Weekend Plans

I haven’t done any ‘what will I do this weekend’ posts for a long time now - I have pretty much neglected all my blogs for quite some time. I’ve stopped getting overly annoyed about things after my burn-out some years ago and I was getting tired of basically doing the same kind of post once a week, just to tell you what I was reading/watching/playing - especially as my plans and my reality often differ. However, I think I might take up my posts about plans for the weekend again.

So, what am I going to do this weekend?

I’ve several stories that need more writing, my old enemy, the ending, is at it again. It’s true, I find it easy to start a story, I get though the middle well enough, but I have a hard time with the end. Perhaps, subconsciously, I don’t want the story to end, as I like writing. Consciously, I often am not sure where to end, since I usually think further ahead than necessary, make up much more of my characters’ fate than I need. I should finish some smut stories I’ve been writing (first time I got past the beginning of vampire stories in a long time), most of them merely need a few more scenes. There’s a couple of Loki stories which only miss a chapter or two, same goes for the retelling of a fairy tale I did a while ago. I’ll be occupied for more than just a weekend with all of that, though.

I’ll probably be reading in “The Shadows of Sherlock Holmes,” an anthology edited by David Stuart Davies I bought ages ago. It includes a lot of detective stories written at the same time as Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and overshadowed by them. I have been cross-reading it before, but now I want to read all of the stories.

I’ll definitely be watching the last episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” this weekend, as I just downloaded it from iTunes. In addition, I think of tackling either Season 4 of “Doctor Who” (new series), the one and only season of “Dracula,” and/or the second half of the second season of “Sleepy Hollow.” I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do.

I’ll also be playing some stuff, hopefully. I want to finish some TMs, namely “Sweet Kingdom,” “The Musketeers - Victoria’s Quest,” and “Fairy Kingdom.” I’ve also got quite some HOGs that need finishing, at least “Midnight Mysteries: Ghostwriting” and “”Revived Legends: Titan’s Revenge” deserve to be finished soon, since I got far with those already. I also want to go back to some adventures I was playing, like the remakes of “Gabriel Knight - Sins of the fathers” and “Grim Fandango.”

I’m sure I won’t get to finish all I planned. I’ll definitely watch “One of Us” tomorrow or during the weekend. I might start on “Sleepy Hollow,” since it’s only seven episodes and the other two series I want to watch are longer (10/14 episodes). I might get somewhere with my games, too. I should also play the second episode of “Tales from the Borderlands” this weekend, since it just came out and I have really been waiting for it. So much to do and little weekend.

Please don't tell my parents...

Some more book reviews from me. When I got the first two “Jeeves” story collections by P. G. Woodhouse and the complete “Anne of Green Gables” collection downloaded to my Kindle app on the PC yesterday, I was reminded I had, more or less on a whim, also bought two novels by Richard Roberts a little while ago. My guess is that they are geared towards teens, which would also fit with the age of the main characters, but they were so interesting and entertaining, I read them both yesterday, staying up longer than I had expected to.

“Please don’t tell my parents I’m a supervillain” is the first of the two novels centred around Penelope Akk, Claire Lutre, and Ray Viles, all 12 years old and middle school students. Penelope, Penny for friends and family, is the daughter of two superheroes herself and absolutely set on developing her own superpowers yesterday by preference. In the process of building a machine that could awaken her powers, she has her first invention ‘episode,’ coming up with a mechanic, voice-activated centipede that serves as both tool and recycler. While her parents expect her powers to develop slowly now, over the course of years, Penny is set to be a hero within a year. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned. Not only does she awake her best friend Claire’s powers (Claire’s mother is a supervillain-turned-superhero) by accident (the serum was only supposed to make Claire more fit for being a cheerleader), she also gives her friend Ray superpowers with the same serum. Her first act as a superhero is to stop Ray from trashing the science fair after Penny was disqualified, since judges didn’t believe she had really built the Machine (the mechanic centipede), while the school bully Marcia will win with a project she probably did nothing for herself. Unfortunately, Marcia set the whole thing up in order to catch a villain and Penny and Claire have to help their friend get away, while Marcia aka Miss A tries to catch them. To make up for their first ‘supervillain’ appearance, they try to stop another young villain, who was stupid enough to announce his first coup online, only to be pushed back into the ‘villain’ mould by Marcia and two other heroes. Unfortunately, in the course of these endeavours, Penny and her friends also get their names as a team (The Inscrutable Machine) and as individuals - Bad Penny (not because Penny’s identity was revealed), E-Claire (an alias Claire used online already and that goes well with her ‘cute’ mind manipulation powers), and Reviled (which Penny creates on a moment’s notice, based on Ray’s full name). The only adults who learn about the identities of the three new supervillains in town are Claire’s mother (who doesn’t mind, as a former villain), the sometimes-villain/sometimes-hero LucyFar (a good friend of Claire’s mother), and Spider, the former arch-enemy of Penny’s parents. During the course of the first novel, however, Penny and her team manage to gain the respect of the supervillains of LA (where the story is set) and become recognized as villains themselves, with all the rules and protections that includes.

In “Please don’t tell my parents I blew up the moon,” school has started again and Penny’s parents still don’t know their own daughter, now 13, is the leader of the hottest team of young supervillains in the city, The Inscrutable Machine. Then she and her two friends get a message from Spider for a job that will take them to Jupiter. Penny is supposed to build a functional spaceship to investigate a strange message from a human-sounding young girl that originated somewhere in the vicinity of Jupiter. For this, she makes an organic spaceship and goes on a trip with Claire and Ray. They stumble upon proof the alien race known as “Conquerors” (whose technology Penny unknowingly copied for one invention in the first book) has fought a battle against other aliens out in the asteroid belt. They also find a remainder of those aliens, a biological tissue that controls and mutates beings and objects it comes into contact with, referred to as “Puppeteers.” They destroy a last hideout of the Puppeteers on their way to Jupiter, picking up a partially changed human from the turn of the twentieth century. Close to Jupiter, they meet several human colonists from the Jupiter moons Europe, Callisto, and Io who fled Earth during World War II. And there they are again, the supervillains who actually want to be heroes, caught between intrigues, old enemies, monsters, aliens, and a lot of Steampunk technology. It’s up to Penny and her team to solve it all, preferably before the Puppeteers are replaced by monsters even better at controlling humans. Sometimes, you just have to blow up a moon to save mankind when you’re a supervillain.

While both novels are nominally young adult fiction, they definitely are entertaining for older audiences as well. Luckily, the author has avoided the typical pitfalls of writing a story about a super-intelligent child (boy or girl alike), which include making them too adult and too obviously above every problem. Penny has the talent to make new stuff, but it’s only partially under her control. And apart from the ability to make a bike out of energy, a mechanical device that can ‘eat’ and ‘reproduce’ every kind of energy, object, or material, Penny is a normal 12-year-old. She has not-so-favourite classes like German (high intelligence doesn’t make a being good at everything), she gets bullied sometimes, she has more or less normal friends, she has a crush on the hero Mech, who is a friend of her parents. And even though she has grown up in a household with two super-intelligent parents, her life at home is refreshingly normal. Yes, when inspiration strikes, Penny can build super-batteries or reproduce alien technology her father can’t understand, but apart from that, she is a teenager with all that includes. There’s also pretty little cliché when it comes to other people in the books. The villains aren’t always aloof or fighting each other, they meet in Chinatown every weekend for parties. The superheroes aren’t always heroic (Marcia and Ifrit seem more like bullies who pretend to do it all for the greater good, Witch Hunter seems to be in the whole hero-business only to kill) and not everyone is always good or evil (LucyFar. who claims to be Lucifer incarnated, pretty much does as she pleases, in a D&D game, she would be true Chaotic Neutral). The pretty girl with the seductress for a mother (Claire, whose mother was once known as The Minx and a villain for most of her life among the supers) doesn’t get her mother’s ability to cloud minds with sexiness, for her it’s cuteness. And Claire is far more of a geek than Mad Scientist Penny, both Claire and Ray are far more into comics and superheroes than Penny is. And when the formerly-bullied boy with the terrible parents (Ray) gets strength, speed, and endurance (and a healthy ego boost), he doesn’t turn into the hero with the white hat, he actually enjoys wreaking havoc far more than Claire and Penny. Emotionally very understandable, but not how it normally goes.

The superhuman ability of Penny’s mother to analyze data fails when it comes to her own child, Barbara Akk, formerly known as The Audit, is always sure The Inscrutable Machine might be a danger to her daughter, but never makes the connection between the facts and the truth. It says a lot that the enemy of her parents makes the connection much sooner, but the Spider proves more or less honourable in her dealings - insofar as you can expect that from a villain (who also isn’t human). It might also say something that of all the superheroes the trio crosses paths with the only one realizing they are actually trying to do the right thing is the one hero everyone fears and nobody listens to - reanimated vampire/zombie Mourning Dove who is known to rather kill villains she stumbles across than take them to jail.

On the whole the two novel about Penny and her friends are a great read, not too challenging, but definitely not simple ‘kids’ novels, either. I really enjoyed reading them and will probably visit them again. I always like the ‘evil’ point of view and the kids aren’t really evil, they’re just a little … misunderstood.

Book Catchup

It’s between the years, as we say over here, and I have been doing some catching up with my books - my e-books, to be more precise. I’ve been buying several cosy mysteries over the last couple of months and I didn’t always get to read them right away. At the moment, I have the peace and quiet and spare time, so I thought I might just as well get to it.

Caught Dead Handed (A Witch City Mystery) by Carol J. Penny

I couldn’t put this one down the moment I had picked it up. It was a spurt of the moment decision to buy this one, since it was the first of a new series and I read about it in the monthly review of new cosy mysteries over at the Cosy Chicks.

Lee Barrett is returning to her hometown of Salem MA, only to find herself in trouble when she leaves after not getting the job she wanted only to find another employee of the local TV station WITCH-TV dead in the water. Lee gets tangled up in the investigation after taking the late woman’s job on a whim and becoming the new medium/horror movie host of the station. The fact that after many years her visions are returning, doesn’t make things better, neither does that fact that the dead woman’s tomcat has decided to adopt her and her aunt.

The story is very well-written and fun to read. It’s a good balance between mystery and humour and has enough twists and turns to keep me interested and reading on.

Murder on the Half Shelf and Not the Killing Type (Booktown Mysteries) by Lorna Barrett

Murder on the Half Shelf has been the first Booktown Mystery I bought as an e-book, I have the prior ones as soft-covers. It took me some time to get around to it, after I had bought it, and I have to admit the series is running into a bit of a block with this one. Tricia and her sister Angela spend a night at the newly-opened Bed and Breakfast, only to stumble yet over another murder. It’s getting a bit of a stretch to have more crimes happening, since Tricia on the whole lacks the nosiness of Miss Marple, who stumbles over stuff, because she is actively searching for it (at least that’s my impression of her).

Not the Killing Type was a little better, then. This time, there is actually a link back to Tricia again, a logical reason for her to investigate, since her sister is among the suspects - and so is she. During a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, Angela is set to become the new head of the Chamber. Suddenly, though, a third party pops up, only to get murdered a little later. Everyone who was in the meeting is a suspect and Angela and Tricia even twice so. Finally, from my point of view, Tricia also breaks off with her on-off boyfriend, the local sheriff - a guy who every time something happens starts to treat Tricia as if he’d never met her before, just because she could always have been the one who done it in his eyes. Nobody needs a guy like that for a boyfriend and Tricia is putting up with too much, anyway.

I might still give the series another try, but if things don’t change to much, it might go the way of the Coffeehouse Mysteries, which I haven’t been reading any longer for quite a while now, too. After all, there’s a few interesting new series coming up, like the Witch City Mysteries above or the two following.

Iced Chiffon (A Consignment Store Mystery) by Duffy Brown

I took my sweet time with that one, admittedly, buying it quite a while ago, but never really starting to read it. I’d taken a look in the book at amazon and then decided I wanted to have it, but somehow always found other stuff to read first, despite the fact that it was on my Kindle the whole time.

At first, Reagan, the main character of the starting series, seems a bit of a letdown, since she’s sitting in her partially renovated home and feeling sorry for herself, since her ex definitely got the best of her (everything but the house) during their divorce. He’s got the company, all the money, the younger girlfriend, and even the Lexus. Reagan has a half-finished Victorian house and more bills than she can pay. And, after Reagan and her aunt found the corpse of Cupcake, her ex’s new girlfriend, in the Lexus, he even plans to sell her house, which he still hasn’t fully handed to her, in order to pay his lawyer who helped him cheat her out of everything she should have gotten during the divorce.

But Reagan grows quickly out of her misery, taking things into her own hands, investigating the murder of Cupcake (given name Janelle), so the lawyer won’t be able to run up that much of a bill. With courage, a little bit of luck, and a lot of snooping, she does her best to get to the bottom of it all. It doesn’t always help that Walker Boone, the lawyer, seems set on telling her to stay out of it, only to help her when things are getting tough. Or that the leader of a local gang is running a bet on who will find out first, Walker or Reagan.

At the same time, Reagan turns the ground floor of her house into a consignment shop called the Prissy Fox, in order to make some money and get her bills paid - plus the food for the dog which turned up under the porch and prefers hotdogs to premium food.

The story is full of interesting characters and the strange and colourful life of Savannah. It has twists, it has turns, it has oodles of suspects (since Cupcake was making some illegal money on the side), and it has a lot of witty barter between the gang-member-turned-lawyer and the temperamental consignment store owner. I’m looking forward to more of it.

Geared for the Grave (A Cycle Path Mystery) by Duffy Brown

Also by Duffy Brown (who also wrote Iced Chiffon), but the start of another series. I haven’t finished this book, so I can’t tell where it will lead me and what will happen, but I can already tell that the heroine will be interesting and the setting is very promising, too - Mackinac Island, full of bikes and horses, but empty of cars. Evidently also having at least one murderer present, but it can’t go out to the tourists.

Scandals, Secrets, and Murder (The Widow and the Rogue Mysteries) by Maggie Sefton

This one I’ve had on my hard disk (the Kindle app on my computer at any rate) for a while, but I haven’t found the peace to read it so far. It’s not set in the present, unlike the other books in this post, but in the past of Washington DC. A senator who cheats people out of money gets murdered in a brothel, the girl who was with him is almost killed as well. The wound, luckily, isn’t fatal, since the man was quite heavyset and the weapon didn’t pierce her body deep enough.

The book brings together two unlikely allies, a widow, doing good work with her husband’s money, and the relative of a young man suspected of the murder, who had to leave England for a while. Where the widow and the rogue are going to end up, I don’t know, but I still think I will get into this one, once I can devote the time to it.

I’m enjoying catching up on my books, having the time and the peace for reading to my heart’s content. Of course, I also enjoy playing multiplayer games against friends from Challengers, even though I usually get defeated.

Back to Sleepy Hollow

Recently, a sub-station of Pro7 started to air the first season of “Sleepy Hollow.” That means people over here can finally see one of the best supernatural series made recently. I, however, have moved on already and took the chance to get the second season at iTunes yesterday. As with the first on, once I had started watching the episodes, I was caught and just had to go on and on and on. Which meant, with only 11 episodes, I have managed to watch the season in about a day (split between Friday evening and Saturday morning/afternoon).

It’s always a certain danger when a series is going into another season. I remember being completely taken with the first two seasons of “Warehouse 13” and finding the third so uninteresting I almost didn’t watch the final two seasons, which are great again. I did fear a little that the series, once in for a new season, might lose the things that made it so interesting to me: the close connection of mythology, history, conspiracies, and magic. I was afraid they would put some of that aside to boost other stuff. I was afraid action might take over, or the visible attraction between Ichabod and Abbie may.

Instead, they continued down the road they had chosen before. Yes, there is more action in the second season, but that is only to be expected, as the End of Days draws nearer and both sides get more desperate. They also expanded the pool of main characters a little. But they kept more than they changed. Just as in the first season, it pays to pay attention to the details of every episode. The situation can change from one moment to the next and what you thought you knew can suddenly be all wrong again. There is no such thing as a ‘monster of the week’ episode in “Sleepy Hollow,” either. With merely 11 episodes, there is no space for one. Even seeming ‘monster of the week’ episodes like “Heartless” or “Mama” include vital information and drive the main story. Often it takes one or two more episodes to realize the real impact another episode has had on the full story. “The Weeping Lady” seems to be a ‘monster of the week’ episode at first glance, since the ‘lady’ in question targets women around Ichabod and tries to drown them. The episode is important for the season in the long run, though, because of the outcome and the new information on both Ichabod and Katrina it delivers.

As in the first season, the monsters are not just creations of the show’s writers, either. Even though they might have taken some liberties with the material, all monsters have a solid foundation in mythology, history, or at least literature. They are very well-made (the Gorgon in the next-to-last episode took my breath away, once it was completely visible) and the writers know how to introduce monsters correctly: by not immediately showing them off.

At the end of the first season, the audience is left with no less than five cliff-hangers, every main character has their own. Ichabod is buried in his son’s former grave, Abbie is caught in purgatory, Katrina is in the hands of the headless horseman, Captain Irving has been arrested for the murders his daughter committed while possessed by a demon, and Jenny (Abbie’s sister) may be dead or still alive after a car accident. During the first episode of the second season, not only is a full story of a ‘possible future’ told, but all five cliff-hangers are resolved, too. And as much as there’s different threads running through the whole season (for both seasons out so far), they all get tied up nicely towards the end of each. It’s almost as if the show’s writers wanted to do a ‘how to’ about handling the story arcs right.

I really loved the second season of “Sleepy Hollow,” even though there’s less cliff-hangers at the end of it. I will definitely hope there will be a third one.

End of the Year

Another year is approaching its end and the last few weeks - about one and a half months - have been quite stressing for me, at least health-wise. Things are looking up again and I’m sure the next year will start better than this one has been approaching its end.

Looking back at 2014, I see a very mixed year. I finished my evening courses in accounting, which is good. I have written quite a bit and expanded my list of stories over at Feedbooks (more about that in my Writer’s Blog), which is good as well. My years of not really taking care of my health have caught up with me early in November, which was bad. I got myself an account at Facebook, mostly to chat with a good friend in New York City in peace. We chat a lot and that is good, too. In addition, I have found Facebook to be a good way to while away some time and to find pictures and inspirations, which is also good, at least for me.

What will 2015 bring? To be honest, I have no real idea. I hope my health will improve again. I’m rather sure of it, actually. I know I will continue to write, so new stories will appear on Feedbooks. I hope to find a new job, too, something that pays well enough to keep my expenses covered, but allows me to spend my spare time writing. I hope to find the courage to approach some publishers with my work, perhaps find one that will publish some of my stuff. Not for the money, just to get a foot in the door and expand the reach of my work. I hope to lose some more weight, too, but it’s no high priority for me.

Another year is almost over and my Christmas spirit and End-of-the-Year good mood are making an appearance. Goodbye 2014. Hello 2015.