Just a little over a week since the last review came up, a new one has been posted on Amazon. I guess it was only a matter of time before Snake started to catch up with Reborn City and The Quiet Game.
Snake is about a young man who becomes a serial killer in order to save the woman he loves. It’s definitely one of my darker works, and considering I’m a horror author that’s saying something. Anyway, this is the fourth review of Snake, and it was posted by Michele Kurland, who gave the book 4-stars (Michele also gave Reborn City and The Quiet Game pretty nice reviews as well. I guess I’ve got a fan). Her review is entitled This page-turning read was another great effort by Rami. Here’s what she had to say:
Well, I took yet another vacation where I made my family “just wait until I finish this chapter.” This page-turning read was another great effort by Rami. He is not afraid to take risks in plot twists and turns, character development and he takes the reader on quite the journey in this book. So looking forward to his next creation!
Well Michele, I have several new creations, I just have to find the time to get them edited and published! And I like it when I make it difficult to put the book down. It shows that I’m doing my job as a fiction writer.
If you would like to read Snake, you can find it in both paperback and e-book from Amazon and Smashwords. And if you do decide to read it, please let me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love feedback, and you can leave it for me in a comment or you can leave a review online for me to find.
And as I keep reminding everyone, Reborn City is having a big sale and giveaway. You can find out details here if you wish to learn more.
That’s all for now. I’ve got some work to do, so I’ll get to it. Have a good evening, my Followers of Fear.
I would’ve written this yesterday when my last thesis meeting occurred, but I was pressed for time, and then I had homework up the wazoo, and then I got up late today, and then I still had homework, and then…what was I typing about? Oh yeah. Well yesterday I met with my advisor M and fellow thesis-writer P (he’s not working on Rose, of course. He’s got his own thing). I told them some of the changes I wanted to make with the story, and they liked some of my ideas once I’d taken the time to explain them.
But the conversation took a different turn when it came to the latest work I’d sent them. They began asking about all these fantastical elements I’d been adding to the story, wondering where I was going with the story and maybe if I was taking the focus off of Rose and the antagonist. Up until then, despite several offers to show them what I’d planned for the rest of the novel and even show them the outline I’d written, they’d said no. But today, in order to give them more of an idea of where I was going with this story, I gave them the basic idea of where Rose was going.
They had issues with the course of the story, to say the least and told me why.
Basically, the plot of the story would have gone with a powerful Japanese god joining the story and trying to kill Rose. They pointed out that my antagonist would’ve been relegated to barely secondary antagonist and that the story would’ve gotten too complicated for a single book. And I had to admit, they were right. It would’ve gotten pretty complicated, maybe unnecessarily so, if I went down that path.
So I took all that in, realized they had some definite points, and worried that maybe I still have a ton to learn as an author (good thing I’m still pretty early in my career). I’m now going to start a new outline for Rose (the fifth, by the way), and see where I go with it. I’ve got some ideas, so I’m going to brainstorm some more. However, I’m going to try and focus it on those two characters, Rose and the antagonist, and keep the focus on their topsy-turvy life. After I write the new outline, I plan on sending it to my advisor and getting his feedback on it. Hopefully he’ll like what he sees.
So for now, I’m off to read some manga, watch some TV, and see what comes to mind. Hopefully it’ll be something really great that will impress readers. Wish me luck, Followers of Fear.
And remember, there’s a huge sale on Reborn City and a giveaway going on right now. Click here for more details.
One whole year. One whole crazy, kooky, lovely, exciting, frustrating, magical, mystical, marvelous year. Can you believe how much time has passed since then?
Actually, yes I can. I’ve had that sort of crazy life. But yeah, it’s amazing that an entire year has passed since Reborn City was first published. It’s my first novel and I’m especially proud of it. And the reception to it has just been great. I’ve had a lot of people who’ve told me how much they’ve enjoyed reading RC, how they thought it was really original and that they couldn’t wait to read the sequel.*
For those of yo who are unfamiliar with RC, let me tell you about it. Reborn City is the first in a science fiction trilogy I started writing in high school, and that I’ve been working and polishing on and off since then. It follows Zahara Bakur, a Muslim teenager who lives in the titular city, a Las Vegas-like entertainment town in the year 2056. After the death of her parents, Zahara is forced by circumstance to join the Hydras, an interracial street gang whose leaders have special abilities and powers. Zahara finds a new home with the Hydras, despite the constant violence in her neighborhood and the discrimination she faces because of her religion. However, when tragedy strikes, Zahara learns that there are people in the government interested in the Hydras for very specific reasons, and the choices she makes will influence not only her life, but the lives of those she cares about.
Currently, Reborn City holds a 4.7 rating based on seven reviews on Amazon, and people have been mostly very positive with what they’ve had to say. Take a look:
This is an extremely commendable effort by a new young writer, whom I believe we will see much more of in the years ahead. Rami Ungar’s vision of a frightening dystopian future is peppered with those elements that make us all human. There are quite a few surprises in the book, and I am anxious for the next volume in the series to be released.
–Marc M. Neiwirth
This is not a genre I typically delve into, but I took this book on vacation and couldn’t put it down. The plot had me turning pages at quite the clip. The characters were unique and interesting and the imagery had me creating my own visual of what Rami’s interpretation of the future looked like. For first time novelist, Rami Ungar, this was an outstanding showing of talent and commitment to his passion of writing. Looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next!
–Michele Kurland
As a reader who does not read books in this genre, I must admit that I could not put down the book. I attribute this to the talent of the author. I am looking forward to reading the next books published by Ungar. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy action with features of supernatural powers and sci-fi.
–Enjie
And in honor of a full year since Reborn City was published, I’m doing a couple of special things to celebrate. First, I’m doing a two-week sale. All e-books of Reborn City will be only $0.99 and the print paperback will be $6.50, down from their usual prices from $2.99 and $8.99, respectively.
In addition, I’m holding a contest. From November 1st-November 14th, you have the opportunity to win an autographed copy of Reborn City, sent to wherever you may live. This contest is available to all, except to those who are closely related to me or had some hand in the creation of Reborn City. All you have to do is leave a comment below with your name, where you’re from, and a superpower you would like to have. Easier questions than what was asked at the Bridge of Death, right?
If you would like to check out Reborn City, you can buy a print or digital copy from Amazon and Smashwords (the latter only has the e-book version). And if you like (or hate) what you read, please let me know what you think, whether in a comment or in a review. Positive or negative, I love feedback, so please let me know your thoughts on the book.
Good luck to all contest participants and fun reading, my Followers of Fear. And thanks for a wonderful year, everyone. I couldn’t have done it without you.
*Speaking of which, I’m sorry editing and publishing Video Rage is taking so long. I’ve been busy with my thesis and school, so there hasn’t been any time to work on it. But I’m hoping that with a slightly easier next semester in the spring, I might be able to actually put in some time finishing up the second draft of VR. Of course, I’ll deep into the job search at that point, so that could get in the way.
It’s been a while since I updated everyone on my novel-that-also-doubles-as-my senior-thesis Rose, but I have the opportunity to do so now. Especially since I can’t do my job search without updating my resume, and I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of people on whether I can use them as references.
Well, if you’ll remember my post on my first thesis meeting, you know I ended up switching to first person and rewriting some of the early chapters to make them darker. Well, this past Wednesday there was another meeting with my advisor and the other student I’m working with (I keep meaning to ask if I can use their real names, but I keep forgetting. Oh well, I think I’ll stick to M, my advisor, and P, the other student I’m working with). They had a lot of suggestions for me:
Probably a hold over from writing Reborn City and Video Rage, but I have a tendency to explain the stranger elements of the story. Works great for science fiction, but terrible for horror. So I’m trying not to explain the stranger aspects and let the story tell it through what happens.
There are a few comedy elements that I’m trying to cut out. We’ll see how that goes.
There are some things I will need to change for the first couple chapters, but that’ll wait for the second draft.
Most importantly, I’ve switched to narrating in present tense.
That last one is a big one for me. In a previous post, I mentioned that I probably shouldn’t narrate in present tense because I’m not very good or familiar with it and because I have the tendency to switch back into past tense. I explained that to M, but he insisted that I at least try it. His reasoning was that since I’ve been narrating the story in past tense with a first person narrator this whole time, it’s pretty much assumed that things will turn out for the best (probably true). Putting the story in first person would probably serve to add a little mystery and uncertainty to the story.
So I thought, might as well give it a shot. I’d switched from third to first person already, and that had brought about a definite improvement, though I have to work harder to make sure that Rose’s constant state of terror doesn’t start to sound boring. On the other hand, I was already comfortable with writing in the first person. One of my early attempts at writing a novel was in the first person, and for a story written in my early-to-mid teens I did a pretty good job. Writing in the present tense was something I’d hardly ever done before.
So I rewrote parts of Chapter Three to start with, the parts that needed some holes to be plugged so that the story could continue to flow.Then I wrote Chapter Four, and over the past twenty-four hours or so I wrote Chapter Five. Both of those chapters and the parts of Chapter Three I rewrote were written in present tense. And it is weird for me. I don’t know many other authors who write that way, so I don’t have an example to refer back to. I’m basically feeling it out as I go.
But I somehow managed to do it. And it’s been a rather dramatic shift, like the DNA of the story has been altered. I keep thinking back to that scene from the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film, when Peter Parker’s DNA gets rewritten by spider-DNA, causing his whole self to change. It’s that dramatic a shift, like the whole thing has changed in a very important way while still remaining the same basic story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before.
Well, I’ll keep writing it in first-person present tense, hopefully gaining a knack for writing stories like this along the way (it could be useful for a future story). I just hope that when we meet again on Halloween, I don’t have to do another major change to the story. Writing this thing’s been hard enough as it is with just a busy schedule. Writing in unfamiliar styles and with so many new rules or ideas to incorporate certainly makes the job a bit tougher.
Well, it’s late, so I’m going to bed. Hopefully I’ll start Chapter Six tomorrow after classes and homework. Wish me luck, my Followers of Fear.
I just finished the second short story I’ll be submitting to my creative writing class. This one is titled “Frauwolf”, and it’s about a woman who turns into a werewolf–or as she prefers, frauwolf, meaning “woman wolf”. Werewolf mean “man wolf”, so my character thought she’d coin a term for the ladies out there. Anyway, she turns into a werewolf, but at a certain point she can’t tell whether she’s actually changing into a wolf creature or if she’s nuts, and I write it so I make it hard for even the reader to figure it out either.
This story’s also significant because the main character and her partner are both women, and it’s been a long while since I’ve written any characters that were LGBT (I originally intended to make 011 from Reborn City gay, but I didn’t think it fit with the story I was trying to create, so I mase him just creepy and sadistic and possibly asexual). I’m wondering if having two women in love will influence how anyone sees or likes this story. As far as I’m aware, non-hetero couples are still not very prominent in horror fiction, and it’s common for those that are to die pretty early on or be shunted to the side where they won’t make that much impact in the story. Perhaps having them at the forefront will make a difference.
This particular short story was probably one of the hardest I’ve ever had to work with ever. I had to go back three times to the beginning and start over because I didn’t like the way the story was going. Thus, about two or three weeks that could have been devoted to my thesis were devoted to this particular short story. Finally on the fourth try I came out with a version I happened to like.
Still, considering how I’m more suited for writing novels, I doubt “Frauwolf” will come away from critique day without a lot of comments and plenty of edits to make. I say, bring it on. I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of stuff I could do to improve the story, and if I decide to try to publish it in a magazine or something, plenty of the story I could cut out and rewrite to be shorter. And considering how much I love this story’s concept, I’m really hoping to find ways to improve it.
In any case, I’m putting this story away until it’s actually time to deal with it. I’ve still got a thesis to work on and I’ve taken too long of a break from it to get this thing done. If I finish my homework early (and that happens a lot on Tuesdays, for some reason), I’ll get right on the next chapter. Wish me luck, because I’ve got a meeting with my advisor on Wednesday and I don’t want to tell him I have nothing new to send him!
Well, I’m exhausted, so I’m going to rest and relax till bed. You have a good night, my Followers of Fear. Sweet nightmares to you all.
Well, it took me a little while (darn my school load!) but I’m finally done editing Chapter 24 of Video Rage. And since the second installment of the Reborn City series is 37 chapters long, I’m about two-thirds through the second draft.
So excuse me while I do a little happy dance…
Still here? Cool.
I think the hardest thing about editing VR is that a lot of it is rewriting. When you’re doing a first draft, you think that a lot of what you included (including dialects in the narration) is just genius, the best thing for the English language since Shakespeare put quill to parchment or Hemingway put pen to paper or Stephen King put typewriter keys to…you know. And then you leave it alone for several months so you can look at it with fresh eyes, and then you think to yourself “What the f*ck was I thinking writing this crap?”
But I’m glad I’ve been able to take a second look at this. If I thought that the first draft was okay, I’m sure the second draft is going to impress maybe a few readers. That’s the hope anyway. In any case, I think after the second draft is done I’ll send VR to a certain science fiction writer I’m acquainted with who took a look at RC for me. I’m pretty sure his opinion on things will be very useful indeed.
Well, I’m hitting the hay. Big day tomorrow with lots to do, and I want to be well rested for it. Good night, my Followers of Fear.
Some of you are probably reading the title of this post and are wondering, Since when is there a purpose to any sort of violence? Very true, but I’m talking about violence in speculative fiction and when it is useful and when it is just excessive.
Granted, I might not be the best person to speak on this subject. If any of you have read or are reading Snake, you are well aware that the main character is very influenced by slasher films and the Russian mafia, so violence abounds. However, in my other books I try to hold back on the violence. Why? Partly because I’m just terrible with writing fight scenes. I actually try to avoid them when I can, which is okay because in horror it’s often more about the atmosphere and character interaction than about describing a punch or a gun fight.
But the other reason is that, when I’m writing and I think about including a very violent scene in my story, I think about whether it can advance a story’s plot.
Let me explain. In Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City that I’m currently editing when I have the chance (my time is so filled up these days), there comes a scene about midway through the book where some of the characters get into an argument and one of them ends up punching the other in the face. The actual punch occupies about maybe two or three paragraphs, but the result s of it is felt throughout the rest of the novel. Both characters in this little altercation have to reassess their relationship. One has to decide if they want to continue to be friends with someone who punched them, especially since they really cared about this person and the hurt feelings and pride hurt more than the being punched. As for the one doing the punching, he is horrified about what he did in a moment of anger. He has to take a hard look at himself and really decide whether he might need to change his actions and perhaps do some growing up.
Another example is in Rose, my work-in-progress/thesis project. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Rose is dealing with a young woman trapped by magic with the stalker who resurrected her. And when she tries to get away from him, he often gets violent and dangerous. While providing some very terrifying scenes, these moments also force Rose into a dark place. She becomes frightened, and, like many abused women, starts walking on eggshells because she’s afraid of arousing his rage. Over the course of the story, Rose finds herself driven into a darker and darker place spiritually because of all she suffers. At least until certain events allow her to seek a change.
So in a way, while I detest violence and I try not to use it when I can, in certain ways like the ones above violence can advance the story and allow for character development. Of course there are many other tools that allow for character development and propelling the plot forward: romantic relationships, deceit and treachery, other non-violent events in the characters’ lives that allow them to move forward in the story. But I think of all those, violence requires a delicacy that is much harder to handle than other methods (and not to mention romance can be a bit overused). You have to use it in just the right way or your readers will be overwhelmed and turned off from reading anymore. One slap or punch or explosion too many and it can really change things, and not for the better. So for the author, it’s up to them to figure out what is the right level of violence and how best to wield it in their story. And hopefully through practice one can figure out just that.
So am I good at wielding the violence? You’d have to find that out yourself or ask one of my other readers. An author can often the worst judge at their work. But I think I do okay at it. At any rate, I haven’t had any complaints about the levels of violence in my stories or how they’re used. In fact, I’ve been told that they’re rather scary, which pleases me to no end.
How do you use violence in your stories? Do you have any advice regarding including or not including violence in your stories?
Boy, I’m not sure my life could get any better. Things have just been going so well for me these days. It’s like my Tarot was right and fortune really was just around the corner.
Today, my science-fiction novel RebornCity received a new review on Amazon. This new five-star review makes for two 4-star reviews and five 5-star reviews, for a total of seven reviews and an average score of 4.7 out of 5. As you can expect, I’m super excited and super-grateful for all that’s been going on and can’t thank the people who make it happen enough.
This latest review comes from Marc Neiwirth, one of the people to whom my second novel Snake is dedicated to (speaking of which, he just downloaded a copy of Snake today. I hope he likes it when he gets the chance to read it). His review, which he entitled Fantastic First Novel (I love that he capitalized the first letter of each word), goes like this:
This is an extremely commendable effort by a new young writer, whom I believe we will see much more of in the years ahead. Rami Ungar’s vision of a frightening dystopian future is peppered with those elements that make us all human. There are quite a few surprises in the book, and I am anxious for the next volume in the series to be released.
Marc, your words mean a lot to me. I’m glad you enjoyed it and that you found parts of it surprising. Sadly, since I have to focus on schoolwork and my job at the financial aid office before I can do creative writing, editing Video Rage is on the back burner at the moment. Still, there’s a good chance I’ll find time to do editing later on in the semester. I’ve done it before, so I don’t see why it can’t happen now.
In the meantime, if you would like to check out some of the other reviews of Reborn City, or if you’re interested in getting a copy for yourself, you can check out Reborn City’s page or you can check it out on Amazon and Smashwords, where it is available in e-book and paperback (but only through Amazon for paperback). And if you end up liking what you’re reading, please let me know what you think, either in a comment or a review. Positive or negative, I love feedback and I want to hear yours.
That’s all for now. I’ll do a little more homework and then try to relax. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares!
As of last night, I’m a little more than halfway through editing Video Rage, the sequel to my first novel Reborn City. It’s been a long and slow process, not helped by work, preparing for the new semester, and the general craziness of life itself. Still, I am making progress. And I have become a bit more cognizant of the fact that I like to make issues that are important to me part of the stories that I write.
I’ve mentioned this before, but RC and its sequel VR have a lot of themes in them that reflect societal problems we face today, including Islamophobia, racism, and drug addiction, among a few others. I thought that these were the only book I’ve written where these issues have become so embedded within the story’s narrative, but then I realized that wasn’t the case. Snake, my other novel, explores the trade in human beings and in flesh, albeit slightly less prominent due to the focus on a certain serial killer. And Laura Horn, the novel I finished last month, stars a main character who suffers from the trauma of sexual assault. Even Rose, the novel I’ll be writing for my thesis, has a lot of themes reflecting issues that I find important, including gender dynamics and women being viewed solely for their biology, domestic abuse in relationships, and even gun violence*.
*Speaking of which, I have a post about that. Remind me to write about it later this week.
I think I write in all these themes into my stories for a number of reasons. One is because a lot of what I write is taken from today’s world. You look around you, and you’ll see the world plagued by many issues that are not easy to solve and nowhere close to being solved. Often I will write a story and the problem can either be inserted into the story or it just evolves its way in, showing up throughout the story. Another reason is that, as an author, I have the potential to influence plenty of people through the words I write and the stories I tell. If I can do some good through that, then why shouldn’t I? Third, sometimes you feel so upset about the problems yourself you can only vent about them through words on paper, which is something I sometimes do. And fourth, because I can.
In any case, I look upon this habit of mine as beneficial. Like I said, inserting issues such as racism, gun violence, LGBT rights or whatever into my stories has the potential to perhaps do some good in the world and allow for discussion that sometimes is stifled out of fear or because of strong emotions (or because being politically correct can make you feel like you’re walking on eggshells). And besides, I think it makes the plots of my stories much better. Rose originally didn’t have the gun violence aspect to it, but when I realized that it could make things in the story more interesting and allow me to flesh out the main character more, I decided to go with it, and with fantastic results too.
And if the reviews I’ve gotten on my books are any indication, people like my books better because I add in these issues.
Do you insert issues important to you in your stories? What issues and how do you put them in? What have the reactions been like?
I’m about a third of the way through editing Video Rage. And while I was editing Chapter 12 yesterday, I had a bit of a problem that I had to really rack my brains to solve.
Does anyone remember the Kony 2012 video from two years ago? If you don’t, here’s a quick reminder: Joseph Kony is an African warlord leading a terrorist organization that recruits children to be soldiers and sex slaves. The video Kony 2012 exposed many people to Joseph Kony’s crimes to many people in the West for the first time, amassing nearly 100 million views and becoming one of YouTube’s most viral videos ever. However, despite a powerful Stop Kony campaign, a Cover the Night event, and a sequel to clarify points made in the first video, interest in Joseph Kony and Invisible Children, the organization behind the video, waned after questions of the legitimacy of the campaign came up and the video’s narrator/producer suffered a very public mental breakdown.
Maybe it was because I was really impacted by the video at the time, going out of my way to make a Kony 2012 T-shirt and participating in Cover the Night, but when I decided to make an original viral video in Video Rage, I wanted to use Kony 2012 as an example to compare to the viral video in the story. So I wrote it in, ignoring the reservations I had about using such a famous (and infamous video).
Well, perhaps there’s some truth to the phrase “Another year older, another year wiser.” I was 20 when I wrote that chapter, but I’m 21 as I edit the novel. And I decided to cut Kony 2012 from the story. It’s just that a well-known video like that being featured in my novel might do more harm than good, especially considering everything that went on in the aftermath. So I ended up replacing it with a fictional documentary that I made up pretty much while editing. It took me a while to come up with the subject matter behind the documentary and what it did to achieve the level of fame that it would inspire a viral video in the novel’s universe nearly forty years later, but I finally managed to come up with something that I was satisfied with. And hopefully any future reader will be satisfied with it as well.
So what’s the point of this post? I’m not sure there is a point. Maybe I just wanted to tell you all a story while letting you know how the editing for Video Rage is going. Or maybe I was trying to illustrate how something that seems like a good idea when you’re younger or at an earlier stage of a project (or both) can really seem like a bad idea later on and you just have to nix it. (Strange that Stephen King didn’t think of that when he wrote in that scene in IT with the kids all having sex with each other).
In any case, I’ve fixed what I considered to be a great problem with that one chapter of Video Rage, and I think that the rest of the draft will go smoothly…if I can stay on track with finishing the second draft of the book.
Well, that’s all for now. It’s late, so I’m going to bed. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear. I’ll update you on Video Rage and anything else that needs updating as time goes on. In the meantime, pleasant nightmares.
Rami Ungar The Writer 