Tag Archives: Reviews

Three is a lucky number.

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I have this friend, and she’s a writer. She’s a stealth writer, though, and she uses a pseudonym, which makes it all super mysterious and romantic. It works for her, because she writes stuff that’s both mysterious AND romantic.

After trial, tribulation, revision, editing, jumping through the flaming hoops of the traditional publishing world, revision, rinse, wash, repeat, revise, and then three more iterations of all of that, she has decided to self publish. That’s right, instead of collecting digital dust on her hard drive, she has taken the plunge and made her works available for our hungry eyeballs.

And so, there are three novels, available to you, right now, for the Amazon Kindle! And if you don’t have a Kindle, and you want to read them on another device, all I have to say to you is: What, you’ve never heard of Calibre?

Click one of the links below to satiate your ocular organs:

Semantics Are Important

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There are certain challenges that I am unable to resist. Wait, scratch that. It’s more accurate to say that there are some challenges that I have no desire to resist. Semantics Are Important is one of those challenges.

Remember my recent trip to Cleveland?  Okay, maybe not that recent.  Anyway, about a month back, Gil started a podcast. He’d already created a web page, had the first episode recorded, edited (mastered?), and posted. The second was in the works, and more were a certainty. He was hitting a wall with his technical skills, and wanted to get me involved in a professional capacity. I jumped on this immediately.

A point of context – I tend to move at a tectonic pace. A more “normal” assessment of the events might say that I spent a few days contemplating, doing some research here and there, and letting my excitement gather steam.  If that’s your flavor of normal, I can only say, “Whoa, there. Pull up a chair and sit a while. This weather’s rough. Want a coup of coffee? Tea? Hot chocolate? Meet the wife and kids…”

Once I got going, my pace significantly increased. We got the bulk of the site nearly mirrored from Wix to WordPress.com. Now all we have to do is wait to transfer the domain over. Why have I put in this effort? Why did I jump on this project? Well, a little extra income never hurt nobody. More than that, the podcast is Gil at some of his finest. It takes the philosophic  social, artistic, spiritual, and bullshit rants out of the bars, car rides, diners, and coffee shops that have housed them in the past and pipes them directly into your ear holes.

He says that we no longer need to suffer through the rants, wondering when he’ll just shut the fuck up.  Now, we can just turn the podcast off. Except, I don’t.

I anticipate the next episode.

I look forward to it. I enjoy hearing his larger-than-life voice come out of my headphones. I chuckle, I roll my eyes, and I miss my friend a little less.

I think you might look forward to it, too. Go give it a listen here.

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Enterprise, concluded.

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All right, now that I’ve seen the entire series, let’s break this down. Fair warning, I am a long-time Trek fan, and can get a little nit-picky about some details.

  • Temporal war… was done already by the time that I wrote the last post. When they resolved the issue at the end of Season 3 and the opener for Season 4, that apparently unraveled the cause for the temporal cold war. Thankfully, they handle the time travel physics as consistently as possible to the Trek universe. Which is to say, I can’t put into words the rules involved in time travel, paradoxes, etc, but it feels solid. It doesn’t feel phoned in.
  • I wasn’t wrong to look forward to the mirror universe episodes. I have to think that they were having fun and knew that they didn’t have another season, because they seemed to throw everything into their mirror universe counterparts. There was a Vulcan with a goatee! And a whole new intro without a shitty song with shitty lyrics! On top of that, seeing the TOS ship from the primary universe whoop some newer-looking Enterprise-era arse was extremely gratifying. These two episodes were total fan service, and I loved them.
  • As for the final episode, I liked the concept, but it was implemented for crap. I’m not saying the Federation phase cloak discovery wasn’t an extremely stressful time for Riker, and I think that it was a neat idea for him to visit the decommissioning of NX-01on the holodeck to set his own internal conflict into perspective. However, Jonathan Frakes was… not the same man that he was during the taping of Next Generation. I was surprised as hell to see NCC-1701-D instead of E. It was difficult for me to suspend disbelief and see Riker as Riker, instead of a hastily slapped together linkng to the overall Trek universe. And lest you think I’m just a naysayer without any constructive input, I have two suggestions for better ways to end the series:
    • Instead of the discovery of the phase cloak device, fast forward to Picard’s retirement, and Riker’s promotion to Captain of the Enterprise E. Keep the nervousness, and cap off the character’s constant struggle with leaving Picard’s side to assume his own command. Appearance wouldn’t kick the viewer out of the story, and it would have ended Enterprise while continuing the progression of the Trek universe up until the reboot 8 years later.
    • Trash the entire idea, have the Traveler and Wesley Crusher show up in cowboy hats (and possibly an epic beard for the Wes), declare to Archer that they have a course he can plot, steal the ship, and conquer Risa in a bloodless coup.

I’m happy that the series didn’t suck rocks like I’d remembered. Except for the intro. Sooooo much rock sucking.

Star Trek: Enterprise

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I get sucked into television. Much like when I read a good book, I get sucked in so far that I tend to close out everything else going on in the real world. When real life denizens dare to pull me back for whatever reason, important or not, I get irritated. So much so that I don’t want to watch shows or movies that I’m looking forward to until the kids have gone to bed. I want to be immersed in the story. I wouldn’t call it an addiction, but it is something that I have to actively fight when it comes to grander plans, like writing.

So, like some of my other compulsive quirks, I’ll defuse this one by sharing it.

When Star Trek: Enterprise first hit the airwaves, I was lukewarm about it. Starting off with time travel was ballsy, and I’ve never been impressed with the way that it’s been done on TV. Then there’s that infuriating, enraging, pluck out my own eardrums opening theme. Thanks to Netflix, I can skip its aural atrocities every episode. Nevertheless, I abandoned the entire series, and I don’t really remember why.

Could have been the Borg episode. Seriously, the Borg are going to show up before Q sends Picard out into the Delta quadrant? Was this because the Borg episodes in Voyager were the only really good ones? (Not that I’m opinionated.) I neglected to remember the time traveling Borg in the First Contact movie. The wreckage from the sphere had to go SOMEWHERE. So, in the end, the Borg episode was forgivable enough for me to relax and enjoy it.

The entire series is on Netflix streaming, so I added it to my queue. I’ve been watching it. I’ve been enjoying it. I’ve been awed and horrified at the amount of damage dished out to both the Enterprise and its crew. They tear the shit out of both. Just so much hull damage, system damage, blood of all colors, psychological damage, emotional upheaval… I’m impressed. And I’m enjoying it. The characters are developing (mostly), and to see the initial interaction between Humans, Vulcans, Klingons, and Andorians. Though, I was surprised that the Klingons had the ridged skulls, unlike in the original series.

I would have abandoned the series at the end of Season 3. Instead of getting a well-earned warm welcome home after months and months of hellish reality-warping travel and conflict, with the end of Earth always looming just in the distance, they get punked and sent back in time to World War 2. What, is this the Wheel of Time? Is this an Amy campaign? Am I watching any Spider Man movie ever? The slight was quickly remedied, and even explored some of the emotional and social scars left behind from all of the crazy that went on.

I haven’t yet finished the last season (4), but I’m greatly looking forward to the Mirror, Mirror episodes. I’m also hoping that they can tie up this temporal war crap before they got canceled. I mean, three seasons short of the standard Star Trek 7, so how hard did they have to scramble, and how much notice did they have?

Podcasts for Writing

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Since this year’s Penguicon, which I was sadly unable to attend, I’ve been collecting episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast. Two writers whom I admire were guests in those episodes, so I started downloading. I would eventually get around to listening to them.

I finally copied the files over to my phone last night, and began listening while I was on the way to pick up my might-as-well-be-biological sister in preparation for her holiday return to Delaware. As an aside, I still dig my cassette tape adapter.

There’s something to be said about listening to writers talk about writing, when you’re a writer. (Write.) I didn’t lack motivation before I started to listen again, but I’m finding that I have more of it now that I did. It reminds me of listening to Mur Lafferty‘s I Should be Writing podcast. Which, now that I go and visit the site, seems to have included video.

If you are writing, want to write, or want to improve your writing, I would recommend both of these podcasts. They give us access to those that are going through the same trials and tribulations that we are, or those that already have. They give us ideas and writing prompts that may take us in a direction that we would never have thought to take. And, if we’re lucky enough to pick up on it, they might even give us perspective.

Carnivale, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Dexter

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Carnivale, Season 2

I was warned to watch out for the ending of this one. Warned that I should skip the last fifteen minutes of the last episode, if I wanted to keep liking the series. If the two seasons had been the complete story, I’d totally agree with the warning. But, knowing that each set of 2 seasons was intended to be a book, and that there were supposed to be 6 seasons (three books), the ending made quite a bit of sense. I enjoyed every episode of this season, from beginning to end, as much as I did from season 1. HBO contracted a bit of Fox disease, in that it cancelled an awesome show before its time. Five stars.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Season 1

Wow, you know, I used to love this series. It was insane and hilarious and didn’t shy away from not making any sense whatsoever. The first season, well, it’s like the first season of any Star Trek series. Needed serious work, but had a solid base. Of crazy. Three stars.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Season 2

Definite improvement from the first season. The show started hitting a good pattern, most of which involved Master Shake abusing Meatwad or Carl getting injured. This show pics and chooses what bits of the timeline to carry through, and partially resets after each episode. It’s similar to the method used in the Aeon Flux timeline, but comparing Aeon Flux to ATHF makes my noggin hurt. Looking forward to more. Three stars.

Dexter, Season 1

Dense. That’s the word I’d pick to describe this series. It’s been over a year since I started watching this with the wife and some friends at their Girls’ Night gatherings (don’t ask how I ended up invited). We watched a couple of discs, and then Supernatural reared its beefcake head, and they were hooked. I watched a few more episodes after Cian was born, during the sleepless nights. I’ve been streaming it again, and it’s not like Avatar: The Last Airbender, where you can just sit down and watch and watch and watch. One episode makes my brain feel full. Two in a row makes preoccupied a tame word for my zombie-like state. It’s worth every second, though. Great series, great writing, and great acting. Five stars.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Book 3

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Another batch of streaming Netflix awesomeness. I’d seen the last episode when my stepson did, but I hadn’t yet seen any episodes from Books 2 or 3, so there was a lot that didn’t make sense. Seeing everything that led up to the climax of the story was both brutal and brilliant. The series had a definite beginning, middle, and end. It wasn’t extended beyond its proper finish, but it wasn’t shy about acknowledging plot threads that hadn’t yet been resolved. As the last season geared up, I have to admit to displaying symptoms of addiction. :)

Five stars.