books – Page 6 – The Daily Opinion

Tales of Tremendous Tragicide: An Anthology

Anthologies are to literature what the all-you-can-eat-buffet is to cuisine. A varied selection of authors, styles and characters, all with a common theme. Tales of Tremendous Tragicide focuses on the balance between love and tragedy, a mix that is so often present in life. Each story is very different from the next, and while some are more expected than others, they all take the reader by surprise and offer something new to the mix. You might not like all the stories, or feel a connection with every single one, but I can guarantee at least one will speak to you. The collection features everything from the life story of a plate, to the world through the eyes of a fly, to the question of life after death, but they all offer much more than the surface story and leave you feeling both fulfilled and contemplative .

As a collection the anthology works well, although the style of each story is not always complementary of the next one and some contrast strongly. In general I prefer a collection that takes you on a journey, with each story teaching you more and adding to the basis laid out by the first one. However, perhaps Tales of Tremendous Tragicide isn’t trying to take you on a journey, but instead it is showing you the harsh realities of our world, in the natural and sometimes jarring way that they come to us. Life doesn’t offer its lessons in bitesize chunks, it throws them at you, seeing how much you can take. In a way, this is what the anthology is doing.

There are certainly some stories that made more of an impression on me than others, as is expected with so many stories in one place. I wouldn’t be able to pick a favourite, but Asia with Amy by Ruby Johnson is certainly one that I’d go back to. Telling a story through letters can often either give great insight or turn into a complete cliché, but Ruby certainly did the former here. She creates a beautiful balance between the loss of a loved one and the trauma of genocide. Although this story is one of immense pain, the changing setting and narrative style keeps this pain at a manageable and understandable level. Similarly, The Ward, by Samantha Carey, tells the story of a children’s cancer ward and by the end of it I desperately wanted someone to tell me that it is now a novel, so I could carry on reading it.

While all of these stories reached for the heights, covering some very difficult topics and including such a wide range of issues, there were some that I felt fell short of the mark. Plate, by Arthur Sharpe, offers a new twist on class distinction through the eyes of a plate and although he is making an interesting social commentary the story just doesn’t quite captivate the reader. Making your reader empathise with a plate is quite a difficult task though. However, every single story in the collection says something about the world we live in and is very well written, so overall I’d say the authors have really achieved something here.

Guest Post by Sherri Hayes

I’ve always loved a good romance. Back when I was a pre-teen, I remember reading Sweet Dreams romances. As I got older, I graduated to Harlequins. There’s always been something about two people meeting and falling in love that draws me in, and makes me want to see them find their happily ever after.

When I started writing, someone told me to always write what you like to read, and that’s what I’ve tried to do. The hero and heroine have to be characters I can fall in love with. I don’t want them to be perfect, but I do want them to be likable enough to make me want to root for them through whatever struggles they have to go through.

Relationships are complex, which means I can have fun putting the couples through lots of twists and turns. There has to be a good story, with strong supporting characters to round things out, and keep things entertaining.

Since I don’t plot out my stories ahead of time, I rarely know what’s going to happen in one of my novels until right before I type it into the computer. It keeps things interesting, and makes writing fun. I’m not sure I could do that in another genre. Romance is about people at its heart, and I like writing about people.

Interview with Sherri Hayes

The combination of FBI agent and professional footballer is an unusual one. What made you come up with the idea?

Gage’s profession was decided in the first book of the series, Behind Closed Doors. After that, it was a matter of finding the right woman for him. I knew she needed to be strong, both physically and mentally, yet vulnerable, too. Rebecca took shape from there.

Which idea came first, the professional footballer being stalked, or the romance between an FBI agent and her project?

Gage and his stalker were first. There are hints in Behind Closed Doors about Gage having a stalker. Rebecca’s character didn’t begin to take shape until the very end of writing Behind Closed Doors.

You go into quite a lot of detail about the football games. Is this a personal passion of yours?

I grew up watching the Cleveland Browns with my dad. Back then it was not unusual to find me right there along with him shouting at the television. Of course, during playoff season, it’s not uncommon to find me doing that now, either.

As Rebecca relaxes and allows herself to be seduced by Gage she gradually becomes used to the more provocative outfits that he picked out for her. Was this an intentional statement about female sexuality and a woman’s right to dress as we please?

It was more a statement about Rebecca herself. I tend to write what is right for my characters, their personalities, and their growth. Everything else is secondary. In Rebecca’s case, she viewed her ultra conservative clothing as an outward sign of her poise and control over her life and situation. Gage gave her the freedom to release some of that, and realize her world wasn’t going to fall apart if she did.

Your main characters get engaged and have a child relatively quickly by today’s standards. Did you have any alternative endings in mind when you were writing?

Neither of those things were planned when I started writing their story. When I write a story, I generally only have a vague idea of where it’s headed. Outside of that, I let the story flow, and the characters guide where we end up. I knew they would end up together, but they surprised me with the ending.

How did you find writing the erotic scenes and are there any family members who will be forbidden from reading it? (Grandparents, etc.)
This is my sixth published work to date, and all of them have had love scenes of one shape or form. Writing them doesn’t bother me. I do what I feel is appropriate for the plot, scene, and characters. As for family…the only family that reads my books is my mom and she loves my romances. She once told me that my love scenes were what a woman wants but rarely gets.

Who were your literary influences for this book?

I love to read, but I wouldn’t say there were any specific literary influences for Red Zone.

The obvious question is, what was your take on 50 Shades of Grey and did it inspire you to write your own erotic romance?

My first book published six months before 50 Shades of Grey, so no, it didn’t inspire me. While I read part of the fan fiction when it was posted, I haven’t read the books since E.L. James published the trilogy.

Do you see yourself more as Rebecca or Megan and is any part of the story autobiographical?

I relate more to Rebecca than I do Megan. While I wouldn’t say any of the story is autobiographical, there are parts of Rebecca’s past and personality that are similar to mine.

Was there a man that you had in mind when creating Gage’s character?

I tend to visualize personalities more than physical traits when I write my characters, so no. All of my characters come purely from my imagination.

What made you choose the romance genre and not Sci-fi or fantasy, for example?

I’ve always loved reading romance novels, and I write what I like to read. There is something about reading about a couple falling in love that draws me into a story, and makes me want to see them get their happy ending.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a writer?

Writing was something I sort of fell into. It wasn’t anything I’d ever considered as a career path growing up. In fact, I didn’t start writing my first story until I was thirty. It wasn’t until three years later when my publisher approached me after reading some of my online writing that I ever considered being a writer.

Have you got any advice for budding erotic novelists?

The best advice I can give any writer, erotic or otherwise, is to write what you like. If you don’t like the story, then chances are, no one else will either. It also makes the work of writing much more enjoyable.

Do you believe that erotic fiction empowers women?
In a way, yes. I believe it gives women more freedom to learn what they might potentially enjoy sexually with their partners, and that’s always a good thing.

Book Review: Red Zone by Sherri Hayes

Sherri Hayes’ latest novel follows the lives of a headstrong FBI agent and a professional footballer thrown together in the hunt for a stalker and unwittingly on a journey full of steamy romance. On the surface, Rebecca Carson is solely focused on her career, with no mind for romance or even fun. It quickly becomes apparent that truthfully she is searching for someone to spend the rest of her life with, but only if he ticks all the boxes. Gage Daniels, on the other hand, is all about the fun side of life as he lives out his dream of playing professionally and seducing women. His perfect life is interrupted by the presence of a stalker and Rebecca is brought in to help solve the case, working undercover as his girlfriend.

As the story progresses, so does the presence of the stalker, with more letters and photos of Gage and other women surfacing, but it is only when Gage and Rebecca find themselves under fire that they realise just how serious the situation is. As the two main characters gradually get used to each other their pasts begin to surface. Rebecca has clearly been burnt in the past and as you learn more about her parents it is easy to see why she has so many barriers up. Gage is relatively unscathed by love, but as both his friend and brother have seen the more painful side of love it is understandable that he’d prefer to enjoy the commitment-free side. As Gage and Rebecca get to know each other they begin to analyse their own actions and feelings, working out the cause of their problems and when Rebecca’s bubbly sister, Megan, comes onto the scene Rebecca realises just how much fun she has been missing out on.

The premise of the story is a good one and certainly not something that I have read in the past. The concept of combining a career driven woman with a fun loving man to bring out the true nature in each of them is not a unique one, but Hayes makes it work without entering cliched territory. If I had to find fault in the book, I would have to say that the constant threat of the stalker could be much more sinister and make the sexual tension between Rebecca and Gage electric, but it seems to only be there as a reason to bring the two characters together. The focus on emotions is where Hayes really excels and she draws attention to the often overlooked need to address one’s feelings honestly. Both Rebecca and Gage take the time to consider why they react in a certain way and because of this they learn more about themselves and eventually develop a strong relationship. If you take anything from this book I suggest it be the emotional honesty that her characters use to reveal their true natures.

The Trials of Arthur: The Life & Times of a Modern Day King – CJ Stone and Arthur Pendragon

It if fair to say that this book is unlike any other that I have read and that alone is a good enough reason to give it a try. It depicts the inspiring and unique journey of Arthur Pendragon, also known by numerous other names, as he discovered his true calling in life. To begin with I was worried that this might be an overly didactic tale of King Arthur in the 21st Century, but I was greatly mistaken. The Trials of Arthur is simply that: an insight into his life as he transformed from squaddie to biker to King Arthur himself and everything in between. It is also a humble explanation of the difference that he made to those around him, access to Stonehenge and to the world.

CJ has set the tone of this book perfectly. At no point do you feel like you are hearing the dreary tale of an eccentric man’s life. Instead it feels as though you are sitting around a campfire with Arthur and CJ exchanging stories and really getting to know these two extraordinary men. It is a gently humorous insight into the inner world of a misfit with a joyful rhythm propelling the story along. CJ explains not only the thinking behind each action, but also the sentiment, which ensures that the reader is never left behind.

The Trials of Arthur makes you stand back and take a look at your life, asking if you are happy and if you are making a difference for what you believe in. It doesn’t tell you what to believe, it simply says stand up for it. You gain an insight into the life of a Druid, but it is written in a way that simply allows you to accept that life, accept this man who believes that he is the legendary King Arthur. At no point did I think to myself ‘what a madman’. I just accepted what he believed and was inspired by his determination. The fact that one man, standing in the rain in his tatty leathers day after day, trying to persuade people that they needn’t pay to see Stonehenge, that it was in fact their right to see it, can influence so many people and ultimately lead to the end of restricted access to the monument, is truly inspiring. Overall this is a well written, humorous and insightful book, no matter what your personal beliefs might be.

The Lost World

A couple of weeks ago, a well-thumbed copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic 1912 novel The Lost World caught my eye on a bookshelf. Having read and enjoyed at one time or another similar tales of adventure by the likes of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, I took it down and indulged myself. I’ve had great pleasure in reading the majority of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories so therefore I felt certain I was going to enjoy this too. And enjoy it I did. The mix of Victorian characters, exotic adventure and prehistoric fantasy all written with that turn-of-the-century eloquence made it an eminently pleasurable page-turner.

Naturally, upon completion it led me to check out the original filmed version of the story which in turn led me to a comparison with a contemporary one. The first, directed by Harry Hoyt, was made in 1925 and the date of this alone is impressive, not least because this was still the silent era of cinema. One can almost imagine those early studio bosses scratching their heads and wondering how on earth do you take prehistoric beasts off of the page and bring them to life before a paying audience.

The answer was, of course, stop motion special effects and this was the first feature film to use such a technique courtesy of, in this instance, Willis O’Brien. O’Brien was a pioneer of this style of special effects and would become responsible for some of the best-known images in the history of cinema, his best known work perhaps being the greatest monster movie of them all, King Kong (1933). For audiences of the time, it must have been incredible to see dinosaurs moving about on screen when all they had ever seen of them before were drawings on a page. The film itself is significant for this reason and overall it’s worth a viewing not just to see how far cinema has come since those early days but also to see how creative these filmmakers were with the resources they then had.

In the film, Wallace Beery plays the brusque Professor Challenger who leads a group of British explorers into the Amazon in order to prove to the world that a land of prehistoric creatures exists on an isolated plateau. The South American jungle is depicted by set pieces of rainforest and river with the occasional snake dangling from a tree and one or two cutaways to stock footage of a snarling jaguar. The prehistoric plateau is more of the same but with models of distant smoking volcanos and of dinosaurs roaming around or fighting in that uniquely disjointed way that is stop motion animation. One panoramic scene of dozens of dinosaurs fleeing an erupting volcano was created on a tabletop that was 150 ft long by 75 ft wide!

By today’s standards it is, of course, laughably crude but then in this digital age where everything from men made out of liquid metal to flying vampires can be brought to life so convincingly, we’ve all become a little immune to the impossible.

The second adaptation of this story I watched was the 2001 BBC TV movie starring Bob Hoskins as Professor Challenger and boy! what a difference 75 years make. This version was obviously always going to be more accessible and with the special effects taken care of by the same team that produced the hugely popular Walking with Dinosaurs series (indeed, some creatures were used for both programmes), it was far more watchable and more entertaining entirely.

But is it as important a film as the earlier one? No, definitely not because as artistry in film goes, it is no better than average. In 1998 the Library of Congress selected the 1925 film for preservation in the US National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”, something that the BBC version will never be deemed. Perhaps one of the reasons it is less significant is that we all recognise the creatures to be computer generated, after all, ever since Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park in ’93 (a film that will surely gain inclusion to the registry at some point), we’ve got used to seeing them this way. And let’s face it, they look about as real as we’d ever want them to

Let’s just suppose for a moment that Spielberg had dreamed up a hoax (perhaps a ‘market experiment’ would be a better term) sometime before the 93′ release of Jurassic Park and that hoax involved a crackpot professor with an outlandish story. This professor made headlines because he wanted to tell the world about some fantastic trip he had just returned from and he then proceeded to show the world footage of prehistoric beasts he had reputedly taken while there, footage which was actually pioneering computer-generated imagery of dinosaurs Spielberg had recently perfected. Would the world have been fooled? After all, we’d never seen anything like it before had we? Isn’t it just possible we would have reacted in the same way as Sam Neil’s Dr. Grant and his party when first encountering the Brachiosaurus in the movie – i.e. pinch me, I must be dreaming.

It’s hard to imagine now but in 1922, Arthur Conan Doyle showed a test reel of Willis O’Brien’s work to a meeting of The Society of American Magicians, one of whom was none other than Harry Houdini. The footage – which Doyle craftily refused to discuss the origins of – depicted a Stegosaurus, a family of Triceratops and an attack by an Allosaurus. The next day, the New York Times ran a front page article saying, “(Conan Doyle’s) monsters of the ancient world, or of the new world which he has discovered in the ether, were extraordinarily lifelike. If fakes, they were masterpieces”. You get my drift? If those magicians were fooled by something they’d never seen before, couldn’t we be? Or has the coming of the digital age, where any visual representation is possible and incredibly lifelike, robbed us of that mystique of the unknown? UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster – even if (for the sake of this argument) it were genuine, would even the clearest of film footage convince us nowadays?

There’s no denying special effects evolved enormously between The Lost World of 1922 and Jurassic Park of 1993 and in terms of lifelikeness these two examples are at opposing ends of the visual spectrum. But my God! didn’t it take a long time to get from one end to the other? The stop motion technique was refined and better filmed perhaps with the passing of decades (Ray Harryhausen will forever be a favourite of many) but it took 70 years for any groundbreaking improvement. And then, BAM! with the help of computers, suddenly we’re seeing monsters that don’t twitch when they move, suddenly we’re seeing dinosaurs that actually breath, that flow with their movements, that look, for want of a better adjective, REAL. And all this creativity and invention simply to make our visual experiences more lifelike and thrilling.

But where is the future? Most special effects are virtual reality now – that is, what we see on screen is virtually real – but it can never be ‘really’ real because it’s on screen and consequently not reality so again, I ask, where is the future? Where do filmmakers go from here? Let’s all be honest now and admit that apart from involuntarily ducking your head out of the way of some apparent incoming object, 3D doesn’t really add that much to the cinematic experience yet. Haptic technology such as that found in flight simulators and certain video games which simulate motion to the user by applying forces and vibrations is quite exciting but whether it will ever have a place in cinema is debatable. And yet there’s bound to be a continued progression – it’s simply the way of things. But who can see the road ahead?

Personally, ever since Jean Luc Picard and his crew occupied the bridge of the Enterprise in Star Trek The Next Generation, I’ve been looking forward to the arrival of the Holodeck. Surely, that’s the future right there. A room projecting an optical reality all around us in which we can interact with simulated people and objects and move around on a virtual treadmill. That’s got to be fun. Sadly though, if that’s going to take another 70 years to become fact, I’ll never know because I’d have gone the way of the dinosaurs.