Uber quick

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Monday 24th August
The Intersection - 12,763

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Review of Ray Garton - Bestial

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In horror movie-land sequels are pretty much a par for the course. You make a good horror film, it seems it only makes sense to go back and milk the idea a second time. In the world of horror books (note - not dark fantasy or paranormal romance, I mean HORROR) this has been less common. I'm not saying they don't exist - Graham Masterton's Manitou and James Herbert's Rats both started series - and sure you get books set in a repeated environs - take Gary Braunbeck's Cedar Hill short stories and novels, and Stephen King's version of Maine. But straight sequels, picking up the action from the end of the prior book or soon after, haven't filled the shelves in bookstores. I guess part of the reason for this is the rather final end that most horror books have. Zombies are destroyed, vampires staked, demons exorcised, witches burned etc, etc. Okay, Dracula can be resurrected over and over but mostly you get to the end and that's it. Recently though this seems ...
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Thoughts on writing to order

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I had an email today from an agent I'd submitted my science fiction novel Against the Fall of Empire to last year. The email was a rejection but one of the kindest ones I've ever seen. I'm not going to mention her name but I am going to quote from the email. Here's one sentence.  - I really enjoyed the first three chapters of your novel AGAINST THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE. I thought this was imaginative, well-written, gripping with strong and original characters. Sounds promising doesn't it? She said something similar (quoting character names about my horror novel (Mr. Stinky) when I submitted that to her earlier. The email (today's) continues by telling me I have chosen to write novels in two of the hardest genres to sell today. Just my luck eh? Well I wrote the ideas that came to me. The email did contain something that was hopeful. She mentioned that the market is looking for fantasy. Well I might just have a YA fantasy out these in the Patternmaker's D...
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I had absolutely no idea what this film would be like when I popped it into the DVD player. I'd never heard of it before I saw it on the shelf in the video store. I find that's often the best way. I've seen far too many films with pre-conceptions they just didn't live up to. Long Distance centres on a young woman called Nicole who one night dials a wrong number. Sounds innocent and safe enough, except the man that answers calls her back repeatedly. The following day she finds out he was calling from the house of a woman he'd just murdered. And now it seems she's the target of a killer's obsession. This is not a bad film at all. It manages to build a pretty decent level of suspense. Decent plotting, good direction and fair acting. But it does rather have a telegraphed ending. I'd imagine they were going for a serious twist here, one that might grip the viewer. The only problem I had was this "twist" was pretty obvious - which meant the ending wa...
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