Goo-Goo, Gah-gah

Birthdays, ya’ gotta love ‘em … ya’ gotta hate them.

I mean, think about it. A five year old kid holds up five pudgy, candy grimed fingers, “I’m almost five,” he says proudly.

At that age, the next birthday is like the world to you. Then you start hitting really cool milestones, like first becoming a teen … then sixteen … twenty one … thirty and a half.

But somewhere along the line, we all … well, you, not me … stop adding to your age. You won’t see a middle-aged person bragging, “I’m almost forty.” Or, “next month I’ll be thirty-six!”

Instead, you start shaving years off your age, sometimes to ridiculous extents. I personally know two women who have celebrated … well, not exactly celebrated … their twenty-ninth birthdays more than once.

Where am I leading with all this?

Well, it’s because .. um … uh …

Hmmm … (drumming fingers)

Okay, fine, I don’t have a clue.

Big surprise, huh?

But I do want to tell you the most special birthday ever for me. I mean, forget my own hatching, er, development in a test tube, er, binary fusion … but the most special birthday wasn’t mine. It was my daughter.

But you have two daughters, you say.

Yep, and they were both the best birthday ever.

commercial break: my upcoming vampire humor Young Adult book Fang Face comes out September 1.

Just weeks away

… hee, hee, hee!

Come check it out http://www.fangface.homestead.com

Norm

Fantastic Fantasy

Fantasy is one of the oldest writing genres on the planet, going back to Beowulf, King Authur, er, Arthur, and other mystical, magical beginnings.

It's a style with no rules, and when science started catching up, it spawned two related genres, Sci-Fi and the more fantastical of horror. These three genres intertwine like a handful of worms.

Fantasy is also the most liberating genre of all, because, frankly, anything goes. If you want your vampire to be all sparkly and pretty, sure, go for it. Wood elves, trolls, goblins ... do you want your elves to be good elves, or something darker and more foreign? Doesn't matter, there's no right or wrong way to do it.

In fact, the more novel, the more unique, the better. Books that give us a new look at an old topic are all the rave. Look at the success spawned by Wicked. Imagine, taking the old witch from the Wizard of Oz and making her someone you cared about.

I think this is one of the reasons I was drawn to the genre. After all, reading is, in a way, escapism, and if you're going to escape, why not go to a world so completely different than ours that your fascination with the world brings you more colorfully and lucidly into the story.

Look to the success of games like Dungeons and Dragons. If you liked the first Harry Potter, you loved them all, and you lived the story along with Harry, Ron and Hermione all the way to the end.

Fantasy allows the author a freer hand than any other genre. The science in Sci-fi has to be palatable, if not provable. Mysteries have to walk the line between being too easy and too hard to solve. Westerns have to be ... um ... I dunno, I don't read them. But the horses have to be vegetarians and have four hooves, all of which touch the ground.

When I wrote my Adventures of Guy series, I didn't intend on them being fantasy at all. My heroes were three college roommates and a mother from up the street who get involved on a Quest. Of course, every quest has to have an elf, sorcerer, Unbeliever, a warrior and attorneys, er, otherworldly evil creatures.

But fantasy? Nah, I just wanted the freedom to have whatever I wanted to happen in the stories happen , and if it took a bit of magic, so be it.

Still, though, I have to admit to some surprise when reviewers started using the word 'fantasy.'

But with my upcoming book, Fang Face, all pretense is thrown away. It's definitely fantasy ... a vampire story, cut and dried. And I get to make the rules. The vampires don't sparkle, can't come out in the day once they are fully Undead, and they can't tolerate Doritos.

And believe me, I love the freedumb ... freedom ... to do whatever I want.

Norm

www.normcowie.com

Fangs in school

On my other blog (fangplace.blogspot.com), I discussed whether a boy should be expelled from school because of acne ... no, not that, heck, if acne was a reason to keep kids out of schools, they'd be empty.

What I meant to say, was if he got caught at school with a penknife.

Anyway, this touched on something from my upcoming book, Fang Face, where school authorities discuss banning a teenage girl from school just because of a little blood problem.

No, not anemia.

Her problem is that she likes blood. To drink. This isn't all of an uncommon feeling among her kind, seeing as she's in the process of being turned into a vampire.

But she isn't yet fully a vampire, and frankly, the law requires she attend school.

This was a fun thing to research. I called an administrator at the local high school, and asked her how a school might respond to something like this, and her answers surprised me.

I want to throw it out to y'all. How do you think a school should respond if it were asked to let a vampire attend classes with the other kids? And how might you respond if your child were in the same school?

The floor's open...

Norm

www.fangface.homestead.com
www.fangplace.blogspot.com

New Kid on the Block

Heh... a new place to play with words ...

So make room !

I'm going to talk ...well, write ... about writing for young adults (definition: those whose ages approximate my maturity level). I'm going to rant on occasion, 'cuz things out there piss me off sometimes, and I like to get 'em back in writing. And sometimes I'm just going to say something random ... like this.

"I'm watching television right now ... well, I'm typing ... but the boob-tube is on, and guess what's going to be on in two minutes?

Have you guessed yet?

George W. Bush's FAREWELL address!!!

Yay!!!!

Anyway, why's that relevant to anything here? Well, it' snot, er, sorry, it's not, but my WIP (work in progress) stars one George W. Bush.

And boy do I have fun with him. You'll really want to read it, believe me.

But that won't happen for awhile, because I have two books coming out before this, "Missing," an anthology that includes a story with my characters from award-winning Adventures of Guy series ... and then in August, Fang Face, my YA humor/vampire books comes out to gnaw on young readers.

Books should be judged on their content, so I humbly ask you to visit my website and read excerpts of my books, including a sneak peak at not-even-edited Fang Face.

So get yourself over to www.normcowie.com, and check them out.

In the meantime, remember, be kind to your vampire and keep your neck clean!

Norm

www.normcowie.com
www.fangface.homestead.com

The Adventures of Guy
The Next Adventures of Guy
The Heat of the Moment
Fang Face (coming Aug 09)
Missing (coming Feb 09)

I am Legend-- Richard Matheson-- Review

Count Orlock from the movie Nosferatu (1922)

I am Legend by Richard Matheson is a classic vampire novel. The version I am reading is c1995, it was originally c1954, Richard Matheson renewed the copyright. There are also several short stories included with this version. I am going to focus on the story "I am Legend."

I have read it several times. It has a very different feel from when I first read the horror novel. I think the novel is really written for someone in their late twenties. It had a lot more impact for me then.

The darkness wasn't there for me this time. It was more of a description of a horrible experience for the main character, Robert Neville. The story is more about the main character than the vampires. The world has pretty much ended for the human race. A terrible plague has spread across the world turning the population of humans into the undead.
Robert Neville is the last man on earth. He survives by living in a world fortified against the vampires outside.

Every day he goes out and stakes the living dead around his property. For me this no longer scary because they are just dead bodies to be searched for. We also learn because of a plot device he is immune to the vampires bite. One time he had been bitten by a vampire bat while he was in the army. This is an entertaining gimmick more than anything else. It lalso means he can be bitten and torn at without turning into a vampire.

The dog dies in the novel, apparently, the dog doesn't die in the movie starring Wil Smith. An interesting note about the book is that the character is a tall, muscular, blue eyed, blond haired man. But, this doesn't matter because as you are reading the novel, you can see the character as an every man. The main characters physical description seems incidental.

I've also read quite a few more vampire and zombie novels. The plot by this time has spread to numerous other novels and films. World War Z by Max Brooks is another story about a horrible plague, this time it is not vampires but zombies. Also, 28 Days, the film is about a plague that turns people into raving killers. The vampire as plague story started with this novel. The novel was very original for its time.

The vampire as plague is an interesting idea. I rather like how the book ends. This is a spoiler. Survivors who have come up with a partial cure find Robert Neville and execute him. He is a legend, the last man of the old earth. I am sure this is nothing like the new Wil Smith film even if I haven't seen it. I did see the Omega Man, an earlier version of I am Legend on the screen. In the Omega Man, Robert Neville finds a cure for the plague. I like the partial cure idea, it is much scarier and more grotesque.

I like how Robert Neville survives. He listens to classical music and he drinks. If you read carefully, you realize some of the music being described is atonal classical music. It is meant to disrupt ones emotions. The liquor he drinks is strong, scotch mainly. Scotch is a pretty sophisticaed drink

The library is of course a central motif of the book. Robert Neville searches the library, now covered with dust for books on physiology and the circulatory system. The author uses the books as a plot device to explain how the plague spread.

Robert Neville ponders the plague and the classical vampire motifs, garlic, the cross, running water, stakes, immunity to bullets. The author doesn't fully explain how or why these things work completely. He does give just enough to tantalize you, but not enough to finish the complete idea.

For a vampire novel, the writing is quite complex. It has a very detailed quality to it and misses very little of what is important. It is clear when reading the novel, the author thought things through very carefully when he wrote the novel. It is detailed enough that he gives specific dates for when things happened, chemical descriptions, and percentages. These of course aren't that important because the novel could just as well have been set today as thirty years ago. Yet, they do give a finished feeling to the writing.

Stephen King and many horror writers consider this novel to be one of the top horror stories ever written. The novel is short only 170 pages long allowing one to read it in one sitting.

There is an element of unbelievability to the novel. The author even comments that he doesn't understand why the vampires with a tiny bit of intelligence don't just burn the main characters house down to get rid of him. They throw stones at his house. But, then the novel would end. He has to be caught as an individual for the novel to end.

I am wondering what the sound track of I am Legend will be like. I hope they include some decent piano music.

I remember watching Nosferatu in the park on a summer evening at around six o'clock. You paid for your ticket and sat outside. Maybe you got a glass of beer or soda, or some popcorn. Then the piano would start playing. The film was a silent black and white with a slightly grainy texture. Nosferatu had a dreamlike quality much like animation. Everything was either very dark or very light. The whole movie was a movie of extremes.

I am reviewing this book particularly because the movie is in the theater. I am not going to go see the movie in the theater. I will wait until it comes out on DVD. When it comes to the library, I will put it on reserve. I will probably end up being number 250 in line and have to wait three months to get the movie. I am in no hurry to get movies, books, and other media. I don't feel an urge to rush out to get things. I think this is much more satisfying when you are younger. There is an excitement to be the first one to see a movie. You get wide eyed and rush out to see the latest thing, or grab the newest comic book. It is a very intense experience.

I also have Spiderman 3 and Shrek The Third on hold. I rather like these kinds of films. Like, I am Legend, I am not in a hurry to get things. I follow the same habit of some of my patrons. I fill up my holds list and keep it filled. There is one patron of the library who comes in and first fills his hold list of 20 films, then he uses his mothers card to add another 20 films. He is disabled. It is what he does with his time. There are a couple others like this who fill all their holds with videos.

In a way, I am just as obsessed, however, I have a little more variety, books, dvds, and comic books. I usually get a few items every couple days.

Here is the paperback book. It has a picture of Wil Smith on the cover. Some people will buy this book only because it has a picture of Wil Smith on the cover. They collect paperbacks based on films. The clearer the shot of the film the more they will like the paperback. The paperback is currently on the Locus bestseller list for science fiction, the film has definitely revived the books.