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? - 14 By Peter Clines

To say too much about this intriguing and Stoker-nominated novel would deprive readers or listeners of  a great deal of pleasure. It's a tale of discovery, and  it's really about the journey as much as about where it's going.

The protagonist, Nate Tucker, a data entry clerk, moves in to an impressively low-rent Los Angeles apartment. It's too good to be true of course. Even before he moves in, he is told there's something a little off about the building.

That becomes apparent when he learns there are mutant roaches in his kitchen as well as a high-end black light that picks up things that can't be seen by the naked eye.

Mysterious markings under the paint, the truth about Apartment 14 all hint at a strange and dark purpose, but why is it rented out at all?

Nate and a small band of fellow tenants set out to find answers, and soon it's an obsession.

A large portion of the book is about connecting the dots and defying the building manager, who's apparently a stooge for the keepers of the Kavach building, where no two apartments are alike, and there's something in the walls.

With a tantalizing setup, it's easy for a story to disappoint, but Clines weaves in great clues as the story builds to a nail-biting climax that generally proves satisfying.

This actually represents a great updated example of an identified strand of horror literature, but I won't say way kind of __-ian fiction it is. Just trust me, it's a blast.

A few of my favorite movie songs

A lot of great songs come out of movies, and a lot of others get used in movies. Johnny Cash's fab "The Man Comes Around" has been in more movies than some movie stars.

You Tube's made reliving the musical moments from old films possible since soundtracks are sometimes hard to come by. Below are a few of my melodic favorites.

Tomorrow, tomorrow
"Tomorrow is the Song I Sing" from Richard Gillis is one of several tunes that punctuate the offbeat Sam Peckinpa Western The Ballad of Cable Hogue. It's catchy an infinitely hummable. It, happily, is available from iTunes as part of the Gillis album Blow the Gates of Heaven.



Reachin' to the sky
Folk genius Leonard Cohen's melancholy "The Stranger Song" opens another offbeat Western, Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It really is a perfect tone-setter for the Warren Beatty outing. It's also found on The Essential Leonard Cohen.



I can almost see that old Bandera Highway...
Barry De Vorzon's "San Antone" is actually on a couple of movie soundtracks that I know of, both of which he served on as musical director.  He's best known for Nadia's Theme.

The tune is the homecoming song that opens the revenge flick Rolling Thunder. It's more wonderfully moody and nostalgic in contrast to the opening scenes of William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration, aka Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane. Sadly it doesn't seem to be available for purchase in a pristine MP3.



Over the hills and far away
The television adaptations of Bernard Cromwell's swashbuckling Sharpe novels adopted a John Tams rendition of the 17th century British song "Over the Hills and Far Away."

 It's catchy and a wonderful mesh for the excellent films with Sean Bean. I don't think it's on iTunes, but The Music of Sharpe CD is available in the U.S. on Amazon.




I could go on, but that's a pretty good playlist for a blog post. I'll forego the theme from Kelly's Heros and The Osmonds?! performing "Chilly Winds" on the risque Rock Hudson/Angie Dickinson thriller Pretty Mains All in a Row from Gene, but I kind of like both of those too.

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.

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

Get more details on the featured stories here.

The SidiPhone

I used to say, in those ancient days of 2005, it would certainly be nice to have my iPod and my cell phone wed.

Around that time Christine crunched some numbers and determined we'd come off well going to pre-paid cell phones.

They announced the iPhone, right after we bought these really nice LG phones that looked like racing cars. Alltel apparently sponsored a NASCAR driver. Who knew?

Anyway, with new phones and an insanely cheap payment plan, let's just say we weren't going to be moving to mechanized looms very quickly in our household.

Flashforward. I've finally worn Christine down. I got an iPhone for Christmas, so 2010 will be my 2007.

I promptly seized the 21st century technology and downloaded a couple of 19th century novels via an app called Stanza, though I got an app called Epi from Epicurious.com shortly afterwards.

That puts recipes and beer ads at your fingertips, so if you find great mahi mahi at the grocer--no more regretting you didn't look up a mahi mahi recipe before you left the house.

I'm hopeful that Christine will see the value in that just like The Bob Newhart Show reruns on Hulu helped her understand the virtue of an HDMI cable stretched across the living room from computer to TV.

I don't know if it will radically revolutionize my life otherwise, but utilizing the Twitterrific may soon improve my ability to type with my thumbs.

New Episode of Fear on Demand - Dark Eyes is now available

A new episode of Fear on Demand is live today. It features a great story by Pamela K. Kinney, and it's read by Sonia Perozzi who plays sparrow and Rachel Nolen on Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery audiodrama podcast.

Pamela is author of several books including Haunted Richmond and Haunted Virginia. Visit her website here. I don't want to give too much away about "Dark Eyes," because it's a really cool, Lovecraftian story with some surprises.

It reminds me of a female version of Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Checkout the Wormwood show as well. It's an excellent, ongoing drama that's loads of fun, and it has ghostly and horror elements.

Listen online or download here or via iTunes.

Terror for the iPod - Two Tales of Frankenstein

Occasionally things turn up that are almost like discovering one more chapter(s) in the Universal Horror series. 

Some are better than others of course, but I'm always happy to gain access to those missing pieces that utilize talents from the Universal heyday, especially when it's what Forry Ackerman might term the Frankenstein Lonster, Lon Cheney Jr.

Tales of Frankenstein

I never knew of the Tales of Frankenstein pilot from Hammer Films in 1958 until QuasarDragon mentioned recently that is was available on the archive.org site, where cool things seem to materialize regularly.  It's directed by Curt Siodmak who penned Universal horror classics such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman as well as the classic science fiction novel Donovan's Brain.

The lead-in suggests the resultant series would have been a horror anthology since the opening narration notes "any story that chills the soul and freezes the blood is truly a tale of Frankenstein."

The opener features Dr. Frankenstein (Anton Diffring), somewhat like the Peter Cushing incarnation from Hammer theatrical releases, though it's in a silvery Universal black-and-white instead of the trademark Hammer color--inevitably modified by the adjective lurid.

He's called on to help a young but dying man in the pilot, but instead he uses the man's body to reanimate a VERY Universal looking monster. 

It doesn't rise to the level of the best of the Universal films, but it's an interesting piece to watch either online or on an iPod.

Tales of Tomorrow #16 - Frankenstein

This perhaps more infamous live television adaptation of Frankenstein is a bit more engaging and not to be missed by the Universal fan. It stars Lon Chaney Jr.--best known as The Wolf Man but also a memorable mummy and Dracula in Universal flicks--as the creature in a contemporary re-telling that features One Step Beyond host John Newland as Victor Frankenstein. 

I believe this version's been around on DVD, but I've never picked up a copy. 

It's the adaptation that features the allegedly inebriated Chaney being less destructive on his rampages than planned because he believed he was still in a rehearsal and not performing in a live broadcast. That's actually not as distracting as you'd expect. You kind of have to be looking for it. Sorry. Spoiler warning? 

The creature makeup is interesting in its own way and the gloomy castle sets make for a moody backdrop for the fairly fast-moving story of monster making and destruction. 

I was exciting to find these available, preserved for a new visit and a new experience. If you've any love for the roots of contemporary horror, have a look.

Nobody reads anymore, so...Podcasting!

Addendum (1/19/09). We're now in iTunes. (Link will open the iTunes application.)


That's kind of a "made ya look" headline. I don't really believe that nobody reads anymore. It will take a while--even though we're in a midst of some cultural shifts--for things to change that drastically.

Certainly new things are happening all the time, though. New or newish delivery methods are becoming ubiquitous faster than the generations before us accepted radio or TV.

Podcasting's been around a while now, and I've enjoyed the true play-on-demand opportunities it has provided me. I can listen to NPR at the gym now, audiobooks on the treadmill, tech news in the a.m. and talk shows devoted to topics I'm interested in such as Doctor Who and Battlestar.

I've wanted to try something for a while. For some reason it hit me around Jan. 1 that rather than trying to tackle a discussion show, I could put together a podcast of short horror and suspense fiction. I have a few pieces of my own work that were recorded a while back for an audiobook collection, and I have access to those as potential installments.

There is also a tradition, I percieve, in the podcast community, of podcasters lending their voices to other 'casts, so I decided to dive into what I'm calling the beta version of Fear on Demand to see if I could pull it off at least for a respectable number of episodes and a respectable publishing schedule even when I'm back in school. The goal is for it not to be devoted just to my work but to present a true collection of works of many.

I think, think mind you, I can manage something monthly. I know I can for a few months anyway. After that we'll see.

I'm calling it the beta because it's hosted in the simplest way I can imagine right now, and I'm working on the little details like RSS feeds, getting it into iTunes and available for podcatchers and that sort of thing. As I write this it's pending iTunes approval.

I'm running into some of the usual headaches that I'm sure all novice podcasters have experienced at start up--puh sounds, normalizing, decent Flash players for the blog version. etc. I'm sure I'll have other headaches along the way, but it's an interesting process, and learning is always exciting.

So anyway, Episode 1 is ready for a listen at Fearondemand.com, or you can subscribe to the basic feed manually with iTunes or your favorite podcatcher or get the Feedburner feed plugged in to just about anything you like. The show will play in a Google Reader, for example.

Episode 1

Episode 1 features a tale from Charles Gramlich called "Thief of Eyes." It originally appeared in a collection edited by Del Stone, Jr. called The Parasitorium, and it's read by Glen Hallstrom, aka Smokestack Jones, who hasrecorded many Lovecraft stories at Librivox.org. Glen's blog is Too Much Johnson, and he's available for voice work. Charles tells me the story grew out of an anthology that never breathed life that Thomas Fortenberry and I tried to put together a few years ago. That was sort of a shared-world horror anthology, and that reminded me that concept might also be ripe for a podcast. Who knows? Baby steps. I'm learning the ropes here.

Submissions

For the moment, Fear on Demand is by invitation. I'm not quite ready to open the door to a flood of unsolicited submissions by listing on market news sites, though eventually I'd love to discover someone just starting out.

In the meantime, I'm guardedly moving along quietly. Certainly anyone in our little blog circle here is welcome to e-mail me. One thing I can kind of envision is maybe a Halloween celebration episode collecting some of the flash fiction people did in October.

Payment at the moment is the promotional or promo opportunity it provides only.

Authors retain all rights to the story except the podcast audio rights, and I'm including a Creative Commons, no-derivative works license tag on each episode and on the Fear on Demand blog. People can listen, pass an episode along but they can't, you know, make it into a movie, without striking a deal with the author.

If I can get the Paypal donate button working, apparently that's one of those common headaches, I'll be accepting donations to help with the domain mapping and hosting costs, and perhaps at some point it might become a paying market. Time will tell.

If there are any bands out there who want to play, I'm also open for some intro music or a tune to include.

Readers

And anyone with a mic who's interested in reading is welcome to check in.

In the meantime, drop by and have a listen of Charles' excellent story just past my stammering, Southern-accented intro, and listen after dark at your own risk.

WARNING: Fear on Demand contains explicit content such as mature themes, language and subject matter. If you feel you would be better entertained by more gentle stories, hey Google's ready when you are.

What's on the iPod? - Montego Bay

As I drove through another rainy morning cloaked with a grey, wet blanket, Bobby Bloom's Montego Bay popped up as my iPod shuffled songs. I've never been there, and I'm not sure exactly what a BOAC is, but the tune transported me to other places and made me remember people I've passed on the journey.

I've found, sometimes you encounter people randomly but more than once. It may not be anything but serendipity if you're a reporter in a small city, or maybe there's a little more magic to it.

3x
I ran into a man named Glen about three times. He was a small business owner out to live life to the fullest from what I could tell. He spent his vacations travelling, seeing sites, SCUBA diving and more.

The first time I met him, he was just back from Jamaica. It had started as a vacation trip and turned into an adventure.

A hurricane hit the island shortly after he arrived, and he and other vacationers spent about a week trying to survive and get back out of paradise. It was a time with little water and much uncertainty.

When civilization gradually took hold again, he was able to get a flight out. He recalled looking around at fellow travellers, recognizing people from the flight in and wondering what became of those who were missing.

That experience didn't seem to slow him down or dissuade him. I heard tale of other trips he took afterward, hopping here and there.

I encountered him next at the opening of a chest pain center at a local hospital. I don't know how old he was. I was young and everyone looked old, but he was probably around the age I am now. He was there as a spokesman, representing the need for a chest pain center.

He explained how he'd felt a tingling in his left arm as he took a shower one morning. Initially he denied it could be anything serious, but eventually he sought help.

It was a heart attack and they caught it in time to avert major damage. He felt he'd been given a second chance and wanted to encourage others to act quickly and hang onto life.

The last time I ran into him, I was afraid I had a flat tire. I pulled off the freeway and into his auto service center. One of his employees came out to help me check my tire. Glen popped over for a second and, seeing the employee was handling things, went on to wait on other customers. I didn't have a flat, just a low tire. With it re-inflated, I pulled back into traffic and never looked back.

Appointments
A couple of years later, I heard he had died while diving somewhere out West. I was a little sad, though I didn't know him well, not friend, just acquaintance.

The second chance had played out, I guess, or maybe the Reaper had him on a list and didn't give up on that appointment in Samarra.

I guess the important message is that he milked the days, fought for the second chance and tried to make the most of time, had some fun.

When "Montego Bay" came through the speakers this morning, I recalled Glen sitting on his sofa, posing in a straw fedora for photographs, and it was a good thought for a new year. Carpe diem and all that.

Who knows what a year will bring? Maybe the good news is that it's made up of a lot of nows that can be squeezed.

I confess two things. I'm Sid and I'm a cynic.

I confess also, I've been a little down the last few days. I will endeavor to do better, to snatch the joy of each moment, even if it's as simple as humming along with an old song with a catchy beat. I'll cope with the travails as they come, and I'll look ever forward.

I will also seek to heed my own advice.

Them's my new year's resolutions.

And to G., maybe we'll cross paths again somewhere down the line. I'll look for you in the crowd in that distant port when the BOAC lands.

Come sing me La
Come sing me Montego Bay
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Mostly Recharging

I've been getting a little bit of writing done on a couple of projects, but mostly I've been recharging the last few days, and wondering how I got a write-in-Hindi button on my blogger interface.

I thought I would get more read over the holidays and time off I've had, but I haven't managed to turn as many pages as I'd hoped.

I managed to veg a bit instead and discover a few guilty pleasures:

Legend of the Seeker

I'm guilty of never having read the Terry Goodkind books on which this new syndicated series is based. I'm told they're better than the show, but for the moment the show's what I have time for. It's on Hulu.com, partially in HD, and it's beautifully shot with likable actors, some swift action and a twinkle in the eye and just a slight smirk. For TV, it's Herc and Xena territory, but it's engaging me more than some feature films. I detect a trend of betrayal and redemption, but it's still captivating viewing in the sword and sorcery vein, and there's not much in that vein on the air now.

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

It's on just about every critic's year-end best list, so this is no revelation, but I liked it. Didn't get to see it when it was hot during the writer's strike. Happily it's also on Hulu in HD also and on DVD now as well. It's from Buffy-producer Joss Whedon, features Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie fame, plus Slither and Firefly's Nathan Fillion, who's soon to be seen in Castle, a mystery series that sounds like it might be fun.

Anyway Doogie is Dr. Horrible, aspiring super villain. I wondered how they were going to give him a suitable nemesis on a budget. Enter Fillion as The Hammer, a Captain Triumph-style good guy who's a bit of a jerk. He has the affections of the girl Dr. Horrible has a crush on, making things worse but paving the way for great songs. Really great show tunes. No kidding. Check it out.

The Big Bang Theory
So why is a show about über-nerds on opposite Heroes, a show they'd probably watch? I missed an entire season of this fab sit-com. It's got some standard misunderstanding gags, but it's brilliantly executed and ropes in Star Trek, online gaming, comic books and more as its youthful geniuses struggle with life outside their physics experiments. I resolve to solve all quandaries and disagreements in 2009 using rock, paper scissors, Spock, lizard!

Steampod

How'd I miss this great podcast for so long? It's a steampunk-themed 'cast with a stellar Christmas episode transposing late-sixties cryonics to the Victorian era, and you can backtrack to a multi-part novella and a great opening episode as well. Put it on your iPod, for sure!

QuasarDragon's Blog

Looking for free e-books, podcast recommendations and more? QuasarDragon's is a great place to stop by. It's a fantasy, SF cool-hunting blog pointing to various online e-zines, free fictionsites and more. It also occurs to me that it's a great guide to writing markets. Well worth a look. It's how I found Steampod.

Well, that's how I've been spending my free time of late. I think it has been energizing a bit as I prepare for the plunge into 2009, which promises to be challenging and busy. I had a tee-shirt in the appropriate year that read "Orwell That Ends Well, I Made it Through 1984." I'm thinking we all deserve an I Survived 2008 tee, and maybe a matching version for this year.

Let's look for fun where we can, and may everyone within the sound of my posts have a good one!

What's On the iPod? - Hell for the Holidays

Last Christmas, I listened to adman-turned-author Chris Grabenstein's Slayride, a holiday-set thriller featuring  FBI agent Christopher Miller. I've been saving Hell for the Holidays for this holiday season. 

In this book, African-American agent Miller, whose daughter was abducted by a crazed and vengeful Russian chauffeur in Slayride, becomes embroiled in a plot involving a white supremacist group that begins on Halloween with the kidnapping of his neighbor's child.

Happily the child is rescued quickly and his abductor killed by a quick-thinking off-duty police officer, but that's just the beginning for Miller who quickly suspects there's more to the situation than is immediately apparent.

The tale is read by actor Christian Rummel and it's shaping up to be an engaging holiday-season read/listen.

After this I'm going to find some time for Grabenstein's other series featuring ex-military, small town cop John Ceepak. Titles in that series include Whack-A-Mole, Madhouse and Tilt-A-Whirl. 

What's on the iPod? - A Colbert Christmas

Addendum

As of a few minutes ago, the album was No. 3 on iTunes' charts, one notch above Kanye West's album. - 9:30 p.m. CST 12/3

Stephen Colbert is calling on everyone to help drive his Christmas album to the top of the iTunes charts today at 5 p.m. Eastern in "Operation Humble Kanye."

 I'd play along, but I already bought it.

I'd planned to simply watch the special, but I found myself wanting to hum along and put the Colbertnation.com Fahrenheit 451-burning Yule log on my desktop to make things feel cozy. 

The collection features some authentic tunes such as Toby Keith's right-leaning- but- easy-to-hum-to "Have I Got A Present for You" and Elvis Costello's "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding?" but much of it's composed of surprisingly good song parodies. 

They sound so authentic and familiar they could almost be modern standards or at least secondary tracks on any of a host of celebrity seasonal albums, if they, you know, weren't mildly blasphemous or seemingly suggestive as in John Legend's ode to "Nutmeg."

 

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: John Legend

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

It's not for all tastes of course, but it is a bit of a holiday blast. The culminating performance of "Peace, Love and Understanding" works well,  Feist's voice is lovely and Jon Stewart's ode to Hanukkah backed up by brush stick drumming  is, well, maybe not pitch-perfect but perfect nonethless. When Colbert decides to stick to his Catholic roots rather than convert, Stewart urges him to wish "the pontiff a Gut Yontif."

The only more ingenious lyric is Willie Nelson's Drummer Boy-esque ode to ganja that admonishes "let mankind not Bogart love."

Like I said, not for all tastes, but if you can take holiday flavor with a little tongue in cheek, it's parody as inspired as Colbert's take on pompous pundits.

As Willie's extra Wise Man might put it: "Yah, the bud was kind."

What's on the Ipod? - Footprints in the Snow

I crossed paths on MySpace with Black Pharaoh of the metal/Gothic band,  The Old Ones, appropriately of Providence, R.I. 

On their profile page, the really eerie "Footprints in the Snow" was playing.

BP was kind enough to share an MP3 with me, which I promptly added to a playlist.

It's a Lovecraftian tune that speaks of an eerie, unsolved mystery, coiling forward from one generation to the next. The haunted persona proclaims:

"Sooner or later the moment will come

When together with my reason, I'll lose my life,

Fighting against that merciless ghost

Ominous whispers in the darkness"

It has the unsettling quality of "The Shadow Over Innesmouth." It's a concise and open ended short story set to music, and it pounds with some of the same menace of a favorite of mine, The Gothic Archies.

Drop by the profile and  check out the playlist which also includes: "Funeral Song," "Spirits" and "Hall of the Astral King."

They're great tunes to get you in the mood for writing scary stories. 

  

What's on the iPod? - Doctor Who Forever Autumn

Sorry I haven't checked in for a while guys. Didn't have a new flash idea and kind of wanted to keep the flash at the top of the blog for October. I will get a jump on next year, and I hope we can do the round-robin again. That's a great idea Charles had.

I have been busy mostly working on things for school or watching too much political coverage.

School has devoured a lot of my time. I also finished a graphic novel script in and around writing a portion of a prose novel for school.

It's good to be blogging. I've just popped a Doctor Who novelization to the top of my playlist for Halloween time. It's called Forever Autumn, written by Mark Morris and read by Will Thorp who sounds a lot liked David Tennant.

The scares will all wind up being scientific, but the Doctor can often edge into the horror realm.

It's about two hours, so it's perfect to get me through to the 31st. The synopsis reads:

It is almost Halloween in the sleepy New England town of Blackwood Falls. Autumn leaves litter lawns and sidewalks, paper skeletons hang in windows, and carved pumpkins leer from stoops and front porches.

The Doctor and Martha soon discover that something long-dormant has awoken in the town, and this will be no ordinary Halloween. What is the secret of the ancient chestnut tree and the mysterious book discovered tangled in its roots? What rises from the local churchyard in the dead of night, sealing up the lips of the only witness? And why are the harmless trappings of Halloween suddenly taking on a creepy new life of their own?

As nightmarish creatures prowl the streets, the Doctor and Martha must battle to prevent both the townspeople and themselves from a grisly fate...

Sounds like fun!

What's On The iPod? - Runrig

Wow, how did I not know of Runrig? They are not well known in the U.S. I suppose, but I am a bit of a follower of the British Isles. Somehow I've just never encountered them, but I happily discovered them recently.

Christine had the British/PBS series Cranford on the DVR, and we started watching it this weekend. It's a great, funny and poignant adaptation of the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell. I didn't think I'd like it, but it's engaging in a quiet sort-of-sneaks-up-on-you way.

In the course of the story a couple of characters sing Loch Lomand, a tune of which I'm a fan on a historical level since I like folk songs of all stripes.

The different renditions always intrigue me. A number of years ago they had a choir boy singing it in Cracker in an entirely different way.

So anyway, they sang it in Cranford prompting me to check You Tube for renditions, and behold I found Runrig performing their rendition for the Scotland Children in Need telethon last November.

It features the band's fairly new lead singer Bruce Guthro, and I was ready to plop down my 99 cents for the pod when it was finished.

What's on the iPod? - The Darkest Evening of the Year

A friend with whom I share book suggestions asked the other day if I had read The Darkest Evening of the Year. She had started reading Dean Koontz following my recommendation of Life Expectancy.

Much to my chagrin I've owned the audiobook since, well probably the darkest evening of last year, but I hadn't listened to it yet as of the other day. So, I've set out to rectify that by bumping it to the top of my listening queue. (Now that a new Odd Thomas book is almost due.)

The whole idea of getting an iPod and an audiobook subscription was to get me to the gym so that I can listen while exercising, and Koontz is always a good choice since his tales are ever suspenseful.

An Illustrative Tail (I Meant Tail - That's Not a Mistake Just a Bad Pun)
I've been particularly interested in The Darkest Evening of the Year because he's managed in a non-didactic way to tell a story that spotlights golden retriever rescue.

Koontz, as you probably know, loves golden retrievers and sadly lost his pet and companion, Trixie, before beginning the novel. In his podcast he reported that for a five-week period after her death he could not write, and that delayed his start on Darkest Evening though he ultimately wrote it in a fast burst of inspiration.

What I admire about the novel is that it blends a typically excellent Koontz story with information on a cause about which he is passionate--animal welfare. Koontz further uses the tale to explore the human-animal bond. (Speaking of which, my cat, Miss Daisy, is on my lap--OK make that standing on my keyboard, OK make that trying to contribute--as I write this.)

A lesson for writers
The novel is an admirable use of the fictional form and worthy of examination for all fiction writers who want to add relevance to their words without, say, delving into the roles of rank and position in 19th century Victorian England.

Specifically Darkest Evening tells the tale of Amy Redwing, founder of a retriever rescue who picks up a dog named Nickie in a page-turning opening confrontation that pits her against an abusive head-of-household and prompts her to take his wife and kids under her wing.

Amy eventually runs afoul of a crazed arsonist named Moonglow and her boyfriend and other finely-crafted Koontz villains as well.

All in all it's a fine audiobook and no doubt a great read.

The Quibble
The book on tape is performed by an able reader named Kristen Kairos, but she occasionally offers some of the most creative pronunciations I've heard since Lindsay Crouse's vocalization of Ponchatrain (Pon-CHA-train) in the audio version of Anne Rice's The Witching Hour.

I Went to the Renaissance Fair and What's on the iPod Because of It

It's been ages since I've been to a Renaissance festival. I was overdue. Huzzah!

We went for the jousting Sunday at The Four Wind Faire and stayed for The Brobingnagian Bards, an Austin-based duo performing Scottish and Irish drinking songs with the period instruments and the upbeat humor you hope for in such venues.



I was happy to discover they had a website, one member has a podcast and they're well represented on iTunes. They're veterans of science fiction conventions as well as festivals so there are Jedi tunes in their repertoire as well as many an Irish tune.

My favorite song, being a cat owner, is Marc Gunn's solo effort Danny Boy, to the tune of Londonderry Air, sung by a cat owner roused in the wee hours by his feline friend.