“I began to wonder what this children’s book would look like if the veil of Barre’s prose were peeled back, if the violence and savagery were presented in stark, grim reality. How would those children react to being kidnapped and thrust into such a situation? How hard would it be for them to fall under the spell of a charismatic sociopath, to shuck off the morality of civilization and become cold-blooded killers? Judging from what goes on in modern gang culture, and seeing how quick teens can be to define their own morals, to justify any action no matter how horrific, I believe it wouldn’t be that hard.
And these thoughts were the seeds for The Child Thief.” -From Brom’s Author’s Note
Every so often I stumble across a book that just kicks ass. I’ve seen Brom’s books around, but was skeptical of an illustrator-turned-author. When I found The Child Thief at Barnes and Noble, I had to go to Amazon and Goodreads, and see how it was rated before I trusted the great prolog and bought the book. There’s a reason it has 4.5/5 stars on both Amazon and Goodreads. It’s a phenomenal book.
The Child Thief is a dark fantasy retelling of Peter Pan’s story. Here’s the cover copy. Kinda long, totally worth it. My two cents worth to follow:
Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief–and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life, but his promised land is “not” Neverland.
Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter’s crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?
There is “always” more to lose.
Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries–one where he must learn to fight or die among the “Devils,” Peter’s savage tribe of lost and stolen children.
There, Peter’s dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the “Flesh-eaters” and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.
We get to see lots of different points of view…Peter, Nick, “The Captain” and another antagonist. Each character’s rationale for their (horrifically violent, sometimes selfish) actions are pleasingly rock solid. None of these characters perform for the author, for a pre-conceived plot. They act and react in very human ways…even though they’re not all human.
The fantasy world is well rendered, based on lots of research from fairy tales and old English, Scottish and Welsh legends. My favorite thing about the book, though? Its darkness made it unpredictable. Early on it was established that anything could happen, none of the characters were safe. In some books, you know the good guys are gonna win with minimal collateral damage. Those books can still be a pleasure to read…series books, for example. You’re not worried for the protagonist, it’s more about the execution. This one, though, the body count started racking up early on, characters were presented with tough choices. There were no easy answers. Brom is a fan of making the worst possible things happen, and forcing his cast to deal with it the best they can. A good lesson, for writers, in raising the stakes.
Because Brom started as an artist, I must also commend the illustrations: Each chapter gets a black and white drawing (it was the drawing of the barghest that sold me on the book…I’m a sucker for a really awesome monster) and there are also glossy color pictures in the middle of the book of many of the main characters—but not poor Nick. I guess because he’s “just” a human, he doesn’t get one.
About three quarters of the way through the book, Nick realizes an error he’s made. The gravity of his error flattens him, and with him, the reader. The book has so many fully realized, visceral moments—not in the superb action scenes, but in the characters hearts and minds. It’s a really powerful mix of emotion and dark, dark, dark fantasy. I’d argue for this book to have a place in a horror section.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a good read check out Brom’s The Child Thief. I’d go with a paper copy, or an e-reader platform that really lets you appreciate those drawings. So good! (Here’s a link to Brom’s webpage with some of the fantastic art from the book…though not my barghest picture!)
Mailorderzombie.com is hosting the 4th annual Dead Letter Awards, an online poll for zombie fans to choose their favorites of the previous year. There are several zombie films listed that I’ve never heard of that I may check out, and some cool sounding zombie books. Most exciting (for me) is the inclusion of The Zombie Feed, vol. 1 on the ballot for best anthology!
Here’s the link to the ballot…please take a moment to go and vote! The polls are open until March 16th. And if you haven’t picked up your copy of The Zombie Feed vol. 1, we can fix that, too! It’s still only $2.99 for the Kindle! If you have read it, please mosey over to Amazon or Goodreads and toss up a review.
Raindrops? Roses? Nope. I have been inspired by Jonathan Maberry’s recent guest post on Horror World, where he discusses his love of the genre and his favorite influences. It got me thinking a lot about how I came to horror, and what my favorite books in the genre are.
My mother tells me when I was very young, Scooby Doo scared the shit out of me. But I kept watching. I didn’t get into horror through movies. Movies were strictly controlled when I was growing up, but books not at all. I can recall my mom telling me I “I didn’t want to” read any of the large number of Stephen King books we had floating around, because they were too vulgar for a little girl. But she didn’t tell me not to. Nor did she put them out of my reach. I had an adult library card in Elementary school, and King, Crichton and Koontz opened the doors of horror to me. I’d read enough King that I slogged through Danse Macabre in seventh grade. I hadn’t seen any of the movies, hadn’t read any of the suggested books. I thought it was boring. But it gave me some clues as to where to go next.
So I’ll toss out a few of my favorite books, and why they appeal to me.
The Terror by Dan Simmons (2007) is a monstrous tome, a fictionalized account of Sir John Franklin’s attempt to find the Northwest Passage in 1845. The two ships the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror become frozen in the ice. This is bad, but the crew has prepared for an icebound winter. The ice doesn’t thaw on schedule, the food stores are contaminated, and there’s something bigger than a polar bear out on the ice, stalking, hunting. The book’s pacing mirrors the tedium of being frozen in the ice day after day. That may sound like a strike against the book, but I sure thought it worked, giving the reader a real sense of bleak desperation. I want to read more books like this: historical event + monster = awesome.
Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959). Oh man, the opening paragraph. Poor Eleanor. Jackson takes a disturbed young woman and plunges her into hell…Is she crazy? Is she causing the hauntings? Jackson lets her tale unfurl slowly and organically, parsing out information on a need to know basis. No monsters, no axe murderers…but every page is infused with terror.
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967) might be the scariest book I have ever read. I’m fascinated by the trope of the monstrous womb (think Alien and Cronenberg’s The Brood) and RB brings that down to a personal level. Rosemary is left to wonder if she is going mad. She has such a strong support system…but are they really supporting her? And she’s so pleased to be having her first baby, so excited to step into the role of mother—it juxtaposes so well with what is being done to her. Some people argue that Rosemary isn’t a strong enough protagonist, that she’s just a puppet, but I think based on the time and Rosemary’s history, she behaves like anyone would.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990) is a flawless blend of sci-fi and horror. I’m not thrilled with the precocious kiddos, but the bloodthirsty velociraptors more than make up for it. Hammond’s naiveté means you can’t call him a villain because he’s so excited about the dinosaurs…but his enthusiasm can’t stand as his creations start eating everyone. Nedry is a great character; Grant is badass…a hell of an adventure tale. And the movie is just as good.
Watchers by Dean Koontz (1987) is a perfect tale of yin and yang, good and evil. Einstein the genetically modified golden retriever is so good, so pure so fun…and his antithesis, the Outsider is an amalgamation of everything that is evil…but it’s his shame about being evil that makes him a multi-dimensional villain—though villain isn’t even the right word…there’s a nasty hit man for that (who I find to be the least interesting part of the tale). The Outsider is a created monster, and he does what he was built to do. Because it’s Koontz, one has a pretty good idea of how things will end, but the way we’re led to care about the characters still makes readers worried for them. Great novel.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King (1999). This is his most underappreciated book. Though I love the woods (and growing up in Maine, I can picture down to the veins on the leaves the woods in TGWLTG), I think they’re terrifying…who knows what’s out there. The ambiguity of the story is what sells it for me…is Tricia really face to face with The God of the Lost? Or is she just a little girl who’s sick and starving in the woods? Tricia’s character is rendered so lovingly and realistically, King sells every piece of this novel.
So…what’s your favorite? If you’re a writer, what inspires you?
I am pleased to announce that in October of 2012, my first novel Trinity will be released from DarkFuse! I have the pleasure to show you the cover they’ve made for me…and I truly can’t wait. I was excited before, sure, but now I want it to be October NOW. Below is the cover art, from the fantastic Daniele Serra! There will be more information to come.
As my short-lived career as an ESL teacher meanders to a close, I taught a hilarious class today where we made diamante poems about cause and effect. You take a simple cause and effect sentence, like this one I found online: I studied hard for my spelling test and got 100! and you transform this into a poem that looks like:
Study
Challenge, Dedication
Repeating, Memorizing, Writing
Practice, Analysis, Success, Victory
Cheering, Smiling, Celebrating
Excellent, Masterful
100%
It looks like a diamond! How cute. But I’m not big on sappy spelling test B/S. So the next sample I showed my class, I wrote. My sentence? Zombies took over the city and everyone died.
Zombies
Dead, Brainless
Shambling, Moaning, Eating
They overtake us all
Killing, Biting, Changing
Quiet, Dead
Empty
And now, a couple diamante poems written by Korean high school lads. They were really pretty brilliant.
The reason for his madness is so much laughing.
Laugh
Happy, Fun
Laughing, Loudening, Stamping
He laugh so much
Teasing, Doing, Exhausting
Painful, Crazy
Madness
The destroy revealed because education (I don’t know what this means, but damn is it profound!)
Education
Knowledge, Development
Studying, Learning, Sitting
People have to study hard so they become upset
Rebelling, Restricting, Objecting
War, Doomed
Destroyed
I stayed up late at night yesterday, so I am really tired now. (This pretty much could have been my poem.)
Insomnia
Late, Annoyed
Rolling, Standing, Talking
I could not sleep
Sleeping, Trying, Sleeping
Sleepy, Tired
Exhausted
This one was unsettling in its conformist nature: A boy studied hard, and he entered a good university,
Studying
Hard-Working, Gradual
Memorizing, Solving, Thinking
He studied very hard
Enduring, Desiring, Wishing
Patient, Good
Happy
This one didn’t have a cause and effect sentence, but it sums up my entire high school experience where a certain subject is concerned. (He waffled on the format, sure, but the theme is so dear to my heart…)
Math
Difficult, Confusing
Getting more difficult, Frustrating, Devastating
He doesn’t study math
Scolding, Getting bad grade, Sighing
Sad, Disappointed
Give up
And now my two favorites, from the best English speaker in the class, and also the most whiney. The first one, as he read it, he told us he wanted the cause and effect sentence to come AFTER he read the poem.
Tease
Scornful, Ridicule
Laughing, Mocking, Annoying
He buried the boy
Panicking, Horrifying, Frightening
Irresistible, Dead
Fear
A boy teased a boy and he buried the boy.
And my favorite, from the same chap: Too much English made the boy crazy and he became happy.
English
Too much, Stressed
Over-whelming, Over shooting, Inferior
English made him crazy
Laughing, Dripping, Running
Mad, Uncontrolled
Happy
Gosh, I don’t know why these were all so morbid…I’ll leave you with the poem I did in class (everyone had to write two and share one)
Aliens coming to Earth to enslave us will make the human race go extinct.
Welcome!
Green, Different
Descending, Meeting, Talking
Oh no they’re evil!
Maiming, Killing, Enslaving
Cruel, Violent
Extinction
I recently had the opportunity to spend two weeks on the island Palawan, on the western part of the Philippines. While there, I visited a place that inspired a new novel, which I’m making most excellent progress on. I won’t tell you what it’s about or much else about it, but I will show y’all some photos of a place that kicked my writer mind into overdrive!
Long time no see, as they say here in Korea. There are some changes going on, most of which I can’t talk about yet (oooohhh…secrets!), changes with the blog, with some writing stuff, with life in general.
But I am well, writing is happening, and news is bubbling under the surface. Stay tuned for more info!
So, uh, have this unicorn to tide you over!
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Coming in October 2012 from DarkFuse Publishing:
Trinity, a novel
Check out my contribution to Seoulist Magazine…a Halloween tale of terror, The Red Mask Girl!
The Zombie Feed vol. 1
Featuring “Rabid Raccoons”
Available from Amazon
What do reviewers have to say about the Zombie Feed and “Rabid Raccoons”?
Click here for reviews from Shock Totem, Hellnotes, and more.
Unspeakable: A New Breed of Terror
Featuring “Cancer on Cat’s Paws”
Available from Amazon.com
Encounters Volume 2
Featuring “Dappler’s Department Store”
Available from createspace
Or Amazon.com