Shadowed (pictures I like)

Photo Month: Day 13

Broken (pictures I like)

Shadowpath (pictures I like)

Almost... (pictures I like)

This tunnel could almost be pulled right out of the pages of Shadow Spinner.
Do you want to go there?
(If I remember, next week, I'll show you the other side.)

Manon (an opera review post)

Before I get into the review, let's have some background.

One of the ways my wife and I are able to afford the opera is that we sit in the cheap seats. The San Francisco Opera House has multiple balconies, and we sit allll the way at the top. Well, close enough. We also buy season passes, because that's much cheaper than buying show by show. Because up at the top is so far up at the top, for certain performances, they have screens that lower for the upper balcony and they broadcast close up shots of the performers for those of us too far away to see faces. It's way better than having to use "opera glasses" the way people used to have to do, though we still see those from time to time.

The screen provides some advantages to sitting up at the top. Occasionally, we get to upgrade our seats (for free) and move down to lower balcony. In front of the screens. So, yes, we're closer (much) to the stage and what's happening and don't really need the screens to see what's going on, but you don't get close ups of the performers faces with your eyes alone.

All of that to say that Ellie Dehn was excellent as Manon, and I know because we were up at the top and had the benefit of the screens and were able to see her facial expressions throughout the performance. And, sure, opera is about the singing -- she sang great -- but it has to also be about the acting or there's no life to the performance, and Dehn was amazing.

And I only bring up any of this because one of the things my wife and I do on our drive back home after the opera is look up reviews of that opera to see how the reviews compare to what we thought. Generally, reviews for any given opera are pretty similar, either everyone loved it or everyone hated it, but reviews for Manon were mixed, and they all seemed to center around Dehn. Either the reviewer thought she was great, or the reviewer thought she was flat and lifeless, which made me wonder if those particular reviews were just unable to see how expressive she was.

Maybe where you sit at an opera is more important than I previously thought?
Or maybe those reviewers went on an off night for her? It's hard to tell with live theater.
Whatever the case, we thought she was great.

Michael Fabiano, as Chevalier des Grieux, was also great, but I would say he was not quite as good as Dehn. [That's them above.]

I also really enjoyed David Pershall as Lescaut, Manon's cousin.

The set for this one was interesting. It used a combination of reflective surfaces (including Lescaut's shiny pants in act one) and shadows to lend atmosphere. Mostly, it was a minimalist set design, but the frequency of the large shadows of the actors on the wall behind them made it seem as if there was more on the stage than there really was.

But the real strength of this opera, for me, was the story. Because of the necessity of music, opera stories tend toward, let's say, straight forward and tend to have one dimensional characters. It's difficult to get more involved than that when your entire piece is around two hours long and it takes a six minute (or more) song to deliver a brief dialogue that would only take a few seconds to speak. The characters in Manon, though, were suitably complex even while dealing with what could be seen as a typical tragic love story. It was engrossing.

Of course, it was also long. Three hours. AND they cut out the ballet sequence; I have no idea how long it would have been with that. By the way, did you know that the origin of ballet is within opera? Well, it is.

I really liked Manon. It's not my favorite because the music wasn't quite compelling enough for that, but I would gladly watch it again, which is something I'm finding is a measure of how much I like things.

Shadows (pictures I like)

Changes Are Happening

The Creepy Days of Tiberius (a FREE! book day!)

It's October, and we all know what that means. We all do, right...?
It means the days are shorter and the shadows are longer. The shadows can reach farther and seem to never go away.
That's fine for most people, because the shadows don't care about most people. Most.
But there are those, those few, whom the shadows want, and when the shadows grow long and the veil grows thin, the shadows can act.
Tib has always known the shadows were after him, but he didn't always know he could fight back...

Get Shadow Spinner: Tiberius (Collection 1: Parts 1-5) today for FREE!
Seriously, go get it now! It's only FREE! for a limited time, so don't miss your chance.

And watch out for the shadows...

The Secret Path (pictures I like)

Okay, so it wasn't "secret," but it was shadowed.

Vampires: Day 5 -- Vampire Slaying

Assuming you haven't used the information from earlier this week to become a vampire or have plans to become a vampire, you may want and/or need to know how to get rid of a vampire(s) should you ever have a vampire infestation. If possible, call on a professional vampire slayer. Yes, these exist. Okay, mostly, they exist in Europe, but, still, there are people that go around and slay vampires. For a fee.

Unlike with Buffy

or Van Helsing,

"actual" vampire slayers do most of their work with bodies that need to be dug up rather than engaging in property-damaging combat. Fortunately, for you, this is the more appropriate way to go about things. Usually.

But! If you ever do get stuck facing a "living" vampire, here are some thins to know:

1. According to many legends, vampires cannot cross running water, so, if you steal the vampire's hat (no, don't ask me how to go about doing that and, yes, vampires are just assumed to be wearing hats, I guess) and throw it out into a river or stream or whatever, and taunt him about the hat, he will be unable to help himself and go after the hat. Yeah, vampires have some behavior issues beyond just the biting thing. Attempting to cross into the running water to retrieve the hat will cause the vampire to drown.
2. Staking a vampire will not kill a vampire. This is not a Buffy thing where the vampire turns to dust or, even, just dies. The staking only incapacitates the vampire, effectively paralyzing it. Once that's accomplished, other things which can actually destroy the vampire can be done. [On an interesting note, Joss Whedon wanted to do something like this in Buffy but decided that having the characters always having to deal with paralyzed vampire corpses would become too cumbersome so decided on the "dusting" as a way to deal with that.]
3. Vampires are not killed (or even hurt) by sunlight. Potentially, it may make them less strong and fast, but it's not going to cause them to burst into flame. If you will note (and you will need to have read Dracula), Dracula had no issue moving around in sunlight. [The idea that vampires can't go about in daylight seems to stem from early 20th century movies. In actuality, vampires don't cast shadows (which is related to the whole reflection thing), so filming at night was the only way to get around that.]
4. Vampires, actually, can be "killed" through physical means just like a person can. Of course, going hand-to-hand with a vampire is not the best way to accomplish that since they are faster and stronger than humans. However, a vampire is just as susceptible to swords, arrows, and bullets as anything else. The problem is in getting the vampire to stay "killed."

And this is why vampire slayers mostly work with bodies that are already in the ground. If you really want to "kill" a vampire, that's the place to do it. So...

1. The stake. The stake is used to immobilize the vampire. Ash and hawthorn have been very popular and, also, oak to a lesser extent. Most legends say the stake should go through the heart, but some say the stomach and some say the mouth. Theoretically, burying a staked vampire will prevent the vampire from ever rising, although it won't destroy it.
2. Beheading. Beheading is a much better way to kill a vampire but, still, not a sure thing. Just cutting off the vampire's head isn't enough to make sure it will stay dead. Some legends say it needs to be buried between the vampire's feet or "behind" the buttocks (I'm not quite sure what "behind" the buttocks means in this context). Others say the head needs to be carried off and buried somewhere else entirely.
3. Garlic. Garlic could be used to keep a vampire in its grave. Stuffing it in the mouth was common, but some sources say it had to be stuffed  in all orifices. I'm not sure if it means all when it says all, but, if it does, ew!
4. Boiling water. Once a vampire was in the ground, pouring boiling water over the grave would keep it there.
5. Dismemberment. Sometimes, vampires were persistent. In those cases, the body was dismembered and buried in separate locations.
6. Cannibalism. In some cases, the vampire was even more persistent. In such extreme cases, after the dismemberment, the body was fed to the family of the deceased, whom it was usually "haunting." The "victims" generally died anyway.
7. Cremation. Ah, burning. Burning  the body has long been viewed as the most effective way of destroying a vampire, yet, throughout history, it has often been the last resort. Why? I can't really answer that question, but, almost always, other methods for banishing the vampire were tried, first, before the body was finally burned.

Oh, of course, you could always appeal to the vampire's arithmomania by placing the irresistible bag of rice or sand in the coffin, which would keep the vampire occupied all night with the need to count every grain. No, the vampire's not destroyed, but, man, that sounds like a lot of fun. I wonder, if a vampire came at you, if you could throw rice at it and cause it to stop and count the grains. That sounds like the best way to deal with any vampire attack in my book.

And thus ends vampire week. I didn't cover everything, but there's been a lot of information over the course of the week, and I hope you've enjoyed it. There may even be some vampire lore worth turning into stories. The one thing I'm quite certain of, though, is that nowhere in anything I read was there any mention of vampires and sparkling. Not once. And, now, I'm scared that in 100 years people will think that vampires do sparkle just like we think vampires can't go out in the sun. What a horrible thought...
Now that is frightening!

But here are some things that are not:

1. The "Oh, How I Miss You" blogfest is coming up. Go here to read about it and sign up.
2. There's a big serial giveaway and rafflecopter thing happening, right now. Go here to find out about that. You can also find out about it at the following sites:
Susan Kaye Quinn
E.J. Wesley, Author
RaShelle Workman
Confessions of a Watery Tart

Unexpected Applause: Chasing the Sandman

Way back at the beginning of the year, I did a review on a book by the guys over at A Beer for the Shower. It's a good book, so you should all click the link, read the review, and go buy the book. But that's not what we're here to talk about today.

Today, we're here to talk about the first solo release of the Brandon half of the Beer team, Chasing the Sandman

This is a collection of short stories that Brandon has written over the years and finally collected into one place. As such, I mean, as such that it is short stories, I should probably say right here at the beginning that I'm not the biggest fan of short stories. Which is not to say that there have not been some that I've really enjoyed or even some that have been very influential in my life, but, mostly, I just feel like there's not enough to them, so I tend to avoid short story collections. It's also why, I suppose, that I don't really write short stories either. What I think is going to be a short story when I start out always becomes something bigger than that (The Evil That Men Do is a good example).

Now that everyone is expecting me to trash the book, let's get to the technicals. As is generally the case with independently published books, this one could have used an editor; however, it wasn't too bad. Other than  the repeated issue with the comma after the conjunction with an independent clause following (my current peeve), there were no consistent errors. Just the occasional typo and left out word. All in all, it's a pretty good job that would say is a B. If not for that one comma thing, I'd say a B+ to an A-, but, then, there's the comma thing. That's probably a bigger issue for me than, well, pretty much everyone else, though (and I have a whole post about commas coming up; won't that be fun!).

But let's look at the book itself. Great title, right? I think it's a great title. My only issue with it is that it didn't seem to have any relation to the stories within the book. Often, with a collection like this as with the title of an album, the title will have something to do with a theme for the stories or with one story  in particular. There are no stories with the same title nor is the line used anywhere, so, unless I missed the theme, it's just a cool title. I'm not sure how I feel about that, although I'm sure it won't bother a lot of people. That's probably just me and my hang up with titles, but you can blame that on Samuel Delaney.

Jumping into the book, though, there is a lot of good to be said about it. Most of the stories are quite good with a twist that you can see coming but can't quite figure out. It makes them interesting in a way that most things of this genre are not. In fact, I'd love to go through them individually, but I don't think I could say anything of substance about them that wouldn't give away more than you'd want to know, so I'm not going to do that.

I will say that the first story hooked me immediately, for reasons I can't say, and kept me going even though... well, see, I can't say that, either. What I can say is that "Graveyard Shift" is a freaky story even though I think it probably shouldn't be, and that says a lot for the author. It made my skin crawl, and I'm not even afraid of... yeah, see, I can't say that.

"Runaway Train" is unusual and sad. Sort of a unique perspective.

"Spirit House" is great even though I saw where it was going. But, see, it's one of those that I really wanted to be longer. I felt stifled by the shortness of it.

"Spirit of Christmas" is one where you think you know what's going to happen but the author pulls one over on you. You know there must be some twist coming, but you just can't figure out what it could be, and, then, when it happens, you smack your forehead. Brilliant!

Amidst all the horror slips "Into the Deep," a great little sci-fi piece that hints at a lot more. There's a bigger story there, but the one that's told is a good one.

"Seeking Shade" is great. I probably have a particular fondness for it due it's shadowy theme. There are some interesting things going on there and more to be told, I'm sure.

And I loved "1st Appearance"! The comic book thing is right up my alley and is the kind of thing any comic nerd dreams about. Okay, well, probably the second thing any comic nerd dreams about, but we can't talk about the first one in polite company. Okay, so, really, the main thing any comic nerd dreams about is getting super powers, but if you leave that one off the list... Just forget that I'm talking. Except keep reading.

All of that aside, the story I liked most, "Spilled Ink," was also the one I was frustrated with. It's a great example of what I think of as a story that's too short. It's a great idea and well written, except the author makes a couple leaps of logic that I have to assume were made to the story an acceptable length, except that I would much rather that it be twice as long or three times as long to get all the story in there rather than have it be whittled down. So I think it's a great story, but it's definitely too short.

As is the last story, "Denatured," although I didn't like that one as much. However, I might have liked it a lot more if it didn't fee so sparse. The ironic thing about that is that I think "Spilled Ink" and "Denatured" are the longest stories in the collection.

With 21 shorts, there were only a few that I didn't care for at all, and, I think, that's saying something. Generally speaking, for me, in a collection like this, I'd only be finding a few a actually liked, and I'd be dismissing the rest as inconsequential, but this whole collection, for the most part, really kept me going.

If you like horror and suspense, this is definitely something you should check out. You can see hints of the humor and wording from The Missing Link in here, and that, to me, is very interesting. Interesting in that I can see how the Brandon half of Beer works with the Bryan half to make their stuff work. But, again, that's probably just me. Overall, I'd give the collection a good B hedging to the higher side of the B. The stories are definitely above average and do a good job of defying expectations. You go read it and let me know which ones you like best. That's kind of the most fun with short story collections anyway. Especially if you love one that I hated. Okay, so I didn't hate any of them, but, with 21 stories, there have to be a few on the lower end of the scale.

And remember to come back on Monday!
For the FREE! release of