Happy heart day. Here’s to love and chocolate! Join me for a different kind of Valentine Day discussion: necromancer love and strategies to confront a zombie apocalypse! Because you can never be too prepared.
Please join me !
If you’re a fan of dark fantasy, Grimm type fairytales, or Guillermo del Toro, I highly recommend the movie Pan’s Labyrinth. One of the many things that has stuck with me in addition to the amazing visuals, haunting story, and Guillermo del Toro’s wonderful creepy creatures is an exploration of the monstrous.
In the movie, a woman marries a Captain in the Spanish army, under the new facist regime, after the Spanish Civil War in 1944. The woman is pregnant with the Captain’s child, and the Captain really only cares about his unborn child. As the mother becomes increasingly ill during her pregnancy, the young girl stumbles upon a magical labyrinth and encounters a faun-like creature, who send her on a series of trials to maintain her essence, as the faun believes she is the reincarnation of a princess of the underworld. Continue reading
Demon Host by Timber Timbre absolutely had to be included in the soundtrack for Necromancer’s Seduction. The lyrics are fantastic and reflect a bit of the gothic quality to my heroine and her necromancer power. I just ran across the video on you tube and absolutely love it. The entire time he’s singing the song in this dilapidated wood shed, a person is standing outside in a black cloak. It’s so subtle, but immensely creepy. I find the understated can often provide the best creep outs.
Enjoy!
You’ll probably see a lot of Dean Koontz. I think he’s a great writer. This is from the book Lightening:
His face resembled a clown’s countenance-not the kind of clown you’d see in a circus but the kind you might run into on Halloween night, the kind that might carry a chainsaw instead of a seltzer bottle.
I mean, really? A clown with a chainsaw? I love it.
I do read more than just horror by the way. I read all kinds of stuff. I like reading Dean Koontz because I like the way he builds tension. It’s amazing really.
Sorry folks, we had technical difficulties yesterday, but my guest post is now live. Thanks to the wonderful Lynda Scott.
http://star-crossedromance.blogspot.com/2013/01/guest-noemi-ghirghi-aka-mimi-sebastian.html
Have fun incorporating the strange and unusual in your stories. Check out my guest post on the RWA Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal site!
I haven’t picked up the Great Gatsby in forever, and flipped through it the other day after hearing about the new movie with Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, directed by Baz Luhrmann, same style as the Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge movies Luhrmann made.
I’d always wondered about what made Gatsby one of those enduring classics. Gatsby and Daisy are actually pretty shallow. Daisy hits someone then Gatsby takes the blame instead of her taking responsibility for the accident. So why has this book about such people remained a classic? Fitzgerald explores enduring themes and portrays that age and its excesses, but what jumped out at me this time, was the writing. I love his descriptions. He writes with economy, but when he does describe the characters, it’s wonderful. Below is a snippet of Nick describing Gatsby:
He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you might come across four or five times in your life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
I love the last part...and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
This is a person that knows how to manipulate and use people and that’s exactly what Gatsby did to Nick, using him to get closer to Daisy. Awesome. (Um, not that he used Nick, but a spot on description awesome 🙂
Interviewed today by the amazing Lindsay Avalon on my Urban Fantasy Necromancer series. This was lots of fun and hope to start doing my own interviews soon 🙂 Link to interview:
What to say about Christmas that hasn’t already been said? I struggled with this until I remembered last night, Christmas Eve, watching Polar Express with my four year old son. (Which I think the animation is so weird, almost creepy, but it’s a nice story) And when Santa shows up and teaches the boy how to hear the bell ringing, to believe in Christmas again, my son turns to me and says, is Santa coming? I want to meet Santa. And really, he wasn’t worried about getting a present, he wanted to meet the symbol of Christmas, and it made me believe in Christmas again, made me shed some of the cynicism, the concern about getting the right gift, or even being jolly.
Since I spent time in the Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast, I had become more cynical of just how much we have in our country when many children around the world have so little. Christmas began to represent those excesses to me, and some of the joy of the holiday became lost to me. I thank my son for returning some of the mystery and joy. So we gave my son cookies and milk and he placed them next to the fireplace, and after my son fell asleep, we ate the cookies and milk, making sure to leave crumbs on the plate and a ring of milk in the glass. And that was the first thing he thought of when he woke up. He wanted to see if Santa had eaten the cookies and drunk the milk. And so did I.
Have a wonderful holiday and new year!