What's Next For Our Heroine?

So, Return is done and off to the publisher.  I haven't gotten it back yet (and am I the only one who's like -- "Oh no, they didn't breeze right through it!  They don't like it!  Aaaaahhhh!"?  I'm certain there will be editing before the finished product hits the virtual shelves, so in the meantime....

I've got to start the short story, India, 1870.  It's the tale of how Fredericks and Mary-Louise became friends with Cray and Miranda.  I've also got to get Brooklyn, 1830 ready for publication on Smashwords (and perhaps Kindle).  That was a story I hadn't planned on, it just sort of happened.  I was writing a ghost story for an anthology that never came to be, and I couldn't leave Cray and Mirrie out of it.  Think Let the Right One In meets The Lovely Bones.  Yep!

In the meantime I've got to keep in shape -- summer is here (can you believe how the year has flown?!!)

Take care, gang!

Just horsin' around!

Movie Monday -- The Next Three Days

I'm a bit late reviewing this one as it's out on DVD.  I had high hopes for this Russell Crowe flick, as he's usually in something good, and I like Elizabeth Banks.  All I have to say is:

Don't bother.

I hope I'm not losing my attention span, but this movie took forever to get going.  We see in the trailer that he's got to break his wife out of prison in "The Next Three Days", and it feels like it took 3 days to watch the film.  Let me just say that -- ALOT of planning goes into breaking someone out of prison, and not all of  comes to fruition.

Lara Brennan meets her husband, John, and his brother and wife out for dinner and drinks.  She complains about her boss and the fight between the two of them at work today; the next thing you know, Lara is fighting with sis-in-law.  Lara and John leave, have hot sex in the car, and go home to the babysitter.  The next morning, it's business as usual BUT -- the cops burst in to catch Lara washing blood from her raincoat, and they arrest her for the murder of her boss.

Three years later, we see Lara, who's natural hair color has grown out in prison, being visited by her husband and her six-year-old son.  It's a sad scene as the son is clearly having trouble with the fact that mom's in prison for murder.  And it doesn't look like she's getting out, either -- a visit by John to Lara's lawyer shows that the appeal was denied; the blood on Lara's coat, her fingerprints on the murder weapon, they can't find the homeless woman whose button popped, and a co-worker saw Lara leaving the garage right before he found the boss's dead body -- what would you think?

But Russell doesn't give up, and thus begins the plot to break his wife out of prison.  This is where the movie drags, and it takes a while because he tests out each and every part of his scheme -- which normally would happen, but I have to say, it's slow to watch.  He also fails several times, losing money, getting beaten up, and nearly getting arrested.

I won't spoil you with whether the plot was successful or not, but suffice it to say -- maybe watch the beginning, and then come back 2 hours later and see the last 15 minutes!

We've Got Fright Night (2011) Images!!!! Colin Farrell as a Vamp!

Special thanks go to Count Basarab who posted a link to these gems (I've been dying to see Farrell as Dandridge, haven't you??)

Here's Evil Ed -- I like Christopher Mintz Plasse, but he's got huge shoes to fill 'cause Geoffreys just made the original:

 And finally, Charlie and Amy:

Imogen Poots is gorgeous -- I hope they don't dumb-down her role.  Amy in the original wasn't the prettiest, but she sure had a personality....

There you have it, gang -- enjoy Fright Night Friday!!!

Yay!!!! It's Done And Off To the Publisher!!!!

So, Return is done.  Like a dinner.  Is it perfect?  Probably not.  Personal issues kept coming up (and down, and up, and down), which made working on it rough.  Not to mention -- starting the sequel was hard.  I had an idea of where everyone needed to be at the end of it, but not really an idea of how to get there.  So I wrote alot of stuff, which needed some serious editing and changing around when I went back over it.

The good news is that I got my groove on, and I'm really happy with the final work.  There will probably be mistakes, and it might not be as polished as the draft of Release I submitted way back when to Vamplit, but it was time to turn it over and get the juices flowing for Redeem ;-)

Yay!!!!  And here's a sneak peek (from Cray's POV, if you couldn't tell the voice ;-)

It’s a common misconception that vampires intermingle with humans, courting them and seducing them, in order to feed regularly. The fact is that the majority of my race prefers to find, feed, and disappear all rather quickly, with the humans retaining no residual emotions or memory of the encounter. In the latter half of the 20th century, we’d stopped killing, although lately, my sister and I had killed our prey merely out of convenience -- we had demon friends who could burn the remains, thus greatly lessening the questions and superstitions that arose when bloodless bodies were found. The only humans we allowed into our daily lives had been cursed by voodoo and dark magic, thus giving them a taste of what our lives as vampires -- as outcasts -- are like. These cursed humans have become our friends, our family. For my sister and me, the two – friends and family – have become one and the same.