I'm reading at an event for Try Vegan Week!

Cari and I are reading at a fundraiser event for Try Vegan Week Portland. May 4th 7PM. At the Red and Black Cafe.


Featuring four Vegan authors from the northwest!

Gina Ranalli Author of 13 thorns and Suicide Girls in the Afterlife

“There are some very funny—and sacrilegious—moments (and) the author has serious things to say. But that doesn’t stop a lot of it from being irreverent and tongue-in-cheek…it’s certainly a fascinating—and for this reader, successful—experiment.” Charles De Lint on suicide girls

Kristopher Young author of Click

Click was September 2007’s Book Club Selection on Chuck Palahniuk’s official website, The Cult. “…a rare and amazing literary feat… highly personal and gut-wrenchingly real, yet surreal, dream-like and convincingly fantastic. The novel is both intuitive and masterful in execution…”
-Jody Franklin, editor, Mungbeing magazine


David Agranoff author of Screams from a Dying world

"Screams from a Dying World by David Agranoff is a moving reading experience rich with descriptive prose that makes each story come alive and a subtle message that will leave you looking at the world in a whole new way. This is a welcomed addition to the horror genre." – Horrorworld

Cari Beltane Co-author of the Gutter Limits

"Imagine if Satan made a Rubik’s cube... Beltane’s stories are intricately crafted puzzles made to mystify and horrify; filled with shock, splatter and poetry. She’s either bringing art back to horror, or horror back to art." -Paul Stuart, Publisher Punk Horror press.


Sunday May 4th at the Red and Black Café( 12th and Oak) 7 PM


Also Papa G's Grand opening!
Papa G's vegan organic deli will have their official grand opening Earth Day Tuesday April 22. We will offer free samples of all kinds of food as well as house made bakery goods and organic fruit. 3pm - 6pm.

Book review: The Dragon's Nine Sons

The Dragon’s Nine Sons by Chris Roberson

Solaris Books, 432 pages

It is rare that I go into a book or movie blind. I often know a great deal of the plot or stuff about the author and while we like to tell ourselves that doesn’t effect how we read the book, the reality is it effects how we judge the book. In this day in age it’s also likely for me to have met or hung around the author at a convention or on a message board. I try to build my TBR pile based on principles of brief recommendations and respect for the author. In the case of John Shirley’s Wetbones (my favorite modern horror novel) a lack of pre-knowledge was crucial in my enjoyment.

So it was strange that The Dragons Nine Sons found it on my TBR. Complete chance that I was at the library looking for HellBlazer comics and stopped to look at the Sci-Fi new arrivals. The book looked so new and the lay-out sleek, so I picked it up. So I started to read the back and discovered that it took place on mars during an epic battle between the Chinese and Aztec empires sometime in the future.

Yep, you read that right. As a Kungfu movie and Science fiction geek this alternate timeline novel seemed perfect for me. In the detailed and researched back history of this novel Europe was beaten to global travel and China had only one other superpower to deal with Mexica. You get a interesting timeline as a bonus feature in the back of the book, that alone is a interesting read.

I’m not sure this novel is for everyone, but I would have to give it a big thumbs up. I found myself deeply involved as the plot unfolded, it became clear to me that Roberson was paying loving tribute by re-casting the dirty dozen (or Eastern condors) in his universe. The novel could be simply dismissed as Dirty Dozen in space, but this is not fair. That could be said about battle beyond the stars and Seven Samurai and still I think that is a perfectly respectable way to re-tell the new myths.

Roberson keeps the action moving, and the pages fly by. It has a really cinematic feel which is funny because Hollywood would never touch something like this. The characters area dynamic mix of good and bad you would expect from this story. The best testament I can give this novel was as they reached the objective of the suicide Mission I found myself wishing the characters to get out of danger, you see I wanted them back for sequels.

Was it flawless? No. Some of the flashbacks transitioned so clunky that it reminded me of 80’s sitcoms when the actors stare up and rub their chins as the image squiggled into a past episode. Those flashbacks gave me a little eye rolling but I suppose an argument could be made that it added to the cinematic nature of the piece.

This was a fantastic work of epic science fiction with an original setting that could be mined for many novels, at this point I intended to follow them. If I were Roberson’s agent I would be mailing copies of these books to Chinese publishers and production companies. I could see this as movie directed by Ringo Lam staring Andy Lau, and Simon Yam. Damn I want to see that movie. I hope some day it happens.

For a list of tales in this universe check out this page:


http://www.chrisroberson.net/2007/10/celestial-empire-checklist.html

New Talisman song online!

Photo is of me singing for my old band Stand Alone in 1990.

Talisman is a death metal project I did with my friend Rat. Vegan Straight Edge death metal in the vein of Day of suffering. We did one song in the mid 90's with some friends in Syracuse. Rat and I decided recently to keep the spirit alive. Check out.

http://www.myspace.com/talismanvsxe

VEGAN POWER!

Reviews: Sounds Like, Southland Tales

I’m on a roll with horror director Brad Anderson. If you’ve seen the Machinist and didn’t think it was that great then I know you didn’t seen it in the theater. It was an engrossing experience, bleak and horrifying on the big screen and I shocked when people evn argue that it is not a horror film.

I was excited when I saw that he had directed ‘Sounds Like’ an episode of the show The masters of horror. I have been mostly disappointed by these episodes outside of Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns, Coscarelli’s Lansdale adaptation and Dante’s Homecoming. Dante’s one was funny so I’m not sure that counts. Miike’s Imprint was disturbing but was ruined by the English language.

Anderson’s Sounds Like was the best offering yet, again he shows his skill at making the audience uncomfortable. It was a great little horror film,well acted, written, directed and like I said disturbing. A + for Brad Anderson can’t wait to see what he does next.

The other film we watched that same night was Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko follow-up “Southland Tales”. While this was being filmed there was a lot of geek buzz generated based on the cult status of his first film and the strange casting that included Justin Timberlake, The rock, Buffy, Connor Mccloud, Dan from Night Court and about half a dozen SNL veterans. This should have been a clue that Kelly was making a satire but the movie was released like a wet fart.

Not the film’s fault. It’s a strange hybrid destined to be misunderstood by most viewers and panned by critics who would object to it’s non-traditional pacing. Take one part Phillip K. Dick, one part David Lynch and a dash of Pink Floyd’s the wall and you have Southland Tales. Kelly manages to spin a Sci-Fi plot around a satire that manages to get a lot of targets. Left wing radicals, Right wing politicians, pop-culture of every kind and most of all the patriot act.

In an alternative 2007 the America that survived a dirty bomb attack is the home to a movie that manages to be interesting and boring at the same time. Everyone did a wonderful job expect maybe director Richard Kelly. Maybe the movie is brilliant and I don’t get it, but Kelly breaks every screen writing rule there is. This should be a good thing, original and inspired but if he didn’t have DD in his past this would be rejected everywhere.

Does that make it bad? No, But do I care about the characters? A few. Is the pacing there no, there are moments that drag, all that sad I going to give this movie a skeptical thumbs up. My biggest problem with this movie is my fear that Kelly’s career might be like a balloon. Donnie Darko filled it up with air and southland Tales may have popped it. Hope not.

John Woo's Battle of Red Cliff now two films!

Ok So while we should all be stoked for Jet and Jackie's team in Forbidden Kingdom(April 18th) this is not the only film based on an ancient Chinese novel set to be released. In July China will see two part epic based on one battle/chapter of the classic chinese novel the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The Warlords with Jet Li is kinda based off of it as well.

This is exciting for geeks like me because this is the first non-hollywood Chinese language film John Woo has made since Hard Boiled. Nothing he has made in hollywood has compared so get stoked!

A shorter verison will be released everywhere but Asia, which means will have to order from HK flix to see the full thing.

http://www.kungfucinema.com/?p=1460

Congrads to this year's Bram Stoker award winners!

This picture is of me telling Gary Braunbeck how much I loved his novel In Silent Graves at the 2005 awards


Superior Achievement in Poetry
BEING FULL OF LIGHT, INSUBSTANTIAL by Linda Addison (Space and Time) and
VECTORS: A WEEK IN THE DEATH OF A PLANET by Charlee Jacob & Marge Simon (Dark Regions Press)

Superior Achievement in Nonfiction
THE CRYPTOPEDIA: A Dictionary of the Weird, Strange & Downright Bizarre by Jonathan Maberry & David F. Kramer (Citadel Press / Kensington)

Superior Achievement in a Collection
PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS by Michael A. Arnzen (Dark Regions Press) and
5 STORIES by Peter Straub (Borderlands)

Superior Achievement in an Anthology
FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT edited by Gary Braunbeck and Hank Schwaeble (Haunted Pelican Press)

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction
THE GENTLE BRUSH OF WINGS by David Niall Wilson (Defining Moments)

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction
AFTERWARD, THERE WILL BE A HALLWAY by Gary Braunbeck (Five Strokes to Midnight)

Superior Achievement in a First Novel
HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill (William Morrow)

Superior Achievement in a Novel
THE MISSING by Sarah Langan (Harper)

V: The Second Generation - My review

V: The Second Generation

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (February 5, 2008)

As A kid there was only one show that came close to Star Wars in my love. That show was V. I had every hour of both mini-series and even the horrible weekly show all on Beta-max. I had a V pulse rifle that I could take apart, a visitor punching bag. I even had a mothership technical manual that I sent away for after I saw a classified ad in the back of Starlog. I was a V Geek.

Sure I loved the story, the gun battles, and the spirit of resistance even as a kid. I actually consider V a huge part of how I developed such a radical spirit. Over the years I returned to the Mini-Series in the nineties and found a totally different film. Suddenly I understood on a deeper level what Director Kenneth Johnson was trying to say about Nazi Germany.

Don’t look down on the Germans because it could have just as easily been us. This hit home even harder when I happened to watch it with friends in October 2001. Our country had lost it’s damn mind. Members of my very liberal family were calling for muslam blood and Indiana was awash with flags everywhere. GW was just starting to mold his bullshit Iraq agenda. V was more powerful than ever.

To this day I can always watch V. I always find something new. It’s like a song I love to sing along to because I know every word, every beat. So as much as I love the final battle (the official TV sequel) I was excited when Kenny Johnson the original creator told the world he was working on HIS sequel, based on his original vision.

I’m sure when he started thinking about the task of pulling all the actors back together and dealing with getting Warner brothers, NBC and everyone else back on the same page he thought a book would do it just right. So he wrote a novel.

Many people have complained that Johnson is being Lazy by throwing out the events of the final battle (Yep as far as this novel goes the final battle never happened) but personally I’m going to give this move a big thumbs up! Don’t get me wrong I love Ham Tyler and the final battle but it’s not gone. If you love the red dust, the star child, Diana’s brainwash chamber you still have your DVD’s. Personally I am glad we get to see the original creator’s vision. Personally I think Johnson’s vision while more bleak is better.

A better story, a little less cheesy and a bit more daring. You see when the events of the book start the resistance is on the ropes more than ever. Diana has lead a “great purge in ’99 and has almost dried the earth of it’s water completely. For reasons that I consider a spoiler The Vistors are on a time line and they need to finish up on earth soon.

That’s not to say the V:TSG is perfect it has some cheesy moments but nothing has cheesy as the star child. Infact the hatred and scorn thrown on the half breeds in the novel makes a lot more sense. As you read this you can tell Johnson is more comfortable writing for the screen and switches perspectives so fast it’s easy to get confused. This worked well for the original TV movie but in the book it is annoying. Johnson also had a habit of reminding us what the characters had done twenty pages earlier and I found myself wishing he trusted us to remember.

The only other thing that made me want to throw the book out the bus window (this was my commute book). Willie, you might remember as the loveable sweet alien (played by Robert England before he became know for being Freddy Kruger) in 1983 it was funny and cute when he messed up words, cut the Alien some slack he learned Arabic for going there. Johnson has Willie still screwing up english words, after thirty years in America and being married to a English speaking human. Johnson also missed a chance to give Willie a baddass sub-plot where he could have helped communicate with middle eastern resistance cells and perhaps help a jihadist muslam suicide bomber attack the visitors but I digress with my wishes. Willie had a cool role but not that cool.

In the end the book was a quick read for me because it was like being reunited with old friends. The characters have been forged by twenty years of struggle, they have hardened, changed but they are still committed to the fight and damn I am with them every page of the way.

V fans! Don’t be a poser. Read this book.