I do love Pixar movies. (Who doesn’t?) Here are trailers for their next two movies…
… INSIDE OUT…
… and THE GOOD DINOSAUR
Author: Civilian Reader
Trailer: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION
I have a real soft-spot for the Mission: Impossible movies. This trailer for the next instalment in the franchise makes it look like it’ll be a lot of fun. In cinemas in July 2015.
New Books (May-June)
Featuring: Judy Blume, Nick Brown, Jack Campbell, Lincoln Child, Ernest Cline, Nathan Garrison, Mat Johnson, Stephen King, Jessica Knoll, Douglas Lain, Mark Lawrence, Aidan Levy, Jason Matthews, Naomi Novik, Matthew Palmer, Ron Perlman, Alexandra Petri, Loren Rhoads, Christopher Robinson, Neal Stephenson, Corey Taylor Continue reading
Interview with MIKE BROOKS
Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Mike Brooks?
Starting with a hard one, eh?
I’m currently thirty-three, but I tend to change my age every year. I’m British. I enjoy a select few video games, a select few Games Workshop games, walking in the countryside, watching football (soccer), MMA and nature/science documentaries, and playing guitar and singing in a punk band called Interplanetary Trash Talk. I also DJ occasionally, usually at the request/tolerance of the Rock Society of Nottingham Trent University, from which I graduated in 2003. I am, as you might expect, a massive fan of fantasy and science-fiction in various media.
I’m politically left-leaning, and it’s arguable whether that’s cause or effect of me working with the homeless for over ten years. I have little fear of public speaking or performance, but can struggle to make conversation one-to-one. I have difficulty in recognising or recalling faces, and would be much more comfortable in the world if everyone walked around with their name floating next to their head. I’ve been married for eight years. I go out of my way to say hello to cats.
Your debut novel, Dark Run, will be published by Del Rey this week in the UK. How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?
I would introduce it as a science-fiction adventure featuring interplanetary smugglers, intrigue, revenge and an awful lot of treachery. You don’t need a physics degree to understand the science, it’s not so grimdark that you can’t see the walls, but there’s a lot of action and hopefully a fair bit of humour. People keep describing it as ‘fun’, and I’ll take that.
It is indeed part of a series – or at least, that’s the plan. The sequel Dark Sky is coming out in November, and after that… well, I’ve got plans, but the best-laid plans of mice and men seldom coincide. We’ll see what the future brings (hopefully a contract for more books). Continue reading
Guest Post: “On Writing – I do it My Way” by Sue Tingey
I would imagine if you ask half a dozen writers about how they get their ideas and how they go about putting them down on paper you would get a half a dozen different answers. For me, it changes from project to project. On the whole though, there are certain definites to my writing regime and process.
I try to be disciplined about my writing as that’s the only way it works for me. I write every weekday morning without fail from 7 a.m. until 8.30 a.m., and sometimes later when I’ve got caught up in a scene and forgotten the time. Fortunately I have a very supportive boss – at least he hasn’t sacked me yet! In these one and a half hours I re-read and edit the work I wrote the previous day to get me back into the flow and then I aim for a count of between 700 and 1000 words. If I manage more, I’m happy. If I write less than 700 – well, let’s not go there. Meeting the daily word count keeps me focused and if I wasn’t so strict on myself I would probably flounder and not get anything finished. Continue reading
Guest Post: “Juggling YA and Adult Fantasy Writing” by David Hair
I read a bit of everything (except romance), but fantasy has always been my big love. I blame that on my introduction to Tolkien at an impressionable (teen-)age. Since then, I’ve been through all of the usual suspects as I explored this amazing genre. I knew I wanted to write a genre novel, but it took a while to overcome a lack of confidence, and a lack of time.
What excited me most were epic fantasies: big juicy stories with apocalyptic plot-lines, huge casts and many complex threads, and a whole imagined world to explore. When I did find time to write however, my best idea happened to be better suited to a teenage/YA audience. Growing up in New Zealand, the son of a truck driver who thought nothing of driving his family for hours to visit friends and relatives, I saw a lot of the countryside. Being enamoured of mythology and history, as I stared out of the windows, I began to populate the landscape with historical places and mythic creatures. The result was The Bone Tiki, which won Best First Book at the New Zealand Children’s Book awards in 2009, and had some commercial success. That opened up the opportunity for me to write sequels, the sum of which (six books) collectively became known as The Aotearoa Series. I wrote most of those books while living in New Delhi, India. My wife works for Immigration New Zealand, and was posted to India for four years. Whilst there, I also wrote The Return of Ravana, a four book YA series set in India. Continue reading
Review: IT’S SO EASY (AND OTHER LIES) by Duff McKagan (Touchstone)
A superb memoir of Guns ‘n’ Roses and more
A founding member of Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver — and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee — shares the story of his rise to the pinnacle of fame and fortune, his struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction, his personal crash and burn, and his phoenix-like transformation.
IN 1984, AT THE AGE OF TWENTY, Duff McKagan left his native Seattle — partly to pursue music but mainly to get away from a host of heroin overdoses then decimating his closest group of friends in the local punk scene. In L.A. only a few weeks and still living in his car, he answered a want ad for a bass player placed by someone who identified himself only as “Slash.” Soon after, the most dangerous band in the world was born. Guns N’ Roses went on to sell more than 100 million albums worldwide.
In It’s So Easy, Duff recounts Guns’ unlikely trajectory to a string of multiplatinum albums, sold-out stadium concerts, and global acclaim. But that kind of glory can take its toll, and it did — ultimately — on Duff, as well as on the band itself. As Guns began to splinter, Duff felt that he himself was done, too. But his near death as a direct result of alcoholism proved to be his watershed, the turning point that sent him on a unique path to sobriety and the unexpected choices he has made for himself since.
I really enjoyed this book. Despite being a huge Guns ‘n’ Roses fan (my first CD was Use Your Illusion I), McKagan’s story was mostly unknown to me. The first music magazine I ever bought was an issue of Hit Parader which included a long interview with and feature on McKagan and his music, but beyond that I don’t believe I’ve read anything else about him. After finishing Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself, I wanted to read another music biography, and this one came highly recommended. I can certainly see why: it’s gripping, extremely well-written, sometimes amusing, and brutally honest. Continue reading
Review: UNDER GROUND by S.L. Grey (Macmillan)
A fast-paced, slow-burn thriller
They thought they were safe…
A global outbreak of a virus sends society spinning out of control. But a small group of people have been preparing for a day like this. Grabbing only the essentials, they head to The Sanctum, a luxury self-sustaining underground survival facility where they’ll shut themselves away and wait for the apocalypse to pass.
All the residents have their own motivations for buying into the development. A mix of personalities, they are strangers separated by class and belief, all of them hiding secrets. They have only one thing in common: they will do anything to survive.
The doors close, locked and secured with a combination that only one man knows. It’s the safest place they could be. Nothing could go wrong. They’re ready for anything…
But when a body is discovered, they realize that the greatest threat to their survival may be trapped in The Sanctum with them.
“S.L. Grey” is the critically-acclaimed writing partnership between Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg. I haven’t read their previous novel, The Mall, which received rave reviews. This latest novel is a (perhaps oxymoronically) fast-paced slow-burn thriller. A relatively slim novel (under 300 pages), after the cast are gathered at the Sanctum, things quickly spiral out of control, and all hell breaks loose. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Under Ground, but I knew from past experience with Lotz’s writing that it would at least be very good. I wasn’t disappointed — this is a gripping, briskly-paced novel of psychological suspense and the fragility of social norms. Continue reading
Guest Review: TRAITOR’S BLADE by Sebastien de Castell (Jo Fletcher Books)
Another perspective on the first Greatcoats novel
The King is dead, the Greatcoats have been disbanded, and Falcio Val Mond and his fellow magistrates Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as bodyguards for a nobleman who refuses to pay them. Things could be worse, of course. Their employer could be lying dead on the floor while they are forced to watch the killer plant evidence framing them for the murder. Oh wait, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Now a royal conspiracy is about to unfold in the most corrupt city in the world. A carefully orchestrated series of murders that began with the overthrow of an idealistic young king will end with the death of an orphaned girl and the ruin of everything that Falcio, Kest, and Brasti have fought for. But if the trio want to foil the conspiracy, save the girl, and reunite the Greatcoats, they’ll have to do it with nothing but the tattered coats on their backs and the swords in their hands, because these days every noble is a tyrant, every knight is a thug, and the only thing you can really trust is a traitor’s blade.
Reviewed by Ryan Frye
I began reading Sebastien De Castell’s Traitor’s Blade late one night and the next thing I knew, it was even later, and I was already a fair chunk into the book. This is one of those books that grabbed my attention immediately and made it easy for me to submerse myself into this new fantasy world and all its trappings. De Castell does this with quick, action packed pacing and a first person narrative voice that makes the story easy to fall into. From page one, there’s great, witty dialog and a dragon’s horde of action. These two elements were the driving forces that kept me reading of Traitor’s Blade as I found some areas where I struggled with the novel. Continue reading
New Books (May)
Featuring: Michael Arnold, Rob Boffard, Mike Brooks, James L. Cambias, Wesley Chu, John Henry Clay, James S.A. Corey, Cindy Dees, Bill Flippin, David Hair, Laurell K. Hamilton, Nalo Hopkinson, Andrew Michael Hurley, N.K. Jemisin, Chuck Klosterman, Gayle Lynds, K.M. McKinley, David Mitchell, Keith Richards, Slash, Bradley Somer, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Mick Wall, Django Wexler, Bill Willingham Continue reading
