Zombie Mechanics

Book Review: The Moonshine Wars by Elmore Leonard

The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book but I can see how it’s really not for everyone. I don’t usually venture into the historical fiction genre, but when I saw this book at the library I had to pick it up. I’ve been wanting to read an Elmore Leonard book for quite a while now, and this is a good one to get me started with this author.

The Moonshine War is a historical fiction piece set in 1930′s Kentucky during prohibition. Immediately you get a terrific sense of presence, as the author sets up a whiskey raid in the back hills and hollows of rural Kentucky. Part of what I loved about this book is the unapologetic viewpoints and characters. There’s no attempt to make the delicate reader LIKE these people. It simply tells a great story and let’s you decide. It’s a book written by a man, about southern men, doing backwoods hick men things. If that’s not in your wheelhouse, then give this one a pass.

The Good: Great dialogue, great cast of villains – nearly all of the usual types are represented, from the simple thug, to the manipulative mastermind – good pace, perfect length, nice action, decent suspense, believable premise and plot from beginning to end.

The Bad: Abrupt end, protagonist isn’t proactive, reading this book makes you want to reach for the whiskey bottle just for a snort to relate.

This book didn’t get the fifth star for two reasons. One, the abrupt end kind of left me cold. I understand it, I just would have liked to know how some of the character issues were resolved once the book was past its climax. Two, I’m not a huge fan of protagonists that let the action happen to them. Son Martin did very little to try and resolve the situation before it reached the boiling point, and while that was his character’s nature, it made me want to wring his neck at times. The highlight of the book for me was the interaction of the trio of villains, Frank Long, Dr. Taulbee and Dual Metters.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever lived in rural America, and anyone who is a fan of historical fiction. If you’re a fan of prohibition era fiction and/or moonshine/whiskey then read this book!

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Top 5 Memorable Moments: The Walking Dead Mid-Season 2 Return

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead Season 2 returned last night, February 12th. 2012, to AMC with much fanfare and gnashing of zombie teeth.  If you haven’t already seen the show, know that there are spoilers in the article so stop reading here.  You’ve been warned!!

I’m a huge fan of The Walking Dead, obviously, and of the zombie genre in particular so I never miss a show.  Season 2 is suffering from a blight of overly dramatic writing that we didn’t see at all in season 1.  The first season was tight, dramatic, and moved with purpose.  The sophomore run is leaving people antsy, and yours truly, a little disappointed.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the show and the actors are fantastic (especially Norman Reedus and Andrew Lincoln) and I’ll watch ever show they put out from here to season 10, or however long they can milk AMC.

From a writer’s perspective, I like how they’ve deviated from the comics in interesting ways.  If they stick to the general arc of the comics, the fans get a sense of where they’re going next, but with the characters mixed-up and new things thrown in – it leaves plenty of room for creativity and fresh action.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Heck, if they stuck to the comics, Shane would already be clawing his way out of a shallow grave, and Dale would be bumping uglies with Andrea.  Listen up writers…NOBODY wants to see that!

Now on to the fun…

Top 5 Memorable Moments from Season 2: Episode 8

#5.  Daryl Dixon calling Lori “Olive Oyl”  – LOL

#4.  Andrea picking up the dismember arm fallen from the truck – gross and funny at the same time.

#3.  Lori looking into the barrel of her own pistol – ever heard of gun safety? How on earth has she survived this long? STUPID.

#2.  Hershel’s daughter nearly getting eaten by his step-wife after the barn slaughter – doesn’t anybody follow the rules!?!  DOUBLE TAP!

#1.  Rick “Quick-draw-McGraw” Grimes getting the jump on the two Philly boys.  DAMN!  Now THAT’s the Rick I want to watch.  That’s the man that can lead these people and do what it takes…more of that guy!

Enjoy the rest of the season, Zombie Fans!

Yearning for Wonderland Flash Fiction Contest

Anna Meade (@ruanna3) over at YearningForWonderland.blogspot.com is running a flash fiction contest in honor of the upcoming release of Mary Losure’s THE FAIRY RING.  The Fairy Ring writing contest is simple: 300 words of a first person encounter with a fantastical being (faeries, goblins, etc).  No undead.  Unfortunately this rule was created specifically and cruelly to eliminate the deeply misunderstood zombie and related vampire-like…things.

Prizes include a copy of THE FAIRY RING and the editing services of the talented Ms. Meade, so go write whimsy and ENTER TODAY!

My humble entry:

MEMORY AND DREAM

As if on cue, she appeared.  Gossamer wings floating gently in the still air of the redwood copse, her beauty was natural and undeniable.  The wood nymph smiled at me, shyly, from behind a tree.  Ferns and lichen hid her from my camera, taken out that day to photograph nature’s beauty, not knowing that I would come across something more wondrous than an ancient forest.
I tried to capture her on camera, but the coy nymph was not taken easily.
She giggled and ran from me.  I gave chase, not wanting to lose her in the thicket.  I saw, through the green shade, flashes of her lustrous blonde hair and milky skin that took my breath away.  Her tiny dress of silk and gossamer left very little to my experienced imagination.
She stopped unexpectedly and lounged against the trunk of a redwood that was already old when I was new.  Her smile demolished the walls in my heart, long constructed from the petty hurts of mortal women.
Entranced, I forgot I even had the camera.
I stared at her in wonder, memorizing all her perfect imperfections, until my heart could burst.  That was the moment I finally knew what that word meant; Love.
“Marry me,” I said.
“OK.”
“I’m serious.”
The nymph smiled, her brown eyes sparkled with mischief, “I can’t marry you. I have a boyfriend.”
“Where is the lout?”
“He’s off taking pictures of trees,” she pouted.
“He’s a fool.”
“I know, but I love him anyway,” she said, “with all my heart.”
Memory entangled dream that afternoon.
I never did capture that whimsical creature on camera, but sometimes when the light is just right, I can see her winking at me from the wedding pictures on my wall.  She looks remarkably similar to my beautiful wife.

Enjoy and good luck to all the other writers!

Book Review: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this book. I’d read dozens of in-depth articles on the financial meltdown of 2008 but was always left with an incomplete picture of what happened, who was involved, and more importantly, why? This book fills in all the gaps and does a fantastic job of breaking it all down for non-financial folks.

Don’t get the impression that this book is dry or uneventful or hard to read. Michael Lewis is fantastic at spinning reality into fiction-like tales. Good guys, bad guys, lackeys, stooges, fools, disasters, jokes…this book had it all. I think there might have even been a car chase in their somewhere. It’s an incredibly easy read and I laughed out loud on many occasions.

The story follows three groups of investors who took a systemic look at the sub-prime mortgage business and saw what no one else wanted to admit. A ticking time-bomb. These investors literally had to reinvent market devices and their business persona to bet against the insanity/fraud/stupidity of the players involved. Long story short, they made out like bandits shorting the big boys because they saw how the system was gamed from the inside.

I won’t go into a 5000 word analysis of the crash. Read the book for yourself, you won’t be disappointed. I will tell you that anyone who speaks of the crash of 2008 and pins the blame solely on Freddie and Fannie, or Barney Frank and the Democrats, is a fucking idiot and you should walk away from any conversation at that point. The book is entirely apolitical and with good reason. The trouble started and ended in a giant circle of disaster in the heart of Wall Street.

And if you think the story ends with a great solution or some wisdom about where to go next and how to prevent the next catastrophe, stop reading. Michael Lewis makes it clear that Wall Street Investment giants have broken the traditional feedback loop between success in the markets and personal remuneration. When the CEOs and top bond traders can fail spectacularly and still walk away from the table with 10′s of millions of dollars while their shareholders and customers (and ultimately taxpayers) get screwed, then there is no reason for them not to take bigger and more complicated risks the next time around.

We’re through the looking glass now. The system is rigged and there is no turning back. The disgraced ratings agencies are a bought and paid-for sham, the government “Inspector Clouseau” regulators show up three years too late with a wooden pistol, and the customers (you and me) are blind-deaf-mute morons who hand over our hard earned cash with glee in our hearts for 2%.

I love this book for it’s simple honesty and humor in the face of disaster. I would recommend this book to everyone.

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Flash Fiction Blog Hop Challenge

Here’s my entry in Lillie McFerrin‘s January Blog Hop Challenge.  A Flash Fiction piece no longer than 300 words using the picture below as inspiration.

Inspiration

Wish Upon a Dead Star

I’ve never forgotten the way it smelled on the first day.  Fresh, deep, and rich with possibility.  I still smell the earth, perpetually crusted under my fingernails, but the poppies and pines remind me where I am.
This is my office.  Deep in the belly of the UCS Destiny, this field and trees are my life’s work.  There are few perks to being senior botanist, but bringing my ship-born daughter here to remind her what the Earth smelled like is one of them.
“It’s so peaceful,” she said.
“Yes it is, sweetie.”
The red strobes no longer poisoned our picnic.  The Captain turned off the klaxons once the decision was made.  The final meeting was quick and loud. The ship’s engineer screamed with rage at the Captain for giving up so easily.  Gerry kept running the simulation on the view screen.  Every time, same result.
Physics doesn’t lie.
X is thrust, Y is trajectory, Z is the gravitational pull from the rogue black hole stalking the Colony Ship.  Redlining the engines bought us time, but not much.  Exploding engines rupturing the hull was certain and violent death.  The black hole was silent, instantaneous, and peaceful.
“Will it hurt, Daddy?”
“No.  You won’t even know.”
Her eyes, her mother’s green eyes, were red from crying.  I held her in my lap, admiring the soothing beauty of nature in the flowers and trees.  The horror of nature waited for us in the darkness outside.
“I bet Heaven will look like this,” she whispered.
“I bet you’re right.”
I couldn’t bet on Heaven, but I could bet on physics.  Wormholes, alternate dimensions, time travel.  They were all possible by theories of smarter men than I.
I hugged my daughter and watched the counter slip to zero.
Please God, let Einstein be right.

300 words

Happy reading and be merciful, Judges Lillie McFerrin, Angela Goff, Angie Richmond, and Daniel Swensen

Flash Fiction: #FridayFictioneers 1-27-2012

Go easy on me, this is my first entry to Madison Woods’ 100 word #FridayFictioneers contest. Follow her on twitter at @madison_woods.

Picture Cue:

#FridayFictioneers

Consequences

“I told you to pick up your toys, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but…”
“I told you to eat your vegetables, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but…”
“I warned about sassing Mommy, and you pulled the tiger’s tail.  I’m sorry Jake but it’s time to learn your lesson.”
“But, Dad, I thought you were joking!”
“Sorry, Son.  But this is part of parenting.  We have to follow through or you won’t respect my authority. Now get on the train.”
“But I don’t wanna go to China and work in the iPad factory!”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby.  It’s only for three years.”
“Waaahhhh….”

100 words

@zombiemechanics

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  It’s a joke.  Don’t give me any sass Apple fanboys!

Rebuttal:  7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)

The mostly funny folks over at Cracked.com published an article on the 7 scientific reasons a zombie outbreak would fail (quickly) here.

After reading the article and seeing a few glaring holes, I thought it would be fun to write a little rebuttal (mostly because my blog needs material).  Now before I begin, please keep in mind that I’m fully aware that zombies aren’t real.  I love the zombie mythos in a slightly unhealthy way, but I’m quite sure it’s a metaphor for the dissatisfaction a growing subset of the western world has with society.  There are quite a few people who would rather roll back civilization and deal with zombies than scumbag credit card companies, predatory banks, asshole bosses, and mothers-in-law.

I got sucked into reading this article by the second word.  Scientific.  Imagine my surprise when the article had a bunch of wild guesses and generalizations.  Not from Cracked?!  Say it ain’t so!  Look, I’d have still read the article if you left out the word “scientific”, but if you include it… you better back up your 7 guesses with some fucking numbers, charts, graphs, and rational arguments.  That Ph.D. in my CV allows me to be an asshole about that particular word.  Your own mileage may vary.

Point by point, please refer to the original article for their arguments, which the titles summarize pretty neatly.

Writing: #WIP500 Project

The brainchild of Cara Michaels over at www.caramichaels.com, #WIP500 is a Twitter-borne idea that we, as writers, need to consistently produce new material and what better way to do it that to set reasonable daily goals for yourself.  WIP, in writer lingo, stands for “Work(s) In Progress”. It’s a way to separate what you write in everyday life (emails, blog posts, twitter, facebook, etc) from your works of fiction, which writers LOVE to start but find any, and every, excuse not to finish.

#WIP500 sets a goal of keeping you on task on your FICTION, you know, the stuff people want to read that isn’t your ramblings about co-workers and whether or not the cable man showed up on time. Write 500 words a day or not and then make your failure or success public.  That way EVERYONE gets to jump on your case when you forget or slack off, or just run into life’s little roadblocks on any given day.  They also get to lift your spirits and high-five you (virtually) when you meet or exceed your expectations.

500 words a day happens to be the goal I set for myself in 2011 early in February.  I did really well up until the first draft of my WIP was completed and then it fell by the wayside sometime in the summer.  I didn’t pick up the regular production again until right before NaNoWriMo when I kicked it into high gear.  By my best guess, I produced something around 100K of original fiction in 2011.

Not bad, but #WIP500 will set me on track for – let’s see, carry the one, plus 5 – 183,000 words.  Just to give you an idea of what 500-a-day can accomplish, in a year you could write 1st drafts of any of these:

Catch-22 (174K words)

To Kill a Mockingbird (99K words)

The Adventures of Huck Finn (104K words)

Nineteen Eighty-Four (89K words)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (77K words)

The Hunger Games (99K words)

You could try to write the next Twilight (115K words), but please don’t.  Leave it be.  NO sparkly vampires!  As for me, I have 40K left to complete my NaNoWriMo novel (50K+40K), another 20K worth of rewrites on my first two novels, 10K worth of short stories on the tack board, plus a 35K word experimental project in another genre that I don’t usually write.  All of which I should be able to accomplish by the end of the summer.

So go over to Cara’s website and sign up if you so choose.  Find the 100+ writers already signed up on Twitter and make some friends with hashtag #WIP500.

Good luck and get cracking!

Book Review: Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What can you really say about “Salem’s Lot” that hasn’t already been said? I realize it’s rather futile to review books that have been out for 30 years, but this is for my own satisfaction as much as potential readers. The book is arguably the breakthrough hit of Stephen King, the book that launched his career behind the success of “Carrie” and made him an icon in the Horror community.

Salem’s Lot is two parts Brahm Stoker’s Dracula, two parts Comic Book Vampire, and all Stephen King. Fans of King will know this means lots of characters, New England settings and a slow and steady build of tension and dread that will leave you wishing you could read faster before the sun goes down. Barlow and Straker make a perfect combination of Master and Apprentice of Evil. Ben Mears, Mark Petrie and Doc Cody make a great combination of completely unlikely heroes who do what they have to do, not at all because they have heroic ambitions, but because sometimes terrible things just happen.

The book is a great study in the forms or evil and good. Evil with a capital “E” in the form of Hubie Marsten or Barlow, and evil with a little “e” in the form of a mother that beats her child, the wife that cheats on her husband, or the cowardly town constable. All manner of “little e” evils creep into the characters of the book, giving Barlow plenty of opportunity to work his spell over the selfish and often petty and stupid townsfolk of Jerusalem’s lot. The powers of Good struggle mightily to gain a foothold and fight back against the growing darkness in the town and often fails spectacularly. King has written in other works that the hallmark of a horror novel is good characters making bad decisions, and that is definitely the case here. By the end you’ll be ready to sharpen some stakes and grab your cross and holy water to go help out these characters – or at the very least shout at them “NO! Don’t go in there!”

The Good: Brilliant homage to Stoker’s Dracula, tension build is great, villain that almost makes you sad he’s gone at the end (or is he?), some great characters and dialog, wonderful prose in general and very easy to read.

The Bad: Not much. Minor complaints about a few unnecessary characters, there are a lot to keep track of but that’s a staple of most King novels so I know what I’m in for. I also had a minor complaint about the use of the clock as a plot device. As a writer, I get why he does this to build tension; as a reader and a resident of a small town, it tears at the believability in places. If you set your story in a town of 2000 people and you’re going to have it take an hour for the characters to get from one side of town to the other, you better have a darn good explanation – it’s not NYC, you’re talking 7 or 8 blocks tops. Last minor complaint is that King actual broke his own canon to advance the plot – SPOILER: Barlow breaks through the window in the Petrie house and enters the kitchen without being invited while Mark is there with Father Callahan – and I find that slightly annoying.

Summary: If you like King, Vampires, or horror in general this book is a must read in the genre. Being set in the seventies puts the novel a little out of date, but the story loses nothing with the test of time. Classic King and wonderfully chilling novel. No sparkly empathic vampires in this tale, hallelujah.

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Book Review:  Wicked – The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of the West  by Gregory Maguire

Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The title for WICKED is accurate. On it’s face, the novel is an interpretation of Oz as seen through the Wicked Witch of West’s eyes throughout her life. The characters and settings are familiar, both for fans of the movie and the original work of Baum. That’s pretty much where the similarities end.

Maguire weaves tales of Oz that brings depth to the mythical world, people, places, races, and canonical events seen from a new point of view. The language of Wicked is undoubtedly beautiful. Maguire is a master of prose and there are passages throughout the book that seem to be more poetry than fiction. That works both for and against the novel in terms of readability. The novel is certainly not for young readers and there are places where it’s difficult to maintain momentum because of large jumps in the time line. As a reader, I really wanted more to happen along the way. It’s hard to keep reading when nothing of consequence happens page after page after page, but maybe that’s my ADHD rearing it’s ugly head. Maguire had some great source material and developed some intriguing ideas then let most of them die on the vine through neglect.

My biggest complaint from a writer’s perspective was that in the source material, Fabala (TWWotW) is a force to be reckoned with. You get a real sense of power and purpose in her actions and capabilities as a villain. I kept waiting for that to develop in the book and it never does. Fabala comes off as a failure and a sham of a Witch. She has very little effect on the people around her except to abandon them at inopportune times.  The idea that the Wizard would have anything to fear from a shut-in spinster racked with guilt in some far off land who would die in a rainstorm is ridiculous. Entirely disappointing, but maybe that was Maguire’s point.

The Good: Beautifully written, interesting premise, familiar characters interpreted with a twist.

The Bad: The plot wanders, it’s often preachy and/or speculative without much explanation, characters come and go (often dying “off-screen”), fans of the movie will not like this particular interpretation.

Summary: If you’re a fan of literary fiction or Maguire and Baum then it’s worth a read, just know you have to be patient and persistent. If not for Maguire’s musings on the nature of Evil, then for the fascinating tapestry of language built around Oz. For anyone else, I’d pass on the book and go see the Broadway show instead.

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