Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

My New Deal with Orbit

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On August 20, 2019, Orbit will publish my political thriller, OUR WAR, about a journalist and UN worker who uncover the use of child soldiers during a second American civil war. Today, I’m very excited to announce Orbit will also publish my new psychological thriller with horror elements, tentatively titled THE SACRIFICE, in 2020.

In this novel, three people who survived their childhood in an apocalyptic cult reunite to confront their past and the entity that appeared the night the cult destroyed itself. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and IT meet the Jonestown massacre in this psychological thriller about memory, trauma, belonging, and faith.

Publishing about 60 titles each year, Orbit U.S. is the sci-fi/fantasy imprint at Hachette Book Group U.S.A., with authors including M.R. Carey, Joe Abercrombie and Iain M. Banks. Plans for THE SACRIFICE are still preliminary, but the intent right now is to publish it likely in the fall of 2020.

Very exciting for me, it still feels like a dream. I’m very fortunate to be able to work with a quality company like Orbit.

BLACK MIRROR Season 5

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Like previous seasons, season 5 of BLACK MIRROR continues to focus on the collision of human nature and technology, revealing how technology changes us less than makes more of what we already are. It augments and enables emotion, instinct, and failings rather than corrects them. Unfortunately, this season takes a far lighter approach to the typically dark material, resulting in the show losing most of its punch. It went from brilliant episodes like “Metalhead” and “Hated in The Nation,” which would make me think and haunt me for days, to easily forgettable fare.

Season 5 consisted of three episodes. In one, two friends find a strange kind of love that exists only online. In another, a man expresses the horror of how addictive social media can lead to death. In the last, technology turns a troubled singer into a product. The episodes are fun, interesting, and engaging, but compared to previous seasons, they feel hollowed out and pandering to a stereotyped American audience. Not as bad as GoT did with its disastrously weak final season, but yeah.

So I’m still a fan and I liked the new season, I just didn’t love it and hope it returns to its dark and disturbing roots.

THE TERROR (2018)

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Based on the novel by Dan Simmons, THE TERROR, which originally aired on AMC and I caught on Amazon Prime, offers a horror take on Captain Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic in 1845–1848. Driven by strong characters and a powerful cast, the show brilliantly combines a supernatural monster element with actual historical events rendered with rich accuracy and realism.

The show begins with two British warships, which have been converted into the most technologically advanced exploring vessels of the age. Their mission is to explore the Arctic in search of the elusive Northwest Passage, which would offer a dramatically shorter trade route between the United Kingdom and China. Leading the expedition are Captain Crozier of the TERROR (Jared Harris, rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors), Captain Franklin (the great Ciaran Hinds) of the EREBUS, and Franklin’s second, Commander Fitzjames (the solid Tobias Menzies). We also get to know many other crew members, all of them distinct and likeable or detestable.

Franklin is out for glory and rashly commits the ships to a route that freezes up and leaves the ships icebound, against the advice of Crozier, who is the more practical of the two but also haunted by his failings to the point of struggling with a drinking problem. Things are bad enough as the crew is forced to winter in the Arctic, but after a local native is killed, a strange creature appears and begins hunting them one by one.

The real horror element isn’t the creature, however, but the cold, the refusal of the ice to thaw, the deteriorating rations, and the resulting madness and starvation that slowly tears the crew apart and turns them from honor- and duty-bound Englishmen into savages. Fear in all its guises is on full display in this show, as the men continually face an impossible and steadily worsening situation and struggle to maintain duty and compassion. The result is powerful, heartbreaking drama.

In short, the show is brilliant. While it decisively concluded as a miniseries, based on its popularity, its makers are turning it into an anthology show, with the second season set in a Japanese internment camp during WW2. I highly recommend it.

THEY REMAIN (2018)

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Based on the novella by Laird Barron, THEY REMAIN (2018) is a creepy psychodrama about a pair of researchers investigating phenomenon at the site of a cult massacre on behalf of a mysterious corporation. That’s one hell of a setup, and while the film achieves a high level of creep and tension, its overall slow pacing and last act’s splintering, unreliable narration may achieve the film a deep appreciation but maybe not love. The payoff is satisfying, but perhaps not enough.

More about the plot: Keith (William Jackson Harper) and Jessica (Rebecca Henderson) are field researchers for a corporation seeking new resources to exploit. While the goals of the project are unclear, apparently the team investigates strange phenomenon looking for resources that can be controlled. In this case, the remote wooded area is almost devoid of animals, makes insects behave strangely, and also affects people, including previous researchers and the members of a local cult, which went from drugs and sex to thrill killing.

They don’t seem to like each other much. Keith is distrustful of people and roams the woods setting up cameras. Jessica is an obsessive nerd and handles the lab work. Soon after they arrive, the equipment begins behaving strangely and odd knocks and whispers occur at night, along with bizarre nightmares of the land’s previous inhabitants. After Jessica finds a giant horn of some massive beast, things get really wonky, suggesting that even when dead, the beast is still affecting the land around it. Keith and Jessica begin to spiral into madness.

Overall, there’s much to like here. Harper and Henderson are solid actors who give their characters a lot of life and interest. The idea of the bone of some Lovecraftian creature affecting its area is a compelling mystery, and the history of the cult is pretty cool. The big strokes work. More challenging is the rubber-meets-the-road elements such as pacing and sometimes frustrating lack of coherence as reliable narration disintegrates toward the final act.

I came away with a deep appreciation of the ideas and general execution, though I didn’t fall in love with it. Recommended if you like slow-burn horror with a somewhat sci-fi bent.

THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD (2018)

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In THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD (2018), a young man ends up trapped in an apartment during the zombie apocalypse. The result is a highly gritty and realistic portrayal of survival and a meditation on loneliness and madness.

The film opens with Sam, a musician living in Paris, visiting his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to retrieve a box of music tapes he’d left with her. He finds a party in full swing, and his ex brushes him off until finally telling him where the tapes are. On the way there, a man bumps into him and bloodies his nose, and Sam passes out in a chair. He wakes up to discover a horrific zombie plague swept through Paris during the night. He now finds himself alone with limited means of survival.

The film is about him claiming the building as his fortress, clearing apartments, claiming tools and supplies, and basically surviving as city services begin to shut down. The loneliness slowly eats away at his sanity. In the end, he knows in the long term, he’ll die if he stays, but he’s terrified of leaving, resulting in a big decision.

THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD worked for me as an experience that is almost unique among zombie movies. It comes close to cinema verite as we see Sam do what he must to survive, and he reacts to everything with realistic terror. The zombies themselves are terrifically done.

The challenge for this film was to make an urban Robinson Crusoe interesting. The film accomplishes this for the most part, though it does drag in places. I believe the film would have been far more engaging and powerful if there’d been some sort of character arc, some necessary change addressing a character flaw, and a stronger external goal, such as being isolated from a survivor in a neighboring building but unable to get to that person unless he takes a very real leap. The result is a great climax and a dark denouement, but the overall effect is a bit flat.

Overall, I liked it a lot and found it something different and interesting in zombie movies.

THREE LAWS LETHAL by David Walton

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David Walton’s THREE LAWS LETHAL tells the story of two entrepreneurs who have a dream of converting the nation’s car stock into autonomous, self-driving vehicles, and the woman whose brilliant research holds the key to making it a reality. It’s a fun, engaging techno thriller, kind of like something Michael Crichton would write, except with very memorable, well-developed characters.

I first read Walton when I picked up THE GENIUS PLAGUE, which introduced me to his strong formula of excellent research, tons of interesting details, fantastic yet believable story line, and well-developed characters I could root for. THREE LAWS LETHAL delivers the same, hard sci-fi that reads like a thriller.

The story focuses on two young men working on software enabling self-driving cars to communicate and respond to each other. Naomi Sumner holds the key, a virtual world where she is training bots to evolve as a community through competition and collaboration, resulting in manifestation of artificial intelligence. An intelligence that may have its own goals.

This was a lot of fun to read and put Walton on my list of must-read authors who deliver engaging fiction powered by well-fleshed-out, big ideas.