In the mean time: Book Reviews

Sorry about the radio silence folks. Stac and I have been concentrating on getting the podcast recorded. You know what sucks? Trying to schedule two very busy women together on Skype, that's what sucks. If I was a shut in, this wouldn't be a problem. Luckily it looks like we'll be recording this week and releasing next week. We'll be sure to announce it.

So in the mean time, here's some book recommendations to sling at ya!



Under The Dome

I finished the epic book that was Under The Dome last night. And you know what? I really enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed it more than I should since most things I've heard about it were mixed at best. But I have to admit, its up there as one of my favorite Stephen King novels I've read. Actually its one of the most engrossing novels I've read so far this year. Sir Stephen does an great job creating a thick tapestry of characters and interweaving story lines in this disaster tale. While at heart its definitely a Sci-Fi story, the atrocities presented in it are on par with any horror novel. I found myself comparing it to the "A Song of Fire and Ice" series by George R.R. Martin, but set in modern times. If you like a story with a huge interesting cast and a ton of power struggles, this one is up your alley. Plus it has one of the best villains I've every read, Big Jim Rennie, a man you LOVE to hate. I also have to give Sir Stephen some credit here for the female characters in this book. They are some tough and strong bitches, my favorite being Julia Shumway, the cynical and sharp newspaper editor.
As I stated earlier in another post, I sense the impending film adaptation of Under The Dome on the horizon. And I hope hope HOPE that they forgo a movie and instead do a seven part miniseries on HBO or Showtime or ANY pay cable network. There is so much detail to this story that it can't be told in an hour or two. And the horrors that happen really need to happen in full out gore and uncensored glory to get the point across that these people are fucked.
This book made me want to go back and read The Stand again to compare and contrast. There are a lot of parallels between the two, only Under the Dome is on a much smaller scale.
HIGHLY recommended.




Truthseekers: Welcome to Blackriver and Truthseekers II: Birthright

I mentioned my friend Rob St. Martin, in an article a while back and I skimmed over his books really quick in the article. Therefore I felt I need to come back and give a little more detail on what I consider crack. I'm sure none of you have heard of either of these books or of this author before. This is probably because his novels have been self published. And while Rob is a dear friend of mine, I really wouldn't bother posting an article on these books if I didn't think they were worth the read.
Truthseekers and Truthseekers II are young adult novels. I would not call them out and out horror novels, they have a lot of supernatural elements and creeptastic moments. But don't let that stop you from picking them up. The writing and story lines were sophisticated enough to keep my 34 year old brain entertained. The Truthseekers series follows a young woman, Ashley, who's parents were brutally murdered and she is sent to a small town of Blackriver to live with her cousin. And Blackriver? Well its kind of a strange, STRANGE place. The first book is comprised of many short stories about Ashely and her new friends confronting the weird and wild. While there is a bit of a threw line, each story stands alone very well. Mr. Rob writes a cast of very endearing characters and twists cliched elements such as vampires, ghosts, and cults to feel very fresh and new. I also have to commend him for writing teenage females like real teenage females. He never goes into the vapid girls constantly worrying about their make-up and kissing boys territory and truly gets into the mind of a young woman at that sensitive age. Granted, the Make-up and kissing boys are there but its not the ONLY thing that is there. Props to you Mr. Rob. Not many men can do that. And while sometimes the story feels like its meandering at times, it always picks itself back up and gets right back on track.
Truthseekers II: Birthright is a continuation of the story of Ashley and the gang. Personally I enjoyed this one more. The writing was tighter and the storyline that Mr. Rob is creating is becoming more and more relevant, making it feel much more like a novel and less like a short story anthology. And while the book will appeal to the younger set, he never ever dumbs down the threats and scares. Its not an out and out gore fest but it has a lot of suspense and some great creativity. Also, it has a battle of the bands where our leading lady shames someone in song....which is the only way I'd want to shame someone. Now that the summer months are approaching, these books would be perfect to pick up. Both are quick reads, perfect to put down then pick right back up again and fall into the story head on.
Truthseekers III: Level Up has finally been released and I am eagerly awaiting my copy.
Another high reccomend.

Carnival of Souls Review: the Sleep Deprived Edition

I went to bed at 4 am this morning, and was up just before 9 am. I convinced myself that some perv had been in my black as, uh, night, yard, watching me masturbate (hey, it's my house; I can touch myself in it all I want). So every time I heard anything I was convinced some psycho was in my house, waiting for me to fall asleep so s/he/it could butcher me and use my tits as a frighteningly realistic t-shirt. What I'm taking too long and sharing too much to tell you is that this may not be the most lucid movie review of my personal catalog. There will also be SPOILERS. You were warned!

This is a gorgeous poster; I plan on some day having a copy. Word of note, however: at no point does Candace Hilligoss dress up in what appears to be a Romanian peasant girl costume barely held over her nipples with double sided tape. And I'm pretty sure she wears a bra through the whole film; hope I didn't ruin anything for you.

This is a spooky little movie, unquestionably. I'd seen it once before, but it had been so long that I needed a refresher to realize this really is a quiet little gem, waiting to be watched. This movie was shot for 17,000$, and even in 1962 that's a pretty piddling amount. This movie used its resources wisely, and went for style and atmosphere over flash; ultimately a brilliant choice.

In its basic form, this movie it a ghost story. A woman, Mary (Candace Hilligoss, who is amazingly beautiful), is in a violent car accident that results in the whole car she's in being swept off of the bridge it's on, and into a flood-staged river below. For several hours a retrieval squad drags the river, trying to pull the car up, but the water is too wild and high; discouragement is setting in, rapidly. To the group's surprise, a figure is seen straggling out of the river: Mary has emerged, but is disoriented and uncommunicative. There is no sign of the other two young women.

Feel for this woman; that water looked cold.

Showing early on how strong her force of will is, as well as how cold and abrupt she comes off to others, Mary is stubbornly insisting she's fine the day after her accident. She has a job waiting for her as a church organist, in Utah; apparently in the 1960's you could go to college for organ playing. At my campus all of the organ playing appears to be extracurricular. (C'mon, you'd have been disappointed if I hadn't put in a wang joke, and you know it.) Phallic puns aside, it's nice to know that in Kansas in the early 1960's you could be young, blond, and pretty, and major in Old Lady. Seriously; have you ever seen a church organist under the age of 110? So off Mary goes, and her personal haunting begins in the drive down.

This place was moderately creepy even when it was in use and not a salt-caked wreck.

Two images become iconic almost simultaneously: the Pale Man (played by the director, Herk Harvey, with frightening proficiency), and the ruined pavilion Saltair, next to the Great Salt Lake. At some point I am going to do a blog entry solely based around this ruin; this movie has one of the best uses of a pre-existing locale ever. This place was a marvelous husk (sadly the version in this movie was burned down in the 1970's. It's been abandoned, destroyed, and rebuilt so many times it seems like it's got its own ghosts to contend with). Apparently the existence of this quiet ruin is the whole purpose that this movie ever got made-- Herk Harvey, who did educational shorts for the extent of his career save for this diversion, was location scouting and found the place. Something about it drew at him, and he collaborated with another Centron employee, John Clifford, who wrote the screenplay.

Want to see this leering at you in the middle of the night? Yeah, neither did Mary.

Through the extent of the film we see how Mary's world is getting stranger and stranger, more disconnected from everyone else around her. More and more often she's seeing the Pale Man. He is pursuing her with an obsession that is disease-like; his presence in her life is tainting everything around her, sickening the tiny, isolated world she lives in. More and more she sees images of a dance of the Dead, out in the ruined pavilion, and frequently the Pale Man's dance partner in this frenetic whirl under the decayed decorations is Mary herself.

There is no happy ending here: the Pale Man and the other dancers eventually do catch Mary, and sweep her away as she screams. The next morning officials are commenting that her car is abandoned there at the ruins, and you can see in the sand where she ran and fell, but no other footprints. Where she fell is where she disappeared. Then the final shot cuts back up to Kansas, where the strange, solitary woman was originally from. After all this the car has been found, and the recovery men are in the process of winching it out of the water. There are three women in the car; Mary is one of them. A ghost, haunting even herself.

I also want to take a moment, and appoint some form of award for what has got to be THE sleaziest character in the whole of cinema: Mary's neighbor, John Linden. Seriously, this guy is SO skeevy he seems to leave a palpable haze of scum on the film itself. The man peeps-- and gets all hot and bothered when he sees Mary, clad in a towel the size of a queen bed sheet, put on her old lady frumpy robe, and then drop the towel. You literally see no more of her than the back of her neck, but by gum, that lady's NEKKID under that robe that goes to her calves!

This man probably has the words "date rape" on his body, formed there from birth, much like Damien's 666 in The Omen.

If only he'd had internet porn; then he could have been a creepy shut in spanking it to guro and bestiality pokemon fanfiction instead of trying to molest poor, confused dead girls.

I have no idea why this is creepy, but it really, really is.

Herk Harvey, as I said, did educational shorts; this was his only foray into feature film making.That's too bad, because this one example is truly a classic. Many of his shorts, however, were soundly mocked by Joel, Mike, and the 'Bots on MST3K. Talk about career extremes, both of them wonderful, in my opinion!

My final note is this: there was a loose remake of this made in 1998. While the actors were all solid, this movie is absolute CRAP and should be avoided at all costs. AT ALL COSTS. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

Over all, this is a beautiful, eerie movie, and you should do yourself a favor and see it if you've not had a chance before. It's in the public domain so I'm sure there are a million places online to see it, so seek it out.

See? That wasn't so bad! Started out with masturbation, ended with a recommend! We all win!

Time-Life The Enchanted World: Ghosts

I am a legitimate, to the bone product of the 1980's. I watched Transformers and G.I Joe, He-Man, and even She-Ra though I hated her and possibly thought her twin brother was hawt. But some of the staples of my childhood in that most neon-colored of decades have been forgotten, and I am here to remind you of them, starting with a book series that my mom got: Time-Life Books "The Enchanted World" series. Anyone else remember these? Here's the commercial, to stir the blood into remembrance, as it were:





We had a ton of these; my mother is the progenitor of my morbid streak, though she's much less open about it than yours truly. I LOVED these books when I was a kid; I was about five years old or thereabouts when Mom started getting them. If I begged enough she might read pieces of it aloud to me as I played in the backyard and she worked on her tan. I started out just looking at the pictures, then eventually reading the captions and little stories told in the margins; by the time I was in high school I knew my favorites cover to cover.

For years I tried to talk Mom into letting me have them-- I doubt seriously they've been read all that much since I left home, but she would never give them to me. It's like that damn Monster Mash record, all over again.

Until I finally just found my own on eBay, my sister and I would slap the SHIT out of each other over who got this album when Mom died. We're a delightful bunch.

Most of my friends didn't remember these books at all, probably because it was a mail-away deal, not something you could just impulse buy at the local book store. Those who did usually only had Witches and Wizards, the first volume in the series. Mom has at least ten of these volumes, which was apparently unusual.

I wanted to read these books again so badly, but didn't want to pay God knows how much on eBay. Compounding the problem, I didn't know the name of the series (The Enchanted World). Doing a search online for a book called Ghosts usually ends up about how you'd imagine it would. But one day Bevin, my frequent (and often unwilling) partner in crime (as opposed to Cins, who is ALWAYS willing to shit stir) and I lucked out one day whilst shopping in Seattle. We went to Half Price Books, a store whose very existence makes me ridiculously happy, when a familiar brown cover (Magical Beasts) caught my eye as I was heading upstairs to look for more glorious girl-smut to add to my forever expanding library. The book was on the very top of a tall shelf, unnoticed for who knows how long; only reason I saw it was because it just happened to be at eye level with my head at the right angle when I was on one specific step. Between myself and Bevin (she bought Water Spirits, I bought almost all of the rest) we decimated that shelf. I got almost all of my favorites (still need Gods and Goddesses and Water Spirits) and a few other my mom doesn't have. Several of them are of a decidedly spooky bent, and perfect for this blog and the upcoming season!

My favorite as a kid was Ghosts. Simple, elegant, freaky as Hell's own gate. I would haul this out every time I had a sleep-over; great fodder for scaring the piss out of myself as well as my poor victim, usually one of my best friends, D.J. Heh. I'll have to remind her of that.

Skeleton or not, I'd still kiss him. With tongue, all lickory like! Painted by Horace Vernet.

This book is so very cool and creepy; the cover alone was enough to give myself the chills, and more than once, even as a teen, I had to put the book away when home alone because I'd unnerved myself. I self-medicated with My Little Ponies. (True fact: Cins was a My Little Pony in a former life! I was a witch.)

The book utilized a wide variety of artistic talent-- in researching this, I made some surprising discoveries. I also discovered that other than cover pictures, you can't find SHIT for these books. So I took photos; I could have scanned but eh, I'm lazy.

Click any of the pictures below for size GIGANTIC, so you can read the text on some of 'em!

This is just the flyleaf. There are three or four of them like this; how effing scary is that?! Painted by John Jude Palincar.

There's a lot of tricks like these in this book, and freaking LOVE it. Book credits this to Yvonne Gilbert.

This is one of the pictures I "hid" from; didn't like to actually look at it, as it were. Called the Ankou, a representative of Death in Bretagne (Brittany). Credited to Mark Langeneckert.

This is from the story titled as The Hooded Congregation, a story from Sweden. Scariest Christmas eeeeever. This and several other contributions in this book was done by Chris Van Allsburg, the artist who wrote and drew The Polar Express, Jumangi, and Zathura! I find it hilarious that I knew this guy's work from this; we never owned any of his children's books.

"Clattering on the staircase and howling in the hall, ghosts known as screaming skulls terrorized anyone who sought to displace them from the houses that once had been theirs." (pgs 58-9) Painted by John Jude Palencar.

This snippet is the reason my younger brother and I don't like to go near random wooden stakes in the ground. Seriously. Painted by Marshall Arisman.


Does this really need words? Painted also by Marshall Arisman.

One of my favorite ghost stories of all time, painted by Judy King Rieniets.

The Wife's Revenge; if my husband poisoned me and drove me to suicide he'd be lucky if the least he got was a haunting. Created by Kuniyoshi, a famous Japanese artist who was born in the 18th century. Old school horror!


She sees you. Everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. Go check under the table cloth. G'wan. Have a peek. Painted by Gary Kelley.

Remember the story of the bride who wanted to play hide and seek at her wedding reception? Yeah, they found her. Eventually. I'm gonna play trick-or-treat at my wedding reception just to see the uneasy looks on everyone's faces. Painted by Rick McCollum.

These books are pretty prevalent online for those interested in checking a few out. I love them and recommend them to everyone; you can get the whole set (all TWENTY ONE volumes) for about 150$, which breaks down to pretty minimal per book. Not bad for something that originally retailed in 1985 for 15$. A lot of people are selling the books individually, too, and your local library might have some to flip through; I know ours does.

Go forth! Read and better yourselves! Now please excuse me, this took me hours to write, I'm sure you have eye strain, and I need a shower.

Jane Austin Does Dead Folk

Rawr rawr rawr! Rawr. *munch munch* Rawr.

I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies some time ago, and decided, compliments of an irritating person I know, to post my review here. This is a person who routinely proves herself a moron; she read part of this book and panned it, and since she irritates the FUCK out of me I decided to post my opinions of the story. I feel slightly more qualified to do so since A. I like zombies, B. I love Jane Austin, and C. I actually read the entire fucking book.

First off, I enjoy Jane Austin; I read the original version of this tale of my own volition several years ago. This is still that book, but with some scenes changed and some new ones added. Mostly of people "politely vomiting into their hands" and brain chomping.

It was fucking aces.

We are here to dance and to whup ass. And our dance cards have all been filled!

This is still a comedy of manners, as is the original story; if you hate Jane Austin you will not like this book. I personally find the hair-pullingly stringent rules for manners hilarious in conjunction with dealing with the undead; it's impolite to show ankle, but what about when you're beheading the flesh-chomping menace at a country assembly? Enter the Bennet sisters, ass-kickers extraordinaire and sisters in need of rich husbands.

There is still the love story between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy (I know, isn't that an awesomely horrible first name? No wonder he went by Mr. the whole story.) with some hilarious changes. Mr. Darcy actually proposes to Elizabeth Bennet twice; she refuses him the first time because he basically says "Hey, I know your family is awful and horrible, but despite the fact that I'm a better person that all of you, let's get hitched!" Not surprisingly Miss Bennet tells Fitz where to put it. However, in this version she says no by roundhouse kicking him into the fire place mantel, chipping the marble as well as Mr. Darcy's skull. It was AWESOME. It's even funnier when I picture the cast from the 1995 BBC miniseries; Jennifer Ehle kicking the crap out of Colin Firth will make me laugh, every time!

Another hilarious bit is a take on the novel's classic battle of wills between Elizabeth and Lady Catherine de Burgh; this time there are ninjas involved. And the eating of a heart, but not by a zombie. I enjoyed both equally!

True love and ass-kicking: all any woman wants in life.

Eventually Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy find happiness and are united; the more despicable characters in the book definitely get theirs, which is EXCELLENT as they escape mostly unscathed in the original. Mr. Wickham, your basic pig, runs off with Lydia, Elizabeth's sister, in both versions. In this version however, he is caught by Mr. Darcy, forced to marry Lydia, and then has every bone in his body broken, rendering him a bed-ridden invalid for the rest of his life. As he's a prick I was very happy to see him get his comeuppance. Incidentally, in the picture above the zombies are attacking cauliflower; they think they are brains, and it easy to use the veggie as bait. But you have to admit, those moldering relics from hell look cute as the dickens eating those starch loads!

Over all, I loved this book. It's funny, still has the romance of the original, and is illustrated, as I have demonstrated above. For me, Regency England mixed with martial arts and the walking dead is an irresistible combination; it's so silly it borders on DaDaism, and God above knows that I am a walking receptacle of the silly.

Yes, before you ask, I AM going to read Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters when it comes out.