Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

THE WITCH (2015)

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THE WITCH is a historical supernatural horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers.

The story begins with William and his family standing before Puritan church elders. William stubbornly maintains a religious difference with the church and decides to leave the plantation to live in the wilderness. He and his family find fertile land and praise God before building their new home.

Some time later, his wife Katherine gives birth to a son. While Thomasin, their oldest daughter, is watching him, he disappears, the first sign that evil lives in the forest.

What follows is despair, further nightmarish assaults, religious paranoia and accusations, culminating in horrific violence.

THE WITCH is dark, moody, slow. It’s not your typical horror movie. It’s a slow, character-driven burn of a story. The director takes his time, which fits with this being a period piece. He also took great pains to ensure everything in the film is historically as authentic as possible. By the end, we feel the characters’ isolation and paranoia, and see the surrounding thick woods as ominous and threatening.

I enjoyed THE WITCH as a standout film in the horror genre.

Miyazaki is Amazing

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Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese producer/director, animator/author/screenwriter, and manga artist. Over the past 50 years, he achieved widespread acclaim as the creator of anime feature films that are commercial successes in Japan, mostly through his production company Studio Ghibli. Most people in the West hadn’t heard of him until Princess Mononoke.

Miyazaki is a traditionalist, favoring hand-painted animation, often using water colors. He usually starts the animation before the script is finished and the storyboards are still developing.

His work is amazing. I’ve been working my way through his films thanks to friends Ron and Ella. So far, I’ve seen Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Castle of Cagliostro and Princes Mononoke. My favorite is definitely Porco Rosso, the tale of a WWI fighter pilot who lives his life as a pig.

Miyazaki manages to convey a breathtaking sense of wonder in his films, amazingly charming characters, and interesting stories. He infuses each character with very human traits revealed through action, which conveys a deep sense of empathy and realism.

If you enjoy anime and haven’t watched his films yet, I recommend you check them out.

LADY BUG by Paul Telegdi

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lady-bugCRASH DIVE, my submarine series, is so fun to write, I’ve been thinking about writing a series about the crew of a Sherman tank. First step is to see what else is out there, which brought me to LADY BUG. In Paul Telegdi’s war novel, the crew of a Sherman tank fights from North Africa to Italy during WW2. Not all of them will be coming home, however, at least in one piece.

LADY BUG is a flawed minor masterpiece. First, the flaws. The character development is sketchy in the first hundred pages. The point of view jumps around a bit before we find out Hawkins, the tank commander, is the main character. Often, the characters less converse than give speeches to each other. In many cases, those speeches serve as minor info dumps about the war, and the reader is left with the impression the author is talking, not the character.

Nonetheless, like I said, it’s a bit of a masterpiece.

Despite its flaws, the novel feels completely authentic. Telegdi didn’t serve in WW2, but he clearly did his homework. Not only does he capture the geographies and weaponry in excellent detail, but the routines of Army life. The novel reads as if written by somebody who’d been there, done that.

The action scenes are short but enormously powerful. You really feel the rush and horror of combat, what it might have been like to fight inside one of those tanks.

An interesting development is about half the book takes place stateside as one of the characters recovers from an injury and tries to reintegrate into civilian society after the horrors he’s witnessed. This was a risky move, but once it gets rolling, it works, and it elevates the book to something greater than just a pulpy war novel. The result is bigger than the sum of its parts. It achieves something like pathos.

Telegdi has written a lot of other books. I’m curious to check them out.

AFTER, Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

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afterWhat happens after the end of the world? That’s the thematic question behind AFTER, an anthology of nineteen stories edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

Contributors include Carrie Ryan, Richard Bowes, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeffrey Ford and more.

It’s an eclectic collection with a literary bent. In the stories, the characters often try to find meaning and control in an atmosphere of dramatic change or post-change.

My favorite stories were:

Carrie Ryan’s “After the Cure” tells the story of a young woman cured of a vampire affliction that is threatening to overrun the world. The problem is the society that cured her doesn’t trust her, while she remembers and often longs for the pure simplicity and sense of family among the undead hunters of the night.

N.K. Jemisin’s “Valedictorian” tells the story of a young woman at the top of her school and living in a society enclosed by a superior machine intelligence. The last humans barely survived the war and now hide behind a massive wall that everyone knows offers no real protection. Each year, the machines ask for the smartest among the humans to be handed over.

Carol Emshwiller’s “All I Know of Freedom” tells the story of a young woman kept as an indentured servant in the home of a rich family during a time of mass poverty and natural calamity. She stumbles across a religious community that is building a rocket ship to start a new life on another planet.

Steven Gould’s “Rust with Wings” tells the story of a young man fleeing his home with his family. Behind him, a growing infestation of strange insects that devour metal is growing.

Metthew Kressel’s “The Great Game at the End of the World” tells the story of a brother and sister playing a baseball game with a strange set of creatures on a torn section of earth thrown into space, the private collection of a vast intelligence.

The voices were refreshing to this jaded apocalyptic reader, though I wish Datlow had reached out to more authors who specialize in apocalyptic fiction.