and culture. It’s very strange, and you can only really get a sense of it by actually going to the museum itself.

My most artistic selfie.

My most artistic selfie.

But compared to Notre Dame, the Louvre might be a funhouse. I went there after the Louvre, and it’s a very amazing place. From the moment you arrive, you are struck by the very detail of the building. The entrances have so many figures carved into them that you could spend an hour just looking at them and guessing who they are. And once inside, it is very dark and quiet, with people looking around or praying. You can’t help but feel a strange holiness to the place, a sense of godliness no matter what your religious beliefs (or lack of them) are. I even met a couple of OSU alumni there (we’re everywhere!) and they agreed with me on that. I might’v spent more time there if I didn’t have to be back to the hotel by a certain time to meet up for dinner.

See any hunchbacks behind me?

See any hunchbacks behind me?

What does all this rambling have to do with anything? Well, I guess it’s the power of memory. Although sometimes very fallible, the power of memory can transport you through time and space, landing you in a totally different age and location. Just watching that Doctor Who serial was enough to bring me all the way back to France and those five or six lovely, idyllic days of study and learning and wonder and fun, faster than even the TARDIS, even. And I was so happy to return too, because it’s an experience I’ll never be able to relive again, and the memories and photos are what keep the memories alive.

And I hope they stay alive for a long, long time.

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