Shakespeare in Historical Fiction

I am a fan of Bernard Cornwell's historical fiction and this new book, Fools and Mortals looks like it belongs on my TBR shelf.

Here's the pitch:

New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell makes a dramatic departure with this enthralling, action-packed standalone novel that tells the story of the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream—as related by William Shakespeare’s estranged younger brother.

Lord, what fools these mortals be . . .

In the heart of Elizabethan England, Richard Shakespeare dreams of a glittering career in one of the London playhouses, a world dominated by his older brother, William. But he is a penniless actor, making ends meet through a combination of a beautiful face, petty theft and a silver tongue. As William’s star rises, Richard’s onetime gratitude is souring and he is sorely tempted to abandon family loyalty.

So when a priceless manuscript goes missing, suspicion falls upon Richard, forcing him onto a perilous path through a bawdy and frequently brutal London. Entangled in a high-stakes game of duplicity and betrayal which threatens not only his career and potential fortune, but also the lives of his fellow players, Richard has to call on all he has now learned from the brightest stages and the darkest alleyways of the city. To avoid the gallows, he must play the part of a lifetime . . . .

Showcasing the superb storytelling skill that has won Bernard Cornwell international renown, Fools and Mortals is a richly portrayed tour de force that brings to life a vivid world of intricate stagecraft, fierce competition, and consuming ambition.

Fantasy freebies.

The Summer Garden, my 11,000 word retelling of "Beauty and the Beast, is available in this Instafreebie giveaway. Grab it now!!

Some dark thoughts on BRIGHT

I hated it.
I hated it so much I bailed out at the two-thirds mark and I NEVER do that.
Really, I loathed it. And I shouldn't have. I should have embraced it with the fervor of a lover long denied. Because I love urban fantasy. The first time I encountered it, in a mix of two of my favorite genres--mystery and fantasy--I felt like it had been invented JUST FOR ME. The first urban fantasy I can remember seeing on television was Cast a Deadly Spell that featured a noir-ish storyline with Fred Ward as a private detective who gets involved with mystic books and cults and a woman he saves from a dark fate.  I loved it.
And then there were television shows like Poltergeist Legacy and the Dresden Files, and Warehouse

Paul Blackwood as Harry Dresden

13 and Grimm. There was Supernatural. Oddly, I never got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, possibly because I didn't like the few episodes I saw. But Buffy was the gold standard for UF television for a long time.

And now there's Bright. Here's what I liked:  Margaret Cho's in-your-face performance as a tough police sergeant. It was interesting casting and she was fine. I also liked Joel Edgerton as a gentle orc still trying to figure out how to deal with being "the first" of his kind. Although weirdly, it felt like he was channeling Dave Bautista's gentle giant character from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Here's what I hated about Bright:  Everything else. It looked cheap. It looked like it had been filmed in sepia tone. The sound was muddy. But really, what I hated most was the cynical take on the world. And it's encapsulated in a scene that happens very early on in the movie when Will Smith's wife screams at him to kill the fairy who's been getting into their bird feeder. He doesn't want to kill the fairy, but she insists, so in front of a group of neighborhood gangbangers, who are vastly amused, he beats the fairy to death with a broom. It's not subtle. (And neither is the subtext.  A cop beating a fairy to death? And just in case nobody GOT THE SUBTEXT, Will Smith has a line about "fairy lives don't matter today.)

I almost stopped watching right then and when I later mentioned it to friends on FB, a lot of people were in agreement. (One guy said he thought it was funny but I could not disagree  more.) Will Smith is a wonderful actor. Here he seems to be phoning it in. His character is incredibly unlikable.

The movie was pretty polarizing. I checked out the Rotten Tomatoes reviews (My favorite had the line, "Orcs are the new black") and can see how polarizing it's been.  And while as a UF fan I should be thrilled that there's now a sequel in the works, all I can think of are the many terrific UF series that would be great as television series or occasional movies. Max Landis, Bright's writer, may love the genre, but he relied on every tired trope and cliche in the business and delivered a heavy-handed social commentary along with it. I was sooooooo disappointed.

A Vampire a Day...Misbegotten

Yes, it's shameless self-promotion day.  I have just released MISBEGOTTEN, which is a novella and the first in a series of books set in my L.A. Nocturne universe. This is a paranormal LA in which vampire family vie for position against the most powerful family, which operates out of Griffith Observatory.

There are werewolves and ghouls and fae. the book began with a short story called "Tired Blood" that appeared in John Donald Carlucci's Astonishing Adventures Magazine back in 2007. I found I really loved the characters and the world and in the decade since then, I wrote enough paranormal short stories to fill an entire collection:  L.A. Nocturne Collection: Tales of the Misbegotten.

My protagonist, Kira Simkins, is a crime reporter who specializes in paranormal crime. She has her own blog, which was originally conceived in the manner of Nikki Finke's "Deadline Hollywood," which really rose to promminence during the 2008 WGA writer's strike. It's called paracrimes.com and I actually own that domain name, though not sure what I'm going to do with it.

I was originally inspired by Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita blake series, which I remember embracing with the fervor of a religious convert. I had never read anything like her books (it was really before "urban fantasy" was a thing).  This first story deals with the uproar that occurs when the head of a vampire family dies under peculiar circumstances that may or may not relate to a series of vampire on vampire murders occurring in the Southland. I'm really rather pleased with the results.

A vampire a day...Blood Destiny

I have to say--the title caught me when the cover didn't. Honestly, I think that's a TERRIBLE cover, although it has the saving grace of not featuring a shirtless guy.  Those are soooooo CHEESY.  But, this is a series with nine books about a cursed vampire and a female Homeland Security Agent. That was enough to pique my curiosity. Blood Destiny is the first in Tessa Dawn's Blood Curse series and it begins in 800 B.C. Romania and right away we're introduced to murderous twins with the somewhat unlikely names of Jadon and Jaeger. It's soon obvious this is a kind of Cain and Abel story with Jadon cursed for his brother's actions.  I was sucked into it pretty fast and curious to see how the writer spins out her premise over so many books.

Tessa Dawn writes a number of series, all of them Gothic/dark fantasy. She has another popular one with dragons. You can read about them on her site. She's also done trailers for some of her books. Here's the trailer for the Blood Curse series as a whole. View the trailers here where you can also find audio samplings.

A Vampire a Day--House of Night

I've been reading "urban fantasy" since before it was a "thing" and my interest in vampires predates Twilight. Lately, though, it seems like urban fantasy has been edged out by "paranormal romance," a lot of which seems to feature near-naked guys on the cover. (Although to be fair, the whole "shifter" subgenre of UF seems to be the bigger culprit with the paranormal porn-y kinds of covers.)
I thought it might be fun to read (or reread) a sampling of what's out there and I'm going to start 2018 off with P.C. Cast's and Kristen's Cast's "House of Night" series.

Dustin M. Ramsey (Kralizec)

This mother--daughter writing team have set their book in Tulsa, Oklahoma and that immediately sets it off from the bazillion other books that are set in LA/NY/Chicago. The first book opens with a stunning scene that features this truly creepy statue that stands in front of the entrance to Oral Roberts University, and throughout the series, many real-life locations are woven into the story.

There's diversity in the story--the protagonist, Zoey "Redbird" is part Native American and she has inherited powers from her "Grandmother Redbird." Native American myth augments and amplifies the vampire stuff, and when the books (there are twelve so far) get into the "Raven mocker" parts of the story, the saga really takes off. There are characters here I really didn't like when I first met them and then the Casts surprised me with what they did. There is growth here--the characters don't stand still. The books are addictive, in a good way, and there are real stakes at the heart of Zoey's situation.  If you're looking for a series to binge-read, this is a good one.

Janesville, a review

A Washington Post reporter’s intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors’ assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin—Paul Ryan’s hometown—and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class--Janesville is on a lot of year-end "Best Books" lists. It's easy to see why. The event that grounds the book is the closing of a GM parts plant just before Christmas in 2008, a move that threw the struggling blue-collar town into financial disarray. Even as town leaders looked to their hometown hero Paul Ryan to help them out, citizens scrambled to find other jobs. And as in the Bruce Springsteen song, "These jobs are going boy, and they ain't coming back."

Now, nearly a decade later, Ryan (who comes from a wealthy family) has offered his own Christmas present to his constituents, and to the rest of America. And just like GM, his decision was based purely on profit with no regard at all for the human cost of his actions.  We expect corporations to be soulless. It's still a surprise when humans are completely without compassion. It's worth noting that in the 2012 election, Romney and Ryan did not carry the vote in Janesville.

Here's my review:

This is a story that plays out much like the star-studded adaptation of Randy Shilts’ AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, bringing together related plot strands and characters in a story that does not have a happy ending. The writing is very good, and one of the surprises is the sympathetic portrait of Congressman Paul Ryan, who grew up in the wealthy part of Janesville (his family was part of the “Irish Mafia” who got rich in construction), but who seems to have worked very hard to save the plant for his neighbors and constituents.