Wednesday, October 31, 2012

2012 Movie Madness Challenge - October Report



Time for my tenth status report for the Movie Madness Challenge.

Here is my code for the films:

New to me - N
Repeat viewing - R

I'll also be including how I viewed the films:

DVD
VHS (yes, we have a lot of those, and a VCR)
Network TV
Pay TV
Internet
In theatre


The Phantom of the Opera
DVD
R



Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
DVD
R



Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory
DVD
R




Bedazzled (1967)
DVD
R



Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince
DVD
R





Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows I
DVD
R




Sixteen Candles
DVD
N




The Nightmare Before Christmas
VHS
R

 




An American Werewolf in London
DVD
R



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Total movies for October - 9

Total movies for 2012 - 80

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Movie Critic status!

Yeah, baby.



November is NaNoWriMo month, so I'm expecting my total to be a bit low next month. But that will give me December to hit 100 films before New Year's Eve strikes midnight.

I'm there. 


25 Movies: Movie Newbie

50 Movies: Movie Fanatic

75 Movies: Movie Critic

100+ Movies: Movie Master

Saturday, October 27, 2012

5 on Friday - Set 142




Travis at Trav's Thoughts invites everyone to lay down a short set of music that takes their fancies for his 5 on Friday meme.

My Spooky Stories Author series wrapped up here at A Piece of My Mind this week with:


If you missed the first three interviews, you can catch them here:




Halloween finally arrives next week. Happy Haunting to you! 

1 - Wicked Annabella - The Kinks



2 - The Witch Queen of New Orleans - Redbone



3 - Black Magic Woman - Santana


4 - Swamp Witch - Jim Stafford


5 - Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Thursday Thirteen - 251 - 13 Questions For Linda Poitevan, Author of The Grigori Legacy Series



Time for the fourth and final interview in my Spooky Stories Authors series here at A Piece of My Mind.

Here on the east coast, the leaves thin out in the trees and thicken on the ground while the world glows orange, gold and red. Cold creeps in, darkness comes early and in a few days the little ghosts and ghouls will haunt the streets with their treat bags. A perfect time to welcome fellow Canadian Linda Poitevin to my blog -- Linda, thanks for dropping by! 

1 – Your Grigori Legacy series is a hybrid of genres. What was the reaction from publishers when you pitched your idea?

A number of them were willing to take a look at the first book, SINS OF THE ANGELS, if I were willing to rewrite it as a paranormal romance.



Much as I love a good romance, however, this story just isn’t a happy-ever-after type and rewriting it as such would have been…well, just wrong, lol.

Needless to say, I was totally thrilled when the editor at Penguin USA saw the bigger picture and decided to give me a chance. J

2 – Tell us about your latest release, SINS OF THE SON.

SINS OF THE SON is the second installment in what will ultimately be a four-part series (I’m working on book 3, SINS OF THE RIGHTEOUS, now).

Your titles are great.

It picks up pretty much where SINS OF THE ANGELS leaves off, and delves much more deeply into the Heaven/Hell conflict that is spilling over into our world.

3 – When writing spooky material, do you ever scare yourself?

I’ve learned to never, ever write spooky scenes at night while I’m alone in the house…does that answer your question?

4 – Ha, ha...most definitely. I can't help but wonder if you read scary stories while growing up?

I most definitely did! My favourites were the “scary tales from the crypt” and “tales of terror” anthology types, along with the highly suspenseful Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy series…at least, they seemed suspenseful then! J

5 – LOL! For me, too! Not to mention sophisticated. I always loved the fact that she went out 'sleuthing'. Did you watch spooky TV shows or films when you were young?

I used to love having the living daylights scared out of me by those!

This was back in the dark ages, mind you, so we didn’t get a lot of television variety where I lived (two channels with a seemingly never-ending stream of sports…ugh).

The two movies that stand out most in my mind were Race with the Devil and Carrie, both of which I saw in the theatre. I never did work up the nerve to see Exorcist, lol.

6 –As a reader/viewer, do you prefer spooky/scary, or do you delve further into horror?

Though I’ve had readers tell me that some of my scenes border on horror, I’m afraid that spooky/scary is about as much as I can handle as a reader/viewer these days. Must be getting old or something… ;)

7 – If you had to name your top three supernatural creatures, what would they be?

Angels take top billing, of course, then dragons, then ghosts. I love witches, too, but don’t really consider them to be supernatural.

8 – Have you explored these character types in your fiction so far?

Only the angels, but these are early days in my writing career…I hope!

9 –I have no doubt! Are there some earthbound, everyday aspects of life that you find scary?

Too many to mention, honestly. I avoid watching the news because of it. Escapism, anyone?

10 – Where is the spookiest place you’ve ever been? What made it so scary?

The first house that my husband and I rented.

It had a bedroom in the basement that was painted entirely in red—ceiling, floors, walls, closet, everything (à la Amityville Horror)—and had a slide bolt on the outside of the door.

I swear there was something besides us living in that place *shudder*.

11 –That's pretty creepy. If you could be a fly-on-the-wall visitor in a setting from a spooky book, TV show or film, where would you go?

The television show Supernatural…for obvious reasons, I think. ;)

12--[insert Family Feud "Good answer!"]

Ooo, yeah. My Winchester obsession. You have incredibly good taste.

I want to thank you for visiting with all of us today. Before you go, why do you think people like to be scared in the first place?

I believe it’s at least partly for the adrenaline rush.

There’s nothing quite like a good scare to heighten the senses...and to make us appreciate the fact we’re alive after the fact!

13 –Linda is giving us a short excerpt from SINS OF THE SON. Enjoy!



Aramael didn’t move and a frisson of warning ran down Alex’s spine. If she didn’t put an end to this standoff, it was going to get ugly. No matter what Aramael’s reason for being here might be, he would never allow himself to be taken into custody. Couldn’t allow it.

Shooting a quick glance past him to where Henderson was beginning to look downright pissed, she pitched her voice low enough that only Aramael could hear. “You need to get out of here. Now.”
Aramael met her gaze over his shoulder. “I can’t.”

“Look,” she said through clenched teeth. “I get that you have an agenda of some kind, but neither one of us needs the kind of attention you’ll bring if you’re taken into custody. Now get the hell out of here while you can.”

Not that having him disappear into thin air would be much better, but at least he wouldn’t be around for questioning.

“You don’t understand,” he said, gray eyes boring into hers. “I can’t.”

“You—” She stopped. Stared at his shoulders. Willed herself to see them there, rising beyond him, flexed, powerful, iridescent with their golden fire. But there was nothing. Her gaze moved to his again.

“Your wings,” she whispered. “Aramael, what happened to your wings?”

© - Linda Poitevin


Friday, October 19, 2012

5 on Friday - Set 141





Travis at Trav's Thoughts invites everyone to lay down a short set of music that takes their fancies for his 5 on Friday meme.

My Spooky Stories Author series continues throughout October here at A Piece of My Mind.

If you missed the first three interviews, you can catch them here:




This week brings us to some truly classic spine-tingling compositions. Best enjoyed while walking through overgrown misty graveyards... 

1 - In the Hall of the Mountain King - composed by Edvard Grieg - performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra




2 - Ride of the Valkyries - composed by Richard Wagner - performed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra





3 - Night on Bald Mountain - composed by Modest Mussorgsky - performed by Leopold Stokowski's Symphony Orchestra





4 - Danse Macabre - composed by Camille Saint-Saens - performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski




5 - The Isle of the Dead, part I - composed by Sergei Rachmaninov - performed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra



Thursday, October 18, 2012

Thursday Thirteen - 250 - 13 Questions For Caleb Casey, Author of Now You'll Never Know




Having spent my early years in Michigan, it's a delight to have Michigan indie author Caleb Casey here today for the third in my Spooky Stories Authors series, running all month on Thursdays here at A Piece of My Mind. Welcome, Caleb!

1 – You’ve been working with the short story format so far. Do you see any novel-length works in your future?

I'm actually working on a novel-length project right now. Progress is slow – I'm just not very fast when it comes to writing – but I like what I have so far.

Many of my favorite books are short story collections and I like the form.

My husband's a big fan of horror anthologies.

It fits with my writing style, keeping things streamlined, keeping the story moving.

My novel-length project has the same kind of style and themes as my short fiction – bleak, dystopian, but with dark humor and a glimmer of hope – it just has more characters and more scenes.

2 – Tell us about your latest release, NOW YOU’LL NEVER KNOW: A COLLECTION OF STRANGE STORIES.

It's a collection of the first stories I've been able to finish.

It took years to complete. I'd been writing for fun for quite a while but something was missing and I don't know what it was. At some point it just clicked for me – like the combination of all the reading and writing I was doing flipped a switch – and I felt like I'd figured it out, how to tell a story effectively.

I was debating whether or not to send some of my short fiction out to magazines, see if anyone wanted to publish them, and then I saw what Amazon was doing with its Kindle Direct Publishing and opted for that route instead.




I took three stories I thought were closest to “finished” and published them as singles, and the goal was always to eventually finish the other stories and publish a collection. Some of the stories in NYNK I started many years ago. Only two of the stories from NYNK were written entirely this year.

The stories are often strange and bleak but with a lot of dark humor. What works for me is to incorporate some element of the supernatural or paranormal into an everyday place and situation.


3 – When writing spooky material, do you ever scare yourself?

I don't, but I do get caught up in some of the other emotions sometimes. I find the spooky stuff to be interesting rather than scary, usually.

4 –Did you read scary stories while growing up?

Actually, I started out reading Tolkien's THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS and similar fantasy stuff, and I got into reading scary stuff later on.

I took a year or two off from reading after college – I was burned out on it, after reading four or five novels per week for assignments

The same thing happened to me with movies after graduating from film school.

When I started up again I decided to try a Stephen King book (DREAMCATCHER, his latest at the time). From there, I started to check out other horror authors like Clive Barker, Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, Bentley Little, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, and now pretty much all I read is horror fiction.

Poppy Z. Brite's WORMWOOD, Barker's BOOKS OF BLOOD, and King's NIGHT SHIFT – all of which are short story collections – are three of my favorite books. My favorite novels are Jackson's WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE and Barker's THE HELLBOUND HEART. I'm also a big fan of Jackson's short fiction.

5 –LOL! I'm pretty sure my husband has every one of those.

Did you watch spooky TV shows or films when you were young?

I'm a big fan of The X-Files and the Tales From the Crypt TV show. I have an enormous collection of DVDs and literally hundreds of them are horror movies, and they represent a wide range of horror subgenres.

We do, too...

My favorite, one of the few that I find to be legitimately scary, is The Descent.

Here's a few of my other favorites: Planet Terror, the Evil Dead series, [Julia's interruption: "Give me some sugar, baby."] Feast, High Tension, Severance, Jeepers Creepers, Dead Alive, Sunshine, Hatchet, The Thing, Tremors, and Dead Snow. I like Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects and I thought his Halloween remake was solid. I loved Pan's Labyrinth but it's so bleak I've only been able to watch it once. Donnie Darko – great movie, one of my favorites – qualifies as “spooky,” right?

6 –Definitely! As a reader/viewer, do you prefer spooky/scary, or do you delve further into horror?

It depends on what mood I'm in.

I like a lot of different types of horror fiction. I like to read less overt horror stories, Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, where it's mostly psychological, a sense of dread behind everything, but I also like zombie movies, slasher flicks, sci-fi horror, creature features, all kinds of horror movies.

7 – If you had to name your top three supernatural creatures, what would they be?

I like things that are alien, not necessarily from outer space, just things that are strange or different, things that we don't know where they come from. I like stories that involve ghosts or hauntings. The concept of demons offers a lot of possibilities.

8 – Have you explored these character types in your fiction so far?

Quite a few of my stories involve things that are alien. There's the masked things from “The Insomniacs” and the strange co-workers from “Drones Like Us,” the humanoid creatures from “No Blood.” I prefer to use things that are strange, with their own set of rules, rather than using vampires and werewolves and things that people are already familiar with, although if I thought I had a new angle on one of those I would write it.

“The Demon Version” deals with demonic possession, exploring this question: If your friend was possessed, would you rush her to a church or a hospital like they do in the movies, or would you wait and see what it's like?

I haven't written a “ghost story” yet, but the project I'm working on now, one of its themes is living in a place that seems haunted, even though there aren't visible ghosts.

9 –That sounds goosebumpy. Are there some earthbound, everyday aspects of life that you find scary?

I wouldn't say scary, but I find a lot of everyday things to be strange.

Sometimes I wonder how people can do some of the things they do, ranging from the worst acts of physical cruelty to just general rudeness and a lack of compassion, greed for money, betrayal. Some of it's just beyond comprehension.

10 – Where is the spookiest place you’ve ever been? And what made it so scary?

When I was a baby, we lived in a house that had a haunted room.

Cool.

People swear to it. One story I heard, a person was trying to change a light bulb in there, reaching up in the dark, and feeling a hand grab theirs out of nowhere. Strange noises, strange breezes. My family moved out of that house while I was still very young.

11 –If you could be a fly-on-the-wall visitor in a setting from another author’s spooky story, where would you go?

Hill House, the haunted place from the Shirley Jackson novel.

12-Awesome choice.

Why do you think people like to be scared?

It can be an exhilarating sensation.

I think people like scary books and scary stories because you can explore strange and terrible places and people while staying in a safe environment. Get the sensation without the risk. You can close the book or turn off the TV if it gets to be too much.

13 –This is an excerpt from The Winged Things, one of the stories from NOW YOU’LL NEVER KNOW: A COLLECTION OF STRANGE STORIES. (People can currently download the whole story for free from Smashwords.)




Desmond won’t stop looking at me. His expression makes me think of creeps in trench coats who frequent XXX movie theatres.

I go into the kitchen, feeling my way past the furniture in the dim light, and see what the late Martin Howard has in his refrigerator. It’s still cool inside, and the touch of chilly air feels great on my face and chest; I allow myself to bask in it for a moment. What I would really like is an ice-cold Coke, but the only beverages available seem to be of the alcoholic variety. I grab a Corona.

Back in the living room, they’re still carrying on. Desmond’s eyes are on me and I can practically hear his bad thoughts.

“Hey honey, how about you bring me one of those?” he says. Ugly face, worse manners.

“Desmond, you’re a toad. Stop staring at me or I’ll break this bottle over your head.” I take a sip of cold beer.

Mrs. Prendergast, evidently overhearing our stimulating conversation, sees the beer in my hand and gasps, an exaggerated look of shock on her face. Her eyeglasses are large, round, and thick. She has the pointy face of a turtle.

“You’re drinking Marty’s beer?” She does her best to sound mortified. Seems a little forced.

“He doesn’t need it anymore.” It’s a response that only a jerk would use, I guess, but Mrs. Prendergast has been getting on my nerves ever since we came into this house.

What happened to Mr. Howard wasn’t pretty.

The winged things tore him apart.

People were gathered outside, looking up at the sky, talking, obviously scared. The black clouds above us were tinged with crimson; the sky looked like the inside of an active volcano. Someone – the guy who lived next door to me, Mason, a bald guy, mailman, I think – was trying to start his Jeep, no luck. He opened the hood and started tinkering around. The others in the street had nothing interesting to say, foolishness about the power coming back on soon and “everything’s going to be fine if we just stay calm.”

That’s when the winged things came…

They appeared on roofs and in between houses; they crawled from behind bushes and trees. We heard the flapping of huge leathery wings, like an invasion of man-sized bats. The “just stay calm” plan got chucked right into the trash when the first winged thing shrieked. It was loud. Others joined in. The things seemed to be surrounding us, inching closer, some crawling on all fours like wolves, teeth bared. People started babbling in a mad panic. I looked back and saw one of the winged things near my front door.

Lovely apocalypse we’re having, I thought.



I'm over at The Popculturedivas today, remembering Walter Carsen, the incredibly passionate patron of the ballet company I adore. 


Friday, October 12, 2012

5 on Friday - Set 140




Travis at Trav's Thoughts invites everyone to lay down a short set of music that takes their fancies for his 5 on Friday meme.

I'm already two weeks into my Spooky Stories Author series here at A Piece of My Mind, so my sets for the rest of October are going to be all-Halloween, all the time.

If you missed the first two interviews, you can catch them here:



The tone for this week begins with unchecked madness and spirals into the hell that follows... 

1 - Crazy - Gnarls Barkley




221st Century Schizoid Man - King Crimson



3All the Madmen - David Bowie





4 - Riders on the Storm - The Doors




5 - Home by the Sea - Genesis