Help A Friend!

Help A Friend!

Darryl could use a hand getting the word out about his book. If helping a self-described starving artist is your jam, check it out here:

GoFundMe for “The Lookiloo” by Darryl Hughes

The Last Laugh Now Available

Hey, hey! New book is out in both ebook and print. Small town vs evil clowns. Get it at Amazon.

Frightfully Funny FREE Reads on Kindle Unlimited

Monster Hunters is included in this sweet group of books that should have you laughing…to death. (Bum-bom-BUUUM!) If you enjoy my books, you might like these as well. They’re all free for those of you in Kindle Unlimited, and some are additionally discounted for everyone. For example, Monster Hunters is a cool buck, so like 75% off for you math wizards and 500% off for the rest of you. You can clickety-click or tapety-tap to check the prices of the other books on Amazon.

Frightfully Funny FREE Reads on Kindle Unlimited

 

Join the Party for Free

More Halloween fun with Unlife of the Party being available for free on Amazon for a limited time.

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Five Favorite Halloween Films

So you wanna watch something Halloween-themed for some mysterious reason, huh? Good news, you ain’t alone. Here’s my fave-five-films with a Halloween setting.

5. Trick ‘r Treat A light-horror anthology set on Halloween. The stories are all tied together by Sam (the kid with the bag on his head on the cover), and you get to find out why in one of the stories. Hint: Sam is sweet as candy.

4. The Nightmare Before Christmas Tim Burton seems most at home with animation where his penchant for quirk and bizarre set design don’t feel quite so artificial. And this is easily his best animated film, featuring Jack Skelington of Halloweentown’s run in with the denizens of Christmastown. Sure, Halloweentown as a setting isn’t exactly the same as Halloween but we’re not going to get too nitpicky at #4 are we?

3. Monster House One of the early 3D animated films that flew a bit under the radar. The animation isn’t the best, but it’s got good characters in a fun story.

2. Donnie Darko Stylish and surreal, Donnie Darko isn’t always the most coherent story, but it’s always compelling. Halloween is the perfect time to let go and settle in to a deeply strange experience.

1. The Crow Five years before The Matrix redefined action movies, The Crow set a high bar for style. Brandon Lee gives a great performance as a man brought back from the dead to avenge the murder of he and his wife to be. You can see a lot of the bones of The Matrix here, from the color palette to the costuming and the way the sountrack is integrated into the action set pieces.

Deep in the Mojo & Other Stories 2nd Edition

To kick off the week leading up to Halloween I updated Deep in the Mojo & Other Stories with a weird Western tale called “Bring Me the Head of Pepe Cortez!” featuring plenty of undead action and reduced the price to $0.99 for a limited time.

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MONSTER HUNTERS Now Available

Once upon a time, some readers on Amazon said some nice things about the short story Road Trip. It reminded me how much I liked writing Shan and Parker too, and that I’d left the characters far from home. I sat down with the intent to write another short story about their trip home, and ended up with the novel MONSTER HUNTERS.

It didn’t make much sense to release a novel size sequel to a short story, so I included a heavily revised version of Road Trip to the beginning for a better reading experience–their whole trip in one magical shotgun blast.

Road Trip on Instafreebie

If you haven’t already read MONSTER HUNTERS, you can get the short story that inspired it for free from Instafreebie.

The Walking Dead 3.16 “Welcome to the Tombs” Discussion

How to encapsulate my thoughts on this episode? Let’s try: This was a good episode, but a very unsatisfying season finale.

Starting with Andrea and Milton in the Governor’s torture chamber, we get a nicely staged and paced event. Milton is dying from a stab wound, will soon turn into a zombie, and chew on Andrea who’s bound to a chair. But he hid some pliers behind the chair before the Governor gutted him, and we get to watch Andrea’s race against time to get those pliers and free herself before becoming lunch. This event, spread throughout the show into bite-sized scenes is really tense. It’s annoying that Andrea repeatedly stops her quest for freedom to have deeply emotional conversations with Milton–multitask, Andrea, talk and work–but dramatic license and all. And once again, the Governor is just evil. He’s gone total supervillian, not content to just kill someone. No, they must die in some extra horrific manner.

The other event insterspersed througout the episode is the Governor’s assualt on the prison and its aftermath. This is the really unsatisfying part for me. It sets up nicely. We see Rick and the gang packing up, apparently to get out of Dodge. We see the Governor and crew arrive with heavy weapons, blasting the guard towers with RPGs and mowing down zombies with a fifty cal. We, and the Governor quickly learn that it appears Rick’s group got out in time–the cell block is empty except for a bible with a knowingly highlighted passage which I could not read fast enough to gain any context from. Anyway, The Gov & Co continue on into the depths of the prison and we get to the part where things go south for me. There are alarms and zombies and smoke and gunfire. And the Gov & Co retreat completely out of the prison, back in their trucks. They come under fire in the yard from Maggie and Glenn in body armor from barricaded catwalks. Okay, so this was some sort of ambush. We learn that the non-combatants from Rick’s group, plus Carl, are hiding out in the woods. But this leaves Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and Carol unaccounted for. Were they in the prison? Outside the prison? Covering other avenues of possible escape the Governor might have taken? It’s unclear. And unsatisfying. A two second cut of Rick triggering the alarms, Daryl throwing a smoke grenade into the halls, and Carol opening a door that releases a bunch of zombies would have let us see through action that the chaos in the prison was actually a trap and shout “yes!” in support of our heroes. But it was all just mildly confusing guesswork.

That confusion continues with the Gov’s retreat. Once presented with the gunfight they were looking for (Maggie and Glenn) why don’t they bring their overwhelming firepower we were shown earlier into play? Why do they run in the trucks? It becomes clear in the next scene that the Gov wasn’t actually leading the retreat. His truck cuts off the truck carrying his “army” and we learn they’ve abandoned his fight. But this really should have been staged better in previous scenes. My brain had to retcon the prior scenes to fit what the show was telling me just happened–because I didn’t see it at all with what was shown. It would have been pretty cool to have experienced him losing sway over his troops to mounting panic, but I didn’t see that on screen. I just heard about it after the fact. Unsatisfying.

And then the big scene where all that becomes retroactively clear and he mows them all down. Surprising, but it really should have been shocking, and tense. We could have used some of the melodrama the show applies liberally elsewhere. We should have experienced the Governor’s mounting frustration, his loss of authority, and his final realization that his reign was over with these people. And then the machinegun should have come out. But it was very out of left field. Just an occurrance because the prior scenes didn’t develop well toward this breaking point.

And the storytelling weaknesses on the other side didn’t really make the Governor’s breakdown feel much like Rick and the gang’s victory over him. Man, this season really set things up amazingly for an epic confrontation between these two groups, and we get some confusion, a retreat, some after-the-fact piecing together of what happened and one side self-descructing. Unsatisfying.

In concept that all should have worked swimmingly. In execution, not so much for me.

And then he drives away in a funny scene where his two remaining lackies have to decide whether to get into a car with the nutjob who mowed down all their friends. Funny, but ultimately unsatisfying. The Governor plotline deserved a conclusive resolution. And he gets to drive off into the sunset, perhaps to terrorize our heroes in a future story arc, or perhaps not. I don’t like the not knowing here. A loose end that I would have preferred tied off.

There was a very strong subplot with Carl. He kills one of the Governor’s army in cold blood, a kid who surrendered out in the woods. When confronted by Rick about it, he says he did what needed to be done, and if Rick had done the same they wouldn’t have lost so many people. This was a real highlight. He’s his father’s son! (And by that I mean Shane’s son.) Wonderful.

And then we get to the big scene. So sad. Andrea didn’t quite get out of the chair fast enough and got bit. Rick, Daryl, and Michonne have dropped by Woodbury to see her final moments. I liked Andrea. She added to the show. The writers seemed to think her story was done with her failure to make peace between the two groups but I’m not on board. Last week Merle’s story felt complete. It was time. This one feels premature. I generally like how characters on the show feel very mortal (except Rick). It might have worked better as a counterpunch to a rousing defeat of the Governor, but as a coda to the ambiguity of the Governor’s fate it was just the show hitting my while I was down.

Even as is, if this had occurred with 2 or 3 episodes left in the season I probably would have been fine with it. But as “the climax” of the story arc, it left me cold.

The Walking Dead 3.15 “This Sorrowful Life” Discussion

Wow. Finally the show is back on track. The previews for this episode had me fooled into thinking it would just be more wheel spinning.

So we start with Rick preparing to turn over Michonne to the Governor. We get a few quiet moments with the group, all strong: Michonne has a good defensive idea, Carol’s growth is acknowledged by Merle, and Glenn tells Daryl why he can’t forgive Merle, and Merle of all people recognizes that what Rick is considering is exactly what the group has condemned Merle for. All the while, Merle is planning to take matters into his own hands knowing RIck won’t follow through. Of course Rick reconsiders. I wish he could have done it without seeing ghost Lori, but, oh well, nothing’s perfect. And of course, Merle kidnaps Michonne anyway before he even confirms Rick won’t go through with it. All nicely staged.

From here things don’t go as expected. Michonne goes zen about Merle nabbing her. And she talks. (She also gets a cool zombie kill using the wire that’s binding her hands.) This is Michonne’s strongest episode. She opened up a bit with Carl a few weeks back and the writers are finally giving her some personality. It’s refreshing.

Soon enough, Daryl follows alone on foot and because of the small world syndrome established over the past few weeks he can’t be far behind and a brother showdown is on the horizon.

Meanwhile, we get a couple more nice, quiet scenes. Glenn asks for Hershel’s blessing, and then proposes to Maggie with a ring chopped from a zombie’s finger. Ah, romance!

And lo the moment of truth arrives. Michonne’s zen schtick works on Merle. He let’s her go. Color me surprised. But he continues on alone and engages the Governor’s thugs in a nicely staged ambush. Surprisingly, Merle gets to go out in a (small h) heroic fashion and I was suprised to find myself rooting for him. Alas, alone, he’s unable to get the Governor himself who then kills Merle by shooting him in the chest. Not a head shot. So Merle come back as a zombie. Man, the Governor is just an ass, even when he’s killing you. Poor Daryl arrives and is forced to do the final deed on his brother with, by my count, about 700 knife stabs to the face.

Back at the prison, Rick gets his single best scene of the entire series. He’s finally realized what the audience has known for a while–he’s been a terrible leader for a while and the group needs to be involved in decisions. Go Rick. Nearly three seasons to get to a single moment where I sympathized with the guy.

Great episode. Can’t wait for the season finale.