I’m pleased to announce that my story, “The Suns of Quetzalcoatl,” has sold to Deepwood Publishing to appear in their “Ancient New” anthology!  This collection focuses on strange collaborations between new technology and ancient societies.

The story is an alternate history tale set thousands of years in the future, where the Aztecs have become Earth’s dominant space-faring race.

I’m pretty proud of this story.  The anthology’s release date is still TBD, but I’ll put the word out when a publishing date becomes available.

Another short story of mine, “All Hail, SunSavior!” is now available as part of the “Mass Dissidence” Anthology from Pill Hill Press.  This is an anthology of dystopian tales, and my contribution is the story of a dismal society that works tirelessly on a massive project called “SunSavior” that no one really understands while their world crumbles around them.  It’s got a charismatic dictator, an interplanetary monument building company, water laced with sterilants, hamburger made from recycled human waste (this is happening today, believe it or not), an unplanned pregnancy and gigantic metal bubbles that house all of humanity!  I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few *wink wink* political references in it!

Sometimes you write something knowing in all likelihood that no other living soul will ever read it.  But you still pour your heart into it, obsess over it, and scrutinize it until you know every word by heart and your eyes are bloodshot and sore and your hands cramp from hanging over the keyboard long hours into the night.

I wrote Long March about ten years ago.  It was the fourth screenplay I’d written, and I remember my initial thought was simply to write something that took place during World War One.  Why?  Because very few movies have touched that conflict and it was fertile ground for new ideas, notable exceptions being the excellent Paths to Glory (1957) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).  Not exactly recent films.  I started thinking about this screenplay in 1998, so yes, I beat War Horse to the punch by about a decade.

Long March is the story of an American doctor, Noel Hobson, serving in the British Army in and around Belgium in 1917.  Hobson is renown for his skills, highly decorated, and selfless on the battlefield.  He is also a man on the edge of madness.  After too much time on the front, his fellows begin to suspect that he is near the breaking point.  Displaying an increasing paranoia, Hobson himself comes to believe that he has been cursed with a “touch of death,” and that anyone he comes in contact with will die horribly.

Interlaced with Hobson’s story is that of a fearsome and reticent German sniper, Ernst Wintersteiger.  Like Hobson, Wintersteiger is renown for his skill, though in his case it’s his ability to take life.  Wintersteiger is so feared among his fellow soldiers that even officers tread lightly in his presence.  He is a sulky and dark brute with a mysterious past.  Lately, however, he’s found that his skill for slaughter is slipping from him and he has been “cursed” with a touch of life, which not only prevents him from taking life, but gives him miraculous powers to heal.

Long March follows the story of these two men as they inevitably are drawn together across the bloody fields and trenches of Belgium during one of the bloodiest battles of World War One.  It’s a story of two men’s separate but linked quests to find truth amid chaos.

Long March takes places against the backdrop of actual events spanning the Summer and Fall of 1917 in what would become known as the Battle of Passchendaele or the Third Battle of Ypres.  During this barely five month battle, it was estimated that British forces suffered almost 300,000 casualties, and the Germans some 400,000 (compare this to about 3500 US casualties over eight years in Iraq, or even 290,000 US casualties for all of World War Two).  This was a battle of incredible ferocity.

The story, though, isn’t really about the battle.  It’s a human story told from multiple viewpoints on both sides of the war.  Voiceover takes the form of letters written home from both British and German soldiers.  I did an enormous amount of research for this screenplay, researching everything from the geography and events of the time to the manner in which the trenches were dug, battlefield tactics, and the varied dialects of the soldiers.  I take great pride in it’s accuracy.

Long March is not an anti-war film, or at least that isn’t it’s primary theme.  All war films are, to an extent, anti-war films.  But Long March doesn’t pound the reader over the head with preachy anti-war themes (if this is what you want, I recommend the last few seasons of M*A*S*H).  I would not consider Long March a war film, but a dramatic story set against the war.   The theme of the story revolves around war’s ability to change people into things they aren’t (or may not want to be), and the struggle to find truth.  To that end, every character in the script is in some way putting up a facade.  Some of the best characters I’ve ever created are in the story, from brooding Wintersteiger to the erudite British lieutenant Jeffrey who battles his own heritage, from the quietly heroic nurse Cordelia to the boisterous  and barely literate Sergeant Shankland.  And I still believe the exchanges between Generals Stuart-Bailey and Dorrien, during which they debate not just the tactics, but the morality of the war, are some of the best I’ve ever put to paper.

So, if you’ve read this far maybe you’ll read a bit farther.  Click the tab above and take a look at Long March.  It would be enough for me to know that just a few more people read the best thing I’ve ever written.

Well, the reviews of “Writers of the Future Vol. 27″ continue to trickle in.  Diabolical Plots gives a pretty thorough story-by-story analysis of the entire book and I was pleased to see I scored an “A-”

I find it continually satisfying and entertaining how many people tell me they start out hating Sgt. Thomas Silk, but by the end they for some reason really like him (Kevin J. Anderson told me this at the awards, and it made my day!) He’s a loveable a**hole and I’d love to revisit him some day and tell more of his story.

I also really like the comment about the story “feels like it was written in the 70′s,” which may seem odd, but the truth is that, time and time again, I find myself preferring older SF stories to the new ones.  To be honest, a lot of the stuff I read nowadays is just too bland, too mundane and tries to hard to be literary when you just want to read something that entertains you.  I really enjoy the “Golden Age” stories, even running up into the 70s and 80s (Haldeman is one of my favorites, and Orson Scott Card of course).  Maybe as I get older, I just get nostalgic.

I’m happy to announce that my novellete, The Dodging Tide, is now available for purchase on both Amazon and Smashwords for the Kindle, Nook, Sony reader, Kobo and pretty much every other e-book format (including .PDF and HTML formats for anyone without an e-reader).  The price is a mere $0.99!

This story has a long history.  As a short story, it won third runner up for the Dell/Isaac Asimov award in 1998 under the title “Silent Exemplar.”  At the time, I was working part time as an EMT with an ambulance company in Cincinnati, and I spent a lot of time in nursing homes and hospices of varying quality and interating with many patients in very bad conditions.  The sight of some of the people, wasting away and all but forgotten in conditions I’d have to describe as deplorable, made a strong impression on me and inspired me to write the story and create one of my favorite characters, Graham Cunningham.

I converted that short story into a screenplay called ”The Dodging Tide” a few years later.  One of the best screenplays I’ve written, but unfortunately it never saw the light of day.   This past year, I revisited the screenplay (having sadly lost the original short story) and re-wrote it as a novelette.  In my humble opinion, it’s even stronger now and I’m very proud of it.

This is my first venture into self-publishing, but more to follow.  Please visit the links above and take a look, write a review or let me know what you think!

“There passes itself something on this boat that causes me much inquietude.”

-Hercule Poirot

Linnet Ridgeway is a woman who has everything…youth, beauty, a vast fortune, irresistible charm and a handsome fiancée.  The only thing she lacks is a bullet in the head, but before the ill-fated Karnac reaches its destination, she’ll have that too.

So the stage is set for yet another fine Hercule Poirot mystery penned by Agatha Christie back in 1937.  Miss Ridgeway, recently come into a vast fortune left to her by her father, brashly spurns the advances of Lord Windlesham, who most of the upper crust of English society thinks she would pair with perfectly.  Instead, she pursues and marries Simon Doyle, an impoverished country boy from Devonshire.  The problem is that Simon was at the time already engaged to Linnet’s best friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort.

Linnet and Simon decide to honeymoon in Egypt.  Jacqueline, bitten by this betrayal, follows them.  She turns up everywhere they go, skulking about, watching them from shadowy parlor corners, but never physically threatening either.  Also turning up in Egypt for various reasons are Linnet’s American trustee, Andrew Pennington, who rushes across the Atlantic to “accidentally” run into Linnet upon hearing word of the impending nuptials between Simon and herself (as well as the financial ramifications of this).  A large ensemble cast of characters also inhabit the Karnac, including a American erotica novelist and her son, an archaeologist, an avowed communist, the requisite socialites found in all Christie novels, and an Austrian physician.  Luckily for them all, Detective Hercule Poirot just happens to be on holiday in Egypt at the time (he seems to be on holiday in every novel), and just happens to decide to take the same cruise.

Linnet’s murder does not actually happen until almost half-way through the book.  Christie takes her time setting the stage, and the Karnac serves its purpose well as a somewhat isolated locale for the dastardly crime to take place.  The cast of characters so large that I admit I had trouble keeping track of who’s who.  Most of them are pretty ubiquitous, and I think this is one of Christie’s weaknesses.  There are two couples, the Allertons and the Otterbournes, who to this day I can’t tell the difference between.  Christie also has two characters named Ferguson and Farnthorp who I continually got confused (one rule of writing warns us to avoid having two characters whose names begin with the same letter as it leads to confusion.  Here indeed it does!)  The standout again is Hercule Poirot, who is as brilliant and arrogant as usual, but continues to endear himself to the reader.

But this is a whodunit, and as they say, character is secondary and plot is everything!  I can
say Christie delivers plot in spades.  From the actual murder on, there is a dizzying array of clues, red herrings and twists.  Almost everyone is a suspect, everyone has motive.   It could be the one you least suspect, or the one you most suspect (or, as Dwight Shrute would say, the “one you most medium suspect.”)  I can say that at one point, I did have in my mind the correct killer.  But, as I read on, Christie threw one twist after another at me so quickly that I changed my mind to spite myself.  Even then, I was completely wrong as to the final solution.  I have an argument here, because I’m almost completely convinced that she cheated a little.  There are a couple of instances where I think she slips in facts that Poirot seems be privy to that are not revealed in the text.  One of the them, which I won’t mention for want of not revealing spoilers, is very obvious and would’ve almost told the entire story.  There are others, but I don’t want to make excuses for my humbling failure.   As usual, if you want to solve this crime, I suggest breaking out pen and paper, charting out all the suspects, making timelines and studying the supplied diagram of the Karnac provided in the book.  With Christie, you must know where everyone is at every moment in time.

Overall, this is a fine addition to Christie’s body of work.  As usual, the beginning is a little slow with the usual inane socialite chatter that characterizes Christies work (think The View, but even more shallow and mindless).   However, be careful.  Once in a while, Christie will sneak a clue into all that static!  I admit I had a couple false starts before I plowed through the first quarter of the book.  Later on, though, the story picks up considerable steam and becomes quite a page turner.  On a rating scale with her other work, I’d put it above An Appointment with Death, but below Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None.  Well worth your time if you enjoy a good
puzzle.

“Third prize is, you’re fired.”

The second movie in this series is one I think most people are aware of, but have not actually sat down and watched.  I chose this movie because it’s one of those that, for whatever reason, when I mention it to friends I get a blank look in return…usually followed by a request to repeat the title.  A great movie with a very poor title, Glengarry Glenross was adapted from a stage play and written by David Mamet.  It’s the story of a small real estate firm that showcases a motley cast of somewhat dishonest salesmen whose jobs depend on pushing crappy Florida real estate to deadbeat customers, or they lose their jobs.

The cast here is amazing.  It’s easier to ask who’s NOT in this movie rather than who is.  Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino and Alan Arkin.  For Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin, these are the best performances of their lives.  Baldwin is in the movie all of ten minutes, but it’s ten minutes that will knock your socks off.  Jack Lemmon’s Sid “The Machine” Levine, a formerly red hot salesman who’s way past his prime, is a phenomenal character with few equals in modern cinema.

This is a movie heavy on dialogue.  Mamet is known for his rapid-fire, sharp exchanges and that’s what you get here.  The office these people work in resides somewhere near the ninth circle of Hell, and you pity them and hate them at the same time.  For some reason, as you hear them trying to cold-call sell the same crappy piece of land to the same deadbeat customer for the hundredth time, you root for the rotten salesmen because their lives are so damn miserable.

This story is entirely character driven.  There’s somewhere around three sets in the entire movie, so the character’s are revealed almost entirely through their interactions with each other.  Be warned, the dialogue is coarse.  Mamet was said to have worked in a real estate firm for some years, and wrote Glengarry Glen Ross from his experiences.  He pulls no punches, but it rings with a verisimilitude that couldn’t be achieved by your average Hollywood screenwriter with a MFA from UCLA.  The people in this movie spend most of their time insulting and/or screaming at each other, but you’ll wince and laugh at the same time (and maybe remember some of the lines to try out for yourself).  If you don’t watch the movie, just watch the clip and enjoy Baldwin at his best (prior to him becoming a loon).

Enjoy it, but remember it’s only a small tidbit of a masterpiece.  Go see it, and remember….A.B.C. Always. Be. Closing.

There’s a great review of “Medic!” over at Fantastic Reviews.  Go check it out, and many thanks to them for the very kind words!

I am very pleased to announce that I have sold my short story, “Life on Sweetwater,” to Digital Science Fiction.  For those who don’t know, DSF is a quarterly anthology available in both print and electronic editions on Amazon Kindle and other ebook formats.  My story is scheduled to appear in their fifth volume in January of 2012.

This marks my second pro-rate sale (after WotF).  I invite everyone to visit the Digital Science Fiction website and take a look at this outstanding anthology!

There’s a movie called The Last Supper that came out back in 1995 that you have probably never seen.  I say this because in the past I’ve mentioned it to almost everyone I know at one time or another, and 95% of them have never heard of it. 

Despite the title, the movie has nothing to do with religion.  A bit misleading, I know, and I think the poorly chosen title may have had something to do with it’s lackluster performance at the box office.   When it was in theaters, I was living in Cincinnati, recently out of the Army and back in school working on my second degree (which to this day I don’t use).  I don’t know why I was attracted to this movie, and I don’t remember how I even knew about it.  I had to see it in one of those small, art house theaters that was squeezed between innumerable coffee shops and second-hand stores that seem to infest any given college town.    Since then, I’ve probably seen it thirty times.   It’s a black comedy about a group of liberal graduate students who invite conservatives to dinner and proceed to kill them.  Just by that, you’ve probably already made several assumptions about this movie.  Í’ll tell you whatever it is you’re thinking is wrong.  The movie surprises all the way to the end, is loaded with symbolism, and is genuinely funny.  It also challenges a lot of conventions, and shines a spotlight on the intolerance of the supposedly tolerant.   If you’re a liberal, you’ll enjoy the movie.  If you’re a conservation, you’ll like it just as much.  Any movie that can manage that while dealing with such explosive topics as war, racism, sexism and environmentalism deserves a look.  Even more, you’ll recognize almost everyone in the film.  Besides Cameron Diaz in one of her earlier roles, you’ve got Ron Eldard (the paramedic from early seasons of ER) and cameos by Jason Alexander, Mark Harmon, Bill Paxton, Nora Dunn, Charles Durning and Ron Perlman (in an excellent role). 

Check out the trailer and rent it soon.  You won’t be disappointed.