Comic Book Therapy » author

Chris Roberson To Write The Shadow Ongoing

Cody "The Thorverine" Ferrell — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 05:47:24 +0000

Chris Roberson will be sticking with the pulp heroes beyond the pages of Masks. The writer of the well-received Dynamite crossover event, which we’ve been raving about, will be writing The Shadow ongoing series starting in April. Roberson pointed out the April solicitations for the series:

THE SHADOW #13
Chris Roberson (w)
Giovanni Timpanol (a)
Alex Ross, Paolo Rivera, Tim Bradstreet, Francesco Francavilla (c)
4 regular covers will be shipped in equal ratios
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
A grisly string of random murders has left the authorities baffled, but The Shadow believes there is method to the killer’s madness. At each crime scene, eyewitnesses have spotted the spectral figure of a woman in white. Is “The Light” behind the murders, or a victim’s lost spirit? The Shadow must unravel the mystery before the killer strikes again!

When asked on Twitter if this would be longer than the upcoming “Light” arc, Roberson said he didn’t plan on going away anytime soon. This is great news for Shadow fans. Roberson has handled the cast of Masks well, but his Shadow writing stands out. The writer mentioned he particularly enjoyed writing the character in our interview last month (click here for that). It will be interesting to see what Roberson brings to his first arc. He has written a lot of great stories and comics, but I’ve been particularly impressed with Masks. Having Chris Roberson continue on with the pulp characters will be something you can’t miss. What do you think about the news? Will you be tuning in for The Shadow vs. The Light?

Cody "The Thorverine" Ferrell, Chris Roberson To Write The Shadow Ongoing

A Moment with Bestselling Author Brent Weeks

Michael Worthan — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:39:59 +0000

Alright folks glad to be back and going, this is my interview with New York Times bestselling author Brent Weeks (the Night Angel Trilogy, The Lightbringer series). I am very happy he has interviewed with me again, and that I was able to talk to him about his newest book the Blinding Knife on sale September 11th 2012. So sit back, enjoy, and comment!

Also if you don’t want spoilers be wary of what you read on here!

First off beyond everything else I’d like to say thank you for not only taking the time to answer these questions, but for reaching out to me on Twitter after I had tweeted you about your books. It’s rare for people one admires to actually reach back out when a comment is made to them any where really. I know how busy things can get, and for you to take your time and do all of this for me, as well as my site is a huge privilege.

Hi Michael — Well, thanks for your interest! It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. And thank you for giving me this opportunity to virtually chat with your site’s visitors.

Alright on to the questions.

First off can you give us the synopsis of where things were left off at the end of the Black Prism and where the Blinding Knife takes off?

Ah, starting me off gently, are you? Well, everyone who hasn’t read The Black Prism consider this your spoiler tag. (No really, this will be a spoiler. I know you read really fast and you’ve already gone three lines past where I said this is your spoiler tag, but you need to stop. Don’t worry, I’ll have a little end tag in there too, so you know when it’s safe to come back.)

The Black Prism is a story of the Prism, Gavin Guile. The Prism is the religious head of religious power in the world and the figurehead of political power. (Analogous to the Japanese Emperors circa 1600.) The current Prism is still trying to mend his empire after a war 16 years ago that started between him and his brother. Early in The Black Prism, Gavin Guile finds out that he has a bastard named Kip in a backwater village. Kip is 15, chunky, and mouthy, the son of a single mom with a drug problem. In other words, he’s pretty much the opposite of the charming, educated, and always cool Gavin Guile. Some rebels determined to secede from the empire rise up against Gavin Guile — and, not coincidentally, this uprising begins in the same area where Kip lives. (You do realize that you’ve just asked an epic fantasy author to give a synopsis, right? We’re good at lots of things; brevity is not one of them.) Suffice it to say bad stuff happens and then gets worse. And not everybody’s who you think they are. (I did that for all the people who read past the spoiler tags, even though I told them not to.)

At the end of The Black Prism the rebel army has captured Garriston despite Gavin’s heroic defense of it. Gavin’s former fiancée has probably figured out his big secret and may well use it to destroy him. Kip has nearly gone crazy and managed to kill a king in a spectacularly gory fashion — the words “his head burst like a popping pimple” may or may not have been used there — and it seems that the heretics who use magic to transform themselves into monsters may actually have a point after all. (END SPOILER)

The Blinding Knife picks up about four days after the end of The Black Prism. This is actually technically a little bit more difficult than if I’d skipped forward, say, six months. Because when you skip forward you have good excuses to remind readers of all that happened in the first book while you’re telling them what’s happened in the last six months. However, I took on the expositional challenge because I like to give the reader the sense that they’re getting to experience every part of the story.

In the Black Prism you introduced us to Kip, who is one of the main characters in the story. In all honesty he was whiny, he angered me more often than I wanted him to, and yet near the end he was a little more mature and genuinely a brave yet heart breaking case. How does he grow in The Blinding Knife? What can we expect from him in book 3?

I found the reactions to Kip really interesting. In some ways I’ve come to the conclusion that Kip is a victim of my accuracy. I’ve had people tell me “Brent, it’s uncanny how well you’ve captured a 15-year-old.” And I’ve had people tell me, “Kip is so whiny, he pissed me off every time I read about him.” I don’t find any conflict between these two statements. I think how you view Kip depends a lot on how you view your own 15-year-old self. If you can look at that whiny, awkward with the opposite gender, hormonally-charged, sometimes smart and sometimes stupid person that you used to be with a healthy dose of grace, I think you can find a lot to love in Kip. However, if your 15-year-old self still mortifies you, then you don’t want to be reminded of that. Not even in your fiction.

Other people commented that they found Kip vacillated wildly between being a child and being a grownup. That, too, was by design. I like to tell a story of one of my friends in high school. He was one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met to this day. I mean, we’re talking IQ in the 160+ range. He was incredibly intelligent, and because he was intelligent, even from a young age, he tried to parse things logically. And it gave him this kind of lopsided development as a human being. I remember him talking about his parents’ divorce in a perfectly level voice, emotionless and descriptive, while tears were rolling down his face. And he said quite frankly, “I have no idea why I’m crying.” Like it was a puzzle to him that he could figure out. I think most of us are like that, though to a much lesser extent. Especially in adolescence, we develop certain skills to a level of adult proficiency. And in other areas we’re complete newbs.

Without giving spoilers, I think it’s fair to say that when placed in a healthier environment with some people that care about him, Kip is going to do a lot of growing. However, as he does that, he’s also finding himself stepping onto an international stage and being asked to play games against the very best opponents in the world.

Book 3 is tentatively titled The Blood Mirror. However, I recently gave in to my inner editor and decided that the Lightbringer series is going to be four books, rather than three — as I had always feared. Thematically, The Blood Mirror is a better title for the last book, but I haven’t yet come up with a fourth title so Book 3 will be The Blood Mirror for now.

In the Black Prism we start to see the complicated lies that have been weaved by Gavin and why his relationships with everyone are the way they are. We start to see some resolutions in the Blinding Knife, and half of those reveals made me feel like I was watching a slow moving train wreck. How was it writing these twists and turns? How many more in book 3 do we have to look forward to?

I like to write books that have 2 1/2 twists with a Volshenko turn at the end. If they enter the water with little splash, so much the better.

No, of course I can’t tell you how many twists are left! By which I mean, actually, this is the last twist you will see in Brent Weeks’s writing. He’s grown tired of them and decided he does not want to be a one-trick pony, and additionally will now speak of himself in the third person.

Ok, honestly, I like to surprise readers. I’m told I do it well, but I also don’t want every book to be reducible to one big twist. I hope give people lots of reasons to read. And deep characters doing surprising things (that still make sense when you think about what the character knows) will probably always be part of my writing.

You invented a game in the Blinding Knife called Nine Kings that made even want a non-Magic the Gathering player such as I want to grab a deck and give it a go. Any possibility this becomes a real game?

Yeah, a funny thing happened to me when I finished writing The Black Prism. A math professor friend of mine came to me and asked if I’d played Magic the Gathering before, because he thought the magic seemed similar. I actually never had played the game before, but he taught it to me, and I found it really cool. Nine Kings has elements of Magic the Gathering, Shadow Era, and other trading card games as well as some strategy games like Catan and Carcassonne that I’ve loved for a long time.

At first I made up the game simply because I needed an excuse to put Kip and Andross Guile in a room for a long time — and to give Andross ways to torture Kip. I thought of chess first, and then poker, but they both seemed so boring and overdone. When I came up with Nine Kings and having the people depicted on the cards be real, and the history they’re in be knowable, I knew I’d stumbled upon plot device gold. With my friend, who handily enough has a Ph.D. in mathematics, I have begun developing a game based on Nine Kings. However, making a game and writing a novel require two almost completely disparate skill sets. I do hope to make it into a game someday, but I expect it will take years to develop. Novels are really my main thing, and I’m not going to stop writing for a year or two to make a game.

In the Blinding Knife you introduced me to one of my favorite characters (Teia), and a lot of amazing side characters. How do you flesh out so many characters? How many more do we have to look forward to in the third book?

First, thank you! I love Teia. She’s awesome. And she’s been really fun to write. I can’t wait for more people to meet her.

I don’t intend to introduce very many more characters. There are a few side characters that will have more of their stories told in Books 3 & 4, but at this point in the narrative, an author needs to be really careful about introducing new points of view or the whole series can just explode and become a 15 volume epic.

Is there any shot of seeing a Kylar from the Night Angel trilogy Kip from Lightbringer series crossover at any point? Purely a fan question.

At the point you see this book come out, you will know I have sold my soul. Please ask me at that time how much I was paid for it. If it’s more than six figures, you can make fun of me and I will cry on my way to the bank.

You’ve developed a magic system that really I haven’t seen any where else, as well as a meaning for all of the colors and how the effect the attitudes of those who wield them. How did this come about, how difficult is it to keep track of their abilities?

I think it came about from my fascination with science and with complicated systems that look simple on the surface. When you look at a color, you think you know what it is, but the more you delve into wavelengths of light and the science of perception, the more you realize it’s a lot harder than blue just being blue. I wanted my magic system to reflect that. It starts with something easy: different colors make for different magic. Each color’s magic has physical properties. Red is sticky and flammable, blue is smooth and breakable, green is rough and springy, etc. And then I layered onto that further physical properties like smell and weight and strength. I layered on that some break down after a certain amount of time. Yellow has a liquid and a solid state like water and ice that act differently. Then I tried to imagine a culture that uses these properties as if these physical substances were just another kind of stone or wood or glue or oil. The science and engineering of the world itself would be altered to take these new materials into account and use them in architecture and art and every form of human endeavor possible because humans are endlessly creative.

And then on top of the physical system, I layered a metaphysical system. That is, drafting each color has emotional and psychological effects on the drafter. Blue is harmonious, logical, structured, but cold. Red is passionate, fiery, emotional. Again, I tried to do this in ways that sort of make sense with the connotations we already have with colors.

And then, quite simply, I lit the fuse. Each person can use a finite amount of magic in their life. And then those metaphysical and physical properties overtake them. An otherwise logical person who uses vast quantities of red eventually becomes more passionate, more angry, and less able to reign in their emotions.

It wasn’t terribly difficult to keep track of. I have charts and things that I can look at when I need a cheat sheet. But because the system did sort of exactly what I’d hoped — started simple and got delightfully complex — it was a big challenge for me in The Black Prism to know how much I needed to keep cluing readers in and reminding them of how things work. I was recently listening to the audiobook for the first time, and I felt like I really over-explained some things. But then I still read blogposts from people who were still confused even at the end of the book, so it’s a hard balance to strike. In The Blinding Knife, I threw in some reminders, but mostly hit the ground running and actually even introduced some cool new complexities with spectra of light that are beyond the visual spectrum in both directions. (If you want to talk about complicated, think about how complicated the particle-wave theory of light is, or stuff about Schrödinger’s cat. And that’s to us, in the 21st century. I’m dealing with a 1600s Mediterranean level of technology — although their science of optics is more advanced than that — and I’m trying to explain stuff about millimeter wave radiation in ways that (1) are accurate, (2) make sense to the characters who don’t have the concept of a millimeter of light traveling in waves, or of radiation, and (3) in ways that don’t sound hopelessly anachronistic as you’re reading this book set in an alternate 1600 Mediterranean world.) Whew!

You leave the Blinding Knife with a lot of open ends and a lot of excitement and storylines that look to add so much to the third book? What can we expect from book 3?

I’m actually already more than halfway done with the first draft of The Blood Mirror and I’m having a great time with it. Like The Blinding Knife, Book 3 picks up only days after the climactic events at the end of the previous book and then flies. The pacing of my books is unrelenting and the stuff I have in Book 3 is really exciting. I get to spend time with at least one villain who’s just awesomely twisted. He makes me squirm every time I write one of his scenes. And we get to see some of the other characters we’ve been with for a while really come into their own (even as, remarkably, the world just gets worse and worse.) That’s as much as I can give away right now.

As a comic fan when I read your books I can vividly picture every character because your writing is so explanatory and you give such a clear view of who we’re watching do what. Is there any shot you make either of your series into a comic? If not a comic is there anything on the line you can talk about TV or movie wise?

Well, I do have the Night Angel graphic novel which is being developed right now by Yen Press, and I’m sure over the upcoming year I’ll be doing a fair amount of work with the artist/adapter to make that come to life. Right now they’re just contracted to do The Way of Shadows, but if that’s successful, then they will obviously continue with the series.

I haven’t publicized the fact, because sometimes fans get too excited when they hear about options and movie stuff, but I’ve been working with the producer of all of the X-Men movies to try to bring Night Angel to the small screen. She is really a top-notch pro, and she knows everybody in Hollywood and she’s interested in quality, which has made her a delight to work with. After talking about it, we agreed that Night Angel would do better as a series than as a movie or even three movies. There’s just so much content there that would have to be cut that we thought a TV series would be a better direction. This time I’ve actually held on to the option rights myself, which puts less money in my pocket but allows me to have a say in the direction of the project. And I’ve actually used that. I’ve said “No” to several parties that were interested. (Which, believe me, was kind of hard to do.)

The truth of the matter is that I could line up everything with the most talented people in the world and then sign over my rights and the personnel might end up changing and a crappy movie or TV series come out of it no matter what I do, but right now I’m doing all that I can to make sure that if a TV show happens, it’s the best it can possibly be. And if a project doesn’t happen because I’m being too picky? I’m fine with that. I love writing books and don’t feel that they’re inferior in any way. I’m making a living, and I’d sooner write a Night Angel/Lightbringer crossover than I would willingly sign on to some crappy movie!

Alright folks again I’d like to thank Brent for being so amazing and answering all of my question, as much as I show him gratitude you can as well by picking up his book here and visiting him on his book signing tour starting in September when the book comes out. The list of the book tour dates is here.

Michael Worthan, A Moment with Bestselling Author Brent Weeks

An interview with Peter Clines

Michael Worthan — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 20:09:39 +0000

I’ve been given the chance to once again interview author Peter Clines about his newest book -14- that just hit stores and e-stores a few weeks ago. After reading and reviewing -14- and realizing this book was by far one of my favorite summer reads this year I reached out to Peter and he agreed to do this interview. I hope you folks enjoy and go pick up a few of his amazing books.

Your newest book is simply titled -14- . Can you explain it a bit for some of those who haven’t read the synopsis of the book yet?

14 is about a guy named Nate who moves into an old apartment building and notices a few odd things about his new home. Nothing major or earth-shattering, just a couple odd things that are easy to brush off. One of them is an apartment on the second floor that has several padlocks on the door—apartment #14. But as he gets to know his neighbors, he starts to realize that almost every room in the building has something odd about it. And well… anything past that would be giving things away.

It’s been a tough sell at times because it is so mystery-heavy, and anything you get told takes away from that bit of dramatic impact in the story. I was up at Crypticon in Seattle over Memorial Day weekend with a few advance copies, and the way I sold it to people there was “How would you explain LOST to someone without giving anything away?” And they’d usually grin and say “People crash on an island and stuff happens.” So that’s how I’m explaining 14 (and hoping most other people explain it for as long as possible). This guy, Nate, moves into an old apartment building and stuff happens.

What was your inspiration for writing -14-?

A couple things. It was one of those lucky moments where a bunch of ideas were in my head and they all happened to fall together to make a story.

A good chunk of it was the building I first lived in when I moved to Los Angeles. It was really old and brick and had paint that would peel off the walls in big sheets. It also struck me how odd it was that I didn’t know any of my neighbors, even after I’d lived there for almost a year. Which is really odd when you think of, say, a college dorm. It’s the exact same living arrangement but you know everyone, you hang out together, and sometimes crash in each others’ rooms (for various reasons). It got me wondering why things were so different in an apartment building. The tenants eventually bonded over the big Griffith Park fire in 2007, the one that threatened the Observatory. A bunch of us ended up on the roof, just watching the fires and drinking all night. And we all started talking and got to know each other. And suddenly we were this little community with shared interests and hobbies and we were trading DVDs and sharing meals.

True story—it turned out one of my downstairs neighbors, Hunter, was one of the founding members of the sci-fi band Gwar. He was Techno-Destructor. I got to wear his claw once. We hung out a couple of times and played games. He’s very cool, and his kid’s a big superhero fan.

Anyway, when I moved out, my girlfriend and I joked about leaving a note for the next person who moved in to find. And that got me thinking about the kind of things you could find that other tenantsleft behind. Maybe deliberate or accidental. I mean, who really knows what happened in their apartment before they moved in?

And part of it was Nate. I’ve seen lots of characters in lots of books who have great jobs and careers, or who live on the fringes or even are total anarchists. When the plot of their given book gets going, they can take long vacations or tell their secretary they’re out for the day or do whatever. But it seems rare to have a character who’s just trapped in a job and can’t do something else, no matter how common it is in real life. They don’t make enough money to really live, but they also can’t afford to quit. I’ve been there, and I think a lot of other people have, too, so it struck me as an interesting type of character that people would be able to relate to.

-14- was a definitely different book in all the best ways, any chance for a sequel to it or is this a stand alone project?

For the moment it’s just a stand-alone thing, although I have had a few random ideas for “what happens next.” Maybe somewhere down the line I’ll have some big interlocking universe like Stephen King and we’ll see some of these characters again. For now I think we can let them rest, though. Seriously, they deserve some time off.

With you having written five different books, what has been your best experience with them and, which book is your personal favorite?

Probably one of the best experiences was The Junkie Quatrain, the interlocking short stories/ novella I did for Audible.com last year. It was a short deadline at a time when my girlfriend and I were tight, financially speaking. So I threw myself into it and I kept thinking about Robert Louis Stevenson writing Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde to pay the rent, or old stories from Ray Bradbury about writing stories for grocery money. It was a bit stressful, but it also made me feel really close to all the giants that started out the same way. Not that I’m a giant. I get some joy just from being in that same low position they once were.

Past that, it’s really tough to pick a favorite. There are things I’m exceptionally proud of in each book. There’s things in each book where I look back and sigh and kick myself for not realizing I should’ve done this instead of that. I would have to say my favorite book is “the next one,” because I’m still amazed that I get to keep doing this.

We all have favorite authors, my list isn’t a short one but you are definitely on it sir, so who are your favorite authors?

There’s so many. Ray Bradbury’s been one of my favorites since I was very young. He was just amazing. I wrote him a fan letter in college and was thrilled when he wrote back. I still have the letter, and living in LA I had a few chances to hear him talk. It was really sad for me to have 14 come out the day after he died, and I felt very cheap doing any sort of promotion for it at all.

As a native Mainer and someone who gets lumped into horror, I have to love Stephen King. People can bitch all they like, but he is the 20th century’s Charles Dickens (and possibly the 21st century’s, too). Craig di Louie is another Permuted Press author whose stuff I love so much I have to say I hate him (not really, but it keeps me from gushing all over him). Lee Child’s books are fantastic. Neil Gaiman is brilliant. More people should know about Dan Abnett (I met him a few years back at the San Diego Comic-Con and his table was deserted. I just got to stand there and talk with him for fifteen minutes—he autographed a copy of Ravenor for me). Mira Grant a.k.a. Seanan McGuire. Iain McKinnon. Eloise J. Knapp. I also love the classics—Edgar Rice Burroughs, Harper Lee, Steinbeck, Dumas, Hawthorne (we all hated his stuff in school, but Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote some very, very creepy stories when you look back at them). And there’s great young adult authors (some before there was such a thing as “young adult”) like Lloyd Alexander and Alexander Key and…

Like I said, too many.

At this juncture in your career what has been your biggest challenge as a writer?

Only one? Hmmmm…

I don’t know. It shifts from day to day. Sometimes I put a ton of work into the Facebook fan page, interviews, or other promotional-type stuff. There are days I spend hours doing damage control of one type or another. I don’t think there’s any one thing that’s more challenging than anything else.

Silly as it sounds, the biggest challenge is probably getting outside and talking to people. I’ve got a home office, so I work here, eat here, sleep here… On a regular day I usually see my girlfriend and my cats and that’s about it. But you need to get out and see people and talk to people. That’s the interaction that helps you get a sense of how people talk and react. I’m very lucky to have a lot of friends who I can just go out for coffee with or spend a day playing with little toy soldiers or watching bad SyFy movies.

With your books being popular, and in my opinion easily transferred to a screenplay, have there been any Hollywood types looking at your work that you can speak of?

That I can speak of… no, probably not yet. Not saying there hasn’t been interest, but I think I need to wait on some things before any loud announcements are made.

But even then, that doesn’t mean a movie is a sure thing. There’s no point in cheering or getting excited. It’s fantastic having interested parties who honestly love my stuff, but the nature of film is that you need to hit this sort of critical mass of interest, if that makes sense. Studio heads, producers, actors… a lot of people have to be interested. Unless the one guy who likes your book is Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, or James Cameron, it’s still an uphill battle.

For anything you want to see made into a movie, the best thing is for people to be talking about it. Lots of people. If a million people went into work tomorrow talking about how cool 14 is, there’d be a movie in the works by the end of the month. Until then… I’m just very glad some cool people are interested in making things happen.

What is your advice for getting over writers block?

I know this sounds kind of silly but my advice is just keep writing. I think in most cases writer’s block is just fear. It’s this paralyzing worry that the words I put down are going to be wrong or inferior in some way, and then my whole story will be tainted somehow and never live up to the version in my head and –wham—there goes my Nobel Prize for Literature. Odds are those first words will be wrong and inferior, but that’s not the end of it. That’s why we edit and do multiple drafts. Words gets rewritten and edited and sometimes completely cut out of the story. It doesn’t have to be perfect on the first draft, just on the last one.

So if you’re stuck with writer’s block, just start writing. Write anything. Catch up on email, review some books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Write up lists of favorite birthday presents you’ve received, beloved pets, favorite television shows, characters, people you’ve slept with, people you wish you’d slept with. Just write. It’s like any sort of exercise, and the longer you go without doing it the harder it is to get going again. So just write and don’t worry about being wordy, because this is all early-draft type stuff that no one’s ever going to see. And eventually you’ll be free enough to steer your writing back to your book or screenplay or short story.

I’ve got a little ranty blog where I talk about writing stuff at least once a week. Not agents or publishing or anything like that. It’s just tips and suggestions and observations about writing and storytelling, culled from my many, many years of screwing things up and doing it all the hard way. I’m also thinking about putting out a Kindle book later this year kind of assembled from/inspired by the blog. The working title is currently The Ed Wood Guide to Storytelling. Just because.

Well there you have it folks, I hope you pick up Peter Clines newest book -14- and also I hope you enjoyed the interview! Until next time keep reading those books and stay tuned for more interviews and news!

Michael Worthan, An interview with Peter Clines

A Review: -14- by Peter Clines

Michael Worthan — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:36:20 +0000

From Peter Clines, author of ‘Ex-Heroes and Ex-Patriots, comes -14- which is not only a great book that I’ve given 5 out of 5 it’s something unique and different to add to his growing reputation as a versatile and unique writer. Having read all of his books from “The Eerie Adventures of Lycanthrope Robisnon Crusoe” up to “The Junkie Quatrain” Peter Clines has always brought a unique twist to the books, but -14-, which is in paperback today (June 18th) and audiobook format tomorrow (June 19th), is something new and fascinating, something that not only had me going the entire time, but allowed me to finish it and want more in less than a days times. The synopsis on amazon is this:

Padlocked doors. Strange light fixtures. Mutant cockroaches.

There are some odd things about Nate’s new apartment.

Of course, he has other things on his mind. He hates his job. He has no money in the bank. No girlfriend. No plans for the future. So while his new home isn’t perfect, it’s livable. The rent is low, the property managers are friendly, and the odd little mysteries don’t nag at him too much.

At least, not until he meets Mandy, his neighbor across the hall, and notices something unusual about her apartment. And Xela’s apartment. And Tim’s. And Veek’s.

Because every room in this old Los Angeles brownstone has a mystery or two. Mysteries that stretch back over a hundred years. Some of them are in plain sight. Some are behind locked doors. And all together these mysteries could mean the end of Nate and his friends.

Or the end of everything…

Without offering too much in the form of spoilers I personally went into this book thinking it was a cut and dry suspense book, but even then I knew that the author may throw in a few surprises that actually got me excited. What I came across in this book was definitely not what was expected, and for that alone I was all in. The characters are well created, and actually made you feel as if you were reading about a story with friends in it, the building is mysterious, and certain characters gave off certain vibes be it awesome or creepy that you just couldn’t shake.

When it was all said and done, and I had read the last page I was a bit upset that I was done with it so quickly. Regardless of how you read it (ebook, real book, or audio book) give this one a try it is definitely worth it.

Michael Worthan, A Review: -14- by Peter Clines

A Review: Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture by Rob Salkowitz

Michael Worthan — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:53:39 +0000

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced cop of “Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture” by Rob Salkowitz about a week ago and after much hassle in life I was afforded a little while to engulf myself in this book, and this book alone. Being a beginner student of business I was rather interested in the points of view the author makes, as well as the way he is torn throughout the book by being a futurist, and businessman himself, and being a fanboy of comics and all their glory.

Right off the bat I give this book a four out of five, and that’s not being generous at all I feel this book is a solid read, fully informative, and without revealing too much he hits on topics, and gives insight to points about the comics and entertainment industries that I fully agree with, as well as saying a few things that I just don’t see happening in my opinion.

“Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture” was a quick read with as much amusement and stories as there is knowledgeable information about the business side of an industry. Now being a fan for such a long time has left me a little bit jaded about what the “Big 2″ are doing comic book wise, and as fans that kind of happens with all of us. We complain about the smallest changes, the way someone looks, or that the industry doesn’t understand us. What this book does is break down where the industry is, what has happened to the comics, and how everything from print media to the video game and movie industries has an effect upon the comics we love to read all the while following the author and his wife on their Comic-Con adventure.

If you feel you have a grasp on the business side of the comics industry this book may very well teach you a few important things, if you are a fan of Comic-Con in San Diego and want to learn more about the industry take a look at this book. It has everything for a newbie to business and an avid fan, as well as being well written and very funny at times.

Michael Worthan, A Review: Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture by Rob Salkowitz