STABBY STABBY!

Here's the cover for the next book I'm in! I think it's out next month!!!!

THE *OTHER* DOCTOR

Tonight saw the début of BBC1's SHERLOCK, in which the world's greatest detective (apart from Batman) and his genial cohort Watson are transplanted from the fog-bound streets of Victorian London smack-bang into the 21st Century, complete with mobile phones, internet and witty banter.

"OH HORROR!" you cry. "And Holmes' role of consulting detective makes him Jessica Fletcher to Inspector Lestrad's [Google Chrome's built-in spell-checker suggested I was actually trying to write 'Legstraps'] Sheriff Amos Tupper [I could have gone with Sheriff Mort Metzger but I've always had a soft spot for Tom Bosley]?!" you also, rather laboriously, cry.

Yes indeedy!

Thankfully, turning Sherlock Holmes into the so-overdone-it's-gone-black-in-the-middle 'maverick agent who has an insight into crimes that the police are just too thick to notice by themselves' archetype actually works because he IS that archetype. However, this doesn't necessarily mean it's any good.

As it 'appened, the story around the plot was a lot more interesting than the plot itself, which may have been intentional, seeing as the first episode of any new series typically sets up the major players and gives hints of what's to come.

People are committing suicide, possibly under duress but the police are of course baffled. Is this the handiwork of a twisted new serial killer? Of course it is! Who's doing it and why?

Unfortunately, we're not supposed to be able to out-detective the world's greatest detective (apart from Batman, and maybe actually Quincy, in a round-about way) but that's exactly what the first episode of SHERLOCK let happen. Who's the killer? A cabbie. Why's he doing it? Terminal illness. Yawn. I'm going to be lenient though, and guess that Holmes was so intent on figuring out some diabolical mastermind that he couldn't see the wood for the trees. And speaking of diabolical masterminds, Mr Murderous Cabbie informs Sherlock that he's being "sponsored" to do these peculiar killings. The plot thickens! Speaking of which...

Watson (played with a sort-of grudging humour by Martin Freeman) is headed home when someone calls telephones as he nears them. When he answers one, a voice says he's being watched by the nearby CCTV, and that he should get in a waiting car. He's then taken to meet a thin man in a suit, who talks a lot of mysterious nonsense about being Holmes' "archenemy". "Ah-ha!" cry the loyal Sherlock afficionados, "that can only be one person...

MORIARTY!"

Except we're supposed to believe Mark Gatiss is the new version of Holmes' legendary nemesis? The guy's as fearsome as mouldy cheese (and yes of course I know what he's from, but his character in SHERLOCK is two steps above 'simpering' and no number of veiled, sibilant threats can make someone who looks like he does in this scary). Plus, I'm almost certain the voice on the phone to Watson was an elderly gent (my money's on the guy who played the evil doctor in the last series of Being Human)...

Incidentally, Mark Gatiss is credited as being the 'co-creator' of SHERLOCK, along with the main brains, Stephen Moffatt. Who, if you're hip and have used your own deduction skills on this post's title, is the new big cheese behind the current Dr Who. You'd never guess that he was that guy, though, not with the way he writes Sherlock as a hyper-talkative weirdo who wears strange clothes and is intensely bright...oh hang on. He's tweaked Matt Smith's Doctor and put him in a new show. Cheeky! (Sherlock's even played by a weird looking guy with the has-to-be-made-up-for-the-sake-of-attracting-roles name of Benedict Cumberbatch).

All that aside, this new show pays tribute to the proper Holmes by sticking him and Watson in 221b Baker Street, and giving them Mrs Hudson as a landlady (not housekeeper, as she amusingly keeps reminding them), and insinuates Holmes has a drug problem (apart from going a bit crazy with nicotine patches). Plus, his violin gets mentioned, but he never gets it out. Boo!

And Moriarty is actually name-checked, effectively, since we've spent all episode waiting to hear his name spoken aloud. And who's Mark Gatiss actually portraying? Why, MYCROFT HOLMES of course!

SHERLOCK was filled with crazy/witty banter, dizzying chases through London's backstreets, snazzy visual tricks (Holmes' thoughts are displayed as text on the screen, which ends up being a little redundant because he then goes on to explain to whoever's with him exactly what we just read) and very little violence/blood. There was a feeling of fun and adventure more than threat and terror, which made for a welcome change from every single other godawful cop show on telly at the moment, but it did ask a question I'm not sure even this Sherlock could answer:

Who is this actually aimed at, and why did it appear at 9pm when it was no worse than anything shown at 8pm?

YIPPEE!

ZOMBIE ZOOLOGY has recently been reviewed here:

http://monsterlibrarian.com/zombies.htm#Zombie_Zoology

and guess who gets a mention? :D :D :D

INCEPTIONAL!

I went to das kino to see INCEPTION last night but I'm not going to review it, not properly, because I firmly believe this is one of those films that you're better off knowing less about before you see it. So here's a succinct and completely spoiler-free opinion!

But first, a plot-crunch: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, who I used to hate but now genuinely admire) can enter people's dreams to steal information - this process is known as 'extraction'. 'Incepetion' is when an idea is planted in someone's mind, and that's what Cobb is asked to do, even though it's supposedly impossible. He then sets about putting together a little gang of specialists who can enter dreams with him, in order to enter the dream/mind of Fischer (Cillian Murphy, who always looks a bit ill), a young man who's poised to take over a massive corporation.

There is A LOT more to the story than this, but that's the basic premise. And interestingly, it's not really about what Cobb can do, but about why he does it, but that's all I'm saying about THAT.

Honestly, if you've seen the trailer you've seen most of the 'money shots' - a street folding over itself, a train barrelling down a road, a crumbling city - but the film's not about conjuring up surreal landscapes (though there is a little bit of this in it) because the point of extraction/inception is that the dreamer shouldn't be made aware that they're dreaming as this can jeopardise the mission. It's about falling down a rabbit hole into another rabbit hole into another rabbit hole, and forgetting which way is up.

INCEPTION is perhaps the tensest film I have seen in a long while, in that I was constantly leaning forward, eager to see what happened next, and this in itself is a masterful stroke on behalf of director Christopher Nolan, especially when he starts juggling dream layers. What's real? Is reality overrated? Whose dream are you in - yours or someone else's? And is Nolan a crafty bastard? I guarantee that by the end of the film you'll be thinking "Yes".

Recommended for fans of: sci-fi that manages to be as action-packed as it is mind-bending.

Overall value: Incredible pounds and Crazy pence

BACK FROM THE DEaD?

I'm really digging THIS MUSIC at the moment - it's like a darker Amon Tobin, which is more than fine by me.

I'm trying to write some new cARDbOaRD DEaD bOY stuff (I used to be quite good, I'll have you know AND HERE'S THE PROOF) but I keep making cool 'bits' but nothing coherent. I need to try and tap back into what made CDB tick all those years ago...here's another review by the same guy for a different place.

*wistful sigh*

USTED TIENE UN AMIGO EN MÍ

TOY STORY 3 is excellent.

That is all.

MY BLOOD WAS BLACKER THAN THE CHAMBERS OF A DEAD NUN'S HEART

Finally thought an idea for THIS SUB CALL -->

http://northernfrightspublishing.webs.com/guidelines.htm

and it involves a kid, an old EC-style comic, and demonic superpowers. It might also get a bit hackneyed whilst potentially breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging the trite nature of such things, not to mention have a sort-of 'feedback loop' of image/narrative. Ooo very mysterious!

In other news, I've been playing ALAN WAKE on the EGGBOX. It looks lovely, very moody and atmospheric, with mist-shrouded woods being the main area the game takes place in. Which is getting a little boring, as the town of Bright Falls (where Alan, a horror writer, goes on vacation) seems to have a sinister history. I reckon I'm about halfway through the game, if not further, so hopefully things will change a bit.

The controls are bit frustrating as, like in Silent Hill, it often pays to just leg it rather than try and fight the creepy enemies (in this it's darkness-shrouded people) but it would help if Alan could manage to sprint for more than three seconds before getting hopelessly knackered. This is even more annoying when the enemies are bloody fast and have remarkably good aim with their thrown sickles and axes. This isn't 'tense' or 'scary' just 'bloody annoying'. I also get to have a good chuckle at the character models, who look as if they've had strokes in every cut-scene.

But it's not all dodgy survival horror - there are some nice Lovecraft hints, some (heavy-handed) King references, and even a nod to August Derleth (thanks to the Twlight Zone-style 'Night Springs', which can be watched on televisions in the game). AND there's some pretty good music utilised throughout the game, not least one of my favourite Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds songs, Up Jumped the Devil.

At this point, it's unclear quite what's causing all the weirdness in Alan's world (though there's a suggestion of In The Mouth of Madness writer-writes-reality type shenanigans going on) and if I remember other reviews, the game ends without properly explaining itself...an idea given further credence by the second and latest Alan Wake DLC (Downloadable Content, awkward acronym fans!) which states "Now Alan knows what he's up against..." - but I'm certainly intrigued. Ironically, Alan's writing (which is found throughout the game as manuscript pages) is a bit poor, but the game itself is pretty finely crafted. FANCY THAT!

WHEN YOU GO WALKING IN MY SHOES

Holy crap, I watched THE HORSEMAN last night - a recent Australian revenge flick - and if it's not the definition of 'sombre' and also quite possibly 'horrible' I don't know what is. As a double-bill with DEAD MAN'S SHOES, it was something all right...

Dead Man's Shoes is by English director Shane Meadows, and stars The Most Terrifying Man In Cinema(tm) Paddy Considine. After watching this film you will be in no doubt that he could royally fuck you up if he wanted to. Just make sure you don't target his family...

He plays Richard, the older brother to special needs Anthony. When Anthony's tormented by some men who initially befriend, then humiliate him, Richard returns from the Army to dish out some serious retribution. Likewise, in The Horseman, 44 year old father Christian sets off to visit vengeance upon the men he views as being responsible for the death of his daughter.

Both films cover the same ground, but in drastically different ways. Richard dresses up in a boiler suit and weird gasmask in order to unnerve his victims - and does in fact mess with them for a bit first, letting them know he's coming for them. One stand-out scene sees him confront Sonny, the de facto leader of the gang Anthony fell in with. Sonny squares up to Richard, tries to act tough, and Richard, wearing a face like thunder, holds his hand out, palm up, points to the middle of his palm, says to Sonny, "That's you" then slowly closes his hand. Fantastic.

Christian, on the other hand, doesn't give the men who killed his daughter any such warning. The first they know about his mission for vengeance is when he starts killing them off, and when they tell him who he should talk to Christian says "Already met him". Brrrr!

Both protagonists are men fuelled by the sort of righteous anger that only losing a loved one unjustly can really create, and in both films this sheer emotion is so damn palatable you'll probably need a shower after watching them, especially The Horseman, but more on that in a sec. In Dead Man's Shoe's, you absolutely buy into the relationship between Richard and Anthony, and feel vindicated whenever one of the 'bad guys' gets it (and do they ever! Axes and drugs are the main weapons used against them, partly in a 'poetic justice' manner). Same with The Horseman - Christian's daughter gets involved in a porno, but gets drugged up to the eyeballs and then raped, before being dumped by the road, to die before an ambulance can reach her. The men who did this to her are undoubtedly vile human beings, though not all of them...and his daughter may not be as innocent as she first appeared (did she turn up to the shoot off her tits already, or is this a lie?).

This is one of the main differences between the two films - Dead Man's Shoes baddies are just guys who didn't know when to stop a prank from spilling over into something darker, and are largely drug-using wideboy lads who might get in a pub fight or two but aren't "evil", not as such. The men in The Horseman, however...almost all of them are disgusting creatures that shouldn't be labelled as human beings, though you can easily believe these sort of men exist in the real world.

The biggest difference between the films, however, is the violence. They're probably about as gory as each other, but whereas Dead Man's Shoes can be called "a cool film to watch", maybe with some mates round and some beers, The Horseman really isn't that sort of film at all. Christian's grief is so powerful it borders on the profound, and the fact he isn't an indestructible agent of death but gets his arse kicked a few times, makes it even worse - we WANT him to succeed, even though the things he does are horrible (fish hooks in bits, hammers to heads, etc) (and I love the overall feeling of 'you can do what you like to me because the pain you inflict now is nothing compared to the pain I feel at having lost a child). And whereas you might enjoy seeing some of the payback in Dead Man's Shoes (the drug sequence near the end is as funny as it is uncomfortable), anyone who claims to derive genuine enjoyment from any of the violence in The Horseman isn't right in the head. Yes, feel vindicated, cheer Christian on maybe, but don't high five yourself when he smashes a guy in the legs with a sledgehammer because that's just wrong, my friend. The man might have deserved it but that doesn't necessarily make it right. Violence begets violence, after all.

Curiously, though Dead Man's Shoes is the more 'watchable' of the two films, The Horseman has a potentially happier ending, despite all the rage and blood spewed out in the 90 minutes beforehand. Cathartic? Absolutely. Just don't expect to feel any better about the human race after watching either of these films.

“THE LORD SHALL MAKE THE RAIN OF THY LAND POWDER AND DUST, FROM HEAVEN IT SHALL COME DOWN UPON THEE, UNTIL THOU BE DESTROYED”

My story OF DIRT AND DUST has been accepted for Pill Hill Press' Return to the Middle of Nowhere antho! I only submitted it at 11am today, too!

I think I mentioned it already, but as a refresher, it's about an agent for the Department of Agriculture who travels to a tiny town to find out why no-one's responding to telegrams. It initially started as a clear 'Bad Day At Black Rock' style paranoid thriller but rapidly turned into a short, sharp environmental horror. Yeah, I think I can call it that. Oh, and it's set in the heart of the Dust Bowl in the late 1930's! Wait that's right I did talk about it before because I linked to this awesome documentary that I used as my primary research source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/dustbowl/

Seriously, if you have an hour spare check it out - you can see how something like this is ripe for horror writing!

Watched In The Mouth of Madness again tonight. Man, I fucking love that film. Pardon the swearing but I fucking love it. I'd marry it if such a thing was possible. Marry it and fuck its brains out!

Screw it, I'm going to do a post soon that's just a massive love letter to it.

MUST LOVE DOGS

Stay tuned, freaks! Reviews of Pet Sematary 1 and 2 coming up, and maybe a brief love letter to Dead Man's Shoes. I've also been thinking about refining and colouring-in that tentacle sketch, but I think I'll leave it as it is.

Why haven't I done any of this stuff now, and just posted about doing it instead? Because it's my blog, ugly, and I can do whatever the hell I want to damn well please to do! TOUCHY, MON AMI!

CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Is anyone tech savvie? My internet connection won't/can't 'renew ip address' and I have no idea what the deal is...

In other news, had a real splurge on films these last few days. Prepare for OPINIONS!!!

PREDATORS --> The very definition of 'solid'. Well acted/directed, and all the rest of it, but missing that extra little 'something' that would make it worth watching again and again. Perhaps 'fun'? I was going to say Laurence Fishbourne is worth the price of admission alone but I think that honour has to go to Adrian Brody's voice. Magnificent.

A bunch of hardcases literally drop out of the sky onto an alien planet, where the Predators hunt. And that's pretty much it. There's a Russian with a mini-gun, a Mexican with two uzis, a Spanish (?) lass with some sort of sniper rifle, Adrian Brody with a grenade launcher and incredible voice, a near-silent Yakuza chap and...a doctor?! New alliances must be forged and tenuous friendships etc etc etc. Ol' Larry plays someone who's been stranded on the planet for ages and is now a bit loopy, but he's only in it for maybe 5 minutes.

The Predators themselves look cool but they don't really do that much - ie they're not as actively involved in the story as you might hope/think. They mess with the people a little bit, and you get to see them quite a lot, and there are some fight scenes between them and the humans, and them and each other...but it's lacking. You get the impression they're tough but not actually skilled hunters, as the traps they pull are sussed-out by the humans fairly easily.

However, it does do a few things I didn't expect (that might actually have been better, but at least they didn't do the obvious) and there's a 'twist' at the end that doesn't really serve any purpose, not to mention a 'convenient' story element that so shamefacedly exploits dramatic tension it should get an award. But, despite all this, it is still SOLID.

STAR TREK --> Yep, the latest film. It's brilliant! All the casting is spot-on (although I was a little unconvinced by Simon Pegg's accent) with my favourite character easily being Bones (played fantastically by Karl Urban). Seriously Hollywood, give him more films!

I was a little unsure what the deal was with it at first - prequel? reboot? - as it starts with the death of a Kirk...but it soon turns out this is the (explosive) birth of Captain James T Kirk himself. Alriiiiiight! We then fast forward to the Star Fleet Training Academy, where the now 20-something Kirk meets his future shipmates (Uhurhurhruuhu, Bones, Chekov, Sulu? Zulu?, and of course SPOCK). Cue hi-jinks and calamity as they boldly go...into SPACE!

I always find Star Trek baddies a bit boring, and the one in this isn't too incredible - Nero, a Romulan miner who was pissed off that Spock (accidentally) let his planet get destroyed. He (Nero's) pretty tough and merciless, but not too gripping. And why does his ship, which we're told is a mining vessel, look like a bad guy's ship? Admittedly it's cool, with tons of spikes and things, and all in black, but if this ship came to mine my planet I'd shit my pants.

Speaking of Spock, not only do we get a more 'push me too far and I'll smack you' version in Whatshisface from Heroes, but we also get a nice amount of Original Spock(tm), with Leonard Nimoy popping up to explain a few things. Turns out that he's from the Original Timeline(tm) and the one the film occupies is an alternate one, caused by something earlier in the film. Crafty buggers, those writers, as this now allows more sequels with their own stamp on proceedings to follow.

And I hope they do - this film's Kirk is a cocky smartmouth who gets by on brains and charisma - perfect! Plus all the other crew have interesting facets worth exploring, although I'm not sure about Uhrhurhuhuhu's blooming romance with a certain alien. But most importantly: MORE BONES!!!

DAYBREAKERS --> The Sperig Brothers created this, and their (last?) film, Undead, was a good title wasted on a bad film. You can't really go wrong with zombies but somehow they did. Well it's not rocket science - the tone of that film was completely at odds with the actual look. It was gritty, dark, with a highly stylised colour palette, but with some outright goofy humour, and ALIENS. It did have some excellent lines though, but ultimately was a bit of a mess.

SO...I was a bit wary of Daybreakers, despite it having Ethan Hawke (who only seems to bother appearing in films every few hundred years) and One Of The Best Actors In The World And Not Just Because He Appeared In In The Mouth Of Madness Well Okay Mainly Because He Appeared In That Film(tm) Sam Neill in it. Oh and Willem Defoe!

In went the DVD, and on went the film...and initial signs were intriguing. Things kick off with a little girl vampire burning to death in sunlight, and from there we're introduced to what feels more like an alternate reality than future progression - a lot of people are dressed a bit 1940's, but there are sci-fi advancements like cars with high-tech computers onboard and self-inflating tyres, that sort of thing.

We then discover that, apparently, ten years have passed since a virus outbreak that turned most of the world into honest-to-goodness vampires. In that time, they rapidly became the dominant species and started using humans as cattle, sticking them in these labs where they're constantly drained of blood by machines so the vampires can feed off them without any of that messy neck-biting business (not that there isn't plenty of this throughout the film).

The only trouble is, the human population is running dangerously low, and if the vampires can't develop a blood substitute soon they'll effectively starve and devolve in 'subsiders', monstrous creatures that are part bat.

Almost everything in the film is excellent, to no-one's surprise more than mine, especially since I'm not overly fussed with vampires. The lore and mythology of the world Daybreakers inhabits is pretty much air-tight, with some very, very clever tricks and twists, particularly later on, when Defoe turns up, claiming to have inadvertently found an actual cure for vampirism, and then later on when we find out an unexpected side effect of this cure.

Sam Neill doesn't really do much, to be honest, apart from act a little sleazy. He does get his own mini-plot involving his still-human daughter though, that's a nice 'up yours' moment to his (business and physical) greed.

Ethan Hawke is almost always watchable, and in this he has a nice role - a vampire haematologist who doesn't like drinking human blood, and who ends up helping Defoe's 'freedom fighters'. The chap who plays his brother is also pretty good, and used as a nice counterpoint to Ethan's character (enjoys being a vampire because he "wasn't very good at being human").

There were a few things that bothered me though, and they relate almost exclusively to pace and timing within the film. For instance, Ethan has to meet some humans at noon, which he does. They then end up getting chased and, suddenly, it's night. Whoops. And if it's only been ten years since the 'outbreak', why can't Ethan really 'remember what it felt like to be human', when he's the most human out of all the main vampire characters? And it would have been nice to know what year it's supposed to be, because clearly it's more futuristic than 2010 but there's still the suggestion that, once vampires appeared, they brought an innate technological advancement with them. The last thing that didn't quite seem right relates to the girl (and later, some subsiders) as they burn in sunlight. They all go up pretty quickly, but at another point in the film a character gets blasted with it a few times and doesn't even have any marks (not even fast-healing ones), which didn't quite feel right. And the closing voiceover feels pithy and weak compared with everything we've just seen (not to mention it states the bloody obvious).

However, there IS a lot of blood and guts in this film, with a highlight being a veritable orgy of gore (or gorgy, if you will) towards the end of the film. Overall, Daybreakers is very, very good and the Sperig brothers (or however you spell their name) have redeemed themselves in my eyes. And that's all that matters, RIGHT?!

THE CRAZIES (remake) --> was a bit disappointing. I'd heard largely glowing reviews, about how it generates a succinct and effective 'small town apocalypse' feel, but it just wasn't that good.

It ticked all the right boxes (Sinister military presence? - check! / Once-polite townsfolk going mental? - check! / Radha Mitchell? - check!) but felt almost as empty as the main town of Ogden Falls gets. Timothy Oliphant plays the sheriff well, even though there seems to be a problem with his eyes (I don't think he blinks once during the film) that's particularly noteworthy when he gets a slap, and his face moves but his eyes don't. Weirdo. But...but but but.

Where are all the Crazies? After the town's water supply gets tainted by a biological weapon (a discovery made remarkably quickly - the film does have a solid, fast pace) people start going loopy. But we're told this more than actually shown it, apart from a few occasions. Ogden Falls has a population exceeding a thousand people, and there's point where the infected people get unleashed on the town...yet the sheriff and his little gang manage to walk around largely unmolested for most of the film, with the crazies taking a definite backseat to the military. Boo!

I was reminded of the excellent Twilight Zone episode where CSI Grissom goes to a small town that's slowly going nuts - that was really creepy and strange, but The Crazies is neither of these things. There's some scope for people to go steadily, almost imperceptibly mental, but we only get a small slice of this. If anything, the film's more about the aftermath of the outbreak than the outbreak itself, which is a shame. Does have an obvious, but cool, ending though.

PANDORUM --> was the last film in my splurge-fest, that I watched last night. Almost conversely, this received 'okay' reviews compared to The Crazies, but I found it more enjoyable.

Corporal Bower (played by Ben Foster) and Lieutenant Payton (played by the ever-reliable Dennis Quaid) wake up from 'hypersleep' onboard the Elysium - a massive city-sized spaceship - with memory loss. Where are they going, and what's happened to the 59, 000 other people onboard? They don't know, but luckily for us the well-worn plot device of 'cryogenic amnesia' allows the audience to discover the facts at the same time as the main characters, and what facts they are!

Upon its release, Pandorum was largely called 'cookie-cutter', and a favourite reference point was the film Event Horizon. Pandorum doesn't break any new ground within the genre but neither does it really resemble Event Horizon. For starters, the monsters in Pandorum are real, physical creatures, not supernatural/demonic forces. Yeah, it's a big empty spaceship with weird stuff happening on it, but that was also the plot of Alien, and you don't see Pandorum getting compared to that.

So anyway. Bower remembers his an engineer, and realises the ship's reactor is getting close to meltdown. Away he goes exploring the ship on his way to fix it, guided by Payton, who remains in a command room. Along the way, Bower meets a few other survivors and the aforementioned monsters, who look pretty cool - all pale and deformed, with bits of metal growing from their bodies. I won't reveal what they are exactly, but the video game player in me loved the reason for their existence.

That right there is a pretty good description of Pandorum overall - it's survival horror, and were it a video game, would probably be classed as a solid 8/10 title worth picking up once the price had dropped a bit.

The 'Pandorum' of the title is actually a space mental illness, where people basically go nuts, and lose all sense of morality, not to mention suffer a pretty sizable 'break with reality', as the quacks say. It plays into proceedings quite heavily, as Bower and Payton find out what's happened to everyone else, why they're on the ship, and what their mission actually is/was. Things get a bit daft at the end with some needless melodrama, but it's compensated for with an ace reveal (when they open the ship's windows, they can't see any stars - and THAT is a cool idea right there). Worth watching!

And that's the end of Film Club for this week. Stay tuned for more quick reviews. OR NOT!

BOW BEFORE WAYNE!

I think this is going to be my new bio when submitting work to publications:

Wayne Goodchild is better than you, and it's about time you accepted it. Proof, as if any is needed, is available in Zombie Zoology (from Severed Press), Letters From the Dead (Library of the Living Dead) and Through the Eyes of the Undead (also from the Library), with further evidence forthcoming. He is also so mighty that his work appears in serialized form on newbedlam.com, and quite possibly in your dreams. Anyone who still doubts his power is clearly mentally ill. Get on your knees, peasant! Worship him at theycallmepotato.blogspot.com

BUSY BUSY BUSY

To some degree anywayz.

Finishing off initial edits of some Doomology submissions; should have that sorted by tomorrow night easy peasy.

Going to sort out the No More Heroes accepted submissions later this week too, get that done.

Couldn't finish the 4000 word story the other day - it would never have made that limit without being pumped full of more crap than a supermarket own-brand chicken fillet.

Trying to finish off a fairly simple story set in the Dust Bowl, in 1936. Plenty of cool history to work with, largely thanks to this incredible documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/dustbowl/

You can probably guess what elements I'm making horrific use of :D

Also received a rejection recently, but a personal one so that's a nice change. Story starts off well, apparently, but then turns too 'comic-booky', apparently to the detriment of the story. Oh well.

Speaking of comic books, I've been playing the free 14 day trial of City of Heroes/Villains, which, considering I have all this editing to do, may not have been the wisest thing to sink time into at the moment haha. I used to subscribe to/play it when it first came out, a few years ago, but then ran out of money (or rather, moved house and didn't give the internet provider my new address so they couldn't bill me, sneaky sneaky!) so it's been pretty cool making goofy characters and sending them jumping off tall buildings.

The only trouble is, when I play a game like this, or watch something like Smallville, it really makes me want to write a superhero story. Nothing stopping me of course, but the challenge is less of what to make it about (apart from having superpeople fighting) but where to put it. There doesn't seem to be much of a superhero fiction niche out there, but I might be wrong. At least I've got No More Heroes to do, which Bill and I have further plans for if sales warrant a (or any) sequels.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go punch crime in the face. Goodchild - AWAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!