The Catacomb's Bookshelf

Quadmotor Awesomeness

2012-03-04T09:48:00.002-08:00

Imagine that: flying quadmotor robots that can fly and play the theme to James Bond. This is amazing.

Bookshelf/Apology to John Keats Review: Hollowland by Amanda Hocking

2012-02-22T18:26:00.000-08:00

All right ladies and gents, here is the full review of Hollowland with my good friend and fellow writer AJ. Let's give AJ a big hand!

My first genuine Apology to John Keats, a review of Amanda Hocking’s “Hollowland.” But wait, there’s more! My first ever collab, with Kris from over at Catacomb’s Bookshelf! >http://catacombsbookshelf.blogspot.com/<

So, let’s get started with Kris’s take:

Hey folks, this is Kris of the Catacomb’s Bookshelf. A while ago, AJ read through Hollowland and she hated it. Curious, I downloaded the book for free on my Kindle Fire and I hate it too. It’s amazing how much a free book by a best-selling ebook author can turn me from a hopeful indie-authors-kick-ass reader to a how-the-hell-did-this-get-uploaded reader. How much do I hate it?

Hollowland is like eating a medium rare burger gone stale. It has all the ingredients, flavors, and condiments of a zombie book, novel, and film. But the main problem is that the meat is too damn rare and all the ingredients, flavors, and condiments are horrible.

The novel's biggest problem is its plausibility: for example, keeping beds by windows is a BAD IDEA when zombies could break in and GRAB someone from it and pull the poor sap through the window where the zombie and its hungry friends will bloodily devour with ease. I mean, the beginning was good (Even with the random guy’s gun seemingly going off by itself) but then it goes straight downhill from here into zombie cliches, Redbull-induced headaching idiocy in logic and annoying, one-dimensional characters of whom you wished would just get eaten, all written with a plot and prose structure that would best suit a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic.

The characters are very, very irritating to say the least. In one scene where a really annoying character, Harlow, was taken by zombies, I was screaming to the zombies "EAT! EAT! EEEEAAAAATTT!!!" while silently cheering for two really minor, stupid characters to perish. Sad, I know, but then they are characters that appear very briefly, show no purpose in hanging around the main characters, and die two gruesome and awesome deaths. But the characters whine and complain too much about the current situation and a few key characters just don't know how to survive. Even one character is abandoned because zombie blood might have gotten into her system, and the effect of sadness falls flat on its face because we never got to know the character before she is abandoned.

The only character not annoying is the main narrator and heroine, Remy King, only she's pretty much the generic female warrior who can somehow somersault while on the floor and has the personality of a fembot found in the Resident Evil movies. Amanda Hocking, have you never taken a physics class? Or taken an anatomy class to understand that no one can somersault from the floor? That was a huge “What-the-fuck-that-is-so-blatantly-lame” moment that took me out of the paper-thin plot. Does she have some redeeming qualities? She has more good qualities than the other characters at least. She's worried about her brother and that's pretty much it. Her narration is tolerable because she has zero personality and that makes it easy to not want her get the crap kicked out of.

I could have done without the warrior lion who in REAL LIFE WOULD HAVE EATEN REMY AND HER PARTY ALIVE. The lion pretty much ruined any plausibility of the story and even if this story was written as a satire of the zombie novel genre, which it isn’t, it is still stupid because the lion hangs around as a walking deux ex machina device. The rock star Laszlo did not do much for me as he served as the stupid love interest and eye candy for female and gay readers. Blue the medic, although promising, barely makes a blip on the radar in most scenes. It's like Hocking forgot about him entirely while trying to make a forced, unconvincing romance between Remy and Laszlo and making stupid reasons for both of them to fuck each other. Speaking of fucking, there is a scene like that and it makes the reader question if this is appropriate for Hocking’s target audience, which is teenage girls. With all the blood and guts flying, I forgot this was a young adult book.

The thing that really kills me is that there is not an original bone in Hollowland's body. We get the same zombie apocalypse tropes like rogue groups. But the segment that really slapped my face with stupidity was when Remy and her crew take refuge with the crazed religious cult that completely rips off David Koresh's cult and the Waco, Texas tragedy. Hocking, just because his name is "Korech" instead of "Koresh" does not make him an original figure.

In short of content, Hollowland is, well, HOLLOW. There's no originality, there's no real reason to care about the characters, and there is no real reason to read it. The only good parts are some of the gory zombie details and zombie mythology: the zombies don't just move fast like the rage-infected humans do in 28 Days Later, they also evolve and use tactics to take the humans down. And Hocking's writing style, when it does not delve into idiocies, is laden with flawed clauses and a few typos that stick out. This book needed several more levels of editing as many instances of broken clauses pop up like “I’d only made it down a few steps when the gun went off behind me, and I ducked.” It makes it hard to swallow several details presented in the book. Overall, the text structure and editing is broken and at times, confusing. For a woman who somehow became a best selling ebook author, this is inexcusable.

I'm not sure how I'm going to like Amanda Hocking, but reading through Hocking's book was like forcing myself to be a zombie: not really feeling anything as I just walk along until I'm finally shot dead by the ending. Which completely and utterly sucks to where it does not feel like an ending, but it feels like the story is going on and on. So yeah, Hollowland did not do much for me and I'm afraid it did not do much for me for wanting to check out more of Hocking's bibliography.

Now it’s my turn!

First off, I’d just like to point out the first line of “Hollowland,” that is used in her promotion of the book in many summaries I’ve seen:

"This is the way the world ends - not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door."

This is an allusion to the final lines in the (gorgeous) poem “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot,

“This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.” (Go read it now! >http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/poem-text.html<)

I understand this is a widely referenced quote, and Hocking was deliberate in the usage. However, I feel, after Eliot’s poem, any time the line is used, the work referencing it just feels flat and collapses, as Eddie Izzard might say, “like a flan in a cupboard.” Unfortunately it was the best line in the whole book.

And I honestly don’t know how I managed to get through this one.

Kris reflected my sentiments about the characters and the plot. (I don’t understand how all the characters manage to be under an upside down car with broken glass and not be poisoned by zombie blood which, in Hocking’s world, is just as deadly as a bite.) Having covered this, I’ll follow with some other thoughts.

I thought this book was poorly written and not just because the description was strictly action and the narration was painfully oblivious to any structure. I had a huge problem when I found out the main character was 19. When I first started reading the book I pegged the reading level to be for 12-13 year olds, maybe. Then we learn that Remy is nearly 20? What? I’ve read a lot of good books for young readers, so that’s not my problem. My problem is that apparently, even with a reading level for middle school, throwing in some curse words and a sex scene makes it edgy and young adult. (And no, Hocking isn’t the only author in the world to do this.)

That being established, Hocking uses her character’s age to put in pop culture references including Bon Jovi and Monty Python. But then she explains the jokes. And then she has the 13-year-old character not get the jokes and the older characters roll their eyes at her. I feel that this alienates potential audience, because at that reading level, she is going to have younger readers that don’t get the reference. Plus, why would a writer explain the joke if he or she is making fun of the character that doesn’t get it? Why explain a pop culture reference at all? EXPLAINING THE POP CULTURE REFERENCE DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF THE POP CULTURE REFERENCE SO STOP IT!

Moving along. Her character’s names were also annoying. Remy, Blue, Laszlo and Harlow. I guess all their parents just happened to be creative hippies. Forgivable enough.

But Kris sums up my sentiments when he states: “there are typos about and for a woman who somehow became a best selling ebook author, this is inexcusable.”

Exactly. The reason I read this book in the first place was because I felt a certain amount of given respect for an author that was successful being self-published, self-directed, pursued her ideas, and gained a loyal readership. But that respect has completely diminished after reading this book. This book doesn’t appear to be edited in any way other than a simple spell-check and misplaced words appear throughout the entire book. For an author that stresses how much she edits, I’m quite unimpressed. Maybe I’m just ravenous for a good, well-written book that other writers can aspire to, learn from, and enjoy. I did not find any of that in “Hollowland.”

I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but with this one, when I saw Barbie’s gothic sister lost in Mordor, I should never have clicked the download button.

In the end, I agree with Kris’s inkling about future Hocking books: They’re not what I’m looking for. I understand the value of a thrilling escape with accessible characters in a quick read, but Hocking’s brand does not sync with me. After reading this book, I probably won’t be reading any more of Amanda Hocking’s work.

Overall, Hollowland is a hollow mess. There are much better indie books out there folks.

Just saying...

2012-02-22T08:40:00.001-08:00

This was taken from Things We Forget #819. This is something I honestly forget!

PCA/ACA Thing...

2012-02-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

Can't really determine if I posted about this before, but I will be attending the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) conference that will be taking place in Boston, MA sometime in mid-April. I will be presenting my artifact analysis over WebCT and Moodle and which piece of courseware is better suited for instructors and students.

Elaboration on Why Notebook Paper is Useful

2012-02-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

This is going to sound hypocritical but I did not type up this post without putting it on notebook paper first.

A while ago, I gave a speech on notebook paper and how it helped give me writing ideas to type with. And it is true that some of the early stuff I published was the offspring of rough scribbles I made on notebook paper.

"But Kris," you say. "Why use notebook paper when you can just open up a Word file and type?"

That is a good point but let me explain. First off, anyone writing is not going to be near a computer all the time. And when you are at the computer trying to figure out what to write, you are usually busy (In my case) doing the following:

- Watching video game reviews on YouTube (Like the late Stephen Bray, A.K.A. antisocialfatman and anything by IGN, Gamespot, and Classic Game Room.

- Playing Solitaire on the computer

- Watching videos on That Guy with the Glasses

- Mindlessly logging in and out of e-mail accounts to see if you received anything

The computer covers just about anything these days, and though it helps a writer write, it is the worst enemy when you are trying to work on some ideas. Working on a rough piece of notebook paper or any sheet of paper not only captures an idea but also helps preserve it. It is also cathartic as some studies shown that writing manually can improve motor skills. It is just cathartic to write down some ideas, even if the ideas are just half-baked. Don't worry, you will work on them later.

I remember that I wrote some of my first stories on notebook paper. They turned out to be very different compared to what would be typed later. But this was a good thing, as I took the good elements for the story and transferred them to the typing realm. You can think of notebook paper as scratch paper that artists use for rough sketches. Handwritten notes, prose, and poetry act as rough sketches while the Word application on the computer acts as the polished canvas to finish the final product.

Collaborative Review of Hollowland Coming Up

2012-02-14T19:52:00.000-08:00

Hey folks. Been busy, but I want to let you know that a collaborative review between me and AJ of Apology to John Keats will be featured on the Bookshelf and her blog. The book we are tearing apart, er, reviewing, is Amanda Hocking's Hollowland, a young adult zombie-themed novel that makes some people wonder why Hocking was able to make so much money on downloadable books that are not well-written.

Bookshelf Review: Ruin by N.M. Martinez

2012-02-12T12:01:00.000-08:00

A light post-apocalyptic story that holds strong to the end.

The Good: Decent characterization and setting; welll-written situations and scenes

The Bad: Some pacing issues.

Ruin was the first ebook I downloaded to my Kindle, all because I've heard how good it is from various author's sites such as this one among others. So there's a considerable amount of hype for this indie novel among indie novels that are lucky to get such a press release. Is it worth the purchase? The answer is yes.

Set in a dystopia where the rest of the world is a massive ruin, with only a few sheltered areas known as Neutral territories, areas that are heavily guarded from the rest of the world. The story focuses on Paula, a teenage girl who is exiled after her mother is accused of espionage. She is taken into what is called the Wildlands, a territory where laws do not exist and the humans that live there possess immense powers and often no remorse. Paula must fend for herself in the territory and she is guided by a few members who would see that she would not come to harm, namely her father, who is one of the first super-powered beings after a revolution occurred thirty years ago.

If you're expecting an action-packed hunt-and-gather adventure, this is not the case. What makes Ruin easy to enter into is that the Wildlands are not so different than the slums set in our world. There are a few action scenes put in here and there to help build up the tension, but taking place from Paula's perspective-and Paula is usually just a witness-there's not so much action that can be gratifying. Martinez describes the broken scenes delicately, as she takes time to develop each plot segment before moving onto the next so the reader does not get lost. However, some elements of plot structure do repeat themselves in that some scenes become similar to others, but that's just a minor gripe.

This is where the characters come in and they truly make the book shine. Paula is your usual teen girl protagonist who is a witness to the events around her but then there is Brandon who is an "older brother" type who shows Paula around. But the character who really steals the show is Jimmy, a highly skilled killer who is both savage and yet human at the same time. He becomes the main focus of the story somewhere mid-way and his relevance to that scene, as well as the love story inserted, are central to Ruin's plot. There's hardly an underdeveloped character in Ruin so you will know who everyone is and what purpose they serve. The dialogue is also well structured, as terminology is understandable and the reader is not inducted so much in the world that there will be confusion on what is happening in the apocalyptic landscape.

Overall, Ruin does earn the attention it is receiving and it is recommended that it can be picked up. It's a good book for post-apocalyptic fiction lovers and fiction lovers in general.

Overall: 9/10

The Problem with Friendships

2012-02-11T13:31:00.000-08:00

I read an article a few years ago about how long a friendship typically last. It stated that it takes seven years for a friendship an end. Typically, I assumed. But the sad thing in my case is that a lot of the friendships I've had, even the strongest ones, would fizzle out and die.

I was friends with a girl who claimed to have liked me when I was first attending college. The problem was that she would say one thing but would do another. We had a lunch arrangement but she failed to tell me she was going to some concert instead. I gave her another chance, but nothing went on between us. I eventually removed her from all of my contacts.

Then there were the friends I've had who were always fucking around with everything and everyone. This was especially during my college years, as I've known some fairly smart friends who would do shit like have open relationships that always get tangled up and she ended up dropping out. Worse, she was a compete and utter tease. She told me I wore my clothes wrong and there were many "issues" that I had. That ultimately pissed me off...and though I forgave her for all of it, it did not help the friendship any. So I deleted her from my contacts.

Then I've had a close friend I knew in high school who did not have the same successful academic track that I had. He went on academic probation and went to Job Corps. When Job Corps. did not do so well, he had to take a job at a gas station in a town nearby. I know he lives in a large city somewhere, but we do not really talk as much as we used to. The sad thing is that we grew apart as people.

And the sad thing is, he's not the only one. The above-mentioned friends are also not the only ones either.

Why do people grow apart? Friends take different interests and hobbies. They also take in different beliefs. They also develop differently depending on the environment that they were raised in. There are a lot of factors why friends grow apart, but growing apart from a friend is a very painful experience.

I made friends with someone of whom I considered very close. We communicated with each other openly for four years. Then on the third year, communication started to drop. I panicked and I tried to do anything to maintain contact with this friend. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much respect I tried to give, conflict between us broke out instead. Then on the last year, there was a schism between us. This friend, she turned out to be a completely different person. She went to an art institute and I noticed she started to change. I changed during my last year of high school, and that was for the worst. The schism happened sometime in 2005, when I finally graduated from high school and she just dropped all contact from me. The sad thing is...yeah, "sad thing" is said a lot here because the REALLY SAD THING was that I lamented the loss of this friendship for over seven years. Seven years. That's a lot when you are expected to grow and change against an ever-changing world.

Well, I'm tired of lamenting. I realized the schism was inevitable and that it was stupid to try anything to stop it. Sometimes breaking away from friendships is a good thing: you might have a friend who gets into drugs and trouble with the law and you're on your way to receiving your college education. You get your college education, he doesn't. You might have a friend who is skilled at photography and you envy your friend's ability to get her pictures shown. You hate her and you finally break all ties with her because you were so damned jealous. This was the case with the friend I lamented over for seven years: she was a very, very talented artist. And not figuring out what the fuck I was going to do for the rest of my life, I decided to try to get into the arts too. I loved art, but art did not love me because I did not have the natural talent for it as she had. Our friendship broke not just because of different interests but out of sheer jealousy. This is the reason I lamented the friendship because I thought there would be a chance of saving it by not being such a jealous bastard.

Well, it's too late now.

And lamenting over any mistake makes a person weaker. It made me weak. Being tied to the friendship made me weak because I never truly gave myself a chance to explore my own potential as a writer. I always thought being a writer was a "secondary skill" because anyone could do it, right? Well, wrong. Some people have a natural knack for it, like I do. And others don't. And when I realized I lamented the art woman more than I lamented other friends I broke ties with, I realized I am setting up a double standard here.

If I had not broke with that friend, I would still be tied to online message boards I used to frequent. I would watch the message boards I loved crumble before me and I would not have been successful in college as I would have been if I had stayed tied to them. I lost almost everything and everyone I ever cared about in mid-2005. But that meant that when I entered college, I did not have to really "miss" anyone. I almost had no one and nothing to lose. I did not have to bother with a past. I could reinvent myself, allow myself to evolve without any stupid friendship ties to hold me back.

Nothing lasts forever, and that's the case with friendship. There are some friends that stick with you a long time and then there are others that just fade away. And it is stupid to lament the ones that fade away because you only have YOU to control, YOU to direct in life.

I have myself to direct in life. Don't know how it will end up, but that's just the epiphany for the day.

Transcript of Notepaper Speech

2012-02-08T22:47:00.000-08:00

This is a transcript of a speech on notepaper I gave a short while ago.

I remember the first time I wrote my first short story on notebook paper.

It was in first grade. I had a desk all to myself. I had several pieces of paper that I would write math problems and vocabulary words. I took a sheet of paper and I wrote a story of a frog that flies in space and he tries to eat the world. Problem for this frog is that he always gets blown away by a ship every time he tries to eat the planet. Every time the frog thinks of a solution and acts on it, he is be greeted with a solid “BA-BOOM!!!” and is rocketed back to space. Eventually, the frog eats the ship and he gets his planet.

So that’s my short story in a nutshell. It was a poorly written piece by first-grade standards with poor grammar, spelling, and logic (How did the world turn into a cake?). But hey, a first-grade writer is a first-grade writer so it was a major milestone in my young career. It was a milestone because I kept all sorts of notes and ideas on paper, lots and lots of notebook paper. Some were good ideas, like some haunted house story stuff, some were bad ideas, like bad jokes involving a sheriff tripping on his horse and cursing at the end of the story. And then there was the weird stuff, like having a high school student dream that he was being chased by bad guy in a car and all the fire hydrants somehow exploded. Well, it was a sophomore year story and we were allowed to be as stupid as possible. Sure, it was terrible and it did not make a lot of sense, but the bottom like was that it was fun. Writing on notebook paper, with a graphite pencil in my hand, or an ink pen, was just pure, unadultered fun. It was rebellion, it was activism, and it was usually covert, messy, and convoluted.

I kept all of my writing ideas and thoughts on notebook paper. Yes, the paper your teachers tell you to take notes in, but you end up doodling speech balloons and stick people dressed up like Roman soldiers. Notebook paper was an escape during long, boring sessions in public school, where the math teacher was more amazed at a math problem she was presenting than say, actually teaching the class on how to do the math problem. Back before I fully understood Microsoft Word, back before I blogged, I used notebook paper to record websites, to record interesting quotes I came across, and to keep a journal of day-to-day business of surviving in the public school realm. Back before I had my own computer, notebook paper was my friend. It was my blog, it was my drawing board, literally and figuratively. Even with the art classes I took, I preferred using notebook paper to the drawing paper we all had to make sketches of.

Yet around the time I had my own computer and I started college, I used notebook paper less and less. Problem was, it was just messy and it was hard shuffling around papers to grab whatever ideas I wanted to read. Keeping different Word files just grew easier. It was cleaner, as there were no eraser shavings or ink smudged together. And yet, even though Word documents were much better to organize and much better to present learning journals and essays with, there was a loss of personal touch. I have serial killer handwriting, or so people have told me, but It grew a lot more fun for me when I sat down, in the summer of 2008, and wrote what would become my first published short story. It started when I failed to win a spring contest with a hastily put-together story about a woman who was having a bad day getting a grip on technology to teach for her high school class. I had not outlined the story, I had not written out character notes or story details on notebook paper. I blame the lack of notebook paper for not spewing out any proper ideas before I had to hand in the entry, under 2,000 words, before a deadline.

So during the summer of 2008, I spewed out possible ideas for a short story. I even wrote out the short story of a college love triangle on a piece of notebook paper. It started out with two people, a college boy and a girl who initially hated each other but somehow, somehow were supposed to fall for each other. After much scribbling on the green desk that I still keep, I found I needed to add another character to make a love triangle, of a college boy who falls for another college boy’s girl. But how was I going to make it work? I think back of my college experiences where I used notebook paper to take notes in class, but I also used my experience of seeing an open relationship-about a girl who let her boyfriend elope with other girls-inspire me. I typed the story in Times New Roman, double spaced, twelve-point font. I submitted it to the contest. And I eventually earned the runner-up spot the next year.

Still, the only reason I use notebook paper is when I use notes in class. It’s not that I don’t dislike notebook paper, it can get messy, easily torn up, and it kills trees. Lots and lots of trees. Yet there is something personal, even inventive, about brainstorming ideas on a piece of pulp. I confess a lot of the stuff I produce is based on previously written drafts written in an electronic Word program, because paper takes up a lot of space. This is why I moved onto the next best thing: the notebook. It keeps everything bundled together, from ideas to plans, to character analysis and descriptions to plot descriptions, to plot outlines. Notebook paper is the rough paper copy for the soul. It’s not anything fancy like a computer program, but it is a springboard for grander things, like a novella to be written on Word.

Oh, by the way, I used my first-grade copy of “Mr. Frog Eats the World” for a storybook project. Notebook paper produces good ideas and nostalgia in the long run.

Commas Keep People Alive!

2012-02-06T19:35:00.001-08:00

As a reminder that the Bookshelf master is still alive, I will be posting this valuable lesson:

Stuff on Writing Raw - 1/30/2012

2012-01-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

My short story, "Woodland Stalker," is now featured on Writing Raw. My essay "When the Hourglass Pours Faster Than the Fingers Can Type" is also featured. What a day.

The Maze's Amulet - Possible Postponing?

2012-01-29T10:59:00.001-08:00

"Say it ain't so, Kris!" Well, it is. I've been reviewing the manuscript for The Maze's Amulet and I realize that there are areas that I will need to work on still. I was afraid this was going to happen but it is official: the book might not see a possible fall 2012 date.

I know it is far ahead, but there are some mechanics that will need to be fixed up, as well as a few plot elements. I'm disappointed too. I worked on this novella since summer of 2009, way before I envisioned it as a novella. Long before I found it was another entry point for other ideas in the novella's universe. I know excerpt after excerpt is not going to sate appetites now.

Also, being a grad student means I don't have a load of time to pour over the manuscript. I can only afford short bursts of time and updates to the work will be sporadic. This blog might also go through sporadic bursts of updating. Still, I will do my best to work on what I have.

However, this also opens an opportunity where you can help: you can go on the Critique Circle Online Writing Workshop, where I will be posting chapters of The Maze's Amulet for review. I will be under the handle name Nelo. I will keep you posted on when more development will take place.

Random Updates...

2012-01-22T08:52:00.001-08:00

I'm very happy to say that Congress effectively killed the SOPA/PIPA bill once and for all. It made me want to do the jig, provided if I could if I did not have crazy work hours this weekend. Yeah, Wal-Marx piled me high with many late -nighters over the weekend which hardly left me any room to breathe and celebrate that SOPA/PIPA was officially slashed and burned.

Let's all give ourselves a major pat in the back. If the bill was passed, the Internet would not be a very fun place to work in at all. In fact, it would be reduced to the ultracensored version that China has. The reason the United States has been so successful is that all its great ideas and innovations have not been restricted and if restrictions were placed, innovations on the Internet would be unable to grow. Corporations would have more tight-fisted authority than they do now in some areas and they would tangle their dirty roots into Congress by dictating what is "legal" and what is "copyright infringement." Destroying the SOPA/PIPA bill was a major victory for the people and a major loss for the corporations and some big wigs in government.

As I am working on my thesis, which is an artifact analysis over two online class programs, it has made me think of SOPA/PIPA was enacted, would it have also affected online education? What could be taught and could not be taught? The thought is nightmarish enough. I have a ton of things going on in my life right now and it is just a good thing that SOPA/PIPA is not hanging over my head or anyone else's head.

As for the Ruin review I've promised, I'm not sure of the exact date that it will be on the Catacomb's Bookshelf, but it should be written by the end of January or sometime in February.

Till then, time to work on thesis and to prep up for another crazy work-filled Sunday.

To Get Into the Harry Potter Spirit...

2012-01-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

This video gets one in the spirit for the Harry Potter class...

And yes, Voldemorte is quite the S.O.B....

Hey Kids, Let's Learn About SOPA/PIPA!

2012-01-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

In case you are totally lost on what the SOPA/PIPA fuss is all about, this video will help clarify some things:

What the people in the video are basically saying is that big-wig corporations such as the MPAA, record labels, and folks like Rupert Murdoch can step into the Internet and stop any and all activities that it would view as "infringing on copyright." Which means if an independent artist was doing a cover of a mainstream artist's song on YouTube, this gives the right for the government to shut YouTube down based on a corporation's claim that copyright infringement, all without a trial. This also gives different music companies rights to destroy independent artists by censoring their work while giving record companies' artists less competition to deal with. And who knows? Some book companies might be scheming of how to destroy competition in the e-book realm. In short, the SOPA/PIPA bills could give corporations the legal, government-regulated right to shut down and blacklist sites on the Internet. These sites would include parody sites, independent music and film sites, independent book sites, and more. This is a sign that the corporations, who dominated various industries for years, are starting to get really scared of the digital revolution.

I read a funny sign (Which you can see here) on how if someone downloads a Michael Jackson song, they would get five years in prison, even though Jackson's doctor, who killed him, would just get a year more than the person downloading the song! That's total bullshit that defies legal logic. We have Internet pedophiles preying on kids and all Congress and big companies are worried about is their music, books, movies, and video games being pirated? It's all about the money and the less competition these big companies have, the more money they will have. It is about greed, and big companies don't really care about the people being creative or expressive their rights to be creative about their fields. It is about money, all about money, and using money to influence the government is a pretty sick thing to do.

SOPA/PIPA lost its round, but that does not mean the fight is over. Keep protesting, keep contacting your congressfolk, and keep fighting this bill supporting the big corporations. Big corporations are not people, they are large, looming monsters that fear being challenged.

Going Dark 1/18/2012

2012-01-18T08:21:00.001-08:00

The Catacomb's Bookshelf is going dark on this day to protest Protect IP (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

To take action:

Call your senators and representatives.

Write your senators and representatives.

E-mail the state department.

For more links:

Learn more about SOPA/PIPA.

Letting these bills pass would allow the big wigs to take control of the Internet by censoring material and helping deny first amendment rights for Internet use in the U.S. This bill just cannot pass, folks. It just can't.

Happy MLK Day

2012-01-16T19:57:00.000-08:00

It's a little late, but I wanted to give my honor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his famous "I Have a Dream" speech:

Nothing Too Much to Report...

2012-01-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

I will be busy with my day job for the next few days (Plus more with thesis stuff) so the Bookshelf will be quiet for a few days. As for the Ruin review I promised? It should be coming up next week.

See you all later.

Hate Religion, Love Jesus

2012-01-11T19:01:00.000-08:00

I want to point out that I am agnostic, but I am also a pluralist so I don't go out of my way to bash religion for bashing's sake (Even though I tend to be very questionable of it). Religion is a human invention, and often it is used as a large excuse to carry out horrific acts or to perform selfish deeds like building large corporate and church buildings but pointing the finger at the homeless for not "doing enough." This is a very powerful poem below:

It is Quiet Today...

2012-01-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

I am working on some thesis stuff for today, just as I had been for the past two days. So things around the Bookshelf will be quiet today. Peace out, folks.

Book Nostalgia Gets Me...

2012-01-10T19:34:00.001-08:00

I like eBooks, I really do. Real books might not be with us in a few decades to come, and I can't help but like this video. May the book legacy live on.

C'mon, Really? You Could Not Have Guessed Who Would Have Nabbed New Hampshire??

2012-01-10T17:36:00.000-08:00

CNN reports that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney ranks first place in the nominee list in New Hampshire, with Ron Paul and Jon Huntsmen ranking third.

I always thought Romney would win at the top of the list, namely because well, he kept his mouth shut throughout the entire convention. He did not do any stupid "Oops" moments like Rick Perry did, he did not have any dirty secrets revealed like Herman Cain did, he did not blather idiocies like Michelle Bachman did, he was not a political has-been like Newt Gingrich who kept making idiotic blunders like paying several billions to run ads attacking his opponents, only to be bitten in the ass. Other than being Mormon, the most important key of all is the fact that there was not really anything remarkable about him in regard to personality and tactics that helped him win the race, even those who were even plainer than him who were running. And yeah, he also did not do another stupid thing like Santorum did, like bashing the LGBT community left and right. So what's the only notable thing about Romney? He's uber-rich and he is a high supporter of corporations.

But does that mean there's a chance that he will beat President Barack Obama, provided if he makes it further than New Hampshire? That's yet to be figured out, but I personally hope Obama and his charisma can hold his own against Romney's...unremarkable presence. If Romney wins, here is the good news: he appeals more to the moderate side of politics so that does not mean he will be a hardcore right winger like the other candidates were. The bad news is that he will be "more of the same" by clamping down on abortion and gay rights, as well helping big businesses gobble the population and its income up. Hopefully the "I like being able to fire people" line he made will come back to haunt him when he runs against Obama. In this economy, a line like that can irk a lot of unemployed people who were laid off or fired in the first place, and that makes Romney look like a douche who is clueless how the rest of the population is faring.

So basically, it will be down to the current president, who is a successful author and a well traveled man (Read Dreams from my Father, which is an interesting read for people who are not even Obama supporters) versus a scion of a highly wealthy family who states that the president is elitist but in reality, Romney is an elitist, right-winged person who would most likely widen the gap between the rich class and the poor class, which would help dissolve the middle class further.

A friend of mine believed that there would be a violent revolution coming up. Let's hope Obama beating Romney will prevent this revolution-or something just as horrible-from happening.

On My Current Reading List...1/9/2012

2012-01-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

As soon as grad school starts in the spring, I have no doubt in my mind that I will probably be thumbing through my textbooks than say, one of my fiction and nonfiction books. But here's what I've been reading so far:

Hollowland by Amanda Hocking

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

I'm planning on posting a review of N.M. Martinez's Ruin soon. Getting over a major work hurdle in my day job will open myself up for more reading, more reviewing, and working on my thesis. Stay tuned.

Oh yeah, my novella is currently undergoing review by Dragonfairy Press and their response time is between four to six weeks. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one.

Public Speaking Suckage

2012-01-09T19:41:00.000-08:00

I just want to say that I really, really suck at public speaking. Anyone who has heard me speak knows I tend to have a very quivery voice and this quivery voice comes with an ounce of frustration. Hence, this is why I am considering joining Toastmasters International. They are worth taking a look at.

Help Writing Raw

2012-01-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

I recently checked a post that Writing Raw, the online literature magazine I submitted to several times, had a submission slump for this month. Gene "Weeb" Heinrich, the site administrator, thinks that there may not be submissions for the next month. This is a call to all writers or people who know writers to submit to Writing Raw to keep it alive.

If you have any short pieces of fiction and poetry to submit, I highly suggest submitting to Writing Raw. There are a lot of great pieces to look at, plus lots of writing advice tips. You can even download a PDF copy of your story and poem with the awesome Writing Raw seal on it. Please help Writing Raw and Weeb keep up the awesome work featured on the site. Click here to submit your stuff.

200,000 Jobs Created

2012-01-06T10:48:00.001-08:00

I just read on BBC that the U.S. economy created 200,000 jobs. This made the unemployment rate go down to 8.5%.

That still does not serve as the magic bullet that would put away unemployment in the U.S. for good, or at least still remove a large chunk of it. Most of the jobs are formed in retail, health care, transportation, manufacturing, and warehousing. There would still need to be more jobs created in higher entry positions, especially for college graduates like myself who rank as those most likely without a job by the time they get their degrees. Still, this dose of good news is enough to raise enough spirits in that, hey, the U.S. avoided getting into a major second Great Depression.

And keep in mind that the U.S. is not the only country facing economic woes, other countries are feeling the pinch as well. The euro in Europe has fallen in value and it is continuing to fall despite the better job rate report. It also has not helped S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Wall Street either because it would also rely on foreign markets to thrive. On the other hand, this could just be another hurdle and the problem might be addressed. With the news that new jobs were created, it also proposes a good chance for President Barack Obama to seek re-election, something that I am personally hoping for.

Till then, all that can be said is to hope for the best. The U.S., as well as the rest of the world, will recover from the economic crisis with careful planning, discussion, and innovation.

A Sample of The Maze's Amulet

2012-01-05T10:29:00.001-08:00

I did promise another excerpt from The Maze's Amulet, even though I gave several excerpts of the course of two years. This one I've shown before with the full first chapter, but it is more refined this time around.

For those of you who have not read the excerpts from The Maze's Amulet yet, I hope you enjoy.

Elza saw some vagrants lurking near an alleyway separating the restaurant and a nameless bookstore. She observed that they were the roguish sort with multiple piercings in their ears and noses. Their skins were also adorned with spiral tattoos adorning their faces, arms, and whatever else they got the idea to brand them. Elza sensed their lust and hunger before she caught a whiff of their cigarettes, thanks to a passive dark witch intuition. They were nulls pretending to be monsters-like homeless, ravenous spirits and oversized rats-but they were nulls pretending to be monsters holding knives.

One of them got in front of her and stuck a knife close to her face. “All right,” he said. “We know what you are, and we don’t give a shit. Give us your wallet.”

Elza just stared at the nullish punk in front of her indignantly. She was not impressed by the basic null power to sense the aura of either type of witch. “You nulls have always been fucking idiots, you know that?”

The vagrant behind him, who had needles stick in the top of his skull, shivered as he looked into Elza’s eyes. “Hey man, she kinda sounds like she’s into this. It’s like she wants you to try.”

His partner in piercings growled at him. “Shut up, Len. The only thing she’s going to be into is my magic dick jabbing inside of her if she don’t go with what I’m saying.” He leered at Elza with a hiss. “Give me your fucking wallet, or I’ll make you see something really scary. Is that it, bitch? All you witches like scary shit? You probably do ‘cause your kind always casts it all the time.”

Elza laughed as if she was told a dry joke. The null with the knife tensed up as he was about to make a thrusting move.

Elza shouted, “Vargas tull!”

Then the vagrant opened his eyes with a weak gasp. He turned from a tough guy to a scared urchin at the cloudy, bestial face that hissed at him with bright glowing green eyes. This creature was no longer the woman he and his friend planned to mug. This was an animal with a phantasmagorical mane of hair and a twisted feline face belonging to a lion from hell.

The thug with the knife stumbled back and he dropped his weapon. Elza heard the knife hit the cement with a clatter ringing with the rain but she did not care as she stepped forward.

The thug shouted, “No! Get away from me!” He ran across the street, leaving his friend behind to face the shocking apparition Elza turned into. A car screeched to a stop in front of his friend as he fled the scene. The null accompanying him stepped back into the alley from where he emerged with his partner.

When they were gone, Elza shifted the energy powering the monstrous “ghost” away from herself by raising her hands upward and saying “Saigas tull” and the apparition covering Elza’s face dissipated. She swallowed a breath of air after the Fear Tactic spell deactivated. She felt a spasm of pain constrict around her body. Elza leaned against the wall for a little while and gripped at the wet mortar as she tried to ignore the fact she hurt like fuck. Elza wrenched her hand down her coat and felt the hard, warm stone spread hot energy into her veins. The pain she felt minutes ago started melting away to a mere ripple. Elza took another breath and walked on like nothing happened. Dwelling made the constant pain worse. She thought that at least she did not pass out in the street.

But it would have been so much easier to pass out on the street and not wake up, wouldn’t it? she wondered. No, I need to mind my damn shop and that little punk social services stacked me with.

THE MAZE'S AMULET- TO BE RELEASED BY FALL 2012

How Winter Breaks Go For Me As a Grad Student

2012-01-05T10:21:00.000-08:00

The picture really says all. Because it is so true, it is funny.

You can check out more comics like these at Ph.D Comics by clicking here. The comic is very funny and true if you are like who is getting by day to day working on his thesis material.

Publishing Opportunity for Authors

2012-01-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

A new friend of mine, Kenya Wright, has announced that Dragonfairy Press, a small publishing company that publishes digitally, will accept author requests. Submission details can be viewed by clicking here.

Does that mean The Maze's Amulet will be submitted there? Even before a fall 2012 deadline? Possibly. More details soon.

Old Art of the Day #1

2012-01-03T20:51:00.001-08:00

Because, I thought I should share that I used to be an aspiring comic artist. Aspiring comic artists draw a lot. An actual comic artist I never became. But you can enjoy what I put up back in 2004, when I was a senior in high school and itching to get out of there.

What Writers Should REALLY Avoid...

2012-01-03T20:47:00.001-08:00

My friend Amanda PV had a link posted that lists the twenty-five things that writers should not do. And to confess, I've done too many of these links. You can read the link below:

25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Click it...NOW!)

Word Count for This Week

2012-01-03T19:56:00.000-08:00

I am working on a new short story project and I am also in the middle of working on a short nonfiction project, but here is what I will give about the newest short project I have out:

Total Word Count for Short Project: 1,482

I am really impressed with this number. I usually do not write more than say, a thousand words in a week. I do not count any academic papers because I lose count of how much I write (And I'm supposed to write them anyway) so keeping a word count for myself is checking my writing will power. And believe me, I am really, really checking my will power here.

A New Introduction to The Catacomb's Bookshelf

2012-01-02T13:44:00.001-08:00

Since this is a new year, I want to refresh myself (and others) on what The Catacomb's Bookshelf is about and why it exists.

The Catacomb's Bookshelf is a blog I jumpstarted sometime in January 2010, as I was starting off sending published work soon after graduating from college in 2009. I started it out as my writing hub, as well as a place to feature reviews. It could get a little messy as one topic would overlap the other and it made me confused on what this blog is about in the first place. But as I worked on it, I realized that trying to focus the Bookshelf for a specific purpose would limit it and it would limit on what I would be writing about. I even tried to make post categories but that did not work either "Song of the Week" might not stick around, but you never know.

The Bookshelf has been around for two whole years now, and a new introduction would help reinstate on what the Bookshelf is about.

First you ask, "Why The Catacomb's Bookshelf? What is a catacomb?" A catacomb is an underground area where the dead are placed. I gave it "catacomb" to incite a dark feel with the blog, as I usually work with dark subject matter in the blog. But not all of my posts would be like that. A catacomb is usually depicted as a twisted, myriad place where one might not know where to run into next. And this blog might run into different places because one moment, I might talk about my own writing projects but then I might delve into politics, philosophy, or even the latest Little Gamers comic. The "Bookshelf" part is appropriate because on a bookshelf, lots of text and topics are stored. A blog, a combination of "web" and "log," always acts as a bookshelf of topics for its user. I don't know if I will find anything better than "The Catacomb's Bookshelf" but that's what it is right now. So sue me for my interest in dark, underground places and the need to write about stuff that pertains to those places but otherwise might not pertain to those places.

So the Bookshelf is my signature writing hub and place where you can get the latest news about my newest writing projects. More blogs about other material might spring up later, but this will be it when it comes to looking at whatever musings, ramblings, and scribblings I'm working on.

Song of the Week - Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt"

2012-01-02T13:19:00.000-08:00

If anyone knows me, I am a big fan of Trent Reznor and his industrial project Nine Inch Nails. My first exposure to NIN was "Closer" at the tender age of ten. I had no idea what the lyrics meant, and the radio kept censoring "Fuck you like an animal" like crazy.

Sigh. The days were radio were hard back then...how come the radio never censored the word "bitch?" Why not "fuck?" That's a different subject entirely on why radio is a hypocritical, misogynistic medium for getting music out but I want to show off the song "Hurt." Unlike most of Reznor's tracks, "Hurt" is very soft sounding, although it still holds the nihilistic, the dark, and possibly the suicidal lyrical nature of his other tunes.

I interpret this song to be that of betrayal, with Reznor promising someone he will make that someone hurt. "You could have it all" might reflect Reznor might have tried to give someone something, but it is never stated what. I try to see if there was a personal reflection he was trying to convey, as he sounds very bitter and in despair about that someone making him hurt, so Reznor is trying to make that person feel his pain. This made me think that "Hurt" might have not been directed at anyone in particular, but then the lyrics "crown of shit" tipped me off, as well as the lyrics "You could have it all." Many of Reznor's songs are directed at hacking away at authority's roots, with the songs "March of Pigs" and "The Hand that Feeds" depicting a struggle against a larger force. One can easily assume that Reznor is anti-establishment (This makes him one of my heroes for fighting to do his own thing, including forming his own record label after leaving his last one) but it can also mean he is fighting against the very power that enabled him to distribute his records to a wider audience.

But on a more personal note, this could mean that Reznor might have lost some friends and family along the way in his career. He might have known some people he was good buddies with prior to his fame, but once he achieved a successful career. there would have been some envy along the way. Reznor would have become a very different person after achieving success in music. "What have I become?" could signify this, as he remarks how different he's become, as everyone he knew and loved "goes away in the end." No wonder this song is so somber. It is not a really angry tune and all, but a sad one that depicts his ironic loss after gaining a significant amount of attention and money from his work.

Reznor was at the height of his career at the time, and he might have been fighting with the record companies about what direction to take his music. The lyrics "crown of shit" can hold that much against someone who thinks he or she has a large amount of power and thinks this power can be wielded in any way. Reznor might have been fighting the environment he was placed in. The music industry is infamous for getting talented musicians involved in drugs because music producers-and musicians-think drugs "empower" them. Reznor's label might have tried to make him change his sound, just as the media and politicians might use Reznor and other artists as a scapegoat to show that his music is somehow "corrupting" the youth listening to it. There is also a suicidal tinge in the song, and that would have been the time that Reznor was also at his breaking point (He would resume performing music and release With Teeth sometime in 2005.) and that he wanted out of whatever rut he was chained to. Back on the personal note, some of what "friends" he had might have been high and mighty about not selling out like Reznor did. He could call himself unfortunate, as his "empire of dirt" might mean gold in his music has been found but he has not been allowed any of it. Interestingly enough, Reznor won a $5 million law suit against music producer John Malm, Jr. Looks like Reznor received his gold.

The quiet nature of this song makes it one of my favorites. It would have been the usual raging computer-and-guitar sound but the sound is interesting. It would be like if Reznor was just sitting across this person he would be communicating with and it would have been in a low voice instead of the bitter vocals he would normally use. Oh, he's used softer sounds but "Hurt" is one of his most muted songs yet. This is what makes the song memorable out of his whole playlist: it is quiet, and yet it is very powerful in whatever message it is conveying.

This song grew so popular that late country musician Johnny Cash performed a cover of it and changed the lyric "crown of shit" to "crown of thorns" to reflect on him being a Christian. The video for Cash's cover is presented below. I consider both Reznor's original version and Cash's version to be very powerful in their individual contexts and performances.

Exercising the Writing...

2012-01-02T11:39:00.001-08:00

One of my New Year's resolutions was to write about at least fifteen minutes a day. I've started doing by looking for some prompts online to write about. Writing Raw, my favorite literature and writing site period, likes to offer a lot of these prompts and word-of-the-day prompts. Writing prompts can help get a person off the ground running, especially if they have no clear idea on what to write about.

Writing prompts also helps breed new ideas about what to write in the future. Old exercises can be kept away and be used as a an example of what to do with writing and what not to do with writing. I sometimes realize that I mix up present tense and past tense together. This is because when I was a teenager, I decided to play around with present tense and use it as my writing style for a while. But then one of my writing instructors encouraged me to use past tense, as I sometimes get present and past mixed together. I look back and see some of my older stuff gets mixed up in past and present. This is one reason writing prompts help and this is another reason why writing prompts-and writing instructors-encourage people to just write and not check over their mistakes. It enables writers to look over previous mistakes and learn from them.

So yeah...that's practically what I've been doing for the past day or so. It keeps my interest when I'm not doing too much productive writing stuff...or it gives me new ideas.

For fun, I will throw out this prompt I'm stealing. Okay folks, for whomever is reading this blog, I want you to try using capernoited in a sentence. First, look up what the word means, then use it in a sentence. Ready? Set? Go!

Leave a reply with your result.

Progress on The Maze's Amulet

2012-01-01T10:46:00.001-08:00

Well, the year is the year I promised to release The Maze's Amulet, my urban fantasy novella that I've been releasing excerpts since 2010.

It went through a lot of writing, re-imagining, editing, and formatting. Ah yeah, formatting. That part I am working on so it will read well on eReaders.

I said before there is a chance that I will be releasing it earlier than fall 2012, but until then, fall 2012 will be the deadline. I will get it released before then.

The formatting will be tricky because I need to "strip" some stuff down. After reading other books on Kindle, I noticed that visual details are lacking, especially with page numbers. E-readers work on a different page format so I will need to work out some kinks, formatting wise.

To make up for the long wait (and procrastination?), I will be releasing another excerpt this month. And after that, a new trailer.

More will come up soon.

Time to Begin with a Bang

2012-01-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

You know what? Screw the end of the world. Screw the Mayan calendar. And screw the doomsayers who are thinking that they don't have anything better to do than say, pile up canned food for a day that won't be happening in centuries.

Or, unless someone pushes the big red button. Or a giant asteroid falls on earth. The point is, the best time to really live is now.

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays....and Then Some...

2011-12-24T10:23:00.001-08:00

To compensate for the lack of posts (and future posts until the new year), I will leave you with Santa Nyan Cat.

Happy holidays from the Bookshelf.

Whew, what a semester...

2011-12-16T10:03:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone.

I just finished with my final. I'm prepping up for my thesis, but that leaves me a little room to blog what's been going on.

I've been invited to present my thesis at CCCC in St. Louis, which is taking place in March 2012. I've also been invited by another conference by Architexture. What I plan to present as my thesis is an artifact analysis over WebCT, a program which has its pros, but as for someone who's taught on the course, it has its many flaws. It is a very noninteractive program that feels like it was programmed in the late 1990s, or as I like to joke.

I've also been on a published streak. Recently, I sent three more short stories to Writing Raw. I plan to submit more in other places, but ever since I successfully published two short stories and two poems on the same site, the experience of submitting has been very addicting. I've produced many other works that I want to see the light of day. Many of these works I've produced between 2009 to 2011. I just need to kick my ass into gear and submit whatever I can, now that I'm free until the spring semester.

I've had a lot of contemplation for what will happen after I graduate from the university. I've thought a lot about moving into a metropolitan area, more skyscraper laden than where I live now. I say this because larger cities have a lot of culture. There are more writer and artist networks in larger cities than some of the smaller areas. There are also a lot more interesting things to look at and do in a larger area. From my experience in large areas, people are less likely to judge on a community level. One can blend into the city and not be singled out.

This has been my experience moving into a community larger than the one I grew up as. They do not care about your past, they do not care who you are in actuality. The smaller communities I walked around in were extremely narrow-minded and judgmental. You are given a label in these small communities and you are critiqued bit-by-bit on how you do things compared to the other folk. A caste system is common, especially in the U.S., but in small communities, from what I observed, the cliques and castes are far more noticeable. There is never an ounce of hope, as the small townsfolk realize that they are stuck in this area without a plan.

And to be honest, it was possible I could have been stuck in the small area I grew up in. I thank the people in my life for looking forward to something more and not just what was around me. I thank them for helping me reach the light at the end of the tunnel, of what I can learn and do beyond the experience I've grown up with. I thank my family and my friends who pushing me to do so many things other than sit and dwell on "Well, how could my life have been different?"

This blurb I typed up is unfocused. But then again, maybe not everything can be focused, like life itself.

Two Poems Featured on Writing Raw

2011-12-01T06:03:00.000-08:00

Here they are folks. Be sure to check out Writing Raw for more great material from other great writers on the site. And don't forget to check out Really Bad Shakespeare...it is black comedy awesomeness. Click on the poetry titles to be transferred to a PDF version of the poem, signed by Writing Raw itself.

The Idol on the Square - Several tribes wander from their hard journey to find a golden idol. The tribes love it so much and believe it to be the answer to their own problems that they worship it to the point of suffering from starvation.

Broken Room, Fixed Photo - A man trapped in a broken room finds only solace from a beautiful young woman he knew and loved...but he can only look at her photo and lament as he disintegrates in this decaying room.

I might submit more work to Writing Raw, and I will certainly submit to other areas. It's growing addicting, and it's encouraging me to see what else I finished up and send it out.

I'm close to the end of the semester...so maybe there's time for more writing.

Two New Poems to be Published on WritingRaw

2011-11-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

I will be having two poems published on WritingRaw.com. Till then, you can check out my short stories that are on now:

Gold Muse Sugar - My author surrogate is having writer's block, so he buys some magical pills that turn him into an a-holish critic. Mayhem ensues.

Papercut - A man gets a paper cut and tries to find a bandage, but he ends up having to find more than a bandage to cure his pain...

The Annoying Office Plant - A woman has an office plant shooting out stupid plant puns at her...but is she overworked, or is it real?

They should be published sometime next month.

The Maze's Amulet - New Release Date

2011-11-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

I've been looking through The Maze's Amulet and...I might be able to release the book sooner than a fall 2012 release:

1. It has been edited several times.

Some people, especially fellow writers, have helped me edit the project. It's been formatted in a way that I might be able to publish it in a submittable form. I feel if I wait too long, the book will never get published.

I felt the fall 2012 date was reasonable, considering I have grad classes and other responsibilities to tackle. But, I feel if I wait too long, I'm going to start picking out some things and try to expand on it. I will second-guess myself. And it will take longer to get the book released. And there are many other shorter and longer written projects that I want to work on.

2. I have a cover ready.

My friend Mark Burgat finished a cover for me this summer. This gives me a greater incentive to release the book. It looks really good and it is making me look forward to releasing the book sooner than anticipated.

3. It's another small way to pay for classes.

To be honest, that's not the best reason for releasing my book earlier. Ebooks, though successful, is hit-and-miss depending on the title. I might be lucky to sell a few copies or not. But if copies do well, it is a good way for me to help pay for graduate classes.

4. I want the feeling of publishing a novella.

I am really excited about my book coming out. Really, really excited. I've been working on the book since the summer of 2009 since it was a short story, and then I expanded the plot into its current form in 2011. I feel that two years of my work will be worth it if I am published. I don't know how many other books I will finish or publish, but if I publish at least one, I will feel satisfied. I will feel that all of my hard work will have not gone to waste. I will be one of the many, many independent authors who get their works published and hopefully, noticed. It's just something I need to try, and something I need to try before fall of next year.

So this has been a heads up that The Maze's Amulet might be released before the projected due date. It will show that I am right on schedule and this will leave me time to finish up a follow up or a different work entirely.

Guilty Pleasure: Wikipedia

2011-11-26T16:02:00.001-08:00

I'll be honest I like Wikipedia. I like Wikipedia because anyone can edit articles, for better or for worse. It is a guilty pleasure of mine to research how certain video game projects are created and how certain books were written and what ideas came from for these books and video games.

There is the old warning: Do not follow what is on Wikipedia, because Wikipedia can be edited by either a very experienced scholar or a perverted ten year old. I came across a Resident Evil page that stated in Resident Evil 4 that Leon can have sexual intercourse with the president's daughter. The Wikipedia article stated it was for the PS1 system (That game was released for Nintendo Gamecube, Wii, PlayStation 2, and PC...). That was one piece of information that I immediately picked up as false. Other examples are not so obvious, and depending on a person's knowledge base, can be really easy to believe or hard to swallow.

So if there is so much false information, why is it that I keep track on Wikipedia? Because more often than not, many articles have authentic information instead of fallacious information that slips through the fingers. I usually go to Wikipedia first because there are bits of information that is not readily found on most cites. Also, wikis are a work in progress. They are living documents. Like any essay, they are written, re-written, and then polished and polished some more. I even catch some mistakes in textbooks and even news articles. Information needs to be questioned, and while it needs to be questioned on Wikipedia, it also needs to be questioned elsewhere. When the video game Bulletstorm came out, Fox News published an article explaining that video games caused increased rape levels, even though rape levels have been on the decline since 1995. To add to Fox News' already high level of stupidity, it said that the game can be bought anywhere by minors, even though some state laws have banned selling games to minors.

So not all information found is genuine, especially Wikipedia. The best way to check whether information is true is to be curious and look into information for yourself. Being curious and finding stuff on your own is a lot more fun than hearing it secondhand.

Still Shaking Off the Turkey Juice

2011-11-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

Things are slowly kicking back up at the Bookshelf. I've started a new short nonfiction project which is in the rough draft stage. I am also fixing an outline for the next novella/novel that I will be working on, hopefully after The Maze's Amulet is released.

The problem is that I keep daydreaming about my works, so much that I don't work on them. Why is that the case? Apart from being busy with a day job and classes, I sometimes feel ill-confident about what I piece together. A project is never how I imagined it, and it is easy to be disappointed about something you envision never popping up to how you want it. This also leads to a writer's self-conscious in that I feel the audience won't enjoy it. So I am being way too hard on myself in that regard.

Till then, I will be busy with some updates...

Happy Turkey Day!

2011-11-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

The Bookshelf wishes you all a happy Thanksgiving.

Why Netflix is (Still) Awesome...And Some Pondering About Digital Media...

2011-11-21T17:52:00.000-08:00

I recently tried out Netflix and I am in awe of how many movies can be viewed at once. I'm disappointed that I can't find Oldboy on there but there's a slew of other films that I've been always wanting to see. Even the Netflix/Qwikster scandal hasn't scared me off.

One good thing about Netflix has always been a more wide availability of movies, and that includes movies that usually don't show in mainstream video stores, especially in smaller towns. I've always been frustrated that movies I read about on the web are not in the video store and for many other people, this will be a relief. This means that movies that might not get conventional showings can grab more showings. It's a common thing nowadays for movies to get exposure through Internet play. Snakes on a Plane would not become the hit it was today had there not been an Internet audience not only knowing about the film but also from participating on what should be included in the film.

Writing this made me think of how things are moving digitally. Music, movies, books...it's all becoming more widely available. This means more exposure of certain works to more audiences and there are also possibilities of new genres to appeal to different tastes, and not just to the familiar box-office audience. This would create new cultural references and new audiences altogether. Foreign films would not be too foreign anymore and audiences and creators would have wider perceptions for how something can be filmed, recorded, drawn, and written. The Internet might help chip away at the mainstream entertainment sect as we know it. Cliches would be demolished and tropes would be yesterday's garbage. Or not...but it's cool to see what is coming up.

So what's next for e-books? My Blood Approves by Amanda Hocking started out as an e-book. The book gained popularity and sales through Kindle Direct Publishing. Even Movie deals for Hocking's Trylle Trilogy are already underway. Does this mean that other e-books are destined for the same success and recognition? With the Internet offering quicker access to films, games, and movies, we all can only guess what happens next. And for someone who's preparing to publish an e-book, it's exciting to live in an age of the digital revolution.

Time...A Commodity in Itself

2011-11-20T21:42:00.000-08:00

As I grow older, I notice that the days get shorter and shorter. Is it because I have more added responsibility? Is it because I've lost touch with some things? I'm currently on break and it seems to be a breather compared to what I've been going through during the past few months.

I remember as a kid that time seemed to go on forever and ever. It was a nice feeling not to have to worry about anything, especially if an atom bomb went off the next day (And not that I did not think of those things...but I grew pretty morbid later on). At the same time, especially when I was a teenager, I hated time. It dragged on, and on, and on, much like high school did. Aggravating classmates dragged on. Long, boring class times went on. Long days working out in the fields of Nebraska dragged on. Everything, everything dragged on.

I look back and I think I probably did not use time as well as I should have. I mean, I was moving from place to place and looking back, there was not enough room to breathe or to adjust. But at the same time, I did not hit my writing potential early on, only teasing it in snippets (I was a budding comic artist, an ambition that was shattered after I hit college). I felt I did not open myself enough to people, but then again, people around me were very closed minded. They only thought about having sex with their classmates or going to drunken parties or looking for the best colleges or shooting up for theater roles. I'd say they were using time worse than I did, huddled with my Gamecube and drawing pad. But then again, they were hitting stuff pretty hard early on.

But then again, I took time away from the high school life. That's when I joined Tae Kwon Do classes. I learned how to block blows, how to maintain a good posture, how to kick high, punch low, and to do it in a slow, methodical way. Now that was time well-spent.

I first felt that time was going really fast for me when I was in my junior year at college. I was easing into my English major, and I had all this stuff hanging all over me. That was when I really realized that I perceived time a lot faster than I did previously. I don't know what did it, but it showed that I was getting older. And more perceptive that time was slipping through my fingers.

So yeah, that's when I realized that wasting time was not an option in my life. I'm not going to get preachy. I do kill time with some flippant stuff but waiting for something to happen, like releasing my novella or submitting more stuff for publication or grabbing my Masters was not an option. My biggest fear right now is just sitting down and doing nothing. I don't want to get stuck in one place. I want to keep moving forward without the sense of something dragging me back.

So yeah, that means I need to use time wisely. It is very precious. It needs to be spent on long investments, no matter how hard these investments, like education and experience, might be.

The Catacomb's Bookshelf is Back in Session...

2011-11-19T21:21:00.000-08:00

All right folks, I made a decision.

I decided to open up the Catacomb's Bookshelf.

Now you're thinking, "Hey man, can't you make up your mind?" Well, truth be told, I can't. I have a lot on my plate right now. I have grad school classes. I have a part-time job. I have a struggling social life.

And truth be told, I just need to manage my life better. I haven't done a hot job of it. And I can be pretty damn harsh on myself, if I ask me.

I also know I have more than 9,000 views on this blog. I've thought about starting over. That means I would leave the people on my contact list behind, as well as my whole blog list behind. And that would be a slap in the face to people who read my blog. For that, I apologize.

My other problem is that I've been trying to pigeonhole this blog. I talk about a lot of random stuff and the most "organized" stuff are my reviews. I've been moving away from the reviews, and I might even devote a blog to them entirely. I might even start a blog for technical communication, my grad school discipline. But for now, I need to keep the Bookshelf alive. I need to let the world know that The Maze's Amulet is coming next year, either in the fall, or even earlier than that.

So yeah, I'm wishy-washy but I will say this: the Bookshelf is open. Have a seat and take a read.

This Is It...

2011-11-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

All right, folks. I made a decision.

This will be the last post made on The Catacomb's Bookshelf.

I do not dislike blogging at all. In fact, I like it. I really, really like it. I was introduced to blogging by an English professor at Peru State College and it made me do blog post after blog post. It was very addicting and fun to do for class.

But right now, I am getting tired of it. I just don't return to it as much as I should. Life's stuff, like grad school, are getting in the way. But moreover, I feel I don't have enough to share for my writing and my blog is just getting very preachy and disorganized.

I'm planning on revamping with a new blog, but what it will be I am not sure. Right now, the Bookshelf is not very fulfilling to me and I really want to go to work on my own written projects. At twenty-five years old, I'm learning what I am getting good at and that I can't be good at everything. Sure, I'm good with the blogging...it's just right now I'm not coming back to it as often than not and I need a refresher.

So for those of you who followed the blog, I thank you for giving pageviews and whatever thoughts you've given me. For all I know, I might be releasing The Maze's Amulet a lot sooner than fall 2012. I'm perfecting a lot of things. I even have a cover. And it may be going to Lulu.com first.

So farewell, all of you.

On the Crossroads....

2011-11-05T21:00:00.001-07:00

All right, I'm having one of these moments whether I should be shutting this blog down for good or just keep updating it.

Truthfully, I'm getting a little tired of blogging. When I blogged a lot, I blogged a lot. But right now, I'm becoming disconcerted with blogging because I feel it's getting in the way of my on writing projects. And I've been holding off these projects due to my time in graduate school and just plain insecurity.

But recently, I've had a "rebirth" in writing ideas. Once I started recovering from my sickness, I've started drafts that have been lingering in my head. And the truth is, I've written about these writing projects before but I feel that post them have been pretty fruitless.

Blogging has taken time away from working on these projects head on and giving them to an audience. I look at my track record at 8,1000 page views but...I don't know, I just don't know right now.

For anyone reading this blog, what do you think? I really want to maintain this energy and not have it dwindle out on me, and yet I want to keep in good contact with a community of other writers. I know other people's blogs on Bloggers and elsewhere have introduced me to a lot of other things but I felt it has given me no time to work on my own projects. And when I work and finish on my own projects, it builds up satisfaction and confidence. I need both of these factors to keep my work and myself alive.

How About a Good Serving of Pretentiousness?

2011-11-04T08:10:00.001-07:00

I combed through my favorite writing blog, Whatever by John Scalzi, and I happened to note that he and another author, Charlie Jane Anders, had linked to picked apart a review that denounces genre fans. Click here for the review by Glen Cook, author of The Last Werewolf, for clarification.

And no, I have not heard or read The Last Werewolf but I might not be doing it soon because after reading through the review myself, I have to say the author produced one of the more pretentious pieces of crap that I've ever had to scan through. It makes me wonder if reading The Last Werewolf, based on the author's overly pompous and overstretched writing style, is really worth my time.

I will say that sentence after sentence was just muddled commentary of why genre fiction, such as zombie fiction, is stupid and that its fans are also stupid, beginning with the line of "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star." After reading through the line several times and from the take of Scalzi and Anders, I found the line does not make any sense. Not all intellectuals and porn stars can be grouped together in massive stereotypes. You have intellectuals who can be extremely arrogant and just damn right idiotic in that they are detached from reality. More ironically enough, is literary fiction always supposed to be attached to reality? It certainly wasn't the case with House of Leaves which critiqued and even mocked intellectual overanalysis to the extreme. And there have been some really good genre pieces that have stood the test of time, from Starship Troopers to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and books like World War Z, which details a worldwide zombie outbreak in journalisic fashion, receive high praise, awards, movie deals, and even some scholarly analysis to boot. All of these are considered genre pieces with some ties to reality, and Duncan's review proves there are high-nosed critics who are ignorant of the writing world.

Part of the reason Duncan's review pissed me off too was that he was trying to put himself on a fucking pillar. It's insanely obnoxious of how people take hierarchy, one of society's most oppressive tools still alive, and twist it to their own ends to make themselves feel better about themselves over everyone else.

Hell, from the review, he seems to imply that literary fiction is cliche free and clean, but I've read my good share of "literary" based novels and they are also victim to their cliches. I get tired of the simple-minded girl who tries to find herself. I'm tired of the man who cheats on his wife because he feels his life sucks. Those are pieces that have been used over and over and yet they are grounded in "reality."

This almost makes me feel guilty for enjoying reading reviews in the first place, let alone writing some.

Two Pieces Published on Writing Raw

2011-11-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have two pieces published on WritingRaw.com, which has just been revamped to be a bigger, better, and badder web site. I highly recommend submitting good works to them and checking out the site's stuff.

"The Annoying Office Plant" - A short story where an overworked woman swears that she hears an office plant speaking to her in stupid plant puns. Is she just overstressed, or are her insecurities manifesting into something rooted from within her?

"Paper Cut" - Poor Steven received a paper cut from grading a failing freshman's paper, but the walk to get a bandage turns all the more painful as he slips, trips, and crawls his way in agony to some adhesive bandages...and possibly a phone to call 9-9-1 on.

Both were added at the beginning of this month so check 'em out.

Yay! Sinuses!

2011-11-03T08:27:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I'm back to report on a few things that have been going on with me.

The most recent development is that I've been sick all week. I've had a lot of pain in my head and in my neck from sinus congestion and has not made me the most fun person to be around with. I've had sleepless nights but recently I've doused some Sprite (TM) and chicken noodle soup to relieve the tension. I've also been taking some mucous tablets to keep the sickness at bay. Remember kids, keep pumping up the fluids so that the nasty stuff comes out. Yes.

I can also attribute the sickness to a great amount stress that's tearing up in my life. My part-time job on Saturday pissed me off so much that it made my blood boil. Yes, my blood boiled. Why some customers, who are so fucking hungry and impatient, have to be so damned demanding and savage? Worse, their orders often merge with other orders and I have to ask customers again on what they want. It's a very high cost on my health to help the rent and other bills be paid. I also could not afford to celebrate Halloween properly because some friends' functions were too far away to come to. I also was growing very sick and had to sleep in most of the day Monday.

But as I was writhing in agony and coughing profusely, I kept thinking I was not going to pull through. The stuff that I had to do, including keeping a balance on work and school, was really drilling into my chest. I had no solid support system. How the hell am I surviving now with all of these things?

After a really brutal night, after some bad sinus attacks, I woke up strangely relaxed, like last night was no big deal. I could call that an equivalent to a near-death experience. Sheesh, my sickness was not the worst that I had either. Earlier this year, I suffer strep throat. Inch by inch, I started losing my voice to the point where I could only give out a good whisper. I then became too sick, exhausted, and tight-throated to really continue meeting students for my online class and to continue work on some graduate papers so I had to retreat a rest a while. It took about three to four weeks to fully recover.

I believe stress is a high cause for why I get sick. I do not handle stress very well, I confess. My head always burns with pain and it even affects my joints. It also influences my diet. I tend to take on fatty foods when I get very, very stressed out. And I think being stressed out now is lead me to be sick again. Stress affects the immune system and the immune system is important for protecting against major diseases.

So I made an epiphany this week, especially as my throat was getting sore, that I had to relieve my stress levels. I have not posted on this blog for many weeks because I've been so focused on my graduate school work and on just basic survival. But I also did not continue work on my blog because I felt so ill-confident with the work that I've turned in to some literary establishments so far, and even to Helium. Self-consciousness is also a major dent in my personality.

So yeah...I'm slowly recovering from my sinus problem. It's most likely the flu and I know if I did not get the flu shot, I would probably be even worse off than I am now. But I also made an epiphany that I got too self-conscious of my own blogging. I try to concentrate on "important" topics but censoring the ones that seem so random and slice-of-life based, like my sickness. The problem was, I was censoring myself. Censoring inhibits. Censoring imprisons. Censoring kills and keeps whatever words the writer wants to express caged up to where the writer's insides grow rotten and rusted. And then the writer becomes sick, both mentally and physically.

I also decided take down my Witchpunk Chronicles blog because people have not been reading it very much. And my recent efforts into promoting excerpts and trailers for my novella, The Maze's Amulet, have been fruitless because I realize that I am just a new writers. New writers do not get noticed. Hell, writers have a hard time getting noticed unless they have had a long established and literary career. And if they have a major publisher behind them, then that instantly grants them all the promotion they have.

And I vowed myself that I would self-publish the book next fall. Self-published authors don't have it easy. But I'm still pursuing the route because I believe books will be going to an electronic format and I like the feel of releasing my book independently without some major editing telling me how to rework my story.

Geez, I feel I've just moaned my way through this blog post. Yeah, I've been pretty damned ill but recently, I've been working on a couple of new short drafts: one is a short story/novelette project and the other is a short nonfiction project. If me being sick was equivalent to a near-death experience, then it made me realize that writing is very important and that I need to do it more often.

And speaking of short projects, two were just published on Writing Raw. More details on the next blog post.

Might Be Off for a While...

2011-10-17T20:58:00.001-07:00

Lots of things are going on, but the thing is, I've been far too busy to really blog about anything. Being busy with grad school stuff has really, really made me lazy about the whole blogging thing and I am overwhelmed as it already is.

Expect more details of The Maze's Amulet as it will come out next fall. Till then, I decided, writing-wise, I will be concentrating on my main projects. I really need to focus on my own projects, and hopefully not be jealous and fanboyish over other achievements.

Till then, goodbye.

Old Plans Scrapped

2011-10-12T11:47:00.000-07:00

I originally said I was going to move my reviews to another blog, but to be honest I just don't have the time to do it, let alone make neat titles for every blog post I make.

I realize blogging is always a work in progress, just as writing is a work in progress. So I'm pretty much done trying to "clean up" this blog as it already is.

Currently, I'm typing up a major take home midterm exam for one of my college courses and I have another major academic project coming right up. Meanwhile, I'm going to have some major part-time hours to work and some more notes to take on my thesis project, which I decided will be an artifact analysis for an old online course system.

Oh yes, I'm also typing up four other articles for Helium.

Busy boy, yes I am.

Article on the Sphinx on Helium

2011-10-11T20:19:00.001-07:00

I also wrote an article about the Great Sphinx of Giza on Helium. You can read it here.

What I Fear in the Dark: A Poem Featured on Helium

2011-10-11T20:13:00.001-07:00

My poem "What I Fear in the Dark" is featured on Helium. Click here to read it.

Another poem in progress...

2011-10-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

I joined a Facebook group known as The Writer's Block, and it's where people post up their poetic musings and complete sentences for free written interpretation. It's also where I came up with this poem with themes of war and regret. It's a work in progress so please bear the roughness of it...

He walks down to the graveyard

The old voices keep calling to him.

No matter how far away he walks away from the metal gates,

The voices keep calling him to stay.

He doesn't want to play to their morbid wishes

Of calling him to remember old times

That they cry with their etheral vocal cords

That wrap around the man's heart like chains

That pull him deeper and deeper into the graveyard

Where his comrades remain buried today.

He bends down in front of one of the headstones,

His hands grip the moldy stone,

He takes in the moist air

And says, "You were good to me,

You were the reason I am alive, why I survived in the trenches,

I'm so sorry I can't repay any favors."

He gets up and walks away

But survivors guilt stabs into him harder than an enemy's knife

As he looks back at his dead friends and cries as he leaves the gate

With the good, the bad, and the traumatic thoughts circling in his head

For the rest of his life.

Blogging Plans and Old Persistences

2011-10-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

While it's still fresh in my mind, I'm planning to split this blog into several areas.

I know I have a mix of blog posts; film reviews, book reviews, and game reviews. These reviews might go to a separate blog or even several blogs. It's just a way to keep myself organized and if anyone wants to check out previous posts, they are welcome to access it in the easiest ways possible.

Another reason I'm doing this is that I do enjoy blogging. I realize I need a blog for ruminations as well as writing advice. Being a tech-writer-in-training, I might also open up another blog devoted to technical writing, editing, and advice. Though I'm busy with my grad program, I need to make myself open to the blog and submit more writing material. I even submitted a poem to a Poet Laureate on the campus that I go to. A month ago, I sent some prose and poetry over to different publishers, all of whom had not responded yet.

And that's the old rejection song and dance I've been playing with. The key is persistence and if I'm persistent enough, I should get something else published. Of course, I will have to be persistent enough to advertise The Maze's Amulet more so that more people will know more about it. Persistence is necessary for getting the book published in eBook format. Persistence is necessary for everything else.

Officially Published on Helium

2011-10-03T16:21:00.001-07:00

I am now a published author of the article Adaptations of rainforest biome animals on Helium.com. You can read the article here.

Chicken is Sexy

2011-09-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

This blog is going in multiple directions; in a writing hub, a review hub, and a project hub. Right now, it's just full of scatological thoughts with no consistent theme to work on.

But as I was thinking this, I came across an article of how the founder and president of PETA expressed outrage at a New York Times column depicting a raw chicken in a sexy pose. Here is the image below:

As the article states, this accusation from PETA is hypocritical, given that they throw out pornographic imagery of women who promote their let's-eat-vegetables-instead campaign. I think PETA was bothered by this image because it looked like a parody of their advertising campaign. The photographer of this piece defended the photo and I agree with her that it was too hilarious to resist posting up. Seriously, what is sexier than a raw chicken that needs to be dressed up and cooked? A good roasted chicken makes a good orgasm on the tastebuds.

Oh, and another interesting fact: despite PETA's claims of rescuing animals, 2,345 dogs and cats were rescued but 2, 301 were euthanized. PETA seems to care more about people paying attention to them and the porn stars they employ than actually doing anything about helping animals. If we were to give up cattle, beef, and chicken, not only would we lack sufficient protein but we would also be destroying entire farming industries and leaving many people unemployed. So is eating a burger or slaughtering a full-grown pig worse than say, a sexually-exploited woman being forced on camera to pose pornographically or giving a kid a comic that says Your Mommy Kills Animals?

Yes PETA, you gained attention for yourself all right. In news articles that makes fun of your crazy rants and advertisements.

Nonfiction Ideas

2011-09-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

I've been having some nonfiction ideas brewing in my head but I'm having trouble nailing down on what I wanted to work on.

My friend AJPV suggested I should do more word fiction after a nonfiction story titled "My Father the Pesticide" was published (Which I might publish here later). It's probably because I did that piece very well. Truth is, I need to be honest with fleshing out myself to readers as I am a person and not just some autonomous set of hands that piece together blog posts at random.

But the trouble is, I'm not sure where to start nonfiction-wise. Part of me is recently thinking of doing a piece on arrogance; despite what you may have read, I have an arrogant streak that I might not be aware of. Believe it or not, I tend to tear apart people's writing, even though I don't mean to sound cruel. But I was tearing apart a person's report for a technical editing class for a letter that we had to present with the main project we were editing. I read through everyone's report for peer review and I realized that my letter was the most assholish and the most searing letter of the whole bunch.

A friend of mine met with me in the hallway about it. And I almost broke down because I knew from her stare of why she wanted to see me.

"But now you know why, right?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I deserve to be slapped in the face."

And I probably deserve a whole lot than that. It made me go back to some moments where people perceived me as an arrogant person, as someone "better" than them despite what I was otherwise trying to prove. Yes, I have some gifts but for some reason people hate me for those gifts, people hate me for...for...hell, I don't know why. I never really asked other than being labeled as "creepy" or "freaky looking."

I suddenly feel like I am in high school all over again. I now feel not compelled to make fun of anonymous author's works because frankly, I have not been productive with my stuff. I made an epiphany that I have nothing to really sell to people to earn any true form of respect. I don't have anything to offer writing wise other than a few published pieces. I'm a lot more ill-confident than I gave myself credit to be.

So the main nonfiction idea might involve arrogance on my own part and my reluctance to work on my own projects. Oh, I've been critiqued harshly during many a creative writing session but I also critiqued harshly back. I even laughed out loud at someone's fiction because it was so horrible.

So yeah, I have to get myself a bit of humility, huh? I'm as monstrous and sharp tongued as everyone else.

In Despair...

2011-09-29T19:43:00.000-07:00

I'm in despair. I'm not exaggerating.

I'm in despair because despite all that I've promoted for my novella, The Maze's Amulet, I feel I have not gotten a lot of people interested in it despite posting an excerpt and showing the YouTube trailers around Kindleboards and Facebook. I feel I need to do something more. But the sad thing is that I have not done anything recently to actively promote it.

Yeah, I'm in self-pity all right. Sure, I have published works but not a whole lot of self-published works like some other writers that I know. This shows I'm getting a little envious and this shows that I am becoming highly self-pitying.

I've went through self-pity once because someone was a much, much better artist than I was. She went to an art institute. And from what I found, she has many, many friends. I am not among them. Why? Because I was envious of her talent and despite trying to promote my art work on DeviantaArt, I never got off the ground because I just was not talented in that area. I ended up lashing out at this friend who decided she was tired to hearing of how crappy I was. We have gone our separate ways but I still beat myself over being so envious and not focusing on myself enough rather than focusing on other people's success and trying to emulate it.

I was more talented in the "writing" aspect and that frustrated me. I took it too far for granted, despite some of the praises, comments, and suggestions people gave me. I did not love my work enough and I really did not love myself enough. It is still a problem with me though that I don't love myself enough sometimes, despite that people told me I just needed confidence.

I'm twenty-five years old. I have two degrees and I am pursuing a masters. I have different works published and a novella in tow. Why can't I love myself still? What do I need to do to really love myself enough?

Editing: Another way to think

2011-09-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a technical editing assignment that involves looking through twelve pages of a poorly written and poorly strained report on how to make more parking spaces. To work on this assignment, I have to use the Tracking Changes command as well as the comment boxes to explain what is wrong, what grammar rules are violated, and how the writer can fix it.

It took me three days to look through the whole assignment. Not even my experience in editing other people's work has prepared me for this enormous task. And I will also need to look through the editing comments that I made.

Yep, editors have a lot more to work with than just grammar errors.

That's right, I said "look through the editing comments I made." This is a very strange way of thinking, a new way of thinking; I never thought of editing my own editing marks before. This is probably because the people I worked with knew some of the grammar rules to begin with, but this is a the first time I truly thought about it. And it makes sense to edit a comment about using the wrong diction while looking at it again made me realize the writer was using the right word and I had to edit my own comment in not to throw the writer off. An audience is important and that's why there are writers to deliver messages. An editor is very important of keeping a written work at bay before it is unleashed on the public. In my experience of writing and editing, this actual practice really blew my mind in how editors are valued and yet not wholly recognized.

I remember first practicing editing when I did one of my earliest short stories (It is crude and gross, by the way, but I might share it later) and I realized I made several mistakes like referring to the FDA as the FFA. So I switch the acronym around, I added some new dialogue, I revised some action sequences, and I switched up some of the dialogue and what certain characters would think and say. This is the first time I really remember editing something on my own and I've continued this practice as I continue writing.

So I should count myself lucky that I have some extensive editing experience. I have had experience copy editing other people's works. It was a grueling task but there was a small amount of satisfaction to be hand fixing up another person's work and testing how good I was with the English language. However, I had to be careful of how I would address some writer's mistakes in order to help them improve their work. And how is it for me in the receiving end? I'm hardly scared when people look at my work and I hardly get defensive because I'm used to he fact that someone will point out a few flaws I somehow missed when I looked over my own work. Getting defensive about one's work is counteproductive to the writing process and I do not fear it. I had to learn to get used to it for some of my own written projects to be released.

J. Jonah Jameson: one of the most overzealous and self-conscious editors you will ever get yelled at by.

So yeah, I needed to give my own insight on editing because I'm doing a huge project now that I may or may have not overedited (Yes, there is such a thing as overwhelming a writer with comments) but it's something I hope I can take care of with my editing skills alone.

Another Reminder that The Magick Maze is open...

2011-09-17T12:11:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to throw out another reminder that The Witchpunk Chronicles is open. You can click on the link here to access it.

The latest post gives some details on when the next official excerpt will be released to build up interest for the novella, The Maze's Amulet. I will release the excerpt on Friday, September 23rd.

I am also promoting the book by showing its official trailer on different pages on Facebook, as well as on Kindleboards. There will be more promotional material to come for the novella as well as more details on what is featured in the Witchpunk universe and what is in The Maze's Amulet in particular. So stay tuned!

Tech Writin' Left and Right!

2011-09-16T18:17:00.001-07:00

I'm running out of creative titles for all of my blog posts. Heck, I'm not sure if I want to call every post "Bookshelf" either.

I am pursuing a M.A.A. in Technical Communication. "But Kris, what is technical communication?" Technical communication is utilitarian-based writing that helps people reference step-by-step instructions what to do, such as operation equipment, inform people of projects, and helps set up projects through writing.

The thing I am doing for my internship is doing some technical writing for the instructional media department at the university. I just finished a bunch of instructions for some of the major features of a course creation system called Moodle; it will replace my university's current one, which is WebCT. I will attest that after serving as an online instructor, WebCT completely and utterly sucks for several reasons:

1. It is non-interactive.

2. Some of its features are non-functional to begin with, like posting videos.

3. Accessing some of its features is very cumbersome and outdated. This is the 2010s, not the 1990s.

So I am not just making instructions for the sake of the job and the internship, I am also making instructions to help instructors, who are already intimidated by WebCT AND Moodle to begin and not too happy how online courses work out. One important thing writers consider is their audience; I will do my best to consider my audience who are online instructors just stepping into a new program. I have no idea how I got through WebCT in my online course I taught last semester but it was enough that I just hated the system to the very bitter end. It did not do my students any favors, it did not do my fellow instructors any favors, and it ultimately did not do ME a favor.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to aside from setting up a presentation project with a team and wrapping up some other class stuff...

Drinking Coke American or Mexican?

2011-09-14T09:02:00.001-07:00

I read though an article on Yahoo!'s Shine page in which there was a taste comparison between American-style Coke and Mexican-style Coke. This article really intrigued me because I tasted Mexican Coke way back in 1999 when I was traveling with some family and friends through Progresso, Mexico.

I cracked open an aluminum can and took a drink. What I remembered next was drinking down one of the sweetest sodas I ever tasted. The Mexican Coke was very tangy as all the bitter oily taste of the Coke was replaced with a hearty sugary flavor. It was one of the many things I enjoyed in Mexico, apart from the fish and tortilla chips they served in a restaurant we ventured in.

But according to this article, the participants in the taste test determined that the American version of Coca-Cola was much better than the Mexican version. The writer explains that the brain is very good at convincing us of what tastes good and what tastes much better. So do I regret opening that can of Coke in Mexico and savoring the Spanish language and design on the shiny aluminum can?

Not one bit.

I'm still convinced the Mexican brand is better. I've never been told that Mexican Coke was sweet before I tasted it. I wasn't even aware that there was this "cult" of Mexican Coke lovers who would disagree with Shine's article. The New York Times reports that Mexican Coke does taste better by switching its ingredients as well as the bottle it is shipped in (Most Coke bottles in Mexico are made of glass, which is an ironic throwback to how it started out in America).

I'm fully convinced that replacing high fructose syrup with just pure sugar really makes Coke taste a lot better and no one had to tell me otherwise. But until I can import some, or if the Coca-Cola Company imports some, I'm sticking with my Abbreviation Soda (A.K.A. Dr. Pepper).

When the Public Laughs at Death...Health Care Discussed During the Republican Convention

2011-09-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

Just read an article on Yahoo! News about last night's Republican presidential debate. It was about Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a doctor, was asked by CNN Host Wolf Blitzer a hypothetical question about a man in a coma who was about to die. This man would have refused health insurance earlier (The video clip is also in the link).

Paul is a limited government advocate and he said this:

"That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks," Paul said and was drowned out by audience applause as he added, "this whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody…"

Then Blitzer asked:

"Are you saying that society should just let him die?"

That's when the audience got involved by cheering "Yes!" But then Paul said that was not what he meant. Paul, who worked in health before Medicaid, commented that the church system would not refuse anyone being hospitalized.

I admire the man's gut to say "no" in a crowd that cheers "Yes, yes, yes!" To me, this is disturbing because if this is what the rest of the American public, in a conservative event, is thinking, then I am worried if presidential candidate Rick Perry or the other of the GOP candidates win the election.

Congress needs to work out the health care system a little more. We need a healthy public regardless of where we come from to work within the infrastructure. The Tea Party, volatile as it is, seems to think that health care is a privilege and that it is not a right for everyone. I have a bad feeling health care is going to be used as a tool of flaming rhetoric against any sense of rationality that's needed in this time right now.

As someone who's been watching for someone better than George W. Bush and Sarah Palin...uh....John McCain to take over, I'm just not a fan of what's being offered on the conservative side of the spectrum.

Witchpunk Chronicles Blog - Now Open!

2011-09-13T09:08:00.001-07:00

Well, I finally created a new Blogger page for The Witchpunk Chronicles, which will have more specific information about books like The Maze's Amulet, which will be due out in fall 2012. You can visit the blog here.

Quoting It - Edgar Allen Poe and Daydreaming

2011-09-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." - Edgar Allan Poe

Ever since I was a kid, I daydreamed a lot. I daydreamed about being a knight and chasing after a dragon with a plastic sword (And no, I'm not just referencing that old Sheryl Crow song!) or chasing after a vampire with a plastic sword because I could never understand why Simon and Trevor Belmont always hunted after Dracula with a whip of all weapons in the Castlevania games on the the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Oh well, a whip is useful for getting up on ledges but it just wasn't portrayed in those games...

...oh sorry, carrying on. I used to daydream walking through molten caverns and dank castles. I even daydreamed about being on star ships, desolate worlds, lush planets, and other crazy places. The books, movies, and video games I played all but helped fuel this imaginative sphere.

Funny thing is, I still daydream today as a twenty-five year old adult. I would think I would outgrow it, but no. I used to think it was bad to daydream. I used to hide it a lot. My mother warned me that I had my head in the clouds and I would miss a lot of stuff that I would need to do.

And the truth is, I used daydreaming to get away from some of the more awkward and horrible moments of my life. My trip through public school for one thing is where I daydreamed a lot when some of the "elite" students or the bullies would hunt me down. I would daydream getting back at them, I would daydream escaping from them. And of course, I would daydream about escaping to another place entirely because I found holding grudges just sets a bad seed inside you.

Now as an adult, and as a graduate student, I still daydream. Is that such a bad thing? Short story author and poet Edgar Allan Poe had this insight on dreaming during the day in the quote above and it's beginning to make more sense. I believe he means that people who do stuff like daydreaming usually access some ideas quicker than those who don't think outside of their reality at all. I know I do it with some major projects I work on and this is especially apparent with my story, poetry, and nonfiction ideas.

But most importantly, I think it is okay to daydream as long as you use the daydreams for something. If I let these daydreams linger around my head for so much longer, I feel I'm just going to go crazy keeping track of them all.

I sometimes think of some authors of fantasy and science fiction who might have daydreamed; did Lewis Carroll have some kind of nightmare and that nightmare just happened to linger on? What about Isaac Asimov who was a scientist but also thought of robots enough to make the Three Laws of Robotics? And of course, what about the more literary authors such as Gabriel Garcia-Marquez who thought of ordinary scenarios but decided to embellish them? And what about William Golding who planted a group of children on an island to fend for themselves? Did they just happen to daydream these ideas until they put them on paper? I am also really amazed at artist like Salvador Dali and Henri Rousseau who thought of such crazed imagery that has become truly iconic over the years. I envy artist, I will tell you the truth, and how they get their dreams across is very, very powerful. Art of any form is subjective and we might be misinterpreting what a person wrote for instance, but it's a lot of fun to imagine how their ideas coursed through until we get to the interviews.

And to be honest, that's why I find the creation process more interesting than the audience process; whenever I see a movie, I often wonder how some scenes were conjured up. I also read through books and wonder what went through the author's head when he or she injected that piece of text into a scene. This is why I find more joy in creating other than being a captive audience; there's a lot I need to share and expressing oneself through the arts is one way people can share ideas and concepts to others in a non-forceful manner.

So now it's time to dream up some new ideas and make use of them and share them with other people.

Sometimes Things Still Come Late...

2011-09-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, that Witchpunk Chronicles blog will be open. Soon.

I sometimes get self-conscientious about my work. Will The Maze's Amulet be as successful as I hope it would be? Would my other ideas work as well they should? I should be confident by having a few pieces published but what if that isn't enough?

Doubt can be a killer of anything and dwelling over doubt can kill ideas outright, let alone the person. I confess I am a habitual stressball and sometimes this stress can take a life of its own. It can seize the arms, the legs, and turn them inward and make the person bend down like the person was trying to squat down to a point where no one can see a rolled up human hiding in a corner.

Of course, if I did something like that, if anyone did anything like that, then no writing or anything else can get done. I don't practice writing outside of the academic domain as I should. I mean, the Bookshelf is getting as dusty as it is with infrequent updates. Most importantly of all, I sometimes don't get too confident about what I post.

And maybe I should. Not everyone can go to Tibet and blog about it but then again, not everyone can get a few pieces published and blog about them either. Jealously is another killer entirely.

Remembering September 11th, 2001

2011-09-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

I was in the lunchroom cafeteria at one of the high schools I went to when someone brought in the television set. Another person turned off the lights. Then the TV was turned on and we saw the World Trade Center's towers being blown to smoke, fire and ash from two passenger planes. My eyes were wide open as I wondered what the hell was happening. Soon, everyone else was watching intently as the news displayed details on what happened.

The footage went on for hours and hours. Everyone kept watching. I did not want to watch anymore. That's when my art teacher came in and asked if we wanted to stop watching the footage and go to the art room. I said "Yes" without haste.

Watching the Twin Towers fall was one of the most disheartening things of my life not just as an American citizen but as a person. I was always curious about what was going on in the world and despite all the wars that were going on, despite the suffering that took place all over the world (Including this one), I was optimistic that the world would move on. But when the hijacked jets flew into those towers, all sense of innocence and safety were lost. That's when hysteria spread around my school, around my region, and around the country. Everyone adopted an "Us vs. Them" mentality that made me want to stop caring about what happened on 9/11. I did not want to be part of the hysteria. I needed to see what happened next. Everyone thought I acted apathetic to what was happening, including that I completely spaced out when a documentary played that the twin towers fell partially because of the frames being melted down due to the planes exploding. What would it have mattered? Two planes, hijacked by Islamic extremists, dove into the towers, killed many people, and left behind many husbands, wives, fathers, sons, daughters, and other family members to grieve and to wonder why such a day would happen.

I did not dive into the hysteria that a lot of people went into. I wanted military action in Afghanistan because of how the Taliban were treating the people there and destroying priceless artifacts left behind by other cultures. I did not want the war in Iraq, I did not want total Western occupation in the Middle East. This is a day not just when the towers fell, this is a day a lot of misunderstanding and strangely enough, revelation, happened. We started understanding some cultures better but we also became more paranoid about other cultures coming in and out of different countries. It was a wake up call that the U.S. could not hide in its little bubble with its cable TV and its Hollywood movies that it needs to open itself up to the fact that like other countries in the world, the U.S. was vulnerable.

I am sickened that some people would exploit 9/11 and make coins that commemorate that day. I was sickened that the Bush Administration not only exploited 9/11 as an excuse to wage war in Iraq.

But this is all the negative stuff I am trying to get out of my system, stuff that's been crawling around for about ten years. If we let the hate ride us, especially on that day, we are no better than the people who caused it. Let's remember the people who were lost on that day, let us remember the people who survived, and let us remember the people who risked their lives to save those people on that day, which include the fire fighters who went into the burning buildings and did what they could to save people who were still trapped in the rubble.

Most of all, let's be grateful that we are alive and we still have a chance to heal old wounds and to help build the U.S., and the rest of the world, back up from catastrophe. Let us love instead of hate.

"Random Test," Huh?

2011-09-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

I read this article on CNN about how Muslim travelers are often inspected more than other travelers:

"If you think we're paranoid, look up some of the crazy things that have gotten Muslims even kicked off of planes -- a T-shirt with Arabic script, a head scarf and more. Ask your Muslim friends how many times they've had to buy new luggage because their checked suitcase is returned, slashed, with a note from the TSA saying, "Your bag has been randomly chosen for an inspection."

Other "random checks" include almost certain head-and-chest checks, hand swabs, invasive searches and pat downs including "sensitive areas of the body," and even a blunt admission by TSA representatives that it's because you're wearing the Muslim covering."

I see this as another classic example of "Oh, let's be racist towards a specific group of people but let's NOT be racist." Seriously, if we keep doing this crap to any group of people, airlines will go out of business and tarnish their name and build up the U.S. government's reputation as an alienating, red taped a-hole. I only fear that with September 11th rolling around, there's going to be more justification of "getting back at the people who burned the towers down." What people exactly? Do you mean the actual terrorist group who plotted it or a certain ethnicity and culture that's being hounded via guilt by association?

A friend of mine from Saudi Arabia once asked me why most Americans are very rude and always shoving down their culture down people's throats. This article is just another sad reminder that there's more work yet to be done in America to stamp down its pro-gun-nut, pro-life-and-pro-welfare, pro-Bible-thumping, and war-mongering mentality. Soon, everyone will be flying and getting inspected. And no one likes being touched in those sensitive areas. No one.

New Blog Announcement - Coming Soon

2011-09-05T10:52:00.001-07:00

To market The Maze's Amulet more effectively, I decided to devote a new blog to the novella and the universe that it is set in.

So expect a link on the Catacomb's Bookshelf that will lead to the new blog which will be known as The Witchpunk Times. It will be a blog devoted to details regarding the The Maze's Amulet as things are getting rather cluttered on this blog already! So stay tuned for a link update as all news and advertisements for The Maze's Amulet will be going there.

The new blog will be ideal for streaming news on what will be going on with the novella, including what formats it will go into (Kindle/Smashwords/Print) as well as a "developmental diary" on how some sequences of the novella are being made and presented and some bits on the release date (I stated the novella will be released in fall 2012, which could be between September, October, or sometime in the beginning of November).

The Bookshelf will also post up news but only in little bits that lead to the new blog. For now, stay tuned!

The Maze's Amulet - Official Trailer

2011-09-04T11:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a more beefed up trailer that I promised to release in the middle of September but I finished quicker than I thought!

So here it is folks. Enjoy. And remember The Maze's Amulet will be coming out in fall 2012!

More Updates from The Maze...

2011-08-29T20:28:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm starting off in school again, and that includes taking a job with it.

Part of the reason I went with a fall 2012 release for The Maze's Amulet was that I will be busy with school. Very busy with school, anyway. I also want to build up some anticipation for the novella as I also try to figure out how to format the text for reading on a Kindle or in the print version. The sample advertisement may go somewhere, but it is just a sample.

I want to give a head's up that a second trailer will be released for The Maze's Amulet sometime in the middle of September and it will be less text heavy than the "teaser" I released on YouTube a while ago. Stay tuned.

Time for The Maze's Amulet Promotion Extravaganza: A Summary of How This Project Evolved

2011-08-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

The Maze's Amulet has come a very, very long way. It was originally supposed to be an urban fantasy short story with a magic show setting. However, I could never, ever get it to the right page length that I wanted. Then I started changing principal characters, then I started expanding character history, then I started building up more of the alternative near-future world that this novella is set in. Then I expanded on the scenario.

Whew. What I described was way, way too vague.

The Maze's Amulet was originally set in a magic talent show setting. The main protagonist, Elza del Toro, was actually much younger than her current counterpart that I kept showing small excerpts of. She was to be a prototype of the headstrong teenage boy Noah Thomas and her elder in the story was that of a bearded old man. I originally set to have the story end tragically with Elza meeting a bad end, but I ended up doing a switcharoo. I found Elza to be a compelling protagonist in that she was a well-grounded female character and I tend to like working with female characters more often than not. The old man's role was reduced to a mere mention and I started working on a "magic show" setting where Elza would be the owner and Noah would be the apprentice. And yes, someone would be interested in shutting her place down.

The problem with this approach is that the story felt too rushed; Elza deals with enemies in a very hasty way and the conflict was confusing on why the bad guys wanted to shut Elza and Noah down. Noah had little to no characterization in him as he was already good pals with Elza by the time the short story starts. There was also more mentioning of the performers themselves as opposed to Elza and Noah and focusing on them too away from the main conflict for an "aimless" plot. I also did not have a solid magic system set down at the time.

It was then I realized that I needed to make the story even longer and I felt Elza being a washed up performer would be more feasible than an actual owner of a performance theater. This is where a special amulet comes in, although it served as a radically different plot device than what it is used right now. Noah was there but he still wasn't characterized right; he was just "there" as an assistant. But switching the amulet's purpose from holding a person's soul (Don't ask!) to keeping Elza alive helped make Noah more important as although he can't use spells for legal reasons (He's on probation), he was a healthy, youthful foil to Elza's experienced but aging self.

There's a lot more I want to cover with the backstory behind The Maze's Amulet but that's for another day. I really want to announce that I will start actively promoting The Maze's Amulet and I say this because it is nearly ready for its release. It's finished, it's edited, it's undergoing some formatting and it even has its own cover which I will reveal later in the weeks to come. I will be releasing solid, polished excerpts and I will give out more news and updates with how The Maze's Amulet is coming along.

And remember this, I am releasing this novella in FALL 2012! That's my benchmark. Look into it.

Bookshelf Review - Fright Night (2011 Remake)

2011-08-21T19:33:00.001-07:00

Colin Farrell and the other actors give this film and the vampire genre some much needed "bite."

The Good: Nice balance between humor and horror; solid acting from the principal characters, lots of blood and interesting set pieces and scenarios

The Bad: Ending uses a serious deux ex machina

I will say wholeheartedly that I believe the Twilight franchise has fucked the entire vampire mythos up from its sparkly, vegetarian, and abstenence promoting vampires to its dull and obsessive heroine that its female following for some reason aspires to be. So it really cracked me up that when main character Charley Brewster (Played with gusto and character growth by Anton Yelchin) mocks Ed Thompson (Played nerdy and sharp by Superbad's Christopher Mitz-Plasse) for alledgedly liking the notorious franchise. This helps set the tone for the film as Fright Night, being the remake of the awesome 1985 original, invokes old-school vampire charm and a chilling yet funny scenario where Charley discovers that his neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Colin Ferrell) is a vampire.

And Ferrell plays one hell of a vampire in this movie. He's very good looking and charming, the kind of vamp all the dudes would want to be and as the next door neighbor who has no trouble wooing Charley's mom or the women who come to meet him. But Ferrell also brings out his sinister and monstrous side, the side I personally wished he would bring more often to the roles he plays as. Ferrell's performance as vampire Jerry is better enhanced with some monstrous vampire effects and he does not screw around as he murders whatever humans are on his menu.

Luckily, he does not steal the show entirely, as Yelchin plays as a teenager trying to figure out who he is amidst earning high school popularity, popularity that strikes a dischord with his best friend who's trying to warn him that Jerry is a bloodsucking devil in disguise. It's chilling and amusing to watch him struggle through figuring out how to get rid of his next door neighbor, all the made better when he seeks illusionist Peter Vincent (Played sarcastic and infectiously entertaining by David Tennant) who markets himself as a vampire expert but ends up being baffled by Charley's problem than being intrigued by it. The exchanges with Tennant help advanced characterization and move the movie along for the horror and comedy that are in store. I'm not giving too much away but there are quite a few bloody bits and bloody laughs that pop up when you least expect it, and this is surprise in an era where people line up to see sparkly vampires and being being strapped onto tables and being sliced up for about thirty minutes until some in the audience throws up in their popcorn. One major flaw I think for the film is the deux ex machina ending. I won't give it away, but you will know it towards the end of the film.

Since I saw the movie in 3D, I'm happy to report that most of the 3D effects were actually pretty good, especially when ashes are around. That said, 2D or 3D, Fright Night is a movie worth taking a trip to the cineplex this August.

Overall: 8/10

Bookshelf Review: F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate

2011-08-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

It's the same old, same old...and it's getting old really fast.

The Good: Still the same tense firefights and horror and some new weapon types.

The Bad: Everthing is wearing thin, and most of the new weapon types aren't worth it.

I happened to finish Perseus Mandate today and for those of you who read through my F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. Extraction Point review, you would know what to expect from this title in terms of graphics (Which are considered growing old at the time) and gameplay. So I'm going to pick out what makes this expansion distinct and what is good and bad about about it, even though this argument might seem old for 2011.

The Story

A second Firing Everything Around Ruffians team is sent to investigate a facility which contains something special...aaaannd that's pretty much it. Monolith has disregarded this story as noncanonical and for good reason; the first story was so good that this game's storyline of looking for the ghost girl's (Alma's) DNA sample which could create more supersoldiers pales in comparison. So the story can be disregarded entirely despite some good voice work and only a small amount of intrigue.

The Gameplay

It's the same F.E.A.R. you know and love, for better or for worse. The Replicas are the same clone soldiers you fought in the two previous games (And let's not forget some disposable Armacham Technology Corporation rent-a-cops that you blow away for a short while) and slow motion is important of not getting yourself killed for too many times. You will fight in environments that you traveled through in both F.E.A.R. and Extraction Point. Some environment variety would have been nice but all's been recycled to add onto gameplay that might not seem as fresh as 2005's masterpiece.

There are a few new enemy types though; one is a new type of soldier known as a Nightcrawler which uses powerful weaponry and throws different types of grenades than what the Replicas through and they take quite a few routes of even your most powerful weapon to bring down (And some are even enhanced with your slow motion ability). With the Nightcrawlers that can use slo-mo, expect to die a lot because these enemies take a lot of hits to the point where it is ridiculous (How can one figure even survive two grenade hits?!). During those battles, there are many health kits and armor around. In fact, even on the most high difficulty level, there are many health kits and armor to be found. This does take away some challenge when you enter one hard gun battle to the next but being a stand-alone expansion pack, Timegate was probably trying to appeal to a new audience to those who haven't played F.E.A.R. but the difficulty level is a little unbalanced; it starts off players with training wheels but then throws in a curve but once players get access to the more powerful guns then the middle of the game is somewhat more balanced.

As for the firefights themselves, there's less variety than what was found in the past few games before it with only at least a few memorable sections (Battling a giant mecha in a lab that chases you around in it and going through a cave) but nothing that you haven't seen before. It's not the firefights in the game are bad, you've just fought in them before. If you beat the game, there are a few bonus missions unlocked which are fun but you will be tired of F.E.A.R.'s game play and will want to move on to something else.

The New Weapons

Three new weapons are offered in Perseus Mandate: a new type of assault rifle that has a scope that magnifies light, a grenade launcher, and some type of electricity-based weapon. Out of all of those weapons, the assault rifle is what I used the most as it was the more as it is fully automatic, powerful, and its scope helps see everything that you're aiming at. The lightning gun is a complete and utter joke as it just fires a lighting bolt that does not too too much damage to either the Replica or Nightcrawlers and ammo for it is extremely limited. The grenade launcher is also not as accurate, powerful, or as useful as one would expect as it is a lot easier to throw grenades, and easier yet to throw grenades and shoot them in slow motion in a middle of a clustered squad. In terms of arsenal, only the rifle stands out as the most useful and powerful; the other weapons could have worked much better.

As of this writing, you can download Perseus Mandate and Extraction Point with the original F.E.A.R. on Steam and you can also find them coupled together in F.E.A.R. Files for XBox 360. Perseus Mandate is not a bad expansion pack but it's an expansion pack that does not have the polish of both F.E.A.R. and Extraction Point. It's worth a playthrough but you will probably want to play F.E.A.R. 2 and F.E.A.R. 3 after you are done.

Overall: 7/10

Bookshelf Review: F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point (PC)

2011-08-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

A spooky and bullet-ridden expansion to an already spooky and bullet-ridden experience.

The Good: Enhanced enemy AI and crazy bullet ridden scenarios; more horror thrown in; cool new weapons; minimalist plot

The Bad: Some steeper system requirements, hence some graphics overload and crashes; minimalist plot

It's okay to be wary of expansion packs. Usually, expansion packs seek to cash in the success of an already established game with only a few features put in and a very short campaign thrown in to boot. It makes gamers scream why they have to pay full price or even half price for half of what their favorite game is. There are a few exceptions to this rule:

1. If you are Blizzard Entertainment, you will produce a very cool expansion pack with not only a solid single player and multiplayer experience, but also some very cool features that make a good game even better (Unless its Diablo: Hellfire, but that was a decent expansion by Sierra despite its faults).

2. If you are any other developer, good luck with creating another expansion on your own (Anyone? Anyone?).

3. If you are any other developer, you probably have another developer doing the dirty work for you (DOOM 3: Resurrection of Evil, which was good, or Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt, which many critics cited as a dud). Good luck with that one.

F.E.A.R. Extraction Point takes the #3 route and despite an immense risk, it comes through as an excellent expansion pack to an already excellent game. If you liked the first F.E.A.R., then you will dig into what is offered in Extraction Point.

The main game begins after the end of the first F.E.A.R. (An acronym for First Encounter Assault Recon), where the Firing Everything Around Ruffians Point Man (Yeah, I will never get tired of making fun of the acronym) and whatever survived with him survived a chopper crash and must escape the city alive. Along the way, the Point Man will have to battle clone soldiers he faced in F.E.A.R., as well as some supernatural enemies wrought on by the mysterious ghost girl named Alma.

Extraction Point took the gun battles that made F.E.A.R. great and used them as a model for how gun battles take place in the expansion and the results are wonderful; you will battle Replica in open areas and they great use out of these areas in keeping close to cover and flanking you from all directions around subway tracks, train cargo, and other enclosed areas. This will make using Reflex Time more imperative as the Replica will employ a few new Replica types to hunt you down. I won't give away too much, but the church scene you will battle in early in the game is one of the highlights of the expansion and an indicator that there are more great firefights to come.

As for the scary moments, they are much improved over F.E.A.R., where hallucinations are now more gratuitous and there are more shocking moments that you just won't see coming as you will travel through mostly dark hallways. The horror is made better as you face against new paranormal enemies that will require you to make use of your slow motion ability and your wits. And even with your slow motion ability, you will not help but feel tension with a shadowy apparition chases after you and you are firing away and away until your gun goes click click and you have to reload. Although Timegate could have added more supernatural enemies and add an even bigger emphasis to the horror of the game (After all, the city you hunted Paxton Fettel in is now a haunted ruin), what they used is effective to keep your heart and blood pumping.

The new weapons to bring down the monsters and Replica are also very welcome and have a solid punch to them; the laser carbine shoots out a long red beam that turns your enemies into charred up steak fillets, and the minigun which is unwieldy but very powerful to use against an entire squad of Replica if you time the shots just right as it takes some time for the gun to charge up. You also have a new throwable weapon in form of a turret where you can throw it in any spot and a small turret pops up to take down anyone in its radius. These new weapons are very useful in a lot of situations, but there are only a few situations where you can get a chance to operate them, especially with my personal favorite, the laser carbine.

Graphically, (And I'm referring to the time it was released), there are a few enhancements to the visuals which are really great to look at in term of textures and shadow work. Explosions bloom from cars and mortar (and looks awesome in slow motion), and the fire effects, especially during the horrific scenes, blazes and singes very well in a way where you will feel dread of seeing it. However, you will feel some environment settings were resused in the expansion as they are practically identical to the original game's settings. Add to that even though the new battles are exciting, they also are identical to the first game's. I said before they were great but they are nothing really new to what you've seen in the first game.

Another thing that is largely absent but sorely missed were phone messages which helped give story clues. The story is very linear: reach the extraction point. That's it. No new twists are given and there is some confusion why some major events in the game are happening (Monolith as of this writing has deemed Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate non-canonical, which adds mild disappointment). So if you 're looking for further plot development, you're all out of luck.

As of this writing, you should be able to download this game as well as the original F.E.A.R. and Perseus Mandate all in one package at Steam, or you can find it in F.E.A.R. Files for XBox 360. Let's just say if you liked the original game and you don't mind more of the same, Extraction Point is worth a play through.

Overall: 8/10

Oh, Where Was I?

2011-08-20T19:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a fairly lazy Saturday. I just got finished putting on some editing touches for The Maze's Amulet (Remember kids, due out fall 2012!) and making a Goodreads account. You can check out my profile here.

Goodreads allows people to show off what their favorite books are or what books they think are total and utter crap. So far, I've listed over one hundred books that I've read over my lifetime. That's right, over a hundred books!!! I'd add more exclamation points, but seriously...I sometimes think I don't read enough but for some reason I snag in a book every now and then.

The reason I joined Goodreads is that I want to reach out more to people who do love books as much as I do and that I can keep talking to them about these books. It's also a way to help promote The Maze's Amulet as well as other works that I'm working on.

Well, I haven't been working too much as I've been finishing up F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point and F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, both which are expansion packs to the excellent 2005 first person shooter F.E.A.R. Expect a couple of reviews for those games soon.

Bookshelf Review - F.E.A.R. (PC)

2011-08-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

This creepy shooter will knock your socks off...in slow motion!

The Good: Scary atmosphere, very detailed textures and models in the graphics, excellent lighting, very solid enemy AI, awesome slow motion gunplay mechanics, and decent plot.

The Bad: Repetitive level design, fairly high system requirements, and some framerate issues when the action gets hot.

Now I've heard a lot of jokes regarding to the organization name F.E.A.R., which the box art, Wikipedia, and the official Web site deemed as "First Encounter Assault Recon." Lots of YouTube users claim that it really means "Fuck Everything and Run!" or as Mark Bussler of Classic Game Room on YouTube would deem it as "Flying Elephants are Rebellious" or "Fun Every Afternoon, Really!"

Here's what I think the acronym really means: Firing Everything Around Ruffians. Because that's what you do in this game, and you shoot in Matrix-style slow motion. And it is one of the key mechanics that really shines in this awesome game.

To start off, the story starts when the main antagonist, Paxton Fettel, is freed by a mysterious ghost girl who is central to the main plot. Fettel is a psychic commander created by the mysterious Armacham Corporation and he is leading his clone soldiers, known as Replicas, across a killing spree. You are known as the "Point Man" of the U.S. Army secret sect known as Firing Everything Around Ruffians (Sorry, couldn't help myself!) who try to stop Fettel but also have to deal with the ghost girl who is a dead ringer for Sadako from Ring. You will uncover a lot of interesting plot details through military jargon laded talk, scary ghost hallucinations, and phone messages scatted throughout the blood splattered and dark corridors you will explore and shoot people in.

To say the least, a receptionist's desk at Armacham is pretty hard to find when you're applying for a job there. And asking directions from Replica soldiers is not the best idea.

Being a first-person shooter, it is a very solid one. The levels are set up well enough for some pretty well stage movie-esque firefights. And this makes opportunities for the Replicas who push over objects, duck under cover and try to flank you. Yes, I can't say this well enough that the enemy AI is very good. They don't charge at you in a suicidal manner or stand long enough like idiots with guns for you to pop them in the head. You feel like you're not running down robot-brained enemies who wait for grenades to blow up in their faces and it's like you're fighting real people. They show real self-preservation as they call for back up, curse, retreat, and really try to catch you off guard. I know I got splattered enough a few times because I underestimated the AI and F.E.A.R.'s AI is one of the best that I've ever fought against so far.

The other main course of the game is the horror elements. Granted, not a lot of the horror is aimed at hurting you like a lot of other horror games would (Like the Resident Evil games or DOOM) but it is more psychological. Strange images and apparitions will pop out at you, and of course, the ghost girl will also materialize to freak you out in unexpected ways. I'm not going to reveal too much here, but expect some pretty creepy dark corridors, and expect these corridors to be haunted. Very haunted. Between firefights.

And in these firefights, you get an ability known as reflex time. This makes you perceive the world in slow motion and this ability can save your life many, many times as the Replicas are fast on their feet and quick on the draw 90% of the time when you are fighting them. The bullet effects whizzing by still look great even by today's standards and it is vital, especially in later levels, to employ reflex time to dodge enemy fire and return fire with it in cool John Woo-style physics. It makes the game easy sometimes but the Replica are very hardened and very fast soldiers to hit with conventional means so this makes slowing down time important during the most tense firefights.

It's going to take more than a mop to clean up all the blood...and more than several powerful weapons to keep paranormal hallucinations at bay.

And the environments themselves are set up in a way where crazy firefights can happen. Each room you are in has several corridors where the Replica can flank you and you have to utilize quick reflexes and caution when traveling through. It's enough to make you think of how you are going to shoot through the situation as just charging in will most likely make you just another blood puddle on the floor. The drawback to these environments comes when you are exploring different sections. I found myself getting lost in Armacham's offices, for example, because certain desks and hallways looked exactly the same. Expect a lot of similar-looking pipes and times to show up as it can make looking through some areas that you already walked through a chore.

But at the same time, many of the environments, despite taking place in ordinary settings, are very beautiful to look at thanks to the lighting and shading system that the graphics engine implements. The texture work on character models, environments, and weapons are very detailed and close to photorealistic (As far as it would go in 2005, the year the game was released). But the shadows and lighting really steal the show, as you can see your character's shadow move around depending on what angle you walk in the light and the physics engine allow different objects to move differently whether they fall on their own during supernatural opens or how you shoot certain things. So if you shoot a light, that light will move as it would in real life and illuminate the room in a wild way. The engine is very dark, as it should be since it is used best for some seriously creepy moments.

These creepy moments are backed up by a strong plot that is followed by radio communication and phone messages. The acting is solid enough to keep character dialogue interesting to you as the silent protagonist and between military personnel who are allied with you. The phone messages left by different maintenance and Armacham staff are also hardly boring and intriguing as you go deeper into the game. The story is fragmented and in a good way as you are to piece together on what Armacham has been working on in the past that relates to Fettel, his clone soldiers, and the creepy ghost girl scaring you from every corner. However, though the story asks you to make your own theories on what is happening, the story will lead you by the nose to its shocking conclusion. Still, the plot is engaging enough in that it will keep you playing, it will keep you shooting, and it will keep you running for your life in one scary and tense scenario after the next.

If you are looking for a pure horror game, Firing Everything At Ruffians might not be the ideal choice as the moments are far and few in between when you are in real danger from the supernatural elements. But if you're looking for a solid shooter with horror elements, then check out F.E.A.R. however you can on PC, XBox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Overall: 9/10

Wait, I'm a Writer and a Bibliophile...and I Don't Have Time to READ?

2011-08-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, as shocking as it sounds, even though I love combing through the book sections, even though I check out reading and writing blogs such as A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, even though I habitually read reviews of different books, video games and films, I just don't give myself enough time to read anything beyond an article. And to confess, I sometimes regret enjoying online video shows such as Classic Game Room which features video games and Mark Bussler's funny commentary. I hit up That Guy with the Glasses quite a bit, and I blame Doug Walker's line of "BAT CREDIT CARD!" to get me hooked on the site. So I find my video watching is increasing and reading time is sharply decreasing beyond required textbook reading.

And to confess, even though I've read many, many books in my lifetime, I confess I don't even know some of the major big name authors or books like Catch-22, Starship Troopers, Pride and Prejudice, among others. So the lack of knowledge of what is within these texts should enhance my reading appetite, but why isn't it? It's the illusion that there is not enough time in my life to look to those books. It is also because I have been out of touch with the book and writing community and I am trying to get back to the old realms of those areas.

So I scoured some tips on how to habitually read more when I might not even have the time to read. Wikihow offered some good tips and I ripped a few to help with this blog post, as well as some times from my own reading experience:

1. Carry a book with you all the time - That way, you will always have something to read whenever you're waiting for the bus, for the subway or a visit in the doctor's office. Even if it is for the shortest amount of time, you will at least gain a little bit of reading.

2. If you can't read in a really noisy place, try finding someplace else that's ideal for reading - Go for a quiet place on the couch, in the bathtub, or even outside where there is not a whole lot that will distract you from reading. Reading is a solitary activity and it is sometimes best to do it alone.

3. Read a book in the library - This is pretty obvious, isn't it? But it's true; most libraries demand peace and quiet, and you get this peace and quiet with some reading time.

4. Read what you're actually interested in - If you are reading something you're liking, you're most likely to get into it. But if you're reading a book that's not our forte, or if the book totally sucks, then you're not going to get a lot of reading time done, are you?

5. Read some short stuff - Short story and poem collections are ideal for this tip; sure, you want to enculture yourself with a huge postmodern literary epic like House of Leaves or a large classic like Les Miserables, but they are best spend alone and not for short bursts like when you are waiting for a bus to pick you up.

6. Start reading early in the morning or late in the evening - In the morning, before work or school, you possibly have some time to kill before you have to do anything really important. And of course at night, unless you have that last minute essay or work report that has to be in the office by eight o'clock sharp lest you face the chopping block, cracking open that book before nodding to sleep is a good deal.

Okay, time to finish House of Leaves before I review it for the Bookshelf...

Bookshelf Review : Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-05T19:11:00.000-07:00

It's not exactly the summer movie to go "bananas" for but you'll "ape" at how predictably entertaining it can be.

The Good: Decent ape special effects, ape characters are very interesting and distinct, good pacing.

The Bad: Shallow human characters and predictable story.

I've never seen the original Planet of the Apes nor have I read the original novel that spawned the movie but I did walk in with a little background and understanding how this movie is to be a reboot to a new franchise. Fortunately, there is a good time to be had with this movie not understanding what the original film was, but it's a movie that leaves you wanting more.

To start off, the plot revolves around a chimpanzee named Caesar (Played with gusto and energy in his computer generated glory by Andy Serkis, who is famous for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy), secretly adopted by a scientist (Played predictably and uninterestingly human by James Franco) who is born with a drug that enhances the intelligence of apes. This drug that Caesar is enhanced with was originally supposed to heal human brain cells but it really does a bang up job on Caesar and any kind of ape the drug comes in contact with. But Caesar's days as a companion to Franco grow short after some tense events that lead him to be caged and grow resentful of the humans who regard to him as nothing but a stupid animal and test subject to boot.

The story is very linear and it follows the preachy "Don't-mistreat-the-animals-with-experimental-drugs-or-else-they-will-rebel-against-the-human-oppressors" mantra but it doesn't overdo it. There's a lot of "showing" than telling with Caesar adjusting to human and inhuman surroundings and the effects of the drug are interesting to watch for both human and ape characters (Let's just say the FDA would never approve of the drug for human consumption!) And that's a good thing considering the movie's short run time so we don't dwell on the dull human characters who are either A) Arrogant businessmen and scientists, B) Assholes, and C) Sympathetic human characters who only serve to develop Caesar's character.

The apes themselves on the other hand are a lot of fun to watch so kudos on the director letting the apes "ape" the screen a lot. They interact with each other in a realistic way and some apes also stand out to give out some of their personality on screen. Those are the best parts of the movie and more scenes with the apes as opposed to the humans would have made the movie ever better. They appear more sympathetic than the human characters and they also do more interesting things than the humans to help move the story along, such as climbing on red wood trees, plotting escapes, and making leaf falls by climbing on trees en masse. The ape aspect moves very well to the film's climax and you will love what they do at the end as they seek revenge on the very species that imprisoned and mistreated them.

So yeah, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is pretty predictable but it's a fun kind of predictable that you know what is going to happen and it happens in a very satisfying way. Just don't expect anything any higher and you won't regret an hour or so "monkeying around" with some popcorn and soda in your seat.

Overall: 7/10

Word Count? And Some Saving Advice...

2011-08-04T18:30:00.001-07:00

I'm just keeping the Bookshelf all oiled up due to the lack of posts. I'm dealing with some stuff in real life (as usual) among other things. It's hard to get organized sometimes.

I've been organizing a bunch of my written works into different files, and that's a good practice when you are storing any kind of document, whether it be a fiction-based manuscript or otherwise. You think dealing with a ton of paper in disorganized heaps is bad? Well, if you don't like that, then be sure to put your written work in organized files, and in different places. Make a file that says, "Written Projects." Then make different files such as "Nonfiction, Essays, Fiction," et cetera, et cetera, and et cetera.

And don't just use the proverbial eggs-in-one-basket approach; save all of your files many places. Your computer might break down, one of your PIN drives might be corrupted. Be ready for any hindrances that will get in the way of your writing hardware and software wise. You can even save important files to your e-mail account by sending the e-mail to yourself. Be sure to organize e-mail names as well (Like Draft 1, Draft 2) as you do this.

And that's my two cents for this post.

Newsletter Announcement

2011-08-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

I plan on releasing a the official newsletter of the blog, The Catacomb's Bookshelf News Scroll.

"But Kris," you ask. "What is The Catacomb's Boookshelf News Scroll? Don't you post stuff about your latest works anyway?" Well, it's true I do but with the News Scroll, you can get exclusive information about my latest novels, novellas, poetry and short story collections. You will also receive exclusive excerpts from my work-in-progress. You will also receive contest info sponsored by the Bookshelf.

"So Kris," you ask. "How do I get the newsletter?" Well, all you have to to do is request a newsletter to be sent to you via e-mail. Send your requests and any other questions or comments to catacombsbookshelf@gmail.com.

The Search Trailer

2011-08-01T20:41:00.001-07:00

My friend G.K. Fralin just released the trailer for her book The Search: Lunis Flower of Hidden with his available on Lulu.com and will soon be available for Kindle. Take a gander at the trailer below:

I Guess It's Okay to Glorify Dead People and Spit on Them Too

2011-07-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

I read the news that singer Amy Winehouse died on Saturday, July 23rd. Already, some people have been making comments and jokes about her dying, even one secondhand comment reading that her death was like "cleaning up the gene pool" while others have been denouncing mocking her demise.

That is one of the most disrespectful things you can say about a dead person, let alone a dead celebrity.

I was never a fan of Winehouse or her music but all I can say is that if you're dead, you can't defend yourself from your critics. You can't even go and hide somewhere else to avoid the criticism. A person can dig up your grave and practically piss in it. And that's what some people have been doing to Wiinehouse; they mock her appearance, they mock her drug habits, and they mock her drunken stage performances.

I say enough is enough. We make fun of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who died at 27, by killing himself with a shotgun. We don't lampoon Jimi Hendrix who vomited to death and Janis Joplin who died from overdosing on drugs. These people are celebrated, and they often make more money than their living counterparts and we are making fun of a celebrity who won six Grammys for her second album Back to Black because she was killing herself with drugs.

What the fuck, people? Couldn't there have been another way to save her from herself? At least several other musicians and public figures, such as Kelly Osbourne, are attending her funeral. We need to at least respect the dead, no matter how disorderly they were in life.

Two Simple Tips for Getting Yourself to Write More When You're Not Writing

2011-07-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

All right, all right I confess this is a small rip off of Amanda Pearson-Vanderbroek's list on her blog, but that does not mean that you should not check the link out. She has a lot of helpful information, from watching author interviews and cutting yourself some slack just because you haven't written in a while. But based on my take, here are my three simple tips:

1. First, off, READ.

"READ?" you ask. "But I thought you were going to tell me how I was gonna write more!" Well, yeah, writing is important but reading is even more important. When you read someone else's work, you do understand the words written and how these words are delivered. You also absorb how these words are written and in how they are delivered. To add onto an analogy, let's say that you wanted to get better at drawing. You take a look at other people's comic books. You go to an art museum and look at some line drawings. You not only look at these drawings but you also absorb the lines used to complete these drawings, what colors are used, and how these drawings are presented in context. To phrase, or paraphrase, Stephen King's On Writing, "Read four hours a day, write four hours a day. If you can't do this, you can't be a good writer."

Now I know what you're thinking, "But how much do I actually have to read? I don't have four hours to kill a day!" Well, don't make a big deal about it. Read the news on CNN.com, or something on the OMG section on Yahoo! News. And yes, even read a review for a movie, or an instruction manual. Your reading material does not have to be so big and heavy for it to be sufficient for the day. If you've read some political editorial for a few minutes, or even an hour, then congratulations. You've absorbed some text and you got some reading out of the way.

2. Second, make little notes, even if they are the dumbest notes possible.

So you want to write something but you're not at your laptop yet, let alone your journal (Which you always need!). Well, start carrying around a little notebook with you. I carry around a small Sasquatch notepad, and whenever something does pop in my mind, I make a quick note of what I thought of. It's that simple. No, it does not have to be the most awesome idea you ever spawned out of your head. That's an issue you need to deal with when you do write in your journal to outline the thing or to sit at your lap top and type up a rough draft. Start using this scribble as a platform. You might be able to make something larger out of it in the long run thanks in part to writing that idea down. That idea will grow into something bigger and with some revisions, it will work as a written piece. And if you have a blog and/or a journal, then make use of it for these little notes as much as possible.

So there you have it. Just read a little bit and write a little bit.

The Maze's Amulet Teaser Trailer

2011-07-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

It took me a while, but this is the teaser trailer that I will be releasing on the Bookshelf and on YouTube. Expect an official fall 2012 release.

Bookshelf Review: Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-07-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

This movie about the first Avenger might be one of the best.

The Good: Awesome special effects, action, World War II setting, decent acting, and a nifty trailer at the end of the credits.

The Bad: Mostly one-dimensional characters, story is pretty standard.

Inevitably Marvel Studios will have released The Avengers in May 2012. They've been building it up with the two Iron Man movies, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and finally, this movie about Captain America, who first burst into the comics scene punching Adolf Hitler square in the face in March of 1941. He is one of the most recognizable and iconic of the Marvel Comics superheroes, and it would be a total no-brainer to bring this hero onto the big screen. Then you have to wonder, "How the hell are they going to get that ridiculous outfit to look plausible?" Well, they do get the outfit right as well as other elements in the movie.

So is this movie worth seeing? Well, if you enjoyed the other movies Marvel has released (*Cough* Daredevil and *Cough* Ghost Rider) then you are going to enjoy this one. I have to be honest my enjoyment of The First Avenger stems from my fascination of World War II. It is a war that helped influence modern technology, war tactics, and aspects of popular culture the world over. And although some of the themes presented in this movie are pretty far fetched, this is not a movie to say, "Hey, the Germans never invented those freaking laser guns!" This is a comic book movie, a Marvel comic book movie, so leave your history textbooks at home.

The plot involves a young soldier wannabe named Steve Rogers (Played by a non-cocky non-Johnny Storm Chris Evans) who gets involved with a special experiment that turns him from a scrawny patriot to a buffed up American badass. You don't have to be familiar with Captain America's origin story to enjoy the transformation or the rest of the film in general. Evans does not spend a lot of time brooding or even acting like a jackass at times like some of the other Marvel heroes have done on screen. He's very straightforward. Evans jumps in a no-nonsense way, he shoots in a nonsense way, and he even acts very naive in many situations. In short, Evans plays the young supersoldier to a T who's learning to accept his new abilities, his missions, and his role to stop the megalomaniacal Johann Schmidt, A.K.A. the Red Skull, and his army of the Nazi secret science division HYDRA from destroying the world. Hugo Weaving, who plays the Red Skull, has a ball with the roll speaking in an evil German accent and acting out his ruthlessness on his enemies and especially those under his command. He's the second interesting character next to Evan's Captain America, unlike the other soldiers featured in the movie.

The other bit players, aside from Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark (Tony Stark's father in Iron Man), don't really stand out from the archetypical World War II hero mold. You get to meet some multiethnic soldiers (Including an African-American soldier who can speak German) which is refreshing to see in a non-stereotypical manner, and they stand out well in that they could be the main characters of their own World War II epic. But you only see them act out often and they pretty much act as Captain America's support fire. Tommy Lee Jones plays the traditionalist Army leader well, although he also plays the standard no-nonsense Army character with one good scene. And of course, you have the tough love interest played by Hayley Atwell who is convincing with her British accent and attitude. Still, the bit players help move the story along. And the story in no way tries to pull any punches; there's a bit of humor here and there, there's action, but it's all expected in the action-adventure mold.

Still, The First Avenger is worth seeing, especially if you've seen the other Marvel Studio movies and if you are looking forward to The Avengers movie. The movie's linear plot and characters service the movie's run time

Overall: 8/10

Word Count for the (Past) Two Days

2011-07-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the second installment of The Witchpunk Chronicles and here is the overall word count:

4,122 Words

From this word count, I've gone through nearly thirteen pages. On a good day, I can usually get through one or two. Part of the reason for this page count is that I started getting rid of some distractions, namely those that keep me glued to the Internet. Another reason for this page count, I believe, is the use of an outline. Outlines are very helpful for larger projects that require more plot and character development and I've been making one as I've been going along.

So that's a short update. I saw the latest (and last) Harry Potter movie and I'm looking forward to Captain America: The First Avenger. The review I did of Harry Potter was the first one I ever did after directly coming out of the theater. If you have not seen it, then go and see it.

Bookshelf Review - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

2011-07-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

The series finally comes to an end, and that's a good thing in the best way possible.

The Good: Very tight pacing, action, and effects; good conclusion to an already excellent film series based on a series of well-written books.

The Bad: Newcomers will be completely lost on what is going on.

First, I want to say that I like the Harry Potter movies and books but I'm not a crazy Potterhead (Now now, I'm not against those who are, unlike the Twilighters...just kidding!). The books are very good but to me, they are just solid fantasy-based entertainment that does not really break the mold of a secret-magic-world-within-the-real-one. I'm no hater, but I'm not a hardcore junkie either. I like my stuff dark and grungy. I like my stuff explosive. And I admit, I do like solid fantasy-based entertainment.

So why do I open this review up? And especially on the last movie in the Harry Potter franchise? Because the last part is not only dark and grungy, not only is it solid fantasy-based entertainment, and not only just very good, but it is a very explosive end to a movie franchise based on one of the best selling and critically acclaimed fantasy book series that this era has to offer.

Let me warn you that if you have not seen any of the other Harry Potter movies (Or even read the series that spawned the movies) then you will be very lost. The movie does not recap on what happened earlier so the revelations made in the movie would lose their punch if one was not familiar with the rest of the franchise. But this movie is aimed for fans of the movies and the books and I doubt that a lot of people would be lost. If you don't know the series, then read the books, or watch the earlier movies. Do it and then go see the final installment. You will not be disappointed.

The movie jumps in right to where the last movie left off. Voldemort, the snake-like wizard antagonist to the series, has seized a very powerful wand, he has a very large army of dark wizards, he has Hogwarts, the school for wizards, under his complete control, and Harry Potter and his friends Ron Weasly and Hermoine Granger are on the run looking for special artifacts, known as the Deathly Hallows, to bring the evil wizard down to his knees. It's a race against time to beat Voldemort and his followers, and the film does very well to treat it like it is a race. Potter and company will venture through secret passageways, underground lairs, and Hogwarts castle which is in an extreme state of disarray.

The plot is as straightforward as it gets as it is a good thing. The pacing is tight and that means the action is very solid and there are no "filler" moments that you wished you could get out of your seat to leave the theater. The special effects, from the large white dragon seen in the trailer, to the various spells cast in the film, are right on the mark and what you would expect out of a Harry Potter film. The settings are large and believable, and the acting is dead on as it matches the desperation and maniacal glee good and bad folks in the film express. It is also a very dark film, both visually and thematically, as many of the main major characters bite the dust and there is a lesson about sacrifice and heroism and those things go hand in hand in this film.

If you've read the seventh book like I had, you will know what will happen but you will still get a kick out of what is going on. There's plenty of suspense and excitement and it is all needed for this series to make a very well directed bow down to the fans of this long-running franchise.

I feel this is a very short review here, but the film is very straightforward as it needs to be; it is an ending to a great film franchise and if you felt the first party of Deathly Hallows was too long, then Part 2 does a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn and runs with that turn. I say go for the full ticket price on the regular version (I haven't seen the 3D version nor do I care to) as this is not only one of the best summer flicks of this year, but this is one of the best endings to any film franchise ever.

Overall: 9/10

Kat and Mouse=Blades 'n Bullets

2011-07-16T22:27:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I know I've been a little slow on blogging. One of the major holdups is reading online independent fiction, and one of these is the awesome Kat and Mouse: Guns for Hire, a cyberpunk action thriller serial.

You can read the serial by clicking here.

Five Cheers for Introverts!

2011-07-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

Being introverted, I often have trouble navigating through a social landscape. However, the career "Writer/Author" fit the bill in this list. So if you're the introverted type, click on this link here.

Bookshelf Word Count for July 5th

2011-07-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I worked on not one, not two, but three written projects which are rough drafts and are undergoing editing. I won't name the titles but I will give a short description for each:

Poem: 666 Words (Yeah, coincidence for anyone who believes that number will burn them).

Science Fiction/Horror Story: 1,294 Words

Love Story: 2,720 Words

I'm impressed with myself. I probably should not beat myself up continuously on not writing regularly but I am really surprised by actually trying to structure something from text with three different short writing projects in one day! Time to pat myself in the back...

Fourth of July Time

2011-07-04T20:53:00.001-07:00

Well, I really did not too do much of anything except work. Yes, work on the Fourth of July. Oh, I don't dislike the holiday nor do I choose to disregard it. But this is one of these holidays this year that I celebrated by getting some food from McDonald's and downloading Otep's Sevas Tra album.

My message to you all is never to take your freedoms for granted. One of these freedoms include downloading music for money off of iTunes so you can freely listen to the music whenever and however you want it. There are numerous other freedoms to list but I think you can choose one to be grateful for, which includes blogging!

Now let me bring in Francis Scott Key:

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Bookshelf Random Post - Why Blogging for Me is Slow as a Lawn Mower Running Out of Gas...

2011-07-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that I have my "ups" and "downs" when it comes to blogging about new material. I realize I also tend to blog in "quick bursts." Oh, I wish I had more to blog about freely but I tend to talk about stuff that just "matters," like memes or my own written work. I'm just not that kind of guy who says:

Oh yeah, I really hate the summer heat. I was just getting a table outside and I felt I was sweating all over the place. I was mowing today and grass coated me all over because the slot that shoots out the cut grass evenly broke a long time ago, blah, blah,blah,blah,blah...

Can lawn mowers be used as a metaphor for blogging?

And yeah, I might have tried doing that but I can't bring myself to cut loose and really talk about life's everyday snippets, or if those snippets come along, I have to analyze these snippets in one way or another because these snippets are taken for granted.

I know I cut a lot of grass, metaphorically speaking, when I first started blogging as a junior in college for a Shakespeare class project. We were all assigned plays with a partner to do blogs on, and my blog was (primarily) about the play Much Ado About Nothing. The blog was named Much Ado About Nothing and Everything Else Shakespearean and it was the first one I ever made. The play was surprisingly good, as I usually don't get into romantic comedies, but what amazed me more was how short of time it took for me to get on a blog and churn out posts like the gas-powered grass murderer spreading remains out to be used for mulch.

And the reason I blogged so much on Much Ado About Nothing is that there were a ton of Shakespeare topics I could spin in the most creative matter possible. Adding photos and videos help illustrate some interpretive points I used for the topics about the Three Witches, characters like Don John the Bastard in Much Ado About Nothing, why Keanu Reeves sucked in that role in the 1993 film adaptation by Kenneth Branaugh, how each Shakespearean character can reference other aspects of popular culture, Shakespeare plays being adapted into comics books and manga, and so on and so forth. So it did enhance my liking for Shakespeare a bit but with blogging, I saw all sorts of possibilities in dispersing information in new and creative ways.

Keanu Reeves: good for playing Hamlet and stopping bullets, but not so great when playing Don John or other "playing, dealing villains."

Back to the present: I noticed I am blogging on The Catacomb's Bookshelf in shorter bursts because the Bookshelf, although a writing promotion vehicle and a review board, is open to all sorts of topics for it is also my personal hub. And I realize without any major subject to work with, I have a hard time talking about my own life because I fear it will be very boring for the reader to go through. Therefore, I am selective about choosing my topics.

It can be the same with any writing; any focus, even if the focus seems random, is needed for comprehensibility and for enjoyment. This is important when it comes to news articles, essays, and especially technical writing where you need to instruct the reader how to get from Point A to Point B. Without focus, the whole written project (And this blog included) gets thrown into a huge, confusing whirlwind.

I have a rough couple of days ahead of me. I will be posting up another free chapter of The Maze's Amulet soon.

Bookshelf Analysis - Meme Me Me ME!

2011-07-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

To start things off, here is the video of the Nyan Cat:

Yes, watch the video. This video so far acquired more than TWO MILLION VIEWS! More than two million views, can you believe it? For a little toaster pastry cat trailing a rainbow, that's quite an achievement. And that's all it does. And it sings "Nyannyannyannyannyannyannyannyannyannyan..."

Whoa, almost fell into that. If you're one of of those people who saw the video, then check out this funny parody by Jacksfilms.

What this video is is a meme, which Wikipedia (Yeah, double check that) states is a style of behavior, idea, or behavior that spreads from person, to person, to person (Hence, this is why videos like these are called "viral videos."). As of this writing, several parodies and versions have sprouted from this adorable little cat in a toaster pastry spreading happy rainbows.

Bask in the weirdness, people:

So yeah, point being, even though some memes can be extremely annoying (Nyannyannyannyannyan!!! Make it stop!), they are very difficult to stop because it will get stuck in a person's head, and then it will transfer to another person. Memes are not new; they are ideas that spread like cells or viruses. The "host" would be a mindset, and then that mindset would change with the idea. Then the idea spreads and so on. Sometimes the idea changes over time for better or for worse, like the Nyan Cat being reinterpreted as Darth Nyan up above.

Kinda makes you think of creative, political, economic and other kinds of ideas being reinterpreted in different ways, don't you think?

Bookshelf Video - Associated Press Interview with Amanda Hocking

2011-06-28T21:00:00.001-07:00

Yes, there's some stuff I can learn from this eBook author.