Monday, January 30, 2012

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Just got done watching it and while it may not be horror it is science fiction and I like it just a bit less than horror. The movie was fuckin' awesome. *Spoiler Alert* just for anyone that hasn't seen it yet, I'll try not to give much away.

It is a true origin story and yes it does have plenty of story. But never felt slow, always had you hungry for more story and back story to the events of the other movies. It builds from the first scene, getting more and more awesome until you just want to see some monkey carnage and then... they give it to you! This is the first movie in a while I have actually gotton everything I wanted, not even expected, just simply wanted. With the end of the movie I can't wait for the next one and to see what they will call it. maybe, "Planet of the Apes: Guerilla Warfare." Or maybe even more precise, "Planet of the Apes: Fuck Shit UP!"
I watched mine on Vudu because its extremely conveniant. If by chance you have a sudden urge to watch the movie after my raving review then its the impulse buyers delight haha.

More packing tommarow, leaving town tommarow night, peace.

Tafe

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Update and Review

Just want to let everyone know that I will be missing for a little while. Tommarow the movers will be here, Tuesday we will be going to my girls grandparents to stay until we go to Florida and then on a cruise, and after all of that shitmwe will be moving to the new house and dealing with all the fun that comes with a new house. I will post when I can and write plenty without any Internet so I should have plenty to update when I get going again. So I leave with a review. Enjoy.


Review:
Nightjack by Tom Piccirilli.

This is the first book I have read from this author and hadn't really heard a whole lot about him prior to reading Nightjack. I saw the awesome cover and saw the name "jack" (the ripper) in the synopsis and bought it immediately.
It starts out pretty strong, well paced with pretty good diologue and a bit of action. Unfortunately after about the first quarter it gets a bit slow, taking the characters on a long road trip basically where not much happends. It took me a while to get through this part, picking up my kindle and reading 5-8 pages at a time. I didn't really think it would pick up, and if it did, I didn't think it would really peak my interest.
In the last 15% it finally does, revealing a concept that I really wish I would have thought of haha. And the rest is pretty good. I did like how the book was all kind of abstract, things the characters say and do are crazy and can be interpreted in a lot of ways.
Bottom line. I liked it. Isn't one of my favorites but I did enjoy it for the most part. 3 stars and a stamp of "put on your read list" from me.

Thanks guys, see ya in a month.

Tafe

Thursday, January 26, 2012

My hard drive lives!

As I posted recently, my MacBook ceased to live back in November and I thought all of my unpacked data was lost. Primarily my first few rough chapters of ZAMN. Well I got my hard drive encasement today and after a little Jerry rigging, it lives! I'm happy as hell and tidying everything up plus clouding it all just in case. Fuck yeah!

Haha, Tafe

Keep it simple?

Which do you notice more when looking for a book? The cover? The binding? Or do you go straight for the synopsis on the back of the book or for an ebook, scroll down a little?
Personally, if I am in a book store I will scan the shelves for a binding that catches my eye. Scanning for names or titles or even the backdrop on the binding will stop me. Online, however, is completely different. Amazon's "customers also bought" is a infinite yellow brick road that will take you all over a variety of genres but will generally give you things that spark your interest,at least enough to read the whole synopsis.

Now to more to the point of my post title. Simplicity. If the cover is too busy or too graphic novel looking it is kind of, for me anyway, a turn off. When it is too busy the thumbnail view is normally way to small to make anything out and most (not all) are a sloppy mess. Meshing too many topics or characters from the story (that you wouldn't know anything about) and then trying to squeeze the title of the book somewhere into the chaos. As for why I don't like graphic novel looking covers... Not really sure haha. I guess I buy books to read books, nothing but a treasure trove of words on a page, and I buy graphic novels to let the pictures tell me a story with a little dialogue. Basically my reason is rooted in shit but it's only my opinion.

Even my own Inner Horror's cover is a little busy for me. The two ideas I have in my head are much simpler but conveyed everything I want them too. I am just hopeless at any sort of drawing so I did what I could for a cover. I really wish I had that amazing artistic talent, even tried hard a couple times, my mother was a painter in college even! But I still draw stick figures most of the time.

Title is another eye catcher. Has to look good in text, has to fit nicely on the cover, has to be what you want it too without being so long that people lose interest before the damn thing. I find it funnier than hell when a books title looks more like a run on sentence, four word long title with a five word series name right behind it in parenthesis. Really? Keep it simple! I love it when books don't even have a series name, sure you have to do an extra search to figure out which book is first in the series or if the book has a sequel when your done reading it but if your going to put the trouble in then you probably loved the book! Hell, a single word title without an series name behind it is like a statement by the author, "your going to love this book so much you are going to wiki my ass just to find the sequel!"
Case and point for me was David Moody's "Hater." I had been looking around on barrens and nobles website, browsing out of boredom, making a list of books I might buy in the coming months. Stumbled upon a book with a glossy white backdrop cover with beautiful deep red blood splatter on it. Not a whole lot, but definitely enough. And "Hater" written in blood. I barely needed to read the synopsis, I wanted it. It went on my list and went forgotten for a few months until my mother in law got it for me for my birthday, (she saw the cover and the name. It's cool. She knows there's something wrong with me haha.) I read it in two days and the moment I put it down I looked for the sequel. Same cover scheme, more blood with the title "Dog Blood" on it. Bad ass book. Enough said.

Now off of my tangent, I'll continue to the last thing most readers will look at before buying your book, the synopsis. If if I scroll down and there is two thick paragraphs for a synopsis, the cover wasn't that great, and the title didn't light a spark in my head, then I am already clicking the back button. Some people like too know every plot point before jumping into a book, I do not. Give me an outline, If I like it then I will show faith in the author that the book is probably pretty cool. Some authors will just put a few lines. "jack ran from the zombies to find his wife. Jack couldn't find his wife so killed some zombies in a rage. Jack found his wife, she was a zombie, so he killed her too!" hahahaha. A synopsis like that is cool too, short quick and to the point, let's me know enough about the story to decide if I want too spend a few bucks on it. Especially if you have read the author before and like his work.


These three things are the biggest factors on whether a reader will buy your book, sure I left out a few tid bits like adding a word count or having a trademark character name instead of a series name after the title. And all of this shit is just my opinion, but I think most readers would agree with me. People love simplicity when shopping online or in stores. Leave the complex twists and turns for the pages. I've made this post ridiculously long and I'll have to send people donuts or some shit if they manage to read up to this point haha. Thanks for reading,

Tafe

Monday, January 16, 2012

Side note

On a side note to last nights post I am also working on a new sadistic bastard of a character I am thoroughly enjoying writing about. So while I work on Inner Horror's revamp I will also be working on a small novel that is coming together with ease. I will most likely post all of it on here before putting it on the kindle store so stay tuned!

Tafe

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Back Up And... Crawling.

Hello to everyone that may still poke onto my blog, and thanks for staying loyal in my prolonged absense. My computer kinda died, and by that I mean got fed up with being dropped and will no longer boot up haha. With it went most of my notes, which were mostly backed up to one extent to another but I did lose what I was working on (ZAMN) and I am pretty pissed about that. But shit happends and It lasted me a steady three years before it got tired of me.

Now, after going a few months without any computer at all in any shape or form, I bought a Ipad with a nice little keyboared, that I am using to write this post with, (Not the easiest to hold in your lap and type with a keyboared but I think I'm getting the hang of it.) I have had some time to start reading recently, (Nightjack, by Tom Piccirilli) and after picking over my own Inner Horror a little bit I see how badly it needs a good proofread. Hopefully I will start posting a little more, even if it is just some stupid shit that I thought was a bit above interesting, I want to get my blog going again. And maybe my twitter, or maybe I should leave it alone since I seem to get followers by keeping my mouth shut haha.

Like always, Talk to me if your a new Indie or just a fan of horror novels, (maybe a fan of MY novel? Do I even have Fans with my book of horrid typos? Haha.)

Peace for now,
Tafe