Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

LOVE, DEATH, AND ROBOTS, Season 3

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The first season of LOVE, DEATH, AND ROBOTS (Netflix) wowed me with its anthology of stunning, action-packed, and titillating animated stories. Season 2 upped the production quality though at the expense of story, and I feared the show had become nothing more than a series of self-promo resume reels for its creators. Season 3 put all those fears to rest, delivering a really terrific series of animated shorts that fire on all cylinders. I loved it.

In “Three Robots: Exit Strategies” (written by John Scalzi), three robot tourists from the first season revisit Earth to learn about its apocalypse; this time, we learn it was climate change that killed everyone, and we see how different strata of society reacted to the end, with the have-nots fighting each other and the haves secluding themselves until they died out. Poignant, funny in a harsh “haha, we’re a really stupid species” kind of way.

In “Bad Traveling” (David Fincher’s animation debut), a massive shark-hunting sailing ship runs afoul of an intelligent sea monster, forcing the crew to make a decision about whether to save themselves or a nearby island full of people. Brutally satisfying.

In “Night of the Mini Dead,” we see a condensed zombie apocalypse from a bird’s eye view, looking down at tiny people and cities. Funny and quirky.

I intended to only describe the ones I really, really liked, but I’m now realizing that’s almost all of them. I was really impressed with the consistency of quality across the entire anthology this season. I’ll skip the others with a recommendation to just watch if it you have the chance, but I should talk about the finale, “Jibaro.” In this fantasy story, a squadron of warriors and priests pauses to rest by a lake in the wilderness, only to draw the attention of a local siren. The catch: Her charms don’t work on Jibaro, who is deaf. Thus beings a game of attraction and repulsion between the two, a tale of violence and greed. It’s simple with frenzied, exquisite action and visuals, and it’s quite beautiful and stirring to watch. Even if you discover this season of LOVE, DEATH, AND ROBOTS isn’t for you, I hope you’ll at least give this episode a crack.

Overall, I found this season brilliant, different, and giving me plenty of reasons to hope for a fourth season.

EPISODE THIRTEEN Now Available for Pre-Order!

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I’m excited to announce today that EPISODE THIRTEEN, my ghost novel coming out from Hachette’s Redhook imprint on January 24, 2023, is now available for pre-order at Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore, and online retailers like Amazon.com.

Fade to Black: Led by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin, it’s the new hit ghost-hunting reality TV show.

Episode 13 will take their investigative team to the former site of the Paranormal Research Foundation in Virginia. In this brooding, derelict mansion, they hope to use their scientific methods and high-tech gear to crack an infamous haunting while uncovering clues about the bizarre experiments that went on there in the 1970s.

But as Foundation House begins to unravel its mysteries, Matt and Claire discover it wants something in return…

Revealed in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, and correspondence, this is the story of Episode 13—and how an entertaining show about hunting ghosts became a documentary of obsession, madness, and human terror.

I hope you’ll check this one out! It was serious dark fun to write and, I think, it will be a blast for you to experience.

“A beautiful Russian doll of a story… EPISODE THIRTEEN hooks you, creeps you out, and then it overwhelms you. It’s HOUSE OF LEAVES meets HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, in all the best possible ways.” – Peter Clines, NYT Bestselling Author of THE BROKEN ROOM

X (2022)

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Ti West’s latest horror flick, X, explores the juxtaposition of sex and death. It’s fun, competent, and has a great aesthetic. While the last act didn’t quite pay off for me, I liked this one.

In this film, it’s 1979, and a strip club manager, trio of would-be porn stars, and a two-person film crew decided to travel out to rural Texas in search of the perfect location for their porn movie. For the actors, they have stars in their eyes, thinking the film will make their names. For the manager and director, they see dollar signs, hoping to cash in on the developing home video market. All of them are young, hungry, and want it all.

Unfortunately, the old couple they’re renting a boarding house from is very odd and facing the end of their lives. And boy, do they resent the young for having it all.

West earned a reputation for producing solid workhorse horror films known for their consistency of quality and competence. In this film, he delivers while flirting with the juxtaposition of sex and death and horror’s kissing cousin: humor. The characters are more or less developed, the actors do a good job, there’s an original take on the villain and its agency that comes as a twist, and the overall aesthetic is 70s grind house. When the violence happens, it has a FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH vibe to it.

My only downer is the same as with other Ti West films, which is while they’re solid and competent, they tend to roll out as a fairly even road from beginning to end, with barely a suggestion of a roller coaster, and as a result, when they end, they just sort of end rather than come in for a big finish, at least for me.

Overall, I liked it and would recommend it for horror buffs looking for a hearty square meal.

THE RETREAT #6: FORLORN HOPE Available!

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Written by my writing partner Stephen Knight, THE RETREAT: FORLORN HOPE, the last episode of our brutal “zombie” series, is at long last available for Kindle at Amazon. I’ve received a lot of letters asking when it would be coming out–thank you for your patience! The book is out, it ends the series with a hell of a bang, and you’re going to love it.

Based on the classic Greek story THE ANABASIS, THE RETREAT is about a battalion of light infantry that evacuates Boston during a horrific pandemic that compels its victims to seek out inflicting or receiving pain, which delivers excruciating pleasure–and makes them laugh and laugh. As America collapses around them, the lost battalion travels south toward Florida, where the last bastion of the government is holding out. If you read them in order, they were #1 (I wrote), #2 (Stephen Knight), #3 (Joe McKinney), #4 (me), and #5 and #6 (Stephen Knight). In this last episode, we find out if they make it, and what it means for humanity.

Stephen is an ace at the military procedural, and the result in an episode packed with non-stop gritty, violent, authentic action that is not for the squeamish. Here’s the Amazon description:

The road has been punishing.

Traveling from Boston to ill-fated Fort Drum, then on to Philadelphia, and again to Mount Weather and Fort Stewart, the First Battalion, 55th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division (Light) is run out, blown out, and virtually waiting for death’s embrace. Now at the border of Georgia and Florida, the battalion receives new orders:

Encamp at Moody Air Force Base…

…and call in the Klowns.

Lieutenant Colonel Harry Lee knows this will spell the end of the battalion. But executing the mission could mean the the difference between life and death…not for the 1/55th, but for what remains of the United States of America.

Lee took an oath when he enlisted with the US Army. But he hadn’t thought it was a suicide contract…

Check it out here.

UNDONE Season 2

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Amazon Prime’s first animated series, UNDONE explores the nature of time and the yearning to do life over if only to correct one’s mistakes in a series that is trippy but also very relatable and grounded in strong characters. Season 1 was top-notch sci-fi, authentic and hallucinogenic and challenging in its ideas; Season 2 isn’t as powerful, though it delivers the goods.

Skip this paragraph if you haven’t seen Season 1 yet, which I recommend you do. In Season 1, Alma (Rosa Salazar, probably my favorite actress after seeing her in this and BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR) is broken and restless due to her father (Bob Odenkirk) vanishing and turning up dead during her childhood. One day, she sees him again just before a car accident, but this was no hallucination–Dad is reaching across time to ask her to help save him from ever dying in the first place. The key, he says, is for her to unlock her dormant power to control time itself. The result is an exciting journey of discovery, reconnecting with her father, keeping her worried family at bay, and pulling the right strings so reality would shift and become in her mind perfect.

In Season 2, the story continues right where it left off. Alma gets everything she wants, but she’s still unsatisfied and restlessly looking for a problem she can fix. The only trick is her powers have weakened, resulting in her working with an ally to once again go into the past to fix a problem hanging over the family’s head. Is Alma looking for a problem that isn’t there because she’s disposed to being unhappy, itchy to use her power to “fix” reality for its own sake, or is there something real she can fix and finally make things perfect?

For me, the result isn’t as strong as the first season. Alma doesn’t have the same agency, there isn’t the same exciting process of discovery, and her ally is reluctant. The result is the plot moves forward, her ally says I don’t know if we should be messing with this, Alma says we do this and everything will work out, and then it repeats. When things finally break, the plot starts to get exciting, but until then, I was feeling a little uncertain as a viewer and a fan of the first season, as the second season felt softer both in the plot and dialogue. What you do get, what really carries the story, is the characters are darn likeable, and you want them to win.

Overall, Season 2 is far more of a family drama than the story of a young woman discovering her power to change reality, but it’s a likeable family with interesting problems, and I enjoyed it. It’s different, but it’s still good.

SAND CASTLE (2017)

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Written by Chris Roessner based on his experiences as a machine gunner in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, SAND CASTLE is pretty conventional as far as movies about modern war go, but its ring of authenticity and theme of futility in counterinsurgency overcomes this objection to offer a worthwhile experience. Critics and audiences didn’t seem to care for it a whole lot, but I liked it quite a bit. Though it’s no OUTPOST, it’s as enjoyable as similar efforts like HYENA ROAD.

It’s the eve of the Iraq War in 2003, and Private Matt Ocre (Nicholas Hoult), who’d joined the Army Reserve to pay for college, is fearful about what he’s about to get into. The troops roll out, and soon Ocre and his platoon are engaged in heavy street fighting. Soon after that, with the war all but over, he and a squad are tasked to team up with a Special Forces unit in a dangerous town called Baqubah. Headed by Captain Syverson (Henry Caville), the mission is to repair a water plant that was damaged in the fighting. Unfortunately, this seemingly simple task starts to feel frustratingly impossible as every step forward takes them two steps back as they deal with a hostile and fearful populace.

The movie has a lot to say about the contradictions and difficulty in fighting a counterinsurgency effort, as well as the difference between soldiers regarding what they’re doing as a job, which keeps them emotionally secure, versus a mission, where they care about the task, possibly too much. The action feels authentic and fairly intense, and the characters are likeable enough, especially Ocre’s sergeant (Logan Marshall-Green) and an Iraqi engineer trying to help the squad (Nabil Elouahabi, a terrific actor and veteran of war movies like HYENA ROAD and ZERO DARK THIRTY and TV series like GENERATION KILL). The only problem is Ocre himself; he obviously has plenty of fears and longings, but we rarely get to peer into his private world. He’s a good soldier at the best of times and a fair soldier at the worst. He’s important but not critical to the story, and the movie might have been improved if it had focused equally on the entire squad.

Overall, I don’t know if SAND CASTLE added anything new to an action-packed and thoughtful field, but I found it definitely a worthwhile watch.