Confessions of the One and Only F.J.R. Titchenell (That I Know of) - Fiona J.R. Titchenell's Official Homepage

Book Review: The New Hunger

6/30/2013

Topping off zombie month with another book review!

Book Review:

The New Hunger

By Isaac Marion

Zola Books, 2013

B+

Note: The New Hunger is a prequel to Warm Bodies. You can read my review of Warm Bodies here.

The Basics:

The world is still in the process of falling apart. Our zombie hero, R, is freshly reanimated and searching for even the vaguest understanding of what he is. Julie Grigio is twelve years old, searching with her parents for any form of civilization. Nora Greene is sixteen and alone with her seven-year-old brother, searching for anything at all. And they’re all searching in the same direction.

The Downside:

Prequel-itis. I’m a defender of prequels in general. I find that knowing how they have to end gives them a powerful weaving-together quality more often than it spoils them, but in this one, the inevitability of who will live and where they’ll end up is particularly limiting, especially for R. With Warm Bodies relying on the premise that he’s dead at the beginning in almost every sense, going through some of the motions of life but with their meaning absent, he doesn’t have a whole lot of room for progress before he gets there. Julie, on the other hand, clearly has a past, but none of it is in this book, other than the part about being a tired but optimistic twelve-year-old who’s seen too much death. The founding of the stadium city, the romance with Perry, and the worst of the Grigio family’s breakdown all take place between the two books. The interactions between separate groups of main characters are kept to a minimum, just enough to hold the book together, but they still slightly undercut the impact of their formal first meetings in Warm Bodies.

The Upside:

Nora’s share of the story (the biggest blank the book has to work with) is sweet, funny, and heartbreaking. Her relationship with her brother and their one-day-at-a-time quest to stay alive makes it impossible not to want to stop and give them both big hugs every few pages. What Warm Bodies lacked as a monster story, being told entirely from a zombie’s perspective, The New Hunger helps make up for from Nora’s. There are no vast hordes of zombies, but the Boneys and their pure evil group intelligence are chilling enough in tiny numbers. And of course, being Isaac Marion, the imagery and the prose itself are gorgeous, poignant, and razor-sharp all the way through. If you’re a fan of Warm Bodies, this is an extra taste of the universe and its style that’s certainly worth taking.

Fi's Five Favorite Zombie Moments #1: "Another one for the Fire" (Night of the Living Dead)

6/26/2013

(Click the links for Zombie Moment #2, #3, #4, and #5)

For another zombie moment this week, check out Matt's top zombie moment here.

****Spoiler Alert****

If there’s anyone out there reading this list of great zombie moments who doesn’t already know, Night of the Living Dead is the first of George A. Romero’s Living Dead movies and the first zombie movie. Period.

As a movie, I can’t claim it’s one of my favorites. It’s not one I can call near-perfect, and it’s certainly not one I can watch over and over.

Mostly because of this bitch.

But I’m naturally grateful to it for creating the subgenre I love, and I respect it as an independent horror movie that did bold, revolutionary things, including but not limited to creating the classic zombie.

Most of Night of the Living Dead is a pretty basic zombie movie, or rather, the basic zombie movie, since it’s the one all others jump off from. A motley group of survivors take shelter in a farm house, struggle to keep the zombies out, fight amongst themselves, and are whittled down by a combination of pettiness, sentiment, stupidity, and bad luck. A radio broadcast informs them that destroying the zombies’ brains will stop them and that extermination teams are on their way to resolve the disaster by doing just that to every zombie they can find.

Our hero, Ben, does his best to keep everyone safe until that can happen, but the aforementioned whittling forces are just too strong, and by the end of the night, the series of mishaps has left him completely alone.

Ben does manage to survive until morning, when he finally hears the shots and shouts of one of the cleanup teams headed his way. He goes to the window, and…

Gets mistaken for a zombie. The movie ends with the cleanup guy’s line, “That’s another one for the fire.” And that’s it.

The first zombie movie, released in 1968, when every Hollywood movie still had to end with an uplifting monologue about the American spirit, instead went to an even darker, bleaker place than most horror movies will go today. There was no way it could not be number 1.

Movie Review: World War Z

6/23/2013

Movie Review:

World War Z

2013

B-

Yes, as I've said many times, I’m a fan of the book. You can read my review of it here.

The Basics:

There are zombies. Brad Pitt must fight zombies.

The Downside:

First, let’s get this part out of the way: this is not an adaptation of the book World War Z. Any fan should have started working on coming to terms with that when the first trailer full of running zombies was released, but just in case there were any lingering hopes, consider that fact confirmed.

They are both called World War Z, they both involve zombies, and the movie has one brief cameo appearance by a character from the book and a few near-subliminal references. The connection firmly ends there. Even tiny details that might accidentally coincide with the book if left unchecked are made as different as they could possibly be, the American military’s nickname for the zombies, for example (“Zack” in the book, “Zeke” in the movie).

Now to do what I’ve been psyching up for since those first trailers: put the book aside and focus on the movie as an independent entity.

It’s a zombie action movie. It’s a zombie action movie about a troubled but utterly perfect hero who spends most of his time rescuing helpless women and children, being tragically disappointed by all the drastically less perfect people who try to help him or require his help, worrying about his family (which adds nothing to the plot other than his worry and a laughable number of “oh no, the child has wandered off again!” moments), and generally being troubled but utterly perfect.

Even the global scope that should make this one unique among zombie movies is forgotten about two thirds of the way in, when it morphs into a typical lock-in zombie story in a research facility.

The Upside:

The fact that our troubled but utterly perfect hero does all this with Brad Pitt-grade charisma manages to keep him from being completely intolerable, as does the fact that one of the women he saves (an Israeli soldier whose bitten hand he chops off) turns out to be about as cool as anyone other than Brad Pitt is apparently allowed to be in this movie, not that that’s saying much.

Most of the other characters, while annoyingly helpless next to our perfect hero, are refreshingly decent for inhabitants of a zombie-infested world. This one isn’t a story about humanity’s internal breakdown, for a change, and as a result, it has some genuinely sweet moments.

The zombies themselves account for a large percentage of the points I’d give this movie. They’re quite terrifying (in their own right, not as an interpretation of the book’s zombies, of course). The images of them swarming and pouncing in the large-scale scenes and twitching and snapping in the small-scale ones are distinctive and effective.

The transition from a global movie to a lock-in makes both styles feel underutilized, but both are done well in what screen time they get, and both are able to maintain adequate tension and fun for an overall enjoyable summer blockbuster experience.

Interview with Teri Harman and Amazon Giftcard Giveaway!

6/22/2013

Today, I've got Teri Harman with me on Confessions of the One and Only F.J.R. Titchenell (That I Know of), discussing Blood Moon, the first book in her NA Fantasy Moonlight trilogy, which hits shelves June 22nd! Yes, that's today!
Check out the book trailer:

You can read my review of Blood Moon here,

And order your copy here!

F: First of all, congratulations, Teri, on the release of your awesome debut novel! And congratulations and thanks for being the first author to be interviewed (that is to say, asked multiple questions) on Confessions of the One and Only F.J.R. Titchenell (That I Know of)!

T: Wow, I’m honored! Thanks for having me and for your fabulous review of Blood Moon.

F: How long have you known you were a writer? What’s the earliest story you can remember coming up with?

T: Always. The first story I remember composing was about a cow. I dictated while my mom typed it on her electric typewriter. I believe I was four or five. Since then life has always been about stories.

F: Blood Moon is about witches, and each witch identifies with one particular element, Air, Water, Fire, Earth, Mind, or Dreams. Which one do you think you’d be?

T: I believe I would be a Dreamer, which is partially why one of my main characters, Willa, is a witch with the Gift of Dreams. I’ve always had very vivid and slightly (read: seriously) twisted dreams. Many of Willa’s dreams in the book are inspired by my own.

F: The witches in Blood Moon are decidedly fantastical beings, but cosmetically, they have more in common with real life Wiccans than with most major existing fictionalized versions of witches. What made you decide to go this route, and what was the research process like?

T: Basing the magic of the Moonlight Witches on Wicca and Natural Magic was a conscious decision. I had read a little about both techniques out of curiosity and the beliefs and practices fell in line with the kind of magic I always imagined fantastical witches should have.
So I started reading more on both subjects – I particularly like books by Scott Cunningham - and gaining a solid foundation on which to build my own brand of magic. I consult the books regularly for spell and scene ideas.

F: Give us a glimpse behind the scenes of the writing of Blood Moon. Did it almost write itself, or were there dozens of rounds of drastic redrafting? Any cool deleted scenes we missed out on due to pacing or other practical reasons?

T: Oh, how I wish it had practically written itself! Blood Moon started in the fall of 2010 and every one of the several drafts/rewrites was tear-my-hair-out difficult. I set myself up with a difficult plot format of having the narrative switch between past and present involving a large cast of characters. So keeping everything lined up and making sense is always difficult.
Hmm…deleted scenes – there were many. I had to cut a moon ritual in which one of the characters grows moonflower vines out of the ground to surround all the witches. I loved the imagery in it of the small flowers unfurling and catching the moonlight, but it had to go. Such is the life of a writer.

F: The name Simon means “listener.” Fitting for a character who hears people’s thoughts. Was it intentional? How do you usually choose characters’ names? Is it for meaning, sound, or likeliness given the character’s age and place of birth? Do you ever name them after people?

T: Names are really important to me, at least for my main characters and major role players. I look for all of those thing: meaning, sound, how it fits the character picture in my head and time period. Some names strike a chord with me and I know I want to use them, others I have to search out. I haven’t ever used the name of a person I know in real life.

The name Simon definitely fits the character’s gifts. Willa, which means “resolute protection,” also fits her. Willa will do anything to protect her bond with Simon. But I also really liked the sound of Willa the Witch.

F: Without spoiling anything for those who haven’t read Blood Moon, can you give us any hints about what’s to come in the next book?

T: The next book is all about Simon’s struggle to understand and control his crazy-powerful magic. Willa wants to be there for him, but because of something that happens at the end of BLOOD MOON, Simon retreats inward and the tension that follows threatens their strong bond.

Plus, the evil abounds. From expected and unexpected places.

F: During the pursuit of your writing career, what’s the one question you’ve most fantasized about someday being asked by an interviewer, and how would you answer it?

T: Haha! Great question! I’ll be totally honest, at the risk of embarrassing myself. I love the question: Did you ever expect your (insert what the successful person has done here) to be so successful?

I’ve never heard someone answer with what sounds like a truly honest answer. The interviewee usually feigns humility with something like, “Oh, no. I never imagined it would get this big.”

Well, then these people obviously don’t have very good imaginations! I, on the other hand, imagine things for a living. And so, I hope one day one of my books goes mega-big (because that is what I imagine) and I can answer that questions with a “Heck, yes! I dream big.” After all, why set out to do something hard without having high expectations for your success?

Thanks so much, Fiona! Great questions!

F: Thank you, Teri! May your success still manage to exceed your expectations!

About Teri Harman:

Teri Harman has believed in all things wondrous and haunting since her childhood days of sitting in the highest tree branches reading Roald Dahl and running in the rain imagining stories of danger and romance. Currently, her bookshelf is overflowing, her laundry unfolded, and her three small children running mad while she pens bewitching novels. She also writes a bi-weekly book column for ksl.com, Utah's #1 news site and hosts a monthly television segment for Studio 5, Utah's #1 lifestyle show.

You can find Teri on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

About Blood Moon:

A hand slowly reaches out a crack in the window to feel the light sprinkles of rain. The hand, cemented with dirt, sweat, and blood, trembles like a withered leaf clinging to a dead branch. Although filthy, the hand emits a history of grace and elegance long lost to the evils of torture and imprisonment . . .

From what Willa recalls, seeing this pitiful hand, and, eventually, the person connected to it, was the catalyst to the discovery of her true self. Willa is a witch, and it turns out her boyfriend, Simon, is a witch, too. Soon after Willa first sees the reaching hand, Simon and her embark on a rescue mission, only to find themselves catapulted into the alluring, but dangerous world of witches and witchcraft. Answers to all of Willa and Simon's questions are now within reach, but they've also stepped into the middle of a deadly war where many will stop at nothing to control the magic of The Six Gifts.

Willa and Simon must now learn to harness their powers to protect their lives and the lives of their newfound friends before the blood moon arrives, or all will be lost.

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Fi's Five Favorite Zombie Moments #2: "Bloody Mary" (Shaun of the Dead)

6/18/2013

(Click the links for Zombie Moment #1, #3, #4, and #5)

For another zombie moment this week, check out Matt’s #2 zombie moment here.

Shaun of the Dead is an English horror-comedy, and as anyone familiar with my upcoming zombie horror-comedy novel (or my anglophilic upbringing) can probably guess, it’s a favorite of mine.

In this scene, our hero, Shaun, and his roommate, Ed, are still unaware that they’re in a zombie movie. Ed glances outside and sees what he thinks is just a very drunk human being stumbling around the yard, and the two of them go out to ask her to leave. Well, Shaun asks her to leave. Ed is playing with an old film-winding camera and keeps snapping pictures of them.

According to her obscured tag, her name is Mary.

Mary attacks and tries to eat them, as zombies do, and after a few more moments of attempted polite reasoning, Shaun is forced to push her off of him hard enough to make her fall backward onto an exposed pipe, which impales her through the middle.

Shaun and Ed stare in horror for a moment at what they think they’ve done, before they finally see their first evidence of the fact that something has gone very, very wrong in their world.

Mary plants her feet and hands and lifts herself off the pipe as if it’s a minor inconvenience, then continues stumbling toward them with a perfectly circular hole through her stomach, a truly awesome zombie image which, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, doesn’t seem to have been captured anywhere online.

Luckily, though, that’s not even the best part. What’s Ed’s reaction to witnessing his first ever zombie moment?

A blank stare and dead silence, broken by that special, distinct sound of winding film in the camera for another shot.

Book Review: World War Z

6/15/2013

By Max Brooks

Crown, 2006

A+

This one’s been a favorite of mine since around the time it was released, long before I started blogging, and it’s one of those very weighty masterworks that’s always felt too big to revisit and dissect with the necessary care and reverence, but it seems only right to record and post a full review before the movie is released and changes the world’s perspective on the book forever.

The Basics:

World War Z is, as the cover announces, a historical account of a world-wide zombie war, compiled after the fact. It is told in a series of varied first person accounts, with an introduction and occasional prompts by the researcher, detailing everything from patient zero to the following reconstruction.

The Downside:

By the nature of the format, if you’re looking for a tight, linear storyline with a protagonist to bond with and root for, this isn’t it. Few interviewees come up more than once, and after his passionate introduction, the researcher keeps a deliberate, professionally discreet distance. Nothing is safe to become attached to.

The Upside:

Somehow, attachment still manages to be inevitable. The characters are memorable even for their solitary chapters in the spotlight, and even without the continuation of individual characters’ stories to anticipate, the arc of humanity’s survival and the pure quality of the vignettes keep the pages turning.

All the advantages of the format are used to full effect. The story is every bit as global as it should be, the voices are incredibly diverse and distinct, and the research and analysis put into the zombie war scenario are absolutely breathtaking. The whole work is played absolutely straight as a history book, all the way down to the in-universe review blurbs on the back, and the writing carries all the weight and authority such a book would have in reality.

It’s a zombie book that takes itself more seriously than any other and manages to live up to its own lofty standard, one of the few books about which I’ll say, without a single snide qualifier, “There’s nothing else like it.”

The Chalice of Malvron Cover Reveal + Giveaway!

6/14/2013

Today I'm proud to feature a fellow homeschooler (and even earlier bloomer), Elisabeth Wheatley, on the occasion of the cover reveal of her upcoming book, The Chalice of Malvron!

About Elisabeth Wheatley:

Elisabeth Wheatley is a high school student homeschooled in the Texas Hill Country. When she’s not daydreaming of elves, vampires, or hot guys in armor, she is reading copious amounts of fantasy, playing with her little brothers, studying mythology, and training and showing her Jack Russell Terrier, Schnay.

You can find Elisabeth on her blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Goodreads.

Okay, okay, without further ado, here it is, the cover of the third book in Elisabeth Wheatley's Argetallam Saga:

"Ooh, pretty," I hear you exclaim, "but what's inside it?" Fear not!

About The Chalice of Malvron:

A princess with no recollection of the past eight years. War on the horizon. Who to trust? Who to save?

Sixteen-year-old Janir Caersynn Argetallam wakes, sore and disoriented in the home city of her people, surrounded by relatives who seem concerned for her well-being. As she tries to recover, the Argetallams’ allies, the Stlavish, prepare to unleash a magical relic of untold power against the Argetallams’ age-old enemies, the Brevians. Janir watches silently from the sidelines until she meets a warrior elf and a strange wizard-boy who claim to know her and make her feel…confused. They claim that everything she’s been told is a lie, that her memories were stolen at the command of her father, the Lord Argetallam. As the eve of Brevia’s destruction draws closer, Janir finds herself with the power to stop the Stlavish. Conflicted and confused, she must decide whether she will allow Brevia to be conquered or if she will betray her father and destroy the relic—the Chalice of Malvron…

Check out the first two books in the Argetallam Saga:
The Key of Amatahns and The Secrets of the Vanmars.

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Fi's Five Favorite Zombie Moments #3: "The Future of the Human Spirit" (World War Z)

6/11/2013

(Click the links for Zombie Moment #1, #2, #4, and #5)

For a second zombie moment for this week, check out Matt's list of zombie moments here.

I had a hard time picking one moment out of World War Z, because it’s made of big moments. Each single-chapter vignette could be called a great moment in zombie fiction, but most of them felt just a little bit too big, too complicated and shrouded in research and analysis, to stand alone in a list of pieces small and simple enough for the word “moment.” This one, I think, is self-explanatory enough.

By this point in the book, the worst of the zombie war is over. Humanity is devastated but has pulled itself back together and gotten organized enough to start focusing on eradicating the zombies and reclaiming the planet rather than simply surviving another day. Of course, the best and worst thing about zombies is that they’ll keep on attacking no matter what the odds are, so the easiest and safest way to root them out of an infested area is to stand in an open space nearby and make a lot of noise.

So that’s exactly what all the different extermination teams do, all over the world, in their own ways, and it turns into a celebration of humanity’s return as much as a weapon. In the British Isles, they use bagpipes. China uses bugles, South Africa uses Zulu war chants, and the Americans get to live the dream of actually blasting heavy metal while firing at walking corpses.

I couldn't find an adequate picture of people living that dream, so here's one of them doing the exact opposite.

Other than its simplicity, there is one (very timely) reason this moment was the one that made the list. It’s the only part of World War Z that ever made me think, even for a moment, “This should be a movie!”

Like many fans of the book, the only screen adaptation I ever eagerly envisioned for it was an R-rated HBO-style miniseries imitating a History Channel-style documentary, and I still hope such a thing may yet exist someday far down the line.

This chapter, though, has that cinematic, everything coming together, final-confrontation-musical-montage feel that takes me back to some of my favorite Broadway-inspired movies.

I'm a woman of eclectic tastes.

That’s really remarkable, when you think about it. In the midst of a zombie novel so dense and intrinsically stylized that I’d dare to call it cinematically untranslatable, there’s a chapter that manages to capture a global zombie-killing musical montage that should only be possible to render in clips of images and sound, on the page.

A contender for a zombie-loving bookworm’s favorite moment? Yes. Definitely.

Event Review: The Great Horror Campout

6/10/2013

Event Review:

The Great Horror Campout

B-

The Basics:

An overnight interactive horror experience featuring a scavenger hunt, several different theme zones and small horror mazes, dinner and breakfast, tent hopping monsters, and frequent kidnappings.

The Upside:

The actors were enthusiastic and professional, there were some intricate sets, and the costumes were fantastic. The whole concept of an overnight horror camping experience is unexplored territory, and the competitive angle of the scavenger hunt and the constant presence of the monsters in every part of the event make for a very different psychological experience from the typical Halloween haunt. And, of course, being in June, it caters to Halloween-all-year types like Matt and me and avoids a lot of potential weather problems.

There were some great moments that had the feel of a living videogame. One maze required sneaking past a pack of Chupacabras by freezing whenever they turned to look (I was seen once, bagged, and dropped in another part of the maze for my group to find). Matt jumped into a windowless van that was roaming the campsite promising free candy, had the door slammed behind him, and escaped a few laps of the tents later with a Werther’s Original and a missing child poster, two prizes that really, really should have had a higher point value. While trying to rescue him, I avoided being thrown in the trunk of a car by a clown for the sole reason that the trunk was full at the time. Those were some very notable highlights, as well as some sentences one never expects to type.

The Downside:

The planning level of the event and the newness of the concept allowed for some pretty major logistical issues. The idea of combining a scavenger hunt with Halloween mazes sounds awesome in principle, but in practice, having large groups of people scouring every set and crawlspace of a maze instead of running from the monsters only causes massive congestion and a pervasive feeling of paranoid boredom, appropriate for standing in line for a maze, not for being inside one.

For every game moment that worked well, there were several that didn’t. The scavenger hunt items were rarely restocked, and it would have been impossible to be among the first to reach everything with all the traffic flow problems, so it became clear very early, even to those with excessive competitive spirit, like Matt and me, that the game was effectively unwinnable, taking a lot of the fun out of the levels. There’s a lot less satisfaction in reaching into the goopy chest of a fresh Bigfoot kill knowing that all the precious ribs will already gone.

One area required guests to smear their skin with blood to mask their scent in order to get close enough to a bug’s nest to reach in to find a grub. The more blood, the better the chance of a find, we were told. The woman in line in front of us jumped in the blood vat and soaked herself, to no avail. Zombie dancers in another area asked for volunteers to be locked in coffins, one of the scariest-looking challenges, but in spite of what the clue promised, there was nothing to be gained or solved or accomplished. People just ended up having to buy their way back out with items they’d already found.

There were some random announcements where people got pulled out of mazes (without any interesting theatrical fanfare) for pointless wristband color changes. The event really ran out of steam at 2, when the hunt ended, and the task of surviving until morning through the monster visits (which also sounded awesome on paper) became more of an obligation than a challenge, with nothing left to look forwa.

Then there were the more mundane issues like the tents being quite small for four people (and misnumbered at the beginning of the night), and the authentic special appearance by the LAPD at around 3am due to the easily anticipated noise complaints from the houses across the street from the very urban campground location.

It was a fun, memorable time overall, and I’m glad to have gone and proud to support innovative horror thinking, but without some major refinements, I probably wouldn’t pay another $150 a head to go again.

Fi's Five Favorite Zombie Moments #4: The Swimmer (The Walking Dead TV Series)

6/5/2013

(Click the links for Zombie Moment #1, #2, #3, and #5)

For a second zombie moment for the price of one, check out Matt's #4 Zombie moment at www.mattcarterauthor.weebly.com

My #4 moment is a gooey one.

Early in the second season of The Walking Dead TV series, the survivors set up camp at the Greenes’ farm and are offered access to one of the better water wells on the land. When they reach it, they think far enough ahead (barely) to have a look inside before anyone drinks. This is what they find:

After a few moments of debate, they come to the least logical possible decision: They're going to lower someone down to lasso the weeks-old, oozing, drooling, bowel-voiding plague corpse, so they can hoist it out before it can somehow further contaminate the water.

The hat generates contagious, lasso-related ideas.

But it’s okay, because the resulting scene is some of the most uniquely, perfectly gratuitous zombie gore ever.

Glenn gets to go down the well, of course, because he’s the lightest of the men, Lori and Carol have ultra mom stuff going on, Maggie has yet to become awesome, and… well, mostly because everything really disgusting must invariably happen to Glenn no matter what.

Using himself as bait, he gets the zombie to raise its arms so he can get the rope around it and gets away unbitten. The group then starts dragging out the much heavier bloated zombie, and they get it as far as the lip of the well before it loses what remains of its structural cohesion, and this happens...

...sending the intestine-filled lower half splashing back down into the water, just in case anyone was still considering drinking it.

Now, I’ve never seen a waterlogged human corpse, but I imagine this is exactly what it would look like. I mean, just look at it!

The well zombie isn’t in the original comics. This is all TV, a blatant exploration and celebration of the fantastic makeup talent (and budget) this horror cable show has access to, and just for a moment, in a freaky, geeky way, that makes me happy and at peace with the world.