What's on the iPod - Miami Purity - Feminine Noir

I'm not sure how I missed Vicki Hendricks' dark, noirish Miami Purity (1995), often dubbed a feminine The Postman Always Rings twice, but I was happy to discover the audiobook recently. That's due to a mention in a Salon article about what to read after Gillian Flynn's brilliant  Gone Girl.

Miami is brilliant also, a steamy--in more ways than one--and grim crime excursion told by the protagonist, Sherri Parlay. She's a former stripper who's maintained a vestige of innocence in spite of her rough thirty-six years and a deceased husband. He's deceased because she clipped him with a boom box while he was being abusive.

After her husband's death and some suspicion about it by the cops, Sherri lands a job in a Miami cleaner  called Miami Purity. She's hired by the owner, Brenda Mahoney.

Before long she's discovered the owner's son, Payne,  and fallen deeply into lust for him before she learns Brenda doesn't really care for Payne having a love life.

Things spiral downward as Sherri pursues Payne anyway and catches his interest. Once she's fallen for him, she learns just how twisted his relationship with Brenda is. With the best of intentions, she smothers Brenda with a plastic bag.

Things tumble around after that like towels in a dryer as Sherri strives for a healthy relationship with Payne that, as astute readers know, just isn't going to happen.

The question is, of course, how are things going to fall apart and what's going to happen with Sherri who has an affection for drink and men?

To say more would spoil the fun of the second part of the tale, but it unwinds nicely with a fairly intricate plot and plenty of twists and surprises.

The audio version is nicely suspenseful, and it's well narrated by Linda Borg, who invests Sherri with just the right mixture of sultry and innocent.

It's profanity-laced and loaded with graphic sexual descriptions, so be warned, but it's a great, seedy crime excursion.

Extra
A blogtalk radio interview with Vicki Henricks

What's on the iPad? - Haunting Melissa

I think I maximized my viewing experience of the new app-based serial Haunting Melissa last night. I put in my ear plugs as I lay me down to sleep and I powered up the first installment. The lights were out, all else was quiet, and I was immersed.

The set up is generally familiar. We see things unfold through hand-held cameras and web chats.
The Melissa of the title is staying alone in a big, old house. There's a locked room, not sure what's in there. Voices and other strangeness abound, and Melissa and her friend begin to investigate. What could go wrong?

In spite of the familiarity, watched in total darkness, there were some eerie chills. I'm intrigued and waiting for installment two. That can be earned by a Facebook share, though I suppose future installments will come at a price. You wanna find out what happens, you must pay.

The project comes from New Edelstein, a producer on the The Ring and The Ring 2 and other projects, and it's well done. I think I will stick with it for a while.

I hope Part 2 arrives quickly. I want to see what happens next.

What's On the iPod? - Last Call by Tim Powers

The strength in Last Call by Tim Powers, a contemporary fantasy or magic realism epic, is, first and foremost, in its fully realized fantasy universe. It is a world shaped by the Tarot and Arthurian legend, and it's the kind of immersive work that makes for a really fine audiobook experience.

As an aside: The App

I've begun using Audible's free iPhone app for its convenience, and because it's goal-oriented. It crosses foursquare badges, time tracking and sharing with friends. It's brilliantly or crassly commercial, depending on your point of view. It challenges you to listen more. It's also helpful, since I have an active imagination and have to exercise care to keep my mind wandering when listening to audio fiction. It's not the fiction's fault, just me.

The app provided perfect inducements for keeping me focused on Last Call, read brilliantly by Bronson Pinchot, most noted for comedic turns on film and TV. Yeah, it's Balki, but there's never a trace of over-the-top humor in his tone.

In the Last Call universe, where Bugsy Siegel was a wizard and Las Vegas swirls with subtle magic, Scott Crane is faced with a horror from his past.

Scott, who once worked as a gambler with his surrogate father, Ozzie, is the target of his real and powerfully magical father, a wounded king with multiple bodies and his disposal and a host of thugs as well.

Having once played a poker game with Tarot cards against his biological dad, Scott's primed to provide the old man a new body as the result of an assumption of a card hand.

The quest to prevent that loss of body and soul takes up most the novel's central action as Crane seeks the help and knowledge of the estranged Ozzie, who's steeped in gambling superstitions which have real validity in the universe of Last Call. He also has to cope with a ghostly ex-wife, an angry sister and a neighbor who's been given cancer by association with Scott's magical baggage. 

Chases, gun battles and intrigue keep the story moving, all while conveying more and more detail of the world and the rules in which it all takes place.

It's a fabulously consistent magical  landscape, shaped by myth and history, and it makes for several wonderful hours of listening. It's pretty much how I spent my January at the gym, and of course it's still available on paper or in e-book formats as well.

Look for On Stranger Tides by Powers as well, source for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

What's On the iPod/iPhone?: Big Finish's (Sherlock) Holmes and the Ripper

I was pleasantly surprised recently to discover:

a.) The Big Finish Podcast 

b.) That Big Finish is doing Sherlock Holmes stories

c.) You can now download from the Big Finish website

d.) Downloads are less expensive than CDs

I've been under a rock two years, so I'm still catching up on a lot of things.

 Of course when I gained all this knowledge, starting with the podcast, a natural choice for a birthday gift request was "Holmes and the Ripper," an installment based on a stage play by Brian Clemens of The Avengers fame and scores of other TV shows and movies.

The story's core stems from the conspiracy theorized in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight, so it bears similarities to From Hell, the Jack the Ripper miniseries and the earlier Holmes flick Murder By Decree. Chronologically, release-wise, the play falls it the middle. It pre-dates From Hell and the graphic novel on which it's based but followed 1979's Decree by about nine years.

I suppose the conspiracy is too delicious dramatically to be abandoned, even though it's widely discredited.

Familiarity with the source material doesn't minimize the enjoyment of the production, because it's gloriously and freshly executed with a full cast, incredible music and a music suite track that's a dark mind ride unto itself.

Nicholas Briggs is wonderful as  Holmes, pining over Irene Adler--The Woman--yet  up to the challenge of conspirators and mystics in pursuit of the truth behind the Whitechapel killings. Interesting use is made of Scotland Yard Commissioner Robert Anderson, who, I believe, gets a lot of examination in Ripperology.

"Holmes and the Ripper" manages action, chills and excitement, sparking the imagination with its brilliant mixture of sounds and pauses. It's a great starting point for the Big Finish universe.

A note on the download - The download is not like an Audible or iTunes audiobook. You receive the CD tracks in a zip file, which means importing to iTunes and making a playlist. It's relatively painless.

Steampunk iPhone Wallpaper

I don't know that you can call my first effort at making iPhone wallpaper steampunk with 100 percent accuracy, but I had the spirit of steampunk in mind as I crafted it for the SidiPhone with the help of a few tutorials and Photoshop accessories.

I'm not sure why I felt a desire to trick out my new phone with steampunk touches. Maybe it was the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which felt a little steampunky and drove me back to the Sherlock canon for a December/January binge, or maybe it's just that turbulent times always make us look in different directions, namely backward.

There's a poem called 221B Baker Street, written in the '40s after the 20th century had been shaken by two wars. It celebrates the simpler time and world of the canon, a time where it's "always eighteen ninety-five" and where Holmes can always tie up things in tidy fashion.

Perhaps the constant improvement of technology and it's encroachment on our lives fuels--if you will--some of steampunk's current popularity.

At any rate, it resonates with me a bit at the moment. My effort above is ready for right-clicking if you're inclined to use it. Or if you want to make your own here's roughly how I got there, though this is by no means a step by step tutorial.

Resources

A tutorial from Abduzeedo on creating a vintage travel diary was my starting point and has links to stock art and many of the great Photoshop brushes that made it an easy job. The background is done with a brush from this Waterlogged Map collection.

Some of the gears and tools are from a couple of sets of steampunk Photoshop brushes found here and here. A few I didn't use are here. Maybe for Steampunkwallpaper 2.

I really just added a few bevels, texture touches and drop shadows to make the tools and gears look more real.

More steampunk fun

I ran across quite a few bits of steampunkery as I researched resources. Here are a few more links for browsing enjoyment.

• Via Trend Hunter, Bizarre Magazine's steampunk cover shoot.
• Trender Hunter's Steampunk Celebrations.
• The Steampunk Emporium for steampunk fashions.
• The Steampod Podcast.
• Steampunk Magazine.
• Steamed, a brand new steampunk romance.

Four On The Floor

So we’ve got the “Big Bang Theory” paused on the DVR while taking care of a couple of things around the house when the sound of thumping begins...

This was one night last week. You may have read my Twitter posts about it. Thought they might be my last words if not just a chance to get more handy with Twitterific.

“The weather’s really getting bad,” Christine said from across the room.

I was thinking I must be hearing pine needles hurled at the house like darts. My brain didn’t process hail as a possibility for a few more seconds.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” I agreed.

Then the sirens started.

The next voice you hear
This burg’s early alert system looks like alien technology atop strategically placed poles. One stands about 30 feet from our back door. When they test it, it sounds like the voice of God booming through the evergreens.

I didn’t hear any spoken word messages. The howling winds must’ve drowned them out.

Please stand by
We flipped back over to broadcast TV to see if there were any reports, but the howling winds were interrupting the satellite signal.

Generally I feel invincible where weather is concerned, but things started to seem a little hairy. Christine, who is likewise not particularly skittish, said: “Maybe we should go a central location.”

I shrugged and followed her to the hallway. Something had to be making the sirens go off, right? Sitting on the floor, we called the cats to join us. You may recall from previous posts there are four of them. They sauntered in as if to ask: “Why are you sitting on the floor?” Then they sauntered back out.

“Maybe we should get in the bedroom closet,” Christine said.

“I’m getting the laptop,” I said, thinking wireless might work even if nothing else did. I’d already checked the weather on my iPhone, but the outlook for Cupertino was fine.

So we took the laptop with a streaming report from a local TV station to the closet, and I started catching cats one at a time.

The phone rang as I cornered the last feline.

“Let it go,” Christine said, thinking it was probably her father who lives one state over. He calls about the weather. He called once to see if we had snow seconds before I started seeing flurries outside. I’ve never figured out how he managed that.

Portents
Actually we learned later that omniscient early alert service telephones you to tell you you're doomed, just in case howling winds are drowning out the outside audio message. I’m kind of glad I didn’t answer. That might have made things seem serious.

So we found ourselves sitting on the floor watching the weather man report circular swirling motions detected on radar about five miles south of where we were sitting.

The cats didn’t like the sound of hail on the roof and wondered why we’d imprisoned them in the closet, but otherwise they seemed calm. Ash was particularly happy to have Christine’s polar fleece robe spread out for him.

That'd be, you know...
I looked toward the ceiling where boxes of comic books were arranged on a top shelf. The Joker’s face from the back of The Killing Joke grinned through the hand-hold of one carton.

How ironic it would be, I thought, if my comic book collection fell and crushed me to death.

Otherwise nothing really profound flashed through my brain, no PowerPoint show of my life, no real panic. Guess I wasn’t really convinced by the Sturm und Drang usually reserved for a night Lost is new.

The web stream continued to work through the whole period we sat there on the closet floor. I guess it was about 45 minutes.

In the old days—early 2008—we would’ve just had to sit in the closet until we stopped hearing sirens. Instead, we watched the orange and green Rorschach pattern gradually move East on th Doppler radar.

Happily I don’t think anyone was seriously hurt, though some surrounding areas experienced property damage. Eventually we crawled out of the closet and set the cats free and went on with the evening routine.

We finished The Big Bang theory the next night when things were quiet. By then, we could laugh.

Kersh Without Covers

Besides a couple of 19th century horror novels, one of the first books I nabbed for my iPod's e-reader was Men Without Bones by Gerald Kersh, Harlan Ellison's favorite writer.

My Kersh is a little lacking.

Bones is proving to be an excellent way to catch up. The collection came out in the fifties and many of the stories appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. They have the feel of other short stories of that era.

They remind me a little of the slightly skewed weirdness of Shirley Jackson, meaning they're chilling in very subtle ways.

The title story is science fiction horror with a twist, recounted by a narrator who has just encountered a man from a lost expedition. The man details encounters with the men without bones, leading up to startling and eerie revelations.

My favorite story so far is one called "The Shady Life of Annibal," another as-told-to-story in which a scandal sheet journalist interviews a famous actress. She reveals secrets of her parents and her slightly askew early life.

It's a really nice find for the new year, and I'm looking forward to turning a few more of the e-pages.

Further reading

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