Posts Tagged ‘scary stuff’

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.

Buried Alive: Finished

Posted: July 4, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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This doesn’t happen in the short story, but it gets the idea across.

Today–and especially this evening–was like a writing whirlwind. I sat in front of my computer, at times struggling to finish this short story. But as I kept working and as the story got further along, I started writing faster and faster, not caring about word counts or anything around me. I had classical and opera music in my ears and I was putting words onto the page like there was no tomorrow. And about fifteen minutes ago, at around 11:35 PM, I stopped and looked at the manuscript I’d written.

I’d finished Buried Alive, a short story about a teenage girl who is buried alive in the backyard with her mother and sister by her abusive stepfather. I stood back and I felt a sense of satisfaction.

At 5,550 words, this is definitely one of the toughest short stories I’ve ever written. For one thing, it was in the first person, which is definitely not one of my best tenses to use (even writing in second person for Addict was easier). And it’s not easy to imagine oneself in a coffin, let alone in a coffin with two other people. People are good about not thinking about unpleasant things, even horror writers, so it was tough to get into the mind of a girl in that situation.

But eventually I managed to figure it out and I just started writing. And as the story went on and things got more desperate for the character, I made things creepier and stranger. I think I ventured into a sort of zombie fiction near the end, but I really don’t think you could call this a zombie story. It certainly got interesting, and I’m very proud of this story. I actually think it’s one of my best short stories, and I’m not going to let a high word count get in the way of me finding a home for it.

So tomorrow I’ll see if a certain friend of mine who has read plenty of my short stories wouldn’t mind taking a look at this one. I think he’ll like it, especially since I don’t really explain some of the weirder and scarier aspects of the story. But then again, one thing I learned from The Amityville Horror, you don’t always need to explain the source of the creepiness to make it super-creepy.

If this short story goes anywhere, I’ll let you guys know. Wish me luck.

The Quiet Game: 2 Weeks To Publication!!!

Posted: July 3, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Coming out in two weeks. Who's excited?

Coming out in two weeks. Who’s excited?

As I prepare for a wonderful Independence Day tomorrow, I’m also preparing for something just as great in 14 days. The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones will be coming out in 2 weeks, and I am super-excited. Plenty of people have told me that they cannot wait to read it. You know what? I cannot wait for them to read it!

It’s been a crazy process since December 2012, when I started writing what would become the five short stories appearing in The Quiet Game. I’ve published a few short stories in some magazines and one on Amazon, I’ve learned to use Photoshop and CreateSpace, I’ve waited for copyrights to come through (sometimes very late), I’ve bugged people to get back to me on my short stories and tell me what I should change, I’ve created a book trailer and a Facebook page for the book, and now I’m counting down the days until The Quiet Game comes out.

So what do I hope will happen in two weeks? I hope that I’ll have some decent sales, a couple of good reviews and maybe one or two average or bad reviews to convince potential readers that those reviews weren’t just written by fans who want to make me happy. I hope that friends will come up to me and say, “Oh Rami I read your book” and then give me an honest response on what they thought, rather than saying “Oh I bought a copy, haven’t read it yet though” or “I’ve been meaning to get a copy but I’ve been busy/I forgot.” (I’ve gotten that response once or twice for past works).

But most of all, I’m hoping that people will read the book and tell me what they think. I think that’s every writer’s sincerest desire when their books are published.

Well, we’ll see in two weeks. Until then, I’m counting down the days and spreading the word.

A Conundrum With Resurrection

Posted: July 1, 2013 in short story, Writing
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No, this post is not about me wondering if there’s going to be an end of the world and I’m going to be raised from the dead. I’ve thought enough about it already and concluded that until the Messiah comes, it’s just not worth thinking about.

Yesterday I got an email from a friend of mine who was looking at a short story of mine. The story, titled “Resurrection”, is about a man who is brought back to life from the dead through a cryogenic process, and something of supernatural origin messes it up. It’s nearly five-thousand words, which makes it a very long short story, or a very long short story in the eyes of most magazines. I was hoping I’d get some good feedback from my friend, which I did, but I did not expect this to appear in the response:

“It is very good. Actually, it could be expanded into either a novella, a full blown book or even a screenplay.”

That was the first time I ever used the center-alignment option on this blog. I don’t know why I’ve never done that before.

But that’s beside the point. What my friend said got me thinking, and since then I haven’t been able to stop thinking! I mean, I could see this story being expanded in some form or another, though I don’t think a novella or a full-blown novel is in the works right now, with all that’s going on. A screenplay might work, and heck, other horror writers have written screenplays before, Stephen King being chief among them.

Of course, there’s a couple of problems: I don’t know anything about writing screenplays! And to top that off, I’m still a relatively unknown writer with some short story publishing to my name, a collection coming out in sixteen days, and a novel in November. The way Hollywood is right now, what are the chances my screenplay will make it to the lunch table, let alone to the big screen? And considering how much Hollywood hacks slash, rewrite, and ultimately murder screenplays, would I really want them to do that to my own work?

I’m not so sure.

So for now I’m going to put “Resurrection” on a shelf until I know what to do with it. I may edit it and try to publish it in a magazine. Or maybe I’ll expand it into a different format of creative literature. Or maybe I’ll even turn it into a screenplay. Or maybe I’ll save it for another collection of short stories. Who knows?

Until then, I think I’ll wait and see. Time usually tells, and I’m sure time will tell me the right answer, once I’m ready for it.

Still, I wouldn’t mind your thoughts and opinions on the subject, if you’re willing to give them to me.

Review: World War Z (film)

Posted: June 29, 2013 in Review, Scary Stuff
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Some of you may remember my review of the novel a while back (if you haven’t read it, click here), which got a very favorable review for being a history of the political, military, economic, social, educational, religious, ethical, and moral ramifications of a zombie war as told through a series of vignettes from witnesses of the war (try saying that three time fast).

After reading the book, set ten years after the end of the war, my whole family–or just me and my mother, plus my sister who hasn’t read the book–wondered how the movie would differ from the book. Obviously there would be a lot of differences, seeing as the movie shows the zombie war as it begins. When we got to the theatre yesterday, had our coupon denied, sat through a hundred corporate ads, had the projector break down, and finally started the movie, we hoped that even with so many liberties, the movie would be good.

We weren’t disappointed. Although plenty of liberties were taken and plenty of stuff was left out–the zombies were fast-moving rather than slow shufflers, there was no mention of the new religious empire of Russia or the South Africa plan, changes in what happens to North Korea, and a huge difference in what happens to Israel–the movie was a decent zombie thriller. Brad Pitt was awesome as Gerry Lane, a retired UN worker who’s called back into service when the plague breaks out. He is surrounded by a great cast and zombies who are so lifelike–or maybe un-lifelike is better–that whether they are CGI or actors in make-up, they look so real.

The movie zigzags around the world, from Philedelphia to the Atlantic Ocean to Korea to Israel (whoop-whoop!) to Wales and finally to Nova Scotia, but there are plenty of thrills and tense situations in-between that have you on the edge of your seat. And finally there’s the scene in the vault in Wales, where the final twist in the movie is revealed. At the end, you’ll be enjoying yourself despite all the liberties taken.

My family and I left the theater discussing the movie and its many differences from the book, but how we enjoyed it all the same. I’m going to give the film a 4.4 out of 5, for being the first decent zombie film I’ve seen in a while.

Oh, and apparently Paramount is moving ahead with plans for a sequel, despite the fact that the original was plagued with numerous problems and production costs skyrocketed. Not surprising, considering horror has had a history of doing sequels long after the sequels should stop, and this was well before the sequel mania we are in began. I’m not sure if I’ll see the sequel, but considering that it took six years for the movie to actually make it to the screen, I tink enough time will pass for me to actually enjoy the sequel.

The Quiet Game: 3 Weeks To Publication

Posted: June 26, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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new TCG cover

More good news after the SCOTUS verdict! The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, will be available to purchase in both print paperback and ebook format. I’m very excited about The Quiet Game getting published soon, as it’s been the culmination of nearly seven months’ worth of writing, designing, advertising, and just plain waiting for the copyright to come in.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Quiet Game, it’s a collection of short stories I’ve written that I’m putting out this July 17 for purchase. And some of these tales I’m going to be publishing are quite scary: in Addict, a man with sex addiction tries going cold turkey, only to be haunted by horrifying hallucinations; in I’m Going To Be The Next James Bond, several kids go into an abandoned hospital with a dark history, and find out the history is very much alive; an autistic child gets to experience true terror In The Lady Ogre’s Den; a senator finds that his ancestor’s sins are following him around in the form of a vengeful spirit in Samson Weiss’s Curse; and finally, there’s a game that’s more perilous and more deadly than any game ever played. The Quiet Game.

You can sign up for the Facebook page here, and join nearly 75 people to get instant news and updates, and you can check out the trailer below if you’re not sure whether or not you want to buy a copy. I hope you have a nice day and that the thought of my collection doesn’t scare you too badly.

Of course, if it does, I wouldn’t mind that. Mwha ha ha!

Review: Hannibal Season One Finale

Posted: June 20, 2013 in Review, Scary Stuff
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The word that sends people into horrified nightmares.

I’m what’s known as a Lecterite. Like die-hard Trekkies, Whovians, and comic book junkies, I get very revved up by Hannibal Lecter, and love to praise the character and fault the work when it fails to live up to his scary image. Which was why I was very excited–and very worried–when I heard they were making a prequel series that showed the development in the relationship between Lecter and Will Graham (the guy who searched Lecter’s head before Clarice Starling ever graduated high school, if you didn’t know).

I remember watching the pilot (read review here), and I remember being intrigued. I also remember thinking vaguely that I would do a review of the season finale, but that sort of became a prophecy as time went on. And at that time, I would know if I would be disappointed, if I would be happy, or at the very least glad Starling wouldn’t come to TV (I am not a Starling fan).

I’m happy to say that I was not disappointed (and Starling will get her own show on Lifetime apparently, but don’t expect me to watch it). Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, and Lawrence Fishburne deliver as Will Graham, Dr. Lecter, and Jack Crawford respectively. For the first time, there’s a Will Graham who actually convinces me he can get into the minds of killers whether he likes it or not (this is mentioned in Red Dragon and its movie adaptions, but very rarely explored), and this is utilized to its best in the season’s plotline. Lawrence Fishburne is tough and ready to do what it takes to catch a killer, even if it means pushing some very dangerous limits.

And Mikkelsen? My God, he’s better than Hopkins! He portrays Lecter like he’s a casually curious kid who’s constantly finding someone’s set up dominoes in front of him and he can’t help but see what happens if he pushes that one domino. And why? As he says in the penultimate episode, “Because I can.” If that’s not psychopathic, I don’t know what is! And the best part is, he’s at the heart of the FBI investigations and a damn good actor and manipulator, so nobody, no matter how good these feds are, can figure out he’s got them around his fingers. And trust me, these feds aren’t portrayed as incompetent as in the novels or the movies.

All that and a tight plot that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Not too much blood but plenty of creepiness and freaky murder and death to draw in the viewers without grossing them out. And the characters and relationships and their developments are incredibly believable. It’s the best adaptation of the Lecter books yet!

So 2014, come soon so I can find out what happens in season 2 (SPOILER: Hannibal isn’t in a cell at the end of season 1). In the meantime, I’m assigning the entire season a 4.2 out of 5. I take 0.8 points out because the fourth episode was pulled for its so-called objectionable material. I don’t know what was so bad with that episode that it had to be pulled prior to broadcast and aired only online and abroad. But maybe I’m just thick-skinned and not easily disturbed (or too disturbed to care) about kids being brainwashed into killing their families.

Anyway, you probably don’t care. But I’m putting it out for those who do. Good night everybody!

The Quiet Game: One Month To Publication

Posted: June 17, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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TQG cover

Apparently God felt like being nice to me (thank you Sir). I checked the website for the US Copyright Office, and The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, has been copyrighted. That means The Quiet Game will be coming out in one month!

I’m super-excited and I cannot wait to put this baby online, possibly with a new cover (I’ll let you know later in the week how that goes) and in print and e-book version (hopefully). If you haven’t checked out The Quiet Game book trailer yet, please click below:

You can also like the FB page if you want to, and I encourage you to do so. If you want to, please click here. I hope you check out the page and that you’re as excited as I am for the release.

START THE COUNTDOWN! I have to modify my book page.

“Revenge For A Succubus’s Beloved”: Published

Posted: May 27, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Man, it’s just good news after good news after good news lately! I heard about this online magazine called Horror Zone on Facebook recently and I checked out their website. They seemed like a good place to submit my work, so I sent them “Revenge For A Succubus’s Beloved”, the succubus story I wrote last summer and then rewrote during the fall. I’ve been struggling to find a publication that would take this short story, but these guys did! They even gave it a little “Revenge” logo thing near the beginning. I don’t watch the show, but you have to love what they did there.

If you want to read the short story, you can click here and you’ll be redirected to the site. Once again, thanks to Horror Zone for publishing my short story, and I hope to do business with you again in the future. In fact, I already have a short story in mind. For now though, I think I’d like to go for a jog, get some exercise in.

Hope you’re having as awesome a day as I am!

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