Late, I'm Late For A Very Important Date!

After careful consideration - and an especially helpful suggestion - I have decided to post blogs only once every Sunday afternoon. While I would like to sit in front of my computer every single day and compose beautifully mastered re-tellings and characteristically long opinions for the people who enjoy reading such things, (I'm looking at one person in particular) I find myself ridiculously predisposed.

I feel that if I try to put out a blog every single day I'll be posting non-interesting or particularly captivating words that don't really have an effect on anything or anyone. If I work my way up to that one amazing post every Sunday for a whole week, I have six times the chance to wow people. I would rather wow people than bore.

So there you have it; expect to expect a blog post every Sunday afternoon. This Sunday included.
 

Edward Cullen vs. Chuck Hogan & Guillermo Del Toro

Do you like Twilight? No?

       Would you like Twilight a little bit more if Edward's head flipped back like a Pez dispenser and he ate Bella right in the middle of the classroom, two chapters into the first - and therefore only - book? Not to mention every boyfriend or significant other in the span of the past few years would not have to endure either reading or sitting through another Twilight related event.

         If your answer was a resounding "Yes!" or you are the poor, aforementioned significant other then Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro's "The Strain" would be the read for you.

Though the majority of the novel is set in The Big Apple, the first chapter throws readers into the world of a young man on the very edge of a rapidly modernizing age, pre-World War II. This is where we are introduced to the story of Jusef Sardu, an ill-fated blue blood who becomes cursed.

           Wait, let me guess what you're thinking... "cursed to walk the night and feed on human blood!" You might even be speaking in a thick, clumsy, Transylvania, Boris Karloff inspired accent. For the most part, yes, you'd be right... but these vampires don't look much like Mr. Karloff and they definitely don't sound like him. Not to mention that they don't much care specifically for the blood of whiny, teen virgins who care for British film stars turned sparkling vampires.

            The novel takes an interesting romp through the lives of several New Yorkers who ultimately all become embroiled in the fight against what soon becomes a vampire plague (yes, think Night of the Living Dead, but with vampires) after a inbound 747 passenger liner stalls on the tarmac at the JFK airport. Ephraim Goodweather and Nora Martinez, disgraced CDC scientists, Vasily Fet, a vermin exterminator and Professor Abraham Setrakian - a Holocaust survivor turned vampire hunter - soon become the focus characters of the story.

              Del Toro's background in the macabre and ultimately gruesomely fascinating coupled with Hogan's ability to weave and interesting, dynamic plot make this novel nearly impossible to put down. From the scenes of trial and tribulation between characters and the fantastically horrific, this novel becomes - for all intents and purposes - a horror movie for the imagination, inked on paper instead of lit up on a screen.  

               If you're disappointed with what happened to vampires in the gap between Anne Rice and post- Stephanie Meyer, this is a book that has the potential to redeem the monster title for this creature of the night.

                Personally, I give this book an 8 out of 10 if for nothing else but the vivid imagery, nearly seamless plot line and the attempt to bring the vampire back into the genre of horror and not teen angst.

What I didn't quite like about the novel was the up and down tendencies of the action. Hills and valleys; if you can get through the first three chapters, the book only gets better.

This Blog thing...

So, this is the blog thing, eh?

Why not start one? Because I don't have time.
 Why don't I have time? School.
School? Yes school.

This is my fourth attempt at a blog. One of these attempts was semi-sort-of-maybe successful. I was forced to write it at gun-point, against my will, on pain of death, the discretion of a marking rubric. It was focused on chick-flicks which I guess isn't really an ingenious idea... but it worked and I watched girly movies as a part of school based work. It was an adventure and a half.

I guess I'm starting this blog as a branch-off for what I'd like to do in the future which is being an author. I've had a few suggestions for which direction I should take genre wise (Romance, Mystery, Fiction, Teen Fiction) but ultimately, I guess my goal is to really have a book of every genre. Far-fetched goal I guess for some people... Not really I say! You see, I work in a book store and therefore have a vague idea of what the market is really like.

Well at least I thought I did before I started shelving "legitimate," "books" by Tyra Banks, Hilary Duff, Lauren Conrad and most disappointing, Snookie and J-Wow. What is it that they have that I don't? Oh yes, established fame wherein they can produce crap en mass and actually have people who spend hard earned money on these tree-killing horrors. Poor children are starving in Africa and with the money you just spent on that book J-Wow is selling, yes, you can feed a hut of twelve, plus send little Aisha to school. Yes you can!

So I guess - before I go into a long winded rant about how life isn't fair, because I realize that this is a tired and therefore already widely accepted fact - this is it. This is the blog thing. I'm not really sure what my blog will be about at this point - look for rants, book reviews, writing updates and possibly in the future, publishing news.

This is a non-discriminatory blog in which all subjects will be addressed, yes, even that one that you're thinking about Blog stalker... even that.








... Maybe not.